2026: iPad Pro, Vision Pro, and a Device Mostly in My Drawer
Looking back at ten years with the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, why it became a single-purpose learning device, and what that suggests about the Vision Pro.
Field Notes
Personal records, retrospectives, and portfolios where specific experience comes before the lesson.
16 posts
gen:LOCK Season 1 by Rooster Teeth
What gen:LOCK Season 1 gets right about mind uploading, mecha pilots, and the uneasy boundary between a copied consciousness and a human body.
The Media Consumption Arc: From Video Games to Shows to AI
Before the pandemic I avoided television shows because of their time commitment. Then watching shows with my wife helped us through isolation. Looking from college to retirement, the better question is not whether media is good or bad, but what degree of attention and responsiveness it asks from us at each season of life.
Burnout Is a Control Problem, Not an Hours Problem
More than a decade ago I burned out badly, and the obvious story (too many hours) turned out to be wrong. Burnout wasn't the work I did; it was the control I lost over where my time went, and everything the work made impossible outside of it.
The Background Brain: Why Boredom Makes Ideas
Some of my best ideas came from stopping work, not doing more of it. Learning How to Learn's diffuse mode, Kahneman's System 1, and Cal Newport's Slow Productivity all describe the same mechanism: the mind does its best creative work in the background, so past a point more hours make creative output worse, not better.
My Swift Journey: Why I Love It but Can't Use It at Work
Swift might be my favorite language, striking a rare balance between low-level and high-level features, yet I've never been able to use it professionally. This is why, and what it takes for a language to break out of its home ecosystem.
25 Years of Operating Systems: Windows, macOS, and Back Again
A personal retrospective spanning 25 years of operating systems, from Windows 98, 2000, and XP through a decade of macOS to a return to Windows 10 and 11, and a look at where a fully Linux development environment might fit next.
Stop Conflating Effort Tracking with Work Tracking
Why effort tracking (where is my time going?) needs to be separate from work tracking (what am I building?) and how centralizing effort in one tool provides visibility that scattered work-tracking systems can't.
Longest Path into Learning Data Structures and Algorithms for the Tech Interview
A nontraditional software developer's path through bootcamp, Princeton, and MIT courses to build the algorithms foundation needed for technical interviews.
Apple Chips == AR Glasses
A 2020 prediction that Apple's move away from Intel would connect its custom chips, graphics, gaming ambitions, and eventual AR hardware.
2016: One Year of iPad Pro 12.9"
One year with the original 12.9-inch iPad Pro, from its battery life and speakers to the compromises of typing on glass.
From Creative Tools to Software Engineering
How a yellow film camera, video editing, web design, Python, Swift, and open source gradually revealed that programming had been part of my creative work all along.
Media Projects & Digital Production Portfolio
Video production work spanning documentary, commercial, and technical content. From humanitarian missions to commercial products.
Technical Projects & Development Portfolio
Software development projects spanning mobile applications, web development, system tools, and emerging technologies.
What Apple Swift Means to Apple and the Future of Apps Everywhere (A Prediction)
A 2014 prediction about Apple's newly released Swift language, why it could become the foundation of connected app frameworks, and how apps might eventually run everywhere.
A Decade of Mobile Computing: From PDAs to Pocket Internet (1999-2009)
A chronological journey through the evolution of mobile devices from 1999 to 2009. From Nokia brick phones and Sony Ericsson chocolate bars to Palm PDAs, Java games, SMS-based Twitter, and finally the iPhone 3G.