Personal story

Zebra pictures from South Africa

I took a trip to South Africa at the start of the pandemic. I wrote a little bit about it in my post about China.

I had been living in Beijing for a couple of years and I just started a new job in Xi’an. It was going to be a big increase in pay and a better opportunity. But a month into the new job and the Wuhan virus broke out, so they shut down the school.

The big Lunar New Year / Spring Festival, when China goes on a it’s big holiday, was just around the corner. So they decided to shut down early and open back up after the holiday. With this extended holiday, I decided to visit my friend and coworker in South Africa. Spoiler alert – the “holiday” is still going on 2 years later and the school is still closed.

A friend from Scotland just happened to be travelling Africa at the time to so we decided to meet up. His plan was to see how many countries we could see, and I was going to travel with him until I could get back to China. We ended up taking a week traveling from Johannesburg to Cape Town hitting the countries of Eswatini and Lesotho along the way. Along the way we had many adventures. We did a safari in our rental car. We got too close to a rhinoceros and scared ourselves.

When we landed in Cape Town, the virus hit the world stage. It was then that we realized that it was not just going to stay in China. The continent went on lockdown. Because of this, airbnb had some really inexpensive places so I got to stay in a two-story house overlooking the ocean in nearby Glencairn.

Anyway, here’s a picture I took of some zebras in South Africa.

Ten ideas a day

I write 10 ideas every day. Well, that’s a lie. My record in one year is 174 and I average a little less than every other day. But it’s been a habit of mine since 2014. It’s a brain exercise. It helps exercise my brain.

You can hire me to write 10 ideas for you for $5 on Fiverr. I’ve had some success with it. All but one of my customers was really impressed. One of them created an art show based on a list they bought from me. One of them was so happy she tipped me 200%.

It was really useful in coming up with topics to blog about for this Blogging from A to Z April Challenge for example.

If someone asks “have any ideas?” I usually say – “gimme a minute. I’ll come up with 10.” because I know from experience that I can. I use it as a form of fan mail. I write about how I admire them and write them 10 ideas. Sometimes they respond and once or twice it’s become a continuing conversation.

Postmodernism and the Potato

I got a strange degree in college. It was called Conceptual and Information Art. When I started, it used to be called Conceptual Design and Information Arts, but the student body voted to change it so it was CIA because we were a bunch of pranksters. The name stuck and it’s now called Digital Media Arts & Emerging Technologies (Conceptual Information Arts). It’s an alphabet soup that means the intersection of art, science, technology and culture. It is where I met and fell in love with postmodernism.

What is postmodernism? Well! There are volumes of intellectual discourse on the subject. Check out this definition:

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The Ocean

I love the ocean. I grew up in a house that overlooked the beach. A sleepy little California west-coast surfer town that has since become a place of multi-million dollar mansions. But as a kid, it wasn’t so fancy. It was a place where all the dirty-faced neighborhood kids would get together and run down to the beach to play. Time has smoothed out the edges and made it even that town even more idyllic that it probably was. The effect is that when I think of home, I think of the beach and swimming in the Pacific Ocean.

Watching the sunset on the beach with a friend on Christmas

For a large part of young adult my life, I lived near the beach would rarely go. Just knowing it was there was enough. I could always tell the cardinal directions because the beach was in the West. Even today, when traveling to a place with a beach on the East, or when living in a foreign country, I need think imagine that beach in California to orient myself in the world.

Mitch Altman

There are 3 people who I wouldn’t necessarily call “mentors” but fit the bill because they are influential older people whom I admire and have changed the course of my life for the better. They are my college professor, my Dad’s childhood friend, and Mitch Altman.

I am not alone when I call him a mentor. He may not like the term, but he has inspired so people I would be very surprised if more than a few would call him such. As he likes to say “I convince a lot of people to quit their job.”

An image I made for HTTC2018 that we turned into a sticker
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Lessons from 2048

I am addicted to the game 2048. I played it when it first came out, and somehow it lodged itself in my head and won’t get unstuck. I’ll play it during meetings, watching TV, or anything that doesn’t require my full attention but requires me to sit still. It’s my digital fidget spinner.

2048 is a simple game. It’s a sliding tile puzzle game where you slide numbered tiles and they double as they combine. The goal is to get the 2048 tile. You can also keep playing after you won and get bigger and bigger numbers.

2048 high score
The highest tile I ever reached is 65,656 and it only took me a little 9 hours 15 minutes, 22 seconds.

It was written in 2014 by Gabriele Cirulli1 in JavaScript and CSS. It’s open-source and it went viral as people started creating their own versions of the game. I wrote one called “50” as a tongue-and-cheek reference to 50 Shades of Gray. I thought it would be funny to make it to go though shades of gray instead of going from grey through red to yellow. Also, instead of doubling and going to 2048, it adds 5 every time and you win at 50.

screenshot of the game 50
I created the game 50 as a 2048 knock off. Aren’t I hilarious?

So what have I learned from obsessively playing the same game for over 8 years? Glad you asked! I thought about it much deeper than one really ought to and came up with these life lessons:

  • The smaller numbers are the most important.
  • Think multiple steps ahead.
  • Consider all the outcomes of your next action.
  • You have to deal with random chance the best you can.
  • It’s just a game. You don’t have to play it.
  • You need different strategies depending on how much you have.
  • If you win and keep going, eventually you lose.
  • Don’t give up until the last minute, because sometimes you can pull a miracle.
  • Doubling quickly gets out of hand.
  • Try to stack as many things as possible to save space.
  • When waiting for a better opportunity, sometimes it never comes.
  • It is possible to play two sides at once, but it weakens both positions.

Kevin Bacon

I have a Bacon Number of 2.

What is a Bacon Number? Let’s back up.

There is a theory that all people are six or fewer social connections away from each other. It’s called the Six Handshakes Rule or Six Degrees of Separation. There’s no real science behind it, but it’s an accepted factoid and may as well be true.

Kevin Bacon is in a ton of movies. More than 65. He’s no Eric Roberts, who has been in over 400 movies, but he’s been in a lot. The idea is that all Hollywood actors have 6 or fewer degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon.

Actor Eric Roberts
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Just the factoids

For many years, I had a project called Just The Factoids. The idea was conceived as a conceptual art project to make art out of pure idea in text form. I drew inspiration from Jenny Holzer1, a conceptual artist who creates works of text in public, and L.M. Boyd2, a newspaper columnist who wrote articles that were lists of interesting and amusing trivia.

A “factoid” is a short fact that is probably true, but is not necessarily provable. I would collect these semi-substantiated facts and try to make them into a body of work using social media as my artistic media.

From 2017 to 2020, I posted a new factoid every day on Twitter. I posted over 1500 factoids and got a little over 1000 followers. I had a Facebook page, a blog, and Tumblr, and I even sold a couple of shirts with factoids printed on them.

Just The Factoids logo
The old Just The Factoids logo
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Flying

Flying. I have taken up paragliding. It is a wonderful but very difficult to learn sport. It is amazing being able to fly in the air with nothing but a wing above. It’s actually very quiet and relaxing once you are in the air. The hard part is “kiting” which is controlling your wing when you are on the ground.