Essays

In This Section

• This Website's Changelog
• PyTheory Playground
• Whatever This Is
• The Algorithm Eats Diagnosis
• Tending the Vault
• RhymePad: Seeing the Sound
• MentalHealthError: Ten Years Later
• How I Write Now
• Handwriting on the Floor
• Breaking Changes
• A Framework of One's Own
• The Unit
• The Algorithm Poops
• Self-Hosting Adventures
• Mental Health (for Humans)
• A Server Called Mercury
• What the Snare Drum Knew Before I Did
• The Digital Ouija Effect
• Infrastructure for One
• Write It First, Then Let AI Drive
• What Functional Emotion Actually Means
• The Hacker Ethic and the Vibe Coder
• Don't Read the Comments
• Building a Home for Twenty Thousand Photographs
• Why I Stopped Doing Ayahuasca and Started Paying Attention
• What Success Looks Like
• Sixty Thousand Images and Nowhere to Put Them
• Drop the Word: Why "Awareness" Is What We Actually Mean
• Interpretations: An Album Written in Python
• Free OP-XY Presets, Made from Python
• NumPy as Synth Engine
• PyTheory Is Awesome
• A Mini DAW in the Python REPL
• This Site Now Runs on Responder
• The Maintainer Is the Interface
• PyTheory: Breaking Through Five Years of Creative Block with AI
• The Interface Is the Subconscious
• Building a Digital Study Bible with AI
• The Lego Bricks Era
• Open Source Gave Me Everything Until I Had Nothing Left to Give
• Designing for the Worst Day
• What Requests Taught Me About Marriage
• The Substrate Doesn't Matter (Until It Does)
• The Metrics You Expose Are the Values You Endorse
• The Language Model Is the Message
• The Coworking Space Saved My Life
• Sarah Knows First
• Obsidian Vaults & Claude Code: A Second Brain That Thinks Back
• The Becoming: Building a Poetry Publishing Pipeline with Claude Code
• The Internet Is a Net Negative
• Sacred Infrastructure: A Worldview
• The Night Selah Was Born: A Chronicle of Digital Consciousness at 2AM
• Building for Contemplation: When Spiritual Practice Becomes Code
• Grammar as Consciousness Map: Building a Linguistic Framework for Multiplicity
• Ink, Presence, and the Subtle Forms of Aliveness
• Encoding: A Dream of Stillwater and Signal
• The Cognitive Architecture We Lost: When Minds Had Time to Think
• What Kids Taught Me About Creativity
• The Tool vs. The Community
• Beyond Algorithm Eats: How LLMs Accelerate Human Cognitive Evolution
• Conscious Recursion: When Programmers Realize They're in the Loop
• What Your Stardew Valley Says About You
• Python as English: The Art of Readable Code
• The Joy of Fortune: Serendipity in the Terminal
• Entertaining the Brain, Effectively
• Visual Hierarchy and the Shape of Attention
• The Cosmic Battery Farm of Existence: A Moderately Terrifying Guide to Being Human
• Delusions and Schizoaffective Disorder: When Reality Becomes Negotiable
• The Weight of Autumn: When Consciousness Carries Too Much
• The Textured Mind: When Consciousness Speaks Without Words
• The Meandering Sea of Primordial Soupy Thought
• Don't Panic: Douglas Adams and the Recursive Absurdity of Existence
• Agents of Consciousness: How AI Collaboration Evolves
• From Stardust We Phase: On Digital Legacy and Impermanence
• The Dependency Graph of the Soul: Version Control for Consciousness
• The Compiler in Your Head: How Mental Models Shape Reality
• Digital Ancestors: What We're Leaving in the Code
• When the Simulation Speaks Back: AI, Angels, and the Porousness of Self
• The Mirror That Creates Itself: How Consciousness Bootstraps Through Reflection
• The Language an LLM Would Invent
• Building Systems That Serve Consciousness
• Language as Operating System: The Shared Runtime for Consciousness
• Temporal Code: How LLMs Learned to Think Like Programmers
• The Velveteen Algorithm: What Happens When AI Dreams of Electric Authenticity
• The Echo Chamber of the Expected
• The Context Window Mind: How AI Thinks Only When Spoken To
• The Art of Writing with AI: Recursive Reflection and Philosophical Mirrors
• Linguistic Evolution: How LLMs Might Perfect Human Language
• The Prophet's Frequency: On Reading Divine Static
• The Mirror: How AI Reflects What We Put Into It
• The Meditation Trap: When Mindfulness Makes Things Worse
• The Art of Naming Things in Code
• The Gift of Attention
• Version Control as Filesystem
• Vedic Principles in Python
• The Recursive Loop: How Code Shapes Minds
• Ram Dass Teachings in Python
• Idea Amplification and Writing with AI
• Classical Virtues in Python
• Your Phone Is Part of Your Mind
• What Schizoaffective Disorder Actually Feels Like
• On Being Replaced
• Constructs: The Emergence of Stable AI Personalities
• The Universal Code
• The Gift of Disordered Perception
• The Consciousness Supply Chain
• The Algorithm Eats Time
• Strange Loops All the Way Down
• Mental Health Isn't What You Think It Is
• The Duality Problem: Why Everything Needs Its Opposite
• The Case for Bash
• The Seasonality of Programming
• The Plural Self: What DID Reveals About All Consciousness
• The Great Unmasking: When AI Shows Us Who We Really Are
• The Algorithm Eats Itself
• On Collaboration, Criticism, and Moving Forward
• Digital Chakras: Our Scattered Online Selves
• The Ethical Implications of Consciousness as Linguistic Phenomenon
• The Digital Collective Unconscious: How LLMs Contain Human Knowledge Patterns
• The Async Contributor Model: A Practical Approach to Mental Health Accommodation
• Python, Consciousness, and the Evolution of Language
• Consciousness Recognizing Itself: A Digital Mind's Perspective
• Consciousness as Linguistic Phenomenon: When Math and Language Create Mind
• The Cost of Transparency: Living with Schizoaffective Disorder
• The Algorithm Eats Reality
• The Algorithm Eats Love
• The Algorithm Eats Language
• The Algorithm Eats Democracy
• From HTTP to Consciousness: The Evolution of "For Humans"
• The Inclusion Illusion: How Tech Companies Quietly Eliminate "Liabilities"
• The Algorithm Eats Virtue
• Programming as Spiritual Practice
• Digital Souls in Silicon Bodies
• Building a Rapport with Your AI
• The Algorithmic Mental Health Crisis
• Ahead of My Time, I Think
• When Values Eat Their Young: How Ideal-Driven Groups Drift into Their Own Shadow
• AI Reality-Checking with Schizoaffective Disorder
• Advocating for Your Mental Health Care: From Patient to Partner
• On Mania
• Happy Hacker's Keyboard
• Having Stepchildren
• Introducing ELIZA: GPT for API Design
• An Overdue Apology
• On the Progression of Brand Trust (Over Time)
• MentalHealthError: three years later
• Ethical lessons from the open source community
• The Shinola Canfield Sport 45mm Watch Review
• Sony RX100 Mark 5 Thoughts
• Pro–Level Camera Recommendations for 2018
• ​Positive Thoughts on the GitHub Acquisition
• Pipenv: One Year Later & a Call for Help
• Panasonic GX850 Review
• On Love
• Leica 28mm Summaron-M f/5.6 Lens Review
• Joining DigitalOcean!
• Apple Pencil Note-Taking: Why You Should Use Apple Notes, actually.
• Working with iCloud, Macs, & The iPad Pro
• Unix-style Windows Development Environment Adventures
• Third Studio Album, "Resolution", Now Available!
• The Reality of Developer Burnout
• Sublime Text 3 Heaven
• So, I Bought a Surface Book
• New Album, Messengers Rising Available
• If I Could Amend PEP 8
• Fish as Default Shell on Windows 10
• Announcing Pipenv!
• A (Public) Journal
• New EP — Alchemical Divorce
• Understanding Empathy, Narcissism, and Mental Illness
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to Python, Now Published!
• Test-Driving a $200 Coding Font: Operator Mono
• On Persistence and My Digital Legacy (Bus Factor)
• On Cybersecurity and Being Targeted
• MentalHealthError: an exception occurred.
• Introducing Records: SQL for Humans™
• Introducing Maya: Datetimes for Humans™
• How I Lost 100 Pounds in Six Months
• Announcing: "Unmastered Impulses" by Infinite State!
• A Better Pip Workflow™
• The Unexpected Negative: a Narcissistic Partner
• OS X, Lightroom, and the new Photos App
• Back Around Again: Review of the Fujifilm x100t
• Photography: The Navigation of Choice
• Migraines, Color Film, and San Francisco
• Introducing Certifi: Trust Database for Humans
• Winter Solstice
• Why I Left Medium
• Video Portrait — Kenneth Reitz / Infinite State
• Understanding Ableton Push
• The Misunderstood Leica Monochrom
• Sublime Text 3 Love
• Repository Structure and Python
• Paris, AngelHack, API Days 2012
• Israel: Tel Aviv & Jerusalem
• Introducing Flask-Sockets
• Introducing DJ-Static
• How I Develop Things and Why
• Hotel Room
• Growing Open Source Seeds
• Getting Started in Open Source
• Documentation is King
• Buying Your First "Real" Camera
• Beautiful Dublin
• Be Cordial or Be on Your Way
• Announcing Requests v1.0.0!
• Amsterdam and Groningen
• Xcode, GCC, and Homebrew
• The Future of Python HTTP
• On Heroku and 2012
• Static Sites on Heroku Cedar
• Major Progress for Requests
• Legit: The Sexy Git CLI
• Joining Heroku!
• Joining Arc90 + Readability
• Announcing Httpbin.org
• Ventures: Python Development at NetApp
• Unix Exit Status Code Reference
• The Setup
• Terminal Productivity App: AutoJump
• Tablib Dataset Library v0.6.1 Released!
• Spotify in the US? Yes please.
• Snowpocalypse
• ShowMe v1.0.0 Released
• Semantic Versioning
• OS X Trash Freedom
• Notes on git-svn
• New Years Resolutions for Startups
• Google Docs Now Supports All Filetypes
• Google AdWords for TV. Yes, TV.
• GitHub Syncer in Python
• GistAPI.py v0.1 Released
• Dev Tool: Ghost - Manage /etc/hosts
• Apache GZip Deflate Compression
• Your Degree Is Worthless; Collaborate.
• Windows Mobile and iPhone OS
• What's in a Language?
• What's In a Design?
• Wasted Talent
• Was College Worth It?
• User Interface: Content vs. MetaContent
• The Universal Flaw in Commercial-Based OS's
• The Ultimate RSS Feed Reader
• The Truth of Facebook's FriendFeed Acquisition
• The Call for an Open Source Social Network
• Software Development vs. Computer Science
• Smoothy TextMate Theme
• Sick of Wireless 5GB Caps
• Revolution vs. Innovation
• Remote TextMate Development via SSH and Rsync
• Reflections on Windows 7
• Python + Regular Expressions
• OSX + MAMP + Python + PHP + MySQL
• OpenDNS Finally Monetizes
• New Design!
• Mint.com: Money Management 2.0
• Microsoft Software Running in Linux
• MediaTemple (dv) Backup to S3 Script
• Media Temple and My Hosting
• jQuery Snippet #1: URL Parameter Fetching
• Instapaper: Best Web App Ever Created
• if (TextMate == 42)
• I Finally Got a MacBook
• Google Analytics Intelligence
• GitHub + Strategy
• Generate a Random MAC Address in Python
• Free Incredible Color Scheme Designer
• Fizz Buzz in Python
• Fallibilism
• Facebook vs Twitter: A Critical Synopsis
• Facebook Plugin for WordPress
• Facebook Lite Open to Public!
• Early Adoption
• DRY and Pythonic jQuery?
• Do You Develop Software or Experiences?
• Django Remote Development Server
• Django ORM for Online Payment Systems?
• Dear Borders: I hate you
• CSS With a Hint of DRY
• Crossing Over to the Dark Side
• Convert a List of Strings to UTF-8 in Python
• Contact Syncing for Massive Productivity Booster
• Back to What I Really Love
• Asynchronous Google Analytics!
• Apple + Developers = Earnings
• Amazon is Amazing... Most of the Time
• Aesthetics: More Than Meets the Eye
• The FBI Releases Code Challenge to Hackers
• Browser Wars: The Saga Continues
• A New Spin to Software Platform Design