A pattern for building personal knowledge bases using LLMs.

[…]

Most people’s experience with LLMs and documents looks like RAG: you upload a collection of files, the LLM retrieves relevant chunks at query time, and generates an answer. This works, but the LLM is rediscovering knowledge from scratch on every question. There’s no accumulation.

[…]

The idea here is different. Instead of just retrieving from raw documents at query time, the LLM incrementally builds and maintains a persistent wiki — a structured, interlinked collection of markdown files that sits between you and the raw sources.

As a human reader, I get immense value out of online wikis (like Wikipedia) and will often not even need the actual source material for the vast majority of my searches. When reading fiction, I will frequently use book-specific wikis as supplemental reading when I’m trying to remember certain details (e.g. where else have I seen this character?). My personal knowledge base (and this site, to some degree) is an effort to build a wiki-like system, that I control, to augment my own memory. Wikis save me a lot of time.

Applying this same principle to LLM systems is a fascinating idea. Wikis (theoretically) can save a lot of tokens.

The knowledge is compiled once and then kept current, not re-derived on every query.
[…]
You never (or rarely) write the wiki yourself — the LLM writes and maintains all of it. You’re in charge of sourcing, exploration, and asking the right questions. The LLM does all the grunt work

Architecture

There are three layers:

Raw sources — your curated collection of source documents. Articles, papers, images, data files. These are immutable — the LLM reads from them but never modifies them. This is your source of truth.

The wiki — a directory of LLM-generated markdown files. Summaries, entity pages, concept pages, comparisons, an overview, a synthesis. The LLM owns this layer entirely. It creates pages, updates them when new sources arrive, maintains cross-references, and keeps everything consistent. You read it; the LLM writes it.

The schema — a document (e.g. CLAUDE.md for Claude Code or AGENTS.md for Codex) that tells the LLM how the wiki is structured, what the conventions are, and what workflows to follow when ingesting sources, answering questions, or maintaining the wiki. This is the key configuration file — it’s what makes the LLM a disciplined wiki maintainer rather than a generic chatbot. You and the LLM co-evolve this over time as you figure out what works for your domain.

Operations

Ingest. You drop a new source into the raw collection and tell the LLM to process it. […]

Query. You ask questions against the wiki. The LLM searches for relevant pages, reads them, and synthesizes an answer with citations. […] The important insight: good answers can be filed back into the wiki as new pages. […] This way your explorations compound in the knowledge base just like ingested sources do.

Lint. Periodically, ask the LLM to health-check the wiki. Look for: contradictions between pages, stale claims that newer sources have superseded, orphan pages with no inbound links, important concepts mentioned but lacking their own page, missing cross-references, data gaps that could be filled with a web search. […]

The tedious part of maintaining a knowledge base is not the reading or the thinking — it’s the bookkeeping.

[…]

The right way to use this is to share it with your LLM agent and work together to instantiate a version that fits your needs.

I’ve applied the concepts for this idea to one of my projects. My first attempt was a failure. It generated a wiki, but the instructions written to CLAUDE.md contained a fatal flaw: Claude would greedily consume the wiki on every query. This was filling my context window quickly. I’ve since updated those instructions and seen efficiency improvements. Plenty of room to improve, though. I plan to explore implementing a few of the operations as commands and an agent for coordination.

Another interesting idea I’ve seen around this concept: for software projects, using compiled artifacts like AST to provide the basis for the wiki. See Codesight for more details.

When I was a little boy, my first memory was this dream of falling. […] My whole life, I’ve been obsessed with the dream. But maybe it wasn’t me falling to my death. Maybe it was me flying.

Dean Potter is a near mythical figure in the world of climbing. He was famous for his daring exploits while climbing, BASE jumping, and highlining (often performing multiple at the same time). He was infamous for his disregard for tradition, safety, and the law.

From directors Peter Mortimer and Nick Rosen comes an unflinching portrait of Dean Potter, the world’s most influential and controversial climber, BASE jumper and highline walker.

The two directors behind the series are also responsible for:

• The Alpinist (2021)
• The Dawn Wall (2017)
• Founding Reel Rock (2005)

The Alpinist and The Dawn Wall are both fantastic climbing documentaries. Both are worth your time.

Now that I live in Colorado, it’s an annual tradition to attend the world premiere of Reel Rock in Boulder. The Dark Wizard will also screen at the Boulder International Film Festival on April 10.

The four-part docuseries premieres April 14 on HBO Max .

This looks to be a must-watch for climbers (or climbing enthusiasts).

Everything I do runs through Claude Code. Not just coding. My morning routine, my CRM, my content pipeline, my lead sourcing, my follow-ups. All of it.

I built a system that runs my entire business from the terminal. One command in the morning, and my whole day is laid out. I copy, paste, check boxes, move on.

At some point I stopped thinking of Claude as something I chat with and started treating it as infrastructure. That changed everything.

Don’t get me wrong, I still chat with it, but only on [Claude Code].

Anyone else gone full Claude Code for non-coding work?

I’ll have a lot more to write about this in the future, but I have been using Claude Code to help launch my business . I have a lot of experience building software but I lack experience in the other skills that are required to run your own business: managing infrastructure, product strategy & research, marketing, design, and the day-to-day details of administration. As a solo indie developer, it’s empowering to have a (semi-)reliable personal assistant that can do a little bit of everything.

I even use Claude Code to semi-automate the running of this blog. Claude has helped me:

• Write a custom Hugo theme that I’m more happy with and which allows me to drop an external dependency.
• Automate the boilerplate and grunt work required to manage a static site.
• Audit the site to catch mistakes and inconsistencies.
• Add a new linked list feature to the blog.
• Proofread my writing to catch mistakes before publishing.

Now I get to focus almost entirely on the writing.

New feature at Daring Fireball: the Linked List, a daily list of interesting links and brief commentary on DF-related topics, updated frequently but not frenetically. Call it a “link log”, or “linkblog”, or just “a good way to dick around on the Internet for a few minutes a day”.

I’ve been following Daring Fireball (by John Gruber) since 2008. I remember the days (before I learned how to use RSS) when I would repeatedly refresh the home page as I went about my day at college. In many ways, Daring Fireball is one of the (if not the) reasons I became interested in writing software for Apple platforms.

From Simon Willison’s Weblog :

I started running a basic link blog on this domain back in November 2003—publishing links (which I called “blogmarks”) with a title, URL, short snippet of commentary and a “via” link where appropriate.

[…]

I’m going to describe the informal set of guidelines I’ve set myself for how I link blog, in the hope that it might encourage other people to give this a try themselves.

Willison goes into great detail about his guidelines. My guidelines are basically:

• Something I found interesting
• Something I want to remember
• Something I want to share

Willison closes with:

Sharing interesting links with commentary is a low effort, high value way to contribute to internet life at large.

Willison’s “What to blog about” is also a must read.

Other pioneers in this space:

• Dave Winer (Scripting News , 1994)
• Jason Kottke (kottke.org , 1998)

I went to the New York Times to glimpse at four headlines and was greeted with 422 network requests and 49 megabytes of data. It took two minutes before the page settled. And then you wonder why every sane tech person has an adblocker installed on systems of all their loved ones.

I’ve been a long-time user of 1Blocker , Hush , and Vinegar to help wrangle the madness of today’s internet.

Simplified versions like text.npr.org, lite.cnn.com and www.cbc.ca/lite still exist out there. And RSS feeds do too.

For the record, a typical post on this site (no images) weighs in as follows:

At just 23 KB, that’s roughly 2,000× lighter than the home page of the New York Times. This site is built to be fast and lean.²

Some supplementary (and seething) commentary from Daring Fireball :

Even websites from publishers who care about quality are doing things on the web that they would never do with their print editions.

[…]

The web is the only medium the world has ever seen where its highest-profile decision makers are people who despise the medium and are trying to drive people away from it.

This post from Daring Fireball weighs in at a trim 157 KB, over half of which comes from the screenshot (an extremely rare inclusion on DF).

Back to Shubham Bose to close it out:

They built a system that treats your attention as an extractable resource. The most radical thing you can do is refuse to be extracted.

Let’s tell the truth, then: Nobody reads your blog. […] At least, not as many as you’d like.

This is not meant to be a mass market blog. Thank you for tagging along.

When you write, you think better. When you think better, you create better.

So, who’s there real audience?

You’re not just writing for today’s invisible audience. You’re writing for:

• Future you. Your posts become a time capsule of your evolving mind.
• One right person. Maybe one day, someone stumbles across your words at exactly the right moment. And that changes something for them.
• The work itself. Consistency beats virality. A hundred posts with depth will outlast a single viral hit.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot as I chart this new course in life. I want to document how running a small software company goes.

Whether it goes poorly or well, by writing about it, I’ll (hopefully) learn from my mistakes and understand what actually worked. If you follow along, you may learn something as well.

And honestly, I just want to write more. I find it cathartic. To that end, I’ve added a new “linked list” feature to this blog and streamlined my workflow. My personal essays are sporadic and varied; I’m hoping this will help me move the needle on my writing consistency.

Daniel_Langworthy (April 13, 2025):

@codinghorror do you know what happened to WASDKeyboards? I am so sad, I love my keyboards I got from them but they seem to just be gone

JimPas (April 13, 2025):

Hi Daniel. I checked this out and the last post on their support site was back in Nov 2024. Scrolling down to the bottom of the page shows this, so it doesn’t look good:

It shows a screenshot of a notice that reads: “Service Temporarily Unavailable”.

Glenwing (April 15, 2025):

I stopped by their office address in early January. Their name was still on the sign, but they’re gone. Replaced with some Solar startup.

This is sad news indeed!

After I started my first software engineering job in 2014, one of the first things I purchased was a mechanical keyboard from WASD: a CODE V1 87-Key Mechanical Keyboard with Cherry MX Clear keys.

I felt strongly (and still do) that writing software is a craft and any good craftsperson should invest in quality tools, learn how to use them effectively, and care for them. That keyboard went with me to every new job and moved across the country from Tennessee to California to Colorado. I’ve never had a single issue with it.

In 2022 when I needed both an office and home setup for Apple’s hybrid schedule, I added the CODE V3 (87-Key Mechanical Keyboard - Cherry MX Clear) to my setup. The V3 was for work; the V1 for home.

Now that I work independently , the V3 is my daily driver but the V1 is still alive and well, boxed up in my office awaiting a day when it’s needed again.

This is a one-person operation: it’s just me, building software for Apple platforms. The kind of software I want to use myself: focused, thoughtful, and delightful in the details.

I’ve spent my career caring deeply about the quality of the software I ship. That doesn’t change now. If anything, working for myself means I get to hold it to an even higher standard.

There’s more to come.

Good software should spark a little joy. I’m working on it.

Thanks for checking it out!

According to Strava, in March, I spent 22 hours active (walking, running, hiking, etc.), traveled 58.6 miles, and gained 8,967 feet of elevation. Over the past five weeks, I’m averaging around 12 miles and 1786 feet of elevation gain per week. My current routine is to run twice during the week for general fitness, climb twice at the gym, hike with Kellie at least once, and do one longer trail run on the weekends. I feel like I’m getting stronger and I’m down about eight pounds.

I kind of started trail running out of the blue (more on that in a future post) and I’ve been blown away by how much I’ve enjoyed it. I’m not going for any PRs or FKTs… I’m just happy to be out here running around in the mountains.

It seems like we’re finally at the tail end of winter. We had a lot of snow in March and it was fun at times but I think Kellie and I are both ready for spring.

Yellow highlight | Location: 564
My awesome quote!

Yellow highlight | Location: 566
Another cool quote...

Using Sublime Text , you can use easily clean this up by:

1. Select Find > Replace from the menu bar
2. Ensure regular expressions is selected
3. Past the following regex into the find field (note the trailing period):

^.*Yellow highlight.*\n

4. Replace all with an empty space!

This leaves you with a relatively clean copy of your highlights.

This morning I completed a Boulder classic: solo climbing Freeway on the Second Flatiron. Special thanks to my friend Brooke for talking me into this excellent climbing experience and capturing my epic leap from the “diving board”. Aside from a few sketchy “scrambles” to set anchors in the past, this was my first intentional solo climb.

At 600 feet high, Freeway seems intimidating from the base. But the route is an extremely easy climb. It’s graded at 5.0 on the Yosemite Decimal System (this is the lowest grade that still counts as climbing that warrants protection). In truth, it’s a moderate scramble up a slabby face that has a few true climbing moves and enough exposure to get the heart pumping when you remember that you don’t have any protection. I was able to complete this climb in my approach shoes.

The weather was absolutely fantastic! It was a moderately busy morning: we were two of seven people on the route. At the beginning, we crossed paths with a guy who was RUNNING DOWN the route. Brooke also ran into a friend on the route right after I jumped off the diving board. This felt like a very Boulder moment and I found it very humerous.

Round trip, it took us 1 hour 45 minutes to go 2.36 miles, 1242 feet of elevation gain. I take the blame for being slow on this one. I was a a little nervous about the climb and took my time on the way up.

My Highlights

For all its faults—and they are numberless—I felt a sudden affection for the Empire of my home,

Rome of old was not loved for its greatness, so the poet wrote. Rome was great because men loved her, as I loved my Empire in that moment.

A fear born of the fact that though we may come back to a place at the end of our journeys, we never really return, for we are not the same person who departed.

Alexander needed desperately to become something. To become someone. To matter. Thus it is for all men. We are nothing until we have accomplished something.

that the privilege of one’s birth is no privilege at all, only another kind of cage.

“Well then,” she said, “’tis well that whether we fail or not is up to us.”

But it was better this way. To appear ostentatious was to exaggerate my importance. Understating my arrival like this sent a different message: that I did not need to exaggerate.

“Because I have earned their respect. Rank only formalizes relationships between people, Alexander. It does not create them. One has rank because one deserves it, and if one does not deserve it, he will lose his rank. Or his life. A man would do well to become worthy of his honors, else he will be deposed as a tyrant.”

“From little towns in a far land we came, to save our honour and a world aflame,”

That is why the best commanders, the best captains and kings, make themselves known to their people—that their people may be known to them. That we might not betray their trust and obedience when the critical time came.

Sir Gawain. Turning my head, I stopped and looked to the statue nearest me on the other side. SIR LANCELOT. I guessed then I could name the others. Percival, Bedivere, Gareth, and Kay. Gaheris and Galahad. Tristan and Palamedes. The Knights of the Round Table.

I had believed that I alone had the wisdom to set the world to rights, not knowing then that true wisdom lies in knowing that I did not possess that wisdom, and never would.

Men are slower to act from principle than self-interest, and far slower to act on principle than jealousy or revenge.

I had to choose. The only way out was through. Always forward, I thought to myself.

Reader, have I already said that there is a difference between knowing a fact and owning it?

“Because we are not good.” It took me a moment to realize that it had been I who’d answered. Both my master and student looked at me. “If we were good men, we’d not need all this reflection.”

The stone giants, the city, the mountain on which I stood existed in another present. One that had not happened—that could not happen—because the past that informed its reality had not. I had come to a time unreal and unrealized.

As darkness brings forth the creatures of the night, so silence brings forth the things within our hearts… if we will but listen to it.

“Hadrian,” she said, “you were gone for forty days.”

The allusion here is interesting.

Consciousness, I think, is a mechanism we humans have evolved for sorting the threads of time. We do it blindly, and that is enough for most of us, most of the time. I am no different, save that I have learned to listen. To see.

Nothing is without meaning, because nothing is without consequence.

“We are all chosen for something,”

I am not certain if a hell awaits the unjust hereafter, but I know there are hells in this life.

We had expanded too far, brushed against the borders of infinity. Infinity had pushed back.

“We are going to lose people now.” It had struck me as a funny thing to say at the time. We had already lost people fighting in the streets, had lost an entire fleet and orbital defense platform. We had been losing people for days. He’d meant civilians, but the word choice stuck with me. What were soldiers then, if not people?

Pallino had told me long ago that proper Sollan officers don’t duck. In the open, a shot will find you crouching as easily as standing, he’d said. Plus the men don’t like it. That had always stuck with me. The men don’t like it.

He was braver than I ever was. Braver… or more foolish. Or perhaps they are the same thing.

Darkness greeted us, darkness and the sense that we were running out of time.

Today, we tried an activity that I’m never experienced before: snow shoeing!

Notes:

• Snow shoeing is easy going when the trail is well trod. Not so much when you are the one breaking the trail.

Trail Details:

• Trail: AllTrails
• Distance: 3.3 miles
• Elevation Gain: 334 feet

Workout Details:

• Start Time: 12:18 PM
• Workout Time: 2 hr 50 min
• Avg. Heartrate: 105 bpm

Weather:

• Temperature: 29ºF
• Humidity: —%
• Air Quality: —
• Conditions: Clear

Trail Details:

• Trail: n/a
• Distance: 3.6 miles
• Elevation Gain: 129 feet

Workout Details:

• Start Time: 5:21 PM
• Workout Time: 44 min
• Avg. Heartrate: 140 bpm

Weather:

• Temperature: 44ºF
• Humidity: 56%
• Air Quality: 41
• Conditions: Cloudy

Prep Time: 5 min | Cook Time: 5 min | Difficulty: Easy | Servings: 1

Ingredients

• 30 grams fresh¹, coarse ground coffee
• 350 grams hot (not boiling) water

Adjust ratios to taste.

Equipment

• Pour over carafe (e.g. Chemex or equivalent)
• Paper pour over filters (I prefer white paper filters)
• Burr grinder (strongly recommended)
• Goose neck kettle (recommended for easier pouring)

Directions

Preparation

1. Grind beans. If possible, grind beans just before brewing. Consistency should be medium-coarse, similar to coarse salt or sand.
2. Heat water. Water should be just shy of boiling, 195°-205°F.
3. Pre-wet filter. Put filter in place on carafe and pre-wet with enough water to soak most of the filter. It doesn’t take much water and this will hold it in place. Dump filtered water out of carafe.
4. Assemble on scale. Put coffee in wetted filter and place entire carafe on gram scale.
5. Zero out your scale now.

Brewing

This recipe uses the three pour method. Each pour should be slow but steady and in a circular motion, working from the center out and back in.

1. Pour just enough water to saturate the grounds (~30g). Give it a gentle stir with a chop stick. Allow to “bloom” for 30 sec.²
2. Pour until the scale reads 200g. Allow to filter down.
3. The final pour should take you all the way to 350g.

Once the brew is complete, you should end up with a beautiful, smooth bed of wet grounds. If you have a rough crater, you probably poured too quickly.

Enjoy!

I wasn’t sure where I wanted to run this morning so I picked a route that I was excited to run! I’d been hiking on this trail before so I knew to what to expect. The views of the mountains looking west were phenominal.

The weather was threatening to rain but it held off long enough to complete my run. The trail conditions were pristine.

I even found a few friends on the way back down.

Notes:

• I ditched as much weight as possible this time. I only took my running vest, 0.5 liter of water, a headlamp, and my rain jacket (weather was threatening).
• This run was honestly too difficult for me right now. I spent most of my time in Heart Rate Zones 3 and 4. I continue to struggle with my pacing.

Trail Details:

• Trail: Mount Sanitas via Lion’s Lair Trail Run
• Distance: 4.47 miles
• Elevation Gain: 750 feet

Workout Details:

• Start Time: 6:46 AM
• Workout Time: 1 hr 8 min
• Avg. Heartrate: 155 bpm

Weather:

• Temperature: 39ºF
• Humidity: 67%
• Air Quality: —
• Conditions: Overcast / Chance of Rain

This morning, I made it up to the top of the Dakota Ridge just in time for sunrise for a fantastic view of Boulder and the Front Range.

Notes:

• Take less! I over-estimated how long the run would take me and packed too much stuff in my running vest: Phone, 1 Liter water, snack, trekking poles, head lamp, pocket knife, headphones, chapstick, etc. For less technical runs, I can ditch the poles. For shorter runs, I can bring less water. For all runs, I need to shave as much weight as possible (Do I actually need a pocket knife on a run?!). It might be interesting to weight my full running kit under various configurations.
• Be bold! Start cold! Long socks + shorts kept my legs warm enough but I was over dressed up top and got hot really fast. I need to work on my laying system so that I can be bolder and start colder.
• Pacing needs work. I spent most of the run in Heart Rate Zone 3. I need to work on my pace (especially uphill) so that I can spend more time in Heart Rate Zone 2. Uphill was difficult! I hiked as much if not more than I ran. The view was worth it at the top though and the downhill was fun! The return was a wide, smooth track all the way back to the trailhead. I ran hard the entire way down.

Trail Details:

• Trail: Sanitas Valley and Dakota Ridge Trail
• Distance: 2.47 miles
• Elevation Gain: 453 feet

Workout Details:

• Start Time: 6:48 AM
• Workout Duration: 39 min 46 sec
• Average Heartrate: 143 bpm
• Average Pace: 16'02"/mi

Weather:

• Temperature: 38ºF
• Humidity: 36%
• Air Quality: 39
• Conditions: Partly Cloudy

Highlights

Fear is death to reason.
“And reason death to fear.”

“[…] Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. […]”

We believe our fear destroyed by new bravery. It is not. Fear is never destroyed. It is only made smaller by the courage we find after. It is always there.

I find this to be true even in my own life. My fears never truly go away; I just get better at managing them.

We are not always the authors of our own stories.

We have little control over our ends, and none over what passes beyond them. But if we live well and truly, those who follow on may remember us for our lives and not our deaths.

A man is the sum of his memories—and more—he is the sum of all those others he has met, and what he learned from them. And that is an encouraging thought, for that knowledge and those memories survive and are part of us through every storm, and every little death.

Each of us contains multitudes, but it is not that we are cells in the body of humankind. Rather we are clay, shaped as the mountain is shaped: by the wind, the tramping foot, and the rain. By the world. The mark of other hands is on us, but we are ourselves alone.

There are two sorts of men. One hears an order from his better and obeys. The other sees order in himself and obeys that. All men obey something, even if it is only themselves.

These feel very Stoic to me for some reason.

Lucifer and Prometheus are the same.

This is an interesting comparison to make. In the Bible, Lucifer (Satan) is a fallen angel who “gives” mankind knowledge of good an evil. In Greek mythology, Prometheus is a Titan who steals fire from the gods and gives it mankind in the form of knowledge.

Evil is older than we, other than we—or is greater than, extending back and forward across all of conscious Time. Reader, there are other devils than Man. And by our evolved reason we may be sure of understanding human devils only.

We live in a world where only man has evolved to sentience. Trying to imagine worse evils than those we have perpetrated is a dark and interesting thought experiment.

And know this: every thought had by every philosopher and scholiast, every scientist and priest, is framed by the human mind.

Sometimes two groups can be shaped in ways that make communication fundamentally difficult, if not impossible.

Thus often do we return to those childish things when the weight of responsibility and of trial becomes too much to bear alone.

Escapism as a coping mechanism can be a powerful tool.

Obedience out of fear of pain.
Obedience out of fear of the other.
Obedience out of love for the person of the hierarch.
Obedience out of loyalty to the office of the hierarch.
Obedience out of respect for the laws of men and of heaven.
Obedience out of piety.
Obedience out of compassion.
Obedience out of devotion.

Obedience is a theme that keeps coming up in these books.

Have I said that what we perceive as darkness is only the chaos that came—without light’s order—before Creation itself? That is why we imagine anything might be lurking in the darkness.

Update 03/14/2024: We made it through 4½ weeks before we got bored with the routine. It was too repetitive. We decided to go a different direction with our fitness routine: a combination of running, climbing, Apple Fitness+, and hiking on the weekends. We’re still going strong!

Last week, Kellie and I started a new training program geared towards getting us in better shape for climbing, hiking, and an upcoming back packing trip. I thought I’d summarize what we’re doing.

I adapted the 6 Weeks to Trail Fit program (Outside Online) to work in some climbing and an extra rest day.

The program is 6 weeks. The excercises are essentially the same each week but they get progressively more difficult due to added weight, duration, or elevation.

• Monday: Strength and Conditioning
• Tuesday: Climbing and Core
• Wednesday: Active Rest Day
• Thursday: Strength and Conditioning
• Friday: Climbing and Core
• Saturday: Adventure Day! Hiking
• Sunday: Passive Rest Day and Meal Prep

I’ll report back at the end of the program to summarize how things went (and provide a PDF). We’re off to a good start though. Week one ended with us hiking the Enchanted Mesa Trail .

Highlights

The fool believes the iniquities of the world are the fault of other men. […] The truly wise try to change themselves, which is the more difficult and less grand task.

The man who hopes for the future delays its arrival, and the man who dreads it summons it to his door.

Olorin took a step back before answering. “I will tell him I met a man, a lord of the strange Empire. I will tell him of your quality.” His smile capered on his face. “And your quality will be known in Jadd and on the battlefields of our war before ever you find yourself there. You will have friends.”

This reminds me of the scene between Balian and Imad ad-Din from Kingdom of Heaven (one of my favorite movies).

After 5½ years working on ❤️ healthy things at Apple in California, I’m starting 2024 with a new gig: working on 🥽 spatial things at Apple in Colorado. It’s hard to put into words how difficult this transition was. So many things had to go right along the way and it took a lot of patience. Not to mention how difficult it was to say goodbye to all of the wonderful friends and colleagues that I’ve met along the way.

But this move feels right for so many reasons. A fresh start in a new product space in a new location. I’m excited about what the future holds!

At some point, I plan to reflect about my time in California but I’ll save that for another post.

Until then, the mountains are calling me.

The origin of the name “chess pie” is steeped in history and folklore. No one really agrees on the exact origins but the most likely explanation is that it is a corruption of the word “cheese”. Chess pie was likely brought to the American colonies from England as early as the 17th century and is similar to many cheesecakes and cheese curd pies found in cookbooks from that era. It’s basically a cheese-less cheese pie. Today, you’ll find variations of this pie everywhere from New England to the deep South but it’s most prevalent further south.

Regardless of the origin, I have many fond memories of eating chess pie and chess bars over the years… but I won’t bore you with any more history. There are many variations of this recipe but they follow the same basic direction (mostly tweaking ingredients and proportions). I received this recipe from a dear friend who taught me a little about cooking and a lot about life.

It’s time for pie!

Recipe

Chess pie. A delicious and very southern pie.

Equipment:

• 9 inch pie dish
• OPTIONAL: Aluminum foil
• OPTIONAL: Pie weights (or dried beans)

Ingredients:

• 1 pie crust (store bought or homemade)
• ½ cup unsalted butter, melted
• 1½ cup sugar
• 1 tablespoon all purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon cornmeal
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 4 large eggs, room temp, lightly beaten
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon white vinegar

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 425°F. Fit the pie crust to a 9 inch pie dish and use a fork to prick the bottom and sides. Optionally: Line the pastry with aluminum foil and add pie weights. Pre-bake pie crust for 8 to 10 minutes. Remove foil and pie weights. Allow to cool completely.
2. Lower oven temperature to 350°F.
3. Whisk together all pie filling ingredients. Pour into cooled crust. Place on rack in lower third of oven.
4. Bake until set. It should take 50-55 minutes. TIP: After 10-15 minutes, you can cover the edges of the pie crust with aluminum foil to prevent excess browning.
5. Allow to cool completely.
6. Serve cold or at room temperature. Fork optional!

Variations

Chess pie can also serve as the starting point for some tasty deviations:

• 🥛 Buttermilk Chess Pie
• 🍫 Chocolate Chess Pie
• 🎃 Pumpkin Chess Pie
• 🍊 Orange Chess Pie
• 🍋 Lemon Chess Pie

Baking one of these variants is a simple exercise of adjusting proportions and adding one or more key ingredients to reach your desired flavor. Enjoy!

May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. May your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and castles and poets’ towers into a dark primeval forest where tigers belch and monkeys howl, through miasmal and mysterious swamps and down into a desert of red rock, blue mesas, domes and pinnacles and grottoes of endless stone, and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs, where deer walk across the white sand beaches, where storms come and go as lightning clangs upon the high crags, where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you—beyond that next turning of the canyon walls.

So long.

The original source appears to be the preface (dated June 1987) for the 1988 reprint of Desert Solitaire (p.12).

Sunday

We left San Diego early and landed in Nashville around midday. The afternoon was spent celebrating Father’s Day with my family. My brother and his wife hosted a wonderful cookout at their house. I learned that Sam’s Club all beef hotdogs are delicious.

My sister couldn’t make it to the cookout due to being hospitalized so we went to visit her in the hospital. Luckily, she was on the up-swing and we spent about an hour catching up before heading back to the cookout.

That night, Kellie and I made the long drive to Chattanooga and checked into the Kinley Hotel around midnight.

Monday

After the long, coast-to-coast travel day, we slept in until midday and had a nice brunch at the hotel bar. We spent early afternoon walking around Southside and happened across a few really interesting places: a woodworking academy, a climbing + Ninja gym, Niedlov’s Bakery, and Velo Coffee.

Back at the hotel, I spent the afternoon working to get this blog up and running. It was a struggle to contain my emotions as I authored George’s memorial .

That evening, we ventured to downtown. We enjoyed a quick meal at Tazikis before heading to High Point Climbing Gym for an indoor climbing session. The gym was really nice and far less crowded than we’re used to out west. The routes were well set and there was enough variety to keep things interesting.

We enjoyed a well-earned trip to Ben & Jerry’s before heading back to the hotel to relax and binge the first half of The Night Agent .

Tuesday

On day three, we awoke at a slightly more reasonable hour and had brunch across the street at Frothy Monkey , an old favorite from my days living in Nashville.

Then we headed east. We enjoyed a serene drive through Booker T. Washington State Park before meandering down to the local REI.

On our way back to Chattanooga proper, we stopped by the Riverside location of High Point. It was somewhat spartan but felt like a gym for more serious climbers compared to the novelty of the downtown location.

For dinner, we went to Toto where we enjoyed some sushi and poke! Rather fortuitously, we ran into my old college friend Sydney and her family.

Wednesday

We made it to First Watch on time for breakfast on Wednesday. Ironically, this chain started in Pacific Grove but after an eastward surge of expansion, it no longer has any locations in California. I’m not keen on the farmhouse style but the food was excellent!

We went for another nature drive, this time up to Signal Mountain. The drive was fun and once we made it to the top, it was so calm and quiet amongst the trees. The view of the river from Signal Point was beautiful. I often forget how lush Tennessee is compared to California.

We drove back down to Chattanooga to enjoy an afternoon snack at Cadence Coffee while waiting for our friends Clay and Loren to arrive. Once they arrived, we checked into our joint accommodations at Hotel Clemons .

We enjoyed a wonderful dinner at Wooden City . I’m currently taking a break from alcohol and I particularly enjoyed their mocktail menu.

Thursday

We decided to start the day climbing as a group on Thursday so we walked to Puckett’s (in the rain) for breakfast before heading to High Point Downtown for several hours of climbing. We enjoyed a post-climb coffee at this adorable little coffee shop called Sleepyhead before heading to lunch at Niedlov’s Bakery in Southside.

That afternoon, we drove south to Lookout Mountain. We caught a break in the weather so we made the short hike down to Sunset Point. I was glad we did because I got my first glimpse of what Chattanooga has to offer outdoor climbers: a seamingly endless series of stainless steel climbing anchors lined the cliff.

We made the short drive down to St. Elmos for some coffee then finished the day with good food and fun trivia at Five Wits Brewing. I enjoyed a very nice non-alcoholic beer from Untitled Art.

Friday

Unfortunately, Kellie wasn’t feeling well on Friday so the rest of us ventured to Bluff View Art District without her. We went to Rembrandt’s Coffee House for breakfast. Then we made our way Hunter Museum of American Art. The art was very nice but I was particular enthralled by the exquisite wooden benches throughout the exhibits.

Kellie recovered enough to join us for lunch at Cashew, a surprisingly tasty vegan spot. That afternooon, we crossed the pedestrian bridge to explore North Shore.

For our final meal in Chattanooga, we walked to a Levantine restaurant called Calliope (pronounced “cah-LYE-eh-pee”) where we enjoyed easily the best meal of the week. I’m still thinking about the braised lamb shoulder.

Saturday

We ended our time in Chattanooga with one final trip to Sleephead. This was easily the best coffee that we had on the trip.

Then we made the drive to Knoxville to spend our last day in Tennessee with Kellie’s folks for a belated Father’s Day celebration. We enjoyed homemade taco salad and a very tasty cake that (rather ingeniously) used ice cream sandwiches as the base.

After a nice visit, we made the long drive back to Nashville and began our even longer journey back to San Diego.

Pics

In memory of George. June 1, 2015 — April 15, 2023.

I lost my cat George in April. Over the years, he’d been dealing with a heart murmor and then late last year he was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. It was very rough at first but the treatment was going really well. In April, I noticed his breathing became labored so I took him in for a check up. I assumed we’d adjust his meds and get things back on track. We weren’t even at the vet’s office a full hour before he was gone. It all happened so fast. Even now, looking back, it seems a little unreal.

I thought I’d share a few of my favorite memories.

One night several years ago, a group of friends were gathered at my house for dinner. I was in the back of the house on a phone call when I heard a loud commotion coming from the dining room. I rushed to see what was going on and found my two cats, Fred and George, cornering a mouse. My guests were egging them on! Fred was keeping the mouse’s attention while George flanked it, velociraptor style. Clever boy.

Much to the cats’ chagrin, I saved the mouse and put it outside. That was the only mouse that made it out of that house alive. The boys would go on to leave me three little “gifts” at the foot of my bed over the years in that house.

One day I came home from picking up groceries and made my way in carrying every single bag (as you do). I managed to get the front door open but in my struggle I unknowingly failed to close the door behind me. I made my way to the kitchen to put the groceries away and eventually realized the front door was wide open. I went to close it and found George just sitting on the threshold looking out at the big wide world. He was so taken by the view that he never even tried to leave.

George loved to play fetch but only on his terms. He would often drop the toy about halfway back to you, forcing you to play a little fetch as well.

I wish that I had played fetch with him more often in his final months. Oh how he loved to chase after those little mice!

I am greatful for the almost eight years that you brought joy to my life. I hope I gave you as much love and joy. You were the sweetest cat. I’m going to miss you dearly.

Photos

Awhile back, I asked my mom what she’d like for her special holiday. She requested a nice large tray. Apparently trays are all the rage in decorative world these days (she’s a bit of an interior decorator). She didn’t give me much to work with but it was clear she didn’t want anything loud or overly trendy. My mom enjoys simple designs and clean lines.

I decided to keep things simple and focus on the fit and finish of the tray. The design I came up with was straightforward: a miter box frame with a dado groove for the bottom panel. I spent several Saturdays in my garage milling, cutting, and recutting the parts. It took some work to get the miters just right. Then I sanded through the following grits: 80, 120, 220. I applied two coats of wipe on polyurethane to finish, sanding between and buffing afterwards.

The wood was reclaimed from a couple of nice ladies on Craigslist. I believe it’s cherry or something similar.

I didn’t take any pictures during the construction process so here is the final result:

Food & Drinks

• Hattie B’s Hot Chicken
• Martin’s Bar-B-Cue Joint
• Five Points Pizza
• DeSano Pizza
• The Patterson House
• M.L. Rose
• Kayne Prime Steakhouse
• Virago Sushi
• Pinewood Social
• Pucket’s Grocery & Restaurant
• Otaku Ramen
• Tacqueria Del Sol
• Burger Up
• Las Paletas
• Taquería La Juquilita

Coffee & Breakfast

• 8th & Roast
• Frothy Monkey
• Barista Parlor
• Proper Bagel
• Steadfast
• Fido

Breweries

• Jackolope Brewing Company
• Yazoo Brewing Company
• Tennessee Brew Works
• Fat Bottom Brewing
• Tailgate Brewery

Entertainment

• Robert’s Western World
• Rudy’s Jazzroom
• House of Cards
• Headquarters Beercade
• Schermerhorn Symphony Center
• Ascend Amphitheatre
• See a game for any of our sports teams
• Pick almost any bar or restaurant and you’ll find live music

Outdoors

• Centennial Park
• Percy Warner Park
• Long Hunter State Park
• Sevier Park

1. Striving for Smallness
2. Documentation
3. Organization
4. Access Control
5. Early Exits
6. Closure-Based CollectionType APIs
7. Property Configuration
8. Lazy Sequences
9. Debugging Slow Build Times

I’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback. Feel free to reach out to me on Twitter @blakemerryman .

• Powered by plain text.
• Preview/rendering options.
• Multi-media support.
• Hand writing / drawing support.
• Customizable organization (via tags).
• Search.
• Mobile friendly. There is apps for iPhone, iPad, & Mac.
• Affordable and viable. Subscription pricing: $1.49/monthly or $14.99/annually.

Still missing from my wishlist:

• Varied storage options. For now, iCloud is the only supported storage option. This is fine for now as I live in an Apple dominated world.
• Text transcription. I can sketch and write on notes but can’t easily search this hand-crafted content.
• Web service. There is no way to access this content from the web.
• Customizable templates. There is not any template support.
• Extensible. There is no way to extend bear with your own functionality.

The silver lining in all of this is that I ostensibly control the content and it is being stored in an easily transferable format. This app is also well maintained and will hopefully add many of the features that I’m looking for.

And yet, I’ve never loved Evernote. I feel like we have always been at odds. Things never work quite how I want them to and a lot of minor details leave me frustrated. I’ll save that rant for another post but the bottom line is this: I’ve been looking for a new note taking system for a long time and I’ve always been forced come back to Evernote because it is the lesser of many evils.

With all of the discussion about the “open web” lately, I’ve been toying with the idea of building my own system, using existing technologies and supplementing with my own open-sourced utilities. This post won’t go into the nitty-gritty details and is more of an outline of what features I think this system should have in order to meet my needs. So let’s begin.

Wish List

This list is not all encompassing, nor are all items required. These are just things I want (and use in my current system).

1. Powered by plain text files. Whether you prefer to take notes in Markdown , HTML, plain text, or LaTex , this system should take any and all text files without regard for the contents.
2. Preview/rendering options. This system should easily allow the user to preview their marked-up plain-text content. Preferably with a live preview option. Also, presentation mode!
3. Varied storage options. A user should not have their thoughts and ideas locked into a third party’s cloud. They should be able to pick and choose and easily relocate their data at anytime. Ideally, the user can even host their own data.
4. Supports multi-media. As much as the developer in me wishes that everything existed in text, even I have to add images & videos to my notes every now and again. This should be easy & intuitive.
5. Hand writing support. Some people just prefer to take notes the old fashioned way or have sketches interspersed throughout.
6. Customizable organization. If the user wants to file things away in folders by month or year, great. If the user wants to file everything away in one large, hot-mess of a folder, also great.
7. Search. It should be easy to find what you’re looking for.
8. Text transcription. This is one feature that Evernote really nailed and probably the hardest to replicate. Ideally, this would tie in with search as well.
9. Mobile friendly (first?). We live in a progressively mobile first world whether we like it or not. This system should function equally well on phones, tablets, computers, and the web.
10. Web Service. This system should be able to live on the web, including self-hosted.
11. Affordable but viable. Fairly priced for consumers and the developer(s).
12. Customizable templates. Whether you’re bookmarking sites or journalling, a good template can save you time.
13. Extensible. Feature missing? Easily add it in yourself.

Basically what I want is a fast, simple, powerful note taking platform that is also useful for bookmarking, planning, todo-list managing, and cross-platforming utility. Not much… just everything.

This will probably (read: definitely) be on long, drawn out process as I piecemeal this all together (or give up and move on to something else, as I’m want to do on projects like these).

If you have suggestions or thoughts, feel free to contact me on Twitter .

• Lack of “Status Updates”

  In the past, Apple has kicked off every event with a stacatto of numbers about how great Apple has been doing. The past few events, however, Tim Cook has basically said “we’ve already crammed so much into this time slot that we don’t have time for updates; things are great; let’s do this”… which, in my opinion, is a welcome change that shows Cook’s leadership style comfortably in place at Apple.

• Apple Watch & watchOS 2

  I’m not über thrilled about the Watch-related announcements but there were a few gems. The updated watchOS will bring some much needed stability & performance improves to the fledgling platform (including a few nice new features like third party complications). Additionally, I think it’s great that not only is Apple continuing to produce new finishes and bands, but they are beginning to partner with serious companies to branch out with new collections of bands.

• iPad Pro, Keyboard, & Pencil

  A huge (and yet light) screen powered by iOS 9. Multi-tasking. Touch ID. Retina Display. Stereo speakers. All day battery life. Coupled with a ridiculously engineered Pencil (I didn’t say stylus!) and an interesting keyboard case, this could be the general purpose computing device that I’ve been waiting for. Slim, beautiful, powerful, versatile. I’m am stoked about this product combo.

• AppleTV & tvOS

  This will be in my living room as soon as it comes out. The AppleTV finally has an app platform. Apps are universal. Unified, refine-able search across content sources. A multi-touch remote that also acts as a microphone for voice commands. Powerful Siri voice search. A powerful, 64-bit system on a chip capable of Apple’s new Metal technology (high performance graphics). Support for bluetooth controllers.

• iPhone 6S & 6S Plus

  The new iPhones are pretty amazing. Tougher materials. 3D Touch technology (the “peak” and “pop” paradigm is pretty ingenious). 12MP camera capable of 4K video. Moving photos from the Wizarding world. Rose gold isn’t for me but it is beautiful.

  If only Apple would stop shipping 16GB phones. An uncompressed 4K video a few minutes in length can be close to 10GB in size (depending on format). Seriously Apple, come on. The fact that Apple continues to ship 16GB iPhones seriously rained on my parade.

• iPhone Upgrade Program

  This may be the announcement that I’m most excited about. Apple’s new upgrade program will finally allow one to affordably decouple our iPhone purchases from our service carrier bills. Here are the key points:

  • New iPhone every year
  • Unlocked
  • Low monthly payments (2 year commitment required through the Apple Store)
  • AppleCare+ (protection plan)

  I think decoupling hardware purchases from cellular service carriers is a good thing that will benefit the consumer and further drive carriers to focus on their service reliability and affordability rather than the handsets.

• Naming Conventions

  With iOS, watchOS, & now tvOS, I don’t think it will be long before we see Mac OS X become macOS. And I really like this naming convention.

• Power Connectors

  I had thought that with Apple’s adoption of USB Type C on the new MacBook that we might see the iPhones transition to the new connector in a year or so. However, with several new products (the TV Remote & Pencil) adopting the Lightning Connector for charging, I’m not so sure.

• Incremental builds for increased build performance
• Native Set collection class that bridges to NSSet, joining Array/NSArray and Dictionary/NSDictionary
• static methods and properties support for classes
• Improved type inference for single-expression closures
• Swift enums can now be exported to Objective-C
• let constants no longer need immediate initialization
• General performance enhancements
• General improvements to Swift-Objective-C interoperability

And my personal favorite:

• Nested & enhanced optional binding

Now, this:

if let x = self.x {
    if let y = self.y {
        if let z = self.z {
            if z == true {
                // Do something at the top of the Pyramid of Doom!
            }
        }
    }
}

becomes this:

if let x = self.x, y = self.y, z = self.z where z == true {
    // Do Something without climbing the Pyramid!
} 

Beautiful!

Apple has even included a handy Migration Tool to get your code from Swift version 1.1 to version 1.2.

There are a lot of other great changes as well (including enhancements to Objective-C) so head over to the Apple Developer Center to download the beta and read the full release notes.

First, Some Stats & Facts:

• In January 2012 , Google had over 4 billion views per day. It’s definitely more now, but this is the most up-to-date stat I could find.
• Every time you load a Youtube video, you are downloading that view counter (along with the video and everything else on the page).
• 32-bit integers take up 4 Bytes; 64-bit integers take up 8 Bytes.

Now For Some Math:

oldCounterBandwidth = ( 4 Bytes / view ) * ( 4 billion views / day ) = 16 GB / day
newCounterBandwidth = ( 8 Bytes / view ) * ( 4 billion views / day ) = 32 GB / day

Note: Final values were converted from Bytes to GigaBytes for clarity.

By converting to 64-bit integers to store the view counters, they are doubling their bandwidth from 16 GB per day to 32 GB per day…. just to load view counters. Keep in mind that the daily view stat I found is from January 2012.