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Background Digital technologies are a double-edged sword. In 2021, we enjoy the tremendous privilege to stay connected with anybody we’ve ever met, to answer any question at any moment, and to have endless entertainment and enrichment wherever we are. As we’re on the tail end of a global pandemic, computers have kept many of us employed and semi-sane over the past year. Important social movements are organized via social media, and medical advancements have skyrocketed with moden computing....

If you browse my Github profile, you’ll find two or three embarrassing attempts at building a personal website. My first few drafts used Gatsby, a Node-based static site generator. After that I tried building a custom web server based on Go’s httputil. The problem with my bespoke server is that it takes a lot of time and the final product is slapdash. The problem with Gatsby is that I suck at Node....

I have met a lot of people who want to start meditating, or who have tried but it “didn’t work” for them. All the self-help articles and magazine covers at Sprouts, and now even western science, say it’s supes important. But like any healthy habit, it can be hard to get started. Maybe even harder than most healthy habits, because they teach you in school how to run and to floss, but not how to meditate....

This week I learned all the winners of the Academy Award for Best Picture, by year. It took me 5 days. Here’s how I did it. My tool: quizme I wrote a flashcard-style quizzing tool to help me learn, which I named quizme. It’s available on Github here. The basic structure is: The tool prompts you with a year (say, 1964). You respond with the title of the film that won the award in that year (My Fair Lady)....

When I run a game of D&D, I want my world to be believable. Monsters should dwell where they do for a reason; political unrest should have a social history; and each room in a dungeon should be used by its denizens. A cohesive world is more immersive to the players, and easier to improvise in as a DM. However, there is one facet of the game which I have always failed to fit into the narrative: Why on earth would any dungeon-dweller fill their home with riddles, complete with hints to the solver?...

For the past 18 months, I have practiced the Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology, with Evernote as the de-facto home for my Next Action lists. I briefly experimented with a paper system, but I found that the portability of a digital system makes a big difference for me. In the name of iteration, today I am switching from Evernote to Todoist. Here’s why. Todoist is built for to-do lists, whereas Evernote is a general notetaking platform....

This is the final post in a series about MIT Mystery Hunt 2019. It is preceded by “Puzzlehunts: An Overview,” “Part 1: Story,” and “Part 2: Structure.” Spoilers ensue. This is the post that I’ve been waiting for so long to write: the one where I reveal to my friends and family the puzzles that I have been crafting for a year. There is no correct way to engage with these....

This is a part of a series about MIT Mystery Hunt 2019. It is preceded by “Puzzlehunts: An Overview” and “Part 1: Story”, and proceeded by “Part 3: My Puzzles”. Spoilers ensue. Note: While I was on the team which wrote this year’s Mystery Hunt, I had very little impact on the overall structure. My efforts were focused on writing, testing, and laying out puzzles. Rounds == Holiday Towns Each round of this year’s Hunt represented one holiday town in the Holiday Forest from The Nightmare Before Christmas....

This is a part of a series about MIT Mystery Hunt 2019. It is preceded by “Puzzlehunts: An Overview,” and proceeded by “Part 2: Structure” and “Part 3: My Puzzles". Spoilers ensue. Note: While I was on the team which wrote this year’s Mystery Hunt, I had very little impact on the story. My efforts were focused on writing, testing, and laying out puzzles. Kickoff Some folks might prefer to watch the kickoff video....

This past weekend, nerds from all over flocked to Massachusetts to spend over fifty hours solving puzzles at MIT Mystery Hunt. I was a part of the team which ran this year’s Hunt, so my brain is full of thoughts about puzzles which I would like to share. Because puzzlehunts are a particularly niche form of entertainment, I want to offer an overview of the genre before delving into more specific topics....