Came across the acronym SIEM.
I’m an editor. My job has me on wikipedia almost daily. Sometimes, it’s to look up what some term means, because I just don’t know. Sometimes, it’s to fact-check something, because something doesn’t sound quite right when I read it. Sometimes, it’s more like this.
Considering daily or weekly wikipedia “today I learned” posts.
Like, today I learned a lot about video compression formats.
American tax law is ridiculously over-complicated and there is a lot of misinformation and scams out there. I’m not a lawyer, I’m no longer a certified tax professional (although I used to be), and this is just my opinion and personal experience. But I’m really frustrated seeing these particular myths so often.
There’s a debate at work regarding acronyms. There’s lots of opinions out there in the world on acronyms. The pro-acronym camp looks something like this:
- They are helpful mnemonics that reduce cognitive load. You’d never have passed algebra class without PEMDAS, right?
- The increase reading and writing speed (fewer words to read, fewer keystrokes to press).
- Acronyms reduce word count, making text more concise. Less to read is better in the twitter age, right?
The anti-acronym camp looks something like this:
- They are confusing jargon that increase cognitive load. Stopping to remember what an acronym stands for and looking it up slows you down.
- They increase reading and writing speed only if the acronym is familiar to the reader and writer.
- They are shortcuts to get around word count limits.
So, to abbreviate or not to abbreviate?
I think a lot of people don’t even start learning to code, because they think they need a four year degree in computer science to be useful.
This is false. Five minutes of programming now can save you hours of mundane grunt work later. More »
Reading is hard. It’s a cognitively demanding task. Be kind to your readers, and write well.
I’m not impressed by your 40 page essay, when it could have been written in four.
If you have too much text on your slides, your audience will be reading and not listening to you. Use pictures, or less than 30 words per slide.
This isn’t a new phenomenon caused by twitter either. This has been going on for centuries.
First off, this game is the amazing love child of Skyrim and Ocarina of Time. It’s beautiful and peaceful. It allows you to creatively solve puzzles. It rewards off-the-beaten path exploration.
But I have one problem with it. Small spoilers below (although the game’s been out six months, and almost everything below is discernible from the trailers).
Test ride #2 included hills, 53 miles, and 22 pounds of gear.
It was doable, but perhaps not sustainable. I could definitely handle 50 miles and 22 pounds of gear for two days in a row, and maybe even three days in a row, but adding more intense hills and going 7 days in a row? Perhaps too much. I’ve pared down to 18 pounds but may go up as high as 20.
Some thoughts on the missions I’ve visited so far:
Mission Solano, the northernmost mission, was cute. It’s a small little historic landmark in wine country. It’s very humble. There was some art, but a lot of the gold and extravagant art I associate with Catholic churches just wasn’t there. A replica of the original Californian flag was there, and being the most recently built mission it had some more recent history (like the gold rush).
Let me preface the next two thoughts with the following: I did zero research on the missions before this trip, and mostly chose this route because I’m Californian born and raised, and El Camino Real is a long, well-defined route to follow for backpackers and bikepackers with historical significance. I should also probably say that I’m not Catholic at all, and from a cultural point of view I’m learning more about Catholicism at each site than anything else.
Mission Santa Clara is on a Catholic University campus. I didn’t tour it, partially because everything was a sprawling campus and I couldn’t figure out what was the Mission and what was the university bookstore. It’s less than 10 miles from where I live, so I can come back to it. I was very surprised it wasn’t a state historic park.
Mission San Jose is a state historic park, but it’s also active as a Catholic church. There were baptisms going on while I was there. This also surprised me.
Did a short 20 mile test ride today with ~26 pounds of gear that included a pitstop at Mission Santa Clara. I’ll be repacking and reprioritizing my bags tonight, then making another test ride tomorrow.
I was extremely anxious about this trip. I originally wanted to hit all 21 Missions in two weeks but have since realized this was unreasonable. I pared down my itinerary and now I’m feeling much more confident and excited!! Just one more week!
