Off the clock

Beans, barbells, and rec leagues.

These days it's rec volleyball, pickleball, soccer, weightlifting, and a growing interest in longevity. In past lives: a decade of rock climbing, scuba diving, some silly videos, and a multi-year cold shower phase. Always: reading, trying new food, and failing to learn an instrument.

Current obsession

Longevity: the Bean Boy Order of Operations

My wife lovingly calls me "Bean Boy" because of my proclivity for beans. It stuck hard enough that I wrote a whole framework around it: SLEEPS — Sleep, Love, Exercise, Engage your brain, Plants, Stop health detractors — plus an order of operations for healthy living.

  1. Stop doing things known to be bad
  2. Eat diverse whole food plants
  3. Move frequently
  4. Sleep well
Read the full framework Take the Barometer self-assessment
Sports

What I play now and what I used to climb

Currently on rotation: rec volleyball, pickleball, soccer, and weightlifting. Before that, climbing was my main sport for about a decade; competitions, V10 boulders, 5.13 routes, and one very regrettable A2 pulley tear. I don't climb much anymore, but the archive lives on.

Interactive map

Everywhere I've climbed

A searchable map of my climbing destinations and US climbing gyms, scraped from Mountain Project and built with d3.

Blog post

How to become a good rock climber

The three principles that took me to V10: climb a lot (boulder!), climb with people better than you, and don't get injured.

Resource

The Complete Climbing Anthology

An attempt to collect all the climbing content out there — books, films, apps, gear, research, and data science in climbing.

Random content

Videos & side projects

Interactive · Monte Carlo

The bathroom door problem

Anytime I go to Cheesecake factory I end up encountering someone at the bathroom door at the same moment I am entering. This is a Monte Carlo simulation of how often two restaurant diners reach for the bathroom door at the exact same moment.

Parody video

"Bidet": a parody of 'Bad Day'

A parody of Daniel Powter's 'Bad Day', about bidets. There's also a karaoke version, because of course there is.

Side project · Ecommerce

PocketPosture

My posture-improvement store and marketing sandbox (2019–2020). The best artifact from it lives on as a Towards Data Science article.

Side project · Community

Sendaholic

A site to promote and share information about rock climbing and other adventure sports.

Side project · Java

Chugg

A Java desktop drinking game built to be played with a large group of people.

Blog

Writing

All posts & drafts →

Documenting experiences from a variety of activities — climbing, data science experiments, and the occasional questionable life choice.

Oct 6, 2019

Taking cold showers every day for 3+ years

Why I took a cold shower nearly every day from 2016 to 2020, and what the Wim Hof rabbit hole taught me.

Oct 4, 2019

Predicting my brother's gas bill

My brother kept meticulous utility records for years. I modeled them and predicted his gas costs within ~$6 (median).

Sep 25, 2019

How to become a good rock climber

1 — Climb a lot. 2 — Climb with people better than you. 3 — Don't get injured.

Bookshelf

Books that shaped how I think

Not everything I've ever read, but a few of that left a mark. I love to read across fantasy, sci-fi and business. Send your recommendations!

The list (14)
  • The Mom Test
  • Traction — Gabriel Weinberg
  • Be Our Guest
  • Measure What Matters
  • Crossing the Chasm
  • $100M Offers, Leads, Money Models
  • We Die Alone
  • The Art of Loving
  • The Art of Being
  • The Complete Sherlock Holmes
  • Man's Search for Meaning
  • Unbroken
  • The Red Fox
  • The Complete Guide to Memory Mastery — Harry Lorayne
  • Moonwalking with Einstein