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 the main thing 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

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.

Reading list

Books

What's on deck and what I've finished. My favorites: David Copperfield, Traction, and The Mom Test.

To read (19)
  • The Prince
  • Night — Elie Wiesel
  • The Way of Kings — Brandon Sanderson
  • The Count of Monte Cristo
  • Wonder
  • Flowers for Algernon
  • The Things They Carried — Tim O'Brien
  • East of Eden
  • The Handmaid's Tale
  • Mind Gym
  • Death of a Salesman
  • Thinking in Bets — Annie Duke
  • The Winter of Our Discontent
  • All Quiet on the Western Front
  • Hiroshima
  • Atomic Habits
  • Meditations
  • Mindset
  • World Without Mind
Read in 2019 (15)
  • David Copperfield
  • The Complete Guide to Memory Mastery — Harry Lorayne
  • Blink
  • Outliers
  • Traction (the Bullseye method)
  • Happy — Derren Brown
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
  • Be Our Guest
  • How to Win Friends and Influence People
  • Blue Ocean Strategy
  • Prelude to Foundation
  • Founders at Work
  • Ultralearning
  • The 4-Hour Workweek
Favorites from before 2019 (15)
  • The Three-Body Problem
  • Ready Player One
  • Crossing the Chasm
  • Moonwalking with Einstein
  • The Millionaire Next Door
  • Unbroken
  • We Die Alone
  • The Art of Loving
  • The Art of Being
  • The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (series)
  • The Complete Sherlock Holmes
  • Arthur & George
  • Man's Search for Meaning
  • A Tale of Two Cities
  • Dracula