Category: Uncategorized

Scary

“Before I go” (make sure to watch the video as well) is an essay by Paul Kalanithi in which he talks about life, time, and cancer. It’s one of the most beautiful and touching essays I’ve read in recent times. It made me think about the inexorable forward march of time and the inherent fragility of human health. I think that’s really scary – we cannot really do anything about either of those things. All we can hope to do is live life in such a manner that when (not if) our time comes we realize that every moment leading up to now isn’t a flat line of points, but rather a gorgeous valley of peaks and troughs.

Building a building

Instead of reading two research papers for the month of March I’ve decided instead to read as much as possible (yes I know that’s not a measurable quantity) of The Architecture of Open Source Applications: Volume 1. I’d read the LLVM and HDFS chapters in the past and was blown away but how well written they were. I’m pretty excited to read the rest of the book.