I used to walk for an hour to get to some of A+'s playdates, pushing her in the Thule bike trailer / stroller that she still fit into. I liked bringing popsicles during the summer so that A+ could share them with her friends, so I often balanced a small cooler on top of the stroller and walked as briskly as I could. The popsicles were usually still reasonably cold by the time I got to the park. We'd spend a few hours playing there, and then there would be another hour's walk back. A+ usually napped on the way, so it was a chance for me to listen to podcasts.

Sometimes we biked to the playdate instead. That was much faster in terms of getting there, even with a popsicle break halfway through. Those popsicles were only for us, since I couldn't bring a cooler on my bike. Also, A+ was usually too tired to bike back, or it was too dark for her to be safe biking on the busy streets between the park and our house, so we often waited in the mall parking lot for W- to pick up A+ and her bike in his car. Then I biked back by myself.

We'd been considering cargo bikes for a while, and eventually things lined up to make it possible. It was a carefully-considered decision. I did a bunch of test rides using different models of cargo bikes. My height (or lack of it) ruled out many of the models designed for taller people. A+ was quite vocal about her preference for the suspension on the R&M Load cargo bikes, and she liked the view from the front-loaders more than the longtails. I rented the Load 75 and the Load 60 to try them out, accidentally tipping over onto the side an embarrassing number of times; A+ was safely buckled in but very grumpy about it.

When we confirmed that a cargo bike fit into our life, I bought a Riese & Müller Load 75 from Curbside Cycle. We picked the Load 75 over the Load 60 because the rain cover was nicer and the extra room could give us more years of use as A+ grows.

I love it. Biking is my favourite way to get around. There's just something so cheerful about it. A+ and I sing as we go around town. We smile at dogs in sweaters. She takes pictures of trees. Sometimes there are cargo bikes in front of us as we wait at the traffic light, and we wave and nod.

We got the Bakkie bag, too. It's designed to tow a kid's bike. That way, A+ can bike wherever she wants. When she gets tired, she can hop into the cargo bike and I can buckle her bike into the Bakkie bag, towing it all the way home. We've been able to go on more bike adventures by ourselves and together with W- because we don't have to worry about exceeding A+'s range.

Since we could get to the playground in 15 minutes instead of 60, it was a lot easier to bring snacks to share. We pretty much kept the playground kids well-supplied with free popsicles (and the occasional much-coveted ice cream treat) all summer, and the ice packs came in handy for treating the occasional bumps too. We even brought disposable cups and insulated bottles of hot water for making hot chocolate and instant apple cider in the colder months.

Aside from taking A+ to a wider range of places, we've also used it to bring several bags of potting mix or a propane tank home from the hardware store, carry other bulky items, and take lots of stuff to the community environment days for recycling/donation.

We are very lucky to have cargo biking as an option. When people ask me how much it is, I ruefully tell them, "Well, it's less than a second car." We weren't actually choosing between this and a second car; even though W- rarely uses his car these days, I'm too anxious to drive. My brain gets a little squirrelly and is prone to attentional hiccups. I don't want a moment of distraction to result in someone's death or serious injury. I'm still on alert when I bike, but it feels a lot more like something I can handle. And biking is so fast and convenient. I don't have to nudge A+ out of a playdate so that we can make it out before the subway gets packed like sardines, or shepherd A+ back home from the subway station ("I'm tiiiired.").

I got the bike in November 2023. Here's how much I biked over the past year:

I was pleasantly surprised that even during the cold months (and A+'s reluctance to go outside if it was very cold or slushy), and even during the schoolweek, we still managed to get out on the bike.

I got data from the ebike-connect site using Spookfox using the code below.

[...document.querySelectorAll('.activities__ride-menu')].map((o) => {
  return {
    date: o.querySelector('.activities__menu-details > span').textContent,
    distance: o.querySelector('.activities__menu-distance-text').textContent.trim(),
    time: o.querySelector('.activities__menu-details > span:nth-child(2) > span:nth-child(2)').textContent,
  }
});

(let ((by-month (seq-group-by
  (lambda (row)
    (let ((date (plist-get row :date)))
      (when (string-match "[0-9][0-9]\\.\\([0-9][0-9]\\)\\.\\([0-9][0-9]\\) [0-9][0-9]:[0-9][0-9]"
                          date)
        (format "20%s-%s-01"
                (match-string 2 date)
                (match-string 1 date)))))
  trips)))
  (append
   '(("Month" "Distance")
     hline)
   (mapcar
    (lambda (row)
      (list (format-time-string "%b" (date-to-time (car row)))
            (format
             "%d"
             (round (apply '+
                           (mapcar (lambda (entry) (string-to-number (plist-get entry :distance)))
                                   (cdr row)))))))
    (reverse (seq-filter (lambda (o) (string< (car o) "2024-11")) by-month)))))

(let ((by-day (seq-group-by
  (lambda (row)
    (let ((date (plist-get row :date)))
      (when (string-match "\\([0-9][0-9]\\)\\.\\([0-9][0-9]\\)\\.\\([0-9][0-9]\\) [0-9][0-9]:[0-9][0-9]"
                          date)
        (format "20%s-%s-%s"
                (match-string 3 date)
                (match-string 2 date)
                (match-string 1 date)))))
  trips)))
  (json-encode (mapcar
   (lambda (row)
     (cons (car row)
           (format
            "%d"
            (round (apply '+
                          (mapcar (lambda (entry) (string-to-number (plist-get entry :distance)))
                                  (cdr row)))))))
   (reverse (seq-filter (lambda (o) (string< (car o) "2024-11")) by-day)))))

import pandas as pd
import datetime
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import seaborn as sns
import json

data = trips
df = pd.DataFrame(data, columns=["Month", "Distance"])
df.set_index('Month')
df['Distance'] = df['Distance'].astype(float)
plt.figure(figsize=(8, 6), dpi=100)
sns.barplot(data=df, y='Distance', x='Month')
plt.savefig('biking-distance-by-month.svg')

import pandas as pd
import datetime
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import seaborn as sns
import json

start_date = datetime.datetime(2023, 11, 1)
end_date = datetime.datetime(2024, 11, 1)
dates = pd.date_range(start=start_date, end=end_date, freq='D')
data = json.loads(trips)
df = pd.DataFrame.from_dict(data, orient='index')
df.index = pd.to_datetime(df.index)
df[0] = df[0].astype(float)
# Create calendar heatmap
plt.figure(figsize=(16, 3), dpi=100)
pivoted = df.pivot_table(index=df.index.day_name(), columns=df.index.strftime('%Y-%W'))
all_days = ['Monday', 'Tuesday', 'Wednesday', 'Thursday', 'Friday', 'Saturday', 'Sunday']
pivoted.index = pd.Categorical(pivoted.index, all_days, ordered=True)
pivoted = pivoted.sort_index()
heatmap = sns.heatmap(
    pivoted,
    cmap="crest",
    linewidths=0.5,
    linecolor='white'
)

# Set the x-axis tick labels to show only the months
month_labels = df.index.strftime('%b').unique()
month_ticks = [i * 4 for i in range(len(month_labels))]
plt.xticks(
    month_ticks,
    month_labels,
    rotation=90
)
tick_positions = [i + 0.5 for i in range(len(all_days))]
plt.yticks(tick_positions, all_days)
plt.title('Distance on dates')
plt.xlabel('November 2023 - November 2024')
plt.ylabel('')
plt.xticks(rotation=90)
plt.savefig('biking-by-day.svg')

I like our cargo bike a lot. I hope to ride it for many years to come.

I want to get better at working in tiny chunks. Some of the things I find hard are:

• getting incomplete thoughts out of my head when the kiddo interrupts so that I don't get grumpy (because of the Ovsiankina effect)
• managing the stack of interrupting tasks and yak-shaving temptations
• still making time for larger projects or things with less-immediate or more uncertain payoffs

Some general ways to improve:

• Reduce friction so that more things can fit in less time.
  • Take notes
  • Improve workflows and tools
  • Create templates
• Build momentum: focusing several chunks on one project to minimize context switches and make more progress
• Lower expectations and split things up.
• Start with a rough cut and then refine.
• Use different types of work:
  • Organizing information can be easier than thinking up something new
  • Recognizing things from a list can be easier than recalling them from scratch

How can I get better at using tiny chunks in different aspects of my life?

• Code:
  • Now that I'm on a more powerful computer, I'm looking forward to learning how to take advantage of LSP, completion, and other modern conveniences.
  • I can replace social media doomscrolling with reading APIs, guides, and code samples.
  • I can take more notes and review them.
• Writing:
  • If I sketch my thoughts, that can help me think through things in a more nonlinear way at the beginning. Mindmaps and sketchnotes might actually be easier than using text outlines, since I can do them off my computer.
  • Dictation might help me turn other pockets of time into writing time, and then turn computer time into editing time.
  • Improving my workflows makes it easier for me to get the text out into a blog post that has a sketch or a video or a screenshot.
• Drawing:
  • I can ask smaller questions so that I can get to an answer faster. I also don't have to flesh out the full thought in the drawing - I can use dictation or writing to add more details.
  • I can crop the image to remove the pressure to use the full page. I used to draw my thoughts on index cards. That was a good size for a small thought, and they were easier to build up into larger chunks.
  • I can use visual organizers, metaphors, and other structures to help me think through things. That might also give me additional insights.
• Bigger projects: One of the things that sometimes frustrates me is having bigger projects that I can't figure out how to fit into smaller segments, or that take a lot of setup time and therefore tend to get deprioritized in favor of things with more immediate payoffs.
  • I have a few 1.5-hour chunks of focused time because of A+'s virtual school, and I might be able to reserve more time eventually. It might be good to have that time when I'm not prioritizing short tasks and quick wins. Aside from that, if I get focused time in the evening, the trade-off is usually that A+ binge-watches YouTube videos when I'm not focusing on her. Sometimes I'm okay with this because I really want some thinking time. It's better when I'm getting that focused time because she's off doing something with W-, though.
  • I tend to work on whatever I've been thinking about lately (availability bias), but it might be good to review longer-term projects/interests to keep them on my radar or make peace with archiving them.
  • Even the stuff that feels like very slow progress can be worthwhile.
• Life:
  • Sometimes I feel a little distracted by things I want to do, but it's worth figuring out how to put stuff aside so that I can play. Bluey has plenty of examples of short games that could be fun to play with A+.
  • There's always time to work on health. Sometimes doing a single pushup makes it easier to do another, especially when the kiddo jumps in and starts exercising too.
  • Similarly, a small chunk of time is great for tidying.

I've been really enjoying playing sungka with my eight-year-old daughter. We've been playing it for a number of years now. Usually she likes to start out with one shell in each cup and working our way up to seven shells in each cup over a series of rounds.

Over the last week, she's gotten a lot better at playing. In the past, she used to make her moves fairly randomly, and she liked having the advantage of starting off with a few extra shells in her home. Now she doesn't need that starting point, and she's beginning to plan ahead. She counts the shells to predict where she's going to end up. She recognizes common patterns like clearing out the cups closest to her home. She loves moving shells out of the way so that she can make a very large capture, cupped hands full of shells.

Sungka has taken over as her current hyperfocus. It's the game she asks to play with me when her virtual school is on a recess break. I enjoy playing with her. Even when I'm losing, I enjoy watching her become more dextrous as she drops the shells in one at a time, and I like watching her plan ahead.

I played sungka a lot when I was a kid around her age. I think the school had some sungka boards that people could borrow after class, and I played with the other kids until it was time to go home. I don't know if this is a game that I can bring to the playground. It'll probably be a challenge with sand and kids and lots of small pieces. I think this will just be a game for home and for us, but it's wonderful that I get to share it with her.

Is it the Emacs lifecycle that you tweak your config for few months and then you live off of fat of the land for >4 years? My Emacs config is a Org-tangle spaghetti that I touch only if I want to set some more sane config variable.

@xgqt@emacs.ch

This got me thinking about how tweaking my config fits in with other things I want to do–how I choose what to hack on and for how long.

Sometimes when I chat with other people about automation, this XKCD chart about Is It Worth the Time? comes up.

I realized that this isn't quite how I consider things. I'm lucky in that when it comes to computer things, I get to choose most of the things I spend my time on. My consulting clients have very long wishlists that I pick from based on interests and priority, and I play with Emacs for fun.

Because I enjoy tinkering around with Emacs, I often build a little Emacs hacking into my tasks. 15 or 20 minutes of exploring an idea can make it even more fun to do the actual task it's supposed to help with because then I want to test it out. Then after the task is done, I get to write about it. It's like making a little task sandwich with really nice bread. This is also a little related to sharpening the saw, which is pretty fun in Emacs. (Vim people do it too!)

These little changes add up over time, making things even more enjoyable. It's a little like the way desire paths show where people actually walk between buildings and give a sense of how much they are used, or how rivers smooth down the edges of stones. The easier I make something, the more likely I am to do it, and the more I'll get to enjoy the results of my code. It's a little like the Igors described in this essay.

When I think about something I might tweak about my Emacs configuration, I usually consider the following:

3. What's nearby?

Thanks to Emacs's amazing community, there are usually relevant functions or packages that I can borrow code from. I mostly have a sense of things from the blog posts and forum threads that cross my radar because of Emacs News, and I should probably get used to skimming the descriptions in the "New packages" list because that can help me find even more things.

When coming up with possible approaches, I also sometimes think about other related ideas I've had before. Filing those ideas into the appropriate subtrees in my Org files sometimes helps me come across them again. If I can take a small step that also gets me closer to one of those ideas, that's handy.

I also like to think about next steps and possibilities. For example, even if I spend an hour or two learning more about data visualization with Org Mode and plotting, that's something I can use for other things someday. This works pretty well with keeping things small, too, since small parts can be combined in surprisingly interesting ways.

Let me try to trace through a web of related features so I can give you a sense of how this all works in teeny tiny steps.

If you view this on my blog with Javascript enabled, the SVG should stick to the top of the browser window and get highlighted as you go through the different sections.

• defun: I often wanted to write about a specific function, so I wrote some code to find the function definition and copy it into my export post hidden inside a details tag with the first line of the docstring as the summary. 2023-01-02
• my-include:...?from-regexp=...&to-regexp...: Sometimes I wanted to write about longer pieces of code. I wanted to include code without repeating myself. The regular #+INCLUDE can handle line numbers or headings, but neither of them worked for the Elisp files I referred to since the line numbers kept changing as I edited the code above it and it wasn't an Org Mode file. I made my own custom link so I could specify a start and end regexp. 2023-01-08
• my_details: I wanted to put the code in a details element so that it could be collapsible. I made an org-special-blocks template for it. special-blocks
• :summary: For Org source blocks, I wanted to be able to do that kind of collapsible block by just adding a :summary attribute. 2023-01-27
• defun-open: I wanted to sometimes be able to keep the function definition expanded. 2023-09-12
• emacsconf-el: Since I was writing about a lot of EmacsConf functions in preparation for my presentation, I wanted a quick way to link to the files in the web-based repository. 2023-09-12
• defvar: Made sense to include variable definitions too.
• web links: The emacsconf-el links were so useful, I wanted to be able to use that type of link for other projects as well. 2024-01-07
• Embark: I wanted to be able to copy the final URL from a custom link at point, so I used Embark. 2024-01
• QR code: I started livestreaming again, so I wanted a quick way for viewers to get the URL of something without waiting for stream notes. 2024-01-10
• :comments both: While scanning Reddit to find links for Emacs News, I learned about :comments both and how that includes references to the Babel file that tangled the code. 2024-01-07
• context: Now that it was easy to link to the web version of an Emacs Lisp file, I thought it might be fun to be able to automatically include a context link by passing link=1. I also wanted to be able to navigate to the Org source code for a tangled function. 2024-01-11
• my-include:...?name=...: I wanted to be able to refer to Org Babel source blocks by name.

In the course of writing this blog post, I learned how to use URLs in Graphviz, learned how to include inline HTML for export with @@html:...@@, used position: sticky, figured out how to highlight the SVG using JS, used CSS to make a note that should only show up in RSS feeds, and submitted a pull request for meme.el that was merged. And now I want to figure out sidenotes or at least footnotes that don't assume they're the only footnotes on the page… This is just how my brain likes to do things. (Oooh, shiny!)

Moments: https://sketches.sachachua.com/tags/moment

If you're viewing this on my blog, you might be able to click on the links below to open them in a viewer and then swipe or use arrow keys to navigate.

• 2023-12-05-07 Moments starting 2023-12-05 #moment.png
• 2023-11-23-07 Moments starting 2023-11-23 #moment.png
• 2023-11-11-04 Moments starting 2023-11-11 #moment.png
• 2023-10-30-05 Moments starting 2023-10-30 #moment.png
• 2023-10-18-05 Moments starting 2023-10-18 #moment.png
• 2023-10-06-07 Moments starting 2023-10-06 #moment.png
• 2023-09-24-06 Moments starting 2023-09-24 #moment.png
• 2023-08-31-06 Moments starting 2023-08-31 #moment.png
• 2023-08-19-05 Moments starting 2023-08-19 #moment.png
• 2023-08-07-04 Moments starting 2023-08-07 #moment.png
• 2023-07-26-05 Moments starting 2023-07-26 #moment.png
• 2023-07-14-03 Moments starting 2023-07-14 #moment.png
• 2023-07-02-07 Moments starting 2023-07-02 #moment.png
• 2023-06-20-01 Moments starting 2023-06-20 #moment.png
• 2023-06-08-06 Moments starting 2023-06-08 #moment.png
• 2023-05-27-02 Moments starting 2023-05-27 #moment.png
• 2023-05-15-10 Moments starting 2023-05-15 #moment.png
• 2023-05-03-01 Moments starting 2023-05-03 #moment.png
• 2023-05-02-03 Moments starting 2023-04-21 #moment.png
• 2023-05-02-02 Moments starting 2023-04-09 #moment.png
• 2023-05-02-01 Moments starting 2023-03-28 #moment.png

Here are older ones.

• 2022-08-01a The Gravel Fairy #moment #household #sketches.png
• 2020-07-03 A- liked balancing on the pitchfork #sketch #moment.png
• 2020-07-01 Heroica #sketch #moment.png
• 2020-05-15 Taho #moment.png
• 2020-04-19 Coronavirus watermelon #sketch #moment.png
• 2020-04-06 My raincoat is waterproof. Mama, put your raincoat on. #moment.png
• 2020-04-01 I'm a puppy. When are you going to let me out #moment.png
• 2020-03-19 Can you add this as one of my moments #moment.png
• 2020-03-10 The baby is all swaddled up #moment #sketch.png
• 2020-03-08 I'm ready for a pedal bike #moment #sketch.png
• 2020-03-06 I'm a new queen. I can zzzip around. #sketch #moment.png
• 2020-03-04 I put a sun card on the bottom. A- discovers stacking the deck. #moment #sketch.png
• 2020-03-03 Can you tell which one is the baby #moment #sketch.png
• 2020-02-11 A- loves goofing around with a friend. #moment #sketch.png
• 2020-02-10 I'm a penguin #moment #sketch.png
• 2020-02-09 Chicken dance #moment #sketch.png
• 2020-02-08 Cardboard violin #moment #sketch.png
• 2020-02-07 Tracking my footprints in the snow #moment #sketch.png
• 2020-02-06 I want to sled with someone who is a kiddo #moment #sketch.png
• 2020-02-05f A- dove into her stroller #moment #sketch.png
• 2020-02-04k A- was really focused on making mousse #moment #sketch.png
• 2020-02-03j Look at me jumping rope #moment #sketch.png
• 2020-02-02 At A-'s best #moment #sketch.png
• 2020-02-01c Astronaut #moment #sketch.png
• 2020-01-31g Taffy #moment #sketch.png
• 2020-01-30d Pretend animals #moment #sketch.png
• 2020-01-29a Faces #moment #sketch.png
• 2020-01-28 Drawing at night - all tangled up, but drawing #moment #sketch.png
• 2020-01-27 Floppy baby #moment #sketch.png
• 2018-08-07a Bridge #sketch #moment.png
• 2018-08-06a Making buns #sketch #moment.png
• 2018-08-05a Mending glasses #sketch #moment.png
• 2018-08-04a Sprinkler #sketch #moment.png
• 2018-08-03a Watermelon #sketch #moment.png
• 2018-08-02a I'm home #sketch #moment.png
• 2015-03-10d Life with three cats -- index card #life #cats #seeing #perspective #moment.png

ArneBab's post: "My best thing today in sketchnotes"

I come up with way more ideas than I can work on, and that's okay. That's good. It means I can always skim the top for interesting things, and it's fine if things overflow as long as the important stuff stays in the funnel. I'm experimenting with more ways to keep things flowing.

I usually come up with lots of ideas and then revisit my priorities to see if I can figure out 1-3 things I'd like to work on for my next focused time sessions. These priorities are actually pretty stable for the most part, but sometimes an idea jumps the queue and that's okay.

There's a loose net of projects/tasks that I'm currently working on and things I'm currently interested in, so I want to connect ideas and resources to those if I can. If they aren't connected, or if they're low-priority and I probably won't get to them any time soon, it can make a lot of sense to add quick notes and pass it along.

For things I want to think about some more, my audio braindumping workflow seems to be working out as a way to capture lots of text even when I'm away from my computer. I also have a bit more time to sketch while waiting for the kiddo to get ready for bed. I can use the sketchnotes as outlines to talk through while I braindump, and I can take my braindumps and distill them into sketches. Then I can take those and put them into blog posts. Instead of getting tempted to add more and more to a blog post (just one more idea, really!), I can try wrapping up earlier since I can always add a follow-up post. For some things, making a video might be worthwhile, so smoothing out my workflow for creating a video could be useful. I don't want to spend a lot of time filing but I still want to be able to find related notes, so automatically refiling based on tags (or possibly suggesting refile targets based on vector similarity?) might help me shift things out of my inbox.

I'm generally not bothered by the waste of coming up with ideas that I don't get around to, since it's more like daydreaming or fun. I sometimes get a little frustrated when I want to find an interesting resource I remember coming across some time ago and I can't find it with the words I'm looking for. Building more of a habit of capturing interesting resources in my Org files and using my own words in the notes will help while I wait for personal search engines to get better. I'm a little slow when it comes to e-mails because I tend to wait until I'm at my computer–and then when I'm at my computer, I prefer to tinker or write. I occasionally redo things because I didn't have notes from the previous solution or I couldn't find my notes. That's fine too. I can get better at taking notes and finding them.

So I think some next steps for me are:

• Post more toots on @sachac@emacs.ch; might be useful as a firehose for ideas. Share them back to my Org file so I have a link to the discussion (if any). Could be a quick way to see if anyone already knows of related packages/code or if anyone might have the same itch.
• See if I can improve my braindumping/sketch workflow so that I can flesh out more ideas
• Tweak my video process gradually so that I can include more screenshots and maybe eventually longer explanations

10 years ago, I wrote that I was on the threshold of even more changes and two wildly different paths, and that I was looking forward to learning, sharing, and scaling. Here's how that worked out:

• Learning: I've been learning a ton about myself, life, and the people and resources around us, and skills that make our lives better. Drawing my thoughts out has been really helpful for untangling them. I haven't focused on tech as much, but sometimes I make little improvements here and there so that I can make the most of my limited screentime.
• Sharing: Parenting's been keeping me too busy to create lots of focused resources. I'm not too worried about this, though, since lots of other people are making cool stuff for Emacs.
• Scaling: Emacs News has been a really time-efficient way for me to help out with the Emacs community, and all the automation I've built around EmacsConf lets me squeeze it into the time I have. For consulting, I've been able to help other people learn by answering quick questions, and I continue to have fun making the client's crazy ideas happen.

Wow, 2013 to 2023 brought a lot of big changes to my life.

Parenting will probably take up most of my forties. I think the biggest thing I need to practice is calm, appreciative curiosity: not letting my worries or reactions or shoulds get in the way of being present, enjoying what's there, and helping figure things out together. It's tough, but it's what I signed up for, and that skill will also come in handy as I learn to deal with aging and world weirdness.

It's been a good ten years. Looking forward to seeing what we can make of the next ten.