Don’t Measure the Quality of Your Life Using the Temperature of Your Nachos
A few years back, I read an anecdote somewhere on the web by a guy whose boss had won an all-expenses-paid trip to see an NFL game with amazing seats. The fo...
Welcome to Control-Alt-Backspace, a place for collecting ideas on regaining control in an increasingly complex world. Check out the manifesto to learn more about the purpose of this site or the sitemap for an overview of series and topics, or jump right in with recent posts below.
Control-Alt-Backspace updates every Monday, more or less. Got questions about something you read or suggestions for new posts? I love hearing from people – shoot me an email!
Recent Posts
The SM-2 Algorithm Actually Is Too Aggressive on Substantially Overdue Cards
I did an informal study on my 13 years of Anki spaced-repetition history to settle a team question at RemNote: is our “Anki SM-2” algorithm (and Anki’s SM-2 ...
Supplement on Emergency Contraception Effectiveness
In my post on contraception, I mentioned emergency contraception only in passing, as something that was out of scope, but it’s come to my attention t...
It’s the Commodification of Attention, Stupid
One of my Big Serious Goals for 2023 is to become more socially connected and make more really good friends in my new city, where I hope to be f...
Understanding Percentages
Figures expressed in percentages are ubiquitous, and interpreting and doing calculations with them is an important part of the basic mathematical lit...
Short Posts and Short URLs
Two quick announcements this week.
Understanding the Long-Term Risks of Contraceptive Failure
Our data on contraceptive failure is terrible, and our education is worse. How can we as individuals improve our chances of avoiding unintended pregnancies?
The Inconvenience of Convenience: On Being Unreachable
There was a time, not so very long ago, when walking out your door meant you were no longer reachable by anyone who wasn’t physically next to you. At...
Six Simple Solutions to Perplexing Tech Problems
Over the years, I’ve encountered quite a lot of tech problems, as someone who knows a lot about computers, writes software for a living, and has ...
Totally Enclosed Luminary: On Being Wrong Well
Last week, my hallway light burned out. As one does, I got up on my footstool in the dark, unscrewed the set screws carefully to avoid dropping the g...
The Fortunes File
Some months ago we talked about commonplacing, a technique for recording quotations and other random ideas you come across. In this rather short post, ...
Redesigning Motivation, or the Unexpected Benefit of Dishwashers
I bought a small countertop dishwasher for my apartment a few weeks ago. This is a box about eighteen inches on each side that fits on a counter or side ...
How to Quickly Learn Your Way Around A New Place
I’m naturally pretty average at navigation. I’m not bad – at least since my teens, I’ve always been able to use a map (GPS-enabled or not) or listen ...
Sabbatical Update, Week 23: Final Reflections
In the final weeks of my sabbatical, I settled into my new home, finished up a variety of projects, and got ready to start a new job.
Best Books of 2021
I read about 30 books in 2021. Here were the ones that stood out the most; I highly recommend all of these.
Sabbatical Update, Week 18: Moving
This was an action-packed couple of weeks mostly characterized by moving.
Sabbatical Update, Week 14: A Bunch of Stuff I Didn’t Plan On
Looks like it has been 6 weeks since I posted here! Things have not been going quite how I expected, but they should be back on track about now.
Sabbatical Update, Week 8: tzk and TiddlyRemember
This has been a whirlwind week and quite productive! I finished up with tzk for now and spent a lot of time working on TiddlyRemember, among other things.
Sabbatical Update, Week 7: Camping, Reading, and Writing
I wrote this on Saturday, but apparently forgot to publish it for 4 days. Whoops. Here’s what I was saying I was up to then.
Sabbatical Update, Week 6: Miscellaneous Weirdness
This week was an odd mixture of a lot of different things, and next week will likely be the same. Regardless, I am still greatly enjoying this whole sabbatic...
Sabbatical Update, Week 5: Three Cleanup Projects
A whirlwind week, as expected, and my work didn’t go the way I expected, but it was still good! I was visiting family from Friday to Monday 9/6.
Two Takes on the Eternal September
September, and with it the start of classes at most educational institutions in the United States, is almost upon us. In honor of this, I’d like to l...
Sabbatical Update, Week 4: Beginnings of tzk
A relatively quiet week. It was rainy almost the whole week, so I spent most of it inside reading and hacking on the Zettelkasten stuff.
Free Speech: A Credo
I hesitate to write about politics on a blog that is rarely overtly political. But this is a special kind of politics. It is a kind of politics that tran...
Sabbatical Update, Week 3: Grok TiddlyWiki Updates
I can hardly believe it has only been 3 weeks since I left my job at Federated Insurance. These weeks have been packed full and felt very long – which is gre...
How and Why to Create a Commonplace
Commonplacing is an ancient technique for recording passages and ideas you run across while studying or living your life. The technique was developed...
Sabbatical Update, Week 2: Neatening Up
This week felt really long and was unexpectedly tiring. I think that’s pretty normal after a big routine change, though – for me it usually takes about two w...
Sabbatical Update, Week 1: Camping
Welcome to my first sabbatical update post! I’ll be publishing one of these every Friday or Saturday (yeah, I know my first one is on Monday) which gathers t...
Better Indexes Through Semantic Modeling: A Sketch
Over the past year or so, I’ve been sporadic with my daily journaling practice owing to a number of new note-taking and memory systems consuming my t...
Upcoming Sabbatical
I’m reaching the end of my stint as a developer and DevOps engineer at Federated Insurance. It’s been an excellent four years working with a lot of great...
Updates on Grok TiddlyWiki
Since several people have started to write to make sure I’m OK after seeing that I haven’t updated since my COVID-19 post, I figured it would be a go...
Another Victim of the Plague
Unfortunately I have somehow managed to come down with COVID-19, despite having 0 CDC-defined close contacts in the past two weeks and going nowhere ...
Book Review: Digital Minimalism
Every once in a while, I run into an article or book or website that eerily matches what I’ve been thinking about, and sometimes even writing abo...
Tweaking the Scheduler
Anki’s default scheduling settings are good enough in most cases. But sometimes they don’t work optimally with certain types of material or study pattern...
An Introduction to Mnemonics
Mnemonics is the art of reversibly substituting easy-to-remember things for difficult-to-remember ones.
Everything’s Broken, Everything’s Too Complicated
Today I took (and thankfully, given everything else that happened, passed) a Microsoft Azure certification exam. Of course I’m under an NDA on the exam, ...
Partnering with Anki
Less experienced and less successful spaced-repetition users tend to treat their SRS as a magic box: put information in, and knowledge comes out. In ...
When to Learn with Anki
After you’ve determined what to learn and how much to learn, you might wonder when you should do your study. In one sense, it doesn’t matter at all; ...
Case Studies in Writing Cards
In this post, we’ll look at three case studies of real things I added to my Anki collection recently and how I selected and wrote the cards.
Catching Up On Your Anki Reviews
Everyone gets behind on their reviews occasionally. Here are some strategies for getting back in Anki’s good graces when that happens.
Maintaining Your Collection
Maintenance might not be fun, but if you think doing maintenance isn’t fun, try not doing maintenance. Here’s a plan for keeping your collection neat...
What to Learn with Anki
If you start a spaced-repetition collection and diligently study every day, you might soon face an unusual question: what should you learn? Sometimes...
Organizing Your Cards
If you start seriously using spaced repetition and add material from all areas of your life, it can get tricky to keep track of all your cards. Maybe...
How Much to Learn with Anki
When you’re starting out with Anki or another SRS, you might wonder how much you can expect to learn with this newly efficient method of studying. Be...
Dealing with Leeches
One of the foundational principles of spaced repetition is separating easy cards from hard cards. We can then review the easy cards rarely and the hard c...
Rules for Designing Precise Anki Cards
Reviewing in Anki is easy: all you have to do is answer the question and press a button to indicate how well you remembered it. Creating the cards to...
Spaced Repetition Glossary
Spaced repetition has a bit of a learning curve of its own, but too much of it comes from not understanding a few relatively straightforward terms an...
Getting Started with Anki
By popular demand, the memory series is back! Thanks to all those who wrote to and asked me if I was going to write more. Over the next few weeks, we’ll ...
Yes, I Do Mind Reviewing Your App
Do you have a bunch of apps that constantly nag you to review them? The nicer ones have a “never ask me again” button or give up after one or two times, ...
Why Keep Notes?
Nearly every literate person has written notes for herself at some point in her life. However, most people haven’t spent much time thinking about all...
