A Blog About Jon Bell

I’m winding down this blog

Instead of posting here, I’ll be posting instead at http://notaghost.lot23.com/feed.xml. That’s an RSS feed, because right now there’s no blog to point to. See you there!

If you see this, I’m already successful

I set up a new database. But I’m not sure if it’s going to work. So if you’re seeing this in the Firehose (not in the Ghost RSS, which I’ll probably move away from soon) then woo!

Wait, I think I have something

I’ve been working on my Firehose product for about a year. This evening, I posted a new version of the landing page. And once I did it, I realised something for the 100th time. Something I’ve known implicitly and explicitly, but tonight I felt it in a new

Elementary particles of truth, a follow-up

I broke up with my debate buddy. It was done gently and carefully, where I made a point to say I enjoyed getting to know him, hoped he didn’t think the exercise was a waste of time, and so forth. He responded respectfully and said I could stay with

Elementary particles of truth

I have a friend who uses the term “elementary particles of meaning” to refer to things that are foundationally true for a person. For example, you might say you enjoy biking. Why? Because you like the exercise. Why? Because you feel better when you do. Why? Not sure! It’s

Proud of this new feature

To explain the new feature I just added to my blog, I’m just going to copy/paste what I wrote to my friend. — So, like, most blogs do this: site.com/blog/1 site.com/blog/2 Which is fine. They also load everything in pure chronological order. And

My Morning MP3

I have a rough idea for a product I want to build for myself, and I already have several of the pieces of technology to make it work. But I’m not sure exactly what to build, so I’m going to think out loud while I work it out.

I Learned Big Stuff Today

First, look at this post from @luokai on Threads: https://www.threads.net/@luokai/post/C4IGz4OuCfD It talks about people pointing LLMs at a YouTube video and getting a great HTML page out of it. Pretty great and I want to try doing it myself. Second, look at this post

Backstage

VH1’s Pop Up Video helped me discover how much more interesting the background trivia can be, often more interesting than the art itself. If you look at a painting in a gallery, you’re looking at it at the most simple level. It’s paint. On a canvas. It’

It’s Funny How (A Day in the Life)

It’s funny how, when I start my weekends, I feel a little explosion of possibility, followed immediately by an avalanche of tasks. It buries me, but fortunately I have learned how to prepare myself with the right equipment to help me dig my way out. It’s funny how

The Apple Vision Pro as of February 15

Last year I predicted how the Apple Vision Pro might fare. Two weeks ago, as the product was launching, I compared my old predictions with my new ones. Now I’d like to do some further modifications to see what I got wrong and provide some additional colour. New information

Apple Vision Pro: Vanity Fair Update

I just want to state for the historical record that I wrote my bullish Apple Vision Pro article before the bullish Vanity Fair article came out. Dang. That is the kind of press coverage any marketing team would die for, but only Taylor Swift and Beyoncé seem to be able

The Apple Vision Pro as of February 1st, 2024

I love predictions. Show me someone saying there was no way Trump would win in 2016, or someone who said Apple Watch would be a flop in 2014. Show me someone who predicted Biden winning Super Tuesday or that Roe would be struck down by the Supreme Court. And most

Where Everybody Knows Your Name

I’ve been part of a small online community for 20 years or more. It’s invite only, it predates things like Twitter and Facebook, and these are people who have communicated every day or nearly every day in a group chat since the George W Bush administration. So as

The Crushing Weight

I feel better when I have a place to put my thoughts. You can think of it in a very objective, analytical way, like counting steps. If you’re 15 steps away from something, that’s further than 5 steps. If you have to open 3 doors to get to

Some Recent Projects I Want to Remember

Go into any inventor’s lab, physical or figurative, and you’ll find projects in different stages of development. For each thing that’s ready to share, there are often dozens of little experiments and explorations tucked into nooks and crannies. Some of my biggest successes were things I set

Conversations I've Had Today

"Can I get some oatmeal and biscuits and gravy?" "Yes, please put your meal ticket in the slot." "Oh, I don't have a meal ticket..." "You don't?" "No, I don't know how this works."

Can I Talk About This Yet?

A long time ago, maybe five or ten years, I started a project called Can I Talk About This Yet? It was broken into different folders representing the different companies I’ve worked at, with little essays inside each. Some weren’t fleshed out yet, and just had little notes

Reading List, 2023

Here are the books I read this year. "Making a Scene" by Constance Wu "Crying in H Mart" by Michelle Zauner "Small Fry" by Lisa Brennan-Jobs "Tokyo Vice" by Jake Edelstein "Creativity, Inc" by Ed Catmull "Our Mathematical Universe&

This Chance

There’s a simple line from a TOOL song that always grabs me: Celebrate this chance to be alive and breathing That’s it! There’s no deeper metaphor, there’s no double meaning. It’s as basic as reminder as you’ll ever get about living well. Remembering that

December 6, 2023

One thing took from GTD The “GTD” craze, which stood for Getting Things Done, seemed half helpful and half silly. The helpful part was helping people feel more productive, a noble pursuit. The silly part was everything else. One thing I learned from GTD was the benefit of a “brain

A new album from Blockhead

I like an artist named Blockhead, so I tried listening to his new album. It seemed good, but different. And then I noticed him making references to old samples from his previous albums, which seemed ballsy. Before 2023, I would have done a Metacritic search for the album, skimmed through

Search engines are disappointing (examples 1 through 3)

I haven’t liked search engines in a long time. Frankly, I’ve been a little surprised by how much garbage people put up with when searching for information. It seems like we all decided that Google is the pinnacle of discovery, despite ample evidence of its shortcomings, because we

The Next Level of Creativity

Many years ago, Brian Eno came up with a deck of cards called “Oblique Strategies.” Each card had a provocative statement on it. Examples: * Is there something missing? * Work at a different speed * Use an unacceptable color The idea was to hit a creative roadblock, draw a card, and hopefully

The Humane AI Pin

While listening to the wonderful Hard Fork podcast, my ears perked up when I heard them say that some people think the Humane AI Pin will fail, but a bunch of product types and engineers and saying “there’s a lot of amazing tech in there.” To the host’s