Tech — Work — Ramblings

by Mike Kalvas

I see you're not using JavaScript (which is awesome!) on one of my pages that uses it to provide a better experience. If you see something not working right, please let me know. My site should work exactly the same without it apart from any exceptions noted here.

I use prism.min.js to do syntax highlighting. It clocks in at 23kb total in size. Since the majority of the writing I do involves coding, I personally find this to be a worthwhile trade off. If you choose to keep this disabled, rest assured, the code examples are still there, they just may have some extra whitespace and obviously no syntax highlighting.

I do no tracking at all and am a zealot about keeping my pages as small as possible. If you're reading a page of mine that transfers more than about 250kb over the wire (including my most gratuitous indulgence — fonts) I've messed up.

So, if you'd like to have a slightly richer experience, consider enabling javascript for my site and I promise your trust won't be misplaced.

202304102010 Interactions with reality drive innovation

The interaction with harsh reality tends to push you into significant discoveries which otherwise you would never have thought about while doing pure research in a vacuum of your private interests.¹

It's important not to live in an ivory tower, separated from the muck of life. All the best research and thought can lead down paths that would never work when implemented in a real system. Not only that, but reality will strengthen your ideas or illuminate new paths and opportunities.

Hamming, R. W. (2020). The art of doing science and engineering: Learning to learn. Stripe Press. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53349431-the-art-of-doing-science-and-engineering ↩