Pet Peeve: Tech Switching

I read a decent amount of tech media/press. Barely a day goes by when there isn't someone in my RSS feed explaining how they dropped application X for application Y. This seems to happen most often for frequently-used applications or workflows like scheduling/calendars or email.

I won't call out the specific blog post that set me writing this post, but suffice it to say that I wish there was a clause (in the contract of life) forcing tech writers or bloggers to state why the application they're singing the praises of is better than the one they were using up to now. Specifically, are there any new features, or does it just look shinier? Also, have you been using it for longer than a day or two?

I'm pretty solid and stable in the applications I use. It'll take something pretty seismic to rid me of DevonThink or Tinderbox or Mailmate. But if you catch me flip-flopping in my tech-related writing, please call me out on it.

The ways memory skills augment your life

I released a new episode of Sources and Methods today. This week I spoke with Lynne Kelly, author of ‘The Memory Code: The Secrets of Stonehenge, Easter Island and Other Ancient Monuments', a fascinating exploration of the intersection between history, archaeological sleuthing and memory techniques. We delved into the contents of her book as well as the practical applications she found for these ancient skills.

I’ve been fascinated with the work that Lynne has been doing on the history of memory and her own personal memory ‘experiments’. If you need some inspiration as to things you might learn (or ways you might learn them), head over to her blog and the page entitled ‘My 33 Memory Experiments’. She generously includes photos and explanations of how the various systems work. Her latest groups places them in even further context. As someone who’s been following her memory experiments for a while, I found the book really useful to understand why she was picking a certain technique over another.

She’s about to start a new project involving memory skills, education and schools (she discusses that in the podcast around the 34-minute mark) and I look forward to reading about the outcome.

New Year, New Arabic-language Podcast

This year, in combination with my publishing a book about getting from intermediate-advanced level in Arabic, I wanted to find a way to stay committed to improving my own language. So I’ve started a mostly-Arabic-only podcast.

There are two episodes up already, both from the ‘Jordanian Dialect’ series. This series is recorded with co-host Lina Obeidat, my good friend and Arabic teacher of several years. (Book lessons with Lina on iTalki here. She’s also a regular contributor to talkinarabic.com’s Levantine materials).

During the first episode, we talked about the winter and the rain in Jordan (where we’re both based), and I learnt about the existence of a period of 40 days when the weather is much colder. In our second episode, we talked about taxis in Amman. We struggled to find many positive things to say about the system or the drivers of taxis, but tried to see things from their perspective. At the end, I learned a new proverb that was appropriate to our discussion.

In the coming weeks I’ll be adding more shows to the podcast. There will be a show focusing on Classical Arabic texts. There will be a show on Modern Literature. Potentially we’ll have a show for Egyptian Colloquial (sigh!) but that depends on my finding someone to host it (let me know if you’re interested).

I’m looking forward to recording more episodes. Please leave a comment over on Soundcloud with any feedback you might have. Also, subscribe on iTunes by clicking on this link or search my name and you should find it. The podcast is also available on Overcast. Just search the name and it’ll show up.

Pre-Order Now: 'Master Arabic'

We're getting closer to finalising the materials for our new book and resource guide, 'Master Arabic'. The full description of the book reads as follows:

This will be my thirteenth year studying the Arabic language. I've tried everything: university programmes, intensive courses, self-study and more.

My Arabic level remained at the intermediate level for years, a learning plateau, and I felt like I wasn't progressing. I spent the last three years getting to the advanced level and I'm now (finally) able to communicate comfortably in a dialect and tackling contemporary fiction.

I've decided to write up some of the techniques, attitudes and resources that are available to the intermediate student of Arabic. This is the condensed product of years of experimentation. This book contains advice on how to improve your reading, writing, speaking and listening skills and also offers suggestions for resources you can use to tackle each particular skill.

The premium package includes over a dozen interviews with leading educators, Arabists and students who impart their secrets on how to pass through to advanced materials. It also includes life-time access to an online resource database of materials to study Arabic.

As a way of saying thank you to all those who subscribed to the mailing list and to ring in the new year, 'Master Arabic' is now available for pre-order. A discount code is provided below that will allow you to purchase the book for 10% off.

There are two editions:

- Basic Edition -- You'll get a copy of the e-book in PDF format. You will also receive access to an exclusive curated guide to materials, content and study aids for students of Arabic.

- Premium Edition -- You'll get everything in the basic edition, plus multiple formats of the ebook to suit various e-readers. You will also get access to over a dozen interviews with students, teachers and experts from Egypt, Jordan and the United States who have unique insights into learning Arabic.

Feel free to email if you have any questions about the book, the materials or have a topic that you really feel we should cover in the book.

USE DISCOUNT CODE 'preorderthankyou' for 10% off. This one-off discount will no longer be offered once the book is released at the end of January.

Dinner Party Decision Matrix: A Python Tool

Some friends were coming round for dinner this evening and I couldn’t decide what to cook. I couldn’t decide because there were too many variables floating around that would impact the decision.

So I decided to make an app.

I wanted something tasty but that also was relatively hassle-free. I wanted something that didn’t take too much time to prepare, but it still needed to be different from the kind of food I’d cook in a rush at the end of a long day.

I’d come across the idea of weighted decision-making a while back, and really like its premise; you say how important various factors are to you and then rate all the different options according to those same factors. At the end, you’re left with a score that can be said to be more objective than just your gut feeling.

So yesterday morning I listed a bunch of the factors that were important to me in coming to a decision about what to cook. I figured I could get some coding practice by making a tool that would work to calculate the best option from any combination of choices.

I put the finishing touches on the decision-making tool this morning. You can check it out on Github, though you’ll need to know a little about how Python works to get it going for yourself. I’m fairly sure my code looks horrific to a seasoned professional. There are probably ways I could have standardised the flow of questions and improved the output, but for now, I’m satisfied.

The app ended up picking the following for dinner (photo below):

- Courgette, chickpea and feta filo pastry pie

- Roast beetroot and pistachio salad

- Kale, pomegranate and shredded chicken salad

- and a beetroot and chocolate cake

View fullsize

I learnt a bunch of things about Python while coding the tool:

1. When you run a x= raw_input(“Ask question here”) command, the information allocated to x will be in a string format. If you are collecting numbers, you’ll need to convert it to an integer format by using int().
2. Lists and dictionaries can be tricky, particularly when you’re looping over them or looping over certain keys etc.
3. It helps to test while you code. This particular function wasn’t too complex to understand, so I just pushed on without testing so much. At some point towards the end, I realised something in the middle was wrong: cue much debugging. I keep reading about the importance of having in-built tests. I’m not sure what that would mean / have meant in the context of this particular app, but I imagine I’ll find out in due course.
4. Coding is fun and appeals to the compulsive side of my brain. I rarely need to be urged back to the task at hand when I’m coding. This probably has something to do with the quick feedback loop that coding enables. In any case, I’m hooked (again).

Knot 4: Empathy, Tech Scepticism and Climate Change

I completed a major stage in a big project this week. Emerging from the haze, I had a bit more time to read for pleasure / curiosity. This helps explain the older selections of article that follow, and the number of books I managed to get through. I made steady progress with my language-learning coding side-project (about which more soon), and recorded three new podcast episodes to be released in the next few weeks.

Articles

• Nick Romeo - “The Chatbot Will See You Now” (New Yorker)

This is an article about how technology might help provide some kind of therapeutic intervention at scale. A specific case explored in the piece is that of Syrian refugees who use the app to help deal with things they experienced as a result of the ongoing conflict (or as a result of refugee life). Results on efficacy and so on are still unknown, but it’s at least an intriguing idea.

• Mark A. Heberle - “Must Everyone Write English?” (Claremont Review of Books)

Heberle explores how translation into English is both a blessing and a curse. It brings about this kind of ‘global literature’ and awareness of other cultures for English-reading audiences, but it also changes the kinds of expression that takes place. It’s a challenge to the English-first trend that will leave us so much poorer over time.

• Lisa Miller - “An Experiment in Empathy” (New York Magazine)

This piece is accompanied by a video (here). The video is worth watching, but both show what happens when various parties from ‘opposing sides’ of a contentious issue (gun laws in the USA) come together to try to understand and/or empathise with each other. I’ve long talked about the need for finding a place for empathy in how we understand other people, other places, other contexts, but this piece pushes back a little against that logic. Paul Bloom has also recently published a book (‘Against Empathy’) which argues against the use of empathy as a primary means of making decisions. I will be reading that soon to see how it meshes with my current understanding.

• Michael Knox Beran - “In Defense of Memorization” (City Journal)

A common charge levelled at those who study ways to improve their memories is that there is no need to learn facts since everything is available online. This article shows how memory fits into different kinds of education and learning and how it enriches your mental landscape.

• Cal Newport - “Some Thoughts on Transitioning to Digital Minimalism” (CalNewport.com)

Sensible advice on how to start thinking about reshaping your digital consumption habits. Newport’s last book, ‘Deep Work’, gets into all of this in much more detail, but it’s a useful entry point if you’re considering making a change.

• Tristan Harris - “How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds — from a Magician and Google’s Design Ethicist” (The Startup)

A useful reminder of the ways that our oft-used tech-enabled gateways and services are highly addictive, and designed to be so. This, to my mind, should make us think and pause and consider ways we can be less dependent.

• Jonathan Stray - “The Dark Clouds of Financial Cryptography” (JonathanStray.com)

I’m simultaneously fascinated by the various new digital currencies that have emerged in the last year or two but also overwhelmed whenever I try to understand how they work. This article by Jonathan Stray brought me a little closer to learning about the ‘how’, but also some of the ‘why’ and reasons for possible uncertainty and concern.

• Tara Duggan - “Seafood’s New Normal” (San Francisco Chronicle)

A richly reported story on how climate change and fishing practices are changing how seafood reaches our plates as consumers. It’s told through a very specific lens (that of California and the American west coast) which helps give the piece its power.

• Mark Schapiro - “The Unique Burden of Covering Climate Change in the Middle East” (Pacific Standard)

A really nice overview of the challenges that local journalists face in the Middle East when trying to cover climate change. Schapiro tells his story by way of a workshop in Amman hosted by the Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism. We get to meet reporters from different countries. This was a great way to get at the story, and I wish there were more pieces like this.

• David Schenker - “Jordan’s Economy Was Always Shaky. The Refugee Crisis Has Only Made Things Worse.” (The Tower)

I understand next to nothing about how economies and financial systems work, but this article on Jordan’s economy seemed to make sense. Things were always difficult, but now is especially so.

• Donna Abu-Nasr - “Saudis Are Trying to Figure Out How the Post-Oil Era Works” (Bloomberg)

Lots has been written on the Saudi pivot, how they want to be less dependent on oil and reinvent the Kingdom’s role in the Middle East and the world at large. This was the first piece I’ve read that laid out some of the confusion and contradiction as to what exactly that means.

Books

I read Irving’s ‘Guide to the Good Life’, a useful and practical guide to stoicism, a Greco-Roman philosophy that is undergoing a revival in certain circles these days. Harrison’s ‘A Powerful Mind: The Self-Education of George Washington’ was a slightly dry but compelling account of the role of reading in the life and career of George Washington. I read Deci’s ‘Why We Do What We Do’ on the strength of Deb Chachra’s recommendation during her Sources and Methods podcast interview. Deci argues that internal motivation beats external motivation every time; I’ve started employing some of the suggestions in my language coaching work as a result. I also finished Yassin-Kassab and Al-Shami’s excellent ‘Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War’ (my longer review here).

Request

If you’re still reading, please drop me a note if you have a spare moment. I see the stats on how many people open these ‘Knots’ link collections but I’m unsure as to whether they’re useful. Let me know if you find them useful, and/or what else you’d like me to write about.

Talking DevonThink with Gabe Weatherhead

I’ve been on a bit of a DevonThink kick these past weeks, and the catalyst for all of this was a conversation I had with Gabe Weatherhead (@macdrifter over on Twitter, though that account is no longer active).

You can listen to the full episode on your podcast player of choice or over on the Sources and Methods site. Towards the end of the episode we get into the weeds on how he uses DevonThink Pro Office and several other pieces of software. I’m looking forward to hearing Gabe’s much-anticipated appearance on MacPowerUsers in January, since I imagine he’ll go into even more detail there.

We also discussed social media and some of the ways he found himself drifting away from commonly-used sites like Facebook and Twitter. For me, this was the most interesting part of the podcast.

Syria’s Revolution: The First Draft

I haven’t been following events in Syria that closely. ‘Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War’ (by Robin Yassin-Kassab, Leila Al-Shami) is only one among several books that have been written in the midst of the ongoing conflict, but I’d heard consistently good things about it since its release at the beginning of 2016. It doesn’t disappoint. I started it yesterday, lulled by the conclusion of a large project and a thousand pictures of Christmas dinner preparations on twitter. I woke up this morning and finished the rest.

Burning Country is compellingly written, not only on a structural level but also on account of its interspersed interview and other oral history-type testimony. This is the book’s primary strength, I felt. It’s hard enough to write accurate and compelling history after the fact. Doing so while events are still unfolding makes the job even harder. Thankfully, Burning Country delivers the goods.

After introducing Syria and Syrians as if to set the stage, Yassin-Kassab and al-Shami launch into an account of the Syrian uprising’s early days, told through a diversity of sources from a variety of backgrounds. They make a strong case for the initial moments of the revolution as being less co-opted by one group or another, even as later chapters show how a variety of forces pushed and pulled that initial impulse in unintended directions. I learnt a lot from the accounts of initial organisational strategies, the way different groups responded to similar kinds of threats from the state and how the logic of violent escalation started to take on more prominence. The chapter on cultural shifts (or expressions) brought about by the revolution (chapter eight) was also excellent. The end of the book falls a little short, if only because the conflict is ongoing and you had the sense that it is an unfinished project.

As a one-stop shop introduction and opening-out to some important parts of Syrian society, history and current affairs, Burning Country is well worth your time. The book ends with a note on thinking about and understanding Syria:

“In order to truly think globally – rather than to hide from thought behind clumsy globalising paradigms – it is necessary to act locally. We ask the reader, rather than applying the usual grand narratives, to attend to voices from the ground.”

I hope we get to read other histories of Syria (and other countries) that employ the same logic.

Share the Gift of Language Coaching

If you’re still looking around for last-minute Christmas presents, look no further. How about the friend who has been struggling to learn a language? Know someone who is always talking about how they want to learn a language but don’t have the time? Or even you yourself: are you always putting off studying Arabic or French (or even Mandarin) that you know would benefit you, but you just don’t know how to get started?

I offer custom-made language coaching to suit your schedule and needs. You might need help with motivation, accountability, coming up with a grand plan and/or just require someone to be a sounding post for a study plan you’re already working on.

Whatever you language-learning needs, I’ll be happy to work with you. My goal is to help you reach your goals as directly as possible. We’ll work to your strengths and find ways to make the process less of a chore.

You can read more about the whole process here.

To purchase a gift subscription, please get in touch here.

The Best Books I Read in 2016

Compared to 2015, this year was a relatively slow year. I decided to reduce the number of books that I wanted to read after it became clear to me just how much work I’d have to put in to finish my PhD dissertation.

Last year I wrote that I wanted half of the books I read in 2016 to be fiction. I also said that I didn’t want to buy any new books. I failed firmly and thoroughly on both goals. I only read nine works of fiction this year, and I bought many books. Part of the reason for less fiction was due to a realignment of my broader goals (less writing of fiction in my daily life and more writing of computer/programming code). Nevertheless, I want to be reading more fiction as a regular habit. I’ll probably set a Beeminder goal for 2017 to facilitate this.

Two works of fiction did stand out among the 76 (as of today) books I did manage to read. Hanya Yanagihara’s ‘A Little Life’ was an unrelentingly miserable book. At 734 pages, it was also very long. It was a significant time investment, but the craft of the writing kept me reading. I avoided reading reviews when this came out, but was aware that many people were saying positive things. The events that take place in this book are traumatic, to say the least, and the author has been criticised for writing ‘torture porn’ by a number of readers. So take this or leave it. It’s incredibly powerful and beautifully written.

2016 was also my year to jump on the Elena Ferrante bandwagon. I read the first two volumes in a series of four. I enjoyed the first, ‘My Brilliant Friend’, more than the second, though that was perhaps on account of the pleasure on discovering a new writer (to me) who told engaging and emotionally satisfying stories. This book didn’t send me on a nostalgia-infused journey as it seems to have done with others, but it was certainly one of the books I savoured reading most this year. “Deliciously compelling,” I wrote immediately after finishing.

Cal Newport’s Deep Work was what spurred me to finish my PhD in an intense three-month period at the beginning of the year. I think anyone doing some kind of freelance work, or remote work, or work where you aren’t immediately / directly under the supervision of someone else would benefit from reading this book. Newport is occasionally a bit preachy, but don’t let that distract you from his important thoughts on quality of work and production. (Some related thoughts in an old blogpost here.)

Austin Kleon’s ‘Show Your Work’ (original blog here) is responsible for the uptick in posts on this blog. (I even have a Beeminder goal to keep me honest.) This was a quick but rich overview of ways in which sharing ideas, work and other moments where you learn something can be useful for both the author and his audience. Lots of practical ideas, most of which could be boiled down to what happens when you keep a blog regularly updated. Highly recommended to anyone who thinks for a living.

‘The Inner Game of Tennis’ by W. Timothy Gallwey is my final pick, if only because I really need to absorb some of its lessons. Gallwey makes the point that conflict between competing ‘voices’ in our minds is often the source of self-sabotage. I wrote a longer summary here in case you want to learn more.

The year is 97% finished, and arbitrary as the passing of time is, I remain mindful of the fact that there aren’t that many days. I also have been trying to hold the paradox of things mattering (but at the same time not mattering) in my head.

So 2017: more fiction, (probably) more blogging, (certainly) more coding and maybe a return to Afghanistan-related topics.

Reading and the American Revolution

‘A Powerful Mind: The Self-Education of George Washington’ tells the story of Washington’s reading habits (and how they benefited him). You can read only the introduction and get the main message: he read a lot and the things he read allowed him to grow as a military and political leader. The rest of the book is a detailed exploration of this thesis alongside some of the supporting evidence.

Extensive and deep reading alike were important throughout his career. In one of the most fascinating sub-sections, Harrison shows how Washington’s military campaign benefited from some of the latest military theories of the day, both in terms of tactics and strategy.

I benefited from the way the book proceeded chronologically through Washington’s life, not being familiar (at all) with the events of the American Revolution and the time period being examined. One of my first questions to other readers (over on Goodreads) was the extent to which someone not immersed in this American history could read this book without trouble, and I’m pleased to report that relative newbies like myself shouldn’t find much issue.

This book is repurposed from a PhD thesis, and it tells. The narrative is sometimes diverted to a discussion of sources or the evidence on which certain claims rest. This is all fine and proper, though it disrupts the flow. I wonder whether those discussions might not have been relegated to an appendix. That said, I also occasionally felt that too much was made out of the baseline evidence on which the book seems to rest, i.e. the records of which books were owned, annotated and/or read by Washington. Harrison writes a lot about the various ways we can deduce what Washington might have been reading at period X or Y, but as a reader myself I felt disappointed that somehow we hardly ever seemed to actually catch Washington directly in the act.

One of the points that I found most interesting was how Washington seemed to go about selecting his books. There were fewer titles at the time, so he seemed to have more opportunity or necessity for deep reading (annotating copies line-by-line, for example) than in the present day where it’s probably easier to develop habits of wide/extensive reading that are ultimately shallow. A fascinating section in this respect was where Washington decides he needs to overhaul his farm and agricultural practices, and Harrison shows how he used what he read to take a risky but ultimately profitable decision to reform and overhaul how he managed his land.

Two Charities Needing Your Support

If you do any kind of end-of-year charitable donations, now would be a good time to support one or both of these organisations.

CAGE works in the UK to advocate on behalf of communities and individuals affected by the so-called War on Terror. They occupy a niche space among UK-based NGOs and the work they do is unique and important. Contribute to their campaign here.

The Kabul Mobile Mini-Circus for Children is a group that I’ve fundraised for in the past. I visited them a few years back in Kabul and it was one of the happiest places I’ve been to. The children seemed to love being there, exploring what they could do through learning new skills, working with each other and so on. They’re building a new training / social / educational centre, and you can support their campaign here.

Django vs Flask

I am diving back into the coding of my language-related web tool, as I mentioned a few days back. In and of itself, the functionality is quite simple, but there are three parts that have to all work together, so it’s harder for me to put it all together than I had expected.

One of the decisions I’m currently mulling over is whether to use Django or Flask to allow my Python code to interact and get displayed on the website. For those of you who aren’t familiar with coding and how websites work, these two frameworks are what allows me to write the bulk of the tool in Python, but then use either Django or Flask to display it on the web and interact with the web server. (I realise I probably butchered that explanation.)

Django seems to be what most people recommend I use, in part because it comes with a number of useful things built-in. As a result, or maybe independently of that, it has a steeper learning curve and feels like a larger proposition than perhaps I need for my (somewhat small) project.

Flask is pretty basic and pared down. It doesn’t contain all the bells and whistles that Django offers, but as a result it’s easier to get your head round and make a working prototype sooner.

If I had a bit more time, I think I’d go with Django. The user community seems bigger and I’d probably end up using the built-in features, but Flask allows me to get a working prototype hosted somewhere much faster and thus seems like probably the option I’ll choose.

For now, I’m getting a bare-bones Python-only version of the tool ready, then I’ll hook that up to Flask and see how that interaction works.