Walking 30 miles from Beverly to Boston

On May 21, 2024, I walked about 30 miles from Beverly MA to Boston MA.

A coworker asked me to blog about it, so here we go.

Here's a Google Photos album of pictures I took along the way:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/NkyMJwm3MSt64maD6

Here's an interactive map of the route:

https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1yGUECeeST6aukYuqzeBJFqhrT6GI1tA&usp=sharing

And the record from Strava:

More correspondence about religion

After 6 years of suspense (see my first comment on this post: http://breathmintsforpenguins.blogspot.com/2016/06/musings-on-meaning-of-meaning-and.html), my thoughtful Christian friend got back to me and we continued for a while brought it to a thrilling conclusion.

I thought it was a fun conversation, so I'm posting (a somewhat edited for brevity and clarity) my part of it here. I haven't asked for permission to post my friend's comments, so I'll summarize those. I guess if they come across this and want their part included verbatim, I'll replace with the full, unedited correspondence. Also skipping a big chunk towards the end because it gets complicated, and probably boring to read for people other than the participants.

Backpropagation through graphical models for new year's resolutions and planning out priorities for the next year

Around New Year's every year, I take some time to reflect on the successes and failures of the past year and decide what I should prioritize for the next year. Usually I do this using a combination of paragraphs and bullet point lists.

I recently took a deep learning class where I learned about a technique called backpropagation, which is used to find optimal parameters for a predictive model. It occurred to me that an analogous thought process could be used to help guide New Year's planning.

This is the first time I have gone through this exercise, so I'm making it up as I go along. If you decide to try this (or if you have already tried something similar), I would be really delighted to hear any feedback (good or bad) or suggestions you might have for improving the method. 

Dreaming of Grandpa

memorial for grandma

Productivity through cycles of exploration and focus

I'm not a very good swimmer. I don't usually wear goggles, but I don't like getting water in my eyes. When I swim I start by looking around, noticing where obstacles points of interest are, and picking a destination. Then I close my eyes and swim towards that target for a while before stopping and repeating the cycle.

Isolating (peppermint) glandular trichomes by the bead-beater method

Sean Johnson

April 26, 2017

Simplified from: Gershenzon et al., ANALYTICAL BIOCHEMISTRY 200,130-138 (1992)