there's a directory on my laptop called ~/dev. it holds every personal project i've made in the last ten years.. seventy-odd git repos, most of them dormant, a few of them finished, a handful still moving. this summer i've been reviving some of them with agentic coding and starting new ones the same way, and a few things fell out of that which i want to write down.

the short version: a turn late in a long agent session costs about five times what a turn early in one does, and once i could see that, tokens per commit dropped by about 60%. the trick wasn't a better model or a better prompt. it was keeping the receipts. the rest of this is how i found that out, and what the receipts say about what all of this actually costs.

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over the years, i've written a lot of compter code, both professionaly and personally. as the saying goes though, the cobbler's children has no shoes, and that also applies to my personal software projects. i have to spend effort to create infrastructure to be able to access them from all my devices, and that has gone through many iterations over the years.

most of the time i create software toys. not fully fleshed out ideas, but something that sparked an interest, and i want to see and interact with from my phone, or my laptop, or any other internet capable device. what i need is a safe space to create applications and experiment. be it simple http apis, to full web applications with a frontend and backend.. but without worrying about the wild west of the internet banging on my open ports.

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this is a blog about obsessions. having a conversation, reading a book, seeing a video—something will make me stop and say, 'oh, really?' an idea will resonate with me and i will set out to experience it for myself. i will go deep and consume all the information i can, taking detailed notes, log my practice, and create charts and videos of my progress. this is a collection of writings and artifacts related to these experiences:

• ultrarunning, especially in the mountains of colorado
• movement practices like gymnastics, pilates, kettlebell juggling, and so much more
• living in a spiritual community for a decade
• living habitually barefoot and without furniture
• love of nature and exploring remote places, including caving, and cave conservation
• fractals and emergent systems, generative art
• the emotional power of music, especially rhythm
• unix and emacs, and a love for the computer language lisp

i feel like an alchemist standing in the confluence of these different obsessions. instead of transmuting materials though, i'm transforming myself through these experiences. i'm gaining me new skills and perspectives, and my approach to life is much different than it used to be.

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