This is my last weekend of funemployment. After a luxurious two month break, I'm excited to start my new job on Monday. It will probably be a while before I'm posting again. Before I go, I'd like to share some miscellaneous funemployment thoughts. A two month break hits the duration sweet spot, conditional on at-home … Continue reading Day 27: COVID Funemployment Thoughts
Personal
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Day 26: Re-learning Chinese as a Heritage Speaker
I recently read How Will You Measure Your Life by Clayton Christensen on recommendation and now I'll propagate the cycle by also proselytizing the book. It's an accessible, self-reflection provoking read with great insights for cookie-cutter career-conscious yuppies. I was personally galvanized by the discussion around "Investing for Future Happiness" and "The Risk of Sequencing … Continue reading Day 26: Re-learning Chinese as a Heritage Speaker
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Day 25: Special Meals
Disclaimer: I don't take good food photos. Here's some weird corn instead. Food for thought that recently came up at the dinner table: what makes a meal special? Specialness is a tricky idea, heavily influenced by individual perception. A meal is never categorically special - you and I perceive, experience, and subsequently feel differently. This … Continue reading Day 25: Special Meals
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Day 23: Jiu Jitsu: The gentle art of folding clothes while people are still in them
An oldie but goodie For the uninitiated, if you've ever seen adults wrestling on the gym floor whilst wearing fancy pajamas, that probably was jiu jitsu, a submission-based grappling martial art. New folks might find jiu jitsu inaccessible relative to more self-explanatory martial arts - without understanding the techniques, it looks like an exercise based … Continue reading Day 23: Jiu Jitsu: The gentle art of folding clothes while people are still in them
Day 21: WordPress Themes
I've started playing around with the aesthetics of my blog by exploring different website templates. A few quick thoughts: Choosing a WordPress themes is an exercise in tedium. Decision fatigue is incredibly real and unfortunately, quantity of choice does not translate into quality. Medium does a good job of having a one-size-fits-all template aesthetic. This … Continue reading Day 21: WordPress Themes
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Day 18: NexKey Deep Dive
Let's take a closer look at cloning a NexKey RFID access card. Unfortunately, our steps for cloning HID tags won't generalize. The NexKey protocol is rarer and locked in a more comprehensive security package. The Proxmark tooling has less functionality for NexKeys so prepare to get scrappy. We start by reading the card and the … Continue reading Day 18: NexKey Deep Dive
Day 17: Links for Context
Housekeeping today. I've received feedback that many of my posts are too inaccessible for a lay person lacking the necessary context. There's a fine line between adequately grounding your reader and providing original commentary. My strategy is to hyperlink the reader to the necessary context elsewhere, otherwise I run the risk of becoming too skilled … Continue reading Day 17: Links for Context
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Day 16: World Order and Diplomacy
World Order: "Vintage Kissinger" Hillary Clinton refers to Henry Kissinger's World Order as "vintage Kissinger." While she undoubtedly intends the phrase as fulsome praise, it makes me far less excited about reading Kissinger's earlier works. Kissinger's writing is both dense and assumes a high level of background knowledge on global political history. If you have … Continue reading Day 16: World Order and Diplomacy
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Day 15: Nf3, Réti Traps
Réti Opening: 1. Nf3 d5 2. c4 Allow me to begin with the disclaimer that I am not a good chess player. I am at best a 1500 strength player whose time would be better spent studying positions than playing blitz. Unfortunately, I've chosen to spend the past decade playing cute blitz openings on chess.com … Continue reading Day 15: Nf3, Réti Traps
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Day 14: HID Deep Dive
Yesterday I wrote a demonstrative example of cloning an unencrypted HID RFID access card. You might complain that it was exercise in Proxmark magical keyboard incantations. Well buckle up reader - today we dive into the details. Image 1: Proxmark scan data from reading our HID card The above screenshot (Image 1) shows the results … Continue reading Day 14: HID Deep Dive
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Day 13: HID Cards
Proxmark 3 Easy, original HID card (note the printed card number 67924), and rewritable T5577 card My first task is to clone some old RFID cards I have on hand. Today, we're working with a HID iCLASS card, commonly used for building access. Our Proxmark is able to identify the card type and read the … Continue reading Day 13: HID Cards
Day 12: RFID Cloner
My first introduction to the technological transhuman movement was a few years ago when a friend showed me his implanted neomagnet and NFC chip. Once the nerves had healed around the neomagnet, he was able to feel EM waves emitted from nearby electronic devices - a useful trick for an electrical engineer. He used his … Continue reading Day 12: RFID Cloner
Day 11: My Writing Process
Having made it to two weeks of near-consecutive posting, I'd like to reflect on my writing process. Quality daily blogging is challenging mostly because of my limited idea-generation. To guarantee output, it would be easy reverting to stream-of-consciousness journaling. However, not only would that defeat the spirit of this exercise, I also doubt anybody is … Continue reading Day 11: My Writing Process
Day 10: First Day of Spring
Today's weather is too beautiful to spend indoors on the computer. Spring may have started in the northern hemisphere on 19March, but NYC weather only just became aware. I'll see you folks on the roof.
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Day 9: Editing for Clarity and Style
The cheeky cover to an excellent little manual. Today I pulled out from storage Dreyer's English - An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style by Benjamin Dreyer. As an aside, pro strat for the day: when storing books in giant moving boxes, stack them so their spines are readable. It will make retrieval so … Continue reading Day 9: Editing for Clarity and Style
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Day 6: Morning Runs
This morning's run metrics on Strava: 5.8 miles, 8:38 min/mi Morning runs never cease to impress me with how energized I feel at the start of the day. That being said, the hardest part of the morning run is waking up early. Given the current COVID environment, morning runs are the only outside runs that … Continue reading Day 6: Morning Runs
Day 5: NYC Bucketlist
Within a couple months, I'll be leaving NYC for the medium term future. As part of preparations, I'm putting together a NYC bucketlist - hopefully I'll be able to cross off a few items. Reflecting on my time in this city, I realize that an abundance of memory-building experiences have all fogged together in my … Continue reading Day 5: NYC Bucketlist
Day 1: Daily Blog Post
Hi folks, It's time to start writing a daily blog post. This will be good for me to 1) help track what I've been doing during fun-employment and 2) exercise my underdeveloped writing muscle. From a tracking perspective, today is Day 17 of fun-employment. The past two weeks are starting to blur together, despite my … Continue reading Day 1: Daily Blog Post
Economy Simulator 2000
Let's pretend your name is Jerome Powell. You have the difficult problem of figuring out how much to raise interests rates by. Whatever you decide, there will be profound and propagating effects throughout the economy, so choose wisely! What monetary policy analysis tools do you have in your toolbox to help you? Until recently, you … Continue reading Economy Simulator 2000
The Beginning
Hi all, thanks for coming. Welcome to my blog. First post. The intent of this blog is not so unique. I want a medium to practice communicating ideas. I need practice communicating ideas in a form other than office email/posting style. The careful exposition of an idea can be at odds with getting the point … Continue reading The Beginning
Erick's Blog 