Tribology and phone screen time
This past week I added another word to my vocabulary: tribology. According to the Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers, tribology is “the study of surfaces moving relative to one another.” They go on to explain that such study focuses on three related factors in the world: friction, lubrication, and wear. Though I offer this information from the STLE website, that’s not where I learned the term tribology. I learned that word when I picked up Jennifer Vail’s book Friction: A Biography as I was browsing the local independent bookstore. I skimmed a few pages and thought it was very interesting, but resisted the temptation of yet another distraction from the books that I’m currently reading. With some reluctance, I put the book back down on the recent arrivals table.
Read moreScreen time report #4
I’m wrapping up this four-week project with today’s report. It’s a little — but only a little — frustrating to see that my phone use crept up a bit in this final week. I have what I think is a good excuse: my wife and I were both traveling to different places. I was out and about on my own in the city a good bit, and needed to stay in touch. I say that I’m only a little frustrated by this because, as I said last week, I have a different sense of the value of this project now than I had when I began. Though I’m impressed by how much others have lowered the time they spend on their phone — looking at you, Manuel! — I’m really more interested in becoming more deliberate and intentional about when and how I use my phone. Living out such intentions has lowered the amount of time I’ve been on my phone; I’m happy about that, but I see that as a side effect rather than the primary goal.
Read moreTime change and changing times
As I was reading this morning I quite suddenly remembered that time will jump ahead early tomorrow morning, borrowing an hour of my life that will be returned sometime next fall. Knowing that the lost hour will materialize as if out of nothing next fall is little comfort as I contemplate the lost hour of sleep tonight. I remind myself, though, that it’s only an hour of sleep. There was a spring season years ago when the change seemed much more cataclysmic.
Read moreReading a book: the burdens of commitment
Lydia Davis:
…reading a book is a considerable commitment of not only time but also thought and even emotion, especially when you have so many books you have brought into the house, when you seem to buy books even compulsively, out of a hunger for yet another book, and haven’t yet read most of them, when you have acquired so many that although you have many bookcases, in many rooms, there are still books piled on the floor.
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Screen time report #3
Another week of watching my screen time, and I’m happy to say that it dropped a bit more this past week — to an average of just over 2 hours a day. About an hour of that time is my exercise and meditation time, when I use the phone to track time spent. I’m even happier to say that I believe that I’m breaking the deeply ingrained habit of reaching for my phone whenever there’s what might be called down time in my life. I’d rather think of that time as mind-wandering or day-dreaming time.
Read moreEmacs Carnival: Completion in Beancount Plain Text Accounting
This is my submission for the February 2026 Emacs Carnival; Sacha has proposed the theme of completion in emacs.
I manage our household finances using a Plain Text Accounting app called Beancount. I really like having all of our records in plain text rather than in a proprietary accounting system. And, by “all of our records,” I mean a pretty long history of earning and spending. The first entry in the ledger is dated 1 July 1988. I didn’t start out in plain text. I don’t remember the name of the first program I used. I moved from that forgotten program to quicken, then to Gnu Cash, then (moving into plain text) to Ledger, and finally, to Beancount. I use emacs with beancount-mode enabled to manage our ledger.
Read moreScreen time report #2a
Another week in my attempt to lower my attachment to my phone. I’ve been at this for three weeks now, but at the end of the first week I joined Manuel, Thomas, Kevin and others. They’ve just now finished week 2, so I’m numbering this entry 2a so that I can get in sync with them.
I’m a little late posting this because last week was a bit different from the previous weeks. There are a couple of factors here. First, I had a busy week before leaving early Friday morning for a weekend in NYC. The traveling meant that I relied on phone mapping much more than I usually do. Second, over the course of the day Saturday the weather forecast for both NYC and Boston got more and more dire, culminating in a blizzard warning throughout much of the northeastern US. Late Saturday afternoon we spent a good bit of time on our phones working through the details of changing our train reservations. It didn’t help that many other people were doing the same — the Amtrak app responded very slowly, and available seats were disappearing. It all worked out — we arrived home at noon yesterday instead of 5:00p, leaving us plenty of time to restock the refrigerator and settle in for the storm. But there were some harried moments.
Read moreAuthors and Books: Intersections on the outside, drawing me in
Here’s my entry for this month’s IndieWeb carnival. The topic proposed by Zachary Kai is intersecting interests. When I saw the topic, I immediately thought of my reading interests. Since my retirement, I suspect that I spend more time reading than I spend doing anything else, though I suppose if one bundles washing the clothes, washing the dishes, and paying the bills together under the heading of household management, I might spend more time there. But household management isn’t all that interesting. So when I think about intersecting interests, I think about the reading. And it’s not just the interests as reflected in my mind. It’s also the interests reflected in the books and essays that I’m reading.
Read moreScreen time report #2
Another week down, and time to think about the time I spend on my phone. I decided a couple of weeks ago that I was going to lessen my attachment to my phone. Serendipitously, I stumbled on Manuel’s post indicating that he and a friend were doing the same. Following their lead, I committed to posting a screen shot of my phone screen time each Sunday for four weeks. This is my second installment.
Read moreThe cleaving in Dickinson's mind, and the role of a teacher
I wrote earlier this week about the cleaving in Emily Dickenson’s mind and followed that up with a rant about my frustration with end notes. For some reason, as I was thinking about both of those posts this morning I quite suddenly remembered a brief conversation I had with my favorite philosophy teacher. Joe (the philosophy professor) was one of the most intelligent people I ever spent time with. Moreover, He read more broadly and more deeply than any other person I’ve known.
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