Hanson

  • On Listening to Music at 42

    When I used to blog heavily circa the early/mid-2000s, it was mostly about music. I would come back from a show at 1AM or whatever and then spend an hour talking about what I just saw. Openers described in detail, audience assessments (often about how Vancouver doesn’t support bands that I liked), and usually how…

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  • Why I’m Doing This (Again)

    I still like the positive aspects of social media. Making loose connections with like-minded folks that share my niche interests, getting pithy nuggets off that make me (and a few others) chuckle, and being exposed to random stuff that enrich my world view: all that is made much easier when I’m part of a follow-graph-based…

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  • On Moneyball and the Real Lessons Learned

    The mystique around the 2002 Oakland A’s was built on the foundation laid by Michael Lewis’ excellent 2003 book Moneyball. In it, A’s GM Billy Beane, handcuffed by a cheapskate owner, had to use non-traditional techniques to identify and acquire players that other organizations undervalued. Namely, he and his team used data over traditional scouting…

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  • Rethinking the App Startup Metric

    The granddaddy of Android performance metrics is probably application cold start. Setting aside the complications of how to precisely measure it (PY breaks it down really well in this post), lets think about what it represents. Beginning with a user-triggered action, the app process is created by the OS by forking the zygote, leading to…

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  • On Sustainability

    Watford FC has enjoyed several years of Premier League success followed by several years of what can generously be described as mediocrity. This last period of non-success (promotion notwithstanding) have not only been taxing on fans, but on the bank account of the club too. Every year we were not in the Premier League, we…

    Read more: On Sustainability