Today I Learned
Knowledge isn't static. It grows, branches out, and occasionally needs pruning. Here I share knowledge about a topic as I understood it at a point in time.
This knowledge informs my changing worldview. Like the Ship of Theseus, its components may get completely replaced, but its identity remains the same.
Index
Posts
The Map of Contents groups posts by topic, and posts are available via RSS, with monthly updates on my /now/ page.
| Date | Topic | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-06-30 | FIRE | I analyzed the difference between my forecasted and actual cost of ownership for the first twelve months of owning a 2024 Toyota RAV4 Hybrid XSE. |
| 2025-12-31 | Coding | December 31, 2025 | ๐งโ๐ป I sniped my friend's website domain, ported his 20-year old game from ๐ Python to ๐ฆ Rust, made it playable in the browser on his website, then gave it to him for his birthday |
| 2025-09-09 | Coding | ๐งโ๐ป Debrief on my week at RustConf ๐ฆ, including an Intro Async workshop by Hebert Wolverson and the Unconf |
| 2025-07-26 | Coding | 2025-07-26 | ๐งโ๐ป Reflecting on the progress I've made in becomming a programmer, and the projects I've completed including games, apps, tools, and other things I've learned to the software development lifecycle. |
| 2025-07-22 | Aviation | ๐ฉ๏ธ Airplane camping trip report flying in a Cirrus SR22-Turbo G6 to KORS on Orcas Island, WA in July 2025 |
| 2025-03-07 | Coding, AI, LLM, SPITS | A custom Google Sheets formula function to query a Large Language Model (LLM) about data within the sheet. |
| 2024-05-18 | Hierarchy of Fulfillment | โ 2024-05-18 | Uncommitting |
| 2024-05-11 | Aviation | 2024-05-11 | ๐ฉ๏ธ A Mostly Boring Flight |
| 2024-05-04 | Mountaineering | A photo-essay of moss-covered trees on a hike in the Pacific Northwest that look like monsters. |
| 2024-04-27 | Aviation | A look inside an FAA-authorized Advanced Aviation Training Device (AATD) flight simulator for Cirrus aircraft, and how it's used for training, proficiency, and currency. |
| 2024-04-20 | Coding | 2024-04-20 | Building a Roguelike in Rust's Bevy Game Engine |
| 2024-04-13 | FIRE | 2024-04-13 | FIRE: How much do I need? |
| 2024-04-03 | Aviation | 2024-04-03 | Quick Lunch Flight in Cirrus SR22 Turbo from Renton, WA to Gig Harbor, WA |
| 2024-03-30 | Coding | 2024-03-30 | How I replaced my vendor with a very small C# script | Mistaking an Opportunity as a Problem |
| 2024-03-20 | Hierarchy of Fulfillment | 2024-03-20 | My 2023 Hierarchy of Fulfillment Report Card |
| 2024-03-16 | Mountaineering | A photo-essay of a hike in the Pacific Northwest and a campfire on a pleasant March weekend. |
| 2024-03-09 | Video Games | A photo-essay and review of the survival sandbox video game Valheim, highlighting the building and crafting aspects. |
| 2024-03-02 | Coding | 2024-03-02 | Embedded 'Hello World' in Rust with a Raspberry Pico |
| 2024-02-23 | TIL | A one-year reflection on creating and maintaining the 'Today I Learned' (TIL) public digital garden, covering learnings, content evolution, and future plans. |
| 2024-02-17 | PKM | 2024-02-17 | Tackling my Reading Backlog with Deliberate Intent |
| 2024-02-10 | PKM | This post describes my 2024 journaling habit using the Daily Note plugin in Obsidian. I discuss what I journal about, how I use it for recall and reflection, and the therapeutic benefits I've experienced. |
| 2024-02-02 | Coding | A six-month reflection on my journey from a hobbyist coder to a programmer. I recount my accomplishments, my plan for the year, and ask for mentorship and collaboration opportunities. |
| 2024-01-25 | Video Game | I discuss my experience programming a Dungeon Crawler Roguelike video game in Rust, following the 'Hands-on Rust' book. I also touch on deploying the game to the web using Web Assembly. |
| 2024-01-20 | Aviation | A reflection on the novelty and awe of flying airplanes, and how it relates to my Hierarchy of Fulfillment framework. I also share details of a recent flight in a Cirrus SR-22T. |
| 2024-01-12 | Linux | My experience installing Linux Mint with XFCE on a 14-year-old Toshiba M645 laptop. I detail the troubleshooting process and the eventual solution using the 'acpi=off' kernel parameter. |
| 2024-01-06 | GTD | An overview of my 2024 Hierarchy of Fulfillment framework, including how I'm tracking habits in Gqueues and Daylio, avoiding unhealthy productivity, and collaborating with others. |
| 2023-12-24 | Coding | A summary of 'Qbert', a C# application I wrote in 2009 to automate the processing and uploading of lead data from CSV files into Eloqua, and the impact it had. |
| 2023-12-16 | Networking | An open invitation to connect with like-minded individuals in the Greater Seattle Area for non-transactional networking, with a list of my interests and hobbies. |
| 2023-12-04 | Coding | A look back at 'CodeSpider', a C# utility I wrote in 2008 to crawl web pages and identify outdated Salesforce Campaign IDs, and the impact it had on my work. |
| 2023-11-27 | FOSS | A discussion on the value of free and open-source software (FOSS), with a call to action to support the creators behind them, and a list of the projects I support. |
| 2023-11-21 | Rust | A detailed account of my first open-source contribution: a pull request to the Taskwarrior project. I explain the problem, my solution, and the lessons I learned while working with Rust. |
| 2023-11-14 | DIY | My experience fixing the flickering screen on my ASUS S410U laptop, from diagnosis to the simple, yet satisfying, solution of tightening a loose screw. |
| 2023-11-06 | Video Games | ๐ฎ Myers Briggs for Final Fantasy Characters |
| 2023-11-02 | Aviation | ๐ฉ Flight to Troutdale, OR (KTTD) in Cirrus SR-22T |
| 2023-10-26 | Coding | ๐ฆ Seattle Rust User Group Meetup |
| 2023-10-17 | Coding | ๐ฉโ๐ป Contributing to Taskwarrior - an Open Source task management system for the command line |
| 2023-10-10 | Aviation | ๐โโ๏ธ'I run, but I'm not a runner'; ๐ซ Flight to Hoaquim (KHQM) |
| 2023-10-01 | Hierarchy of Fulfillment | โ Intro to the Hierarchy of Fulfillment |
| 2023-09-12 | Books | ๐ 5 Highly Recommended Books for All (Young) People |
| 2023-09-05 | Coding | ๐ฉโ๐ป Lessons from even Limited Progress in Coding |
| 2023-08-29 | Productivity | ๐ Logjammed: Getting Unjammed |
| 2023-08-21 | Aviation | ๐ซA flight to Friday Harbor (KFHR), and ๐ฉโ๐ป Coding Update |
| 2023-08-14 | Coding | ๐ฉโ๐ป Ownership in Rust; Linux is for Puzzle Solvers; |
| 2023-08-08 | Coding | ๐ฉโ๐ป Write An App: Rust; Jellyfin, NuShell, Rasperry Pi |
| 2023-08-01 | Coding | A post about participating in 'Blaugust' and the challenges of learning Rust, including setting up the development environment in WSL and dealing with dependencies. |
| 2023-07-31 | Coding | A post about starting the Rust programming language tutorial, covering installation, Cargo, and the 'hello world' program. |
| 2023-07-28 | Coding | A post about setting up Git and version control for a new Rust project using VSCode and WSL. |
| 2023-07-27 | Coding | A post about setting up a development environment with WSL and VSCode for Rust, and a hiking trip up Mount Si with a mountain goat encounter. |
| 2023-07-26 | Coding | A post about starting the journey from being a hobbyist coder to a professional programmer, choosing to learn Rust and setting up a Linux development environment with WSL. |
| 2023-07-12 | Video Games | A post about a custom birthday cake based on the cake puzzle from the video game 'The 7th Guest'. |
| 2023-07-11 | Video Games | A review of the video game Pillars of Eternity after completing it, and a note about starting Valheim next. |
| 2023-07-09 | Camping | A post about camping at Dashpoint State Park in Federal Way, Washington. |
| 2023-06-20 | 3D Printing | A post about 3D printing a custom trophy award based on Bandit, the dad from the TV show Bluey, at a local library's maker space. |
| 2023-06-13 | Hypecycle | A reflection on technology hype cycles, from crypto and blockchain to the current wave of AI, LLMs, and 'spicy autocomplete'. |
| 2023-06-06 | Philosophy | A philosophical exploration of 'Cursed Knowledge' - information that, once known, cannot be unknown and may carry a burden. |
| 2023-06-02 | GTD | A post about creating personal productivity charts from Gqueues task manager data using Python and Pandas. |
| 2023-05-27 | TIL | A Today I Learned (TIL) post about Dijkstra Maps, their application in video game pathfinding AI, and their connection to graph theory. |
| 2023-05-25 | Coding | Updates to the TIL page regarding RSS feeds, learning the Rust programming language, and working with DoubleLoop. |
| 2023-05-17 | Running | A personal reflection on running, identity, and achieving personal bests. |
| 2023-05-14 | TIL | A Today I Learned (TIL) post about visiting Snoqualmie Falls, its connection to the TV show Twin Peaks, and the impressive hydroelectric power plant at the site. |
| 2023-05-13 | Coding | A Today I Learned (TIL) post about implementing a toy DNS resolver in Python, inspired by Julia Evans' zine. |
| 2023-05-12 | Uses | A post about receiving a new Fitbit Charge 5 and updating my 'Uses' page. |
| 2023-05-08 | TIL | A Today I Learned (TIL) post discussing the efficiency of different programming languages and the concept of the 'Liar's Dividend'. |
| 2023-04-28 | TIL | A Today I Learned (TIL) post about the word 'phatic' |
| 2023-04-19 | TIL | A post about the Doom WAD 'myhouse.wad' and a Today I Learned (TIL) section on the creation of synthetic helium. |
| 2023-04-18 | TIL | A Today I Learned (TIL) post about how the card game Magic: The Gathering is Turing complete, and its connection to Prolog and Datalog. |
| 2023-04-17 | TIL | A Today I Learned (TIL) post about the connection between ray-casting, ray-tracing, and Binary Space Partitions (BSP) from the game Doom. |
| 2023-04-08 | TIL | A Today I Learned (TIL) post about the concept of Emergence in systems thinking and digital gardening. |
| 2023-04-07 | Hierarchy of Fulfillment | Learning about 'Eudaimonia', 'Ikigai', and their relation to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and my own Hierarchy of Fulfillment framework. |
| 2023-02-23 | TIL | A Today I Learned (TIL) post about the 3D rendering technique 'Affine Texture Mapping' used in the classic video game Ultima Underworld. |
What
Today I learned (TIL) is where I write posts to share what I've learning.
Why
It's partly cathartic, partly nostalgia for the early internet, admittedly performative, among other reasons to write publicly:
- A place to extravert thoughts
- Learn In Public
- Publish content in one place, and syndicate elsewhere (POSSE)
- Per 23 Reasons to Write online:
Write to dispel the curse of knowledge, to find your people, and to become.
How
I use Obsidian.md, with the Digital Garden Plug In, which commits changes to a GitHub Repo triggering Vercel to build a static site with an 11ty script. I've heavily customized the provided site template, however. As of 2026-07-31 my domain registrar is Porkbun.
Using Obsidian as my "CMS" allows me to write and publish content on mobile or laptop, in a very friendly and easy to use interface, without a whole separate application or web service. This website is maintained in a second "vault", separate from my mainย PKMย content.
๐ก More of my tools, services, and media preferences can be found onย Uses
Feedback
Email, Social Media, and Messaging
- sayhello@isaacwyatt.com
- Mastodon
- Signal ike.25
- Community: Discord