More from Naz Hamid
Rest in peace little one. I never would have guessed that a 4-lb Chihuahua would come into our lives, let alone be the animal to steal my heart before Jen’s. Our previous animals — two cats and a Boxer dog — are a stark contrast to a tiny dog that we would carry around in a sling or a backpack and take practically everywhere. That was what was in store for us in May 2019 for Memorial Day weekend, when Muttville — where Jen volunteered at the time to help with the rapid succession of loss with our other animals — was encouraging employees and volunteers alike to help take an animal home for the long holiday weekend so all would have a home. There were two dogs in ISO (isolation) because of potential kennel cough. One was a miniature pinscher named Dolly Parton, and the other was a tiny white-and-tan Chihuahua named Barbara. Jen went in and scooped up a blanket that contained the Chi. I had to take a quick group selfie as we walked from Muttville to the car. We were to foster her through her initial intake: help with looking at her messed up eye, getting spayed, removing a cancerous mammary tumor, and then to bring her to adoption events. We fixed her eye with the help of the amazing Dr. Mughannum at Vet Vision, who had helped Shaun, our Boxer, with issues years prior. We got her spayed. We got her tumor removed. And then she stole our hearts. This lady cleaned up nicely. I fell in love quickly, while Jen held out a little longer. It’d only been four plus months since the last of our original trio, Loki the cat, had passed. We joined the foster fails club. Estimated at 12 years old, we had another animal living with us again. She was our first female, and true to her nature, was absolutely fierce, independent, and extremely loving. Over the next almost six years, she would fill our lives with joy, laughter, and showed us what life looked like when you could take an animal almost everywhere. One of our favorite camp spots in southwestern Utah, overlooking a valley. We're perched by this cliffside and enjoying some simple food I just cooked up. Barb went camping with us everywhere. People would take photos of her for their socials, swoon over her, give us free coffee, and even bypass hotel pet deposits, all because she was a tiny thing that fit in a sling. Sitting at Quarrelsome Coffee in St. Louis, Missouri, on our mega roadtrip to the Midwest. We were told because of her cancer and tougher life — she was a stray on the streets of Oakland — that we’d maybe have two or three years with her. With Jen making all of her food (Chihuahuas of this size do not have high caloric needs), and us taking her on adventures camping, hiking, and regularly exercising and socializing her with our friends, we believe we were able to extend her years and we hope she got to live out her retirement years with panache. After all, what 4-lb dog would go camping in a roof top tent at 11,000 feet in Colorado, but also slum it at the Four Seasons in Las Vegas? This Chihuahua. Camping in late December 2022 on a cool evening in Quartzsite, Arizona, and someone is enjoying the fancy bed at the hotel. We realized she was slowing down when we last went camping. A trip to the Sierra with Ryan, showed us that her tolerance for high altitudes and heat were becoming too much for her. August 2024 would be her last time out in the wild. 117 nights in a roof top tent. Her last phase of homebodiness began to show towards the end of last year, and in December, a rough few nights had us begin the discussion of the end. As 2025 rolled over, she began to lose her eyesight. It’d been declining due to cataracts for a while, so walks had stopped, and around February, we could no longer take her outside to potty. She couldn’t tolerate the time from our 2nd-floor apartment to the street, and we let her use the tiled floor in our bathroom. Her bowels needed frequent disposal, and pee pads in the apartment were normal in the past few months. She was still eating, she was still digging in her bed, and she was still enjoying the sun. Dementia had started and her bouts of confusion coupled with her blindness limited her autonomy. Her beds were her safe place, as well as our laps. Especially mine. We started to keep tally of the good and the bad days. For a while, the good days still outweighed the bad, and then they started to draw even. This past week, the days were all bad. And late on Thursday, May 1st, she started to wheeze and cough. “She’ll tell you when she’s ready,” was what our friend and neighbor told us a week prior. And he was right. She was telling us. We made a plan to call her vet this morning but if anything happened in the middle of the night, we’d head to the emergency vet. As we wound down for bed, she struggled with getting comfortable and ultimately snuggled up to me by my head. This was something she did regularly when she first came into our lives but hadn’t in past two years, and groggily, I took that as a further sign that she wanted to just be with us and know that we were there. Puffy face, red eyes, but cherishing this last night and then enjoying Jen's lap despite her tiredness. In the morning, Jen made the call and we made an appointment for 1:30pm. We wanted to have some time. Barb had other plans though and her weak body and labored breathing was a little worse. I canceled meetings and we left the house early. She seemed content in her blanket and Jen’s arms. We decided to drive to Bernal Heights to let her feel the sun on her skin, and the wind through her fur. We wanted to give her one last look at the city that was home for the past six years. Even if she couldn’t really see anymore. One last look at this city she's called home for almost six years. We arrived at the vet and they quickly arranged and sorted out a room for us. A new vet gently welcomed us. She wasn’t Barb’s regular vet, but was still kind and gracious as she told us the plan: a sedative, then a deeper one. They were busy, but they also wanted to give us a bit of time so we spent the twenty or so minutes snuggling her and recalling some of her best moments. She came into my arms so I could get some last snuggles in. She emitted a sleepy tiny bark and her little legs were moving. It reminded us of when she’d be dreaming and running in her sleep. She settled. Moments later, the vet walked in and asked if we’re ready. We started to adjust position a bit, and the vet asks, “Is she still with us?” We laid her down on the nearby table, and I knew. The vet confirmed it with a stethoscope, and she was gone. Barb crossed the rainbow bridge at around 10:45am, in my arms with the two people who loved her the most. We lingered saying our goodbyes, thankful that she stayed true to herself, and did it on her terms, in her way, in my arms. She is missed severely. Our little adventure buddy, and the joy of our lives will meet the rest of the gang. I hope they’re romping around together. RIP Barbara, c. 2007–May 2, 2025. See you at the rainbow bridge. Visit this post on the web or Reply via email
Bridging the design-development gap as AI rises. There’s a frustrating gap in how development projects present themselves. What looks straightforward on GitHub — ‘just run this command!’ — quickly spirals into an odyssey of sudo permissions, package managers, and missing dependencies. As someone comfortable with design tools but less versed in development environments, I find myself mashing through terminal commands, hunting through Stack Overflow threads, and piecing together solutions without understanding the underlying context. What I’m missing isn’t the how, but the why. I get it: developers and engineers speak their language and rarely cater to non-developers. Robust beginner-friendly documentation isn’t what engineers want to be doing. Could these projects see greater adoption if they provided better context and more accessible instructions for newcomers or non-engineers? This includes guidance for people who’ve never worked with an API, or even know which directory they should be in to make package installs, let alone what packages are. The asymmetry between designer and developers is an interesting one. In my experience, designers build more of a bridge to developers because of wanting to communicate better with them. Designers start to code (sometimes as a forcing function) because they want to prototype and bring their designs to life quicker — no longer static and in turn opening their design and development possibilities. Developers might not return this in kind as they can build functional products without deep design knowledge or interfaces can be constructed using UI frameworks and libraries. Engineers are less pressured to become designers. They are paid more to specialize. Their bridge is to collaborate closely with design rather than to become a designer. Let’s talk about the new thing that is aiming to… supplant the above: AI. I can feed Claude or ChatGPT my entire codebase, give it files, have it sit inside my IDE, or even ask for code that does x, y, or z, and it’ll work with me to get these projects running. I’m comfortable with Claude, and it will give me cursory information on how and why. Of course, I don’t even know if the code is valid! And sometimes it’s not, but we work through it, and I come to a result that works. The knowledge transfer becomes even greater to non-existent. As I mentioned previously, vibecoding and generative codebases will likely increase as these LLMs serve solutions to ideas and concepts from the new generation of startups. Depth and understanding will be lost. When developers don’t understand the underlying principles of their code, debugging becomes a struggle; they can’t optimize for performance; and security flaws may abound. Technical debt will accrue in systems that become increasingly unknown and unpredictable. Broader innovation stutters because you’re stuck with what AI can give you. Homogeny ensues. For providers, the goal regarding LLM dependency, viewed from an investment perspective, is to mitigate or reduce cost and risk. In the end, entire software businesses are created around abstracting, simplifying, and making technology easier to use. What I lament is the focus on business opportunity, versus taking a more inclusive approach to bridging the gap between design and development or any other discipline with engineering. How do we get to better knowledge transfer? A tiered or tracked approach. One documentation track that exists for experts, and another that’s more verbose: context and explanation of the basics. Can open source projects and the like benefit from templates that encourage documenting the why along with the how? More collaboration is always good. I’ve benefitted hugely from working with engineering-centric product thinkers. I come at it from design with the knowledge of development, while my collaborators deal in code but find design a skillset to complement their coding skills. We meet in a middle ground that’s fruitful because we understand concepts. I am never shy about asking why something is done a certain way. And yes, AI. Can we use pattern recognition and matching to level up and progressively explain how and why things are built? There are many code-based helpers, but I’d love to look at how that a designer can utilize AI to pair program (something I do in trying to get to the why of it) — beyond working with an LLM. I’m imagining visual documentation or interactive tutorials that help guide you to various parts of a system. This knowledge gap has persisted for years, but AI is rapidly changing this landscape. While AI tools may bridge the divide between design and development by filling in missing context, I'm uncertain if this technological solution addresses the underlying communication problem — especially in an industry already stretched thin by time and resource constraints. This is an open dialogue for me at the moment, and I wanted to collect these thoughts at this time for later reflection. Visit this post on the web or Reply via email
Memories are an interesting beast. I have certain core memories that are embedded deep in my mind. The years I attended SXSW from 2007-2012 encompass some of those. In 2011, I shared a house with longtime partner-in-crime Scott Robbin, Jeff Skinner, and Sam Felder. We were off South Congress up at the top of the hill and tucked away close to Curra's Grill on Oltorf. We were in a neighborhood where all the streets were named after Robin Hood characters: Friar Tuck Lane, Little John Lane, Sherwood Lane, Long Bow Lane, and Nottingham Lane. Because we had this house, we ended up hosting two separate nights of hangs and invited a bunch of people we knew. I made a video of it using the Panasonic Lumix GF-1, the much-lauded camera that my friend Craig Mod made famous. The video isn't much — but watching it back now, some 14 years later, I'm so very glad I put it together. Many of these people are still friends to this day[1]. Perhaps, one of the most poignant memories I have is shown at the end of the video — when just us housemates went bowling during some downtime, and I put Spoon's “The Way We Get By” in the video because on the drive back from the bowling alley, that song came on the radio. I'd never heard it before, but Jeff, Sam, and Scott all sang along to it, belting out the lyrics, windows down, as we're cruising south on I-35. We lost Sam years later. Sam was a great guy, and he is missed by many. I'm very, very glad I made that video, and that I can look back on it. And remember everyone there, but especially recollect, see, and hear Sam in it. RIP Sam. SXSW brought many things, and in particular memories of some of the best people on the internet I got to know, and became friends with. Thank you, all. In order of appearance: Jeff Skinner, Scott Robbin, Dave Rupert, Nathan Peretic, Reagan Ray, Jay Fannelli, Luke Dorny, Trent Walton, Scott Boms, Sam Felder, Patrick DiMichele, Christopher Cashdollar, Kevin Hoffman, Jack Auses, Rob Weychert, Jonathan Bowden, Phil Coffman, Noah Stokes, Harold Emsheimer, Paul Armstrong, Wilson Miner, Andrew Huff. ↩︎ Visit this post on the web or Reply via email
A meditation on entering flow state. A snack beckons. I stand up and head a few feet away to the kitchen area. A hojicha latte is on my mind, and also a bite. My brain is at operational capacity, and I am in a flow state. The metabolic need feels high, and I need to keep my energy up. I make the latte, iced with almond milk. I devour an oat bar. It’s the time of year when projects are in full swing. The seasons also drive business. Today started with syncing on UK time, getting on a call with Simon and then Jeff joining. We reviewed work and made plans. I know what’s immediately ahead of me today, and I steel myself mentally. It’s funny how the pressure from a timeline and deadline can focus you. Because I am a shokunin, I have my design mise en place laid out both in the mind, and at the physical desk. The plan appears, as I percolated on it after the call. I am now executing it. Windows are open all over: a browser with a tab count I can't even see, a few design tools, two deck tools, communication tools, and note tools. I stop to consider that I'm working across multiple variants of the same core pieces of software but in different flavors and with different purposes or are inputs from others collaborating. The mise en place is multi-modal. I am traversing them, wielding a strange authority over them all. After all afternoon and as the evening beckons, I share the file, toggling on collaboration. A message goes out to all parties. Flow state will come for us all. This is just the beginning. Visit this post on the web or Reply via email
More in literature
“A knowledge of men and of books is also to be desired; for it is a writer’s best reason of being, and without it he does well to hold his tongue. Blessed with these attributes he is an essayist to some purpose. Give him leisure and occasion, and his discourse may well become as popular as Montaigne’s own.” If pressed to name my favorite literary form I would choose the essay, the form without a strict form, seemingly designed for free spirits with brains and emotional depth – “a knowledge of men and of books,” as W.E. Henley puts it above. The most unlikely things can be successful essays – reviews, memoirs, scientific papers, recipes, fiction. The best ones have a point, even an argument or lesson, but never hector or harangue the reader. An essayist confides. Without condescending, he puts his arm around your shoulder and talks softly, turning you into the sole member of his audience, a person worthy of his trust. Sure, Montaigne started it all (except for Plutarch and Seneca), but the English came to perfect it – Johnson, Hazlitt, Lamb, Stevenson, Chesterton, Beerbohm and the rest. William Ernest Henley (1849-1903) will never be a member of that front rank. He was a poet, lauded in his day, and will always be remembered for a poem my eighth-grade English teacher had us memorize sixty years ago: "Invictus." It’s a natural for recitation, up there with Kipling. The passage at the top is taken from Henley’s “Essays and Essayists” collected in Views and Reviews: Essays in Appreciation (1892).He writes: “Essayists, like poets, are born and not made, and for one worth remembering the world is confronted with a hundred not worth reading. Your true essayist is in a literary sense the friend of everybody. As one of the brotherhood has phrased it, it is his function ‘to speak with ease and opportunity to all men.’ He must be personal, or his hearers can feel no manner of interest in him. He must be candid and sincere, or his readers presently see through him. He must have learned to think for himself and to consider his surroundings with an eye that is both kindly and observant, or they straightway find his company unprofitable.” Henley was born on this date, August 23, in 1849. His friend Stevenson, who based the character of Long John Silver in Treasure Island (1883) on the one-legged Henley, wrote him a letter from Nebraska on August 23, 1879 -- the poet's thirtieth birthday. Stevenson writes a brief, impromptu essay from Willa Cather's (b. 1873) future turf: “I am sitting on the top of the cars with a mill party from Missouri going west for his health. Desolate flat prairie upon all hands. Here and there a herd of cattle, a yellow butterfly or two; a patch of wild sunflowers; a wooden house or two; then a wooden church alone in miles of waste; then a windmill to pump water. When we stop, which we do often, for emigrants and freight travel together, the kine first, the men after, the whole plain is heard singing with cicadae.”
“The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do [only] whatever we know how to order it to perform,” Ada Lovelace inveighed upon composing the world’s first algorithm for the world’s first computer. Meanwhile, she was reckoning with the nature of creativity, distilling it to a trinity: “an intuitive perception of hidden things,” “immense reasoning faculties,” and the “concentrative faculty” of bringing to any creative endeavor “a vast apparatus from all sorts of apparently irrelevant and extraneous sources” — that is, intuition, the analytical prowess to evaluate the fruits of intuition, and a rich reservoir of… read article
Notes from the margins of my research.
Robert Penn Warren in Democracy and Poetry (1975): “The will to change: this is one of the most precious heritages of American democracy. We have the story of the young Washington, who studied surveying and could, by the exercise of his skill, buy ‘Bullskin plantation,’ his first one, at the age of sixteen. Thus far he had merely changed his condition. But he had the will to change himself as well, and with the same furious energy, he studied the Roman Stoics that he might achieve the admirable character he desired.” This is part of the folklore I grew up with, like the story of young Washington and his cherry tree. I don’t consciously remember learning any of this. The lives and thought of the early presidents were like holy writ, to be studied and emulated. The first book I wrote as a kid was a collection of presidential biographies (through Kennedy), each one-page long, handwritten on lined paper, happily cribbed from encyclopedias. Perhaps this accounts for my enduring sense of patriotism, a devotion to the American ideals, despite all our all-too-human errors. Warren continues: “So we have the long list of autodidacts, including Lincoln, Mark Twain, and Dreiser — men who, with all their failings and complications, willed a change deeper than that of an objective condition. We admire those autodidacts, but the will to change the self is not now deeply characteristic of our democracy.” All too true, even half a century ago. The embodiment of the autodidactic approach to life for me is Eric Hoffer (1902-83). He started as a migrant worker in the West, worked as a longshoreman on the docks of San Francisco and wrote The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (1951), an essential guide to the world we inhabit today. I first encountered him at age fifteen. His “Reflections” column was syndicated in U.S. newspapers, including The Cleveland Press, from January 1968 to April 1970 – my high school years. I read the columns, clipped and pasted them in a scrapbook, and moved on to his books. My father was an ironworker and high-school dropout; my mother, a tax clerk. No one in my family had gone to college. I felt an immediate personal identification with Hoffer. He was my first model of autodidacticism, proof that education was up to me. I’m reading Daniel J. Flynn’s Blue Collar Intellectuals: When the Enlightened and the Everyman Elevated America (ISI Books, 2011). Flynn devotes a chapter to Hoffer, calling him “the definitional autodidact.” He wrote prose that got “straight to the point. Efficient and crisp. Hoffer’s words stood out against the opaque, verbose, circuitous style that increasingly characterized the prose of intellectuals. If readers found his style original it was because they had never come across French writers—Pascal, Montaigne, Renan, de la Rochefoucauld—whom he imitated.” Hoffer was part of the reason I wanted to write and why I became a newspaper reporter. He was no snob. He seemed from the start like the kind of guy I could talk to.
Here’s to the English writer who waited until her ninth decade to finally experience fame in America The post The Patient Penelope Fitzgerald appeared first on The American Scholar.