I’m currently taking flying lessons towards my Private Pilot License. I decided to keep a meticulous record of all my expenses. In this post, I’ll detail the estimated costs for getting a pilot’s license in the DC/MD/VA metropolitan area in 2017. I’ll also itemize what I’ve spent so far, 11 flying hours into my journey. Continue reading →
Author / Conway
Articles That Challenge My Beliefs
A running list of articles and research that challenge my beliefs, or demonstrate unintended consequences. I would like to note that all of the excerpts are just as prone to biases as the original beliefs, so please do not stop at the excerpt– read the whole article to see if it really challenges your beliefs, too!
Top 25 Ski Lifts by Vertical
Thanks to websites like MountainVertical.com, skiers looking for the best bang-for-their-buck know which mountains provide the best “True-Up Vertical”, or the maximum practical descent possible from any one ski run.
But if you’re a true fanatic looking to rack up as many vertical-feet-per-day as possible, knowing a mountain’s True-Up Vertical isn’t enough, since it can take several sequential chairlifts to return to the summit. A better question is, “How many vertical feet can I ski from a single chairlift?”
Using user-submitted and GPS-verified data from Trace, I found the top chairlifts in North America.
2015 Pocket Year in Review
For the second year running, I finished the year in the Top 1% of Pocket readers worldwide. Of course, percentile rankings like these are useless without more data on Pocket’s users, many of whom I suspect downloaded the app but rarely use it. Even still, I’m a verifiable maniac when it comes to reading, fueled by Pocket and Kindle. Here’s the stats Pocket released for my “Year in Review”:
- 5,599,107: words read
- 119: books-equivalent
- 1,332,737: average words read by my Facebook and Twitter connections who use Pocket
- Most saved topics (Pocket’s categories): Current Events, Health, Travel, Sports, Education
The Essential Movie List
In my previous post, I explained the goals and methodology of this list. As a reminder, here’s the cinematic food pyramid guide:
- Carbs = dramas or ‘airplane movies’
- Proteins = action/adventure
- Vegetables = highbrow movies
- Fruits = scifi/horror/fantasy
- Sweets = romance/comedy
- Fats = lowbrow movies
- Mac and Cheese = children’s movies
Without further ado, here’s my list of movies that are culturally-essential for the 21st-century American citizen, beginning in 1980: Continue reading →
The Essential Movie List: Methodology
Back in August of 2014, my friend Kevin shared through Pocket a NY Times column by film critic Dan Kois entitled “Eating Your Cultural Vegetables”. You should read the entire piece, but the gist of it is summarized in this excerpt:
“As I get older, I find I’m suffering from a kind of culture fatigue and have less interest in eating my cultural vegetables, no matter how good they may be for me… Part of me mourns the sophisticated cineaste I might never become; part of me is grateful for all the time I’ll save now that I am a bit more choosy about the aspirational viewing in which I engage.” Continue reading →
D.C. Food: A Neighborhood Guide
Wondering what or where to eat in D.C. or Virginia? Here’s my compiled food guide. It’s organized by neighborhood so you know what’s nearby when you’re out-and-about.
My sources are primarily the food listicles of the Washingtonian, Washington City Paper, Washington Post, Thrillist, and Eater DC. Any place that is featured on one of their lists (e.g. Best Burgers, Best Cheap Eats, etc.) is on here.
Take heed: since I’m a price-conscious Millennial without a lavish corporate expense account, this list is tailored toward my interests, so it doesn’t have many high-end restaurants unless it’s particularly notable (like Rose’s Luxury or Central Michel Richard or something). Places I’ve been to are in italics. Places I want to visit are in bold. Continue reading →
Jurassic World, A Park Without the Wonder
Jurassic World both met my lowest expectations and surpassed my highest expectations of what this movie would be: loud, thrilling, and emotionally vacuous. Overall, it speaks to the massive changes in popular taste since the first movie was released over two decades ago. 1
The overwhelming nostalgia for the first film was so constant, so blatant that even the most casual viewer could detect something was schmaltzy and amiss. Indeed, the numerous references to Jurassic Park also underscored the ways in which this movie is the product of the new millennium in which Hollywood has gone all-in on the mantra of the Age of Transformers and Iron Man: MOAR DESTRUCTION, MOAR LOUD, MOAR WOW.
This reviewer will attempt to erase from his memory the failed evolutionary speedbumps that were The Lost World and Jurassic Park III. ↩
Dream Diary: EMS, Time Traveling, and a Mysterious Island
In this series, I will try to recollect and narrate any notable dreams as they occur. This practice is called keeping a “dream diary“, and it’s only half as crazy as it seems. I’ve been mildly curious in the phenomenon of lucid dreaming, and keeping a dream diary is supposedly one of the most important steps towards achieving control of these dreams. Plus, it’s fascinating stuff.
Civilization V Quotes
I’m not much of a video gamer. I’m stuck in a (virtuous) cycle of compounding disinterest: I don’t play many games, so I never gain the proficiency or patience to become a good gamer, which makes it harder to enjoy video games, which further discourages me from gaming, and so on. That’s not to say I don’t have my vices. I’m caught in my own peculiar cycle of consumption: reading longform and Wikipedia articles, which encourages me to read even more “for understanding and context”, which takes me to more articles; and the next thing I know, it’s the end of another glorious but wholly unproductive day.
I guess it makes sense, then, that the only video games I currently play are those that scratch some obscure intellectual itch. For the last six months, those have been Kerbal Space Program and Civilization V. I will surely write about my experiences with Kerbal in the future, but for now, I’d like to share one of my favorite little features of Civ5: the Technology and Wonder quotes. Continue reading →