Projects

Like just about everything, this started with an idle curiosity that kept getting more and more advanced until eventually it was a full scale undertaking. I just kind of wanted to know what boats were passing my house, where they were going and what they were carrying and had these very vague musings that you might be able to derive something useful from knowing. The original plan was for me to get a text with a picture and name of the boat and some of its key stats whenever it passed the house. Maybe count them or something. And that felt ambitious.

But of course lots of boats didn't have pictures and boats in a given fleet apparently all look pretty much the same so there was no easy way to visually identify them. They do, though, broadcast an identifier radio beacon that can be decoded with the right equipment. So I put up an antenna and a receiver and connected it to an old laptop and wired it to a map and suddenly I could see all the boats in a 20 mile radius.

And from there it kind of spiraled. I wanted a picture from the house so I connected a couple of old cameras to the laptop. But the cameras didn't know when to fire so it became a really complicated math problem of given direction and speed at what point does the boat cross the cameras' fixed field of view? From the "this boat will be in x position at y time" algorithm it was a not small step to predicting times generally. Which boat will get there fastest? Where is it going and when will it be back? What if anything can be more broadly inferred and acted upon? I don't even really like boats, honestly. But I love the problem of it all.

So this afternoon my membership in a global AIS network came through (I broadcast my signal and in exchange get everyone else's) and I'm sitting there looking at a live map of ship congestion outside the Strait of Hormuz and realize that this has gotten significantly out of hand in the best possible way. It's by far the most autistic thing I've ever done and it feels like scratching an itch I didn't know I had but apparently required real-time global maritime telemetry to reach.

Last November I got the idea that I would get a halosauna (a sauna, but with a salt generator) and put it in my garage. I ordered one for delivery in February 2026. It was more expensive than a regular sauna and when my friend who needed it for her lung disease turned out to be not so much of a friend and more like someone fully focused on ruining my life, I canceled the order. I still wanted a sauna, just didn’t need the salt.

Shopping for a sauna is like expressing digital interest in having solar installed or getting a mortgage. Your entire feed becomes saunas. If anyone gets a hold of your telephone number (they did, eventually) you never see another moment’s peace - I haven’t touched a sauna ad since July and I had 4 missed calls today from people pitching me their latest 5% off specials.

I finally ordered one a month ago for delivery in early October. In my mind I was just going to clear some space and have like a really big appliance that I could use whenever I wanted instead of going to the gym. But then realized the garage was going to have to be completely rewired and thus began a long slow decline that read something like, “if it’s going to have to be rewired anyway, it would be awfully nice to have AC in there and maybe some gym equipment” to “if I’m going to have a sauna, AC and gym equipment then some gym flooring would go a long way for stretching, etc.” to “this is a wellness area it should also be painted and maybe I need some plants.”

In summary the month before delivery has been an endless series of major and minor tasks and I’ve been weatherstripping and painting and putting down flooring and electricians and HVAC people and building inspectors and random helpers to move these 300lb slabs of wood around. Jules has been beside herself. It’s been a month of chaos but it’s almost over and before you know it I’ll never leave the house again.