Professional Mobile/BE Software Engineer. Interests: Coding, Teaching, Meditation, Exercise, Philosophy I have a YT channel mostly about coding.
Vancouver
Joined October 2016
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I have begun publishing my free article series on the fundamentals of meditation practice. None of this was written by AI. It is just someone who used to teach programming taking a similar approach to sharing what I have practiced and learned for over a decade.
Part 1: Risk and rewards of meditation practice.
rkay301.medium.com/risks-rew…
I'm kicking off a new streaming series tomorrow; available on twitch and youtube.
Can I code a better starcraft AI by hand than Claude? More fun challenges to come.
twitch.tv/ryan_michael_kay/s…
youtube.com/live/ZDjOCi8cI4I…
Wishing my friends in America well. Looks like you've got a tough journey ahead of you.
Reminds me quite a bit of Tolkien's Lord of The Rings. I expect the midterms will be Helm's Deep, not quite at the fields of Pelennor yet.
I've slowly cut down from 200lbs to 190 in two months. No calorie tracking, just weighing myself every day and eating based off of that. Much more enjoyable than the hard cuts I've done. Also feel like I've kept my muscle. Still setting a rep PRs.
This is actually the same treatment we have been getting for a client's app from @GooglePlay. Releases floundering for weeks (over a month for one beta), and getting VeRy UnDeRsTaNdInG AI responses from support.
It is actually kind of dystopian.
"Congratulations — that's the actual repro, and it settles the whole thread. Your instinct was right and most of my theorizing was chasing the wrong mechanism." - Claude Opus 4.8
Still feeling very safe as an Android developer in terms of job security. I find it great for web dev, but for in the weeds mobile dev, still a long way to go.
I am finding that creatine is a fantastic thing for cognition but taking it in high enough doses tends to really turn my stomach.
Having multiple smaller doses would probably work but I don't really give enough of a shit to min-max things like that.
At a phase in my meditation practice (moment to moment percieving of conscious experience) where the sense of a controller/doer is essentially impossible to find anymore.
There's still habits and useful conventions associated with that, but I no longer feel like a thing behind the eyeballs directing anything.
However, there's still subtle, and on occasion, not so subtle cases where there is a sense of ownership depending on the position (location in seemingly 3D conscious space), perspective, familiarity, and percieved solidity/constancy of some things that arise.
So that's kind of where the practice seems to be unfolding now.
It's not complete yet, but it is absolutely an upgrade. Relax, everything is out of control!
After dealing with hip issues on and off with both of my hips, as well as my lower back, I finally said fuck it, and am spending as little time as possible sitting during the day.
At 32 years old, I was always one day of too much sitting away from hobbling around the next day.
I do all kinds of physio and mobility work every day, so this was not the issue.
I don't know if sitting for 12-15 hours a day was actually the problem, but I will find out soon. I'm now sitting less than two hours per day. So far, hips are feeling much better, but my lower back at the bottom of the lumbar spine has been tight almost constantly since starting this.
Fun little experiment.
I've made a practice for a few years, where I just instantly mute/block creators who use overtly dumb or controversial statements for clicks.
It is just one small way to balance out the universe; even just one less pair of eyeballs and 1/1000th of 1% less algorithm favour.
My dumb Canadian ass here with no degrees 🤣
The World’s Most Educated Populations, Across 45 Countries
College or university degree (%)
🇨🇦 Canada: 64.7
🇮🇪 Ireland: 57.5
🇰🇷 South Korea: 56.2
🇱🇺 Luxembourg: 54.4
🇬🇧 UK: 53.8
🇦🇺 Australia: 53.1
🇸🇪 Sweden: 51.8
🇺🇸 U.S.: 50.7
🇮🇱 Israel: 50.5
🇳🇴 Norway: 50.4
🇱🇹 Lithuania: 47.7
🇨🇭 Switzerland: 46.5
🇩🇰 Denmark: 45.1
🇳🇱 Netherlands: 45.1
🇧🇪 Belgium: 45.0
🇮🇸 Iceland: 44.5
🇳🇿 New Zealand: 44.0
🇫🇷 France: 43.4
🇫🇮 Finland: 42.7
🇪🇪 Estonia: 42.5
🇪🇸 Spain: 42.3
🇱🇻 Latvia: 40.5
🇵🇱 Poland: 39.5
🇦🇹 Austria: 37.7
🇬🇷 Greece: 35.3
🇸🇮 Slovenia: 34.6
🇩🇪 Germany: 34.3
🇧🇬 Bulgaria: 33.8
🇨🇱 Chile: 32.9
🇵🇹 Portugal: 31.4
🇭🇺 Hungary: 31.1
🇨🇴 Colombia: 30.6
🇭🇷 Croatia: 30.4
🇸🇰 Slovak Republic: 29.0
🇨🇷 Costa Rica: 27.8
🇨🇿 Czechia: 27.5
🇹🇷 Türkiye: 26.9
🇦🇷 Argentina: 23.7
🇮🇹 Italy: 22.3
🇲🇽 Mexico: 21.9
🇧🇷 Brazil: 21.5
🇷🇴 Romania: 19.2
🇮🇳 India: 14.2
🇮🇩 Indonesia: 13.1
🇿🇦 South Africa: 9.0
Source: OECD’s Education at a Glance 2025 report.
It seems like for me, 30 minute sessions is plenty of time to develop refined mental states (samatha jhana) in meditation practice.
60 minute sessions seem to be much more ideal for development of insight (mind seeing its true nature).
This is for at home practice as someone who lives a busy homelife.
Last year I had to navigate a very tricky refactor estimation and process for one of the most important clients that my company has.
If you are curious about how to deal with those situations yourself (as a developer, PM, or Client), give this a read.
silverorange.com/blog/comple…
Still in early data collection phase, but we already have some interesting results. Plausible "Jhana Spindles" in the Jhana eeg session, sleep spindles in the nap EEG session, and a notable absence of spindles in the baseline EEG session.
There also was a bit of "jhana spindles" in the nap session. For now, I would explain that by saying that it can be hard for me to not "meditate" at rest these days.
It is tough to be optimistic living in or next to the US right now, but I do think there's a possibility that this could be a good thing ultimately.
What we are learning is that, in the information age, it is extremely difficult for criminals, pedophiles, liars, morons, and other bad actors to cover their tracks.
So, the way I see the next couple years is that this could go one of two ways:
- The criminals, pedophiles, liars, morons, and other bad actors are powerful enough to carry on like this is normal, acceptible, and nothing can be done about it
- They are eventually brought to justice and it becomes ever more difficult to be that openly immoral and self interested, at least for a time
I don't know how things will end but there is some hope here. Best of luck to my American friends.
Most people do not know that mindfulness/meditation practice can cause everything from bizarre experiences to full blown psychosis. Though high intense practices to tend to make this more likely, it can happen even with low-dose McMindfulness stuff!
medium.com/@rkay301/risks-re…