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Reclaim A Tiny Part of Your Sanity, Via Your TV
Ads suck. I realize I’m preaching to the choir here. Ads have always been annoying, but doesn’t it feel like advertising is getting so much worse now? If you’re one of the lucky few that hasn’t noticed this, try watching any professional sport on TV. Even ignoring the stadium names and uniforms and in-stadium advertising and commercials during the broadcast, it seems like every part of the show is “brought to you by” some corporation. Kick things off with the Lucky Charms Pre-Game Show! Stay tuned for the Weight Watchers Halftime Show! Stick around for the Preparation H Post-Game Show!…
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Fantasy Football Team Branding
For the first time in many years (I literally cannot remember, it’s been so long) I’m participating in my family’s fantasy football league, which has been going for twenty years strong now. The position of league commissioner was recently passed down from my dad to my youngest brother. That news, plus the round, pleasing anniversary number, convinced me to come out of retirement and participate this year. Oh, that, and AI. While I may or may not be consulting with Claude to draft players and adjust my team roster, I am definitely using AI to have some fun with my…
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Booze and Vinyl
Background A couple of years ago, my friend Jeff had an idea to have a “booze and vinyl” party at his place. Truth be told, it wasn’t entirely his idea, since it was based on a book of the same name by André Darlington. In the book, the author highlights 70 albums — spanning almost the same number of years — ranging from rock to dance to chill to “seduce”. Most importantly, two drinks are paired with each album: one for Side A and one for Side B. The drinks are usually (but not always) cocktails and they match the…
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The Case for Magazines
Magazines are back! Well, maybe not for everyone, but they are for me. I’m not even necessarily talking about your run-of-the-mill monthlies, although those are great too. I’ve had a Wired subscription for many years and since the pandemic I’ve picked up subscriptions to Conde Nast Traveller and The Atlantic too. What I’m actually referring to are those that cover even more niche topics, are printed on archival-quality paper, have thoughtful graphic design, and are released a little less frequently. It all started a few months ago, when the Instagram algorithm decided to feed me an ad with a dapper…
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How To Edit A WordPress Theme
This one will be short and sweet and right to the point. Have a WordPress theme that you downloaded or bought and want to modify? It’s super easy. WordPress themes are usually distributed as zip files, so unzip it. (It’s outside of the scope of this post to talk about GitHub, but I recommend making a private repository and unzipping the theme in there, so that you can track and save all your changes.) You should now have a directory with files inside that looks like this: Now go in and make your edits. As I have in other posts,…
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Automating WordPress Drudgery with Claude
This post — and admittedly my use of AI in general — is a bit of a late bloomer, but I’m hoping that someone somewhere will find it useful or inspiring. To back up a bit, here is some context about the current state of AI in Spring 2026: I think this stat probably sums up my industry the best: 90% of developers regularly use at least one AI tool at work I’ve been using AI at Arista for almost a year now: first Augment and now Claude. My team hasn’t gone too deep with agents yet, but it’s becoming…
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Here We Go Again: A Website Overhaul Story
Thirteen years ago, I started a blog in preparation for leaving my job and taking some time off to travel and explore. Gentleman of Leisure, Student of Life is actually still alive today, and I suppose will continue to exist for as long as Google wants to keep Blogger on life support. My very first post gives a bit of context and outlines my hopes for what writing could accomplish. Four years (and many adventures) later, I relaunched that blog as a standalone, WordPress-powered website that I controlled myself. I gave it a brief mention in my 2016 year-end wrap-up,…
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How We Danced in 2025
Well, it’s that time of year again: the ball has dropped, roses have been paraded, resolutions have been made, and now it’s time for me to stress over my year-end playlist of dance music. Actually, since “numerical alliteration” affords me 25 spots this year, I didn’t bite off too many fingernails trying to whittle down my favorites from the last twelve months. This year’s collection is my usual mix of deep, funky, disco, tech, organic, and progressive house, so without further ado, I present my 25 from ’25! PROFF, Michael Cassette, Above & Beyond, Chicane, Qrion, and Romain Garcia all…
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How We Danced in 2024
In a poetic bit of coincidence, I had exactly 24 dance music Spotify likes from last year, so naturally this year’s edition must be a Top 24 of ’24 list. Well, it’s two lists actually, since the tracks fall nicely into two halves. (Bonus discovery: each half can fit perfectly on a single CD, in true “mix tape” fashion.) Part 1 — Oceanic Nostalgia The first part is almost entirely melodic deep house. For reasons I can’t quite explain, more than half have an aquatic vibe, hence the name of the list. Some have oceanic album art (Purple Disco Machine,…
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Anjunadeep Explorations 2024
Note from the editor: Anjunadeep Explorations is an annual music festival and label showcase in Dhermi, Albania. Many dozens of artists — all associated with the label in some way — play sets ranging from two to twelve hours across five different stages. Monday: We just finished up a fun weekend in Minnesota seeing family, so our itinerary ended up being slightly different this year, but basically the same thing: MSP — Chicago — Athens — Corfu. Even though we’ve done this travel day before, this one seemed to drag on forever. Get us to coastal Greece already! Tuesday: Just…
