virtu.is

Some opinions on infernal machines

Imagine it's 1950, and people are still talking about cars like it's 1900.

Nov 2 • Mark

October 2026

Would you like to shut down your computer?

Turning off servers overnight is an absolutely crazy idea.

Oct 23 • Mark

June 2025

Is using ChatGPT to write breaking your brain?

This MIT study seems to point that way.

Jun 24, 2025 • Mark

January 2022

The Map of Wordle

I've been busy doing all kinds of Wordle analysis — as I mentioned in the last post I've been testing various strategies to assess the "difficulty" of…

Jan 8, 2022 • Mark

Wordle Strategies Analysis (Part I)

In my last post, I began to explore the inner workings of Wordle. As a friend pointed out, it has all the hallmarks of a good game, because even…

Jan 6, 2022 • Mark

Analyzing (and Solving) Wordle

I published some proof-of-concept Python code today while thinking about the inner workings of Wordle.

Jan 5, 2022 • Mark

September 2020

Gamifying Standup with D&D

As day 200 of pandemic life approaches, even the introverted engineers among us are starting to lose their marbles.

Sep 25, 2020 • Mark

July 2020

More Google Maps Semantic Location History Fun with BigQuery

In the last post, I covered the basics of how to transform and load your Google Maps data, including Google's parsed history data, into BigQuery.

Jul 19, 2020 • Mark

Google Maps Semantic History in BigQuery

In this post I talked about getting your location data from Google Maps and loading it into Google BigQuery.

Jul 10, 2020 • Mark

June 2020

Google Maps Location History with BigQuery

Google Maps can be configured to record your location and show your history over time.

Jun 19, 2020 • Mark

The Classifying Hat -- An ML Harry Potter Sorting Hat with BigQuery

The wizarding world is notoriously haphazard.

Jun 11, 2020 • Mark

May 2020

Sample Data Warehouse Charter

In my book, I repeatedly emphasize the importance of chartering and running a project to encapsulate your data program.

May 28, 2020 • Mark