The Curious Engineer

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Simpler Machines

simplermachines.com

Essays and photography from Nat Bennett. Based in Minneapolis.

Software / engineering practiceEngineering management / careersEssays / personal

’21’22’23’24’25’26
Posts
284 from 11 Jun 2021 to 30 Oct 2026
Posting
weekly (98 in the last year)
Kind
personal blog
Feed
https://www.simplermachines.com/rss/

2026 95

  1. [NMD EXQ 44/60] These could be Oakland flowers, but they're not
  2. [NMD EXQ 43/60] We've been using the record player a lot more in the new place
  3. How has the Impulse cooktop changed how I cook?
  4. How Not to Ruin Your Housing Market
  5. [NMD EXQ 39/60] Date night
  6. How to Find Energy for Creative Work
  7. On Writing Every Day
  8. Mere Being - 035 - September - evening photographs, writing, chickpeas
  9. [NMD EXQ 36/60] This might be a bismuth mine
  10. [NMD EXQ 35/60] Two troubling dolls
  11. [NMD EXQ 33/60] Another shot of geometry
  12. [NMD EXQ 33/60] Mildly mid-century
  13. [NMD EXQ 32/60] Yes -- it's chairs
  14. [NMD EXQ 31/60] My beautiful tomato children
  15. What is a Text?
  16. [NMD EXQ 30/60] Tools for living
  17. Why I Moved to Minnesota Draft 0
  18. [NMD EXQ 27/60] Settling in
  19. Process Doesn't Matter
  20. [NMD EXQ 25/60] Mesquite smoke
  21. [NMD EXQ 24/60] Geometry
  22. [NMD EXQ 23/60] This is just to say -- squirrels
  23. [NMD EXQ 22/60] Temporary office, no internet
  24. [NMD EXQ 21/60] Wacky wild
  25. The Paperclip Maximizers are Already Here
  26. [GR02.16] one more camellia
  27. Reviews of the Disney/NFL t-shirt collaboration
  28. [NMD EXQ 16/60] After a walk from the old place
  29. Mere Being - 034 - August - Diane's place, State Fair,
  30. [NMD EXQ 15/60] Two homes? No home?
  31. [NMD EXQ 14/60] Mountain Thunderstorm
  32. [NMD EXQ 12/60] Solar company or dispensary?
  33. [NMD EXQ 11/60] Guests
  34. Super Bowls Georg should not be counted
  35. [GR02.15] Flowerboy Project Coffee
  36. [NMD EXQ 9/60] Walked the dog
  37. [NMD EXQ 8/60] The new place
  38. [NMD EXQ 7/60] Jackass Joe's UFO Jerky
  39. [NMD EXQ 5/60] It's a pretty big canyon
  40. Most Integration Failures Are Stupid
  41. [NMD EXQ 3/60] The internet at the Grand Canyon is very bad
  42. [NMD EXQ 3/60] THE HIGHWAY OF THE GRAND ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC
  43. [GR02.14] Bi-Rite marigolds
  44. Let's not call it "tech debt," it's just "mess"
  45. [GR02.13] lake irises
  46. What I'm Watching for on Every NFL Team in 2026
  47. [GR02.12] kitchen tulips, again
  48. Mere Being - 033 - July - Game Changers, Ethnographies, Hollandaise Sauce
  49. How I use Capacities as a Zettelkasten
  50. [GR02.12] outside a restaurant in Tahoe
  51. [GR02.11] lavender, I think
  52. Why AI writing is so exhausting
  53. [GR02.10] tiny pink flowers
  54. Divination-Driven Decision-Making
  55. Concourse Lives!
  56. [GR02.09] chrysanthemum
  57. [GR02.08] lilies and plastic
  58. Testing Problems are Design Problems
  59. Mere Being - 032 - June - summer sports, Brandon Sanderson, tagines
  60. See a good bird
  61. [GR02.07] I don't know what kind of flower this is
  62. Want to be happier at work? Try joining a church
  63. [GR02.06] camellia, single
  64. The Tech Debt Snowball Method
  65. [GR02.07] camellias, senescent
  66. Why I don't use story points
  67. [GR02.05] camellias, several
  68. Mere Being - 031 - May - a paid membership program
  69. Something is Very Wrong in San Francisco
  70. [GR02.04] jacaranda
  71. notes from o11ycon 2026
  72. [GR02.03] hibiscus
  73. Software delivery will continue to be non-linear
  74. [GR02.02] roses, outdoors, Venice
  75. Is feedback really a gift?
  76. Mere Being - 030 - April - meditation, improv, and the NFL draft
  77. [GR02.01] roses, indoors, Venice
  78. [GR01.16] winter branches
  79. [GR01.15] Edgar
  80. [GR01.14] false spring ice
  81. Mere Being - 029 - March - winter, software, Marathon
  82. [GR01.13] bench on the hill
  83. [GR01.12] what's left of another shrine
  84. [GR01.11] red bow, March 9
  85. [GR01.10] the lake is the last of winter
  86. Mere Being - 028 - January/February - ICE, Red Mars, tinned fish
  87. [GR01.09] the lake itself, on a sunny day in December
  88. [GR01.08] memorial for sam nordquist
  89. [GR01.07] sled brake
  90. [GR01.06] November tree shrine
  91. [GR01.05] hay bales for sledding
  92. [GR01.04] baseball diamond
  93. [GR01.03] frozen crabapples, 4 long blocks from where Renee Nicole Good was shot by ICE
  94. [GR01.02] streetlights at sunset, before the lake finished freezing
  95. Mere Being - 027 - December - Manny's, Sicko Street, Hot Pot

2025 11

  1. [GR 01.01] a tree by the lake in November
  2. Mere Being - 026 - November - Zen Center, Being Cold
  3. Mere Being - 025 - October - Minnesota, Quail Egg, Cabbage
  4. Mere Being - 024 - September - Moving, Football, Laughter
  5. Mere Being - 023 - August
  6. Nat's Current Prompts
  7. Mere Being 022 - June - Procrastination, Wallpaper Music, Popsicles
  8. Mere Being 021 - April - dinner parties, charoset, dying in holes
  9. Mere Being 020 - March - human nature, lady doctors, potatoes
  10. Mere Being 019 - February - Plenty Huge Men Roam the Earth
  11. Mere Being 018 - December

2024 6

  1. Mere Being 017 - September - Dirt Man
  2. Mere Being 016 - August - Iron Supplements, Digestion, Love
  3. Pivots don't start enough businesses
  4. How team assignment worked at Pivotal (at least on Cloud Foundry)
  5. Testing Transactions in Elixir
  6. Man, I miss pairing

2023 1

  1. Notes on the Pivotal Interview Process

2022 21

  1. [PL] The end of Point Lobos
  2. [PL 4/4] On the nature of waves
  3. [PL 3/4] Everything at Point Lobos is working very hard at being alive
  4. [PL 2/4] The finest in organized rectangles
  5. [PL 1/4] California is California
  6. [NMD EXQ 40/60] Squinchy face
  7. [NMD EXQ 38/60] Oakland is full of these
  8. [NMD EXQ 37/60] My infinite enemy
  9. [NMD EXQ 29/60] First thing in the morning
  10. [NMD EXQ 28/60] Japanese Wisteria
  11. [NMD EXQ 26/60] Chicken dinner
  12. [NMD EXQ 20/60] Firefighter
  13. [NMD EXQ 19/60] Palm trees in a part of Nevada where there is no water
  14. [NMD EXQ 18/60] In the garden
  15. [NMD EXQ 17/60] Safeway sushi
  16. [NMD EXQ 13/60] [ST]OP
  17. [NMD EXQ 10/60] First furniture
  18. [NMD EXQ] Numbers give grandeur to the canyon
  19. [NMD EXQ 2/60] Denver
  20. [NMD EXQ 1/60] Grizzly Island?
  21. Test first, design second

2021 34

  1. Walking in Oakland - Final Issue
  2. Walking in Oakland, Issue #31 -- Windmills and salt licorice
  3. Walking in Oakland, Issue #30 - Help yourself, put money in mailbox, thank you
  4. Walking in Oakland #29
  5. Walking in Oakland, Issue #28 - Seasons
  6. Walking in Oakland, Issue #27
  7. Walking in Oakland, Issue #26
  8. Walking in Oakland, Issue #25
  9. Walking in Oakland, Issue #24
  10. Walking in Oakland, Issue #23
  11. Walking in Oakland, Issue #22
  12. Walking in Oakland, Issue #21
  13. Walking in Oakland, Issue #20
  14. Walking in Oakland, Issue #19
  15. Walking in Oakland, Issue #18
  16. Walking in Oakland, Issue #17
  17. Walking in Oakland, Issue #16
  18. Walking in Oakland, Issue #15
  19. Walking in Oakland, Issue #14
  20. Walking in Oakland, Issue #13
  21. Walking in Oakland, Issue #12
  22. Walking in Oakland, Issue #11
  23. Walking in Oakland, Issue #10
  24. Walking in Oakland, Issue #9
  25. Walking in Oakland, Issue #8
  26. Walking in Oakland, Issue #7
  27. Walking in Oakland, Issue #6
  28. Walking in Oakland, Issue #5
  29. Walking in Oakland, Issue #4
  30. Walking in Oakland, Issue #3
  31. Walking in Oakland, Issue #2
  32. Walking in Oakland, Issue #1
  33. Why you need a "WTF Notebook"
  34. Burnout recovery, and the self-care trap

Undated 116

  1. Mere being 015 july
  2. Taking notes on a new codebase
  3. How to write better bash than chatgpt
  4. Are platforms pointless
  5. How to write
  6. Making things well is inherently valuable
  7. Mere being 014 june hanging out
  8. Dont be results oriented
  9. Management at pivotal draft
  10. Estimates arent guesses
  11. Mere being 013 may
  12. Reading software and thinking about it
  13. Do you worship work
  14. Mere being 012 april
  15. One weird trick for figuring out your values
  16. Seriously just write a rails application
  17. Dont lie in interviews
  18. Comments on understanding software
  19. Untitled 2
  20. Elixir has a type system and i really ought to take advantage of it
  21. Exploration tidying ecto
  22. Bookmarked links
  23. Why doesnt everyone do xp
  24. Mere being 010 february
  25. Project be more chill
  26. Mere being
  27. Mere being 008 december
  28. New zine how to quit vim
  29. Why do prototypes suck
  30. Miss me check out nonlinear garden
  31. Please stop writing dockerfiles
  32. Mere being 007
  33. Pairing is asking for help
  34. Mere being 006 october
  35. Merebeing 005
  36. Some facts about concourse
  37. Mere being 004 august
  38. A brief hiatus
  39. Why elixir
  40. What i would copy from the pivotal interview process
  41. Do what works was the hard part
  42. Mere being 003
  43. Mr reciprocity
  44. If you wish to write a book on nvim from scratch you must first invent the multiverse
  45. Some things i have done to get faster at writing code
  46. You should have an e mail list
  47. Mere being 002 may
  48. Managing github actions workflows with skylounge
  49. What are you buying with tests
  50. Moderately unreasonable people
  51. Winning bring me a rock
  52. Metrics are the squeaky dog voice for business
  53. Incremental development works
  54. How to make designers love you
  55. Career advice for engineers who arent supposed to exist
  56. Devops for application developers
  57. We pair because its fun
  58. Setting up a new elixir project from scratch
  59. Zero configuration project management
  60. Mere being 01
  61. How i write code
  62. Build your own vim config
  63. Nouveau shamanic programming
  64. User research for platform teams
  65. Adventure around the bay
  66. Gumroad stats and some early notes on react
  67. The mortifying ordeal of pairing all day
  68. Intro to pairing
  69. Everything i know about e2e tests
  70. The god of chairs
  71. The corpse of content
  72. In defense of rabbit holes
  73. Elves taxes
  74. Making a video course
  75. Stop starting start finishing
  76. Advice for pair programming that youll hate
  77. Pairing is for peacocks
  78. Handy tricks for pairing from air force
  79. You think you re doing continuous integration but you re not
  80. Why arent we all using heroku
  81. When was the last time you changed your standup
  82. Whats the deal with containers
  83. Why you shouldnt use terraform to manage kubernetes deployments
  84. Throw away your prototypes
  85. Read the code
  86. How to get acquired
  87. Tests need to be fast
  88. A new season
  89. Lessons learned from 5 years of pivotal tracker
  90. App mindset infra mindset
  91. Use retros to gauge team health
  92. Why i set up honeycomb on small projects
  93. Interview with josh aresty tech lead at braintree
  94. An interview with ignition works
  95. An office with a door that closes
  96. Why does pivotal tracker have a priority field
  97. Newsletter recommendations
  98. Conservation of conflict
  99. Code is a load bearing poem
  100. Do you want to be productive or do you be busy
  101. Some light kubernetes skepticism
  102. Key skills for pairing
  103. P levels are made up just like god money and the government
  104. A close read of the actiondispatch response class
  105. Photo zine venice 1
  106. How to make friends as an adult
  107. The camera had a power i hadnt expected
  108. Work is trying to own your soul
  109. Motivate people by repeating their words right back to them
  110. Quiet your productivity demons with knitting today
  111. Tracking conversion rates with amplitude
  112. Rspec feature tests
  113. A close read of the actiondispatch testresponse class
  114. How does anyone learn to test
  115. A few of my favorite developer tools
  116. How to get more business ideas