The Autodidacts

Exploring the universe from the inside out


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The Autodidacts

Exploring the universe from the inside out


Hello. You’ve found the blog of three thing-building, self-educating, perpetually-experimenting brothers. It includes reports from the world of DIY neuroscience and Brain-Computer Interfaces, posts about some things we’ve built and programmed, and occasional philosophical musings on life and happiness. ¡Bienvenidos!
Scroll-to-text fragment bookmarklet

Scroll-to-text fragment bookmarklet

TL;DR I made a thing and think it’s cool. Have you ever wanted to send someone a link, not to a huge and confusingly-laid-out webpage, but to the one sentence that’ … »

How to Migrate a Discourse Forum from DigitalOcean to Linveo

How to Migrate a Discourse Forum from DigitalOcean to Linveo

When we launched NeuroBB in 2015, as the first (and only) independent EEG, BCI, and neurofeedback discussion forum, we chose the forum software Discourse. We chose Discourse not because it is easy, but … »

Days Are Easily Made

Days Are Easily Made

Days, it turns out, are rather easily made. The time required varies, but trends closer to making the bed, or making a cup of tea, than to making Ravioli. (If you are crazy … »

How to Get the Most Out of a Conference

Conferences can be hit-and-miss. It’s easy to go through the motions on autopilot and find the experience lacklustre. Earlier on this summer, I attended one that started out lacklustre, but then became … »

Implementing Elegant Timing

Implementing Elegant Timing

This morning I got stuck in the slow lane behind an old man when I was walking down the sidewalk on my way to a Zoom meeting at my neighbourhood coffee shop. Rather … »

How to use an Aeropress without it blowing up in your face

How to use an Aeropress without it blowing up in your face

If you’ve ever splattered your face, shirt, counter, and ceiling with coffee and grounds when trying to operate an Aeropress coffee maker, this is how to prevent it. Blowouts happen when it … »

Treating Everything as Practice

Treating Everything as Practice

No matter our position or situation, life will throw challenges our way. These can either knock us off our stride and make us sulk, or be an opportunity to grow. Depending on my … »

The Joy of Selective Attention

Reality is detailed, and attention is finite. As I get older, I find myself noticing less. I think this is partly because adults are socialized not to stare, and to pretend like they … »

Towards Universal Keybindings

Towards Universal Keybindings

Keyboard people invest time upfront memorizing keybindings, in order to save time in the long run. At least, that’s the theory. In practice, it’s more like this: What if we crowdsourced … »

My Favourite Ways to Avoid Spending Money 🔒

My Favourite Ways to Avoid Spending Money 🔒

This is a Patrons-only post. But if you sign up for an Autodidacts membership, read this post and apply the advice, and it doesn’t save you the cost of the first month … »

Perfectionism is optimizing at the wrong scale

At the risk of stating the obvious even more obviously than I usually do: sometimes the perfect approach involves tolerating imperfection. Imperfection?! Yes. Specifically, the more macroscopic one’s view becomes, the more … »

The One-Hour Principle

The One-Hour Principle

I play the violin. I started when I was about six, but didn’t get serious until I was nine, when my parents gave me a new instrument as a birthday gift that … »