Year of the Speedrun

Published on February 18th, 2025 by Spencer Cloud

My "Yearly Theme" for 2025 is Year of the Speedrun. A lot of time passed since I last posted on spencercloud.com due life-long chronic perfectionism, and I'm addressing that with this theme.

The yearly theme is taken from popular Internet personality, CGP Grey. Breaking it down:

  1. New year's resolutions famously frequently fail
  2. A year is a bad time-frame for specific long-term goal-setting
    • Resolutions with specific, strict, numbered goals (e.g. “I will lose 50 pounds by 2026”) are better for shorter time-frames
  3. A yearly theme is a north star, vibey version of a resolution made for smaller day-to-day decisions

Shortly before the year ended, I read How to Build Anything Extremely Quickly. It resonated with me as I dive too deeply into the weeds for projects, perfecting every detail of a detail before moving on to step 2. Over time, this discourages me from starting more projects, since putting in effort often leads to nothing.

I thought about something like "Year of Speed" or "Year of Velocity", but my issue wasn't really about moving slowly. Despite appearances, I work quickly, but staying on-track and working in the direction of done is what needs improvement.

Year of the Speedrun feels different because it's not just about doing things quickly, but moving in the direction of done with different strategies based on goals and context.

It’s also about finishing things quickly and correctly. As the Navy SEALs say, slow is smooth and smooth is fast, a.k.a., don't go so fast that you spend more time fixing sloppy mistakes.

What Is a Speedrun?

The term comes from speedrunning, where in video games people compete to see who can beat a game, or part of a game, as fast as possible following some strict criteria. Speedrunners discover strategies, often counterintuitive and outside-the-box, for finishing quickly. It also encourages keeping an eye open for opportunities to remove unnecessary cruft.

The game Super Mario 64 takes an average player about 12 - 15 hours to finish normally (beating Bowser), and 30 hours to finish 100% (according to Claude AI). The current world records are 46m 26s for the main game (70-star run, or just enough to beat Bowser) and 1h 25m 28s for finishing it 100%, an over 99% time reduction for both categories.

This might mean nothing to you, but watch this speedrun strategy that cuts a ton of time from a level:

Super Mario 64 video game with Mario going down a slide but jumping to the left right at the beginning to skip almost the entire thing

(Despite appearances, I don't play video games nearly as much as I used to.)

Done This Month

Filling in the New Apartment

I'm slowly but surely buying actual furniture for my new apartment:

<video src="/assets/bedroom-hue-lights.webm>
Philips Hue lights being turned on and off and dimmed with a portable smart button
Philips Hue light cycling through colors in a bathroom

Improved My Internet Browsing Experience

I finally dove into the world of ad blocking. I'm using uBlock Origin for my laptop/desktop browsing, and AdGuard for iOS. These don't block all ads, but they block most, more than I expected. I enjoy browsing the Internet a lot more now.

I would feel badly about this if I were still using a lot of ad-based services, but I've been switching away from ad-based services in general. More on that in "De-Googling" below.

Set Up Actual Budget

I set up and started using Actual Budget. Since I'm paying a mortgage now, I want to keep a closer eye on my spending.

A lot of finance tools are cloud-based and closed-sourced, but I don't want someone else to be the custodian of my finances. Even if the provider is trustworthy today, it doesn't guarantee they will be trustworthy forever. If they go out of business, get hacked, or anything bad happens out of their control, you could lose access to so much of your own financial information.

Actual Budget involves more setup than your standard budgeting app, but even if you're not tech-savvy, there are easy-to-follow guides and doesn't take a ton of time.

The app used to be for-profit, but it went bankrupt. Instead of locking away / throwing out the source code, the founder made it open-source and free-to-use. We need more of that in this industry (and world).

I'm using PikaPods for hosting since they provide it in the quickstart guide. I plan to self-host eventually, but in the spirit of the Year of the Speedrun, I went for "Any %" completion.

Discovered SImpleFIN

In setting up Actual Budget, I discovered SimpleFIN. I track my account balances for checking & savings, credit cards, loans, and investments on a spreadsheet. Despite how much I've automated, it remains tedious to export data in various CSV, OFX, VQ9, and ZPZ formats from every account. SimpleFIN connects to all these accounts and exports standardized transaction data.

Now that I use SimpleFIN for Actual Budget, I started using it for my wealth-tracking spreadsheet. I found their documentation and set up a personal SimpleFIN token stored on my laptop. The improved process:

  1. Request transaction summaries in JSON format
  2. Convert them to CSV
  3. Add the CSV to a temporary spreadsheet
  4. Process the transactions to running balances on the main balance sheet using the same, standardized formula
=B2 + SUMIFS(CSV!B:B, CSV!A:A, A2)

Fixed an Annoying Google Alert

Years ago I set up a Google Alert for my name, specifically my name in quotes ("Spencer Cloud"). Whenever that exact string appears on the Internet, Google alerts me with an email linking to the source.

My name isn't that common, so they only alert me once every few months, often from my own activity. Sometimes years go by without an alert.

The last few months, Marks and Spencer has been advertising the cloud-yarn relaxed collared knitted jacket, and my email has been getting spammed with alerts showing "Marks and Spencer's Cloud-Yarn Relaxed..." bla bla bla.

This was happening several times a day, so I modified the alert with Google's advanced search rules:

"Spencer Cloud" -"Marks and Spencer" -"Marks & Spencer" -"Phil Spencer"

and it worked. The - means don't include results with those strings. This surprised me since these days Google straight up ignores these advanced search rules in regular search.

I added -"Phil Spencer" due a similar alert where the head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, talks about cloud gaming. The headlines read like "Phil Spencer - 'Cloud Gaming is the Future'". I seldom received these alerts, so it didn't bother me, but figured I might as well add that while I'm changing things.

Music & the Arts

Now that I'm not nomadic for the first time in years, I've returned to some old hobbies.

I attended swing dance classes for the first time since college. Over the last decade, I danced at socials, but never in an actual group class beyond one convention that I half-attended. I'm still trying some classes out and plan to attend more.

I also leave my guitar in its stand next to my desk. When I take a work break, it encourages me to practice instead of doomscrolling. Frictionless good habits stick.

I'm progressing through Justin Guitar, which is a great resource for guitar beginners.

Language Learning

Pimsleur

I discovered Pimsleur in May of last year, and it is the single best language learning app I've used. I finished most of French DuoLingo and lived in France for 3 months, but nothing compares to Pimsleur, except maybe a 1-on-1 tutor.

It focuses on speaking and listening in more natural conversation contexts. They bake spaced repetition into the lessons, cementing words and common phrases into memory.

Speaking practice helped me with words I mispronounced for a long time - people hesitate to correct bad pronunciation, but a true language learner appreciates it so much.

Everyone knows about DuoLingo, but no one knows about Pimsleur. For one, DuoLingo pours a ton of resources into marketing, but also, Pimsleur seems less convenient when described. 30 minutes a day of listening and speaking practice seems like a bigger commitment than "practicing" for 2 minutes in a DuoLingo lesson. Further, Pimsleur is a paid app by default (though you can get it for free by checking out the audio lessons at your local library), while DuoLingo has a free version, albeit a terrible one.

On-the-whole, I find Pimsleur to be more convenient than DuoLingo since I practice while doing mindless tasks, like washing dishes or doing laundry.

If you (yes, you) want to join my Pimsleur account, I can add up to 3 more people and we can split the cost.

I'm almost finished with all 5 courses of Pimsleur French (just 10 lessons left). I don't speak perfectly, but I spoke more fluently than ever at my friends' wedding in Guadeloupe last December. I plan on attending language practice meetups in Manhattan soon.

I'm debating which Pimsleur course to start next. Russian intrigues me and I've already finished a few lessons, but I'm also interested in German, Mandarin Chinese, and Arabic. There are many different reasons to learn whichever language, but the best reason is usually "because it's fun and interesting".

Dix pour cent (Call My Agent)

I've off-and-on watched the show Dix pour cent (Ten Percent, but anglicized to "Call My Agent!") since last summer. I finished it this month and highly recommend it, even if you have no interest in French. It's funny, clever, and currently available on US Netflix.

The show focuses on a talent agency in Paris. A different real-life actor guest stars in each episode, and their first name is the episode's title. Most actors aren't well-known in the US, but a French speaker will likely recognize them. (Think of Matt Leblanc playing himself in Episodes.)

Spoiler in linked footnote. It's a level 2 spoiler on a scale of 1 to 10 - not a big, story-based spoiler, but spoiler-sensitive people should avoid. 1

De-Googling

Google product quality has declined for the better part of a decade, and I'm decoupling from their services.

The ad-supported model of online services works well when companies are growing and attracting users. But the real focus is their true customers, the advertisers, and quality is just a happy byproduct in these early days. When they monopolize the product, our attention, and saturate the market, cost-cutting come next. This means decreased resources put towards the free offerings. They also make it hard to move to a different service.

To be clear, I don't think badly about anyone working at Google. I know some Googlers personally and they're great. Organizations big and small respond to incentives. If incentives don't align with making sure your user-facing product stays good, the user-facing product isn't going to stay good.

I'm also not saying that Google is pure evil now. A big point of de-googling is to not put all your software eggs in one basket, so this also applies to my heavy use of Apple services. Using services that give you the control over essential things like email, or storage for all your important documents is just a good idea.

Search

Google search quality has declined over the last 10-ish years. You may not have noticed, but power-users of the product, like software engineers and researchers, have taken note of the enshittification for awhile now.

I switched over to using Kagi as my main search engine. I can find results more quickly with Kagi than on Google. You can attribute this partially to better results, but maybe more to not seeing full pages of ads for simple queries.

Kagi charges the user instead of relying on ad revenue. You may not like the idea of paying for search, even if the basic plan is just $5 / month, but try the 100 free searches and see how you feel. Incentives align with the user here and it's noticeable.

Maps

This one is trickier. I'm trying out OsmAnd as a Google Maps replacement on my phone, but the interface isn't great.

Translate

I downloaded DeepL. It works just as well as Google Translate.

Mail, Drive, Docs, and Sheets

I haven't started de-googling here yet.

I subscribe to r/degoogle to see discussions on replacements.

I lean towards open-source, self-hosted solutions whenever practical. I don't want to move to something like Proton Mail and end up with the same issues that I have with Gmail.

What Am I Doing With This Blog?

For so long, spencercloud.com was the face of Spencer Cloud Consulting, LLC. I dissolved that business 2.5 years ago, yet I still have the domain because why would I give up spencercloud.com?

My blog-reading skyrocketed over the last few years. Using Inoreader RSS reader (as a superior replacement for Feedly), I follow:

I actually follow 44 RSS feeds / blogs in total, though many are dormant, which is perfect. A personalized RSS feed give you a chronological, non-algorithmic feed that does exactly what you tell it to do. If Wait But Why finally makes its on-average once-yearly post, I'll see it immediately. All other times of the year, I can forget about it.

I also subscribe to a few YouTube channels, web comics (like XKCD), and a personalized RSS feed set up with Kill the Newsletter for things like Creighton alumni relations emails, the Hacker Newsletter, and the LessWrong Curated Feed.

The number of blog subscriptions grows and shrinks. I add blogs that I find interesting, and unsubscribe when their signal-to-noise ratio becomes more noise than signal. I keep up with news and interesting authors and don't feel overwhelmed and no longer get addicted to "just one last post" potato chip algorithms like on Reddit or X / Twitter.

All this blog reading made me want to return to my own. This might continue the in the spirit of my old travel blog, Don't Cry for Me, USA.

I don't want or expect to gain a "following". For now, I'm writing for me and don't care if it goes viral of whatever. If you know me but find the blog tedious, I'm not obligating you to read this. Just say "it wasn't for me" and I'll understand, even if you're a relative.

Digital Gardening

I've documented a ton in Obsidian for about 2 years. There are currently 776 files in my vault, and they're all currently private.

I recently came across this post on Digital Gardening. I plan on publishing some of my locked-away notes for the world, or at least a handful of people that might read them.

Also: [Learn in Public](https://www.swyx.io/learn-in-public

Articles

Videos

Music

  1. The 4th and final season disappointed me. The tone changed a little and it wasn't as clever. It ended weirdly and abruptly. Apparently some of the main writers left at the end of season 3. I've seen rumors of a possible 5th season and/or movie, but I'm not holding my breath since it ended 4 years ago. It was popular in France, so there is hope. ↩