Personal on Harlan D. Harris

One More Minute: A Pebble Count-Up Timer with Roman Numeral Vibrations

harlan@harris.name (Harlan Harris) — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A couple of months ago I released Almost Five, a fuzzy-text watchface for the reborn Pebble smartwatch. It's been fun hacking on watch faces, but I realized I had a practical gap: I needed a count-up stopwatch I could wear on my wrist while cooking, without pulling out my phone.

There are lots of timer apps on the Pebble App Store, but they're mostly focused on count-down scenarios, where you know exactly when the timer needs to end. But sometimes, especially in cooking, you want to know how long it's been, so that you can adjust as you go. How long has this steak been on the grill? How long have I been reducing this sauce? I don't see great stopwatch-like designs for that use-case.

Introducing Almost Five, a New-ish Pebble Watchface

harlan@harris.name (Harlan Harris) — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

You might remember the old Pebble smartwatch -- a minimalist e-ink watch that was popular among a certain set ten or so years ago. Well, it's back -- the original creator is manufacturing new hardware, and the software has been open-sourced. I wasn't on the bandwagon when they were originally popular, but I picked up the old/new Pebble 2 Duo recently and have been enjoying it.

Recently I decided to start building apps for it. I have a handy app for putting my grocery list on my wrist, but it's based on a reverse engineered API, which the grocery list company doesn't support, so I can't publish it. What I can publish though is an open-source watch face that I've been hacking on. Based on a couple of iterations of previous work by others (PebbleTextWatch and Fuzzy-Text-Watch-Plus), both last touched in 2016, and with the assistence of an AI agent, I've now released Almost Five!

Are Black Holes the Answer to Dark Matter and Dark Energy?

harlan@harris.name (Harlan Harris) — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This post is a little different. I have a layperson's/nerd's interest in cosmology and physics, and have tried to read a few books about current research. Recently, I ran across some new work suggesting a pretty radical shift in theory. Not finding a great summary for the non-physicist reader, I had Google Gemini write one for me, in the style of pop-science journalism like Science News. The result, below, is 90% AI's writing, unlike most of what I write these days. I served as the editor, helped it with a few rewrites and framing, and double-checked/fixed the citations. (Gemini tended to hallucinate the wrong journal, but got the content mostly right.) It's possible that there are misunderstandings of the research direction, but I think it's pretty close. And it's an interesting set of hypotheses!

Stovetop Smoked Chinese Fish

harlan@harris.name (Harlan Harris) — Sun, 13 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

I've been cooking a recipe recently of my own creation that I really like, and there isn't much similar on the internet, so I'm sharing the recipe here. It's a combination of two great things -- hot-smoking fish with wood chips in a stovetop smoker, and the fermented flavors of Hunanese cuisine.

Smoked fish and duck are common flavors in Chinese cooking. Tea-smoked duck is common on Chinese menus in America, and Chinese cookbooks have recipes like Steamed Smoked Fish with Black Beans and Chiles. But those recipes typically suggest purchasing a smoked trout or similar, and adding additional ingredients. I've had great luck starting with raw fish. There are a few examples of similar techniques, but not that many.

How I Rewrite Recipes

harlan@harris.name (Harlan Harris) — Sun, 25 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

A thing that I do when I cook is to re-write the recipes I’m using (whether they’re from a cookbook or my own invention) onto a piece of paper in a very specific way. I think the approach I use is handy, so I’m describing it here in case you’d like to use it. (Or in case you need more evidence about how weird I am.)

There are 4 ideas that I think are important:

On moving my blog from Wordpress to Blogdown

harlan@harris.name (Harlan Harris) — Sun, 11 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This is my first new post on harlan.harris.name for a while. The occasion is a change of scenery. For about 10 years, my primary blog has been on WordPress, more recently supplemented by Medium. But WordPress and Medium are limited for technical writing, and the trend among data people recently has been to publish static sites built with Blogdown and Hugo. So that’s what this is.

The technology I’m using (more on it below) lets me do fun things like trivially embed math: \(\sum_i a^2_i\), or generate plots with embedded code:

neveragain.tech

harlan@harris.name (Harlan Harris) — Sun, 08 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

I, Harlan D. Harris, hereby commit to the neveragain.tech pledge. Please stand with me and hold me to it.

It starts:

We, the undersigned, are employees of tech organizations and companies based in the United States. We are engineers, designers, business executives, and others whose jobs include managing or processing data about people. We are choosing to stand in solidarity with Muslim Americans, immigrants, and all people whose lives and livelihoods are threatened by the incoming administration’s proposed data collection policies. We refuse to build a database of people based on their Constitutionally-protected religious beliefs. We refuse to facilitate mass deportations of people the government believes to be undesirable.

(read the rest)

Smartwatches with Higher-Bandwidth Vibration Notifications

harlan@harris.name (Harlan Harris) — Mon, 30 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This is an updated version of an article first published on Medium on Oct. 24, 2015.

I love my smartwatch, way more than I thought I would when I bought it, over a year ago. It’s a Moto 360, which is still better looking than the Apple watch, I think.

Why do I love it? It’s not the health monitoring. I turned that junk off as soon as I got the thing. Do not care. It’s because it separates my phone and its alerts (and temptations) from my interactions with other people.

Inauthenticity

harlan@harris.name (Harlan Harris) — Sun, 07 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

View this post on X (HarlanH)

Let me unpack that a bit…

Hugh and Crye t-shirt

Recently, Hugh & Crye, a DC-based clothing firm for men, with a novel take on sizing, recently did a Kickstarter campaign for their new line of fitted t-shirts. What the hell? H&C has been around for about 5 years, and based on their product growth and hiring seems to be doing quite well. I like their stuff. Why do they need a Kickstarter? The original goal of Kickstarter was to “kickstart” new products by providing crowdsourced seed funding so that you (you!) can ensure that a great idea gets off the ground. And if a project doesn’t make its goals, no harm done, and no money wasted. A fantastic example is the Oculus Rift, which was a Kickstarted Virtual Reality rig, and is now a subsidiary of Facebook. Kickstarting a project is a rather labor-intensive alternative to trying to get a bank loan, or maxing out your credit cards, but with much less risk. It’s a very community-driven, authentic way of getting support for a new venture, moving it from the prototype phase to the initial manufacturing round.

Bikeshare hills, incentives, and rewards

harlan@harris.name (Harlan Harris) — Sun, 23 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

A topographic map of Washington in 1791 by Don Alexander Hawkins. I live on the top edge of the map, on one of those hills.

I’m a generally happy user of DC’s Capital Bikeshare system – just renewed my annual membership today in fact. But I don’t use it as much as I’d like to, for one critical reason. I live on top of a hill. Riders are happy to take bikes from the neighborhood to their jobs downhill, but are much less likely to ride them uphill. As a result, the bike racks in my neighborhood are frequently completely empty by 8:00 or 8:30am, despite the many stores and businesses in the area. The only days I can reliably take a bike into work are when I leave at 7:15 for 8:00 meetings, which is thankfully not too often. On several occasions I have looked at the handy real-time map of bikeshare bikes, only to observe that there are no bikes available within a 15 minutes walk of my home!

On .name and third-level domains

harlan@harris.name (Harlan Harris) — Wed, 15 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

And, we’re back! After being off-line for several weeks, this site is now live again! I can’t imagine you missed it.

Here’s what happened. Let’s start at the beginning. In 2003, ICANN added .name to the list of top-level domains (like .com, .edu, etc.). The idea is that individuals would use it for personal sites and email addresses. You can still do this, but (in case you haven’t noticed), it’s not very popular, and most domain name registrars don’t even sell .name addresses.

Pretzel Whoopie Pies with Vanilla Stout Filling

harlan@harris.name (Harlan Harris) — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

My newish cooking club had a dinner yesterday with the theme American Beer. I was tasked with dessert, and came up with this recipe for Pretzel Whoopie Pies. They turned out extremely well, so I thought I’d share the recipe here.

Sources:

About.com Southern Food (basic whoopie pie recipe)
Southern Living (Stout buttercream)
Ideas In Food (flavor combo)
Bakewise (cookie recipe tweaks)

Ingredients:

2 egg yolks
1/2 c minus 1 T sugar
1 T light corn syrup
1/2 c finely ground unsalted mini pretzels
1/2 c cake flour
1 t baking powder
1/8 t salt
4 T butter, softened
1/3 c milk
kosher salt
1 c stout beer (Breckenridge Vanilla Porter is excellent)
4 T butter, softened
8 oz powdered sugar

Recipe:

Apple TV and cross-device user-interface integration

harlan@harris.name (Harlan Harris) — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

On last week’s Build and Analyze – a great podcast nominally about iOS development, but actually more about just living a tech-geek lifestyle – Marco talked a lot about the rumored “Apple TV” and whether it could actually be a groundbreaking product. He concluded that it probably couldn’t. Most people wouldn’t dump a working TV just for an Apple brand; the touch-screen interface that Apple has been using for the iPad and iPhone wouldn’t work for a TV; the only apps that would work well on a TV would be just ways of getting better content (I note that Roku apps are laughable, with the exception of Angry Birds); getting access to better content than other competitors is probably impossible, even for Apple.

For these reasons and more, Marco suggested that there’s little that Apple, or anyone else, could do to substantially improve the TV experience, with the exception of better menu design.

I think there’s a way that Apple (or someone) could integrate modern technology into a TV that would be actually compelling, though. And in some ways it’s the same way that I earlier blogged about for MP3 players. Cross-device user-interfaces. Here’s how it might work for a television:

making meat shares more efficient

harlan@harris.name (Harlan Harris) — Mon, 09 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

A personal interest I have is the ethical and sustainable production of food. I’ve been a member of and helped run Community Supported Agriculture groups, and my wife and I currently purchase the majority of our meat from a group of upstate NY pastured-livestock producers who sell their products through CSAs. It’s an ala-carte business model, where I place an order on a website, and the next week I pick up the frozen products cut and packaged as if for retail.

Smartphones, MP3 players, and Bluetooth: the division of labor

harlan@harris.name (Harlan Harris) — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

As more and more people get smartphones that can play MP3s or streamed music, like the iPhone or Android phone like the upcoming HTC Evo 4G (I’m gettin’ one!), fewer and fewer people are buying standalone MP3 players. Why have two gadgets when you can have just one? But I think there are good reasons to do so, but I don’t think the right combination of products are currently on the market. Here’s my thinking.

Savory and sweet, pears and beets

harlan@harris.name (Harlan Harris) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Hah, it rhymes! The fall haul (hah!) from the CSA inevitably means two things, root vegetables and ungodly numbers of pears. I love root vegetables, but tend to find pears to be pale imitations of apples. But when poached in red wine, or cooked with butter and sugar, pears can have some redeeming value. Recently, for the cooking club, I teamed up to make a dessert with the theme “Fall Harvest.” We were inspired by a recent recipe from the late, lamented Gourmet magazine, Beet and Pear Napoleons with Ginger Juice Vinaigrette. Roasted beets layered with pears, with flavors of ginger, citrus, tarragon, and poppy. In fact, we were so inspired by the dish, that we made it too, and started the dinner with an amuse of the original recipe: