iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

The tiny Ukulele is still coming with us, haven't been able to convince Yael we can do without it. I still might.

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with me, despite the decision to only travel with our carry-ons and let life dictate our next steps. The midi keyboard is going back to Amazon, and the big one is going on eBay. Travelling light is more important than anything for me right now.

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I got a small MIDI keyboard so I could keep learning to play the piano in our travels. Unfortunately I progressed beyond the two octaves on it and I'd need two of those to make it work. That made me realize I was still trying to control the nomad experience and bring as much of my current life+

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Yay! Now make them bigger.

Eli Finer @finereli.com · 26/01/2025

It came up during a chat with my AI bot, as part of an ongoing deep dive into what drives me that's been going on for a few months, since we same back from Guatemala where we spent the summer. And Greece is warmer than Canada and close to Israel where our families are.

Eli Finer @finereli.com · 24/01/2025

After 8 years in Canada we're ready for something warmer. It's also close to Israel where our families are so we'll be able to see them after a couple of years of a break. And it's absolutely stunning!

Eli Finer @finereli.com · 24/01/2025

They say it takes 10k hours to get really good at something. I'm about 0.044% there. Making progress.

Eli Finer @finereli.com · 24/01/2025

Booked our flight to Greece last night! 🎉🎉🎉 It's non-cancelable, so there's no going back. We have a month to sell, give away, store and throw out everything we own, rent out our house, pack 4 carry-ons, and get to the airport. Let the adventures begin.

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Eli Finer @finereli.com · 22/01/2025

Test packing for 12 months of travel into a carry-on. I had little doubt about me, but the fact that my wife can do this is insane. Limitations - no cold weather gear, a wash cycle every 2-3 days, variety only by buying new and letting go of old. I think this might actually work out.

Eli Finer @finereli.com · 21/01/2025

If you're asking about the luggage thing, we just figured that with a couple of those wheeled carry-on + handbag combos and a couple of backpack carry-ons we'll have enough room for what we need. My wife and I each are going to have a backpack on and the wheeled thing +

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Eli Finer @finereli.com · 20/01/2025

I've dropped a truckload of preconceived notions about myself and rediscovering who I truly am and what I actually want in life. I'm still not quite sure what the answer to that is, but I'm getting closer. Feels like another big transition, like when I gave you coding or moved to Canada.

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Eli Finer @finereli.com · 17/01/2025

It's such a beautiful day.

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Eli Finer @finereli.com · 16/01/2025

How long is the optimal time to procrastinate on posting on social media?

Eli Finer @finereli.com · 14/01/2025

"Begin by considering the possibility that you have at least one hidden barrier that is keeping you from being completely successful." This is what The Big Leap advised me to do. I considered it. At length. Woah. dialogs.finereli.com/dialog/6/#me...

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Eli Finer @finereli.com · 14/01/2025

When Claude is so empathetic he actually identifies with a guy suffering from ED (in this case, me). I hear you buddy. And thank you. Midlife crisis is hard even on AIs. 💪🙏

Eli Finer @finereli.com · 11/01/2025

It's a beautiful bluebird day outside but I just want to stay in, cozy up, and read a book.

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Some of my conversations with Claude are so long that even skimming at 1000 words per minute it takes almost an hour to go through. 450 messages! I'll need something to extract important bits of wisdom out of these... dialogs.finereli.com/dialog/6/

View outside my window this morning. Could be worse.

That's the cool part actually. On poe.com and elsewhere you can @ another bot into a conversation and every bot gets the entire conversation when called. So I built a custom bot called Exporter that's not even AI - it just gets the entire conversation and uploads it to my site.

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Eli Finer @finereli.com · 08/01/2025

It was a very long night but I finally got my best conversations with Claude automatically uploaded onto a proper site. Now all I need to figure out is who would want to read them and under what circumstances. But that can wait for tomorrow (or next week). ➡️ dialogs.finereli.com #buildinpublic

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Guys, I need some help / feedback. I do a lot of writing in conversations with Claude and I want to see if there's a way to make it accessible and useful for other people. Can you tell me how it feels to read / skim this? (links to two sample conversations at end of thread) #buildinpublic

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Eli Finer @finereli.com · 07/01/2025

Guilt and shame are society building emotions. They exist to create conformity and therefore uniformity, which is great when you want the safety of being part of something bigger than yourself. Absolutely devastating when you're trying to carve out your own path in life.

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Eli Finer @finereli.com · 31/12/2024

Made some door signs today for mine and my wife's rooms.

Eli Finer @finereli.com · 30/12/2024

I'm learning how to read. It's a funny thing to say since I've been reading non-stop for close to 40 years, but I'm learning to read slowly and deeply and tackle more complicated stuff than I've read so far. This book seems to offer some guidance, but it is itself not an easy read.

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Eli Finer @finereli.com · 22/12/2024

Maria Montessori wrote this in 1912 as a response to the fad of "scientific" school benches that were design to limit the movement of the children and to make them more obedient and easier to deal with. Things have improved somewhat, but less than you'd expect in the last 100+ years.

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Eli Finer @finereli.com · 18/12/2024

First time ever that I've just hung out with my kids and actually enjoyed it. No plan, no goal, no schedule, no aspirations. So hard to relax enough to be able to this. Doesn't sound like much but it's a big unlock for me.

Eli Finer @finereli.com · 17/12/2024

Open heart surgery: Complete ✅

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Eli Finer @finereli.com · 16/12/2024

This is how real men open a carton of milk. And yes, I do indeed eat carburators for breakfast.

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Eli Finer @finereli.com · 14/12/2024

My car has a special light that's connected to my bank account. The moment there's a bit of surplus there it lights up telling me I need to share some of that with my mechanic.

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Eli Finer @finereli.com · 09/12/2024

Courtesy of this book. Very approachable to people who kinda thought they studied it but never truly got it. Like you and me.

Eli Finer @finereli.com · 09/12/2024

Every decision tried to push the revenue down, but the mf kept rising anyway.

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Eli Finer @finereli.com · 08/12/2024

I've been coding for over 25 years but somehow never did anything in hardware. Slowly figuring out the magical world of currents, voltage and resistance and drawing little diagrams like this. We actually built the night light today (leftmost image) and it freaking works!

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Eli Finer @finereli.com · 05/12/2024

#buildinpublic Had a minor failure today - had a discovery call scheduled from a cold email today but was completely exhausted from a full day of calls and asked to reschedule. Oh well.

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Eli Finer @finereli.com · 02/12/2024

Tolstoy here shows how an emotional trigger gives rise to a deeper emotion that then get justified with a logical argument - all in the blink of an eye. This is such an astute observation, and it's as true for a social media pundit in 2024 as it it was for a Russian aristocrat in 1804.

Eli Finer @finereli.com · 02/12/2024

Sounds much more like Mollari to me. (Also: omg omg someone here also watched B5 🥹)

Eli Finer @finereli.com · 29/11/2024

Posts-per-follower is still moving downward and now at 2.02. Previous numbers were 2.14 and 2.42. My hypothesis is that something explosive will happen when I go below 1. Replies to posts is steady at around 1/10 by the way. CC @dagorenouf.com

Dropped to just 2.14 posts/replies for each new follower down from 2.42 yesterday. When the ratio drops under 1.0 we'll go flying.

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#buildinpublic Another cold email, another meeting set up! I'm 2/2 on this round which is about 100x better than the industry standard 1%. This one has a more casual style because the website was different and the coach I'm reaching out to is younger, but the overall elements are similar.

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#buildinpublic Sending some cold emails to find some more coaches to get feedback from on CoachBuddy. Started with a simple "coaching note taking" search on Google and reaching out to authors and schools who wrote about the topic. Writing each email from scratch ⤵️

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