Hi 👋, I’m Matthew Carlson

If you’ve been unlucky to converse with someone who has recently bought a bidet, they’ve probably told you how it changed their lives like some sort of newfound religion. As someone who converted to Bidetism recently, I’m here to tell you four reasons why you shouldn’t. Have you ever looked at your toilet and thought it could remind you more of a nursing home? With a bidet, you can. Strap an enormous white plastic throne to your diminutive toilet....

This is a gross oversimplification, but there are roughly two types of music players: classical and jazz. Classical knows what’s coming next. They play as a well-oiled machine that is in tune and sync. They can start and stop on a dime as directed. Jazz flows, bouncing to new places and riffing off the previous stanza. Sometimes beautiful and sometimes verging on horrid, jazz keeps time but not beat. Classical practices specific pieces and jazz practices generally....

While I won’t go so far as to diagnose myself with ADD without consulting a doctor, those who know me know I can be distracted quite easily. So recently, I decided to do something a little different with a personal project I started a few weeks ago (link to come). I wrote unit tests. That may seem rather uninspired, but I’ve always poo-pood the idea of test-driven development (TDD), as it seems wild to me to write a test for something that you don’t know what it needs to do yet....

I find the 20’s to the 50’s a very fascinating time in American history. Perhaps because it is so very different from the life we have today, but still feels relatively closer. Maybe even more so because the 20’s and 30’s were so radically different from just 50 years prior. So in pursuit of learning more about the history of the cinema and to understand more about what life was like by watching what they watched, I’m going to watch the top grossing/most popular movie from each year....

Surveys by Common Sense Media and the Consumer Mobility Report both state a large majority Americans sleep next to their phone or with their phone in hand. According to a 2019 Statista survey , 44% of participants reported feeling some anxiety when separated from their phone (not the same thing as the smartphone itself causing anxiety ). This isn’t a public decrying of how we are hopelessly addicted to our phones....

I have lots of laptops and one desktop. While jumping around the country, it’s annoying to have to setup a dev environment on every machine. There are solutions out there like docker, github codespaces, or renting a VM from one of the dozens of cloud providers. But I already have a great desktop with everything I want already setup. I work on tons of different projects (most don’t see enough work to warrant a writeup) and it’s annoying to have to provision the different environment....

Since I hate sites that make you read a whole story to get the recipes, out of the five different ice creams, here were the two highest ranking ones. I’d recommend reading more about these recipes Silk Ice Cream 1/2 cup granulated sugar 1/4 tsp xantham gum 2 tbsp light corn syrup 1 1/3 cups + 1 tbsp of Silk Heavy Whipping Cream Alternative 1 cup - 1 tbsp of Oat Milk (you can substitute other milks, but do your math to recalculate the fat, see notes below) Combine sugar and xantham gum Put corn syrup in medium pot and stir in oat milk....

I have a friend who claims food delivery is too expensive and would just go and pick it up themselves. To me, if I’m hot and tired from working on some house thing, I love just hitting a button and hopping in the shower knowing some kind soul will deliver food to my door by the time I’m out. Ethical concerns about food delivery companies aside (I try to tip well), it’s something I value more than my friend does....

A custom ladder that stores blankets for our family room

I love a todo list. It captures my goals and desires in a semi-succinct and concrete way. There are hundreds if not thousands of todo apps and methods. But to me personally, one stands out above all the others. A simple 3x5 notecard. This is a how-to or a help article. This is a love letter. A love letter to paper. The simple idea of writing down your list of things to do on a physical surface with your own hand is something I love....