About This Site and I

Target Audience

The content on this website is for my future self, who is intelligent and interested, but has forgotten. So I hope to remember why I decided something by noting down everything I found interesting about it for future reference. I hope you might find some topics as interesting as I have, and the essay useful or at least entertaining–but the intended audience is my future self.

Long Site

I’m looking for more ways to apply the idea of Long Now. If you worked on something for the next 60 years, what sort of writing could you create? What could you do if you started now?

The great French Marshall Lyautey once asked his gardener to plant a tree. The gardner objected that the tree was slow growing and wouldn’t reach maturity for 100 years. The Marshall replied, “In that case, there is no time to lose; plant it this afternoon!
― John F. Kennedy

Long Content

I hope to work on projects that are too big to work on normally or too tedious. Thinking Long Now gives you a better perspective to tackle long-term tasks like gathering information for years. If one persists in collecting glimmers of genius for years, then even the dullest person may look a bit like a genius himself.

Starting is hard. One solution is to never start. Have perpetual drafts tweaked from time to time. And the rest takes care of itself. It’s about starting, not finishing. Improving, not being perfect.

I wish to create works that persist through time. Works in which the more time passes, the more they improve.

One such approach is the monograph, but Long Content is any content that gets better over time.

So a goal is to actively think about how to write material that improves with time, and work on writings that will not be finished for years, if at all.

About Me

I elevator pitch myself as a Designer, Developer, and Marketer, but here I try to give a more extensive view of who I am by taking a look at things I’ve spent my time learning. These are all things where I understand the joys and pains of using them, but I wouldn’t call myself a master of anything.

Core Values

Tsuyoku Naritai–I want to become stronger.
- The important thing is to do better, to keep moving ahead, to take one more step forward.
Process over outcome.
- Infinite games over finite games
- First-time mistakes are common and expected. Second-time mistakes means there‘s a problem with a process. Third-time mistakes means there needs to be an intervention.
Think Less Wrong and act Long Now
Find heroes and outgrow them.
When your stomach is in knots, make it heard.
Choose to create.
Give it five minutes.
Attention is a gift. Don’t sell your attention, refuse the transaction.
Interruption is assault.
Write it up, don’t chat it down.
Everything should have a URL
Find new ways to confuse yourself
Find solace in learning
Find a quest, find something to be enthusiastic about
Slow down, deliberate
Strong opinions, loosely held
Less, but better
Everything must be paid for twice
It’s okay to not like things
Idea labs, not echo chambers
Long-term games with long-term people
You can’t teach what they aren’t ready to know
The map is not the territory. Revising your map is a sign you’re doing things right.
- When your map and reality conflict, reality is always right.
Search for better questions.
Build for posterity, build bridges when you cross.
We shape our tools, and our tools shape us.
Today you, tomorrow me.
Genshai: Never treat another person in a manner that would make them feel small – including yourself.
Trust by default.
You have to trust your self.
We need you.

Technical Things I’ve Learned

Various technologies I dove into before I started tracking when I learned them. (Before I turned 20)

macOS
Windows
iOS
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Photoshop
Affinity Designer
Affinity Photo
Affinity Publisher
DaVinci Resolve
Final Cut Pro X
Motion 5
Microsoft Office
~~G Suite~~ Google Workspace
Google Search Console
Wordpress
Netlify
GitHub
Jekyll
HTML
CSS
JS
Liquid

Technical Things I’ve learned in 2022

Remix.js
Fly.io
API design
Supabase

Technical Things I learned in 2021

Docker
Tailwind
Next.js
React.js
Node.js
Vercel
Firebase
Cypress
Sanity
Serverless
Jamstack
GCP
AWS
Java

Technical Things I Learned in 2020

Content Marketing
SQL
Email Marketing
Salesforce
Salesforce Pardot
RSS feeds
Schema Markup
Ahrefs
Screaming Frog
DNS
Google Tag Manager
Google Analytics
Google Data Studio
Netlify Functions
Google Web Stories
Atom Feeds
Ruby

Technical Things I Don’t Know

Gatsby
GraphQL
SCSS / Sass
GSAP
Three.js

Things I want to learn

Moved to /wtl

Companies I’ve Worked For

March 2023 – Present SkyCatchFire • JavaScript Application Developer • Remote

March 2021 – March 2023 Virra • Front End Developer • Remote

August 2020 – March 2021 Loganix • Content Strategist • Remote

January 2020 – April 2020 ABB • Marketing Consultant • Remote

July 2018 – August 2019 Infinite Smiles • Product Designer • 7500 Sawmill Pkwy Powell, OH 43065

August 2017 – May 2018 Cinemark @ 1071 Gemini Pl Columbus, OH 43240

December 2015 – July 2017 Chick-fil-a @ 8787 Sancus Blvd Columbus, OH 43240

Places I Want to Visit

In no particular order

USA, Washington
- The Library of Congress
USA, California
USA, Massachusetts
- Walden Pond
- Bell Works
UK, Cambridge
- Cambridge University Library
Japan
- Patio11 recs
- Ise Grand Shrine in 2033!
Germany
Brazil
China
France
India

Atlas Obscura travel guidebook

Websites

Gmail since 2010
Twitter since 2012
Instagram since 2012
Github since 2012
YouTube since 2013
Snapchat since 2014
Reddit since 2015
Facebook since 2016
LinkedIn since 2016
Pinterest since 2018
Lukasmurdock.com since 2018
Less Wrong since 2020
Long Now since 2020 #11261

Uses

See: uses

Mailing Lists

Currently building list on Airtable

Personality

Myers-Briggs

INFJ-A

Big 5 Personality Inventory

Openness to Experience: high
Conscientiousness: medium
Extraversion: low
Agreeableness: medium
Neuroticism: medium-low

Enneagram

type 5 ()

PrinciplesYou

Best Match: Growth Seeker

Defined by a deep passion for learning, personal growth, and development. Curious, humble, open to new ideas and experiences, and adaptable.

Good Match: Quiet Leader

Focused on leading through open-mindedness and equanimity in facing challenges - often leading as much through “taking in” as “putting out”. More reserved, reflective, both determined and humble, composed under pressure while also being an inspiring and demanding leader.

Second Good Match: Coach

Regard self-growth, development and learning as a cornerstone of life and daily practices and teaches and models these as aspirations for others. Both demanding and caring, humble and resilient.

How I prefer to think:

Heavily favor creative thinking, have a comfort with the unknown, think independently, and find my own way of doing things.
Tend to rely on logic and analysis, with a moderate inclination to be methodical and strive for objectivity when reaching decisions and making choices.
I tend to be less organized, neat, and orderly. I can focus on details when required but don’t pay too much attention.
I have a preference to think abstractly and philosophically, using theories and models to solve problems.

How I engage with others:

I prefer less social engagement and activity, with a moderate inclination to be adventurous in the activities I like to participate in.
I am willing to fight for my ideas, tell people what I really think, and be frank with my views, including critical feedback.
I have a strong desire to prioritize and support others’ needs, and am fascinated by their behaviors and tendencies, with moderate sensitivity to their emotions and feelings in the moment.
I am willing to take charge in groups, and tend to lead more through holding myself and others to high standards of performance rather than through motivation and inspiration.
I have a moderate preference and appreciation for humor, being light-hearted and not taking matters too seriously.

How I apply myself:

I tend to remain calm, confident, and controlled under stress or pressure.
I hold myself accountable to the outcomes I experiences, am self-motivated, and have a moderate inclination to operate independently, without needing direction or guidance in accomplishing tasks or goals.
I tend to embrace change and uncertainty, and am versatile at shifting the roles I play in different circumstances, and am very interested in my own growth and development.
I work hard to go after ambitious goals and tend to take action to seize opportunities and solve problems I confront, though may be distractable and don’t always push through to finish what I start.
I like to explore different perspectives and I’m open to being wrong, receptive to critical feedback in order to learn, and modest.
I have high levels of stamina, enthusiasm, and energy in work and life.
I am comfortable with my station in life, content to be who I am and don’t worry much about others’ impressions of me.

When interacting with others, I:

Prefer to spend time with a small circle of close contacts
Moderately inclined to be joyful and lighthearted, but know when things need to be taken seriously
Support others with empathy and compassion, while also trying not to sugarcoat my honest view of things.
Am willing to speak my mind, but are always aware of how others perceive it.

As a leader, I:

Demand and hold others accountable for results
Argue for my beliefs and say what I think
Call out underperformers whenever justified
Take initiative and instigate change
Take feedback and direction from others with an open mind
Believe acknowledging mine and other people’s strengths and weaknesses is part of being a good leader
Balance when to assert direction and when to let others take a lead

When planning, I:

Anticipate and welcome change by reacting to it when it happens
Think creating overly detailed plans in anticipation of change is futile
Find intrigue in the unexpected and am comfortable changing tactics as events unfold
Like to handle things as they come and don’t mind if I end up in a different place than was set out
Try to establish clear goals and objectives, but am less diligent in tracking progress against deadlines
Care about pushing through but may benefit from an external forcing mechanism to get me there
Prefer to think about the big picture
Approach planning and thinking in an unstructured and sometimes messy way

When solving problems, I:

Like to draw on other people’s thinking to stress test my own ideas
Explore a wide range of possibilities before deciding
Am generally comfortable finding solutions on my own
May be distractible and can benefit from help keeping me on track
Am fascinated when solutions aren’t obvious
Explore the unknown rationally
Believe that the best outcomes are a result of combining imagination, logic, and rigor
May be perceived as too emergent and spontaneous

When setting goals, I:

Like to pursue novel ideas and plans, though sometimes don’t complete them
Readily take initiative whether the goals are my own or set by others
Am comfortable adapting to my circumstances, and aren’t overly concerned about finishing everything I start

On a team, I:

Am willing to express opinions directly, though may be not be the first to dive into the conversation
Address issues with others privately and empathetically
Tend to be a good listener
Confront challenges directly and push back on attempts to lower the bar
Make a strong effort to strike a balance between focusing on my own work and pitching in to help the team
May perceive others as overly rigid, while others may perceive me as too casual or spontaneous

Under stress, I:

Remain calm, cool, and focused on what matters most
Adapt to new experiences rather than avoid them
Calmly turn mistakes into self-growth and learning rather than let them get me down
Keep my emotions close to my chest

When learning, I:

Prefer topics that are logical and objective over those that are intuitive and subjective
Like to read, analyze, and process before sharing ideas and conclusions
Like to reflect and hear other perspectives before speaking up myself
Love exploring new areas of interest I don’t yet know about
Love a good brainstorm
Like subjects that are abstract and philosophical
Like to study in peace and quiet where I can focus
Like to watch, read, and write
Am interested in creative topics where my curiosity and originality can thrive
Have good stamina and endurance

Contact

I’m a shy guy with a fear of annoying people whenever I contact them. I’m working to get over that. Inspired by Patrick Mckenzie, this is a standing invitation: if you want to talk design, development, or marketing, I want to talk to you.

Email: [email protected]
Twitter: MurdockLukas
LinkedIn: lukas-murdock

About The Development of This Website

Looking at my email logs, I started building a site somewhere on or before December 29, 2018, on Squarespace. But I soon felt constricted by their customizability. I realized I could have complete customizability limited only by my skills if I rolled my own, and it would be free by utilizing developer tiers.

The first commit to this site was on July 3, 2019.

(This is a better version of the About this website I posted April 17, 2020.)

This website is built on two principles: As little dependencies as possible and minimizing vendor lock-in. I guess a third would be to make it as simple as possible and as complex as needed, taking into account technical overhead.

This has currently materialized in:

Data should be saved and built server side before using the client
Git-based structure to minimize vendor lock-in

Vendors like Squarespace or Webflow are growing. Why not use vendors like Squarespace or Webflow? In the long term, all non-Free software is a dead end. The utility of all non-Free software always approaches zero. And I have the freedom to pick up my site and take it elsewhere if a service goes down.

Why not use WordPress? Honestly, WordPress is a good option here. But while it’s free, the server isn’t, and the technical overhead that comes with it seems too annoying, especially compared to my free “low-tech” stack used here. This site is technically JAMstack now, but it started with no JavaScript or APIs, just markup.

Also I like the benefits that come from static sites.

Data Sources

APIs → YAML, Markdown, and YAML files.

Posts are stored as Markdown. Book data seen on booklist and want-to-read are pulled from APIs at build time and stored locally. The data for knowledge, principles, and alivetime are YAML as well.

Using these data formats prevent me from any lock-in and give me control over all the files. To have a setup like this means that content edits are Git-based.

Git-based means that changes made on a local machine are pushed to the Git repository which then triggers a new build of your site. Compared to API-based where the content is held on a different server and your site needs to pull the content from an API.

I’ve been getting more comfortable using Ruby build scripts that run at Jekyll build time to streamline some operations:

Adding only an ISBN number to the booklist or want-to-read list will pull the data I want to show from the Google Books API.
- Making a booklist
- Optimizing my booklist
- Note: I’ve rewritten a large part of it and have yet to create another update post for it.

So, currently I use Ruby to pull API (JSON) data and turn it into YAML.

Note: Jekyll supports loading data from YAML, JSON, CSV, and TSV files located in the _data directory.

Build

Jekyll. “Markdown, Liquid, HTML & CSS go in. Static sites come out ready for deployment.”

Jekyll uses HTML layouts that are extensible through the Liquid template language. Both Jekyll and Liquid are written in Ruby.

Jekyll also provides a number of useful Liquid additions to help you build.

The more I use it, the more I see how powerful it is. The next step of things that I want to do is create a collective changelog of dated tasks, books, and resources added by date (which may be possible in liquid, I’m still learning). May possibly utilize SQLite.

Deploy and CDN

Currently hosting on Github Pages as that’s what I started on. All my other projects use Netlify and I imagine I’ll move over once they improve some things.

Github Pages doesn’t support custom _plugins but my build scripts don’t need to run on every build, and I typically preview by building locally anyways so it’s currently not an issue.

With this stack my entire website is currently free, aside from paying for the domain name and email.

Misc

Music

Long YouTube

Soundcloud

Remixes of popular songs

YouTube Channels

Favorite Artists

Fonts

Modern font stacks
Atkinson Hyperlegible
HEX Franklin (no matter what weight you use, the letters are always the same width)
Iowan Old Style
Figtree
Nerd fonts

Font Foundries

Google Fonts

My favorite fonts on Google Fonts.

Serif

Eczar
Newsreader
Libre Baskerville
Literata
Besley
Rosarivo