Here you can find writings on a variety of topics that I’ve found interesting enough to be worth sharing.
I love a random chat. You can reach me at tim@ this domain.
Welcome
Latest Posts
Biotech basics in the battle for beef's bloodiness - Part II
v2food's take on the Impossible
This post summarises some biotech concepts and industry movements I’ve learned as a newcomer to the field. It’s intended to be narrative, notes and references that past-me would have found interesting and useful.
It follows on from Part I where we looked into precision fermentation as a means to produce heme proteins - a high value ingredients that give meat its “blood” characteristics. We also touched on the legal battle between heme producers - Impossible Foods with their wide-reaching patent and Motif challenging the patent’s validity.
Biotech basics in the battle for beef's bloodiness - Part I
Impossible vs Motif via GM yeast
This post summarises some biotech concepts and industry movements I’ve learned as a newcomer to the field. It’s intended to be narrative, notes and references that past-me would have found interesting and useful.
Impossible Meat mimetics Impossible Foods' claim to fame is producing a plant-based burger product which has some of the unique characteristics of meat - taste, texture, colour and cooking behaviour. They have a patent which covers a realm of art, and they are particularly well known for their production of heme.
Reviewing Intel's Split: Part II
Commodification and Innovation, with Clayton Christensen
Continuing the review of Intel’s chip design revolution in the 1980s and how it relates to Intel’s split. In Part I we used a Wardley Mapping lens to describe the evolution that contributed to Intel’s decades of success, and their current position. Here in Part II we will look at it through Clayton Christensen’s lenses of innovation theory and the Law of Conservation of Attractive Profits.
Clayton Christensen’s theories Professor Christensen’s innovation theory is a commonly explored phenomenon.
Reviewing Intel's Split: Part I
Design CAD Tool Commodification, with Wardley Maps
Intel’s changing its direction in terms of strategic competencies. The decision was to split out the design and manufacturing capabilities as external services, while at the same time continuing down their traditional strategic path of full integration of the two.
The ever excellent Stratechery offers a breakdown, including references to a fantastic paper from Intel1.
The roots of Intel’s change can be traced back to the 1980s and the revolution described in that paper.
Ana Vidović: Bach on Guitar
This performance of Bach’s Flute Partita, Corrente movement is my new favourite.
I was not previously familiar with the piece, but I haven’t been able to find a better rendition, and I am a new convert to the beauty of Bach on classical guitar.
As Ana says the voicing, especially the bass, comes out more clearly on a classical guitar. The plucking initiation of each note is more clean than the muffed hammer of a piano (let alone a flute) while the ability to vary the resonance and dynamics of each note is not possible on a harpsichord.
Largeness of Spirit
Flourish through hard times
Towards the end of the epic Musashi, Hon’ami Kōetsu (an aesthete and cultural icon to this day) is recounting some of the history of the Kongō-ji temple.
Centuries earlier the Emperor was driven from his palace and took refuge in the Kongō-ji. Kōetsu reads a poem from that time
Though the war goes on,
Even for a hundred years,
Spring will return.
Live with a song in your hearts,
Choose Your Own Talisman
Microdosing faith for fun and profit
So, what would you do differently if this was a simulation? The question clearly applies to existential concerns such as the simulation argument, the hard problem of consciousness and religion and the afterlife. The answers to these questions can’t be proven to a sufficiently convincing extent, but for many people there are net tangible benefits for behaving “as-if” one side or the other were true.
This behaviour can be generalized beyond the existential into a practice of defining our own talisman (or belief).
When business is harder than technology.
Mistaking an adversarial environment for a benign one.
Here’s a small excerpt from an episode of The Tim Ferriss podcast.
Tim Ferriss: …what was the subject matter and the intent behind the MOOC that you taught?
Balaji Srinivasan: Great question. So the subject matter, the title was Startup Engineering. And the concept was that it was basically the class that I wish I had had before doing my first startup. And so it was kind of like a time capsule back to somebody who was into math or into just technology in general, but was just completely naive about how to actually run a business or anything like that.
B2B Challenges - Supply example
Customers and Users; Decision Pipelines; Value Chain
So you want to sell into another business Take a fictional company Baye. They design and manufacture tapware pieces for kitchens and bathrooms. Their products are high quality, they have marketed them well and have won over high rise developers and the architects that serve them. Baye have done a lot right - designed with a great product with strong product market fit and have executed a successful go to market strategy.
Recasting Dynamic Visualisations, and slack time
Bret Victor has some wonderful demonstrations of software for direct manipulation and realtime visualisation of dynamic systems, such as Drawing Dynamic Visualisations and Stop Drawing Dead Fish. There is a familiar language to these and other videos of Bret’s - a way of presenting dynamics without requiring drawing every frame, learning symbolic manipulation or relying on tooling-specific methods. This approach is supposed to unlock creativity, discovery and understanding because there is less of a barrier between raw thoughts and the creation.