Andrew Skotzko

Understanding the Internet: How Messages Flow Through TCP Sockets

One of the questions that has been coming up a lot lately as many people are building with Akka.Remote is this:

How big of a message can I send over the network?

I’ve been asked about this four or five times this week alone, so it’s time to put out a blog post and stop re-writing the answer. This is a great question to cover, as it starts to reveal more about what is going on under the hood with Akka.Remote and the networking layer.

Up until I worked on Akka.NET, I honestly hadn’t thought much about the networking layer and so this was a fun question for me to dig into and research.

When does this come up?

This comes up all the time when people have large chunks of data that they need to transmit and process. I’ve been asked about this lately in the context of doing big ETL jobs, running calculations on lab data, web scraping, for video processing, and more. People asking about sending files that range anywhere from 20MB to 5GB.

All of these contexts involve large amounts of data that need to be processed, but no clear way to link that up with the distributed processing capabilities that Akka.NET provides.

So what’s a developer to do?

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Computing and the Battle of the Futures

One of my earliest memories is of a decrepit, dusty blue Toyota pickup truck lazily rolling past our house. It was June 1991, and my family lived in N’Djamena, Chad. I was five.

The bed of this truck was spilling over with African men carrying rifles. In the middle of the truck bed, there was some sort of tower-like thing sticking up. Something tall and alien looking poking its head out above the gaggle of men in the back of the truck.

It was an anti-aircraft gun.

At first, I didn’t understand. I mean, I had seen a gun like that before when I went on a tour of a retired battleship from World War II. But what was this huge gun doing in the back of a truck? And what was it about how it looked that seemed so… wrong?

Then it hit me: The anti-aircraft gun wasn’t pointed at the sky.

The gun was mounted for use at street level.

That anti-aircraft gun, and that truck full of men, were on their way to kill people.

I have never forgotten that.

I spent years of my youth in Africa and Asia, and was evacuated from countries a few times due to civil unrest and armed conflict. From early on, I saw that the world could be a very harsh place.

But I also saw grace, compassion, generosity, tender moments of intimacy. So far, I’ve been to 53 countries and all 7 continents (yes, even Antarctica). Even when they had nothing in the way of material possessions, I’ve seen how people from all walks of life could joyfully connect with each other and compassionately share the experience of being alive here on our pale blue dot.

But you know the most important thing I saw in these travels?

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Curiosity, and a Walk Through the Desert

I’ve been feeling damn frustrated since I got back from South America. Since I returned, I’ve been exploring different technological landscapes, looking to see which area draws me in.

From May through July, I spent a lot of my time building crappy prototypes. And trying to come up with new ideas. And I didn’t like any of them.

Organic interest

Either the ideas were just plain bad, or weren’t sustainably interesting to me. There were quite a few that would work and make somebody a lot of money, but not me—I was just the wrong person to deliver on that idea. I mean, if I couldn’t get myself interested in working on something for more than two weeks, how could I possibly build it into something real and interesting for other people? Nonstarter.

There has to be a basis of organic interest.

The (wrong) question?

By July, I felt very frustrated by the lack of progress and the desire to have a direction to run in. So I started asking other entrepreneurs, “what do you do in this situation? what do you do when you’re trying to come up with something interesting and hating everything you’re coming up with?”

This was a mental walk through the desert. This became The Question.

The Question generated a lot of answers. Mostly useless answers.

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How to Email Notes & Ideas Into Scrivener

Over the last several months, I’d fallen off the wagon writing-wise due to very heavy client workloads. I’m finally getting back into it after wrapping up a project. Given the restart, I got to wondering about my writing workflow and which tools I use.

In whatever I do (coding, writing, etc) I’m always concerned with tools and establishing a good workflow and rhythm. For me, that means mobility and cross-platform access to what I’m working on. I want my data stored in the cloud so it isn’t tied to any one physical device or location, and so it’s properly backed up off-premises. This protects my work from accidents (or stupidity) well, and gives me flexibility about when, where and how I do my work. I appreciate that.

After a quick chat with Scott (he’s currently finishing a book on product design), I decided to use Scrivener as the main organizational hub for everything, with all my files stored in Dropbox. In case you’re unfamiliar with Scrivener, it’s a professional-grade writing suite used by many journalists, authors, researchers, et al. Basically, if you’re doing serious writing, Scrivener is a one-stop shop and damn useful. It is also complex.

I’m a huge fan of Scrivener for overall project organization and editing. But I don’t love it for actual writing. The layout is too distracting and its composition mode doesn’t feel focused enough for me. So I pair Scrivener with iA Writer, which is my favorite text editor to actually write in. I do this by using Scrivener’s external sync via Dropbox, and voila! I have a beautiful cross-platform environment to write in. I also like the idea that my writing is safely stored in Dropbox, and I’m able to work on it anywhere, anytime, from any device. (I wrote this paragraph on my phone while waiting in line at the grocery store, and when I got back to my desk I just synced from Scrivener and carried on writing where I left off on my phone.)

I got to wondering: could I somehow easily email ideas into my Scrivener project from wherever I am? I often send myself little notes on the go by emailing them into my Evernote account with one tap using the Captio app, which is probably the most useful $1.99 I’ve spent on software. (For Android, it looks like Mail Myself or Google Keep could be good options for similar use case.)

Idea strikes, fire off email to my Evernote in 5 seconds, move on. It works well.

So, can you quickly email in ideas to a Scrivener project? Absolutely. Here’s how.

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How to Unlock Foreign Languages: 11 Principles

Heads up: This a long, detailed post (~6,400 words) so you might want to read it somewhere comfy. You can get the gist by skimming the headings and sequence lists, and then diving into the specific sections as you see fit. Be sure to check out the FAQ and resource links/downloads at the end. Skim time: 5 minutes. Full read time: 32 minutes.

From November until March I worked remotely and traveled in South America. Working remotely and exploring the world is something I’ve wanted to do ever since I first learned the term “location independent” as a college sophomore. But until this trip, I’d never done it. So with no lead time, in early November I booked a one-way ticket to Buenos Aires.

Just one problem: I didn’t speak Spanish. I took Spanish in high school, but I couldn’t remember anything useful. And I’m not sure I could apply it in conversation even if I could remember it.

Onboard the redeye flight from Miami to Buenos Aires, my lack of Spanish was immediately clear. I sat next to an Argentine man who turned to me and started speaking. Even though he spoke simply, I could not understand him. It had already been an eighteen hour day, and my best intentions failed within ten seconds. Flush with embarrassment, I admitted defeat: “no hablo español.”

Fast-forward six weeks to arrive at one of the proudest moments of the trip: I sitting in a dark little cerveceria named Konna in Bariloche, in Northern Patagonia, drinking beer surrounded by native Spanish speakers. And having real conversations in Spanish. Conversations that went beyond what foods I had eaten, what I thought of the town, and where I was traveling from and to. A real conversation amongst friends in a bar, for 2 hours.

This was what I’d been working my ass off for. The crowning point of the night when one of the women at the table, my lovely Spanish teacher Mariela, said that my progress amazed her. After a comment about my love of mate, steak, and naps, she declared that I was Argentino Argentino. I beamed like a kid with his first trophy.

I wasn’t fluent and my Spanish wasn’t perfect, but that wasn’t the point: I was having a blast, actually speaking real Spanish with real Spanish speakers in a real conversation. That is the point: the cultural experience and growth.

So how did a gringo like me go from “no hablo” to “Argentino Argentino”? That’s what this post is all about

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Permission to Fall

In life, I regret the things I didn’t do more than the missteps I made along the way.
– David Stanley

For the last three months, I traveled throughout South America. Despite what my Instagram photos may suggest, for the first month I was on the road, I was not enjoying it. Everything was new and stressful. There were no familiar places or friends to fall back on. The lack of regular schedules shot all my routines to hell. I felt lonely without my friends, and had no idea what I was doing. I drank too much, and exercised too little.

Searching, far from home

I had gone away to get out of the tech scene for a while, for a change of pace and scenery. I had recently left Chill, where I’d driven myself at a maniacal pace for almost three years. I needed time and space to think, refresh, and get some perspective.

But I was 6,121 miles away, and it wasn’t working.

On the night of December 21st, I remember calling Matt from my apartment in Buenos Aires. I’d talked myself in circles, about whether this crazy trip was still a good idea.

Should I just go back to California and take another job? Should I scrap the idea of trying to build something of my own? I was minutes away from booking a trip back to the USA so I could spend the holidays with friends and family.

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Analog Hearts In A Digital World

If there’s ever a time of year when we want to feel human connection, it’s around Valentine’s Day. And connection requires vulnerability and honesty, experiencing the world through another’s eyes.

Here are two questions that I’ve found helpful in authentically opening up my work and thinking to others over the last few months, which has led to some wonderful connections and conversations:

  1. What do the things that I feel compelled to do tell me about myself?
  2. Why do I want this thing that I want?

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13 Lessons for My Niece

After a long day in transit, I wanted to share a note of lessons I wrote in hopes that my future niece learns them earlier than I did:

  1. The world is both big and small and travel is one of the best things you can do for yourself. Embrace it. Get out into it.
  2. Learn to pack light. You need much less than you think.
  3. Keep asking “why?” and consider it as a major warning sign if someone in authority doesn’t want to answer, gets frustrated when you ask, or can’t answer the question without a tautology.
  4. “Because that’s just how it’s done” is the worst answer to this question.
  5. Learn to listen for and recognize the quiet voice inside of you that you know is your soul.
  6. Do whatever you have to in order to protect and cherish this voice. Some people will try to crush it.
  7. Avoid those people. They aren’t worth your time and are toxic for you.
  8. Basic personal finance and statistics will save your ass.
  9. Avoid debt like the plague. It is one of the oldest forms of slavery in the world, but is made to appear as “normal.”
  10. On that note, don’t watch TV, or whatever its equivalent is by the time you’re old enough to. It will try to lie to you about almost everything that is important and make you feel bad about yourself so you buy crap you don’t need or believe in ideas that don’t serve you.
  11. Curiosity and “dangerous questions” are what we need more of. All progress depends on these.
  12. Ignorance is not the same as stupidity. If you don’t know something, find out. Ask, learn, repeat.
  13. Avoid anyone who tries to make you feel bad for being curious, learning something, or trying to improve yourself and the world. This person is an energy-sucking vampire.

Love,
Uncle Andrew

Have You Gotten Too Comfortable?

I’ve come to believe all creative work is a constant struggle between hope and fear. Hope that what I’m making will add value to the world. Hope that it will be accepted by the market. Hope that it will be interesting or resonate in a meaningful way. Fear that it won’t. Fear that everyone will laugh at me. Fear that people will call me names and think I’m an idiot for having made something so laughably dumb.

There’s a lot of fear. Especially when I let the noise in or get sucked into the trap of comparing myself to others.

But none of these fears outshines the biggest fear I have. Top billing is reserved for a fear that whispers to me in my quiet moments, the moments when I’m otherwise unencumbered and have some space to think: my fear of getting too comfortable. My fear that I’ll stop growing, which is the day a creative starts dying. The mere suggestion of such a stall scares me. But I remain hopeful.

Hope – Fear = Momentum

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Nice to Meet You, Again

It’s an incredible moment when you meet the real person inside someone you’ve casually known for years.

Tonight I was at a dinner at USC with a large group of people I’ve known since my time there. Most of us have met before, had some meetings, maybe even been out socially in that sort-of-colleagues-but-also-sort-of-friends way that was so common in my life before I got that I have to bring who I really am to everything I do.

At dinner, I re-connected with a college peer I’ve known for about six years. I wouldn’t say we were ever friends, but we knew each other and had worked together. After dinner, we walked together across campus and had the first real conversation we’ve ever had. It was exciting—I made a new friend, a real friend—we had independently experienced similar struggles and were discussing our journeys since leaving college. When we parted, I felt like I had just met an entirely different person. We hugged, and without even thinking I said “nice to meet you” to a guy I’ve known for six years. But in a sense, I had just met the real him for the first time.

Conversations are powerful.

Conversations are powerful because moments are powerful. Moments are where we take risk. Moments are when we expose ourselves in hopes that another will respond. Moments are when we push pause on our mental treadmills and appreciate something in the past that we were too busy experiencing to grasp the significance of. Moments are where we suddenly stop reaching, trying, stretching for something external and just…are.

Conversations may well be the most important tool we have for uncovering these moments. Conversations are often when those moments happen, or synthesize, come together, and coalesce into a cogent whole that has meaning and power.

Deep conversations like the one I had tonight are when I get to experience my favorite moment.

Whether it’s out of frustration, desperation, or exhaustion, eventually there is a moment where we all just get tired and say “Fuck it.” To the career path that cultivates money at the expense of meaning. To doing what we’re supposed to do instead of what we want to do. To playing the small game we’ve been told to play instead of the big game our heart yearns for.

This moment is precious. It’s exciting. Because the moment you stop trying to speak with somebody else’s voice is the moment you hear the first whispers of your own. And those whispers mark the beginning of the path that leads to what each of us is really seeking: ourself.

It’s the moment when someone begins to come into their own. The moment when untapped potential becomes reality-on-the-way, when hope becomes action, when things long dreamed of become memories soon to be cherished.

How you arrive at this moment doesn’t matter, but I believe we all must arrive there eventually if we’re to live the life we’re capable of.

There is nothing I want more than to help everyone I come in contact with to be closer to living at their potential, to experience these moments and the ripple effects in their life. That unleashing of potential in people and ideas is what I live for.

And there is an effective vehicle to get there: real conversations. I’m going to try to have more of them from here on out.

So I hope I have occasion to say “nice to meet you” to someone I’ve already met, again, very soon.

I wish the same for you.