blog
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Best Things This Year (2024)
2024 is just about over and I can’t believe we have this dipshit Donald Trump returning to the White House. I feel the same as I did 8 years ago, but the second time around is going to be different in unexpected ways. I’m trying to stay positive and not get lost in despair and…
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365 Songs
Today is my 46th birthday and I want to share a song every day for a year. It’s not a playlist, it will just be a song I think fits the day. Sometimes I’ll write about why I chose it on Bluesky Some days I won’t. Some days I’ll probably forget and post two songs…
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Minimalist vim
I use vscode these days, but I think it’s important to learn vim or emacs because eventually you’ll be stuck ssh’ing into a server and have to edit a file or search a log. Vim is endlessly configurable and has a million commands but I try to keep my setup simple. Here are some commands…
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Minimalist git
You only need a few git commands. They are checkout, push, pull, commit, clone, add, branch, reset, and mergetool. If you are using github, perform all merges and reverts using the web UI. Clone Create new repos using the github UI and clone them like this: Checkout Branches are the heart of git. It’s how…
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Best Things This Year (2023)
I spent the first 4 days of 2023 stuck in bed. I threw my back out on New Year’s Eve after days of painting my old apartment / new house. I thought it would get better on its own but after four days I finally went to urgent care. They put a giant needle in…
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Best Things This Year (2022)
Disclaimer: This post was written by ChatGPT. It’s been quite a year for Ben Garvey in 2022. He traveled to a number of exciting destinations, including San Francisco, Austin, New York, Iowa, Maine, and Chicago. Along the way, he experienced some ups and downs, including the loss of his Uncle Mike and Aunt Betty, who…
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Requiem for a Jacket
It’s time to get rid of a jacket I’ve had for a long time. I don’t remember exactly when I got it. Sometime between 2006 and 2009. Maybe at the Cherry Hill Mall Macy’s. The jacket has been with me almost my entire adult life. It’s still in pretty good shape, too, but just doesn’t…
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Chili Oil Ramen
Over the last year Sasha got way into Ramen. She’s soft boiling eggs, making her own broth, growing basil, making me take her to the best Philly spots (Hiro, 11th & Chestnut), etc. but after a lot of trial and error I think we’ve settled on a god tier ramen recipe that’s easy to make.…
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Best Things This Year (2021)
Well, we’re still in year 2 of this pandemic. I feel lucky my family is vaccinated, boosted and able to fend off one covid case. But it’s still sad we haven’t returned to the world we had in 2019. I’m still hopeful we can in some ways, but things will always be different. 2021 was…
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Impossible Korean Beef Recipe
I’m still eating meat, but I’ve been experimenting with Impossible Meat and I’ve made this recipe a bunch of times now and I love it. The only tough to find ingredient is the gochujang. I got mine at HMart. 3 Tbsp gochujang3 Tbsp soy sauce1 tsp garlic powder1/2 tsp red pepper flakes1 tsp sugar2 Tbsp…
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Best Things This Year (2020)
Anything I write about 2020 won’t convey how different it was from any year of our lives. I came into the year optimistic about the new decade, but 3 months in everything changed with the COVID-19 pandemic. My office closed and my team shifted to remote work. My kids are in remote school and everything…
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5 Things You Can Do With csvkit
Recently I wrote a post about building tiny data pipelines with bash and the most common feedback was that people hadn’t heard of csvkit before. It’s fairly new to me, too, so here are some things to get you started. CSV stands for comma separated values and it’s the most common data format for flat,…
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Schmedium Data: Building little data pipelines with bash
Over at plotdevice.bengarvey.com I have a bunch of one-off dataviz projects, experiments, and analyses. They all run on data, but sometimes it’s not easy to get, so I end up trimming and transforming data into something I can work with. We’re not talking about big data here, more like small or medium data. Schmedium data.…
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Best things this year (2019)
It’s hard to shake off failure. I did a lot in 2019, but it doesn’t always feel that way. I felt lonely, but made 100+ new friends. I didn’t ship enough side projects, but I started a new job and hired a bunch of people. I didn’t travel that much, but I gave a talk…
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Best Things This Year (2018)
What a year, huh? A favorite comic of mine talks about how we don’t live one life, but eleven and this was the last year of my 5th life. 2018 was one of my best years, but at times it was the the saddest and most difficult. So much ended and so many new things…
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Best Things this Year (2017)
Every year I write a recap of things I did and enjoyed. 2017 was packed. I re-read my 2016 recap and there’s a lot of despair, but I’m glad it didn’t slow me down. Maybe it was motivating. TV / Movies Twin Peaks: The Return Silicon Valley The Leftovers The Big Sick Coco Get Out…
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Collingswood Porch Fest September 23, 2017
I’m playing this Saturday at the Collingswood Porch Fest on my porch at 12:30PM. Facebook event link
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15 things I’m doing after OpenVisConf 2017
Today was the last day of the incredible OpenVisConf in Boston. I’m still digesting everything from the two days of talks, but here is my general plan. 1. Taking screenshots of my work in progress. So many of the talks had in-progress shots that showed their design and thought process and it made everything easier…
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Best Things this Year (2016)
What a year. Every week another beloved celebrity passed away and our electoral system gave us a 2.9 million vote loser as president. People I love voted for a guy who bragged about sexually assaulting women, thinks climate change is a Chinese hoax, and wants to build a registry of muslim Americans. But her email…