About
I’m Aaron Gillespie. I’m the tall guy in that picture down there. This website is my internet-facing presence. I maintain it for fun and to keep myself producing creative content. I’m a married father of two. I am an Electrical Engineer by education, but have spent more energy learning to code and build things since my graduation from college. I’m an advocate of self-tracking, knowing what’s important to you, making life fun, and getting things done.
The Column
The Column has existed in one form or another for most of the past two decades, from a “The Column” section of the Xanga page for a band the author was in for 3 weeks in middle school, to a WordPress page hosted by a friend, to a Tumblr right after college, to a Blogger blog for the past 7 years, and now on GitHub Pages. Its purpose is solely for its author’s entertainment. If you enjoy any portion of reading it, that’s a happy side effect. Columns cover whatever topic I feel like writing about at the time. As such, their content is usually contemporaneous to the time and always informal.
Typical Topics
- personal projects
- consumer technology
- quantified self stuff
- musings on life
- movies, mostly Marvel movies
- whatever else Aaron feels like on a given day
Gillespedia
Gillespedia is a section of this website holding articles I wrote that fulfill a different role. Articles located in Gillespedia are not about my life, or current-day topics. They are, instead, book reviews, philosophical writings, and analyses of more general topics. Gillespedia is not two decades old. It’s been around since roughly mid-2019, and has only existed in this form since April 2020. It is a part of my application of the Feynman Technique.
Typical Topics
Creation of the Week
In May 2020 I began cataloguing a “Creation of the Week”. I like to think of myself as a well-rounded creative person, but as time has gone on, each of my little projects have gotten lost or forgotten about. The aim of the CotW is to be a repository of my creative efforts for posterity and to function as motivation to continue creating things.
Typical Creations
- Columns
- Gillespedia articles
- coding projects
- drawings
- video/podcast production
- woodwork, and other physical products
- music (maybe someday)
Other Stuff
Notes
I have an expanding body of atomic notes about topics like Productivity, Philosophy, Health, Happiness, and much more.
Personal Data Warehouse
My longest-running personal project. It’s a quantified self journal which has evolved over the past 8 years, growing with my needs and also my increasing technical competence.
Annual Reviews
I’m an advocate of measurement, personal growth, and transparency. The confluence of those three things = annualized reviews.