http://lenkiefer.com/tags/personal/ Recent content in personal on Len Kiefer Hugo -- gohugo.io en-us © 2021. All rights reserved. Thu, 23 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000 http://lenkiefer.com/2020/04/23/last-summer-this-spring/ Thu, 23 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000 http://lenkiefer.com/2020/04/23/last-summer-this-spring/ Earlier this week I gave a talk and used this picture to compare myself last summer to this spring. Some key differences. Last summer I was: clean shaven provoking bears This spring I am: sporting a quarantine beard dealing with sassy autofill Despite what autofill was suggesting I think there’s some reason for optimism, though no doubt recent weeks have been tough. Last summer, when I took the photo with the bears, I was up in New York City. http://lenkiefer.com/2019/12/09/write-anything/ Mon, 09 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000 http://lenkiefer.com/2019/12/09/write-anything/ This could have been a tweet. Sometimes it is a tweet. After I have taken a break from social media, blogging, etc and I try to get back in the swing I find it incredibly difficult to get restarted. I feel enormous pressure to say something insightful, something funny, something grand. An effective strategy is not to shoot for the stars. Rather than writing something great, I set my sights lower. http://lenkiefer.com/2019/09/23/theme-inari/ Mon, 23 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000 http://lenkiefer.com/2019/09/23/theme-inari/ Over the summer I spent a few weeks in Asia. One of the places I visited was Fushimi Inari-taisha in Kyoto, Japan. This shrine is situated on a beautiful mountain. What really struck me about this place was the vibrant colors used in the Torii gates and to decorate some of the fox statues like these: The color got stuck in my head, so I decided to look up the hex code here and created a modified ggplot2 theme using the color. http://lenkiefer.com/2019/09/04/found-in-translation-please-do-not-anything/ Wed, 04 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000 http://lenkiefer.com/2019/09/04/found-in-translation-please-do-not-anything/ Found in Translation On a hill in Kyoto, Japan there is a most delightful sign. Near the Kiyomizu Temple temple in the Higashiyama District there are several picturesque streets. The presevered historic district is a favorite place for tourist shopping, tasty snacks, photo opportunities with majestic temples in the background. Many folks like to rent Kimonos (mostly women, but also a few men) and snap photos in the street. On my way through the district I happened across this wonderful sign attached to a private residence: http://lenkiefer.com/2019/01/16/masters-in-business/ Wed, 16 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000 http://lenkiefer.com/2019/01/16/masters-in-business/ I went up to New York and spoke with Barry Ritholtz on his Masters in Business podcast. Some links: The podcast A transcript Bloomberg View: Every Graph Tells a Story I am really glad I got the chance to chat with Barry and share some of my story. Have a listen if you want to learn more about my work and background, the mortgage finance industry, and how I use data visualization. http://lenkiefer.com/2018/01/23/me-on-a-podcast/ Tue, 23 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000 http://lenkiefer.com/2018/01/23/me-on-a-podcast/ Hey check it out! Me on a podcast: https://policyviz.com/podcast/episode-111-len-kiefer/. We talk about data visualization and how I use it at work. A bit about using R too. I got the opportunity to talk with Jon Schwabish on the Policyviz podcast. Jon’s PolicyViz blog has a lot of cool data visualization stuff, including chart remakes and thoughtful discussion. There’s a bunch of other neat stuff on the page too. So check out the podcast and take a look around the page, there’s a lot of useful stuff there. http://lenkiefer.com/2017/09/16/hello-hugo-hello-blogdown/ Sat, 16 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000 http://lenkiefer.com/2017/09/16/hello-hugo-hello-blogdown/ ALL RIGHT! LOOKS LIKE WE’RE BACK ONLINE. I took the opportunity to try out the newly released blogdown R package and migrate my blog over from Jekyll to Hugo. This blog has been up for just over two years and Jekyll was working fine, but I never felt really comfortable. I’m guessing that the Blogdown package will become enormously popular and it seems that Hugo has more flexibility for me. http://lenkiefer.com/2016/07/01/going-off-grid/ Fri, 01 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000 http://lenkiefer.com/2016/07/01/going-off-grid/ See you later I’m going to be away from the grid (web, twitter etc.) for a few weeks. Back later this summer! {% include JB/setup