Hi, I’m Burton. I’m a data scientist and engineer, environmentalist, photographer/potter, and occasional blogger. Well, “occasional” is a stretch: This is my third time starting a blog over from scratch, separated from the second iteration by a(nother) multi-year hiatus. I want this time to be different.

What is this blog about?

I plan to write about things I do and know and believe. Some subjects will be personal (pottery, politics, homesteading, cats, …) and others will be professional (data science, analytics engineering, product development, careers, …). My knowledge level about the material will vary: Some things I’ll have just learned or will represent work-in-progress, while other things will be based on years of direct experience or completed projects. This will be made clear in context. Although I will occasionally present my opinions, I’ll try to stay anchored to facts. Some of this content won’t be interesting to anyone besides myself – and that’s fine, because…

Who is this blog for?

This blog is for me! Other folks are welcome to read it (hello, world!), and I hope they find some value in it. But I’m not writing for an audience; I’m not trying to build a brand or community. There’s no analytics, or comments, or newsletter. I am speaking directly to myself, in the future, in hopes that something I say now will be useful to me then.

Why start this blog again?

I think about things a lot, but I rarely write those thoughts down. This contributes to (at least) two big problems: 1. I allow for lazy thinking and underbaked ideas that could be caught and refined by a structured process like writing; and 2. I forget things, all the time, and some of those things I really wish I could remember now. I need a place to collect and organize my thoughts. Since social media is not my preferred forum for “discourse”, I figure this blog could suffice. As for why now: I’ve felt intellectually stifled lately, and want to provide a place to challenge myself; at the same, I’m getting older, and the rate of forgetting feels like it’s ticking up. So: Better now than never!