it's a blog, yo

it’s a blog, yo : Brian Copeland of MPLS + NOLA

I’m Brian, aka Tilda Nextime. Find long form stuff here. Find links and small stuff on Bluesky. Photos and drag on Instagram. I guess there’s work stuff on LinkedIn.

    Thanks for stopping by!

    • Squirrel Burgers

      Here’s a story about sacrificing quality for delivery: don’t make squirrel burgers. I’m usually a centrist. If there’s two competing moral principles, the best moral compass is probably somewhere in the middle. I’ve been on the side of rehabilitative criminal sentences (fix what caused the crime, don’t eye-for-an-eye ’em), but then some really awful case…

    • Micro Posts and Finding Meaning in Life

      I’ve been a bad blogger. I see interesting content on the internet and don’t share it. I think, “eventually I’ll write an intelligent and meaningful post about it.” Then, months (years) later, I haven’t ever done anything and this blog goes months (years) without new content. Today is the day I stop the bad habit. Here’s…

    • PyData Recap

      PyData (https://pydata.org/) is a fairly regular conference put on by NumFocus (https://numfocus.org/), a non-profit that sponsors most of the big Python projects (NumPy, pandas, Jupyter, Julia, Bokeh…). Within the span of a few weeks, they’ve put on conferences in Washington DC, NYC and LA. Three weeks ago, I attended the PyData NYC version – here’s…

    • The Latest

      Yo! Despite the dead cat post that sat up on my blog for awhile, I’m doing fabulous. Here’s the latest in my life: Hot Peppers Are Amazing Still rocking the hot sauce stuff. I’ve reported it previously on Twitter, but I like hot things a lot. Which is fun, as I distinctly remember thinking Sriracha…

    • Leela

      I’m sitting here bawling my eyes out, so maybe writing will help. Cats are strange animals. Oddly self-reliant. How does the joke go? Everyone imagines a cat thinking, “Yeah, I’ll live with you and eat your food… but I could be outta here in a split second, sucka.” That’s exactly how Leela was. My then-future-wife…

    • End-of-Sumer 2017 Update

      I can’t even call them mega-updates if they only happen every half a year. But at least they are content filled. Rest assured, dear reader, that I have every intention of posting more, but I’ve had that same intention for more than a decade. Oh well: progress not perfection, right? Let’s go in chronological order.…

    • Winter 2017 Mega-Update

      Geez, has it been six months since an update? Let’s do it mega-style. Overview I’m still a Data Scientist at Target, still living in Minneapolis, and still loving Jenga. Life is good, cats are healthy, and there’s no major drama. Whereas my 20’s were spent worrying about what person I should be, what hobbies I…

    • The Library of Babel

      There’s a story written in 1941 by Jorge Luis Borges called “The Library of Babel” that describes a library that contains every single possible 410 page book written with a basic alphabet. The ordering of the books is random and most of the books contain gibberish, but this library also contains every book ever written.…

    • Rest in peace, decent shirts

      One of those hard things in life is learning to let go. Wait, Brian. You mean loved ones? Did someone die?? No, far more vapid than that. Stuff. Strangely, it’s really hard to throw away stuff you own that aren’t specifically broken. Take these t-shirts: These T-shirts are awesome. The top one comes from a time…

    • Summer Update

      Fourth of July has come and gone, we’re in the depth of summer now. I made ribs. It’s been the summer of biking for me! I found The Zissou at a garage sale and have been rocking it around town. Not every day to work, but at least one day a week. It’s been the…