What I’m Doing Now

Published on July 20, 2023

This is a /now page. You can find more pages like this at nownownow.com

Where am I?

I’m currently living in the beautiful rust-belt city of Rochester, NY. I continue to work for Simplified Safety; my current title is Divisional Marketing Manager.

So far this year, I’ve spent roughly two months in Europe working with our European business units. It’s been great seeing everyone on the team on a regular basis and hearing about their successes as we enter a busy second half of the year.

Where do I want to go?

I want to revisit Asheville, NC, ride local mountain bike trails, and do another brewery tour. I had a great time when I visited 6 years ago, and things have only improved in Asheville’s mountain bike and beer scene.

Where am I spending my free time?

I’ve enjoyed returning to mountain biking and cycling adventures over the past year. My journies have taken me across NY state on the Empire State Trail, and I’ve stayed in 10 different campgrounds in NY, all of which I’ve traveled to via my Priority Apollo gravel bike.

Along with my regular bikes, I’ve acquired another eBike. This time choosing to go with a moped-style Revv1 from Ride1up. Within weeks of owning the bike, I upgraded it with a second battery from Johnnynerdout and a Battery Blender. The bike now gets roughly 50 miles on throttle only, plenty of range to visit my nephews. It’s a blast to ride.

Getting More Sunlight

I’ve made it a goal to spend at least 1 hour in the sun daily. I get in my hour by walking on my lunch break and riding my bike to and from work and for fun. Every few weeks or so, on a Sunday morning, I’ll load up my ultra-light chair and a thermos and head to a city park to read a book and catch some sunlight.

Memorization

Inspired by Mike Boyd, I’ve been trying to memorize some data sets. I started with memorizing the US States in alphabetical order. Now I’ve moved on to memorizing them in order of population. I also use these data sets as ways to help me fall asleep. They’re my version of counting sheep.

What am I making?

I released a set of desk organizer models for 3D printing called “Deskfinity” for the Gridfinity system. The models get a steady 200ish downloads a month, and it makes me happy to see others benefitting from the hundred or so hours I poured into learning Fusion360 and CAD design over the past year.

I plan to continue releasing new models for the system throughout the rest of the year.

Programming / Web Development

ChatGPT and GitHub Co-Pilot have inspired me to get back into programming and web development. They’ve allowed me to learn and develop small ideas more quickly. With the speed of execution being a motivating factor for me, I’ve launched several small projects in the past six months, including but not limited to:

  1. Invoice splitting tool for my colleagues
    1. This project showed me how the PyMuPDF library works.
  2. Alfred to ChatGPT Query Chrome Extension
    1. Helped me understand the limitations and workflow for following the Chrome Extension Manifest.
  3. ChurchOrWeed.com game
    1. I had an idea at 3 AM and jotted it down in my iOS Notes app. I started working on the game at 10 AM the next day and had a working game by 1 PM. Most of the logic for the game was written entirely by ChatGPT, and I did some CSS tweaking and Photoshop work for the image files.
  4. PiNetSpy script for sending me an email notification when my internet goes down for more than 60 seconds. This is a helpful tool for keeping my ISP honest and getting some idea of why my home VPN may not work.
    1. Showed me how easy it is to integrate with APIs when using ChatGPT code interpreter to write the baseline integration. It doesn’t get it right 100% of the time, but it gave me a great headstart.

What content am I into right now?

Books

  1. Mistborn trilogy (re-reading for the sixth time)
  2. 12 Rules for Life
  3. Hell Yeah or No

Sites

  1. Lesswrong.com
  2. Derek Sivers
  3. ChatGPT

Podcasts

  1. All-in
  2. The Daily
  3. Tim Ferriss Podcast
  4. Kill Tony

YouTube

  1. Van Neistat
  2. Strange Parts
  3. Laura Kampf
  4. Jeff Geerling
Meet the Author

Ethan Thompson is a Divisional Marketing Manager for a global safety company. He has worked in the digital marketing field for 13 years and loves the challenges the ever-changing field brings. When he isn't exploring new digital marketing tactics at his desk, he lives car-free in Rochester, NY. During the warmer months, he can often be seen riding his bike around the Empire State.