Posts on Jack Smith

Beeminder Works

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Beeminder Works

Beeminder works, for me at least. This is a short post and basically a public service announcement.

Beeminder is a service that allows you to make commitments for your future self, and if you don’t follow through on those commitments you’re charged real money for failing. This allows you to “tie yourself to the mast” and face real consequences for failing to follow through.

In October 2024, I set a Beeminder goal to spend 1hr per week strength training which pencils out to about 8.5 minutes per day. It’s not a lot of time, but my baseline was pretty low. I used Beeminder to commit myself to this goal.

How I Use Dating Apps Without Losing My Goddamn Mind

Fri, 04 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

How I Use Dating Apps Without Losing My Goddamn Mind

TL;DR: Don’t overthink your problems, if there’s an attention black hole on your phone, but you still have good reasons to use it a little bit, just get a separate physical device to put it on.

How I Got Here

This year a long term relationship ended. A few months later, I felt ready to date again and faced a decision:

Entiat Entertainer

Sat, 29 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Entiat Entertainer: July 29th, 2023

Before this trip, I had never been back into the Entiat range. Since the Chiwawa River road had just reopened after an extended closure, I figured this was the perfect opportunity.

The Entiats boast three peaks over 9000 feet, which are the giants of the Entiat cirque: Mt. Maude, Mt. Fernow, and Seven Fingered Jack. My plan was to start by reaching the ridge of Carne Mountain, then hike both Mt. Maude and Seven Fingered Jack before returning to the car.

Terror West Ridge

Sun, 09 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Terror West Ridge: July 8-10 2023

It has been four years since I got my first glimpse of the southern pickets from Trapper peak and took one of my favorite photos of all time showing the rugged range in sunset-lit glory.

Sunset on the southern pickets range

At the time, knowing very little about climbing and mountaineering, I wondered if anyone had ever climbed any of these spires, the thought of it was mind boggling.

Backcountry Travel Time Estimation Part 1

Mon, 08 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Backcountry Travel Time Estimation – Part 1

Backcountry travel time estimation is the discipline of looking at a hike, ski tour, or other outdoor objective, and figuring out how long it will take. It’s an art, not really a science, and I’m going to use that fact to justify my “artistic” use of statistical techniques to evaluate two specific methods for doing this estimation, the Munter method and Tobler’s Hiking function.

Homebrew Gu

Fri, 17 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Homebrew Gu

As I’ve gone deeper into endurance cardio sports like trail running and ski touring, I’ve started using sports nutrition gels and found them extremely helpful.

This post is an overview of how to make your own similar product and some information about why gels have the ingredients that they do. TLDR; Skip to the bottom for my recipe

Commercial Products, Problems

There are many commercial nutrition gel products out there. The one most people are probably familiar with is Gu, which is a flavored carbohydrate gel that comes in disposable foil sachets which tear open. Each serving is 100kcal and looks like this: