The Decan Log
A 10-Day Journaling System Aligned with the Stars
A journal that runs on ten-day cycles instead of weeks, each tied to a bright star the Egyptians used to tell the hours of the night. All 36 star chapters are posted here in full.
Books
Three books I've written. The Decan Log is free to read in full here; AgentSpek's opening chapters are free to read, and the rest are in the book. The Little Black Book of Hansuru is a pocket field manual on antifragile investing, available in Kindle and paperback. For reviews of the books that changed how I see the world, visit The Library.
Written by Joshua Ayson
Original Books
AgentSpek
A Beginner's Companion to the AI Frontier
Don't panic, just code with AI. Chapters 1, 2, 4, 6 and 18 are posted here in full; the other chapters open with their first sections and continue in the book.
The Little Black Book of Hansuru
A pocket field manual for antifragile investing.
Selling options for income, built on one law: survive first. A black pocket manual for standing toward markets you cannot predict, separating what lasts (principles) from what does not (strategies).
Book Reviews
See all 34 reviews →In-depth reviews of books that changed how I see things. Philosophy, technology, writing craft, and the cosmos.
Book Review
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The Information by James Gleick: The Book That Sent Me Looking for Meaning
James Gleick's The Information is the clearest history we have of how the world learned to measure the signal. It is also the book that showed me, by drawing the boundary so cleanly, the one thing the science of information set aside on purpose, which is meaning. This review is the origin story of the work I have been doing since I closed it.
Book Review
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The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts
Watts's short 1966 book argues that the skin-encapsulated ego is a useful fiction, that you came out of the universe rather than into it, and that a culture forbids us to notice.
Book Review
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Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson: The Algorithm and Its Cost
I'm mid-listen on Isaacson's Elon Musk, read by Jeremy Bobb, and I keep hearing Musk's five-step engineering algorithm in my own work. I admire the deletion discipline; the mania has a human cost.
Book Review
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Born a Crime by Trevor Noah: A Voice Telling Its Own Life
I'm mid-listen on the Born a Crime audiobook, narrated by Trevor Noah himself, and it is one of the best-told things I have ever put in my ears. A story of apartheid, a fierce mother, language as survival, and lightness pulled out of hardship.
Book Review
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Out of Your Mind by Alan Watts: The Universe Listening to Itself
Out of Your Mind is Alan Watts' archival lectures in his own voice, laugh included. I keep them on a loop, transcribed the program for a film series, and found the bedrock under how I think about the stars.
Book Review
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Masters of Doom by David Kushner: How Two Johns Built id Software
I finished the Masters of Doom audiobook narrated by Wil Wheaton and it was marvelous. The two-founders, build-from-nothing, ship-relentlessly story of id Software stuck with me. I miss it already, the same way I miss Shoe Dog.
Latest from The Decan Log
Chapter 21
Vega: Harmony & Beauty
Vega, the Standard Star of astronomy, sits 25 light-years distant, sending photons from the year 2000. Zero-point of the magnitude system, lyre of Orpheus, loom of the Weaver Girl. A decan of harmony and beauty through precision, craft, and calibration.
Chapter 20
Deneb: Decan 20 - Creativity & Transcendence
The photons entering your eyes right now left Deneb around 590 BCE, from the age of Pythagoras and the Buddha, when the foundations of every major intellectual tradition were laid simultaneously across civilizations that had no contact with each other. 2,615 years that photon traveled, arriving tonight as bright as stars a hundred times closer. September 26 - October 5. Create something the universe cannot ignore.
Chapter 19
Altair: Decan 19 - Vision & Speed (September 16-25)
The photons entering your eyes right now left Altair in 2008. This A7 V white main-sequence star rotates once every 8.9 hours, so fast it has squashed itself into an oblate spheroid. In 2007, it became the first main-sequence star other than the Sun whose surface was directly imaged. The Flying Eagle opens Decan 19 with vision and speed. See clearly, move fast, and accept the shape that velocity gives you.
Latest from AgentSpek
Chapter 18
Chapter 18: Your Journey
The compass from chapter 1 in one line: pick one tool, feed it real context, review like an architect, keep your history honest. Then take something real, build it, and tell one person.
Chapter 17
Chapter 17: Community
For six months, I told almost no one about how I was working. The isolation was real. The way out was finding the people figuring out AI-assisted development alongside you.
Chapter 16
Chapter 16: Becoming
Somewhere in the daily back and forth with AI you stop watching the change and notice you have become it. The chapter calls that metanoia, and it is about who the developer turns into.