Like Leibniz, people are always criticizing me for being a jack of all trades. Although it's a valid accusation, I'd say this outcome is more a result of design than laziness or natural preponderance. Our world is becoming increasingly specialized, and lots of people know a fair amount of knowledge on 5-10 things and virtually nothing at all about the rest.

I propose to be different. I want to know a little bit of hundreds of things. I'm 22 and I can't yet call myself an expert at anything. The closest I've gotten to being an expert is being in the 65th or 70th percentile. But I think not being an expert at anything is a good thing in today's world of hyper competition so long as you're somewhat good at a whole lot of other things.

The trouble is that my interests are too varied and change way too frequently to find the motivation to specialize. One day I'm interested in web development, the next day I'm interested in distributed version control, then one day personal development, short stories, essay writing, juggling, time management, typography, user interaction, marketing, calculus, transportation, efficiency, nanotech, and the next day, movies, screenplay, relational databases, animation, instant messaging, startup culture, innovation, chess, photography, angel funding and vegetarianism. There are a few topics that I try to judiciously stay away from namely economics, finance, religion and politics. But I don't always succeed.

I'm always wondering what might have gone through the head of Leibniz when he was alive. To me, he's the king of all jacks of all trades. I'm inspired by the very thought that a person could be so knowledgeable about such distant topics as math and geneaology at the same time.

This posterous will be an alternative to my other blog. My other blog is meant for more well thought-out, long-form posts. I proof-read posts on my other blog at least 20-30 times.

This posterous, on the other hand, will contain more rapid-fire posts from stuff that pops in my head from time to time. Much short, much less proof-reading, and much higher chance of simple grammar mistakes and typos. In essence, a real blog, not a distillation of the results gleaned from reflecting on my life's happenings. Think of it as posts you would write when you're tired. Or when you're on a plane. Except I won't be tired when I write them, and I will be in an airplane only one in every 100 posts or so.

I used to use Facebook notes for this sort of stuff in the past, but I like posterous better. I also like the fact that it autoposts to twitter/facebook.