As a young kid, I used to be a voracious reader. We'd go to the library every two weeks or so, I'd check out so many books that we'd have to put them on multiple library cards, and then get through 50-70 books in a matter of days. Granted, these were mostly smaller chapter books (and a healthy dose of manga), but it was a constant part of my day. But then, something changed. As I…
A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon an Instagram reel (that I can unfortunately no longer locate). The reel posed the question of why the author always felt the need to have a map on in their car, before cutting to a montage of racing game HUDs, all of which contain a minimap. That reel made something click for me, because it was an odd instance of something being really relatable without me even…
I have struggled with task management for my entire life . I have an extremely poor working memory, and as such, after leaving high school and losing the baseline structure of tasks and responsilities that it provided, I started relying on to-do lists a lot. However, my relationship with to-do lists hasn't exactly been perfect. What I've Tried I initially tried to have iOS Reminders as…
Recently, I've seen a few variations of this sentiment floating around, and as I get closer to the end of formal schooling (for now), I've realized just how much this one little phrase explains. Fair warning that this is maybe more of a personal post than usual. In elementary school, I was a child who got in trouble in school. A lot of trouble . And there was certainly a lot of horsing…
As social, community-dependent animals, we rely on being in sync with our surroundings and obligations. Knowing when appointments, meetings, and gatherings are, which people need to be called/messaged back, and managing things that need to be planned. There's also a dependence on sync within oneself, ensuring that our own plans for the next day, week, and month line up with our internal…
Photo by Matthew Bornhorst on Unsplash It has somehow been nearly two years since I've written anything on this page. I haven't stopped having thoughts, tinkering with things, building new stuff, or writing ideas down. After some thinking, and a lot of learning about myself over this time, I can firmly attribute this to friction . We, as humans, will just about always take the path of…
Nerds (like me) love trying out new tools. At least in the circles I follow, there's been this new Renaissance of information management and sharing. Using personal knowledge management (PKM) software is gradually becoming more common among knowledge workers, a good few people are starting digital gardens , and there seems to be more and more tools billing themselves as a new way to write or…
My existing note management solution hasn't been cutting it for a while now. My current approach to notes and knowledge management has been to keep things in Joplin (with my 5TB university OneDrive as the backend), as well as use Simplenote as a "drafting box" for things like blog post articles and some small temporary notes. However, Joplin hasn't really lived up to what I hoped it…
Important Note: In this article, I describe running Windows XP in 2023. When running older Windows, particularly XP, remember to be very careful about connecting the machine to the internet , as these unsupported mainstream operating systems are vulnerable to a whole host of malware. I personally kept this install of Windows XP offline as a precaution. I've wanted to have a reliable machine…
I had put off building up a personal RSS feed until just about 2 months ago. I don't entirely know why it took so long, but a lot of it was certainly choice paralysis. There's so many reader and sync services that it takes a minute to figure out which one to use, and it took me needing to download some variety of RSS reader to test the RSS generation of this site to finally start…
I've finally had a chance to do a little cooking again! After being cooped up in a dorm room for two semesters with a shabby excuse of a kitchen shared by the entire floor, I'm back home, with decent burners, a good spice rack, and even an actual fridge . Now that I'm doing some more cooking, and hopefully will continue to do so for the forseeable future, I want to have a home for…
Note: This post is the first part of a planned multi-part series on learning how to manage my e-mail. Check back soon for part 2! It feels like my generation never really learned how to use e-mail correctly. I had a school provided e-mail since I was in 4th grade, and have had my own personal e-mail, the one I still used up until recently, for over a decade. Because e-mail, and other aspects of…
A while back, I stumbled upon korayer 's RE;FERI . This site outlines a number of resources about creating lightweight websites, and most notably includes the template for a CSS grid system, allowing one to create websites with layouts more complex than just a linear text document, but without any bloated JavaScript. I was intrigued by the possibilities, but didn't want to continue…
It’s been a few weeks since I’ve posted to this site, which is quite unfortunate. In that time, I’ve finished off another semester of college, shoved all my possessions into my trusty 4Runner, and hopped on a flight to Isla Verde, Puerto Rico, where I’m writing this post from. I’ve also taken a renewed interest in making this place my home on the internet, inspired by the numerous other folks on…
Note: I go into a bit of background on this phone during the first portion of this article. If you want to skip straight to the setup guide, scroll down to "Unlocking the Potential". Around a week ago, I noticed a flip phone being auctioned off on my city's surplus website. I've been looking around for interesting phones as part of a separate project, so I jumped on it and bought it, not…
During some internet exploration a few days ago, I stumbled upon a blog post where the author details making a bookplate for their personal library. Sufficiently intrigued, I began doing a little research on this historic practice, and ended up creating my own. What is a bookplate? A bookplate (or ex librīs ) is a label affixed to the inside of a book, often on the front endpaper , indicating the…
A first post is always very difficult to write. This one is definitely more of a placeholder than a grand occasion, and may get deleted later, but a first post it is nonetheless. I've been putting off getting this blog/"brain dump"/"digital garden" set up for weeks now, so I'm very excited to finally have a place to put some of the article ideas I've had saved in my notes…