I'm back after a year-long web hiatus, but I'll write about that in detail in the next post. Meanwhile, I've spent a week upgrading the website, since I missed this process a lot and had a bunch of ideas. So here's a list of changes, starting from the coolest one: New comment sections. I wanted to add this feature so many times, but my infrastructure was always kinda bad, so a week ago I decided…
It seems that I escaped the endless work loop, and there's more room to breathe right now, which feels weird - when you do something 24/7 for some time, it's hard to return to a normal life tempo afterwards. Feel a little anxious since I don't have to work so much right now, though I spend this time studying anyway. Also, I've been feeling sad not writing here as much as usual lately - hope I'll…
The last couple of days I’ve been researching how cars work, since I want to make some 3D animations for my new job - and I seriously lack knowledge in this area. First of all: cars (..planes, trains, and basically all machines) are fucking magic. Seriously, if you don’t know anything about transmission, engines, differentials - like I didn’t - go watch some videos. It’s literally mind-blowing. I…
A few weeks ago, I updated my setup for video editing (well, and everything else, since it's my main machine) - and I just love it so much! I had been using a 27-inch 2K monitor for a very long time, and it worked well for me, but lately I started to feel a serious lack of space. Especially when it comes to drag’n’dropping stuff between different programs - doing that on one monitor is a…
Lately, I’m finding myself more and more often in situations where I can’t set my priorities and values straight anymore. Over the last year, I was testing (and later supporting) the idea that most of the time, work sucks, and people need to shift focus to real life instead of wage-slaving - since that only leads to frustration and regrets at death’s door. On the other hand, any serious life goals…
sum 27 logs / 63h55m logged time / 02h22m avg session [ A ] 01h40m | [ C ] 10h30m ||||||||||| [ H ] 07h15m |||||||| [ W ] 44h30m |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Nothing interesting happened this week - I'm still working almost all day every day, but I'm kinda getting used to it. Hopefully, it'll change in a week or so, because it's not that fun to not have time to do anything…
My new logging system really helps me stay sane right now. Usually, I psyche myself up a lot during intense work periods (or anything with a high stress load), because it feels like I’m doing something for hours without a break. But actually, most of that time is just me being annoyed by the fact that I have to do so many things. So, looking at my stats gives me a more realistic picture of how…
I'm 100% in work mode right now, and I'll get back to emails as soon as I can! Work sucks - especially when it's just a bunch of endless tasks and you can't see the finish line. I hate this, but you gotta do what you gotta do.
sum 30 logs / 58h44m logged time / 01h57m avg session [ A ] 30h22m |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| [ C ] 13h47m |||||||||||||||||||||| [ H ] 04h00m |||||| [ W ] 10h35m ||||||||||||||||| 250525 : H RUN 00h40m 5k morning run! so nice! 250525 : A PLN 01h10m Website cleanup, more readable link section 250525 : A PLN 00h45m Weeknote, bookshelf 250524 : A PLN 02h14m Logging system -…
It’s been almost a week since the previous post, and during this time I’ve been working on a new version of my logging system. I wrote a big post about how it works - so check it out if you're interested. As for me - I’m going to get back to real life and spend some time running, eating, working, and doing all the things I’ve been neglecting because of this new obsession! Definitely need some time…
Disclaimer: It's not a documentation of any kind, I have no idea how to write documentation correctly. It's just a bunch of chaotic notes on how and why I created this logging system, how I use it, and what statistics I'm interested in gathering from all the collected data. Intro As I promised earlier, here's a quick explanation of my new logging system. Technically it's the 3rd iteration - the…
After finishing work on my logging system and dashboard this morning, I accidentally found these two amazing things while surfing through the webring : Log by Josh Færeld by Mika Both are CLI utilities for logging and time tracking. They’re a little different, but very close to what I had in mind when I decided to make my own script. The problem is, I’m 100% not ready to build something that…
Spent another 6 hours tinkering with the homepage, trying to find the best-looking layout possible - or at least one that makes sense. I like how it turned out in the end, but I’ll probably tweak it a bit more later - it’s good for now though. Added a few more metrics to the dashboards, structured everything, and made a separate class for icons to invert color depending on the theme. Blasted…
Reading: Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami (2002) Albums played: Softscars by Yeule (2023) Matangi by M.I.A. (2013) Movies watched: Happyend by Neo Sora (2024) Oh wow, look at that! The first weekly generated data - it works! (This thing at the top is inserted by a script when I create a new weeknote - it pulls all the logs from the last 7 days.) There are very few things logged because it's…
A working version of the new logging system is ready. Still need to polish a few things and think more about scalability, but overall it already works well! My neck and spine hurt after 7 hours in front of the screen though - no idea how IT guys live like this, haha.
Next week my new job starts, so while I still have some free time, I decided to finish my May-website-revamp by creating an automated dashboard for the homepage! It’s a pretty big project, though I’ve already implemented some parts of it. The funny thing about working on this website is: whenever I get an idea - no matter how difficult - I can’t do anything else until I implement it, at least…
Just added a new script that resizes, compresses, and dithers all images and thumbnails! Now I can simply drop pictures into the assets folder and deploy. The hard part was finding all the original files, since I used to delete them and only keep the dithered versions. If anything displays incorrectly, try clearing your cookies and site data.
After automating some stuff with scripts, I had a few more ideas I want to implement here: Automatic image dithering before building the site. Right now, I do it manually each time I add images, and it's a pain in the ass. Creating a backup file after building the site and uploading it. Some kind of template for weeknotes - it would be easier to have a foundation when I start writing. Maybe a…
Decided to run on my street instead of the stadium today. It’s different - elevation changes, views, feels more dynamic, though a bit harder. Found a route that’s exactly 5 km from my home and back - that’s nice.
SSH works great too. It literally took me two hours to get it working somehow on Windows - here, I set it up in 30 minutes, and it does so much cool shit. I love it! Should’ve done this a long time ago. plantay@fedora:~/plantayme$ plndep Date in navbar updated to May 14 Building site... Checking all internal links with anchors. Successfully checked 0 internal link(s) with anchors. Creating 46…
Also, I finally added an automatic date update in the navbar!! It's so fucking great to just build the website and never have to worry about updating the navbar again!
The RSS and Atom feeds broke after adding new sections btw! Everything is working again now, but for those who used my rss.xml feed - it no longer exists. You can now use Atom instead; there are 3 feeds: full , weblog only , and microblog only . Sorry for the inconvenience!
What a great week - so much done! There were just a few work tasks, so I spent a lot of time tinkering with the site, reading, walking, and repotting plants. The weather was also wonderful - a couple of sunny days to enjoy the upcoming summer and a couple of rainy ones to enjoy sitting at home and nerding out about things. Love the balance. This week, I tried using SSH for the first time - great…
Also, I finally gave up on using Windows for website maintenance. I tried using SSH for deploying the site, and my experience on Windows was horrible. I updated everything on my Fedora laptop - it’s so smooth and cool. Really excited to write a couple of scripts to automate a bunch of things; I’ve wanted to do that for a very long time.
I wasn’t sure about adding a microblog section of any kind, since I use the weblog for literally everything. But lately, I’ve had a feeling that I’m not writing down a lot of thoughts there simply because they’re too short to bother with - coming up with a post title, description, all that stuff. Maybe this little thing will help with that problem - I don’t know yet, so why not find out?
I’ve been thinking about moving all my videos from Youtube to this site for a long time, and finally - it’s done! From now on, you can find all of them in the videos section in the nav-bar. It’s still a work in progress, and I have a few problems to solve, but honestly, it already looks exactly how I imagined. Can’t believe I pulled it off in just one day! And no, the reason isn’t even my usual…
Okay, it's not that ugly - only because I fixed it this morning. I was too embarrassed to show it here before. Right now it looks okay-ish, but there's definitely a lot of stuff for me to work on in the future. Maybe when it grows a little, it'll look better. I'll post some pics in a few months. In general, I really enjoyed the experience. It was fun doing some small-scale plant-tinkering with…
I got annoyed by the total size of my website, so I finally decided to optimize it a little bit. The main problem was that a few pics and gifs weighed 10 times more than everything else combined. I switched gifs to pics and dithered everything else, so now the website weighs about 2 MB instead of 500 MB. These changes probably caused some posts to reappear in RSS feeds - sorry about that! But now…
Why do we like the things we like? It's probably a huge mix of reasons - like the environment you grow up in, the people who surround you, and other stuff like that - but it still feels so weird. Over the past couple of days, I’ve been walking through the forest along the creek, searching for new kinds of moss and different terrarium plants that can grow in such a humid environment. I enjoyed it…
First of all, I’ve just finished reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami - so if anyone wants to discuss it, you can email me at plantay at proton dot me. I have mixed feelings about it, because usually I really don’t like magical realism (e.g. One Hundred Years of Solitude - maybe it’s time to read it again), but for some reason I find it captivating in Murakami’s novels. Still,…
It’s been about a month of workouts and running almost 5–6 days a week - I feel great, and maybe even a little proud, since consistency is not exactly my strongest trait. There's been some progress with pull-ups. I’ve been doing a lot of negative pull-ups to improve my technique, and it seems to be working - I'm doing regular ones more cleanly now. Also, I think this is the first time in my life…
For the last 2 weeks it’s been raining a lot, so I haven’t done anything interesting to write about - that’s why I skipped last (14th) weeknote. The situation is still the same, but I decided to write at least a few updates to keep myself busy. Basically, my main activities during this period were: working, running & doing workouts, tinkering with plants, and watching A LOT of movies. --- The…
I have been focusing on diet and physical activity recently - it's one of my yearly goals - and I thought that spring is the best time to try to establish some kind of routine. Considering my prior experience, I know that I definitely need to make the routine as simple as possible because the more steps and rules there are to follow, the lower the chance that I'll stick to it for a long time. For…
I'm completely off schedule with weeknotes now, but I finally finished my work transition and hopefully will have a lot of free time from now on. As I wrote in the previous note, it’s been hard to keep up with all my habits and routines over the last three weeks, so I have big plans for April! The weather seems to be changing, and I think that in a week or two, it will be possible to start hiking…
Starting with not-so-good news this time: I sat in front of the computer for 9–11 hours a day this week, despite my goal to keep it around 5–6 hours max. The main reason is my sudden decision to change jobs, which led to the necessity of working three jobs in parallel for basically the entire month. To my surprise, it doesn’t suck - I was sure it would - but spending so much time on the computer…
I made a few site tweaks this week: Added a separate disclosure element for random lists and pages on the homepage. I think this will make the site cleaner and easier to navigate, especially if I add more pages over time. For now, I’ve moved favourites , tools , quotes , and guitar tunes there. I’m always making lists for everything, so this is definitely going to be useful! Grouped posts by…
Spring Came So Fast! I was hoping that winter would last as long as possible, but I'm so happy to see my plants growing twice as fast. And honestly, I’m happy to see the sun myself too - at least while it's not too hot outside. Anyway, some things have changed over the past week that I really want to share here: A couple of weeks ago, I caught myself being annoyed with everything and realized that…
Not every song is suitable to play with just one guitar and voice. Sometimes you find an amazing song that you really like, but it sounds like shit when you play it by yourself because some fundamental parts were in the rhythm section - drums or bass - and you can't replicate them. Sometimes you can imitate it with guitar, but that’s more of an exception, and it usually ends up sounding too busy…
This week was full of emotions, and it's kinda cool considering I had a very flat lifestyle for a while, but damn, I’m so tired! I just want to sleep for a few days and do absolutely nothing. Maybe it’s just the change of seasons or some other weather conditions. I feel heavier and slower than usual. A few days felt off - I was really annoyed, which is rare for me. Mostly because of work and…
I've decided to return VCV patch notes to the website - I think it's the most suitable place for them in the end. Originally, I wrote them for Patchstorage , and later, after creating this website, I added them to a separate page, which wasn’t the best decision. Now, with my tag system (which I really, really like), I can add any category of posts here and filter them with one click if needed, so…
The first real winter in 2 years, what a relief! It's times like this when I'm convinced I'm a northern person. Chop-some-wood-and-make-some-tea person. -20°C makes me excited, and +30°C makes me want to peel off my skin and die. It's a pity that the weather will change in a week or two. Today I woke up to an absolute dead silence . Maybe it was caused by this abnormal weather, but there were…
I often write the same things in circles until I really shove an idea into my head, so here's another round of my thoughts on boredom, screen time, and creativity. Wait, I think I haven't written those thoughts here yet - probably just in my notebook. Anyway, I wrote a lot about this topic around a year ago, but all my attempts to fix the issue failed miserably, so here's round two! The problem: I…
This whole week, I was learning motion graphics, so almost nothing else happened (which is sad because I feel like the whole week just skipped). But here's a quick rant and an amazing discovery of mine: I hate the fact that there are so few alternatives to After Effects. Don't get me wrong - it's a great program, literally a Swiss knife in this field - but god damn, it's so slow and unoptimized,…
One thing that happens to me really often - and drives me crazy - is when a cool random idea comes to mind, but it's never the right time. I can't act on it immediately, so I end up completely forgetting about it. I don’t always intend to bring these ideas to life, but it would be great to have them all in one place, waiting for me to hit a boredom state and pick one at random. To fix this, I…
This was such a lazy week, and I really enjoyed it! After a task-heavy January, I’m happy to take some free time to chill and learn a few new things. We had lots of snow this week, and the mountains look spectacular, though I mostly sat at home in front of the computer. Running was a little harder due to the weather shift - something around 12–13 km overall, which is fine, I guess. For almost the…
A few days ago, I realized that I have no visual or audio works uploaded on this website, so I’ve decided to start posting such things more often. I always delete all my projects and renders after a few months, and after a year or two, I regret it deeply. Even if they were bad, it would be cool to take a fresh look at them after some time. So, for some context: for the last 5–6 years, I’ve been…
For the past year or so, I’ve been collecting links to websites that I liked - some for their aesthetics, others for their great blogs or bookmark pages. Eventually, my web places page turned into a huge pile of different links, making it impossible to find anything. So, I decided to clean it up a little, add links to RSS feeds, and include short descriptions. I think all these pages deserve…
It was a pretty productive week in terms of work, but I feel a lot more drained than before. I think that I really need some kind of limit on everything I do because I have a tendency to dive deep and spend all my time on one thing, which leads to constant burnout. Especially if it’s related to work stuff. I’m writing this weeknote on Monday, once again, because I spent the whole weekend on…
More than half a year has passed since my post about modern web , and things haven’t gotten any better, sadly. A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon a video called "Generative AI is a Parasitic Cancer" on Freya Holmér’s YouTube channel. I’ve been thinking about this topic for a long time, but my thoughts tend to be really jagged and all over the place. This video, on the other hand, is so to the point…
Sport : ran 13km (moderate pace) Sleep : stopped drinking cofe, sleep is great Touch typing : 6/7 sessions, great results: RU - 120min, 32/32 letters, 50 WPM with 95% accuracy ENG - 120min, 20/26 letters, 40 WPM with 95% accuracy Listened : Ryan Lott - Pentaptych (2019) Watched : Another Earth (2011) by Mike Cahill | 90/100 This week was really busy, so I've delayed this weeknote for a few days. I…