Optional

A friend asked me about how I manage personal projects. Stuff like learning skills and building small apps. I don't have all the answers. But I did start out struggling with this a lot and have since reached a point where I do have more peace of mind and am happier with how I'm managing my efforts.

Read more...

This is a review in the form of fan fiction. Click here for context.

Witch: What do you think of my videos? Ouroboros: I like that on some platforms these videos automatically loop. Because of their density they are highly rewatchable.

Witch: What do you think of my videos? Mermaid: When I am caught in a cycle of scrolling through feeds I am delighted to find your videos in between them. On the surface they seem like any other quick and easy-to-consume content, but there's much more going on below.

Read more...

Update 09/2024: Yes.

People over on Mastodon are arguing that web search has gotten worse. They are disappointed in Google and DuckDuckGo claiming that “you can't find anything anymore”. And that feels correct, doesn't it? Google in the past year has gotten exponentially worse. Or was it web search in generally that got just gradually worse in the past 10 years? What are we even talking about? I can't find good vegan recipes on the web and someone has to be responsible!

Read more...

I recently set up the self-hosted podcasting solution Castopod. Here's a quick rundown. It's closely based on official instructions though.

Read more...

Twemoji in Obsidian

I've spent literal YEARS trying to change the way Obsidian renders Emoji, from the hideous Windows Emoji to the beautiful Twemoji. But this isn't a recipe, so let's get right to it!

Read more...

There's a new blog on this instance called OptionalBooks where I share reviews of the books I'm reading.

Read more...

When playing Pen and Paper games I highly recommend the use of “Calibration Tools”. These are more commonly known under the name “Safety Tools”, but since they enable more than just “safe” play, I prefer “Calibration Tools”. These tools take the form of additional rules and/or processes that formalise the process of finding common ground on what stories we want to tell at the table.

Read more...

This is to tell you that there'll only be bad blog posts from now on. “So nothing changes?“—Shut up! But… yeah.

Read more...

You're learning to play darts. You don't care about the actual rules, but just want to consistently hit the bullseye. You do a couple of throws, all somewhere around “okay”. Finally, you hit the bullseye! You try to remember exactly what it was that enabled you to hit it… You had your right foot in front! You try again, right foot out front. You hit the edge of the board. Left foot, same result.

Read more...

A woman and a robot reading a document TL;DR: I used chatGPT in some form of Socratic dialogue to aid in understanding a text I was reading. Transcript

Yes, AI is over-hyped and not actually (yet) capable of what many people claim it can do—or what people are already using it for. The best advice I've heard goes “Treat it like a younger version of yourself or an assistant. Let it do busy-work which you could also do yourself and don't trust it blindly.”

Read more...