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2025-03-03

5 min read

Alternatively: what I talk about when I talk about

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I’ve decided that it’s worth keeping a record of how I experience and think at certain points in time. I like to think that I have a good memory, especially in social situations, but I frequently realize that my memories can be very spotty and also biased. Especially now that things like deepfakes exist and we’re losing ownership over digital media1, it’ll be interesting to look back and remember how I perceived the world.

Things I’ve been working on

For Quartz, I fixated on two things: Password on Quartz via client encryption with Staticryptapex and abc js plugin(ish)apex. Neither are 100% polished, and they both took a LOT of Perplexity queries, but I’m just glad they’re working. It was nice to think about the architecture and setup behind Quartz that would need tweaking to get these two things working.

For Spotify stuff, I made a neat modification of the now-playing box 2 to make it show 5 songs, because I was really frustrated that the other guides on GitHub required Firebase, and I have no idea how Firebase works. And it wasn’t working. But after even more Perplexity prompts, I made my other single-song widget into what I wanted! ACTUAL guide to a now playing widgetapex 🤩 I think I’ll formalize the guide as a separate git repo (forking the original for credit, I guess 😪) and then try my best to make it get a ton of stars, haha.

Spotify|400

I’ve also been trying to ramp up a homelab! It’s going slowly. I have a Raspberry Pi 4B which I’ve been using as a “practice” server since it’s got a pretty low power draw, and honestly, I’m not even sure what I want to do with a server right now. It’s nice to have free time (and money) to spend on stuff like this. Again, Perplexity has been very helpful here.

In general, this month I spent a lot of time putting together my own spin on things that other people have already made.

It’s okay to use GPTs for things that you don’t really care about

I never really enjoyed web development. It’s frustrating when you have an idea and lack the skills to execute it. But I also recognize that I do not have the desire to actually learn the concepts at this point in time. After all, time is a very valuable resource!

Aggressively time-tracking

Inspired by a friend that also has a blog, I started tracking how I spend my time every day. I found this video: Life tracking setup for 2024 goals + habits - Jennifer | unhinged life tracking and started using an app called Toggl Track, which is something meant for freelancers but works great for life tracking.

It’s nice to know where my time is going, but I’m definitely at the stage where I need to set some concrete goals based on the data.

Social media addiction

I’m always very back and forth on my social media usage 3 and for the last month I’ve been pretty consistently off the apps. Maybe? It’s easy to think positively when looking back but I’m sure I’ve had some bad days too. One thing I realized is that I’ll find a way to scroll (“doomscrolling”, if you will) on anything. For example, I deleted every traditional social media off my phone, and developed a habit of scrolling my GitHub feed 🤦‍♀️ Breaking a habit is tough for sure.

What you dislike in others is a reflection of traits that you dislike in yourself

… is what I read somewhere once.

Fitness

I’m going on vacation soon, so I got back onto the fitness grind. As a short term goal, I’m trying to make lifting a part of my routine (2x a week for now). As a long term goal, I found a nice half marathon training plan online and started following it. I hope my time improves! I’ve read the Murakami running book 4, and some random Princeton Review college essays book 5, and I’m just biased: I believe that runners truly have the strongest mentality.

Music

Footnotes

  1. Amazon has revised the text when purchasing a Kindle e-book on its online store. You do not own the book you bought but are licensing it. It used to say “By clicking on above button, you agree to Amazon’s Kindle Store Terms of Use.” However, the text in the USA has been changed to “By placing your order, you’re purchasing a license to the content and agree to the Kindle Store Terms of Use.” 💬 Good e-Reader, accessed 2025-03-03 ↩

  2. np.sandbox.eilleeenz.com/api/spotifyapex ↩

  3. How to get over a social media addiction | Eilleen’s e-Notebookapex ↩

  4. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami | Goodreads ↩

  5. College Essays That Made a Difference, 6th Edition by The Princeton Review | Goodreads, or maybe some other older edition? I don’t remember. ↩

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