I like lists

A random list of things I like, April 2023 edition

Here it is, in no particular order.

  • Mechanical keyboards
  • World peace
  • Taking photos
  • Drawing
  • Writing
  • Reading (fiction or non-fiction)
  • Video games
  • Music (listening, possibly creating some day1Not quite a bucket list item, but close)
  • Singing, specifically, like Bob Dylan. I do a decent Bob Dylan.
  • Chocolate chip cookies
  • Pizza
  • Making things
  • Getting sprayed with cool water on a very hot summer day
  • Being alone with my thoughts on a run
  • Quiet places
  • Bouncy things, like trampolines
  • Battlebots2What can I say? It’s fun watching 250 pound robots tear each other apart.
  • Roller coasters
  • Bright colours
  • Baseball caps
  • The accents of YouTubers Tom Scott and Mark Brown (both British)
  • Cats3The furry creatures, not the musical
  • Other things that may come to me later

10 light blog post topics

Once again, I consulted my favourite AI after the Master Control Program in TRON, ChatGPT, for 10 light blog topic ideas.

Rather than spread them out over 10 separate posts, I’m going to include all of them conveniently right here!

First, the topics suggested by ChatGPT:

  1. “5 easy DIY home decor ideas”
  2. “10 fun outdoor activities for families”
  3. “Healthy meal prep ideas for the week”
  4. “7 ways to boost your productivity at work”
  5. “A beginner’s guide to mindfulness meditation”
  6. “The benefits of practising gratitude daily”
  7. “How to create a successful morning routine”
  8. “The best books to read for personal growth”
  9. “Budget-friendly date night ideas”
  10. “The importance of self-care and ways to do it”.

And all 10 topics covered below, squashed into this one entry for your convenience and/or reading pleasure:

5 Easy DIY Home Decor Ideas

  1. Don’t just put your kids’ “interesting” drawings on the fridge, paper all the walls of your house with them. You may need more productive kids or many more kids to really make this idea shine.
  2. Take the plastic off your furniture. It’s time.
  3. Get rid of your pets. They shed all over everything. Fish are OK.
  4. Win the lottery and hire a professional interior decorator because let’s face it, you probably don’t know what you’re doing.
  5. Paint the walls with optical illusions that make it look like each room of your home is actually just a shabby corner of some grand palace.

10 Fun Outdoor Activities For Families

  1. Try to get the dog in the car
  2. Try to get the dog out of the car
  3. Lawn darts (note: I think this might be illegal now, so maybe check first to avoid getting arrested and/or having your kids taken away by the child welfare people)
  4. Jumping in puddles in the rain. Works best if you are under six years old.
  5. Count the ants at your picnic in the park
  6. Run away from the bees
  7. Go hiking around a lake, with trees and shit*
  8. Abuse nature with your off-road vehicle
  9. Visit exotic sand dunes, then relive the experience for the next week while you try to get the sand out of everything
  10. Crash your neighbour’s backyard barbecue. You’re pretty sure they like you.

* stolen from McSweeney’s

Healthy Meal Prep Ideas for the Week

  • Salad
  • A plate of raw vegetables
  • More salad
  • Tofu Surprise
  • Probably some more vegetables, maybe in soup this time. But no salt. Sodium is bad.
  • This feels like the right time for more salad
  • Eat out at that vegan place that curiously has no reviews after being open for four months

7 Ways to Boost Your Productivity at Work

  1. Hire someone better than you to do your work
  2. Put in long, grinding, soul-destroying hours
  3. Sharpen pencils on your own time
  4. Rig up one of those little dipping bird things to peck at your keyboard
  5. Get ChatGPT to do all of your programming, writing or email. Basically, anything that you would type out as part of your job.
  6. Encourage management to hire lousy slobs to make you look better in comparison
  7. Redefine your role to best suit your limited skill set

A Beginner’s Guide to Mindfulness Meditation

  • Remember to breathe, or you might pass out or maybe even die
  • Ignore the neighbours screaming and throwing things upstairs–it’s all part of finding inner peace
  • If your yoga position is causing excruciating pain, just remember: The pain is all in your mind

The Benefits of Practising Gratitude Daily

Gosh, this one is tough. I mean, I guess if you’re grateful for something, your life doesn’t totally suck, so that’s good! And being grateful usually means you’re happy about something, so you’re not thinking about how that rat you thought was your friend still owes you a hundred bucks. What’s their deal, anyway? Also, if you’re grateful, maybe you’ll enter an elevated state of mind where you come up with some super genius idea like cold fusion that works, or how to lick climate change. I mean, it’s theoretically possible.

How To Create a Successful Morning Routine

  1. Get up while it’s still morning.
  2. Do the things you need to do.
  3. Repeat every day until the day you die.
  4. You probably don’t need to do this as a ghost or whatever.

The Best Book to Read For Personal Growth

  • Any book with “growth” in the title that is not referring to fungal growth
  • Any book with “habit” in the title that is not about nuns. Or maybe a book about nuns is exactly what you need, sister!
  • “How to Influence People Through Hypnosis and Trickery”
  • Oh wait, I was only supposed to mention one book.
  • Fine, read The Handbook of Etiquette. Sure, it was written in 1860, but that probably means it’s free now, so you save money to put toward your personal growth. And it’s bound to have some decent advice in it. What’s really changed in 163 years?

Budget Friendly Date Night Ideas

  • Have your date pay for everything.
  • Stimulating conversation at the kitchen table
  • $10 bottle of wine and a $15 tent bought from Walmart, in the backyard. Make sure the dog is inside. The house, not the tent.
  • Watching the stars from a grassy hill. You may need to move to the Australian outback for this to really work now.
  • Charades. I’m kidding, you probably want a second date. Or to finish the first one.
  • Troll people on your favourite social media site. Make it a game you play together. See who garners the most angry responses or blocks!

The Importance of Self Care and Ways to Do It

First, if you don’t brush your teeth, it’s highly unlikely someone else will do it for you. So it’s important to do stuff like that unless you have extremely close and generous friends.

Taking care of yourself is best learned through watching endless hours of self-improvement videos on YouTube. There’s too many to list, but you’ll find them. Just watch them all for a few weeks. By the end you’ll be self caring like a mofo, as the kids say.

Also, avoid donuts. I know they are delicious, but they are bad for your teeth–which you have to brush yourself–and they probably contain chemicals that cause cancer.

If you find my advice useful, please support me through my Patreon.

Organized chaos (to-do apps)

person marking check on opened book
Or I could go back to pen and paper! Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

I read an article on Medium about Todoist in which the author lamented certain issues with the app. Todoist is one of the to-do apps I tested and ultimately dropped, though reliability was never an issue for me.

However, the comments on the article happened to mention another to-do app as an alternative, a new one I’d never heard of before called Twos. It’s developed by a guy named Parker and instead of a subscription for premium features, you just buy the ones you want for a flat fee (currently $2 US each).

Now, I’d settled on Microsoft To Do, but recently started using TickTick again. I do not need to test drive another to-do app. And yet here I am, doing just that!

I’ve given myself a week to evaluate it and see how it stacks up against the others. My initial impressions are favourable, though To Do still holds the crown as prettiest to-do app.

More to come!

10 Things I Want to Learn

Stolen from Austin Kleon‘s Steal Like an Artist Journal. I mean, I had to.

The idea (and first prompt in the above-mentioned book) is simple: Write down 10 things you want to learn. Here’s the list Kleon came up with in the heady, pre-pandemic days of 2017:

Now, I love lists, so this is my bag. But I haven’t given a lot of thought to 10 things, which may not seem like a lot, but really is, so going off the top of my head, I may not have 10 right away. Here goes my initial attempt.

10 Things I Want to Learn (2023)

  1. Discipline
  2. How to create a song (with vocals) in Garage Band (or other music software)
  3. How to Stretch
  4. How to consistently draw Gum Gum People
  5. Meditation
  6. My camera’s ins and outs (Canon EOS M50)
  7. Unity (the game engine, not the concept)
  8. Blender (3D animation program)
  9. ???
  10. ???

All right, I have a list to start, and I think it’s a decent beginning, but I will need to ponder a bit and come back to round out the list.

The best and worst running conditions, 2022 edition

Previously:

The best worst running conditions: 2016 edition (April 27, 2016)

Bad weather running: the list (updated) (July 10, 2012)

Bad running weather: the list (July 13, 2011)

Due to climate change and certain incidents, I feel it’s time to update the list again. Here are the best/worst running conditions. Unlike the previous entries, I’ve numbered them from best to worst, to keep things more positive or something. For the record, only the top three are really what I’d call “good” running conditions.

  1. Overcast and light breeze. This is actually ideal conditions. It is usually never too cold or warm when the weather is like this. Temperature-wise, we’re looking at around 15C.
  2. Moderate wind. Moderate wind is fine. I have a cap that stays in place now.
  3. Warm sun. Warm is no big thing. I’m talking about 20ºC or thereabouts.
  4. Light rain. You might think light rain would be nice, but it really isn’t. You still get soaked, and in the summer there’s no real way to dress for it. And it still feels cold(ish), even in mid-July.
  5. Snow. I’ve only run in light snow a few times, and it was fun. Light snow is shallow and fluffy, so it’s easy to move through. I’m thinking a foot of snow would probably be less so.
  6. Cold rain. Cold rain means cold hands and if you wear gloves they need to be waterproof. Cold rain is never fun. Plus my nipples are weirdly sensitive to the cold now and cold rain is like torturing them. Poor little nipples. UPDATE FOR 2022: It turns out the nipples are more sensitive to moisture more than the cold, as The Nipple Issue™ returned in Summer 2022.
  7. Hard rain. This has the potential to wreak havoc with any non-waterproof items you may be carrying, and it’s hard to see if you wear glasses. I wear glasses.
  8. Extreme cold. I’ve run in sub-freezing conditions and been fine. I’m thinking Arctic tundra-type cold here.
  9. Heavy wind. The resistance means you work a lot harder to achieve the same result, and my cap has to be on tight enough to cut off circulation, so it doesn’t fly away. This is pretty rare where I run, though. And I don’t run during actual windstorms due to the very real danger of flying (tree) debris.
  10. Hot sun. When it’s hot, my body feels like a furnace, and I’m left parched as all get-out. Dry mouth and lips are yucky. By hot, I mean high 20s and up. While it still gets hot in the summer, a new contender has arrived to usurp it. Keep reading!
  11. Hard rain and heavy wind. Likeliest weather to make me wonder to myself, ‘What was I thinking?’ when running.
  12. Hot sun and heavy wind. Or “What would it be like to do a run on a windy day in the Sahara?” Heat dries you out, the wind makes it harder to run and dries you out even more. Bleah. This combination is, however, pretty rare.
  13. Hail. Getting pelted by little ice rocks is unpleasant. I’ve been caught in hail twice and did not like it either time. Still, twice since 2009 is not bad.
  14. Cyclists. I have grown to loathe anyone on a bicycle, especially since the area where I run most frequently–Burnaby Lake–forbids bicycles, but cyclists show up anyway, sometimes in packs. They tend to be either little kids who will wobble suddenly and unpredictably in front of you, or jerks who power through as fast as they can pedal, oblivious to the presence or safety of others.
  15. Dogs. See here. I’ve had a dog knock me down while running. The weather has never done this.
  16. Tree roots. See here. I’ve only tripped and fallen over a tree root while jogging at full speed once, but once was enough. Fortunately, the resurfacing of the trails at Burnaby Lake means almost all exposed roots are now gone.
  17. Hot sun/heat and high humidity. This is the new entry for 2022 (the tree root happened in 2016, but the previous version of the list was written pre-root). See how Hot sun is way up there at #10? The heat/high humidity combo is so much lower because IT IS TERRIBLE. While I don’t suffer from a parched mouth in this weather, the combo of 30C+ weather and extremely high humidity in the summer of 2022 made running a horrible slog, no matter what the time of day. It was only just less horrible, depending. And it happened for nearly the entire summer, earning its hallowed spot here.

What’s the deal with note-taking apps?

DISCLAIMER: Technically, I am talking about personal knowledge management (PKM) tools, which act like your own little personal Wikipedias, and not just plain note-taking apps. My main purpose for using a PKM is note-taking, though, and I make the rules here! Am I using a hammer instead of a screwdriver? Probably. Read on, anyway!

I love fiddling around with new stuff. It’s why I have three mice sitting on my desk (computer mice, not the living kind) and a bunch more stored away. It’s why I have more keyboards than I could ever need in five lifetimes, stuffed into drawers and scattered about my place.

And it’s why I’m a sucker for a shiny piece of new software, which leads to this post’s topic: note-taking apps.

Even if you have absolutely no interesting in note-taking apps, you probably still have one, anyway, whether it’s Notepad on Windows, the Notes app on Macs, or some built-in app on your iPhone (Notes again) or Android device. They are ubiquitous. And now, with the whole second brain1Go ahead, try looking up what a “second brain” is. Your actual brain will explode. thing being the new hotness, note-taking apps have started popping up like bunnies. Note-taking bunnies.

I noticed that after expressing some interest in technology on Medium (via my preferences), it started offering me stories on note-taking apps. I believe there are roughly a trillion of these articles on Medium, which nearly matches the number of note-taking apps themselves.

I thought to myself, “Self, you need to be more organized, somehow. For some reason. You need a note-taking app that will let you consolidate all your notes in one place, so you never need to figure out where your notes are. This future of unparalleled organization will be awesome.”

It’s a good theory. My notes were previously scattered all over. I used:

  • Paper. Actual paper, like cave people used to do
  • Drafts. An app on my iPhone that can send to other apps.
  • OneNote. I kind of stopped using it a few years ago and I’m not sure why.
  • Microsoft Word. Because I had it, so why not?
  • Apple’s Notes app on various Apple platforms. Because it’s there.
  • iA Writer. Not really built for notes, but…
  • Ulysses. See above, plus a subscription. Ew.

There’s more I’m forgetting, and this was all before the current explosion of note-taking apps. Since then I’ve tried:

  • Craft
  • Notion
  • Obsidian

And contemplated a million others, while absolutely only positively ruling out a few, like Evernote, usually due to what I deem excessive pricing.

For a time I thought I had settled on Obsidian. It supports markdown, is free, can work between Mac, PC and (somewhat) with iOS (it really wants you to use iCloud for your “vault”). On (virtual) paper, it provides everything I’d need in a note-taking app and also has all the second brain stuff, like backlinks and things.

I feel like I’m grossly under-utilizing it by not making proper use of links (back, forward or any other direction), tags and other means of keeping things organized. I mean, look at this guy wax poetic about how useful Obsidian is. It makes me want to install it again right now!

While I’m clearly not tapping into Obsidian’s potential, I am big on bullet lists, because I love lists. So now, as I think about whether to stick with Obsidian or not, I wonder: Why do I take notes? The answer is in a list. Right below!

  • Track ideas. These can be ideas for:
    • stories
    • blog posts
    • game design
    • comics
    • drawings
  • General reminders (I have moved these to actual to-do apps)
  • WIP stuff on my newsletter (five issues so far, published very intermittently)
  • Book and movie reviews (that get posted to my blog, Goodreads or elsewhere)
  • Random tips and tricks, usually associated with tech
  • Everything that doesn’t fit into the above

And Obsidian has worked reasonably well here. I’ve added plugins to expand on what it can do. Look how organized everything appears to be (I have redacted a few items, but it’s nothing scandalous, like panda porn or something, just stuff regarding the condo or other personal yet banal items):

And yet I feel like:

  • I am underutilizing Obsidian to the point where I probably could just use Notepad, for all the difference it would make
  • Maybe I don’t have the kind of personality to connect the dots, or in this case, the notes?
  • Maybe I actually don’t have a compelling reason to use backlinks and I’m overthinking things, as is my way

But it all seems so useful. There are so many articles! I want to do more! Yet I am not feeling there is a yawning chasm in my life because I have only clicked a backlink maybe once in Obsidian, and that was just to see if it worked (it did).

Anyway, have a look, there’s plenty to choose from!

It’s the second day of September, here are random thoughts

In list form, because I like lists:

  • Favorite interpretation of Apple’s September 7, 2022 “Far Out” event: Refers to pricing of new devices to be unveiled.
  • Summer 2022 early review: It’s not the heat, IT’S THE HUMIDITY AAAAAGGGGHHHHH
  • Weight loss 2022: Going way better than previous attempts in the past few years!
  • Running: Back in the groove, with potential injuries, humidity and bears being ongoing concerns
  • Cats: I kind of want a cat again, but also kind of like not having the responsibility of having a pet
  • Dogs: Why are there so many of them? Do people want kids and get dogs as kid substitutes?
  • Dog owners: Why are so many of them so bad at being dog owners? Am I living in a part of the world where people just don’t understand how dogs work?
  • Diablo 3: Why did I start playing again? WHY?
  • This list of random thoughts: Why did it evolve into a list of questions?
  • Upcoming blog posts I’m committing to right here:
    • Mac vs. PC, 2022 Edition
    • Apple Watch as running watch: The 7-year review
    • R.E.M. albums ranked (again) with mini-reviews of each
    • Maybe the same for ELO
  • Ugh, it’s only 10 a.m. and already 21C. WHY.
  • WHY
  • That’s all for now

Random things I find weird

Earrings are weird when described literally:

Punch holes into your flesh, then hang shiny metal objects from the holes.

close up photo of gold colored latched back earrings
Photo by Dima Valkov on Pexels.com

Boxing:

Two people put on gloves and punch each other repeatedly in the head and upper body. Wearing gloves magically converts this from assault to entertainment.

men doing sparring fight
Photo by Pavel Danilyuk on Pexels.com

Wiener dogs:

If you want an idea of what humans will do when genetic manipulation evolves further, consider the wiener dog.

relaxed cute dachshund dogs sleeping on cozy bed
Photo by Dominika Roseclay on Pexels.com

My Demotivation Pal

When logging into My Fitness Pal to record my food and exercise for the day, I see this under the section for food entries:

The idea that I’ve earned one whole extra calorie to burn as I see fit amuses me. I could make a list of things to do with that single, precious extra calorie:

  • Exhale
  • Blink my eyes once or maybe twice
  • Shift slightly in my chair
  • Think hard for several seconds

(After a minute or so, MFP synced with my watch and bumped the calorie burn up to something with four digits instead of one.)

Run 694: For the first time in two days, another 10K!

View from Cariboo Dam, just prior to starting the run.

It was forecast to get up to 28C today, so I opted for a mid-morning run to beat the heat. Here’s my run report in handy list form, because I like lists.

  • Good News: I ran another 10K. Yay! I can now say it’s been two days between 10K runs, instead of 988 days.
  • Less-Than-Good-News: Around the 5K mark, an upper left thigh muscle began to twinge a bit. It settled after a few km and is fine now. I blame my body for being weirdly asymmetrical. It may also not surprise you that I am also left-handed.
  • Bad News: None, really. This run felt a lot harder than Monday due to the warmer temperatures (though they were not bad), but mainly the still-high humidity. Humidity is like a superpower designed to drain all energy from your body. It works very well!
  • Fun Fact: For whatever reason, I mistype “humidity” almost every time. I didn’t this time because I was concentrating hard enough for Mavis Beacon to sit up and notice.
  • Trail update: They are putting the final touches on the trail resurfacing near the dam. Where will they resurface next? (Please please please be the trail along the athletic fields.)
  • Sensitive subject: A few years ago I had a weird issue when running if my chest got wet, whether through perspiration or precipitation–my nipples would become strangely sensitive. It almost feels like this might be making an unwelcome return. It’s both weird and annoying. So far it is only hinting. I will give it a hint to go away and see if that works.
  • Award time: I got an award in the Apple Watch Fitness app for most calories burned in a running workout, 723. I find this somewhat odd that it didn’t happen years ago. Maybe I have more calories to burn now.

Award:

Finarly I did it.

Stats:

Run 694
Average pace: 6:12/km
Location: Burnaby Lake (CW)
Start: 10:00 a.m.
Distance: 10.02 km
Time: 62:08
Weather: Sunny
Temp: 22-25ºC
Humidity: 64%
Wind: light
BPM: 150
Weight: 165.6
Total distance to date: 5085 km
Devices: Apple Watch Series 5, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation)
Shoes: Brooks Caldera 5 (198 km)

The incomplete list of things I could learn to do properly and the odds of it happening

I do some things quite well, like breathing and walking. Others I do moderately well, like avoiding donuts, and some I’ve resigned myself to never being that great at, like math. Math is hard.

But there is a group of miscellaneous things that I have attempted to become better at and, for various reasons, have failed to do so. Here’s a short list of some of these things, along with the odds that I might actually become better at them:

  • Ice skating. I am not terrible at ice skating, just a bit wobbly, especially when required to move in a not-straight line. I very rarely ice skate, though. Odds of improving: Close to zero.
  • Swimming. I have long described my swimming technique as “not drowning” and after taking aborted swimming lessons, discovered that part of the problem was having an actual fear of water, or at least water’s potential to snuff out my life in the right circumstances. I rarely go in water, though I am sometimes near it. I’d have to overcome the fear before trying lessons again. Odds of improving: Slight, but better than winning the lottery.
  • Typing. I never learned to touch type. How can someone who dreamed of becoming a writer never learn to touch type? I do not know. I even got my own typewriter as a kid. I’ve tried learning with Mavis Beacon and it did not go well. I’ve dabbled a few times since. This would clearly benefit me, yet I never seem to get enough momentum to keep pushing through. I need a magic typing pill. Or just start using dictation. In fact, I’m going to dictate the rest of this post! Odds of improving: Slim, but possible.
  • Losing weight. I am in the process of losing weight now and have actually seen some success, so I am somewhat positive that this will be a thing I can actually achieve. Odds of improving : Good.
  • Drawing. Over the last couple of years I have started to draw more, and I am seeing improvements by doing so. I have taken actual lessons on things like perspective, shading and so on, and some of those lessons have actually stuck! Odds of improving: It’s already happening, woo.

I’ve now turned auto punctuation on for the dictation, because it was doing weird things with the periods and commas. Let’s see if it works better now. So far it seems to be working better. Who knew? Computers are just so darn smart. Maybe I’ll let the computer write the next post.