I've saved a link to more or less every thought-provoking article I've read since the last 12 years (first in Evernote, and now Obsidian). I have two notes, one "links", the other "article notes", that's just a bare minimum note-taking system for stuff I read on the web. Both notes are huge, and undoubtedly contain many tidbits of advice, perception shifting ideas, or "subjectivity merges" (https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/books-are-subjectivity-me...).
One of my project ideas now that has been building in my mind is, 12 years on, to go back and re-read and re-evaluate many of these links, and do a short write-up on how I've been influence by this article or any explicit choices that I've made in my life that could likely be attributed to it. I think this would be fascinating from a psychological/neurological POV but also a really cool chance to reflect on how I've changed/grown as a person.
Great article, and this resonates a lot with how I've felt lately. I'm trying to include at least one "creative" task each day in my to-dos, because I notice I feel much much better if I have a multidisciplinary day--some programming, some writing, some DIY projects, some new cooking. If I run out of steam for one thing, oftentimes I still have energy to put into other types of tasks, and even feel rejuvenated afterwards. These things can be small (like learning a new skating drill or a small home improvement project), but the act of creating something physical regularly feels really good to me day after day.
They're nice to be able to change up your position during the course of the day, but regardless of what you do, it's bad for your body to be in the same position for several in a row. You can throw some money at the problem, but having discipline to get up and have a quick break every 30 minutes will take you much further than a standing desk will IME.
Really cool angle. I'm curious how Youtube ranks on the amount of human knowledge or described experience compared to the whole (publically available) web. It's got to be pretty substantial.
A personal journaling web app that records my voice, sends it to a speech-to-text API, then sends that text to ChatGPT to rewrite it in a style of my choice (bulleted list, casual, professional, etc). Then saves that as a markdown file for viewing in the same web app. Pretty easy to make and I really like journaling with my voice.
I would almost consider this a default package to use in a react application for server-side state. Any mildly complex UI will almost immediately need init/loading/error/data states, and you begin to write a wrapper that trends towards what react-query gives you. It makes it a lot easier to by default, write code that provides much better UX. The improvement there far outweighs the small amount of time it takes to learn the library and overhead it introduces.
For sure an influential engineering codex. Feels almost strange thinking about all the easy abstractions we have now for hosting, like Render or Vercel or that this was written in 2012, when web apps were much much more of a wild west in terms of accepted/shared practices.
A little, but not terribly much. Maybe it's an age thing, I'm not that old (around 40), but I don't feel weird talking to people I don't know - I quite enjoy it. In fact, I felt rather sad since the rise of smartphones, because a lot of places I use to get small talk(barber, airport, etc), everyone is busy or feigning being busy. But when people are just out enjoying the air, they are more free to chat.
The biggest thing to put aside are first impressions/biases - ie, treating people that you wouldn't normally think you'd be friends with the same. As a lot of my neighborhood are older than we are, that was a lot of people. In a way it's like coworkers, you can't pick them, but some end up being great friends.
It also helped to have a really outgoing child. She'd go riding her bike around the neighborhood, and a few people stopped by because "the little girl on the bike said I should come meet you guys."
I will say it was easier, to me, to do so when first moving in. I personally would feel weird if I'd lived somewhere a long time and never bothered to meet anyone, then started acting more social out of nowhere. But that's probably just in my head.
One of my project ideas now that has been building in my mind is, 12 years on, to go back and re-read and re-evaluate many of these links, and do a short write-up on how I've been influence by this article or any explicit choices that I've made in my life that could likely be attributed to it. I think this would be fascinating from a psychological/neurological POV but also a really cool chance to reflect on how I've changed/grown as a person.