Excursions

Derek Sivers wrote a wonderful piece on the benefits he has realized via his diaries and journals. He talks about why he likes keeping his daily diary.

We so often make big decisions in life based on predictions of how we think we’ll feel in the future, or what we’ll want. Your past self is your best indicator of how you actually felt in similar situations. So it helps to have an accurate picture of your past.

It was especially fascinating looking at the list of topics he keeps a journal about. A great, great inspiration for any one looking out for what to journal about. He puts down a prime example.

I especially like my “Regrets” journal. Whenever I do something I regret, I write it down there, noting why I regret it, what I wish I would have done instead, and how I hope to prevent this in the future.

Derek has given me so much to ponder on. I have bookmarked this, I may reference this every time I question my resolve to journal more. Even outside of a journal, I think this is a great suggestion to write everything.

Ask yourself questions, then question your answers.

To be frank, it was when I read his account that I got to know that diary and journal are not the same. Apparently, diary is for an account of one’s daily activities while journal is for more comprehensive thoughts on specific topics. Some may say that’s minutiae, but it’s good to know.

I intend to stop publishing the weekly digest from this week onward, at least in its current form. It was turning out to be an effort against a post I wasn’t going for initially.

Surprisingly (or not may be), I was dearly missing the system-wide emojis from Mac as I switched to Windows — before I realized, of course, they are available. I need to spend some time finding everything about the platform I have decided to move to now.

I understand the argument of this GDPR article on Verge, but, as a developer, I also believe that the data these companies hold on you is very complicated to be presented in any form which isn’t a bit messy. You’ll need a reference to parse the data, which should be acceptable.

What do you do with your old electronic devices? I find this decision especially tricky with laptops and tablets. They may be unusable for me, but I know for a fact that there would be a section that will find these to be useful.

I never like to sell them — for some reason, the trade makes me uncomfortable. I am seriously considering donating them to someone less fortunate.

I am making conscious efforts to avoid the fillers in my writing, and whenever possible in my talking too. I have realised I use them a lot and the prose sounds significantly clearer without them.

None of unnecessary “I think”, “so”, “I guess” etc going ahead.

It’s been a year today since I became part of the micro.blog community. It was a fascinating year of finding the lost love for writing and of learning loads from the wonderful people here. I thought I would get a page which I can look at for flashback. Hence, on this day.

Around a year ago, I got enthralled by the IndieWeb principles and started experimenting with them on my website. Exactly a year ago today, I had started contributing on the Micro.blog platform. And it has been a very productive year writing-wise since then.

I have expressed myself a lot more in the past year. I have thought a lot clearer, a lot better as a result. It is all thanks to the wonderful interactions on the platform.

What it also means is that I have a year worth of posts to look back upon. And I thought what better way to do so than getting the On This Day page added to my blog. I have done that. It presents how the journey started - if nothing else I myself can follow the thoughts along as they evolved.

Will it stick in this same form? May be not. I may experiment a bit on how I see this feature. But I have got the base working now for my blot-based blog.

PS: This feature is based on the wonderful project Micro Memories by Jonathan LaCour for the micro.blog hosted blogs. I have just customized and simplified it as per my needs.

I see a lot of people exploring wiki, especially TiddlyWiki, as a way to capture thoughts these days. There must be some fun and efficiency in it for so many folks to enjoy it. I’m tempted to experiment a bit with it. But I am worried I may be sucked in for another project.

Apparently, phones with foldable displays are all the rage among OEMs and tech media. I however can’t think of any practical usecase for an interface of this kind. When, how and for whom will this be useful?