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Plan & Reflect

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    Weeknote 2024-W30

    Gone full nerd this week. It went something like this:

    1. Saw @82mhz@oldbytes.space’s post on #OldComputerChallenge - triggered that I should do something with my old laptop.
    2. Decided to try Linux for the first time.
    3. Wiped Windows (no tears shed) and installed Linux Mint Cinnamon.
    4. Learned what CLI is - Command Line Interface - now use CLI.
    5. Learned what nano, vi, vim and emacs are - text editors accessible in the CLI - now use nano.
    6. Installed and use Taskwarrior command line task management tool.
    7. Installed and use the ImageMagick convert tool to edit images from the command line.
    8. Discovered the tildeverse.
    9. Learning what gopher and gemini are.
    10. Made a smolweb blog to learn out loud my weird and sudden smolweb, linux and command line nerdery.
    11. Can now blog from the command line.

    This has triggered a million things I want to try. I’m not a programmer or developer by trade clearly but if I need or want to do things I can generally pick the basics up pretty quick. These things sometimes become useful at work too.

    Anyway I’m a kid in a candy store right now. I am super interested in playing with the GNU Recutils plain text database management tool. Maybe I can log my vege gardening in it, hook it to a Strava API, or log my reading.

    Grabbing SOFA by its horns right now - Start Often Finish rArely / Start Often Fuck Achievements.

    Comments

    #weeknotes

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    Weeknote 2024-W28

    • 🏃‍♂️ Picking up the running again. Physio didn’t explicitly tell me I can’t run, so I did 35.2km / 2,239m for the week. Maybe a little too much vert, but hey that’s what I do. Had amazing winter weather - blue skies and snow-capped mountains. Because of the snow I’m staying in the lower elevations though I’m familiar enough with our network of trails that I can still get my vert quota while keeping it interesting.

    • 🩼 Had an ultrasound scan on my knee. They didn’t find much in the way of the expected Baker’s Cist, but noted some small happenings around the front part of my knee which gives me the occasional sharp pain on climbs. Scans have gone to the doc for review and then the physio who I see this week. Pain has subsided anyway as I continue my strengthening exercises so I’m confident that I’ll be just progressing the exercises and continue my running.

    • 💻 I added a “comments” section to posts on this website (see bottom of this post). I stumbled across David’s tool Komments. I love the simplicity of it and it is very easy to manage. At the moment I am only adding ability to comment to weeknotes, quarterly reviews and my bigger running recaps as I feel they would potentially be the places where people may want to ask questions or connect on. All my posts are cross-posted to Mastodon so there is that option to converse as well.

    • 💻 Made a Postroll page. Now that Junited has ended this will be a nice place to dump worthy readings I stumble across.

    • 🏢 At work, finished green belt six sigma training. Now just have to do the online exams. Once I’ve done the green belt exam I can do a green belt project and submit data and slides to get proper certification. I have a project in the pipeline which I will likely use for this as I am wrapping up a couple now. Although they were process improvement projects, the application of six sigma was a bit light. Will be good to tighten it up a bit in this next one.

    • 📚 Finished reading Revenge by James Patterson. ⭐⭐⭐

    Perfect winter running conditions:

    Comments

    #weeknotes

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    Quarterly Review 2024-Q2

    Pretty meh in terms of health, but caught up with friends and family, found some new interests, and kept plugging on.

    • 😷 Got COVID for the first time at the end of March. The effects carried on for a couple months. I wrote about it on the 25th April, headaches carried on for another month after that - almost like I was always hungover. I’ve finally kicked it… though…
    • 🩼 My knees have been playing up. All the running with not enough body maintenance has finally caught up. I’ve been seeing the physio, been given exercises, and have just started to run again with some promising results.
    • 🏃‍♂️ With COVID and shyte knees, my running took a back seat. Half way through the year, it’s looking like my streak might take a hit. That’s ok. This is my recorded stats since 2010: 2016 was a fractured foot. 2019 was when I moved to New Zealand, closer to the mountains, and when I started going a bit bonkers with vert.
    • 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 After Dad and Ruth’s visit, Soph and the fam came. That was fun.
    • 🍻 Adz and Lou visited for their 10-year wedding anniversary. Perks of living in a holiday destination!
    • 💲 My Allocate Smartly trading system made 2.06% for the quarter, and a 7.77% annualised return to date. Been running 11 months now. I’ll contemplate the continuation of this. 12-month term deposit rates are currently around 5.9%, which is below what I’m making but I’m carrying risk. Here’s my accumulated equity curve (Hatch) tracked against the SPX and AS system I use.
    • 🌱 In the garden, as winter approached, I planted garlic (May 18) and broad beans, composted all the summer crops, mulched. Pruned the fruit trees the week of shortest day.
    • 💻 I found the fediverse and created a blog and website. I attribute this to my COVID and injury which freed up 10-20 hours a week of what would normally be running. I do this… switch to nerd-mode when I can’t run. I am having a blast, reminded of the fun I had back around 2000 when I tinkered with websites and mIRC scripts, even if I’ve tried and failed a few setups. I have found a community of very creative and positive people whom fill my RSS feed with joy. RSS is new to me too. I think I missed the worst of social media, being off Facebook and Instagram for a few years, and completely missing Twitter. Mastodon has been my new social and fedi-gateway.
    • 🏠 Prepared my spare room for Airbnb. My housemate left, so I have decided to give Airbnb a go. I swapped the study for the spare room so the room will be more private at the front of the house. Part of the prep was installing shelving in the wardrobe. Was fun getting out the circular saw again. I’m almost ready to advertise, just waiting on a lockbox to be delivered and need to do some minor prep work.
    • 📚 Read a lot of Junited posts. Really appreciate @birming@mastodon.world for kicking this off. I gave it a stab but dwindled off towards the end of the month. I picked a theme of location/places, which I found a little hard to maintain. Still, the posts I found were great reads.
    • 📚 Read Data Grab by Ulises A. Mejias and Nick Couldry ⭐⭐⭐
    • 📚 Read The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday ⭐⭐⭐
    • 📚 Read Cuddy by Benjamin Myers ⭐⭐⭐
    • 📺 Watched a couple of screenings at the International Permaculture Festival of Ideas. Inspiring stuff.
    • 📺 Watched The Bear (Season 2) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Amazing show. Sheesh its intense.

    Comments

    #PlanAndReflect #QuarterlyReview

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    Weeknote 2024-W24

    • 🏃‍♂️ Went to the physio and confirmed I’ve got runner’s knees. No surprise, but good to put a name to it. To be specific, it is patellofemoral pain syndrome. Knees were strapped up for 3 days and I’ve got some light exercises to work on my vastus medialis (inner quads). I will see the physio again on Wednesday. Looking forward to implementing a long-term programme of strengthening exercises. It’s definitely something that’s been missing. Hoping to be running again soon.

    • ❤️‍🩹 Since I got COVID on 26 March, and these injuries popping up I have been putting on a little weight. I have wiggle-room, but I am a bit concerned I don’t have a handle on it. At 185cm (6'1") I find my sweet spot around 77kg (170lbs). Lately I’ve been hovering around 81kg so there’s a bit of work to do.

    • ☕ Limiting my coffee to two cups a day is going well. Tracked it while I was at it. I’ll try and throw in more single-cup days.

      • 2024-06-10 06:30 aeropress
      • 2024-06-10 09:00 instant
      • 2024-06-11 07:30 stovetop
      • 2024-06-12 06:25 z servo
      • 2024-06-12 10:00 instant
      • 2024-06-13 06:31 stovetop
      • 2024-06-13 11:40 stovetop
      • 2024-06-14 07:05 aeropress
      • 2024-06-14 10:05 aeropress
      • 2024-06-15 08:43 stovetop
      • 2024-06-15 12:39 cafe
      • 2024-06-16 10:32 stovetop

    • 💻 Played around with the dark mode colours in my website’s CSS. I’ve always liked green text on a dark background. I haven’t played with the light mode much yet, but when I get the time I’m thinking of going down the path of an oldschool yellow notepad coloured theme.

    • 📚 Been reading a lot of Junited blogs recommended by folk on Mastodon. There’s been some crackers and I’ve been updating my RSS feed accordingly, which is forming up nicely. That said, I haven’t been reading much in the way of physical books lately. I pick up The Data Storyteller’s Handbook by Kat Greenbook every now and again but it’s not drawing me in much.

    • 🏢 At work we have kicked off six sigma green belt training. It’s great to be going through this in some formal (online) classes. It is pretty fast paced and with topics like statistical analysis it requires a bit of brain power to stay on top of it. I might do some posts on certain topics to help me retain the knowledge.

    • 🌱 Things have well and truly slowed down in the garden with the colder weather rolling through. I am still harvesting plenty of rocket, silverbeet and carrot. The garlic is starting to show itself, and I’ve mulched the garlic and broad beans. The winter solstice (shortest day) is this Friday so I need to get my fruit trees pruned (and a couple more planted).

    Broad beans mulched

    #weeknotes

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    Weeknote 2024-22

    • 🏃‍♂️ Ran 45.4km/2,651m - Getting close to my sweet spot again. Even threw in a grinding 2min-on/ 1min-off hill session. Got back into my scrub bashing habits too. Gotta be careful with my knees. They’ve seen better days.

    • 💻 Learnt how to create maps and elevation profiles with my gpx files. Maps are exported to html so I can embed in my notes/posts.

    • 💻 Satisfied with micro.blog as my webspace. It’s just what I was after - easy posting from mobile and PC, seamless cross-posting to Mastodon, and some nice looking styling templates for the website. I can pull my long-posts (not short-posts?) back into Obsidian using the RSS Reader plugin. Looks like there’s a micro.publish plugin that goes the other direction, posting to micro.blog from Obsidian. I’ll look at this later.

    • 📅📈 Attended a trading webinar by Society of Technical Analysts of New Zealand (STANZ). The topic was on Elliot Waves, a form of technical analysis I find interesting but very hard to put into practice.

    • 📅 Went to Luma Southern Light Project. First time since 2019. Was ok but not really my thing.

    • 📚 Finished reading Data Grab (2024) by Ulises A. Mejias and Nick Couldry ⭐⭐⭐. Very well researched book. A good snapshot of the state of data ownership, but found the ways forward aimed at more involved activists and developers rather than the average Joe.

    Forward Focus

    • Monday - King’s birthday public holiday. Garden time.
    • Adz visiting on Friday 🍻
    • Junited 2024 is underway which will give me some nice reading material.
    • Inspired by @CodeMacLife’s WeBlogPomo reflection post I’m going to try scaling back the coffee (5 a day is not good right?).
    • Go to bed earlier.
    • Continue my early starts.
    • Ride to work.

    #weeknotes

    Tussocky terrain with rocky outcrops on the hill above. Red and blue lights illuminated on trees with pond reflection. Green and blue lights illuminated on trees above a circular screen showing a moon and other visual effects. Colours being projected through a smoke machine giving the affect of a low cloud cover. Spheres of red light projected from a pond shining in the trees above.
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    Weeknote 2024-21

    👨‍👩‍👧‍👧 S and her fam visited. Was fun being host and spending more time with my niece especially, who is a happy little camper at 7 months old. Highlight was completing a 8km/370m Mt Crichton loop hike resulting in a M falling asleep in the carrier strapped to me.

    🏃‍♂️ Ran 31.3km/1,849m - Continue to ramp up the running post Covid. Bit more vert this week. Although I run solo most of the time, it is always social running around the hills here. Ran into a couple locals, J, who I’ve met before, and another who had used one of my Strava gpx files to map out an FKT route they subsequently knocked off. Probably got another running buddy for summer. They were doing “vert day” knocking off as much vert in 24 hours they could muster. Looking at Strava looks like they got upwards of 6,000m. Solid effort.

    💻 Trying micro.blog for the first time. I am over the GitHub deployments sporadically breaking on Vercel and Jekyll so I’m going to try something easier. I’ll be sacrificing posting from Obsidian but I may be able to reverse this by pulling my micro.blog posts back into Obsidian via the RSS plugins.

    💻 Started coding again, installing python and the Spyder IDE. Toying with my old 3D gpx plotting scripts.

    🥕 Harvesting carrots, beets, rocket, spinach, silverbeet.

    🌱 Planted garlic.

    🌱 Removed more spent summer crops. Adding compost.

    🚴 Walked and rode more this week as I lent my car to S for their visit. Enjoyed sunsets and sunrises more because of it.

    🏢 Projects at work are ramping up but I’m enjoying the pressure.

    🍿 Watched Late Night with the Devil (2023) and Asphalt City (2023). Both fantastic.

    📚 Continue to read Data Grab (2024) by Nick Couldry and Ulises A. Mejias.

    #weeknotes

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    Quarterly Review 2024-Q1

    Approaching Mt Griffin

    Heading towards Lake Adelaide during “A real NZ mountain marathon”

    Onion harvest

    Approaching Ben Lomond from the front

    Chillin on Mt Larkins, looking over the ridge to Mt Alaska

    #PlanAndReflect #QuarterlyReview