Plantay's Weblog

Micro 2025-07-10 12:31

2025-07-10T12:31:12+04:00

It seems that I escaped the endless work loop, and there's more room to breathe right now, which feels weird - when you do something 24/7 for some time, it's hard to return to a normal life tempo afterwards. Feel a little anxious since I don't have to work so much right now, though I spend this time studying anyway. Also, I've been feeling sad not writing here as much as usual lately - hope I'll fix that - and fix my schedule as well. Anyways, it was a good month in terms of work and learning - I'm doing a lot better now with motion graphics and 3D.

In other news - I finally decided to get a driving license this year, so I'm spending some time reading driving rules and other technical stuff about cars. Besides that, having some spare money from a new job, I ordered myself a sim racing setup (Moza R5 with 3 pedals for now), so I can practice at home and play ETS 2, ACC, or iRacing - considering it a gift to myself after this hard month (or is it already two? I'm kinda disoriented in time and space lol).

Micro 2025-06-22 17:48

2025-06-22T17:48:42+04:00

The last couple of days I’ve been researching how cars work, since I want to make some 3D animations for my new job - and I seriously lack knowledge in this area.

First of all: cars (..planes, trains, and basically all machines) are fucking magic. Seriously, if you don’t know anything about transmission, engines, differentials - like I didn’t - go watch some videos. It’s literally mind-blowing. I have no idea how people came up with this stuff, especially considering how long ago it all started.

Second: while searching for videos about clutches, I found the Animagraffs</a> channel, and I highly recommend checking it out. There’s a bunch of amazing videos explaining how things work. And the craziest part - it’s just one guy doing everything in Blender. There are even a few videos where he explains his process (including the research stage - which is also mind-blowing), so yeah.. I’m definitely down this rabbit hole right now.

Micro 2025-06-22 17:29

2025-06-22T17:29:30+04:00

A few weeks ago, I updated my setup for video editing (well, and everything else, since it's my main machine) - and I just love it so much! I had been using a 27-inch 2K monitor for a very long time, and it worked well for me, but lately I started to feel a serious lack of space. Especially when it comes to drag’n’dropping stuff between different programs - doing that on one monitor is a nightmare.

After some consideration, I decided to get a cheap 21-inch monitor and use it in portrait orientation for all the utilities, browser stuff (especially useful for scripts), scopes, etc. I feel like 21 inches is a perfect size - it has a similar PPI to my main 27-inch monitor, and it doesn’t look bulky in the setup - just enough space to work efficiently. And the dual monitor arm - it’s SO convenient!

Hope it won’t break my table. Until then, I’m happy as hell! Here’s a pic:

Weeknote - 25W24

2025-06-16T00:00:00+00:00

Lately, I’m finding myself more and more often in situations where I can’t set my priorities and values straight anymore. Over the last year, I was testing (and later supporting) the idea that most of the time, work sucks, and people need to shift focus to real life instead of wage-slaving - since that only leads to frustration and regrets at death’s door. On the other hand, any serious life goals demand money at the end of the day - you just can’t escape this system. I don’t think the “hut in the woods” idea is a real solution (well, maybe for some people). As much as I like the idea of chopping wood and listening to country music 24/7, it’s more like escapism. It doesn’t solve any real problems - just hides them from sight.

For the last few weeks, I haven’t been writing anything here because I was working a lot, and an interesting thing happened: I kinda… like it? I’m not even sure what I feel, to be honest. There were a lot of stressful moments that I didn’t like, but I really enjoyed the problem-solving part. Because of the new job - and some adjustments I made to the other jobs - I was able to multiply my monthly income by around 3 times, which is fucking a lot. And I’m still confused about what I’m doing right now and which direction I’m choosing. My biggest concern at the moment is that I don’t really have spare time to do stuff anymore. I still have time to walk, run, go out for dinner with friends - but no more sitting four hours a day working on my website and things like that. On the other hand, I don’t need to be afraid of tomorrow, and I can afford to take care of my health - maybe even help my family in the future.

And the main idea that came into my head - the one that caused this big shift in my thinking - is that I don’t have to do stupid jobs I don’t like. I can actually affect this variable in my life. Maybe all of my frustrations were simply caused by the content I was editing - not the fact of working itself. I love cinema and art in general. I love sincere content that has real value / message / purpose / beauty in it. So, theoretically, if I find the right projects and people, maybe I’ll be able to balance the shit out? Make money, make some impact, shift the current world-slop-balance - even if it’s just 0.0001%.

I often rant here about how the internet is getting worse, media is getting dumber, values are getting cheaper, etc. But, like - I can make some kind of impact. Networking is my biggest weakness, and probably the reason why I still mostly work on shitty projects that I personally don’t like or support. Maybe right now I just need to give away some of my freedom - to get the freedom of another kind in the future? That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out lately.

I don’t like disappearing from here and not posting - it feels uncomfortable and weird. So this is just a quick update on my current situation. I’ll probably post less in the near future - right now I’m reading a bunch of books, watching some courses, and trying to enhance my skills, so I have a better shot at landing projects I actually care about. Sorry for not replying to some emails - I really have too much stuff going on in my head right now.

Hope you’re all doing well!

Weeknote - 25W22

2025-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

sum 27 logs / 63h55m logged time / 02h22m avg session

[ A ] 01h40m |
[ C ] 10h30m |||||||||||
[ H ] 07h15m ||||||||
[ W ] 44h30m ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

Nothing interesting happened this week - I'm still working almost all day every day, but I'm kinda getting used to it. Hopefully, it'll change in a week or so, because it's not that fun to not have time to do anything else. I haven't been running as much as I want to - turns out my physical state is really dependent on how much time I'm working. Sleep is worse, diet is worse too, since I don't have a lot of time to cook, but I'm trying to do a lot of exercises with rubber bands between work sessions - it really helps. I just started doing it a few days ago, but I already feel much better. You can do a lot of stuff with those things! Ran 3 or 4 km this morning - it was already hot outside, but I decided to just endure it - turned out alright.

Besides work, I wasn't doing anything cool - just watched some YouTube between tasks to cool my brain off, walked around, or ate some snacks. You can see the stats yourself - it looks crazy haha. I hope I'll be able to balance it out next week.

Read a lot about NixOS this week - the concept seems very logical and interesting, but there are a lot of mixed opinions. I’d like to try it sometime, but I already see how it could take all my time just to figure out the basics, so maybe the best thing is to stick with Fedora for a while. It works great.

After some consideration, I decided to remove the log list from weekly stats - it seems that I care too much about writing everything clearly and correctly, and it makes logging harder for me. It’s a lot more convenient if I can write everything without overthinking and not worry about forgetting to remove private info. The log list is still in my weeknote generation template, since I like to check the logs before writing my notes here - so I just delete it manually after writing a post. I think that’s the easiest way to do it for now.

I’m really looking forward to tinkering with my setup, posting some stuff, and answering emails once my work schedule becomes more manageable! I’m still thinking a lot about making an achievements page - I already have a more or less clear picture of how I want it to look and work. And the plants are growing so fast, I want to show it all here later too!

Despite this mess of an awful temporary work-life balance, I really like the summer vibes. I don’t like that it’s still hot, but the birds and greenery help a lot to stay sane. There’s something calming in early June - I like it.

Micro 2025-05-28 07:12

2025-05-28T07:12:48+04:00

My new logging system really helps me stay sane right now. Usually, I psyche myself up a lot during intense work periods (or anything with a high stress load), because it feels like I’m doing something for hours without a break. But actually, most of that time is just me being annoyed by the fact that I have to do so many things.
So, looking at my stats gives me a more realistic picture of how much time I actually spend on this and that - and that’s really helpful. I had some experience with time tracking last year (I think I wrote about it here), and it was a good one - very insightful. The only important thing is to keep it simple, quick, and consistent, so it doesn’t become a burden - just a regular habit, like brushing your teeth.

Micro 2025-05-28 07:11

2025-05-28T07:11:55+04:00

I'm 100% in work mode right now, and I'll get back to emails as soon as I can! Work sucks - especially when it's just a bunch of endless tasks and you can't see the finish line. I hate this, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

Weeknote - 25W21

2025-05-25T00:00:00+00:00

sum 30 logs / 58h44m logged time / 01h57m avg session
[ A ] 30h22m ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
[ C ] 13h47m ||||||||||||||||||||||
[ H ] 04h00m ||||||
[ W ] 10h35m |||||||||||||||||
250525 : H RUN 00h40m 5k morning run! so nice!
250525 : A PLN 01h10m Website cleanup, more readable link section
250525 : A PLN 00h45m Weeknote, bookshelf
250524 : A PLN 02h14m Logging system - all scripts updated, finished

More entries</summary>
250524 : A PLN 02h00m New post - TIME TRACKING
250524 : A GRD 00h20m Watering plants
250524 : H WLK 01h20m 5km walk with coffee, yeah!
250524 : C YTB 02h00m Watching stuff about linux / gaming
250524 : C RDG 01h00m Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami (2002)
250523 : A PLN 01h38m Logging system - added sum, man, fixed ui
250523 : A PLN 01h00m Logging system - code refactoring
250523 : A PLN 04h00m Updated website dashboards
250523 : C RDG 01h00m Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami (2002)
250522 : C MOV 03h20m The Rehearsal - Nathan Fielder (2022)
250522 : A PLN 04h00m Logging system - working CLI prototype
250522 : A GRD 01h15m Ivy cuttings repotting
250522 : C RDG 01h20m Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami (2002)
250521 : C MOV 02h00m The Mule - Clint Eastwood (2018)
250521 : H WLK 02h00m Took a short morning walk
250521 : C YTB 01h07m GL;HF Podcast
250521 : A PLN 03h45m Logging system - TUI prototype
250520 : A PLN 04h55m Logging system design
250520 : A GRD 03h20m Terrarium build, watering
250520 : C MUS 00h40m SUDS - The Great Overgrowth (2023)
250520 : C RDG 01h20m Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami (2002) </details>
Daaaaamn! I'm so happy with how this whole dashboard idea turned out - it's even better than I initially planned! I wasn't sure about adding the full list of logs here (and still am not); it's kinda weird to showcase your whole life like that on the internet. But in the end, I'm doing it for myself - to document and analyze it. Good thing I can change all those scripts at any time, so if I change my mind, I can just remove this part from the dashboard, or maybe remove only the entries and leave everything else. I'm pretty sure I'll tinker with the dashboards a little more later - I'm just glad it works anyway.
As you can see from the analytics, I spent almost the whole week doing this stuff, and now I'm a little behind on work and life in general. I like doing things in marathons - if I have a solid idea, I'll spend as much time as needed to make it work. It's just easier for me to focus on one thing that way, so it's good news that it took me only a week (well, three weeks total with all the previous versions and the whole homepage revamp).
I still have some ideas in mind about how I can utilize all the gathered data, but they're all too complicated to do immediately, so I'll postpone them for a while. A big one, which I suddenly came up with after finishing the scripts, is to make a dedicated achievements page. I've heard about "life gamification" a lot in the past few years, but I’ve never been a fan of the idea - especially considering that people use services for it. I think it's silly. But now, since I have all that data anyway, why not implement something similar here? Something like what you see in Steam - just a fixed list of 20–30 achievements based on my activities, like 1000 hours running, 100 books read, etc. I still don’t think it would be useful in any real way, but it would definitely be a fun addition to the website. And it's automated, so I don’t need to do anything manually to maintain it. I’ll think about it more.
Besides that, I have a lot of plant-related updates. A bunch of new cuttings, a lot of repotting, a new terrarium - probably should write about it in a separate post sometime soon.
Have a good week, everybody!

Micro 2025-05-24 13:01

2025-05-24T13:01:29+04:00

It’s been almost a week since the previous post, and during this time I’ve been working on a new version of my logging system. I wrote a big post</a> about how it works - so check it out if you're interested. As for me - I’m going to get back to real life and spend some time running, eating, working, and doing all the things I’ve been neglecting because of this new obsession! Definitely need some time away from the computer right now.

TRACKING TIME

2025-05-24T00:00:00+00:00

Disclaimer: It's not a documentation of any kind, I have no idea how to write documentation correctly. It's just a bunch of chaotic notes on how and why I created this logging system, how I use it, and what statistics I'm interested in gathering from all the collected data. </blockquote>
Intro</a></h1>
As I promised earlier, here's a quick explanation of my new logging system. Technically it's the 3rd iteration - the first one was a bash script that added entries into a bunch of JSON files with a different number of arguments, and it worked pretty badly - there was a lack of ways to turn it into somewhat useful statistics. After that, I made an attempt to create a TUI version of it using Python, Rich, Textual, and SQLite - I failed miserably and spent 3 days in frustration.
It was obviously too complicated for me, since I don't have any real tech background. So, for the final (hopefully) 3rd version, I decided to make it a pure CLI - it's much easier for me to maintain and fix than a TUI, and it's much more portable because it has fewer dependencies. For this version, I used Python, SQLite, and Tabulate.
Overview</a></h1>
While researching other solutions, I found a bunch of amazing trackers that inspired me to continue. Here's the main ones I used as references while creating my own tracker:

Log by Josh</a></li>
Færeld by Mika</a></li> </ul>
And here's a collection of similar tools that I found later:

Time Travelers</a></li> </ul>
As you can see, all these tools have a big difference from my initial idea - start and end timecodes for each activity. Here I want to address the first problem: I will never track exact timestamps of when I start or end doing something. Moreover, I want to have the ability to add entries retrospectively, after some time. So, I found a compromise that worked for me - instead of time frames, I added a duration property.
Of course, I want to make the system as flexible as possible, but realistically, I need to make it as easy to use as possible. Because if it's gonna be too complicated, I'll give up on it after a week. But I really want to have all this useful statistics. During the day, I write down all the things I do in my small notebook anyway, so it's easy for me to add the duration of each activity - even if it's approximate, it doesn't matter that much. Watched a movie? - 2 hours. Worked on a site the whole morning? - 3 or 4 hours. And so on.
Another compromise was to get rid of inconsistent parameters that don't translate to every log type - for example, rating (which I used for movies, books, and albums) or the km property for running. And I think it's okay too, because in this new system we're gonna have a fixed number of arguments instead, which is gonna make usage of the system much easier and more streamlined.
Arguments</a></h1>
So, here are the arguments that I settled on after a long consideration:

ID - identification number, assigned incrementally</li>
Date - log date, assigned automatically</li>
Sector - one of 4 main groups of activities: A, C, H, W</li>
Code - 3-letter code for activity (RUN, EDT, RDG, etc)</li>
Duration - time spent on activity, HHhMMm</li>
Entry - any string you want: what book you read / how many km you ran, etc</li> </ol>
I found that this list of arguments is the most effective for generating great stats, while still being minimal and easy to remember/use at the same time. Shortly: ID is needed to use commands - basically, you can do stuff like del 0012 or dup 0184 to make quick operations with entries using only the command line. Date is obvious - by default it uses the system date when you add a new log, but if you add a log retrospectively with the command ret, you can set any date manually. Duration and entry are pretty obvious too, so let's talk about sectors and codes. Here's a quick explanation:
Sectors & Codes</a></h1>
So, I split all the log types into 4 main sectors:

A - Action - anything you do, like this website, or the logging system, for example</li>
C - Consumption - watching stuff, reading stuff - passive activities</li>
H - Health - running, gym, hiking, and so on</li>
W - Work - basically anything you make money with</li> </ol>
Each sector can contain as many codes as you want:

A : GRD, PLN, LRN</li>
C : RDG, YTB, MUS, MOV, GMN</li>
H : RUN, HIK, GYM, WLK, CAL, MDT</li>
W : EDT</li> </ol>
I thought about these sectors a lot and tried a lot of other ways to split everything, but this one seemed the most reasonable to me. Why do I need those sectors at all? The first reason - I want to generate general statistics, and my main goals are to check the balance between passive and active activities, check the balance between work and personal projects, and check how much time I spend on health compared to everything else. The second reason - this way I don't need to create a fixed list of codes (EDT, RUN, RDG...) and make a dictionary for them. Because without sectors, for the general stats I would need to assign each code to a sector anyway, and it would be much more complicated. And now I can add any log with a new code if I want to - for example, "H CLM" for climbing - and I don't need to update any files. It will automatically be included in all the stats and dashboards. I hope it makes sense!
UI overview</a></h1>
So, lets look at the main interface. By default it shows last 10 logs.

LOG / 21 ENTRIES / TOTAL 47h29m / 250524 / --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ID Date Sec Code Duration Entry ---- ------ ----- ------ ---------- ---------------------------------------------- 0021 250524 A PLN 02h14m Logging system - all scripts updated, finished 0020 250523 C RDG 01h00m Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami (2002) 0019 250523 W EDT 00h50m ^#@%$!@^, !@%#$@ 0018 250523 A PLN 04h00m Updated website dashboards 0017 250523 A PLN 01h00m Logging system - code refactoring 0016 250523 A PLN 01h38m Logging system - added sum, man, fixed ui 0015 250522 C RDG 01h20m Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami (2002) 0014 250522 W EDT 02h30m #@$^%$# &%@# + &#^@ 0013 250522 A GRD 01h15m Ivy cuttings repotting 0012 250522 A PLN 04h00m Logging system - working CLI prototype --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- plantay@fedora:~/plantayme/logbook-cli$ </code></pre> As you can see, I made 3 main parts of UI - status bar, log list and command line. To make it work similar to TUI, after each command the terminal window clears and displays all the elements updated - this way you won't end up with endless mess of commands and lists on the screen, everything is static in one place. Status bar shows general stats, program messages and filters. Nothing special here, so let's move on to the commands.Commands</a></h1> Here's a command list: - add [sec] [code] [dur] ["act"] Add a new log entry - ret [date] [sec] [code] [dur] ["act"] Add a retro log entry - dup [id] Duplicate a log by ID with current date - del [id] Delete a log by ID - jmp [id] or [date] Jump to a log by ID or date - flt [sector/date/code/entry]:--- Filter logs by category - sum [period] Show summary (total | year | month | week) - man Show manual </code></pre> I hope everything here is clear too, I decided not to make too many commands and keep everything as simple as possible. We have add and ret to add logs, dup to repeat log with today's date, del to delete log, jmp for basic navigation, flt to filter logs by any parameter (or by several parameters), sum for simple stats and man to keep record of all the codes and commands. Everything for dashboard generation for this site is in the separate scripts for easier maintenance, so this tool is just for logging itself. Project tree</a></h1> Here's a project tree for those who interested: ├── logbook │ ├── commands │ │ ├── add.py │ │ ├── dlt.py │ │ ├── dup.py │ │ ├── flt.py │ │ ├── __init__.py │ │ ├── jmp.py │ │ ├── log.py │ │ ├── man.py │ │ └── sum.py │ ├── __init__.py │ ├── storage.py │ └── utils.py ├── logbook.db ├── main.py └── requirements.txt </code></pre> Homepage dashboard</a></h1> And here's the most interesting stuff! How we can use all that data to do analytics. The main goal of all this thing for me was to make cool dashboards for my website that I can use to track my progress and see how I can improve my life using all this stats. I created 2 scripts: one for homepage, and one for weeknotes. Here are all the homepage dashboards. I render them separately to several .txt</code> files so I can use CSS and stylize them how I want - make 2-column layouts and stuff like that. Originally, I made a lot more stats, but it was taking too much space, so I ended up cutting it down a lot. [ SUM ] 21 logs recorded [ SUM ] 47h29m logged time [ AVG ] 02h15m avg session [ MON ] 21 logs / 47h29m this month [ A ] 26h07m |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| [ C ] 10h47m |||||||||||| [ H ] 02h00m || [ W ] 08h35m ||||||||| [ RDG ] Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami (2002) [ MUS ] SUDS - The Great Overgrowth (2023) [ MOV ] The Rehearsal - Nathan Fielder (2022) The first block is called meta - it represents general statistics: total number of logs, hours, average session duration and short month stats. The second one is called sectors - it shows total amount of time spent on main sectors: Actions / Consumption / Health / Work. Good thing to see on the homepage to check if you're spending too much time on some things, like me with this logging system instead of working, haha. The third one is called now and shows last added logs for the book I read, movie I watched and music I listened to. I think those dashboards are enough for personal website, though I wanted to add a lot more - but I really need to get my life back at this point. I spent too much time on it already, and I don't need to spend more - it already works great, at least much better than previous one. Weeknote dashboard</a></h1> And the second part of stats - dashboard that automatically generates after creating a weeknote. This one I like the most, it turned out so cool: sum 21 logs / 47h29m logged time / 02h15m avg session [ A ] 26h07m |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| [ C ] 10h47m |||||||||||||||||||| [ H ] 02h00m ||| [ W ] 08h35m |||||||||||||||| 250524 : A PLN 02h14m Logging system - all scripts updated, finished 250523 : A PLN 01h38m Logging system - added sum, man, fixed ui 250523 : A PLN 01h00m Logging system - code refactoring 250523 : A PLN 04h00m Updated website dashboards More entries</summary> 250523 : C RDG 01h00m Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami (2002) 250522 : C MOV 03h20m The Rehearsal - Nathan Fielder (2022) 250522 : A PLN 04h00m Logging system - working CLI prototype 250522 : A GRD 01h15m Ivy cuttings repotting 250522 : C RDG 01h20m Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami (2002) 250521 : C MOV 02h00m The Mule - Clint Eastwood (2018) 250521 : H WLK 02h00m Took a short morning walk 250521 : C YTB 01h07m GL;HF Podcast 250521 : A PLN 03h45m Logging system - TUI prototype 250520 : A PLN 04h55m Logging system design 250520 : A GRD 03h20m Terrarium build, watering 250520 : C MUS 00h40m SUDS - The Great Overgrowth (2023) 250520 : C RDG 01h20m Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami (2002) </details> It also has 3 parts: the first one is short statistics from the week - number of logs, time spent and average session duration. Then we have the sector one, similar to the one on the homepage - it shows log distribution for the week. And the last one is the list of logs added during the week, except the work, since there's some personal info. By default it shows 4 last entries, but you can expand the list and it'll show all the logs. This one is very useful, because I can just open it before writing a weeknote and have a glance of stuff I did during the week. I really like how it looks! Outro</a></h1> So, here it is, in all the details I could remember in my disturbed state of mind, after sitting 24/7 in front of the screen for a few weeks! Of course, if something is still unclear and you have any questions, you can email me. The main purpose of this post was not to show how I technically did it, but more to show the system itself - it was my biggest problem while researching. All the systems that I found were either too complicated or too simple, so this is my attempt to make a time-tracking system that can be easy to use (it takes less than a minute to log everything in the evening for me), and that can still give a lot of useful data that you can use in a big amount of ways.
Micro 2025-05-19 19:36 2025-05-19T19:36:50+04:00 After finishing work on my logging system and dashboard this morning, I accidentally found these two amazing things while surfing through the webring</a>: Log by Josh</a></li> Færeld by Mika</a></li> </ol> Both are CLI utilities for logging and time tracking. They’re a little different, but very close to what I had in mind when I decided to make my own script. The problem is, I’m 100% not ready to build something that complex - but damn, looking at the implementation, it totally seems worth the time. I briefly checked how such apps are built, and it’s basically Python (which I know a little), using things like Rich, Typer, Textual, and either JSON or SQLite for storage. So, in theory, it’s possible - but it would be a huge challenge for me. I think I’ll get my feet wet by just reading some basics about these libraries and tools first. A big part of my inspiration comes from the aesthetics of such apps, but there are also a lot of functional improvements I could make compared to my current Bash script. The good thing is that everything still works with plain text files, so there’s no risk - if I fail, I can switch back to my Bash script in a minute. Micro 2025-05-18 13:48 2025-05-18T13:48:51+04:00 Spent another 6 hours tinkering with the homepage, trying to find the best-looking layout possible - or at least one that makes sense. I like how it turned out in the end, but I’ll probably tweak it a bit more later - it’s good for now though. Added a few more metrics to the dashboards, structured everything, and made a separate class for icons to invert color depending on the theme. Blasted through all M.I.A. albums for the first time while doing this - crazy stuff, a lot of gems. She was definitely ahead of her time. Gonna go stretch a bit and eat something - neck and eyes are completely destroyed. Weeknote - 25W20 2025-05-18T00:00:00+00:00 Reading: Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami (2002) Albums played: Softscars by Yeule (2023)</li> Matangi by M.I.A. (2013)</li> </ul> Movies watched: Happyend by Neo Sora (2024)</li> </ul> Oh wow, look at that! The first weekly generated data - it works! (This thing at the top is inserted by a script when I create a new weeknote - it pulls all the logs from the last 7 days.) There are very few things logged because it's only been a day or two, but in theory, there will be more variety over time. I already love this feature, since I completely forget everything I did during the week because of distractions like work. There's probably a much better way to display all this info in weeknotes, but I haven’t figured it out yet. Crazy week - I'm literally in goblin mode right now. My gas heater broke again, and I haven’t had enough time to figure out why it keeps happening. So, no hot water this week - just quick, fucking cold showers that bring pure dread. Usually I’m really into trying to fix these kinds of problems myself, but when it comes to gas - I’m out. I tried a few things here and there, but honestly, it’s too scary, especially considering the local conditions with electricity, gas, and all that flammable or potentially explosive stuff. I probably need to call a technician, but my wage has been delayed for a few weeks already, so I’ll just wait. Good thing I can tinker with the site all day and forget about all the problems in the world. Still, I’m a little angry and disappointed that some people think it’s okay to delay payment for that long - I wonder what they’d say if I delayed my work for a few weeks. Basically, the dashboard and logging system were the only two highlights of this week. My mind is still kinda restless, but there are lots of ways I can improve both, especially in terms of scalability. My main goal right now is to make the whole system as flexible as possible, so I don’t get stuck with problems later. Maybe I should take a break for a few days to look at everything with a clear mind, though. In any case, I’m really happy with how the homepage looks now - and as usual, if something looks weird, please clear cookies and site data. p.s. During the week, I decided to look through all my website backups, and damn - the timeline is crazy. Good thing I uploaded every version to cloud storage, even the alpha versions. It's so cool to see that kind of progress. I’m thinking of making a "museum" or "memories" page with screenshots of all the main versions - that would be fun. Micro 2025-05-17 14:51 2025-05-17T14:51:42+04:00 A working version of the new logging system is ready. Still need to polish a few things and think more about scalability, but overall it already works well! My neck and spine hurt after 7 hours in front of the screen though - no idea how IT guys live like this, haha. Homepage revamp! 2025-05-16T00:00:00+00:00 Next week my new job starts, so while I still have some free time, I decided to finish my May-website-revamp by creating an automated dashboard for the homepage! It’s a pretty big project, though I’ve already implemented some parts of it. The funny thing about working on this website is: whenever I get an idea - no matter how difficult - I can’t do anything else until I implement it, at least half-assed. That’s why this May was so packed with updates. I’ll make a separate site update post once everything is done and will write more about how it works. But for now, while I’m inspired, I just wanted to write about the bigger picture. The main reason - besides being bored with the old homepage and never actually using it - is that I finally understood the beauty of automation. After setting up SSH and writing a few scripts to automatically dither and compress images, update timestamps, and similar tasks, I realized how much more I could automate - saving time for writing and creative stuff. For now, I’ve built a simple part of the dashboard: site statistics. It’s generated with every build, so the data is always fresh. It looks something like this: [ OK ] Site uptime: 492 days (since 2024-01-10) [ OK ] Last updated: 2025-05-16 20:36 [ OK ] Total posts: 034 / +009 last month [ OK ] Micro posts: 008 / +008 last month [ OK ] Disk usage: 2.0 GB / 100 GB [ OK ] Deploy size: 987M [ OK ] Status: I'm gonna get fired for wasting so much time on this lol </code></pre> As you can see, I went with a CLI-inspired look. I think it's the best way to present data like this. It looks a little corny right now, but it’ll probably feel better after a few design iterations. I’m still thinking about what other stats I could add - if you have any ideas, please shoot me an email. Maybe a broken links checker? That’s something I struggle with during big updates like this one. The second part of the dashboard is much harder. I want to create a script for a logging system that tracks my progress with running, reading, meditation, film & music logs - stuff like that. It sounds like too much, but after thinking it through, I believe it’s a solid idea. Why? Because I love data - it opens up so many possibilities. Here’s a simple example: I have a favourites</a> page, and I haven’t updated it once since I made it. Just imagine digging through a hundred entries trying to remember what you already added and what you forgot. With structured data, though, I could automate the whole thing - use a template to display your top-rated films/albums/quotes/trips/etc. I’m already logging all that stuff using services like Criticker or Goodreads, so why not bring it right here? Another cool use case: you could auto-generate weeknotes with logs from the last 7 days - how cool is that? With data, there are so many things you can do (looking at you, big tech), so you can always find a use case that fits you. Just imagine how fun a yearly review would be. And the last part is easy - just showing a few recent posts from the weblog/microblog, maybe the latest video. That’s like five minutes of work, but it’s still part of the whole dashboard idea. Right now, I’ve already made scripts for adding different types of posts, building the site, dithering images, deploying it - and I’m currently working on the logging system. Since each object will be different ("book" might have 4 parameters, "run" might have 2, etc.), even making a demo is tricky. So I decided to plan everything on paper first before jumping into code. Because of all this, expect my homepage to change a lot next week. But it won’t break anything - just wanted to explain what’s going on before I change too much! Micro 2025-05-15 17:52 2025-05-15T17:52:40+04:00 Just added a new script that resizes, compresses, and dithers all images and thumbnails! Now I can simply drop pictures into the assets folder and deploy. The hard part was finding all the original files, since I used to delete them and only keep the dithered versions. If anything displays incorrectly, try clearing your cookies and site data. Micro 2025-05-15 09:34 2025-05-15T09:34:46+04:00 After automating some stuff with scripts, I had a few more ideas I want to implement here: Automatic image dithering before building the site. Right now, I do it manually each time I add images, and it's a pain in the ass.</li> Creating a backup file after building the site and uploading it.</li> Some kind of template for weeknotes - it would be easier to have a foundation when I start writing. Maybe a tracker that asks questions and generates a table with data on previous week?</li> Book log / plant log - both would be great, but it’s probably too much work for now. Maybe someday.</li> </ul> Micro 2025-05-15 09:22 2025-05-15T09:22:55+04:00 Decided to run on my street instead of the stadium today. It’s different - elevation changes, views, feels more dynamic, though a bit harder. Found a route that’s exactly 5 km from my home and back - that’s nice. Micro 2025-05-14 17:29 2025-05-14T17:29:31+04:00 SSH works great too. It literally took me two hours to get it working somehow on Windows - here, I set it up in 30 minutes, and it does so much cool shit. I love it! Should’ve done this a long time ago. plantay@fedora:~/plantayme$ plndep Date in navbar updated to May 14 Building site... Checking all internal links with anchors. Successfully checked 0 internal link(s) with anchors. Creating 46 pages (0 orphan) and 3 sections Done in 104ms. Zola build completed Starting deployment... Deployment finished Deployment Report: • Total site size: 987.40 MB • Transferred this deploy: 877.62 KB Site deployed to: https://plantay.me/ Micro 2025-05-14 15:52 2025-05-14T15:52:07+04:00 Also, I finally added an automatic date update in the navbar!! It's so fucking great to just build the website and never have to worry about updating the navbar again! Micro 2025-05-14 15:20 2025-05-14T15:20:48+04:00 The RSS and Atom feeds broke after adding new sections btw! Everything is working again now, but for those who used my rss.xml</code> feed - it no longer exists. You can now use Atom instead; there are 3 feeds: full</a>, weblog only</a>, and microblog only</a>. Sorry for the inconvenience! Weeknote - 25W19 2025-05-13T00:00:00+00:00 What a great week - so much done! There were just a few work tasks, so I spent a lot of time tinkering with the site, reading, walking, and repotting plants. The weather was also wonderful - a couple of sunny days to enjoy the upcoming summer and a couple of rainy ones to enjoy sitting at home and nerding out about things. Love the balance. This week, I tried using SSH for the first time - great thing. Though Windows ruined the experience, since it's much harder to automate things there. So, here I am, using my Fedora laptop again! I missed the feeling of everything working as intended without constant frustration. I concluded that it’s easier for me to grab my laptop during the day to write some posts than to keep trying to make sense of Windows. I’ll just keep the main machine for work, since video editing is its strong side. Also, this week was full of site updates! I added a videos</a> section and transferred all my jams from Youtube here, as you might already know from the previous post. I really like how it looks - the idea is to keep it as simple as possible. Besides that, I also added a micro</a> section - I finally decided to add a microblog. Shout out to princss</a>, Zak</a>, and Justin</a> - thanks for the microblog design inspiration. Your pages are neat and have given me a lot of different design ideas. I’m not sure if I’m going to use it a lot, but the main purpose is to make it easier to write shorter thoughts or share moments from my life. Some things seem too small or silly for me to bother sharing in the main weblog section, so maybe this will solve that problem. A lot of really good stuff is hidden in the details and silly things - I don’t want to miss them. I have a feeling that next week, I’m going to spend most of my time learning how to automate my posting process. I already made a small script to write microblog posts - it’s so easy now! I’ll do the same for weeknotes and regular posts. I’ll also figure out SSH and rsync, so I can finally forget about uploading the website through the browser client - meh. Micro 2025-05-12 20:20 2025-05-12T20:20:19+00:00 Also, I finally gave up on using Windows for website maintenance. I tried using SSH for deploying the site, and my experience on Windows was horrible. I updated everything on my Fedora laptop - it’s so smooth and cool. Really excited to write a couple of scripts to automate a bunch of things; I’ve wanted to do that for a very long time. Micro 2025-05-12 20:15 2025-05-12T20:15:12+00:00 I wasn’t sure about adding a microblog section of any kind, since I use the weblog</a> for literally everything. But lately, I’ve had a feeling that I’m not writing down a lot of thoughts there simply because they’re too short to bother with - coming up with a post title, description, all that stuff. Maybe this little thing will help with that problem - I don’t know yet, so why not find out? Big site update 2025-05-10T00:00:00+00:00 I’ve been thinking about moving all my videos from Youtube to this site for a long time, and finally - it’s done! From now on, you can find all of them in the videos</a> section in the nav-bar. It’s still a work in progress, and I have a few problems to solve, but honestly, it already looks exactly how I imagined. Can’t believe I pulled it off in just one day! And no, the reason isn’t even my usual outrage at Youtube’s algorithmic feed, engineered purely to hook you and make as much money as possible. What actually triggered me yesterday was something simpler: yet another completely nonsensical UI change. These updates are getting worse every year. Why?? Why do they keep making it worse with every new version? The only explanation I can think of is that they need to justify paying the UI/UX department. But either way, it sucks - so why not just leave? I figured I could use that frustration as fuel and finally move everything here. I’d been postponing it, thinking it would take a lot longer, but it only took one day. I know that’s a pretty basic task for many people, but since I don’t come from a tech background, it was a bit more of a challenge for me. I’m really happy with how well the new section blends in style-wise with the rest of the site. It must look smth like this (if it looks wrong, that's probably because of cached CSS): That said, there’s one problem I haven’t solved yet: I have long descriptions for a bunch of videos, and I don’t know where to put them. I don’t want to clutter the main page with text under every thumbnail, and I also don’t want to create a separate page for each video. I love the simplicity of clicking a thumbnail and having the video open in the native player - it really fits the site’s philosophy and design. I tried adding tooltips and expanding the video with JS below its row, but neither option worked well, so I’m leaving that for later. If you have any suggestions about how to include descriptions - or where they could go - please email me! I’d love to hear some feedback. Another issue is file size. As I mentioned in the last site update</a>, I’ve been trying to keep the site as lightweight as possible. But adding a bunch of long videos doesn’t exactly help with that. I converted everything to 1080p and compressed a lot, but the total size is still around 800 MB. I know that’s not terrible, but I’d love to reduce it further - I just don’t know how yet. For now, all the videos are just VCV Rack jams. By the way, I uploaded a few that weren’t on my Youtube channel before - check them out! Especially dream is destiny</a> - it’s my first and favorite jam. I’m also thinking it would be fun to upload stuff that’s not music-related. I feel a lot less restricted here - emotionally and legally. I can use whatever music or media I want without worrying about it getting blocked in some country. And of course, it’s much easier to shitpost here, since it’s basically just my personal braindump. Sure, there’s no discoverability, but I was never focused on views or subscribers. I’m genuinely happy to have a few people who know this site and check in from time to time. I’ll keep playing around with the layout and different ideas to find the best solution - so once again, I’d be glad to hear any feedback or ideas! Update right away: </blockquote> While writing this post, I tried a few more ways to add descriptions and temporarily settled on the plain HTML <summary></code>–<details></code> element. It’s kinda lame, but it’ll work for now. The setup is crazy stupid: I have a data.toml file where all the video data is stored, and I added the description right there. There's a big con - I need to convert it to HTML so it displays properly with all the links and paragraphs. I like how it looks, but there’s definitely a cleaner and more adequate method to do exactly the same thing. My first terrarium 2025-05-09T00:00:00+00:00 Okay, it's not that ugly - only because I fixed it this morning. I was too embarrassed to show it here before. Right now it looks okay-ish, but there's definitely a lot of stuff for me to work on in the future. Maybe when it grows a little, it'll look better. I'll post some pics in a few months. In general, I really enjoyed the experience. It was fun doing some small-scale plant-tinkering with tweezers, crushing coal, and trying to fit everything in place - almost like solving a puzzle. Basic explanation of layers (from bottom to top): clay pebbles or pea gravel</li> window screen mesh to stop soil from mixing with drainage</li> charcoal to filter water</li> substrate (coconut peat + sphagnum moss + a little bit of my default soil)</li> a few types of moss, a fern, a stone, and a few small groundcover plants</li> </ol> Some mistakes I made: drainage layer is too thick - half of that would be better</li> filter screen radius is too big - looks ugly (the border between substrate and drainage)</li> ugly-ass jar - next time I'll definitely find something decent</li> more types of plants or decorative stuff needed</li> no springtails (need to find some in my area)</li> </ul> Also, today I'm getting a big package of sphagnum moss delivered, and I’ll finally be able to make more sustainable propagation boxes for moss and everything else. (Right now it's just some soil at the bottom - not the best solution.) I'll build something similar to this structure: drainage -> window screen mesh -> charcoal -> sphagnum. Maybe something a bit simpler - haven’t decided yet. p.s. I added a plants</a> tag to keep everything clean. I'll try to make all the plant-related posts separate since they've been infiltrating all my weeknotes lately. Site update 2025-05-08T00:00:00+00:00 I got annoyed by the total size of my website, so I finally decided to optimize it a little bit. The main problem was that a few pics and gifs weighed 10 times more than everything else combined. I switched gifs to pics and dithered everything else, so now the website weighs about 2 MB instead of 500 MB. These changes probably caused some posts to reappear in RSS feeds - sorry about that! But now my soul is at peace again :) Weeknote - 25W18 2025-05-04T00:00:00+00:00 Why do we like the things we like? It's probably a huge mix of reasons - like the environment you grow up in, the people who surround you, and other stuff like that - but it still feels so weird. Over the past couple of days, I’ve been walking through the forest along the creek, searching for new kinds of moss and different terrarium plants that can grow in such a humid environment. I enjoyed it so much that I started thinking about a lot of my friends (and people I know in general) who would find this kind of activity awful and annoying. It always seemed strange to me that some people don’t enjoy or appreciate nature - the lack of noise, people, tech, transport, etc. It’s impossible for me to imagine myself in that kind of position, even though I consider myself a pretty empathetic person. During my walks, I found a few beautiful kinds of fern: (I think it’s) Asplenium trichomanes and Cystopteris fragilis - I grabbed a couple of each and planted them in my moss box temporarily. This week, I’ll get some charcoal and sphagnum to create a more sustainable propagation box for all my moss and other small plants. I hope they’ll survive a few days in this setup. I also watched quite a few videos about moss propagation and terrariums this week, so now my understanding of how it all works is much better. I’ll try to make my first terrarium soon and will probably write a separate post about it. These four videos were especially helpful: how to make a closed terrarium + basic care</a></li> how to propagate your own moss</a></li> how to grow fern and moss on stone</a></li> how to make kokedama</a></li> </ul> I really liked the kokedama and the stone-with-moss ideas, but they seem a bit more advanced. p.s. Wow, I think the last 4–5 posts have been completely about plants - I don’t know how that happened - but it’s the only big thing I’m doing right now besides work and life stuff. I guess I wanted more “real” things in my life and subconsciously decided to spend more time with plants, but it really brings me joy these days. Right now, my friend and I are looking for a small plot of land in our area to grow stuff and maybe experiment with beekeeping - or even chickens. I don’t know how it’ll go, since we want to find something really cheap so it won’t be a burden for either of us, but I’ll make a post if we find something good! Have a great week, guys! Weeknote - 25W17 2025-04-30T00:00:00+00:00 First of all, I’ve just finished reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami - so if anyone wants to discuss it, you can email me at plantay at proton dot me. I have mixed feelings about it, because usually I really don’t like magical realism (e.g. One Hundred Years of Solitude - maybe it’s time to read it again), but for some reason I find it captivating in Murakami’s novels. Still, there are a lot of controversial things in it, but overall I enjoyed it a lot. Anyway, I was kinda busy this week - my job situation resolved pretty quickly, and now I have a lot of things to do again. I’m happy with it right now (though the workload is going to be a lot more than I planned), but we’ll see how it goes. Other than that, I started playing Dark Souls last week for the first time, and it also takes quite a lot of time. By chance, co-op mode was released around the same time, so my friend and I decided to play it together - it’s been very fun! Since it’s the end of the month, I’d like to share some results from my logging system</a>. It worked better than I expected, though not across all activities - it seems like my brain just prioritized the most important ones and let the rest slip. Here it is: 17/20 | working</li> 07/12 | studying</li> 20/20 | running & workouts (how?..)</li> 10/12 | reading</li> 14/08 | socialization</li> 04/08 | website (posts & emails, basically)</li> 03/12 | meditation</li> 00/08 | traffic rules (fuck.)</li> </ul> </blockquote> All in all, I’m pretty happy about it - especially the physical activity. I’m shocked that I trained five times a week all month, and it felt absolutely fine and not overwhelming, as I thought it would. My body feels great. I’m now running 5km in 40 minutes within a 130–150 bpm heart rate range, which is amazing, and my workout routine also feels much easier (I mean the technique is better - I’m still dying every time, haha). Two things I want to be more active with next month are reading and meditation, since I watched a lot of stuff again this month - movies, YouTube, etc. I’m a little disappointed, but it’s okay. I’ve changed the list of activities for May - maybe it’ll be easier to concentrate on the important ones. For example, I removed “socialization” because it turns out I meet people a lot more often than I thought. I also removed “traffic rules”, because fuck it - I hate legal language, and I want to throw up every time I try to read it. Also, with all the new work, I won’t have the time or willpower to deal with it. I still need to get a driver’s license at some point, but not now. Another thing I got into last week is moss - I don’t know why, but I like it a lot. Maybe it’s just me getting older and finding new weird hobbies, idk. The whole week was cloudy and cold, everyone stayed home, so I just walked through the streets and collected a few different kinds of moss. I cleaned them and planted them in a temporary container, but I already bought three different containers to make my first terrariums - a glass jar with a lid, a spherical one with a small opening at the top, and a wide short one. I want to see the difference, because everyone seems to use closed containers to keep moisture, but I like open ones more - so this will be my little experiment. I also ordered some sphagnum moss and coconut peat to mix with the soil I usually use, so I’ll post the results with pictures next week (or maybe the week after). Weeknote - 25W16 2025-04-20T00:00:00+00:00 It’s been about a month of workouts and running almost 5–6 days a week - I feel great, and maybe even a little proud, since consistency is not exactly my strongest trait. There's been some progress with pull-ups. I’ve been doing a lot of negative pull-ups to improve my technique, and it seems to be working - I'm doing regular ones more cleanly now. Also, I think this is the first time in my life (apart from a few periods at the gym) where leg exercises take up more than half of the whole workout. Honestly, I really enjoy full-body workouts even though they’re less “efficient” than split routines - it just feels so good when your whole body works evenly. Yesterday, I tried using resistance bands, and it’s another new thing I’ll consider using more often. Maybe I’ll be able to cover some isolation exercises I could previously only do at the gym - shoulders, biceps, that kind of stuff. Work, on the other hand, is driving me crazy again. It’s just the same cycle over and over - you find a job, work for a few months, and then the workload drops off. Maybe it’s a freelance thing, or something specific to the media industry, but I’m just desperate at this point. What frustrates me the most is that I know I’m a good fit for this kind of work - I always meet deadlines, pay attention to detail, and often go beyond what’s required just because I enjoy it. But still, it doesn’t seem to matter when you can’t plan anything financially more than two weeks ahead. Is a bit of consistency and a more or less adequate team too much to ask...? Whatever. It just really pisses me off. Sorry for the rant. Oh, by the way - the new DaVinci Resolve release is fire! Keyframes in the Edit view, finally - what a treat! A lot of neat new features. I literally spent the last few days just trying everything out. Not a fan of the AI slop, but whatever - it seems like companies think they won’t sell anything without it nowadays. I really hope Blackmagic improves the motion graphics workflow in the future instead of focusing on AI voice changers and other such bullshit, because keyframes in Fusion still suck ass - and that's a core feature. Other than that, DaVinci is still the best editing software. Love it! The Hedera cuttings I took three weeks ago have unfurled a bunch of new leaves, and a few of them have already started growing roots! It’s so cool to see they’re not just slowly dying. I’m looking forward to planting them in a few weeks. I also potted some Epipremnum cuttings last week - they seem to be doing fine. I’ll upload some pics later. Weeknote - 25W15 2025-04-13T00:00:00+00:00 For the last 2 weeks it’s been raining a lot, so I haven’t done anything interesting to write about - that’s why I skipped last (14th) weeknote. The situation is still the same, but I decided to write at least a few updates to keep myself busy. Basically, my main activities during this period were: working, running & doing workouts, tinkering with plants, and watching A LOT of movies. ---</center> The logging system that I came up with in the last weeknote is working great for me, so here’s the explanation I promised. Recap: I’ve been using a weekly planner for the last year, and it worked great, but I don’t like two things: a) it ties everything to specific days and you feel obligated to do everything just to not feel like shit again, and b) you don’t get an overview to see the whole picture from a distance and make conclusions. So, the only thing I was able to come up with is a simple list of activities that you want to track this month, a corresponding quota in brackets (which is not obligatory, just a benchmark), and "points" that you add each time you do something from the list. I use numbers because it’s easier for me to compare them to the quota, but it could be a checkmark or just a dot. It looks like this: | working (16) | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | | | | learning (8) | 1 | 2 | 3 | | | | | | | | website (4) | 1 | 2 | 2 | | | | | | | | meditation (12) | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | | | | | | reading (8) | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | | | | | | | guitar (4) | 1 | 2 | | | | | | | | | house stuff | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | | running (12) | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | | | | | | workout (8) | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | | | | | | | hiking (4) | 1 | | | | | | | | | | socialization (8) | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | | </code></pre> I use it as a paper card that I keep on my desk - the table above is just an example. The hard part for me right now is remembering to log things, but that always happens when you change your routine, so it’ll be okay in a few weeks. First impressions are great - it seems like the amount of things I need to do is rising (well, running / workouts and work definitely became more consistent). The main advantage of this system for me is that I don’t need to look at a huge task list every day (= much less anxiety). I just look at this table when I have some free time and try to make it look more even. For example, if I had a free day soon, according to the table above I’d definitely go hiking. So, you don’t have a particular schedule - which can quickly become a burden for a person like me - but you can still be productive in a healthy way and not lean too hard into specific things (like working 24/7 and skipping all sports, or the opposite). If you’ve tried something similar or have any suggestions on how I can improve it - please let me know. ---</center> As for the plants: as I wrote in the previous weeknote, I’ve tried to find some cuttings and local plants while walking around these past few weeks, so here they are: A few epipremnum cuttings from my friend. I think it’s Epipremnum Aureum (Neon Pothos). The leaves have a bright green color - a good addition to my home since I already have a lot of dark plants. It’s still living in water, but I’ll plant it in a pot this week once the soil gets delivered. </li> Some succulents and two types of moss. I planted everything in one wide ceramic pot - it’s not the best idea, since moss needs a lot of constant moisture, and succulents prefer dry soil most of the time - but I found them growing together in one spot, so I think they’ll survive. For now, I’ve covered the moss parts to keep moisture while it adapts. The succulents perked up after a few days - it seems like they’re alright! </li> </ol> Weeknote - 25W13 2025-04-02T00:00:00+00:00 I have been focusing on diet and physical activity recently - it's one of my yearly goals - and I thought that spring is the best time to try to establish some kind of routine. Considering my prior experience, I know that I definitely need to make the routine as simple as possible because the more steps and rules there are to follow, the lower the chance that I'll stick to it for a long time. For now, I’ve decided to continue running; it still feels great and pretty easy (oh, and my sleep is so much better!). My goal is modest - I run 5 km three times a week, but this amount feels good. As for the gym, I think the hardest part for me is adjusting to its schedule because it’s only open for a few hours in the morning and a few hours in the evening. I really like lifting, but as I said earlier, there are too many steps involved for me to stick with it long-term. So instead, I've decided to do two full-body workouts per week at the outdoor sports area near my house. I think that should be enough to keep my body toned, and maybe it'll be easier to maintain this routine for longer. This year, I'll try to keep training sessions short but intense - I found a lot of great calisthenics resources that I can use to adjust the program and make progress. (For comparison, last year I tried the opposite - I trained in the gym three times a week for an average of two hours. It was crazy.) I want to use the same approach for my diet - make it as simple as possible to maintain. •</center> Besides sports, I've been hiking a lot recently; the weather is almost perfect now. I like finding a quiet place and sitting with my notebook for a while. Dumping everything on paper makes life feel easier. Maybe that's why I’ve been writing here less lately - a lot of my thoughts are already on paper, and it feels strange to write the same stuff again (it feels less sincere?). One thing I wanted to share, though - after a conversation with Zak</a> I’ve been thinking a lot about logging systems, task & time management, because I have a problem with it. If I want to do a lot of different things, I always try to make some kind of schedule to follow, but over time, it turns into torture. It feels daunting to look at a huge list of tasks in the morning even before having breakfast. So, I've been trying to come up with a system that works like a planner but without being tied to specific times or dates. The best idea I’ve had so far is just a list of activities I want to do this month, with empty cells where I can mark “points”. Each time I do something from the list, I add one point to that row. This way, it's easy to see any imbalances and fix them quickly. I also wrote down a desired quota near each activity to have some kind of goal (e.g. 12 running sessions, 8 learning sessions, 8 guitar practice sessions, etc). I’m not sure if it’ll work well, but I’ll try this method throughout April and see how it goes. •</center> This past week, I continued tinkering with plants and went searching for some cuttings outside. The climate here is pretty warm, so we have a lot of succulents, ferns, vines, and herbs that can happily live in a pot indoors. So far, I’ve found two different types of ivy - Hedera helix and Hedera colchica (I’m not great at plant identification yet, so feel free to correct me; I’ll leave pictures) - both with beautiful dark green leaves. I took a few cuttings and also grabbed a few parts with roots to see which method works better since I’ve never planted ivy before. This weekend, I’m planning to head to the mountains and try to find something else - my biggest goal rn is succulents. •</center> Currently listening to: Japanese Breakfast - For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women)</a></li> Oscar Jerome - The Fork</a></li> Perfume Genius - Glory</a></li> </ul> Weeknote - 25W12 2025-03-24T00:00:00+00:00 I'm completely off schedule with weeknotes now, but I finally finished my work transition and hopefully will have a lot of free time from now on. As I wrote in the previous note, it’s been hard to keep up with all my habits and routines over the last three weeks, so I have big plans for April! The weather seems to be changing, and I think that in a week or two, it will be possible to start hiking season. I'm really looking forward to seeing some sunsets and sunrises in the mountains this spring (and maybe in summer, if the temperature is okay). Because of work, almost nothing happened during the last week - I wasn’t doing much except working. However, there are a lot of new challenges workwise. I’m learning something new every time I edit anything at my new job, and it’s such a cool feeling! So, my last week in brief: Learned a few new tunes on guitar, trying to get into bossa nova. It’s not difficult technically, but you really need to play with feeling; otherwise, it just doesn’t sound right. It’s fun to learn all the different voicings and complex chords, but singing along is VERY hard, obviously. </li> Listened to a lot of classical music - Idagio is still a huge help. I’ve noticed that I enjoy chamber music much more than large orchestral concerts. Solo piano or piano + violin / flute pieces are my favorites, but maybe it's just a stage of taste development. This week’s highlights: Chopin, Ravel, Debussy, Tartini, Schubert, & Schumann. </li> Fiddling with plants - spring transplanting, care, propagation, and stuff like that. My calla is growing at a scary-fast pace - my apartment is going to look like a forest soon (which is great). And it’s finally blooming! Look at this: </li> </ul> That’s it for this week. I’d rather go bask in the sun than sit at my computer now! Weeknote - 25W11 2025-03-15T00:00:00+00:00 Starting with not-so-good news this time: I sat in front of the computer for 9–11 hours a day this week, despite my goal to keep it around 5–6 hours max. The main reason is my sudden decision to change jobs, which led to the necessity of working three jobs in parallel for basically the entire month. To my surprise, it doesn’t suck - I was sure it would - but spending so much time on the computer again is definitely making me feel worse. I think it doesn’t bother me too much now because, in a few weeks, I’ll have much more free time. This new job is more about quality over quantity, with the same income as the previous one but a much lighter workload, which is exactly what I wanted (and even wrote about in my 2024 yearly review</a> as one of my main goals). I just need to power through a couple more weeks of this temporary crazy schedule. It’s funny how I’ve turned myself into a lab rat, constantly testing different approaches to digital time restrictions and other life experiments. I even take notes on it all the time, but they read like complete schizophrenic delusions, so I won’t post them here. But the difference is noticeable - eye strain, mood changes, sleep quality, desire to do creative work, and much more. •</center> On the other hand, it’s been almost a month since I started practicing meditation, and I’m already seeing a lot of results. I can’t say I practice as much as I initially planned, but it’s somewhere between once a day and once every two days. I’ve tried different methods, different times of day, different moods - calm or annoyed - and I feel like I’ve got a grip on it to some extent. The most interesting thing for me is that some methods work great, while others feel incredibly difficult. My favorites (and basically the only ones that work for me) are sensory and heart-centered meditation. Everything else feels off - like tonglen, mantra meditation, and more esoteric stuff. I’ll try everything anyway, but I’m already making progress with the easier ones. It’s much easier to focus or just do nothing, my overall mood is better, and I feel a new kind of calmness and indifference to unimportant stuff. I also have far fewer cyclical thoughts, which were driving me crazy. •</center> Also, I still think from time to time about my issue with having too many interests and not dedicating enough to any of them, but it seems I don’t care about it as much anymore - at least not like I did before. I was reminded of it this week while reading a post on spasic.me</a> called Refuse to Choose: Too Many Interests to Pick Just One?</a>, which really resonated with me. Here’s a small excerpt: I learned that no knowledge is for nothing! It may not have a straightforward or tangible effect on my life right now, but as you move on, you will know that the time invested in your interests is never wasted. It is for you and experiencing this world with passion and a sense of wonder is what some of us see as our life purpose. </blockquote> •</center> And lastly, some music talk as usual! As I wrote in last week’s note, I’m trying to get into classical music right now, which is pretty difficult for many reasons. But this week, I found an amazing service that makes the learning process much easier. It’s called IDAGIO</a>, and it’s basically Spotify but exclusively for classical music. I haven’t used Spotify in a long time - I have downloaded files for every album I listen to - but with classical music, I quickly realized that method wouldn’t work. Not only is it much harder to find pieces in high quality, but every well-known piece has an overwhelming number of different performances. And those performances can be drastically different in terms of quality, tempo, and many other aspects, meaning you’d have to listen to them all, compare them, and then find the version you like. Because of that, I found IDAGIO incredibly useful: it offers lossless quality, tons of different performances, weekly mixes, playlists with essential works from any composer you want, and even some lectures explaining various pieces. It’s subscription-based ($10/month), but there’s a free version with ads, which seems much better than Spotify’s free version. I enjoy listening to curated playlists and just exploring what I like and don’t like - it’s much more interesting than just googling random pieces, especially when you’re just starting out. I’ll test it for the two-week free trial and then decide if I’ll subscribe. Given the lack of good resources for exploring classical music, I probably will. The piece I’m really into this week: Maurice Ravel – Adagio assai from Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in G major, M.83</a>, performed by Josep Pons, Orchestre de Paris, and Javier Perianes. It’s only nine minutes long, so I highly recommend listening to it if you can find some free time in a quiet place. It’s absolutely charming, I swear. •</center> Because of this work situation, I don’t have much energy to write posts or emails, but by April, everything should be back to normal - or even better. Have a great week, everyone! Site update 2025-03-14T00:00:00+00:00 I made a few site tweaks this week: Added a separate disclosure element for random lists and pages on the homepage. I think this will make the site cleaner and easier to navigate, especially if I add more pages over time. For now, I’ve moved favourites</a>, tools</a>, quotes</a>, and guitar tunes</a> there. I’m always making lists for everything, so this is definitely going to be useful! </li> Grouped posts by month. Huge thanks to Zak</a> for the help - I had been trying to do this in January but failed immediately. I’m really happy with how it works and looks now; everything instantly feels more readable and neat. </li> </ol> I love making small updates like this without changing the site too much, as I did before. It’s so cool to see the site evolve with some kind of purpose / direction rather than impulsively. Weeknote - 25W10 2025-03-09T00:00:00+00:00 Spring Came So Fast! I was hoping that winter would last as long as possible, but I'm so happy to see my plants growing twice as fast. And honestly, I’m happy to see the sun myself too - at least while it's not too hot outside. Anyway, some things have changed over the past week that I really want to share here: A couple of weeks ago, I caught myself being annoyed with everything and realized that I’ve reached the age (or the mental state) where your surroundings start to affect you more than you think. Almost my whole life, I’ve had more of a r/malelivingspace</a> approach to "interior design" - if you can even call it that. It wasn’t bad, but it was too utilitarian: simple, clean, but always just a desk with a computer and some kind of bed or mattress. It seemed like I didn’t care at all, because the fewer things you have around you, the less you think about them. It was just easier to focus on the "important" stuff. But now, getting closer to 27, I clearly see that I do care about these things a lot more. Maybe my definition of “important” has shifted, and now this has become the important stuff instead of productivity. So, I finally decided to make my home feel like a place a human actually lives in - and immediately hit a wall: I had no clue how to do that. Obviously, like any person, I have a taste in things and can separate what I like from what I don’t, but how do you apply that to something as complex as a living space? There are hundreds of small details that, in the end, make everything look cohesive - as a whole. Because of this, I spent the entire last week (and almost all of the previous one) reading about interior design, different styles & principles, and how to apply them. I still feel stupid af in this field, but a lot of things make way more sense now. I've already made a reference board, moved some furniture, changed the room layout (after sketching dozens of variations and struggling to pick one), and ordered some smaller things - like bed sheets, lights, etc. At first, I wanted to document the whole process here, but then I figured it might feel uncomfortable, considering I’m renting and don’t really feel like sharing something that personal. Maybe I’ll upload a picture in the end, if it feels ready. Anyway, the whole point of this rant: don’t be like me if you’re in your early 20s! Your surroundings have a huge impact on how you feel, but it’s not always obvious. You could subconsciously hate your space for years without realizing why you feel like shit. And now, I see that it can be pretty cheap and easy to change fundamental things like layout - you don’t need to buy an entirely new set of furniture, you can work with what you already have. After a week of living in this new setup, I feel so much better, and honestly, it took very little time to change everything. Oh, and I added a few new plants! •</center> Reading update: since I started restricting my computer time, I’ve been reading a lot more. I was going to write a separate post about it, but it’s not that interesting, so here’s the short version: I started reading Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk because I have the paperback in English, and I’d already read it in Russian. I stopped near the last quarter of the book with the realization that I just don’t like Palahniuk’s writing anymore. At first, I thought I was just being picky since I hadn’t read anything for almost half a year, but it turns out I just don’t like the book. I still think Fight Club and Diary are great, and I resonate with his themes, but man - every one of his books is almost the same. It’s exhausting to read through all that nihilism over and over again. I’m convinced you could compress that shit into 50 pages, and it’d still be the same thing. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I just have different problems now. Or maybe that’s the coolest thing about art - that it’s basically like playing 5d chess. Constantly changing because you are constantly changing. Every time you read the same book, you’re actually reading a different book. But that’s a whole other topic (which I hope to write about soon - it’s been growing in my mind for a long time). After quitting Survivor, I wanted to read something more chill and remembered Murakami. I know people either love him or hate him, but I’m fully on the fanboy side. Like with any great author, there are some controversial aspects, but I think a lot of it comes down to cultural differences. I’ve read four or five of his books before and loved them all. This time, I just picked a random one because, at this point, I know I’ll enjoy it no matter what. I chose The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - I’m halfway through it right now, and it’s amazing. Love it! Once again, there are some strange erotic scenes, but that’s probably just a Japanese thing if you look at any other Japanese media. Here's a small piece from The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle that I wanted to share: Everybody's born with some different thing at the core of their existence. And that thing, whatever it is, becomes like a heat source that runs each person from the inside. I have one too, of course. Like everybody else. But sometimes it gets out of hand. It swells or shrinks inside me, and it shakes me up. What I'd really like to do is find a way to communicate that feeling to another person. But I can't seem to do it. They just don't get it. Of course, the problem could be that I'm not explaining it very well, but I think it's because they're not listening very well. They pretend to be listening, but they're not, really. So I get worked up sometimes, and I do some crazy things. </blockquote> I won’t even comment on it because anything I write wouldn’t have even 0.001% of the power of this paragraph. It feels great to be reading again, but at the same time, I feel like I’m just compensating for computer time. It’s still consumption - just from a different source... •</center> When I’m not reading or working, I’ve been getting back into guitar again. I used to take classical guitar lessons as a kid and was decent at it, but after school, I just stopped playing. Probably because of turbulent youth and a million other things happening in life. Now, after practicing touch typing for a few months, I’m convinced that you can improve quickly by doing something for just 20 minutes a day. So, I decided to give it a try and do some exercises. I even remembered a few pieces I played in childhood! So cool. •</center> Music I’ve Been Listening To & Some Notes New album by Ichiko Aoba – Luminescent Creatures</a> is great, highly recommend it!</li> Finally listening to Jamiroquai. I always knew I’d like this kind of music but just never got around to it. So far: music is great, mixing is VERY questionable.</li> Listening to Schumann’s Waldszenen, Op. 82 (Forest Scenes) – Amazing. Love it. I’ve been trying to get more into classical music (or Western Classical Music for all the experts here) for a long time, but it’s tough because it’s so different from modern albums. Everything is structured differently, and you need to find a performance you actually like (which, trust me, can vary a LOT). It takes a few extra steps to listen to classical music properly - that’s what I’m trying to say. So, I decided to start simple and pick a few short pieces.</li> </ul> Cool guitar tunes 2025-03-04T00:00:00+00:00 Not every song is suitable to play with just one guitar and voice. Sometimes you find an amazing song that you really like, but it sounds like shit when you play it by yourself because some fundamental parts were in the rhythm section - drums or bass - and you can't replicate them. Sometimes you can imitate it with guitar, but that’s more of an exception, and it usually ends up sounding too busy and complicated. I always enjoy finding songs that are perfect for playing on guitar. Usually, I spend a few days transcribing all the chords with little details, playing with inversions, transpositions, and that kind of stuff. But after some time, I forget about the song and just move on, completely losing everything I worked out. It’s not a huge problem - I can easily figure it out again - but I forget which songs were the most suitable, and that’s what truly bothers me. Lately, I've been playing guitar a lot to fill empty time, and considering my previous mistakes, I started writing them down in a list. So, here are a few songs that are incredibly suitable for just you and your guitar to play alone in the evenings: Solid Air, Sweet Little Mystery, The Man in the Station by John Martyn</li> Haruki by Alice Phoebe Lou</li> Any song by Nick Drake, but good luck with the tunings lol</li> The Sun Is in Your Eyes by Jacob Collier</li> Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd</li> 1979 by Smashing Pumpkins</li> Miss You by Blink-182 (don't judge me, it reminds me of childhood)</li> </ul> This is just a few I’ve played over the past week, so I'll probably update this list in the future. Also, whenever I play certain songs, I always get the urge to read about their history and the artist’s background. While playing Solid Air - one of my favorite songs - I discovered that it was actually written about Nick Drake! I’ve been listening to Nick Drake and John Martyn for such a long time, but I never knew that they were friends. I read a few articles and found their relationship dynamic to be really captivating. Weeknote - 25W09 2025-03-02T00:00:00+00:00 This week was full of emotions, and it's kinda cool considering I had a very flat lifestyle for a while, but damn, I’m so tired! I just want to sleep for a few days and do absolutely nothing. Maybe it’s just the change of seasons or some other weather conditions. I feel heavier and slower than usual. A few days felt off - I was really annoyed, which is rare for me. Mostly because of work and bureaucracy. I started the year with a strong intention to transition all my work into a legal format, registered an IE, and did all that stuff, but a few months later, it just seems like a huge pain in the ass. Almost like it’s intentionally made to be too complicated and stupid. But we’ll see, maybe I’m just being pessimistic (which is not rare for me). After a few "bad" days, I’ve noticed that it’s much easier for me to tell if a day is going to be cool or not, like I have some kind of radar. Maybe it’s a generic human feature, but I was much worse at it before. Maybe it’s because I have a lot more free time to think and reflect on stuff. In the end, I just made a very simple conclusion - just go with the flow. If something feels off - fuck it, do something else. Sitting in that mood for five hours fixating on it definitely won’t make it better. Also, I messed up my digital time restriction this week (just a few days, though). And I noticed a HUGE difference in a lot of things: sleep quality, brain activity, mood in general, etc. I feel much better when I use the computer for less than six hours a day - the difference is tremendous. I hope next week is going to be easier since I have fewer things planned. •</center> Continuing my attempts to draw -things- I bought liners to add some details to my watercolor pencil drawings. And I really liked it! I liked plain sketching even more than watercolor because there’s less chance to fuck everything up. After sketching, I colored them with watercolor pencils and fucked them up anyway, though. But it’s a learning process - at least now I feel that I should use way fewer colors. I think it would be a great exercise to just work with one or two colors and use different amounts of water to create highlights and shadows. Here’s one sketch with colors that looks okay (because I saw a dude on the internet draw it and explain it): And here are a few sketches without watercolor (aka "before they look like trash"). I’m trying to figure out how to work with one-point and two-point perspective - it’s so captivating! Sketching feels much easier than I thought it would, but I definitely need to practice more. I like these two, though: I’ve been thinking about the concept of "creative time" recently. I always mention that I love mornings and that it’s my zen time, but I can’t figure out how to do creative tasks during this time. Usually, I try to do as much work as possible after I wake up, before my brain realizes that it needs to do the most boring and nonsensical things to keep me with food. It works fine, but it would be even better if I could spend this time on creative activities. I just can’t shake the feeling that I have a lot of work to do. If I postpone it, then it’s going to be way harder to do anything work-related later. •</center> Also, I’ve been thinking about weeknotes. I feel like I should write more separate posts instead of shoving everything into weeknotes. It just kinda happened automatically this way because I write all my notes during the week into a template and then make a weeknote from it. I think it’s just hard for me to define which ideas are interesting or solid enough to turn into a whole separate post, but I’ll work on it. •</center> NB: I stumbled upon a new open-source music player called Tangara</a> that supports FLAC! Finally!! I’ll definitely keep an eye on it. Site update 2025-02-24T00:00:00+00:00 I've decided to return VCV patch notes to the website - I think it's the most suitable place for them in the end. Originally, I wrote them for Patchstorage</a>, and later, after creating this website, I added them to a separate page, which wasn’t the best decision. Now, with my tag system (which I really, really like), I can add any category of posts here and filter them with one click if needed, so I think those patches won't get in anyone's way. The only thing I'm a little worried about is that they might pop up in RSS feeds, though all posting dates refer to summer '24, so I think it's gonna be okay. You can find all the patch notes with downloadable files using the patches</a> tag. </blockquote> Also, I've merged the "website" and "web" tags into one since I post site updates rarely (and I hope it stays that way). Besides, a website is kinda part of the web, right? That's it! Weeknote - 25W08 2025-02-23T00:00:00+00:00 The first real winter in 2 years, what a relief! It's times like this when I'm convinced I'm a northern person. Chop-some-wood-and-make-some-tea person. -20°C makes me excited, and +30°C makes me want to peel off my skin and die. It's a pity that the weather will change in a week or two. Today I woke up to an absolute dead silence. Maybe it was caused by this abnormal weather, but there were completely no sounds of people, birds, or cars - anything. The loud silence, like on the top of a mountain, when you feel this internal urge to be as silent as everything else to dissolve with it completely. The last few days, I slept so well I couldn't remember the last time I felt this way. But in the middle of the week, I had a few nights of insomnia, so maybe it's just the contrast. Probably it was the acclimatization period caused by my transition to a "less screen time" lifestyle, which I described in the previous post</a>. This weeknote is mainly going to be about things I experienced in my first week. The main idea is to reduce computer time to 6 hours a day. </blockquote> First of all, I'm happy to announce that I haven't screwed up yet. Maybe it's because of novelty and I'm just excited to do something in a different way, but I feel pretty confident. I'm really satisfied with my decision not to mess around with details and particular things and just restrict "digital" time in general. All the tasks just distribute automatically, like water into communicating vessels. You won't watch a movie if you only have 2 hours left and a bunch of work to do. But if you have 10 hours of computer time, you'll most likely decide to watch a movie or even two. The one thing that I still want to mess around with a little is the time limit itself. At first, I felt like 6 hours would be too little because I have so many things to do - work, study, personal projects, website, emails, movies, music, and so on. But after a few days, I realized that I can do 4 hours. Seriously, it would be enough. I won't do it right now, though. I want to get a feel for this new thing and check what tasks are easier and better to optimize first, so it wouldn't be just a race against the clock. Obviously, my main concern is work. As a somewhat freelancer, I have a problem: freelance pros: you don't have any schedule</li> freelance cons: you don't have any schedule</li> </ul> This means it's just on me how many hours per day I work. I can split the volume into small pieces during the whole week, or I can sit for 12 hours in one go, so the next few days are completely free. I like this a lot more than the traditional 9-to-5, but it collides with my idea to spend 6 (or 4) hours a day max in front of the display. It means that I 100% need to work every day to get rid of the possibility that one day I'll have to work 9 hours, which is against my new rule. (I imagine the faces of people who work 9 to 5 all week reading this... I'm sorry.) Anyway, I'll probably test a 5-hour-a-day schedule next week, and we'll see how it goes. What has changed? Noise in the head is almost gone. The main struggle disappeared in the first week. Maybe it's not the direct consequence of just sitting less in front of the computer, but it worked as intended. </li> Writing feels easier because the noise is gone. Also, this post</a> by Steve helps a lot. I still see a bunch of garbage words in my texts, but I feel like it gets better bit by bit. </li> I walk much more, but it's surely the weather. Once it gets warm again, I'm not leaving the house! </li> I read again; it's easier than ever. If the only alternative is to sit in silence, reading becomes the most entertaining thing in the whole world. And still, I spend a lot of time sitting in silence. I don't have the possibility to buy real books where I live (as you can tell by the beautiful pictures within this text), so I read from my phone, which is very uncomfortable because of the screen size and the fact that I hate smartphones in general. I'm thinking about e-books, but everything I found is also questionable. I'll research it a bit more and maybe buy something later. </li> I've decided to give myself a second chance with meditation because of sitting in silence. My first attempt a few years ago failed almost immediately, but this time I found a book - Natural Meditation by Dean Sluyter - which helps me a lot right now. It's definitely a more populist approach, but the classical "don't move & don't think" just didn't work for me. I've been trying different techniques from this book during the week, and yesterday I felt something very different for 3 or 4 seconds - almost like my body disappeared. Is this the thing that everybody talks about? I was never really into such stuff, but a lot of people I'm interested in (Philip Glass, David Lynch, etc.) are into meditation and spiritual practices, so it's time to figure this out myself, I guess. </li> Live sounds have a ton more depth than digital sounds. All the reflections, the room tone - so cool. I miss my piano; it would be such a great fit for my current situation. At least I have a few guitars with me! Maybe I'll find a harmonica or something similar just for fun. </li> I spend almost all my digital hours on work/study or writing, so I don't have time to listen to music, which is an essential thing for me. On the other hand, I've noticed that I value each album or song even more since I can't just listen to them at any time. So, the conclusion that I made is that I need to make music a non-computer activity. It really overlaps with my physical media idea</a>, but I'm still figuring out how to do it correctly, considering my audio setup. Basically, I only need a gapless CD player, a disk drive, some CDs, and cases. The most expensive thing would be the player since it's really hard to find something decent under $200–300. If you have any suggestions or experience in this stuff, please let me know. </li> Also, I've been thinking about making writing a non-computer activity too, but it's definitely much harder, so I'll leave this task for the future. I already write most of the drafts for posts and emails on paper, but it still takes a huge amount of time to transfer them to the computer and edit mistakes. I don't have any ideas how to optimize it more at this moment. </li> I've finally started going through Baseline Design Bootcamp</a>, an amazing free resource that I've mentioned a bunch of times already. Because of the time restriction, I'm moving very slowly through the chapters, and it feels great. It feels like it's supposed to be that way, not 6 hours a day. I like the amount of practical assignments - dry theory rarely works for me - so it's nice to consolidate knowledge with some tasks. </li> </ul> That's all for now. It's already 12 o'clock in the afternoon, meaning that I should turn off the computer. I've been working since 8 AM, so I'll try to do 4 hours today. Have a nice weekend! Boredom & creativity 2025-02-20T00:00:00+00:00 I often write the same things in circles until I really shove an idea into my head, so here's another round of my thoughts on boredom, screen time, and creativity. Wait, I think I haven't written those thoughts here yet - probably just in my notebook. Anyway, I wrote a lot about this topic around a year ago, but all my attempts to fix the issue failed miserably, so here's round two! The problem: I spend too much time in front of the screen. My typical day looks like this: I wake up around 6am, have breakfast, turn on my PC, and start working & studying, usually for about 6-7 hours. Then I take a small break, cook, do housework, and go back to the computer, sitting there until 9pm doing whatever comes to mind - surfing the net, researching random topics, diving into new rabbit holes or watching movies or YouTube for another 5-6 hours. That adds up to 10-14 HOURS A DAY. What the fuck! The funny thing is I don’t even have social media anymore (except YouTube and this site) and haven't for a long time, yet it doesn’t help. It's just a lifestyle at this point. In September 2023, I tried to fix this, and it actually worked for a month. But then I forgot about it (as usual), and everything went back to "normal." Well, not exactly forgot, but you know how it works - some new idea came up, or something big happened, and my focus shifted completely. A few words about my first attempt: it was hard because I lived in a more urban environment where so much happens around you, making it difficult to focus and do nothing. But it was an amazing experience. I started walking a lot - like a lot - sometimes for an entire day, until I reached complete wilderness. I found the most isolated places I could and just sat in silence, writing in my notebook - all the thoughts and observations that came to mind. It felt real, and I rarely feel that nowadays. I still have those notes and read them from time to time. I think I want to achieve the same thing with blogging at some point. Because of this issue, I basically live on autopilot, drifting through life mindlessly without time for reflection or boredom - both essential for the brain to work properly. I've been thinking about childhood a lot lately. I remember watching Bridge to Terabithia when it came out in my local theater. I was about 9 years old, and I have such strong memories of it. Of course, part of that is because it was the first movie I saw about death from a child's perspective, but that's not the point. Looking back at any movie from that period, I notice the same thing: I thought about it for at least a week, analyzing it, remembering character lines and moments. Why? Because there weren’t many ways to watch a movie. Once a month, you saw something in a theater, maybe something else on TV, maybe a CD from the rental - that was it. No internet, no YouTube, no scrolling. That made everything feel valuable. I want to feel that again. Nowadays, I can watch a few movies a day, then add a few YouTube videos, etc. By the end of the day, I barely remember anything. Well, I do, but not in the right way - no reflection, no deep thoughts. I think the lack of something makes it more valuable. Boredom makes everything more valuable. But it’s so hard to be bored when you have the most interesting things in the world just a few clicks away. It's a drug, but no one considers it one. Sometimes I wake up at night because of a very loud noise in my head - like a hundred radios or TVs playing at once, and I can't turn them off. During the day, I feel something similar with my own thoughts. If I have 10 free minutes, I fill them with some bullshit just to avoid feeling lonely or confused, like anesthesia. Also, this lifestyle gives me huge anxiety. I’m always in a hurry for no reason. Every minute, something happens - news, movie or music releases, notifications, work calls. I do a thousand things a day and still feel like I’m not keeping up. Maybe FOMO is a big factor here. It feels strange to just sit in silence and do nothing when I could be learning a new skill or listening to a podcast to be a little "ahead" - which is total bullshit, obviously. Anyway, here’s my second attempt at bringing realness back into my life. I think it could work because I managed to leave social media, which was a huge milestone and proof that I can do things like this. Main idea: it’s easier to track one restriction than ten. My mistake before was isolating all the main issues and working on them separately, like with YouTube. That just doesn’t work. Something else will replace YouTube, and screen time will stay the same. So, I think the most effective approach is to limit computer time in general. I’ve decided that 6 hours a day is the best restriction for now. I’ve already tried it for a few days (but won’t write about results too early), and I barely have time for essential tasks like work and studying (which is great). Ideally, I’d like to reduce it to 4 hours a day, but I’m not sure if that’s possible. So, here’s a list of things that I really need my PC for: Work, obviously</li> Studying</li> Movies</li> Website & emails</li> Creating (music, visuals, etc.)</li> Organization</li> </ul> </li> The task: find alternatives to digital activities and maximize the number of things I can do offline. Everything I do is on my PC, and that’s a problem - a solvable one, though. Here’s a list of offline activities I’ve come up with (I’ll definitely find more): Writing (posts & email drafts, notes, ideas)</li> Reading</li> Listening to music</li> Playing instruments</li> Drawing, design drafts</li> Just thinking</li> Meditation</li> House tasks - cooking, cleaning, etc.</li> Running, hiking</li> </ul> </li> </ol> I hope I won’t screw up this time and that this change will bring more quality time into my life. A few notes from my previous experience to remember: Loneliness is okay. In my first attempt, I felt very lonely, but it’s just a reaction - like quitting cigarettes or any other drug.</li> Doing nothing is also okay. I definitely need to rewire my brain to accept this, but it's crucial. I don’t have to be a tool. I don’t have to do everything right and perfect. I only have one life, and that’s the only important thing. I don’t want to skip it.</li> The emptiness will fill itself, and the silence will turn into music. I know this is true. I know this is how things are supposed to be. It’s going to hurt a little, but that’s life, right?</li> </ul> P.S. If you have similar issues or want to share something, email me at plantay (at) proton.me Weeknote - 25W07 2025-02-16T00:00:00+00:00 This whole week, I was learning motion graphics, so almost nothing else happened (which is sad because I feel like the whole week just skipped). But here's a quick rant and an amazing discovery of mine: I hate the fact that there are so few alternatives to After Effects. Don't get me wrong - it's a great program, literally a Swiss knife in this field - but god damn, it's so slow and unoptimized, even for simple stuff. I get that the software is around 30 years old and was definitely written with a lot of restrictions back then, but why can't such a huge corporation do something about it? Maybe it's better to polish the engine and core functions rather than add 1000 more features, idk. And, of course, there's the whole Adobe thing with policies, pricing, and AI. From the start, I've been checking out alternatives, and nothing impressed me, but: </li> Last week, I accidentally found Cavalry</a>, and this is exactly what I was looking for. It still has a much narrower functionality than AE, but I was never planning to use AE for compositing or anything beyond 2D animation anyway - I prefer DaVinci for that. So, this week, I completed a short introductory course, and it was really fun. It has my favorite software quality: modularity, which makes it capable of so many cool things. I feel like AE has a more utility-driven approach - there are a lot of features to learn, but they're fairly straightforward. Cavalry is kind of the opposite: the toolset is much smaller compared to AE (I basically figured out all its functionality in a week), but the way you can combine everything makes it deep and complex. For now, the plan is to keep learning AE, since it's the most versatile and commonly used tool in motion graphics, but in parallel, I'll try to use Cavalry as much as possible. The team behind it seems amazing - they release updates often and keep adding functionality, so maybe it'll catch up in a few years. Also, the community is insanely talented - just look at these projects</a>. I spent hours going through them. </li> </ol> I forgot to write about my touch typing practice last week: I’ve unlocked all the letters</a> for both Russian and English layouts. My typing is still a bit messy (around 95% accuracy) but overall, I feel much more confident now. One problem I didn’t expect: it’s really hard to use touch typing in "real life," outside of Keybr. I don’t know why, but my skill drops drastically when I type anything else. Maybe it’s because of punctuation marks and numbers - I still have to look at the keys for those. I’ll try to figure it out next week. Maybe I’ll change my practice format - writing posts and emails instead of using Keybr. Music picks of the week (all of these are my favorites—you’ll see them often here): Sweet Trip – You Will Never Know Why (2009)</a></li> Nick Drake – Pink Moon (1972)</a></li> Talking Heads – Speaking in Tongues (1983)</a></li> </ul> Anyway, I hope next week will be more chill, because once again, I feel more like a tool than a human. And I still can't figure out how to fix that and actually live my life properly. Maybe I’ll write about it next week. Physical media idea 2025-02-11T00:00:00+00:00 One thing that happens to me really often - and drives me crazy - is when a cool random idea comes to mind, but it's never the right time. I can't act on it immediately, so I end up completely forgetting about it. I don’t always intend to bring these ideas to life, but it would be great to have them all in one place, waiting for me to hit a boredom state and pick one at random. To fix this, I decided to add an "ideas" tag to my weblog. If any of these ideas inspire you, please send me an email and share - I’d be happy if they turned out useful for someone! This one is about physical collections. I'm really into music, but I’ve never owned any physical media, unfortunately. Buying vinyl or CDs from abroad is difficult, especially when it comes to niche and rare releases. It’s also quite expensive, considering exchange rate differences and shipping costs. That’s why, for now, my collection is entirely digital (though all in FLAC format). But recently, an idea came to mind (while reading Sam's post about physical music media</a>): since I’m into drawing and design right now, it would be an incredible exercise to create alternative covers for my favorite albums, print them, and insert them into original CD cases. (Cassettes are rare and low quality, vinyl is big and expensive, but CDs are a nice middle ground. And if an artist doesn’t have any physical releases - which happens a lot with underground music - you can even make your own CDs.) It’s still tricky because I’m not sure how to ship CDs to where I live right now, so I’ll leave this idea in the “ideas” section for now. But really, this could be such a cool personal project. I’m inspired to try it with at least a few albums. You could design covers that reflect your personal connection to an album - incorporating memories, emotions, or details from the time when it influenced or helped you the most. And since you’d be printing the covers, you could also upload them digitally in a gallery format on your website. Oh, and the back cover of the CD case! There’s so much you could add - your own album description, favorite tracks, or even little notes about why the album matters to you. I’ll definitely do this one day! Weeknote - 25W06 2025-02-09T00:00:00+00:00 This was such a lazy week, and I really enjoyed it! After a task-heavy January, I’m happy to take some free time to chill and learn a few new things. We had lots of snow this week, and the mountains look spectacular, though I mostly sat at home in front of the computer. Running was a little harder due to the weather shift - something around 12–13 km overall, which is fine, I guess. For almost the entire week, I spent the first half of the day learning After Effects and working, then drawing, cooking, playing Euro Truck (yep), and watching movies. I watched American Primeval (2025) by Peter Berg - love this genre, so I recommend it, but the last 15 minutes are weird, almost like they changed writers at the end. You could probably skip that part and not miss a thing. I’m not a big fan of the series format in general, but I respect when a story is told in 5–6 episodes instead of being milked for 500, so maybe give it a try. Also, I uploaded a post with flying stones</a> that I made in Blender - check it out if you missed it. In that post, I said I’d show a few drawings in this weeknote, so here they are: A few weeks ago, I bought a pack of watercolor pencils, and I didn’t even know these things existed, to be honest. (Shout out to Zak</a> for the idea, check out his Januartuary</a> posts, which inspired me!). I tried taking some drawing classes when I was 18 or 19, but it didn’t go well because it overlapped with my first year at university, and I quit after a month or so. I liked it, though! Right thing, wrong time. So now I’m giving it another shot - just for fun this time. No goals, no rush. It’s funny how long it took me to understand the concept of having a hobby where you don’t need to achieve anything! Maybe I’ll write a separate post about this - it’s had a huge impact on my life. I still decided to watch a few tutorials to get the basics of working with water and brushes. Turns out, it’s harder than it looks, but I promised myself not to binge-watch courses like I usually do. Music picks from this week, while I'm trying to remember other topics: Florist - Emily Alone (2019)</a></li> Pavement - Wowee Zowee (1995)</a></li> Oklou - choke enough (2025)</a></li> </ul> Oh, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but I have a weird problem with gaming. Not the usual “I play 9 hours a day and can’t stop” problem, but more like the opposite. I love the concept of gaming, and I want to play, but every time I try, I can’t last more than 30–40 minutes. Then I delete Steam, don’t play anything for months, and the cycle repeats. The only exception is playing online with friends, which feels more like socializing than gaming. Maybe it’s some kind of anxiety, but I just can’t stop thinking about all the important things I should be doing instead. Like, I cannot let myself sit and drive a fucking truck for three hours to deliver 20 tons of milk to Düsseldorf while listening to country music. It pisses me off, and I’m trying to work on it. For the last couple of days, I decided to use it as a form of meditation - just me and the truck, no thoughts about work or the future. Also, I’ve been thinking about blogging and decided to change a few things. I’ll try to write smaller posts about more specific topics (except for weeknotes - those will stay as brain dumps). Every time I try to write something like this post</a>, I struggle to stay on track because everything is connected, and I lose my original idea. Writing shorter, more focused posts should be better practice - both for my English and for anyone reading.</li> I have a bad habit of writing in a really dry style, probably because I used to take notes that way - just the essence, no emotions or personal thoughts. I think it’s influenced how I write everything now, so I want to change that. I feel like my posts are already more human, but this is more of a reminder to myself to keep going in that direction.</li> </ol> That’s all for now. Have a nice week, everybody! And don’t take things too seriously. Flying stones 2025-02-08T00:00:00+00:00 A few days ago, I realized that I have no visual or audio works uploaded on this website, so I’ve decided to start posting such things more often. I always delete all my projects and renders after a few months, and after a year or two, I regret it deeply. Even if they were bad, it would be cool to take a fresh look at them after some time. So, for some context: for the last 5–6 years, I’ve been learning different audio- and video-related skills. I don’t know why this exact field stuck with me, but I’m good at learning software, and I love creating things. I started with music production, mix engineering, and modular synthesis</a>, and lately, I’ve switched to visuals. I have very little design knowledge, and this whole thing is pretty new to me, so I think it would be cool to share my learning process here. I have some experience with Blender and 3D in general, and right now, I’m learning After Effects. It was hard to make this decision because I’m definitely not a fan of Adobe software - it’s outdated, slow, and expensive - but I haven’t been able to find any alternatives for motion graphics yet. Fusion is the closest thing, but it also seems pretty slow and inconvenient, even for simple graphics. Also, I’ve been drawing a lot lately. It’s hard, and I suck at it, but my main goal here is to understand color science better - watercolor gives so much understanding, even if you just mess around. Besides that, drawing seems to be really meditative; I like how time slows down when I draw. I’ll show some works in the next weeknote. This post was mostly intended as an introduction, but here are a few of my latest visualizations. I made it in Blender and DaVinci in a day or two, and it was super fun! The one thing that is not fun at all is rendering 30 seconds of 4K video - it took around three hours. (After this one, I decided to make everything in low resolution and dither it. It always looks okay that way.) I was considering the best way to upload it but decided to go with an embedded GIF, even though it’s much heavier than other options. (UPD: i decided to switch gifs for jpgs, it was too heavy!) I’ve always had a bad feeling about doing a lot of different things and not sticking with something particular. If you could describe me in one phrase, it would definitely be “Jack of all trades, master of none.” Since childhood, this has felt like my biggest flaw, and I’ve always been embarrassed by my inconsistency. But lately, I’ve finally accepted it and decided to let things take their course without any restrictions. I don’t know if there’s any purpose in this, but I think that the desire to find purpose in everything causes more problems in the long run. The one thing I enjoy after these 5–6 years of doing everything is that I can now see patterns. It’s so much easier to learn literally anything now. And I’m also really proud that I can combine all my knowledge and create complex projects by myself exactly the way I want - from video editing and 3D to SFX and music. Maybe it’s going to be the most average thing in the world, but I’m okay with that, to be honest. If it reflects me or my feelings in some way, that’s already great. Anyway, for now, my plan is to learn the basics of motion graphics and After Effects, do some design courses (I’ve found this one</a>, which a lot of people recommend), and after that, I want to dig a little deeper into color grading. If you have any suggestions or recommendations for my learning process, please let me know - you can find my email on the homepage</a>. I’m a little disoriented with all this stuff right now, but usually, that goes away once you understand the basics and figure out what exactly you want to do. Small site update 2025-02-06T00:00:00+00:00 For the past year or so, I’ve been collecting links to websites that I liked - some for their aesthetics, others for their great blogs or bookmark pages. Eventually, my web places</a> page turned into a huge pile of different links, making it impossible to find anything. So, I decided to clean it up a little, add links to RSS feeds, and include short descriptions. I think all these pages deserve better representation in the end. I also merged the webrings and communities sections and added descriptions to them too. </li> After a few weeks of using a grayscale color scheme, I realized it was much harder to distinguish links and highlighted words from the rest of the text, so I decided to bring back color - nothing fancy, just classic blue links. Grayscale looked cool, though! </li> And lastly, I increased the layout width to 800px - I find it easier to read this way, but I’m still choosing between 800px and 900px. I’ll experiment with different values for a while and see which one fits best. </li> </ol> I really like how the website turned out. The simpler it becomes, the fewer things can break, so I’m not obsessing over fixing and changing stuff all the time. I’ll try to keep everything simple. (If at some point you notice that this site becomes complicated, please email me and tell my stupid ass to calm down.) Weeknote - 25W05 2025-02-03T00:00:00+00:00 It was a pretty productive week in terms of work, but I feel a lot more drained than before. I think that I really need some kind of limit on everything I do because I have a tendency to dive deep and spend all my time on one thing, which leads to constant burnout. Especially if it’s related to work stuff. I’m writing this weeknote on Monday, once again, because I spent the whole weekend on bureaucratic stuff (documents for work, bank accounts, etc.), and it took much more time than I expected. Today, I’m taking a day off to do some things at home and get myself together. Listening to some Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith right now, trying to chill the fuck down - seems to work! Last week I ran 15km, which is alright, but I think that something around 20-25km would be perfect. But also, I like it as it is because it works great for me right now, and I feel much better, so I won’t set any goals. I feel like progress will come naturally, so no need to force things here. Also, I really like the fresh air in the mornings, considering that I spend the rest of the day sitting indoors and working. I was thinking about my weeknote process during this week, and I think that I found a happy medium for myself: I write down some keywords during the week, and then I just need to expand on them over the weekend. It seems to be a very convenient way because during the week, I don’t have much time to write a lot of thoughts down. And when the weekend comes, I don’t need to remember what happened during the week and what I wanted to write about. One thing - it’s still really hard to write. I feel a huge lack of skill in just formulating my thoughts. If you’ve ever tried writing something in a second language, you know what I’m talking about: you have a thought, but when you write it down, it almost loses its meaning and integrity. Maybe I’m just dumb - the possibility is really high. I try not to read my own posts after publishing because they suck balls, but whatever. I was reading different blogs this week (surfing the BearBlog</a> discovery feed - there are tons of amazing blogs!), and some people have this incredible ability to write profound thoughts with very few words. It fascinates me. Right now, I’m on the opposite end - using a lot of words to say basically nothing. But it’s a learning process, I guess. Touch typing! This week was harder than usual. I was constantly thinking about life and work-related things, and my thoughts just endlessly wandered from one place to another. It was really hard to concentrate, and it showed instantly in my practice and results. But to be honest, I feel pretty good with the Russian layout now - speed is already up to 50-60 WPM, but progress with the English layout has slowed down a lot. I have around 4-5 letters left to unlock, so it won’t be a problem - I’ll catch up during February. Once again, there’s no need to hurry. Starting this week, I’ll practice 10 minutes per layout. That should work fine. I watched a few more movies than usual this week, but the only one I want to mention (and recommend) is Leave No Trace (2018) by Debra Granik. I resonated a lot with it, though it’s definitely a niche movie. Touching plot, great acting, beautifully shot - an unexpected gem. The main concern of the week was time. I feel like I’m doing something wrong with it. Feels like I do too much and not enough at the same time, wtf.. Is this a common thing when you’re in your mid-20s? I was trying to find a good time-tracking app just to get an outside perspective on how I spend my day, but I hate "productivity" apps, to be honest. They always make me feel more anxious. But I found a good one - BlockyTime. It’s super simple, and you don’t have to write and track a lot of things, just click on 30-minute segments of time and assign an activity. Already got some insights. I’ll use it for a few weeks and try to make some conclusions. I don’t think any conclusions will actually help with this problem, though. Anyway, I think January was stressful and hard, but I’ve done a lot of important things - things I usually just put off for a long time and never come back to. I’ll try to find something in between in February. We’ll see. Modern web (pt2) 2025-01-31T00:00:00+00:00 More than half a year has passed since my post about modern web</a>, and things haven’t gotten any better, sadly. A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon a video called "Generative AI is a Parasitic Cancer"</a> on Freya Holmér’s YouTube channel. I’ve been thinking about this topic for a long time, but my thoughts tend to be really jagged and all over the place. This video, on the other hand, is so to the point that I really recommend finding a free hour to watch it and see the problem demonstrated for yourself. I really like the parasite analogy - you can find it around the 1:05:18 mark. Here’s the problem: most people don’t understand how generative AI and LLMs work, and they think it’s actual "artificial intelligence," which drives me fucking crazy. This delusion creates a huge number of problems and miscommunication, making the web worse and worse. People think it’s magic, they embrace it, companies shove it into their products and workflows, and now we have what we have - a web bloated with nonsense "articles" and a completely fucked-up, unusable search. The video I mentioned earlier demonstrates that around 90% of search results are AI-written (and usually incorrect) articles or ads for shitty services selling "AI solutions" to your problem. Want to convert a file? Try our AI-driven service for $19.99 a month! Fuck off, mate. And I experience the same thing more and more. The number of times I’ve had to add "reddit" to the end of my searches just to get human answers is unbelievable. Even for basic problems, I need to search on fucking Reddit because every other page is a joke. (Is there any browser add-on to filter out these sites? Maybe our new reality is having both an ad blocker and an "AI-blocker" enabled at all times.) I think a lot of people don’t understand why this is dangerous: LLMs are not intelligent. They won’t tell you when they "don’t know" something - they’ll just hallucinate and make stuff up on the fly, giving you more incorrect information the more specific your question is. But you can’t stop the hype. And I think what frustrates me even more is knowing that the tool itself is fine (once again, I’m not even talking about ethics or machine learning here), but the real problem is people. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. Every tool has its pros and cons, but in this situation, a huge number of people simply don’t understand the core principles of how this tool works. Maybe it’s a marketing issue - I don’t know. Obviously, if companies told their customers that it’s not actually AI, just a fancy autocomplete, no one would buy it. But should we sacrifice the entire web for the sake of business, SEO, and marketing strategies? Sounds kind of sad and stupid, idk. By the way, here’s a great video explaining the difference between actual AI and what we have right now: "AI does not exist but it will ruin everything anyway"</a> by Angela Collier. I think this should be explained to everyone - maybe then we’ll be able to escape this tech-bro fever dream we’re stuck in. As I already said, I don’t want to go deep into the ethics of it because I’d get incredibly pissed off. That side of the situation frustrates me the most. And to everyone who thinks "AI art" is cool and that it’s even art in the first place - please leave this planet immediately. If you don’t want to draw, or you don’t want to write a song, then don’t fucking do it! Using stolen art to generate garbage should be illegal and publicly condemned. And to the people who say AI will destroy humanity - humans will do it better than anything else if they keep believing every word that corporations and billionaires feed them. I want to believe this is just a temporary problem - some new thing appears, and no one knows how to deal with it for a while. I hope that’s the case, because otherwise, we’re fucked. I don’t see any real alternatives right now. I’ve tried different search engines, and everything looks the same - thousands of AI-generated bullshit pages, a few real ones, and things are only getting worse. I’m completely moving to the small web for now - otherwise, I’ll definitely go crazy. Sorry for the rant, but this shit triggered me too much. We had such a beautiful thing in our hands, and now everyone’s just raping it, shitting on it, and thinking it’s cool. Fuck all these people. Weeknote - 25W04 2025-01-28T00:00:00+00:00 Sport : ran 13km (moderate pace)</li> Sleep : stopped drinking cofe, sleep is great</li> Touch typing : 6/7 sessions, great results: RU - 120min, 32/32 letters, 50 WPM with 95% accuracy</li> ENG - 120min, 20/26 letters, 40 WPM with 95% accuracy</li> </ol> </li> Listened : Ryan Lott - Pentaptych (2019)</a></li> Watched : Another Earth (2011) by Mike Cahill | 90/100</li> </ul> This week was really busy, so I've delayed this weeknote for a few days. I want to start with an interesting observation: I had been drinking instant coffee for the last couple of years, but around a month ago, I tried drip bag coffee. I've never understood why everybody is so crazy about "real" coffee, but this time it clicked. I drank it without milk or sugar, and it tasted really good! But the funny thing is that I live in a very small city, and if any product becomes popular among my friends and me, it just disappears from the stores. Because of that, I was kind of forced to be on a coffee diet for the whole week (and I don't enjoy the taste of instant coffee anymore) and came to the conclusion that I feel much better without coffee at all. I sleep better, I'm more calm and chill throughout the day, I don't try to do all the tasks in the world, and, as a consequence, I don't stress. I'm a little bit sleepy all the time, but I like that condition, to be honest. So, yeah, no more coffee, apparently. Also, I've switched back to a standing desk again (my first try was this summer), because my lower back hasn't been feeling good for the last month or so. Nothing serious, but I find standing instead of sitting much more comfortable, though you can't do it all day (maybe that's the reason). I hope to buy an adjustable height frame for my tabletop, so I can change the height depending on the task. That would be the ideal solution because watching movies while standing in the middle of the room is weird and not comfortable at all. I switched a few days ago, and my body feels much better already! I've been trying to do some fun stuff this week (learning history, English, drawing), but it seems that I have less and less free time every week. For now, I'm removing these categories from the weeknote stats because it's too depressing for me to look at! On the other hand, I'm making a lot of progress workwise. The reason I don't have much time now is that I've decided to make an attempt to create a little business because I'm tired of working for people who know nothing about post-production but take a big cut of my paycheck. I feel like I need an opportunity to make my own decisions and not just do things I've been told to do. I want to have more responsibility, and I want to deliver a much better service than I can while working for someone else. So right now, I need to work two jobs to have money while doing this whole thing in parallel, which, as it turns out, includes a thousand and one tasks! But I really like it; it already feels like I'm doing something right in this life. Anyway, I don't want to talk too much about it because that would take a few more hours than I have. Maybe I'll expand on this in later posts. Touch typing! Damn, why didn't I do this earlier? It turned out to be MUCH easier and faster than I thought. I've already finished the Russian alphabet, and I have six more letters left in the English alphabet. Of course, I’ll need a lot of practice after I "unlock" all the letters (I'm using Keybr, so that's why I say "unlocking" the letters), but the hard part will basically be done. I want to finish learning the letters before the end of January, so one more week, and then I'll just practice both languages for 10 minutes a day for a while—a month or two. Starting next week, I'll reduce practice time to 15 minutes; I think that will be enough. Site update: As I mentioned in the previous site update post, I won't change anything drastically in the near future, so I can focus more on the writing itself. Though I had a few small changes I wanted to add, one of them was "previous" and "next" post buttons in the weblog, so I did it. I think it’s a really useful small feature that helps navigate through posts faster. Weeknote - 25W03 2025-01-19T00:00:00+00:00 Sport : ran 23km (moderate pace)</li> Sleep : recovered sleep schedule</li> Consumption : almost the same as the previous week, sadly</li> Visual : practicing basic motion graphics, learning Fusion</li> History : 0/2 lessons, was tinkering with the site too much, will fix it next week</li> Touch typing : 7/7 sessions, great results: RU - 140min, 29/32 letters, 30-50 WPM with 90-95% accuracy</li> ENG - 140min, 18/26 letters, 30-40 WPM with 90-95% accuracy</li> </ol> </li> Listened : Alice Phoebe Lou - Orbit (2016)</a></li> Watched : The East (2013) by Zal Batmanglij | 75/100</li> </ul> This week was pretty productive overall. I managed to tackle several bureaucratic tasks related to work, and now I’m able to work with international clients and even hire people if needed. I’m moving toward my yearly goals at a great pace this month. As for the sport: my friends, who live in the next building, invited me to run with them in the mornings, and I decided to give it a try. I’ve always been more of a gym person, but lately, it hasn’t been as enjoyable. My previous running attempts failed quickly because I thought I had to run intensely, but it turns out that’s not the case. This week, we’ve been running about 5km with moderate pace each day, and it felt amazing. However, on Saturday, I ran 10km, and the next day I realized that was a rookie mistake. My left knee hurts a little - maybe the load was too much considering my lack of experience. Next week, I’ll try running 3 - 5km per day. I don’t want to rush progress, as it feels like there are many ways to get it wrong and end up injured. In addition to the previous post</a>: I switched to the Left</a> text editor from VS Code earlier this week. I think it will help me focus on writing rather than getting distracted by coding and tweaking templates. Left has a lot of great features, like page stats, a speed reader, auto-completion, and synonyms - which is particularly helpful since I’m trying to improve my English vocab and tend to repeat the same words. In an attempt to quit YouTube, I shifted my focus to RSS feeds this week, and it seems to be working. I discovered many interesting feeds and creators; perhaps I’ll add a blogroll section to my web places</a> page later. Of course, it’s not a panacea, as it’s still consumption, but I hope it will help me shift my attention from visually appealing content to text-based and long-form material, at least initially. Ideally, I want to experience more things myself this year. It’s a steep curve for me, though. Interestingly, I’ve noticed that older people sometimes don’t struggle with this issue at all, while younger people don’t even consider it a problem. It feels strange to be in this middle ground. I’ve been experimenting with different RSS readers, but none of them are perfect for me. For now, I’ve settled on the Feedbro extension for Firefox. It works well, and I like the layouts compared to other options. If you have good reader recommendations, please let me know via email! Since touch typing training is going faster and easier than I expected, I want to add some English practice to my routines. I’m thinking about reading and using Anki, which would complement my writing practice nicely. Unfortunately, the English-speaking club is on pause because there weren’t many participants, and the host stopped organizing meetings. I’ll try different approaches next week and hopefully create some kind of schedule. After cleaning up the code and rewriting all URLs, I’m still unsure how best to name blog posts. Many people seem to just use the title of the post, but that leaves them in random order in the folder. I’ve considered adding short dates (e.g., 240119-name-of-the-post), but it looks messy. If you have a good solution or idea, please let me know, because I’m confused. Major site update 2025-01-17T00:00:00+00:00 On the last week, I was thinking about adding more pages to the site and maybe importing some of my notes here, but then I realized that, basically, it's the opposite of what I originally wanted to do. A big number of pages requires more attention and regular maintenance, and I've noticed that instead of actually writing stuff, I'm just trying to find a way to make everything look reasonable, endlessly tweaking CSS and templates. It sucks, but this is how my brain works. Maybe it is some kind of escapism, but I really enjoy tinkering with stuff without any purpose, and it always turns into a deep rabbit hole and a few wasted weeks of going back and forth. But as I've written in the previous post, things always align together when it's needed. A few days ago, I stumbled upon this article</a> by Steph Ango</a>, which really resonated with me because of my frustration after attempts to make my website minimalistic and full of different stuff at the same time. He writes: When it comes to ideas, I agree — allow your mind to be changed. When it comes to process, I disagree. Style emerges from consistency, and having a style opens your imagination. Your mind should be flexible, but your process should be repeatable... Having a style collapses hundreds of future decisions into one and gives you focus... Style gives you leverage. Every time you reuse your style, you save time. A durable style is a great investment. </blockquote> My main goal here is not to make the best-looking website or become the master of CSS, but rather to sort out my thoughts and learn to write things down to better understand myself. And if I want to make it work, I need to stop spending so much time on things that don't matter so much, even if I enjoy doing them. Besides that, I really need to practice English, because my current level is horrible, and I usually spend a few hours on a simple blog post because of attempts to find better words. After these thoughts, I've decided not to add any knowledge-based notes here and, moreover, remove some stuff that takes time and doesn't have any purpose. In the past few days, I've simplified the structure a lot: now there are only two main pages in the navigation bar - homepage and weblog. I've moved all static page links to the homepage (including web places, bookmarks, and stuff that is more or less consistent), so now I can focus more on the weblog. Also, I've removed the changelog completely, and all site updates are going to be here too from now on (I hope that there will be fewer of them). The tag system turned out to be very useful because I can have different types of posts here and filter them easily. I really want to spend more time doing real things and writing about them in the weblog, so I hope this decision will change the situation for the better. Also, while surfing dozens of blogrolls, I've stumbled upon a few personal sites with amazing minimalistic design focused on writing that inspired me a lot. Check them out: mgx</a> - amazing minimalistic design & pinned posts, I've never seen this before, great idea</li> mei's diary</a> - accent on diary entries, zero unnecessary sections</li> bacardi55</a> - great design! I took the idea to move all static pages to my homepage here</li> veronique</a> - perfect style, beautiful art</li> Noisy Deadlines</a> - great tags and category system</li> Jedda</a> - cool example of a blog with a photo journal, really like it</li> </ul> Here's a list of all recent updates since I've removed the changelog: Renamed all page URLs (lowercase + hyphen as separator)</li> Added a bunch of new bookmarks</a></li> Added a bunch of new web places</a></li> Added a favicon</li> Simplified CSS and merged everything into one file</li> Cleared code a little bit. Checked the site with W3C HTML Validator</a>, and it was a total mess</li> Added manual theme toggle</li> Added emojis to blog post titles for better visual representation</li> </ul> I think there are going to be a few more minor updates this month. I want to add "next" and "previous" links to the blog template to improve navigation and maybe play with colors. For now, I made everything grayscale - I like the look, but readability is definitely much worse now. Weeknote - 25W02 2025-01-12T00:00:00+00:00 Lately, I've been noticing more and more that everything in life happens exactly when it’s supposed to. Very often, I come across a topic that interests me, but I pass it by. And every time, I return to it precisely when all the circumstances align in the most suitable combination. This mostly applies to learning since you gradually accumulate knowledge and experience in different areas. After that, it feels like a "new level" unlocks, and what once seemed incredibly difficult now feels almost obvious and always logical. And the best part is that all the knowledge from different areas connects! I thought about this because, by the time I was ready to start doing weeknotes (a week ago), I had already been practicing journaling for several months in exactly the format that makes it easiest to transfer data into weeknotes. Earlier, the idea of writing a post every week seemed daunting, but now all my ideas, thoughts, tasks, and routines are perfectly structured and laid out, making the task of creating a weeknote very simple and joyful. This week has been pretty lazy work-wise; I’m still trying to pick up the pace after the holidays. On the bright side, I spent a lot of time working on my website, which makes me very happy! For the past 4-5 months, I’ve struggled to find a job, which caused me to almost stop dedicating time to the site - my thoughts were entirely elsewhere. Now that things have stabilized, I hope to dedicate more time to one of my favorite hobbies this year. Here're some recente website changes: Rebuilt homepage</a> section. Added recent posts and "readmore" function.</li> Side panel, welcome back (I missed you)</li> Added webring section to the side panel</li> Repaired Atom & RSS feeds</li> Added a bunch of new bookmarks</a></li> Simplified CSS (and merged to one file)</li> Cleared code a little (checked with W3C HTML Validator</a>, and it was a total mess. Main sections inside of another main sections and so on)</li> Added manual theme toggle</li> Added emojis to blog post titles for better visual representaion</li> </ul> </blockquote> I’ve once again changed the site’s layout. I kind of like it overall, but here’s a thought I’ve stumbled upon: due to my lack of design skills and love for minimalism, I always make the design as sterile and plain as possible. In general, I like this approach - it makes websites load faster, improves compatibility, and enhances user experience. However, every time I visit the websites of my web neighbors (like Princess</a> or Nerucom</a>), I feel, by contrast, how much more soul and individuality their sites have. Every time, I come to the conclusion that I want to make my site more messy and chaotic, but with my design skills (or lack thereof), I don’t know how to achieve the desired result. I think this issue is also closely tied to my tendency for order and control. I’ll be thinking about what I can do about this. 🏋️‍♂️ Gym I didn’t go to the gym this week because I needed to get used to a new approach at work and finish up some old tasks. But I did create a new workout plan! Last year, I followed a program that was too complicated (though effective) - 2-hour sessions, 3 times a week. After such workouts, I had no energy left to do anything at all. This year, I’m trying out a more minimalistic approach: still a 3-day split (chest + triceps, back + biceps, legs + shoulders), but with 40-minute sessions, each including 3-4 sets of 4 basic exercises. Starting next week, I’ll log my exercises and progress. This week is for rest! 🛏️ Sleep Kinda messed up my sleeping schedule again, but it’s not that bad. Gonna try to permanently move my wake-up time to 6 a.m. next week. 📺 Consumption This one is the real pain in the ass! It’s so hard to just sit and do nothing when there’s a whole world of interesting tutorials and video essays... Maybe I need to repurpose some of that time for other stuff or just cut my internet cable, idk. Content era sucks; I miss the good old Paleolithic era. Also, I hate how necessary smartphones have become for even the simplest things these days, but that’s a whole other topic. 👁️ Visual Did some simple motion graphics at the new job - it’s a really cool process, but I’m still not used to it taking 4 times as long as regular editing (skill issue). The idea of taking five motion graphics lessons a week was horrible! The best approach is to learn the basics and then practice, experiment, and implement techniques one at a time. Why do I always forget this? Anyway, I’ll try to include some examples of my work in upcoming weeknotes. I think it would be fun to look back on my progress over time. 📜 History (2/2 lessons) The invasion of Persian forces (500–449 BCE): The Battle of Marathon</li> The Battle of Thermopylae</li> The Battle of Salamis</li> </ul> I love bringing back weekly history lessons! They take so little time and bring so much joy. I’m taking casual paper notes but thinking about transferring them to my Markdown system so I can have more detailed articles on my site. I’ll think about it. ⌨️ Touch typing (7/7 sessions) Time: 20 + 20 min daily (2 languages)</li> Letters: ~ 50%</li> WPM: 30 → 40</li> Accuracy: ~ 95%</li> </ul> One interesting thing I’ve noticed after two weeks of touch-typing practice: words have a vibe. You’ve probably heard of synesthesia</a> (when person associates certain letters or numbers with colors). I’ve started noticing that words feel like they carry a certain emotion or sensation - not because of their meaning, but because of the sequence of finger movements. Some words are typed with just one finger; some have a concise, even logical sequence of movements; others feel awkward and clunky. I find it amusing how the brain attaches associations to physical sensations while forming new neural connections. So far, learning has been going smoothly. In two weeks, I’ve learned the first half of both the English and Russian alphabets and increased my speed to 40–45 WPM with fairly high accuracy. It’s nice to develop new skills! 🎵 Music Relistening to some melancholic, moody stuff this week. Amnioverse by Lapalux is even better than the last time I listened to it! I’ve had it on repeat almost the whole week while tinkering with the site and practicing touch typing. Highly recommend. Lapalux - Amnioverse (2019)</a></li> Ichiko Aoba - Windswept Adan (2020)</a></li> Loukeman - Sd-1 (2021)</a></li> JFDR - New Dreams (2020)</a></li> </ul> 🎞️ Films Airplane! (1980) by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker & Jerry Zucker | 75/100</li> </ul> ISTP notes 2025-01-07T00:00:00+00:00 Over the past few months, I’ve been reading a lot about Jungian types, MBTI, and socionics. Normally, I’m quite skeptical about typologies that divide people into rigid categories - I feel that these are dangerous generalizations. However, in this case, MBTI has helped me better understand myself, recognize behavioral patterns, and draw some interesting conclusions. I also want to point out that I consider taking any typology tests an unreliable way of typing oneself, especially when it comes to Jungian typology and its derivatives. In my opinion, it’s better to focus on cognitive functions and base any conclusions on them rather than relying on test results. My type is ISTP (SLI in socionics), aka The Crafter, aka The Artisan. Here are some notes I’ve made over the past few months based on MBTI (which currently seems more realistic to me than socionics) and my own life experience. I don’t think this will be useful to anyone else, so let me clarify that this is just a personal reminder for myself (as I’m constantly making observations and immediately forgetting them). Take care of your body – prioritize health, proper nutrition and regular exercise.</li> Pause before reacting – avoid responding impulsively to situations. Give yourself time to process all info and move away from a pessimistic mindset.</li> Prioritize responsibilities – balance what you want to do with what you need to do. Focus on responsibilities to build discipline and accountability.</li> Write things down – your memory might not retain everything. Keeping notes prevents you from forgetting lessons and repeating same mistakes.</li> Practice humility – don’t try to control everything or everyone. Let people ask for help if they need it; avoid giving unsolicited advice, even if you’re confident it will help.</li> Stick to habits – treat habits like a belief system. Commit to them, especially routines like exercise and schedules, to avoid dropping them after a short time.</li> Verify facts – don’t blindly trust information, even if it seems logical. Be aware of biases and hidden motives. (and don't make idols for yourself!)</li> An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. Stick to your values rather than acting out of resentment. Revenge only leads to more harm.</li> Build connections – skills alone aren’t enough. Networking might feel uncomfortable, but it’s essential for growth and opportunities.</li> Optimize routine tasks – simplify repetitive or mandatory work by finding the fastest and most efficient ways to complete it.</li> </ul> Some tips for task optimization and healthy productivity: Small consistent steps. Big plans are really hard to execute, so break down all tasks into smaller ones and tackle them gradually, bit by bit.</li> Clear tasks with defined time marks. Tasks should be clear and well-defined, so they can be completed within a specific and reasonably short timeframe (otherwise - procrastination)</li> Time will smooth out edges eventually. If you stick to the previous points and work gradually, over time, imperfections will even out, and progress will become noticeable.</li> Find someone who inspires you and does similar things; use it as a kind of "decision/behavior compass." This method helps you stay on track and not feel lost.</li> </ul> Weeknote - 25W01 2025-01-05T00:00:00+00:00 Last year, I noticed that many people I follow online have a weeknotes section, and I spent a lot of time considering starting one myself but wasn’t sure how to approach it. What finally convinced me was an example from Zak</a>. So far, this format seems like the best fit for my situation. The thing is, I have a small set of routines that I try to track closely, and I think weeknotes could help me better observe my progress from an outside perspective and possibly identify patterns in my behavior. At the moment, I don’t have a clear idea of the exact format I want for this, but as usual, these things tend to evolve naturally once you give them an initial push. For now, the plan is simple: I want to track my basic habits. This includes progress at the gym, studying history, developing professional skills in video editing, motion design, and audio, as well as short-term learning goals like touch typing. I also plan to monitor bad habits, such as excessive content consumption. Beyond that, I think logging and reflection are incredibly valuable for mental health, and perhaps weeknotes will lead to some interesting insights about myself. (For instance, once I spent two months tracking exactly how much time I spent on everything I did each day, and the results were shocking.) The first week of this year will serve as a simple introduction since I spent most of it finishing last year’s unfinished tasks and partially resting. 2024 Yearly review 2024-12-31T00:00:00+00:00 This year was incredibly eventful and productive! I didn’t expect it, especially considering that I moved to a very small town in the mountains and thought life would become slow and boring (which, a year ago, was what I wanted - and still want, to some extent). The move has been very beneficial for me; living in a more secluded place allowed me to better understand myself and my desires, and I’ve found a direction I want to pursue further. Over the past year, I’ve (kinda) transitioned from immaturity and a complete unwillingness to work to accepting the fact that you need to sacrifice a small part of your freedom and time to gain another type - financial freedom. For most people, this is an obvious truth, but it took me longer to grasp it than I would’ve liked. As a result, I’ve concluded that the simplest way to handle this is to optimize your work as much as possible and significantly improve your skills to take on more complex, higher-paying tasks that involve less routine work. Here’s a list of goals (or milestones) for professional growth in 2025: Improve editing skills as much as possible. This includes mastering Davinci Resolve and studying literature on composition, color grading, and related fields. This is the foundation, and it needs to be polished to perfection.</li> Learn motion graphics. Start by fully mastering Fusion; if that’s not enough, move on to After Effects. This is a key priority and already in progress.</li> Study TouchDesigner. While secondary, this can complement the main goals (plus, it’s like modular synthesis in the visual arts world, which is a 100% my cup of tea).</li> Learn the basics of design. I’ve avoided this for a long time, but design is crucial for working with motion graphics, so at least the fundamentals need to be covered.</li> Work with international clients. I see great potential in work with clients from abroad. However, this is a significant and challenging step with many hidden pitfalls, so I need to start tackling it gradually.</li> Achieve stable income without burnout. Find work that doesn’t consume all my time so I can simultaneously learn the above-mentioned skills. The goal is to establish a stable income that covers all my needs.</li> Upgrade pc and get a monitor for color grading. After working with basic motion graphics for a few weeks, I’ve realized my i5-8400 can no longer handle the workload. In the first half of the year, I need to replace the motherboard, CPU, and a few other components. I’d also like to buy a monitor with better color accuracy and a larger screen, but prices are high, so I’ll address this when possible.</li> </ul> 2024 was my first full year without social media. It was an interesting, sometimes challenging journey that allowed me to discover new interests, meet amazing people, and make unexpected realizations about myself and the world. I want to continue moving in this direction; there are still many areas and issues to work on. Here’s a list of those I’ll focus on in 2025: Stop watching YouTube and series. While I’ve avoided social media this year, I can’t fully claim victory since I still struggle with a content consumption habit, especially YouTube (and occasionally TV series). I’ve spent far less time on YouTube this year, and there were periods when I stopped watching it entirely, but the habit hasn’t been fully broken. This needs to change, and I must take it more seriously.</li> Learn history. The time freed up from technology has allowed me to explore new interests, one of which is studying history. In 2025, I want to continue and perhaps dedicate more time to it.</li> Improve English skills. This year, I started regularly attending an English-speaking club, which has significantly improved my language skills in just a few months. This skill will be invaluable for work, so I need to solidify this habit. I’ve also noticed weaknesses in my grammar, so studying grammar is a huge part of this goal.</li> Learn touch typing. I spend a lot of time at the computer and type quite a bit. It’s embarrassing to admit, but I still haven’t mastered touch typing, which slows me down and frustrates me daily. This year, I want to fix this and incorporate touch typing exercises into my morning routine. Ideally, I’d like to type fluently in both Russian and English.</li> Continue using a planner. This year, I found what seems to be the perfect tool for tracking my activities - a school-style planner (I've just discovered that it's very different in US, I think it's called "assignment book" there). I’ve tried various methods, from digital notes to reminders and journals, but only the simplicity of a school planner helped me stay organized and productive. In 2025, I’ll continue using it to reinforce the habits I started in 2024 and possibly add new ones.</li> Maintain health-related routines. In 2024, I established a decent sleep schedule and started going to the gym (though I missed quite a few sessions and basically the whole summer because it was really hot). This year, I aim to consistently work out three times a week without setting rigid goals - just getting out in the morning and doing what feels right for my body.</li> Apply MBTI insights. Toward the end of this year, I delved into MBTI and Jungian theory, not for general purposes but specifically to understand myself better, recognize my strengths and weaknesses, and learn how to work with them. In 2025, I want to continue exploring this, though it’s a secondary priority.</li> Adopt healthier eating habits. I’ve improved my diet somewhat over the past year, but toward the end of the year, I started consuming more sugar and pastries (perhaps due to the cold weather). In the new year, I’ll aim for better nutrition, including more wholesome meals.</li> Practice having proper rest days. At least one full day off each week. Since my work is project-based and inconsistent, my schedule feels like a blend of workdays and weekends. Essentially, I work every day, but I also rest every day. This needs to be fixed by establishing a proper schedule.</li> Revisit driving and road rules. At the end of 2024, I started studying traffic rules and driving, but it turned out to be much more tedious and draining than expected (the legalistic language is particularly off-putting). If I have the time and energy, I’ll try to complete this in the new year, though I’m doubtful since there are many more important tasks. Time will tell.</li> </ul> This post contains only a portion of my reflections and thoughts, as I’ve decided to highlight only the most important aspects. It’s possible that throughout the year, I’ll make adjustments and change course depending on the circumstances - this is by no means a to-do list but rather a general direction that, as of the end of 2024, seems most suitable for my current situation. At the end of 2025, I plan to review the year and assess what I’ve achieved, what didn’t work out, and what challenges arose. I believe such notes can be very helpful for staying on the right track. Modern web 2024-08-25T00:00:00+00:00 I quit social media more than a year ago. Despite the fact that it was a pretty big part of my life for a long time, I feel a lot better now and want to talk a little bit about modern web problems and possible solutions. A lot of things that I will mention might seem "nostalgic," so I just want to say upfront that I'm in my mid-20s and was introduced to social media almost a few years after the first time the Internet came to my house (I think it was 2007-2008). I've never had experience with the "real" old web - GeoCities, webrings, IRC, RSS, and other stuff - and I want to make it clear that the main message is not "bring back the good old web, it used to be better!" though I find some of those things useful and healthy for society in general. SPENDING TIME ONLINE Until 2023, I had no idea that there were so many amazing web places all over the internet because everyone around me (including me) used basically 5-10 websites: Google, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Wikipedia, and Reddit. Basically, we have everything here, so why would you need something else? The funny thing is that all those places lead to each other in a vicious circle: you search something on Google, with the magic of SEO it leads you to a few Reddit posts, which lead you to YouTube videos or Twitter threads, which lead you back to Reddit, and this loop never ends. Most people of my age live in this ecosystem their entire life and have no idea that there's something else. In 2022-2023, I started gradually quitting social media and deleting my accounts. I had a few similar attempts already, but they didn't end up successfully for many reasons. I was heavily addicted to Instagram and YouTube; my screen time was up to 8-9 hours per day, and it felt terrible. Bad mood, bad sleep, poor social connections, and the worst thing - I was losing interest in everything I liked at the time. At some point, I felt so terrible that I decided to delete accounts one by one in the least painful order: first, delete accounts that I hardly use, then delete the ones I use more often, and so on. The whole process lasted around a year, and it worked! But a new problem appeared. I love the web for the ability to connect with other people, so I started searching for alternatives. That was the moment I began to delve deeper into the indie web (aka small web). WEBSITES ARE COOL What is even indie web</a>? At first, I had a strong feeling that it's a very small marginal community of a few maniacally enthusiastic people who can't stop talking about how cool the indie web is and why everyone should make a website (and now I'm one of them...). I was kind of wrong: this community is huge and full of amazing people. To be honest, I can't remember when was the last time I discovered so many creative people in one evening. I wanted to include all of them in this article but made a separate page with my favorite web places</a>. And the cool thing about these places is that almost each site has such a page dedicated to other cool pages! So, the first week after my discovery, I spent in this endless rabbit hole, going from one site to another. You might say, "but the whole point of quitting social media was to avoid such time-wasting rabbit holes," and I partially agree. But there's a slight difference: browsing personal web pages, which were made by hand with a particular intention, is a completely different experience compared to big tech sites. MODERN WEB PROBLEMS I won't expand on this topic too much because otherwise this post will grow 10 times longer, but here's a short list of reasons why I don't like modern web solutions and try to avoid them as much as I can: Web bloat - pop-ups/ads/trackers/cookies, which make websites slow, ugly, non-private, and almost unusable.</li> SEO - you can't find anything useful because of search engine optimization; as I already mentioned, the first 20-50 results are the same 10 sites.</li> AI-written articles - I'm pretty sure you've already noticed a bunch of nonsense websites with AI-written news/articles/etc.</li> Driven by money - in most cases, those sites are trying to sell something to you or sell your data.</li> Algorithmic feed - almost every app or site has an infinite feed nowadays, which is the worst human invention of the last decade.</li> Every website is the same because it's financially good for the companies. If posting pictures of shit were financially better, they would do it immediately.</li> Driven by likes, trends, and influencers, not by creativity and people.</li> Closed spaces - you HAVE TO create an account just to see a picture or a post (=> give some of your personal data and sign the "Terms of Use", although it's absolutely unnecessary).</li> You don't own anything; you're literally called a "user." As a result, your data could be deleted/moderated/censored, and you can't do anything about it. For example:</li> </ul> Google reserves the right to delete an inactive Google Account and its activity and data if you are inactive across Google for at least two years. This policy applies to your personal Google Account. </blockquote> THE DIFFERENCE So, what is the difference? Indie web is made for people, not for algorythms or companies. This was my main reason to switch, but there's a lot more than that: It has zero web bloat</li> No trackers, no cookies</li> Loads fast on any device</li> People own it, not companies</li> Creative and versatile</li> Written by human, not AI</li> No restrictions, highly customizable</li> No distractions, FOMO, or modern brain-stimulating shit</li> And many, many more</li> </ul> Sadly, almost all web services are aimed at making money through data collection and advertisement nowadays. Everybody knows it and silently agrees because it seems like we have no other options. You want to check out cool pictures of your best friend's dog on Instagram, but you don't have an account? Sorry, won't happen! First, you'll need to provide some personal data, sign an agreement that this data could be used in various ways, and create an account that will tie you to that particular web space. The indie web is cool because it is the opposite. It doesn't force you to do anything, it doesn't need your data or your attention, it doesn't sell you stuff you don't need, and honestly, it feels like a huge breath of fresh air. If you're tired of all this stuff, I encourage you to take a break from commercial social media and spend a few days browsing the indie web (you can start here</a> or here</a>), and I'm pretty sure that you'll quickly get what I'm talking about. If you decide to go further after that, I highly recommend you consider making your own website - it's easy, fun, and you'll gain some new knowledge, which is always great. YOU CAN MAKE A WEBSITE, IT'S EASY To make your own personal web space, you don't need to have any particular skills or deep knowledge. It's definitely not as simple as making an Instagram account, but it takes maybe a week or two to cover most of the things you need to know. This whole website-making idea serves two purposes: Break from the big-tech environment cycle</li> Rebelance the web in favor of quality and strong social connections</li> </ol> I've seen some videos on this topic lately, and a lot of people write in the comments something like "Yeah, personal pages were cool, I hope someone would bring them back one day!" and it sounds so strange to me. I think that starting with yourself and making small contributions here and there is what really makes a difference in the end, and that we're still able to change the situation, which is only getting worse over time. So, if you have something to share (it could be thoughts, knowledge, art, or anything else), or you just want to make a simple landing page, I encourage you to check out these resources and make your own web space: Great HTML & CSS free course</a></li> Community of website hobbyists, lots of web-related resources</a></li> Web-development reference book</a></li> Layout generator with a lot of different options</a></li> Another layout generator with useful comments in the code</a></li> More advanced stuff, in case you are interested</a></li> </ul> You have few routes when creating your website: Create website from scratch using HTML & CSS</li> Use layout generator as a starting point</li> Use website builder or CMS (Wordpress, Wix, Shopify, etc.)</li> Use SSG (Static Site Generator)</li> </ul> I don't recommend using the third option because, again, it ties you to a specific platform. Instead, I suggest trying the second one - using a layout generator to create a template for your future website. I think it’s the optimal option because it provides all the structure you’ll need initially (plus, you can customize it before generating the code). When you start filling it with your content, you’ll figure out how things work really fast, but be sure to check out HTML basics beforehand. If you want to build everything from scratch, start with a simple landing page, figure out the basics, add some simple CSS, and gradually add pages as needed. Don’t be afraid to break things - I’ve re-designed and re-written this site a few times already; it’s part of the learning process! (Update: After 10 posts, I decided to transfer everything to an SSG (Zola</a> in my case) because it’s much simpler to use if you have a larger site. For example, with an SSG, you can use templates for side panels, and you don’t have to change them on every page, like with plain HTML. You can also use taxonomy to filter posts by tags, which is very useful. I highly recommend this method, but it does require a bit more technical knowledge!) After creating your website, you'll need two more things: Domain name</li> Hosting</li> </ul> The first one is pretty easy: you can buy a domain in a few minutes, and it costs 5-10 dollars per year. Some of them can be pricey (especially short .com domains), but you probably won’t need those. Hosting is a bit more advanced because there are plenty of options: you can use a dedicated service (I'm using Hostinger right now), a VPS (Virtual Private Server), or even self-host your site. I’ve chosen the simplest option to start so I can dedicate more time to learning HTML and CSS, but I’m really interested in the VPS option (though it’s more expensive), and I will explore it a bit later. Anyway, if you're not a tech person, I think a simple hosting service is the easiest way. Once you set up all those things, it’ll become really easy and fun to maintain and develop your site. You can add posts, photos, and all that stuff like on social media; you can play with the look and feel of your site by changing the CSS; you can optimize it a little, and much more. I hope this text will inspire you to make your own web space, or at least think about it! If you found it useful or even created a website, please write me a letter; I would really enjoy it. RESOURCES Here're some resources that are written much better then my article, I highly recommend you to read them as well: My website is a shifting house next to a river of knowledge. What could yours be?</a></li> Guidelines for Brutalist Web Design</a></li> How to Build a Low-tech Website?</a></li> The internet used to be* fun</a></li> A Manifesto for Preserving Content on the Web</a></li> Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web</a></li> Rediscovering the Small Web</a></li> Manifesto for a New Web</a></li> Do Not Track</a></li> </ul> Energy consumption 2024-08-02T00:00:00+00:00 This is the first part of my self-sufficiency exploration story. To clarify my reasoning: one of my big goals in life is to have my own piece of land and live more or less self-sufficiently. I'm not talking about a super-remote lifestyle and a "hut in the woods" type of thing, but rather the ability to comfortably live without modern commodities, which seem to expand at the speed of light (often not in a good way). I want to be a person who understands where electricity comes from, how it works, and how you can generate and store it. The same applies to water gathering, food-related skills such as gardening, ingredient prep and storage, cooling and heating techniques, plumbing, woodworking, and much more. Currently, I’m living in a flat and have a few permanent jobs, so I don’t have the possibility to start practicing these skills in a more suitable environment yet. Therefore, I decided to start small with what I already have. First things first, I want to understand how electricity works at the everyday level, learn more about energy consumption, and how I can optimize it. I remember the basic stuff from school, but I want to refresh my knowledge and apply it in real life. OBJECTIVES Calculate current power consumption levels</li> Create a more power-efficient setup</li> Compare setups in terms of energy consumption and limitations</li> </ol> MAIN WORKSTATION PC (Intel i5 8400, 48GB RAM, 7.5TB (SSD + HDD), RTX 2060 12GB, OS: Windows 10 Pro)</li> MI Display 27 2k</li> JBL LSR 305 (2x)</li> Steinberg UR22 mkii</li> M-Audio Axiom 61</li> Beyerdynamic DT 990 Pro (250ohm)</li> T-Bone SCT2000, SM-57, Zoom H4n Pro</li> Keyboard & mouse</li> </ul> This is my main setup, which I run every day. My casual routine looks like this: I turn it on when I wake up, do all my work tasks, do all other tasks during the day, and turn it off when I go to sleep. So the whole setup is running the whole day. We can fix this! The biggest limitation in this experiment is my main job, which requires constant downloading of huge 4k S-Log video files, GPU-intensive color-grading, rendering, and uploading those files. Theoretically, I can do all this stuff on the laptop, but as I already mentioned, a radical approach is not the point of this experiment. So, the most obvious thing to do is to separate "job time" from "everything else time" and use the heavyweight setup only for heavyweight tasks. That's exactly what I'm going to do: use the main workstation only for work (and only for a limited time - e.g., 3 hours in the morning), and use a new test setup for all the other stuff, such as modular synthesis, mixing, website development (VS Code), browsing, and everything else. Let's look at the test setup! TEST WORKSTATION Matebook Pro 16 (Ryzen 7 5800H, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, OS: Linux Fedora 40)</li> Komplete Kontrol M32</li> TRUTHEAR x Crinacle ZERO (10ohm)</li> SM-57, Zoom H4n Pro</li> Charge cycle: 100min / discharge cycle: approximately 600min</li> </ul> Yep, Linux and audio-related work, I know! But considering that I don’t do commercial projects anymore, I basically don’t have to use specific software or work with 100-ish track projects, so we're good! I’ve been running Fedora on this laptop for a few months already, and it's smooth like butter. Of course, there are some Linux-related issues, but I’m gradually learning how to solve them. I’ve already tested VCV, Bitwig, ORCA, Dirtywave M8 Headless (m8c), and VS Codium, where I’m writing this article right now - everything works great, to my surprise! And the cool thing is this setup works for more than a full working day after one charging session, which is only 100 minutes. One problem is there's only 1 SSD slot, so I may buy a 1TB external SSD to keep media stuff there. CALCULATIONS To calculate energy consumption of both setups, I’m going to use a wattmeter (electricity usage monitor). I wanted to calculate all the power usage separately for all the devices, but then decided that it would be a lot easier and more accurate to just check the overall power consumption of the two setups. Let's look at the workstations first, and then check the peripheral devices: WATTMETER VALUES PC Passive - 80W</li> PC Music listening with JBL monitors - 100W</li> PC Browsing + VS Code - 110W</li> PC VCV Rack + Keys - 120W</li> PC Video editing - 150W</li> PC Video rendering - 265W</li> Laptop charging - 75W</li> </ul> To calculate the power consumption of a device, we need to multiply its power consumption (in kilowatts!) by the time the device is used (in hours). POWER CONSUMPTION OF THE MAIN SETUP Editing and rendering = 0.15kW * 2h + 0.265kW * 0.3h = 0.38kWh</li> Music production = 0.12kW * 2h = 0.24kWh</li> Lightweight tasks (browsing, VS Code, learning) = 0.11kW * 5h = 0.55kWh</li> Passive = 0.08kW * 4h = 0.32kWh</li> Total per day: 1.49kWh</li> </ul> POWER CONSUMPTION OF THE TEST SETUP Editing and rendering = 0.15kW * 2h + 0.265kW * 0.3h = 0.38kWh</li> Full laptop charging for the whole day = 0.075kW * 1.66h = 0.12kWh</li> Total per day: 0.5kWh</li> </ul> So, theoretically, we can use 3 times less energy without radical solutions - only by optimizing what we already have. For reference: if you have 2 solar panels, they'll produce around 1.5kWh of energy per day, which means we can do all the computer-related work and have 1kWh left for peripheral devices: Phone charging - 0.018kWh per day</li> Desk lamp - 0.002kWh per day</li> WiFi router - 0.16kWh per 24 hours</li> Freezer - 0.3kWh per 24 hours</li> Total per 24h: 0.48kWh</li> </ul> CONCLUSION All values and calculations are approximate, but I think it's a good starting point for understanding how much energy your devices need and how you can optimize energy consumption by slightly adjusting your workflow and habits. I hope this article will stimulate readers' interest in this topic; feel free to write to me if you have any thoughts or ideas about power consumption. This is the first step in my self-sufficiency research. Next, I want to cover some food-related topics, such as gardening and ingredient preparation, so stay tuned! RESOURCES Electrical engineering basics</a> - amazing youtube playlist that covers all the necessary stuff</li> </ul>