Category: Me

Personal random notes.

Me

All the “Things” 2020

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I’ve been using the Things app to track all my personal to-do’s and projects for a couple of years now. I love this Mac-assed Mac app and use it all the time.

I recently discovered how to get access to the Things database and took the chance to reflect on how I’m spending my time.

So here are some highlights of all my “Things” in 2020.

Lastly year, I completed 108 personal projects. Each project consists of a number of specific to-do items (tasks). A project can be something small like 🛳 Renew passport (6 tasks) or big like 🎸Convert guest room to a music studio (31 tasks).

I generally include an emoji in my project names because somehow they help motivate me. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Some favorite completed projects of 2020 were:

  • 🗳Vote (3 tasks)
  • 🤹‍♂️Plan for best self (7 tasks)
  • 🦠Corona (5 tasks), my most fitting “project” for 2020

I canceled 9 projects, such as:

  • 🌶Home gardening
  • 🥋Grav Maga
  • 🦃 Holiday family plans, the most fitting cancellation for 2020

I completed 11 projects to “fix” things, including:

  • 🐍Fix that gap under my door (3 tasks)
  • 🥁Fix drums (luckily only 2 tasks and zero dollars)
  • ✍️Blog fix up (6 tasks)

Top project in progress:

  • 📘Write a book (43 tasks completed, many more to go — and growing)

In 2020, I completed about 7 per day on average. This is useful because it tells me how to pace myself.

I canceled about 1.4 per day. Canceling isn’t a bad thing — it’s just the opposite. It’s a conscious choice not to do something you thought you needed to do.

Going into the new year, I have 62 projects in progress. Hmm, it already looks like a busy year coming up. 🤔

Here is one of the SQLite queries I used for this post. 👨🏻‍💻

SELECT title, date(creationDate, 'unixepoch') as start, date(stopDate, 'unixepoch') as stop from TMTask
WHERE type = 1
AND status = 3
AND date(creationDate, 'unixepoch') BETWEEN '2020-01-01' AND '2020-12-31'
ORDER BY creationDate

Me

Three Millions Steps

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My Sweatcoin app, which I had reluctantly decided to allow tracking all my steps, reported to me that in 2019, I had walked over 3 millions steps, or the distance from Lubbock (Texas) to Rochester (New York).

This was cool to know, helped inspire me, and turned out to be a surprisingly delightful experience. 😀 It’s much better than the usual “medal” or fireworks for doing my regular workouts. Granted, there was a full-year buildup for the one.

My only complaint is that the distance shows up in kilometers. I know this is America-centric of me, but srsly, kilometers? 🙄😆 I had to convert them to miles on Google to get any real meaning out of it. 🤷🏻‍♂️ (It’s 1472 miles.)

Me · You

The 50/50 Rule and Why I Blog

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My blog’s current tag line is “This is not a blog.”

Originally, this site was intended as a way to keep track of links to interesting or useful things, like glorified bookmarks. But since then, it has evolved to serve another purpose: to make me think and communicate about stuff.

See, as I was bookmarking stuff, I found myself adding little bits about why I liked the link or context about how I found it. Over time, I found that when I would link to an article, I would sometimes want to add a summary about the article to help me process it and remember it better.

A better way to learn, process, retain and remember information is to learn half the time, and share half the time.

If I take two seconds to effortlessly save a bookmark, then the information is saved and soon forgotten. If I add even a quick post about it, giving it a title and some context or a summary, then that post is now a part of me. And as a bonus, I get to share it with other people.

So I was happy to see this article, which makes me think I am not wasting my time.

👉 The 50/50 Rule (How to Retain And Remember 90% of Everything You Learn)

It basically says that if you make yourself talk about something, then you come to understand it or appreciate it better. Spend half you time learning and half your time explaining what you learned.

According to the article, I would be serving myself better by writing out my notes by hand. It seems people type too fast for their brain to absorb what they’re doing. And simply by writing that, I now remember that fact. But I’m typing this anyways because you can’t tag, search, and share your paper notebook. 🤷🏻‍♂️

And yes, this article is so meta.

Me · Software Dev

WordPress API

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The recent discovery of the YNAB API has me visualizing some sort of personal client where I can manage my budget and do everything else in my life from one place. Maybe a command-line tool on my Mac terminal? 😆🤓 Why not write and edit blog posts from there too? I mean, it’s possible. I might do it just because it’s so nerdy.

👉 WordPress REST API Handbook

Wait, what if I used the WordPress API to write a blog post about the WordPress API. 🤯😆

Note: there is also a handy interactive API console.

Me · Software Dev

Uploading

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As an iOS app developer, there is no better feeling that uploading your build to TestFlight. You’ve done your part, and now it’s time to get the app into people’s hands to try out for real.

Actually, there is one better feeling: pressing the “release” button and publishing your app to the whole world. But that’s one is scarier, sort of like jumping off a cliff. Hopefully fun cliff diving. 😵😃

Me · Music

Needs a Word… 🎧

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There needs to be a word for that feeling when you’re really enjoying a song but you can’t wait for it to be over so that you can listen to the next song because you’re really going to enjoy listening to the next song too.

It’s like you want to be able to fast forward though a song and still enjoy it. 🤦🏻‍♂️

Me · Music

“I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”

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U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” is one of those songs that I heard and vaguely liked when when it came out in 1987 when I was 15 years old. At the time, I didn’t really “get” the song. The words were mysterious, but I couldn’t relate to them. The song sounded alright, but kind of standard and mid-tempo to me at the time.

But now it is one of those songs that I not only “get” but feel like I’ve lived.

Musically, I find it stunning — almost impossibly subtle and unique. It’s such a weird combination: an oom-pah Polka baseline, weirdly undefined drums, gospel vocals from an Irish singer, and a couple of echo-heavy guitars. It should be a disaster. But it works! The end result is beautiful and organic. It’s catchy and singable, but not in an annoying pop sort of way. More in a timeless way that makes me think, “this song must have always just existed” like a mountain or a river.

As an aspiring musician myself, this song blows my mind. I can’t even imagine trying to come up with anything like this song.

Here’s the song’s mesmerizing video, shot in Las Vegas. It apparently had a lasting affect on legitimizing Las Vegas for musicians. 😎

Lyrically, I suppose the song is about spiritual doubt or yearning or something… blah blah blah 🙄. That’s not the part I relate to. The “honey lips” stands out for me now. Another sign I’ve grown up from my clueless 15-year old self. 🤓

I have kissed honey lips
Felt the healing in the fingertips
It burned like fire
This burning desire


I have spoke with the tongue of angels
I have held the hand of a devil
It was warm in the night
I was cold as a stone


But I still haven’t found
What I’m looking for

Interesting side note according to wikipedia… this song was not the band’s original pick for a second single off of The Joshua Tree. But when “Red Hill Mining Town” stumbled, the band swapped in “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” as a late second choice. Music works in mysterious ways. 🤷🏻‍♂️