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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 17th, 2023

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  • For those that are questioning what the point of the lengthy article is because the title doesn't help much, here's the explanation:

    Imagine it this way: let’s say every time you stepped outside your front door, you decided you want to be safe, so you dressed head-to-toe in full combat gear, complete with bulky full-body kevlar, a helmet, safety glasses, steel-toed boots, and gloves. I can stop the scenario here: even for those of us living in the roughest places, that’s a silly visual because it’s overkill. To be a little detailed, it also goes back to that word I used: “you want to be safe.” Safe from what? The sun? Then just put on some sunscreen and a hat. The cold? Put on a jacket. Danger? Keep your eyes up, headphones out (or low), and be aware of your surroundings.

    Yet, many of us do the equivalent of overdressing in our digital lives because, as I said, we don’t always see it right away. Most people can instantly tell when they might be putting on too many items of clothing. Even something as simple as a jacket – when you feel the weight and restriction of movement – makes you pause enough to go “how cold is it really outside?” With the digital world, it can be much harder to notice the added weight, at least for a while. This makes it easier to overdress and not notice for a long time – or to dress up in full armor except for going barefoot (like I said, inconsistent action). In the past, I’ve compared some of the easier cybersecurity strategies with locking your front door: it’s technically inconvenient but we accept that inconvenience because the dramatic increase in security and safety outweighs it. This is comparable to things like using a password manager and 2FA or making the upfront switching cost to another service.

    ...

    Once [people] understand the concept, they quickly start to realize where they can safely dial back to something less stressful without risking themselves and where they should instead focus more attention to improve. You don’t need the entire suit of body armor, you just need to put on a jacket.










  • I've found that an A6 size notebook was easier to always have with me because it fit in my pocket the way a smartphone does. But I've been using an A5 since I stopped going to an office and, well, I had some A5 notebooks lying around.

    I've also found that the best thing I learned to do with the notebook was to have very few things (the most important things) written down in the front and "other" things written in the back. Focusing on the things in the front until complete (or has become less important relative to some other thing) and marking them off is tremendously helpful. Folding the corner or bookmarking the most recently written on pages allows for easy navigation.

    It's a bit like a stack and a heap. When a new "other" thing has my attention, I write it to the heap in the back of the notebook. The most important things (3 at most) are written to the stack in the front of the notebook and popped off (struck through) when finished or moved to the heap (writen in the back of the book because it's no long a top priority). Eventually the back and the front meet (a stack overflow) because you're not erasing anything and you need to use a new notebook.

    I couldn't tell you why this is so helpful other than to say that it frees my mind to write down whatever has my attention and is important enough to remember but not important enough to prioritize now.

    Other than that, I use a calendar app and Google notes for things I want in digital, synchronized form.

    Also, regular exercise seems to help me stay organized. But that's probably not what you're asking about.



















  • As far as I can tell Conda.org is run independently of Anaconda. Anaconda uses the projects built and developed by the Conda Community. It seems that some employees of Anaconda are paid to work on Conda community projects. But that seems to be the extent of the relationship.

    I don't like or use Anaconda. It's the definition of bloat and I'm not sure what their value proposition is. Installing and running Conda (or Mamba) is easy to do without installing or using Anaconda. In fact, it's the recommended method for installing Mamba.