2026-08-012 Catching up

#blog

So it's now August. The last blog I posted was in February and it was a very bleak and icy winter. This summer is proving to be just as bad with a heat dome that has made it uncharacteristically hot for months.

I took a long break from posting here because my personal VimWiki was competing with what this site is, which brings me to a thought I've had for a while- I think I have issues organizing my thoughts digitally because I have no idea when a service will suddenly not be available or suddenly become subscription-based, or I'll suddenly not remember how to work it. This Digital Garden plugin through Obsidian is really neat, easy to remember, and affordable (free), but who knows how long that will last. VimWiki isn't as feature-rich, but it lives on my computer and is open-source as far as I can tell. Both services make it a pain to add pictures internally, so I've been relying on web image hosting sites to deal with that; but again, how long will that service function? I have commitment issues, if you can tell. At least it makes MMORPGs and other internet-based games less attractive to me so I only spend my money on things that exist on my computer (though I will toss a dollar or two toward the friendslop of the week every so often- this bothers me less because it feels more disposable).

My home server is finally running again, and I'm not sure I ever mentioned on this website that it went down. I had 4x10tb used HDD running Truenas and it was stripped and mirrored. Unfortunately, two drives failed at nearly the same time in such a way that all my files were gone (don't stick your mechanical drives on top of a vibrating subwoofer). I had backups of my more important files, but all the lesser things were gone. Since disk prices have gone up with everything else, I'm essentially running on 2 drives now, but they mirror each other just in case something happens to one of them. It's a bit slower, but it's working fine so far.

I'm taking sailing lessons! It was mostly a decision I made on a whim, and I'm enjoying it so far. I'm sure I'll post pictures of it once I manage to take some.

I joined a new book club. This time, we're reading a chapter a week of This Soviet World. It's very good at explaining basic topics of Marxism and, while I'm behind, I do plan to post some highlighted sections on this site eventually.

Coffee vs Tea
I keep debating in my head whether I prefer tea or coffee. I like the process of making coffee more. I also like the smell of coffee more. But I like drinking tea more and tea doesn't bother my stomach as much. If only I could make the tea-making process more like coffee. I essentially have to look up every time I make tea how hot the water has to be, how long to steep, how much tea to steep, etc. With coffee, my grinder is set to the proper size and all I have to remember is to grind 20g of beans for 330g of coffee. I think tea just has a harder time because some tea can handle very hot water where other tea needs a waiting period so the water doesn't make the tea too bitter. I don't know, maybe I just need to write it down on the specific container of tea leaves.

I 3D printed my partner an e-spinner! It took a while to get all the parts in, and there's still a couple things I need to do to fully refine it, but it was a fun project! This was the first time I have ever used a 3 position (on, off, on) switch, a step-up converter, and a speed controller. There was no video tutorial I could follow, which was a bit intimidating, but I was able to get it finished! Pretty proud of myself.

If you couldn't tell, I've ended my participation in Weekly Beats. Things just got a bit too busy and I ran out of creative energy very quickly. Maybe next year I make a song every month instead of week. I found myself dreading every new week that came around because the imposter syndrome would always come up and it was just neverending self-doubt. But I swear I do like making music (sometimes).

I have a few other projects I'm in the process currently: