Dino’s Journal 📖

Had this conversation with another blogger about a book he read. Similar to what I learned from reading The Great Cholesterol Myth, the same advice is given on a book about Alzheimer’s. And that is to limit carbs and lower/avoid sugar intake to reduce inflammation.

That's two different diseases — Alzheimer’s and Heart Disease — that gets pretty much the same recommendation to reduce carbs and sugar intake. This should really make you rethink how much sugar you should be ingesting everyday.

It took you years to put on all that weight. Don't be too hard on yourself if you're not losing weight fast enough. Think of losing weight more as a marathon than a sprint.

I've found a compromise for using my gel pen and fountain pen. When I'm at home, I use my fountain pen to write on my bullet journal. Anywhere else, and on any other notebook, I use my gel pens or ballpoint pens.

A few days ago I wrote this on my journal:

“Almost to the end of the k-drama Iris. It's a really good show!”

Then I got to the end. And wow. That ending was horrible! I had planned to say so many good things about this show. There's the amazing plot. The great acting. The pretty good fight scenes. The great story about love and friendship. But it was all brought down by the horrible ending. I can't even recommend it to my wife anymore, not after I've seen the ending. Such a disappointment. The show was great 95% of the time, until it got to the ending. Unless you're a sucker for horrible endings, don't waste your time on it.

Just a week after officially declaring that I will stop posting on my dev blog and instead publish software developments posts on this journal, I am starting to see a problem with this setup. The problem mainly revolves around retrieving software development content.

I actually use my dev blog to store answers to problems I've encountered before. And every once in a while, I use it to retrieve scripts or pieces of code that I need to re-use. That's easy to do with a dedicated software development blog. It's not so easy to do with this journal. And that's because these bits and pieces of software development content, are buried inside one big Weeknotes post. And that makes it hard for me to quickly get to the information I need. It is inefficient as far as searching for information goes.

For instance, to retrieve the notes I had about the basics of using Git from a command line. I have to sift through the content of Weeknotes-011.

So, 340 grams of Watermelon is around 109 calories. On the other hand, 85 grams of Butter Pound Cake (which I have to say taste so good) is around 337 calories! It's easy to see why snacking on pastries/baked goods makes it so hard to lose weight.

Last week I remembered why I chose to go with pen and paper for my bullet journal — it was to give my eyes a break from staring at screens all day long.

My only issue with this analog approach to journals, is how to digitize the text that I wrote so that they can be searchable in the future. Sure, bullet journals have an index for tracking down specific topics. But let's face it, that doesn't even come close to being able to search text digitally.

I previously tried to get around this by publishing journal entries on this site. As part of writing those posts, the content from my bullet journal would end up in a text (markdown) file when I download a backup of this site. This benefit went away when I decided to stop writing journal entries.

Now, I'm doing a similar thing with these Weeknotes posts. This time around though, my journal entries end up in my Obsidian vault. I still have to manually type them in though. This is the part I'm trying to streamline. But I'm not sure that's even possible. It's either I ditch my analog bullet journal and go straight to digital journal apps, or just continue what I'm doing — write on my bullet journal then migrate (type up) my notes into Obsidian sometime later in the day or week.

I've decided to start publishing software development specific posts on this journal. Previously, they would go into my dev blog. But nowadays, I feel like that's too much work — maintaining multiple websites that is. So, in the interest of simplifying things, for 2021 at least, software development posts will start showing up here.

While I've already had this idea in my head for the past few months, I was also inspired by this post from Angelo.

Content moved to... Update Contents of Windows Form TextBox Periodically

So, it turns out subscribing to a Write.as blog via an Outlook email address, means you might run into issues with Markdown formatting in the emails. I tested it by subscribing to this site using two different email providers. The email that I received in Outlook had formatting issues. But the same email in Protonmail did not have issues.

Helped Davin build a makeshift house using Lego blocks. I can now see why the wife likes helping Davin with his Lego blocks; it is fun.

Last week, the Dallas Mavericks won a game that I watched on TV. I guess I’m not cursed after all haha. They just suck this early in the season.

After that win, they went on to play an excellent game against the Denver Nuggets. Jokic hit the buzzer beater to send the game to overtime. But unlike the previous seasons, the Dallas Mavericks were able to close this game out. They need more games and wins like this, to develop their ability to close out games.

Finished reading The Great Cholesterol Myth: Why Lowering Your Cholesterol Won't Prevent Heart Disease — and the Statin-Free Plan that Will by Jonny Bowden, PH.D. and Stephen Sinatra, M.D. Here are my thoughts on what I think is a must-read book for everyone.

Why did I pick up this book?

My primary care physician was getting worried about my rising cholesterol numbers. She was worried enough that she wanted me to start taking statin medications to lower my cholesterol. I, on the other hand, was concerned about having to take said medications. And this was before I even knew of the scary side effects mentioned in the book. Also, I was getting frustrated at not being able to lower my cholesterol on my own, without having to take medications.

TWSBI Eco-T Fountain Pen – an affordable fountain pen for beginners.

Got a TWSBI Eco-T fountain pen as a Christmas gift. I've been using it last week and I'm still not a big fan of it. But I also can't seem to stop myself from using it. There's something fascinating about a fountain pen that makes me want to write with one.

I think my Zebra Sarasa Grand Gel Pen writes better. But I need more time with the TWSBI Eco-T fountain pen before I make a final judgement.

For my Zettelkasten in Obsidian, I decided to no longer keep links between my Daily Notes and my Permanent Notes. This is based off what I read in Ahrens' book saying to discard or archive Fleeting Notes. And that's pretty much what my Daily Notes are, a collection of Fleeting Notes.

I'm removing the links, but I'm still archiving them though. And that's because I use the Daily Notes to create my Weeknotes post. It also makes those notes searchable via Obsidian.

Have recently become addicted to Skyrim. Yeah, I know I'm late to the party. I've had the PC version of the game for a long time, but I never really got into it. Then last week, I found that it was available on Xbox Gamepass, so I decided to give it another try.

Gameplay for me, seems to be much more enjoyable on the Xbox than on the PC. I'm not quite sure why that is. Maybe because of the Xbox controller? Melee fighting seems to be much better suited to a controller, than to a keyboard. In any case, I was drawn into the game much more deeply than when I was playing the PC version.

I unintentionally ended up with a Shield Mage play-style. This is something that I've never thought of doing while playing the PC version. I usually go for Shield and Sword. But man, a Shield on the left hand and a Flames spell on the right hand, makes for another fun way to fight.

A hilarious exchange between my wife and son.

Coney: Davin, why are you not wearing your slippers? Davin: Because I'm waiting for my slippers to rest.

***

And another one, this time between my dad and my son.

Grandpa: Where did you go? Davin: I dunno. I forgot to check the map.

Meta comment: I'm not really sure where to put this kind of content. They're too short for a single blog post. And it also seems out of place in a weeknotes post. In the past, this would go into my microblog. But that doesn't exist anymore, so I decided to include them in a weeknotes post. It was either social media or this site, so I decided to publish them here for now.