Weeknotes: week 22, 2023
✱ If someone asked me, I’d say the most amazing play I’ve ever watched happen in NBA was featured by Derrick White last Saturday, a couple of hours after my weekly notes: at the last second — actually, the last 0.1 second —, the Boston Celtics guard scored the basket that kept his team alive in the East Conference Finals for the seventh and decisive match, when the score turned 104-103. His feat was amazing, and even though, to my personal pleasing, Celtics were later eliminated 103-84 in the final game, I needed to note it here. Amazing how he jumped before the final buzz and, while in the air, got the rebound from Marcus Smart’s failed 3-point shoot and made magic. That’s just what I love about basketball. This unpredictability.
✱ Geffrey van der Bos organized an open PKM discussion using Obsidian as a basis last Saturday, and I was able to take part live. Besides Geffrey, Alex Qwxlea was also there, and the talk was very nice and informative. Two learnings for me: Geffrey’s custom highlights CSS snippet for Obsidian callouts (implemented and loved it), and the File Chucker plug-in, which can move my notes from my inbox to any folder I say, doing so very quickly. I hope Geffrey repeats discussions like this often…
✱ This week, while mentoring a colleague at work about storytelling and presentations, I presented her with a very nice TED Talk: the one Richard Turere presented back in 2013, when he was only 13 years-old. Two years before, Richard, who was born in Kenya and as a child shepherded his father’s cows near the south parts of the Nairobi National Park, faced lion attacks to the cattle, and seeing people around him killing the lions to avoid more cow deaths, started thinking about a way to trick the wild animals into not attacking the cows. Shortly, when he came up with the Lion Lights, an electronic device used at night, that really worked. Most impressive, though, is the fact that even being so young at 13 years-old and having never talked in public before, he got to deliver a killer presentation, which I assure it’s worth watching.
✱ It’s been some time now that I’ve come back to using RSS feeds to help me consume content. And, in order to do so more properly, last year I subscribed to BazQux reader on a yearly basis, as I found it to be both simple and full-featured to my needs. The thing is this week I came to the conclusion that I’m not being able to follow so many subscriptions, and did some autumn cleaning, being more picky in relation to what I really want to keep following. This made my unread articles count decrease from 500+ to 300. It’s nice to have the sensation to be in control again. Besides, I’ve used the mark all read button more often, as a means to combat FOMO, something I don’t need at all in my life.
Haplo, as pictured by user airasan on DeviantArt
✱ Years ago, my brother-in-law had a cat named Haplo. Back then I absorbed that information not to care about it at all in the years to come. Until by the end of last month, I stumbled upon Dragon Wing, the first of seven volumes that form the Death Gate Cycle series, from which Haplo, a Patryn, is the main character. It amazed me that my memory recalled that name after almost two decades… and yet, it didn’t amaze me quite as much as the reading in itself. This book is unputdownable, and, from my brother-in-law’s impressions, it looks like so is the whole seven-part series.
✱ I walked past 12,000 steps this Saturday, my personal record since having started to monitor my steps via my mobile and Apple Watch. That’s over 9 kilometers far! I have to admit that counting steps adds some gamification to the experience of exercising, making it less boring. I hope to keep the pace… 👟