I tend to have many notebooks going at any one time, each with their own slightly different uses. But my trick for keeping things 'dirty' for my main notebook is that I burn it when I'm finished with it. I'll copy out anything I need to maintain to other, more permanent, places, but in the end it will be gone. Why not be messy, it will be ash soon enough!
Second the Rice Museum recommendation! If I ever make it big I'm going to legally change my last name to 'Mineral' and create the Mineral Museum of Rice on the other side of the freeway showcasing everything from basmati to risotto.
I've been enjoying Tiled Words! I find myself playing in a weird way, by totally ignoring the clues. I look at the title and try to puzzle out all the answers myself. I don't know if I'm alone in that, but it could be a neat mode to have a setting to hide the clues.
I made a simple ON AIR sign with LEDs inside that I change to reflect what I was doing. Red means I am in a meeting or totally focused, blue means I'm working, but someone can interrupt me if needed. Green means I'm not working, come on in!
The only issue with my setup- I work from home. My wife does not. No one is there to care if they can come in or not. It was building something fun to solve a problem I never had.
I enjoy the way Baldur's Gate 3 implements this- choices tend to align more along character axes than good/evil. There are indications for many small dialogue choices that say "Karlach approves" or "Astarion disapproves" to give you a sense of each character's values and personality, and they each have their own motivations. Some are more traditionally good or evil, but they all have reasons for doing what they do.
Choices occasionally feel fairly binary good/evil, but more often all choices have their pros & cons, and it's more about story and narrative in making my decisions.
I feel the same! One bit of advice has helped me take better advantage of those small chunks of time- "Park facing downhill." I don't remember where I first heard it, but the idea is to stop somewhere naturally conducive to resuming work. Start making the list, and stop at a point where it's really easy to write down the next few items. Or leave the really easy bit of code for next time.
I'm not good at it, because I prefer to cross things off when I finish them, but when I can pull it off it saves some of that time getting oriented to what I'm working on.
Several years ago my niece dressed up as Jane Goodall for Halloween. Through a string of random connections, someone sent Jane a picture of her. She wrote my niece an incredibly nice note complimenting the costume and all its details.
For all the good Jane Goodall has done in the world, I am forever grateful that she cared enough to give a young girl a gift she can treasure forever.
I've always wanted to make a messaging app that would vibrate in Morse code when you get a message. I love the idea of feeling a message in my pocket and 'reading' it without looking, but I'm also not great at deciphering it, so it wouldn't get much use.
The Steam Deck is a great example, and I attribute its success to riding that line between usability and customization. I can get into Linux and mess around, or I can never touch the back-end stuff and just play my games.
Building a pneumatic long-range candy dispersal device (candypult) to launch Halloween candy from my garage door to the street. As is the case for many of us around here, I get bored of making digital tools and want to build something in meatspace. I'm trying to use as much material I already own as possible, so building out of leftover metal framing and old decking.
Trick-or-treating at a door is so last decade; trying to catch a Snickers hurtling towards you in the darkness is the future.
I had a similar experience- moved to an area with a new ZIP code (<2 years old) and while most services were fine, Google Address Verification didn't know it existed. I couldn't use my credit card anywhere that used Google to see if the address was real. Multiple customer service reps said there was nothing they could do; my address was just not valid for their system. I imagine it eventually made it in to Google's vault of 'knowledge,' but by that time I had moved away to a place Google thought acknowledged the existence of.
In my experience- yes. As you mentioned, there is a steep learning curve before you get to that point. Characters instead of letters, sounds you're unaccustomed to hearing and making, and multiple tones make learning basic phrases much more work than many languages. However, once you get some time with those difficult pieces, the grammar is actually much easier than one would expect. I would much rather learn another language like Chinese than a conjugation-heavy one such as Finnish.
I took a bookbinding class on a whim at university, and it's still a hobby I enjoy. I would love to have a dedicated space for all the big equipment one day, but it's easy to make notebooks with just a bone folder, awl, needle, and thread.
I once heard this advice given as "park facing downhill." I find it difficult to not finish up before I stop working, but it helps me get started in the morning to jump into a nearly-complete task.
Point 4 is what resonates with me, and first got me into knitting. So much of what I do is in front of a screen, and creating a real, physical object and having something to occupy my hands lets me step away from the computer and work relatively mindlessly.
If anyone's interested in the Sea Peoples and the Late Bronze Age, I recommend 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric H. Cline. It gives a great overview of the primary sources and evidences for the factors leading to the Late Bronze Age collapse, including the role the Sea Peoples may have played as both a cause and symptom of larger societal issues.
Pleasantly surprised. Outside of some questionable acting performances, my biggest disappointment was probably how... small? it all felt. Five friends from Oxford become some of the most important people in the world, rather than the international nature of the novels.
I didn't find the first 5 episodes as engaging as the last 3, but that's likely because I enjoyed the second book the most and was excited to see some of the wallfacer storyline.
Glad to see this here! About a month ago I was ready to start a new farm and held off to wait for this update. I haven't read the changelog because I want to go in blind to any updates, but I'm constantly amazed by ConcernedApe.
One of my favourite things about Stardew Valley is seeing how different people play- I like having lists of things to do, but always celebrate the festivals and mingle with the townsfolk. My brother has spreadsheets on top of spreadsheets to min/max crop yields. And we both have a great time!
I'm grateful for my (relative) health. Seeing family members during the holidays with chronic issues reminds me to not take 'feeling normal' for granted.
I'm grateful that I have people in my life who care about me and whom I care deeply for.
I had a router that would need to be restarted every once in a while, so I just plugged it into a Christmas light timer to go off for 15 minutes early every morning. Worked well until we left that apartment.
Button under the desk controlling LED lights outside the room. The light indicates whether you're in a meeting and can't be disturbed, working but can talk if necessary, or just chilling.
A series of travel-based puzzles to solve as a way to explore a new city. Going to Edinburgh? You get a series of clues to solve, using landmarks in that city. It will take you to many of the areas a tourist would want to visit, but in a more engaging way than a list of things you 'must see.'
I'm trying to nail down the exact audience/tone. Is it for families with kids? How hard should the clues be? Should it be more lighthearted or immersive?
So many of these comments echo my sentiment around Evernote. I used it for years and was a huge fan, until they reduced functionality and increased prices. I got a new device, couldn't sync my devices, and realized there were many great alternatives. Exported to Joplin and haven't looked back.
I was teaching online, and it involved a significant amount of grading on the LMS (Learning Management System.) It was a pain to click on the grade entry field for each student, then click "Next". I wrote a browser extension to autoselect the proper input field, and then on Enter it would both submit the grade and load the next assignment. Saved me hours and hours while grading.
Second this- it's my go-to when I just need some quick notes that won't be saved. I've thought about making a version with little markdown helps like automatic bulleting, but I like the simplicity as-is.