alan_n
Regarding names, I think the suggestions are a bit in conflict, as often to avoid variable shadowing you have to do stuff like name things node, _node, node2. I try to have distinct names, but I'd rather the shadowing in those cases where it's hard. As for i, and j. I don't like them, but they're such conventions it's hard to avoid them. I always try to use them only once, and assign the variable I need: `item = obj[i][j]` if possible.
Currently I have obsidian notes for different libs and technologies and really useful stuff or things I plan on reading, they go there but search of the page itself is non-existent. For sites I go to again and again because chrome's search sucks, I tag my bookmarks in the url title with an underscore (e.g. _python _docs) and stuff them all in a folder. An underscore actually works and you can combine them to quickly find stuff. For highlights, I don't highlight much, but I use hypothesis because it looked promising, but honestly it's been very slow with any management related features. I also run a local archivebox for pages I don't want to loose. It has search but doesn't show you where the term matched.
And I've been keeping an eye out on spyglass, which is a local search engine with the concept of custom "lenses" that you can create or you can get ones created by the community. It can also index local files and bookmarks. It recently fixed the shortcut issue I had on linux so I'm properly trying it out and it seems very promising. I hope to be able to hook it up to all those different services. Need to clean my older bookmarks first....
Also from what I understand the feeling of suffocation is quite common for people who experience sleep paralysis. You're not actually suffocating. Given I induced it, that's probably what that was. The first time it woke me up, the second time I ignored it and a few seconds passed and then the sensations stopped and I was lucid dreaming. At least that's what it felt. I slept for slightly more than an hour most times (I've only managed it during naps) and lost lucidity at times. It felt like the dream started immediately but it might not have. Also at other times I could feel my body in the bed again but wasn't dreaming just asleep.
I've not managed LD awake/meditating yet , but I can fall asleep awake if my body is tired enough but I'm mentally awake, though it requires a lot of concentration. And doing it does not feel nice (you can feel your body paralyzing, feels like you can't breathe and you have to avoid reacting).
But then I am also an artist... Although more because of this than the other way around. Although drawing has further trained this ability, I have accurate detailed childhood (~5-6y) memories (of houses, schools, objects, etc) from before I was drawing consistently enough for it to matter (high school).
I wonder, can people who see 0 imagine movement if they're seeing the object right in front of them? And if they can draw 3d objects, can they still do so if they close their eyes?
You learn something new every day I guess. I wonder if this can be used to predict what fields someone goes into or could go into that they'd be good at (engineering, etc).
Try doing a few meals in a row with similar ingredients and chop once for like the next 2-3 days (depending on what's being chopped).
Also you can try timing yourself. See how long it takes to chop an onion, record it. Now you know the REAL prep time for a recipe based on it's ingredients.
What really saves time is having an idea what order you're going to do things and how to parallelize tasks, but for that you need to have some intuition about time so you don't accidently burn something. There's a recipe I make that takes twice as long if strictly prepped first then cooked.
Also, just going to state the obvious, but if you're cooking for more than two people, it's just always much harder.
Personally I cannot really get the hang of linked editors like this that only use links or basic tags for structure. They require too much upkeep to keep things organized. I'm working on my own solution that goes a different way, but it's nice to see more open source implementations of these types of editors.
One thing you learn as a writer is you want varied sentence structure * . Also good prose has a sort of rhythm, both in the words used and the lengths of the sentences (this is also imo why translations rarely compare to the originals). If you make all your sentences the same length it sucks the rhythm out. As for everything else it highlights, they're all just tools. A long word or a passive voice used in the right place can work better than the "correct" alternative. Writing is about knowing which tools to use when. In some ways, writing is very similar to visual design. People don't notice why some writing is good. It's just a bunch of tiny choices that all add up, but also if you use comic sans you're dooming yourself to failure.
What do I actually suggest to writers? Read your story out loud (tts can help to pick out errors as well, but rarely rhythm related errors). If you mentally stumble or backtrack reading a sentence, something is wrong. If you feel like you need to pause but there is no pause, something is wrong. Same with the opposite. Finally, put the story away for a month and try it again. Rinse and repeat until polished.
* Like everything, this also just a tool. You can not use it and still have amazing prose that matches the situation (e.g. one long run-on sentence to emulate a stream of consciousness).
I've actually read both Fogg (dry and repetitive but more precise) and Clear (more engaging but more fuzzy/muddled concepts) although not Duhigg. Like I said I agree/use the method. I'm not picking holes just pointing out potentially bad examples. Also most people will not read the books. They'll read the 5 minute versions like these. They should have the absolute clearest/best examples.
The reason I'm nitpicking this example is because I've found it helps substantially to know that even if I only do 2 minutes of the thing, I'm making progress. Otherwise it's very hard to trick my brain into doing the thing. I don't like the "wear running shoes" example either. I have found that when I plan habits like that I maybe do them once or twice, then never again. There is no reward for me without the progress and in the case of the coding example would only bring me frustration.
All the others could be done in the day, except for the vegetable one which is too abstract. And their solution could be done in 2 minutes. The coding one on the other hand... impossible to do in a day and also writing code is imo almost impossible to write in small chunks of time. Brainstorming a feature,thinking about a problem for 2 minutes, deleting/cleaning code, or even just opening your IDE and checking where you're at and planning the next step, sure. But actual coding, would not recommend. I require at least 30m+, preferably 60m+ to get anything reasonable done.
I live somewhere were having your phone out is dangerous so I'm forced to use it only when needed. The number one thing I use my phone for is checking bus routes (second is store times which can be very odd, especially with the pandemic). I know some routes off the top of my head but not the majority. Plus although I always plan where I'm going before hand so I know the streets (although many are missing signs), what time things are open, if the buses are actually working (apart from strikes, sometimes a bus line might be diverted due to construction/protests), often I end up going more places than I plan and end up needing to take a different bus than I had planned back.
I mean if I get my phone stolen or something I'll still be fine, but I don't get how having to hunt down road signs and depending on others to tell you the right info can possible feel liberating? I have navigated the city before it's bus app was built and internet was reliable, and it was not fun. Plus recently I've had problems with my contacts and because I can't stand my full prescription in glasses I can't see far away so it's been even more liberating to have my phone. I can quickly glance at google maps (even without internet and just gps on) and see where I am. Extremely useful in buses where I'm too far to see the road signs at all. I would hate having to ask the driver all the time to drop me off at the right street.
Also there isn't a one size fits all criteria (e.g. use the best software, most popular, etc). My views on this are slightly different depending on the situation.
- Situation 1. The class is about teaching some piece of software (e.g. graphic design, 3d, video editing). In that case the class should put an emphasis on the common tools and techniques regardless of what program they use. And contrary to what one would think just teaching more programs does not help. I'm currently in a trade school and we have one software related class and although they are doing the correct thing by teaching us using a variety of programs, the kids still learn by memorizing steps instead of tools because this is how they've always gotten by.
- Situation 2. The software is secondary to the class (e.g. Teams/Zoom right now for virtual classes). In this case the easiest to use and the most appropriate for the job. In this case my school chose Teams and I think it's been a pretty good experience compared to the horror stories I hear about Zoom and custom implementations for exam taking at other schools.
- Proper search engine (all books with x+ ratings, rated y+ start, in genre z). From what I've heard one has to scrape the site to get any useful information. - Forbidding rated reviews before release dates. This seriously skews ratings for some genres and is insanely annoying.
Okay maybe three... managing shelves is super slow. I want to be able to drag and drop and have things instantly re-ordered without a reload.
Anybody experience anything like that?
In fact, I try to keep as much stuff OUT of my brain as possible. I think of my brain as an index, the smaller it is, the better. In relation to books, this means I highlight anything I find interesting, but otherwise rarely do much else Also just because you don't remember a book doesn't mean it didn't change you. After I read a book, if it was good, it will probably be on my mind for a while as I relate things I learned in it to things I knew.
Later if I want to look something up I'll remember what book it was in, just not the specifics. I don't just do this for books either, I do it for webpages all the time. Currently I am using an extension called Liner to save highlights. For things I'm actively researching for some reason or another, I extract all the highlights out when I'm finished and save them to a note, (I used to do this in Evernote, but I've since switched to Scrivener).
If a book has particularly important information but is dense, and I know I'll need the info later, but later it's very likely I'll forget it, for example, for school, I'll just make nice study-like notes, extracting the useful stuff. In fact, for school, those notes were my study notes, and I would just take exams then promptly forget everything. In case I actually needed the info, the notes existed.
Now that I think about it, this is all why I took to writing lots of comments in my code. Makes it a breeze to drop and pick up projects again. Cannot understand pro-"self-documenting code" people. I've also started documenting any large installs, complicated setups, etc, in gists lately. Very useful.
Usually my workflow is: take notes, if I can avoid things I know are in the book, I will, then a week or so before exams I'll read everything (book+notes_ and make flashcards in Anki. I know I can do 25 pages (of a book) a day comfortably so I'll time it appropriately. Then I proceed to cram for a day or two until I can realiably do the whole deck with ease. This usually takes me less time (1/2 usually) than the reading/making hence why I want to switch to digital notes, to avoid a step. Most of the material that's tested for usually doesn't need to be memorized, which irritates me to know end, but what can I do. So I cram so I can promptly forget.
I find concepts are either understood or not understood, they do not need to be memorized. Things that are usually tested for (at least where I live / for what I'm studying) tend to be facts/procedures. At the end of the year I extract these from my notes / anki cards for future reference.
One other thing I do is the flashcards are written exactly how I will answer the question 90% of the time, sometimes in my own words, sometimes extracted right from the book. Before when I studied in English I didn't do this because I'm comfortable with the language, but because I'm studying in another language now, often the wording is the hardest part (also in part why reading takes me so long). This way I don't have to worry about that. Also this makes exams go lightning fast. I'm always first to leave.
In general, contrary to what you'd expect, documentation options for ts seem poor. Typedocs is painful and ugly. I'll be trying DocFx next but it looks like it has a complicated workflow.
Also you should imo have some typescript experience to be able to write the jsdocs in a way that they work how you expect (e.g. typing a parameter as an object does not work how you would expect, it).
So next thing I thought was to just write js and accompany each file with a manual .d.ts definition. This works when you consume the exports of the file but it doesn't when you're within that file (see https://github.com/Microsoft/TypeScript/issues/30304) which makes it useless imo. Also even if it worked, now that I think about it, I'm again not sure how creating documentation for that would work.
In the end I've reluctantly settled for just switching completely to typescript and hopefully the documentation situation will improve when tsdoc gets farther along.