I used GMT for map making in my dissertation in 2008-2009. It was fascinating to be able to make great-looking maps with reliefs, shades and legends using publicly available terrain and border data.

Taskwarrior has a `log' subcommand, originally used to note down tasks that you have already done. In combination with the tool's search & filter capabilities this results in a quite decent log tool.

You can use a specialized tag to separate your log from your finished tasks. I was using "+memo".

So

    task +memo +yak "Tuned up my Emacs config a bit now it boots -0.02s faster"

You can use Taskwarrior's other features such as projects, contexts etc. with this. And of course you can use as many tags as you like.

Also you can customize report formats for your log, and create shell aliases to make logging and looking up easier.

Edit: typo

Nice! I use Fedora Silverblue and Emacs. Since Silverblue uses toolboxes (OCI containers), it would be nice to put most config codes into projects and set up one toolbox for each of the projects. That way, I can start working on a new computer in 10 minutes, without setting up all those environments.

fw seems to make this more feasible.

I am unemployed for 6 months now, and I watch YouTube from time to time, and search for all kinds of things. From a human viewer perspective, the ads were more related to my YouTube watching behaviour than my browsing history. I use DuckDuckGo but let Google Analytics see me.

Recently I decide to start doing video essays. I searched for a ton of medieval history stuff and watched a ton of related clips. I notice that YouTube began to show ads of at least 2 "I get rich from millions in debt" self-help workshops/courses to me, which I've never shown any interest in.

I have watched audio equipment review videos as well, and that's the only possible connection I can establish between the ads and my online behaviour. Are a lot of unemployed people seeking to enter audio/video making? Or are the snake oil ads showing on many people's screens because of the dire economic situation many of us are in?

I'm sure someone will tell me why this isn't happening, but I perceive a correlation between anything I type into FB Messenger (or HN) and subsequent ads. And I mean quickly.

So, my question for you is have you been making comments or sending messages online about debt, money, wealth, etc? Then again, maybe Skynet just knows you're unemployed and that's what makes you a target for get-rich-quick.

I seldom talk about my financial status online. But I have been searching for jobs on Glassdoor and talked with people on WeChat and a few social networks in China regarding my job seeking.

Thinking that just that could make me a target of these crooks ... wow, just wow.

On large, generic platforms like Facebook and YouTube, I sense the possibility that these ads that are essentially spam can drive a much higher conversion than the legal businesses' ads, and eventually drive out other types of ads. Those are not nigeria princes asking you for "hlep", you can tell the guys behind it put in a lot of efforts and serious money, some made it like a trailer of _The Pursuit of Happyness_. There's no way Google or Facebook's AI could tell that they are suspicious schemes.

Could be that some pyramid scheme victims aren’t good at targeting the ads when they try to recruit people? So they just overbid for generic ad slots.

I think I've scraped the bottom of the barrel of YouTube content and ads, the worst are these Japanese weight loss commercials.

How's your situation, are you still learning and pursuing your own journey? I can totally relate to the feeling of being out of work but I believe strongly that our work is a calling and we must listen to our intuition on the journey to mastery of our art.

Yeah, those 5-min infomercials are nightmare.

I am learning to be an independent content producer if that's a thing. But I have family and there's constant self-imposed pressure to pursue a regularly paid job. I am juggling between job applications and making things at the moment. I guess I really need to talk to people and think it through.

Your kind words give me a lot of support I need. Thank you.

Hey! Welcome to reach out to me, let's have a virtual cup of tea or coffee -- my email is on my profile page

I submit this for discussion for I worry that in our current self-isolation due to the endemic, could we self-impose coersive persuasion that make us even more isolated from the society and the reality?

> a world of "applications should ask me when they want to do something" transparency.

Why not make the user know what applications do: which files, ports, devices it has to access, and what data it emits, to begin with?

Org-mode syntax is no better than that of AsciiDoc, or arguably Markdown.

But I can assign keywords and unique id to sections, include sections from another file, generate indexes and sitemaps in fully customizable manners, incorporate other programming environments. What markup languages can do that?

Org-Mode syntax is an interface to a powerful writing/authoring environment. To dismiss it as a `markup language' is not a good way to advocate its adoption. Something similar can be said to ways people appreciate the power of Emacs.

I am not sure this helps people get into the habit of paying attention to news instead of hovering over social media sites, other than raising awareness. Every one of the feeds can flood your RSS inbox in a few hours, and a normal person simply don't have time to catch up with all of them. I remember this was how I abandoned RSS the first 5 times.

You may want to pick only a few of them, maybe one for each political leaning, and look at their site to see if they provide feeds by section, then pick the section you are interested in, instead of importing the OPML whole.

Yeah I can see how that might bog down a newcomer, that's not bad advice. You could also import the 22 feeds and delete any that seem to be posting too often for your taste.

A rough estimate is that these 22 feeds would generate about 300-600 stories a day.

By my experience, you don't even need all 22 to feel overwhelmed. I still haven't found one news agency with a feed that would feel like "important news". Actually, all the news are simply the worst, and getting worse still. All the most prominent media resources manage lately to combine in a news feed tell-you-nothing headlines, lengthy writing style of the newyorker w/o a summary, and still not including a recap/timeline of previous events when following up on something that's ongoing for the last 2 months. Plus, I do understand that importance is somewhat a matter of perspective, but they still manage to post some nonsence every 2 minutes, while not covering really impactful business news/economic events.

I considered creating a service that you subscribe to and that gives you reasonably detailed content filtering. With configurable classes to sort news between e.g. newsletters and chatbot interfaces, based on how time-critical they are. There are meta-agreggators like GDELT [0] that supply machine-readable classifications that should somehow allow filtering useless stuff out based on what they contain. Do you think there is significant demand for this, possibly even in a way that you pay a (small) amount for the service?

It seems like a (comparably) sane idea to pursue, but pre-implementation market validation is a strong motivator to prioritize work on it without direct financial pressure.

[0]: https://www.gdeltproject.org/

This was the original intent of Vox.com ... and here we are. Think we're in the minority of the reading audience, unfortunately.

I have tried to use a dozen of 'digital' tools for tracking tasks and taking notes. Bullet journal is the first analog thing I tried and it remains in my daily routine for 3 months now.

I have problem understanding the efforts to reimplement the concept in various software systems (Evernote, org-mode, etc.). Why confine yourself in the limited computer system?

What do you use as your journal? I struggle with needing to carry a book around with me.

Much like the saying about cameras, the best journal system is the one you have with you.

I think my laptop's heaviness helps :P If I want to write something outdoors I remember to pick up my notebook if I remember how clumsy my laptop is. At home, it is always by my hand.

I use an A5 size notebook by a Japanese vendor, the brand is Stalogy. It has ~185 thin sheets and weighs only ~100g. The paper is quite good, light and sturdy. If you use a fountain pen or ball pen, the marks won't smear the other side of the page. Highlighters can be seen from the back but you won't mistaken the marks for those on this side. Haven't tried watercolor though.

The covers may become a bit wrinkled if they are wet, but inner pages are not much affected by water if you press them flat when drying. I find this out after I spilled some water in my bag. Luckily no electronic gadgets were in it then.

Since I use this system, I always have my notebook with me when I'm working (I always have a laptop backpack with me, too, and it goes in there). When I'm not working, I don't use this system.

After half a year I stopped doing most things he showed, except for the monthly review. That rocks. And checkboxes. And a few important pages that I keep referring to that can be found through the index. I track days that I took off on the calendar and otherwise never used that for anything.

The main benefits are

1. Writing things down means you are away for a few seconds from the machine full of distractions (made at great expense by powerful companies for the sole purpose of distracting you), and the physical act of writing helps concentration too.

2. Using this method, I actually keep a decent log of what I'm doing. I never did with any digital method, not for more than a couple of days.

Funny as it seems we arrived at the same "solution".