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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • Congrats! It feels incredible when a " ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯ worth a try!" repair turns out well; I can practically feel your astonished jubilance through the screen.

    I’ve got to the point where I have enough experience fixing things that I feel completely confident in my ability to have an initial look at the problem (possibly opening the device), and to know whether I’m likely to break things worse by dabbling. Sometimes this means immediately closing up the device, but increasingly often I feel comfortable taking a crack at the problem, and sometimes it even works!



  • When I first started using Obsidian, I used folders too much because I felt like things were “messy” if not tidied away. I already knew that one of the weaknesses of hierarchical folder systems is how it can make having an overview of the system harder, but it took a while for me to properly understand that.

    As you say, it’s necessary to be proactive with making links to things. I found that when I used Obsidian for journalling, I started to put square brackets around loads of stuff, because the inactive links didn’t do me any harm, but they did highlight what might be useful as active pages. Something I picked up from the Zettelkasten crowd was occasionally having a “Map of Content” page, where I used it as an index of topical links. It always worked best when I allowed them to arise naturally, as needed. Once I got the trick of this, I found I was able to find things far more easily, because I was able to navigate via the links.

    Tags are a tricky one to use. I never found them useful as a primary organisation method — they were worse than both hierarchical folders and link based organising in that respect. They were super useful as an augmentation to my organisation though, especially when I used them sparingly.

    This is all an overlong way of saying that yes, I agree with you, using systems like Obsidian do require a switch in how you think in order to best use them. Something that I always enjoy pondering is whether pushing ourselves out of our comfort zone is something that’s inherently good — something something cognitive flexibility? I don’t know, but I enjoy endeavours of this sort nonetheless



  • This, a thousand times. Also echoing what someone below said that a physiotherapist may be best, but in my country, the doctor refers to a PT.

    The reason why getting proper medical input is important is because often back pain arises because of long standing, complex imbalances e.g. I had a weak core, which caused my legs to lock in a way that sort of compensated, which caused me to have an odd gait and to fall lots. Generally improving your strength was a good step, but if you’re experiencing pain like this, you may need help in identifying any underlying weaknesses.

    Especially because injuries don’t just come from heavy or intensive exercise. I knew someone who had upper back pain that likely stemmed from poor posture. They identified the muscles that were painful and started doing stretches to that area. Even though it was only light intensity stretching they were doing, they were inadvertently exacerbating the root problem, which they didn’t learn until they had to be seen by a doctor urgently.



  • I have a question which may turn out to be a feature request

    The question: How easy would it be to use Linkwarden to check whether I have already bookmarked something from the site I’m currently on? To clarify why I’m asking this, I have been generally trying to be more mindful in what media I consume, which means the things I enjoy reading are fragmented pieces that I may stumble upon through word of mouth.

    For example, I read post ‘a’ on blog ‘A’ and I enjoy it so much that I bookmark it (‘Aa’) so I can find it for later sharing. Many months later, I am linked to post ‘b’ on site ‘A’, but I don’t remember whether I have been to this site before, and knowing that I had previously enjoyed post Aa may prompt me to actually read post Ab (or properly set aside for later)

    Native Firefox bookmarks don’t do this, I know that much. It’s something I’ve been meaning to figure out how to solve, because one of the delightful, if somewhat overwhelming parts about floating on the ‘small web’, is the trust that builds up gradually after seeing sometime put out consistently good coverage


  • Probably smart, because I’m already pretty smart and the prospect of giving up what I already have seems scary.

    Plus, I’ve lived most of my life thinking I was repulsively ugly; part of overcoming that anxiety involved understanding that “you can be the juiciest, ripest peach in the world, but some people just don’t like peaches”. If there’s anything I’ve learned from that, it’s understanding that attractiveness is even harder to “objectively” quantify than intelligence