October
This is the first entry in the Lately series.
Lately will be my monthly journal (no guarantees about the time frame). I think it could help me with the inability to write coherent pieces of text. Since it will be shorter - paragraph or two - and contain more topics I won’t deplete my limited vocabulary so quickly. Furthermore, keeping a journal might push me to appreciate more of the insignificant achievements and the joys of everyday life.
What will Lately look like? I enjoy Tom MacWright’s Recently blog posts and will take inspiration there. The format should be concise and to the point; starting with a quick overview of past month: things I have been doing, places I have been to and things I have been thinking, and other seemingly boring stuff. I might follow up with more in-depth paragraphs on individual interesting topics that I have lately come across. And, to wrap it up, a few words into the upcoming month will give everything a silver lining.
I still haven’t decided whether to write such entries gradually over the month or all later in retrospect. Right now I am more inclined to the former than to the later for the sake of capturing also the briefer ideas that cross my mind. Also, it might be easier to spit out the words over a time then to force myself to write all at once before I forgot what even was the last month about. Anyway, if this whole thing becomes a habit of mine I might try to A/B test both options and pick the one that suits me better.
October was quite a month. The Cisar Challange that we were registered for got canceled because of Covid concerns, so we ended up driving to Pilsner for some precious family time with the rest of Šťastňák family. Except the obvious - going for a jog - we have also seen the Collective; investigative documentary about the events following the fire at the club Colective that uncovered vast fraud in the Romanian health-care system.
Swimming pools closed forcing me to put on the neoprene and do my first swimming session in the Pískovna. Thankfully, cyanobacteria is not a big fan of cold temperatures, and the water had no longer rich green colour. We spent one more weekend with Šťastnáci on Doubravka, piling up wood for burning and cleaning a full room of artefacts from the beginning of 20th century. I also managed to do my first muscle up and later on also two in a row. A little, insignificant hurray to myself.
Other than that:
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New member of the Why didn’t they force us to read this in high school instead? list is Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. I didn’t finish Harari’s 21 Lessons for the 21st Century about a year ago and was skeptical to start Sapiens. Nevertheless, it was one of the best reads of last year and definitely honourable member of top 10 list - if I had one. I encourage everyone to read it too.
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I saw The Social Dilemma with the whole family. There’s not much new for computer engineers, but I enjoyed how easy to understand they made the topic of online privacy to non-technical folks. Doesn’t seem that anyone would walk away more concerned with his social media intake however, I hope that at least some parts of the movie will be remembered.
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Still baking bread approximately every other day and getting better. I will try to write more elaborate article on that one day, until then: this guy knows what’s up. His recipes are easy to follow, and most importantly have reasoning behind the steps and ingredients.
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First month of regularly cold bathing went well. On the 11th occasion it was 1 °C outside, the water had 9 °C, and heavy fog laid over the lake. Tell me more about perfect conditions.
The “PayPal Mafia” is a group of former PayPal employees and founders who have since founded and developed additional technology companies such as Tesla, Inc., LinkedIn, Palantir Technologies, SpaceX, Square, Slide, Kiva, YouTube, Yelp, and Yammer. Wikipedia