Probably a couple of years ago, while doing some researching on learning, I ran across numerous articles and blog posts that touted the notion of learning in public. In general, these were associated with Personal Knowledge Management software such as Notion, Roam, or Obsidian (and a whole bunch of others!). This topic piqued my interest then and I played with it a bit. More recently, the topic was brought back to my attention so I wanted to explore it a bit more.
I’m always fascinated when I hear or read about someone who devotes significant time and effort into what they call their passion project. I mean, how do they come up with those ideas? What makes something a passion project?
Dictionary.com defines a passion as an intense desire or enthusiasm for something. So someone’s passion project is borne out of their intense enthusiasm for whatever that project is. But how do they find that? I mean, I have a lot of interests. I spend inordinate amounts of time on some of those interests (computers and related technology, for example) but I would not call those passion projects. Nor would I even say I have a passion for technology. There are many in the open-source community that are quite passionate about the philosophy of open-source. Some to the point of being extremist. I appreciate the open-source philosophy and try, whenever possible to support it. I use open-source software and generally look for open-source options when looking for software. But am I passionate about it? No, not really. Am I going to go out and proselytize for it? Nope. Nor am I going to look down on those who choose not to prioritize open-source software.
If you’ve read any of the literature on aging engaging in social activities with others is one of the most commonly cited contributors to an overall sense of well-being, maintaining cognitive function, and even to longevity. As a rule, I’ve always been a bit of skeptic on that front believing that while this may be generally true, it really depends on the person. I am not a social person. I have always been a bit of an introvert. No small part of that is because, as I discussed in this essay I believe I may have some autistic tendencies that show up through social awkwardness. I’m never really comfortable in social situations because I really don’t know how to make small talk, a necessary skill in most social situations. My skepticism comes in the form of wondering if the stress and anxiety that comes from being uncomfortable in most social situations counteracts any benefit of those situations.
Roughly six months ago I documents my efforts to install FreeBSD on a Lenovo X250 that I bought for that purpose. In that post I noted that the one problem I had with FreeBSD on that device was that the suspend/resume feature did not work. Since this was a laptop and my plan was to use it as a dedicated writing machine that I could take with me on the go, the inability to suspend and resume the device made the whole process a no-go. Yes, I could shutdown and reboot as needed, but I’m lazy and that just didn’t work for me. Moreover, often times I’m just shutting the lid for short periods of time and so the shutdown and boot up for those short periods seemed a bit much.
For some time now I’ve had a preference for using plaintext files where ever I can. I explained in this post why that is, so I won’t repeat it here. But in order to begin using plaintext it is necessary to have an editor that will support it.
Now, over the past few years I’ve preferred using nano, a simple, easy to use plaintext editor on linux (and other devices e.g. mac). Nano is just a basic editor and while it served its purpose, I was looking for something a bit more flexible. Prior to nano, I periodically turned to vi or its more recent incarnation, vim. Vim (or vi) is so deeply rooted in the unix-y space that, unlike nano, it does not need to be installed. It is part of the OS. The problem with vim, though, is that it is a modal editor. Modal editing has its charms and its benefits but also creates a few, not obstacles, per se, but frustrations. Modal editors have different modes (hence “modal”) and in order to accomplish different actions you find yourself frequently changing modes. Once you’ve worked with a modal editor for a while those actions become more or less automatic and I am slowly getting there. Still, it’s frustrating to have to stop and think about what mode you need to be in in order to accomplish some action.