I buy a bunch of books each year, but it seems less than half of them get read.

Sometimes I'm just satisfied by the notion that I will eventually read the book and never get around to it.
However, I do actually go back to some of these books. For instance I bought Gene Wolfe's Shadow of the Torturer/Sword of the Lictor back in 2015 but recently finished it back in summer of 2018.

Some have sat on the shelf for much longer.

Orson Scott Card's Xenocide comes to mind. I read Ender's Game back in 2013, read the sequel some time in 2014, and told myself I'd get around to the third book (Xenocide) but I never have.

Another one I picked up last year that I've been meaning to read is The Confessions of Saint Augustine.

So, what are some books you've been neglecting? Write them down here to put them to rest, or even better, to motivate yourself to actually read them!!

I thought it'd be fun to have a casual conversation about what we like to drink. If that's not appropriate for some reason please let me know.

I've switched from beer and whiskey to Tangeray and (diet) tonic and really feel less hangover when I drink (for whatever reason). What is your current go to on a Friday night?

Independent, investigative journalism in the public interest is becoming harder and harder to find. This is a shame because an informed public is critical for democracy to function effectively.

What news sources do you recommend for people trying to avoid the distraction of biased, sensationalist outlets like Fox News or CNN?

I don't know what is the correct word in English, but I'll be one of those guys who will teach a "class" consisting on answering questions and guiding them through the exercises.

The content is very basic algorithms in C, so things like functions, pointers, and structs are off the scope. Here is the repo I made with the solutions for last semester. I'm starting in the second semester, so I have everything fresh in my memory.

I welcome anything you can give but I'm not necessarily seeking technical advice since the teachers have that covered. What I'd really like to know is what you consider to be some good examples, attitudes, and approaches for this particular position. Thanks.

hey all!

i think this is my first ~talk post, 👀 nice place ye got here!

so, i got to thinking about social media sites a few days ago (whilst trying to brainstorm a sideproject that isn't a social media site) and i got to thinking about Voat.

it seemed like an interesting idea at first, a nearly literal copy-paste of old reddit meant a system that i was already used to, but i'd also be early enough to get whatever username i want, and they even have a cute little goat!

and then uhh

reddit got rid of a lot of hate-communities

and they all went to voat.

now - i guess that's fine. if they want to all exile themselves into their own corner of the internet, i can't stop em

but my question is like - what about the people behind Voat? obviously there's people running the site, there's investment money involved, and they have to know that their site is the front-yard above-ground pool with green water of the internet, right?

i tried looking for some interviews of the founder - but i couldn't find anything.

any of you lot know what's goin' on with voat? what are your thoughts on the site itself? its longevity?

Recently, Ian Lance Taylor, one of the most productive contributors to Go and, IIRC, the original author of gccgo, has written a very interesting comment on his view of the language:

(…) Go intentionally has a weak type system, and there are many restrictions that can be expressed in other languages but cannot be expressed in Go. Go in general encourages programming by writing code rather than programming by writing types. (…)

I found this distinction, writing code vs. writing types, very insightful. In my experience, in a language like Rust or (modern fancy) C++ the programmer is constantly forced to think about types, while when I program in Go or C, I almost never think about them. Types are, in fact, almost always obvious. It is also interesting that languages like Haskell and Idris explicitly expect the programmer to program with types.

What do you think?

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk a bit about it.

Past weeks: Week #1 · Week #2 · Week #3 · Week #4 · Week #5 · Week #6 · Week #7 · Week #8 · Week #9 · Week #10

I just watched the clip to this. It left me perplexed. Starts out with an absurd self-flattery, then name dropping multiple (and actual) ex boyfriends of the singer. Then the clip, it's something totally different and unrelated. It's as if clips (which are somewhat sexist againt almost all sorts of gender out there) collected from a stock media site.

Then the lyrics. A list of someone's ex-SOs. Then self-flattery. Then, let's put a few buzzwords here and there. She's in a lesbian relationship, and her dad is transsexual. Apparently queer people reduced to pure stereotypes. It all comes off to me either as an exploitation of the current atmosphere among the youth, or something so personal would better be a vlog.

There is a strong contrast between the video and lyrics. Objectification of male genitalia sprinkled towards the end of the song. An "eww" at people with missing teeth. Women in sexualised outfit.

Am I too out of touch with mainstream pop stuff? I mean something like Nicky Minaj doesn't come of this "dissonant" to me. There's lots of sexuality in her stuff, but I don't think that's a problem per se. I just don't like her stuff (or swathes of stereotypical male rappers and pop singers) and move on. But this entire combination of clip and song comes off as literally repugnant to me. Is there something I'm missing?

Edit: just to clarify, it's not sexuality or queer stuff that is the problem for me (I don't have any problems with these things and them being depicted), but a strong sense of exploitation and dishonesty that I get.

In lieu of the recent Gillette ad, and seeing as the conversation around it has stirred the pot quite a bit, I wanted to propose a conversation where we start from the very beginning:

Without yet talking about subsets, variants, or interpretations of masculinity/femininity (toxic or otherwise). How do you define it for yourself: what makes you masculine or feminine, or what parts of you would you describe as such, do you feel that those things go as universal descriptors or are they specific to your case?

There may also be some deeper questions in here about where you think you gained this conception (your family? your immediate circle of contacts? Role models?) or who you think best embodies your ideal definition of your gender.

I'd say something here about thinking a monthly thread for this is better or something, but that would be a lie and the truth is that I was busy during Christmas and subsequently forgot to post this thread for about three weeks running. Sorry about that.

Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.

If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its Anilist, MAL, or any other anime/manga database you use!

So I have all my passwords, TOTP backup codes, and account recovery codes in my password manager (Bitwarden.) In turn, Bitwarden is secured with a master password and TOTP 2FA. I have a recovery code for the 2FA in the event that I can't get to andOTP anymore (2FA app.) The thing is, where do I put that code? I can't put it in a note app or anything, because if I'm locked out of Bitwarden, I don't have my passwords. Do you see my problem? I was thinking about physically writing it down, but that makes me nervous because I might lose it. Are there any good solutions to this problem?

I was thinking about the intersection of internet privacy and politics. You could even say I was having a bit of a mini-crisis. I like to think of myself as being pretty liberal, but I wondering how that fits into privacy. I was a little upset when I learned that Obama called Edward Snowden unpatriotic. I was kind of thinking that what he did was patriotic. Wasn't the NSA monitoring US citizens without warrants. That's morally wrong right? I think I would be pretty fine with the government monitoring someone if they had a warrant given to them by a non-secret court. I'm wondering if anyone here can give me some insight on this or if anyone else feels/has felt this way.

Personally, I strongly dislike it. Every aspect of every film is way overblown there.

If there's a funny scene in a movie, they LITERALLY die laughing and wake their whole neighbourhood up.

If there's a scene that is in the slightest bit sad, they're going to cry their eyes out for months.

If there's a movie that's decently good, then it's an absolute masterpiece and the best movie of the decade.

And so on... Everything is always really exaggerated.

On top of that, there's always the circlejerk hivemind aspect. Threads are closed after 6 months, so the whole discussion about the film is divided between many threads, but because every thread is small and new, you often get the same fluff comments.

For more popular flims, it is the absolute worst. With half the thread being just funny quotes from the movie with no additional commentary or anything valuable, yet having thousands upon thousands of upvotes. It's kind of sad.

I used to go to IMDb boards, –which, admittedly, had their own issues– but they were still pretty useful for discussion. And shutting people up wasn't as easy as it is on Reddit, so the opinions there were much more varied. However, since they shut them down, Reddit is the closest thing I've found. Moviechat.org is supposed to be a replacement to the IMDb boards, but it's pretty inactive.

So, even though I kind of despise r/movies, I'm sort of forced to use them. But reading it makes me somewhat bitter.

What about you?

What's your favorite movie that features average-looking people? We all know the industry selects for youth and attractiveness mostly, but have any good movies risked casting only normal-looking people?

Edit: TV show suggestions are also welcome!

Every year we try to put together a 'best of' list that is devoid of the same 200 albums that make up all of the other music lists on the internet. We do this by intentionally excluding popular/mainstream artists from our submission pool. Our cutoff is generally no more than three tracks with a million plays on spotify, though we do fudge it a bit especially for artists that only have regional success or put out something really great. The popularity limits are more of a guideline than a hard and fast rule.

I used last year's results as a test post on tildes, if you want to see what the final results will look like. Once we finish voting on the albums we generate the playlists on spotify and use automated tools to replicate them to other streaming services. We have a google spreadsheet that helps us manage the process. There's a submission form that will drop recommendations right into the spreadsheet where we can work on them.

We're not trying to find albums that are 'better' than the mainstream. We're just trying to include more of the great music that gets released every year, particularly the good stuff from new and overlooked artists that gets lost by the wayside while all the major music publications argue about the right order of the year's press darlings. Consider AlbumOfTheYear's List as the 'official' record of what's popular in the music press.

We do this by asking people for their favorites - in listentothis, in letstalkmusic, and today here on Tildes. I'd like to invite everyone on Tildes to submit their picks for the best overlooked music they've heard this year.

How do you know if an album you like is good enough? Everyone has their own way of listening, but generally, if you've had the record on repeat at all, that's the sign that it's worthy of attention. If you've got one you can't stop spinning and can't get out of your head, that's 'must listen' territory which goes at the top of the list. Make sure to leave a note in your comment when you submit, if you think it's that good. ;)

You can submit albums right here using this form. Please put a ~ in front of your username when you submit, so we know it came from a tildes user rather than a reddit user.

This spotify playlist contains the 175 albums from 2018 we've gathered so far. That's what's in our spreadsheet right now, at the start of the process. We haven't vetted/voted on these yet, just made sure they come in near the popularity cutoff. If any of the albums in this list really knock your socks off, let us know in the comments below. The first 1/3 of the list is mostly from random redditors, quality may be a bit dicey. The last 2/3 is the fruit of the l2t crew's cratedigging all year, submissions from our 30+ moderators. Every genre you can imagine (and some you can't) is in this list, they aren't sorted by style yet - this is one big bucket that goes all over the map.

I will update this playlist as new albums come in, though not exactly in real time - expect a day or two delay. If you want to keep up with it, just follow that list on spotify.

We're taking until the end of Feb. to finish the 2018 set, so roughly 6-8 weeks to listen to all of this stuff before we push the finished set out the door. If you want to help us listen, bookmark this thread here on Tildes, and leave a comment here when one of the albums grabs you. Feel free to submit new albums to that spreadsheet right up until the deadline at the end of Feb.

Happy listening. :)

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

Anyone else play visual novels? If you don't know what they are, it's like an interactive story with pictures and sometimes player choice. People called Bandersnatch a kind of visual novel!

I got into them by playing Katawa Shoujo, which is astonishingly well-written and empathetic and funny. Recently I played Don't Forget Our Esports Dream, about two Starcraft pro gamers trying to chase their dreams while facing the realities of their lives. I love how it talks about the soul of esports, and if you ever played Starcraft, this game will bring back all the memories. What visual novels do other people recommend?

Of all video games out there where a good guy beats a bad guy, which bad guy do you personally feel got the shittiest end of the stick? I recently beat Mother 3 and SPOILER Porky's fate seemed kinda fucked, what with him being permanently sealed away, unable to die, for all eternity in the Absolutely Safe Capsule.

I'm an audio engineer, and I spend many hours a day consuming music. I could talk your ear off about genres, sub-genres, vocal styles, rhythms, and exactly what combinations of those I really enjoy. Technology, recommendations, and websites like everynoise.com have really enhanced how accurate my recommendations are, and I'm constantly consuming music that I absolutely love.

But when it comes to books... I'm so lost. Literature genres are like the equivalent of listing what instruments play on an album. Okay, this book is "sci-fi," so I know it's probably got futuristic technology, may be set in space, and could have some aliens. But that doesn't tell me anything about the writing style.

I know enough to know that I can't go just by good reviews on sites like amazon. How do I learn to quantify what I enjoy and curate my recommendations more effectively?

I bought a starter pack in 2015, played a few dog fights and races at 25fps, and then forgot about it. I reinstalled it today and was amazed at all the progress. There's some really cool stuff, like having your own expressions mapped onto your characters face with a webcam, or how you can get on your ship, jump to another planet, descend through the atmosphere and land at a camp, get out of your ship, and go inside, all seamlessly with no load screens.

The game looks fantastic, and runs a lot better too (I did upgrade, my pc, but not that much. I have a ryzen 5 2600 and a radeon 570)

Do any of you play? What do you think about the game?

Just a few minutes ago I moved this topic from ~creative to ~music, but almost immediately began second guessing my decision. I'm not exactly sure where that belongs, because it's music, but it is creative/the OP's original song. What do you think? Is ~creative more for crafts, IE woodworking and the likes, or anything creative done by the OP? Similarly, I can think of more examples for this, such as if someone wants to show off their Raspberry Pi project, do they put it in ~comp or ~creative? Where does it belong?

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something!

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

I've seen every episode of The Good Place up to this point and still can't decide if I like it or not. It's a very strange situation. The premise, while novel, doesn't work well (in my opinion) on a TV show budget or schedule and I find myself wondering why I'm watching it.

Reviews of the show are generally very positive, but it feels like the writers are constantly scrambling for new ideas when the concept just doesn't lend itself to that much TV.

I love Michael Schur's work generally and like Kristen Bell as an actress, but I still can't decide if I like this or not. Thoughts?

I wouldn't really consider it a hobby, but couldn't think of where else to try and have this discussion.

How many of you have ever heard of, or even considered the idea of alternative keyboard layouts!? As unanimous as it is, why are the letters of the alphabet even placed that way on our keyboards anyway? Alternative keyboard layouts attempt to optimize the layout by placing letters in such a way as to make typing more ergonomic. Often ideas include focusing on the home row, rolling fingers, alternating hands, high frequency letters on index and middle etc.

Some examples to look into if you've never heard of the concept:

• Dvorak, the most well known alternative keyboard layout. Prioritizes alternating hands by separating vowels and consonants by hand.

• Colemak. As opposed to Dvorak, prioritizes rolling the fingers rather than alternating hands and attempts to limit same-finger bigrams.

• BÉPO, a layout optimized for the French language!

• Others include Carpalx, Workman, MTGAP, Norman and many, many more. Creating rather than using layouts has sort of become a hobby for some...

So what do you think? Supposed ergonomics vs standardization. Would you ever consider switching or do you think it's a bunch of hocus pocus? Perhaps you have switched or tried to switch and would like to share your experience.

I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard a manager complain, “The HR department included ‘must have college degree’ in the job req even though I don’t care” or “They asked for 5 years of experience in a technology that’s only been around for 3” or “I have no idea why they rejected this candidate without even contacting me.”

Still, in many cases you don’t have a choice. If you want to hire someone, you need to deal with HR, at least to a small degree – especially if you work in a big company.

So I’m writing a feature story for technology managers, collecting real-world advice from people who learned their lessons the hard way. Here’s the questions I’d like you to answer:

• Tell me about a frustration you had with the HR department (in regard to hiring). That is, tell me a personal story of HR-gone-wrong. Because we all love schadenfreude, and that gives me an emotional example with which to begin.
• Let’s say you have a new opening in your department. In what ways do you involve HR? (That could be anything from, “give them general guidelines and let them choose the best candidates for me to interview” to “I do the search myself, and use HR only for on-boarding.”) What makes you choose that path? How much choice do you have in the matter?
• What weaknesses have you discovered in your HR department’s ability to serve the needs of a tech-focused department?
• What have you done to cope with those weaknesses? Which of those efforts worked, and which failed?
• What do you wish you knew “n” years ago about dealing with your company’s HR department?
• So that I can give the reader some context: Let me know how to refer to you in the article (at least, “Esther, a software architect at a Midwest insurance company”), and give me some idea of your company size (because the processes appropriate for a 70-person company aren’t the same for one with 7,000 employees).

You don’t have to answer all those questions! I asked these to get the conversation going. Tell me as much or as little as you like.

Please don’t assume that I think HR always sucks. However, there isn’t as much to learn from “why HR is your friend.” The idea here is to help techie managers cope when HR doesn’t offer what you hoped for.

I'm stuck in a rut.

What do you do to get out? How do you rediscover something that inspires you? Or something that you can be passionate about?

I've got a handful of "projects" on the go at all times - writing some music, getting better at the sport I play, learn a new language for work, do some "proper" research. But they all sort of sit there looking tedious on my whiteboard. I'm just not passionate about any of them really (except maybe the sport, but I'm approaching 40 so it's not like I'm on the verge of setting the world on fire with it!).

What do you do to rediscover your inspiration? What has worked for you?

Hi there,

I'm considering purchasing a used Galaxy S7 and moving to LineageOS and would like to hear about similiar experiences. I currently own a iPhone 5S (only my second smartphone). I plan to continue using Ting as my provider.

I am attracted to LineageOS because it's open source and allows greater control than the standard Android-build I'd get from an ISP. I'm not afraid of installing ROMs or tinkering - I know I'll be doing a lot more of that by moving to an open-source OS.

I was looking at Galaxy S7 because it's well-known and has wide support/information available on forums, etc and of course because it's relatively cheap to get a used one ($200-ish).

I'm in the US and use Ting as my provider.

So some questions I have are:

• Should I expect to use the standard Google Play store? I'm still a little unclear on this after looking at the LineageOS website and wiki. The best I could find for an answer is this article talking about installing default google apps. I think my question is so basic it's not addressed on their site lol.
• Can I drag and drop MP3s from my computer to the phone? In other words, can I get my music on there without having to install something dreadful like iTunes or use Spotify/Amazon Music?
• The LineageOS project looks healthy to my untrained eye...any rumors that it'll vanish overnight?
• I found these instructions for a Galaxy S7 Anything else I should know or look out for?
• Any general thoughts/advice about moving from the Apple to the Google ecosystem? I'm entrenched in Google everywhere BUT my iPhone where I mostly use Google apps.
• What else should I look out for? See any gaps in my understanding?

Designing our countries to accommodate cars as much as possible has been one of the most destructive things to our health, environment, safety and social connectedness. The damage has spread so far and deep that it has reached a crisis point in most developed cities in almost every country. The suburbs we live in are subjected to strict zoning laws baring any form of high density building and any form of mixed zoning. As a result our houses are spaced so far away from each other and from the essential services we need that unless you own a car you are blocked from having a normal life. The main streets full of independent stores and markets have all been killed by megamalls 30km away from where people live with carparks bigger than most park lands. All of this was caused by car usage pushing our societies further and further apart to the point where many people find it acceptable and normal to drive 40km each direction to work each day.

One of the more devastating effects of this urban sprawl is the supermarket has been moved so far away that most people avoid going as much as possible and limit it to a single trip every 1-2 weeks. Fresh food does not last 1-2 weeks which leaves people throwing out mountains of spoiled food that wasn't eaten in time as well as the move to processed foods packed full of preservatives. As well as a shift to people buying dinner from drive through takeaway franchises because their hour long commute has left them with little time to cook fresh and healthy foods.

Owning a car in many countries is seen as the only way to get a job. This locks the poor from ever regaining control of their life because the cost of owning and maintaining a car is higher than most of these people get in an entire year. Our city streets which should be places of vibrant liability have become loud, unsafe and toxic.

Elon and his electric cars solve none of these issues. Electric cars are not the way of the future. They don't even solve air pollution issues entirely because a large part of air pollution is brake pad fibres and tire wear which is proportional to the vehicles weight. And these Teslas are not light.

The only solution is reducing personal vehicle usage as much as possible in urban areas. Of course there will always be some people who will genuinely need vehicles such as in rural areas but there is simply no reason to have the average person drive to and from their office or retail job every day. Its wasteful and harmful in so many ways.

There needs to be a huge push to reclaim our cities and living spaces to bring back the liveability that we could have had. In my city some of the side streets were closed to cars and the change was incredible. Plants and seating filled the spots that would have once been a row of free parking. The streets are filled with the sounds of laughter instead of the roar of motors. The local pubs and cafes have benefited hugely. They didn't benefit at all from street side car parks that were always filled by people who have done 5 laps of the city looking for an empty park and do not intend to shop there.

What is everyone's opinion on this topic and what can we do about it?

In 1977, Stephen King published a novel about a school shooting called Rage. It is somewhat infamous, as it has been connected to instances of real-life school shootings. King, in response, allowed the story to fall out of print and has never reissued it. The novel has a lot in common with other YA stories and tropes: a disaffected protagonist, meddling/out of touch adults, and newfound social connection with peers. While the main character is undoubtedly disturbed, the novel feels somewhat uncritical (or potentially even supportive) of his actions.

Certainly fiction is a space where authors are free to explore any point of view or theme they wish. The beauty of fiction is that it is limitless and consequence-free. No people are harmed in Rage because there are no people in it. Its characters are merely names and ideas--they are a fiction.

Nevertheless, Rage addresses a real-world phenomenon, and the beauty of fiction is that it doesn't live as a lie. As Ursula K. Le Guin writes,

"In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we're done with it, we may find - if it's a good novel - that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have changed a little..."

We like fiction because it resonates with us, exposing us to themes that can affirm, shape, or challenge our mindsets.

With this dichotomy in mind, I'm torn between whether authors should be free to explore anything they wish from the safety of make-believe, or whether they have a social responsibility because their words carry messages and ideas that directly impact lives. I'm not sure what to think, and I can come up with great arguments for both sides. What's your take? What social responsibilities do fiction authors have (if any)?

I'll preface this by saying that I'm a high school student, so obviously I can't be facing any real stress, but it seems real enough to me, anyway. My strategy is usually just to bury it in entertainment, but I see a lot of the people around me turning to using substances like nicotine, weed, or alcohol.

I don't think any of these are really good options, so I'd like to hear what you guys do.

I am currently trying to learn how to fix things myself by learning how to solder and fix things like that. I also want to DIY some things for quite some time.

My current project is working through the book Make:Electronics , I bought it at humblebundle some years ago. Yesterday I powered a led via a power outlet for the first time, by connecting it to a cut off USB cable. I'll share a picture of the abomination later.

So: what have you built at home? What are you building? What are you planning to build?

[LONG POST - 4 months of trying different planners)

I always wanted to use one but I never thought of analog (paper) planners and tried a lot of digital ones - link to a post.

About 4 months ago I saw my friend at school using a pocket diary - similar to this image, he was writing down his tasks on it (he didn't use it again). That day I bought a good pocket diary of around 200 pages, till date I've not used more than 10 pages and its still lying around.

I realised that I was not going to use it because it was very thick and I couldn't carry it in my pocket. I bought this pocket diary. This was thin and simple, perfect for me. I've used it the longest before switching.

Initially I used to dump all the tasks and cross it after completion, later I introduced a date system and it was one date for one page. I wrote down tasks for the day and crossed after completion if something was incomplete I migrated it to next day. This worked well but I needed a place to dump tasks that I had to do in future so I made a future section from backside and added tasks to it. This was the final tweak and I used it for like a month. I used it for daily tasks, future tasks, some notes and contacts (I used to make contact.txt before this).

Later IIRC I wanted to change because it was already half full and a mess because I was trying to do a lot with it. Next I mindlessly bought a notebook - something like this but with 5 sections, I didn't know what to do with it. I also don't remember why I bought it so I used it to write down stuff that I learned online and wanted to remember. It replaced my reddit save and I wrote what I wanted to remember, it is still with me and has been changed a lot (usecase).

I made a calendar on a single page of that notebook and tracked down basic stuff on it, I started using small square sticky notes to write down tasks and that's how I left my pocket diary. Not long after I lost interest in that notebook thing and updating calendar daily was not interesting. I left that and searched a lot online. Again tried a lot of digital options but I know it will never work for me so I left it and didn't use anything for like a day before I stumbled across Strikethru.

Strikethru is something like Bullet Journal. If you want to look at strikethru then see this video & this for Bullet Journal.

I took that notebook and turned it into a bullet journal, I used it for ~a week before trying strikethru and then again switching to bullet journal after a week. That was testing period and I chosed bulletjournal (bujo) over strikethru. That book was also thick so not long after I made a new bujo notebook (normal 200 pages). Again it felt like a big task that I had to do daily and I lost interest, I again restarted it with a new design. In this month I switched to different notebooks/design a lot and was never satisfied. I also tried Nextcloud tasks for 3 days before again trying out bujo.

Last year in december around a week before christmas I wanted to change it all so I went to a store and bought a new grid notebook (we used it for doing math in 1st grade). I used it for 10 days and everything broke during the last week of december, I was not at home and we went on a vacation. I took it with me but didn't update it because it was boring. It has been 5 days I was busy organising everything else again and now I've settled on what I started with (slightly better idea).

During that time I read a lot on nosurf, pornfree, internet addiction, sleep cycles, polyphasic society, tulpas, made new friends, tried a lot of todo managers, used different journaling apps and this is what I've decided to stay with.

I went to the store today to buy the same pocket diary that I've used the longest (1 month one). Its cheap, for 15 INR and works well for me. Over there I saw a box that said monthly planner, I took it and it had 13 small pocket diaries (similar to what I've used the longest but more thin) and with that a small case that would hold a notebook. There was one contacts pocket diary (perfect) and 12 pocket diaries one for each month. It was for this year and costed 170 INR, I didn't had money so I asked the storeman (idk what we call them, here we call them uncle) did he have cheaper option. He showed me the same piece that costed 140 INR but was for 2016, he said he would give it to me for 70 INR because he would have to throw it anyways.

I thought that was a great deal and bought it. So now I have 12 mini diaries for each month and one contacts diary that has my big list of 10 friends contacts. After trying a lot of different options I came back to what I used for the first time. Its simple and stupid & fits in my pocket.

It has one page for one day and I just have to cross 2016 and the day (mon, tue, etc.) thing and update it with 2019 days. In the middle it has a big two page calendar for current month, page before it has previous months small one page date list to write down events and on page after it has next months small one page date list. The last page is for notes and the cover has 2017 calender that I won't use and ignore.

Theres little patch work todo but for that price I think I bought a good set and if I actually use this for full year then I would buy a new one next one (for 2020 & not 2017 :|)

I've spent around 300 INR for all these (~ 4.5 USD)

Tl;dr -> Used a lot of systems and in the end switched to what I used for the first time which is simple and fits in my pocket.

# What do you use for managing your tasks? Do you use it daily?

I miss music blogs. I mostly used them for piracy in the past but plenty of them (pirate and non-pirate) have been great sources for curated lists of new good music. I'd like to add some more variety to my music discovery methods for this new year, so what blogs do you still follow / respect?

Some previous semi-related threads that might be of interest:

How do you discover music?

How do you keep up with new music?

Music Blogs & Mini Station Rant

What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk a bit about it.

Past weeks: Week #1 · Week #2 · Week #3 · Week #4 · Week #5 · Week #6 · Week #7 · Week #8 · Week #9

Fill in the blanks. No parameters from me: I'm leaving the prompt open-ended because I'm curious to see where people go with it.

Also, to prevent low-effort/single sentence posts in response, please explain why your suggestion is a suitable replacement.

In the rare chance you haven't heard of Flutter, here's the link: https://flutter.io

Flutter just officially left beta with v1.0 December 4, last year. The code is written in Dart, and deploys on Android, and iOS (and will run natively on the rumored Fuchsia OS).

So for those of you that have used Flutter or are currently using Flutter.

• What are you working on?
• Why'd you choose Flutter?
• What do you like about Flutter?
• And what do you dislike about Flutter?

I'll start:

I'm working on a niche art app. I myself do not do that type of art, but knowing people that do, I wanted to create a tool to fill in the lackluckster market for Chromebooks and Android.
I chose Flutter because:

• I wanted to try something new, and what newer than something that was (at the time) in beta?
• Custom Views in Android are a hassle.
• I will be able to release on both Android and iOS (semi-)natively without having to code it twice.

Here's what I like about Flutter:

• Layouts are really simple.
  (though you can easily let it get clustered if you don't think too much about it.)
• Design isn't an afterthought.
  Animations are built in (and simple), themes aren't hard-coded, and Material Components get more attention here. (Still waiting for Shapes on Android)
• It's fast by design.
  Flutter uses its own custom rendering engine (Skia). I've never experienced any stutter with the built-in components, and when I caused lag (with heavy I/O) Flutter/Dart had tools in place for me to narrow down exactly what was causing it.

What I don't like about Flutter:

• It has poor mouse/trackpad support.
  Right clicks, not a thing. I can workaround this with a double-click/long-click, but for a desktop OS, this isn't optimal. Scrolling, that's panning, this should be differentiated. There's a difference between using a scrollwheel and moving finger around on the screen. According to Flutter there is not. There's also currently no support for mouse hovers which I have needed very much.
  There is a pull-request for adding support for all of these, but the developer hasn't done anything since code review.
• Keyboard support, while there, is lackluster.
  Ctrl, Shift, Alt. These have to be gotten with the meta code. There's no built-in function for checking those. Text fields don't support the tab key to navigate. And text formatting (bold, italic, etc.) isn't possible with text fields without the use of a library (or making it yourself).

I was trying to think of a third dislike, but I can't. My complaints are on missing APIs for Chromebooks. That's it. I really like Flutter, I plan on using it more, and if they won't add support for mouse/keyboard, maybe I'll have to contribute.

I'd love to hear what your thoughts about it is.

Whether you will start it on January 1st or already doing it, what is it that is going to make you a better person?

For me, I decided to limit my two biggest timesinks, namely, Youtube and Reddit. I started several days ago and won't wisit them at all before I pass all the exams. Before, they were often an excuse for me to spend time basically doing nothing. Time to change that. (And yet, I'm doing the dame thing right now with ~, but oh well, it doesn't have content anyway)

I'm rather curious - for me, about a fiver. It's all I need to be able to smash an egg at someone - legally. It'd probably be pretty fun - probably not 'life changing', though.

~£40 is probably the least for something more 'life changing'. I could buy a Pi, storage, and a charger. Then I can set up a pi-hole, and never have to worry about ads. It'd also make browsing on my weak laptop that liittle bit better.

I spent most of 2018 exploring the Soulsborne games (Demon's Souls, Dark Souls I (no longer for sale, thanks to the Remaster), II, III, and Bloodborne) and wanted to know all of your thoughts on them. Like them? Hate them? Want to try them? Favorite and least favorite?

From Software is probably my favorite game dev studio now. I want to say I adore all of the games, but I haven't tried Demon's Souls or Dark Souls II... yet. Bloodborne is my favorite out of the collection (or what I've played of it) because of the familiar but much faster-paced gameplay, with higher risk meeting higher reward. Not to mention they didn't put Ornstein and/or his armor in it.

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something!

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

Personally, I really enjoyed Bandersnatch as a one-off. Having the ability to choose what happens and trying to piece together the story by watching multiple endings.

But honestly, the story fell quite flat and it wouldn't have been a very entertaining episode had it not been for the gimmick. But what do you guys think?

Just how? I fail to stick to the right side of the line between productively using internet, and losing time procrastinating and impulsively browsing and/or commenting in places like Reddit, HN, Tildes. The best I can do is to leave home to study outside, but becasue I don't work ATM, that's too costly. I sometimes even consider stopping using a computer. But I'm also a very technical, power user, so IDK if I can comfortably confine myself to use a phone (where I don't have this issue).

What is your way of dealing with this?