44
votes
Post something from your notes app
Post something from your notes app that you think might be a good conversation starter.
Including but not limited to:
- An idea you jotted down to remember for later
- A meaningful quote that resonated with you
- A reminder
- A to-do list
- Those books you’ve been wanting to read
- A message you saved
- Those questions for your doctor
- That creative writing you were working on
- etc.
You can post the quote just on its own, or you can post it and add some context/questions to it as well. Anything you think might spark some good discussion or thought in others.
I’ll post mine without any context. This is all from the same note:
As usual, a neat topic for discussion. Thank you!
Had to look this one up. Paraphrased as "Opinions are like assholes. Everyone has one. This is someone who doesn't stop to think whether anyone else would like to see theirs."
😯 I like this. I think I will make use of it, but with a minor alteration: “Opinions are like assholes. Everyone has theirs, and it’s weird to show it to others, especially if unsolicited.”
"Xenofiction" certainly sounds intriguing. I like the idea of stories from inhuman perspectives, and although most Dungeon Core stories aren't particularly well written I've read a few that were really good.
Sounds like it's your random thoughts note.
Yup! I keep a sort of “junk drawer” note that I just toss things in as they come up without worrying about putting them in the right place. Each week on Sunday, I clean up my notes and move/delete things from it as needed. So it ends up getting fully cleared out each week. Temp storage.
Like, if I hadn’t posted this topic, that last line would have moved to another note I have titled Tildes Post Ideas. And the “Xenofiction & Dungeon Core” line will turn into a to-do list item if I don’t get a chance to dive in and explore them this week.
So, this copy/paste was the current contents of my junk drawer note.
I'm into your third idea but I'd rather it just tells me page numbers or something... Then I realized that idea is called "flip to the last page and divide by days" though I'd hate to end up in a cliff hanger because I selected 30 days instead of 29 and now a fight is cut in half due to raw math and the computer didn't send me the cool bits.
The idea came from @MimicSquid over in the reading rules topic. They mentioned using an RSS reader to read individual chapters of several different webfiction series concurrently.
It took me back to the late 00s, when I had an RSS reader and would catch up on my subscriptions to webcomics and different blogs and whatnot. I then thought, what if you could replicate the same thing, but with ebooks you already own? I was also reminded of a service that took, I think it was Frankenstein, and emailed you the sections of the text in “real-time” since the novel is epistolary.
I read books linearly, one at a time, before moving on to the next. But what if I instead read books in parallel, only reading a little bit of each at a time? Would I read more? Would my brain make different connections as I read with multiple books in mind? Would the built-in task switching of changing books help my sometimes distracted mind actually read longer than sticking with one book and getting fatigued by it?
I said email in my note for brevity’s sake, jotting it down quickly so the thought wouldn’t leave my mind, but RSS feeds for each book would probably work better. Also, in my mind the chunking would be “smart” and try to prioritize natural breaks in the text (new chapters or sections) over keeping each chunk the same exact size.
It’s magical thinking on my part because I have no idea how it works, but I feel like AI or an LLM could do its thing to come up with harder, mid-text breakpoints by “feel”.
I envision a bring-your-own-ebook cloud service where you upload your ebooks and then schedule their delivery. The service then sets up emails or RSS feeds for each one and then serves them up to you as directed. You could do this with a whole library and schedule out years’ worth of reading, or go with the flow and queue up new books as you finish others.
I have zero technical knowhow, so I will never do anything with this idea, but I thought it was a cool way of considering how I might potentially changing up my reading habit — a thought exercise.
I have a small history with ebooks. Specifically I spent part of my career on building an application-specific reader for Kindle books for reasons not really worth going in to.
Unless the intent was to break it up into a huge number of sections this probably wouldn't be too difficult to do without AI or anything. There are a variety of reasonably natural stopping points that can roughly all be categorized together as "places there is a line break that isn't just a single new line". This would naturally grab chapters, horizontal rules, and a few other stylistic separators.
There are a few places I can think of where this would break down, but they're probably pretty rare and the ones coming to mind are usually related to quote blocks. For example, an embedded letter or poem would misbehave unless quote blocks are explicitly excluded from the breaking rules.
That book chunking idea is fun, but I would need some sort of snooze or “rechunk” capability for when I inevitably fall behind or miss a day
I'll post the whole note and y'all can try to decipher it lol
2 T peanut butter
3 T soy sauce
Half T dark soy
1 T vinegar
2 tsp brown sugar
Hi
Crash
Pedals with hi hats
Ride
Yellow piece hi hat
Ride in trunk
Thai fusion or jazz fusion? YOU DECIDE!
Nice to see some more drummer representation on the site, or perhaps you’re just a very friendly guitarist / roadie friend.
Just kidding, of course; guitarists would never lower themselves to helping a drummer pack their car up ;)
Haha! I like this one the best. We're just ultra beginners though :) fantastic instrument for whole workout and driving your neighbours crazy (probably)
@first-must-burn Slam poetry lol yes!
@TheRtRevKaiser is most accurate
Yeah, I was picking up a set of drums from a retired drummer, a new beginner set but I wanted the Sabian symbals. But I don't know what hardware goes with what yet, and feared I wouldn't be able to set up back at home. So in a panick I opened the notes app and just typed into the most recent notes to remember which piece I placed where in the car
Congrats on the purchase and the new journey!
If you need a second set of eyes on the setup (and you feel comfortable sharing photos), I’m always happy to help a new drummer get themselves established. It’s certainly not the most intuitive instrument to assemble!
Oh nice I've got you bookmarked :D thank you
A recipe for peanut sauce followed by a list of cymbals?
Pure slam poetry!
It appears I was logging insults at some point. My notes app copy and paste:
God wasted a really good asshole when he put teeth in your mouth.
Your family tree must be a cactus because everybody on it is a prick.
Trying to explain shit to you is like trying to staple Jell-O to a steel wall.
Your brain is just there to hold your ears apart
You're like a slinky. Not really useful for anything, but fun to push down a flight of stairs.
Your asshole must be jealous of your mouth because of all the shit that comes out of it
This one, right here, I love.
Ramping it up like that to unnecessary levels, but still consistent in its microcosmos, makes it a tremendous insult.
There is no way but laughter and friendship after this gets thrown out.
Ha, I haven't heard a few of these and will be stealing a couple. My version of one of them is a lyric from a hardcore band I quote often, "you're talking so much shit your mouth looks like an asshole".
This one:
And this one:
Made me lol.
My son, at 9 months old
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Great food for my RNG composter!
Aww Oscar
Similarly, my son at 3:
olevrluvsrasccorsanddadytoim3andaveiz2aveolevr
Translated, step 1: olevr luvs ras ccors and dady to im 3 and ave iz 2 ave olever
Translation step 2: Oliver (author) loves race cars and daddy too. I'm 3 and Eva (little sister) is 2. Eva Oliver
Starting as the St Louis Bread Company, and commonly called Bread Co, what does this sandwich shop and bakery go by everywhere else.
What is the only fruit with the seeds on the outside
Typically only known by his title and last name, what famous cereal mascot technically has Horatio Magellan as his first and middle names?
What staple of Korean cuisine is made from salted and fermented vegetables? The most common ingredients are cabbage and Korean radishes.
A snack brand introduced in 1968 features individual pieces shaped as hyperbolic paraboloids so that they fit together perfectly in their vessel. What is this snack brand?.
The flu shot is recommended by the WHO and CDC for yearly vaccination for nearly all people over the age of six months. What animal's eggs are often used to produce this vaccine each year?.
What fruit sometimes known as the alligator pear is likely to have originated in South Central Mexico? Botanically speaking, this fruit is a large berry with a single seed and it is now grown in dozens of countries in both hemispheres.
Because of its oblong shape, Chicago's giant metal "Cloud Gate" sculpture is nicknamed for what staple food?
What's the six-letter name for the Vietnamese single-serving sandwich, usually served on a baguette, that typically features a fusion of meats and vegetables from native Vietnamese cuisine such as pork sausage, coriander leaf, cucumber, and picked carrots?
"If you order a dish of Indian food which includes chana, you'll be treated to a legume that goes by two different common names in English."
(I used to do trivia with the RAs when we did check-in for on-call so I was filching questions from everywhere)
My answers.
9/10 (and I did explicitly avoid making the testicle reference to my students...)
answers
1. no ideastrawberry??
????
kimchi! (though evidently it originated in china before korea put their own spin on it. According to ppl on rednote anyway.)
comrade ngl i have no clue what a hyperbolic paraboloid is but it sounds like math and im allergic
chicken eggs! my mom told me for years that we didnt get flu shots bc she had an allergic reaction and she thought i might too (neither of us are, or ever have been (afaik) allergic to eggs.)
avocados, im assuming.
is this the giant bean?
banh mi
chick peas/garbanzo beans
7/10
Click to expand spoiler.
1. Panera Bread 3. Captain Crunch 4 - I don't see any evidence of that on Wikipedia, tbf the folks on rednote will have a their own biases, but I don't see any obvious indication of that history in what I can quickly look up. The word is not considered sino-Korean either. 5. If it helps, Pringles are the only "chip" with a regular shape, which just so happens to be a hyperbolic paraboloid :D *passes you a Benadryl* 8. It is indeed The BeanMy answers/guesses.
5/10 because #6 is in fact that simple
I did edit how I read these, but picking trivia for college students is hard - they know things I don't but have no clue on things I know by heart. Food was an easier one
Guesses
Panera Bread
Strawberry
Cap'n Crunch
Kimchi - the radish thing was an answer to the NYT Crossword a few days ago
Pringles
Ducks
Coconut?
Bean
Bahnmi
Chickpea / Garbanzo bean
8/10
and avocado, not coconut!
Response
I was thinking of this rabies vaccine, but it's definitely an older technique, so not clear if anyone's doing it that way now.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_embryo_vaccine
Gotcha, if the question had been less specific I'd have given you credit! (And I learned a new thing)
Social network with Pokemon Go like functionality
Wasn't there a dating app where you could get a notification if someone you matched with was physically close by? I think that's close, though a privacy nightmare.
Sounds like Grindr
It still exists: happn
Opposite--you can match with people you passed by.
I woke with a start to the sound of a characteristic popping. Kind of like the sound of elementary school kids pulling their fingers to release a chathertic "crack." Except this sound wasn't quite a crack. At the end of the noise came a subtle squeak. Like when you fall wrong and your bottom jaw collides with its mated top and a crunching, squeaking noise resonates through your skull.
And there I laid. That same nauseating squeaking and popping echoing in my room. I laid frozen. Was it a dream? I felt too lucid in my discomfort and contemplation at what could be making such a sound for this to be a dream. I couldn't bring myself to turn and look so there I laid and just, listened. "It couldn't be. But it is," I thought to myself. It's in the walls. Like worms, like fingers stripped to their core, crawling through my walls. Their calcified little forms wrapping and snapping as they etched their way to their unknown destinations. Each of their movements on the gypsum boards finalizing with an ear pounding "pop."
I couldn't say how long it lasted, but it felt like after reaching a crescendo akin to hail on glass windows it all went quite. Not another sound breaking the stillness of night. Yet there I laid. Listening. Waiting. Waiting for what must have been an a small army to begin its resurgent assault on the peace of the night. Yet I waited for an encore that never came. Hours of sleepless stillness passed, and as the sun crept through my windows I allowed myself to breath a bit deeper and a bit easier. Up I got, cautiously to the kitchen I went to make coffee and make sense of what surely had been an awful case of sleep paralysis. Though truthfully I'm not sure I'd ever experienced sleep paralysis before that night.
The house appeared to be as I'd left it before drifting off the night before. The water boiled, the beans ground, and the first relief of my waking hours came as the smooth, bitter aroma of my brew snuck from the cup into my nose. I had a few sips of my morning concoction when I noticed it. A fine, speckled, powdering of chalk like dust seemed to coat the inside of my house. The walls, the floors, the table. Everything was just faintly dusty. Maybe I'd been too overworked these past few weeks to notice how far I'd let the house slip into a state of disarray, but had it really been so dusty just a half a day prior? I never heard the popping in my walls again. It's been years now and my therapist reassures me that this is a completely reasonable sleep paralysis experience and there's nothing for me to worry about. All the same, I've never felt comfortable hearing the sound of popping knuckles after that night.
This is fiction just in case anyone is curious. My wife and I got a rescue puppy from a bad situation a few years ago and the first few months were tough and we were not getting very consistent sleep. One night when I was especially tired this story just kind of flowed out of me as I typed it on my phone. It's weird and I still love it even if the language style is a bit over the top for my taste. I'd love to write more weird stuff like this, but rarely have ever experienced something popping into my head as fully as this little story. One thing I do look forward to at the prospect of having kids some day is that despite how awful sleep deprivation is, I might get some really good writing that comes out of it. I didn't do any editing to this in the spirit of this thread, so any typos are a result of my sleep deprived brain a couple years ago.
Thanks for spending some time reading my little nosleep/creepy pasta kind of story stranger!
Context back in the day I was super into /r/nosleep before it kind of got repetitive and especially now that reddit is... doing it's thing. I wrote a few stories that did okay, one that did really well, they're all deleted now.
This was my list of ideas for stories that I never got around to writing. Some of them were a little more mentally hashed out than others. If you're interested in a little bit more of an outline of any of them I'd be happy to share what I was thinking of when I wrote them down.
Grandpa's soul is trapped in vinyls, trying to get out
Little brother started streaming and now he is being weird
I recently returned to an old online game, and everyone seems... wrong.
I went through a doorway to another dimension and then found my way back. I think something else came with me.
I traveled to a land of great evil. I can't find my way back. (It's Earth)
I seem to have taken over the body of another person, but I can't remember anything but their life, can someone help me? (Allegory for depression)
Someone has been following me all the way home from North Dakota.
I've been listening to the nosleep podcast, and while I'm not sure how the subreddit felt about the podcast (cause I don't have the impression it was 'official'), I've really enjoyed listening to people's stories. There were some absolute masterpieces written there! Do you have a copy of your stories anywhere else? I'd love to read them!
Here's my favorite and also highest voted story I ever posted:
My parents had a toy skeleton they named SkeleSon as a joke. It used to keep me up at night telling me something bad was going to happen.
According to my mom, the way the story of SkeleSon's introduction to the family goes is quite mundane. My mom loves dressing up, decorating, and generally celebrating every holiday out there, while my dad is more of a "holidays are just a day off work" kind of guy. But when they got their first nicer apartment together, around Halloween, he bought her the toy as a joke because it was incredibly silly looking. Since they were being patient about starting a family, they used to pick on each other by occasionally saying things like, "You forgot to feed SkeleSon again today, didn't you? I can see his ribs!" You know, dumb parent jokes like that. I mean, I guess it's cute.
Anyway, when I was born (no, they thankfully did not name me SkinDaughter) they put it in my room and used to tell me that SkeleSon was my big brother and he was going to keep me safe from the ghouls and goblins of the world. We even had a bedtime song about... anyway, it doesn't matter.
SkeleSon is mostly fabric and stuffing, but with some rigid pieces underneath for the "bones." He has an orange and black wide brim hat with matching striped vest and pants. He has black shoes and a bowtie of the same color. I can't express to you how silly this toy was.
When I was very young, I used to revere SkeleSon, I guess like I would an older brother. I never played with him directly - he was only ever involved in make-believe as a role of advisor or wise man to the other toys. It's not that my parents told me not to play with him, or that he was fragile or anything. I just thought of him as different. I can still feel the way the hair rose on the back of my neck the first time I heard him speak to me.
I was 8 years old. It was late at night, and I was up a little later than I should have been. My parents had told me to be in bed by 9, but they fell asleep before that, so I stayed up and watched some TV in my room. It took me a moment to realize the sound had come from my side, and not from the speakers in front of me.
"Go wake your parents up, or something bad will happen soon."
I froze and looked to where the sound was coming from. The only thing on my dresser in that direction was SkeleSon. Of course, I didn't assume it was him right away.
"Hello?" I said out loud, clutching my covers tightly.
I let go long enough to turn the volume down on the TV, and saw SkeleSon's mouth move this time. His voice was calm, deliberate, and forceful.
"Go wake your parents up, or something bad will happen soon."
Being 8, I ran to my parents' room crying. They asked what was going on, and I told them I had a nightmare. Even at that age, I knew what I had seen wasn't normal, and I was scared to say it out loud and make it real. I guess I got it from my dad - he has always been one to keep his struggles to himself. I slept in my parents' bed that night.
The next time it happened was two months later. Similarly to last time, I was staying up later than my parents, but unlike last time, I had a cousin spending the night. Simon and I were up late, maybe 10pm, playing video games, after a long day at the beach. Simon went to the bathroom, and while he was gone, SkeleSon spoke to me again.
"Go wake your parents up, or something bad will happen soon."
This time I didn't freeze or cry. I knew Simon would be back in a minute, and I was more confused than scared this time.
"What's going to happen?" I asked.
SkeleSon turned his head towards me, and only repeated himself verbatim. "Go wake your parents up, or something bad will happen soon."
His head snapped back into place as I heard the door swing open, and Simon re-entered. "Who were you talking to?" Simon asked me.
"Did you hear that?" I asked him in surprise. If he had heard SkeleSon talk, maybe I wasn't going crazy after all.
"I only heard you mumbling, but I didn't hear what you said - were you yelling at the game?" He hadn't seemed to have heard anything specific after all.
SkeleSon didn't move or speak for another six months. On my ninth birthday, me and all my friends were going to go to an amusement park. The day before, I was so excited I thought I was going to be sick. I was reading all about the rides, attractions, and food at the park in bed when SkeleSon spoke again.
"Go wake your parents up, or something bad will happen NOW!"
He said the last word so sharply it shook the windows. I sat up half terrified and half in disbelief. I opened my mouth to speak, but before I could take a breath, he screamed:
"NOW! NOW! NOW!"
The shockwave from his voice scattered the dust in my room and almost knocked me off my bed. I took off running.
I burst through my mom and dad's door and screamed, "I need help!" before I blacked out.
I woke up 3 days later in the hospital. They said the tumor was the size of a golf ball and growing. If they hadn't caught it when they did, it would have started putting pressure on my brain, and I could have started having hallucinations or even permanent brain damage. The operation was a success, and I've never had any serious complications, aside from the 4 inch section of my scalp where the hair won't grow. The doctors insisted my blacking out was unrelated and just a random panic attack.
They insisted there wouldn't have been any symptoms at all. My brain was normal, and there was no excess pressure anywhere yet. They said normally you can't really tell until it's already causing problems. They said we were so, so very lucky. They all patted themselves on the back for going through with the CT scans, just in case.
SkeleSon never spoke to me again. He never moved. He never gave any indication he was anything more than a stuffed toy with a silly backstory. I still keep him around, though. He moved with me when I went to college, much to the confusion and amusement of my parents, who never got the full story from me, and he lives with me in my first home now. I'll introduce him to my kids as their guardian uncle and he'll have a placement in their bedrooms when they sleep at night, because even though it would be really easy for me to dismiss the encounters as hallucinations my doctors were wrong about, there was a reason they took those scans.
My dad wouldn't let it go and forced them to get scans. They argued with him to no end, but he wouldn't back down or explain why he was convinced they needed to be done. When my mom asked them afterwards how, how could he have known? How could he have seen what the doctors couldn't, when he was just some middle manager who had absolutely nothing in the way of medical knowledge. He swore her to secrecy, and to this day, he has never mentioned it to her or anyone else again.
Mom and I drink wine together though, and she let the story slip one day. He had told her, "I know this might sound crazy, but as we were rushing out the door to the hospital, I heard someone shout, 'Make them check her brain!' from her bedroom."
I love this! This is such a fun story! Thank you so much for sharing. ( ^▽^ )
I am glad you enjoyed it!
Context: I occasionally sit down and add more to these, but here is the first in a series I call “Rapid Fire Quiz” — the intention is for these to be spoken aloud, sort of as an icebreaker I guess, because it’s kinda fun wordplay, but low stakes. Every word should end in the same “sound” (except the final one deliberately throws off the pattern — it’s spelled the same but pronounced differently, it’s also phrased to be a lot more difficult) and I’ve listed them in order of the answers alphabetically.
Give them a go at reading them out loud to someone, see how it goes!
Rapid Fire Quiz: art
This is brilliant! Do you have any more you could share?
I have two others, but they’re both still incomplete. So is this one below, now that I read through it — clearly Sash would be next.
The other two incomplete ones are breaking the spelling rules, because the intention is for these to be spoken out loud, and people will pick up on the sound patterns without necessarily thinking about the spelling. For example, Bait and Date are both in “Rapid Fire Quiz: ate” because they sound the same despite the spelling.
Notes for this one: the clue for the second word mentions “bogan” which I think might be a uniquely Australian/New Zealander word. Wikipedia link for the curious. I feel like it’s a very culturally immersed clue, because it’s a word I hear bogans (or people stereotyping bogans) use, and I very rarely hear anyone else use it unironically. The word is “bash” which means to beat up or assault.
Rapid fire quiz: ash
...
https://exploremore.quipugroup.net/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield,_Illinois
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Louis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peoria,_Illinois
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quincy,_Illinois
...
life calendar (ics ? everydayfocus)
play Super Mario Bros. Wonder
Notes about my notes:
A quote from Dostoevsky that I've been meaning to think about
A little more context. This was about albums I heard as a teen that I think led to an expansion or pivot in musical taste. It wasn't meant as an exhaustive list of important or favorite albums of that era, just ones I think led to more exploration.
Tuesday, Dec 24, 2024 at 12:18 PM
Albums that shaped my music interest
Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral
Parliament - The Best Of Parliament: Give Up The Funk
Ween - The Mollusk
Medeski, Martin, and Wood - Shack-man
Wu-Tang Clan - Wu-Tang Forever
Phish - Billy Breathes
Love the idea!
For non-German artists this would be for me
Atmosphere - Sevens Travels
Portishead - Portishead
Brooke Candy - Sexorcism
Nicolas Jaar - Space is only Noise
I might be seeing Jaar with his band Darkside next Wednesday. It's a little far and being a Wednesday doesn't help.
I'm super envious. He is on my lifetime must-experience-live list. So many memories. The intro to Space is only noise still sends shivers down my spine every time I hear it. It's a record that I treasure.
Context
My wife’s due date was yesterday — this is from our note where we track questions for her obstetrician. The “I” is her. Everything is going well!
Exciting! Glad it’s going well. Best of luck to you two (soon to be you three!), and especially to your wife with the delivery.
Here's one from my Keep app that I'd be curious to know if anybody is familiar with.
I don't know the term for it, but is it how someone communicates when they can (only) move their eyes?
(First I thought code but each letter is only used once I think)
That's a really interesting thought! I have a young disabled cousin whose parents are trying to use eyegaze communication, actually, but that's not what this is.
This is actually a mnemonic device for an alternative writing system that I found a few years ago that I thought was really cool. It's very versatile, you can make it look like Commander Keene-esque alien glyphs or east asian brush calligraphy and all kinds of stuff in between.
Here's the website of the artist who came up with it.
Ah neat, so code was sort of closer but also sort of not!
Ha! I recognize this! It was in a book about secret codes by secret societies I had as a kid. It was called the Rosenkreuzer Code there. You just write the shape and some dots in there to symbolize the letter you want to write.
this is super cool, and has inspired me to make my own version! thank you for posting it
That's cool! I'd love to see it if you feel comfortable!
The sentence is "the quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog" because im boring and couldnt remember the cool sentence that uses all the letters. Here is the key. im still not entirely decided on how i want to combine and shape letters/words so I'll probably end up changing some things for using it for english. im gonna toss it at a conlang though, and see how that shapes up.....once i find the notebook i put the conlang in 😅
Looks cool! I have always liked it when people really stack lots of letters together in Elian, and this have some of the same effect.
In the same spirit of chaos as @kfwyre's notes, this falls before a summary of a conversation with the school principal about my daughter being bullied and after a list of instructions I wrote for her to find her phone's IP address for herself so she can play coop Stardew valley at her friend's house.
this is fun!!
this is a list of game ids from Riot Games's old system of managing esports data (ACS), which errored when I wrote a script to retrieve them about 5 years ago. I still have the error log file open in notepad++ (which is what I use for temporary notes) for some reason.
Sadly I deleted all my notes recently which were likely the most unhinged, but this one is interesting.
I copied it from Married at First Sight, when each couple gets given a list of values that are important to them. Each person needs to individually rank the values (mine are ordered here so there's an insight into me!) and compare them to the other person.
I did it blind with my partner and we had the exact same order except one swapped, lol.
If you have a partner, give it a go!
I like this topic!
Here's a list of three entries from one of my notes sections:
Horror themed online personal CV & Resume experience.
Subnotes: Jump scares, creepy audio with voice overlay. Annoying alert popups that make you accidentally accept location services / camera / mic abilities. For use later on in the experience.
Self made "horror imagery" with MS paint generally but super realistic 3-D singular parts.
EDM Cover / Mix of the Beach Boys "Good Vibrations" song
Sherlock Holmes 'discombobulate' meme theme but with a Wikipedia focus. 'disambiguate'
A note titled "I'm doing the f*cking math", regarding this airport inspired math puzzle.
Some fun maths
Let's assume it's 50 meters solid ground, 50 meters moving walkway, which moves at 2 meters per second.
Let's assume you walk at 2 meters per second.
The solid ground takes 50 meters divided by 2 meters per second to travel, totalling 25 seconds. The moving walkway takes 50 meters divided by 2+2 meters per second to travel, totalling 12.5 seconds. It takes you 37.5 seconds to walk from A to B.
You can sprint for 5 seconds, doubling your speed to 4 meters per second.
You sprint on the solid ground. For 5 seconds, you're moving 4 meters per second, totalling 20 meters. You must walk the remaining 30 meters at 2 meters per second, totalling 15 seconds, and the whole walkway at 4 meters per second, for a grand total of 5+15+12.5=32.5 seconds.
You sprint on the walkway. The solid ground takes 25 seconds. For 5 seconds, you move at 6 meters per second, totalling 30 meters. You must walk the remaining 20 meters at 4 meters per second, totalling 5 more seconds, for a grand total of 25+5+5=35
Wtf this makes no sense but the math adds up but it makes no sense because you're just adding a set amount to your speed this does not compute
I still don't get it. I feel like it shouldn't matter whether you run along the solid ground or the moving walkway. This hurts my brain more than conditional probability.
Maybe some of you can have some fun with this. Does the math match up with your intuition?
Here’s a possible hint by changing your mental framework
In the examples you posted, the total distance is fixed, and therefore by altering your speed, you can only impact the final time.
From this perspective, we then consider walking (2m/s) versus running (4m/s) on the ground; you have doubled your speed (2x), therefore effectively cutting 50% off your time.
Contrast to walking (4m/s) versus running (6m/s) on the moving platform, you’ve only increased your speed by a factor of 1.5x therefore you’re only reducing your effective time by ~33%
I believe the constraint on running was that you can only run for a certain amount of time, which fits our paradigm here.
I believe your intuition of “it shouldn’t matter either way” would be true if instead the constraint was you can only run for some fixed distance, regardless of speed or time.
I hope that helps at least a bit?
Holy cow, thank you for this comment. It seems so obvious now!
spoiler
Given a choice between a 2x improvement for 5 seconds or a 1.5x improvement for 5 seconds, the choice is obvious when you put it like that
I get where you're coming from. During my first read, I had the first flash of thought/intuition that it wouldn't matter as well.
But then
thinking about it a bit more, you want to minimize the time you are traveling the slowest.
A note from 2017 with my favorite Kerouac passage:
Then suddenly everything was just like jazz: it happened in one insane second or so: I looked up and saw Japhy running down the mountain in huge twenty-foot leaps, running, leaping, landing with a great drive of his booted heels, bouncing five feet or so, running, then taking another long crazy yelling yodelaying sail down the sides of the world and in that flash I realized it's impossible to fall off mountains you fool and with a yodel of my own I suddenly got up and began running down the mountain after him doing exactly the same huge leaps, the same fantastic runs and jumps, and in the space of about five minutes I'd guess Japhy Ryder and I (in my sneakers, driving the heels of my sneakers right into sand, rock, boulders, I didn't care any more I was so anxious to get down out of there) came leaping and yelling like mountain goats or I'd say like Chinese lunatics of a thousand years ago, enough to raise the hair on the head of the meditating Morley by the lake, who said he looked up and saw us flying down and couldn't believe it. In fact with one of my greatest leaps and loudest screams of joy I came flying right down to the edge of the lake and dug my sneakered heels into the mud and just fell sitting there, glad. Japhy was already taking his shoes off and pouring sand and pebbles out. It was great. I took off my sneakers and poured out a couple of buckets of lava dust and said "Ah Japhy you taught me the final lesson of them all, you can't fall off a mountain."
Mine are mostly German, duh.
But here is one that I just stumbled upon:
I'm sure some of you recognize this :)
Yep.
Two random quotes I have sitting next to each other in a note with no other context and they were added months apart.
"In eternity, where there is no time, nothing can grow. Nothing can become, nothing changes. And so death created time to grow the things it would kill. "
"It is a product of its time in a way that makes it unique and notable among the products of our time. A representative artifact of a lost moment and an artistic aesthetic that will never feel contemporary again."
That first one reminds me of two that I have recorded in my quote file from my personal reading. Both from Jorge Luis Borges stories:
Something of a contrary view, but food for thought, perhaps.
There was a blank note, a note with a name, and this list that appears to be last edited 3 years ago. I take it I put the top 3 entries, no clue what the rest of this list is supposed to be, other than a list of movies.
TEN THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU
CALL ME BY YOUR NAME
INGRID GOES WEST
AMERICAN HUSTLE
PRINCESS BRIDE
FRIDAY
PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN
THE LOST BOYS
DROP DEAD GORGEOUS
MR. AND MRS. SMITH
JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS
GO
KINGSMAN
UNFAITHFUL
SCHOOL OF ROCK
HEARTBURN
DON’T TELL MOM THE BABYSITTER’S DEAD
THINK LIKE A MAN
BARBERSHOP
ALWAYS BE MY MAYBE
AMERICAN MADE
THELMA
BOOGIE NIGHTS
BLUE VALENTINE
CLUELESS
TITANIC
THE GRADUATE
THE PROPOSAL
TOY STORY
AMELIE
THE JERK
THE MASTER
SOAPDISH
IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK
CLUE
From the top of my head, these are very different movies. I see no connecting theme.
Did you ever end up watching Amelie? It's beautiful!
I have not! Nor have I watched much of the list since that date 3 years ago. A Clue rewatch, maybe a Princess Bride rewatch.
I really have no clue what the connecting factor here could be.
I have 2.
...and
From my list of stupid story/video ideas:
Reminds me of the Community scene where Troy goes into THE Room Temperature room. This is THE Tucker.
Most of my notes are really mundane, but I do have one with a few random Dungeons & Dragons ideas jotted down.
Magic Mouth spell cast on a gold coin in a regular chest. The coin makes snarling sounds to trick looters into believing the chest is a mimic.
Ancient temple buried in the desert (The Cursed Desert of Arakkah Ah-ruh-Kah). Temple deep in heart of giant sandstorm, built by tabaxi, now mummies. The desert is cursed so that any water turns to sand. Island has city made of glass built by dwarves. Purple worms and ankegs (or homebrew rust monster?).
City of constant rain: water mills, high concentration of water based races, unquenchable fires, magic charms to repel water sold at the edges of the city. Maybe caused by an old lingering spell, a portal to the elemental plane of water, or maybe a storm giant.
Koh, The Face Stealer (homebrew monster, Avatar TLA)
The world has two moons, one operates like a normal moon with phases each night as it orbits the planet. The other is like a small planet on a long elliptical orbit and it only comes by once every 10 years. During the 4 month period of time when the moon is closest to the planet, the two planets atmospheres converge allowing people to relatively easily use magic to travel between the two. This moon also has its own moon which isn't actually a moon. Legend says that thousands of years ago a group of 5 warriors banded together and sealed away a terrible evil known only as (Dragon name). The legends are actually greatly exagerrated as (Dragon Name) actually sealed itself away when it gained knowledge that the heroes were coming to eradicate her. While sealed away for the last several thousand years, she has been traveling to various echoes of the Material Plane and fusing the powers of her own echoes in order to gain power and emerge as a Red Chromatic Greatwyrm. Fizbans pg168. Homebrew: For every 10 damage caused by either its Breath Weapon or its Chromatic Flare, 1 Fire Animated Breath Fizbans pg163 is created.
If a character loses an arm or a leg, phantom limb can take on a new meaning. The ghost of the missing limb becomes a real menace to the character (3 stooges stuff).
Permanently invisible Beholder. Born from the dream of a blinded beholder.
Beauty and the Beast - An arrogant prince cursed to live as a beast alone in his castle. Could be a side quest when lost traveling in deep woods.
Miniature city?
Ooh, this is fun. Here's a note from my phone's Keep app that might be a good conversation starter:
Additional context: the phrases in parenthesis are things that might help when requesting it from the Echo.
I love the hypothetical image in my mind of you trying to get the Echo to play something from VVVVVV without your workaround (absolutely fantastic soundtrack, by the way).
Except the album is called PPPPPP, so:
The game is one of my favorite games of all time, so when I’m talking with my husband about it, I literally call it “The Letter V Six Times.”
Meanwhile, my husband cheekily insists on pronouncing it as written every time. I can’t really type out phonetically what he does, but suffice it to say that the name of the game ends up sounding a vacuum or an electric razor when coming from him.
Hah! I've tried something like your hypothetical idea; it works quite poorly, hence asking for specific tracks by name instead.
Usually when discussing it with my son (who's better at it that I am), I just call it "vee-vee-vee". That's not too hard to say, and three vees are enough to be unambiguous, especially if the context is video games.
Also, since I've been learning adult beginning piano, I've really gotten into the niche of watching good pianists cover video game music (in the "I will never be that good, but it's fun and aspirational to see someone talented do it" sense). One of the ones that I originally listened to a lot is Verdegrand's Positive Force, which he contributed a clean version of to PPPPPPowerup!. And just the other day, I discovered this cover of Pushing Onwards which I've been listening to a ton. Chip tunes seem to translate surprisingly well to piano -- I also love this cover of Spider Dance from Undertale.
These are all great but WOW that Pushing Onwards cover is perfection. So good.
Given that you’re into both chiptunes and piano, you’re probably already aware of aivi & surasshu who combine both of them to magnificent effect. In case you’re not though, definitely give them a listen!
My notes app is mostly work memos and my kid messing around with the drawing tools. But I did find some old notes from a game I was working on through lockdown. Here's one of the random events we were plotting out
4.c- event: Grave Robbing (Location: -4,5,-4)
Triggers:
PART 1
The narrow canyon opens into an unusually wide clearing. You notice dozens of unnatural formations littering the area, as well as deep gashes carved into every surface. A quick scan reveals these formations to be ancient downed crafts caked in centuries of dust. However, there's no clear sign why they are all concentrated in one place. A thorough investigation would take several hours.
PLAYER.salvage (30): It is unlikely that you can recover any useful salvage from the ancient wreckage.
PLAYER.empathy (20): You also hear murmurings of bad omens amongst the company.
PLAYER.integration (40): But you feel drawn to something in this clearing.
Consult:
KING - "Don't know about this commander. If something here took down old tech, do we really want to see if it's still around."
BOOK - "So we getting paid for this little adventure or are we getting back to work."
SLY - Sounds like SLY crew are arguing on how to split the salvage.
HIVE - No response
SEER - "Rot. Leave"
Options:
C0. Leave - "We're too exposed out here and can't spare the energy on treasure hunts."
-> morale: + 2
-> stats: ?
-> standing: KING+2, BOOK+1. SLY-2, HIVE =, SEER+4
-> END EVENT
C1. Quick check - "We've got half a shift to dig up what we can around here."
-> time: +3
-> TEAM.salvage(65): PASS
--> stats: ?
--> munitions: +5, materials: +3, gear.old_tech x 2 common
--> standing: KING+1, BOOK=. SLY+3, HIVE +1, SEER-2
--> morale: +3
--> END EVENT
-> TEAM.salvage(65): FAIL
--> standing: KING-1, BOOK-1. SLY-2, HIVE =, SEER-3
--> morale: -1
--> TO PART 2
C2. Quick check - "If everyone came here for something, then we probably want it too. Prep for excavation."
-> time: + 6
-> morale: -3
-> standing: KING-1, BOOK-3. SLY-2, HIVE =, SEER-3
-> stats: ?
--> TO PART 2
PART2
After a fruitless sweep of the surface, you move to begin excavation. The minute a constructor drone breaks ground in the center of the clearing, a giant spike falls from the sky and impales the autonomous machine. You watch as giant, bipedal machine slowly descend from the sky and effortlessly extract its crude weapon from the drones carcass. It faces you with cold indifference on it's blank face.
Options:
C0. Flee - "Full retreat. We're not messing with whatever the hell this is."
-> time: +2
-> morale: -3
-> standing: KING-2, BOOK-4. SLY+1, HIVE+2, SEER-2
-> stats: ?
-> END EVENT
C1. Fight - Guardian elite combat. Ambush.
-> VICTORY
--> gear.old_tech x 1 rare + 2 common
--> standing: KING+3, BOOK+1. SLY+5, HIVE +3, SEER-3
--> morale: +5
--> stats: ?
--> TO EVENT 4.d
-> RETREAT
--> standing: KING+1, BOOK-3. SLY-2, HIVE+2, SEER+2
--> morale: -8
--> stats: ?
--> END EVENT
Last thing in my notes app was a weird ass dream I had. This was written at like 3am so the wording is weird. Enjoy.
Dreamt of a demented game. I've played it before in my dreams. Involves being assigned an item you have to take to a location, usually something fragile or a food item that is tempting to eat. Everyone gets something different, it's crowded where the game happens and needs a place with lots of random rooms and dead ends. It's filled with all the players trying to take their items to a location, interspersed amongst the players are imposters, some kind of otherworldly creature that is trying to catch you. They can only catch you by convincing you that they are a real person. When they catch you they show you unbelievable horrors that kill you. No one ever wins this game. I came upon a room filled with hundreds of people and a band all frozen and waiting to see if someone would start shooting a gun. It was a standoff because someone swore there was a fake person with them (there wasn't).
I was assigned a sandwich to take somewhere, and wore a birthday hat. I was eventually cornered by a middle aged woman and a guy, they were some of the fakes. She lifted my birthday party hat and I barely saw under the edge and it was filled with a sea of endless eyes. I screamed and woke up.
Packing checklist for a long weekend trip I took last month down to Norfolk, VA. It's not a complete list; I didn't even check off everything, but it's got the basics. Whenever I travel, I always have a list or checklist.
I'm glad that I'm not the only one who does this! Much easier to make a list as I think of things in the days leading up to travel than try to think of everything on-the-spot as I'm packing.
This made me laugh more than it should've.
I’ve been reading a book where the author shares her opinion on how the “self-improvement” movement has led many people to burnout (something that I’m familiar with). The following quote caught my attention:
I was on coffee brewing course a few days ago. Tranlated to English:
I also have this in my notes, but I don't really know what it means:
I also have my ethernet cable runs calculated in my notes which reminds me I should eventually fish them through the walls.
Nothing special, just a little condiment that is good on most things
A quote from Meet Joe Black (from this scene)
Okay. Be deliriously happy. I shall, uh, I shall do my utmost.
I finally got a WR250R on the way, which this list is for
must:
maybe:
mods:
maintenance/parts:
RMK
https://github.com/HaoboGu/rmk
A #keyboard firmware written in rust, using the [[embassy-780d9494]] framework.
Seems to support everything I use on the [[ferris-sweep-5e423a14]],
but does not (yet) support a trackball, sutch as on the [[charybdis-e23fa7b7]].
Would have to write my own configuration with it, but it seems easy enough.
QMK provides premade configurations for many keyboards out of the box,
RMK expects you to write your own.
However, RMK makes it significantly easier to write your own keyboard config.
Definitly not for people new to custom keyboards,
but for somone with experience with QMK and friends, its a perfectly viable alternative.
Might also be a nice codebase to look at for learning embassy.
Really interesting how it uses a proc-macro file to parse
keyboard.tomlat compile time.It does not yet have support for half-duplex serial, which is needed for the ferris sweep.
It is in the master branch, but has not seen a release yet.
The half-duplex serial also has a bug that renders it unusable with long serial cables,
Im fixing it here
Next release is focusing on input devices,
so it should be possible to get it working with a trackball like the [[charybdis-e23fa7b7]] has.
The [[foo-12345678]] links are internal links to other notes. I use zk to manage my notes.
A journal entry dated 2025-01-03:
I just received a call from Jacob, learning that grandma has passed away. It was a good run! She just turned 90 years old a few days ago.
I haven't spoken with grandpa yet since his house is full of people right now and he probably needs some space anyway.
As the annals of this journal will show, I've had various opinions of grandma throughout my life. But in recent years, I've grown quite fond of grandma. She was a pleasant person and wanted what was best for her family.
I don't train Wing Chun anymore but other styles (Shuai Jiao + Hsing-I), but I keep this on hand as a good practice set when I have access to a mook. Which I don't at the moment, but this lives in my notes app on my phone just in case.
Wake up.
Live.
Sleep.
Wake up.
Live.
Sleep.
Wake up.
Live.
Sleep.
Is this what I was born to do? What I was destined for? What my whole life was building towards?
I never thought about it. I never thought about what I would actually end up doing. I guess I thought everything would eventually work out.
I don’t really know what to think anymore.
Wake up.
Live.
Sleep.
Wake up.
Days are getting shorter.
Did I brush my teeth this morning?
Sleep.
Wake up.
spits Blood. Jesus, how many days has it been since I brushed my teeth.
Sleep.
Wake up.
Beat
Sleep.
I guess it’s not so bad.
The world is oddly quiet.
The roads, empty.
How different is my life anyway? Truly. It’s not like I was partying every night, going out clubbing. Enjoying my life.
Posting without context, but I'm sure it won't be hard to figure out.
Location: New Orleans
Theme: Grief
Guests:
Colman Domingo, Brian Tyree Henry, Kiki Palmer
Ke Huy Quan, John C Reily, Joan Kusac, Kristen Wig, Tony Dalton
Bradley Whitford, Jason Alexander
Staff:
Wendell Pierce, Glenn Howerton, Kyle Mooney/Paul Rust(?), Christine Ko, Jessica Williams (?)
Small selection:
Minucius said; "Dictator, you have on this day won two victories, one over Hannibal through your valour, and one over your colleague through your wisdom and kindness. By the first you saved our lives, and by the second you taught us a great lesson, vanquished as we were by our enemy to our shame, and by you to our honour and safety. I call you by the excellent name of Father, because there is no more honourable name which I can use; and yet a father's kindness is not so great as this kindness bestowed by you. My father did but beget me, while to you I owe not only my own salvation, but also that of all these men of mine."
Context: A chat message that made me laugh, directed at someone who was being unruly in the chat of a livestream.
Context: Note dated 2024-07-04
Context: This was relatively soon after I'd started wrapping up a programming project, and realised that I didn't know how to communicate the value of what I made. Sure, if you gave me 5 minutes I could stumble my way through it. But I had no elevator pitch. This talk helped me realize that figuring out your "elevator pitch" early is helpful in a ton of ways.
Searched my #quotes tag and found this scene I saved from the cartoon Mike, Lu & Og, always relevant:
I don't always jot down my dreams, but this one struck me in some way that I wrote it down in my book ideas folder.
I honestly don't remember any of it now, so I guess I' glad to have written it down. Not sure yet how I would turn it into a compelling story.
Melancholy
That is how I would describe today.
By definition, there would be no cause.
However, I know the cause.
It's self sabotage
Your voice lingering in my soul
Piercing to my heart
Your face a image when I close my eyes
Even though they are faint
They are impacting
Leaving me with the ghost of tears past
Tense
Sad
Melancholy
Dumb story idea:
A boy raised by his aunt and uncle discovers that his parents were actually highly gifted hackers when their old organization comes to recruit him, Harry Potter style. He doesn't take the time to realize that hacking skills aren't hereditary and runs away with them. Turns out his parents hid billions of dollars in crypto before they died, and tied their 2fa to his biometrics.