I’ve had some new visitors arriving lately to the site (welcome!) and thought I’d link to a few of my favorite posts here at Celsius1414. You can also see what everybody else’s favorites are—for today or all time—in the sidebar.
Empty Thoughts, or Do Zen Monk Robes Have Pockets? What tools do you truly need to carry with you everywhere, every day?
(By far the most popular page here.)
If you think about it, our Things are never really Getting Done. Sure, you might complete a given todo list, but there’s always more to do. That project might be out the door at last, but there’s always another right after it. Still, most of us accept this Sisyphean existence as an inherent aspect of leading a productive life.
Less easily handled by all the productivity schemes are non-actions.
February 2005, my stepfather Jack was diagnosed with lung cancer.
Death is nothing to be afraid of, even if certain methods of dying are frightful. Death is merely the absence of life, much as darkness is an absence of light, or cold an absence of heat. It is not a thing in itself, but just a name for when something else is missing.
Of course, these fine philosophical and semantical shadings were themselves absent the other day when a giant pickup truck decided to swerve across the road towards me and my bicycle.
I occasionally try using a plaintext todo master file, using tags a la Giles Turnbull’s article Living in text files. Previously, I’ve tried out various combinations of plaintext files, OmniOutliner documents, HPDA, regular paper-based lists, etc., but come back to plaintext every so often. Adding in the tagging mechanism mentioned in Giles’s article enables some complex sorting and filtering using common CLI tools that are very handy — and powerful.
The last time I experimented with a single text file, I tried making a few changes to my Mac OS X work environment in order to reduce distractions even more than before, experimenting with various combinations of informational Widgets and window sizing, as well a sedate overall color scheme.
Here’s a brief outline on how it all fit together.
So last night was both Fleece Blanket Night and Chinese American Community Night at Dodger Stadium. There were some talented martial artists, reportedly monks straight from China, performing on top of the big LA logo. Singers sang and award ceremonies were held.
There was also a baseball game played. You might have heard about it.
As I’m writing this, I keep having to pause as I flashback to last night. My eyes go all blurry, and I lose my grip on time and space.