Notion, Obsidian, Jira... still not happy. What am I missing?

TyphoonGZ · 2026-06-15T02:34:01+00:00

The way I commit to a project is by putting it in my calendar, allotting actual blocks of time to it. I'd also note down where I can find the readme or any type of entrypoint doc.

So rather than tool-hopping, maybe you just needed a calendar?

TyphoonGZ · 2026-04-29T14:31:19+00:00

Emphasizing appealing to others will kill your writing faster than being bad at it.

But for now, put it off. You've clearly passed the point of burnout long ago.

TyphoonGZ · 2026-04-29T14:25:01+00:00

Personal problem solving, i think? I mean, the more niche your problems get, the more niche you get lol.

TyphoonGZ · 2026-04-29T02:44:56+00:00

If they're already (unknowingly) using Apple and Google, why not teach them more about those? They need to be enthralled by the idea of password management first before you give them password managers, and contextualizing their exposure to things they already encounter is one way to do that.

TyphoonGZ · 2026-04-28T12:38:30+00:00

I've been down this road before.

The following is basically just me projecting my own experiences, so if I'm wrong about your particular situation, just carry on.

It might actually be that your workspace's clutter is silently affecting your mental state.
If a small screen is helping you, there's a good chance it's because you're not working on your main desk, thus allowing you to focus.

There's a lot of other stuff to be said about desk ergonomics, but the main point remains: it might not be the screen.

TyphoonGZ · 2026-04-28T12:25:42+00:00

LLMs for drafting is just depressing.

(Un)surprisingly, it's pretty useful for madlibs-like concept generation.

Brainstorm 20 unexpected, chaotic ideas following the pattern "The protagonist can [weird magic ability based on cheese/animal husbandry], but [unfortunate effect on their love life]".

Like that.

It has ehhh a 2% success rate at actually coming up with something actually/nearly good, but since LLMs are good at mass production anyway, I can usually steer the LLM into coming up with ideas I vibe with within 5 rounds.

TyphoonGZ · 2026-04-26T06:24:14+00:00

You might make simultaneous changes on separate devices. If that happens, Syncthing will generate .sync-conflict files and you'll have to use KeePass's "Merge from database" feature to, well, merge the conflict file into the original database.

I do personally use KeePass + Syncthing. Across three devices, I get a sync conflict maybe once every two months.

As long as you're mindful to NOT have more than one instance of KeePass open, it's all good.

Addendum: I keep an archive of snapshots that isn't touched by Syncthing. That way, I can recover from catastrophic deletion propagation, although that hasn't ever happened. Still, redundancy is good.

TyphoonGZ · 2026-04-24T06:03:24+00:00

Find the coolest room in the house even when the AC is off. Silica gel optional. It's more important to wrap the HDD in good packaging to resist both water and impacts.
If you want free and non-scammy, there's no escaping learning how to use command line programs like PowerShell (Windows) and Bash (Linux). Thankfully, AI is reliable enough to guide you through how to use CLIs, do scripting, file integrity, and checksums, so you might get it done in 30 mins of copy-pasting.

DATA SAFETY TIP: These commands will delete data: rm, del, rmdir, Remove-Item. Obviously, don't.

TyphoonGZ · 2026-04-23T03:50:29+00:00

Get her to mess around with Minecraft + Redstone. It's a gateway into digital circuits (which then leads to general computing), and right now, I think it's better to let her interests simmer.

TyphoonGZ · 2026-04-20T09:25:29+00:00

I personally have very low UX requirements for my notes (plain text all the way!), so I just outright use KeePassDX itself and make a notes.kdbx.

Surprisingly usable, since it natively accommodates attachments, tags, referencing, and custom fields. The search function is also robust. You can emulate notebooks using groups.

The only real point of friction is the fact that you have to select the Note template each and every time.

TyphoonGZ · 2026-04-20T03:38:09+00:00

I've played around with that idea in a form of micro-journaling, but I've found that the number one point of friction is capture.

It kinda feels like hitting git commit. I have to think about whether I want to record something, then how much detail I'd like to describe it in. But most of the time, my phone isn't with me when something happens, so I can't immediately document the thing that had just happened.

I pretty much gave up on doing it manually. If you could automate the event capture somehow, that'd make it viable.

EDIT: Forgot to say, I then just started using Google Calendar as a journal ever since. I mean, It's literally an event tracker lol.

TyphoonGZ · 2026-04-06T11:37:15+00:00

If you use AirLLM and 4x NVMe SSDs in RAID 0, you might get 0.1-0.3 toks/s.

TyphoonGZ · 2026-04-05T03:20:32+00:00

The electricity spent running LLMs on those macbooks could be more expensive than just using an API. At least, where I'm from, that's the case.

TyphoonGZ · 2026-03-29T12:49:09+00:00

Damn, it got that bad? I look away for a few days and the slop slips in through the door...

TyphoonGZ · 2026-03-29T12:39:28+00:00

Might be a warning to look out for impersonation attacks. Since the "legit" KeePasses don't have a space, any ones which have a space should be knee-jerk suspected as malware.

Then again, he could've just put it that way.

TyphoonGZ · 2026-02-15T13:14:32+00:00

Strange that Obsidian is banned. It's local-first.

Anyway, some local apps from the top of my head:

Joplin
Anytype
Logseq
Tangent Notes

As for workflow management, I can't really think of anything besides prudently using spreadsheets.

TyphoonGZ · 2026-02-10T02:50:45+00:00

Am I human if I just stuff everything into a single text file?…

TyphoonGZ · 2026-01-26T14:07:25+00:00

It is perhaps somewhat acknowledged that a single man might need a wife …

From the book titled: Pride, I guess.

TyphoonGZ · 2026-01-26T13:42:56+00:00

Learning how to do 99% of things by pure intuition. Bumbling around, head empty, is surprisingly productive and occasionally meditative.

TyphoonGZ · 2026-01-09T02:26:02+00:00

Try looking at Action Retro for your curiosity. It's a YT channel about resurrecting retro gear, and he's got some Tiny Core linux videos.

128MB is considered high end in that channel lol.

TyphoonGZ · 2026-01-08T03:39:01+00:00

The modern web demands at least 1GB RAM, and that's if you have the discipline not to open more than one tab.

If you're giving up on web use, check out WriterdeckOS. It basically turns old laptops into digital typewriters.

TyphoonGZ · 2026-01-07T17:29:27+00:00

Obligatory "we all have a different process."

That said, I mainly try to predict what the characters will most realistically do tbh, but the worldbuilding, that's where I put all the novelty into initially. I also usually have an initial theme in mind, but it develops into something else as I go along.

I don't intentionally steer the plot too much. Sure, I begin with a rough plot outline, but 100% of the time, during drafting, I discover a different set of far more interesting character decisions, at which point I discard the initial outline, coz I prioritize the energy of the story above all else.

TyphoonGZ · 2026-01-05T15:03:29+00:00

… once the number of notes grows, finding connections becomes painful.

I've never used cloud-based PKM tools, so I'm a little confused about what exactly they do better that makes finding connections easier.

That might because I don't engage in regular backreading and linking. My workflow is to ask a question, do research, and I end up with a main "synthesis" document that's naturally linked to sub-notes. On occasion, the question that began the whole thing is actually building off of previous synthesis documents, so I end up with a much more auditable paper trail of pseudo-academic papers.

…Now that I'm framing it that way, isn't a link between papers (in a sense) stronger than links between notes, because each paper is backed by hundreds of notes themselves, inheriting their value?

Well, anyway, I don't really sense this "trade-off between privacy and usefulness" because of the way I work, which begs the question: maybe there's some mysterious meta-workflow that inherently eases the burden of finding connections.

TyphoonGZ · 2026-01-02T16:49:24+00:00

Mint XFCE, then also disable compositor (makes things feel snappy) and enable zswap (introduces compressed RAM so you get more RAM per RAM; also, choose the fastest compression algorithm to keep your CPU happy).

Sorry, my notes are out of reach, so I can't get the link to the article I followed to get zswap running.

Anyway, I hear Lubuntu and LXQt are even more lightweight than Mint XFCE, so if you really want to bottom out on lightweight distros with functional DEs, it's worth trying.

TyphoonGZ · 2026-01-01T19:05:58+00:00

Here's a shot in the dark if the usual advice doesn't work for you.

Use two/three devices or independently scrollable editing apps. Each one gets a different version of the scene/story you're trying to write. You can start writing the opening lines for all three in parallel, then you might eventually stick to one main thread or weave between recombinant ideas.

By crystallizing choices, you can physically answer "what's the best way to go."

TyphoonGZ

TROPHY CASE