AcademicalNerd @academicalnerd@qoto.org

I am now downloading and flashing Tails OS on a spare USB stick. An interesting time to live in, indeed.

I'll sum it up.

Judging by what's happening, no one hates the people of Russia more than the government of Russia.

Well, Russia is becoming Venezuela in some sense. Prices are spiking and the currency is getting cheaper. Everyone is buying what they can, because there will be no imported goods. A very interesting situation to be in.

Well, people went on the streets in Moscow. 2000 now arrested across country, and on the second day the subway station where people started gathering was blocked immideately. No one wants this war, except for the government.

Some say all germans were nazis in the 1940s. Well, I think I realize how did that feel. Trying to live your life, as best as you can, to find out one day that somebody decided to commit a slaughter using your name.

Another hidden cost of the things that are happening now: no imported medicines. My sister relies on a few of them to live somewhat comfortably, and it was getting progressively more difficult and expensive to buy them over the last years. I guess a couple packs we have now will be the last.

It is now day three of war. I have more or less relized the scale and the consequences of the events and worked out the rough plan of my actions. It's going to take a lot of work, but I'll get through this. There are a few complications.

1) Russia can't buy chemicals from USA anymore. It makes it more difficult to do work as stuff that is made here is not great and what China sells is often quite shite.
2) Germany seized all the scientific projects with Russia, and there were plenty. I think the rest of Europe will follow along soon. And there are few facilities in Russia, most resources spent in the last years were aimed at getting access to foreign ones. Mainly, you guessed it, German.
3) If I happen to drop out of University, I get mobilized and sent to war. Which is not exactly what I aspire to do with my life. Killing humans is not on my to-do list and, I hope, never will be.
4) No CPUs and other components for the next 5+ years, probably. It's a good thing I use linux and pretty much any computer will work. My i3-8xxx should last me a few more years before giving up and by that time I hope to get the hell away.

Correction to n.4: China will import their computers, huawei and xiaomi and maybe others. I may upgrade to these. but who says China will keep getting their CPUs?..

The transition is very interesting. I went to sleep in my own bed in a peaceful country and woke up in a war without moving an inch. Frightening.

My new hobby -- ab initio quantum computations. This one shows sodium alginate molecular orbitals.

So I put together a quick article on giving a talk. Inspired by my experience last Friday.
https://academicalnerd.blogspot.com/2022/01/on-public-speaking.html

I switched to journalling and planning on paper this year. Been loving it so far.

https://academicalnerd.blogspot.com/2022/01/analogue-note-taking-digital-mess-we.html

The long-term planning boils down to a simple algorithm:

1) Identify end goal, feasible for your capabilities and the timeframe, a year in this case.
2) Break it down into smaller milestones, assuming linear progress (for the sake of simplicity). Quaters work well.
3) Break the milestones into steps, in this case I use monthly goals as an outline.
4) Consider the processes that are likely to bring you to the end goal and design them.
5) Keep going back to the initial plan and readjusting based on the experience.

It is a difficult process to tacle, in part because it is frustrating to face the uncertainty. But the rewards, I believe, are worth it.

I am now in the process of annual review and planning. This will take me a few days on and off to finish, as there are some 300 daily notes and two small notebooks.

The review will include notable events and parties, some key ideas and lessons, and a list of accomplishments.

The planning part will take longer, as I plan on redoing my entire setup to lean towards analogue note-taking and minimalistic digital workflow, that would link together all or almost all of my work as a scientist, writer, teacher and - lately - game developer. I'll post a few updates on this as I go.

2021-12-24

The annual review turned out to be a surprisingly pleasant thing to do. I didn't reach all my goals but did some significant progress and even managed to do some stuff outside of my initial intentions.

However, I have no slightest idea where will the next year take me. It will be an interesting adventure.

Turns out I am greedy. Not for money, as I usually have enough thanks to my parents and workaholism.

I am greedy for new hobbies, projects and ideas. Once there is an opening in my schedule, I'll immideatly try to fill it with something, whether it be a coding project, lab work or new piece of writing.

Yesterday there was a moment where I caught myself and gor an upper hand: instead of putting "outline new article" on a todo list, I left the line blank. A small yet important victory and a step towards a more sustainable life.

Update 3: side-hustles.

I've been teaching a couple of students on and off, and this was a nice experience. Now I managed to get into copywriting for a job search platform which I won't name for now. They publish guest posts on various blogs to advertise themselves. It is not the best writing I could do, but I can hone my writing, especially in English as I'm still not native speaker.

Update 2: life.

How in the world do my parents cope with all the shit they have tyo cope with? The question I asked some time ago. The answer quickly came to me: they don't. Smoking, wine, sleeping in and burying themselves in work and household chores to not think about the situation.

Now the shit piled up on my plate as well, with stress from work and family life. And I seem to somehow have far more resources than I anticipated. As long as there is some time to rest and process the events of the week (Saturday is off-limits for this reason), everything is more or less okay.

Reading about psychology and philosophy helps a lot, especially stoicism. For some reason I find it quite calming to read.

Update 1: work.

My scientific advisor fucked up the communication and as a result I had a month of work with tight deadline, actually the tightest I ever had relative to amount of work.

This led to a pile of messy code I'll have to sort out at some point, but it's okay because now everything is in source control and I won't irreversibly break anything. Which happened a few times before. Shame I wasnt using git before. Better late than never, I guess.

Now I'll need to submit literature review draft by January, duh. A lot of work but at least I know what to do and a third of it I did in advance back in September.

Ugh. Alright, this semester is tough. The past month was a chaotic turmoil of deadlines and other bullshit, but I managed to do some important things and get back into the writing habit. So here we are.

I'll post a few updates here once today's work is done.

The winter is nigh, and warming beverages are in order.

Cocoa recipe - for two cups

- 600 ml of milk
- half a glass of hot water
- 30 g of cocoa powder
- spices to taste (I use cinnamon and cloves)
- sugar to taste (2 teaspoons is a good start)

Put dry components in a pot, distribute evenly around the bottom and pour boiling water in. Thoroughly mix cocoa with water and make sure no dry powder is left. Then pour the milk in and put on the stove. Adjust the fire so that it takes about ten minutes to almost boil the milk. Take the pot off the stove just before boiling and pour to cups. Preheat them if you feel fancy.

Some remarks to this recipe are in order.

1) Try adding some pepper, red or black, to make the beverage more "warming". Try nutmeg or any spice you have in the counter.
2) Hot water in the beginning is important: it wets hydrophobic cocoa powder and extracts plenty of teste from it and spices.
3) Try adding cornstarch - it doesn't have flavour but makes the drink thicker.

Credit to Max Frei and the most entertaining cookbook I have ever read.

# 2021-09-18

Being articulate and precise is very important. Usually this is related to speech or writing. But there is no reason to not expand this statement to other domain. Be concise in your words and actions, in your code and your drawing. Say, write, draw and program exactly what's necessary, in the most compact and efficient way possible. Your ability to align action with intent is what separates failure from triumph. This - and luck, but you can't exactly control your fortune, so focusing on former makes more sense.