Last updated: 2025-11-26

Hi, welcome to my Now page! You can see previous versions here.

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Happy Thanksgiving folks! I don't live in the US, but I'm lucky that my wife's family does celebrate it so I get to live part of the experience. Sometimes it can feel a bit overwhelming having the whole family here (and her family is huge!), but I'm always grateful to be part of it. And you know, one only tends to remember the nice things. The great majority of the family also has similar views on stuff so there's very little of that all too common disagreements that are typical of this time of year.

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I'm still playing Silksong and recently got into the Citadel (started Act 2). I'm actually way into it by now, but I decided it's time to take a break. I think I'm just tired of bashing bugs around, and want some of my time back to do other stuff. It's amazing how much more free time I have now!

On the side I've been working on an Obsidian Plugin to sync writing to TrackBear and I have to say it's been great at helping me stay motivated with doing my Morning Pages. I believe being able to see my writing progress on a dashboard pushes me to keep on moving that graph upwards. I'm now in the process of publishing the plugin the official Obsidian store, which should hopefully be done soon.

Now

• I've decided to start a new writing project as I felt stuck on here (something I've mentioned AT LENGTH in my past Now updates) . I think I have too-high standards for my blog, which is why I feel like I want to write but never end up doing so. That's why I created a "dumpster" for myself! It's a public facing page, but I'm trying to treat it more as a place without standards. I'm not sure what will happen with it or if I will eventually bring back some of the stuff I write there over to the blog (probably yes).
• I recently discovered an excellent app called Readeck to queue up the stuff you want to read from around the web. You're meant to self-host it so it might not be as friendly for non-technical folks. If you're curious I can create an account for you on my instance, just ping me!
  • Seriously, this app is so good. You can "save" new articles from the Readeck site itself or (often more conveniently) from the official browser extension (that works even on Android!).
  • My favorite feature is that it remembers your progress in each and every article, so I can read a bit on my phone and then open it up on my computer and continue reading there, and then again on my phone.
  • I'm using it for both personal and work stuff. I usually have tens of tabs with papers relevant to my job, but I'm lucky if I end up reading one of them a week. Now, since I have a queue, I can just go through it whenever I have time. This organization has really done a difference for me, and my browser window definitely looks cleaner!
• I'm seriously considering paying for Kagi. There are two main reasons for this:
  1. Google sucks, Bing sucks. I don't want to look at ads just to make money for them. I'm not complaining about the search results (even Bing is mostly acceptable after it builds up a profile), it's more of a philosophical thing.
     • For years now I've been using Ecosia which is actually a really nice project. It's a Bing based search engine, and the foundation behind it gives pretty much all their revenue to planting trees. You should check them out if you didn't know about them! Search results are decent.
  2. I've been thinking just how important search is for our internet use. We often don't think about it because Google/Bing just work, but Search in fact the cornerstone of our internet experience (especially if you are an Information worker). It not only shapes OUR experience as users, but also what the internet itself is shaped up to be. I think a lot of the crappy ad-farm sites that are commonplace now exist solely because they're gaming Google's algorithm. And Google's algorithm is made for making Google the most money, not to optimize the experience for the user doing the search, nor for the sites the user is reaching (sadly this is the case even with Ecosia). The fact that search works is just a byproduct of the fact they need to keep users searching.
     • I feel that using something like Kagi is a statement and a direct way of reclaiming our agency as co-creators of the web. You pay, yes, but that lets you play a role in what you want your (and others') experience to be. Kagi also has some awesome features like custom page filtering, ranking, and Lenses (which are totally awesome)! And their new crowdsourced AI detection thing is, I think, also moving things in the right direction.
     • The thing keeping me back is that it's so expensive! I've been trying to find someone that wants to split the "Duo" license with me, but no one around me is ready to cast the yoke of Google. I really wish there was a way to "team up" with random strangers without worrying that they'll eventually ghost you and not pay their part.

Reading

(you can also find me on Hardcover)

• On Writing by Stephen King
  • Man I really need to get back to reading this! It's been a long while that I don't touch it but I do want to finish it. There's a lot of good stuff in it.
• Snuff by Terry Pratchett
  • I love Terry Pratchett so much! It's been a while since I read anything from him. I'm only a few chapters into the book but I'm liking it so far.
• Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
  • I first read this book in my freshman year at college and it was such an important part of my formative experience at that time that I was extremely surprised when I realized I basically haven't re-read this book even once! It's still as good as I remember, though there are many things I didn't remember, and now that I'm older perhaps understand some things a bit better.

Watching

• An aunt recommended us Bon Appétit, Your Majesty and it's been surprisingly fun! It's a weird mix between drama and comedy that's really entertaining to watch. The actors are also really good, and the cinematography is great.
  • The overall story is so-so, but every episode on its own has been drawing me in so far, so it means it must be good.

Projects

• As mentioned above, I'm working on an Obsidian TrackBear plugin.
• I'm also picking up work on Gustbooks once again!
  • After much debating whether I should or not I decided to go ahead and implement a sort of "reply functionality" where the guestbook owner can reply to messages. Still trying to finalize the design.
  • Recently Kayla brought to my attention the fact that people might want to spam other Guestbooks (as in fact happened to her not long ago)! Come on folks, that's not a nice thing to do! In retrospect, that was obviously going to happen.
    • Added a "delete multiple messages" functionality to the dashboard so at least spam can be dealt with in a single fell blow.
    • But that's not enough. I'm now thinking of adding some sort of spam detector thingy to Guestbooks. I'm familiar with basic spam detection on email, and think maybe we can do the same for Guestbooks? With a single shared filter that all users contribute to?
      • I haven't decided if "spam messages" should just be blocked (maybe a warning shown to the person trying to post the message?) or if a more complex spam folder should be added on Guestbooks. The latter is probably better, but it's also quite a bit more complex to implement.
    • Anyway... I'll think more about it. This "Now" page is probably not the place to get into a design specification 😅