Treefingers

I’m currently in the middle of writing two posts and I feel that I’m still very far from completing them so I wanted to post just a song and talk about purging music for the previous year. Kristen gave me this suggestion at the end of 2018, make a playlist for the year in Spotify (or whatever music streaming service you use) and clean the library itself. This was a good push into discovering new music in 2019. I’m doing the same for 2020 so while I do that and finish up the other two posts, I wanted to share the following song too:

Yesterday, I played Battlefield 1 late at night and while I was playing something occurred to me. I play video games pretty often and for a good while now, I’ve been addicted to playing BF1 and haven’t really played anything else. The game’s mechanics, maps, and overall gameplay has kept me engaged pretty well, so well that I have it on both my PS4 and Xbox just so I can play on one if the other is updating.

I play most on the weekends but I have had a feeling that recently, the time I’m spending playing video games is too much of a waste and not so much relaxation or “getting my mind off other things”.

It has become its own problem altogether and I’m going to stop playing them starting today until at least January 17th, 2020.

I’m trying to collect a list of coffee places that have good oat milk cappuccinos and this is for Los Angeles:

Good
– Little Ripper Coffee, this has been my favorite find so far. The cappuccinos are great plus the staff here is very friendly. I also had a veggie sandwich here and that was well composed.
– Sqirl, great food and a very delicious cappuccino. This is one of the best cappuccino I’ve had.
– Tartine, good cup of coffee. The oat milk is very well frothed and I enjoyed the whole cup.

Not worth it
– gget, I waited too long for their homemade oat milk.

You can more of my reviews on Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=Mywjhx_fsJwGmA32MS3ruw&utm_source=ishare

When I used to work at Outbound, I would go to a nearby shop to get some cake as an afternoon treat. I’m forgetting the shop’s name and they’ve closed down since.

The cake was a soft, simple, and fluffy angel food cake. The past few days I’ve been in the thanksgiving mood where the autumn leaves 🍁 are falling and the weather is getting just cold enough to make me feel cozy in my apartment. So, I decided to make a cake, this is my first attempt at this so it didn’t turn out so well.

Things I would change:
1. Fluff up the eggs enough to make the cake keep that consistency. 2. Read the instructions properly.
3. Waste less eggs.

I made the same mistake I made some time last year where I accidentally made it impossible for me to log in to my digital ocean box. Last week, this happened with my go.mhmd.us server. Which means I will have to start from scratch on some setup there, but this time, I’ll be more careful and I’ll document things as well.

I’ve started using bash and ruby scripts more often to do some repetitive tasks, maybe this will be a good place to try this.

So yes, all go.mhmd.us links will break now and I’m not going to try fixing them right now. I will go on with something else…

So I’m thinking about how some time last year, I tried watching Outlander. The beginning of the show is amazing, premise and environmental setup of the whole show is amazing but something got me to stop watching it. I’ve thought a lot about what this something was and it’s mostly that there were just too many damn rape scenes and gore from unnecessary things like the main character getting whipped on screen for a solid two minutes was not something I wanted to watch.

I really wanted to like it but I just can’t go back to watching it. I got about 7 episodes in before quitting on one half way through.

I recently finished this book and I am going to summarize some of my thoughts in a concise list below:

• The book has great writing
• The buildup in the book is pretty amazing but there is no climatic part
• Characters are pretty well developed even if a bit hard to relate to
• About 3/4th the way in, Mrs. Montague is added but no real plot or character development is done by this
• It’s clear this book can be an influence for many movies and books that came after it

Overall, this book is a 3 out of 5 stars, in my opinion.

I’ve been busy the past month with work and when not working staying away from the computer. I want to highlight some changes to my daily routine and also update on some books I’ve read or listened to recently.

About 2 years ago when Kristen and I adopted our dog Samson, I started waking up early with him because he had some magical internal circadian rhythm telling him to wake up around 7am. This was new to me and I had a tough time getting used to the first few months. But as time went on, I started to go to sleep earlier to accommodate waking up early. Nowadays, I’m automatically waking up around 7am and taking Samson on a walk.

This has also led me to be mindful about what I do with my time at night. One main change being that I’ve stopped browsing the Internet on my computer. The last time I interact with my MacBook is either if I get a Pagerduty alert from my work or when I leave work around 5-6pm.

And so because I’m not on my computer, I’ve started reading more or on days when I’m feeling lazy, I’ll play video games but the main goal is to not be reading random blog posts or new articles on my computer. And that reminds me, I’ve read and listened to quite a few books since I last posted so I’ll cover those below.

Books
I’ve been pretty diligent about reading books and listening to audiobooks. Any spare moments I’ve had, I try to read. The book I’m struggling through right now is The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. Mainly because it’sa horror book that I don’t like reading before sleep 😴. Below are short reviews on recent books. Headphones 🎧 means I listened to the audiobook version.

• Dune by Frank Herbert, a classic sci-fi epic that keeps you wanting more. It’s definitely worth a read to see where other sci-fi worlds like Star Wars might get some influence.
• The Body by Bill Bryson 🎧 a fun listen most of the way, gets a bit depressing and unavoidable by the end. Bryson covers the whole body and its many functions and shortcomings. Narrated by Bryson himself! I highly recommend this one. Probably one of my favorite listens of the year.
• Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell. I am not a huge Gladwell fan but this one I was able to get through the whole way and I did like some points that he made, especially the fact that most people default to truth when talking to strangers and familiars alike.
• The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman 🎧. This I’m only posting because I didn’t like the book at all. I had a hard time getting through the whole book.

Right now, I’m still making good progress toward my goal of 24 books read by the end of the year. I don’t include audiobooks as part of that list. I’m currently at 23 books! So close!