My Second Brain

12-20-2024

December 20. 2024

Last journal entry was 4 days ago. That's mainly due to working 8 hour shifts for the last 3. But also because Sydney has been in the hospital since Sunday night.

Her baby isn't due for about 12 weeks but she's having contractions and is 3cm dilated. At this point, she's not leaving the hospital until the baby is born, which could be hours, days or weeks away.

Aside from no journaling, any side project work has been on hold. With no scheduled shift today, I should be able to get something done. I'd like to get my new web notes app deployed and add a responsive design to it. That way I could start to use it going forward.

I also have to pick my bood.dev classwork app, having left off at a challenging functional programming assignment with tuples.

One small thing I did get to work on earlier today was adding fingerprint support on Arch Linux, which is what the Dell XPS15 runs. I can use my finger to log in to the system, which is a start. Additional configuration needed to use the fingerprint scanner for my system password / sudo.

That reminds me: Need to add a second brain note on the process used to add fingerprint support to Arch Linux. (Update: [Done](https://www.kctofel.com/n/software/fingerprint-sensor-in-arch-linux/!

Heard my son's mechanical keyboard and I like the sound of his better than mine. Decided to cut a few strips of the thin plastic used to protect items for shipping. Opened my keyboard by removing 4 screws and then removed the actual keyboard PCB from the base. Inserted three of the foamy layers and closed things back up, although I haven't properly trimmed the plastic sheets yet. MUCH niceer sound that's a little deeper and THONKY.

Opened keyboard

Closed keyboard

Recently watched videos of interest:

Image of Neom in the desert

  • Why Saudi Arabia is building a $1T city in the desert The Neom project has been in development for a few years now, so it's interesting to see the progress. I didn't realize they work on this 7x24. Also good to see perspective from the local nomadic tribes.

  • Why I disappeared I've always enjoyed Matt D'Avella's take on minimalism and productivity. Then the videos stopped earlier this year. Matt explains why and I can certainly sympathize with his reasons of burnout after writing nearly 10,000 blog posts in 7 years some time ago.

Blog post ideas:

  • List of items purchased in 2024 that I don't regret:
    • Shikibuton
    • New wireless charger
    • Open box gaming laptop
    • iPod Classic
    • Koss PortaPro headphones
    • Breville smart oven