Week Notes 2025-16

Week Notes for April 14 - 20, 2025

Things this week

The week started on an absolutely positive note: all the snow from the previous Monday was gone. 6 straight days of sunshine did its work. The weather stayed nice all week, even if it cooled down a little bit.

Looking at my notes from last week, they are dominated by tech tinkering. I can't say I'm surprised, as my mind was focused on playing with Obsidian and setting up automations (blog posts below). Is my life "better" as a result of the automating and organizing of my Obsidian vault? Maybe not, but it's giving me a different way to review the past week and write about it. In that sense I found it a productive use of my time.

I have a few more notes on Obsidian but I'll put those in the technology section. Other than all that automation, we had Good Friday, a day that really felt more like a Saturday. It indeed was a Good Day, and spent a lot of it outdoors. My wife and I took our dog for an unleashed walk in a nice area we frequent a lot. Our dog loves running around and smelling all the smells; thankfully she did NOT roll around in deer poop or puddles. However, she gave us a scare when she decided to chase after some geese on the ice, and ran out nearly 200 metres on the ice. Thankfully it wasn't too thin and she did not fall through.

At the end of the week, before we drove back home from my wife's family, I started brainstorming some creative ideas. I wrote a little bit about it Friday evening.

And to cap off the week, I found a nice little note to tell me that I've been randomly selected to become a potential juror. I need to fill out a form, and I'll be notified if I am selected. Crossing my fingers that I'm not!

Health Notes

I noted early in the week that I haven't been logging food in Cronometer since March 31st. Since then I have had no way of knowing if I'm eating "well" (i.e. staying within my calorie budget) over the last 3 weeks. Overall I feel I have been doing just OK, but there have for sure been "write-off" days when I have blown my budget out of the water.

Officially as of Sunday (yesterday) I have restarted my health regimen:

Proper food logging
Proper flossing & brushing at night

I've gotten away from both of these things for a while now, and I need to do better. I originally wrote in my daily note that "I'm going to restart..." - No. I changed the wording to indicate that I already restarted it. A small change but it helps me get in the proper mindset.

Other notes:

My 15-day walking total for the Cool Bloggers Walking Club: 86,505 steps / 64.51km

Technology

As I mentioned Obsidian consumed a huge chunk of my attention this past week. When I first got into Obsidian, I joined the /r/ObsidianMD subreddit, but quickly unsubscribed. I found that the bulk of the posts I came across were a mix between people arguing for or against plugins; people sharing their convoluted setups; generally unhelpful posts (to me) talking about all the great plugins they use. In short, I didn't find it very helpful.

This past week I re-subscribed to the subreddit because via the mobile app I was still seeing some suggested posts from the subreddit that I did find helpful or at least fun to read. I even contributed some comments to describe my setup (using SyncThing). There are useful posts there, but they tend to be "quieter" in the sense that the posts I mentioned above get more attention. I'll be selective to which posts I open up going forward.

One final thought on my setup: I have officially turned off all plugins. I've been treating my setup the same way I did when setting up Photos by srgower: put together the framework, and throw in components as I find the need for them. I've been able to accomplish everything I want so far with the core functionality of the app combined with some shell scripts running on my OpenBSD server. I'll cross the plugin bridge when necessary.

Other notes:

I have wanted to install Linux Mint on a spare PC tower I have in the house for a while now, but didn't have any use in mind for it. I can't remember how I settled on this but I came up with one: setting up a Plex server. On Sunday I got it up and running, ripping disc 5 of my recently purchased ReBoot complete series box set. Working well!
I found a new theme for Miniflux that I like: andymason / miniflux-css-theme (GitHub)
Added Canadian Politics (whole word) to Mastodon filters.
- I should share my full filter list. I wonder if I can export as .CSV?
As it turns out, 2025 is my Year of Tech Tinkering

Media

Played my first online vs game of NHL 25 in a while. Won 2-0 despite being outplayed. Videos: Pinto scores! | Tkachuk buries the rebound
The week started off with establishing The Battle of Ontario (Toronto Maple Leafs vs. Ottawa Senators) for round 1 of the NHL playoffs. Buckle up! Unfortunately things didn't go so well in game 1 last night, but that's just one game. The rest of this week will be dominated by playoff watching.
- I played two offline games of Ottawa vs. Toronto on NHL 25; I went 1-1, losing big in game 1 and winning big in game 2. Accurate prediction, perhaps?
I started playing Mole Mania via the Delta emulator on my iPod Touch; it's a fun game and was recommended to me by a friend as on the same tier as Donkey Kong as one of the best Game Boy games. So far - it holds up. I will probably write a review of it for my gaming blog.
I caught up on some Deep Space Nine episodes: "Move Along Home" is not as bad as I remember, or that people say; there is a fantastic Godfather homage scene in "The Nagus". I forgot that there was a great Ferengi episode in the first season. Of course there is! They need to do some character development episodes for all the characters.
3+ months into the year, I am feeling the itch to go back and log my reading. Not for the purpose of quantifying my reading, but I'd like to clean up my 'to read' list and keep a digital record. I'm still writing private notes and not really sharing things unless I feel like writing a review. Perhaps the solution is to start a spreadsheet.
The trailer for Fantastic Four: First Steps came out last week, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I've added at least one movie to my in-theatre experience list for 2025. There haven't been many in the last year+

Things I Made This Week

Sunday Thoughts 02 | An Almost Anonymous Blog (technically I wrote this on Sunday of Week 15)
Am I a Tastemaker? – Alternative Airwaves
Automating Obsidian with OpenBSD | An Almost Anonymous Blog
Wednesday Thoughts 08 | An Almost Anonymous Blog
Following up on Automating Obsidian | An Almost Anonymous Blog
Creative Pursuits | An Almost Anonymous Blog

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