Organising my photos
I’ve done quite the trip yesterday. That’ll probably be it’s own blogpost someday. One thing I will divulge here is that I used a compact camera instead of capturing the photos with a phone. It’s pretty nice having something for one specific purpose and nothing more. Plus I don’t check my phone that much during the trip because I’m holding my camera. Usually I’m glued to it.
Once we finished our trip we rested at home, which continued on today. Since we’re not going out I decided to organise all the photos that we took into an album on an external HDD we have. While I’m at it might as well put all the photos on my phone and the cloud (Google Photos) into that external hard drive as well. The HDD has a capacity of 2TB (not exactly 2TiB, more so around 1.8TiB), with barely anything on it. Also, I’m looking to empty my Google Photos anyway. It’s currently taking a space of 10GiB as of writing and I don’t want to pay for Google One or lose any emails sent to me.
So first things first, the camera photos. I’m fortunate to have a modern laptop that also has an SD card slot for some reason. Like a full size one. I know I’m thankful for that now; no need to buy an external adapter like all my other friends who’re into photography. I’d just have to copy the photos to my laptop and then transfer over it to the external HDD. All the photos took around 1GiB, thanks to each photo taking a whopping 6MiB. For comparison my phone only takes ~3MiB for each photo encoded in heic.
Now it’s Google Photos export. I just went to the settings in the Photos website and scrolled down to the section about data export. Following the process to create a data download. Originally I wanted to just have one archive to download, so I selected to have it be 50GiB size for the zip files. Unfortunately it failed, even when I selected it to be in tgz format. Guess I have to download several 2GiB zip files and unzip them separately.
Downloading and exporting it is just time consuming really. Other than pressing the download button 10 times it’s just waiting for the download and unzip those 10 files at once. All in all the export was around 20GiB (half of it was when Google Photos still offered free storage. Ah the bliss).
Then comes sorting the albums in the takeout with the ones in the camera. This is actually less hassle, as the export from Google Photos already separates the pictures into folders. All that I had to do on my end was copy and paste the folders into place. Well that and renaming the folders, I don’t like having spaces in my folder names :P
Oh yeah there’s also photos from my phone. For that one I transfer it to it’s own folder on the HDD and defer organising it to future me. How to transfer it is simpler than my camera. So when you connect your (Android) phone to your laptop you are given 3 options, one of which is to mount photos via MTP (which stands for Media Transfer Protocol). This means that your phone will only expose the photos. One ctrl-a ctrl-c ctrl-v later, and I have transferred all of the photos.
It’s nearing midnight as I’m finishing this blog post, and I would like to say that I have done all the transfers needed to my external HDD. It currently sits around 34.3GiB. Quite the storage, though somehow it feels less than other people’s. I’m not the type to take a pic of everything, so even on my phone, pictures aren’t taking most of my storage hostage. Maybe I should take more pictures now that I freed my storage somewhat.
Reply to me via e-mail
Weird eggs we bought
Our family bought some eggs recently, but those eggs were not the best batch we bought. We usually buy eggs in cardboard cartons at the supermarket, but it was sold out when we went there. There are still C- and D-grade eggs, but those are too small. So we go to the more expensive aisle and buy those eggs in plastic cartons. I’m assuming the plastic carton exudes a type of luxury, but eh we just bought enough to last our next visit. Shouldn’t be that bad, right?
Well apparently we tried frying those eggs, and it was very explosive. The pan and the spatula were dry, so the only thing left that could make the oil splash was the egg itself. Does it have a higher percentage of water compared to normal eggs? What do people even do with these eggs to not realise this? I could only guess.
Okay, so frying them is out of the question. How about making half-boiled eggs with them? Tried it; it was good, just that it’ll probably be too much preparing the eggs. You see, the eggs are stamped with ink, and my family doesn’t want that ink to seep into the eggs as it’s being boiled. We can see the cancer risk rise just by thinking about it. It’ll take a while to remove the ink, as it has been absorbed by the egg’s pore.
The only thing I can think of using these eggs in is soup. It’s not going to explode from hot oil, and there won’t be the fear of the ink seeping into the egg. There’s only one problem: my family doesn’t make soup regularly. Probably once every two months, but nothing more than that. Quite a shame; guess we just have to wash the eggs thoroughly to make them into half-boiled eggs.
Reply to me via e-mail
Organising my notes
Note: This seems to have gotten a bit too tech centric again…
So it comes to a point in everyone’s life where they found about a thing called a second brain either from YouTube or word of mouth. It involves getting a notes app, preferably Obsidian or Logseq, and try to create notes the Zettelkasten way (or something similar) which creates a very fancy graph that some people share on social media [1].
Now it’s not like I don’t understand the appeal of it. Like most people who have been exposed to this, I tried dabling in Obsidian and Logseq to make a second brain that works for me. I tried using it on an off, but it never really clicked each time. Not saying that it doesn’t work for everyone, it’s just that I specifically cannot work with that mental model. It took me quite a few years to find a note taking method that works for me, which involves Emacs with Org mode.
For anyone who doesn’t know, Emacs is a text editor, kinda like notepad, but is extensible by programming in a language called elisp. Org mode on the other hand is a type of markdown language, like markdown with ways to style and format the contents inside of it. Although org-mode has a unique syntax, it is arguably more featureful than markdown in a lot of ways. There are a few applications that support Org mode, but a lot of Org mode functionality can only be accessed by using emacs.
For context here, I use emacs as my go to editor when I want to do programming or just edit a text file. I’ve been using it for a year or so, so I’ve been quite comfortable in using it (though I only learned the basics for navigation and saving files). I know text editors aren’t something that people look out in a note taking app/workflow, but for me it’s something personal. Something about my identity. This is probably why there are a lot of
What I would do is that whenever I am doing something that I know I want to reference later and it’s hard for me to find the information in the first place (for me it was on how to flash a USB drive) and write down just the answer or a simplified flow to do it. Most of it is tech related stuff. How to configure Linux, Firefox, tar. How to diagnose Windows installations. Not everyday things I have to do, but it would take me longer than I would like to admit to search and find the answer for, considering the landscape of search engines in the past few years.
If the file becomes too big (too much scrolling for example, I’m okay with a bit), then I would split it up and put it all in a folder by theme. This hasn’t happened yet as I don’t take that much notes now, although I already made folder in advance because it’s notes from a specific website.
As you might have guessed, this is pretty simple compared to how other people would describe their note taking process elsewhere. Instead of Org mode and emacs using markdown and notepad might be more effective for some. I don’t know everyone needs to find their own note taking method that works for them. There is always something simpler, notably paper and pen, but I have a problem of misplacing the paper each time, so yeah.
Originally I wanted to put a list of files and folders I have using the tree command down here. Unfortunately when I previewed the posts it shows that my setup doesn’t support codeblocks. Then again, I guess putting up my file list does constitute as showing off.
Reply to me via e-mail
[1]: Here I wanted to highlight how influencers and YouTubers always show those very complex graphs, though I suppose it came out as a bit negative here. Appologies for that.
tags: blog, lifestyle, note-taking
Average
The week’s going pretty fast. Lectures just ended last week, so I only have some presentations and tests remaining before my short semester break. Though it doesn’t feel like it. I’m at the point where I am contemplating on how to use the time. Use it more efficiently, upskill yourself, read some (educational) books. All those thoughts rush to my brain on how to use my time. Every semester break. And every semester break I seem to not be able to follow what I set myself up to do.
There are some semester breaks that are more filled than others. A few of my semester breaks were solely dedicated to reading light novels. Like literally. I would read an average of one light novel a day for weeks on end. Though my reading speed is probably around average, as I spend most of my waking time dedicated to reading. If I don’t need to focus on something without distractions (say for example, driving), you can bet I was reading.
I know learning to speed read would make me enjoy more books at a faster rate, but I don’t feel like motivating myself in picking up that skill. It’s the same with my typing speed. I learned touch typing after I finished high school, but I only practiced until I got a speed of ~40wpm. I could do better, faster with practice, but I don’t see why in increasing my typing speed. I mean, it does increase, albeit slowly. Currently it’s between 50 and 60wpm, quite okay, but not blazing fast speed.
Most of my life is like that, I can pick up a skill if I put earnest attention to it, and sometimes I would appreciate doing it deliberately; but it doesn’t translate to me mastering it. I don’t have the drive to go beyond acceptable in my eyes. Why master some craft, which would entail years or even decades of one’s life, when doing mediocre is enough to get by. It’s probably that I don’t see something that I would enjoy mastering instead of doing, but I don’t know how to proceed from here.
This website is evidence of that. I write serviceable html and css to present this website in a good manner without anything fancy. I wanted to have multiple columns, fancy animations or a background image, but every time I attempt to do it I give up halfway from the lack of enjoyment of implementing it. The css isn’t mine, it’s technically a framework, though I do change the colour scheme for some personality. I don’t use fancy static site generators, the only thing automated are the blog posts using bashblog, which some people still use but has stopped updating years ago (why would I setup something else when it still works). I have to manually copy pictures that I want to display in my photoroll using scp instead of figuring out a CMS setup to do it seamlessly.
Sure, there’s some extra goodies that doesn’t make it the bare minimum. I setup a favicon so that my website stands out in the tab bar, there’s opengraph on most websites so it’ll look pretty nice if I share my website somewhere else (as far as I understand it, bashblog uses twitter’s opengraph style, so it may look different), there’s rss for what it’s worth. Though those do less compared to changing the layout of my website in other ways.
I probably won’t pick it up unless it comes out of necessity, like how most people function nowadays. There’s so much that can be done, explored and mastered, but that means that I have to manage my time, and I’m bad at doing that. Maybe I have to start with that than other things.
Reply to me via e-mail
Hidden time
My family and I were getting lunch at a cafe. Partly because my father had those free discount vouchers on hand. It’s pretty good, sans that you can only order coffee with it, but they offer decaf, that should compensate drinking coffee in the evening somewhat. They didn’t have decaf. I’m probably staying up late today (this was written a few weeks back, but I don’t want to delete this…).
I have bad time management. Like if someone says to meet up in an hour, I won’t be able to allocate the time to get ready and be there on time. Sometimes the place is only the faculty next door, and technically, I would have time to do other stuff and get there on time, but I always for some reason not do anything and still be late.
I’m not sure whether this is just me mindlessly scrolling on social media (yes), having the immediate urge to read a long technical blogpost in its entirety (yes) or just spacing out (also yes). My mind seems to perceive time either on slow mode when I am not doing anything or super fast when I am doing something. I couldn’t even time my walks. Sometimes it’ll only take 5 minutes, sometimes it’ll somehow take 15, and I would wonder how am I walking a three times slower than previous walks.
Driving is also a problem. I mean the traffic is random in my eyes, but I seem to not be able to be in the car when I want to start driving. Yes, I’m the friend who only starts getting ready when I’m supposed to be there, how can you tell?
In all seriousness it’s not that bad. I’ll only be late by 10 to 15 minutes most days, and I usually inform my friends ahead of time if I am going to be late for the meeting or lectures (for some reason I know I’m gonna be late way beforehand). I do have a conscience, however slim it may be.
I should change this habit (or behaviour? not sure what to call this really), though I’m not sure how. A dopamine detox? I could never get through with it. Therapy? I don’t know if that’s actually relevant here. I feel like I have to do something. I’m not sure what’s the best course of action here.
Reply to me via e-mail
Traffic lights
As most people, I drive to get from point A to point B. The place I am residing currently has a pretty good public transport network, though we only use it to go to the capital where it’s horror to drive and navigate the branching expressways. There’s also other factors that contribute me to use a car instead of public transport to move around, though that’s a story for a different day.
There are approximately 5 traffic lights between my home and university. It doesn’t seem that far for some, but for me the traffic lights are an unknown variable once in a while. Sometimes they change the timing of the green lights so it only has time to let two cars go before changing to red, effectively halting traffic for a few kilometres, sometimes the traffic light was just broken, probably from a car or truck hitting it.
Sometimes it has those countdowns with it. Normally it’s the normal countdown led (fancier is the countdown on the light itself), but there’s one junction I go through that has lcd displays on it. I’m not sure whether they had budget to burn through or thought it would make a good ad space. The only thing other than a countdown displayed are reminders to drive safely.
Of course this lcd display is prone to breakdown. I mean at least it’s graceful, the traffic light still works, but it was annoying that I can’t rely on the countdown being there. By now I remember the pattern of the lights, so the countdown now is just something that I look forward every once in a while.
Reply to me via e-mail
Charging my phone
I’m the type who always forgets to charge their phone. It’s not to the point that I go out with 5% left, but it won’t really last the day. Yes, I do bring my charger everytime I go out because of my carelessness, but finding a power plug outside is a trouble in of itself. Not to mention that I would have to stay there for around 10 minutes for it to charge a decent amount (my phone has those quick charge features, though it’s only rated for 15W. fast, but not lightning fast). Turning on ultra battery saver helps a ton, but that could only get me so far with 10% left.
The situation at home is less of a problem because I can plug my phone in anytime, but 1. I always left it to charge for 4+ hours at a time because I took a nap and 2. it runs hot when it’s quick charging. I remember reading somewhere that charging while the device is hot leads to higher battery degradation (I don’t have a source for that), so I would like to avoid that. My battery’s only holding 80% of charge after 3+ years of continuous use. Not sure whether that’s good or bad, but it’s getting to the point where I have barely enough battery for the day without resorting to ultra battery saver.
So I decided to do something at home. I used a charger adapter that came with an old Samsung phone my family had bought more than a decade ago (those things last, the fast charging head we received with newer phones only last for around 2 years) and a usb-c cable (that supports fast charging, there’s no normal usb-c cable in the house). It charges at just a normal rate, like phones of the prior decade, but on the plus side I don’t have to worry about my phone overheating. Well, unless I decided to play a heavy game while charging. The battery on this phone is quite big (4520 mAh) so it takes a good few hours for it to fully charge.
Using it is quite nice as I would plug my phone in and do my work on my laptop. By the time I finish my work or I’m eating, the phone has been charged a decent amount. It doesn’t really work if I have to go out early in the morning as it can only charge by 5% the most, but 5% is 5%. Also I don’t have to bring out the charger I always bring with me at home to charge, so it’s less likely I’m going to forget bringing it :P
There are some days where I forget to charge it at home and leave with less than 20% left, but those days are fewer and far between.
Reply to me via e-mail
Tried a cold brew today
Lectures start late today, and I decided to go have a cup of coffee. Not because I was feeling it, but because there’s a voucher for a free drink. The selection for the free drink isn’t a lot, but my eyes stopped at ‘cold brew latte’.
I know the basics of cold brew, it uses cold water instead of hot for extracting the coffee. A lot of people say that the method makes the coffee sweeter, and considering it’s free anyway, I ordered it. Since I’m ordering in the morning, I did not ask for decaf.
The coffee itself tastes nice. I’m not that much of a coffee drinker, so I couldn’t really taste the sweetness people preached about. If anything else, I thought I was drinking normal iced latte. Guess the drink was wasted on me :P
I’ll probably won’t be ordering this for some time. Just gonna stick with good old tap water.
Reply to me via e-mail
Got a new thermometer
So funny thing, I caved in to consumerism and decided to buy a thermometer. Not the basic kind, the one with humidity as well.
I’ve been eyeing for this type of thermometer for a while already. Where I live the humidity is constantly high, but I remember hearing that an air conditioner reduces the temperature as well as the humidity, and I’m curious by how much. Also my room has been too humid (humid is not the word I really want to use. there’s a word in my native language for this, but humid is close enough. just imagine it’s the hot variant) to the point that I’m having headaches if I stay in there for too long at any one time. I want to see how the temperature and humidity is at that time, as the temperature seems to be constantly above 30C. Pictured below is a close approximation to what I bought.
Hopefully I did my markdown correctly and the image loads, if not the alt text should suffice. Anyways, I inserted the battery (that came with it) and hey presto, it sprang to life! The humidity updated pretty quickly, though that’s probably because I moved it around the house and went through an air conditioned living room. It hovers around 70% humidity (don’t know if it’s high in comparison to other places).
I tried to do somewhat of a test in my room to compare the humidity and temperature without and with air conditioning (at night as of now, I have to wait until the weekends until I can check for morning). Before I turned on the air conditioner, it settled around 32C with a humidity of 71%. After letting the air conditioner to do its course it went down to 26C with a humidity of 44%. Honestly I didn’t anticipate the humidity would drop by that much (I thought it’ll only go down to 55% at most), so that’s a surprise.
So yeah that’s all that I think I’ll write for today. It’s pretty nice seeing these sorts of metrics. I wouldn’t have imagined these type of stuff was viable at a cheap price point the past few years. No wonder people buy a lot of stuff online :P
Reply to me via e-mail
My water bottle
I have had multiple water bottles throughout my life. Most of them were Tupperware. My family was the kind to hoard it around. It’s a reputable brand, and its build quality is high. We rarely had any faulty Tupperware (my grandparents had Tupperware, and we at one point recovered a container that’s produced 30 years ago, and it’s still air tight!).
My current water bottle is also a Tupperware. It’s a blue Eco+ Bottle (it’s pretty popular here) and it holds approximately one (1) litre of water. It is slightly wider than what can fit in a normal cup holder, so I have to hold it or use a water bottle bag if I want to bring it along with me (fortunately, my laptop bag have bigger bottle holders than usual, so I thankfully don’t have to hold it when I bring my laptop). There are signs of wear on my bottle, mostly from me not taking care much of it. A fall here, a fall there, even a story tall, it went through all my carelessness.
I in particular like this water bottle more than all the previous ones. I don’t particularly know whether the engineers at Tupperware were onto something, but for some reason this water bottle makes the perfect chilled water. Like imagine a cup of water that’s been left overnight and drinking it at 3am. That chilled water. All that’s needed from this water bottle to recreate it is ample airflow, and it’ll gladly make it in an hour. I’m almost certain they put a magic spell on this line of water bottles!
For all the time I don’t think about it, I appreciate this water bottle of mine. It reminds me to drink every so often. Saves me time from always going to the kitchen to have a cup of water. I feel safe around it. And I would not have it any other way.
Reply to me via e-mail!
Kitchen hood
My family and I decided to spend the long weekend a few hours away from where we live, so we boooked a homestay (or more like an airbnb, the term is commercialised here) so that we can cook there instead of buying food outside. We came to just walk around, not really for food.
The place we booked looked pretty modern in my eyes, it was situated in a newly-ish built apartment (5 years is still new, right?). Other apartments around also seemed to be also built around the same time period. And they’re pretty tall. 30+ stories tall. I didn’t know apartments can be that high, the tallest apartment I know at my hometown is 16 stories tall (we also have apartments where I live, but I never bothered to look up how high those are. they’re probably higher…).
The place is not big if I’m comparing it with a landed house, it’s a studio room. It’s practically a large living room and kitchen in one big room and a bathroom… that’s next to the kitchen (the bathroom in particular is big. like twice the size the bathroom we have at home. why?). I know back in my uni people who are well off rent this sorts of room. I can see the appeal if it’s compared with a dorm…
After we checked in and put our bags, we went around and bought some food to cook for dinner. It was just sardines, eggs, instant noodles and some marinated chicken (they were 50% off. then again even the place near our home has marinated chicken at 50% off…). Going up 30+ stories each time wasn’t that big of a shock, we just have to make sure our ears don’t pop from the sudden altitude change.
We then tried to cook and immediately encountered a problem. We don’t know how to operate the kitchen hood. There was no physical buttons to press as it was just a slab of metal with the engraving of the brand in the middle. At first we thought it was integrated with the induction stove as it was from the same brand, but even if we turn the nob to max heat it won’t start the hood.
It took around 10 minutes of finding a button that I decided to check over on YouTube to find out how to operate it. Apparently, for this type of kitchen hood… you just have to pull that slab to start it. We were hysterical when we found that out. This was like the time we rented those cars which use buttons for ignition and didn’t know that we had to push the clutch to make it start XD
Modern appliances are very cryptic to understand :P
Tried out decaf
We were just going out for some fresh air from the constant traffic and my parents decided to have a little bit of coffee, which I reluctantly also go and order. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I dislike it, it’s just that I’m a bit wary of my caffeine intake. I’ve tried one of those coffee energy drinks once a few weeks ago, and I couldn’t sleep properly for 2 days due to that. Not the best experience by far.
Everything is loud
!! This is the first in a series of blogposts that I’ve written on bearblog, I’m gonna retire that blog after finishing the migration of posts to here !!
So I’ve been noticing a thing recently in my life, every sound is loud. Not in the way that it hurts my ears kind of loud, but more so that it is loud enough to drown other sounds. If it’s the middle of the night, with barely any other noise than the fan creaking, a microwave or an alarm would be glaringly obvious to me. If I watch a video early in the morning or talk with someone in a quiet place, it would be very clear to me on what they’re talking about.
It has been a while
Hello, I’ve not really been active on this place it seems like. Life happened and stuff; and this place became an afterthought apparently, like so many things. Been well, just tired of all the news and stuff.
Currently in a middle of a hectic semester with delays and stuff. Doesn’t necessarily mean I’m busy all the time; it’s just that I don’t have as good as a skill in time management than I thought I was. Daily traffic probably doesn’t help the cause.
This blog post has been drafted in several places actually. The initial draft was done last week on a standing desk outside of the lecture halls. It was actually quite nice, there was a lot of air circulation around there. The second half, i.e. the polishing is done near the library (not in, there’s a dedicated place outside of the library with desks and chairs that’s open 24/7). It’s crowded by comparison. I’m pretty sure there’s no air circulation here, my mind’s been really slumping being here for extended periods of time, but it has pretty comfortable chairs, so I’m a bit reluctant to change places (the standing desks have chairs, though it’s pretty uncomfortable sitting for long periods of time for me).
Originally, I’ve had a draft for a light novel review that I wanted to put at the end of this blogpost as it’s nothing to write home about in terms of length, but I feel like it doesn’t really sit with me to put it here now that I’m proofreading it. Oh well, guess it’ll be in a different blogpost if I can manage myself to write it. Don’t expect anything too grande from that review, I just wanted to update on some stuff I had been doing instead of studying and stuff. That’s all…
Edit 4th June 2025: changed title because quotes would invalidate the rss feed :P
22nd April 2025
Online prescence
I’m not sure about the allure of instant messaging (or any online communication platform tbh). I’m the type of person to just immerse in some entertainment without any regards of anything happening in the online world. Sometimes I want to see if what I’m immersing myself into has an online community, but usually it’s either that it’s on a platform I’m not in (or don’t use anymore like reddit) or that it has some sort of group infighting that I don’t have the spoons to really know. Sometimes I found someone online that has some overlap with my interests at the time, and follow them on social media, but it doesn’t really amount to anything as I don’t really initiate the conversation (how does one start an online conversation). I’m quite the introvert irl, but I still feel that it’s easier to start a conversation with the person in front of me rather than texting on my phone or laptop.
I mean I do the occasional programming things, seeing that I’m a CS major and all, but online communication just feels like a black box sometimes.
Flying a kite
It’s been a while since my family decided to go to the beach. We brought a few kites with us (one standard kite and another resembling a bird). The bird kite is difficult to control as it has a tendency to lean to the right before falling from the sky. There is a way to balance it, by releasing the string for a while and reeling it back in (that kite uses a fishing rod for some reason). I could sustain that for around half an hour before my hands started aching from the constant reeling.
Despite that, it feels a bit refreshing to be inhaling the salty sea breeze while doing that repetitive, needless action. Perhaps I should be more willing to go to vacation instead of staying in the house doing nothing.
Podcasts on headphones
I’ve never got the trend of podcasts or audiobooks before. I usually set my phone’s volume to the max and try to enjoy it while doing the dishes, but the sound is muffled due to background noise and loss of quality when putting the volume to max.
Some months pass and I have a nice bluetooth headphone gifted to me. It’s miles better than my laptop and phone’s speakers, so that’s something. You can really listen to the bass on songs. I decide to try listening on a podcast to see how it is, and now I can see how people actually enjoy this.
Even without Active Noise Cancellation enabled (my ears feel like it was about to pop with ANC, don’t know how people like it), it blocks background noise decently for me to listen. Plus, being a wireless headphone means that the volume doesn’t diminish while I’m walking as it just stays near my ears, overall giving an immersive experience.
So if you feel like podcasting or audiobooks aren’t your thing, try using headphones to listen to them. You might end up liking them after all.
tags: lifestyle, podcasts, blog
A try on digital minimalism
I had tried minimising my screen time countless times, so I’m trying something akin to an accountability book this time around. In this book: - I have to do an entry I want to open my phone/laptop for any specific purposes - Add other things if I accidentally open it (e.g. YouTube, social media)
Hope that this is going to last. Currently on my second day and it’s getting frustating adding all the entries.