Week Notes – Dec 03 to Dec 15 2025
👕 I promised myself that the reward for completing the 750 Words private journaling last month was to buy myself an Iron Maiden t-shirt. I used to have one way back then, and I just had this wish to wear one again. So I did it! I found a local store that still sells licensed rock/metal bands t-shirts and got a pair (I wanted to avoid buying online).
☑️ I noticed that the Nirvana app was looking a bit more colourful than usual. So, the iOS version already had colours on the menu and now that is matched on the web and also on the Windows app. Cool!
⏰ I sometimes wish Nirvana offered stronger reminders. Or at least a quicker way to add simple ones and receive persistent notifications. To fill that gap, I’ve been using the Reminders app on my phone, or occasionally Microsoft To Do, since both make it much easier to add a reminder. And that brings me to…
🐧 ... I want to try out Linux again. It's been years since I've been on Linux, and now I feel like I have the headspace to start my switch from Microsoft to Linux. I don't have major issues with Microsoft at the moment, other than how bloated Windows 11 has become, the endless updates that appear out of nowhere and take forever to finish, the constant insertion of Copilot AI buttons everywhere I look, and an overall concern about privacy and how little control I have over my own desktop. (Well, those might actually be Major problems!). I’m not extreme when it comes to privacy or ideology. I just want the bare minimum: a fast, predictable system that stays out of my way, lets me decide what runs on my machine, and doesn’t treat my computer like an advertising surface.
🎓 I finished an online course that was offered by my company about Leadership: “Harvard ManageMentor (HMM) Leadership Experience”. It was okay, I got somethings out of it. There was an author interviewed talking about anxiety and I identified with her ideas. I'm reading her e-book “The Anxious Achiever” by Morra Aarons-Mele. It is helping me recognize anxiety as a manageable personality trait rather than a problem to solve. Anxiety might be part of my personality. And that's okay, as long as I understand it and learn how to manage it. It can help me sometimes, and in the moments where it hinders me, I can use tools to mitigate it.
🎉 Me and my partner attended my company's Holiday Party, which was nice. We are not party people at all, but this one has become a tradition for us. And one thing I like to do is wear the same dress every year, to kinda prove that we don't need (especially women) to have a different outfit every fricking event we go to! It may be a women's thing, but there is a lot of pressure for us to “dress pretty” and god-forbid if we wear the same dress! I've been wearing the same outfit since 2018, and I was not excluded from society.
🎿 I enrolled in Intro Cross Country Ski Classes that will start early January! I finally moved this project from my Someday/Maybe! Now I need to get some skis, but I'll wait until the craziness of Christmas shopping season is over. I'm super excited about skiing! I have no clue how it works.
📌 Cool online reads:
- Desert Island games (feat. some of you!) by Joel: This is an awesome post with the collaboration of a bunch of people talking about video games (including me!). It’s a great list and Joel’s comments are super fun, I had a great time. Go read it!
- My approach to GTD – capturing | zkbro: I loved this todo.txt style system using Obsidian, mixing the PARA method and daily notes. I am following to read the rest of the series of posts about this GTD system.
- My approach to GTD – processing | zkbro: This is post 02 of the above, talking about processing. It’s very complete with contexts and priority tags.
- IndieWeb Carnival: where do I wish to see the IndieWeb in 2030 – Manu: Some interesting reflections here. The one that most caught attention is the tendency of creating or replicating major corporate platforms rather than creating something genuinely different. I honestly feel that Mastodon resembles Twitter too much, and I always wonder what could be different?
- A roadmap of the Roman Empire – 82MHz: So interesting to know about Itiner‑e, a project mapping all the roads of the Roman Empire, essentially a “Google Maps” of antiquity. Andreas is so lucky to be near an actual ancient Roman road. It feels so special to me to be in archaeological sites or heritage buildings. Fascinating!
📺 Videos I enjoyed:
- A Brief History of the Concert Film by Polyphonic: I’ve been watching a lot of recordings of live performances, so this was a nice video that goes back into the origins of recording live music and creating these films.
- Heisenberg Made a Discovery in 1925. We Still Can't Explain It by PBS Space Time: Quantum Physics is crazy and amazing!
- The Windows 11 Crisis by ColdFusion: this video encouraged me to start thinking about Linux again, after years being in the Microsoft environment. I used to be a minor Linux enthusiast, having set up dual boot gaming desktops back in the day where I couldn’t play games on Linux. Well, now the reasons not to use Linux feel smaller than ever, and the reasons to leave Windows feel harder to ignore.
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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.