niracler

My condition has probably improved since early July. Over the past three months, I sincerely thank my family for their selfless support. I also want to thank those friends who accompanied me on trips, to comic conventions, concerts, hotpot dinners, movies, tea, basketball, gym sessions, reading, watching anime, reading comics, practicing driving, going to IKEA, and reviewing resumes: friend L, friend F, online friend L, online friend P, friend S, friend H, online friend H, friend Z, online friend G, friend W, online friend L2. Thank you very very very much everyone. (This is not a rigorous correspondence)

If the main theme from April 23 to June 8 was "Travel + Baldur's Gate 3," then the main theme from June 9 to July 22 is "The King of Beasts + Regaining My Condition." To restore my condition, I have tried various things, including but not limited to fitness, adjusting my diet, decluttering, practicing typing, practicing driving, and meeting up with friends, which are unrelated to my main work.

Originally, I planned to write about one or two important things in this journal, but in the end, I wrote everything down. Since it's a journal, I don't pursue deep thinking, but rather focus on recording. (Isn't this really a monthly journal?)

Decluttering - Getting rid of some physical and mental clutter#

I have cleared various clutter around me and in my mind.

Starting to Have Some Time to Read#

After a week of immersive play in "Baldur's Gate 3" and completing it, I began to reorganize my time:

1. Morning: Gym on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays; Library on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays
2. Afternoon: Too hot, looking for jobs at home
3. Evening: Playing games (occasionally going to the gym)

This rough plan kicked off this month. (It changed a few times later)

So, I started going to the town library to read. I didn't bring my computer or iPad, just books, paper, and a pen. Upon arriving at the library, I turned off my phone to give myself some time to read without electronic device distractions.

The mornings spent reading at the library have been the most peaceful moments for my mind in the past three months. I can focus on the stories and thoughts of the characters in the books without worrying about the reality of "the rain keeps falling."

(I got quite tanned while riding my electric bike to the town library)

"Decluttering" by Marie Kondo - Don't Fill Your Drawers#

Among the books I read, the one that impressed me the most was Marie Kondo's "Decluttering." Most of the principles in the book I already understood, but I lacked the courage or motivation to act.

This time, I finally took action.

People have limits; after understanding my "capacity," I should let in as much as I let out, leaving some space in the "container." I will write another article soon about my "capacity."

Immediate Actions Taken#

After slightly organizing my decluttering notes, I immediately did the following:

1. Office Environment: Moved my office location and gaming equipment to the study instead of my bedroom. The standing desk in the study is more suitable for work, and I try to keep my bedroom desk empty. Sleeping and working should be in separate rooms.
2. Drawers: Packed some memorabilia from the drawers, throwing away unnecessary items directly.
3. Clothing: Threw away deformed clothes and packed up styles I don't like. All clothes are hung up to avoid folding.
4. Books: Sorted the books at home into three categories: those to throw away, those to donate to the library, and those to sell on Duozhuayu. I will avoid buying physical books in the future.

(This is the book donated to the town library)

Some Changes Afterward#

1. Sleep: No electronic devices in bed; keep sleeping and working rooms separate, and devices should charge outside the bedroom at night. It's fine to read physical books.
2. Living Habits: Established routines for getting up and before sleeping, as well as shower routines. For example, preparing clothes for the next day before sleeping. No phones in the bathroom to avoid looking at the phone while brushing teeth or showering.
3. Shopping: Buy as much as I can handle.

Focus#

The key to the whole book is to understand the size of your "container," let in as much as you let out, and leave some space, avoiding overfilling.

For example, keeping my Bilibili follows under 100; maintaining around 80 follows is sufficient. I can continuously add follows, but I also need to remove those I no longer need. After all, my time is limited, and I can't follow so many at once.

The 100 is the "container" size I set for myself; when I reach 80%, I should consider unfollowing some less interesting areas to make room for new ones.

Regularly keeping 20% of space is also crucial, allowing me to jump on interesting things without first worrying about "what to throw away to make space, and getting tangled up."

Similarly, this principle applies to things I want to do and things I want to buy.

PS. Recently, I set a "task to complete each day," with a container limit of 1. This means I will assign a task for each day of the upcoming week a week in advance. Once I complete that day's task, I can play freely. (Thus, I finally had time to watch anime and caught up on "Delicious in Dungeon"!!!)

Games - About How I Watched 100 Movies in 3 Months (Not Really)#

Me: I completed 2 games in these 3 months.
Friend: Oh, so what?
Me: Well, it seems like nothing, but I was so busy that I didn't even have time to watch anime. I spent 260 hours.
Friend: 260 hours? That's enough to watch 100 movies.
Me: ！！！

PS. I seem to have watched fewer than 100 movies in my life. (Actually, I also found that an equal amount of time was spent reading manga, so it's really not good to look at electronic devices late at night.)

(The reason there are two Baldur's Gate 3 entries is that I initially found it unplayable on Steam Deck/M1 Air. In the end, I switched to playing it on Xbox... 69 hours were spent on Xbox.)

Completed "The King of Beasts"#

9/10, completed on EX difficulty without inheritance in 90 hours, reminding me of when I played Q Pet Battle. (And Magic Road Shell? No?)

In terms of gameplay, SRPG is indeed my chosen game type; the half-real-time strategy combined with electronic cricket fighting is quite interesting. Especially the skill release conditions can be set, making it very playable. However, magic damage professions are quite constrained during the process, being countered in various ways. In contrast, physical professions are increasingly violent. As the first playthrough on EX difficulty, it was still a bit easy (also because I copied others' homework).

In terms of story and character design, I guess it's because I played in English, so the immersion was slightly lacking, and I felt a bit fatigued towards the end. The character designs are all very appealing; the elf twins aside, Yunifi's beauty, supported by strength, is also very attractive. Moreover, there are so many characters that they can't all fit into a 7x5 team. (The male characters have to be relegated to benchwarmers.)

Also, the UI is surprisingly smooth, with no lag or unnecessary animations that waste time.

(I'll remember the Vanilla brand.)

Fitness & Diet#

Exercise - Starting to Work Out#

Initially, I found a paid tutorial video on Bilibili. However, I found it quite confusing even in the gym; it was hard to engage the correct muscle groups and master the breathing rhythm. So, I hired a personal trainer for a total of 12 sessions, with the basic rhythm being he teaches one day, and I practice the next. Now, there are two sessions left, but I have already mastered the basic use of various gym equipment. Each workout lasts 1 hour, with an average heart rate of 140 BPM.

As for the results, my weight initially increased by 2kg, then decreased by 1kg (Body fat should be decreasing)

I also combined SunGuts' series of videos to correct some daily postures and bad exercise habits. His videos mainly popularize knowledge about everyday body aches and share simple detection methods and self-rescue techniques.

(The workout frequency should be three times a week; I wonder if I can maintain it after starting work.)

Diet#

Half a year ago, I read a post about Intermittent fasting on HN, but I didn't pay much attention to it at the time. Recently, I saw others discussing it again and started to focus on it, discovering that there are many discussions about fasting on HN. I recently tried 16/8 Intermittent Fasting for about two weeks, and it indeed feels easier to manage than strictly controlling my diet before.

• Intermittent fasting more effective than calorie restriction | Hacker News
• Fasting Journal | Salted Bean

I recently started with 16/8 Intermittent Fasting, so I do not consume any sugar before lunch and after dinner, only drinking plain water.

What Else Have I Done?#

Reorganized My Random Tasks#

I migrated my Random list from Trello to GitHub Project and now automatically send random topics from the list to my Telegram Channel every month using GitHub Action. I also updated the game rules. For more on Random tasks, you can check my previous article.

(As shown, 22 is the capacity limit for my random tasks.)

Typing Practice#

This July, the random task was to practice typing. Half an hour a day, five days a week. This website adds one letter at a time; I just completed all the letters yesterday. You can see my progress here.

I found that I used my right hand more before, and my index finger often reached the g key, causing my left hand's keys to shift slightly. (This was due to the evil asd gaming hand, causing the shift.)

(30wpm->44wpm; it seems the average level is 40wpm, while the pros are at 100wpm.)

Driving Practice#

Recently, I've been practicing driving and found that socializing and driving are quite similar in some ways. The more afraid I am, the harder it is to start, creating a vicious cycle that halts everything. In the year since I got my license, I had never really driven. Recently, I've been trying to drive whenever I have the chance. After driving over 600 kilometers, I found myself gradually getting used to it.

At first, my brain struggled to distinguish between useful information and irrelevant information. When I first hit the road, I was still overly focused, but after more practice, things gradually improved, and I realized that many things don't require excessive worry from my brain.

Recently, I drove a friend's car to Guangzhou. Driving in a place like Guangzhou is really toxic; places like Zhengjia Plaza during summer weekends are truly hell.

Meetup Activities#

It's definitely not because I feel like I can meet people after losing weight, but I indeed don't resist going out as much. I arranged a badminton meetup, and my record was 1. (Yes, I only won one match.)

(This picture is actually a mistake; I didn't enlarge his avatar.)

Cooking? "Delicious in Dungeon"#

I haven't watched much anime in the past few months.

"Delicious in Dungeon" scored 9 points. Farlin, oh, Farlin, how can you be so cute?

Produced by Trigger, no wonder the elf's eyes after shrinking look so much like Yako's.

With a great enemy ahead, let's cook a meal first. Dedicated to friends who are going through a low point in life; make sure to eat well and sleep well.

Recently, I've started adjusting the dishes at home, asking my mom what to cook before she buys groceries, and then checking online how to make that dish and what ingredients to use. (Mainly using the Xia Chu Kitchen app)

(This is definitely not because I watched "Delicious in Dungeon" and then made this sweet and sour spare ribs 😆. This is the best dish I've ever made; it's truly a classic recipe.)

Started Playing "Zero Zone"#

Well, gacha games can bring misfortune.

👀 What Else Have I Watched#

All of these have been synced to my channel, and then using jq to get the pinboard article list and convert it to markdown format

I will directly remove those mentioned above.

📚 🎬 📺 Works#

🌐 Articles#

• Documentation for Visual Studio Code - In previous years, I relied on intuition to use and install plugins randomly, so I took this opportunity to check out the VS Code tutorial and reorganize the plugins.
• Using SSH over HTTPS - GitHub Documentation - When using the enhanced modes of Clash and Surge, git always failed to push. I just learned that it was due to the ladder vendor restricting port 22, and I need to use SSH over HTTPS.
• tcort/markdown-link-check: checks all of the hyperlinks in a markdown text to determine if they are alive or dead - Used to check if the links in markdown files are valid. The links in my article "Person X Community X Thing" were mainly checked using this tool.
• The Happy Points - Rainbow Line - "Work should primarily be for enjoyment." The version has an appendix that the Reading Library version lacks.
• Building Your Free Image Hosting System from Scratch (Cloudflare R2 + WebP Cloud + PicGo) - Pseudoyu - Go can serve as a reference solution (afterward, I have already set it up, super thanks to @pseudoyu).
• From Doujin to Official, the Hybrid Version of "Plants vs. Zombies" Changed the Author's Life - Game Research Society - "At first, everyone thought Dota was just a map in Warcraft."
• "The Heron and the Boy" - My New Representative Work of Miyazaki Hayao - ursprung.io - "The Heron and the Boy" can be listed as a "representative work" of Miyazaki Hayao, but "representative work" does not mean it is a good work. Here, "representative work" refers to the film having a significant personal style of Miyazaki.
• Wang Jie: The Jiang Ping Incident Will Soon Have Results; Some Analysis and Predictions - Wang Jie has indeed made a mistake, but this reasoning approach isn't too problematic.
• S2E21. "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya" - What Are the Different Perspectives? -- Super Permutation Problem_ Big Brother Li Talks Math (Complete) - I only started watching "Haruhi Suzumiya" after listening to this episode; now I think as long as it's a work leaning towards an episodic format, watching it in a slightly disordered way is fine.
• Character Ratings/Positioning/Combination Brief Review of "The King of Beasts" - Surprisingly, all 60 characters were discussed; this is the most detailed guide I've seen so far.
• Home | Mihon - Changed from Tachiyomi to this. Well, then changed back to TachiyomiSY.
• The Great Deterioration of Local Community And The Loss of The Play-Based Childhood - This article explores the importance of community in children's growth and the protective role of community in the smartphone era. It points out that children with close community relationships are less likely to be harmed by the smartphone era. The author discusses the impact of the decline of community relationships on children's growth and the negative effects of technological developments like television and the internet on community relationships.
• Li Tianhao - YouTube - After being invited for tea 🍵 at the beginning of the year, I realized a few days ago during the 64-35 anniversary that I really knew nothing. So I came to fill in some historical knowledge. I finished his collection on the history of the Republic of China (still updating). I feel that this history teacher from Taiwan is quite interesting and pretty good.
• The Follow-up on My Boss Wanting to Make Games - NGA Player Community P3 - The gossip on the second game side is really getting bigger; gender opposition, transfer payments, mixed toilets, etc. A few days ago, I browsed NGA and Tieba, and it was really close to a cesspool, full of various second games in community PVP. (My brain has been polluted, CPU overloaded; who will save me?)

So What’s Next#

After writing this article, I feel completely unfazed, which is quite zen; it seems this is what they call neurosis. Over the past two months, I haven't touched anything related to development.

What’s next? Job hunting is the top priority. However, while looking for a job, there are also some topics that need to be resolved. I just happened to find someone else who is also looking for a job, so we can discuss job hunting matters together.

And the goal I set for today is, of course, to write this journal entry. (In the end, it still took me two days to write.)