guitar player's journal

Where are you and where are you going?
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guitarplayer
Posts: 1300
Joined: Thu Feb 27, 2020 6:43 pm
Location: Scotland

Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

January 2022 messy update

Happy New Year to all. My New Year resolution this year is to go through exercises from this book today I'll be wrapping up Week 1.

I finished 'How not to Die' by Greger. very impressed with the book, like ERE-book level impressed. I think it's the writing style. I am applying many lessons from there, DW too.

I changed my 'unit' (for lack of better word) at work and have been asked to do deputy manager for three months to cover the absence of the current one. I think about it a little, but will probably decide not to go for it. 2022 will be time to focus on other things. But getting an extra £600-1000 total for the same 40h/week over three months, hmm. The thing is, the manager has been away so I haven't seen her working style very much. 11 Jan is the deadline for applying.

Maths and Stats are going well. Mathematical methods, models and modelling entail lots of mechanics, I enjoy learning this stuff as a general curriculum expansion (in the sense of understanding how the physical world around me works). I now read about oscillation, energy, forcing damping and resonance, soon normal modes. Brings me back to my 19yo self studying sound directing wanting to end up working in a music studio (dropped out one year into it). Stats part is going very well too. In April 2022 I am applying for the last 'batch' of funding from the Scot Gov.

I applied with two short courses given by one bootcamp, Web Dev Essentials (this will be about python), and Data Science Essentials. They are also funded by ScotGov, over 100h hours of learning. Next week I will confirm if I am eligible for this. There is a longer course in software engineering available, but I would have to move to a different county (Aberdeen(shire)) for it.

Getting a flat somewhere looks like it will materialize in 2022. I am thinking Glasgow, bit city, cosmopolitan, property still cheap. I will be researching this. Aberdeen(shire) would be the other county, I know it, been living there for over two years; have friends. The city's gray, countryside is beautiful, airport is crappy.

I will try to time moving out from the countryside with changing working field. I should be able to. Had a chat with an old friend from my times in Market Research analysis, he said that the job market in the field is currently hot. I am not sure I want to go back to doing research on candy bars, and if there are many of these opportunities in Glasgow/Scotland. Still, it was good to have the chat, he gave me a good narrative to go with when breaking into a 'white collar' from my current 'blue collar'.

So all these things in the air make me not want to get greedy and not apply for that deputy manager post (i.e. £600-1000 extra for 2022), instead focus on sorting out other 2022 stuff.

guitarplayer
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

Changes!

I feel pretty upbeat recently given the Scottish winter. Normally I would be a bit down, but not this year. I credit a number of things.

* diet: we now eat a vastly whole food plant based diet, take D3 and B12. Still fine tuning the system, but the results are so far great. We had our last meat binge when at my parents in September (mum cooked lots of meat), after that went the other extreme and stayed this way.
* inner work: I have done lots of inner work based on Stoicism, reading books and recently doing the 'handbook for the new stoics' exercises.
* DW relationship: feels like I am rediscovering DW as a person, this is not for the first time. It is a good match between us.
* new (ad)venture: Maths and Stats starts being more complex and advanced, it is a good challenge and I am doing very well on the course.
* a new course: I got enrolled into a Wed Dev Essentials course. It will be about 80 hours of work split over Tue-Thu evenings for 8 weeks.
* work: my new manager asked for the second time if I could help her in the office. I said that I will if there is no other candidate. She told me today that someone has applied, so I will stay in my current role. Still, it feels great to be appreciated.
* a new perspective: for three years between 2018 and 2021 I have been trying to do the community life here where I live and work. There were ups and downs, but I was an idealist thinking that this is worth pursuing. This washed off throughout my attempts, and now life is getting ripe for a change in the frame of mind. This is very much linked to the other aspects of the change. I feel like there is a new life awaiting around the corner.

The last four years were a sort of moratorium for self development for me and I think for DW, too. We have learned heaps, from the surroundings here, from the forum (I share stuff with DW), from different books and sources recommended on the forum. It laid a good foundation for ERE (I am going to re-read the ERE book soon these days). We are not FI just now here where we live, but have a ton of money compared to up to 10 years ago, when were mostly skint. With the background we have, we could FI anytime by moving to another country: EU (particularly Eastern, Southern and Central) and South America are open anytime. I can imagine it so easily.

As I am now loosing the idealism and belief in community life, my focus shifts towards individualism. This is not new and has come to me in waves in the past. Yesterday before falling asleep DW and I chatted about it, I used the phrase 'inner journey' which sounds a bit cheesy but this is what it is.

I will be posting about the changes coming, very curious what they will turn out to be.

guitarplayer
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

Pondering closing the loops, not going down a rabbit hole that will isolate other parts of life so that they slowly die away. Need to think about specifying important life aspects worth tending.

chenda
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by chenda »

guitarplayer wrote:
Tue Jan 11, 2022 10:57 am
With the background we have, we could FI anytime by moving to another country: EU (particularly Eastern, Southern and Central) and South America are open anytime. I can imagine it so easily.
This is the same for me. If I were to stay in the UK I'd have to work in some capacity, but in a lower COL country earned income would be optional. Which is a nice problem to have and on the face of it staying in the UK seems a obvious no.

guitarplayer
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

From the money point of view. UK can be good from the climate point of view though because the climate here is pretty mild. Flooding would be a risk, have been looking at the maps shoving areas with heightened risk of flooding, particularly Glasgow area. It seems okay when a bit away from any water basin.

But recently I have been getting distracted with daydreaming a career in coding which could get me / us south to England or the continent.

_________________________________________________

Note to self: tranquility, security, health and knowledge.

chenda
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by chenda »

guitarplayer wrote:
Wed Jan 12, 2022 1:16 pm
From the money point of view. UK can be good from the climate point of view though because the climate here is pretty mild.
Yes definitely agree for the long term the UK is a good climate bet. Life in the southdowns is pretty awesome actually if you can make the figures stack up.

guitarplayer
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

What is the lower bracket for a freehold habitable property? Scotland's great but the rain does bother me a bit, and I think if anything there will be more of it as the climate changes.

______________________________________________________

Chatting with DW continues, she said she doesn't like the fact that I turn towards a 'rat race' in my endeavours. I should listen to her and recalibrate, she's pretty observant and gives good insights. Once in the past I nearly bought a car thinking that it would be useful which, in retrospect, it wouldn't be.

chenda
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by chenda »

guitarplayer wrote:
Thu Jan 13, 2022 5:08 am
What is the lower bracket for a freehold habitable property?
In the national park I'd reckon £250 000 minimum for a 3 bed semi or thereabouts.

guitarplayer
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

ouch. Have been looking at Galashiels, there is a one bed with electric heating and a private garden for £55 000. Heating would be expensive. 52 min by train from Edinburgh, freehold. Apparently there are some drug problems in that town though.

__________________________________________________________
Hands, that was the last 5-6 years.

Head - I am getting into this.

Heart - music still on a back burner.

chenda
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by chenda »

guitarplayer wrote:
Sat Jan 15, 2022 2:07 pm
ouch. Have been looking at Galashiels, there is a one bed with electric heating and a private garden for £55 000.
I looked on street view, didn't look quite as bad as I'd thought it would be at those prices and maybe it's ripe for gentrification by Edinburgh types ? Though I think we might both be better off in the med 😂

guitarplayer
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

Jan 2022 Mid month update

Beauty

We had full moon and a clear sky two nights ago. As I was walking around the dark estate enlightened only by the moon, I pondered the beauty of this place and the world at large. Victorian buildings can be impressive in the moonshine, and trees as old as the buildings even more so.

Happy to see swans from the nearby bird reserve coming along to our pond throughout the day.

I have also been thinking about some glimpses of past lives when I was in Austria in the middle of the Alps, skiing virtually every weekday, or otherwise hiking or cycling the mountains. Or in Budapest, soaking the atmosphere of decaying remnants of Habsburg empire while going to art galleries for free wine and Pogacsa. It's been a good journey, hope for it to continue.

Gold panning

A work colleague is doing gold panning in nearby burns. He seems quite hooked, showed me some gold and opals he had found. He's got two spare pans, we will try to go next Thursday. I am looking forward to it, that would be so unexpected if I found some gold at the first attempt.

Chatting with DW

Chatting with DW can be so eye opening. So we had a chat yesterday, figured that we can start pursuing a more liberal lifestyle. I follow some of the journals here and can sometimes get locked into the perspective of the next person. The matter of fact is that we have a good amount of money and ample skills. Contrary to quite a few journals here, it is not like we are pursuing some lucrative career that if left would be difficult to return to. We now do a job that is abundant, and will continue to be. We find some meaning in the job, could return to it if needed (I certainly could). If anything, we now study stuff that may (but does not have to) lead to a lucrative career perhaps 5-10 years down the road, at which point the 'lucrative' aspect would probably be peripheral.

So we are now dialoguing about the next stage. On my mind now are:
* The next months will be about downsizing. We don't have much stuff, it will be mostly cleaning up things that have to go, like the scraps of my lamb coat that are left over from making shearling slippers etc.
* Put together some Excel tools (me). We got pretty pampered in our little village, not needing to deal with any bills or shopping. DW has been recording discretionary expenses in an app the last 9 months which is good.
* there is one international fungi specialist living on the Scottish west coast. I think he is the type of person who would be happy to embrace a bartering arrangement of some work in exchange for a bedroom and food. If I am right in my intuition, I am thinking about going to visit him for a couple of week in the summer and perhaps move there second half of 2022
* there is an idea of going to South America for the winter 2022/23. Not sure if it would be an alternative to the above, or we would do it in a sequence. We would likely be aiming for the less touristy Pacific Coast, though still to be researched.
* I am more chilled about the future, not thinking now about 'needing to do this or that'.

Money

Money keeps on piling up, out SWR now around 6.5% in the UK (but this is not that very central piece of info here).

Whole-food Plant-based Sugar-Oil-Salt free

We have been practicing this diet for maybe one or two months, progressively heading more and more to the extreme dropping various elements of diet like meat, diary, sugar, fat, salt. I might be biased but so far I find it a transformative experience in terms of physical and mental capacity, looks, smell even, it's got a huge 'wow' factor for me. Agrees with me on many levels.

A reminder
Ego wrote:Priority #1 is building and maintaining my relationship with Mrs. Ego as it is prerequisite to everything else and cannot be purchased at any price.
This has got to be the case for me and my wife.

guitarplayer
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

Feb 2022 monthly update

Beauty
Different take on beauty, this time mechanics. I had a moment of awe looking at the derivation of the wave equation in my course on mathematical modelling; maybe because I play guitar. In it, deriving the second derivative of x is so beautifully elegant.

Gold panning
DW and I went gold panning last Thursday. My wife got lucky and found some gold! Three pieces, the guy we went with said that it is probably 0.1g all together; we didn’t bother to go and weight it. Was nice to learn how to do gold panning, and of course a nice bonus, something to remember. It was a pretty chilly day so we got quite cold being in the river. But then it was good to go out, felt good afterwards.

Image

New season
The days are getting longer, snowdrops pop up. Today is Candlemas. It is going to be great to be more out in the sun again; it will make it (again) more difficult for us to leave this place. Garden, mushrooms, berries, wild swimming, all that.

Web Dev Course
We had a local Internet outage, so I skipped the first session of Web Dev Essentials course that I got funded by the ScotGov. I attended the second session which was today. Got used to using PowerShell and Visual Studio Code, wrote code of a simple website. I think the Visual Studio Code can automate some things for my LaTeX work for Uni.

I chatted with one of the instructors asking if I can land a job after this course, he was not particularly enthusiastic but did not say no. Said that perhaps a junior role or helpdesk can be a good way to learn quickly. Helpdesk is not very competitive because perceived as a ‘call centre’ job.

This course will be about HTML, CSS and Python from the vantage point of Web Development, on both client and server end. I shall learn a lot.

I don’t think I would pay £3000 for this course, more than happy to take it without paying.

Uni
It is getting dense with my courses, but I manage okay with everything, scoring in the 90s/100. The maths bit is a lot about physics now, just finished an assignment about partial differential equations, case studies of wave equation (guitar string) and heat equation. The Stats bit is reiteration and getting deeper into different statistical models.

Momentum
I am gaining momentum for a change, feels good.

Covid
We have an outbreak where I live and work, half the people are with it. My flatmates have got it too. Normally I would need to isolate for 10 days, but I can go to work since I am triple vaccinated. Colleagues without those three jabs (jabs are optional) would have to (and some of them do) isolate in my situation – paid 10 days off. I try to be stoic about it.

Money
This month we will be rebalancing and buying more of FTSE shares that pay biggest dividends.

Got another £2000 bonus in Lifetime Isas that is for old age or first property. We will be aiming for £2000 more in April.

Whole-food Plant-based Sugar-Oil-Salt free
Going strong and loving it.

Reading
Still reading ‘How not to Diet’ by Greger and I think I will read ‘How to survive a Pandemic’ more for the style of the writer than particular interest in the subject (though it would be a timely lecture!)

There is hype on the forum about ‘Lifespan’ book and the podcast. Sounds good but not sure if I will have time to read it.

Forearm – music
I broke my left forearm about 5 years ago, had to have metalwork inserted. It has been weaker ever since and was weaker to begin with as I am right-handed. I am planning to allocate some times every day for chromatics and scale exercises on my acoustic, stuff I used to do 10 years ago. It will be good for the forearm and for the soul.

Perhaps the goal could be to be able to play this song back to back without getting tired, at the moment I manage about 2/3. 'It's only cause, the way you ask is so nice; you ask so nice'

guitarplayer
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

10-days-into-the-month update

Web Dev Course

Learned:
- Working from PowerShell
- Semantic HTML:5 fundamentals, setting out sections website
- CSS3 fundamentals, improving looks of a website
- layouts and wireframes
- Python fundamentals (types of entries: string, integer and float, booleans; most common errors; collections: lists and dictionaries, TBC)
- installed Git Bash installed and connected to GitHub; learned how to push back-up files onto GitHub.

Reading
Finished ‘How not to Diet’. DW reads ‘How to survive a Pandemic’. I also read Wilber's 'a theory of everything' and am reading 'Common sense economics' now.

Uni

I now write assignments in VSC with LaTeX extension, build in compiler. Everything is so much quicker. I am having fun with optimization and automation, my life so far has been an antithesis of it almost, ha!

Retirement present for dad

So now that I am learning to build websites, I am thinking about building a website for my dad in his mother tongue that is based on 'How not to diet' by Dr Greger. Dad always says he needs to learn English to speak to DW more (he could learn Spanish, too!). Anyway, I don't think he is going to learn enough to read complicated books anytime soon. He enjoyed 'How not to die' a translation of which is available and is generally I think trying to tackle health to stop being overweight which he has been throughout life. I developed a good connection with him recently via newsletter I started sending out to family members, turns out he is very responsive to this.

So yes I think building a website for him would be a nice way to keep in touch, and also I think that this info is not much available in the language so perhaps other people would benefit as well. Of course it would give me an opportunity to practice building a website. He is going to retire in September or October this year. Maybe building a website for a newly retired person would bring some insight for me re 'retirement' from my current line of work.

Stoic exercises

I am doing stoic exercises with this book. It requires keeping a journal and writing daily entries. I have gone through 6 weeks so far, below is a brief of what they were about:

Week 1 - distinguishing what is and what is not under your control
Week 2 - focusing on transforming things outside of your control into the ones within your control (e.g. you cannot control someone's behaviour but can control your reaction to it)
Week 3 - comforting yourself as if you were the other person, giving yourself sympathy. I really enjoyed this one, am writing the diary in Aurelius' style, in second singular.
Week 4 - giving another person sympathy, maybe they are having a bad day too.
Week 5 - physical hardship. We had a covid outbreak so I was working in a t-shirt in single glazed 300 yo buildings in the middle of winter. I discovered the power of chilli powder in my tea (thank you Dr Greger).
Week 6 - Premeditatium malorum - imagining how things can go wrong. Someone DW knows lost their dad to covid recently, this brought me an opportunity to meditate over a hypothetical loss of my dad. 10 min meditation, it was pretty strong. There were also some other minor exercises.

I will be reading about Week 7 tonight or tomorrow.

guitarplayer
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

2022 update 7/52

Web Dev Course

Learned:
- Getting used to working from a terminal; now work mainly from Git Bash so be able to pull and push files from GitHub
- HTML:5 and CSS is now back in the garage waiting to come back in after learning more Python
- Python:
* Classes,
* fundamentals of testing functions and methods
* getting used to terminology
* multi file working

Tangent: Yesterday in this course I got paired up with a guy who's been Mathematics teacher for the past 5 years, now wanting to escape the profession (hence taking the course). It was good to have a chat with him. One thing he had said, is that he forgot all that he studied at uni (he did Mathematical Physics). This is so sad! I am scratching my head over whether I want to get into this. What he said was in line with what @7w5 was writing on the forum.

Tangent2: our instructors say that working together collaboratively on the code is very desired by companies nowadays, when they can afford it. Software developers who read this - is this the case? He was talking about the 'driver-navigator' tandem where one person writes the code and the other looks up stuff on google / checks out the requirements. Sometimes when I get paired with other people, it really slows down my learning and comprehension of the material, but I imagine it would have been different had I already been comfortable with tasks.

Reading
Finished 'Common sense economics.' Reading 'The Logic of error: recognizing and avoiding error in complex situations'. Thank you for mentioning the book in one of the intro posts @WFJ.

Uni

- Group modelling exercise, modelling the area of a cushion like surface underneath a swing that should be there to comply with health and safety of children using the swing.
- Went through parametric tests, revision of the Central Limit Theorem (again), point and interval estimates, compare and contrast of hypothesis testing and p-values, currently non-parametric tests, and on the lookout for multivariate analysis.

Stoic exercises

Take a (much) broader perspective - it was about doing one of the exercises at some points during days and one 10min 'meditation' at some point (for me it was evening). Imagine yourself and your 'problems' or things that annoy you, then
- the vastness of time: whole day<week<month<year<decade<lifetime<centuries<thousands of years<lifetime of our species<lifetime of the earth<lifetime of stars
- the vastness of space: similar logic
- the relative size of the problem: what is meeting someone grumpy in comparison to losing a limb, losing a loved one, an earthquake shattering a city, famine, whole species dying etc.

I enjoyed it, though admittedly I have been doing something along those lines already before.

Today I will be reading Week 8

Food

Just munching on fresh pumpkin seeds, straight from a pumpkin that we grew last summer. Fresh pumpkin seeds are soft, no problem with chewing through the outer husk. Eat the husk, more fiber. Pumpkin will be for lunch. Life is great, social conventions can be so silly.

Money

I bought more shares, this year DW and I will be expecting over $10,000 in dividends from unloved companies. Unless they are not unloved but actually having a hard time and will chicken out on paying dividends, which some of them surely will.

Routine

I recently got into a sort of routine, where I wake up, hit 200 burpees first thing, have a cold shower, drink a cup of tea or two cups of water and do 4 sessions of pomodoros for uni, in breaks preparing food. Then there is a bit of a variation but usually fit in another set of 4 pomodoros for uni and manage to do laundry / cook lunch / do something before 2pm. I work mornings only two days a week, and on those days it is different.

I am happy with exercising first thing in the morning.
Last edited by guitarplayer on Thu Feb 17, 2022 10:48 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Slevin
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by Slevin »

From my experience / network in the industry, some companies do like pair programming, but it isn’t a broad industry standard and you won’t find it as a daily implemented thing at many companies. They do exist though.

Code reviews (someone looking at your final project before merging onto main) are industry standard, though the amount and quality of code reviews before having code merged is wildly variable. I stick to jobs where code reviews and code standards are very high and there are really intelligent people reviewing code, as this is both a form of work checking and mentorship (provided feedback is given in a nice way and you treat it as trying to improve the code / codebase).

guitarplayer
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

Thanks! Working with intelligent people, if I had a proxy for this, that would be so good.

____________________________________________________________________________

Had a lunch monologue over lunch with DW, imagining mid-term future and where we want to find ourselves. One outcome was that I imagined myself as a middle aged person and pondered upon the shortness of life.

What is under our control?
What isn't?
How to flip things outside of control into things within control?

I am going for a quick walk to enjoy the nature now, snowing and not the best weather but still good to get out and experience it.

guitarplayer
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Re: guitar player's journal

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2022 update 8/52 (= 2/13 of the year gone)

Web Dev Course

Learned:
-putting all the stuff learned previously (HTML:5, CSS) into Django framework, first stab at building apps (hand-holding way). I have a wee website ran on my laptop as a local server. All uploaded to Github.
-it's going well.

Reading
Still reading 'The Logic of error: recognizing and avoiding error in complex situations'. I only have access to this book via archive.org so it's going slowly (I already spend a lot of time with the laptop).

Read 'Man's search for meaning'. It must have been Frankl's charisma and experiences from the concentration camps that contributed to this book's great success. A quick read, some of the ideas that have been around for a long time now. Maybe 'dereflection' is one technique I will take away from the reading - when one finds themselves over-fixated on something, it is good to let go and focus on other things, then the original object of desire is more likely to come. In some ways this is analogous to the Goodhart's law.

He mentions Gordon Allport a few times, I remember from my time doing psych degree that Allport was a guy whose books I wanted to look into.

I am thinking about reading a book on Python.

Uni

- Multivariate analysis, correlation matrices, reducing dimensions. I had this one go at scientific writing once and published a paper that used this sort of analysis, so it is familiar.
- I found an article by a Japanese researcher where lots of the legwork for my modelling exercise has been carried out (though the objective of the article is something else). It's a pleasurable read.

Stoic exercises
Week 8. Meditate on nature and the cosmos - I did this week almost unconsciously, as I meditate on nature and the cosmos on a daily basis. This is a perk of living where I live, not having a car etc. Though the weather has been crap the last week so I was meditating over hail, snow wind and rain. Still, makes you feel alive.

Today reading Week 9.

Food

Started adding vinegar to my tea instead of lemon. I am careful not to disturb enamel afterwards.

Money

Re-balancing is done. I might have just paid my tuition for investment lessons. Bought most of shares I intended, then had to wait a few days to be able to finalize rebalancing. Meanwhile the Russia-Ukraine tensions sky rocketed and price of one company that I own that operates in Russia plummeted. So I bought more of it. I think I should leave looking at investments for a while now and see how things unfold in a while.

Trimmer

I wanted to fixed my electric trimmer but had a bit of trouble with opening it up plus turns out second hand ones are on ebay for $15. DW bought me one of them. It's a bit of a shame as I thought it would be cool to fix the old one, but I can cheer myself up at least in the wl4 sense - it would cost most time and probably same amount of money to fix the old one. I still have the manual one but it takes longer to get the job done with it. With the electric one, I will manage to take care of myself and clean the bathroom in the same amount of time. So I settled that it will be a weekend treat to use the electric one.

Exercise

I don't manage to do the guitar exercises for my left arm as often as I thought. I do manage however to do some left arm lifting with a cast iron pot I have.

Still 200 burpees first thing in the morning. I am now 69kg which I was once when 19, but much more skinny then. Generally in good shape.

Performing

So the 'ceo' of my organization is retiring in March, I have been asked to play something and perhaps sing. I think it would be a great opportunity to sing publicly, but am a bit stressed about it. Which makes me think it would be a good idea to do it.

I can also just play a piece without singing which I am more comfortable with.

guitarplayer
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

jacob wrote:Society offers you a deal: Get a student loan; get a college degree; get a mortgage and become a homeowner; build your life with a deck of credit cards. Just sign on the dotted line and before you know it, you're on the hook for a house, a car, the basic "human needs" of cable TV, fancy restaurant visits, cell phone and gym subscriptions, and a house full of toys. After a few years, it'll be hard to imagine life without all that stuff. You will, therefore, spend all your life working in a possibly unfulfilling job to pay the bills for all the things you signed up for. If your job brings you down, you buy something on credit as a reward, dragging you further into the spiral of addiction. You'll be living in a virtual debtor's prison, except you'll only see the bars if you miss a payment. If you have debt, you're not a free person. You're explicitly owned by your debt and implicitly owned by the creditor. You put 15% of your income into a retirement account for 40 years, plan to retire at 65, then try to spend the remainder of your life making up for lost time and health. Are you willing to take that deal? If not, there's another way: Don't accept the chains; leave the cave.
Rereading the ERE book, the above had to make me think of this.

Had the poster in my dorm room and later flat share, still a teenager. Funny that I ended up in Scotland the past 6+ years.

Image

guitarplayer
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Re: guitar player's journal

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2022 update 9/52

Web Dev Course

I reached a low point in this course. One of the instructors left, we have some new guys who are not exactly familiar with the group and what we have done so far. Sometimes we spend 30min going through one person’s problem, looking at the person’s screen. The instructors keep on saying ‘welcome to development’ whenever there are such problems.

I am bulking the app I am creating, added list of events. I will need to go over the process later on.

Reading

Still reading 'The Logic of error: recognizing and avoiding error in complex situations'. I only have access to this book via archive.org so it's going slowly (I already spend a lot of time with the laptop). Reading about types of goals and goal setting now.

[ETA 5.03.2022] Finally read 'Bluff: The Game Central Banks Play and How it Leads to Crisis'. It was a somewhat scary read, realizing that the financial system is a Collosus with Legs of Clay.

Also reading the ERE book again now. @Jacob of course talks about the above in the lock-in.

Uni

Writing up an assignment for Multivariate analysis.

Stoic exercises

Week 9. Be careful about what you call “good” and “bad” – this was about calling things good or bad in relation to them being about one of the four stoic virtues, courage, justice, temperance and practical wisdom, and stopping calling all the other ‘awesome’ things awesome – they are just preferred indifferents. I did not manage to do the exercises as well as I had hoped.

Food

I had some gastric upset recently, very much unlike me. I think I located the cause of this in drinking white tea and eating the leaves. I will experiment some more to find out exactly.

Money

Yeah, so the net worth is quite a bit down due to the situation in Ukraine. Part of it is just part of the system I have for allocating money, but part of it was me getting more of the shares that then plummeted. It feels more difficult than 2 years ago when covid came along, as the stake is more than twice as big. I might slowly start thinking about changing my investment strategy to something more risk averse.

Exercise

My big toes and the toes next to them are a bit sore from over 2 years of daily burpees, I think they are developing some thick skin.

A bit much

It is a bit much at the moment with work, uni, the web dev course, the stoic weeks project and the Ukraine situation.

guitarplayer
Posts: 1300
Joined: Thu Feb 27, 2020 6:43 pm
Location: Scotland

Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

2022 update 10/52

Journal

Keeping a weekly journal keeps me on the sane side, good way to reflect. Hope folks here get something out of it, I get something from the comments for sure, so thank you!

Web Dev Course

Trying to find time to do a review and read all the notes. In retrospect they do make sense, so I am learning. The website is looking good, some added functionalities for users, like ability to 'attend event' , having a list of events to be attended, cancelling attending an event. Next week we will be creating a dashboard for logged in users (yes we sorted out authentication as well).

I would appreciate having the notes before so that I could prepare for the lessons. DW says instructors don't share the notes until after because otherwise it would then be clear that they are just reading the notes!

My learning style is definitely well suited for individual learning. With the Open University (no classroom time, learning from home) I get excellent scores with reasonable effort and basically putting in the required hours. With this course, about 25% of the time is for labs where you are paired with another person. This often ends up being chatting about rubbish and drains my energy. And also, when the instructors deliver content, it's like almost too slow for me to remain focused.

Still, will be great to have the website to later tinker with and that piece of document 'accomplishment of the training' is a tangible on the resume for some HR people (that @jacob has been writing about in the 'leaving the dark ages' section of ERE).

Reading

Carry on reading 'The Logic of error: recognizing and avoiding error in complex situations' - a slow read indeed! It is much narrower than the ERE book.

Still reading the ERE book again now. I am working with the book now, about time. The first (couple of) time(s) just read it straight. I try to take a sober look at my situation and estimate where on the Wheaton Scale I am with different life aspects, and consciously try to 'rate myself down' so to speak, just to make double sure that I have got it covered.

Aside: DW and I watched 'Office Space' and had lots of laugh!

Uni

I am learning about vector calculus, scalar fields of multiple variables, vector fields, gradient, divergence and curl. This stuff describes the dawkinsian 'middle world' that we see in everyday life - this is so refreshing to be learning it.

Part of me want to do the 'Optimization' module next year to get more of applied mathematics and work with computer software. Part of me wants to take 'Graphs, networks and design' because it sounds interesting and covers a broad scope. I spend unreasonably large amount of time thinking about this choice.

Stoic exercises

Week 10. Act the opposite - well I did not manage to exercise much this week! The idea was that if there is something I like to indulge in, I should skip it. I am pretty good at delayed gratification anyway, but still would prefer to be more conscious about the exercise.

This week is going to be about moderating at mealtime!

Food

So the gastric upset recently, turns out it was dates! My housemate brought a box of dates nearing 'best before' date and encouraged to eat them. Then DW bought a box of dates because they are meant to be good for you. So I indulged and man was it a hard week! I read about it, it would be sorbitol, the sugar alcohol present in dates (also maybe in conjunction with my recent fiber reach diet). Same effect as eating lots of prunes.

Money

Well, our net worth is experiencing a wild downwards swing as an outcome of the geopolitical situation. Good that we are pretty ERE. Still, since the funds are larger than at the beginning of the pandemic (there was a wild swing back then as well), it is much more of a 'wake up call' for me.

Time to ERE up and stop daydreaming about 'living off of dividends'. Especially after reading 'Bluff', I feel like this is such a phony of a system. Money is still useful, but much less 'solid' than an average naive person would have it.

Exercise

Putting shoes on for the burpees, a relief for the toes!

I tried a 'standing desk' arrangement with one of the shelves at my place, worked pretty well. I will be trying to do it when dealing with strictly computer stuff, not best arranged for needing to hand write.

I try to move about every 25min when study, in the pomodoro breaks. Like, go chop fruit for breakfast, put the laundry in, etc. household chores.

A bit much

It's still a bit much but less so compared to last week. The Web Dev course finishes in two weeks, it will be quite a change. Not so much about 'oh I need to incorporate so much new info' but more about 'oh I have to see people EVERYDAY the last month and a half': at work because it is a 'social' type of work and after work because of the training.

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