Week Notes: 11

Apr 6, 2022 13:02 · 692 words · 4 minutes read weekly-reviews

This is the beginning of a new month, and with it, here’s a quote from a friend:

Relationships are like plants. They need to be treated with care: Water them too much and you may damage them. Water them too little and they may dry up.

Here is another lovely one from Nduli [adapted from some book]:

Do you know what’s more dangerous than a villain? A villain who thinks they are a hero. A person like that, there’s nothing they won’t do, and they will always find themselves an excuse.

Do you know what’s more annoying than an ignorant person? An ignorant person who thinks they “know”. Such a person will always come up with grandiose ideas founded on nothingness. And should such a person have the means, waste someone else’s time in their pursuit of “nothingness”.

Finally [wrt to quotes], here’s one by Ralph Waldo Emerson on making each day a masterpiece (from [James] Clear’s newsletter):

Finish every day and be done with it. For manners and for wise living it is a vice to remember. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it well and serenely, and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This day for all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the rotten yesterdays.

Free And Open Source(FOSS) Work

  • There’s a Pycon Kenya event coming up this month. I submitted a talk: “Managing Python Dependencies in GNU Guix” and it got accepted here. That said, for this event, I don’t like that I had to create a “sessionize” account to submit a talk :(
  • Worked some more on the GNU Emacs’ tissue interface. Hopefully, I’ll get something worth blogging about this week. In the meantime, I’ll clean up that package and have my team mates use it.
  • A team mate received an offer from industry. That’s exciting news, and we wish him all the best :)

Grad School

  • Started writing my grant proposal for my Master’s Programme disseration. You can view it here. I want to finish it by the close of this week.
  • For some school syndicate group, we met up and tried to help one of our members with her project. I’ll be doing less of this– I have too much on my plate.
  • Last semester’s results are out and I passed. Thus far, I’ve been consistent in my performance, and I want to keep things that way.

Books

  • Made some progress with: “The Sense of Style” by Steven Pinker. At my current location in the book, Pinker is discussing some grammatical constructs. This section is making further progress with the book difficult.

Personal & Miscellaneous

  • Worked out issues with my partner. Key thing was clear and coherent communication.
  • Mental note to self: Consuming social media in any of its forms is not a form of entertainment.
  • Tasks-wise, I can only work on one major task in a day. The rest would just be “busy work”.
  • Listened to Mike Kayihura’s album: “Zuba”.
  • Lights out this past (entire) weekend.
  • Fuel shortage here in Nairobi.
  • A recurring theme during some random hangout on Saturday: “What does friendship mean to you?”
  • How do you offer help and support to dear ones without imposing yourself or ideologies on them?
  • I trimmed down my GNU Emacs configs. I moved from “Helm” to “Vertico”. At one point, I broke my configs and I spent some time trouble-shooting my GNU Emacs :(
  • In life, instead of “mindlessly” acting, consider first seeking out the right questions to ask. Then act by answering these questions. Life is easier and more fulfilling if you ask the “right” questions.