Github code search is awesome. I often find myself writing obscure and niche pieces of code that don’t fall under the bell curve of the internet. But with code search, I search for a specific or expected code pattern and voila.

So it’s indeed unique links associated with my Spotify account. That’s impressive strategic foresight right there.

I can’t figure out how Spotify kept track of songs I shared with people on other messaging apps. Is the URL unique and contain some kind of token? Fascinating.

Spotify has a chart now? Great. It should let me know if I have already shared a song before.

Using Claude to tailor my resume. Curious that Claude starts ending its response with “your resume is ready for submission” after 3-4 iterations. Wonder if this is baked into the global system prompt?

Throughout my PhD I despised books that attempted to describe and prepare you for what this experience would be like. Post PhD, unemployed and 2 papers still in the revise-review-resubmit limbo, and I can sympathize with the authors. You need to be in the trenches yourself.

Use the right tool for the job. I can be reasonably productive in the command line but there is a reason why GUIs dominate. It takes design, interactions and product thinking to make something worthwhile for the user.

Open source developers are philanthropists.

I saw drastic improvements in my table tennis technique in year 1. But it took another year to translate than into winning matches. I find that I need to shift my mind to a play state, focus on having fun rather than score. Sometimes the wins come naturally, most of the time I learn something new.

Found the perspective of considering AI wrt Economics refreshing. There are days when I cannot remember how I got anything done without AI. But on the other hand, I also distinctly remember swearing at the garbage Claude sometimes produces after hours of prompting.

Having the possibility to digitally capture thoughts and ideas actually backfired on me. It never gave me time to process what I was capturing. Intentionally keeping my TODO.txt only on my laptop lets ideas simmer in my subconscious. Often they turn out to be bogus, the good ones are hard to forget.

Learning a lot about gaming ATS today.

Modern LaTeX stack: tectonicand tex-fmt. No more 5GB texlive hanging about my on system.

Currently undergoing a digital detox. No more spiraling with note taking; back to the basics with a single markdown file to manage tasks & pen+paper for brainstorming. I was feeling anxious about all the note I was writing. Connections form in the brain, not on a screen.

Claude code is a game changer for me. It has brought an end to the text editor hopping syndrome I have been suffering from for the past few months. I am back in my natural habitat now, the terminal. I run (neo)vim in one tab and Claude code in another.

Actually, my TODO.txt is called 2025.md and its saved inside a directory called Life Admin. The name is inspired by the Johnny Decimal System.

Added some quick highlights for the keywords in my TODO.txt using mini.hipatterns.

I like my text in the terminal to look “chunky”. Helps me focus on the content rather than superfluous UI stuff.

The first principles of living life.

I need to exercise my body, to exercise my mind. I start my days early, (try) to work in 2-3 hours of blocks. Break the sessions with exercise (currently mix of long walks, HIIT, table tennis & weights). If I can’t focus, I stop, reset and try again. Discipline and consistency trump all else.