[1]Skip to Main Content · [2]Take on Rules · [3]About · [4]RSS Feed · [5]Site Map · [6]Search ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Breadcrumbs [7]Home / [8]Posts for 2025 / [9]Some Entries from My Personal Journal ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Some Entries from My Personal Journal [10]Jeremy Friesen wrote [11]< [12]this post [13]> on 2025-01-16 :: Tags: [14]< [15]personal [16]> · [17]< [18]poetry [19]> Summary: Here I draw two entries from my #journal; annotating some thoughts as well as how I’ve expanded my #writing process over the last two months. There’s a #poem in here as well. On Tuesday the 12th of November, 2024, I started what I hoped to be a new habit. That is writing a personal daily journal. Over the weeks, I expanded my aspirations to include a daily check list of activities I wanted to do. I’ve also used these journals to spin-off blog posts; such as this one. In other words, my daily journal is growing a virtuous cycle in my creative process. How It Got Going These are the notes for November 19th, one week after starting my electronic journal endeavor. 2024-11-19 Tuesday This used to be a bulleted list, but I went back and converted lists to terse paragraphs. As future entries attest, going from list to paragraph was a good move; I’m spending just a bit more time synthesizing the “list” item.Today I: Wrote [20]“Spear” by Nicola Griffith. Finished reading bell hooks all about love by bell hooks. I was able to get quite a bit of work done; and have some tasks lined up for tomorrow. Downloaded [21]The Authoritarian Regime Survival Guide. I encourage everyone to watch A Small Light; the story of Miep and Jan Geis and their efforts to hide Anne Frank and several other Jews. We started watching it, knowing the heartbreak and hurt. But there are reminders that each little act of life affirmation is a positive and worthy act. Watched episode 2 of A Small Light. Some “works” I will add to my Bibliography; others I won’t. A Small Light is in my bibliography and thus uses CITE tag, whereas “Interior Chinatown” is not and does not. We watched the first episode of “Interior Chinatown”. Practiced testing a radio frequency detector; this one works on vibrate or making noise. Tonight I plan to continue reading The Once and Future King by T.H. White. How It’s Going The section below is yesterday’s entry. The margin notes are my reflections for today. 2025-01-15 Wednesday I include a date link as a matter of practice. This is a custom [22]Org-Mode [23]📖 link that I have used for a year and a half. It serves two purposes: generate an HTML time element and to provide backlink-ing. I think I could move towards the native Org-Mode time element; but for now this is what I have. Today: • [24][*] Read one book chapter • [25][*] Read one poem • [26][*] Read one essay • [27][*] Tend my daily feed • [28][*] Write one response to a feed item The dogs woke me up around 4am, and I went outside. The moon, close to full, shown through clear skies. Setting a light the bitter cold snow, which twinkled as though themselves stars on a white sky. Deep indigo shroud Pierced and gouged Light reflected spills Upon white fields Twinkling a promise Of the morrow rise Often my first entries will be related to what I’ve read. However, the above poem needed to be written. Capturing at least a bit of that memory. I read [29]Don’t Use Session (Signal Fork); and this stinks of someone creating a platform that eases well-funded actors attempting to crack encryption. In reading [30]Book Review: Rules for Radicals- A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals by Saul Alinsky, I added Rules for Radicals by Saul D. Alinksy to my shopping list. The salient point, of the review, is the book helps equip change agents by asking “What is your theory of change?” Reading [31]The Multiplier Effect of Collective Curiosity leads with an ancient practice of walking and wondering together. I’ve done this in past meetings and can say it was some of the most transformative conversations I’ve had. Rarely is there “lone genius” instead this is an effort of collaboration and conversation. Each building upon what we share. In [32]Lit Hub Daily: January 15, 2025 I learned about [33]Olga Tokarczuk’s New Rules for Realism | The Nation which reviews The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk; which I added to my shopping list. Why? Olga’s anti-national (e.g. how do we move away from tribalism); and to move forward we’re going to look at how to reduce our us vs. them mindsets. Read [34]Why am I not taking pictures?, I responded/reflected and wrote [35]Re: Why am I not playing games?. This makes two responses to Jack in as many days. With having finished my RSS [36]📖 feed, I turn to my books of poetry. I grabbed one and opened to somewhere in the middle. I tend to reflect on them a bit more, but this time I didn’t. I suppose I’ll need to re-read it. I read the poem A Thousand Dawns from The Half-Life of Angels by Mark Nepo. Looking to the Fediverse, there’s statements by the Proton’s CEO and then official Mastodon account that are alarming. Especially given that their threat model includes state actors. Finding out that Proton’s CEO is teetering on MAGA-boosting is gross. So I started exploring other options. A cursory review is as follows: Email Tuta (see [37]https://tuta.com/) VPN Favor Mullvad VPN (see [38]https://mullvad.net/en) Calendar Tuta (see [39]https://tuta.com/) Password Manager Bitwarden Cloud Storage Run Sync-Thing with multiple devices. I am interested in Synchronization and thus back-up. This looks to be a reasonable pathway. I’ll need to review and establish a Runbook. I had heard of SyncThing but didn’t use it. In part because how it was originally used was conflated with a gaslighting mansplaining experience. But don’t throw the technology used out with the people using it. Now the people developing it? I started experimenting with syncthing; easy enough to use. Can replace my Cloud Drive (if I get one more device in the loop). However, I must consider how to make this available for my family. I’m using [40]Syncthing-Fork on my Android (as found on [41]Community Contributions — Syncthing documentation) and brew install syncthing on my Mac. It’s just a bit much for non-programmers; but I think there’s some documentation to help. The notes are not chronological; I read the following essay before really diving into [42]SyncThing [43]📖 . While writing this post, I opted to create a glossary entry for SyncThing ; but did not amend my journal. Before dinner, I read Finance is Just Another Word for Other People’s Debt from The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World… by David Graeber. Both nationally and internationally, we are ruled by a ruling class whose profits are based primarily on complex forms of rent extraction, backed by coercive of force.―David Graeber, The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World… I’m not prepared to take these steps, but understanding what folks are considering is a helpful exercise. Reminding me a bit of the nano swarms from The Diamond Age by Neil Stephenson. I chuckled as I learned about [44]ZADZMO code, namely Nepenthes: This is a tarpit intended to catch web crawlers. Specifically, it’s targeting crawlers that scrape data for Large Language Models (LLMs [45]📖) □ but really, like the plants it is named after, it’ll eat just about anything that finds it’s way inside. I’m eager for LLM model collapse, as this hype cycle is one that is hellbent on consuming all creative output. But, I think they are fully on the “sunk cost” fallacy trajectory. I drifted off to sleep listening to some Iain M. Banks. I read the fourth chapter of Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks. Conclusion I had an idea of what I wanted to do. But kept that idea light weight. And started building the habit; expanding upon it. This week I started adapting the journal at work; writing to a different file of course. Building from the same habit, has helped in my day to day work. Keeping on top of blockers as well as improving the odds of tracking down past one off work. I’m thinking how I can build from this habit to incorporate a todo list. I’ve started many todo lists, but nothing has quite worked. In that I lose momentum using them. Paper lists are the best, and one would think I could simply “make a file on my computer” for these todo items. But it doesn’t quite work. So I’m going to do what’s working and reflect on how I can build upon that for a todo list. [46]Reply by Email Related Posts • [47]Go Down Swinging? • [48]Together We Could • [49]The Fading of Winter • [50]On Prescription and Description • [51]Clutching Wood and Graphite ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ©2025 [52]Jeremy Friesen [53]Contact Me · [54]Changelog · [55]Colophon · [56]Content Disclaimers · [57] Privacy Policy Some Entries from My Personal Journal by [58]Jeremy Friesen is licensed under a [59]Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at [60]https://takeonrules.com/2025/01/16/ some-entries-from-my-personal-journal/. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at [61]https://takeonrules.com/more_permissions/. 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