I added some simple analytics to this site finally. So now I can prove that I’m the only one reading it :). Mostly it was just wanting to check out self hosting Umami analytics. Following Jack over at baty.net makes me feel better about all the tinkering I do with this setup. He’s much more active at moving and reconfiguring things than I am.

One thing that I just realized my new scribbling setup doesn’t currently support is physical media. I don’t often get a chance to sit down and listen to a record but I did get some good ones for Father’s Day this year that I’ve been listening to.

I’m sure I can manually add listens but I’ll have to look into a way to do it automatically. Although I’m not sure how it would be possible with an analog setup like a record player.

I read Filterworld by Kyle Chayka last year and have been trying to be more mindful of where algorithms are influencing my consumption. Music is probably the biggest portion of that consumption. For the last 10 years or so I have largley moved away from listening to albums or making specific playlists and just relying on generated “stations” in YouTube Music. Part of this is due to the fact that all of my friend group uses Spotify so I can’t connect and share with them as easily for recommendations. The other part is it’s just easier when I’m working or commuting to just click a single button and zone out to an endless, themed playlist.

Did some research into why physical writing is linked to so many memory and learning benefits. More of the brain is activated when physically writing. Including many of the “hubs” that are important for memory formation. The act of deciding what to write and thinking that through also helps to activate brain regions important for memroy.

I tried to get Pages CMS set up on my server to publish to this Hugo-based blog. I was unable to get it working. I use Yunohost to handle a lot of the stuff I run there including LDAP. I think the auth redirects are causing the issue.

I’ve been knocking around an idea in my head for a while. I want to understand some of the things that are really impactful to humans but seem to be modern enough that I don’t know how or why it’s impactful without an evolutionary link.

For example; writing on physical paper has been linked to better memory retention. Why is this the case if written language is so new (in terms of human history/evolution). Also, the widespread knowledge of reading/writing is really only 150 or so years which is way too short of a time to be impactful on an evolutionary scale.

Spent some time today cleaning up a lot of unused apps and domains on my vps. It was pretty easy with YunoHost through the dashboard. I moved some services around to other domains and simplified a lot of stuff. I think I may be able to reduce the size of my server now that there is less stuff running.

Big storm last night. It was initially supposed to hit us around 10pm but was really slow moving and took until about 12:50am to get going. At least that’s when it woke me up because I fell asleep waiting for it. I did stay up and watch the lightning and wind for almost an hour before it was passed us and started to calm down. I would have preferred it been earlier in the night but I guess I shouldn’t complain.

Watched the first episode of Common Side Effects today. It was free on YouTube. Really enjoyed it. I’m a big King of the Hill and Mike Judge fan.