During my recent holiday I had a lot of free time and time to think. My head was not occupied with daily life and work topics. I read books, what I usually do in my leisure time, I played little games by myself or with my wife - found a nice logical game for the iPad (see links page) - or just scrolled down my Instagram feed. It felt a bit of a waste of time just to scroll through insta. Well it is nice to know what people do that you are related to, but it also kills time. Time that I thought I could use better. I stumbled upon some commercials about micro learning, but starting a new habit to follow just another app? This felt to passive either.
I had a better idea. I always wanted to be more active in social media and connect with people - but an idea how was missing. In addition I always thought starting to write - at least something - would be cool. I like to read novels, but that would require more fantasy and a different skill set than I have. So during the winter hikes the idea grow to start a weekly blog about my life. Share something I have learned, personally and in my work side of my life. I love to gather knowledge in various topics and also to share it in a non I know-it-all fashion.
I think in our today's life we are going to learn everyday a lifetime long which I enjoy.
So I will start blogging once a week for a full year and see if it makes fun and where it gets me.
In this personal section I will most likely write about personal feelings ambitions and what I learned for my self that might be interesting for somebody else. Let’s see what kind of topics come up during the next 52 weeks.
The first technical thing I should mention is how this blog is build. As I am using Notion for quite some years now to build up a second brain it was quite obvious that I also use it to gather the content that I want to publish. Luckily Notion also supports publishing pages to the web. So the decision was a no-brainer to use Notion for creating, maintaining and publishing this blog. While creating content for this blog I also hope to learn more features of Notion that I can use for my second brain. Another hope is also that I get better at writing over time so you can enjoy the reading a bit more. In the beginning it might be a little messed up but it will evolve over time. Guess I will also cleanup and modify some of the base structures as I go along. So bare with me when I duplicate myself or write more than keeping it short.
As Notion has build-in AI capabilities I will also use these from time to time to explore this feature. But most of the text will be written by myself. Also all the pictures that I share here are taken by myself- otherwise I add a text where I got it from.
The second topic goes in line with my mentality for sustainability. Couple years ago I started to live more sustainable and be more conscious about our planet. So I do not buy new clothes very often and if I do then it will have a kind of a green label. I still have some clothes that I wore in school and I still love to wear those. But this is a technical section and not about clothes…
So recently I got hold of an old iPad Air which cannot be updated anymore and therefor a lot of apps are not working on this device. I still wanted to try what I can do with it and found a couple of things - some will also help me with this blog. First the iPad is a little bit slow compared to what we are used to on our today’s tablets or smartphones. I figured out there are versions of my favorite apps that still run on this iPad. Spotify, YouTube and Chrome are apps that work and that I use daily for example in the train when I commute to work.
Unfortunately Notion does not work on this iPad so I had to find a workaround to save notes when I have the iPad at hand. The possibility I found was the Apple Notes. This feature still works and can sync in the iCloud where I can grab the notes on my laptop and use it to write the blog articles. I find it easier to type on the iPad than on my phone where Notion of course works. Too bad the Apple Notes and iCloud are isolated so I cannot get the notes through an API and automate the process to Notion - not yet 😉
Another cool feature is of course the touchpad in combination with the notes - I can use it to skribble some architectural drawings for work - I often think about solutions to problems on my way to work but found it too cumbersome to start my laptop. Now I can just use my finger to draw whats in my mind. I think in boxes and arrows - basically I imagine a lot of things in pictures.
I own a Fairphone 5 and recently they published an article about the Fairphone 2 re-using it as a microcomputer - really cool thing and the right thing to do in regards of sustainability.
For convenience I add the link here. More links can be found on the Links page.
The Fairphone 2 is reborn... as a circular microcomputer - Fairphone