Daily Head Voices on Monday 2023-12-18

First day back after two day hike in the Cape of Good Hope Nature reserve (the park containing Cape Point). Day 1 was about 14km, and day two was about 20km. Group of 11 people, so was interesting balancing hiking styles. The double peak crossing at the end of day 2 in the summer heat was challenging! Was really great seeing these particular old friends. We did our previous multi-day hike together, before life and family, in the late 90s at Magoebaskloof!

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Weekly Head Voices #253: Weekend Warrior

Welcome back everyone! It’s clear to me that I have to get back in the WHV saddle, but preaching sure is easier than practising, and so I thought it might be a good idea to try and bullet-list myself back into it. (When I say “bullet-list” I mean “helpfully named hierarchical sections”, because Emacs tends to frown quite disapprovingly at mere bullet lists. Here I am after the intention of the bullet-list, namely to just get on with it.

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Weekly Head Voices #252: My prostate cancer post

Figure 1: A dazzle of zebras Welcome back everyone! My excuse this time for the multi-month WHV blogging hiatus is that I was dealing with prostate cancer. I was diagnosed in February, but I wanted to wait for calmer waters before writing anything. Extremely fortunately, those calmer waters have arrived, and now I can talk openly. I wanted to write up this whole story firstly because this blog has a long history of stories about significant life events, but also just in case it could help anyone else who might find themselves in a similar boat and would like to talk.

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Note-taking strategy 2023

I wrote about my note-taking approach for the first time in 2016 (read for fun), and then pretty expansively about its evolved version in 2019. In spite of the title of these posts, already in 2019 it had become more a system for personal knowledge management than just for note-taking. It is now again three years later (3.5 to be slightly more accurate), and the system has continued on its path of steady evolution.

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Weekly Head Voices #251: Week one fun

Welcome to the first regular Weekly Head Voices of the year folks! This, the 251st edition, looks back at the week from Monday, January 2 to Sunday, January 8 of the brand new year 2023. Figure 1: Blue waters of Betty’s Bay main beach. The weather was amazing. You might recall from the 2023 transition post that appeared a mere week ago, that I really wanted to try to post more regularly here, even if it meant that the posts might be less substantial.

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The 2022 to 2023 transition post

Welcome to 2023 everyone, and to the traditional yearly year transition post! Figure 1: Scene from a recent windy family walk in Cape St Francis I wish all of you all of the best for this shiny new year twenty-twenty-three! (By the way, this, the first day of the year, is the earliest that the yearly transition post has ever appeared!) Blogging Over the past year, I published fifteen posts on this blog, 14 of which were “weekly” head voices posts (#237 to #250), and one the 2022 transition post.

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Weekly Head Voices #250: Durable, blissful contentment

This, the quarter-thousandth edition of the Weekly Head Voices, covers two weeks from Monday November 21 to Sunday December 4, 2022. Figure 1: The sunset colours in Betty’s were beautiful that day. I am happy that my ever-evolving life philosophy (as well as my approach to health and wellness) includes a growing section on the importance of hard and challenging work with great colleagues, because these past few weeks have really been delivering in that respect.

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Weekly Head Voices #249: Self-discipline

Welcome to WHV #249, covering the two weeks from Monday November 7 to Sunday November 20, 2022. Figure 1: Photo of many Watsonias (up from last week!), taken by partner on a hike. Emacs Mastodon server was irresistible A week or two ago, I was still chatting with friends about how to respond to the currently in-progress Twitter Muskification. At that point, largely due to all of the great connections and positive experience I’ve been enjoying on twitter (howto: follow only kind humans who are involved in your fields of interest; in my case visualization, machine learning, data, mobility), I commented that I had no plans yet and preferred waiting for a bit to see how it would pan out.

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Weekly Head Voices #248: Oh snap

Welcome back everyone to this completely normal and of course utterly on-time edition of the WHV which spans (checks notes…) the one (1) week from Monday October 31 to Sunday November 6, 2022. Figure 1: Watsonia posing in front of mountain. Photo by partner. (Yes, I am a little bit excited that for once this post is technically on time enough to cover only that one week. Of course what’s in the post does not necessarily have to do anything with the events that transpired in that week, but we won’t let that keep us from this little punctuality celebration.

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Weekly Head Voices #247: Precious moments

Welcome back friends! This post attempts to cover the longer thann normal period of time from Monday September 26 to Sunday October 30, 2022. Figure 1: This is what the view looks like just after a lunch at Pearl View Guest House, which itself with spectacular views. This is the year of me struggling to make the time and the energy to write these posts. Between work (it’s never been this truly busy before), family (teenagers man) and other important activities, this previously straight-forward endeavour has become really challenging.

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