Been Busy

I’ve been busy.

This month, I had 6 quizzes, 4 tests and 3 major deadlines. All of which had to take priority over almost everything else.

My finals are still approaching, so I’m not sure if I can blog more. At the very least, now I have a one week ‘break’. I’m going to keep it short, but I just wanted to mention a few things that seriously helped me throughout this really stressful month.

Notesnook and the Monograph

I used to be pretty disorganized. This meant that I would constantly forget about deadlines and other important dates. Unfortunately, in my university, there are a bajillion places that I had to pay attention to for announcements. As a result, I decided to create a notepad where I keep track of all these quizzes, tests and deadlines (‘Upcoming Q, T & D’ as I called it). This proved to be integral to my workflow and allowed me to plan for the present and next few weeks.

Notesnook has this free feature that way too few people talk about: Monographs

Monographs are essentially public notes. You can password-protect them, make them self-destruct after view, or you can leave them there (they are, by default, unlisted). Every Monograph is static, so it does not update automatically - and I love that. So, I can edit the note locally on my computer/phone and then ‘publish’ it again (under the same link) when I believe it’s ready. So, what does that have to do with me?

Well, I thought that it would be helpful to my course-mates if I made the note public, so I published it as a Monograph and shared it with them. I’m glad I did, as it turned out to be helpful to them as well and they also helped me if there was anything missing. To my course mates reading this, a major update is underway but it’s going to be gradual. Stay tuned!

I’m planning to subscribe to the Notesnook Education Plan to fully take advantage of Notesnook and to support the developers. I have been using it since the v2 era, and I believe it’s one of the best FOSS notetaking apps. It’s up there with QOwnNotes (which I use to draft my blog posts). Check out /uses for more cool apps I use.

Daudix’s Calendar

Despite being a computer science student, I still prefer using pen and paper. It’s in my blood I suppose. Back in high school, I would print out a calendar to use. For me, it’s a lot easier as I would be more likely to remember stuff if I wrote it down rather than if I typed it. Furthermore, keeping track of multiple digital calendars is not fun.

For the past year, I’ve been using Microsoft’s Hummingbird template. However, once I stumbled upon Daudix’s Portal-themed calendar, I knew I had to use it. I’ve always been a fan of the aesthetic and lore of the Half-Life universe (despite not finishing a game from the series. I’ll get to it, I promise). This seemed like the perfect calendar for me. It was also fun to show it to my friends who have played Portal, and they love it as much as I do.

The calendar has seen extensive use this month with all the important dates (so plenty in fact I had to gamify it to cope. Creatively dubbed: ‘Stronghold Protocol’) and man I can’t thank Daudix enough for creating it. I wish him all the best with Ametrine, I look forward to using it once its complete :D

I Gotta Do Better

This is my first year and first semester in uni. I’ve made a lot of nice friends, and they’ve helped me a lot. I want to thank them and apologize for my deficiencies. It’s not even finals week yet and I’m already tripping all over the place academically. I have about three weeks to prepare, and I am on that grind now. I’ve also realized that I need to balance my time right, as working all day is not sustainable as shown by my results and mental health. Going to the Surau/Mosque more often has helped me a lot to clear my mind and soul as well. Oh yeah, don’t forget to sleep early.

I did not keep this as short as I had promised lol. My bad.

This post marks Day 3 of #100DaysToOffload