Changeblog #001:

Perfectionism Diversion Tactic

Sweeping changes to how I want to work on this site in the future.

The first changeblog, starting with a wide variety of topics such as why I made this new section, an update on what's up with the site and how I plan to update it in the future, some milestones I reached in my note-taking journey alongside some sneak peeks into stuff I've been writing about as well as general mundanities of life I wanted to share!

Oh, and one can't forget the actual changelog of this update (as I did add a bit to the site alongside this entry!)

Hello all!

What? What is this?

This is a sort of new section Iā€™m trying out. Donā€™t know how well it will go, but weā€™ll see!

The initial thought for this ā€œChangeblogā€ section was ā€œI wanted to share my lifeā€™s mundanities with others, and because of my abysmal update rate, I couldnā€™t. Letā€™s have a section I could always update and publish regardless of what horrifying inbetween dimension my local website finds itself in.ā€

Other attempted descriptions I wrote in the drafts for this include:

As you can see, I still donā€™t really know how to categorize this.

How will this be structured?

I donā€™t know how well this will go, or how often Iā€™ll use it. Hereā€™s a bunch of random thoughts about that topic!

Anyways, from now on, itā€™ll just be random topic rapid fire ending with a changelog.

What? {SquaredPancakeā€™s note-taking system} is evolving!

As Iā€™m interested in the art of organizing information, I like to tinker with my note-taking systems. I donā€™t know if itā€™s practical or more like a distraction, but my first bigger goal I want to reach in this journey is writing and publishing a long-form text called ā€œHow I organize my Thoughts & Notesā€ that goes into detail how I take notes and reflect on my thoughts. I already have some neat snippets and ways-of-thinking I want to share in the snippets below.

The Boons of Thing-based note-taking

I canā€™t recall the exact details of how I slowly discovered and transformed my notetaking system into including Thing-based notes. The general concept of it is really simple: Take any nameable or uniquely identifiable thing (such as a book, game, person, location, cooking ingredient, recipe, concept, quote, writing, webpage, day, month, year, software, photo, memory, question, situation, problem, task, memorabilia, song, album, video or YouTube channel) and make a note for it. That is a thing note, and it is essentially just you adding your own info and metadata onto it. (like quotes you like; links to related concepts, ideas, writings; open questions you have regarding the thing; things you still want to do with it; good writings/blog posts other people wrote about that topic; etc.)

Iā€™ve already read that some people do something similar like it where they keep a reading list, where every book theyā€™ve read or want to read is a note with specific metadata, and they then can filter and sort them with queries and simple searches. Software Iā€™ve seen stuff like this implemented in is via Obsidian, AnyType and Capacities (I currently use Obsidian as it seems most performant and malleable, and also has a good, fully-featured android client).

Whilst this sounds so simple that itā€™s practically insulting to point out, thinking about things in this specific way has somewhat shifted my brain in an indescribable way. Here are the boons of Thing-based notes that Iā€™ve observed:

But I also noticed that not every note should be a Thing-based note ā€“ some notes are hard to categorize, or are just transient notes you take in the moment to better process something and then discard once youā€™re done thinking about it. I still struggle on how to really organize my notes if theyā€™re not a Thing-based note.

Looking at your whole notes as just a database you query

Making and organizing notes is like maintaining a database full of information. How you organize and remember the location of each piece of info is up to you, but as long as you can retrieve it in the right time and format, itā€™s working as it should!

This implies that a large part of note-taking is not about how you structure your database, but how your mind is able to remember and process it all. The database can store exorbitant amounts of info, but itā€™s up to your own mental model of the database to remember how and where you stored it. As such, one way to approach note-taking is to focus more on building a mental database rather than the actual database of notes.

Having a ā€œUse Casesā€ note

After a phase of demotivation about how I canā€™t use my note-taking system effectively, I had the idea of making a note that just lists off every kind of way I want to use my note database. I called this note ā€œMy note-taking Use Casesā€ and filled it with every question and info set I wanted my notes to answer. Itā€™s easier to show what I mean by sharing some of what things I wrote in it:

Most of my "My note-taking Use Cases" note 
> This is a copy of my current "Use Cases" note, with some entries with personal entries redacted or removed.
> Note how many headings have emojis like "šŸ”²ā—¾" in them. It's an experiment I once did to see how well tracking status and priority inside the heading works for me. The idea is that by opening the outline *(something like a table of contents that just lists off every heading in the current note)* in an app like Obsidian, you get an easy overview of these use cases ā€“ what you've already solved and what still needs work.
> While I forget to use this most of the time, it _feels_ like it could be useful, and might actually be useful to you.

## šŸ”²ā—¾ Isolated Todo-Lists ā€“ "What are all the tasks I can work on in regards to X?"
- šŸ’¬ **Examples**
	- My website
	- Golfing Expansion
	- This Vault
		- Custom styling *(-> [[Obsidian]])*
		- Organization
		- [[(āœØļø Decluttering-Hub)]]

- **Ways to approach**
	1. Task Note Type
		- ++ Tasks can easily relate to multiple other tasks with complex relationships
		- -- It is more annoying to search as to search for words in the task descriptions, Ill have to go through the search plugin and manually specify notes of type task first
			- Bases has a search function that just search for text in any of the present fields! 
			- [>] Is there like an [URI](https://obsidian.md/help/uri) I can open to quickly preset the search function?
				- [Test A](obsidian://search?vault=Notes%20%26%20Databases&query=%5Bcategories%3Atask%5D)
		- -- WILL clutter global context *(File Switcher, Search, Tasks query)*
	
	2. Simple Todo list in a single file
		- ++ Optimal for smaller, dedicated Task Lists that only apply to a singular context
		- ++ Won't clutter global context *(File Switcher, Search, Tasks query)*

- šŸ—Øļø **Additional Thoughts**
	- Interestingly, this query/context would benefit from some additional text/info talking about other places I've stored these tasks, what tags I used *(tag metadata)* and what things to prioritize on.
		- [ ] I would also need to note where other Todo notes are stored *(`TODO:` comments in program source code, notes in [[(Inbox-List)|Inbox Notes]] I haven't moved yet)*
	- It would help if theres a search bar that only shows results matching the context *(so it would only show tasks related to project X)*
	- What would decide if something is an isolatable context instead of like a task tag?

## ā¹ļøā—¾ "What are Low Energy tasks I can still accomplish when feeling down or demotivated?"
- + "...just inside Project X?"
- Attempt: [[LowEnergy - Things to do when feeling down and wanting to comfort]]
- Attempt: `#LowEnergy` tag in [[(šŸŒŒ Master Task List)]]

## šŸ”²ā—¾ "What are the most urgent things I need to do this week/month/year?"

## šŸ”²ā€¼ļø Planning my day/life 
*Assembling a list of tasks I want to accomplish today/this week/this month/this year.*

- [ ] For today:
	- This is easy ā€“ I just need a dedicated note I can quickly jot down stuff in at the start of the day. Problems come in when...
		- Planning ā€“ How do I keep track of all the things already due? And how should I decide what tasks to tackle first?
			- For this, I'd need...
				- ...my calendar *(to plan for already existing time blocks (work, events, meeting with people))*
				- ...a list of tasks that are important and/or due someday *(see the above query "What are the most urgent things I need to do this week/month/year?")*
		- End of Day ā€“ What should I do with the tasks I didnt manage to finish? Should they carry over for infinity until done?
			- If I fail to do this, my Daily Tasks note will get cluttered and clobbered by outdated tasks
- I think people refer to such a program as a "Time Blocker" as you assign your schedule in time blocks.

## šŸ”²ā—¾ Retrieving *(and managing to update)* a general list of one-off tasks I need to do
- Examples: Cleaning my irl desktop, decluttering my Bastelschrank, Decluttering-Hub, Music Library Housekeeping, buying new shoes, Fixing my GĆ¼rteltasche
- Ideally, I could be able to query *(filter and sort)* them in various ways *(which just leads back to the queries I need in the first section)*
	- "What are the most urgent tasks related to "Health"?"
- Having them all in a master task list will make it likely to get lost if I dont spend 10 minutes each day sifting through all tasks

## šŸ”²ā—¾ Keeping track of short- to medium-term goals I want to aim for
*similar to pinning recipes to craft in Terraria, or my play session goal checklist in Minecraft: CABIN*

- Attempt: [[(ā±ļø Temp Todo List)]]

## āœ…ā—¾ Tracking things I need/want to do in periodic time increments
- Solution: Tasks.org app on Android with it's excellent repetition settings and notification ability.

- **Examples**
	- Manual computer backups every monday
	- Cleaning dishwasher filter every 6 months
	- Updating my digital train ticket at the start of every month
	- Claiming the free Epic Store games every Thursday

## šŸ”²ā€¼ļø "What are all the past situations I still need to process?"
- How can I sort them according to most important? Or assign some a due date?
- Attempt: [[šŸ’® List of Life]]
- Attempt: [[šŸŒø Situations]]
- Attempt: Journal `#Important` tag
- Attempt: Todo-Items

## šŸ”²ā—¾ "What are all the ways I feel like I suck?"
- So that I could improve
- Attempt: [[Proof that I suck]]

## šŸ”²šŸ”œ "How many hours did I work this month?"
- Even if all things in my finances cannot be tracked using one singular method, at least some parts of my finance tracking system will include some way to easily answer this question.
- I can always start with the most straight-forward and manual way now and do improvements later as I discover pain points *(better than not starting)*
- *Where do these helpful thoughts come from? They just arise out of seemingly thin air, yet it's this magical appearance that would be so valuable to instill into others*

## šŸ”²ā—¾ "What things does each person in my household like on their kebap?"
*...because I keep forgetting it and feel embarassed when I need to ask for that info again*

- What things should I always buy for {FAMILY MEMBER} when going shopping?

## āœ…ļøā—¾ Storing a list of Bugs / Feature Requests / Plugins / Pull Requests to make for something
- Solution: This is best stored in the affected software's Thing note!

- I still need to mentally connect this question to the right place in my notes. The link index here is a clutch until I can properly figure that out
- šŸ’¬ **Examples**
	- [~] [[Obsidian]] *(Descriptions for properties, Bases "Group by `<List>` sux)*
		- [ ]  Keep list of uses for plugins to reference when disabling them #Obsidian
	- [~] [[A list of typos on gwern.net|Gwern.net Typos]]
	- [ ] AnyType Feature Request *(Descriptions for properties)*
	- [ ] Iconic *(Fix performance issues when the widget loads when typing `#`)*
	- [ ] tModLoader EasyForFirstContributors stuff *(Fixing the mod menu double-closing to the title screen when pressing Escape)*

## šŸ”²ā—¾ "What games/boardgames do I most want to play by myself or with others?"
- Useful for Tabletop Simulator
- Overlaps with Games and Bookmarks

## šŸ”²ā€¼ļø "Having a place where I can quickly dump/capture some thoughts or ideas for later"
- Attempt: [[šŸ“„ Inboxes]]
	- The general problem with this is that I'd need to regularly review these, because otherwise they would be lost to time anyway and pile up in a big backlog
	- I noticed that this Use Cases note is quite helpful to help me decide where tp route all the things I capture in my Inboxes

- Imagine "I have to go in one minute and still want to capture it"

- Use Cases: Todo's, random spare thoughts

- Attempt: [[šŸ“‹ Todos]]
	- The problem here is that it's split up in an inbetween state of in-file lists and Todo Note Types.
	- It's easier to collect all tasks I want to do to SquaredPancake next up into a single note, and also allows adding related stuff that aren't tasks directly *(e.g. links)* to the collection.
		- In Note-based notetaking, that would require splitting each small, temporary and project-limited to task and require them to link to a parent note that lists all temp tasks for this update. It would feel like such an overhead and unnecessary bloating of e.g. the search list for something that should only be local to that one note.

## šŸ”²ā—¾ Keeping a database of wisdom
- Webdesign knowledge *(Inspirations, Moodboards, Tips & Tricks, Websites, Topics)*
- Bakery knowledge *(How to do specific tasks; )*
- A general database of Things *(games, links, music, tags)*

## ā¹ļøā—¾ Having a journal that broadly lays out what I did each day
- Attempt: [[šŸ“” Journal]]
- Layer 1:
	- Basic memory of what I did when.
	- Tags to filter for days with specific activity
	- Tags to highlight important days *(e.g. Abiball, exams, personally memorable days)*
- Layer 2:
	- More ambitious uses would include noting down the general thoughts I gnawed on during time frames, what "eras" of my life were when,
	- What Links I visited

- https://ratfactor.com/notes *(keep in mind the notebooks were called predecessor to cards, so see if they iterate/improve on the structure)*
	- Addresses how minor benefits from minute logging can be. Should be wary of to not fall into it myself.

## šŸ”²ā—¾ Storing and retrieving specific mindscapes / sets of concepts *("Learning"?)*
- Retrieving the "Always keep an overview of what tasks there are and what you can do now" *(what I previously called keeping a mental Todo List)* thought at the beginning of every shift

- [[2026-07-16]]: This might just be a different definition of [[šŸ’” Learning]]:
	1. You need to recognize reoccuring situations
	2. Then you need to tie a rememberable pile of info to that situation, so that any time it happens, you remember the note/concept/quote that helps you improve

- Taking the whole "at work" mindset as an example, I can do step 1 *(recognize a reoccuring situation)*, but I keep struggling to remember the exact concepts effectively *(e.g. "see it as a time trial")*.
	- One way to help is to attach a note I can remember to read whenever the situation strikes.

- As a sort of side observation, some thoughts are more easily memorable and convertible into intuitive understanding than others. *(e.g. "Always keep an overview of what tasks you need to do by when" is easily recallable, probably partly because of the mental image of bringing up a HUD in my in mental eye. "see it as a time trial" takes a bit more abstract and takes effort to see what I really meant by it)*. The thoughts that are harder to convert to intuitive understanding *(and are often also hard to remember)* is what I call "Ungraspable thoughts", something I struggled and struggle with a lot, making me feel like in a loop where I forget most progress I do in the span of days.

## šŸ”²ā—¾ Keeping track of my PC components and logs
- Solution: [[Mein PC-System]]

## šŸ”²ā—¾ Keeping track of gripes/wishes for things I notice for the next time I buy something
- Example: How it sucks only having two USB slots at the front of my PC case because of my headphones permanently taking up one of them due to having too short of a cable
- Example: Ear Buds
	- You can only enable/disable them via the charging thing *(meaning it sucks to forget it when I plugged it into the charger)*
	- JBL earbuds apparently have the problem that they reset their settings every now and then
	- I often axtivate touch gestures without wanting to

## šŸ”²ā—¾ Keeping track of musical ideas
- Attempt: Tagging my Music Library
	- -- Can't handle songs I haven't downloaded yet
	- -- To inspect the data, I need a dedicated tagger *(which is only available on PC)* or convert it first to a more useful data format
	- -- I can't dynamically filter and sort my music library according to metadata *(except genres)* yet.
	- -- Can't handle song-independant notes, such as album notes or general music-related notes like what music software and plugins I could use one day.
	- ++ Integration into music listening software *(pretty album covers, ability to filter after singular genre/tag)*

- Examples:
	- Using the little fluttery flutes at the end of the Aeronautics release trailer as part of a "Great Feat Accomplished" jingle when you accomplish one of your major goals in a video game *(beating one out of six large areas)*

## šŸ”²ā—¾ Tracking motives I want to draw
- Motives:
	- Inverse Rain
		- Raining while it's sunny out *(characters dont feel rain)*
		- No visual rain while it's cloudy *(characters do feel rain)*
	- Reverse rain/snow *(rising upward insteaf of down)*
	- It's raining inside a set of windows while the facade outside is clear & sunny 

## ā¹ļøā—¾ Storing random tidbits of knowledge that are only useful in very specific circumstances
- VSCode only scans multiple lines during regex if there's a \n in the query *(meaning tricks like `[\S\s]*` to target a series of characters doesn't work as expected, instead requiring `[.\n]*`)*

## Keeping track of recipes we cooked and liked
- Attempt: Paprika app

## Keeping track of custom VGM mixes I want to upload to YouTube/khinsider because they don't exist elsewhere
- [x] Mina the Hollower - Inside OST
- [m] PixelJunk Shooter Ultimate - Dark Level Calm Mix
- [ ] Spelunky 2 Ice Cavern Extended

## Keeping track of upcoming things I'm excited for
- Attempt: Event Calendar integrated into my phone's calendar
	- What about those with no clear release date yet?
		- Perhaps all I can really do is set up to be notified once more is known? *(Adding to RSS reader, enabling notifications for that discord server, subscribing to newsletter, following games on Steam)*

- [ ] Splatoon Raiders Release

## Keeping track of specific tweaks I would need to make to Obsidian/my own note-taking software to accomodate my needs (KW: qualm)
- Attempt: [[šŸ“‡ Snippet Writer]]
- Generally more integration, quality of life and automation of Todo notes:
	- It would be really neat to see the status of "Todo" notes when inline linking them, so you can easily link to task notes and see their current progress
	- Being able to have repeatable Todos
	- Being able to set reminders for Todos
	- Being able to easily see relationships between tasks & notes:
		- Generally an easily accessible and hideable way to see the hierarchy set via *(mostly)* Parents and Children properties
		- Having special visuals or like warning stuff somewhere when you're viewing a task that is blocked by another task
- How templater notes that automatically add the created date would link to the wrong note if there was already a note that day present that was renamed already.
- The amount of maintainance and lack of automation when it comes to yaml properties:
	- Having to do large maintainance tasks over hundreds of files *(e.g. moving some game properties over to the Todo type)*
	- Changing the type a property belongs to
	- Changing the properties of a template means having to change each instance of said template
- How Daily Notes are not allowed to be renamed as most can't detect such name changes, deproving file & folder-only access
	- How date-based metadata needs both "date" and "link to day note" data types so that it works for every use case *(backlinks from daily note, plugins making use of date-time properties to track e.g. when a task note was created)* 
- I want to keep a "git"-like changelog where I can keep a semi-automated chronology.
	- For example, on my site I think it would be quite neat to see what other edits I did when I e.g. edited Brennan Day's description.

## Keeping track of what I like and dislike about Obsidian, Capacities and AnyType
- Attempt: [[āš”ļø The Battle of the Task-Managers|āš”ļø Das Battle der Task-Manager]]
- Potential: Each in Obsidian, Capacities and AnyType Thing notes?
	- But how can they then be comparable?

## Keeping track of online social situations where I'm unsure how to say/respond to something
- Examples: Responding to a guestbook entry or a comment on a YouTube video, when a stranger texts me on Discord or Steam, when wanting to add a thread to a forum or chime in with a thought or answer to something someone said on Discord or like a Minecraft server chat whilst multiple people are online

## Tracking articles / sites / writings / books / essays / quotes / concepts I want to revisit and think on
- Attempt: [[šŸ’¬ Concepts]], [[āœ’ļø Writings]], [[šŸŽ™ļø Quotes]]
- Attempt: [[šŸ“‹ Todos]] > Reflection
- Attempt: [[ā›“ļø Links]] *(Just a very long, unsorted list of links to video/writings/websites/tools etc.)*
- Attempt: Instagram & Reddit Saved Posts, YouTube's Watch Later playlist
- Attempt: Steam Wishlist *(=> [[šŸŽ® Games]] + [[šŸ“‹ Todos]])*, Amazon Wishlist *(=> [[Shopping List]])*
- Attempt: Notes tagged `#šŸ’¬ThingsIWantToGnawOn`
- Attempt: Personal Discord server where I link to conversations that're interesting
- Attempt: Favorited posts in RSS reader

- Problem: Sometimes, there are just things I don't think to save, but remember months later and want to find again. I can do so through browser history

- Many times when wanting to link to a webpage, it's not the page itself I want to track, it's the thing it contains *(the piece of writing, the video, the mod)*. As such, I kinda decided that [[šŸ”– Webpages]]/[[ā›“ļø Links]] is a catch-all kind of thing where anything that doesn't fall into the other categories *([[šŸŽ® Games]], [[šŸ“¹ Videos]], [[āœ’ļø Writings]])* falls into.

*This down there is essentially just [[ā›“ļø Links]] :P*
- karl voit's memex
- https://storybook.ttywitch.dev/acknowledgements/
- https://delovely.neocities.org/lessons/ *(old tab I had open in mobile browser)*
- [People Describing Their Hardware/Software Setup](https://karl-voit.at/other-peoples-IT-setup/) *(via RSS reader)*
	- [Uses This / Interviews](https://usesthis.com/interviews/)
	- [What Do People Use to Get Stuff Done?](https://karl-voit.at/2014/08/10/what-do-people-use/)
- [James Clear](https://jamesclear.com/)
	- [About James Clear](https://jamesclear.com/about)
		- [Famous Speeches: A List of the Greatest Speeches of All-Time](https://jamesclear.com/great-speeches)
		- [100 Good Books to Read: Book Recommendations by Topic](https://jamesclear.com/best-books)
- [Resources ā€“ The Cozy Cat](https://thecozy.cat/sovereignweb/resources/) *(after cleaning up the dusty guestbook page)*
- [Leilukin's Hub](https://leilukin.com/) *(from "people watching" the regulars in the 32-Bit CafƩ Discord server)*
	- [squaredpancake.neocities.org - Website Carbon Calculator](https://www.websitecarbon.com/website/squaredpancake-neocities-org/)
- [What should a personal website be? - ratfactor](https://ratfactor.com/cards/personal-website) *(via 32-Bit CafƩ Forum Thread)*
	- [Project Inbox 2026 - ratfactor](https://ratfactor.com/inbox2026)
		- [Do not apologize for replying late to my email](https://ploum.net/2026-02-11-do_not_apologize_for_replying_to_my_email.html)
			- [Use plain text email](https://useplaintext.email/)

## Keeping track of things I want to share on my website
*e.g. videos, writings, games, websites etc.*

- Attempt: Thing notes tagged `#šŸ„žWantToShareOnWebsite`

- Optimally, it would all be in one place *(rather than be at two places like it is now ā€“ one here in my notes and the other on my websites sources code)*.
- These things tend to also be things I want to gnaw on some more *(see heading above)*

As you may see, this list isnā€™t very sorted yet (there are some things that fringe on being duplicates of other existing headings). Yet despite that, this list is really handy because itā€™s an easy method to remind you of all the useful queries and questions you want to ask your notes. It also serves as a Inbox where I can quickly add a heading whenever thereā€™s a new set of info I want to track, but am unsure if Iā€™ll remember it if I just write it into a seperate note with a name I believe to forget in a few days. That way, I at least know to look in this note and search for the information pile I want with CTRL + F and remembering the key words I used to describe it all.

My thoughts on my Question note type

Writing Frenzy

This is unrelated to anything I wrote previously in this section. I just included it here as it was an interesting note I took on the way to work one day.

Splitting my mind into ā€œstable websiteā€ and ā€œexperimental site restructureā€

I wanted to change the way I use this website. You see, thereā€™s this habit of mine where I get excited and work on like multiple different features and sections. Most of those take a lot of work, and that initial honeymoon phase of having a cool idea doesnā€™t get me through towards pushing through and finishing them.

This has the unfortunate side effect that I keep getting my website stuck in an inbetween state thatā€™s really hard to publish stuff out of. This is especially damning considering that there is some stuff that is already upload-worthy that I want to share, but canā€™t just easily push out (as I often rewrite CSS, HTML and JS that would not work on the website that's currently up, which uses outdated CSS/HTML/JS). This update too was stuck in the realm of the inbetween, and one day whilst letting my mind brew on that topic, I found myself a bit circling around and being unsure about how this site is structured and if to revamp it (as I commonly do).

Then, a great idea hit me ā€“ what if I seperated my desire to share stuff and my insatiable desire to revamp the site and tack on a bunch of features? I will use the current state of my website with all of itā€™s existing sections and systems to easily push out the stuff I want to share whilst distracting the other side of my brain with this mythical site revamp my mind keeps dreaming about. It might be fruitless and/or take years to explore, but in the mean time my site stays stable and able to share any incoming outgoing thoughts!

Do note that I might add some bits of functionality if itā€™s abscence bothers me so much to the point that I will get spite-fueled programming sprints until that fuctionality exists, but other than that, this site should stay as stable as possible.

A vague picture of how I want my site to be restructured

Iā€™ve youā€™ve read in order so far and read the previous section about Thing-based notetaking: That is a big way I imagined the site could roughly be structured. Some things on this site already follow this Thing-based structure to a tee! (The shining example being the Links section). Otherwise, itā€™s all just a vague picture:

Also; here: Have these ramblings I made! (It feels like they're way better at showing my way of thinking than these long-form texts rehashing it in winding sentences.)

Contents of my Todo note: "Create the third site iteration (TBKD)" 
Tea Bee 'Kay-dee *(Thing-based knowledge database)*

- Settings page to...
	- ...hide NSFW/18+ things/notes/single blocks
		- Blocked notes could have a special gray link color, display a popup explaining it on click and have their icon replaced

- Should I just merge my website and my Obsidian vault into one thing?
	- Status: Currently tending towards yes because just imagining the arduousness of syncing both states and the many tiny desyncs being really annoying. I want both my notes and my site to reflect my current state, and having a single source of truth instead of needing to maintain two makes it actually possible without being swamped playing the [[Syncthing]].
	- **Reasons for it**
		- Main reason: Less duplicity. Able to make use of Obsidian's features and allows easy editing on mobile.
		- I don't need to update two distinct sources whenever a new shareable thought strikes *(which is quite a huge overhead)*
		- One way would be to have 3 vaults ā€“ a private vault, a mixed vault and a website vault ā€“ but that makes the whole architecture confusing...
	- **Reasons against it**
		- There are some things that are only doable in HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
		- There's always the potential that some failure in my build system could leak all private notes
			- Perhaps a testing suite to test the site before publication could help..?
		- It adds overhead to my writing process with questions like "What if I accidentally share PII through some indirect way?" or "Will this accidentally get uploaded or is this a private folder?"
	- **Implementation details**
		- I need some way to mark spans, blocks and notes as private and potentially allow adding the ability to describe what they're hiding and for what reason I linked to them, so that the public get the context they need whilst not leaking private details
			- Different levels of privacy: Show note tile, show custom note title *(e.g. `a person` or `g_a` instead of `Garrison Anielle`)*, show `PRIVATE NOTE`
			- !! There is still some danger in forgetting a note is public and writing in it as if it's private
				- Maybe a different color scheme/complete styling and/or red warning banner whenever editing public notes might be enough..?
		- Assume a note is private unless it's explicitly said not to


- Think about adding some kind of glance or peek functionality
	- How to trigger it? *(think about mobile!)*
		- Holding alt while hovering?
		- Having an šŸ‘ peek button automatically placed next to any link?
		- How does gwern do it?
		- Having one click/tap open the preview and another open the page normally?

- How should I handle and display metadata? *(e.g. Parents, Children, Related, automatic backlinks)*
	- Exercises:
		- [[šŸŽµ MusicLib Tags]]

- Custom features I'd want to explore/experiment with:
	- Links with metadata *(`[Title](Link){Tooltip}`?)*
	- Enrichening my markdown editor with my own flavor *(popcards/tooltips, links with metadata)*, or adding my own build steps to jekyll to handle my own syntax
		- Exploring rare markdown syntax like adding classes/ids to elements.
	- Potentially making my own kind of text editor..?
	- Property values with nested values and/or metadata *(e.g. summary description like they exist in Capacities/AnyType)*
	- Quick Switcher, Aliases and Customizable keybinds
	- Commenting functionality sounds really powerful, where people can add their own mental connections, concepts, stories, examples and counter arguments to my thoughts directly to a Thing note!!
		- Some way of "subscribing" to Things notes, and having a notifications area for notifications whenever a new comment was added..?
		- Having a seperate "community-added metadata" section for things like backlinks from user comments?
		- As my notes might change at any time, it might make sense for comments to require blockquoting the specific thing they want to refer to, or to save snapshots of pages that get made whenever I update the page and then have them refer to that.

- This honeymoon drafting phase is always quite fun!

- Being able to link to query pages with preset queries *(such as in the info retention section of "[[How I organize my Thoughts & Notes]]", where I'd link to every piece of writing I clipped/wrote that is about learning)*
	- Perhaps like `/nt/articles?tags=learning` and then having it parsed thanks to JavaScript? *(as the whole filtering thing wouldn't even work without JavaScript in the first place)*

Why do I dream of a site restructure?

My current notes had two points:

  1. I am a sucker for trying to be innovative, and want to experiment with new site structures, similar to how Andy Matuschakā€™s Evergreen Notes or patsitiveā€™s gartenkasten do!
  2. I think it can be quite powerful in interconnecting things and having things build off of each other instead of being seperated by type. For example, I am currently starting to play Chicory under the desire to reflect on the themes in the story. Instead of having my thoughts on the topics the game brings up confined to the game note, I can instead tie and link it to the concepts like Impostor syndrome and make that page mention the game as an example for it.

Unused changelog stuff

As you mightā€™ve noticed, Iā€™ve always had a bit of fun writing flavor text in changelogs. For example, I tried writing one like a little adventure game, or another one as an online chat room, or one that just starts and ends like a diary entry. Since the old changelog format is shelved in favor of this new, uncategorizable changeblog thing, I thought it would be fun to share the ideas and drafts I still had kicking around, but canā€™t use anymore!

Changelog in the form of a negative review

Context

A changelog I started writing for this update during the time where I actually planned to ship the functionality I decided to stop working on. I just find the idea of someone dunking on every feature and thus you learning about said feature fun! 

Hi. Today, I will express my hatred towards SquaredPancake's most recent update.

## Exhibit A: Theming
Let's begin with the introduction of themes, that can be accessed on an entirely new page called "Site Settings".

Not only does this new settings page reek of unfinished-ness *(SquaredPancake himself noted that he hasn't fully tested if every theme works in all edge cases, but even besides that it also features SquaredPancake's typical signature blunders such as publicly including debug themes (which in my professional humbling opinion have no place in an production environment) or hiding half-finished ideas inside HTML comments (which, again, should only be visible to developers and developers only))*, but it's also frankly lazy. One month of time for mostly cosmetics and only minor additions is a weak reason to push out an update, especially for one that interrupted my morning coffee as I was scrolling through my RSS feed. If I wanted to eat a nothingburger, I could just breathe it in myself, thank you!

## Exhibit B: Terminal

## Exhibit C: Minor
Besides cosmetics and novelty, SquaredPancake actually added minor content that mostly spans a few new links added to the Links section *(some of which don't even have a description written for them, like come on man, how lazy can you be?)*

At this point, I got too lazy and my brain too high on hatred to properly respond to the rest of his changes. Most of them are so obviously terrible that I don't even need to explain their idiocy anyway. I also realized that there are more worthwhile things in life to do *(for example, trolling strangers on the internet is way more fun than critiquing this cretin that'll probably take years to post an update responding to this anyway)*.

ā€“ Anonymous

Mina the Hollowerā€™s OST is lowkey great

Whilst this sectionā€™s titular statement is true on itā€™s own, itā€™s also a subtle nudge to the fact that I recently released a small-ish project I set out to do ā€“ uploading ā€œlowkey variantsā€ of various tracks from the gameā€™s soundtrack to one of my YouTube channels (with "lowkey" I mostly mean those calmer variants that play whilst inside interiors such as underlabs). My perfectionism forced me to polish them up to high quality, meaning that you lucky lot got:

All in all, it took a bit too long for my liking (25-35 hours, ranging from first extracting the audio, editing ~28 to loop properly, writing all the descriptions for the video and mildly editing the album cover), but I am still happy I could contribute to the ā€œVGM sceneā€ (if there is one..?) by just sharing good music thatā€™s not really available anywhere with fellow fans!

You can go have a listen via the ā€œMina the Hollower - OST Extrasā€ playlist on @CubedPancake! (The channel icon kind of sucks. I like the concept, but it isn't executed well yet. I do plan on improving it whenever I feel artsy, but that feels like it's a long time off.)

Other mundanities

Gaming

The Steam Summer Sale hit and I stockpiled on games I wanted to play the next time I actually want to play stuff instead of like focusing on the many other things I also just want and/or need to do. Shortly before the sale, I was in a mild existential crisis around games, which led to me asking the question of why I really play games and helped me pick out good games to play next. My notes on that question:

Thanks to reorganizing the games in my note-taking system, I could kind of intuitively gauge and prioritize what games I wanted to play next out of the hundreds that Iā€™ve previously thrown on the wish list on Steam ā€“ most games tended to be games that I picked to challenge myself by making me reflect on themes and topics that interest me or that I have faced, am facing, or will face during my lifetime.

Besides just ā€œChallenging by Reflectionā€, I also kept side-eyeing games for their ā€œChallenging my Limitsā€ nature:

Sadly, my gaming time is limited by my inability to play aforementioned games because theyā€™re so draining to play, by me swamped with work and other life responsibilities and by me working on projects important to me like this website, so playing those games will take a good while.

Update Changelog

Bigger stuff

Details and QoL

Planned, but shelved

My notes on potentially implementing a supporting sidebar
- [ ] Testing it via the simple Clipping styling
- [ ] What could be in it?
	- [ ] Page-dependant contents?
		- Page metadata? *(e.g. Tags, reading time?)*
		- Table of Contents
		- Filter Panel in pages like Graphics Gallery
	- [ ] Global contents?
		- A graph or navigatable map? *(would essentially replace breadcrumbs and be a bit like Obsidian's graph or the enhanced graph I wanted to make for [[šŸŽµ MusicLib Tags]]. Could also be just a simple sitemap tree?)*
		- Quick Settings? *(like [how Wikipedia does it?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple))*
			- Theme & Scheme switcher
		- Example: Brennan Day has a sidebar with the same global content in every page:
			- About the author
			- Support/Donation methods
			- Site stats
			- Newsletter signup
			- Blogroll
			- Elsewhere *(Other accounts of his)*
			- Status.cafe status
			- Badges
			- Webrings
- [ ] What other features would it conflict with?
	- [ ] The idea of letting floats extend a bit away from the main width when room allows

- I quite like how [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple) does it

Thoughts after writing all of this