Nels Lindahl — Functional Journal

A weblog created by Dr. Nels Lindahl featuring writings and thoughts…

Tag: puzzles

  • Editing videos and writing content

    Yesterday morning, I spent some time working on the next edition of “The Lindahl Letter” and editing some videos. One of them is already up and live on YouTube comparing the two webcams I’m testing out right now the Logitech BRIO and the Dell UltraSharp 4K. Testing out technology is always a fun and exciting thing to do and testing out webcam technology has been fun over the years. The latest webcams are really very good and the sensors are getting better and better. 

    Every day for the last few weeks I have had my Fitbit Sense wake me up before 0530 hours. It turns out that I greatly prefer the subtle shake of the Fitbit vs. the jarring madness of any alarm clock sound or tone. A lot of different things have needed my focused attention in the morning and it has not translated to direct keyboard time writing things for the weblog. That is ok and a lot of the things that end up getting produced, written, modified, or coded won’t ever be a part of the weblog. Not all content is created to be placed in my functional journal if that is even a good name for the storage place of my random musings. Getting into a good rhythm where things are being created every day is the important piece of the puzzle. 

    Traffic comes and goes from the weblog. People visit every day, but fewer and fewer of them have commented over the years. I’m either not writing controversial or interesting things or the verification process has trimmed out all of the unwanted or unnecessary comments. I’m not sure why that bubbled up to the forefront of my thoughts at the moment. It sure showed up and took over my consideration for a few moments. 

    This computer is running the developer preview of Windows 11 Pro and I installed a new video editor the other day called OpenShot. After dropping some video into the editor and working with it to make a video to upload to YouTube I started the video creation process and it was taking forever and all the fans on my computer case started to be as noisy as they get on the Dark Base Pro 900 from the company, “be quiet!”. Anyway, that happened in part due to the fact that the video was rendering using the CPU vs. the GPU. It has been a long time since a video has been rendered in this household with a CPU powering that action. You can imagine that I was super surprised that this could happen with any type of modern software.

  • Ready that writing timer

    Set that 15 minute timer and get ready to write. Sometimes you need to get out a timer. Be it old fashioned or digital timer and set aside some time to write. The simple act of chasing the keys on the keyboard for a specific block of time can open the door to adventure. I suppose you could just as easily drop the needle on your favorite vinyl record and start writing along to that as well. A lot of ways to make time exist and the process of somehow getting into the flow of writing is the important piece of the puzzle. That is where things start to get going and where things start to come together. At the start of the day I was looking forward down the paths of a ton of different perfect possible futures. Things have to get done to help move along those paths. Momentum alone is not going to help me realize the best possible outcomes. That is part of a process of working toward the right things and being ready to close things out.

    That is where my thoughts are focused at this very moment. I’m deeply thinking about being an activity closer today and just getting things done. Today is not going to be a day of reflection, it is going to be a day of resolution. Sure better ways of saying that in a more refined way exist, but I think the point got made. Today has to be a day of getting to the point. Supporting a nexus of indecision at this point remains counter to getting things done. I’m ready to start this day and keep things moving along. That is a great way to kick off Monday. Welcome to the start of a great week. I’m almost on track to write a page of prose about that timer that started a little bit ago and is still going. For some reason this paltry amount of prose took me a pretty decent block of time to create. My thoughts were clear, but they were not flowing at a really solid pace this morning. That is pretty much the way things have been going for the last few days. 

    Some time ago I really invested and worked toward writing 3,000 words per day. Doing that really required a block of time in the morning and at night to invest in the creation of words. You have to kickstart the day early with good topics you are passionate about to get to that type of word production. Sadly a lot of that ended up in a closed loop of writing about writing during the course of writing. Breaking out of that loop required doing and thinking about other things. One of the ways I’m avoiding that pitfall right now is the weekly Substack post I’m working on that breaks that cycle. That involves researching and digging beyond the natural flow of words about my process and digs into something more tactical in the now. You have to be ready to focus in on things and get things done, but sometimes having a writing assignment can kickstart that focus. To help myself along the way I have a long running list of topics to cover. That series of guideposts helps keep me on track and avoids missing the writing target.