The August Juornal

This is a follow up for August. About what I've been doing all month. I took to learning two things that promised a career for me, did some gardening, and found an interesting theory called 'The Six Handshake Rule' This site, I hope to make a passive income off. There's a saying "Expectations are disappointments waiting to Happen". I'm more keen on the experience of failing/budding on something new. 'Those two things', I intend to score a job from. One is programming. And the other is Drawing. I wanted to draw since I was a kid. Since I joined my science class to draw because of animals. Now looking back. I've gotten pretty good. Made tremendous progress in just 30 days. I tried this book called "Drawing for the absolute beginner". It is very good. I will label my drawings here.

And about programming and coding: Coding wasn't too hard. Programming on the other hand, I've been, I've been learning since five weeks, six weeks now I Think. Many weeks. We'll count eight weeks. And I know HTML5 now. I know CSS, Like the basics and Intermediate I think. I'll code my own website In the coming days. So, what I was doing today itself was programming a 'ping-pong' game. I went with not the highest expectations of math skills at all. Turns out, ping-pong requires a mathematicians mind. So, I spent half my day... around 12 hours, watching YouTube tutorials and reading about it and researching, researching and paired some favorite tutorials. Followed one. I swear VS code has grudges against me. The IDE doesn't always work fine with me. Whenever I run the program, the terminal has issues which are fixed only after reopening it. Sometimes the whole IDE. I don't know why. I'll figure, I'll figure how to how to fix that in the coming days hopefully. The ping-pong game is a work in progress, like myself. JOURNAL: At Exercising I've been pretty regular this month. Like, I must have only skipped Five days total in the whole month. I've been looking to get a calendar for myself and mark tasks, Mark all my objectives that I touch up that day. I keep a journal of it. (Almost all of it is here) I have a couple things I check off. I ticked programming and drawing today. Exercise, I was feeling too tired, so today was a rest day. Meditation I'm yet to do, before sleeping. It's already 1'o clock in the night. Like, it's pretty late, It's, it's no good for me this sleep schedule. Reading: I've been reading a couple many books. So, "drawing for the absolute beginner" is a pretty good one. It is a guide. I've been following through Chess. A beginner's book called 'Chess' by Logan Donovan taught me opening strategies. I heard about the Sicilian defense and the Indian kings offense and Indian kings defense and some other things. I'm still a beginner at that too. I know all the moves but I'm blind while chessing.

Finally made time to listen to 'The Art of War' by Sun Tzu. It's a short audiobook. Took me around an hour in Librivox. It's about the proper conducting of war. It mentions army strategy, spies, camping grounds, motivation to the army, supplies, distraction, and ideal practices. One book I'm extremely keen on listening is 'The Arthashastra'. It's kind of like the encyclopedia for Kings. It covers Everything from Economy, Law, War, and Business. And then some.

ABOUT THE APPS USED : My apps kind of changed. Default browser changed, exercise app changed, Meditation app is quite the same. I'm using this app called otter for transcriptrion. It's a paid app but lets you record free for 40 minutes. And I'm using it to transcribe my blog, my diary, my journal, the one you are reading. Most of this, I haven't used my pencil to write. Dictated to the app, it caught around 70% of the words right. Haan, about exercise apps!! Why I keep changing those, let me just, let me just tell you about that. I've used 'Freeletics'. I've used 'HIIT by Downdog' and I'm currently using '8Fit'. And the three aren't the only ones. So why I keep switching is all the apps, all those apps have their own target muscle group. No one app is truly balanced. One app focuses a little more on legs, one app focuses a little more on arms, one app focuses a little more on cardio. So, switching those does good for my body. I practice shadowboxing, watching this guy on YouTube called Jason Van Alden, who hosts his channels called 'precision striking' and 'boxing home workouts' for boxing. Keeps me healthy those things. 8fit for the exercise app and precision striking/ boxing home workouts for shadowboxing. Meditation too keeps me healthy, I keep hoping. I got into meditation... like YouTube kept recommending meditation but I used to watch this one channel called 'Whack'. it is still up and running. It is still hosted by Freisha B. I don't know what that B stands for. Sorry. So she she did a video somewhat related to "things I wish I knew when I was 20". She mentioned meditation in it. She wished she knew about meditation sooner. That was kind of an eye opener, how such a simple thing could be so desirable, impactful. Just as the COVID pandemic started. I, I was mostly home, And I kept getting anxious. And I think I had anxiety attacks. Those are undiagnosed, like, I read a book about it called 'FUCK Anxiety'. It was nicely helpful. And I migrated through several meditation apps looking for peace. 'Headspace' I recommend for beginners. Their first course is free. That was free Two years ago, I don't remember if it is still free. Now it's quite pricey and greedy. Sorry for saying that. Thank you for being my first teacher Andy. The second one I use, like, 40% of my learning was 'Calm'. That app is great too. They have an amazing four pack meditation series on confidence. Kind of an eye opener that one. My current one I've been using it since the COVID pandemic started. It's "10% happier". It's owned by a news channel called ABC. It is an English news channel. It's host is Dan Harris who works for the corporation. Here, he hosts interviews with a great many meditation teachers. They are good people. Patient people. They are good role models to me. I keep referring them as my meditation teachers. I'd say 10% happier is one of my top apps. And another one of my top apps is any book reading app. I recommend everybody to read books. I did preach so to my cousin. He wanted some advice on life. Don't know if it was the most responsible advice. Like, books are responsible advice, of course, but cousin wanted a quick answer. Youtube videos have quick answers. Often they are lacking. I don't use youtube and I lately, tried to quit reddit. I might relapse on reddit. Youtube I do stumble across that site once in a while, like I did today, trying to program ping-pong. GARDENING:

The 'Mud-Apple' Plant in front of the Mosambi

I did some gardening Friday, afternoon, that was quick. The previous week was quite rainy. And scary too. So I had a mind to plant a chikoo plant. It's Sapodilla. It's even called Mud-Apple I came to know. I transplanted It near a mosambi tree and kept an eye on it for five days. looking today, Looking at the first Sun since a week, It's leaves are firmer. It's settled well. It must be feeling like it got another life. Like, It migrated to another country or something. Not country, the weather must be similar to its previous spot. Nutrition! I think it'll get good nutrition. I kept spotting red ants crawling on the plant. Those were chopping its leaves off and I did not intrude. I was thinking Most of the leaves are safe from those, and those which are getting chopped down would have only served as a burden to the plant for a few days. Looking back today, It settled. The ants are no longer there. I'm sure their nest is below the plant. It's good for it, I think, and I don't think those ants disturb roots that much. So I leave them be. It'll be winter season soon enough. The mud-apples will settle well for the season since winter at ours is apple-season.

Final find: I came to know about an amusing theory called the six handshake theory. It says: "In six or less collections, Six or less asks from people, you could connect to any person in the world". There's math backing it. So how it works is, you asked one of your friends, if, like, they know an Australian kangaroo breeder, he most probably denies. What he says might be "I know someone who lives in Australia". "So who might that be?" you ask. "It's one of my brother's friend. He lives in Australia now." So, one contact led to another. Ahhhh! Wikipedia has a better definition. It's formally called 'Six degrees of separation'. I'll leave you here to the path of discovery. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation Laters world👋