Posting From Ulysses to Wordpress - Connection Refused Fix

I was trying to configure Ulysses to post stuff directly from it. I was looking at issues that I thought were stemming from the fact that I disabled xmlrpc.php. After I spent an hour trying different things, I thought that maybe the issue isn’t at all coming from how the site is configured.

I remembered that a lot of the things on the web get fixed by clearing the cache. So I did just that. I use a plugin called “LiteSpeed Cache” for caching the site. I purged everything from it and now I am able to connect Ulysses to my blog.

LiteSpeed Cache was caching the plugins’ settings, including some stuff from Wordfence. After purging everything, I’ve set up a new application password and connected Ulysses. Couldn’t find anything through Google about this issue being caused by caching. That's why I’m leaving this here, just in case someone else needs it.

The conclusion is: If you’re using Wordfence, LiteSpeed Cache and want to publish stuff through Ulysses, yet you get a “connection refused” error even after you’ve allowed application password authentication in WordFence, try and purge the LiteSpeed cache.

About Reading

I kept seeing things about speed reading, I think that I always saw as something that should be avoided. Reading should be done at a pace that allows us to absorb information in a way that we allow it to settle, to sediment itself so we can use it at some point. Speed reading is a way to gather information, but I don't know if it helps on the long term.

A while ago I found about the barbell method. This is a term coined by Nassim Taleb, and I think this is something that works for me. It allows one to better filter information from books and find out faster if a book is useful or not, among other things.

I found out about the Barbell Method from zettelkasten.de. In the article, they say:

It means that you make sure that the majority of your investment is safe while you make small but very risky bets. You combine safety with the possibility of high revenue. The trick is that you floor the possible loss while leaving the possible revenue unlimited.

And applied to books, it would mean that you would have to:

  1. Read the book. Read swiftly but don’t skip any parts unless they make you vomit or put you to sleep. Mark all the passages that stand out and contain useful, interesting or inspiring information.
  2. Read the book a second time. But now you read the marked parts only. This time you make notes, connect them to past notes (Zettelkasten Method!) and think about what you’ve read. Make mindmaps, drawings, bullet points – everything that helps you to think more clearly.

I'm going to leave a link to the article here so I can get back to it some time in the future, and maybe someone else will also find it useful.

Find out more here: Reading using the Barbell Method

Rewriting everything

I've started writing this trying to remember how eleventy works, as I forgot that I had a digital garden thingy. I tend to forget stuff like this: too much time spent in front of screens.

I had a short vacation which was beneficial. I needed to get away from screens, at least for a few days. I am feeling some sort of technology fatigue, and what I previously considered to be a sign of inatentiveness, now I think it's related to the amount of time I spend in front of a screen.

I am trying to look more at the things I spend my time doing. I've reduced the amount of social media to a minimum; I can not be in a mental state where everything I read/watch is a distraction or something that tries to grab my attention.

With limited access to internet - mostly because of the slow connection I had where I went - I downloaded some music and some documentaries from DW. Watched the documentaries on the train, helped me to pass the time while the train was having a 3 hour delay.

I'm rediscovering listening to music in "full albums", not just singles. Found 3 albums from totally different types of artists and I am enjoying them. My favorite is "Cover songs in inferno", by Francoiz Breut and Don Nino. I've also listened to IX, the first album from HOST (a band with members from Paradise Lost).

I haven't read that much during the vacation, but before that I've managed to finish a few books on Kindle, including the first two books from the "Discworld" series by Terry Pratchett.

Now I'm trying to figure out ways to configure my site to work with eleventy. Speaking of, I've added "types" to the notes, based on their status. So now my notes will be categorized into seeds, growing, budding, flourishing, and notes that need pruning. Trying to go all the way with the digital garden metaphor. Besides that, I'm rewriting some stuff, and adding some automations. It's interesting to see how this digital garden grows and updates; hope it doesn't turn into a mess.

Why a Digital Garden

A digital garden?

"Why a digital garden", you might ask. I asked myself the same question. And I don't know if I have a clear answer, but I know that I want to write more and write freely. In case someone ends up on my site and finds something useful, it will make me very happy to know that.

I noticed that I tend to spend a lot of time moving from one thing to another and writing them down helped me memorize things. My attention span has slowly but steadily devolved over the years. So I needed to find a way to focus more on the input-output process of my mind, if there is such a thing. I needed something that allowed me to write freely and see if the things I read or watch or consume in one way or another are of any use to me. I also consider myself a permanent learner, and I want to share with others the things I'm learning about. Speaking of which, I found out about a method of reading on the Zettelkastten.de site. I've added a small note about it here: About Reading

I've been taking notes with Obsidian.md and I've been trying a few other solutions to create some sort of a personal knowledge system. I've stuck with Obsidian as I think it's an amazing tool, with a great and welcoming community to support it.

I have a local Obsidian vault, where I keep notes in Romanian. This one will be in English and I'll probably translate some of the Romanian notes and add them here too. That's also the place where I keep my podcast notes. By the way, if you can understand Romanian and you're interested in creative coding, I have been doing this little podcast called "Tab & Space". I'm working on a new episode that I will release (hopefully) next week.

For the moment, I won't touch the design of this space. I will probably change some things, but this isn't my priority right now.

Next steps

This place will probably change a lot in the following weeks. Content will appear, disappear and be moved around. I want to let it grow organically, but I would also like to know some things about the people that might end up here. I've decided not to use any unnecessary tracking scripts, cookies or anything like that. I found out about plausible.io recently so I will give it a go. They say they are a "simple and privacy-friendly alternative to Google Analytics". I've already added a script to my main domain, and I'm adding their script to this place now. One of the things that I liked from the start about Plausible is the fact that's extremely easy to configure.

Probably in a week or so this place will have more content added to it. I also need to find a way to automate my workflow so I can publish directly to this place.

Note taking apps, second brains and writing

Which is the best note taking app?

I feel that I’ve been running after the perfect note taking tool and I see a lot of them popping up recently. A lot of them are promising features that will help you be more productive, get your ideas out there or whatever you want to do; or in the case of some apps, that you won’t need anything else, bundling calendars, office suits, note taking apps etc into one large tool.

This is what I’ve been doing for the last couple of years. Trying note taking apps, hoping that the next one will be THE ONE. I used Obsidian for a while - an amazing app, by the way - , I tried Roam, even simpler apps. I was looking especially into apps that would help me take notes about the things I am reading or just journal some random thoughts that I have.

I think I stopped using Obsidian when it became an all in one solution for publishing content online, creating a ‘second brain’ and a PKM app.

I’ve tried apps like Notion and Craft, but I feel that they have too many features and that I would spend too much time tinkering with them instead of actually writing. I’ve been using Agenda, but more for personal project notes and a place to gather info about very specific topics that can be useful in my work. In the meantime, I also found out about Capacities – Your second brain and Tana. All these tools are amazing for teams, so I probably won’t be able to use them at their full potential.

Second brains and external memory

A thing that’s probably common sense, but it took me some time to realise is that everyone has a method to take notes, you just need to find your own. I looked over the recommended apps for building a second brain, all of them seem to be recommending things that work for the author.

It’s good to look at how others organise their work/research/notes etc, but in the end you have to do it in your own way. If it works for you, that’s enough. You want to create some sort of an external memory for you, not for someone else.

Initially I was making a confusion between the note taking app and the concept of “second brain”, which is actually an ecosystem of apps. But still, the most important tool in this ecosystem is the note taking app, which should be the place where you store and distill the information you’re gathering.

My ideal note taking app

If I would try to describe my ideal note taking app, it should be:

  • easy to access from any device and sync notes. I tend to jot down ideas on my phone and get back to them on my laptop.
  • its files should be an open format that can be used on different platforms and with different apps - ideally markdown
  • it should allow me to make connections between my notes fast
  • a small amount of features - text, links, images, video embeds and site embeds
  • offer a preview mode in case it uses markdown
  • allow you to search through your notes without you having to remember the exact taxonomy / tagging system
  • I want my editor to let me focus on what I want to do - without any distracting notifications or features
  • have a way to export notes. It would be great if it could export a note and all the notes that it links to, generating a single pdf/html file. Ideally batch export.

At this point I’m writing this in Bear, but I’ve also been using Ulysses. I feel that Ulysses is much better for writing long-format articles, novels or research papers, which is also its stated goal.

I like apps that don’t have flashy features: they get discovered by the user naturally, at the right time. If you have some features that are useful to the user, make them as unnoticeable as possible.

How I remember the 90s

Growing up in 90s Romania, the author reflects on the evolution of technology from basic computers to the internet, influencing their journey into programming and creative coding.

To The Best of Our Knowledge Podcast

I think in May or June I found out about a great podcast called To the Best of Our Knowledge. I've been listening to it since then, and I remember that the first episode that I listened to is called "Solace of Nature". In that episode they talked about the way nature influences our life, how it can offer us contemplative experiences.

I continued with another episode called "The Weird, Wild World of Mushrooms". In this episode one of the guests was Paul Stamets, a mycologist on whom a character from "Star Trek: Discovery" was based on. The character even shares his name and has a similar job, but with a twist: he's an astromycologist. This episode was also a good starting point for me to check out a documentary on Curiosity Stream called "The Kingdom: How Fungi Made Our World". You should check it out if you would like to know more about the importance of fungi and their relationship with the environment, trees, plants and even humans.

IDEO Podcast on the future of food

Today I found out from [IDEO's blog](https://www.ideo.com/blog/ideos-new-podcast-asks-food-world-visionaries-about-the-future-they-want-to-see) about their podcast where they discuss the topic of food and how the future looks like for it. Just the fact that it comes from IDEO makes me want to see what it's all about. It has 8 episodes so far, around 25 minutes each. The podcast can be found here: https://ideo.com/food, with transcripts for each episode.

I have listened to the first episode, and I am adding a few ideas here.

The main question of the podcast is "How might we design better food systems?" Another question that it discusses is "how does climate change affect the way we produce and consume food"?

I will add a few updates and probably turn them into separate notes as I listen to the rest of the podcast

First episode

How do we connect with food - main three ways: shop, cook and eat. We don't think about the systems behind getting the food on our plate.

13 mil children in the US go hungry every year, although almost 40% of the food produced goes to waste.

When restaurants, school cafeterias and coffee shops closed - or reduced their activity - due to the covid-19 pandemic, farmers were also hard hit. A lot of their products remained unused and they had to dispose of them when their biggest clients no longer needed these products.

Our current food system has lead to the loss of biodiversity, rise in factory farms, chemicals in soil, and release of greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change.

The current food system is responsible for 25% of the annual greenhouse gas emissions.

Dr Ricardo Salvador, director of the food and environment programme at the union of concerned scientists, who was a guest on the show said:

"The food system isn't broken. It is working exactly as it's intended to work. And exactly as it was designed."