Month 3: Welcome to Spring
With it being March, Waterloo’s weather has been a lot better, and all the snow has melted. We’re still getting plenty of rain, but I’ve been able to go shoot downtown, so I’ll call it a win. What’s not a win, is the number of final assignments and exams looming over the horizon. While my school term technically lasts until April 4th, this might as well be the last month of classes. Every one of my classes has at least one assignment due during the last week, some of which haven’t even been released yet 🗿. It’s going to be a bit hectic balancing everything: final deliverables, studying for exams, and club/team-related responsibilities.
Tooling Tradeoffs
I’ve been running into an internal conflict over the last couple of years. This boils down to the idea of trying to centralize everything I do to one tool. Each time I do this, I inevitably end up running into some mental friction, and drop my attempt. I thought it was about time I organize my thoughts on why this seems to happen.
Current Tooling
For now, my core tooling looks like this:
- Obsidian for note-taking, project management, and university work.
- Neovim for software development.
- Google Calendar
- Todoist for task
A note to make here is that for any kind of editing of text (even within Obsidian) I use Vim Motions. For anything that would replace any tooling that I currently use for editing text, it is a necessity to have Vim Motions either built-in or via emulation. This crosses out Notion (though I have other reasons for ditching it for Obsidian).
I’ve dabbled with combining tools (e.g., replacing Obsidian and Neovim with a single solution), but I always hit roadblocks, particular when it comes to rendered LaTeX, images, and polished PDF exports. Attempts to “do it all” in one tool often came at the cost of speed or usability — two things that I care deeply about. This is the reason I won’t be swapping to Emacs anytime soon even if it “solves” my problems.
It took me a while, but I’ve started to realize: maybe there’s no need to force everything into one system. Sometimes, it’s better to use separate tools that each excel at their jobs, rather than compromise. It’s time I live by the Unix Philosophy.
It’s very likely I write a detailed account of everything I’ve tried with my paint points sometime in the future in another post. Or maybe I’ll just forget about it 🤷 .
Random Highlights:
- Since I’m in the co-op version of CS at Waterloo, my degree is 5 years long. As a result, some of my friends either not in co-op or pursuing other degrees are graduating after this term. Since I’ll be in California during the summer, I won’t be able to make their graduation. I decided to grab dinner/lunch with them to wish them well.
- I had the pleasure of attending the inaugural Ontario Universities Sports Analytics Coalition Conference. I travelled with some friends from UWAGGS and Waterloo’s Varsity Analytics IST. I took some pictures which can be found here.