Back in August 2018 I started the habit of writing down stuff I learn. I had come across a lot of TIL posts on reddit, which inspired me to start building a library of personal knowledge.
Since then I’ve had some months on and off, some more documented than others. I keep a TIL list in my Workflowy that I like to refer back to.
This year I’d like to become better at taking notes of the random facts, computer tricks and techniques I run across. Here are some of the things the first 1⁄12 of 2020 had to offer:
- Mockaroo - a service that provides fake data in various formats
brew cask zap {formula}fixes issues with stale Homebrew casks (source: stackoverflow)- xsv - CLI utility for manipulating and working with CSV files (source: random blog post)
- You can use the Ruby package manager bundler with a single ruby file (source: bundler.io)
- Bars that serve beer in Norway must also provide snacks (source: human [unreliable] bartender)
- Discovered OpenSearch and SearchAction standards
- 1⁄3 in binary is 0.0101… and 2⁄3 is 0.1010… and 3⁄3 is 0.1111… (source: mikesmathpage)
- You can paint your wall with IdeaPaint to turn it into a whiteboard
- ESSO is a result of the breakup of Standard Oil and its name comes from the phonetic pronunciation of S. O.
- Postgres comes with functions to calculate percentiles (source: leafo.net)
- Dunbar’s number: Cognitive limit of number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships (source: What is Scaling Agile)
- Q8 is derived from Kuwait (and now I’m the gas stations+etymology guy)
- Thumbs up is considered a rude gesture in the Middle East (happy I didn’t have to learn this the hard way)
- Bonus fact: Thumbs up is also a problematic gesture for divers:
- 👌🏻 I’m okay
- 👍🏻 I need to surface
- Figma can generate heatmaps of the expected eyegaze/user attention [with a plugin]
⌥ + Qon an Apple Keyboard is shortcut for a bullet point- Other interesting shortcuts:
⌥ + Pπ⌥ + Fƒ⌥ + .…
- Most modern browsers (except IE11) support multiline text trimming with CSS (source: medium.com/@lead)
- Hugo (or Markdown?) automatically styles fractions beautifully (but to be honest I gave it a 1⁄2 chance it would just work)
Finally I learned how to push git branches directly between two machines without using Github. I actually had to do this to move the source code for my blog from my old laptop and write this entry.
What interesting things did you learn the past month? Don’t be ashamed if you learn or discover something new that might seem obvious to everyone, and don’t overestimate how many of your friends know the things you do.
February goal: learn how comment sections work