My simple desire to access Doom Emacs on my mobile phone sent me down a deep & dark rabbit hole of setting up a home server.
Going to grab a Rasberry Pi 5 soon
Thoughts that kept me from going insane
Don’t do things because you have to, you must to, or you want to.
Do things simply because you can.
Because isn’t that the rawest essence of life? Doing whatever you can, however you can whilst you still can?
Isn’t that good enough for you?
Left journalism, but journalism never left me, I guess.
Missed writing for a living. (Technically still am, in many ways)
This year, I need to start delegating work properly.
- Demanded control and visibility over the project
- Not trusting others for quality control
What resulted was overloading myself with too many projects. My team doesn’t get the experience they need to be more competent — further fuelling the cycle.
I need to be more comfortable detaching myself from the outcome and the means to the end. Focus should be placed upon the people and processes that make it happen.
The worst part is, I can only do so after mid-February.
Setting up my own private vps has opened up a new world of IT usages — now I can ssh into Doom eMacs, and am considering taskwarrior and a way to backup my photos
Tomorrow, I have water rafting in the morning, a 5 hour drive and a 12km marathon at night.
God bless my ambitious body, weary body and foolish mind on what’s about to come.
Am I Dumb for Starting a Digital Services Agency in 2025?
I’m in the midst of starting CoThinking, a company providing web development and B2B digital marketing services—and doing so now is different than how it was a few years ago.
Market trends observed:
- Market is oversaturated with job seekers
- AI has improved productivity
- This has compelled job seekers to start their own practice
- Companies are focusing on in-house resources
However, there is one important aspect within the industry that’s actually declining, and that’s trust in the quality and reliability of services.
- AI is flooding the market with mediocre output, which is heavily scrutinised
- Employee attrition is still high, and it still takes a lot of resources to onboard new employees
Trust is something that a saturated supply market and AI cannot compensate for. As such, I’ll be more transparent and showcase my work processes to help build trust within my brand. I believe this will be the only way service providers can remain competitive moving forward.
Being productive in college
I have a client in university with more than 70 hours of screen time over the past week alone. The crazy part: he’s not depressed—just bored and is looking to get a job to be more productive. We’ve contemplated four options:
- Freelance (Services)
- Side Hustle (Product)
- Part-time Job
- Content Creator
I reccomend every college student to give any of the above a shot.
Ramblings
Became a better person in 2024, but plenty of room to grow. However, the journey to get there involves ridding the desire to be so.
Ideally, to grow is not a longing, but a series of actions to be performed — which affects how I think, which affects how I feel, all contributing to the sense of self. Desire plays no role in this equation— just decisions to be made, and the ability to follow through.
My 2025’s theme is the year of settling down. Systems that helps with decision making and follow through will be key to the year’s success.
A surprising number of clients chose to spend their holidays with friends and coaching sessions—rather than with family members.
Apparently, family is a major cause of their mental health struggles. With recent US election results, I can see why.
Still, I wish everyone a Merry Christmas, regardless of their circumstances. If there are causes for celebration, it’s worth taking them however we can, whilst we still can.
A lazy Sunday before the Xmas season. Calm before the storm.
Major projects with deadlines before CNY 2025. Water Rafting + Marathon combo next weekend.
But for now, there is peace. And peace is good.
Recovering Redacted Content: It’s Scary How Easy It Is
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Blurred and pixelated images can often be reverse-engineered to reveal censored details, making them unreliable for secure redaction.
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Black bar redaction in digital documents are not foolproof despite being industry standard; hidden text can be retrieved using simple software tools.
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Proper redaction involves using the right tools for the job, but can go as far as printing, physically cutting out portions, and rescanning in 2-bit.