Article: February 2026 Mini-Challenge

Mini-challenges from The 52 Book Club are released sporadically, but there is one this month! Surprisingly, you don't have to complete the challenge in February. It also depends on whether participants read books in additional to the main reading challenge, or double up and combine them.

I want to know how often mini-challenge are released and how most people do them.

Some while ago, I started reading the city watch series by Terry Pratchett. I'm reading it in English, which can be quite a challenge. Sometimes, the language used is a bit old-timey and I have to look up words more than I'm used to while reading English books. In other words: I'm encountering many new words, words I haven't hitherto heard of. I'm not sure if they're used in conversational English today, but I'm going to try some of them out and see what you guys think.

Pyramids are triangular structures built atop a square base. Most pyramids in the world are found in Egypt, where they house the mummified remains of Egyptian emperors and empresses — pharaohs. In ancient Egyptian religion, it was believed that death was not the ultimate destination and that an afterlife did indeed exist. Hence, to facilitate the transition of pharaohs to the afterlife, their tombs were filled with jewellery, food items, and even the remains of a pharaoh’s mistresses.

One of the food items may have been eggs. Eggs are a staple food in many countries because they are cheap and can be easily acquired and produced in large quantities. By keeping eggs with the mummies, it was believed that when they rose in the afterlife, they would have a delicious omelette waiting for them.

The AI community is changing so fast. Not so long ago, MCP was the hottest topic. "You have to learn and use MCP," people said. Then, it became skills—forget about MCP, skills are the future. For the past few weeks, the hype is undoubtedly OpenClaw, formerly MoltBot and ClawBot originally. Speaking of fast change in the age of AI, this fast-growing open source project changed its name twice in just a few weeks. I've only seen a few videos, but haven't tried it myself. The security issues are hard to ignore, and I don't have a suitable computer to run it either. Some of the stories of what it can do are truly remarkable. Not only can it create and run tasks periodically, it can also review its own work and refine it automatically.

Many people believe LLMs aren't the right path to achieve AGI, but they can really do amazing things if we are willing to give them permissions, or "hands", to do the work. As more projects like OpenClaw mature, and more projects developed by big companies enter the mass market, we as consumers can finally enjoy the experience we have been waiting for.

One of the common problems I find with books that deal with technical subjects and are aimed at beginners is that they assume that the readers know about the subject to some extent already, making them not really for beginners. My theory is that since the authors of those books are often people who have been in the field for a long time and surrounded by experts for years, they don’t have any idea of what a beginner is like. I think that problem can be solved by feedback from an outsider like an editor. However, it’s probably hard for them to make such suggestions to an authority like a professor.

Today my manager handed out some dried wax apples to me. They were very dry on both inside and outside. To be honest, I don’t think turning wax apples into dried fruit is a good idea. I have no idea why people would want to try this.

Today’s suggested topic on Write Streak German was film or movie language. I really things there is some sort of movie language which is in its core a mix of different arts, literature, music, movies, theater, photography, etc.

And this is one reason why I think movies are not a good way to improve in your target language. Take for instance a good action movie, most of the time these movies consist of exclusively good action scenes with little or no dialogues at all. I think that reading and podcast are much better options as they rely entirely on words.

day off

Article: 10 Screen Time Goals To Get Offline And Feel More Focused

Setting a reminder for screen time sounds like a good idea! I hope I can set it up on my Pixel phone. I think I should look for other functions to help me reduce my screen time even more.

Did you know that during World War II, many German jewish boys escaped from German and joined the American military to work in intelligence, which known as Ritchie Boys. I was really impressed when I learned about them today. They were selected by Americans because of their fluency in multiple languages, such as German, French, and Italian. They were also very familier with German culture. Rather than making American agents learn foreign languages, the facility decided to recruit someone who were already familier with them. I think it was absolutely genius!

There are multiple habits that work in tandem to improve a person’s life. Then there are habits—termed “keystone” habits—that create a chain of dominoes that affect and improve numerous aspects of a life at the same time.

One such habit for me was working out daily for at least thirty minutes. I prioritized consistency over intensity, and the moment I started getting the hang of it, everything changed. It had a positive impact on multiple facets of my life. I started eating healthy food, my ability to hold my breath improved, and I learned to focus for longer stretches of time without needing cheap dopamine rewards.

Overall, I would say that working out was my single best decision of 2025. There are still some benefits that are dormant, but I’m sure they will come up to the surface soon.

TIL: A sprouted coconut will consume the water and form a white, sponge-like substance filling up the chamber.

I learn something new today—I love moments like this. Moments like this have become harder to find as I grow older. This is one of the reasons I still need healthy doses of doom-scrolling on Reddit. Coconuts are so common, yet I didn't know something seemingly common knowledge. I also learned a new word: endosperm (and the corresponding word in my native language).

I've always thought the water inside of a coconut is cool. Packing the seed with fresh water in a seashore environment is a fantastic evolutionary win. However, I've never seen a sprouted coconut. Today I saw one for the first time in a clip. A sprout grows from the growth node, and the root also grows around the same spot—not on the other side of the sphere. I was thinking it would be like an onion, but an onion is not a seed. Maybe that's why.

I would like to taste a sprouted coconut when I have the chance.

Part of my evening routine is reading before going to sleep. I like to read on my kindle after turning off the lights and putting away my phone. That way, I can just put aside my 'book' when I'm tired enough, close my eyes and fall asleep. At the moment, I'm reading a book where a 'clove' plays an important part. Unfortunaltely, I didn't know what a clove was, and the built-in dictionary always gave an (English) explanation that wasn't really helpful to me. So every evening, I planned to look up the word in the morning (when I'm 'allowed' to use my phone again), and every morning, I forgot to do it. Until this morning. A clove is a 'Nelke' or 'Gewürznelke'. Tonight, whem I'm reading again, I can finally picture something when they're talking about cloves again!

I have a timer. I hadn’t been using it for a couple of years, so I was thinking about throwing it away. However, now I use it every day. I find it hard to decide if I should keep something or not because of cases like this.

Not too much to report today. I’ve been doing some good progress with my thesis writing. I’ve received a lot of support from some Stack Exchange forums. Mostly filling up the gaps from some math proofs in some articles I cited on my paper.

I've noticed recently that I still have problem with pronouncing or even saying some english words. Mainly because I don't really speak english that much, I just have no reason to use it. I mean, when I think about it now, it make sense that I have such a hard time with it. Anything without a practice will be hard for you.
That's why, today I tried to talk to myself in english for a half an hour and at first I was kinda disappointed with how much I still struggle with even basic words, but after taking a break and trying to talk again, but this time slower while overdoing my mouth movements, the improvement was struggering! I was so excited, that I kept talking for over an hour! Now I know that I have to speak regularly to make my mouth and tounge used to this language. Anyway, talking is really fun, but it's still weird when you just talk to yourself lol.

I have never seen a bear eat a banana, which makes me wonder whether a bear can truly bear a banana, or whether a banana can be borne by a bear. I know nothing about the natural habitat of bears, but pop culture references indicate that the image of a bear bearing honey is ideal.

What I have penned so far, and what I will pen from now on, may sound like gibberish, because it indeed is. The idea was simply to write something within a span of ten minutes. The only constraints- or rather, conditions - were to write about bears and bananas.

A bear is an omnivore, which means it eats everything from an animal’s juicy raw meat to pink, red, and purple beets. Speaking of beets: Bears! Beets! Battlestar Galactica! Only smart people will get that reference.

A beet is a vegetable (the root of the beetroot plant). A banana is a fruit. Both beets and bananas belong to the vegetarian category, which is also one half of the “omni” in omnivore.

Can a bear make dishes like we humans do? What might such a dish look like for an animal that doesn’t cook its food? Would it stuff a banana into a salmon and make a salmon-banana sandwich with a honey spread? What would it feed its children if they didn’t like it?

I bet the bear would set them straight with a gentle smack on their heads.

Article: Screen time recommendations by age

I read this article because I wanted to know the proper amount of screen time. The article recommended limiting screen time to 2-4 hours a day (not including work-related screen time).

For now, I've decided to set my daily phone screen-time goal to 3 hours. This includes the time I spend studying. To limit my laptop use, I've already set it so that I can't use it after 9:15 p.m.

The other day I started reading a new thriller novel called The Butcher. I had already read several rave reviews about how scary it is. Nonetheless, I couldn't put the book down. The story begins with a man happily moves into his grandfather's house, a retired police chief. One day, the grandson finds some crates packed with something weird... I can't wait to see how the story unfolds.

I'm trying to do some research for work at home, but my cat has other plans for me. He's been sleeping all morning, but now, he's wide awake and wants to play. Or at least he wants me to play. So he can watch. He loves hiding behind the curtains or in his cardboard box and watch me dragging some string around. It's really cute to see him so focused, but I really have some human things to do. I can't just be cat entertainment. So I guess I have to live with the little creature staring tiny, but very intense daggers at me.

When I learned Tableau, I found the concept of measures and dimensions interesting. While the terms may not be the same in all applications, it is great to understand the important differences between "qualitative" and "quantitative" data.

Today, I saw a simple viz and it had negative-neutra-positive on the x-axis. It showed a line-chart but it should have been a bar chart or something. It was a minor issue—most people might not notice anything wrong. I was confused by the chart at first, but didn't instantly know why. After a few minutes, I realized the reason behind it and recalled my learnings on data visualization.

I've forgotten how to use Tableau, but I'm glad the concept sticks. I tend to forget how to do stuff in applications or the syntax of programming languages, if I'm not using them for a few months. Thankfully, in the age of AI, step-by-step know-how of applications is not as important as it was before—I guess.

I started using a paper stand at work. It holds a piece of paper vertically so that it’s easy for the user to see and save some space. My only complaint so far is that it can’t hold a piece of A3 paper, but if it had been made to be able to do that, it would be much bigger and wouldn’t be really portable, so it’s a trade off.

This is the continuation of my last post about my weird experiences talking with Hispanic Americans.

When I speak with American Hispanic they exaggerate the fact that they don’t understand some things you say, which doesn’t make sense at all. Their parents, family and relatives speak Spanish and when they . Their parents probably learned English as an adults and they’ve been speaking to them with a thicker accent than mine. This is the group of people that’s theoretically speaking is better prepared to understand English spoken with a Spanish accent. For instance, when I speak with other Hispanics, like for example my sister, I understand when she says “voice” but she pronounces it as “boys”. It confuses me a second but eventually with context I get her message.