I have a lot of tasks I want to do, like projects, technical reading, homelab stuff, and itches to play various video games. I feel overwhelmed by all these, but this overwhelming feeling is not quite the unpleasant kind; it's more like an inspirational / motivational kind that makes me excited to do things, and I just don't know where to begin. Maybe there is already a long German word for this feeling? If not, then I hereby coin Lastbegeisterung. This word breaks down into Last, meaning load or burden, and begeisterung, meaning enthusiasm.

In any case, I have to prioritize and triage, all while maintaining an inner voice that says "Pace yourself, think things through, there is no real (in contrast to perceived) hurry to complete these tasks, you can do this."

I have a kanban-cli program that I use to help me organize my tasks.

Projects

  • Write my first Rust program as an implementation of one of my shell or Python scripts. In this case I know what the end goal is, and I need to dive in, research, and learn how to do it in idiomatic Rust. Reading The Rust Book from start to end is just not something I'm keen on doing. I will no doubt use it as a reference, but I learn better in a more hands-on, fuck up and write shitty code first, and then learn how to improve it approach.

  • Write a Python program that takes a URL and a list of tags as input and posts it to my Linkding instance and monomarks. I've already done most of the prototyping for this, and now it's a matter of putting it all together in a usable command line program.1 I'd also like to find a Python way to fetch the page or article's description, which Linkding tends to do automatically after pasting in the link. It seems to resolve the URL and the response contains the description if one exists.

  • Find ways to help the Archive Team efforts. I'm already running an Archive Team Warrior, but I want to do a lot more with the computing and networking resources that are available to me. Maybe one of the core team members in the IRC channels could give me some "quest markers".

Technical reading

  • Christine Lemmer-Webber made a post in the Fediverse that expounds on the differences between ATproto and ActivityPub and how "decentralized" ATproto really is. The post contains a wealth of information, insight, and answers to questions I've had about this topic. I have to finish reading her blog post linked in the OP.

  • While reading part of Christine's blog post, she linked to the Bluesky Federation Architecture Overview, which I would like to know more about.

Homelab

  • Possibly self-host a Bluesky/atproto Relay. This is a bandwidth-intensive program, so I'm not sure if self-hosting it in my homelab is a good idea, but there are at least two ways I can do a test trial:

    1. 1.

      I can start running it in my homelab and measure the bandwidth it uses.

    2. 2.

      I can spin up a Vultr VPS, setup the relay there, and measure the bandwidth it uses without it impacting my home network. I'll most likely end up going this route.

  • Self-host a tangled.org knot. tangled is still very much in the alpha stage, so if I do this I would have to make sure the repositories stored on the knot server are mirrored elsewhere.

  • Find a use-case for a FreeBSD virtual machine on my NAS's hypervisor.

  • Find out if I can contact my Comcast ISP to see if they can somehow route internet from the ISP modem to the WAN port of my OPNsense device. The last thing I want to do is call them and deal with their tech support and try to explain the thing I want to do, while they completely misunderstand and end up redirecting me to other tech supports, where I'd then have to explain the problem all over again and have them misunderstand all over again. Maybe I can make a post on their community forum, and hopefully I'd get a substantive and non-automated response from a Comcast representative that shows they understand what I want to do, and either tells me exactly what I need to do or at the very least provides some actionable information.

  • Assuming the above works out to my satisfaction, then I'd have to plan and configure my home network with my OPNsense device.

Video game itches

  • Finish my current playthrough of Starfield, and document things by filling out missing data pages on the Starfield wiki.

  • Do another, more thorough playthrough of Weird West, where I explore various choices and consequences, explore the maps with a fine-toothed comb, including pickup up all notes, journals, and Western Gazette entries, and document all this in the Weird West Fandom wiki.

  • Do a playthrough of the Shadowrun trilogy. Contribute to the Shadowrun Fandom wiki for each of the games, which seemed pretty lacking the last time I saw it. Honestly this particular itch is stronger than the two above, with Weird West being the second strongest.

I'm excited about all these tasks, but I will no doubt face periods of depression / anhedonia where I can't focus nor feel excited to do any of them. These depression periods tend to be ephemeral, so they are like intermittent tar pits on the track that I have to just trudge through to get to the finish line. I'm the only one racing, so it's not like these setbacks are all that consequential.