Books Saved My Life

This post was first sent to my newsletter on January 27, 2023. You really ought to subscribe :) From A Velocity of Being. Art by Yara Kono An extract from the page I read today from A Velocity of Being. Dani Shapiro writes … My Dear Future Friend, I will probably never know you. We may not ever walk this earth at the same moment. But listen carefully. Books saved my life....

February 10, 2023 · Mario Jason Braganza

What I Learned Today (2nd of February, 2023)

Long day today1. I thought I got nothing much done, until I wrote this post. So, more incentive to keep writing these. Python Learning about how to make keyword arguments stick. And how to think about structuring programs Devops Deep dive into how to add prow job listings to the dashboard and viceversa; how to go about looking for the job from the dashboard Urdu / French Lots of practice with vowels and the ‘jiim’ group of letters....

February 2, 2023 · Mario Jason Braganza

Some Books

This post was first sent to my newsletter on January 19, 2023. You really ought to subscribe :) Art by Ricardo Siri Some books are toolkits you take up to fix things, from the most practical to the most mysterious, from your house to your heart, or to make things, from cakes to ships. Some books are wings. Some are horses that run away with you. Some are parties to which you are invited full of friends who are there even when you have no friends....

February 2, 2023 · Mario Jason Braganza

I Should Write Down and Summarize What I Did

I did a lot of research the other day about what I’d need to build a contact form for my website. I bookmarked lots of pages. And today, I come and look at this mountain of videos and sites and pages and woneder what exactly it is, that I am supposed to tackle. Nothing makes sense. I know I ruled out Sendy as an option. Or did I? Do I need Javascript?...

January 23, 2023 · Mario Jason Braganza

Reading Page a Day Books

This post was first sent to my newsletter on January 10th, 2023. You really ought to subscribe :) I took close to a year to finish two of the books from last years reading list. That’s because I was reading them, in tiny bits, in small chunks, a day at a time I was already reading a poem a day and then some time early last year I serendiptioustly ran into this Ryan Holiday post, which spoke to the virtues and pleasures of page-a-day books and daily wisdom....

January 17, 2023 · Mario Jason Braganza

Maria Popova’s Favourite Books of 2022

This post was first sent to my newsletter on December 11th, 2022. You really ought to subscribe :) Hello, hello, it me! :) With all that is going on in my life, I don’t have the will or wherewithal to compile the annual reading list this year. So I’ll keep sending you folks, the lists that I come across and find compelling enough to share. I’ve always ended my annual books-to-read list with the Marginalian....

January 11, 2023 · Mario Jason Braganza

Focus on How Long You Read, Not How Much

Alternate Subtitle: The Best Advice I Could Give You About Reading Lots of Books. via a Tom Gauld Book1 Ever so often, after one of my reading updates on social media, some of my young friends ask me how I get so much reading done. So, I decided to answer it here for posterity and then just point folk here. You are not me. a. I am a book worm....

August 7, 2022 · Mario Jason Braganza

What Is a Real Book

Stolen from Tom Gauld’s Tumblr. click pic to embiggen …

July 17, 2022 · Mario Jason Braganza

Writing as Gardening

GRRM in his latest not-a-blog-post, references this video on the two types of authors, he lumps writer-folk into. Just like him, I try to structure and outline what I write, I really do, and just like him, I can do it fairly ok, and still never really enjoy the process. I never quite understood why, until I realised I was a gardener. This also helped me understand, why the recent move to the Zettelkasten process is helping me write without the stress that I previously used to encounter when I attempted writing something even a teensy bit long or complex....

July 9, 2022 · Mario Jason Braganza

Zettelkasten

Just a little note to mark the beginning of my Zettelkasten journey. While I’ve always had a commonplace book of sorts, all my life, and I’ve always taken tons of notes on books I pay attention to, I’ve never really been able to come up with a way of writing what I think syntopically. Or I can, but its like pulling teeth. Writing what I learnt in Antifragile, took months, and a lot of cursing through gritted teeth....

June 28, 2022 · Mario Jason Braganza