For those who know about as little about WordPress as me a week ago, let me give you a very brief and over-simplified explanation. WordPress is a web content management system, meaning that you can use it for pretty much any type of website, from a blog to a store or a forum. And there are tons of templates available out there for free, so you could just pick a design you like and head right in. But there is a catch. What when you have a pretty good idea of what you want to accomplish and no template fits your needs properly? Yes, I ended up creating my own template. Quite simple and minimalistic, prioritizing functionality over making things look super pretty. After all, there are enough fancy websites out there that make my browser throw up or crash, so I decided to keep it simple.

Where will this Blog go?

I’ve already thrown in a few hints here and there on where I’d like to take this blog, but there has been a bit of uncertainty regarding both the content itself and the technical aspects. After some experimenting, I’m now quite confident in what I’ll be doing with this. There will be three pillars… no, screw that. That sounds like some empty marketing nonsense. One aspect will be the personal blog, where I’ll probably very irregularly write something about what I’m currently busy with. For example, what book I’m reading, what experiment I might be doing, or other stuff I find worth sharing. Another will be book reviews and summaries. Quite self-explanatory, but I’ll be reading books, summarize the hell out of them, and perhaps add some own thoughts to it as well. I am very aware that there are tons of book summarizes out there, even entire companies who do nothing but summarize books, but I want to do it a little differently, which brings us to the third part: knowledge organization. While most book reviews out there only summarize the content of one book, I want to both write a book summary and extract relevant content into a knowledge organization system. This will a be quite extensive, so allow me to explain

Knowledge Organization

When reading a book, I usually take notes and create flashcards when I come across interesting things. But I don’t want to create isolated notes for individual books. I’ll be connecting information across books, sort of creating a “web of information” that’ll grow with each book, article, study, or whatever added. To give you an example with content I’ll try adding here soon: I’ve read the book “The Only Skill That Matters”, which suggested that a certain diet will improve cognitive capability. In another book, “Outlive”, this same diet is connected to other benefits. So why would I talk about this diet in both “The Only Skill That Matters” and “Outlive” separately? Why would I repeat myself? Why would I make it difficult for you to find all information on this topic scattered across this website? Instead, I’ll create a “diet” knowledge page, perhaps a sub-page of nutrition, which will be a sub-page of health, and so on. In this page, I’ll combine the contents from both books, reference to them, and perhaps connect this diet to some other related content, e.g. metabolism, diseases, or whatever. For those who know Obsidian (great tool, you should get it), this approach might not seem too unfamiliar, as Obsidian is great for organizing notes. But while Obsidian offers a “publish” feature, allowing you to turn your notes into a website, it simply isn’t primarily built for web hosting. WordPress isn’t designed specifically for this kind of knowledge organization either, but it’s flexible enough to build it myself. And that’s what I’ll be doing.

Current State

Right now, you’re already seeing my own custom theme in action, and some parts of it are already working as expected. Most of them aren’t even built yet tho. It’ll probably take a couple of weeks or even months to finish building the V1 of this theme framework I’ll then use for organizing knowledge properly. I’ll be honest and say that AI is a great help for this. While I do have a couple of development skills and experiences, translating ideas into a unfamiliar programming language and framework will always be a challenge. It’s like knowing what you want to do and how to do it, but trying to explain it to someone who doesn’t speak your language. So you’d have to look every word up in some chaotic dictionary called documentation that’s super overstimulating an doesn’t have a 1-1 translation from the language you know the the other one, but instead forces you to describe what you want to do in weird ways. Then you’d hope that whatever you found is the right thing and not another 4-word-function that differs from another in just a slight way, get the syntax (grammar) right, and pray. I’ve done that in the past, and it’s hell. So it’s quite nice that I only have to work on structure and code logic but have AI as an translation layer.

With that being said, I’ll try doing things in parallel. That means sharing a blog post every couple of days or weeks, talking about what I’m currently working on, and gradually working on the theme and logic in the background. I’d like to build a very smooth and easy search functionality. You should be able to find anything you’re looking for at ease. Or be assured that it isn’t here yet.

What else I’m busy with

I said I wanted this blog to be personal as well, so that’s what I’ll be doing. I won’t deny that it’s kinda strange. I’ve spent most of my life without any real online or social media presence. As of now, I still don’t have any typical social media accounts, but who knows if that’ll change eventually. It’s even weirder if you’d know me and read this while I have no idea that you’ve discovered my blog. After all, it’s one of the first results that pop up when searching or my name.

Anyways, like I said, I’ve stumbled across an interesting diet called “ketogenic diet”, commonly known as “low carb”. I’ll share all the scientific details on the effects and benefits bit by bit in the Knowledge section. The reason why I’m doing this diet is that I’d like to lose some weight. I used to be quite in shape before moving out, but as my living environment changed, physical changes came as a consequence. For almost a decade, it’s been an ever-lasting and tiring struggle. I’ve signed up for gyms, went on fasts, tried jogging, and quit jogging right after because I hated it. My weight has been fluctuating by ±15kg, which is a lot. This has been taking a mental toll on me as well. I try to maintain a good relationship to food, but it had been clear for a long time that something had to change. Some of my latest (re-)reads include “Atomic Habits” and “Ultra-Processed People”. I’m also gradually working my way through “Outlive”, which provides a lot more scientific depth to how I view nutrition. It’s become very clear that the path I’ve been on hasn’t been a good one and would eventually lead to increased health risks regarding a variety of unpleasant diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease, type 2 diabetes, or cancer. Those are things I’d like to stay away from.

What surprised me a lot was the realization that my weight gain isn’t much of my own fault. In the end, the problem boils down down to capitalism. Capitalism rewards food corporations that produce foods designed to be over-consumed. So they experiment with different textures, flavors, additives, and package designs to see what people will buy and eat the most of. Give this some time and the result is that the vast majority of the foods in your grocery store are ultra-processed, meaning that they include some non-natural ingredients such as modified starch. Those foods influence your hormones in a way where you’ll feel hungrier, making you eat more. In retrospective, this makes a lot of sense. I had the luxury of receiving home cooked meals during my childhood and adolescence, prepared with fresh, natural ingredients. We even had home baked bread most of the time, so all the typical additives and processing didn’t exist in my diet. The second I moved out, the food environment changed. While I did opt for whole grain bread and other “healthier” options, they were almost all UPF. So I ate more and I ended up gaining weight. Lucky for me, I stumbled across those books I mentioned, which provided me with some much needed knowledge regarding the situation I’ve wound up in, allowing me to make some changes, which is where I’ll make use of “Atomic Habits” and “The Power of Habit”.

For now, I’ll leave this here as a little update. Thank you for your time and have a pleasant day!