Weekly Report #44 - Silent Workers, xLog and Daily Life

Preface#

This article is a record and reflection of life from 2023-07-11 to 2023-08-15.

After nearly a month of stagnation, there was a sense of unfamiliarity when I reopened the weekly report document. In fact, I have accumulated many themes I want to write about and many things I want to say. Although my output has decreased, my desire to share has not diminished due to changes in my life situation; instead, it has spread throughout the deep currents of daily life. As I gradually adapt to the new rhythm of life, I also begin to adjust (fill in) some plans made at the beginning of the year, and the weekly report and blog posts have started to be updated again.

Silent Workers#

yixi_ticket

One weekend, I attended a talk that felt somewhat like a localized version of Ted, featuring many interesting people, including a lovely scholar who lived in the Russian forest for years to save endangered owls, an artist exploring the remnants of ancient temples in the folds of mountains, and an architect who makes books...

yixi_speech

The most impressive and my favorite was a psychological counselor, Teacher Wei Mingyi, who focuses on "short-seeking." I bought her book on-site and got her signature, and I finished reading it quite concentratedly this week. I really like her self-description as an "anthropological apprentice," deeply engaging with a group of workers who were expelled and confined during the glorious era of Keelung Port in Taiwan, walking alongside them to understand their inner world and perspective on life. The book does not overly dramatize their suffering; they have experienced both glory and the abandonment of the times, which is still far from many groups that truly struggle to make ends meet.

book_with_sig

What is shocking is that this group of people seems to have been quickly forgotten in just a few years due to some political/economic shifts. It seems that the era of "the city that never sleeps" never belonged to them, yet they have to spend most of their lives trying to make society accept them again, while also needing to re-understand themselves. To the outside world, they seem to be a group of "useless" people who were abandoned for "not trying hard enough." No one has ever seriously listened to their voices, and they have gradually learned to be silent.

History always decides what should be recorded based on its own (or certain political) standards; they are the overlooked ink. However, the true sense of history often lies beyond the historical materials, in those buried memories. Our current era is similar, filled with too many unspeakable and unarguable things, which are perhaps the true voices of the times.

This brings to mind a Taiwanese film I watched before, "A Sun," where many dialogues, monologues, and long shots seem to present the traces of life as they are, which is probably a unique style of Taiwan, told in a gentle manner. I have developed a lot of interest in some lifestyles and characteristics of the era in Taiwan, and I want to watch a play I have wanted to see for a long time, "Workers."

I am particularly interested in this because during my junior high and high school years, due to my father's work, I lived in employee dormitories with several of his apprentices. Most of those roommates had either not finished high school or had dropped out to work hard in a foreign land, hoping to learn a skill and find a place for themselves.

In an era when smartphones and short videos were not yet popular, perhaps because the nights were too long, they always needed to find a place to pass the time after work. I was occasionally brought into their social circles; sometimes we would spend hours at an indoor roller skating rink, sometimes chatting in a corner of a bustling square, and sometimes just watching Ultraman together in the room with an old DVD player. I was still very young then, and my interactions with them were not deep, and later, due to various changes, we lost contact.

Thinking back now, more than a decade later, they were only eighteen or nineteen at that time, yet they seemed to possess a maturity beyond their years. They needed to find their place in this bustling city at such a young age, yet they had to face the struggles of life, feelings of loneliness, and alienation from society. Perhaps only the freedom of the night could allow them to truly feel something that belonged to them. Later, I inquired a bit about their lives; some returned to their hometowns to start small businesses, while others continued to work hard in Hangzhou, changing places one after another, yet still seemingly unable to achieve the lives they wanted. Just as described in the book, they do not blame this era; instead, they attribute their dissatisfaction in life more to themselves, and that’s all.

Personal Life Snapshot#

boyi_universal

My sister is on summer vacation, so she came to Beijing to play. We went to Universal Studios with a senior. Although it was a weekend during the summer vacation, it wasn't as crowded as I imagined.

We managed to experience several popular attractions. During the "Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey" ride, my glasses flew off, and I still haven't found them, so I went to the glasses city to get a new pair. I guess when you come to the magical world, you have to wear glasses.

The rest is the deep currents of daily life, slow yet beautiful. I met with Liangliang and other teachers who came to Beijing for an inspection, and we talked about many previous matters; I occasionally explore some eateries in the streets and alleys, and I also go to Yonghe Temple to listen to folk songs on weekday evenings, finding a moment of rest amidst the hustle and bustle; I also pick up and drop off my senior during remote work breaks, chatting with the security guard at the door during the wait...

Perhaps my mindset has changed a bit, and my life state and feelings towards life have also changed a lot. It's hard to describe precisely; generally, it feels fuller of beauty and kindness.

I haven't shared my daily life with Nene for a long time. Now her fur is getting thicker, and I might take her for a bath and grooming next week.

nienie_2023_0816_01

nienie_2023_0816_02

Interesting Things and Items#

xLog#

yu_xlog_profile

xLog is currently my main synchronization and backup platform for my blog. I have been reluctant to migrate all my previous data and comments accumulated on Cusdis, so I haven't been able to fully migrate over. However, with the recent launch of the "Portfolio" feature, combined with xSync, xFeed, and xChar, it has become a great personal profile page that I increasingly rely on.

This is my portfolio page: xlog.pseudoyu.com/portfolios

boyi_xlog

Previously, my senior's blog was hosted on the Hashnode platform, which is a simple and easy-to-use platform. However, with the evolution of xLog's features and the freedom it offers creators, I migrated it over. Besides receiving CSB Tokens, the onboarding experience has been great, and binding a domain and setting up umami parsing are also very convenient. I recommend friends who want to have their own blog to give it a try.

This is my senior's blog: boyilu.com

During the migration and editing process, I read through everything again and still feel that writing is the most comfortable and warm way I can think of to understand and gradually get closer to a person.

Personal Information Flow Synchronization System#

Since Railway officially closed its Free Plan on 8.1, the n8n synchronization system was down for two days. After some research, I decided to run it on my own VPS using Docker (a 搬瓦工 ThePlan with 2c2g, combined with NginxProxyManager for reverse proxy, running most of the services I need for data persistence), and I updated the version while I was at it, continuing the synchronization.

As of writing this weekly report, the Telegram channel has 536 subscribers, and I am gradually forming my own input-output habit pattern. Although I have been using Twitter (which might now be called X) less and less, I have reached over 2000 followers, which is a small milestone.

Open Source Budget#

In a previous weekly report titled "Weekly Report #30 - Open Source Budget, Writing Intentions, and Humility Towards Technology," I mentioned the following:

I found it interesting in Randy's article "I set a monthly open-source donation budget of $20" regarding his philosophy and attitude towards open-source projects, which inspired me to set a similar open-source budget for myself. My current setting is at least $20 (about 130 RMB) per month or an equivalent budget, flexibly chosen based on my daily usage and tech stack. I will choose the following projects to donate to:

Independent blog authors and developers who inspire me

Projects I frequently use that solve practical problems during my side projects

Some interesting open-source tools and services that I use frequently

Previously, I regularly sponsored reorx on GitHub Sponsor. This month, after Randy released Cusdis Pro and Notepal, I started sponsoring Randy.

sponsor_randy

💖 I'm sponsoring @randyloop for his passion and dedication to open-source. His products, blogs, and podcasts really bring inspiration to my growth as a programmer and life learner.

Nuphy#

nuphy_keyboard

I occasionally write some articles about productivity tools, and unexpectedly, I was contacted by Nuphy's official team to test the Nuphy Air60 keyboard, which is lightweight and aesthetically pleasing. I plan to take it with me when I go out.

Others#

I feel like many fun things have happened, but it's hard to recall them all at once due to the accumulation over the month. I have started to focus on learning Japanese, working on a set of tutorials and many article themes I want to write, hoping to gradually fill in the gaps later.

Input#

Although most interesting inputs will be automatically synchronized in the "Yu's Life" Telegram channel, I still selected a portion to list here, which feels more like a newsletter.

Books#

Kafka on the Shore, beautifully described, the protagonist's perspective has a sense of detachment from the world that I really like, and the ending is calm yet surprising. Unfortunately, I read this book over several months, mostly on planes or high-speed trains, and with the setting of two parallel storylines, the narrative felt very disjointed. Perhaps I will have the opportunity to read it again properly.
Silent Workers, I have quite a few thoughts on it, which I wrote in the first part.

Articles#

Videos#

Here are some interesting videos I watched:

Podcasts#

Music#

Series#

Tokyo Love Story, rewatching.
The Disguiser, because I still quite like this group of people from Nirvana in Fire, I marked it for a long time and found a weekend to binge-watch it.