2022 In Review
# Experiences (in no particular order)
Winning the Broadway lottery and having front row seats for Six w/ Charlie
Hamilton
Wicked with Marshie and Charlie
Taking Charlie to see the Lion King
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge time with Marshie and Charlie
Cory Wong concert at Friday Cheers with Marshie thanks to a recommendation from Jake
Saw Movements at Canal Club with Bryson
Such an amazing Landmvrks and Miss May I show
Started Playing Tennis with Robert
Took a Tennis lesson with Holger Schmidt
Started playing Tennis on Wednesday nights with Marshie and Charlie and then going to Galley afterwards
Charlie joined Richmond Montessori School
Katniss becoming incontinent
Bought a Playstation 5 from a guy in Southside in the snow
Apple claiming water damage in Marshie’s M1 Macbook despite the water indicators being intact and non-reactive
- After much fighting they ultimately decided to reimburse the cost for the display in Marshie’s computer.
Found a PCP and found out I had a vitamin D deficiency
Spent two weeks in New York this summer
- Ate at Los Tacos No 1 (really, really good tacos and Horchata)
- Visited The High Line.
- Won the lottery and took Charlie to see Six on Broadway
- Lin Qiu reached out to me on my birthday.
- Took Charlie and Pietra to the Museum of Ice Cream
- Saw Marcel the Shell
- Checked out Design within Reach and Herman Miller in SOHO
- Visited Little Island
- Crunchy Cereal Milk Shake at Milk Bar
- Tried a Matcha Latte at Chalait
- Breakfast at Maman
- Ate at MeMe with Marshie
- Saw Hamilton
- Tried out the Away Backpack, but didn’t end up liking it
- Ultimately bought the Evergoods CPL24. Love it
- Visited Oula Health in Brooklyn, NY
- Learned how to do laundry in New York
- Learned the coffee shops in NYC purposefully don’t have public restrooms so that people don’t stay all day. They assume that eventually you will need “to go.”
- Rode bikes on Governor’s Island
- Charlie hit a dog and scraped her hand and knee. Thankfully the dog is okay.
- Great food on the island
- Took Charlie to see Six on Broadway. We had front row center seats from the lottery. It was amazing. Show was great and Charlie is obsessed.
- Made Minifigs at Lego
- Made a character for Marshie
- Had breakfast at Maman in UWS.
- Had a Matcha Horchata Latte at Chalait
- Ate at Los Tacos No 1 again. Best taco I’ve had
- Ate at MeMe with Marshie
- Tried a Matcha Latte at Chalait.
Going glamping with Marshie and Charlie
Dorsata onsite in Charlottesville, VA
# Places
- Richmond, VA
- New York Trip
- Charlottesville, VA
- Wintergreen, VA
- Massanutten, VA
- Farmville, VA
- Mathews, VA
- Whitestone, VA
- Bath County, VA
- Salisbury, NC
- Roanoke, VA
- Sea Isle City, NJ
# Accomplishments
# YouTube
Started the year at 340 subs
Gained 3,437 subs
30 Videos published
516,244 views
35,864 watch hours
- (1494.33 watch days)
- (4.09 watch years)
I stumbled upon my Save Chrome Tab Groups with Tabox video from a year ago and the quality difference is pretty significant. Same sweater, much better video quality.
Defined a YouTube Video Process and learned the importance of thumbnail, title, and hook to the success of a moc/YouTube video
Improved the audio and got the microphone out of the shot with the Rode Videomic NTG
Settled into a cadence of one video every two weeks
# Books Read
- Alchemy
- The Design of Everyday Things
- Four Thousand Weeks
- Building a Second Brain
- The Inner Game of Tennis
- Range Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World (Still Reading)
# e-Ink
- Ordered my first eInk tablet, the
Boox Note Air 2 Plus
- This led to one of my most popular videos I’ve done and also opened the wonderful rabbit hole into eInk Tablets
- Kit Betts-Masters reached out with a question and then promoted the video. (Thank you, Kit!)
- Got the
reMarkable 2 in for testing (ended up loving it)
- Learned that I don’t hate the Ballpoint pen on the reMarkable 2, only the Fineliner.
- reMarkable 2 made screen-sharing and connectivity free
- Reviewed the
Supernote A5 X
- It is also great.
# Other
- Started a Blog (brandonkboswell.com)
- Laid the technical foundation for a Newsletter
- Have started getting sign ups, but haven’t started writing for it yet (27 subscribers as of EOY 2022)
- “People are preordering your thoughts”. —Bryson Davis
- Have started getting sign ups, but haven’t started writing for it yet (27 subscribers as of EOY 2022)
- Started the Knowledge Workers Discord Community ( https://discord.gg/v4qdKMughq)
- Obsidian / Second Brain
- Wrote an Obsidian plugin, Obsidian Weekly Review Plugin ( Link)
- Stood up a dashboard for Areas in Obsidian
- Started a Content Calendar in
Obsidian
- It worked okay, but wasn’t perfect
- Still looking for something that I stick to better
- Set up Obsidian to automatically back up to Github. The last thing I need is to lose my PKM system because it’s not backed up. ( Link)
- Created Backlogs in
Obsidian
- Gaming Backlog
- Idea Backlog
- TV Backlog
- Got a Smoker and learned how to smoke a few things:
- Salmon
- Chicken
- Ham
- Chuck Roast
- Got into the Readwise Readwise Reader Beta ( Link )
- Got comfortable controlling OSX without Mouse
- New PR on Peloton
- Marshie and I’s 10th Anniversary
- Re-did the dining room
- Got 8 dining chairs from Charm School for $200
- New table
- New Chandelier
# Things
Camlink
- Made it much easier to record live videos
JDS Atom+
- Sounds better than the Schiit Magni Heresy and is significantly more reliable
Getting an iPhone 13 Mini.
- I love this thing
- I wish it had 120hz display, but otherwise I love this thing.
Womb Chair Replica from Rove Concepts
Got new eyeglasses from Warby Parker and got them adjusted.
- Got prescription sunglasses as well.
Mastodon — Feels like Twitter of old. Which is a good thing- Lululemon Commission Pant
Godox SL150W II
Found a new color picker from Sindre Sorhus. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/system-color-picker/id1545870783?mt=12
Sony A80K
Sparkle 2 is the spiritual successor to Zuma
Finished Death Stranding
# Game Changers
LanguageTool
- I can use LanguageTool to get Grammarly style feedback in Obsidian.
Quartz
- Got the Blog running using Quartz
Packing away old T-Shirts to reduce stress
- Bound Hyper + Backspace to Forward Delete
- Migrated my Karabiner config to .keyboard and posted it to Github at https://github.com/brandonkboswell/keyboard
Obsidian Quickadd Plugin
- Found the Quickadd plugin for Obsidian and dropped the majority of my Obsidian Templater hacks
- Unbound CMD+N from New File in Obsidian to be QuickAdd New File. Now everything is added through QuickAdd.
- Ultra powerful and free
- Learned how to zoom with anchor points in DaVinci Resolve
Descript for A-Roll Editing
New M1 Macbook Pro
Lori Bed to convert the guest room into a Stretching and Yoga room.
AirPods Pro (Second Generation)
# Learning / discovery this year
Began tracking notes on my outcomes when cooking in the cooking folder so that the next time I cook something, I can benefit from my learnings the previous time. Don’t Start from Scratch
Figured out how to bind the Quick App Launching as Toggles.
- Started with TickTick, but now I’ve migrated my whole Karabiner file over
- Got the app toggle behavior the way I want with Hammerspoon. It’s incredibly fast and responsive. Significantly faster than using the previous applescript. I now use this to toggle open Obsidian with Ctrl+Space similar to how I use hyper+space to open Akiflow. You should have instant access to your utility apps
- Later moved this to rcmd
- Figured out how to run Hammerspoon commands from Karabiner
Learned how to get CSV output from jQ.
Swapped over to Warp as my terminal of choice
- Later swapped back to iTerm
Had more productive morning time by avoiding time traps like Twitter and Feedly
- Learned to avoid my phone and Time Traps during the morning routine to get the most out of my most productive time of the day
- Avoid your phone for the first hour of the day
- Move Readwise to lunch time along with Wordle to up more time in the morning
I took Readwise’s Bionic Reading study and found that I read 17% faster with Bionic reading.
Adjusted my daily template to just use: “Today was a good day because:” for reflection
Shifted my left monitor back to portrait so that it can show me more of the list content I consume in TickTick, Slack, Akiflow, Obsidian
Realized I can open any url from my clipboard in a web browser by pasting it into Alfred
Decaffinated Coffee can still make it difficult to get to sleep
Daily & Weekly Reflection is difficult when I’m not on my routine. Especially during the Holidays
I learned that I avoid/struggle with self-promotion due to being accused of bragging as a child.
Read the content you’ve already curated instead of looking for more via RSS.
Connected the softbox to a smart plug to make it easy to turn on and off.
Tasks that aren’t immediately actionable shouldn’t be in your To-Do list they need to be incubated somewhere else
The importance of starting the day with a plan
- If you expect there to be time and energy at the end of the day for your daily highlight you are setting yourself up for failure
- Avoid phone usage before lunchtime as a goal.
Weekly Planning
- Working from a pre-planned week makes the morning routine significantly easier.
Reducing Distractions
- Trying hiding the bookmark bar to try to remove it as a distraction.
Started documenting my Areas of Focus
Learned about the ABZ Framework. I need to figure out how to apply this in projects.
Research as a form of procrastination
Doing a dedicated script-writing session prior to record videos.
Consume less content, produce more
Updated Daily template to include this day last year. Revisiting the journal entry from this day one year ago
PARA‘ified my Google Drive
Reviewing my journal entries from a year ago has been rewarding and insightful