[Obsidian] 入门阶段

 为了将杂乱无章的科研和教学的想法整合到一起，拥有纯文字的体验，我开始尝试Obsidian来记录各种想法。Obsidian的基本形式有点像私人维基。我现在从最简单的开始，熟悉Markdown 语法，建立各种笔记群。

目前还是用的最传统的方式：文件夹。以前在用Evernote的时候采用过序列号numbered notebook，这次也参考了Johnny.Decimal的方法。

然后每一个笔记的标题采用 Date-People-Title-Stage 的格式来排序。

接下来要探索的是tag，还有双链。双链目前因为笔记量还在累计中，用得不多。

当然，最牛的据说是各种插件，且待我慢慢探索。

注意的是，这个无法替代OneNote去和outlook链接，OneNote也比较适合各种截图和标记。其次，可视化方面也无法替代coggle等思维导图的工具（刚好看到一个Coggle 图讲Obsidian）。再次，也不是为了替代roterunner日记本和其他日程提醒、时间管理工具。

另外，最近发现google doc作为组内共享，还是永远的神。

Finally, I am back

I finally got back to writing blogs. That feeling is good. Nowadays ChatGPT and Deepseek are taking over the white-collar job market. Writing and publishing without being polished by AI is as rare as being naked on the street. However, I like to reserve some little space for me to write nakedly--still write what I want to write, and do not care about the grammar error or typo.

I finally got back to coding. That feeling is even better. I can see things being produced by myself directly. This is a controllable process. Even debugging is quite fun. It is my showtime to solve the bug.

I finally got back to cooking some meals. That feeling is quite amazing. I enjoy the time flow around the water rather than the clock. I made mistakes as well. But that is part of cooking, and anything else. I was so afraid of picking up things that I have not been doing for a while, like meditation, like exercise, like coding, and cooking. This proves again that most of my time is spent in dealing with my inner anxiety and doubt.

[Windows] The first full crash ever!!!

I can't believe - just after two months using my new ThinkPad X1, I have not been able to access my File Explorer, Outlook and other Office products, OneDrive and so on since September 3rd. 

Our IT support tried different ways to uninstall OneDrive and tried to enter the safe mode, but it was not successful. Then I initiated a recovery update on my PC on September 5th. After an hour of installation, I was no longer able to access my account. (A few days later I was told by the Lenovo support that this is a BitLocker feature). The reset of the pin is not successful because my operational system has corrupted. 

Pin error

The Lenovo support arrived on September 13rd and helped remove the BitLocker first through my personal recovery key, and then tried to back up some data by manually taking out the SSD and putting it into a reader. After that, they reinstalled a new Windows 11 enterprise on this PC by removing everything from my PC. 

The entire process of diagnosis, trials, testing, and fixing takes two weeks. I was under the stress and anxiety for half of the time. The most challenging part is contacting the Lenovo support. I was not so sure what is covered and whether they can come fix the issues given my warranty. During the period, our IT support are fantastic. And a lot of friends provided useful suggestions, such as backing up the data first, and then reinstalling the OS system. In the future, I hope this will not happen, but even it does, I will be less panicked. 

Here are some set up resources:

Duplicate OneDrive Folders in Navigation Pane

Adobe Font

[Windows] Set up a hard drive

 I recently got a new SanDisk extreme portable SSD, and would like to use it to back up my old PC.

After copying my disk to SSD, I found that a 30 GB on my old laptop becomes a 90 GB on the SSD. It took me a while to understand the reason.

I learned to check the disk allocation unit by going to CMD (administrative) and then type in the following on my PC

>chkdsk d: /f

The format is NTFS

The allocation unit size is 4096 b = 4k

>chkdsk e: /f (SSD drive)

The format is exFAT

The allocation unit size is 1048576 b = 1MB

The reason is that the SSD drive has a 1MB storage unit (mostly for photo and video these days), and it is much larger than 4kb on my PC. For small files, they will take up at least 1MB size in the SSD, which causes the expansion of the space being used. 

[Pycharm] New way to create project from existing sources

In the past versions, to start a new project, I need to use New Project from the File menu. 

But with the 2024 edition, I need to use Open instead. Otherwise it will create a new folder called PythonProject by default under the existing folder. Here is the guidance.

This change makes some sense, but it is quite difficult to navigate.

Do you measure diameter at your breast height?

 What is DBH?

"DBH is shorthand for the diameter of a tree’s trunk measured at breast height... probably the most common and important measurement made on standing trees"

"In the U.S., DBH is the diameter of a tree stem measured at 4.5 feet above the ground. In Canada, Europe, and most of the rest of the world, “metric DBH” is measured at 1.30 meters (4 feet, 3.2 inches). In Japan and Korea, it’s 1.20 meters, and in New Zealand, it’s 1.40 meters"

"DBH is also supposed to be measured on the uphill side of the tree (from the duff, not the soil), perpendicular to the lean of the tree, and above any branches, burls, swellings, or other protuberances that may exist at that height."

https://openoregon.pressbooks.pub/forestmeasurements/chapter/3-2-determining-tree-diameter/

Why 4.5 feet? 

"To make tree diameter measurements meaningful and easy to perform, a standard location and protocol have been developed. Diameters are measured outside the bark at 4.5 feet above the ground on the uphill side of the tree (Figure 3.3). This location, called diameter at breast height or DBH, is above most butt swell and brush. It is also at a comfortable arm position for most people."

Here is an article focusing on the origin of 4.5 feet.

"In 1899, Gifford Pinchot—arguably the most important forester in U.S. history—claimed that 4.5 feet (ft) (137 cm) was the customary height for measuring the diameter of a tree’s trunk, which then became the default height in the United States. However, based on my review of archival forestry texts, there was wide variation in the heights used to measure trees pre-1900. Furthermore, my analysis of male anthropometric datasets contradicts assertions that 4.5 ft is a comfortable measurement height for men. Rather, 4.5 ft was likely Pinchot’s own BH. The selection of 4.5 ft might have also resulted from a mis-conversion of Bavarian forestry data. I discuss the social context in which the 4.5 ft standard emerged."

Why is the title of your article so critical?

In the past, I did not understand the art of writing a title. In fact, now that I gather, the title is the second most important factor for citations, right after being Open Access or not. It is the face of a paper.

A title should tell a story as much as possible. My past titles typically reflects the research goal and method, more descriptive, but then the real question is whether this is the story you want to convey? If your objective is to get people's attention on your novel techniques, then go for it. I am pretty sure this is important in the engineering field. But if you are telling a scientific story, while the methods are just tools for achieving this goal, then the title should be considered a headline for your story. 

A title should be as short as possible. Now that if your title is not that technical, then you can shorten it much more easily. For example, you can cut off your data, approach, research scope/region (unless this detail is important). 

A title should be as concrete as possible. Sure you want to have a short title, but you can't make it too general and vague. You need to select the most important message from probably 3 highlights and strike a good balance between being too broad and too specific. 

It may be a good idea to come up a few titles throughout the writing process. You surely write a title at the beginning and may want to update the title after you have done your first draft. Then communicate with general audience and see their reactions: which one they can get your gist the quickest? which one they will have interest to read further? which one they will consider a good prompt to remember after several months/years?