git commit -m

• I tested the Projects plugin for Obsidian yesterday to see if it could help with my task management. It looked interesting based on this YouTube video by BenCodeZen. Unfortunately, I did not find it very intuitive to use but may return to it in the future.
• I really enjoyed this video from Nicole van der Hoeven yesterday. It highlights the value of putting your learning experiences in public. I'm trying to do something similar with this blog. I'm impressed by how she is willing to make so much of her content public - I'm trying to find the balance between what I make public and what I keep private right now. She mentions using a changelog, which I really appreciate as a form of transparency and will eventually add here. I've tried using plugins to log the creation date and modified date to each page but have not had success yet. So I may try the Obsidian Vault Changelog plugin she mentions in the video.
• I changed the term "Research Takeaway" to "Research Highlight" for this blog. The layout of the blog is not solid yet, so I made references to this term more dynamic via the Research Takeaways page. Now I can update all text references to this term just by changing the name of that page if I want to use a different term in the future.
• I found an issue with how the backlinks-tracing code I'm using (see my post on the Obsidian forums) can grab irrelevant links. I'm using the code to trace back references for Research Takeaways through a specific set of relationships in Notion-like databases. The databases hold references, content, and insights similar to how the databases for books, newspapers, and blogs are connected to the Summary database in the illustration here. I originally set up these databases using bidirectional links but am now questioning whether moving to outlinks only would make more sense. The problem with using bidirectional links in the databases along with the code I mentioned is that the code allows for jumping back-and-forth between databases. The goal is for links to be traced in a waterfall-like fashion, but since the code is grabbing all linked pages inside of certain folders, links can also be traced back up the "waterfall". Outlinks may solve this problem, but I don't know if I could ever revert that change of removing inlinks (I hope I am referring to "inlinks" and "outlinks" correctly here...) without a lot of manual work. This would also mean changing my database structure to fit code instead of the other way around, which seems like bad practice. And the real issue is that I don't understand the code well enough to make it fit my database structure. Research Takeaways are nothing without accurate references, so I will need to explore some options and make a decision before publishing any more of them here. In the meantime, I've removed Research/Assumptions/Assumptions from the 2024.02.23 Research Highlight because it may have irrelevant entries due to this issue. I manually checked all its references already, so they are fine.

Fasting

• I started a five-day "fasting" protocol today. My plan is to eat two avocados, electrolytes, and other supplements each day for five days. This is similar to the Fasting-Mimicking Diet (FMD), but likely results in a greater reduction in IGF1 availability during the fast due to having fewer calories and protein each day compared to the human version of the 5-day FMD used in studies (e.g. this study). My plan is based on the method described by Damien Blenkinsopp in this episode of The Quantified Body podcast. Multi-day fasting/FMDs come with many potential health benefits that I've written about elsewhere and that I will continue detailing in my Research Takeaways, so I want to make it a habit to undergo some kind of multi-day fasting on a regular basis.