<img src="https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/resource.mixa.site/valhallaresearch/Media/Pasted%20image%2020231023145924.png" priority="1"> 
I absolutely love watching <a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/NoBoilerplate">No Boilerplate</a>'s videos. They're simple, well-done, barebones and contain great, well thought-out research on all manner of things, from Rust development to development philosophy. I don't know the person that runs the channel, I've never spoken to them before, this is just pure unbridled fandom.
One of the things they've used throughout their YouTube videos is Obsidian slides, which they release on GitHub for anyone to view. I checked them out once a while back and saw that they're just Obsidian files. This was right around when I was looking into <a href="/01_RESEARCH/NONTECH/Personal%20Knowledge%20Management%20(PKM)" title="Personal Knowledge Management (PKM)">Personal Knowledge Management (PKM)</a> more, and becoming more interested in how to organize my thoughts.
I was also struggling. I enjoy content creation, just not the... act of creating content. I don't like editing, basically. I love to blog and I love to put research out into the world, but the act of editing a YouTube video is mind-numbing to me. I just wish I could do my research, organize it into some simple slides, and put it out there. I wish I could just write more and release more often.
That's what I was thinking as No Boilerplate's creation strategy, Obsidian Publish and the PKM space crossed my radar. I was fairly quickly hooked on the idea, but took way too long to implement it. I started blogging again on Ghost, and then that fell off, then I started and stopped releasing on YouTube a couple times, and I realized that I couldn't ever really make it doing content stuff if I was going to be this inconsistent.
There's a saying in the fitness space that the best diet and workout plan is one that you're going to stick to. Going full vegan when you're overweight and having trouble controlling your dietary urges is hard. Going straight from no exercise to Crossfit, sprints or triathlon training is doable, but very difficult. The mantra states that instead, you should pick a diet and workout regimen that you're actually going to stick to: don't cut too many calories, don't work out so hard you only do it once a week, and ease your way into it.
Enjoying this blog? Follow me on <a href="https://twitter.com/valhalla_dev">Twitter</a> for infrequent updates while I am still deciding to keep that platform around, as well as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSXxklOmlUOJfjzOkKM07gg">YouTube</a>.
It also hearkens back to James Clear's <a href="/01_RESEARCH/NONTECH/Book%20Notes/Atomic%20Habits" title="Atomic Habits">Atomic Habits</a>, one of the best books I've read on productivity, anti-procrastination and more. In the book, James states that one of the most important ways to set a habit is to make it as easy as possible. If you're going to run in the morning and suck at getting up early, you set your clothes, headphones, socks, shoes and water out on the counter the night before, that way it's as simple as hopping out of bed, throwing it all on and getting out the door before the lazy part of your brain has time to register how hard it is.
Content creation, whether blogging or YouTube, is a habit I've been struggling to set... because it's been too hard. Every blog has to be expertly written, thousands of words and a certified big deal. Every YouTube video has to be 20 minutes long and expertly edited, even though some of my best YouTube videos have been low-effort, low-fidelity and short.
So, I made the decision to switch to Obsidian and Obsidian Publish for blogging and will be moving over to No Boilerplate's methodology for YouTube content creation as well. These blogs will be more consistent, probably shorter, lower fidelity and much more focused on "here's the new thing I learned, here's how I applied it." I'll still probably put together some more polished posts over time (they'll appear in <a href="/04_PUBLICATIONS_MOC" title="04_PUBLICATIONS_MOC">04_PUBLICATIONS_MOC</a> when I do) but for the most part, I'll be focused on what I enjoy the most... the research.

Vectors in Rust are fairly similar to arrays in just about every other language.

Rust Vectors

Making My Way Through the Rust Book

Rust's poem_api makes REST API development easy and swagger documentation even easier

Backend API's with Rust's poem_openapi

Creating a DigitalOcean Droplet with Golang

Delaying GrabbrApp's Launch

Full-Stackism and Being a Well-Rounded Developer

Golang Microservices - How to Make a Golang Lambda Function

Pushing the Pico - D3d_Dr0p and Hyperlocal E-Graffiti

There are a lot of languages to pick from. Here is why I think you should pick a couple, and be open to experiment with more

Should you learn multiple programming languages?

Terraform - The Basics

The Gin Framework - REST API's with Golang

Writing is Dead and Meetings are Killing It

CODE MOC

Go Routines - Wicked Fast Concurrency in Golang

Atomic Habits

01_BOOK NOTES MOC

WIP Antifragile - Nassim Taleb

WIP Revolt - Nadav Eyal

Digital Gardens

Junior Developer's Resume

We'd love to believe that we're logical thinkers, but I think there's danger in it

Logical vs. Critical Thinking

Disruption Isn't Just Moving Money Around

Personal Knowledge Management (PKM)

On making a move away from research blogging and toward just research

The Obsidian Switch

The Tightening Belt

Zettelkasten Method

01_NONTECH MOC

WIP - The Qakbot Takedown

Detection engineering isn't just stopping badness. Unfortunately, false positives and false negatives, as well as mis-detections, make it much more complex

Detection Engineering: False Positives, False Negatives and Mis-Detections

1 November 2023 GrabbrApp Update

Rewrite-It-In-Rust seems like it's become a meme, but I started to see the light pretty quickly

Goodbye Golang Microservices, and Hello Rust Monoservice

26 September - Poking around with the Go compiler

22 September - Initial Irritation

16 October - Awesome SANS talk on Golang RE

WIP - Reverse Engineering GoLang Binaries

01_SECURITY_MOC

01_Research MOC

02_DATA_MOC

29 August 2023 - Check Point Shares Analysis of Qakbot Malware Group - Check Point

13 July 2023 - Avast - Go Malware on the Rise

30 August 2023 - Qakbot Malware Takedown and Defending Forward - John Hammond via Huntress

29 September 2021 - Reversing in action - Golang malware used in the SolarWinds attack

29 August 2023 - Qakbot Malware Disrupted in International Cyber Takedown - US FBI