Thoughts

Blog Design Rework

I am working on redesigining the style of this blog. It is a bit pathetic to focusing on the packaging rather than the contents but I cannot help doing this. Designing is more compelling aspect of blogging to me.

Tags: blog

401k

The 2026 contribution limit for pre-tax or Roth 401(k) is $24,500. Mega Backdoor Roth (converting after-tax 401(k) contributions to a Roth 401(k) or Roth IRA) allows up to $35,250 in additional contributions, while the standard Backdoor Roth IRA (traditional IRA to Roth IRA) allows up to $7,500.

Realistically, however, I won’t have enough cash flow to fully utilize all of these options. Therefore, my primary objective is simply to maximize my employer match.

Since I joined my company in the middle of the year, reaching the full 2026 401(k) contribution limit would require a much higher contribution rate for the remainder of the year, which makes the decision difficult.

Tags: finance

Social Conversation is Rough

Casual conversations in English are still challenging for me. I’m usually excited to start one - and fortunately, my colleagues are proactive about saying hello, so getting the conversation started isn’t the hard part. The challenge is keeping it going. My limited fluency and the lack of conversational topics often cause the conversation to lose momentum.

What’s even more discouraging is that I can sense, almost in real time, when the other person is also running out of momentum and struggling to stay engaged. The moment I notice that, I become even more reserved, which only reinforces the vicious cycle.

I’m beginning to wonder if I should prepare a small cheat sheet of casual conversation topics until this becomes more natural.

Tags: blog

Thought Starter

This entry isn’t meant to archive anything particularly useful. It’s simply an attempt to keep the momentum of writing alive.

Lately, I’ve found myself trapped in a state of paralysis, where every commitment feels weighed down by its opportunity cost. Instead of making progress on anything meaningful, I end up doing nothing at all, wasting time while knowing exactly what I’m doing. Yet I still haven’t been able to break this vicious cycle.

At times, I even catch myself feeling that the time I devote to my full-time job is taking away from the time I could be spending on side projects or building future passive income. To be clear, I don’t feel this way while I’m actually at work - that’s exactly what that time is meant for. Rather, it’s the feeling that lingers outside of work, as if every free hour carries the burden of what else it could have become. I know it’s an irrational way to think, but the feeling persists nonetheless.

Tags: blog

AI Blacksmith

I’ve been thinking a lot about whether publishing my thoughts on a personal blog still benefits me in the age of AI. Yet I haven’t found a convincing answer, and I’m beginning to lose momentum.

One idea I keep coming back to is that, in the long run, the ability to read, understand, and think for myself may become even more valuable than delegating the entire process to AI assistants.

But then an analogy occurred to me - have I ever worried about losing my arithmetic skills simply because computers have been doing calculations for decades?

Am I just an obsolete blacksmith, hammering away at an iron blade while muttering, “AI has no soul, and I don’t like it”?

Tags: blog

Syncing Obsidian Vault with Github Repo in Iphone (iSH + Obsidian)

Using iSH together with Obsidian, it is possible to write and manage blog posts in Obsidian even on an iPhone. The key is the mount -t ios-unsafe command, which maps an Obsidian Vault stored in the iPhone’s Files app into iSH’s Linux filesystem. This allows the Vault, which would otherwise be accessible only through the Files app and Obsidian, to be accessed directly from iSH as well.

However, repositories mounted into iSH using ios-unsafe may encounter Git ownership verification issues, preventing Git operations from running correctly.

If this happens, you can mark the repository as trusted by running:

git config --global --add safe.directory <repository-path>

This tells Git to treat the repository as a trusted directory despite the ownership mismatch introduced by the ios-unsafe mount.

Tags: blog

Interactive Key Visual Design for Blog Posts

I’m considering using JavaScript-based interactive canvases as the key visual for blog posts instead of static images or animated GIFs. Since AI can now generate high-quality JavaScript code with relatively little effort, the production cost is likely to be much lower than it would have been in the past.

For example, a post about the idea that success requires unseen effort could feature a small interactive game where the reader has to keep a swan afloat by constantly paddling its legs beneath the water. Rather than merely illustrating the concept, the visual would allow readers to experience it firsthand through interaction.

Tags: blog

Added a Page for Accumulating Pieces of Thoughts

I came to believe that publishing unfinished posts and iteratively refining them is not the optimal strategy for maintaining high-quality content over the long term. As the number of incomplete posts - ambitiously thrusted in the beginning - grows, it becomes increasingly difficult to track, revisit, and improve each one. Every post should reach a point where, at the time of publication, there is little or nothing meaningful left to add.

So moving forward, I plan to maintain a separate thoughts collection that serves as a workspace for fragmented ideas, notes, and pieces of information. Once the content around a particular topic has matured sufficiently, it will be developed into a standalone post and published.

In the long term, I plan to introduce an Obsidian-inspired graph view to visualize the evolving network of thoughts, making it easier to explore their connections and observe how ideas gradually converge into larger themes.

Tags: blog