On February 9, I posted on Mastodon that, from now on, I will add a disclaimer to my blog posts that I use LLMs for proofreading and editing my writing, which gained some traction. One of the people who reacted to my post also included a similar disclaimer on their website. Today, someone else reached out to me by email, against the use of such a disclaimer and arguing that the burden will be on the reader to guess how much LLM is used in the write-up. The conversation is still going on, and though we both like IndieWeb, we disagree on the use of LLMs in writing. Despite all the issues with LLMS, I support its use for legitimate cases.
Finally, I got some time on Saturday, February 14, to be outdoors. It was a sunny day with temperatures in the double digits. I first went to Cabin John Park, where I shot three videos for my words and trails Instagram account—two of which I released today. Then I went to Lake Bernard Frank; it was semi-frozen at this point, but what a view. In the end, I went to Swains Lock on the C & O Canal. It's one of my favourites, the view of the Potomac is just amazing, along with the canal and the bikers' campground.
We did not plan anything extravagant for Valentine's Day, but since the weather was nice, we decided to make a fire in our courtyard in a tiny tin flower planter I rigged as a fire ring, roast some hot dogs, and make some s'mores for dinner. We sat around the fire until we finished our dinner, then we went to our building club room to play some board games. It was a low-key, but fun and distraction-free experience with the family.
February has begun, and I had no time to write in my journal. A lot happened, though, in the first two weeks. We had a big snow/ice storm that dumped a lot of snow and ice across Maryland and probably most of the Northeast coast. It's still there, and it will stick around for another week or so before the temperature rises enough to start melting it.
Today, I changed the way I was serving my website. I am still compiling the website on my local machines, but instead of rsyncing directly from my local machine, the rendered website is being pulled from GitHub on the server. I had to do it because I lost SSH connectivity, which was required to push the rendered website to my server. I still don't know the reason, but that's what happened. The system is still okay; a cron job on my server pulls any new changes every 5 minutes. I will have to wait and see if it costs me any more than what I am already paying.
I have also published a book of my postcard collection. It was already online, but I have now removed the restriction on search engines' indexing it. I also updated the license to make it more permissive. I still have to add quite a few postcards to it, but I don't have the time. Here you can see my book https://cardsandstories.rohitfarmer.com/
As usual, I woke up early to go to the gym, and, not to my surprise, it was closed due to the snowstorm. Since it was early morning and there was hardly any traffic due to poor road conditions, I decided to drive around to test the X-modes on my Subaru Outback Wilderness that we bought last year. It was the first time I had driven a car in snowy conditions, so it was thrilling and fun. I did not do anything crazy and went on the road that I am familiar with. But it gave me the confidence that I can take on some challenging roads, and that my car is capable of handling them. This year, I want to try a few overlanding trips, and I am communicating with more experienced people who can help me get started.
We’re under a full-on snowmageddon today. Snow started falling late last night and, as predicted, is expected to continue until tomorrow morning. We’ve been getting warnings for days (NOAA News), with people urged to prepare for power outages and road closures. This is shaping up to be a historic snowstorm impacting much of the U.S.
Over the past three days, we stocked up on food and water, charged all our devices, replenished the medicine cabinet, and went on the hunt for sleds for the kids. Sleds, it turns out, were surprisingly hard to find. Facebook Marketplace was a bust—either the listings disappeared quickly or prices were jacked up to nearly the cost of a brand-new sled.
Thankfully, I learned that the local ACE Hardware in Bethesda would be getting a fresh shipment on Friday morning between 7 and 9 a.m. I showed up at 8 and walked out with two sleds. I get an odd kick out of moments like these—tracking down scarce items through a bit of inside information and good timing, and beating the rush by showing up at just the right moment.
Here are some pics of empty shelves at Aldi, a couple of days before the storm. People were panic buying, and almost everything was gone - water, bread, and meat were the first to sell out. This was the first time I have seen grocery stores running out of food since the COVID lockdowns.
I also took the opportunity to live-stream the storm today on YouTube from my balcony using one of my old phones. I like live streams and constantly think about things that I can live stream. I will build a setup to live stream from more places more often. Right now, one of the limiting factors is the internet bandwidth outside my house. My mobile phone doesn't have unlimited 5G data, so I don't like to live stream much when I am outdoors.
Today, I went for a walk at Cabin John Park, checked out the campgrounds, and walked along the creek. It was cold, but sunny, beautiful weather for a day out. I have been stuck at home since the beginning of the year, first because of illness and then because of bad weather. I am glad that I decided to go out today; it was therapeutic. I also managed to make a small video for my words and trails Instagram account. I never regret the time spent outdoors.
I am slowly transferring my notes from Simple Note to Joplin on my phone and home desktop. I knew about Joplin, but never seriously tried it. Now I have figured out how to synchronize notes using Dropbox and enable end-to-end encryption (E2EE). E2EE is what attracted me to give it serious thought, as I am trying to minimize the amount of my data that goes to tech companies. Joplins E2EE is device-to-device based and synced through the system of your choice; in my case, it's Dropbox. Even the folder on Dropbox is encrypted at rest. The only downside is that I can't share the notes or invite collaborations with my current setup. But other than that, I am liking it so far.
It's been more than a week now since I have cough and general fatigue. I am able to work, but I do not feel 100%. The drive to and from Ocean City on New Year's Eve and Day, and the cold wind, got me bad. Fortunately, I have not had a fever so far, but overall, I feel dull. I don't like getting sick; it's not the sickness itself that bothers me, but having my whole house shut down because so many things depend on me.
Today, I saw on Mastodon that India will soon require all the messaging apps to bind to a physical sim card. This is to curb fraud happening in India using WhatsApp and other messaging apps. It's all good from a fraud prevention point of view, but such decisions always hurt the innocent more than the perpetrators. I still use my Indian WhatsApp number in the USA on the same phone as my US WhatsApp number. Soon, I may not be able to do that. Either I will have to carry two phones, with the Indian WhatsApp bound to its physical SIM card, or give it up altogether. It's not the end of the world for me, but it will be an inconvenience. Right now, I have a neat setup for tracking both groups' numbers. We don’t even know whether such measures work in the long run. I think, instead of restricting and banning things, the government should spend more on educating people about how to stay safe online.
I am having home computer issues. All my home laptops are old now, and one by one, they're dying. I don't want to buy a new computer yet, but I will need to find a solution soon. I have just converted my home server, a Lenovo ThinkPad, into my everyday laptop, as my Dell Inspiron is unreliable when starting up. I did a fresh Linux Mint install on the ThinkPad and installed all the tools I need for my hobby project development and video editing. I don't know if I will use the same system now for Plex and back up my phone photos. I may have to go back to my old Raspberry Pi setup. I still have my Raspberry Pis, which I can revive again. I will think about it before making everything so complicated that it's hard to maintain.
I had nothing else to write today, but I wanted to test if my build system for this journal is working on my ThinkPad with the fresh installation, hence this late-night rant.
We returned home from Ocean City on January 1, 2026, but before we left, we went to the beach and the boardwalk after checking out. It was extremely cold, but the kids loved their time on the beach playing with the sand and then in the arcade on the boardwalk. Since Ocean City is a summer destination, it was a ghost town when we went, which is understandable. I have no complaints, as all I wanted was to get out of the house after a week-long staycation during the Christmas week, and I can never get enough of the ocean, no matter what time of the year it is.
The journey was tiring, and it will take me this weekend to get out of the fatigue and the sore throat I developed before I can be back to normal.
View of Ocean City, MD, from our room on January 1, 2026.Elsa buried her legs in the sand.LaQuinta hotel, where we stayed.
