{"id":4542,"date":"2020-01-02T16:08:48","date_gmt":"2020-01-02T23:08:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dresan.com\/blog\/?p=4542"},"modified":"2023-03-11T23:22:34","modified_gmt":"2023-03-12T06:22:34","slug":"never-give-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/2020\/01\/02\/never-give-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Never Give Up"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

So, 2019. What a mess. More on that later; as for me, I’ve had neither the time nor even the capability to blog for a while. But one thing I’ve noticed is, at least for me, the point at which I want to give up is usually just prior to the point where I could have my big breakthrough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example: Scrivener.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had just about given up on Scrivener<\/a>, an otherwise great program for writers that helps with organizing notes, writing screenplays, and even for comic book scripts. But I’d become used to Google Docs<\/a> and its keyboard shortcuts for hierarchical bulleted lists, not entirely different from my prior life using hierarchical notebook programs like GoldenSection Notes<\/a>. But Scrivener’s keyboard shortcuts were all different, and the menus didn’t seem to support what I needed, so I had started trying alternatives. Then I gave on more shot at going through the manual, which had earlier got me nothing.\"\"At first this looked like a lost cause: Scrivener depended on Mac OS X’s text widgets, which themselves implement a nonstandard text interface (fanboys, shut up, sit down: you’re overruled. case in point: Home and End. I rest my case), and worse, depend on the OS even for the keyboard shortcuts<\/em>, which require the exact menu item. But the menu item for list bullets actually was literally a bullet, which normally isn’t a text character in most programs; you can’t access it. But as it turns out, in Scrivener, you can. I was able to insert a bullet, find the bullet character, and even create a keyboard shortcut for it. And it did what it was supposed to!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Soon I found the other items I needed to fill out the interface that I’d come to know and love in Google Docs for increasing\/decreasing the list bullet indention on the fly while organizing a list:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Eventually I was able to recreate the whole interface and was so happy I wrote a list describing it in the middle of the deep learning Scrivener notebook that I had been working on when I hit the snag that made me go down this rabbit hole (namely, wanting to create a bullet list):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Writing this paragraph itself required figuring out how to insert symbols for control characters in Mac OS X<\/a>, but whatever: a solution was possible, even ready to be found, just when I was ready to give up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I found the same thing with so many things recently: stuck photo uploads on Google Photos, configuration problems on various publishing programs, even solving an issue with the math for a paper submission at work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I suspect this is everywhere. It’s a known thing in mathematics that when you feel close to a solution you may be far from it; I often find myself that the solution is to be found just after the point you want to give up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve written about a related phenomenon called this “working a little bit harder than you want to” but this is slightly different: it’s the idea that your judgment that you’ve exhausted your options is just that, a judgment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It may be true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Try looking just a bit harder for that answer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

-the Centaur<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pictured: a photo of the Greenville airport over Christmas, which finally uploaded today when I went back through the archives of Google Photos on my phone and manually stopped a stuck upload from December 19th.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So, 2019. What a mess. More on that later; as for me, I’ve had neither the time nor even the capability to blog for a while. But one thing I’ve…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4543,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[193,230],"tags":[8,128],"class_list":["post-4542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-real-life","category-startuppery","tag-intelligence","tag-making-computers-useful","ratio-2-1","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4542"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6444,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4542\/revisions\/6444"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}