nikitavoloboev/ama

Ask me anything

👋 I learn in public. Build Learn Anything & KusKus. Make things that bring me joy. Love Karabiner, macOS & many more tools.

💛 I share things on X, Instagram & YouTube. Write monthly updates & stream code. Ask me anything.

~/src

Below is all code I share publicly as it exists in my file system.

• config - Apps/CLIs/configs I use on macOS/iOS. Fish, Karabiner, Cursor..
• org
  • learn-anything
    • learn-anything.xyz - Organize world's knowledge, explore connections and curate learning paths
    • tasks - Tasks done exposed as library functions or HTTP endpoints
  • kuskus - Food/drink sharing app
• sites
  • nikiv.dev - Personal website
  • ui - Solid, Expo components/utils
• ts - TS libraries and other code
  • packages
    • ts-utils - Utils of all kind
• rust - Rust crates and other code
  • crates
    • log_macro - Macro to print variable(s) with values nicely
• python - Python libraries and other code
• go - Go libraries and other code
• swift - Swift libraries and other code
• new - Start new projects, create files quickly
  • new-app - New Solid/Grafbase/EdgeDB/Tauri app

~/try

Sponsoring my work on GitHub has perks like personal Discord server priority help. Thank you. 🖤

🐱

ama's Issues

Do you use fzf?

https://github.com/junegunn/fzf

What topic would you speak about if you were asked to give a TED talk on something outside of your main area of expertise?

What is your Terminal app?

As seen here:

What is the book (or books) you’ve given most as a gift?

What is your "time to automate" moment?

First of all, thanks for all of your work, you're an inspiration! 🙏

What is your "automation trigger"? When do you say "Hey, I need to create a hotkey/alfred workflow for this"?

Veganism

Have you ever considered becoming vegan?

Bullet Journaling

What's your opinion on Bullet Journaling?

I'm reading the official book and I'm loving it so far

Do you have a favourite quote? One you live by or think of often?

Github stars organization

I saw that you put a lot of stars in github. How do you not get lost in them? Do you use any third-party service?

How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success?

How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Or, do you have a favourite failure of yours?

What is something really weird or unsettling that happens to you on a regular basis?

Can you open source some of your alfred workflows?

Like nikivi.styaing.on.top, nikivi.search-the-web, `nikivi.search.files". Maybe it's won't work for others. But I'd like to see.

Is there a way of watching your TedX talk?

I would be very interested in doing so :)

What are your morning rituals? What do the first 60 minutes of your day look like?

How do you find the iPad Pro 11'' for reading?

I'm thinking of buying one just for reading PDFs / ePubs and maybe annotate on them. Much reading would be happening while traveling. Thoughts?

What have you changed your mind about in the last few years? Why?

DRM (Digital Rights Management)

What's your opinion a DRM (Digital Rights Management)? Do you avoid buying digital content with DRM? Do you remove DRM? What about social DRM (watermarks)?

Help migrating over to Nix

Hey Nikita,

I'm a huge fan of Homebrew and I use it almost every day, but I've heard great things about Nix ... would you recommend migrating ... is it worth it?

If you do, I've found the documentation very hard to understand ... do you have any tips for someone on a Mac to help them get started/install Nix/install packages using Nix?

What is your favorite method of learning Go?

When you think of the word “successful,” who’s the first person who comes to mind and why?

Your CV

Would you mind posting the source code (the .tex files) for your CV?

What is the worst advice you see or hear being dispensed in your world?

How do you decide between making a repo for one of your lists and putting it into your `knowledge` gitbook instead?

For example, I see your gitbook has a page your VS Code extensions, but you have a dedicated repo for macOS apps.

What is something you believe that other people think is insane?

Several questions about MacOS setups.

Hello!
I have the several questions about MacOS setups.

1. Do you use the option Automatically hide and show the menu bar
   
2. Do you use the option Automatically hide and show the Dock
   
3. What resolution do you use on your MacBook Pro?
   I mean the settings on the screenshot below.
   

Thanks in advance for your reply!

Where do you host your wiki and your personal site? How do you manage deploys?

Java language does not show

Want to core Java learn.

VSCode Night Blue Theme

I was an extreme fan of your VSCode Night Blue Theme, but it seems to have been deleted. Would you kindly consider republishing it please?

What purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last year?

What purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last year (or in recent memory)? The specific brand/model and how you discovered it?

What advice would you give to others looking to achieve their goals and success in general?

How do you tag your posts?

I don't see any tagging in your posts nor in github. I'm assuming you don't use them? If so, how come? I find tagging wonderful for connecting a central idea across different categories.

iTerm - No Title Bars

Hey Nikita! I was digging through your wiki on iTerm 2, and saw you run the app with no title bars. I can't seem to find how to do this, aside from cloning the repo and manually editing/building the app. Is this how you accomplished this, or is there another method?

Programmatic access to a MindNode map, how?

How could I access a MindNode map programmatically?

If a map is available as JSON, how could I find the URL?

Posture

I was having a read through you wiki, and I came across the following:

Always have good posture. Sit properly and upright, don't bend my back/spine.

Coming from a person that struggles with this, how exactly do you enforce this and make sure that you always have good posture?

What is the best or most worthwhile investment you’ve made?

What is the best or most worthwhile investment you’ve made? Could be an investment of money, time, energy, or other resource. How did you decide to make the investment?

what are your clever techniques to learn/research a completely new topic?

Hey Hello, first of all congratulations for all the wonderful things you have done and accomplished. Well earned Kudos 🥇 please keep it up 👍 It inspires poor souls like ours XD

I spend most of my time searching things on internet (apparently I still know nothing about this world ) and I want to reflect on it make researching process little bit easy for me, thats when I came across one of your fine works learn-anything.

And so comes my question, what are your smart techniques that you implement (or would like to implement !) to learn about a totally new topic?
Consider a hypothetical situation like, somebody challenges you to learn everything about Feng Zheng, or wormholes or something like this so bizzare, how do you usually break down the topic at hand?

Is there a workflow we can make to research to totally bizarre topics ?

Hope it make sense :D

What is your daily routine?

When do you check your focus boards? Do you meditate before bed? When do you check the news? Do you have any scheduled breaks?

First of all, love your work!

My question is about how do you go about your work day.

I am curious as to how do you distribute your time to get the most out of your day. I am a freelancer myself and I struggle with how to organise myself and my day, and I thought I could get some inspiration with your routine.

Thanks!

Screenshot of your phone homescreen.

Some Questions for the Wizard

Hello Nikita! I've got a couple of questions for you:

1. Do you know how you got your powerline fonts for neovim to work... I'm having a hard time doing that!
2. I've been on your knowledge repo recently and found your file system... which I really like! Could you tell me what your home (~/) folder looks like? Also, how do you organize your college classwork... I didn't see any folders for that?
3. How to you get your ls command output to look so nice? Mine barely has any colors at all... but I'm using the same pure theme that you have!
4. Although your setup is super nice, you don't have a lot of apps that are free 😄! It would be nice if you could put together a list of free Mac apps! I'd really appreciate it!

Thanks in advance! PS: number 4 is not required

Safari keyboard navigation

Hi Nikita, could you share how you open links after a google search in Safari using your keyboard? The native tab navigation from accessibility feature is too slow and I couldn't find anything similar to Keyboard navigation for Safari, thanks!

How do you organize todos across multiple apps?

According to your wiki, you use Trello, 2Do, and MindNone to store todos, which seems to be quite overlapping. How do you decide where to put a new todo? And in general, how do you track projects, which might have many todos and other corresponding information?

GNU/Linux

Have you ever considered switching to GNU/Linux?

What obsessions do you explore in the evenings or weekends?

What book has had the greatest impact on your life and why?

Remapping Ctrl and ESC

Using Karabiner (or another app), what do you think is the best way I can get the following behavior with my Ctrl key:

Hold Ctrl -> Ctrl
Tap Ctrl -> Escape

I previously used Hammerspoon to do this, but it kept clashing with key rebindings I made in Keyboard Maestro for the Ctrl key. Any advice?

What is your favourite documentary or movie?

I like what you got!

Hello Voloboev,

I recently found your GitHub through the website learn anything, and I think it will help me a lot in my pursuits of education. I value looking through your open knowledge base, such as your Trello and your 'my macOS' stats (I just got a MacBook Pro) It is really fascinating to see how someone can manage their life lol. You seem to have a very complex persona, so I hope my question doesn't inhibit your busy schedule.

I have a few questions; what motivates you through all the tough work? I'm in a position where it seems hard to gain momentum. Also, how did you get started (origin story lol)? And what is your daily routine? Do you call yourself a dedicated person? That is all I have to ask, have a nice week.

Could you share your way of organising Local files?

I enjoyed your content like how you use Mac OS. I am really interested and looking for best way for organizing my digital files

What do you believe is true, even though you can’t prove it?

If you could have one gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it, what would it say?