Eric Gregorich

Clearing the Cache #6

Books, hardware, games, articles, videos, and interesting links I've collected recently.

A photo of a flower I took at a botanical garden a couple of years ago.

Books

From Strength to Strength
I'm still slowly reading From Strength to Strength by Arthur C. Brooks. I'm in a reading slump lately, mainly because I've picked up a new game (see below). I have been updating my previous post with some more notes from the book.

Hardware

Lofree Flow84 Keyboard
I picked up a Lofree Flow84 keyboard. I love this thing so far. It's low profile, easy to type on, and sounds great while I type without being too loud. It's a nice mix between a full mechanical keyboard and something like the Apple Magic Keyboard. I wrote more

Lofree Flow84 keyboard: A quick review

Tech

I swapped out my keyboard for the Lofree Flow84 keyboard today. After using a Keychron Q1 Max for a while, I really missed the simple low-profile keyboard.

This little mechanical keyboard is pretty awesome. With an aluminum casing and minimal design, it feels premium.

The typing experience is precisely what I was hoping for. While quite (for a mechanical keyboard), it has a nice "thock" sound and an excellent feel when pressing the keys. It's low profile and very easy to type on.

A couple of minor gripes that don't impact me, but maybe others.

The Flow84 does not come

Why are we getting dumber?

Reading

I was listening to episode 369 of Cal Newport's podcast today and found the deep dive interesting. Cal talked about the Flynn effect, the observed increase in IQ scores over time. While our IQs have increased over the generations, they have recently started to decline.

The reasons for the decline are speculated to be the rise of distracting media, starting with television, then radio, and finally the internet. While the increase in IQ has slowed over the generations, the decrease started around 2010, which is the same time smartphones became a household staple and social media came soon after.

This

Chevelle: Bright as Blasphemy

Music

Bright as Blasphemy is the tenth studio album by the rock band Chevelle, released August 15, 2025, through Alchemy Recordings.

I've been enjoying Chevelle's latest album, Bright as Blasphemy. It's not my favorite Chevelle album, but it has a few great songs.

1. Pale Horse: Heavy and all over the place.

From Strength to Strength

Book Notes

From Strength to Strength, by Arthur C. Brooks.

I picked up From Strength to Strength by Arthur C. Brooks after a Bookworm podcast recommendation. It's essentially about finding fulfillment and happiness in later life. Since I'm well into this stage of life myself, the book caught my attention. It helped that both podcast hosts gave the book a 5-star rating (out of 5 stars).

Our Inevitable Professional Decline

The first chapter of the book talks about our inevitable professional decline. Every high-skilled profession goes through it, and it usually occurs between the late thirties and early fifties. I hadn't given much thought to my "professional decline" until now

My switch to Omarchy

Omarchy

Why and how I switched my personal PC from Windows to Linux using Omarchy.

My personal Windows PC has primarily been used for the browser, VS Code for some light development, and a couple of games. When I decided to try to set up Ghost locally for theme development, I was immediately reminded of why I prefer not to do development on Windows.

Trying to set up Ghost on Windows led me down a rabbit hole of installing and uninstalling various libraries and software packages I had never heard of, and repeatedly rebooting my computer. All without success.

All the documentation and discussions I read made it clear that Linux or Mac was the

Eric Gregorich

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Books

Hardware

Our Inevitable Professional Decline