<?xml version="1.0"?><rss version="2.0"><channel>
<title>jtecca's gopherhole</title>
<link>gopher://tilde.institute/~jtecca/</link>
<description>this is my gopherhole</description>
<item>
<title>The Inner Game.txt</title>
<link>gopher://tilde.institute/0/~jtecca/phlog/20220425-the-inner-game.txt</link>
<pubdate>25 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000</pubdate>
<description><![CDATA[<pre>
----------------------------------------
The Inner Game
April 25th, 2022
----------------------------------------
If you ever felt "in the zone", where you are consciously
unconscious and wholly consumed with a task that you're
working on -- that's /flow/.
This state of immersion happens when your actions and
awareness are intertwined like old tree roots. Losing your
feeling of the inner critic and those "other" voices in your
head are signs that you are in a flow state.
In zen buddhism, there is a concept of the two minds -- the
big mind and the small mind. Big mind thinks about
connections in the world and is engaged when you're thinking
beyond yourself. Small mind is the opposite; the critical
and self-reflecting part of your mind
There's a component to getting yourself into this flow state
which requires your big mind engaged in the activity. I've
been thinking and practicing on what works for me and wanted
to share what I have found what engages my brain into a flow
state.
* Know the outcome
I ask myself what I am hoping to accomplish before I start
my activity. This is something simple that is a measurable
goal. I find I don't need details about the goal -- usually
it's something along the lines of "finish reading a chapter"
or "create something new".
It's important to me to keep the goal criteria loose --
frequently I fail to achieve my goal but those failures can
be powerful teaching methods if you leave yourself open to
reflection after you're done.
* Removing criticism
One of the things I struggle with most with achieving flow
is letting my inner small mind critic talk me out of what I
am doing in the moment, typically whenever I start to struggle.
The more mindful I am about recognizing this feeling of the
small mind critic the easier time I have of reminding myself
of my goal and letting myself continue even if I fail.
Criticism is a powerful tool, but engaging it immediately
takes me out of a flow state.
I have been mindful about reserving time for criticism after
I'm done with my flow state activity. If I'm writing for my
activity, I just write for a while without any corrections.
If I'm playing music, I just improvise and create without
being critical and let myself be open with the results.
Having tools that allow you to record your sessions for your
activity can be a big boon because they allow you to
completely disengage having to keep track of your activity
while you stay in the zone.
* Practice for the big mind
As a person who has been a musician for most of my life, I
take for granted how much unconscious training I do that
non-musician people may not be predisposed to. This is
called "practice", which means doing an activity in such a
way that you don't think about individual components of the
activity such that big/unconscious mind can "just do" them.
This includes all of the physical motions for your activity,
calculations, and any minutiae that for an unpracticed mind
would take a considerable amount of focus on these
individual components.
Investing time in getting these smaller components of the
activity to be automatic means that you can think about the
goal and let your big mind "do the right thing". When I'm
playing a musical solo, I don't think about the individual
notes of a scale or rhythms -- I've practiced them in
isolation so that I can just pay attention to the melody I'm
making in context to the rest of the music.
* Context is key
This is less specific to flow, but is something I've found
to be important to me to achieving the state: the context of
your environment can help you get into flow.
One of my music composition professors once told me a story
about how he found that sharpening his pencil before sitting
down at the piano acted as a locus for getting him into a
flow state. It became a ritual for him both physically
preparing his tool for the activity as well as sharpening
his mind.
Consider the space that you work in -- are there too many
distractions to interrupt your flow? You may consider what
tools and resources you need to have close at hand to help
minimize the amount of time that would pull you away from
your activity.
-----
Further reading:
THE MIND ILLUMINATED
https://archive.org/details/TheMindIlluminatedByCuladasaJohnYatesPh.D.MatthewImmergutJeremyGraves2017
THE INNER GAME OF TENNIS
https://archive.org/details/innergameoftenni00gall_0
</pre>]]></description>
</item>
<item>
<title>Kitbashing.txt</title>
<link>gopher://tilde.institute/0/~jtecca/phlog/20220119-kitbashing.txt</link>
<pubdate>19 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000</pubdate>
<description><![CDATA[<pre>
----------------------------------------
Kitbashing
January 19th, 2022
----------------------------------------
Sometimes it is beneficial to steal ideas from others.
Creativity can be seen as taking some existing idea and
combining it with another existing idea to create a
brand-new composite.
One of the pasttimes that I've been thinking about a lot
recently are table-top RPGs (TTRPGs), such as the famous
Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) or Pathfinder series. I've been
lucky to play with numerous groups of people who all
(literally) bring new ideas and styles of play to the table.
I've similarly acted as a player character or referee across
many of these games.
This has given me an incredible vantage point to critique
many of the rules and their interactions within my group of
friends and the systems we use to run our games. Most of
the time we run the D&D version du jour because of ease of
access of resources and familiarity -- after all, we're all
people with day jobs, kids, and other demands from life
beyond being unemployed teenagers when many of us started
playing TTRPGs.
However, I've long had an itch to design my own set of rules
that streamlines what I think are the best parts of TTRGPs:
the unfolding nature of narrative that arises from multiple
people crafting a story together. When it's pulled off, it
feels primordial like our ancestors who have gathered around
a fire on a stark midwinter night to weave a tale together.
But there's a lot that interrupts the attention of everyone
playing: rules. A strict adherence to rules are the
hobgoblin of player's minds. Some become obsessed with them
in a ritualistic sense and can't function if an infraction
is not called out. Others see the aim of "winning" as
bending the rules to their advantage. Others, mostly newer
players, are often befuddled by the rules and interrupt the
flow of narrative to clarify the rules.
So my primary goal for this new system is to strip out the
bits of the system into a bare-bones set of rules. More
like abstract rule systems. Then, if a group of players
wanted more crunch -- more combat and tactical-ness in their
game -- you could bolt on new rule systems or modify an
existing rule system to match what ultimately helps the
story move along.
Any story, albeit a TTRPG or a novel, needs to have a way to
give rise to and resolve conflict. Without a core system to
do this, you don't have a story. So the core system for
this new RPG is rules for how conflict is resolved that is
common to all other systems that interact with the game.
From there, it's a matter if designing little micro-systems
that (hopefully) harmonize with the core conflict resolution
system depending on what the style of game needs to tell a
good story. I have a basic skill system cooked up, a wild
magic system, etc, that can all be bolted into the core game
as needed.
If this sounds like the GLOG[0] to some of you, then yes,
that's the main inspiration, although I pull what I think
are a lot of other nifty abstractions from other games into
my kitbash RPG. I'm not stealing many features directly
from the GLOG other than this concept of interchangeable,
abstract, and bolt-on-able systems.
One of the core inspirations for combat is a modified
version of the Frostgrave[1]/Stargrave[2]/Rangers of Shadow
Deep[3] (all with the same main author/designer) which are
systems intended for 28mm wargamming that I'm redesigning
for theater of the mind play that can also be adapted back
to miniature play as a visual aid. The concept that I
really enjoy from these games is that combat is reduced to
two twenty-sided dice, and that damage done to an opponent
comes down to some minor stats and the results of the dice
rolls. It simplifies a lot of choices about weapons, combat
stats, and combined with a theater of the mind approach that
removes the 'stickiness' of D&D battles to allow for more
varied storytelling and less war of attrition of stats.
A general goal of mine in regards to combat is to make turns
go fast. Slow combat in other TTRPGs is a death knell;
sitting waiting around for a wizard to check on spells, or
watching a fighter do dozens of mental math calculations for
multiple attacks saps the energy out of the other players.
Spells and attacks should be simple and straightforward.
You'll do less on a turn, but your turn will come back to
you quicker than in other games which will ultimately keep
everyone more engaged.
I'm pulling lots of ideas from Dungeon Crawl Classic[4]'s
magic system of rolling a twenty sided dice plus some
modifiers to determine how a spell reacts. This adds a lot
of randomness to spells that makes them wild and surprising
for all. Magic will be powerful to encourage people to take
the risk to use it, but the costs will be high when it runs
amok to keep the element of danger and wonderment present at
the table.
I'm stealing the concept of classless players characters
from a bunch of different systems. While classes are a nice
feature for helping to ensure that everyone has a specialty
to focus on during play, more often then not players develop
strategies for overcoming challenges that don't make use of
the full party's compliment of skills. What I'd like to do
instead is to provide all of the abilities, skills, feats,
etc that typically make up a player character but let a
player build their own set of abilities via a point-buy
system. This can give a player of feeling of control and
growth over a character that isn't preordained by a class.
There's several more features that I'm planning to use as
abstract systems, most importantly inventory slots instead
of calculating weight as well as Usage Die from the Black
Hack to track anything that can be considered consumable
(even magic items such as rods, weapons, armor, etc). I'd
like to have an optional item crafting system as well an
optional system for potion brewing to encourage new forms of
play. All of these system's designs will be focused on the
goal of creating interesting and emergent storytelling.
This new game is a massive, wonderful, twisting bunch of
Lego blocks that I've scattered over the floor to kitbash
into something that is uniquely personal for me.
I'm not planning on ever releasing the rules because of the
massive amount of stealing that I've done, but if something
like this resonates with you, I'd encourage you to follow
down my same footprints. Start with a core system that
mostly works for you and then think about how that system
can be broken down and rebuilt. Think about your main goals
and find ways to reward everyone at the table for creating
wonderful tales together.
---
[0] - https://goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-glog.html
[1] - https://ospreypublishing.com/frostgrave-second-edition?___store=osprey_usa
[2] - https://ospreypublishing.com/stargrave
[3] - https://www.modiphius.net/collections/rangers-of-shadow-deep
[4] - https://goodman-games.com/dungeon-crawl-classics-rpg/
[5] - https://the-black-hack.jehaisleprintemps.net/english/
</pre>]]></description>
</item>
<item>
<title>Doing Nothing.txt</title>
<link>gopher://tilde.institute/0/~jtecca/phlog/20210908-doing-nothing.txt</link>
<pubdate>08 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000</pubdate>
<description><![CDATA[<pre>
----------------------------------------
Doing Nothing
September 08th, 2021
----------------------------------------
I've been reading "How to Do Nothing" by Jenny Odell[0] (which ironically pops
up on lots of social media) lately and have been thinking about my attenion.
Attention is the essence of life -- it is what uniquely qualifies us as beings
alive at this moment on this planet.
---
The way that we direct our attention matters more than anything else: it
determines what information comes to our conscious brain, it shows us a pattern
for what we care about, it reflects our thinking and understanding of the
world, and it is the single greatest gift that we can give as living beings.
---
Awareness implies attention, and is the lens through which we gain context from
our attention.
What are you aware of? That should be easy to answer.
What are you unaware of?
Try focusing your attention on something that you don't typically direct your
attention to. Try being comfortable being uncomfortable with holding your
attention for longer than you typically would on something you don't normally
pay attention to.
You might surprise yourself with what you have found.
---
[0] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/600671/how-to-do-nothing-by-jenny-odell/
</pre>]]></description>
</item>
<item>
<title>Sustain.txt~</title>
<link>gopher://tilde.institute/0/~jtecca/phlog/20210526-sustain.txt~</link>
<pubdate>26 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000</pubdate>
<description><![CDATA[<pre>
----------------------------------------
Sustain
May 26th, 2021
----------------------------------------
I recently received a copy of a running book called "I Hte Running and You
Can Too: How to Get Started, Keep Going, and Make Sense of an Irrational
Passion" by Brendan Leonard.
It's a short, partly illustrated book that one could easily finish over a long
lunch break where Leonard explains the mental side of doing an activity that is
partially irrational and incredibly difficult.
What really struck me was that this wasn't really a book about running at all,
but instead a book on understanding how to take an approach of a sustained pace
in the face of obstacles like pain, sleep, energy, willpower, and more.
As I've mentioned before, my true passion beyond computers is music. I
practice almost any day that I can. I've played on stages for thousands of
people. And this book was fundamentally describing my process of learning a
skill through pain, sleep issues, lack of enery, low willpower, &c.
The central premise of the book is twofold: you build big things out of very
small blocks of work and that the pace of your work should be /sustainable/
over a long period of time.
If you want to learn to play a guitar like Jimi Hendrix, you start by taking
little steps like understanding the notes of a guitar, learing to fret
properly, learning to tune your guitar. These are little blocks that you build
upon to understand scales, modes, harmony, counterpoint and more. Eventually,
over a period of sustainably working on many little things, you build up enough
skill to start to do things like play a Hendrix-inspired solo.
I see the same thing with software development: you start with tiny little
"hello world" programs, understanding compilers or interpreters, text editors,
Makefiles, libraries, packaging, and more to build complex software.
The biggest impact after reading this book has been the impact on my own
running regimen by slowing down to a sustainable pace. I enjoy my runs even
more because I am more in tune with my surroundings and because the easier pace
allows me to run more frequently compared to a challenging run. This is all
because I strive to make each effort /easy/ and that each effort is just a
small building block into something bigger.
I encourage you to contemplate your own pace for long-term goals. Maybe you
have attempted a skill only to find that you don't stick with it for a long
period of time. It could be that you need to consider a sustainable pace and
understand how your effort fits into a larger picture the next time you attempt
such an undertaking.
</pre>]]></description>
</item>
<item>
<title>Sustain.txt</title>
<link>gopher://tilde.institute/0/~jtecca/phlog/20210526-sustain.txt</link>
<pubdate>26 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000</pubdate>
<description><![CDATA[<pre>
----------------------------------------
Sustain
May 26th, 2021
----------------------------------------
I recently received a copy of a running book called "I H♥te Running and You
Can Too: How to Get Started, Keep Going, and Make Sense of an Irrational
Passion" by Brendan Leonard[0].
It's a short, partly illustrated book that one could easily finish over a long
lunch break where Leonard explains the mental side of doing an activity that is
partially irrational and incredibly difficult.
What really struck me was that this wasn't really a book about running at all,
but instead a book on understanding how to take an approach of a sustained pace
in the face of obstacles like pain, sleep, energy, willpower, and more.
As I've mentioned before, my true passion beyond computers is music. I
practice almost any day that I can. I've played on stages for thousands of
people. And this book was fundamentally describing my process of learning a
skill through pain, sleep issues, lack of enery, low willpower, &c.
The central premise of the book is twofold: you build big things out of very
small blocks of work and that the pace of your work should be /sustainable/
over a long period of time.
If you want to learn to play a guitar like Jimi Hendrix, you start by taking
little steps like understanding the notes of a guitar, learing to fret
properly, learning to tune your guitar. These are little blocks that you build
upon to understand scales, modes, harmony, counterpoint and more. Eventually,
over a period of sustainably working on many little things, you build up enough
skill to start to do things like play a Hendrix-inspired solo.
I see the same thing with software development: you start with tiny little
"hello world" programs, understanding compilers or interpreters, text editors,
Makefiles, libraries, packaging, and more to build complex software.
The biggest impact after reading this book has been the impact on my own
running regimen by slowing down to a sustainable pace. I enjoy my runs even
more because I am more in tune with my surroundings and because the easier pace
allows me to run more frequently compared to a challenging run. This is all
because I strive to make each effort /easy/ and that each effort is just a
small building block into something bigger.
I encourage you to contemplate your own pace for long-term goals. Maybe you
have attempted a skill only to find that you don't stick with it for a long
period of time. It could be that you need to consider a sustainable pace and
understand how your effort fits into a larger picture the next time you attempt
such an undertaking.
------
[0] https://bookshop.org/books/i-hate-running-and-you-can-too-how-to-get-started-keep-going-and-make-sense-of-an-irrational-passion/9781579659882
</pre>]]></description>
</item>
<item>
<title>Charms.txt</title>
<link>gopher://tilde.institute/0/~jtecca/phlog/20210525-charms.txt</link>
<pubdate>25 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000</pubdate>
<description><![CDATA[<pre>
----------------------------------------
Charms
May 25th, 2021
----------------------------------------
If it isn't already clear from previous entries in my phlog, I am a heavy
GNU/Emacs user. One of the most difficult things was trying to find a keyboard
that supported long hacking sessions both in terms of body ergonomics as well
as something lightweight and comfortable on my fingers. I feel as though I
finally found a proper solutions for both.
I now own two Keyboardio Atreus'[0], one with Box White switches and a second
with Box Browns. The former switches are for typing at home while the latter
is so I am not sacrificed to the silence gods by my co-workers when I
eventually return to working in an office.
The split on these keyboards is the most comfortable that I've found,
especially compared to a fully split keyboard like the Iris[1]. They allow me
to keep my arms tucked in to my body, forearms perpendicular to the floor, and
my wrists level as well.
I have flashed both Atreus' with QMK[2] since ~I have tasted its power~ I have
used it previously on all of my other mechanical keyboards so I am easily able
to replicate my same setup across both keyboards.
I have been using a custom layout that keeps CTRL and ALT easily under my
thumbs (along with some other commonly used mods) because it's much easier to
use those keys with your strongest fingers (the thumbs) without having to move
them a considerable distance (like on standard keyboards where the space bar is
entirely too long to cause you to need to physically move your hand!).
It works, it's simple, and it's efficient. I never had issues with "emacs
pinky" or had to do any of the weird hacks others have had to do with heavy use
of an emacs-like editor.
However, a co-worker of mine recently told me about a keyboard layout called
"Miryoku"[3] which is built on top of QMK. The co-worker is a regular
vi/vim/nvim user, but told me he found value in the layout -- it's main feature
is that the four main modifiers (CTRL, ALT, SHIFT, SUPER) are all available
under the home row when certain keys are held down instead of pressed.
It's not immediately obvious, but this layout was designed for heavy emacs-like
editor usage!
I hacked together the layout to run on a Keyboardio Atreus (something I still
need to submit back upstream when I have a chance) and spent a week suffering.
Lots of bindings were flipped compared to my previous custom layout and
rewiring my brain to flip was very difficult. I printed out the cheatsheet and
kept it on the desk next to my keyboard. Along with the flip, I spent a lot of
time trying to get used to balancing out hitting mods between two hands instead
of a single mod under one thumb.
After two weeks (and a lot of practice in Klavaro[4]) I was able to make using
the layout feel intuitive, and didn't have to mentally strain to make swapping
modifiers between both hands a reality. It was also around this time that I
noticed that putting in that effort made a big difference in comfort -- by
balancing mods between both hands I am able to keep both hands more relaxed and
even more centered because it elimiates almost all need for reaching anywhere.
I should mention that I still kept a QWERTY layout on Miryoku and have this
feeling of relaxed balance between both hands even with the inherent issues
that is the QWERTY layout. Maybe someday I'll be brave enough to try a more
efficient layout, but for now I needed a stepping stone into this new world.
{}{}{}{}{}
I am about a month in to using Miryoku as my main layout and it is a joy. I
still keep a Preonic around with my custom pseudo-typical layout for playing
games (since having mods activate when held in Miryoku means you would have to
tap A S and D if you're using that to control a game!) but otherwise I am very
happy to have made the switch.
Have you gone through a typing upheaval? Do you stick to a fairly standard
keyboard/layout?
-----
[0] https://shop.keyboard.io/products/keyboardio-atreus
[1] https://keeb.io/collections/iris-split-ergonomic-keyboard
[2] https://qmk.fm/
[3] https://github.com/manna-harbour/miryoku
[4] https://klavaro.sourceforge.io/en/
</pre>]]></description>
</item>
<item>
<title>Something Has To Change.txt</title>
<link>gopher://tilde.institute/0/~jtecca/phlog/20210401-something-has-to-change.txt</link>
<pubdate>01 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000</pubdate>
<description><![CDATA[<pre>
----------------------------------------
Something Has to Change
March 31st, 2021
----------------------------------------
I am taking this little moment as a breath, as a pause. A
fermata in the pulse of ticking time.
I am tired. It took me too long to realize just how tired I
am. Tired from the politics of work, from equipment that I
thought reliable but failed, from dealing with other
people's problems, from the state of the world the past few
years.
There is a weight to this tiredness that is infinite and
intangible.
Part of this weight is a choice, because anyone who is ever
tired has a choice. Sometimes these choices are poor, but
we should recognize that we still have them.
I can make a choice to change my mental state, my physical
state, the rhythms of my own life.
I need to spell this out clearly for myself because I get
stuck in mental ruts with negative thoughts which breed more
negative thoughts.
The sort of thoughts that keep me from doing what I love.
Thoughts that lock me in and reinforce the rut that I find
myself in.
I am lucky in that I have moments where I become
"extra-vagrant"; I glimpse myself from a third eye detached
from my body. And I see a sine wave from bliss to
suffering, over and over, postive to negative to positive, a
line drawn over time.
A line that I can easily trace with my thumb from my notes,
from my feelings, from the pictures and memories that I have
collected over my life.
If you're reading this and find yourself tired just as I am,
I hope that you also possess "extra-vagrant" abilities, or a
journal, or friends that help you see the rut.
It's easy to accept the line as-is. Especially to let the
weight press you down without helping hands to lift it.
But I can make a change. Change is anything but the
tiredness and weight that I feel now.
How can I be so sure I can make that change, you ask?
Because I know that a fermata is not the final pause, but
anticipatory to something new.
</pre>]]></description>
</item>
<item>
<title>Pause.txt</title>
<link>gopher://tilde.institute/0/~jtecca/phlog/20210220-pause.txt</link>
<pubdate>20 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000</pubdate>
<description><![CDATA[<pre>
----------------------------------------
Pause
February 20th, 2021
----------------------------------------
I recently found myself in a place that
meant I couldn't create. Creation of
things is one of the most powerful
things that I enjoy doing -- writing and
making music, coding, cooking.
A metaphorical weight was placed upon my
chest and it kept me from feeling
compelled to do the things that I enjoy
doing. Instead, I found myself
constantly drawn to playing video games;
rapture of the fantasy.
I feel better now, though I'm still not
there. Most of the recovery has come
from a pause. Slowing down and
carefully removing the things from my
life that don't get back to doing the
things I love to do.
Sometimes the omission is more powerful
than what is added. Sometimes it takes
failure to understand what can be
omitted.
</pre>]]></description>
</item>
<item>
<title>This Is Your Elfeed On Gopher.txt</title>
<link>gopher://tilde.institute/0/~jtecca/phlog/20210122-this-is-your-elfeed-on-gopher.txt</link>
<pubdate>22 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000</pubdate>
<description><![CDATA[<pre>
----------------------------------------
This is your Elfeed on Gopher
January 22nd, 2021
----------------------------------------
I'm happy to say that my PR for Elfeed has been merged into master which means
that you can now use Elfeed to keep track of your favorite phlog's feeds. [1]
Elfeed is a an extensible feed reader for Emacs and I use it heavily for
everything on the WWW, but found myself increasingly wanted to read phlogs from
Elfeed without having to go to Elpher [2] and manually scan through my
bookmarks.
It turns out the PR was fairly simple as there were two components that needed
updating. The first is that Elfeed was originally designed for HTTP(S), but
someone had recently added the ability to pull feeds from a local file, which
meant that there were mechanisms to bypass header verification and all that. I
was able to reuse that code when checking URLs for gopher protocols.
The second point, and the most important, was that Elfeed uses cURL by default
for its backend (with an Elisp fallback if needed), and recent versions of cURL
support gopher out of the box.
So this PR felt more like re-plumbing some of Elfeed's cURL internals around
instead of a massive overhaul to get the feeds working. It took me longer to
understand the functions for async feed checking than it did to implement the
fix.
But I still have an issue opened up re: Elfeed and gopher [3] as I'd like to
eventually get gopher links to open in an appropriate browser. Emacs' internal
`browse-url' and its cohort is likely being called and it may be set up
specifically for the web. I might take this as an opportunity to dust off my
FSF waiver to contribute to Emacs' core to build in a handler for multiple
protocols if that doesn't already exist. (It probably does.)
In the meantime, if you like feeds and CLIs and aren't necessarily into Emacs,
then I'd recommend you try ~dacav's (a fellow of ~.institute) "crossbow"
aggregator [4] which is supported on OpenBSD, among other platforms which
easily handles gopher RSS feeds.
Finally, I'd encourage all of you to publish your phlog feeds over gopher! If
you're a fellow ~.institute person, then "burrow" should be already creating an
RSS feed for your gopherhole (according to the default configuration from
/etc/burrow/config) so all you'd need to do is provide a link to the file to
make it obvious that it's there.
I added mine via
0RSS rss.xml
in my gophermap so it's clear to others that they can follow me.
[1] - https://github.com/skeeto/elfeed/pull/410
[2] - https://thelambdalab.xyz/elpher/
[3] - https://github.com/skeeto/elfeed/issues/408
[4] - https://gitlab.com/dacav/crossbow
</pre>]]></description>
</item>
<item>
<title>Reality.txt</title>
<link>gopher://tilde.institute/0/~jtecca/phlog/20210115-reality.txt</link>
<pubdate>15 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000</pubdate>
<description><![CDATA[<pre>
----------------------------------------
Reality
January 15th, 2021
----------------------------------------
The thing about reality;
the more you stretch it
the harder it will come
back to hit you in the face.
</pre>]]></description>
</item>
<item>
<title>Recently Read Books.txt</title>
<link>gopher://tilde.institute/0/~jtecca/phlog/20210103-recently-read-books.txt</link>
<pubdate>03 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000</pubdate>
<description><![CDATA[<pre>
----------------------------------------
Recently Read Books
January 03rd, 2021
----------------------------------------
As part of the beginning of the new year, I wanted to try to get better about
writing little notes about some of the books that I've read recently. I'm not
a particularly voracious reader anymore, but I still manage to find time to
bounce around some books every couple of months.
Here is a very short list of some not-reviews of books that I've recently read:
-----
"The Death of the Necromancer" by Martha Wells [0]
I really enjoyed this book.
It reminded me of a more refined version of the Gentleman Bastard series of
books by Scott Lynch [1] -- set in a pseudo-Victorian area with a combination
of then-technology and magic. Think steampunk without the emphasis on steam.
I am finding that I really enjoy these types of settings in fantasy fiction
that combine a mixture of 17-19th century settings with magic.
The descriptions are beautiful, the characters are alive, and the focus on an
anti-hero as the protaganist of the story makes this book feel like it was
recently written then it actually was. I'd recommend this if you enjoy fantasy
fiction, especially fiction with a mix of action and mystery.
-----
"The Evolution of Everyday Things" by Henry Petroski [2]
"The Design of Everyday Things" by Don Norman [3]
I've talked about these before in my previous post, so I won't spend much on
them here. They're both similar, though Petroski's book obviously focuses more
on how common items (for the 1990s) have evolved over time whereas the Norman
book focuses on how humans and design intersect.
The Petroski book is really good for a skim. I found his explanations
long-winded (I found that he is incredibly repetitive in his arguments, but I
don't know the context of the audience he is writing to) but the gist is really
facinating. I "finished" this book but only after skimming most of each
chapter.
The Norman book is more accessible, but does drill down deeper into design than
the Petroski book. It's another book that I'd recommend a skim to see if
there's anything that sparks some interest first before digging in deep. I
found a lot of the surface arguments about how design can fail people to be
enough to keep me happy, though admittedly I've spent some considerable amount
of time over the past few years consuming other design-related content (such as
podcasts) so I knew some of the arguments presented in this book.
-----
"The Righteous Mind:Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion" by
Jonathan Haidt [4]
This is one of those non-fiction books that I tell everyone I meet to read.
The arguments it presents for understanding the spectrum between liberal and
conservative have become a permanent lense through which I've been viewing the
world, especially the context that I find myself in now as a person from the
United States.
Haidt goes out of his way to describe why we need a balance of thinking across
the political ideological spectrum and demonstrates the dangers of how ruinous
one way of thinking can be detrimental to society.
I could easily write an essay on this book, so I won't to keep brevity here.
If you've ever wondered how someone with a completely different political point
of view can believe in the things that they do, then you should read this book
to develop a greater level of compassion and understanding for them.
-----
[0] - https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-death-of-the-necromancer_martha-wells/323466/#edition=2378080&idiq=666276
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Lynch#Gentleman_Bastards
[2] - https://archive.org/details/pdfy--rXmwRDB5uzq5MmU/page/n1/mode/2up
[3] - https://www.biblio.com/9780385267748
[4] - https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-righteous-mind-why-good-people-are-divided-by-politics-and-religion_jonathan-haidt/256175/#edition=7003082&idiq=10241557
</pre>]]></description>
</item>
<item>
<title>Dull Forks.txt</title>
<link>gopher://tilde.institute/0/~jtecca/phlog/20201224-dull-forks.txt</link>
<pubdate>24 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000</pubdate>
<description><![CDATA[<pre>
----------------------------------------
Dull forks
December 24th, 2020
----------------------------------------
For whatever reason, my brain has been churning through thoughts on design.
Anyone who writes software inevitably comes across a design choice even if they
are not consciously aware that there is a choice to be made. This has real
implications for end-users on how their program are perceived and used.
Specifically, I've been reading small bits of "The Evolution of Everyday
Things" by Henry Petroski[1] as well as Don Norman's "The Design of Everyday
Things"[2] and mentally chewing on the pieces, one at a time.
As I am reading these books, I am reminded of all of the vapid arguments
from the so-called "Editor War"[3] which typically boil down to personal
preference. But what is so fascinating is viewing the editor war arguments
under a lens of design -- why do people care so much about tiny little features
of a text editor when something like GNU Emacs and (neo)vi(m) are more than
capable of their main goal of editing text?
The tools that we use with any frequency become ingrained in us, and we impart
our own shape onto the tools that we constantly reach for first. Petroski
discusses (at some length) hammers from craftspeople from the past who
have handles that appear to be bent in strange proportions but are actually the
result of the handles being warped by the hand of the person that used it
frequently until it had a 1:1 match of the grip of its owner.[4]
Here's a text-representation of the hammer (hopefully you support 200 character viewing, otherwise sorry!)
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KSSwpNpGUUNpSpAZKmAwpkeDGUw8Gw06DGGKaZapGk2SkyjUKUGDZ]Ttw8UUpwXkUGZ]?}wc]uty>xt1)|]1]1LTt)1]jeZ]YtsytT)izxkXj]LtYTczV]l)ee||cs]]V]6kXllk]}jtzc]yX]j)))r>>)|?rc?r??L|/^|1tr\?>\?r||>>>rr|>?|icccLxsLts)tt
UhZmbMDbUwNwZpUZpwZDKwNRGUG&wUGpGwpweZKUUhhkUwk66wm0Vxt1MSUDGj]1ZXj1i]SXcj1ccy]Y?cjViYrc1YX1jXXYTxczcz}t|]y]yc)])?T]uuty2kt)Y]XVkiaL)1jyojtxljj11ic|?>r>?)|c|Y|rL|j>^r|1LrrY/>|rrr^|>>/r>L)cctctj)??Y?zL
UGD88RmwwN0hKUSw8UNpwDWDw6NKep6D66wake8SXoSwpZhDGUN6UkukG?VKXZkek]ykkZV]jzuLV]Tt|zY])?x]c?111ejuj1Yzxii1ci}Xj]uzs)zcjyTzY|cTz]XVtczyTeeo]1zyXXz1)c?)?|>rL)>xLzL>Y?t^rr|lr/>r"|>>>>>|>r|>t??>L)iTj||))zsL
0NMbRRpSUMGKDUS&GmNAwgDww8NwbNmDww0akU00hXwDKkGDAXG&m0lNRZ6heeVkXjVXeXVeeoi?jXz>xxus??yzt|jYe}cjizz}zt>cljsyj)szt|)iSj)cijtc}okXVjj]l]YY]XeejluzYL|)??>rt?|)?1|?)>|rr>Lz//r^^|r>>>>>/"?>)|)??LL)??L)?ttt
DDmpgDUV6&UN8UwN6NKU8RbKKDwGRNNN88D8eUwGhewUG2G6eUAGUXe&8U6ee1uXZ)zVezl]]iLux^;>s]]t]]czL?Y]A))l1i}1Yxykkj1kztiVzci}Z]}jjYxuXlyVZZlictc1VX2j}XX1cYicL)?Lz|L|Ll|?>|>|||c?/>r/|)?/r>r|/>|^>>||?L|??)?>>t)L
Rm8NMmUeW8GN6wN&8MwGDDKpKNwRgMDbwppUSUhwwwZheeGGUZKDZzND&GweyleeXz]X]jy}))/]c?riYYciyjzj}?jAXjxtYt})iyXeZj]}]ttcijVaA]Vjt|Ll}2ZUGk]}ocYeZV}]ye]it?sc?)|s)||?tt|L>||||?c|rL>/?)>^^r|?/>^>>|r|||?)zxt||ctL
88DWN8kmN8gWb&RRDDKUNp86gDDMND0Dw88ZwUGwAAZAXwpwwUSw|uUD8Ukw}yVy]T}]XyzVyL?r?Lt??)tYuYcjickXij}z]ycYcLxXkx11zc?Yeeyuk]TjtctaikkUhT2Veoous]2]X]sTttsL))xc?|x|L|???|r|xtt?|?>/))r^/r|>^r^?/||?)?YY]xT|rt)T
D8Mg&GU$8&QN0DMNW0bD0Km8$DDMDDN06kp8wUGGkZZU6K8KVzU)r06NUAAkVoXzzj}Xk}ye]ioVtTt?i||uYcTxu1V)ijsuVyty>sVeyijlL)c1e}oty1)tuijVcjeky)??ltsl]o]o]six)uuLzTyT?/???>)>?|r?]cu)?)>/||^^r>Lrr>r?>>||)?tc)))LLtcj
D8gD6bRWDMQNDNgMM0DMwmGDND8NpD0GUZ88Kb8GGUUewGGAkZs;|b8kkkX222}s]XyVo1k]XVXytj?sx)Lu)|cjzuiYs1ueoYY|lVk]loe1sXczXoxcX]LjslV)]]kXt?|??)zTs1sk2uy]cVc1z|})L?>?>||?|YLojzzt??>>|^//>>?r|r|>>>??tLc1x?|t|s)Y
8DWpGmWR0W$&ggMRN0ND6&GNNbWD8D8mUD0DpGS6bU8GGSZeu}?>S6waUeXyXVkel]eV1]VZyyel}))})||Y|)cjz2T)tliZ1>r>iLejsVkt}X|VkS?]ZT?zjk}]Zke|>>||?tiYY)jeXoylyyx1z)uc1c))L|>|LYcj1V1)L?|L|^r>>||r||>>|||))ciltt?)r?i?
D$DGp&$8m$88gNNM&MM08K0D8gNmNNM68NN8mUwU6DpGpNwLlU!ZD68whhhko}y}]XeyzXlht]]yy^?jz?s>^xzcVzztj]ojtizl|xcYcZ1}X??jk2yaoT]VSZXkXXy)Yt|??)xz)Yy]V11ok}1yz]]ii?sYLr?LLl}]]yY|TcLx|/r|>|r>ix)YLccY)Yiz)?|?/>|>
There's also the part about the proliferation of specific variations of
hammers, nails, and dinnerware such as forks and knives. These are all tools
that we as humans use with such frequency that a simple "good enough"
tool probably isn't practical for all of the various ways that we can employ
our tools. Even a platonic ideal fork may not be as immediately useful as a
specialized fork in certain situations, hence the need for forks for eating
slippery food or food that is hard to reach inside of shells, jars, &c.
Text editors are the tools of anyone who works with a computer with any sort of
intimate frequency, so like our dinnerware we have developed specialized tools
to do text manipulation. And so it makes sense that while a particular tool
would make more logical sense to someone more than another tool because they
may have different situations to employ the tool with.
Ultimately, what my point boils down to is that a proliferation of tools is a
good thing, even if a tool doesn't last then it may represent a node in an
evolutionary chain of other tools. For anyone who is more than a lightweight
computer user, I think it behooves us to experiment and try out new tools for
our common and uncommon situations; we may discover something useful or a new
perspective that we were unable to see before.
Or to put it another way, our favorite editor is nothing more than a dull fork
but a trusted one at that. And maybe our editor wars should instead reflect a
mindset of pushing others to experiment and think about the ways that interact
with a computer.
-----
As a side note, I recently started using 'ed'[5] for smaller edits of files.
It is surprisingly useful even today on high-res displays, especially if you
are already familiar with the 'ex' commands from vi and its offspring. Even
more useful is turning on verbose mode ('ed -v') which gives you error messaging
when you (inevitably) screw up a command.
This little bit of time spent gaining knowledge of 'ed' has actually saved me a
considerable amount of potential time wasted trying to debug issues in Docker
containers. Typically on very small containers, you may not even have access to
a fully functional terminal when accessing a shell on a running container,
which means full-screen editors like 'vi' may be impossible to use to display
anything properly. But 'ed' can still be used since even the dumbest of
terminals can print lines. This allowed me to go view and edit files in a
half-broken container instead of iterating through a cycle of building new
containers and slowly checking debug commands non-interactively when the
container has been executed.
[1] - https://archive.org/details/pdfy--rXmwRDB5uzq5MmU/page/n1/mode/2up
[2] - https://www.biblio.com/9780385267748
[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editor_war
[4] - https://imgur.com/d8hGy4D (sorry about that, I couldn't find a better image outside of imgur)
[5] - https://www.gnu.org/software/ed/manual/ed_manual.html
</pre>]]></description>
</item>
<item>
<title>Pico Thoughts On Emacs And Small Keebs.txt</title>
<link>gopher://tilde.institute/0/~jtecca/phlog/20201206-pico-thoughts-on-emacs-and-small-keebs.txt</link>
<pubdate>06 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000</pubdate>
<description><![CDATA[<pre>
----------------------------------------
pico: Thoughts on Emacs and small keebs
December 06th, 2020
----------------------------------------
This pico entry comes from ruminating more on the Aetreus keyboard[1] that I've
been using and my long-time predilicition for using Emacs-like editors. My
quick thesis here is that 60% keebs are the right balance of size for heavy
Emacs editor users.
I still use my Keyboardio Aetreus every day for work as well as regularly on my
Chromebook that has been liberated with Ubuntu and the feeling is fantastic.
However, I've noticed some friction in Emacs because of the reliance on
number-shifted symbols (!@#$% etc) and the heavy reliance on C-x [number] for
window and frame management.
Sure, I could create a new map to deal with the window and frame management
commands and bind that to a key chord that is easier to hit without numbers,
but it would be a bigger pain to remind all of the number-shifted commands.
I'm not talking about throwing the whole thing out; it works well enough
especially as an alternative to cramped laptop keyboards. But given an option
over a 60% keeb versus something comparable to the Keyboardio Aetreus (like a
Planck[2]) everything just works so much better when you have dedicated number
keys.
Here's a really quick breakdown of what I think a perfect (for me) Emacs
keyboard would have:
- The most important ideas is a focus on keeping modifier keys under the
thumbs. At least CTRL and ALT/META should be kept within easy reach of the
thumbs. (And perhaps should even be right next to a small spacebar!) They're
the strongest fingers and easily able to deal with heavy workloads that require
lots of usage in heavy editing sessions (such as refactoring code).
- A small spacebar. Or a spacebutton. The space 'key' isn't important enough
to take up the majority of the bottom row when you can make it smaller to allow
for modifiers to be more easily hit with the thumbs.
- Enough keys to have a dedicated Hyper key within easy reach of the thumbs.
This is something I haven't figured out on my Preonic yet, but having a whole
new layer via the Hyper key allows for much more comfortable keybinds within
Emacs without resorting to having to use Hydras or keybinds like C-$-%-q. I
would love to be able to have another set of easy binds on my homerow with
another modifier key without having to move my hand too much.
- A dedicated row of number keys above the letters for ease of hitting commands
like M-^ or M-%.
[1] gopher://tilde.institute/0/%7ejtecca/phlog/20201006-keyed-in.txt
[2] https://olkb.com/collections/planck
</pre>]]></description>
</item>
<item>
<title>Pico C64 Users Manual.txt</title>
<link>gopher://tilde.institute/0/~jtecca/phlog/20201205-pico-c64-users-manual.txt</link>
<pubdate>05 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000</pubdate>
<description><![CDATA[<pre>
----------------------------------------
pico: C64 Users Manual
December 05th, 2020
----------------------------------------
This is what I am calling a "pico" entry -- a really small entry instead of a
longer burrows.
I've been spending some free time playing around in VICE's Commodore 64
emulator for fun and definitely not profit. While I never owned a C64, I have
fond memories of using a PET in kindergarten as well as some sort of knock-off
microcomputer that I could play the 8-bit Ghostbusters game. (So maybe a C64?)
Regardless, I have been playing around by reading the whole Commodore 64 Users
Manual (which you can find at archive.org) and learning BASIC from scratch.
It's wonderful in that the appeal of the machine grows on you, especially being
able to poke around and modify BASIC routines. It makes me appreciate that the
Apple ][ had a built-in monitor compared to the C64, but the tooling is there
retrospectively 40+ years later in the guise of easy-to-load flash carts.
What is the point of this? Nothing but fun. I've sometimes struggled with
justifying spending time learning an archaic language that isn't applicable in
my daily life, but then that was really the point of these early computers --
to realize the potential of what computers *could* be.
</pre>]]></description>
</item>
<item>
<title>Intel Woes.txt</title>
<link>gopher://tilde.institute/0/~jtecca/phlog/20201128-intel-woes.txt</link>
<pubdate>28 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000</pubdate>
<description><![CDATA[<pre>
----------------------------------------
Intel Woes
November 28th, 2020
----------------------------------------
My wife and I own computers that have an Intel wireless card in them. My
wife's computer is a laptop and mine is a desktop. Within the past year, we've
had impactful bugs hit both computers that have caused wireless QoL to be
severely degraded.
In my wife's example, the wireless driver simply fails to load with an
ambiguous status code. Enough sleuthing around online shows that many other
people have hit this bug which remained open up to the last time I checked a
month ago. This particular fix was a major regression and for some reason a
fix wasn't easily backportable to earlier GNU/Linux kernel versions. I've
tried compiling custom forks of mainline Ubuntu kernels with iwlwifi patches to
no avail. Something is so seriously wrong that reverting back to even a 3.x
kernel version doesn't fix the issue. She's been forced to use a USB wifi card
which works reliably through kernel updates but sticks out from a laptop and is
asking to be snapped off.
The bug I experience on my desktop is much more sneaky. I will have
intermittent network drops as my card disconnects and reconnects after a couple
of seconds. I notice this much more when playing real time online games as it
usually results in a server disconnect or in a loss of about 20 seconds or so
of game time for more forgiving game network code. I am on Wi-Fi, but the
router is in the room right below where the desktop is kept; it's probably no
more than 10 feet away with a floor in between.
For my desktop computer, I can easily run some stats on my bug because it has
an easy to grep message of the number of times in a particular day that this
issue has affected me, sorted by the highest total number of occurrences in a
day.
$ sudo journalctl | grep "No beacon heard" | cut -c 1-6 | uniq -c | sort -h -r
372 Jul 19
277 Jul 16
224 Jul 18
198 Jun 27
163 Aug 08
140 Jul 15
131 Jun 29
106 Feb 02
100 Jun 28
99 Jul 01
91 Feb 01
83 Nov 28
78 Mar 22
69 Mar 21
62 Nov 27
62 Jul 02
61 Nov 14
61 Jul 11
60 May 24
53 Jul 13
53 Jan 22
51 Sep 13
50 Aug 11
48 Aug 09
47 Jul 12
45 Jan 24
43 Nov 15
41 Jun 05
41 Jul 10
40 Jan 17
39 Jul 20
39 Jul 06
36 May 28
36 Feb 03
35 Jul 05
35 Feb 23
35 Aug 07
34 Jul 04
33 Sep 27
33 Jul 17
32 Aug 04
31 Feb 04
30 Mar 27
29 Nov 16
29 Nov 11
28 Nov 23
28 Nov 20
28 May 25
28 Jul 08
28 Aug 05
27 May 23
24 Mar 30
23 Feb 24
22 Nov 26
22 May 27
21 May 22
21 Jul 07
20 Sep 12
20 Nov 12
19 Mar 29
18 Aug 06
17 Aug 12
16 Nov 22
16 Mar 20
15 Jun 07
15 Aug 13
14 Oct 26
13 Aug 10
12 Nov 19
12 Jul 03
12 Jan 15
12 Feb 09
11 Sep 28
11 Sep 26
11 Nov 17
10 Sep 24
10 Nov 26
10 May 31
9 Oct 29
8 Jun 01
7 May 26
7 Mar 04
7 Feb 22
6 Oct 08
6 Mar 28
6 Jul 09
6 Jan 09
6 Aug 14
5 Mar 15
5 Mar 08
5 Jun 16
5 Jan 29
5 Jan 23
5 Jan 12
5 Feb 21
5 Feb 16
4 Oct 28
4 Nov 13
4 May 02
4 Mar 01
4 Jun 11
4 Jan 26
4 Jan 11
4 Dec 01
3 Sep 25
3 Oct 22
3 Oct 20
3 Nov 07
3 Mar 14
3 Mar 07
3 Jun 26
3 Jul 26
3 Jan 30
3 Jan 14
3 Jan 04
3 Jan 02
3 Feb 18
3 Feb 17
3 Feb 08
3 Apr 29
2 Oct 25
2 Oct 09
2 Oct 03
2 Nov 20
2 May 16
2 Mar 16
2 Jan 06
2 Feb 28
2 Dec 06
2 Apr 26
2 Apr 11
2 Apr 10
1 Oct 24
1 Oct 23
1 Oct 19
1 Oct 03
1 Nov 19
1 Nov 17
1 May 03
1 Jul 14
1 Jan 13
1 Jan 05
1 Feb 29
1 Feb 14
1 Dec 07
1 Aug 02
1 Apr 09
Seeing the bug tracker is even worse -- bugs that have been open for more than
a year with little follow-up from the developer's side. Most of these bug
trackers are filled with people discussing hacks as workarounds when nothing is
being done. Both of the open bugs affecting my wife and I are regressions to
existing functionality; both of us were plagued with these bugs after kernel
updates. It makes me wonder what sort of testing (if any) that Intel is doing
with their GNU/Linux drivers. Is there something that can be done to help?
I'm usually not perterbed when it comes to hardware and Linux capability but
running into these issues will make me very cautious about buying laptops or
components that include Intel technology in the future. I've had my fair share
of issues with Realtek-based wireless chipsets as well, but those bugs seem to
be patched more easily and readily than anything Intel puts out.
</pre>]]></description>
</item>
<item>
<title>Keyed In.txt</title>
<link>gopher://tilde.institute/0/~jtecca/phlog/20201006-keyed-in.txt</link>
<pubdate>06 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000</pubdate>
<description><![CDATA[<pre>
----------------------------------------
Keyed in
October 06th, 2020
----------------------------------------
I just received my Keyboardio Atreus in the mail today, and I am typing out
this phlog post on it right now.
It's amazing to me how much I have improved since even just an hour ago when I
first started using it, though by the number of times I still fumble to hit
backspace or shift with my left thumb leads me to think about how much further
I have to go. (And how much I wish to type in all lowercase right now to avoid
shift misses -- I must learn somehow!)
As much as I continuously hit z instead of shift like on my other keyboards, I
am appreciative of how this new thumb cluster has made me mindful of my typing.
I am used to my Preonic v3 and my split ortho Iris with a relatively normal key
positioning for most of the important keys (things like + and brackets and
parens are on a special layer, but most other things are similar to someone
used to the layout of a normal keyboard.)
This Atreus is different, though, especially since ' and " are now in a very
different place (as they're down on the thumb cluster now) as well as - and _.
I'm also used to having a numeric row and their shift varients at the top of
the keyboard, so it will take a little getting used to to use the numberpad
layer for numbers and the left hand layer for symbols.
Unlike with my other keyboards, though, I want to try to leave the default
layout for a while to use this time for focus and to try to rewire my brain to
something new. I remember when my mappings with my other keyboards really
'clicked' and the feeling that came with that effortless creation -- seeing
symbols appear on screen without having to think about what my fingers were
doing was powerful. That is a feeling I'd like to try to recreate with this
keyboard.
It will be interesting to see how getting used to this keyboard will change my
other keymaps. Will this mean that I won't be able to type on a normal laptop
keyboard anymore? Perhaps, but the feeling of these keyboards is so amazing
that I'm not sure I'd ever want to go back.
</pre>]]></description>
</item>
<item>
<title>Speaking With A Lisp.txt</title>
<link>gopher://tilde.institute/0/~jtecca/phlog/20200907-speaking-with-a-lisp.txt</link>
<pubdate>07 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000</pubdate>
<description><![CDATA[<pre>
----------------------------------------
Speaking with a Lisp
September 07th, 2020
----------------------------------------
As mentioned in my previous post, I have been experimenting with Forth. It has
been fun to make tiny little programs, especially since I've been working on
64Forth[1] to mess around with PETSCII graphics drawing.
However, it was never meant to be something other than an exercise in trying
something new; expanding my horizons and discovering new ways to think about
solving problems.
For more practical uses, I have been turning back to Common Lisp (specifically
SBCL[2]). I'm working out of the second edition printing of David S.
Touretzky's "Common Lisp: A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation"[3].
Before I had poked around the book at whatever chapter interested me, but this
time I've taken a more methodical approach to learning -- going through it in
order and doing the exercises in order. Unsurprisingly, I've gleaned a lot
more from the text in this way, even if it is just a refresher on some aspecs
of Common Lisp that I was already familiar with.
One thing I completely missed out on was the recursion function templates,
which are invaluable, and I'm surprised that those examples aren't easily found
in other Common Lisp texts or tutorials. It was something I didn't pay
attention to the last time through the book because of the out of place story
about the dragon and the boy learning recursion because it felt too out of
place and so I skipped most of that material.
As a professional developer, I often end up needing to read a lot --
programming language specifications, requirements, documentation, &c. To make
sure that I'm not going down a rabbit hole when dealing with these documents
I've cultivated a sense of skimming which has helped in time-critical
situations but as also made me less mindful of being focused when I really do
need to deep-dive into reading.
The casualty of not paying attention to the recursion templates section in the
book seems like a casualty of that lack of focus, something that I need to stay
aware of as I continue to work more out of that book.
-----
As an aside, one of the biggest hurdles for me to using Common Lisp as a more
regular daily driver is its namespacing and symbol handling. It's terribly
confusing and complex (though I imagine for good reason) and there doesn't seem
to be a whole lot of good documentation out there. Even "Practical Common
Lisp"[4] has a chapter on it that feels like it barely scratches the surface.
I recently bought a print version of "Common Lisp Recipies"[5] which has a
significant section of the book devoted to pratical solutions to common
namespacing issues that I'll look into more as I get further into Touretzky's
book and start looking to write more mature software.
If anyone has any other good resources for help with Common Lisp namespaces and
packages, please feel free to email me at jtecca@tilde.institute.
-----
[1] https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/64_Forth
[2] http://www.sbcl.org/-
[3] https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/LispBook/ (the first edition PDF is available for free)
[4] http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/
[5] http://weitz.de/cl-recipes/
</pre>]]></description>
</item>
<item>
<title>Picking Up Forth.txt</title>
<link>gopher://tilde.institute/0/~jtecca/phlog/20200808-picking-up-forth.txt</link>
<pubdate>08 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000</pubdate>
<description><![CDATA[<pre>
----------------------------------------
Picking up forth
August 08th, 2020
----------------------------------------
I'm one of those people that like to pick up a new programming language just to
tinker with it for a while. I have no problem learning something for a little
bit and setting it down knowing that I may never touch it again.
Yes, I don't get the full experience of getting a deep understanding of a
language, but that's not really the point of my play. I want to try out a
language for a while to understand what it is like to approach it with a
beginner's mind: what is the experience of looking up documentation, of parsing
error messages, re-writing common programs in my undignified understanding of
the new language as a comparison to working in others.
It's this "feel" of the language that is important to me. Like text editors,
programmers spend so much time with their tools playing with solutions to
problems that if a language and its ecosystem don't feel right to me then I'm
not likely to pursue it. It's entirely subjective, but so is most things
associated with using computers.
So I recently read about Forth and using it to drive microcontrollers like
Arduinos. I searched for some possible Forth implementations that work on the
various Arduinos I own and tried to load them. That was a couple of days ago
and still nothing reliable is installed on any of those machines.
As a person who loves the Lisp family of languages, I felt a pang of anger that
I felt when starting with Lisps as well -- the language is sufficiently
powerful, but the language itself struggles from easily being able to get set
up and going.
So far, I've scraped the microcontroller Forths and have stuck to toying around
on "gforth"[1] (GNU Forth) as well as a fun relic of 64Forth[2], which is a
cartrige-based Forth specifically for the Commodore 64.
The latter comes with its own excellent documentation which includes a
mini-tutorial on basic Forth. The former I am using the excellent (and
canonical) "Starting Forth"[3] as a guide.
I still haven't written anything of consequence, but that's okay. Forth may
end up being an interesting experiment and something of a revelation when I'm
working in the languages that I use on a more regular basis.
-----
[1] https://gforth.org/
[2] https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/64_Forth
[3] https://www.forth.com/starting-forth/0-starting-forth/
</pre>]]></description>
</item>
<item>
<title>Asking For A Friend.txt</title>
<link>gopher://tilde.institute/0/~jtecca/phlog/20200729-asking-for-a-friend.txt</link>
<pubdate>29 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000</pubdate>
<description><![CDATA[<pre>
----------------------------------------
Asking for a friend
July 29th, 2020
----------------------------------------
Who do you read that really makes you slow down and think?
The more and more I spend on the gophersphere the more I like coming across
random people who have put meaningful reflections out there. It feels more
personal than the firehose that is modern social media.
So I ask you, if you are listening, who do you read?
Email me @ jtecca@tilde.institute
</pre>]]></description>
</item>
<item>
<title>Making Journals.txt</title>
<link>gopher://tilde.institute/0/~jtecca/phlog/20200723-making-journals.txt</link>
<pubdate>23 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000</pubdate>
<description><![CDATA[<pre>
----------------------------------------
Making Journals
July 23rd, 2020
----------------------------------------
One of the things I never suspected would be a by-product of the global
pandemic would be an expansion of my random hobbies. Case in point: I've
started creating my own physical journal/notebooks.
The process is simple for a smaller physical book. Take a stack of rough,
draft-quality paper (or whatever you fancy) and fold it in half, creating a
booklet.
With some cardstock of your choice, cut a cover to match around the booklet.
Using an awl, punch four to five holes in the center of the stack of pages.
Depending on how thick your notebook is, you may need to measure and punch the
holes over a couple of packets. Stack the packets and the cover together; the
holes should all align.
Grab some cheap embroidery thread and a needle and create a tight bind between
all of the holes that you've just made with the awl. You typically loop back
through a previous hole so that you end up with a length of thread running
between each hole on both the inside of the notebook and along the outer spine.
Tie off the terminus ends of the embroidery thread to an existing length of
thread to form a tight knot.
Finally, find a heavy weight to press down on the notebook to get the crease to
keep it closed when flat. I used a stack of some pizza stones that are
booklet-sized but have significant weight. Leave it overnight to press.
Et voila! That's it. You have a small but usable journal/notebook to work
with, with a size that you can easily customize. You can add pouches out of
recycled paper to collect random bits of physical material, something which I
usually make use of with my Moleskines when I'm jotting down notes or ideas to
myself on bits of paper.
You can add a ribbon into the spine or a piece of elastic if you want to make
sure your notebook stays closed -- there's plenty of small hacks that you can
do that don't require much more energy or tools.
</pre>]]></description>
</item>
<item>
<title>Meditation.txt</title>
<link>gopher://tilde.institute/0/~jtecca/phlog/20200720-meditation.txt</link>
<pubdate>20 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000</pubdate>
<description><![CDATA[<pre>
----------------------------------------
Meditation
July 20th, 2020
----------------------------------------
I've been a musician as long as I can remember. Although it's not my
main source of income it has so far left a profound impression on my
life. I spent some time today just randomly playing chords at the
piano like a child -- sometimes dischordant, sometimes consonant
sounding -- and playing them slowly.
I sang along while improvising wordlessly. 'Sang' is less like the
word I want to choose but 'play' is closer. There's something about
stretching yourself creatively beyond your normal working point; going
beyond your point of comfort and your normal frames of references that
seem to spark something new.
My piano chords breathed and groaned with wild dissonaces and I took
my time to breathe, listen, and slide to quarter tones and something
else inbetween -- a language removed from my day to day notes.
I 'hit the wall' after about seven minutes, but pushed on until about
twenty. Afterwards I felt like I could easily create associatively --
basically improving a song from a deeper place than consciousness.
For further reading, I'd recommend two books by the same author:
- "Free Play - Improvisation in Life and Art" by Stephen Nachmanovitch
- "The Art of Is - Improvising as a way of life" by Stephen Nachmanovitch
</pre>]]></description>
</item>
<item>
<title>Ubuntu Issues.txt</title>
<link>gopher://tilde.institute/0/~jtecca/phlog/20200719-ubuntu-issues.txt</link>
<pubdate>19 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000</pubdate>
<description><![CDATA[<pre>
----------------------------------------
Ubuntu Issues
July 19th, 2020
----------------------------------------
My wife's computer has been suffering recently. It's a relatively new
ASUS ZenBook, lightweight but powerful enough to support the research
that she does for work. The laptop barely has been turned on with the
pre-installed Windows 10 installation before we agreed to install the
latest Ubuntu LTS.
Since then, it's been a cascade of issues that have forced me to do
some kernel hacking in order to fix various pieces of hardward issues
in the Linux kernel. The first was the issue with sound, a small fix
in terms of code (I think the patch we applied was about 30 lines of
code changes) but required a recent kernel outside of Ubuntu's
recommended version for LTS. It was fun for me, but for a distro that
prides itself on "just installing and working" it was frustrating for
my wife to have to go to the lengths of recompiling the kernel for a
fix.
-----
Fast-forward to the past week, where the internal Intel wifi chip has
suddenly started having issues with the microcode, meaning that the
firmware fails to load on startup killing the connection to the internet.
The error messages are fairly vague, and while I managed to find some
activity in the Linux kernel bug tracker, the patch there didn't seem
to make a difference on getting the firmware to load. I suspect that
something got botched when there was a security or LTS update that
triggered automatically.
I started to notice the cracks when I'd be trying to rebuild the
kernel modules for the LTS kernel and for some reason the modules
would always point toward the modules that I had backed up and not the
ones that I had recently rebuilt. The process of debugging was
entirely untransparent and hard to get information on.
I'm in the process of backing up her data via a Live CD and pulling
the nuclear option of wiping the harddrive to start with a fresh LTS
install.
-----
On my own machines, I do a lot of work with music production, so the
Linux kernel and the supporting software for that (JACK, Ardour, etc)
are a necessity to run over a *BSD. In the past I've had issues like
my wife's computer which necessitated a nuclear re-install of the base
system every couple of years. I haven't encounter the need to do so
in such a long time that the past events have been surprising to me.
-----
After messing around on tilde.institute, I've installed OpenBSD bare
metal on an old laptop that has overheating issues. I'm reminded here
of the joy of simplicity, on the KISS principle and how that actually
manifests with real-world consequences. Granted, I am not doing audio
production on that machine, but I do not worry about the nuclear
option for the OpenBSD laptop. We'll see if that opinion holds after
I go through my first point release as a data point against Ubuntu.
</pre>]]></description>
</item>
<item>
<title>Hello World.txt</title>
<link>gopher://tilde.institute/0/~jtecca/phlog/20200712-hello-world.txt</link>
<pubdate>12 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000</pubdate>
<description><![CDATA[<pre>
----------------------------------------
Hello, World
July 12th, 2020
----------------------------------------
This is my first post on the gopherverse. Not very exciting, but I am
excited to explore this space more and see what can be done with it!
The idea of text- and document-based browing really intrigues me,
mostly because I find so much content on the general internet to be
trite or unrevolutionary. There's a simplicity about text-only
browsing of documents to simply get information that is much more
appealing than firing up Firefox and waiting for tremendous amounts of
fluff to be sent over the wire.
The fact that I could boot up a Raspberry Pi Zero and load `lynx` to
be able to access this content is exciting as it takes me back to the
days of when I'd log on the BBSes or `telnet`ing in to my local
library to browse their catalog and place holds.
There's a quiet joy in the simple but effective, and that's what I am
to discover in this space.
</pre>]]></description>
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