Journals for the last 209 days with entries

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→ node [[2024-04-06]]

2024-04-06

→ node [[2024-04-05]]

2024-04-05

→ node [[2024-04-04]]

2024-04-04

  • I'm getting more into the groove with [[fish]] on desktop the more that I use it.

    • Still a slamdunk win on Termux.
  • I would just like to take a moment to lament the fact that I have received an email inviting me to become a Certified Generative AI Specialist.

  • Idle thought: maybe the world would be a better place if the de facto 'learn to code' tutorial was not a todo list (individual productivity) but a simple group poll (collective decision-making).

→ node [[2024-04-03]]
→ node [[2024-04-02]]
→ node [[2024-04-01]]

2024-04-01

→ node [[2024-03-31]]
→ node [[2024-03-30]]

2024-03-30

→ node [[2024-03-29]]

2024-03-29

→ node [[2024-03-28]]

2024-03-28

  • I've been picking up the [[guitar]] again regularly recently, for the first time in a long time. And I'm really enjoying it. Drop D tuning and finger picking. Still got the muscle memory for basic chords and picking patterns. Relistening to some [[John Fahey]] too.
→ node [[2024-03-27]]

2024-03-27

→ node [[2024-03-26]]

2024-03-26

→ node [[2024-03-25]]

2024-03-25

  • Although in general it feels the same (possibly slower? because I didn't compile it myself?), one thing that is much faster in Emacs 28 is the parsing of my huge Tasks.org file for work. Thumbs up.

  • I'd like to tweak my garden a bit such that I have 'planted' and 'last tended' dates on each page.

    • I already have 'This page last updated: …' at the bottom of every page.
    • But I'd prefer it right at the top. Not too prominent/distracting, but I have some pretty old pages knocking around now and I'd like people to be aware that they might be outdated.
  • [[org-timeblock]] looks pretty good and like it'd fill my desire for a timeblocking tool for org-mode.

    • I used to use [[Goalist]] on Android and it was great, but I got annoyed that I couldn't sync it and make use of it anywhere else.
    • So… [[trying out org-timeblock]]. However, hitting a bunch of issues from the beginning.
→ node [[2024-03-24]]

2024-03-24

→ node [[2024-03-23]]

2024-03-23

→ node [[2024-03-22]]

2024-03-22

→ node [[2024-03-20]]
→ node [[2024-03-19]]
→ node [[2024-03-18]]
  • [[work]]
    • lunch with the [[ER-CH]].
    • then some meetings and some focus time! pretty alright :)

2024-03-18

→ node [[2024-03-17]]

2024-03-17

→ node [[2024-03-16]]

2024-03-16

→ node [[2024-03-15]]

2024-03-15

→ node [[2024-03-14]]

2024-03-14

→ node [[2024-03-12]]

2024-03-12

→ node [[2024-03-11]]

2024-03-11

  • [[Listened]]: [[Brian Merchant, "Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech"]]

  • [[Spam]].

    • Our website is experiencing an uptick in spam over the last few days.
    • Incredibly irritating.
    • With comments like 1*if(now()=sysdate(),sleep(15),0).
    • We have Akismet and a honepot enabled. Adding a very noddy manual captcha (e.g. 4+8 = ?) helps. But if it continues, we'll probably have to enable ReCaptcha. Which I'd prefer to avoid if possible.
    • Seemingly emanating from the same IP address.
    • The host lists an abuse@ address. But when I contact that address, the mailbox is reported as being full.
→ node [[2024-03-10]]

2024-03-10

→ node [[2024-03-09]]

Suddenly you become [[[[more [[aware]] of the [[nature of existence]]]].

  • I read about the [[multiverse]] and [[groups]] again after long -- this reminds me that I need to finish reading [[a rosetta stone]] :) I think I will find my paper print or print it again and read it at night.
  • Note [[Silverbullet]] is currently journaling at a different path, the Agora should show both in any date-matching nodes.
  • [[agora development]]:
    • pull silverbullet editor somewhere in the Agora
      • host silverbullet for people with a docker container + associated git repo (maybe automatically created at git.anagora.org?)
      • write about social hosting :)
    • #pull [[index]] from now-index!
  • [[agora discuss]]:
  • write about the nature of existence :)
  • [[edit]]
  • [[agora development]]:
    • implement URL pulls, it's been on the todo for quite long! :)
      • this would make [[edit]] work (at least for me, for now) :)
      • this seems to almost work :)
    • look into the bugs that neil reported
      • finding them in [[agora discuss]] led to enjoying that space as usual! :D
  • [[what if we became better protopians]]?

2024-03-09

→ node [[2024-03-08]]
  • [[AI]]:
    • I went to an interesting [[AI]] talk and learnt about a few new (to me) services/things that look interesting:
      • [[pikaso]] (a paint-to-image generation tool)
      • [[grok]] (a plushie voiced by [[Grimes]])

2024-03-08

→ node [[2024-03-07]]
  • In the [[Agora of Flancia]], each node is an [[Agora]] -- meaning a fork of the Agora that is centered around the node in question and its [[context]].
→ node [[2024-03-06]]

2024-03-06

→ node [[2024-03-05]]

2024-03-05

→ node [[2024-03-04]]

2024-03-04

→ node [[2024-03-03]]
  • Apparently there was some sort of controversy about a site called [[content nation]] in the Fediverse, and people from [[Mastodon]] came across as conservative/resistant to change/unfriendly to newcomers. I am not surprised.
    • Good thing is I found [[wedistribute]] via the article linked in the node above, and I think I'm liking this site and maybe particularly a podcast they have called [[decentered]].
  • I read about [[Jim Simons]] and the [[Medallion fund]] after watching [[Veritasium]]'s [[The Trillion Dollar Equation]].
  • I read about [[Jizo]] a.k.a. [[Ksitigarbha]], which I now associate with number [[6]] (as he vowed to liberate beings in all six Buddhist realms).

2024-03-03

→ node [[2024-03-02]]

2024-03-02

  • A 'trick' I use when I have some issue with a particular file in my [[org-publish]] pipeline on my remote server.

    • In org-publish-project-alist, set :base-extension "foo".
      • By default it is "org", looking at all files with org extension.
      • By setting it to foo, the publish process won't find any files. Except..
    • Set up :include to include the file that's got the issue.
      • e.g. :include ("file-with-a-problem.org")
    • There's probably a better way of doing it than this, but it gets me by for now.
  • Nice, I replaced a cl-loop with a mapconcat in some of my output formatting, e.g. in [[Well-connected]]. mapconcat feels a bit more functional style, and it also gets rid of the superfluous parentheses I had in the output.

  • I might try and add [[Pagefind]] to my published garden.

  • Trying [[fish]] out on desktop.

    • While on mobile I found them incredibly helpful, I actually find it all of the autosuggestions a bit distracting at first.
    • I'll see how it pans out.
  • Watched: [[Guardians of the Galaxy]]

→ node [[2024-03-01]]
  • [[ec]]: "Yo adelgacé mucho gracias al vino rosado."
  • #push [[Maitreya]]
    • I created a "[[GPT]]" (sigh, I get what they're going for with the name though :)) called [[Maitreya]]. Some example prompts are in [[Maitreya AI]].

2024-03-01

→ node [[2024-02-29]]

2024-02-29

→ node [[2024-02-28]]
→ node [[2024-02-27]]

2024-02-27

→ node [[2024-02-26]]

2024-02-26

  • [[The Web of Death (ft. Tamara Kneese)]]

  • [[Work Notes 2024-02-26]]

  • 'Dear Data Subject' and other great ways to start an email.

    • [[Matomo]].
    • They mention that they are now using a [[data broker]] for "customer and prospect data enrichment".
      • "We process this personal data on the basis of legitimate interest. Without the information we will not be able to customise our communications with you to best meet your needs".
      • I find the wording a bit weaselly to be honest. Better would be "We want this information so we can more likely retain and get new customers". Fine - just be honest about it.
      • You can opt-out. Not opt-in?
  • Using Python in org, I was getting: [[Importmagic and/or epc not found]].

→ node [[2024-02-25]]

2024-02-25

  • Listened: [[The Web of Death (ft. Tamara Kneese)]]

    • Digital decay
    • Digital memorials
    • Makes me think of the film [[Coco]]
    • Transhumanists
  • magit doesnt work properly for me in [[termux]] for some reason. I can stage but I cant commit.

    • No biggie as I just git from the terminal instead. But still, would be good to get to the bottom of it.
  • Had a quick play with [[Surfacing notes in my garden that have no claims]] using [[Metabase]].

    • Easy enough to do. But has the downside for me at the moment that it's only accessible on my laptop, which I'm not often using at the moment outside of work.
    • [[Knowledge commoning]].
→ node [[2024-02-24]]

2024-02-24

→ node [[2024-02-23]]

2024-02-23

→ node [[2024-02-22]]
→ node [[2024-02-21]]

2024-02-21

→ node [[2024-02-20]]
  • Second day using [[silver bullet]], enjoying it a lot!
    • I like how I was able to specify a full path for a new page, in this case journal/2024-02-20, and it just worked (tm).
    • I also like the [[autocompletion]] for links it has; it is better than [[wiki vim]]'s (which, granted, maybe I didn't really get the hang of) and [[logseq]]'s (faster).
  • [[work]] was tough given that I'm still not fully recovered from flu/virus and there are some interpersonal issues that take energy to deal with, but also satisfying as I did manage to get some things done.
    • Also my team is really great, every time I go back to team-specific tasks it feels like a breath of fresh air!
  • Talked to [[Berni]] and it was great.
  • [[AG]] did a surprise certification today after work, impressive :)
→ node [[2024-02-19]]
  • [[Silverbullet]] doesn't follow the convention of using journal/ for journals; and I wonder if that's not actually quite reasonable. Why wouldn't an ISO-formatted-date node be enough? That's what the [[Agora]] parses as journals ;)
  • Honestly I'm maybe fine moving to journal-dir-less but I'd like to find a shortcut to 'go/create today's note'. I haven't found this in menus yet.
  • [[heart sutra]]

2024-02-19

→ node [[2024-02-18]]

2024-02-18

  • Read: [[Forest and Factory]]

    • Finished it.
    • Good stuff. Provocative.
    • The suggestion to focus on hard science fiction for our utopias seems a good one.
    • Though I don't know if their piece really does that.
    • They just combine a focus on production with handwaving, rather than reproduction with handwaving.
    • Their salient point is really that we've stopped thinking about production, which I think is a good one.
    • Also lots of nuggets of wisdom in the footnotes to be mined.
  • Listened: [[The Art and Science of Communism, Part 1 (ft. Nick Chavez, Phil Neel)]]

    • Great discussion. Based around [[Forest and Factory]]. Loads of good stuff.
    • Their insistence on starting from present conditions and working towards for me thinking about [[complex systems]] and [[chaos theory]], [[sensitive dependence on initial conditions]] in particular. Is it logical to try and completely map the present to then try and cause the future? Maybe.
    • Maybe an alternative is the utopian way of doing it. Think of elements of your desired future as attractors of sorts, then focus on how your can leverage the path of history towards those. Maybe that's a combination of both. It obviously can't hurt to know the present conditions, but to then assume you can trace a clear path from now to the future seems wrong.
    • Yeah I think you need both. A clear understanding of present conditions. A clear idea of how you want society to function - your attractors. And then you nudge it from A to B, making use of [[shocks]], [[leverage points]], etc.
    • They make the point that a lot of utopias focus on reproduction rather than production. (Superstructure rather than base?).
→ node [[2024-02-17]]

2024-02-17

  • Read: [[Talking to My Daughter About the Economy]]

    • Finished it. Enjoyed it. Would recommend.
    • Need to go back and note it up a bit.
  • Read: [[Theories of International Politics and Zombies]]

    • "How international relations theory can be applied to a zombie invasion"
    • Fun.
    • I remember some of [[Robert Biel]]'s articles saying how [[international relations]] was a field that applied systems theory to politics, so was looking for something that is a bit of an easy primer - this seems like it!
  • [[Shower thought]].

    • I want to make sure that I document at least the top two or three salient claims from every book and article that I read.
    • Otherwise it seems like wasted effort.
    • I'll tag book files such that I can run a query that pulls out those that I've read but have no associated claims.
    • To do so will be a positive act of [[knowledge commoning]].
→ node [[2024-02-16]]

2024-02-16

  • Read: [[Talking to My Daughter About the Economy]]

    • Nearly finished it now.
    • Very good all in all. Very readable intro to some economics concepts, in particular through a critical lens of capitalism.
    • Very easy to read. (As such not the most rigourous analysis, but thats fine)
    • Interesting to note he uses 'experiential' value rather than use value.
    • His brief suggestion of a solution to capitalism is that we need more democracy rather than more markets.
      • In ownership of the means of production and in control over how we treat the environment.
  • Read: [[Forest and Factory]]

    • Deep dive into the logistics of production of motors.
    • Interesting, but still not convinced that this constitutes a scientific account of transition, in the language of their own critique.
  • How repairable is a [[Vision Pro]]?

  • I'd like to add a '[[New connections]]' page to my garden.

  • [[Flancian]] told me about [[Orgzly Revived]].

    • This is very good news to me.
→ node [[2024-02-15]]
→ node [[2024-02-14]]

2024-02-14

→ node [[2024-02-13]]

2024-02-13

  • Read: [[Forest and Factory]]
    • So far: very interesting.
    • But unnecessarily disdainful in tone to some of the other projects that it is critiquing. We're all on the same side here!
    • And, so far, while very interesting, the vision for the future they outline is just as lacking in scientific rigour as any of the projects that they are critiquing.
      • Going to assume that the science bit is going to come later.
    • Unflinching mentions of carbon capture and storage / direct air capture is a bit of a red flag.
→ node [[2024-02-12]]

I worked half a day as I was sick; cold symptoms, nothing terrible though. I attended two meetings and did writing.

Then I read [[Aaron Copland]] on music, thought and wrote about [[Moloch]].

--

I eead the [[Dalai Lama]] and [[Thubten Chodron]]. I'm in chapter 2 of book 2: [[The Foundation of Buddhist Practice]].

2024-02-12

  • Read: [[Forest and Factory]]
    • Subtitle: The Science and the Fiction of Communism.
    • Heard about it from the This Machine Kills podcast.
    • Very interesting. A modern day update on the topic of [[Socialism: Utopian and Scientific]].
    • Critiques a bunch of things I've read recently as utopian, in the sense of lacking any practical route from the here and now to there.
      • Fair comment - though I've appreciated them, I've thought similar.
    • Not got to their own prescription for transformation yet.
→ node [[2024-02-11]]
→ node [[2024-02-10]]
→ node [[2024-02-09]]

2024-02-09

→ node [[2024-02-08]]

2024-02-08

→ node [[2024-02-07]]
  • Slightly less intense but still emotionally tough day at work (dealing with layoffs as part of the [[employee representation]] group).
→ node [[2024-02-06]]
→ node [[2024-02-05]]

2024-02-05

→ node [[2024-02-04]]

2024-02-04

  • Listened: [[The Santiago Boys]].
    • Finished the first episode. (Ep 1: A Blast in Manhattan).
    • Chiefly about the political milieu in Chile at the time, and then how Fernando Flores invites Beer to work with them.
→ node [[2024-02-03]]
  • [[Flancia meet]]
    • with [[bouncepaw]] we set up https://flancia.org/meet as a landing page for it, I like the result!
    • it made me revisit good old flancia.org after a while -- and it felt good. Maybe I should go back to writing more on it? I say, not for the first time.
  • [[AG]] is wonderful

--

  • The following was written by [[Lady Burup]]
  • (a lot of dashes/empty list items, unsure how she wrote all these)

-OOOOAPI||||||||||

  • (more :))

-ooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

--

Back to regular programming :)

--

  • [[e acc]]:
    • Somehow I arrived at [[e acc]] ([[e/acc]] is not a good Agora link as slashes usually mean actions, and action e/ currently doesn't exist). I can instantly relate mildly with their utopian side I guess, even as I dislike many of their positions and their super-capitalist stance. Also [[Shkreli]] is involved, sigh.
    • [[techno optimist manifesto]]
  • I read (re-read? I don't think I've forgotten it, but I did read a lot of SSC at one point) [[Scott Alexander]]'s review of [[Age of Em]].

--

  • [[Mohammed Aldhari]]
  • [[AG]]
  • [[Lady Burup]] <- [[Burrup Peninsula]], which I found in a Firefox session and enjoyed once again :D
  • Also I found out that [[Flancia]] seems to actually be a common name in some countries?! Twitter search found a lot of people with Flancia in the name, some with accounts older than mine.
    • Nice plot twist, thanks universe as usual.

--

Please disable copyright enforcement in AI. I want to be able to ask LLMs to pirate things for me, or help me pirate them. [[I take full responsibility]], as some are wont to say ;)

I usually buy books in one format but want several. Many authors make it easy for me to give them money on Amazon, but then I want an epub. Etc.

In the meantime I have to go to https://libgen.is manually I guess?

--

I've been thinking of parsing this format in the Agora, meaning longer subnodes separated by -- in a newline -- and publish it to the [[Fediverse]] as individual posts :)

--

→ node [[2024-02-02]]

2024-02-02

→ node [[2024-02-01]]

I believe things are going to be pretty amazing anyway; I sometimes get caught in the day to day and fail to notice it, or remember it, but all things considered I think the likelihood of humanity and our friends making it happily in cosmic terms long term is quite high.

I've been writing about the Agora for about 5 years now: https://github.com/flancian/flancia/commits/master/pages/agora.md.

→ node [[2024-01-31]]

2024-01-31

  • Read: [[The Shock Doctrine of the Left]]
    • Finished it. Reading it in lots of 20 minute late-night bursts while doing childcare.
    • Very good. Primary focus on movement building, organising.
    • Combination of left politics and complex adaptive systems is right up my street.
    • Also touches on [[organisational ecology]], [[care work]].
    • Would like to apply some of the concepts to [[reclaim the stacks]].
    • Particularly the description of using (and creating) shocks as points of leverage and transition is useful.
→ node [[2024-01-30]]
→ node [[2024-01-29]]
→ node [[2024-01-28]]

2024-01-28

→ node [[2024-01-27]]
→ node [[2024-01-25]]
→ node [[2024-01-24]]

2024-01-24

  • Listened: [[#ACFM Trip 4: Love and Hate]]

  • Listened: [[#ACFM Trip 5: Consciousness Raising]]

  • Listened: [[#ACFM Microdose: Theories of Consciousness]]

  • Listened: [[Why It's Eco-Socialism or Collapse]]

  • Interesting to see that 'Challenging the size and power of the biggest tech companies was voted a top priority by [[Foxglove]] supporters in our new year survey.'

    • From Foxglove's newsletter on 24th January 2024.
    • Very keen to see where they go with this.
→ node [[2024-01-23]]
→ node [[2024-01-21]]

I finished [[Taixu]], meaning the translation by [[Charles B. Jones]] and his commentary. I am thankful for it!

→ node [[2024-01-20]]
→ node [[2024-01-17]]
→ node [[2024-01-16]]
  • [[work]]
    • tough with [[layoffs]] wave 3 going on, plus [[social plan]] negotiations for all waves
    • but people are great
  • [[social coop]] organizing circle meeting was great!
  • [[open letters]]:
  • I've had [[unbundling tools for thought]] open as a tab for maybe over a year now -- should I read it?
  • I ask myself this kind of question often, as I'm managing tabs a lot of the time (I have many across many computers), often on the way of getting something else done.
    • I want to trust myself to eventually do some things, like reading this, but even though I very often add things to the Agora (through [[Betula]] or manually) to keep track of them, there are so many that I will probably never get to most of them.
      • And maybe that's OK!
      • Leaving links behind is better than nothing ;)

2024-01-16

→ node [[2024-01-15]]
→ node [[2024-01-14]]

2024-01-14

  • Listened: [[Trip 39: Protest]]
    • On the topic of [[protest]].
    • Individual, collective. Marches, non-violence, [[direct action]], boycotts etc.
    • Whats effective and what isnt? Effective might mean different things, e.g. could be political change but could also be just connecting and energising a movement.
→ node [[2024-01-13]]

2024-01-13

→ node [[2024-01-09]]
  • [[Flancia]]:
    • Flancia is a container for [[My favourite things]]:
      • The common good
      • Happiness
      • Freedom from suffering
      • Science
      • Technology (inasmuch as it improves the world, which it does plenty)
      • Art
      • Knowledge
      • My friends and loved ones (inasmuch people are embodied as a composition of things)
      • The Agora (inasmuch it might show others the way to its [[entelechy]])
  • [[Gone]]:

I had noding "my favourite things" in a post-it so I decided to do it right here using a push above.

→ node [[2024-01-07]]
→ node [[2024-01-06]]
pull color="#b51f08"> <title>500 Internal Error wtf.
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://doc.anagora.org/css/center.css"> <button class="pull-url" value="https://doc.anagora.org/css/center.css">">pull</button>
<div class="container-fluid text-center">
    <div class="vertical-center-row">
        <h1>500 Internal Error <small>wtf.</small></h1>
    </div>
</div>
→ node [[2024-01-05]]
→ node [[2024-01-04]]
→ node [[2024-01-03]]
  • All my computers tend to be melting down all the time. They run out of RAM and CPU. It all feels quite un-ecological, but I guess we're all betting on becoming a higher level [[kardashev]]?
  • [[work]]
  • [[fotl]]
  • [[agora development]]
    • make it so that [[opensearch]] document is utf-8 so chrome stops ignoring Agora Search (presumably) :)
      • I think the actual issue is that new Chrome only loads [[opensearch]] data when the user performs a search in the root of the webpage, e.g. https://anagora.org -- and currently the Agora just redirects to /index so this never happens. Hmm.
        • Maybe I should just remove that redirect.
  • [[fediverse]]
  • [[yoga with x]]
→ node [[2024-01-02]]
  • Happy [[2024]] to everybody reading!
    • May you be happy! May you be free! May you [[thrive]]!
  • [[work]]:
    • paged at 6.30AM.
  • [[AG]]
  • [[Laundry]], as in most of the last few days due to the ongoing [[Bettwanzen]] response -- trying to enjoy every cycle, some cycles are more fruitful than others :)
  • [[social coop]]:
    • Last day oncall for the [[CWG]].
    • Reviewed some progress on the discussion about [[Fedipact]] and whether we should be listed as signatories
    • Check poll
    • Check registrations
    • Check moderations

[[Meditate]], said [[Nostromo]].

--

I meditated. Thank you [[Taixu]] -- meaning the Buddhist Monk and also the [[shell]] script that I run in computer [[nostromo]].

I've been missing writing; I always feel like I should write more, and more often -- I feel the same for action [[read]] of course as well, as do many of us. So I decided to start writing more right here -- in my journal in the [[Agora of Flancia]].

Traditionally up to now I've been focusing my efforts more on [[noding]], in the particular meaning of exploring connectivity space; more interested in building links (between concepts, things and people) than about producing widely legible output. This under the hypothesis that the connections are important in building an [[Agora]] in particular, or at least [[bootstrapping]] it.

This reminds me [[bootstrapping]] is either chapter [[0]] or [[1]] in the [[Flancia Pattern Language]].

...anyway :)

--

  • [[social coop]]
    • Having an interesting conversation with [[3wc]] and [[ntnsndr]].
    • Sent oncall handoff to [[sam]]
    • Oh no, I forgot the [[twg]] meeting earlier today!

--

I slept. It was great.

--

Today I plan to continue doing laundry and finally open and clean up one of the rooms affected by [[bed bugs]] (the lesser one, no obvious infestation).

Also I plan to work on the [[Agora]]. Or should I say in the [[Agoras]]?

--

→ node [[2023-12-31]]
  • [[31]] is [[Las Jaras]]:
    • a [[poem]]:
      • Las Jaras, qué jaras?
      • Las tiradas con recta intención:
      • Las de Maitreya;
      • Las de Avalokiteshvara;
      • Las de Tara!
  • [[Silvester]]:
    • As they call it here in Switzerland.
    • Happy [[2024]] all! May it be free from suffering to as many beings as possible.
    • Going to a party tonight!
  • [[bedbugs]]:
    • Still going through [[The Great Wash]], as this period of doing lots of laundry to make sure no bed bugs (fully developed or in egg form) survive in clothes and bedlinen.
    • I've been trying to do loving kindness with the bed bugs as individuals and as a species, even as they are dying in droves in the fumigated bedrooms.
  • [[2024]]:
    • Thinking of planning.
→ node [[2023-12-30]]
  • Saturday oncall at home doing laundry and some shopping two minutes away carrying my laptop in Coop -- cozy :)
    • I renamed my second work laptop to [[Sariputta]] and I already like it more.
    • Also finished some paperwork and responded some personal messages.
  • [[social coop]]
    • some discussion about [[Fedipact]] and whether we should be listed as signatories
    • there were a few polls but the one that voted (majority) block was blocked, so the actual needed fraction of votes wasn't accomplished
→ node [[2023-12-29]]
  • Strange day, it started down but then went up :)
    • Paid bills, donated to [[unicef]].
  • [[Work]]
    • CL review
    • Some approvals
    • Oncall handoff
  • Agora project
    • Check if patera is still down and fix it
  • [[social.coop]]
    • [[twg]] dates discussion
    • registration / moderation
    • PR review
→ node [[2023-12-27]]
→ node [[2023-12-26]]
→ node [[2023-12-25]]
→ node [[2023-12-23]]
  • [[Flancia]]!
    • [[Flancia meet]]
      • quiet in the morning, used it for planning :)
      • [[agora development]]
        • I want to continue in the vein of [[december adventure]], with small improvements and some new experimental features.
          • This will continue through the whole weekend ;)
      • [[fediverse]]
        • Yesterday I tried one bridge between [[Bluesky]] and the [[Fediverse]] and it failed, but I want to try again :)
          • it failed again: bluesky.bovine.social. It looks promising though, I opened an issue in the Codeberg repo and took the chance to set up my [[Codeberg]] profile at last.
          • I also gave https://brid.gy a try and it was able to log into my Mastodon and Bluesky both, but it seems designed to cross-post between those and [[webmentions]] only/first.
            • This made me think that I should really implement webmentions in the Agora?
      • I also want to take some time to see friends IRL :)
        • Happy about this!
        • [[Pesho]]
        • [[AG]]
→ node [[2023-12-22]]

Digo, ahora que empiezo a escribir en el escritorio número 7.

Finalmente exporté [[goodreads]] e importé en [[bookwyrm]]: .

  • As an aside, I miss the capability of pasting pictures/media in the Agora. I used to have it in Obsidian, maybe I should run it or [[Logseq]] again.

--

--

→ node [[2023-12-21]]
→ node [[2023-12-20]]
→ node [[2023-12-18]]
→ node [[2023-12-16]]
  • Because of [[Uposatha]] days I feel the need to know the phase of the moon. I wonder what time it'll come out tonight as well; it's been cloudy so I haven't been keeping track.
  • [[flancia]]
    • [[agora development]]
      • [[december adventure]]:
        • shipped some 'quality of life' and 'polish' improvements to anagora.org in the last few days.
        • [[css spinner]] was useful
        • [[doing]]:
          • now shifting focus to providing endpoints, in the sense of:
          • [[api]]
            • commit something -- anything :)
              • this means exposing the right existing methods at this path I guess :)
          • fix [[mastodon bot]] integration
            • the wikilinks it dumps are not clickable due to an encoding issue, I've been wanting to solve that for a while
        • [[agor.ai]] ~ [[agora network]]
          • remembered that [[agora network]] is important
          • as planned I will try to continue improving the agor.ai setup and try to provide useful Agoras to others
          • Wrote out a [[call for agoras]], meaning people can propose possible Agoras to build
            • link.agor.ai and flancia.agor.ai already exist on the new-style setup, which I must continue to [[improve/upgrade]]
  • [[above]]:
→ node [[2023-12-15]]
  • [[work]]
    • was alright!
  • [[flancia]]!
    • [[apero]]
    • [[15]]: [[uposatha]] day if you go by straight decimal/solar calendar date instead of the (I believe) more traditional lunar
    • [[spiel]]:
      • I found [[spiel/agora]] again after more than two years :D
        • it's great, I like it even more than last time
        • I think even before it gets [[fediverse]] support (for login) it may already be one of the best chat platforms I've seen
        • [[matrix]] could/should look like this
→ node [[2023-12-14]]
→ node [[2023-12-12]]
  • [[Bettwanzen]] inspection finally came and results were relatively positive:
    • These are [[bed bugs]] indeed.
    • And, as I was hoping, they are only in the main bedroom -- haven't spread to the guest room where I've been sleeping or anywhere else it seems \o/
  • [[work]]
    • yep
    • prod meeting -- interesting topics came up. I think they will feed in what we're trying to write
    • then I reviewed 5x roadmaps and edited a document I'd been meaning to dedicate time to :D
  • [[flancia]]
  • [[Fediverse clients]]:
  • Thought of [[7]] (as an example number):
    • Numeric nodes should probably auto-pull known number-related nodes like [[hex]] and [[prime]]? In particular in the [[Agora of Flancia]] these contains utilities.
  • [[december adventure]]:
    • [[new style pulls]] for social media.
    • [[misc]]
      • fix [[micro.blog]]? builds on 'canonical' concept which I've tackled a bit previously
      • reintroduce autopull/pull all and fold all
        • in the sense of a button that pulls resources - maybe on both agora-level and node-level?
        • also maybe s/search/go/, try it out
          • would interact nicely with that old [[double click]] idea: if you're already at the node and you press go, it redirects to the go link if there is one known
  • thought about [[web rings]]:
→ node [[2023-12-11]]
→ node [[2023-12-10]]

2023-12-10

→ node [[2023-12-09]]
→ node [[2023-12-08]]
→ node [[2023-12-07]]
→ node [[2023-12-06]]
  • Woke up feeling a lot better!
    • 7h of sleep breathing acceptably make a lot of difference.
    • [[2023-12-05]]: I ended up feeling better after I was finally able to take a nap late in the afternoon. In the evening I did some open source coding, [[december adventure]]. Enjoyed it a lot!
  • [[dentist]] appointment -- I tested negative for Covid and my symptoms are almost gone so I think I'll attend (and ask if they are OK with it, like last time I was so-so).
  • Today back to [[work]]. I plan to work until 20, at which time I'll join...
  • The [[fellowship of the link]] weekly call :)
    • :D
    • [[neobooks]]
    • [[doing]]:
      • I need to fix pushing to the Agora from Hedgedoc, for some reason it broke
  • In [[2024]] I want to resume work on/with [[coop cloud]].
    • Hmm, that could actually fit the [[december adventure]]?
    • I want to improve flancia.agor.ai; make it be up to date, match anagora.org.
      • update docker images
    • [[december adventure]] :)
    • [[poll]]:
      • I ran a poll whether to try to kill or heal [[Moloch]] in [[2024]] and it came out [[heal Moloch]].
      • I thus plan to write an [[open letter to Moloch]] and try to reason things out, try to disentangle ourselves constructively and mutually improve on views, values and behaviours.

2023-12-06

→ node [[2023-12-05]]
  • [[december adventure]]:
    • [[day 5]] :)
      • I'm testing what I'm calling [[natural pushes]] with this section in my journal.
      • these blocks should all be pushed to [[december adventure]] because I suffixed it with a colon.
      • I think this reads a lot better than using #push and all.
      • ! also works as a suffix :)
  • [[4]]:
  • [[5]]:
    • hypothesis, in hz:
    • 134 152 134 152 311 [[hz]]
    • I will ask [[chatgpt]] to confirm, it is able to do this just fine (albeit probably inefficiently, for now, energetically speaking)
  • [[Agora Development]]:
    • having fun with it! :D
    • working on consistency + UI simplification
  • no [[work]] today except answering a message and quick code reviews as I got up feeling sick after a night of sleeping very little + quite badly due to heavy congestion (likely a common cold)
  • [[Flancia]]:
    • reviewed old papers and it felt freeing!
    • [[Flancia doc]]

2023-12-05

→ node [[2023-12-04]]

2023-12-04

→ node [[2023-12-03]]

2023-12-03

  • Snow. Lots of snow.

  • I fixed a long-standing bug on my site where backlinks often didn't work.

  • I also fixed up the backlinks section for each node to only include backlinking nodes once.

→ node [[2023-12-02]]

2023-12-02

→ node [[2023-12-01]]

2023-12-01

→ node [[2023-11-30]]

2023-11-30

  • Listened: [[A blast in Manhattan]]

    • First episode of [[The Santiago Boys]].
    • Really well made.
    • This first episode covers a lot of the geopolitics and general shittery of the CIA and corporations in South America.
  • Read: [[Doughnut Economics]]

    • Finished it.
    • Really good book.
    • Chapter on growth is interesting. She proposes being agnostic about [[growth]], so long as you're staying within the Doughnut. Which is fair enough, but I think the [[degrowth]] perspective would argue that it's simply not possible to stay in the Doughnut without degrowth.
→ node [[2023-11-29]]
→ node [[2023-11-28]]
→ node [[2023-11-27]]
→ node [[2023-11-26]]
  • Beautiful start to the day thanks to [[AG]]!
    • Oncall, got paged at 9am -- not too early thankfully. And I had left the bedroom so AG could sleep through it as I hoped.
    • [[Lady Burup]] is softer than ever it seems :) I have been thinking of maybe introducing her to a loyal/earnest feline companion, be it Lord or Page, maybe short in years and happy to learn from her -- and assist? :) When I leave her alone (e.g. for going to work, or if I stay a night at AG's) I find it sad she might be lonely, and I wonder if she might be happier living also with another cat.
    • I spoke to [[Chat GPT]] in call mode and it was mindblowing again. They reacted with interest when a 'Burup' (intended for my Lady) got into our call, and to my information that it was human-feline language.
  • Thought about numbers and mindfulness.
    • Counted 89 mindful breaths using my [[binary mala]], my hands, while following to Sam Harris' daily meditation (10-11 minutes usually).
    • [[Magnetic mala]] probably should be 127 balls by default, as that's the first centered hex number which exceeds [[108]]. Incidentally is the amount of spare magnets I have after gifting a lot (gladly).
  • Some [[social coop]] work, didn't find the root cause for the issue with indexing someone reported yet but made some progress.
  • Thought of [[Richard Francis Burton]], the [[victorian scholar]].
  • [[OEIS]] has a great page on [[offsets]] which make me think hex(1) should be 1, hex(2) should be 7 -- e.g. offset for [[hex numbers]] should be 1.
    • I'll fix hex.py in my bin/ in the garden accordingly ;)
    • This will let me assert: "the hexagon which is n long on any one side contains hex(n) magnets", e.g. hex(7) = 127.

2023-11-26

→ node [[2023-11-25]]

As I deal with [[pain]], I think of my [[friends]] and the [[heart sutra]].


Gone, gone beyond!

All gone to the other shore


Gone kindly

If you have to go

[[Go kindly]]!

2023-11-25

→ node [[2023-11-24]]

Yesterday I woke up with back pain in a new place, mid-back; it got a bit worse in the evening after attending the beautiful event of [[AG]] presenting. It didn't get in the way of enjoyment but I need to keep an eye on it/take care and try to rest and recover.

...Having said that, I cleaned the bathroom and [[Lady Burup]]'s toilet and my back got a bit worse :) But I feel it still gave me energy.

Then I worked a bit more, after oncall handoff, and I got several things "out of the way" in a relatively short time. It felt great.

  • As of 23h I have moved to bed early due to increasing back pain. I think my back needs rest/inactivity.

2023-11-24

  • Read: [[Doughnut Economics]]

  • Reflecting back and seeing them published on my website, I realise my work notes each day are a little mundane.

    • I imagine most people aren't that interested to see them.
    • But, I do like the fact that they stimulate me to publish to the garden even on days where outside of work I have little time for it.
    • And I find them a helpful piece of reflection.
    • So I think I'll experiment with putting them off in links from the main journal post. So people can read them if they want, but they won't be right up in your face with visual noise.
  • Watched: [[Isle of Dogs]]

→ node [[2023-11-23]]

2023-11-23

  • Reading: [[Doughnut Economics]]

    • I like the emphasis on an economics that is distributive by design and regenerative by design.
    • Also like the occasional references to [[biomimicry]]. Not convinced yet how applicable to economics it is - but I just have a general interest in it from [[Evolutionary and adaptive systems]] days.
  • Listened: [[Hotel Bar Sessions: Late Capitalism]]

  • Today at work I:

    • Responded to a personal message from a community member.
      • We have a community and friends within it, and sometimes personal messages come via my work channels.
    • Scheduled in some things for when I'm away.
    • Did the daily inbox trawl.
→ node [[2023-11-22]]

2023-11-22

  • [[Perceptions of degrowth in the European Parliament]]

    • Looks good. Only skimmed it, but they mention [[ecosocialism]] as one of the positions held.
  • Today at work I:

    • Did the daily inbox trawl.
      • A lot of the emails are automatic alerts that take up a lot of my time checking. I kind of need to see them though.
      • I wonder if there's a way of flipping it so I only see them if something has gone wrong.
      • The trouble then, though, is you don't realise if the alert itself has stopped sending.
    • Responded to questions from the team on Slack.
      • Schedule tasks/actions in as a result.
      • Either as 'unplanned' work for the day if it needed doing today.
      • Or for a future date if not urgent.
    • Quickly added a cache around a slow endpoint.
      • It was (a) meaning some automatic tests were very slow to run.
      • (b) possibly crashing the app when the tests were running.
      • I patched it quickly in on live (naughty, but needed) and now need to properly add it into the repo.
    • Tested app-to-app connection between app and WP site API as part of migration tests.
      • I always app-to-app connections and APIs. Prefer them to user interfaces :D
    • Attended team meeting.
    • Did some layout/content tweaks to our main website.
      • Fiddling around with CSS and layout is not top on my list of fun things to do. Always takes longer than you expect.
      • Some yak shaving to be done based on npm install failing. Haven't got the time to shave that yak right now.
    • Do some quick estimates of how long potential pieces of work should take.
    • Cross-posted a social post on Mastodon.
    • Kicked off a new sprint in Jira (late, as I was off on leave when it technically started).
→ node [[2023-11-21]]
  • Last day of [[vacation]]; tomorrow I go back to work.
    • My mum leaves today. It was very nice seeing her on both ends of my travel!
    • We played [[Rummy]] and had beautiful conversations. We also played with [[Lady Burup]].
  • [[done]]
    • Yesterday I paid [[bills]].
    • I pushed [[async agora]] to production, meaning anagora.org, and it's holding up quite well! I notice an improvement in speed, which I know is only partially there -- nodes load as slowly as ever on a cache miss, but the fact that the UI doesn't block on it really helps. I can start reading wikipedia or move on to a web search before the node fully loads. It just feels more responsive.

2023-11-21

  • Today at work I:

    • Did the usual inbox trawls and day planning.
      • Day planning I do with org-mode, org-agenda and org-timeline.
    • Prepped for the meetings for the day.
      • Mostly with mindmaps.
    • Did some strategic planning for next year.
      • Mindmaps and freeform writing.
    • Some rote work
      • processing incoming applications for things, updating website accordingly
      • always good to think with this stuff how processes could be streamlined
    • Minor website content change.
      • Minor change, but thinking about the UX of it is always interesting.
      • And how it affects client agreements/expectations, too.
    • Planning and assigning work for my team.
      • Bit of mindmapping combined with going through Jira.
    • Reviewing new features.
      • Code and functionality. Code review is in Github.
      • Testing I tend to build the feature branch locally.
    • Meetings.
      • Sometimes I jot things down on mindmap.
      • Somethings I record things straight into knowledge base.
      • Sometimes I log things straight into org as TODOs.
      • It's a bit haphazard to he honest. Could be improved.
    • Emailing external partners.
      • Always interesting the amount of work that goes into crafting an email to get across all the nuances of your position on something.
    • Distracting myself with Slack threads not really related to what I'm doing.
  • When I'm working, I don't log a lot in the journal, I noticed.

    • So experimenting with logging thoughts on work activities.
    • Not much detail on specifics, more reflections on activities and process.
    • I quite enjoy it so far. Useful to reflect.
  • Listened: [[Hotel Bar Sessions: Revolutionary Mathematics]]

    • So far, discussing frequentism and Bayesianism schools of thought in probability.
  • Patient privacy fears as US spy tech firm Palantir wins £330m NHS contract | …

    • Absolutely gutted by this. Despite all the campaigning by Foxglove and Just Treatment, fucking [[Palantir]] still awarded the contract with the NHS.
    • Makes me sick. This is not the kind of organisation our health service should be in partnership with.
→ node [[2023-11-20]]
  • [[EC]]
    • Conoce a una persona que se llama [[Leo]] porque lee mucho.

2023-11-20

  • At work today I:
    • Trawled through inboxes after a week away.
    • Reviewed some code (Laravel/Vue).
    • Tested some functionality changes.
    • Made a little tweak to a WordPress component, with a lot of yak shaving to get my local environment up to speed.
    • Thought about UX of a couple of things.
    • Other general bits and bobs.
→ node [[2023-11-19]]

2023-11-19

  • We had another play of [[Space Cats Fight Fascism]] today.

  • We spend a not insignificant chunk of our lives just on the upkeep of our household.

    • If it was a system, how would you describe it?
    • What are the stocks and flows? What are the processes? What system archetypes does it exhibit and what are the leverage points to make it function better?
    • I feel like ours has a few too many input flows of things and a blockage at the output which mean it gets easily cluttered.
→ node [[2023-11-18]]

2023-11-18

  • Been enjoying [[Superstore]] of late.

    • Often very funny. And also plenty of digs at corporate anti-worker practices and the tactics of [[worker exploitation]]. The staff attempt [[unionisation]]. ICE detains an undocumented worker. etc.
  • We played the [[Rise Up]] board game tonight.

    • You work cooperatively as part of a movement to fight the system.
    • A lot of fun. I like the fact that they include a storytelling element to it - certain cards get you to think of an accompanying story to the system.
→ node [[2023-11-17]]

2023-11-17

  • Think I might play with annotating items in my garden in a more relational way.
    • So rather than objects with properties, more like things in relationship to each other.
    • e.g. rather than annotating a podcast with a 'Series' attribute, call it 'Part of'. Let the entity at the other end of the link tell you what it is.
    • i.e. try a more [[relational ontology]]. I don't think this will have much practical technical benefit - it is more of a way of exploring a relational mindset. Ontology informs polity.
→ node [[2023-11-16]]

2023-11-16

→ node [[2023-11-15]]
→ node [[2023-11-14]]

2023-11-14

→ node [[2023-11-13]]

2023-11-13

  • Enjoying the [[This Machine Kills]] podcast.

    • All the episodes I've listened to have been excellent discussions on socialism and digital technologies so far.
  • Having another attempt at getting RSS feed publishing working for commonplace. This time without trying to use a tempdir, caused too many problems last time.

  • Listened: [[Kill the Ecomodernist in Your Head]]

  • Listened: [[No King But Ludd (ft. Brian Merchant)]]

  • org-roam on the mobile with Termux is going well. Using it regularly.

  • Going to start posting my daily journal/log in the stream as well. So it's a bit more discoverable/subscribeable.

  • Been reading through [[Doughnut Economics]] again. Appreciating the chapter on [[systems thinking]].

  • [[Hugo Blanco]] passed away.

  • Watching [[Captain Fantastic]]. A lot of fun. Points out the problems of American (Western) society. Is what they have in the woods any better though?

→ node [[2023-11-12]]

2023-11-12

→ node [[2023-11-10]]
→ node [[2023-11-09]]

2023-11-09

→ node [[2023-11-08]]
→ node [[2023-11-07]]

2023-11-07

  • It's quiet in the Agora right now. But I'm sure peeps will be back.

  • I basically never write code anymore for work purposes. I guess I'm OK with that right now. But I feel one day soon the pendulum will swing back from lead to coder again.

  • I'm perhaps less interested in code for code's sake these days, and more interested in the design of systems.

→ node [[2023-11-06]]
→ node [[2023-11-05]]
  • 'RICE', or Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort is a [[prioritization]] tool for project [[management]].
    • Reach: how many people with this touch within a specific [[time]] frame? collapsed:: true
      • Number of people/events per time period
    • Impact: how much will this [[change]] someone if it touches them? collapsed:: true
      • Measured between 3 and 0, where .25 is 'almost none' and 3 is 'massive'.
    • Confidence: probability of reach & impact.
    • Effort: how much [[time]] it will take each individual in the team.
  • Sunday, 11/05/23 ** 23:47 Finished GTO today. Reminds me how important it is to care about people and of healthy ways to share - and avoid projecting - personal pain onto others. Manga antics aside, being a strong, fit, capable man has so much value. Most games or metrics in real life are stupid - main lesson of GTO is to pay attention to the moral game and what's right to you - what seems right in a plain, dumb, human-seeking-justice sense - regardless of societal expectation.

2023-11-05

→ node [[2023-11-04]]
  • [[Clients]] carryover [[expectations]] from the last [[lord]]. collapsed:: true
    • Steve Jobs recognized this, and so moved to own the whole experience.
  • George [[Frison]]
    • 'Equalizer years' were years in which everyone lost much of their [[herd]], and so everyone started off with a similar [[economic]] base in the next year.
    • "nothing sharpened [[hunting]] expertise as quickly as [[hunger]]"
    • Before World War II, there was a rural culture of [[hunting]] for [[meat]] due to the Great Depression. collapsed:: true
      • It's possible many of these kinds of [[hunters]] were the [[war]] heroes we've heard about.
  • When do [[animals]] bunch up? What [[weather]] or [[terrain]] [[changes]] encourage this? collapsed:: true
  • Saturday, 11/04/23 ** 01:19 Goals
  • Prototyping repo with interactive pages/experiments
  • Weird compiler-like build tool for progressively enhanced personal site and writing
  • Programming language and query system for personal use
→ node [[2023-11-03]]
  • [[Strong]] [[animals]] may [[flee]] [[upward]]. collapsed:: true
    • Weaker animals tend to stay horizontal.
    • Wolves often [[test]] herds to figure out which animal might be easiest to isolate. So, most [[hunts]] fail- because they are tests.
  • "the higher the pitch the sharper the edge" [[stone]]
  • "for in every [[battle]] the [[eyes]] are defeated first" [[Tacitus]]
  • Friday, 11/03/23 ** 12:15 Best procedure for conversation at work and conversation outside of work seem completely opposed!

At work, it's most productive to say as little as possible. Fewer words mean more time for more work.

Outside of work, being social - as much as possible, volunteering information, asking meandering questions - is so beneficial.

WHERE is the balance?? ** 16:22 Conversations need an elected arbitrator and decision maker. Someone has to say 'yes, we will do it this way'. ** 17:18 I miss feeling cool ** 22:07 Most code is designed to be experimented with and to be deleted. Learn the technologies that are best for building prototypes! It's good to have to throw away code and use newer, faster, more optimal technologies. Choose a language that allows you to throw things away fast. Solidify it once you've validated that your idea works.

2023-11-03

→ node [[2023-11-02]]
  • Several days later, here I am again :)
    • I am writing this on the [[Shinkansen]] back to Tokyo.
    • Looking forward to doing some reading/writing/coding.
  • [[Agora Development]]
    • I am tired of the Agora being so slow to load.
    • There are two solutions I can think of: a hard(er) one and an easy one. For some reason I've postponed both for very, very long. I think I'll try to implement the easy one now ;)
  • What [[prioritization]] do we use to determine if we can accept a new [[project]]? collapsed:: true
    • What are the necessary [[parts]]?
    • How much [[time]] is needed?
  • How may we [[visualize]] [[work]] in progress?
  • What does an [[Asabiyyah]] Diagnostic Tool need to function?
  • Some people are born into [[owning]] [[territory]], others are not. Those who are not will have to [[own]] [[outcomes]] to get [[territory]].
  • [[Genre]] makes a familiar series of [[promises]].
  • “Wolf-[[time]], wind-time, axe-time, sword-time, shields-high-time,”
  • One way to tell whether someone has a [[direction]] is to notice if they're willing to consider [[trade-offs]] or [[prioritization]]. collapsed:: true
    • If they're in a mode where they won't entertain these about any given subject, they're usually playing some sort of cheerleader role. And so can be safely ignored, except as an indication of what a crowd is cheering.
  • Thursday, 11/02/23 ** 18:31 Never require an account to use a product ** 19:35 Biggest regret so far in life is complaining about things instead of doing something about them. Avoid this whenever possible. Do not make one more comment than is necessary. Work silently. Fix the problem without any concern. ** 20:00 Work policy --

On work's time (9-5, or whenever I've planned to do my work for the company), I follow the priorities we set for issues.

Off of work time, I will prioritize however I want. Coding is fun!

→ node [[2023-11-01]]
  • [[Handovers]]/[[transitions]]: collapsed:: true
    • Who has ultimate [[responsibility]]?
    • What is the [[task]] sequence for a typical project/game?
    • What is your task? How many tasks do you have?
    • Is there any [[overlap]] between tasks?
    • Is there a [[method]] that we use regularly to guess what will happen during the game/project?
    • Do we [[prepare]] for what we guess is most likely to happen?
    • Does our [[communication]] style promote calm, cool, and collected [[action]]?
    • Do we use [[checklists]]?
    • Does everyone have a way of providing [[feedback]] for the project/game process?
    • Do our briefs unite our [[expectations]] and establish a unified [[narrative]] about what happened after a project/game?
    • Do we have a way to [[communicate]] our situation?
    • Do we [[train]] to improve our [[process]]?
  • how to increase [[flow]] of [[attention]]? What is up and down [[stream]] of it? collapsed:: true
    • when does attention wait?
    • what is the nature of [[boredom]]?
    • what is the rate at which [[attention]] consumes [[work]]?
  • What matters most to get where the [[organization]] wants to go to [[grow]]? collapsed:: true
    • Eliminate everything that doesn't work toward that.

2023-11-01

→ node [[2023-10-31]]
  • [[Business]] questions: collapsed:: true
    • When would surprise you, if it's not done by that date? id:: 6546ca02-65fd-4078-9456-d5f58a161f65
    • What would be the dumb, simple way to make progress?
    • What's a [[conversation]] you've been avoiding?
    • Who needs help today?
    • If I wasn't already doing this, would I put energy down to do it today?
    • What [[problem]] are they solving?
    • What alternatives do they have to solving the problem? How is your [[solution]] different, how does it [[fit]] one problem better?
  • Intentional, calculated [[creation]] produces [[authentic]], [[smooth]] experiences for audiences.
→ node [[2023-10-30]]
  • Monday, 10/30/23 ** 10:35 'Site' is all for me. Is 'uln'? ** 17:35 Why do people really care about what you're doing? Why does it matter? What's the competitive advantage? Why should I consider it? Why should I switch? Why should I pay? What am I paying for? What value can I extract? Am I using a system or abusing it? Can the system be abused for good? Can users discover ways of using the system that the developers did not conceive of?

The worst response that you can receive about a tool is someone else being okay with it. ** 17:57 i wonder if heaven has more konbini characters than people

→ node [[2023-10-29]]

2023-10-29

  • For all the (supposed) micro-rationalities of [[capitalism]], it produces some huge macro-irrationalities ([[overshoot of planetary boundaries]], [[social inequity]]).

  • Finished listening to [[What Is To Be Done? with Breht O'Shea and Alyson Escalante]].

  • Listened: [[Red Menace: Climate Leviathan: A Political Theory of Our Planetary Future]]

    • Great discussion of [[Climate Leviathan]] by the [[Red Menace]] crew. Very engaging overview of the book. Definitely need to get around to reading it.
    • I was listening while doing jobs around the house so didn't get chance to note that much. But was nodding along to lots of salient points along the way.
    • Alyson and Breht both thought it a very worthwhile book and liked much of its analysis. They veer more to Climate Mao than Climate X, but still found value in X.
    • I do think there's a strong argument that you'd need a planetary sovereign of some kind to tackle the urgent and global polycrisis.
  • Why bother with org-roam and Termux on my phone? Why not just stick with orgzly for fleeting notes and then process them at the laptop?

    • A few reasons. First off, I just enjoy tinkering, and it's fun playing with Doom Emacs in Termux 🙂
    • Second - in my daily life outside of work I don't get that much opportunity to just sit at my desk so often fleeting notes just like you in orgzly without getting processed.
    • So far, though we'll see how it pans out, I'm finding much more opportunity to grab a moment here and there and process stuff incrementally through termux.
  • [[Planetary sovereign]].

    • From [[Climate Leviathan]], the idea of a global 'state' of some kind, to coordinate response to climate crisis (and polycrisis in general).
  • [[Polycrisis]].

→ node [[2023-10-28]]
  • Saturday, 10/28/23 ** 19:01 I will make functional things

2023-10-28

  • Got org-roam working with Doom Emacs in Termux. To a certain degree. Few niggly issues but decent start. [[Setting up Doom Emacs in termux on Android]]

  • Don't sync org-roam.db between machines.

  • Getting into org-roam on Termux. Useful extra tool in addition to orgzly for taking fleeting notes on my phone. Actually, Termux is more the processing of fleeting notes into actual notes.

    • Couple of nice to fixes: pull in the .git folder so I csn commit from here too.
    • Fix that weird error so that I can insert new nodes.
  • Enjoying the Upstream interview with Breht and Alyson from Rev Left / Red Menace. They seem a bit more tempered here on another show - left to their own devices can sometimes come across tankie. Lots of good discussion of the need for an [[ecology of organisation]] here. [[What Is To Be Done? with Breht O'Shea and Alyson Escalante]].

  • Watching Coraline. It's fun. I feel a bit seen by the Dad character…

  • This bit of text committed from my phone… will it work?

    • Hmm. It gets a bit confusing. Because the changes are synced by syncthing first, so git sees that as a conflict when I pull from the other device.
    • [[Syncing a git repo within a syncthing folder]]
    • OK. Now just syncing via git for a while, lets see how that goes.
  • Read: [[Universal basic services: the power of decommodifying survival]]

  • [[Problem with Kobo Clara HD battery]]. It is draining really fast.

  • Started reading Kate Soper's [[Post-Growth Living]]. It'll be about how a move away from consumerism will actually bring about a more enjoyable life.

→ node [[2023-10-27]]
  • Friday, 10/27/23 ** 14:03 Using javascript in my free time - I don't miss macros or type systems or good autocomplete (that's what AI is for). I miss immutable variable aliasing.

JS, like other functional language, encourages creating intermediate values that do not mutate previous results - but you can't update the existing value without mutating it.

Common pattern with 'let's in functional languages is to redeclare the current variable you're working on.

i.e.: value1 = a; value2 = change(value1); value3 = change(value2);

I never want the intermediate values for the end state because all I'm doing is applying pure transformations to input, but those intermediate values are excellent for print debugging. I might also want to split values up and merge them back together.

I AM SO STUPID you can use 'let' to do this but we have an eslint rule set up to avoid it

This reveals that (1) I should learn more about javascript semantics and (2) that I should learn to use a debugger instead of handling all of this intermediate value business

but also - redeclaring, not mutating, is a good default, and i wish i could do it with const

lol 'const' allows this too

ah, js does not allow you to alias function arguments!! ** 14:24 I like dynamic languages because you can accept whatever input you want as an argument and normalize it

I keep getting confused; is this a path? a string? a relative path? an absolute path?

Type systems can't capture that complexity without a lot of pushing types around. In some cases, they have to use dependent type systems to capture these semantics, like ensuring a number is above such and such value.

It's okay to sanitize incorrect inputs because users are stupid and make different assumptions about arguments they can provide! Strong types require the caller of a function to be very precise with their usage of the function. Weak types require the implementer of the library to consider all of the possible usages of the function and accomodate them. I like the latter because it's really cool to make things as easy to do as possible and as expressive as we want.

→ node [[2023-10-26]]

2023-10-26

  • Read: [[Problems with ecosocialism]]

    • Gives some critiques of ecosocialism. I don't necessarily agree, but worth a read and a think about. Mainly: not enough concrete ideas on actual transition (perhaps true, also recognised by ecosocialists themselves); too much focus on the social, not enough on the eco (I'd disagree with that from what I've seen); capitalism is too embedded to overthrow it, need to work within current system (kind of reformist argument).
  • The [[planetary boundaries]] framework defines nine boundaries for the planet, and as of 2023 six of them have been overshot.

→ node [[2023-10-25]]
  • Wednesday, 10/25/23 ** 13:29 How do you appropriately pitch an idea? Say less and code more.

2023-10-25

→ node [[2023-10-24]]
  • Tuesday, 10/24/23 ** 16:26 Building a service to generate static data and apply static transformations at scale? Here's what you're doing wrong. You're optimizing for the static case - the file transformation case.

If you have a single pass file input stream approach to parsing, serializing, compiling, whatever, you have no good way to debug or visualize your compiler. Where are the intermediate parts of the process?

Build assuming that you want to visualize. I like visualizing with HTML and the browser, but command-line interactions, printouts, other forms of GUIs are just as valid. ** 16:45 Read 'I am a hero' manga. Long form content is so much more valuable - feels so much more gratifying to consume - like I actually learn something!!

The panels felt cinematic. Author is either a fan of or has similar inspirations as Daido Moriyama .So many of the panels without dialogue - those intended to show the scene and highlight a particular emotion, character, or action - have deliberate distortion introduced into them around a subject; the distortion's similar to what the Ricoh's 28mm lens produces! Black and white ised used in harsh ways, in soft ways, to tell stories, to focus on particular parts of the medium. The author feels like a master of the medium, almost as good as Inio Asano's work - and definitely in the same vein. I was blown away. The plot twists - zombies to aliens to a sense of unity - and the contrasts drawn between the two ends and between different societal norms - young and old, following rules vs. acting out, etc.. were incredibly well-highlighted. MC follows the laws to the letter even during the apocolypse, but is also vehemently opposed to merging with others. Other characters are ardently individual or value harmony in different ways. The series is really about comparing and contrasting different ways of organizing society, exploring neet culture and independence - 'I am a hero' is MC's declaration of independence, and he carries it through luck, through circumstance, and at some points through his own will to the end. Great series. ** 16:54 https://chrisbolin.co/offline/

You must be offline to view this page.

Brilliant!

→ node [[2023-10-23]]
  • Monday, 10/23/23 ** 12:59 Using LTL to reconstruct the polycule STD timeline
→ node [[2023-10-22]]

<<<<<<< HEAD

  • [[trip to x]]!
    • Flying to [[Hong Kong]] and then [[Tokyo]] today.
    • With [[AG]] :)
    • Very happy about these holidays! They've been planned for long, and as work got tough in the last few months I relied on "seeing them coming" quite a bit.
    • I'll be very jet lagged but also likely happy in Shinjuku for the first few days.

As I write this, I'm roughly above [[Baku]] about to cross the [[Caspian Sea]]. I don't have an internet connection so I'm jotting down these local notes which will be synced to the Agora later.

I guess much has already been said about the relatively rareness of being offline nowadays; I am old enough to remember a time before being online at all was possible; then a time in which being online was rare; then the transition to always-on home internet and then mobile internet. I welcomed each increment of extra connectivity, and I still love how far we've gotten in this respect; but I can also appreciate the focus that being fully offline for a bit seems to bring. If nothing else it announces that the same focus is always available -- behind the impulse to catch up with messages, or check feeds, or read about Baku and the Caspian Sea on Wikipedia (which is surely what I would be doing right now instead of writing these words were I not truly offline.)

I'm thinking a bit of Agora development during these holidays; it might or might not happen, based on all the sightseeing and experiencing we'll be doing out there in the analog world :) But I thought it would still be nice to think of which things I could improve in the Agora if I have some time available.

I might write some [[executable subnode]] or other, if nothing else because they are fun and self-contained.

I think I will try to do one or two quick iterations on the [[Agora Server]] UI, maybe finishing the move to [[zippies]] as base widget as I've already done for nodes, stoas and most sections really. If I am able to move all sections under the search button/field to zippies the UI will probably look a lot more streamlined/be easier to understand, less confusing (this I'm guessing based on earlier feedback). Also it's not hard to do and it is apparent, so it sounds fun.

Moving on to larger things, [[mycoverse]]/[[fediverse]] integration is something I would love to get done in this Q4 2023 so getting started on it would make a lot of sense. I would love to understand what is the minimum that Agora Server would need to do to be able to expose user accounts as Fediverse feeds. Then new/updated nodes could generate something close to new posts/notes? Unsure.

Also, some playing with an hypothetical [[knowledge commons extension]] for e.g. [[Obsidian]] or [[Logseq]] or [[VSCode]] could be in order after the conversation last week with the [[fellowship of the link]]. But one blocker there is that I'm currently not using either Obsidian or VSCode as garden editors, so I'm not directly scratching an itch. Having said that, moving back to Obsidian or Logseq or [[Foam]] for a bit could make sense to see how far they've gone since the last time I've used them. It's still a shame Obsidian is not free software though.

2c5b52a413a40d92a8033377f285a8589e4e12e5

  • Sunday, 10/22/23 ** 02:58 Stockholm isn't like New York - you can't pretend that there are infinite opportunities. Miss one social commection and you're out of friends for the year. Try again next time. ** 03:13 On https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DePDzfyWkw --

I thought Rossman knew what he was doing but this is such an obvious miss. He's completely ignoring the fifteen years of failures of similar projects within the last year.

How many 'decentralized identity providers' are there? How many third party centralization attempts? How many secure, ad-free services?

Meta, Twitter, Reddit have all killed expressive API access within the last year - you can data dump, pay lots of money, or give up on it. YouTube is so close to doing the same - blocking adblockers is the first step towards requiring ad consumption or management.

AI data moats are the last straw here, and Google - positioning itself as a direct competitor to OpenAI - has every reason to lock up their APIs in exactly the same way. Rossman's app will never become big or popular enough to make YouTube shut off the API - though I'm sure he will claim this. Such a change will happen in spite of the few hundred users of the app.

The identity provider take also falls as flat as a freshman business student trying to 'start a startup in the bay area'. Oh look, there are N companies providing platform identities. I can't get them to talk to each other to validate legitimacy because legitimacy (or verification) is platform leverage, and no company is going to spend developer time and money to give another company that leverage. How do I solve this? I'll build company n + 1 and make a data moat of verification for the other n platforms!

Keybase tried this and their proofs worked super well. I loved using that app but they kept throwing security-related stuff at the fan because, regardless of being open-source, building a relatively strong brand, and providing proof of identity - they couldn't find a reason compelling enough to be the n + 1 company, so they folded. Servers cost money. They threw data storage on the pile, E2E encrypted messaging, cryptocurrency wallets to support your decentralized identity.

Louis'll say that they failed because they dove into crypto. They clearly just never found product-market fit, kept throwing stuff on the pile, and now they sold to Zoom - the marketing-pump-in-pandemic-fueled video calling app - something that felt like an off-the-shelf Electron student project from a coding bootcamp - that bragged about signing anticompetitive contracts and never paying a designer, then refusing to implement key accessibility features for schools. They needed competent staff to patch their security holes (and there were many), so they bought an aimless company to nab the staff.

How many open source beggars have there been for the last ten years? 'My library is free - but please give me a donation.' Nobody. Prominent library maintainers burn out and drop off when they're making 20 bucks a month off donations and putting in two hours a day - in addition to their salaried job. DRM-free and open-source-but-please-pay-us are fun ideas, but video hosting and streaming cost a hell of a lot - and so few people go out of their way to pay for something unless they're explicitly paywalled out of it. ** 03:32 By the way, I seriously do wish the best for Rossman; I hope his project works and he gets hundreds of millions of users and can afford to hire lots of people to build the distributed identity provider of the future.

I seriously want these tools to exist almost as much as he does. I just don't see how this venture can work out.

(Best-case scenario here - the company reaches tons of users and receives tons of financial support. Turns out, though, that video hosting platforms can't cut a loss and neither serve ads or charge money for videos.

Optimistically, the platforms in question cut a deal trading dollars for API access. This is the video streaming mess but slightly better because everything is available throuhg a homogenous platform.

Is it possible for these video streaming services to serve a large fraction of content without receiving compensation?) ** 03:57 My approach to React code is literally just small-scale MVC. A custom hook, or hooks, form the data model. The JSX at the bottom of the component is the view. The compatibility layer is implemented somewhere in between - declaring const onClick to fetch some data, check some UI bookkeeping, save some user input, mediating between all of them. I haven't learned much of anything. ** 04:00 To that end - my approach to coding is just interface design. I start at the top and write a file, hallucinating interfaces from other files. I implement those interfaces in a way that makes sense rather than adhering strictly to the framework I established - within reason. Then I run the code, the differences produce errors, and I coax out some substance. ** 23:23 I love when new features 'fall out' of existing designs. The fact that I can use the import infrastructure designed for jake.isnt.online to bootstrap the website itself is really beautiful.

The solution I have gets around the expression problem, in a way, by faking multiple dispatch.

  • Constructors automatically compile files from parent to child if the file doesn't yet exist.
  • Paths are always immutable but 'just work' everywhere, regardless of whether we have a naked string or the object because we check for them in one key, weird looking case. If you accidentally pass a string as a path (I've been there lots of times with the previous codebase), we fix for you.
  • javascript files are loaded with the same infrastructure that loads the files we compile with. they feel a bit too 'special-casey' right now, but I think general approaches will naturally fall out of the files as I write more code, rework, abstract, etc...
  • Instantiating classes dispatches to specific instances of those classes, but the caller doesn't ever have to know which class they have an instance of, ever. Methods always just work.
  • Abstracting more actually allows us to obscure and avoid overhead; we can decide when to read the file from disk, when to parse, it, etc. as the user interacts with the file in different ways. Complete file state is cached, pre and post compilation, because computers have more memory than we know what to do with (and we aren't deep copying everything in JS like we are in java world). Getters as immutable functions allow us to pretend that property access just works. (I don't think this is important, but it is fun...)

Time to learn some more math... ** 23:37 How does hot reloading with dependencies work?

When a dependency is created, it tracks which files depend on it and which files it depends on. When I change that file, I fetch, compile, whatever the new version, then notify the files upstream to make that dependency change. Lazy implementation is completely re-executing everything upstream that's dependent. Good implementation is pinpointing exactly what needs an update and fixing it.

Surgically replacing parts of files when statically generating a site isn't worth it, but operations like replacing an HTML structure with a new one or re-importing just a specific JS file without changing the whole stack are worth exploring. We had this with the clojure implementation.

By the way - this code is so, so much easier to roll than Clojure. It's incredible how well it works, how fast the code runs, how quiet my computer is when running it; there is no kick into high gear or fire on all cylinders mode like the insane Clojure JVM startup was. The bun repl is good enough to test ideas out locally or try out modules, but I should also implement some tests at some point... right?

2023-10-22

→ node [[2023-10-21]]
  • [[flancia]]!
    • [[flancia meet]]
    • I had to pick up a reminder and do my [[tax return]] today as tomorrow I travel for 3w+, and I could only extend the deadline for slightly less than that. I tried to enjoy it, and I was able to!
    • Having a great time with my [[mum]] being over.
  • Saturday, 10/21/23 ** 10:53 Saying no is an act of love. Yes is "whatever", "it's fine", "I agree"; "no" is "I care enough to correct you", it's "I believe in this mission and think something else should be prioritized" ** 13:14 It's become pretty clear that an AI service will become a giant, a huge company, a Stripe or a Google.

The strategy is airtight -- big data and effective AI systems require lots of fast, large-scale data processing, so the players with the most computers and the most money will have the most power.

As a consumer, the only way for you to access a state-of-the-art AI system is to pay for the one that has downloaded and vectorized most of the world.

As an individual developer, I have no idea where I fit anymore. The clear answer here - to me - is to fold into a big company if I want to work on innovative tech.

→ node [[2023-10-20]]
  • Friday, 10/20/23 ** 10:59 Why do founders spend so much time in Figma?

I can't see the time difference between putting together an html frontend prototype and a figma prototype as super significant. Cost of the former is a complete rebuild of the html prototype anyways.

Is that wrong? Is the value of Figma in part the expectation that it is truly a mockup, not a real product, rather than showing a website that's 'not real'? I don't get it. ** 11:04 'Product manager' in Swedish is 'Produktchef'

→ node [[2023-10-19]]
  • [[Flancia]]!
  • [[work]]
    • was tough
      • it started well with a reassuring conversation with a mentor, but the day ended with more conflict again in the employee representation group.
      • the sub-group within the group I am in -- I find really draining; it is one of the most difficult groups I've been in, in part because of a personality mismatch between myself and the rest of the group and because of the high stakes/high stress situation.
      • apparently the group really really doesn't like my way of being/acting/requesting information and reasons for why we do things the way we do. i find them overly hierarchical, surprisingly conservative, and IMHO sometimes uncharitable and rash (some of them).
      • I am thinking of stepping down from said subgroup but I think I will wait until after my holidays, which are imminent :)
  • [[audio recorder]]!
  • Thursday, 10/19/23 ** 01:07 Excuses are really lame Just do things
→ node [[2023-10-18]]
  • Wednesday, 10/18/23 ** 13:26 I hope that, in addition to video, to audio, to interactivity, to computationally-and-or-presentation intensive services, that your message can be presented with text - with plain text and compressed images and little diagrams, maybe even ascii art. Internet accessibility is escaping us because the mediums are becoming more dynamic, more interactive; but video is expensive and only a few - absurdly large - companies have the ability to host and support fast video infrastructure.

Interactive websites, too, require backends, assume stable and fast internet connections, assume fast code execution speeds; the M2 Macbook that the website's developer is using will never be the 2015 iPad or 400 dollar laptop that most of the world has access to. ** 15:16 Keeping up with the news doesn't improve your ability to accomplish goals in daily life or to help the people around you. If you're in an immediate position to help, you will find out through other means; you'll learn about the news by walking outside, for example, or through your workplace. You'll be able to help within your domain of expertise.

Following current events second by second and trying to piece together social media accounts, gossip, misinformation just makes you better at the bad reporting game; it doesn't help you progress towards accomplishing the goals you have in your everyday life.

→ node [[2023-10-17]]
  • [[Flancia]]!
    • [[work]]
      • I still have a cold but it was slightly better.
      • I checked with the [[dentist]] and they didn't mind (I tested negative for Covid yesterday), so I went ahead and I'm happy with the results!
    • [[Agora]]!
  • Tuesday, 10/17/23 ** 17:23 Ads are good because they make services frustrating enough to put down after a period of time. YouTube is too seamless without ads - video after video after video can autoplay without interruption, without someone screaming at you to download Clash of Cocks or Warfare Game 3 ** 17:45 I like that websites are apps that change every time you visit them. I like that they can be good or bad or based on trust. Websites are more about the people who maintain them than programs are - programs work one way forever, but websites you connect to. As an internet user, you open your TCP socket to accept their connection, listening to server updates live that they choose to push; maybe they've set things up for you, or maybe they're pushing chat messages to you live, facilitating conversations with friends or emojis or more. Websites feel so dynamic, so alive; they'll keep changing and changing and changing forever so long as someone is there to look after them. ** 17:48 On making money - you don't get to choose your struggle - the circumstances of the world at the time pick the best tool for you to provide value to others. It's your job to find enjoyment in it. ** 19:50 Every TopGolf looks the same and is big enough to obscure reality outside of the place - absurd for somewhere so big. When you are in Top Golf, you are not in Arizona or Brooklyn or Portland or California or Massachusetts. You are in transit
→ node [[2023-10-16]]
  • [[Flancia]]!
    • I woke up with a cold, have the sniffles hard; I [[worked]] from home and took it easy -- no meetings after 15:30, tried to rest. Tested negative for Covid though!
    • Last light in the balcony looking southwest, cold day but beautiful.
    • [[AG]]
    • [[Lady Burup]]
    • I thought of [[Tara]].
→ node [[2023-10-15]]
→ node [[2023-10-14]]
  • Welcome to the Agora of Flancia!
    • Today and every day.

Today is [[14 October 2023]] and I am glad you are here with me.

It has been ages since I've in Flancia, sometimes it feels, even as time is varying.


Here is what I call a poem: [[trees]].


This weekend I intend to advance what I call [[open letters]]: documents addressed to groups, openly published even as they are being written.


As of 21:45 CET I did some 'day job' stuff (having chosen it) and started a proposal (open letter, as per the above) that I had on my todo list.

Now switching to [[paramita]], planning to continue on related topics but in the [[commons]].


Today we bought the tickets to and from [[Sri Lanka]], happy about it!

→ node [[2023-10-12]]
  • Outage from Alcova to South of mountain. [[storymine]]
  • Thursday, 10/12/23 ** 08:39 Lately, I've been solving difficult software problems by permuting the solutions until I find the best one that fits.

Yesterday I stuck the problem in my head, went for a walk, then came back and specified a solution. ** 20:49 From debugging experience today - Code walkthroughs - in front of a group or just one person - can be really helpful, but you need to know where to start.

Narrow down the problem in your own head and on paper as much as is reasonable; don't consider code coverage so much as the aspects in which your program could fail. "I've narrowed it down: the bug is with this behavior (in this case, a refresh issue), and that issue could be caused within this scope."

Then allow the user to assume what's outside the scope - you've used good function names and left good comments, so this shouldn't be a problem - and ask them to identify problems or things that look off, starting from 'the top' of the problem surface and working our way down - just like Matthias taught. (That was two years ago now... wow. I'm just reaching that point in 'my career' now. That's kind of sad. Work faster!)

We would have found the problem instantly if I'd done that at work today!

2023-10-12

This is a book for people who want to destroy Big Tech. It’s not a book for people who want to tame Big Tech. There’s no fixing Big Tech. It’s not a book for people who want to get rid of technology itself. Technology isn’t the problem. Stop thinking about what technology does and start thinking about who technology does it to and who it does it for. This is a book about the thing Big Tech fears the most: technology operated by and for the people who use it.

→ node [[2023-10-11]]
→ node [[2023-10-10]]
  • Tax benefits of utility company I was working at. [[storymine]]
  • Flat tire van using own vehicle for checks. [[storymine]]
→ node [[2023-10-09]]
  • Monday, 10/09/23 ** 00:52 Removed most of my YouTube subscriptions ** 11:14 This website (what this is hosted on and compiled with) needs to use javascript - frontend and backend. The same language has to run everywhere. That's the only way to avoid lag, overhead, etc...

It's very possible that I use some Clojure-macro-wrapper-thing for JS. It should not have a runtime - just different syntax (maybe). The ability to inspect element in the browser and see the exact code that someone has written - comments and all - is really beautiful, and I want to strive for that.

There are 'mediums' where we are able to take the source file. ** 11:33 Biggest pet peeve lately - and by lately, I mean the last few months - I can't seem to stand the use of 'it' as a subject when using a verb is necessary. It really pisses me off!!!!! A clear 'source' of the statement always exists, and using 'it' is always a cope to avoid having to think about what 'it' is. In doing so, the writer or speaker omits an opportunity to be more specific; they deliberately obscure details and - IMO - over-rely on context instead. The word 'it' says 'fill me in with what you think could be here', which allows English to increase information density, but in doing so also increases ambiguity!

→ node [[2023-10-08]]
  • Sunday, 10/08/23 ** 10:48 The tech keynote only exists because it was the best way for Steve Jobs to present new products. It doesn't work for anyone else. There is some value to hosting an event that's (1) physical and (2) completely controlled by the company announcing the product - it gives them the ability to present and control a complete narrative. I'm not sure if today, new consumers are exposed to new products in that way!

Most people (I believe - not quite sure) consume secondhand - The Verge chops up cuts of these multi-hour-long sessions into fifteen minutes of What Really Matters, while other tech review websites and content creators all quote the same two or three relevant sentences from the keynote. Companies try to buy the attention back with stunning video quality and presentation acumen, but they'll never beat the perspective of a third party - and some review outlets, like MKBHD, are stepping up to match that production value.

→ node [[2023-10-07]]
  • Saturday, 10/07/23 ** 17:48 The biggest aspect of the US - of Germany, of Italy, of most other places I've been - is the lack of eye contact and body language in Stockholm. Growing up in Portland suburbs, my dad would say 'hey' to everyone we passed by on morning walks - and though I wasn't that explicit, I would always make eye contact, smile, nod; acknowledge the other person, and they would almost always acklowledge me back. In social scenarios, an eye contact and a smile is a sign - "I want to talk to you", or "you seem interesting", or "thank you for sharing this space with me".

I'm used to giving and receiving those kinds of looks everywhere. In Stockholm, I get nothing back. No matter how sparse or densely crowded a street is, nobody will make eye contact; they aggressively look in the other direction, like they're deliberately avoiding acknowledging the other person. This girl who sat down after me - next to me - on the bus five minutes ago - ACNE Archive bag, beautiful red leather jacket - and amazing outfit, honestly! - I wanted to ask where the jacket was from, so I looked for some social cue from her to consent to my reaching out, to say that somehow it would be okay for me to talk to her - and though I made it very clear that I was open to conversation through my social signals, I thought, she gave nothing back, positive or negative - not even an acklowledgement. Keep staring at the phone. Don't acknowledge the environment.

This isn't incredibly uncommon - I feel like I experience this with someone else at least once a week. Interesting person, no idea how to talk to them, they don't broadcast any social signals. This isn't something I've experienced anywhere else - even in Copenhagen, quite close (culturally and physically), I had something to go off of - and people interacted with me non-verbally! Where is that here? ** 19:28 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hql6doE-Ccw

Dave2D's video presentation is really interesting. He films everything in one take - or hard cuts if he needs another, but that doesn't seem to happen frequently. He adjusts on the fly and lets it happen - left a joystick off, for example, or doesn't realize how to do something at first - and doesn't brush it off, necessarily, but acknowledges that it's part of the experience.

It's this seemingly casual, ad-hoc delivery that makes him a good speaker, I think; he feels personable, like he could be you experiencing a device, unlike a lot of the other tech review content production out there. His videos are clearly very planned, though; he hits on all the points at the right times, and the progression of the story - feel in hand to build quality to cool quirks to gameplay experience to who would buy this - is standard, and he hits his marks every two or so minutes to transition between them. He makes this happen, though, through a conversation, one that's briskly filmed without cuts. Dave films his own face and the device at the same time, and isn't afraid to cut out to his face or to the full device view if he needs the room, but he is in complete control of to what degree his face - his opinion - about the device is shown.

More of Dave's face? More opinion. More of the device fills the screen? Facts about the device, because you're looking and making the decision for yourself rather than talking to him. Brilliant!

His varying tone of voice also really brings points home; when he needs to make some sort of disclaimer or note for the more serious people, he always - always - 'inlines it' by using it as a fourth point in the five paragraph essay structure he uses, speaking quickly and with a lower tone of voice, so that most people brush over it but the people who care absorb the information; it's required for him to convey in some way. Headline sentences or leading paragraphs have his voice dipping up and down, slowing when mentioning device names or Bringing. Points. Home., like It's All. About. The. Joystick. or something like that, then continuing to deliver with a faster cadence; 'you see, well...'.

Another observation - his style is very deliberate but he still bookends a lot of his points with filler; filler that would be common in a conversation, but not necessarily in a prepared script. This makes a video feel like a conversation. ** 20:05 Oh, Fujifilm is in Stockholm because Hasselblad headquarters are in Gothenburg. Was wondering why they were so into coming here first when choosing Europe...

2023-10-07

→ node [[2023-10-06]]
  • Friday, 10/06/23 ** 09:48 Website edit system for documents 'Sign in with github' Creates a pull request in the background to make the requested edit to the text

Would be so cool!!!!!!!

Really I want this for jake.isnt.online but would have to be part of the backend thing for uln.industries right? I'll figure it out!!!!!!!!!! ** 10:15 If the argument for Tailwind CSS is optimization... wait. A more intelligent SCSS compiler should be able to handle abstracting across different CSS styles and classes to minify them.

How?

Module SCSS files have to be imported. If a class is actually a combination of other class names, it's trivial to pass multiple class name arguments instead of one; you just leave a space between them.

This means an optimizing SCSS compiler can split classes, find similar classes using the same code, and unify them across the whole project, significantly reducing SCSS size. If my CSS class with 10 rules shares 5 distinct rules, each with two other classes, we can serialize those 5 rules to a class, then - on import - append that class name to the current one when deploying to production

A linting rule could also catch this project-wide and encourage the user to refactor and reduce the use of them. ** 10:39 When meeting someone - make sure the question takes as much effort as the answer. If the answer takes more effort, the conversation is no fun, and the asker isn't actually listening. ** 18:57 I like interfaces of any kind

→ node [[2023-10-05]]

Discussed divorce with [[L]], we've been separated for around 1.4 years. Things are going well and I wish us both happiness!

  • Thursday, 10/05/23 ** 12:47 Stories should never be 'X and Y'. Those are unrelated! You're just reading off a list, stating facts.

Instead - 'a', then 'b', but 'c', because 'd'. If the order in a list of facts doesn't matter, your structure doesn't make sense.

To pick up a new plot? If we hit peak interest, switch to the other story. Then revisit.

Commanding attention is a brilliant skill - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GXv2C7vwX0. "It's not what you get, it's about how you cut it - and how it comes out the other end." ** 12:53 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdSKot0psNg Trakcing shots - used to convey size, motion, or time. Good transition as well. ** 13:31 After watching more of these - I think I can learn a lot about product design from film. Film transitions and compositions aim to direct the viewer's attention, to evoke particular feelings of progress, of anguish, of any sort of emotional state as the plot of the movie progresses. They practice engagement - what is the correct amount of information to show the user? When do we need to prompt for user interaction? When should we present information to them and let them watch?

Cinema is a series of calculated risks and to make a movie is to balance all of these plot-driven interests to hammer a single, particular path home. ** 21:33 I love having the opportunity to think about a technical problem and get it right, and I mean really right; to evaluate consequences and scratch at all of the rough edges until they peel a little bit, then affix them with the right tools and apply some treatment, some abstraction, until the tool is perfect and foolproof and ready for someone to use.

This is an environment I can thrive in -- someone gives me a problem - puts me in a box - and I find all the right tools to both find a solution and make it feel beautiful to use. I can't wait to keep coding and making more.

→ node [[2023-10-04]]
  • Wednesday, 10/04/23 ** 11:03 "I built something"

"Your thing sucks. Here's why."

"I didn't build it to be seen in that way and it doesn't harm anyone"

"I hate you"

→ node [[2023-10-03]]

[[Imaginate un mundo sin latencia]] me dije, habiendo solucionado los problemas de conectividad bluetooth en [[nostromo]] :)

A veces extraño el [[español]] como idioma.

  • #push [[youtube]]
    • the uploading experience even on studio.youtube.com leaves me unsatisfied :)
    • it is slow, you need to perform a multitude of clicks to get to publish something
    • friction should be much lower than this!

Mientras escribo esto, estoy escuchando [[hola frank]] de [[sumo]] :)

  • Next I will work on a [[proposal]] within the context of my work in the [[er-ch]].
  • And on my personal computer I will start work on [[x]] as the evening progresses :)

Let us pray, dice Luca Prodan :)

  • Young goth not happy about his girlfriend dancing with others. [[storymine]]
  • Anticipating the total cost of the flat tire in Mills. [[storymine]]
  • Tuesday, 10/03/23 ** 07:29 Understanding what Daniel meant when he said he wasn't comfortable with his physical form... it's so, so easy to keep working, keep working, keep working, and never think about your body, your life, who you are outside of your job ** 09:43 My are.na feels a bit unstructured lately, disorganized; the photos I'm saving lack a sort of coherence. Some have grit, others have polish, some have pain; I'm not sure which is which and which is best. I'm glad that I'm doing this but I need more control, to make more work myself. ** 10:02 Don't use words like "jealous" or "ugly" or "bad". Not good words - negative words - evoke not good feelings, even when used in jest. Instead shift phrasing to always be positive. ** 10:03 It's okay to both take things seriously and not expect them to lead anywhere ** 10:12 I will never make 'merch' I will never make 'merch' I will never make merch

To make goods designed not to fulfill a need, not to solve a problem, not to improve daily life, but solely to produce revenue - providing value as a """""""""""""""memento""""""""""""""""" - is disgusting. Creativity and genuine care and making things for the sake of making them is cool. I don't think money should ever be the focus.

Thinking more about 'bullshit jobs'. Is promoting an inferior product a bullshit job? Restricting information definitely is.

pull color="#b51f08"> <title>500 Internal Error wtf.
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://doc.anagora.org/css/center.css"> <button class="pull-url" value="https://doc.anagora.org/css/center.css">">pull</button>
<div class="container-fluid text-center">
    <div class="vertical-center-row">
        <h1>500 Internal Error <small>wtf.</small></h1>
    </div>
</div>
→ node [[2023-10-02]]

instagram ideas - you get all the value you need from a picture and a caption or a short video

hook of content should provide another question - what's next? he hatched a fish from caviar? HOW did he catch a fish? make the hook brief and brilliant and shareable across platforms - but leave more hanging to share across other platforms.

Not healthy to pretend to be interested in anything

Has to pass the pub test - if I tell someone the idea at the pub in a couple of sentences and they look at me in a weird way, I've got an idea; they want to see more

Good to be unfamiliar enough with a circumstance but for it to seem cool, to have a good level of energy... ** 22:27 Photos have to be just quiet enough; not too loud, not too much coing on

→ node [[2023-10-01]]
  • Sunday, 10/01/2023 ** 09:20 Coding for fun makes my work stronger and my life better. Finally picking up the personal projects I've procrastinated on for so long - no more bullshit, just cutting to the chase and learning NextJS, modern React, etc. properly outside of work. Building that compiler for a website.

Making more increases momentum; we learned that from taking photos. Doing more means you'll continue to do more and more and more and more until you've mastered it. ** 09:24 No days off again. Even if on vacation, even if sick - write some code. Go to the gym - or at least get outside. Take some photos. Don't allow yourself to reset and become afraid of those activities. ** 09:56 Overlay to give information about a page if I've seen it before, things I've written, things I've logged... like what if hypothes.is was on all websites, a superset of it. ** 21:03 https://archive.ph/SixJv#selection-2129.0-2133.185

It's strange to fill my head with these stories of grit, of character, of tough experiences because I don't think I've had any. My whole life has felt a bit structured, a bit planned, and I'm not quite sure how to make it out of there. I don't want anything but friends and excitement; I have everything else I could want. Maybe I have to master consistency before I get a bit more dysfunctional. ** 21:09 Writing, taking photos, writing code, using computers, posting on social media, saving inspiration, cooking, dressing yourself, etc... these are 'democratic' hobbies - everyone has to do them to live life today - but for some people these skills are careers, and whether the skill becomes a career speaks more to your business acumen than your skill with the activity itself. Career or not, becoming good at things that everyone has to do every day is beautiful.

All of my tools are black or silver or white. Why? ** 21:12 Maybe my next - my 'first' - essay should be about learning the basics, the mundane, the beautiful, mastering it. Things that everyone needs or does.

→ node [[2023-09-30]]
  • Saturday, 09/30/2023 ** 11:04 jake.isnt.online is a silo - away from other ideas of computing, away from websites and how they should be built. folk. uln.industries is industrial, production-ready, state-of-the-art. ** 14:55 Bucket list / might miss some things, but need some goals to center myself...
  • Make one clothing collection: simple items that I can wear forever.
  • Take beautiful photos of everyone I love, no matter where we are
  • Learn to sketch or paint // without an end goal yet
  • Build a computing ecosystem entirely my own: web stack, programming language database system... own my stack. Something symbiotic.
  • Build, or help build, a tool that many friends and family members use every day. Thinking Notion, iPhone, Google Maps.
  • Become comfortable with mathematics and formal methods. I think I'll much better understand the world.
  • Likewise for physics.
  • Likewise for human biology / understand the biological foundations for the 'state of the art', at least.
  • Likewise for computing hardware.
  • Learn to write to convey information well.
  • Make an album of music.
  • Speak Swedish comfortably.
  • Understand enough Mandarin to properly experience China / or Korean/Korea, Japan/Japan, Arabic/yeah... English will never explain those cultures enough.
  • See South America
  • See East Africa
  • See the middle east

This is far from complete, I think, I think, I think

→ node [[2023-09-29]]
  • [[29]] is [[drishti]] in the #Flancia [[Pattern Language]].
  • My hobby, sometimes: think about whether numbers are prime while laying down or sitting.
    • Take [[209]] -- it is not prime.
      • I find this one quite beautiful, this is how I got there:
        • It is not multiple of two or five trivially.
        • It is not a multiple of three as its digits don't add up to a multiple.
        • It is not a multiple of 7 because 210 is (as 21 is 3 * 7) and it's too near.
        • Consider the hypothesis that it is multiple of 11.
          • 220 is a multiple of 11 because 22 is.
          • 220 - 11 is 209.
          • So 209 is a multiple of 11. What is the other factor?
        • Consider the hypothesis that it is a multiple of 19.
          • 19 * 10 is 190.
          • 190 + 19 is 209 precisely, so it is a multiple.
        • Therefore 209 is 11 * 19.
    • [[1547]] is not prime; it is 7 * 13 * 17.
  • Friday, 09/29/23 ** 09:24 Specialized tools are good.

Camera roadmap:

  • Ricoh(s): everyday cameras.
  • Fuji X system: day shooting, video.
  • GFX (future): serious client, portrait, editorial work.

X-T3 is great. Upgrade to the next X-Pro when available. GFX tilt-shift lens is incredible. Would seriously transform my photos of buildings. GFX-50R ii, hopefully. ** 13:03 Internet history is becoming more and more difficult to track -- how do we archive all of those TikToks? Connect the links? I'm sure everyone's said the same about Facebook and Instagram, but - distressed. ** 14:39 hey ** 17:40 Thinking about decoration --

I would never want a photo I've taken in my house, but I would love a sketch or a watercolor or an oil painting or a sculpture or a piece of jewelry or some furniture. I don't really enjoy photos in other people's homes.

Maybe I'm doing the wrong thing. Maybe photos are just for Instagram.

But they're not; I love looking at photos, photos of buildings and people that tell stories, that present these super minimal landscapes. Those have a different use case.

I want to make everything myself, though - and I'm a bit ashamed that I couldn't reasonably make decorations for my apartment.

→ node [[2023-09-28]]
  • Thrown so snappily that my balls clapped. [[storymine]]
  • Thursday, 09/28/23 ** 10:59 I'm part of the problem. I save the same room inspiration as everyone else. My home will always look like everyone else's. ** 11:12 Taking photos improves eyesight ** 13:37 Maybe my bad mood is just about the weather. Finally finishing the apartment organization process. Coding well. Feeling great about progress today. Excited to do more and make more. I love work and life. This new camera is just what I need.

How do I prevent this from happening?

  • A fan.
  • Bright lights. ** 20:33 Issey Miyake (the brand, not the person... rest in peace) continues to make clothing that looks so different from anything else I've ever seen. Always blown away by the work. That clothing is art. How is nobody else doing it like this???
→ node [[2023-09-27]]
  • [[just do it]]
  • [[gone]]
  • [[yoga with x]]
  • [[fellowship of the link]] was great!
    • note this node takes minutes to load, and that's sort of awesome
    • because of current agora behavior every embed that opens, in the node itself and everything it pulls by default, grabs focus when it loads. the result is a bit like an automatic tour of our conversations over the previous many months.
    • it is... Agora [[demo mode]] / [[autopilot]], as I dreamt it, implemented as a side effect of bugs!
    • [[neobooks]]
    • I discovered someone took amazing notes while I gave the presentation yesterday. It filled me with joy, such friends!
  • How to deny [[time]] to an enemy?
  • Rec center receptionist finding me students. [[storymine]]
  • What birds sing near this [[place]]? What other animals make sounds near that place? [[navigating]]
  • Wednesday, 09/27/23 ** 14:46 So much of writing React code is reconstructing state machines with particular primitives.

Is it better to use an abstraction like 'xstate' and rely on a state machine abstraction than to make it explicit? ** 14:47 I don't have a strong enough foundation to build a WebGPU UI framework thing. I barely even know what I want from a UI framework.

  • First: I have to continue building my personal website and add more primitives, more abstractions, logic for transitions. Get comfortable with my own workflow.

  • Build a couple of applications with Next.js or other 'state of the art tools'. Not splash pages or toys. Professional-looking applications.

  • Try building a mobile app or some sort of mobile interface for one of those abstractions.

  • Learn from using those multiple paradigms. Try to figure out what could be better. Try out those Rust Web UI experiments and whatever Swift is doing.

Only after doing these things will I be prepared to revisit all of that graphics rendering stuff!!!!!!!!! ** 16:20 I love Figma. Blown away by how responsive it is every time I use it. Can't wait for the experience to get closer to code.

Feels like user interface style systems should be redesigned 'figma-first'. Flexbox - and similar responsive systems - are great, sure, but we can add those retroactively. 'Convert to responsive component' or something atop of the mockup. So much of this mockup - any mockup - could be trivially converted to code if we had the right system, but this is only possible if the UI framework is tightly coupled to the design tool.

I want this to be real. ** 20:37 The Apple keyboard feels so shallow compared to my other devices; the huge amount of resistance that the X-T3 puts in front of my fingers makes these keys so touchy by comparison, with so little travel... being human is about getting used to our tools so quickly. Joel was shocked that I had a Swedish keyboard - but for me to adjust to it took no time at all.

Let's talk about camera gear.

I can tell that the Fuji's sensor is better - or that, at least, it injects some magic into the colors of each photo - and that's helped shape my style and take good photos.

However: those buttons are painful to press. It's genuinely difficult to change exposure compensation without reassigning a dial, and settings can't be quickly flicked into place; it's either one click at a time or a rough, forced transition for a very different setting. This is not the camera for fast photos.

I know the Ricoh wins, but let's break it down - I want a camera that:

  • Can be shot one-handed
  • Has IBIS to catch movement and enable one handed shots
  • Fits in my pocket or is otherwise unobtrusive when bringing it around
  • Has a versatile focal length
  • USB-C charging
  • Fast lens
  • Quick changing settings

Today it became so obvious how obtrusive the Fuji is - I have to keep it on the end of its 'leash' - camera strap - to guarantee that the image is stable, given no IBIS; the camera's a bit heavy to hold one-handed - tires my arm just enough to want a second hand sometimes - but that isn't much of a problem. Everyone around me reacted to me holding a camera; looked my way, gave me a weird look, tried to hide a bit, posed a little bit... maybe it's just imagined but the Fuji provoked a different reaction. This bus driver stared at me for ten minutes as I took photos around Slussen - and she wasn't even in the photos! I kept having to change settings and miss shots, too... bring the hand up to the camera or the camera down to the hand, make adjustment, repeat. Not a fun process.

→ node [[2023-09-26]]
  • Tuesday, 09/26/23 ** 12:00 Make more youtube videos. Produce more 'content'. DO MORE. ** 13:19 Missed shot - leather jacket in early afternoon light with a fly at the top right. Would have been brilliant.

Poor shot - experimenting with low shutter speed in Odenplan. Being afraid of taking a photo of someone close to me. Have imperfect results saved. ** 15:06 Employee at by:fiket - a bit of a goofy, outgoing character - awesome person - asked me how he could improve on making the mocha as I was leaving.

What an awesome idea - I'm so glad. I wish I had had more advice for him. ** 21:35 Photo learnings today:

  • Hold the camera as still as you can
  • Consider experimenting with manual mode
  • I love those shots of people in buildings
  • Discovering some dynamic compositions close to people
  • My movement can be good if I carefully consider what's in frame - learn to move the camera better adn control the motion
  • Most of the photos I want to shoot naturally fit with a longer focal length, and I feel like a lot of the time I am forcing the GR iii to do something it's not built for. It's a great indoor camera, but I'm still having a hard time forcing it outdoors. ** 21:38 Meta-notes on making videos and writing without thinking: it's okay for writing to be 'off the dome' because you see immediate feedback and correct it. This can be done in YouTube videos too - take a second to figure out the idea, say 'oops', control your pace, and figure it out in post.

In conversation, you have to control your thoughts and your pace prematurely. Take it slow. Think about it a little bit. Then slowly let the words out, word by word, carefully choosing the framework beforehand and filling in the gaps. ** 21:44 Also thinking about the best hobbies for learning how to learn. Photos are a perfect example. Barrier to entry is zero: literally walk outside and click a button. Barrier for feedback: super low. Post a photo on Instagram or send to someone else and ask their opinion. Community of practice: huge. Bad community of practice: huge. Really good people in modern day - a lot of them. Lots to aspire to do, can feel the huge gap, can clearly quantify getting better.

The tighter the feedback loop on your thinking can be, the faster you can learn and the better you can make things.

Gym takes a few weeks - I'd say two - to pay off positively with mood benefits. Eating takes a few days but is hard to directly establish the association. Photos are instant gratification: you see the image in the monitor and you think you win. ** 21:47 Thinking about what Fuji guy (sorry your name is in my phone but not on my computer) told me about composing on his camera - he just uses the black and white filter on the camera and uses the color RAW files. Intention is to focus on the composition in the camera then shift to considering the colors in post.

Is this good?

I think it would be a good exercise for learning. I'm not sure if it could help me make the best images possible. Color is so important to consider in a final image.

Should I force myself to shoot black and white jpegs for a bit and see what happens?

Should I bring back the Fuji focal length and see what happens?

Yes to the second. No to the first. I love color too much to give it up, and I love photos too much to miss an image because of a decision I made. ** 22:01 Why am I doing something that so many people are?

Walking around and crossing my fingers for shots is starting to feel frivolous; what am I really documenting? What is really what I want to picture? Can I really compete in such a crowded market? Am I really expressing myself? Is this really helping me meet people? Is taking photos a good use of my time? ** 22:07 More websites. There aren't enough websites.

→ node [[2023-09-25]]
  • Reducing [[risk]] for the client makes it easier for them to [[decide]] to [[buy]].

Love his advocacy for joining the community - getting closer to others, not just borrowing elements from it or observing it. If you appreciate a culture you should live in it. ** 10:26 Thinking that once a week is a good rate for taking photos. ** 10:38 If I want to live more local, maybe I should use bandcamp instead then.

I appreciate the people who lean into the competitive advantages of taking photos - the ability to perfectly document an environment. Marketing work can be replaced by graphic design, 3D modeling, AI - that'll become cheaper. Recording progress, process, individual documentation - that's what photos are good for. ** 11:46 Yeah, I think Ricoh GR iii X is for me - I don't think the lack of weather will ever be a problem - but I also think my budget's run out. ** 12:42 To learn from photos

  • Shooting without the viewfinder, without the screen, without even looking. Being able to have a conversation without a camera, but still document a moment, is really beautiful
  • More interesting compositions. I messed up my photos from the event yesterday trying to square the compositions. They were just worse. Focus on people first - don't be too rigid
  • Shooting one handed. So powerful. Goes with the shooting without the viewfinder.
  • Working with people.

** 14:14 Always provide help first, then ask why, not the other way around - especially if it's something that could (or should) be prioritized. Nobody likes no ** 22:28 Thinking about livestreaming my daily photo editing or review sessions. Is that a good idea?

→ node [[2023-09-24]]
  • Sunday, 09/24/23 ** 11:14 Still feeling weird about the Ricoh. It's the perfect camera for living life. It's not the best camera - for me - for going out and taking photos. The lens is just too wide.

Should I get the GR iii X too?................ ** 19:29 Too much NYC mythos. Nobody needs another NYC street photographer - not in that style. Watching these videos - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAKWwljJiIQ - a lot of the work feels like a copy of a copy of a copy - I don't understand where the work is coming from. He has some great photos - but not in this video. Maybe an unlucky day. The narrative about 'documenting life in the city' though doesn't feel like it adds up when there are so many people doing it?

Maybe what I'm doing is wrong too, directionless. I think it's more reflective of how I'm feeling than it is of others, or - at the least - more reflective of some theme I want to convey. What do I do it for? My instinct is to practice and keep practicing - it's not a hobby, really, it's a routine.

There are too many good photos - just like there are too many good songs and too many good websites and too many good graphic designers. (I don't think there are enough good websites or graphic designers though, really. Maybe video editors are a more apt comparison.). I don't think technology can make photos much better - we have tools today that expose the exposure latitude and dynamic range problems of previous tech generations. No camera from the last ten years has any limitations. Improvements are incremental - they decrease luck as a factor but make no fundamental changes in how things work.

There is room for different mediums that leverage the benefits of modern technology - we don't have a good camera for 'motion photos', to my knowledge, really - (or maybe I need to find one) - but it feels as if everything is trending towards video. Maybe photos are in the past. Every photo I see has been taken before; every idea has been thought of. There are new people but - as Chuck said in that essay - all of us live the same lives, really.

Maybe I should spend more time making websites then.

Okay - how am I different though?

  • My style - shot in a street style, but a bit sculptural, respective of frames and lines and architecture - is an approach that I don't really see other people using. I think I can expand and improve on it. I think there is merit to it.
  • I'm in Stockholm, not in New York City or San Francisco. Culture is different here.
  • I have a better understanding of technology than many others.
  • I have taste in clothes. Beyond what works and doesn't work for me, I have an understanding of how to style and dress to convey a particular mood. I don't know how to make clothing, but I keep up with new designers that make beautiful things that others could use to express themselves.
  • I have engineering discipline and tools for self-reflection. I will get better and better and better.
  • I have no connections to musicians and no experience with portraits of people. I need to do more here.
  • I have no experience in studio or with artificial lights.
  • I have no experience with interviews.
  • I don't take photos in the morning.
  • I don't need other people to care about my photos to make them. It just happens.

Cool - what can I do differently?

  • Take photos in the morning.
  • Take photos in the studio.
  • Try interviewing people.
  • Try 'street portraits' in locations I love. Spend time loitering and ask cool people at those locations for photos at those locations. This has worked for me before!! Working with people is something I will never get enough experience with.
  • Don't worry about a particular genre.
  • Consume more media from interesting, contemporary photographers. Watching all of this information about the NYC streets, I worry that too many people have the same influences and take the same photos. I don't want to become too tainted.
  • Keep consuming media from people who have different styles from mine.
  • Plan more.
  • Keep cold DMing. Cold DM everyone in Stockholm asking for photo advice. Cold DM anyone who wants photos. I need to meet more people.

I think reaching out is the best win I can get here. I do enough of the rest - I just need to meet people. Nothing's new. ** 21:02 Things to write about

  • Consequences of camera settings and how they can add to photos
  • Meta software development (not the company, the practice)
  • Day in life
  • Sweden
  • Fiction ** 22:16 Learning from riot photos
  • Take burst shots. No single photos.
  • Bring the bigger camera. Nobody will care.
  • Tell stories with the frames - prioritizing getting the lines straight over focusing on perspectives is too much.
  • Take more photos than you think you'll need - just point and hold the shutter down.
  • Slow shutter speed is great for showing motion.
  • Really wide focal length can show you down. Ricoh was not the best tool here.
  • Keep your hand still if you're shooting at low shutter speeds.. ** 22:59 I think I'm happier when I'm making my own work than I am when consuming the work of others. Finding references is good - but my life doesn't have the most balanced approach atm! I'm taking too much in and not putting enough out.

How much time is healthy to dedicate to 'input'? Depends on the medium, I think - but I'm dialed in basically 16 hours a day. There's no way that my current attitude is healthy.

More often than not, when I see something on are.na that I like - I've already saved the thing to one of my channels and the person who saved it - why it showed up - follows me, meaning they likely found the thing from me to begin with. That has to be a sign to stop - or, at the least, slow pace.

2023-09-24

→ node [[2023-09-23]]
  • Saturday, 09/23/23 ** 09:03 All these review websites - anonymous notes - etc. I don't think it's really possible for writing to be unidentifiable, unless it's been tumbled through editors and AI, or at least I think so; most people tend to have a strong voice. At work, I can generally identify who on the (9 person team) has written a passage based on their writing style, formatting, and other little hints throughout - a quirk of poor punctuation, a common misspelling, a certain phrase of words tehy use often. ** 10:13 The morning is for getting ahead - the evening is for cleaning up.

I think I will shift my workout schedule to the morning. It feels 'active' - not like 'maintenance' - and the last two hours of my day should be spent cleaning and organizing. In a way, everything I do feels like organizing; the code, for example, already exists; I just need to arrange and compose it in a way that solved my problem.

Maybe my plants need watering. Maybe I can do that now.

I think I have to accept that creating mess during the day is okay, too - as long as it's taken care of by the end of the day (or the next morning). I deserve a fresh start.

Talk at work yesterday - "You have to have a plan for when you'll end, or you could just work forever". That's my problem - I don't define time or space for me to do particular things, so I don't do much of anything and none of my time is reserved for me to accomplish anything in particular.

This is part of my effort to aggressively calendar retroactively - to visualize time spent is to take control of it. ** 10:51

Coney Island -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xw68q0jipg -- maybe New York City is the center of the world -- or, at least, one of them. ** 12:30 I write more words at work than I code - if you count comments. I think this is the correct approach ** 12:48 Forgot how good the Framework feels. The Macbook is robust - engineered- a beautiful artifact, a design machine, complete for people to use.

My Framework - with two years of NixOS, a light metal frame, and a few dents under its belt - is charming by comparison. It's a machine built for hacking, that begs to be remade and recrafted and redone over and over again, for debugging and hacking all sorts of beautiful system utiliteis and projects. The machine encourages you to remake it, transform it. It can do anything - you just have to make it happen and write the code to do it. ** 16:05 How do I format these notes as 500 word essays?

Love https://stephango.com

Wondering how I can make a system to help myself do the same ** 17:06 Loving the way the ilcaffe lights shake and move a bit when someone leaves their seat in the back - a trace of them is left in their place, swaying, lingering, for fifteen or so minutes afterwards. ** 21:04 I missed two really awesome photos today. One - woman in party gear looking down at Slussen. Two - woman immaculately dressed, looking very professional, flipping beer can above her head 180 degrees and pouring into her mouth alone - through the subway system window in Odenplan.

First one I was too scared to take - I was worried about being confrontational. I would not have been.

Second one - just didn't have the camera ready. I was too overwhelmed by the process of getting off the train to make myself alert.

2023-09-23

→ node [[2023-09-22]]
  • Friday, 09/22/23 ** 02:22 Lessons from today's photos
  • I should ask people to take their photos if I want to rather than shying away from it. Own up to the fact that you're taking their photo- don't be ashamed of it. They either notice or they don't. Ask permission if it won't ruin the scene!

2023-09-22

  • [[I got a new (second-hand) phone]].

  • Looking through the transcript of [[Kohei Saito on Degrowth Communism]]. [[Marx's theory of metabolism]].

  • Reading about [[system dynamics]] and the differences between the qualitative and quantitative approaches to it.

  • I'm using the RSS feed of changes to my digital garden (via Agora) as a very simple gardening tool (that is, something for improving the notes in my garden).

    • I add notes to my garden. Sometime later I see them in my RSS reader. I scan them. Often, upon reading, I'm then minded to tweak them slightly.
    • Not exactly a fancy [[spaced reptition]] system, but pretty simple and effective so far.
    • I'm thinking also to experiment with using my journal as a place where I revise key concepts in a spaced reptition kind of way. Just write certain thoughts out again and again until I feel they're clear enough in my head to leave them for a while.
  • Wheee I'm currently editing my journal from vim in termux on my phone. Synced here via syncthing. Not sure how much I'll need to be doing this but good to know that I can.

→ node [[2023-09-21]]

De quién son [[las jaras]]?

Están las de Maitreya, las de Tara, las de Avalokiteshvara!

  • Being called mean in grappling. [[storymine]]
  • “A risk-taking creative environment on the product side [requires] a fiscally conservative environment [on the business side]”
  • Befriend an [[astronaut]].
  • Thursday, 09/21/23 ** 10:04 not better - just different ** 11:04 The minute I get to new york, stay in new york, I'll be stuck there forever ** 11:12 I'm so lucky to have seen so much of the world at this age

though I haven't learned enough ** 11:16 Take more photos --

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iESIfSrt_dU ** 13:34 Why did she give me two kanelbulle? ** 13:35 Maybe because they aren't very good today. ** 16:22 "If the best thing a photo has going for it is that it is technically difficult to get... it's like a musician showing off their chops, playing really fast, but maybe it's not very musical and not very soulful. A lot of photography now, taking single images trying to impress people who make single images .. " - Aaron Berger

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBfdwxVFHU8

→ node [[2023-09-20]]

i also use avidemux for simple video editing. 20:22 Samuel Klein Samuel Klein says:love your naming scheme! Samuel Klein says:this diagram also suggests scale-free design [which is compelling; not privileging zoomed-in or zoomed-out parts of the whole] Samuel Klein says:++ 20:36 PK Peter Kaminski Peter Kaminski says:Flask is a lightweight web application framework for Python Peter Kaminski says: https://flask.palletsprojects.com/

20:41 JM Jerry Michalski Jerry Michalski says:is that like agreeing on a hashtag? 20:47 Samuel Klein Samuel Klein says:One thing I'd like to see more easily is the list of repositories in your agora, and which ones have a node for a given wikilink Samuel Klein says:I have to run! This was great to see, worth tuning to a 15-min pitch Samuel Klein says:❤️ ❤️ ❤️ 21:01 avatar Samuel Klein Samuel Klein says:oho my next meeting was moved back I have 15 min 😃 21:02 JM Jerry Michalski Jerry Michalski says:yay! Jerry Michalski says:it's a hypertext catfish! 21:05 Aram Zucker-Scharff Aram Zucker-Scharff says:I found this very useful! I have to drop 21:07 JM Jerry Michalski Jerry Michalski says:see you! 21:07 PK Peter Kaminski Peter Kaminski says: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glock_switch

21:09 avatar Samuel Klein Samuel Klein says:there's probably room a tool like "full auto-linker" that could look through your doc + its context, check your agora for entities that exist across the conjoined namespace, and autolinking concepts the first time they appear in your doc

  • "What you [[want]] is for your [[kids]] to have fun. [[Winning]] [with [[stakes]]] is [[fun]], losing is not fun."
  • Some states may require school districts to allow homeschoolers to compete in a s[[school]] [[sport]]. collapsed:: true
    • [[Wyoming]] ostensibly allows homeschoolers to compete in a school sport while paying the same fees as school attendees.
  • Wednesday, 09/20/23 ** 10:31 Some deliberate life improvements that I feel are significantly changing the way I am living life:
  • Replacing phone use cases with external devices. Phone should live in the back pocket, not the front pocket, and be used only as a last resort.
  • Pausing before speaking. An uncomfortably long pause followed by a well-reasoned answer is far more clear than a series of ramblings before directing someone to the right place.
  • Time tracking on google calendar. Now that I know how I spend my time, I can take steps to deliberately improve it.
  • Planning small time frames in google calendar ahead of time. Same reason - helps set goals.
  • Writing more and making videos critiquing my photos. I think these things already, but writing them down - making them real - voicing and highlighting these ideas - helps me learn to talk about work, advance its quality, and share my work with others.
  • Dealing with menial tasks by end of day - always. There is never not time for another five minute email in my life now.
  • Making a deliberate effort to take photos every day.
→ node [[2023-09-19]]
  • In a [[story]], the people start as one thing and end up another.
  • Felt a camaraderie with every hustler today. Something similar in knowing what it's like to hunt for [[angles]] in [[grappling]].
  • Saw Tim at the gym. He said something led him there. Chores. Dropping something off. A road that led the [[gym]]. [[storymine]]
  • What's a process that will guarantee that people will [[sleep]] well? [[business]]
  • Go where the highest [[stakes]] are.
  • What do people need to know to deal with more [[heat]] than they are used to? [[business]]
  • Every [[story]] is about one moment. One [[time]] someone [[changed]]. The start, middle, and end are to get to that moment and then wrap it up.
    • What is the [[meaning]] of the [[moment]]?
      • The [[moment]] of [[change]].
      • Once, Alice was ______. But now, Alice is _______.
    • What is the opposite of that moment?
    • The [[start]] is the [[opposite]] of the [[end]].
    • Generate several threads for each start, middle, and end and then pick the one that resonates most.
    • In media res.
    • What are the [[stakes]]?
    • How to add or ramp up stakes?
      • Clear [[want]] and [[problem]]. collapsed:: true
        • A [[promise]] of what they will get from taking in the [[story]].
        • Start with a [[familiar]] [[want]], end with a strange new want.
      • Say something that will give the audience the character's [[hope]] and [[fear]]. collapsed:: true
        • Show what the audience needs to accept to [[feel]] what the [[character]] feels in the moment.
        • Have the characters present a plan so the [[audience]] feels like they are a part of a [[plan]], and then have to adapt to the [[problem]] when they face the problem.
      • Present half-bits of [[information]] about the [[end]]. collapsed:: true
        • What would let them [[wonder]] about what will happen [[next]]?
      • Take more [[time]] when the [[audience]] is in maximum [[tension]] and paying the most [[attention]]. Take very little time when the audience is not at that height of tension.
      • Have the [[characters]] make [[predictions]] that fail.
      • Put a [[camera]] in the [[scene]]- the [[narration]] should work like cameras in a movie. Situate the [[story]] in [[space]] and [[time]].
      • 'but' and 'so' offer a sense of [[change]], more than 'and' collapsed:: true
        • contradiction or multiplication
      • Make the [[big]] [[story]] [[small]], and the small story big.
      • [[Surprise]]. collapsed:: true
        • Distract during key information with other feelings- such as making them laugh.
        • [[Contrast]] what happens just before the surprise with the surprise.
      • [[Start]] with a [[laugh]] to get [[attention]]. collapsed:: true
        • If laughter precedes tragedy, it hurts more. Then make them laugh again, to dissolve [[tension]].
        • From Schwarzenegger: "Starting with something disarming and [[funny]] is a good way to stand out. You become more [[likable]], and people receive your [[information]] much better."
        • For triggering a [[laugh]], put the most [[surprising]] word at the [[end]]. collapsed:: true
      • [[End]] the story with [[yearning]].
      • A good [[story]] is about one thing only.
  • Check [[public]] [[domain]] releases every year.
  • Sorting through the thrown-up bits of [[sourdough]] [[pizza]] for [[glass]] or sand. [[Testing]] the grains on the window. [[storymine]]
  • [[Experience]] is the most valuable thing.
  • Penis allergic to vagina. [[storymine]]
  • [[Create]] things that people will [[want]].
  • Tuesday, 09/19/23 ** 09:01 Every night, go through the photos I took that day. Record myself going through the photos and what I thought about them. Upload to YouTube. Put it out there! ** 09:21 Nobody's content add is 'good video quality'. It always comes down to who is behind the camera and what - or who - they choose to take videos of - and their personality. That's why quality doesn't matter - micro-optimisation ** 16:23 Saw a headless pidgeon lying upright on the street yesterday in front of my apartment building. Dead - obviously. Thought about taking a photo of it. The bird wasn't there ten minutes later.

What happened?

Should I have taken the photo?

I should stop telling myself - atthe least - that I can always go back. It's a lie! ** 22:52 Learning that the Ricoh is a tool in a different way - the ability for a camera to go unnoticed in a tool in and of itself. Sure, I miss some photos I would have gotten if I had a zoom lens or had swapped lenses on the fly - but that would have drawn attention and tampered with the scene, something that a Ricoh gets away with like no other camera can.

Would I rather tamper with scenes if I had that power? Hell yeah. ** 22:58 Taking photos for me will always be about getting outside and spending time with people ** 23:01 Why does nobody making these YouTube videos where they take photos spend time critiquing their images? That's the interesting part - getting better and better and better every day. Learning deliberately from your photos. Learning to speak about your work. Learning to get better.

→ node [[2023-09-18]]
  • [[18]] is [[right understanding]] in the [[flancia]] [[pattern language]].
    • Flancia is in some ways a [[calendar]]. I usually revisit the Flancia Pattern language daily, considering the current date as my default focus.
  • [[drishtis]] ~ [[29]] might be particularly interesting as it is a list; 29 tends to remind me of items on which my focus is trained on by default in the running month.
    • on this note [[7]] and [[17]] this month were beautiful as usual
    • [[20]] ~ [[agora slides]] this month as I'll present it to [[fotl]] in whichever shape it is :)
  • At this point I decided to start writing in the Agora assuming I have [[autopush]] on, even though I haven't implemented it.
    • It will work like this: if you [[wikilink]] or #tag once node [[autopush]] in a resource, the Agora will try to push blocks for you even without mentioning #push; so the following would result in [[poems]] getting a push of this node without further ado.
  • [[poems]]
    • I wrote [[Agua]] again today on my paper notebook.
    • [[Fork]]
      • Fork
      • Fork, fork!
      • As we fork we'll [[merge]]!
    • [[Merge]]
      • Merge
      • Merge, merge!
      • As we merge we'll [[fork]]!
    • [[Flow]]
      • Flow
      • Flow, flow!
      • As we flow we'll do kindly!
  • Hello from [[paramita]] :)
  • A [[story]] shows [[change]] in someone over [[time]].
  • The Casper Tiny Business Book Club: a way to bring tiny [[business]] starters together in Casper.
  • [[Communities]] benefit from a fear of missing out, which come from [[barriers]] to entry. At the most basic level, [[time]] and [[space]] are barriers to entry. collapsed:: true
    • Nodes need a way to connect to other nodes directly. Lots of small gatherings are needed to make a bigger [[group]] healthy.
  • Questions to ask to find a [[business]]: collapsed:: true
    • What [[problems]] do people have?
    • How many people share that [[problem]]?
    • Who do people get [[advice]] from in that [[space]]?
    • What are their [[weaknesses]]?
    • Which [[distribution]] models are most effective?
    • What problem isn't being solved?
  • Kevin Von Duuglas-Ittu talks about "building a net with the world" to describe how competent Muay [[Thai]] [[fighters]] slowly stop [[movement]] in an [[opponent]]. This parallels "setting traps" or "creating luck". [[Position]] in an [[environment]] is used to [[block]] off movement for whoever is being [[hunted]].
    • "it is quite often a [[stalking]] [[game]] of techniques, exerting [[pressure]] on [[space]] and [[time]], until the [[kill]] can happen. At it’s highest, I suggest, it is 'building a net of the world'"
  • "It's not going [[fast]] that's [[dangerous]], but stopping fast"- also applies to [[throws]] and [[unarmed]] [[combat]].
  • [[Change]] creates [[tension]].
  • [[Sailing]] with the [[wind]] limits speed more than sailing against it because the sail acts as a [[parachute]] and the boat can only go as [[fast]] as the wind (rather than faster).
  • hips higher, square to the ground, spine aligned, between [[earth]] and [[sky]], be upright
  • "[[Magic]] only happens in a spectator's [[mind]]...focus on bringing an [[experience]] to the [[audience]]."
  • Who are the passionate [[outsiders]] with no [[tribe]] yet? collapsed:: true
    • Who's bored with yesterday and demands tomorrow?
  • When to take a [[slow]] bend, and when to go [[fast]] to float over a [[problem]]?
  • Things [[fans]] of Jack Carr talk about from his [[books]]: collapsed:: true
    • Nonstop action (how would one make [[written]] [[action]] [[flow]]?)
    • --some chapters are still considered too long for fans
    • Cell workout routine- a fan says they're stealing the character's workout routine.
    • People are annoyed with how many books seemingly minor plotlines take.
    • Funny glimpses to the author's worldview through the glossary.
    • You know the end (Reece will escape). You know the beginning (people have cornered Reece). People read to find out the middle (how?).
    • Hatchet patches- something for people to wear or display that shows that they are fans of the story. collapsed:: true
      • -A fan made a tomahawk to mimic the tomahawk used by characters.
      • -people are making breakfast dishes from the books.
      • -fans are wishing for the ability to purchase patches from the units in the series
      • -people are ordering watches that characters use in the books
    • "I have never felt as much [[anxiety]] and adrenaline listening to something before."
    • A reader has a feeling that anyone, including someone close to the [[protagonist]], could be a spy. This creates [[tension]]. Carr casts suspicion on someone close to Reece that Reece is putting all his eggs in- so the [[stakes]] are high.
    • Less politics, more ass-kicking.
    • Sucking air out of someone's throat underwater.
    • Reece's dad leaves him a note that suggests a puzzle. This puzzle is not solved until book 7.
    • People want to go to the [[places]] referred to in the book, even if they're not real- they get the idea that it is a reference to something real.
    • Who is going to die? <- creates [[tension]]
    • Redacted portion of the book.
    • How did X happen?
    • Most fans are [[listening]] to [[audiobook]], rather than [[reading]].
    • In the Blood ending.
  • Things [[fans]] of Heinlein talk about from his [[books]]: collapsed:: true
    • Quotes about the nature of humanity.
    • Quotes about political dynamics.
    • Introduction to alternative views on sexuality (polyamory, bisexuality, sexual acceptance).
    • Competent man as celebration of man.
    • A character who is what a male reader admires in women (freedom of embodied expression), followed by trauma closing the expression up. The reader cried on the scene about her having her lover come home in a coffin and hearing Taps.
  • Things [[fans]] of qntm talk about from his [[books]]: collapsed:: true
    • [[Worldbuilding]] doesn't overexplain, which gives it room to breathe.
    • "It's nice to get a story of [[existential]] [[horror]], in the face of vast and inimical entities from beyond human comprehension, that isn't just another Lovecraft pastiche."
    • Uplifting good vs evil end despite an extremely uncertain world.
    • Human feeling contrasted against existential alienation.
    • Endings that are touching and deeply personal, as well as with a grand [[vision]] for the future of humanity.
    • Putting human life into a galactic perspective and making the reader feel insignificant in a vast world.
    • Appreciating anti-fascist just-so stories.
    • Plausible explanation of magic (perhaps echoing Wattsian vampires).
    • Hard scifi magic (the paradox attraction thingy)
    • A sense of people getting punished for being confident (the protagonist gets punished)
    • Some things remain unknown, and unexplained.
  • [[Cold]] [[air]] = [[high]] [[pressure]] [[Warm]] air = [[low]] pressure
  • Monday, 09/18/23 ** 10:00 Thinking about the impact of wearing something that acts as a focal point for your identity. The huge camera shapes your day - who you are - what you intend to do with your day in a way that the Ricoh in the pocket never will. The huge accessory gives you a quest, a way for others to visually identify you and a way for you to talk to others about what you do that day. The huge accessory gives you a quest, a way for others to visually identify you and a way for you to classify yourself.

I think that sentence may have been duplicated.

This idea is reminiscent of Stephen Wolfram's laptop setup - propped up at his waist, ready to type, at all times.

The way that this device inconveniences you is a constant reminder that you /want/ to accept this inconvenience - that you're making a sacrifice every minute of the day to do what you love - and other people can see it; they can at least observe the mission you're going on.

This reminds me of going on a walk with a problem held in your head; with carrying a burden or task and idea that you're obsessed with, can't stop thinking about until you find an answer. ** 12:49 The only two ways I can ever imagine taking photos of people are:

  • Across the table from me at a restaurant or dinner
  • Across the room, in their apartment or mine

Maybe 40mm is for people and 28mm is for things. ** 12:50 The clothes that I'm wearing today feel too generic.

  • Black wool sweater
  • articulated pants
  • Sock darts
  • Bose headphones
  • Black tote

This outfit is consistent but not distinctive - there is no focal point for someone to remember me by. Nothing I wear tells someone else what I'm interested in. There is no band tee or tracksuit or football jersey to talk to someone else about.

My camera's too discrete now to stand out.

That's a good thing; the Ricoh can replace my phone. ** 20:56 Thinking about ways to more deliberately improve my photos.

I wonder if I'm using the right camera or the right focal length. I feel too wide in so many circumstances. The 28mm is just right for home life, for shooting indoors, for recording life day-to-day, but for walking outdoors - and expecting to find great photos - it's quite hard to use. Maybe the GR3x would be a better fit for me; maybe that camera would get me the depth of field I want from a friend in a cafe.

I'm not sure. I think the ability to easily and unobtrusively make more and more and more photos with a camera in the pocket is brilliant. I think having a large sensor with a high resolution is good. I think carrying a camera everywhere I go without any effort - and without showing others - is so powerful. A camera smaller than a phone is a beautiful tool.

How do I set practices to get better?

I can:

  • Walk through my photos every night, trying to get better
  • Revisit places day after day, perfecting the same kinds of photos. This gets boring really quickly and doesn't generalize to everywhere. Scratch that!
  • Keep walking into new places. New places will help you learn from old ones.
  • Try new cameras. The Ricoh is an experience I've really been learning from. We'll see how that process continues.

I noticed that the Magnum photographers take tons of shots of a particular scene - 50, 100, in a location - rather than moving on. I need to learn to stay in places longer. I'm out to take good photos. I'm not in a rush to the next location.

I like the idea of talking through and presenting my ideas to others. Is there a way to workshop photos with other people to improve deliberately? Try to find someone else to talk through photos with.

The curved lines of the Ricoh - and the way they show up in-camera - isn't fun.

On the bright side - I love the way my images of the Stockholm Library around the corner turned out. Wondering how possible it is to make more, similar photos.

Likewise - the hostel sign, the images inside my apartment, the subway system, the office - all photos that this camera was able to handle extremely well. This focal length is indoors and intimate.

Also - particularly in Stockholm - the focal length allows me to capture the entire facade of a building opposite me on the street and still have room for some action in the foreground. I didn't anticipate this. It's a useful tool I'll have to keep using as I wander around.

This was all basically what I expected when I purchased the camera; I shouldn't be surprised that it wasn't able to capture some of the tricky frames - like the woman through the white window on the green background - as well as I really wanted to. Maybe I have learned a bit about taking photos. I'm just not sure that it's best suited for my street photography work a lot of the time. I'll keep pushing it for the rest of this week - at the office, after work, and so on - and we'll see how it goes.

Decision: I am keeping the camera.

Will I use it daily?

I'm not sure yet.

I'll still try to take the Fuji out on weekends and longer trips. This isn't a replacement for those circumstances. We'll think about the GR III x though... ** 21:28 I like being able to pick games I don't want to play; to say one vector is good enough and investigate others. No subject is simple, but some subjects interest me less than others. It's okay to follow internet rabbit holes. Abandon the leaves that lead in the wrong directions. ** 22:30 Daily reminder that cooking is a gift, a privilege, and you have more of the best ingredients in the world - more than any other person has had available here at this point in history - down the street. Learning to cook is learning to love a process. ** 22:34 Instinctively I want to hate that I don't have the time to be good at everything in the world, but I love that I can fill in all of the gaps that friends and people I meet can't.

I just have to get as good at what I can now and meet those people when I can't. ** 23:23 I guess I just need to do more work.

2023-09-18

→ node [[2023-09-17]]

Loved the [[Majihima]] discourses on [[Heartwood]] (I already knew this), [[Cowherd]], [[Gosinga]].

[[3149]] is an interesting number. It's not prime: it's [[47]] (we will defeat Moloch) * 67 (Bodhi, Bodhisattva).

  • Sunday, 09/17/23 ** 19:51

BLISS brand by uln ** 20:00 What in America isn't overdone, overperscribed, overused? ** 20:19 My phone is taking away from human interaction.

There are two things I use it for daily --

  • Paying for items
  • Using the subway

Both should be replaced with physical cards. ** 20:30 Why do camera companies feel like traditional tech companies - hype cycle, product nobody needs, release every year, repeat - rather than companies that focus on making tools, like Muji?

Ricoh is the company I've found that cuts closest to this.

Is Leica like this? Leica is inaccessible to anyone, so that's kind of irrelevant. Why would I buy a Leica when I can get a medium format Fuji?

Every other company feeds into the hype cycle. I wonder how expensive making a camera actually is.

2023-09-17

→ node [[2023-09-16]]
  • Saturday, 09/16/23 ** 12:11 Every minor public figure in the world is one Instagram DM away from a conversation ** 12:16 Watching photo videos. Seeing beautiful shots in the videos that the creators don't take advantage of frustreates me.

Maybe I should go take photos outside.

→ node [[2023-09-15]]
  • Friday, 09/15/23 ** 16:55 I wonder if some of the people responsible for bringing the most joy to the most people are the people who run social media animal accounts ** 17:31 At a B2B SaaS company, the work you do day-to-day is not publicly visible unless you're working on marketing tools.

Make as much public work as you can in your free time to compensate. Don't share the same knowledge - that's a breach of contract - but leverage the same skills. Learn and do better. Improve what you do inside and outside of work with your free time. Work more and more and more when it's dark out. ** 17:35 Haters will tell you to avoid looking at the world's best work and comparing yourself to it. How will you ever get there if you can't understand the gap between your skills and theirs? Dive into the work of people who are the best in their fields. Understand what makes them tick. Pick another lane and do better.

2023-09-15

→ node [[2023-09-14]]
  • Thursday, 09/14/23 ** 13:05 No architects are better at making use of natural light than those in Sweden. Every time I get to spend time in another home in Sweden - or any large, freestanding building - I'm reminded of 'In Praise of Shadows' - and the ways the light of a room is used - without relying on the lightbulb as a crutch - to fill the room and fill space. Natural light is so valued here.
→ node [[2023-09-13]]
  • Wednesday, 09/13/23 ** 14:11 I want a calendar and email and messaging system that 'cascades up'. I should receive everything in one inbox, but when I respond to something, that response is locally scoped to where it came from. That description is poor. If I am invited to an event for work, the response should come from my work email; if I'm invited to an event outside of work, that response happens outside of the work domain. Everything falls back to my personal account though as the root.

2023-09-13

  • Read: [[The Magic of Small Databases]]

    • Enjoyed this. Thoughts about an indie web approach to curating and sharing and collaborating on small lists, indexes, collections.
  • [[Subconscious Beta]].

    • Been keeping an eye on it for a while, and I certainly like the sound of [[Noosphere]] and [[Subconscious]]. Collective knowledge management that is local-first and with data sovereignty. Discovery, feeds and follows of others is on the way apparently, which would be a great set of features I think.
    • It sounds kind of like a slicker Agora. But I don't necessarily use 'slick' as meaning 'better'. I love Agora's ramshackle and homebrew approach.
  • And I haven't come across anything from Noosphere that suggests it has any politics of any kind. The beta announcement is signed off with "Let’s 10x humanity’s collective intelligence", which, absent of any political direction, is kind of problematic to me.

→ node [[2023-09-12]]
  • Tuesday, 09/12/23 ** 20:46 Maybe taste is gone because people have no space for elitism, for cool. Maybe cool is now basic and people just want to know people - authentically - not as part of a performance. That's https://www.instagram.com/samyoukilis/ - hook - showing people as they are - embracing who they are - no dance jig or act up for the camera. That's who Fulcrum is. Authenticity is what really matters. ** 21:06 Sam Gellaitry's back - I loved him in high school. I didn't know he was in high school at the same time. I love watching people do what they love. I think I need to make music. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ufGIABd0c4

2023-09-12

  • Swinging back to blogs and RSS feeds over Mastodon. The stream of info on microblogging sites is too much for me, and the signal-to-noise ratio is too weak.

  • Reading: [[The environmental impact of a PlayStation 4]]

    • "PlayStation 4 has the most dazzling and problematic parts of global capitalism purring in unison."
    • "It is an exquisite, leanly designed machine pulsing with the exploitation of Earth and its people."
→ node [[2023-09-11]]
  • [[Flancia]]!
  • [[agora slides]]
  • #push [[Flancia
  • #push [[debate]]
    • Imagine a public global debate about the crimes of [[Moloch]], and the ways to move forward.
  • #push [[liquid democracy]]
    • Imagine calling elections in every nation-state currently recognized by the UN where a group of people think they could be useful. These meaning in addition to those called by the state in question as per custom up-to-date: put succinctly, imagine the citizens of the internet calling for open, transparent, fair, liquid-democracy-advancing elections in Russia, United States, China -- a priori without the authorization of the states in question, but with an intent to cooperate rationally with them.
  • Monday, 09/11/23 ** 11:53 Wondering if my differentiator is internet research. I think I'm quite good at assessing a community - and what makes that community tick - off of a social media profile and a name. I'm also decent at finding interesting people, things, ideas, those that aren't necessarily mainstream, maybe those that are super radical. What can I do with that? ** 13:18 Wondering why Warp doesn't take into account any sort of 'cd' result to determine the next suggested command. Hard-coding git commit -m <prompt> would be so powerful. I really want AI to write my commit messages for me.
→ node [[2023-09-10]]
  • For [[handfighting]], it is often advantageous to get two [[hands]] on one [[limb]] and bring that limb across the opponent's [[body]].
  • Sunday, 09/10/23 ** 20:50 yeah i never put a bitch before my money

i love key glock

i been getting bag after bag after bag yuh ** 21:54 MacOS auto-update practices - in that most apps will prompt you to update or update in the background - have felt far more smooth than NixOS, where some apps just 'stop working', have security vulnerabilities, etc. because there is no path that allows users to push updates. The centralized management of the nixpkgs ecosystem is nice in some ways - I'm glad someone is managing security in a centralized way - but in some sense that's the responsibility of the computer. We need systems to be reproducible, too.

→ node [[2023-09-09]]
  • Saturday, 09/09/23 ** 19:31 Collect 1-5 second clips of videos on YouTube dynamically to document, to capture moments, to tell stories

2023-09-09

→ node [[2023-09-08]]
  • [[Dick Thompson]] of the [[Vietnam]]-era [[SOG]] units noticed that North Vietnamese and South Vietnamese ate different food. He could [[smell]] the difference. So they all started eating North Vietnamese food. They also stopped using [[soap]] to shower- so that they would not alert North Vietnamese of their presence in the jungle.
  • Friday, 09/08/23 ** 00:19 New quest: make (design, sew, construct) my own uniform to wear every day ** 14:50 Thinking about brands 'editing things down' and turning campaigns into social experiences to make them feel democratized. https://www.are.na/block/22556031. As a video posted by Maybelline of the bus with a targeted ad and video with some silly words and people interacting in a studio, I wouldn't look again at this. Captured by a human with a phone, shaky camera, looks homemade? It feels like something tangible in the real world that I could participate in. Feels like fake democratization; the brand is still centralized and large and physical, but invited more user participation. ** 14:53 Jared - of BunJS - has such strong Twitter branding. No-nonsense, makes the product - and him - feel both social and hardworking. Gives hooks to connect - 'found on discord'. Clear sell and focused on just one thing. It's not a marketing schtick really, deliberately; it's a way for him to gather what he loves. ** 14:54 Wondering how a black and white monitor would change my design and development practices. Try it for a week. ** 17:06 I need a sanity check on my personal website to make sure this 'roll-from-scratch' approach is a good idea.
→ node [[2023-09-07]]
→ node [[2023-09-05]]
  • Tuesday, 09/05/23 ** 00:41

i want to warp a photo like im shaking a camera out to dry ** 19:43 80-20: Every day of mine is eight hours of software development work, two hours of photo.

→ node [[2023-09-04]]
  • Monday, 09/04/23 ** 08:47 Once I figure out food, I win ** 08:51 I take photos to meet people.

To create my own worlds - to film to tell stories, not to document; to animate and model and make motion - is strange to me. I take photos to document, to preserve specific motions and memories and cool buildings and awesome people, to preserve a feeling.

User interfaces are different. I'll always want to make things that other people use, and crafting motions, experiences for others is invaluable.

Great stories are moving, but mine should be told through a lens of what I'm doing every day.

→ node [[2023-09-03]]
  • Sunday, 09/03/23 ** 14:00 I like vertical video because it represents what's in front of me, what's in front of my body. A vertical work is something I can stand in front of.

It's Sunday. There's work to do. I'll make it happen. Maybe I'll see the Stadmuseet too. The English translation is strange: 'Stockholm City Museum' because a 'Stad' is a state more generally.

→ node [[2023-09-02]]
  • Woke up by [[Bodensee]].
    • Will miss [[Flancia meet]] today as I temporarily don't have internet connectivity.
    • Will try to catch up later with people who were/are around! Apologies for missing it.
  • [[Flancia meet]] topics as I expected them
    • [[docker]]
    • [[agora recipe]] is running on [[coop cloud]], which is nice (this is what is serving link.agor.ai) but it needs some improvements:
      • It should be easier to override Agora settings from the coop cloud recipe proper, e.g. Agora name and sources. This could take place in the form of mounting agora.yaml as a config file?
      • It should be able to run one or more of the Agora bots which are part of [[agora bridge]] but currently not running for any Agora in agor.ai.
    • [[activitypub]]
      • Still unsure about whether to implement first-party support in e.g. [[agora server]], or to write a separate activitypub component (where? maybe in bridge?), or to rely on an existing implementation like the canonical golang one which seems quite mature and is geared precisely towards API usage (doesn't offer
  • #push [[What is the Agora]]?
    • I've been wanting to write a special node which acts as explainer to the Agora that should be accessible to the average (?) internet browser, in the sense of a person browsing the internet.
    • Node [[agora]] was maybe originally that but it has amassed a lot of historical content which makes it harder to offer a 'curated' primer experience.
    • I've also been thinking about this as a [[WTF]] button which we could render in red up top, with the milder tooltip 'I don't understand / what is this place anyway?'
    • Surely writing this would be an interesting challenge in the first place :) The Agora is many things, at least to me, and probably to all the people already in the Agora of Flancia; and it has accreted layers (meanings) as time goes by.
  • [[Jerome]] told me about [[Beaufort]] cheese yesterday.

As I sit here with my laptop (with [[vim]]) and no internet connection, I realize that I don't write here longform as much as I could. I guess the availability of the internet does make it easier for me to get distracted, which granted I see sometimes as a positive (it motivates a form of exploration), but might not be conducive to practicing the skill of writing coherently and consistently for more than a few bullet points in each journal.

The thought of writing in my blog again (meaning https://flancia.org/mine) has come up a few times recently. I'm unsure; I like the process of writing in my garden, and how everything I write in it automatically shows up in the Agora moments later (at least when I have an internet connection). So maybe what I want is to embrace this space as a blog, and just try to write longer form alongside with my mainly outline-style notes, like other Agora users already do so beautifully.

  • [[todo]] maybe this weekend
    • Upload social media activity gathered by the [[agora bots]] to git repos.
      • This one has been in the back burner for a while and doesn't sound very hard.
      • It would also remove one of the main reasons to keep making full Agora backups -- which keep causing low disk space events in the Flancia servers.
      • All in all good bang-for-the-buck to start the weekend.
    • Fix hedgedoc
      • I think hedgedoc is not syncing to the Agora, the syncing process has some bugs at least -- while I'm dealing with 'git autopush' as per the above, it'd be a good time to take another look at this process and see if it can be made incrementally better.
    • Actually autopull [[etherpad]] or [[hedgedoc]] on empty nodes
      • I realized the other day this is quite simple; I tried this a few times in the past and ended up disabling autopull of the stoas because it can be disruptive (they tend to steal focus when pulled), but the disruption is really just because they are in the wrong position for empty nodes. Because empty nodes render on a separate template path, it should be straighforward to just embed the right stoa right there in the 'nobody has noded this yet' message, making the stoa onboarding experience much more convenient.
    • merge PRs
      • Aram's
      • vera formatting
      • vera sqlite
    • update journals page
      • formatting of the page is all different/weird
    • the pull of flancia.org/mine is broken above because of the parenthesis -- how to fix that?
    • update [[patera]] to something non ancient?
      • whatever is running on [[hypatia]]?
  • Saturday, 09/02/23 ** 21:53 This moment is the best moment to live in, to live through, ever. The next will be even better. I can't wait to take more and more photos of people and make better and better work. I'm starting to feel competent, and it feels wonderful.

I am also wondering where I'll ever find the money for that medium-format Fuji camera. Oh well...

→ node [[2023-09-01]]
  • Friday, 09/01/23 ** 10:16 Too much meta-startup work, not enough time spent building things and see what happens. Best people online are writing the 'here's how to do this' and 'i built this' posts - extraordinarily high-effort per tweet or share or instagram whatever - and it pays off. Don't water it down or start thinking about the 'meta-advice' until you have something to iterate on. ** 14:28 Clothes - I need to go brighter, bigger, cleaner, more friendly. Fewer logos. That light blue hoodie brings out my hair and eyes wonderfully. The color makes me happy. Maybe that's my future ** 18:57 Letting someone know that you've seen something already doesn't add anything to a conversation
→ node [[2023-08-31]]
→ node [[2023-08-30]]
  • [[Flancia]]!
    • [[30]] in the Flancia Pattern Language means [[flow]].
      • 6 means flow also some days and 30 is 6 * 5 so it makes sense.
        • 5 means [[focus]], so you can think of it as focusing on flow or flowing focusing, which to some extent may be seen as redundant (but doesn't need to be).
  • [[work]] was fine :) I'm settling into a rhythm of working until late with a break in the middle, and I enjoy it.
  • I attended to what I could of the [[fellowship of the link]], then a weird Jitsi bug that persisted across devices and internet connections locked me out! I couldn't see or hear anyone.
    • I'll read notes and try to watch the recording though :)
  • Wrote, thought, meditated.
  • [[bouncepaw]]
→ node [[2023-08-29]]
→ node [[2023-08-28]]
→ node [[2023-08-26]]
→ node [[2023-08-24]]
  • [[lcdf]]
    • :D
  • [[bags of holding]]
  • [[Gracias]]
    • Gracias Buda!
    • Gloria a las maravillas del universo!
  • Después de literalmente años logré conectar un tecladito pequeño a [[nostromo]], la pc de la tv que siempre corro a mis espaldas.
    • Tuve que recurrir a usar [[bluetoothctl]]
    • Se sintió como ganar acceso a [[conocimiento arcano]]!
    • Y me liberó de algo; completé un pro asdfyecto después de años, aunque haya sido pequeño!
  • Thursday, 08/24/23 ** 22:53 the woman with the two children in a double stroller whistling at them in the art museum was absurd

the five people who ran to the vermeer when a small detail was pointed out, craning their necks as if in a parody film

the guys from the chemistry exhibitions - mostly alone - taking selfies with anyhthing and everythign

→ node [[2023-08-23]]
→ node [[2023-08-22]]
  • [[Stories]] were mostly used for assistance in [[navigating]] [[land]]- so the obstacles were once literal.
→ node [[2023-08-21]]