Sometimes a change in scenery makes all the difference
A few summers ago I had a panic attack. There was no singular cause for it, a few things had been eating away at me, and a minor spat escalated into one of those self-reinforcing spirals of self-hatred. Something deep in my heart told me to go, get out of the house for a couple days until I felt a bit more stable. So that's exactly what I did. I drove deep into the mountains and spent the night under the stars, disconnected from the rest of the world, feeling all the more content by the passing hour. By the time I was ready for bed, I knew I'd be returning to my normal life the next day.
The sun's rays cast a watercolor of amber, red, and gold across the neighboring cliff-face, greeting my new day with its beauty. The cool, crisp air filled my lungs, filling my sleep-deprived body with an unfounded sense of power. I drove back into my life refreshed, my demons all but silenced, as I rounded the crest, letting me see my home, the Sacramento valley, once again. I came out of the excursion with a deeper appreciation for the beauty of day-to-day life.
Two weeks ago, on a mundane Sunday afternoon, I was scrolling through my work's Slack. I stumbled upon an invite for the following weekend to go to Atlanta to run some cabling for the new office. I instinctually started typing out my response of "Sorry, I've got school, can't make it", before I caught myself. Too often have I let that homebody win out. I watched the message change to "As long as I'm back in Sac by noon on Monday, I can come". It almost felt like someone else wrote it; any trip I go on requires a few days of contemplating the details, but there I was pressing send. Within 24 hours, I had a flight booked. Everything came together so quickly it almost didn't feel real.
It had been seven years since last the last time I had flown, and it was the first time as an adult that I was flying on my own. I was a bit of a nervous wreck, but the staff and TSA agents at SMF were nothing but kind, even when I forgot to take off my belt. I took the red-eye flight thinking that I was going to be able to sleep on the plane, boy was that a mistake. Fortunately some bad weather in Atlanta kept my connection grounded for a little over an hour, allowing me to lay down across the aisle of chairs and rest.
I touched down at 10:00 in the morning, and after a quick stop for breakfast at the hotel, we got to work. I was a fetch-boy for most of the first day, Ubering back and forth to Home Depot to pick up the tools we didn't know we needed. This was a great gift, letting me talk to the various drivers, cashiers, and passersby, getting to know the culture of the city. I was enamored by the friendliness of everyone I met.
After we returned to the hotel for the night, I found myself with an unshakable smile. Even though the hours of restless travel and the countless trips back and forth to the new office left me completely exhausted, it made me feel electric. I was filled with a eudaimonic bliss.
The second day, I was left with setting up some access control doors, which was quite rewarding. All those years of messing with building simple circuits with spare wires and salvaged PCBs was finally paying off. My hands made quick work of stripping the cable ends and wiring the system together, though terminating the ethernet runs will always be a little tricky for me.
Before I knew it, it was time to go home. After another delay, I missed my connection and was left to spend the night in the DFW airport. It was cold, but at least it left me with a story, and a deeper gratitude for real beds.
One thing that has stuck with me since I've returned is that lasting appreciation for every day life. Seeing how exciting it can be when you put yourself out there and explore has reignited that inner flame. I feel that drive to go out and seize the day, even if it's only in a minor way.
Last Friday I woke up early and could not return to sleep. But instead of laying in bed, wasting my time in one way or another, I decided to go on a walk. As soon as I felt the warmth of the sun's rays kissing my cheek, I felt my lips curve into that unshakable smile yet again. I greeted everyone who crossed my path with a joyful "Good morning!". With each step, a new painting unveiled itself before me. It was like the whole world had been putting on a symphony this whole time, and I had finally plucked the plugs from my ears to hear it. I was happy. I had found my peace.
There is beauty everywhere, you just have to look for it
Nobody likes exams
Having a major part of your grade resting on a series of unknown questions, picked from subject matter that has taken weeks to cover, is a recipe for stress. Over the course of my academic career I have developed a method that has all but guaranteed a score in the 85%-100% range, with the majority being on the higher end of that scale. The best feature of this method is that it minimizes the amount of time that you spend actively studying, leaving you with plenty of time to waste doing something less productive! The method has four guiding rules:
1. Engage with the material in class
Ok this is sort of a cop-out rule, the equivalent to the chastity method to preventing pregnancy, but it is a lot easier to do well on a test when you actually know the material. I know how easy it is to "multitask" in class, especially when you have a screen in front of you, but avoid it. Take notes when it makes sense, ask and answer questions, and participate, you'll thank yourself later.
That being said, if your teacher/professor sucks at teaching and you can't engage for the life of you, just make sure to know what subjects you have talked about so you are able to go back and somewhat learn them before the test.
2. Do a reverse all-nighter
Staying up late into the morning the night before the big test, reading and rereading sections of your textbook, while contemplating switching to being a business major is a sure-fire way to do poorly on the test. Studies have shown how much worse you will perform when you are tired, something which I'm sure has been beaten over your head enough to be trite at this point. The thing is, cramming is not in and of itself a bad method, it's just practiced wrong. You need to invert it.
Don't stay up late the night before, go to bed a little early. I know this is easier said than done with the stress of the exam keeping you awake, but you're gonna want to be well rested, so just do your best. When you wake up, try to get moving as soon as possible, have your coffee and start studying. You're wanting to have everything fresh in your mind before your test.
This works because our brains do some housecleaning while we are asleep. More important things go into long term memory, where unimportant things get forgotten. You can probably remember what you had for breakfast this morning, but probably won't remember what you had a few days ago. Likewise, it's going to be easier to remember that one paragraph explaining the answer to problem 27 if you read it a couple hours ago, instead of the night before.
In high school I would go to bed around 21:00 at night and wake up around 03:00, which proved to be excessive, even for the earliest of early morning tests. I recommend studying for at least 2.5 hours before the test for finals, and about an hour for smaller tests like midterms.
Also, give yourself a 30 minute break before the test so that you aren't burned out before you start. Use the time to make sure you have everything you need, use the restroom, get water, etc.
3. Don't read from the book
Textbooks are bad in the age of the internet. If you're having issues grasping a subject, look it up online or watch a video on it. It's going to be a lot more refined than the walls of text and puzzling figures that you'll find in the book.
Furthermore, practice problems are the best thing to prepare you, do them. They will tell you more about your understanding of the subject than reading through resources. Even if you may not fully understand the "why" behind each step of a problem, it will familiarize you with the process. Additionally there have been multiple times where my teacher/professor has directly pulled test questions from practice problems in the homework or study guide, basically giving you a free question since you'll have already solved it an hour ago.
4. If it is allowed, make a comprehensive cheat-sheet
This one is especially useful for comprehensive finals. Go through all the homework, in-class materials, and extra resources and jot down anything useful, whether it be definitions or equations. Try to keep it organized and put some care into it. Treat it as your masterpiece. Now throw it away.
Ok don't actually throw it away, bring it with you to the test, but you're barely going to use it. You basically just did all the studying you will need to do by making it and it's firmly planted in your brain, at least for a little while. You may end up glancing at it from time to time during the test, but really it is just a good studying tool.
5. Profit
So now you've finished the test, you got an A. You're not likely to ever use any of what you just learned ever again, but it's ok. You didn't spend every waking moment for the past week memorizing the textbook by heart, you just got up a little early and gave up your morning to doing a handful of practice problems and making a pretty looking study guide. Now you have the rest of the day to do whatever you want.
A worthy trade if you ask me
Just 15 more minutes, which turns into an hour
I find my internal monologue too often saying: "At XX:(00, 15, 30, 45), I will start doing Y". Then I get lost in my procrastination and by the time I notice the previously selected time had passed, so too have a handful more minutes. Even though I said at 9:30 I would take a shower, it's no longer 9:30, it's 9:37, and that's almost 9:45. If it's almost 9:45 then really I could should just keep procrastinating until then, since it's a nice, round number, and who lives by ugly, non-round numbers? Sickos!
This is worse for very undesirable tasks. I remember once in high school where a whole night had been wasted by this ceiling-rounding, because I desperately did not want to make those slides for that presentation I wanted to do even less. I've gotten better over the years, but still find myself falling into this trap.
Wasting the day 15 minutes at a time
Or should I say Saable?
No I probably shouldn't.
I've switched back to my old car, a Saab 9-5, after borrowing my mom's Prius V for the past 6 months. My folks only really use one car and so have been using the 9-5 at most once a week for those few times they both leave the house. I did a long overdue oil change on it and fell back in love with the car.
Sure it's not the most fuel efficient, or the fastest, but it just feels nice to drive. I took it for a test-spin after the oil change and the way the seat held me as I took turns and the nice rumble of the tubrocharged inline 4 made me feel alive. Something I never felt in the Prius.
So I gave my mom back her keys and drove home my old bucket of bolts last Sunday. It was exhilarating feeling the turbo spool up going up the on-ramp. Driving a very slow car for 6 months makes you appreciate having some power again. It also got better gas mileage with the new tire, which previously had been leaking air.
It was all fun until Wednesday of last week when I got a puff of steam come out from under the hood. There's been a minor coolant leak for some time, which I was treating with a top off of the reservoir every few weeks. Well, the leak got bigger, not aided by the sudden rise in use after sitting in the hot sun for the majority of the Summer. At first I thought one of the hoses may have slipped off, but no, the plastic connection to the radiator had snapped off. I jerry-rigged a new connection using a lot of epoxy and a plumbing reducer, but the leak was still there. It turns out this crack was a lot larger than I thought.
I've been trying to patch it up with epoxy, but with how cramped it is, I keep failing to fully cover it. It's gotten better, but I still need to refill the reservoir every time I drive it, not good. Right now I'm just using distilled water since I don't want to be spilling tons of toxins every time I drive, and it is a lot cheaper than coolant. I've ordered a replacement radiator, but I'm hoping to patch it up so I can still drive it in the meantime.
One thing that has shocked me is how fine I am with the issue. Sure it's a little stressful whenever that low coolant warning splashes on the display, but the problem excites me more than it demoralizes. Part of the fun of having the car is fixing the problems, something I never had to deal with in the Prius. It's odd but I missed having them, because problems created opportunities to learn, opportunities to be creative.
It's also spiritually fulfilling. I grew into myself in that car. 6 months ago I tried to be someone else, someone I thought was me, but ultimately proved not to be. I enjoyed how cheap the Prius was to drive, how cheap it was to go places, but at the end of the day, driving the Prius felt hollow. The Saab has soul. I feel more like myself again, holding onto the steering wheel, tapping the gear shift levers, and keeping my eye pinned on the temperature gauge.
It feels good to be back
There are those days where you wake up and the only thing you wish for is for it to end, where everything gets on your nerves, and where you wish you could just blend into the background. It was one of those days that I wrote Loud.
Loud
Pounding ripples of sound shake,
a deafening murmur of clinks and clanks
Stuffy recirculated air bakes
The convection oven of the classroom
Loose fitting garments tie me to the chair
No matter how it's done, I don't like my hair
Every momentary glance, I'm aware
I try not to, but I care
Hustle and bustle, crammed into corridors
A thousand footsteps echo across the floors
The blinding pale light of compact fluorescence
Somehow it all makes me lose my essence
Why do I feel most alone in a crowd?
I'm tired of it all being so loud
At least solitude has its silence.
I built a Linux-powered handheld PC
Shortly after getting into Linux, I gained the desire to have the ability to use it and the suite of programs I found on the go. I wanted to be able to control which applications I used, the background processes that ran, and the way windows were managed. For many years I tried to accomplish this by various means, but now I have made a major step forward in achieving this goal.
Introducing: The Step
click here for project page
Ok, let me be frank, this falls short of the mark of what I imagined. I originally wanted to build a mini-laptop around a Raspberry Pi and a display like this, but after spending countless hours and hundreds of dollars over the years trying and failing to accomplish this, I needed to make a pivot. Realistically, second hand smart phones are cheap, come with everything I need (shy a keyboard), and can cram it all in a much smaller footprint than I ever could. It's the logical solution to all the problems I was having with my former approach. Thanks to all of the hard work of the people around PostmarketOS, booting Linux on a smartphone is only a matter of running a few commands. Without all their work this wouldn't be possible.
For the past couple of weeks I have been using the Step as my primary device and I intend to do so for the foreseeable future. Tiling window managers and tui/cli programs pair amazingly with this form factor. Everything is only a few keystrokes away; a pleasant change from the countless menus and submenus of touch-friendly mobile interfaces. I've been able to read blogs, watch videos, and listen to podcasts the way I want to, no longer needing to deal with restrictive apps or kludgey mobile sites. I've also noticed a positive change in how I spend my time using the device: I don't doomscroll. When the next hit of dopamine requires more than a swipe of the finger, it's easier to break out of the cycle. I'm spending more time enjoying the world around me and less time staring at a screen.
While I wouldn't write a novel on it, the physical keyboard is a joy to use. No longer do I have to go sifting through layers of a software keyboard to find non-alphanumeric keys, or have to deal with the unpredictability of attempting to copy and paste text with the sole input of a touchscreen. Where I'd be painfully frustrated trying to accomplish basic tasks in a mobile browser, the Step handles them with ease.
Additionally, The Step has given me the motivation to tinker again. Unlike the world of monolithic apps with little to no inter-app communication found in Android and IOS, I get to harness the openness of Linux. I don't have to reinvent the wheel of a UI, I can just write a script that does exactly what I need, nothing more, nothing less, and take advantage of tools like rofi or fzf to provide user-interaction.
But most of all, it just gives me ease to know I am the one in control. I don't have to be victim to the decisions being made in board rooms in Silicon Valley. If I don't like the way something works, I can change it. The only limit is my knowledge, something that I have control over.
Give it a try!
All required files and materials are listed on the project page. I'd be happy to help anyone, just send me an email!
There's a pilgrimage I make around the new year
I'll take some mushrooms and go for a hike, always the same trail: The Salt Creek loop in Auburn California. On this hike I reflect over all that has changed since the last time I had made it. Some changes are environmental, like the fallen log that I've watched decompose over the past two years.
The log in 2022
Though the changes I try to focus on are personal, changes in goals, views on life, relationships, and my general well being. It amazes me how many there are, but at the core of it all, I'm still me.
The trailhead marker
The trail takes you down long switchbacks, from the grassy, oak-sprinkled meadows, through dense pine forest, past the granite and slate laden bluffs, to the sandy shoreline of the American river. The mushrooms normally start taking effect once I reach the trailhead, allowing the trek downward to mirror the introspective flow of consciousness to the core of what makes me who I am. By the time I reach the river I have found some new realization, one which I ponder for a while as I watch the deluge lap the rocks beneath me. Once I have found my breath and rehydrated, I continue my journey upward, thinking about how this new wisdom I have gleaned will shape the path forward. On the path up, I am greeted by the beauty of the setting sun, casting his watercolors of light across the foothills beside me. I reemerge at the trailhead reborn, the wind at my sails, as I make the trek back to the parking lot.
The setting sun on the foothills
The first time I made the trip it felt like my life was in shambles. I felt lost, having just gotten out of my first romantic relationship and spending my days rotting away in my room, trying to fill the void that was left scrolling through dating apps. On the hike down the canyon I found peace in my surroundings. I felt that childlike feeling of wonder as I examined the blooming eruptions of lichen that covered the stones lining the trail. I felt alive breathing in the cold, damp air that was warmed by my internal flame. For the first time in months I felt content. Although I had not made it out of my depression, that journey was my first step forward.
The next trip was when I found God. Maybe not the God of Abraham, but a spiritual connection with a higher power. I realized the significance of humanity's connection to the natural systems and cycles of the Earth. I gained a deeper appreciation for forgiveness, being freed from the shackles of held grudges and past slights. I felt a kinship with the Earth and all the beings on it.
The last trip was now only a few days ago. I had hoped that this one would bring with it another life-reframing epiphany that would ease my troubles and allow me to make that next step forward. There was no epiphany, but I was able to find some peace. 2024 was a year I made some major mistakes, ones which have been haunting me over the past months. On the journey I was able to accept that I was already moving on the right path. I had tortured myself long enough, now was the time to make changes in my actions and rekindle what was snuffed out. Even if the lasting peace I long for is not immediate, it feels tangible and something I'll be able to reach in time. In many ways it felt like a reaffirmation of the lessons I learned on that first trip, and a reminder of how I was able to overcome my demons before.
Now I just have to do it again
I've been using Substack.
Originally it was just to subscribe to the paid feed for Blocked and Reported, then I found Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn's show, America This Week. Substack's RSS feed's often are a few hours behind and so I found myself opening the app in order to get the shows as soon as they came out. Now it has become a bad habit to scroll through it in the morning.
At first most of my feed was written content, made up of the muddy blend of blog and journalism that has appeared over the past decade or so. I was pleased with this, finding the content interesting, but without the constant firing of the dopamine receptors found with short-form video platforms. I found engaging writers that I otherwise would not have found if it weren't for the algorithm supplying them to me.
Then a couple months ago I noticed a change in what was showing up in my feed. There were fewer long-form written posts and more snarky quips and comments with an attached photo or video, similar to what you would find on Twitter/X. I didn't necessarily dislike this change at first, but I found myself impulsively clicking on the orange squircle, like I had done with Instagram before I kicked it.
Now when I open the app it is almost solely the sort of dopamine-farming, intellectually-unchallenging cacophony of memes, viral videos, and misleading headlines, that I have been attempting to escape, but inevitably find myself surrounded by. Perhaps it is my own fault for engaging with these posts, perhaps it's the fault of the architects of these platforms, but nevertheless I'm there.
All social media platforms seem to follow the same pattern. A new site emerges, sparsely filled with content of a particular niche (i.e. Liberalism and Bluesky, Trump-flavored Conservativism and Rumble, lip-synced dancing and TikTok). This brings in people interested in that niche to the site and they start creating content of their own. Then there is a fork in the road, the new content either is diverse enough to bring in new people (TikTok), or it becomes an echo-chamber and becomes more or less irrelevant (Rumble (and currently Bluesky but its too soon to say)). For the sites that are able to escape their single niche, more and more people join the site, and in order to maintain engagement with the site, the recommendation algorithm is tweaked to maximize the amount of time spent on the site. This creates many silos, where users are eventually trapped in a box, not seeing large swaths of the content on the site, though highly-viral posts will be served regardless of the box you fall into. Eventually the content of one site is nearly identical to another.
I find myself in the conspiracy box on Substack. Although I am a conspiracy theorist, I don't think everything is controlled by some evil cabal, but nevertheless that is all I am fed on the site. It's getting frustrating, because for those first couple months I really enjoyed reading opinions from various thinkers across the political spectrum. Occasionally some variation peeks through, but it is few and far between. It's all conspiracy posts, memes, conspiratorial memes, and the few people I followed before my feed got ruined.
I guess that's what I get for thinking Substack was going to be any different
I got to nerd out with one of my friends over New Years
He's recently started getting into Linux, starting off with a tried and true Arch + i3 setup. I cannot put into words the joy that came over me when he first sent me the photo of his little repurposed chromebook with the neofetch output on the tty. It's good to have someone to share this hobby with, better yet with one of the best friends I have.
We had him over for our New Years Eve celebration and to my pleasant surprise he brought the chromebook. He let me play around with it and check out his config, which was almost nostalgic for me, having not used anyone else's configs since I first started tinkering with window managers back in 2017. It was refreshing to try something different to how I would set it up, seeing what someone else prioritises. One thing that caught my eye was that he was using kitty for his terminal emulator. Seeing as I had just jumped to wezterm, I was eager to see if the grass was truly greener on the other side.
Of course, terminal emulators don't widely vary from one another, but where they do differ often makes or breaks their usability. I had tried kitty years ago before I switched to alacritty and remembered it fondly, except for the "bell" sound which got irritating, though is easily disabled (why I never did originally disable it escapes me). He showed me kitty's image rendering support and I immediately fell in love. I had a preconceived notion it was more similar to ueberzug or w3m-img, but in reality behaved much more like sixels. I felt like an idiot for not having given it a try sooner and working solely on my assumptions.
That brings us to today, where I have now once again migrated terminal emulators from wezterm to kitty. The transition was just about painless, though my font of choice, terminus, was not a TrueType font and thus was not supported. Fortunately there was a TrueType version of it, but I opted to change fonts. Although I find Terminus to be aesthetically pleasing, it is not great for readability, especially in large blocks of text. So I opted to use the Hack font, one I had used in the past, as well as the font my friend had been using. You will also see this for the website, which had used Terminus prior to this post.
Kitty is trying to accomplish more than what I normally look for in a terminal emulator, but it is executing it well and the image protocol seems to be being adopted as a defacto standard. It's nice to have a config you feel comfortable and familiar with, but it's also nice to have some change every once in a while.
This is a nice change of pace for the new year
Ok, maybe the internet isn't all bad
A couple months ago I received an email from a reader of my old gemini capsule, let's call him Artem, as I'm unsure if he would like to be identified. I, now regretably, did not make a post saying anything about abandoning my capsule and he was wondering where I had ended up. He explained how he initially found my capsule, mentioning a few keywords that caught his eye: Russian language and culture, Linux, and communist politics. I've not had the chance to speak with a Russian who still resided in Russia, let alone one who shared many interests with me, and had a number of questions for him. The conversation kicked off from there. We've shared stories from our lives, separated by thousands of miles, years apart, now connected by electromagnetic waves and the ingenuity of our forefathers.
These interactions have reawakened a latent Russophilia that has been with me since high school. There's something about the unique character of the country and its people that fascinates me; a landmass bridging West and East, sharing characteristics of each, while maintaining its own bold identity, being made up of a smattering of nationalities and subcultures. Through my raging communist years, the songs of The Red Army Choir taught me how to connect with music on an emotional level, from the euphoric bellows of В путь, to the longing melancholy of сулико (Though the latter is Georgian in origin). Since my interactions with Artem, I again find myself putting on music from the other side of the Iron Curtain, but connecting in a stronger way, no longer tied to the desire of the music to hold any form of ideological rigidity, enjoying it as a reflection of the human experience. One song that has been particularly connecting with me through this dark Winter of mine has been тёмная ночь, as I trudge through each day knowing things will improve, surrounded by a vacuous steppe.
This connection has also stoked an inner conflict that has plagued me since first reading Industrial Society and Its Future: is technology good? In many ways it has isolated us from our communities and has made us servants to an ever-growing behemoth that strips us of our natural connection to the Earth. In many ways it allows us to connect with people we never would have crossed paths with otherwise and collate the wealth of humanity's wisdom and knowledge, accessible for all to see. Technology is simultaneously a slaver and a liberator. Although it was before my time, hearing hopeful descriptions of the wonders of the information super-highway from the 90s makes me dream of a better world, a world where this great leap forward of communication was used how it was intended. I dream of a world where the powers at be are laid bare by the masses, no longer able to contain the centuries of pent up subjugation. Yet I awake in a world where these tools have been used for control, wielded ever so craftily by the very people it threatened to destroy.
Through these communications with Artem, I have concluded one certainty: technology that serves to enable self-expression and technologies that serve to expand the range of what was once the domain of traditional letter-writing are wholly beneficial. Without it, I would have never had the guts to publish anything nor had the chance to meet this remarkable individual. If you have the chance please check out his website and his collections of quatrains, many of which are quite humorous:
Be warned for my fellow non-Russian-readers, software translators are not your friend for this language. You'll be far better off using https://en.openrussian.org or another dictionary of your liking.
Reach out to people online! Connect with others! Use the internet for good, but don't be a slave to it!
The Atom feed format is bad
As I mentioned in my last post, I'm re-writing my RSS feed reader, Feedie. With Winter break going on, it has been the main thing I have been doing for the past week or so. I've made pretty good progress and have mapped out how it's going to work in my mind. The one thing that frustrated me was writing a parser for Atom feeds.
Atom feeds kinda suck. While the Atom standard is fairly well defined, the implementations are kinda all over the place. Some use a combination of RSS and Atom XML elements, some prepend each tag name with "atom:", some identify themselves as Atom feeds, i.e. using "xnls=http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom", while actually just being RSS feeds. This is bad. Instead just checking for one element, you have to check for multiple, some of which are nested inside other elements. Additionally, they complicate it further by placing some things in the text values of the XML element, while putting others (mostly urls) in the attributes of it. In the end it's not difficult to parse. I just copyied the RSS parser code and added a few more values to check for. But still, since there is a standard, it's frustrating that it isn't followed.
The worst part is that it muddies everything up while not adding that much new functionality. All of it could have just been done by extending the RSS specification, something which is supported from within the RSS specification, but no, we have to have a nearly identical standard with a few things renamed.
I'm excited to get Feedie to a working state. The back-end is almost done and I'm intrigued by NotCurses for using in the front end. ChatGPT has come in handy a few times for writing very basic, but repetitive code. Even if this project is all for naught, I've gained a better understanding of C++. I see why there is a lot of hate for it online, but dammit I like it.