Server upgrade 2024-10-01T19:34:35.535Z

Okay, my VPS should now be on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. Things I bumped into along the way:
- Had to reinstall MySQL for some reason. Fortunately kept all the data, although I did need to recreate directories for logs and sockets.
- Reinstalled my Docker images. Fortunately kept all the data on disk, so that was fine. Along the way, upgraded my mongo DB from 4.2 to 4.4 to 5 to 6 to 7.
- Panicked when gotosocial was taking a while to start up, interrupted it and tried again, ended up with a partially-migrated database and worse problems. Fortunately had a backup of the db, so I restored and patiently waited.

Eleventy upgrade 2024-09-30T17:35:26.858Z

I managed to get my blog upgraded from Eleventy 2 to Eleventy 3.0.0-alpha.20. find-dired and wdired were useful for finding all the .js files and turning them into .cjs.

Supernote colour template 2024-09-27T03:05:15.033Z

I finally got around to checking if the #Supernote can handle colour templates despite only letting me draw in black, white, and two shades of gray. It keeps the colour in the export! That means I can make a template that uses a specific color to make a grid, which is then easy to strip out of it with Python. That saves me 3-6 taps and reduces friction even further. Looking forward to experimenting with that at the next opportunity.

Blog tweaks and other code - 2024-09-26T17:02:17.804Z

A couple of little tweaks:

- I re-added a "Random" link to my blog header, nudged by https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41647654
- I added a sitemap.xml , so let's see if search engines pick stuff up
- I wrote some code to move Org properties from a subtree to a parent
- I changed my code for inserting the latest file from my Supernote A5X e-ink device into Org Mode to also recolor, recognize text, rename, and archive the file

Setting up hibernate 2024-09-26T00:08:50.365Z

I followed the directions at https://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2021/08/enable-hibernate-ubuntu-21-10/ to set up a swap partition and enable hibernate. Now I can pause whatever I'm doing in Linux in order to switch to Windows to play Minecraft Bedrock with the kiddo, and then switch back to Linux afterwards.

Drawing inspiration from reference librarians 2024-09-26T23:55:01.196Z

I'm imagining the kind of person I want to grow into over the next few decades. I think a fair part of it might be learning how to be more like a reference #librarian for the kinds of things I'm interested in, like #Emacs. Might not know the answer itself, might know the general direction one can find the answer in and what kinds of words to look for; might not focus on finding the answer myself, might take the time to help people learn how to figure things out; might not focus on the surface question, but dig deeper to find out what might be a good fit, might not just wait for questions, might also do outreach and readers' advisory. This is a handy way for me to think about it because it means I can tap into how people have been learning about this sort of stuff for hundreds or even thousands of years. :)

Some links:
- https://blogs.princeton.edu/librarian/2008/02/rethinking_my_own_reference/
- https://medium.com/everylibrary/a-day-in-the-life-reference-librarian-at-a-public-library-70999119a909
- http://www.5minlib.com/2016/01/so-you-want-to-be-reference-librarian.html?m=1
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2019/08/20/digital-assistants-could-learn-a-lot-from-reference-librarians/

Shallow work 2024-09-26T02:42:11.765Z

Shallow work is often all that I have time or energy for, and that's okay. I don't want to wait until I've got three hours of straight focus time. If I can learn how to make good use of five minutes here, ten minutes there, maybe the occasional 30 or 40 minutes when I'm lucky--if I can build something from all these little crumbs--then I think that's something that might be useful even later on. I expect my life to become more fragmented, not less, but I want to make something with it anyway. :)

Practically speaking, that means:
- learning out loud
- looking for little improvements, reducing friction
- shifting modes: maybe audio and sketches can work around some limitations
- building connections between smaller ideas, both manually and automatically
- figuring out what I can do with what I've got at the time

Emacs novelty and community 2024-09-25T17:46:25.723Z

Looking at how the kiddo dives deeply into one interest and then moves on to another, and how she gets such satisfaction from sharing those interests with me, I think part of why #Emacs has been a long-lasting interest of mine is that it involves an endless space of novel possibilities that is entirely because of a wonderful community.