This post covers the week ending Dec 4 and the week ending Dec 11, since it was a bit of a rush leading up to EmacsConf.

• EmacsConf 2024 went well, hooray! Here are some of my journal entries over the past two weeks:
  • I worked on the BigBlueButton server some more. I used Spookfox to automate Firefox from Emacs Lisp so that I could add moderator codes to all the BBB rooms. That way, speakers can let themselves in if needed, since we might be understaffed. (Might need to ask the mailing list if anyone wants to volunteer to host, which is mostly reading out questions and making conversation.) I also updated the Tampermonkey script so that the user in the VNC session will be able to join the web conference automatically.
  • I added shell scripts to copy the BBB redirect files so that I can easily do that by hand in case I don't get the automation sorted out again over the next week.
  • Livestreaming to Toobnix seems to be iffy at the moment, so I'll just focus on 480p and YouTube. I'll probably end up manually copying and pasting the stream keys for each event, so I've added them to the shift checklists to make that easier for myself.
  • I confirmed crontab and publishing still worked, and I processed some last-minute submissions. I also sent the check-in emails and fixed my email delivery verification.

  • 2024-12-08T00:40:59.681Z

    #emacsconf day 1 wasn't 100% smooth, but it was 100% fun, and people rerouted around all of the tech hiccups. I think we've figured out the color issue (needed to update mpv from 0.35 to 0.38), I updated my scripts to take the video files from the cache directory instead of other directories that I forgot to update, updated the checklist to have the right URLs, enabled case-fold-search on the other Emacs, and added random package mentions to the countdown screen. I forgot to let zaeph know I edited one of the videos, so next time I should flag that somehow. I'm not 100% sure about our BBB setup; a couple of people's computers crashed. On the plus side, this year, sooo many people helped out with captions and quality checks. Improving little by little! :D The important stuff got done: people got to see things and chat with other people!

  • The second day of EmacsConf went pretty well! We managed to handle a couple of last-minute uploads.
  • I processed the EmacsConf Q&As to add chapter indices and correct a number of misrecognized words. I also copied comments from of IRC and YouTube.
  • I modified the VTT separator regexp for subed.el.

  • swapping roles 2024-12-08T02:34:12.554Z

    I had a lot of fun watching Leo Vivier, Corwin Brust, and FlowyCoder fluidly swap roles as needed during #emacsconf . It was like professional jugglers dancing, one tossing a ball up in the air, the other shifting into place to catch it, the third getting the next ones lined up so things keep moving smoothly.

  • I dropped by Lispy Gopher Show again to chat about Emacs, Emacs Lisp, and EmacsConf with screwtape.

    • 2024-12-11T16:41:12.384Z

    @screwtape I imagine it could be useful to have a smart radio object that could tell someone how many minutes until your next show and where to listen to it (saves us from UTC conversions); do the same for other anonradio shows; search for a keyword in your archives (even just the descriptions); and maybe even allow other people to contribute a note that can be reviewed and included in the archive description for an episode

  • Q&A update 2024-12-12T14:48:25.451Z

    Yay, I've copied the rest of the comments from IRC and YouTube to the #EmacsConf talk pages, so speakers will be able to review them in one go. I've also copied some sections out of the transcripts for quick answers. I might send the speakers the thanks email with the discussion and main talk video links, but without links to the Q&A videos yet.
    
    BigBlueButton audio mixing was as usual a bit of a challenge, with some participants quiet and some participants louder. BBB saves only mixed audio. It would be nice to see if I can get separate audio recordings next year by configuring https://github.com/bigbluebutton/bigbluebutton/issues/12302 , but that sounds a little complicated. Instead of taking over the task of messing with the audio in the current recordings (which I tend to flub because I don't have the patience for it :) ), I can leave space for other people to do things. Instead, I can focus on the other tasks I've been procrastinating. :)

• Life:
  • A- felt that the Outschool club was worth keeping because she likes the people.
  • We all practised shinny at High Park. Nice! A- and I worked on our stops once it was time to move over to the leisure skate area. We've also skated even though there was a light drizzle.
  • W- enjoyed helping out with the Bike Brigade.
  • A+'s CCAT scores qualified her for the next step in the TDSB gifted identification process. I've been trying to figure out what this could look like for us. There's probably no gifted program for virtual school, so it might look much like what we've already got. We've been talking about how to adapt to systems that are designed for other people. At the moment, it seems to work better for her if I sit with her during boring parts of class and help her explore things like coding with Python (or help her get her homework out of the way), so I don't have much focused time myself. It's important to us that she feels good about learning and that she learns how to work with/around systems, so spending that time is worthwhile. It just means that I have to be strategic about what I do.

• Reflection on writing style - 2024-11-18T00:44:18.080Z

  I notice that I have a lot more fun writing tiny workflow tweaks (mostly #Emacs ) and sharing them on my blog versus, say, insightful reflections developed over a longer period of time. I think it's the payoff of being able to enjoy those tweaks. Sometimes abstract thoughts help me come to realizations that I can then try to use to change my concrete behaviours, but it's a lot less straightforward.

  Also, I notice that I prefer to write with a curious, exploratory tone instead of an authoritative one, which is probably also related to my focus on "I" rather than "you". Kinda like: here's what I'm experimenting with, sharing in case it's helpful (and also because I want to be able to find it again), everyone's different and that's awesome, curious about what works for you. :) I'm glad other people can pull off being authoritative/persuasive, though.

  23+ years #blogging and still learning more!

• Sketchnote blogs - 2024-11-17T18:19:47.826Z

  I'm surprised by how few active blogs I could find about #sketchnotes (or had a category feed for sketchnotes). It's mostly rohdesign and Verbal to Visual, I think. Sketchnote Army still comes out with episodes, but the posts themselves don't seem to be very visual, so people have to click through to the person's website. I guess a lot of people are on Instagram, but that doesn't seem to support RSS any more, and I'm not really keen on scrolling through that. Ah well!

• dark mode sketch filter - 2024-11-14T13:41:01.165Z

  I tweaked my dark-mode sketch CSS rule thanks to stefanvdwalt's comment. Now I've got

    @media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) {
    .sketch-full img, .gallery img, .left-doodle, .right-doodle,
    .center-doodle { filter: invert(1) hue-rotate(180deg) brightness(150%)
    contrast(0.9); }
    }
  

  Updated: https://sachachua.com/blog/2024/11/using-a-coloured-template-on-my-supernote-a5x/

• Researched BBB hosting options and compared the costs with self-hosting on Linode.
• Checked the shell scripts to make sure that hosts can start the videos by using shortcuts.

I used to write weekly reviews. Nudged by Doing weeknotes, I want to get back to doing them. I'm still figuring out how I'd like to put these notes together as part of a weekly review process picking up some stuff from my blog posts, toots, Org inbox, and journal entries. That way, I can revisit fleeting notes and flesh them out a little more, notice and celebrate progress, and radiate intent.

Do I want to leave it on Wednesdays (chosen for its alliteration with weblog, with no particular deep thought about it) or go back to Fridays like before? Wednesdays might be a good idea, actually, since I might still be able to schedule some tasks for Thursday and Friday.

Anyway, over the last seven days:

• EmacsConf:
  • Improved the Makefile we use in EmacsConf so that it detects the prefixes from the original files in the directory and builds various intermediate files (reencoded.webm, opus, vtt, normalized opus, main.webm).
  • While the kiddo was at an extracurricular activity, I listened to talks for the upcoming EmacsConf and annotated transcript PDFs so that I can edit the captions later. It was very enjoyable and something I could do with gloves on, which was great because the weather's getting pretty cool. I'm looking forward to using pdf view to flip through the exported annotations in Emacs. Yay! (toot)
  • Processed lots of talks and captions.
  • Wrote some code to skim the starts of subtitles to check the timing.
  • Got Icecast, OBS, and Emacs set up for the upcoming conference, and I disabled screenlock in our i3 config.
  • Still haven't been able to fix bbb.emacsverse.org. I've asked Corwin to look into Galene. I think meet.jit.si might not be solid enough for us (potentially throttling issues like several years ago).
• Other Emacs stuff:
  • Wrote a function for storing a link to a blog post from the Org subtree for it. (my-org-store-blog-post-link in Linking to blog posts).
  • Experimented with moving lines around for fixing the text conversion of sketches, but I think it feels like more work than just retyping.
  • Figured out that I needed to set :comments no on the Org source block that had ;; lexical-binding: t on it. (toot)
  • Used org-html-htmlize-generate-css to export CSS from Modus Vivendi to use as my dark-mode colours
• Other tech:
  • Tweaked my blockquote speech bubble to let me have left-pointing or bottom-pointing ones depending on CSS class. Tweaked dark-mode colours, too.
  • Ordered two micro:bit boards. Also tried turtle programming with Python.
  • Shared the coloured dot grid template I use on my Supernote A5X.
  • Thought about webpage margins and sticky navigation.
• Life:
  • Read Tiny Habits and made sketchnotes. I also listened to a podcast on The Feel-Good Method of Productivity, which touched on some of the same points about joy and celebration. (toot)
  • A thought as things become more tangled: Here are some of the things I am working on learning as I grow up: how to navigate uncertainty with curiosity, how to use conflicts to figure out priorities, how to face regrets with acceptance, and how to transform grief into an even fiercer love.
  • Parent-teacher interview and progress report: A+ is doing well. No exemption from synchronous learning this year. Oh well. We'll just have to figure out how to work with the system for now, or decide when it's not working well enough for A+.

I used to walk for an hour to get to some of A+'s playdates, pushing her in the Thule bike trailer / stroller that she still fit into. I liked bringing popsicles during the summer so that A+ could share them with her friends, so I often balanced a small cooler on top of the stroller and walked as briskly as I could. The popsicles were usually still reasonably cold by the time I got to the park. We'd spend a few hours playing there, and then there would be another hour's walk back. A+ usually napped on the way, so it was a chance for me to listen to podcasts.

Sometimes we biked to the playdate instead. That was much faster in terms of getting there, even with a popsicle break halfway through. Those popsicles were only for us, since I couldn't bring a cooler on my bike. Also, A+ was usually too tired to bike back, or it was too dark for her to be safe biking on the busy streets between the park and our house, so we often waited in the mall parking lot for W- to pick up A+ and her bike in his car. Then I biked back by myself.

We'd been considering cargo bikes for a while, and eventually things lined up to make it possible. It was a carefully-considered decision. I did a bunch of test rides using different models of cargo bikes. My height (or lack of it) ruled out many of the models designed for taller people. A+ was quite vocal about her preference for the suspension on the R&M Load cargo bikes, and she liked the view from the front-loaders more than the longtails. I rented the Load 75 and the Load 60 to try them out, accidentally tipping over onto the side an embarrassing number of times; A+ was safely buckled in but very grumpy about it.

When we confirmed that a cargo bike fit into our life, I bought a Riese & Müller Load 75 from Curbside Cycle. We picked the Load 75 over the Load 60 because the rain cover was nicer and the extra room could give us more years of use as A+ grows.

I love it. Biking is my favourite way to get around. There's just something so cheerful about it. A+ and I sing as we go around town. We smile at dogs in sweaters. She takes pictures of trees. Sometimes there are cargo bikes in front of us as we wait at the traffic light, and we wave and nod.

We got the Bakkie bag, too. It's designed to tow a kid's bike. That way, A+ can bike wherever she wants. When she gets tired, she can hop into the cargo bike and I can buckle her bike into the Bakkie bag, towing it all the way home. We've been able to go on more bike adventures by ourselves and together with W- because we don't have to worry about exceeding A+'s range.

Since we could get to the playground in 15 minutes instead of 60, it was a lot easier to bring snacks to share. We pretty much kept the playground kids well-supplied with free popsicles (and the occasional much-coveted ice cream treat) all summer, and the ice packs came in handy for treating the occasional bumps too. We even brought disposable cups and insulated bottles of hot water for making hot chocolate and instant apple cider in the colder months.

Aside from taking A+ to a wider range of places, we've also used it to bring several bags of potting mix or a propane tank home from the hardware store, carry other bulky items, and take lots of stuff to the community environment days for recycling/donation.

We are very lucky to have cargo biking as an option. When people ask me how much it is, I ruefully tell them, "Well, it's less than a second car." We weren't actually choosing between this and a second car; even though W- rarely uses his car these days, I'm too anxious to drive. My brain gets a little squirrelly and is prone to attentional hiccups. I don't want a moment of distraction to result in someone's death or serious injury. I'm still on alert when I bike, but it feels a lot more like something I can handle. And biking is so fast and convenient. I don't have to nudge A+ out of a playdate so that we can make it out before the subway gets packed like sardines, or shepherd A+ back home from the subway station ("I'm tiiiired.").

I got the bike in November 2023. Here's how much I biked over the past year:

I was pleasantly surprised that even during the cold months (and A+'s reluctance to go outside if it was very cold or slushy), and even during the schoolweek, we still managed to get out on the bike.

I got data from the ebike-connect site using Spookfox using the code below.

[...document.querySelectorAll('.activities__ride-menu')].map((o) => {
  return {
    date: o.querySelector('.activities__menu-details > span').textContent,
    distance: o.querySelector('.activities__menu-distance-text').textContent.trim(),
    time: o.querySelector('.activities__menu-details > span:nth-child(2) > span:nth-child(2)').textContent,
  }
});

(let ((by-month (seq-group-by
  (lambda (row)
    (let ((date (plist-get row :date)))
      (when (string-match "[0-9][0-9]\\.\\([0-9][0-9]\\)\\.\\([0-9][0-9]\\) [0-9][0-9]:[0-9][0-9]"
                          date)
        (format "20%s-%s-01"
                (match-string 2 date)
                (match-string 1 date)))))
  trips)))
  (append
   '(("Month" "Distance")
     hline)
   (mapcar
    (lambda (row)
      (list (format-time-string "%b" (date-to-time (car row)))
            (format
             "%d"
             (round (apply '+
                           (mapcar (lambda (entry) (string-to-number (plist-get entry :distance)))
                                   (cdr row)))))))
    (reverse (seq-filter (lambda (o) (string< (car o) "2024-11")) by-month)))))

(let ((by-day (seq-group-by
  (lambda (row)
    (let ((date (plist-get row :date)))
      (when (string-match "\\([0-9][0-9]\\)\\.\\([0-9][0-9]\\)\\.\\([0-9][0-9]\\) [0-9][0-9]:[0-9][0-9]"
                          date)
        (format "20%s-%s-%s"
                (match-string 3 date)
                (match-string 2 date)
                (match-string 1 date)))))
  trips)))
  (json-encode (mapcar
   (lambda (row)
     (cons (car row)
           (format
            "%d"
            (round (apply '+
                          (mapcar (lambda (entry) (string-to-number (plist-get entry :distance)))
                                  (cdr row)))))))
   (reverse (seq-filter (lambda (o) (string< (car o) "2024-11")) by-day)))))

import pandas as pd
import datetime
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import seaborn as sns
import json

data = trips
df = pd.DataFrame(data, columns=["Month", "Distance"])
df.set_index('Month')
df['Distance'] = df['Distance'].astype(float)
plt.figure(figsize=(8, 6), dpi=100)
sns.barplot(data=df, y='Distance', x='Month')
plt.savefig('biking-distance-by-month.svg')

import pandas as pd
import datetime
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import seaborn as sns
import json

start_date = datetime.datetime(2023, 11, 1)
end_date = datetime.datetime(2024, 11, 1)
dates = pd.date_range(start=start_date, end=end_date, freq='D')
data = json.loads(trips)
df = pd.DataFrame.from_dict(data, orient='index')
df.index = pd.to_datetime(df.index)
df[0] = df[0].astype(float)
# Create calendar heatmap
plt.figure(figsize=(16, 3), dpi=100)
pivoted = df.pivot_table(index=df.index.day_name(), columns=df.index.strftime('%Y-%W'))
all_days = ['Monday', 'Tuesday', 'Wednesday', 'Thursday', 'Friday', 'Saturday', 'Sunday']
pivoted.index = pd.Categorical(pivoted.index, all_days, ordered=True)
pivoted = pivoted.sort_index()
heatmap = sns.heatmap(
    pivoted,
    cmap="crest",
    linewidths=0.5,
    linecolor='white'
)

# Set the x-axis tick labels to show only the months
month_labels = df.index.strftime('%b').unique()
month_ticks = [i * 4 for i in range(len(month_labels))]
plt.xticks(
    month_ticks,
    month_labels,
    rotation=90
)
tick_positions = [i + 0.5 for i in range(len(all_days))]
plt.yticks(tick_positions, all_days)
plt.title('Distance on dates')
plt.xlabel('November 2023 - November 2024')
plt.ylabel('')
plt.xticks(rotation=90)
plt.savefig('biking-by-day.svg')

I like our cargo bike a lot. I hope to ride it for many years to come.