Sacha Chua - category - weblog Emacs, sketches, and life https://sachachua.com/blog/category/weblog/feed/atom/index.xml 11ty 2024-11-20T18:58:10Z Wednesday weblog: week ending November 20, 2024 2024-11-20T18:58:10Z 2024-11-20T18:58:10Z https://sachachua.com/blog/2024/11/weekly-review-week-ending-november-20-2024/

  • 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.

    • Quotes

    • Excerpts from Rebecca Solnit's "A Field Guide to Getting Lost" (2006) - 2024-11-19T12:52:11.878Z

      One of the books that has just arrived from the library is "A Field Guide to Getting Lost" (Rebecca Solnit, 2006), which was recommended to me by @janoli .

      Here are some snippets that have resonated with me so far:

      p5. Love, wisdom, grace, inspiration–how do you go about finding these things that are in some ways about extending the boundaries of the self into unknown territory, about becoming someone else?

      p10. and there's another art of being at home in the unknown, so that being in its midst isn't cause for panic or suffering, of being at home with being lost.

      p14. The historian Aaron Sachs, about explorers: "In my opinion, their most important skill was simply a sense of optimism about surviving and finding their way."

      p80. Even in the everyday world of the present, an anxiety to survive manifests itself in cars and clothes for far more rugged occasions than those at hand, as though to express some sense of the toughness of things and of readiness to face them. But the real difficulties, the real arts of survival, seem to lie in more subtle realms. There, what's called for is a kind of resilience of the psyche, a readiness to deal with what comes next.

      p99. Probably it had its origins in protective urges, but it had gone sour long ago.

    • Excerpts from Bill Watterson's speech at Kenyon College in 1990 - 2024-11-19T12:19:15.286Z

      Thanks to @kims for sharing Bill Watterson's speech at Kenyon College, Gambier Ohio, to the 1990 graduating class (https://web.mit.edu/jmorzins/www/C-H-speech.html)

      This section particularly resonated with me: "Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it's to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential-as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth."

      I also appreciated his resistance to commercializing Calvin & Hobbes:
      "Selling out is usually more a matter of buying in. Sell out, and you're really buying into someone else's system of values, rules and rewards.
      The so-called 'opportunity' I faced would have meant giving up my individual voice for that of a money-grubbing corporation. It would have meant my purpose in writing was to sell things, not say things. My pride in craft would be sacrificed to the efficiency of mass production and the work of assistants. Authorship would become committee decision. Creativity would become work for pay. Art would turn into commerce. In short, money was supposed to supply all the meaning I'd need.
      What the syndicate wanted to do, in other words, was turn my comic strip into everything calculated, empty and robotic that I hated about my old job. They would turn my characters into television hucksters and T-shirt sloganeers and deprive me of characters that actually expressed my own thoughts."

    Other links

    You can e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

    ]]>         Wednesday weblog: Week ending 2024-11-06 2024-11-13T17:22:26Z 2024-11-13T17:22:26Z https://sachachua.com/blog/2024/11/wednesday-weblog-week-ending-2024-11-06/ 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:
    • 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+.

    Links

    You can e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

    ]]>         Wednesday weblog: Toots ending 2024-10-23 2024-10-30T14:35:32Z 2024-10-30T14:35:32Z https://sachachua.com/blog/2024/10/wednesday-weblog-toots-ending-2024-10-23/

    You can e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

    ]]>         Wednesday weblog: Toots ending 2024-10-16: EmacsConf, Emacs, PKM 2024-10-16T13:01:41Z 2024-10-16T13:01:41Z https://sachachua.com/blog/2024/10/wednesday-weblog-toots-ending-2024-10-16-emacsconf-emacs-pkm/
    • Personal knowledge management

      • thought management - 2024-10-13T21:24:39.185Z

        I think I don't have a task management or even a knowledge management challenge, I have a thought management challenge. I want to think more thoughts through to a reasonable level of completion (blog post, commit, sketch, even a toot) while still honouring the kiddo's desire for snuggles and playtime. My brain gets cranky about unfinished thoughts because of the Ovsiankina effect[1]. Sometimes I can get away with just adding a note to myself, and sometimes I end up telling the kiddo, "Let me just finish this thought..." My brain also gets cranky if I don't get time to focus on my own stuff, so it's a bit of a balance.

        I like sketchnotes[2] because I can use non-computer time to think nonlinearly and make a thing I can refer to, a chunk I can use to build up other thoughts. I'm working on getting used to even smaller chunks so I can feel like a thought is complete without needing to fill up the page.[3]

        Audio braindumps[4] let me explore thoughts, which is nice. WhisperX gets me reasonable transcripts. The transcripts are unfinished chunks, though, so they often go back into my inbox and feel like an open loop[5]. I'm experimenting with LLMs to help me neaten them up, but I haven't figured out a prompt that I'm happy with yet.

        So here I am: picking up a thought, putting it down, picking it up, putting it down, capturing a bunch of other thoughts that come up along the way. It'll do for now. This is a temporary phase. Just gotta keep sane!

        - [1] Ovsiankina effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovsiankina_effect
        - [2] sketchnotes https://sketches.sachachua.com
        - [3] cropping https://sachachua.com/blog/2024/09/org-attaching-the-latest-image-from-my-supernote-via-browse-and-access/
        - [4] audio braindumps https://sachachua.com/blog/2023/12/audio-braindump-workflow-tweaks-adding-org-mode-hyperlinks-to-recordings-based-on-keywords/
        - [5] open loops https://gettingthingsdone.com/2011/10/gtd-best-practices-collect-part-1-of-5/

        (... Hmm, does my brain like inline links or footnotes when it comes to stuff like this? What does your brain like? I think inline links might be slightly easier when it comes to grabbing segments and using them in other chunks like a blog post, but it might be worth trying different ways.)

      • my personal knowledge management workflow - 2024-10-13T03:35:27.740Z

        I have an inbox via Orgzly Revived (thanks, GTD). On good days, I distinguish between TODO and SOMEDAY; other times, everything starts off as SOMEDAY. I try to have very few commitments or deadlines. I tag some tasks with keywords (consulting, emacsconf, writing, need) to make them easy to refile automatically so that I can see what's left. I don't really worry about tagging by context (computer, errands, phone) because I still don't have enough focused time to batch things. (Sorry, GTD.) My main Org file is roughly organized along the lines of PARA - projects, areas of responsibility/interest, resources, archive. I have yyyy-mm-dd-nn IDs for my sketches and journal entries (thanks, Zettelkasten) and some support for linking between things, but I haven't gotten around to implementing backlinks or spending more time linking concepts.

        I move ideas between sketches and audio braindumps and outlines and notes and toots and blog posts depending on what I can use at the time. Some of them even get turned into audio recordings and videos. Other times, I refile things to rough locations in other parts of my outline; maybe someday I'll get to use them. I tend to use org-refile or ripgrep or Google to try to find things again.

        I'm usually skewed by recency/availability bias, focusing on stuff in my note inbox or scheduled tasks. Sometimes I pick a project and focus on it. I use Org Mode's clocking and capture features to help me manage interruptions from life, other ideas, or other tasks.

        It's a mish-mash of #PIM approaches, nothing particularly elegant or sophisticated, but it helps me get by and I'm looking forward to tweaking it further.

      • evolution of my personal information/knowledge management systems - 2024-10-13T03:00:21.459Z

        I started thinking about the evolution of my personal information management systems from 2001 to now. Rough timeline:

        - 2001: university: assignments, class notes, projects; Planner Mode in Emacs (daily tasks/notes, category notes, blog with RSS feed)
        - 2003: teaching: lesson plans, notes; Planner Mode
        - 2004: internship in Japan: language learning; Planner Mode, flashcard.el
        - 2005: master's degree: research, class notes, finances; Planner Mode, Ledger
        - 2007: sketchnotes, working at IBM: internal vs. external notes, publishing to internal blog, moving my public blog to WordPress; Org Mode, org2blog, WordPress
        - 2012: self-directed learning - what do I want to spend my time and energy on?; time tracker
        - 2015: Emacs News; categorizing Org Mode list items
        - 2016: parenting - sleep deprivation, interruptions, limited computer time; MobileOrg
        - 2017: web-based journal so that I can easily update it when traveling without my computer
        - 2018: switched from MobileOrg to Orgzly
        - 2019: EmacsConf; Org Mode for scheduling and automation
        - 2021: switched from WordPress to the Eleventy static site generator to reduce security things to worry about
        - 2023: SuperNote A5X - easier black/white/gray sketches
        - 2024: starting to have more predictable focus time, can revisit my Org Mode notes and projecrs; WhisperX for audio braindumps

    • EmacsConf

      • Started processing videos for EmacsConf - 2024-10-14T23:03:02.187Z

        It took a bit of figuring out, but I managed to spin up our #emacsconf video processing pipeline and got the first uploaded video through the process and into our backstage area, complete with edited captions. I experimented with using the word-level timestamps from WhisperX, but merging them was a little tedious. I might go back to using the text output and then using either Aeneas to align or splitting based on the word data from the WhisperX JSON. Could try finding some other subtitle segmentation thing - maybe give lachesis another try, or check out recent research, or just go with something based on length+punctuation+gap...

      • Got stuck with Etherpad 2.x, staying with 1.9.7 for now - 2024-10-14T16:11:27.704Z

        Got stuck trying to figure out how to install Etherpad 2.x, so I'm going to leave Etherpad at 1.9.7 for #EmacsConf until I have more brainspace.

    • Emacs
    • Other

      • small ideas - 2024-10-13T15:18:05.139Z

        I was thinking about my visual book notes [1] , my stack of unread books from the library, and my general feeling of time scarcity that makes it difficult for me to sit down with a book (or even a video). I think for this phase of my life, I'd rather reflect on people's personal blog posts and toots about what they're learning, and that's okay. Small (manageable, hold-in-your-head-able) ideas can be much easier to deal with than something that's trying to be a big enough idea to justify the costs of physical book distribution.

        [1] https://sachachua.com/blog/category/visual-book-notes/

    You can e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

    ]]>         Wednesday weblog: Toots ending 2024-10-09 2024-10-09T13:11:59Z 2024-10-09T13:11:59Z https://sachachua.com/blog/2024/10/wednesday-weblog-toots-ending-2024-10-09/ Here's what I've been posting on @sacha@social.sachachua.com:

    You can e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

    ]]>         Wednesday weblog: Toots ending 2024-10-02 2024-10-02T15:51:18Z 2024-10-02T15:51:18Z https://sachachua.com/blog/2024/10/wednesday-weblog-toots-ending-2024-10-02/
    Tech

    • 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.

    Life

    You can e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

    ]]>         Wednesday weblog: Toots ending 2024-09-25: Emacs and tech 2024-09-26T00:18:25Z 2024-09-26T00:18:25Z https://sachachua.com/blog/2024/09/wednesday-weblog-toots-ending-2024-09-25-emacs-and-tech/
    Emacs:

    • Emacs community

      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.

    • keyboard shortcuts

      I wonder if someone's already written a newbie-friendly #Emacs Customize-based interface for defining and saving keyboard shortcuts, function aliases, and other little things that could make it easier for people to make Emacs more comfortable for themselves.

    • org-src-lang-modes and web-mode

      I want my #Emacs #OrgMode `#+begin_export html ... #+end_export` blocks to open in web-mode, not html-mode. I customized `org-src-lang-modes` and now `org-edit-special` does the right thing. Yay Emacs!

    • beginner map

      I pulled together a bunch of beginner-oriented links from past #Emacs News and started mapping out topics. https://sachachua.com/web/beginner-map.html

    • consult-omni and Google searches

      I want to quickly look up and add links. [consult-omni](https://github.com/armindarvish/consult-omni) lets me search within #Emacs instead of switching to a web interface. After I set up consult-omni-google with a Google custom search engine and a JSON API key, I can call it with my shortcut: `M-g w`. Using `M-n` for future history pulls in the word at point. Then I can select a site and use Embark to insert with `C-. i` or copy with `C-. w`.

      My config: https://sachachua.com/dotemacs#consult-omni

    Tech:

    • hibernate

      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.

    • ffmpeg and fps

      I noticed out-of-sync subtitles when I used #ffmpeg to combine an animated gif with audio and subtitles. Turns out all I needed to do was to bump up the fps with the fps filter in order to get the video to play smoothly.

    You can e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

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