https://ctrl-c.club/~lettuce/ Generative music, art, coding, learning, politics, whatever Tue, 22 Oct 2024 08:00:00 -0400 https://ctrl-c.club/~lettuce/bikepacking-weekend.html https://ctrl-c.club/~lettuce/bikepacking-weekend.html Mon, 21 Oct 2024 08:00:00 -0400 Over a decade ago I had biked thousands of miles from Portland to Boise, and LA to Santa Barbara, and many other trips. I've done solo and buddy trips. I've taken weekend trips on my bike out of New York City as well. But it's been years. So last weekend I went on a 24hour bikepacking trip with about 10 folks new-to-me. I'm part of an informal group of bikepackers based in my city, all folks interested in camping by bike. The group is organized and communicates via (choose at least one): Hobby Game Development https://ctrl-c.club/~lettuce/hobby-games.html Mon, 30 Sep 2024 08:00:00 -0400 In this post I write about the practice of creating a ▒ video game in a hobbyist approach. I describe a practice ▒ where one translates a board game into a video game. For ▒ me, the term hobbyist is used in order to contrast from ▒ the higher stakes of (semi) professional development, best▒ practices, and conceptual novelty. It can be much easier to try to translate a board game ▒ into a video game than attempting to design a completely brand new video game wholecloth. Sometimes I find that ▒ simple board games I like haven't been turned into video ▒ games, but I would like them to be. So then it becomes my ▒ own task to satisfy this need. I'm doing this to scratch ▒ an itch. It may become something I share with other people▒ but may not be. It feels lower stakes than my professional▒ dev practice, teaching practice, or art practice. And it's▒ a way for me to lose myself, get into the flow state, and ▒ not worry about the outcome. https://ctrl-c.club/~lettuce/ten-thousand.html https://ctrl-c.club/~lettuce/ten-thousand.html Sun, 15 Sep 2024 08:00:00 -0400 I remember reading about 10,000 hours years ago. Without spending any time on a search engine right now, I believe it was an indicator (roughly) of the amount of time one had to dedicate to a discipline in order to be an expert or master in it. Then I think years later I may have read a sort of debunking that it mattered less the exact number of hours but how you spent that time. In any case, it came to mind and I was riffing on it recently when another professor called me a senior faculty member and it hit me that now I am. It doesn't mean that I'm the best, or that I can't still learn a ton and improve. They said it in the context of explaining that they were thankful for me mentoring them, and I realized how time flies, that others had been mentoring me what seemed so recently but was years and years ago. Especially as I'm now tenured and have received larger grants, I must be doing something right. Right? https://ctrl-c.club/~lettuce/posting-park.html https://ctrl-c.club/~lettuce/posting-park.html Tue, 10 Sep 2024 08:00:00 -0400 Oh ho ho, here I am finally browsing gemini and writing an entry for ROOPHLOCH 2024 on my ereader. I live near a huge beautiful urban park with acres of nooks and crannies and I’m esconsed in a particularly gorgeous forest canopy area with mugwort and many other reeds all around. The last time I sat in the park reading, only two days ago at this time, I was quite cold, and buffeted by soca music. Today i hear airplane overhead and a distant saxophone player murmuring an improvised jazz blues from among the trees. This is my favorite time outdoors, dinner time, when all families and sensible people have cleared out and I’m left to my own devices. Last time I posted I wished for a gemini reader and a terminal or way to write on my new Kobo Clara. My wishes were quickly answered by mbays, who let me know about their recent KOReader plugin gemini.koplugin. KOReader is an alternate reading application. Really its a platform with lots of customizations and mods created in Lua. I used a script (after reviewing the code) that installed KOReader, plugins and the Nickelmenu UI. It was quick to install and I took it for a spin. The UI is much more full featured than the default Kobo software so it took me a couple minutes to get my bearings. To the developers‘s credit there is a quicksťart document on install, but I was still overwhelmed at first, having some confusion how to exit out to get back to my default reader with Overdrive and Pocket. The location for menus are different between the two apps, so I may need to customize later to make it smoother. https://ctrl-c.club/~lettuce/new-ereader.html https://ctrl-c.club/~lettuce/new-ereader.html Sun, 08 Sep 2024 08:00:00 -0400 i am having fun. it is 6:30pm and i am on top of the hill that passes for a mountain in brooklyn, a pleasant wind sound swaying all of the leafy green branches above my head. the occasional acorn makes a play, knock, whizz, then lands somewhere near my feet or elsewhere. all is well as long as it lands outside the range of my head. i am a bit cold and have been most of the time i've been here. i'm wearing sandals with socks and jeans, the only acknowledgement to the recent change in weather i've made. not wanting it to be fall yet i had stupidly gone out in my t-shirt and have been half shivering for hours. https://ctrl-c.club/~lettuce/laptop-repaired.html https://ctrl-c.club/~lettuce/laptop-repaired.html Sat, 07 Sep 2024 08:00:00 -0400 I have a Dell XPS 13 7390 "Developer Edition," which means it was the Ubuntu Linux version instead of Microsoft Windows. I use this as my primary machine, now with Void Linux, after a bit of distrohopping 3 years ago (Ubuntu with Gnome -> RegolithOS (an Ubuntu spin with i3 window manager) -> Void. All this has been documented on my gemlog here previously. I purchased the laptop in fall 2019. I should be embarassed to say it was purchased on Cyber Monday, but I will tell you that it was and I specifically waited for that date to order for about 5 months and bought the computer at 23% off. My previous computers had always been refurbished Macs but I was switching to a dedicated Linux machine for the first time, and bought new, hoping that the machine would be fairly robust. I had read so many reviews before purchasing the machine. I also considered the beloved hacker classic Thinkpad laptops, but when I borrowed one for CCC fest in 2018 I hadn't loved how bulky it was. I was coming from having a small Macbook Air previously, and I know I like the 13" screen size. The XPS 13 was pretty much the same size and weight as my previous and in one review it said it should last "at least 3 or 4 years." https://ctrl-c.club/~lettuce/funeral-ereader.html https://ctrl-c.club/~lettuce/funeral-ereader.html Wed, 14 Aug 2024 08:00:00 -0400 I am burying (recycling) my Nook Simple Touch this month. I purchased it on sale from Barnes and Noble in May 2012. I continued to read books on it until August 2024, a useful life of just over 12 years. Aside from some simple hacks and rooting the first year (so I could test Android on it) for the first year or so, I ended up just using the thing as a basic e-reader. I only purchased a handful of books from Barnes and Noble through it since almost immediately I was downloading epubs on my computer and transferring them to the device from an external micro-SD card. I also wrote my own library (bookmobile) to download website articles, strip away cruft, and convert them to epub, which I then moved in bulk to the device to read on my commute or at home. This summer I traveled a bit by bus and train, and have been camping, at the beach, pool, the park, etc. I've brought the device around by throwing it in my backpack. I only travel with a single bag, no matter how long I travel for, even when I traveled around the world for a year in 2011. But alas, over time the plastic of the Nook got weaker, then the buttons started to go. They got stuck down, causing the pages to auto-advance. There is a second button I can use instead, but that one is also getting weaker, brittle, and it's only a matter of time til the device fails entirely. Possibly this thing has another 6 months or year or more left in it maybe. But I'm feeling like it's time. I'm finding myself browsing ebook readers on ebay and reading reviews. A Kobo Clara? A Boox Nova? https://ctrl-c.club/~lettuce/occ-2024-recap.html https://ctrl-c.club/~lettuce/occ-2024-recap.html Sun, 21 Jul 2024 08:00:00 -0400 This is the third time I've participated in the Old Computer Challenge and this year my constraint was trying to do most of my work in Alpine Linux in a virtualized container on iOS on my iPad. My other goals: mostly use the command line, keep working on my forth-based language. Stretch goals: make a simple zine, and make zine-making software. I did largely stick to these things for the week. I was camping the first few days of the challenge at a music festival, then headed for a few days vacation at a friend's house in the mountains. I did bring the ipad to read on and browse the web so that really provided the constraint that led me to decide to do the challenge for the week with the command line in the ipad. https://ctrl-c.club/~lettuce/old-computer-2024.html https://ctrl-c.club/~lettuce/old-computer-2024.html Mon, 15 Jul 2024 08:00:00 -0400 I'm typing this on my ipad in the iSH terminal emulator, running Vim in Alpine Linux. I am away from home and this and my phone are my only computing devices. This keyboard isnt ideal but it's fine for now. My goals for this week: https://ctrl-c.club/~lettuce/creative-love2d.html https://ctrl-c.club/~lettuce/creative-love2d.html Sat, 18 May 2024 08:00:00 -0400 This week I had an artwork (or as we say to each other as artists, a "piece") presented in a group exhibition. I built the work as a non-interactive work that continously runs in a generative fashion, in the simplest sense of that term. https://ctrl-c.club/~lettuce/rss-added.html https://ctrl-c.club/~lettuce/rss-added.html Thu, 16 May 2024 08:00:00 -0400 You may be reading this on Gemini or on the world wide web. In any case, this blog is actually a gemlog aka a gemini capsule, or whatever you want to call it. I actually write and host this in the Gemini protocol's gemtext format, and I browse/read my own and many other sites on Gemini. But I do also convert my own gemlog to html via my own Geminut program for those that are using web browsers and not gemini clients. https://ctrl-c.club/~lettuce/living-computers.html https://ctrl-c.club/~lettuce/living-computers.html Tue, 30 Apr 2024 08:00:00 -0400 If we care about the longterm health of our computers to reduce consumption and wasting of minerals and other elements, we can try to keep using our devices and our computers as long as possible. I've written about some areas relating to permacomputing in the past. Here I'll detail some of the steps I've taken to keep my main laptop "alive" as long as possible. https://ctrl-c.club/~lettuce/streaming-ambient.html https://ctrl-c.club/~lettuce/streaming-ambient.html Thu, 25 Apr 2024 08:00:00 -0400 I find it annoying jumping back and forth from Spotify, to Soundcloud, to Bandcamp, to wherever else to find music to match a mood or preference. About 10 years ago I got deeper and deeper into listening to radio via the internet. The nice thing about radio is you can just switch it on or off, or flick to another station if you don't like what's currently playing. https://ctrl-c.club/~lettuce/offline-programs.html https://ctrl-c.club/~lettuce/offline-programs.html Sun, 24 Mar 2024 08:00:00 -0400 Responding to the challenge set out by Solderpunk this month to develop and share some piece of offline software that is offline-first I thought about what things I open a web browser to find out the answer to that could instead be easily found out through a short program, conversion, or lookup table. https://ctrl-c.club/~lettuce/micropower-radio.html https://ctrl-c.club/~lettuce/micropower-radio.html Tue, 12 Mar 2024 08:00:00 -0400 Micropower radio is a general term for a whole class of activities of underground radio. As opposed to unlicensed "pirate" radio stations operating powerful transmitters, larger stations, and targeting a major metropolitan city for example, micropower radio is instead concerned with broadcasting to a niche community that could be as large as a neighborhood or as small as a campus or city block. https://ctrl-c.club/~lettuce/brooks-saddles.html https://ctrl-c.club/~lettuce/brooks-saddles.html Mon, 22 Jan 2024 08:00:00 -0400 I've been biking most of my life. I use the bike practically for commuting, for enjoyment (joyriding!) and for exercise. I currently own two bikes. My 17-year old Bianchi San Jose is a cyclocross/hybrid singlespeed/fixed bike that I bought new in 2007 and have ridden perhaps 20-30k miles on. I also have a Rivendell Clem Smith Jr. L, which is as close to a do-everything bike I can imagine. I can haul groceries, go on urban group rides, go bikepacking, and hit singletrack trails. In fact, I do all these things fairly regularly on this bike. I purchased the bike 2 years ago, as a gently or barely used frame, and built up for me from a person I found on the Rivendell Owners Bunch email list serve. https://ctrl-c.club/~lettuce/remove-old-packages.html https://ctrl-c.club/~lettuce/remove-old-packages.html Fri, 22 Sep 2023 08:00:00 -0400 This is a short Linux tutorial of incantations you can use to remove dependency packages for programs that you've uninstalled. As far as I know, this is not done automatically on any distros I've used. I tend to run this periodically, most especially after removing software from the command line. Most obviously, you'd do this to reduce your disk usage. https://ctrl-c.club/~lettuce/1x1.html https://ctrl-c.club/~lettuce/1x1.html Mon, 11 Sep 2023 08:00:00 -0400 1x1 (pronounced "one by one") is a one-off e-zine dedicated to solo gaming, playable without computers. I am particularly interested in games not commercially manufactured but I do enjoy some solo rules variants of commercial board games. And I have a love of games playable with standard items like a regular card deck, pen and paper, dice, and dominos. While I do also enjoy the occasional solo rules variants of commercial games, particularly fan-made ones, there are many other places to find that kind of thing online. https://ctrl-c.club/~lettuce/RE-students-on-gemini.html https://ctrl-c.club/~lettuce/RE-students-on-gemini.html Tue, 05 Sep 2023 08:00:00 -0400 This is an update to my original post asking for help in a course I'm teaching on web technologies, collaboration and the internet to undergrad Computer Science students. https://ctrl-c.club/~lettuce/students-on-gemini.html https://ctrl-c.club/~lettuce/students-on-gemini.html Thu, 31 Aug 2023 08:00:00 -0400 Hi folks, this title perhaps sounds a little click-baity, but it's actually a genuine question. https://ctrl-c.club/~lettuce/why-cli.html https://ctrl-c.club/~lettuce/why-cli.html Fri, 31 Aug 2023 08:00:00 -0400 In short, I use the command line because it's fun, it's logical, expressive, and because it lets me avoid planned obsolescence and arbitrary restrictions. Read on for the details: