Su	Ma	Ti	Ke	To	Pe	La
	[[1\|2407#01-07-2024]]	2	3	4	5	6
[[7\|2407#07-07-2024]]	[[8\|2407#08-07-2024]]	9	10	11	[[12\|2407#12-07-2024]]	13
[[14\|2407#14-07-2024]]	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	[[23\|2407#23-07-2024]]	24	[[25\|2407#25-07-2024]]	26	27
28	[[29\|2407#29-07-2024]]	30	[[31\|2407#31-07-2024]]

--- #### 31.07.2024 ## On writing and the limit of the medium *(contains rants about screens and ADHD)* There's a reason why I still keep and write on paper notebooks. There's a reason why my main jounal / log "platform" rn is a website with nothing more than basic Markdown-parsed semantic HTML. The limits of the medium enables me to focus. I have found that, especially during times when my ADHD got bad, every time I try to jot things down on my phone or laptop, I end up **not** finishing it. People love praising the editability, searchability and neat organization of digital files, as opposed to the messy, sporadic, cluttered paper notes. Here's the thing: writing and note management are two different activities. When I write, all I need is a blank canvas and my thoughts, and my hands who have learned to translate thoughts into texts. When attempting to "write" on a digital platform, I face some unavoidable questions: What *type of file* am I writing to? What are the correct syntax? Where is it *stored? (Online? Offline? Do I need a backup?)* How do I find this again amongst my other notes? (*Title? Keyword? Timestamp?*). And then there is structure: hypertext formats often allow some semantic to take place. Logseq for instance allows nested, thread-like notes, while Wikis allow linking notes to one another... *What system am I using?* How will the note display after I wrote them? Who and what am I writing for? And if it's just a private note that I won't ever publish... *why go digital?* It's analysis paralysis. I start thinking about how to **display** the text before I even start writing it, eventually overthinking my sentences and editing them over and over again... Hypertext is too robust, and I find myself straying from my goals. In times when I really need to write something down, I found that paper is the thing that that enables me to write **longggg** and cohesive notes, perhaps because of how limited it is: only one direction to write, no ability to go back & edit, everything in *plain text*, no bells and whistles. It brings out this raw, stream-of-conciousness style of writing that just runs and fills one page to the next without the guilt of being unkempt, without the fear of capitalizing the wrong letters or missing one *Oxford comma*. Messy handwriting just shows that the writer was "in the zone", so much so that their hand makes mistakes catching up to the speed of their thoughts. And that's the way I want to write. I never want to force myself to write something, only write when I have something to say, very badly, often to myself but also to anyone. And I have to experience the urge, so that when I pick up the pen, words just come out and hours past. That's writing. I have tried making myself write in the past, mostly for school or social media, something on-command. It was never enjoyable, it was always staring at a paragraph in Microsoft Word _{(fuck Microsoft btw)} in agony, trying to churn out words for things I didn't care about. Why write if you have nothing to say? I don't get it, but we make bullshit writing our assignments and then our jobs. *With all these machines we have commodified writing.* Coming back to why I like pen-n-paper writing: **restriction** of the medium. Well, software developers have been trying to emulate this experience in their note apps by implementing restrictions for a while now. Sure, I have a couple of note apps that meet the criteria: plain text, blank canvas, distraction-free, minimal UI, some even prevent editing (see the NaNoWriMo writer), some even have no file system and promise that you can just put things in without ever seeing the backend and trust autosave to keep everything intact (which is bullshit to anyone who remotely knows how computers work). But still, writing on these apps only worked during days when I *coded* a lot and needed to e.g log my progress (in hypertext). Otherwise, if I open my phone or computer *just* to write something down, it'll be a shit show because I... well, I get distracted. ~ intermission music to let you know this part is ADHD specific rants ~ I get very stimmy when I think. At least with a pen I can stim and still stay in place and continue the work at hand. Usually I can also write on my phone if I don't get sick of the small screen (UI design is crucial for phone stuff). But on a computer, especially in those "focus mode" note apps, I can't stim. Best I could do is to highlight and unhighlight the sentence I just wrote for a dozen times, or get out of my seating and walk around in circles. But more often than not, I end up navigating *outside* the note app, maybe opening a browser tab to fact-check whatever I'm writing, and then suddenly remember a song, watch the music video for it, have a whole conversation with myself about it, and then watch all the other 15 videos from the same artist, and then one glance at the bookmark bar of the browser reminds me of the task I forgot to do 3 days ago and so I navigate to where I store that task, and then all the things there carry my attention away. And then I get hungry. ~ end of ADHD rants ~ I realized that screens are good for consumption, not creation, of content. Screens are quite *consuming*, actually. They're good at displaying shits - that's why I choose to share my notes digitally, on a screen. *They're good for distributing, not taking notes.* Now of course, I do create things on the screen (I code and draw digitally), and of course paper is a medium of distribution as well (e.g letters, zines, books...). I'm just saying that, for every tool designated for creation on my computer, there are like tens or dozens tools that are designed for consumption. By volume and by speed, screens are much better at distributing / displaying content because of its all-consuming nature, begging you to look at it. Writing and reading are not the same hobby, writing and note management are not the same activity. I realized that, by assuming computers can be anything, we have ultimately merged our creation and recreation (i.e consumption) spaces, and rendered them inseparable. But every once in a while, I pull out my notebook and clicky pen and draw the boundary between those two spaces. That's my two cents. --- #### 29.07.2024 ## On instant gratification Come to think of it, I feel like I have dopamine routes in my brain that just makes me crave instant gratification, like I'm wired to think that all my problems are solvable and that the solution can be handed to me whenever and however I want it. I've yet to learn to take it slow, though I'm trying to. It's just, living in this day and age, it is hard to escape the capitalist temptation to seek immediate answer & solution, or lest a distraction to satiate any hard feelings we have about the process of problem solving. Obviously in this time of hiatus my biggest enemy is myself, and my biggest challenge is refusing to believe that I'm only one bag of potato chips away from being happy, or that spending hundreds of €'s on power tools and fancy composting equipments will ward off my anxiety about environmental footprint (and my lack of commitment to reducing it). Bo Burnham put it best when he said > *"The whole world at your fingertips, the ocean at your door."* Maybe I should print that out and put it on my wall as a reminder of how much the internet, with its volume and its speed, have skewed our perspectives and hijacked our brain. Maybe I should be reminded that having access to So Much is detrimental and not normal. I got away from social media, so I have essentially removed from myself the *need to perform* on a digital stage, to everyone, all of the time, for no reasons. But self-performance is only one part of the internet experience. The other part is deeply tied with instant gratification, established by an entire culture of advertising that existed way beyond the 'Net. The part that prompt me to tap, click & scroll away my questions, my discomfort, my sorrow, my boredom. The part that has me compulsively looking for a way to *buy* my way out of life struggles and depression. That part has a grip on me, and boy is it not habit-forming. The dopamine that I get from instant gratification, it is one hell of a drug. It keeps me unhappy so that I will come seeking it again. --- #### 25.07.2024 ## Intention Been watching (binging) tiny home planning videos - as I moved all my furnitures around again - and stumbled upon one video about *rules* of living in a small space. Some of the principles are quite common/obvious enough - everything should be multi-purpose, organize shits, keep stuffs clean,... But there were some thoughtful things as well, for example: intentions. The very idea of having principles for using your space, and making it *intentional* and *purposeful* has gotten me thinking. Like, it's not even just physical space, but when I looked at my digital spaces the same rules kind of apply. It's kinda funny and crazy to come back to some general-purpose platforms that I used to inhabit and make into an own space with very specific intention in mind, with a clear idea of how it's supposed to be used, and attach my workflow to it. Like this one Discord server I have where I log my purchases, shopping notes, wanted items, and reflection on my own buying habits. Or like how I used to use a markdown pastebin service as my "landing" page and store bookmarks. The point is these spaces could've been used for anything, in any way, and could've been used *badly*. But when I had a vision and set up the space intentionally for specific things, I was in turn encouraged to use it *well* and use it for dedicated jobs. This I think is why intention is so important. --- #### 23.07.2024 Made some [[Bingo]]s using Excalidraw and exported them to SVG. A few notes: - Make sure links are in a different color. - SVG is *semantic*, which means that no matter how the texts are positioned/displayed, they're still essentially an ordered list interpreted from top to bottom. To make it accessible for screen readers, make sure to check the text order before exporting to SVG. Make a blank white rectangle covering the bingo and gradually move it down the layers, and adjust if something is off. - When exporting to SVG, check "Background", uncheck "Dark mode" and "Embed scene", and set the "Scale" to 1x. - Remove `` section. Find and remove all the `font-family="Virgil, Segoe UI Emoji"` and other `font-family=` lines, all the `fill="#1e1e1e"` and other `fill=` lines - they're unnecessary since I styled the whole SVG using external CSS. - Find and replace all the `stroke="#1e1e1e"` lines with `stroke="var(--A)"` and all the `stroke="#0000ff"` lines with `stroke="var(--B)"`. - Find the first `` element, change `fill="#ffffff"` to `fill="var(--C)"` - Mod the viewBox `width="..."` and `height="..."` attributes to `width="40em"` and `height=""` to dynamically scale to viewport. - ⌘A to select everything Thinking of creating a kiwi for my OCs thats navigateable in a YWOT style... Its HTML is still semantic but its display will be non-linear as possible. Might use anchors for nav and make a directed graph for it. The thing is Excalidraw has enabled me to make elaborate SVG graphs & structures that can be easily scaled to viewport, and they're not terribly heavy either (though we shall see how they behave with added pictures etc), this may finally makes it possible to view on mobile devices. Its a shame that Excalidraw doesn't have a built-in option to share the graph in readonly SVG view-mode (it automatically opens in Excalidraw editor) because otherwise I could share my graph and dynamically edit it instead of exporting it every time. It seems like Excalidraw graphs are capable of much more e.g embedding music, webpages, images, etc... but I digress. Let's try and keep this simple. --- #### 14.07.2024 ## Human error The Problem: Did a workshop. Wanted to share the slideshow with people who are interested. Collected people's email addresses by letting them WRITE it down on a piece of paper, thinking that it'd be the most private and secure method to collect emails. Spent the rest of the week trying to decipher their handwriting. Dear future me, if you want to make sure your recipients get the material you want to send them, don't EVER collect their emails via pen and paper again. But if you're looking this up, I assume you've forgotten my warning and made the same mistake and now trying to remember how to salvage it. Here's what I did: - Type down all I could read from the email addresses. - **Remember to ask for help!** Ask for people who might know these people I'm trying to find, and ask people who are better at handwriting forensics. - Try to use the information I already knew about the email receivers. I knew the names of some attendees and the fact that they have mostly Finnish names, which helps figuring out the "correct" address amongst my guesses. And as it was a cybersecurity workshop, I knew that if the email showed up in the queries of `haveibeenpwned.com` in the last 24h there's a high chance that it was the email I was looking for. - Validate the addresses (check if they actually exist) using OSINT tools - Use an [email checker](https://centralops.net/co/emaildossier.aspx) to verify accounts from e.g Gmail, Outlook and other non-private mail services. - Use Proton's [reset password page](https://account.proton.me/reset-password) to check Proton accounts. - For other private mail services that doesn't have a reset password page (e.g RiseUp), my last resort would be an [reverse lookup](https://epieos.com/), though if it's a really new & clean address or on very esoteric domains there's not much hope to find anything there. - Type down all the valid email addresses and put them aside. An extra careful step here, when I actually know people who came to the workshop, could be OSINT-ing the valid emails to see if they match with the respective audience member. - To the invalid email addresses, guess possible typos, make a list of them if needed. Run the checks again. To avoid future struggles, do this instead: - **Use a feedback form**. CryptPad has a built-in form tool, and the festival I was giving the workshop at used this as well. This way people can leave anonymous feedback, and if they so desire to give their contact, they can TYPE their email address instead of hand-writing it. - **Circumvent the emailing as a whole** - emails are finnicky and bulk sending emails to a group of people using CC/BCC always somewhat compromise privacy of the recipients. Plus, something about a file sitting forever on some email providers' server doesn't sit quite right with me... Instead: - Send the slideshow directly to everyone in the room e.g via a network connection (using a P2P service such as [Blaze](https://blaze.vercel.app/) or [ShareDrop](https://sharedrop.io/) ), so they all have an *offline copy* of it. The downside of this method is that our slideshow is made for laptop screens and most people only have their phone with them. - Dump the file on a limited file hosting service (e.g Catbox/Litterbox), so everyone can access the online copy of it, and then those who really care could download it to their device. Also the link to the file can be made into a QR code. I like this method because if you set an expiration date to the access of a file then only those who *really do care* will eventually download it -> less e-waste. --- #### 12.07.2024 - Started using [ssh](https://ssh.e0x0e0.club/) and assigned the [ssh.e0x0e0.club](https://ssh.e0x0e0.club/) subdomain as a Reverse Proxy for its Web client -- [Shell in a box](https://github.com/shellinabox/shellinabox). - Also reconfigured both `e0x0e0.club` and `*.e0x0e0.club` to root directory. There should be no problem with SSL certs of subdomains anymore. --- #### 08.07.2024 Täytyy perustaa [luostari](https://pad.tildeverse.org/pad/#/3/pad/view/a369e1500306f8388b499efc11706cb8/embed/). - Minor fix to table in [[Custom CSS|s]], as to make table items italicisable. - .table :is(strong,em) {font-style: normal;font-weight: normal;}

.table > ul > li > :is(strong,em) {display: table-cell;padding: 0.2em 0.5em;vertical-align: top; font-style: normal;font-weight: normal;}

--- #### 07.07.2024 Created a [shopping list](http://simpleshopinglist.com/?list=d90099128f41e79a6d8641f5159d6345) and installed [yarr](https://github.com/nkanaev/yarr) today. --- #### 01.07.2024 I just realized that Youtube essentially mirrors the cinema experience (which also predates television format). There is a widescreen mode on the Youtube interface that's literally called "Theater Mode". But also, the commercial nature of modern Youtube is pretty much ripped off of a cinema theater. Somehow, watching a Youtube videos for FREE with 3 unskippable ads doesn't seem that annoying compared to PAYING for a movie screening and still having to watch 5 unskippable commercials at full resolution and full volume + 3 more trailers of upcoming movies. But alas, most movies are longer than Youtube videos so maybe this wasn't a fair comparison. Talking about ads and Youtube, it seems that uBlock Origin can block Youtube ads on both YT and YT Music interface? That's crazy (said person who haven't used the YT interface for years).