.bashrc as literate programming

1 Knuth gets annoyed at his publishers, \(\TeX\) is born.

Back in the late 70s Donald Knuth who was (and still is) publishing a seminal series of Computer Science text books got annoyed at the typesetting, layouts and font choices he was being presented by publishers. So he did what any self-respecting hacker who happened to be Donald Knuth would do: he created his own typesetting system called \(\TeX\) which (along with \(\LaTeX\) which borrowed heavily from SCRIBE) is something of a standard to this day in academic publishing.

Because, you know, why is it unreasonable to expect publishers to render simple equations, right?

\begin{multline*} \vec{E}_{\mathrm{tot}}= q\cdot k_{b}\cdot \dfrac{r}{r^3} \left\lgroup \frac{\hat{r}-\left(\dfrac{d}{2\cdot r}\right)\hat{d}} {\biggl(1+\left(\dfrac{d}{2\cdot r}\right)^2- \left(\dfrac{d}{r}\right)\hat{r}\cdot\hat{d}\cdot\cos(\theta) \biggr)^{3/2}} \right. \\ \left. {}- \frac{\hat{r}+\left(\dfrac{d}{2\cdot r}\right)\hat{d}} {\biggl(1+\left(\dfrac{d}{2\cdot r}\right)^2+ \left(\dfrac{d}{r}\right)\cdot\hat{r}\cdot\hat{d}\cdot\cos(\theta) \biggr)^{3/2}} \right\rgroup \end{multline*}

But wait, there’s more.

What a day for a daydream

“Ladies and Gentlemen, may I have your attention…”

This piece began as some thoughts on “attention” and wound up as reflections on daydreams. I think I’m a fan of daydreaming.

1 Attention

Attention is a finite commodity. You only have so much attention to give in your life, in your day. Parents want your attention. Brothers and sisters and friends want your attention. Teachers want your attention. Employers want your attention. Politicians want your attention. Social media wants your attention. And, of course, advertisers¹ want your attention (the most literal translation of the Latin roots of the word “advertisers” would be rendered “turn-toward-ers”)

All we are saying, is give init.el a chance

On this Armistice Day, 2020, commemorating the end of “The war to end all wars” 119 years ago, I reflect that if the whole world were busy fiddling with their emacs configs there would be no more war. Well… so the treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations did not work out as planned…so maybe we look for community in the small instead.

There is community that has grown out of research labs in Boston (a city notable for its contribution to the birth of other well known communities). Some of the well known members of the community that I am acquainted with include a Chinese programmer living in Palo Alto, a philosophy major in France, an Astronomy professor in the Netherlands, a programmer in New Zealand, a Fin living in the United states and a Filipina mother of a 4 year old living in Canada and of course it’s founder, still in Boston.

Nixon's The One !!!

For those who remember the “All in the family” sitcom:

Mister, we could use a man like Richard Nixon again

Richard Nixon lost the 1960 election to John F. Kennedy in the closest (popular) election of the 20th century. There was a credible case to be made that voting irregularities in Chicago (read, the Richard Daley political machine) and Texas put Kennedy over the top (in the electoral college). And yet…

History: escape to the past or lessons for the present?

I’ve always liked history. And because the un-examined predilection is not worth having (γνῶθι σεαυτόν), I turn to Livy to understand it:

This I hold to be the chief value and reward of history, to have examples of all kinds set forth as an illustrious record, from which you may choose what is worthy of imitation in public and private life, and what is to be shunned as wrong in inception and ruinous in outcome

Livy, Preface to History of Rome.

Quoted from “Classics In Translation: Volume II, Latin Literature”, MacKendrick and Howe, 1982

So, history provides examples for present living. It provides a moral and practical purpose, helping to guide our interactions with others in the present, but also…

Joy in the sorrows of others?

“Why is it that man desires to be made sad, beholding miserable and tragic things which he himself would by no means wish to suffer? Yet he desires as a spectator to feel sorrow, and this sorrow is his pleasure…”

Was this guy watching too much news, political mudslinging or maybe just hanging out on Facebook?

Hello twtxt

And in the to-simple-to-be-true category…

twtxt is a decentralised, minimalist microblogging service for hackers.

https://twtxt.readthedocs.io/en/latest/user/intro.html

$ twtxt tweet "Is there anybody out there, just nod if you can hear me"

Goodbye Twitter

1 1 of 2

Goodbye twitter. In 2016 Facebook got too political so I dropped it. Now, Twitter. You can reach me as gmj AT pobox DOT com. Please drop an email if you to stay in touch. I blog semi-regularly at http://curious.galthub.com/.

2 2 of 2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(software) is a free, open source, ad-free, distributed twitter-like thing. No corporation algorithmically manipulates your timeline and AUPs are set by the community. I’m on the https://fosstodon.org instance.

Source Code Distribution From Printouts to Github

Source code distribution has changed over the years. Today we all love (hate?) git, github and friends, but, believe it or not there were ways to distribute source code even before the Internet. In fact, this was the world in which the GNU Public License was created. Below are a few of the ways I’ve gotten/transferred source code through the years, in something like chronological order

Post 31 of #100DaysToOffload https://100daystooffload.com/

Privacy: The view from 1987 and Antiquity - or why I'm deleting Google,Facebook and Twitter

1 “A History of Private Life”

There is, I think, an urgent need to protect the essence of individuality from headlong technological progress. For unless we are careful, individual men and women may soon be reduced to little more than numbers in immense and terrifying data bank.

Georges Duby, Forward to A History of Private Life, 1987

I’m in the process of deleting Facebook, Twitter and Google from my life. I think Duby et al. were on to something a little ahead of their time.

Post 30 of #100DaysToOffload https://100daystooffload.com/