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{'name': ['Game Analytics and Procedural Content Generation Questions for a Gaming Company'], 'published': [DateTime(2022, 3, 14, 14, 15, 21, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': "I will soon be interviewing at CZ, a large company which develops casual mobile games in several genres, including slots, match-three, and word puzzles. The team I'm interviewing with is focused on procedural content generation and analytics/data science infrastructure.\nIn pre-interview emails, the recruiter suggested I play some of CZ's games. I did so. Here are my thoughts and impressions.\n<div class=muted>\nFor purposes of professional courtesy, I have changed the name of the company and all games discussed in this article. Unfortunately, preserving CZ’s anonymity also means I cannot show screenshots.\nI originally had another section in this post discussing ad placement and characteristics, but I removed it once I understood that the "analytics" side of this team is focused more on content analysis than ad performance. Email me if you want it.\n</div>\n<h2>Choosing Games</h2>\nI very much like word games (having originally trained as a linguist) and pattern recognition games. I also chose a couple games not in those categories to get a broader selection. The games I spent the most time on were\nLathe Turner, Word Land, Hexagon Drop, and Color Squares.\n<details>\n<summary>Lathe Turner</summary>\nLathe Turner consists of levels having three phases. In the first phase, the player is tasked with producing a target shape by moving their hand to carve bits of wood from a block, which rotates as if turning on a lathe. In the second phase, sandpaper is used to perfect the shape. In the third phase, paint is applied.\n</details>\n<details>\n<summary>Color Squares</summary>\nThis game starts with a grid of empty square spaces, and three configurations of colored blocks. The player must place all three configurations of blocks somewhere on the board before being presented with three more. If three or more blocks of the same color are touching after a configuration is placed, all of those blocks will disappear. Gameplay continues until a configuration cannot be placed; there is no concept of discrete levels.\n</details>\n<details>\n<summary>Hexagon Drop</summary>\nHexagon Drop, similarly to Color Squares, does not have levels, but is instead played to failure. Unlike Color Squares, it requires quick reflexes. A hexagon begins the game sitting atop a tower of irregularly-shaped blocks. Tapping a block destroys it, causing other blocks above to shift unpredictably thanks to a physics simulation. The goal is to prevent the hexagon from falling off either side of the tower, which is difficult because it can tilt and roll if blocks below are not carefully "pruned" so as to keep the surface below the hexagon flat. For me, not being especially deft with my fingers, each round of Hexagon Drop ends very quickly.\n</details>\n<details>\n<summary>Word Land</summary>\nI found this game the most enjoyable of all I tried. In each level of Word Land, and empty crossword is presented, as well as a list of letters. The player spells words using the list of letters. Word Land is simple and addictive, especially once I learned there are bonus points for spelling words that are not part of the expected list of crossword solutions, but which do match a hidden list of “obscure” words.\n</details>\n<h2>Startup and Personal Data</h2>\nAll of the games I tried triggered the standard iPhone "allow/disallow app to track you elsewhere" dialogs, which I expect from most applications these days.\nI checked in the settings menu of each app and did not find any analytics-related toggles or opt-out buttons, but that's to be expected, given that analysis of player actions is crucial for generating challenges that match a given player's skill level and playstyle. It was nice to see that all the games I checked had a “request or delete personal data” button.\n<h2>Analytics and Content Generation</h2>\nI’m sure every CZ game is comprehensively instrumented with analytics, both for in-house game development and market research purposes, and for feedback to advertising partners about performance. In general, I imagine all player interactions in every game are stored, in order to analyze not just timing and frequency of events, but also sequences of events.\nIn specific, I’d guess all of the level-based games I tried are tracking the length of time to complete a level, whether the player completed a level in one sitting, and how often the player buys bonuses or expansions. The timing-based games probably track how well the player is able to do before failing, both at their peak and on average. I also noticed that all of the games I played had some kind of indicator for how well the player had done relative to all the other players (such as accuracy of object created in Lathe Turner, or percentage of global players who completed a given level of Word Land.)\n<h2>Questions</h2>\n<ol>\n<li>I believe neural networks are being used at CZ as part of data analytics pipelines. If data from a particular player were used as neural network training data, their data might "live on" even after a deletion request has been processed. Is it technically feasible to address this concern, such as by retraining networks on a periodic basis so that the data of deleted players does not remain in use?\n</li>\n<li>There were a couple times where I spelled words that I’m sure are actual English, but were rejected by Word Land, even as bonus words. Has CZ considered adding a "report word" feature that would enable them to expand the vocabulary of this and other word-based games?\n</li>\n<li>How does CZ adapt games or otherwise learn lessons from analysis of player behavior? Let's consider how the Word Land level generator might take player behavior into account.\n<ul>\n<li>If a player habitually spells short or long words, the level generator could filter the word corpus to give a distribution of words which matches the player's habits (for an easier level) or goes against it (for a harder one.)</li>\n<li>The number of times a player spells a word which they had already entered successfully could be a sign of frustration, aimlessness, or that they haven’t yet gotten in the habit of checking the list of words they’ve already spelled on this level. Future levels could offer words with more distinction between them (as measured by, say, edit distance) so it's harder to forget if you've played a particular word.</li>\n<li>If a player consistently guesses words from a large vocabulary, the level generator could continually expand the size of its corpus to offer more and more challenging words. On the other hand, a player who consistently plays words from a limited vocabulary could be given levels which draw from a similarly-limited corpus.</li>\n<li>If a player can quickly get the first N words per level, then struggles with the remaining words, further generated levels could reduce the maximum number of words per level to roughly N (with fewer than N words producing an easier level, and more than N, a harder level.)</li>\n<li>A player must tap and hold on a letter to start spelling a word; those taps could be checked to see whether that letter could possibly spell a word remaining in the level (including bonus words), to try and tell whether the player is floundering or thinking carefully. If a player keeps trying to spell words which couldn't possibly be in the level, or which couldn't fit on the board, the corpus for future levels could be adjusted to use words which the player has tried to spell on inappropriate levels.</li>\n<li>If a player enters words that are valid English, or which were used in previous levels, but which aren't part of the current level, level generation could deliberately prioritize those words for inclusion, to cater to the revealed characteristics of the player's vocabulary.</li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n<li>How do techniques used for content creation at CZ interact with strategies for monetization, including advertisements?\n</li>\n</ol>\n<h2>After the Interview</h2>\nEverything above was written before my interview; now I'm writing after it. My interviewer, Ms. W, asked a bunch of questions to gauge how well I could think about PCG design considerations. One topic that came up which I hadn't thought about was ensuring that match-three game levels are playable and satisfying.\nFor instance, suppose you had a match-three level which, due to the initial arrangement of pieces, completely cleared the game board after the player made a single move! That might be fun once in blue moon, but would quickly grow stale from a player's perspective, since it would remove the challenge aspect of the gameplay (which usually involves preventing the whole board from filling up with pieces, somewhat like Tetris.)\nFrom the other direction, a match-three game board with zero valid moves at the start of the game would offer no gameplay whatsoever, and a board which offered one valid move but which had zero valid moves thereafter would be just as bad.\nA match-three level generator must absolutely be constrained to prevent these types of "degenerate" game board from being shipped to players. Ms. W confirmed that these kinds of constraints -- and many more -- are being used at CZ to support a minimum standard of quality for their games.\n"}], 'category': ['gaming', 'computing'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2022/03/14/xh', '/2022/03/14/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Planar Gating and Travel'], 'published': [DateTime(2022, 2, 27, 21, 51, 36, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': 'My mentor Alexis Smolensk, of <a href="https://tao-dnd.blogspot.com">The Tao of D&D</a>, has created a marvelous <a href=https://wiki.alexissmolensk.com/index.php/Knowledge_Points>system of knowledge skills for his world</a>, through which player characters slowly gain abilities which improve their understaning of the game world, and their ability to create within the world. I use his system for my game, and the players like it very much; you can <a href=https://wiki.alexissmolensk.com/index.php/Knowledge_Points>read more about it here</a>.\nVelue, the <a href=https://wiki.alexissmolensk.com/index.php/Illusionist_Sage_Abilities>illusionist</a> in my ongoing campaign, has chosen the study of Planar Gating and Travel as his first area of expertise. As Alexis has not yet written up his ideas for that study, I took some time tonight to write up a rough plan for the abilities Velue will obtain. These four tiers are unlocked at certain thresholds of points within the study; Velue currently has access to the Amateur abilities, and may gain the Authority ones as soon as 3rd level, if he\'s extremely lucky (points are gained by die roll.)\n"Planar Gating and Travel provides knowledge of how to transition self and others from one existence to another, granting the wherewithal to cross into the ethereal or across the astral planes." (A. S.)\n<h2>Amateur</h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Recognize Extraplanar Manifestation: know the typical stats and plane of origin for extraplanar creatures and phenomena, and recognize the same when they appear on the Prime Material.</li>\n<li>Understand Planes: knowledge of the terrain, features, hazards, and native entities of the other planes.</li>\n<li>Determine Destination Plane: tell which plane a portal leads to.</li>\n</ul>\n<h2>Authority</h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Contact Other Plane</li>\n<li>Ethereal Jaunt: shift oneself into the Ethereal Plane, allowing one to bypass many Material obstacles.</li>\n<li>Extraplanar Mentalities: understand the motivations and behavior of extraplanar creatures, which also grants increased ability to bargain with them.</li>\n<li>Determine Precise Destination: tell exactly where on a plane a traveler will end up if they pass through a portal.</li>\n</ul>\n<h2>Expert</h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Astral Projection: send spirit through the Astral Plane, temporarily creating an effect similar to the Avatar spell, but capable of reaching any plane.</li>\n<li>Call Extraplanar Denizen: summons a typical inhabitant of another plane of existence (not including those planes which are "religious" in nature, such as Heaven, Hell, Nirvana, Olympus, and Asgard.)</li>\n<li>Create Planar Exclave: link a tiny region of the Prime Material with another plane, transforming the region to resemble that plane.</li>\n<li>Construct Temporary Portal: build a magical edifice which manifests a one-use portal to another plane.</li>\n</ul>\n<h2>Sage</h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Construct Permanent Portal: as Temporary Portal, but the edifice will automatically become reusable after a period of time (alternatively, it stays open during specific periods, such as a phase of the moon, but is totally closed at other times.) Edifice will resist destruction by mundane means.</li>\n<li>Acquire Planar Characteristics: permanently acquire characteristic feature of creatures native to another plane.</li>\n<li>Create Pocket Dimension: warp space to create a personal retreat outside of reality itself.</li>\n</ul>\n'}], 'category': ['dnd'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2022/02/28/kc', '/2022/02/27/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ["What I've Been Up To"], 'published': [DateTime(2022, 2, 12, 10, 54, 9, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': 'Four factors have combined to keep me from posting on this site for six months, which feels like an eon.\n<ul>\n<li>The janky setup behind this website Imposed too high an activation energy for creating new posts.</li>\n<li>My poor hands, though in a somewhat better state than at the beginning of 2021, are still suffering from an undiagnosed source of pain.</li>\n<li>I started graduate school.</li>\n<li>I’m busy as heck outside of school.</li>\n</ul>\nHowever, aside from my hands, things are really looking up. For the benefit of my lovely readers, here’s what I’ve been up to since the final episode of The Drongo.\n<h2>Living and Growing</h2>\nIn August, I celebrated my 27th birthday. I still didn’t really know anyone in Santa Cruz, but someone who didn’t know me very well was game to come over for drinks and pizza. Thank you, Patrick; I hope your mathematical art blog is still going strong. We haven’t kept in touch, but that’s OK. My only regret is that I did not get to go dancing the night of my birthday, because the music at the local open air club was complete trash.\nMy living situation here in Santa Cruz was, at first, a disaster. I moved sight-unseen into what must have been the cheapest and crappiest lodgings in the city, and between the condition of the place and some unpleasant roommates, I was despairing at the thought of having to live here for all two years of my degree.\nFor those who don’t know, the Santa Cruz housing market is one of the tightest, and most expensive, in the entire country. Alex and Angie, both of whom have lived in New York for several years, tell me that they were paying similar prices for better places in that famously expensive city. The way to find a rental around here is to get extremely lucky and take whatever you can get, no questions asked.\nLucky for me, I fell ass-backwards into a far superior pad. I poached the one good roommate from my old spot, and together we moved into a small detached house that had recently been renovated. The way I would put it is that we moved from a craphole to a dreamhole.\n<h2>In Which I Pursue Mastery</h2>\nIn September, I began graduate school at UC Santa Cruz. In my first quarter, I took two classes.\nThe first was an introductory class which primarily consisted of reading and discussing primary sources from the history of computing, including material By the likes of Alan Turing, Vannevar Bush, Ted Nelson, Alan Kay, Doug Engelbart - and a host of other thinkers slightly less well-known, but usually no less inspiring.\nThe second was a course on game artificial intelligence. Normally such a class would involve implementing classic algorithms in AI, but the instructor, my advisor Michael Mateas, decided to change it up for our graduate level course. Instead, we explored a relatively niche field called “automated game design,” Which is concerned with figuring out how a computer might generate entire playable games from scratch. This field is the big brother to procedural generation, which is about automatically creating certain types of content for use in games, such as textures or levels; automated game design is concerned with creating all of the things that make up a game, from sounds to environments to level connections to nonplayer characters. As you can imagine, it’s a complex field that has made progress only slowly since it began in the 1990s; researchers continue to be interested in it because being able to create a large number of games automatically would mean lots of novel fodder for programs that automatically play games.\nDuring the AGD class, I worked on a project which did automatic level design for a text adventure (verdict: not successful, because I mismanaged the design of the program), as well as a longer project where I tried to generate blocks of tax that were both, A, valid limericks, and B, valid programs in the English-like Inform 7 programming language. This project was a bit more successful, but my hands were still in such discomfort that I really couldn’t put enough time into the project to make it as much as a success as I had hoped for.\n<h2>Amigos Aplenty</h2>\nDespite the fact that I didn’t perform as well as I had hoped in the AGD class, it was extremely valuable in terms of social connections. The first and strongest friend I made here in Santa Cruz is Alex, who I met at orientation; our friendship was cemented because he also took this class. Two of the other classmates, Angie and Ross, have also become my close friends.\nWhat’s more, as of a couple weeks ago, those three have become my first group of D&D players in several years. And what players they are! Despite the fact that only Ross had ever played a roleplaying game before, all of them have the entrepreneurial, wily confidence needed to set their own goals in my open-ended game world. They aren’t afraid of the grittiness of my rules, either. I’m confident all three will grow into formidable players, and I’m going to give them the best gaming experience I can offer.\nOutside of school, and more recently D&D, I’ve been taken advantage of the uni library, reading all kinds of books on history, as well as a fair amount of poetry. I’ve tried to get outside as much as I can, going for walks on the beach, or short hikes along the cliffs and in the forest - including one particularly memorable trip with my friend Wolfi and his analog camera, and another excursion with my homie Karthik where we spent an all-too-brief period of time laying on a log over a river.\nI’ve also been fortunate enough to make friends with a postdoc in the CM department, Oskar, who, being very athletic, has encouraged me to go along on bike rides and archery outings. Finally, I have continued having weekly coding calls with Angelo, my computer sensei, a tradition we have kept up for nearly 2 years now. I hope he has gotten as much out of it as I have!\n<h2>Join Me in Merriment</h2>\nThere are other goings-on, but I think this is enough to make up for my silence all these months. Because I have to prioritize what I use my hands for, I can’t promise a regular posting schedule, but I’m getting more used to voice dictation on my iPhone, and Angelo‘s work on web development has borne fruit in the form of code that I can use to make this website easier to run and maintain, which will encourage me to post more often (as well as allow me to dictate directly into a new post).\nAs always, feel free to get in touch, especially if you are in the area. Luci (a friend of my Internet buddy h0p3) and her boyfriend visited me while they were in town a couple months ago, and we had a grand old time over seafood. Come have a grand old time of your own!\n'}], 'category': ['santacruz', 'computing', 'dnd', 'rsi', 'h0p3'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2022/02/12/m4', '/2022/02/12/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'og-image': ['https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/static/thedrongo/jacob-hall.jpg'], 'published': [DateTime(2021, 8, 18, 14, 44, 57, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': 'Welcome, each and every drongo, to The Drongo\'s first interview since our summer hiatus. We\'ve got a real rock star for our guest today!\n<div class="center">\n<details>\n<summary>Receive new interviews twice a month. Subscribe to The Drongo for free!</summary>\n\n<link href="//cdn-images.mailchimp.com/embedcode/classic-10_7.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">\n<style type="text/css">\n #mc_embed_signup{clear:left;}\n /* Add your own Mailchimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block.\n We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */\n \t\t #mc_embed_signup .button { background-color: green; }\n</style>\n<div id="mc_embed_signup">\n<form action="https://maxwelljoslyn.us17.list-manage.com/subscribe/post?u=a4f320c858eb89641f87a7bf1&id=8c49f38e34" method="post" id="mc-embedded-subscribe-form" name="mc-embedded-subscribe-form" class="validate" target="_blank" novalidate="">\n <div id="mc_embed_signup_scroll">\n <h2>Subscribe to The Drongo</h2>\n All fields required.\n<div class="mc-field-group">\n <label for="mce-EMAIL">Email Address </label>\n <input type="email" value="" name="EMAIL" class="required email" id="mce-EMAIL">\n</div>\n<div class="mc-field-group">\n <label for="mce-FNAME">First Name </label>\n <input type="text" value="" name="FNAME" class="required" id="mce-FNAME">\n</div>\n<div class="mc-field-group">\n <label for="mce-LNAME">Last Name(s) </label>\n <input type="text" value="" name="LNAME" class="required" id="mce-LNAME">\n</div>\n<div class="mc-field-group input-group">\n Desire for an Interview \n <ul><li><input type="radio" value="1" name="group[9090]" id="mce-group[9090]-9090-0"><label for="mce-group[9090]-9090-0">Interested in being interviewed</label></li>\n<li><input type="radio" value="2" name="group[9090]" id="mce-group[9090]-9090-1"><label for="mce-group[9090]-9090-1">Not interested in being interviewed</label></li>\n</ul>\n</div>\n <div id="mce-responses" class="clear">\n \t<div class="response" id="mce-error-response" style="display:none"></div>\n \t<div class="response" id="mce-success-response" style="display:none"></div>\n </div> \n <div style="position: absolute; left: -5000px;" aria-hidden="true"><input type="text" name="b_a4f320c858eb89641f87a7bf1_8c49f38e34" tabindex="-1" value=""></div>\n <div class="clear"><input type="submit" value="Subscribe" name="subscribe" id="mc-embedded-subscribe" class="button"></div>\n </div>\n</form>\n</div>\n\n</details>\n</div>\n<div class="center"><img src="/static/thedrongo/jacob-hall.jpg"></div>\nThe Drongo: Our guest for this round of The Drongo is Jacob Hall. He\'s provided us the following third-person biography.\nJacob Hall: "You\'d likely recognize Jacob Hall pretty quickly if you ran into him on the street: he\'s always barefoot, he\'s either wearing his pants or either of his two shorts, and his hair keeps changing colors.\nHe currently lives in Williamsburg, VA, studying geology at William & Mary, producing educational media for the on-campus Studio for Teaching and Learning Innovation, and co-managing a student-run house/venue/coffee shop called The Meridian. In his free time (read: procrastinatory sprees) he develops websites for himself and friends, cooks for anyone in earshot, and goes on very long walks."\nThe Drongo: Jacob, thank you for joining us today. I\'m grateful that, though we\'ve only known each other since early 2021, you were willing to participate in this project.\nBefore our interview, I searched online for university geology curricula to better understand your field. It appears that as a Geology major at W&M, you\'re learning a mix of inorganic chemistry, physics, mineralology, hydrography, and ecology -- with options for GIS, surveying, maybe even drone piloting.\nJacob Hall: As you say, there are so many fields that come together to make "geology." This makes for a wide range of potential problems to solve, but also a lot of different tools a geologist can use to solve any given problem.\nThe Drongo: Well then, if I\'ve hit the broad strokes, please fill in the details: how do you synthesize all those fields? What is a "problem" in geology -- the counterpart of a math problem -- and how do you attack it?\nJacob Hall: Here\'s an example. Right now, I\'m researching the presence of radon in Williamsburg. This project involves understanding both the stratigraphy (layers of rock) where uranium can be found, and the radioactive decay processes that eventually turn uranium into radon. So many of the fields you listed are relevant to radon research, from the composition of sedimentary deposits, to the GIS tools that help us predict where we should be worried about radon exposure.\nDear reader, exposure to radon increases your risk of lung cancer, and if your house might have concentrations of it, please get a test kit!\nThe Drongo: What does a fieldwork expedition look like?\nJacob Hall: The geology department has a reputation at William & Mary for having the most frequent field trips!\nLast semester, one of my classes drove out to the James River and used gold pans to collect heavy mineral sands from the shore. Most "sand" (you know, the white/yellowy stuff that <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hi5jjXTPtyY">gets everywhere</a>) is quartz, but depending on the situation you might find other, denser grains mixed in, such as magnetite and ilmenite. Geologists can also often be found augering holes to determine the concentrations of different rocks, or where the water table is at a specific location.\nThe Drongo: Just the other day, I found <a href=https://mindat.org>a rock and mineral website</a> offering a huge, open-access database with photos and explanatory articles.\nYou don\'t run any geology websites, so far as I know, but you\'re a cybercitizen as much as you are a geological guru. Readers, Mr. Hall has computing and programming skills beyond the average non-CS major.\nJacob Hall: It\'s a really exciting time to be a budding website developer. The Internet has matured so much that nearly everyone has experience navigating it, and interpreting the websites that flash onto their screen as they do so. So much effort has gone into refining the common languages used to populate your screen with memes and words and emojis.\nThis mass adoption has meant that website development is an art form nearly anyone can consume, which is really exciting to me. I\'m motivated by the idea that my work could be almost universally consumable by my friends, family, and strangers -- whoever comes by to visit my site.\nThe Drongo: Tell me about your own website, and what you\'ve done to run sites for others.\nJacob Hall: My best friend <a href=https://bwagley.com>Ben</a> has taught me how to use Linux over the years, encouraging me to build my own computer and experiment with programming in different languages. I learn things about computing as I need to in order to create what I dream up. I love that this hobby can apply to most areas of my life, from getting a job writing code, to syncing the TV show we\'re watching to my partner\'s computer.\nAny-who, my website is sort of a living representation of my identity. I\'ve written the whole thing from scratch, and I am confident that it represents my style and values. That being said, it\'s an ongoing project to build all the features that I want to have. For example, I\'ve gotten really excited about the <a href=https://indieweb.org/>IndieWeb</a> recently. Basically, the IndieWeb is a set of specifications by which personal websites can interface with each other to form a social network.\nThe Drongo: For those unfamiliar with the term, I\'ll add that the IndieWeb includes not only the network of websites that interoperate to form a social network, but also the community of people running those sites. Motivated by a shared distrust of centralized social media platforms and their incentives, we use our personal websites to replace social media, while collaborating on <a href="https://indieweb.org">a finely-detailed wiki</a> of social media code and design patterns so that anyone can follow in the whole group\'s footsteps.\nJacob Hall: Maxwell is actually one of the friends I met through the IndieWeb!\nThe Drongo: Yep, we met early this year, at the IndieWeb\'s weekly Homebrew Website Club -- and now, here you are, doing an interview which will land on my website, and which you\'ll probably repost to yours.\nSince we\'re on the subject of social computing, I understand that the IndieWeb is relevant to your own ambitions to run a digital community for your friends.\nJacob Hall: That\'s right. Over the years, I\'ve accumulated a number of web projects that I maintain. There\'s <a href=https://thehbarchive.org/>an archive of my high-school\'s historic documents</a>, a friend\'s <a href=https://wordways.us/>collection of interactive poetry</a>, and a few other friends\' personal sites. I have them all hosted on one server, with everyone having their own login credentials that give them access to their sites\' content.\nRecently I ran into the <a href=https://tildeverse.org/>tildeverse</a>, a community of public-access Unix systems, and thought: OMG, I sorta run one of those already! So now I have this big dream of establishing my web server as a community, with its own code of conduct and internal tools that members can use. Those tools will include the IndieWeb components I\'m building for my own website, and I hope that we will all contribute to building more complex applications on the server together. It feels like I\'ve accidentally already created the alpha version of this community, and my friends have been roped into being my guinea pigs as I develop it further.\nIf you, dear reader, want to be a part of this, please reach out! This is an open offer to have me develop and host your personal site for the foreseeable future, as long as you\'re OK with the occasional email about my excited progress.\nThe Drongo: I know at least two readers are going to be tempted your offer. The desire to control one\'s own space on the web extends further than some programmers might think.\nAlright, Jacob. I\'ve got one more round of questions for you. You must have known when you signed up that I was going to ask you about your habit of going barefoot.\nJacob Hall: I know my bare feet can be seen as a bold statement, but it\'s hard for me to overstate how normal barefooting feels at this point. I\'ve had people exclaim "Hey, I used to do that too!" and it took me a minute to realize what they were even talking about. Going barefoot is most comfortable for me, and after doing so full-time for many years now, I\'m focused on seeking out the people and places that accept me most for my lifestyle.\nThe Drongo: I accept you, Jacob.\nNow, please make like a camgirl and show me dem toes.\nJacob Hall:\n<div class="center"><img src="/static/thedrongo/jacob-hall-feet.jpg"></div>\nThe Drongo: Little closer...\n<div class="center"><img src="/static/thedrongo/jacob-hall-feet-closeup.jpg"></div>\nThe Drongo: That\'s the ticket.\nI\'ve read <a href=https://jacobhall.net/2021/01/barefoot-faq>your barefooting FAQ</a>; for the benefit of the audience, and to save you from retreading old ground, I\'d like to include a few quotations. Assuming, since it\'s on your website, that it still represents your views.\nJacob Hall: Feel free.\n<details>\n<summary>"Why do you go barefoot?"</summary>\n<blockquote>\nIn short, I find it more comfortable.\nIt feels nice to "feel the ground" with my feet. There are so many interesting sensations! Texture, temperature, etc. Shoes are uncomfortable for me. I only want to wear them when I need to keep my feet warm, like gloves. Going barefoot is increasingly a part of my identity. I feel more myself when I\'m barefoot, and I love meeting other people who enjoy to go barefoot.\nSometimes people will ask me if I go barefoot to be "grounded" or for a heightened sense of spirituality. I honestly don\'t know much about grounding, and it\'s not something I ever think about. As an atheist, I don\'t find much religious or spiritual meaning in going barefoot, but it\'s cool that other people do!\nPeople have asserted that I go barefoot to attract more attention. I love meeting and talking to people, and freely admit to expressing myself in ways that spur conversations! I honestly forget that It\'s Weird To Go Barefoot. Along with the way I dress, do my hair..., the way I express myself is genuine. It\'s OK if you don\'t think my self-expression is attractive or sexy or tasteful, but I do!\n<cite>from Jacob\'s "<a href=https://jacobhall.net/2021/01/barefoot-faq>The Barefoot FAQ</a>"</cite>\n</blockquote>\n</details>\nThe Drongo: There you are, readers: Jacob wants to go around with nothing between his feet and the ground. No special message or higher calling needed.\nIs there much of a barefooting community in Virginia? Are you doing anything to spread the word?\nJacob Hall: I recently wrote <a href=https://flathatnews.com/2021/05/03/barefoot-lifestyle-deserves-respect-and-acknowledgement-from-student-community/>an opinion in my school newspaper</a> responding to a previous article about barefooting at our library. It felt good to articulate my thoughts about barefooting on campus in a more formal setting.\nI got a lot of really kind feedback from the community, and an invitation to join the <a href=https://www.barefooters.org>Society for Barefoot Living</a>! I\'m excited to be growing as an advocate for barefooting.\nThe Drongo: Congratulations! It must feel good to come into contact, all at once, with so many other like-minded barefooters.\nI know of your wilderness and outdoors days, because they informed the <a href=https://jacobhall.net/2019/what-to-pack/>wilderness packing recommendations</a> on your website. I\'m curious to know whether you have gone barefoot on trails, or on even rougher terrain.\nJacob Hall: Yes! I\'ve gone on 20+ mile hikes barefoot over all sorts of terrain. It\'s fun to feel the different surfaces under your soles as you walk. 😁\nThe Drongo: Do you have a good wilderness story for us? It need not star your feet.\nJacob Hall: It was a hot summer night in 2017. My friends and I had been hiking southbound on the Appalachian Trail for three weeks.\nWe rolled up to a shelter just as the sun was coming down, and rushed to make dinner and pitch our tent before it got too dark. If you\'re backcountry camping in that area, one of the most important things to do before you go to sleep is hang a bear bag with all of your food in it, so that bears can\'t access it in the night.\nThis was a relatively popular shelter, with many people sleeping in and around it each night, so it featured some vertical poles with hooks, for visitors could more conveniently hang their bear bags. My friends and I packed up our stuff into a dry bag, and walked up the hill to the bear bag poles.\nWhen we arrived, there was a couple already standing there clipping their bags shut. After we\'d waited for thirty seconds, they turned to us and muttered, "Here comes Tunnel Rat." I wasn\'t sure what that meant until I turned around and spotted a tall man emerging from the woods, dressed only in flip-flops, a speedo, and one of those massive Petzl headlamps. I was 17 at the time, and this man was INTIMIDATING. He stood there for a moment, then said, "I don\'t hang my bear bags. Bears don\'t fuck with me."\nThe Drongo: Drongo alert!\nJacob Hall: Tunnel Rat was hiking northbound, so after that encounter we started finding his notes in each logbook along the trail. My favorite one was about him getting drunk in town, and then attempting to night-hike to the next shelter at 2 AM. He got lost, and wandered through the woods for a while before finding the trail again. Tunnel Rat embodied an attitude of freedom and recklessness that I was so eager to find on the trail.\nEveryone got their "trail name" for one reason or another. Meatlog ate a massive summer sausage in one go. Noodle Water drank the water we cooked the noodles in. I\'ve always wondered how Tunnel Rat got his name.\nThe Drongo: You\'ve got me wondering that, too. Perhaps, for our stomachs\' sakes, it\'s better that we don\'t know. (But if you somehow find out, tell us!)\nIt\'s been great having you on the "show" today, my friend. Would you care to share any contact info or social links with the audience, so that they can get in touch with you?\nJacob Hall: Drongos can absolutely get in touch! I\'ve recently changed my email to <a href="mailto:email@jacobhall.net">email@jacobhall.net</a>, so that\'s probably the best way to contact me, and I can guarantee a relatively timely reply.\n<a href="https://jacobhall.net"><a href="https://jacobhall.net">https://jacobhall.net</a></a> is my ever-evolving home, blog, portfolio, and Internet interface... Instagram (<a href="http://instagram.com/jacobwhall">@jacobwhall</a>) was my first "real" online presence, and is still my main connection with old friends on the Internet.\nOn Letterboxd, I\'m <a href="https://letterboxd.com/jacobwhall">jacobwhall</a>. I\'ve gotten weirdly excited about Letterboxd as a platform. Maybe it\'s a rite of passage these days for college students to promote a niche social network. So follow me on Letterboxd!!!\nThe Drongo: I see on your Letterboxd profile that one of your favorite movies is It\'s Such a Beautiful Day, which was also recommended by an earlier interviewee, <a href=/thedrongo/interviews/nick-leflohic>Nick LeFlohic</a>. I recall that the two of you are both into sending postcards on Postcrossing, as well.\nPerhaps you two drongos will become brothers-in-arts.\nⵘ ⵗ ⵘ ⵗ ⵘ\nThat\'s it for this issue. Again, if you want to try having your own website, with a friendly administrator to help you out, <a href="mailto:email@jacobhall.net">email Jacob</a>.\nIf you liked this interview, please share it on social media:\n<code><a href="https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/thedrongo/interviews/jacob-hall">https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/thedrongo/interviews/jacob-hall</a></code>\n'}], 'name': ['The Drongo, Interview #12: Jacob Hall'], 'category': ['drongo', 'newsletter', 'interview', 'barefoot', 'geology', 'indieweb', 'computing'], 'channel': ['thedrongo'], 'slug': ['interviews/jacob-hall'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2021/08/18/ao', '/thedrongo/interviews/jacob-hall'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Who Styles the Whostyles?'], 'published': [DateTime(2021, 8, 11, 18, 38, 34, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': 'I hear tell that Jacob Hall has <a class="u-in-reply-to" href="https://jacobhall.net/2021/08/horton-hears-a-whostyle">implemented whostyles on his website</a> ... let\'s see how he handles mine.\n'}], 'category': ['indieweb', 'computing'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2021/08/12/hz', '/2021/08/11/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'visibility': ['public'], 'audience': ['maxwell'], 'published': [DateTime(2021, 7, 1, 12, 16, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'name': ['Input Growth'], 'content': [{'html': '\nThe length, measured in keystrokes, of a command needed to trigger some action at the computer, should grow as little as possible proportional to growth in other input factors, including specificity of , fully-qualified name of command,\n\nFor instance, CLI interfaces should be defined so that it barely takes any additional keystrokes to operate on a file in the current directory, or a file located far away in the filesystem. Tab completion attempts to deliver on this, and mostly succeeds. Zsh-style smart completion improves on typical bash tab completion.\nCase-insensitive search is an example of this principle: no additional <kbd>Shift</kbd> keypresses are needed to search for partially or fully capitalized strings.\nIt should only take a few keystrokes to trigger any function regardless of how long its name is, or how long its invocation is. Bash aliases offer this feature; for instance, "ydx $URL" can expand to "youtube-dl $URL -x".\nIt should only take a few keystrokes to insert a large/arbitrary amount of prespecified text. Text-expansion programs, which exist in most computing environments, monitor your keystrokes and convert specified strings into larger outputs. All such systems which are worth a damn will allow you to define "holes" in the expanded templates, which can then be (manually) filled with situation-specific information. In other words, these are functions which take no input, are given short names, are automatically called by the text-expansion system, and whch return a string as output.\nBookmark systems allow accessing favorite websites with hotkeys or with incomplete input of a full domain name, filesystem, or other specific location.\n'}], 'category': ['computing', 'interface'], 'channel': ['ideas'], 'slug': ['input-growth'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2021/07/01/uf', '/ideas/input-growth'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'og-image': ['https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/static/thedrongo/hayley-vanderjagt.jpg'], 'published': [DateTime(2021, 6, 15, 9, 54, 30, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': '<div class="center">\n<details>\n<summary>Receive new interviews twice a month. Subscribe to The Drongo for free!</summary>\n\n<link href="//cdn-images.mailchimp.com/embedcode/classic-10_7.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">\n<style type="text/css">\n #mc_embed_signup{clear:left;}\n /* Add your own Mailchimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block.\n We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */\n \t\t #mc_embed_signup .button { background-color: green; }\n</style>\n<div id="mc_embed_signup">\n<form action="https://maxwelljoslyn.us17.list-manage.com/subscribe/post?u=a4f320c858eb89641f87a7bf1&id=8c49f38e34" method="post" id="mc-embedded-subscribe-form" name="mc-embedded-subscribe-form" class="validate" target="_blank" novalidate="">\n <div id="mc_embed_signup_scroll">\n <h2>Subscribe to The Drongo</h2>\n All fields required.\n<div class="mc-field-group">\n <label for="mce-EMAIL">Email Address </label>\n <input type="email" value="" name="EMAIL" class="required email" id="mce-EMAIL">\n</div>\n<div class="mc-field-group">\n <label for="mce-FNAME">First Name </label>\n <input type="text" value="" name="FNAME" class="required" id="mce-FNAME">\n</div>\n<div class="mc-field-group">\n <label for="mce-LNAME">Last Name(s) </label>\n <input type="text" value="" name="LNAME" class="required" id="mce-LNAME">\n</div>\n<div class="mc-field-group input-group">\n Desire for an Interview \n <ul><li><input type="radio" value="1" name="group[9090]" id="mce-group[9090]-9090-0"><label for="mce-group[9090]-9090-0">Interested in being interviewed</label></li>\n<li><input type="radio" value="2" name="group[9090]" id="mce-group[9090]-9090-1"><label for="mce-group[9090]-9090-1">Not interested in being interviewed</label></li>\n</ul>\n</div>\n <div id="mce-responses" class="clear">\n \t<div class="response" id="mce-error-response" style="display:none"></div>\n \t<div class="response" id="mce-success-response" style="display:none"></div>\n </div> \n <div style="position: absolute; left: -5000px;" aria-hidden="true"><input type="text" name="b_a4f320c858eb89641f87a7bf1_8c49f38e34" tabindex="-1" value=""></div>\n <div class="clear"><input type="submit" value="Subscribe" name="subscribe" id="mc-embedded-subscribe" class="button"></div>\n </div>\n</form>\n</div>\n\n</details>\n</div>\n<div class="center"><img src="/static/thedrongo/hayley-vanderjagt.jpg"></div>\nThe Drongo: Our eleventh interview guest is Hayley VanderJagt.\nHayley VanderJagt: Oh shit, I\'m talking about myself! My name is Bloo, and I\'m currently passing the time in my hometown of Albuquerque, New Mexico, fittingly called "The Land of Entrapment." The prodigal daughter has returned to her old stomping grounds to start graduate school after seven years in the Pacific Northwest.\n<figure class="center"><img src="/static/thedrongo/pit-bull.jpg">\n<figcaption>Hayley\'s pit bull, with blanket headdress.</figcaption>\n</figure>\nHayley VanderJagt: Folks have called me multifaceted, offbeat, and maybe even mercurial, but these days I mainly just do a lot of schoolwork grinding. When I\'m not cosplaying as a professional, you\'ll probably find me yelling at video games, ripping bongs, or wrestling with my pit bull. Social isolation has unexpectedly been pretty great!\nThe Drongo: I couldn\'t help but notice you left out your most drongeriffic hobby: fire spinning!\nHayley, how and why did you take up the forbidden fire arts? What are your secret techniques?\nHayley VanderJagt: There\'s a part of me has always had this adorably naïve belief that I could do anything I really, really wanted to. When I was an undergrad, I saw the fire troupe at my school perform. Like most people with an intact sense of wonderment, I was immediately turned on. Not in the literal sense -- although in retrospect, maybe in the literal sense -- point is, I was totally inspired.\nThe Drongo: More like in-fired, dohoho.\n<figure class="center"><img src="/static/thedrongo/fire1.jpg">\n<figcaption>Behold! The Viking mistress in all her fiery glory.</figcaption>\n</figure>\nHayley VanderJagt: I used to be pretty shit at orienting my body in space and recruiting my brain to coordinate my movement, so I figured ... might as well see what I learn from trying something I know I\'ll be abjectly terrible at! Any behavioralist will tell you that punishment is not a very good teaching tool, but getting repeatedly smacked by an incredibly-dense pronged staff is actually pretty instructive.\nWith more motivation than I tend to bring to most things, I practiced all the time. I\'d go to class with bruises everywhere, which definitely concerned some observant teachers. Anyway, after a while, the staff just became some sort of extension of my body. I started trusting that it would move with me when I moved.\nIn fire spinning (and, I imagine, other flow arts) there\'s a pretty big difference between "static" props and "dynamic" props. My prop, the dragon staff, is a static prop. The planes on which you can orient it are more limited, and the prop itself doesn\'t have joints, which would allow it additional ways to rotate around itself. In comparison, fire poi are way more dynamic (and I\'ve never been able to figure them out.)\nLately, I\'ve been playing with some fans, and this neat toy called a levi-wand, so I\'m hoping someday I\'ll round out my skills a little more.\nThe Drongo: What feelings go through you during a fire performance?\nHayley VanderJagt: It really depends on the day. Sometimes, I feel badass; most of the time, I feel mildly terrified. The first show I was supposed to perform in was one of the annual gigs most popular for the troupe, so I remember drilling my choreography in the gym real hardcore-like. I was a little more Type A back then, I guess.\nThe Drongo: Oh, you\'re still Type A! (I would know, readers: I lived with her.)\nHayley VanderJagt: On the night of the performance, I drank quite a bit more than I intended. Call it nerves? Right as the curtain was rising, I definitely panicked and considering dropping out, but was convinced otherwise by an upperclassman who said I was probably more anxious than drunk. Was that true? Who knows. Don\'t flail flaming objects around while intoxicated, guys (unless the audience is 20 feet away, like mine was.)\nSo: my music starts, people are cheering, and basically ... my mind goes blank for the entire performance. I notice myself standing in my body again once the song ends. I know I didn\'t drop the prop the entire time, and thus probably nailed the routine I had turned into muscle memory. No clue, really. At least the crowd was stoked.\n<figure class="center"><img src="/static/thedrongo/fire2.jpg">\n<figcaption>Behold again!</figcaption>\n</figure>\nThe Drongo: As if prancing around with a flaming staff wasn\'t drongo enough, you went and did it while so drunk and nervous that your spirit left your body. I assume Satan held on to it for safekeeping.\nEver since the night we became friends, when you told me over beers about the psychological effects of alcohol, I\'ve known you to be as hardcore about education as you are about fire spinning.\nI understand you\'re about to finish your first year of PhD studies in clinical neuroscience.\nHayley VanderJagt: So actually, I\'m currently studying clinical psychology! My background was real heavy in the hard (neuro)sciences, so I know my way around mice brains, rat brains, monkey brains ... but in the years after graduating, I definitely realized I wasn\'t using a lot of my more innate skills professionally.\nThe Drongo: My mistake, Hayley! For the laymen among us, what separates clinical psychology from other subfields of psychology?\nHayley VanderJagt: Despite being majorly introverted, I find people really interesting, and I think the trajectory from research to real-world impact moves a lot more quickly in clinical psychology than in more micro-scale niches in the field. If I\'m devoting so much energy into developing treatments to help folks, it\'d be nice to live long enough to see them implemented.\nIn grad school, I get to design studies and take on clients from the university\'s psychology clinic, which is really awesome. It\'s a good reminder of why the rigor of grad school is necessary, and the reasons why I\'m doing it.\nThe Drongo: What\'s your focus within clinical psych, and what do you hope to achieve in your own research?\nHayley VanderJagt: My special interest is in the realm of eating behavior, weight management, and disordered eating. Food is obviously an integral part of being alive, but, particularly in this society, I think the way we eat is sort of taken for granted.\nI mean, the majority of processed foods are deliberately manufactured to be "craveable", convenient, and cheap. Food is dishonest now, in the sense that the dietary staples we\'re habituated to might not always reliably deliver accurate indicators of the amount of nourishment or energy we\'re receiving. When we unknowingly develop problems with eating, like putting on too much weight, bingeing, yo-yo dieting, or malnourishment, we\'re treated like idiots with no willpower.\nWe get fat on food we\'re taught is acceptable to eat regularly, and then society stigmatizes us for it and tries to sell us a "cure" in the form of pills, diet plans, seaweed wraps, whatever. It\'s really ugly.\nI\'m currently looking at interventions for psychological issues like disordered eating and depression, from the angle of improving nutritional composition. There\'s a lot of research showing that a suboptimal diet contributes to a whole host of issues beyond simply being overweight -- which, by the way, is NOT the issue I care about fixing. I just think we can drastically improve our mental wellbeing with good food!\nIt\'s all about balance, really. Many animals are quite "nutritionally wise," and can tell when and what to eat based on physiological hunger cues. I think it would be really cool if we could reinvite that mind-body connection back into food-eating culture.\nThe Drongo: One way we might make that happen is by reintroducing cooking classes to middle and high schools. In comparison to school material which is entirely oriented toward college-track advancement -- and which most students will forget unless it\'s used in their career -- cooking can be used by someone from any segment of society, and will remain useful for as long as humans need to eat. That\'s an ironclad defense against "when are we ever going to use this?" if I\'ve ever heard one.\nLet\'s conclude our visit to the Blooniverse with ear pleasures. You\'ve told me that music is your "fourth base." Can The Drongo get lucky and hear you play?\nIf not, you can stem my weeping by recommending your favorite tunes (at least one each, please, in the categories happy, mopey, and weeby.)\nHayley VanderJagt: To be totally honest, I put off completing this interview because this question tossed me into an internal tug-o-war!\nI\'ve been playing music since I was 10, and have dabbled in songwriting, but I\'m so damn weird about it to this day. It just feels very intimate. But, I think the fundamental reason people are put on this earth is to express themselves to others, to see and be seen. So -- just for you, Maxie -- I\'ve attached a couple (janky) recordings of short little songs which have been sitting in my pocket for a while.\n<figure class="center">\n<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/DIeyzl3i6CA" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>\n</figure>\n<figure class="center">\n<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/3xID6mk_O58" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>\n</figure>\nThe Drongo: Beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing. I\'m partial to the first one (and not only because I have fond memories of hearing it through your door while you practiced.)\nHayley VanderJagt: I\'m going to recommend some tunes too, just because I\'m hoping someone out there will jive to these bangers like I do!\nThe Drongo: Hurray! An entree from you, and side dishes, too.\nHayley VanderJagt: It was really hard to choose just one for each category, but I went with things that are fresh on my radar at the moment.\nFor happy: this one is just a fucking funky bop. The artist owns a farm in Iceland, but does music on the side, and actually entered a song into Eurovision recently! <a href=https://lyricstranslate.com/en/skiptir-ekki-m%C3%A1li-doesnt-matter.html>Look up the lyrics in English</a> if you get the chance, because they\'re really nice.\n<figure class=center><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/8TKNbwC6L78" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>\n<figcaption>"Skiptir Ekki Mali" by Daði Freyr (<a href=https://lyricstranslate.com/en/skiptir-ekki-m%C3%A1li-doesnt-matter.html>English lyrics</a>)</figcaption>\n</figure>\nFor mopey: this is tricky. Usually when I\'m moping, I still choose things that are upbeat, like, "Let\'s ruminate ... while dancing!"\n<figure class=center>\n<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/VMmJ7Dch9Z4" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>\n<figcaption>"Hunting for Reason" by Folded Like Fabric</figcaption>\n</figure>\nFor weeby: y\'all ever seen Samurai Champloo? Check out this sweet cover. You don\'t even need to like anime to like this one, I promise. It just TASTES good in your ears.\n<figure class=center>\n<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/mIWjkSkhVWA" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>\n<figcaption>"Shiki no Uta" by Sapphire</figcaption>\n</figure>\nThe Drongo: Readers, I\'ve tried all three of these boppity bops, and I advise you to follow our guest\'s spectacular taste.\nThat\'s all for this issue of The Drongo. Hayley, thank you so much for participating. May readers get in touch with you after they\'ve seen your interview?\nHayley VanderJagt: Sure! I guess I sort of fly under the social media radar, since I don\'t have any links to share. I have an Instagram (<a href=https://instagram.com/b.l.o.o.m.y.m.i.n.d>@b.l.o.o.m.y.m.i.n.d</a>) that I use as a photo-diary, if you\'d like to see that. Mainly, it\'s for sliding into cuties\' DMs. Just kidding. Or am I?\nThe Drongo: You heard it here first, cuties. And for the non-cuties among us, there\'s always email: <a href=mailto:hayleyvanderj@gmail.com>hayleyvanderj@gmail.com</a>.\nⵘ ⵗ ⵘ ⵗ ⵘ\nIf you liked this interview, please share it far and wide (<a class=u-syndication href=https://twitter.com/maxwelljoslyn/status/1404852388381483011>perhaps on Twitter</a>):\n<code><a href="https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/thedrongo/interviews/hayley-vanderjagt">https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/thedrongo/interviews/hayley-vanderjagt</a></code>\nThe Drongo is going on a brief hiatus. No interview will appear at the end of June. In July we\'ll resume publishing two interviews per month.\n'}], 'name': ['The Drongo, Interview #11: Hayley VanderJagt'], 'category': ['drongo', 'newsletter', 'interview', 'music', 'psychology', 'firespinning'], 'channel': ['thedrongo'], 'slug': ['interviews/hayley-vanderjagt'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2021/06/15/bh', '/thedrongo/interviews/hayley-vanderjagt'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Eulogy for a Master'], 'published': [DateTime(2021, 6, 13, 10, 10, 34, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': '<div class="muted p-intro p-summary">\nA parody of one of my favorite poems, G. K. Chesterton\'s "The Great Minimum."\nSyndicated to <a class=u-syndication href="https://twitter.com/maxwelljoslyn/status/1404484803299213313">Twitter</a>.\n</div>\n<div class="poem-container">\n<pre class="poem">\nIt is something to have warred as we have warred.\nIt is something to have done as we have done.\nIt is something to have battled with a lord,\nAnd, though it mean your death, see battle won.\n\nIt is something to attain the weightless blade,\nThough blade of equal make yet lay you low.\nIt is something that your killer was repaid,\nThough peace now be the sum of all you know.\n\nTo have seen you spurn the Council, with your face\nBrave as a file of troopers for the fray,\nCalmer than Time, a sentinel of Space:\nIt is something, though you went from me today.\n\nTo have known the things that younglings may not learn,\nAnd turned away all passions, base or high;\nIt is something when one\'s fate one may discern;\nIt is something to have lived to watch you die.\n\nIn a time of leisure droids and death-stick churls,\nAnd squabbling smugglers wallowing in ire,\nIn a galaxy of Twi\'lek dancing girls,\nIt is something to reject all heart\'s desire.\n\nLo, simple are the robes in which he burns.\nYea, tidy is the beard upon his chin.\nLet the Dark Side tempt a lesser man to turn\nWith its lightning. It won\'t master Master Jinn.\n</pre>\n</div>\n'}], 'category': ['parody', 'poetry', 'starwars'], 'channel': ['poems'], 'slug': ['eulogy-for-a-master'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2021/06/13/p2', '/poems/eulogy-for-a-master'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['A Very Shanske Birthdave'], 'published': [DateTime(2021, 6, 10, 12, 17, 51, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': '<div class=p-summary>Please telepathically assist me in wishing <a href="https://david.shanske.com" class="u-category h-card">Dave Shanske</a> (alias "GWG") a very happy birthdave.</div>\nDave is a pillar of the IndieWeb community. Most notably, he\'s helped organize several of our largest in-person social events, including our yearly IndieWeb Summit conferences, and he\'s always willing to help run A/V or monitor the chat for attendee questions.\nPerhaps even more important, however, is all the work Dave does to welcome new and curious members to our community. He sets a fine example for newcomers by using his website to showcase everything from photos, to vacation records (with maps automatically generated from his itineraries), to journal entries from bygone years. He also puts his archiving and librarianship training to use on behalf of IW members trying to orient themselves among the blog posts, wiki pages, chat logs, and technical specifications which this community has created over the last decade. I\'ve lost count of the number of times when, after someone referred to a IndieWeb topic, Dave was able to recall precisely when it debuted, or summarize the history of its development.\nFinally, Dave is the maintainer and programmer of Wordpress plugins which offer instant IndieWebification of any site built on that platform. As I understand it, hundreds of website owners who would not otherwise be part of the IndieWeb (except by the broadest definition which includes all personal websites) owe their ability to participate in our network directly to Dave.\nYom hu\'ledet sameach, Dave, and may you have many more happy years!\n'}], 'category': ['birthday', 'indieweb'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2021/06/10/ta', '/2021/06/10/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Higher Flight'], 'published': [DateTime(2021, 6, 9, 13, 24, 3, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': '<div class="muted p-intro p-summary">\nThis is an Elon-Musk-themed parody of John Gillespie Magee, Jr.\'s <a href=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gillespie_Magee_Jr.#High_Flight>"High Flight"</a>.\nSyndicated to <a class=u-syndication href="https://twitter.com/maxwelljoslyn/status/1402728860966219776">Twitter</a>.\n</div>\n<div class="poem-container">\n<pre class="poem">\nOh! I have spurned the surly SEC,\nAnd pierced the skies with rocket booster flames;\nSunward I\'ve turned, to harvest energy;\nNutted to Mars -- and played a hundred games\nYou have not dreamed of -- founded, bought, and sold;\nRan Paypal, blasted Dogecoin to the moon,\nBuilt companies from visions into gold,\nAnd granted seven children silver spoons.\n\nUp, up the endless void of frozen black\nMy dankest starship speeds with burning grace.\nI\'ve seen the future, and I won\'t look back:\nThey\'ll say I left my mark upon the times.\nFor I have sent my Roadster into space --\nPut out my hand, and touched the face of Grimes.\n</pre>\n</div>\n'}], 'category': ['parody', 'poetry'], 'channel': ['poems'], 'slug': ['higher-flight'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2021/06/09/4g', '/poems/higher-flight'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ["You've Gotta Have a Prince"], 'published': [DateTime(2021, 5, 28, 12, 43, 26, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': 'Whereas he has ceaselessly displayed the virtues of camaraderie, wisdom, and piety befitting those of noble rank,\nWhereas he and I agreed it was a good idea,\nWhereas those parties assembled at <a class=u-in-reply-to href=https://events.indieweb.org/2021/05/homebrew-website-club-the-americas-4ye1RCe2cBdC>HWC Americas</a> made no objection,\nBy the powers invested in me according to the ancient and noble constitution of maxwelljoslyn.com,\nI hereby crown\n<figure class="center" style="font-size: var(--s4);"><a href=https://gregorlove.com>Gregor Morrill</a></figure>\nPrince of this website,\nat 12 PM, 49 minutes and 24 seconds past the hour, on May 28th, in the 31st year since the Web began.\n\n'}], 'category': ['indieweb'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2021/05/28/5q', '/2021/05/28/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'og-image': ['https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/static/thedrongo/eyal-herling.jpg'], 'published': [DateTime(2021, 5, 27, 11, 8, 16, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': '<div class="center">\n<details>\n<summary>Receive new interviews twice a month. Subscribe to The Drongo for free!</summary>\n\n<link href="//cdn-images.mailchimp.com/embedcode/classic-10_7.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">\n<style type="text/css">\n #mc_embed_signup{clear:left;}\n /* Add your own Mailchimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block.\n We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */\n \t\t #mc_embed_signup .button { background-color: green; }\n</style>\n<div id="mc_embed_signup">\n<form action="https://maxwelljoslyn.us17.list-manage.com/subscribe/post?u=a4f320c858eb89641f87a7bf1&id=8c49f38e34" method="post" id="mc-embedded-subscribe-form" name="mc-embedded-subscribe-form" class="validate" target="_blank" novalidate="">\n <div id="mc_embed_signup_scroll">\n <h2>Subscribe to The Drongo</h2>\n All fields required.\n<div class="mc-field-group">\n <label for="mce-EMAIL">Email Address </label>\n <input type="email" value="" name="EMAIL" class="required email" id="mce-EMAIL">\n</div>\n<div class="mc-field-group">\n <label for="mce-FNAME">First Name </label>\n <input type="text" value="" name="FNAME" class="required" id="mce-FNAME">\n</div>\n<div class="mc-field-group">\n <label for="mce-LNAME">Last Name(s) </label>\n <input type="text" value="" name="LNAME" class="required" id="mce-LNAME">\n</div>\n<div class="mc-field-group input-group">\n Desire for an Interview \n <ul><li><input type="radio" value="1" name="group[9090]" id="mce-group[9090]-9090-0"><label for="mce-group[9090]-9090-0">Interested in being interviewed</label></li>\n<li><input type="radio" value="2" name="group[9090]" id="mce-group[9090]-9090-1"><label for="mce-group[9090]-9090-1">Not interested in being interviewed</label></li>\n</ul>\n</div>\n <div id="mce-responses" class="clear">\n \t<div class="response" id="mce-error-response" style="display:none"></div>\n \t<div class="response" id="mce-success-response" style="display:none"></div>\n </div> \n <div style="position: absolute; left: -5000px;" aria-hidden="true"><input type="text" name="b_a4f320c858eb89641f87a7bf1_8c49f38e34" tabindex="-1" value=""></div>\n <div class="clear"><input type="submit" value="Subscribe" name="subscribe" id="mc-embedded-subscribe" class="button"></div>\n </div>\n</form>\n</div>\n\n</details>\n</div>\n<div class="center"><img src="/static/thedrongo/eyal-herling.jpg"></div>\nThe Drongo: Today, our guest on The Drongo is Eyal Herling.\nBefore we begin in earnest, I must mention that Eyal is Israeli, and that we conducted this interview before the recent conflict triggered by the Sheikh Jarrah ruling. Readers, whatever your opinions on Israel-Palestine affairs, please make certain that your comments are respectful toward Eyal.\nTake it away, Eyal.\nEyal Herling: First of all, let me start with a great thank you for having me here, and for conducting this interview. It is a unique experience for me.\nThe Drongo: You\'re welcome, and thanks for being here. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?\nEyal Herling: I was born in the north of Israel, to my loving parents. I am the youngest of three. I\'ve always loved being outside in nature, having adventures, and I\'m traveling at the moment.\nThe Drongo: Traveling the globe and working where you please, because after finishing your military service, you became a scuba diving instructor. Is that right?\nEyal Herling: Correct.\nThe Drongo: What drew you to diving, as a passion and a career?\nEyal Herling: Ever since I can remember, I\'ve always loved water. Pools, streams, puddles, rain: if there was water, I would be in it.\nMy dad used to go with his buddies to dive in Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. From the time I was 4 years old, I would go up to him and ask to join. His response was always, "Get to the age where you can do a course, pass it, and I\'ll take you." So, at the age of 12, that\'s what I did.\nI don\'t remember a lot of that open water course. I just remember that after my first time underwater, I decided that\'s what I wanted to do all the time. From then on, I didn\'t get birthday presents; instead, every 2-3 months, we would go to the Red Sea for a few days of diving.\nThe Drongo: Wow, you\'ve been diving your entire life.\n<figure class=center>\n<img src=/static/thedrongo/eagle-ray.jpg>\n<figcaption>\nOne of Eyal\'s recent sightings: an eagle ray.\n</figcaption>\n</figure>\nEyal Herling: Given the fascination and love I have for all of the life in the ocean, and my desire to explore the world\'s oceans, reefs, and caves, while passing this love and passion to others, it was simply natural for me to become an instructor. It\'s a job I love and appreciate. To help guide people in their first steps into the magnificent underwater world is an incredible privilege for me.\nLong story short, my dad and I finally went diving in Sinai last March, before the pandemic, when I was already an instructor.\nThe Drongo: Do you intend to be an instructor forever, or is it just a job for while you\'re young?\nEyal Herling: I intend to be a diving instructor in one way or the other until the day I die. Even when I can\'t be a full-time instructor, I could teach a few advanced courses a year, such as ones on technical diving. I could also train new instructors, to influence not only each new generation of divers, but also each new generation of instructors. I have some time before I get there, but I will eventually :)\nThe Drongo: You\'ve spent so much time diving that you must have some ridiculous stories. Please share with us your craziest diving story (or stories!)\nEyal Herling: Craziest dive story? There are tons. I\'ll go with one of my favorite dives.\nI went diving in Baja California, in a natural reserve called Cabo Pulmo which is famous for two dive sites. One of them, "The Wreck," is a hangout place for grown bull sharks.\nOf course I had to go there.\nOn this dive, we got to the shipwreck (which is not very deep -- approximately 45 feet.) There isn\'t a lot left of the ship itself, so we got to the bottom and just sat there. Suddenly, we saw sharks in the distance. As the sharks got intrigued, they came closer to check us out.\n<figure class=center>\n<blockquote class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/CIqkNXeJiwC/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="13" style=" background:#FFF; border:0; border-radius:3px; box-shadow:0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width:540px; padding:0; width:99.375%; width:-webkit-calc(100% - 2px); width:calc(100% - 2px);"><div style="padding:16px;"> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CIqkNXeJiwC/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" style=" background:#FFFFFF; line-height:0; padding:0 0; text-align:center; text-decoration:none; width:100%;" target="_blank"> <div style=" display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;"> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"></div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"></div> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"></div></div></div><div style="padding: 19% 0;"></div> <div style="display:block; height:50px; margin:0 auto 12px; width:50px;"><svg width="50px" height="50px" viewBox="0 0 60 60" version="1.1" xmlns="https://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><g stroke="none" stroke-width="1" fill="none" fill-rule="evenodd"><g transform="translate(-511.000000, -20.000000)" fill="#000000"><g><path d="M556.869,30.41 C554.814,30.41 553.148,32.076 553.148,34.131 C553.148,36.186 554.814,37.852 556.869,37.852 C558.924,37.852 560.59,36.186 560.59,34.131 C560.59,32.076 558.924,30.41 556.869,30.41 M541,60.657 C535.114,60.657 530.342,55.887 530.342,50 C530.342,44.114 535.114,39.342 541,39.342 C546.887,39.342 551.658,44.114 551.658,50 C551.658,55.887 546.887,60.657 541,60.657 M541,33.886 C532.1,33.886 524.886,41.1 524.886,50 C524.886,58.899 532.1,66.113 541,66.113 C549.9,66.113 557.115,58.899 557.115,50 C557.115,41.1 549.9,33.886 541,33.886 M565.378,62.101 C565.244,65.022 564.756,66.606 564.346,67.663 C563.803,69.06 563.154,70.057 562.106,71.106 C561.058,72.155 560.06,72.803 558.662,73.347 C557.607,73.757 556.021,74.244 553.102,74.378 C549.944,74.521 548.997,74.552 541,74.552 C533.003,74.552 532.056,74.521 528.898,74.378 C525.979,74.244 524.393,73.757 523.338,73.347 C521.94,72.803 520.942,72.155 519.894,71.106 C518.846,70.057 518.197,69.06 517.654,67.663 C517.244,66.606 516.755,65.022 516.623,62.101 C516.479,58.943 516.448,57.996 516.448,50 C516.448,42.003 516.479,41.056 516.623,37.899 C516.755,34.978 517.244,33.391 517.654,32.338 C518.197,30.938 518.846,29.942 519.894,28.894 C520.942,27.846 521.94,27.196 523.338,26.654 C524.393,26.244 525.979,25.756 528.898,25.623 C532.057,25.479 533.004,25.448 541,25.448 C548.997,25.448 549.943,25.479 553.102,25.623 C556.021,25.756 557.607,26.244 558.662,26.654 C560.06,27.196 561.058,27.846 562.106,28.894 C563.154,29.942 563.803,30.938 564.346,32.338 C564.756,33.391 565.244,34.978 565.378,37.899 C565.522,41.056 565.552,42.003 565.552,50 C565.552,57.996 565.522,58.943 565.378,62.101 M570.82,37.631 C570.674,34.438 570.167,32.258 569.425,30.349 C568.659,28.377 567.633,26.702 565.965,25.035 C564.297,23.368 562.623,22.342 560.652,21.575 C558.743,20.834 556.562,20.326 553.369,20.18 C550.169,20.033 549.148,20 541,20 C532.853,20 531.831,20.033 528.631,20.18 C525.438,20.326 523.257,20.834 521.349,21.575 C519.376,22.342 517.703,23.368 516.035,25.035 C514.368,26.702 513.342,28.377 512.574,30.349 C511.834,32.258 511.326,34.438 511.181,37.631 C511.035,40.831 511,41.851 511,50 C511,58.147 511.035,59.17 511.181,62.369 C511.326,65.562 511.834,67.743 512.574,69.651 C513.342,71.625 514.368,73.296 516.035,74.965 C517.703,76.634 519.376,77.658 521.349,78.425 C523.257,79.167 525.438,79.673 528.631,79.82 C531.831,79.965 532.853,80.001 541,80.001 C549.148,80.001 550.169,79.965 553.369,79.82 C556.562,79.673 558.743,79.167 560.652,78.425 C562.623,77.658 564.297,76.634 565.965,74.965 C567.633,73.296 568.659,71.625 569.425,69.651 C570.167,67.743 570.674,65.562 570.82,62.369 C570.966,59.17 571,58.147 571,50 C571,41.851 570.966,40.831 570.82,37.631"></path></g></g></g></svg></div><div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style=" color:#3897f0; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:550; line-height:18px;"> View this post on Instagram</div></div><div style="padding: 12.5% 0;"></div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px; align-items: center;"><div> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px);"></div> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; height: 12.5px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px; flex-grow: 0; margin-right: 14px; margin-left: 2px;"></div> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px);"></div></div><div style="margin-left: 8px;"> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;"></div> <div style=" width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid #f4f4f4; border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg)"></div></div><div style="margin-left: auto;"> <div style=" width: 0px; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-right: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(16px);"></div> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; width: 16px; transform: translateY(-4px);"></div> <div style=" width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-left: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px);"></div></div></div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 224px;"></div> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 144px;"></div></div></a><p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;"><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CIqkNXeJiwC/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">A post shared by Eyal Herling (@eyhdives)</a></div></blockquote> <script async src="//www.instagram.com/embed.js"></script>\n</figure>\nEyal Herling: These beautiful, giant, magnificent animals were swimming around us so gracefully! We were supposed to stay close together, yet I lingered a bit behind, and got the sharks to come within three feet of me, which was incredible. The awe and reverence this creature creates is outstanding.\nThis is really important: sharks are amazing animals. They are very important to our oceans\' ecosystems. Sharks rarely attack people, especially not divers; the majority of shark attacks on divers are in situations where the sharks were fed, and then divers harassed the sharks, so it had an urge to defend itself. As long as we respect them, they will respect us, and we can all enjoy an amazing time in the water with one of the prehistoric relics that are still alive today.\nYou know, Maxwell, the ocean is salty because of the tears of misunderstood sharks.\nThe Drongo: Truer words have never been spoken. One day the sharks will reveal their legs, and come after us for revenge.\nLet\'s travel back in time to a few years ago, when you were fulfilling your obligation of national military service in the Israel Defense Forces. Could you tell The Drongo what it was like to serve, and to learn explosive-ordnance disposal (EOD)?\nEyal Herling: All in all, the service was a positive experience that taught me a lot. I cannot start to explain the experiences and feelings I had, the friends I made, the beautiful places I saw, and the crazy situations I encountered. None of that would have happened if I had not served in the army.\nI got recruited into the engineering corps, and after two weeks I was transferred to the special platoon. At the start, we just knew we were in the engineering corps special forces; we didn\'t even know we were EOD.\nFrom the moment you arrive, you live by a stop watch. Everything you do has a time frame, from seconds to minutes, and everything you do must meet those standards. Exceed the time frame, and you\'ll be punished; fail to do something perfectly, and you\'ll do it all over again. In this way, we learned basic soldiership: firing rifles; using, repairing, and maintaining gear; and, in our case, handling explosives.\nThe whole process toughens you up, teaches you how to work in a team, and builds your endurance, discipline, and physical and mental strength. I carried the skills and character I developed in basic training for the rest of my service, and they\'ll remain with me for the rest of my life.\nAfter boot camp, we were told our purpose, and went on to higher levels of training. That meant lots of military exercises, gun range practice, walking with heavy weights, and lack of sleep for days on end. As the course continued, we got more independent. Different people were given different responsibilities requiring more complex training and longer time frames, and we pretty much handled ourselves. The final few months of training were actually learning EOD. A lot of explosives were used, of course (which made that part a lot of fun.)\nThe Drongo: What were the negative aspects of military service?\nEyal Herling: Being a soldier is a maturing and frustrating experience. You have to take orders from the people above you, even if they have no idea what you do, or what they are doing. Sometimes you\'ve been in the military longer than them; sometimes they give orders to gain some sort of profit from it, like prestige, political power, or looking good in front of their superior; sometimes they give orders just because they can. Most of the time, such decisions are simply annoying and illogical.\nA lot of people don\'t really want to do their jobs, or they cover their own asses all the time, so you get into a lot of frustrating situations. I had to learn how to talk to, and how to treat, the people I needed -- cooks, mechanics, etc. -- so they actually did their jobs. But that all mirrors modern life. You learn to cope, and to navigate through it.\nWith that, I was lucky enough to be in a small unit with even smaller crews, which gave my crew, and me personally, a lot of independence and freedom compared to other soldiers.\nThe Drongo: What is it like to be EOD, specifically? How does it feel to defuse a bomb?\nEyal Herling: I don\'t know how it is in the US military, but for us, EOD consists of small operating teams that go with the army into combat. My role as EOD was to make sure nobody would need a medic.\nThere are other forms of mission -- that I cannot talk about, sorry -- but EOD is not what people usually think. Situations like in the movies, "red wire blue wire," don\'t happen very often. Almost never. When they do happen, they are way more complex; you have to be super professional, and take so many factors into consideration that I cannot begin to explain them all.\nThe Drongo: That\'s all right. Do your best.\nEyal Herling: As for defusing bombs, first of all, I enjoyed the process. In training or low-risk missions, it was really fun, like a complex puzzle you need to put together to get the outcome you want. The tools you have are extremely varied: robots, rifles, plus all sorts of explosives.\nUsually, we were called for unexploded ammunitions from exercises in the middle of nowhere. So you just blow it up and go eat lunch.\nThe Drongo: "Blow it up and go eat lunch" exemplifies why I\'m running The Drongo. It\'s important to remember how our jobs and our duties shape our sense of what\'s normal, and drongos\' jobs and duties may be odd indeed. For a civilian like me, there are no everyday explosions; for you, it was just another morning.\nNow, if I recall correctly, although you are Israeli and Jewish, you are not religious.\nEyal Herling: Correct again, haha. I consider myself Jewish by nationality, not by religion.\nThe Drongo: What does it mean to you to be Jewish in the 21st century?\nEyal Herling: That is a big question. As a matter of fact, I don\'t know how to answer that. You see, even inside Judaism there are so many different streams, cults, and ways of thinking. Even inside a particular school of thought there will be disagreement and conflicts. There is an old joke that goes, "Two Jews, three opinions."\nWhat does it mean to be Jewish in the 21st century? Well, I\'m more concerned about what it\'s like to be human in these times. Compassion, empathy, reason, and understanding the other seem to have been replaced by self-absorption, recklessness, and ungrounded resentment. For me, the world would be a better place the moment we could all shake hands with people with whom we strongly disagree.\nThe Drongo: Let\'s try another angle, then. Are you proud to be Israeli? Why or why not?\nEyal Herling: Yes. Even with all the problems, internal conflicts, and corruption, there are a lot more virtues that are overlooked. Israel is my home, with values and atmosphere I feel comfortable in. No matter where I go in the world, there will always be an Israeli person there, who would always try to help me the best they can.\nIt\'s the camaraderie, the togetherness [that matters]. I\'ve hitchhiked with people with whom I strongly disagree, either politically or religiously, and shared coffee and regards at the end of the ride. I\'ve spent Shabbat with orthodox Jews and had a great time; for people who don\'t know, Shabbat has a lot of restrictions, including not driving or using any electric devices. I served with Muslims in the army, and worked with Christians at various places. "Israeli" doesn\'t necessarily mean "Jewish;" there are Muslims, Christians, and many more religions and cultural groups here, and at the end of the day everybody sits around the same table eating hummus and drinking Turkish coffee together.\nThe Drongo: I figured you would be proud of your own country, but wanted to ask anyway.\nWhat about my country? How do you view Americans, and American culture? Did your experience of traveling with a group of Jewish Americans on <a href=birthrightisrael.com>Birthright</a> [where Eyal and I met] influence those views?\nEyal Herling: Well, a lot of our media is American, so that is what we get to see the most of. At the moment I write this, I\'m at a hostel in Mexico, and after talking with people from around the world, I find that it isn\'t much like that in other places.\nFrom my point of view, American culture is more self-absorbed and more restrained. People keep to themselves out of fear of how their words will sound in the ears of their peers. I stayed with an American family for a few days of this trip, and felt like I had to think about every single word I said in order not to be rude. That was exhausting.\n"Divide and conquer" is an old trick, but it works, unfortunately. It\'s used in both Israel and America, and I do believe it has a great effect on the US. A little more understanding and compassion for the other, even if they don\'t think the same, would be better. On the other hand, I didn\'t feel like that on Birthright. Maybe it\'s the fact that it was a small group of people who came to Israel with an open mind to see the place, and try to understand it; maybe it\'s the special people that were on that trip. I can\'t really say.\nI will sign off with a statement of what I believe is the solution. In the words of <a href=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hootie_%26_the_Blowfish>Hootie and the Blowfish</a>:\n<pre>\n"With a little love and some tenderness\nWe\'ll walk upon the water\nWe\'ll rise above the mess."\n</pre>\nThe Drongo: It\'s good to end on a hopeful note. We\'ll walk upon the water, and the sharks will set aside their grievances to walk with us.\nEyal Herling: Thank you for the interview, Maxwell. It has taken me back years, trying to remember the experiences and emotions I had back then, and reflect upon them. With a big heart and a lot of love, I wish you good luck. Live long and drongo!\nThe Drongo: Live drong and prosper, Eyal. Thank you for taking the time to participate. Without interviewees, The Drongo couldn\'t exist.\nEyal Herling: If anybody has more questions for me, I would be happy to talk!\nThe Drongo: You heard it from the man himself: this drongo wants to talk to you! Readers, you can contact Eyal at <a href=mailto:eyal898@gmail.com>eyal898@gmail.com</a>, connect with him <a href=https://www.facebook.com/eyal.herling>on Facebook</a>, or, best of all, check out many more dive pictures on Instagram (<a href=http://instagram.com/eyalherling>@eyalherling</a>).\nⵘ ⵗ ⵘ ⵗ ⵘ\nDrongos, should you wish to share Eyal\'s interview, here\'s the permanent link:\n<code><a href="https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/thedrongo/interviews/eyal-herling">https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/thedrongo/interviews/eyal-herling</a></code>\nPlease rejoin The Drongo in mid-June for our 11th interview. Our next guest is Hayley "Bloo" VanderJagt, who has mastered both the inner flame of scholarship and the literal flames at the end of a spinning staff. <a href=/thedrongo/subscribe>Get in the drongmobile</a> and prepare for a wild ride!\n'}], 'name': ['The Drongo, Interview #10: Eyal Herling'], 'category': ['drongo', 'newsletter', 'interview', 'israel', 'scuba', 'diving', 'military', 'judaism'], 'channel': ['thedrongo'], 'slug': ['interviews/eyal-herling'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2021/05/27/aa', '/thedrongo/interviews/eyal-herling'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ["The Gamer's Prelude"], 'published': [DateTime(2021, 5, 18, 13, 30, 19, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': '<div class="muted">\nThis is a loose parody of the Prelude to The Canterbury Tales, dedicated to, and inspired by, none other than my good friend Ryan Wright (read <a href=/thedrongo/interviews/ryan-wright>his interview with The Drongo</a>, or play <a href=/ryanquest>Ryan Quest</a>.)\n</div>\n<div class="poem-container">\n<pre class="poem shadow">\nThere came a schollar from Viking country,\nWell verst in ludonarrativity.\nWhen that Aprill with his shoures thick\nHied off, he watched ye childe play hoop and stick\nTo ponder changing stick for lethern balle,\nAnd wryte upon the meninge of it alle.\nOf anti-gamer scorn, no hede took he,\nAware that men live in society,\nWhile those of lerninge to him wolde adjure\nFor hy discourse on English literature.\nFull gladly teched he on such things culturall,\nAnd left each lecture-hall with maydens plurall.\nExotic assets allways filled his pipe:\nHe was a verry parfit gaming type.\n</pre>\n</div>\n'}], 'category': ['poetry', 'parody', 'gaming'], 'channel': ['poems'], 'slug': ['gamers-prelude'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2021/05/18/d4', '/poems/gamers-prelude'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Potential Topics for HWC Americas'], 'published': [DateTime(2021, 5, 12, 17, 55, 22, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': "HWC Americas is <a href=https://events.indieweb.org/2021/05/homebrew-website-club-the-americas-uHVvDK0RChVN>on again tonight</a>. Some potential topics:\n<ol>\n<li>Drumming up one last spurt of interest in Saturday's event, <a href=https://events.indieweb.org/2021/05/webmentions-beyond-webmention-io-zG4JpHhZShVA>Webmentions Beyond Webmention.io</a></li>\n<li>Private Webmentions</li>\n<li>Building chat and other real-time features into one's website</li>\n</ol>\n"}], 'category': ['indieweb'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2021/05/13/sc', '/2021/05/12/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'og-image': ['https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/static/thedrongo/larry-drui.jpg'], 'published': [DateTime(2021, 4, 30, 11, 29, 53, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': 'I\'m so happy to announce that The Drongo\'s circulation has grown to 44 subscribers. No paltry number, that. We\'re nearly at the big Five-Oh!\n<div class="center">\n<details>\n<summary>Receive new interviews twice a month. Subscribe to The Drongo for free!</summary>\n\n<link href="//cdn-images.mailchimp.com/embedcode/classic-10_7.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">\n<style type="text/css">\n #mc_embed_signup{clear:left;}\n /* Add your own Mailchimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block.\n We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */\n \t\t #mc_embed_signup .button { background-color: green; }\n</style>\n<div id="mc_embed_signup">\n<form action="https://maxwelljoslyn.us17.list-manage.com/subscribe/post?u=a4f320c858eb89641f87a7bf1&id=8c49f38e34" method="post" id="mc-embedded-subscribe-form" name="mc-embedded-subscribe-form" class="validate" target="_blank" novalidate="">\n <div id="mc_embed_signup_scroll">\n <h2>Subscribe to The Drongo</h2>\n All fields required.\n<div class="mc-field-group">\n <label for="mce-EMAIL">Email Address </label>\n <input type="email" value="" name="EMAIL" class="required email" id="mce-EMAIL">\n</div>\n<div class="mc-field-group">\n <label for="mce-FNAME">First Name </label>\n <input type="text" value="" name="FNAME" class="required" id="mce-FNAME">\n</div>\n<div class="mc-field-group">\n <label for="mce-LNAME">Last Name(s) </label>\n <input type="text" value="" name="LNAME" class="required" id="mce-LNAME">\n</div>\n<div class="mc-field-group input-group">\n Desire for an Interview \n <ul><li><input type="radio" value="1" name="group[9090]" id="mce-group[9090]-9090-0"><label for="mce-group[9090]-9090-0">Interested in being interviewed</label></li>\n<li><input type="radio" value="2" name="group[9090]" id="mce-group[9090]-9090-1"><label for="mce-group[9090]-9090-1">Not interested in being interviewed</label></li>\n</ul>\n</div>\n <div id="mce-responses" class="clear">\n \t<div class="response" id="mce-error-response" style="display:none"></div>\n \t<div class="response" id="mce-success-response" style="display:none"></div>\n </div> \n <div style="position: absolute; left: -5000px;" aria-hidden="true"><input type="text" name="b_a4f320c858eb89641f87a7bf1_8c49f38e34" tabindex="-1" value=""></div>\n <div class="clear"><input type="submit" value="Subscribe" name="subscribe" id="mc-embedded-subscribe" class="button"></div>\n </div>\n</form>\n</div>\n\n</details>\n</div>\n<div class="center"><img src="/static/thedrongo/larry-drui.jpg"></div>\nThe Drongo: This issue\'s interview guest is Larry Drui, a multi-talented performer and playwright who always has something intriguing to say. Tell us about yourself, Larry.\nLarry Drui: Originally born and raised in Hawai\'i, in 2012 I moved to Portland, OR, to pursue a theater degree at Reed College. I am hapa (half-Japanese, half-white.) I tend to make spreadsheets about craft beer, and I also have a penchant for wordplay.\nI am the one who eats the bagels. If you, too, are the one who eats the bagels, then I think we will have many pleasant exchanges.\nThe Drongo: I make good use of my racial bonus to bagel-eating, and I expect this interview will be one hell of a pleasant exchange. I brought you this:\n<figure class=center>\n<img src=/static/thedrongo/bagel.jpg>\n<figcaption>Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/@phototastyfood">David Fedulov</a></figcaption>\n</figure>\nThe Drongo: Larry, you\'re a natural organizer. I know firsthand that you govern your videogame play schedule with a color-coded spreadsheet, and now you tell us you\'ve got a beer spreadsheet, too.\nWhy?\nLarry Drui: I\'ve always enjoyed organizing and planning things! It\'s one of many methods I use to not only ground myself, but also quell my Anxiety™ and occupy my time. It\'s comforting to me to be able to organize the world around me, to consolidate key information to function more efficiently, and to maintain order when my mental health does not normally permit me to do so.\nTo get midkey poetic here for a second, it is a constant struggle against -- but also a tacit acknowledgement of -- the natural entropy of the universe.\nThe Drongo: Would you share with us your entropy-fighting hobby spreadsheets? Ideally, the videogames one.\nLarry Drui: I have not updated my videogame spreadsheet since ... before I composed a single word of my senior thesis [editor\'s note: i.e. since late 2015.]\nHowever! I have more recently been updating a spreadsheet of television shows that I intend on watching. It is one of my most colorful spreadsheets to date.\nThe Drongo: Let \'er rip.\nLarry Drui: Please excuse any errors or oversights if some of the data is no longer accurate; I can only update it so frequently.\n<figure class=center>\n<img src=/static/thedrongo/tv-planner-table1.png>\n<figcaption>Larry\'s spreadsheet has several tables; this one tracks TV shows with episode lengths below 15 minutes or above 60 minutes.\nColors are applied on the basis of the "Total Time" column. Green means "doable," yellow means "this might take a while," red means "this will definitely take a while," and gray (not shown) means "do not attempt."</figcaption>\n</figure>\nThe Drongo: The "Quantified Self" community is formed of people who track all kinds of personal activities to learn more about their own lives and habits. You haven\'t used that particular term to describe your data-management practice, but this kind of spreadsheet makes you that kind of person.\nSince your kooky creativity comes out even in the meta-hobby of managing and analyzing other hobbies, it\'s no surprise that you\'ve done a lot of artistic work. You\'ve performed as a dancer, an actor, and a voice-over artist. You\'ve also written plays.\nWhat is it about each of these art forms that inspires your creativity, and how have you expressed yourself through them?\nLarry Drui: That\'s an excellent question! Each form of expression you\'ve listed is very different, but each one has, at its core, a community of people who are trying to communicate and connect with one another.\nI learned an awful lot of dance styles in high school, including ballet, jazz, hip hop, and musical theater. However, I enjoyed tap the most (1) for the way it requires careful coordination and timing of the body, (2) for its focus on a large ensemble, at least in the numbers I performed, and (3) because tap shoes go brrr. Honestly, who among us has watched "Moses Supposes" from Singin\' in the Rain and hasn\'t had gay thoughts?\n<figure class=center>\n<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/P_-TIOVA7-Y" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>\n<figcaption>\nYou be the judge.\n</figcaption>\n</figure>\nLarry Drui: Going back to the origins of the theater, ritual is a quintessential part of performance, and routine and ritual are naturally similar. I very much enjoy the theatrical routine of rehearsing and rehearsing, then finally all coming together to share, with an audience, the collective experience of months of hard work. The same is equally true for voice acting, although voice acting has a much higher emphasis on cadence and rhythm, given the inability to use the body for visual cues.\nFinally, writing is something I very much enjoy, but let\'s be real: it\'s just a cleverly disguised ruse to be able to make people listen to my shitty puns. Did you know I once wrote an entire play about corn puns called Prop Corn? It was very ... cheesy.\nThe Drongo: I did not know that, but it\'s exactly what I\'d expect from you.\nBy the way, readers: Larry agreed to share part of a play with The Drongo. Read an excerpt from the script of Call to Me at the link below, and see for yourself how Larry writes for the stage.\n<div class=center><a href=/static/thedrongo/call-to-me.pdf download>Download Call to Me excerpt (PDF, 2 pages)</a></div>\nLarry, do you perceive any connection between your continual involvement in theater and dance, and your penchant for computer gaming?\nLarry Drui: Other than the fact that I played Pokemon Blue on an emulator during a dress rehearsal, not a whole lot. Well, I mean, my dance training definitely helps with rhythm games. I haven\'t played Dance Dance Revolution in well over a decade, but I will kick anyone\'s ass -- hell, even my own ass -- at it. (ง\'̀-\'́)ง(ง\'̀-\'́)ง Fite me in an Applebee\'s parking lot (ง\'̀-\'́)ง(ง\'̀-\'́)ง\nThe Drongo: Somehow I feel that would violate your terms of employment, but I\'ll defer to your intimate knowledge of the IRS Employee Manual.\nSpeaking of which: most people would consider working for the IRS to be hellaciously boring, but you seem to enjoy it. Is that true? What is your job like, and what makes it worthwhile?\nLarry Drui: It\'s a great place to work! Good pay, fantastic benefits, and a mountain of job security.\nI\'m sure I, or any Reedie you ask, will state that they, to at least some extent, enjoy research. Half of my job is researching accounts: any person who\'s ever filed a tax return has an "account" with the IRS, which is a fancy way of saying that certain events -- like a tax return being filed, or a refund going out, or an adjustment being made -- are recorded on a computer. The other half of the job is customer service, which is a kind of performance!\nI staff the phone lines. When you call up asking about your refund, I\'m the person you get. I have also been trained to answer basic tax law questions (e.g. "Is X type of income taxable?" or "Am I eligible for X?"), schedule appointments at local Taxpayer Assistance Center offices around the country, and assist tax specialists with account questions for their clients.\nI occasionally have to adjust accounts after researching them. For example, say you try to claim a dependent on your return, but the Social Security Number (SSN) you enter is off by a single digit. Until that\'s fixed, the IRS will disallow certain tax benefits on your return. I would be able to correct the transposed digits, and adjust the tax return to regain those benefits.\nThis job is honestly a culmination of all of my past experiences. It allows me to research, and get that li\'l bit of dopamine from Sherlock-ing my way to the correct answer. It also allows me to improvise while finding the best way to communicate information to people while on calls. In fact, I even voluntarily worked a total of 514 hours of overtime last year -- because it\'s so lucrative, and because, luckily, it doesn\'t make me want to bash my head against a wall of dicks & bricks!\nIf any drongos out there need tax assistance , I can\'t promise I can answer your question fully, but I\'ll do my darnedest, so feel free to reach out! (Just don\'t ask where to send your quarterly estimated Drongo payments; that\'s a question better posed to one Maxwell Joslyn.)\nThe Drongo: It seems that you\'ve found a perspective on your job which lets you apply the work ethic and pursuit of excellence which you acquired from theater and dance rehearsals. If that motivates you enough to work 25% more hours than a typical job, I call that points scored for the liberal-arts model of education.\nLet\'s conclude by returning to our starting point: the pleasures of media. Could you please recommend us your favorite art pieces -- perhaps from a medium in which you\'ve performed?\nLarry Drui: One of my favorite audio plays that I had the pleasure of coming across in my thesis research was this radio drama adaptation of Harlan Ellison\'s short story "<a href=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_No_Mouth,_and_I_Must_Scream>I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream</a>." Very elegantly written and brilliantly acted!\n<figure class=center>\n<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/rSwfpVRVWlo" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>\n</figure>\nThe Drongo: Being a fan of the original story, I leaped on your recommendation. What do you know, Harlan Ellison plays the role of the murderous computer AM! That\'s perfect. Don\'t miss this, drongos.\nLarry Drui: As for visual art, I legitimately considered the question for about an hour before I settled on this image.\n<figure class=center>\n<img src=/static/thedrongo/vagania.jpg>\n<figcaption>"Ariel Needs Legs," by Neil Cicierega, Internet artist extraordinaire.</figcaption>\n</figure>\nLarry Drui: Okay, but genuinely, and I mean this with the utmost sincerity: I have not thought about any image more in the past five years of my life than this one. And if that ain\'t art, then light a firecracker in my butthole and call me Amelia Bedelia because I apparently don\'t know what art is.\nThe Drongo: Thank you for putting The Drongo on the hook to publish this little-known masterpiece. Of all the notes on which we might have ended, none could have surpassed the sweetness of Prince Eric\'s flute.\nⵘ ⵗ ⵘ ⵗ ⵘ\nThat\'s all for today! Thanks for being a great sport, Larry, and I hope some Drongo fans get in touch with you after this interview. Readers, you can contact Larry by email at <a href=mailto:scholarry@gmail.com>scholarry@gmail.com</a>.\nIf you liked this interview, please share it on social media:\n<code><a href="https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/thedrongo/interviews/larry-drui">https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/thedrongo/interviews/larry-drui</a></code>\nNext month, join The Drongo for our ninth interview. You\'ll meet one <a href=/thedrongo/interviews/alexi-caracotsios>Alexi Caracotsios</a>, a polyglot who\'s studied Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Kyrghyz, and Uyghur as part of a quest to experience life to the fullest.\n'}], 'name': ['The Drongo, Interview #8: Larry Drui'], 'category': ['drongo', 'newsletter', 'interview', 'theater', 'gaming', 'dance'], 'channel': ['thedrongo'], 'slug': ['interviews/larry-drui'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2021/04/30/rt', '/thedrongo/interviews/larry-drui'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['The Drongo, Interview #7: Ryan Wright'], 'og-image': ['https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/static/thedrongo/ryan-wright.jpg'], 'published': [DateTime(2021, 4, 15, 15, 0, 2, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': '<div class="center">\n<details>\n<summary>Receive new interviews twice a month. Subscribe to The Drongo for free!</summary>\n\n<link href="//cdn-images.mailchimp.com/embedcode/classic-10_7.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">\n<style type="text/css">\n #mc_embed_signup{clear:left;}\n /* Add your own Mailchimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block.\n We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */\n \t\t #mc_embed_signup .button { background-color: green; }\n</style>\n<div id="mc_embed_signup">\n<form action="https://maxwelljoslyn.us17.list-manage.com/subscribe/post?u=a4f320c858eb89641f87a7bf1&id=8c49f38e34" method="post" id="mc-embedded-subscribe-form" name="mc-embedded-subscribe-form" class="validate" target="_blank" novalidate="">\n <div id="mc_embed_signup_scroll">\n <h2>Subscribe to The Drongo</h2>\n All fields required.\n<div class="mc-field-group">\n <label for="mce-EMAIL">Email Address </label>\n <input type="email" value="" name="EMAIL" class="required email" id="mce-EMAIL">\n</div>\n<div class="mc-field-group">\n <label for="mce-FNAME">First Name </label>\n <input type="text" value="" name="FNAME" class="required" id="mce-FNAME">\n</div>\n<div class="mc-field-group">\n <label for="mce-LNAME">Last Name(s) </label>\n <input type="text" value="" name="LNAME" class="required" id="mce-LNAME">\n</div>\n<div class="mc-field-group input-group">\n Desire for an Interview \n <ul><li><input type="radio" value="1" name="group[9090]" id="mce-group[9090]-9090-0"><label for="mce-group[9090]-9090-0">Interested in being interviewed</label></li>\n<li><input type="radio" value="2" name="group[9090]" id="mce-group[9090]-9090-1"><label for="mce-group[9090]-9090-1">Not interested in being interviewed</label></li>\n</ul>\n</div>\n <div id="mce-responses" class="clear">\n \t<div class="response" id="mce-error-response" style="display:none"></div>\n \t<div class="response" id="mce-success-response" style="display:none"></div>\n </div> \n <div style="position: absolute; left: -5000px;" aria-hidden="true"><input type="text" name="b_a4f320c858eb89641f87a7bf1_8c49f38e34" tabindex="-1" value=""></div>\n <div class="clear"><input type="submit" value="Subscribe" name="subscribe" id="mc-embedded-subscribe" class="button"></div>\n </div>\n</form>\n</div>\n\n</details>\n</div>\n\n<div class="center"><img src="/static/thedrongo/ryan-wright.jpg"></div>\n\nThe Drongo: Today on The Drongo, we\'re speaking with Ryan Wright on game studies, game development, love and relationships, and more.\nRyan Wright: Hi drongos, I\'m Ryan! I\'ve lived in Los Angeles, Portland (Oregon), the California Bay Area, and Copenhagen. I like partner dancing (when not in a pandemic), tai chi, and my tripod dog named Lincoln.\n<figure class=center>\n<img src=/static/thedrongo/lincoln.jpg>\n</figure>\nI\'m an independent videogame developer who also does academic research on games. I write about the aesthetics of interaction and play using phenomenological theory and existentialist philosophy. If you want to know how the hell those things fit together, check out my <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=rn6AwbEAAAAJ&hl=en">Google Scholar</a> page.\nThe Drongo: Any readers who want to dive into your Google Scholar citations will get a good preview during today\'s discussion of your work in games.\nRyan, you\'re currently working full time on Forgotten, a videogame which you originally prototyped as a master\'s project at ITU Copenhagen. The game imparts a first-hand experience of suffering from Alzheimer\'s disease. Could you please give us an overview of Forgotten\'s gameplay?\n<figure class=center>\n<img src=/static/thedrongo/forgotten-logo.png>\n</figure>\nRyan Wright: Forgotten is a 3D exploration game (colloquially, a \'walking simulator\'), meaning you walk around and explore an environment while a story unfolds. The central conceit of the game is experiencing, from a first-person perspective, a few days in the life of a woman with Alzheimer\'s disease, and the effects of this disease on your relationships with your family members.\n<figure class=center>\n<img src=/static/thedrongo/forgotten-pitch-shot-2.jpg>\n</figure>\nWe made a short prototype in school that used unsettling design techniques to produce a cognitive dissonance in the player that we imagine is analogous to some of what people with Alzheimer\'s experience. Early on you might put an object down somewhere, only to find it\'s not where you remember leaving it, while later in the game you might think you\'re alone in your house, only to suddenly hear your daughter in the other room talking to you. Your symptoms get worse as the game progresses.\nWe try to emulate the experience of having gaps in your perception of time, and use the language of videogames to give players the sense of lost agency. It\'s an empathy-cultivating experience.\nThe game was endorsed by Alzheimer Foreningen, a Danish organization for helping folks in Copenhagen learn to take care of loved ones with dementia. We were later nominated for Best Student Game at the Independent Games Festival 2020, though we sadly couldn\'t participate in the live March 2020 showcase because ... well, something else happened instead in March 2020.\nThe Drongo: Luckily, the showcase nomination wasn\'t the last bit of good news for your team. In November 2020, the Danish Film Institute awarded the Forgotten team an $80,000 grant to turn your prototype into a full gameplay demo.\nCongratulations on your achievement! How have you been using the funds, and how does it feel to receive institutional recognition for your hard work?\nRyan Wright: We\'re extremely thrilled that Forgotten\'s managed to earn us this first round of funding, and have been humbled by how many people reached out to us to say that the game made them reflect on personal experiences with dementia in their family. We used the funds to start up a Copenhagen-based game company called Autoscopia Interactive.\n<figure class=center>\n<img src=/static/thedrongo/forgotten-team.jpg>\n<figcaption>Forgotten\'s creators: Marlène, Jordy, Ryan, and Daniel. Pardon my goofy collage.</figcaption></figure>\nAutoscopia is a team of four turning Forgotten into the full experience we originally imagined it could be, and we want to bring the game to a wider audience. The funds go to employing ourselves (so we can pay rent), buying equipment, marketing, playtesting, and hiring folks to help us with specialized development tasks like sound design.\nThis round of funding lends us 6 months\' worth of time to make a "vertical slice" of final game content, meaning we expect to make a demo that showcases our new art style, new strategies for emulating dementia symptoms, and a full story centered on a mother and her daughter-turned-caretaker.\nHopefully by the end of these 6 months we\'ll have more funding to keep working full time on this.\nThe Drongo: Can we play the prototype?\nRyan Wright: You can download the original prototype (or follow along with development) at <a href=http://forgotten-game.com>the official website</a>.\nThe Drongo: Go try Forgotten, everyone. It\'s worth your time, even at this early stage.\nLet\'s talk academics, so our readers can learn how you came to work on such a game. The field in which you did your master\'s research is called game studies. What exactly is game studies, and how does that field of inquiry tie in with game design, game programming, or literary theory?\nRyan Wright: Wow, where do I start? Game studies is a diverse niche of media studies focused on videogames, interactive fiction, game AI, and virtual environments. A lot of game research is psychology- and design-adjacent, so research on games for learning, or on how different kinds of games impact their players\' mental health, are very prevalent.\nThere are also parts of the field dedicated to researching the cultural impact of games. For instance, there\'s a lot of really interesting work being done right now on how queer online communities evolve around games, in part because role-playing videogames facilitate play with one\'s sense of gender and other facets of identity. Some people find that these experiences teach them something deeper about themselves.\nOf course, there\'s also straight-up design and computer science research exploring game-based AI, which might have uses beyond the gaming market. The bit of game studies I\'ve published work in is weirder: aesthetic theories of play and interactive art.\nNon-dynamic forms of media, like literature and film, rely on theories about the psychology and aesthetics of narrative to describe their meanings. Games, however, don\'t necessarily need to include any narrative-based aesthetics; instead, they offer first-hand experiences of being in a story world, or of acquiring mastery over a system by tinkering with it. As such, playing games offers players perspectives on themselves and the world from points of view that they probably wouldn\'t have gotten exposed to if they weren\'t part of play.\nAs a designer and researcher, these theories inform my practice. In Russia, the turn of the century brought us a school of formalism that invented film techniques like montage. There\'s a budding analogous school of formalism in game studies that\'s exploring the aesthetic possibilities of interactive media like games.\nWhile videogames are not totally different from previous kinds of media, the part that is new — their configurative and exploratory nature — is the precursor to the kind of virtual media that we\'ll see dominating our future. Developing sophisticated media literacy about configurative media requires deep understanding of how games make meaning, how they\'re impacting culture today, and how people internalize the rhetorics and aesthetics of gameplay.\nThe Drongo: Thanks for giving us all a thorough introduction. I\'ll have to follow up our interview by doing some reading in your field.\nRyan Wright: Shameless plug time. I actually work for one of the bigger journals in the field, aptly named <a href=http://gamestudies.org>Game Studies</a>. It\'s online, it\'s free, and we\'ll have a new issue out later this month!\nThe Drongo: Never let it be said that you lack marketing instincts.\nOn top of creating and studying videogames, you have also been the subject of one. It\'s a little-known fact that you starred in <a href="/ryanquest">Ryan Quest</a>, a 2019 videogame by Maxwell Joslyn.\nWhat was your reaction when presented with the game on February 1st of that year? How do you view Ryan Quest two years later?\n<figure class=center>\n<img src=https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/static/ryanquest/portfolio/3.png>\n</figure>\nRyan Wright: Holy crap, that was two years ago? I still tell people that it\'s the best birthday present I\'ve ever gotten, and I mean it. I think it\'s hysterical — quintessential and iconic Max Joslyn humor — and the amount of energy and time that clearly was invested into Ryan Quest makes it extremely meaningful to me.\nEven though I think the caricatured picture it paints of me is something I may have to answer some questions about one day (like if I ever want tenure at a university), I was genuinely touched by the whole thing — especially the warm final lines that unlock if you solve all its mysteries.\nThe Drongo: I shared your kind review with Mr. Joslyn, and he says that you deserve some of the credit for Ryan Quest — for inspiring it, and for "being preposterously prankable."\nscreech\nDo you hear that? Our transition between sections got loose. We\'ll have to make do without it, and go right into our next topic: polyamory.\nIf I understand correctly, your current life, and your plan for the future, is centered on a four-person polyamorous household. You plan to raise children with all four adults as parents. Can you describe your relationship to each person and their relationships to one another?\nRyan Wright: We\'re what you might call a \'Z\' or an \'N\'-shaped \'polycule,\' meaning I date two people (we\'ll call them C and G), and one of them has a husband (J). J and C are married, but J and G aren\'t in a relationship. They\'re best friends though!\nMost of us also have other partners who don\'t live with us, but COVID has complicated seeing them frequently, which has been rough. I was in the wedding party for C & J\'s wedding, and gave a wedding toast and everything. We take care of each other.\nThe Drongo: It takes a tremendous drongo to sail against mainstream romantic norms. What brought you to polyamory? Why does it work for you and yours?\nRyan Wright: Polyamory works for me for several reasons, but above all, it has to do with the kind of trust and security I\'ve been able to find in polyamory that I — personally — had trouble finding in monogamy. When I was younger and monogamous, my relationships felt like they could be easily endangered if one of us met someone else who was particularly compelling.\nI was often jealous, anxious, and found trust hard to cultivate if I didn\'t feel like my partner was being fully honest with me about what they were thinking and feeling — particularly when it came to how they felt about other people. I\'ve always been someone who really wants people to tell me what they think and how they feel, even if it hurts my feelings, because at least then I know. Even knowing bad news can be a comfort compared to whatever horrible stuff I concoct on my own when I\'m in a bad headspace and speculating.\nWhen I was in my early 20s, I started recognizing some contradictions between my thoughts and my lifestyle, which ate away at me over the years. I realized that it actually was never my partner\'s attraction to other people that scared me; it was that they might not be telling me important information about how they really felt. Also, feeling connected or called toward more than one person at a time seemed extremely normal for me, and I ended up in situations where there was more than one \'right\' person for me to be with at one time — more than one person who would challenge me to grow in ways that felt important. I never felt like there was anything morally wrong about that because we don\'t have full control over our feelings. The heart wants what it wants.\nAt Reed College (where Max and I met), non-monogamy was pretty common, and I met someone who was living a polyamorous lifestyle that was causing them to grow in ways I found extremely inviting. While there are a million ways to do non-monogamy (and a lot of them really don\'t work for me), I found that those practicing "non-hierarchical non-monogamy," or "kitchen-table poly," offered me the most security and comfort — and in my experience, the least drama.\nThe ideal in this setup is that you\'re basically friendly with your metamours — people who your partners date — and maybe you\'re even proper friends independent of your common partner. It\'s important for me to be able to have difficult one-on-one conversations about feelings with my metamours. In turn, I do my best to hold a lot of emotional space for them.\nI had some good luck finding C, and being very supported by C and J when I was new to polyamory and was really intimidated by their pre-existing relationship. I was always treated as someone whose feelings and needs were as valuable as everyone else\'s in the relationship network, and that was a very special kind of security.\nI feel calmer having this kind of openness in my relationships. Before, I often wondered if my monogamous partners really wanted to keep dating me as time went by, or if they merely felt obligated to do so even as other people entered their lives. In my current relationship dynamic, I\'ll always know that my partners actually choose to continue being with me every day, and I them. Should we ever drift apart, it will be because of some reason internal to our dynamic, and not for some outside reason, like one of us meeting someone else who became important to us.\nI feel challenged to grow into my best self through this kind of non-monogamy. I need to have a lot of patience, clear communication practices, hyper-awareness of my needs and feelings, and a lot of patience and compassion for my metamours, who ordinarily would seem like a major existential threat to my relationships.\nFurthermore, finding the self-confidence to believe I\'m worthy enough for my relationships, even though my partners have other partners, has done wonders for me. We all take care of each other as a community, and I basically think this way of doing things is really sustainable for me.\nThe Drongo: If we had more time for this interview I\'d want to pick your brain about poly philosophies of commitment. Unfortunately, I\'ll have to leave that for another day. Ryan, thanks a million for answering all our questions here at The Drongo.\nRyan Wright: Thanks for this, Max. It\'s really cool to be included in your project. :)\nThe Drongo: You\'re welcome. Ryan was savvy enough to sprinkle his professional links into his answers, but here\'s all his contact information in one place for curious readers:\n<ul>\n<li>Email: <a href=mailto:ryan@rcwright.org>ryan@rcwright.org</a></li>\n<li><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=rn6AwbEAAAAJ&hl=en">Google Scholar</a></li>\n<li>Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/RC_Wright">@RC_Wright</a></li>\n<li>Game Studies academic journal: <a href=http://gamestudies.org>gamestudies.org</a></li>\n<li>The Forgotten homepage: <a href=http://forgotten-game.com>forgotten-game.com</a></li>\n</ul>\nIf you liked this interview, please share the link on social media:\n<code><a href="https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/thedrongo/interviews/ryan-wright">https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/thedrongo/interviews/ryan-wright</a></code>\nThanks for reading The Drongo! <a href=/thedrongo/interviews/larry-drui>Our next interview</a>, releasing at the end of April, will be with <a href=/thedrongo/interviews/larry-drui>Larry Drui</a>, who performs multiple forms of dance, writes plays, and loves his job at the IRS. Don\'t miss it!\n'}], 'category': ['drongo', 'newsletter', 'interview', 'gaming'], 'channel': ['thedrongo'], 'slug': ['interviews/ryan-wright'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2021/04/15/bn', '/thedrongo/interviews/ryan-wright'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'og-image': ['https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/static/thedrongo/drew-jackson.jpg'], 'published': [DateTime(2021, 3, 25, 16, 28, 58, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': 'Howdy-ho, wild and wandering drongos! Here comes another issue of the newsletter named for the most fearless freewheelers known to exist.\n<div class="center">\n<details>\n<summary>Receive new interviews twice a month. Subscribe to The Drongo for free!</summary>\n\n<link href="//cdn-images.mailchimp.com/embedcode/classic-10_7.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">\n<style type="text/css">\n #mc_embed_signup{clear:left;}\n /* Add your own Mailchimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block.\n We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */\n</style>\n<div id="mc_embed_signup">\n<form action="https://maxwelljoslyn.us17.list-manage.com/subscribe/post?u=a4f320c858eb89641f87a7bf1&id=8c49f38e34" method="post" id="mc-embedded-subscribe-form" name="mc-embedded-subscribe-form" class="validate" target="_blank" novalidate="">\n <div id="mc_embed_signup_scroll">\n <h2>Subscribe to The Drongo</h2>\n All fields required.\n<div class="mc-field-group">\n <label for="mce-EMAIL">Email Address </label>\n <input type="email" value="" name="EMAIL" class="required email" id="mce-EMAIL">\n</div>\n<div class="mc-field-group">\n <label for="mce-FNAME">First Name </label>\n <input type="text" value="" name="FNAME" class="required" id="mce-FNAME">\n</div>\n<div class="mc-field-group">\n <label for="mce-LNAME">Last Name(s) </label>\n <input type="text" value="" name="LNAME" class="required" id="mce-LNAME">\n</div>\n<div class="mc-field-group input-group">\n Desire for an Interview \n <ul><li><input type="radio" value="1" name="group[9090]" id="mce-group[9090]-9090-0"><label for="mce-group[9090]-9090-0">Interested in being interviewed</label></li>\n<li><input type="radio" value="2" name="group[9090]" id="mce-group[9090]-9090-1"><label for="mce-group[9090]-9090-1">Not interested in being interviewed</label></li>\n</ul>\n</div>\n <div id="mce-responses" class="clear">\n \t<div class="response" id="mce-error-response" style="display:none"></div>\n \t<div class="response" id="mce-success-response" style="display:none"></div>\n </div> \n <div style="position: absolute; left: -5000px;" aria-hidden="true"><input type="text" name="b_a4f320c858eb89641f87a7bf1_8c49f38e34" tabindex="-1" value=""></div>\n <div class="clear"><input type="submit" value="Subscribe" name="subscribe" id="mc-embedded-subscribe" class="button"></div>\n </div>\n</form>\n</div>\n\n</details>\n</div>\n<div class="center"><img src="/static/thedrongo/drew-jackson.jpg"></div>\nThe Drongo:\nToday\'s interview guest is Drew Jackson, an old friend from college who\'s as tall (6\'7", ladies!) as he is taken (sorry, ladies!) I\'ve convinced him to spill vast torrents of beans on everything from working in academic libraries to early modern nation-states. Listen carefully: here comes Drew!\nDrew Jackson:\nHi, I\'m Drew! I currently live in Portland, OR, where I work as a manager in the access services department of a university library. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area before moving to Portland to attend Reed College, where I majored in History.\nI’m currently pursuing my master\'s degree in Library and Information Science at the University of Washington, through their online program. When I’m not studying or shuffling books around at work, I love to play games with my friends and bang around on the guitar and bass.\nThe Drongo: Drew, it\'s great to have you here. I recall a conversation we had in Portland, in which you said librarianship was enjoyable, and had decent career prospects, but did not rise to the level of a passion. With your degree in library science underway, has that opinion changed? Why or why not?\nDrew Jackson: That\'s a really interesting question – the answer is yes and no. There are aspects of library work that I am passionate about: big things like access to information, information literacy, and making the field more equitable, and small things like helping connect a user to that one resource they really need. That last one especially is what drives me. Working with a student to help them find the articles they need to make their research paper click – watching them get excited about their topic as you tease out their thesis and what they\'re actually asking – is a singularly gratifying experience.\nThat said, there are aspects of library work (and librarianship specifically) that don\'t exactly reach the levels of passion. "Librarianship" itself as a concept basically exists only to gatekeep (though saying that will piss off a lot of librarians).\nFor those that don\'t know, in libraries there are basically two categories of employee: librarians and staff (also sometimes called professionals and paraprofessionals.) Librarians tend to be department heads; in academic libraries, my field, they are often granted tenure-track positions and can teach classes. Staff do everything else, from staffing the front desk to administrative tasks to purchasing and cataloging books (though in some libraries librarians will do this as well.) Already one problem with this presents itself: how is a position like the head of the circulation desk (the front desk in the library that checks books in and out, and often is responsible for all day-to-day operations) "para" professional? They are not an assistant to a librarian, and often have a much better idea of what it takes to actually keep the place running than a new librarian fresh out of grad school (who makes 1.5-2x what the circ manager does.)\nWell, the answer is that that librarian has a master\'s degree in library and/or information science (MLIS), which is basically required to advance above a certain level in libraries (financially, that level is ~$40,000-$50,000/year.) It is possible to become a librarian without an MLIS, but it usually requires a decade-plus of experience, and you still might lose out to some 26-year-old with a brand-new master\'s. This presents a pretty clear issue: those who can afford to go to graduate school get slotted into the positions where they make more money, and those who cannot afford it are put into positions where they make less money, thus reinforcing class divisions. Pair this with the fact that librarianship is OVERWHELMINGLY white and, well, you get the idea. (This is not to say that the MLIS is entirely useless, but I would trust one of my student workers with 3 years of library experience over a freshly-degreed librarian to run the place.)\nWow, what a digression. This is one of the things that makes it hard to be passionate about the field, and something that contributes to this culture of whiteness that is present in libraries overall (many libraries are working to counter this and make our field more welcoming to everyone, but that work is slow and meets a lot of resistance.) A less big-picture thing is that the day-to-day can be uninteresting; I spend a lot less time working with students face-to-face than I\'d like, and a lot more time in various committee and policy meetings (libraries love committees and policy.)\nSo, uh, short answer: yes and no.\nThe Drongo What aspect of library science do you wish more outsiders knew about?\nDrew Jackson: Besides that whole discursion in the previous section, I wish more people knew what actually went on in libraries, and what library workers actually do. I think a lot of people think that libraries are these stuffy, dusty towers packed with tomes that no one is allowed to touch. Some libraries might still be this way, but the vast majority have changed in the last century.\nIncreasingly, libraries are hubs, not repositories. When the ongoing global pandemic is done, go check out a library makerspace and learn how to use a 3D printer! See if your local library has a "library of things," and check out a board game, or even some power tools! Many libraries now offer streaming services so you can watch movies for free with your library card! Libraries are constantly innovating – take advantage of it.\nBehind the scenes, library workers are constantly fighting for user privacy (increasingly an uphill battle), working to decolonize collections and curricula, and trying to counter increasingly strict and costly licensing norms in order to ensure equitable access to information. Ever wonder why you need to "check out" e-books, or why there are limited copies? The publisher limits the amount of simultaneous users each e-book can have so that the library needs to either purchase more than one, or shell out a ton of money for an unlimited simultaneous-user copy. It sucks, and your library workers are trying to fight it!\nThe Drongo: "Suck" isn\'t strong enough, Drew. Coming from the computers side of things, it\'s beyond frustrating to see the norms of the print publishing industry being copied for digital texts with fundamentally different distribution characteristics, such as zero-marginal-cost reproduction. I can only hope that collaborations between technologists and librarians continue to bear fruit; the Internet Archive, which backs up the whole Web and digitizes a lot of the world\'s literature, is a prominent success story in that area.\nFor now, let\'s move on to something with a little more joy in it. What was your thesis topic for your BA in History?\nDrew Jackson: My title was London\'s Burning: Riots and the State in Early Modern London (yes, I regret starting and ending with "London," but I wanted to include the Clash reference.) In the early modern period (~1500-1800), London was infamous for its high volume of riots. The people of the city were incredibly ready and eager to take to the streets for all manner of grievances, for a lot of social and political reasons.\nThe formation of what we recognize as modern state entities is what marks the early modern period in Europe. I examined the interplay between that culture of collective action and the process of state formation, using the Weberian lens on violence and statehood under which only the state can enact legitimate violence (that legitimacy is key here.) Are riots, a form of collective violence, considered a socially legitimate expression of power? That is, even if illegal, does society largely treat it as an acceptable form of action? Is the state\'s response legitimate? How do the answers to those two questions change and butt up against each other as we progress through the early modern period in England?\nAll these questions and more, poorly answered in about 100 pages!\nThe Drongo: I\'m sure it wasn\'t all that bad, Drew, but perhaps you\'ll have an opportunity to revenge yourself on history with a paper or two during your remaining graduate studies.\nI sense an opportunity to test your historical knowledge in a most drongular way. Suppose I cursed you to live in the past. Assuming you were able to live to old age in relative peace, to what place and time period would you most like to be banished, and why?\nDrew Jackson: As absolutely ass-garbage as our world is right now, I genuinely think that the 21st century is probably the best time to be alive. A lot of the problems we have now (rampant racism on a global scale, climate change, a wealthy ruling elite who don\'t care about us, etc.) have been true throughout history, but back then there were no TVs or refrigerators, and you were way more likely to be stabbed by some guy while just out doing errands or whatever.\nThat said, as a white dude my options for temporal banishment are alright. I think I would probably pick pre-Revolution 18th-century France. I think I could really fit in with the effete, fainting-couch, salon-going bourgeoisie of the mid-1700s Paris of my imagination. See some good art, eat some nice foods, poop in a chamber pot, retire to the countryside. Not bad, but I would definitely miss watching anime.\nThe Drongo: Ah, but just imagine the possibilities, Drew. If you brought a collection of carefully-prepared transparencies, you could introduce anime to Europe hundreds of years early!\n<figure class=center>\n<img src=/static/neon-genesis-evangelion-asuka.jpg>\n<figcaption>You see this, 1700s Parisian bourgeoisie? You know nothing of culture.</figcaption>\n</figure>\nThe Drongo: My sources tell me you enjoy games of all kinds. What are your favorite categories: Eurogames, RTS, shooters, puzzlers?\nDrew Jackson: I like a lot of different kinds of games. I enjoy some shooters like the Halo games (90% nostalgia) and Titanfall (because of the big robots) and puzzle games, but my true loves are boring video games that are mostly menus, sprawling tabletop strategy games that take forever to learn, and tabletop roleplaying games with very few rules.\nThe first two are beloved for similar reasons. I find that once you are able to crack big, obtuse games, you can really make them sing and get experiences that no other game will provide. I think both of these qualities, the difficulty to learn and the emergent narrative, are due to the fact that games like this contain so many overlapping systems.\nMy favorite example of these are the Crusader Kings games, which simulate medieval European politics. Once I was playing as a relatively inconsequential duchy in Italy and somehow, purely by accident, ended up inheriting all of the Empire of Lombardy, comprising all of Italy. Normally this would be great, if a pain to manage, but my character had the "homosexual" trait, which a lot of 12th-century feudal lords aren\'t crazy about. Suddenly all of these Italian nobles have a new, young, unqualified, gay emperor who they HATE. And what does my character do? He decides to have an affair with the wife of his vassal who hates him the MOST (so much so that he declared me, the emperor, his "rival.") Yeah, my gay emperor character slept with this guy\'s wife, who he wasn\'t even attracted to, mechanically! Not only that, the emperor then had ten illegitimate children with her. Ten!\nEventually this vassal challenges the emperor to a duel, after trying and failing to assassinate me a handful of times … and loses! Poor guy. The succession struggle that followed after the emperor died was a nightmare, since I had legitimated all of those children born of my affair just to really rub it in. Great game.\nIn the complete opposite direction, I love tabletop roleplaying games that have basically no rules. In my video games, I like seeing what story can be generated for me through my inputs into these crazy systems, but in RPGs I love creating a story collaboratively with my friends as we\'re guided by the game\'s systems. There\'s this sweet spot where the intentionality of each player making decisions that they think are interesting for their character or for the world (not optimal, but interesting) interacts with the randomness of the game system. It leads to story beats that no one person at the table planned for, but that everyone had a hand in creating, and I think that\'s beautiful!\nThe Drongo: Have you tried your hand at game design in any capacity?\nDrew Jackson: Sort of! Nothing with video games, as I am not very computer savvy, and coding absolutely makes my head spin. However, good friend and fellow Drongo subscriber Matt Unger and I have been working off-and-on on our own homebrew RPG system for a while now. We\'re taking the "Powered by the Apocalypse" system (used in games like Apocalypse World and Dungeon World) and adapting it for use in a setting inspired by mecha anime, drawing on our shared love of things like Mobile Suit Gundam, Super Dimension Fortress Macross, and Gurren Lagann. It\'s been a really fun process!\nThe Drongo: You\'ve sent giant robots are dancing through my head on impossibly tiny rocket feet. It\'s almost too good to be true, and it\'s all thanks to you.\nThe robots are now doing a synchronized routine to The Drongo\'s official outro music. We\'ve reached the freeform response zone. Perhaps you\'d like to ask and answer your own questions? submit a recording entitled "Banging on the Bass?" draw something? write erotic fiction about your workplace?\nDrew Jackson: I wanted to write and perform "Banging on the Bass," but unfortunately ran out of time. Maybe that can feature in a future issue of The Drongo?\nThe Drongo: Certainly! Don\'t hesitate to send it in.\nDrew Jackson: For now, I\'ll answer my own question inspired by a recent conversation: WHO ARE YOUR TOP 3 WIZARDS?\n<ol>\n<li>Gandalf (The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings.) A real wizard\'s wizard. Staff? Check. Big hat? Check. Beard? Absolutely. Rolls around dispensing wisdom, smoking, setting off fireworks – but do not mistake him for some conjurer of cheap tricks! He can also make bright lights, fling people around, and fight with sword good. I like that he lets others be the main characters, but is still instrumental in completing the quest. That\'s a good wizard! Also he\'s a literal, actual angel (or angel equivalent) which counts for a lot.</li>\n<li>Ben Kenobi (Star Wars.) All versions of Obi-Wan Kenobi are good, but my #2 wizard is specifically the Ben Kenobi that hangs out in the desert watching over Luke from afar. He\'s both wise and vague/cagey about great truths, which are great traits for a wizard. Don\'t think he counts as a wizard? At one point Uncle Owen says, "That wizard\'s just a crazy old man."</li>\n<li>Howl (Howl\'s Moving Castle.) Very attractive wizard. Also he can turn into a big bird monster, which rules.</li>\n</ol>\nThe Drongo: scribbles notes A classic wizard list to be sure. I\'m partial to the Jack Vance wizards, like Mazirian the Magician or Rhiallto the Marvelous. Nothing says "wizard" like cloning creatures in vats, memorizing spells like the Excellent Prismatic Spray and Phandaal\'s Gyrator, and lusting after IOUN stones.\nThat\'ll have to be the end of our interview. I hope you found participating in this interview to have been even half as fun as designing RPGs and thinking about wizards.\nReaders and subscribers, Drew is ready for your emails at <a href=mailto:drew.mcjackson@gmail.com>drew.mcjackson@gmail.com</a>. He\'s "not very active on social media," but you can also follow him on Instagram (<a href=https://instagram.com/therealdrewjackson>@therealdrewjackson</a>) or Twitter (<a href=https://twitter.com/librarybimbo>@librarybimbo</a>).\nⵘ ⵗ ⵘ ⵗ ⵘ\nIf you liked this interview from The Drongo, <a href=/thedrongo/subscribe>please subscribe</a> if you haven\'t, and share this page on social media:\n<code><a href="https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/thedrongo/interviews/drew-jackson">https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/thedrongo/interviews/drew-jackson</a></code>\nThe Drongo will next appear in mid-April, bringing you all <a href=/thedrongo/interviews/ryan-wright>an interview with Ryan Wright</a>, game studies researcher and star of <a href=/ryanquest>Ryan Quest</a>!\n'}], 'name': ['The Drongo, Interview #6: Drew Jackson'], 'category': ['drongo', 'newsletter', 'interview', 'librarian'], 'channel': ['thedrongo'], 'slug': ['interviews/drew-jackson'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2021/03/25/dk', '/thedrongo/interviews/drew-jackson'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'published': [DateTime(2021, 3, 24, 17, 23, 12, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'name': ["Let's Homebrew that Website"], 'updated': [DateTime(2021, 3, 26, 0, 48, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': '<data class="p-rsvp" value="yes"></data>\nHere comes another <a class=u-in-reply-to href=https://events.indieweb.org/2021/03/homebrew-website-club-the-americas-zJpjozpYpj42>Homebrew Website Club</a>. Join us for discussion of websites, blogging, owning your personal data, open protocols, and more!\nEDIT: An after-action report.\nHWC is always scheduled to run for 90 minutes; in practice, we typically run to about two hours of discussion.\nTonight, though? We broke two hours. We broke three hours. We broke four hours.\nBy the time Angelo, Kartik, Ben, and I called it quits -- the last four stragglers from a peak of 11 participants -- this evening\'s club ran to five hours and forty-five minutes. Surely that\'s a record! And we loved every bit of it.\n'}], 'category': ['indieweb'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2021/03/25/4y', '/2021/03/24/2'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'published': [DateTime(2021, 3, 24, 17, 8, 31, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'name': ['Some Topic Proposals for HWC Americas'], 'content': [{'html': "<a href=https://events.indieweb.org/2021/03/homebrew-website-club-the-americas-zJpjozpYpj42>In preparation for Homebrew Website Club.</a>\n<ol>\n<li>How can we encourage tool/solution reuse between individual IndieWeb sites, without building more hosted services?\nIt seems to me that many IndieWeb participants, especially those starting out, end up either (a) relying on <a href=https://indieweb.org/single_point_of_aaron>Single Point of Aaron</a> services or (b) building their own solutions for every aspect of the IndieWeb "stack" (Webmention, Micropub, a posting interface, etc.) This problem could be addressed with a stronger culture of developing reusable libraries for IW tasks, but turning your own code into a library usable by others isn't always easy.\n</li>\n<li>What are the pros, cons, use cases, and UX considerations of doing real-time chat on your web site (such as communicating with visitors) or via your web site (such as with a hypothetical "chat-message" post type that syndicates to IRC or Discord?)\n</li>\n</ol>\n"}], 'category': ['indieweb'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2021/03/25/ha', '/2021/03/24/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Letter to h0p3 about Hands, Interviews, and Software Stupidity'], 'published': [DateTime(2021, 3, 19, 11, 45, 32, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': '<a class=u-in-reply-to href="https://philosopher.life/#2021.03.15%20-%20MJos%3A%20%E2%97%89%20%CD%9F%CA%96%20%E2%97%89">h0p3</a>,\nI didn\'t expect to write you another letter so soon, but my mind kept piling up phrases which I could tell were destined only for you.\nI have continued to spelunk your wiki. Your turns of phrase give me unceasing enjoyment; it would be clear from your diction alone - if it were not already clear from all of the philosophy that wrestle with - that you are deeply immersed in language. I must also note that I adore your term of art "Fireman Time." I often wake up to find I have unconsciously summoned a monster into attack mode. Yu-Gi-Ohhhhhh...\nI am pleased to hear that you <q>thoroughly enjoyed</q> Wizards. I think it\'s worth a watch -- barely -- for the art style, and for the unbeatable joke at the very end, but that\'s about it. Bakshi\'s other well-known movie, Fritz the Cat, is, I think, a bit more worth one\'s time -- but still, more to marvel at the fact that it exists than for quality in and of itself. I must confess that the connection I saw between "h0p3" and "Peace" was merely linguistic: two mononyms based on abstract concepts. Plus, there is something to the mental image of you as a colorful robot mounted on a mutant donkey.\nRegarding carpal tunnel: the shots are essentially free -- the doctor gave me the first round as a matter of course during the appointment where I got my diagnosis -- but after the first dose they fall off in effectiveness. The first dose can last anywhere from three to ten months (depending on the severity of the underlying condition), while the second dose might scarcely last at all (if the first dose wore off after a few months) or might give another half year of relief (in the happier cases.)\nRegarding equipment: I have tried the same Anker (no, not "honker," dictation program. If I had a honker mouse I\'d never take my hands off it) vertical mouse that you have, and found it wanting. It put my hand at an awkward angle. Happily, a trackball is proving to be an acceptable pointing device. To your question about keyboards: I have indeed tried a variety. I used a Kinesis Advantage for a long time, and when the stars aligned and I got my sitting position just right at my old apartment, I could type on that fluidly with no problems. But that was two years ago or more, and in living spaces since then, with shittier chairs and desks, and with new and shittier carpal symptoms manifesting, I could not get the Kinesis to do me justice. Instead, it would hurt my wrists.\nI\'m now using an Ergodox something-or-other, but I don\'t like it either. The keys are spaced too closely together for me, or my hands are too big, and there are these extra keys arrayed around the normal keys, which are so easy to hit on accident. I\'d like to experiment with something like the Datahand, or with a vertical keyboard, or with mounting my Ergodox vertically if I could find suitable camera-tripod-type equipment.) I also wish I could get someone to make a keyboard that was a custom fit for me; I would happily pay double or triple the price of even a fancy keyboard like Kinesis or Ergodox. But I must acknowledge that I\'m not the best typist. I think my problems and pains have been exacerbated by rushing when I type, and by bad sitting posture.\nRegarding speech to text: the programs I\'ve tried have been poor in accuracy, slow to take input, and slow to display output, all of which combine to slow my writing to a crawl, or send me sadly back to the devilish keyboard. To tell the truth, neither accuracy nor input/output lag are the worst problem! The worst problem is that none of these speech to text solutions have had any thought at all put into their user interfaces. It\'s such a freaking crime. Otter AI, for instance, which I am using to dictate the first draft of this letter, is so incredibly poorly designed that you cannot even edit the transcript as you go.\nFurthermore, all the dictation products I\'ve tried do too much in attempting to be complete "no-hands" solutions. All of them, all of them, insist on including command functionality which make the computer respond to phrases like "next window" or "open Firefox." But the problem is that none of those apps make command and dictation mode separate, which means that, while dictating a piece of text, the software might all of a sudden hear incorrectly, assume that you\'re issuing a command instead of dictating, and blast you off into some other context, leaving you to wriggle your way back to what you were actually doing, timidly resetting the precious working environment which the software has so mercilessly clobbered. I swear it would be harder to program that mix of dictation and command than just writing the sensible, foolproof, far more user-friendly solution of having two separate hotkeys to hold down, one for dictation and one for commands, with "neither held down" meaning the software won\'t respond at all so you can take a break to talk to yourself, for God\'s sake, while figuring out what you\'re going to say before feeding it to the dictation program.\nInstead I have to put up with idiocy wrought by the death of user testing in software.\nFrustrations like these are compounded by the fact that I am compelled to recombine and invent words and phrases, which activity dictation software, being an electric normie, is not prepared to understand at all. Consider "Yu-Gi-Oh" earlier in this message. At the first utterance, Otter failed to understand it completely -- just gave a blank spot -- and I hand-typed it. The second time, two sentences ago, Otter failed to understand it, then updated the text with the correct word, but hyphenless, and then -- truly irritating -- changed its understanding again, to "ukiyoe." A further failure of hyphenation -- that word is spelled ukiyo-e -- as well as a failure to update the software\'s "priors" based on my previously typing "Yu-Gi-Oh" by hand (before editing it to complete the joke.)\nNotice that at no point is this software attempting to ask my opinion about anything. It\'s too smart. I am always skeptical of solutions that are full automation. I would rather have 80% automation that is completely, utterly reliable, and then 20% human work at the end, rather than an attempt to give 100% automation which actually creates more work.\nChrist. The Otter dictation program is so piss-poor at accuracy that I\'m going to have to edit the shit out of this transcript. If I talk carefully it does pretty well, but as soon as I get a little bit slurred or a little bit slack, it totally shits itself. And again, no attention to user interfaces, no experimentation, no, say, hotkey that I can type to drop a target letter or number on all the words in the just-dictated paragraph for rapid editing of precisely-targeted strings. Ridiculous.\nSo! All this is to say that, on the one hand, there is a ton of ground to be explored here, sort of like how there\'s a ton of ground to be explored in reclaiming the beauty of the top-to-bottom editable, understandable, startable-stoppable Lisp Machine environment. On the other hand it is incredibly, incredibly frustrating to have to try and hack together everything myself when it is already sorely needed, and frankly my Computer Use skill rating is only barely up to the task.\nIt\'s ridiculous. I keep saying that, but it\'s the only thing I can say in the face of dingdongery of this magnitude. There\'s so much ground to be covered in software design, and so little of it being covered. I just saw, for instance, that Substack released an announcement about how chuffed they were to be able to offer the oh-so-novel feature of sending emails to a subset of your subscribers instead of the whole set. Truly, an innovation on par with anything produced by Doug Engelbart.\nRegarding "no hands." You are correct to remind me that I do in fact have them, and that they are high-bandwidth input mechanism. I agree that "no hands" is a mistake outside pure dictation, and I have updated the plan for what I\'m doing to be called "low hands," instead. I aim to build myself a launcher program which can, with one or two keystrokes, get me into the contexts where I would paste text drafted with dictation, then edit it with efficient motions and movements. The launcher program will also be responsible for switching apps, launching websites, adjusting volume, and so on. Yes, there will definitely be re-fabrication of my software ecosystem, but luckily I was already planning on doing that anyway. By the way, the machinery I have planned, the great server-side sausage factory, will also enable me to publicly self-model with more granularity. That excites me. You should h0p3fully be able to see the resulting sausages within one month\'s time.\nRegarding education: yes, I will immerse myself in my degree. I have not yet decided how much I want "low hands" input project to overlap with my schoolwork and research.\nI\'m inclined to say that I only want to solve the problem for myself. It\'s not that I don\'t see it as morally good to provide what I do to others; rather, I think that by its nature, this problem has to be solved by individuals, for individuals. Everyone uses computers differently, and with different apps and operating systems and programming languages and interfaces, and it would be architecture-astronaut folly to try and solve the problem for anyone else before I have solved it very well for myself. Once I\'ve done that, I\'ll try and extract what I can for the benefit of others, similarly to how the Talon voice guy is doing it. It\'s a pity his code is closed source. (I\'ve played around with that program, by the way, and it suffers from the same muddling of command and dictation paradigms. It even has a so-calld "dictation mode," which ought to just be dictation -- yet it still accepts commands, which can still yank you away from your dictation area, so what the fuck is the point?)\nRegarding laying myself down on the wire. I am coming to see my own overarching life project, at least for the next few foreseeable years, as being centered on the use of technology to social ends, and on social activities centering on, or only made possible by, technology. That is why, for instance, I am hosting Homebrew Website Club most weeks. The "host" role for that group has previously been something of a "light touch" role, and at first that\'s how I played it, too, but I am increasingly reaching out to potential new participants, and to lapsed participants, and drawing them into our meetings. If I am to play the host, I\'ll play the part to my own satisfaction and strive to do Homebrew Website Club as good a turn as possible. That\'s one aspect of "laying myself down."\nRegarding an interview. A key point to consider is that the people I\'ve interviewed, or asked to interview, typically don\'t have websites or blogs. The main thrust of The Drongo is to spread thejoy, the fulfillment, the satisfaction of being friendly or acquainted with someone special; as part of that, I\'m giving, to people who are not highly online, a platform to talk about themselves and their life journeys at length. I try my best not to stuff them into a box.\nYou are the complete opposite of not being online -- you are nearly 100% online, or at least your self-model is -- so it\'s not as meaningful for me to broadcast you as it is to broadcast, say, <a href="/thedrongo/interviews/chris-stasse">Chris Stasse</a> or <a href="/thedrongo/interviews/nick-leflohic">Nick LeFlohic</a>. Broadcasting others creates a good (i.e. a product/project) while serving the Good, but you have no need for a third party to investigate you, or to broadcast you. That said, it would be a supreme drongo who blasted pure h0p3 all over his willing email subscribers; who permitted you to let it all hang out, and droop down into the unsuspecting eyes of people who did, after all, sign up for interviews with strange people. If we do end up conducting an interview for The Drongo, don\'t worry: I don\'t want you to compress a goddamn thing. I take your point that we are presently interviewing, intertwingling ourselves. Looking again at the letter on your wiki to which I am responding, that exact kind of thing -- in your own style, with footnotes and digressions and acronyms -- would be perfectly acceptable for an interview. Again, the idea of The Drongo is to present, display, publicize, spread the joy of existing in a particular friendship, and there\'s a reason I write to you like this.\nTalk to you soon, Khal Drongo. You are one bon homie.\n'}], 'category': ['rsi', 'h0p3', 'correspondence', 'computing'], 'channel': ['letters'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2021/03/19/hc', '/2021/03/19/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'published': [DateTime(2021, 3, 17, 14, 11, 44, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2021, 3, 18, 14, 47, 7, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'name': ['Gift Suggester'], 'content': [{'html': "Suppose I want to give a gift to person P. I'd like to be able to call up the history of my interactions with P, in as many channels as possible. I'd also like to be simultaneously call up my current finances, including an assessment of whether I have any store-specific credits which would suit their interests. (For instance, I've got $50 of credit for Lululemon fitness wear, which I'm never going to use on myself, but which I'd want the computer to show me when planning a gift for a girlfriend or female friend.)\n(Update: I've decided that "planning gifts around store credit" is such an infrequent occurrence that there's no reason to build a program for it. I am, however, beginning to build my own contacts database. Expect that to appear in Q2-3 2021.\n"}], 'channel': ['ideas'], 'slug': ['gift-suggester'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2021/03/17/gj', '/ideas/gift-suggester'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'og-image': ['https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/static/thedrongo/nick-leflohic'], 'published': [DateTime(2021, 3, 11, 16, 2, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': 'Welcome once again to The Drongo, available wherever Internet connections are found.\n<div class="center">\n<details>\n<summary>Receive new interviews twice a month. Subscribe to The Drongo for free!</summary>\n\n<link href="//cdn-images.mailchimp.com/embedcode/classic-10_7.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">\n<style type="text/css">\n #mc_embed_signup{clear:left;}\n /* Add your own Mailchimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block.\n We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */\n</style>\n<div id="mc_embed_signup">\n<form action="https://maxwelljoslyn.us17.list-manage.com/subscribe/post?u=a4f320c858eb89641f87a7bf1&id=8c49f38e34" method="post" id="mc-embedded-subscribe-form" name="mc-embedded-subscribe-form" class="validate" target="_blank" novalidate="">\n <div id="mc_embed_signup_scroll">\n <h2>Subscribe to The Drongo</h2>\n All fields required.\n<div class="mc-field-group">\n <label for="mce-EMAIL">Email Address </label>\n <input type="email" value="" name="EMAIL" class="required email" id="mce-EMAIL">\n</div>\n<div class="mc-field-group">\n <label for="mce-FNAME">First Name </label>\n <input type="text" value="" name="FNAME" class="required" id="mce-FNAME">\n</div>\n<div class="mc-field-group">\n <label for="mce-LNAME">Last Name(s) </label>\n <input type="text" value="" name="LNAME" class="required" id="mce-LNAME">\n</div>\n<div class="mc-field-group input-group">\n Desire for an Interview \n <ul><li><input type="radio" value="1" name="group[9090]" id="mce-group[9090]-9090-0"><label for="mce-group[9090]-9090-0">Interested in being interviewed</label></li>\n<li><input type="radio" value="2" name="group[9090]" id="mce-group[9090]-9090-1"><label for="mce-group[9090]-9090-1">Not interested in being interviewed</label></li>\n</ul>\n</div>\n <div id="mce-responses" class="clear">\n \t<div class="response" id="mce-error-response" style="display:none"></div>\n \t<div class="response" id="mce-success-response" style="display:none"></div>\n </div> \n <div style="position: absolute; left: -5000px;" aria-hidden="true"><input type="text" name="b_a4f320c858eb89641f87a7bf1_8c49f38e34" tabindex="-1" value=""></div>\n <div class="clear"><input type="submit" value="Subscribe" name="subscribe" id="mc-embedded-subscribe" class="button"></div>\n </div>\n</form>\n</div>\n\n</details>\n</div>\n<div class="center"><img src="/static/thedrongo/nick-leflohic.png"></div>\nThe Drongo: Our guest today is Nick LeFlohic, a biomedical researcher who, outside of work, has cultivated an appreciation for the arts, including film. Here\'s how he describes himself; ever the modest man, he\'s chosen to use the third person rather than appear egotistical.\nNick LeFlohic: Nicholas LeFlohic is a twenty-something wandering through days and ideas. He studied Biomedical Engineering in his native Southern California, and now works in a biological laboratory. Being intrigued by the historical, random, and unusual, he can often be found reading articles which are of no practical importance, but are intellectually stimulating (or so he hopes.) He is also perennially drawn to film, whether classic or contemporary, foreign or domestic, avant-garde or conventional, fictional or documentary. In short, he is amused by and interested in everything around.\nThe Drongo: Our first topic is Nick\'s love of sending postcards. I can vouch for his taste in such things, but don\'t take my word for it: I\'ve kept every postcard Nick\'s ever sent me, and pictures of those postcards will appear throughout this interview.\n<div class="center"><img src="/static/thedrongo/skeleton.png"></div>\nThe Drongo: Nick participates in an online community called <a href="https://www.postcrossing.com">Postcrossing</a>, which bills itself as as follows: <q>for each postcard you send, you will receive one back from a random postcrosser from somewhere in the world.</q> His profile is <a href="https://www.postcrossing.com/user/niscle">here</a>.\nNick, why do you enjoy sending postcards?\nNick LeFlohic: I love the postal service. I\'ve been intrigued by mail since childhood. The joy of running out to that little box outside the door to find something that has traveled many miles and many days to here: I still have some sense of that, despite there now being a good share of adverts and bills.\nAs much as I have enjoyed receiving correspondence, I\'ve come to quite like, perhaps even more so, the act of sending cards out. It has a strong sense of community participation, and the feeling that someone\'s day may be made a little better through a random image and some badly-scribbled words. Aside from that, most social activities are quite anxiety-inducing. Mail removes some of that anxiety, and allows for some engagement with the world, even if it\'s limited.\nThe Drongo: Don\'t sell yourself short, bud. It\'s a fine thing to do. How do you find your postcards?\nNick LeFlohic: Oh, the cards I send come from a few places. Amazon is one source, as with almost anything nowadays. I\'ve ordered, on one whim or another, box sets of themed cards: books, space, colors, random subjects. I\'ve gotten cards from trips to museums and other places of interest. I do enjoy a nice gift shop every now and then. I miss \'em. And there\'s been random finds in various stores, grocery, book, or otherwise.\nThe result of all this is a box, tucked away under the bed, with a mess of postcards of various interests, which I send to friends and associates.\n<div class="center"><img src="/static/thedrongo/cuisine.png"></div>\nThe Drongo: One way to recognize a drongo is by his or her unorthodox modes of communication. A predilection for postcards certainly counts.\nNow, why don\'t we talk about your day job. You\'re an engineer in a biomedical research lab, and I understand that you\'re pulling exceedingly long hours. What are the goals of your research which make those hours worth it? You might also introduce the specific field in which you work.\nNick LeFlohic: The process and opportunity are very fulfilling, though the ongoing nature of my work leaves me unsure how much I can disclose. Out of an abundance of caution, that may not be a lot.\nThe Drongo: No problem. You can play it safe.\nNick LeFlohic: I’m currently working for a biotech startup seeking new and innovative cancer treatments. I have been happy to see and learn about the fast-paced biotech research landscape, with special respect to tissue culture, molecular biology, and immunology.\nThe skills I use at work are built on a foundation formed in previous roles. Before this job, I\'d already gained experience with the isolation and culturing of primary mammalian cells, which in turn was preceded by collegiate introductions to laboratory research, mousework, dissection, and aseptic technique.\nThe Drongo: I\'m beyond glad that there are people like you out there to kill and dissect lab mice. I\'d faint.\nNick LeFlohic: A lot of steady handiwork and a comfortable relationship with repetition have served me well.\nThe Drongo: Yowza.\nNick LeFlohic: It also helps to be constantly awed by, and appreciative of, the opportunity to be a part of the scientific community, however minor.\nThe Drongo: What is it that drew you to this particular sector of the scientific community -- specifically, biomedical engineering, as opposed to pure biology, or another branch of engineering?\nNick LeFlohic: It was in the title. Or rather, I was drawn by the full title of the major, when I was making that choice way back in 2011. However, before explaining that, I’d like to give some background.\n<div class="center"><img src="/static/thedrongo/hfilms.png"></div>\nWhen I was much younger, I spent a lot of time ruminating on what I would do in the future. I had a lot of internal quibbling over this problem. I knew I wanted to help others, in some general fashion. Relatives often asked the old question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" only to have an answer of "I \'unno. Something good for everyone?" There were some daydreams of quietly working in some support capacity somewhere, though thinking long on those, too, conjured risks and complications.\nAs I moved through school, no class was uninteresting, and the promise of becoming ever more acquainted with detail sustained my advancement in all areas. By late middle school, though, I felt drawn to science, both as a way of better understanding how things work, and a way to help improve what was around me. Medicine became the answer to the old aspirational questions, for entering the medical field would offer specialization, the opportunity to improve the well-being of others, and an applied understanding of the biological sciences.\nThe study of medicine became my background goal, ever-present, providing a nudge of academic and professional direction. However, being just as indecisive in my youth as I am now, I continued pursuing familiarity with as many subjects as possible.\nBy the time of filling out college applications, I felt my background was suitable enough to be a bona-fide premed student. I was not as competitive as others I knew, but I was determined to try. I looked through the available majors for what I thought was most appropriate — a major in the biological sciences — but UC Irvine had an offering that seemed particularly good: "Biomedical Engineering: Premed," or BME:P. It was in the title.\n<div class="center"><img src="/static/thedrongo/moon.png"></div>\nThe Drongo: I knew that you\'d been gunning for medicine from an early age, but I never knew that you chose biomedical engineering specifically to keep your set of possible futures as large as possible.\nNick LeFlohic: The major was specifically designed to prepare me for medical and/or graduate school, and it mixed classes from the schools of biological sciences and engineering. Once I actually began college, there was no doubt that the BME:P coursework suited both my predilection to be a jack of all trades, and my aspirations of doing medical or biological research. I learned to explain mechanisms scientifically, then apply my understanding in an engineering capacity. The cross-disciplinary requirements and the high standards made BME:P a little more difficult than its component majors (or so I was told), but it was worth it to be exposed to so many different subjects of study.\nThe Drongo: Since you mentioned earlier that your job requires knowledge from all your previous endeavors, it seems clear that your generalist approach has paid off! Good for you, Nick. May your head stuffed with facts forever stuff your wallet.\nNick LeFlohic: Thanks.\nThe Drongo: There remains one more piece of Nick magic to learn here at Drongwarts. OK, you\'re a film lover: what movie or movies do you cherish, and why? Focus on what\'s most meaningful to you, and don\'t worry about whether anything is "accessible" to casual viewers.\nNick LeFlohic: There are too many films out there for me to satisfyingly (in my eyes) create a list of any type, even a list of those which I hold most dear. That stated, for the sake of the exercise, here are some that I find myself going back to, and frequently suggesting.\nThe Royal Tenenbaums (Anderson, 2001) - I remember first catching this while I was in middle school. It was on a Saturday, in an edited form suitable for Comedy Central, but even with commercial breaks, and content removed for decency on syndicated cable, the unique cadence of the work captured me. From the ensemble cast of characters with their individual quirks (and great interplay between them), to the conceit of the film being an adaptation of a (fictional) novel, complete with chapters, to the themes of nostalgia for a promising, now-dashed future, and reconciliation after years of estrangement, I think this is a high point for Anderson, and worth seeing when you can.\nBirdman (Iñárritu, 2014) - I\'m going to throw out that I think I rewatched this movie the most in the theater in my years of going to the theater. It was an unusual year in college, my penultimate one: a time which held a constant sense of ennui for the impending future and, I thought, the trivialized present. The Birdman trailer had had me waiting for its arrival since spring of that year. I was intrigued by the premise of Michael Keaton playing a depressed former superhero actor who was struggling to move forward into new roles. It felt on-the-nose.\nThe technical and stylistic challenges of making the movie appear to be a single shot sealed the deal for my seeing it as soon as I could. Then I rewatched it to catch more details and references. Then I showed friends and family who would care to join me. Then, after I had seen everything else in the small cinema by the university, I watched it again. In all, I think I paid for seven tickets to see Birdman, which is excessive. It was an unusual time, as all times seem to be.\nI actually have this available to loan on Bluray, if anyone\'s interested.\nThe Drongo: Yeah you do, drongo!\nNick LeFlohic: Next is Inside Llewyn Davis (Coen brothers, 2013) - The Coen brothers are great. There is such a variety to their stuff: throwbacks to noir, screwball comedies, ancient myths, literary adaptations, remakes, anthologies, and whatever Barton Fink is (go watch it). All imbued with a certain je ne sais quoi.\nLlewyn Davis is a spiritual sequel to the Coen brothers\' O Brother, Where Art Thou? from 2003. That movie is a reimagining of Homer\'s Odyssey in Depression America, centered on the Americana and popular folk music of the time. Llewyn Davis, by contrast, is more rooted in a harsher realism (though not too far removed from its predecessor) as a folk singer makes his way through New York in the 1960s. He is not much of a likeable character, but what he goes through will leave an impression on you. I like that Coen brothers films have many possible interpretations, and I enjoyed the depiction of the 1960s folk revival and popular culture. It also helps that I was constantly listening to the soundtrack (that the actors actually played in the film!) during the latter half of college.\nIt\'s Such a Beautiful Day (Hertzfeldt, United States, 2012) - Bill is a man whose run-of-the-mill life becomes affected by a progressive neurological disorder. It\'s funny. It\'s meditative. It\'s stick figures and splashes of color that left me lying in bed for a bit. I think I\'ll leave it at that. See it if you haven\'t. Please. And tell me what you like, or didn\'t. For anything, really, but this one especially.\nHere are a few quicker, but no weaker, special mentions:\n<ul>\n<li>The Atomic Cafe (Rafferty, Loader, and Rafferty, 1982) - A documentary wholly made up of period elements! No interviews! No retrospectives! An exercise in editing! An exercise in experiencing the sentiments of a previous era!</li>\n<li>Brazil (Gilliam, 1985) - Orwell meets Monty Python! Studio meddling! Diverging and converging ideas on how a dystopia is founded! Robert De Niro as a plumber!</li>\n<li>Closely Watched Trains (Menzel, 1966) - Wes Anderson before Wes Anderson! A coming-of-age story during the Second World War! Idiosyncrasies and quirks abound! Czechoslovak New Wave!</li>\n<li>Man with a Movie Camera (Vertov, 1929) - I love silent cinema! This one jumps to new heights! A film without intertitles! The city alive! Fast editing! Crazy editing! Soviet montage!</li>\n<li>A Page of Madness (Kinugasa, 1926) - Early Japanese silent horror?!</li>\n<li>Paths of Glory (Kubrick, 1957) - The First World War! Stanley Kubrick! Trenches and courtrooms!</li>\n</ul>\nThe Drongo: Myriad movies! Knowledge Nicktastical! I promise I\'ll watch at least one of your recommendations this month, and I hope some readers will join me in doing the same. Perhaps we can have an all-drongo watch party! Nick, thanks so much for taking the time to speak about your work and hobbies with the The Drongo.\nReaders, Nick is open to being emailed at <a href="mailto:niscle@gmail.com">niscle@gmail.com</a>; you can also reach him on <a href="https://letterboxd.com/niscle/">Letterboxd</a> (for film), the aforementioned <a href="https://www.postcrossing.com/user/niscle">Postcrossing</a> (for postcards), and <a href="https://steamcommunity.com/id/niscle/">Steam</a> (for gaming.)\nⵘ ⵗ ⵘ ⵗ ⵘ\nIf you liked this interview, please share it on social media:\n<code><a href="https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/thedrongo/interviews/nick-leflohic"><a href="https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/thedrongo/interviews/nick-leflohic">https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/thedrongo/interviews/nick-leflohic</a></a></code>\n<div class="center">\n<div id="fb-root"></div>\n<script async="" defer="" crossorigin="anonymous" src="https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v9.0" nonce="E6YIqNsT"></script>\n<a target="_blank" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.maxwelljoslyn.com%2Fthedrongo%2Finterviews%2Fnick-leflohic&src=sdkpreparse" class="fb-xfbml-parse-ignore">Share on Facebook</a>\n<iframe id="twitter-widget-0" scrolling="no" allowtransparency="true" allowfullscreen="true" class="twitter-share-button twitter-share-button-rendered twitter-tweet-button" style="position: static; visibility: visible; width: 61px; height: 20px;" title="Twitter Tweet Button" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets/tweet_button.0edc1ef9f8b82d9b79c6115bda79f63f.en.html#dnt=true&hashtags=drongo&id=twitter-widget-0&lang=en&original_referer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.maxwelljoslyn.com%2Fthedrongo%2Finterviews%2Fnick-leflohic&size=m&text=The%20Drongo%20interviews%20Nick%20LeFlohic&time=1615488451437&type=share&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.maxwelljoslyn.com%2Fthedrongo%2Finterviews%2Fnick-leflohic&via=maxwelljoslyn" frameborder="0"></iframe><script async="" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>\n</div>\nThanks again to all you drongos. Join me again in late March for Interview #6 to hear Drew Jackson on librarianship, historical research, and wizards.\n'}], 'name': ['The Drongo, Interview #5: Nick LeFlohic'], 'category': ['drongo', 'newsletter', 'interview', 'movies', 'engineering', 'postcards'], 'channel': ['thedrongo'], 'slug': ['interviews/nick-leflohic'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2021/03/12/j6', '/thedrongo/interviews/nick-leflohic'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Darth Xenon'], 'published': [DateTime(2021, 3, 11, 6, 34, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'artist': ['Elissa Coambs'], 'photo': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/darth-xenon.png'], 'photo-small': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/480/darth-xenon.png'], 'content': [{'html': 'Look at him go! Huff that noble gas, Darth Xenon.\n'}], 'category': ['slc'], 'channel': ['sithlords'], 'slug': ['darth-xenon'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2021/03/11/sv', '/sithlordchallenge/darth-xenon'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ["Darth Skivin: Still Livin'"], 'published': [DateTime(2021, 3, 8, 18, 16, 59, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': '<div class="muted">\nAn email to Aaron Strick, intended only to pay a compliment and secure a Sith holocron, so touched him that <a href="https://aaronstrick.com/posts/darth-skivin-and-indie-web" class="u-in-reply-to">he wrote a blog post about how happy he was</a> to receive it. This is why I spend so much time on the Web; why I employ technology to run social projects like <a href="/thedrongo">The Drongo</a> and the <a href="/sithlordchallenge">SLC</a>; why most weeks I take on hosting duties for Homebrew Website Club Americas.\nAaron, you\'re a drongo and a half, and a magnificent mellow, too. I laid down these stanzas in your name, for your pleasure.\n</div>\n<div class="poem-container">\n<pre class="poem">\nWhat ho: Darth Skivin\'s papa is a drongo?\nAnd IndieWeb-compatible, to boot!\nSo kind is he that on my horn he\'ll toot,\nAnd deem it awesome that I email. Lo!\n\nSuch drawing skills as few contestants mustered\nWere brought to bear on that repugnant Sith\nOur Skivinator made his entry with.\nBoth Plurt and I declare you\'ve cut the mustard.\n\nNo permadeath for Skivin in the Clone Wars,\nNor in the upgrade to the Aaron site.\nYour Darth renewal triggered my delight;\nIf you\'re my mellow, naturally I\'m yours.\n</pre>\n</div>\n'}], 'category': ['poetry', 'slc', 'correspondence'], 'channel': ['poems'], 'slug': ['darth-skivin-still-livin'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2021/03/09/vs', '/poems/darth-skivin-still-livin'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Overmuch Magic'], 'published': [DateTime(2021, 3, 5, 15, 49, 17, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2021, 9, 1, 21, 21, 43, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': '<div class="muted">\nThis is the fourth, final, and longest of my semi-found poems inspired by choice phrases from The King of Elfland\'s Daughter.\n</div>\n<div class="poem-container">\n<pre class="poem">\nThe men of the parliament gathered again to take counsel.\nThrel had witnessed their lord of an evening, alone on the downs,\nTotally motionless, list\'ning to soundings from Elfland,\nWith his eyes to the East as he listened — yet no sound was there.\n\n"We sought magic for Erl from his father, and magic is here —\nWe have more than enough," stated Threl, voicing fears for them all.\n"Let him follow no more after witchery," someone replied.\n"Let us go to his chamber —" Threl stopped him. "Too late for that now."\n\nThen Guhic rose slowly and stood by himself at the table,\nAs trolls gibbered like bats in the loft, and shapes prowled in the dark.\n"If the eyes of Orion, our lord, are now turnéd to Elfland,\nLet our parliament go to Ziroonderel, up on the hill,\nAnd beseech her to cast us a spell against overmuch magic."\n\nAt the name of Ziroonderel — nary a troll in the night\nNor a will-o-wisp lacked for a fear of her magical broom —\nAll twelve men were enheartened. Tomorrow, they\'d wear holy clothes,\nAnd they\'d end their work early, to visit the witch before nightfall.\n\nWhen the parliament came to her door, she was sitting outside it,\nLooking nowise the older for all of the coming of years.\n"Mother Witch," began Narl, "we are met here to pray you to give us\nSome good spell for a charm against magic, that no more will come\nTo the valley of Erl, where the magic is now overmuch."\n\n"You\'d have spells against magic? You speak as though magic were not\nAll the spice and the essence and ornamentation of life.\nBy my broom," said the witch, "I will give you no spell against magic."\n\nAnd they thought of the wandering lights and the gibbering things,\nAll the strangeness and evil that ran in the valley of Erl,\nAnd besought her again, speaking suavely. "Oh, Mother Witch,\nThere is overmuch magic indeed, and the border with Elfland\nHas been broken. The trolls and the goblins should stay in their elf-holes,\nAnd we men with our folk and our fam\'lies and homes, here in Erl.\nMother Witch, for our homes, will you give us no spell against magic?"\n\n"By my broom and by stars and night-riding, I give you no spell!\nI would sooner grant spells against water to make the world thirst,\nThan a spell against stream-song which evening hears faintly past hills,\nWhereby we hear old wars and lost loves of the Spirits of rivers.\nI would sooner cast spells against bread, that the people should starve,\nThan a spell against wheat in gold hollows of moonlit July,\nThrough which those of whom mankind knows nothing may rove in the night.\n\nI would spell against comfort and clothing, and shelter, and warmth,\nAnd would do so before I would tear from the poor fields of Earth\nAny magic which makes, against Space and its chill, ample cloak,\nAnd gay raiment against sneers of nothingness. Go hence to Erl!\n\nAnd to you who sought magic in youth, but in age seek it not,\nKnow that age brings a blindness of spirit, as blindness of eye;\nBrings a darkness, across which no truth may be well apprehended.\nNo voice from that darkness shall move me to spell against magic!"\n</pre>\n</div>\n\n'}], 'category': ['poetry', 'elfland', 'semifound'], 'channel': ['poems'], 'slug': ['overmuch-magic'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2021/03/05/jh', '/poems/overmuch-magic'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ["Orion's Unicorn"], 'published': [DateTime(2021, 2, 27, 7, 30, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': '<div class="muted">\nThe third in my series of semi-found poems derived from The King of Elfland\'s Daughter, by Lord Dunsany.\n</div>\n<div class="poem-container">\n<pre class="poem">\nForth from the unicorn issued a groaning,\nA sound low and awful, as never is heard in the fields that we know.\nThen there was naught but the wonderful carcass,\nThe deep growls and roaring of hounds as they wallowed in fabulous blood.\n\nCurséd be unicorns, all of their ways,\nAnd everything else in the world that be magic.\n\nCurst be their horn and the place where they dwell\nAnd the lilies they feed on. Curst be their speed,\n\nAnd their hide in white sleekness, their beauty --\nAnd all things enchanted that wander by magical streams.\n</pre>\n</div>\n\n'}], 'category': ['poetry', 'elfland', 'semifound'], 'channel': ['poems'], 'slug': ['orions-unicorn'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2021/02/27/d9', '/poems/orions-unicorn'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['The Retreat of Elfland'], 'published': [DateTime(2021, 2, 25, 8, 16, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': '<div class="poem-container">\n<pre class="poem">\nThe Elf King, chaunting rhythmic, unknown words,\nAn age-old incantation, ordered Elfland\nTo drift away from Earth, the mortal realm.\n\nAs in a moment no one can determine\nWhen sunset layers turn from gold to pink,\nFrom glowing pink to listless unlit colors,\nAll Elfland left the edges of the fields\nWhich all men know, and hied where men know not.\n\nMotionless fronds of dream-gripped trees lay calm.\nPetals of myriad roses stilled their trembling.\nSharing the King\'s content, Elfland reposed.\n</pre>\n</div>\n<div class="muted">\nThus continues my series of semi-found poetry inspired by attention-arresting phrases from The King of Elfland\'s Daughter. "The Retreat of Elfland" is less of a found poem than "Almost Elfland," for I\'ve taken a bit more liberty in rearranging the phrases, and even inserted a few words. Still, though, any beauty you find in this should be considered Lord Dunsany\'s doing, not mine.\n</div>\n\n'}], 'category': ['poetry', 'elfland', 'semifound'], 'channel': ['poems'], 'slug': ['retreat-of-elfland'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2021/02/25/v6', '/poems/retreat-of-elfland'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Almost Elfland'], 'published': [DateTime(2021, 2, 20, 7, 0, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': '<div class="poem-container">\n<pre class="poem">\nSo strong enchantment lay o\'er all that land,\nIt seemed there was an understanding there\nThat reached from men to trees, from trees to men.\n\nMore beautiful than aught our wonder guesses,\nMore than our hearts have hoped, the dewdrop lights\nHint of the seaweeds draping cliffside rocks.\n\nEternal beauty dreams in honied air\nWhere nothing ever stirs or fades or dies,\nNor seeks its happiness in changing things.\n</pre>\n</div>\n<div class="muted">\nThis is almost a found poem. The stanzas are adapted, with only miniscule changes, from lines on pages 15, 20, and 40 of The King of Elfland\'s Daughter.\n</div>\n\n'}], 'category': ['poetry', 'elfland', 'semifound'], 'channel': ['poems'], 'slug': ['almost-elfland'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2021/02/20/ch', '/poems/almost-elfland'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'og-image': ['https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/static/thedrongo/lyla-boyajian.jpg'], 'published': [DateTime(2021, 2, 18, 23, 1, 18, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': 'Hello again, all you drongos. The Drongo continues to drong-grow: 18 subscribers received the first interview, but now there are 34 of you.\nOur lineup of interviewees stretches all the way to June. Thank you so much for reading -- keep doing it!\n<div class="center">\n<details>\n<summary>Receive new interviews by email, twice a month. Subscribe to The Drongo today: it\'s free!</summary>\n\n<link href="//cdn-images.mailchimp.com/embedcode/classic-10_7.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">\n<style type="text/css">\n #mc_embed_signup{clear:left;}\n /* Add your own Mailchimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block.\n We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */\n</style>\n<div id="mc_embed_signup">\n<form action="https://maxwelljoslyn.us17.list-manage.com/subscribe/post?u=a4f320c858eb89641f87a7bf1&id=8c49f38e34" method="post" id="mc-embedded-subscribe-form" name="mc-embedded-subscribe-form" class="validate" target="_blank" novalidate>\n <div id="mc_embed_signup_scroll">\n <h2>Subscribe to The Drongo</h2>\n All fields required.\n<div class="mc-field-group">\n <label for="mce-EMAIL">Email Address </label>\n <input type="email" value="" name="EMAIL" class="required email" id="mce-EMAIL">\n</div>\n<div class="mc-field-group">\n <label for="mce-FNAME">First Name </label>\n <input type="text" value="" name="FNAME" class="required" id="mce-FNAME">\n</div>\n<div class="mc-field-group">\n <label for="mce-LNAME">Last Name(s) </label>\n <input type="text" value="" name="LNAME" class="required" id="mce-LNAME">\n</div>\n<div class="mc-field-group input-group">\n Desire for an Interview \n <ul><li><input type="radio" value="1" name="group[9090]" id="mce-group[9090]-9090-0"><label for="mce-group[9090]-9090-0">Interested in being interviewed</label></li>\n<li><input type="radio" value="2" name="group[9090]" id="mce-group[9090]-9090-1"><label for="mce-group[9090]-9090-1">Not interested in being interviewed</label></li>\n</ul>\n</div>\n <div id="mce-responses" class="clear">\n \t<div class="response" id="mce-error-response" style="display:none"></div>\n \t<div class="response" id="mce-success-response" style="display:none"></div>\n </div> \n <div style="position: absolute; left: -5000px;" aria-hidden="true"><input type="text" name="b_a4f320c858eb89641f87a7bf1_8c49f38e34" tabindex="-1" value=""></div>\n <div class="clear"><input type="submit" value="Subscribe" name="subscribe" id="mc-embedded-subscribe" class="button"></div>\n </div>\n</form>\n</div>\n\n</details>\n</div>\n<div class="center"><img src="/static/thedrongo/lyla-boyajian.jpg"></div>\nThe Drongo: Today on The Drongo, our guest is Lyla Boyajian. She\'s one of the most energetic people I know, and if she\'s not a drongo, nobody is. You\'ll see.\nWho exactly are you, Lyla?\nLyla Boyajian: I\'m from Chichester, New Hampshire, and I studied Spanish at Reed College. I moved back home and spent a year recruiting for the 2020 Census. I\'m currently working for the NH Bar’s Pro Bono Program before I start a delayed Fulbright in Armenia next spring. After that, law school. I\'ve also been studying Russian for the past 4 years.\nFun facts:\n<ol>\n<li>Once, Medvedev\'s car almost ran down me and my Iranian friend, which would have been an international nightmare.</li>\n<li>I make a bomb creme brulee.</li>\n<li>During Reed College\'s annual Renn Fayre, I hit a home run in the softball game.</li>\n</ol>\nThe Drongo: Let\'s start off with your narrow miss. I want to hear about you almost getting run down by Medvedev.\nLyla Boyajian: In the fall of 2017, I participated in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthright_Armenia">Birthright Armenia</a>.\nOne of my internships was at the Ari Literature Foundation. I worked there with another Birthright volunteer named Arineh, who was from Iran. On our first day there, one of the internship coordinators brought us in a taxi to meet our supervisor. The ride was awkward, to say the least. Neither of us had been friends with anyone from the other\'s country before. However, we stuck it out, and, by the end of our lunch break, we\'d discovered that we were both massive fans of Jane Austen and became quick friends.\nArineh was really interested in asking me about the US, and I was fascinated by the way she described her professors getting around bans on teaching feminism: apparently, you can teach feminism as a way that others interpret texts, so long as you yourself aren\'t actively espousing it. Over the course of our internship, we both learned a lot from each other. Although neither of us could have visited each other in our home countries, Armenia provided a neutral meeting ground. It also turned out that our host families lived in the same neighborhood, so we would often walk home from work or Birthright events together, feverishly talking about English literature.\nOn one of those days, we came upon a crosswalk on Yerevan\'s main drag. We had the walk light and there were no cars in sight, so we started across. As we reached the middle of the crosswalk, a police officer on the other side ran up to us, grabbed us, and pulled us to the sidewalk just before a motorcade blew through the intersection. We didn\'t think much of it, but when I got home, I saw that my host mom and sister were watching the news. There on the TV was the same limousine that had almost run us down -- apparently, Medvedev had just arrived from Moscow.\nThat police officer prevented what I\'m sure would have been a massive international headache. The headlines would have read: "Iranian and American citizens killed by Russian PM -- What Does This Mean for Nuclear Deal?"\nThe Drongo: I hope you continue to avoid causing international incidents when you return to Armenia on your grant program. Speaking of which, I heartily congratulate you on earning a Fulbright!\nLyla Boyajian: Thank you!\nThe Drongo: Why Armenia, and what will be the focus of your time there? On this question, especially, please hold absolutely nothing back.\nLyla Boyajian: I value my relationship with my ancestral homeland, and I knew there was so much more for me to do there. I feel a sense of connection to the land and the people that is hard to explain, but that I think most people experience when they return to the place that is the source of their ethnic or cultural heritage. I didn\'t grow up in an Armenian community, so at first, the whole country reminded me of visiting my grandparents\' house as a kid, which contributed to a false sense of security. Luckily, Armenia is a very safe place, so I was fine.\nAfter my experience with Birthright, I knew that I wanted to return. I spent a year back at home with my family and applied for the Fulbright. My grant year was postponed because of the pandemic. Nevertheless, I am excited. I hope that by the time I get there, I will be able to have a more traditional Fulbright experience.\nI have an English Teaching Assistant grant, so I\'ll be helping out in the English department of a university in Yerevan. That\'s all the information I have so far. The start date was pushed back until next August, so I\'m sure I\'ll learn more as we get closer.\nI also put in a proposal to do an independent project on the way that Argentine tango is used in the Armenian diaspora, in repatriate communities, and as a tool of international diplomacy. There\'s a sizable Armenian diaspora in Argentina, so when some of those people moved back in the last few decades, they brought tango back with them. There\'s now a decent tango scene in Yerevan, and the Argentine embassy holds a yearly festival to encourage tango dancing. I didn\'t have the self-confidence to go out dancing while I was last there, but that\'s changed. I\'m hoping that we will be able to dance again, at least in the second semester of my grant. I\'m also looking forward to continuing to improve my Armenian and Russian.\nThe Drongo: You\'ll have quite the packed schedule when you return, but I know you\'ll cherish every second.\nLet\'s mentally transport ourselves from your ancestral homeland to the land of your birth: the good old USA. In our pre-interview discussion, you specifically mentioned the weirdness of working for the US Census. What was weird about it? The work environment? The duties? The canvassing of countless strangers?\nLyla Boyajian: First, let me say that the census may have been the ideal job for me out of college. It was active, different every day, and challenging. I made a lot of money, and I also got to speak Spanish on occasion. And, despite the bureaucracy, I generally believed that what I was doing would make a difference.\nI was not an enumerator (census taker), but rather a recruiter, and then a census response representative. I was responsible for recruiting more than 1,000 applicants over the course of six and a half months. I started with most of the towns in my area, then took over the county next to us as well. Twice a week I spoke at the employment office, and I held office hours at local libraries and booths at craft fairs. We also spent at least two days a week blitzing. That meant going door-to-door in neighborhoods where we were low on applicants, as well as asking every business to let us hang up a flyer. We had a map app called MOJO that was like God.\nEach neighborhood had a number of applicants needed, broken down by languages spoken, and we had to reach at least 80% of that goal. We were constantly understaffed: a large contingent of people quit because Massachusetts was getting paid more. All I can say is that Massachusetts has income and sales taxes, while NH has neither. We ended up getting a raise after that to help with recruiting, anyway.\nHonestly, most of my job was explaining what the census is, and convincing people that they could work for a few weeks to make some extra cash. We also did county-bounce blitzing, which was when we brought everyone who was available to a county that was low, where they worked for at least three days just on blitzing. In one day, you might walk 10 miles.\nI often worked alone, although I made friends with other recruiters, and we would take turns helping each other in our territories. The census had the most diverse team I\'ve ever worked in, and I really appreciated being able to meet people who were part of so many different communities, and who had had such different experiences. One of my coworkers and friends had worked for the UN and was now retired; another volunteered with <a href="https://aa.org/">AA</a> at a local prison; and still others had immigrated from Nepal, Turkey, or Rwanda. New Hampshire is a small state, but it has a lot of mountains, so travel still takes up time. With the census, I got paid for drive time and reimbursed for mileage. I love driving and listening to music, so that was pretty ideal for me.\nAfter the pandemic hit, we started working from home, taking the census from people who were calling in to respond. As soon as our office opened, I was brought in to help as a secretary there, which was totally different from recruiting. At that point, we were hiring, so I was helping people schedule fingerprinting appointments, and directing calls all over the place. We had to hire thousands of workers in a month.\nIn July, we started going out to live events where anyone could respond to the census, and I was able to help with that. I particularly enjoyed working with Spanish speakers. However, it was obviously dangerous work. Despite guidelines for me as a federal worker, nothing stopped anti-maskers from harassing me and telling me I was slowly suffocating myself. I do think I convinced one person that COVID is real. He asked me if I even knew anyone who\'d had it, and I told him about my cousin and her husband. They are fine now, but got pretty sick with it in April. He was genuinely shocked, and gave up the conspiracy theories.\nI guess that\'s one of the things about the census: there\'s intentionally no filter on who you interact with, so I got to see a broad sample of the people in my state. Some of them were highly educated and fabulously wealthy. One man I met had never learned to read. Some were recent immigrants, and some had had ties to the land for millennia or centuries. Some of them would pull me aside and say they were only taking the census to make sure that they counted and "the illegals" didn\'t; others would have long conversations with me about whether or not they could ethically work the census knowing that undocumented people might be discriminated against. Surprisingly, people were overwhelmingly kind to me. I had one creepy run-in that I effectively dealt with, and my boss and coworkers were supportive. We used my experience to better prepare future census workers in that area.\nAs a side note, one of the people I recruited was my boyfriend, who doesn\'t fit the typical retiree demographic of most census workers. He had a very different experience than I did. He did the door-to-door thing, but he was assigned most of the addresses that other census workers couldn\'t physically get to. On numerous occasions, he told me he\'d followed his GPS through the woods for hours, only to find an abandoned building, or no building on the site at all. Then, he would have to hike back out of the woods, trying to find someone to confirm that there was no structure there. Very weird.\nThe Drongo: Weird, indeed, but I\'m glad to know that the census has drongos like your boyfriend to trek through the woods on demand.\nThe Fulbright isn\'t the first famous organization which you\'ve convinced to do something for you. I have it on good authority that, way back in high school, you convinced the Freemasons to do you a favor. To conclude our interview, please tell that story.\nLyla Boyajian: Oh, yes! I\'m surprised you didn\'t ask me about the lumber smugglers--\nThe Drongo: The what?!\nLyla Boyajian: --but the Freemasons are good people as far as I could tell. Let\'s give them some airtime.\nWhen I was a junior in high school, I was invited to attend a youth leadership workshop in the UK. My parents, thinking it would never happen, told me I could go if the school agreed and I funded it myself. Well, my headmaster sent out an announcement before he even told me I could have the days off, so the challenge came down to funding my travels. I did some research and found out that "building leadership skills and international connections" is part of the mission of the Freemasons.\nI wrote letters to every Masonic lodge I could find in my state, and many of them invited me to speak at open meetings. I would go and speak to them, and they gave me a check -- generally $50 to $200. One of the Masons was married to someone in the NH Federation of Women\'s Clubs, so they kicked in $400 without me even having to ask. On one occasion, an official from the Grand Lodge was there to impart a lifetime achievement award. He shook my hand and slipped me a hundred-dollar bill.\nIt was a really lovely experience, and I got to go to the conference in the end.\nThe Drongo: Wheeling and dealing with a secret society? It doesn\'t get more drongo than that. I love it!\nLyla, thanks so much for participating in an interview with The Drongo. I wish you a whole raft of adventures, in Armenia and beyond.\nLyla Boyajian: Thank you so much for doing this! This has been a lovely exercise in self-reflection, and I can\'t wait to read everyone else\'s interviews. <3\nThe Drongo: Lyla Boyajian, everybody! If you didn\'t get enough of her on The Drongo, you can also follow her on Instagram at <a href="https://instagram.com/ohlyler">@ohlyler</a>, or <a href="https://www.facebook.com/lyla.boyajian">find her on Facebook</a>.\nⵘ ⵗ ⵘ ⵗ ⵘ\nIf you liked this interview with Lyla, please share it on social media.\n<code><a href="https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/thedrongo/interviews/lyla-boyajian">https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/thedrongo/interviews/lyla-boyajian</a></code>\n<div class="center">\n<div id="fb-root"></div>\n<script async defer crossorigin="anonymous" src="https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v9.0" nonce="E6YIqNsT"></script>\n<a target="_blank" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.maxwelljoslyn.com%2Fthedrongo%2Finterviews%2Flyla-boyajian&src=sdkpreparse" class="fb-xfbml-parse-ignore">Share on Facebook</a>\n<a href="https://twitter.com/share?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" class="twitter-share-button" data-text="The Drongo interviews Lyla Boyajian" data-via="maxwelljoslyn" data-hashtags="drongo" data-dnt="true" data-show-count="false">Tweet</a><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>\n</div>\nIf you aren\'t already subscribed to The Drongo, <a class="bigclick" href="https://newsletter.maxwelljoslyn.com/subscribe">subscribe today</a> to receive more interviews by email. <a href="/thedrongo/interviews/nick-leflohic">The next interview, with Nick LeFlohic</a>, will be released in early March. See you next time!\n'}], 'name': ['The Drongo, Interview #4: Lyla Boyajian'], 'category': ['drongo', 'newsletter', 'interview', 'census', 'armenia'], 'channel': ['thedrongo'], 'slug': ['interviews/lyla-boyajian'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2021/02/19/ch', '/thedrongo/interviews/lyla-boyajian'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['The Drongo, Interview #3: Carla Paloma'], 'og-image': ['https://carla-paloma.github.io/images/head-2.JPG'], 'published': [DateTime(2021, 2, 2, 16, 56, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2022, 5, 6, 17, 40, 40, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': 'Hello, one and all.\nIf you\'ve been thinking, "It\'s been far too longo since I read The Drongo," you are in luck.\n<div class=muted>\nAt Carla\'s request, I\'ve temporarily taken down this interview (for reasons not related to the interview itself.) You may enjoy one of the other <a href="/thedrongo/interviews">entries in this series</a>.\n</div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n</div>\n'}], 'category': ['drongo', 'newsletter', 'interview', 'art', 'ceramics'], 'channel': ['thedrongo'], 'slug': ['interviews/carla-paloma'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2021/02/03/nr', '/thedrongo/interviews/carla-paloma'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'published': [DateTime(2021, 1, 29, 14, 19, 54, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': 'Oh ho ho. No less than the brilliant Tanner Greer <a href="https://twitter.com/Scholars_Stage/status/1355259497896423426">tweeted a link</a> to my essay, "<a href="/rare-syllables">The Rarest Mandarin Syllables</a>." I\'m humbled -- but not so humbled I\'m not gonna blog about it. It\'s not every day a senpai notices you.\n'}], 'name': ['Tanner Greer Notices Me, Oh My'], 'category': ['chinese', 'linguistics', 'shoutout'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2021/01/29/3r', '/2021/01/29/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'published': [DateTime(2021, 1, 20, 20, 19, 54, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': 'Oh, cool! <a href="https://paper-republic.org/pers/jack-hargreaves/read-all-about-it-news-2/">In the second issue</a> of their "news roundup" feature, Paper Republic featured my page "<a href="/rare-syllables">The Rarest Mandarin Syllables</a>!" Thanks, Jack!\n'}], 'name': ['A Shout-Out in Paper Republic'], 'category': ['chinese', 'linguistics', 'shoutout'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2021/01/21/wt', '/2021/01/20/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'published': [DateTime(2021, 1, 17, 16, 26, 39, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'name': ['The Drongo, Interview #2: Chris Stasse'], 'og-image': ['https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/static/thedrongo/calligraphy-analects-chris-stasse.jpg'], 'updated': [DateTime(2021, 1, 20, 20, 11, 58, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': 'From Drong Beach, California comes another interview with The Drongo.\nSubscribers are up 20% since <a href="https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/thedrongo/interviews/karthik-bala">the first issue</a>! Thank you all for such positive feedback. If you\'re not signed up, <a class="bigclick" href="https://mxjn.me/thedrongo/subscribe">subscribe to The Drongo (it\'s free!)</a>, and you\'ll get these interviews by email twice a month.\n<div class="center"><img src="/static/thedrongo/chris-stasse.jpg"></div>\nThe Drongo: Chris Stasse and I have been friends since we met as college sophomores taking Second Year Chinese. Today\'s interview guest is a supreme shenaniganeer, one who acts with vigor and learns with rigor.\nChris Stasse: Hey all, I\'m Chris. I like poetry. Also, I like dance, many sports, tea, cooking, movies, Han Yu, and Emerson. I have an obsessive interest in Chinese which will likely be my downfall, even as I savor the archaic and in many ways hopelessly poetic qualities of its modern and ancient legacy. It seems my personal values are also archaic and hopelessly poetic, which is probably the best reason I can give for why I study Chinese.\nMaybe I will open a soup restaurant in China someday. "Super Soup Yum 苏坡苏坡香": a delicious harbor for all world-weary drongos!\nThe Drongo: Having heard Chris\'s menu proposal, I\'ll be at Super Soup Yum on opening day.\nChris, you\'ve immersed yourself in Chinese language and culture for nearly a decade, including three years spent living in southern China. What led you to start learning Mandarin, and how have your motivations changed over time? What is the most meaningful element of your current studies?\nChris Stasse: I guess in the beginning, learning Mandarin was a result of traveling in China after high school on a "gap year," and wanting to communicate in a more effective way with people I met there. It was really a practical tool. As a freshman at Reed, I decided it couldn\'t be a bad idea to learn more about the language, and I needed the language credit, anyway. That\'s more or less what started it.\nFrom 2012 to 2016, different things pushed me from a relatively casual relationship with Chinese to it being the center of my studies. I was good at it. I made enough improvement with regular studies to have a sense of accomplishment. I had good teachers. On a social level, different relationships at school became more and more connected with Chinese: I befriended other students studying it, and also dated a Chinese woman.\nSome time in late sophomore or early junior year, Chinese had become not just a fun thing I was doing at school, but also the answer to something I wanted badly: to leave Reed for a while. There was an option to study abroad in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzhou">Fuzhou, China</a> for very little cost. I left in spring of 2015.\nIn Fuzhou, Chinese was no longer a side-show. It was the center of my studies, and the necessary medium for the expression of my personality and interests. I was reading, talking, writing and listening a lot, every day. About a year into the program, I realized that Chinese was not just an excuse to be in China, was not just a tool for interacting with different people, was not just an interesting school subject. It was a fundamentally different way to express myself compared to English. I could say things I couldn\'t say in my mother tongue.\nIt wasn\'t "bigger" than English, but it was older, prettier, and definitely wiser. I remember asking myself, "What would you do if you could do anything in your life, no matter how crazy?"\nAt the time the answer seemed ridiculous, but it went to my core:\n"I would write poetry in Chinese."\nCurrently, I am learning <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_Chinese">Classical Chinese</a>. I remember Hyong Rhew [Professor and Chair of Chinese Literature, Reed College] once warned me that if you don\'t study Classical, your Modern Chinese won\'t go anywhere. He was right: if you want to be really good, you can\'t ignore Classical. Anything beyond a conversational felicity requires some grounding in it.\n\nThe Drongo: Traditional Chinese cultural practices range from tai chi to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_paper_cutting">papercutting</a> to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_poetry">poetry</a> to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_opera">opera</a>. You have chosen to concentrate on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_calligraphy">calligraphy</a>. Can you put into words the experience of studying calligraphy, and the feeling of actually performing it?\nChris Stasse: As this is a website dedicated to drongos, I have decided to share a drong-venture calligraphy project: graffitiing the Reed College Chinese department\'s bathroom stalls. The phrase is the first sentence from The Analects: 學而時習之不亦説乎. ["Is it not pleasurable to learn, and to persevere in practicing?"]\n<div class="center"><img id="calligraphy-analects" src="/static/thedrongo/calligraphy-analects-chris-stasse.jpg"></div>\nThe Drongo: That\'s a spectacular piece of work. You\'re a drongo extraordinaire.\nChris Stasse: Just as with Chinese itself, I did not think much of calligraphy when I first started learning it. The decision to try it was basically whimsical. I had never really studied a visual art before, and I needed to take an elective in the Fuzhou program.\nHowever, again as with Chinese, I found that I enjoyed calligraphy more than expected, and that enjoyment was visceral, not intellectual. I\'ve thought about how, in grade school, I was really attracted to the idea of learning cursive. I seemed to be in the minority among my classmates for taking cursive practice seriously, and eventually making it my default handwriting. After high school, I started journaling a lot. Part of the journaling habit was not just reflecting on recent thoughts or interesting quotations, but actually immersing myself in the physical act of writing.\nTo make the writing itself beautiful seemed to be an exercise in piety to the ideas I was transcribing. I think that is the same set of motivations I ultimately took to calligraphy. I am inspired by ideas I encounter, or about which I am writing, and I want to express them in a way that is personal and has the potential to be artistically evocative.\nBecause of the nature of Chinese characters vs. the Roman alphabet, as well as the nature of the brush vs. the pen, what you can convey with Chinese calligraphy is much more expansive than what you can convey with English calligraphy. Artistic urges I have had since grade school have found a much wider and deeper outlet in Chinese. There is a visceral, cathartic, almost primal enjoyment I get from writing calligraphy -- and then the things I write get to be nice-looking. In some ways, I think I have a "purer" relationship with calligraphy than with Chinese, in the sense that it is really just a hobby I do for fun. There is a lot of work with Chinese to get the expressive and comprehensive skills, but the "work" in calligraphy actually makes me feel relaxed.\nThe Drongo: Now that we\'ve seen Chinese at its most visually expressive, why don\'t you share one or two Chinese quotations or phrases which exemplify what makes you find the language so fascinating? Anything goes.\nChris Stasse: I mentioned earlier that I found Chinese "older, prettier, and wiser than English." Let me give some examples.\nOlder\nChinese has endless idioms, which are most often four-character phrases. Here is an example:\n<div class="center" style="font-size:var(--s1);">\n不日不月\nbú rì bú yuè\n</div>\nThis literally means "no sun no moon" or "no day no month." What could that mean? The phrase comes from the Classic of Odes, one of the world\'s oldest collections of poetry, which dates back to roughly 1000 BC. The actual meaning is something like "unable to use days or months to record," or simply "an unimaginably long time."\nThe phrase is extremely old (and reads as being very archaic now), but the characters that compose it are very simple. This is a major difference between the ancientness of Chinese and the ancientness of Romance languages: whereas one would have to study Greek or Latin to know the ancient roots of many English words, many Chinese characters have not changed in thousands of years, and appear in phrases as old as China\'s earliest dynasties.\nPrettier\n<div class="center" style="font-size:var(--s1);">\n離緒縈懷\nlí xù yíng huái\n</div>\nThis phrase almost sounds like a four-character idiom, but is not. Literally, it means: "departure feelings entwine bosom." I would pick out at least three reasons this phrase is more aesthetically pleasing in the original than in its translated counterpart.\nFirst of all, English sounds weird if you eliminate articles like "the." Compare "entwine bosom" with "entwine the bosom" (or "my bosom," etc.). In Chinese, and especially in Chinese poetry, "content words" can be arranged to create meaning themselves, without adding many "function words" for structure. This often reduces clarity, but creates more potential for "uncluttered" aesthetic expression.\nSecond, this phrase contains the character "緒 xù," which I have translated using the very weak English "feelings," but which originally means "the ends of threads." In its practical usage, this character is often used to talk about subtle thoughts or emotions lingering in the mind. The choice of "緒 xù" works perfectly with the next character "縈 yíng," "to entwine." Put together, the phrase conveys sorrowful "strands" of emotion wrapping around one\'s bosom. It would be difficult to achieve the metaphorical resonance and brevity of the original in an English translation.\nThe third and final reason this phrase stands out is not for its meaning, but its visual complexity. These four characters are noticeably denser than the previous four characters. They are complicated, requiring many more brush strokes to write, but are still relatively well-balanced. This is the sort of phrase I would enjoy transcribing into calligraphy.\nAs a disclaimer, it is obviously true that there are many examples of English poetry which would translate clumsily into Chinese. I bring up this phrase only to demonstrate how certain features of Chinese -- the visual identity of characters, the lack of dependence on function particles -- give it unique aesthetic potential.\nWiser\n<div class="center" style="font-size:var(--s1);">\n發了橫財不散財，必有災禍天上來\nFā le héngcái bù sàncái, bì yŏu zāihuò tiān shàng lái\n</div>\nThe above aphorism means something like, "To accumulate and not disperse will result in heaven\'s curse." (I tried to retain the rhyming feature of the original.)\nThere are endless idioms in Chinese; there are also endless aphorisms and proverbs. I have often wondered what it must be like to be Chinese and inherit this kind of over-rich linguistic tradition. It must be a curious weight to bear: both a source of pride, and a daunting shadow to live under.\nMore than any other culture I can think of, China tends to monumentalize the language of its ancestors. To Chinese people, Chinese is not just a language, but a heroic cultural achievement. The ways in which Chinese characters were invented and recorded have been carefully mythologized and integrated into China\'s self-perceived identity. Chinese has been the vehicle for this civilization\'s sense of uninterrupted cultural transmission for millennia, and along the way it has accumulated a dizzying mass of useful sayings. This is a language that is wiser than any one of its users.\nThe Drongo: Keep expressing yourself with phrases like "wiser than any of its users," and I\'ll be your friend for life.\nOur last question is simple, but it needs a bit of background. At 19, with no Chinese ability to speak of, you traveled from Beijing to Tianjin, and it took you a week because you <a href="https://www.travelblog.org/Asia/China/blog-660323.html">walked</a>. Later that year, you <a href="https://www.travelblog.org/Asia/blog-688601.html">squatted for weeks on an abandoned helipad</a> in the forest. Now, at 26, you live in a Dodge minivan which you and your dad converted into a mobile scholar\'s hut.\nWhat is it that compels you to be such a drongo?\nChris Stasse: I think doing this stuff comes from an intuition that I am most likely to learn something when I am outside what I am familiar with. I need to remove the things I normally take for granted to see what is essential.\nIf I want to learn, I can\'t just go do it; I need to actually make myself vulnerable to learning. That is the purpose of an adventure: to put down the accumulated props of my life and allow myself to react to completely new situations. There is value to being at my wit\'s end.\nThe Drongo: Why, you\'ve articulated the whole drongo ethos in one pithy phrase!\nChris Stasse: Before we conclude, I have one more thing to share: <a href="https://youtube.com/watch?v=re8ULFMEvkQ">a freestyle dance video</a>.\n<div class="center"><iframe style="max-width: 100%;" width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/re8ULFMEvkQ" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>\nThe Drongo: My god, look at those moves. If you keep recording dances, I\'ll keep watching. How about doing one set to Daft Punk called "Harder, Better, Faster, Dronger?"\nⵘ ⵗ ⵘ ⵗ ⵘ\nThank you very much, Chris, for sharing your thoughts with The Drongo. May you embark on a million adventures. Readers can contact Chris at <a href="mailto:evanstasse@gmail.com">evanstasse@gmail.com</a>, or read his irregular 2011-2017 travel blog at <a href="https://mytb.org/evanstasse"><a href="https://mytb.org/evanstasse">https://mytb.org/evanstasse</a></a>.\nIf you enjoyed this interview, share it with your friends, followers, and family. Show them Chris\'s champion calligraphy! Here\'s the web URL:\n<code><a href="https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/thedrongo/interviews/chris-stasse">https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/thedrongo/interviews/chris-stasse</a></code>\nOr share on social media:\n<div id="fb-root"></div>\n<script async defer crossorigin="anonymous" src="https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v9.0" nonce="E6YIqNsT"></script>\n<div class="fb-share-button" data-href="https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/thedrongo/interviews/chris-stasse" data-layout="button" data-size="large"><a target="_blank" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.maxwelljoslyn.com%2Fthedrongo%2Finterviews%2Fchris-stasse&src=sdkpreparse" class="fb-xfbml-parse-ignore">Share on Facebook</a></div>\n<a href="https://twitter.com/share?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" class="twitter-share-button" data-text="Check out Chris Stasse\'s interview with The Drongo!" data-via="maxwelljoslyn" data-hashtags="drongo" data-dnt="true" data-show-count="false">Tweet</a><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>\n<a href="/thedrongo/interviews/carla-paloma">Interview #3, with Carla Paloma</a>, comes out at the end of January. We\'ll see her gorgeous pottery, and talk about running an artist residency located in a historic and unusual location! Don\'t delay: <a class="bigclick" href="https://mxjn.me/thedrongo/subscribe">subscribe now</a> to get Carla\'s story right in your inbox.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n</div>\n'}], 'category': ['interview', 'newsletter', 'chinese', 'calligraphy', 'drongo'], 'channel': ['thedrongo'], 'slug': ['interviews/chris-stasse'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2021/01/18/mq', '/thedrongo/interviews/chris-stasse'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Santa Cruz Portfolio'], 'show-metadata': [False], 'published': [DateTime(2021, 1, 10, 8, 51, 35, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': '<h2>Introduction</h2>\n<div class="muted">\nThis portfolio helped earn my admittance to the Computational Media master\'s program at UC Santa Cruz.\n</div>\n<h2>Table of Contents</h2>\n<ol>\n<li><a href="#ryan-quest">Ryan Quest</a></li>\n<li><a href="#poetry-and-parody">Poetry and Parody</a></li>\n<li><a href="#a-dnd-economy">A D&D Economy</a></li>\n<li><a href="#the-drongo">The Drongo</a></li>\n</ol>\n<h2 id="ryan-quest">Ryan Quest</h2>\nAreas: creative, technical\n<ul>\n<li><a href="/ryanquest">Webpage</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href="/ryanquest/play">Play in Browser</a></li>\n</ul>\nRyan Quest was a gift for Ryan Wright, my college roommate. In this interactive fiction, you play as Ryan in a fever-dream parody of his life as a Game Studies graduate student in Copenhagen.\nUntil I sat the protagonist down in front of the completed game, he was totally unaware that I was working on a videogame, much less one about him.\n<h3>Goals and Audience</h3>\nMy goals were few, and simple:\n<ul>\n<li>Make a game about Ryan, as a gift</li>\n<li>Make Ryan laugh as many times as possible</li>\n<li>Finish in four months</li>\n<li>Fly around the world to deliver an in-person surprise</li>\n</ul>\nI never expected that anyone but Ryan would play Ryan Quest, but while traveling with a tour group during the last two weeks of development, I mentioned the game to a couple new friends. In minutes, I had half a dozen players, all otherwise non-gamers, huddled around my laptop and strategizing about puzzles. They beat the whole game as a group.\n<figure class="center">\n<img srcset="/static/ryanquest/300/group-pic.png 300w, /static/ryanquest/500/group-pic.png 500w, /static/ryanquest/700/group-pic.png 700w, /static/ryanquest/group-pic.png 1364w" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 300px, (max-width: 750px) 500px, (max-width: 1400px) 700px, 1364" src="/static/ryanquest/300/group-pic.png" title="My friends team up to play Ryan Quest during the final beta test." alt="My friends team up to play Ryan Quest during the final beta test.">\n<figcaption>My friends team up to play Ryan Quest during the final beta test.</figcaption>\n</figure>\n<h3>Design and Gameplay</h3>\nRyan Quest is old-school to a fault. The player is dumped into Ryan\'s apartment<a href="#fn-1">1</a> with no apparent objectives, other than those implied by "Points: 0/10" in the upper-right corner, and the inability to leave the apartment without the backpack.\nThe gameplay consists of roaming around in a shallow pastiche of Copenhagen while fiddling with objects and speaking with NPCs. The world, the mechanics, and the player objectives teeter between surreal and absurd. If the game\'s tongue were jammed any further into its cheek, there would be blood.\n<figure class="center">\n<img src="/static/ryanquest/portfolio/3.png">\n</figure>\n<figure class="center">\n<img src="/static/ryanquest/portfolio/4.png">\n</figure>\n<figure class="center">\n<img src="/static/ryanquest/portfolio/5.png">\n</figure>\nAll that aside, I did my best to incorporate gameplay and interface conventions which IF writers have converged on since the genre\'s mid-90s renaissance. In particular, Ryan Quest never becomes unwinnable, supports UNDO and HELP<a href="#fn-2">2</a>, and always displays the player\'s location and available exits.\n<figure class="center">\n<img src="/static/ryanquest/portfolio/2-annotated.png">\n</figure>\nIn total, several dozen non-Ryans have played, enjoyed, and laughed uproariously at Ryan Quest. Whatever else one wants to say about the game, those players\' experiences are proof that I was able to make the game accessible to all comers.\nI find that Inform, the implementation language for Ryan Quest, is well-suited to a creation style blending a complex, simulatory world model with an authorial desire to meet specific player inputs with hand-crafted responses. These characteristics reminded me of my D&D experience (see below), so in the future I\'m hoping to explore the use of Inform for implementing real-time multi-user dungeons (MUDs). While I wouldn\'t want to write application software in Inform, its focus on textual input and output would allow a more robust systems-programming language to handle web requests, database access, and so on, while communicating with an Inform program which maintains the world model.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<h2 id="poetry-and-parody">Poetry and Parody</h2>\nAreas: creative, interpretive\nParody:\n<ul>\n<li><a href="https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/poems/huge-katana">Huge Katana</a></li>\n<li><a href="https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/poems/countryside-nastiness">Countryside Nastiness / 田园恶</a></li>\n<li><a href="https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/poems/thats-podracing">That\'s Podracing</a></li>\n<li><a href="https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/poems/voyeur">That\'s Right, Voyeur</a></li>\n</ul>\nSerious:\n<ul>\n<li><a href="https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/poems/mountaincall">"Mountain Response"</a></li>\n<li><a href="https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/poems/man-from-h0p3">"The Man from H.0.P.3."</a></li>\n</ul>\n\nI have been an active poet for two and a half years. A lifelong passion for making others laugh has given me the instincts required for parody, and even my non-comedic works are "light verse." I am, however, deadly serious about my craft.\nTo produce parody is to constantly ask questions:\n<ul>\n<li>"How can I reuse this line or fragment in a new context?"</li>\n<li>"What amusing new words can I stuff into the meter, or melody, of the original piece?"</li>\n<li>"What type of parody will this be?"</li>\n</ul>\nYou can\'t write parody without ripping apart your object of study, so one\'s answer to the last question will also depend on how the new work will position itself in relation to the old. One way to classify parodies is to follow Kenneth Baker\'s five-way taxonomy from Unauthorized Versions: Poems and their Parodies.\nIn the introduction to this book, Mr. Baker identifies these strains of parody:\n<ol>\n<li>those "that openly attack the original writer by alluding to one of his or her most famous or characteristic poems"</li>\n<li>those which "take a well-known text like Hamlet\'s soliloquy ... and stick to it as closely as possible, often using the same words at the beginnings of lines and even, if rhyme is involved, the same rhyming words"</li>\n<li>those where "the target is the literary style of the poet, though the parodist may not necessarily have any particular poem in mind"</li>\n<li>those where "the parodist sets out to reverse completely the meaning of a vulnerable piece of verse"</li>\n<li>those for which "the parodist takes a famous original and uses it as a model to comment upon some topical event, political figure or social development"</li>\n</ol>\nAs I devote my greatest attention to matters of diction and rhyme, and most frequently parody song lyrics, my parodies typically fall into group 2, or occasionally 3. I have little interest in attacking anyone, and even less interest in producing socio-political commentary.\nTo me, poetry is an exercise in maximizing the density of meaningful notions per line, while juggling the constraints imposed by meter and rhyme scheme. It is for this reason (and for the joy of employing my comedic abilities) that I have naturally gravitated toward parody:\nYet, there are other ways to produce high-density bundles of meaning. Writing in Classical Chinese will do it. This ancient language, used for written works throughout Asia for over 2,000 years, is famously compact, and doubly so when used for poetry. Single characters may express complex concepts in their entirety, often by alluding to other works in the enormous premodern canon. Furthermore, each character can function as multiple parts of speech (noun, verb, adjective, etc.), meaning that lines of Classical Chinese poetry may take on almost any sort of phrase structure. This flexibility allows the flourishing of rhetorical devices: two characters next to each may constitute an observation of contrast, a reference to a whole category of objects or creatures, a subject-predicate structure, a topic for the comment that follows, or a summary judgment.\nIn the future, I hope to make more use of web design to emphasize the connections between a parody and its original, such as by creating a "parody overlay" with markup explaining or emphasizing imitation of the source rhyme scheme, runs of original text which have been used in-place with a new meaning, words or concepts from the source which have been transplanted elsewhere in the poem, and so on. I took a tentative stab at this with JavaScript-powered annotations on my (non-parody) poem "Portland Protest Preparations," but I want to do much more.\n\n\n\n<h2 id="a-dnd-economy">A D&D Economy</h2>\nAreas: creative, technical\n<figure class="center">\n<img src="/static/dnd/portfolio/3.png">\n<figcaption>One section of <a href="http://www.21stcenturydnd.com/pages/Prices">the price table</a> from which my D&D players purchase items</figcaption>\n</figure>\nI have run tabletop roleplaying games for many years. My tastes are maximalist. I prefer to DM<a href="#fn-3">3</a> from a large and ever-growing rule set of my own design, dispensing rulings on novel game scenarios with the knowledge that it will then be my duty to incorporate said rulings (perhaps with adjustment) into the permanent body of rules.\nWhen, in 2012, I discovered the work of Alexis Smolensk, creator of <a href="https://tao-dnd.blogspot.com/">Tao of D&D</a>, I felt I was in the presence of a great gaming prophet. While my attention to D&D itself has waxed and waned in the years since, I have never stopped reading his blog and marveling at his endless capacity for work. Millions of people have played D&D, and thousands have written about it, but the gap between what others have created, and what Alexis has wrought, are as the distance between Earth and its moon (or even the sun.) Others pontificate. Alexis studies.\nThe most inspired aspect of Alexis\'s game was his series of maps which cover most of the planet Earth in tremendous detail. He uses these maps to support pricing mechanisms which ensure that players visiting one or another commercial market will find that items for purchase are only available at costs which reflect the difficulty involved in transporting or creating said items -- if they are available at all.\nIn 2015, I resolved to use my budding programming skills to create a digital version of my game world, with the ultimate goal being to implement a version of Alexis\'s economic system for use at my own gaming table. While I am too embarrassed to show the wretched code, I am pleased to say that over the next three years I got the project to a state usable in real gameplay.\n<figure class="center">\n<img src="/static/dnd/portfolio/2.png">\n<figcaption>Part of the world map...</figcaption>\n</figure>\n<figure class="center">\n<img src="/static/dnd/portfolio/1.png">\n<figcaption>...and the whole thing at once.</figcaption>\n</figure>\nTo begin, I wrote a Python terrain generator handling elevation, land and sea distinctions, distribution of moisture, hot and cool areas, climate, the placement of market towns, and A*-pathfinding<a href="#fn-4">4</a> to determine how said towns should be connected by trade roads. I also implemented a Haskell program to <a href="http://www.blog.21stcenturydnd.com/2016/07/time-for-some-triangles.html">render the resulting terrain and roads into SVG images</a>.\nAfter assigning, on the basis of climate, various raw materials<a href="#fn-5">5</a> and services<a href="#fn-6">6</a> to each of the market towns, I was able to start in on the real work: specifying how each of these materials and services combined together into larger components, and ultimately into finished goods for market.\nThis required much research into 17th-century manufacturing techniques. By the time I lost steam on the project, I had specified over 300 such production "recipes" for everything from ultramarine writing ink (made from lapis lazuli), to barrels, to chainmail; from Norse-style faering rowboats, to hats and gloves, to beer, wine, and rum (complete with precise calculations of each alcohol\'s ABV.) <a href="http://www.blog.21stcenturydnd.com/2017/10/recipe-faering-hull.html">Here is an ancient post from my college-era blog discussing the rowboat calculations.</a>\n<figure class="center">\n<img src="/static/dnd/portfolio/5.png">\n<figcaption>Another section from <a href="http://www.21stcenturydnd.com/pages/Prices">the price table</a></figcaption>\n</figure>\nThe genius of Alexis\'s system is that its existence supports new types of game play. Savvy players, knowing that, say, Toledo is positively infested with metalworkers and swordsmiths, will prefer to travel to that city when they want to equip forty or fifty mercenaries with longswords. My goal was to support that depth of play in my own game.\nWhile I never got anywhere near as far as Alexis, I would call my project a success. Each player-purchasable good, requiring inputs of raw materials, services, and intermediate goods which all varied in price thanks to the distance system, showed enough pricing variation that the players would make plans to move from one area to the next partially on the basis of how much it would cost to live, or hunt, or drink in a certain city.\n\n<h2 id="the-drongo">The Drongo</h2>\nAreas: creative, interpretive\n<ul>\n<li>First interview: <a href="/thedrongo/interviews/karthik-bala">Karthik Bala, ayurvedic shaman</a></li>\n<li>Second interview: <a href="/thedrongo/interviews/chris-stasse">Chris Stasse, Chinese scholar</a></li>\n<li><a href="/thedrongo#interview-schedule">Schedule of Upcoming Interviews</a></li>\n</ul>\nThe Drongo is a newsletter in which I interview people living wild and unusual lives.\nAlthough I only began The Drongo in December 2020, by January 1st, 2021, I had enough interview signups to fill six months of twice-monthly interviews. As of January 9th, half of those interviews have been conducted, and are being prepped for publication. Based on the participation I\'ve gotten for previous "open call" events, I\'m confident I\'ll end up conducting at least thirty interviews -- more than a year\'s supply.\nThe point of The Drongo is to create new edges in my social graph. By introducing friends and contacts to one another in their own words, at length, I can spark new friendships which would otherwise never have had a chance to grow.\nAs is fitting for artwork dedicated to lifting up my friends, I was inspired to create The Drongo by the comments of two people who are dear to me.\nIn early December of 2020, as my old friend Chris Stasse was staying with me, he noted a curious gap in one of our mutual friendships. "Max, you know Alexi C., Jordan, and me. Alexi and Jordan are old friends, and Alexi and I are old friends. But, even though I\'ve heard of Jordan for years, and you and Alexi both know him, and I know Jordan and I would get along -- why, we\'ve never met!"\nSome months earlier, I\'d had a vague notion that I ought to write a web series in which I promoted my friends. That idea had fallen by the wayside, and I figured I\'d pick it up again eventually. Once Chris made this observation, however, I knew that that project\'s time had come.\nIn January of 2020 -- so early that nowhere but China had any inkling of a pandemic -- my friend and mentor, the great <a href="https://tao-dnd.blogspot.com/">Alexis Smolensk</a>, had given me counsel on how to proceed, in life and in art, without despairing over what seemed to be a total lack of success. Here is an excerpt.\n<blockquote>\n[Art] is not about your pain or your doubts. You\'re the one with the mind and the ability to throw off the shackles of propriety, and step up to the task of making this world a better place, despite your fear, your pain and your doubts.\nYou\'re not elected to hang back and watch; you\'re elected to lay your body down on the wire as a bridge for others to climb over -- and to accept that it means sacrifice and discomfort. That you\'ll likely not be remembered for it, or appreciated.\n</blockquote>\n"Lay your body down on the wire" has become my watchword. As I began making arrangements -- as I set up a mailing list, contacted friends, and began writing interview questions -- as the completed interviews began to roll in -- I heard that phrase in my head, countless times. I\'m thinking of it as I write these words, too.\nIt took me a year to understand Alexis\'s advice, but with The Drongo, I know am laying myself down on the wire. Carpal tunnel be damned. I don\'t mind the sacrifice one bit.\n<section class="footnotes">\n<ol>\n<li id="fn-1">When I made Ryan Quest, I was unaware of how tired the "my friend\'s apartment" IF trope is. Had I known, I would not have made it possible to gain any points in the apartment, so that savvy players would not roll their eyes and dismiss the game as an "apartment game." That said, the typical "apartment game" takes place entirely in someone\'s crappy apartment, while Ryan Quest quickly nudges the player outside to discover the rest of the game world. Furthermore, there are several nods to the real-life Ryan that could only be properly placed in the apartment.<a href="#fnref-1" class="footnote">↩</a></li>\n<li id="fn-2">But, since I implemented HELP early on and few people needed it, it never got much love. Better help is available on the game\'s webpage: <a href="/ryanquest#how-to-play">How to Play</a> is suitable for text-adventure newbies, while <a href="/ryanquest#commands">Commands</a> is a concise reference.<a href="#fnref-2" class="footnote">↩</a></li>\n<li id="fn-3">"Dungeon Master," i.e. the person tasked with running the game world and responding to player\'s actions. This role is also referred to as the "Game Master" (GM) or "referee." The choice is not arbitrary -- it is a fundamental principle of linguistic semantics that no two words are exactly alike -- but for the purposes of this portfolio, there\'s no need to quibble.<a href="#fnref-3" class="footnote">↩</a></li>\n<li id="fn-4">This included a consideration for elevation, such that a road running on level ground around a high mountainous area would be preferred to one which ascended into the mountains and back down.<a href="#fnref-4" class="footnote">↩</a></li>\n<li id="fn-5">For example: numerous metal ores, coal, timber, and salt; sheep, cattle, cod, herring; flax, wheat, tobacco, cotton, and sugarcane; cinnabar, phosphorus, and lapis lazuli.<a href="#fnref-5" class="footnote">↩</a></li>\n<li id="fn-6">For example: blacksmiths, coopers, butchers, millers, cheesemongers, glassblowers, alchemists, brewers, potters, dyers, hatters, tailors, carpenters, and "lumpmen" (salt makers.)<a href="#fnref-6" class="footnote">↩</a></li>\n</ol>\n</section>\n'}], 'channel': ['pages'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2021/01/10/z7', '/santa-cruz-portfolio'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'published': [DateTime(2021, 1, 9, 7, 49, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': '<div class="muted">\nThis morning message is work in progress, for sure. It means something, but doesn\'t mean it as fully as it might.\nI\'m posting it to keep encouraging myself to post snippets and snoopets.\n</div>\n<div class="poem-container">\n<pre class="poem">\nFor breakfast, man made sausage, so I sausage,\nAnd squint askew as Ra holds high his disk.\nWith no time for poetic inspiration,\nHe casts aside the slinking clouds of mist.\n\nThe seagulls, noisy poopers, have come inland.\nWith stupid orange mouths agape, they wheel,\nUngainly flap, and float, til they spy refuse,\nThen land to fight amongst themselves and squeal.\n\nOn high, in blue, airliners cut a contrast,\nSpeed straight where birds must fart around like clods. \nDo seagulls ever wonder what a plane is?\nDo they believe in jets, as we do gods?\n</pre>\n</div>\n'}], 'name': ['Seagulls'], 'category': ['poetry'], 'channel': ['poems'], 'slug': ['seagulls'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2021/01/09/ay', '/poems/seagulls'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'published': [DateTime(2021, 1, 2, 11, 46, 52, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'name': ['The Drongo, Interview #1: Karthik Bala'], 'updated': [DateTime(2021, 1, 17, 16, 42, 41, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': 'The day has come! Welcome, one and all, to the first interview with <a href="https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/thedrongo">The Drongo</a>.\nBefore I introduce our guest, a celebratory note: delightful drongos have completed enough interviews for me to release one every two weeks through late <s>February</s> March. Even more are under way!\nThe official drongometer readout is mere millimeters from "Maximum Drong." <a href="https://newsletter.maxwelljoslyn.com/subscribe">There\'s no better time to subscribe</a>.\n<div class="center"><img src="/static/thedrongo/karthik-bala.jpg"></div>\nThe Drongo: Please join me in welcoming Karthik to the stage. For being the first interview guest, his courage is matched only by his drongitude. I can also vouch for his sense of humor. Karthik, please introduce yourself to the audience.\nKarthik Bala: Yo, I\'m Karthik. I started off as this ultra-rationalist, science-worshipping tech enthusiast. I programmed for Facebook hoping to get overpaid to rest and vest until I could retire to a beach hut in Hawaii and never work again.\nFortunately, a series of weird health issues thwarted my plans and forced me to re-examine my materialist view of my body and the world. Long story short, I flipped my whole belief system and quit my job to dive into the awe-inspiring world of astrologers, gurus, energy healers, etc.\nToday I write, practice ayurveda, and mine the vast caves of ancient knowledge.\nThe Drongo: First off, let\'s get situated. Could you please introduce us to ayurveda?\nAfter that, could you also touch on the other areas of healing, occultism, and religion which you study, and discuss your rationale and methods for combining them with ayurveda? Feel free to get historical.\nKarthik Bala: Ayurveda is the ancient Indian science of attaining perfect physical and mental health.\nIn western medicine, we get biological knowledge with microscopes and look at how cells and proteins interact or whatever, and then use that to make a hypothesis for how to cure disease. Ayurveda takes an inward approach. Sages just meditated a bunch, prayed to the God of Ayurveda for knowledge, introspected, felt their own nervous systems and organs -- and then magically came out the other side with the cures. It sounds crazy, but the cures have worked for thousands of years, and are now being corroborated through the western lens as well.\nAll traditional medicine systems share the belief that the medical qualities of a food can be derived simply from its look, taste, and texture. No lab needed. An example concept in ayurveda is the twenty "qualities" of edible substances. The qualities of oatmeal are "dull," "unctuous," and "heavy" (three of the twenty qualities.) So if you\'re "light" (underweight) and "dry," you should eat oatmeal. That\'s a super basic example, but they have different kinds of these intuitive, simple, beautiful abstractions (6 tastes, 5 elements, 7 tissues) that come together and are applied to heal any disease.\nUnfortunately, ayurveda today is much different than when it started. It takes a lot of spiritual intuition to really learn and practice ayurveda well. Back in the day, practitioners could just feel your pulse for a minute and know exactly what was out of balance in your body. There was a legendary doctor who could cure any disease under the sun, with the same three herbs given in different, precise ratios, because he had some special gifts.\nSo you can\'t really just go to LearnAyurveda.com and expect to be a good healer. Even the formal colleges are fairly BS. So, these days, I\'m more into developing my intuition and sensitivity so I can taste an herb and just "know" what it does myself (this concept is called Divya Drishti.) And of course, this will help me with everything, not just ayurveda.\nFor example, the scriptures say if you really meditate on the moon, you\'ll attain the knowledge of all the movements of the stars. That\'s awesome, right? No math or reading required. The mystic path definitely has a high ROI. I know that sounds insane and woo-woo, but I have a strong faith that it\'s in the realm of possibilities.\nAnd even science aside, I don\'t rely on my dumb, flip-flopping brain and limited rationality to make choices for me. I want my heart to take the lead. I want to just know "the right thing to do" in all cases. So yeah, part of what I\'m focusing on is developing my ability to ascertain knowledge through spiritual practices. I haven\'t made much progress yet 😂, but I\'ll let you know when I can read books with my eyes closed.\nThe Drongo: When you achieve that, I want to be the first to know!\nNow let\'s get a detailed look at your practices.\nPick a specific ritual technique of high importance, or centrality in your beliefs. Please explain its goal, then lay out allllll the preparations you make for it, and the exact steps you take during it. Don\'t hold back: use as much specialized terminology as you need to explain timing, bodily positions and movements, mental states, "ingredients" and other prerequisites, everything.\nKarthik Bala: The way you asked that question I feel like you imagine me sacrificing goats and casting spells and what not 😂. Unfortunately I\'m not at that level yet. My practices are pretty boring. Aesthetically, at least.\nThe central practice of my life is Sadhguru\'s Shambhavi Mahamudra, which I don\'t think I\'m allowed to explain, so I would just encourage everyone to <a href="https://isha.sadhguru.org/us/en/wisdom/article/what-is-shambhavi-mahamudra">check it out</a>. There are <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5871312/">studies on it</a>, if that\'s your thing, but keep in mind these studies only touch on physically-observable benefits of the practice, which is a small dimension of its overall purpose.\nSomething I\'ve been experimenting with recently that I\'ll go into is using specific seed mantras (one-syllable chants) to change my emotional state. Speaking different words will impact the body in different ways (aside: "spell," like "wizard spell," is derived from "spelling!") Different sounds sound different because they\'re produced in, or resonate in, different sections of the body, stimulating different nerves, organs, energy centers, and producing different physical and emotional states.\nIf you sit still and relaxed, hands in prayer position, and slowly chant the word "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv5bXgovIuE">Kleem</a>" -- really get into it, how a shaman would -- you can feel the "kl" move up and down in your throat, the "ee" vibrate in your chest, and the "mmmm" vibrate in your chest and head. This combination is said to create love, joy, and ecstasy. Or, according to YouTube comments, can make the ex you still love call you...\n<div class="center"><img src="/static/thedrongo/kleem-tweet.jpg"></div>\nI\'m hoping one day these mantras will replace drugs. I figure, when you take something like MDMA, it\'s not serotonin in a pill. MDMA just agonizes serotonin receptors, pushing your body to make more serotonin on its own. Also, I figure, yogis and people like Wim Hof have insane control processes (e.g. serotonin regulation) that most of us believe are unconscious and off limits. So, I don\'t think making more serotonin sans drugs is off limits. The future I want to live in is one where we all hold hands and chant Kleem (or Ram, a more "Red Bull" type of mantra) at the pregame.\nThe Drongo: What role does empiricism play in your religious practice or rituals?\nIs it more important to trust and faithfully follow tradition, or is experimentation a requirement for understanding? If tradition, how do you know the prescribed costs/preparations are truly required? If experiment, how do you recognize success?\nKarthik Bala: For mysticism, you need faith in order to experiment. Unlike conventional scientific experiments, your mind, thoughts, and emotions play a big role in the outcome of the experiment, like how in quantum physics the observer affects the observed. You can\'t do a ritual mechanically, without the mindset. It won\'t work, because most rituals have positive will and thought power as a requirement.\nOf course, this leaves mysticism and theology open to being dismissed as one big placebo. I find that unfair, for reasons I\'ve written about <a href="https://blog.karthik.is/posts/gravity/">here</a>.\nYou can start with something where faith isn\'t needed. Drinking turmeric tea for a cold, maybe. If it works, you\'d think, "Wow, this stuff works. That\'s kinda cool. I wonder what else works!" So you go a little weirder -- maybe breathing techniques or mantras. And your initial inertia with the tea gives you a positive mindset on the weirder stuff. And if more and more starts to work you build an optimistic faith in the crazier stuff, and faith in the geniuses that somehow came up with all of this.\nThe scriptures say knowledge is attained by the consensus of 1. personal experience, 2. scriptural reference, and 3. agreement of a living guru. So it\'s a mix of tradition and experiment. Scriptures and guru, #2 and #3, are where you get the "prescribed costs/preparations."\nRecognizing success is hard at first, since the effects are so subtle. It takes faith to keep going. But once you\'re deep into it, meditation becomes very visceral, tingling, blissful, you start hearing sounds and shit, and you can feel pretty strongly that something cool is happening. But there\'s also obvious success. Like, for twenty years, since I was a little kid, I\'d get sinus infections once every one or two months. My nose is completely fucked. Don\'t know why -- genetics, maybe. Doctors just told me to take more Nyquil, get a CPAP machine, maybe undergo surgery. But after 6 months of ayurveda and spiritual practices, I stopped getting them completely. It\'s been 18 months since my last one. That\'s easy to recognize as success.\nThe Drongo: That sure sounds successful to me, Karthik. Any last thoughts to share with the audience? This is the bonus round. Anything goes.\nKarthik Bala: If anyone wants to know more about mysticism in general, I highly recommend <a href="https://www.innerengineering.com/">Inner Engineering</a> by Sadhguru, or for the more scientifically-minded, there\'s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwgkvBZXum0">a great talk he has</a> with the neuroscientist David Eaglemen. To read about the seed mantras I mentioned, like Kleem and Ram, there\'s a great book: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Mantra-Yoga-Primal-Sound-Mantras/dp/0910261946">Mantra Yoga and Primal Sound</a>. I also occasionally write about it on my blog here.\nThe Drongo: A thousand and one thanks, Karthik! Your responses were beyond excellent, especially given you had no previous examples to guide you.\nTo read more from Karthik, you can visit his personal website <a href="https://karthik.is">karthik.is</a>, his blog <a href="https://blog.karthik.is">blog.karthik.is</a>, or his Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/kbala444">@kbala444</a>. He\'s also open to contact and follow-ups at <a href="mailto:karthikbala444@gmail.com">karthikbala444@gmail.com</a>.\nⵘ ⵗ ⵘ ⵗ ⵘ\nYou are encouraged to spread this interview, and The Drongo itself, to your friends, SOs, family members, followers, and corona podmates. <a class="bigclick" href="https://newsletter.maxwelljoslyn.com/subscribe">They can sign up here</a>!\n<a href="https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/thedrongo/interviews/chris-stasse">Interview #2 is with Chris Stasse</a>: Chinese scholar, calligrapher, and dance machine.\n\n<div class=center>\n\n</div>\n'}], 'category': ['drongo', 'newsletter', 'interview', 'ayurveda'], 'channel': ['thedrongo'], 'slug': ['interviews/karthik-bala'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2021/01/02/4f', '/thedrongo/interviews/karthik-bala'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'published': [DateTime(2020, 12, 23, 20, 19, 23, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'name': ['Labels for Blog Titles'], 'content': [{'html': 'A couple weeks ago, I added "new" labels to the front page of my website. They are rectangular and ugly, but soon they will be round<a href="#fn-1">1</a>.\nI realized I could reuse the same labels in my blog index, so that each post\'s name will be followed by its tags, like this.\n<blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>Paper Republic </li>\n<li>Reed College Chinese Department </li>\n<li><a href="https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/ryanquest">Ryan Quest</a> </li>\n<li>21st Century D&D \n<li>The Drongo <a href="https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/thedrongo">interview series</a> </li>\n</ul>\n</blockquote>\nI wanted to differentiate them from the "new" labels. Since "new" was the odd one out (expressing recency rather than a topic), I changed its shape and color scheme. Here\'s how looked before.\n<section class="footnotes">\n<ol>\n<li id="fn-1">2020-12-23T20:59:48-0800 they are now round.<a href="#fnref-1" class="footnote">↩</a></li>\n</ol>\n</section>\n'}], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 12, 23, 20, 59, 54, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['indieweb', 'computing', 'upgrade'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/12/24/mx', '/2020/12/23/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'published': [DateTime(2020, 12, 17, 14, 58, 45, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'name': ['Software Parody'], 'content': [{'html': '\nIt is relatively easy to define "parody" when the object of parody is a book, poem, movie, or piece of music. What would it mean to parody a piece of software?\n\n<h2>Functional Objects Can Be Parodied</h2>\nIt will not do to claim that software is immune to parody because it is a functional construct. A building is functional, yet its structure could be parodied, perhaps by a distorted replica having stretched hallways with non-rectangular cross sections, and doorways which are too small for humans or which lead nowhere. (Architecture in general can also be parodied: consider the ridiculous effect of a diminutive Arc de Triomphe in the middle of a normal-sized roundabout.)\nFurthermore, it is mistaken to claim that poetry or literature is not functional; that belief persists only because most people are not familiar with the mechanics of the forms, and have never thought of those media in functional terms. The function of a poem, for instance, is to snag the reader\'s brain, and plant an image or feeling inside it, by clever use of diction within the constraints of meter.\nIn sum, functionality of an object is no barrier to parodying it.\n<h2>Comedic Programs and Languages</h2>\nComedy is not parody; the latter is a subset of the former. Comedy programming languages have been written. INTERCAL is the classic example. To name just one of its rules, a program written in INTERCAL requires a certain number of PLEASE tokens before the compiler will accept it.\nI believe that INTERCAL constitutes a parody of programming languages. But even a program written in INTERCAL, such as a program that counts words in an input file, is still a program, not a parody of a program. Its functionality, though obscured in an amusing way by the ludicrous language, is still present.\nComedy programs have also been written, often in ordinary programming languages. One of the goals of participants in the <a href="https://www.ioccc.org">International Obfuscated C Contest</a> is to amuse the C-savvy reader by contorting the notoriously flexible C language into bizarre shapes that still run as code. (My favorite is "Signed Char Lotte," Paul Westley\'s entry from 1990 which reads as a series of letters between a man and jilted lover.)\n<figure class=center>\n<pre>\n<code>\nchar*lie;\n double time, me= !0XFACE,\n not; int rested, get, out;\n main(ly, die) char ly, **die ;{\n \tsigned char lotte,\ndear; (char)lotte--;\n for(get= !me;; not){\n 1 - out & out ;lie;{\n char lotte, my= dear,\n **let= !!me !not+ ++die;\n \t(char)(lie=\n</code>\n</pre>\n<figure>The first two "stanzas" of "Signed Char Lotte."</figure>\n</figure>\nHowever, comedy is still not parody. To achieve parody code, we need to find a program which achieves comedy by imitating another piece of code.\nAt time of writing, I have been unable to find such a thing. <a href=mailto:maxwelljoslyn@gmail.com>Please email me if you have any ideas</a>.\n'}], 'category': ['parody', 'computing'], 'channel': ['ideas'], 'slug': ['software-parody'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/12/17/8d', '/ideas/software-parody'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'published': [DateTime(2020, 12, 17, 14, 58, 45, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'name': ['Poetic Meter Analyzer'], 'content': [{'html': '<div class=muted>\nDoes this exist?\n</div>\nType in words. For each line you type, this program will do its best to categorize the line by its pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. It does this by retrieving the stress pattern or patterns for each word from an ordinary dictionary (maybe several dictionaries), and comparing all possible paths through the line to determine, for words with multiple possible stress patterns, which is most likely to be right. Or, which would lead to what patterns. [Aside: run spell checker before doing analysis.]\nOh, typing is getting me nowhere. Examles of desired behavior will do better.\n[2020-12-26 FYI I\'ve got rsi. hands don\'t do perfectly with typing anymore; please gracefully ignore typos.]\n<pre>\n<code>\nLet s mean weak. Let S mean strong.\nEx1 sSsSsSsSsS -> Iambic Pentameter (I5)\nEx2 SssSsSsSsS -> I5 with inversion at 1, notated ":invert [1]"\nEx3 SsSsSsSsSs -> Trochaic Pentameter (T5)\n</code>\n</pre>\nThe program might assign a low probability to Ex2 actually being "anapestic something-ameter with very broken anapests and a leading strong syllable", as long as it still judges "I5 with inversion 1" most likely.\nMesuring whether something is I5 or near it can be implemented in terms of penalties for deviation from the expected form, but no idea yet what to do about meter that doesn\'t fit a strict pattern, or which is made up of multiple kinds of foot.\n2020-12-26T12:58:46-0800\nBeyond meter checkers, we can also have stanza-structure checkers, for more complicated forms like the sestina.\n'}], 'category': ['poetry', 'computing', 'linguistics'], 'channel': ['ideas'], 'slug': ['poetic-meter-analyzer'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/12/17/rw', '/ideas/poetic-meter-analyzer'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'published': [DateTime(2020, 12, 9, 15, 56, 2, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2021, 2, 24, 12, 0, 48, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'name': ['The Drongo: Interview FAQ'], 'content': [{'html': 'Thanks for agreeing to an interview with <a href="https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/thedrongo">The Drongo</a>, or at least for being curious enough to read this FAQ!\nThis page lists answers to every question I\'ve gotten about the interview process. If your question doesn\'t appear here, <a href="mailto:maxwelljoslyn@gmail.com?subject=question about The Drongo interview">please email me</a>.\n<ul>\n<li>What\'s the time commitment for doing an interview?\nPre-interview survey: 5-10 minutes\nInterview questions: ~60 minutes of writing (don\'t worry, I\'lll handle all the editing)\n</li>\n<li>What\'s the pre-interview survey?\nThe survey collects a brief bio, a photo of you, and some other summary information. Time commitment: 5-10 minutes.\nYour bio will help me write your interview questions, and serve as your self-introduction in the interview.\n</li>\n<li>What\'s the format?\nBoth the pre-interview survey and the interview questions will reach you by email.\n</li>\n<li>Is there a deadline to respond?\nTry to respond to the survey ASAP. You\'ll have ~1 month to respond to your interview questions, and we can be flexible.\n</li>\n<li>Where will my interview be published?\nSubscribers to The Drongo will receive your interview over email. It will also be published on this website.\n</li>\n<li>What will my interview questions be?\nQuestions are unique to each interviewee. <a href="/thedrongo#interview-schedule">See the past interviews</a> for real examples, or check this typical outline:\n<ul>\n<li>one about how you came to be who you are, usually touching on your unusual hobby, your sick day job, etc.</li>\n<li>one to three questions on topics you suggested, or which go deeper into aspects of your answers to the first question</li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n<li>What if I don\'t like my questions, or want to take the interview in a different direction?\nThat\'s legit! Talk to me and we\'ll figure out an angle we\'re both happy with.\n</li>\n</ul>\n'}], 'category': ['drongo', 'newsletter'], 'channel': ['pages'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/12/09/uf', '/interview-faq'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Letter to Maya'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 11, 26, 14, 39, 40, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': '<a href="https://maya.land">Maya</a>,\n<a class="u-in-reply-to" href="https://maya.land/responses/2020/10/18/zero-indexing-doesnt-come-from-c-and-it.html">Thank you for sharing</a> Mike Hoye\'s "<a href="http://exple.tive.org/blarg/2013/10/22/citation-needed/">Citation Needed</a>" (which documents the strange-but-true origin of the programming-language convention of array indices starting at zero, instead of one.)\nA piece of writing born of someone\'s realization that <q>nobody else has investigated this,</q>as with "Citation Needed." Part of that magicalness comes from the novelty of the discovery, which, in the hands of a good writer, will be unfolded for the reader so that it feels like they could have discovered it, too. Another part of the magicalness is the same feeling one gets when one reads about an archaelogical or historical find from the unlikeliest of places: you mean we didn\'t know?! As you said in your reply, so much of computing history is being lost to time every day.\nYou know what else we\'ve forgotten? Muthafuckin\' Lisp Machines. Name me a computer system today that will let you go from "I\'m using X" to "I\'m inspecting how X operates" to "I\'m extending X as it runs, in real time" to "X works, newly enhanced," where X is anything from low-level code to an app or its GUI, all in one language, with the computer patiently <a href="http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/lw70/IDE-M/html/ide-m-147.htm#pgfId-853189">Listening</a> as you explore.\nEven Emacs only goes so far, and it\'s not an entire operating system (memes aside.) Perhaps hacking on the code which runs Jupyter notebook from inside a Jupyter notebook would feel similar, at least in terms of visibility, but Jupyter is even further from being an OS than Emacs is.\nI was reminded of Lisp Machines by reading <a href="http://loper-os.org">Stanislav</a>, to whom Mike linked in "Citation Needed." Stanislav is building both custom computer architecture and an operating system, Loper OS, in accordance with his manifesto, <a href="http://www.loper-os.org/?p=284">Seven Laws of Sane Personal Computing</a>.\n<blockquote>\nThe foundations of the computing systems we use are built of ossified crud, and this is a genuine crime against the human mind. How much effort (of highly ingenious people, at that) is wasted, simply because one cannot press a Halt switch and display/modify the source code of everything currently running (or otherwise present) on a machine? [...] We have allowed what could have once become the most unbridled creative endeavor known to man short of pure mathematics to become a largely janitorial trade; what could have been the greatest amplification of human intellect in all of history - comparable only to the advent of written language - is now confined to imitating and trivially improving on the major technological breakthroughs of the 19th century - the telegraph, telephone, phonograph, and typewriter.\n<cite>Stanislav, <a href="http://www.loper-os.org/?p=46#selection-81.0-97.0">Shards of Lost Technology, and the Need for High-Level Architectures</a></cite>\n</blockquote>\nA final note for you, and any other Indieweb visitors: I see Stanislav has a <a href="https://indieweb.org">fragmention</a>-like script on his page. When I selected the text for the above quotation, his site added a URL anchor which takes you right back to that location, with the text selected. One of many things that ought to come standard across all computer interfaces.\n'}], 'category': ['correspondence', 'lisp', 'computing'], 'channel': ['letters'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/11/26/zx', '/2020/11/26/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'published': [DateTime(2020, 11, 8, 12, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'name': ['An Integer That Only Decreases?'], 'content': [{'html': 'Is it correct to say that a type system needs to implement dependent types if it is to allow the expression of an integer that can only decrease? The goal would be to define a type <code>R Integer</code> such that a function <code>R Integer -> R Integer</code> would only compile if the <code>Integer</code> inside the output value was equal or less to the one inside the input.\n'}], 'category': ['math', 'computing'], 'channel': ['ideas'], 'slug': ['an-integer-that-only-decreases'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/11/08/vi', '/ideas/an-integer-that-only-decreases'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'updated': [DateTime(2021, 12, 9, 12, 51, 44, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': '<h2>Introduction</h2>\nFrom September 2019 through October 2020, I catalogued the rarest syllables of Modern Standard Mandarin<a href="#fn-1">1</a>. Occasional notetaking turned into a systematic search, and I believe this list is close to complete. To the best of my knowledge I am the first to compile much of this information -- but perhaps others have done so, somewhere beyond the reach of my search-fu.\nDuring this investigation, I was specifically concerned with syllables which are rare regardless of which tone they are pronounced in. This meant that even certain uncommon tone-syllable pairings were not rare enough for me; for instance, only two characters are pronounced qiong in fourth tone, but qiong was not eligible for my list because there are many other characters pronounced qiong across the other three tones.\nIf you know a thing or two about Chinese, I urge you to <a href="#disclaimer">read the disclaimer</a> and leave comments, especially if you spot an error. <q>The best way to learn something is to be wrong about it on the Internet.</q>\n<h2>Zero Characters?</h2>\n<details>\n<summary>\n2021-11-06: An anonymous commentor recently asked whether any syllables are associated with no characters at all. The general answer is no, but the specific answer is more interesting.\n</summary>\nFirstly, although this doesn\'t really count as a Mandarin syllable, you could combine initial and medial/final elements of existing MSM syllables into a pseudo-syllable which does not exist in the language. "B" is an initial, and "iong" a final, but "biong" is not a Mandarin syllable.\nSecondly, sometimes new syllables are invented. Most famously, in a 2004 shampoo commercial, Jackie Chan made the noise "duang" to indicate the sound of shampooed hair being poofy. That syllable does not have a character associated with it; Chan invented the onamatope for the commercial. Internet commentors later decided that the syllable should be given a character composed of the two characters for Jackie Chan\'s Chinese name stacked on top of each other, but that character is a brand-new invention and will not be found in, say, a Chinese-language software keyboard/IME. For more on the "duang" phenomenon, <a href="https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=17913">see this comprehensive writeup</a> in the always-excellent Language Log.\nThirdly, there is another example which I have forgotten; I will write it here at some point.\nFinally, let\'s invert the question, and ask whether there are any characters without syllables to pronounce them. The answer is a resounding yes. You need to look no further than Xu Bing\'s <a href=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Book_from_the_Sky>Book From the Sky</a>, that being the most well-known example of invented Chinese characters which follow all the calligraphic principles but do not mean anything.\n\n(Fun fact: this "zero characters" section was written exactly one year after the initial publication of this post. Thanks, anonymous commentor!)\n\n</details>\n<h2>One Character</h2>\nEight syllables are associated with a single character.\n<h3>Unique Syllables in Everyday Use</h3>\n\nThree of the eight are everyday words<a href="#fn-2">2</a> in heavy use. Shei is by far the most well-known of these: the only word pronounced shei is the question word "who." The word "who" is as common in Mandarin as it is in English, yet you\'ll never hear that syllable anywhere else.\nThe next everyday syllable with just one character is lia. Its one and only written counterpart is 俩 "two, both", a colloquial shortening of 两个 "two MW<a href="#fn-3">3</a>." They can be used interchangeably in phrases like "you two" (“你们俩/你们两个”).\nFinally, there is gei, which in third tone is the verb 给 "to give," as well as, roughly speaking, an indirect object marker and a passive marker.\nMDBG claims that 假 is pronounced gei to <a href="https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary?wdqr=%E5%81%87%E6%8E%B0%5Bgei1%20bai1%5D&wdrst=0">transcribe a single word of Hokkien</a>. I originally took this to mean that gei should be in the two-syllable category, but on 2020-11-10 I reconsidered, and moved it here. A single <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hokkien#Grammar">Hokkien</a> transcription is far from a central example for Standard Mandarin usage, with which this essay is concerned. My MacOS input suggests that 䢎 is also pronounced gei, but as this character is so rare that <a href="https://www.zdic.net/hans/%E4%A2%8E">even Zdic doesn\'t list a pronunciation</a>, I\'m willing to discard it for the time being. Eventually I will check elsewhere.\n[Boy, I wish I didn\'t have to keep manually checking dictionary sites. If only someone was building a web interface to check all the important dictionaries at once, as part of a <a href="/linguary">Chinese information-management tool</a>.]\n<h3>Unique Syllables, Rarely Seen</h3>\nThe remaining syllables in the single-character group are associated with characters far less common than the characters for shei, lia, and gei.\nThe character 欻 can be pronounced chua, first tone, to mean "crashing sound," while tei is an alternate reading for 忒 "too, very" (also pronounced tui, which is anything but rare.)\nRather more obscure is fiao<a href="#fn-4">4</a>, which as 覅 which means something like "need not" or "don\'t." Also obscure is kei, found only as an alternate reading for 克, meaning "scold." That character, 克, is quite common, especially in adaptations or transcriptions of foreign words, but it is practically always read ke4. Had I not undertaken this project, I might never have encountered the kei reading, even if another eight years of study went by.\nLastly, eng is unambiguously associated with just one character: 鞥, an archaic literary term for a horse\'s reins. Technically, eng is considered a pronunciation for the interjection 嗯, "ah/oh/hmm?", but that is more often pronounced en<a href="#fn-5">5</a>. Furthermore, "en" and "eng" are not distinguished by many speakers of Chinese, so the case for admitting this as a second character pronounced eng is weak, at best.\n<h3>A Very Special Edge Case</h3>\nA ninth syllable technically does not belong to this category, but might be considered a special case. The syllable fo, in second tone, is associated only with 佛 "Buddha." There are other characters with this pronunciation, but all of them are variants having exactly the same meaning. By contrast, the characters for the other rare syllables listed here all have distinct etymologies. As I understand it, no other characters have acquired the pronunciation fo because of the combined seriousness of Buddhist religious conviction and traditional Chinese naming taboos.\n<h2>Two Characters</h2>\nFour syllables are only encountered as readings for two piddly characters.\n<ul>\n<li>diu is the reading for 丢 diu1 "lose, discard" and 铥 diu1 "thulium". (I choose to ignore a variant on the former which uses a heng stroke instead of a pie at the top, i.e. 丟; I also choose to leave out the character 颩, which, <a href="https://www.zdic.net/hans/%E9%A2%A9">according to Zdic</a>, is only ever read diu1 when it stands in for 丢.)</li>\n<li>sen is bestowed on these and these alone: 森 sen1 "forest" and 椮 sen1 "lush growth (of trees); fishing using bundled wood."</li>\n<li>seng cuddles up to just two characters: 僧 seng1 "monk; sangha" and 鬙 seng1 "short hair; unkempt."</li>\n<li>zen is the pronunciation for only two characters: 怎 zen3, the ultra-common interrogative "why?/how?", and 谮 zen4, a literary term meaning "(to) slander." MacOS pinyin input, as usual, has some extra ultra-obscure and potentially wrong suggestions: 撍, which Pleco says is usually pronounced zan4 but may also be pronounced zen1; 㻸; 囎, which is 赠 "give gift" supplemented by a mouth radical; and 䫈. None of these show up regularly in dictionaries. (Thanks to Jacob Reed for bringing zen to my attention on 2021-12-09.)</li>\n</ul>\n<h2>Three Characters</h2>\nThere are eight syllables which are associated with three characters.\n<ul>\n<li>miu is attached to 谬, 缪, and 唒 -- and I\'ve only found dictionary entries for the first two. The word 荒谬 huang1miu4 "absurd, ridiculous" is the most commonly-seen word containing one of those characters.</li>\n<li>zei has 贼 "thief, traitors; wily, deceitful; extremely" and a variant thereon, 戝 (ignoring the difference between simplified and traditional versions of the 贝 radical), as well as 鲗 "cuttlefish."</li>\n<li>cen has 㟥 "uneven, not uniform," 岑 "small hill" (also a surname), and 涔 "overflow; rainwater; tearful."</li>\n<li>fou has 否 "negate, deny"; 紑 "bright; glossy"; and 缶 "pottery." The first, fou3 "negate, deny," is common in formal language; the others are quite specific and rarely seen.</li>\n<li>shua is most commonly encountered as the reading for 刷, as shua1 "to brush, daub, paint" or shua4 "to select." The other characters for this syllable are 耍 "play with; wield; act cool; display (skill, temper)" and 唰, a piece of onomatopoeia for a whistling or rustling sound.</li>\n<li>One of the characters read ne is the extremely common speech particle 呢. It can occur at the ends of questions in certain discourse contexts, and can also be said in between listed items. The other two characters, both pronounced ne4 are 讷 "speak slowly; inarticulate" and the radical 疒 "sick, sickness". I\'ve never heard this last one referred to as ne4, which is its name as a Kangxi radical; in everyday speech, it is called 病字旁, "the radical in 病" (which also means "sick, disease").</li>\n<li>den is oddly distinguished by its three characters 扽, 扥, and 㩐, all of which are read den4 and have the meaning "yank, pull tight."</li>\n<li>nüe has to its credit 虐 "oppressive, tyrannical" and 疟 "malaria." MacOS pinyin input claims that 硸 is one, too, but it\'s not in any of the dictionaries I\'ve checked so far.</li>\n</ul>\n<h2>Honorable Mentions: Four Characters</h2>\nThe honorable mentions have four characters each. Zhua and shuan are definitely in this group, while a few other candidates need more detailed checking: shai seems like it has either 4 or 5, while ha and re are up in the air.\n<h2 id="disclaimer">Disclaimer</h2>\nI am confident that this piece is unfinished. Even as I typed up this essay from my notes, I continued to find obscure characters which forced me to shuffle the above list.\nI understand the obstacles to definitively stating that such and such syllable has exactly so many characters. Old, archaic, and variant characters make that quest questionable, as do the differences between simplified and traditional characters<a href="#fn-6">6</a>. I have, however, succeeded in ruling out the rarity of most Mandarin syllables; observing what is left -- even when exact numbers are hard to come by -- is enough to make this linguist happy.\n\nI started many of my searches for this project by typing a toneless syllable into the MacOS pinyin input method and seeing how many characters it suggested. That was a sufficiently reliable indicator to show whether I should search dictionaries such as CC-CEDICT, Xiandai Hanyu Guifan Cidian, and the Pleco app\'s in-house dictionary. If there is any large, reliable character database which allows a syllable as a search keyword, I have not found it.\n<section class="footnotes">\n<ol>\n<li id="fn-1">Modern Standard Mandarin (MSM) is the official version of Mandarin on the Chinese mainland, natively called Putonghua 普通话 or "common speech." The Taiwanese standard is usually called Taiwanese Mandarin (国语 "national language.")<a href="#fnref-1" class="footnote">↩</a></li>\n<li id="fn-2">These three characters can stand alone as words, but many characters cannot.<a href="#fnref-2" class="footnote">↩</a></li>\n<li id="fn-3">"MW" means "measure word," also called a "classifier." Roughly speaking, a measure word is an extra element which is usually<a href="#fn-7">7</a> pronounced between a number and the noun that number counts. English does not have measure words, but it does have something similar in the way "cup" is used in "three cups of milk" (which is sometimes called a "massifier<a href="#fn-8">8</a>.") In Chinese, you add something like "cup" on any noun you count. In English, we could say "two cows" or "two head of cattle," but in Chinese that would always be rendered as "two head of cattle." And in English, there\'s no word like "head" for snakes or cats, but wiggly things like snakes (and pants, and rivers) share a measure word, as do small animals like cats, birds, and dogs.<a href="#fnref-3" class="footnote">↩</a></li>\n<li id="fn-4">Thanks to "<a href="https://eastasiastudent.net/china/mandarin/unusual-syllables/">Unusual Syllables</a>," at East Asia Student.<a href="#fnref-4" class="footnote">↩</a></li>\n<li id="fn-5">In one of several tones, depending on the speaker\'s meaning.<a href="#fnref-5" class="footnote">↩</a></li>\n<li id="fn-6">In all the cases I recall investigating for this essay, there was a 1-to-1 relationship between simplified and traditional characters, such that the count was the same whether I considered the traditional or the simplified character as canonical. I predict that any further large changes to my list will come from correcting mistakes made at this phase (e.g. noticing cases where two totally different traditional characters were simplified to one form, in which case my count was N but should be N+1.)<a href="#fnref-6" class="footnote">↩</a></li>\n</ol>\n</section>\n'}], 'name': ['The Rarest Mandarin Syllables'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 11, 6, 15, 34, 55, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['chinese', 'zh', 'linguistics', 'research'], 'channel': ['pages'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/11/06/vs', '/rare-syllables'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'published': [DateTime(2020, 11, 6, 15, 34, 55, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'name': ['Syllables with Few Characters'], 'content': [{'html': '[Moved to <a href="/rare-syllables">The Rarest Mandarin Syllables</a>.]\n'}], 'category': ['chinese'], 'channel': ['ideas'], 'slug': ['syllables-with-few-characters'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/11/06/qc', '/ideas/syllables-with-few-characters'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Another Great Turnout for Homebrew Website Club'], 'content': [{'html': 'We got a great turnout tonight at <a href="https://events.indieweb.org/2020/11/homebrew-website-club-the-americas-6krVDX5GAVs6">Homebrew Website Club Americas</a>, including two IndieWeb newcomers: Noodles (no website yet), and Dave Bucklin (<a href="http://davebucklin.com">davebucklin.com</a>).\nWhat do you get when you put 10 website geeks in a room? Exactly what you might expect: lively conversation about unconventional uses for RSS feeds, "retro grouching" about old-school UNIX tools, and spitballing of potential session topics for <a href="https://2020.indieweb.org/east">IndieWebCamp 2020 East</a>, coming up on November 14th and 15th. <a href="https://etherpad.indieweb.org/2020-11-04-HWC-Americas">Here are the collaborative public notes</a> we took during our discussion.'}], 'category': ['indieweb'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 11, 4, 19, 57, 45, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/11/04/7a', '/2020/11/04/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'published': [DateTime(2020, 10, 25, 12, 36, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'name': ['"Action" Drew Jackson Text Message Extraction'], 'content': [{'html': 'Items originating in messages to Drew, archived here:\n<ul>\n<li>Cyberatops\n</li>\n<li>GI Joestar\n</li>\n<li>Cromartie High School Host Club\n</li>\n<li>This, from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deng_Yujiao_incident">the Deng Yujiao incident</a>:\n <blockquote>\nDeng Guida then used a wad of ¥4000 cash to hit her face while yelling, "Didn\'t you want money? I bet you have not seen any money before. How much money do you want? Just say it. Believe me or not, I shall smack you to death with money."\n Deng Yujiao retorted, "Yes, I have never seen any money before. If you have the guts, today you smack me to death."\n Deng Guida then replied, "I am going to smack you to death with money. I\'m going to get a truckload of money to squash you to death."\n </blockquote>\n</li>\n<li>And this:\n <blockquote>\nWhen the Buddha accepted Anāthapindika\'s invitation to visit Sāvatthi, the latter, seeking a suitable place for the Buddha\'s residence, discovered this park belonging to Jetakumāra (MA.i.471 says it was in the south of Sāvatthi). When he asked to be allowed to buy it, Jeta\'s reply was: "Not even if you could cover the whole place with money."\n </blockquote>\n</li>\n<li>The 17th-century Chinese warlord <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Xianzhong">Zhang Xianzhong</a> led a peasant revolt, conquered Sichuan, killed an unknown-but-large number of people, and (supposedly) erected a stele inscribed with this poem:\n <blockquote>\n <pre>\n 天生万物以养人\n 人无一善以报天\n 杀杀杀杀杀杀杀\n Heaven brings forth innumerable things to nurture man\n Man has not one good thing with which to repay Heaven\n Kill kill kill kill kill kill kill\n </pre>\n </blockquote>\n</li>\n</ul>\n'}], 'category': ['correspondence'], 'channel': ['ideas'], 'slug': ['action-drew-jackson-text-message-extraction'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/10/25/6d', '/ideas/action-drew-jackson-text-message-extraction'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'drafted': [{'datetime': '2020-10-07T23:51:13+00:00', 'timezone': 'America/Los_Angeles'}], 'offload': ['true'], 'content': [{'html': 'I <a href="/books#finding-them-gone">recently read</a> Finding Them Gone, Red Pine\'s book combining a contemporary Chinese travelogue with an introduction to ancient Chinese poetry. Through this book, I learned about chang2xiao4 长啸, an ancient Daoist spiritual exercise. It is known in English as "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendental_whistling">transcendental whistling</a>" -- or, in Red Pine\'s translation, "droning."\n<blockquote>\n<cite>pg 47</cite>\nI discovered that in the mouths of Daoists, changxiao had a very different meaning, and involved breathing out in a way that could be heard for miles. Such droning was done from the top of a hill or a raised platform. None of the Daoists I\'ve spoken with, however, have been able to tell me how to do it. Either the regimen behind such a skill has died out, or such knowledge is transmitted in secret.\n</blockquote>\nNow, I\'m not telling you about droning just because it\'s crazy cool. Using Google\'s new website Teachable Machine, it took me just fifteen minutes to create a neural network that recognizes droning-like noises in the browser.\nAfter clicking the button, allow 3-5 seconds for the scripts to load. You\'ll know it\'s working if your browser asks to use the microphone. To trigger the network, make a high-pitched "eeeee" noise, or a low pitched "uhhhhh" noise.\nEDIT: this doesn\'t work on all mobile devices. Try your desktop browser if you can.\n<button type="button" onclick="init()">Get Ready to Drone</button>\n<div id="label-container"></div>\n\n<script src="/static/drone/1.js"></script>\n\n<script src="/static/drone/2.js"></script>\n<script src="/static/drone/main.js"></script>\n<div id="highdiv">\nHigh detected.\n</div>\n<div id="lowdiv">\nLow detected.\n</div>\nAn 8th-century Daoist manual, the Xiao4zhi3 啸旨 (Principles of Droning), describes about ten methods of droning. Though some sections have been translated, to my knowledge nobody has translated the whole manual. In the future, I\'d like to thoroughly translate the droning methods given in the Principles of Droning, then retrain this network to recognize the authentic sounds.\nLast but not least, here are the remaining quotes on droning from Finding Them Gone.\n<blockquote>\n<cite>pg 48</cite>\nIn Juan Chi\'s day, droning was considered an art worthy of any gentlemen interested in a life beyond the crowd. Juan\'s contemporary, Ch\'eng Tzu-an (231-273), wrote a long poem about it titled "Ode to Droning" 啸赋, which was later collected in the 6th-century literary anthology known as the Wen Xuan. Ch\'eng began by describing how practitioners climb to a height and focus their thoughts on what is subtle and distant, with such intensity that they become oblivious of themselves. Once this was achieved, they gave rise to\n<blockquote>\n<pre>\nA sound not dependent on an instrument\nA technique free of tools\nUsing what one has at hand\nFocusing the mind and controlling the breath\nYou move your lips and a tune appears\nYou open your mouth and a sound comes forth\nWhatever you meet or encounter\nInspires a response in song\nIt isn\'t discordant when it\'s loud\nIt doesn\'t sound weak when it\'s faint\nIt\'s purer and more piercing than a flute\nSofter and more refined than a zither\nEthereal enough to reach the realm of spirits\nSubtle enough to probe the deepest depths\nCreatures all dance and tap their feet\nPhoenixes prance and flap their wings\n........................\nKnow then the wonder of droning\nIs the pinnacle of sounds\n</pre>\n</blockquote>\n</blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<cite>pg 85</cite>\nIn addition to cultivating forms of meditation that turned their minds into ashes and their bodies into wizened trees, they [<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Sages_of_the_Bamboo_Grove">the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove</a>] also droned.\nI had also hoped to climb to a promontory known as Sun Deng\'s Droning Tower. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Deng_(recluse)">Sun Deng</a> was a long-haired Daoist hermit, who played a one-string zither, and who served as the group\'s mentor in Daoist matters, which, of course, included droning.\n</blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<cite>pg 94</cite>\nAnother poem on the scroll was [<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Wei_(Tang_dynasty)">Wang Wei</a>\'s] Bamboo Retreat 竹里馆:\n<blockquote>\n<pre>\nSitting alone amid dense bamboo\nPlaying my zither and droning\nDeep in the forest no one else knows\nUntil the bright moon looks down\n</pre>\n</blockquote>\nLike Juan Chi, Wang Wei was both a musician and a cultivator of spiritual arts. He, too, could drone.\n</blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<cite>pg 120</cite>\nI could see why Li Bai chose this location. It was flat, and would have been perfect for martial arts exercises. At the far end of the summit, there was a new shrine hall where Li Bai\'s reading terrace stood. At some point, droning towers were replaced by reading terraces among Chinese intelligentsia. Droning, I\'m guessing, didn\'t do as much for a person\'s resume or help with passing the exams. Still, it\'s not surprising that so many of China\'s great poets had some sort of elevated place where they could be closer to celestial and atmospheric influences.\n</blockquote>\n<cite>pg 85</cite>\n<blockquote>\nWe asked directions only twice. Sun\'s tower was just north of Huihsien, inside Paichuan Park, a park of a hundred springs dominated by a small lake with a zigzagging bridge across the middle. I walked to the north end of the lake then follow the trail up a small hill known as Sumenshan. Then, minutes later, I arrived at the place where Sun droned.\nHuihsien had changed since then, but the mountain was still a mountain. The view was expansive, and it would have been a fine place to drone.\n</blockquote>\n\n'}], 'name': ['Daoist Droning'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 10, 17, 23, 5, 36, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 10, 28, 23, 8, 2, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['chinese'], 'channel': ['pages'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/10/18/78', '/droning'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<data class="p-rsvp" value="yes"></data>\n<a class="u-in-reply-to" href="https://events.indieweb.org/2020/11/indiewebcamp-east-2020-ShBaD3gD6Df0">Indie Web Camp East 2020</a> will be taking place on November 14-15. I\'ll be there, and I hope you\'ll join me.\nThe magic of any special-interest social gathering will mostly be destroyed by the need for a virtual conference -- but, having attended Indie Web Camp West 2020, I can verify that the remaining 10% of the magic is enough to enjoy oneself.\nCome make your first-ever website, or tinker with the one you\'ve got. Come share what you\'ve learned as a website enthusiast, or listen to others as you decide what to implement next. Come fall in love with personal websites, or storm off after two hours to take up fishing. There\'s so little downside: <a class="u-in-reply-to" href="https://2020.indieweb.org/east">register today!</a>\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 10, 14, 20, 23, 42, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['indieweb'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/10/15/cd', '/2020/10/14/2'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'Just finished making an event for tonight\'s <a class="u-in-reply-to" href="https://events.indieweb.org/2020/10/homebrew-website-club-west-coast-nQINu0vuIGDs"><data class="p-rsvp" value="yes"></data>Homebrew Website Club, West Coast</a>. See you there!\n<img class="u-photo center" src="/static/2020-10-14-hwc.png" alt="Screenshot of participants in tonight\'s Homebrew Website Club.">\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 10, 14, 12, 29, 30, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['indieweb'], 'channel': ['rsvps'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/10/14/6j', '/2020/10/14/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'published': [DateTime(2020, 10, 11, 12, 0, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'name': ['Sir Fedivere'], 'content': [{'html': 'I\'d watch a food review show where the host apes Bedivere as portrayed in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, making up ludicrous explanations for everything and having to open and close the little door on his helmet for each bite.\nIt would be called "Sir Fedivere" -- or perhaps, if the other knights got involved, "The Bites of the Round Table."\n'}], 'category': ['food'], 'channel': ['ideas'], 'slug': ['sir-fedivere'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/10/11/xr', '/ideas/sir-fedivere'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<div class="muted">\nThis is just for giggles and shiggles: a little Halloween spirit, China-style.\n</div>\n<div class="poem-container">\n<pre class="poem shadow">\n巧克力兮，花生酱\n混合二味，皆更香\n小圆形兮，超方便\n咬后食尽，屑不见\n</pre></div>\nTranslation:\n<div class="poem-container">\n<pre class="poem shadow">\nChocolate -- oh, peanut butter\nCombine the two and both taste better\nSmall round shape -- oh, super handy\nNo crumbs left from one-bite candy\n</pre></div>\n\n\n\n\n'}], 'name': ["Reese's Cup"], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 10, 10, 21, 33, 16, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 11, 14, 13, 24, 44, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['translation', 'zh', 'chinese', 'poetry'], 'channel': ['poems'], 'slug': ['reesescup'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/10/11/9f', '/poems/reesescup'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'updated': [DateTime(2020, 11, 21, 12, 8, 18, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': 'After reading "<a href="/poems/new-hermit">A Gift from "Endlessly Stupid" to a New Hermit</a>", Chris Stasse responded with a poem of his own, "Hermit Replies to Stupid" 《傻隐回复》.\n<blockquote>\n鸟啼更静躺山夜\n生人不约往孤野\n车冷人寂思萦纡\n离家一日似十月\n</blockquote>\nRough translation, 2020-11-21:\n<blockquote>\nAt night I lie in the mountains. It\'s quieter when birds sing\nStrangers aren\'t likely to approach this lonely wilderness\nMy car is cold. I\'m lonely. My thoughts twist around\nOne day away from home is like ten months\n</blockquote>\n\nNaturally, I wanted to reply in kind. My goal was to show I had grokked Chris\'s poem by restating its sentiments in different words.\nIn addition, I challenged myself to work within the constraints of a line-internal rhyme scheme: the 2nd, 4th, and 7th (final) syllables of each line all share an ending sound.\nI think it turned out rather well. Judge for yourself:\n<div class="poem-container">\n<pre class="poem shadow">\n天冷思尨鸣静更\n山边无人紫河显\n人寂处僻情迪逆\n离家别爸微害怕\n</pre>\n</div>\n<div class="muted">\n(For those who read Chinese, 尨 is here pronounced meng2, not mang2 as you might expect: the former is an archaic reading meaning "jumbled.")\n</div>\nRough translation, 2021-01-11:\n<blockquote>\nThe skies are cold. His thoughts are jumbled. Bird calls alternate with silence\nAbove the mountains, the Milky Way reveals itself to no one\nIn this remote place, he is lonely. His emotions thrash forward and back\nGoodbye to home, farewell to Dad -- and, now, a touch of fear\n</blockquote>\n</div>\n'}], 'name': ['Mountain Call and Mountain Response'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 10, 9, 0, 4, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['translation', 'poetry', 'chinese', 'zh'], 'channel': ['poems'], 'slug': ['mountaincall'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/10/09/tb', '/poems/mountaincall'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<div class="muted">\nA certain Mr. Stasse (featured several times on this website) has temporarily withdrawn from society to live at a Buddhist retreat.\nOriginal Title: 《老傻赐新隐士》\n2020-10-13: On reflection, I dislike the third line and will probably change it. It\'s a leftover from the first draft, and out of place.\n</div>\n<div class="poem-container"><pre class="poem shadow">\n秋风摇树果不应\n愿隐士身旁同赏\n人生弯曲预无因\n他稳似果拟之值\n</pre></div>\nRough translation (updated 2020-10-13):\n<div class="poem-container"><pre class="poem shadow">\nAutumn wind shakes the trees, but the fruits don\'t go along\nI wish the hermit was here to appreciate it, too\nLife\'s twists and turns aren\'t worth guessing at\nHe is steady, like the fruits, and that\'s worth imitating\n</pre></div>\n'}], 'name': ['A Gift from "Endlessly Stupid" to a New Hermit'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 10, 8, 19, 38, 34, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 10, 28, 22, 52, 33, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['poetry', 'zh', 'chinese', 'translation'], 'channel': ['poems'], 'slug': ['new-hermit'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/10/09/jj', '/poems/new-hermit'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'offload': ['true'], 'content': [{'html': 'Today at 6 PM Pacific, <data class="p-rsvp" value="yes">I\'m hosting</data> the IndieWeb\'s <a href="https://events.indieweb.org/2020/10/homebrew-website-club-west-coast-QQFT9wRngt5U" class="u-in-reply-to">Homebrew Website Club West Coast</a>. If you have a personal website, come join in the fun!\nHWC is informal, so there\'s usually no fixed agenda, but I\'d like to start this week\'s club with a discussion about the tradeoffs between posting on a website to perform data storage (as with bookmarks), vs. using a website to display information ultimately stored elsewhere (on disk, or in a database, or live-updated from some service.)\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 10, 7, 11, 18, 51, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['indieweb'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/10/07/4c', '/2020/10/07/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'offload': ['True'], 'content': [{'html': 'Chris sent me a letter, and I sent one back. Why not preserve them -- pickle the words in blogger\'s brine?\n<blockquote>\nDear Maxwell,\nI don\'t usually send letters but I thought it might be fun during COVID. I was reading some of <a href="/poems">your poems</a> online to great delight and I hope you keep on writing. I am eager to read more. I think you bring out a light and eccentric beauty that is never lacking in humor and a "spirited indecorousness." I think you could do many things, but maybe one of those things would be designing games that truly deserve the title of "art." You\'ve probably thought of that before, but I do think it would be a good combination of your skills and interests. Just a thought ~~\nThings here in [Northern California] are alright. I help my dad when he needs it but really I have a lot of time to myself. It has been a strange year indeed, but who knows what we will be doing this time next year? I guess I wouldn\'t be me without leaving you with a poem:\n<img src="/static/2020-09-09-chris-calligraphy-wang-wei.png">\nYour fellow drongo,\n楷\n二零二零年九月九日 [2020-09-09]\n</blockquote>\n<blockquote>\nDear Chris,\nThis slow-motion year deserves such a return to the low-speed communications of pre-digital times. Thank you for instigating, and for following along as I diddle the dictionary.\n"Games as art" is a well-saturated niche where success depends heavily on coding prowess -- but comedy games, specifically, can be rock-bangingly rudimentary if the humor is strong. I\'ll keep that creative channel open in your honor; there might be a couple such things already in suspended animation on [<a href="/ideas">the Ideas page</a>].\nBy this time in 2021, I hope we are all less frazzled, and enjoying frequent, vigorous contact with 尤物. Taking a cue from current events [California\'s wildfires], I\'ll repay your poem in my usual manner. Let me know if my archaisms are up to code.\n["<a href="/poems/countryside-nastiness">Countryside Nastiness</a>" 《田园恶》]\nYour pal,\nMJ\nDrong Beach, CA\n2020-09-14\n</blockquote>\n'}], 'name': ['Letters To and From Chris Stasse'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 10, 3, 17, 58, 27, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['zh', 'chinese', 'poetry', 'calligraphy', 'correspondence'], 'channel': ['letters'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/10/04/u9', '/2020/10/03/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<div class="muted">\nIn September, Chris Stasse <a href="/notes/2020/10/03/1">sent me a letter</a> which concluded with his calligraphic rendering of "Countryside Pleasures No. 6" 《田园乐——六》, by Tang-era master poet Wang Wei. My <a href="/notes/2020/10/03/1">reply to Chris</a> included a parody of the same poem.\nMy version\'s title swaps out the third character, 乐 le4 "pleasure, happiness", for the rhyming word 恶 e4 "evil, vicious, harmful." Here is "Countryside Nastiness," by Wang Wei\'s little-renowned cousin, Wrong Wei.\n</div>\n<div class="poem-container">\n<pre class="poem">\n桃红中坏烈焰\n柳绿烧成灰柱\n花落腾于热气\n鸟啼出窝恐离\n</pre>\n</div>\nTranslation:\n<div class="poem-container">\n<pre class="poem">\nRed peaches suffer from fierce flames\nGreen willows burn up into pillars of ash \nFlowers fall, then rise on heated gusts\nBirds cry, leaving their nests in fear\n</pre>\n</div>\nFinally, let\'s compare my parody with the original. In my imitation, I retained the first two syllables in each line, marked like this.\n<div class="poem-container">\n<pre class="poem">\n桃红复含宿雨\n柳绿更带朝烟\n花落家童未扫\n莺啼山客犹眠\n</pre>\n</div>\nMy parody was inspired by the wildfires raging through California at the time of writing. After posting my letter, I learned that the fire in Santa Rosa came within 3 km. of Chris\'s house! The news made me feel a bit embarassed at having written a lighthearted poem on the topic, but Chris put me at ease:\n<blockquote>\n我觉得这首诗很美，真的，我一点也不介意。就算我房子被烧得一干二净，你的诗在我眼里还是会有一种悲壮的美。</blockquote>\n'}], 'name': ['Countryside Nastiness'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 10, 3, 17, 8, 55, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 10, 10, 23, 3, 41, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['poetry', 'parody', 'translation', 'chinese', 'zh'], 'channel': ['poems'], 'slug': ['countryside-nastiness'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/10/04/g2', '/poems/countryside-nastiness'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'offload': ['true'], 'content': [{'html': 'I vigorously encourage you to <a href="https://beeminder.com/" class="bigclick">use Beeminder</a> for tracking, maintaining, and modifying habits.\nSeveral people have recently asked me to explain why I like this service so much. This page is my evolving answer.\nSo, why Beeminder?\n<h2>Design</h2>\nThe core feature of Beeminder is the "bee sting." The service charges you money if you fail to meet a certain rate of progress toward a goal.\nFor instance, if I declare to Beeminder that I will meditate 5 minutes per day, and I fail to perform meditation at that rate, Beeminder will "derail" me, charge me a small amount of money, and -- after a weeklong grace period -- rearm the sting.\nWhy Beeminder? It assigns meaningful consequences for not living up to your stated goals.\nThe good news about the bee sting is that Beeminder is totally self-driven. You<a href="#fn-1">1</a> do the data reporting, you set the starting and maximum penalties for the bee sting, and you choose how fast you want to make progress on each goal. You are even responsible for confirming with the Beeminder team whether or not a derailment was legitimate.\nWhy Beeminder? It trains you to build honesty with yourself (and the support team!) when you succeed or fail. This calibrates a better understanding of your strengths and weaknesses, while giving you the information you need to ramp up or ease off on a goal.\n<h2>Philosophy</h2>\nA Beeminder user must break down his or her goals into atomic, numerically-measurable steps toward a large goal. Goals like "chinups performed," being both numeric and precise, are a perfect fit for Beeminder. To perform 100 chinups, set your target rate to 1 chinup per hour/day/week; set your target number to 100; and do chinups whenever you can. That\'s it: as long as you keep your average rate above 1 chinup per chosen time unit, Beeminder will never charge you, and you\'ll be making steady progress.\nWhy Beeminder? It trains you to reframe your life goals, especially ones that seem monumental, as nothing more than piles of little goals, steadily achieved.\nWhile goals that are easily quantified are the best fit for Beeminder, even nebulous goals can be tracked and nudged in the system. One of my goals is called "selfserve", and its target number is 100 -- where "100" means "has ported 100% of this website to self-administered web servers and infrastructure."\nFew methods of calculating exact progress on this goal would be worth the time they took to administer. However, since I know the scope of the task and its subtasks, after completing each subtask I can add a few percent here and a few percent there into Beeminder\'s tracker.\nWhy Beeminder? Whether your goal is concrete or abstract, Beeminder puts you on a schedule which will achieve it.\nWhat\'s more, merely declaring "I will be 100% done with this hairy task by such-and-such date" was enough to spur me into action. My original target date was 100% completion by mid-December, but as of today, before even reaching October, my "selfserve" goal sits at 60%! I\'m months ahead of my original pessimistic estimate, and it never once felt difficult to get there -- but if I hadn\'t promised myself, via Beeminder, that I would do so, I\'d probably still be sitting around griping about my crappy old website infrastructure.\nWhy Beeminder? It builds the self-confidence and self-trust that can only come from diligently working toward success.\nFinally, I realized recently that Beeminder has instilled in me a new and creative instinct: the impulse to judge any new opportunity by determining how I might realize its potential in steps of Beemindable size.\nIt is one thing for the latest self-help book or productivity guru to tell you that anything is achievable in small steps. It is quite another for that mantra to develop into a deep-seated instinct which influences your worldview. Thus Beeminder is empowering in the truest sense of the word: it grants new abilities.\nWhy Beeminder? Extended use installs the powerful meta-habit of noticing opportunities to achieve goals by "mere" effort -- and as a Beeminder user, you\'ll be ready to exploit such opportunities because you\'ve practiced doing so.\n<h2>Proof by Existence</h2>\nThe Beeminder founders, Danny and Bethany, use Beeminder to supercharge the development of Beeminder itself. <a href="https://www.beeminder.com/meta">They\'ve set up the Beeminder user "meta"</a> to publicly display business metrics, which they\'ve committed to Beeminding just as you or I might Beemind pushups or calories.\nThe "meta" goals include typical metrics like revenue and monthly active users. That Beeminder openly publishes these figures makes them is noble, but I want to draw attention to a non-financial indicator: <a href="https://www.beeminder.com/meta/uvi">a very, very important number called "UVIs."</a>\nUVI stands for "User-Visible Improvement," and they are the gold-standard, AAA, totally-unfakeable indicator that Beeminder works. One point on the UVI goal means the Beeminder team has directly improved your experience using Beeminder, and at time of writing, the Beeminder team has added one new UVI every day for ten years.\nWhy Beeminder? Its own existence is a massive proof of its ability to motivate you to fantastic heights -- like, say, creating a program which has helped tens of thousands of people achieve their goals.\n<h2>Conclusion</h2>\nI\'ve said my piece, so don\'t delay: <a href="https://beeminder.com/">go try Beeminder for yourself</a>. Set your goals to the minimum charge until you figure out what works for you, and if you want help getting started, email the ever-helpful support team, or check out the forums.\nI\'m just a happy customer with a blog, and Beeminder didn\'t ask me to write this post. That said, Danny and other staff members encouraged me to write on this topic after I mentioned it over email.\nIf you liked this, leave a response! In a future post, I\'ll investigate my own Beeminder successes and failures as case studies for others to learn from. Thanks for reading, and never ever hesitate to <a href="mailto:maxwelljoslyn@gmail.com">email me</a>.\n<section class="footnotes">\n<ol>\n<li id="fn-1">To lessen your data-entry work -- and to make it harder for you to rationalize away failures -- Beeminder can automatically retrieve data from many programs, including Gmail, Duolingo, Github, Fitbit, and Slack.<a href="#fnref-1" class="footnote">↩</a></li>\n</ol>\n</section>\n'}], 'name': ['Why Beeminder?'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 9, 29, 13, 26, 18, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 10, 1, 23, 19, 18, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['philosophy', 'quantifiedself', 'goals', 'computing', 'rationality'], 'channel': ['pages'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/09/29/bb', '/beeminder'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'offload': ['true'], 'content': [{'html': 'I\'m running my Micropub implementation against the official test suite at <a href="https://micropub.rocks">micropub.rocks</a>. Despite the fact that I haven\'t implemented the <a href="https://www.w3.org/TR/micropub/">entire specification</a> (much less <a href="https://indieweb.org/Micropub-extensions">the extensions</a>), my version already passes about a third of the test suite -- and a couple of the failed tests gave enough feedback to code fixes on the spot. Full steam ahead!\n<figure class="center">\n<img src="/static/2020-09-25-micropub-tests.png" alt="Micropub.rocks test suite for creating a post via Micropub.">\n<figcaption>Tests for creating posts via Micropub (other tests not shown.)</figcaption>\n</figure>\n'}], 'name': ['Testing My Micropub Implementation'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 9, 25, 20, 31, 23, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['indieweb', 'upgrade', 'computing'], 'channel': ['photos'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/09/26/uh', '/2020/09/25/2'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'offload': ['True'], 'content': [{'html': 'I\'ve spent the last couple weeks developing version 2 of this website as a Python Flask-based web application. This has required learning more about server administration, as well as putting into use the web-app development skills I\'ve been chipping away at all year.\nI\'m happy to report that the new version of this site will be going live next week, with Micropub support implemented. Your end user experience should not change at all (but please <a href="mailto:maxwelljoslyn@gmail.com">report any broken links</a>!) Improvements to navigation, content discovery, subscription, tags, and syndication are forthcoming.\nMy main motivation for this upgrade was to lower my self-imposed barrier to public writing and interaction.\n<ol>\n<li>Building this site by compiling files with a static site generator on my home computer, and hosting the site by copying files to static hosting (AWS S3), meant that I could only work on the site from my laptop. If I noticed a typo or thought of an improvement, I couldn\'t update the site immediately; I had to stick it in my todo list as one more thing to tackle at home.\n</li>\n<li>Irritating and unclear caching behaviors made it difficult for me to know when an edited post would finally be served to readers.\n</li>\n<li>The difficulty of posting made it impractical to participate in more lightweight <a href="https://indieweb.org">IndieWeb</a> interactions by posting likes, bookmarks, and reblogs.\n</li>\n</ol>\nThe new site\'s <a href="https://www.w3.org/TR/micropub/">Micropub</a> support means I\'ll be able to write and update posts on the fly, even from my phone. That\'s not news to anyone who\'s used social media or a blogging platform, but implementing the specification was a worthwhile technical challenge, and my activation energy for public writing and sharing will be massively decreased.\nThree secondary factors pushed me to complete this project:\n<ul>\n<li>The rewritten backend code will afford breaking my collection pages into individual posts. Several webpages, especially <a href="/books">Books</a> and <a href="/favorite-poems">Favorite Poems</a>, are constituted of numerous small items. These pages receive frequent updates and expansions, but right now those updates aren\'t visible to readers because they appear as totally quiet changes to pages first published months or years ago. The new code will publish additions to those pages as regular blog posts which are then scooped up into those collections.</li>\n<li>As I continue growing my backend development skills, the new server will let me host other apps. I\'m most excited about finally getting to deploy <a href="/linguary">Linguary</a>, an (in-progress) application for enhancing Chinese-language study, research, and writing. Taking that app live will allow me to start using it for my own Chinese work, and <a href="https://indieweb.org/selfdogfood#eat_your_cooking">using what you create</a> is the quickest way to tell whether it\'s worth pursuing.</li>\n<li>Since we met a couple months ago, <a href="https://lahacker.net">Angelo Gladding</a> has been a friend and mentor to me, including on this project. Thanks, Angelo!</li>\n</ul>\n'}], 'name': ['Taking this Website Dynamic'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 9, 25, 14, 9, 8, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 9, 25, 14, 10, 30, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['indieweb', 'computing', 'upgrade'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/09/25/fc', '/2020/09/25/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'offload': ['True'], 'content': [{'html': 'My friend Matt and I just discovered that Android\'s (default) text-messaging app can now send voice messages.\nVoice messaging (on WeChat) was everywhere when I lived in China, and I\'ve missed it as an option for texting in the States. I suppose the demand for voice messaging is filled here by Snapchat, whatever Facebook does, and voice iMessages for the Apple ecosystem. I don\'t use those, so I have been a text-only plebeian -- until now!\nI think I\'ll be using voice messages a lot, especially during the coronavirus pandemic. My words, in my voice, represent me more closely than writing can. I\'m glad to find a way to move some of my normal communication away from pure text.\n~\nAs Matt and I sent each other sounds, I remembered an amusement from computer classes in my teenage years: the Mac\'s <code>say</code> command, which performs text-to-speech. All I had to do to send a dumb message in a machine\'s voice was to type <code>say -v Alex "One. Alpha. Peter. Turbo. Peter again."</code>\nWith that command in hand, I was able to make an "useful" addition to my normal Emacs script for launching Firefox. From now on, the program will remind remind me that it\'s launching Firefox, then read off some pointless numbers. [2020-09-22: updated the script to offer both Chinese and English ;^) 2020-10-15: slight refactor.]\n<code>\n<pre>\n(defun mj/run-firefox (in-english)\n (interactive "P")\n "Run Firefox, and turn on Wifi if necessary. Speaks Chinese; with prefix arg, speak English instead."\n ;; if Wifi is already on, trying to turn it on again does nothing\n (mj/toggle-wifi t)\n (let ((between-1-10 (+ 1 (random 10)))\n (speed-wpm (if in-english 250 200))) ;; Chinese voice isn\'t as good at fast speed\n (start-process "say-process" nil\n "say"\n "-r" (format "%s" speed-wpm)\n "-v" (if in-english "Alex" "Ting-Ting")\n (if in-english (format\n "Launching Firefox. Random number: %d."\n between-1-10)\n "浏览器已启动。"))\n (start-process "firefox-process" nil "open" "/Applications/Firefox.app/")))\n</pre>\n</code>\nIt\'s only a matter of time before I find a use for this that\'s amusing and practical. How about a script that opens subscription-feed items and reads them aloud? Or a long-running background job for <a href="/linguary">Linguary</a> which generates robotic-but-acceptable audio from scraps of Chinese text? Even the dumb idea of announcing running programs can be made useful, to provide feedback from programs in cases where I\'m paying attention to something else. Soothing meditation timer, anyone? Receiving -- on the hour, every hour -- words of encouragement from your silicon friend?\nIf you have any ideas for scripting with text-to-speech (or speech-to-text!), leave a comment.\n'}], 'name': ['Speech Synthesizers'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 9, 21, 23, 54, 20, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 9, 22, 13, 38, 45, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['computing', 'upgrade', 'emacs', 'chinese'], 'channel': ['articles'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/09/22/25', '/2020/09/21/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'published': [DateTime(2020, 9, 15, 18, 20, 20, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'name': ['Notable Chinese Characters'], 'content': [{'html': '<div class=muted>\nJust a dumping ground for characters that are peculiar.\n</div>\n<ul>\n<li>嬲 niao3 and 嫐 nao3, both meaning "tease, disturb". The first is a woman 女 between two men 男; the second, a man between two women.</li>\n<li>(2020-09-06, 18:39) 表现日语和汉语之间的区别的例语: 侘寂。日语读音为“wabisabi”，中文呢？可不是那样了。</li>\n<li>旮旯</li>\n</ul>\n'}], 'category': ['chinese'], 'channel': ['ideas'], 'slug': ['notable-chinese-characters'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/09/16/ai', '/ideas/notable-chinese-characters'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<a href="https://events.indieweb.org/2020/09/homebrew-website-club-west-coast-QZlnIER9zfCW" class="u-in-reply-to" p-data="yes">Once again, we are blessed by Homebrew Website Club</a>.\nLately, I\'ve been working to change this website from a pile of (generated) HTML files into a proper server-backed dynamic site. There\'s not much to show off, but I\'m implementing a <a href="https://indieweb.org/Micropub">Micropub</a> server and learning a lot more about Flask (the web-app framework.)\n<data class="p-rsvp" value="yes"></data>\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 9, 9, 18, 2, 12, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['indieweb', 'computing'], 'channel': ['rsvps'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/09/10/vb', '/2020/09/09/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Darth Vurm'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 9, 7, 23, 5, 47, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'artist': ['Adam Luft'], 'photo': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/darth-vurm.png'], 'photo-small': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/480/darth-vurm.png'], 'category': ['slc'], 'channel': ['sithlords'], 'slug': ['darth-vurm'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/09/08/pb', '/sithlordchallenge/darth-vurm'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'As I write up explanations and annotations for <a href="/poems">my poems</a>, I find myself wanting to use lines and shapes to pick out particular areas of each work.\nHere\'s a rudimentary prototype, drawing heavily on <a href="https://anseki.github.io/leader-line/">the LeaderLine library</a>. Try clicking or hovering one of the bracketed sections.\n<pre class="poem shadow">\nI\'m a fake poem, sure to spin\nA top around its bottom\n</pre>\nI am a fine explanation! And I am his lovable pal.\nI\'m not currently planning to turn my annotations into sidenotes or marginalia, but I\'ll certainly draw inspiration from the numerous attempts at that style of web design. I\'ll also be investigating annotation platforms like Hypothesis, which may have something to offer.\n'}], 'name': ['Testing Poem Annotations'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 9, 7, 15, 15, 49, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 9, 22, 11, 22, 21, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['indieweb', 'poetry', 'computing'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/09/07/6c', '/2020/09/07/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<div class="muted">\nA late-night snippet imitating the chorus of Weezer\'s "Pork and Beans." For Hayley ("Bloo") to sing to Seth.\n\n</div>\n<div class="poem-container">\n<pre class="poem">\nI\'ve a PhD that I must pursue\nThere\'s neuroscience knowledge to accrue\n\nWith calves athletic and a belly lean\nAt times my swagger\'s known to cause a scene\n\nAlthough I\'m picky \'bout my repertoire\nI\'ll practice strumming tunes that you adore\n\nOne look in our mirror and you know it\'s true:\nI\'m awful fond of being Bloo with you\n</pre>\n</div>\n(Hayley: <q>AWWWWWWWWWWWWWW. I’m not sure what the tune is (hint pls!!!) but I’m smiling ear to ear anyway <3</q> Me: <q>It\'s \'Pork and Beans.\'</q> Hayley: <q>OH FUCK YEAH</q>)\n'}], 'name': ['Bloo With You'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 9, 4, 14, 10, 10, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['poetry', 'parody'], 'channel': ['poems'], 'slug': ['bloo-with-you'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/09/04/tj', '/poems/bloo-with-you'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<data class="p-rsvp" value="yes">G-g-g-going to</data> <a href="https://events.indieweb.org/2020/09/homebrew-website-club-west-coast-eKgjOW4KvBIK" class="u-in-reply-to" p-data="yes">Homebrew Website Club</a>.\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 9, 2, 18, 8, 46, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['indieweb'], 'channel': ['rsvps'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/09/03/4q', '/2020/09/02/2'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'I <a href="/notes/2020/09/01/1">wrote h0p3</a>; <a href="https://philosopher.life/#2020.09.02%20-%20MJos%3A%20%E8%AF%B4%E6%9B%B9%E6%93%8D%EF%BC%8C%E6%9B%B9%E6%93%8D%E5%88%B0:%5B%5B2020.09.02%20-%20MJos%3A%20%E8%AF%B4%E6%9B%B9%E6%93%8D%EF%BC%8C%E6%9B%B9%E6%93%8D%E5%88%B0%5D%5D" class="u-in-reply-to">h0p3 responded</a>; my turn again.\n<blockquote>Dear Maxwell,\nIt\'s good to hear from you.\nI\'m hanging in there. I\'ve felt flooded, but I have little room to say anything. Given the [degree or kind] to which you [publicly self-model], it\'s difficult to see how well you are doing from over here, but I hope you are safe and well as well.</blockquote>\nI am indeed safe and well: interviewing for jobs; learning to run my own servers to host this site and add more IndieWeb tools; writing poems. I have several drafts to type up today.\n<blockquote>If you want to fix the ridiculousness and inaccuracy of [[h0p3\'s new Chinese page](https://philosopher.life/#中国语录)], go for it. My assumption is that you have far better things to do with your time, but I would adore having something that is more wisely organized and even roughly parallel and usable (though I simply have no idea how to gauge what is reasonable here) - I romantically prefer to think that randos like me and other folks might share something like the same signs and signifieds. I have no idea how to cut it down to something that makes the most sense for my context.</blockquote>\nFar better things to do with my time? Maybe. But I would certainly get something out of researching and differentiating Chinese phrase types, then applying the results to your page as a case study. Aside from just doing you a good turn, I could incorporate the resulting standards for phrase types into <a href="/linguary">my work on Linguary</a>.\n<blockquote>I\'ve been lucky enough to have relationships with some translators (most of them with a specialized reading knowledge only), but probably none as skilled as you.\nYou do have a way with words.</blockquote>\nD\'aww, thank you.\n<blockquote>If and when I am lucky enough, I would like to learn more about your philosophical and political perspectives on translation (and linguistics in general). Maybe how you engage in the practice already makes that clear to someone who is qualified to weigh the merits of your translation work. I\'m obviously blind here.\nI think learning to do your work would be an impossible task for me. If any, what kinds of surprising and low-hanging fruit multi-lingual hacks for absolute noobs stand out to you?</blockquote>\nPhilosophy/political/linguistic perspective: I\'ll do what I can, when I can.\nAs for low-hanging linguistic fruit:\n<ul>\n<li>Focus exclusively on pronunciation of syllables, syllable groups, words, and phrases far longer than typical curricula dictate.</li>\n<li>Use spaced repetition (SRS) to drill individual vocab words, then whole utterances, into long-term memory.</li>\n<li>When ready, do conversation-turn practice with a native tutor. They say a sentence; you immediately utter a coherent follow-up that is responsive to exactly and only the words they said. (This teaches you to subconsciously absorb what you hear, leading to better conversational flow and less need for qualifying questions.)</li>\n<li>Read texts with accompanying audio recordings, and mimic them.</li>\n<li>Have foreign audio playing as much as possible. (I struggle with this one.)</li>\n<li>Record yourself reciting texts. Listen to them, diagnose mistakes, make new recordings, and compare.</li>\n<li>Whenever you make an error and someone corrects it, write down what you said and how they fixed it. The same goes for deliberately asking a native for help: record whatever distinction or detail they gave back to you. (Then, make SRS flashcards for the new info.)</li>\n</ul>\n<blockquote><pre>> Since I don\'t know how often you read my website, I thought I\'d bring my website to you.</pre>\nCool. I also don\'t know how often you read my site. I assume it happens when it happens. I keep your site in my FTO personal sites bookmarks folder for opening up them all. It\'s one of the things I haven\'t yet found a nice way to transfer into the wiki; eventually, I\'d like to have a button to just open all the links in a single tiddler. Your practice reminds me of a newsletter or a follow-up e-mail.</blockquote>\nFunny you should say that. I\'ve been meaning to set up a email newsletter for, or accompanying, this site. I\'d show old material to new readers; revisit old pieces to comment on them and compare them to current works; and disseminate fresh stuff.\n<blockquote>I can only imagine that [the search for the tooling](/linguary) could be endless here. It seems like a job too large for a single person (or a lifetime of work). I assume you have to be super practical about it (and, I still don\'t know what it would [let alone should] look like, even with what you\'ve described). I hope you\'ll consider disregarding IP barriers entirely.\n</blockquote>\nPerhaps I can avoid concerning myself with "the end" if I ensure that, as Linguary takes shape, it only does things which immediately address my needs as a linguist/translator.\n<blockquote>[new poems]\nI\'m all about the bunghole tickling! (/¯–‿･)/¯\nI recall reading <a href="/poems/portland-protest">the Portland piece</a> because it reminded me of <a href="https://philosopher.life/#2020.06.01%20-%20Antipleonasm%20Analysis%3A%20MLK%27s%20Durable%20Social%20Phenomena:%5B%5B2020.06.01%20-%20Antipleonasm%20Analysis%3A%20MLK%27s%20Durable%20Social%20Phenomena%5D%5D">2020.06.01 - Antipleonasm Analysis: MLK\'s Durable Social Phenomena</a> and my brother AIR. Your approach is far more light-hearted. I admire that.</blockquote>\nThanks.\nI read your commentary on MLK\'s speech. I\'d respond, but I can\'t think of a single measly incentive for me to share political opinions on the Web. (Improving them through private debate is another matter.)\nCheers, and keep chugging.\n'}], 'name': ['Another Letter to h0p3'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 9, 2, 15, 39, 25, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 9, 4, 14, 19, 17, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['h0p3', 'correspondence'], 'channel': ['letters'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/09/02/wz', '/2020/09/02/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'Originally an email.\nDearest <a href="https://philosopher.life">philosophist</a>,\nI hope you are well. I was delighted, really actually delighted, to see that you are now collecting Chinese phrases on <a href="https://philosopher.life/#%E4%B8%AD%E5%9B%BD%E8%AF%AD%E5%BD%95">the "中国语录" page</a>. I want to help you improve and expand this page\'s classification scheme and its contents. I\'ve begun taking notes and will use the tiddler editor to add them when I can (unless there\'s a better way.)\nSince I don\'t know how often you read my website, I thought I\'d bring my website to you.\n<ol>\n<li><a href="/linguary">Linguary</a>: further thinking and design toward the "linguist\'s working environment" application I mused about in my last letter to you.\n</li>\n<li>New poems and parodies, which ought to tickle the same part of you which "The Bunghole" tickled:\n<ul>\n<li>"<a href="https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/poems/dew">Dew</a>"</li>\n<li>"<a href="https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/poems/bananas">Bananas</a>"</li>\n<li>"<a href="https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/poems/portland-protest">Portland Protest Preparations</a>"</li>\n<li>"<a href="https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/poems/voyeur">That\'s Right, Voyeur</a>"</li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n<li>I\'ve lightly updated the text of "Man from H.0.P.3.". Just letting you know in case you want to do an update, though I like the idea of your webpage preserving the original.\n</li>\n</ol>\nYours,\nMaxwell\n'}], 'name': ['Letter to h0p3 - Salutations, September 1st'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 9, 1, 20, 4, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['h0p3', 'correspondence'], 'channel': ['letters'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/09/02/uo', '/2020/09/01/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'drafted': [{'datetime': '2020-08-14T22:47:38+00:00', 'timezone': 'America/Los_Angeles'}], 'content': [{'html': '<h2>Introduction</h2>\n\nThis page describes Linguary, an application to support two major activities in language analysis: (1) storing source material which has caught the user\'s interest, and (2) grouping and commenting on source material to attack or defend a hypothesis. This page, like Linguary, is a work in progress.\nLinguary was born to serve my own needs in translation, linguistics, and recreational language learning, but I intend to make it useful for others (though there are no plans to make it applicable to non-Chinese languages.) The application was first mentioned on this site under the earlier name "Linguist\'s Working Environment," in <a href="/notes/2020/06/22/1">my June letter to h0p3</a>.\n<h2>Goals</h2>\nLinguary is being built to handle all the vagaries of storing chunks of Chinese source material, and grouping and annotating those chunk (collectively, interacting.)\nStorage means providing one place to put all the written material that is found or created while studying a language. For this Chinese scholar, such material includes:\n<ul>\n<li>words/phrases of interest: leaving the definition of "word" or "phrase" underspecified for now, let\'s just say that linguists spend a lot of time considering the internal structure of words, and the ways in which words combine into phrases.</li>\n<li>grammatical examples</li>\n<li>errors and corrections</li>\n<li>personal dictionary entries (for when a 3rd-party entry lacks an apparent meaning)</li>\n<li>source documents: stories, poems, and other target-language texts which are associated with specific creators. Note that an individual quotation is also a "document": see below.</li>\n<li>freeform notes: in any computational system, it is endlessly helpful to have an "escape hatch" for entering data that doesn\'t fit any of the predefined template.</li>\n</ul>\nInteraction means viewing lists of stored materials, and statistics about those materials; reading and marking up source documents; entering metadata for incomplete records; and so on. Eventually, I\'d like to add a "mental stimulation" interface, which, given a word of input, would show (on one screen) the results of searching for that word in external dictionaries, saved documents, other words\' definitions and example sentences, and so on.\nOf the two activities Linguary intends to provide, storage is more fundamental. It\'s easier to iterate on an application\'s user interface than its data model, so it\'d be best to spend time getting the latter right before the app is fully developed. Interaction is, for now, a smaller topic, so let\'s get it out of the way before returning to the subject of storage.\n<h2>Interaction</h2>\nI\'m currently focused on building Linguary\'s data storage and API. Since there exist libraries for manipulating and viewing databases, I\'ll use one to the greatest extent possible, and save custom frontend and UI design work for when data modeling and transmission are stable for daily work.\nAs of 2020-08-21, the best tools I\'ve found in the "view a database and build basic apps on it" niche are <a href="https://github.com/simonw/datasette">Datasette</a> -- an <q>open source multi-tool for exploring and publishing data</q> -- and <a href="https://retool.com/">Retool</a>, a free/paid SaaS for building apps around internal business processes.\nThe actions available to a user will include:\n<ul>\n<li>create, update, and delete records of Chinese character variants</li>\n<li>create, update, and delete individual <a href="#language-items">language items</a></li>\n<li>while viewing an item, pull definitions from multiple 3rd-party dictionaries into one screen for comparison</li>\n<li>show occurrences of a target item in stored documents, and in other items\' text fields</li>\n<li>create, update, and edit <a href="#collections">collections</a> and their accompanying writeups</li>\n</ul>\nLinguary itself will not support flashcards, but Linguary users will be able to export data as Anki flashcards, and possibly in other formats too. Linguary will be able to send certain commands to a running instance of Anki through the 3rd-party library AnkiConnect, and it may even be feasible to trigger Anki\'s built-in cloud synchronization. I\'ve already written the Python code to programmatically add language items to an Anki flashcard deck; this code exists outside the Linguary codebase, but can be readily expanded into a small library to manage communication between Linguary and the AnkiConnect API.\n<h2>Storage</h2>\nThe types of information which linguists encounter while working with Mandarin Chinese can be classified to form the beginnings of Linguary\'s data model. Data modeling has two goals: (1) distinguishing the data types which the application will store and manipulate, and (2) designing a database schema which properly encodes the relations between those data types.\nI foresee Linguary\'s data falling into these major categories:\n<ol>\n<li>Syllables</li>\n<li>Characters</li>\n<li>Language Items<ul>\n<li>Morphemes</li>\n<li>Words</li>\n<li>Phrases</li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n<li>Collections<ul>\n<li>Errors</li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n<li>Documents<ul>\n<li>Sources</li>\n<li>Quotations, Highlights</li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n</ol>\n<h3>Syllables</h3>\nSyllables ("readings", "pronunciations") are individual syllables of Mandarin Chinese, using the pinyin romanization system. There\'s nothing to invent here, so I\'ll punt on an explanation for now; <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin">see Wikipedia</a> to learn more about the syllables of Modern Standard Mandarin, and how they\'re transcribed.\nRegional variation causes regular (predictable) changes in how some readings are spoken. Note that this type of accent variation can produce syllables that "don\'t exist" as citation syllables. For instance, "zhuang" will be pronounced "zuang" by many Southern or Taiwanese Mandarin speakers. I\'ll provisionally refer to these as synthetic syllables.\nCharacters may have one or many readings, and some even have zero readings (such as when the user is entering a character they haven\'t fully researched, or when a character is so archaic that it has no modern reading.) Readings also vary unpredictably by region, usually under the influence of a local language. For these reasons, Linguary will store one-to-many relations between characters and syllables.\nThe syllables table would only store individual syllables, note that certain combinations of syllables are pronounced differently than you might expect. Such changes are a form of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandhi">sandhi</a>, which means the changes are regular. Thus, the character-pronunciation or word-pronunciation relations need not capture them.\nElsewhere on this site: <a href="/rare-syllables">The Rarest Mandarin Syllables</a>.\n(TBD: specify tone sandhi; possibly discuss topolect examples of syllable sandhi; consider erhua)\n<h3>Characters</h3>\nIndividual Chinese characters (stored as traditional characters<a href="#fn-1">1</a>) are here considered to be elements of writing, not elements of the language itself. In technical terms, they are not morphemes, but graphemes. The exact shape of a given character varies across regions, and across its use in different languages, but these variants are all considered versions of one Platonic character. I believe this is the Unicode approach.\nElsewhere on this site: <a href="/ideas#simple-but-uncommon-chinese-characters">uncommon characters</a>.\n(TBD: bite bullet and dig into "simplified" vs. "traditional".)\n\n\n\n<h3>Language Items</h3>\n"Language Items" is a supercategory for any chunk of Chinese language. So far, I\'ve specified these major types:\n<ul>\n<li>morphemes: meaningful subword units, such as prefixes and suffixes, as well as items more exotic to the non-linguist, like clitics and transitivizers. (For an English example of a "subword unit," consider the suffix -er, as in "worker" or "farmer." The suffix -er turns a verb, V, into a noun meaning "someone who [performs that verb].")</li>\n<li>words, including one-character words</li>\n<li>phrases: complete and incomplete sentences, as well as unique Chinese phrase types like chengyu and xiehouyu.</li>\n</ul>\nFor now, items are just strings, with no structure. I\'d like to change that, and add the ability to store (partial) syntax trees as well, but I\'m nowhere near ready.\n(TBD: transpositional variants and detection thereof; compound nouns; numeric epithets; onomatopoeia; subtypes of words/phrases. A "verified" field for items which have been checked with, or were produced by, a native speaker. A data column to explicitly mark whether a source item is correct, incorrect, questionably correct, marked, etc. as in normal linguistic studies.)\n\n\n<h3>Collections</h3>\nA collection enriches a set of Items with annotations, grouping, and explanatory text. These are the building blocks of linguistic arguments: a linguist will contrast multiple phrases which differ in precisely some way that that proves or disproves a conjecture about the characteristics of the target language.\nTBD: example, including clear portrayal of "grouping" (e.g. two correct and two incorrect items.)\nCollections will frequently be used for error explanation, in which a fragment of correct Chinese is set against its correct counterpart(s), and augmented with precise descriptions of both the error and the tactic taken to repair it.\nTaking the above into account, a collection will relate to many items, and either one chunk of explanatory text, or many. As for grouping items together, as of 2020-08-30 I intend to implement such "groups" into collections themselves (which Linguary could create on the fly), so a collection can relate to many other collections.\nAside from database tables for collections and explanatory freeform-text notes, Linguary will also need tables to maintain each of the one-to-many relations collection-item, collection-note, and collection-collection.\nFinally, I already have about 70 example collections which could be entered into Linguary. Countless more could be constructed in service of a pedagogical or linguistic goal.\n<h3>Documents</h3>\n(TBD: should documents just be really long Items? Quotations, especially if just a single sentence or less, also seem like Items. It\'s no good to try distinguishing Items as being less than one sentence, and Quotations/Docs as being one or more sentences, because many extremely short Items would be able to stand as full sentences in the right context.)\nThe documents category would primarily include what I call sources: short stories, essays, transcripts, and other textual works. A user will also be able to enter quotations without uploading an entire document; these quotations are themselves a document subtype.\nIf a user highlights a section of a document in the viewer interface, the highlight could be stored as a quotation. Therefore, highlights are also a type of document.\nA document in the database could, in addition to its text, contain metadata like the author, publisher, publication date, access URL, and so on. This isn\'t a priority at first.\n<h2>Data Sources</h2>\nI certainly don\'t intend to collect all my information on the Chinese language from scratch! I\'ve relied on dictionaries and corpora aplenty in the course of my journey. Linguary will eventually sport an bulk import system for ingesting pre-existing data sources.\nSuch a feature can be valuable long before it\'s 100% automated. An HTML scraper for a frequently-used dictionary could dump hundreds and thousands of entries into a "for review" table, letting the user categorize & annotate those items at their leisure.\n\nThere are also academic data sets made by scholars in NLP or the digital Chinese humanities which offer language material richly annotated with grammatical, historical, philological, and cultural metadata. These, too, would be worth absorbing, and I have several lists\' worth of such material to post here (TBD / under construction):\n<ul>\n<li>CTEXT is fantastic for Literary Chinese, with its vast document collection, its API, and its text tools.</li>\n<li>Ichacha has priceless example-sentence functionality which shows when multiple English phrases correspond to a single Chinese equivalent.</li>\n<li>Dict.cnki.net has loads of technical vocabulary.</li>\n<li>MDBG is an old reliable dictionary based on CC-CEDICT, though its example sentences, sourced from Juku, are terrible: nearly all are drawn from what seems to be a single software-design manual, and I\'ve seen countless examples where the English was incorrectly interpreted when translating into Chinese.</li>\n<li>Pleco, the king of mobile Chinese dictionaries, has digital dictionaries not available anywhere else. Though licensing agreements limit how I can use those dictionaries\' data, correspondence with Mike Love, Pleco\'s creator, confirmed that I could make derivative works for non-commercial personal projects (e.g. visualizations of links between chengyu.)</li>\n</ul>\n<h2>Difficulties</h2>\nWIP 2020-09-15T18:40:33-0700. TBD: lots, including simplified versus traditional.\nSee <a href="http://www.cjki.org/c2c/c2cbasis.htm">The Pitfalls and Complexities of Chinese to Chinese Conversion</a> for initial discussion.\nEvidence for needing to distinguish between characters (as graphemes) and words (as morphemes):\n<blockquote>For example, an SC string such as 头发 ‘hair’ is not treated as a single unit, but is converted character by character. Since SC 头 maps only to TC 頭, the conversion succeeds. On the other hand, since SC 发 ‘hair’ maps to both TC 髮 ‘hair’ and TC 發 ‘emit’, the conversion may fail. That is, if the table maps 发 to 發, which is often the case, the result will be the nonsensical 頭發. ‘head’ + ‘emit’. On the other hand, if the table maps 发 to 髮, 头发 will correctly be converted to 頭髮, but other common words, such as SC 出发 ‘depart’, will be converted to the nonsensical 出髮 ‘go out’ + ‘hair’.</blockquote>\nSee Wikipedia: <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambiguities_in_Chinese_character_simplification#1_to_9">Ambiguities in Chinese character simplification</a>.\n<blockquote>As we have seen, orthographic converters have a major advantage over code converters in that they process word-units, rather than single codepoints. Thus SC 特征 (te4zheng1) ‘characteristic’, for example, is correctly converted to TC 特徵 (not to the incorrect 特征). Similarly, lexemic converters process lexemes. For example, SC 光盘 (guang1pan2) ‘CD-ROM’ is converted to the lexemically equivalent TC 光碟 (guang1die2), not to its orthographically equivalent but incorrect 光盤.\nThis works well most of the time, but there are special cases in which a polysemous SC lexeme maps to multiple TC lexemes, any of which may be correct, depending on the semantic context. We will refer to these as ambiguous polygraphic compounds.\nOne-to-many mappings of polysemous SC compounds occur both on the orthographic level and the lexemic level. SC 文件 (wen2-jian4) is a case in point. In the sense of ‘document’, it maps to itself, that is, to TC 文件; but in the sense of ‘data file’, it maps to TC 檔案 (dang4\'an4). This could occur in the TC-to-SC direction too. For example, TC 資料 (zi1liao4) maps to SC 资料 in the sense of ‘material(s); means’, but to SC 数据 (shu4ju4) in the sense of ‘data’.</blockquote>\nLater, deal with <a href="https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3330">polysyllabic characters</a>, words without standardized characters in <a href="https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=47770">Dongbei</a> and Cantonese, "second-round" simplifications like 歺 can1 (for 餐), the invention of <a href="https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=48395#more-48395">completely new characters</a>, the six types of character composition, ...\n\n<h2>User Stories</h2>\nTBD. I\'m not rushing to hype up Linguary before release, or sell it as a commercial product, but detailed user stories will help me clarify which features I do and don\'t want to deliver. In addition, if I find I can\'t understand how someone might use Linguary for a given task, that would drive me to either discuss it with people doing that task, that I might adapt it to their needs -- or else decide I should not attempt to serve that group of potential users.\nTBD: linguist user story. Translator user story.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<section class="footnotes">\n<ol>\n<li id="fn-1">This is the standard for Chinese database and dictionary software, because traditional characters can be converted to their simplified ones by a mechanical, context-free procedure. Going the opposite direction is much harder to do correctly. Because multiple traditional characters were commonly merged into one simplified character, the conversion process is probabilistic, and the odds of getting the right traditional character can only be improved by analyzing the character\'s occurrence in context (such as by examining the other characters in a given word.)<a href="#fnref-1" class="footnote">↩</a></li>\n</ol>\n</section>\n'}], 'name': ['Linguary'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 8, 21, 18, 33, 43, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 11, 6, 15, 35, 38, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['chinese', 'zh', 'computing', 'linguistics', 'translation'], 'channel': ['pages'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/08/22/qu', '/linguary'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<a href="https://events.indieweb.org/2020/08/homebrew-website-club-west-coast-08qDQv97WsBG" class="u-in-reply-to"><img class="u-photo" src="/static/2020-08-19-hwc.png" alt="Screenshot of participants in tonight\'s Homebrew Website Club.">\n<a href="https://tantek.com" class="u-category h-card">Tantek</a>, <a href="https://lahacker.net" class="u-category h-card">Angelo</a>, <a href="https://sarah-hibner.com/" class="u-category h-card">Hibs</a>, <a href="https://gregorlove.com" class="u-category h-card">Gregor</a>, <a href="https://david.shanske.com" class="u-category h-card">David</a>, <a href="https://adilettante.com" class="u-category h-card">Joseph</a>, and I made it out to tonight\'s West Coast version of Homebrew Website Club.\n<data class="p-rsvp" value="yes"></data>\n'}], 'name': ['HWC West Coast Screenshot'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 8, 19, 19, 39, 44, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['indieweb'], 'channel': ['photos'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/08/20/6y', '/2020/08/19/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': "I had eye surgery on Wednesday the 12th. I am making a healthy recovery.\nThe healing period will run until roughly the beginning of September, so until that time, I'm on doctor's orders. One of my rules is to maximize time spent with my eyes closed, so my computer time will be extremely limited through the end of this month.\n"}], 'name': ['I Had Eye Surgery'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 8, 15, 17, 50, 7, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['life'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/08/16/ez', '/2020/08/15/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'I\'ve more than doubled the size of <a href="/links">my Links page</a>, bringing it from 49 to 119 entries.\n'}], 'name': ['A Basket of Fresh Links'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 8, 10, 17, 35, 19, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['upgrade'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/08/11/8e', '/2020/08/10/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'Yesterday\'s good deed: <a href="https://github.com/binance-exchange/binance-api-postman/pull/44">revising and rewriting technical documentation</a> for a cryptocurrency company\'s open-source project.\nI\'ve long had the habit of emailing people I find on the Web to notify them of typos, or dead webpages, but only recently have I realized:\n<ul>\n<li>how little time and energy companies typically devote to writing documentation (relative to resources spent on the systems being documented)</li>\n<li>how many projects have software docs and similar written resources in public version control repos</li>\n<li>how easy it is to fix written documents when they\'re hosted on version control platforms like GitHub</li>\n</ul>\nI hope to continue helping out with FOSS projects\' technical-writing needs, especially when there\'s an opportunity to help Chinese-speaking teams translate material into native English.\n'}], 'name': ['The Joys of Open-Source Docs'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 8, 7, 13, 25, 35, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['computing', 'chinese'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/08/07/mz', '/2020/08/07/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'published': [DateTime(2020, 8, 6, 12, 15, 30, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'name': ['Ubasute'], 'content': [{'html': '<blockquote>\nUbasute (姥捨て, "abandoning an old woman", also called obasute and sometimes oyasute 親捨て "abandoning a parent") is the rare, old[1] practice of senicide in Japan, whereby an infirm or elderly relative was carried to a mountain, or some other remote, desolate place, and left there to die.[2] According to the Kodansha Illustrated Encyclopedia of Japan, ubasute "is the subject of legend, but… does not seem ever to have been a common custom".[1]\n<cite><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubasute">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubasute</a></cite>\n</blockquote>\nHa. I notice that "姥捨て" begins with kanji whch, when read in Mandarin, are homophonous to 老舍. The meaning is not similar in the first character ("lao" in the author\'s name means "forever, always, eternally") but it could be (as "lao" can, in sufficiently compressed contexts, directly indicate an old person). As for the second character, 捨, it\'s a variant of 舍; they have the same meaning of "giving up, relinquishing".\nI am no help on the hiragana glyph which comes after the two kanji in "ubasute". my wild guess is that it\'s either verbing the noun "old woman/grandmother abandonment", or nouning the verb "to abandon an old woman/grandmother".\n'}], 'category': ['japanese', 'chinese', 'zh'], 'channel': ['ideas'], 'slug': ['ubasute'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/08/06/g2', '/ideas/ubasute'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Inform 7 Website Templates Leak Information'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 8, 5, 18, 23, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 9, 19, 11, 22, 17, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': '[This has been moved to <a href="/inform">my Inform page</a>.]\n'}], 'channel': ['ideas'], 'slug': ['inform-7-website-template-leak-information'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/08/06/mz', '/ideas/inform-7-website-template-leak-information'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'published': [DateTime(2020, 8, 5, 15, 26, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'name': ['Dumb Arithmetic'], 'content': [{'html': "You can divide 12 into 3rds or 4ths evenly.\nBut, if you take 1/3rd from 12 (= 4) and add it to 12, you get 16, which can't evenly divide into 3rds (but can into 4ths.) If you take 1/4th of 12 (= 3) and add it to 12, you get 15, which can't evenly divide into 4ths (but can into 3rds.)\nDoes this point at anything interesting, or am I just a dingus?\n"}], 'category': ['math'], 'channel': ['ideas'], 'slug': ['dumb-arithmetic'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/08/05/4s', '/ideas/dumb-arithmetic'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'published': [DateTime(2020, 8, 5, 15, 26, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'name': ['Uses This'], 'updated': [DateTime(2021, 3, 18, 15, 19, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': 'Software, tools, and services that I use. Search keyword: "uses this."\n<ul>\n<li>writing and editing: <s>GNU Emacs</s> Neovim</li>\n<li>operating system: macOS (laptop); Debian (server - but I\'m not picky about my GNU/Linux)</li>\n<li>memory training: Anki (with several extensions, including <a href="https://foosoft.net/projects/anki-connect/">AnkiConnect</a> for programmatic interaction, and <a href="https://massimmersionapproach.com/table-of-contents/anki/low-key-anki/low-key-anki-usage-guide/">Low Key Anki</a> to present just two choices on each review and adjust easing factors, and <a href="https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/923360400">True Retention by Card Maturity</a> to ensure my reviews are having an effect.)</li>\n<li>keyboard: <s>Kinesis Advantage2</s> Ergodox EZ</li>\n<li>mouse: <s>Anker Vertical Ergonomic Mouse</s> Kensington trackball</li>\n<li>headset: an unknown brand with around-ear earpieces and a taped-up frame; a pair of "1More"-brand Bluetooth earbuds</li>\n<li>webcam: Logitech 920</li>\n</ul>\n'}], 'category': ['computing'], 'channel': ['ideas'], 'slug': ['what-i-use'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/08/05/jy', '/ideas/what-i-use'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'updated': [DateTime(2020, 12, 11, 20, 41, 12, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': '<div class="muted">\nThis is a parody of "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea", the best-known song by 90s group Neutral Milk Hotel (NMH), feted for their otherworldly sound and surreal lyrics. I apologize to Jeff Mangum, Scott Spillane, Jeremy Barnes, and Julian Koster for perpetrating the following verses.\n<div class="center"><img src="/static/dew.jpg"></div>\nAs always, I encourage you to sing along. A glossary follows.\n</div>\n<div class="poem-container">\n<pre class="poem shadow">\nWhat a scrumptiously-based mountain liquid I taste\nCould this be what sex feels like? Must be\nWhile I chug, enemies start to flash on the screen\nIn a blink of an eye, they\'ll be shot by me\nSweet caffeine\nGlug it dry, then use the bottle to go pee\n\nAnd one day we will die, and respawn in the sky\nWhere God\'s scoreboard will show our K:D\nBut for now, we are young\nGaming far from the sun\nFragging noobs in a vicious and masterful spree\nMy mommy\nSays to turn it off, but all I do is ree-eee-eee-eee!\n\n[Spillane horn solo]\n\nWhat a gripping gunfight\nI\'ve been having tonight\nOn the leaderboard, I made top three\nI\'m in love with my life\nAnd my virtual wife\nHear the voice that I made for her digitally\nLove to be\nIn the arms of my handmade waifu daki\n\nNow how I crave Mountain Dew\nHow I would stretch my tongue out to\nReceive what nectar trickles through\nThe mountain valleys, green and sweet\n\nWhere does it come from? No one knows\nWe dare not question sacred flows\nOur slurping, burping record shows\nIt\'s Dew that keeps us on our game\n\n[Koster on the singing saw]\n\nWhat a scrumptiously-based mountain liquid I taste\nAs I pick from arrayed weaponry\nAnd when we meet on a cloud, we\'ll sip long and sip loud\nLaying waste to all comers and guzzling freely\n\nCan\'t you see?\nWe gamers live in a society\n</pre>\n</div>\nThe promised glossary, for those unaware of certain seedy aspects of gamer and otaku culture:\n<ul>\n<li>a "waifu" is a female anime/manga character which one adores to the exclusion of all others. "Waifu" is transparently a loanword from English "wife"; the male equivalent is husbando.</li>\n<li>a "daki", short for "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakimakura">dakimakura</a>", is a person-sized body pillow. These are so commonly adorned with a printed anime character that popular usage of "daki" almost always refers to that kind (<a href="https://dakimakuri.com/shop">commercial examples</a>.)</li>\n<li>"ree" is onomatopoeia for a shrill and irritated cry of rage.</li>\n<li>the adjective "based" (<a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Based">Urban Dictionary</a>) means "cool; admirable; worthy of agreement," often with the implication that the noun so described is obviously superior to alternatives. This positive usage was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lil_B#Artistry">coined by rapper Lil B</a>.</li>\n<li>"K:D" stands for "kills:deaths (ratio)", a basic measure of competence in shooter games.</li>\n<li>"we live in a society" is a variant on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHhbdXCzt_A">a phrase uttered</a> by Seinfeld character George Costanza. Through <a href="https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/gamer-joker-gamers-rise-up-we-live-in-a-society">memetic mutation</a>, it became a slogan for poking fun at gamers who believe themselves to be persecuted by ordinary society. Since online expression flits between irony and sincerity, and so many extreme viewpoints can be encountered on the Web, it\'s difficult to know how many people use the phrase seriously.</li>\n<li>finally, while playing real-time games, some people will avoid leaving for the toilet by peeing into soda bottles. Nasty, but ... efficient.</li>\n</ul>\n\n'}], 'name': ['Dew'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 7, 31, 6, 52, 10, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['poetry', 'parody'], 'channel': ['poems'], 'slug': ['dew'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/07/31/in', '/poems/dew'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<div class="muted">\nThis was commissioned by the Fruit Art Project, a group which develops creative projects that incorporate the history and geography of fruit cultivation. When I learned that wild bananas were originally tiny brown nothings, and that the wealth of modern cultivars are the result of intensive human breeding, I imagined what that breeding process would have looked like if it had taken place all at once, under the control of a 21st-century organization.\n</div>\n<div class="poem-container">\n<pre class="poem">\nOur teeny-weeny lumps of brown bananaflesh are worthless.\nWe can\'t sell these. We need new products, of which we can boast.\nOur wholesale customers are vicious, money-grubbing, mirthless.\nIf they can\'t snag consumers, we\'ll be toast!\n\nWe of Bananas, Inc must guide development of nanners\nThat grow up larger, sweeter, firmer, easier to store.\nBig supermarkets only then will deign to fly our banners,\nSell patrons our bananas, and buy more.\n\nThe only object of Bananas, Inc must be succeeding\nAt rising from the red into the moneyed heights of black.\nBefore the breakup of Big Fruit, our brown nanners were leading\nThe market: an advantage we now lack.\n\nAs one division of a bigger firm, we had the freedom\nTo discount buyers\' preferences since no one could compete.\nThose days are gone. Barbarians are in what was our kingdom,\nAnd their bananas are what households eat!\n\nI see your faces. Pass this mic, and share your hard-earned lessons.\nBananas, Inc. requires a breakthrough in this fiscal year.\nPlease speak your mind. I hereby call an all-hands brainstorm session—\nBeginning now, and happening right here.\n</pre>\n</div>\n2020-08-06: Today, I noticed and fixed a line in the original where I completely broke the rhyme scheme, without noticing. While rewriting that line and its rhyming one, I noticed confusion in the narrative structure of the last two stanzas. After 46 minutes of poetry, the two stanzas merged into one.\n\n\n'}], 'name': ['Bananas'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 7, 29, 14, 25, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 8, 6, 23, 48, 39, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['poetry'], 'channel': ['poems'], 'slug': ['bananas'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/07/29/88', '/poems/bananas'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<div class="muted">\nI no longer live in Portland, but I know many people there. This was written to bolster the spirits of three good friends who informed me they\'d be participating in the ongoing courthouse protests.\n</div>\n<div class="poem-container">\n<pre class="poem shadow">\nMy Portland boys, I hear you\'ll join the protesting tonight.\nI bring you heptametric stratagems to aid your fight.\n\nKit Emlyn out to feed those comrades who\'ve made their retreat.\nTwelve spoons, one vat of jam, and gimp-suit butt cheeks on a seat\n\nWill draw the right attention to your makeshift chow hall stand,\nAs long as you establish it far back from no-man\'s land.\n\nConstruct a trebuchet and launch Drew o\'er the courthouse fence\nTo do karate with his lanky limbies. No defense\n\nCan best a six-six wingspan hitting backs high, and fronts low.\nSir Unger, rather than the naginata you would stow\n\nBefore most battles, I suggest you pack in field supplies.\nOnce you\'ve dispensed them, as what Charlie labors may arise\n\nReach your attention, go and help where hands are needed most.\nRender assistance, then slip clean away, a sideline ghost.\n\nOne final plea: no matter how the federales chafe,\nYou\'re better whole than injured. All of you, please come home safe.\n</pre>\n</div>\n<div class="muted">\nThis poem alludes to real events. Matt Unger loves himself a good melee weapon, and doesn\'t shrink from "Charlie work" (tough labor.) Drew, the karate-chopping beanpole, once drew a Kirby OC and, when asked to come up with its name on the spot, stuttered out the ridiculous moniker "Frontlo." Finally, for a term project in the performing arts, Emlyn donned an assless latex gimp suit, and -- with spoons and knives taped to his fingers -- attempted to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the professor and a dozen classmates.\n</div>\n'}], 'name': ['Portland Protest Preparations'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 7, 28, 13, 45, 22, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 9, 22, 11, 46, 4, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['poetry'], 'channel': ['poems'], 'slug': ['portland-protest'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/07/28/r8', '/poems/portland-protest'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<div class="muted">\nThis is a naughty parody of "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/While_My_Guitar_Gently_Weeps">While My Guitar Gently Weeps</a>", a Beatles classic from the White Album.\n</div>\n<div class="poem-container">\n<pre class="poem shadow">\nI turn on the faucet\nWarm water starts flowing\nThat\'s right, voyeur: take a peep!\n\nAnd while I\'m disrobing\nI know what I\'m showing\nThat\'s right, voyeur: take a peep!\n\nI don\'t know why nobody told you\nHow to be bolder in love\nI don\'t know how somebody sold you\nTickets to watch from above\n\nWith lathered-up bubbles\nI\'m rubbing my belly\nThat\'s right, voyeur: take a peep!\n\nI\'m wiggling and jiggling\nLike hot sexy jelly\nThat\'s right, voyeur: take a peep!\n\nI don\'t know why total immersion\nTriggers perversion in you\nI don\'t know how you got this craving\nBut I relish bathing for you\n\nI rise from the tub\nAnd the droplets start rolling\nThat\'s right, voyeur: take a peep!\n\nI hope that your tongue\'s out\nAnd ceaselessly lolling\nThat\'s right, voyeur: take a peep!\n</pre>\n</div>\n'}], 'name': ["That's Right, Voyeur"], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 7, 25, 12, 31, 25, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['poetry', 'parody'], 'channel': ['poems'], 'slug': ['voyeur'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/07/25/tt', '/poems/voyeur'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'I\'ve struck a deal with Doctor Boctor, a Bay Area musician and producer, to turn my "Hallelujah" parody "<a href="/poems/huge-katana">Huge Katana</a>" into a real recording!\nWatch this space for news -- and more original content!\n'}], 'name': ['"Huge Katana" Enters Production'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 7, 25, 12, 21, 18, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['poetry'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/07/25/7x', '/2020/07/25/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': "This is a translation of an image, seen on Twitter, about the current state of the Three Gorges Dam. I've done my best to preserve the news voice, and to ensure the accuracy of all technical terms related to flood control.\n<h2>Translation</h2>\nOn July 18th, Xinhua News reported that, as a result of heavy rainfall, on the 17th the "second 2020 Yangtze flood" began in the upper reaches of the Yangtze.\nThe Three Gorges Dam's inflow rose rapidly, reaching 61,000 cubic meters per second as of 8 AM on the 18th. This is the largest floodwater to reach Three Gorges since the beginning of the flood season. The dam's outflow was 33,000 cubic meters per second, with the flood-blocking rate passing 45%. After retaining several cycles of floodwater, the Three Gorges Dam's water level had reached 160.1 meters -- 15 meters above its flood limit level [the highest allowable water level for flood containment.]\nThe report acknowledged that the Three Gorges Hub Operations Department's testing record showed the dam to be undergoing "displacement, seepage, and deformation." However, the [Xinhua] report did not provide specific data on those factors; rather, it stated in general terms that the dam was "within ordinary limits," and emphasized that "safety indicators for all of the dam's water-blocking structures are stable."\n<h2>Original</h2>\n《新华社》18日报道，受强降雨影响，“长江2020年第2号洪水”于17日在长江上游形成，三峡水库入库流量快速上涨，18日8时达每秒6万1000立方公尺，这是今年入汛以来抵达三峡的最大洪水。出库流量每秒3万3000立方公尺，拦洪率超过45%，拦蓄多轮洪水后，三峡水库水位已达160.1公尺，超出汛限水位15公尺。\n报道中承认，三峡枢纽运行部门检测记录显示，三峡大坝发生“位移、渗流、变形等”。但报道没有给出具体的位移、渗流、变形的数据，而是笼统称“在正常范围内”，强调“大坝挡水建筑物各项安全指标稳定。”\n"}], 'name': ['State of the Three Gorges Dam'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 7, 23, 16, 8, 1, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 7, 24, 19, 37, 1, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['translation', 'chinese', 'zh'], 'channel': ['pages'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/07/23/5v', '/three-gorges-flood'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'Today\'s reading: articles, mostly literary criticism, written by the one and only Gwern Branwen.\n<ul>\n<li><a href="https://www.gwern.net/docs/culture/2007-wolfe">"Nor the Summers as Golden: Writing Multivolume Works"</a> (article by Gene Wolfe)</li>\n<li><a href="https://www.gwern.net/Suzanne-Delage">Interpreting "Suzanne Delage"</a> (which is a Gene Wolfe story)</li>\n<li><a href="https://www.gwern.net/Immoral-Books">Immoral Books</a></li>\n<li><a href="https://www.gwern.net/docs/culture/1983-wolfe-thecitadeloftheautarch-thejustman">"The Just Man"</a> (commentary on a story by -- say it with me -- Gene Wolfe)</li>\n<li><a href="https://www.gwern.net/fiction/The-Mulberry-Tree">The Mulberry Tree</a></li>\n</ul>\n'}], 'name': ['Slurping the Juice of the Gwernberry Tree'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 7, 19, 21, 2, 28, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['media'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/07/20/qw', '/2020/07/19/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'published': [DateTime(2020, 7, 19, 18, 43, 16, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'name': ['Dream of Dang Village'], 'content': [{'html': 'A parody mash-up/crossover for the ages: combine the American cartoon <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_of_the_Hill">King of the Hill</a> with Yan Lianke\'s tragic novel <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_of_Ding_Village">Dream of Ding Village</a>.\n'}], 'category': ['chinese', 'literature'], 'channel': ['ideas'], 'slug': ['dream-of-dang-village'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/07/20/u7', '/ideas/dream-of-dang-village'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Darth Drongo'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 7, 10, 20, 14, 55, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'artist': ['Chance'], 'photo': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/darth-drongo.png'], 'photo-small': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/480/darth-drongo.png'], 'content': [{'html': "\nDarth Drongo's creator describes him as follows:\n<blockquote>\n<ul><li>Forehead tat displays drongish deference to his fav classical Terran musician</li>\n<li>Signature shutter-monocle is attributed abilities ranging from farsight to nigh-omniscience. DD just Likes the Look</li>\n<li>Effortlessly mastered Forms I-VII in the womb, abandoned his lightsaber by age 12, now simply spams Lemonberry Lightning at all problems</li>\n<li>Consumes only the finest Twi’lek brews (and bitches)</li>\n<li>Often goes a-Sithin’ in standard Jedi Knight robe to achieve maximal chaos/comfort despite the contradiction. Absolutes mean nothing to this Sith</li>\n<li>Founder of galactically-recognized 00F brand apparel, well-known for being mandatory everyday wear in one star sector and banned in another, with the resultant 00Fer wars entirely masterminded by yours truly</li></ul>\n</blockquote>\n"}], 'category': ['slc'], 'channel': ['sithlords'], 'slug': ['darth-drongo'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/07/11/mv', '/sithlordchallenge/darth-drongo'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'I\'m attending two events today: one professional, one personal.\nIn the afternoon is "<a href="https://www.socsci.uci.edu/newsevents/events/2020/2020-07-08-china-digital.php">Digital Sources for Chinese Studies</a>" (or "Chinese History" -- sources conflict), put on by UCI\'s Long US-China Institute and Yale University\'s Council on East Asian Studies.\n<data class="p-rsvp" value="yes">In the evening is another week of</data> <a href="https://events.indieweb.org/2020/07/homebrew-website-club-west-coast-ZObv0hlGOdR5" class="u-in-reply-to">Homebrew Website Club West Coast</a>.\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 7, 8, 11, 6, 24, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['chinese', 'indieweb'], 'channel': ['rsvps'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/07/08/o5', '/2020/07/08/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'For the sake of readers\' eyes, I\'ve redesigned <a href="/blog">the blog index</a>. This post explains what changed, and why.\n<h2>Before the Changes</h2>\n<img class="center" srcset="/static/480/2020-june-blogstyle-old.png 480w, /static/2020-june-blogstyle-old.png 944w" sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 480px, 944px" src="/static/480/2020-june-blogstyle-old.png" alt="A picture of the blog index before 2020-06-30.">\nHere are the problems with the "before" picture.\n<ul>\n<li>Cluttered presentation of notes\nThe reader can be told, "This is a note," without nearly as much text as shown at (1). Let\'s take a lesson from Tufte and not put so much ink on the screen.\nNotes are the foundation on which specialized IndieWeb post types are built, and are so basic they don\'t even need titles. The note\'s presentation should get out of the reader\'s way.\nFurthermore, if there are multiple consecutive notes (not pictured), then, whether they are on the same day or not, the clutter pointed out in (1) makes it hard to tell when the date changes.\n</li>\n<li>Articles aren\'t distinguished from poems\nWithin articles, I have a "poem" subtype. These are sufficiently different from normal articles that they have their own markup and visual styling.\n"The Man from H.0.P.3." is a poem, while "A Round of Thanks" is an article, but that\'s not made clear on this page at (2) and (3).\n</li>\n<li>Articles don\'t display publication dates\n"The Man from H.0.P.3." was written on June 22nd, but the reader isn\'t told that; as shown at (2), the reader can only see the last time the was updated (if ever). Articles are the core of my website, so their publication dates should definitely appear. That alone would be enough to demand a change, but the lack of dates also poses this problem: since the blog represents a chronological ordering of site activity, its presentation shouldn\'t leave the reader guessing at when something was published.\n</li>\n</ul>\n<h2>After the Changes</h2>\nHere is the new and improved blog page:\n<img class="center" srcset="/static/480/2020-june-blogstyle-new.png 480w, /static/2020-june-blogstyle-new.png 705w" sizes="(max-width: 850px) 480px, 705px" src="/static/480/2020-june-blogstyle-new.png" alt="A picture of the updated blog index.">\nThe new layout only shows a given date once, and below that line are all the items published that day. The amount of text displayed for each note is vastly decreased, and each post\'s type is displayed. (Since this post, I\'ve also set <code>list-style: none</code> to remove bullets from the list items.)\nAdding post types (article/note/poem) to post metadata was easy: that information was already accessible to my static site generator\'s Python programs, so that they could apply page templates. Changing the code to group posts under their shared publication dates took a bit longer, but led to other backend improvements along the way.\n<h2>Wrapping Up</h2>\nAll I have left to say is a reminder that today is June 30th. Happy Old Year\'s Eve!\n'}], 'name': ['Redesigning the Blog Index'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 6, 30, 17, 24, 35, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 7, 8, 11, 44, 13, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['bna', 'indieweb', 'computing', 'python'], 'channel': ['articles'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/07/01/ht', '/2020/06/30/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Darth Unfinished'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 6, 28, 19, 27, 50, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'artist': ['Spencer'], 'photo': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/darth-unfinished.png'], 'photo-small': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/480/darth-unfinished.png'], 'content': [{'html': 'Pictures coming soon. This is the first Sith Lord to manifest in 3D; all the previous entries have been drawings. Though sadly incomplete, Darth Unfinished\'s chicken wire and papier-mache construction represents a significant advance for Sithnology.\n'}], 'category': ['slc'], 'channel': ['sithlords'], 'slug': ['darth-unfinished'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/06/29/2j', '/sithlordchallenge/darth-unfinished'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Code Library for the Sexagenary Cycle'], 'content': [{'html': '<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagenary_cycle">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagenary_cycle</a>\nCode for converting between Gregorian and Chinese year numbers already exists. Wikipedia highlights the current year on the sexegenary cycle list, and somebody programmed that. But, all the same, I can amuse myself by thinking about it.\nThings to be defined would include:\n<ul>\n<li>the Ten Stems and the Twelve Branches</li>\n<li>the 60-element cycle formed from pairing Stems and Branches by the traditional method</li>\n<li>the 60-element "false cycle"<a href="#fn-1">1</a>, formed by all the pairs not in the traditional cycle</li>\n<li>given a number indicating 1 thru 60 as the starting year, and a number +/-N, return the Stem and Branch for the year N years after/before the starting year</li>\n<li>given a Gregorian year, return its Stem and Branch according to the traditional calendar</li>\n<li>given a Stem and Branch, return the most recent Gregorian year, or all of them (up to an optional stopping point), which were that Stem and Branch on the traditional calendar</li>\n</ul>\n<section class="footnotes">\n<ol>\n<li id="fn-1">The "false cycle" is my made-up, provisional name. There\'s probably a real one.<a href="#fnref-1" class="footnote">↩</a></li>\n</ol>\n</section>\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 6, 23, 12, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'channel': ['ideas'], 'slug': ['sexagenary-cycle-programming-library'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/06/23/vp', '/ideas/sexagenary-cycle-programming-library'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'In reply to <a href="https://philosopher.life/#2020.06.07%20-%20MJos%3A%20%E4%BD%A0%E5%A5%BDdy:MJos%20%5B%5B2020.06.07%20-%20MJos%3A%20%E4%BD%A0%E5%A5%BDdy%5D%5D" class="u-in-reply-to">a post by h0p3</a>:\nFirst, and foremost, <a href="/poems/man-from-h0p3">I have written you a poem</a>.\n<blockquote>\nI hope you\'ll be able to forgive me for being so slow. I am thinking about you and many others. Even though I am somewhat manic, I\'m socially glacial and autistic.\n</blockquote>\nNo problem. You need never apologize to me for communication speed or length. When I need a particularly timely response, I send a follow-up email.\n<blockquote>\nHell yeah! I\'m really glad you took the time to hit me up. It\'s my honor to meet you, nomad.\n</blockquote>\nYou too, you big drongo. (What\'s a drongo? Answer <a href="/poems/drongo-explained">Number 1</a>, Answer <a href="/poems/peerless-drongo">Number 2</a>.)\n<blockquote>\nLet me know if you need any help. You\'ll have to pick out what is salient with me in our hyperconversation.\n</blockquote>\nWill do.\n<blockquote>\nIndeed, gwern spits fire. I doubt I\'ll be able to catch up. I\'m glad to have achieved this dankness rating though. Are you a fan of cannabis or any other substances?\n</blockquote>\nI do like beer. I\'ve started a draft "Beers" page, like my Books page, so I can more easily recall what I like and don\'t like. Publishing that isn\'t a high priority at the moment, though.\n<blockquote>\nYour homebrew site is delightful. I almost attended a meetup once; I may still. It\'s a {dream} of mine that everyone would have their own site. I am not convinced we can have a functioning democracy without it. I appreciate your sharing what you can. Your site seems to be PSMing to me, perhaps to a different dok. Even the fictional characters and masks that can be worn online probabilistically tell us something about the author. I appreciate that you are in this for the long-haul. Progress is slow, but I\'m in it for the long-haul too.\n</blockquote>\nI\'ve changed my mind from my first email. I think you\'re right that I\'m publically self-modeling (PSMing); I just only allow certain things into the model, and accept that it will not perfectly mirror Meatspace Me.\n<blockquote>\nI\'ve gone through your site, and I\'ve picked what stands out to me:\n</blockquote>\nI\'ve gone through your reply and done the same. :^)\n<blockquote>\n[Translation Index](/translation)\nIs automation of any use to you on this front? I\'d like to understand your process.\n</blockquote>\nAutomation of translation itself: no, not yet.\nAutomation of general tasks, some of which are useful for translation: yes. I\'ve written Emacs commands to help with writing and editing, as well as one that queries online Chinese dictionaries.\nI am trying to find a good place to start on a project I\'ve been dreaming about for a while: an all-in-one professional linguist\'s work environment (LWE).\nIt would support adding words or phrases with tags and metadata, tracking them as in a field linguist\'s glossary or a computer "translation memory"; creating spaced-repetition flashcards from cards tagged "vocab" (or at least allowing the export of "vocab"-tagged items to external flashcard programs); storing, reading, and highlighting documents (with highlighted passages becoming new word/phrase entries); sharing any of these data; and so on.\nI am working on my own glossary to be released as a web page on this site. I\'ve long needed to settle on one and only one place to store English and Chinese words/phrases which catch my attention. I\'ve made initial strides toward this with a local Python program that stores my vocabulary items, and loads new ones into Anki (flashcard memorizer) after I add new stuff. But that\'s a program local to my laptop, and although I\'ll probably take the incremental step of using that tool to spit out HTML for a webpage, the longer-term aim is to run a website that handles data drudgery for me, including serving the glossary.\nI don\'t think a LWE will be hard to achieve, in principle. Whatever format its word/phrase dictionary takes can become the source file for my aforementioned web glossary, and databases are well-known, non-fancy technology which will easily store all of the above data types. There\'s probably some open-source document reader JavaScript library, to which I could add annotation commands (has Hypothes.is been open-sourced? Hmm.) Finally, writing an app to bring all this together is mostly a matter of CRUD-dy HTML forms, Python, and SQL.\nPrior art most certainly exists in the form of computer translation tools, but I haven\'t seriously investigated them yet. I doubt anything available is flexible enough for me: I doubt any of those tools work outside a GUI environment (so I couldn\'t host one on a server and be done with it), and I also doubt any of them provide open-source code for me to cannibalize.\n<blockquote>\n[Chinese New Year for a Small Town in Jiangxi Province](/jiangxi-account)\nHaunting. I consider this post a gift to Humanity.\n</blockquote>\nThank you.\n<blockquote>\n[Volunteering with unCoVer](/notes/2020/02/25/1)\nHave you ever posted your work elsewhere? Maybe I\'ve run into your translations on Reddit?\nI am very lucky to run across translators. I desperately need the perspective.\n</blockquote>\nI have never posted a translation anywhere but here, and I don\'t use Reddit with an account. I will try to remember to ping you if I ever collect a list of translators\' websites.\n<blockquote>\n[Links](/links)\nI\'m a Link addict. Gracias. Like books on our shelves, they often tell us an important story about the owner.\n</blockquote>\nI slowly defaulted to collecting links in my "Pending Links" draft rather than slapping them on that page. I realized recently that I had about 3x as many links in that draft as on the live webpage, so the Big Slap is overdue.\n<blockquote>\n[Sith Lord Challenge](/sithlordchallenge)\nMy daughter [j3d1h] is drawing up something for the art challenge. We\'ve been thinking about it. You are a Dungeons and Dragons fan, so I think you might appreciate the character we aim to model: Aquina the Shadowmonk.\n</blockquote>\nYes! Yes! More Sith! Bring it, j3d1h!\n<blockquote>\n[Ideas](/ideas)\nThis is my favorite part of your site. Note for a lack of trying, but I rarely understand people. I wish it were more common to just get it out and not worry about the optics of it so much. I enjoy having the opportunity to hyperread through their thoughts and ideas. I hope this places grows so large that you have to atomize and catalog it.\n</blockquote>\nI appreciate your visiting the ass end of my website. The "atomize and catalog" mambo will inevitably be danced. You prompted me to move an entry from Ideas to the Inform page; there will be a lot more of those movements as I expand the Chinese sections of my website.\n<blockquote>\n[Books](/books)\nI like how cleanly the quotes are organized.\nThat reminds me that I\'ve not being doing any book reading. I\'ve been so flooded by the interwebs.\nIf you ever need any e-books or audiobooks, please do not hesitate to ask me. I\'ll do my best to acquire them for you.\n</blockquote>\nHave I read any books that you haven\'t? Do you have any recommendations for me, or want more detail on one of the books I didn\'t review/quote?\n<blockquote>\n"[The Bunghole](/poems/bunghole)"\nI\'m completely unqualified to write or interpret poetry. I adore that you make it. It\'s an art beyond me.\nI adore this poem. Bunghole is a tremendous concept for me. It reminds me of Smelting Muh Silly Farts [a category on h0p3\'s website]\n</blockquote>\nBow down before the tremendousness of the bunghole, philosopher. Feel free to quote and link the poem for your Farts index.\n<blockquote>\n[Programming a D&D Web Application](/notes/2020/02/03/1)\nThere will come a day when you will have the opportunity to meet my Root User: chameleon. I think you\'ll find her RPG and programming work thought-provoking.\n</blockquote>\nNoted. In return, let me introduce you to my dear friend and mentor, <a href="https://tao-dnd.blogspot.com">Alexis Smolensk</a> -- blogging and wikifying like mad about his playable, explorable, oh-so-tremendously-detailed-and-thought-out game world based on 17th-century Earth. He has the highest D&D power level in existence. You want to talk gifts to Humanity? Alexis has a Christmas tree waiting for you.\n<blockquote>\nThank you for reaching out. I hope I\'ll be able to hear back from you on your site. This may be a lot to ask, but if you have the chance, I\'d like to be able to search, have a tag, or a specific page I could check.\n</blockquote>\nIt is done: you have been given <a href="/tag/h0p3">the h0p3 tag</a>. Be seeing you!\n'}], 'name': ['Letter to h0p3'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 6, 22, 16, 9, 28, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['h0p3', 'correspondence'], 'channel': ['letters'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/06/22/rp', '/2020/06/22/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<div class="muted">\nThis poem was <a href="/notes/2020/06/22/1">inspired by correspondence</a> with the Philosopher of Life, <a href="https://philosopher.life" class="u-category h-card">h0p3</a>.\n</div>\n<div class="poem-container">\n<pre class="poem shadow">\nSundown. My latest letter is complete:\nI post it to the madman\'s house of black.\nHis call for correspondence thus fulfilled,\nWhite ink on parchment fuligin comes back.\n\nThe auto-philosophe greets me with cheer.\nHe\'s scoured my tubes; he\'s scanned my public face.\n"Your site\'s delightful" — so reads his review.\nNo lesser turbo-hermit has such grace.\n\nI swear I see him through Eye Number Three:\nThin fingers, stained with e-ink, sweep the keys\nThat lock him to the ever-growing Book\nOf Life, which he attends on hands and knees.\n\nFrom ones and nones, h0p3 builds a prophesy,\nAnd from his labors may he never tire.\nIn 2020, Montaigne essays on.\nHis precomputed smile floats down the wire.\n</pre>\n</div>\n'}], 'name': ['The Man from H.0.P.3.'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 6, 22, 9, 32, 13, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 6, 30, 12, 21, 46, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['h0p3', 'poetry'], 'channel': ['poems'], 'slug': ['man-from-h0p3'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/06/22/y8', '/poems/man-from-h0p3'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'There won\'t be an in-person IndieWeb Summit this year, but in its stead, <a class="u-in-reply-to" href="https://events.indieweb.org/2020/06/indiewebcamp-west-2020-ZB8zoAAu6sdN">the all-online IndieWebCamp West</a> has been announced! Come join us for two days of discussing and developing personal websites. There\'s something for everyone in the IndieWeb, so whether you\'re a first-time blogger or an old hand at web development, you\'re sure to walk away charged up with the creative spirit.\n'}], 'name': ['Get Excited for IndieWebCamp West 2020'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 6, 10, 13, 7, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['indieweb'], 'channel': ['rsvps'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/06/10/28', '/2020/06/10/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'The job search I began in 2019 has ended: <a href="/consulting">I\'ve gone independent</a>, and I\'m digging it. (<a href="mailto:maxwelljoslyn@gmail.com?subject=consulting inquiry">Click here to make an inquiry</a>.)\nWhen I began the job hunt, I despaired over the small size of my network. Being a small number of years into my career, I didn\'t think "it\'s who you know" would work for me as a search strategy. I\'m happy to say I was totally wrong. Online and offline, the more I put myself out there, the more people I met who were willing to help me out.\nFirst, I have these people to thank for engaging me for work.\n<ul>\n<li>Eric Abrahamsen has me doing Python development for Paper Republic.</li>\n<li>A non-native English speaker has me working to improve the English copy on his tutoring website.</li>\n<li>A client has hired me to build a no-frills personal website. "I want it like a mathematician\'s academic homepage," he says.</li>\n<li>A client is hiring me to translate Mandarin for his business venture.</li>\n</ul>\nSecond, the following friends and contacts each offered me something, then delivered on that offer. If you\'re named here, call in an equivalent favor at your leisure. If you\'ve been left off this (evolving) list or want to change how I\'ve used your name, <a href="mailto:maxwelljoslyn@gmail.com">get in touch</a>.\n<ul>\n<li>Matt C. praised my cover letter and resume while advocating for me to his boss. My nervousness during the subsequent coding screen meant "my best foot forward" was not the same foot I had "in the door" -- but that\'s on me.</li>\n<li>Matt C. came back a second time to connect me to Jon Paul, who floated a job opportunity or two my way.</li>\n<li>Matt U. connected me with his hometown friend Milo, who spoke with me at length about his employer and advocated for me during the interview process.</li>\n<li>Gus, despite having newborn twins, graciously found time on a Saturday to take an informational phone call, spent the rest of that morning calling his contacts to help me source leads, and continually checked in for the next month or so with professional advice.</li>\n<li>My fellow Uncoded board members provided moral support and an opportunity to attend the SCALE conference, which brought some networking opportunities.</li>\n<li>Alexi and Anna Leah invited me to feast and make merry in his home, for days and weeks at a time.</li>\n<li>My IndieWeb buddies motivated to keep working on this website, as well as lead a discussion at IndieWebCamp Online 2020.</li>\n<li>A Reed College Alumni Programs event introduced me to fellow Reedie and Sinologist Joseph, who connected me to another Reed Sinologist, Brydon, who turned me on to the American Mandarin Society mailing list, which finally resulted in my spending several months aiding a Chinese-translation effort related to COVID-19.</li>\n<li>Chris Stasse invited me to his home for a drongo week of carpentry, camping, and poetry battles, reminded me that being unemployed at a young age doesn\'t mean I\'m "falling behind," and helped me <a href="/translation">polish my short-story translations</a>.</li>\n<li>Jaime Torres taught me to keep cool in interviews while putting "the Maxwell charm" to use, and helped me push my boundaries and build confidence through athletic excursions.</li>\n<li>Alexis Smolensk, a friend and long-time mentor, firmly advised me to focus my creative and artistic skills on meeting the needs of others, not just on what I alone find meaningful.</li>\n<li>Justin referred me to a position with his employer.</li>\n<li>Chancellor volunteered his lawyerly knowledge to refine my freelancing contract.</li>\n<li>Lyla was Lyla to the fullest.</li>\n<li>After I posted on Hacker News and Slate Star Codex seeking advice, dozens and dozens of commenters came to my aid. Roughly a dozen of these followed up with emailed advice or open positions.</li>\n<li>J. G., who I met on Slate Star Codex, kept up a correspondence lasting several months, consensually hounded me about my to-do list, and advised his offspring to enter the <a href="/sithlordchallenge">Sith Lord Challenge</a>.</li>\n<li>Subhro, who I met on Hacker News, went above and beyond in his quest to help a perfect stranger. He gave me his phone number and insisted I call him to talk things over, referred me to a job at his employer, and offered sage advice from his stint in the Air Force.</li>\n<li>My parents were indispensable -- \'nuff said.</li>\n</ul>\n'}], 'name': ['A Round of Thanks'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 5, 29, 14, 54, 37, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 5, 31, 11, 46, 2, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['consulting'], 'channel': ['pages'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/05/29/gd', '/round-of-thanks'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'published': [DateTime(2020, 5, 25, 12, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'name': ['Chinese Document Search'], 'content': [{'html': 'When I come across an unfamiliar phrase, especially one that\'s metaphorical, it\'s useful to be able to search text documents, on the web or elsewhere, for regular expressions matching that phrase.\nI\'d like to begin building my own repository of documents to run such searches against, as well as write a program to run them against websites like <a href="http://ctext.org">the Chinese Text Project</a>, <a href="https://www.gushiwen.org/wenyan/">Gu Shi Wen</a> ("Ancient Poetry and Literature"), <a href="http://www.jukuu.com">Jukuu</a>, and <a href="https://www.zdic.net">Zdic</a>.\nFor a user interface, the ability to run searches comes first. Then, the ability to save information from a search into a memorization flashcard. Further improvements: the interrelated concepts of searching with (limited) regexps and other special operators (see ludwig.com); saving and re-running searches; saving (list (parameters) (API version)) to the user\'s local storage or offering to download it as a file... a way that produces premade regexps for different purposes, or the ability to save and re-run searches.\nAs for development techniques, this seems like a fit for a server application. I send it queries, it works, it sends back results. I could run the application on my local computer for my own purposes (a strategy of which I am growing fond), and providing the search tools to other people is as simple as running the app on my own <abbr title="Virtual Private Server">VPS</abbr>.\n'}], 'category': ['chinese', 'computing'], 'channel': ['ideas'], 'slug': ['chinese-document-search'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/05/25/u6', '/ideas/chinese-document-search'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'updated': [DateTime(2020, 11, 4, 14, 36, 55, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'show-metadata': [False], 'content': [{'html': '<div>Closed</div>\n'}], 'name': ['Joslyn Consulting'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 5, 19, 7, 20, 51, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['chinese', 'translation', 'computing', 'consulting'], 'channel': ['pages'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/05/19/rs', '/consulting'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsive_web_design">Responsive web design</a> is the practice of ensuring that website material adapts to the capabilities of the user\'s device. I\'ve taken some steps in the last couple days to make this site more responsive.\n<div class="benefit">\nHow this benefits you:\n<div class="benefit-answer">\n<ul>\n<li>on mobile, all website text now loads at a device-appropriate size, rather than appearing zoomed-out</li>\n<li>mobile images now load at a device-appropriate size, saving you from wasting time and mobile bandwidth on oversized downloads</li>\n<li>images now resize themselves in your display, such as moving from portrait to landscape or shrinking the browser window</li>\n<li>at smaller screen sizes, lines of poetry now wrap to fit your display, instead of running off the page or requiring you to scroll</li>\n</ul>\n</div>\n</div>\n'}], 'name': ['Responsive Images and Text'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 5, 5, 8, 43, 31, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 5, 8, 15, 35, 36, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['upgrade', 'bna'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/05/05/if', '/2020/05/05/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'updated': [DateTime(2020, 11, 21, 13, 41, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': '<h2>Introduction</h2>\nAs a work sample for a job application, I spent some time writing a Python library which lets a game designer create basic text adventures. Though the library is a mere prototype, I was able to use it to implement a sample game called "Bread Master."\n<aside>If you want to make a real interactive-fiction game, I recommend <a href="http://inform7.com">Inform 7</a>, a phenomenal piece of software accessible even to those with no programming experience.</aside>\nMy library and its documentation are <a href="https://gitlab.com/maxwelljoslyn/text-adventure-engine">available on my public GitLab account</a>. The rest of this page reproduces some introductory sections from the library\'s README, as of 2020-05-09.\n<h2>Aims</h2>\nGuiding principles for this project.\n<ol>\n<li>Hit the mark.\nTA gave me free reign to submit any code sample I chose. Having developed interactive fiction but never made my own tool for such, I set out to build a small but complete text-adventure engine. I defined "complete" to mean I could hand the library to another programmer and expect them to be able to make a game, ideally after no more introduction than reading and playing the sample game, "Bread Master."\n</li>\n<li>Do right by both the user and the user\'s user, the game player.\nI wanted the user to be able to open this library, read the thirty or forty lines of code that specify "Bread Master", play that game, and be ready to write his own little game. [For explicit user instructions, see "<a href="#instructions-for-game-designers">Instructions for Game Designers</a>" below.]\nIt seemed to me that, if I were a game designer thinking about using this game library, the most important thing would be an assurance that my players would be well-served out of the box. Thus, I tried to include quality-of-life features for players of games made with this library, including a help menu listing commands and their synonyms; parser special cases to allow more freedom in typing <code>Command</code>s; and prompting the player with choices of direct object if they failed to provide one for a targetable <code>Command</code>, rather than rejecting their command outright.\n</li>\n<li>Document design decisions.\nHaving been a research programmer, I believe a long-term software project is most likely to succeed if one can make progress on it even if only able to return to it at intermittent intervals. The way to achieve that state is to ensure that the code is no trickier than it needs to be, and that any potential sources of confusion are patiently explained, in as much English as is necessary.\nMy standard of achievement for Aim 3 was that, anywhere Future Me or Future You might have been confused or skeptical, that emotion would be dispelled in code commentary or this README. I couldn\'t achieve lofty heights in five days, but I could make crystal-clear the reasons behind my choices and the next steps for continued work.\n</li>\n<li>Convince TA I\'m the right man for the job.\nThe role for which TA is considering me is a bit unusual. The team is small, and the work isn\'t tied to the quarterly business cycle. I\'d be assisting TA with long-term, grant-funded research by improving an existing codebase. While assisting with new features would be part of the job, the primary duties would be refactoring, testing, and above all thinking. In this repository, I hope I\'ve shown that I can think long-term, keep track of what needs doing and what\'s unimportant, justify my design choices, write clean code, explain my code to others, and put user needs first.\n</li>\n</ol>\n<h2>Features</h2>\nA library user can:\n<ul>\n<li>implement custom <code>Item</code>s (including <code>Room</code>s) with synonyms</li>\n<li>choose the player\'s starting <code>Room</code> and inventory <code>Item</code>s</li>\n<li>set an introductory message for the game</li>\n<li>set the game\'s win conditions</li>\n<li>set a win message for the game</li>\n<li>define custom functions for activatable <code>Item</code>s, which change game-world state or give <code>Item</code>s additional functionality</li>\n</ul>\nGame players enjoy engine convenience features such as:\n<ul>\n<li>sequential entry of multiple commands with "." (if you enter "go north. take jelly", the engine will run "go north" and "take jelly" in sequence)</li>\n<li>being prompted to enter the "help" command if your command is unrecognized</li>\n<li>command synonyms (example: "pick up", "take", "get" are all interpreted as the "take" command)</li>\n<li>parseable articles (example: "take the doll", "take a doll", "take teh doll" are all interpreted as "take doll")</li>\n<li>being prompted for a direct object when you forget one (example: if you just enter "take", the engine will prompt you to choose a currently-visible object)</li>\n</ul>\n<h2>Scope</h2>\nMany possible features were out of scope given time and quality constraints. In general, if I felt I wanted to add something but wouldn\'t be able to do so without failing to achieve Aim 1, I erred on the side of documenting it in this README to show that I\'d at least considered the problem. This prevented me from dancing to the seductive song of scope creep. Things I left out include:\n<ul>\n<li>ability for user to implement custom <code>Command</code>s</li>\n<li>the possibility of losing the game or displaying a losing message</li>\n<li>scoring or other measurement (other than <code>win_function</code>)</li>\n<li>turn count and/or timed actions</li>\n<li>NPCs</li>\n<li>stateful <code>Item</code>s</li>\n<li>many typical adventure-game commands (notably, "take" is implemented but counterpart "drop" is not)</li>\n</ul>\n<h2>Instructions for Game Designers</h2>\nFor an example file which shows all these steps, <a href="https://gitlab.com/maxwelljoslyn/text-adventure-engine/-/blob/master/breadmaster.py">see <code>breadmaster.py</code></a>.\n<ol>\n<li>In a Python file, import everything from <code>runner.py</code>.</li>\n<li>In a string variable, write a sentence or two which situates your player in the game, and introduces the identity of their player character. This will be printed when the game starts. You might consider including the game\'s title, author, and other publication info within this string.</li>\n<li>Define any custom functions you need for your game. At minimum, you will need to define a win condition (see <code>runner.GameRunner</code> for details.) If you want items to have custom effects, you can define functions to pass in for their <code>activate_fn</code> parameter; this allows you to change game state in response to player commands, or provide different options for activating an item based on the current game state.</li>\n<li>Define the items your player will be able to interact with in your game. Each one needs a name, a description, and a list of the commands to which it can respond (aside from "look", which is always available.)</li>\n<li>Define the rooms which constitute the game world\'s structure. Each one needs a name, a description, a dictionary mapping from directions to other room names, and a list of the items which populate that room at the beginning of the game.</li>\n<li>Write a message to show the player when they win your game.</li>\n<li>Define the items, if any, which the player will have on their person when the game begins.</li>\n<li>In your <code>main()</code> function, pass all of the above to the <code>GameRunner</code> constructor, then ensure <code>main()</code> is called when your Python file is run.</li>\n<li>Test out your game!</li>\n</ol>\n'}], 'name': ['A Text-Adventure Game Engine'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 4, 27, 16, 6, 9, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['python', 'computing', 'games'], 'channel': ['pages'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/04/27/z9', '/text-adventure-engine'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<data class="p-rsvp" value="yes">I\'m going</data> to <a class="u-in-reply-to" href="https://events.indieweb.org/2020/04/online-homebrew-website-club-west-coast-v0BQQ1BYfuhI">Homebrew Website Club</a> tomorrow. Hope to see you there!\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 4, 14, 11, 44, 27, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['indieweb'], 'channel': ['rsvps'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/04/14/v8', '/2020/04/14/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Linguistic Autism Symptoms'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 4, 7, 12, 55, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': '<div class=muted>\nI keep these around in case anyone asks after the autism-related work on my resume.\n</div>\n<blockquote class="shadow">\n<ul>\n<li>echolalia (frequent repetition of a sound, word, or phrase)</li>\n<li>trouble using or understanding pronouns</li>\n<li>trouble using or understanding sentence (phrase) structures</li>\n<li>irregular tone (e.g. atonality; use of rising tone ("uptalk") at end of sentences which aren\'t questions)</li>\n<li>irregular articulation</li>\n<li>hard to keep themselves to a certain volume (e.g. hard to use "inside voice")</li>\n</ul>\n</blockquote>\n'}], 'category': ['autism', 'linguistics'], 'channel': ['ideas'], 'slug': ['linguistic-autism-symptoms'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/04/07/ms', '/ideas/linguistic-autism-symptoms'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'Having corresponded with my friend Plurt Masberry, I\'ve sorted the entries to the Sith Lord Challenge into <a href="/sithlordchallenge#characteristics-of-sith-lords">a taxonomy of Sith characteristics</a>. The five categories are "wizardly," "brutish", "inconceivable," "deceptive," and "artificial." <a href="/sithlordchallenge#characteristics-of-sith-lords">Click through to read the full update.</a>\n'}], 'name': ['Classifying Sith Lords'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 4, 2, 17, 16, 41, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['slc'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/04/03/u6', '/2020/04/02/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Seth, the Ancient Sith'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 4, 2, 1, 52, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'artist': ['Nitzan'], 'photo': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/seth-the-ancient-sith.png'], 'photo-small': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/480/seth-the-ancient-sith.png'], 'category': ['slc'], 'channel': ['sithlords'], 'slug': ['seth-the-ancient-sith'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/04/02/jk', '/sithlordchallenge/seth-the-ancient-sith'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Darth Skivin'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 4, 1, 23, 59, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'artist': ['Aaron Strick'], 'photo': ['https://aaronstrick.com/replies/01-sithlordchallenge/'], 'photo-small': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/480/darth-skivin.png'], 'category': ['slc'], 'channel': ['sithlords'], 'slug': ['darth-skivin'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/04/02/fi', '/sithlordchallenge/darth-skivin'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'In <a href="https://events.indieweb.org/2020/04/online-homebrew-website-club-west-coast-JsujusQZLM7Z" class="u-mention-of">tonight\'s video call</a>, <a href="https://new.aaronstrick.com" class="u-category h-card">Aaron Strick</a> brought up the <a href="/sithlordchallenge">Sith Lord Challenge</a>, and produced live laughter. Hours later, Aaron created the sinister <a href="https://aaronstrick.com/replies/01-sithlordchallenge/">Darth Skivin</a>.\nPraise Aaron!\nAaron showed the page to <a href="https://gregorlove.com" class="u-category h-card">gRegor</a>, who produced live laughter. Hours later, gRegor created the symbolic <a href="https://gregorlove.com/2020/04/darth-ascii/">Darth ASCII</a>.\nPraise gRegor!\nThe thrill of new entries prompted me to challenge Nitzan, who readily agreed. Hours later, Nitzan produced the minatory Seth, the Ancient Sith!\nPraise Nitzan!\nI hear that, even now, <a href="https://boffosocko.com" class="u-category h-card">Chris</a> and <a href="https://v2.jacky.wtf" class="u-category h-card">Jacky</a> toil to create their own Challengers...\nDraw your dark side! <a href="/sithlordchallenge">Take the Sith Lord Challenge!</a>\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 4, 1, 22, 14, 2, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 4, 2, 16, 6, 1, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['indieweb', 'slc'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/04/02/zb', '/2020/04/01/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Darth ASCII'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 4, 1, 20, 26, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'artist': ['gRegor Morrill'], 'photo': ['https://gregorlove.com/2020/04/darth-ascii/'], 'photo-small': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/480/darth-ascii.png'], 'content': [{'html': 'Recipient of the Digital-Native Sith Ribbon.\n'}], 'category': ['slc'], 'channel': ['sithlords'], 'slug': ['darth-ascii'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/04/02/3h', '/sithlordchallenge/darth-ascii'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'Another week brings another <a href="https://events.indieweb.org/2020/04/online-homebrew-website-club-west-coast-JsujusQZLM7Z" class="u-in-reply-to">Homebrew Website Club West Coast</a>. The last one led to fruitful discussion, <data class="p-rsvp" value="yes">so I\'m going again</data>.\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 3, 29, 16, 4, 45, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['indieweb'], 'channel': ['rsvps'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/03/29/k4', '/2020/03/29/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<data class="p-rsvp" value="yes">I\'m going to</data> <a href="https://events.indieweb.org/2020/03/online-homebrew-website-club-west-coast-5CZGhYbdcga1" class="u-in-reply-to">Homebrew Website Club West Coast</a> tomorrow, and this post is my RSVP.\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 3, 24, 18, 15, 34, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['indieweb'], 'channel': ['rsvps'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/03/25/8r', '/2020/03/24/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['3bo'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 3, 22, 15, 8, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'artist': ['Young Master/Mistress Greene'], 'photo': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/3bo.png'], 'photo-small': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/480/3bo.png'], 'content': [{'html': 'Plurt Masberry, Curator of Sith Artifacts and Holocrons at the Cloud City Republican Museum, informs me that this drawing depicts a Sith legend.\n<blockquote class="shadow">\nOne day 3bo was out on a walk. Then out of the corner of the tree was an evol speiret. So he foght. The evol sprit did not have time to fight back because he die. 3bo finly won his first battol.\n<cite>3bo Battles Evol</cite>\n</blockquote>\n'}], 'category': ['slc'], 'channel': ['sithlords'], 'slug': ['3bo'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/03/22/ko', '/sithlordchallenge/3bo'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<div class="muted">\nThis is a parody of Leonard Cohen\'s famous song "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallelujah_(Leonard_Cohen_song)">Hallelujah</a>". When my friend Matt mistook a haiku for such a parody, I knew I had to make it real. Consider this a companion piece to "<a href="/poems/hakuna-katana">Hakuna Katana</a>".\nNews: this got picked up for <a href="/notes/2020/07/25/1">production into a real song</a>!\n</div>\n<div class="poem-container">\n<pre class="poem shadow">\nMy ancestors all bore the sword\nWhich I now bear to serve my lord\nAll spring I fight, when weaker men don\'t wanna\nIt goes like this: the stroke, the swish\nThe spray of blood, the stink of piss\nI have no friends besides my huge katana\n\nChorus:\nHuge katana\nHuge katana\nHuge katana\nHuge kata-aaa-ana\n\nFrom Edo to Hokkaido\'s shore\nThe only life I know is war\nEach day of my existence is nirvana\nA lesser man would lose his head\nBut I know I\'m already dead\nAnd to my son I\'ve willed my huge katana\n\n[Chorus]\n\nI\'ve read the Bibles Dutchmen sell\nI scoff at Satan, laugh at Hell\nI need no foreign Christ, and no Madonna\nI don\'t believe a word they say\nMy Bible is bushido\'s way\nMy only god is called my huge katana\n\n[Chorus]\n\nI have no patience for the court\nI\'ve never been the courtier sort\nI\'d rather live life simply, kin to fauna\nThe finer arts are lost on me\nLet others write death poetry\nMy dying words will be my huge katana\n\n[Chorus]\n</pre></div>\n'}], 'name': ['Huge Katana'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 3, 21, 21, 54, 33, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 8, 1, 12, 47, 51, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['poetry', 'parody'], 'channel': ['poems'], 'slug': ['huge-katana'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/03/22/d9', '/poems/huge-katana'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Choosing a Notation for Mandarin Romanization'], 'content': [{'html': 'Decision: Standardize on gei3-type citations for source material. Can use scripts in the build process to automate find-replace for publishing. I don\'t care about academic or legal standards right now, and any Chinese linguistics writing I do will probably not be for laymen.\nHere is the case for using gei3 instead of standard Pinyin gěi.\nPro:\n<ul>\n<li>only need ASCII to search (except for lü, but that can be typed lv), which is helpful for build-process mechanisms and scripts like spell check, as well as fewer edge cases for implementation of projects such as full-text search</li>\n<li>if I ever switch to doing it the other way, I can more easily replace text like gei3 into gěi than the other way around (and the procedure for determining which letter takes the tone accent mark is a straightforward algorithm<a href="#fn-1">1</a>).</li>\n</ul>\nCon:\n<ul>\n<li>not standard in the academic literature or in the private sector</li>\n<li>not part of PRC or Taiwan standards for Romanization (though numbers do show up in the Jyutping, the most widely-used standard for Cantonese: for example, 粤拼 "Jyutping" itself is Romanized in Jyutping as Jyut6ping3)</li>\n</ul>\n<section class="footnotes">\n<ol>\n<li id="fn-1">Roughly: letter which comes first alphabetically gets the tone mark, except for a few regular exceptions, such as the vowel combo in "xiōng".<a href="#fnref-1" class="footnote">↩</a></li>\n</ol>\n</section>\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 3, 12, 12, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['chinese', 'linguistics', 'computing'], 'channel': ['ideas'], 'slug': ['which-mandarin-romanization-notation-should-i-use'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/03/12/6r', '/ideas/which-mandarin-romanization-notation-should-i-use'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'I had a wonderful time today at the Southern California Linux Expo, as a booth volunteer with <a href="http://www.uncoded.org">Uncoded</a>. It\'s a satisfying challenge to pitch to crowds of people, hoping to get them interested in something you care about.\nSpeaking of pitching: Uncoded is a Long Beach non-profit which brings together people in the tech industry for learning, socializing, and professional networking. Come to our weekly Hack Nights to meet enthusiasts of all kinds: you\'ll be welcome no matter your level of knowledge or area of interest. Hack Night is every Tuesday from 6 PM to 8 PM; on 2020-03-10 we\'ll be at Sura Korean Restaurant, 621 Atlantic Ave.\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 3, 6, 22, 5, 51, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/03/07/95', '/2020/03/06/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Post Office Valentines'], 'content': [{'html': '<blockquote class="shadow">\nInterested customers can write to these Post Offices for postmarks to keep or to share with friends. Enclose a stamped, addressed card or letter in another envelope or box labeled “Valentine re-mailing” and address it to the postmaster of one of the towns listed below. Please allow enough time for postmarking, re-mailing, and delivery.\n<cite><a href="https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-history/valentine-post-office-names.htm">USPS Website</a></cite>\n</blockquote>\nHere are the towns with names that I like the most, out of about 35:\n<ul>\n<li>Bliss, ID 83314</li>\n<li>Bliss, NY 14024</li>\n<li>Darling, MS 38623</li>\n<li>Deary, ID 83823</li>\n<li>Eros, LA 71238</li>\n<li>Honey Brook, PA 19344</li>\n<li>Honey Creek, WI 53138</li>\n<li>Honey Grove, PA 17035</li>\n<li>Honey Grove, TX 75446</li>\n<li>Honeyville, UT 84314</li>\n<li>Juliette, GA 31046</li>\n<li>Kissimmee, FL 34744</li>\n<li>Lovejoy, GA 30250</li>\n<li>Lovejoy, IL 62059</li>\n<li>Lovelady, TX 75851</li>\n<li>Loveland, CO 80538</li>\n<li>Loveland, OH 45140</li>\n<li>Lovely, KY 41231</li>\n<li>Loveville, MD 20656</li>\n<li>Loving, NM 88256</li>\n<li>Loving, TX 76460</li>\n<li>Romance, AR 72136</li>\n<li>Romeo, CO 81148</li>\n<li>Romeo, MI 48065</li>\n<li>Sugar City, CO 81076</li>\n<li>Sugar City, ID 83448</li>\n<li>Valentine, NE 69201</li>\n<li>Valentine, TX 79854</li>\n<li>Valentines, VA 23887</li>\n<li>Venus, FL 33960</li>\n<li>Venus, PA 16364</li>\n<li>Venus, TX 76084</li>\n</ul>\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 3, 6, 11, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['love', 'opportunity'], 'channel': ['ideas'], 'slug': ['post-office-valentines'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/03/06/s5', '/ideas/post-office-valentines'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['For Dog Eyes Only'], 'content': [{'html': "<pre>\nNot in the dresser,\nNor on the couch.\nNot in this jacket,\nNor in that pouch.\nNot in the bucket,\nAnd not on the chair.\nNot in the cabinet.\nNot over there.\nI'm going stir-crazy:\nIs it anywhere?\n</pre>\n"}], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 3, 5, 11, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'channel': ['ideas'], 'slug': ['for-dog-eyes-only'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/03/05/iu', '/ideas/for-dog-eyes-only'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'After a few months of intermittent work, my translation of Lao She\'s short story "Iron Bull and Sick Duck" <a href="/tieniu-he-bingya">is ready to share</a>. So far as I know, nobody has ever before translated this story into English.\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 3, 4, 9, 32, 10, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['chinese', 'translation'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/03/04/p4', '/2020/03/04/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<h2>Introduction</h2>\nThis is my translation of a social media narrative posted by someone living through the COVID-2019 outbreak in China. The original author is "Qian Wan" (a pseudonym.)\nI originally translated this thinking it could become part of a group project, but logistical difficulties prevented them from using it, so I\'m publishing it here. Anything I\'m unsure of is marked like this.\n<h2>Translation</h2>\nThis is an account of daily life in a rural county seat in Jiangxi Province, China, under the shadow of the COVID-2019 outbreak. No cases have been confirmed, but the popular sentiment is one of anxiety. It is in such moments that we most want to maintain empathy, for in the face of this crisis all people are feeling a shock to their spirits. No single element can exist separately from the whole.\nUltimately, the village entrance was closed to visitors.\nOn February 1st, in Jiangxi Province, the county seat where my hometown lies finally entered a state of high alert. It had been twelve days since Zhong Nanshan -- the epidemiologist and Chinese Academy of Engineering member who led the fight against SARS in 2003 -- said that the novel coronavirus had demonstrated human-to-human transmission. It had been nine days since Wuhan, a city of eleven million, was declared to be on lockdown.\nAn image of the checkpoint, with a banner that reads: "Those arriving in this village are asked to turn back along their original route."\nDriving quickly, we arrived to find that the blockade line had been set up in front of my maternal grandmother\'s house. I got off the scooter and took the initiative, advancing forward to ask the inspectors, distinguished by red armbands, how to register to enter the village. Looking at the chair and table, which had likely been taken from the village\'s elementary school, I saw a document densely covered with names and numerals -- but couldn\'t make anything out. The material had probably been used during questioning. To one side was a gray thermometer gun, which would measure a person\'s body heat when pressed to one ear.\nThe man sitting there didn\'t want to pay attention to us, and wouldn\'t say a word, but the one who was standing waved a hand at me to indicate that we could go in. This was as I expected. Even in a time of crisis, the countryside was a place where social relations could not be completely ignored. Though they didn\'t know me personally, a few sentences letting them know that I was related to the village\'s foremost family<a href="#fn-1">1</a> were enough to let me pass.\nMy grandmother was waiting for me in the courtyard, one hand propped on her cane.\n1\nThe company I work for had given everyone an early start to the national holiday, so on January 21st my mother and I took the high-speed train home.\nBy that point, I had already heard news about the "pneumonia," but it was yet to be confirmed, and there was no vigilance. I brought two face masks with me from Shanghai, and gave one to my mother. Once she saw that in the station waiting room the number of people wearing was much greater than in previous days, she wore hers for a while, but after boarding the train she stuffed it in her coat pocket, saying she wasn\'t used to wearing one. I wore my own disposable mask from the moment we left home, during the whole journey of four or five hours: on the high-speed train, on the slower train, and on the electric scooter from the county train station. Only later, while browsing the web, did I realize I\'d worn the mask backwards, with the white side outward. More susceptible to bacteria when used incorrectly.\nAt that time, my relatives at home were still not aware of the earth-shattering news of the epidemic. As I set foot on the threshold of the house, and saw my family before me, I took off the mask, suddenly not wanting them to think that fussy urbanites were making a big deal out of a little illness.\n2\nOn January 23rd, the day before Chinese New Year\'s Eve, I got a call from my cousin who works in a neighboring town\'s government. On previous New Years, she\'d mostly talked about how to meet target indicators for poverty reduction, but this year she was anxious and sincere. I could almost see her eyebrows knitted together as she said, "You\'d do best to stay home. I\'m not kidding."\nWe exchanged news, from which I learned it had been discovered that a doctor from a neighboring village had secretly traveled home from Hubei. Even the doctor\'s family hadn\'t known. As a suspected infection case, the doctor had been quarantined for observation. "If the case is confirmed, I\'ll get no rest at all during the New Year\'s celebrations."\n3\nThe next day, I made a trip to the supermarket in town to buy some drinks for our New Year\'s Eve feast. The tradition is to start New Year\'s Eve by feasting at my paternal grandmother\'s house with that side of the family before paying a call to my mother\'s side. Originally, we all lived in the same county, and the two families were within walking distance, but ever since my maternal grandmother insisted on moving to the countryside, they\'ve been 8 kilometers apart.\nThinking back to yesterday, when I saw there was no soap in my grandmother\'s bathroom, I picked up several bottles while doing my shopping. On the way back, I passed a pharmacy, and entered to ask, "Do you have any masks left?" A clerk in a white gown, who wasn\'t wearing a mask, walked over from the cash registers and said, "There are three gauze masks left. Want them?"\nTaking one off the shelf to have a look, I saw they were 3 RMB each. Light red lettering on the thin plastic wrapper explained that the mask was made from 24 layers of gauze. However, I could clearly see the mesh inside it, and thought that if spittle flew out while talking, the mask definitely wouldn\'t block it. Seeing my hesitation, the clerk added, "The other masks sold out a few days ago. People were scrambling to buy them."\nIt seemed not everyone had been as hesitant as my relatives.\nWhile paying, I also bought a few bottles of alcohol spray. On my way home, I ran into my aunt as she was returning from the food market, and gave her one of the bottles. She gave the transparent bottle a curious look, but took it, and said she\'d use it.\n4\nMeanwhile, as Wuhan went into lockdown, the news which could be found daily on the Internet was enough to make the situation seem hopeless. Some predicted that the epidemic would be ten times bigger than SARS.\nMy strongest memory from the SARS epidemic was of my grandmother\'s living room, not larger than ten square meters, with a stove burning to make vinegar fumes (for warding off disease.) On the TV screen, Hu Jintao was making a speech. The stench of vinegar penetrated my nose; my grandmother told me to bear with it a bit longer.\nIn a WeChat group, my cousin began to share with me the "prohibitions": no paying visits, not even as part of New Year tradition; no gathering for feasts; no playing mahjong. But my mother and I "circulated" every day. We\'d ride in another family member\'s car to go visit my grandmother. "It\'s safe to ride with someone we know, isn\'t it? We won\'t meet anyone, anyway."\nWhen we saw people on the village streets, the majority were not wearing masks. How could it be otherwise? Masks were sold out everywhere.\nMy cousin said that they planned to hang banners with slogans in the towns and villages, to warn and admonish "circulators" like me. I sent her a picture I\'d seen on WeChat of a banner hung high above the entrance to a street in a northwestern city: "Paying New Year visits is harmful. Gathering to feast is deadly." I asked them to choose more elegant sentences if they hung banners themselves.\nAn image of a banner at the mouth of a road, which reads: "Do not pay visits, do not assemble in groups, do not gather for feasts. A healthy year is a fortunate year!" A sign below the banner reads: "Entry to the village is forbidden for non-locals."\n5\nNaturally, the customary visits and feasting for the second day of the New Year were canceled. On the fifth day of the New Year, there was a disturbance in the village; I heard my mother, aunt, and uncle discussing it after dinner. Through family ties, the person at the center of the scandal could be considered my maternal grandmother\'s nephew. We originally planned not to tell my grandmother — it was inauspicious for such a scandal to occur, and for someone to be detained by the police, in the first month of the New Year — but she found out anyway. I saw her sitting on the sofa, massaging her eyes with a chapped right hand.\nThe scandal had to do with the epidemic. The police wanted to commandeer an area of the town to serve as a checkpoint, where they could advise people coming home for the holiday to turn back. The nephew, who was drunk that day, stubbornly refused the police their request. In addition to preventing them from establishing their position, he also assaulted the officers. He was quickly carried off.\nMy cousin was on the vanguard. She had been on-call 24/7 since the day before New Year\'s Eve. Several key departments partitioned the area into zones, inside which the responsible department would take stock of residents\' health conditions, and their movements from place to place. Under the orders of the Propaganda, Education, and Administration Departments, citizens could not be complacent<a href="#fn-2">2</a>. One of the painstaking exhortations was "do not use WeChat to share information about the novel coronavirus which has not been officially confirmed."\n6\nThe suspected case was confirmed to be uninfected. My cousin breathed a sigh of relief.\nHowever, it was said that in a neighboring county, a monk had traveled back from Hubei Province, and invited several tables\' worth of guests to dine in the temple before the Lunar New Year. Among the guests were a mother and child from our county. It turned out that the monk was infected with the coronavirus, so all who had attended the meal that day were classified as "having had close contact."\nThe mother and child lived in an area at the center of the county seat\'s operations. If the virus had indeed spread, it was close at hand. This sent everyone into a state of fear.\nMy aunt half-believed in Buddhism, and on the second day of the New Year she would normally visit the temple to worship. Before the New Year arrived, she heard that the temple was temporarily closed due to the epidemic. This didn\'t get her down, though. This year she prayed through her cell phone, and lit incense "in the cloud."\nI discovered that, every day during the holiday break, after going to bed my mother spent at least two hours on the phone before falling asleep. In addition, when she woke each day, she would look at real-time data on the epidemic, then tell us the number of new cases, or the latest news from Zhejiang and Shanghai.\nI overheard the discussions of those around me. "That Hubei monk is evil for inflicting suffering on so many." "Those guests were foolish to share a meal during such extraordinary times." "At least so-and-so\'s family, who live in Hubei, didn\'t come back to celebrate this year. They would have been dangerous."\nSometimes those remarks made me uncomfortable, but I understood that those who said such things weren\'t really afraid of Hubei, nor were they discriminating against outsiders. They wanted to convey the fact that there were some things they couldn\'t understand. Why Wuhan? Why Hubei? Why had the infection appeared? Why was its scope so vast, to the point that now everything seemed out of control?\n7\nFor a decade, there had only been small changes in my hometown.\nIn the whole county there were only five supermarkets and one Xinhua bookstore. There was no high-speed rail station, no KFC, no McDonald\'s, no Starbucks. The largest change in recent years was that two privately-owned movie theaters opened for business. Because of the epidemic, the theaters had been closed indefinitely.\nEven as a child, I often thought that my hometown had gotten old all at once. It wasn\'t like Shanghai, where on every block, year after year, the storefronts changed like the cells of the city regenerating, and new landmarks and buildings were being constructed all over. When there were changes in this country, they were slower to reach my hometown than anywhere else.\nNevertheless, the state of alert in response to the epidemic had been reached rapidly, within days. Unlike the neglectful Red Cross, the machinery of government had shown within days that it controlled its force with utmost care, and was able to rapidly extend its tentacles to the poorest of regions.\nBy February 1st, all roads connecting the county seat to the countryside had been blocked by barriers or parked cars. Checkpoints for entering and exiting the city set up stations urging people to turn back. Every district had posted notices with calligraphy done on red paper, which read, "Those who are not residents of this district may not enter." On February 3rd, the roadblocks were strengthened, and more supervisory personnel were added. My mother and I went out, only to turn and head back home.\nAll eyes were on Wuhan, but it was not only Wuhan that was on lockdown. My rural hometown was, rapidly yet invisibly, carrying out measures more thorough than those of Shanghai.\nThe development of this state of affairs into its present condition irreversibly put the whole country in a state of anxiety, from the bottom up. It was a great force shaking the foundations of a delicate pagoda, damaging its roof and destroying its walls. But after a period of time, if the pagoda has not collapsed, it will pass into legend. Only on the verge of collapse did I see people finally begin to frantically crave reading the news, as earnestly as if they were reading a survival guide.\nIn this little country town, though there are still no confirmed cases of the coronavirus, I cannot rejoice. Each day is hemmed in by fear. Nobody can escape these times.\n<section class="footnotes">\n<ol>\n<li id="fn-1">第一家. Given the comment on social relations, I took this to mean "the foremost family," i.e. a family with significant standing in the village. Am I correct? Or is this to be taken literally, e.g. "the first family (beyond the barricade)"?<a href="#fnref-1" class="footnote">↩</a></li>\n<li id="fn-2">在对市民的宣传、教育、管理的指令下，也毫不松懈. I\'ll have to revisit this sentence.<a href="#fnref-2" class="footnote">↩</a></li>\n</ol>\n</section>\n'}], 'name': ['Chinese New Year for a Small Town in Jiangxi Province: Nobody Can Escape These Times'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 2, 27, 23, 39, 32, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 7, 29, 17, 54, 51, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['chinese', 'translation'], 'channel': ['pages'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/02/28/er', '/jiangxi-account'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<div class="muted">\nThese verses are parodies of the song "Hakuna Matata", from Disney\'s animated film <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lion_King">The Lion King</a>. I wrote the first two stanzas on 2018-01-14, and the other two on the publication date above.\nConsider this a companion piece to "<a href="/poems/huge-katana">Huge Katana</a>".\n</div>\n<div class="poem-container">\n<pre class="poem shadow">\nHakuna katana: what an elegant blade\nHakuna katana: only Nippon-made\nIt means bushido, for the rest of your days\nBisect knights with ease\nSpeak Japanese\nHakuna katana\n\nHakuna katana: cut down knights from your horse\nHakuna katana: follow honor\'s course\nIt means no mercy, and it means no remorse\nYour whole life will be\nBlade mastery\nHakuna katana\n\nHakuna katana: train in samurai schools\nHakuna katana: kill impudent fools\nIt isn\'t murder if you follow the rules\nWith a single slash\nTurn foes to hash\nHakuna katana\n\nHakuna katana: fill opponents with dread\nHakuna katana: slice off someone\'s head\nYou\'ll practice living like you\'re already dead\nOne day you may be\nLike Musashi\nHakuna katana\n</pre></div>\n'}], 'name': ['Hakuna Katana'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 2, 25, 16, 32, 38, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 2, 25, 22, 39, 29, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['poetry', 'parody'], 'channel': ['poems'], 'slug': ['hakuna-katana'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/02/26/bj', '/poems/hakuna-katana'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'I recently joined the unCoVer initiative [<a href="https://uncoverinitiative.home.blog/stories/">homepage</a> / <a href="https://www.facebook.com/2020.unCoVer/">Facebook</a> / <a href="https://www.instagram.com/uncover.2020/">Instagram</a>], a group of volunteers translating Chinese accounts of ordinary people\'s experiences while living in areas affected by the nCoV-19 epidemic. I\'ve done line editing, copy editing, and proofreading of translations, and may later be doing translations myself. If you\'re interested in a new perspective on this global event which is affecting so many lives, I urge you to read and subscribe to unCoVer\'s social media pages.\n'}], 'name': ['Volunteering with unCoVer'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 2, 25, 8, 45, 16, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 3, 14, 0, 18, 21, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['chinese', 'translation'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/02/25/tn', '/2020/02/25/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'published': [DateTime(2020, 2, 24, 11, 29, 29, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'name': ["What's Up With Gei?"], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 5, 14, 13, 31, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': 'Besides its verbal use, 给, with the reading gei3, is also (roughly speaking) "near-obligatory case marker for indirect object". But 给 has at least one other use, as the example 把什么东西给烧了 demonstrates. The function of 给 here seems similar to the usage of 弄 and 搞 with complements like 对 and 好, e.g. 弄好/搞好 "improve; put right".\nI think there may be other nuances related to animate nouns, too -- so what\'s up? I\'ll keep an eye out. (While translating "<a href="/tieniu-he-bingya">Iron Bull and Sick Duck</a>", I found some examples of this phenomenon to copy into here.)\n2020-05-14: Aha! <a href="https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/grammar/Expressing_passive_voice_with_%22gei%22">The AllSet Chinese Grammar wiki</a> contends that this is a passive construction. It all makes sense now. (Be warned that AllSet occasionally offers quite poor English translations, <a href="https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/grammar/Name-calling_with_%22zhege%22#Examples_2">like these</a>.)\n'}], 'category': ['chinese', 'zh', 'linguistics'], 'channel': ['ideas'], 'slug': ['whats-up-with-gei'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/02/24/zu', '/ideas/whats-up-with-gei'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'published': [DateTime(2020, 2, 23, 15, 14, 39, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'name': ['A Nonsense Dialogue'], 'content': [{'html': '<pre>\nFop:\n Your skills --\n Your accumulated advancements --\n Have insufficient increasement!\n\nDandy:\n Upwardified are my upgrades,\n My many masteries --\n That is, my skills!\n\nFop:\n Predictably, you are plusless,\n Listless, and lazy!\n You have! No! Skills!\n</pre>\n'}], 'channel': ['ideas'], 'slug': ['nonsense-dialogue'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/02/23/hq', '/ideas/nonsense-dialogue'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Musings on a New Chinese Name'], 'content': [{'html': '<div class=muted>\nTaking notes on characters suitable for creating a new Chinese name. The one I have doesn\'t sound very Chinese, having been bestowed somewhat haphazardly by otherwise-excellent teachers of introductory Chinese.\n</div>\nSurname list with well over 250 entries, including two-character ones: <a href="https://www.diyifanwen.com/tool/baijiaxing/">https://www.diyifanwen.com/tool/baijiaxing/</a>\nSurname candidate syllables: [zhang zheng zhong zhai zhan jing]. Candidate characters:\n<ul>\n<li>暲 zhang1 sunrise; bright</li>\n<li>荆 jing1</li>\n<li>峥 zheng1 lofty, noble; steep, high, perilous 峥嵘</li>\n<li>晸 zhen3,zheng3 appearance of the sun</li>\n<li>绛 jiang4 purple-red</li>\n</ul>\n"M"-initial candidate syllables: [ma man mang mai mu mi miao miu mao men meng mei]. Candidate characters:\n<ul>\n<li>狇 mu4 no meaning listed (NML)</li>\n<li>莯 mu4 NML</li>\n<li>睦 mu4 friendly amiable peaceful</li>\n<li>渺 miao3 endlessly long, boundless, vast</li>\n<li>淼 miao3 a vast expanse of water</li>\n<li>玅 miao4 mysterious, subtle, exquisite</li>\n</ul>\n"W"-initial candidate syllables: [wa wan wang wu wo wei weng]. Candidate characters:\n<ul>\n<li>日子旁，右边是伟的右边 wěi "the bright shining of the sun" (apparently not typeable on mac)</li>\n</ul>\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 2, 18, 11, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['chinese'], 'channel': ['ideas'], 'slug': ['new-chinese-name'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/02/18/hw', '/ideas/new-chinese-name'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<div class="poem-container">\n<pre class="poem shadow">\nI stepped outside to take the air, but stopped short when I heard\nA squeaking cry, as issues from a wounded, bleeding bird—\nOr rather, from no bird at all, but from an injured bat;\nThe wingéd mouse, the flying shrew, the aviating rat.\n\nThe sound came from the corner of the garden, past the gate.\nI went inside to fetch my coat—we\'ve had a chill of late.\nBeraimented, I crept along. The batlike wail grew near.\nOn garden path I crept, until the screeching filled my ear.\n\nAnd ... what found I? A broken bird? A bat, brought down to ground?\n\'Twas neither thing that drew me there by way of eerie sound.\nI took a knee to do some work. The squeaking went away.\nNo longer will that broken sprinkler keen like dying prey!\n</pre></div>\n2020-07-24: Only five months after writing this poem did I learn that shrews are in one order of animals, bats in another, and mice and rats in a third. I love line 4, but if I can change it to match biology, I will. In the meantime, please don\'t base any scientific research on this poem.\n'}], 'name': ['Strange Squeaking'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 2, 9, 19, 57, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 7, 24, 17, 53, 7, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['poetry'], 'channel': ['poems'], 'slug': ['strange-squeaking'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/02/10/ws', '/poems/strange-squeaking'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': "An unexpected bonus from Hack Day: with individual poems integrated into this feed, I've passed 100 posts on this blog! Woo!\n"}], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 2, 9, 15, 44, 22, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/02/09/ju', '/2020/02/09/2'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'Today is Day 2 of 2 for IndieWebCamp Online 2020, which means today is Hack Day! My goal for the day is to reconstruct my <a href="/poems/index">poems page</a>.\n[As of 15:32:57, I\'m all done!]\nMy first task today is to solve the page-redirect woes that I\'ve been blogging about since <a href="/notes/2020/02/04/1">a few days ago</a>. Diligent implementation of the solutions given in S3\'s documentation got me nowhere, so I\'ll use a little JavaScript to redirect from the old poems URL to the new one.\n[2020-02-09T09:38:25-0800: first task complete!]\nWith the redirect in place, I can proceed to the larger of today\'s tasks: breaking out each poem onto its own page. This will accomplish two goals:\n<ol>\n<li>Allows me to integrate each poem as an individual post on my <a href="/blog">blog</a></li>\n<li>Allows me to turn the poems index into a <a href="https://indieweb.org/collection">collection</a></li>\n</ol>\nThe steps for this second task are:\n<ol>\n<li>Include the new poems directory into my website build script [done]</li>\n<li>Cut each poem, or section of poems, out into its own page [done, including some upgrades to my CSS and more-semantic HTML]</li>\n<li>Add code to my build script to construct the poems index by fetching the body for each poem. The display order on the index is not entirely chronological, so I can\'t just concatenate all the pages\' bodies together before rendering the index. [done]</li>\n</ol>\nCoincidentally, another IndieWeb practitioner, <a href="https://jgregorymcverry.com">Greg McVerry</a>, is building his own poetry page today.\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 2, 9, 9, 12, 3, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 2, 9, 20, 19, 44, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['indieweb', 'upgrade', 'computing'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/02/09/r8', '/2020/02/09/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'Thanks for <a class="u-in-reply-to" href="https://quickthoughts.jgregorymcverry.com/2020/02/08/maxwell-joselynthen-demos-indieweb">the shout-out</a>, Greg!\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 2, 8, 14, 37, 54, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/02/08/rd', '/2020/02/08/2'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'Despite getting up an hour too early, <data class="p-rsvp" value="yes">I am excited for <a class="u-in-reply-to" href="https://events.indieweb.org/2020/02/indiewebcamp-online-gUpSVUxbUKhv">IndieWebCamp Online 2020</a>! I\'m <a href="https://indieweb.org/2020/Online/collections">facilitating a session</a> on <a href="https://indieweb.org/collection">collections</a>, an IndieWeb term for an explicit grouping of posts which is conceptually distinct from a typical chronological feed.\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 2, 8, 7, 24, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 2, 8, 15, 55, 6, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['indieweb'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/02/08/aj', '/2020/02/08/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'By the powers vested in me, this post indicates that I am following <a href="https://mblaney.xyz/">Malcolm Blaney</a>\'s <a class="u-follow-of" href="https://unicyclic.com/indieweb/">Indieweb Planet</a>, so that the Planet follows me back. Gazounds!\n[Edit: it appears that the Planet has reached its subscription limit. Curses!]\n[Edit, 2020-02-06T16:53:56-0800: Discussion with Malcolm on IndieWeb chat shows that I was mistaken about the subscription limit. His Planet has successfully subscribed to this website. Baboosh! Mission Accomplished! And it even exposed a bug on my site: I\'d somehow deleted the <code>rel="feed"</code> link in my HTML <code><head></code> tags, which is how subscribers to this website know to retrieve posts <a href="/blog">from the blog</a>.]\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 2, 5, 19, 29, 5, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 3, 20, 10, 18, 58, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['indieweb'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/02/06/k3', '/2020/02/05/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'Edit, 2020-02-09T13:52:23-0800: I\'ve finally solved this problem by replacing <code>poems</code> with a stub page that redirects to <code>poems/index</code>, using JavaScript to preserve the URL fragment. Mission accomplished--no thanks to S3!\nEdit, 2020-02-07T20:15:29: I\'ve tried using the other form of S3 redirect: uploading a zero-byte file called <code>poems</code> and adding a redirect from that file to the new <code>/poems/index</code> location. We\'ll see if that works.\nEdit, 2020-02-07T10:48:32: Dammit, I don\'t know what I\'m doing. Can anyone help?\nRedirecting from the no-longer-existent <code>poems</code> file to the new <code>poems/</code> in the "Static Website Hosting - Redirection Rules" section of the S3 Console is not working at all: I get the AWS-default 403 (Access Denied) return code (which AFAIK is masking an underlying 404 Not Found, given that <code>poems</code> has been deleted from the bucket.) I\'m already stuck, and it\'s only step one of the plan below! Here are the routing rules I\'m using.\n[2020-05-03: The picture below may be broken. It\'s a known issue as I work to provide multiple versions of each image for better display on small screens.]\n<img srcset="/static/256/2020-02-07-routing-rules.png 256w, /static/480/2020-02-07-routing-rules.png 480w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 256px, 480px" src="/static/480/2020-02-07-routing-rules.png" alt="Image of the AWS routing rules that aren\'t working for me.">\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAt this time <code>poems/</code> itself also returns 403 (instead of showing an empty directory, which is what I thought would happen.) My next step was to deal with that by setting S3 to serve <code>poems/index</code> whenever <code>poems/</code> is requested, but because S3 only lets me target object prefixes for redirects, not the whole objects, I think that might have the unintended side effect of catching any request for e.g. <code>poems/night-walk</code>, and redirecting it to <code>poems/indexnight-walk</code> (which would be ... unhelpful.)\nOriginal post:\nI\'m planning an upgrade to my site\'s layout.\nI\'d like to give each of my <a href="https://maxwelljoslyn.com/poems">poems</a> its own individual page, so that those pages can be integrated into the blog feed. The natural place for the new pages is in a directory called "poems", so that, for example, the poem "Night Walk" would be accessible at "<a href="https://maxwelljoslyn.com/poems/night-walk">https://maxwelljoslyn.com/poems/night-walk</a>".\nI also want to keep the "poems" page as it currently exists (and allow existing links which I\'ve given out, such as "<a href="https://maxwelljoslyn.com/poems#night-walk">https://maxwelljoslyn.com/poems#night-walk</a>", to keep functioning.) However, this would not be compatible with having a "poems" directory. I don\'t use URL extensions on my HTML pages, so my website host, AWS S3, won\'t let me upload a folder called "poems", because it would conflict with the page with the same name.\nHow can I satisfy both of the following constraints at once?\n<ol>\n<li>A visitor can browse "<a href="https://maxwelljoslyn.com/poems">https://maxwelljoslyn.com/poems</a>" to get the same page they see today: a listing of all poems in a hand-chosen order.</li>\n<li>A visitor can browse "<a href="https://maxwelljoslyn.com/poems#night-walk">https://maxwelljoslyn.com/poems#night-walk</a>" to either:<ul>\n<li>a. get the listing page, with "Night Walk" scrolled into view, as today, or, less desirably,</li>\n<li>b. be redirected to the new "<a href="https://maxwelljoslyn.com/poems/night-walk">https://maxwelljoslyn.com/poems/night-walk</a>".</li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n</ol>\nRight now, my plan is to have a "poems" directory, make available at "/poems/index" the page previously available at "/poems", and redirect requests from "/poems" to "/poems/index". This plan keeps all the links to "/poems" that I\'ve handed out alive and well, thus satisfying constraint (1). As for constraint (2), the question is: if I redirect from "/poems" to "/poems/index", will the URL fragment (the part that comes after "#") be preserved after redirecting? The <a href="https://www.ietf.org/">Internet Engineering Task Force</a> has my back:\n<blockquote class="shadow">\n[...] redirection inherits the original reference\'s fragment, if any [...] a GET request generated for the URI reference "http://www.example.org/index.html#larry" might result in a 301 (Moved Permanently) response containing the header field:\n<pre><code>Location: http://www.example.net/index.html\n\n</code></pre>\nwhich suggests that the user agent redirect to "<a href="http://www.example.net/index.html#larry">http://www.example.net/index.html#larry</a>", preserving the original fragment identifier.\n<cite><a href="https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7231#section-7.1.2">RFC 7231, Section 7.1.2</a></cite>\n</blockquote>\nLooks like I can proceed, full steam ahead! <pre>:^)</pre>\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 2, 4, 19, 14, 52, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 2, 9, 13, 53, 59, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['upgrade', 'indieweb', 'computing'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/02/05/36', '/2020/02/04/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Potential Website Improvements'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 2, 4, 17, 36, 44, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 12, 23, 22, 18, 52, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': 'Website "itches" I want to scratch.\n<ul>\n<li>2021-06-07T12:44:14-0700 CSS optimization <a href="https://reading.supply/@jim/a-set-of-tactics-to-ensure-fast-css-object-model-creation-iCoP4G">https://reading.supply/@jim/a-set-of-tactics-to-ensure-fast-css-object-model-creation-iCoP4G</a></li>\n<li>2020-12-23T22:18:52-0800 follow gwern\'s example <q>Book reviews are sorted by star, and sorted by length of review within each star level, under the assumption that longer reviews are of more interest to readers.</q></li>\n<li>2020-12-21T18:40:36-0800 design and CSS to study, steal <a href="https://ethanmarcotte.com/about/#start">https://ethanmarcotte.com/about/#start</a> <a href="https://manazir.org/newsletter">https://manazir.org/newsletter</a></li>\n<li>2020-12-21T12:16:49-0800 use granary.io to provide an RSS feed, quick and easy</li>\n<li>2020-12-02T22:34:24-0800 <a href="https://thelounge.chat/docs/usage">https://thelounge.chat/docs/usage</a></li>\n<li>2020-10-25T23:41:48-0700: <a href="https://instant.page/">https://instant.page/</a></li>\n<li>2020-10-01T13:17:45-0700 SUPREMELY UNIMPORTANT Add XML friend network to at least one link, for funsies <a href="https://gmpg.org/xfn/join">https://gmpg.org/xfn/join</a></li>\n<li>2020-09-24T17:20:46-0700 glean from style, cover catalog at <a href="https://deeden.co.uk/reading/2008/">https://deeden.co.uk/reading/2008/</a></li>\n<li>2020-09-21T15:18:51-0700 document submission/creation times for Sith Lord Challenge entries</li>\n<li>2020-09-21T13:03:00-0700 Turn "full" (vs "truncated") designation on <a href="/favorite-poems">Favorite Poems</a> into structured data, for use in template that positions small-font full/truncated over the top-right of a blockquote :^O oh yeah oh yeah</li>\n<li>2020-09-20T20:14:53-0700 Glean tips on design, color scheme, and layout from <a href="https://rusingh.com/work/">Ru Singh\'s blog</a>.</li>\n<li>2020-09-18T16:24:11-0700 - <a href="https://mattspitz.me/2013/11/20/serving-authenticated-media-with-nginx.html">authenticate with a web app while serving media from a static file server</a></li>\n<li>find somewhere to use <a href="https://bennettfeely.com/gradients/">Bennett Feely\'s CSS gradients</a></li>\n<li>make my Arduino blink when the site gets an HTTP request, a la <a href="http://lelandbatey.com/posts/2016/12/Making-lights-blink-for-each-HTTP-request/">this project</a></li>\n<li>(2020-09-05T13:47:48-0700) Make names of individual <a href="/sithlordchallenge">SLC</a> Lords into h3s with a class/style that makes them stand out</li>\n<li>Fix the issue of P tags adding additional margin inside LI tags (example: <a href="/links">the Links entry</a> for "Chinese Text Project") </li>\n<li>Try ripping off some mobile design from <a href="http://plasticbag.org/">Plastic Bag</a></li>\n<li>Borrow the menu which changes at small screen sizes, from <a href="http://umvirate.com/post/">Umvirate</a></li>\n<li>Add template: "share this post" with permalink URL (a la Tantek, Derek Sivers)</li>\n<li>Change "WIP" class to be regular text against a red-shaded callout, since red text may be illegible for many against my background color</li>\n<li>DON\'T DO THIS: This is a solved problem; the right solution is not to waste time solving it myself, but to finally migrate to a proper CMS or application server, which will handle this and a hundred other fiddly details for me. [for webpages generated from other pages\' data, with no corresponding source document: rewrite build script to only regenerate these if the underlying data has changed.] </li>\n<li>experiment with making the size of blog links relative to each entry\'s wordcount. Some cutoffs to try: 25 or fewer words; 26-100 words; 101-250 words; 251-500 words; 501-1000 words; 1001-2500 words; 2501-5000 words, 5000-10000 words; 10001 or more words. [Create a distribution of my post lengths to find the 5 20%-wide clumps.]</li>\n<li>add <code>rel=canonical</code> links to all pages. make sure those are HTTPS links, not HTTP ones. follow the guide stored in docs folder.</li>\n<li>OUTDATED <s>build website on a build server; be able to trigger rebuilds by posting to a certain endpoint (and/or with a long-running process watching source files and starting a rebuild when sources change)</s></li>\n<li>add <code>p-summary</code> class to appropriate paragraphs, typically some or all of the intro section</li>\n<li>(2020-03-24) Use the resources at these links to implement responsive, lazy-loading images <a href="https://responsivebreakpoints.com/">https://responsivebreakpoints.com/</a> <a href="https://css-tricks.com/tips-for-rolling-your-own-lazy-loading/">https://css-tricks.com/tips-for-rolling-your-own-lazy-loading/</a></li>\n<li>(2020-03-22) I finally found a solution for always centering poems: they need to be wrapped in <code><div class="center"></code>.<a href="#fn-1">1</a> However, if I do this, when the article bodies are copied to the generated <a href="/poems/index">Poems index</a>, they remain centered, which makes them look weirdly out of line with that page\'s headings and timestamps. I want to keep poems left-aligned on the index while centering them on their own pages. One solution would be for the centering <code>div</code> to be applied in a template only used for individual-poem pages, but Hakyll makes that more work than it should be. I think I\'ll suffer through off-center individual poems, and deal with this once my rendering/templating is saner.</li>\n<li>turn Glossary/Books word lists into HTML definition lists, and experiment with CSS</li>\n<li>once Glossary itself is published, turn Books word lists into just words, linked to full in the Glossary</li>\n<li>standardize on an HTML structure (and corresponding CSS) for representing Chinese lexemes in running text (e.g. 朋友 peng2you3 "friend")</li>\n<li>in <code>posts.py</code>, log a warning if <code>bodytext.line</code> contains "(www". That string is almost certainly the beginning of the URL in a Markdown link; such a link should have the <code>http://</code> protocol at its front, as without the protocol Hakyll will render that link relative to maxwelljoslyn.com.</li>\n<li>add a "shop" where you can purchase dubious services with the world\'s strongest currency, Hills of Beans</li>\n<li>add a calendar. v1: include holidays I care about, like Old Year\'s Eve.</li>\n<li>automatically add height and width annotations to each image, allowing browser to speed up HTML rendering by laying out the page before images are fully downloaded.<ul>\n<li>service/product/tool: Emfasten by thume.ca?</li>\n<li>search posts for <code>img</code> tags matching a regex for "doesn\'t have height and width attributes". (something like "move backward through the file, and if you find </img> then record the region from that point until you find <img>" .... luckily images can\'t be nested)</li>\n<li>build a map :: Post -> [Img]</li>\n<li>use ImageMagick (or just stat?) to nab image size</li>\n<li>write the image tag back to its original location</li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n<li>write post-upload script to do WebMentions and other stuff with on-site URLs<ul>\n<li>use Selectomax (sp?), the faster-than-beautiful-soup Python HTML library, to extract URLS, anchor tags, links</li>\n<li>feed all of them to something like <a href="http://github.com/Ryuno-Ki/webmention-tools">webmention-tools</a> for discovery and sending</li>\n<li>HTTP GET all of them to see they\'re all there (want to never again have the problem I had with broken Ryan Quest images)</li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n<li>make Books into a collection following the Poems model</li>\n<li>OUTDATED write Emacs function/command to insert link with my choice of mf2 classes</li>\n<li>DONE 2020-10-01T00:02:26-0700 <s>set Micropub server\'s default post creation time to be in Pacific</s> </li>\n<li>DONE is my word-count program accidentally double-counting the texts of my poems, by including both <code>/poems/index</code> and each individual poem page? Answer: no.</li>\n<li>DONE create template fragment tag that inserts my email with a <code>mailto</code> link (with optional parameter for <code>mailto</code> "?subject" attribute)</li>\n<li>DONE (with all the ones that matter) redirect the handful of permalink URLs I messed up when I switched from /blog/yyyy/mm/dd/X to /notes/yyyy/mm/dd/X (see email). Effect: just tidying up. April 2020: redirected the old note URL sent to Chris Aldrich about his formatting error, and the blog post link I sent to Tyler Sullivan.</li>\n<li>DONE 2020-04-07 improve differentation of H2 and H3 tags</li>\n<li>DONE reverse <a href="/books">my Books page</a> so that the newest entries are at the top</li>\n<li>ALL DONE (<a href="https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/notes/2020/02/09/1">see here</a>) make Poems into an indie "collection"<ul>\n<li>DONE <a href="https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/notes/2020/02/04/1">write up potential redirect strategies</a></li>\n<li>DONE implement necessary redirects</li>\n<li>DONE cut poems up into individual pages</li>\n<li>DONE get new individual-poem posts slurped up into the blogfeed</li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n<li>(DONE \'(time 2019 03 ??)) add comment support for non-IndieWeb people by integrating Comment Parade (possibly with Quill as the authoring interface), a la <a href="https://quill.p3k.io/?dontask=1&me=https%3A%2F%2Fcommentpara.de%2F&reply=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.kickscondor.com%2Finternational-sad-hits">this example from Kicks Condor</a></li>\n</ul>\n<section class="footnotes">\n<ol>\n<li id="fn-1">What I don\'t yet understand is why some poems are centered without having to do anything else, e.g. "<a href="/poems/esther">Esther</a>" is centered as I would expect. Whether centering does what it "ought" to do (pshaw!) seems to depend on whether an HTML tag comes before the <code><pre class="poem"></code> element.<a href="#fnref-1" class="footnote">↩</a></li>\n</ol>\n</section>\n'}], 'channel': ['ideas'], 'slug': ['website-improvements'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/02/05/c6', '/ideas/website-improvements'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'My first hobbyist programming project was to enhance my D&D game with a system for determining the prices of in-game items. To reach this goal, I built up a pipeline of tools which <a href="http://www.blog.21stcenturydnd.com/2016/07/my-world-part-1.html">generated terrain with elevation, moisture, temperature, and climate</a>; used pathfinding to construct a road network; rendered the world map as a vector-graphics file; and specified "recipes," <a href="http://www.blog.21stcenturydnd.com/2017/10/recipe-faering-hull.html">like this one</a>, delineating the raw materials and labor needed to construct each purchasable trade good<a href="#fn-1">1</a>.\nPouring thousands of hours into a sprawling project over two years solidified my love of programming, expanded my brain, and got me seriously writing on the Web for the second time<a href="#fn-2">2</a>. However, as the work of a beginning developer, "the economy project" is sloppy.\nToday, I embarked on the grand adventure of converting this project into a proper (web) application. It\'s hard to explain all the work which will be required, but I can see the end result in mind. Here are some of the changes I\'ll make:\n<ul>\n<li>The original project could only be run on my computer. The new version will be accessible on the Web.</li>\n<li>The original project was only able to output its final product (the trade-goods pricing tables). The new one will provide more of the game-world information it uses internally, including that pertaining to towns, roads, and terrain.</li>\n<li>The original project required me to change a parameter in the source code to output prices at a different city. The new one will allow one to simply enter a different town name in a dropdown list, and may also permit comparison between prices at multiple cities<a href="#fn-3">3</a>.</li>\n<li>The original project didn\'t cache the prices of intermediate goods which fed into many recipes\' final price. The new one will use caching wherever possible.</li>\n<li>The original project ran every layer of code (terrain, pathfinding, import/export, pricing, recipe evaluation) each time the main program was executed. The new one will use a database to reuse each player\'s results, only re-running a given layer when its source code has changed.</li>\n</ul>\n<section class="footnotes">\n<ol>\n<li id="fn-1">More details can be found on my old blog, <a href="http://www.blog.21stcenturydnd.com">21st Century D&D</a>. One day I\'ll port those blog entries and <a href="http://www.21stcenturydnd.com/">the game rules</a> over here, for archival purposes, for rewriting into better game material, and so I can finally redirect that domain.<a href="#fnref-1" class="footnote">↩</a></li>\n<li id="fn-2">The first time was a blog I wrote while studying abroad. The third and final time is this website.<a href="#fnref-2" class="footnote">↩</a></li>\n<li id="fn-3">As the app evolved toward a full-fledged game platform, with players logging in to make characters, it could be arranged so that only characters with sufficient mercantile knowledge would be able to view this screen.<a href="#fnref-3" class="footnote">↩</a></li>\n</ol>\n</section>\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 2, 3, 21, 54, 58, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['dnd', 'python', 'computing'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/02/04/gn', '/2020/02/03/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<div class="muted">\nA parody of the song <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooked_on_a_Feeling">"Hooked on a Feeling"</a>, originally performed by B.J. Thomas and further popularized by Blue Swede.\n</div>\n<div class="poem-container">\n<pre class="poem shadow">\nPour a cuppa\nPour a, pour a, pour a cuppa\nPour a, pour a, pour a cuppa\nPour a, pour a, pour a cuppa\n\nOne sip of Darjeeling\nSparks my fantasy\nI don\'t bother trying out\nAny other tea\n\nFinished steeping\nBoard the flavor train\nWest Bengali\nWorldwide acclaim\n\nI ... I\'m hooked on Darjeeling\nThat tea-leafy feeling\nAnother cup for me\n\nHooked on Darjeeling\nThose leaves got me reeling\nAnother cup for me\n\nLittle insects puncture\nVeins of growing leaves\nCausing plants to send out\nMuscatel terpenes\n\nCome on, boiling water\nBe a friend to me\nBring me piquant secrets\nFrom those ancient trees\n\nGrapelike flavor\nPuts me on my knees\nI\'m in heaven\nFilled with ecstasy\n\nI ... I\'m hooked on Darjeeling\nThat tea-leafy feeling\nNo other drink for me\n\nHooked on Darjeeling\nThose leaves got me reeling\nNo other drink for me\n</pre></div>\n'}], 'name': ['Hooked on Darjeeling'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 1, 31, 23, 22, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['poetry', 'parody'], 'channel': ['poems'], 'slug': ['hooked-on-darjeeling'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/02/01/pt', '/poems/hooked-on-darjeeling'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<div class="poem-container">\n<pre class="poem shadow">\nI rambled through a grid of streets which I thought I knew cold\nThe street lamps turned to will-o-wisps, alluring balls of gold\nI lost my bearings wandering—I got all turned around\nBut I\'m OK. I found my way, and now I\'m homeward bound.\n\nI got disoriented on the roads I walked of old\nI took some time to cogitate—I knew I wouldn\'t fold\nThe path that I was seeking is no longer sought, but found\nI\'m A-OK. I found my way, and now I\'m homeward bound.\n\nSurveying my surroundings gave my instincts purchase-hold\nRearmed with subtle pointers, I grew confidently bold\nOld landmarks shuffled out to say, "You\'re on familiar ground"\nI\'m A-OK. I found my way, and now I\'m homeward bound.\n</pre></div>\n'}], 'name': ['Night Walk'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 1, 30, 23, 38, 12, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 3, 31, 19, 2, 34, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['poetry'], 'channel': ['poems'], 'slug': ['night-walk'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/01/31/hv', '/poems/night-walk'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'Recent days have brought several new poem uploads, including "<a href="/poems/thats-podracing">That\'s Podracing</a>", "<a href="/poems/esther">Esther</a>", "<a href="/poems/drongo-explained">Drongo Explained</a>", and "<a href="/poems/night-walk">Night Walk</a>".\nThe next upgrade I have planned for this site will incorporate poems into the blog, so I don\'t have to make announcements like this one -- but the Poems page, as a collection, will remain a nonlinear rumpus. This is in keeping with the idea of "multiple views onto material" which I expressed <a href="/notes/2020/01/17/1">here</a>.\n[2020-02-09: the aforementioned upgrade has been made. Poems now get their own pages, and are incorporated into the blogfeed.]\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 1, 30, 0, 49, 51, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 2, 9, 20, 43, 54, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['poetry'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/01/30/ty', '/2020/01/30/2'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'D\'aww! Look what <a href="https://kickscondor.com">Kicks Condor</a> had to say about my website!\n<blockquote class="shadow">Maxwell Joslyn\nJust the kind of personal blog that I really like the best - littered with projects and writings, thoughts stuffed everywhere. This is sort of like what [Sphygmus](https://sphygm.us/)’ or [Chameleon](https://wiki.waifu.haus)’s wikis would look like outside of TiddlyWiki.\n<cite><a href="https://www.kickscondor.com/hrefhunt/9/" class="u-in-reply-to">(Href Hunt, January 2020)<a href="#fn-1">1</a></a></cite>\n</blockquote>\nLet it be known to all comers that Kicks Condor is one hell of a drongo, whose website has a supremely trippy, glitched-out aesthetic, and whose skill in smelling out the cool corners of the Web is second to none.\n<section class="footnotes">\n<ol>\n<li id="fn-1">I linkified the mentions of the two cool internauts.<a href="#fnref-1" class="footnote">↩</a></li>\n</ol>\n</section>\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 1, 30, 0, 2, 59, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 1, 30, 0, 23, 12, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/01/30/3q', '/2020/01/30/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<div class="muted">\nWhile corresponding with <a href="https://kickscondor.com">Kicks Condor</a>, I realized I didn\'t have a snappy, instantly-recognizable definition for a drongo. To fill that need, I began this poem in December 2019, edited and extended it over the next couple months, and pronounced it finished on 2020-01-29, around 23:33.\n</div>\n<div class="poem-container">\n<pre class="poem shadow">\nA drongo is a hooligan,\nA whirlywind, a fool,\nA tonguer of adventure\'s taste,\nA seeker of the cool.\n\nWith merry eyes he seeks a prize—\nHe\'s not so sure it\'s real—\nBy keeping ever on the move\nHe turns all woe to weal.\n\nThe drongo\'s madman tendencies\nAre rarely well-controlled.\nTo pyrite one may see him cling,\nConvinced it\'s good as gold.\n\nFirst going hard, then going fast,\nThen going \'round again,\nIs perfect drongo conduct, which\nThe drongo finds urbane.\n\nTo drongo is to wander through\nA landscape from the past,\nWith no plan but to savor it—\nThen toast it, at the last.\n\nA drongo has nowhere to be\nBefore his chosen hour.\nThough time may threaten him with snares,\nHe\'s far beyond its pow\'r.\n\nIf drongos call out, "Nine o\'clock!"\nThey never mean the time:\nThey\'re pointing out a pretty girl\nWho\'s standing at your nine.\n\nShould you insist that\'s boorish — fine!\nRenounce it, if you choose.\nA drongo\'s way is his alone,\nAnd his alone to lose.\n\nYou can become a drongo — if\nIt\'s true you have no lack\nOf love for wild abandon, and\nDistaste for looking back.\n\nFor starters, ramble-shamble romp\nTo anywhere you please.\nYou\'ll know the other drongos when\nThey join you in your ease.\n</pre></div>\n\n'}], 'name': ['Drongo Explained'], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 1, 29, 23, 33, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 3, 23, 16, 12, 24, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['poetry', 'drongo'], 'channel': ['poems'], 'slug': ['drongo-explained'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/01/30/hp', '/poems/drongo-explained'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'Reading today:\n<ul>\n<li>Naval Gazing\'s series on Anti-Submarine Warfare, <a href="https://www.navalgazing.net/Anti-Submarine-Warfare-Part-1">Part 1</a> and <a href="https://www.navalgazing.net/Anti-Submarine-Warfare-Part-2">Part 2</a></li>\n<li>Wikipedia: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_machine#Design">the Enigma machine</a></li>\n<li>Atomic Rockets: <a href="http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewarintro.php">Introduction to Space Warfare</a>.</li>\n</ul>\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 1, 28, 9, 58, 53, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['media'], 'channel': ['bookmarks'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/01/28/hp', '/2020/01/28/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<div class="muted">\nA Star Wars parody of the classic Dean Martin song <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That%27s_Amore">"That\'s Amore"</a>.\n</div>\n<div class="poem-container">\n<pre class="poem shadow">\nWhen you pull a tight spin\nWithout losing your grin—\nThat\'s podracing\n\nWhen the chance cubes are rolled\nAnd you have to be bold—\nThat\'s podracing\n\nRacers bring\n(Bring a ling a ling, bring a ling a ling)\nPods together in battle\nWatto squirms\n(Squirmy lurmy lurm, squirmy lurmy lurm)\nOnly Shmi left as chattel\n\nWhen you feel in command\nSoaring over the sand—\nThat\'s podracing\n\nWhen a man screams "poodoo!"\nAs he cedes ground to you—\nThat\'s podracing\n\nWhen foes swear in Huttese\nAs you place first with ease—\nThat\'s podracing\n\nWhen announcers go wild:\n"Anakin, the slave child!"—\nThat\'s podracing\n\nRacers bring\n(Bring a ling a ling, bring a ling a ling)\nPods together in battle\nWatto squirms\n(Squirmy lurmy lurm, squirmy lurmy lurm)\nOnly Shmi left as chattel\n</pre></div>\n\n'}], 'name': ["That's Podracing"], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 1, 27, 22, 29, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['poetry', 'parody', 'starwars'], 'channel': ['poems'], 'slug': ['thats-podracing'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/01/28/k9', '/poems/thats-podracing'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'Hey, <a href="http://monkinetic.blog/">Steve Ivy</a>. The links on <a href="http://monkinetic.blog/archive">your archive page</a> appear to be broken. Instead of showing the user your posts from the month in question, they instead show a single bullet point with no content.\n[2020-01-28: Huzzah to Steve -- he\'s fixed the problem.]\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 1, 24, 16, 38, 47, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 1, 28, 10, 15, 44, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/01/25/bj', '/2020/01/24/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'I\'ve finally uploaded the 3rd version of <a href="/ryanquest">Ryan Quest</a>, which removes the only game-breaking bug that snuck into the final release (almost a year ago now. Wow!) I\'ve also updated some body text and captions on that page.\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 1, 17, 14, 25, 55, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/01/17/89', '/2020/01/17/2'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'tag': ['upgrade'], 'content': [{'html': 'I\'ve added <a href="/all-tags">an "All Tags" page</a>, which lets you browse this site by its categorization tags. I like providing multiple views onto the website\'s materials because each view emphasizes different relations among those materials. To this end, the <a href="/index">homepage</a> shows some -- but not all -- articles, and doesn\'t mention notes; "All Tags" and the individual tag pages form per-topic indexes which cover most of what I\'ve published here; and the <a href="/blog">blog/feed</a> is a familiar chronological view of all material.\nMy thinking about those topics was stimulated by a recent weekend rewrite and cleanup of the site\'s primary build script. The overhaul made it much easier to experiment with collections of material where membership can be based on any of the publishing metadata I keep for each page.\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2020, 1, 17, 14, 20, 49, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2020/01/17/b7', '/2020/01/17/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<div class="poem-container">\n<pre class="poem shadow">\nI sit down to produce a jot of verse—\nI stand up, and I pace around the room.\nWhat might have been a banger will get worse\nThe more I pace. To hesitate spells doom.\n\nFor any work which takes a focused mind—\nAnd poetry is surely in that group—\nIdeas must flow all at once, I find,\nOr else I\'ll lose myself: caught in a loop\n\nOf thinking, and rethinking, and—oh, fuck!\nI\'ve dropped the thread entirely by now.\nThat\'s what I get for pacing: a big suck;\nThe glimmer of a topic, but no "pow!"\n\nOne saving grace: there is no Poem Boss.\nWhen I screw up, it\'s no-one else\'s loss.\n</pre></div>\n'}], 'name': ['Missing the Moment'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 12, 27, 22, 17, 4, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['poetry'], 'channel': ['poems'], 'slug': ['missing-the-moment'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/12/28/p2', '/poems/missing-the-moment'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<a href="/notes/2019/09/17/1">A few months ago</a>, my Kinesis Advantage2 keyboard stopped working properly. I was able to locate a backup keyboard shortly afterward, but the backup is missing a few keys, so I still wanted to repair my daily driver and return it to use.\nI exchanged a series of emails with a Technical Specialist at Kinesis, Mr. Tyler Sullivan, in which we discussed the keyboard\'s behavior and the scope of the problem. He suggested that the main cable, which connects the keyboard over USB, might be shorting out. He sent me a replacement cable to install.\nI wasn\'t able to get around to this as fast as I wanted, but today was the day. I flipped the keyboard onto its face, unscrewed the back plate, and put the plate aside to expose the circuit board.\n[Perhaps this post should have photos, but the process had so few steps that I didn\'t feel it was worth documenting visually.]\nI noticed dust and dirt buildup on the inside of the case, so my first order of business was to wipe away the debris with a microfiber cloth. After the housekeeping was over, I unplugged the main cable from the circuit board, and undid the "E clip" holding the cable inside the case.\nWith the old cable out of the way, I was free to thread the new cable through the hole in the case. This took a few tries, because I wasn\'t sure whether feeding it from the outside to the inside, or vice versa, would properly position the cable for securement with the E clip. I think it can be done either way, as long as the biggest of the series of rubber circles on the cable is flush against the outside of the case (which will leave the trench for the E clip just inside the case.)\nRe-attach the E clip, test the keyboard to see if it\'s working -- yes, it is! -- and replace the back plate with its screws. Done!\nNow, this tale might not be over: the keyboard was failing intermittently, and it might start going haywire again later in the day. For now, however, it is operating smoothly.\nI want to thank Mr. Sullivan for all his help since September. He did a great job explaining what might be going wrong, and walking me through possible quick fixes before sending me the new cable.\n[2020-01-02: As I had feared, the keyboard began to malfunction again on the day after I performed this repair. I\'ll be receiving a replacement motherboard in the mail soon. More hardware jiggery-pokery awaits!]\n'}], 'name': ['Broken Kinesis, Part 2'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 12, 22, 13, 27, 23, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 1, 2, 22, 9, 36, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'channel': ['articles'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/12/22/3t', '/2019/12/22/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['The Gerblecarp'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 12, 20, 12, 21, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'artist': ['Ian'], 'photo': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/the-gerblecarp.png'], 'photo-small': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/480/the-gerblecarp.png'], 'category': ['slc'], 'channel': ['sithlords'], 'slug': ['the-gerblecarp'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/12/20/mw', '/sithlordchallenge/the-gerblecarp'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<div class="muted">\nPart of the 2019 Weeklong Wine Country Poetry Fight. Written while hiking in Austin Hills State Recreation Area, in response to a challenge from Chris Stasse: "in five minutes, write a poem on what you see before you."\n</div>\n<div class="poem-container">\n<pre class="poem shadow">\nThe north wind rises\nDescends onto the ridge\nMeets both trees\nAnd swirls away\n</pre></div>\nAfter I read this aloud, Chris said it reminded him of descriptions of nature from the poet Wang Wei [王维].\n'}], 'name': ['Stanza Written Above a Ridge'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 12, 14, 13, 30, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['poetry'], 'channel': ['poems'], 'slug': ['ridge'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/12/14/t2', '/poems/ridge'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': "Yesterday I got on a plane from Santa Ana to Sonoma. I was supposed to meet my friend Chris Stasse at that airport, but two things went awry:\n<ol>\n<li>Chris misunderstood me, and went to SFO airport instead of Sonoma.</li>\n<li>After two turbulent attempts at landing in a rainstorm, which induced vomiting in many passengers (and nearly in me), the flight crew made the decision to divert our landing to Sacramento.</li>\n</ol>\nAll's well that ends well. After a two-hour shuttle ride -- first southwest, then northwest -- I finally met up with Chris at Sonoma airport, still with plenty of time to attend his badminton club's potluck.\nI am writing today from Santa Rosa, part of Northern California's wine country. I will be living here for 10 days with Chris and his father, Mike.\nMike has been working on cars, carpentry, and construction for decades. From the main house on their property, ascending a set of exterior stairs brings you to the woodshop; descending the same stairs brings you to the "car level." The plan for my stay is to spend time gaining craft skills in Mike's shops, working as a sub-apprentice alongside Chris.\n"}], 'name': ['Santa Rosa Sojourn'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 12, 8, 11, 51, 43, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['travel'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/12/08/gp', '/2019/12/08/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'If you look at the bottom of this post, after the main text, you\'ll see that I\'ve added tags to categorize the pages of my website. Clicking one of the links in the "Tags" section will take you to a summary page, listing all the posts with that tag.\n\n\nOriginally, a bug was causing the phrase "Tags: " to show up even on pages without any tags, but as of 2019-12-08 I\'ve rewritten the code to take care of that.\n'}], 'name': ['Adding Tags to Categorize Website Material'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 12, 5, 12, 58, 37, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2019, 12, 8, 16, 24, 36, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['indieweb', 'upgrade'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/12/05/ss', '/2019/12/05/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Swordfighting Videogame with Two Modes'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 12, 5, 12, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': "I propose a videogame with two modes. Mode 1 is played in a 3rd-person or 1st-person perspective (I think 1st-person would be more satisfying.) On your turn, you swing your sword toward the enemy's body. The motion of the sword can be precisely controlled, as can the hit location; part of the game skill is hitting a "juicy" place on your enemy.\nMode 2 begins as your sword impacts the enemy. The game speed slows down, and a picture-in-picture appears, showing a magnified view of the part of the enemy that you hit. You guide the sword blade through the enemy body part, with the overall direction of your blade determined by the angle of your sword stroke and other such factors. Your time is limited by the size of the body part because your blade is passing through them (perhaps it might be possible for the blade to get stuck, ending your Mode 2 turn early.) You're trying to do something: either deal damage to the interior of the body part by destroying the "chunks" inside, or navigating the torturous path between the chunks in order to sever the body part. Dealing damage is easier, but it only weakens the limb instead of severing it.\nDifferent parts of the body could present different obstacles, or special unique points. There might be a special "bisect" move available if you swing your sword at the top of the enemy's head and successfully navigate their whole body; hitting the heart or stomach or intestines might do something special, if those are even modeled at all; etc.\n"}], 'category': ['games', 'computing'], 'channel': ['ideas'], 'slug': ['swordfighting-videogame'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/12/05/f6', '/ideas/swordfighting-videogame'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<div class="poem-container">\n<pre class="poem shadow">\nMy milkshake is a peanut-butter treat\nWith chocolate, too, appearing in the mix\nA glass so large, so sickeningly sweet\nThat I need less than half to get my fix\n\nI\'m in a diner with a weighty tome\nGreat English Poems, edited by Briggs\nAcross the table, Adam looks at home\nWith Murakami, and with coffee swigs\n\nThere comes a sudden motion from below\nAs Adam lays a tickle on my knee\nI counter-jest, exclaiming, "Nandato!"\nWhich Adam laughs at oh-so-heartily\n\nIt\'s Wednesday. We have nothing much to do.\nThe skies change from a rainy gray to blue.\n</pre></div>\n'}], 'name': ['Milkshake Sonnet'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 12, 4, 13, 30, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 1, 29, 11, 30, 35, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['poetry'], 'channel': ['poems'], 'slug': ['milkshake'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/12/04/t5', '/poems/milkshake'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'Before this morning, I had two barebones Emacs commands which I used to open my website in a browser. One opened the index page in the build folder, and one opened the index page on the deployed site.\n<pre>\n<code>\n(defun mj/browse-my-website ()\n (interactive)\n (browse-url "https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com"))\n\n(defun mj/browse-my-website-locally ()\n (interactive)\n (browse-url site-build-folder))\n</code>\n</pre>\nSince I frequently used the "browse-locally" command to check how the site looks before deploying, but rarely used the command to browse the deployed site, I turned the latter into an option triggered by passing an argument.\nMore substantially, browsing the index page is still the default, but if I\'m viewing a webpage\'s source in Emacs, the command instead browses that page on the (local or deployed) site. This is usually what I want when checking pages.\nHere is the new and improved command.\n<pre>\n<code>\n(defun mj/browse-my-website (arg)\n "If visiting a webpage source file,\n open corresponding page on the site.\n Otherwise, browse the homepage. \n\n Local browsing is the the default.\n With prefix ARG, browse deployed site instead."\n (interactive "P")\n (let ((site-name\n (if arg\n "https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com/"\n site-build-folder))\n (visited-file (buffer-file-name))\n (path))\n (cond\n ((not visited-file)\n (setq path "index"))\n\n ((string-match blog-post-regex visited-file)\n (setq path (concat "blog/"\n (match-string 1 visited-file))))\n ((string-match article-regex visited-file)\n (setq path (match-string 1 visited-file)))\n\n (t\n (setq path "index")))\n (browse-url (concat site-name path))))\n</code>\n</pre>\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 11, 23, 12, 42, 47, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2019, 12, 5, 13, 39, 32, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['emacs', 'upgrade', 'computing'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/11/23/u3', '/2019/11/23/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'Update: Material below the <code>(old)</code> marker is incorrect. I\'m going to go live in a cave and never touch a computer again, but before I pack my bags, here\'s the real scoop.\nA person mention is the act of linking to someone\'s homepage when mentioning them in post content. It\'s worth having a special name to distinguish homepage links because it\'s a common IndieWeb practice to handle WebMentions sent to a homepage differently from those sent to other paths on the site.\nA person tag is the act of marking a post to indicate someone is involved in the post in some way. Examples: the person was present in a photo being posted; the person was hanging out with the author when the post was made. A person tag requires a person\'s homepage link (which makes it a type of person mention), as well as the <code>u-category</code> microformat which indicates a post is "about" some topic (in this case, a person.) Finally, person tags are usually added through an interface which complements the posting interface. Consider the difference between @-mentioning someone in a Facebook post and tagging them in a photo.\n(old)\nOn the <a href="https://chat.indieweb.org/dev/2019-11-22">IndieWeb developer chat</a>, we\'ve been discussing the difference between "person tags" and "person mentions." There\'s a difference, but I don\'t think the wiki page correctly describes that difference.\nThe problem with <a href="https://indieweb.org/person-tag">the IndieWeb wiki page for person-tag</a> lies in the very first line, which currently says that a person tag <q>is a person mention</q>. However, the rest of that page, and the page for <a href="https://indieweb.org/person-mention">person mention</a>s, does not support the claim that a person tag "is-a" person mention.\nA person tag is an HTML chunk that forms a reference to someone, by being marked up with specific HTML attributes (class="u-category h-card" and href="homepage.example.org"). A person mention is a Webmention sent to a specific person\'s homepage to notify them of a post which in some way is about them/concerns them. A reference and a Webmention aren\'t the same thing: that\'s problem number one for the above quote from the person tag page.\nProblem number two is that the person mention page is explicit that as long as the content at the Webmention <code>source</code> is relevant to Mister Example, and contains a hyperlink to his homepage, <code>mr.example.org</code>, then a Webmention sent with that source and <code>target=mr.example.org</code> is a person-mention: <q>if you\'re doing something beyond merely mentioning someone, e.g. inviting them to an event, or person-tagging them, then see [the "invite" and "person-tag" pages] for how to add that markup (<cite><a href="https://indieweb.org/person-mention#How_to_person_mention">source</a></cite>)</q>.\nYou can put a person tag in a post without sending a Webmention<a href="#fn-1">1</a> for that person tag: maybe you just want to use people\'s names as tags on your site without notifying them of it. And you can send a person mention without having a person tag in the post, as described in the "merely mentioning" quote above.\nI had trouble understanding the distinction because I can\'t think of a practical scenario where I would want to mention someone in the written content of a post, and send them a Webmention about it, without also wanting to explicitly indicate that I\'m "tagging" them (and taking the extra step of adding person-tag markup to the post.) On the other hand, I can imagine person-tagging my posts without sending person mentions to let people know about the tags.\n[Thanks to several people for helping me understand these concepts, including <a href="https://tantek.com">Tantek</a>, <a href="https://jacky.wtf">Jacky</a>, and <a href="https://mblaney.xyz">Malcolm</a>.]\n<section class="footnotes">\n<ol>\n<li id="fn-1">This Webmention would be a person mention, because it goes to their homepage, because a person tag <code>href</code> must link to someone\'s homepage.<a href="#fnref-1" class="footnote">↩</a></li>\n</ol>\n</section>\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 11, 22, 12, 21, 45, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 5, 11, 10, 15, 31, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['indieweb'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/11/22/w9', '/2019/11/22/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'Hey, <a href="https://boffosocko.com">Chris</a>, the layout of your main page is slightly borked. It looks like the problem is related to some of the category names being longer than others. See image below, and good luck fixing it. [2019-12-03: Chris fixed this problem a few days ago.]\n<figure class="center">\n<img srcset="/static/256/boffosocko-layout-2019-11-21.png 256w, /static/480/boffosocko-layout-2019-11-21.png 480w" sizes="(max-width: 400px) 256px, 480px" src="/static/480/boffosocko-layout-2019-11-21.png" title="A picture of the layout of boffosocko.com as of 2019-11-21." alt="A picture of the layout of boffosocko.com as of 2019-11-21.">\n<figcaption>The 2019-11-21 layout of boffosocko.com\'s category-navigation interface.</figcaption>\n</figure>\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 11, 21, 22, 24, 28, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 5, 3, 23, 44, 42, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['indieweb'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/11/22/w6', '/2019/11/21/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'published': [DateTime(2019, 11, 20, 17, 4, 30, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'name': ['Workout Weight Progression'], 'content': [{'html': 'Novice weightlifters are typically encouraged to use one weight until they can perform a certain number of reps, then go to the next-biggest weight and repeat. This straightforward approach, called linear progression, is the standard recommendation for those new to weight training.\nI\'ve noticed, however, that the total weight moved per set (which I\'ll call "poundage") in linear progression can vary dramatically between total pounds moved in a set, at weight W, of the maximum number of reps R, and a set of 1 or 2 reps at the next highest weight<a href="#fn-1">1</a>. For example, 1x50 = 50 poundage, and 2x50 = 100 poundage: both of which are lower than 3x45 = 135 poundage. The linear progression can be shown by executing the following only-slightly-pseudocode, and if we graphed the poundage values in the <code>result</code> list, we\'d see spikes up and down as the lifter moved from one 5-pound increment to the next:\n<code>\n<pre>\n(let\n ((weights (range 45 50 ... 225))\n (reps \'(1 2 3 4 5))\n (result))\n (dolist (weight weights)\n (dolist (rep reps)\n (let ((poundage (* weight rep)))\n (push poundage result))))\n result)\n</pre>\n</code>\nIf we sort <code>result</code> (and add some extra code to match each poundage with its values for weight and rep), we would have a weight progression which is smoother than the linear approach. I don\'t know whether or not this smooth progression would actually be more efficient for a novice, since periodic resets to a lower poundage are valuable for sustained progress<a href="#fn-2">2</a>.\n<section class="footnotes">\n<ol>\n<li id="fn-1">5 pounds, in the form of 2 2.5-pound plates, is typically the smallest increment available for a barbell.<a href="#fnref-1" class="footnote">↩</a></li>\n<li id="fn-2">The core of all "periodic" (i.e. non-linear) progression is to work up to a new maximum poundage, reset to something well below it, and work your way back up while trying to achieve higher reps on weights below your max. The 5-3-1 program is a good example.<a href="#fnref-2" class="footnote">↩</a></li>\n</ol>\n</section>\n'}], 'category': ['exercise', 'computing'], 'channel': ['ideas'], 'slug': ['workout-weight-progression'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/11/21/8q', '/ideas/workout-weight-progression'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'published': [DateTime(2019, 11, 20, 12, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 10, 1, 0, 5, 2, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'name': ['A Translation Interface'], 'content': [{'html': '<q>Two windows next to each other, one of which shows usage instances for the word under, or around, the cursor.</q>\nPart of the challenge of creating an interface to help with Chinese translation lies in defining the extent of a word. For example, when a verb and an object (e.g. 吃东西 ), is combined with a two-character complement<a href="#fn-1">1</a> (e.g. 起来), the result, 吃起东西来, does not contain "起来" as a substring, because two-character complements get split up to follow both verb and object. Any digital dictionary or reference system concerned with usage examples will have to account for this fact of Chinese grammar, and contain the knowledge that, despite the results of affixation, this can be considered an occurrence of the "起来" complement.\n<div class=muted>When [Linguary](/linguary) has evolved far enough for custom interfaces, I\'ll return to questions like these.</div>\n\n\n<section class="footnotes">\n<ol>\n<li id="fn-1">In Chinese linguistics, this term (natively 补语) refers to words which, aside from their normal usage, can also be suffixed to verbs (or VOs) to express the result of the verbal action. Some of them, when used this way, have the same meaning as when used on their own, e.g. 懂 means "understand", and 看懂 means "look-understand", i.e. "understand by reading/watching". Other words take on new meanings when used as complements: 起来, which on its own is a verb meaning "rise up", means "begin doing" when used as a complement. Don\'t confuse the term "complement" here with the same word from the broader study of syntax; there, it usually means "argument selected by a head." (I won\'t link the Wikipedia page here: as of 2019-11-20, it\'s not well-organized, and gives space to "traditional grammarianism" alongside a mangled, wishy-washy stab at linguistics.)<a href="#fnref-1" class="footnote">↩</a></li>\n</ol>\n</section>\n'}], 'category': ['chinese', 'translation', 'linguistics'], 'channel': ['ideas'], 'slug': ['translation-interface'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/11/20/68', '/ideas/translation-interface'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'published': [DateTime(2019, 11, 20, 12, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'name': ['Presents from Prengubi'], 'content': [{'html': 'On the page of writing where I discovered <a href="/sithlordchallenge">Prengubi Cjiiiifgh</a>, I found some strange stuff.\n<ul>\n<li>The Weedler\'s Promise</li>\n<li>The Friendler, The Seedler, the Feedler, the Deedler</li>\n<li>Pheasant Peasant</li>\n<li>Living Gold</li>\n<li>Sumweyer Ells: home of the sexy fox people (definitely not related to the home of the Khajiit.) Do humans skin the sexy fox people to create the highest-quality fursuits? Yes.</li>\n</ul>\n'}], 'category': ['stupid', 'prengubi'], 'channel': ['ideas'], 'slug': ['presents-from-prengubi'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/11/20/ob', '/ideas/presents-from-prengubi'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': "The website should look much cleaner, thanks to some CSS upgrades I just made.\nI thought I also had it set up better for small screens, but I checked on my phone and it's still mostly just a shrunken version of the regular website. Woops. The redesign will continue. [2020-05-11: I've since fixed this. The website now adapts itself to your device's viewport.]\n"}], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 11, 19, 17, 22, 31, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 5, 11, 10, 7, 26, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/11/20/ka', '/2019/11/19/2'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': "I've coded a new feature for the blog: "previous" and "next" links! As you can see below, each post now links to its predecessor and/or successor. (IndieWeb people, those links have <code>rel="prev"</code>/<code>rel="next"</code> classes on them for machine consumption.)\nFurther improvements will include post tags, on the index and on individual posts; I also want to display approximate wordcounts for each post. And of course, I'm still missing comments (but that will take more doing than the other two.)\n"}], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 11, 19, 15, 37, 57, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['indieweb', 'upgrade'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/11/19/mq', '/2019/11/19/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'Major formatting changes coming through! The goals are to make the site more pleasant for mobile users, and fix some long-standing layout bugs.\nIf you see any ugliness, please be patient; the Complaints Bureau will be hearing grievances in February 2023.\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 11, 17, 20, 58, 39, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/11/18/b9', '/2019/11/17/2'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'Yesterday, I learned the basics of setting up a Linux virtual server on Amazon\'s "Elastic Compute Cloud" (EC2) service. After some false starts with other hosting providers, <a href="https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/EC2_GetStarted.html#ec2-launch-instance">the developer documentation for EC2</a> felt blessedly straightforward.\nServer-side application development is a new programming paradigm for me. I\'ve written a lot of programs, but nearly all of them were designed for me to consciously start running on my own computer. I\'ve created material on multiple websites and blogs, but until now I\'ve relied on free blog hosts or Amazon S3, and have never run a server to handle web traffic.\nIn other words, I\'ve automated the execution of tasks, but haven\'t spent much time automating the starting and stopping of tasks. Suppose I write a program that runs once an hour, checks a web feed for updates that match a filter, formats and saves any new results, and texts me a summary once a day. To run that program, I need a computer that keeps working when my home computers are hibernating and my brain computer is asleep. I need a server.\nOr rather, I needed a server. Now I have one!\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 11, 17, 20, 21, 20, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['computing'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/11/18/ck', '/2019/11/17/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'published': [DateTime(2019, 11, 14, 12, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 7, 16, 18, 58, 31, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'name': ['Simple but Uncommon Chinese Characters'], 'content': [{'html': 'There are Chinese characters which are structurally simple, but not in common use today.\nA perfect example is 屾 shen1, a literary term which means "并列的两座山" ("two mountains side by side".) This is one of relatively few characters that is actually ideographic, i.e. has a shape depicting the real-world concept it represents. This is because 屾 shen1 is made up of two side-by-side copies of the character for mountain, 山 shan1. Two mountains side-by-side in the character; "two mountains side-by-side" for the meaning.\nBelow are other characters which have piqued my interest.\n<ul>\n<li>卞 bian4"hurried": does not show up in any words on [MDBG](<a href="https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary?wdqb=c%3A%2A%E5%8D%9E%2A&wdrst=0">https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary?wdqb=c%3A%2A%E5%8D%9E%2A&wdrst=0</a>]</li>\n<li>惢 suo3: not even in MDBG\'s dictionary at all. I believe MDBG is backed by CC-CEDICT, like most Chinese dictionary services. Suo3 shows up in Pleco but without any definition or other information; extended dictionary options may give me some information.</li>\n<li>勹 bao1: another Kangxi radical.</li>\n<li>彳 chi4: known as 双人旁 shuang1ren2pang2, "two-person radical", by analogy with the radical form of 人 "person" called 单人旁 dan1ren2pang2 "one person radical" which is like chi4 without the upper falling stroke. I understand why <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangxi_radical">Kangxi radicals</a> have pronounceable names, but has chi4 ever been used as a character outside the radical lists?</li>\n<li>亍 chu4：not a Kangxi radical. What\'s the origin of this one? Was it ever a shorthand version of 行? It\'s similar to 示.</li>\n<li>2020-09-25T14:58:24-0700 AHA!! 彳 and 亍 are used together in the word 彳亍, a literary term meaning "amble; stroll." Note that the character 行, which includes "walk, move" among its many meanings, looks just like 彳 and 亍 put together.</li>\n<li>卢矢 lu2shi3: "black arrow". Unlike previous entries on this list, these characters would likely be understood by moderns; I just wanted to make a note of them since neither lu2 nor shi3 are the words used for "black" and "arrow" in modern Chinese. (The corresponding characters would be 黑 hei1 and 箭 jian4.) (2020-09-11T19:11:16-0700: Student\'s Dictionary of Classical Chinese informs me that 矢 is the earlier character, and indicates arrows made of bamboo, while 箭 came later, and refers to arrows made of wood.)</li>\n<li>雫: not even the pronunciation is in MDBG. This character occurs in the title of a Taiwanese comic series, Drops of God, so I know it can mean "drop" (of liquid).</li>\n<li>足: MDBG claims that ju4 "excessive" is an alternate reading for this character, normally pronounced zu2 with meanings including "foot" and "sufficient." I can\'t find a reference to the ju4/"excessive" reading anywhere, even in the quite-comprehensive Student\'s Dictionary of Classical Chinese.</li>\n</ul>\n'}], 'category': ['chinese', 'linguistics', 'zh'], 'channel': ['ideas'], 'slug': ['simple-but-uncommon-chinese-characters'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/11/14/ph', '/ideas/simple-but-uncommon-chinese-characters'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Terrible UI Design in MacOS Chinese Input'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 11, 14, 12, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': "MacOS Chinese input allows you to cycle through the tones with TAB. I just discovered this after years of (begrudgingly) using this input method. Harrumph! They could have put the tones on the number keys to kill two birds with one stone:\n<ol>\n<li>Number -> tone is a straightforward, well-known mapping, so I wouldn't have had to discover this feature at random.</li>\n<li>It would have forced them to find a smarter, more ergonomic way of letting me pick candidates, rather than having to lift my fingers from the letter keys to identify every single character I want to use.</li>\n</ol>\n"}], 'category': ['chinese', 'computing', 'userinterface'], 'channel': ['ideas'], 'slug': ['terrible-ui-design-in-the-macos-chinese-input-method'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/11/14/vw', '/ideas/terrible-ui-design-in-the-macos-chinese-input-method'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'I\'d like to represent my Chinese name in the <a href="http://microformats.org/wiki/h-card"><code>h-card</code> markup</a> that makes this website\'s authorship information machine-readable. How should I do that?\n<div class="muted">Some time later:</div>\nThe answer seems to be "<a href="http://microformats.org/wiki/h-card#Properties">use the <code>p-nickname</code> property</a>." The wiki documentation of that property clearly states that it can be used for a handle or alias. I don\'t like that "nickname" is the microformats keyword for this purpose: I prefer "alias," since all nicknames are aliases, but not all aliases are nicknames. However, I\'m glad to at least have solved my problem.\n(Another scenario where using this property would be useful: a European friend named "Juerg" spells his name "George" when communicating in English. On his business cards, he writes <q>Juerg \'George\' Lastname</q>; on his website, he could mark up the \'George\' with the <code>p-nickname</code> property.)\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 11, 13, 17, 49, 48, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['indieweb', 'computing'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/11/14/ay', '/2019/11/13/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'updated': [DateTime(2020, 3, 6, 10, 8, 25, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'name': ['Turning Off Lisp Semantics'], 'content': [{'html': 'The reason Lisp is special is because you can TURN OFF semantics.\n(+ 1 1) is pure form. (+ 1 1) is syntax. (+ 1 1) is a syntactic expression: it has structure. But, until we evaluate it, it doesn\'t have meaning. [It might appear to be "add one and one," but in a programming language<a href="#fn-1">1</a> focused on bits and bytes, (+ 1 1) might well be the command to put together two bits, resulting in 11.]\nIn all the Lisp-family languages I know of, because they are programming languages, and by default the programmer expects to evaluate syntactic expressions, the default notation for an expression which will be evaluated is simpler than that for one which will not be evaluated.\nThe notation given above is the traditional notation for an expression which will be evaluated by the Lisp system. (+ 1 1) evalutes to 2<a href="#fn-2">2</a>.\nThe notation for an unevaluated expression is \'(+ 1 1). But, "unevaluated" isn\'t quite the right word here. It will be more helpful to consider (+ 1 1) as evaluating to itself.\nYou can think of that single quotation mark like a switch which turns off evaluation. Once that quotation-mark switch is flipped, the following expression no longer means anything. It\'s pure syntax. The result of evaluating it will depend on the environment in which it\'s evaluated: if you redefine "+" to do subtraction, the result of evaluating (+ 1 1) in that environment will be 0.\n2020-03-06T10:08:25-0800\n(all\n(anything where the first word in operator position is treated by looking up, within a table, how to output it e.g. (:span (children)) becomes children\n(anything else gets rendered as normal text into a :p tag or something or something similar)\n(this s-expression is an example)\n)\n<section class="footnotes">\n<ol>\n<li id="fn-1">This language might be either general-purpose or "domain-specific;" it might be self-hosting or it might be a dialect inside another language. And isn\'t a programming library just a collection of new words in a familiar language? Ones with commentary, and notes on usage, and perfectly explicit definitions?<a href="#fnref-1" class="footnote">↩</a></li>\n<li id="fn-2">Setting aside questions of integers vs floating-point numbers and other such things.<a href="#fnref-2" class="footnote">↩</a></li>\n</ol>\n</section>\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 11, 7, 11, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['lisp', 'computing'], 'channel': ['ideas'], 'slug': ['turn-off-lisp-semantics'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/11/07/ea', '/ideas/turn-off-lisp-semantics'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': "Today I upgraded my website publishing software. From now on, new articles (individual pages which are longer and less time-dependent than blog posts) will automatically come with a date and time of publication. I'll be manually adding publication dates to prior articles over the next week or so.\nAlong the way, I fixed a problem I was having with adding "time last updated" to pages and blog posts. I had to manually position the mouse in the right spot before running a command to add the current time and date. Now all that is done automatically with one command, <code>mj/insert-webpage-update-time</code>. Having this command written also puts me 90% of the way toward the next logical step, which is automatically setting the "time last updated" every time I save a file for the site. I'll get to that in the future.\n"}], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 11, 6, 13, 37, 33, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2019, 11, 6, 14, 19, 36, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['indieweb', 'upgrade'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/11/06/rn', '/2019/11/06/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Scope of Variables in Inform 7'], 'content': [{'html': "Consider this snippet of Inform 7 code:\n<pre>\nTo improve the mood of (character - an animal):\n if the mood of character is less than friendly, now the mood of the character is the mood after the mood of the character.\n</pre>\nI am not sure whether or not the statement "the mood after the mood of the character" wraps around. That is to say, I am not sure whether the above code would "improve" the character's mood from the best one possible to the worst. I would hope it doesn't do that, but I'll have to investigate.\nThe <code>if</code> statement above can be translated into pseudo-Clojure as follows:\n<pre>\n(let [current-mood (:mood character)]\n (if (< current-mood friendly)\n (assoc :mood character (succ current-mood))))\n ;;assuming the moods have an interface sort of like Haskell Enum typeclass\n ;; 'set KEY in MAP to VAL' is spelled `assoc` in Clojure\n</pre>\n"}], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 11, 5, 11, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['computing', 'inform'], 'channel': ['ideas'], 'slug': ['inform-variable-scope'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/11/05/tf', '/ideas/inform-variable-scope'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<a href="/notes/2019/10/24/1">In a previous update</a>, I succeeded in buying a copy of Stephen Fry\'s poetry manual, The Ode Less Traveled. The exercises given throughout the chapters are placed and scoped such that it is easy to slip into doing them right as they are called for. Working through the exercises is exactly what I need to improve my skill level. <a href="/poetry-exercises">I am posting my exercise responses on this page</a> as I go through the book.\nMy copy of the book arrived on 2019-11-01, and it has already proven to be a good purchase. I bought it so I could improve my own poetry; I began <a href="/poems">writing verse</a> in 2018, but all I\'ve been doing is stringing together rhymes. Until I cracked Mr. Fry\'s book, my knowledge of meter was essentially nil, and although all my poems so far have used syllabic patterns, the closest I\'d gotten to metric analysis was counting syllables. It never occurred to me to think about stress at all.\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 11, 3, 21, 46, 36, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['poetry'], 'channel': ['reviews'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/11/04/6r', '/2019/11/03/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<div class="muted">\nA parody of William Blake\'s "<a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43687/the-tyger">The Tyger</a>".\n</div>\n<div class="poem-container">\n<pre class="poem shadow">\nBunghole! Bunghole! Clenching tight,\nOn the toilet, in the night.\nCurse you, bowels! Set me free!\nHas my poo no place to be?\n\nIn a distant land of glee—\nSomewhere constipation-free—\nMan may poo most joyfully.\nHe knows not of agony.\n\nHe knows not the price we pay:\nPants \'round ankles, we inveigh,\nGrunting, swearing, moved to pray,\nPooing in a toilsome way.\n\nFor what reason, in God\'s grace,\nDid He make man squat in place,\nWasting time, without a say,\nOn a poo\'s extended stay?\n\nWhat immortal hand on high\nMoved to make our poo so dry?\nWhither Bunghole and his fee?\nWhither constipationry?\n\nBunghole! Bunghole! Clenching tight,\nOn the toilet, in the night.\nCurse you, bowels! I don\'t see\nWhat I\'ve ever done to thee!\n</pre></div>\n'}], 'name': ['The Bunghole'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 11, 3, 12, 35, 9, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 7, 24, 17, 31, 41, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['poetry', 'parody'], 'channel': ['poems'], 'slug': ['bunghole'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/11/03/fa', '/poems/bunghole'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': "Here I go, testing out a minimal IndieWeb reply context.\n<aside>Some time later:</aside>\nDamn, it's not working. If you caught this post before I updated it, you may have seen a stupid link to "www.maxwelljoslyn.com/notes/2019/11/01/1/www.maxwelljoslyn.com/blog/2019/10/31/1".\nI'll go after the problem when I have time. At the very least, I do know the blame ultimately lies with how relative and absolute hyperlinks are handled by my blogging software.\nNaughty software! I will punish it at once.\n"}], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 11, 1, 21, 7, 17, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2019, 11, 1, 21, 38, 19, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['indieweb'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/11/02/v6', '/2019/11/01/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'Media today:\n<ul>\n<li>Chinese introductory calligraphy videos<ul>\n<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5lUxoIE4ok">台南市100年度硬筆書法研習實況教學</a></li>\n<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3z2-oDJPWY">毛笔书法基本笔画，横画</a></li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n</ul>\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 10, 31, 18, 28, 13, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['chinese', 'calligraphy', 'zh'], 'channel': ['bookmarks'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/11/01/se', '/2019/10/31/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': "I spent yesterday upgrading from an old computer to a new one. From the lowly depths of a 2012 MacBook Pro, I ascended to the lofty heights of a ... 2013 MacBook Pro.\nThe venture gained me an onboard SSD and a Retina screen, but cost me 2 inches of screen (15" to 13") and half my onboard storage (1 TB to 500 GB). Despite these tradeoffs, switching was worth it: the SSD is a breath of fresh air for load times; I'm nowhere near 500 GB of documents; and the 2 inches of screen size means nothing since this laptop spends nearly all its life hooked up to an external monitor.\n"}], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 10, 30, 14, 3, 5, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/10/30/h9', '/2019/10/30/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'With advice from <a class="u-category h-card" href="https://jgregorymcverry.com">Greg McVerry</a>, <a class="u-category h-card" href="https://aaronparecki.com/">Aaron Parecki</a>, and <a class="u-category h-card" href="https://snarfed.org/">Ryan Barrett</a>, I finished getting this blog set up for subscription using the `h-feed` microformat, and made other improvements along the way.\n<div class="benefit">\nHow this benefits you:\n<div class="benefit-answer">\n<ul>\n<li>You can now subscribe to this website if your reader understands <code>h-feed</code></li>\n<li>Posts which have received updates since publishing now display their "last updated time"</li>\n<li>For posts with explicit titles, <a href="/blog">the blog index</a> displays them, making it more rewarding to manually browse the index</li>\n</ul>\n</div>\n</div>\nIn addition to the above, all pages\' titles now link to themselves, and each link in the blog index now has proper <code>h-entry</code> markup.\nThe tools <a href="https://indiewebify.me/">Indiewebify</a> and <a href="https://monocle.p3k.io/preview?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.maxwelljoslyn.com%2Fblog">Monocle\'s Feed Previewer</a> were invaluable for understanding what my site would look like to a computer consumer.\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 10, 28, 17, 1, 50, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 5, 11, 10, 5, 49, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['indieweb', 'upgrade', 'computing'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/10/29/xz', '/2019/10/28/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': "Another day, another website upgrade. My script for counting total words of written material was including articles, but leaving out blog posts. Now it's been fixed!\n"}], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 10, 24, 23, 35, 6, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['upgrade'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/10/25/bi', '/2019/10/24/3'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'While editing <a href="/books">my books page</a>, I became curious about exactly when I started this website.\nOne of the two earliest pages was <a href="/maxandruby">"Max and Ruby"</a>, which I made to ask a girl out (it worked.) My text message records show that I delivered the goods at 09:07 AM, on Monday, 2018-08-06.\nI know I had the image all ready to go during the weekend before that Monday. I know the website existed at least a short time before "Max and Ruby," since I remember having one other page available. And I know there was a significant lag between buying this domain, and actually setting up the website. The records at my DNS provider indicate that I bought the domain in September of 2017.\nTherefore, this site (in its present form) first appeared during the window of time between 2017-09-01 and the weekend preceding 2018-08-06. I have to go to bed, so I won\'t explore further today, but the next thing to check is the Amazon S3 hosting records. Perhaps I can find the date on which I registered the "bucket" (storage space) for this site.\n[2019-10-28: I looked through version control logs, and now know that the site certainly existed as far back as 2018-04-17, 7:37 PM. However, that was a little-used prototype, and what I care about is the birth of the website as it currently exists.\nWith the prototype period extending at least until 2018-04-17, the real birth of my site can now be fixed somewhere after that date, with the end of the window still being the weekend preceding 2018-08-06.]\n'}], 'name': ['Figuring Out When I Began This Website'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 10, 24, 23, 2, 28, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 1, 9, 17, 21, 31, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'channel': ['articles'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/10/25/q7', '/2019/10/24/2'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'This evening, I wanted to purchase The Ode Less Traveled, a poetry manual by Stephen Fry. I went to Amazon, noticed the Kindle version was $7, and decided to give that a shot.\nI had to decide whether to log in with my account, or my mother\'s. I would pay the bill myself either way, but my Kindle reader was originally hers, and I had a niggling suspicion that it would matter. I should have listened to my suspicion!\nLogging into my account went smoothly, as did "purchasing" the book<a href="#fn-1">1</a>. I decided to read the book on the Kindle Android app.\n<pre>\nWith the app installed, I tried once, twice, thrice\nTo log in as me -- but, alas, no dice.\n</pre>\nMy mood at this point was "lightly fried." My account credentials had worked well enough for Amazon to take my money, so why wouldn\'t it recognize my login?\n"No problem," I thought. "I\'ll just put it on the Kindle itself."\nDownloading the AZW file went smoothly, as did transferring said file to the Kindle. I went to open the book on the Kindle, and: lo and behold, this device is still registered to my mother\'s account. Thus, for DRM reasons, I couldn\'t open the book.\n"No problem," I thought. "I\'ll just re-register the Kindle to my Amazon account. My mistake, after all."\n<pre>\nWith the file on board, I tried once, twice, thrice\nTo log in as me -- but, alas, no dice.\n</pre>\nI felt helpless! I sat there typing like a gibbon, tediously switching between physical letter keys and virtual number ones, painstakingly comparing each character to the Holy Text in my password manager -- and my login was repeatedly rejected.\nMy mood at this point was "steamed like a bun." All this foolishness cost me 30 minutes. I gave up on the whole enterprise, initiated a refund due to "download problems," and ordered a physical copy of the book -- from another vendor, thank you very much.\nA fool I was, but a fool I shall not remain. Lessons learned:\n<ol>\n<li>Don\'t bother with an ebook that has DRM. Buy it from a vendor that respects its customers, get a physical copy, or poke around the unsavory parts of the Web until you find a copy of dubious origin.\n</li>\n<li>I thought I knew how much I missed living 5 minutes\' walk from a university library. I was wrong.\n</li>\n<li>Amazon, the tech monolith, can\'t do something as basic as account authorization. They happily accepted my credentials so I could spend money, then wasted the final stretch of my evening with rejections of the same credentials.\n</li>\n</ol>\n<section class="footnotes">\n<ol>\n<li id="fn-1">I say "purchasing" because you never actually own a Kindle book: you just rent its contents indefinitely.<a href="#fnref-1" class="footnote">↩</a></li>\n</ol>\n</section>\n'}], 'name': ['In Which I Attempt to Give Amazon Money'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 10, 24, 21, 57, 33, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/10/25/5y', '/2019/10/24/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'I\'ve laid another tiny upgrade at my website\'s feet. <a href="/blog">The blog/feed</a> now mentions how many posts there are.\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 10, 21, 14, 40, 28, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 1, 12, 13, 41, 5, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['upgrade'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/10/21/gk', '/2019/10/21/2'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'In <a href="/notes/2019/10/20/1">a blog post yesterday</a>, I discussed adding time-of-publication information to future blog posts. In that post, I decided against adding a fake publication time to prior posts which were made without recording that information.\nToday, I\'ve reversed my decision. I added time information as one step toward making the blog available to subscription tools. Adding my blog to your viewer of choice will be easier if all my blog posts come with a canonical publication time.\nIf you visit posts made before 2019-10-20, <a href="/notes/2019/10/13/1">such as this one</a>, you\'ll see I\'ve changed their publication notices to indicate that the time given is suspect. That\'s good enough for me.\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 10, 21, 14, 25, 12, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['indieweb'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/10/21/hy', '/2019/10/21/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': "As of right now, the publication timestamp before this paragraph reads "Published on 2019-10-20, around 18:14:20". This timestamp is also a permalink for this page.\nThe dates on these posts ("2019-10-20") have been there since soon after I started this blog, but I just added the time-of-day information ("around 18:14:20") today. A machine-readable version of the time, including the time zone, has also been invisibly included in the permalink's HTML.\nI did this as one step in upgrading my website so that other people can subscribe to it. If I only provided the date of publication, but not the time, someone else's reader program wouldn't be able to put my post in chronological order when compared with another post.\nI didn't specify publication times when writing posts before today. On the pages for those posts, how should I go about displaying a publication time?\n<ul>\n<li>I could give these posts a default time, such as midnight, or a number that stands out by seeming artificial, like "12:34:56". This would be inaccurate, but would ensure that anyone subscribing to the blog (or otherwise interacting with individual blog posts) would get some information about the time of publication.</li>\n<li>I could also remove the time information from previous posts altogether. This would prevent me from providing information I know is wrong, at the cost of making it a bit harder to use my posts as data for other purposes.</li>\n</ul>\nFor now, I prefer the latter plan. I don't want to publish inaccurate time information. Please tell me if you have a suggestion one way or another.\n"}], 'name': ['Improved Time Stamps'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 10, 20, 18, 14, 20, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['indieweb', 'upgrade', 'computing'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/10/21/ii', '/2019/10/20/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': "I'm in Santa Monica for the first time, staying with my friends Alexi and Anna Leah. [2019-10-21: It was a lovely, energizing weekend, and my two friends deserve the greatest of thanks for hosting me.]\n"}], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 10, 19, 12, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['travel'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/10/19/56', '/2019/10/19/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'Below <a href="/maku-xiansheng">my translation</a> of "Mr. Breeches," I\'ve <a href="/maku-xiansheng#criticism-of-a-translation-by-tony-blishen">added a new section</a> which discusses and criticizes another translation of the same short story.\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 10, 16, 12, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2019, 10, 30, 23, 58, 43, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['translation', 'chinese'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/10/16/fa', '/2019/10/16/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': "Today, between laps at the local pool, I stopped to observe the women's water polo team. I'm a novice swimmer, and my form needs work. I thought I might glean something useful from watching athletes practice.\nI was right! I noticed the tight, efficient movements with which they lifted their arms out of the water and shot them back in. I also noted the quick cadence of the players' strokes.\nI applied the same economy and vigor of motion on my next lap, and was rewarded with an immediate increase in the speed and smoothness with which I moved through the water. I managed six or eight short, sharp strokes between breaths, instead of four sloppy ones, and I learned viscerally what swimmers and surfers mean by "pulling yourself through the water."\n"}], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 10, 15, 12, 34, 57, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/10/15/rq', '/2019/10/15/2'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'I\'m pleased to announce that, thanks to one Nicole, the <a href="/sithlordchallenge">Sith Lord Challenge</a> has received its 25th entry!\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 10, 15, 12, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['slc'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/10/15/mt', '/2019/10/15/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<div class="muted">\nWhile traveling on the group tour which inspired "<a href="/poems/gift-gadi">A Gift for Gadi</a>", a friend and I spent a day stumbling around a foreign marketplace, our bellies stuffed and our eyes wide. We were totally out of place -- yet we were at ease. I invented a word to describe the feeling of wandering aimlessly without a care: "roaming around like a couple of drongos."\nThe word "drongo" doesn\'t have a pithy definition, but this poem (and its companion, "<a href="/poems/drongo-explained">Drongo Explained</a>") should help you get the idea. A hedonist, a bon vivant, a fish out of water, an artist, a scrounger, a drifter, or a jester might all be drongos.\n</div>\n<div class="poem-container">\n<pre class="poem shadow">\nHe\'s cheerfully strolling\nDevoid-of-all-goaling\nGracelessly fearless, our witless fellow\n\nDown the street ambling\nUnhurried rambling\nTo none beholden, the peerless drongo!\n\nPausing to peer as the\nLadies draw near is he\nFinding no shame in production of drool\n\nWith lust for the stocking\nThe drongo comes knocking\nNo need of motley has this kind of fool\n\nWanton debauchery\nLewd side-eye watchery\n\'Round the whole world in his bumbling flow\n\nSnorting and snootling\nFecklessly frootling\nTo none beholden, the peerless drongo!\n\nCheapest of epicures\nDrinker of every beer\'s\nLast golden drops in the bottle at hand\n\nMarket stall prowlery\nFlavor night-owlery\nLed by his stomach all over the land\n\nFaced with this nobody\nGo with the flow, buddy\nWhen you come near him you\'re certain to know\n\nShare what you have today\nSoon he\'ll be on his way\nTo none beholden, the peerless drongo!\n</pre></div>\n[I am aware that not all speakers of English pronounce "epicure" /\'ɛpɪkiɹ/, rhyming with "beer" /\'biɹ/, as I have rhymed them here.]\n'}], 'name': ['The Peerless Drongo'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 10, 14, 21, 11, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['poetry', 'drongo'], 'channel': ['poems'], 'slug': ['peerless-drongo'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/10/15/28', '/poems/peerless-drongo'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Zim Pi'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 10, 14, 9, 53, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'artist': ['Nicole'], 'photo': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/zim-pi.png'], 'photo-small': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/480/zim-pi.png'], 'content': [{'html': "<q>She's a Kaminoan and she's angry.</q> Don't be fooled: what appears to be a human nose is actually two Kaminoan nose slits, pierced with a nose ring.\n"}], 'category': ['slc'], 'channel': ['sithlords'], 'slug': ['zim-pi'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/10/14/bq', '/sithlordchallenge/zim-pi'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<div class="muted">\nWritten in response to something nice that Chance, a new friend, said to me. This is "two thirds" of a sonnet because a real sonnet needs a third four-line verse before the ending couplet.\n</div>\n<div class="poem-container">\n<pre class="poem shadow">\nHas it occurred to you that you deserve\nTo be called not just chill, but chill supreme?\nI have a softness in my heart for those\nWho follow through—who realize the dream\n\nOf living in a world where effort\'s fruits\nAre by most sincere comments justly met\nMuch thanks, for \'tis upon my horn you toot\nExchanging digits was a winning bet\n\nA sonnet, or two thirds of one, for thee\nWith gratitude from You-Know-Who and me\n</pre></div>\n'}], 'name': ['Two Thirds of a Sonnet for Chance'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 10, 13, 22, 59, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['poetry'], 'channel': ['poems'], 'slug': ['chance'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/10/14/az', '/poems/chance'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'updated': [DateTime(2020, 11, 21, 11, 45, 34, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': 'Today I watched <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGznaq9wrUQ">La Faim</a>, an 11-minute animated film by Peter Foldes. The principal character eats and eats, and becomes grotesque. I recommend you try it, because the animation has a delightfully bizarre quality to it. The characters\' bodies sort of morph into new positions. It\'s a bit hard to describe -- just watch the video.\n<div class="center"><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/zGznaq9wrUQ" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 10, 13, 12, 34, 57, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['media'], 'channel': ['bookmarks'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/10/13/ue', '/2019/10/13/2'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'While browsing the Web, I came across <a href="https://developers.googleblog.com/2019/09/flutter-news-from-gdd-china-flutter1.9.html">this blog post</a>, which announced a new version of Google\'s cross-platform Flutter framework.\nMy attention was seized by the image at the top, because there were Chinese words on the presenter\'s slide! As a little exercise, I annotated the image with English translations of the Chinese terms.\n[2020-05-03: The picture below may be broken. It\'s a known issue as I work to improve the site for better display on small screens.]\n<figure class="center">\n<img srcset="/static/256/devdays-flutter.png 256w, /static/480/devdays-flutter.png 480w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 256px, 480px" src="/static/480/devdays-flutter.png" title="Chinese-language version of conference slide announcing Flutter 1.9, with my translations superimposed." alt="Chinese-language version of conference slide announcing Flutter 1.9, with my translations superimposed.">\n<figcaption>Chinese-language version of conference slide announcing Flutter 1.9, with my translations superimposed.</figcaption>\n</figure>\n<a href="/translation">More translation-related material available here.</a>\n'}], 'name': ['Translating a Conference Slide from Google Developer Days, China 2019'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 10, 13, 12, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 1, 17, 15, 12, 35, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['chinese', 'translation'], 'channel': ['translation'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/10/13/qb', '/2019/10/13/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<div class="muted">\nWritten late at night, after getting to know these two fellows at a meetup. If you join the second and third lines in each stanza, the meter becomes iambic tetrameter (save for the line beginning "Knowledge", which must be read as a trochee.)\n</div>\n<div class="poem-container">\n<pre class="poem shadow">\nTonight I\'ve met a pair of men\nWhom I hope I may\nCall new friends\n\nTwo buds, pointed at PhDs\nKnowledge sets both their\nMeans and ends\n\nTwo dudes, united by one car\nStick-shift - they\'re off! in\nHomeward flight\n\nLet\'s meet again, cognition crew\nTo pass another\nPleasant night\n</pre></div>\n'}], 'name': ['Poem for Cameron and Felix'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 10, 12, 0, 41, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['poetry'], 'channel': ['poems'], 'slug': ['cameron-felix'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/10/12/ob', '/poems/cameron-felix'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'Here are two good reads about how and why people form mental models:\n<ul>\n<li><a href=""><a href="https://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/five-lessons-from-history/">https://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/five-lessons-from-history/</a></a></li>\n<li><a href=""><a href="https://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/you-have-to-live-it-to-believe-it/">https://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/you-have-to-live-it-to-believe-it/</a></a></li>\n</ul>\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 10, 11, 12, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['rationality', 'media'], 'channel': ['bookmarks'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/10/11/9a', '/2019/10/11/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'I\'ve reorganized and updated the <a href="/links">links</a> page, on which I recommend websites, blogs, and projects which I think are worth your time. The page is (currently) organized into my favorites, things that are worth a long investigation, and things which are worth at least a passing glance. Let your eyes rove over <a href="/links">the page</a>, and try something which strikes your fancy.\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 10, 8, 12, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/10/08/8j', '/2019/10/08/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<h2>Introduction</h2>\nAs I watched a friend play the ninja videogame Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, I noticed an inscription on an enemy samurai\'s war banner. I wrote it down; now I\'m translating it.\n<blockquote class="shadow">\n有死之荣，无生之辱\n</blockquote>\n<h2>Source and Translation</h2>\nA rough translation of just this phrase is:\n<blockquote class="shadow">\nHaving the honor of death, not the shame of life\n</blockquote>\nThis quotation comes from <a href="https://ctext.org/wu-zi/">the Wuzi</a>, a Chinese military classic by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_Qi">Wu Qi</a>, a Legalist philosopher who lived during the Warring States period. He was a military leader in Wei and, later, a politician in Chu.\nThe full quote, reproduced below, is a sentence which concludes <a href="https://ctext.org/wu-zi/lun-jiang#n41704">the first passage of the section 论将 Lùnjiàng</a>.\n<blockquote class="shadow">\n故师出之日，有死之荣，无生之辱。\n</blockquote>\nI haven\'t read the full passage yet, but a rough translation is:\n<blockquote class="shadow">\nTherefore, on the day that soldiers are dispatched, have the honor of death, not the shame of life.\n</blockquote>\nHere I classify 有 and 无 as imperatives ("have!" / "don\'t have!"), and the characters after them as Noun-Genitive-Noun constructs (e.g. 死之容 "death GEN honor" "the honor of death".)\nFor those who are not Chinese scholars, I\'ll note that Classical Chinese used vertical<a href="#fn-1">1</a> formatting and no punctuation marks, as shown in <a href="https://ctext.org/library.pl?if=en&file=77700&page=124">this Chinese Text Project image of a physical copy of the Wuzi</a>. In addition, the Wuzi was written in "traditional characters," so some of the characters in this phrase would have been written differently. In particular, 无 above would be 無, 师 would be 師, and 荣 would be 榮. Putting it all together, here\'s what it would have looked like on the original wooden strips:\n<blockquote class="ccvert">\n故師出之日有死之榮無生之辱\n</blockquote>\n<a href="/translation">Back to translation index</a>\n<section class="footnotes">\n<ol>\n<li id="fn-1">In the Republic of Taiwan, vernacular literature is still written vertically to this day (though horizontal text is also used, and I don\'t know the relative abundance of each style.)<a href="#fnref-1" class="footnote">↩</a></li>\n</ol>\n</section>\n'}], 'name': ['Translating a War Banner'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 10, 4, 15, 40, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['chinese', 'translation', 'classical'], 'channel': ['pages'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/10/04/vi', '/war-banner'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'I\'ve finished translating <a href="/maku-xiansheng">Mr. Breeches</a>, a laugh-out-loud short story by Lao She. I hope you enjoy it.\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 10, 4, 12, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['translation', 'chinese'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/10/04/qs', '/2019/10/04/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'Media today:\n<ul>\n<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTdXVrm1LF4">【吃货请闭眼】北京超火爆的大虾火锅？大锅40只虾只要128元，2个人吃到撑</a></li>\n<li><a href="https://medium.com/@robertwiblin/what-you-think-about-landfill-and-recycling-is-probably-totally-wrong-3a6cf57049ce">What You Think You Know About Recycling is Probably Totally Wrong</a> by <a href="http://www.robwiblin.com/">Robert Wiblin</a>, Director of Research at 80,000 Hours.</li>\n<li><a href="https://asknature.org/strategy/air-flow-patterns-facilitate-efficient-gas-exchange/">Bird respiratory structure</a></li>\n</ul>\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 9, 24, 12, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['media'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/09/24/kx', '/2019/09/24/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1i-dnAH9Y4">This instructional video</a> from 1953 explains the basic mechanisms that combine to form contemporary mechanical computers (in this case, naval firing computers.) The narration and examples are clear and accessible to the mechanical novice, who should start at the beginning. If you already know about cams and differentials, watch the first few minutes to see the footage of men operating the computers, then <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1i-dnAH9Y4?t=1153">skip to the second half</a>.\n'}], 'name': ['1950s Naval Firing Computers'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 9, 23, 12, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['media'], 'channel': ['bookmarks'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/09/23/gh', '/2019/09/23/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'When I first created the blog index, there were about ten posts already, so I just copied their URLs into the page. Today, faced with the prospect of having to continue to make manual updates to the index, I wrote a Python script which reads the list of posts, and builds the index page for me. I then integrated this script into the overall build script for the website.\nIncremental improvement is all one can do!\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 9, 22, 12, 34, 57, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/09/22/7c', '/2019/09/22/2'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'Reading today:\n<ul>\n<li>\n<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgolfier_brothers">the Montgolfier brothers</a> invented the world\'s first hot-air balloon.\n<blockquote class="shadow">Since the animals [from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgolfier_brothers#Public_demonstrations,_summer_1783">the previous test on 1783-09-19</a>] survived, the king allowed flights with humans. Again in collaboration with Réveillon, Étienne built a 60,000-cubic-foot (1,700 m3) balloon [...] It was about 23 m (75 feet) tall and about 15 m (50 feet) in diameter. Réveillon supplied rich decorative touches of gold figures on a deep blue background, including fleur-de-lis, signs of the zodiac, and suns with Louis XVI\'s face in the center interlaced with the royal monogram in the central section. Red and blue drapery and golden eagles were at the base of the balloon.\n<cite><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgolfier_brothers#Piloted_flight,_autumn_1783">Wikipedia</a></cite></blockquote>\n</li>\n<li>\n<a href="https://dominiccummings.com/2019/06/26/on-the-referendum-33-high-performance-government-cognitive-technologies-michael-nielsen-bret-victor-seeing-rooms/">Dominic Cummings\'s article</a> on just how outmoded political decision-making methods are.\nSummary: "Critical governance decisions in the UK and elsewhere are made without even simple technologies like checklists, let alone modern computers. Data with which to make informed decisions is woefully absent."\n</li>\n</ul>\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 9, 22, 12, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['media'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/09/22/o3', '/2019/09/22/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<div class="muted">\nHayley, AKA "Blue" or "Bloo," was my roommate (or "shmoom-mate") from September 2018 to September 2019. I started composing poems shortly before I moved in with her, and soon found that life in close quarters provided many poetic inspirations. This is one of my two favorites from this period; the other is "<a href="/poems/hayley-boytoy">Hayley and her boy toy</a>".\n</div>\n<div class="poem-container">\n<pre class="poem shadow">\nI was delighted that you called me mellow\nI\'m certain that you count as mellow too\nI testify to you that this Max fellow\nWill just as certainly be missing Bloo\n\nOur shmoomery is done but not forgotten\nWhen thinking of me please don\'t hang your head\nWe shan\'t forget each other \'til we\'re rotten\nNo need to eulogize before we\'re dead\n\nIf by some chance to SoCal comes a Hayley\nIn Snoop\'s hometown you know you have a pal\nTransmitting good cheer to you on the daily\nWhat\'s left to say? You rule! Go get \'em, gal!\n</pre></div>\n'}], 'name': ['Goodbye, Hayley'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 9, 20, 13, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['poetry'], 'channel': ['poems'], 'slug': ['hayley-goodbye'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/09/20/6j', '/poems/hayley-goodbye'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Saber-Tooth Lion'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 9, 19, 22, 30, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'photo': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/saber-tooth-lion.png'], 'photo-small': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/480/saber-tooth-lion.png'], 'category': ['slc'], 'channel': ['sithlords'], 'slug': ['saber-tooth-lion'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/09/20/ss', '/sithlordchallenge/saber-tooth-lion'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'It\'s been a frustrating day. My beloved Kinesis Advantage keyboard, that stalwart defender against repetitive strain injury, has developed an intermittent problem where it completely fails to function.\nI\'ve managed to do some computer work today anyway, but I had to use the horrifically non-ergonomic keyboard of my Macbook Pro 2012, which causes me wrist pain after an hour or two of use. It also has the tiny little problem of a nearly-dead "e" key. The most common letter in the English language is currently unavailable to me unless I press hard, in a manner most non-ergonomic for my left middle finger. And, every time I stab the "e" key and it doesn\'t fire, I get a little more frustrated, a little more ticked off at my equipment, and a little less able to take things easy and get work done.\nOne day I will be able to type at a luxurious setup which does not destroy my body during use, so let me focus on the positive and try to dissolve some frustration.\nThe day of the luxurious setup is getting closer. For years I\'ve typed while hunched over because a laptop was all I had, but I have a cable coming in the mail that will let me hook up a monitor, thus blessing me with improved head, shoulder, and arm position for typing.\nFurthermore, of all the people I could possibly know, one of my local friends is an expert on keyboard design and repair. I\'m helping him paint a building soon, and I bet he would be willing to fix my Kinesis in return.\nProblem solved -- in the future, at least. Until then, I\'ll have to find some other way to type: job applications and translations won\'t write themselves.\n[2019-12-22: Shortly after this writing this post, I found a backup Kinesis to use until the original was fixed. On 2019-12-22, I <a href="/notes/2019/12/22/1">repaired my keyboard</a>, and so far it\'s working fine.]\n'}], 'name': ['Broken Kinesis, Part 1'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 9, 17, 12, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2019, 12, 22, 13, 57, 10, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'channel': ['articles'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/09/17/py', '/2019/09/17/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'After my last D&D game folded, in June of 2018, I felt like I didn\'t want anything to do with D&D for a while. Only after another year or so did I resume reading and commenting in the blogosphere, and only now am I thinking about next steps for serious work on my game.\nThe month after the game folded, I wrote a brief post-mortem analysis for the five or six sessions of the 2018 game. Here is a rewritten and distilled version: the key points as I see them today, with the benefit of longer hindsight.\n<ol>\n<li>I believed too strongly in fully-automatic tools for replacing my need to do certain kinds of work, rather than narrow, focused tools which could augment my intelligence and capacity for reason. Another 18 months of work experience, reading, writing, and hobby experimentation has taught me that pie-in-the-sky large-scale programming projects take too long to become useful started, suffer from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scope_creep">scope creep</a>, and cause me to drift around in the mental world of "wouldn\'t it be nice."\n</li>\n<li>I didn\'t understand the skills for managing players, individually and as a group. A non-exhaustive list of what I mean by "managing" includes encouraging or tempering emotions; noticing when out-of-game matters (weather, difficult day at work, etc.) are interfering with someone\'s focus; and responding promptly and accurately to player questions. In other words, I\'m talking about all that goes into running a good game session, as a building block of the eternal campaign. What frustrated me is that making progress here seems partially dependent on breaking a vicious cycle. How do I practice table management without a table? And how do I keep a table if I can\'t manage? Oh, I have run good game sessions, all right. I know that I have what it takes, SOME of the time -- which makes it so frustrating that I can\'t (yet) do that reliably, and thus can\'t (yet) provide a strong enough baseline quality for game sessions that momentum carries players past the point, as a group, where a bad session becomes a reason to give up instead of a reason to try again. As Alexis has put it, <q>D&D is such a hard game to know</q>.\n</li>\n<li>I didn\'t put enough work into acquiring abilities that would help with point 2. For instance, I didn\'t memorize my own rules and world well enough answer instantly when asked for clarification.\n</li>\n</ol>\nAbove, I mentioned "next steps for serious work." At present, those include:\n<ul>\n<li>rereading Alexis\'s 2018--2019 DM Masterclass series of posts, <a href="https://tao-dnd.blogspot.com/2018/08/a-game-is-rose.html">which starts here</a>, and doing its exercises</li>\n<li>uploading my rules, files, and other items to this site</li>\n<li>adding comment functionality to this site, so the players have somewhere they can park notes and questions for my review, enabling discussion during and between games</li>\n<li>in general, more writing, more posts, more comments -- more brain time spent, full stop</li>\n</ul>\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 9, 16, 12, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['dnd'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/09/16/hj', '/2019/09/16/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Darth Preta'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 9, 15, 17, 51, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'artist': ['JW'], 'photo': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/darth-preta.png'], 'photo-small': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/480/darth-preta.png'], 'content': [{'html': 'The creator describes Preta as <q>the ancient revenant of a dead Jedi, who feeds off fallen Sith and Jedi to increase his power.</q>\n'}], 'category': ['slc'], 'channel': ['sithlords'], 'slug': ['darth-preta'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/09/16/oq', '/sithlordchallenge/darth-preta'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'The English language can be hard, and it changes from place to place. Here are some important Californian phrases to help you fit in.\n<ul>\n<li>"sup" -- hello; how are you?</li>\n<li>"chill" -- good; cool</li>\n<li>"dank" -- very good; very cool</li>\n<li>"bruh" -- I am pleasantly surprised</li>\n<li>"bro" / "brah" -- friend; brother</li>\n<li>"brooo" -- good idea</li>\n<li>"bro!" -- what are you doing?</li>\n<li>"fosho" / "aight" -- yes, sure, no problem</li>\n<li>"mad" / "hella" -- very; lots</li>\n<li>"gnarly" -- excellent; terrible</li>\n<li>"faded" -- high on marijuana</li>\n<li>"gnar" -- something cool</li>\n<li>"shred" -- what you do to a gnar</li>\n</ul>\nMost importantly, if you ever forget what to say, the word "dude" can mean anything and is always acceptable.\n'}], 'name': ['Californian Phrases'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 9, 13, 12, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'channel': ['pages'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/09/13/od', '/cali-phrases'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': "Only once have I used a grocery-delivery service. I picked out my items, and the following evening a young delivery man came with my order.\nThe receipt that the delivery man left with me had been printed by the same process used for the receipts of in-store cash registers. The layout and formatting were identical.\nHowever, in the space where a cash register's receipt would have read, "Today, your cashier was So-and-so," this receipt instead said:\n"Today, your cashier was Virtual."\n"}], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 9, 8, 12, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/09/08/yi', '/2019/09/08/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Darth Obliti'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 9, 7, 16, 15, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'photo': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/darth-obliti.png'], 'photo-small': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/480/darth-obliti.png'], 'content': [{'html': 'Obliti is <a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/oblitus#Latin">a conjugated form</a> of the Latin participle "forgotten."\n'}], 'category': ['slc'], 'channel': ['sithlords'], 'slug': ['darth-obliti'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/09/07/8o', '/sithlordchallenge/darth-obliti'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Unnamed Sith'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 9, 3, 17, 39, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'artist': ['Maddy'], 'photo': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/unnamed-sith.png'], 'photo-small': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/480/unnamed-sith.png'], 'content': [{'html': 'A final draft may one day arrive!\n'}], 'category': ['slc'], 'channel': ['sithlords'], 'slug': ['unnamed-sith'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/09/04/nk', '/sithlordchallenge/unnamed-sith'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'I\'ve <a href="/sithlordchallenge#my-duties">added a section to the Sith Lord Challenge</a> which discusses the different hats I\'ve been wearing as the facilitator.\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 9, 3, 12, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['slc'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/09/03/p8', '/2019/09/03/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ["Khz'zithr Mai'Tzo-Kol"], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 9, 2, 19, 24, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'artist': ['E-16Man'], 'photo': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/khz-zithr-mai-tzo-kol.png'], 'photo-small': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/480/khz-zithr-mai-tzo-kol.png'], 'category': ['slc'], 'channel': ['sithlords'], 'slug': ['khz-zithr-mai-tzo-kol'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/09/03/gf', '/sithlordchallenge/khz-zithr-mai-tzo-kol'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Darth Pthaaargh'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 9, 2, 15, 41, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'photo': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/darth-pthaaargh.png'], 'photo-small': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/480/darth-pthaaargh.png'], 'content': [{'html': "This entry's creator reminds would-be foes that Darth Pthaaargh's beefy arms can be used for punching and strangling.\n"}], 'category': ['slc'], 'channel': ['sithlords'], 'slug': ['darth-pthaaargh'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/09/02/dt', '/sithlordchallenge/darth-pthaaargh'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'The <a href="/sithlordchallenge">Sith Lord Challenge</a> is coming along fabulously. We are up to 18 entries!\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 9, 2, 12, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['slc'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/09/02/us', '/2019/09/02/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Darth Chef Cat'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 9, 1, 17, 55, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'artist': ['Lyla'], 'photo': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/darth-chef-cat.png'], 'photo-small': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/480/darth-chef-cat.png'], 'content': [{'html': "Recipient of My Aunt's Seal of Approval.\n"}], 'category': ['slc'], 'channel': ['sithlords'], 'slug': ['darth-chef-cat'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/09/02/id', '/sithlordchallenge/darth-chef-cat'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Darth Dick'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 9, 1, 17, 34, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'photo': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/darth-dick.png'], 'photo-small': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/480/darth-dick.png'], 'content': [{'html': '<q>His ability to drink all the beer before you arrive is the ultimate evil.</q>\n'}], 'category': ['slc'], 'channel': ['sithlords'], 'slug': ['darth-dick'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/09/02/a3', '/sithlordchallenge/darth-dick'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Darth Lord Kraetertorius'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 9, 1, 14, 21, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'photo': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/darth-lord-kraetertorius.png'], 'photo-small': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/480/darth-lord-kraetertorius.png'], 'content': [{'html': "This Sith Lord's creator notes that Kraetertorius <q>has an S rank in every stat.</q>\n"}], 'category': ['slc'], 'channel': ['sithlords'], 'slug': ['darth-lord-kraetertorius'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/09/01/zy', '/sithlordchallenge/darth-lord-kraetertorius'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Darth Alley'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 8, 31, 16, 59, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'artist': ['Liev'], 'photo': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/darth-alley.png'], 'photo-small': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/480/darth-alley.png'], 'category': ['slc'], 'channel': ['sithlords'], 'slug': ['darth-alley'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/08/31/mb', '/sithlordchallenge/darth-alley'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Running Cat-Mask Ski-Sith'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 8, 31, 16, 18, 24, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'artist': ['Mary'], 'photo': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/running-cat-mask-ski-sith.png'], 'photo-small': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/480/running-cat-mask-ski-sith.png'], 'category': ['slc'], 'channel': ['sithlords'], 'slug': ['running-cat-mask-ski-sith'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/08/31/qt', '/sithlordchallenge/running-cat-mask-ski-sith'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Dominus Pectus'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 8, 31, 9, 49, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'artist': ['Fedora'], 'photo': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/dominus-pectus.png'], 'photo-small': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/480/dominus-pectus.png'], 'content': [{'html': 'Don\'t miss <a href="/fedoradventure">of Fedoradventure fame</a>, the teeny text adventure starring the creator of Dominus Pectus.\n'}], 'category': ['slc'], 'channel': ['sithlords'], 'slug': ['dominus-pectus'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/08/31/bp', '/sithlordchallenge/dominus-pectus'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Darth Big Boi Maxwell'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 8, 30, 13, 55, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'artist': ['Ruby'], 'photo': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/darth-big-boi-maxwell.png'], 'photo-small': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/480/darth-big-boi-maxwell.png'], 'content': [{'html': 'Recipient of the Prize for Benighted Dingusry.\n'}], 'category': ['slc'], 'channel': ['sithlords'], 'slug': ['darth-big-boi-maxwell'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/08/30/ra', '/sithlordchallenge/darth-big-boi-maxwell'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Spins the Hypnotist'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 8, 30, 10, 13, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'photo': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/spins-the-hypnotist.png'], 'photo-small': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/480/spins-the-hypnotist.png'], 'category': ['slc'], 'channel': ['sithlords'], 'slug': ['spins-the-hypnotist'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/08/30/ce', '/sithlordchallenge/spins-the-hypnotist'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Darth Asshole'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 8, 29, 21, 43, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'artist': ['Jaime'], 'photo': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/darth-asshole.png'], 'photo-small': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/480/darth-asshole.png'], 'category': ['slc'], 'channel': ['sithlords'], 'slug': ['darth-asshole'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/08/30/ao', '/sithlordchallenge/darth-asshole'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'I\'ve updated <a href="/sithlordchallenge">the Sith Lord Challenge</a> page with entries from the first five participants. Have a look at these inimitable, unthinkable, top-notch Star Wars fan creations.\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 8, 29, 12, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['slc'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/08/29/ay', '/2019/08/29/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Veex'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 8, 28, 20, 0, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'photo': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/veex.png'], 'photo-small': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/480/veex.png'], 'category': ['slc'], 'channel': ['sithlords'], 'slug': ['veex'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/08/29/f9', '/sithlordchallenge/veex'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Prengubi Cjiiiifgh'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 8, 28, 12, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'artist': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'photo': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/prengubi-cjiiiifgh.png'], 'photo-small': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/480/prengubi-cjiiiifgh.png'], 'content': [{'html': "This teated fellow's name is pronounced "prehng-GOO-bee kyee-ee-ee-eef" or /pɹεᶇ'gubi kji'i:i:if/\n"}], 'category': ['slc'], 'channel': ['sithlords'], 'slug': ['prengubi-cjiiiifgh'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/08/28/vv', '/sithlordchallenge/prengubi-cjiiiifgh'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Sahr Eh Kolpa'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 8, 27, 9, 20, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'photo': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/sahr-eh-kolpa.png'], 'photo-small': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/480/sahr-eh-kolpa.png'], 'category': ['slc'], 'channel': ['sithlords'], 'slug': ['sahr-eh-kolpa'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/08/27/m2', '/sithlordchallenge/sahr-eh-kolpa'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Darth Moba the Hutt™'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 8, 27, 8, 31, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'photo': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/darth-moba-the-hutt.png'], 'photo-small': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/480/darth-moba-the-hutt.png'], 'category': ['slc'], 'channel': ['sithlords'], 'slug': ['darth-moba-the-hutt'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/08/27/tp', '/sithlordchallenge/darth-moba-the-hutt'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Darth Vegtablor'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 8, 26, 21, 10, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'photo': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/darth-vegtablor.png'], 'photo-small': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/480/darth-vegtablor.png'], 'content': [{'html': 'According to the anonymous creator of this entry, <q>Darth Vegtablor is a Sith Lord by association of color and taste only.</q>\n'}], 'category': ['slc'], 'channel': ['sithlords'], 'slug': ['darth-vegtablor'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/08/27/ps', '/sithlordchallenge/darth-vegtablor'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Duglim Hohmschiz (MS-48)'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 8, 25, 17, 15, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'photo': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/duglim-hohmschiz-ms-48.png'], 'photo-small': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/480/duglim-hohmschiz-ms-48.png'], 'category': ['slc'], 'channel': ['sithlords'], 'slug': ['duglim-hohmschiz-ms-48'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/08/26/xx', '/sithlordchallenge/duglim-hohmschiz-ms-48'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Korgoth, the World Destroyer'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 8, 24, 17, 35, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'photo': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/korgoth-the-world-destroyer.png'], 'photo-small': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/480/korgoth-the-world-destroyer.png'], 'content': [{'html': "Korgoth's creator asked me to point out that Korgoth is wearing socks and sandals.\n"}], 'category': ['slc'], 'channel': ['sithlords'], 'slug': ['korgoth-the-world-destroyer'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/08/25/vs', '/sithlordchallenge/korgoth-the-world-destroyer'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Darth Prius'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 8, 24, 0, 14, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'artist': ['Matt'], 'photo': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/darth-prius.png'], 'photo-small': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/480/darth-prius.png'], 'content': [{'html': "This sluggy Lord's name is pronounced "PRY-us" or /'pɹaɪǝs/, not "PREE-us" like the car.\n"}], 'category': ['slc'], 'channel': ['sithlords'], 'slug': ['darth-prius'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/08/24/su', '/sithlordchallenge/darth-prius'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'Media today: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2sukhHU1gzbJgEodn1haQ2HtfA_rdoge">Making Future Interfaces</a>, a video series on ways to improve webpage design/styling.\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 8, 22, 12, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['media'], 'channel': ['bookmarks'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/08/22/cy', '/2019/08/22/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'Some of the tidbits I found while cleaning my room in preparation for moving:\n<ul>\n<li>circuit diagrams and truth tables from spring 2019, when I was studying the computer architecture course <a href="https://www.nand2tetris.org/">NAND to Tetris</a>, AKA "Elements of Computing Systems."</li>\n<li>a crude doodle of a fox person, which led to <a href="/sithlordchallenge">the Sith Lord Challenge</a></li>\n<li>journal notes from a Joshua Tree camping trip</li>\n<li>prose and poetry resulting from three evenings\' worth of writing games, over the last year or so</li>\n</ul>\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 8, 21, 12, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/08/21/b7', '/2019/08/21/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<div class="muted">\nShortly before moving away from Portland, I got the chance to have a farewell lunch with Professor Hyong Rhew, one of just three or four people whom I call "my most beloved teachers." Also present was my long-time friend Chris Stasse, whom I similarly call one of "my most beloved friends."\nThis poem commemorates the mischievous post-prandial activities of that day. I believe this is the first poem I\'ve written for Chris; it probably won\'t be the last.\n</div>\n<div class="poem-container">\n<pre class="poem shadow">\n最后一杯\n干了之后\n老师告别\n哥俩要走\n笑着回家\n大麻便抽\n疯狂假想\n做双朋友\n</pre>\n</div>\nA loose translation, 2019-12-20, 11:41:01-0800:\n<div class="poem-container">\n<pre class="poem shadow">\nOne last cup\nDrained\nThe teacher bids goodbye\n\nThe two boys\nLeave\nLaughing all the way home\n\n"Big Hemp" is\nSmoked\nWild fancies take flight\n\nSuch is a pair of friends!\n</pre></div>\n'}], 'name': ['After the Farewell Lunch'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 8, 20, 19, 0, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['poetry'], 'channel': ['poems'], 'slug': ['after-farewell-lunch'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/08/21/3f', '/poems/after-farewell-lunch'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'Updates today:\n<ul>\n<li>fixed a <a href="/ryanquest">Ryan Quest</a> bug and put the game back online</li>\n<li>did some tinkering with the index page</li>\n<li>fixed some broken links</li>\n<li>deprecated a folder and moved its contents</li>\n</ul>\nYak-shaving included coming up with a way to keep my URL scheme tidy in order to use excellent solution #1 for the above problems -- only to realize it wouldn\'t work because my articles don\'t use file extensions, and having to use not-as-good solution #2. Incremental!\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 8, 10, 12, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2019, 11, 19, 15, 55, 50, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/08/10/ba', '/2019/08/10/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Darth Patrick Flat-Nuts'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 8, 3, 21, 9, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'artist': ['Larry Drui'], 'photo': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/darth-patrick-flat-nuts.png'], 'photo-small': ['/static/sithlordchallenge/480/darth-patrick-flat-nuts.png'], 'category': ['slc'], 'channel': ['sithlords'], 'slug': ['darth-patrick-flat-nuts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/08/04/hq', '/sithlordchallenge/darth-patrick-flat-nuts'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'Today, I worked toward adding simple text <a href="https://indieweb.org/note">notes</a>. You are reading one of them right now!\nRemaining items include:\n<ul>\n<li>figure out something better to put in <code><h1></code> tags for individual posts [2019-09-18: done]</li>\n<li>create year/month/day listing pages [planning to reuse the code for creating <a href="/blog">the blog/feed</a>, which is still evolving]</li>\n<li>redirect attempts to access a directory to the appropriate listing page</li>\n</ul>\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 8, 1, 12, 34, 57, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['indieweb', 'upgrade'], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/08/01/td', '/2019/08/01/2'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'Today, I tried to make Fluffy\'s <a class="u-in-reply-to" href="http://beesbuzz.biz/food/273-Easy-sausage-soup">recipe for sausage soup</a>, but I\'m a pretty bad cook, and it came out all wrong. While the flavor was strong and tasty, the vegetables had been cooked too quickly and too long, leaving them with little texture. The sausages fared better: while a bit overcooked, their flavor became stronger and spicier.\nI salvaged things as best I could. I drained out the broth to use in a savory sauce or to use in a second attempt, and I saved the beans (which were fine) and the sausage to fry for part of a meal tomorrow.\nFurthermore, I knew I was unlikely to get the recipe right on the first try, so when I was in the store I bought enough ingredients to try two or three times. Once I do it a few more times I\'ll get it right.\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 8, 1, 12, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/08/01/hj', '/2019/07/23/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': "<pre>\nHoity, howdy, hiddly ho.\nI'm an update: look at me go!\n</pre>\n"}], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 8, 1, 12, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'channel': ['blurts'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/08/01/js', '/2019/08/01/1'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'published': [DateTime(2019, 7, 22, 9, 1, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2021, 11, 15, 23, 1, 26, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': '<h2>Contact</h2>\nI relish meeting new people!\nMost of my webpages accept comments. You can also send email to <a href="mailto:maxwelljoslyn@gmail.com">maxwelljoslyn@gmail.com</a>. 在给我发邮件时，英、中文都可以随意混合。\n<h2>About This Site</h2>\nThis website is my personal CMS and brain accelerator, as well as my node in <a href="https://indieweb.org">the IndieWeb</a> (which means I use this site, rather than social media, to communicate, bookmark, and share.)\nHere, I publish <a href="/thedrongo">interviews</a>, <a href="/poems">poetry</a>, <a href="/translation">Chinese translations</a>, surreal <a href="/ryanquest">videogames</a>, and commentary on <a href="/books">books</a>, <a href="/favorite-poems">poetry</a>, and <a href="/links">websites</a>. I\'m also running <a href="/sithlordchallenge">an art contest</a>, open to everyone.\n<h2>About Me</h2>\nAs of fall 2021, I\'m studying for an MS in Computational Media at UCSC. I\'m also an active member of Tiny Factories, an art collective, and the IndieWeb, a community pioneering the fusion of personal websites and decentralized social media.\nI earned a BA in Linguistics at Reed College. I\'ve worked in computational linguistics research, Chinese translation, and software development.\n<div class="muted">I am not Max Joslyn the illustrator and Twitter user; Max R. Joslyn the camera operator, documentary filmmaker and Flickr user; Max Joslyn the Pinterest user; or Joslyn Maxwell the author.</div>\n<h2>Copyright Notice</h2>\nUnless otherwise noted, all website material is © Maxwell Joslyn, 2018-present.\n'}], 'name': ['About'], 'channel': ['pages'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/07/22/er', '/about'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'It\'s nearly 5 PM, and at 6 I have plans to go biking with my good friend Jaime. In my backpack I\'ve placed a peanut-butter sandwich, a bottle of water, my sunglasses, and a benzocaine lozenge in case my throat acts up.\nHayley, my roommate, is in a chipper mood as she gathers her own supplies. Tomorrow, in her infinite coolness, she will summit Mount Adams.\nI\'ve been feeling down lately. The job search has so far been fruitless, and the way my savings are dwindling, at the end of August I\'ll have no choice but to leave Portland.\nI sigh, and Hayley says I\'m full of big sighs today. This prompts me to share my feelings with her: I\'ve certainly accomplished a thing or two since March, but my bohemian experiment seems like a big failure<a href="#fn-1">1</a>, and I dread leaving Portland, where I\'ve spent my entire adult life (save one year) since age 18.\nHayley reassures me that everyone goes through a period where they have no idea what they\'re doing or where they\'re headed next. "It\'s a rite of passage," she says, looking somewhere to my left. "You speak another language. You\'re a self-starter. You\'ve got a degree and a history of employment. Things will work out."\nSweet Hayley. The reminder that others go through this is genuinely welcome. I\'m apt to forget that <q>everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.</q>\nI feel better, or at least better enough to go biking. I thank Hayley for the pep talk, wish her a good climb, and go downstairs.\nOn the ride to the MAX rail station, I catch my pedal on a curb and have to leap off the bike to recover, but I\'m fine and so is my bike. The train ride to Killingsworth is uneventful.\n<pre><code>-*-*-*-\n\n</code></pre>\nI find Jaime at a little park near the Killingsworth station. We decide to ride around with no agenda, letting our moods lead the way.\nAfter roaming around, we come across a public rose garden which neither of us have ever seen. We dismount and go for a stroll, conversing all the while about women, dating, meeting people, finding new jobs, and figuring out one\'s path in life. I help Jaime convince himself to move into consulting, and he helps me convince myself that for my next job I should focus on Chinese, and not computers. He tells me about some dates he went on recently, and tells me not to worry so hard about finding dates myself.\nWe go riding again. I love the feeling of dronging around on a bicycle and talking with a buddy. It\'s something I haven\'t done since high school.\nWe notice a Fred Meyer grocery store, and resolve to buy ourselves dinner. We end up with a turkey-brie sandwich, half a pound of popcorn chicken, a tray of blueberries, and six cans of Uinta golden ale. I commit what I consider a mild faux pas: Jaime waits in line to get the booze, but I go through the self-checkout instead of waiting with him and paying at the cashier. I file it away as a lesson in case I\'m ever in charge of keeping a group together.\nProvisions in hand, we return to the park where we began our ride. The food hits the spot; we eat everything, and drink all but one can of beer. (It\'s on my table as I write; I\'ll drink it tomorrow.)\nWe discuss many things as we eat, but eventually I bring up the fears I am having about my uncertain future and the seeming inevitability of leaving Portland. Jaime argues that leaving is not a loss, but a gift.\n"Being back down in California means you\'ll have a lot more opportunities than up here," he says.\n"More people, more companies, more industries, more area ..." I say.\n"Exactly," he says. "There\'s a lot more going on in SoCal or the Bay than there is in this city of half a million."\nThere\'s more to the conversation -- there\'s more to everything I\'ve said here than what I\'ve said here -- but no matter.\n<pre><code>-*-*-*-\n\n</code></pre>\nJaime has an idea. "If you want a challenge, we can bike from here all the way to Pioneer Square."\nI recognize that this is a chance to face my fears of biking on major streets, but at first I\'m apprehensive. "Let\'s go to the edge of the park so I can take a look."\nWe clean up the trash from our meal and walk to the street. Jaime was right: there\'s very little traffic on the road right now.\n"All we\'d be doing is following the MAX tracks," he says. "And with no traffic, it\'s a good time to practice." Given the practice I\'ve been doing in Southeast, I have to agree: a summer night is the best time to bike.\nBolstered by Jaime\'s encouragement, the perfect riding conditions, and the two beers in my belly, I mount up. We list through a crosswalk, skirt a family with kids, and turn south.\nWithin two blocks, my fears have melted away. I\'m on a road that would have scared me off yesterday, and I\'m enjoying it without anxiety. How can this be?\nSeveral minutes later, Jaime signals to pull off the road. "There\'s a good view of the river if we walk thataways," he says, but the view turns out to be obscured by trees and a fence. We laugh it off. On the way back to the street, we theorize about what\'s going on in the single lighted apartment at the top of a residential building.\nWe keep going. After a downhill straightaway where we build up to exhilarating speed, we cross an intersection where a score of mopeds and dirt bikes are idling, greedily revving their engines in anticipation of The Green. Our route turns such that I can look back at their ranks as they get the green light.\nThey\'re coming around the curve, too! They\'re coming our way! They\'re going to pass us!\nI\'m beside myself with excitement at the noise, at the spectacle, and at the realization that this group of speed demons must come together every Friday night to race around. They\'re a community! They\'re a social group! This is perfect!\nAnd then, as if the moment weren\'t wonderful enough, the dirt bikers start to pass us, and every second or third bike is reared up on their back wheel while maintaining full speed.\nSuddenly: panic. The road ahead routes the bike lane straight through an area with an offramp -- twenty feet of the bike lane must be cut through by any motorist taking the ramp -- and the crowd of dirt bikers are indeed cutting through!\nI\'m doomed!\nAll my fear returns at once as I contemplate trying to weave through half a dozen motor bikes, and I come to a complete stop just before the twenty-foot section ...\n... But the fear doesn\'t last. I see the dirt bikers are in complete control of their trajectories, I get up my nerve, and I pedal forward.\nThe scary stretch isn\'t so scary at all. I ignore the dirt bikes on my flank, and pedal straight through. After just a few seconds, the danger is past. The bikers are all to my right, heading up the ramp, and I am fine.\n<pre><code>-*-*-*-\n\n</code></pre>\nJaime and I pedal south toward the river. As we ride, we hear (and sometimes see) the dirt bike squad tearing across bridges and other straightaways in the nest of roads we are navigating.\nAt the riverside, we elect to cross on the bike path under the bridge. A man and a woman biking ahead of us reach the path a few seconds ahead of us, and when we see them again, they\'re off to one side, straddling their bikes and kissing passionately.\nWe go down to the bike path, and are rewarded by the sight of a train. I stop and watch it go by for a while, and reap the further reward of hearing the train whistle. One minor, but fond, memory of college is wandering around Reed campus at night while listening to the trains blow in the distance.\nJaime and I finish crossing the bridge, then bike to a taco truck which he swears by. The al pastor is delicious.\n<pre><code>-*-*-*-\n\n</code></pre>\nI hug Jaime goodbye, and thank him for all he gave me this evening. We part ways.\nI step into the MAX light rail, Orange Line to Milwaukie, and hang my bike on a peg near the door. The train doors close and we pull away, bound southeast across the river.\nI stand next to my bike. In the leftmost seat of the row in front of me, a bald, goateed man in an orange Buddhist robe debates something with a drunk who gets off at the next stop.\nI cast glances at the robed man. I want to ask him, Are you a Buddhist monk?, to see whether he\'s really a monk, or just wearing their costume. I notice that he has Asian wooden bead bracelets on his left wrist.\nThe possible monk stretches. In doing so, he catches my eye.\nHe says something. I don\'t hear him.\nI ask what he said. He doesn\'t hear me.\nThen he says, "Excuse me? I thought I heard you ask a legitimate question."\nIt becomes apparent that the monk is genuine.\nHe speaks to me. He says that as long as what you are doing comes from the heart, and is done with focus and without concern for external motivations, it\'s worth doing. He points toward someone who\'s doing something that he dislikes, but when I tell him I missed it, he doesn\'t tell me what he saw.\nInstead, he reproaches himself. "I shouldn\'t be pointing. I have trouble with that sometimes," he says. "But when I see someone doing something illegitimate, something fake, I get frustrated."\nA tired-looking man with tattoos on his arms and deep pits in his face gets on the bus. He sits across from the monk and begins murdering a candy bar. Crumbs dust his lap and the front of his shirt.\nThe monk sees an opportunity. "That\'s legitimacy," he says to the tired man. "You\'re loving that candy bar. You\'re enjoying it. What if someone made fun of you for the way you\'re eating?"\nThe man laughs. "I ain\'t giving a fuck either way."\nThe monk keeps going. He points out the man\'s shoes ("only had \'em one week") and his scuffed leather bag.\n"If I took everything out of that bag, it wouldn\'t matter. You care about that bag," the monk says. He pulls off his own sandal. "Look at my feet." (They\'re dirty and seem somewhat misshapen.) "I\'m wearing these piece of shit shoes. Who cares?"\nAs the monk continues talking to me, the other man unlaces one of his shoes, then removes the sock as well. Again, the monk is quick to act: he reaches over and pokes the guy\'s toe.\n"You see that? You haven\'t even had time to clip your nails. That hurts, doesn\'t it? Let me see your hands. Mine are soft and pathetic. May I touch yours?"\nThe candy-bar killer holds out his right hand, then his left, palm-down. The monk\'s hands are palm-up, and he strokes them across the other man\'s palms.\n"What about your face?" the monk asks.\nThe guy seems embarrassed. "Acne," he says.\nThe monk makes a noise to mean, "Oh, come on," and the sitting man reveals that he\'s an ironworker, and a welder too.\nThe monk talks about family. About how we\'re all here to find mates and make children, and how nothing is permanent, and how honesty is the source of legitimacy.\n"You\'re a biker," he says, shifting his gaze toward me. "When you bike, are you thinking about anything else? No! You\'re focused. You\'re biking to work, or to class. Wherever you go -- don\'t tell me where!"\nThe monk describes how he would teach someone who comes to him asking to learn meditation. "I\'ll tell you to sit down on the ground," he says. "Then I\'ll ask, \'Have you washed?\' and you\'ll say, \'No, I haven\'t,\' and I\'ll send you to go wash. You\'ll come back and I\'ll ask whether you\'ve cut your toenails, and if you haven\'t, I\'ll tell you to go clip your nails. You\'ll come back and I\'ll ask if you\'re hungry, and if you\'re hungry, I\'ll tell you to go eat."\n"I might take you up on that offer," the ironworker says quietly. I don\'t think the monk heard.\nThe monk asks me, "Do you have a pen?" I pull one out of my backpack, uncap it, and hand it to him.\n"Do you have a wrist?" I extend my arm toward him, and he starts writing. "Shunryu Suzuki," he says. He can\'t write clearly on my arm, so he tells me to do it myself, which I do.\n"Do you have a computer or smartphone?" I get my phone out; the monk pronounces the name again, and I pull up <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shunry%C5%AB_Suzuki">Suzuki\'s Wikipedia page</a>. He founded the first Buddhist temple outside Asia, and kicked off the popularization of Zen in the United States.\n"He wrote a book," the monk tells me. "You should read it." Then he\'s back to telling me how all that matters is believing something in your heart, and doing it. I want to tell him that he\'s preaching to the choir, that I\'ve been living the dream of artistic fulfillment as best I can, that I wholeheartedly agree with him -- but I just nod vigorously, because it\'s hard to get a word in and anyway there\'s no need.\nThe monk\'s stop approaches, and he gets up.\n"Thank you," I say.\nImmediately, he blows a disappointed raspberry. "\'Thank you?\' I was never here!"\nThe ironworker repeats what he said earlier so the monk can hear it: "I want to take you up on that offer."\nThe monk shakes his head. "I\'m not doing that tonight, I\'m not teaching you tonight. I\'m going to a homeless shelter to teach Zen."\nThe train stops -- the doors open -- the monk leaves -- the doors close.\nAs we travel onward, the ironworker shoots me a look. "That guy seemed sketchy to me. Why did he put all that out there, then take back what he offered?"\nI don\'t think the monk was offering to give instruction immediately in any case, but I don\'t point that out. I just agree.\nHe then gives me his own dose of philosophy: "Life is bullshit, and the world is full of bad people. There are good people, too, but they tend to keep it quiet inside themselves."\n"Then what I want to do is find out good people and spend time with them," I say.\n"Look that way," he tells me. I find myself looking at my reflection in the dark window.\n"That\'s the only person you need to be true to," the ironworker says.\nThe conversation turns to a more practical matter: he who vanquished the candy bar needs directions to downtown. I break it to him that downtown is the opposite direction entirely, but if he gets off with me at Bybee he\'ll be able to take the Orange back the way we came.\nWe arrive at Bybee Station. I guide the man to the schedule monitor; we see that the wait is only eight minutes. I wish him a good night, and shoulder my bike.\nAs I\'m walking toward the stairs, he calls out to me: "Be the true you!"\n<pre><code>-*-*-*-\n\n</code></pre>\nI bike homeward, physically weary but too excited to feel it. I can feel the presence of the Muse. I visualize it as a squat goblin sitting on my head, patiently waiting for me to open my computer and start typing.\nHome. Stairs. Strip. Milk. Shower. Keyboard. Write. Remember. Document. Savor.\n<pre><code>-*-*-*-\n\n</code></pre>\nThis evening was magnificent. As if in response to my growing fear of losing my connection to this city, I got to see a bunch of it on display all at once. The meandering initial ride, the unknown rose garden, the face-my-fears ride, the dirt bike crew, the hesitation at the twenty-foot stretch, the lovers, the train whistle, the monk on the light rail -- who could ask for a better sendoff?\nOne day I\'ll leave Portland, and that day may be as soon as one month from now -- but when I miss it, I can always recall tonight.\n(2:36 AM)\n<section class="footnotes">\n<ol>\n<li id="fn-1">2019-07-25: Hmm, what does it mean to "fail at being bohemian?" Looking back, I disagree with the notion that spending a few months figuring out my next career move while indulging in creative pursuits is a failure if one part succeeds but not the other.<a href="#fnref-1" class="footnote">↩</a></li>\n</ol>\n</section>\n'}], 'name': ['The Friday Ride'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 7, 20, 2, 36, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 2, 12, 10, 4, 20, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'channel': ['pages'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/07/20/fb', '/fridayride'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['The Promise, Part W'], 'content': [{'html': '<pre>\nIf you were transformed into a wooden cylinder,\ntransported to the highest point of your current location,\nand dropped so that you rolled,\nwould you like where you ended up?\n</pre>\n<q>You\'ve overlooked all the colors of flavor: all 16 million of them!</q>\n<cite>D</cite>\nTo be precise, (16^2)^3 = 256^3 = 16,777,216 colors, if we\'re talking about RGB colors with two hex digits to specify each channel, e.g. FFAABB.\nThere\'s a connection here with wagon wheels. The following code is semi-pseudocode for Inform 7.\n<code>\n<pre>\nNeeds two hands free:\n"You grasp the red wagon wheel between your thumb and forefinger. With the other hand, you peel off its wax paper backing.\nYou pull back your lips, baring your teeth like a horse, and open a pinprick of space between your top and bottom chompers. After bringing the wagon wheel to your lips, you take a nibble fit for a fly.\nNothing feels different."\n(set a counter to 0, incrementing on each subsequent turn)\n(return control to player)\n(after their next turn, i.e. the counter == 1)\n"You catch sight of the clock on the other side of the platform.\nIt\'s stopped!"\n(Allow a couple turns of exploration. On turn 5:)\n"\'Partner, you look like you\'re [italic]wheeling[roman]! You been hitting the durbz?\'\nAn indigo cube is floating behind you, with its vertices at top, bottom, and midway along its height. One vertex points straight at you.\nOn each face of the cube, stenciled black capitals read \'1 CUBIC FOOT.\'"\n/ Wheeling?\n/ Durbz?\n/ What exactly did I just eat?\n/ What the hell are you?\n/ [Look at clock again]. -> Still stopped.\n/ [Eat more of the red wagon wheel.]\n"\'Durbz are durbz, no matter the dose,\' Cubic Foot says, in a tone which indicates it has rehearsed this phrase."\n</code>\n</pre>\n'}], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 7, 16, 12, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['games', 'inform'], 'channel': ['ideas'], 'slug': ['the-promise-part-w'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/07/16/y7', '/ideas/the-promise-part-w'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<h2>Introduction</h2>\nThe <a href="indieweb.org">IndieWeb</a> is a group of independent creators who use their websites as the foundations of digital identity. Web technologies both extant and under development are used to copy data from one site to another, which forms the basis of a distributed social network where each participant\'s posts, likes, comments, and other personal output are stored on his or her personal site.\nIndieWeb held <data class="p-rsvp" value="yes"><a class="u-in-reply-to" href="https://2019.indieweb.org/summit">the 2019 IndieWeb Summit</a></data> in Portland on 2019-06-29 and 2019-06-30 (with a pre-conference meet-and-greet on 2019-06-28). I attended, and enjoyed myself despite an all-weekend headache.\nTo taste the flavor of this gathering, consider the process by which I gave my RSVP.\n<ol>\n<li>I marked up this page\'s HTML with <a href="microformats.org">microformats</a>: special HTML classes which establish additional semantics for the HTML tags to which they are attached. I used the class which indicated that part of this page was an RSVP, as well as the ones which pointed out my name.\n</li>\n<li>I sent, to a particular endpoint on the IndieWeb Summit website, an HTTP request which pointed at the Summit RSVP page and at this page. The endpoint then updated the Summit RSVPs with a link to my homepage.\n</li>\n</ol>\nIndieWeb tech represents a reaction to the centralization of social networking on big-industry websites. This attitude informs a core principle of the group: each member should prioritize implementing the features they care about. If I want to use my site as a source of identity, and for writing articles and notes, and never make any "likes" or use my site to chat with people on an <a href="https://indieweb.org/reader">indie reader</a>, then that is enough. If on my website I don\'t want to replicate what I think are the negative aspects of mainstream social media, then I am free to experiment with those concepts my own way, or drop them altogether.\nThis first foray into IndieWeb technologies intrigued me, and the conference did not disappoint -- but I feel no need to document the event myself. If you\'re interested, check out <a href="https://indieweb.org/2019/Schedule">the IndieWeb wiki page for the event schedule</a>, which was updated live with the results of discussions and hacking sessions.\n\n\n\n\n\n'}], 'name': ['Indie Web Camp 2019'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 7, 1, 12, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2019, 12, 5, 10, 18, 45, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['indieweb'], 'channel': ['pages'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/07/01/mv', '/indiewebcamp2019'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<div class="muted">\nHalf a dozen friends of mine live in a group house called Friendship Village. The first time I hung out with them as a group, I wrote a Chinese poem for them all to express my gratitude at meeting such lovely new friends.\nAbout a year later, after a joyous night of homemade pizza at Friendship Village, I decided to write poems for each of them. A week later my project was complete. I hand-wrote the poems on cards, and delivered them at Ian\'s going-away party on 2019-06-13.\n</div>\n<ul>\n<li><a href="/poems/fv-ian">Ian</a></li>\n<li><a href="/poems/fv-rory">Rory</a></li>\n<li><a href="/poems/fv-aj">AJ</a></li>\n<li><a href="/poems/fv-hanna">Hanna</a></li>\n<li><a href="/poems/fv-keely">Keely</a></li>\n<li><a href="/poems/fv-fedora">Fedora</a></li>\n</ul>\n'}], 'name': ['Poems for Friendship Villagers'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 6, 13, 12, 35, 10, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['poetry', 'fv'], 'channel': ['poems'], 'slug': ['fv'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/06/13/93', '/poems/fv'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<h2>Introduction</h2>\nYou are Fedora, and it is a good day for lounging about the house.\n<a href="/static/fedoradventure/play">Play Fedoradventure online here</a>: it only takes a few minutes to finish.\nFedoradventure is a super-small adventure game I wrote as a gift for a friend named Fedora, who was quite pleased with it.\n'}], 'name': ['Fedoradventure'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 6, 13, 12, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['computing', 'games'], 'channel': ['pages'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/06/13/ub', '/fedoradventure'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'I tried and tried, but couldn\'t come up with a poem for Fedora. Instead, I made for her a bite-size videogame called Fedoradventure, <a href="/static/fedoradventure/play">which you can play online</a>. Though not a poem, Fedoradventure still belongs to the <a href="/poems/fv">Friendship Village</a> series.\n'}], 'name': ['Fedora'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 6, 13, 12, 34, 55, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['fv', 'computing'], 'channel': ['poems'], 'slug': ['fv-fedora'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/06/13/w8', '/poems/fv-fedora'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<div class="muted">\nPart of the <a href="/poems/fv">Friendship Village</a> series.\n</div>\n<div class="poem-container"><pre class="poem shadow">\nA cottage on a hill\nA flower patch\nA tree of fruit\nA mound of herbs\nA bunch of beans\nA pile of plerp\nA bag of blegg\nA tin of twomp\nA sack of snoob\nAnd a sign out front, big-lettered:\nWITCHY WONDERS\n"CHAOS, MADE TO ORDER"\n</pre></div>\n'}], 'name': ['Keely'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 6, 13, 12, 34, 54, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['poetry', 'fv'], 'channel': ['poems'], 'slug': ['fv-keely'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/06/13/mh', '/poems/fv-keely'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<div class="muted">\nPart of the <a href="/poems/fv">Friendship Village</a> series.\n</div>\n<div class="poem-container"><pre class="poem shadow">\nHand-painted\nWholesome winter scenes on\nChristmas cards.\nHow? How does\nSomeone come to wield such\nSkill at arts?\nLong, hard work\nAnd a smile for all the\n"Not-quite-rights."\nNo other\nWay to learn to paint such\nWinter sights.\n</pre></div>\n'}], 'name': ['Hanna'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 6, 13, 12, 34, 53, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['poetry', 'fv'], 'channel': ['poems'], 'slug': ['fv-hanna'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/06/13/ne', '/poems/fv-hanna'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<div class="muted">\nPart of the <a href="/poems/fv">Friendship Village</a> series.\n</div>\n<div class="poem-container"><pre class="poem shadow">\nGuaranteed to brighten up my day-J\nHugs me when I go off on my way-J\nEmits every color except gray-J\nFriendship Village saint? I vote for AJ\n</pre></div>\n'}], 'name': ['AJ'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 6, 13, 12, 34, 52, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['poetry', 'fv'], 'channel': ['poems'], 'slug': ['fv-aj'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/06/13/nz', '/poems/fv-aj'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<div class="muted">\nPart of the <a href="/poems/fv">Friendship Village</a> series.\n</div>\n<div class="poem-container"><pre class="poem shadow">\nTo me you come off as the coolest housemate\nCan it be true that you\'re the illest villager?\nSkate on home, then rouse up that guitar rumpus\n"Cool" is too weak: from now on you\'re a chillager\n</pre></div>\n'}], 'name': ['Rory'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 6, 13, 12, 34, 51, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['poetry', 'fv'], 'channel': ['poems'], 'slug': ['fv-rory'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/06/13/k5', '/poems/fv-rory'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<div class="muted">\nPart of the <a href="/poems/fv">Friendship Village</a> series.\n</div>\n<div class="poem-container"><pre class="poem shadow">\nSneaking round the house at night\nThe prankster man comes giggling\nLaughing to himself with all\nTen fingers splayed and wiggling\nReaching into every cranny\n(Not a man for strictures)\nYou won\'t see him come or go\nBut you will find his pictures\n</pre></div>\n'}], 'name': ['Ian'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 6, 13, 12, 34, 50, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['poetry', 'fv'], 'channel': ['poems'], 'slug': ['fv-ian'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/06/13/b6', '/poems/fv-ian'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<div class="muted">\nOne of my two favorites of the poems I wrote for my former roommate, Hayley. The other favorite is "<a href="/poems/hayley-goodbye">Goodbye, Hayley</a>".\n</div>\n<div class="poem-container">\n<pre class="poem shadow">\nHayley and her boy toy\nIn the night they giggle\nFingers go exploring\nInterlocked they wiggle\nFingertip on her hip\nTracing out a squiggle\nThis is love, no doubting\nNot even a niggle\n</pre></div>\n'}], 'name': ['Hayley and Her Boy Toy'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 3, 5, 12, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['poetry'], 'channel': ['poems'], 'slug': ['hayley-boytoy'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/03/05/9a', '/poems/hayley-boytoy'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '2020-02-10T18:38:07-0800: This page is unfinished. I have not actively worked in Inform for about a year now, but hope to do more work with it in the future.\n<h2>Introduction</h2>\nHere I am documenting problems of language design and usability that I\'ve noticed while using Inform 7 to implement <a href="/ryanquest">Ryan Quest</a> and <a href="/fedoradventure">Fedoradventure</a>.\nInform 7 (hereafter just "Inform") is a programming language and game engine specialized for creating interactive fiction (<abbr title="interactive fiction">IF</abbr>), a genre of software which grew out of text adventure games. Classic examples include Colossal Cave Adventure, Zork, A Mind Forever Voyaging, and The Hitchhiker\'s Guide to the Galaxy. The distinguishing feature of interactive fiction is that it primarily uses text to convey its world and narrative (although many games supplement this with images or audio.) The player types in commands for their avatar, the game logic updates the game world as necessary, and the resulting update is described in text for the player to read.\nDespite my grievances here, my overall attitude toward Inform is quite positive. Most of the time it is pleasant to use, and no other game-creation system gives me such a quick design-develop-test loop. I hope that expanding and sharing this page will lead to some of these criticisms being addressed -- even if only by myself, in a language extension that only I will use.\nInform code is quite readable even for those who have never encountered it before. However, before continuing, please note that a comment in Inform source code is set off in square brackets, [like this].\n<h2>Inconsistent Syntax Keywords</h2>\nYou can use either "of" or "from" to express two rooms being linked to each other by a direction.\n<code>\nRoom A is a room. Room B is a room. Room C is a room.\nRoom A is north of Room B. Room B is south from Room C.\n</code>\nHowever, once you have created such a connection between rooms, only "from" is valid for testing that connection. "Of" won\'t work.\n<code>\n[wrong; will not compile]\nIf Room A is north of Room B:\n do nothing.\n[right]\nIf Room A is north from Room B:\n do nothing.\n</code>\n<h2>Wordy Syntax</h2>\nThis code iterates over each element of a list.\n<code>\nlet L be the list of muddy rooms;\nrepeat with X running through L:\n do nothing.\n</code>\nHere is my proposed replacement.\n<code>\nlet L be the list of muddy rooms;\nfor each X in L:\n do nothing.\n</code>\n"For each X in (the) Y" is a common idiom, whereas "repeat with X running through" sounds like robot-speak. It is therefore a bit friendlier for English-speakers who are learning Inform, and much friendlier for non-native English speakers. My proposed change is also shorter, easier to type, and not yet an existing Inform keyword -- so far as I know.\n<h2>Unwise Defaults for "Release Website" Templates</h2>\nI haven\'t investigated whether this is still a problem in more recent releases of Inform.\nIn Inform\'s IDE, the "Release Website" command compiles your game\'s code and any "materials" (digital assets, such as pictures) into a webpage. That webpage also displays some bibliographic information about the game, the display of which can be controlled by applying a user-suppliable template.\nI dislike how the default template for "Release Website" exposes some information to the end user about the system which compiled the game. Here are examples of two materials to which this occurs:\n<ul>\n<li>the small cover image gets renamed to /Users/yourname/path/to/game/source/Small Cover.png</li>\n<li>the large cover image becomes /Users/yourname/path/to/game/source/Cover.png</li>\n</ul>\nIn other words, these two absolute paths on the system compiling the game get leaked in the release metadata.\nI think that releasing an Inform game should instead make these metadata filepaths relative to the <code>game/materials</code> folder, i.e. they should simply be "Small Cover.png" and "Cover.png". I know that\'s possible because it happens with other materials which the compiler moves into those folders.\n'}], 'name': ['Improvements for the Inform Language'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 3, 1, 11, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 9, 19, 11, 22, 17, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['computing'], 'channel': ['pages'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/03/01/xn', '/inform'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<a class="center tilt"\nhref="./static/ryanquest/play">\n<img srcset="./static/ryanquest/300/Medium-Cover.png 300w, ./static/ryanquest/500/Medium-Cover.png 500w, ./static/ryanquest/700/Medium-Cover.png 700w, ./static/ryanquest/Medium-Cover.png 960px" sizes="(max-width:400px) 300px, (max-width: 600px) 500px, (max-width:1000px) 700px, 960px" src="./static/ryanquest/300/Medium-Cover.png" title="The cover of Ryan Quest." alt="Ryan Quest cover image: the phrase \'MAXWELL JOSLYN PRESENTS RYAN QUEST\' superimposed on a picture of the protagonist, Ryan Wright."></a>\n<a href="./static/ryanquest/play">Play Ryan Quest in your browser.</a>\n<h2>Introduction</h2>\nFrom 2018-10-01 to 2019-02-01, I created an adventure videogame based on the life of my friend Ryan Wright, an American who is studying game design in Copenhagen. The game has been enjoyed by all who\'ve played it, including the titular Ryan.\n<ul>\n<li>estimated play time: 1-2 hours (too long? Try the five-minute <a href="/fedoradventure">Fedoradventure</a>.)</li>\n<li>difficulty: easy/medium. An UNDO command is included.</li>\n</ul>\nThe game is usually played by one person, but friends have found it even more entertaining to play as a group: everyone suggests things to try next, and one person does the typing.\n<figure class="center">\n<img srcset="./static/ryanquest/300/group-pic.png 300w, ./static/ryanquest/500/group-pic.png 500w, ./static/ryanquest/700/group-pic.png 700w, ./static/ryanquest/group-pic.png 1364w" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 300px, (max-width: 750px) 500px, (max-width: 1400px) 700px, 1364" src="./static/ryanquest/300/group-pic.png" title="My friends team up to play Ryan Quest during the final beta test." alt="My friends team up to play Ryan Quest during the final beta test.">\n<figcaption>My friends team up to play Ryan Quest during the final beta test.</figcaption>\n</figure>\n<h3>Versions</h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Version 3 was released on 2019-11-12. It quashed the bug which made it possible to enter an unwinnable state.</li>\n<li>Version 2 was released on 2019-06-11. It added ~40-50 improvements.</li>\n<li>Version 1 was released on 2019-02-01.</li>\n</ul>\n<h2>Playing Ryan Quest in the Browser</h2>\nThe easiest way to go on a Ryan Quest is to <a href="/static/ryanquest/play">play the game online</a>, in your web browser. Please note: when playing online, you will lose your progress once you close the browser tab, even if you use the "save" and "restore" commands. Unfortunately, that particular code is out of my hands; fortunately, most players beat the game in one sitting!\n<h2>Playing Ryan Quest on Your Computer</h2>\nInstead of playing online, you can also <a href="/static/ryanquest/RYAN-QUEST.gblorb" download>download the game (2.7 MB)</a> to play on your computer. You wil also need a program called an interpreter to load and run the game file for you. On Mac or Linux, I recommend the <a href="https://www.logicalshift.co.uk/unix/zoom/">the Zoom interpreter</a>. On Windows, I recommend Glulxe or <a href="https://github.com/garglk/garglk">Gargoyle</a>. Other options can be found by searching the Web for "interactive fiction interpreters."\n<h2 id="how-to-play">How to Play</h2>\n<h3>The Title Screen</h3>\nIf you seem to be stuck on the title screen, make sure to click "More" or press the spacebar to scroll down all the way. If that\'s not enough to help you get started, keep reading!\n<h3>The Command Prompt</h3>\nAfter the introduction, you\'ll see the command prompt symbol, which looks like this:\n<pre><code>>\n\n</code></pre>\nThe prompt is where you type in the action you want Ryan to take in the game world. An interactive fiction game plays out like a conversation between you and the computer, which translates your commands into instructions for Ryan.\n<h3>Play Concepts</h3>\nThis old-school adventure game is played by moving from area to area, examining items, talking to people, and manipulating both to try and gain points. For example, in the first area of the game (the apartment), there is a loaf of bread on the shelf. If you want to see details about the bread, you can type "examine bread" after the prompt, as follows.\n<pre><code>> examine bread\n\n</code></pre>\nYour command is submitted when you press enter. Examining the bread, as you have done here, will print out the bread\'s description, right below the command you typed.\n<pre><code>> examine bread\nMade with 100% Danish wheat.\n>\n\n</code></pre>\nNotice how the command prompt reappears after the description of the bread: the game "took its turn" by describing what you did. Afterwards, you can take another turn. Ryan Quest is built to recognize many synonyms, so you have leeway in how you give your instructions. All of these are equivalent:\n<pre><code>> examine bread\nMade with 100% Danish wheat.\n> x bread\nMade with 100% Danish wheat.\n> x the bread\nMade with 100% Danish wheat.\n> look at bread\nMade with 100% Danish wheat.\n\n</code></pre>\nWhy not have a snack?\n<pre><code>> eat bread\n(first taking the bread)\nYou eat the bread. Not bad!\n\n</code></pre>\nProceed on this principle, and you will do just fine.\nHere is, I believe, a complete vocabulary of all the commands needed to play the game to the end<a href="#fn-1">1</a>. Please <a href="mailto:maxwelljoslyn@gmail.com">email me</a> if you know of another command which is required to win, but keep in mind that commands have synonyms (e.g. "take" and "get" do the same thing.)\n<h3 id="commands">Commands</h3>\n<dt>north/n, south/s, up/u, inside/in, and so on</dt>\n<dd>Move to a new area</dd>\n<dt>open </dt>\n<dt>close</dt>\n<dt>get/take/pick up</dt>\n<dd>Carry something with you</dd>\n<dt>drop</dt>\n<dd>Put down something you have with you</dd>\n<dt>give something to someone</dt>\n<dt>ask someone about something</dt>\n<dt>buy something</dt>\n<dt>eat something</dt>\n<dt>dirs/directions</dt>\n<dd>Lists the other places you can get to from your current location</dd>\n<dt>ride</dt>\n<dt>show</dt>\n<dt>examine</dt>\n<dt>wear/put on</dt>\n<dd>Put on clothing or other wearable item</dd>\n<dt>take off</dt>\n<dd>Take the clothing/wearable item off again</dd>\n<dt>put something in or on something else</dt>\n<dt>push or pull</dt>\nFor a mini-tutorial, try typing in each of the following commands in order<a href="#fn-2">2</a>. When you type each one into the game, pay attention to how the game responds, and you\'ll be well-equipped to go on a Ryan Quest.\n<pre><code>> look backpack\n> take backpack\n> look fridge\n> pull handle\n> look steak\n> pick up steak\n\n</code></pre>\n<h2>Prototype</h2>\nThe game you know as Ryan Quest began development in October 2018 ... but my first attempt at creating a Ryan Quest game came a few months earlier, in the summer. Ryan Quest as it currently exists shares only thematic elements with this prototype. Here is a screenshot.\n<figure class="center">\n<img srcset="./static/ryanquest/300/prototype.png 300w, ./static/ryanquest/500/prototype.png 500w, ./static/ryanquest/700/prototype.png 700w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 300px, (max-width: 800px) 500px, 700px" src="./static/ryanquest/300/prototype.png" title="Title screen of the original prototype for Ryan Quest." alt="Title screen of the original prototype for Ryan Quest. The prompt reads: \'You are RYAN WRIGHT, the Casanova of Copenhagen. You have 100 days until your master\'s thesis (Ludonarrative Assonance in _The Witness_) is due. Don\'t let hedonism get in the way or the Danish government will quit giving you money and send you back to America with no degree!\' Below the prompt, the game measures Ryan\'s hunger, lust, money, time left before thesis deadline, and pages left to write.">\n<figcaption>Title screen of the original prototype for Ryan Quest.</figcaption>\n</figure>\n<section class="footnotes">\n<ol>\n<li id="fn-1">At least one secret is left unlisted.<a href="#fnref-1" class="footnote">↩</a></li>\n<li id="fn-2">I\'ve removed the game\'s responses which would normally come after each line you type.<a href="#fnref-2" class="footnote">↩</a></li>\n</ol>\n</section>\n'}], 'name': ['Ryan Quest'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 2, 1, 11, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 9, 29, 14, 15, 51, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['computing', 'games'], 'channel': ['pages'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/02/01/84', '/ryanquest'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': '<div class="muted">\nI once traveled in a touring group guided by an amicable man named Gadi. When the group played Secret Santa and I received his name as my beneficiary, I decided to write him a poem.\nPlease excuse any awkwardness in the pseudo-literary Chinese. The gift was completed in a hurry, for a non-Chinese-speaking audience, so I judged rhyming more important than phrase construction.\n</div>\n<div class="poemsep">A Gift for Gadi, Original</div>\n<div class="poem-container">\n<pre class="poem shadow">\nGadi Gadi Gadi\n我队队长\n样子很帅\n哥们超爽\n\n人才之峰\n留一大胡\n教人何为\n天天为酷\n</pre>\n</div>\n<div class="poemsep">A Gift for Gadi, Rough English Translation</div>\n<div class="poem-container">\n<pre class="poem shadow">\nGadi Gadi Gadi\nCaptain of our team.\nHis style is way fresh,\nThis Chiller Supreme.\n\nOf eminent talents\nAnd big-bearded too,\nHe teaches all people\nHis everyday cool.\n</pre>\n</div>\n'}], 'name': ['A Gift for Gadi'], 'published': [DateTime(2019, 1, 25, 18, 45, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['poetry', 'zh'], 'channel': ['poems'], 'slug': ['gift-gadi'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2019/01/26/rm', '/poems/gift-gadi'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ['Kill That Elf'], 'published': [DateTime(2018, 11, 30, 19, 0, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': "You've gotta take yourself into battle.\nYou've gotta do your sick moves -- every last one, even if it kills you. But you can't let it kill you, because you've gotta win. You've gotta\n<pre>\nKill.\nThat.\nElf.\n</pre>\nYou're gonna put on your elf-fighting suit and ride into battle, and if you retreat, so help me Space God, I will shoot you myself. I don't care how afraid you are, or how pissed your pants are, or how good you are at fighting in the gaseous-metal atmosphere of this planet: you've gotta do it anyway, you've g-o-t-t-a\n<pre>\nKILL.\nTHAT.\nELF.\n</pre>\n"}], 'category': ['fv'], 'channel': ['ideas'], 'slug': ['kill-that-elf'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2018/12/01/gg', '/ideas/kill-that-elf'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'name': ["It's Dark Outside, and I'm Spider-Man"], 'published': [DateTime(2018, 11, 30, 19, 0, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'content': [{'html': '<div class=muted>\nThe publication date of this snippet is an approximation; I only recall that it was some time in fall or winter 2018, on an evening with <a href="/poems/fv">these friends</a>.\n</div>\n"It\'s dark outside, and I\'m Spider-Man," said Spider-Man. "I am here for those of you who have suffered from CRIME."\nThe citizens of New York were distraught. "The person who crimed us is Stan Lee!"\n"It can\'t be," said Spider-Man. His web-shooters flexed. His butt clenched. "It can\'t be."\nBut it was.\n'}], 'category': ['spiderman', 'fv'], 'channel': ['ideas'], 'slug': ['its-dark-outside-and-im-spider-man'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2018/12/01/bh', '/ideas/its-dark-outside-and-im-spider-man'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'Material that I\'ve translated from Chinese.\nLarger:\n<ul>\n<li><a href="/maku-xiansheng">"Mr. Breeches"</a> 《马裤先生》, by Lao She</li>\n<li><a href="/tieniu-he-bingya">"Iron Bull and Sick Duck"</a> 《铁牛和病鸭》, by Lao She</li>\n<li><a href="/jiangxi-account">An account of daily life in China during the nCoV-19 epidemic</a></li>\n</ul>\nSmaller:\n<ul>\n<li><a href="/three-gorges-flood">State of the Three Gorges Dam</a></li>\n<li><a href="/notes/2019/10/13/1">Translating a Slide from a Google Developer Conference</a></li>\n<li><a href="/war-banner">Translating a War Banner from Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice</a></li>\n</ul>\nI\'ve begun translations of more Lao She stories, including "Attachment" 《恋》, "A Family Letter" 《一封家信》, and "East and West" 《东西》.\n'}], 'name': ['Translation Index'], 'published': [DateTime(2018, 8, 21, 12, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'updated': [DateTime(2020, 7, 29, 11, 42, 37, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'category': ['chinese', 'translation'], 'channel': ['pages'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2018/08/21/vo', '/translation'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'content': [{'html': 'Slapping together a silly animation once landed me a date. This consequence of messing with ImageMagick was not mentioned in its otherwise-excellent documentation.\n<img src="/static/maxandruby.gif" alt="" />\n'}], 'name': ['Max and Ruby'], 'published': [DateTime(2018, 8, 6, 9, 7, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'channel': ['pages'], 'visibility': ['public'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2018/08/06/yt', '/maxandruby'], 'type': ['entry']}

{'visibility': ['public'], 'audience': ['maxwell'], 'content': [{'html': 'Read The Drongo #1 - Interview with Karthik Bala\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n'}], 'name': ['Test Page'], 'published': [DateTime(2017, 1, 1, 11, 34, 56, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))], 'channel': ['pages'], 'author': {'uid': ['/'], 'name': ['Maxwell Joslyn'], 'note': ['I am a human bean']}, 'url': ['/2017/01/01/bg', '/testpage'], 'type': ['entry']}