Category: Journal

Once I had my Linux box up and running with Regolith and i3wm, I wanted to integrate it into my developing Zettelblogging workflow.

First, I explored the world of Emacs. There is a wonderful community around Emacs currently with great YouTube videos and blogs. I’d be remiss if I didnt’t mention Prot, Sachua and David who served as guides to integrating Emacs into my workflow. It took a program called SyncThing to hook the Linux box into my Apple-centric iCloud workflow efficiently although seeing folders from the Mac over my home network is pretty easy in Linux, particularly having the Gnome tools available.

In the end, Emacs, like Linux itself, is a high customizable environment that was engaging but in the end just didn’t bring that much utility to the actual work. In fact, both act as potent distractions to actual research and writing.

Next I explored LogSeq, which is one of the new generation of note taking apps like Roam, Notion and Craft. I kind of liked it and found it more straightforward in use than I had imagined with its backlinking and autotagging style. But in the end it was too much a self contained system and really not easily integrated with the Drafts/DEVONthink/text/PDF workflow I had built up over the years.

So I’m back using the tools on the Mac and iOS where each piece of software is a bit more opinionated and fits a particular use case while all working well together. Suprisingly, the Kindle Scribe is my latest useful tool, giving me a nice way of reading PDFs in depth. I’m hoping the notetaking side becomes better integrated, but for now my notebooks and fountain pens are just as good as a digital notetaking tablet. Notes are an initial step in input and my goal is working in public on that input.

It’s clear that the Linux desktop failed even as Linux became the single most widely deployed OS behind the scence. And as Linus Torvalds, the creator of the OS knows, the reason is the fragmentation of the user experience.

Even knowing this abstractly didn’t stop me for spending a good bit of the first half of 2022 building a PC and playing with Linux, I’ve built a few PC with my youngest son as gaming rigs. I fell in love with the Teenage Engineering mini-ITX case they call the “Computer-1“. So when they became available again at the beginning of last year, I bought one and then the parts to put together a Linux box. Just Intel on chip graphics since the case is too small for a high powered graphics card and I wasn’t looking to use the build for gaming or other graphics uses.

What I wanted was a fast, minimal system not filled with distractions and extras. Since Linux runs fine on hardware ranging from my Raspberry Pi to multiprocessor servers, I figured that a well configured box would be about as fast as possible on standard tasks like text editing and browsing.

My biggest motivation was to really try a tiling windows manager. One of my biggest frustrations with MacOS is how inconsistently windows are spawned and so randomly placed. Working with two large external monitors multiplies the problem. I’ve mostly dealt this this by using a utility called Magnet which quickly allows screen tiling. And the new Stage Manager OS approach actually helps a bit. But using a minimal system with a tiling WM is just another experience altogether.

So I used a Linux distro called Regolith which integrated the I3 tiling windows manager with the Gnome System Mangement tools on Ubuntu. Sounds complicated already, doesn’t it. These distros on Linux are absolutely necessary because of the complexity of putting together a full suite of system management tools. There are literally dozens of distros. I found it pretty easy to find a distro and get it loaded on my newly built machine. But when something goes wrong or you want to add a functionality and keep it updated, it starts taking time to look up how to install or change some settings file to get things right. So far from the experience of running MacOS or Windows.

I can see how if one were running a certain configuration and just wanted to maintain function, it would be a reliable way to go. But as a user, there’s just so much friction that I can see how any casual user would be detered from continuing. Lets just say that to run Linux as a user, one needs to be at “Hobbyist” level. Willing to invest time into running the machine to learn how it all works and customize an experience.

So I got my Linux machine up and running. In the end, I ended up with a full Gnome install running with I3 loaded as the window manager at startup. That was just the start of the journey though, as I spent more time after that going down the Emacs and LogSeq rabbit holes. But I think those are tales for another day.

Expect lots of puppy photos here. I have not had such a willing model in many years.

So far, it’s been iPhone photography all the way. This is a portrait mode image to get that blurred background. Digitally created in the phone with the AI system combining two images, but no work and quite impressive looking.

I’m figuring out how to use the bigger cameras for these portraints, especially the Leica SL2 which has been pretty idle without roadtrips and landscape photography.

The puppy’s name is Thiebaud, named after the California painter, Wayne Thiebaud. Pronounced in both cases “TEEBOW”. We’re learing about each other and I’m learning how classical and operant conditioning work in the real world, training an animal that now lives here. The power of positive reinforcement using food is quite remarkable, which I ought to know after decades of reading about behavior studies in the lab.

Speaking of lab, she’s a black Labrador Retriever from Viklan Labradors in West Chester, PA. A confident, playful and very motivated companion.

The metaphor of horse and rider is an ancient way of understanding the relationship of mind to body. Our control is at best partial, influencing the animal we inhabit. The metaphor is dualist of course, seeing the mind and the body as separable entities.

We now understand of course that awareness itself arises from the brain itself, intimately tied into signals coming both from the environment and from within our own bodies. Those physical appetites and values we assign to the world pull brain function in their determined direction as brain control systems do their best to steer toward goals valued in more abstracted models of how the world works. Food, shelter, stability are basic desires, but we know based on social models that a fat bank account can be used to obtain them if some immediate gratification is delayed for a future gain.

I’m working my way through the classic Jewish book “Nefesh HaChaim” (“Living Soul”) by Reb Chaim of Volozhin published after his death in 1824. In a bit of a twist on the classic horse and rider metaphor, Reb Chaim likens the body and mind to a horse and chariot. It struck me that while it evokes a deeper separation of body and mind, it captures well how the body is physically under indirect control, being steered by the man in the chariot and not under the kind of direct control we imagine. The charioteer says go and we hope gets pulled in the right direction by the horse. There’s some steering and ability to stop, but not much more than that. The brain executes behaviors in the way the horse pulls the chariot. Awareness can influence but rarely control.

The limitations of awareness and agency are truly profound. We’re operating under assumptions of control that are not very accurate when tested. As choice is so limited, the emphasis has to be on training the horse rather than somehow trying to gain more control over it, an effort that seems destined to fail.

Amazing how easy it is to reconstruct a social network on a new platform starting with a few well chosen individuals as starting nodes.

Honestly, I wish I understood what Doctorow really means here:

Online, a lot of us have been unhappy with our social media platforms for a long time, but we hang in there, year after year, scandal after scandal, because as much as we hate the platform, we love the people who use the platform. We don’t leave because we don’t want to lose them. They don’t leave because they don’t want to lose us. It’s a hostage situation, and we’re all holding each other hostage. Collective action problems are hard problems.

_ – How to Leave Dying Social Media Platforms | by Cory Doctorow | Oct, 2022 | Medium

He’s right that we’re locked in because the information is available on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Not just friends, but services and news. I’d like to leave, but see no alternative.

Somehow, I think, he wants the services to open to outside syndication. Interoperate with a broad set of platforms. Doctorow broadcasts his work from multiple platforms, but I’m out here on what they call the indie web just writing. I stopped the Twitter and Instagram cross posts. It was a nuisance and just feeds their lock in.

We’ve seen social media platforms die or migrate away from their original audience. Flickr of course comes to mind. Odds are that we’ll just see a new platform emerge, like Instagram did to accommodate photographers who left Flickr for the new style of promotion. Now that Instagram has changed, I haven’t seen where these photographers are going. Not their own websites and to no other platform. It’s just become kind of moribund with fewer interesting photographs to see. Either that or Instagram has decided to fill my feed with posts that are more viral or financially lucrative.

Looking for answers, but see my only recourse as my own site and RSS feeds.

Leica Q2 Monochrom.