Axxuy's Internet Notebook

We’re right around the halfway point of August now (what‽ already‽) and I have not been nearly as active around this blog as I would have liked to be. I haven’t even read many blog posts! And there are so many great posts coming out, both as part of Blaugust and as part of the constant stream of creativity that is the best part of the internet. I’ve only gotten two posts out this month. Nobody is keeping score, I know, but I had hoped and wanted to do more. But what is there to say? I haven’t…

The main tool I use for to write this blog is vim (specifically Neovim. “Vim” at this point is not really a particular program, but a clade of software.) I have been using it for many years now, so this is not surprising. What is surprising (to me) is that I do not write (or at least draft) more posts by hand. I like writing by hand. I have quite a collection of analog writing instruments and I certainly am looking for ways to justify that. I have fountain pens, I have typewriters, I have far…

It’s August again. The year goes by so fast. With August comes a very special event: Blaugust! It’s a month long celebration of blogging. There are all kinds of events going on at all times in various corners of the “blogosphere,” but this is the one that really got me into the habit of blogging. It is a bittersweet one this year. Belghast , who founded this event, tragically passed away earlier this year. I did not know him personally, so I cannot write a proper tribute, but there are others…

Some Links Link Tree? How about a Pan-tree? A little while ago I wrote about my thoughts on linktree type sites . It seems I am not the only one whofeels that way. Here’s some tips on making your own with pandoc . (This blog has a lot of information about pandoc.) Distraction Free as a Distraction Are you trying to set up a distraction free writing environment? Do you spend a lot of time thinking about it? Does removing distractions distract you from what you need to do? Is it an excuse to buy…

My last post is not long, but it did end up taking quite a bit longer than I wouldhave liked. Sometimes you just do not have as much time for a project as you expect. In this case it was also hindered by being tied to a programming project, which invited tweaking and contemplation of features, etc. I became hesitant to post it. It took too long to finish. What I find happens, is that the longer I spend with a piece of writing, the less confident I become in it. As I tweak, edit, revise, the…

A little while ago I was wondering just how many words I’ve written on my blog. I was inspired by Wouter over at Brain Baking . Now, I use a static site generator for my blog, the upshot of which is that the whole thing is just a big folder full of files. So counting up all the words is really easy with a simple shell command: wc --total=only -w content/blog/*/*.md 55198 That’s 55,198 total words as of the time of this writing. Well that’s neat. With a little bit of awk you can get the average…

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I don’t really want to make another post about LLMs. I would love for blogging about LLMs to become as gauche as blogging about blogging. But this is the idea I have right now. I don’t want to talk to chatbots. There is one simple reason: I am not chatty. I am not talkative. I find it difficult to think of things to say. It takes me quite a bit of time and effort to think of things to say. It’s hard! And so, if I am going to spend all that time and effort, I want to spend it on actual people. I…

I love to go for long walks . That is my first choice for getting places. I love being able to walk places. It is a privilege. It is a privilege to have a body that can do it without pain. It is a privilege to have places close enough to walk to. It is a privilege to have a climate and landscape amenable to it. None of these are guarantees. Sometimes they are short walks. There is a bakery a few blocks from where I live. Every now and then, when I have a bit of time in the morning, I indulge in…

First up is a pair: Nostalgic for past futures by Tracy Durnell and Nostalgia Always Includes a Temporal Context by Brain Baking. Both posts, as the titles suggest, are about nostalgia. In It’s Pie day for me JTR shares a picture of some delicious looking pizza. I’m a very big fan of pizza. Two more from Tracy Durnell: Bookshelves as mental constructs with some philosophizing on bookshelves. And a recipe for Chickpeas and pasta with rosemary oil —sounds yummy! Aaron Hertzmann wrote an essay…

I have noticed an interesting phenomenon with LLMs. There is something I have never quite understood. From what I have gathered from people talking about LLMs in comments, and blog posts, and chat rooms, and Youtube videos, etc. One of the most common uses for them is looking up information. And I don’t get it. I do try to avoid using LLMs where I can, but this particular case is not aversion or resistance for me. It is categorization. I simply that I don’t associate them with finding…