A series of blurbs
A proper blog entry rather than a series of rapid devlog posts felt appropriate. Here’s some notes on things I’ve started or done at the least for the fun of it.
Uxn
Uxn is a neat ecosystem/project composed of a stupid simple virtual machine architecture and machine language, heavily inspired by forth. Designed with sustainability and permacomputing in mind, it provides a very fun stack-based language through which one can write some excellent and future-proof programs. compudanzas provides an excellent resource for quickly starting with it here. I’ve enjoyed doing just enough toying around with it to feel comfortable with the language. I last set this down in the midst of implementing a line-drawing algorithm in a language with no supported for signed values.
Enjoy some selected convenience macros I whipped up, as a sample. Procedures don’t look very different.
( character -- )
%EMIT { .Console/write DEO }
( short -- )
%EMIT2 { .Console/write DEO2 }
( -- )
%NL { #0a EMIT }
( character -- )
%EMITL { EMIT NL }
( short -- )
%EMITL2 { EMIT2 NL }
( character -- )
%PRINT-DIGIT { #30 ADD EMITL }
( 0x00-f -- )
( normal ascii add for 0-9
if that sum is beyond ascii 9, add another x27
to get to a-f chars, then emit whatever char was picked )
%PRINT-HEXIT {
#30 ADD
#3a LTHk ?{ POP #27 ADD #01 JMP }
POP
EMIT
}
( byte -- )
%PRINT-BYTE
{
DUP #04 SFT PRINT-HEXIT
#40 SFT #04 SFT PRINT-HEXIT
}
( short -- )
%PRINT-SHORT
{
SWP
PRINT-BYTE
PRINT-BYTE
}
Permacomputing
Simultaneously, the goals and precepts of permacomputing really resonated with me as I explored the 100Rabbits site (linked above). I did a bit more digging and ran into https://permacomputing.net, a very nice starting resource.
ESP32
I nabbed a small pack of ESP32 dev boards for future learning projects a few months back, and finally took the time to start playing with it, and expanding out my own helper modules for basics, like initializing and utilizing peripherals. Very lately, I’ve been trying to wrap my head around bluetooth setup on them. I don’t care to discuss bluetooth very much.
To complement these twinkle-in-the-eye sort of projects, I paired some small cheapo solar panels with a buck converter in a successful attempt to power the boards. Direct sunlight is a major challenge in any accessible portion of my apartment, so those will remain as a PoC for now. On the other hand, I have this pretty cute wood board as a test bed with panels and the ESP32 mounted to it. Admittedly the previous dives into uxn and permacomputing sparked my interest in a new project of small, sustainably-powered computing platforms but probably buying new is simulataneously antithetical to that. At least the micros are discontinued models!
House
Da wife and I managed to finally have an offer on a house accepted. I’d say the hunt as been on since about March? Things are going smoothly enough, hopefully closing in ~2 weeks. Not much more to say there. Hopefully a nice corner of the garage or elsewhere makes room for a tidy little workshop/dabbler’s nook.
Trending Towards Degoogling
The newest of the new brainworms, I’ve started investigating alternatives to gmail. Much like plenty of my astute readership, I disdain google and its ecosystems but I’m still well-stuck in it, and that major sticking point is Gmail. I’ve started evaluating Proton Mail as a replacement. It seems to be the shiniest of the alternatives (that I’ve found) and makes your transition out of the Gmail Trap as painless as possible. Other features like security and aliasing are nice too. I’ll likely end up moving to a paid plan with them, though a vocal portion of r/protonmail seems to share some of my concerns with their behavior of late – PM feels a little less focused than previous, and concerns for longevity/health of the core product in favor of peripheral things.
Youtube RSS
In a previous devlog I talked about my conversion of my Youtube subscriptions to RSS feeds. It’s had some nice side effects, though admittedly this is only on the home PC. Also some funny drawbacks. This might be better expressed as:
Pros:
- Recess and respite from the Alphabet Skinner Box.
- Direct control and re-evaluation of what I watch, and therefore my interests.
Cons:
- As RSS items, Youtube provides zero distinction between regular video uploads, and Shorts (the bane of this platform as a whole. Watch the skinner box video!!!). As such, an RSS feed cannot filter them. In this, I’ve amicably parted certain creators from my RSS box when they get too frisky with Shorts. I see it as unwelcome spam and content that simply should not be rewarded or encouraged.
- In a similar vein, RSS feeds + Youtube are not very smart. Every time a video is re-titled by its uploader, this appears as a brand new item in the feed, and I’m unsure if these can be reliably filtered out. As a side effect, it’s funny to see how many times certain creators will play with exact wordings of titles in order to maximize engagement (or some similar effect).
- Vivaldi’s RSS reader is absolutely hacked in. The UI is very clearly a copy-paste of the email reader toolbar they also feature. Email-centric wording and UX is all over the place; things like reply-all buttons, forwarding, everything you’d expect from a modestly featured email client. I assume other systems simply work better and would encourage you to explore. Vivaldi is but a few papercuts on the long path to 1000, so I’ll stick with it for the time being.
I think that’s all I’ve got for now. Little things as well, always. Mashina releases tomorrow! Gosh I’m excited for that one. Talha and Jack make some wonderful stuff.