• GraphPlan

    A data structure and search algorithm for efficiently finding the shortest plan of actions between an initial state and goal state. GraphPlan is a STRIPS style planner that uses a graph of actions (planning graph) that have pre-conditions and effects which alter state. The search algorithm trims the search space by pre-calculating mutually exclusive actions which makes finding a solution much faster.

    See also:

  • Downward Causation

    Macro level processes altering micro level processes by changing constraints. For example, thoughts and memories alter the strength of connections in the brain via gene regulation which alters the physical constraints of ions/electrons (synapses). In this way there is a ‘downward causal effect’ where thoughts alters the constraints of the physics that govern the flow of electrons.

    See also:

  • Webmentions

    Webmention is a W3C web standard for decentralized comments, reposts, and other interactions across websites. It’s basically like a ‘pingback’ with some other building blocks for things like federating identity.

    Setting it up is a little clunky to do by hand, but it looks like most people use plugins for their hosted blogging CMS (e.g. WordPress). There are other centralized aggregators that manage webmentions going out and in, but that seems antithetical to decentralization.

    One challenge is setting it up for static websites–webmentions result in a POST request that need to be handled and persisted by your server if you want to do anything with it e.g. display them as comments on your blog post. One approach is to use some other service to handle the request and store them in static files (like text files in a git repo), but this also means additional complexity and exactly once processing is difficult to get right (I imagine webmentions have a ton of duplicates that need to be handled somewhere).

    See also:

    • IndieWeb is an organization and community that supports the adoption of webmentions and extends microformats for things like login with your personal website (IndieAuth).

  • Talk Then Code

    In a blog post from Dave Cheney, open source contributor to golang, he writes that it’s always better to talk about a bug/feature/change then writing code. This avoids hurt feelings (when a change isn’t accepted) and ensures the change lands the first time.

    Generally, pull requests are the wrong place to have a lengthy discussion. Dave recommends starting with a GitHub issue or design doc if it’s more complicated. Communication early prevents misunderstandings and leads to a smoother process for everyone.

    Read the blog post

  • Talk - The Secret of Psalm 46

    A talk given by Brian Moriarty, a renowned game designer/developer, that encourages listeners to dedicate themselves to the pursuit of making something awe-inspiring.

    His examples range from Bach to Shakespeare and the meta game that transcends their original works of art.

    In Bach’s compositions, numerology intertwined in the music that adds a hidden layer of meaning that requires multi-layer recursion to fully comprehend.

    In the case of Shakespeare, countless people that dedicate untold hours to studying his works and unraveling the mystery of whether he was a group of people or just Sir Francis Bacon. After all, how could one man create all that?

    It’s a reminder to recognize the pure and deserving admiration that comes from creating something that sparks genuine awe.

    Listen to the talk

    See also:

  • Meta Game

    The game about the game. In game development, it’s often cited that it’s all about the meta game. It often has it’s own rules, is player organized, and is an emergent behavior (not intentionally designed).

    Examples:

    • When playing fantasy baseball, you compete directly, but the real fun is the meta game of trash talking your friends and finding interesting narratives.
    • A board game tournament, even though you might lose a few matches, as long as you made it to the next round you were pleased. The tournament is the meta game.

  • Learning How to Read (Literature Notes)

    An essay from Niklas Luhmann about learning to read and how there are different kinds of books that require different approaches.

    Novels require a temporal dimension for the reader. They are continually reminded what they don’t know (e.g. the ending/resolution of the book). We can define novels to be in two states with regards to the reader–already read and not yet read.

    Poems are different. They do not have a temporal dimension, but instead have many aspects that alter the meaning to the reader. Style, tone, word choice, metaphor, rhythm, and more. This requires ‘multi-layer recursion’, to think on each word, sentence, section repeatedly to unlock it’s implied meaning. It’s like the meta game, but in writing.

    Theoretical texts (e.g. text books, non fiction) have different demands. The reader is looking to learn and must uncover what is important and what must be learned. This needs short term memory as well as long term memory. Short term to interpret and long term to recall connections with other references/memories.

    Connecting information often looks like attaching the information and grouping it as is the case with attributing key ideas to the author. Notes are similar in trying to capture information to better retain it, but often fails (covered more exhaustively in his essay about Zettelkasten: ‘Communicating with Slip Boxes’).

  • Org-Roam

    An Emacs library that recreates Roam (software that implements a Zettelkasten-like system) using org-mode.

    All notes are stored as individual files addressed by {timestamp}-{underscore_separated_title} and can be backlinked to create a graph of notes which can be generated using graphviz.

    Read the docs

    See also:

    NOTE: Many things have changed about org-roam in v2. Code snippets and issues are likely out of date.

    Problems with org-roam

    • Auto completion is finicky (case sensitive, not fuzzy matching)
    • Can’t search for content in the body of notes when adding backlinks
    • Synchronizing between mobile and desktop is difficult e.g. Beorg on iOS can’t support a template that doesn’t have a title (org-roam’s template just has a #+TITLE tag)
    • You can’t export to HTML in a built in way (looks like you need to use ox-hugo with a config header in each note which is ugly)
    • Buffers don’t wrap text by default
    • Distinguishes between backlinks and ‘cite backlinks’ which is confusing
    • Automatically changes the file name if you change the title (these should be decoupled if you plan to publish notes)

    org-roam v2

    The downside of using ID links in org-roam

    V2 is less portable than v1 now that links use `org-id`.

    DONE Integrating org-roam [8/8]

    DONE Use helm-rg for fuzzy full text searching notes

    Add a keymap entry for it when in org-roam

    DONE Use helm-rg to find notes to make connections to using full text search

    • Add an action to insert a file link to the highlighted result Use helm-add-action-to-source to add the action. See github.
    • Add link anchor words into it (maybe from title?)
    (use-package helm-rg
  :ensure t
  :config
  ;; Add actions for inserting org file link from selected match
  (defun insert-org-mode-link-from-helm-result (candidate)
    (interactive)
    (with-helm-current-buffer
      (insert (format "[[file:%s][%s]]"
                      (plist-get candidate :file)
                      ;; Extract the title from the file name
                      (subst-char-in-string
                       ?_ ?\s
                       (first
                        (split-string
                         (first
                          (last
                           (split-string (plist-get candidate :file) "\\-")))
                         "\\.")))))))

  (helm-add-action-to-source "Insert org-mode link"
                             'insert-org-mode-link-from-helm-result
                             helm-rg-process-source))

    DONE Toggle truncate lines in org-roam buffers

    Make org-mode always use wrapped lines (setq org-startup-truncated nil)

    DONE Set up exporting to html

    • Use ox-hugo to export to md and generate html using hugo Add #+HUGO_BASE_DIR: ~/Projects/zettel and #+HUGO_SECTION: ./ to the front matter of each note
    • Update the capture template to include hugo tags
    • Write a fn to batch export org files from a directory (since each note is it’s own file)

    https://github.com/alexkehayias/emacs.d/blob/master/init.el#L715

    DONE Cloud backup

    • iCloud is nice since all my devices could use it without any additional software, but you can’t symlink directories so an app can’t use the same data directory as another. This makes it difficult to use multiple apps as an input source to zettel notes.
    • Dropbox does sketchy things to desktops and used to cause random CPU spikes that would eat through laptop battery life. Not sure how much that’s changed.
    • Github might work, but once the number of files increases that might become unwieldy.
    • Decided to use icloud for now for syncing a file between Beorg to be processed into notes. On desktop, will use github to backup the exported notes until I can figure out something better for the underlying org mode files.

    DONE Ignore any notes from hugo export that are tagged as private

    https://github.com/alexkehayias/emacs.d/blob/master/init.el#L715

    https://github.com/alexkehayias/emacs.d/blob/master/init.el#L715

    DONE Update org-roam journal template to include private

    (setq org-roam-dailies-capture-templates
      (quote (("d" "Default" plain (function org-roam--capture-get-point)
               "%?"
               :file-name "%(format-time-string \"%Y-%m-%d--%H-%M-%SZ--journal\" (current-time) t)"
               :head "#+HUGO_BASE_DIR: ~/Projects/zettel\n#+HUGO_SECTION: ./\n#+TITLE: %<%Y-%m-%d>\n#+ROAM_ALIAS:\n#+ROAM_TAGS: private\n"
               :unnarrowed t))))

  • Improving the 'Hand Feel' of Software Engineering

    Similar to Neil Gaiman’s remarks about a fountain pen and writing there are ways that enhance the feeling of a craft.

    Examples:

    • A mechanical keyboard improves the typing experience with satisfying tactile feedback
    • Fast feedback loop of making a code change and observing the result
    • Tools for refactoring
    • A REPL that let’s you grow your program
    • Debug tools that let you better understand what’s going on

    The sum of the tools (hardware and software) used while writing code is the hand feel. We don’t spend enough time thinking about the hand feel and often view it through the utilitarian lens.

    What’s the fountain pen for enterprise software? Green field projects?

    See also:

  • Humans Are the Great Interop Layer

    So much of technology is solving the problem of inter-operating between disparate systems e.g. cpu architectures, operating systems, language runtimes.

    Humans provide the greatest interop layer unknowingly. We seamlessly work between different technologies without missing a beat. We interoperate between our desktops and mobile devices, weaving together broken legacy systems at work to operationalize a task, and speak different languages (and computer languages). We manage an enormous amount of complexity without thinking about it.

  • Fuzzing

    The process of generating a range input values based on some constraints to fully explore a programs handling. For example, fuzzing a function that takes a numerical value might reveal it does not properly handle negative numbers even though it’s an allowed value.

    Usage examples:

    • Detecting security vulnerabilities e.g. memory bugs

  • Entropy

    Disorder in a system that tends to increase over time until reaching an equilibrium. Factors of entropy include heat, time, and the number of things in the system.

    Entropy is measured by the number of macro states (e.g. arrangement of molecules) the system can be in where a value of 1 would be a single state (i.e. crystal structure).

  • Difficulty Discussing Social Issues

    The reason discussions of social problems and correctness are difficult is because there is no safe way to fail and learn from feedback about a point of view. When someone is called out, they tend to not engage in social issues for fear of backlash or become defensive and angry, strengthening their belief.

  • Deriving User Flows and Optimal Path to Goals From Events

    By analyzing frontend analytics events we can derive the ‘hot paths’–sequences of actions users often take. If we also know the user’s goals we can then calculate the state space and optimal path (e.g. A* pathfinding). With that we can calculate the frequency in which users choose an optimal path.

    What might the results of this kind of analysis mean for the user experience?

    • A high cardinality of unique paths to a goal might reveal there are too many ways to do the same thing
    • A large percentage of users on an suboptimal path could indicate an opportunity to help users perform an action faster

    See also: