It’s been four months since the last post about my personal projects and endeavours. These past months I’ve been following, slowly but steadily, on the activities I had set the pace for previously.
Books
Language: literature
Explanation: I’ve been reading quite a lot, more than I thought I did
now that I glance back at the list.
- In Over our heads (The mental demands of modern society) - Robert Kegan
- Sapiens - Yuval Noah Harari
- The Language Instinct - Steven Pinker
- The Richest Man in Babylon - George S. Clason
- The Righteous Mind - Jonathan Haidt
- The Mysterious Benedict Society - Trenton Lee Stewart
- Beej’s guide to C programming
And more…
My definitive recommendation in this list is “In Over our Heads”. It’s a mind blowing and captivating piece. Not a hard one to go through but a hard one to ponder about.
On a side not, for those interested in manga, I’ve finally got myself to create a package version of my manga downloader.
It’s specifically for 64bit Linux:
Check it here.
June Events
Language: community
Explanation: This year, similar to the last two years, we did some
special events for June on nixers.net.
Those consisted of:
- A programming/projects week
Where I’ve spent my time adding multipart/alternative to the newsletter
sending script so that it allows both plain text and html versions.
I’ve also start contributing to thelostt ricing book, which looks promising.
- A music week
I had plan to setup a music streaming service for nixers but we got bugged down on the license and legal issues.
- A retro-ricing week
The goal was to create a sort of “retro-style” desktop. This is what I came up with:
- A week in the TTY
This was the usual week in the TTY.
- A monthly mini-scavenger hunt
I spent some hours to come up with a good small mini-hunt for the community. This is what I came up with: It has some crypto, some Unix-specific thing, some small fun parts, etc..
It’s still online for those interested.
Crypto
Language: Maths
Explanation: The last few weeks I had to deal with a lot of cryptography
and certificate related tasks at my job. I’ve found it rather interesting
and so I had to go deeper in the subject. I started consuming a lot
of content related to cryptography. The math is a bit hard to refresh
because it’s been a long time but it’s still fascinating.
I’ve contributed to a certificate verification lib in java and finally was able to learn how to use the openssl command line tool (and find its limitation concerning elliptical curves and regarding certificate name constraints extensions)
Podcast & Newsletter
Language: Unix
Explanation: Amazing isn’t it? The podcast and the newsletter have
moved a long way since I’ve started with the ideas. They are now well
polished and interesting.
So far we’ve got 7 new episodes since the last time, four months ago. This
isn’t a lot but I didn’t allocate enough time to focus on those.
We now have 32 newsletter issues in total, that’s 20 more than four
months ago… And that’s a lot of cool content to read and keep up with.
Be sure to subscribe to the newsletter.
I’ve got hold of the nixers.net domain and so no more spam for the newsletter. I’ve also been wondering if I should push the content to a broader audience. I’ve started distributing some episodes on my blog in a more readable format. Maybe others will find value in those.
2bwm
Language: C
Explanation: Finally, I’ve started refactoring 2bwm!
The new version is in preparation in the 2bwm_refactor
branch on github.
This new version will be more efficient by utilizing hashes instead of
linked list, this will have the effect of a search of O(1). It’ll also
have a cleaner code base, workspaces per monitors and much more.
I’m hyped about this.
Psychology
Language: brains
Explanation: I’ve been ingesting a lot of content and regurgitating
(not really) it back in many online arguments. I feel like I’m learning
every day about myself and others around me. I’ve posted a bunch of
articles related to conversations I’ve had with individuals I care about:
- Cross Culture Frustration
- Why Deliberate Positive Illusion Is Important
- A Case Against Misinterpretations
I’ve also added a new cycle to my evolutionary psychology cycles/mind-maps list:
Ascii & Drawings
Language: art
Explanation: I’m going down the abstract route now, even in ascii arts.
Now
This is a small update on my previous state.
My experiment with donations on Patreon didn’t go really well, only tejr is supporting me at the moment.
The fees are of extensive, $25 per transfer which doesn’t help either:
- 12% going to Patreon
- $20 fix rate by Payoneer
- $5 fix rate by the bank
I’m still going to strive on that path.
Now that I’ve got hold of the domain name nixers.net I’ll work on setting up an encrypted mail server using public/private keys schemes and I’ll share sub-domains with the members.
I’ll also be working on a context-like menu using xcb. I haven’t found any that was satisfying enough. It’s going to be small, lightweight, clean, support for xft, and good looking.
I’ve got plans to continue contributing to the local guide map on gmaps but for that I’ll have to repair my car A/C, which will take a while.
Overall I’m still looking for passive income, my ideas at the moment are vaporous, they’re give away for good will but I don’t know if I can sustain that rhythms.
I might start working on some freelance jobs that fit in my free time but for that I might have to give up on my hobbies, which is not very fun.
Anyway, all is good, good is all!
As usual…
If you want something done, no one’s gonna do it for you, use your own hands.
And let’s go for a beer together sometime, or just chill.
If you want to have a more in depth discussion I'm always available by email or irc.
We can discuss and argue about what you like and dislike, about new ideas to consider, opinions, etc..
If you don't feel like "having a discussion" or are intimidated by emails
then you can simply say something small in the comment sections below
and/or share it with your friends.