We often get absorbed in the moment, it’s tough to take a pause and reflect. However, if we never do we might forget our stances and essential parts of ourselves. So here comes the time to stop, and refresh about what I’ve been up to, to judge and think about the direction of things.
It’s been more than enough time since the last update article.

Life

Language: life
Explanation: The past months I’ve been bridging two continents, one foot in Europe and one foot in Asia, specifically France and Lebanon to be near my SO. I’ve stayed a month in January last year, a month in Spring from April till May, and 45 days between October and December. It’s strenuous to be spread apart but we’re trying to close the gap soon. The road is laborious but love will prevail.

During my stay we try to immerse ourselves in the culture. We’ve visited Bordeaux, the famous city of wine. After that particular stay, while in Lebanon, I tried to apply what I learned and started making apple cider, rum, and wine, using the fruits of my garden, with some attempts and some successes.
Furthermore, on my next trip in October, we chose to focus on cheese, and everything related to them. I started following the YouTube channel of Luisier affineur, and to taste two cheeses every week. My goal was to be able to visit an affineur and to ask them for recommendations based on what I’ve liked. For every cheese I’ve tried, I’ve looked up its rich history. To name a few: Saint nectaire, munster, perail, ossau-iraty, cantal, petit saint thomas, neuf chatel, double bondelles neuf chatel, bienheureux, saint albray, brie de meaux, and so many more.
It culminated in my SO proposing that we make cheese ourselves using raw organic milk from a nearby farm, Lebanese cheeses. Hence, we got all the equipment necessary and prepared three kinds of cheeses: akkawi, halloum, qarishe. They turned out fabulous. When I was back in Lebanon I decided to celebrate Christmas with everything homemade; I made fresh bread, accompanied by olives and olive oil, churned my own butter using heavy cream, made my own mozzarella, halloum, and akkawi, all of it with homemade wine.

In addition to the above, we’ve also gone on city tours, discovering hidden historical places. We also went on so-called “balades patrimoniales”, which are a series of map taking the traveler in separate regions of Toulouse to discover their particularities.
At the start of December, the Christmas market had opened in the city center, and we’ve enjoyed local delicacies and season’s specialties.

Lastly, and as usual, I’ve taken some time to find mushrooms I hadn’t seen before, or that are rare in Lebanon such as: Giroles, trompete, pied de mouton, cèpe, chanterelle, pleurote, and more.

Overall, I’m happy I have the flexibility and ability to travel to be near my SO and I’m doing as much as I can to understand and love the intricacies of the French culture. However, this doesn’t remove the fact that we’re far and it hurts. I’ll be doing my best to change this, and we’ve amply discussed on the next steps to take.

Psychology, Philosophy & Books

Language: culture
Explanation: I’ve devoured books the past months, oh so many. It seems I had an inner yearning to read and read and read. In total around ~30 books. Let’s review them by categories.

Sci-fi:

• Eight O’Clock in the Morning by Ray Nelson
• Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
• The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
• Ringworld by Larry Niven
• I Am Legend by Richard Matheson

Psychology, philosophy, and mythology:

• Atlas of the heart: mapping meaningful connecting and the language of human experience by Brené Brown
• The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
• Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold by Stephen Fry

Fiction:

• A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
• Mourir partir revenir le jeu des hirondelles by Zeina AbiRached

Non-fiction:

• In Search of Time: The History, Physics, and Philosophy of Time by Dan Falk
• Madness and Civilization by Foucault
• 100 ans d’exploration Française

Fantasy:

• Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
• The Legends of the First Empire Series by MiChael J. Sullivan (6 books)
• Riyria Revelations by MiChael J. Sullivan (3 books)
• Piles of Bones by MiChael J. Sullivan
• The broken Earth series by N. K. Jemisin

Sociology and semiotic:

• La societé de consommation by Jean Baudrillard
• Language et pouvoir symbolique by Pierre Bourdieu
• Mythologies by Roland Barthes
• Good Entertainment by Byung Chul Han
• Saving Beauty by Byung Chul Han

The novelty for me was to dive again into fantasy, a genre I hadn’t touched since childhood. What I love about sci-fi also applies to fantasy, it is all about the logistic of creating a new world, and it’s quite amazing and how much immersive fantasy can be, it makes the imagination run wild.
Another topic I’ve introduced is sociology and semiotic, which are in relation to the book I’ve written about internet. These particular books are from deconstructionists. Indeed, the past months, the three articles I’ve written were all about psychology, sociology, and philosophy.

• Myopic Experiences and Distant Observers, an article about observer knowledge and experiential knowledge, a mix of ontology and epistemology.
• Nation, Marshmallows, and Scarcity, a sociological and psychological deconstruction of some national issues in Lebanon.
• Counterculture in the Age of Hyperconnectivity, an analysis of why modern society is bland, what is counterculture, and what it means today.

My favorites from the above list of books are the, J.Sullivan books, he’s exquisitely good at storytelling, Piranesi because of its uniqueness, “in search of time” since someone had recommended it more than 4 years ago and I’ve finally read it, and la societé de consommation, for how it changed my view on many things.

In a similar vein, my SO and I enjoy discussing and arguing about psychology. It can get a bit thorny from time to time, nevertheless it’s exciting, challenging, and always a moment to learn and grow together.

Unix, Nixers, Programming & Articles & Writing

Language: Programming/Unix
Explanation: After the writing of the access control article I focused more on non-unix things. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t in my scope, I’m still reading 10+ articles a week through the newsletter, that is thriving.
Furthermore, a friend, z3bra, has published a wonderful unix scavenger hunt entitled c3ber Hunt. I’ve had a blast playing it and learned a lot of things along the way, from crypto to networking.

On another side, I’m keeping my knowledge up-to-date on system design by going through a new book I’ve read: System Design Interview by Alex Xu, Sahn Lam.

At work, I’ve given a presentation on docker, and soon I’m going to be giving one on the 5GC (I work in the telco industry) and LDAP. I’ll be hosting the presentations on this blog too in the projects section for anyone who is interested. If you have questions you can hit me up by email.

Globally, that doesn’t seem like much has happened tech-related, but now I feel ready to write/start a new research, and launch activities on nixers or others. I already have a few topics in the pipeline and one that I’ve started brainstorming.
I’m thinking of relaunching the nixers conf in June this year, and a couple of other activities. Furthermore, I’m definitely interested in having a weekly papers we love or tech bookclub again, however it’s hard to get others to join the party.

Ascii Art & Art

Language: Art
Explanation: I’ve been in a rut as far as ASCII art goes. I couldn’t get inspiration after I’ve finished my series on mythical creatures, of which I added a griffin and a naga. Yet, I know that the more I try to force it the less I’ll find ideas. And yet again, I know even more that if I wanted to I should force myself and sit down for at least an hour a week in front of the editor, smashing things until magically a piece would take shape.

Moreover, a new hobby I’ve developed is cinematography. It hinges on a covid-era hobby of watching international and classic movie. I’ve been delving into the details and art of cinema, trying to be more of a cinephile.

I’ve built a new page on this blog dedicated to movie reviews instead of the old gopher hole. After watching a movie, I breath and think deeply about what I watched. Initially this consisted of a shallow view of the movie, however this wasn’t satisfying and thus I’ve been learning proper film analysis. This has opened my eyes to so many techniques, from camera angle, lenses, coloring, acting, costumes, mise-en-scene, transitions, inner meanings, tropes, narrative styles, leitmotifs, audio scores, shot length and compositions, and so much more.
I now appreciate and distinguish aspects I hadn’t before and I’m able to put all of it into words that I can share. Isn’t it nice that learning about something makes us savor it even more.

Others

Let’s start with this: I got a new domain venam.net instead of hosting the blog as a subdomain of nixers.net.

When it comes to gardening, I’ve set my attention on landscaping. I’ve created a rock path traversing the garden organically and planted a few things around it, mainly citronella. The first picture above shows the work-in-progress, while the second one show the state of the garden in the middle of winter, in its wild and unkempt state. Goes to say that the citronella have properly grown.

Besides this, I’ve been engaged in the usual activities: still learning mandarin, still doing elevate, still dancing. The main addition is that I’ve now included HITT, high intensity interval training, in my exercises. I feel it’s been positive for my general health.

Now

Altogether, the past months were culturally rich. For the next few ones, I want to go forward with more presentations and researches, to go back to technical stuffs. I’ll be brainstorming for a new massive research article.
Moreover, I’ll be traveling to France in April and May, but planning more long term things too. After that in July I’ll be attending the WeAreDevelopers World Congress in Berlin.

I’ll continue to sprinkle old and new hobbies here and there.

This is it! As usual… If you want something done, no one’s gonna do it for you, use your own hands, even if it’s not much.
And let’s go for a beer together sometime, or just chill.

Attributions:

• from Camirus in Rhodes, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
• Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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.