February 2021

The longer I’m working on my CPU design, the more I come to realize how simplified my understanding of how a CPU works actually is. Yes, I know how an ALU works and how to decode an instruction. But the moment you try to actually design your own architecture and add some nice features like function calling or interrupt, the hardware complexity explodes.

/816cpu

How do you answer this question from your child: it is illogical that we have an infinite amount of numbers but not infinite characters in the alphabet.

/questions

A lot of chaos in my life right now. And there is not much I can actively do against it.

 

I just released a new subjection for my book reading log: Series. It still needs to be filled with all the content but that will take some time. 📚I hope this subpage allows me to better track which series I still need to finish reading.

/meta-blog-maintenance

I watched “Mein Blind Date mit dem Leben”. I very much liked this movie. Unfortunately, it is only available in German. A young man starts an apprenticeship in a hotel without telling anybody that he is nearly blind. I liked the pacing of the movie and the friendship between the two main characters.

 

Had another go at Docker on the Pi. I managed to install it now and add it to my network. Now I’m struggling with setting up an MQTT Broker :-(

/docker /raspberry

So good but also so fear and anger-inducing at the same time.

Cover

Last year Chris had an accident at work and was exposed to HIV. As a doctor not regularly working with HIV, he realized he didn't know much about what life with HIV looks like presently. He set out to learn about modern treatments and the psychosocial stigmas around HIV, while battling with his health insurance company and waiting for his results.

⤑ Chris Finds Out If He Has HIV - Short Film (via Kottke.org).

/link
And the CPU got more complex once again. I just realized that I need more state and hardware to support my interrupt. Perhaps I should start removing features oO

And the CPU got more complex once again. I just realized that I need more state and hardware to support my interrupt. Perhaps I should start removing features oO

/816cpu /interrupts

The person is covered with bruised and lacerations, most of them fresh. In a low voice, he whispers, “beware the porks.” And drops over, Hans is not sure if he died or is just unconscious – but it does not matter at this point as his chances to survive his injuries is rather small.

/writing-prompt /adventures-of-hans

Giving up on setting up HyperiotOS on my Raspy Zero. I’m just not able to get wifi to work :-(

It somehow always the same when I try to do DevOps – nothing wants to work :-(

/docker /raspberry

Hugo is so strange, I’ve worked on a shortcode, and it just did not want to work.

{{- $matched := where $allSeries "Params.lostInterest" false -}}

It took me nearly an hour to find the issue! The culprit was the camelCase spelling of lostInterest. As soon as I changed it to all lower case, it worked fine. But the big catch is that for simple rendering, the value this works:

{{Params.lostInterest}}

But in the where statement, it needs to be written like this: Params.lostinterest.

Ok just did some more googling and found out now that custom parameters should always be lower case and should use snake case instead of camel case.

/hugo /meta-blog-maintenance

@V_ the biggest complaint I constantly see about Hugo is the template engine being finicky and unintuitive. I considered it for my blog until I read about seasoned developers — which I’m not — having frustration with it. What has your experience been with Hugo?

by peterimoore on

@peterimoore I don't think it's any worse than any of the others, I just think the others are more similar to each other. The Hugo template engine is mostly just an extension of the golang templating stuff

by hjertnes on

@hjertnes is it hard for someone to learn with no golang experience, in your opinion? The appeal of Hugo over Jekyll is the build speed and single binary, and I’d be using a pre-made theme to start with. However, I’d still want to be able to tweak and make changes if needed.

by peterimoore on

@peterimoore, I think this: seasoned developers — which I’m not — having frustration with it summarizes my expericences pretty well. In the end I was able to solve nearly all of my issues, but the way to get there needs more energy then I think it should. And I don't think I had these issues with jekyllrb. But it is just to slow when you have more then five posts in you're blog :-( And I think in the end every system has it's quirks.

by V_ on

@V_ that’s my biggest issue and hesitation with Jekyll, quite honestly. Especially when I plan on heavily posting to my blog, even though I’d simply be committing to GitHub and having Netlify do the build. Right now I’m researching Zola as a candidate instead of Jekyll/Hugo.

by peterimoore on

@peterimoore you don't need to know any golang. In the same way you don't need any ruby to use jekyll

by hjertnes on

@peterimoore any speific reason which you like from Zola? I've only had a short look at the page right now it looks rather close to Hugo from what I've seen.

by V_ on

@V_ I like that it’s a single binary like Hugo, with fast build times from being written in Rust. I’ve read a couple of posts from people using it that its template engine is much friendlier, including one who ported a theme from Jekyll in a very short time due to similarities.

by peterimoore on

@peterimoore @V_ Did I also read it has no dependencies? That has a deep appeal. I tried to manage my own SSG site in the past and depency management meant I often was trying to fix something.

by toddgrotenhuis on

@toddgrotenhuis, yes, in this regard, it's the same as Hugo. And that is certainly an aspect I like of Hugo. I don't want to remember how many times I needed to fix my ruby gems with Jekyll Oo (until I moved it into Docker, but that made it still slower).

by V_ on

@toddgrotenhuis that’s correct, and you can use it with Netlify/Vercel for serverless deploy without downloading dependencies and risking breakage. My reading also showed it has a much cleaner folder structure (than Hugo especially). I’m going to try porting a Jekyll theme.

by peterimoore on

Hugo is so strange, I’ve worked on a shortcode and it just did not want to work.

{{- $matched := where $allSeries "Params.lostInterest" false -}}

It took me nearly an hour to find the issue! The culprit was the camelCase spelling of lostInterest. As soon as I changed it to all lower case it worked fine. But the big catch is that for simple rendering the value this works:

{{Params.lostInterest}}

But in the where statement it needs to be written like this: Params.lostinterest.

 

Amazed, I star the dark grey blob under my kitchen table – and it stars back. It slowly creeps in my direction and touches my outstretched hand. It is cool to the touch, feels like metal but not any metal I saw; it could be zirconium, but I’m not sure. What is more impressive is that it is alive!

/writing-prompt

It looks like there is an issue with my daily writing prompt automation mechanism. It stopped working the other day, and I just looked at it now and noticed that repeating the calendar event just lost the Alert, which should open the AppleScript. I have no idea how this could happen.

/automation /writing-prompt

I’ve enjoyed the snowfall today; it was quite a change to the weekend weather. And the day was also somewhat successful, which I’m happy about, especially after the last two weeks.

 

I wonder if I need to look at HTML on my search for an alternative open data format for my notes.

It would support all the things I want: text, images, layouts, and interaction via JS. The only missing thing is that it is not WYSIWYG.

The biggest hurdle I see right now is that you cannot modify the HTML source inside the browser, so you need to have a server to support persistence.

/note-taking
First signs of spring. Flowering branch of a small tree.

First signs of spring. Flowering branch of a small tree.

/spring

@V_ It was a sunny day with migrant birds here in Oslo today, and although ~-8°C, it felt real springy. ☀️🌱🪴🐦

by odd on

@odd sound joyfull. We only had som sun in the morging for around 2 hours. But we took the chance to have short walk before the rain.

by V_ on

I love Hugo for its render speed, but the documentation could be better. Somehow I continuously run into issues that need quite convoluted solutions to solve. Today’s problem is to get absolute URLs for image links in the content part, so my images work correctly in the feeds. It looks like this is a solution Oo.

/hugo /meta-blog-maintenance

@V_ Thanks for that. I'll have to try it. I'd given up on images in the RSS feed because I really like the convenience of using relative URLs and keeping the post's assets in the same folder as the Markdown file.

by jack on

@jack You're welcome. I've also found this feature: gohugo.io/getting-s... It would allow for a nicer solution but only works with images. And you're right this would also allow me to move my assets back next to the md file as well.

by V_ on

I’m thinking back to when I was younger, and the days and seasons were endless. Nowadays I always feel stressed and my free time is short and dear to me. I wish it could change again.

/creative-writing

The wind is howling and drives the rain into my face. I hurry along the dark road past a delicatessens store. I would love to look at the window and wonder how everything smells, but there is no time today, and with every additional minute, I get wetter.

/writing-prompt
An image of a tornado, drawn by my daughter. She seems to be only fascinated by them.

An image of a tornado, drawn by my daughter. She seems to be only fascinated by them.

 

It looks like Amazon changed their ebooks details page once again, and my scraping code does no longer work. It would be nice when they would just over an API.

/meta-blog-maintenance /swift

@V_ Now I get it. Saw it today and I kind of liked the format how the details were displayed.

by ridwan on

@ridwan Yep it looks rather nice now. But I'm not sure I have the feeling not all listing got it. At least it was only a minor fix in my app :-)

by V_ on