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colinflane

53 karma · joined February 13, 2023

colinflane.com
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colinflane··on Show HN: I made a Note-Taking app for people who keep texting themselves
I created a note with a tag. Then I deleted the note, but the tag remains visible under 'Tags' in the left slide panel. fwiw
colinflane··on Tiny fern has the largest genome of any organism on Earth
Unimportant, but "pared" down, not "paired".
colinflane··on J.G. Ballard predicted the rise of social media (2016)
And, of course, yesterday's Met Gala had as its theme Ballard's story "The Garden of Time". Timely.
colinflane··on On Keeping a Logbook (2010)
Not _quite_ the same, but may provide some food for thought. A classic: https://users.speakeasy.net/~lion/nb/book.pdf
colinflane··on The midwit home
And automobile!
colinflane··on I’m not a programmer, and I used AI to build my first bot
I know what you mean, but. Human spoken and written Languge very clearly _does_ something. It facilitates information exchange across time and space, catalyzing cultural evolution.
colinflane··on Willingham sends Fables into the public domain
"Arzach" by Mœbius. "The Incal" by same and Jodorowsky.
colinflane··on Transcript of taped conversations among German nuclear physicists (1945)
I just finished reading McCarthy's 'Stella Marris' and 'The Passenger'. Anyone who enjoyed reading this linked transcript I imagine might also appreciate much of the themes treated in McCarthy's final works. I found the passages on Oppenheimer interesting especially in light of Nolan's new film. Funny timing.
colinflane··on Going Rogue
Brogue is genuinely beautiful. I know pure roguelikes should be white ascii on black, but it's incredible what a little color can do. And the way it handles dynamic events in its environments. Really makes the cave "biome" come alive.
colinflane··on Cormac McCarthy has died
Suttree is maybe my favorite of all his novels. If, as others here have suggested, you regard Blood Meridian an epic. Suttree is a picaresque, like reading Pickwick Papers on salvia.
colinflane··on I’ve been single all my life
Others have said, but institutionalized settings can be good for getting the "vetting" out of the way. Why do so many romances originate in school? Because each and every participant recognizes everyone else is in the exact same position he is -- a subject of circumstance.

Streets, transportation -- these are low-filter interstices. Maximum wariness is warranted, really regardless of sex.

If you're not interested in going to the club, bar, art class -- what are you interested in? Seriously. It's tough. If your hobbies are sticking your head in the sand / introspective study (mine are), you will need to jump outside your comfort zone or else expect some degree of social resignation.

colinflane··on Some mistakes I made as a new manager
Thanks to the author.

This resonated with me.

It was helpful to see here a couple of the same issues I grappled with (to know "I'm not crazy"): feedback loops, prioritization / importance, communication.

On the topic of the dreaded Micro-Management, I read recently somewhere, "better to micro-manage than to not manage at all". That also resonated.

colinflane··on Some mistakes I made as a new manager
Sure, we can agree social media news and zero cost information dissemination is an Existential Evil, but ... if author had said "shout into a bag", "pound head against wall", or "drink a beer". Maybe we could just let it ride, for once.
colinflane··on I’ve been single all my life
Off topic, but as an introvert lurking in an introvert thread, I want to say: this is true professionally, too.

My boss's boss's boss put it this way: no one is spinning around in his chair at his desk, twiddling his thumbs, thinking, "_When_ will Tom ask me to meet over coffee?" But if you send him a note, and ask politely, and convey earnestness, odds are good he will meet you for coffee.

colinflane··on ChatGPT Plugins
Perhaps we will be the new cats and dogs https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262539517/novacene/
colinflane··on ChatGPT Plugins
I recently finally got around to reading EM Forster's in-some-ways-eerily-prescient https://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~koehl/Teaching/ECS188/PDF_files/... I think you can extract obvious parallels to social media, remote work, digital "connectedness", etc -- but also worth consideration in this context too.
colinflane··on PLATO: An educational computer system from the 60s shaped the future
I first learned of PLATO thru the writing of the CRPG Addict: http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2013/10/game-12-oubliette-197...
colinflane··on One AI Tutor Per Child: Personalized learning is finally here
"we want a standard, universal curriculum"

I don't want that.

colinflane··on I use cheap notebooks
A small 3-ring binder, plus packets of hole-punched graph paper. Extremely cheap. The beauty of the binder is that it allows for easily rearranging pages, something notebooks do not. Thanks to Lion Kimbro for this advice.

https://users.speakeasy.net/~lion/nb/book.pdf

colinflane··on Identifying as an Artist
Trees for the Forest
colinflane··on Identifying as an Artist
Thanks, I have read and deeply enjoyed The Incal, as well as some of his films. I merely sought to use the specific example to pose a hypothetical.
colinflane··on Identifying as an Artist
If you enjoyed, or at least "got" something out of the Lynch, you might also the film documentary 'Jodorowsky's Dune'. Is a man with a fantastic vision he is unable to instantiate, an artist? Asking for a friend.
colinflane··on Honestly, It's Probably the Phones
Exact same thing happened to me when we traveled to Costa Rica for a wedding and I unwittingly waded into the Pacific with my waterproof-but-cracked Galaxy in the pocket of my swimming trunks. Came out in death throes, scanning pink lines and emitting horrible noises. Bliss!

Returned to the States and decided to upgrade to an iPhone, but the wait times for the 14 was a couple weeks. Exceptionally lovely time. Go for a walk after wrapping up work -- and that's all it is!

colinflane··on Honestly, It's Probably the Phones
Still relies on writing, but have you considered ReMarkable or something along those lines? At least you'd still have sync. And not to judge, but I wonder about your concern for writing / typing speed: are you really just taking notes, or transcribing? If the former, I would imagine writing quick glyphs might suffice.

FWIW I don't use a ReMarkable or tablet. I'll use a text editor on my laptop, or a paper notebook, and it also troubles me I don't have effortless translation of the latter over to the former. But I have observed there is much less knee jerk to the ReMarkable form factor in meeting rooms, at least in my org.

colinflane··on Future Fords could repossess themselves and drive away if you miss payments
"clerical error" reminds me, recently rewatched Gilliam's Brazil (1985). From the Wikipedia article's section on Plot:

> One day, shortly before Christmas, an insect becomes jammed in a teleprinter, which misprints a copy of an arrest warrant it was receiving. This leads to the arrest and death during interrogation of cobbler Archibald Buttle instead of renegade heating engineer and suspected terrorist Archibald Tuttle.

A literal bug!

colinflane··on How to Start Your Blog in 2023
That sounds really cool, thanks for sharing. It may well be that I'll eventually reach, or gradually approach, a footprint with my site files that rewards putting in place some layer of tooling along these lines.

But I like to think that, when that time comes, I will be the author of that tooling. As it sounds you are. Kudos!

colinflane··on How to Start Your Blog in 2023
I was pleasantly surprised to learn writing raw html is not difficult, at all. I am not doing Rocket Science, though. As others say, static site generators introduce a layer of abstraction. I like writing in markdown too, but if I really cared to, I could write my own scripts to translate. However, I found that html does not introduce undue overhead. I am sure I could churn out content more quickly if I were writing in markdown, but at what cost? There is a cost to writing _too_ quickly. Myself, I find I actually like a little friction.