Good bye, Tumbler

Friday, April 11, 2025 · Permalink

Inevitably, it came the day where no matter how many times I tried, Tumbler refuses to bootstrap. It powers on, some of the LEDs light up but never reaches POST. I suspect it’s the mainboard. I tried disconnecting everything within reach, with no results.

This is a great machine, I love its compact form factor and its superb keyboard and the sharp and crisp screen. It served me well even well past its prime. From time to time a glimpse of hope ignites in me and I give it one more try. Perhaps disconnecting the CMOS. Perhaps leaving it overnight. Perhaps it’s a faulty RAM. But no.

And then I dream, what if it powers on? What would I use it for? Why, lots of things! Writing! Drawing with its integrated Wacom tablet! Reading comics! Retro gaming! Making music with Renoise! I could SSH or VNC into my desktop machine if I’d need to do heavy stuff! But it won’t boot anymore. And I can’t justify spending any money on it. So, it’s official.

Good bye, Tumbler, and thanks for all these years of service!

(Here she is at Nodos Digital, a decade ago (2015), my daily driver at the time)

Friday, February 28, 2025 · Permalink

Just Write.:

Whenever I face a problem that requires tough decision-making, I typically open a new entry in my diary and start typing whatever comes to mind. After flushing out whatever is in my mind at that moment, I then start organizing it. Sometimes, this process results in definitive answers to my questions, and sometimes, not. Either way, I still have a clear outline of the choices available and a better understanding of their potential benefits and costs.

A Web for humans

Saturday, January 11, 2025 · Permalink

As time passes, I keep stumbling with more and more AI-generated product reviews, tech tutorials and «content.» Even Google search results have an AI-generated summary right at the top of the page. And don’t get me started on AI-generated pictures!

Now, more than ever, we need more human-generated content; humans writing original thoughts for a human audience. I don’t want to browse a World Wide Web overflowing with tokens shuffled around by algorithms.

This was an unexpected call to write again on my blog, to do my part producting content. I publicly vow I’ll never use AI to generate any content whatsoever in this blog. Yes, AI is a powerful tool that’s useful when it’s a means to an end. But as the world is finding its balance and presently flooding with AI-content, I propose we push back with 100% human-generated content.

I’m not against AI, but the current abuse and misuse of it. AI to help us crack incurable sicknesses? What an amazing thing! AI to audibly describe a picture to a blind girl? More of that, please! AI to understand the language of an uncontacted tribe opening to us? Let’s hope it’s not death threats for poisoning their waters!

Whatever your thing is, do it and please publish it on the Web! Write, paint, sing, sew, sculpt, compose–do it! We need you, your perspective on life, your opinion, your beliefs, your style, your voice, your soul. A Web for humans by humans!

Monday, October 14, 2024 · Permalink

I am tired of AI:

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last few years, you probably have seen the same massive surge I’ve seen in the application of artificial intelligence (AI) to pretty much every problem out there, in software testing, in software development, and in life in general.

Now, I am all for finding and developing new solutions to existing problems, but boy, am I tired of AI, of how it is used and of how it is marketed.

My sentiments too. I’ve never used ChatGPT or similar tools to this date.

Final issue of Future Music magazine

Friday, September 27, 2024 · Permalink

After 30 years, Future Music magazine has published its final issue, number 414, September 2024.

I discovered Future Music on a small local place here in Ica that sold second-hand and old magazines, books and other publications. I bought the only issue that was available (issue 56), still on its bag and with the free CD, but it was a few years old. I read that magazine many times over! There was a pseudo-interview with Kraftwerk, and also a Roni Size interview from which I learnt early on the value of hard work (he and his mates working at 3 AM) and to make the most of what you have (he had a sample with a hiss, and he used it anyway).

Later, more magazines appeared and I bought as many as I could afford. The free CDs had tracks, demos and samples. One of those samples is the centerpiece of my «404 Dancing Ducks» track. My music production was limited to trackers at the time, and thanks to Future Magazine I was properly educated on MIDI.

I wanted to get my hands on the gear they reviewed: the Yamaha A3000 sampler, the «affordable» XG-powered Yamaha CS1x, the virtual analog Yamaha AN1x beast, the physical-modelling Korg Prophecy, among others.

The massively productive Mike Paradinas was 24 when interviewed, to the chagrin of the interviewer. I was younger than him and thinking «hey, so I still can make it!» I’m now 46 and owning the chagrin.

And then there were the album reviews. Oh, right, thanks to Future Music I learnt about The Blue Nile! Wow, I forgot.

I’m not exaggerating if I say that Future Music shaped my life in many ways. I still have the issues, I still have all the CDs. I’ll give them a good read again!

Thank you to all the staff, specially the ones who wrote on the issues I owned, with a big shout out to Andy Jones. You did a great job.

I have a twtxt now, BTW

Monday, July 8, 2024 · Permalink

Today I learnt about twtxt, a very simple, decentralized microblogging… thing. I don’t dare call it platform. But looks like I arrived late to the party, all twtxts I find no longer exist, clients are now archived, read-only GitHub repositories, etc. Bummer.

Not sure when the novelty will wear off, but here we go: https://jgwong.org/twtxt.txt

Wiki linking and concealing

Tuesday, December 5, 2023 · Permalink

Something I don’t like of Obsidian‘s Wiki links syntax is that the link is first, and the label second. So:

[[Link|Display Text]]

This breaks the reading flow, because if I write:

Whatever happened [[Daily Notes/Daily Notes 2023-11-01|the other day]]

You inevitably read «Whatever happened [[Daily Notes…» and then see the | character and then I realize, «oh, the text meant to be read was «the other day,» that makes sense now.»

This is no problem while working in Obsidian, because Obsidian will display the link as an HTML link, you read «Whatever happened the other day» and you won’t see the link. That’s great, but I spend most of my time in Vim/Neovim. I would have rather preferred if Obsidian used the other Wiki link format, which is «label first, link second.» Like this:

Whatever happened [[the other day|Daily Notes/Daily Notes 2023-11-01]]

It’s more natural to me. You read «Whatever happened [[the other day» and when you see the |character, you know it’s linking somewhere else. Reading flow doesn’t break.

Then I remembered Vim’s conceal feature. By setting up the proper syntax highlighting rules, Vim can hide the link and show only the label, just like Obsidian!

I thought there might be no need to do this from scratch, maybe there’s a syntax file that, at the very least, parses the link and label. I can go from there. I looked at Wiki.vim’s own syntax highlighting but they don’t parse the text and link part. Same with a Mediawiki syntax file for Vim. Pandoc’s syntax file for Vim doesn’t either.

Change of plans, I had to do it from scratch. I would had to learn two things: how to create new syntax highlighting rules and how Vim’s regular expressions work.

And so I did. I learnt on every little pocket of time I had, meaning, when I was sick with tummy ache at 2 AM, when singing to the kids to sleep, whenever Thais was busy baking, etc. I devoured tutorials and the Vim manual. By the way, Neovim has a better, navigable, manual.

This is how it looks like:

A screenshot of Vim, showing how my concealed Wiki links look.

It works awesome and I feel awesome! I feel like I own Vim at a new level. I’m now thinking on how to leverage this new skill and also the fact that I’m no longer at the whim of a colorscheme being almost perfect if only the Comments color were a bit darker. Now I can tweak it to my liking. And even make some new rules or copy over stuff between syntax files.

And Vim is so powerful! Everything is so very well thought out. It has the experience of years, decades of work. So the syntax highlighting can handle many things and already has solutions for things you might stumble because, in these past decades, many people stumbled with it already and it was solved. Elegantly.