Axxuy's Internet Notebook

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Last post: Sep 22, 2026
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Back Up
Sep 22, 2026 · original
I am back up. As in, up again, not a backup, a spare copy of something. By the way, have you backed up your files lately? You should do that. Have you checked your backups to make sure they work? Do that too. So basically my computer has been having some strange issues with the internet lately. I could connect just fine, I just couldn t make any TCP connections. That s most useful connections. It s what websites use. So that was a problem. I still don t understand just what was going on. This problem has happened transiently before, but this time it lasted for more than a week. It s been very frustrating. So do I have a bunch of posts stacked up and ready to go now? Nah. I ve also just been busy. Business is an excuse, yes, but it s my excuse and I m sticking to it. Now I could ramble more, but I have a date to get ready for, so excuse me for that . Reply by email
RIP Wendell Berry
Sep 3, 2026 · original
The other day I heard that Wendell Berry had died. Yet another name in the recent spate of celebrity deaths. I will defer to Wikipedia for his full C.V. but among other things he was a writer and environmentalist. Mainly I know him because I read a book of his essays a few months ago. I enjoyed them and I have been interested in reading his poetry. He had a strong voice and strong opinions in his essay. He was sharply critical—to put it mildly— of the modern world, with essays such as Why I am Not Going To Buy A Computer . When I read his book I assumed he had already passed away. The book was not really that old, but it is old enough to be palpable. It gave me a strong feeling that the person writing those words at that time, seeing how things have gone since then, would spontaneously combust. I assumed that he could not survive the sight of the modern world with the views he had. There
What is Nature
Sep 2, 2026 · original
There is a very special park in my area—there s a lot of parks, it s nice. It is a beautiful bit of nature. It is full of lush greenery that is deeply refreshing to be among. Except is isn t actually natural. The whole thing is engineered. It s centered around a canal that was gouged out for business and industry and commerce. Some praiseworthy person a century ago decided to put a park and gardens alongside the canal. It s all maintained by a staff of professional gardeners. I like hiking (not that you would know it from the amount that I actually do). There s something deeply soothing about getting away from civilization and wandering through the wilderness. Just keep in mind that trails are built . They do not occur naturally or maintain themselves naturally. And though the forests around me may seem like nature, I have to keep in mind that they are not really so wild. All the land in
September
Sep 1, 2026 · original
Today is the first day of September. Blaugust is over. Over the course of 31 days I wrote a grand total of… 4 posts. I blame work. There some scheduling… adjustments during August. I spent essentially the entire month busy and sleep deprived. It was really impossible to get into a writing mood. It was difficult (even more so than usual) to focus. So, naturally, I did not write. I am disappointed at missing Blaugust, but I do not feel to bad about it. I am too tired to feel bad. I just want to sleep. I hope to write more in the next month. I do even have a draft of a post already! This blog remains, even if slowly. In the meantime, I have lots and lots of great blog posts from everybody else who participated in Blaugust to catch up on. Ĝis la reskribo! Reply by email
Short Posts
Aug 20, 2026 · original
One of the nice things about writing your own blog on your own website is that the form of it is completely up to you. There are absolutely no constraints or rules about how you present yourself or your ideas (but please be cool and make sure it s accessible). Almost all of my experience with writing before this blog was school assignments, so I am very happy to be free of those strictures. In particular, I enjoy not having to worry about length. I can just write two paragraphs if I want—or even two sentences—and that is enough. There s so stretching and straining to fill out a five page assignment. I don t think I ve ever had five pages worth of stuff to say about one topic in my life. Reply by email
Blown Off Course
Aug 19, 2026 · original
We re right around the halfway point of August now (what‽ already‽) and I have not been nearly as active around this blog as I would have liked to be. I haven t even read many blog posts! And there are so many great posts coming out, both as part of Blaugust and as part of the constant stream of creativity that is the best part of the internet. I ve only gotten two posts out this month. Nobody is keeping score, I know, but I had hoped and wanted to do more. But what is there to say? I haven t had much time or (especially) energy to write. And once that s happening it s hard to build momentum to strt again. I don t like to make these kinds of posts. But it s what I have to say at the moment. And August isn t over yet. There is more time, and I hope there will be more blogging from me. In the meantime, it is good to see such a stream of activity. Keep up the good work everyone! Reply by em
Writing By Hand
Aug 7, 2026 · original
The main tool I use for to write this blog is vim (specifically Neovim. Vim at this point is not really a particular program, but a clade of software.) I have been using it for many years now, so this is not surprising. What is surprising (to me) is that I do not write (or at least draft) more posts by hand. I like writing by hand. I have quite a collection of analog writing instruments and I certainly am looking for ways to justify that. I have fountain pens, I have typewriters, I have far too many notebooks, I have many miscellaneous pens. To add to the mess I recently ordered a sampler pack of fancy Japanese pencils. I like analog writing. And yet I do not use all of those for this blog very often. I usually write straight into my keyboard. This is a contradiction. Not that you would be able to tell if I did not tell you. These words, as they appear on your screen, will carry no trace
Blaugust 2026 Is Here
Aug 1, 2026 · original
It s August again. The year goes by so fast. With August comes a very special event: Blaugust! It s a month long celebration of blogging. There are all kinds of events going on at all times in various corners of the blogosphere, but this is the one that really got me into the habit of blogging. It is a bittersweet one this year. Belghast , who founded this event, tragically passed away earlier this year. I did not know him personally, so I cannot write a proper tribute, but there are others who have: Farewell Belghast — Contains Moderate Peril Goodbye, Bel – Indiecator And where does that leave the event? This is the sweet part of the bittersweet. There is a community here. It is stil here and still writing and still making connections. It lives on. And I am glad to be a part of it. At it s heart, Blaugust is simple: blog during the month of August. There are acheivements, if you want, b
Tab Cleaning: July 2026
Jul 22, 2026 · original
Some Links Link Tree? How about a Pan-tree? A little while ago I wrote about my thoughts on linktree type sites . It seems I am not the only one whofeels that way. Here s some tips on making your own with pandoc . (This blog has a lot of information about pandoc.) Distraction Free as a Distraction Are you trying to set up a distraction free writing environment? Do you spend a lot of time thinking about it? Does removing distractions distract you from what you need to do? Is it an excuse to buy new gadets? What have note-taking PKMs accomplished, really? · brennan.day In a similar vein, how many of the elaborate note taking, knowledge management, second brain systems that you see posts and videos about exist just for the sake of making those posts and videos and ever more elaborate systems. Or another way: I see a lot of people talking about their note taking systems, but much less about
Writing Too Slowly
Jun 25, 2026 · original
My last post is not long, but it did end up taking quite a bit longer than I wouldhave liked. Sometimes you just do not have as much time for a project as you expect. In this case it was also hindered by being tied to a programming project, which invited tweaking and contemplation of features, etc. I became hesitant to post it. It took too long to finish. What I find happens, is that the longer I spend with a piece of writing, the less confident I become in it. As I tweak, edit, revise, the writing seems ( seems , not does ) to become less clear, not more. Editing always has the feeling of pushing food around on my plate with my fork, at best stirring everything up without really changing the substance, at worst making a mess of it. I come to doubt whether I ve made any point at all. And so with these blog posts I have a tendency to rush and try to get them out as quickly as possible. On
Adding Stats to a Static Blog
Jun 24, 2026 · original
A little while ago I was wondering just how many words I ve written on my blog. I was inspired by Wouter over at Brain Baking . Now, I use a static site generator for my blog, the upshot of which is that the whole thing is just a big folder full of files. So counting up all the words is really easy with a simple shell command: wc --total=only -w content/blog/*/*.md 55198 That s 55,198 total words as of the time of this writing. Well that s neat. With a little bit of awk you can get the average too: wc --total=never -w content/blog/*/*.md \ | awk '{total+=$1} END{print total, total/NR}' 55270 321.337 (The change in total word count is because I am running these commands as I write this post.) And finally I have a breakdown of the number of posts by year. rg "^date: \d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2}" -t markdown -o content/blog \ | cut -d' ' -f2 \ | date -f - +"%Y" \ | sort | uniq -c \ | awk 'BEGIN{print
I Bought a New Notebook
Jun 16, 2026 · original
I bought a notebook. Yes, another one. No, I did not need another notebook. But, you know… It all started when I heard about a new stationery shop that opened in my city. Of course I had to go visit one weekend. They had a great selection of fancy notebooks. (Despite my avidly accumulating notebooks, I am picky about which ones. It is important that they have paper suitable for fountain pens, my preferred writing instruments.) It was a nice, friendly, cozy place. I only wanted to support them. So I bought a notebook. It s a brand I ve never seen before: a Nakabayashi Logical T-line. What am I going to do with it? Well, let me tell you. You don t end up a notebook hoarder like I am by worrying about questions like that. But as it happens, I do have a clear purpose for it. I am going to use it for writing blog posts. It is really surprising that I don t draft more posts by hand. This post
I Want to Talk to People, Not Chatbots
Jun 9, 2026 · original
I don t really want to make another post about LLMs. I would love for blogging about LLMs to become as gauche as blogging about blogging. But this is the idea I have right now. I don t want to talk to chatbots. There is one simple reason: I am not chatty. I am not talkative. I find it difficult to think of things to say. It takes me quite a bit of time and effort to think of things to say. It s hard! And so, if I am going to spend all that time and effort, I want to spend it on actual people . I want my computer to be a tool; I want to wield it; I want to operate it; I want to use it. That way my energy can go into the task that the computer is for, not thinking of things to say. There are other reasons too, but this is my reason. Reply by email
I Love Walking
May 30, 2026 · original
I love to go for long walks . That is my first choice for getting places. I love being able to walk places. It is a privilege. It is a privilege to have a body that can do it without pain. It is a privilege to have places close enough to walk to. It is a privilege to have a climate and landscape amenable to it. None of these are guarantees. Sometimes they are short walks. There is a bakery a few blocks from where I live. Every now and then, when I have a bit of time in the morning, I indulge in a sweet treat from there. About half an hour away on my legs, there is a little park with a stunning view of the local landscape. That is always a good stroll. There is nothing like the feeling of moving through the world by yourself, with nothing more than your own body (and the help of the teams of people who designed, manufactured, and shipped my shoe; or the people who designed, built, and mai
Tab Cleaning: May 2026 Edition
May 18, 2026 · original
First up is a pair: Nostalgic for past futures by Tracy Durnell and Nostalgia Always Includes a Temporal Context by Brain Baking. Both posts, as the titles suggest, are about nostalgia. In It s Pie day for me JTR shares a picture of some delicious looking pizza. I m a very big fan of pizza. Two more from Tracy Durnell: Bookshelves as mental constructs with some philosophizing on bookshelves. And a recipe for Chickpeas and pasta with rosemary oil —sounds yummy! Aaron Hertzmann wrote an essay about dogs and the way dogs think: Dogs Do Not Know Things . In short, dogs do not think like we do, and trying to treat them like they do will not have good results for anybody involved. Also, with respect to training, intentional or otherwise, humans are not actually so different. I have a couple of tabs with a classic topic: bloggers talking about why blogging is great. They are right; blogging is
The Tool For the Job
May 14, 2026 · original
I have noticed an interesting phenomenon with LLMs. There is something I have never quite understood. From what I have gathered from people talking about LLMs in comments, and blog posts, and chat rooms, and Youtube videos, etc. One of the most common uses for them is looking up information. And I don t get it. I do try to avoid using LLMs where I can, but this particular case is not aversion or resistance for me. It is categorization. I simply that I don t associate them with finding information. When I want to look something up, I go to Wikipedia , or Youtube . I go to a search engine and look for blogs and forums. LLMs aren t even in the list of things that I think about for learning. I am a little mystified by how they got onto that list for so many other people. There are many tools for this task already. Those tools can certainly be improved on—who has anything good to say about se
Re: Who Knows That You Blog?
May 5, 2026 · original
Who Knows That You Blog? First, this is a response to David s post: Who knows that you blog? . It is also a response to the other people s responses that I have seen in my RSS feeds. For the most part, no one I know in real life knows this blog. My partner knows that I blog, but I have not showed it to them. I—like many other people, it seems—feel a sense of separation between real life and internet life that I am hesitant to violate. Also, the name I blog under here is the same one I write fanfiction under, so I feel a little shy about that. Beyond that I am not embarassed about what I write here—even if some things are hastily and uncarefully written. I am sure I ll share this sooner or later. But all in all, nobody I know in real life knows both that I blog and where my blog is. At least for right now. Who Knows You From Your Blog? Now here s where it gets interesting. I have actually
It's Not Just Slop—It's Bad Writing
May 4, 2026 · original
There was an article I saw floating around recently. It was about an experiment: setting up a computer with a fake login and leaving it open to the internet . It quickly became apparent as I read it, that it was written by an LLM. The other day, I started watching a video by a youtuber I have enjoyed in the past. The script of the video was very obviously LLM-written. I didn t finish the video. It was undeniable. The it s not just X—it s Y"s. The triplets of short sentences with an implicit verb. The Question? Answer. introductions to paragraphs. All repeated relentlessly until there was no chance of it being a quirk of individual style. It all bothered me. But it took a moment for me to realize exactly why. Eventually I came to the conclusion that both of these things were actively made worse because they were written by LLMs . Why? Not because I doubt the accuracy of the information No
Emailing about Blogging and Blogging About Emailing
Apr 30, 2026 · original
Reach Out to Your Fellow Bloggers A few days ago, I read a post about email: About Writing Other Bloggers Email . It s a reflection on the joy of emailing other bloggers. Not so much as a way of commenting on their posts (though not excluding that), but as a way of connecting with the people behind those posts. Shortly after that, on Bubbles , I read a reply to that: Re: About Writing Other Bloggers Email . It s a short note that I found very relatable. The author, like me, thinks about emailing other bloggers, would like to make a habit of it, but so far has not followed through much. I know the feeling. I have sent both of these people a message, so that s a start. One of the things that keeps me from doing it more is overthinking what to say. In the end, I kept it to a simple hey, I saw your post and I like your blog. Every now and then I get an email to that effect, and it always is
I Also Got An Xteink X4
Apr 23, 2026 · original
Have you heard about it? The hot new device? I have recently seen a flurry of discussion about a new gadget: the Xteink X4. This is only a sampling of the blog posts about it: Early Days With Xteink X4 - Joel Chrono I Love Reading on the Xteink X4 - JP Barebones e-reader: Xteink X4 - www-gem XT Eink X4 - Bit-101 What is it? It is an ereader. The big deal is that it is small and relatively cheap. It s about A6 sized and retails for $69 USD. It s got a magnet so you can stick it to the back of your phone and take it everywhere. There is open source firmware you can install to enhance it s features. Why did I get one? At first, I looked at all this discussion, and I thought I don t need one. I didn t feel like buying yet another gadget . It s neat sure, but I already have an Amazon Kindle. I don t love Amazon, but I have it and it still works. I like to ask what can I do with this that I ca

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