Now - Summer Part 1
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It's been two months since the last now, and no progress on the
ship, but plenty of progress on other projects. Well maybe not on
those either. But things have been busy and good.
Creating
Not much visible on the creation side. Mostly been creating an enjoyable summer for myself. By "creating" and "for myself", I of course mean going on a trip my wonderful friends all put together. This was a much needed break from work, and after burning myself on a large refactor, it was very energizing to come back and be straight into a lot of something else.
Having said that, given the relatively immediate timeline of upcoming real™ work, it is unlikely much progress on side projects will happen this month.
Consuming
100r
They live on a boat and make a variety of software, that is engineered, but seems equal parts fun and efficient. Fantastic rabbit hole to dive down, with a webring linked somewhere well worth exploring. Looking into their works have been a fantastic continuation of my shallow dive into permacomputing. (Can't consider it research, I've only been taking inspiration rather than notes)
The Maybe Man - AJR
One of the best augmented reality experiences I've been to. That's an overloaded term, but their use of digital screens to enhance the live performance rivaled Dear Evan Hansen (The Musical, haven't seen the movie) on Broadway, and blew Van Gogh Experience out of the water. I am a big fan of their music, so would probably have enjoyed it regardless of the theatrics and effects, but the theatrics and effects we exceptional.
Lost Terminal
I've listened to one episode of this podcast per night for the last ~6 months, and it has clearly influenced my interests in just about everything. This is a post-collapse world in which humanity is scraping by, told through the lens of an AI named Seth. I don't think I could recommend it enough.
With society collapsing 50-75 years in the future due to conflict over climate change, the "lessons from the past" feel exceptionally foreboding. The technology feels just out of reach referencing everything from the recent jumps in artificial intelligence technology, to increasingly common FPGA based computers. I swear I've learned to appreciate how radio signals work from this podcast more than anywhere else. Wit that said, the characters are who bring this world to life, and with them come tons of perspectives and backgrounds. All this while managing to keep everyone confronting issues that all feel very human, even if some happen to be living in a computer.
I don't know what I'll put on before bed going forward, but I am certainly looking forward to the next season.
Reading
"An Absolutely Remarkable Thing" by Hank Green
- This should be required reading before you're allowed to post on the internet.
Not because it will make you not want to, but because it will highlight the
implications of small seeming decisions. On top of that, it is a fantastic
piece of sc-fi writing, and I'll be reading the sequel.
(Update: Have started sequel, is good)
"All the Bright Places" by a Jennifer Niven
- This broke me a bit. I don't want to spoil anything so this isn't a spoiler filled collection of thoughts. But still, read on with caution. If you'd rather go in blind, which is my usual approach, I recommend skipping the next paragraph. (otherwise hover to reveal)
The end is what broke me. It was foreshadowed for the whole book, but I still wasn't ready for it. It was everything I could think of happening in my worst nightmares, but somehow it still surprised me in the end. Looking back it seemed inevitable from a storytelling perspective, but every ounce of my being wishes that the signs leading up to it were taken into account by the other characters. This book caused that much emotion in me.
It was fantastic, and I appreciate that the story kept going, the world kept happening after the climax. That's the impact of events like that. The dual perspectives took some getting used to, but made that end even more impactful.
Considering
These are incomplete thoughts that are more fun to think out loud. Enjoy, but keep that in mind.
Influenced by all that's been consumed above and plenty more, I have a lot of thoughts about things. It's been a while since I've felt that way. It's nice to have an opinion on actual things again, but I'm rusty at sharing those opinions.
Leaning more towards the design side of software in my focus, and enjoying the artistic and creative approaches there. This isn't necessarily UI design, but that has played a large part as well. This has sorta gotten me out of a slump I'd been in for the last year or so in terms of thinking about software.
It might be more that my opinions on general software design are beginning to form, having now worked on project long enough for it to scale the point where the problems make themselves visible.
For personal projects at least, I'm asking myself:
- What world do I want to live in?
- What world do I want to create?
These could be digital video game-like worlds, or they could be ways of interacting with computers, or ways of interacting with everything. When working in complicated distributed systems, it feels like that network of nodes is the world, and it's nice when that world has some sort of cohesive approach, and a sense of logic to the design behind it.
That cohesive approach is almost necessarily impossible to apply to bottom up, federated network, where the robust approach to components interacting with each other is the only viable option. Those individaul components need to be variable, and adjustable to work with eachother, making each one more complicated to implement. This is good in some contexts and bad in others.
You also can't visualize that approach on a standard architecture diagram, but a tessellated approach to visualizing it may work better to keep that sense of cohesion. Still thinking through what that would actually look like from a planning and implementing side as well, as visualizing those plans.