I’ve been learning French, on my own at a snail’s pace over the past year or so. All because I want to read Émilie du Châtelet, Dumas, Verne, and Montaigne in their native tongue. Since I cannot do immersion nor give regular practice the time it wants, it’s … slow going But I do, do it. Regularly and deliberately. I’ve built up a vocabulary of about 500-700 words by now and I know if I keep this up, I’ll be able to do read well in time. ...
First things first, you should be listening to Cal Newport and reading his books too! His recent episode on books and reading was lovely!1 If I remember right, he started doing the podcast, a couple of months after the pandemic broke out and the world shut down. And it felt very much at the time, like one of those friendly voices across the waves in some post apocalyptic movie. It felt warm, personal and gave me something to do in those dark days. Ergo, I have a strong connection to it and I began saving every episode, at around episode 10 or so. ...
Click the pic to embiggen. Rube Goldberg illustration via James Vaughan Ended up too sick to even tinker, since I last wrote. Well enough now, to scratch out some prose to get my brains in gear. Let’s start with Huginn adventure #1. Buckle up! ...
Let’s get the, “What the heck is Huginn?” out of the way. If you’ve heard of Zapier or IFTTT, that’s what this is. Only better. You host it. You control it. You program it. And everything’s in your control. If you’ve used Yahoo Pipes, then I tip my hat to you my dear friend and tell the rest of you folk, that I believe all of these new fangled pieces of zaps and agents are the spiritual successor to that pioneering web app. IBM has a similar open source alternative, with all the new fangled hotness called Node-RED ...
Don’t know if it’s the gym or the regular work beat, but I seem to be waking up later and later everyday. I don’t know what to do about this. I feel a little anxious about not having enough hours in the day. Python Why use comprehensions? Because it reads better. Like I advice the young ones in DPGLUG on writing. Write short, choppy sentences. They read better. With my problem sets … I should stop trying to generalise in advance and solve the specific problem first. Read stuff carefully. Don’t do more than is necessary Solutions take time to understand too. Budget the time Linux Mint Nemo, the file browser in Linux Mint always opens the home directory, when I click on it and there’s no apparent way to change it to a preferred directory. I want it to always open Downloads A little bit of web spelunking led to an acceptable work-around. Right click the main menu button Click Menu => Open the menu editor => Accessories Then click Files in the items from the right and click Properties further right Change the command form nemo %U to nemo Downloads And that does it! Update 2023-02-09: Does not work. Will look for some other approach. Right now, with the workaround it opens a Downloads window alongside any other folder I click on 😂 Hugo Added a plain, hamburger menu to this blog, using Aditya’s helpful instructions over on the PaperMod Discord. With all the extra nav items, I’ve added to the header the menu would overflow on my iPhone (and probably on other folks’ phones too). So if this page scooches narrow enough, it will change the links on top to a plain menu. ...