Shrutarshi Basu 

Had a fresh samosa, hot, crispy and just a little too spicy. Also saw a small dog wearing a pink vest in the back of a car. Good day.

After seeing a Mastodon post with embedded links, I fell down the rabbit hole of trying to figure out how to actually post HTML to Mastodon. As far as I can tell, Mastodon will accept HTML posts from other ActivityPub servers, sanitize them and display them correctly. But even though the API examples show statuses with HTML content, actually calling the API that way just creates a plain text post. So if I want to republish fleets with HTML to Mastodon, I'll have to run my own ActivityPub server.

Waste books

Part of the reason I'm rebuilding this website is to reconsider & redevelop the way I absorb, process and synthesize information in general. As the post (and referenced book) suggests, having three notebooks (in any form), might be a good way: the first to record, the second to organize, and the third to connect and explain.

I've been writing a bunch of TypeScript lately, and it's… fine? With Deno and the Deno language server, the developer experience is quite enjoyable, though apparently there are storm clouds brewing.

Recently I've been able to work 8 to 10 hour days, only really stopping for meals. Even a little while ago that felt impossible. This is good.

A case study in digital writing

A couple of interesting takeaways from this post on Heidegger, his writing methods and their relationship to modern, digital technology.

• Heidegger handwrote all his manuscripts, which amount to 100 published volumes with 30 more volumes of his correspondence. What am I doing with my life?
• Heidegger's instructions for publishing his works forbade any indexes so that readers would have to follow his train of thought and read everything in context. I understand and empathize with sentiment (especially given how much information is decontextualized these days), but the computer scientist in me who loves carefully organizing information for rapid reference and recall is horrified.
• Kurrentschrift tickles my little linguistic nerd brain. Though, I will admit that even as somehow who writes and enjoys writing cursive, it seems like a bit of pain to read.
• One of Heidegger's early ideas was that to be meant to be present , something that's particularly hard to do in an age of continuous digital distraction and "engagement".

As I've been working on my website, I've noticed there are a whole bunch of non-obvious constraints for what makes valid HTML. This of course makes me think about formalizing the HTML spec in Lean (or something).

Someone please tell me this is a terrible, horrible, no-good idea.

Version 4 of my website, built with Lume, is now live. Right now there isn't much besides some journal entries ported from the previous version and some shorter stream posts from my old Tumblr. I'll add things like RSS feeds over the weekend.

It’s too overwhelming to remember that at the end of every computer is a real person, a lot like you, whose birthday was last week, who has three best friends but nobody to spoon at night, and is personally affected by what you say. Even if we remember it right now, is it even possible to remember it next time we’re overwhelmed, or perhaps never forget it again?

Derek Sivers in A real person, a lot like you