book: Gabor Mate, Scattered Minds

 

A book written by a doctor that has ADD himself, and it shows.

I was annoyed in the first half by his incessant use of anecdotes to prove that ADD is not genetic. It felt like he had to convince himself, and it read as an excuse for his actions as a father.

He uses clear and obvious examples of how not to raise a child (often with himself as the child or the father) to play on the readers emotion. Most of these examples are not even related to ADD.

But in the end, definitely the second half, it is a good book. Most people will recognize several situations and often it does make one think about life choices and interpretation of actions and emotions.

So for those getting past the disorganization (yes there are parts and chapters in this book, but most of it feels randomly disorganized), the second half of the book is a worthy thought provoking read.

Dissapointing Framework Laptop 13 DIY Edition

What a disaster this is, the DIY framework laptop.

The box...

...contains more boxes.

The parts are few...

...so the laptop is assembled in less than a minute?!

Unpacking the thing took longer than assembling it!

Reading this webpage took longer than assembling it!

Installing the DDR5 memory took 1 second: click and done.
Installing the nvme took 3 seconds: unscrew one screw, click and screw.
Installing the bezel was far more challenging, took almost 30 seconds! (*)
Attaching the keyboard: about three seconds?
Installing the four modules: 1 second per module (or less?)

I'm not that good at irony, but I was hoping for at least 20 minutes of fun assembling this thing... and only got one minute. :-/

(*) This gave fond memories of assembling tower PC's in the nineties; ISA/PCI slots click, CD-ROM atapi click, hard disk and IDE jumpers easy. But closing the tower case... well that was the hard part!

Installing an OS

The guide says to be patient when booting (powering on) the laptop for the first time, it may take several minutes.

I timed it, it took 57 seconds to get to this screen:

And now there is this; it has been a long time since I saw a default XFCE, Firefox and terminal.

Let the fun begin!

four books

 

Charlie Mackesy - The boy, the mole, the fox and the horse (2019)

In so far as you can read this book, I read this book. This book allows you to read one page, and then ponder on it for a week. It's a story, but it is also not a story but more a psychological insight into humans. I will probably open this book again several times this year to discover even more about the meaning of a single page.

Brian W. Kernighan - Understanding the digital world (2021)

Kernighan is famous for co-authoring "The C programming Language" with Dennis Ritchie in 1978 and I have always looked up to him.

In this book he gives an excellent overview of computers and networks, including an easy to read introduction to programming, cryptography and (digital) privacy. I would not advice this book for IT-nerds, since it is way too simple. It is though as good an overview as is possible in 260 pages.

David Kushner - Masters of Doom (2003)

Well this was an excellent read! Enjoyable, intriguing, educational and probably only for fans of Doom or of John Carmack.

The book tells the story of the two John's that created the DooM game in the early nineties. David Kushner interviewed a lot of people to get a complete picture of their youth, their first meeting, the development of Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D and of course DooM, and also many games after that like Quake and Heretic.

This book is a nice combo with Sid Meier's Memoir.

Sid Meier's Memoir (2020)

I wanted to link to my tiny review of this book, which I read in 2021, but it turns out I have not written anything about it yet.

The story of the creation of the civilization series of games is a really good read, though probably only if you lived in this era and played some of the early Civilization games. Or earlier 'versions' like Empire or Empire Deluxe, which are mentioned in this book for serving as inspiration for the first Civilization game.

I like the 4X turn-based system of gaming, too bad there are almost no other good games using this (Chess comes close though).

three books

 It took a while, but here are three books I've read.

Kevin Mitnick - The Art of Invisibility (2017)

I have been interested in Kevin Mitnick since his 1980ies hacking. He is mentioned in several books that I read in the past.

This book is about all the personal data one leaves behind when using the internet (or devices connected to the internet). It is a rather simple guide on how to increase your privacy or how to aim to become almost invisible on the internet.

I would not advice this book for nerds, or for IT security experts, the book is probably not aimed for those people anyway. People who know close to nothing about computers/networks could benefit from this guide. 

Robert M. Pirsig - Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance (1974)

Now this is an interesting read. It is not about motorcycles, in fact it is perfectly fine if you replace the word motorcycle by 'smartphone' or 'computer' or 'internet privacy and tracking' in the first half of the book. There are some very insightful comments about how people react in different ways to technology.

The main part of this book though, is not the motorcycle trip with his son through the United States, but his alter ego named Phaedrus. The writer was diagnosed with catatonic schizophrenia and received electric-shock treatment. In the book he remembers fragments of this Phaedrus personality (with an IQ of 170).

The second half is a tough read. I often needed to reread several sentences to grasp what he was saying. (Which was never the case in the Mitnick book above.)

Prusa 3D printing handbook

I finally bought a 3D printer and would advice this to anyone who has lot's of time. Yes, this is not yet ready for end users that only want a 'File - Print' option on the computer. But a whole new world opens, at least for me it's a new world with many possibilities and adventures.

It's a small booklet, but I mention it anyway because it is really good, as are all the follow-up guides on prusa3d.com.

Software I am thankful for

An alphabetical list of software that I really like.

Apache: Not as popular as it used to be, but I know it and so still use it

apt/aptitude/apt-get: The origin of all 'apps' and the most user friendly and secure way to manage software

Audacity: Or is that too controversial now with their telemetry?

bash: The best interface to my computers

convert: From Imagemagick, for batch converting images 

Civilization IV: Yes 4, the only software that is not (yet?) open source

cron: It wakes me up every day (using mpv and bash)

Debian: I run it on almost everything

ffmpeg: to convert video formats

find: because I tend to forget where I put stuff :)

Firefox: because an alternative browser is crucial

FreeCAD: Amazing CAD software, and I like math

gcc: Because coding in C is fun!

gimp: Easy image manipulation

git: How did I ever live without it?

gramps: To keep track of my ancestors

grep: Often very useful.

Homebrew: To make a MacBook usable

Inkscape: Because vector graphics are essential

Linux: in background of course, like so many other tools that I am rarely aware of

make: For software that is not part of Debian

mariadb(mysql): So easy to build a database

mpv: For audio and video (and for their API) 

Openshot: To create Lego NXT or Prusa video's

PrusaSlicer: A 3D printer opens a whole new world of possibilities 

Python: I hate this language, but it is used so much and coding is still fun

return Youtube dislike: How else is Youtube usable?!

rsync: For backups

Singlefile: because web pages tend to disappear forever 

ssh: Multitool for anything remote

Thunderbird: Reading my mail since 1996 (as Netscape Mail)

tmux: used daily, configured to a quiet and relaxing layout

Video downloadhelper: because video's tend to disappear forever

vim: By far the best editor for text, code, config files and more.

wine: To play that one game on Debian (though I wish its 32-bit had as much memory as 32-bit Windows XP)

Wireshark: The best tool to learn about networking

XFCE: My GUI since almost 20 years

xfce-screenshooter: Because screenshots are useful

 

Inspiration HN.

tmux resurrect

Why did I not know about this until now?

https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tmux-resurrect

It restores all windows, all panes, all ssh sessions.

Drie boeken

Door omstandigheden wat minder kunnen lezen, maar bij deze nog eens drie boeken:

De Hel van Deurne-Noord is een verzamling getuigenissen van voetballers en trainers, en reporters, over hun ervaring op den Bosuil. Het dateert van 2016 ofzo denk ik, dus het is vooral dromen van een groot Royal Antwerp FC. Ik denk niet dat er toen iemand was die Naingolan of Alderweireld als spelers van den Antwerp zag.

Het boek leest zeer vlot, elke getuigenis is maar een blad of twee, soms drie. Ideaal voor bus en treinritten.

Ons Antwerpen heeft me blij verrast! Dit is een van de beste boeken dat ik al gelezen heb. Het dateert van rond 1931, de auteurs zijn dus al lang dood, anders had ik hen zeker bedankt.

In dit boek wandel je rond in het Antwerpen van 90 jaar geleden. Er wordt bijvoorbeeld gezegd dat er plannen zijn om een Rubenshuis te maken in de buurt van de Meir/Wapperstraat. Het plein dat nu 'Wapper' heet, bestond nog niet. Er is ook geen Astridplein (dat heette toen Statieplein), maar ze hadden wel net meer dan tienduizend schepen gehad in Antwerpen op 1 jaar tijd.

Ik ben zinnens eens met dit boek rond te lopen, want echt elke straat waar ze zijn wordt vermeld, tot huisnummers toe. De weg zou dus helemaal moeten te volgen zijn.

Starten met C is mijn introductie tot programmeren in C (ik kende totdantoe enkel Basic, Assembler en PASCAL, ah en COBOL). Dit was ons cursusboekje in Leuven in 1991 denk ik... en maakte mij een grote fan van C.

Ik ben het terug aan het lezen nu en beleef er weer veel plezier aan. Nog steeds fan van C dus, helaas ben ik momenteel niet zo'n goeie programmeur. Nu het bijna uit is, zal ik mijn odio applicatie maar snel aanpassen, voordat iemand deze klucht kan zien :)