Currently learning tech stuff to improve digital privacy. Not to a totally anonymous level, but better than completely oblivious. Attempting not to annoy my family with digital security info dumps. Finally found time to install Linux on an old laptop to mess around with. Also trying to find online communities via decentralised platforms because I deleted everything Meta. Neurodivergent safe spaces are the one thing I miss, so if anyone has any suggestions to check out please let me know.

I’m still hyper focused on reading, this is a life long thing.

This month my intense fixation is learning about GrapheneOS and looking at Pixel phones so I can mess around with that. Then I had to dive into researching Garmin watches because I rely on my Apple Watch a lot to keep daily life functioning (hello time blindness 😂).

Tell you what. These are my hyperfixations by decade of life:

1. Stargate SG1
2. Anatomy and Physiology, Psychology, and Sociology of Sex
3. Violence Prevention and Management in Psychiatry (actually became enough of an expert in this to teach)
4. Esoteric Spiritual Practices including Tarot, Astrology, and Tea Leaf reading.

AMA, LOL

When writing BASH scripts:

• The .sh extension isn’t necessary.
• Using /usr/bin/env bash is better than /bin/bash as not everyone has their bash located in bin.
• Try to use local variables when you can. If you use global variables that won’t be used anywhere else, unset them at the end of your script.
• Don’t use set -euo pipefail. It will only cause more issues down the road.
• Functions are your friend. If your repeating code, put it in a function.

These are some of the tips I learned while learning bash.

I’m working to set up my new workshop. We moved into a new house a few months ago, and I’m finally getting to setting up the shop in earnest.

I’m setting up the shop in a 3 car garage. The garage has a one car bay and a two car bay. I want to be able to actually park a car in the one car bay. So I built a large wall separating the two bays. The wall covers probably 2/3 of the width. The rest will be covered by a curtain. The two car bay will be the actual woodshop area. The one car bay will be a place to park a car and will serve as a finishing space. The wall and curtain will keep sawdust contained within the two car bay. The wall also serves as a tool wall. Here’s what the wall currently looks like:

From the other side:

The wall is about 10’ wide and 12’ high.

In my old shop I had even more on the wall. But I’m trying out moving most of my bladed tools into a tool chest. I was going to build one, but I found this old steamer trunk by the side of the road. From the manifest glued to the back it looks like it was used by an air force airman in the 1980s to ship things home from Japan. I’ll be using it as a tool chest. I wanted to put wheels on it. But as it’s a bit of an artifact I didn’t want to actually modify the trunk itself or drill into. Instead I built a little cart for it to roll around on.

After I finish here, the last big step in setting up the shop will be installing the dust collection system. And I went overboard on this. This is very much a dream shop setup I’m building out. Currently in a bunch of boxes strewn about the shop is an entire Oneida Dust Gorilla and a network of piping to service the various machines.

My latest constructed language, Hearthsider (just started this week). None of this will make sense but here we go:

Verbs are a closed class. To form complete sentences you use an equivalent of “do”, plus a verbal noun phrase. This noun phrase can have determiners such as articles attached to them, which indicate things like whether the action was performed only once, repeatedly, etc. To say “X verbs Y”, it would translate literally to “X does Y a verb”. Plurality will likely not be indicated on nouns but will be in articles.

rMl   t  qb  b sBsb    zGK
Light do 2sg a  shine  friend

“Light shine upon you, friend!”

This is a fairly common greeting crosslinguically, so I have translations in my other two conlangs:

Outlander:

sg Bqqbsd rkr PLr
sg      Bqqb-sd        PLr
2sg.AMI illuminate-OBJ light

Commonthroat:

L   rLPq-p      BCq-b         sFsF-qn
OPT light-3D    illuminate-NA friend-2

Here are the gloss abbreviations:

2sg = 2nd person singular pronoun
OPT = optative modal
2sg.AMI = 2nd person singular amicable pronoun
-OBJ = Object focus/trigger suffix
-3D = 3rd person distal noun suffix
-NA = Nonauthoritative verbal mood
-2 = 2nd person noun suffix

My hyperfixated interests tend to be about technology in general, and adjacent to that, ive recently started watching around 7 episodes of Star Trek (currently on the 1st season of The Original Series), and plan to keep watching it for a long while.

My previous fixation lasted 7 months straight, and it was obsessively researching into computer memory architectures, mainly the unified and universal memory architectures. I haven’t even become bored of it yet, it’s just something I research less in now since I did it so thoroughly that I might need a break haha.

Ive also had another one that started around 10 months ago, around the same one as the memory architecture one, but is still going, and it’s about diving into how my mind works and how I can make things easier for myself (as well as find more evidence of me being neurodivergent, which has been very successful). Ive found that I’m very likely AuDHD (if you haven’t already realised from the previous statements), and I’ve been tying in many factors, including daily behaviours, a concussion I had 3 years and 3 days ago, etc, and have compiled it into a shit ton of digital notes.

I’m getting hyperfixated on each one of these answers and it’s quite a shock to go to the next one. “Wait. How is a BASH script supposed to help build a garage workshop?”

Norwegian train car designation shorthand (incomplete).

B: Class B (which is the only class these days. So, meaning passenger seats)
M: Motorized (implies S. See below)
S: Steering capability
L: cargo space (“Lasterom”)
C: Special capability of some sort, such as wheelchair ramp.
MU: Motorized car without driver capability (As in M without S)
P: Car with a pantagraph
R: Restaurant/bistro

So, for example, type 92 is a small set consisting of only two cars: A BM and a BS. Both cars have seating, the train can be controlled from both ends, but only one of them has a motor.

T93 is similar in layout.

T74 and T75 are both five-car trains, and I don’t remember all of the cars, but I remember the middle of them is called BCMU or something like that.

The older T3 trains (now retired, I think), has a car designated LCR (or a different order), which means cargo space, food service, and some sort of special amenities that I never figured out. This train type also had class A with seating of a higher comfort level.

All of these types are printed on the side, usually next to a number, which is an internal serial number. So a 9214BM* means “Type 92, number 14, motor carriage (with passenger seating)”.

*: I don’t remember the exact syntax, but it’s something like that.

EDIT: Un-fun fact I just realized long after using 9214 as an example above: It doesn’texist anymore.

I’ve been reading up on the Salem witch trials for a personal project, and have listened to 3 separate audio books on them (In the Devil’s Snare, The Witches, and A Delusion of Satan).

The similarities to today are more than I imagined. But the similarities between Reverend Parris–the original instigator, and the mouthpiece for the trials–and Donald Trump are unreal. Descriptions of both sound pretty much identical. Unlike The Crucible depicts he was not sidelined, or made a reluctant participant.

Description of Parris (2/3 books were released before 2016):

• Received a large inheritance from his father, but a failed merchant and businessman in both Barbados and New England.
• Considered charming, well-spoken, and handsome–educated and likely acquainted with the theater. Dropped out of Harvard.
• His wife, Elizabeth Parris was widely considered one of the most beautiful women in the area.
• Deeply fixated on status, and compensation. Puritans generally considered material luxuries sinful. Salem Village was an offshoot from Salem Town, of the most pious members, and Parris was the first ordained minster.
• His hiring, and tenure were deeply divisive, and hiring done behind closed doors. Most communities hired their ministers very openly.
• some of his biggest supporters was an influential family who made 60 separate accusations, all against political or personal rivals. The father, Thomas Putnam, was involved in hiring him. The 2 girls, Anne and Mercy Lewis, and also Anne Sr. were some of the central afflicted, and they were all highly educated and intelligent enough to manipulate people, and coordinate.
• Hired with irregular demands, including ownership of the parsonage (minister’s home), and an unusually high salary.
• Constantly feuded with his congregation and named people in sermons. Generally who hadn’t contributed, paid respect, or attended church, and who opposed him. There were a lot of sermons.
• Encouraged feuds and factions even before 1692, and actively stoked fears and paranoia during the accusations, hearings, and trials.
• Granted irregular legal powers and authority to make arrests by the Governor. Supported the use of spectral evidence (ghost stories).
• Never admitted any fault.

Well. Let’s see…

My local community is dealing with a 150MW BESS facility that is scheduled to be built over the next 18 months so I’m trying to educate my other half on that so she can inject a little stability into the current group of doom and gloom. We have a ton of windpower nearby and a data center being built about 20 miles away with a few other BESS’ being built within about 40 miles.

I’m in the process of prepping the install of a new meter base, Enphase System Controller 3, Enphase IQ5 Combiner, and all the wiring for the system to function properly. I did some initial work last week to rebuild and insulate the exterior wall which has gained about 6 inches of thickness and is now insulated to R29. Hopefully on the 20th I can get the next portion done and everything finished for solar panel and battery installation.

I’m also working on a little project that will kind of recreate and reimagine one of the little slow MMO browser games. There was one I used to play called Aargh that was basically a big square map you could move around on and do little things or send messages to people. My version will have visuals for people using IPFS and more plain for regular users, and run almost completely using free Cloudflare services outside of IPFS assets. They are called slow MMO’s because you have a limited number of movement actions per day and you can not bank actions for later use. I’m still in the preliminary planning stage but I’m looking at two environments, one with actions that can move large distances around the map and another environment that is more limited and has a debuff which will prevent more actions if you do something wrong. It may never work and I doubt it will be popular but I think it will be interesting to try and build.