Posts on Nevertheless, she persisted

Cyberchase

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 12:06:55 -0400

I was listening to NPR Planet Money, when I remembered I have a PBS account. I donated to NJ PBS earlier this year because it was shutting down (because Trump destroyed the Corporation for Public Broadcasting). I felt bad about never donating before.

After logging in, I saw that Cyberchase was currently broadcasting. I’d watched it as a child in kindergarten.

My parents had a tv in their bedroom upstairs, but it wasn’t hooked up to cable. I’d come home after school, to the babysitter my parents had hired. She didn’t speak english and we had a combative relationship. She also didn’t let me watch TV in the living room, where the cable box was connected.

So I’d run upstairs immediately after school, into my parents room where the babysitter would not follow me, to watch Cyberchase. It was on right as I came home, so I’d watch it and decompress from school, then come back down to solemnly do my homework.

Is this part of where my social isolation comes from?

Bill Due

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 14:17:02 -0400

I karen my way into an earlier refund from my dentist.

Russell Florida

Sat, 19 Jul 2025 16:41:28 -0400

Russel is one of my best friends. I Love him a lot.

I’ve written about him a lot, we’ve been friends for 4 years at this point. Since graduating, our conversations have taken on a very negative tone due to job prospects and the economy. I became a software engineer, him a PhD student in Computer Engineering. The sacrifices he made to pursue a degree struck me (opportunity cost of lost income, graduate student living conditions, etc). And on my much more privileged end, I was salty that while I made a lot, I never felt secure (home, kids,partner, employment).

Well today, July 19th 2025 it has all come to a head.

Russel’s PhD funding has been cut by Trump. He will be moving to Florida to be with his girlfriend and find a job. My best friend. Gone into the wind.

And as for me, my VP just told me that many of senior engineers find me abrasive, and spoke ill of me during performance management. I try so hard, to be me, and its not enough. I see my coworkers making leaps and bounds and I’m left behind. Again. As always.

Wealth and Poverty

Sun, 05 Jan 2025 22:57:46 -0500

Last year, I watched Robert Reich’s lecture series / college class, Wealth and Poverty.

Mr. Reich was the former Secretary of Labor under US president Bill Clinton, and recently retired from a professorship at UC Berkeley (where he taught the above course).
As Secretary, he was responsible for the last increase in Federal minimum wage, a huge achievement.
Reich remains active online on social media and on his website (I don’t like substack but it sure has made blogging easy).

The Free Internet

Fri, 27 Dec 2024 09:19:47 -0500

A couple years ago, there was surge in interest in building "proxies" for the most popular online services. They were all inspired by each other.

Youtube ⇒ Invidious
Reddit ⇒ Teddit and Libreddit
Twitter ⇒ Nitter
Bibliogram ⇒ Instagram

All of these services were popular, with dozens of public instances. Public instances were often slow, but I enjoyed browsing with user-friendly ui’s with no bloat ((unnecessary) javascript, ads, animations, etc).

Public instances were plagued with abuse, implementing rate-limiting, disabling features, going offline, and asking for donations. Private instances didn’t have this problem, obviously.

Many of the code bases were licensed under the GPL, promoting collaboration as people shared their customizations (usually just css/ui changes).

At a certain point, seemingly all at once, all these proxy services stopped working as more stringent rate limiting was implemented (neutering public instances), and newer client checks were added (which the community seemed unwilling to address given the lack of public instances).

Perhaps it was unrealistic to expect public instances to survive, given rate-limiting. But I was surprised that once public instances went down, so did the community. I guess there was a symbiotic relationship between those hosting and those developing, and these two groups didn’t intersect enough to keep things going.

I took down my private instances (I was "self-hosting" on my laptop).

It seems only the 3rd party youtube clients survive, though not invidious (and youtube clients predate this proxy fad). What a loss.

Acadia Geminids

Sun, 15 Dec 2024 20:03:27 -0500

My friends and I watched the Geminids meteor shower out of Acadia National park in the dead of winter

Android Default Browser

Wed, 27 Nov 2024 23:41:59 -0500

It seems across android 10-12, the ability to avoid setting a default browser was removed. Previously, if the default was unset, a dialog would pop up for links requesting a decision of browser. That dialog is gone (although the one suggesting you change your default, used by browser to assert themselves, remains). In lieu of being unset, it now defaults to the first/only browser app. I tried removing all browser apps, and then reinstalling several concurrently, but it didn’t work (the first browser to download won and became the default).

Forcing users to pick a default increases switching costs, entrenching the dominant position (in this case, the Chrome/Android/Google monopoly). Functionally has been removed: users who wanted to avoid switching could always just set a default. Fuck Google

Taking back control

I couldn’t find any browser switcher apps (similar to browsersaurus for macos) to restore the lost functionality. I vaguely remembered using a browser called Chromer with some minor switching feature, and there were competitors at the time (when I was in high school). Seems they’re all gone. I was able to find the Chromer source and old builds, seems it was renamed and then abandoned. Such is the nature of OSS, free projects languish.

🎶 Lost in Japan 🎶

Sat, 09 Nov 2024 12:24:17 -0500

I get lost in groups![1] It happens to me all the time. Its been happening to me since childhood.

I get distracted by something, and boom I’m left behind.

Grocery Store: nice beans
Nature hike: cool flower
Renn faire: artisinal goods

The last time it happened, my friends had my phone lmfao. Just wandered brownian motion until we found each other. Still panic every time, gotta get over that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycy30LIbq4w ↩

Dark Mode

Mon, 04 Nov 2024 21:19:03 -0500

Back in the dark (actually, light) ages, websites did not have dark mode.
So we installed browser extensions that did so for us. Thus:

website_dark = extension_enabled

Where the above input could be set based on time of day or site domain. extension_enabled = not_disabled && nighttime

Then browsers added their own (initially shoddy) dark modes. Thus:

website_dark = browser_dark_enabled || extension_enabled

Then operating system’s followed suit, support for OS dark was retconned.

Tech Nostalgia

Sat, 02 Nov 2024 17:29:01 -0400

When I was younger, learning about technology sparked feelings of wonder, awe, and curiosity in me.
I was so excited about the new iPhone/iOS/Android/Chrome/etc.

Now I feel only drudgery.
I know this is because the novelty of youth is gone, much of the software I use is mature, and reduced competition and innovation in tech (and many industries).

The Nexus 6p (my first phone) had a unique feature: the ability to take photos with new geometries: full spheres, vertical and horizontal panoramas, fisheyes, a fake wide angle, and partial forms of all of the above paired with a wonderful viewing experience.
The Pixel phone line inherited this feature, but lost it starting with the Pixel 8.
I suspect this is related to Google’s switch away from Qualcomm processors.
They no longer wanted to maintain this feature, which required special software and hardware support.
It seems the first few pixel’s without Qualcomm chips did get the feature, then removed and restored it.

Roomates

Sun, 29 Sep 2024 21:43:21 -0400

So I’m moving! I don’t like my current town, and I don’t like my current roommate (nothing serious, we just don’t jell well). Housing is unaffordable pretty much everywhere, and its resulted in some interesting characters coming by trying to replace me as a roommate.

Today’s prospective tenant came by motorcycle. He strode into our apartment with a very stylish motorcycling outfit (it was black, windproof, made him look beefy). I thought he was cute.

My current roommate is an immigrant, and I can tell he’s unfamiliar with our guest’s American mannerisms. I decide to intervene in the conversation.[1]

I flex my American’ing skills

So where do you work?: Oh, in a "far out suburb of DC"
Why are you looking at our apartment unit then? We’re closer to DC, and rent is higher here. You’d be much happier closer to work: Oh rent seemed really high everywhere, so I’m just looking anywhere I can get.
Oof yeah, but that doesn’t quite answer my question?: He mentions offhand something needing a place for his young children when they’re occasionally.

New Glasses

Mon, 09 Sep 2024 20:38:17 -0400

At some point around the time I started, my new job (Summer 2023), I broke my glasses. I left them in my backpack for several months. They jostled around and broke. Oops.

I hadn’t regularly worn my glasses for several years at that point. I lost my last few pairs.[1] I was on a backup of a backup.[2] Several years of poorly fitted frames left permanent discoloration/scars on my nose, and sensitive areas behind my ears. I only wore my glasses when I really needed them, which is how they ended up in my bag for months.

Driver’s License

I didn’t take issue with my broken glasses until I decided to update my driver’s license to my new state (I moved for work). Transferring a valid license between states is fairly straightforward. You need your old license, and proof of residence. No need to retake the road and written tests. The one wrinkle is that they may administer a vision test. I didn’t have my glasses and thus failed.[3]

So now I needed new glasses. If I downgraded to a non-driver ID, I worried I might be treated differently. And I don’t want to give up my driving ability, even though I drive infrequently.

The Eye Doctor

Fortunately, I live in an ~~very posh~~ city[4] and have a several eye doctors within walking/biking distance. I pick the closest one.

They correct my insurance mixup (I confused my general insurance and eye insurance, fuck America). An underpaid secretary/intern administers the usual battery of tests. He fails to get a good ¿photo? of my eye whilst shining a laser into it and sending puffs of air. We give up after 15 mins, my eyes red and tearing up.

I go the actual doctor, who measures my prescription and ignores my questions/answers. She tells me to schedule a followup to complete the failed imaging. It is "the end of the day" and she is "out of time". I am the last appointment, there remain empty appointment slots after me, and the practice is open for nearly another hour.

Oh well, I get my prescription and go back to the desk to pay. Apparently my insurance might not cover the reasonable appointment cost. They ask me to pay, and hopefully I will be reimbursed.[5]

I peruse the store’s selection of frames. They are all ugly AND overpriced. I leave victorious but drained.

Capitalism

I visit a glasses store known for their quality. I actually visited several weeks earlier with family, and so I know what frames I want. Finally, with my insurance and prescription in order, I can make an easy purchase. Spending money is supposed to be the easy step right?

I learn they do not take my insurance. I don’t know how to use my HSA/FSA.[6] However I do find their frames and deals to be a reasonable level of rip-off. The sales associate encourages me to shop around, but her caring and self-assured demeanor betrays that I will not get a better price elsewhere.

Insurance Sucks

I check my insurance’s coverage for glasses: I pay a flat $20 for lenses, and $120 towards frames. I estimate I will pay $40 each for two pairs of glasses.

Fortunately, I live in a ~~very posh~~ city [4] and have a several glasses stores within walking/biking distance. I visit several and discover a disturbing pattern.

The sticker price of glasses / lenses is artificially inflated at stores that accept insurance (which is most of them). My eye insurance is owned by the glasses monopoly company. My allowance is effectively the starting price for frames. Wonderful, I mentally adjust all the prices in-store for insurance.

I note a variety of frames, and notice that the good looking ones come out to about the same price as the high-quality store.

I legitimately seethe in public and furiously call my mom. If the price is the same with/without insurance, WTF AM I PAYING FOR? I knew insurance was a scam, but to this extent? My mother laughs at me. Her frugal shopping habits make sense all of a sudden. Even though I can comfortably afford whatever I want, the obvious price manipulation makes me want to not buy.

I buy a consolation coffee and sulk on my way home.

Word of Mouth

I ask around / overhear at work of websites that sell glasses for cheap. A coworker shows off their stylish pair. The internet says these cheap websites are owned by the monopoly. I wonder if the websites are a plot to "outcompete" brick and mortar stores.

This seems suspicious (companies lure in customers with deals, then become nasty once they’re trapped, this website is no different), but the prices are low enough. $~25 for lens, and frames each. I shell out $100, my original naive budget. Notably, I tack on features (blue light filters, transition lenses) I planned to omit.

They arrive in the mail. They are not sized quite right, but who cares. I get compliments at work.

Lessons learnt/reinforced

I as a wealthy person still struggled. I procrastinated for months, despite all of the above steps (dmv, eye exam, purchase) occurring within walking distance. If I had to drive everywhere it would’ve been game over for me
If businesses can cheat, their competitors can cheat less and call themselves "better". Consumers are at their mercy.
Maintaining normal social relationships with normal people is important even for these fairly material things. Google could have compensated, but I failed to search.

Hokas

Thu, 25 Jul 2024 21:16:26 -0400

Trendy

From what I can tell, it is the current fashion for young upper middle class people to wear bulky running shoes. Even for everyday wear. Sighs At least Hokas/Asics/New Balance/that cloud one look a little better than the even bulkier and clashing colors basketball shoes. I really like some of the Hokas.

In-person Visit

I went to Road Runner, since I need new sneakers. They barely kept stock (many color options only had the display variant). They also take you through this "shoe fit" program. I feel this is a scam, went through a similar thing at a mattress store. I’d much rather just try on all the shoes. The salesperson has to bring you everything. And my salesperson tried very hard to get a sale, asking me to do an online sale within the store. Although I think that might have had more to do with my specific circumstance. I said I’d take time to decide and order online at home.

The sales people were certainly knowledgeable. They knew about the different traits of the shoes, and I overheard them talking amongst themselves about different brands and sales/releases they’d seen in years prior. I hope they’re paid sufficiently, they deserve it from what I heard.

Online Order

Finally I tried to order online, only for my order to be declined multiple times. I used fake contact info (why the hell do they need my email and phone), and they clearly noticed. I called, and could tell the agent was trying to avoid telling me the order was marked fraudulent.

I walked to Designer Shoe Warehouse and purchased the most basic sneakers (but hey, slip-ons).

Fuck Hoka

Public Bathrooms

Thu, 25 Jul 2024 19:28:05 -0400

In supposedly affluent Western nations, the dire state or absence of public toilets has become a universal nightmare, impacting the health and quality of life of all of us, but particularly for marginalised groups.
— via Kottke

NYC Trip

I drove through NYC for the first time, dropping my father off at the airport. My family and I were proud of this milestone. I had to pee on the way back and held it for as long as possible. After about 2 hours, I caved and pulled into a shuttered Sears parking lot. It was only 15 mins further to home, but I couldn’t make it. I panicked and picked the first place to pull over.

I thought I’d pee in public on the side of the road. Turned out there was construction, a new (over priced) apartment complex. There were workers milling about, so public peeing was out. Then I checked the map and realized a university building was right there. It would be open to the public and had restrooms. It was a fairly nice admin building, so all good.

I should’ve pulled over sooner, but I was in a dense area and didn’t want to enter any of the towns along the highway. If my brain was working, I could’ve found a gas station.

Nervous

I shit when I’m nervous. Not sure why, but both of these problems compound each other. Not being able to use the bathroom in turn makes me more nervous (as it would anyone). At home, its a non issue.

In public, I’ve been lucky to mostly be in "nice" areas where many business are happy to share their bathrooms, even with non-customers. When I’ve been out on my own whilst biking, its been a challenge as a single brown person who does go to worse off areas. The DC metro stations often have bathrooms, but the station master often needs to unlock them. Said stations masters usually don’t open them at late hours (which is policy), although a few kind station masters have helped me.

Conclusion

More public bathrooms please

Sorry for Your Loss

Fri, 05 Jul 2024 21:29:13 -0400

I recently started watching Sorry For Your Loss. I’ve liked it a lot. It is cathartic seeing grief portrayed, even if you don’t think its a good portrayal. I hope to post a review soon.

Anyways, since the show is on facebook it exists in this nether realm. There is a lack of design for a viewing experience. It feels eery, like I am plumbing someone’s innards. They have chucked a tv show into a (cancerous) social media site.

Amtrak Customer Service

Fri, 24 May 2024 11:26:27 -0400

Amtrak’s customer service is amazing.

Rebooking

Several times, I have had to rebook tickets. The ticket counter always rebooked me free of charge, finding the best combination or closest station and delay time.
Trains have been delayed, I’ve missed my train, I even needed to make an emergency pit stop once.
While the issues were annoying, the ticket counters made the best of bad situations.

Bikes

You can bring your bike aboard the train.

Graduation for Realsies

Wed, 18 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I have a mini-breakdown at the thought of never seeing my friends again

Mothers Day 2024

Sun, 12 May 2024 17:58:32 -0400

It’s Mother’s Day! Lets do the default thing and go out for lunch!

The Outing

I researched restaurants prior, but couldn’t find a high-end place that had veg options. Google Maps was slacking here, we eventually saw many places while driving.

We went to my mom’s choice of restaurant. They only took walk-ins and had a moderate wait (30 mins). This was too long for my mom. I respectfully disagree.
We saw / called a couple other nice places. They were booked out
We decided to go to Thai / Malaysian place. We’d had good experiences here before. They didn’t handle the mothers' day rush. They didn’t do anything fast enough: clearing tables, seating people, taking orders, serving food, billing.
They prioritized online orders and appetizers. I don’t think this was a good use of their limited kitchen capacity.

Several family walked out at various stages: before seating, after being seated, after getting appetizers. We left after getting our appetizers and waiting an hour for our main courses.
Finally, my brother was still hungry so we went to Panera for him.

Race at Parties

Sun, 05 May 2024 13:32:31 -0400

I’ve been to a handful of parties now at UMD, a few since I’ve graduated.[1] Many (don’t have the XP to say most) parties are racially segregated, this isn’t surprising. Social groups are often along racial / gendered lines.

Asians

What surprised me was that at integrated parties, there are very few asians. I found this interesting because UMD is racially diverse, and also I don’t see the same pattern in study groups.

I’m aware that frat’s are racially segregated, but I don’t think too many of the (white) men at these parties were members. I don’t think frat affiliation is the reason.

Bro meets Bro

The other thing is that the nucleus of integrated parties, the organizers, were racially diverse. And they regularly interacted (checking on drinks, watching for spills, dabbing each other up).

But this did not extend to the partygoers.

I guess the organizers would invite their respective (disjoint) friend groups, and thats how the parties became integrated.

When the organizers interacted, it sometimes felt like respective tribe leaders acknowledging each other rather than friends.

Why Am I writing this

Pretty obvious. I went to a party across the street from my friends.

The neighbor wanted to avoid noise complaints and, invited us out of politeness. The cops showed up anyways 👮

Yes I have a problem, no I am not working on it. ↩

Off by One

Tue, 23 Apr 2024 13:35:50 -0400

The semester I took crypto, Spring '23, Justin also taught it. So for fun I would sit in his section every so often (my friend Oliver got in and I as jealous).

Towards the end of semester, attendance dropped off so one day I came and there were about a dozen students out of ~80. This might’ve also been after an exam, and people often skip the next day to recover.

Justin jokingly said those in attendance would get extra credit on the next assignment.

I then outed myself as a student from another section, and informed him he’d have to amend his count. Tragic.

The Orgy

Mon, 22 Apr 2024 22:01:50 -0400

A New Friend

I’ve been hanging out with a friend for several years now. We have many similar interests, and I like their energy.

Initially, we kept running into each other at campus events sophomore year. We jelled well and would often talk alone before/after/during these events. We joked that we were the only two outspoken CS majors. I treasured these conversations. We traded lots of advice, especially when the other was feeling down.

My Junior year,[1] I had a falling out with the previous year’s friend group. By chance, we met again and they cheered me up. I decided to invest my time with their friend group instead, as we continued to encounter each other albeit at a reduced frequency.

While I don’t think we fit perfectly as people (an impossible thing?), they are dedicated to their friends (including me) and I feel honoured to return the favor when possible.

Their Friends, The Orgy

They introduced me to their friend group, The Orgy, and they were all nice people as well. This friend group organizes hangouts frequently. The group also drink in moderation, which is nice for me to pace myself.

The group had a "vetting period": you had to be invited to 2 events and then the members would vote

We danced, eat candy, drew dot drawings, watched movies and TV (including an ATLA rewatch prior to the netflix remake), partied, traded valentines cards, snacked, and just lounged around.

Junior Year Halloween

My Junior year, we went trick-or-treating. The Orgy dressed as various eeveevolutions. As a last minute addition, I did not coordinate my outfit and dressed as Morticia Adams.

I’m very forgetful, and predictably forgot several items at the end of the night. Orgy members carefully collected my things, kept them safe, and returned them to me.

This was my first group interaction, and I felt so normal and accepted amongst them.

Their house

In their final year of college[1], (some of) the orgy rented a house. It became the common meeting point.

It wasn’t as accessible as Cambridge Lounge[2] (off campus location, and had to check if people were available ahead of time), but coming back on a monthly basis during my first year of work was incredibly worth it.

They let me sleep on their couch anytime (perhaps I should’ve brought a blanket), and one of them even had a spare mattress I occasionally used. I was shown this hospitality even when I did not visit campus to visit them.

I felt connected to campus during what would’ve been my senior year, and am very grateful.

Conclusion

The orgy is graduating this year. We’ll most likely scatter a moderate amount (perhaps within a 90 min radius of D.C.).

I’m scared about what this means. Socializing as a working adult is harder.

I graduated a year early ↩
A nearby dorm with excellent lounges that I frequented sophomore year with my previous friend group ↩

Adultification

Wed, 27 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

It begins. The fragile grasp for the freedom of youth.

The new has program at my company has launched clubs, largely focused on hobbies / activities. So exciting right? Nothing wrong with that.

But we are tired after a day’s work. Many of us commute. The logisitics of it all are hitting us.

Tuesday I organized my club meeting. It went well. Many attended. We had a vibrant discussion. But people trickled in as the day went on.

Then we had tennis club. We were all a little tired.

Today was board games. We were all eally tired. It was at the office, so some left early. Many of us selected games requiring little mental effort.

I want the college campus density back. But with better urban design: a place for living. And better apartments (shouldn’t be hard for working adults).

I will never own a home

Thu, 14 Mar 2024 23:28:44 -0400

This is a weird blog post. An (fairly onsided) argument occurred in my company’s slack about the housing market, about whether it was ethical to rent out a home (especially in today’s market). It got me thinking. The employees having this argument were some of the highest income earners in the country. Surely I would be able to own a home right? Right?

I started from the generous assumption that I’d be married, bringing my family income to $200k. I’m not so delusional to assume I could own a home singlehandedly. This isn’t 1965 lol. This income is already much higher than the median American family. Marriage is generous assumption because marriage is dead in my age cohort. Marriage has also been uncommon amongst queer people in the US (yay homophobia). Marriage is off the cards for me, but we’ll assume it is.

If we use nerdwallet’s buy vs rent calculator to see what my family could afford, and plug that into Zillow’s real estate listings … We can just barely afford a slightly smaller home in a slightly worse neighborhood than what/where I grew up. I have no problems downsizing (my home was massive, we did not use the space efficiently).

In this scenario, I would be childless. Which doesn’t bother me, if my friends and colleagues also remained childless. But that part is unlikely (they make similar money and are straight, and so are likely to get married and have kids).

Downsizing also doesn’t bother me. However, I cannot stomach sacrificing neighborhood quality (in terms of urban design: accessibility, green space, local businesses, etc).

The primary purpose of home ownership is to build some marginal wealth and security (not to be rich, but to have some stability even in hard times). But if I don’t have a spouse or kids, there’s no motivation for me to own a home.

Lessons learnt

Assuming no parental help, home ownership is out of reach for the upper middle class as well. I thought at least for someone of my income, marriage would make ownership work. But no, the problem is too bad for even dual income to help.

I was also surprised by how close the costs of buying vs renting were over a 30 year period (in many cases). If things were just a bit better, things would be a lot better for many (but not most) people.

I also learnt about the time scale at which such things operate, looking ahead 10-30 years is enough to give a good understand of one’s situation. It also shows why problems (and solutions) with our economy can take so long to show up for the majority of people.

What's a Browser?

Fri, 01 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I just read the unix haters handbook, so this "systems-thinking" is on my mind.

My RSS reader has a bug where links can only be opened in the browser that ships with the OS, or the system default browser. This is despite having a setting to control which browser is used (setting it to something other than those two will fail).

My default browser is an app that forwards to other applications based on user contributed rules. Fox example, when I click an onion link it automatically opens in tor, github links open in firefox (where I am signed in), etc. Uncategorized links are forwarded to a separate app, which displays a dialog to select the browser, similar to iOS and Android.

I was sending (uncategorized) links to my laptop from my phone. It was getting tiresome selecting which browser to use for every link. I set my system browser to firefox, and forgot to switch it back. Later, I discovered links were not being opened with my chosen browsers. A minute or so of "debugging" helped me sort everything out. I incorrectly assumed it was a bug (well, a different bug) with my RSS reader.

I am reminded of an article describing google’s operations. Apparently, there are little to no manual overrides for many processes, including deployment. Any changes must be committed, and automation will apply changes. A similar system here (perhaps like nixOS) would have prevented this folly, because I would have a record of changes made. Such things feel like overkill for my silly machine.

Who Knows How to Drive?

Fri, 23 Feb 2024 18:28:17 -0500

This is an extra tidbit from the trip to Green Bank

We were returning from a school trip. We were split across three white vans, driven by the Adults™️: the director D, assistant director A, and a grad student G assigned to our program. For whatever reason, our director drove aggressively and left our "caravan" (is it a caravan when its only 2 vans?).

At some point, G became very nervous about driving. Strangely, I don’t remember if I was in the van driven by G or by A. Pretty sure I was with A since I remember talking with her while driving, but this might not have been from our return. I remember people in the 2 vans texting and calling each other as the situation began. Pretty quickly we stopped. I believe we were still in West Virginia at the time. We managed to find a spot to pull over, no small feat since this was a narrow road alongside mountains.

We were all trying to figure out what happened. G was white as a sheet and stuttering. We waited for them to recover, but they didn’t calm down enough. Ideas about how to proceed were haphazardly thrown around. Someone suggested coffee, another mentioned music. I think most of us realized that we were already in a very relaxing situation (a leisurely mountain drive with incredible scenery). I ¿think? we had a false start.

Eventually, A started going round asking us if any of us could drive. D had mentioned it earlier, apparently peeved that we were dawdling over a trivial matter. A was concerned about liability, and you know … a young adult driving a large vehicle packed to the brim with people. I was asked, since I had a permit (not my full license) and was one of the eldest students. Unfortunately, I declined. A freshmen eventually volunteered. She definitely was the calmest amongst those asked.

She drove us back safely. It was a few hours and we all rejoiced upon returning to the dorm.

In retrospect, I could’ve volunteered to drive since we were taking it slowly. Or we could’ve taken turns.

Purchasing a Bike

Thu, 22 Feb 2024 23:12:45 -0500

I visited a handful of bike shops today. There are several along major trails in my area. My Atala is a humble commuter/street bike. It seems it does not have a modern equivalent in the US. The closest thing, road bikes, are expensive $1k-2.5k. I cannot justify this expense for something that I expect will get years of light use. I’m not exercising on the bike.

Out of desperation, I remembered that the secondhand market exists. And boom, I’m in business. I can find bikes in good condition from a few years ago for 30-50% less than today’s version. Similar to the phone market.

Lost my Bike

Fri, 16 Feb 2024 18:14:11 -0500

I was out clubbing after a work event in DC yesterday. I left my bike at a rack outside the bar. I didn’t lock it up because I forgot my bike lock key. When I returned outside after a couple hours, my bike was gone. I only have myself to blame.

What feels like a coincidence though, is that I also just acquired another bike. My university seems to have a circulating population of old bikes (they seem to b from 1960-1995). These cycles are plain vehicles, not cheap garbage from walmart or fancy playtoys for wealthier people. They get you from point a to b w/o fuss, have lasted for decades, and require a minimum of maintenance. I realize this may be survivors bias, but I really admire these bikes. Chipped paint and a rusty chain is usually the worst of their problems, which is saying a lot after 30 years.

Often, these cycles will be abandoned after a minor problem. I found an old blue schwinn traveler with a flat tire a few months ago. A week ago I found an old yellow Atala with rusted chain. I took the Atala in for repair and $200 later, I’m now heading in to pick it up. It strikes me as ironic that I’m going to get a new bike (one older than me) immediately after losing one. Though, this didn’t happen when I got the schwinn. The atlas isn’t a solution to my stolen bike. I’m going to take it for a joyride, then return it to the people of College Park.

So then what will I do for a new bike?

On Writing

Tue, 13 Feb 2024 22:14:52 -0500

For most of my life I hated writing. I didn’t like the stilted questions we’d consider in english class. My writing skills were poor (and I was repeatedly told this). I was put in english tutoring (with well meaning and skilled instructors) and still didn’t get it.

The Past

In high school, I tried to type as much as possible (aided by my personal laptop, an incredible privilege). I did not take notes in science and math classes, since I found everything easy. I did not take notes in english classes, because I found content to be disorganized or not worth writing (this is my opinion, not a fact. I’m still learning to appreciate literature). I even learnt some basic latex syntax to type math, though I did not submit full latex documents (I didn’t have the patience/experience to learn/know anything more complicated than markdown). Typing was the language of information and ideas, writing was the act of degrading yourself and slowing down. And yet, what a hassle it was to type math in latex in google docs, slowly convert them to images, and print everything (math hw was submitted physically pre-covid). My printed sheets stood out in submission piles and made me a target for teachers (not out of malice. I made careless arithmetic errors and typed assignments made them trivial to find). Alas, I HATED writing in notebooks and wide tipped pens. Wide ruled and 0.7mm were terrible, college ruled and 0.5mm were barely tolerable.

I starting adding to this blog around the time I started college. I was copying other tech bloggers. They wrote about interesting technical content and I wanted to emulate them.

The Present

However, almost immediately my blog turned into my public diary. For the first time in my life I had a place of my own to write. Not school assignments, and not personal notebooks my parents might monitor. (I had a strange habit of accumulating stationery I wouldn’t use as a child. Probably my desire to write peeking through. Or maybe I found stationery cool). It was a lot easier to write what was swirling around in my head, my life, even though the quality wasn’t (and isn’t) great.

Very little of the content here is technical, so I created the "dev" and "diary" tags.

In parallel to my blog, I gained experience with note-taking discipline in college. For the first time, I couldn’t keep everything in my head in math/computer classes (though concepts were still usually easy). The math lecture style (and to a much lesser extent, cs lecture style) was very easy for note taking. You mostly copy whats on the board: definitions, theorems, example problems, diagrams and figures. You are free to omit stuff, add detail, draw connections, etc. It was a lot easier to write out math, especially since I began collaborating with classmates on paper and the board. Writing helped me not just remember, but to collect my thoughts, organize them, and make them flow. Typing math was solely for submission and presentation / prettifying afterwards (as all my peers already knew).

Sophomore year of college, my SDU program took a trip to NYC. A Chinese friend took us to a Japanese store, Muji. There I found notebooks with narrow lines (even narrower than college ruled) and 0.38mm pens. I filled a large notebook with math, purchased a second smaller notebook a few months/a year later on another NYC trip, then when I couldn’t find anything else with narrow lines. I emptied 2-3 muji pens in the process, about 1 per semester. I scrounged high and low for some random pocketbooks and the narrowest pens when these all ran out, throwing out 7-8 gifted notebooks rather than return to normal American office supplies. I went from 0 to 100 in collage and it felt so natural (if exhausting, since it was all schoolwork). My handwriting had always been small and cramped, and finally this was no longer a limitation. College gave me a reason and space to write, and Muji gave me the ability to write.

The Future

Publishing here has a lot of friction. I have to

Create the post text file. It must be correctly formatted ( there is a metadata header) and named.
Commit and push. Git history is complete overkill. The vast majority of posts have an initial commit with all content, then some follow up commits with typo and formatting fixes. VCS is not useful for my content. It is useful for the non-content (CI config, hugo config, website environment).
Have CI rebuild and publish my site. There’s no "build cache", so the entire site is rebuilt and copied to github pages. Ideally, only changed files would be rebuilt / copied. Alas, this is not hugo’s way (and it only matters because I chose adoc over md).

Banana

Tue, 26 Dec 2023 14:31:38 -0500

Me: I’m so tired of grocery shopping. We keep going, but what do we even buy? When will shopping be done?

Bro: Sounds like you need a subscription. Instead of buying bananas, you need a banana subscription. They’ll ship it to us

Me: Thats the dream

Bro: And the bananas will have trackers in them so when we eat/peel them, they’ll send the next batch. In fact, we’ll never need more than one banana at a time.

Me: You just reinvented HP’s ink subscription

Where Do You Call Home

Sun, 17 Dec 2023 19:05:20 -0500

This is a response to Jason Kottke’s post, since I am not a Kottke.org member.
https://kottke.org/23/12/where-do-you-call-home

Childhood

I grew up in a Central Jersey Suburb. The area is, and remains, unparalleled in its diversity outside of a major city. My town was nearly evenly split between whites, blacks, asians, and latinos. Many of the neighboring towns were homogenous. At least we all remained in close proximity to each other.

While I do think there was segregation of various forms (race, income, when your family immigrated, etc), it never felt mandatory. It was very easy to break out of your bubble.

When I talk to suburban Asians from other parts of the country, I’m struck by how they were either very clearly minorities (nearest asian store or temple far away, not too many asians on school), or they came from an extremely asian place.

My place in Jersey felt … pluralistic? Is that te right word?

College

I went to college and got my first job after college in the DMV area. I’m overjoyed to spend time here with my college friends, most of whom are from the area. But do I feel at home here? No.

My college town is rapidly developing (attracting whom in the process, I don’t know), pushing out lower income people (many of whom work at the university). There is a lack of affordable housing (both student housing and single family housing). College students (armed with parents' money) rent out many of the homes, 5 to a house. Lower income people are being pushed out.

While I loved campus, it has been under massive construction for many years now. Every few years a new development sprouts. I’m sure in 10 years it’ll be unrecognizable.

College Park never felt like home, it never felt like a town. Some parts of campus are circumscribed by major roads, rivers, housing developments. This means when students want to shop, hangout, etc, they have to exit from a single side of campus with only a handful of exits. And they exit / enter from a main throughfare, which makes walking along it and crossing miserable. Much of the activity is concentrated along this stretch of road, despite its inhospitality. Whenever I returned back to my apartment or dorm after a night of partying, studying, hanging out, it never felt like I was going home. The places I spent more often, like my friends rooms (which were larger), or the common areas we frequented felt like home.

Those common areas are also being transformed. Campus leadership fails to acknowledge students need places to hang out, in various forms. Places where individuals, small groups (3-6), and medium groups (7-20) people can comfortably hang out. Whether thats studying, gaming, just hanging out, whatever.

Common areas are being removed, reappropriated, or replaced with glamour or research space (never mind that the grad students also don’t feel welcome).

Young Adulthood

My first job out of college is also in the DMV area, but the specific spot I’m in doesn’t feel organic. Its manufactured, not homily. Though there are nicer proper suburbs very close by.

The urban design is terrible here for all the same reasons urbanists talk about. The nearby pretty suburbs are also terrible for all the same reasons urbanists talk about.

Where Do I feel home

The home I grew up in is where I feel at home. But only when my parents aren’t in it. Such a large space just for me (and/or my sibling) feels so wasteful (I could delete my parents' portions of the house and not notice).

My brother is a big part of the home feel for me. Even if we’re not talking much, his presence is grounding.

Conclusion

My apartment near work needs a lot of work/decor before it starts to feels like home. That’s gonna be part of my New Year’s Resolution.

Interlocutor

Sat, 02 Dec 2023 09:28:26 -0500

This was during Spring 2022, when I made the wise decision to take 3 CS courses. Next semester I took 4 math classes and 1 cs class. Clearly my decision making was sound.

I my first midterm in Data Structures, taught by David Mount, we received the following question.[1]

Imagine a tree, where nodes alternate between having 2 and 3 children. The root has 2 children. The left child of the root has 2 children, the right child of the root has 3.

Calculate a recurrence for the number of nodes at depth $i$ (hint: work two levels at a time, express $n\left(i\right)$ in terms of $n\left(i-2\right)$), and an an explicit formula for the same.

Google Domains

Fri, 10 Nov 2023 22:15:41 -0500

Google Domains is being sold off to Squarespace. I received a verbose email about the sale on Aug 15th. The exact timeline was not mentioned. The details of the sale and customer migration are al fairly standard. Unclear what squarespace’s pricing looks like, or if they’ve committed to lock in pricing for transferred customers.

Google has a legendary reputation for killing off products and services. I’ve already been bitten multiple times. My first phone was a Nexus 6p, my friend group in high schools chatted using google hangouts. The loss of hangouts (even though it’s technically still alive and well) was especially felt because it was available everywhere (website, mobile, browser extension, web app) and didn’t need yet another account. Most other chat apps are mobile first. I’ve also used (prefix each service name with google)

jamboard
cloud print
sites
backup and sync
cardboard vr
trusted contacts
androidify
inbox by gmail
goo.gl url shortner
Save to Google Chrome
code (git hosting)

Euphoria

Wed, 01 Nov 2023 20:10:29 -0400

I finished the first season of Euphoria. This was my 4th? attempt at watching it, and I’m glad I did. The first few times I found the characters strange and stuckup. This time I found them extremely relatable, with everyday problems and an utter lack of healthy coping skills. A good year or two of therapy would set almost every character straight.

It makes me so sad that none of the characters (except for Jules) can see a long term future for themselves.

Characters Synopsis

Rue has "mental conditions" and hasn’t processed the grief of losing her father. She turns to drugs to cope.
Jules is treated poorly by everyone (every man). She’s good enough to fuck, but not to date. She embraces casual sex to get thrills, the feel of being wanted, and a feeling of control over who she spends her time with. Unfortunately, she also is exposed to risky situations (Nate and Cal jacobs).
Kat is treated poorly by everyone (every man) because of her body. She embraces casual sex and sex work to get thrills, the feel of being wanted, and a feeling of control over who she spends her time with (sound familiar). Unfortunately, she doesn’t leave herself vulnerable enough for more emotionally fulfilling relationships (like with ethan).
Maddy is poor and she knows it. She desires to move up in life, and correctly identifies "finding a rich man" as one of the best ways to do it (hey, starting a business or career is hard). She plays the necessary part to get Nate Jacobs, and ignores his abuse because she has no healthy relationships to model.
Cassie witnesses her beautiful parents be treated well due to their appearance. She is sexualized from a young age and so believes she needs her appearance to find love. Since no men have appreciated her for her personality, she can’t (can’t?) identify those who do.
Nate Jacobs is toxic masc. He is aggressive, entitled (sexually and otherwise), unable to express his emotions or desires, and measures himself against a masculine ideal. He is unable to even think about his sexuality, instead choosing to fit the stereotype and pursue Maddy. He isn’t vulnerable with anyone.
McKay is similar to Nate, just a lot more disciplined.

Factoring the Quartic

Sat, 21 Oct 2023 15:24:41 -0400

I walk into marching brand practice in 9th grade. A couple of juniors are scribbling homework questions. I take a peek, seems easy.

We finish practice, and they try to take another crack at factoring this quartic. One of them shares a class with me, and she asks me to do to do the problem. This particular one could be factored using usub (there were no odd powers of x), so I did in like 30 seconds.

And they all stared at me like I’d shown them god.

Website CI Time

Tue, 17 Oct 2023 21:35:45 -0400

In a previous post, I discussed the long build time of my website. However, this isn’t the only thing bogging down my ci usage. Simply setting up the environment was taking 1-3 minutes.

I tried to use nix in CI because it was easy. There were ready made github actions, and nix took care of installing everything reproducibly. I thought I would appreciate using the same environment in CI as locally.

However, nix installs your entire dependency tree, all the way down to libc and a shell if needed. When working locally, all this is cached so your not redownloading the world every time you tweak your environment. Caching was not working in CI for whatever reasons, and only a few megabytes of dependencies out of several gigabytes were being cached.

I switched to github actions that install each of my dependencies separately (one action for each of hugo, asciidoctor, and go). They all run in seconds when their caching works, and tens of seconds otherwise. And they use what the CI operating system provides, so only a few mb’s of dependencies are downloaded instead of GB’s.

I reduced my CI time from 3 minutes to 1. I should have done this from the start instead of hopping on a bandwagon. Nix still seems cool though.

Before After

Install nix
Cache nix deps
Install all deps (nix develop)

Celestial Bodies

Tue, 17 Oct 2023 21:30:27 -0400

This is from 10?th grade, marching band.

Her: Look, the moon is huge Me: ya

Later …

Her: Look! The moon moved so much Me: Yeh, celestial bodies tend to do that Her: Lol, who even says "celestial body". You’re so wild (friendly tone)

Why did I say that? I think I just wanted to sound smart / crack a joke.

Wacky

Fri, 06 Oct 2023 17:35:52 -0400

I was accompanying my mom in a women’s clothing store in a local mall.

polyester

Mom: It says here that this shirt is 50% polyester.

Me (cheeky smile): Does that mean the shirt shrinks by 50% in the wash?

Random Lady: That was pretty good.

Whilst shopping at costco

milk

Mom: Go get some 2%

Me: heaves a gallon into the air, gently lowers it into the cart

Mom: Horrified

Random Lady: You should’ve seen the look on your [my mom’s] face

I thank these strangers for the ego boost.

Scrolling

Thu, 05 Oct 2023 18:04:03 -0400

I pride myself on not being on much of a social media user. I use reddit sporadicaly, and usually just lurk. I’m not glued to my phone, endlessly scrolling and liking thirst traps.

I’m higher minded. I have my RSS feed with content I’ve curated 💖. No aLgOrItHm decides what I see, and I actually like the blogs I follow.

Except …

I’m still "addicted" (might need a better word). When I’m feeling anxious or any strong negative emotion, I’ll go numb myself with reading. I’ll often think about how I could be reading my feed instead of being productive. The information passes through me, but I’m not digesting it. I prioritize content that’s easier to skim through. If my eyes hurt, I’ll lower the brightness. Faster faster faster.

Replace phone with laptop, and scrolling with the down arrow. I’m the same as everyone else. I’ve just chosen a different flavor. I have failed to be more mindful of my media consumption.

I setup a screen time limit for my browser and feed reader. Lets see how it goes.

Asciidoctor Server

Sun, 01 Oct 2023 22:25:37 -0400

Background

My hugo website has been building rather slowly of late, taking 8-10 seconds to build. This is with a site of ~125 pages and ~30 static assets.

This shouldn’t be possible, or at least not this bad. Hugo is a performant program. Its written go™️, is an executable™️, and uses templates™️ instead of scripting to extend itself. You can see I was a little naive when I made the decision to build my site in hugo.

On ci, this has been slowly climbing as well. Here are the logs back from when I hosted on gitlab. As you can see, the time taken has been slowly but steadily climbing.

It turns out other have run into the same issue.[1][2] Hugo is slow only when building a site written in asciidoc. Could it be asciidoctor that is slow?

Benchmarking

Historical foolishness aside, lets gets some benchmarking in. I’m using hyperfine

bench name

command

time (sec)

Description

stock

hugo

8.9

How long it takes to build my website with no changes.

No IO

hugo --renderToMemory

9.0

The difference between this and the stock benchmark shows how much time is spent writing to disk.

cat [3]

alias asciidoctor=cat; hugo

0.7

How long it takes to build a website where no conversion to html occurs. The difference between this and the stock benchmark shows how much time is spent on conversion (a lot)

serial

fd -e adoc -x asciidoctor -o -

6.2

This benchmark shows long it takes to convert the site, minus the time taken to stitch the pages together

batch

fd -e adoc -X asciidoctor -o -

0.38

How long does converting the entire site take, when done as a single conversion.

simple

echo "yeet" | asciidoctor -

0.254

A reference benchmark. How long it takes to convert a single simple document

No op

asciidoctor --help

0.255

Another reference benchmark. How long it takes merely to start the converter ( but not convert anything)

Male Chowvinism

Sun, 01 Oct 2023 15:24:04 -0400

This occurred during the summer, but I'm only writing about it now.

// The title is not mispelled

My father has a classmate who married a czech woman. I found this extremely interesting for many reasons:

Its more common for 2nd generation immigrants to marry out then 1st gen. All of the mixed indian-white marriages I know are this way. Also its usually the woman marrying out, not the man.
My father’s background makes it seem like he’d be opposed to something like this, and most of his friends / our family seem the same. (I have an uncle who declared he’d honor kill a daughter of his who’d eloped.)
Czechia??? All the indian immigrants I know went to the USA, UK, or Australia (all english speaking nations).

Loser

Sat, 03 Feb 2024 10:46:01 -0500

I met an uncle last summer when I visited India. This uncle (along with several others) had stayed at my house for a few months/years when I was in elementary school. My Parents let him the guest room whilst he pursued higher education in the US (he got his PhD, but the other uncles got masters or bachelors degrees iirc). He tried to have a heart-to-heart with me, now that I was a grown man (I’d just graduated college, had a job lined up).

He’d invested quite a bit into the idea of coming to America. He pursued higher education (and lived humbly during that time), he formed a support network out of my family, his extended family, and those he met during his studies. In spite of all this, he still decided to settle back in India. Why?

Staying In India

His PhD (in a computer engineering discipline I think) did not have a good rate of return on job prospects. He found good job offers, both here and in India that would use his expertise, but nothing with a dramatic increase in pay / responsibilities from someone who’d accumulated the necessary experience from the industry.

So then he turned to cost of living. While an Indian salary is a lot less, he’d be upper middle class (which is saying a lot in a country that is still building its middle class, unlike in the US which had a large middle class and is now destroying it). In India he owns a richly decorated home (it is narrow but with 5 floors, I love it), has a chauffeur, lives in a nice quiet area in/next to a bustling city (we’d call this a suburb in the US but that idea hasn’t quite caught on there), and is preparing to sublet the basement. The neighborhood he lives in has a subterranean road leading to underground parking places for each home (their are stairs up to the house). This leaves the above ground road free for pedestrians.

He also lives with his mother, who provides free childcare and domestic labor, and has a maid who cooks and cleans. His sister is his neighbor and visits.

Its not perfect. I don’t like having maid/servants/chauffeurs, servitude feels wrong (there’s casteism to it in India). His mom is clearly out of options (housework isn’t intellectually stimulating). His wife does a decent amount of housework (especially childcare) despite also working. The housing development feels very artificial (the ground outside is a waterproof cheap plastic tile), despite the homes' beauty.

Regrets are for Losers

He took me out to get a suit tailored. A lavish gift. I need to lose weight to look good in it.

We were talking about missteps we’d made / might make in our careers and academic prospects. He told me to not talk to much about these mistakes though, and certainly never complain. If you complain it means your not enjoying your current life, or are bogged down by regrets. And if you do, you’re a "Loser".

This was harsh, but looking back on this after half a year, I appreciate the reminder.

There are lots of things right now that I want to improve about my life (right now I’m thinking of moving). But in 10 years will I really remember these issues? Most likely I will find other things to worry about. Will fixing these issues really make me happier or make meaningful difference in my life (health, family, career)? Lots of my issues are temporary slumps that won’t affect me down the line.

Woke Canada

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I stayed over with some family friends whilst traveling (indian network go brr). Their son said the following to me.

I have this friend on Canada, and he was telling me that Canada is having a woke problem. They’ve become so woke that they’ve wrapped around and become [some synonym for bad that I forget]. Its really crazy man.

Especially with this lgbt shit man. Of course let everyone live the way they want, but don’t force it on kids man.

Brotherly Love

Sat, 09 Sep 2023 14:57:03 -0400

I love my brother.

This is not an uncontroversial statement. Most people love their sibling.

But I am comfortable showing him a level of physical affection uncommon in western culture. Feminists talk about this, how men are discouraged from expressing emotions, especially affection.

Brown adults, especially brown men, pick up on what I do. "Oh yeah look at these two. Aha. Oho".

India is westernizing, like most countries. The spectre of homophobia will enslave more men into repressing their emotions.

Royal Wave

Sun, 03 Sep 2023 21:46:47 -0400

Memory Unlocked

I just remembered my fifth grade teachers (my class had 2) mentioning how different I was. They were talking about how I’d "royal waved" at someone (upright forearm, fingers together). I have been weird since the beginning.

Faggot

Fri, 01 Sep 2023 20:49:56 -0400

A guy says "What are doing that for, faggot". He is not secure in his masculinity or sexuality. He may or may not be straight, its largely irrelevant. He knows gay is bad, and that morphs into anything bad is gay. He will needlessly perform his gender and sexuality, even in ways that are harmful to him and others.

His friend hears this and adjusts his behavior. He might not be gay. He might not even be openly homophobic. But even associating with the concept (much less actual gay people) is suicide. Doesn’t matter what he was doing. It is "gay" and should stop. He wants his friends approval.

Some other boy passing by overhears. He definitely is gay. He does not behave stereotypically gay (its fine either way). He knows what others really think of him. Never mind whether he has hookups / partners, never mind whether he acts feminine, never mind whether he even identifies as gay. He lives in constant fear of being "discovered". Long after the comments, he knows that he is lesser than and unworthy of love or respect.

Gated Community

Fri, 01 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I’m talking to my cousins grandmother (technically shes my aunt and the cousins are … something, but whatever).

I hate living in gated communities (in India). No neighborly feel. Can’t say hi to people walking past. Can’t say good night / good morning to my neighbors. Its the same here in America with the big houses.

WSL Double

Thu, 31 Aug 2023 11:52:51 -0400

I was sitting in Office Hours, when a student came to me with a seemingly simple issue. He’d installed the requisite software and downloaded the assignments, and yet they were nowhere to be found. I dismissed him, and told him to reinstall everything. The install process took a lot of time, so I helped other students while he waited.

He showed me a shell he’d opened, with the install logs present (apt-get is so chatty). I verified the software was available there, and asked what the problem was. He then proceeded to open another shell and demonstrate that the software was missing. I checked his path and noticed he’d downloaded the assignments. No issue there. I verified that in both shells, we were in the same working directory and logged in as the same user. Now I was truly miffed. I dismissed him again to help other students and mull this over in the background. I could see he was getting impatient.

I returned to him once again and tried to sus out his environment. My first real clue was that the assignments folder was available in once shell, but not the other. I finally noticed that the title bars of the two shells were not the same. One read "ubuntu" and the other "wsl". I closed both of the shells and asked him to reopen them. He searched both of the previous terms in the windows start menu.

Here I remembered that wsl supported running multiple linux distros at a time, similar to how one can run multiple vm’s and containers at a time. Docker for Windows uses this feature, and I’d played around with it earlier. I listed the number of distros he had and was greeted with two versions of ubuntu. I checked the windows store (we’d directed students to install ubuntu from there, I consider installed distros from the windows store an excellent feature), and saw he’d installed both the LTS and the latest version of ubuntu. Our instructions were very clear in that only one distro should be installed, and wsl might have even installed the version of ubuntu we wanted around that time. Not sure where he got that idea.

The issue as easily resolved by deleting one distro and completing the install instructions again.

This was the only time I felt violent rage during my two years of TA experience. The student had been a little dismissive and impatient while I addressed his issue (it took about 1-2 hours, a lot of which was spent helping others). He couldn’t explain how or why he’d done this. Surely, whilst installing the second version of ubuntu, he’d have notice another was already installed? They would have appeared side by side in the windows store! I’d spent so much time streamlining the setup instructions.

After helping him, I took a break and walked around. I was very drained even hours later, when I vented to my friends

Asciidoctor Css

Wed, 16 Aug 2023 14:01:25 -0400

Asciidoctor implements a rich markup language with a nice syntax. I use it for notes, my website, and lecture materials.

Unfortunately, its rich feature set requires ccs support. The default style sheet is several thousand lines and ~35kb before compression / minification. This presents a significant challenge when creating a minimal theme.

I came across the Asciidoctor Skins project, and Stylesheet Factory. Both provide a selection of themes that override parts of the default theme using standard tricks (variables, imports, rule precedence).

The default stylesheet bears no comments, which would be helpful to understand which rules are cosmetic, add functionality, or improve cross browser compatibility.

I don’t want fonts, or font awesome icons (though they really are awesome). I’m not worried about ancient or minimal browsers (mobile and desktop is enough headache).

Gave Up on my Website

Sun, 06 Aug 2023 23:22:28 -0400

I have given up on building a theme for my website. I learnt a lot about semantic html, hugo’s api, and go templating. I put all this to good use and designed the html of my theme.

I did not have the stomach to learn css. I looked at the css files of blogs I follow. There was usually 1-3k lines of css, which I would never be able to write by hand. Much of it was autogenerated, evidence of bundling. The default asciidoctor stylesheet is ~2k lines. I can easily imagine what I want, and hugo-bearblog comes very close.

I modified the css a smidge, and added taxonomy pages so one could see my tags and posts under each. I’m missing a sidebar, and post summaries (with some styling I wanted).

My next goals are to integrate asciidoctor with hugo’s chroma support, implement post series, and try to integrate asciidoctor’s css (which is needed for many asciidoc features).

Favicon

Fri, 28 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I am trying to optimize the size of my website. A scan revealed my favicon was by far my largest asset, even bigger than my fonts (dw, those should be gone soon as well).

I found a nice article describing how to do this (with the same information available verbatim in github gists and stackoverflow). All these sources were marked out of date, but this is not completely accurate.

While Imagemagick no longer appears to optimize/shrink the final favicon, it is still useful to know to create shrunken intermediate assets. My original favicon was 260kb uncompressed, and now its 15. While this is still larger than the sum of the intermediates (1 + 2 + 4), its still large savings for me.

Website Bloat

Wed, 26 Jul 2023 18:18:06 -0400

I’m trying to join the https://512kb.club/, a list of websites that are small.

Mission Statement

Many of the blogs I read follow a minimalist approach, where content takes front and center. This approach used to be the default. I want to emulate them. Do my small part in combatting how bloated, privacy-invasive, and ad-driven the internet is now.

I use a theme that by default puts me right on the edge of 512kb per page. I don’t like this. Unfortunately, I have minimal web dev skills (a gaping hole in my resume). Using a static site generator, hugo, has enabled me to focus on writing. Managing the site’s configuration takes a couple workdays a year.

By average website standards, I’m pretty great. My website is 90% useable without js, and is small. I used google lighthouse and https://gtmetrix.com to analyze my site. They give high praise with "near perfect scores", and a long list of suggestions.

The Problem Scope

But by the standards I want to hold myself to, I’m doing poorly. Requests to 3rd party resources, features I don’t use, needless js/css. It all should go. Hugo themes are usually not modular, which leads them authors to try to meet many use cases and include lots of features.

My website theme uses :

katex: I write my site in asciidoc, which is capable of rendering the math server side/at build time. Also, I barely use math. My website has 2 usages of math expressions, both of which are extremely small.
photoswipe: This is for photo galleries and big sweeping title photos. I don’t use this.
jquery: This seems excessive when my site mostly works without js. In fact, I want there to be no js. I browse the web without js.
google fonts: The externals fonts are my site’s biggest resources.
bootstrap: I know nothing about css??
fontawesome: Cool icons?? Disabling js results in a small amount of tofu across my site. It appears these icons are used for the links in my footer and in the article overviews on the homepage.

India Driving

Fri, 21 Jul 2023 04:28:12 -0400

A lot of the content online about driving in India is not from Brown people, and comes across as holier than thou. I think India is solidly middle of the pack when it comes to road safety … whatever that means.

Behavior

In India, people:

Drive on the wrong side of the road
- While it happens all the time and you need to be prepared, its not like an onslaught. Smaller vehicles are more likely to do this
disregard lanes as nonexistent / meaningless
- constantly switching lanes in an attempt to selfishly overtake people
- Straddling lanes out of indifference or trying to play both sides for overtaking
Honk as a proximity alert, not a "get out of the way"
- Yes, this is noise pollution.
- No, its not out of rudeness.
- Yes, there are some especially bad drivers who will honk with abandon
- Yes, this leads to alarm fatigue.
Try to fill every available space
- If your trying to turn, people will swarm you
- If there’s a necessary slowdown, people will swarm you and prevent you from resuming normal speed
Don’t use turn signals

Medical BS

Fri, 30 Jun 2023 20:59:53 -0400

This happened during the pandemic.

TLDR: My balls hurt. I waited 6+ hours to be told to take tylenol.

For several days, I’d felt a slight pain in my balls (say (1 to 2)/10). NBD. The day of this incident, I woke up with it oscillating around a 4. Late in the evening/night (at least past 6), my pain shot up to a 7. I couldn’t walk, there was pressure/tension. I asked my parents to take me to a doctor, but they said to wait till morning. I refused.

We drove to a hospital, the only suitable place open at that hour. Thankfully I live in a dense area, with a hospital nearby. I waited in the waiting room for many hours. There were a few people before us also waiting for many hours. There was some car crash, and the injured were rushed in.

My mother got a hold of the family doctor, who worried it could be torsion. The doctor advised us to beg/be karen/ask to be expedited. In turn, the receptionist informed us of the car crash. I couldn’t tell if she was sympathetic or indifferent. I’m sure she had such people begging all the time. No use begging.

My vitals were taken and "symptoms" were taken (symptoms = "my balls hurt"), and I waited for a couple more hours. A kind nurse came to give me a gown and took me for an ultrasound. I fondled my nuts so she could get good angles. I waited a few more hours for someone to interpret the results. This was too much. I have to wait for my tea leaves to steep, AND for someone to divine the future using them? Divination must be in high demand.

I was given my diagnosis (hydrocele, varicocele), which were some mild/somewhat common conditions. Surgery was only advisable in extreme cases. My pain had subsided amidst all the waiting, and I was advised my condition would likely resolve on its own. I was recommended OTC pain meds.

Upon receipt of the $1200 bill (after insurance applied), my parents chided me for wasting their time.

The entire experience left a bitter taste in my mouth. Had I followed my parents insane advice to avoid or delay treatment, I’d be in an objectively better situation. I’d have resolved it sooner, cheaper, and with less stress. On the other hand, this really could have been something serious. Everyone already knows the myriad ways US healthcare sucks, so I won’t explain.

I really felt it. Anger towards the hospital staff for taking so long. Anger towards insurance for not covering more. Anger towards those injured in the car crash for "taking my spot". Sometimes I feel violently angry. I logically know its none of these people’s fault (well, its definitely insurance’s fault). Violence is not going to help anyone. But logic is not helping my feelings.

My father blamed my biking as the cause. Stupid stupid man. He’s gonna lose his shit when he discovers I’m gay/nb/autistic/atheist.

Poll Working

Tue, 06 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Today I was a poll worker in New Jersey’s Primary election. I was the only brown person, and one of 2 people below the age of 55. The other person was middle aged. Suffice it to say, almost everyone involved in the process was basically a retiree. It was a massive culture shock for me. I felt tapped into the soul of my country for a day.

Democracy is Dead

I had to show up at 6am, which felt offensive. I know it’s because the election was on a weekday, so theoretically people might come in before work. I was instantly out of place. We set up tablets to register people are having voted (they also let us look up voter registrations for those who didn’t have their info on them). We averaged 1-3 people per hour voting. It was midday before I realized mail in voting exists. The majority of those who’d voted did so by mail (thanks jersey, thanks tablets). The actual voting was not the focus of the day for me, though we did jokingly compete on which table had the most voters.

Long Live Democracy

By god the discussions we had! There was a general distrust of institutions (govt, large corporations, etc). There was one woman who repeated phrases like "my momma taught me to always look at the foundation of a thing" (evil institutions don’t really change) and "the eagle is sick" (in reference to American life).

They all spoke about how too many of their loved ones were getting afflicted with cancer. And I’m like .. have y’all seen how old you are??? Nutritious food (and in particular, produce) was so hard to access. Once again, I’m like … yeah the big companies can make more money selling us unhealthy garbage because it’s cheaper to make/ship. Our political system doesn’t listen to the people. Yes, there’s money in politics, low voter turnout, gerrymandering, disenfranchisement, and a dozen other issues. The doctors aren’t listening to them, rob us blind, and are prescribing god knows what. Surprise surprise the insurance companies wants your money. Alternative medicine also came up. No way in hell was I gonna explain placebo. Thankfully, we kind of let this one go (agreed to disagree almost immediately).

Conspiratorial thinking was abound. It sucks how they all identified valid problems … and then missed the mark on them. On all these issues, there was a lot of references to "them". "They" who control everything and want to ruin our lives. I struggled to communicate that in each of these situations, there was no evil hidden cabal of people pulling the strings. Just regular old greed, well understood problems, and equally well understood solutions.

Its worth mentioning that the space was multiracial: I’m brown, ofc there were plenty white people, 2-3 people were black, 1-2 people were latino. It was also mixed gender.

Democracy is sick

Someone mentioned that all the older volunteers had died off, leaving it to the "next generation" (of people 55-70) to take over. Holy crap whatever democracy is left will be gone in my lifetime.

These folks were all extremely intelligent and verbal. We were gushing, a little too much. I’m starting to get tired of these me-vs-everyone discussions (previous topics include evolution, specific aspects of women’s rights, queer representation and liberation). I’ll let it slide this time out of respect for these folks. Even though there was very little convincing going on, I was getting more respected as the day went on. Not being dismissed, not talked over, listened to, responded to.

We could have gone so far with some science knowledge and political literacy. I get the sense that they might not get the chance to talk about these deeply held and important beliefs, least of all with someone so young and someone who disagrees respectfully. The quality of discourse was comparable to some discussions I’ve had in college. How did we as a society have missed the chance to educate this politically influential group?

By the end of the day, I thought everyone was crazy, and I think they knew that. I fucking loved it, being the star of the show. They were all offering me rides back home. I should have taken one of them up on the offer, but my dad came to get me.

Nix

Thu, 25 May 2023 19:19:22 -0400

So I’ve been using nix on my mac (so not nixos) for a few weeks now. Here are my thoughts.

🛑 Warning:

I was too lazy to provide explanations or sources for a lot of this rambling. Enjoy as I pull it out of my ass.

Goals

Provide a light weight specification of a system

Nix expressions/flakes certainly beat dockerfiles here.

While simple dockerfiles (copying files, installing/building packages) are very readable, the complexity frequently balloons.

Dockerfiles Bad

Dockerfiles are a mix between shell scripts and docker commands. Shell scripts are not readable enough to be used like this. Unlike normal languages where I can create my own types and functions, I have to mentally create abstractions to understand large dockerfiles. Dockerfiles do a bad job of managing complexity (not justifying this, but think abstractions, code reuse, etc)

Nix wins here because there’s a configuration language (I won’t explain the benefits of configuration languages) and an expression is itself pure (the language itself need not be functional). The output of a config script is .. the config. We don’t have to look at what the config would do to understand what it means (I don’t have to analyze the downloads and filesystem changes to understand what packages are being installed).

This is not true about docker. Docker cannot enforce this separation between evaluating the config script and doing what the resulting config says. This is because we don’t know what arbitrary shell scripts do (maybe the PL people will save us here). There are many docker tools dedicated to analyzing images: looking for vulnerabilities, splitting changes by layer, etc. Another benefit is that you don’t need to worry about caching (as much). If the set of changes we need to make is the same, it doesn’t matter how the configuration calculated it. Reordering statements or refactoring configuration (or their moral equivalents in nix) will not trigger costly rebuilds.

This does mean we need to reevaluate entire nix expressions on change (what we’re caching are the changes specified by the description that evaluation gives us, not what subexpressions evaluate too). This is not a problem for 98% of scripts, because they are small enough that nix config evaluation speed is not the bottleneck.

Useability

Nix lang

Typing

While, the nix language (and its usages) are an improvement, I’m not satisfied. The type system sucks (its similar to that of javascript, where everything is an Object™️), which hinder autocomplete and composition. Its a common practice to pass closures around. I will occasionally run into the issue where I’m 2-3 closures deep, and I forget who is wrapping what.

I would have liked to see better/real static typing, gradual typing, and generics/parametric polymorphism. However, since I’m not really a pl person, I’m not sure how these would look like in practice. Things like calculating a fixed point, doing ungodly key/value manipulations, or summoning internet resources (tarballs, imports), are somewhat common.

Syntax

The colon is used to denote abstraction (denoting an anonymous function). So a: a is the identity function in nix lang. Unfortunately, this is infix and is harder to read. Haskell, rust, ocaml, and lambda calculus all do something like fun x → x. There’s a leading token to denote the function. Java is in the same boat as nix, but they avoid the issue by only parsing for lambdas when the expected type of an expression is a function ("implements a functional interface"). This works because of Java’s limited (previously nonexistent) type inference.

Whitespace (juxtaposition) is used to denote function application and list element separation. f x is a function call, [f x] is a list with 2 elements.

Evaluation Speed

The language is slow. I haven’t inspected the implementation, so I don’t fully understand why. While laziness was supposed to help here (and indeed, I’ve had fun with Haskell), it seems to have been not enough.

This isn’t a problem for most user code or packages. The bottlenecks are usually downloading/building dependencies, because most expressions are small/simple. It is a mild annoyance when iteratively writing an expression (perhaps you’re editing dependencies or build logic).

This is a problem for nixpkgs (the default package repository), which is structured as a single giant expression (packages are keys in this key-value store). Apparently it needs to be this way in order to facilitate dependency management and overriding packages.

There is Nickel, an alternative to Nix Lang, from tweag. There’s also a reimplementation of Nix itself (package manager, language, and all).

On a slightly related note, the package repository is 3.7 gb at the time of writing, of which 3.5gb is the git history. This is sufficiently large that instead of fresh clones, it is faster to download a tarball of a specific revision.

+ Homebrew used to avoid this issue with shallow clones, but this understandably put load on github when calculating later diffs / fetches. They began periodically squashing git history for their package repository, and then switched to an api/json (which is mutable, doesn’t record history, and morally equivalent to a tarball of the latest commit), but this understandably put load on github when calculating later diffs / fetches. They began periodically squashing git history for the package reposiitory, and then switched to an api/json (which is mutable and morally equivalent to , doesn’t record history,a tarball of the latest commit). Despite knowing this, I didn’t internalize this because I have "developer" mode on for homebrew, which enables package maintainer features (and consequently git clones the brew package repository).

CLI

The command line interface is hot garbage.

Many flags are unintuitively named, subcommands are often passed as flags (even git figured this one out, its apt install not apt --install), and common actions require a bevy of flags instead of those being passed by default. Not to mention that many commands are split across multiple executables. My path currently contains 11 executables with the nix- prefix, though it seems only 3-4 are user facing (and one is the daemon).

There is a new cli, all under a shiny nix command. While it is very ergonomic, it doesn’t support everything (i.e. imperatively installing a package). Its not always clear if and how commands translate between the old and new cli.

User Configuration

This might just be marketing miscommunication (I read a number of blogs and tweets whilst learning), but I got the impression nix could manage not just my system configuration (packages, services, etc), but my user environment ("dotfiles", etc).

It turns out user configuration is managed by a third party tool: home manager. Home Manager (and nix darwin for those using the package manager on macos) are also defacto standards for those using nix for personal use.

Declaring all my user/system configuration turned out to be … needlessly verbose. Learning a new language and a bevy of configuration options was a very high bar. My current system of saving my dotfiles in git is plenty efficient. There are many tools to manage ur dotfiles, or you can user git directly. Similarly, I can manage my packages by with brew bundle, which outputs a list of installed packages that can be restored from. While this is not reproducible (packages may break, be yanked, or updated), it is declarative enough for me. Strictly speaking, its not declarative, as the file is a record of your installed packages. About once a month, I’ll list my packages, remove anything unneeded, and restore from the file.

Security

🛑 Warning:

A cyber security professional should take a look at nix

Nix is possibly the greatest security risk since … ever? Like imagine all the things that could go wrong if you added a script engine to a package manager.

It is a massive blob of unvetted c++
It downloads scripts from the internet
- Like how browsers download/run javascript. The risk is less since we evaluate configuration.
Its a package manager, so all the usual risk there
It also manages other system config, so it requires arbitrary access to the filesystem. apt would never edit your dotfiles, but nix might.

Revenge

Thu, 25 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

All my life, I’ve been misunderstood and disrespected. I suspect autism, but a diagnosis will have to wait (hooray American healthcare!).

This was part of a fight between me and a couple friends of mine. There was no resolution between me and my friends. Neither of us desired reconciliation. I’ve made minor progress about this. Sometimes I can accept/forgive my friends actions, my actions, and the pain we caused each other (yes, this includes accepting/forgiving myself). Other times I’m very angry and want revenge.

I think about reconciliation a lot (its moot now that I’ve graduated college). I miss my friends. Our mutual friends split time, with me receiving much less attention since I’m less assertive, more awkward, and only a single person (the other side involved 2.5 people). I also miss the friends I clashed with. I enjoyed their company, and I held one of my friend’s opinion of me in high regard (was it too high?).

Reconciliation would involve a lot of effort from me. I would have to explain how I was hurt, to people who disregarded my feelings many times. Is this worth it? I would have to give them time and patience to understand, apologize, and change their behavior. This would do nothing to prevent similar misunderstandings from other people (is this relevant?), and might not prevent this from reoccurring between me and my clashing friends. It would also not heal the hurt I already felt.

Reconciliation would be so much easier if I were in a better position. If I were treated better by my friends (mutual and clashing), it would be easier to shrug this off, or I’d desire lesser revenge. I would have been cumulatively? hurt less to begin with, I think. Wait, does this even make sense? I was so hurt to begin with, why was I even friends with them?

Analogy

🛑 Warning:

I’m not a psychologist, sociologist, etc. What I say here may not be true. And my thoughts here are very shallow.

Say I was robbed of $50.

If I were rich, I could easily shrug this off. If I were poor, this would be a big loss (financially and emotionally).

If the government compensated me immediately (assume magical crime detection), and separately pursued the thief (either rehab or punishment), once again no big loss. I would be very willing to advocate for rehab of the thief / reconciliation between us since no money is at stake for me.

If the government only pursued the thief, then justice for me (my personal justice, not to society) would rely too much on the cooperation of the thief. I’m unlikely to get the money back, or an apology. If rehabilitation is pursued, there is a societal benefit (reduction in theft) independent of the personal benefit (apology, compensation). The thief could do either without doing the other. I don’t have the same incentive to care about the social benefit over my personal one (psychology™️). If I can’t get healing, then I went revenge. Incarceration, restricting freedoms, other punishments.

There’s also the concern of not getting enough bang for your buck. Why was I so poor that stealing $50 was hurtful? I don’t want the thief getting more help than I ever did, that feels like an incentive to do crime. And could have something been done to prevent the initial harm? If so, why wasn’t it done?

⚠️ Caution:

I ended up regurgitating conservative talking points I thought I disagreed with: "not caring about social benefits", "incentivizing crime", "revenge". It seems the real difference between liberals and conservative on this issue is how wealthy you are. It is easy to support rehab when I didn’t have skin in the game. This newfound sympathy for conservatives will probably last a day.

Back to my Drama

Neither I nor my friends want to reconcile. I think they don’t understand me, even though I’ve made a lot of effort to understand them. My understanding/compassion varies inversely with how angry I am, which is very variable. Sometimes I want to reconcile. Other times I want our mutual friends to take a stand against them and/or socially exclude them. My friends have been very clear about getting rid of me, excluding me from anything they organize, and preventing me from finding out about times our mutual friends are socializing. This is despite a promise to not do so.

My feelings about all this are too tied up with my own feeling of self-worth/insecurities. I’m sure its the same for my friends (wow, I’m pretty calm right now).

Introspection

This is why everyone needs therapy. It took months to calm down and think through all this. Prolly would’ve taken 3 hours with a therapist.

I also partly see why priests enjoy special status now. They are assumed to show the kind of compassion/understanding in this post towards everyone. Hindering them would be an obvious form of self harm. I understood this about doctors/combat medics, but not priests. I get the phrase "Priests are held to a higher standard now". I assumed priests were useless, and therefore it was useless to expect more from them.

Never Have I Ever (lost my shit)

The main character Devi is unstable and dramatic at times. Her (first brown) boyfriend’s mother (Riyah) advises her son to end things, and the mama’s boy (Nirdesh) complies, despite disagreeing. Devi retaliates by throwing coffee into her bf’s face. Devi’s mother, Nalini, temporarily excuses her daughter’s behavior, defends her daughter, and insults Riyah.

There’s a lot here.

Nirdesh seems really great (similar culture, hot, nice, smart), but at the end of the day he’ll pick what’s easy, not right. He’s just a man. Just a brown man (derogatory).

Riyah was kind to Devi in person (helping Devi with a ¿panic attack?), but duplicitous behind closed doors (and failed to see her behavior as backhanded or wrong). Riyah could have talked through her issues with Devi, but didn’t even consider it because she saw herself (and her son) as better than Devi. She only publicly raised her concerns when she wanted to get rid of Devi once and for all.

Devi does have issues, but that doesn’t mean she’s undeserving of love, or that those issues compromise her ability to have relationships (friends, lovers, etc).

Exploring

Wed, 24 May 2023 09:09:15 -0400

Poem

I love snooping. I love rifling through every draw. I love flicking every switch. I love turning every corner. I love opening every box. I love emptying every shelf. I love perusing every tabletop.

Joy

I’ve been like this since I was a child. I’ve consciously acknowledged it before, and even said it out loud. But this is the first time I’ve said it/thought it as an adult? The older I get the weirder it feels that I snoop. As a child, I didn’t need to ask permission to wander about. As an adult, it seems strange to meet someone new, and then go through their house.

Novelty is definitely a part of this. I’m building a map of everything in the house. And once its built, I don’t get as much fun out of exploring. Whenever I’d get the opportunity (as a child) to visit multiple times, it’d be a chance to update the map, or add unexplored sections of the house.

Yesterday

Yesterday I arrived at my friend Russel’s house. His family has so much stuff. I think there isn’t a bare surface anywhere. Their pantry is packed. Tall stacks hiding yet more stacks.

And of course, he’s chinese so .. stereotypes: Lots of food everywhere, multiple fridges.

I told him whilst going through his pantry, "I haven’t had this much fun in years". I think I really meant this. He’d asked me beforehand "Do you do this to every house you go to?". I said yes, but the real answer was "I’d like to".

Aunty Clap Back

Mon, 22 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

During my 2 years (of in-person) at UMD,[1] I regularly visited some family friends. Eat home cooked food, de-stress in peace, play with the kids, etc. They became my host family and I’m in their debt for helping me through college.

During my final visit to them before graduating, the father took me and the kids to the temple. We were served sambar (or dal?), but it was the bottom of the pot with all the solids. The serving lady warned us that the chilies had collected at the bottom.

I jokingly accepted the risk, but my uncle was worried. The serving lady became indignant and said "No, no, I also eat (the chilies). They’re good for you". My uncle shut up and made a face.

One of the few times I saw a women override a man (outside of a family/friend context)!

University of Maryland, College Park ↩

Cleaning My Drive

Tue, 02 May 2023 12:38:11 -0400

I clean out my drive every 6 months to 1 year. However, my most recent cleanup was preempted by necessity.

What I learnt

I’m not a business person or senior developer, so no cheeky life lessons here.

Sometimes I feel like I’m not productive enough. Cleaning out my drive was clear proof this is not the case. I get the same realization when I uninstall unneeded packages. I should start recording my work in diary entries, so its easier to find this information.

When I manually garbage collect like this, I can be more proactive by deleting large files when I’m done with them. However, "done" might be ill defined.

What I Removed

I installed nix, a combination between a package manager and system configuration tool. I’ve solely been using it to mention project dependencies (go, python, native dependencies for projects), not systemwide packages / personal tools (ide, epub reader, music player, etc). The nix store was using ~20gb. I’m using nix-direnv to manage project dependencies as I make changes. Perhaps it failed to mark old versions of these requirements as unneeded. Perhaps I’m using the tool wrong. Either way, manually pruning my nix gc roots was easy. One project asked for a full latex distribution but did not use it.

I realized I still remained uncomfortably close to a full drive, and proceeded to clean further. I removed the following

Docker for Mac (40-60gb)
- Images, volumes, Virtual Machine
- I was self hosting a number of apps, but that got annoying.
System images for my old phone (10+ gb)
- I bricked my previous phone whilst flashing an os and failed to repair it.
Downloaded movies (~4gb)
- Cant all be work and no play
Compilation caches for go (~5 gb), ocaml, rust projects. I kept the source code around, of course.
- There were dozens of these hanging around. A handful were in the range of 0.5-1 gb!
- Many of these were duplicates of the same school projects from various semesters from my time TA’ing
- Rust caches in particular were larger
- There was one opam switch. I’m using nix for this use case now.
Misc packages
- Rstudio, Intellij Idea, steam, etc (each > 1gb)
- Rust, go, ocaml: these are managed by nix on a per project level rather than globally.
- retdec, gcc, pandoc

Fuck Stem

Thu, 02 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This semester, I occasionally decided to instead go to classes that seemed interesting.

They actually were super interesting and it made me rethink me life. CS is cool and all, its a mind puzzle and I like working out the brain muscles, and money is great. But this stuff is actually interesting to learn.

FMSC330: Family Stuff

My friend took this class the previous semester, and sent me the slides for the entire semester. I thought it was great, so I sat in a few times this semester.

Divorce, marriage, child rearing
incarceration
differing views on family structures
sexuality, dating
and much else!

My Blog's history

Sun, 19 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

🛑 Warning:

This post is written years after the fact. I tried to verify everything using the git histories linked at the end.

High School Fucking around

In my senior year of high school, my friends and I wrote a website that enabled students to sign up for the afterschool bus (used by students who had clubs). Initial prototyping was done under my github pages site (I probably didn’t know about repo specific sites and used the one for my account). We moved the site its own repo under a separate github organization.

Timeline

This site initially began approximately the summer between college and high school, so summer 2020. I saw the fancy websites of other software engineers, and wanted my own. All the tutorials recommended github pages (which used the jekyll website generator). I spent time configuring the theme and publishing my site, … and proceeded to add no content. My first post (which has been removed), was merely a hello world. My second post, was about transferring control to the new officers of my high school’s coding club.

Throughout my first semester of college (fall 2020), I added posts for the "scholars" program I was a part of (the program no longer exists following the director’s departure). There was at least two post about the instructions for a project I did that semester. The projects directions were poorly written, and I rewrote them to be clearer and terser.

Somewhere during this time I heard of the hugo site generator. It was "fast" and "written in go". I was sold (I held (and still hold to a lesser degree) the belief that everything newer is better and worth switching to). I set about porting my site, using that hello world post as a test. I didn’t use any advanced jekyll features, so it was as simple as copying my markdown source files, picking a new theme, and fiddling with configuration. I also chose to publish my site to gitlab pages instead. I believe this shift (hugo, gitlab) occurred during winter break (approx Jan 2021).

I became fed up with markdown and switched my site to asciidoc during summer 2021. Ironically, the post about my markdown pet peeves was lost during the switch. I do not recall if this was intentional. Nevertheless I have revived the post.

While at university, my blog become moderately productive as I added technical content, scholars posts, and diary entries. On Feb 18th, I decided to make back to github pages. Gitlab’s ui is slightly more annoying, and they ask you to login even to just browse. Also, yes, peer pressure because everything has been on github for years now. Most gitlab repo’s I see these days are self-hosted instances. I couldn’t figure out how to resign my commits, but I was able to change the commit author to my github account.

Status Quo

So at this point, we have several git histories. I would like to preserve the git history of original jekyll site. But now that I’ve force pushed I don’t think I can save it.

My original jekyll site on github
- Since I force pushed, this has been overwritten and will be lost when github runs git gc.
My hugo site on gitlab pages
- A hugo theme for the sole purpose of using asciinema
My hugo site on github
- A "ghost" history of the above, from before I managed to preserve the commit dates from the gitlab repo. This will also be deleted someday.

Homebrew Bump

Sat, 07 Jan 2023 13:59:13 -0500

I have a "homebrew tap" (package repository for the homebrew package manager).

I have a github workflow on the repository that checks for outdated packages and opens PRs with updated versions. All this functionality is built into homebrew itself, so the github workflow delegates to brew. This has the added convenience that I can test everything locally without needing to simulate the github actions environment.

For a month now, the workflow has been failing.

brew bump --open-pr kdeconnect
Error: No available formula with the name "kdeconnect". Did you mean kt-connect?

Multiple Feeds

Tue, 03 Jan 2023 11:13:56 -0500

When I started this blog, I wanted it to be exclusively technical stuff. I like good technical content. This blog has instead devolved into my diary. Some of these posts I keep private, some I publish.Its easier to write about my personal life, and I find it rewarding.

On other people’s blogs, I usually skip past the non technical stuff. No hate, just not what I want. I wanted to be the kind of person who puts out good stuff, so I decided I just write technical stuff only when good ideas came by. No need to pressure myself to put out content.

In order to avoid "bothering" my nonexistent audience, I wondered if I could create multiple rss feeds. Turns out hugo already creates separate feeds for every tag/category on your site, in addition to the usual one for your entire site. So uh … yeah I don’t have to do anything.

Further googling revealed that you can use templating to generate arbitrary feeds.

Sources

https://pakstech.com/blog/hugo-rss/
- This person takes advantage of the multiple feed feature to create a page displaying links to every feed.

Reference Counting

Mon, 05 Dec 2022 11:31:34 -0500

My apartment door cannot be locked from the outside. It is electronic and the battery has died. We’ve devised a system, where we will lock the door from the inside once everyone is home for the night. Terrible, I know. Its like we’re using reference counting on the open door, and once all references are dropped the door is dropped (locked).

Except I closed the door last night before one of my mates got back, leaving him with a dangling pointer. We had to try the door "dozens of times" till it revived and opened. Call that a weak reference.

And call me a bad roomate.

Bonaduce

Sun, 04 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I was talking about the music/music instruction in my k-12 schooling with someone else.

So I got really angry. There was this one note I couldn’t get, no matter how hard a blew. So I put my trumpet half in its case, and slammed it shut. Ended up bending it

Childhood callousness / shenanigans aside, this reminded me of my elementary school music teacher, Ms. Phyllis Bonaduce. She came across as a severe woman, but I think that might just be my childish perception of her. I played flute from grades 4-12.

That first year (4th grade), I was the only flautist. At first, I couldn’t blow properly (I had a bad eMbOuChAre). For 2-3 weeks, my lessons were spent just blowing. At home, I’d practice the same. Towards the end of that time, I managed to blow a little whilst practicing in the mirror at home. At my next lesson (A day or 2 later) I excitedly showed her.

I remember feeling so distraught that time. All of the other wind musicians that year had figured out how to blow within a day (we were young, just about everyone was a first time musician). I felt like I didn’t measure up. Ms. Bonaduce told me it would be a little harder as a flautist, because I was blowing across the mouthpiece instead of into. That didn’t matter much to me.

She kept with me for 2 weeks, on blowing. Bruh. I played flute for 8 years after that across various school groups. The flute meant a lot to me because it was part of my self expression/individuality. Thank you Ms. Bonaduce for putting up with me (the year before, when I played violin, I forgot my instrument like 20 times).

Biking

Tue, 08 Nov 2022 23:03:53 -0500

https://imgur.com/a/oN6MD2Q

Today I went biking for a few hours, skipping my one class. My goal was to travel to temples in the area. I was surprised when I found out I could concoct a route that connected two possible destinations. The Lake Anacostia watershed has a surprisingly good trail system, and I took advantage.

Starting from my home / apartment, I took paint branch trail? which had an underpass for 193. god bless, that road is so busy I could never cross that.

Somewhere between "bassetti’s cleaning" and Hillhaven retirement home, I passed the first destination. It was deserted, not cars or anything. Before biking there, I’d barely seen any activity there. However, whilst passing it later I saw plenty of cars.

I continued uphill along 212 to my second destination. I came upon a gas station, and decided to turn back, which was thankfully downhill. Around this time, I noticed the other temple on the map and the way there through little paint branch park. I decided to tack it onto my trip.

Sellman road had this cute, utterly unnecessary roundabout. I usually like them, but this one seemed to just be an obstruction (how middle aged suburbanite of me). The park was beautiful and frequented with people, but I was too cold to care. I consulted a park map.

Unfortunately, I’d need to leave the trail and go along the road, but I couldn’t tell where to make the transfer. I consulted the park map, but it highlighted the trails. I was near where the park reaches 212, and needed directions. I asked a couple people but they ignore me. One guy pretended t jog past me, then resumed walking 20 feet away.

I continued along the highway, which has surprisingly ok sidewalk (usually there’s nothing, so). During a lull in traffic, a kind driver let me cross the street. I reached the temple. It was a BAPS temple, do accordingly huge / pretty / white. Also deserted, with locked doors. Guess this is what I get on a Tuesday afternoon. Another family arrived as I left. They were also unaware the temple was closed, and were more bummed (its was a couple, their kids, and grandparents). This was clearly an outing the grandparents were looking forward to.

The way back was mostly downhill. I passed a couple "campgrounds", the kind that rich people drive into and hook up their trailer and tent into a completely constructed environment. I biked around one for 5 minutes. Mostly a straight shot home.

Total: 15 miles in a couple hours. Leisurely pace that I usually go through whilst in suburbia.

Unwinding

Mon, 22 Aug 2022 19:34:09 -0400

After a day of "work" (well, not just work, really anything on my computer), my head will hurt and my thoughts race. Its usually just endless tangents from whatever happened that day. I’m unable to go to sleep when this happens. Sitting in bed in the dark (sensory deprivation) doesn’t help. Sometimes my thought have raced for hours, become increasingly delirious as they prevent my sleep.

At university, I’ve found that spending quiet time with a friend has been very helpful. Many times we will work late into the night. Usually by midnight only a handful of us remain up / working past midnight. I’ll try to find whoever is still up (made easy by the fact that we studied / hung out in a dorm lounge). Maybe some light conversation will ensue. Maybe the lights will be dimmed. I might look up at my friends, who are deeply concentrating, and am reminded we don’t always need to converse to enjoy company. I’ve mentioned a few times that I’m just there for "therapeutic" purposes, but I usually don’t.

About half an hour does it, but if we end up talking a bit it might take up to an hour. I’m still unwinding, its just that I don’t want to leave. I think its universal to find relaxing and sleeping easier in the company of someone close to you. I’m thankful I have such a support system.

Library Card

Thu, 18 Aug 2022 19:45:54 -0400

I lost my local library card. Not to worry, my library could renew / issue cards online!

I filled out an online form. Good to go right? Nope It said (after I filled it out), that it would take 1-2 weeks to process. I waited a week then purchased a library card in person. They only took cash. I understand that the government cant rely on payment processors, but why does that mean cash only? Uggh. Thankfully I had someone else to cover the small fee. Two weeks after I filled out the form I received a reply stating that I already had a card, with my username and password in plaintext. Thanks library 👍! All this to discover the book I wanted was at a neighboring library and that I would have to wait a week to get it shipped.

I pirated the book.

Speeding Up My Shell Startup

Fri, 15 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This material is not original, and is unscientific. You can find my shell config (among other things) at https://github.com/hybras/dotfiles

I opened my terminal this morning, and it seemed to take about half a second to start. Unacceptable for someone likes to start and stop their shells on demand (instead of leaving one open) and keeps multiple shells open at a time (instead of using a multiplexer like tmux or zellij). Every few years, my shell startup scripts either become too slow and/or monstrously complex and I must benchmark and prune them. So here’s the 2022 edition of my spring cleaning (in July).

I’ve been using a new featureful benchmarking tool, hyperfine. I used the following command to measure my startup. I added a single warmup run because I was frequently editing my shell config while benchmarking, which mean my shell plugin manager’s cache kept getting rebuilt. I also benchmarked a shell with no config / default system config by adding --no-rcs to zsh in the following command. This gave me a speedy baseline of under 5 ms. With everything enabled it took 200 ms, which is a big discrepancy. My goal is to get to 120 ms. Depending on the source, this is either a human record or the shortest time to record visual stimulus.

hyperfine --warmup 1 "zsh --login --interactive -c exit"

J&J Internship

Thu, 23 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I got an internship at Johnson and Johnson, an American medical company.

The Lead Up

I delayed in filling out the necessary paperwork prior to starting. HR contacted me by cell, which I felt crossed my boundaries. They also repeatedly emailed me with reminders to fill out the paperwork, sometimes before said paperwork arrived! Ultimately, they slapped me with a deadline of noon, and informed me of this deadline the morning of. I was blindsided because I required a third party to verify what I’d filled, so I scrambled to find someone. In the end it all worked out. My start date was delayed by one day, but everything was mostly ready anyways to I showed up on my initially listed start date.

First Day / Week

I had a buddy assigned who is very proactive. They showed me our part of the office, introduced me to coworkers, and gave me meetings to sit in on and take notes. They also explained the kind of work they do. It was here I realized that this was not a software engineering position.

My mistake

I assumed that this would be a software engineering internship, like the other opportunities I applied for, and like my last internship. My interviewer explained I would be doing other things. I thought they meant other things as well, but nope. I learnt this over my first couple of days.

What I’m doing

I’ve been assigned to help manage the rollout for a site of ours. It initially will be an ad for a product. As functionality is developed it will become the product itself, plus maybe some tutorials. We already have a couple designers (an employee and a contractor thats should be an employee now on how long they’ve been with us) and a developer who we hired through some contracting site. The dev has also worked with JnJ many times (including a few other projects concurrently with this one). My job is to sit and look busy here while they do the actual work. They are adults and can speak for themselves. Occasionally I mediate a question or two because the product manager doesn’t care/know much about implementation.
I’m trying to organize some kind of volunteering event. JnJ has a "credo" for ethical conduct and volunteering is called "credo" events. I think its posturing. But volunteering is fun and a great way to connect with my colleagues.

A Good Day

Tue, 17 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

A bunch of good things happened to me all at once

crestron interview
330 summer ta
j & j summer internship
452 final online

Scholars Capstone - IEEE Internship

Thu, 05 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

My capstone was a software engineering internship at IEEE’s IT department at their Piscataway, NJ office. I found the position on IEEE’s job site, applied, interviewed, and got the position over the span of last April iirc. I applied to a couple dozen places and IEEE was one of the few that got back to me, much less followed up.

I was immediately assigned a “buddy” (an employee who would assign and supervise my work). My buddy was a chill person. Initially I got mostly pet projects and busywork, to assess my familiarity with various technologies and bring me up to speed.

Trip to Smithsonian and DC

Tue, 26 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

We went the Smithsonian. I took the metro to DC for the first time. I was glad to have Dom and Zach with me to explain the route and how to purchase a metrocard. When we arrived to the station, 2 of the machines were not working. I used one, it ran out of cards, and of course promptly stopped working as well. I love public transportation in America so much.

We also checked out the museum of African art. It was a beautiful building with an amazing staircase. There were exhibits about Nollywood, dresses that mixed fashion styles, and lots of pieces I didn’t understand.

The museum seems to be targeting elementary schoolers. It didn’t bother me too much, there were plenty of display cards that weren’t forcefully playful or perky. Science museums target this age group. I could tell from the bright colors used in displays,shorter words, and the way the definitions of technical terms were given. I think the museum could me more attractive non children.

I absolutely loved the garden lounge. It wasn’t really and exhibit, but the room was beautiful, with its plants and large windows. The exhibit my group was at before was very crowded and hot. The lounge was a good place to relax and cool down. I should’ve taken photos here.

Overall the excursion was great, I wish it didn’t feel so shoehorned into the end of the semester.

Scholars Reflection

Mon, 06 Dec 2021 16:46:56 -0500

In person classes were such a rush. At first, it felt surreal to see other people and class and my professors in person, even if I didn’t interact with them.

All at once, the social aspect of college came into play. Thanks to SDU, I made friends with the other Peer Mentors. And quickly after that, I made friends with people in my CMSC351 class. Whenever I think about it, it still feels weird hanging out with people after a year alone. That’s my insecurities talking.

Science outside of Scholars

The coronavirus pandemic shone a light on how science is communicated with the public. I am thoroughly disappointed. It felt like journalists were constantly putting words in scientists' mouths, which resulted in the loss of lives. Anti vaxxers were enraged in part due to the vaccine requiring 2 shots, instead of other vaccines which require 1. This inconsistency was derided as an example of how scientists keep moving the goalposts. But I didn’t read anything suggesting that the vaccine would ever be a single shot. The amount of (dis|mis)information that emerged from news outlets and politicians, and the efforts public health officials had to go to convince people otherwise, made me lose a little bit of faith in our institutions.

We talked a little bit about scientific methods in my statistics class, and how to design good experiments. We did discuss when it’s valid to make certain assumptions, when to apply certain heuristics. We discussed a little of this in SDU, which was cool.

In Asian American studies, we talked about "biological racism", the idea that difference between races were something we could scientifically confirm. We talked about how scientists, even biologists, can hold misconceptions if their work doesn’t directly deal with a topic, i.e. it’s impossible to think critically all the time. We discussed research the suggested an african tribe was more likely to have genotype considered favorable for running. A followup study pointed out that the difference between groups only occurred when looking at homozygous genotypes, and for heterozygous genotypes (the allele was dominant) there was little difference between races. I didn’t have the scientific knowledge to realize that the first study had essentially cherry picked its data. I had to wait for the science to settle a bit, emphasizing that listening to trendy science articles is a recipe for disaster.

Community

I got to make connections with a lot of freshmen during social hour, the excursions, and Service Day. I’m glad that these opportunities were essentially ready made, and all I had to do was show and start talking. I feel much more connected to the scholars community.

It was much harder to interact with my peers during normal class. Classes were engaging, I just didn’t feel like talking much with people outside my usual group.

Green Bank Excursion

Sat, 16 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I loved this excursion. It was magical 🪄, and perfectly timed in the semester before work started ramping up too much.

Hiking, Spelunking

The hiking was so fun. We got awesome views of the neighboring mountains and town, lots of exercise, picnic food, and great conversation while hiking.

I got to learn more about the freshmen that joined us on the trip. We talked about everything from how technology is transforming society to us politics to nuclear power ☢️. I can’t believe we covered so much ground on hike of just a few hours.

I felt a lot worse about the spelunking. I seemed more of a tourist trap to me. Our tour guide (though engaging) made up a lot of folk lore to describe the geological formations we saw, and got the science behind the formations wrong a few times. I didn’t like that at all 🤬.

Spelunking seemed more of a sightseeing time killer to me, but I don’t think anyone else felt close to the same way.

Green Bank Observatory

I forgot the name of the employee who took us around, but they were very knowledgeable and professional. They took a complicated topic, operating a radio telescope and interpreting its data, and turned into something we could understand after a quick explanation. Also they gave us helpful packets.

There were lot of jargon, but nothing I hadn’t already heard from other astronomy discussions or from Peel. I learnt that we could figure out roughly how fast our galaxy was rotating by looking at whether certain stars were moving toward us or away from us.

Final Thoughts

Being without internet/wifi for a few days was eye opening. I had to download all my content beforehand, and it took time to figure out what I even needed to download. It was awesome for hanging out with my friends. Who knew, hours of isolation w/o internet is great for bonding. We played so many board games… I absolutely recommend this excursion to everyone, its worth making time for.

Terpconnect Site

Wed, 29 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

It doesn’t matter if your mac / win / lin.

When your making a website, it does not Just Work™. All filenames must be exact, all casing must be identical (FILE.JPG and file.jpg are not the same). Everything must be in the right place. Every opening tag/quote needs a closing one. You’re used to software handling these things for you, that’s ok.

Every piece of technology here has been continuously used longer than you’ve been alive (in some cases twice as old as you). There are no bugs, no kinks, no errors. Only your mistakes. Own up to them.

Make a folder

Make a folder just for your site You can call it whatever, and keep it wherever, but it should only have ur site’s files inside.

Download the files

Open peels template dir
Right click each file/link and click "save link as" / "download linked file"
Rename genericsplashpage.html → index.html

Service Day

Fri, 27 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I went along with the freshmen to weed a community garden. The weather was sweltering, but it was a great way to start the semester. The gardens let people grow their own food.

The Issues

The community gardens help combat food insecurity and the lack of access to fresh produce in food deserts. Deserts are areas that that do not have fresh produce in their stores (if they have stores). In these areas, people are dependant on fast food and restaurants. This increases the risk of obesity, diabetes, and malnutrition.

The underlying issue is that nutritious meals are more expensive to cook and source ingredients for. Supermarket chains and grocery stores only find it profitable to sell produce in higher density areas and to those who are mobile. The USDA’s food desert map shows where to find food deserts.

Federal, state, and local governments can invest in free and reduced cost meal programs for students. During remote learning (the 2020-21 school year for my town), our town expanded the lunch program to cover all students and increase eligibility for breakfast. These programs have shown to be effective. But they don’t expand to adults. Similar proposals for adults like funding community kitchens (soup kitchens, bread lines, church programs, etc), do not enjoy similar support. A soup kitchen in my town has partnered with the local hospital to provide produce, but I don’t know much about the program.

I used to think that increasing income levels and helping people out of poverty would indirectly solve this issue, but I’m not so sure anymore. I learnt in racial studies that even high income minority families tend to live in low income neighborhoods, that lack resources like well funded schools and grocery stores.

Self-focused Prompts

For me, Service Day was a one day glimpse into the lives of the residents of Colmar manor. The local residents spend way more time actually growing the crops. We were just in here for a day to "reset" the garden.

It was motivating to know that we were indirectly helping feed nearby families (well, helping them help themselves). I’ve volunteered at meal packing centers, and theres a disconnect because the people who receive the food packets are thousands of miles away usually.

Reflection

I participated in this service because I thought scholars was cool, and because it was one of my first activities. I wanted to bond with the SDU freshmen and catch up with the other mentors.

I’m from NJ, where food deserts are less common due to the higher population density. I’ve noticed that College Park’s neighboring towns are much smaller than I’m used to (the size of individual neighborhoods back home). I wonder if the town lines are partly responsible for why this area is part of a food desert.

IEEE Internship

Mon, 17 May 2021 10:34:55 -0400

My mom used to work at IEEE. She didn’t help me get this position, and no longer works there.

I got an internship at IEEE 🥳.

Lead Up

I applied to ~40 summer positions. This was across the 2020-2021 academic year. I should’ve applied to more places, and I applied to only of handful research positions or co-ops. Stories of needing to apply to 100+ places are common, especially for people who are just starting out. I was rejected or ghosted from everywhere except 2 places: IEEE and Code Ninjas. These last 2 were both places that I applied to relatively late, in April.

Code Ninjas

They were looking for a summer instructor. The big qualification was someone who was good with kids. I think I’m ok, I think I’m patient, but not very peppy.

I got recommendations from {a parent of a code ninjas kid, schoolteacher who used to work at the franchise}. These got my foot in the door and gave me a good chance. My interview went ok (I possessed all the technical skills, but like I said, that’s not what was most important).

I was assumed to roam around, and eventually ended up helping some kids with their assignments. I’m not sure if I was being observed, and this was secretly all a test.

In the end, I turned this offer down after I got the IEEE position.

IEEE

I applied to a generic IT position (ah, IT the bane of CS students). I assumed I’d be maintaining existing projects. My mom correctly guessed who the interviewers would be, one of them being her old boss 😟. The boss joked that "there could only be 1 Chari" at IEEE.

I though the interviewers would be by HR, but instead it was under the people I would directly work under. That was a pleasant surprise. They asked me to list my experience and skills (so just regurgitate my resume). I talked about my time at uni, high school robotics team, and high school coding club.

They were impressed by the breadth of my experience (thank you robotics 🙏). By now I know several different languages, and have used version control, CI, hardware, etc. (Am I re-regurgitating my resume?). Nothing crazy, just apparently more than the average high schooler.

The job

I’ll be starting in June. It’ll be remote. I hear IEEE’s CEO (or at least, whoever controls the Piscataway office) is itching to bring everyone back in. Ironically, this is one of the reasons my mom left IEEE.

Unless I work on something interesting and generally applicable, I won’t post about my actual duties at IEEE. Trade secrets and all that.

Scholars Reflection

Wed, 12 May 2021 22:44:16 -0400

Branching out

This semester, I took "Are We Rome", a course on whether America is a descendant of the Roman empire. I took the course because of my gen-ed requirements, but I was really surprised. Part of university is trying stuff outside your comfort zone, and this was my foray into that. It turns out that people just love to compare America to Rome for just about anything, or use Roman culture for advertising. This makes it hard to draw a comparison. All of the comparisons I saw in class were political (from the left and right), making them hard to trust. In the end, I decided that "Rome v. America" was just a common myth, not worth even taking the energy to refute any argument.

While the material was interesting, I’m not sure if a class 📚 was needed for me to figure this out. Then again, it was only 1 credit and the workload was low. This kind of in-depth about face is impossible in high school. Very few of the courses you take are an elective, and high schoolers don’t have majors. We also touched a bit on the worth of studying the classics, of which sadly I’m unconvinced.

Forming Relationships

The other big part of university is forming relationships and getting job experience (ps I got an internship, post incoming). I really struggled to connect with my professors this semester. Of the 2 courses I took towards my major this semester, one was small (Discrete math, ~20 kids) and the other was large (Programming Languages, ~230 kids).

My discrete prof was extremely knowledgeable, and we got more time with him (thanks to class size). But the material wasn’t so interesting, I found him boring, and the class’s discussion was super early. These are all personal problems that I need to work on. There was a bit of resentment between the class and the professor, because the material was well beyond what the exams required (the course was honors). Its a new kind of stress to have struggle with the material, enter the exam sweating bullets, and see the questions barely require having studied or attended lecture.

My other course felt like the opposite. The material was so great. The technology that programmers use on the job change so fast, and it was refreshing to actually talk about modern tools and areas of research. While the class was huge, most kids didn’t speak. Prof Mamat was great, cracking jokes, giving mostly relatable examples, and not trying to bore us with endless slides. I went to OH a few times and emailed him, and his PL research seems pretty interesting. I would love to research under him, 🤞.

Zooming out

I’m so done with zoom. Teaching is hard, being engaging online is even harder. I don’t blame my teachers, but I’m ready to give out. Its so hard to connect with professors in lecture, and forget about other students. Groupme is such a terrible chat platform, its notifications keep being dropped, and it lacks features. I know the names of about 5 fellow students per class, with the exception of SDU. I can feel my motivation draining away. Thankfully, UMD has mandated vaccination and our vaccination rate is increasing smoothly (we’re not exceptional, the US is currently vaccinating at breakneck speed). I’m desperate to return to in-person. I think I’d hug a stranger at this point.

I’m so nervous for fall. Will I be able to make friends? Does everyone already have friends and I’m a loner? I think I need to be "rehabbed" into forming friendships. What will it be like, meeting everyone as a sophomore?

Conclusion

This semester was solidly 🆗. I want to burst out of home and into university and meet people, but I’m worried it won’t go well.

Scholars Serves

Sun, 09 May 2021 20:24:48 -0400

Depending on ur browser, the above image carousel might not work. My web dev skills are lacking. Here are the images linked.

This spring, my brother made sandwich bags for Elijah’s Promise, a local soup kitchen. His friends had other obligations, so I helped him out.

They weren’t anything special: a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and occasional fruits, cheese, crackers, and juice. We crowdsourced the supplies from my brothers friends, neighbors, and stuff we had in our pantry. The whole packing took ~4 hours.

Elijah’s promise is a lot more than a soup kitchen (my brother and I volunteer there about once a year). They offer cooking classes, hot meals, collaborate with local hospitals to provide fresh produce for members of some program, accept sandwich bag donations, cater, and teach gardening/farming and healthy eating. They really are a community powerhouse, covering food from just about every angle.

My volunteering reminded me that I’m fairly lucky to never worry about going hungry. Elijah’s Promise is literally trying to fight hunger from multiple fronts 24 / 7. I keep thinking, I can contribute more, but usually don’t. I think finding a group of people to do these things together is helpful. This event, and most of my volunteering in high school were with clubs or group’s of friends. Of course, I am being a little selfish. Me not having friends isn’t an excuse to volunteer more. 🤞Hopefully I can spend more time on causes I want to support this summer, now that everyone is vaccinated 💉.

Rust's Small Standard Library

Wed, 10 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Most of this content is unoriginal, though I’m unable to find it all in one place like this.

Rust’s standard library is pretty small. The rationale is that a small std can focus on only the most common, basic functionality. crates.io and cargo make dependencies easy (unlike c/c++). 3rd party crates can make breaking changes and iterate faster. Thus de-facto standards have emerged amongst the community (with many rust-lang members working on these crates).

I will not highlight which crates these are, because the list is dynamic and me talking about the most popular crates feeds that popularity. crates.io and lib.rs both sort crates by categories, keywords, and downloads. Go there for a list.

I’m really impressed / surprised with rust’s design choice. Rust’s stdlib does not have serialization, http, random, async/await, crypto, logging, gui, datetime, etc. I don’t know if any languages with all of these things, but it is unusual that these are all missing.

For comparison, in the Java world, maven and gradle make dependencies easy as well. But the java stdlib is massive and obsessively focused on backwards compatibility, which has resulted in growing pains. And while gradle makes using dependencies easy, publishing them to maven central is relatively complicated. Its common to fiddle with transitive dependencies due to name or version clashes.

Slightly related, Rust lacks named parameters, default parameters, or overloading. I don’t like this (Kotlin and Ocaml have all three, and spoilt me with them). Unfortunately, this means many functions are trivial variants of each other (for example, using with to donate that this function takes additional parameters or else when taking a closure for lazy evaluation). See Result or Option for many examples. While the explicitness is nice, remembering the names of function variants is not. I hope someone can explain if I’m wrong. Of course the above does not exist in a vacuum. rustdoc, docs.rs make documenting much easier, so looking up what you need is never a hassle. I just wish I didn’t have to do that as often.

Conclusion

I like the rust ecosystem a lot, and I love that I get all the goodies I expect in std elsewhere easily. I just wish I could use my autocomplete without wondering what’s the difference between open and open_with.

Perseverance's Landing

Sun, 14 Feb 2021 16:15:54 -0400

A NASA rendering of what Perseverance looks like exiting Earth’s atmosphere

I watched NASA’s Perseverance rover land on the surface of Mars.

I felt magical ✨ watching the livestream. The Covid pandemic’s been keeping us all home, but here was a robot landing millions of miles away 🤯. It really helped me forget about the isolation, boredom, and burnout of remote learning. And yes, I felt wonder like I haven’t felt since I was in elementary school. Its so impressive that for most of human history, we thought the earth was flat and that the sky was a sort of ceiling, and now we regularly fly robots off the earth.

I used to think that luring people in with showy demonstrations was a real life clickbait. For example, the robotics team racing their latest creations around. I changed my mind after considering that the demonstrations, while unrepresentative, were real. And honestly, there isn’t much better advertising for a profession then "watch our giant robot do tricks".

The stream was heavily "produced", containing many segments about stuff that wasn’t directly related to the launch, like covid precautions or plugs for students who’d won an essay competition. The majority of the stream was just this, and it irked and distracted me. My peers showed me Perseverance’s website, which had a simulation. It had great graphics, could go forwards and backwards in time, and pan around in 3d. I switched between the simulation and the livestream to avoid the extra segments. In a perfect world, we’d have a video stream stream from Perseverance, but we don’t have the bandwidth for that.

Perseverance landed in Jezero crater, formerly a lake bed. NASA’s hopes the location will provide signs of life, with the assumption that martian life would be water based ($n=1$). I’m all for searching for life, but when do we decide when to stop? I don’t mean to be overly contrarian, but seriously what would be the threshold of evidence to state that life on mars never existed? I doubt we are anywhere near that threshold, and in any case the Mars missions still provide valuable information about Mars itself. I just wonder when, if ever, we’ll call off the search. I want to find martian of course, whether they’re microbes, animals, or something else.

Just from looking at images, Perseverance and Curiosity look very similar. Given the chance, I’d ask NASA to explain more about their differences. I’m sure the array of instruments, or their size, is different.

Mars is interesting and all, being our neighbour, but we seem to have not sent rovers to many places. The USSR sent many landers to Venus, the US is exploring Mars with many rovers, there have plenty of missions to the moon, and that’s mostly it. I want to explore Enceladus. It reminds me a lot of Hoth, but also the fact that its still geologically active, and has water and organic macromolecules make it alluring. Not to mention it was discovered by William Herschel, Caroline Herschel’s brother.

Top Ten Reasons not to use the C shell

Sat, 13 Feb 2021 15:38:38 -0500

Here is the Original Text.

I have done my best to format this document as well formed markdown, readable as md and html. Contact me with fixes and formatting errors.

The original document used $ and % to denote shell type
I have replaced snippets with markdown code blocks and asciicasts. The code blocks have the shell as the language (which should be viewable in the html source), and asciicasts follow the $ and % convention.
I have replaced "quoted" code width <code> tags
I have italicised and bolded certain statements
I have de-indented paragraphs

Adventures in Markdown

Sun, 07 Feb 2021 14:21:51 -0500

By now, many of us are familiar with markdown and its many flavors and parsers. The most popular parsers include goldmark in go, kramdown in ruby, and markdown-it in js.

Because we all just love 🤮 javascript, markdown-it is seemingly (I have done no research) the most popular parser. Markdown it is an excellent library, being commonmark compliant, supporting syntax extensions, shipping with a number of first party plugins.

The crowded field of notetaking apps (which usually support markdown), near uniformly use markdown-it with various plugins. This is the case with stackedit, for example. The feature set of these apps is invariably: markdown notes (pick your favorite plugins), syncing with the cloud provider of your choice (github, gitlab, drive, and dropbox), a slick UI, some kind of editor (WYSIWYG or WYSIWYM). All of which are appreciated, but not enough.

See, as a developer, I’m guaranteed to have an ide with basic markdown support. I don’t want another app replicating the above functionality. In my case, I use VS Code which already has all of the aforementioned features implemented by default, and supports excellent extensions. Why must I install/use yet another electron app / extension / website? VS Code can do it all.

I began installing various markdown extensions, each containing a syntax extension or a piece of functionality I desired. VS Code uses, you guessed it, markdown it, and even has a page on how extensions can extend its functionality. Hats off to VS Code for going out of its way to be so helpful and extensible. However, each extension was only a part of what I want, and I eventually ended up with a couple dozen markdown extensions. I still didn’t have everything I wanted, and forked an existing extension with the intention of modding it to add subscripts (I already had an extension providing superscripts).

Then I found an extension which added nearly every popular markdown-it feature, including keyboard shortcuts for the syntax extensions. From there I added a linter, mermaid support, code syntax highlighting, and LaTeX. Unfortunately, only vscode’s natively supported syntax extensions render accordingly in the md file (WYSIWYM), which means I need the rendered preview (WYSIWYG). I sure your blood is boiling at this point.

My quest to replicate a note app’s features is incomplete. And of course, I want to go beyond that. Nevertheless, I’m satisfied with what I’ve accomplished and surprised that markdown has been extended so thoroughly. I’m considering switch this site from hugo to 11ty to take advantage of all this. Goldmark’s syntax extensions seem paltry in comparison.

Hugo shortcodes for asciinema

Mon, 18 Jan 2021 21:02:53 -0500

Find the finished theme at the repo

Asciinema records and replays your terminal sessions. It makes it easy to share shell scripts and their output, which is a boon for documenting complex workflows. Best of all, it can be easily embedded using a script or the <asciinema-player> tag. I wanted create a hugo shortcode (template for the hugo static site generator) that makes using and self hosting asciinema easy for hugo users.

Here are some shortcodes I already found:

In a blog post from Tony Lykke (which also describes how to self host asciinema in hugo)
1. con: it expects all parameters to be named (i.e. the shortcode is not flexible)
2. con: Resets the default params
Shortcode from the Hugo Nuo theme
1. pro: well documented and flexible
2. con: only supports the remote player
3. con: too flexible. It allows all parameters to be positional, which I consider bad design when more than a 2 parameters are expected

Scholars Reflection: Semester 1

Thu, 10 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Scholar’s was easily my most chill class this semester. My Thursday’s were packed, but it was still the best part of my day to come to class and discuss pseudoscience. The syllabus gave me a pretty good idea of what to expect. It’s so rare to be able to talk to other people about supernatural/pseudoscientific matters without tensions running high. I felt like we didn’t go that deep though. In every colloquium we easily pointed out logical fallacies in every topic presented. But we didn’t go further into whether we should believe in anything supernatural. Dr. Peel of course made many comments / hints about his opinions about this of course.

I went on two excursions, both of which were really cool (of course I knew the topics beforehand, that’s why I went). The excursion assignments didn’t have ELMS deadlines, and that tripped up a lot of people (myself included). Both the excursions were super engaging and work wasn’t hard. Just had trouble remembering to do it.

The peer mentors (as a group) we’re super helpful throughout the semester. The SDU mentors made a discord and we could interact with any of them. The social hours / game nights were just the ✨ greatest ✨. I will definitely come to those as long as they exist. It’s so great to be able to de-stress, to have a set time for it.

The elephant in the room is how instruction has changed due to the pandemic. My experience has varied substantially between classes. At one end, there were my CMSC professors who didn’t use ELMS assignments / announcements, behaving as if they were 1995 computer literate, and not 2020 computer literate (ironic). And the other end, you have my COMM professor who organized all assignments into weekly modules, made summary announcements, and recorded lesson / tutorial videos for nearly everything. In the middle is my STAT professor, who made assignments but kept his files and announcements disorganized. Above all, I see that Canvas is incredibly powerful and flexible LMS, with sensible defaults (Modules, Pages, Files, Announcements, Discussions). If only all my teachers used these features correctly…

The days / weeks blend together and I have lost all sense of time. I feel stuck with the only variables in my life being workload and the weather. I was hunting for a past assignment to reference in a later one. I thought I’d only submitted it a few days ago. Imagine my shock when I found it from 2 weeks back. I’m grateful for winter recess, but I’m not looking forward to another semester of the same. I want to shake up the routine and come to campus (that part of me has lost). Then I see the savings of not dorming and feel guilty.

I’m still in touch with nearly all my friends from high school. I miss high school so much, which is weird because its not like I want to go back to class. I’m resentful I didn’t get to say bye to my favorite teachers. I was helping organize a hackathon, fresh off victory from a MUN conference, and about to be recognized by the engineering department. I was planning on coming back to see my clubs and EC’s, but they’re all suspended. If high school had ended early (as in we held graduation the week before lockdown) I don’t think I’d be feeling this way. Instead it was cut short, unfinished.

As for an unexpected connection between my classes, I was surprised just how much math/stat was used in my business class. I mean, everyone knows math is used to keep track of finances. I didn’t realize that some complicated statistics were also used to estimate a venture’s probability of success. I’m not a business or finance major, and the level of detail blew me away. For example, to estimate the size of our customer base, we had to use census data and state legislation, and compare that with competitors to estimate our potential market share. Yikes.

All-in-all, this was a pretty good semester, but I hope it gets better next time around.

My First Hugo Post!!!

Sun, 06 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

What is this?

This is a hugo site using the Beautiful Hugo.

How’s it going to far?

Hugo has too many config options 🤯. However, the defaults seem excellent. For example, I can use $ \KaTeX $. I have my IDE set up to use autocomplete for emoji :shortcodes:. Also, hugo is friggin fast ❗

Scholars Serves

Tue, 10 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The Issue

Poll workers skew towards the elderly, and the current pandemic makes its risky for those with compromised immune systems to interact with hundreds of strangers. The underlying issue is that people ages 18-29 are not as politically active as older citizens. We don’t vote as much, we don’t run for elected office as much, and we don’t work as poll workers as much. This means that our pandemic caused a shortage of poll workers. The underlying issue is that voting is downright difficult in this country. Ideally, all adults would be automatically / immediately eligible to vote. In practice, voter registration is time consuming / confusing, political parties don’t campaign as frequently to younger voters, and employed individuals may have difficulty taking time off to vote on a Tuesday. There is enormous incentive for politicians (of both parties) to disenfranchise voters who disagree with their policies. When voters are {not aware of , incapable of voting in their best interests}, politicians can enact policies that increase their power at the expense of the citizenry. As such, Congress is literally not a democracy. And of course, echo chambers online have fueled misinformation, polarization, and obscured broad agreement on certain issues.

Myself

Is was very difficult registering to become a poll workers. I received spam emails from some activist site to fill out a form. I then went to my county’s site and found an updated form. A couple of weeks after that I learnt that registration had now moved online. Election Day was also strenuous, everyone seemed very uptight (though that was probably just me), and we were all under tight scrutiny from each other.

Being a poll worker isn’t a career, but being an election official is. I really wouldn’t want to do this in the future. Provisions for mail-in voting were massively expanded due to the pandemic, and I hope that our nation moves entirely to this method. It allows votes to be counted early, people to vote at their leisure and in private, and additional information can be mailed with each ballot (NJ had several ballot propositions which came with background info). Honestly I hope no one has to do this when better alternatives are readily available.

To other people considering service experiences, my message is that a little time/effort from you can translate into massive impact. I volunteered one day of my time and in turn helped I don’t know how many people participate in democracy. As I stated in #5, the way I chose to help people wasn’t the most efficient, but I still managed to meet so many new people. All of them deserve to have their voices heard and I’m sure any of them would do the same for me in a heartbeat.

Additional reflection

I guess it was a bit of both. I wanted to help other people, but I was also really curious to see how elections are run. Part of it was also availability: I was reached out to so I didn’t have to go searching for opportunities.
NJ implemented universal mail in voting for the election (I also mailed in my ballot), so the people I helped had terrible mail service, didn’t trust the mail, or couldn’t reach a drop box. That felt super weird, to be checking people in when I didn’t even vote in-person myself.
I felt proud of myself for participating afterwards, because the whole "operation" was run extremely efficiently. There were / are allegations of election fraud, but knowing the number of people involved from both parties makes me scoff. I also found out that people had blocked our highways a couple days earlier while I was working, which was extremely infuriating.

Scholars Excursion

Thu, 01 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Click the image to the Center for Inquiry’s page about the event. Its just the promo banner for the event.

I watched Evolution Only Breaks Things, a talk by Nathan Lents about fallacies in Intelligent Design.

I don’t think this talk would have convinced anyone in "ID camp" or on the fence. The talk was on the technical side, and focused exclusively on a single individual within the ID movement (albeit one of the few with Biology credentials). Mr. Lunts did not talk about most of the arguments for/against ID either. This talk seemed targeted towards individuals already intimately familiar with the ID movement.

Lunts attacked Behe directly in different ways (these are the ones I remember): he called into account Behe’s motives, religious background, and refusal to talk with Lunts / other critics. The last one was out of line, and the second one could’ve been avoided. The first point was important for showing that he had arrived at a conclusion and was working backwards to find evidence that supported his position.

I’m not entirely sure if this talk was supposed to be about the ID movement as a whole, or just Behe. Of course, either way this event was just PR for Lent’s book (no shame about that).

From Me to Scholars...

Sun, 27 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Hello Scholars! To be honest, it blows my mind that this program (and specifically SDU) even exists! Every public school has science classes. But its pretty rare to have a science teacher who is passionate about science itself, more than just memorization of subject matter. I was very lucky to have a such a teacher. I suppose I’ve always been curious (though, who isn’t?), but she got me excited about thinking as a scientist, and testing the limits of what we know.

Getting people excited about science seems to be very hard (well, it is for me. anecdote * n != data). On top of that, people chronically (under/over)estimate what science is capable of. If this were 1500 CE, and you told me that we would be flying to other planets, communicating across the globe, editing life itself, I’d assume you were insane. On the other end, people (myself included) are routinely deceived by sensationalist press about ✨groundbreaking research✨ into new diets or evolutionary history.

So I guess what I want from Scholars is to learn how to communicate scientific knowledge, and help others distinguish what is scientifically supported from what is not.

Transfer of power

Fri, 28 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Sorry we never got to have that meeting about how you guys would take over!

The Google Account (everything starts here)
1. nbthstechnologyclub@gmail.com
2. You will need to use the password reset (Ms. Dhrolia’s is the recovery email)
3. All passwords are in the password manager.
4. Login to Chrome browser with the account (should happen automatically) and activate sync. This autofills passwords.
There are club and board shared google drives.
1. Dhrolia is admin. Have her add you guys
2. There are a lot of important documents here, including records of our work, publicity stuff, and HackNB planning.
3. Remove us oldies from the drives
Github
1. We have a github organization
2. Github creds should be with the google account. The browser will autofill login. You can also check the password manager
3. There are 2 admins: nbttech-main and Ms. Dhrolia
4. Have Ms. Dhrolia or the admin account add ya’ll. Do not make yourselves admins!!! That’s what the admin accoutn is for
Slack
1. The admin login should be in the password manager account. It may not be the google login, but the generic email login. Check the password manager. If slack is there, its the generic email option.
  1. If it is, link the club’s google account to the slack admin account.
2. Admin account is not for human-to-human interactions, only adding bots and changing server settings
3. Dunno if it works, but please have people use the sign up with google option, using their SCHOOL GOOGLE accounts. Don’t want people remembering another login.
4. Use this opportunity to clear msg history and re-org the slack. Its messy
5. Feel free to add/remove channels on demand
6. IMPORTANT: Kick all old poeple out
Trello
1. The previous board used this to coordinate. You need not.
2. The admin login is (you guessed it) the google account.
3. Ur gonna have to kick out cuz oldies cuz trello limits the number of people.
4. Trello is a todo list on steriods, not human interaction (thats slack)
Canva
1. Google login
2. Cool flyers and pages and stuff
3. We used to design hackathon flyers
4. Dakshal’s designs are still there
The website
1. Have someone sign up for github student USING THEIR PERSONAL GITHUB ACCOUNT (prolly the webmaster???)
2. Its Repo
3. In the github student pack, there an offer for a free .tech domain registration (yes we cheap). If its not there, use any of the other domain name offers. Any will do.
4. We deploy to netlify
  1. The link is to their docs on setting the website’s domain.
  2. Read the earlier steps for deploying
We maintain a school presence.
1. Solicit ideas from admins and students.
2. Leftover idea: adding bus positioning so students can find bus
3. Ms. Rafano is bursting with ideas. Treat her with utmost respect and she will do the same.

Posts on Nevertheless, she persisted

Cyberchase

Bill Due

Russell Florida

Wealth and Poverty

The Free Internet

Links

Acadia Geminids

Android Default Browser

Taking back control

Links

🎶 Lost in Japan 🎶

Dark Mode

Tech Nostalgia

Roomates

I flex my American’ing skills

New Glasses

Driver’s License

The Eye Doctor

Capitalism

Insurance Sucks

Word of Mouth

Lessons learnt/reinforced

Hokas

Trendy

In-person Visit

Online Order

Public Bathrooms

NYC Trip

Nervous

Conclusion

Sorry for Your Loss

Amtrak Customer Service

Rebooking

Bikes

Graduation for Realsies

Mothers Day 2024

The Outing

Race at Parties

Asians

Bro meets Bro

Why Am I writing this

Off by One

The Orgy

A New Friend

Their Friends, The Orgy

Junior Year Halloween

Their house

Conclusion

Adultification

I will never own a home

Lessons learnt

What's a Browser?

Who Knows How to Drive?

Purchasing a Bike

Lost my Bike

On Writing

The Past

The Present

The Future

Banana

Where Do You Call Home

Childhood

College

Young Adulthood

Where Do I feel home

Conclusion

Interlocutor

Google Domains

Euphoria

Characters Synopsis

Factoring the Quartic

Website CI Time

Celestial Bodies

Wacky

polyester

milk

Scrolling

Asciidoctor Server

Background