Polymaths.social

I would like to do some #WritingMonth development in the next couple weeks, though I can't promise anything about my side projects at the moment due to some IRL priorities. Any requests about features to put at the top of my list if I find some time?

I will probably be on fedi less often this week than usual. If you need my attention, I will still be checking my email. (If I consider an email urgent, I'll take care of it right away, but otherwise it may go in a queue. If you need a quick response please say so.)

Heh, and when expecting a reply time via email remember that I'm in UTC+8, and that I've actually been fixing my sleep schedule this week.

I'm currently seriously considering shutting down Freedom to Write: https://freedomtowrite.org/

I made it as an umbrella for my various writing-related coding projects, back when I had several major ones planned that I have since decided against making. Currently, the only significant project I've been attributing to it is readable.css, which doesn't really justify the stated scope.

If I do this, I will move the readable-css subdomain to my main personal domain. I will redirect the old site until the domain expires, which I believe is in about nine months. I'll probably also send messages to people I know who link to the old site, to hopefully avoid broken links.

So far I've kept it up because there didn't feel like a reason not to, but domain names are getting more expensive and I always have new project ideas, and it feels like a good idea to move to setting a precedent of having project sites as subdomains of my personal website unless there are strong reasons to have their own domain.

I liked the new https://example.com design until I noticed that the SVG icon and translations are injected via JS.

…why even?

It appears Deno is now abandonware unless forked, since the company was just bought by Cloudflare, who will not be maintaining the runtime after a year from now: https://deno.com/blog/cloudflare

It is suddenly more urgent that I switch SSGs from Lume. sigh

Federation may be iffy/broken again—I'm gonna take a closer look at things and may end up taking Polymaths down for a bit. (This may happen after lunch, not right away.)

Federation has been struggling a bit this evening; for the most part the ongoing remote post cleanup in the database hadn't had too much impact but if things are still slow in the morning I may restart the service and let it finish cleaning up another time.

It hasn't been fully broken down as far as I can tell, we've just been occasionally receiving posts in bursts instead of on time.

Good night, all!

I am finally confident enough in my falafel recipe that I've written it up for my website: https://benjaminhollon.com/recipes/falafel/

This is a completely-custom Amin creation—you should not necessarily expect it to be authentic. I made this from scratch using observation and guesswork. That said, I find it very tasty and convenient to make, especially with the alternative route to deep frying I came up with.

I based this writeup on my latest batch, which I made earlier this evening; the flavor is the best yet, though I'm still working on perfecting the crispiness. Feedback is very welcome. :)

Red light means stop, green light means go, and yellow light apparently means "floor it".

So I've had an idea for a card game that could be pretty fun. I think I'll draw up some cards, print them, and see if I can get my family to play test it with me.

Oh, hey, as of a couple weeks ago Polymaths.social is three years old. On September 10, 2023, I fired up the alpha.polymaths.social instance.

A month from now (October 20) will mark two years since we moved out of alpha.

Here's to more fabulous years with you fabulous people.

My main server wasn't responding over the network for about fifteen minutes. I don't know why but things seem fine now.

Polymaths Pages was not affected.

In a move I find both hilarious and amazing, I've added a fan art page to my personal website: https://benjaminhollon.com/fanart/

Feast your eyes on these glorious creations!

Remind me a year from now to do a follow-up review of my Framework Laptop. I bought it with the hope/expectation that it would last as my daily driver for at least a decade, and that will be the halfway point, a good time for a review of the experience so far.

My initial review, after one semester of school: https://benjaminhollon.com/musings/framework-laptop-review/

The summary since then is that the components haven't held up as well as I'd hoped, but in their favor I did have need of repairs (a broken/noisy fan needing replacing) and the process was simple and the cost of the part reasonably cheap, all things considered. It's also worth nothing my laptop is from very early on in their hardware revisions and I expect the quality has improved somewhat over time. (The replacement fan, at least, is definitely quieter than I remember the original being when new.)

Some really insane thunder outside right now.

tfw you regret designing your custom CMS to keep track of revision history; you know it was the right move for what you need but it's gonna be pretty annoying to implement. XD

I've been getting donation banners from Wikipedia today; the wording implies an urgent need for my "10RM" (~USD2.50).

To anyone else getting similarly-worded banners I would like to point you to the Wikimedia Foundation's 2024 Form 990 (the most recent one published), which lists a $530,923 salary for the CEO at the time:

https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Foundation_2024_Form_990.pdf

I don't have a problem with donation-run institutions (perhaps obviously from having donation-funded projects of my own) but the wording of these banners feels downright deceptive given the foundation's actual financial situation.

This is utterly delightful. In the future I may bring my notebook and pen and do some writing here.

The Polymaths.social financial transparency page has been saying that we were paid $8.10 for the Polymaths Pages VPS this month instead of paying $8.10. My bad. I caught the issue when reconciling my bank statement with my own ledger. Should be fixed:

https://polymaths.social/financial-transparency/

"aika" should be a variant of "aka" meaning "also incorrectly known as". I usually use "aka" to nod to the common name of something after saying a more correct one.

For example: "LLMs (aika AIs)"