Raw lab notes, served fresh.

The log is where I put what I've done with my time, rather than catagorizing and writing like the rest of the site. Don't expect polished, fact-checked work, but hopefully expect something cool.

An entry should take ten minutes to write:

• Trying: what I was trying to do
• Happened: what actually happened
• Means: what I think it means, concretely or metaphorically
• Next: What I do next

"House rules":

• At least one entry should go in per week, if I don't, you can {yell} at me :P
• Write down what I'd have said out loud if someone was in the room
• No meta-website work unless I've kept the log up to date!!!
• Maybe things will come out and into the wider website, but that'll take a bit.
• Potentially, one longer-form piece a "quarter"

log september 2026

2026-09-14

• Trying: Today was a lot of trying to fix financial stuff.
• Happened: A lot of nothing, I managed to Swiss cheese failure myself!
• Means: This is probably what most 19 year olds deal with when they start managing their own money, I’m not unique, but I’ve got good people to get help from.
• Next: Keep getting better, replace cards sooner, being proactive is almost always the right bet.

2026-09-13

• Trying: Design with LLMs.
• Happened: They’re pretty ok. Not good at novel things, you have to encourage creativity
• Means: Designers still have a job, and I’d trust a human more.
• Next: Not much! Keep learning about design, especially graphic design, cough magic ink cough.

2026-09-12

• Trying: Today I decided to carpe the diem!
• Happened: Got a battery for my camera, got some film developed, went to the Art Hop, got new pants, ate a good lunch (finally good Arnold Palmer up here!), read a book, and played some video games with friends.
• Means: I should leave the apartment on the weekends more, don't let the comfy bed command me!
• Next: Tomorrow I have a little project lined up, which is good, given the weather looks meh.

2026-09-10

• Trying: Folk again! I was thinking about how to implement some sort of "dynamic download" of other people's "books".
• Happened: To this end, I was thinking that a set of "blanks" could be a good solution, and that eink panels would be a good type of blank. You can render code onto them, and tags, and have them be dynamicaly controlled by the system. I tried it out by putting an apriltag generator onto my XTEINK X3 running Crosspoint, which worked wonderfully!

• Means: I'm probably onto something. A lot of other design decisions to be made, and eink doodad with a tag is not new for folk.
• Next: More thinking about this, plan some other features...

2026-09-09

• Trying: A lot of slack botting today, but I got some work in on a nicer shapes library for folk
• Happened: Slack bots are wierd!
• Means: Eh not much.
• Next: More folk, more WPs.

2026-09-08

• Trying: Thinking about the future. What am I going to do in the next few years?
• Happened: Googled like a bajillion things. UMN-Twin Cities has a History of Science, Technology, and Math major!!
• Means: A place to apply to, of course. I love it. I've been to the twin cities! It's sick!
• Next: Keep looking, school isn't the only option. Though I'm pretty excited.

2026-09-07

• NO TRYING NO HAPPENED NO MEANS NO NEXT
• It's labor day and I'm hanging out with family!

2026-09-02

• Trying: Architecture. I like it a lot. Do I wanna do a carreer in it?
• Happened: Read a lot of papers, played with some software.
• Means: Probably not, I like the software stuff, I like building systems, I like looking at the art, idk if it's something I can do daily.
• Next: Keep learning!

2026-09-01

• Trying: Today I started following the classic [Rust OS tutorial], mostly to practice [devenv] and nix some more.
• Happened: Got through the first couple chapters! It's cool, I get the interrupt tables a lot more than the last time I did this.
• Means: Shout out to my friend Willow, OS-dev extraodinaire, she's the reason I understand that stuff.
• Next: More work on half-life, maybe I'll do something fun with the OS.

log august 2026

2026-08-28

• Trying: A lot of UI design today.
• Happened: I am not good at UI design, picking colors, etc.
• Means: I should probably practice this some more...
• Next: I'm outsourcing to a coworker :P

2026-08-27

• Trying: Today I actually got the drawterm thingy working!
• Happened: It was because drawterm tries to derive a secstore address from your auth address, which just times out slowly. Just make it dial -s tcp!127.0.0.1!1
• Means: I should read man pages more thoroughly next time lol. Also, I love the net dial strings from plan9, not enough software uses BANG!
• Next: Friyay, working on UI design for Half-Life, and dealing with a lost ereader :(

2026-08-26

• Trying: Today I gave a little demo of {Lamplight} @ the [August Feeling Of Computing meetup]!
• Happened: I got through most of it without stumbling too much, but I didn't get to everything I wanted to do.
• Means: I should probably practice giving talks before I do them, and I neeeed to give more talks.
• Next: MORE TALKS MORE WORK MORE WORK THAT GETS ME PAID

2026-08-25

• Trying: Doing some systems architecture for Half-Life today (a new YSWS)!
• Happened: I forgot I don't have to split the backend and the frontend over two services, lmao that's funny.
• Means: I should probably do this a bit more, just for practice!
• Next: Launch page out by Friday??!??!??

2026-08-24

• Trying: Today I'm trying out [the Gleam programming language]!
• Happened: I wrote a little Atproto stream follower (websockets & json parsing).
• Means: It's a real nice little language, and felt really good and intuitive to me. I want to write bigger things in it some day.
• Next: Maybe for my next YSWS backend!

2026-08-20

• Trying: Mostly work, and the game [The Message From Deep Space].
• Happened: The game ate like, 6 hours of my time and kept me up wayyyy too late.
• Means: I love math, linguistics, indie games, etc. I'm a huge nerd. More games should be like this! It's kinda fun seeing through the game to how the developer had to implement things.
• Next: I will continue to play, and honestly it so worth 10 bucks.

2026-08-19

• Trying: I've been making [alternate history stuff] in Affinity (yet to be enshittified...), it's real fun!
• Happened: People love it on reddit! Almost universally positive!
• Means: My art skills are getting better (not evidenced by the thing I made tho lol, but that's on purpose). I like graphic design and text layout!
• Next: I wanna make a magazine with essays from the space I occupy...

2026-08-17

• Trying: Played around with plan9 again today.
• Happened: Really love it. Wonder if I could do a YSWS with this...
• Means: Mostly that I'm lacking on good ideas and am a nerd for YSWSs.
• Next: Keep messing with it :)

2026-08-14

• Trying: I'm working on making everything I do better. So I got some feedback from friends about my {latest blog post}.
• Happened: I got the feedback, and reworked some stuff. My tone was pretty inconsistent, and that's something to nail down. Also, not everyone know how my website works lol.
• Means: I'm getting better at recieving feedback, especially creatively and from people I admire, but it feels way better.
• Next: Keep working, keep getting feedback, keep writing!

2026-08-13

• Trying: Today was a bunch of reviewing!
• Happened: I helped Alex hammer down some UX stuff in the dashboard.
• Means: No big meaning, but a nice experience.
• Next: More abstract stuff to come...

2026-08-12

• Trying: Refining our ideas here at the office to get to 200 WP/month/gap year!
• Happened: The retreat was great, the lightning talks were great, and I have a much better idea now than a week ago.
• Means: Ideating with other people IRL/online is extremely useful still, don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
• Next: Finish up the ideas, and actually get to building!

2026-08-11

• Trying: Still working on "pErSoNaL BrAnD", and I'm working towards projects for that 20 WP for this month.
• Happened: Had a lovely chat with [Ivy Reese] and talked about how I can convey myself as a person through the things I make.
• Means: I've got to actually start writing, y'all! Get something out there! Maybe ask Chee what she thinks...
• Next: Dude I'm 19 I have so much "next".

2026-08-10

• Trying: Getting my WPs up. Currently I'm sitting at like, 4, which is not ideal, I want 25 by the end of the month.
• Happened: This is mostly because I haven't been able to market my programs as successfully as other gap years, so I'm worse off.
• Means: I'll have to try and get involved in bigger things, like [stardance] and whatever comes after that!
• Next: I'm reaching out to coworkers, and getting involved in other programs :)

2026-08-08

• Trying: I'm trying to make the lamplight layouting engine feel really intuitive.
• Happened: I think this is the kind of thing that needs to be prototyped with paper, I just can't use words to say how it should feel.
• Means: Determinisitic masonary algorithms are needed, but I want to keep them as dumb as possible, so I need to figure out what the real constraints are...
• Next: Prototype it with paper, and figure out what I'm actually doing when I play with it.

2026-08-07

• Trying: I wanted to load a real big note.
• Happened: It overflowed :( So I did a big bug-fix pass
• Means: Probably should let the Lamplight engine settle and play with it some more.
• Next: More bug finding!

2026-08-06

• Trying: To Sleep
• Happened: Didn't sleep, [book] too good :P
• Means: I should go to bed sooner
• Next: Go to sleep

2026-08-05

• Trying: I want to start marketting my work more, get more people to see it. I've put some little demo teasers in the FoC slack and on bsky.
• Happened: Bsky isn't really taking off, the FoC stuff got some good reactions, that's nice!
• Means: I need to connect more on bsky. It does have an algorithm, but it isn't as powerful as say, twitter's, so maybe some boosts and following more people will help.
• Next: Try and figure out how to get that out there! This'll also help with YSWS marketting.

2026-08-04

• Trying: I'm working on "what if [realtalk] and [Datalog] had a baby and it was a note-taking app. I wanted to make something in the system now that it works decently well.
• Happened: The traditional "family tree" things have been surprisingly fun to play with, especially with the interactive "why" command.
• Means: I think this means that the magic of this system is the magic of realtalk, when parts that weren't designed for eachother come together real well
• Next: Find a workflow for this that actually is improved by using Lamplight, as I'm calling it.

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