haha, woops, i forgot to write*. hello.
nothing to report. wrote some code. went outside sometimes. it’s unbearably hot and humid in London again. okay.
why is everybody making me work when all i wanna do is VIBE
*oh and then the build failed and i didn’t notice for a day
it is extremely hot. unpleasant. trying to catch the breezes. i’m back on emacs. writing a javascript library. trying to think about the past.
it’s a little reactive library based on
the
Adapton
papers. so far i’m implemented the
miniAdapton-style core and microAdapton auto-tracking. and then on top of
that i’ve implemented a plugin api. everything else i want should be doäble as
plugins. i’ve written a few so far and it’s so much fun. i started last week
building a full acar self-adjusting computations library with a stabilize phase
etc. it was working, passing tests. but it was a lot of faff. but i started to
like this Adapton system better as a base to build on. plus one of the papers
(which is printed out and spread out on my couch) has a mini implementation in
scheme. which is almost a progamming language! (the sac paper’s examples are in
ML).
omg i just looked at the weather and it says it’s going to rain this week and a mere 22 degrees. thank the lord.
sorry for the short post. it’s been so yap yap tap tap and heat. and i’m in a state of permanent confusion. next time maybe there will be music and a little clicker.
hope you’re well. you’re looking well.
i have a lot to report, but i completely forgot that it is Sunday and i’ve run out of time to write any of it. the short version is that it’s nice lying in doorways without a care in the world with someone and talking.
i’m EXTREMELY dehydrated. wrote a reactive javascript ui framework one evening and now will apparently spend the rest of my life trying to optimize it.
i’m gonna go, sorry to be so brief. i am going to go and drink water and then go to bed.
I presented Littlebook briefly at OCWG #27 and then talked about collaborative rectangles.
I say “like” a lot but I sure am cute. Thank you to the everwonderful Jess for asking me to come along.
I walked into the Algorave. It was great. Whatever act was on when I arrived was really good feel. And the next one let me feel like I was being reprogrammed. Saw Lu which was, as always, a real treat. Lu is spectacular. Met a sweet boy with twinkly eyes and multiple names and an energy like he knows something you don’t. I like him. Somebody asked me if I am called “Tom” or “Joe” and I said “😺 I am going to kill myself” and went and cried in the train station.
It’s always the novel misgenderings that fuck me up. Being asked if i am called tom or called joe. Like that guy the other day gesturing to a group that included me while saying “people who can definitely not pass as lesbians”. Or when I said “girls in my team” and that girl corrected me to “women”. I have to do the math in my own head and then misgender myself with the result. Is that a monad?
Listen, I’m not going to tell you what to do or how to behave. But if you send me an e-mail that was generated by AI I’m going to find that offensive. Like, rude. Impolite. Poor etiquette. I want to feel your fingers through the screen. I gotta to be with you, in timeshift.
Watched this video about a new AI browser called Dia, and it was saying “hey wouldn’t it be cool if I could get it to e-mail Emma for me?” And the answer is no. What if I could tell it to buy all these items from Amazon for me? No, the answer is no. Is everyone really looking forward to their AI agents having “sponsored actions” and “sponsored responses” where they are guided towards activity and advice that favours the business model of companies that paid to own your computation? Because I’m certainly fucking not. By all means use AI for finding academic papers and generating demo apps, but please do not ever use it to communicate with me. I can only see your soul through the spaces between the words. And that’s the blood.
The extraordinary becky avery called me on Thursday and asked if I’d like to go to Tchaikovsky’s 5th symphony. I did. It was really wonderful, the music went inside me and made me tingle and my teeth chatter. There was a raffle. The winner would conduct the Alton Towers tune. They’d sold 100 tickets. I bought 50 tickets. Wrote becky avery’s name on the back of each one. Doesn’t it seem so right? I wore my Thorpe Park hoody for luck. 1 in 3 chance. but the fix was in! and the guy dressed like a conductor won. Professional musician. With a cute little baby and glamorous wife.
Becky and me wandered around talking for a while. I talked too much. It was so nice to see her. Felt like it had been forever or mere moments ago. She is extremely special and dear to my heart. I wish there was some way to communicate to her what she means to me but I’m not sure it can be converted into words or symbols, it must be taken whole. I love listening to people talk, but when i get excited i start talking. and listening to people talk gets me all excited. gotta do something about that.
The Spanish place wasn’t open by lunch. We had a lovely meal at The Ivy. When she went home I hopped on a call to play Pictionary with my new coworkers. I lost.
The difference between chaos and change is communication.
I’m dying with anxiety and social shame before and after every interaction, but while I’m in the interactions and faking it I feel like it’s real and I feel like I’m on top of the world. I will optimize the amount of time I spend in the imaginary world that everyone sees, rather than the real world inside my mind.
On Saturday morning I woke up and went outside in my bright yellow jumpsuit (it’s new). Needed somewhere to focus and type on the computer, so I hopped on a train. The next train at LB was Cambridge. Hopped on a train to Cambridge. Nice to warm my Cambridge cache, anyway, in case I ever need it.
calling at Baldock, Ashwell and Morden, Royston and Cambridge
lol this train to Cambridge needs an Oxford comma
I spent most of my time in Cambridge looking for a toilet. From toilet to toilet. I’ve upped my dose of anti-androgens in the hope of chemically castrating myself like Alan Turing so that I can continue to focus on my work even someone in the train station has said hello to me while owning thighs. So far the only effect has been that I need to pee 45 times a day.
The Local-First Conf newsletter came out featuring a photo where I am manipulating an idea in physical space while Orion either struggles to say awake or can actually see the thing in my hands.
On Sunday I hopped on a train too, but this time I only ended up as far as Cannon Street, then London Bridge, then home. I’ve considered getting one of those coworking space memberships so I’d have somewhere outside of the house to go and work. But you know, trains are nice. And sometimes they have little tables. And sometimes they have little sockets. Maybe the train can be my office. Can the train be my office?
I’ve added a bunch of stuff to Littlebook now. It is starting to coalesce into a shape that I recognize and understand. Soon it will be time to write it again from scratch (with some tests, lol) because I will finally understand what is is and how it works. Not long now. A couple of weeks or months or years i guess.
According to last.fm I’ve listened to almost as much music in the past week as I did the whole of last year. The butterflies are so beautiful flying around the sky, I wish that I could keep one in a jar.
We went out for dinner, but didn’t manage to make it into the restaurant. It’s sweet, it’s fun. Is it better this way? It’s honest at least.
I’m about to press a button that will hopefully publish this article from inside Littlebook, using a blog post publisher I wrote inside Littlebook. Wish me luck! If you’re reading this, thank-you. It means your wish of luck worked.
Well! That was quite a lot all at once, wasn’t it? It’s so long ago now, Monday. A couple sitting outside the cafe, staring deep into each others eyes, no table between them, interlocked legs. That’s so earnest.
On Monday i wrote: I’m not happier. I am, [becky avery voice] “however”, more productive.. But maybe that is wrong. I am in pain, but maybe I am happier.
Then Kleppman handed Gentle an unmarked manilla envelope. And i’m thinking, this is the kind of stuff i’m into, i read about this, coders at work, these little details, moments. but then there it is, it’s there, it’s here, it’s in front of me and also they know me, they know my name, this is all very strange.
There’s only one socket in the hotel room so I’m sitting on the bathroom floor. It’s a nice hotel, otherwise. The window opens up wide so I can throw myself into the Spree if necessary. Or rent a guitar.
That night Simon said he thought we were going to end up seeing someone one of us know, maybe space buns. We walked down the river, around new parts of Berlin with many different energies. We went to a shop and bought a Fritz and a beer. And to another for a LAUT WASSER and a beer. And so on. We got a burger from a toilet, and it was a good burger. Anyway he was right, we saw each other. I love him. I do still wish we had seen space buns. Midnight toilet arab line bracelets on and home. It felt like something broken had been fixed.
The people of the Local-First community are extremely nice and wonderful. I wish I had little cards that said “you seem nice” on them that I could hand to people when I am too tired to communicate but I like them. Lots of nice warm glows. Everyone keeps saying “lenses”. I don’t know how to capture how surreal it all is. Normally I don’t meet people who know who Alan Kay is. Here they have his phone number.
People I have a huge amount of respect for, who have written papers and posts and libraries and tools—people who, until a few hours ago, were papers and posts and libraries and tools—they talk to me like I am a peer. i’m startled. also startled to learn that i have things to say, and that i believe them, and that they are new and meaningful.
And then I am emotionally exhausted. I have had many extremely wonderful conversations with people I like and respect who seem to genuinely like me and are interested in what I do and have to say. Yet now I am vibrating with self-hate, filled with self doubt, sick with anxiety. I am sick of myself and if the building was on fire I would lie down and accept it. Struggling to mark the good times as keyframes. In this exhaustion it seems so clear that the only things that matter are the moments I fucked up. All of the good things can be explained away or excused. Some sleep and some fish will help, then I can choose the keyframes and see the bad times as the tweens. After some sleep and some fish, then I will be lucky.
On Thursday morning i sat in a little room with some ink & switchies and we talked about the patch api. On Thursday afternoon and evening I sat with some browser people and talked about IWAs* and DMT and ate lebanese food.
I’m extremely grateful to have been able to sit on little wooden steps, lean against walls smoking cigarettes, and eat burger while listening to these incredibly bizarre and impressive people share their bizarre and impressive thoughts with each other.
At 5am I am standing on a Berlin street corner. A Dutch girl I met around midnight is handing me her phone and a metal straw and saying “three” and “four”. Hurts like hell. At 9am i am in the office in London starting my last day of work. It was a very normal day, I felt very little at all about leaving. There are two people who I might not bump into anymore. Not seeing them is hard. Are things meant to be or do you have to make them be?
thanks to pvh, good, mk, bz, herb for making it seem like there is the chance i might say something worthwhile.
thanks to reed, grjte, gentle, jm for giving me the feeling that it is possible to be understood.
thanks to rb, za, sl, cb, ag, js, ac, ab, rm, kb, lg, gp, mb, etc for the parts you played in the seven most rewarding years of my life.
last night i ate lobster linguine at the ivy. tomorrow i start again.
It’s noon already and I’m still where I was when I woke up at 7. I’m going to go outside for a walk and some cigarettes and we’ll see each other next week.