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.
Like an animal bred in captivity, I feel unfit to be uncaged. But here I am, unleashed.
The business class section of the Heathrow Express is packed. I arrived early and set myself up with a seat in the corner. The lady across from me seems irritated that I have chosen to exist. I’m in concordance with her, it is annoying. I wish she could sit with her husband too. I wish I could sit with mine. We should all get to sit with our husbands.
What else is there? Remember that time Sofía said “I don’t like Mickey Mouse”? Back then I knew how to play a triste. Been walking around the house singing a song about being in pain. So maudlin. So dramatic. One time in school a teacher called me a “drama queen” and I walked out.
Your journey’s not over, it’s just begun. Make your dreams your destiny. And do what must be done. If you’re frightened, if you’re worried: you’re not alone. Hand in hand we’ll take the step into the great unknown
This week I’ve been sitting in one spot, holding onto the part of my life that is not fluctuating. That part of my life has cotton sheets. When not working for a living, I’ve been working on Littlebook.
p: But, why?
s: Because it’s beautiful!
I’ve added an opencanvas experiment where there is an Automerge doc the shape of a canvasprotocol.org OCIF file. The opencanvas plugin provides two Views:
So far I’ve only implemented rectangles, but it’s cool. Collaborative rectangles between devices, browsers, and even apps! You can move them around and change their colour and resize them in Tldraw, and watch the same thing happen over there on your phone in Excalidraw.
I’ve also added a PluginEditor plugin which is a mini-IDE that allows you to build Littlebook plugins within Littlebook.
PluginEditor supports .tsx, .ts, .jsx, .js and .css. You can import
from https://esm.sh. You can set the @jsxImportSource and then write React, Preact,
SolidJS, etc.
There’s a little special set up to get SolidJS working properly behind the scenes because it depends on its own babel plugin, but anything that uses the regular JSX transform will Just Work™.
Some common libraries are available from an importmap on Littlebook itself. Any
https://esm.sh imports will be cached by the ServiceWorker. Did you know that
you can @jsxImportSource https://esm.sh/preact and it actually works?
There’s some Automatic Type Acquisition affordances too.
In fact, you know i’m writing this article in it right now.
I’m off to Berlin now for the Local-First Conference. It’ll be nice to talk to the people who are interested in (the non-corporate parts of) that. The parts that are to do with freedom and ownership, and about making the world brighter and fairer. A lot of it will be about Sync Engines, which is fine. But the really special stuff is happening in other places: collaboration without a server, without the internet, without a network. If I send you a file, it’s yours. We can merge them together later, but it’s up to us. Every single person is the source of truth for their files. And a server is just a computer that’s more likely to be on than off.
In the airport, I keep on remembering how excited I was for the future, and then breaking my heart over again. Little things. And big things. I keep remembering that I was excited for the future, and then it cracks a little more again. But I’m also in heat and salivating.
My work decided they didn’t want to pay for my conference anymore because I quit my job. That’s fair, though I wish they’d given me more than 2 days notice hahahah. So my bank balance is twice light and red.
ate whopper
The guy at the front desk of the hotel gave me a free drink voucher, and told me he’ll be in london in a couple of weeks. The people of Berlin are hungry for rabbit.
And I don't do love I just know someone who I can think about
I’m back in my room now. This hotel has room service guitars supplied by Gibson. It also has €26 breakfasts. I’m looking forward to trying both of those things tomorrow.
It was great listening to peter, alex and seph talk about events and everything. i have things to say but i think i’m talking too much, so tomorrow perhaps i will not speak anymore. orion is lovely.
It’s been enjoyable meeting everybody so far. I’m tired and riddled with anxiety. Hope I can manage to make it out of the hotel room tomorrow.
It’s nearly 4am tomorrow and I promised breakfast that I would be up by 7, so I’d best turn off
it is now after nearly 4am. it is closer to 4:10am. am i going to get no sleep? it’s been a while since i’ve tried to sleep in a new bed alone. i never fare well with sleeping in that scenario.
Let’s get matching tattoos.
Oh look, I’m back. Back in London. London, England. England, United Kingdom. United Kingdom, Earth. Earth, in The Moon System. The Moon System in Engine Alcheme. Stay tuned for more, after these messages from our sponsors.
Sometimes sponsors are the only way to get water.
On Monday I met this bird:
On Tuesday we (Zaina + me, not me + the seagull) flew to Amsterdam, we walked along the canals and we ate spaghetti. And on Wednesday we met another Little Bird. What a wonderful time meeting my oldest friend in person for the first time, and we all took a ride along in a boat and learned about all the top ten grachts in amsterdam and the perils of building everything out of wood (catch fire).
If you owned a bowling alley under a bridge on a canal what would you call it?
And then we (me + Zaina) flew back to Málaga on Wednesday Evening. Zaina didn’t have to show passport to anyone the whole time we were in Amsterdam, noch in het hotel 🏩, noch op de luchthaven ✈️.
The European Dream, living ones Schengeniest life.
On Thursday I attended the conference. Met up with pvh and talked a little Automerge, Malleable Software and whatnot. Orion did a great talk about “adversarial malleability”.
That night Zaina and I attended an impressive flamenco performance, the performers had the duende. Olé!
On Friday another conference day, though I spent the first half walking on the beach. pvh’s talk was very good. Funny and inspiring. Afterwards Zaina and I walked for a couple of hours to a pizza festival, got blisters on our feet, ate a good slice (hers had an egg) and went home.
The next day we got up early to watch the sunrise. We checked out, ate breakfast, lay on the beach. Zaina swam while I burned a bit.
Checking through security there was the angriest man. If you bring to mind the image of Peter Capaldi if he’d been a spanish football referee (who wishes he was a player) you are in the right ballpark. He kept shouting “Lady!” at Zaina and telling her to remove the keyboard from her bag (she had no keyboard). He was being such an asshole. He told me I had things I didn’t have too. He made some mistakes, and held up the line, and then got angry at us for his own mistakes. We gave him our grathias aluegos and went to the gates area where Zaina broke up with me.
I got home about 4am and ate a pizza.
Now I’m reörganizing the monorepo for one of my silly personal project apps. I’ve just noticed with my tongue that part of one of my teeth is missing. This time next week I’ll be in Berlin. The week after that I’ll no longer be an employee for the company I’ve been at for 7.5 years. The day after that I’ll start my new job.
Tense, waiting for a visa a few days before a flight you’ve already booked to a hotel you’ve already paid for. Big plastic envelope arriving 3 days before the flight. Has her passport in it which is maybe stamped Schengen and maybe not, don’t know until it’s in your hands. You have to do it that way, they don’t let you apply for the visa unless you already have a flight and hotel booked.
The visa worked out. We met up in Gatwick airport, ate spicy chicken, drank virgin marys, boarded the plane. Security was quick and painless. Landed in Malaga. Border control was quick and pain-free.
Got on a bus. Picked up the keys from a lockbox in Princesa. Headed to the apartment. Ate KFC at the beach just after sundown. Pretty sunset, heavy clouds, golden beams for borders and lime green and orange stripes along horizon. Nosotres fuimos al DIA por la mañana for eggs and mozarella and stuff for the hair and face. After coffee and breakfast, a walk along the beach and into the town centre. I dosed us both with Benedryl, for allergies, without realizing it was going to take us entirely out of commission. Very cloudy day on a very sunny day. A lot of coffee. Laid down on the bench, head in lap.
The patch where I spilt water 12 hours later wet with tears. I can’t answer these questions, though I’m trying, not in words. And omelettes, and patatas bravas, and an hamburgeusa. It’s been a tiring holiday. Enjoyable for the most part but I really need to take a break. Tomorrow we get on a aeroplane to Stroopwafel & Snert to see lil ol’ lb. Today we went in a photo booth in the middle of the street.
It’s time to go to sleep now maybe. Got to get up early to be treated like a convict by a low-priced airline.
🖖😎🤞
🖖😎🤞
🖖😎🤞
i turned on copilot, it keeps suggesting i add this comment:
// todo this is a bit of a hack
and this one:
// todo this is a bit of a mess
i’ve spent the week writing an app at nights
made a corned beef. unfortunately, it’s the second best corned beef i’ve ever made. i over-spiced it. i’ve only made two corned beeves.
the workers day bank holiday snuck up on me this time!
next time we speak i’ll be in Malaga, getting like berries—providing visas work out.
it’s so scary to have to book a holiday before you can get a visa!!! we’re fly on friday and they haven’t even told us yet if we can go!
i’ve been working on designing the ideal app architecture for a solid-automerge app. so far i’ve reïnvented MVVM.
👍😎🆒
🤙🙂↕️👍
🙂↕️🤝🙂↔️
👍🙂↔️👍
have a good week
