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Michael W Lucas: “Ed Mastery”

2024-09-29T00:00:00+02:00

Michael W Lucas: “Ed Mastery”

2024-09-29

The average user may not think a lot about which text editor to use. For us, however, the choice of a text editor is a very serious matter.

I’ll admit it: I have always felt a little proud to be a vi(1) user (I even have a dedicated vi page on my website). After having read Ed Mastery by Michael W Lucas, however, I feel somewhat whimpy about it.

Only recently did I stumble across the book, and I was surprised that a book about ed(1) – “the standard Unix text editor” – even exists. Yet, I knew immediately that I would have to read it. The mere existence of a book about ed(1) was enough to convince me that it will be worth it.

And I was not disappointed (not that I had expected that…). Michael W Lucas' style of writing is hilarious, and first and foremost, it is simply a pleasure to read.

Admittedly, I never really looked past vi(1) in the history of Unix text editors. I roughly new that ex(1) and ed(1) are predecessors of vi(1) and that they are line editors, but they always seemed a bit too peculiar and exotic to me to justify looking into them in more detail (mostly because they are line editors, stemming from a time when monitors were not yet common or even available – one cannot take a line editor seriously these days, can one?). While I always felt that no real progression has taken place in editor development since the advent of vi(1) (which explicitly includes editors like Vim or Neovim), I always implicitly assumed that vi(1) was in fact a progression from ed(1) and ex(1) (reflecting the progression from line printers to monitors for displaying output). After reading Ed Mastery, though, I am not so certain about it anymore. I thought vi(1) was the pinnacle of simplicity, beauty and efficiency, but maybe I was wrong all along.

A while ago, there was a great post titled Your problem with Vim is that you don’t grok vi. on Stack Overflow (read it if you haven’t yet!). It basically states that many of the features of Vim that are generally considered improvements over vi(1) (Vi IMproved, you know?), making it more “user friendly”, are in fact feature creep (visual mode? why?) and simply exist because users don’t want to take the time to get really familiar and acquainted with vi(1). It is the antidote to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s famous statement “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”^[1]

I am wondering if something similar could not be said about ed(1) as well: “Your problem with vi is that you don’t grok ed.”

In any event, after reading Ed Mastery, many known features from vi(1) will make more sense. And even though it is rather unlikely that most users will ditch their editor of choice right away in favor of ed(1) after reading the book, I am convinced that it will improve your editing skills (if you use an editor descending from ed(1), that is – otherwise, all hope is lost anyway).

In summary: Experiencing joy while reading the book and learning profound things along the way: What more could you wish for from a book?

Therefore my recommendation: Get the book, read it and grok ed(1), now!

Note: Peter N. M. Hansteen has already written a great review of the book several years ago, and actually I feel that there is not much I could add to it (apart from my casual ranting you spent the last couple of minutes reading). You should definitely read it as well if you haven’t!

1. I’ll happily admit that I do use Neovim. Have I ever claimed that I live up to my own standards, after all? ↩

My New Website

2021-06-20T00:00:00+02:00

My New Website

2021-06-20

Not long ago, I created my first website. It was a static website, just like this one. I wrote the content in AsciiDoc and created a small script which rendered the pages to HTML.

I was very proud of it.

The content was basically plain text with a little bit of markup and some meta data – a beautifully clear separation of form and content.

The script generating the site consisted of about 200 lines of Ruby code. It was simple, and it did its job.

But it turned out that I would spend far more time tweaking the script to generate the site than to write content. After all, it was easier and more fun than to think about what to write.

Also, the barrier to publish was too high: There were always a few steps to be done before any change could be published. Not many steps, really: Make some change, run the script, clone the respository for the site, delete its content, copy the output of the script to the repository, commit and publish it.

Yet too many, as it turned out.

So I ditched the script for generating the site and started anew.

This time, it’s just plain HTML. Everything is created manually. Sounds like more work, but it’s not. It’s a profound simplification.

This approach has its drawbacks, of course. The content is interspersed with markup – HTML is not really lightweight. It is not possible to make a change in the template which is immediately reflected in all pages using this template.

But it’s definitely worth it.

I thought my site was simple, but it wasn’t. Or at least not simple enough.

Lesson learned.

Derek Sivers: “How to Live”

2023-03-05T00:00:00+01:00

Derek Sivers: “How to Live”

2023-03-05

To state it upfront: How to Live is a book which can hardly be overrated. It is full of wisdom, packed even more densely with insights than Dereks' previous writings.

The title of the book asks one of the most important questions of life – maybe the single most important one –, and it implies that the book sets out to answer this question.

Instead of answering the titles’ question, however, the book presents us with twenty-one ways how to live. Each of the 21 short chapters explains how to live a life according to a certain guiding principle. It describes how to live in complete accordance with that principle, to adhere to it with the utmost consequence.

But: All of the 21 ways to live are completely incompatible with each other, due to their conflicting guiding principles.

So does this book answer the question posed in its title? No. Instead, it presents possibilities. Every single chapter is convincing and persuading, yet every one is completely different than any other.

To me, the core statement of this book is that there are no definite answers, at least not to the really important questions of life. We humans yearn for answers, for recipes, for certainty – yet at some point, everybody has to face the fact that there are no simple, universal answers to the truly important questions. Life is contradictory, often messy, rarely proceeding along a straight line. And, most important: Each life is absolutely individual, and everyone has to find his own answers.

Just as remarkable as the books' content is its form. It is incredibly dense. Derek somehow manages to picture the different ways to live in often not more than three or four pages. Most sentences are very short, often fitting on a single line, and new sentences always start on the next line. His writing is never pleasing, but always sharp and to the point, and with “How to Live” he has perfected his style. To me, it is supremely elegant.

Two quotes come to my mind when thinking of “How to Live”:

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. It seems to me that this was Dereks' personal guiding principle in writing this book.

The second one is by Michelangelo: “The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.” I can imagine how Derek spent hours and hours chiseling away the superfluous words, finally achieving something which comes very close to the perfection as it is defined in the quote by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry above.

Making a point using many words is easy; making a point using very few words is exceedingly difficult. Derek has succeeded in every aspect.

If you have not read the book yet, buy it and read it, immediately. Then, after some time, read it again, and again.

Running Anki inside Xephyr

2023-02-26T00:00:00+01:00

Running Anki inside Xephyr

2023-02-26

Anki is a great tool for memorizing things, like words in a foreign language you want to learn. I am using it for memorizing Vietnamese words in my endeavor to learn Vietnamese.

I am currently running Anki 2.1.16 on OpenBSD 7.1. Unfortunately, quite often Anki freezes after using it for some time, without any advance notice. When this happens, I can no longer do anything except moving the mouse pointer. I cannot switch windows and not even switch to the console in order to forcefully quit Anki. Apparently, it crashes the whole system, and the only way out is a forceful reboot.

I do not know what causes this behavior or if there is any fix for it. It seems that I am not the only one experiencing this, but I have not yet found a solution to this behavior.

I did find a workaround, however: Running Anki inside of Xephyr(1) (a nested X server that runs as an X application and is part of OpenBSD base) seems to prevent it from freezing. The workaround involves three steps:

Launch Xephyr on display :1 (or any other display differing from your main display, which is usually :0).
Launch cwm inside the Xephyr window just created (it is necessary to run a window manager since Anki employs multiple windows in general; of course, any other window manager can be used as well).
Lauch Anki inside the Xephyr window.

For convenience, I have created a small shell script for executing these steps:

Xephyr -br -ac -noreset -screen 1920x1080 :1 &
cwm -c .cwmrc_xephyr -d :1 &
DISPLAY=:1 anki &

Of course, the value of the screen command line parameter of Xephyr needs to be adjusted to your screen size. Also, I run cwm in the Xephyr window with a specific configuration file.

It works well, but strangely, after a while cwm seems to stop running inside Xephyr. This is inconvenient because it makes it impossible to switch between different Anki windows. The solution is to simply restart cwm by manually executing the second line of the script again.

Obviously, this is not a real fix to the problem, but it works. Hopefully, Anki will get more stable in the future so that this workaround will no longer be needed.

How I Use Vim

2025-08-30T00:00:00+02:00

How I Use Vim

2025-08-30

First things first: This is a contribution to the first ever Vim Carnival, initiated by Hyde, and it is an honor to be part of it! A big “thank you” to Hyde for coming up with this great idea, organizing the carnival and hosting the first one!

Note: In the whole article, I am mostly using “Vim” as a general term referring to any Vim-like editor (i.e. it encompasses in particular both Vim and Neovim), unless otherwise stated.

My History of Using Vim – A Personal Account

When I first grappled with Linux in the mid-to-late 1990s, I was inevitably confronted with the question of which editor to use. There was a huge amount of editors to choose from, but I quickly learned that there were two editors which were mentioned much more than others, and those two editors obviously were vi and Emacs. I started playing around a little bit with Emacs, but soon I realized that it was not the right editor for me. I was looking for a tool which allowed me to edit text files, and nothing else. And Emacs definitely allows one to do a lot more than just editing text files.

Now it is certainly not my intention to revive one of the most famous holy wars ever. I completely understand if people use Emacs if this is the right editor for them (or any other editor, for that matter). For me, however, vi (or rather Vim at that time) turned out to be the right editor.

Its simplicity and minimalist appearance appealed a lot to me. I liked that the mouse played no role in using it. And I knew that there was no need for me to look any further.

I guess I was drawn to vi for the same reasons I was – albeit many years later – drawn to the OpenBSD operating system: I like things to be minimal. In particular, tools should do one thing only and do it well (the core of the Unix philosophy, by the way).^[1]

Once I started using Vim, I never felt any desire to switch to another editor, and it is now my editor of choice since more than a quarter of a century (and I am so fond of it that I even maintain a dedicated vi page).

So, How Do I Actually Use Vim?

I do basically all my editing and writing in Vim, from e-mails to my PhD thesis (and, obviously, this very article as well). I also do all of my programming in Vim (no need for fancy IDEs). It is suitable for minor editing tasks just as well as for large writing or programming projects, and it has never failed me. It is fast – really fast –, and plain vi is available on basically every Unix installation out there – no matter what flavor of Unix or what age it is.

I love that it is a modal editor. In contrast to most other editors, pressing a key does not automatically make the corresponding character appear on the screen – it only does if you happen to be in insert mode. Otherwise, it is interpreted as a command. This allows for pretty easy key combinations for most simple and elementary commands (in contrast to non-modal editors, where one always has to escape entering characters, which necessarily leads to more complex key combinations). I also love that commands are very logical in a specific way; one could argue that they form some sort of a language. I will not dive into the details here; that would make for an entire new article (or two or three…). It has been claimed that editing text in Vim is an almost Zen-like experience, and while I feel that this does not really do justice to Zen, I completely get what is meant by that statement.

I do not use any plugins, although there is a huge ecosystem of plugins available for Vim (and Neovim even declares itself a “hyperextensible Vim-based text editor” on its website). I simply do not have any need for them. While there are certainly plugins which aim at improving the editing experience, my impression is that many plugins try to make Vim into something more than an editor. As mentioned earlier, though, that was one of the major reasons for me not to use Emacs. I do not want Vim to be more than an editor. I want to have an editor – no more and no less, period.

Actually, I do not even care much about many of the improvements of Vim over plain vi (Vim is “Vi IMproved”, after all…). For instance, I never use visual mode. While it may be helpful when one is new to Vim^[2] – and in particular when one is used to GUI editors allowing one to mark text –, it is probably not the most efficient way to accomplish most of the things it is used for. In fact, I would argue that it would be a good idea to use plain vi for quite some time before (potentially) moving on to Vim. Many people probably do not even know how to accomplish things in vi without resorting to the improvements Vim offers. Yet, I am convinced that many of those improvements are improvements only in a superficial way. All this is elaborated extremely well in a reply on Stack Overflow, Your problem with Vim is that you don’t grok vi. I suggest reading it to everyone who is using Vim.

So, in a perfect world, I would be using plain vi instead of Vim^[3], and actually this is what I did for a couple of years.^[4] There are some reasons, though, why I switched to using Neovim for most things. One reason is that multiple levels of “undo” is in fact a real improvement over vi. Besides, I hail from one of those strange countries where people like to draw little dots above the letters, so Unicode support is practically non-negotiable for me. Also, I do use syntax highlighting, though I consider it by no means necessary (contrary to what I used to believe before using plain vi exclusively for a while).

My .vimrc is very simple as well. While I am quite impressed by all the config files one can find on the Internet which are hundreds of lines long, and while I have a tendency myself to tweak config files way too much, I prefer to keep things simple here as well. Setting a few options fully suffices to make Vim behave the way I like.

Now, while one might get that impression, it is certainly not my intention to argue against using Vim and in favor of vi. While I do think that Vim has become rather bloated over time, I use it on a daily basis and am most happy with it. My point is to direct the focus on the beautiful core of Vim – which is pretty close to plain vi in my opinion, yet extends it in certain ways. I sometimes like to compare vi and Vim to C and C++:^[5] There is this beautiful, rather small and well-defined, yet immensely powerful language C. And then there is C++, which extends C by far, adding feature over feature to it. Both are used heavily, and there are certainly reasons for both; but in most cases, I would rather use C instead of C++ (if I used them at all…).

So, coming back to the subject of this article, the question of how I use Vim: I use it mostly the way I would use plain vi, but I also happily make use of those extensions I find useful – which are rather few, though. While I have used Vim for decades, I am sure I only employ a small fraction of the possibilities Vim – or even vi – offers. I might become more efficient by putting work into learning more subtle and intricate features, but I feel no real need for it. I know that, should I need a particular feature, I will most certainly find it – if not in vi, then in Vim. Most of the time, though, I am happy using a select set of commands in a more or less efficient way.

There is so much more to say about Vim (maybe in the context of another Vim Carnival?), but for now, I will close my ramblings about Vim with one last observation: I do not just use Vim – I enjoy using it, a lot.

A Simple E-Mail Reminder System Based on cron and at

2023-02-10T00:00:00+01:00

A Simple E-Mail Reminder System Based on cron and at

2023-02-10

Since I cannot keep everything I have to remember in my head, I need a reminder system. While I would prefer an analog system (ideally one that integrates with my system for keeping track of tasks), I have not found a satisfying analog solution so far.

I am not looking for a full-fledged calendar system. If I were, I would be using Remind or calendar^[1]. But they offer way more features than I need.

I basically have two requirements for my reminder system:

It has to remind me reliably by e-mail about things a certain time in advance.
It has to be simple and have as few external dependencies as possible.

The solution I have come up with is almost too trivial to share: It employs cron and at to schedule reminders, which are sent as e-mails via a remote SMTP server when they are due.

The Setup

The system depends on the following ingredients:

A machine which is up 24/7 – for scheduling reminders for arbitrary times.^[2] I am using a server hosted on OpenBSD Amsterdam.
smtpd – for relaying e-mails to a remote SMTP server.
cron – for scheduling recurring reminders (like birthdays).
at – for scheduling nonrecurring reminders (like one-time events, or events which recur in irregular intervals).
mail – for sending e-mails non-interactively.

On OpenBSD, all the required software is part of the base system; see smtpd(8), cron(8), at(1), mail(1).

Both cron and at basically take two kinds of data as input: A timestamp which specifies when something is to be done, and an action which specifies what is to be done at the specified time.

Regardless of whether a reminder is recurring or nonrecurring, I want an e-mail to be sent to me at the specified time. Therefore, the action in both cases is sending an e-mail to me reminding me of the given event. Since the e-mail needs to be sent non-interactively when the given time is reached, the mail utility is invoked, and the reminder text is passed to it as the mail subject (since they are usually short, I only specify a subject and leave the body empty; then I don’t even have to open the e-mail).

In order not to have to specify the non-changing details (like the e-mail address) for sending the mail each time, I employ a small script called mailrem which is basically a wrapper around mail which takes the reminder text as its argument:

#!/bin/sh

from="John Doe <john.doe@email.com>"
subject="$1"

echo | mail -r "$from" -s "$subject" "$from"

Finally, in order for mail to be able to send mails to a remote SMTP server, smtpd needs to be configured such that it relays outgoing mail to a remote server.

Usage

E-mail reminders are sent by calling mailrem with the specific reminder text as its argument, e.g.

$ mailrem "Prepare tax statement"

In order to schedule reminders for a specific time, mailrem is not invoked directly as above, but either by cron or by at, depending on whether the reminder is to be sent on a regular basis or just once.

Recurring reminders

Recurring reminders are scheduled by cron via corresponding crontab entries. Start editing the crontab file:

$ crontab -e

Then add an entry for each recurring reminder like this:

0 0 3 18 * $HOME/bin/mailrem "[Reminder] Paul's $(( $(/bin/date +\%Y) - 1976 )). birthday (1976)"

This entry would send an e-mail each year at midnight on March 18 with subject “[Reminder] Paul’s n. birthday (1976)”, where n is calculated each time the cron entry is triggered by subtracting Paul’s year of birth, 1976, from the current year obtained by the date utility.^[3]

Nonrecurring reminders

Nonrecurring reminders are scheduled by at via corresponding atjobs. For instance, to schedule an atjob for midnight in three days:

$ at midnight + 3 days

When prompted, enter the action to be executed at the specified time like this:

> mailrem "[Reminder] Doctor's appointment at 9 am"

Then, press Ctrl + D to queue the atjob.

That’s it. A very simple system which does its job and is easy to setup and maintain.

Caveats

The system is certainly not suitable for time-critical reminders. This is obvious, since by nature the reminders are sent in an asynchroneous way (i.e. via e-mail).
There is no easy way to get a consolidated overview over all currently scheduled reminders. For recurring reminders, crontab -l could be used. Similarly, atq displays the queue of atjobs. However, the output of atq is pretty much unparseable (at least in the version which ships with OpenBSD). So one would have to manually extract the job ID from the output of atq and then do $ at -c <id> in order to see the content of the job.
Failures cannot easily be discovered in general, and there is no recovery mechanism. If, e.g., for some reason the cron daemon is not running at the time a reminder is due, it will not be sent and will subsequently be lost forever.

1. Man page of the OpenBSD version: calendar(1). ↩

2. In principle, of course, it is also possible to run the system on a laptop. The severe drawback would be that reminders were lost if the laptop were not running at the scheduled time of a reminder. One could use tools like anacron instead of cron. This would mitigate the risk of losing reminders, but the time they are sent would then depend on when the laptop is running (which may differ greatly from the intended time of sending). ↩

3. Man page of the OpenBSD version: date(1). ↩

Relay Mail to a Remote SMTP Server With smtpd

2022-03-27T00:00:00+01:00

Relay Mail to a Remote SMTP Server With `smtpd`

2022-03-27

Configure smtpd(8) to relay outgoing mail to a remote SMTP server as follows:

Create the file /etc/mail/secrets:

$ doas touch /etc/mail/secrets
$ doas chmod 640 /etc/mail/secrets
$ doas chown root:_smtpd /etc/mail/secrets
$ doas echo "label username:password" > /etc/mail/secrets

username and password are the credentials for accessing the remote SMTP server, and label is an identifier for the username-password combination. It can be chosen arbitrarily and is used in smtpd.conf (see below). Since the credentials are stored in plain text, restrictive permissions are set for the secrets file.

Replace the default content of /etc/mail/smtpd.conf with the following:

table aliases file:/etc/mail/aliases
table secrets file:/etc/mail/secrets

listen on lo0

action "local" mbox alias <aliases>
action "relay" relay host smtp+tls://label@smtp-server:port auth <secrets>

match for local action "local"
match for any action "relay"

label is the corresponding label from the secrets file, smtp-server is the URL of the remote SMTP server, and port is the mail submission port (default: 587).

Verify that the configuration is syntactically correct:

$ doas smtpd -n
configuration OK

Restart smtpd:

$ doas rcctl restart smtpd
smtpd(ok)
smtpd(ok)

Test the configuration by sending an e-mail using mail(1):

$ echo "body" | mail -s "subject" email-address

References

smtpd.conf(5)
Forward outgoing mail to a remote SMTP server by Roman Zolotarev.

Multiple-Click Selections in xterm

2000-01-01T00:00:00+01:00

Multiple-Click Selections in xterm

{date}

It is possible to configure in detail which portion of the screen – a word, a line, etc. – is selected in xterm(1) on rapid successive mouse clicks.

What is a Word in xterm, After All?

In xterm, words can be selected by double-clicking on any character in the respective word. This will highlight the word, and it is then in the primary selection of the X Window System and can be pasted elsewhere.

Characters are grouped into character classes. Words are defined in xterm as strings of characters belonging to the same character class. Therefore, what xterm interprets as a word depends on the mapping of characters to character classes.

In the default mapping, alphanumeric characters and the underscore belong to one character class, space and tab belong to another character class, and all other characters have their own character class. This definition works well when dealing mostly with prosaic texts, since it more or less corresponds to the usual definition of a word (i.e. certain characters separated by whitespace). In other cases, it is less convenient though. For instance, it is not possible to select a path consisting of several directories by double-clicking on it, since directories are separated by a slash, which belongs to a different character class than alphanumeric characters and the underscore.

Interestingly, the mapping can be changed via a certain xterm resource called charClass. Its value is a list of key-value pairs, where the key is either a single character code or a range of character codes, and the value is a character class. A given key-value pair then defines that the character(s) specified by the key belong to the character class specified by the value.

Character classes are identified by numbers (which in turn correspond to the character code of a representative of that character class). The default mapping of characters to character classes is given in the respective section of the manpage. In the default mapping, alphanumeric characters and the underscore belong to character class 48 (the character code of the character 0), and space and tab belong to character class 32 (the character class of space).

Therefore, in order to add e.g. the characters ! (character code 33) and : (character code 58) to character class 48, add the following line to ~/.Xresources:

xterm*charClass: 33:48,58:48

To add all “regular” characters to character class 48, add the following line to ~/.Xresources:

xterm*charClass: 33-126:48

Activate the change:

$ xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources

xterm Knows More Than Just Words

Words are just one kind of character grouping in xterm. The full list is:

word: As defined above.
line: The entire line to which the character under the pointer belongs to.
group: Basically the paragraph the character under the pointer belongs to, i.e. all lines above and below up to the next blank line. Does not extend outside the current page.
page: All visible lines on the current page.
all: All lines, including i.e. saved lines.

Even that is not all there is, though. On top of that, it is even possible to define custom groupings via regular expressions (basically, all other predefined groupings are just shortcuts; they could just as well be defined via a corresponding regular expression). Also, there is the pseudo-grouping none which specifies that no selection should occur in the respective case.

So it is possible to specify in a very fine-grained way what will be in the primary selection when double-clicking on some character. But it can be specified just as well what happens when clicking multiple (i.e. more than two) times in rapid succession. This is useful since one may be interested in selecting different character groupings depending on the respective case. For instance, in the default configuration, triple-clicking usually selects the entire line. Which character grouping is selected when clicking 2, 3, 4 and 5 times in rapid succession is specified by assigning one of the character groupings defined above to the xterm resources on2Clicks, on3Clicks, on4Clicks and on5Clicks, respectively.

As an example, in order to specify that double-clicking should select words defined as a string consisting of alphanumeric characters, the underscore, the exclamation mark and the colon, that triple-clicking should select words defined as a string consisting of all regular characters except whitespace (defined via a corresponding regular expression), and that clicking four times in rapid succession should select the entire line, add the following lines to ~/.Xresources:

xterm*charClass: 33:48,58:48
xterm*on2Clicks: word
xterm*on3Clicks: regex [^[:space:]]+
xterm*on4Clicks: line

Even when using the mouse sparingly, it is very convenient to be able to specify what gets selected on multiple clicks in xterm, and it certainly does save some time.

Taking Screenshots on OpenBSD

2022-01-30T00:00:00+01:00

Taking Screenshots on OpenBSD

2022-01-30

I rarely need to take screenshots, but occasionally it is convenient to be able to do so. The method described here uses maim, cwm(1) and ksh(1). I use it on OpenBSD, but it should work in a very similar way on all Unix-like operating systems.

Here is how it works:

Preparation

Install maim:

$ doas pkg_add maim

Create a script with the following content and save it to ~/bin/screenshot (assuming ~/bin is in the user’s PATH):

#!/bin/sh

maim -s | xclip -selection clipboard -t image/png

All this script does is invoking maim to prompt the user to select the region of the screen he wants to take a screenshot of, upon which maim will create a PNG image of the region, which is then copied to the clipboard.

Make the script executable:

$ cd ~/bin
$ chmod u+x screenshot

Define a keybinding in ~/.cwmrc for invoking screenshot via the key combination Alt + s (of course, any other combination works as well):

bind-key M-s "bin/screenshot"

Define an alias in ~/.kshrc for pasting the image from the clipboard to a file:

alias clip2file='xclip -selection clipboard -o >'

That’s it.

Taking a Screenshot

Then, to take a screenshot, do the following:

Press Alt + s.
Select the region of the screen you want to take a screenshot of.
Go to a terminal and type:
```
$ clip2file <file>.png
```

The resulting screenshot will be saved to <file>.png.

Installation and Setup of the RainLoop Webmail Client on OpenBSD

2021-12-22T00:00:00+01:00

Installation and Setup of the RainLoop Webmail Client on OpenBSD

2021-12-22

RainLoop is a modern, simple and rather lightweight webmail client. This article describes its installation and setup on a local OpenBSD machine and the configuration necessary for accessing a Posteo e-mail account.

Tested with OpenBSD 6.9, PHP 8.0 and RainLoop 1.16.0.

Prerequisites

On a default OpenBSD installation, only a few things are required in order to get RainLoop set up and running:

Web server. Since we are on OpenBSD, we will be using httpd(8).
PHP. In addition to the extensions contained in the base installation, only PHP-cURL is required, and optionally PHP-PDO for contacts.

No database is required for the core functionality; it is only needed for storing contacts, which is optional.

Installation and Setup

httpd

Create an entry in /etc/httpd.conf for a HTTP server listening on localhost:8080 (of course, any other port can be specified):

server "default" {
  listen on "127.0.0.1" port 8080
  log {
    access "default-access.log"
    error "default-error.log"
  }
  root "/rainloop"
  directory index index.php
  location "/data/*" { block }
  location "*.php" {
    fastcgi socket "/run/php-fpm.sock"
  }
}

Here, it is assumed that RainLoop will be installed in /var/www/rainloop, which therefore needs to be set as the document root for the server. Also, web access to the data subdirectory must be blocked.

Start httpd(8) unless it is already running:

$ doas rcctl enable httpd
$ doas rcctl start httpd

Otherwise, simply restart it:

$ doas rcctl restart httpd

PHP

Install php(1) unless already done:

$ doas pkg_add php

Start the PHP FastCGI Process Manager (PHP-FPM):

$ doas rcctl enable php80_fpm
$ doas rcctl start php80_fpm

Install the PHP-cURL extension and make it known to PHP:

$ doas pkg_add php-curl
$ doas ln -sf /etc/php-8.0.sample/curl.ini /etc/php-8.0/

Optionally, install the corresponding PHP-PDO extension for the database to be used (in this case SQLite; other options are MySQL and PostgreSQL) and make it known to PHP:

$ doas pkg_add php-pdo_sqlite
$ doas ln -sf /etc/php-8.0.sample/pdo_sqlite.ini /etc/php-8.0/

RainLoop

Create a directory for RainLoop under /var/www:

$ doas mkdir /var/www/rainloop

Get the latest version of the RainLoop Community edition and unzip it in /var/www/rainloop:

$ doas mkdir /var/www/rainloop
$ cd /var/www/rainloop
$ doas ftp https://www.rainloop.net/repository/webmail/rainloop-community-latest.zip
$ doas unzip rainloop-community-latest.zip
$ doas rm rainloop-community-latest.zip

Set the owner of the data subdirectory to “www”:

$ doas chown -R www data

Finally, copy /etc/resolv.conf to /var/www (otherwise, the domain names of the mail servers may not get resolved to their corresponding IP addresses):

$ mkdir -p /var/www/etc
$ doas cp /etc/resolv.conf /var/www/etc/resolv.conf

RainLoop can then be accessed via the URL localhost:8080, and it can be configured in the admin panel which can be accessed via localhost:8080?admin.

Accessing a Posteo E-Mail Account

Access to a Posteo e-mail account can be set up by creating the file /var/www/rainloop/data/_data_/_default_/domains/posteo.de.ini with the following contents:

imap_host = "posteo.de"
imap_port = 993
imap_secure = "SSL"
imap_short_login = Off
sieve_use = Off
sieve_allow_raw = Off
sieve_host = ""
sieve_port = 4190
sieve_secure = "None"
smtp_host = "posteo.de"
smtp_port = 587
smtp_secure = "TLS"
smtp_short_login = Off
smtp_auth = On
smtp_php_mail = Off

Alternatively, the account can be set up via the admin panel.

References

Pretended Intentionality

2021-10-21T00:00:00+02:00

Pretended Intentionality

2021-10-21

I have recently become aware of an interesting – and somewhat concerning – behavior of mine in relation to my phone: In those spare moments when I am waiting for something, for instance, and the inevitable compulsion to check my phone arises, I often do manage to resist that urge. But after that first little victory over myself, something interesting happens: My mind, unable to accept that it is denied the diversion it so much craves, is trying to come up with suggestions for things that would be worth doing with my phone while waiting:^[1]

What was it again that makes Ridge A such a special place? Now would be a good time to head over to Wikipedia and check it out – after all, there is not much else you can do right now anyway!

Which city in the world has the longest subway system, actually? Well, why not figure it out quickly?

Let’s check openbsd.org to find out whether the new OpenBSD release is already available.

My mind knows that I am trying to control myself in order not to compusively check my phone for no obvious reason whatsoever. And therefore, recognizing that just letting things run will not suffice this time, it becomes creative: Knowing that I am trying hard to act intentionally instead of compulsively and reflexive, it makes me believe that I do in fact act intentionally by rationalizing using my phone.

And thus my mind gets hold of me. It’s the monkey mind at work. But just like a real monkey, it is not just jumping around like crazy; it is also very clever and inventive.

What is so perfidious about it is that my mind is tricking me into the very behavior I am trying to avoid by convincing me that I am in fact avoiding it. Yet, this is all just another, albeit clever, strategy of my mind to run away from the slightest sign of boredom and instead indulge in distractions; that everlasting endeavor of the mind of not having to cope with the truly important things in life – or, at the least, of not having to sit alone in a quiet empty room.

The good thing is: Once you become aware of something you want to change, it becomes possible to actually change it.

1. I am mostly using the terms me and my mind here to refer to the conscious and subconscious parts of myself, respectively. ↩

Derek Sivers: “Useful Not True”

2025-07-06T00:00:00+02:00

Derek Sivers: “Useful Not True”

2025-07-06

Useful Not True is another gem by Derek Sivers. Whenever he publishes a new book, I order it immediately, no matter what it is about. I know from experience that everything he writes is packed with wisdom and insights I don’t want to miss.

Let me start with the form of the book (I am referring to its physical version here): It is short, as Derek’s books usually are. Most chapters are one or two pages at most, very few are longer. The font size is pretty large, as well as the distance between lines, and the lines are rather narrow, which makes the reading a very pleasant experience. This is in contrast to many other books which look as if they were laid out with the goal to pack as many words as possible on each page. With Derek’s books, it is the exact opposite, with respect to both form and content: They look as if the goal was to use as few words as possible (and it was!). They are a perfect example for James Altuchers' maxim “To increase the value of ~~your~~ words, make them as few ~~as possible~~.”

The content of the book perfectly matches its form: It is distilled to the bare minimum of what is necessary to convey its point. Nothing is superfluous; every word serves a purpose. One could certainly easily inflate the books' content to 1000 pages, but it would not be possible to reduce it to fewer pages without losing content.

Useful Not True is a book about perspective. Everything is relative; nothing is absolute. There is no “right” or “wrong”, just “useful” or “useless”. While reading it, so many associations popped up in my mind:

To Zen Buddhism with its belief that everything is made up by the mind alone and its seeking for looking at things as how they are, without making up things about them in our mind.

To phenomenology and its concept of epoché (and similar concepts in Stoicism and other philosophies), a method for refraining from subjective judgements of things or situations.

And even to physics and mathematics, in different aspects: In gauge theories, there are intrinsic unphysical degrees of freedom. By fixing the gauge, those unphysical degrees of freedom can be removed. And this can be done in different ways, depending on what is most useful in the respective situation.

Also, physical theories are formulated as models which describe (physical) reality. They never do it perfectly, though, because they cannot capture every aspect of reality. And yet, good models are extremely useful (and a good model is not necessarily one that describes reality most accurately; it may be perfectly sufficient to describe a very particular aspect of reality with a certain coarseness if it still captures the relevant physical mechanisms). As George E. P. Box put it: “Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful.”

The importance of the book lies in the fact that, while its statement seems perfectly plausible, we very often tend to ignore it. Ask two people standing opposite each other where the river is. The one says: “On the left.” The other says: “On the right.” Who is right? It is remarkable how firm our belief is that there is “right” and “wrong”, while it is so obvious that this is usually not true, if we just looked at things as they are. While the consequences may be trivial as in the example above, they can be arbitrarily grave in other situations.

So, on the one hand, recognizing there are no absolutes can prevent us from making mistakes in judging situations. But there is another aspect, which is hinted at in the title of the book: We can turn this realization to our advantage. You can face a wall, or you can turn around and look at a serene beach. Both perspectives are `"right`" or valid. Why not choose the one you like better? There lies power in not being confronted with the one “true” perspective, but instead being able to choose ones preferred perspective, and this power can be harnessed – provided we know that we can simply turn around.

I will end with my usual recommendation of Derek’s books: Buy it, read it, and digest its content as fully as possible! It is worth every word.

[Stream] 2021-05-01

2021-05-01T00:00:00+02:00

OpenBSD 6.9 released – the 50th OpenBSD release!

[Stream] 2021-05-02

2021-05-02T00:00:00+02:00

Switched from Vim to nvi. Vim started to feel too bloated.

[Stream] 2021-05-06

2021-05-06T00:00:00+02:00

Yes – This is the Mindset For Life.

[Stream] 2021-05-14

2021-05-14T00:00:00+02:00

How to Write: why jotting things into notebooks improves your writing – I fully agree.

[Stream] 2021-05-23

2021-05-23T00:00:00+02:00

A good habit to form: Reading in A Calendar of Wisdom by Leo Tolstoy every day.

[Stream] 2021-06-20

2021-06-20T00:00:00+02:00

New website is live! Here’s why.

[Stream] 2021-06-28

2021-06-28T00:00:00+02:00

Slowly getting used to using the Spleen font in the terminal.

[Stream] 2021-07-04

2021-07-04T00:00:00+02:00

Acting yourself into motivation is much more effective than thinking yourself into motivation or waiting for motivation to occur.

[Stream] 2021-07-11

2021-07-11T00:00:00+02:00

Installed OpenBSD 6.9. A big thanks to the developers for what so far looks like another great release!

[Stream] 2021-07-30

2021-07-30T00:00:00+02:00

What does it mean to be a leader? Leaders make people better. Applies to leading yourself as well.

[Stream] 2021-08-03

2021-08-03T00:00:00+02:00

Every completed Ashtanga practice is a little victory.

[Stream] 2021-08-04 (1/2)

2021-08-04T00:00:00+02:00

The renovated Twin Gable House, designed by Ryan Leidner, is truly amazing with its light-flooded, minimalist interior and beautiful inner courtyard.

[Stream] 2021-08-04 (2/2)

2021-08-04T00:00:00+02:00

In recent years, I have become increasingly aware of the profound effects of walking. Many ideas occur to me while walking, and to me, walking – especially in solitude in nature – is a very calming and contemplative activity. How Walking Fosters Creativity: Stanford Researchers Confirm What Philosophers and Writers Have Always Known is another interesting article on this subject, focusing on the connection between walking and creativity. In particular, it cites the wonderful book “A Philosophy of Walking” by Frédéric Gros.

[Stream] 2021-08-06

2021-08-06T00:00:00+02:00

Once again, I find myself fascinated by the miracles and history of the Laocoon Group.

[Stream] 2021-08-08 (1/2)

2021-08-08T00:00:00+02:00

Two very convenient shell aliases for copying the primary X selection to the system clipboard and vice versa:

alias primary2clip='xsel -p | xsel -i -b'
alias clip2primary='xsel -b | xsel -i -p'

Alternatively, using xclip instead of xsel:

alias primary2clip='xclip -o -selection primary | xclip -i -selection clipboard'
alias clip2primary='xclip -o -selection clipboard | xclip -i -selection primary'

See X is for the X Selection: Copy and Paste on Linux (Shallow Thoughts) for more information.

[Stream] 2021-08-08 (2/2)

2021-08-08T00:00:00+02:00

Rediscovering the joy of cycling.

[Stream] 2021-08-29

2021-08-29T00:00:00+02:00

Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways.

— Stephen Vincent Benét

[Stream] 2021-09-06

2021-09-06T00:00:00+02:00

Man alone measures time. Man alone chimes the hour. And, because of this, man alone suffers a paralyzing fear that no other creature endures. A fear of time running out.

— Mitch Albom
The Time Keeper

(Related recent article by Chris Guillebeau: Time Anxiety Is the Most Pressing Problem of Our Age)

[Stream] 2021-09-07 (1/2)

2021-09-07T00:00:00+02:00

Instead by Seth Godin. A few additions:

Instead of overeating, stop when still feeling slightly hungry.

Instead of exclaiming “I knew it!”, remain silent.

Instead of rushing to the next to-do, sit still for a few moments.

[Stream] 2021-09-07 (2/2)

2021-09-07T00:00:00+02:00

Can we please establish a universal code of conduct stating that no smartphones are to be used at the dining table?

[Stream] 2021-09-08 (1/2)

2021-09-08T00:00:00+02:00

Beautiful article: Long, Boring Walks by Craig Mod.

[Stream] 2021-09-08 (2/2)

2021-09-08T00:00:00+02:00

Wise advice: Make Sure You Write Down Everything Interesting That You Find.

[Stream] 2021-09-13

2021-09-13T00:00:00+02:00

My advice (for what it’s worth) for success and happiness: Compete with yourself and root for everybody else.

— Candice Millard
https://twitter.com/candice_millard/status/1383508127442608141

[Stream] 2021-09-23

2021-09-23T00:00:00+02:00

Roden 059 – Stupid Life Tricks by Craig Mod contains a thoughtful piece on the ever-present distractions of our phones and their consequences – a pressing and, in my opinion, still underrated issue of our time. In particular, it cites an expressive passage from the recent article Picturing the Humanity and Dread of the Infinite Scroll by Jia Tolentino, and refers to an interesting Aziz Ansari interview, Aziz Ansari on Quitting the Internet, Loneliness, and Season 3 of Master of None. Finally, it mentions two great articles by Craig himself, The Glorious, Almost-Disconnected Boredom of My Walk in Japan and How I Got My Attention Back – both must-reads.

[Stream] 2021-10-03

2021-10-03T00:00:00+02:00

High school and university students have designed and built a LEGO model of the detector of the ALICE experiment at CERN, consisting of about 16,000 LEGO bricks – highly impressive!

[Stream] 2021-10-21

2021-10-21T00:00:00+02:00

“…which components of what aspects of the many things making up our lives at any point are worth noting in some external fashion, and which can be left undocumented?” – The question Colin Wright is asking in his newsletter article Documentation, and a question I am pondering as well.

[Stream] 2021-11-13 (1/2)

2021-11-13T00:00:00+01:00

I love beautiful hand-crafted web sites. Examples: sive.rs, mlaine.sdfeu.org.

[Stream] 2021-11-13 (2/2)

2021-11-13T00:00:00+01:00

Finished reading Your Music and People by Derek Sivers and loved it, though I am not even a musician myself!

[Stream] 2021-12-18

2021-12-18T00:00:00+01:00

Rediscovered two good posts by Zach Holman (and, well, Zach Holman himself): Keeping a Journal and My Favorite Tweet. Also, Text Snippets. Boom.

[Stream] 2021-12-20

2021-12-20T00:00:00+01:00

I hate Ashtanga Yoga. And I love it.

[Stream] 2022-01-09

2022-01-09T00:00:00+01:00

Taschenhirn.de: Knowledge database containing lots of interesting data in the form of lists organized into different categories (German only).

[Stream] 2022-01-16 (1/2)

2022-01-16T00:00:00+01:00

Harder, easier and more convenient by Seth Godin – the aspiration to ever more convenience is often faulty.

[Stream] 2022-01-16 (2/2)

2022-01-16T00:00:00+01:00

Just finished reading Hell Yeah or No by Derek Sivers and enjoyed it at least as much as Your Music and People. Great collection of articles, including some of my favorites by Derek, like Actions, not words, reveal our real values, Subtract, Disconnect, Everything is my fault, My favorite fable, Parenting : Who is it really for?, and I’m a very slow thinker, among others.

[Stream] 2022-01-24

2022-01-24T00:00:00+01:00

A worthy prompt: Just For A Moment, Let’s Be Still.

[Stream] 2022-01-29

2022-01-29T00:00:00+01:00

“Just in case” – One of the most common justifications for letting clutter accrue.

[Stream] 2022-01-30

2022-01-30T00:00:00+01:00

New note: Taking Screenshots on OpenBSD.

[Stream] 2022-02-05

2022-02-05T00:00:00+01:00

I had long been looking for a keyboard alternative to clicking the middle mouse button for pasting the primary selection. Recently I learned that pressing Shift + Insert will do it – very convenient!

[Stream] 2022-02-11

2022-02-11T00:00:00+01:00

I didn’t know that carrot greens are edible and so delicious when stir-fried!

[Stream] 2022-02-12

2022-02-12T00:00:00+01:00

New note: Multiple-Click Selections in xterm.

[Stream] 2022-02-13

2022-02-13T00:00:00+01:00

Finished reading How to Live by Derek Sivers. A definite must-read: Extremely dense and to the point, packed with wisdom – in a word: stunning!

[Stream] 2022-02-20

2022-02-20T00:00:00+01:00

Jeder Mensch – Initiative for six new fundamental rights for Europe which take the major developments and problems of the recent decades into account.

[Stream] 2022-02-23

2022-02-23T00:00:00+01:00

Apparently, there was an inscription on the temple of the Oracle of Delphi which read:

Know thyself
Nothing to excess

Maxims to be taken to heart.

[Stream] 2022-03-04 (1/4)

2022-03-04T00:00:00+01:00

xkcd: ISO 8601 – Exactly.

[Stream] 2022-03-04 (2/4)

2022-03-04T00:00:00+01:00

I fully agree with practically everything stated in Write plain text files by Derek Sivers as I have come to the same conclusions myself. Another one of Derek’s articles which can hardly be cited too often.

[Stream] 2022-03-04 (3/4)

2022-03-04T00:00:00+01:00

I have never really seen coding the way described in The Healing Power of Code by Craig Mod, but I can definitely relate to much of what is being said in the article.

[Stream] 2022-03-04 (4/4)

2022-03-04T00:00:00+01:00

Base64-encode a string from the command line using uuencode(1):

$ echo -n <string> | b64encode '' | sed '1d;$d' | tr -d '\n'

[Stream] 2022-03-06 (1/2)

2022-03-06T00:00:00+01:00

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

— T.S. Eliot
The Rock

[Stream] 2022-03-06 (2/2)

2022-03-06T00:00:00+01:00

As the title of Ridgeline: 139 – Walk for the Boredom of it All by Craig Mod implies, the topic of this newsletter article is boredom, and since it is Craig Mod, specifically the boredom while walking. Actually, it mostly references a recent interview with him, citing some passages from it and featuring his comments to them. In particular, he further stresses the importance of boredom in his remarks.

Boredom is an issue I also find highly interesting, and I am convinced – as Craig is – that it is really important to experience boredom and to be able to stand it and cope with it, and that we currently live in an age where we are trying very hard to do everything we can to not be bored, mostly by resorting to various kinds of ever more intricate and sophisticated (and not so sophisticated) distractions and diversions.

[Stream] 2022-03-26

2022-03-26T00:00:00+01:00

The Tyranny of Convenience by Tim Wu – an important article to which I was pointed by the article Harder, easier and more convenient by Seth Godin. Both articles emphasize the importance of doing things which are not convenient, in the face of the general trend towards ever more convenience in practically all areas of life. The last paragraph of Tim Wu’s article provides a good summary:

So let’s reflect on the tyranny of convenience, try more often to resist its stupefying power, and see what happens. We must never forget the joy of doing something slow and something difficult, the satisfaction of not doing what is easiest. The constellation of inconvenient choices may be all that stands between us and a life of total, efficient conformity.

[Stream] 2022-03-27

2022-03-27T00:00:00+01:00

Just rediscovered this impressive depiction of depths: xkcd: Lakes and Oceans.

[Stream] 2022-04-02

2022-04-02T00:00:00+02:00

Turning off my phone improved my science – insightful article by PhD student Adam Weiss. How much would our all lives be improved if we stopped using our phones all the time?

[Stream] 2022-05-08

2022-05-08T00:00:00+02:00

103 Bits of Advice I Wish I Had Known by Kevin Kelly: Full of insights and invaluable advice.

Note to myself: Reread at least once per month.

Update 2025-09-28: No longer available online. The advice is now contained in a book titled “Excellent Advice for Living”.

[Stream] 2022-08-17

2022-08-17T00:00:00+02:00

Population density world map by NASA Earth Obervations (NEO) (contains various other interesting maps of the world).

[Stream] 2022-08-29

2022-08-29T00:00:00+02:00

The digital collection of the Städel Museum contains more than 24,000 images of artworks in the public domain.

[Stream] 2022-09-04

2022-09-04T00:00:00+02:00

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is certainly one of the great achievements of mankind (in spite of the – in many cases entirely insufficient – degree to which human rights are respected throughout the world). Yet, with rights also come responsibilities. A Universal Declaration of Human Responsibilities is a proposal by the InterAction Council for human responsibilities that come along with the human rights.

[Stream] 2022-11-03

2022-11-03T00:00:00+01:00

The Minimalism Life Manifesto.

[Stream] 2023-01-14

2023-01-14T00:00:00+01:00

Since yesterday was Friday, the 13th, I was wondering how often the 13th day of a month is a Friday. Instead of trying to come up with a proper derivation, I approached the question by employing brute force (i.e. by writing a small script on the computer which counts such occurrences).

The result: On average, there are approximately 1.72 occurrences of Friday, the 13th, per year.

(Of course, if one were less lazy than me, one could also just do the math, or if one were even more lazy than me, one could just look it up.)

[Stream] 2023-02-09

2023-02-09T00:00:00+01:00

A great example of seeing things from a different point of view: The short story “The House of Asterion” by Jorge Luis Borges.

[Stream] 2023-02-10

2023-02-10T00:00:00+01:00

New note: A Simple E-Mail Reminder System Based on cron and at.

[Stream] 2023-02-11 (1/2)

2023-02-11T00:00:00+01:00

New text: The Melancholy of the Day.

[Stream] 2023-02-11 (2/2)

2023-02-11T00:00:00+01:00

“Gibs auf” (“Give it up!”): Fascinating (and, well, very Kafkaesque) very short story by Franz Kafka.

[Stream] 2023-02-12

2023-02-12T00:00:00+01:00

The importance of editing texts and refactoring code can hardly be overestimated.

[Stream] 2023-03-12

2023-03-12T00:00:00+01:00

We have lost the ability to just be. We know how to do, but not how to be.

[Stream] 2023-02-26 (1/2)

2023-02-26T00:00:00+01:00

New article: Running Anki inside Xephyr.

[Stream] 2023-02-26 (2/2)

2023-02-26T00:00:00+01:00

There are few things which are as humbling as practicing Ashtanga Yoga regularly.

[Stream] 2023-03-05

2023-03-05T00:00:00+01:00

New article: Derek Sivers: “How to Live”.

[Stream] 2023-03-10

2023-03-10T00:00:00+01:00

Simply beautiful: BEING by Michael Torke. Found it via c.im/@jwsgeek@glod.org/109996126447093296.

[Stream] 2023-03-11 (1/2)

2023-03-11T00:00:00+01:00

Ashtanga Yoga is not about progress. It’s about perseverance.

[Stream] 2023-03-11 (2/2)

2023-03-11T00:00:00+01:00

3 good things:

Meditated for 20 minutes – first time in a rather long time.
Played two rounds of the fantastic game “Ganz schön clever” with my son.
Got some fresh air in the afternoon.

[Stream] 2023-03-15 (1/2)

2023-03-15T00:00:00+01:00

I’ll admit it: I usually have way too many browser tabs open. Every now and then, I lose my open tabs upon restarting the browser (because it could not fully recover from a previous crash or for whatever other reason). And each and every time, I somehow feel relieved when that happens. I don’t miss any of the tabs I previously considered too valuable to close; usually, I cannot even remember most of them.

Which reminds me that I should really adjust my browser preferences such that tabs will not be reopened upon starting…

[Stream] 2023-03-15 (2/2)

2023-03-15T00:00:00+01:00

Good article by Bradley Taunt: Stop Using Custom Web Fonts (also good: A rant on web font licenses by Manu Moreale, referenced in Bradley’s article).

[Stream] 2023-03-16

2023-03-16T00:00:00+01:00

The Unpredictable Abilities Emerging From Large AI Models: At the same time startling, intriguing, and uncanny.

[Stream] 2023-03-26

2023-03-26T00:00:00+01:00

A set of guidelines for designing command-line programs based on Unix principles: Command Line Interface Guidelines

[Stream] 2023-03-27

2023-03-27T00:00:00+02:00

Avoid unnecessary amplifiers by Seth Godin.

[Stream] 2023-03-28

2023-03-28T00:00:00+02:00

Thoughts on journaling: Answering common questions by Michael Eaton.

[Stream] 2023-04-27 (1/2)

2023-04-27T00:00:00+02:00

Space Elevator: Really fun, not just for kids.

[Stream] 2023-04-27 (2/2)

2023-04-27T00:00:00+02:00

The best science images of 2022: Stunning!

[Stream] 2023-05-03

2023-05-03T00:00:00+02:00

Nice article about Turing machines: The Most Important Machine That Was Never Built.

[Stream] 2023-06-16

2023-06-16T00:00:00+02:00

Simple way to rename a hash key in Ruby:

hash[new_key] = hash.delete(old_key)

This employs the fact that the delete method returns the value associated with the key to be deleted. Therefore, it is equivalent to:

hash[new_key] = hash[old_key]
hash.delete(old_key)

Note: If old_key is not guaranteed to exist, the case that it does not exist needs to be handled.

[Stream] 2023-09-09

2023-09-09T00:00:00+02:00

I first became aware of Johann Sebastian Bach’s genius when I read Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter, one of my favorite non-fiction books of all time, more than two decades ago. The question posed by Tyler Cowen, Is Bach the greatest achiever of all time?, therefore seems fully reasonable to me.

[Stream] 2023-11-21

2023-11-21T00:00:00+01:00

Can little actions bring big joy? Researchers find 'micro-acts' can boost well-being (via https://mastodon.social/@Robinbonhomme/111449193672309445)

[Stream] 2023-11-26

2023-11-26T00:00:00+01:00

The Plaintext Journal: An open project created by Geffrey van der Bos about the importance of plain text for digital communication. Articles can be contributed and edited by anyone by making pull requests on a GitHub Repository. As the website states: We believe in the timeless essence of plain text. Yes, we do!

[Stream] 2024-06-07

2024-06-07T00:00:00+02:00

So true: Store-Brand Insecurity by Joshua Fields Millburn of The Minimalists.

[Stream] 2024-06-23

2024-06-23T00:00:00+02:00

Dopamine fasting is a tech fad that sounds silly – but might just work by Oliver Burkeman.

[Stream] 2024-07-06

2024-07-06T00:00:00+02:00

Nice article about the wonderful John Baez: Mathematician Aims to Keep It Simple

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-07-07 (1/4)

2024-07-07T00:00:00+02:00

Read (and watch) The Walking Man by Jiro Taniguchi. Why? Craig Mod explains it much better than I could in Ridgeline Transmission 158 (which is worth reading in its own right). Just like Craig, it took me a year of two to actually buy and read it (since – just like Craig – I am not a big comics reader), but it was on my list ever since I read Craig’s review. It may not be for everyone, but if you can relate to the theme, it is definitely worth it.

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-07-07 (2/4)

2024-07-07T00:00:00+02:00

And for those interested in a more philosophical elaboration of the subject of walking, A Philosophy of Walking by Frédéric Gros might be for you (as well as basically everything Craig Mod writes, of course).

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-07-07 (3/4)

2024-07-07T00:00:00+02:00

The Elegance of Plain-Text Writing

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-07-07 (4/4)

2024-07-07T00:00:00+02:00

It’s a pity that most undergraduate physics students today are still not properly being taught about the geometrical nature of tensors. While tensors are at the foundation of much of the mathematics of physics today, they are still not usually being introduced and taught as the geometrical objects they are. Sure, when working in a space which is endowed with sufficient structure, many objects can be transformed to either vectors or scalars, but that completely conceals their true geometrical nature.

It is really remarkable (in a sad way) that the focus of teaching today is so much on what is likely considered to be some kind of pragmatism or practicality. This may make it easier to quickly get enabled to calculate stuff, but this ease comes at the expense of developing a real understanding. I think this is a very shortsighted approach.

Furthermore, and just as important in my opinion, students are deprived of experiencing the full beauty of these objects in favor of providing them with a mere tool whose sole purpose it is to be able to somehow obtain correct results (not that this is not important, but it is only one aspect).

So what to do about this? For beginning undergraduate students, I recommend reading Geometrical Vectors by Gabriel Weinreich (which basically contains no formulae at all and instead completely focuses on conveying a grasp of the objects themselves). When I first read Geometrical Vectors sometime during my undergraduate studies, it did not speak to me at all (I guess I was already too much indoctrinated by the traditional, orthodox way of teaching vectors and tensors). The second time I read it, however, was a profound experience, almost like an epiphany.

After having developed a basic understanding of these matters, Gauge fields, knots and gravity by John Baez and Javier P. Muniain is a great resource (it contains much more and advanced material though). John Baez is a master of conveying physical and mathematical ideas, and I would recommend basically everything he writes.

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-07-12

2024-07-12T00:00:00+02:00

Human beings used to witness
25,000 sunrises during their lifetime.
Have you seen 25 in the last year?
Or were you too busy?

— The Minimalists
Unbusy

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-07-14 (1/2)

2024-07-14T00:00:00+02:00

Why Functional Programming Matters by Minh Quang Tran.

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-07-14 (2/2)

2024-07-14T00:00:00+02:00

Finished reading Der Zen-Affe und die Lotusblume (The Zen Monkey and the Lotus Flower). Although the many beautiful Buddhist stories and parables appear a little corny and naive at times, they convey timeless insights and wisdom and are pleasant to read. I could have done without the explanations after each story, though.

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-07-20

2024-07-20T00:00:00+02:00

In the case of climate, we are not the dinosaurs. We are the meteor. We are not only in danger. We are the danger. But we are also the solution.

— António Guterres, UN Secretary-General

Source: Special address on climate action, A Moment of Truth, to the American Museum of Natural History in New York on 2024-06-04 (https://press.un.org/en/2024/sgsm22255.doc.htm).

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-07-23

2024-07-23T00:00:00+02:00

Best statement about patriotism I have ever heard:

No, no. I don’t love states. I love my wife; that’s it.

— Gustav Heinemann, former President of Germany

(German original: “Ach was, ich liebe keine Staaten, ich liebe meine Frau; fertig!”)

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-08-08 (1/2)

2024-08-08T00:00:00+02:00

Note to self: Instead of impulsively checking the phone in idle moments and mindlessly browsing the web (which includes mindlessly browsing Mastodon), do a few rounds of mindful breathing instead.

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-08-08 (2/2)

2024-08-08T00:00:00+02:00

An ability of utmost importance – and becoming ever more important: To be able to focus, to not easily get distracted, to withstand the constant fight for one’s attention.

A true superpower.

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-08-09

2024-08-09T00:00:00+02:00

First Ashtanga Yoga practice in a while this morning. Was a tough one (even more so than usual). Right knee hurt a lot, as was to be expected. Sweated like crazy in the tropical heat of Nha Trang, Vietnam (in spite of the early morning hours).

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-08-13 (1/4)

2024-08-13T00:00:00+02:00

Went to see the current exhibition Planet Ocean in the Gasometer Oberhausen when I visited my hometown a couple of weeks ago. Another great exhibition in this really cool location; thinking about going a second time later this year.

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-08-13 (2/4)

2024-08-13T00:00:00+02:00

Beautiful restaurant with many vegan options in Nha Trang, Vietnam, not far from the beach: Ơi Nha Trang

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-08-13 (3/4)

2024-08-13T00:00:00+02:00

You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.

— Cormac McCarthy

A very stoic and true quote.

Also see: My favorite fable by Derek Sivers.

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-08-13 (4/4)

2024-08-13T00:00:00+02:00

A little vegan gem in Đà Lạt, Vietnam: “Quán Chay Hằng Thiện”. The vegan lẩu (hot pot) is excellent.

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-08-14

2024-08-14T00:00:00+02:00

Richard Rogler, one of the great German political satirists (“Kabarettist”), died at age 74.

May you rest in peace.

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-08-15

2024-08-15T00:00:00+02:00

Eating fresh mangosteens – what a joy!

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-08-16

2024-08-16T00:00:00+02:00

Note to self: Spend more time squatting.

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-08-19

2024-08-19T00:00:00+02:00

Just had my first sugar apple (or sweetsop?) in years – so delicious!

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-08-21

2024-08-21T00:00:00+02:00

Perspectives are not right or wrong. They are useful or not useful.

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-08-27 (1/3)

2024-08-27T00:00:00+02:00

Words uttered far too rarely: “I don’t know.”

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-08-27 (2/3)

2024-08-27T00:00:00+02:00

The best booster for creativity: Being in motion.

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-08-27 (3/3)

2024-08-27T00:00:00+02:00

Always take the stairs.

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-08-28 (1/2)

2024-08-28T00:00:00+02:00

Repeating things over and over again creates strong habits with time.

We are aware of this and make use of it when we deliberately try to form new, beneficial habits.

But it is just as true for all the things we repeat unconsciously all the time. It is worth trying to become aware of these as well and asking ourselves if they create habits which serve us or habits which hinder – or even harm – us.

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-08-28 (2/2)

2024-08-28T00:00:00+02:00

The wonderful and timeless text Words by Justin Jackson actually quite perfectly captures the essence of what the Gemini protocol was made for.

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-08-30

2024-08-30T00:00:00+02:00

Two really great (and completely unrelated) documentaries I watched a while back on a flight:

The Alpinist about climber Marc-André Leclerc.
The Way I See It about Pete Souza, former Chief Official White House Photographer.

Both are highly recommended!

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-09-01 (1/2)

2024-09-01T00:00:00+02:00

I have created a Gemini capsule out of curiosity: thorstenzoeller.com.

It is hosted on OpenBSD Amsterdam (just like this website) and served by gmid(8) by Omar Polo. Setting it up was really simple!

Thanks to OpenBSD Amsterdam for hosting my website as well as my Gemini capsule, and thanks to Omar for having written the gmid server!

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-09-01 (2/2)

2024-09-01T00:00:00+02:00

Just started reading Ed Mastery by Michael W Lucas, and it’s great fun (and very instructive as well).

I’m starting to feel a little whimpy as a vi user, though…

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-09-03

2024-09-03T00:00:00+02:00

Installed aerc today and quite like it at first (and second) glance.

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-09-05 (1/3)

2024-09-05T00:00:00+02:00

Today’s featured article on the German Wikipedia is about Caspar David Friedrich, one of my favorite painters. Worth reading (I guess the English version as well)!

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-09-05 (2/3)

2024-09-05T00:00:00+02:00

Above 30 °C in Frankfurt right now. Might well be the hottest day here in the remaining year (although in previous years, we had days with temperatures around 30 °C as late as mid-October).

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-09-05 (3/3)

2024-09-05T00:00:00+02:00

Practiced meditation for 20 minutes yesterday and today morning. First time in a while…

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-09-06 (1/3)

2024-09-06T00:00:00+02:00

I love the pictures of the Scottish Highlands by Steve Carter. They not only capture the beautiful rough Highlands landscape, sometimes displaying scattered tr aces of mankind, sometimes not, but – and this is why they are so appealing to me &ndahs; they often create a really dense atmosphere which I find captivating.

Highly recommended!

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-09-06 (2/3)

2024-09-06T00:00:00+02:00

So why does the behavior of dc(1) and bc(1) differ with respect to the -e command-line parameter?

$ bc -e <expr>

evaluates <expr> and then enters the REPL, while

$ dc -e <expr>

evaluates <expr> and then exits.

The advantage of the bc(1) behavior is that one can easily define an alias which e.g. sets the scale before doing calculations:

alias bc="bc -e 'scale = 2'"

while defining an alias with the equivalent expression for dc(1),

alias dc="dc -e '2 k'"

does not make a lot of sense.

Am I missing something?

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-09-06 (3/3)

2024-09-06T00:00:00+02:00

Again practiced meditation for 20 minutes this morning.

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-09-07 (1/5)

2024-09-07T00:00:00+02:00

Foggy morning in Frankfurt. Probably going to be another warm day before the temperature drops somewhat.

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-09-07 (2/5)

2024-09-07T00:00:00+02:00

Practiced meditation for 30 minutes this morning.

And yeah, I am fully aware of the irony that I am already back to social media…

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-09-07 (3/5)

2024-09-07T00:00:00+02:00

Creating a Gemini capsule (in particular when approached with the mindset of creating a web page) is another proof for the fact that constraints often foster creativity and focus on what is really important.

In short: Not being able to do everything is often a good thing.

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-09-07 (4/5)

2024-09-07T00:00:00+02:00

I always felt like being too much of a mathematician for being a physicist, and too much of a physicist for being a mathematician – like sitting between two chairs.

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-09-07 (5/5)

2024-09-07T00:00:00+02:00

Did some gardening work in the evening, enjoyed vegan overnight oats made with oat milk – time to close the day.

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-09-08 (1/2)

2024-09-08T00:00:00+02:00

Practiced meditation for 30 minutes this morning.

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-09-08 (2/2)

2024-09-08T00:00:00+02:00

Got some more gardening work done before the rain starts.

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-09-09

2024-09-09T00:00:00+02:00

Practiced meditation for 30 minutes this morning.

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-09-11

2024-09-11T00:00:00+02:00

One of the things I really like about the geminiprotocol is that Gemini capsules lend themselves to being viewed with a text-based Gemini client in a terminal (although there are great GUI Gemini clients as well, notably Lagrange).

While there are text-based browsers for web pages as well (like lynx, links or w3m), to me they always felt more like workarounds, since the web is very much m ultimedia-oriented these days (in spite of its origins).

On the contrary, since the geminiprotocol is text-oriented, text-based Gemini clients feel completely natural to me.

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-09-15 (1/3)

2024-09-15T00:00:00+02:00

Practiced meditation for 30 minutes this morning.

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-09-15 (2/3)

2024-09-15T00:00:00+02:00

I love the poem “Small Kindnesses” (see www.danushalameris.com/poems) by Danusha Lameris, an ode to kindness and compassion. It is not about big, heroic actions, but rather about small, everyday acts often performed almost unconsciously. Yet those small kindnesses are so important for our living together that they deserve attention and awareness.

It is a beautiful elaboration on the Dalai Lama’s famous statement “My religion is kindness”.

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-09-15 (3/3)

2024-09-15T00:00:00+02:00

Thinking differentiates the world, meditation integrates it.

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-09-22

2024-09-22T00:00:00+02:00

A simple demonstration of the monkey mind in action I find startling every time I am experiencing it:

When something comes to your mind which you must not or do not want to forget, do not write it down (or otherwise persist it) immediately, but instead try to keep it in your mind for a couple of minutes.

Sounds easy, but most of the times when something I need to or want to remember comes to my mind while brushing my teeth, for instance, I have forgotten it by the time I am finished because my mind has already jumped to the next subject(s) it happens to find interesting.

Time and again I am thinking to myself in such situations: “Come on, it is impossible that you forget <thought so and so> until you are done with <activity so and so> just repeat the thought in your mind all the time.” And often, the thought is forgotten within a fraction of a minute.

Of course, oftentimes I will remember my thought again after a while; usually it is not completely forgotten and gone. The point is that this shows that it is really hard to focus your mind on a single thing even for a short period of time.

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-09-29 (1/2)

2024-09-29T00:00:00+02:00

Finished reading Ed Mastery by Michael W Lucas. Review will be coming shortly.

Looking forward to getting Run Your Own Mail Server next.

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-09-29 (2/2)

2024-09-29T00:00:00+02:00

Here’s my review of Michael W Lucas: “Ed Mastery”.

Make sure to read the review by Peter N. M. Hansteen as well (might be a little more factual than mine…)!

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-11-03 (1/2)

2024-11-03T00:00:00+01:00

A nice – if somewhat explicit – companion to Words by Justin Jackson:

Motherfucking Website

And another reason for the Gemini protocol, for that matter.

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-11-03 (2/2)

2024-11-03T00:00:00+01:00

The “Día de Muertos” is a really beautiful tradition (and yes, I know I’m a little late…). It is so contrary to the way death is dealt with in most European cultures (and in particular in German culture), where it is usually attempted to avoid thinking of death as much as possible.

To me, it seems that the “Día de Muertos” is a very healthy way of coping with death and acknowledging that there is no live withouth death – memento mori.

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-11-12

2024-11-12T00:00:00+01:00

Sharath Jois, director of the Sharath Yoga Centre in Mysore, India, and lineage holder of the Ashtanga Yoga system, dies at age 53.

A sad reminder that all of our lives, no matter how healthy and strong we may seem, hang by a thread and can end at any one moment. Memento mori!

May you rest in peace.

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-12-14

2024-12-14T00:00:00+01:00

Reading The Wizard of Oz for the first time in my life, in preparation for watching it in theater over Christmas with my son and parents.

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2024-12-15

2024-12-15T00:00:00+01:00

I rarely spend time just sitting there and looking out of the window into the garden, for instance, but it is always worth it. Taking time for becoming calm, doing “nothing”, not being “productive”, enjoying stillness is so important and necessary.

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2025-01-03

2025-01-03T00:00:00+01:00

Started reading A System for Writing by Bob Doto (got it after heaving read the great review by Richard Griffiths). Haven’t read much of it so far, but it already looks very primising!

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2025-02-09

2025-02-09T00:00:00+01:00

Interesting: 33 Ways To Improve Your Life, Japanese Style (via Recomendo - issue #449)

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2025-02-16

2025-02-16T00:00:00+01:00

The importance of being able to focus and concentrate and to withstand distractions and immediate gratifications can hardly be overstated.

It is one of the most powerful abilities in today’s world, and it will be even more so in the future when methods to catch the attention of people will get ever more refined.

While in the past people were able to focus entire days on writing or thinking (provided they could afford it), today someone who is able to concentrate on a single task for an extended period of time has almost become an exception.

We live in an age of distraction and diversion, of minimal attention spans and of scattered, fragmented and erratic minds.

This is no new insight, but worth remembering.

Being able to focus is a true superpower.

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2025-03-09

2025-03-09T00:00:00+01:00

Forgot my mobile phone in the car when I got home yesterday and only noticed it 3 hours later.

Pretty happy about that (well, not necessarily about my mental presence, but about my ability to live without a phone for short periods of time).

And no, I didn’t sleep during those 3 hours.

And yes, I’m fully aware of how ridiculous it is to be proud of that.

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2025-03-11

2025-03-11T00:00:00+01:00

Read How I Got My Attention Back by Craig Mod for the second or third time. It is a wonderful piece which is more relevant and timely than ever (even with respect to the political allusions – now, eight years after it was first published).

It is eloquently written and full or relevant observations and insights. Also, it reminds me of how much I like Craig’s writing style and that I should really read more from him (in particular his great newsletters!).

In fact, I think one can see the piece as an excellent elaboration on the central proposition “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone” by Blaise Pascal, which is quoted in the piece (and which has long been one of my favorite quotes). But while man was not able to sit quietly in a room alone already several hundred years ago, in our times it has become incomparably harder – knowing that the much sought-after distraction – and thereby salvation – from his aloneness is not waiting somewhere outside his empty room, but beckoning right next to his fingertips.

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2025-03-13

2025-03-13T00:00:00+01:00

Finished reading A System for Writing by Bob Doto (yes, I’m a very slow reader…). My first impression was confirmed by the rest of the book, which is very well written and devised. I learned quite a bit from the book, and it definitely renewed my interest in the Zettelkasten method.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in PKM in general, the Zettelkasten method in particular, and/or writing which is supported by the use of a Zettelkasten.

Hat tip to Richard Griffiths for pointing me to the book via his review!

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2025-03-16 (1/2)

2025-03-16T00:00:00+01:00

I have several files (mostly related to the logging of tasks, events etc.) where (some) lines start with a date. Since the current date is usually not at the very beginning or very end of the file, a convenient shortcut in Vim or Neovim (or other Vim-like editors) to jump to the current date is:

nnoremap <C-G> /^<C-R>=strftime('%Y-%m-%d')<CR><CR>:noh<CR>

This assumes that the date is given in the strftime format %Y-%m-%d (the only true date format), and it maps the command to the key combination <Ctrl>+G (of course it can be mapped to any other key or key combination).

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2025-03-16 (2/2)

2025-03-16T00:00:00+01:00

Our perception is fully compatible with the assumption that everything, including all our memories, was created an instant (or any other time) ago.

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2025-03-18

2025-03-18T00:00:00+01:00

Started reading Lev Shestov: Philosopher of the Sleepless Night by Matthew Beaumont and am very curious about it.

I hadn’t known Lev Shestov before reading The Myth of Sisyphos by Albert Camus, in which he is mentioned several times and which got me interested in him in the first place. What caught my attention most is Shestov’s deep belief that reality cannot be pressed into a (philosophical or any other kind of) system and that humans are fundamentally irrational beings.

Let’s see what the book has in store about this largely unknown thinker…

Read on Mastodon.

[Stream] 2025-07-06

2025-07-06T00:00:00+02:00

My review of Useful Not True by Derek Sivers.

[Stream] 2025-08-13 (1/2)

2025-08-13T00:00:00+02:00

Having a lot of fun playing Pickleball in Vietnam. There are so many Pickleball courts here – in contrast to Germany, where there are still very few courts unfortunately…

[Stream] 2025-08-13 (2/2)

2025-08-13T00:00:00+02:00

Finished reading “The Worst Ship in the Fleet” a couple of days ago, the first part of Skyler Ramirez' “Dumb Luck and Dead Heroes” series. I had bought a copy of it after having read about it more or less by chance on Nathan Lowell’s website (hat tip to Nathan Lowell).

It is a quick read and rather fast paced, and I enjoyed it a lot. There are certainly inconsistencies and logical hiccups, but I didn’t really care (in contrast to pretty much everything outside of fiction, where I would typically care a lot). The story is captivating, but what is probably most compelling are its two main characters. I am really curious about how their relationship will be developing in the course of the series.

Looking forward to reading part two, “The Worst Spies in the Sector”.

[Stream] 2025-08-15

2025-08-15T00:00:00+02:00

Finished reading “Lev Shestov – Philosopher of the Sleepless Night” by Matthew Beaumont yesterday. I wanted to read more about Shestov ever since I first read about him in “The Myth of Sisyphos” by Albert Camus. Unfortunately, he is mostly forgotten these days, and it is hard to get hold of copies of his original works.

With his rather short, but very dense book, Beaumont offers a lot of information about this elusive and highly unique thinker, focusing on one of his central themes or motives, sleeplessnessand watchfulness in the face of the horrors of our world.

There is much to say about this book, and I plan to elaborate on it in a longer review.

[Stream] 2025-08-16

2025-08-16T00:00:00+02:00

Last day in Hanoi, Vietnam, before heading back to Germany tonight. Had a great time as usual; in particular my first visit to Danang was memorable.

[Stream] 2025-08-27 (1/2)

2025-08-27T00:00:00+02:00

Delicious lunch: Stir-fried dandelion leaves with rice (yes, that is a full-fledged meal!).

[Stream] 2025-08-27 (2/2)

2025-08-27T00:00:00+02:00

Getting really interested in Solarpunk and looking for good fiction to read.

[Stream] 2025-08-30 (1/2)

2025-08-30T00:00:00+02:00

New article How I Use Vim, a contribution to the first Vim Carnival.

[Stream] 2025-08-30 (2/2)

2025-08-30T00:00:00+02:00

Finally got an account on Codeberg. Feels good!

[Stream] 2025-09-04

2025-09-04T00:00:00+02:00

How I fell in love with calendar.txt: Interesting article about the calendar.txt format for a text-file-based calendar.

[Stream] 2025-09-05 (1/2)

2025-09-05T00:00:00+02:00

Life is an acceleration run towards death.

This is not morbid, but a matter of fact – our time on earth runs out quicker than we would like to believe, no matter what our stage in life.

[Stream] 2025-09-05 (2/2)

2025-09-05T00:00:00+02:00

Haiku attempt:

Vast sky opens
behind the window.
The honey bee cannot escape.

Critique welcome.

[Stream] 2025-09-07

2025-09-07T00:00:00+02:00

Haiku attempt (prompt “Laughter”):

Nightshades falling
over silent meadows –
faint laughter in the distance.

[Stream] 2025-09-08

2025-09-08T00:00:00+02:00

Daily haiku (prompt “Willow”):

the old willow bends
ailingly over the pond
a brown duck swims by

[Stream] 2025-09-09

2025-09-09T00:00:00+02:00

Daily haiku (prompt “Harvest”):

fields stretching golden
beneath the evening sun –
harvest in the cart

[Stream] 2025-09-10

2025-09-10T00:00:00+02:00

Daily haiku (prompt “Grave”):

on a weathered grave
rotten oak leaves are covered
by branches and snow

[Stream] 2025-09-11

2025-09-11T00:00:00+02:00

Daily haiku (prompt “Puddle”):

gusts of wind hitting
the puddle’s quiet blue surface –
the full moon is gone

[Stream] 2025-09-12

2025-09-12T00:00:00+02:00

Daily haiku (prompt “Harvest”):

fruits, nuts, cereal –
the ample harvest delights
mice and men alike

[Stream] 2025-09-13

2025-09-13T00:00:00+02:00

Daily haiku (prompt “Pumpkin”):

the hollow pumpkin
shining dimly from within
grins maliciously

And an alternative version:

the hollow pumpkin
contemplating its grim fate
grins maliciously

[Stream] 2025-09-14 (1/2)

2025-09-14T00:00:00+02:00

Daily haiku (prompt “Chrysanthemums”):

between the debris
a patch of chrsyanthemums
defies the wasteland

[Stream] 2025-09-14 (2/2)

2025-09-14T00:00:00+02:00

I love it when the sun breaks through gloomy clouds. Magnificient play of light!

[Stream] 2025-09-15

2025-09-15T00:00:00+02:00

Daily haiku (prompt “Deer”):

behind a large tree
in the snow-covered forest
a shy deer peeks out

And another one:

the young deer wanders
around in fear, its mother
gone without a trace

[Stream] 2025-09-16

2025-09-16T00:00:00+02:00

Daily haiku (prompt “Orchids”):

in a steep rock face
a wee grassy ledge harbors
two purple orchids

[Stream] 2025-09-17

2025-09-17T00:00:00+02:00

Daily haiku (prompt “Lotus”):

on a mountain top
the monk, sitting in lotus
meditates deeply

[Stream] 2025-09-18

2025-09-18T00:00:00+02:00

Daily haiku (prompt “Morning”):

morning dew pearling
from a daffodil, sunbeams
scattered by the drops

[Stream] 2025-09-19 (1/2)

2025-09-19T00:00:00+02:00

Daily haiku (prompt “Glow”):

a faint glow appears
behind the dark horizon –
morning approaches

[Stream] 2025-09-19 (2/2)

2025-09-19T00:00:00+02:00

Finished reading “Aufzeichnungen aus dem Kellerloch” (“Notes from the Underground”) by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Deeply fascinating psychological study of a social outsider, an "underground man" – disturbing and uncomfortable.

[Stream] 2025-09-20 (1/3)

2025-09-20T00:00:00+02:00

Daily haiku (prompt “Cascade”):

amidst wild waters
cascading down the mountain
a lone tree persists

[Stream] 2025-09-20 (2/3)

2025-09-20T00:00:00+02:00

The joy I get out of tweaking a minimal detail of the layout of my website or from refactoring a tiny piece of code – even if it has no visible effect and just makes things a bit nicer under the hood – is completely irrational, yet very real.

[Stream] 2025-09-20 (3/3)

2025-09-20T00:00:00+02:00

Started reading The Worst Spies in the Sector by Skyler Ramirez – part 2 of his Dumb Luck and Dead Heroes series.

Really looking forward to it after the fun I had reading the first part!

[Stream] 2025-09-21 (1/3)

2025-09-21T00:00:00+02:00

Daily haiku (prompt “Somber”):

in the depth of night
the stars shine faintly above
in somber silence

[Stream] 2025-09-21 (2/3)

2025-09-21T00:00:00+02:00

I would be really willing to give Tuta a try – almost everything about them looks really good.

There is one thing, though, which is a complete no-go for me: Being locked-in to a specific piece of software (even if it is open source) in order to be able to send/receive mail, and in particular not being able to use a terminal-based email client like mutt or aerc which e.g. allow me to use a decent text editor for writing mails.

Any suggestions? Am I missing something?

[Stream] 2025-09-21 (3/3)

2025-09-21T00:00:00+02:00

I have said it before, and I will say it again: The quote “I don’t love my country; I love my wife!” by former German president Gustav Heinemann (freely translated by myself) is the best statement about patriotism I have ever come across.

Note: You can replace “wife” by anything you like – as long as it is a human being.

[Stream] 2025-09-22

2025-09-22T00:00:00+02:00

Daily haiku (prompt “Chilly”):

a pale sun’s light rays
breaking through the chilly fog –
autumn has arrived

[Stream] 2025-09-23

2025-09-23T00:00:00+02:00

Daily haiku (prompt “Salmon”):

a flock of salmon
pushing up the steep river
flanked by lush forests

[Stream] 2025-09-24

2025-09-24T00:00:00+02:00

Daily haiku (prompt “Footsteps”):

footsteps in the snow
barely visible by now
washed away by rain

[Stream] 2025-09-25

2025-09-25T00:00:00+02:00

Daily haiku (prompt “Walnuts”):

in the bowl full of
walnuts, almonds and pecans,
a single raisin

[Stream] 2025-09-26

2025-09-26T00:00:00+02:00

Daily haiku (prompt “Dapple”):

orange dappled floor –
painting the wall was only
a partial success

[Stream] 2025-09-27

2025-09-27T00:00:00+02:00

Daily haiku (prompt “Sea Bass”):

the dark silhouette
of a sea bass swimming past
in troubled waters

[Stream] 2025-09-28

2025-09-28T00:00:00+02:00

Daily haiku (prompt “Eaves”):

droplets dripping down
the eaves, falling towards their
destiny, soon gone

[Stream] 2025-09-29

2025-09-29T00:00:00+02:00

Daily haiku (prompt “Laughter”):

deep solemn silence
all of a sudden broken
by jarring laughter

[Stream] 2025-09-30 (1/4)

2025-09-30T00:00:00+02:00

Daily haiku (prompt “High Tide”):

the small isle, swallowed
by the high tide, waiting to
re-rise from the sea

[Stream] 2025-09-30 (2/4)

2025-09-30T00:00:00+02:00

Finally added an Atom feed to my website: /atom.xml.

[Stream] 2025-09-30 (3/4)

2025-09-30T00:00:00+02:00

About a week ago, I had the great pleasure to be on the Over/Under series from Hyde. You can read the questions I was asked and my answers, along with Hyde’s answers to the same questions, here. It was a lot of fun – thanks to Hyde for having me!

Also, don’t forget to follow Hyde on Mastodon if you don’t already do!

[Stream] 2025-09-30 (4/4)

2025-09-30T00:00:00+02:00

Learned about Typst today (hat tip to Russ Sharek for pointing me to it – had for some reason never heard of it before). It is a typesetting system for creating documents which has a lot of features, including advanced facilities for typesetting mathematical formulae. I have only started diving into it, but it looks really promising, and as far as I can tell so far, it may even have the potential to replace LaTeX (though it is probably a little early to assess).

Currently, I use Asciidoctor PDF for simpler documents and LaTeX for more complex documents, in particular documents involving mathematical formulae (though this happens rarely these days). Typst might very well be able to satisfy both these use cases. And there is even an OpenBSD package for it!

[Stream] 2025-10-01

2025-10-01T00:00:00+02:00

Daily haiku (prompt “Hunter’s Moon”):

hunter’s moon shining
brightly over reddish woods –
autumn time has come

[Stream] 2025-10-02

2025-10-02T00:00:00+02:00

Daily haiku (prompt “Grain”):

heaps of grain filling
the storage chambers, a mouse
delights in its share

[Stream] 2025-10-03

2025-10-03T00:00:00+02:00

Daily haiku (prompt “Frost”):

frost-covered meadows
let fall in oblivion
a summer long gone

[Stream] 2025-10-04

2025-10-04T00:00:00+02:00

Daily haiku (prompt “Yellow Leaves”):

yellow leaves dancing
wildly in the air, stirred up
by harsh autumn wind

[Stream] 2025-10-05

2025-10-05T00:00:00+02:00

Daily haiku (prompt “Flour”):

no trace of the mouse –
except footsteps in the flour
scattered on the floor

[Stream] 2025-10-06 (1/2)

2025-10-06T00:00:00+02:00

Daily haiku (prompt “Night Chill”):

as the moon rises
on a starry sky, autumn’s
night chill slowly spreads

[Stream] 2025-10-06 (2/2)

2025-10-06T00:00:00+02:00

Thanks to Adam Newbold, today I learned that one’s Mastodon posts are automatically published via an RSS feed, where the URL of the feed is obtained by simply appending “.rss” to the URL of one’s Masotodon account (so, for instance, my feed is available under https://exquisite.social/@thorstenzoeller.rss) – Obvious to others. Amazing to me.

[Stream] 2025-10-07

2025-10-07T00:00:00+02:00

Daily haiku (prompt “Avoid”):

flocks of birds flying
towards the south to avoid
the cold of winter

[Stream] 2025-10-08

2025-10-08T00:00:00+02:00

Daily haiku (prompt “Ghost”):

in deep autumn fog
a raven slowly descends
like a somber ghost

[Stream] 2025-10-09

2025-10-09T00:00:00+02:00

Daily haiku (prompt “Geese”):

the sky is mirrored
in the lake; at its far end
a flock of geese rest

[Stream] 2025-10-10 (1/2)

2025-10-10T00:00:00+02:00

Daily haiku (prompt “Straw”):

a straw is dancing
on the meadows, blown around
by petulant winds

[Stream] 2025-10-10 (2/2)

2025-10-10T00:00:00+02:00

A must-read: The slow decline of joy

[Stream] 2025-10-11 (1/2)

2025-10-11T00:00:00+02:00

Daily haiku (prompt “Vivid”):

created by my
vivid imagination:
a world united

[Stream] 2025-10-11 (2/2)

2025-10-11T00:00:00+02:00

In Ruby, transforming a hash of the form

h = {key_1 => arr_1, ..., key_n => arr_n}

into an array of the form

[
  [key_1, arr_1.first],
  ...,
  [key_1, arr_1.last],
  ...,
  [key_n, arr_n.first],
  ...,
  [key_n, arr_n.last]
]

can be achieved as follows:

h.flat_map { |key, arr| arr.map { |elem| [key, elem] } }

Example: With

h = {"a" => [1, 2, 3], "b" => [4, 5, 6]}

one thus obtains:

[["a", 1], ["a", 2], ["a", 3], ["b", 4], ["b", 5], ["b", 6]]

[Stream] 2025-10-12

2025-10-12T00:00:00+02:00

Daily haiku (prompt “Crunch”):

pebbles crunch under
the cart’s heavy wheels, drowning
out tired panting

Thorsten Zöller

Michael W Lucas: “Ed Mastery”

Michael W Lucas: “Ed Mastery”

My New Website

My New Website

Derek Sivers: “How to Live”

Derek Sivers: “How to Live”

Running Anki inside Xephyr

Running Anki inside Xephyr

How I Use Vim

How I Use Vim

My History of Using Vim – A Personal Account

So, How Do I Actually Use Vim?

Further Reading

A Simple E-Mail Reminder System Based on cron and at

A Simple E-Mail Reminder System Based on cron and at

The Setup

Usage

Recurring reminders

Nonrecurring reminders

Caveats

Relay Mail to a Remote SMTP Server With smtpd

Relay Mail to a Remote SMTP Server With smtpd

References

Multiple-Click Selections in xterm

Multiple-Click Selections in xterm

What is a Word in xterm, After All?

xterm Knows More Than Just Words

Taking Screenshots on OpenBSD

Taking Screenshots on OpenBSD

Preparation

Taking a Screenshot

See Also

Installation and Setup of the RainLoop Webmail Client on OpenBSD

Installation and Setup of the RainLoop Webmail Client on OpenBSD

Prerequisites

Installation and Setup

httpd

PHP

RainLoop

Accessing a Posteo E-Mail Account

References

Pretended Intentionality

Pretended Intentionality

Derek Sivers: “Useful Not True”

Derek Sivers: “Useful Not True”

[Stream] 2021-05-01

[Stream] 2021-05-02

[Stream] 2021-05-06

[Stream] 2021-05-14

[Stream] 2021-05-23

[Stream] 2021-06-20

[Stream] 2021-06-28

[Stream] 2021-07-04

[Stream] 2021-07-11

[Stream] 2021-07-30

[Stream] 2021-08-03

[Stream] 2021-08-04 (1/2)

[Stream] 2021-08-04 (2/2)

[Stream] 2021-08-06

[Stream] 2021-08-08 (1/2)

[Stream] 2021-08-08 (2/2)

[Stream] 2021-08-29

[Stream] 2021-09-06

[Stream] 2021-09-07 (1/2)

[Stream] 2021-09-07 (2/2)

[Stream] 2021-09-08 (1/2)

[Stream] 2021-09-08 (2/2)

[Stream] 2021-09-13

[Stream] 2021-09-23

[Stream] 2021-10-03

[Stream] 2021-10-21

[Stream] 2021-11-13 (1/2)

[Stream] 2021-11-13 (2/2)

[Stream] 2021-12-18

[Stream] 2021-12-20

[Stream] 2022-01-09

[Stream] 2022-01-16 (1/2)

[Stream] 2022-01-16 (2/2)

[Stream] 2022-01-24

Relay Mail to a Remote SMTP Server With `smtpd`