Fastidious Elegance

planner

Understanding the High Performance Planner by Brendon Burchard

A few years ago, famous personal development personality Brendon Burchard released his High Performance Planner. As popular as it is, many of the reviews seem to miss the point. The biggest fault I notice is in understanding how to use it and why it

fountain pen

A little bit of Black vs. Blue Fountain Pen philosophy

I've been doing some permanent ink tests of various types of inks, and without a doubt, the black, pigmented inks are coming out decidedly on top. I've been using Platinum Carbon ink for a while because it is one of the best, most durable,

productivity

Productivity Systems: Bullet Journaling

As previously noted, I tend to look for productivity systems that are total and holistic. I'm also willing to criticize them for my purposes at least on ostensibly rigorous or thorough grounds (other than "effort" or "effectiveness"). The 3 major ones I have spent

fountain pen

In praise of Iron Gall inks for Fountain Pens

I'm a fan of permanent, archival inks. I like the idea that my work will have a degree of resilience. Within that category, there are three major types of permanent inks that you can go with right now that are fountain pen friendly: PigmentedIron

dyalog

Dyalog Tooling Resources List (LambdaConf Talk 2020)

Here is a list of tooling resources that I mentioned in my recent LambdaConf 2020 talk, with links to documentation on each feature, or the like. General ResourcesYou should generally check out the following pages for a general index: Documentation CenterTools and InterfacesWebinars, cutting

penmanship

My Handwriting Experiment: Italic

If some of my handwritten blog entries seem to be written with a different pen and a different style, it's because I'm experimenting with a new type of handwriting, Italic. I have experience with Spencerian, Palmer, New American Cursive, and SmithHand, but I've begun

productivity

Productivity Systems: 7 Principles of Evaluation

Handwritten VersionProductivity is a hot topic. Who knows how much time is potentially lost trying out different systems. It is fun to experiment and see what you may like, but there is just so much out there, and while some guides try to help

apl

Is APL Dead?

Is APL dead? Not anymore. Changes in modern hardware, business needs, development methods, and our understanding of programming makes APL in its modern state perhaps more relevant and viable than ever before.

apl

Configuring your APL keyboard on Linux

My preferred APL keyboard setup on Linux is as follows: setxkbmap -layout us,apl -variant ,dyalog -option grp:lswitchThis will use the left-Alt key as a Mode switch key to allow you to type APL symbols by holding down Alt and hitting the correct

apl

Installing Dyalog APL on Nix

The following repository is a starting point for getting Dyalog APL on Nix OS. Keep in mind that at the time of this writing the repository is based on 17.0. Version 17.1 includes a much improved and streamlined download process from the

co-dfns

The T-shirts are finally here!

It's taken me a long time to put this together, but I've finally put together a small T-shirt shop! To start with, the initial product launch is the special Co-dfns: Thesis Edition t-shirts and hoodies, in celebration of the completion of my Thesis. I

keyboard

Quick follow-up observation on Corsair Keyboard

Some of you will recall that I recently had a new fastest keyboard in my life. Well, after some more time with it, I find that it is still extremely fast, but I have noticed an interesting facet of the design when working with

keyboard

New Fastest Keyboard

For those who don't want to read my longer post about exploring a new keyboard. I'll just post this short one. I have a new fastest keyboard, and it only took me a day  to break my previous record. At 154 WPM (and some

keyboard

Changing Tunes? Linear keys for typing?

Fast typists have preferred the tactile, sometimes clicky, keyboard for a long time, but I've been thinking that maybe there's a more optimal formula out there.

apl

Writing code to be spoken

A personal favorite design element that APL allows me to explore is the "lyricality" of a given piece of code. I ask myself how much the natural language description of what a piece of code does would map directly to the code. This is

FnConf '19 Discount Code

I will be speaking this year at FnConf '19. Here's a discount code for those who are interested: aaron-10di$c-functional Functional Conf - Asia’s Premier Functional Programming ConferenceAsia’s Premier Functional Programming ConferenceFunctional Conf, Bengaluru, 2019

penmanship

Penmanship for the Modern Literati

The written word is too valuable, meaningful, and powerful for poor speech communicated by poor penmanship. The written word is worth the cultivation of penmanship skill. People think that they do not have time to learn and improve their penmanship, but they are wrong.

martial arts

Applied Taijiquan #1: Introduction

I plan to do a series on Taijiquan and my explorations of it from the perspective of viewing the art as an authentic, martial practice. This began as a single post on Taijiquan but I realized that it was such a large topic that

apl

LambdaConf Tree Manipulation Workshop Videos

The videos for my LambdaConf Tree Manipulation workshop are now online. I was moving through the workshop pretty quickly, and we cover a lot of different topics across a wide range of topics related to APL, so don't expect a very focused lecture or

text editor

ALE: arcfide's line editor

ed(1) meets Emacs implemented in APL, a la Acme. ALE is a line editor that I have created because I can.

apl

Un-directed programming

Various forms of "directed" programming have become very popular these days. However, I find that many of these are too restrictive and not conducive to what I consider a "human" creative approach to programming. Sometimes, it's nice to have a

windows

Emptying the Recycle Bin on an Empty Desktop

How do you empty the Recycle Bin when you don't have the icon on your Desktop?

SSB

Moving Beyond Facebook

Introduction First came Net Neutrality, then came the Snowden leaks, then came so many users’ leaked private photos, then came the evidence of censorship by Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube, then came the sight of Zuckerberg defending himself and Facebook in front of Congress.

social media

Trials of Running a Pub Server

So I decided to try to run a Pub server the other day. Unfortunately, it turns out that the state of the pub servers is rather poor right now. Not that they won't work, but simply that the maintenance and work to get one

social media

Playing around with Scuttlebutt/Patchwork

So I'm playing around with Scuttlebutt and Patchwork. I've even set up a pub server: social.sacrideo.us Specifically intended to help those who are interested in keeping up with my own social/technical network. While I can't stand normal social media, perhaps this