| Links: Saxon-CE and XSLT 2.0 demo - Knight's Tour |
|
Friday, July 1st, 2016 07:29:24 GMT |
| Software |
Lately, I returned yet again to reading about XML (Extensible Markup Language) and XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations).
Mostly because I'm interested in seeing if I can convert info stored in VUE: Visual Understanding Environment concept map files (which are XML files) into radically different formats using XSLT, which is reputed to be good at drastic transformations of XML data.
I only just started looking at Saxon-CE, so, I haven't yet done anything clever with Saxon-CE myself.
But, I was quite impressed by this demo I found via the Saxon-CE manual:
That makes me even more eager than I already was to learn more about XSLT. :-)
Yesterday, I stumbled across Saxon-CE (Client Edition), which is "Saxonica's implementation of XSLT 2.0 for use on web browsers."
I had no idea XSLT could be used for anything like that. :-D
Maybe my daydream from last January (and long before that), of being able to edit actual source code with VUE, really could come true. :-)
▲ Top ▼ Bottom △ TOC ↓ Down Up ↑
| Wishing I had a non-Java version of VUE |
|
Friday, July 1st, 2016 18:33:28 GMT |
| Software |
Probably my least favorite thing about the wonderful concept mapping software VUE: Visual Understanding Environment is the fact that it's Java software.
Because of Java's reputation for security problems, I don't even like to install Java on my computers outside of a VirtualBox. And even without using VirtualBox, Java uses up a big chunk of memory, which I always like to conserve, even though now I have a laptop with 8 GB of RAM.
So, I've been daydreaming about somehow porting VUE away from Java and into something else. Into what, exactly? Anything I like more than Java!
I think it would be great to be able to run VUE in most any web browser on any platform, without having to use the Java applet version of VUE.
And perhaps existing VUE concept map files - which are in XML format - could be read using the JavaScript software Saxon-CE, which makes it possible for web browsers to use XSLT 2.0, a language which is useful for processing and drastically transforming XML data.
I'm guessing Saxon-CE might also help make it possible to output concept map files which would be perfectly compatible with the Java version of VUE.
And perhaps saving that concept map data would be (or could be made) as simple as using TiddlyWiki's save feature.
And maybe it could also be somehow made into a viewer and editor for OrientDB and Neo4j graph databases.
So, just thought I'd share the ideas.
But in particular, I was thinking JavaScript might be especially nice. :-) (Yes, I am aware that Java and JavaScript aren't related, despite the similar names. :-) )
A few years ago, I was able to use the JavaScript library Raphaël to randomly generate very VUE-like graphics for my rather cumbersomely-named Astroblahhh.Com Simple Generator of Many VUE Nodes with Random Colors and Fonts v1.0. :-)
Having a JavaScript version of VUE would also make it tremendously easier to somehow build a VUE concept-map-style viewer or editor for Astroblahhh Desktop data, or for other web apps, like maybe the not-yet-existing CMS - content management system, for lack of a better term - of my dreams. :-)
I don't know if I'll ever really go to the trouble to try to build a JavaScript port of VUE, or any other port of VUE. But, even if I don't ever get around to it, I think it might be quite worthwhile and useful for someone(s) to do.
▲ Top ▼ Bottom △ TOC ↓ Down Up ↑
| Perl Script: Apollia's Primitive Invoice Generator v2.0 |
|
Saturday, July 2nd, 2016 04:32:44 GMT |
| Software |
An old, messily-coded, yet still useful Perl script. Generates an HTML page containing a list of tasks billed by the hour, and/or a list of projects with a fixed price. Automatically totals up the amount due.
Even though this script is version 2.0, I never released it to the world before. I first wrote it maybe over a decade ago, and was recently reminded of its existence by a feature request from the person I made it for.
The code is really messy, and in retrospect, definitely not the best way to do things. But, it works well enough anyway, and the person I made it for has been happy with it for all these years.
So, this script is proof that you don't have to write the most perfect, elegant code to get something done adequately.
Perhaps I'd make it possible to input data via a spreadsheet, or maybe an Hjson text file, or either one. And then maybe somehow convert the input to XML, and transform it into a nice-looking HTML page using XSLT. :-)
Or maybe not. I don't really feel like thinking it through very carefully, because it's tiresome to dwell on such boring things as writing invoice software.
But, if I had to write it again from scratch, I'd probably do things much differently. I'd probably much rather write it in PHP instead of Perl, since despite much struggling with Perl, I'm still much more comfortable with PHP than Perl and probably most other languages.
▲ Top ▼ Bottom △ TOC ↓ Down Up ↑
| Now I'm 35; daydreams and plans for the future |
|
Monday, July 4th, 2016 21:48:11 GMT |
| Software |
Yesterday (July 3rd) was my birthday. So now, I'm 35, and I still haven't really gotten my life together yet. :-)
But fortunately, I already mourned the possibly irretrievable loss of my youth a while back, so, the transition from 34 to 35 isn't a very big deal to me.
And who knows what science, technology and medicine might someday achieve?
Except actually, I think I'd rather reincarnate as a male supermodel than live forever in my current body. :-) So, even if future scientific advances can't save me from old age and death, fine with me, I guess. :-)
My Puppy Linux Setup Kit, Astroblahhh Desktop, the Eryss astrology software, and the WordsPlatz blogging software are definitely still pretty far from as refined and perfected as I hope they someday will be.
But, hopefully I'm well on my way to creating versions of them (and other things) which will be good enough that I'll hopefully be able to share them without having to feel so sheepish about how flawed they are. :-)
Roughly in order of priority, and the possible future chronological order I'm going to work on them:
Lately, I've been relying more on NoteCase and VUE instead of Astroblahhh Desktop, since Astroblahhh Desktop has been in partially-updated disarray ever since last September, and I've been reluctant to even use the VirtualBoxed Windows version of Astroblahhh Desktop anymore, and also have avoided even using the stable-enough Astroblahhh Desktop 2.4, mostly because it needs to run on a web server because I haven't added PHP-GTK and SQLite database capabilities to it yet.
Astroblahhh Desktop already had some NoteCase-related import capabilities since years ago, though maybe not in a released version until 2015. But nothing related to VUE, yet.
Though I still haven't done a huge amount of work on APSK ever since mid-April. In May and June, my temporary top priorities were to get a new (to me) used laptop on eBay with much more RAM than my former usual laptop, and good batteries, and get it working nicely. That's largely done now - but, that was done mostly by adding new installers to the old version of APSK, not by enhancing the new version of APSK.
The old APSK is way too cumbersome and annoying to add new stuff to, and it really needs to be redesigned. That was the best I could do at the time I wrote all that stuff (especially since I was in a hurry), but I think I learned a lot since then (Sept. 2014), and can do much better now.
Another problem is, since I was using a desktop computer instead of a laptop when I built the old APSK, I didn't give as much thought as I should have to making it efficient, instead of redundantly loading a lot of probably mostly unneeded stuff for every single different setup kit script that gets run.
For example, my Navig Perl script already can use my Fashionizer library written in Bash. (It can, even though maybe it shouldn't, for efficiency's sake. :-) Even the Fashionizer, which I made as recently as maybe January, February, and/or March of 2016, should probably be split into even smaller separate parts.)
Those Hjson text files will be converted to plain JSON, then the data from them will be read using the marvelous software jq, which is a command-line JSON processor.
I'm also trying make it far easier to add, relocate, or remove files and scripts in Puppy Setup Kit repos, and make it more easily possible to work with numerous different repos scattered across numerous different disks, without having to waste so much time and energy editing setup kit scripts just to change various things' filepaths simply so the setup kit can find them.
I accomplished a lot toward all these goals earlier this year, and it really seems like it's all going to work... someday. :-) And I learned a lot from forcing myself to write Bash scripts instead of Perl scripts.
Or, I guess I could use PHP to make some working prototypes more quickly and easily than I'm capable of doing with Bash, Perl, or anything else. Then, once I've figured out how to make things work with PHP, maybe I could translate everything into Bash and/or Perl? Or maybe I should just stick with PHP?
I don't know, but another thing I want is for it to be possible for anyone to use whatever languages they want with the setup kit.
So, if anyone (like me) wants to use an odd mixture of Bash, Perl, and PHP scripts, or even languages I usually try to avoid, like Python - I want it to be allowed. :-)
And I even want to keep all old-style Puppy Setup Kit scripts working, but at the very least copy them into the RAM disk and launch them from there instead of a physical disk, to avoid making physical disks do unnecessary work.
And, now that I finally arrived at the ideas of using Hjson and jq with my Puppy Setup Kit, I think they mght also be useful with Astroblahhh Desktop, and also with my notion of somehow making my Astroblahhh Desktop data compatible with graph databases such as OrientDB or Neo4j, which are far more flexible than MySQL and SQLite.
But, at the same time, I somehow want to avoid losing compatibility with MySQL and SQLite. If this is too difficult, though, I'll probably just make my graph DB stuff separate from Astroblahhh Desktop, and hopefully give Astroblahhh Desktop some excellent Hjson export capabilities.
But, I'm going to keep at it anyway. :-) I recently read an amusing blog post that basically said, programmers are the ultimate optimists.
Surprisingly, even for me, that seems true to a great extent, at least with programming. Not so much with anything else - which is why I was surprised to realize that, wow, despite my cynicism about many other things in life, I really have overall tended to be incredibly optimistic about my programming. :-D
Though far from 100% optimistic - which is actually good in various ways, since for one thing, it leaves room for some pleasant surprises when sometimes I get better results than my expectations. (Even though my expectations tend to be quite tentative.)
For example, my blogging software WordsPlatz has served me pretty well with hardly any changes since 2008 or 2009.
And sometimes I get lucky and actually manage to finish things much sooner than I not-altogether-optimistically feared. I feel like I got very lucky with my efforts to get cozy with the GNU Emacs editor, and my effort to modify the multifiles Emacs add-on, which resulted in multifiles-apmod.el. That all only took around two months, but I was bracing myself to spend even more time on them if I really had to.
And GNU Emacs, multifiles-apmod.el, and numerous other great Emacs add-ons have all turned out to be even more wonderful and helpful than I imagined before I started working with them. :-)
So, I now feel a lot more sure that regardless of my projects' difficulty, it's quite possibly just a matter of time and enough effort before I finally succeed at most or all of them.
In any case, I don't think I've achieved world-class talent (yet?). :-) But doubtless I'm a lot closer than I would be if my severe sleep issues hadn't stopped me from being capable of enduring a normal job (which probably wouldn't have been in the field of programming), and I've definitely improved a lot over all these years.
I shudder to think of how much worse my life might have turned out if I had been more capable of forcing myself to stick with my almost minimum-wage part-time job as a copy editor/typist at a small local newspaper (which I barely endured from Nov. 2002 to Jan. 2004), or any other time-wasting probably minimum wage job that would have gotten in the way of me cultivating more valuable skills.
It's so close to releaseable that sometime, I probably ought to just temporarily put everything else aside (despite the fact that all the other stuff seems probably more important), polish it up a little and finally release it.
Even more than the AHK version, I want a PHP-GTK version, too.
Or even a hybrid web app + command line app + PHP-GTK version. Actually, since Eryss will probably be a smaller, easier project than Astroblahhh Desktop, and I also want to make a web app + command line app + PHP-GTK version of Astroblahhh Desktop, I might be able to quickly get a better idea of how to build Astroblahhh Desktop by working on Eryss first.
Maybe that's sufficient justification for me to work on Eryss first?
That would make it much easier to update and improve all my websites. I could finally more easily make my websites nicer, more useful, more organized and easily searched, instead of messy, lazy, and cluttered.
And then, once I also hopefully get some truly great, useful, easy to install and use projects finally completed, perhaps freelance work and/or purchases (if/when I finally get around to creating some sort of products to sell) and/or donations and/or microdonations will just flow to me without me having to make any effort to somehow market myself or seek work?
Even just getting rid of the redundant-looking section of Blog Archive links at the upper right and lower right would probably be an improvement.
I'd also like to automate the addition of a comment section to the bottom of all of my blog posts - an iframe containing each blog post's official comment thread at the Eryss.Com Forum. But, on the other hand, I'm not sure doing anything to popularize either of my forums is the best idea at the moment, since even the nicest, politest forums I ever posted to always tended to stress me out due to my social anxiety.
I still intend to keep my forums around forever, but I probably am going to continue largely avoiding them (and any other forums I'm tempted to post to) until I finish more of my top projects.
Or, better yet would be for me to have such a good memory that I wouldn't need Astroblahhh Desktop or other things as much anymore. :-)
So, I'm definitely interested in trying to make more use of ideas I read about recently in the great book You Can Learn To Remember: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life by Dominic O'Brien, who won the World Memory Championships numerous times.
End of addition.)
The "journey" memory method described in the abovementioned book made me think maybe virtual worlds could be a useful mnemonic tool.
And, for a long time, I've been thinking it would probably be so cool to have a 3D version of the VUE concept mapping software. And the easiest-seeming way I can think of to possibly implement something like that hopefully quickly would be to somehow import VUE data into an OpenSim. :-)
Except I'm not sure the Android phone I have can run that.
Or maybe even to build my own edition(s) of Puppy Linux.
I also someday want to try a Devuan-based Puppy Linux.
So, I definitely have plenty to keep me busy. And who knows what random cool new (or new to me) things I'll hear about in the future which might inspire me to work on totally different things instead.
But, I hope somehow all of the above will somehow help with that too.
And music definitely usually helps my productivity and ability to concentrate.
And, as explained in this old blog post, astrology (among various other things) played a significant part in me becoming more agnostic and hopeful, and less depressed, close-minded and cynical. So, maybe that could help other people too, even though astrology is usually considered a frivolous subject.
And I'm still very curious about whether any part of astrology can be proven to have objective validity, so I'll be quite happy if my software will help scientists, skeptics, and any other curious people to investigate astrology.
I hope this blog post was interesting, thought-provoking, and educational, and that I can get at least some of the above done well in a reasonable amount of time, so hopefully I'll have many more (and hopefully increasingly high-quality) things to share with you all in the future.
Also, Happy Independence Day!
Even though I haven't accomplished as much as I would have liked to with my life thus far, I'm glad I at least managed to do as much as I did, despite all my limitations, such as my severe sleep issues, and the various forms of oppression I and my family have had to deal with, some of which I described back in Nov. 2015 on my Self-Help page.
Here's a summary of what I consider my most important not-yet-finished projects, most of which have taken much longer than expected.
I'm hoping to build the renovated APSK out of a lot more small, modular, replaceable, separable pieces which could also easily be used with unrelated things.
And I also want to make it possible to customize APSK's behavior by simply editing Hjson text files rather than scripts. (Of course, it will still be possible to edit scripts, but hopefully less necessary.)
But I'm actually pretty close to just giving in to the temptation to make PHP a required part of the Puppy Setup Kit, because no matter how much I've tried to force myself to get used to other languages, PHP is still easiest for me and still my favorite.
With all my past experience with how long my projects (except the tiniest ones) have tended to take, I'm definitely very aware that the above might take quite a bit longer to complete than I hope.
But I definitely have some logical reasons for optimism - since a lot of the stuff I've already made (both released or not) is remarkably useful, despite its lack of polish.
So, there's definitely not much chance I'm going to give up on my projects out of a sulky lack of confidence in my abilities. I'm well-aware my work hasn't been flawless, but, I've accomplished much more than I originally had any idea I was capable of.
I wish I knew how close I am to having spent at least 10,000 hours doing and studying programming (and related subjects). 10,000 hours is the number mentioned in the intriguing book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell as being the roughly estimated point at which people might have put in enough effort to finally achieve world-class talent.
And now, here's a list of some less highly-prioritized projects or daydreams of mine.
And here are some things I've scarcely even started working on yet, but which might become higher priorities at some point.
I could go on and on, but, that's already a ton of stuff. :-)
Since this blog post is mostly about software-related goals and daydreams, I didn't even mention any of my other even more huge goals, like "End world poverty".
Even the more frivolous-sounding projects like a streaming music interface and the Eryss astrology software would/will doubtless help me become a better programmer and make it possible for me to do a better job with all of my other projects too.
Thanks again to everyone for all your kind support of any kind!
▲ Top ▼ Bottom △ TOC ↓ Down Up ↑
| Links: Amazing 3D graphics inside a web browser |
|
Thursday, July 7th, 2016 05:26:30 GMT |
| Software |
Last edited 3:48 AM EDT.
Wow, I've been so out of touch with what web browsers are capable of these days! I guess if I were more of a gamer, I wouldn't have been so behind the times for so long. :-)
I'm also pleasantly surprised at how much of the below works fine (or OK, with some imperfections) in Puppy Linux, now that I have a nice, mostly uncrashy laptop with a decent amount of RAM - my Toughbook CF-C1 with 8 GB of RAM which I got on eBay for less than $200.
I'm also using Lighthouse 64 Puppy Linux 6.02 Beta 2 and the web browser Pale Moon, version 26.2.2 (x64).
Not everything I tried works, but the below mostly do. Things do get a bit slow and choppy sometimes, but, many things are remarkably smooth, especially if I don't have a lot of other web browser tabs open. And pretty much everything that works at all runs much better than how Second Life runs on my other Toughbook CF-C1 with Windows 7 and only 4 GB of RAM.
I'm extremely impressed!!!!!!!
(Addition, 3:31 AM EDT. Also, watch out for possible overheating. About a half hour ago, I accidentally overheated and crashed my laptop with the "geometry / terrain / fog" three.js example. Before this, the last time I had a crash from overheating was June 14th.)
Dungeon demo from Pixelcodr.com
Quarto game from Pixelcodr.com
Block game from Pixelcodr.com
Livecodelab from sketchPatch.net
It would be so fun to have 3D graphics in Astroblahhh Desktop, the Eryss astrology software, or a CMS (content management system, for lack of a better term), or a music service, or my daydream of a JavaScript port of the concept mapping software VUE: Visual Understanding Environment, or a 3D browser for graph databases like OrientDB or Neo4j. And tons of other things.
Wow... :-D
Warning: If you have a laptop or other battery-powered device, I don't recommend visiting the below pages unless you have your device plugged in, because I'm guessing the software on those pages might quickly use up your battery power.
Behold!
Not all of these work on my system:
I don't even know exactly how all these things were made yet, but if it was just (or primarily) JavaScript, I'm stunned. :-D
This definitely could make a lot of my (or anyone's) projects and websites more exciting. :-D
▲ Top ▼ Bottom △ TOC ↓ Down Up ↑
| How to add XML and XSLT 1.0 capabilities to Perl in Lucid Puppy Linux 5.2.8 version 004 |
|
Saturday, July 9th, 2016 19:21:33 GMT |
| Puppy Linux |
By default, I don't know if Lucid Puppy Linux 5.2.8 version 004's copy of Perl already includes modules for dealing with XML and XSLT. But, I don't think it had the ones I wanted to use, so I figured out how to install them.
And I avoided using the "cpan" automated installer for Perl modules because I was using a computer I keep disconnected from the internet.
And also because I dislike package managers or any other software which is excessively dependent on internet access. Given these poverty statistics, I think it's better not to just assume the internet is constantly available to everyone who needs it. The less everyone's computing is dependent on the internet, the better, in my opinion.
There was only one tricky part. I'm dubious about whether I handled that correctly, but, I'll explain that below when we reach that step.
I still haven't done very much with XSLT 2.0 (nor even XSLT 1.0), or Saxon-CE, but I'm guessing Saxon-CE is probably one of the easiest ways to get started doing something with XSLT 2.0, since Saxon-CE is written in JavaScript and runs in a web browser.
Many web browsers already have XSLT 1.0 capabilities built in.
My page of Some Puppy Linux Basics explains more about DevX files, and if you need the DevX for Lucid Puppy 5.2.8, it's available at this link:
If you're using a different version of Puppy than Lucid Puppy 5.2.8, that DevX probably won't work, so you should instead download the DevX released for your Puppy.
Also, if you're not using Lucid Puppy 5.2.8, please bear in mind that the instructions in this blog post might not all apply or work for you, since different Puppy Linux distros, and probably even different versions of the same Puppy distro, can differ quite substantially from each other.
And here's how to load SFS files.
make
make test
make install
Or
Decompress the XML::LibXSLT tarball.
Then, open the file "LibXSLT.xs" in a text editor, and add this line below the comment section at the top:
That line is necessary because without it, the build will be halted with these errors:
make
make test
make install
Here's a zip file containing all 3, which aren't by me, but were slightly modified by me. I changed hardly anything in the Perl script, and all I did with the XSLT stylesheet was add a comment with a link to where I found it.
And the VUE: Visual Understanding Environment concept map file was saved by me, but its source code was automatically generated by VUE. And I had to slightly edit it because of the comments at the top which Perl disliked.
Thanks to all the authors of this code!
All 3 files are also displayed below.
If that succeeds, the output will be in a newly-created HTML file named test-xslt-perl-script-output.html.
Hopefully soon I'll learn XSLT well enough to figure out how to extract the node text, which is usually the most interesting part of a VUE: Visual Understanding Environment concept map.
OK, back to the instructions.
I believe the Perl module XML::LibXSLT only has XSLT 1.0 capabilities.
There seem to be some parts of the below Perl modules which are written in C, so, I believe to install them, it's necessary to use the DevX file of development tools for your Puppy Linux.
Next, get the tarballs of the following Perl modules. (The version numbers are just what I used - I don't know if these specific versions are actually required for all these things to work together.)
It's necessary to install each of those modules in the order given above. Do the following 2 steps for the first 4 modules above:
perl Makefile.PL
"new2dir make install" (without quotes) if you'd like to make a pet file or SFS file.
With one Perl module, there might be some annoying warning about "6.55_02" not being numeric, but since that warning didn't stop the build, I ignored it.
Now, the tricky part. I don't know if my trick really solved the problem, and I don't even know whether or not it might have created other problems. But, at least it made it possible for me to successfully run "make" on the XML::LibXSLT module.
int xsltMaxVars = 9999999;
But with that line, the build should succeed. So, now you can run these commands:
perl Makefile.PL
Or "new2dir make install" (without quotes) if you'd like to make a pet file or SFS file.
Now, to see if the modules are working, you'll need three things - a Perl script, an XML file, and an XSLT file.
A Perl script which is a slightly modified version of this code from StackOverflow:
An XSLT stylesheet from this post on StackOverflow:
A saved VUE: Visual Understanding Environment concept map file. I had to move the comments formerly at the top (which tell you not to remove them) into a CDATA section near the top, because Perl was complaining about them.
All three files should be in the same folder when you run this command:
perl test-xslt.pl
▲ Top ▼ Bottom △ TOC ↓ Down Up ↑
| Synonyms for the word "Antifragile" |
|
Saturday, July 9th, 2016 20:49:33 GMT |
| Languages English |
Last edited July 10, 2016 at 1:05 AM EDT.
One of the best books I read in 2015 (or, ever) was Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
I was recently reminded of this book by the fact that my Toughbook CF-C1 overheated and crashed yet again. (Clearly I need to stop leaving so many web browser tabs open.)
But, at least this annoyance was a pleasant reminder of the antifragility of (and resulting from) my Puppy Linux Setup Kit. :-)
And, thanks to my setup kit, I'm able to recover quickly from not only relatively minor crashes which only require a reboot, but also from serious hardware breakdowns which would require me to switch to a totally different computer, which would be a far more inconvenient disruption if I were still dependent on an OS installed on a hard disk.
I can switch to another computer pretty much seamlessly and have everything back to normal in minutes. It's tremendously nicer than having to slowly rebuild a broken Windows system by manually reinstalling Windows along with all my lost Windows software.
This page from the Movies & TV Stack Exchange explains the famous scene from one of the Star Wars movies that made me think of this idea.
I had trouble thinking of many more synonyms, though. Which sort of makes me wish I already automated the addition of comment sections to my blog posts.
Crashes actually benefit my setup kit, because they give me some additional good reasons to stop procrastinating about enhancing my setup kit.
A while back, I thought of a possibly good synonym for the word "antifragile". At least, it's hopefully clear enough if you're a Star Wars fan. But, in case it's a spoiler, I won't say exactly the word I have in mind.
Other possible rough synonyms include phoenix-like or hydra-like.
▲ Top ▼ Bottom △ TOC ↓ Down Up ↑
| Dancing: probably more interesting than many other forms of exercise |
|
Monday, July 11th, 2016 11:27:56 GMT |
| Health |
Like many other computer programmers, I probably ought to get more exercise.
But most exercise sounds boring to me, or otherwise inconvenient. There's a swimming pool I could go to, and I have a bicycle, and I could always go on walks, but, I much prefer to avoid people.
I don't know if dancing is the best possible exercise for me, but, no doubt anything is better than nothing, or just fidgeting and walking around my house.
And becoming a good (or otherwise amusing) dancer seems like a much more fun goal than becoming capable of performing ever-larger quantities of ungraceful, boring, repetitive exercises such as sit-ups and squats.
It might also result in some amusing videos someday. :-)
Maybe I should convert my bike into an exercise bike.
So, I think what I might prefer do instead is, stay in my room and try to learn bellydancing, and maybe other types of dancing too. :-)
Though I actually wouldn't mind an exercise bike or a non-motorized treadmill to use while I work on my computer stuff. Then I could just mindlessly get a significant amount of exercise while I get more useful things done at the same time.
▲ Top ▼ Bottom △ TOC ↓ Down Up ↑
| Going to try a standing desk |
|
Wednesday, July 13th, 2016 21:19:19 GMT |
| Health |
Yesterday, in my family's basement, I was able to find an old rolling table which is tall enough to use as a standing desk for my laptops.
Why did I want a standing desk? Because I keep running into articles which suggest that standing might be healthier than continually sitting.
And it will make it easier to do a wider variety of random exercises (or bellydancing :-D ) while continuing to work on my computer at the same time.
So, I'm going to be careful to avoid swollen ankles. Though I think I might have avoided that without even trying, because I'm so fidgety that I'll probably seldom stand still for long at my standing desk.
So, judging by that article, it seems that alternating between standing and sitting is probably better than constantly standing or constantly sitting. And also that fidgeting is good.
I'm definitely not interested in overdoing standing, exercise, sitting, or anything else. So, hopefully it will overall be good for me to get more variation and movement into my habitual routines. End of addition.)
And it turns out that despite being 35, I still like spinning around in an office chair about as much as I did when I was 5. :-)
So, who knows how much standing and other exercise I'm really going to do now. :-)
But since I have a laptop, this chair won't necessarily interfere with my computing too much. It will at least be amusing to see how well I can program while dizzy.
However, here's a partly negative article about standing desks:
(Addition, July 13, 2016, 6:28 PM EDT. Another partly negative article:
I wonder if lying or sitting in bed is healthier than sitting in a chair all day? My computers are usually next to my bed, and I shift positions a lot more than is possible in the average chair.
Another thing I found in the basement was a nice swiveling office chair I didn't even know we had.
My next task is to clear enough junk out of my room to make adequate room for these delights. Cleaning isn't my favorite thing to do, but at least it has more immediately perceptible good results than the average boring exercise.
▲ Top ▼ Bottom △ TOC ↓ Down Up ↑
| International postal systems: more reasons I'm glad to be an American |
|
Sunday, July 17th, 2016 03:37:03 GMT |
| Business And Charity |
Today, I received a bra purchased on Amazon and shipped from a seller in England. (Despite the fact that I like Richard Stallman's page of Reasons not to buy from Amazon).
And on the outside of the package, on a "Customs Declaration" label, was some rather personal information!
In a column that said "Quantity and detailed description of contents", it said "Lingerie" (in handwriting). And, in the "Value" column was a handwritten price quite close to what the buyer paid for this bra on Amazon.
But still, I think it's an obnoxious invasion of privacy. Here in the USA, we don't have to list the contents and value of our packages on the outside of the package for any curious postal worker or resident of our homes to read.
At least they didn't list my bra size. :-)
It turned out there actually were no fees for me to receive it, but I was shocked that that's even a problem in Europe.
Here in the USA, we have nothing like that. We can receive as many gift packages as we want without being oppressed by fees.
But it's probably particularly harmful to poor people, because if anyone mails a poor person in Europe a package of stuff to help them out, the poor person might not be able to afford to pay the oppressive fees to accept the package! And the more the package is worth, the higher the fees.
It wouldn't surprise me to find that the USA's economy and sales of products sent via physical mail are probably thriving a lot more than Europe's economies and sales, just because of the above problems imposed by Europe's postal systems.
Obviously I'm not very embarrassed, since now I'm telling the world about this by blogging about it. :-)
Back in 2012, I received a package from a friend in Europe. That package's contents and values weren't listed on the outside - but, I was astonished when that friend speculated I might have to pay some sort of "customs" fees just to receive it.
It amazes me that oppression like that is apparently considered normal in Europe. I think it's terrible and unfair to everyone, whether poor or rich.
Also, I'm guessing this nonsense probably isn't any good for the economies of Europe, because it probably discourages people from buying and mailing each other gifts for the holidays, birthdays, etc. It also probably discourages people from buying things online even just for themselves.
▲ Top ▼ Bottom △ TOC ↓ Down Up ↑
| Link: Rosetta Stone for Unix |
|
Monday, July 18th, 2016 04:22:16 GMT |
| GNU/Linux |
Usually I use Puppy Linux. And, reluctantly and relatively rarely, I sometimes use Mac OS.
OR What do they call that in this world?
▲ Top ▼ Bottom △ TOC ↓ Down Up ↑
| Links: Free (as in Freedom), Libre, Open Source Agriculture |
|
Monday, July 18th, 2016 14:57:07 GMT |
| Food |
Ever since I saw the documentary Gasland several years ago, I've been increasingly worried about farms, groundwater (or any water), nature in general, and also places where people live, possibly getting contaminated by pollution from various forms of industrial activity.
And I also think it's quite distressing that unless you pay extra to buy organic food, you're stuck buying food which quite possibly had pesticides used on it, or which might have been genetically modified (GMO).
And, as someone who has at times had a rather inadequate diet simply due to lack of enough money, I've sometimes daydreamed about how nice it would be to be able to grow my own food on my own farm, or in a greenhouse, or something.
So, today, I was very pleased to run across the below links, since perhaps free (as in freedom), libre, open source agriculture will someday help alleviate some of the above problems.
(June 10, 2015 from ThePlate.NationalGeographic.com)
▲ Top ▼ Bottom △ TOC ↓ Down Up ↑
| Teeccino: An Excellent Alternative to Coffee |
|
Friday, July 22nd, 2016 21:32:18 GMT |
| Food |
I sometimes run across articles which suggest that it would be healthy to give up caffeine.
I actually mostly don't drink coffee, and I only drink 1 cup of caffeinated tea per day maximum - but I'm definitely addicted. (Edit, Aug. 13, 2016, 10:42 PM EDT: Actually, I drank one 17 ounce mug which I mistakenly thought was 12 ounces.) I've tried repeatedly (though not very determinedly) to gradually give it up, but I just like the taste too much.
It's probable I'd consume less caffeine if I simply switched completely to coffee, because I only enjoy coffee which is very diluted with water and cream. (Otherwise, coffee tastes unbearably bitter and horrible to me.)
But, my goal is to mostly stop drinking any caffeine, since I think maybe I have adrenal fatigue, given that I have sometimes been unusually tired lately despite going out of my way to avoid stressful things for over a month now.
So, today, I tried Teeccino, which is made of chicory and other tasty ingredients.
Teeccino "tee-bags" seem to take longer to steep than probably most tea does. I didn't carefully follow the instructions - I stuck the bag in a cup of cold water and microwaved it, which I think worked well enough.
Rather than removing the bag, I decided to just leave it in as I was drinking it, and see how long it would take for it to get too strong for my tastes. I don't know exactly when that happened, but it seemed to take a long time, maybe over 10 minutes.
Similar to the way I drink coffee, I liked it best with a lot of cream.
I used to be able to just use any random brown sugar from a grocery store, but I find that difficult to use anymore because the above makes everything taste so much better in comparison.
There are only 4 flavors I wasn't so fond of - Orange, Maya Chai, Almond Amaretto, and Chocolate.
But, I liked (or loved) them all, and all of them were superior to any decaf coffee I've ever had. And it turns out mixing multiple flavors together is fun, so, I might eventually buy even the ones I'm less fond of just to see if they'll taste better as components of my own custom blends.
I already got two 11 oz. packages of ground Teeccino from a local store. The store had only had 4 flavors (and only 2 I particularly liked), so I got Java and French Roast.
On various pages on the Teeccino website (like this one), it says "The exact same Teeccino grounds are in the Tee-bags as in our 11 oz. bags." And Teeccino's website sells empty tea bags. (But I already had some of a different brand - I got 100 on sale for 99 cents from a local store.)
I considered getting a metal tea infuser, strainer, filter, or teaball. Particularly to my liking was this one (but beware of the volume in that video around 0:46 to 0:55). But, in the end, I decided against any metal tea contraption, because I was worried about things like, where was this manufactured, exactly what is it made of, how was it made, and is it really safe?
Filling my own tea bags was a bit less convenient and more messy than buying already-filled "tee-bags". But, I love being able to choose the amounts to put in, and being able to easily mix multiple flavors together.
But I also like combining Java and French Roast, with 2 non-heaping spoonfuls of Java, and less than a spoonful of French Roast (since just 1 spoonful surprisingly seemed a bit too strong for my liking). And I'll be trying other combinations too.
I think maybe I'm unusually sensitive to strong flavors (especially in light of my inability to drink undiluted coffee). A former coffee drinker I know very much enjoyed an 8.5 ounce cup made with 4 spoonfuls of French Roast! (Addition, Aug. 2, 2016, 2:08 PM EDT. That person said 2 spoonfuls is just as good.)
However, the below might still be interesting components to mix into custom blends - so, for that reason, I might buy these too eventually.
And a notable pseudo-exception is Twinings Ceylon Orange Pekoe tea - which has nothing whatsoever to do with orange fruit. It's simply a black tea - but for some years, it qualified as my #1 favorite daily tea, until I tried PG Tips.)
Fortunately for me, it turned out Orange Teeccino didn't actually taste very orangey. I liked it a bit more than the Maya Chai.
But this is a favorite of the aforementioned former coffee drinker I know. That person said they liked this because it's strong.
It reminded me of a weird Celestial Seasonings tea I had a long time ago called "Almond Sunset", which I also found rather disagreeable (though sometimes intriguing).
Even though I didn't like Almond Sunset that much, it saddens me to find that Almond Sunset was retired. Yet another reason why it's better even for food and drink recipes, including tea, to be free (as in freedom), libre, and open source.
I'm also interested in French Vanilla, since I've had a surprisingly hard time finding vanilla teas I really like, and Vanilla Nut Teeccino was better than all of the vanilla teas I ever had.
So, I'll probably try this Boutique Sampler next.
However, the below might still be interesting components to mix into custom blends - so, for that reason, I might buy these too eventually.
Anyway, the Teeccino Southern Pecan flavor seemed to improve the longer it steeped (or the more I got used to it), but until it reached that point, I was considering discarding it. But, it somehow gradually became tolerable. So, I suspect maybe it might be good for me in small amounts as an ingredient in a custom mix.
There are various non-caffeinated herbal teas I like. But, I wanted to try something totally new to me.
I tried a "tee-bag" of the Maya Chai flavor. And, I liked it! I could definitely distinguish it from coffee, but it was still quite good, coffee-like, and better than any decaffeinated coffee I've ever had. (But I should probably point out that I never tried a wide variety of decaf coffee, nor even caffeinated coffee.)
I greatly look forward to trying all the other flavors of the sampler pack I got, and I think Teeccino will definitely assist me in hopefully finally really giving up caffeine, or at least drinking a lot less caffeine.
Addition, July 30, 2016, 11:14 AM EDT. Here's a new blog post by me which could be of interest to Teeccino drinkers:
Additions, July 23, 2016, 3:23 AM EDT, etc. The way I sweeten my tea, coffee and Teeccino is usually:
Anyway, I just tried the Chocolate Mint flavor of Teeccino. I liked the Maya Chai, but I love this! It reminds me of Andes mints in liquid form, but more subtle. I think I like it even more than hot chocolate, because hot chocolate (unless you make it from scratch) tends to be overwhelmingly sugary, and with this, I can control the amount of sweetness.
Addition, July 30, 2016, 12:27 PM EDT.
By now, I've tried all the flavors from the sampler pack.
For me, coffee machines are too much of a time-consuming nuisance, even though I don't have a non-libre coffee machine with DRM. :-) But fortunately, a coffee machine isn't necessary to brew ground Teeccino.
Teeccino takes minutes longer than ordinary tea to steep. I'm not sure exactly how long, but it probably varies depending on how strong or weak you'd prefer it to be. And also depending on which Teeccino flavor it is.
In my 17-ounce mug, I like both pure Java (with about 3 non-heaping spoonfuls) or pure French Roast (with some amount less than 3 non-heaping spoonfuls, since 3 initially seemed too strong for me, though I soon got used to it and liked it anyway).
Here is my mostly indecisive ranking of all the Teeccino flavors from the sampler pack, which no doubt will vary depending on my mood:
Here are the flavors I'm less fond of. They were all good enough for me to finish my cup, but I liked the above more.
There are numerous other flavors for me to try. I'm most interested in trying Pumpkin Spice, since I love pumpkin pie, and one of my favorite teas is Bigelow Pumpkin Spice.
Addition, Aug. 13, 2016, 5:36 PM EDT. I tried all the Boutique Sampler flavors. Here's my current ranking of everything, which will also probably vary depending on my mood:
And the flavors I'm less fond of. They were all good enough for me to finish my cup, but I liked the above more.
And I finally found a flavor I found undrinkable:
▲ Top ▼ Bottom △ TOC ↓ Down Up ↑
| Postum - Buy 3 Jars, Get 1 Free Sale Until August 31, 2016 |
|
Saturday, July 23rd, 2016 05:56:08 GMT |
| Food |
Postum is another excellent caffeine-free hot drink which tends to be placed in the same category as Teeccino - a coffee alternative.
And, until August 31, 2016, there's a buy 3 jars, get 1 free sale of Postum from Postum's official website.
I only ever tried the Original flavor, which never tasted that much like coffee to me. But, I liked it anyway, especially since I wasn't even looking for a perfect replica of coffee - just something new (to me) and different from what I usually drank.
Fortunately, Postum was so popular that a different company (Eliza's Quest Foods of Charlotte, North Carolina) revived it in 2012.
Which is very unusual - since I don't think any other discontinued product I ever liked ever got revived. I wish such revivals would happen more often.
I haven't had Postum in a long time, maybe since 2004 or something. But even though I didn't drink it very often (since I mostly drank caffeinated tea instead), I still liked it.
I read on this page that Postum was actually discontinued by the company Kraft in 2007, which I found very surprising and bizarre. Why would any company discontinue such a good, popular product?
▲ Top ▼ Bottom △ TOC ↓ Down Up ↑
| Free webinar with Deepak Chopra & Eckhart Tolle on Aug. 3, 2016 |
|
Saturday, July 23rd, 2016 12:11:18 GMT |
| Self-Help |
Today, I heard about a free (in price) webinar on August 3, 2016 with Deepak Chopra and Eckhart Tolle:
Usually I'm more interested in pondering more practical (or hopefully practical) ways to solve the world's problems, rather than just seeking better ways to philosophize about and not feel as bad about the way things are.
But, for some reason, I'm interested in attending. I'm unfamiliar with Eckhart Tolle, but I read a bunch of Deepak's books a long time ago and liked many ideas in them, even though I was (and am still) very agnostic and (believe it or not) skeptical about many things, despite my embarrassingly openly-admitted interest in topics like astrology, etc.
▲ Top ▼ Bottom △ TOC ↓ Down Up ↑
| Bash Script: flexishacheck |
|
Monday, July 25th, 2016 13:07:57 GMT |
| Software |
Here's a boring but useful enough Bash script I finished today:
I made this because the not-yet-finished (nor released) renovated Apollia's Puppy Linux Setup Kit (APSK) is going to use SHA-512 checksums to verify that various files are intact, or got downloaded correctly.
Actually, if I recall correctly, the released APSK already does check the SHA-512 checksums of downloaded files. But I want the renovated APSK to be far more flexible - and flexishacheck definitely helps with that, since now I won't have to update checksum record files just because a checksummed file got renamed.
I also want the renovated APSK to be able to use other things to verify that downloaded files are intact, such as GPG signatures.
From what I understand, two different files sharing the same SHA checksum or GPG signature is supposed to be extremely rare, even if the two files are only slightly different. But unfortunately, I'm quite far from understanding all this stuff as well as I'd like, so I'm not sure how helpful (or not) SHA checksums and GPG signatures will really be. But I assume checking SHA checksums and/or GPG signatures is at least better than just blindly trusting that a download succeeded and got the correct file.
At least I've been learning a lot from my struggles to renovate APSK and understand checksums and GPG. At this rate, I don't know if I'll have APSK renovated even before the year is over, but, I'm going to keep trying.
▲ Top ▼ Bottom △ TOC ↓ Down Up ↑
| Chicory and barley: reputedly good for dental health, etc. |
|
Friday, July 29th, 2016 13:02:44 GMT |
| Health |
I was very pleased to find these articles.
(Addition, 9:28 AM EDT: Actually, here's an article which says black tea 'combats bacteria linked with tooth decay and gum disease'. Which surprises me, since I never felt like tea was helpful at all. Vitamin C seems to do my possible gum disease tremendously more good than tea. After having tea, I was always reluctant to put off brushing my teeth, for fear that my gum soreness would come back. End of addition.)
I seldom drank coffee to begin with, but until trying Teeccino, I drank one 12 ounce mug of tea per day.
I like Teeccino more than any herbal tea I ever had, and more than any decaf coffee I ever had. Teeccino also compares so well to the best caffeinated coffees I ever had that I can't even decide which I like more, so I guess it's a tie. And Teeccino even makes my favorite caffeinated tea seem relatively boring and weak in comparison.
Even flavor alone would make me stick with Teeccino. But the reputed health benefits (which also go beyond dental health benefits) are icing on the cake.
So, I wrote this new blog post:
But for me, I think the benefits of chicory and other foods with oxalates probably outweigh the possible drawbacks, so I'm going to keep having them.
Antimicrobial and anti-adherence activity of various combinations of coffee-chicory solutions on Streptococcus mutans: An in-vitro study
May-Aug 2014, from ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
The Health Benefits of Roasted Barley Tea With Chicory
June 23, 2015 from LIVESTRONG.COM
One of my least favorite things about ordinary tea (without chicory or barley) was the damage I suspected it (and/or the sugar I put in it) might be doing to my teeth and gums.
So, I'm very happy that I was able to quit ordinary tea, and am now only drinking Teeccino, which tastes so good it made it easy to give up caffeinated tea and coffee.
Addition, Aug. 13, 2016, 10:09 PM EDT. I read on this page that chicory contains high amounts of oxalates. (Oxalates are antinutrients found in many common foods.)
| DemExit |
|
Friday, July 29th, 2016 17:05:30 GMT |
| Activism |
I'm unhappy that the election was rigged against Bernie Sanders, so, I'm going to participate in DemExit by exiting the Democratic Party.
I don't yet know who I'll vote for.
I recently heard that George Washington thought political parties are a bad idea in general.
And I never liked the fact that many people instantly make snap judgments and jump to wild conclusions about people and issues based on a single-word label like "Democrat" or "Republican".
So, maybe I'll just stay out of every party from now on.