Thoughts

September 4^th, 2023

Let us cultivate our garden

Voltaire's Candide is one of the most important books ever written. The ending is usually seen as a stoic or caustic response to irrational optimism.

What if it can be more than that? Besides the personal benefits, what if cultivating our metaphorical garden is the best way that cultural progress occurs? If so, then choosing what we plant and how it's grown may have more profound importance.

August 22^nd, 2023

What if to hotl to thoit?

I love that feeling in the shower when I'm freezing cold and hot water hits me. The joy flies through into an orgasmic eye twitch and deep sigh. I thought I'd see what OpenAI's DALL·E would create for the prompt:

cold person involuntarily feeling good when hot water hits them

This was the least weird one, and I didn't crop it or add that text!

August 12^th, 2023

Dedication

FedEx just delivered a package that shipped nearly 1 and ½ years ago I always assumed that if delivery services find a package that they accidentally dropped behind some closet or something and it's more than a few months old, that then some worker would just take it home because of the embarrassment of delivering something after a few months, let alone years!

But no, FedEx were asked to get a package to me and nothing would stop them from delivering on their promise! Not rain, nor sleet, nor hail, and certainly not egregious incompetence! It's strangely endearing. Maybe this is some sort of 4D marketing chess?

Building brand loyalty through unconventional means

August 4^th, 2023

Neocities!

I forgot how fun Geocities was:

Not knowing how to make a website look okay but then just looking at how other people do it and finding inspiration. Right Click } View Page Source or Inspect.
The Neocities activity feed is endlessly interesting, not just because of the variety, but also in seeing people explore, struggle, and create. The half-baked sites show that it's okay to suck and fail.
Collecting images:
88x31 buttons

99x56 stamps

150x20 blinkies

80x15 badges

GIFs

Minis

And more

It's amazing that Neocities is free and you can edit your website in a browser editor (or through a folder on your computer).

It's fascinating how much of a mental straightjacket all the other cookie-cutter sites, apps, and social media put us in. Our creativity and our thoughts are transformed and squozen by the container we put ourselves in, like water.

This doesn't apply to just our internet personality, but we're straight-jacketed by political banter, social media posts, internet videos, memes, advertisements, propaganda, and just about anything entering our ears and eyes. How often do you select the topic of conversation? Even when you do, how often are you just parroting and sneezing on a mind virus from someone else, without even realizing?

Ostensibly, pictures and words have an ephemeral character. They don't physically touch us. In that is their power. Often, they penetrate deeper than a knife, into our subconscious, without us much realizing. Like a magic spell.

Our own, personally-curated and controlled website allows us to take back some of the power of pictures and words.

I ended up here because I was playing with Spacehey and I hit a straightjacket moment. Spacehey is quirky and nostalgic and it's great that you can edit and share CSS templates like Myspace; but, ultimately, it heavily restricts you. I don't even remember how I ended up finding Neocities but I'm so glad I did.

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Profile

		Seeking
	Kevin	Woman
Age		20s to early 30s
Status	Single, Monogamous	Ditto
Location	Austin/TX	Earth
Traits	Independent thinker	Ditto
Height	6'0"

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Quotes

There’s no more attractive pleasure, in my view, than following one’s ideas wherever they lead, as the hunter pursues his game, without even trying to keep to any set route. Xavier de Maistre, A Journey Around My Room

When good health and a fine sunny day smile at me, I am quite debonair; give me an ingrowing toe-nail, and I am touchy, bad-tempered and unapproachable. Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

Man, the ephemeral spectator of an eternal spectacle, raises for an instant his eyes to the heavens, and then closes them again for ever; but, during this fleeting instant that is granted him, from every point of the sky and from the very furthest bourns of the universe, a consoling ray of light sets out from every world, and falls onto his eyes, announcing to him that there is a relationship between that immensity and himself, and that he is an associate of eternity. Xavier de Maistre, A Journey Around My Room

Like the sight of enemies or wild beasts dripping with blood or going to the kill; like the underworld monsters poets have imagined, girt with serpents and breathing fire; like the most terrible divinities that issue from Hell to stir up war, spread discord among nations, and tear peace to shreds– that’s how we should picture anger in the mind’s eye: its eyes ablaze, making a din with its shrieking and bellowing and groaning and hissing and any sound that is more hateful, brandishing its weapons in both hands (nor indeed is it concerned to shield itself), fierce, bloody, scarred, and bruised by self-inflicted blows, striding in a frenzy, cloaked in darkness, attacking, laying waste, putting to flight, stirred in its travails by a hatred of everyone and everything– itself most of all– as it seeks to confound earth and sea and sky, if it can cause harm no other way, hating and hated at once. Lucius Seneca; Anger, Mercy, Revenge

We may as well assert that a man, by remaining in a vessel, freely consents to the dominion of the master; though he was carried on board while asleep, and must leap into the ocean, and perish, the moment he leaves her. David Hume, Of the Original Contract

I will at least have the consolation of having made a dog happy. Xavier de Maistre, A Journey Around My Room

We have been allotted inconstancy, hesitation, doubt, pain, superstition, worries about what will happen (even after we are dead), ambition, greed, jealousy, envy, unruly, insane, and untameable appetites, war, lies, disloyalty, backbiting and curiosity. We take pride in our fair, discursive reason and our capacity to judge and to know, but we have bought them at a price which is strangely excessive. Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

Our life consists partly in madness, partly in wisdom: whoever writes about it merely respectfully and by rule leaves more than half of it behind. Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

A bed witnesses our birth and death; it is the unvarying theatre in which the human race acts out, successively, its captivating dramas, laughable farces, and dreadful tragedies. It is a cradle bedecked with flowers; it is the throne of love; it is a sepulchre. Xavier de Maistre, A Journey Around My Room

Although I am continually striving to forget my sorrows and to chase them from my thoughts, it sometimes happens, when I am not sufficiently on my guard, that they suddenly all come flooding into my memory at the same time, as if the sluice gates had been opened for them. On these occasions, I have no option but to abandon myself to the torrent sweeping me away, and my ideas then become so gloomy, and all the objects around me seem so dismal, that I usually end up laughing at my own folly; as a result, the very intensity of the malady produces its own remedy.

There, full of vermin, lay Argus the hound. But directly he became aware of Odysseus' presence, he wagged his tail and dropped his ears, though he lacked the strength now to come nearer to his master. Odysseus turned his eyes away, and, making sure Eumaeus did not notice, brushed away a tear. Homer, The Odyssey

My dear dog Rosine, who has never offered me any favours, in fact does me the greatest favour that can be shown to humanity: she loved me once, and she still loves me today. Xavier de Maistre, A Journey Around My Room

Droll thing life is – that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself – that comes too late – a crop of inextinguishable regrets. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

Into whatsoever houses I enter, I will enter to help the sick, and I will abstain from all intentional wrong-doing and harm, especially from abusing the bodies of man or woman, bond or free. Hippocrates

If we take man as he is we make him worse, but if we take man as he should be we make him capable of becoming what he can be. Goethe

I had no particular desire to enlighten them, but I had some difficulty in restraining myself from laughing in their faces so full of stupid importance. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

I maintain (even though my feeling may be regarded as paradoxical) that the light and brilliant wit of conversation is not even necessary in the most long-lasting love affair, if it has really sprung from the heart; and despite everything that those who have only ever half loved may say of the long intervals that intense feelings of love and friendship leave between them, the day always goes by quickly when you spent it with your beloved, and silence is as full of interest as any discussion. Xavier de Maistre, A Journey Around My Room

Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Immanuel Kant, An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?

Rules and formulas, those mechanical aids to the rational use, or rather misuse, of his natural gifts, are the shackles of a permanent immaturity. Whoever threw them off would still make only an uncertain leap over the smallest ditch, since he is unaccustomed to this kind of free movement. Consequently, only a few have succeeded, by cultivating their own minds, in freeing themselves from immaturity and pursuing a secure course. Immanuel Kant, An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?

I protect my friends, growl at the untrustworthy, and bite wrong-doers. Crates of Thebes

I think we should allow ourselves to laugh, or at least to smile, each time that an innocent opportunity to do so presents itself. Xavier de Maistre, A Journey Around My Room

It is useless to argue with a man whose opinion is based upon a personal or pecuniary interest. William Jennings Bryan

It is fine to travel around many cities, but profitable to live in the best one. Bio the Cynic

O time! Dread deity! It is not your cruel scythe that fills me with terror; I fear only your hideous children, Indifference and Forgetfulness, who turn three-quarters of our lifespan into a long death. Xavier de Maistre, A Journey Around My Room

I’m sorry, but if you can’t be bothered to take an interest in local affairs, that’s your own lookout. Energize the demolition beams. Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Sick and yet happy, in peril and yet happy, dying and yet happy, in exile and happy, in disgrace and happy. Epictetus

So – I will die one day? I will die? I – the person speaking, the person able to feel and touch myself – I might die? I find it rather difficult to believe: after all, others die, and there’s nothing more natural than that: you see it happen every day: you see them passing away, you get used to it; but for you to die, you yourself – you in person! Well, that’s a bit too much. Xavier de Maistre, A Journey Around My Room

Something to do, something to love, and something to hope for. Immanuel Kant

The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted or sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem

They all pose as if they had discovered and arrived at their genuine convictions through the self-development of a cold, pure, divinely indifferent dialectic... while what really happens is that they take a conjecture, a whim, an “inspiration” or, more typically, they take some fervent wish that they have sifted through and made properly abstract – and they defend it with rationalizations after the fact. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

Were I in a desert I would find out wherewith in it to call forth my affections. If I could do no better, I would fasten them on some sweet myrtle, or some melancholy cypress, to connect myself to; I would court them for my shade, and greet them kindly for my protection. I would write my name upon them, and declare that they were the sweetest trees throughout all the desert. If their leaves withered, I would teach myself to mourn, and when they rejoined I would rejoice along with them. Jean Jacques Rousseau

What an intense, melancholy pleasure my heart feels when my eyes run over the lines traced by someone who is no longer alive. Here is his handwriting, it was his heart that guided his hand, and this letter is all I have left of him! Xavier de Maistre, A Journey Around My Room

Right from the fount of these delights of ours
A bitter something rises, which chokes us 'mid the flowers. Lucretius

The soul, today flooded with dark ideas and tragic images, finds causes of sadness everywhere – just as a corrupted stomach converts the healthiest foods into poisons. Xavier de Maistre, A Journey Around My Room

The newspaper does everything for us. It runs the police force and the banks, commands the militia, controls the legislature, baptizes the young, marries the foolish, comforts the afflicted, afflicts the comfortable, buries the dead and roasts them afterward. Finley Peter Dunne

There’s a part of me that knows what the answer should be to that question, and hates me for not being able to reach it.

They say that you sometimes cast politics out through the door but it climbs back through the window, particularly when the windows are open. Secret letter from Khrushchev to Kennedy

Under this bright southern sun it is even somehow hard to believe that there still exist problems in the world which, due to lack of solutions, cast a sinister shadow on peaceful life, on the future of millions of people. Secret letter from Khrushchev to Kennedy

You have to understand, I have no ground to retreat further, there is a precipice behind. Secret letter from Khrushchev to Kennedy

When I was let out of prison the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour — for the horse was soon tackled — was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was nowhere to be seen. Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

You know I hate, detest, and can't bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appalls me. There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies – which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world – what I want to forget. It makes me miserable and sick, like biting something rotten would do. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country. Hermann Goering, Nuremberg trials

When I picture to myself the most reflective and the most wise of men in sexual postures, I hold it as an effrontery that he should claim to be reflective and wise. Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it. Michel de Montaigne

Allusions & Aphorisms

He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how. Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

Never interrupt your opponent when he’s making a mistake

There are some things so serious you have to laugh at them. Niels Bohr

If I am, death is not. If death is, I am not. Why should I fear that which cannot exist when I do? Epicurus

Read not the Times, read the Eternities.

It is worse than a crime; it is a mistake.

The instinct of a man is to pursue everything that flies from him, and to fly from all that pursue him. Voltaire

An arch is held in place because all of its constituent stones are striving to collapse.

The only gift is giving to the poor; All else is exchange. Thiruvalluvar

Letter writing is the only device for combining solitude with good company. George Gordon Byron

And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. Anais Nin

Art is a house that tries to be haunted. Emily Dickinson

Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short. Henry David Thoreau

If a man on seeing a little black were to say it is black, but on seeing a lot of black were to say it is white, it would be clear that such a man could not distinguish black and white... So those who recognize a small crime as such, but do not recognize the wickedness of the greatest crime of all... cannot distinguish right and wrong. Chinese philosopher Mozi

The difference between the right word and the nearly right word is the same as that between lightning and the lightning bug. Mark Twain

When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing. Enrique Jardial Poncela

Never let schooling get in the way of education.Mark Twain

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind. Rudyard Kipling

He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever. Chinese proverb

Let us endeavour to live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry. Mark Twain

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. Thomas Edison

It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who have ever been alive. James Baldwin

The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials. Chinese Proverb

When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world. John Muir

Never wrestle with a pig. You just get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.

No more of all this talk about what a good human should be, but simply be one!

If you marinate in your own misanthropy long enough, common decency fades away.

Torn apart like Knockaert

A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled. Barnett Cocks

GIF editing

Use the gifsicle command line program (or ezgif.com).

List frames and delays:

gifsicle --info input.gif

Extract each frame of a GIF into separate GIF files:

gifsicle --explode input.gif

Create a GIF from input GIFs:

gifsicle input1.gif input2.gif input3.gif > output.gif

Scale a GIF in-place to some height (e.g. 100px) and keep the aspect ratio:

gifsicle -b --unoptimize -O2 input_output.gif --resize _x100

Flip a GIF in-place horizontally:

gifsicle -b --unoptimize -O2 input_output.gif --flip-horizontal "#0-"

Remove a frame from a GIF in-place (# is 0-based, so the example is the 6th frame):

gifsicle -b --unoptimize -O2 inputoutput.gif --delete "#5"

Crop transparency of a GIF in-place for all frames:

gifsicle -b --unoptimize -O2 input_output.gif --crop-transparency "#0-"
gifsicle -b --unoptimize -O2 input_output.gif --rotate-180 "#0-"
gifsicle -b --unoptimize -O2 input_output.gif --crop-transparency "#0-"
gifsicle -b --unoptimize -O2 input_output.gif --rotate-180 "#0-"

Crop a GIF in-place starting at the 0-based (X,Y) coordinates (in the following example: 1,8) and then a width by height (in the following example, 34x24 pixels) for all frames:

gifsicle -b --unoptimize -O2 input_output.gif --crop 1,8+34x24 "#0-"

Video editing

Use the ffmpeg command line program.

Extract first video frame as an image:

ffmpeg -i input.webm -vframes 1 output.png

Scale video to target width (e.g. 560px):

ffmpeg -i input.webm -vf scale=560:-1 output.webm

Reduce video file size (range depends on codec but generally about 10-20 is default and higher is lower quality, up to around 50 being lowest):

ffmpeg -i input.webm -crf 40 output.webm

Cut a clip from a video between two timestamps:

ffmpeg -ss 00:54:07 -to 00:56:00 -i input.mp4 -c copy output.mp4

Cut first part of a video up to a timestamp:

ffmpeg -to 00:00:15 -i input.mp4 -c copy output.mp4

Mount Neocities on Linux

Install davfs2. Example:

sudo dnf install -y davfs2

Add your user to the davfs2 group. Example:

sudo -E usermod -a -G davfs2 $USER

Log out and log back in (or reboot)

Make the mount directory somewhere. Example:

sudo mkdir /mnt/neocities

Set the ownership of the mount directory. Example:

sudo chown davfs2:davfs2 /mnt/neocities

Add the user name and password for Neocities. Example:

echo "https://neocities.org/webdav $USER $PASSWORD" | sudo tee -a /etc/davfs2/secrets

Add some performance tuning in davfs2.conf. Examples:

echo "cache_size 500" | sudo tee -a /etc/davfs2/
echo "table_size 16384" | sudo tee -a /etc/davfs2/davfs2.conf
echo "delay_upload 2" | sudo tee -a /etc/davfs2/davfs2.conf

Add the mount point configuration. Example:

echo "https://neocities.org/webdav /mnt/neocities/ davfs rw,user,uid=$USER 0 0" | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab

Reload systemd configuration:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

Peform the mount (this will be done automatically on subsequent reboots if network is available). Example:

mount /mnt/neocities

Then do periodic backups using backup.sh:

sh backup.sh ~/neocities

Thoughts

September 4th, 2023

Let us cultivate our garden

August 22nd, 2023

What if to hotl to thoit?

August 12th, 2023

Dedication

August 4th, 2023

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