2019-09-17

Weekly status update, 09/08–09/17

A brief on what happened last week

This is something new I’m trying out, in an effort to write more frequently and to serve as a log of how I’m using my time. In theory, I will write this post every week. I’ll need someone to hold me accountable if I don’t. I have yet to decide on a format for this, but it will probably include a quick summary of the work I did, things I read, IRL stuff, etc.

With the meta stuff out of the way, here’s what went down last week!

My discovery of the XXIIVV webring

Did you notice the new fidget-spinner-like logo at the bottom? Click it! It’s a link to the XXIIVV webring. I really like the idea of webrings. It creates a small community of sites and enables sharing of traffic among these sites. The XXIIVV webring consists mostly of artists, designers and developers and gosh, some of those sites are beautiful. Mine pales in comparison.

The webring also has a twtxt echo chamber aptly called The Hallway. twtxt is a fantastic project and its complexity-to-usefulness ratio greatly impresses me. You can find my personal twtxt feed at /twtxt.txt (root of this site).

Which brings me to the next thing I did this/last week.

twsh: a twtxt client written in Bash

I’m not a fan of the official Python client, because you know, Python is bloat. As an advocate of mnmlsm, I can’t use it in good conscience. Thus, began my authorship of a truly mnml client in pure Bash. You can find it here. It’s not entirely useable as of yet, but it’s definitely getting there, with the help of @nerdypepper.

Other

I have been listening to my usual podcasts: Crime Junkie, True Crime Garage, Darknet Diaries & Off the Pill. To add to this list, I’ve begun binging Vice’s CYBER. It’s pretty good – each episode is only about 30 mins and it hits the sweet spot, delvering both interesting security content and news.

My reading needs a ton of catching up. Hopefully I’ll get around to finishing up “The Unending Game” this week. And then go back to “Terrorism and Counterintelligence”.

I’ve begun learning Russian! I’m really liking it so far, and it’s been surprisingly easy to pick up. Learning the Cyrillic script will require some relearning, especially with letters like в, н, р, с, etc. that look like English but sound entirely different. I think I’m pretty serious about learning this language – I’ve added the Russian keyboard to my Google Keyboard to aid in my familiarization of the alphabet. I’ve added the RU layout to my keyboard map too:

setxkbmap -option 'grp:alt_shift_toggle' -layout us,ru

With that ends my weekly update, and I’ll see you next week!