Dopamine hacks

Psychology is a very serious “thing”. Some unfortunate people spend most of their “energy” struggling with their own (unwanted. overwhelming) emotional states, like tension, /anxiety stress and so on. We cannot change ourselves. but we can accept what we are and try to develop (Know Thyself, you know) and apply some hacks, just like that “Emotional Intelligence” meme. Acknowledging and accepting ourselves as we are is the first necessary (but not sufficient) step....

June 7, 2024 · <lngnmn2@yahoo.com>

Teach Yourself programming like Peter Norvig

There are already several websites which publish a “roadmap” of how to teach yourself programming (University keve) using freely available courses and textbooks. Here is my 2 cents. First of all, SICP is an advanced textbook. It is by no means suited for teaching freshmans, unless you are a MIT student, who is math-lover and a “slow thinker”. Brian Harvey, the great, managed to teach the CS61A at Berkeley – a SICP-based course which goes at a slow pace....

April 28, 2024 · <lngnmn2@yahoo.com>

Everything in Emacs

Google deprecated external access to its IMAP due to “security reasons” Karpathy posted a classy coding video lecture in which programming has been done entirely from the default Mac OS browser (doing everything in a web-interface to a Jupiter notebook). Corporations want us to stay in their (and only their) browsers all the time (in many different tabs) and never leave, so they can collect all the data they want....

April 24, 2024 · <lngnmn2@yahoo.com>

Rust is like Haskell, but imperative

What could even be in common between Haskell and Rust? Well, they are the most advanced languages of its time, the most controversial and the most discussed. Most importantly - both languages are have a proper type-classes/traits based standard libraries, where the type-classes/traits define major modern mathematical notions, which can be traced to the modern set-theoretic math and related notions. This is what makes the actual difference with other crap like PHP....

April 24, 2024 · <lngnmn2@yahoo.com>

All you need is…

There are a few ancient sayings about going around the world, looking for the Truth (which us Out There, you know) and then returning back home only to find It right there. Other ancient thinkers have suggested to look no further than onto your own self (to find all the answers). And, of course, the ultimate resit is I Am That from the Upanishads. There are some manifestations Truths I found going around the world....

October 29, 2023 · <lngnmn2@yahoo.com>

Never leave Emacs

It takes time to get more-or-less familiar with the major branches of human knowledge, which is traditionally called a classic education. This gives one, among other things, the ability to see what other people call “connections” between seemingly unrelated “things”. This ability, in turn, helps to see things as they really are, which is the most important part of life, and goes back to the Upanishads and the Buddha. The most difficult and subtle “thing” to see (as it really is), is, of course, your own self, and the habit of doing so, which is called introspection, which ultimately leads to self-knowledge and self-control, is the most sought after ability since beginning of time (at least in the Orient)....

October 17, 2023 · <lngnmn2@yahoo.com>

Productivity Porn

The true, actual, measurable productivity comes not from utilizing some advanced tools, but, like everything else in life, from seeing things as they really are and therefore doing the right thing at each level (of abstraction). Tools give some additional 20%, perhaps, but the main productivity gains are from not wasting time and efforts and just doing the right thing (which is what distinguishes experts and masters). For CS it means understanding all the deep, underlying principles behind the concepts and abstractions....

October 17, 2023 · <lngnmn2@yahoo.com>

Fixing the annoying bug

I has been struggling with this very annoying bug when code blocks in the org mode are messed up badly when the global-whitespace-mode is enabled. This global-whitespace-mode is especially important to see the actual mess which is usually invisible (like decease causing bacteria). My “quality benchmark” is how my configuration renders Sacha.org, you know. So, here is how to fix it. Doom themes (as a standalone package) (use-package doom-themes :demand :hook (after-init ....

September 4, 2023 · <lngnmn2@yahoo.com>

The org-mode rituals of a narcissistic busy-body

The ~org-mode~ package is abused and misused in so many ways, that it can be seen as a distinct psychological phenomena in itself. The underlying mechanism is satisfaction (a dopamine release reward) from repeatedly doing supposedly “the right thing”, which, in turn, is the neurological basis of all repetitive religious rituals. These “very smart” guys just maintain an elaborate system of mechanistic and semi-automated rituals to reinforce their deeply held unwarranted belief, on which their self-identification is based upon, that they are “very smart”....

September 3, 2023 · <lngnmn2@yahoo.com>

GNU Emacs

Emacs is a monument (just like Potala palace in Lhasa) of an old-school software engineering and classic languages – it is, indeed, a world heritage site of the golden age of programming. It also could be compared with the ghat complex of Varanasi, which began no one knows when and is constantly changing since then, being reshaped by the “waves” and “tides” of social dynamics. Visiting Emacs is like visiting one of such historic sites, and just like them, it has been re-shaped by the successions of mass-hysteria and zealous over-excitement about bullshit....

July 28, 2023 · <lngnmn2@yahoo.com>