autodidacts.io

# The Autodidacts
> Exploring the universe from the inside out
Public Ghost content for AI and LLM tooling. Use `/llms-full.txt` for consolidated page and post context.
Append `.md` to any post or page URL to get the content in Markdown (for example, `/example-post.md`).

## Pages
- [About Autodidacts.io](https://www.autodidacts.io/about.md) - Autodidacts.io is the blog of three thing-building, self-educating, voraciously-reading, computer-tinkering, music-playing brothers who hail from Canada’s west coast, where the weather is wet, the post office is open three days a week, and power outages are frequent. Autodidacticism (also autodidac…
- [Affiliate Disclosure](https://www.autodidacts.io/affiliate-disclosure.md) - This blog is powered by Ghost. If you click on a link to Ghost, such as the “Proudly published with Ghost” link in the footer, and decide to sign up for Ghost(Pro) hosting based on what you see, we get a commission for referring you. The price stays the same. If you wouldn't like us to get a commis…
- [Say Hello to The Autodidacts](https://www.autodidacts.io/contact.md) - Have a comment? A question? Just want to say Good Day? This is the place! Just use the contact form below and we’ll do our best to get back to you: Subject (optional) Email Address Message Send Message »
- [Your Voice, Online: Additional Resources](https://www.autodidacts.io/folku.md) - Platforms * Bear Blog * Matoara * Substack * Ghost * WordPress * MailChimp * NeoCities * Buttondown * Patreon * BeHiiv * Wix * Pika * Publii * Write.as * SquareSpace * ListMonk * PHPList Some sites with reviews of the different platforms * https://verysimpleblogging.com/directory/ * https://manuelm…
- [Message Sent](https://www.autodidacts.io/message-sent.md) - Thanks for contacting us! We’ll try to get to your message as soon as possible.
- [Privacy Policy](https://www.autodidacts.io/privacy.md) - Last updated November 9th 2022 Introduction This Policy outlines the principles and practices we will follow in collection, storage, and protection of visitors’ personal information. We do our best to ensure the accuracy, confidentiality, and security of our visitors personal information, and to al…
- [Terms of Service](https://www.autodidacts.io/terms.md) - Last updated November 2nd 2022 This site is provided without warranty of any kind. It may go down; it may break; the information provided may be incorrect; and we may stop publishing and become unreachable. Paid memberships should be considered recurring donations, since we cannot guarantee that we…
- [Thank You!](https://www.autodidacts.io/thank-you.md)
- [Welcome!](https://www.autodidacts.io/welcome.md) - Thank you for joining the Autodidacts newsletter, which you can expect in your inbox every sometime. It’s wonderful to know who is on the other end of the email addresse, and we’re never too busy to say hello. Hit reply and introduce yourself! (Feel free to give a plug for any projects you’re worki…

## Posts
- [Older than the dog](https://www.autodidacts.io/how-wise-do-our-mentors-need-to-be.md) - How wise do our mentors need to be?
- [Ode to Metadata](https://www.autodidacts.io/ode-to-metadata.md) - Make your projects 4-dimensional
- [How to fit Qwen3.8-27B into 16GB of VRAM and run it on a single RTX 3080 card: the best quantizations and Llama.cpp flags I've found](https://www.autodidacts.io/how-to-fit-qwen3-8-27b-into-16gb-vram-run-with-llama-cpp-rtx-3080-flags-quantizations.md) - TL;DR: UD-IQ3_XXS with KV cache quantization
- [Vibecoding isn't as fun as writing code by hand](https://www.autodidacts.io/vibecoding-isnt-as-fun-as-writing-code-by-hand.md) - Sticks tongue out at AI
- [The Hopefully Eventually Ultimate Desktop Linux Troubleshooting Guide: Recovering from Crashes and Freezes](https://www.autodidacts.io/troubleshooting-desktop-linux-crashes-and-freezes.md) - Free advice from the printer fixer
- [Failure Modes](https://www.autodidacts.io/failure-modes.md) - Graceful degradation is underrated
- [Just being is worthwhile](https://www.autodidacts.io/just-being-is-worthwhile.md) - Some moments are intensely vivid and pleasant. Other moments are intensely and vividly unpleasant, or, more commonly, unmemorable and weakly depressing for no reason. The types of experience can be separated, on lucky occasions, by a matter of seconds, and minimal change in external stimuli, which…
- [People and Clothes](https://www.autodidacts.io/people-and-clothes.md) - Some people’s clothes have a way of riding up in unfortunate places, in a way that seems almost willful. It’s as if the clothes are sentient, and cloth and wearer are locked in a lifelong battle for supremacy. I know people who can look out-of-place in a tailored jacket. In fact, I am one of them.…
- [Autodidacts Newsletter #26](https://www.autodidacts.io/autodidacts-newsletter-26.md) - Twenty-four new posts to hitch your mind to
- [What Should We Optimize Away?](https://www.autodidacts.io/holistic-optimization.md) - Optimize away optimizing away
- [How to fit Qwen 3.6 35B A3B into 16GB of VRAM, & run it  with Llama.cpp on an RTX 3080](https://www.autodidacts.io/how-to-fit-qwen3-6-35b-a3b-into-16gb-vram-run-with-llama-cpp-rtx-3080.md) - The belly hangs over the belt, but it fits
- [Let’s call ‘em “aigents”](https://www.autodidacts.io/aigents.md) - The portmanteau is overdue
- [Treat People as Flowers](https://www.autodidacts.io/treat-people-as-flowers.md) - Sometimes people say goodnight by saying, see you in the morning, if that’s expected. This bugs me.[1] While I certainly hope to see them in the morning, and consider it highly probable, even in a modern world, it isn’t guaranteed. To me, all goodbyes are an acknowledgement of this fact. They exist…
- [The search for a good offline dictionary for Linux](https://www.autodidacts.io/good-offline-linux-dictionaries.md) - … proved longer than expected
- [Bookmarklet: Copy Ghost Post ID to Clipboard](https://www.autodidacts.io/copy-ghost-post-id-to-clipboard-bookmarklet.md) - Save several milliseconds with two lines of JavaScript
- [Backpack Activation Energy](https://www.autodidacts.io/backpack-activation-energy.md) - Portrait of a gumption trap
- [20 years of Linux and I finally started using job control](https://www.autodidacts.io/20-years-of-linux-and-i-finally-started-using-job-control.md) - And it’s amazing
- [How to drain pasta without a colander, without burning yourself](https://www.autodidacts.io/how-to-drain-pasta-without-a-colander-without-burning-yourself.md) - A cooking tip for unusually bright cave people
- [All Polymarket temperature markets have disappeared](https://www.autodidacts.io/polymarket-temperature-markets-dissappear.md) - Along with the money bet on them?
- [The bid-ask spread on used physical goods](https://www.autodidacts.io/the-bid-ask-spread-on-used-physical-goods.md) - For most of my life I fundamentally misunderstood buy & sell prices
- [The art of getting back on one’s horse](https://www.autodidacts.io/the-art-of-getting-back-on-one-s-horse.md) - It’s a long process
- [Delusional Optimism & the Art of Sneaking Up on Your Goals](https://www.autodidacts.io/sneaking-up-on-your-goals.md) - You can succeed, but you can't fail — because you aren't officially trying
- [Bothering to understand](https://www.autodidacts.io/bothering-to-understand.md) - First it makes you slow, then it makes you fast (maybe)
- [Curation and its side effects](https://www.autodidacts.io/curators-skim.md) - Some fundamentals about how it works, and what to do when it doesn't
- [The butterfly effect of revenge bedtime procrastination](https://www.autodidacts.io/the-butterfly-effect-of-revenge-bedtime-procrastination.md) - Wasting time isn't bad because it wastes time
- [My criteria for a good Linux developer laptop](https://www.autodidacts.io/my-criteria-for-a-good-linux-developer-laptop.md) - Well-built, cheap, and fast: I pick all three.
- [Some thoughts about backing up, which occurred to me after my laptop abruptly expired](https://www.autodidacts.io/thoughts-on-digital-fragility.md) - I had other plans for what to write about, and also plans for the day that didn't involve disassembling my connection to the outside world with a screwdriver
- [Sheep Music & Wedding Bands](https://www.autodidacts.io/bookworm-pronunciation-syndrome.md) - On knowledge gaps and bookworm pronunciation syndrome
- [Old site, new site bookmarklets](https://www.autodidacts.io/old-site-new-site-bookmarklets.md) - A small utility that’s surprisingly useful during website migrations
- [Ideas Evolve in Dialogue](https://www.autodidacts.io/ideas-evolve-in-dialogue.md) - You can sort of have a conversation with a book. I sometimes write rude comments in the margins when I disagree with the author. But the Stoics recommend that when you’re insulted, you just ignore it. Books are incredibly advanced stoics in this regard. And it’s kind of infuriating to insult someon…
- [An indie blog’s directory of indie blog directories](https://www.autodidacts.io/indie-blog-directory-directory.md) - Blogs are back. RSS is cool again. (Said the blogger to his RSS feed.) Here is a collection of small, independent directories of blogs, personal websites, and smol/indie/slow/human web sites that I’ve run across and bookmarked. Most of them accept submissions. Some of them have RSS feeds. Directory…
- [How I find the email addresses of public figures 🔒](https://www.autodidacts.io/how-to-find-contact-information-of-public-figures.md) - This post is for paid members only
- [Underrated reasons to dislike AI](https://www.autodidacts.io/underrated-reasons-to-dislike-ai.md) - The big arguments for and against AI have been endlessly discussed, and I don’t feel I have much to add. AGI and existential risk; human obsolescence; power use; cybersecurity; safety + censorship; slop; misinformation. Also, I’m kind of tired of everything being about AI, which is why I have speci…
- [Autodidacts Newsletter #25](https://www.autodidacts.io/autodidacts-newsletter-25.md) - 25 new human-written posts
- [We don’t know until the end, and it’s never the end](https://www.autodidacts.io/we-dont-know-until-the-end-and-its-never-the-end.md) - Judging a book by its content doesn’t work either
- [It’s surprisingly hard to reliably paste the current date at the cursor on Linux](https://www.autodidacts.io/reliably-insert-current-date-at-cursor-on-linux.md) - Long, long ago, in a dotfiles directory far away, I had this snippet: bindsym control+semicolon exec date '+%Y-%m-%d' | tr -d "\n" | xsel -i -b && xdotool sleep 0.5 key "ctrl+v" Isn’t it a beauty? But it worked, in i3 on X11. I devoted 500 words to bemoaning how hard it was to port this over to Way…
- [Paste clipboard contents in places where you can’t paste](https://www.autodidacts.io/insert-clipboard-content-in-places-that-do-not-allow-pasting-with-send-keys.md) - Use AutoKey send_keys() to put clipboard content places where it can't normally be put
- [The Fewer Ingredients The Better](https://www.autodidacts.io/the-fewer-ingredients-the-better.md) - Good quality ingredients hardly need seasoning. I only need to add spices if I’ve burnt the soup.
- [Social Cache Busting](https://www.autodidacts.io/social-cache-busting.md) - How do you ask questions that people don’t just hippopotamus?
- [The Evening Writing Effect](https://www.autodidacts.io/the-evening-writing-effect.md) - Time for some night-owl counter-propaganda
- [De-optimize your search terms to skip the SEO slop](https://www.autodidacts.io/de-optimize-your-search-terms-to-skip-seo-slop.md) - Finding the human in a sea of sales
- [PSA: local AI handwriting recognition is usable now](https://www.autodidacts.io/usable-local-ai-handwriting-recognition.md) - To my delight and surprise, local Qwen3-VL:8b WER is acceptable, even on my cryptic handwriting
- [TIL how to accidentally overwrite a decade worth of data in LibreOffice calc](https://www.autodidacts.io/libreoffice-calc-multi-sheet-paste-can-quietly-edit-or-overwrite-data-by-accident.md) - And also, how to restore from my backup with similar single-keystroke efficiency
- [Taking responsibility for my energy levels](https://www.autodidacts.io/tips-for-boosting-energy-levels-mitochondrial-function.md) - Bootstrapping mitochondrial function one flax seed at a time
- [Sonder is a word I like](https://www.autodidacts.io/sonder.md) - At a certain point in my life it dawned on me that other people are people too. That guy bent over with Fentanyl? A whole world: boyhood, rites of passage, dreams, regrets, memories, crushes — the works. The evil billionaire? Old wounds, sincere beliefs, time with grandchildren — playing Legos — st…
- [An unexpected benefit of docking my laptop beside my desk](https://www.autodidacts.io/loud-laptop-fans-fix-docking-laptop-beside-desk-reduces-noise.md) - I can run Performance profile all the time
- [A strange workaround for when the capacitive touch screen of your e-reader isn’t responding to dry fingers: use your nose](https://www.autodidacts.io/nose-as-a-stylus-fix-for-capacitive-touch-screen-not-registering-dry-zombie-fingers.md) - No, really.
- [Handy.computer is the Linux dictation app I've always wanted.](https://www.autodidacts.io/dictate-into-active-text-box-at-cursor-with-handy-linux-app.md) - and this post is written with it.
- [Maybe don’t optimize  conversion rate?](https://www.autodidacts.io/maybe-dont-optimize-conversion-rate.md) - Some of the most interesting people are allergic to funnels
- [Insomnia isn’t a waste of time](https://www.autodidacts.io/productive-insomnia-tips-for-hypnagogic-creativity.md) - Sub-clinical insomnia is endemic among the people I know. And I’ve rarely heard anyone say anything good about it. We all know how important good sleep is for good health, and about the increase in heart attacks when daylight savings time kicks in, and that getting less than 6hrs rest is equivalent…
- [How to increase Ollama context length](https://www.autodidacts.io/increase-ollama-context-length-num-ctx.md) - OLLAMA_CONTEXT_LENGTH environment variable didn’t have an effect, but there’s another way
- [Star rating support has been merged into the Readeck KOReader plugin](https://www.autodidacts.io/readeck-koreader-plugin-now-supports-syncing-star-ratings-as-likes-and-labels.md) - I ported over the patch I wrote for the Wallabag plugin, and improved it
- [Something good happened to my memory, and I have a theory about what caused it](https://www.autodidacts.io/memory-improves-with-use.md) - Accidental strength training for the hippocampus
- [How to pause and resume a resource-intensive process on Linux with SIGSTOP: specifically, Ollama LLM inference](https://www.autodidacts.io/pause-resume-resource-intensive-llm-inference-process-on-linux-with-sigstop-sigcont.md) - Keep your system resources to yourself when you need them, and put them to good use when you don’t
- [OCR Typewritten Documents with a Local Vision Model (Qwen3-VL:8B + Ollama)](https://www.autodidacts.io/ocr-typewritten-manuscripts-with-local-ollama-vision-model.md) - It’s now possible to get results better than Tesseract, without relying on cloud services
- [An extremely silly bug](https://www.autodidacts.io/an-extremely-silly-bug.md) - 🐞
- [In Praise of Earnestness](https://www.autodidacts.io/earnestness.md) - Let’s make it cool again, because it is.
- [Autodidacts Newsletter #24](https://www.autodidacts.io/autodidacts-newsletter-24.md) - One newsletter with more new posts than I published in all of 2025.
- [Script: bulk star Readeck entries by URL (with URL cleaning)](https://www.autodidacts.io/readeck-api-like-star-favorite-entries-by-url-python-script.md) - A better version of the script I wrote for Wallabag
- [Script: bulk star Wallabag entries by URL](https://www.autodidacts.io/star-entries-by-url-wallabag-api-python-script.md) - Useful if you imported from Pocket CSV, and it didn’t include your favourites
- [A basic way to hotreload an AppImage](https://www.autodidacts.io/hotreload-an-appimage-extract-modify-repack-with-entr.md) - Repack and run every time you hit save
- [My free Silver price API now has an RSS feed with the day’s bid price](https://www.autodidacts.io/free-daily-silver-bid-price-rss-feed.md) - Also, I now know about RFC-822 dates, which is not something I was interested in learning about
- [You’re in a computer literacy filter bubble](https://www.autodidacts.io/computer-literacy-filter-bubble.md) - Skill-testing question: what’s wrong with this snippet? user@host:~$ rm $FILENAME You’re still reading. That means it doesn’t look scary. Many of you have already jumped to: this is a code snippet > this is a terminal command > this is probably Bash or POSIX shell > it’s deleting a file > $ doesn’t…
- [I fixed my crashing AWS t2.micro instance by adding swap](https://www.autodidacts.io/i-fixed-my-crashing-aws-t2-micro-instance-by-adding-swap.md) - An obvious solution to a simple problem, overlooked due to previous experience
- [It’s 2026 and LibreOffice Calc still can’t parse JSON API responses without a plugin](https://www.autodidacts.io/parse-filter-json-api-responses-in-libreoffice-calc.md) - I check every year or so
- [My Free Daily Silver Price API is Live](https://www.autodidacts.io/my-free-daily-silver-price-api-is-live.md) - What comes before alpha?
- [Dostoyevsky isn’t difficult](https://www.autodidacts.io/dostoyevsky-isnt-difficult.md) - Other than the names. The names are difficult.
- [I couldn’t find a free Silver price API — so I’m making one](https://www.autodidacts.io/free-silver-price-api.md) - Writing a web app because I want to do calculations in a spreadsheet
- [The Benefits of Creating a Personal Shorthand of Symbols](https://www.autodidacts.io/personal-shorthand-symbols.md) - A guide to devolving your handwriting
- [Human beings are waterproof](https://www.autodidacts.io/human-beings-are-waterproof.md) - Some exceptions apply
- [First impressions of Readeck](https://www.autodidacts.io/readeck-open-source-read-it-later-app-with-kobo-support.md) - A look at another open-source read-it-later app with Kobo support reminds me how pleasant it is to use well-built software
- [Finally, an open-source dictation app for Linux that actually works](https://www.autodidacts.io/whispering-open-source-dictation-app-for-linux.md) - For decades, I’ve contemplated capitulating and buying a proprietary dictation app, such as Dragon Naturally Speaking. Now I don't have to.
- [Split Testing in ~50 lines of JavaScript](https://www.autodidacts.io/split-testing-in-50-lines-of-javascript.md) - I tried to use a Matomo A/B testing plugin and it didn’t work, so I wrote my own: sometimes, re-inventing the wheel is the fastest way to get on the road.
- [A Fish shortcut for rapidly appending clipboard data to text files](https://www.autodidacts.io/fish-bash-clipboard-append-to-file.md) - Text editors are for normies
- [What’s the end game for Ghost newsletter sign-up spam?](https://www.autodidacts.io/ghost-newsletter-sign-up-spam.md) - My theory of mind is failing
- [How to Migrate Kobo eReader Books & Annotations to a New Device](https://www.autodidacts.io/migrate-kobo-ereader-content-books-annotations-to-new-device.md) - And probably not even brick it
- [Script: export post as Markdown via Ghost Admin API](https://www.autodidacts.io/script-export-post-as-markdown-via-ghost-admin-api.md) - Once upon a time I deleted the production database
- [Create custom filtered RSS feeds in Ghost, the easy way](https://www.autodidacts.io/create-custom-filtered-rss-feeds-with-ghost-cms-routes-channels.md) - Create custom feeds, on custom routes, without editing theme files
- [Regex is horrible, yet regex is amazing](https://www.autodidacts.io/horrible-amazing-regex.md) - And it’s not just for programmers
- [Wallabag wins, despite its flaws](https://www.autodidacts.io/wallabag-wins-despite-its-flaws.md) - Freedom and flexibility make up for the rough edges (and the competition has its own usability issues)
- [Sleep is a continuum](https://www.autodidacts.io/sleep-is-a-continuum.md) - Don’t believe the Hypnograms
- [Patching KOReader Wallabag Plugin to add star support](https://www.autodidacts.io/star-wallabag-entry-from-koreader.md) - Now you can star Wallabag entries from the comfort of your Kobo e-reader
- [A list of public Wallabag instances that seem legit](https://www.autodidacts.io/wallabag-instance-list.md) - Especially free-to-use instances that might be around for a while
- [An unsolved question in sleep science](https://www.autodidacts.io/long-sleep-duration-and-mortality.md) - Or, a display of my ignorance of sleep science
- [Filtering RSS feeds by tag](https://www.autodidacts.io/filter-rss-feeds-by-tag.md) - Use CommaFeed filter expressions to hide irrelevant posts like this one
- [Cerelog’s ESP-EEG is a new 8 channel biosensing board at a hobbyist-friendly price](https://www.autodidacts.io/cerelog-esp-eeg-affordable-openbci-like-board.md) - The same number of channels of EEG/EMG/ECG for half the price
- [I’m trying #100DaysToOffload](https://www.autodidacts.io/100daystooffload.md) - A blogging challenge where you publish 100 posts in the space of a year
- [Foodie vs Athlete](https://www.autodidacts.io/foodie-vs-athlete.md) - I have always liked food: I enjoy cooking, I like eating, and I especially value sharing mealtimes together with family and loved ones. I also enjoy snacking, and I like going out to coffee shops, and I like eating out, and I like getting bits of take-out and nibbling them while I’m out for a walk…
- [Quality, Quantity, and Effective Iteration](https://www.autodidacts.io/iteration.md) - The blogosphere abounds with free advice, and one of the more frequently-repeated morsels is to “be prolific”, and quality will naturally follow. The following story, from Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland, is brought in as supporting evidence: The ceramics teacher announced on opening day…
- [I can haz knowledgebase](https://www.autodidacts.io/knowledgebase.md) - I’ve often felt sheepish about my personal knowledgebase: it’s just a pile of text files. Everyone else has their own self-hosted MediaWiki or Obsidian or Digital Garden and mine is stuck in the ‘90s, using text/plain without any folder structure or tags. But it works! In this very short post I wil…
- [My Favourite Ways to Avoid Spending Money](https://www.autodidacts.io/how-to-spend-less-money.md) - The other day I happened across a pair of Lululemon shorts on Facebook marketplace. They were beautiful, they were my size, and they were a deal: only $35! I wanted to buy them. I left the tab open for a while, then I closed it.
- [Tortoise Mode vs Hare Mode](https://www.autodidacts.io/tortoise-mode.md) - When I was a boy, I had a ride-on lawnmower with no blades. I’d wanted a ride-on lawnmower for years, ever since my brothers and I found and restored-to-life a John Deere we found in the garage of a rental house in rural France. (The elderly neighbour, after observing from behind her lace curtains,…
- [Troubleshooting: a skill that never goes obsolete](https://www.autodidacts.io/troubleshooting.md) - Much of what I do, in multiple fields, could be reduced to one skill: troubleshooting. I’ll define troubleshooting as systematically determining the cause of unwanted behaviour in a system, and fixing it. Troubleshooting is often learned tacitly, in the process of explicitly learning “the skill”. T…
- [Scroll-to-text fragment bookmarklet](https://www.autodidacts.io/scroll-to-text-fragment-bookmarklet.md) - TL;DR I made a thing and think it’s cool. Have you ever wanted to send someone a link, not to a huge and confusingly-laid-out webpage, but to the one sentence that’s relevant to them? So have I. For technical people, this has sometimes been possible, by linking to subheadings. But many documents do…
- [How to Migrate a Discourse Forum from DigitalOcean to Linveo](https://www.autodidacts.io/migrate-discourse-from-digitalocean-to-linveo.md) - When we launched NeuroBB in 2015, as the first (and only) independent EEG, BCI, and neurofeedback discussion forum, we chose the forum software Discourse. We chose Discourse not because it is easy, but because it is hard because it’s good, despite its hefty resource requirements. So, I have been se…
- [Days Are Easily Made](https://www.autodidacts.io/how-to-make-someones-day.md) - Days, it turns out, are rather easily made. The time required varies, but trends closer to making the bed, or making a cup of tea, than to making Ravioli. (If you are crazy good-looking and smile at people who aren’t when you pass them on the street, it can be much quicker.) The effort required is…
- [Autodidacts Newsletter #23](https://www.autodidacts.io/autodidacts-newsletter-23-2.md) - Hello friends, Below are four new posts and six old ones. 1. How to Get the Most Out of a Conference (Extroverting 101) 2. Implementing Elegant Timing (in which Immanuel gets stuck behind a very old man on the sidewalk) 3. The Joy of Selective Attention (Henrik Karlsson tweeted “good post!” which m…
- [Autodidacts Newsletter #23](https://www.autodidacts.io/autodidacts-newsletter-23.md) - Hello friends, Below are four new posts and six old ones. 1. How to Get the Most Out of a Conference (Extroverting 101) 2. Implementing Elegant Timing (in which Immanuel gets stuck behind a very old man on the sidewalk) 3. The Joy of Selective Attention (Henrik Karlsson tweeted “good post!” which m…
- [How to Get the Most Out of a Conference](https://www.autodidacts.io/conference-tips.md) - Conferences can be hit-and-miss. It’s easy to go through the motions on autopilot and find the experience lacklustre. Earlier on this summer, I attended one that started out lacklustre, but then became memorable, and I realized there’s a lot one can do to influence the outcome. Adam, the lurking th…
- [Implementing Elegant Timing](https://www.autodidacts.io/elegant-timing.md) - This morning I got stuck in the slow lane behind an old man when I was walking down the sidewalk on my way to a Zoom meeting at my neighbourhood coffee shop. Rather than speeding up and hurrying past him, thoughts on my meeting, I did the opposite: slowed down and walked behind him. Enjoying the mo…
- [How to use an Aeropress without it blowing up in your face](https://www.autodidacts.io/how-to-use-an-aeropress-without-it-blowing-up-in-your-face.md) - If you’ve ever splattered your face, shirt, counter, and ceiling with coffee and grounds when trying to operate an Aeropress coffee maker, this is how to prevent it. Blowouts happen when it takes so much force to push the water through the coffee grounds that the seal around the plunger breaks, and…
- [Treating Everything as Practice](https://www.autodidacts.io/treating-everything-as-practice.md) - No matter our position or situation, life will throw challenges our way. These can either knock us off our stride and make us sulk, or be an opportunity to grow. Depending on my attitude, the same situation can shift between the “this is a super annoying nuisance” category and the “ooh, this is an…
- [The Joy of Selective Attention](https://www.autodidacts.io/selective-attention.md) - Reality is detailed, and attention is finite. As I get older, I find myself noticing less. I think this is partly because adults are socialized not to stare, and to pretend like they know what’s going on. Children are not embarrassed by gawking. And they learn much faster than adults. I think there…
- [Towards Universal Keybindings](https://www.autodidacts.io/universal-keybindings.md) - Keyboard people invest time upfront memorizing keybindings, in order to save time in the long run. At least, that’s the theory. In practice, it’s more like this: What if we crowdsourced the optimal set of universal default keybindings — and made them available in every app? Imagine all the people j…
- [Perfectionism is optimizing at the wrong scale](https://www.autodidacts.io/holistic-perfectionism.md) - At the risk of stating the obvious even more obviously than I usually do: sometimes the perfect approach involves tolerating imperfection. Imperfection?! Yes. Specifically, the more macroscopic one’s view becomes, the more microscopic imperfections may need to be tolerated — if they don’t matter to…
- [The One-Hour Principle](https://www.autodidacts.io/the-one-hour-principle.md) - I play the violin. I started when I was about six, but didn’t get serious until I was nine, when my parents gave me a new instrument as a birthday gift that was sized for my hands, and wasn’t a hand-me-down from my older brother. I was very excited, and worked hard to get good enough to join the fa…
- [How to Deploy a Ghost Theme using the Admin API + Bash + cURL](https://www.autodidacts.io/ghost-theme-upload-admin-api-bash-curl.md) - Figuring out how to upload a Ghost theme using the Admin API from Bash shouldn't have required heroic effort. Embarrassingly, it did. ↓ Jump to the script ↓ I cobbled a script together from the Ghost docs and the inevitable forum posts. However, the Bash JSON Web Token (JWT) example in the Admin AP…
- [Autodidacts Newsletter #22](https://www.autodidacts.io/autodidacts-newsletter-22.md) - For those of you who are new: Welcome! We have three new posts for you. They aren’t entirely representative of what we usually publish, but our posts rarely are. 1. The Grug Brained Writer: a lunatic essay that attempts to compress a lifetime of learnings about writing into baby-speak. 2. Reclaim y…
- [The Grug Brained Writer](https://www.autodidacts.io/grug.md) - [ Inspired by the strangely-hilarious meme-essay The Grug Brained Developer ] grug brained writer write million million words and sell about two. grug scratch head to figure why two words become shiny rocks and not other words. grug squeeze and squeeze all learnings into tiny essay now maybe future…
- [Knowledge & The Coastline Paradox](https://www.autodidacts.io/mercator.md) - A Mercator map is a total lie.1 But it can still save people from the rocks. And sometimes it’s better than a globe — because it folds and fits in your pocket.
- [Reclaim your focus with ~12 lines of bash](https://www.autodidacts.io/coldturkey-selfcontrol-freedom-leechblock-alternative-in-bash.md) - Computers are a tool that you can use or be used by. I have written about my tool-taming tactics before, including blocking distracting websites in my hosts file. My “checking” function is the natural evolution of that tactic. It implements the core functionality of popular anti-procrastination app…
- [Autodidacts Newsletter #21](https://www.autodidacts.io/autodidacts-newsletter-21-2.md)
- [Autodidacts Newsletter #21](https://www.autodidacts.io/autodidacts-newsletter-21.md)
- [I cured my mysterious, debilitating seasonal rash with an ultra-low-carb Ketogenic diet (n=1) 🔒](https://www.autodidacts.io/cure-seasonal-heat-rash-eczema-psoriasis-dermatitis-with-low-carb-ketogenic-diet.md)
- [eBay Still (Secretly) Supports Dorking](https://www.autodidacts.io/ebay-still-supports-dorking-with-and-or-not-logical-operators-boolean-expressions.md) - While shopping for a new Linux laptop, I attempted to use Google-style advanced search operators on eBay, without luck. All references to such things seem to have been removed from their docs. But it turns out it’s still possible. Here’s the syntax I've sleuthed out: * AND operator: thing1 +thing2…
- [How to (Rapidly) Switch Ghost Themes from the Command Line](https://www.autodidacts.io/how-to-switch-ghost-themes-from-the-command-line.md) - I do a lot of Ghost theme development, and have to swap which theme is running on my local install all the time. The Ghost admin interface takes a lot of clicking to get to the page where you can change themes. And I don’t like clicking. Neither Google nor GPT could tell me how to change the Ghost…
- [Tinkering with Manjaro and NetBSD on the Pinebook Pro: a crumbs-in-the-forest tutorial & review](https://www.autodidacts.io/pinebook-pro-linux-bsd-laptop-review-tutorial.md) - I found a used Pinebook Pro on Craigslist for $100 CAD, invented some flimsy excuse[1], and bought it. Then I went much farther down the rabbit hole than I expected, trying to get it functional.[2] Here are my first impressions of the journey to get (semi-) functional Linux and BSD systems installe…
- [Things I don’t know how to do](https://www.autodidacts.io/intractable.md) - I propose a new standard for the blogosphere, along the lines of Derek Sivers’s “Now” page: the Things I don’t know how to do list. Criteria: 1. Maintain a more or less up-to-date list of things that you don’t know how to do, and would like to learn. * These should be things that you have tried to…
- [Autodidacts Newsletter #20](https://www.autodidacts.io/autodidacts-newsletter-20.md) - Six months since our last newsletter, we’re back with four new posts. Wise counsel from someone who everyone wants to hire: The Art of Resisting PromotionThe default course is: as soon as you’re doing a job well, you get encouraged to switch to a different job. This new job will likely be similar t…
- [80/20 Spanish](https://www.autodidacts.io/80-20-spanish-learning-tips.md) - I have tried several methods of learning Spanish that didn’t work: * Spanish in 30 days (book & CD combo) * Duolingo * Memorizing vocabulary with Anki * Listening to Language Transfer Complete Spanish * Listening to Spanish music & watching Spanish films * “Spanish days” with fellow learners, on wh…
- [How to Backup Ghost on Fly.io with Rsync](https://www.autodidacts.io/backup-ghost-on-fly-with-rsync.md) - This is yet another small companion piece to my Ghost on Fly tutorials. In my last tutorial in the series, I showed how to back up your Ghost blog hosted on Fly.io over SFTP. SFTP does the job, but transferring all those images and files every time is a waste of bandwidth — and pig-slow. Rsync is a…
- [Useful keyboard shortcuts I learned too late](https://www.autodidacts.io/useful-keyboard-shortcuts.md) - I’ve been using computers for a long time, and for most of that time, I’ve considered myself a power user — the kind of person who bothers to use keyboard shortcuts in the first place, runs Linux, and knows a bit about programming and the command line. Of course self-described power users know and…
- [The Art of Resisting Promotion](https://www.autodidacts.io/resisting-promotion.md) - The default course is: as soon as you’re doing a job well, you get encouraged to switch to a different job. This new job will likely be similar to what you’ve just been doing, but slightly larger, more complex, higher status, more flashy, and higher pay. And higher pressure. This can seem like a ta…
- [How to Make Your Smartphone Boring](https://www.autodidacts.io/how-to-make-your-smartphone-boring.md) - Yesterday evening I was laying by the fire and reading a book. It was my first evening off in a while; I had shut down my computer before heading for dinner, and I was thoroughly enjoying myself. At one point, after finishing the section I was reading, I remembered about a message I had to send, re…
- [Link to segment of a YouTube video with a set stop time using "end" URL query parameter](https://www.autodidacts.io/link-to-segment-of-youtube-video-with-set-stop-time-using-end-url-query-parameter.md) - Sometimes, you just want to link to a specific segment of a YouTube video. Deep-linking to a specific start time in a YouTube video is fairly common — but sometimes specifying an end-time is as (or more!) important. After much fruitless Googling, I’ve found a way to do this: 1. Use the embed URL (h…
- [Autodidacts Newsletter #19](https://www.autodidacts.io/autodidacts-newsletter-19.md) - For the past year or more, one of the Autodidacts has been thinking way too much about the philosophy of profanity — and has just finished a somewhat excessive exploration of the topic. Behold, “Swearing is Dumb” (except when it isn’t): Swearing is DumbA caveat before we get started: this essay wil…
- [Everything is a Rabbit Hole](https://www.autodidacts.io/everything-is-a-rabbit-hole.md) - Everything is connected. It’s a truism because it’s true. To move a physical thing, everything touching it must move also … and then the neighbours of the neighbours must make way … and the neighbours of the neighbours of the neighbours. It goes on. (Thus, reductive science is at best an approximat…
- [Even More Ways Thinking You Are a Genius is a Handicap](https://www.autodidacts.io/thinking-you-are-a-genius.md) - Thinking you’re a genius can be quite a handicap. People who believe they’re geniuses tend to be obnoxious to be around — especially if their belief is unfounded, which it often is. And having a negative impact on other people has a negative impact on oneself. The relational drawbacks of thinking y…
- [How to Update Ghost on Fly.io to the Latest Version](https://www.autodidacts.io/update-ghost-site-on-fly.md) - A small companion post to my Ghost on Fly tutorials: You’ve gotten your site all set up on Fly’s free tier, and it’s looking spiffy. But the Ghost developers move fast, and next thing you know there’s a new version out — and it has a feature you want, or a critical security update. How do we update…
- [How to Backup Your Ghost Site on Fly.io using SFTP](https://www.autodidacts.io/backup-ghost-on-fly-sftp.md) - This is a small companion post to my Ghost on Fly tutorials, covering how to keep your site backed up. The normal way to backup a Ghost site hosted on a VPS is to run ghost backup. However, since we didn’t install Ghost on Fly using the Ghost CLI, the ghost backup command isn’t conveniently availab…
- [Swearing is Dumb](https://www.autodidacts.io/swearing-is-dumb.md) - A caveat before we get started: this essay will hopefully apply to people at least vaguely like me; it may not apply to people from different cultural backgrounds. These days swearing seems almost ubiquitous, especially among my generation, and especially on the internet. Let’s stop and ponder: wha…
- [Autodidacts Newsletter #18](https://www.autodidacts.io/autodidacts-newsletter-18.md) - To get the year off on the right foot, we have a newsletter exclusively featuring brief philosophical essays on living well. In-depth, nerdy essays & technical articles will resume in the next issue. (If you’d like to opt-out of our self-help department, but stay for the technical stuff, reply with…
- [Why It’s Worth Doing Things Properly](https://www.autodidacts.io/why-its-worth-doing-things-properly.md) - I like to get things done fast. I’ve gradually learned, however, that trying to get things done fast can be self-defeating. There’s a balance. If I work too fast, I make mistakes. And mistakes slow things down. A lot. They mean things have to be redone, they are demoralizing, and can cause a concat…
- [Gratitude](https://www.autodidacts.io/gratitude.md) - First presented to friends and family on New Year's Eve, 2022 When I was young, people would often tell me how lucky I was. I agreed with them, but wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do about it. I was a pretty happy little guy, but I was never sure if that was enough. I remember sometimes asking t…
- [How is it that people can be annoying without doing anything?](https://www.autodidacts.io/incompatible-states.md) - How is it that people can be irritating, without doing anything? Much of the day I have spent being irritated at people for the most ridiculous reasons: the sounds people make — slurping, breathing — when they’re wearing headphones, the smugness of people eating slowly while I eat fast, the sound o…
- [Autodidacts Newsletter #17](https://www.autodidacts.io/autodidacts-newsletter-17.md) - A mere month after our last newsletter, we have three new posts of varying excellent quality for you. We have an in-depth article about ethical affiliate marketing (we tried to avoid doing too much virtue signalling...), including actionable steps to take, and code to use on your own blog: Is it po…
- [Expectation Fields](https://www.autodidacts.io/expectation-fields.md) - My brother expects everyone to be nice. I expect everyone is out to get me. Surprising no one, it seems like everyone my brother meets is nice, and everyone I meet is out to get me. (When we are both talking to someone, our expectations clash, and the person is in a superposition between nice and n…
- [Is it possible to use affiliate links without turning into a sleazy affiliate marketer?](https://www.autodidacts.io/ethical-affiliate-marketing.md) - There aren’t many good ways to monetize a blog. Ads degrade the reader’s experience; membership paywalls restrict reach; sponsorships restrict freedom. Affiliate links have the potential to be a non-destructive monetization option. In theory, affiliate links needn’t have any effect on the reader’s…
- [A few more things I've learned about self-hosting Ghost on Fly’s free tier](https://www.autodidacts.io/things-ive-learned-self-hosting-ghost-on-fly-io-free-tier.md) - Following on from my previous two posts on the topic, here are some additional things I’ve learned running this blog for free on Fly: 1. You can survive a HackerNews traffic spike, without scaling. However, your access logs will pile up. One of my posts made it to #3 on HN while I was sleeping, wit…
- [Autodidacts Newsletter #16](https://www.autodidacts.io/autodidacts-newsletter-16-3.md)
- [Autodidacts Newsletter #16](https://www.autodidacts.io/autodidacts-newsletter-16-1.md)
- [Autodidacts Newsletter #16](https://www.autodidacts.io/autodidacts-newsletter-16.md) - This newsletter might look a bit different: we have migrated our blog & newsletter platform into the 21st century. We hope it still works. We have some new handcrafted blogposts for you. First up, we have a 2,343-word essay on … organizing files! The first half — which we hope will be interesting t…
- [Autodidacts Newsletter #16](https://www.autodidacts.io/autodidacts-newsletter-16-4.md) - This newsletter might look a bit different: we have migrated our blog & newsletter platform into the 21st century. We hope it still works. We have some new handcrafted blogposts for you. First up, we have a 2,343-word essay on … organizing files! The first half — which we hope will be interesting t…
- [Elon Musk could be reading this blogpost](https://www.autodidacts.io/elon-musk-could-be-reading-this-blogpost.md) - It’s unlikely, but it’s possible. That’s the beautiful thing about writing on the internet. I have no idea who you are. You might be the Queen of Denmark. You might be the farmer who grew my porridge. Or, you might be you — the very person reading this sentence. Nice to meet you. I suspect the aver…
- [Taxonomy is Hard](https://www.autodidacts.io/taxonomy-is-hard.md) - We all have data that we need to store, and then find. Regardless of type, data tends to build up. Eventually, we need some system for organizing it into sensible categories. It turns out, this problem is harder than it seems. In this article, I'm going to be talking about organizing digital files.…
- [Why I Don’t Comment on the Internet 🔒](https://www.autodidacts.io/why-i-dont-comment-on-the-internet.md) - [Members only post] I rarely comment on the internet, even though I often have things I want to say, and would like to contribute to the communities I lurk in.
- [Host a Ghost 6.0 Site on Fly.io Free Tier In 2 Minutes — MySQL 8 edition](https://www.autodidacts.io/host-ghost-mysql8-on-fly-io-free-tier.md) - Not long ago, I wrote a post on how to deploy a Ghost blog on Fly.io without paying a dime. Shortly after, Ghost removed support for SQLite in production, in favour of MySQL. However, hosting Ghost + MySQL 8 on Fly turned out to be a bit gnarly. MySQL 8 requires ~2GB of RAM, and Fly's free tier has…
- [Ghost Private Draft URLs Leaked via Outlink Referrer Header](https://www.autodidacts.io/ghost-private-draft-urls-leaked-via-outlink-referrer-header.md) - [Update September 9th 2022: I contacted the Ghost security team on August 22nd, before publishing this article. Yesterday, I received a response from Ghost's CTO & co-founder; her fix is in Ghost v5.14.0, released today. Here I am writing a sensitive article in the safety of my blog’s admin panel.…
- [My strategies for using technology without being used by it](https://www.autodidacts.io/intentional-computing.md) - Or, “How to stop clicking on clickbait headlines like this one, and actually get some work done instead.” I have used many tricks over the years to keep control over the fraught combination of internet and monkey-mind — everything from blocking distracting websites, to keeping track of how I spend…
- [What is RSS?](https://www.autodidacts.io/what-is-rss.md) - Note: this is an introductory article for people who have not heard about of RSS before. If you are a programmer and already know everything, you might get bored and fall asleep. RSS is a way of following websites. RSS is short for Really Simple Syndication, or Rich Site Summary. “RSS feeds” let yo…
- [Did you know Kobo e-readers have a built-in image viewer?](https://www.autodidacts.io/kobo-ereaders-have-a-built-in-image-viewer.md) - Today I discovered, by accident, that Kobo e-readers have a feature I’ve wished they had for years: an image viewer. Double tap on an image in a book or Pocket article to open a full-screen image viewer that lets you zoom, pan, and rotate. This is the only place I know of where the Kobo interface u…
- [Overthunk Note-taking Workflows](https://www.autodidacts.io/notetaking-workflows.md) - For some people, making a note is simple: pencil, paper, done! For others, it isn’t: Which notebook? (Tick-a-tick-a-tick-a) At the front or the back? (Tick-a-tick-a-tick-a) Pencil or pen?? (Tick-a-tick-a-tick-a) Which pen? (Tick-a-tick-a-tick-a) Wait, what was I trying to write down again … ? That’…
- [Opinions Are Optional](https://www.autodidacts.io/opinions-are-optional.md) - I have a new opinion: I don’t need to have an opinion. Having an educated opinion on a topic is a big investment. Many topics aren’t worth that investment. Not because they’re irrelevant, necessarily; just that they aren’t relevant to me, right now. Everything is connected to everything else. Havin…
- [How to get your "How to get your blog post on the front page of HN" blog post on the front page of HN](https://www.autodidacts.io/how-to-win-the-internet.md) - I once got a blogpost on frontpage of HackerNews. Therefore, I am kind of a leading expert on how to get blogposts on frontpage of HackerNews. In this post I will humbly share my secret recipe for winning the internet. 1. Write blogpost. Blogpost must be very awesome. Only best blogposts make front…
- [Host a Ghost 6.0 Blog for Free on Fly.io In 1 Minute — SQLite edition](https://www.autodidacts.io/host-a-ghost-blog-free-on-fly-io.md) - Ghost is one of the fastest-growing publishing platforms. However, for those looking to dip their toes in the water, one aspect can be off-putting: the shiny Ghost(Pro) hosting (referral link) starts at $11/month or $108/year — $300/year a year if you want to use your own theme — and even if you se…
- [What Game Are You Playing?](https://www.autodidacts.io/what-game-are-you-playing.md) - Brad, a top footballer, sits in the bleachers watching the game. He cannot believe his eyes. He has come to watch his friend Edgar play, and Edgar is the worst football player he has ever seen. He stands around, chewing gum. When he runs at all, he runs like a chicken. He ignores the rules of the g…
- [Self Governance 101: The Legislative Branch](https://www.autodidacts.io/government-of-self.md) - For years, I’ve had a folder on my computer titled Notes for Next Time. When I think of ways I could do a better job of something the next time around, I try to write them down so I'll remember when it's time for action later on. These can be as simple as how many litres of water I use per day when…
- [Introducing BCIBox v2: The Open-Source OpenBCI Enclosure, Reëngineered](https://www.autodidacts.io/bcibox-v2-open-source-openbci-enclosure-redesigned.md) - We are delighted to announce that the BCIBox open-source OpenBCI enclosure is back by popular demand, completely redesigned to be fully compatible with OpenBCI Cyton, Ganglion, WiFi shield, and Daisy Module! Video Introduction → For more in-depth information, check out our original write-up about t…
- [Gratitude, for Pessimists](https://www.autodidacts.io/in-search-of-gratitude.md) - In the grand scheme of things, I am one lucky cove. So are you. The fact that you are reading this article means you have internet, an expensive and mind-bogglingly complex piece of electronic equipment, eyesight (or a screen reader), a fairly high degree of literacy — and, most telling of all, fre…
- [How to learn to enjoy running (and survive a half-marathon)](https://www.autodidacts.io/learn-to-enjoy-running.md) - Running used to be excruciating. I would get halfway down the lane by my house… and then have to stop, wheezing and gasping, with burning lungs and aching legs. Now, I enjoy it, and often run 10 to 25 kilometres for fun, and because it's good for the health. (I’ve heard runners have a 25%–40% reduc…
- [5 Best Pocket Notebooks (and how to make your own that beats them all)](https://www.autodidacts.io/best-pocket-notebooks.md) - Here at Autodidacts.io live three avid list-writers and note-takers. When you spend 90% of your waking hours in the company of an object, it's nice if you like it. I've done a good bit of research into the best (and worst) options out there for the everything-pocket-notebook, and present my finding…
- [Save the Date](https://www.autodidacts.io/save-the-date.md) - Here’s a small piece of advice, which I would like to have learned earlier: save the date. Put the date in filenames, but don’t stop there! Put it on everything: journal entries, food in the fridge, every document you write, and each box you send to the storage unit. Always use a consistent date fo…
- [Zen and the Art of Yak Shaving: Switching From i3 to Sway on Ubuntu 20.04](https://www.autodidacts.io/switching-to-sway-wayland-from-i3-x11-ubuntu.md) - When I upgraded from Ubuntu 18.04 to 20.04 LTS, I finally took the plunge and switched from the i3 window manager on X11 to Sway, an almost drop-in Wayland replacement. Here's my experience of the transition. Here be Dragons Tiling window managers are not for the faint of heart. On top of that, Way…

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