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jemurray

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Everything you need to know is here: https://jasonmurray.org/

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If someone asks you how to do something or your opinion, give them a thoughtful answer. Many times I would say, “I don’t have a strong opinion” or “whatever you think is best”. It took a friend to tell me people value my advice and they are truly interested in what I have to say. When someone asks, they want to know what I think. Answer them thoughtfully. Ever since that moment I always give a thoughtful answer when someone asks for my advice.

I could not agree more. My daily updates did stop. Writing something that is not complete shit for an entire year was hard. However, writing is also a personal experience. This again, is why I say write for the joy of writing. My goals were 1) become a better writer 2) focus on something that takes more then a few days, and see it through 3) document as much as I could about things I've learned over my career 4) write about things I love, which is something I think other nerdy people enjoy. In this example, my blog became more of a conscious stream. The articles that resinated with "my people" organically became popular. No SEO. No clickbait. No search-engine/spam shenanigans. Real writing from a real person with a real goal.

There are a great number of people who write just for the love of writing. I wish more of these people would forego the “centralized blogging” platforms and publish using independent systems. When Covid hit I set out to write one article a day using my own self hosted site. Over time it organically started to become more popular. A few of posts are now first page search results.

As pointed out by a number of people already, money will end up corrupting what was once a great and easy outlet for people to share original ideas. A better alternative is to continue building systems that make it easier to publish independently AND create search engines that are not optimized to return SEO optimized click bait garbage for profits. I want blogs from real people who write because they want to teach me something.

Let’s get back to writing good content, share it freely, and change the world.

Fastmail Down? 4 years ago

It’s been hit and miss all morning. Sometimes it will retrieve and send mail, other times the the progress bar pulses along like it’s trying without success. The status page says everything is ok. If any of their engineers are listening and the problem is geolocated, I’m in the St. Louis, MO USA area.

I know this is about Lyme disease, but let me add another word of caution while we are discussing ticks. Two years ago I was bit by the Lone Star tick. Since that time I developed an allergy to all red meat. It was hard to diagnose and a few of the doctors I worked with along the years still don’t believe its true. If your interested in learning more search for Alpha Gal. There is an excellent Radio Lab podcast about it.

Going mouseless 5 years ago

I’ve used vi for 25 years now. Every shortcut and key combination is burned into unconscious memory. This holds true for all other applications used on a regular basis.

This would make a neat piece of art on the wall. I love thinking of the intersection between technology and neural-pathways, this reminds me of that.

In a democratic society you don’t control, you elect strong leaders who guide and mentor the people to the positions that are best for society as a whole. We build a culture that believes in reason, science, humanitarianism, and progress. Then we work on spreading this culture and belief to others around us every opportunity we have.

Awesome Python 7 years ago

‘pip’ needs a download counter to feed stats necessary to generate this list automatically.

Since I am part of this aforementioned technical community, I will spend a few extra dollars in order to get: 1) high resolution screen, 2) large track pad that works well, 3) native "unix like" shell, 4) sleep that works 100% reliably when I close the lid.

I don't consider it a fashion statement, I just want it to work. After 20+ years I don't like to tinker with my desktop anymore. I would go back to Gnu/Linux for desktop, but finding the right hardware with the above specs is a challenge if not impossible (I have yet to find a track pad driver that works as well as Apples).

I have not reevaluated in 2018, If there is anything better I would like to hear specific examples of hardware and OS combinations?