[TOC]
# June 2018
## 2018-06-06
Rebooting this `.plan` after a long absence. Again.
More work on switching to Linux.
Switched to [pass](http://passwordstore.org) from 1Password so I can use it
everywhere. 1Password has been pushing the cloud version pretty hard, so it's
probably only a matter of time before they deprecate the real app. This was
painful. I had to hack apart the `1password2pass.rb` file to handle my naming
conventions, and of course the version of that script in the `pass` repo was out
of date.
Got `weechat` up and running. I can communicate again.
Got `offlineimap` running, but didn't finish the syncing yet (I have a lot of
mail).
Tore Roswell out of my `lispindent` and `clhs` scripts so it just builds with
vanilla SBCL now. So much easier and less brittle.
Backlight support (specifically `xbacklight`) required editing `xorg.conf` as
described in the Arch wiki. The backlight keys on the keyboard still don't
work, but at least I can dim the screen.
`xcape` remains busted in stumpwm for now. Will debug later.
## 2018-06-07
Getting VPN set up. Mostly used the network manager GUI to handle the settings.
To disable saving of the password I had to click the silly little icon in the
right of each password field.
Got my `xrandr` bullshit mostly tamed, thanks to some Lisp code from katco.
It's really nice to be able to script my window manager to add hotkeys with
Common Lisp.
## 2018-06-21
More math review. I'm rusty.
More homework from the Prolog class. This time it was the classic Family Tree
style exercise. Wasn't too tough, even though my Prolog is *really* rusty.
Still on OS X for personal stuff until the rest of the parts for my
Linux/Windows machine arrive.
## 2018-06-22
Math review.
## 2018-06-23
Finished the Trains exercise for the Prolog class. It was harder than
I expected — my Prolog skills definitely need work. But I guess that's what the
class is for, right?
# July 2018
## 2018-07-03
The quest to make my new Linux machine usable continues. Finally managed to
build Weechat from source after screwing around in dependency hell for a while
(apparently there's no `libgnutls30-dev` for Ubuntu 18.04?). Also managed to
get the sound coming out the right ports after some dark incantation with
`pactl`. Not using Gnome as a WM apparently means I'm going to be perpetually
confused about how to configure anything on this damn machine, I guess.
Catching up in the Prolog class. Thankfully tomorrow is a holiday so I can
hopefully make some good progress there too.
## 2018-07-04
Managed to get Weechat to work with Unicode support. I had installed
`libncursesw` and reran `cmake ..` but apparently that wasn't enough, I had to
fully blow away the `build/` directory and redo the `cmake` from scratch to get
it to link against `libncursesw` (rather than `libncurses`). What a shitshow.
I really need to take a month off and write my own IRC client in CL.
Looked into an SBCL bug, but it turns out the standard is just kind of
ambiguous, and the current behavior is probably fine.
## 2018-07-07
Did the [Prolog modules tutorial][] for the Prolog class. This made me really
appreciate Common Lisp's package system... the Prolog module system seems really
crufty in comparison.
Fixed a display issue for my blog, but I don't have Hugo set up on this machine
yet, so it'll have to wait to be deployed.
[Prolog modules tutorial]: http://chiselapp.com/user/ttmrichter/repository/gng/doc/trunk/output/tutorials/swiplmodtut.html
## 2018-07-08
Got mutt running on the new Linux machine. The quest to convert my dotfiles
fully over to Linux continues.
Got ABCL, ECL, SBCL, and CCL all installed and working on the Linux machine.
I had originally installed SBCL (for bootstrapping a new build of it) and
StumpWM through the package manager and forgotten about them. This meant I had
a `/usr/share/common-lisp` laying around which was getting loaded for other
installs too, which borked a few things. I had to remove the old packages, blow
away `~/.cache/common-lisp`, and everything works now. ECL is still installed
through the package manager, the rest aren't.
Started getting my Lisp test infrastructure up and running on the Linux box.
Previously I used [figlet][] and [lolcat][] to print nice headers during the
test runs. I don't want to install Ruby on this machine if possible, so
I looked for a replacement for lolcat and found [toilet][], which includes the
functionality of both. Great! Had to download the figlet contrib fonts
manually, which was annoying (Homebrew on OS X did it automatically, but the
Ubuntu package doesn't). Toilet's rainbows aren't as nice as lolcat's, but the
tradeoff of not needing ruby is worth it.
Got Hugo installed on the Linux box and made a build of my site. I hope
I didn't break anything. Made a couple of tweaks to fix a couple of issues
I noticed in Firefox on Linux. Hand-compiled the LessCSS to avoid having to
install NodeJS on the machine. Removed the timeago jQuery plugin -- the quest
to exterminate all JS on my website continues.
Wrote a blog post. Will post it tomorrow.
Looked into why StumpWM's `remove` command is making the widths weird. Gotta
dive in more when my mind is fresh.
[figlet]: http://www.figlet.org/
[lolcat]: https://github.com/busyloop/lolcat
[toilet]: http://caca.zoy.org/wiki/toilet
## 2018-07-10
Figured out why StumpWM wasn't noticing my timezone changes. I tracked it down
to SBCL itself not noticing the timzeone changes — e.g. you can run
`(get-decoded-time)`, change your timezone, and run `(get-decoded-time)` again
and SBCL will still return the old timezone until you restart it. Eventually
I narrowed this down to `get_timezone` in SBCL's
[`time.c`](https://github.com/sbcl/sbcl/blob/master/src/runtime/time.c), which
uses `localtime_r`. The problem is that `localtime` and `localtime_r` don't
check for a timezone change, you have to call `tzset` yourself, according to
`man 3 localtime`. So the solution is to run `(cffi:foreign-funcall "tzset")`
in your StumpWM process whenever you change your timezone.
Watched the Prolog class presentation from a couple days ago. I'm still
a little bit behind, gotta hopefully catch up this weekend.
## 2018-07-14
Got `notmuch` set up on the new box. Forgot how dang fast it is.
## 2018-07-15
Got `pass` sharing sanely on my phone and desktop.
## 2018-07-16
Installed the Arduino IDE on my desktop. The quest to switch fully to Linux
continues.
## 2018-07-18
Started setting up my new Yubikeys. The process is... not friendly. I'm mostly
following [this guide](https://www.palkeo.com/sys/perfect-password-manager.html).
## 2018-07-19
Finished setting up the Yubikeys. I think.
There's still a few fiddly bits -- handling multiple different Yubikeys seems
like it's gonna take a bit of scripting grease, and I don't think there's a way
to time out the PIN on the Yubikey after a certain amount of inactivity.
I think this should mostly be alright, since the only one I'll leave plugged in
is the Nano: that's plugged into my desktop monitor that I use for a KVM, so
whenever I switch the computers or turn off the monitor it'll lock. I think
that's a good enough mix of practicality and security for what I need.
## 2018-07-20
Finally got around to fixing StumpWM's frame splitting/removing/balancing. Got
a work-in-progress/proof-of-concept PR at https://github.com/stumpwm/stumpwm/pull/481
Debugged why my `scrot` keyboard shortcuts that work fine on Debian weren't
working on my Ubuntu machine. It took a while because shell commands you run
through StumpWM's key mappings have their output blackholed to god only knows
where. Eventually I split the commands into a separate shell script and
redirected all the output to a file (I should have done this much earlier),
which let me see giblib complaining about the keyboard being busy. Once I found
that error it led me to https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=86507 which
shows a solution: add a `sleep 0.2` before the call to `scrot`. Jesus.
## 2018-07-21
Did some coding interview-style programming exercises. I'm rusty at this stuff.
Started writing a blog post. It's turning out to be longer than I expected it
would be. By now I should expect this.
## 2018-07-23
Cleaned up my Vim bundle folder. Removed a bunch of things I never use.
Figured out how to do wildcard blocking in uBlock. Again. Here's for my future
self: the uBlock rule should look like `##[class^="prefix-"]` or
`##[class*="part"]`.
I think I found a setting to eliminate the screen tearing I've been seeing in
Ubuntu with my Radeon card. It was described
[here](https://cubethethird.wordpress.com/2016/06/14/eliminate-screen-tearing-with-amd-gpu-on-ubuntu/).
Got Inkscape installed in preparation for setting up my AxiDraw again this
weekend. Used the PPA to install the latest version (0.92). EMSL recommends
0.91, but apparently I can use the prerelease version on one file for the
AxiDraw (`plot_utils.py`) and it should work okay. I went ahead and version
controlled `.config/inkscape/extensions` this time for when I inevitably have to
dick around with the source again — I learned my lesson last time.
## 2018-07-25
Got `stumpish` set up so I can poke at stumpwm from within scripts. Hacked my
`pass` binary to pop up the copied message with `stumpish` so it's a little less
opaque when I use the stumpwm shortcut to grab a pass.
## 2018-07-28
Finally got my VPN setup on the Linux machine. Had to disable IPv6 at the
router because PIA doesn't support it, and leaving it enabled will leak my
actual IP, and I wanted to use OpenVPN instead of PIA's custom app thing.
Networking is a mess.
Got Project 1999 set up on Linux. Fonts are a mess, but otherwise it's working
fine. Had to add this to `~/.wine/user.reg` to get it to stop fucking up my
gamma:
[Software\\Wine\\X11 Driver] 1269299093
"UseXVidMode"="N"
# August 2018
## 2018-08-10
Tried to get Folding at Home working, but after about an hour of screwing around
with GPU drivers on Linux I gave up. Sorry, I'd like to help, but I can't
invest the time to debug a basic install process.
Set up my own lightweight personal pastebin as outlined
[here](https://pinafore.social/statuses/100475132430233694). The hardest part
was getting a working `pbcopy` and `pbpaste` inside a bash script. I was using
`xsel` which works at my main shell but wouldn't work at all from inside a bash
script. I assume this has something to do with `$DISPLAY`, but then I tried
`xclip` and it worked just fine, so fuck it. Clipboards on Linux are such
a mess.
## 2018-08-12
Traveling. Trying to use my second Yubikey on my work machine, and of course
it's a fucking mess because why would anyone ever possibly want to use more than
ONE single smartcard in their life, right?
The problem is that even though the secret keys for decrypting my `pass`
archives are on this second Yubikey, GPG always wants me to insert the original
Yubikey and pops up the "Please insert smartcard with serial number ..." dialog.
Even after I run `gpg --card-status` to forcibly tell its dumb ass to notice the
new card.
I tried the usual "delete the secret key and reimport the pubkey, then run
`--card-status` to make it notice" dance, but this time even *that* didn't work.
I ended up having to delete some files by hand:
https://donncha.is/2014/07/problems-using-an-openpgp-smartcard-for-ssh-with-gpg-agent/
How is any normal person supposed to actually *use* this software?
## 2018-08-13
At the office, trying to get my Thinkpad set up again. Linux is a Journey.
Had trouble getting the external monitor to work. Again. First attempt: used
a USB-C to MiniDP dongle to a MiniDP to DP cable. It saw the correct
resolution, but something in the dongle prevented it from calculating the
correct timing, and the monitor wouldn't work.
Second attempt: scavenged a raw USB-C to DP cable. This actually worked.
Also had to scavenge a mouse. Took a while to find the not-bluetooth USB
dongle. I checked in all the USB ports on the monitors but didn't see it, til
a coworker pointed out the Apple keyboards also have a spare USB port and that's
where it was.
## 2018-08-20
Back in Rochester, and GPG is being an asshole once again. Much the same
problem as on 8/12 — I'm trying to switch back to my normal Yubikey. The
problem:
* I have two Yubikeys, A and B, which hold my GPG key K.
* I normally use A.
* I want to switch to using B.
* GPG still thinks the private keys for K are stored only on A, even when I plug
in B.
The solution is:
1. Blow away the "keygrip" files in `~/.gnupg/private-keys-v1.d` corresponding
to the keys on the Yubikeys, but **not** other keygrip files. An easy way to
do this is something like `grep -rl shadowed-private-key ~/.gnupg/private-keys-v1.d/ | xargs rm`.
2. Run `gpg --card-status` so GPG will notice the missing keygrips and realize
they're on this *new* Yubikey.
I should probably wrap this up into a script.
## 2018-08-27
Tad says I need some kind of "udev rule" for my Switch controller under Linux:
KERNEL=="hidraw*", ATTRS{idVendor}=="057e", ATTRS{idProduct}=="2009", MODE="0666"
I don't know what this means, but I'm dumping it in here for later.
Published http://stevelosh.com/blog/2018/08/a-road-to-common-lisp/ after many
plane rides and weekends.
## 2018-08-30
Another Ubuntu setup. Practice makes perfect I guess.
Things I needed to `apt install` to get something usable:
* `arandr`
* `aspell-en`
* `aspell-is`
* `autoconf`
* `build-essential`
* `chromium-browser`
* `cmake`
* `curl`
* `dunst`
* `exfat-fuse`
* `exfat-utils`
* `fish`
* `git`
* `gnupg-agent`
* `htop`
* `hugo`
* `inkscape`
* `libx11-dev`
* `mmv`
* `msmtp`
* `neomutt`
* `neovim`
* `network-manager-openvpn-gnome`
* `notmuch`
* `offlineimap`
* `pcscd`
* `python-neovim`
* `python3-pip`
* `restic`
* `rlwrap`
* `scdaemon`
* `scrot`
* `slock`
* `texinfo`
* `tmux`
* `toilet`
* `tree`
* `vlc`
* `w3m`
* `wget`
* `xautolock`
* `xcape`
* `xclip`
Updated my dotfiles bootstrap script to include the new linux symlinks.
Bootstrapping the system is still an uphill fight.
## 2018-08-31
Continuing bootstrapping.
Installing Dropbox makes things a lot easier because I can easily sync little
bits of state between computers. But the Dropbox site sure doesn't make it
easy. To my future self: here's how to install Dropbox on Ubuntu:
* Download the `.deb` file from their site.
* `sudo dpkg -i thefile.deb`
* `dropbox start -i`
Important: **do not run the last command with sudo**, because if you do your
entire installation will be totally fucked (`~/Dropbox` will be owned by root)
and you'll have to start all over.
Building Mercurial from source. Had to install `python-dev` first.
As always, `hg-git` is fucking broken on install. Had to symlink
`dulwich/dulwich` into the Mercurial directory, but it was still broken.
[This](https://bitbucket.org/durin42/hg-git/issues/252/hg-47-error) is the
problem. Mercurial's lack of a stable plugin API is why I no longer really
maintain my hg plugins. It sucks. For now I'm just gonna downgrade Mercurial.
# September 2018
I quit my job at the end of August and spent September traveling and not
thinking about computers.
# October 2018
I spent the first three weeks of October in SF at my new job, to onboard in
meatspace before starting remote work.
## 2018-10-22
Continuing game jam work.
## 2018-10-23
More work on the Lisp Game Jam. I don't think my entry will be ready in time,
but if nothing else at least I've accomplished a couple of things:
* Done some actual testing of Mansion. I really need to come up with a more
stringy syntax, and also start thinking about how to define colors (just use
constants?).
* Figured out how to use esrap. It's a little clumsy, but better than doing
everything by hand. I still like Smug better, I think, though it has its own
clumsiness.
## 2018-10-28
Finally got back to the electronics book. Learned about 555 timer chips.
# November 2018
## 2018-11-08
Did a couple of Rosalind problems after work:
* `cl-ppcre`'s `all-matches` only returns non-overlapping matches, not *all*
matches. Had to write my own. Dammit.
* `~*` will skip over `format` arguments.
* Drakma follows HTTP redirects by default, which is nice.
* Uniprot is slow until you warm up their caches.
## 2018-11-09
Added some support for arbitrary data to CACL. After using `jq` and being
miserable, I think it might be possible to do RPN JSON processing. (Re)learned how
to use the CL pretty printer in the process, from the CLR book, so I can print
hash tables much more nicely now.
## 2018-11-10
Changed the battery in my Thinkpad. Mostly straightforward, except that the
original was missing some screws and one of the plastic tabs had broken off and
was jamming things when I tried to reassemble it. Once I figured that out it
went back together fine.
Did some more Rosalind problems. One was trivial. Implemented
`longest-monotonic-subsequence` for another, which was tricky.
## 2018-11-11
Got the backlight control working in my Thinkpad. Had to edit
`/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf` to contain:
Section "Device"
Identifier "Intel Graphics"
Driver "intel"
Option "Backlight" "intel_backlight"
EndSection
Then reboot, and `xbacklight` would finally work.
Played some DCSS for the first time in a long while. Still fun.
# December 2018
## 2018-12-22
Trying to debug why `ccl:*unprocessed-command-line-arguments*` isn't working.
I can run CCL and connect to it with Vlime to jump around, which is great, but
this particular problem is about command line argument processing so I had to
figure out how to rebuild CCL to add some logging. Turns out you just
`(rebuild-ccl)` in a running CCL to tell it to rebuild itself. I can even do
that in the Vlime process, and then run the binary in another terminal. Cool.
I eventually [tracked
down](https://github.com/Clozure/ccl/issues/177#issuecomment-449586557) why the
command line arguments are wonky. No idea if this is a bug or intended
behavior, but at last I understand what is happening now.
Dusted off the old AxiDraw to make Christmas gift tags and cards for people.
Fun! I've learned now to not try to switch pens and redraw over the old lines
— switching pens moves things around enough that it won't work cleanly.
## 2018-12-23
Traveling.
Refactored the split-sequence PR fork thing. Surprisingly tricky to get all its
weird edge cases around number-of-elements-examined correct.
Still getting used to this split keyboard. Finally starting to press the `b`
key with the correct finger. The numbers and arrows and stuff are still
a challenge.
Cleaned up CACL to work with CCL and Adopt. Need to do some more work on the
other CLI utils and write some docs for Adopt and then a blog post, I think.
Tried to get Weechat up and running on this laptop so I can communicate with the
world. Unfortunately there's no nice list of Weechat's dependencies anywhere
because fuck me, and I'm an idiot and didn't log it in this plan file the last
time I had to deal with this bullshit, so here we are:
sudo apt install cmake libncursesw5-dev libcurl4-gnutls-dev zlib1g-dev libgcrypt20-dev gnutls-bin ca-certificates aspell aspell-en aspell-is libgnutls28-dev
cd ~/src/weechat
mkdir -p build
cd build
cmake ..
make
sudo make install
That `libgnutls28-dev` is important.
Did another couple of Rosalind problems. They were pretty easy, but it was good
to get back into the swing of things, and I came up with some nice utils that
make them pretty clean.
## 2018-12-24
Fixed a bug in one of my Rosalind problems.
Pinned `python-markdown` to version `2.6.11` in `d` because the last release is
fucking broken (it double-escapes characters in codehilited blocks). They fixed
it months ago but still haven't pushed a new release, so whatever, I'll just pin
to one that seems to work. At least I can build my documentation again.
## 2018-12-25
Merry Christmas.
Whipped up a CSV library because the existing ones are a little bonkers. Way
less code and much faster. There are still a couple of features I need to think
about but I think it's pretty solid already.
## 2018-12-26
Wrote unit tests for the CSV library and got them running on SBCL, CCL, and ECL.
`cl-csv` doesn't let you use a string as the newline delimiter on CCL, fun. Had
to install ECL on this laptop. Built it from source this time. It worked
great.
Got my pastebin access set up on this machine. Apparently I forgot to add this
machine's public key to my main Linode box. Had to do it through Lish.
Finally got around to installing LispWorks. The personal edition is janky as
hell. Brain dump for next time:
* The personal edition is 32-bit, so it will just Not Work™ out of the box.
Have to install 32-bit deps to get it to even run: `sudo apt install
libgtk2.0-0:i386 gtk2-engines-murrine:i386`.
* The personal edition is an older version, which bundles ASDF 2, which can't
build shit any more.
* Need to build ASDF 3 first by running `make` in the ASDF repo on the `release` branch.
* Then in LispWorks run `(load "~/src/asdf/build/asdf.lisp") (provide "asdf")`.
* Then you can run the Quicklisp bootstrap and everything works.
* The personal edition won't run init files, you have to do it manually.
* The personal edition can't run a non-GUI (jesus). I guess I'm not adding it
to my automated tests.
What the hell, let's get Allegro running too. Allegro worked out of the box
because I had already done the 32 bit bullshit for LispWorks, but it too is
janky. At least Allegro provides a command line REPL in `alisp`. That's nice.
Installed ABCL on this laptop to run tests there too. The installation process
is just:
* Download the `-bin` from the site. You don't also need to grab the contrib,
it's all bundled together.
* Put the two JARs in `/usr/local/bin`.
* Make a shell script to call `java -jar abcl.jar`.
Renamed `trivial-ppm` to `cl-netpbm` since it's grown more functionality.
## 2018-12-31
Figured out how to get my external hard drives mounted on Ubuntu as a non-root
user. Have to add a line like the following to `/etc/fstab`:
UUID=40098415-2c77-35dc-a3ed-4b286c7ed542 /media/sjl/external-drives/western-digital/ auto user,force,rw 0 0
Get the UUID from `sudo blkid -sUUID`. Then you can just `mount
/media/sjl/external-drives/western-digital`.