Categories on Zinner has a tilde thing

Tools and techniques

Wed, 06 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Occasionally I mention to someone that I have a couple of ‘conditions’ as diagnosed by a professional. Some of these are kind of obvious, but the ones around anxiety and ADD sometimes raises the topic of what could or should be done to deal with it. The thing is, I’m doing it all already. You are looking at what doing … (waves hand broadly into surrounding area) … all of these things does. Occasionally I’ll read a research paper somewhere looking at the efficacy of some intervention like cardio, or food, or sleep and, yep I’m apparently already at the cutting edge of the intervention mix. Any further changes are basically personality re-writes. Not even second, drafts – full re-writes. And to be clear I’m not even against the idea, but short of an acquired brain injury, I’m not sure that’s even possible.

So, sorry, this is your lot. And if you are disappointed, imagine how I feel.

Photography

Tue, 05 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

So this is how my mind works. I see a video about an interesting photographic process. I think about the sort of prints I would like to make, so I’m immediately researching Cafenol, daguerreotype, printing, paper costs, purchase lists and so on. So, not about taking photographs, or finding other people who might be about to teach me, just me making purchases to do it myself.

And I really just wanted a print, right? I could just fry this up on a computer. But for some reason I needed to do it from first principles, or not at all.

So now I have a polluted search history, no print, and another gnawing sense of failing to get something done.

Now, clearly doing the photography or buying the print is the thing to do, sure, but I am more asking right now: is it better to not even think things like this at all? A cool idea that never goes anywhere is perhaps better left unthought?

Ribbon dream

Thu, 12 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I had a dream several years, or perhaps decades ago that keeps popping in to my head. I think I was ill at the time, or at least sleeping in bed that was too hot.

It was a frantic scene. A large, dark room, which in retrospect is perhaps the ‘Tron’ play space, is over what feels like a running track mixed with a flat Rainbow Road track from Super Mario – there was specifically some endless void below. These game related parallels are things I have drawn in my later life, it did not feel like I was experiencing a ‘game in real life’, this was just the scene.

There was some sort of running, or at least movement or motion progress happening on tracks. The curious thing was the dynamics. Up ahead the track was flat and divided into lanes, perhaps a dozen or so. The track was curving left and right, slightly undulating. But were I was, the ‘here’ in the track, was split into ribbons, which were flowing up and down the further from the splitting point I was. And the splitting point was alwasy ‘just up ahead’. The harder I tried to get to the unsplit and sort of safer looking or feeling part of the track, the faster the splitting would happen, so I was always on what felt like a bucking or at least undulating and swaying ribbon of track. Some ribbons would simply drop down into darkness, and the strange thing was, when this happened, I was standing on the ribbon.

I would try to jump from one ribbon to another, other that would somehow outlive the current ribbon, and this would work for a while, but it would always drape down and I would fall.

The weird thing (as if none of this was already weird) is that I was on all of the ribbons. It was my perspective that was shifting. I was on every ribbon, and every ribbon was heading toward the track, but I, the I having the dream, could only experience one perspective, and then only temporarily.

I have since thought that this is my brain trying to lace together my gut feeling of the relationship between the concious and unconcious mind. There’s a roiling mass of perspectives, nearly all of which are snuffed out before only a fraction or the survivors are incorporated (literally) into your concious perspective timeline. Sometimes the welds show. Sometimes there are conflicts between ribbons and your brain stutters and the ideas ‘fight for supremacy’. We you are in an altered state you can sometime feel or see this process happening, or your mind weaves into and attempts to maintain the ‘wrong’ ribbon far too long. You be trippin.

In any case. The image of this dream, of jumping between, falling from, but always only being on ONE ribbon, oftem resurfaces in my mind.

Zinner

A break in programming

Fri, 15 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I turns out day 2 of that music setup thing is a long way off and hasn’t happened yet. Like perhaps many others, I fell down an anxiety hole and fould I had very little spare resource to commit to apparently ‘fun’ things. I have chipped away at this, put the various pieces of my perspective back onto the shelves and straightened the fuck up. A bit.

One of the things I know helps is to get things done, and one of these is ticking the ‘writing’ box on my little Habbits app, so sorry, but you’re now seeing the result this. I’ll also be ticking the ‘running’, ‘weights’, ‘meditation’ and ‘reading’ boxes today if things go to plan, but as the last few days, weeks, months and years have shown, things rarely go to plan.

Love,

Zinner

When to compliment woman

Mon, 21 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

So, the world has gone further, much and intentionally further, to hell. I am unable to engage with it to the point where I needed medical help. I have obviously helped where I can, but that’s a trivial contribution. Everyone I speak to about this seems to be able to think about it. I just can’t. So I will just not, and will rely upon those around me to point out that I am actually about to be vaporized or whatever instead of needing to assess how like it is at any and EVERY given moment.

To the subject. The answer is “don’t”. If you need elaboration, I think, and this is obviously for the straight males (I don’t do gender word games) – only compliment a woman on something you would feel comfortable complimenting another straight male on. Anything else is, by default, creepy. And unless you are well on your way to being acquainted, or are already receiving compliments back of a personal nature, just … don’t.

You really have no idea how often otherwise pleasant interactions with males end up being stressful and aggressive for woman. So, much beyond ‘Great shoes’ really needs for there to be a pre-existing connection.

Setting up a headless M8, day 1

Sun, 09 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Let’s get M8 Headless working

So, I always buy little gadgets with every intention of using them, but very rarely do. This is shameful, but then much I what I do is shameful.

Having seen the Dirtywave M8 on some Youtube channels I follow, I decided I wanted one, but also decided that I wasn’t worth the $550 + shipping and presumably duties, so opted for the ‘headless’ version, knowing full well that, as for most of my gadgets, there is a large amount of learning headroom available on cheap clones before I could ever blame to tool. If it sounds like I’m being overly self-critical, you’re probably right – it’s the mood I’m in today. We’ll just have to ride it out.

What is an M8? Do you know what a Tracker is? You know, music thing from the early 90s, started out on the Amiga, then became a format in its own right? Normally four tracks of rather bit-crunched samples played back with pitch shifting and that’s about it. Very fun sounding, rather constrained, but a very large corpus of tunes. High-energy techno is most common. Well, the M8 is a ‘hardware’ portable device realisation of this idea, but mixes in a minimalist interface strongly inspired by a music utility called LSDJ for Gameboy. All packaged up with a screen, batteries, etc. But it also adds an addition four tracks, FM synthesis, effects, exporting/rendering of output, midi input and output. Pretty amazing. But like I say, $550 and additionally rare as hen’s teeth because they’re made in super low numbers by an indie producer. Of course $550 is not a lot to pay for a musical device, but it is a lot for me, someone whom uses a $1 cable to charge his phone and used a soldering iron to fix his $5 Christmas lights.

What is the alternative? I put the first mention of hardward in quotes because it is of course largely a bit of software. In this case, it runs on something called he Teensy 4.1. This is a small development board with oodles of input and output pins that is basically an Arduino on steroids. It has a USB interface which powers the device and apparently also exposes a sound device as output. The software (actually firmware, depending on semantics) is available for free from the author on GitHub. It incorporates a bunch of other Open Source stuff so this is a very righeious thing to do, so I will of course throw the chap some coin or more probably a hoody/t-shirt if I end of spending more than a few hours with this.

There’s apparently a GUI for Windows and Mac, and something that works with Raspberry Pi the will show the lo-fi interface on your PC instead of using the hardware. So, we’re basically looking at a brain-in-a-box version of the device, and not using the many other input/outputs on the microcontroller to drive the screen, read the buttons, talk MIDI etc. etc. Seems like a reasonably compromise. The device looks awesome, don’t get me wrong, but it is normally on desks full of other devices being used by people whom know what they’re doing. That’s not me.

Moving on.

https://github.com/DirtyWave/M8Docs/blob/main/docs/M8HeadlessSetup.md

Following these instructions, I purchase a Teensy 4.1 (from Amazon – sorry) and an SD card. Yes, I have several, but they’re being used for other stuff.

To be continued (when I have had some sleep.)

Tomorrow

Thu, 06 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Tomorrow is always the busiest day. It has always been thus.

Tired?

Sun, 12 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Is anyone else tired?

Just. Tired?

Cognizant of the contraints, opportunities, and compromises, but but … tired?

I’m in the UK. It is a needlessly sad place. So much history, and culture, and GOOD PEOPLE, but just so much simply awful, selfish, garbage.

It is so tiring.

Wear a fucking mask. I don’t give a SHIT if you think it won’t protect you.

Oh. My. God.

It is so tiring.

NaNoWriNot

Sun, 07 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

So another November started without me being prepared for NaNoWriMo. I wonder how many more of these I’ll be able to attempt. I have a couple of story ideas, but I think they’re more like very-short-stories, nothing like a novel without a whole lot of embellishment. I’ve also figured that I’m never super interested in characters and so forth, just a big pile of ideas, and that’s not really the sort of thing that other people like to read. So perhaps I should just ignore this public display of progress and just write the damn stuff, print it out, and give it a Viking funeral, just to shrug of this sense of guilt that sets in about a week in to November.

Ho hum.

Love,

Zinner

ps. Android 12 is pretty fucked, isn’t it? Alt-tab broken, system icons massive, most useable space on notifications just pointless padding, battery life about 30% worse, screen interaction now required for putting the phone on silent and AWFUL scroll stretching you cannot turn off without disable ALL animations. So lame. I totally regret installing it.

Self soothing

Sat, 30 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

How much of the things that you do that you know you shouldn’t do are due to self-soothing? Backing up a bit, what is self-soothing? Because this is a blog that no-one reads, I’m not going to look it up, but will assume that it is a behaviour that exists less for the apparent goal or activity outcome, but more for the indirect effect it has on the state or mood. Some example I can think of would be the obvious one that are akin to self-medication, such as drinking, or eating, but other things like endless media consumption, or seeking out the dankest memes or whatever it takes to get a little shot of endorphines.

How much of what we do is for this indirect effect, and not for the stated or apparent goal?

Does this matter?

The phrase ‘mindfulness’ has swum into my mind here, but has more to do (I think) with being intentional in the understanding of your current thoughts, as apposed to looking for underlying themes or patterns. Or perhaps I’ve got that wrong. Again, the positives of a zero readership blog is these questions can remain unanswered.

I was wondering about this self-soothing by reading through one of my earlier posts. I seem to have this idea that no matter how under the pump I feel, there are always some tiny little steps that I can take to get things done, or improved. I have realsied that I tend to apply this approach to building self-soothing activities, when I “know” that these activities are more likely that not being done to keep on top of some lurking mood, or some task I don’t feel happy about.

Why don’t I apply this incremental process to the actual commitments I have, instead of the opera of self-soothing?

Is it that I think if I get into the ‘right mode’ I’ll more likely be able to tackle the Big Bad Things? Maybe. But I also know that in the act of starting one of these Big Bad Tasks, I get a very similar boost.

Something to ponder.

Love,

Zinner

How this site is published

Mon, 25 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

So, how is this site published. The footer should let you know that I’m using Hugo, which is basically a static site generator written to be deployed as a single executable. It has a fixed layout for the input files, you add a markdown file into the ‘content/posts’ subdirectory, and it just, generates a site for you under the ‘public/’ directory. The only tricky part is how it uses themes.

There is a ‘config.toml’ file in the root of the working folder that specifies the name of the theme. That corresponds to one of the subdirectories under the ’themes/’ directory. You put themes into that directory normally as git submodules so you can track changes in the theme, but honestly I know so little about Git that I have forgotten how to do that. The only quirk is that when you ‘git clone’ you need to include submodules.

I host the site as a private repo on Microsoft GitHub (because yes I think we need to remind ourselves of this along with Microsoft LinkedIn). I edit mainly using Vim on Android within a Termux session using a 10 buck bluetooth keyboard, then rsync the content of the ‘public’ folder to tilde. Doing this the ‘git’ way finally forced me to setup SSH keys on GitHub.

The only real annoyance where I gave up in frustration a couple of times was why Hugo was refusing to show some posts. Turns out the ‘date:’ field is taken to mean the publication or perhaps embargo date, and adding to that timezones get a little confusing. So I’d write a post, see it on the localhost draft server, but would not see it generated in the public/ folder. Annoying!

I have technical notes and snippets for all the commands for the above that I could alt-tab to and copy and paste, but seeing as though zero people are going to read this, I’ll wait for the first email requeset to zinner@relvokcor.xyz to do so. Lazy days!

What would be nice is if I could set up some sort of automatic rendering for when I push to git. I get an uneasy feeling about storing my credentials there so perhaps I need to do something on one of my many Raspberry Pis first.

Finally, I have a ’notes.txt’ in the root of the repo which has the list of awful topics that pop into my head that I should write about. I have purposefully been just putting them out in a random order without much regarding for the quality just to test this pipeline and get more used to semi-regular writing and publication, such that when I actually have something I would like to say, I’ll be thinking more about the content and less of the mechanics which will hopefully have become obvious to me by then.

Love,

Zinner

Habbits app on Android

Sat, 23 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The Habbits app on Android is good for a couple of reasons.

Firstly it is well layed out, behaves as expected, and has a useful set of features, without trying to “flex” in any particular way.

Secondly it is open source and maintained by what appear to be a number of sincere, skilled, and humble developers whom are trying to put something “good” out there.

Finally, it works.

But hang on, what is it?

It is habbit recording app. You give it the name of some habbit, tell it how often you would like to do it, and it will (optionally) reminding you, let you record when you do it, and show you little charts of how your commitments are going.

Unfounded faith in incremental improvement

Mon, 18 Oct 2021 11:00:00 +0000

I have unfounded faith in incremental improvement. Here I’m talking about the little things you do to try to sort out your life. For me it is this long laundry list of little projects and habbits I’m trying to establish or complete. The unfounded-ness here is that I very rarely if every complete these things, or indeed make major progress.

But what I have found is that these little activities with little initial and very near term following step are the only way to ‘pick myself up’ from the doldrums. It rarely matters where these steps take me, but you need to move. So, while my faith is unfounded regarding the improvement, I think based upon how I am usually able to recover that I have faith in my faith. Ignore the improvement, do the task. Doing gets you moving. Practice in the meditative sense is 99% of the value.

Yes, you are reading one of these little steps.

Love,

Zinner

Having trouble

Sun, 17 Oct 2021 12:00:00 +0000

So, anyone (ha!) who is following along with my posts will be able to tell that I’m not “okay”.

I am addressing mainly myself in a “journey” into not being not okay. Even relvokcor.xyz’s ‘hey, wow, just have fun, woohoo’ feels utterly alien. Thanks, guys. But I am going to take up this offer in a “be” sense, not “expound, explode, explain, riot” sense. Issues.

I think this is more common than the Internet gives credit for. Many, and perhaps most, are dealing with stuff. This stuff stops them doing the other “stuff” they would much rather be doing.

So, no, I am not okay. I am insular, often sad, and trying to find ways to fix this. While I do that I’ll say that I am at least non-zero and “doing”. A shout out to everyone else who is similarly watching the world progress and wondering “Why does everyone else find this easier that me?” My friend: They don’t – they just keep quiet.

Love,

Zinner

I have many gadgets

Fri, 15 Oct 2021 21:39:13 +0000

I have a large number of many electronic gadgets. Gadgets for making music, making pictures, making other gadgets, light, smoke … You name it, I have to gadget. I gave up some time ago pretending that I would use all these gadgets, so simply try to delay purchases to see if I will lose interest in them, purchase second had, or purchase the worst knock-off Chinese versions I can find. I wonder if I should make a catalogue of them. With barcodes. That I can scan with my barcode scanner.

Over optimizing

Mon, 11 Oct 2021 12:26:00 +0000

My form of procrastination comes in the form of telling myself there are ways to optimize what I need to do to make it easier. I conceptually know that I just need to dig in and get started on whatever it is that I need to do, but there is always the critic of future-me waiting to ask why I didn’t do it this-way or that-way, or didn’t use this or that tools, or research a bit more. That future me is never there and I don’t think I ever recall telling myself off for doing things the silly an inefficient way, but I’m always trying to duck out of that fake person’s view by mindlessly fiddling around with options.

I know I just need to heft the hammer up and bring it down on what I am trying to do then adjust the blows until progress is apparent. Why does my brain work like this?

Melbourne Radio

Sun, 25 Jul 2021 17:32:15 +0000

I haven’t lived in Melbourne for about a decade an a half, but still find myself trying to decide which of the independent radio stations I identify with.

I have bookmarks to the following stations that I irregularly stream, though these are the only streams I stream. This is done usually during the wee-hours of their schedule, so I tend to hear the more nocturnal, trance-stuff. This might be a stylistic choice for them.

The stations in question? Well, going in the order they exist in my toolbar:

Triple R 102.7FM, which is great.
PBS FM, which is great; and
3CR Community Radio which is, you guessed it, also fucking great.

This ordering seems to be from according to some vague, indirect sorting I have regarding how mainstream versus primarily community/social awareness they are. Again, I tend to listen to them when they’re playing exactly the sort of stuff I like, but I seem to really want to know which one I ‘identify with’. That’s strange, isn’t it? What on Earth does the random radio station I listen to have to do with my identity?

Should I, for example, take on board how they describe themselves? Or is it sufficient to use my own project of their values? I’ll come out and say the 3CR is definitely a social cause with a radio station, not the other way around, so I can sometime feel like I’m not strong enough to tow the line or whathaveyou, but that obviously says more about me that the station.

There are no doubt interpersonal machinations going on within the production of these stations which, like sausages, would change my perspective of them. My I am meticulously devoid of any of these insights. I only hear what they project, and I them project what I feel about them as institutions and also obviously as individual people putting out this stuff.

In a time where billionaires are shooting themselves into space for four minutes and congratulating everyone who paid for it, and complaining that it is so hard to spend the amount of money they’ve amassed so they HAVE to go into space, I just want to go on the record as saying I literally love these radio stations, and I literally love the each and every one of the volunteers that run them.

What a blessing.

You can try to smash that LIKE/BELL ICON if you like, I guess? There isn’t one, though. Do please sent me message at zinner@relvokcor.xyz though if … you want to? Maybe you listen to community radio. Maybe you live in Melbourne.

Neither of our worth’s will be impactrd whether you do or don’t, but thanks for the effort, honestly.

ps. I think it’s PBS.

I promised a sketch

Wed, 08 Jan 2020 13:32:15 +0000

And here it is. Also, sorry. (I’m clearly just trying out some tools, but I haven’t given up just yet.)

Okay, so this image is the first impression of the thing I’m wanting to make. I’m not exactly sure what the thing is, or how to make it but perhaps I should step back a bit.

Immediately prior to the birth of my first child, a task a delegated to my partner because men aren’t very good at that sort of thing, I went for “one last ride” on my bike. That’s my bike there. It was a very warm night by Sothern English standards. Clear sky. I rode north from my house and out of the town I’m in and into country lanes. Atop one of the gentle hills I decided to stop for a moment. This in itself it strange and I can’t recall every having wanted to just randomly stop during a ride, but I did. I leant my rather handsome bike against the holloway and just walked (or in fact hobbled as I was wearning those fancy cleated cycling shoes) and looked around.

Though at the rise of a hill there were still some other hills in the middle distance that were a bit higher, creating a punchbowl effect, shrinking the horizon subtly. I could only make out this horizon dimply against the glow of the numerous nearby towns and cities warminging the thin cloud and haze in the sky.

I heard various quiet insect noises and the sounds of whichever was the nearly motorway could easily be replaced my my mind with the sound of wind or distant ocean.

I felt a buzzing within me. The ride up the hills had clearly filled me with endorphins, but there presence that night.

Hello

Tue, 07 Jan 2020 01:39:13 +0000

Hello from Hugo running on my phone.

Piscratch

Sun, 17 Nov 2019 11:50:42 +0000

For at least six years I have had a little vision of a 3D ’toy’ model of one of two scenes. They’re not very interesting but don’t seem to be going away, so perhaps I should just try to make them. Better out than in, basically. I think I’m going to write about what these scenes are, what I need to learn to make them, and perhaps why they keep popping into my mind. Note: I’m not some expert feigning ignorance of how to get this done: I really don’t know, nor know how much I don’t know. Let’s see how it goes.

The first step will be a physical sketch of what I want to make, then a list of things I might need to know to get it done, plus a list of the technologies I have chosen to get to done. I have a feeling my choices for technology will hobble me a bit, but basically this is a learning experience so I don’t mind.

Okay, but first I need to not down what I have been trying, some of which will explain the context above. I have a Raspberry Pi (okay, a few) and have been trying to get a graphics benchmark working. The excellent Big Mess o’ Wires 3D performance demo from a few years back. I recall I got this working some years ago on the RPi1, but again, can’t remember if I needing to gack the build, install a package or three, change the GPU memory share or heaven knows whay. Anyway a default up-to-date Raspbian install in November 2019 was giving link errors about EGL. One the following commands seemed to get everything working with a plain make, but I’m not sure which:

sudo apt update
sudo apt dist-upgrade
sudo apt autoremove
sudo apt install libegl1-mesa
sudo apt install libegl1-mesa-dev
sudo apt install libgles2-mesa libsdl2-dev

This gets me to a point where the build works, but runtime fails with:

rasperf3d.exe: util/native.cpp:61: bool InitDisplay(uint32_t*, uint32_t*, bool): Assertion `s >= 0' failed.

which is the following failing with:

    int s = graphics_get_display_size(0 /* LCD */, &display_width, &display_height);
    assert(s >= 0);

.. and this is as far as I have got today.