░ Friday, November 17, 2023
+ yesterday's bike ride
i was feeling pretty good heading outbound on
my bike yesterday. at two separate times, cars
gave me the courtesy of making a left at traffic
intersection.
that feeling subsided when, on my way back home
i got passed dangerously close on a two-lane
road. then a subsequent car tried to do the same,
but this time there was oncoming traffic and they
had to slam on their brakes and retreat. i did
the thing where I moved left to make it clear it
is not safe to pass me, and this ticked him off
more.
✦✦
░ Thursday, November 16, 2023
+ i like to ride my bicycle
· a few months ago, i bought a fixed gear bike
for $20 at an abandoned bike sale at cmu. i
wasn't shopping for a fixed gear, but the pick-
ings were slim. i knew nothing about riding a
fixed gear going into this, but now i'm pretty
into it!
· riding fixed gear is fun. it's light, nimble,
and minimal—i love it. i don't have to learn
how to shift. not many components to worry about.
just wear normal street clothes.
· i outfitted my pedals with some straps, which
helps a bit on the hills. and there are a lot
around here.
✦✦
░ Wednesday, November 15, 2023
⌂ furnace busted, needs a new ignitor. we just
replaced this in january ☹. they agreed to
only charge for labor.
◇ lower-cased title
notcrying.club
· saw this site using ascii titles and exuding
sony minidisc vibes.
don't make a blog, make a brain dump
↑ this captures my thinking and approach to
blogging. have a space for writing that isn't
performative. talk about broken furnaces and
realized dreams.
╲ ╱
╲╱
╔═════════════════════╗
║ ╭───────────────╮┌─┐║
║ │ ││◎│║
║ │ ││◎│║
║ │ STANDBY_ │└─┘║
║ │ │░░░║
║ │ │░░░║
║ ╰───────────────╯░░░║
╚═════════════════════╝
✦✦
░ November 14, 2023
+ why ascii (and not markdown)?
· i love markdown because it makes author-
ing text/html easy. however, since the
output is html, styling is so flexible that
it ends up being a burden.
· ascii affords the right amount of styling
freedom without overwhelming me. it oper-
ates on a strict grid and has a limited set
of symbols (although there are plenty to play
with—box drawing is super fun!)
· it also has a retro-computing, plaintext-
will-survive-apocolypse vibe. i grew up on
bbs’s, so this is also nostalgic.
· as a blogger i get stuck on the silliest
things like “how do i interleave titled
and untitled posts?”
· is the whitespace sufficient? the above
block was an atomic post, and now i’ve
dropped into bullet-point mode.
· y'know i'm gonna find my rhythm eventu-
ally
‾
· a nice squircle:
╭─╮
╰─╯
« Love God, love others »
‾
+ tweaks
· the / and ↗ are too close, try +
· increase font weight of link arrow
· add some section separators
‾
/ links
thinking about using anchor tags as HTML and
styling them to look like they are seamless
with the preformatted text. i can automatica-
lly add whatever glyph i decide to use for
links. also would be great to have an easy
way to be on a webpage and copy link as a
constructed anchor tag. maybe raycast can do
this!
/ inspirations for ascii design
Svgbob Editor
Amiga ASCII art
/ system
Yesterday's stuff was very experimental,
trying different elemtents and styles. it
will evolve. i'm slowly developing a system
of patterns and conventions:
· / forward slash for section titles
· · middle dot for small thought or list item
· ↗ up-right arrow for links, italicized
· ░ a shady block for the date
· format text so it fits 45-character width
· i broke my promise about meta-blogging
✦
╭────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ ◎ ○ ○ ░░░░░░░░░░ Nov 13, 2023 ░░░░░░░░░░░ │
├────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │
│ [2:34p] │
│ this will take a few tries, but perhaps │
│ this is a minimal blogging experience │
│ │
│ - this is a pre-formatted text element │
│ - it is not semantic, i can't link to │
│ individual entries │
│ - but easy to add, easy to edit, embraces │
│ lo-fi vibe │
│ │
└────────────────────────────────────────────┘
[2:51p] now i've gone and nullified the 3rd
point about it being easy to edit
[3:16p] another aesthetic i've had in my mind
for a while is a long stream of text with a
dearth of whitespace. run on sentences repre-
senting free-flowing thoughts. it should con-
vey that i am thoughtful and smart. so how do
i handle links which some would say are the
bedrock of blogging? well, i could run some
javascript to parse for links and then put
them on a sidebar-type thing. and that goes
to another feature that i've thought about,
which perhaps deserves a new paragraph.
==multiple columns==
that contain different categories of things.
column 1 is my top of mind.
column 2 can be some themes or projects that
i'm working on (ha, that column will be
empty). then perhaps 3 will be the areas of
focus i want to maintain.
[3:32p] i don't think that paragraph of text
works. def doesn't make me look smart.
* what about a dot grid kind of background?
give this place some texture…
* bullet-journaling in plaintext
* https://plaintextworld.com/ is an
inspiration
* this reminded me about
https://bentsai.smol.pub
* i like the control and flexibility of
grid-based ascii editing right now
* emojis mess up formatting so let's go
without them for now
[4:06p] okay i promise i'll stop blogging
about blogging. but for day one, forgive me
- [ ] make this look okay in mobile
- i guess tomorrow the new stuff will go
above. reverse-chronological is the way
[4:50p]
· okay i can envision bullet journaling
being pretty dope using different glyphs
○ try out different glyphs
● write about how this is dope
‡ https://ben.yay.boo
▶︎ this is pretty heavy, what should it
mean?
[10:17p]
◈ narrow text to 45 characters
◈ center on page
◈ monospace system font stack
▶︎ [modern font stacks][1]
[1]