BLACK LIVES MATTER !!!

2020-12-05 - Flayva in ya ear…

here's my list of favorite podcasts that i sent to a friend recently

They're alphabetized and not in any preferential order.

• Black Girl Nerds
  • they get into a lot of different topics mostly about black people behind the scenes - mostly in the film industry
• Brooklyn Deep Third Rail
  • its rare if they produce anything - but i got into this bcuz of the 'School Colors' podcast (see below)
• Darknet Diaries
  • a bit of a tech podcast but tells stories of past hacks, breeches the host dives into the background of some of the hackers. some of these breeches are state-sponsored and political.
• Gnu World Order
  • this one of the better tech podcasts on the inet. i like the hosts' topics as they mostly center around linux and preferably Slackware Linux. I agree w/ many of his political views and he's not afraid to express his opinion. The only downside is he does tend to ramble.
• Hacker Public Radio
  • this is different from many other podcasts in that anyone can upload a podcast and it can be featured. Most of the topics are tech based…but they don't have to be.
• Hanselminutes
  • the host has guests discuss the interesting thing they do. what i enjoy most is that he interviews many different types of people
• Heist Podcast
  • this is a fun podcast - the hosts tell stories of different types of famous robberies throughout time. If u can imagine the number of robberies throughout history…the content for their show is endless. the only annoyance i have is the hosts are a bunch of 'dudes' and their goofiness gets annoying rather quickly.
    • one of my favorite episodes…
      • Canadas Own Catch Me If You Can $200 Million Dollars In A Barn
• - Malicious Life
  • this is similar to 'Darknet Diaries' above but w/ a different host.
• School Colors
  • this is one of the best podcasts i listened to. gives a history of the school segregation but focuses mostly on District 13 in Central Brooklyn (Bed-Stuy)
• Self-Hosted
  • more of a DIY tech podcast that gets into advice on running many services / hardware on your own instead of relying on cloud based services / companies
• Side Hustle School
  • produced daily at about 7-10mins each episode the host highlights side-hustles that seem to make over $500+/month he also gives advice to side-hustlers who ask questions
• The Anjunadeep Edition
  • think of this as a DJ set that they host in form of a podcast. It be hit or miss - mostly club/house/deep-base music They are long about 1 - 1.5 hr / episode
• The Dream
  • the host stopped producing once the pandemic hit. i thought this was an excellent podcast and the content is timeless. Only 2 seasons were produced, the first discussing multi-level marketing (MLM), and second about the healthcare supplement industry. The host is a great story-teller.
• The Indie Hackers Podcast
  • this is a great podcast discussing how independent founders have turned their ideas into businesses. The mistakes they made, lessons learned..etc.
• This American Life
  • a well known podcast that showcases some great stories i don't always listen to them…but every now and then you run across a gem of an episode.
    • one of my favorite episodes…
      • The Feather Heist
• What Had Happened Was
  • i think this is only 10 episodes but it discusses the career of Prince Paul - a music producer mostly known for his work w/ De La Soul and Stetsasonic

I also listen to a bunch of tech podcasts. Below is my complete list – there are a handful that no longer exist.

• 2.5 Admins
• Advance Tech Podcast
• Bad Voltage
• Base.cs Podcast
• Black Girl Nerds
• Breach Podcast
• Brooklyn Deep Third Rail
• BSDNow
• CodeNewbie
• CodePen Radio
• Coding Blocks
• Command Line Heros
• Complete Developers Podcast
• Contributor
• CoRecursive
• Darknet Diaries
• Developer On Fire
• Developer Tea
• Egghead.io Development podcast
• Emacs Chat
• Emacs.el
• EmacsCast
• Floss Weekly
• Getting Into Infosec
• Gnu World Order
• Hackable?
• Hacker Public Radio
• Hanselminutes
• Heist Podcast
• Indie Hackers
• Java Pub House
• Java Pub House - Off-Heap
• Javascript Jabber
• Junior Developer Toolbox
• Late Night Linux
• Late Night Linux Extra
• Learn to Code With Me
• Linux Action News
• Linux Unplugged
• New Rustacean
• Malicious Life
• Nixers Podcast
• No Code No Problem
• Programming Throwdown
• Reality 2.0 (Linux Journal)
• Request For Explanation (Rust)
• School Colors
• Self-Hosted
• Side Hustle School
• Sleepwalkers
• Soft Skills Engineering
• Software Engineering Daily
• Software Engineering Radio
• Sunday Moring Linux Review
• Syntax - Tasty Web Development Treats
• TechSNAP
• The 6 Figure Developers Podcast
• The Anjunadeep Edition
• The Bike Shed
• The Changelog
• The Dream
• The Indie Hackers Podcast
• The Vanilla JS Podcast
• This American Life
• This Week in Linux (TuxDigital)
• Ubuntu Podcast
• Weekly Dev Tips
• What Had Happened Was

2020-11-08 - Microphone Checka…One Two Checka

this is my first post on this blog.

it'll mostly be a space for me to express things that are going on with me creatively or maybe politically. who knows…either way it will be a lil bit of a journey. i'll also try to do much of the formatting for this in a homegrown bespoke way. allowing for a lot of creativity in styles, formatting…etc.

i've been using emacs as my text editor for little over a year. as a computer programmer, software developer, and in system operations i spend an enormous amount of time interfacing w/ computer systems. this requires i read a lot and take lots of notes !

the emacs editor was suggested to me about 20 years ago by a fellow co-worker and lisp programmer. i was in the middle of my third paid programming gig and while i had (and still have) lots of patience then…i was just trying to wrap my head around programming concepts at the time. learning to use a crazy esoteric editor was not where i wanted or needed to spend my time.

anyway…long story short; i recently began to read the emacs manual and felt it was one of the best documented software manuals i ever read. so good in fact; i bought the hard-copy manual from the fsf.

my emacs journey has brought me to understanding more about emacs lisp and i even bought an read the book "An Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp, 3rd Edition".

the next step in that journey has been to read the "emacs lisp reference manual". the issue with this book is that there are no current hard-copies of it being sold anywhere.

the jist of it is that the book is large…quite large…at 1334 pages. it does not make sense to sell copies of something that changes frequently.

so i decided to print it myself. to do this i needed to pull the pdf doc to my computer i decided to use barnes & noble printing service, but they have a limit of 800 pages for any book. this meant i need to break apart the book into two separate parts/volumes. i split the book at the beginning of chapter 28. i need to also add index pages to the first volume as well as a cover page for the second volume.

the following are commands i used to split the book into different volumes:

• to see the number of pages and other details about the pdf:

$ pdfinfo elisp.pdf

• to create the first volume of the book from the larger pdf doc:

$ pdftk elisp.pdf cat 1-643 output elisp_vol1.pdf

• to create the second volume of the book from the larger pdf doc:

$ pdftk elisp.pdf cat 644-1334 output elisp_vol2.pdf

• to create an index only of the book from the larger pdf doc:

$ pdftk elisp.pdf cat 1285-1334 output elisp_index.pdf

• to include the index pdf into the first volume file. Essentially, adding 2 PDFs into one

$ pdftk A=elisp_vol1.pdf B=elisp_index.pdf cat A1-643 B1-50 output elispVol1WithIndex.pdf

• to grab the first 2 leader pages of the manual

$ pdftk elisp.pdf cat 1-2 output elisp_begin.pdf

• to include the leader pages into the second volume file. Essentially, adding 2 PDFs into one

$ pdftk A=elisp_begin.pdf B=elisp_vol2.pdf cat A1-2 B1-691 output elispVol2Begin.pdf

i submitted both elispVol1WithIndex.pdf & elispVol2Begin.pdf to the barnes & noble website. these are 2 different books that have come out to 694 pages each. i also followed the book cover formatting requirements and with gimp - created book covers for both volumes.

conclusion:

i recommend creating a bounded hard copy of a book you want. the process was fast, easy and cheap. the tools to do this are free! i will definitely do this again for any future projects.