Recent content on nshan651
I used modified version of Protesiloas’s Modus Vivendi theme and the CSS from systemcrafters.net in the design of my site. If I have forgotten or otherwise failed to properly attribute your work, please email me at nshan651@proton.me and I’ll work to quickly amend it.
I don’t currently have analytics setup, so I can’t see any identifiable information of site visitors. I may setup Plausible at some point, but this only captures anonymized metrics about page views. My website will never use Javascript.
Over the past couple of years, I have almost entirely moved off of social media. For me, social media had two main problems. It began to feel less human. Posts from my friends started to get buried by AI slop, advertisements, and random promoted posts - none of which I had any interest in. When a photo from a friend finally did surface, it was often several months old. I sometimes miss the days of…
Photos from my trip to Zion National Park.
Recently, I’ve been trying to learn Elisp and Common Lisp. I’ve been curious about the Lisp family of programming languages for quite a while, particularly because of their unique set of features such as treating code as data ( homoiconicity ) and the powerful macro system . I’ve also been adding to my Emacs configuration quite a bit lately, so it would be great to get a bit more…
There’s an article I read recently from Emacs package maintainer and writer Protesilaos, On honesty and my creative process , where he goes over his process for coming up with new ideas. In it he discusses the concept of alla prima , which means “at first attempt,” or “wet on wet.” It’s an approach in painting where the artist applies each layer of paint to the…
When thinking about “the loneliness epidemic” and the widespread feeling of social isolation among many Americans (especially young Americans in my demographic), I had always chalked it up to a combination of social media largely replacing face-to-face interaction as well as the fact that college-aged kids are encouraged to move around the country or the world and thus may not focus on…
At this point, most people understand that recycling is a hoax, or, at the very least, that its effectiveness has been dramatically overstated by lobbyists and big corporations. I won’t discuss the underlying issues of recycling here, there are endless articles and documentaries on the topic. Rather, I’d like to talk about an issue I have with the cycle itself . Instead of thinking of…
All of the projects I have worked on. (This page is under construction!)
Programmer, writer, and muser. At my day job I help keep airplanes from falling out of the sky. Contact Email me at nshan651@proton.me — I might respond.
Here is my contact page. Links GitHub GitLab LinkedIn Email Email: public@nshan.is (Note that this is a placeholder, I have not yet created a public email. Please be patient!) Please feel free to email me any questions or suggestions!
Technology is advancing at an unprecedented rate, and people often feel like they need the latest devices in order to not get left behind. There’s a strong temptation to upgrade one’s old devices as soon as new models hit the market. While this may seem like a natural progression, it has led to a significant increase in electronic waste, which is harmful to the environment. One way…
The other day I was on a long train ride back to Chicago, and I ended up getting sucked down the rabbit hole that is Bell Lab’s encyclopedia of things considered harmful . There is SO much here that I can’t possibly cover in a single blog post, but I would definitely recommend having a look. Some of the highlights include the basic laws of human stupidity , Sweden , and security…
Curing my YouTube addiction with yt-dlp Of all the social media sites that I have been moving away from, I find that my YouTube addiction is the hardest to kick. There are so many channels that I really do enjoy and whose content has had a profound impact, whether for their artistry or for their educational value. The creators are great, but lately I’ve started to wonder about the platform…
Here are some great sites that I recommend: Blogs Daemonology – Lots of writings on FreeBSD Dan Luu – Newsletter focusing on economics and tech Gwern – An absolutely incredible blog, so much here James Sinclair – Austrailian web dev, lots of writings on functional programming Joey Hess – Debian core maintainer Jsomers – Writer and programmer based in NY…
I wanted to share my experience with uploading my first package, excite-cli, to the Arch User Repository (AUR). While the process was fairly straightforward (especially with this handy guide on the Arch Wiki on creating packages), I ran into several issues along the way. Most of my confusion arose from project-specific design choices or my own misunderstanding, but there were some legitimately…
Here is my personal library, organized using the Library of Congress Classification (LCC) method. Table of Contents A: GENERAL WORKS AC – COLLECTIONS. SERIES. COLLECTED WORKS AE – ENCYCLOPEDIAS AG – DICTIONARIES AND OTHER GENERAL REFERENCE WORKS AI – INDEXES AM – MUSEUMS. COLLECTORS AND COLLECTING AN – NEWSPAPERS AP – PERIODICALS AS – ACADEMIES AND…
This is the phrase that my piano teacher would often repeat to me whenever I began to learn a new piece. “One bite at a time,” I would reply. I always knew the answer, but the reminder helped prime me to meet the coming challenge. Instead of looking at a piece of music as a whole, he encouraged me to break it down into its atomic elements. Start from left to right, top to bottom. What…
In the age of social media and streaming services, consuming content has never been easier. Corporations have mastered minimizing the friction between you and the next serving of content. Platforms like TikTok remove as much explicit user control as possible, making it so that users can mindlessly scroll while relying on the algorithm to show them what they want to see. Everyone’s busy, and…