tehn @tehn@merveilles.town
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Joined Aug 2020
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we live on a farm in a forest. we create sound machines and open source ecosystems at https://monome.org. we help build community at https://llllllll.co.
that's the short version.
it's a new day. hello.
tehn
boosted
@tehn thanks for mentioning this. Some lovely ideas and images in their pattern language book. I wouldn't have known about it otherwise.
rip christopher alexander
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Alexander
a deep influence. we named our building "half hidden" in honor of pattern 111.
hello equinox.
touch dirt.
good-vibes DIY: growing your own food
this feels like a sad reversal.
we previously encouraged people to repair certain basic issues, to save on shipping/fossil fuels and to build skills.
hoping to offset this by teaching classes in our new space.
the internet cannot teach you everything.
this old board i'm fixing could've been a simple job--- 5 minutes for me.
the person who sent it in after the fix attempt managed to not only fail spectacularly at the primary task, but secondarily destroyed part of the power system--- a chip that's in shortage right now.
luckily i keep a graveyard of half-animated circuit boards, so i can salvage a part to fix this one.
be humble, all you DIYers. know when to get help.
an old damaged painting wouldn't get restored by someone who once took a painting class. there'd be a conservator in charge, likely specialists for particular components.
i'm not saying repair should be sole realm of experts. it shouldn't. there should be care and understanding when approaching a problem, not the sort of blind ideological empowerment of DIY.
the awareness that there are experts in a field should be encouraging. aspirational. the availability of mentors.
repairing something poorly is an act of violence.
the overconfidence i've seen in DIY culture is just astonishing. just because you've done the LED-blinky doesn't mean you can solder-repair a complex circuit. clumsy damage spreads and infects other previously-fine components--- and those components will likely be ever more difficult to source.
aging (or rare) electronics are not commodities that can replaced easily from some imaginary warehouse.
repair takes patience, knowledge, and skill.
tehn
boosted
When you liberate programming from the requirement to be general and professional and scalable, it becomes a different activity altogether, just as cooking at home is really nothing like cooking in a commercial kitchen.
tehn
boosted
On the news of Epic Games aquiring Bandcamp, and possible alternatives: As it depends entirely on my free time (and asides two weeks early this year I've in fact been struggling to make space for it for a while now) I can't make any lofty promises, but I will say that https://codeberg.org/simonrepp/faircamp is still very much alive on my agenda. I received a lot of positive feedback last year (thanks again everyone) and with the Bandcamp takeover there's now more than ever a motivation to bring this towards an official release. Still: It's done when it's done, self-care and a healthy work mode come first. ( ◡‿◡ *)
query: simple web embed for payment processing then digital delivery?
sorry bandcamp.
"Predictive algorithms don’t really predict anything; they just make certain kinds of pasts repeatedly reappear"
still eating last summer's harvest
swap rice for sweet corn: kimchi fried-(corn) with shiitake, onion, garlic
what i was attempting to represent in the impulsively-worded "pastproofing" was a rejection of new technology.
that yes, there is a newer thing. but we don't care that it's faster. it's actually a burden to make sure this new thing works the same as our existing thing. we were forced to incorporate your new thing because capitalist logic deprioritized the original thing.
we could be making art instead.
"backwards compatibility" is another marketing phrase which might be almost useless due to qualitative range.
almost never can this be represented as yes/no, or even quantitatively in one dimension (ie, "40% backwards compatible").
i won't even bother giving examples.
"future-proof" in its current common usage is typically means some component is upgrade-able, and predicated on the idea that not only will the future be "better" but basically obligates you to future purchases. this flavor of "future-proof" is an anti-pattern, a green-washed waste creator in service of profit.
true "future-proofing" would be self-service replaceable parts, schematics, source, etc. the capacity to actually extend the life of a tool indefinitely.
so of course "pastproofing" is lexically nonsensical, meaningless to the point of actually indicating the opposite of that which i was attempting to convey in the linked post.
past-proof: to make resistant against the past? to ensure the past is useless, irrelevant?
and this is perhaps how we stumble upon a perfect description of industry with regards to obsolescence.
due to the unavailability of pi3, we are making shields work with pi4. but ensuring that the community catalog only contains scripts that work with the older chip.
in which case i typed the phrase "pastproofing"
modal/popup design pattern
1. don't, please
2. if you must, ESC will close them
3. if ESC isn't implemented, an elaborate ritual will be performed where ESC keys are harvested from dead computers then mixed into a cauldron with various other reagents causing the deserving programmers endless boring nightmares where you can't escape a stupid modal
- http
- nnnnnnnn.co
- tehn@nnnnnnnn.co
Joined Aug 2020
