Asymptomatic

There must be intelligent life down here

External Brain
April 20, 2020
brain memory

I recall some times back in college where I would play wingman to my roommate for his many female acquaintances. The situation reminds me a bit of some of those movies where there’s some dignitary or higher-up that has an assistant that remembers everyone’s name and position for them. For example, in The Devil Wears Prada, Anne Hathaway’s character attends a function with her boss, the titular “Devil”, and serves up the names of some of the party guests and reasons to talk to or dodge them.

I was listening to podcasts this morning, and as one podcast ended and rolled over to the next, it forced me to recall this situation. The next podcast was partially played, and so it started in the middle with no description of context. It took me several seconds to realize what I was listening to, and where it had left off.

Digital Drawing
April 17, 2020
drawing app ipad notebook

Over the last week or two I’ve been looking for an iPad app that functions like a virtual drawing notebook. I would like to use my Apple Pencil exclusively to interact with this virtual notebook. I’ve been using it explicitly to draw dungeon maps so far, but I’m thinking of a number of ways that this could be useful for other purposes, like app interface design.

I have a few apps that are already good at drawing with the Pencil. Considering the few that do not fit this specific need that I have in mind, Notability is nice, but it centers too much on the content of the page being text-flow-driven. Likewise with the built-in Notes app. Bear works with the Pencil, but its drawing tools are weird and separated from the text part of the app even worse than the other tools.

Stinky Cat
April 16, 2020
blog cat

I was going to write something profound this morning, but instead, I’m going to complain about my cat.

I have some time blocked out in the morning around breakfast to write some stuff for the blog. It’s not a lot of time, but it seems to be enough to actually get some written stuff online, which is more than I’ve been able to do regularly over the last couple of years.

Yates
April 13, 2020
rhetoric president politics argument

..For how can you compete,
Being honour-bred, with one
Who, were it proved he lies,
Were neither shamed in his own
Nor in his neighbours’ eyes?

I came across this quote today in my Twitter feed, and it’s clearly aimed at President Trump. The general sentiment of the quotation is, if you’re raised to be an honorable person, how can you combat someone whose lies don’t shame himself or the people around him who know he’s lying?

New Theme
April 11, 2020
eldir elixir blog theme

Well, the new theme is not done yet, but it’s up.

When I updated the site to remove Phoenix and use only Plug and Cowboy, I inadvertently broke the pagination. When I started fixing this problem, I noticed that I was calling a function with three parameters, but the first parameter contained the value of the third. I was essentially doing this: