Nelson Chu Pavlosky @skyfaller@jawns.club

I remember an XKCD comic where cueball is standing on stage with a bag of rocks and says "I'm going to eat this bag of rocks, not because it is easy, but because it is hard." This refers to JFK saying we go to the moon because it is difficult.

Did I dream it? I can't find it.

I'm not sure if it's better to sort cards by author or title, tho. I lack the patience for both.

My shelves sort by subject, and within each subject books sort by author, so I thought an author's books would already be grouped together. But some authors spread across subjects.

Ok, I have a tentative format. Title of the book on the first line, then shelf location on the 2nd line. I think I'll put non/fiction + subject first to describe the shelf, then the house floor and room that shelf is in, so the latter could be struck out and changed more easily.

I've acquired a few card catalog drawers and cards. I intend to make a title-sorted card catalog for my personal library, shelved using an idiosyncratic subject-based system (not DDC or LCC).

Now I have to decide exactly what to put on the cards, in what format.

The world is too much right now, so I'm taking a vacation from technology and the Internet this weekend. If you're waiting to hear back from me, I apologize, I'll be back on Monday and hopefully less overwhelmed.

Until then, please enjoy these rainbows on my wall.

Some skills may be obscure enough that tracking down someone to learn from is its own project. Consider this list of skills that are endangered in the UK: https://heritagecrafts.org.uk/redlist/categories-of-risk/

One criteria for "Critically endangered" is "no mechanism to pass on skills and knowledge"

Have someone else learn weird skills? That's risky. If they don't already know, how can I be confident they can learn?

This also applies to the "if you want it done right, learn to do it yourself" approach. What if I invest many hours into learning a skill, but fail?

People who already have weird skills often aren't hireable:
- don't care about money (or would have learned something more marketable instead)
- have a day job, and don't want to monetize their hobby
- are scratching their own itch, don't want to work on someone else's project

If you have enough business making stuff you're familiar with, why make something new?

Some may be convinced by a lot of extra money, charging a "making me think" tax. But I have a limited budget, so I can't do this too often. And often no amount of money will suffice.

So aside from my top priority projects I may learn to DIY, I must find people to build the rest.

Possible approaches:
- Convince people w/ relevant normal skills to apply them to weird projects
- Find someone w/ the weird skills I need
- Get someone else to learn weird skills

A constant problem I have is I want to create weird objects, but:
- I don't have time to learn to make all of the weird stuff I want
- People are reluctant to hire themselves out to make something weird, they prefer to make something they've specialized in and are familiar with

I impulse-purchased tickets to a show in Brooklyn, and I'm realizing:
- Google Maps thinks it takes over 3 hours to get there from here via Amtrak, making it an annoying day trip
- I'm running out of people I know who live in NYC, people move out of the city to start families

EtherPad and CryptPad are not designed for programming.

I used SubEthaEdit once upon a time, but it's macOS only.

I once considered Gobby as a SubEthaEdit alternative, but it didn't seem mature then, and isn't very actively developed now. https://github.com/gobby/gobby