Bonan Tagon

I usually really struggle with writing introduction (for philosophical reasons), but I'll try and copy a few ideas from previous introductions I've read - these seem to go over the folowing topics (maybe this can help people in the future struggeling with the same issue as I am while writing this): how one found nixers, who one is "in real life", ones interests (possibly beyond *nix/cs/etc.), ones interests within *nix (software choices, ideoms, etc.), ones projects and contact methods/networks. Alternativly one can just say hi, but I find this unsatisfying. So, let me start by beginning:

# On finding nixers
I am quite sure I have stumbeld by nixers.org a few times over the years, but is was only recently when I have started engaging more activly (in a passive way) with suckless' & the groups aligned with their cause (cat-v, division by zero, bitreich, etc.) that I have come to acctually "notice" nixers. Specifically z3bra's site helped me realize my interest in the commuity, which from lurking the forum for the last few day's has made a very pleasent while also compitent appearance.

# Who' writing this nonsense
My actuall first name is "Philip" (with two p's, one on both sides), but I have used multiple pseudonyms over time: "avika", "survi", "zgebiit" and mutations and combinations of these. Occasionally I also use "phik" or "phikal", if I want it to resemble my real name ("k[al]", are the first few letters of my surname). So if you find these names on some old stupid comments, yeah, that was probably me.

I have just started studying comupter science (Informatik) in Germany, and have turned 19 exactly 2 months ago (petite birthday ^^) and have been using unix-like operating systems for about 5 years. Very different than most others here, I'm afraid, but I'm sure we will get along.

As I've already implied I live in Germany (Bavaria), hence speek German, but I was born in England so my English is fairly good too, but from time to time a bit rusty. Other than that I also am fairly good in Serbo-Croatian, due to my heritage, and I have been trying to learn Esperanto for a while no, but sadly with nowhere near the passion I actually would need. I have no personal national identity. I like to archive stuff.

# Interests beyond *nix/CS
Since I value general education [Allgemeinbildung], my interests (and time I devote to them) are all over the place. My parents are on the one side a Physicist/Programmer (Father) and on the other side Artist/Educator (Mother), and I find myself somewhere inbetween. Hence I like engaging and learning about anything from Arts, Design, Music, Psychology and History to CS, "hard" Science/Math, Economics and (critical) Philosophy (although I have to admit that I tend more towards "continental" philosopy, than analytical). Especially the intersections between different subjects (History and CS, for example) I find very interesting. As a result, I know a lot of stuff about a lot of things, but nowhere would I concider myself an expert. The exception would be CS, with which I have had a bit more (practical) experiance than the others:

# Interests within *nix/CS
Let me start with a backstory, skip this part if you're not interested, but why the hell have you read this far if you're not interested???:

My first memory of using a computer was one running Windows 98, where I somehow managed to pull the task bar from the bottom of the screen to the left side. My father was confused (he was more of a unix guy), and told me to put it back. I was about 3 years old, couldn't properly speak but that's where my comupter careere started.

It took me a while to go beyond using Email, browsing the early 20's web and playing flash games and drawing stuff in paint. This lasted about 8-9 years.

When I started to want to learn programming, we still only had one windows machine in our house, and I didn't have the admin password, which I needed to install compilers, editors, interpretors, etc. Eventually, I decided that I would have to gain proper access over the computer, and I dual-booted Linux (Ubuntu) on the device. I could have deleted everything. Luckely I managed to install it and keep it a secret from my father (who was at that time the system admin in the house) for about 6 months. During this time, I had tought myself how to use a shell, a few scripting lanuages, some web development networking basics and multiple ways to break xorg.

Eventually my father found out I was dual booting, but luckely I got his blessing, and eventually even got my own comupter. Here starts distro hopping: Fedora, Arch, Crux, FreeBSD, Mint, multiple Ubuntu derivative, OpenSuSE, Elementary. Many were good, I even liked some of them, but they either were too much of a burden to maintain or just broke over time. I finally setteled for three options: Debian, Void and OpenBSD - currently I'm writing this post on a Thinkpad X41 with Void running 2bwm and Seamonkey as a browser (+multiple security oriented plugins). I blame /g/ for these preferences.

As it might not suprise that many people, I found the greatest interest in *nix like software: modular, simple/minimal, open, clean and hackable. Other than that, I also value standards (as in comparison to special, secret protocols for each new programm - and yes, I'm thinking of the situation in IM) and distributed/decentralized structures, relying more on the authority of cryptograpy than centralized databases.

Programming Languages I use: Lisp, Python, C, Go, Java, awk, shell, for the most part, while I also engaged with others. But since I don't see myself as an engineer, I don't bother too much with specifics and flamewars. Editorwise, I maily alternate between Emacs and Vim.

# Projects
I could divide this into two sections:
1. "Projects I have completed to some degree, but wish to expand on, but don't have time, even though I do have enough time, but I'm acctually just too lazy":
- ReGeX: A Regular Expression game for Android: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.phikal.regex/ (even though hate Java)
- llist: A "kind" of simple Hackernews/Lobse.rs clone: https://github.com/phikal/llist (I used to have this running on my site, but since I radically minimalized it, It's not there anymore. I wrote is since I never got knew how to get invited to lobste.rs, so I made my own community of one person)
- sc: A RPN shell calculator (I know boring), with a custom lisp interpreter built in to define more complex operations: https://github.com/phikal/sc (The last part has been WIP for quite a while now, since I had to figure out how to write an interpretor by myself)
- 4jhan: A image-board engine without any front-end: https://github.com/phikal/4jhan-server (I plan to complety rewrite this into Go, add backend-federation support over IRC and make the API comply more with 4chan/vichan's)

etc. see my GitHub (and add me <3)

2. "Projects I have thought about for a while, but wish I had started them, but don't have time, even though I do have enough time, but I'm acctually just too lazy":

The main one here is a cgit clone with support for more social features like issue and patches. The interesting thing would be that it would require no accounts, but instead use (for example) Email and GPG as a verification method - this would mean that it could be easily federalisied. But I'm not even sure if I want to do this in the first place, since web dev. isn't known to be the nicest thing to work with.

# Contact
Homepage: https://phi.k.vu/ (check out my old 404 page: https://phi.k.vu/404.html) - I hope this is good example for my interest in minimalism.

Everything you need to contact me can be found there. Please don't spam me though, or send me ad's. Absolutly hate that.
---

I hope that that was a well rounded enough introduction, and alreay applogize in case it was too long. I tend to either write nothig, or far too much. Ask me *if* there are any more questions left.

(15-11-2017, 08:44 AM)zge Wrote: I hope that that was a well rounded enough introduction, and alreay applogize in case it was too long. I tend to either write nothig, or far too much. Ask me *if* there are any more questions left.

That sums up everything.
I like you already!

(15-11-2017, 08:44 AM)zge Wrote: My actuall first name is "Philip" (with two p's, one on both sides)

Don't know why but I giggled at that.

Welcome to the forums!
Be sure to checkout the newsletter https://newsletter.nixers.net/ with its old entries https://newsletter.nixers.net/entries.php

(15-11-2017, 08:44 AM)zge Wrote: I usually really struggle with writing introduction (for philosophical reasons), but I'll try and copy a few ideas from previous introductions I've read

You actually managed to write a pretty decent and interesting introduction. It's nice to see someone around my age here (21).

Welcome to Nixers!

(15-11-2017, 08:44 AM)zge Wrote: Programming Languages I use: Lisp, Python, C, Go, Java, awk, shell, for the most part, while I also engaged with others. But since I don't see myself as an engineer, I don't bother too much with specifics and flamewars. Editorwise, I maily alternate between Emacs and Vim.

All of those with the camel avatar but you're not into Perl!
Joke aside, welcome to nixers.

ed is the standard text editor!

Welcome to nixers from Germany (the real one). ;-) I like how minimalistic your website is; in fact, it gives me a Connection Denied error right now, loading 0 bytes.

Kudos for Lisp and C though.

Hello zge!

Great presentation! I'm not sure if I have written one myself, if I haven't I will now.

You seem to be on a really good path!

Have you read The Futurica Trilogy? very interesting "cyber"philosophy by Alexander Bard and Jan Söderqvist, i think you might like it. I am currently reading "The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation" I am only halfway through but i can highly recommend that too (CS+History).

Do you have any particular books/philosophies to recommend?

(15-11-2017, 10:19 AM)resk Wrote: I like you already!

I'm honoured. The same goes to all the others. Very much appreciate it.

(15-11-2017, 10:19 AM)resk Wrote: Be sure to checkout the newsletter https://newsletter.nixers.net/ with its old entries https://newsletter.nixers.net/entries.php

Will do/have done. Thanks for the hint.

(15-11-2017, 11:48 AM)acg Wrote: It's nice to see someone around my age here (21).

From what I gathered (at least from the introductions and some other miscellaneous posts) there seemed to be "quite a few" people around our age, one person was even 14 iirc. But it might be different when it comes to active participation...

(15-11-2017, 12:24 PM)venam Wrote: All of those with the camel avatar but you're not into Perl!

Funny story: I used to like perl and camels, so I made this avatar. Over time I changed my mind on perl, but still like camels. Nevertheless, I kept the avatar, since I was already using it on a few platforms, but I might change it over time. I have a few alternatives I could use (maybe I'll even make a new one)

(15-11-2017, 03:57 PM)jkl Wrote: ed is the standard text editor!

How could I forget that. I have even unironically used ed (scripts) in some private projects, and then I miss the opportunity to brag about it.

(15-11-2017, 03:57 PM)jkl Wrote: I like how minimalistic your website is; in fact, it gives me a Connection Denied error right now, loading 0 bytes.

Sadly I couldn't optimize it beyond 0 - but seriously, I also realized something was wrong today, I swear it was working this morning. The server is a raspberry pi, that's lying around in my living room, and from time to time the DDNS system I use to update my IP changes, so the site is inaccessible. As far as I see it's working now... Otherwise I also have a gopher server running on the same device, maybe that works?

(15-11-2017, 05:05 PM)budRich Wrote: Have you read The Futurica Trilogy?

No, but from what I see there seems to quite a lot of good responses, so I might look into it. I've just got quite a long reading list right now, and I'm sadly not the fastest reader, so it might take me a while ^^.

(15-11-2017, 05:05 PM)budRich Wrote: Do you have any particular books/philosophies to recommend?

I'm not quite sure what you mean with "philosophies" (in my view, philosophy isn't a plug and play game, picking what one likes and leaving out what one doesn't, where everything is modular, and independent - instead a "system" is interrelated and inevitably follows from basic premisses, which is one of the reasons I don't lile the term "unix philosophy" - but that's a different topic) - but one thing I can certainly recommend, while it isn't a book, but still great, is Peter Adamson's "History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps" podcast, or the BBC's "In our Time". Both very interesting, and especially the former has been helping me understand the historical development of some of the ideas, the underlying presumptions and possible alternatives to many concepts, also in CS, which we often take for granted. Or that's at least on of the things I want to learn more about.

When strictly speaking about book, Primary Literature isn't bad, but it requires focus and background knowledge. I'm currently pushing myself through Plato's "Republic", and "Symposium", Aristotle's "Categories", Kant's "Fundamental Principals of the Metaphysics of Morals", Hegel's "The Philosophy of Right", Marx's 1844 Manuscripts, Freud's "Civilisation and It's Discontempts", and a few other texts. I just back and forth, which means I progress very slowly, but I have the time in my one hour ride to the University. So yeah, I'd recommend "classics", I guess?

Welcome to the nixers community.

(15-11-2017, 08:44 AM)zge Wrote: As I've already implied I live in Germany

And welcome to the german side of it.

(15-11-2017, 03:57 PM)jkl Wrote: Welcome to nixers from Germany (the real one). ;-)

Never knew you are from germany as well.

In one way I think philosophy might be just that, a plug and play game. One dude gets a great idea, think about it for a couple of years, put it in a book, another dude reads the book and replace some details of the idea with his preferences. Repeat for ever. Otherwise there are only one true philosophy and everything else is fake those mindsets are often called religion... Great podcast tips i will check them out. I think I am kind of the same, reading all over, not super fast. But when the books aren't linear stories, it doesn't matter so much if they get read back to back or not.

Do you read on paper, e-ink, phone, tablet, laptop, ultrawide or CRT?

(16-11-2017, 11:04 AM)r4ndom Wrote: Never knew you are from germany as well.

Don't worry, you were not supposed to. :-D

(15-11-2017, 08:44 AM)zge Wrote: applogize in case it was too long

I do not really worry about the length, but about the pace. I felt a great pace through the whole post, so it did not felt that long. :)

(16-11-2017, 12:00 PM)budRich Wrote: or CRT

what about line printers? ;)

(16-11-2017, 12:00 PM)budRich Wrote: In one way I think philosophy might be just that, a plug and play game. One dude gets a great idea, think about it for a couple of years, put it in a book, another dude reads the book and replace some details of the idea with his preferences. Repeat for ever.

What I find weird about what your describing here is that you regard philosophy as "merely" a set of (probably coherent) ideas, and not much more. Saying that ideas develop and change from one person to another, from one generation to another, from one culture to another, from one interpretor to the next, is in my eyes a very uncontroversial truism. But Philosophy (I'll use a capital "P" to distinguish it from the day to day use of the word, roughly corresponding to the "set of ideas" concept), at least the way I understand it a much greater project, between Man and Reality, and even this relation itself. What do we know, what can we know, what does this tell us about life, society, the subject, and the interrelation of all these things. Furthermore we are interested in the eternal truths, although I personally have a few problems with putting it this way. When in epistemology the sceptic asks what can we really know, he isn't worrying (or at least most of the time) about day to day, contingent "truths" like "what is the color of my shirt", stuff you'd write in some self-help manual or "is it raining" but the fundamental, eternal questions and answers, such as the fundamental nature of reality, human nature (or lack of it), the connection between logic and the material world, etc.

Since this a Unix form, I'll take the counter example of how the "unix philosophy" would if you ask me be much better categorized as "the Unix idioms" (note plural), since the advises it postulates might tell us how to write a program that cooperates well within it's environment (the shell) with other programs, but it will not tell us anything about Politics, Aesthetics, Metaphysics, etc. If anything, it silently presupposes many conclusions from existing systems of thought/ideologies (or of course these values arose from the circumstances within which it was developed, "old 70's computers" to put it simply).

(16-11-2017, 12:00 PM)budRich Wrote: Otherwise there are only one true philosophy and everything else is fake those mindsets are often called religion...

I'm not saying that there can be different interpretations of the same subject... But that's a different topic, that should be discussed at it's appropriate time.

(16-11-2017, 12:00 PM)budRich Wrote: Do you read on paper, e-ink, phone, tablet, laptop, ultrawide or CRT?

While I would prefer paper books (most of the time), I have recently been doing most of my reading on a kindle paperwhite. The two main advantages is the backlit screen (which gives me much for freedom to decide when and where I want to read, without having to find a lamp place it in the right spot and not move at all while I'm reading) and the amount of books it can store. The last point is also kind of it's downside, since plays into my skipping from one book to another habit even worse, especially if I get stuck in a bit of a boring passage in one book. For example the introduction... I sometimes read articles on phones/laptops, but I find it generally much more distracting than a offline device.

I've also been using pandoc+calibre a lot since I got the ebook, which has really made me appreciate pandoc much more since I've learned about all it's capabilities.

---

And lots of thanks to @josuah for the lobste.rs invite. Seeing that I've been lurking on the site for nearly 3 years and have yearned to participate in some of the conversations so many times, I was so thrilled when I got the email. Don't remember being that happy in a long time, and I just graduated German high school (Gymnasium) this year, which for many others my age is the highlight of their life (until now).

i have a paperwhite too, my favorite gadget. I find the format the best thing, not heavy, you don't even have to hold it. i often place it in my lap on the bus or something like that.

I think I might have a more silly approach to the mysteries of reality. But someone have to have that. Are you in to myths and stuff too? Alchemy? I like that stuff,