Task Updates

Life has been incredibly busy and full lately and that’s been a great thing. I’ve also been focusing my time on big projects recently rather than posting updates here and updating the wiki. And then I have this day job which basically counts as a big project. While I like the opportunity to focus deeply on some subjects, I also miss the blog.

tycho is conflicted about something. Shocking.

In any case, I want to do something useful with this space more regularly. So here I am and expect me more around these parts.

I’ve been working on a total refresh of my Cyborg Institute project. I want it to be an umbrella for cool projects, nifty examples, great documentation, and smart people¹ working on cool projects. If that’s ever going to happen, I need to get something together myself. The first release will contain:

• A book-like object, that provides an introduction to the basic principals of Systems Administration for developers, “web people,” and other people who find themselves in charge of systems, without any real introduction to systems administration. (Status: 70% finished, with a couple more sections to draft and some editing left.)
• A Makefile based tasklist aggregator, inspired by org-mode but largely tool agnostic. (Status: 95% finished, with documentation editing and some final testing remaining.)
• A logging system for writers. I use it daily, and I think it’s a vast improvement over some previous attempts at script writing, and I did a pretty good job of documenting it, but it’s virtually impossible to manage/maintain. Having said that, I always wanted to rewrite it in Python (as a learning exercise,) so that might be a cool next step (Status: Finished save editing and an eventual rewrite.)
• Emacs and StumpWM config files, packaged as “starter-kits” for new users. I have good build processes for both of these. I don’t think that I need to document them fully, but I need to write some READMEs. Since there’s a lot of redistribution of others code, I need to figure out the most compatible/appropriate license. (Status: Finished except for the work of free afternoon.)

Probably, all of these Cyborg Institute projects will get released at about the same time. The blockers will be finishing/editing the book and editing everything else. I might make the release a thing, we’ll see.

Other than that, I:

• Updated /technical-writing/compilation.
• Finished the first draft of this novel. Editing will commence in June. I’ve also started planning a fiction project, for a draft to begin in the fall?
• Wrote a few paragraphs on the ISD page, but I’m starting to think that as my time becomes more limited, that the critical-futures wiki project, as such, will probably be the first thing to fall on the floor, unless someone else is really interested in making that be a thing.

Onward and Upward!