anything to be distracted

My kingdom for a diversion. I feel carried ceaselessly into places I would not go. I can only avoid it, I feel myself falling and am looking for ledges.

Was s Sasha Chapin? I'm thinking of the violent explosions of delights that we create in the gap of the dual self. It all sucks but at least it's interesting, you know?

We're at IndieWebClub and writing structured posts, so I'm writing a weeknote just to see how it feels.

Things I've done this week:

• Gotten a massage.
• Discontinued a physiotherapy treatment that felt like it was working but was based on junk science.
• Briefly planned what now until December is going to look like. It involves a decent amount of travel.
• Picked up work on Toricelli. Realized I wasn't thinking of the data structures in ways that would make my life easier. It seems easy, writing Rust, to get lost in the puzzle-world of writing just-so type definitions, without getting down to how things are supposed to flow. I have this same problem with Haskell – it's too easy to treat types as ontologies and not models.
  • How does one actually write a model that lifts weight? I get the sense that I could do well to approach it like trying to write a good analogy, not a good representation.
• Got deeply confused by the claim that PageRank is an eigenvalue calculation, and followed up. Learned about eigenvalues and eigenvectors, and about what a spectrum is (but not why it is, quite yet). Started reading Linear Algebra Done Right(Axler, Sheldon 2015), because it seems like it's finally time.
• Baked a giant loaf of enriched bread and turned it into a cream bun. Learned the fine art of a mock cream.
  • designing bread recipes with Claude is interesting and helpful, at least in part so that I don't pile on-the-fly changes on top of each other and lose track of The Implications for rise and bake times.
• Made, gave myself a headache eating, and sadly discarded, a decent sauce soubise.
• Spent time with people, tried to touch that sense of conneciton to others and wake it back up a little bit.
• Watched something like 12+ hours of youtube shorts, sometimes into the early morning. rather than confront the feeling in my chest.
• Slowed way the fuck down, once I was finally tired enough not to have any energy left to spin mself around in the mental/physical/cybernetic laundry machine.
• Finally, finally cried a little bit.

Things to do:

• Answer the CfP for the Rootconf platform engineering meet-up in November. Figure out what the actual pitch is that I can make, and if I can't well that's data too.
• Start looking for places to move to. I'm sick of living in a flat without sun.
• Coordinate with mum about when exactly I'm visiting, and when I'll be back.
• Book all my tickets.
• Finish LADR in the coming two weeks. I want to eat this textbook.
• Implement PageRank for myself, from scratch, reasoning my way through it.
• Read about streaming PageRank. (Riedy, Jason 2016), (Bahmani, Bahman and Kumar, Ravi and Mahdian, Mohammad and Upfal, Eli 2012), (Bahmani, Bahman and Chowdhury, Abdur and Goel, Ashish 2010), (Sarma, Atish Das and Gollapudi, Sreenivas and Panigrahy, Rina 2011)
• Write an explanation of what I've learned using my pet blood flow: linear programming review problem. (While I'm at it, expand that note.)
• Change my sheets. Do my laundry. Vacuum the sofa cushions.
• Donate the damn donatable clothes. Just be fucking done.
• Put up bright white lights for the winter.
• Write out that moment that happened when I explained what I'd read to my physio. What choice was I making exactly, choosing to move away from the placebo-that-worked? What was that for?
• Fucking breathe.