summaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/src/_posts
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
Diffstat (limited to 'src/_posts')
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2013-04-09-erlang-tcp-socket-pull-pattern.md257
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2013-07-11-goplus.md78
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2013-10-08-generations.md101
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2013-10-25-namecoind-ssl.md249
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2014-01-11-diamond-square.md495
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2014-10-29-erlang-pitfalls.md193
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2015-03-11-rabbit-hole.md166
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2015-07-15-go-http.md547
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2015-11-21-happy-trees.md236
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2017-09-06-brian-bars.md105
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2018-10-25-rethinking-identity.md293
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2018-11-12-viz-1.md55
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2018-11-12-viz-2.md50
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2019-08-02-program-structure-and-composability.md588
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2020-04-26-trading-in-the-rain.md56
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2020-05-30-denver-protests.md161
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2020-07-07-viz-3.md155
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2020-11-16-component-oriented-programming.md353
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2021-01-01-new-year-new-resolution.md50
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2021-01-09-ginger.md354
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2021-01-14-the-web.md241
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2021-01-23-goodbye-github-pages.md247
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2021-01-30-building-mobile-nebula.md390
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2021-02-06-old-code-new-ideas.md224
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2021-02-13-building-gomobile-using-nix.md232
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2021-02-25-married.md18
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2021-03-01-conditionals-in-ginger.md195
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2021-03-04-conditionals-in-ginger-errata.md195
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2021-03-12-ripple-a-game.md311
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2021-03-20-a-simple-rule-for-better-errors.md227
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2021-04-01-fmail.md172
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2021-04-06-evaluation-of-network-filesystems.md339
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2021-04-11-ripple-v2.md436
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2021-04-22-composing-processes-into-a-static-binary-with-nix.md248
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2021-04-27-loops-in-ginger.md223
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2021-05-02-nfts.md349
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2021-05-11-ripple-v3.md442
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2021-05-16-new-years-resolution-vibe-check.md62
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2021-05-26-viz-4.md213
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2021-05-28-viz-5.md306
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2021-06-07-adventures-in-defi.md271
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2021-06-23-viz-6.md402
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2021-06-26-selfhosted-email-with-maddy.md277
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2021-07-01-viz-7.md440
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2021-07-06-maddy-vps.md115
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2021-07-14-how-to-secure-a-webapp.md315
-rw-r--r--src/_posts/2021-07-18-radix-v4.md248
47 files changed, 0 insertions, 11680 deletions
diff --git a/src/_posts/2013-04-09-erlang-tcp-socket-pull-pattern.md b/src/_posts/2013-04-09-erlang-tcp-socket-pull-pattern.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 4c9151f..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2013-04-09-erlang-tcp-socket-pull-pattern.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,257 +0,0 @@
----
-title: "Erlang, tcp sockets, and active true"
-description: >-
- Using `{active:once}` isn't always the best way to handle connections.
-tags: tech
----
-
-If you don't know erlang then [you're missing out][0]. If you do know erlang,
-you've probably at some point done something with tcp sockets. Erlang's highly
-concurrent model of execution lends itself well to server programs where a high
-number of active connections is desired. Each thread can autonomously handle its
-single client, greatly simplifying the logic of the whole application while
-still retaining [great performance characteristics][1].
-
-## Background
-
-For an erlang thread which owns a single socket there are three different ways
-to receive data off of that socket. These all revolve around the `active`
-[setopts][2] flag. A socket can be set to one of:
-
-* `{active,false}` - All data must be obtained through [recv/2][3] calls. This
- amounts to syncronous socket reading.
-
-* `{active,true}` - All data on the socket gets sent to the controlling thread
- as a normal erlang message. It is the thread's
- responsibility to keep up with the buffered data in the
- message queue. This amounts to asyncronous socket reading.
-
-* `{active,once}` - When set the socket is placed in `{active,true}` for a
- single packet. That is, once set the thread can expect a
- single message to be sent to when data comes in. To receive
- any more data off of the socket the socket must either be
- read from using [recv/2][3] or be put in `{active,once}` or
- `{active,true}`.
-
-## Which to use?
-
-Many (most?) tutorials advocate using `{active,once}` in your application
-\[0]\[1]\[2]. This has to do with usability and security. When in `{active,true}`
-it's possible for a client to flood the connection faster than the receiving
-process will process those messages, potentially eating up a lot of memory in
-the VM. However, if you want to be able to receive both tcp data messages as
-well as other messages from other erlang processes at the same time you can't
-use `{active,false}`. So `{active,once}` is generally preferred because it
-deals with both of these problems quite well.
-
-## Why not to use `{active,once}`
-
-Here's what your classic `{active,once}` enabled tcp socket implementation will
-probably look like:
-
-```erlang
--module(tcp_test).
--compile(export_all).
-
--define(TCP_OPTS, [
- binary,
- {packet, raw},
- {nodelay,true},
- {active, false},
- {reuseaddr, true},
- {keepalive,true},
- {backlog,500}
-]).
-
-%Start listening
-listen(Port) ->
- {ok, L} = gen_tcp:listen(Port, ?TCP_OPTS),
- ?MODULE:accept(L).
-
-%Accept a connection
-accept(L) ->
- {ok, Socket} = gen_tcp:accept(L),
- ?MODULE:read_loop(Socket),
- io:fwrite("Done reading, connection was closed\n"),
- ?MODULE:accept(L).
-
-%Read everything it sends us
-read_loop(Socket) ->
- inet:setopts(Socket, [{active, once}]),
- receive
- {tcp, _, _} ->
- do_stuff_here,
- ?MODULE:read_loop(Socket);
- {tcp_closed, _}-> donezo;
- {tcp_error, _, _} -> donezo
- end.
-```
-
-This code isn't actually usable for a production system; it doesn't even spawn a
-new process for the new socket. But that's not the point I'm making. If I run it
-with `tcp_test:listen(8000)`, and in other window do:
-
-```bash
-while [ 1 ]; do echo "aloha"; done | nc localhost 8000
-```
-
-We'll be flooding the the server with data pretty well. Using [eprof][4] we can
-get an idea of how our code performs, and where the hang-ups are:
-
-```erlang
-1> eprof:start().
-{ok,<0.34.0>}
-
-2> P = spawn(tcp_test,listen,[8000]).
-<0.36.0>
-
-3> eprof:start_profiling([P]).
-profiling
-
-4> running_the_while_loop.
-running_the_while_loop
-
-5> eprof:stop_profiling().
-profiling_stopped
-
-6> eprof:analyze(procs,[{sort,time}]).
-
-****** Process <0.36.0> -- 100.00 % of profiled time ***
-FUNCTION CALLS % TIME [uS / CALLS]
--------- ----- --- ---- [----------]
-prim_inet:type_value_2/2 6 0.00 0 [ 0.00]
-
-....snip....
-
-prim_inet:enc_opts/2 6 0.00 8 [ 1.33]
-prim_inet:setopts/2 12303599 1.85 1466319 [ 0.12]
-tcp_test:read_loop/1 12303598 2.22 1761775 [ 0.14]
-prim_inet:encode_opt_val/1 12303599 3.50 2769285 [ 0.23]
-prim_inet:ctl_cmd/3 12303600 4.29 3399333 [ 0.28]
-prim_inet:enc_opt_val/2 24607203 5.28 4184818 [ 0.17]
-inet:setopts/2 12303598 5.72 4533863 [ 0.37]
-erlang:port_control/3 12303600 77.13 61085040 [ 4.96]
-```
-
-eprof shows us where our process is spending the majority of its time. The `%`
-column indicates percentage of time the process spent during profiling inside
-any function. We can pretty clearly see that the vast majority of time was spent
-inside `erlang:port_control/3`, the BIF that `inet:setopts/2` uses to switch the
-socket to `{active,once}` mode. Amongst the calls which were called on every
-loop, it takes up by far the most amount of time. In addition all of those other
-calls are also related to `inet:setopts/2`.
-
-I'm gonna rewrite our little listen server to use `{active,true}`, and we'll do
-it all again:
-
-```erlang
--module(tcp_test).
--compile(export_all).
-
--define(TCP_OPTS, [
- binary,
- {packet, raw},
- {nodelay,true},
- {active, false},
- {reuseaddr, true},
- {keepalive,true},
- {backlog,500}
-]).
-
-%Start listening
-listen(Port) ->
- {ok, L} = gen_tcp:listen(Port, ?TCP_OPTS),
- ?MODULE:accept(L).
-
-%Accept a connection
-accept(L) ->
- {ok, Socket} = gen_tcp:accept(L),
- inet:setopts(Socket, [{active, true}]), %Well this is new
- ?MODULE:read_loop(Socket),
- io:fwrite("Done reading, connection was closed\n"),
- ?MODULE:accept(L).
-
-%Read everything it sends us
-read_loop(Socket) ->
- %inet:setopts(Socket, [{active, once}]),
- receive
- {tcp, _, _} ->
- do_stuff_here,
- ?MODULE:read_loop(Socket);
- {tcp_closed, _}-> donezo;
- {tcp_error, _, _} -> donezo
- end.
-```
-
-And the profiling results:
-
-```erlang
-1> eprof:start().
-{ok,<0.34.0>}
-
-2> P = spawn(tcp_test,listen,[8000]).
-<0.36.0>
-
-3> eprof:start_profiling([P]).
-profiling
-
-4> running_the_while_loop.
-running_the_while_loop
-
-5> eprof:stop_profiling().
-profiling_stopped
-
-6> eprof:analyze(procs,[{sort,time}]).
-
-****** Process <0.36.0> -- 100.00 % of profiled time ***
-FUNCTION CALLS % TIME [uS / CALLS]
--------- ----- --- ---- [----------]
-prim_inet:enc_value_1/3 7 0.00 1 [ 0.14]
-prim_inet:decode_opt_val/1 1 0.00 1 [ 1.00]
-inet:setopts/2 1 0.00 2 [ 2.00]
-prim_inet:setopts/2 2 0.00 2 [ 1.00]
-prim_inet:enum_name/2 1 0.00 2 [ 2.00]
-erlang:port_set_data/2 1 0.00 2 [ 2.00]
-inet_db:register_socket/2 1 0.00 3 [ 3.00]
-prim_inet:type_value_1/3 7 0.00 3 [ 0.43]
-
-.... snip ....
-
-prim_inet:type_opt_1/1 19 0.00 7 [ 0.37]
-prim_inet:enc_value/3 7 0.00 7 [ 1.00]
-prim_inet:enum_val/2 6 0.00 7 [ 1.17]
-prim_inet:dec_opt_val/1 7 0.00 7 [ 1.00]
-prim_inet:dec_value/2 6 0.00 10 [ 1.67]
-prim_inet:enc_opt/1 13 0.00 12 [ 0.92]
-prim_inet:type_opt/2 19 0.00 33 [ 1.74]
-erlang:port_control/3 3 0.00 59 [ 19.67]
-tcp_test:read_loop/1 20716370 100.00 12187488 [ 0.59]
-```
-
-This time our process spent almost no time at all (according to eprof, 0%)
-fiddling with the socket opts. Instead it spent all of its time in the
-read_loop doing the work we actually want to be doing.
-
-## So what does this mean?
-
-I'm by no means advocating never using `{active,once}`. The security concern is
-still a completely valid concern and one that `{active,once}` mitigates quite
-well. I'm simply pointing out that this mitigation has some fairly serious
-performance implications which have the potential to bite you if you're not
-careful, especially in cases where a socket is going to be receiving a large
-amount of traffic.
-
-## Meta
-
-These tests were done using R15B03, but I've done similar ones in R14 and found
-similar results. I have not tested R16.
-
-* \[0] http://learnyousomeerlang.com/buckets-of-sockets
-* \[1] http://www.erlang.org/doc/man/gen_tcp.html#examples
-* \[2] http://erlycoder.com/25/erlang-tcp-server-tcp-client-sockets-with-gen_tcp
-
-[0]: http://learnyousomeerlang.com/content
-[1]: http://www.metabrew.com/article/a-million-user-comet-application-with-mochiweb-part-1
-[2]: http://www.erlang.org/doc/man/inet.html#setopts-2
-[3]: http://www.erlang.org/doc/man/gen_tcp.html#recv-2
-[4]: http://www.erlang.org/doc/man/eprof.html
diff --git a/src/_posts/2013-07-11-goplus.md b/src/_posts/2013-07-11-goplus.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 5e63eb2..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2013-07-11-goplus.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,78 +0,0 @@
----
-title: Go+
-description: >-
- A simple proof-of-concept script for doing go dependency management.
-tags: tech
----
-
-Compared to other languages go has some strange behavior regarding its project
-root settings. If you import a library called `somelib`, go will look for a
-`src/somelib` folder in all of the folders in the `$GOPATH` environment
-variable. This works nicely for globally installed packages, but it makes
-encapsulating a project with a specific version, or modified version, rather
-tedious. Whenever you go to work on this project you'll have to add its path to
-your `$GOPATH`, or add the path permanently, which could break other projects
-which may use a different version of `somelib`.
-
-My solution is in the form of a simple script I'm calling go+. go+ will search
-in currrent directory and all of its parents for a file called `GOPROJROOT`. If
-it finds that file in a directory, it prepends that directory's absolute path to
-your `$GOPATH` and stops the search. Regardless of whether or not `GOPROJROOT`
-was found go+ will passthrough all arguments to the actual go call. The
-modification to `$GOPATH` will only last the duration of the call.
-
-As an example, consider the following:
-```
-/tmp
- /hello
- GOPROJROOT
- /src
- /somelib/somelib.go
- /hello.go
-```
-
-If `hello.go` depends on `somelib`, as long as you run go+ from `/tmp/hello` or
-one of its children your project will still compile
-
-Here is the source code for go+:
-
-```bash
-#!/bin/sh
-
-SEARCHING_FOR=GOPROJROOT
-ORIG_DIR=$(pwd)
-
-STOPSEARCH=0
-SEARCH_DIR=$ORIG_DIR
-while [ $STOPSEARCH = 0 ]; do
-
- RES=$( find $SEARCH_DIR -maxdepth 1 -type f -name $SEARCHING_FOR | \
- grep -P "$SEARCHING_FOR$" | \
- head -n1 )
-
- if [ "$RES" = "" ]; then
- if [ "$SEARCH_DIR" = "/" ]; then
- STOPSEARCH=1
- fi
- cd ..
- SEARCH_DIR=$(pwd)
- else
- export GOPATH=$SEARCH_DIR:$GOPATH
- STOPSEARCH=1
- fi
-done
-
-cd "$ORIG_DIR"
-exec go $@
-```
-
-## UPDATE: Goat
-
-I'm leaving this post for posterity, but go+ has some serious flaws in it. For
-one, it doesn't allow for specifying the version of a dependency you want to
-use. To this end, I wrote [goat][0] which does all the things go+ does, plus
-real dependency management, PLUS it is built in a way that if you've been
-following go's best-practices for code organization you shouldn't have to change
-any of your existing code AT ALL. It's cool, check it out.
-
-[0]: http://github.com/mediocregopher/goat
diff --git a/src/_posts/2013-10-08-generations.md b/src/_posts/2013-10-08-generations.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 39e7cac..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2013-10-08-generations.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,101 +0,0 @@
----
-title: Generations
-description: >-
- A simple file distribution strategy for very large scale, high-availability
- file-services.
-tags: tech
----
-
-## The problem
-
-At [cryptic.io][cryptic] we plan on having millions of different
-files, any of which could be arbitrarily chosen to be served any given time.
-These files are uploaded by users at arbitrary times.
-
-Scaling such a system is no easy task. The solution I've seen implemented in the
-past involves shuffling files around on a nearly constant basis, making sure
-that files which are more "popular" are on fast drives, while at the same time
-making sure that no drives are at capicty and at the same time that all files,
-even newly uploaded ones, are stored redundantly.
-
-The problem with this solution is one of coordination. At any given moment the
-app needs to be able to "find" a file so it can give the client a link to
-download the file from one of the servers that it's on. Full-filling this simple
-requirement means that all datastores/caches where information about where a
-file lives need to be up-to-date at all times, and even then there are
-race-conditions and network failures to contend with, while at all times the
-requirements of the app evolve and change.
-
-## A simpler solution
-
-Let's say you want all files which get uploaded to be replicated in triplicate
-in some capacity. You buy three identical hard-disks, and put each on a separate
-server. As files get uploaded by clients, each file gets put on each drive
-immediately. When the drives are filled (which should be at around the same
-time), you stop uploading to them.
-
-That was generation 0.
-
-You buy three more drives, and start putting all files on them instead. This is
-going to be generation 1. Repeat until you run out of money.
-
-That's it.
-
-### That's it?
-
-It seems simple and obvious, and maybe it's the standard thing which is done,
-but as far as I can tell no-one has written about it (though I'm probably not
-searching for the right thing, let me know if this is the case!).
-
-### Advantages
-
-* It's so simple to implement, you could probably do it in a day if you're
-starting a project from scratch
-
-* By definition of the scheme all files are replicated in multiple places.
-
-* Minimal information about where a file "is" needs to be stored. When a file is
-uploaded all that's needed is to know what generation it is in, and then what
-nodes/drives are in that generation. If the file's name is generated
-server-side, then the file's generation could be *part* of its name, making
-lookup even faster.
-
-* Drives don't need to "know" about each other. What I mean by this is that
-whatever is running as the receive point for file-uploads on each drive doesn't
-have to coordinate with its siblings running on the other drives in the
-generation. In fact it doesn't need to coordinate with anyone. You could
-literally rsync files onto your drives if you wanted to. I would recommend using
-[marlin][0] though :)
-
-* Scaling is easy. When you run out of space you can simply start a new
-generation. If you don't like playing that close to the chest there's nothing to
-say you can't have two generations active at the same time.
-
-* Upgrading is easy. As long as a generation is not marked-for-upload, you can
-easily copy all files in the generation into a new set of bigger, badder drives,
-add those drives into the generation in your code, remove the old ones, then
-mark the generation as uploadable again.
-
-* Distribution is easy. You just copy a generation's files onto a new drive in
-Europe or wherever you're getting an uptick in traffic from and you're good to
-go.
-
-* Management is easy. It's trivial to find out how many times a file has been
-replicated, or how many countries it's in, or what hardware it's being served
-from (given you have easy access to information about specific drives).
-
-### Caveats
-
-The big caveat here is that this is just an idea. It has NOT been tested in
-production. But we have enough faith in it that we're going to give it a shot at
-[cryptic.io][cryptic]. I'll keep this page updated.
-
-The second caveat is that this scheme does not inherently support caching. If a
-file suddenly becomes super popular the world over your hard-disks might not be
-able to keep up, and it's probably not feasible to have an FIO drive in *every*
-generation. I think that [groupcache][1] may be the answer to this problem,
-assuming your files are reasonably small, but again I haven't tested it yet.
-
-[cryptic]: https://cryptic.io
-[0]: https://github.com/cryptic-io/marlin
-[1]: https://github.com/golang/groupcache
diff --git a/src/_posts/2013-10-25-namecoind-ssl.md b/src/_posts/2013-10-25-namecoind-ssl.md
deleted file mode 100644
index deded79..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2013-10-25-namecoind-ssl.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,249 +0,0 @@
----
-title: Namecoin, A Replacement For SSL
-description: >-
- If we use the namecoin chain as a DNS service we get security almost for
- free, along with lots of other benefits.
-tags: tech crypto
----
-
-At [cryptic.io][cryptic] we are creating a client-side, in-browser encryption
-system where a user can upload their already encrypted content to our storage
-system and be 100% confident that their data can never be decrypted by anyone
-but them.
-
-One of the main problems with this approach is that the client has to be sure
-that the code that's being run in their browser is the correct code; that is,
-that they aren't the subject of a man-in-the-middle attack where an attacker is
-turning our strong encryption into weak encryption that they could later break.
-
-A component of our current solution is to deliver the site's javascript (and all
-other assets, for that matter) using SSL encryption. This protects the files
-from tampering in-between leaving our servers and being received by the client.
-Unfortunately, SSL isn't 100% foolproof. This post aims to show why SSL is
-faulty, and propose a solution.
-
-## SSL
-
-SSL is the mechanism by which web-browsers establish an encrypted connection to
-web-servers. The goal of this connection is that only the destination
-web-browser and the server know what data is passing between them. Anyone spying
-on the connection would only see gibberish. To do this a secret key is first
-established between the client and the server, and used to encrypt/decrypt all
-data. As long as no-one but those parties knows that key, that data will never
-be decrypted by anyone else.
-
-SSL is what's used to establish that secret key on a per-session basis, so that
-a key isn't ever re-used and so only the client and the server know it.
-
-### Public-Private Key Cryptography
-
-SSL is based around public-private key cryptography. In a public-private key
-system, you have both a public key which is generated from a private key. The
-public key can be given to anyone, but the private key must remain hidden. There
-are two main uses for these two keys:
-
-* Someone can encrypt a message with your public key, and only you (with the
- private key) can decrypt it.
-
-* You can sign a message with your private key, and anyone with your public key
- can verify that it was you and not someone else who signed it.
-
-These are both extremely useful functions, not just for internet traffic but for
-any kind of communication form. Unfortunately, there remains a fundamental flaw.
-At some point you must give your public key to the other person in an insecure
-way. If an attacker was to intercept your message containing your public key and
-swap it for their own, then all future communications could be compromised. That
-attacker could create messages the other person would think are from you, and
-the other person would encrypt messages meant for you but which would be
-decrypt-able by the attacker.
-
-### How does SSL work?
-
-SSL is at its heart a public-private key system, but its aim is to be more
-secure against the attack described above.
-
-SSL uses a trust-chain to verify that a public key is the intended one. Your web
-browser has a built-in set of public keys, called the root certificates, that it
-implicitly trusts. These root certificates are managed by a small number of
-companies designated by some agency who decides on these things.
-
-When you receive a server's SSL certificate (its public key) that certificate
-will be signed by a root certificate. You can verify that signature since you
-have the root certificate's public key built into your browser. If the signature
-checks out then you know a certificate authority trusts the public key the site
-gave you, which means you can trust it too.
-
-There's a bit (a lot!) more to SSL than this, but this is enough to understand
-the fundamental problems with it.
-
-### How SSL doesn't work
-
-SSL has a few glaring problems. One, it implies we trust the companies holding
-the root certificates to not be compromised. If some malicious agency was to get
-ahold of a root certificate they could listen in on any connection on the
-internet by swapping a site's real certificate with one they generate on the
-fly. They could trivially steal any data we send on the internet.
-
-The second problem is that it's expensive. Really expensive. If you're running a
-business you'll have to shell out about $200 a year to keep your SSL certificate
-signed (those signatures have an expiration date attached). Since there's very
-few root authorities there's an effective monopoly on signatures, and there's
-nothing we can do about it. For 200 bucks I know most people simply say "no
-thanks" and go unencrypted. The solution is creating a bigger problem.
-
-## Bitcoins
-
-Time to switch gears, and propose a solution to the above issues: namecoins. I'm
-going to first talk about what namecoins are, how they work, and why we need
-them. To start with, namecoins are based on bitcoins.
-
-If you haven't yet checked out bitcoins, [I highly encourage you to do
-so][bitcoins]. They're awesome, and I think they have a chance of really
-changing the way we think of and use money in the future. At the moment they're
-still a bit of a novelty in the tech realm, but they're growing in popularity.
-
-The rest of this post assumes you know more or less what bitcoins are, and how
-they work.
-
-## Namecoins
-
-Few people actually know about bitcoins. Even fewer know that there's other
-crypto-currencies besides bitcoins. Basically, developers of these alternative
-currencies (altcoins, in the parlance of our times) took the original bitcoin
-source code and modified it to produce a new, separate blockchain from the
-original bitcoin one. The altcoins are based on the same idea as bitcoins
-(namely, a chain of blocks representing all the transactions ever made), but
-have slightly different characterstics.
-
-One of these altcoins is called namecoin. Where other altcoins aim to be digital
-currencies, and used as such (like bitcoins), namecoin has a different goal. The
-point of namecoin is to create a global, distributed, secure key-value store.
-You spend namecoins to claim arbitrary keys (once you've claimed it, you own it
-for a set period of time) and to give those keys arbitrary values. Anyone else
-with namecoind running can see these values.
-
-### Why use it?
-
-A blockchain based on a digital currency seems like a weird idea at first. I
-know when I first read about it I was less than thrilled. How is this better
-than a DHT? It's a key-value store, why is there a currency involved?
-
-#### DHT
-
-DHT stands for Distributed Hash-Table. I'm not going to go too into how they
-work, but suffice it to say that they are essentially a distributed key-value
-store. Like namecoin. The difference is in the operation. DHTs operate by
-spreading and replicating keys and their values across nodes in a P2P mesh. They
-have [lots of issues][dht] as far as security goes, the main one being that it's
-fairly easy for an attacker to forge the value for a given key, and very
-difficult to stop them from doing so or even to detect that it's happened.
-
-Namecoins don't have this problem. To forge a particular key an attacker would
-essentially have to create a new blockchain from a certain point in the existing
-chain, and then replicate all the work put into the existing chain into that new
-compromised one so that the new one is longer and other clients in the network
-will except it. This is extremely non-trivial.
-
-#### Why a currency?
-
-To answer why a currency needs to be involved, we need to first look at how
-bitcoin/namecoin work. When you take an action (send someone money, set a value
-to a key) that action gets broadcast to the network. Nodes on the network
-collect these actions into a block, which is just a collection of multiple
-actions. Their goal is to find a hash of this new block, combined with some data
-from the top-most block in the existing chain, combined with some arbitrary
-data, such that the first n characters in the resulting hash are zeros (with n
-constantly increasing). When they find one they broadcast it out on the network.
-Assuming the block is legitimate they receive some number of coins as
-compensation.
-
-That compensation is what keeps a blockchain based currency going. If there
-were no compensation there would be no reason to mine except out of goodwill, so
-far fewer people would do it. Since the chain can be compromised if a malicious
-group has more computing power than all legitimate miners combined, having few
-legitimate miners is a serious problem.
-
-In the case of namecoins, there's even more reason to involve a currency. Since
-you have to spend money to make changes to the chain there's a disincentive for
-attackers (read: idiots) to spam the chain with frivolous changes to keys.
-
-#### Why a *new* currency?
-
-I'll admit, it's a bit annoying to see all these altcoins popping up. I'm sure
-many of them have some solid ideas backing them, but it also makes things
-confusing for newcomers and dilutes the "market" of cryptocoin users; the more
-users a particular chain has, the stronger it is. If we have many chains, all we
-have are a bunch of weak chains.
-
-The exception to this gripe, for me, is namecoin. When I was first thinking
-about this problem my instinct was to just use the existing bitcoin blockchain
-as a key-value storage. However, the maintainers of the bitcoin clients
-(who are, in effect, the maintainers of the chain) don't want the bitcoin
-blockchain polluted with non-commerce related data. At first I disagreed; it's a
-P2P network, no-one gets to say what I can or can't use the chain for! And
-that's true. But things work out better for everyone involved if there's two
-chains.
-
-Bitcoin is a currency. Namecoin is a key-value store (with a currency as its
-driving force). Those are two completely different use-cases, with two
-completely difference usage characteristics. And we don't know yet what those
-characteristics are, or if they'll change. If the chain-maintainers have to deal
-with a mingled chain we could very well be tying their hands with regards to
-what they can or can't change with regards to the behavior of the chain, since
-improving performance for one use-case may hurt the performance of the other.
-With two separate chains the maintainers of each are free to do what they see
-fit to keep their respective chains operating as smoothly as possible.
-Additionally, if for some reason bitcoins fall by the wayside, namecoin will
-still have a shot at continuing operation since it isn't tied to the former.
-Tldr: separation of concerns.
-
-## Namecoin as an alternative to SSL
-
-And now to tie it all together.
-
-There are already a number of proposed formats for standardizing how we store
-data on the namecoin chain so that we can start building tools around it. I'm
-not hugely concerned with the particulars of those standards, only that we can,
-in some way, standardize on attaching a public key (or a fingerprint of one) to
-some key on the namecoin blockchain. When you visit a website, the server
-would then send both its public key and the namecoin chain key to be checked
-against to the browser, and the browser would validate that the public key it
-received is the same as the one on the namecoin chain.
-
-The main issue with this is that it requires another round-trip when visiting a
-website: One for DNS, and one to check the namecoin chain. And where would this
-chain even be hosted?
-
-My proposition is there would exist a number of publicly available servers
-hosting a namecoind process that anyone in the world could send requests for
-values on the chain. Browsers could then be made with a couple of these
-hardwired in. ISPs could also run their own copies at various points in their
-network to improve response-rates and decrease load on the globally public
-servers. Furthermore, the paranoid could host their own and be absolutely sure
-that the data they're receiving is valid.
-
-If the above scheme sounds a lot like what we currently use for DNS, that's
-because it is. In fact, one of namecoin's major goals is that it be used as a
-replacement for DNS, and most of the talk around it is focused on this subject.
-DNS has many of the same problems as SSL, namely single-point-of-failure and
-that it's run by a centralized agency that we have to pay arbitrarily high fees
-to. By switching our DNS and SSL infrastructure to use namecoin we could kill
-two horribly annoying, monopolized, expensive birds with a single stone.
-
-That's it. If we use the namecoin chain as a DNS service we get security almost
-for free, along with lots of other benefits. To make this happen we need
-cooperation from browser makers, and to standardize on a simple way of
-retrieving DNS information from the chain that the browsers can use. The
-protocol doesn't need to be very complex, I think HTTP/REST should suffice,
-since the meat of the data will be embedded in the JSON value on the namecoin
-chain.
-
-If you want to contribute or learn more please check out [namecoin][nmc] and
-specifically the [d namespace proposal][dns] for it.
-
-[cryptic]: http://cryptic.io
-[bitcoins]: http://vimeo.com/63502573
-[dht]: http://www.globule.org/publi/SDST_acmcs2009.pdf
-[nsa]: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/09/new_nsa_leak_sh.html
-[nmc]: http://dot-bit.org/Main_Page
-[dns]: http://dot-bit.org/Namespace:Domain_names_v2.0
diff --git a/src/_posts/2014-01-11-diamond-square.md b/src/_posts/2014-01-11-diamond-square.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 528c953..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2014-01-11-diamond-square.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,495 +0,0 @@
----
-title: Diamond Square
-description: >-
- Tackling the problem of semi-realistic looking terrain generation in
- clojure.
-updated: 2018-09-06
-tags: tech art
----
-
-![terrain][terrain]
-
-I recently started looking into the diamond-square algorithm (you can find a
-great article on it [here][diamondsquare]). The following is a short-ish
-walkthrough of how I tackled the problem in clojure and the results. You can
-find the [leiningen][lein] repo [here][repo] and follow along within that, or
-simply read the code below to get an idea.
-
-Also, Marco ported my code into clojurescript, so you can get random terrain
-in your browser. [Check it out!][marco]
-
-```clojure
-(ns diamond-square.core)
-
-; == The Goal ==
-; Create a fractal terrain generator using clojure
-
-; == The Algorithm ==
-; Diamond-Square. We start with a grid of points, each with a height of 0.
-;
-; 1. Take each corner point of the square, average the heights, and assign that
-; to be the height of the midpoint of the square. Apply some random error to
-; the midpoint.
-;
-; 2. Creating a line from the midpoint to each corner we get four half-diamonds.
-; Average the heights of the points (with some random error) and assign the
-; heights to the midpoints of the diamonds.
-;
-; 3. We now have four square sections, start at 1 for each of them (with
-; decreasing amount of error for each iteration).
-;
-; This picture explains it better than I can:
-; https://blog.mediocregopher.com/img/diamond-square/dsalg.png
-; (http://nbickford.wordpress.com/2012/12/21/creating-fake-landscapes/dsalg/)
-;
-; == The Strategy ==
-; We begin with a vector of vectors of numbers, and iterate over it, filling in
-; spots as they become available. Our grid will have the top-left being (0,0),
-; y being pointing down and x going to the right. The outermost vector
-; indicating row number (y) and the inner vectors indicate the column number (x)
-;
-; = Utility =
-; First we create some utility functions for dealing with vectors of vectors.
-
-(defn print-m
- "Prints a grid in a nice way"
- [m]
- (doseq [n m]
- (println n)))
-
-(defn get-m
- "Gets a value at the given x,y coordinate of the grid, with [0,0] being in the
- top left"
- [m x y]
- ((m y) x))
-
-(defn set-m
- "Sets a value at the given x,y coordinat of the grid, with [0,0] being in the
- top left"
- [m x y v]
- (assoc m y
- (assoc (m y) x v)))
-
-(defn add-m
- "Like set-m, but adds the given value to the current on instead of overwriting
- it"
- [m x y v]
- (set-m m x y
- (+ (get-m m x y) v)))
-
-(defn avg
- "Returns the truncated average of all the given arguments"
- [& l]
- (int (/ (reduce + l) (count l))))
-
-; = Grid size =
-; Since we're starting with a blank grid we need to find out what sizes the
-; grids can be. For convenience the size (height and width) should be odd, so we
-; easily get a midpoint. And on each iteration we'll be halfing the grid, so
-; whenever we do that the two resultrant grids should be odd and halfable as
-; well, and so on.
-;
-; The algorithm that fits this is size = 2^n + 1, where 1 <= n. For the rest of
-; this guide I'll be referring to n as the "degree" of the grid.
-
-
-(def exp2-pre-compute
- (vec (map #(int (Math/pow 2 %)) (range 31))))
-
-(defn exp2
- "Returns 2^n as an integer. Uses pre-computed values since we end up doing
- this so much"
- [n]
- (exp2-pre-compute n))
-
-(def grid-sizes
- (vec (map #(inc (exp2 %)) (range 1 31))))
-
-(defn grid-size [degree]
- (inc (exp2 degree)))
-
-; Available grid heights/widths are as follows:
-;[3 5 9 17 33 65 129 257 513 1025 2049 4097 8193 16385 32769 65537 131073
-;262145 524289 1048577 2097153 4194305 8388609 16777217 33554433 67108865
-;134217729 268435457 536870913 1073741825])
-
-(defn blank-grid
- "Generates a grid of the given degree, filled in with zeros"
- [degree]
- (let [gsize (grid-size degree)]
- (vec (repeat gsize
- (vec (repeat gsize 0))))))
-
-(comment
- (print-m (blank-grid 3))
-)
-
-; = Coordinate Pattern (The Tricky Part) =
-; We now have to figure out which coordinates need to be filled in on each pass.
-; A pass is defined as a square step followed by a diamond step. The next pass
-; will be the square/dimaond steps on all the smaller squares generated in the
-; pass. It works out that the number of passes required to fill in the grid is
-; the same as the degree of the grid, where the first pass is 1.
-;
-; So we can easily find patterns in the coordinates for a given degree/pass,
-; I've laid out below all the coordinates for each pass for a 3rd degree grid
-; (which is 9x9).
-
-; Degree 3 Pass 1 Square
-; [. . . . . . . . .]
-; [. . . . . . . . .]
-; [. . . . . . . . .]
-; [. . . . . . . . .]
-; [. . . . 1 . . . .] (4,4)
-; [. . . . . . . . .]
-; [. . . . . . . . .]
-; [. . . . . . . . .]
-; [. . . . . . . . .]
-
-; Degree 3 Pass 1 Diamond
-; [. . . . 2 . . . .] (4,0)
-; [. . . . . . . . .]
-; [. . . . . . . . .]
-; [. . . . . . . . .]
-; [2 . . . . . . . 2] (0,4) (8,4)
-; [. . . . . . . . .]
-; [. . . . . . . . .]
-; [. . . . . . . . .]
-; [. . . . 2 . . . .] (4,8)
-
-; Degree 3 Pass 2 Square
-; [. . . . . . . . .]
-; [. . . . . . . . .]
-; [. . 3 . . . 3 . .] (2,2) (6,2)
-; [. . . . . . . . .]
-; [. . . . . . . . .]
-; [. . . . . . . . .]
-; [. . 3 . . . 3 . .] (2,6) (6,6)
-; [. . . . . . . . .]
-; [. . . . . . . . .]
-
-; Degree 3 Pass 2 Diamond
-; [. . 4 . . . 4 . .] (2,0) (6,0)
-; [. . . . . . . . .]
-; [4 . . . 4 . . . 4] (0,2) (4,2) (8,2)
-; [. . . . . . . . .]
-; [. . 4 . . . 4 . .] (2,4) (6,4)
-; [. . . . . . . . .]
-; [4 . . . 4 . . . 4] (0,6) (4,6) (8,6)
-; [. . . . . . . . .]
-; [. . 4 . . . 4 . .] (2,8) (6,8)
-
-; Degree 3 Pass 3 Square
-; [. . . . . . . . .]
-; [. 5 . 5 . 5 . 5 .] (1,1) (3,1) (5,1) (7,1)
-; [. . . . . . . . .]
-; [. 5 . 5 . 5 . 5 .] (1,3) (3,3) (5,3) (7,3)
-; [. . . . . . . . .]
-; [. 5 . 5 . 5 . 5 .] (1,5) (3,5) (5,5) (7,5)
-; [. . . . . . . . .]
-; [. 5 . 5 . 5 . 5 .] (1,7) (3,7) (5,7) (7,7)
-; [. . . . . . . . .]
-
-; Degree 3 Pass 3 Square
-; [. 6 . 6 . 6 . 6 .] (1,0) (3,0) (5,0) (7,0)
-; [6 . 6 . 6 . 6 . 6] (0,1) (2,1) (4,1) (6,1) (8,1)
-; [. 6 . 6 . 6 . 6 .] (1,2) (3,2) (5,2) (7,2)
-; [6 . 6 . 6 . 6 . 6] (0,3) (2,3) (4,3) (6,3) (8,3)
-; [. 6 . 6 . 6 . 6 .] (1,4) (3,4) (5,4) (7,4)
-; [6 . 6 . 6 . 6 . 6] (0,5) (2,5) (4,5) (6,5) (8,5)
-; [. 6 . 6 . 6 . 6 .] (1,6) (3,6) (5,6) (7,6)
-; [6 . 6 . 6 . 6 . 6] (0,7) (2,7) (4,7) (6,7) (8,7)
-; [. 6 . 6 . 6 . 6 .] (1,8) (3,8) (5,8) (7,8)
-;
-; I make two different functions, one to give the coordinates for the square
-; portion of each pass and one for the diamond portion of each pass. To find the
-; actual patterns it was useful to first look only at the pattern in the
-; y-coordinates, and figure out how that translated into the pattern for the
-; x-coordinates.
-
-(defn grid-square-coords
- "Given a grid degree and pass number, returns all the coordinates which need
- to be computed for the square step of that pass"
- [degree pass]
- (let [gsize (grid-size degree)
- start (exp2 (- degree pass))
- interval (* 2 start)
- coords (map #(+ start (* interval %))
- (range (exp2 (dec pass))))]
- (mapcat (fn [y]
- (map #(vector % y) coords))
- coords)))
-;
-; (grid-square-coords 3 2)
-; => ([2 2] [6 2] [2 6] [6 6])
-
-(defn grid-diamond-coords
- "Given a grid degree and a pass number, returns all the coordinates which need
- to be computed for the diamond step of that pass"
- [degree pass]
- (let [gsize (grid-size degree)
- interval (exp2 (- degree pass))
- num-coords (grid-size pass)
- coords (map #(* interval %) (range 0 num-coords))]
- (mapcat (fn [y]
- (if (even? (/ y interval))
- (map #(vector % y) (take-nth 2 (drop 1 coords)))
- (map #(vector % y) (take-nth 2 coords))))
- coords)))
-
-; (grid-diamond-coords 3 2)
-; => ([2 0] [6 0] [0 2] [4 2] [8 2] [2 4] [6 4] [0 6] [4 6] [8 6] [2 8] [6 8])
-
-; = Height Generation =
-; We now work on functions which, given a coordinate, will return what value
-; coordinate will have.
-
-(defn avg-points
- "Given a grid and an arbitrary number of points (of the form [x y]) returns
- the average of all the given points that are on the map. Any points which are
- off the map are ignored"
- [m & coords]
- (let [grid-size (count m)]
- (apply avg
- (map #(apply get-m m %)
- (filter
- (fn [[x y]]
- (and (< -1 x) (> grid-size x)
- (< -1 y) (> grid-size y)))
- coords)))))
-
-(defn error
- "Returns a number between -e and e, inclusive"
- [e]
- (- (rand-int (inc (* 2 e))) e))
-
-; The next function is a little weird. It primarily takes in a point, then
-; figures out the distance from that point to the points we'll take the average
-; of. The locf (locator function) is used to return back the actual points to
-; use. For the square portion it'll be the points diagonal from the given one,
-; for the diamond portion it'll be the points to the top/bottom/left/right from
-; the given one.
-;
-; Once it has those points, it finds the average and applies the error. The
-; error function is nothing more than a number between -interval and +interval,
-; where interval is the distance between the given point and one of the averaged
-; points. It is important that the error decreases the more passes you do, which
-; is why the interval is used.
-;
-; The error function is what should be messed with primarily if you want to
-; change what kind of terrain you generate (a giant mountain instead of
-; hills/valleys, for example). The one we use is uniform for all intervals, so
-; it generates a uniform terrain.
-
-(defn- grid-fill-point
- [locf m degree pass x y]
- (let [interval (exp2 (- degree pass))
- leftx (- x interval)
- rightx (+ x interval)
- upy (- y interval)
- downy (+ y interval)
- v (apply avg-points m
- (locf x y leftx rightx upy downy))]
- (add-m m x y (+ v (error interval)))))
-
-(def grid-fill-point-square
- "Given a grid, the grid's degree, the current pass number, and a point on the
- grid, fills in that point with the average (plus some error) of the
- appropriate corner points, and returns the resultant grid"
- (partial grid-fill-point
- (fn [_ _ leftx rightx upy downy]
- [[leftx upy]
- [rightx upy]
- [leftx downy]
- [rightx downy]])))
-
-(def grid-fill-point-diamond
- "Given a grid, the grid's degree, the current pass number, and a point on the
- grid, fills in that point with the average (plus some error) of the
- appropriate edge points, and returns the resultant grid"
- (partial grid-fill-point
- (fn [x y leftx rightx upy downy]
- [[leftx y]
- [rightx y]
- [x upy]
- [x downy]])))
-
-; = Filling in the Grid =
-; We finally compose the functions we've been creating to fill in the entire
-; grid
-
-(defn- grid-fill-point-passes
- "Given a grid, a function to fill in coordinates, and a function to generate
- those coordinates, fills in all coordinates for a given pass, returning the
- resultant grid"
- [m fill-f coord-f degree pass]
- (reduce
- (fn [macc [x y]] (fill-f macc degree pass x y))
- m
- (coord-f degree pass)))
-
-(defn grid-pass
- "Given a grid and a pass number, does the square then the diamond portion of
- the pass"
- [m degree pass]
- (-> m
- (grid-fill-point-passes
- grid-fill-point-square grid-square-coords degree pass)
- (grid-fill-point-passes
- grid-fill-point-diamond grid-diamond-coords degree pass)))
-
-; The most important function in this guide, does all the work
-(defn terrain
- "Given a grid degree, generates a uniformly random terrain on a grid of that
- degree"
- ([degree]
- (terrain (blank-grid degree) degree))
- ([m degree]
- (reduce
- #(grid-pass %1 degree %2)
- m
- (range 1 (inc degree)))))
-
-(comment
- (print-m
- (terrain 5))
-)
-
-; == The Results ==
-; We now have a generated terrain, probably. We should check it. First we'll
-; create an ASCII representation. But to do that we'll need some utility
-; functions.
-
-(defn max-terrain-height
- "Returns the maximum height found in the given terrain grid"
- [m]
- (reduce max
- (map #(reduce max %) m)))
-
-(defn min-terrain-height
- "Returns the minimum height found in the given terrain grid"
- [m]
- (reduce min
- (map #(reduce min %) m)))
-
-(defn norm
- "Given x in the range (A,B), normalizes it into the range (0,new-height)"
- [A B new-height x]
- (int (/ (* (- x A) new-height) (- B A))))
-
-(defn normalize-terrain
- "Given a terrain map and a number of \"steps\", normalizes the terrain so all
- heights in it are in the range (0,steps)"
- [m steps]
- (let [max-height (max-terrain-height m)
- min-height (min-terrain-height m)
- norm-f (partial norm min-height max-height steps)]
- (vec (map #(vec (map norm-f %)) m))))
-
-; We now define which ASCII characters we want to use for which heights. The
-; vector starts with the character for the lowest height and ends with the
-; character for the heighest height.
-
-(def tiles
- [\~ \~ \" \" \x \x \X \$ \% \# \@])
-
-(defn tile-terrain
- "Given a terrain map, converts it into an ASCII tile map"
- [m]
- (vec (map #(vec (map tiles %))
- (normalize-terrain m (dec (count tiles))))))
-
-(comment
- (print-m
- (tile-terrain
- (terrain 5)))
-
-; [~ ~ " " x x x X % $ $ $ X X X X X X $ x x x X X X x x x x " " " ~]
-; [" ~ " " x x X X $ $ $ X X X X X X X X X X X X X X x x x x " " " "]
-; [" " " x x x X X % $ % $ % $ $ X X X X $ $ $ X X X X x x x x " " "]
-; [" " " x x X $ % % % % % $ % $ $ X X $ $ $ $ X X x x x x x x " " x]
-; [" x x x x X $ $ # % % % % % % $ X $ X X % $ % X X x x x x x x x x]
-; [x x x X $ $ $ % % % % % $ % $ $ $ % % $ $ $ $ X X x x x x x x x x]
-; [X X X $ % $ % % # % % $ $ % % % % $ % $ $ X $ X $ X X x x x X x x]
-; [$ $ X $ $ % $ % % % % $ $ $ % # % % % X X X $ $ $ X X X x x x x x]
-; [% X X % % $ % % % $ % $ % % % # @ % $ $ X $ X X $ X x X X x x x x]
-; [$ $ % % $ $ % % $ $ X $ $ % % % % $ $ X $ $ X X X X X X x x x x x]
-; [% % % X $ $ % $ $ X X $ $ $ $ % % $ $ X X X $ X X X x x X x x X X]
-; [$ $ $ X $ $ X $ X X X $ $ $ $ % $ $ $ $ $ X $ X x X X X X X x X X]
-; [$ $ $ $ X X $ X X X X X $ % % % % % $ X $ $ $ X x X X X $ X X $ $]
-; [X $ $ $ $ $ X X X X X X X % $ % $ $ $ X X X X X x x X X x X X $ $]
-; [$ $ X X $ X X x X $ $ X X $ % X X X X X X X X X x X X x x X X X X]
-; [$ $ X X X X X X X $ $ $ $ $ X $ X X X X X X X x x x x x x x X X X]
-; [% % % $ $ X $ X % X X X % $ $ X X X X X X x x x x x x x x x X X $]
-; [$ % % $ $ $ X X $ $ $ $ $ $ X X X X x X x x x x " x x x " x x x x]
-; [$ X % $ $ $ $ $ X X X X X $ $ X X X X X X x x " " " " " " " " x x]
-; [$ X $ $ % % $ X X X $ X X X x x X X x x x x x " " " " " ~ " " " "]
-; [$ $ X X % $ % X X X X X X X X x x X X X x x x " " " " " " ~ " " "]
-; [$ $ X $ % $ $ X X X X X X x x x x x x x x x " " " " " " " " " ~ ~]
-; [$ $ $ $ $ X X $ X X X X X x x x x x x x x " " " " " " " ~ " " " ~]
-; [$ % X X $ $ $ $ X X X X x x x x x x x x x x " " " " ~ " " ~ " " ~]
-; [% $ $ X $ X $ X $ X $ X x x x x x x x x x x " " " " ~ ~ ~ " ~ " ~]
-; [$ X X X X $ $ $ $ $ X x x x x x x x x x x " " " " ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~]
-; [X x X X x X X X X X X X X x x x x x x x x x " " " ~ ~ " " ~ ~ ~ ~]
-; [x x x x x x X x X X x X X X x x x x x x x " x " " " " " ~ ~ ~ ~ ~]
-; [x x x x x x x x X X X X $ X X x X x x x x x x x x " ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~]
-; [" x x x x x X x X X X X X X X X X x x x x x x " " " " ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~]
-; [" " " x x x X X X X $ $ $ X X X X X X x x x x x x x x " " ~ ~ ~ ~]
-; [" " " " x x x X X X X X $ $ X X x X X x x x x x x x " " " " " ~ ~]
-; [~ " " x x x x X $ X $ X $ $ X x X x x x x x x x x x x x x " " " ~]
-)
-
-; = Pictures! =
-; ASCII is cool, but pictures are better. First we import some java libraries
-; that we'll need, then define the colors for each level just like we did tiles
-; for the ascii representation.
-
-(import
- 'java.awt.image.BufferedImage
- 'javax.imageio.ImageIO
- 'java.io.File)
-
-(def colors
- [0x1437AD 0x04859D 0x007D1C 0x007D1C 0x24913C
- 0x00C12B 0x38E05D 0xA3A3A4 0x757575 0xFFFFFF])
-
-; Finally we reduce over a BufferedImage instance to output every tile as a
-; single pixel on it.
-
-(defn img-terrain
- "Given a terrain map and a file name, outputs a png representation of the
- terrain map to that file"
- [m file]
- (let [img (BufferedImage. (count m) (count m) BufferedImage/TYPE_INT_RGB)]
- (reduce
- (fn [rown row]
- (reduce
- (fn [coln tile]
- (.setRGB img coln rown (colors tile))
- (inc coln))
- 0 row)
- (inc rown))
- 0 (normalize-terrain m (dec (count colors))))
- (ImageIO/write img "png" (File. file))))
-
-(comment
- (img-terrain
- (terrain 10)
- "resources/terrain.png")
-
- ; https://blog.mediocregopher.com/img/diamond-square/terrain.png
-)
-
-; == Conclusion ==
-; There's still a lot of work to be done. The algorithm starts taking a
-; non-trivial amount of time around the 10th degree, which is only a 1025x1025px
-; image. I need to profile the code and find out where the bottlenecks are. It's
-; possible re-organizing the code to use pmaps instead of reduces in some places
-; could help.
-```
-
-[marco]: http://marcopolo.io/diamond-square/
-[terrain]: /img/diamond-square/terrain.png
-[diamondsquare]: http://www.gameprogrammer.com/fractal.html
-[lein]: https://github.com/technomancy/leiningen
-[repo]: https://github.com/mediocregopher/diamond-square
diff --git a/src/_posts/2014-10-29-erlang-pitfalls.md b/src/_posts/2014-10-29-erlang-pitfalls.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 7358430..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2014-10-29-erlang-pitfalls.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,193 +0,0 @@
----
-title: Erlang Pitfalls
-description: >-
- Common pitfalls that people may run into when designing and writing
- large-scale erlang applications.
-tags: tech
----
-
-I've been involved with a large-ish scale erlang project at Grooveshark since
-sometime around 2011. I started this project knowing absolutely nothing about
-erlang, but now I feel I have accumulated enough knowlege over time that I could
-conceivably give some back. Specifically, common pitfalls that people may run
-into when designing and writing a large-scale erlang application. Some of these
-may show up when searching for them, but some of them you may not even know you
-need to search for.
-
-## now() vs timestamp()
-
-The cononical way of getting the current timestamp in erlang is to use
-`erlang:now()`. This works great at small loads, but if you find your
-application slowing down greatly at highly parallel loads and you're calling
-`erlang:now()` a lot, it may be the culprit.
-
-A property of this method you may not realize is that it is monotonically
-increasing, meaning even if two processes call it at the *exact* same time they
-will both receive different output. This is done through some locking on the
-low-level, as well as a bit of math to balance out the time getting out of sync
-in the scenario.
-
-There are situations where fetching always unique timestamps is useful, such as
-seeding RNGs and generating unique identifiers for things, but usually when
-people fetch a timestamp they just want a timestamp. For these cases,
-`os:timestamp()` can be used. It is not blocked by any locks, it simply returns
-the time.
-
-## The rpc module is slow
-
-The built-in `rpc` module is slower than you'd think. This mostly stems from it
-doing a lot of extra work for every `call` and `cast` that you do, ensuring that
-certain conditions are accounted for. If, however, it's sufficient for the
-calling side to know that a call timed-out on them and not worry about it any
-further you may benefit from simply writing your own rpc module. Alternatively,
-use [one which already exists](https://github.com/cloudant/rexi).
-
-## Don't send anonymous functions between nodes
-
-One of erlang's niceties is transparent message sending between two phsyical
-erlang nodes. Once nodes are connected, a process on one can send any message to
-a process on the other exactly as if they existed on the same node. This is fine
-for many data-types, but for anonymous functions it should be avoided.
-
-For example:
-
-```erlang
-RemotePid ! {fn, fun(I) -> I + 1 end}.
-```
-
-Would be better written as
-
-```erlang
-incr(I) ->
- I + 1.
-
-RemotePid ! {fn, ?MODULE, incr}.
-```
-
-and then using an `apply` on the RemotePid to actually execute the function.
-
-This is because hot-swapping code messes with anonymous functions quite a bit.
-Erlang isn't actually sending a function definition across the wire; it's simply
-sending a reference to a function. If you've changed the code within the
-anonymous function on a node, that reference changes. The sending node is
-sending a reference to a function which may not exist anymore on the receiving
-node, and you'll get a weird error which Google doesn't return many results for.
-
-Alternatively, if you simply send atoms across the wire and use `apply` on the
-other side, only atoms are sent and the two nodes involved can have totally
-different ideas of what the function itself does without any problems.
-
-## Hot-swapping code is a convenience, not a crutch
-
-Hot swapping code is the bees-knees. It lets you not have to worry about
-rolling-restarts for trivial code changes, and so adds stability to your
-cluster. My warning is that you should not rely on it. If your cluster can't
-survive a node being restarted for a code change, then it can't survive if that
-node fails completely, or fails and comes back up. Design your system pretending
-that hot-swapping does not exist, and only once you've done that allow yourself
-to use it.
-
-## GC sometimes needs a boost
-
-Erlang garbage collection (GC) acts on a per-erlang-process basis, meaning that
-each process decides on its own to garbage collect itself. This is nice because
-it means stop-the-world isn't a problem, but it does have some interesting
-effects.
-
-We had a problem with our node memory graphs looking like an upwards facing
-line, instead of a nice sinusoid relative to the number of connections during
-the day. We couldn't find a memory leak *anywhere*, and so started profiling. We
-found that the memory seemed to be comprised of mostly binary data in process
-heaps. On a hunch my coworker Mike Cugini (who gets all the credit for this) ran
-the following on a node:
-
-```erlang
-lists:foreach(erlang:garbage_collect/1, erlang:processes()).
-```
-
-and saw memory drop in a huge way. We made that code run every 10 minutes or so
-and suddenly our memory problem went away.
-
-The problem is that we had a lot of processes which individually didn't have
-much heap data, but all-together were crushing the box. Each didn't think it had
-enough to garbage collect very often, so memory just kept going up. Calling the
-above forces all processes to garbage collect, and thus throw away all those
-little binary bits they were hoarding.
-
-## These aren't the solutions you are looking for
-
-The `erl` process has tons of command-line options which allow you to tweak all
-kinds of knobs. We've had tons of performance problems with our application, as
-of yet not a single one has been solved with turning one of these knobs. They've
-all been design issues or just run-of-the-mill bugs. I'm not saying the knobs
-are *never* useful, but I haven't seen it yet.
-
-## Erlang processes are great, except when they're not
-
-The erlang model of allowing processes to manage global state works really well
-in many cases. Possibly even most cases. There are, however, times when it
-becomes a performance problem. This became apparent in the project I was working
-on for Grooveshark, which was, at its heart, a pubsub server.
-
-The architecture was very simple: each channel was managed by a process, client
-connection processes subscribed to that channel and received publishes from it.
-Easy right? The problem was that extremely high volume channels were simply not
-able to keep up with the load. The channel process could do certain things very
-fast, but there were some operations which simply took time and slowed
-everything down. For example, channels could have arbitrary properties set on
-them by their owners. Retrieving an arbitrary property from a channel was a
-fairly fast operation: client `call`s the channel process, channel process
-immediately responds with the property value. No blocking involved.
-
-But as soon as there was any kind of call which required the channel process to
-talk to yet *another* process (unfortunately necessary), things got hairy. On
-high volume channels publishes/gets/set operations would get massively backed up
-in the message queue while the process was blocked on another process. We tried
-many things, but ultimately gave up on the process-per-channel approach.
-
-We instead decided on keeping *all* channel state in a transactional database.
-When client processes "called" operations on a channel, they really are just
-acting on the database data inline, no message passing involved. This means that
-read-only operations are super-fast because there is minimal blocking, and if
-some random other process is being slow it only affects the one client making
-the call which is causing it to be slow, and not holding up a whole host of
-other clients.
-
-## Mnesia might not be what you want
-
-This one is probably a bit controversial, and definitely subject to use-cases.
-Do your own testing and profiling, find out what's right for you.
-
-Mnesia is erlang's solution for global state. It's an in-memory transactional
-database which can scale to N nodes and persist to disk. It is hosted
-directly in the erlang processes memory so you interact with it in erlang
-directly in your code; no calling out to database drivers and such. Sounds great
-right?
-
-Unfortunately mnesia is not a very full-featured database. It is essentially a
-key-value store which can hold arbitrary erlang data-types, albeit in a set
-schema which you lay out for it during startup. This means that more complex
-types like sorted sets and hash maps (although this was addressed with the
-introduction of the map data-type in R17) are difficult to work with within
-mnesia. Additionally, erlang's data model of immutability, while awesome
-usually, can bite you here because it's difficult (impossible?) to pull out
-chunks of data within a record without accessing the whole record.
-
-For example, when retrieving the list of processes subscribed to a channel our
-application doesn't simply pull the full list and iterate over it. This is too
-slow, and in some cases the subscriber list was so large it wasn't actually
-feasible. The channel process wasn't cleaning up its heap fast enough, so
-multiple publishes would end up with multiple copies of the giant list in
-memory. This became a problem. Instead we chain spawned processes, each of which
-pull a set chunk of the subsciber list, and iterate over that. This is very
-difficult to implement in mnesia without pulling the full subscriber list into
-the process' memory at some point in the process.
-
-It is, however, fairly trivial to implement in redis using sorted sets. For this
-case, and many other cases after, the motto for performance improvements became
-"stick it in redis". The application is at the point where *all* state which
-isn't directly tied to a specific connection is kept in redis, encoded using
-`term_to_binary`. The performance hit of going to an outside process for data
-was actually much less than we'd originally thought, and ended up being a plus
-since we had much more freedom to do interesting hacks to speedup up our
-accesses.
diff --git a/src/_posts/2015-03-11-rabbit-hole.md b/src/_posts/2015-03-11-rabbit-hole.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 0bea0b5..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2015-03-11-rabbit-hole.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,166 +0,0 @@
----
-title: Rabbit Hole
-description: >-
- Complex systems sometimes require complex debugging.
-tags: tech
----
-
-We've begun rolling out [SkyDNS][skydns] at my job, which has been pretty neat.
-We're basing a couple future projects around being able to use it, and it's made
-dynamic configuration and service discovery nice and easy.
-
-This post chronicles catching a bug because of our switch to SkyDNS, and how we
-discover its root cause. I like to call these kinds of bugs "rabbit holes"; they
-look shallow at first, but anytime you make a little progress forward a little
-more is always required, until you discover the ending somewhere totally
-unrelated to the start.
-
-## The Bug
-
-We are seeing *tons* of these in the SkyDNS log:
-
-```
-[skydns] Feb 20 17:21:15.168 INFO | no nameservers defined or name too short, can not forward
-```
-
-I fire up tcpdump to see if I can see anything interesting, and sure enough run
-across a bunch of these:
-
-```
-# tcpdump -vvv -s 0 -l -n port 53
-tcpdump: listening on eth0, link-type EN10MB (Ethernet), capture size 65535 bytes
- ...
- $fen_ip.50257 > $skydns_ip.domain: [udp sum ok] 16218+ A? unknown. (25)
- $fen_ip.27372 > $skydns_ip.domain: [udp sum ok] 16218+ A? unknown. (25)
- $fen_ip.35634 > $skydns_ip.domain: [udp sum ok] 59227+ A? unknown. (25)
- $fen_ip.64363 > $skydns_ip.domain: [udp sum ok] 59227+ A? unknown. (25)
-```
-
-It appears that some of our front end nodes (FENs) are making tons of DNS
-fequests trying to find the A record of `unknown`. Something on our FENs is
-doing something insane and is breaking.
-
-## The FENs
-
-Hopping over to my favorite FEN we're able to see the packets in question
-leaving on a tcpdump as well, but that's not helpful for finding the root cause.
-We have lots of processes running on the FENs and any number of them could be
-doing something crazy.
-
-We fire up sysdig, which is similar to systemtap and strace in that it allows
-you to hook into the kernel and view various kernel activites in real time, but
-it's easier to use than both. The following command dumps all UDP packets being
-sent and what process is sending them:
-
-```
-# sysdig fd.l4proto=udp
-...
-2528950 22:17:35.260606188 0 php-fpm (21477) < connect res=0 tuple=$fen_ip:61173->$skydns_ip:53
-2528961 22:17:35.260611327 0 php-fpm (21477) > sendto fd=102(<4u>$fen_ip:61173->$skydns_ip:53) size=25 tuple=NULL
-2528991 22:17:35.260631917 0 php-fpm (21477) < sendto res=25 data=.r...........unknown.....
-2530470 22:17:35.261879032 0 php-fpm (21477) > ioctl fd=102(<4u>$fen_ip:61173->$skydns_ip:53) request=541B argument=7FFF82DC8728
-2530472 22:17:35.261880574 0 php-fpm (21477) < ioctl res=0
-2530474 22:17:35.261881226 0 php-fpm (21477) > recvfrom fd=102(<4u>$fen_ip:61173->$skydns_ip:53) size=1024
-2530476 22:17:35.261883424 0 php-fpm (21477) < recvfrom res=25 data=.r...........unknown..... tuple=$skydns_ip:53->$fen_ip:61173
-2530485 22:17:35.261888997 0 php-fpm (21477) > close fd=102(<4u>$fen_ip:61173->$skydns_ip:53)
-2530488 22:17:35.261892626 0 php-fpm (21477) < close res=0
-```
-
-Aha! We can see php-fpm is requesting something over udp with the string
-`unknown` in it. We've now narrowed down the guilty process, the rest should be
-easy right?
-
-## Which PHP?
-
-Unfortunately we're a PHP shop; knowing that php-fpm is doing something on a FEN
-narrows down the guilty codebase little. Taking the FEN out of our load-balancer
-stops the requests for `unknown`, so we *can* say that it's some user-facing
-code that is the culprit. Our setup on the FENs involves users hitting nginx
-for static content and nginx proxying PHP requests back to php-fpm. Since all
-our virtual domains are defined in nginx, we are able to do something horrible.
-
-On the particular FEN we're on we make a guess about which virtual domain the
-problem is likely coming from (our main app), and proxy all traffic from all
-other domains to a different FEN. We still see requests for `unknown` leaving
-the box, so we've narrowed the problem down a little more.
-
-## The Despair
-
-Nothing in our code is doing any direct DNS calls as far as we can find, and we
-don't see any places PHP might be doing it for us. We have lots of PHP
-extensions in place, all written in C and all black boxes; any of them could be
-the culprit. Grepping through the likely candidates' source code for the string
-`unknown` proves fruitless.
-
-We try xdebug at this point. xdebug is a profiler for php which will create
-cachegrind files for the running code. With cachegrind you can see every
-function which was ever called, how long spent within each function, a full
-call-graph, and lots more. Unfortunately xdebug outputs cachegrind files on a
-per-php-fpm-process basis, and overwrites the previous file on each new request.
-So xdebug is pretty much useless, since what is in the cachegrind file isn't
-necessarily what spawned the DNS request.
-
-## Gotcha (sorta)
-
-We turn back to the tried and true method of dumping all the traffic using
-tcpdump and perusing through that manually.
-
-What we find is that nearly everytime there is a DNS request for `unknown`, if
-we scroll up a bit there is (usually) a particular request to memcache. The
-requested key is always in the style of `function-name:someid:otherstuff`. When
-looking in the code around that function name we find this ominous looking call:
-
-```php
-$ipAddress = getIPAddress();
-$geoipInfo = getCountryInfoFromIP($ipAddress);
-```
-
-This points us in the right direction. On a hunch we add some debug
-logging to print out the `$ipAddress` variable, and sure enough it comes back as
-`unknown`. AHA!
-
-So what we surmise is happening is that for some reason our geoip extension,
-which we use to get the location data of an IP address and which
-`getCountryInfoFromIP` calls, is seeing something which is *not* an IP address
-and trying to resolve it.
-
-## Gotcha (for real)
-
-So the question becomes: why are we getting the string `unknown` as an IP
-address?
-
-Adding some debug logging around the area we find before showed that
-`$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']`, which is the variable populated with the IP address
-of the client, is sometimes `unknown`. We guess that this has something to do
-with some magic we are doing on nginx's side to populate `REMOTE_ADDR` with the
-real IP address of the client in the case of them going through a proxy.
-
-Many proxies send along the header `X-Forwarded-For` to indicate the real IP of
-the client they're proxying for, otherwise the server would only see the proxy's
-IP. In our setup I decided that in those cases we should set the `REMOTE_ADDR`
-to the real client IP so our application logic doesn't even have to worry about
-it. There are a couple problems with this which render it a bad decision, one
-being that if some misbahaving proxy was to, say, start sending
-`X-Forwarded-For: unknown` then some written applications might mistake that to
-mean the client's IP is `unknown`.
-
-## The Fix
-
-The fix here was two-fold:
-
-1) We now always set `$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']` to be the remote address of the
-requests, regardless of if it's a proxy, and also send the application the
-`X-Forwarded-For` header to do with as it pleases.
-
-2) Inside our app we look at all the headers sent and do some processing to
-decide what the actual client IP is. PHP can handle a lot more complex logic
-than nginx can, so we can do things like check to make sure the IP is an IP, and
-also that it's not some NAT'd internal ip, and so forth.
-
-And that's it. From some weird log messages on our DNS servers to an nginx
-mis-configuration on an almost unrelated set of servers, this is one of those
-strange bugs that never has a nice solution and goes unsolved for a long time.
-Spending the time to dive down the rabbit hole and find the answer is often
-tedious, but also often very rewarding.
-
-[skydns]: https://github.com/skynetservices/skydns
diff --git a/src/_posts/2015-07-15-go-http.md b/src/_posts/2015-07-15-go-http.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 7da7d6b..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2015-07-15-go-http.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,547 +0,0 @@
----
-title: Go's http package by example
-description: >-
- The basics of using, testing, and composing apps built using go's net/http
- package.
----
-
-Go's [http](http://golang.org/pkg/net/http/) package has turned into one of my
-favorite things about the Go programming language. Initially it appears to be
-somewhat complex, but in reality it can be broken down into a couple of simple
-components that are extremely flexible in how they can be used. This guide will
-cover the basic ideas behind the http package, as well as examples in using,
-testing, and composing apps built with it.
-
-This guide assumes you have some basic knowledge of what an interface in Go is,
-and some idea of how HTTP works and what it can do.
-
-## Handler
-
-The building block of the entire http package is the `http.Handler` interface,
-which is defined as follows:
-
-```go
-type Handler interface {
- ServeHTTP(ResponseWriter, *Request)
-}
-```
-
-Once implemented the `http.Handler` can be passed to `http.ListenAndServe`,
-which will call the `ServeHTTP` method on every incoming request.
-
-`http.Request` contains all relevant information about an incoming http request
-which is being served by your `http.Handler`.
-
-The `http.ResponseWriter` is the interface through which you can respond to the
-request. It implements the `io.Writer` interface, so you can use methods like
-`fmt.Fprintf` to write a formatted string as the response body, or ones like
-`io.Copy` to write out the contents of a file (or any other `io.Reader`). The
-response code can be set before you begin writing data using the `WriteHeader`
-method.
-
-Here's an example of an extremely simple http server:
-
-```go
-package main
-
-import (
- "fmt"
- "log"
- "net/http"
-)
-
-type helloHandler struct{}
-
-func (h helloHandler) ServeHTTP(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
- fmt.Fprintf(w, "hello, you've hit %s\n", r.URL.Path)
-}
-
-func main() {
- err := http.ListenAndServe(":9999", helloHandler{})
- log.Fatal(err)
-}
-```
-
-`http.ListenAndServe` serves requests using the handler, listening on the given
-address:port. It will block unless it encounters an error listening, in which
-case we `log.Fatal`.
-
-Here's an example of using this handler with curl:
-
-```
- ~ $ curl localhost:9999/foo/bar
- hello, you've hit /foo/bar
-```
-
-
-## HandlerFunc
-
-Often defining a full type to implement the `http.Handler` interface is a bit
-overkill, especially for extremely simple `ServeHTTP` functions like the one
-above. The `http` package provides a helper function, `http.HandlerFunc`, which
-wraps a function which has the signature
-`func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request)`, returning an `http.Handler`
-which will call it in all cases.
-
-The following behaves exactly like the previous example, but uses
-`http.HandlerFunc` instead of defining a new type.
-
-```go
-package main
-
-import (
- "fmt"
- "log"
- "net/http"
-)
-
-func main() {
- h := http.HandlerFunc(func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
- fmt.Fprintf(w, "hello, you've hit %s\n", r.URL.Path)
- })
-
- err := http.ListenAndServe(":9999", h)
- log.Fatal(err)
-}
-```
-
-## ServeMux
-
-On their own, the previous examples don't seem all that useful. If we wanted to
-have different behavior for different endpoints we would end up with having to
-parse path strings as well as numerous `if` or `switch` statements. Luckily
-we're provided with `http.ServeMux`, which does all of that for us. Here's an
-example of it being used:
-
-```go
-package main
-
-import (
- "fmt"
- "log"
- "net/http"
-)
-
-func main() {
- h := http.NewServeMux()
-
- h.HandleFunc("/foo", func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
- fmt.Fprintln(w, "Hello, you hit foo!")
- })
-
- h.HandleFunc("/bar", func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
- fmt.Fprintln(w, "Hello, you hit bar!")
- })
-
- h.HandleFunc("/", func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
- w.WriteHeader(404)
- fmt.Fprintln(w, "You're lost, go home")
- })
-
- err := http.ListenAndServe(":9999", h)
- log.Fatal(err)
-}
-```
-
-The `http.ServeMux` is itself an `http.Handler`, so it can be passed into
-`http.ListenAndServe`. When it receives a request it will check if the request's
-path is prefixed by any of its known paths, choosing the longest prefix match it
-can find. We use the `/` endpoint as a catch-all to catch any requests to
-unknown endpoints. Here's some examples of it being used:
-
-```
- ~ $ curl localhost:9999/foo
-Hello, you hit foo!
-
- ~ $ curl localhost:9999/bar
-Hello, you hit bar!
-
- ~ $ curl localhost:9999/baz
-You're lost, go home
-```
-
-`http.ServeMux` has both `Handle` and `HandleFunc` methods. These do the same
-thing, except that `Handle` takes in an `http.Handler` while `HandleFunc` merely
-takes in a function, implicitly wrapping it just as `http.HandlerFunc` does.
-
-### Other muxes
-
-There are numerous replacements for `http.ServeMux` like
-[gorilla/mux](http://www.gorillatoolkit.org/pkg/mux) which give you things like
-automatically pulling variables out of paths, easily asserting what http methods
-are allowed on an endpoint, and more. Most of these replacements will implement
-`http.Handler` like `http.ServeMux` does, and accept `http.Handler`s as
-arguments, and so are easy to use in conjunction with the rest of the things
-I'm going to talk about in this post.
-
-## Composability
-
-When I say that the `http` package is composable I mean that it is very easy to
-create re-usable pieces of code and glue them together into a new working
-application. The `http.Handler` interface is the way all pieces communicate with
-each other. Here's an example of where we use the same `http.Handler` to handle
-multiple endpoints, each slightly differently:
-
-```go
-package main
-
-import (
- "fmt"
- "log"
- "net/http"
-)
-
-type numberDumper int
-
-func (n numberDumper) ServeHTTP(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
- fmt.Fprintf(w, "Here's your number: %d\n", n)
-}
-
-func main() {
- h := http.NewServeMux()
-
- h.Handle("/one", numberDumper(1))
- h.Handle("/two", numberDumper(2))
- h.Handle("/three", numberDumper(3))
- h.Handle("/four", numberDumper(4))
- h.Handle("/five", numberDumper(5))
-
- h.HandleFunc("/", func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
- w.WriteHeader(404)
- fmt.Fprintln(w, "That's not a supported number!")
- })
-
- err := http.ListenAndServe(":9999", h)
- log.Fatal(err)
-}
-```
-
-`numberDumper` implements `http.Handler`, and can be passed into the
-`http.ServeMux` multiple times to serve multiple endpoints. Here's it in action:
-
-```
- ~ $ curl localhost:9999/one
-Here's your number: 1
- ~ $ curl localhost:9999/five
-Here's your number: 5
- ~ $ curl localhost:9999/bazillion
-That's not a supported number!
-```
-
-## Testing
-
-Testing http endpoints is extremely easy in Go, and doesn't even require you to
-actually listen on any ports! The `httptest` package provides a few handy
-utilities, including `NewRecorder` which implements `http.ResponseWriter` and
-allows you to effectively make an http request by calling `ServeHTTP` directly.
-Here's an example of a test for our previously implemented `numberDumper`,
-commented with what exactly is happening:
-
-```go
-package main
-
-import (
- "fmt"
- "net/http"
- "net/http/httptest"
- . "testing"
-)
-
-func TestNumberDumper(t *T) {
- // We first create the http.Handler we wish to test
- n := numberDumper(1)
-
- // We create an http.Request object to test with. The http.Request is
- // totally customizable in every way that a real-life http request is, so
- // even the most intricate behavior can be tested
- r, _ := http.NewRequest("GET", "/one", nil)
-
- // httptest.Recorder implements the http.ResponseWriter interface, and as
- // such can be passed into ServeHTTP to receive the response. It will act as
- // if all data being given to it is being sent to a real client, when in
- // reality it's being buffered for later observation
- w := httptest.NewRecorder()
-
- // Pass in our httptest.Recorder and http.Request to our numberDumper. At
- // this point the numberDumper will act just as if it was responding to a
- // real request
- n.ServeHTTP(w, r)
-
- // httptest.Recorder gives a number of fields and methods which can be used
- // to observe the response made to our request. Here we check the response
- // code
- if w.Code != 200 {
- t.Fatalf("wrong code returned: %d", w.Code)
- }
-
- // We can also get the full body out of the httptest.Recorder, and check
- // that its contents are what we expect
- body := w.Body.String()
- if body != fmt.Sprintf("Here's your number: 1\n") {
- t.Fatalf("wrong body returned: %s", body)
- }
-
-}
-```
-
-In this way it's easy to create tests for your individual components that you
-are using to build your application, keeping the tests near to the functionality
-they're testing.
-
-Note: if you ever do need to spin up a test server in your tests, `httptest`
-also provides a way to create a server listening on a random open port for use
-in tests as well.
-
-## Middleware
-
-Serving endpoints is nice, but often there's functionality you need to run for
-*every* request before the actual endpoint's handler is run. For example, access
-logging. A middleware component is one which implements `http.Handler`, but will
-actually pass the request off to another `http.Handler` after doing some set of
-actions. The `http.ServeMux` we looked at earlier is actually an example of
-middleware, since it passes the request off to another `http.Handler` for actual
-processing. Here's an example of our previous example with some logging
-middleware:
-
-```go
-package main
-
-import (
- "fmt"
- "log"
- "net/http"
-)
-
-type numberDumper int
-
-func (n numberDumper) ServeHTTP(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
- fmt.Fprintf(w, "Here's your number: %d\n", n)
-}
-
-func logger(h http.Handler) http.Handler {
- return http.HandlerFunc(func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
- log.Printf("%s requested %s", r.RemoteAddr, r.URL)
- h.ServeHTTP(w, r)
- })
-}
-
-func main() {
- h := http.NewServeMux()
-
- h.Handle("/one", numberDumper(1))
- h.Handle("/two", numberDumper(2))
- h.Handle("/three", numberDumper(3))
- h.Handle("/four", numberDumper(4))
- h.Handle("/five", numberDumper(5))
-
- h.HandleFunc("/", func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
- w.WriteHeader(404)
- fmt.Fprintln(w, "That's not a supported number!")
- })
-
- hl := logger(h)
-
- err := http.ListenAndServe(":9999", hl)
- log.Fatal(err)
-}
-```
-
-`logger` is a function which takes in an `http.Handler` called `h`, and returns
-a new `http.Handler` which, when called, will log the request it was called with
-and then pass off its arguments to `h`. To use it we pass in our
-`http.ServeMux`, so all incoming requests will first be handled by the logging
-middleware before being passed to the `http.ServeMux`.
-
-Here's an example log entry which is output when the `/five` endpoint is hit:
-
-```
-2015/06/30 20:15:41 [::1]:34688 requested /five
-```
-
-## Middleware chaining
-
-Being able to chain middleware together is an incredibly useful ability which we
-get almost for free, as long as we use the signature
-`func(http.Handler) http.Handler`. A middleware component returns the same type
-which is passed into it, so simply passing the output of one middleware
-component into the other is sufficient.
-
-However, more complex behavior with middleware can be tricky. For instance, what
-if you want a piece of middleware which takes in a parameter upon creation?
-Here's an example of just that, with a piece of middleware which will set a
-header and its value for all requests:
-
-```go
-package main
-
-import (
- "fmt"
- "log"
- "net/http"
-)
-
-type numberDumper int
-
-func (n numberDumper) ServeHTTP(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
- fmt.Fprintf(w, "Here's your number: %d\n", n)
-}
-
-func logger(h http.Handler) http.Handler {
- return http.HandlerFunc(func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
- log.Printf("%s requested %s", r.RemoteAddr, r.URL)
- h.ServeHTTP(w, r)
- })
-}
-
-type headerSetter struct {
- key, val string
- handler http.Handler
-}
-
-func (hs headerSetter) ServeHTTP(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
- w.Header().Set(hs.key, hs.val)
- hs.handler.ServeHTTP(w, r)
-}
-
-func newHeaderSetter(key, val string) func(http.Handler) http.Handler {
- return func(h http.Handler) http.Handler {
- return headerSetter{key, val, h}
- }
-}
-
-func main() {
- h := http.NewServeMux()
-
- h.Handle("/one", numberDumper(1))
- h.Handle("/two", numberDumper(2))
- h.Handle("/three", numberDumper(3))
- h.Handle("/four", numberDumper(4))
- h.Handle("/five", numberDumper(5))
-
- h.HandleFunc("/", func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
- w.WriteHeader(404)
- fmt.Fprintln(w, "That's not a supported number!")
- })
-
- hl := logger(h)
- hhs := newHeaderSetter("X-FOO", "BAR")(hl)
-
- err := http.ListenAndServe(":9999", hhs)
- log.Fatal(err)
-}
-```
-
-And here's the curl output:
-
-```
- ~ $ curl -i localhost:9999/three
- HTTP/1.1 200 OK
- X-Foo: BAR
- Date: Wed, 01 Jul 2015 00:39:48 GMT
- Content-Length: 22
- Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
-
- Here's your number: 3
-
-```
-
-`newHeaderSetter` returns a function which accepts and returns an
-`http.Handler`. Calling that returned function with an `http.Handler` then gets
-you an `http.Handler` which will set the header given to `newHeaderSetter`
-before continuing on to the given `http.Handler`.
-
-This may seem like a strange way of organizing this; for this example the
-signature for `newHeaderSetter` could very well have looked like this:
-
-```
-func newHeaderSetter(key, val string, h http.Handler) http.Handler
-```
-
-And that implementation would have worked fine. But it would have been more
-difficult to compose going forward. In the next section I'll show what I mean.
-
-## Composing middleware with alice
-
-[Alice](https://github.com/justinas/alice) is a very simple and convenient
-helper for working with middleware using the function signature we've been using
-thusfar. Alice is used to create and use chains of middleware. Chains can even
-be appended to each other, giving even further flexibility. Here's our previous
-example with a couple more headers being set, but also using alice to manage the
-added complexity.
-
-```go
-package main
-
-import (
- "fmt"
- "log"
- "net/http"
-
- "github.com/justinas/alice"
-)
-
-type numberDumper int
-
-func (n numberDumper) ServeHTTP(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
- fmt.Fprintf(w, "Here's your number: %d\n", n)
-}
-
-func logger(h http.Handler) http.Handler {
- return http.HandlerFunc(func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
- log.Printf("%s requested %s", r.RemoteAddr, r.URL)
- h.ServeHTTP(w, r)
- })
-}
-
-type headerSetter struct {
- key, val string
- handler http.Handler
-}
-
-func (hs headerSetter) ServeHTTP(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
- w.Header().Set(hs.key, hs.val)
- hs.handler.ServeHTTP(w, r)
-}
-
-func newHeaderSetter(key, val string) func(http.Handler) http.Handler {
- return func(h http.Handler) http.Handler {
- return headerSetter{key, val, h}
- }
-}
-
-func main() {
- h := http.NewServeMux()
-
- h.Handle("/one", numberDumper(1))
- h.Handle("/two", numberDumper(2))
- h.Handle("/three", numberDumper(3))
- h.Handle("/four", numberDumper(4))
-
- fiveHS := newHeaderSetter("X-FIVE", "the best number")
- h.Handle("/five", fiveHS(numberDumper(5)))
-
- h.HandleFunc("/", func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
- w.WriteHeader(404)
- fmt.Fprintln(w, "That's not a supported number!")
- })
-
- chain := alice.New(
- newHeaderSetter("X-FOO", "BAR"),
- newHeaderSetter("X-BAZ", "BUZ"),
- logger,
- ).Then(h)
-
- err := http.ListenAndServe(":9999", chain)
- log.Fatal(err)
-}
-```
-
-In this example all requests will have the headers `X-FOO` and `X-BAZ` set, but
-the `/five` endpoint will *also* have the `X-FIVE` header set.
-
-## Fin
-
-Starting with a simple idea of an interface, the `http` package allows us to
-create for ourselves an incredibly useful and flexible (yet still rather simple)
-ecosystem for building web apps with re-usable components, all without breaking
-our static checks.
diff --git a/src/_posts/2015-11-21-happy-trees.md b/src/_posts/2015-11-21-happy-trees.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 7fe8d0a..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2015-11-21-happy-trees.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,236 +0,0 @@
----
-title: Happy Trees
-description: >-
- Visualizing a forest of happy trees.
-tags: tech art
----
-
-Source code related to this post is available [here](https://github.com/mediocregopher/happy-tree).
-
-This project was inspired by [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DpzAvb3Vk4),
-which you should watch first in order to really understand what's going on.
-
-My inspiration came from his noting that happification could be done on numbers
-in bases other than 10. I immediately thought of hexadecimal, base-16, since I'm
-a programmer and that's what I think of. I also was trying to think of how one
-would graphically represent a large happification tree, when I realized that
-hexadecimal numbers are colors, and colors graphically represent things nicely!
-
-## Colors
-
-Colors to computers are represented using 3-bytes, encompassing red, green, and
-blue. Each byte is represented by two hexadecimal digits, and they are appended
-together. For example `FF0000` represents maximum red (`FF`) added to no green
-and no blue. `FF5500` represents maximum red (`FF`), some green (`55`) and no
-blue (`00`), which when added together results in kind of an orange color.
-
-## Happifying colors
-
-In base 10, happifying a number is done by splitting its digits, squaring each
-one individually, and adding the resulting numbers. The principal works the same
-for hexadecimal numbers:
-
-```
-A4F
-A*A + 4*4 + F*F
-64 + 10 + E1
-155 // 341 in decimal
-```
-
-So if all colors are 6-digit hexadecimal numbers, they can be happified easily!
-
-```
-FF5500
-F*F + F*F + 5*5 + 5*5 + 0*0 + 0*0
-E1 + E1 + 19 + 19 + 0 + 0
-0001F4
-```
-
-So `FF5500` (an orangish color) happifies to `0001F4` (a darker blue). Since
-order of digits doesn't matter, `5F50F0` also happifies to `0001F4`. From this
-fact, we can make a tree (hence the happification tree). I can do this process
-on every color from `000000` (black) to `FFFFFF` (white), so I will!
-
-## Representing the tree
-
-So I know I can represent the tree using color, but there's more to decide on
-than that. The easy way to represent a tree would be to simply draw a literal
-tree graph, with a circle for each color and lines pointing to its parent and
-children. But this is boring, and also if I want to represent *all* colors the
-resulting image would be enormous and/or unreadable.
-
-I decided on using a hollow, multi-level pie-chart. Using the example
-of `000002`, it would look something like this:
-
-![An example of a partial multi-level pie chart](/img/happy-tree/partial.png)
-
-The inner arc represents the color `000002`. The second arc represents the 15
-different colors which happify into `000002`, each of them may also have their
-own outer arc of numbers which happify to them, and so on.
-
-This representation is nice because a) It looks cool and b) it allows the
-melancoils of the hexadecimals to be placed around the happification tree
-(numbers which happify into `000001`), which is convenient. It's also somewhat
-easier to code than a circle/branch based tree diagram.
-
-An important feature I had to implement was proportional slice sizes. If I were
-to give each child of a color an equal size on that arc's edge the image would
-simply not work. Some branches of the tree are extremely deep, while others are
-very shallow. If all were given the same space, those deep branches wouldn't
-even be representable by a single pixel's width, and would simply fail to show
-up. So I implemented proportional slice sizes, where the size of every slice is
-determined to be proportional to how many total (recursively) children it has.
-You can see this in the above example, where the second level arc is largely
-comprised of one giant slice, with many smaller slices taking up the end.
-
-## First attempt
-
-My first attempt resulted in this image (click for 5000x5000 version):
-
-[![Result of first attempt](/img/happy-tree/happy-tree-atmp1-small.png)](/img/happy-tree/happy-tree-atmp1.png)
-
-The first thing you'll notice is that it looks pretty neat.
-
-The second thing you'll notice is that there's actually only one melancoil in
-the 6-digit hexadecimal number set. The innermost black circle is `000000` which
-only happifies to itself, and nothing else will happify to it (sad `000000`).
-The second circle represents `000001`, and all of its runty children. And
-finally the melancoil, comprised of:
-
-```
-00000D -> 0000A9 -> 0000B5 -> 000092 -> 000055 -> 00003 -> ...
-```
-
-The final thing you'll notice (or maybe it was the first, since it's really
-obvious) is that it's very blue. Non-blue colors are really only represented as
-leaves on their trees and don't ever really have any children of their own, so
-the blue and black sections take up vastly more space.
-
-This makes sense. The number which should generate the largest happification
-result, `FFFFFF`, only results in `000546`, which is primarily blue. So in effect
-all colors happify to some shade of blue.
-
-This might have been it, technically this is the happification tree and the
-melancoil of 6 digit hexadecimal numbers represented as colors. But it's also
-boring, and I wanted to do better.
-
-## Second attempt
-
-The root of the problem is that the definition of "happification" I used
-resulted in not diverse enough results. I wanted something which would give me
-numbers where any of the digits could be anything. Something more random.
-
-I considered using a hash instead, like md5, but that has its own problems.
-There's no gaurantee that any number would actually reach `000001`, which isn't
-required but it's a nice feature that I wanted. It also would be unlikely that
-there would be any melancoils that weren't absolutely gigantic.
-
-I ended up redefining what it meant to happify a hexadecimal number. Instead of
-adding all the digits up, I first split up the red, green, and blue digits into
-their own numbers, happified those numbers, and finally reassembled the results
-back into a single number. For example:
-
-```
-FF5500
-FF, 55, 00
-F*F + F*F, 5*5 + 5*5, 0*0 + 0*0
-1C2, 32, 00
-C23200
-```
-
-I drop that 1 on the `1C2`, because it has no place in this system. Sorry 1.
-
-Simply replacing that function resulted in this image (click for 5000x5000) version:
-
-[![Result of second attempt](/img/happy-tree/happy-tree-atmp2-small.png)](/img/happy-tree/happy-tree-atmp2.png)
-
-The first thing you notice is that it's so colorful! So that goal was achieved.
-
-The second thing you notice is that there's *significantly* more melancoils.
-Hundreds, even. Here's a couple of the melancoils (each on its own line):
-
-```
-00000D -> 0000A9 -> 0000B5 -> 000092 -> 000055 -> 000032 -> ...
-000D0D -> 00A9A9 -> 00B5B5 -> 009292 -> 005555 -> 003232 -> ...
-0D0D0D -> A9A9A9 -> B5B5B5 -> 929292 -> 555555 -> 323232 -> ...
-0D0D32 -> A9A90D -> B5B5A9 -> 9292B5 -> 555592 -> 323255 -> ...
-...
-```
-
-And so on. You'll notice the first melancoil listed is the same as the one from
-the first attempt. You'll also notice that the same numbers from the that
-melancoil are "re-used" in the rest of them as well. The second coil listed is
-the same as the first, just with the numbers repeated in the 3rd and 4th digits.
-The third coil has those numbers repeated once more in the 1st and 2nd digits.
-The final coil is the same numbers, but with the 5th and 6th digits offset one
-place in the rotation.
-
-The rest of the melancoils in this attempt work out to just be every conceivable
-iteration of the above. This is simply a property of the algorithm chosen, and
-there's not a whole lot we can do about it.
-
-## Third attempt
-
-After talking with [Mr. Marco](/members/#marcopolo) about the previous attempts
-I got an idea that would lead me towards more attempts. The main issue I was
-having in coming up with new happification algorithms was figuring out what to
-do about getting a number greater than `FFFFFF`. Dropping the leading digits
-just seemed.... lame.
-
-One solution I came up with was to simply happify again. And again, and again.
-Until I got a number less than or equal to `FFFFFF`.
-
-With this new plan, I could increase the power by which I'm raising each
-individual digit, and drop the strategy from the second attempt of splitting the
-number into three parts. In the first attempt I was doing happification to the
-power of 2, but what if I wanted to happify to the power of 6? It would look
-something like this (starting with the number `34BEEF`):
-
-```
-34BEEF
-3^6 + 4^6 + B^6 + E^6 + E^6 + E^6 + F^6
-2D9 + 1000 + 1B0829 + 72E440 + 72E440 + ADCEA1
-1AEB223
-
-1AEB223 is greater than FFFFFF, so we happify again
-
-1^6 + A^6 + E^6 + B^6 + 2^6 + 2^6 + 3^6
-1 + F4240 + 72E440 + 1B0829 + 40 + 40 + 2D9
-9D3203
-```
-
-So `34BEEF` happifies to `9D3203`, when happifying to the power of 6.
-
-As mentioned before the first attempt in this blog was the 2nd power tree,
-here's the trees for the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th powers (each image is a link to
-a larger version):
-
-3rd power:
-[![Third attempt, 3rd power](/img/happy-tree/happy-tree-atmp3-pow3-small.png)](/img/happy-tree/happy-tree-atmp3-pow3.png)
-
-4th power:
-[![Third attempt, 4th power](/img/happy-tree/happy-tree-atmp3-pow4-small.png)](/img/happy-tree/happy-tree-atmp3-pow4.png)
-
-5th power:
-[![Third attempt, 5th power](/img/happy-tree/happy-tree-atmp3-pow5-small.png)](/img/happy-tree/happy-tree-atmp3-pow5.png)
-
-6th power:
-[![Third attempt, 6th power](/img/happy-tree/happy-tree-atmp3-pow6-small.png)](/img/happy-tree/happy-tree-atmp3-pow6.png)
-
-A couple things to note:
-
-* 3-5 are still very blue. It's not till the 6th power that the distribution
- becomes random enough to become very colorful.
-
-* Some powers have more coils than others. Power of 3 has a lot, and actually a
- lot of them aren't coils, but single narcissistic numbers. Narcissistic
- numbers are those which happify to themselves. `000000` and `000001` are
- narcissistic numbers in all powers, power of 3 has quite a few more.
-
-* 4 looks super cool.
-
-Using unsigned 64-bit integers I could theoretically go up to the power of 15.
-But I hit a roadblock at power of 7, in that there's actually a melancoil which
-occurs whose members are all greater than `FFFFFF`. This means that my strategy
-of repeating happifying until I get under `FFFFFF` doesn't work for any numbers
-which lead into that coil.
diff --git a/src/_posts/2017-09-06-brian-bars.md b/src/_posts/2017-09-06-brian-bars.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 2c56272..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2017-09-06-brian-bars.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,105 +0,0 @@
----
-title: Brian Bars
-description: >-
- Cheap and easy to make, healthy, vegan, high-carb, high-protein. "The Good
- Stuff".
-updated: 2018-01-18
----
-
-It actually blows my mind it's been 4 years since I used this blog. It was
-previously a tech blog, but then I started putting all my tech-related posts on
-[the cryptic blog](https://cryptic.io). As of now this is a lifestyle/travel
-blog. The me of 4 years ago would be horrified.
-
-Now I just have to come up with a lifestyle and do some traveling.
-
-## Recipe
-
-This isn't a real recipe because I'm not going to preface it with my entire
-fucking life story. Let's talk about the food.
-
-Brian bars:
-
-* Are like Clif Bars, but with the simplicity of ingredients that Larabars have.
-* Are easy to make, only needing a food processor (I use a magic bullet) and a
- stovetop oven.
-* Keep for a long time and don't really need refrigerating (but don't mind it
- neither)
-* Are paleo, vegan, gluten-free, free-range, grass-fed, whatever...
-* Are really really filling.
-* Are named after me, deal with it.
-
-I've worked on this recipe for a bit, trying to make it workable, and will
-probably keep adjusting it (and this post) as time goes on.
-
-### Ingredients
-
-Nuts and seeds. Most of this recipe is nuts and seeds. Here's the ones I used:
-
-* 1 cup almonds
-* 1 cup peanuts
-* 1 cup walnuts
-* 1 cup coconut flakes/shavings/whatever
-* 1/2 cup flax seeds
-* 1/2 cup sesame seeds
-
-For all of those above it doesn't _really_ matter what nuts/seeds you use, it's
-all gonna get ground up anyway. So whatever's cheap works fine. Also, avoid
-salt-added ones if you can.
-
-The other ingredients are:
-
-* 1 cup raisins/currants
-* 1.5 lbs of pitted dates (no added sugar! you don't need it!)
-* 2 cups oats
-
-### Grind up the nuts
-
-Throw the nuts into the food processor and grind them into a powder. Then throw
-that powder into a bowl along with the seeds, coconuts, raisins, and oats, and
-mix em good.
-
-I don't _completely_ grind up the nuts, instead leaving some chunks in it here
-and there, but you do you.
-
-### Prepare the dates
-
-This is the harder part, and is what took me a couple tries to get right. The
-best strategy I've found is to steam the dates a bit over a stove to soften
-them. Then, about a cup at a time, you can throw them in the food processor and
-turn them into a paste. You may have to add a little water if your processor is
-having trouble.
-
-Once processed you can add the dates to the mix from before and stir it all up.
-It'll end up looking something like cookie dough. Except unlike cookie dough
-it's completely safe to eat and maybe sorta healthy.
-
-### Bake it, Finish it
-
-Put the dough stuff in a pan of some sort, flatten it out, and stick it in the
-oven at like 250 or 300 for a few hours. You're trying to cook out the water you
-added earlier when you steamed the dates, as well as whatever little moisture
-the dates had in the first place.
-
-Once thoroughly baked you can stick the pan in the fridge to cool and keep,
-and/or cut it up into individual bars. Keep in mind that the bars are super
-filling and allow for pretty small portions. Wrap em in foil or plastic wrap and
-take them to-go, or keep them around for a snack. Or both. Or whatever you want
-to do, it's your food.
-
-### Cleanup
-
-Dates are simultaneously magical and the most annoying thing to work with, so
-there's cleanup problems you may run into with them:
-
-Protip #1: When cleaning your processed date slime off of your cooking utensils
-I'd recommend just letting them soak in water for a while. Dry-ish date slime
-will stick to everything, while soaked date slime will come right off.
-
-Protip #2: Apparently if you want ants, dates are a great way to get ants. My
-apartment has never had an ant problem until 3 hours after I made a batch of
-these and didn't wipe down my counter enough. I'm still dealing with the ants.
-Apparently there's enviromentally friendly ant poisons where the ants happily
-carry the poison back into the nest and the whole nest eats it and dies. Which
-feels kinda mean in some way, but is also pretty clever and they're just ants
-anyway so fuck it.
diff --git a/src/_posts/2018-10-25-rethinking-identity.md b/src/_posts/2018-10-25-rethinking-identity.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 7fd7e70..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2018-10-25-rethinking-identity.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,293 +0,0 @@
----
-title: Rethinking Identity
-description: >-
- A more useful way of thinking about identity on the internet, and using that
- to build a service which makes our online life better.
-tags: tech
----
-
-In my view, the major social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,
-etc...) are broken. They worked well at small scales, but billions of people are
-now exposed to them, and [Murphy's Law][murphy] has come into effect. The weak
-points in the platforms have been found and exploited, to the point where
-they're barely usable for interacting with anyone you don't already know in
-person.
-
-[murphy]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy%27s_law
-
-On the other hand, social media, at its core, is a powerful tool that humans
-have developed, and it's not one to be thrown away lightly (if it can be thrown
-away at all). It's worthwhile to try and fix it. So that's what this post is
-about.
-
-A lot of moaning and groaning has already been done on how social media is toxic
-for the average person. But the average person isn't doing anything more than
-receiving and reacting to their environment. If that environment is toxic, the
-person in it becomes so as well. It's certainly possible to filter the toxicity
-out, and use a platform to your own benefit, but that takes work on the user's
-part. It would be nice to think that people will do more than follow the path of
-least resistance, but at scale that's simply not how reality is, and people
-shouldn't be expected to do that work.
-
-To identify what has become toxic about the platforms, first we need to identify
-what a non-toxic platform would look like.
-
-The ideal definition for social media is to give people a place to socialize
-with friends, family, and the rest of the world. Defining "socialize" is tricky,
-and probably an exercise only a socially awkward person who doesn't do enough
-socializing would undertake. "Expressing one's feelings, knowledge, and
-experiences to other people, and receiving theirs in turn" feels like a good
-approximation. A platform where true socializing was the only activity would be
-ideal.
-
-Here are some trends on our social media which have nothing to do with
-socializing: artificially boosted follower numbers on Instagram to obtain
-product sponsors, shills in Reddit comments boosting a product or company,
-russian trolls on Twitter spreading propaganda, trolls everywhere being dicks
-and switching IPs when they get banned, and [that basketball president whose
-wife used burner Twitter accounts to trash talk players][president].
-
-[president]: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/07/sports/bryan-colangelo-sixers-wife.html
-
-These are all examples of how anonymity can be abused on social media. I want
-to say up front that I'm _not_ against anonymity on the internet, and that I
-think we can have our cake and eat it too. But we _should_ acknowledge the
-direct and indirect problems anonymity causes. We can't trust that anyone on
-social media is being honest about who they are and what their motivation is.
-This problem extends outside of social media too, to Amazon product reviews (and
-basically any other review system), online polls and raffles, multiplayer games,
-and surely many other other cases.
-
-## Identity
-
-To fix social media, and other large swaths of the internet, we need to rethink
-identity. This process started for me a long time ago, when I watched [this TED
-talk][identity], which discusses ways in which we misunderstand identity.
-Crucially, David Birch points out that identity is not a name, it's more
-fundamental than that.
-
-[identity]: https://www.ted.com/talks/david_birch_identity_without_a_name
-
-In the context of online platforms, where a user creates an account which
-identifies them in some way, identity breaks down into 3 distinct problems
-which are often conflated:
-
-* Authentication: Is this identity owned by this person?
-* Differentiation: Is this identity unique to this person?
-* Authorization: Is this identity allowed to do X?
-
-For internet platform developers, authentication has been given the full focus.
-Blog posts, articles, guides, and services abound which deal with properly
-hashing and checking passwords, two factor authentication, proper account
-recovery procedure, etc... While authentication is not a 100% solved problem,
-it's had the most work done on it, and the problems which this post deals with
-are not affected by it.
-
-The problem which should instead be focused on is differentiation.
-
-## Differentiation
-
-I want to make very clear, once more, that I am _not_ in favor of de-anonymizing
-the web, and doing so is not what I'm proposing.
-
-Differentiation is without a doubt the most difficult identity problem to solve.
-It's not even clear that it's solvable offline. Take this situation: you are in
-a room, and you are told that one person is going to walk in, then leave, then
-another person will do the same. These two persons may or may not be the same
-person. You're allowed to do anything you like to each person (with their
-consent) in order to determine if they are the same person or not.
-
-For the vast, vast majority of cases you can simply look with your eyeballs and
-see if they are different people. But this will not work 100% of the time.
-Identical twins are an obvious example of two persons looking like one, but a
-malicious actor with a disguise might be one person posing as two. Biometrics
-like fingerprints, iris scanning, and DNA testing fail for many reasons (the
-identical twin case being one). You could attempt to give the first a unique
-marking on their skin, but who's to say they don't have a solvent, which can
-clean that marking off, waiting right outside the door?
-
-The solutions and refutations can continue on pedantically for some time, but
-the point is that there is likely not a 100% solution, and even the 90%
-solutions require significant investment. Differentiation is a hard problem,
-which most developers don't want to solve. Most are fine with surrogates like
-checking that an email or phone number is unique to the platform, but these
-aren't enough to stop a dedicated individual or organization.
-
-### Roll Your Own Differentiation
-
-If a platform wants to roll their own solution to the differentiation problem, a
-proper solution, it might look something like this:
-
-* Submit an image of your passport, or other government issued ID. This would
- have to be checked against the appropriate government agency to ensure the
- ID is legitimate.
-
-* Submit an image of your face, alongside a written note containing a code given
- by the platform. Software to detect manipulated images would need to be
- employed, as well as reverse image searching to ensure the image isn't being
- reused.
-
-* Once completed, all data needs to be hashed/fingerprinted and then destroyed,
- so sensitive data isn't sitting around on servers, but can still be checked
- against future users signing up for the platform.
-
-* A dedicated support team would be needed to handle edge-cases and mistakes.
-
-None of these is trivial, nor would I trust an up-and-coming platform which is
-being bootstrapped out of a basement to implement any of them correctly.
-Additionally, going through with this process would be a _giant_ point of
-friction for a user creating a new account; they likely would go use a different
-platform instead, which didn't have all this nonsense required.
-
-### Differentiation as a Service
-
-This is the crux of this post.
-
-Instead of each platform rolling their own differentiation, what if there was a
-service for it. Users would still have to go through the hassle described above,
-but only once forever, and on a more trustable site. Then platforms, no matter
-what stage of development they're at, could use that service to ensure that
-their community of users is free from the problems of fake accounts and trolls.
-
-This is what the service would look like:
-
-* A user would have to, at some point, have gone through the steps above to
- create an account on the differentiation-as-a-service (DaaS) platform. This
- account would have the normal authentication mechanisms that most platforms
- do (password, two-factor, etc...).
-
-* When creating an account on a new platform, the user would login to their DaaS
- account (similar to the common "login with Google/Facebook/Twitter" buttons).
-
-* The DaaS then returns an opaque token, an effectively random string which
- uniquely identifies that user, to the platform. The platform can then check in
- its own user database for any other users using that token, and know if the
- user already has an account. All of this happens without any identifying
- information being passed to the platform.
-
-Similar to how many sites outsource to Cloudflare to handle DDoS protection,
-which is better handled en masse by people familiar with the problem, the DaaS
-allows for outsourcing the problem of differentiation. Users are more likely to
-trust an established DaaS service than a random website they're signing up for.
-And signing up for a DaaS is a one-time event, so if enough platforms are using
-the DaaS it could become worthwhile for them to do so.
-
-Finally, since the DaaS also handles authentication, a platform could outsource
-that aspect of identity management to it as well. This is optional for the
-platform, but for smaller platforms which are just starting up it might be
-worthwhile to save that development time.
-
-### Traits of a Successful DaaS
-
-It's possible for me to imagine a world where use of DaaS' is common, but
-bridging the gap between that world and this one is not as obvious. Still, I
-think it's necessary if the internet is to ever evolve passed being, primarily,
-a home for trolls. There are a number of traits of an up-and-coming DaaS which
-would aid it in being accepted by the internet:
-
-* **Patience**: there is a critical mass of users and platforms using DaaS'
- where it becomes more advantageous for platforms to use the DaaS than not.
- Until then, the DaaS and platforms using it need to take deliberate but small
- steps. For example: making DaaS usage optional for platform users, and giving
- their accounts special marks to indicate they're "authentic" (like Twitter's
- blue checkmark); giving those users' activity higher weight in algorithms;
- allowing others to filter out activity of non-"authentic" users; etc... These
- are all preliminary steps which can be taken which encourage but don't require
- platform users to use a DaaS.
-
-* **User-friendly**: most likely the platforms using a DaaS are what are going
- to be paying the bills. A successful DaaS will need to remember that, no
- matter where the money comes from, if the users aren't happy they'll stop
- using the DaaS, and platforms will be forced to switch to a different one or
- stop using them altogether. User-friendliness means more than a nice
- interface; it means actually caring for the users' interests, taking their
- privacy and security seriously, and in all other aspects being on their side.
- In that same vein, competition is important, and so...
-
-* **No country/government affiliation**: If the DaaS was to be run by a
- government agency it would have no incentive to provide a good user
- experience, since the users aren't paying the bills (they might not even be in
- that country). A DaaS shouldn't be exclusive to any one government or country
- anyway. Perhaps it starts out that way, to get off the ground, but ultimately
- the internet is a global institution, and is healthiest when it's connecting
- individuals _around the world_. A successful DaaS will reach beyond borders
- and try to connect everyone.
-
-Obviously actually starting a DaaS would be a huge undertaking, and would
-require proper management and good developers and all that, but such things
-apply to most services.
-
-## Authorization
-
-The final aspect of identity management, which I haven't talked about yet, is
-authorization. This aspect deals with what a particular identity is allowed to
-do. For example, is an identity allowed to claim they have a particular name, or
-are from a particular place, or are of a particular age? Other things like
-administration and moderation privileges also fall under authorization, but they
-are generally defined and managed within a platform.
-
-A DaaS has the potential to help with authorization as well, though with a giant
-caveat. If a DaaS were to not fingerprint and destroy the user's data, like
-their name and birthday and whatnot, but instead store them, then the following
-use-case could also be implemented:
-
-* A platform wants to know if a user is above a certain age, let's say. It asks
- the DaaS for that information.
-
-* The DaaS asks the user, OAuth style, whether the user is ok with giving the
- platform that information.
-
-* If so, the platform is given that information.
-
-This is a tricky situation. It adds a lot of liablity for the user, since their
-raw data will be stored with the DaaS, ripe for hacking. It also places a lot of
-trust with the DaaS to be responsible with users' data and not go giving it out
-willy-nilly to others, and instead to only give out the bare-minimum that the
-user allows. Since the user is not the DaaS' direct customer, this might be too
-much to ask. Nevertheless, it's a use-case which is worth thinking about.
-
-## Dapps
-
-The idea of decentralized applications, or dapps, has begun to gain traction.
-While not mainstream yet, I think they have potential, and it's necessary to
-discuss how a DaaS would operate in a world where the internet is no longer
-hosted in central datacenters.
-
-Consider an Ethereum-based dapp. If a user were to register one ethereum address
-(which are really public keys) with their DaaS account, the following use-case
-could be implemented:
-
-* A charity dapp has an ethereum contract, which receives a call from an
- ethereum address asking for money. The dapp wants to ensure every person it
- sends money to hasn't received any that day.
-
-* The DaaS has a separate ethereum contract it manages, where it stores all
- addresses which have been registered to a user. There is no need to keep any
- other user information in the contract.
-
-* The charity dapp's contract calls the DaaS' contract, asking it if the address
- is one of its addresses. If so, and if the charity contract hasn't given to
- that address yet today, it can send money to that address.
-
-There would perhaps need to be some mechanism by which a user could change their
-address, which would be complex since that address might be in use by a dapp
-already, but it's likely a solvable problem.
-
-A charity dapp is a bit of a silly example; ideally with a charity dapp there'd
-also be some mechanism to ensure a person actually _needs_ the money. But
-there's other dapp ideas which would become feasible, due to the inability of a
-person to impersonate many people, if DaaS use becomes normal.
-
-## Why Did I Write This?
-
-Perhaps you've gotten this far and are asking: "Clearly you've thought about
-this a lot, why don't you make this yourself and make some phat stacks of cash
-with a startup?" The answer is that this project would need to be started and
-run by serious people, who can be dedicated and thorough and responsible. I'm
-not sure I'm one of those people; I get distracted easily. But I would like to
-see this idea tried, and so I've written this up thinking maybe someone else
-would take the reins.
-
-I'm not asking for equity or anything, if you want to try; it's a free idea for
-the taking. But if it turns out to be a bazillion dollar Good Idea™, I won't say
-no to a donation...
diff --git a/src/_posts/2018-11-12-viz-1.md b/src/_posts/2018-11-12-viz-1.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 73c4cd9..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2018-11-12-viz-1.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,55 +0,0 @@
----
-title: >-
- Visualization 1
-description: >-
- Using clojurescript and quil to generate interesting visuals
-series: viz
-git_repo: https://github.com/mediocregopher/viz.git
-git_commit: v1
-tags: tech art
----
-
-First I want to appologize if you've seen this already, I originally had this up
-on my normal website, but I've decided to instead consolidate all my work to my
-blog.
-
-This is the first of a series of visualization posts I intend to work on, each
-building from the previous one.
-
-<script src="/assets/viz/1/goog/base.js"></script>
-<script src="/assets/viz/1/cljs_deps.js"></script>
-<script>goog.require("viz.core");</script>
-<p align="center"><canvas id="viz"></canvas></p>
-
-This visualization follows a few simple rules:
-
-* Any point can only be occupied by a single node. A point may be alive (filled)
- or dead (empty).
-
-* On every tick each live point picks from 0 to N new points to spawn, where N is
- the number of empty adjacent points to it. If it picks 0, it becomes dead.
-
-* Each line indicates the parent of a point. Lines have an arbitrary lifetime of
- a few ticks, and occupy the points they connect (so new points may not spawn
- on top of a line).
-
-* When a dead point has no lines it is cleaned up, and its point is no longer
- occupied.
-
-The resulting behavior is somewhere between [Conway's Game of
-Life](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life) and white noise.
-Though each point operates independently, they tend to move together in groups.
-When two groups collide head on they tend to cancel each other out, killing most
-of both. When they meet while both heading in a common direction they tend to
-peacefully merge towards that direction.
-
-Sometimes their world becomes so cluttered there's hardly room to move.
-Sometimes a major coincidence of events leads to multiple groups canceling each
-other at once, opening up the world and allowing for an explosion of new growth.
-
-Some groups spiral about a single point, sustaining themselves and defending
-from outside groups in the same movement. This doesn't last for very long.
-
-The performance of this visualization is not very optimized, and will probably
-eat up your CPU like nothing else. Most of the slowness comes from drawing the
-lines; since there's so many individual small ones it's quite cumbersome to do.
diff --git a/src/_posts/2018-11-12-viz-2.md b/src/_posts/2018-11-12-viz-2.md
deleted file mode 100644
index de30d56..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2018-11-12-viz-2.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,50 +0,0 @@
----
-title: >-
- Visualization 2
-description: >-
- Now in glorious technicolor!
-series: viz
-git_repo: https://github.com/mediocregopher/viz.git
-git_commit: v2
-tags: tech art
----
-
-
-<script src="/assets/viz/2/goog/base.js"></script>
-<script src="/assets/viz/2/cljs_deps.js"></script>
-<script>goog.require("viz.core");</script>
-<p align="center"><canvas id="viz"></canvas></p>
-
-This visualization builds on the previous. Structurally the cartesian grid has
-been turned into an isometric one, but this is more of an environmental change
-than a behavioral one.
-
-Behavioral changes which were made:
-
-* When a live point is deciding its next spawn points, it first sorts the set of
- empty adjacent points from closest-to-the-center to farthest. It then chooses
- a number `n` between `0` to `N` (where `N` is the sorted set's size) and
- spawns new points from the first `n` points of the sorted set. `n` is chosen
- based on:
-
- * The live point's linear distance from the center.
-
- * A random multiplier.
-
-* Each point is spawned with an attached color, where the color chosen is a
- slightly different hue than its parent. The change is deterministic, so all
- child points of the same generation have the same color.
-
-The second change is purely cosmetic, but does create a mesmerizing effect. The
-first change alters the behavior dramatically. Only the points which compete for
-the center are able to reproduce, but by the same token are more likely to be
-starved out by other points doing the same.
-
-In the previous visualization the points moved around in groups aimlessly. Now
-the groups are all competing for the same thing, the center. As a result they
-congregate and are able to be viewed as a larger whole.
-
-The constant churn of the whole takes many forms, from a spiral in the center,
-to waves crashing against each other, to outright chaos, to random purges of
-nearly all points. Each form lasts for only a few seconds before giving way to
-another.
diff --git a/src/_posts/2019-08-02-program-structure-and-composability.md b/src/_posts/2019-08-02-program-structure-and-composability.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 7add404..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2019-08-02-program-structure-and-composability.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,588 +0,0 @@
----
-title: >-
- Program Structure and Composability
-description: >-
- Discussing the nature of program structure, the problems presented by
- complex structures, and a pattern that helps in solving those problems.
-tags: tech
----
-
-## Part 0: Introduction
-
-This post is focused on a concept I call “program structure,” which I will try
-to shed some light on before discussing complex program structures. I will then
-discuss why complex structures can be problematic to deal with, and will finally
-discuss a pattern for dealing with those problems.
-
-My background is as a backend engineer working on large projects that have had
-many moving parts; most had multiple programs interacting with each other, used
-many different databases in various contexts, and faced large amounts of load
-from millions of users. Most of this post will be framed from my perspective,
-and will present problems in the way I have experienced them. I believe,
-however, that the concepts and problems I discuss here are applicable to many
-other domains, and I hope those with a foot in both backend systems and a second
-domain can help to translate the ideas between the two.
-
-Also note that I will be using Go as my example language, but none of the
-concepts discussed here are specific to Go. To that end, I’ve decided to favor
-readable code over “correct” code, and so have elided things that most gophers
-hold near-and-dear, such as error checking and proper documentation, in order to
-make the code as accessible as possible to non-gophers as well. As with before,
-I trust that someone with a foot in Go and another language can help me
-translate between the two.
-
-## Part 1: Program Structure
-
-In this section I will discuss the difference between directory and program
-structure, show how global state is antithetical to compartmentalization (and
-therefore good program structure), and finally discuss a more effective way to
-think about program structure.
-
-### Directory Structure
-
-For a long time, I thought about program structure in terms of the hierarchy
-present in the filesystem. In my mind, a program’s structure looked like this:
-
-```
-// The directory structure of a project called gobdns.
-src/
- config/
- dns/
- http/
- ips/
- persist/
- repl/
- snapshot/
- main.go
-```
-
-What I grew to learn was that this conflation of “program structure” with
-“directory structure” is ultimately unhelpful. While it can’t be denied that
-every program has a directory structure (and if not, it ought to), this does not
-mean that the way the program looks in a filesystem in any way corresponds to
-how it looks in our mind’s eye.
-
-The most notable way to show this is to consider a library package. Here is the
-structure of a simple web-app which uses redis (my favorite database) as a
-backend:
-
-```
-src/
- redis/
- http/
- main.go
-```
-
-If I were to ask you, based on that directory structure, what the program does
-in the most abstract terms, you might say something like: “The program
-establishes an http server that listens for requests. It also establishes a
-connection to the redis server. The program then interacts with redis in
-different ways based on the http requests that are received on the server.”
-
-And that would be a good guess. Here’s a diagram that depicts the program
-structure, wherein the root node, `main.go`, takes in requests from `http` and
-processes them using `redis`.
-
-{% include image.html
- dir="program-structure" file="diag1.jpg" width=519
- descr="Example 1"
- %}
-
-This is certainly a viable guess for how a program with that directory
-structure operates, but consider another answer: “A component of the program
-called `server` establishes an http server that listens for requests. `server`
-also establishes a connection to a redis server. `server` then interacts with
-that redis connection in different ways based on the http requests that are
-received on the http server. Additionally, `server` tracks statistics about
-these interactions and makes them available to other components. The root
-component of the program establishes a connection to a second redis server, and
-stores those statistics in that redis server.” Here’s another diagram to depict
-_that_ program.
-
-{% include image.html
- dir="program-structure" file="diag2.jpg" width=712
- descr="Example 2"
- %}
-
-The directory structure could apply to either description; `redis` is just a
-library which allows for interaction with a redis server, but it doesn’t
-specify _which_ or _how many_ servers. However, those are extremely important
-factors that are definitely reflected in our concept of the program’s
-structure, and not in the directory structure. **What the directory structure
-reflects are the different _kinds_ of components available to use, but it does
-not reflect how a program will use those components.**
-
-
-### Global State vs Compartmentalization
-
-The directory-centric view of structure often leads to the use of global
-singletons to manage access to external resources like RPC servers and
-databases. In examples 1 and 2 the `redis` library might contain code which
-looks something like this:
-
-```go
-// A mapping of connection names to redis connections.
-var globalConns = map[string]*RedisConn{}
-
-func Get(name string) *RedisConn {
- if globalConns[name] == nil {
- globalConns[name] = makeRedisConnection(name)
- }
- return globalConns[name]
-}
-```
-
-Even though this pattern would work, it breaks with our conception of the
-program structure in more complex cases like example 2. Rather than the `redis`
-component being owned by the `server` component, which actually uses it, it
-would be practically owned by _all_ components, since all are able to use it.
-Compartmentalization has been broken, and can only be held together through
-sheer human discipline.
-
-**This is the problem with all global state. It is shareable among all
-components of a program, and so is accountable to none of them.** One must look
-at an entire codebase to understand how a globally held component is used,
-which might not even be possible for a large codebase. Therefore, the
-maintainers of these shared components rely entirely on the discipline of their
-fellow coders when making changes, usually discovering where that discipline
-broke down once the changes have been pushed live.
-
-Global state also makes it easier for disparate programs/components to share
-datastores for completely unrelated tasks. In example 2, rather than creating a
-new redis instance for the root component’s statistics storage, the coder might
-have instead said, “well, there’s already a redis instance available, I’ll just
-use that.” And so, compartmentalization would have been broken further. Perhaps
-the two instances _could_ be coalesced into the same instance for the sake of
-resource efficiency, but that decision would be better made at runtime via the
-configuration of the program, rather than being hardcoded into the code.
-
-From the perspective of team management, global state-based patterns do nothing
-except slow teams down. The person/team responsible for maintaining the central
-library in which shared components live (`redis`, in the above examples)
-becomes the bottleneck for creating new instances for new components, which
-will further lead to re-using existing instances rather than creating new ones,
-further breaking compartmentalization. Additionally the person/team responsible
-for the central library, rather than the team using it, often finds themselves
-as the maintainers of the shared resource.
-
-### Component Structure
-
-So what does proper program structure look like? In my mind the structure of a
-program is a hierarchy of components, or, in other words, a tree. The leaf
-nodes of the tree are almost _always_ IO related components, e.g., database
-connections, RPC server frameworks or clients, message queue consumers, etc.
-The non-leaf nodes will _generally_ be components that bring together the
-functionalities of their children in some useful way, though they may also have
-some IO functionality of their own.
-
-Let's look at an even more complex structure, still only using the `redis` and
-`http` component types:
-
-{% include image.html
- dir="program-structure" file="diag3.jpg" width=729
- descr="Example 3"
- %}
-
-This component structure contains the addition of the `debug` component.
-Clearly the `http` and `redis` components are reusable in different contexts,
-but for this example the `debug` endpoint is as well. It creates a separate
-http server that can be queried to perform runtime debugging of the program,
-and can be tacked onto virtually any program. The `rest-api` component is
-specific to this program and is therefore not reusable. Let’s dive into it a
-bit to see how it might be implemented:
-
-```go
-// RestAPI is very much not thread-safe, hopefully it doesn't have to handle
-// more than one request at once.
-type RestAPI struct {
- redisConn *redis.RedisConn
- httpSrv *http.Server
-
- // Statistics exported for other components to see
- RequestCount int
- FooRequestCount int
- BarRequestCount int
-}
-
-func NewRestAPI() *RestAPI {
- r := new(RestAPI)
- r.redisConn := redis.NewConn("127.0.0.1:6379")
-
- // mux will route requests to different handlers based on their URL path.
- mux := http.NewServeMux()
- mux.HandleFunc("/foo", r.fooHandler)
- mux.HandleFunc("/bar", r.barHandler)
- r.httpSrv := http.NewServer(mux)
-
- // Listen for requests and serve them in the background.
- go r.httpSrv.Listen(":8000")
-
- return r
-}
-
-func (r *RestAPI) fooHandler(rw http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
- r.redisConn.Command("INCR", "fooKey")
- r.RequestCount++
- r.FooRequestCount++
-}
-
-func (r *RestAPI) barHandler(rw http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
- r.redisConn.Command("INCR", "barKey")
- r.RequestCount++
- r.BarRequestCount++
-}
-```
-
-
-In that snippet `rest-api` coalesced `http` and `redis` into a simple REST-like
-api using pre-made library components. `main.go`, the root component, does much
-the same:
-
-```go
-func main() {
- // Create debug server and start listening in the background
- debugSrv := debug.NewServer()
-
- // Set up the RestAPI, this will automatically start listening
- restAPI := NewRestAPI()
-
- // Create another redis connection and use it to store statistics
- statsRedisConn := redis.NewConn("127.0.0.1:6380")
- for {
- time.Sleep(1 * time.Second)
- statsRedisConn.Command("SET", "numReqs", restAPI.RequestCount)
- statsRedisConn.Command("SET", "numFooReqs", restAPI.FooRequestCount)
- statsRedisConn.Command("SET", "numBarReqs", restAPI.BarRequestCount)
- }
-}
-```
-
-One thing that is clearly missing in this program is proper configuration,
-whether from command-line or environment variables, etc. As it stands, all
-configuration parameters, such as the redis addresses and http listen
-addresses, are hardcoded. Proper configuration actually ends up being somewhat
-difficult, as the ideal case would be for each component to set up its own
-configuration variables without its parent needing to be aware. For example,
-`redis` could set up `addr` and `pool-size` parameters. The problem is that there
-are two `redis` components in the program, and their parameters would therefore
-conflict with each other. An elegant solution to this problem is discussed in
-the next section.
-
-## Part 2: Components, Configuration, and Runtime
-
-The key to the configuration problem is to recognize that, even if there are
-two of the same component in a program, they can’t occupy the same place in the
-program’s structure. In the above example, there are two `http` components: one
-under `rest-api` and the other under `debug`. Because the structure is
-represented as a tree of components, the “path” of any node in the tree
-uniquely represents it in the structure. For example, the two `http` components
-in the previous example have these paths:
-
-```
-root -> rest-api -> http
-root -> debug -> http
-```
-
-If each component were to know its place in the component tree, then it would
-easily be able to ensure that its configuration and initialization didn’t
-conflict with other components of the same type. If the `http` component sets
-up a command-line parameter to know what address to listen on, the two `http`
-components in that program would set up:
-
-```
---rest-api-listen-addr
---debug-listen-addr
-```
-
-So how can we enable each component to know its path in the component structure?
-To answer this, we’ll have to take a detour through a type, called `Component`.
-
-### Component and Configuration
-
-The `Component` type is a made-up type (though you’ll be able to find an
-implementation of it at the end of this post). It has a single primary purpose,
-and that is to convey the program’s structure to new components.
-
-To see how this is done, let's look at a couple of `Component`'s methods:
-
-```go
-// Package mcmp
-
-// New returns a new Component which has no parents or children. It is therefore
-// the root component of a component hierarchy.
-func New() *Component
-
-// Child returns a new child of the called upon Component.
-func (*Component) Child(name string) *Component
-
-// Path returns the Component's path in the component hierarchy. It will return
-// an empty slice if the Component is the root component.
-func (*Component) Path() []string
-```
-
-`Child` is used to create a new `Component`, corresponding to a new child node
-in the component structure, and `Path` is used retrieve the path of any
-`Component` within that structure. For the sake of keeping the examples simple,
-let’s pretend these functions have been implemented in a package called `mcmp`.
-Here’s an example of how `Component` might be used in the `redis` component’s
-code:
-
-```go
-// Package redis
-
-func NewConn(cmp *mcmp.Component, defaultAddr string) *RedisConn {
- cmp = cmp.Child("redis")
- paramPrefix := strings.Join(cmp.Path(), "-")
-
- addrParam := flag.String(paramPrefix+"-addr", defaultAddr, "Address of redis instance to connect to")
- // finish setup
-
- return redisConn
-}
-```
-
-In our above example, the two `redis` components' parameters would be:
-
-```
-// This first parameter is for the stats redis, whose parent is the root and
-// therefore doesn't have a prefix. Perhaps stats should be broken into its own
-// component in order to fix this.
---redis-addr
---rest-api-redis-addr
-```
-
-`Component` definitely makes it easier to instantiate multiple redis components
-in our program, since it allows them to know their place in the component
-structure.
-
-Having to construct the prefix for the parameters ourselves is pretty annoying,
-so let’s introduce a new package, `mcfg`, which acts like `flag` but is aware
-of `Component`. Then `redis.NewConn` is reduced to:
-
-```go
-// Package redis
-
-func NewConn(cmp *mcmp.Component, defaultAddr string) *RedisConn {
- cmp = cmp.Child("redis")
- addrParam := mcfg.String(cmp, "addr", defaultAddr, "Address of redis instance to connect to")
- // finish setup
-
- return redisConn
-}
-```
-
-Easy-peasy.
-
-#### But What About Parse?
-
-Sharp-eyed gophers will notice that there is a key piece missing: When is
-`flag.Parse`, or its `mcfg` counterpart, called? When does `addrParam` actually
-get populated? It can’t happen inside `redis.NewConn` because there might be
-other components after `redis.NewConn` that want to set up parameters. To
-illustrate the problem, let’s look at a simple program that wants to set up two
-`redis` components:
-
-```go
-func main() {
- // Create the root Component, an empty Component.
- cmp := mcmp.New()
-
- // Create the Components for two sub-components, foo and bar.
- cmpFoo := cmp.Child("foo")
- cmpBar := cmp.Child("bar")
-
- // Now we want to try to create a redis sub-component for each component.
-
- // This will set up the parameter "--foo-redis-addr", but bar hasn't had a
- // chance to set up its corresponding parameter, so the command-line can't
- // be parsed yet.
- fooRedis := redis.NewConn(cmpFoo, "127.0.0.1:6379")
-
- // This will set up the parameter "--bar-redis-addr", but, as mentioned
- // before, redis.NewConn can't parse command-line.
- barRedis := redis.NewConn(cmpBar, "127.0.0.1:6379")
-
- // It is only after all components have been instantiated that the
- // command-line arguments can be parsed
- mcfg.Parse()
-}
-```
-
-While this solves our argument parsing problem, fooRedis and barRedis are not
-usable yet because the actual connections have not been made. This is a classic
-chicken and the egg problem. The func `redis.NewConn` needs to make a connection
-which it cannot do until _after_ `mcfg.Parse` is called, but `mcfg.Parse` cannot
-be called until after `redis.NewConn` has returned. We will solve this problem
-in the next section.
-
-### Instantiation vs Initialization
-
-Let’s break down `redis.NewConn` into two phases: instantiation and
-initialization. Instantiation refers to creating the component on the component
-structure and having it declare what it needs in order to initialize (e.g.,
-configuration parameters). During instantiation, nothing external to the
-program is performed; no IO, no reading of the command-line, no logging, etc.
-All that’s happened is that the empty template of a `redis` component has been
-created.
-
-Initialization is the phase during which the template is filled in.
-Configuration parameters are read, startup actions like the creation of database
-connections are performed, and logging is output for informational and debugging
-purposes.
-
-The key to making effective use of this dichotomy is to allow _all_ components
-to instantiate themselves before they initialize themselves. By doing this we
-can ensure, for example, that all components have had the chance to declare
-their configuration parameters before configuration parsing is done.
-
-So let’s modify `redis.NewConn` so that it follows this dichotomy. It makes
-sense to leave instantiation-related code where it is, but we need a mechanism
-by which we can declare initialization code before actually calling it. For
-this, I will introduce the idea of a “hook.”
-
-#### But First: Augment Component
-
-In order to support hooks, however, `Component` will need to be augmented with
-a few new methods. Right now, it can only carry with it information about the
-component structure, but here we will add the ability to carry arbitrary
-key/value information as well:
-
-```go
-// Package mcmp
-
-// SetValue sets the given key to the given value on the Component, overwriting
-// any previous value for that key.
-func (*Component) SetValue(key, value interface{})
-
-// Value returns the value which has been set for the given key, or nil if the
-// key was never set.
-func (*Component) Value(key interface{}) interface{}
-
-// Children returns the Component's children in the order they were created.
-func (*Component) Children() []*Component
-```
-
-The final method allows us to, starting at the root `Component`, traverse the
-component structure and interact with each `Component`’s key/value store. This
-will be useful for implementing hooks.
-
-#### Hooks
-
-A hook is simply a function that will run later. We will declare a new package,
-calling it `mrun`, and say that it has two new functions:
-
-```go
-// Package mrun
-
-// InitHook registers the given hook to the given Component.
-func InitHook(cmp *mcmp.Component, hook func())
-
-// Init runs all hooks registered using InitHook. Hooks are run in the order
-// they were registered.
-func Init(cmp *mcmp.Component)
-```
-
-With these two functions, we are able to defer the initialization phase of
-startup by using the same `Components` we were passing around for the purpose
-of denoting component structure.
-
-Now, with these few extra pieces of functionality in place, let’s reconsider the
-most recent example, and make a program that creates two redis components which
-exist independently of each other:
-
-```go
-// Package redis
-
-// NOTE that NewConn has been renamed to InstConn, to reflect that the returned
-// *RedisConn is merely instantiated, not initialized.
-
-func InstConn(cmp *mcmp.Component, defaultAddr string) *RedisConn {
- cmp = cmp.Child("redis")
-
- // we instantiate an empty RedisConn instance and parameters for it. Neither
- // has been initialized yet. They will remain empty until initialization has
- // occurred.
- redisConn := new(RedisConn)
- addrParam := mcfg.String(cmp, "addr", defaultAddr, "Address of redis instance to connect to")
-
- mrun.InitHook(cmp, func() {
- // This hook will run after parameter initialization has happened, and
- // so addrParam will be usable. Once this hook as run, redisConn will be
- // usable as well.
- *redisConn = makeRedisConnection(*addrParam)
- })
-
- // Now that cmp has had configuration parameters and intialization hooks
- // set into it, return the empty redisConn instance back to the parent.
- return redisConn
-}
-```
-
-```go
-// Package main
-
-func main() {
- // Create the root Component, an empty Component.
- cmp := mcmp.New()
-
- // Create the Components for two sub-components, foo and bar.
- cmpFoo := cmp.Child("foo")
- cmpBar := cmp.Child("bar")
-
- // Add redis components to each of the foo and bar sub-components.
- redisFoo := redis.InstConn(cmpFoo, "127.0.0.1:6379")
- redisBar := redis.InstConn(cmpBar, "127.0.0.1:6379")
-
- // Parse will descend into the Component and all of its children,
- // discovering all registered configuration parameters and filling them from
- // the command-line.
- mcfg.Parse(cmp)
-
- // Now that configuration parameters have been initialized, run the Init
- // hooks for all Components.
- mrun.Init(cmp)
-
- // At this point the redis components have been fully initialized and may be
- // used. For this example we'll copy all keys from one to the other.
- keys := redisFoo.Command("KEYS", "*")
- for i := range keys {
- val := redisFoo.Command("GET", keys[i])
- redisBar.Command("SET", keys[i], val)
- }
-}
-```
-
-## Conclusion
-
-While the examples given here are fairly simplistic, the pattern itself is quite
-powerful. Codebases naturally accumulate small, domain-specific behaviors and
-optimizations over time, especially around the IO components of the program.
-Databases are used with specific options that an organization finds useful,
-logging is performed in particular places, metrics are counted around certain
-pieces of code, etc.
-
-By programming with component structure in mind, we are able to keep these
-optimizations while also keeping the clarity and compartmentalization of the
-code intact. We can keep our code flexible and configurable, while also
-re-usable and testable. Also, the simplicity of the tools involved means they
-can be extended and retrofitted for nearly any situation or use-case.
-
-Overall, this is a powerful pattern that I’ve found myself unable to do without
-once I began using it.
-
-### Implementation
-
-As a final note, you can find an example implementation of the packages
-described in this post here:
-
-* [mcmp](https://godoc.org/github.com/mediocregopher/mediocre-go-lib/mcmp)
-* [mcfg](https://godoc.org/github.com/mediocregopher/mediocre-go-lib/mcfg)
-* [mrun](https://godoc.org/github.com/mediocregopher/mediocre-go-lib/mrun)
-
-The packages are not stable and are likely to change frequently. You’ll also
-find that they have been extended quite a bit from the simple descriptions found
-here, based on what I’ve found useful as I’ve implemented programs using
-component structures. With these two points in mind, I would encourage you to
-look and take whatever functionality you find useful for yourself, and not use
-the packages directly. The core pieces are not different from what has been
-described in this post.
diff --git a/src/_posts/2020-04-26-trading-in-the-rain.md b/src/_posts/2020-04-26-trading-in-the-rain.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 5f2dbaa..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2020-04-26-trading-in-the-rain.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,56 +0,0 @@
----
-title: >-
- Trading in the Rain
-description: >-
- All those... gains... will be lost like... tears...
-tags: tech art crypto
----
-
-<!-- MIDI.js -->
-<!-- polyfill -->
-<script src="/assets/trading-in-the-rain/MIDI.js/inc/shim/Base64.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
-<script src="/assets/trading-in-the-rain/MIDI.js/inc/shim/Base64binary.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
-<script src="/assets/trading-in-the-rain/MIDI.js/inc/shim/WebAudioAPI.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
-<!-- MIDI.js package -->
-<script src="/assets/trading-in-the-rain/MIDI.js/js/midi/audioDetect.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
-<script src="/assets/trading-in-the-rain/MIDI.js/js/midi/gm.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
-<script src="/assets/trading-in-the-rain/MIDI.js/js/midi/loader.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
-<script src="/assets/trading-in-the-rain/MIDI.js/js/midi/plugin.audiotag.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
-<script src="/assets/trading-in-the-rain/MIDI.js/js/midi/plugin.webaudio.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
-<script src="/assets/trading-in-the-rain/MIDI.js/js/midi/plugin.webmidi.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
-<!-- utils -->
-<script src="/assets/trading-in-the-rain/MIDI.js/js/util/dom_request_xhr.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
-<script src="/assets/trading-in-the-rain/MIDI.js/js/util/dom_request_script.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
-<!-- / MIDI.js -->
-
-<script src="/assets/trading-in-the-rain/Distributor.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
-<script src="/assets/trading-in-the-rain/MusicBox.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
-<script src="/assets/trading-in-the-rain/RainCanvas.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
-<script src="/assets/trading-in-the-rain/CW.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
-<script src="/assets/trading-in-the-rain/SeriesComposer.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
-<script src="/assets/trading-in-the-rain/main.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
-
-
-<div id="tradingInRainModal">
-For each pair listed below, live trade data will be pulled down from the
-<a href="https://docs.cryptowat.ch/websocket-api/">Cryptowat.ch Websocket
-API</a> and used to generate musical rain drops. The price of each trade
-determines both the musical note and position of the rain drop on the screen,
-while the volume of each trade determines how long the note is held and how big
-the rain drop is.
-
-<p id="markets">Pairs to be generated, by color:<br/><br/></p>
-
-<button id="button" onclick="run()">Click Here to Begin</button>
-<p id="progress"></p>
-
-<script type="text/javascript">
- fillMarketP();
- if (window.addEventListener) window.addEventListener("load", autorun, false);
- else if (window.attachEvent) window.attachEvent("onload", autorun);
- else window.onload = autorun;
-</script>
-</div>
-
-
-<canvas id="rainCanvas" style=""></canvas>
diff --git a/src/_posts/2020-05-30-denver-protests.md b/src/_posts/2020-05-30-denver-protests.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 710987f..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2020-05-30-denver-protests.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,161 +0,0 @@
----
-title: >-
- Denver Protests
-description: >-
- Craziness
----
-
-# Saturday, May 30th
-
-We went to the May 30th protest at Civic Center Park. We were there for a few
-hours during the day, leaving around 4pm. I would describe the character of the
-protest as being energetic, angry, but contained. A huge crowd moved in and
-around civic center, chanting and being rowdy, but clearly was being led.
-
-After a last hurrah at the pavilion it seemed that the organized event was
-"over". We stayed a while longer, and eventually headed back home. I don't feel
-that people really left the park at the same time we did; mostly everyone just
-dispersed around the park and found somewhere to keep hanging out.
-
-Tonight there has been an 8pm curfew. The police lined up on the north side of
-the park, armored and clearly ready for action. We watched all of this on the
-live news stations, gritting our teeth through the comentary of their reporters.
-As the police stood there, the clock counting down to 8, the protesters grew
-more and more irritated. They taunted the police, and formed a line of their
-own. The braver (or more dramatic) protesters walked around in the no-man's land
-between them, occasionally earning themselves some teargas.
-
-The police began pushing forward just before 8 a little, but began pushing in
-earnest just after 8, after the howling. They would advance, wait, advance, wait
-again. An armada of police cars, ambulance, and fire trucks followed the line as
-it advanced.
-
-The police did not give the protesters anywhere to go except into Capital Hill,
-southeast of Civic Center Park. We watched as a huge crowd marched past the
-front of our house, chanting their call and response: "What's his name?" "GEORGE
-FLOYD". The feeling wasn't of violence still, just anger. Indignant at a curfew
-aimed at quelling a movement, the protesters simply kept moving. The police were
-never far behind.
-
-We sat on our front stoop with our neighbors and watched the night unfold. I
-don't think a single person in our building or the buildings to the left and
-right of us hadn't gone to protest today in some capacity. We came back from our
-various outings and sat out front, watching the crowds and patrolling up and
-down the street to keep tabs on things.
-
-Around 9pm the fires started. We saw them on the news, and in person. They were
-generally dumpster fires, generally placed such that they were away from
-buildings, clearly being done more to be annoying than to accomplish anything
-specific. A very large set of fires was started a block south of us, in the
-middle of the street. The fire department was there within a few minutes to put
-those out, before moving on.
-
-From the corner of my eye, sitting back on the stoop, I noticed our neighbors
-running into their backyard. We ran after them, and they told us there was a
-dumpster fire in our alley. They were running with fire extinguishers, and we
-ran inside to grab some of our own. By the time we got to the backyard the fire
-was only smouldering, and the fire department was coming down the alley. We
-scurried back into the backyard. A few minutes later I peeked my head around the
-corner, into the alley, to see what happening. I was greeted by at least two
-police in riot gear, guarding the dumpster as the fire department worked. They
-saw me but didn't move, and I quickly retreated back to the yard.
-
-Talking to our neighbor later we found out she had seen a group of about 10
-people back there, and watched them jump the fence into another backyard in
-order to escape the alley. She thinks they, or some subset of them, started the
-fire. She looked one in the eye, she says, and didn't get the impression they
-were trying to cause damage, just to make a statement.
-
-The fires stopped not long after that, it seems. We're pretty sure the fire
-trucks were just driving up and down the main roads, looking into alleys and
-stopping all fires they could find. In all this time the police didn't do much.
-They would hold a line, but never chase anyone. Even now, as I write this around
-midnight, people are still out, meandering around in small groups, and police
-are present but not really doing anything.
-
-It's hard to get a good view of everything though. All we have is livestreams on
-youtube to go on at this point. There's a couple intrepid amateur reporters out
-there, getting into the crowds and streaming events as they happen. Right now
-we're watching people moving down Lincoln towards Civic Center Park, some of
-them trying to smash windows of buildings as they go.
-
-The violence of these protests is going to be the major story of tonight, I know
-that already. That I know of there's been 3 police injured, some broken
-windows, and quite a bit of graffiti. I do believe the the tactic of pushing
-everyone into Cap Hill had the desired effect of reducing looting (again, as far
-as I can tell so far), but at that expense of those who live here who have to
-endure latent tear gas, dumpster fires, and sirens all through the night.
-
-Even now, at midnight, from what I can see from my porch and from these live
-streams, the protesters are not violent. At worst they are guilty of a lot of
-loitering. The graffiti, the smashed windows, the injured officers, all of these
-things will be held up as examples of the anarchy and violence inherent to the
-protesters. But I don't think that's an honest picture. The vast, vast majority
-of those out right now are civily disobeying an unjust curfew, trying to keep
-the energy of the movement alive.
-
-My thoughts about these things are complicated. When turning a corner on the
-street I'm far more afraid to see the police than to see other protesters. The
-fires have been annoying, and stupid, and unhelpful, but were never threatening.
-The violence is stupid, though I don't shed many tears for a looted Chili's or
-Papa Johns. The police have actually shown more restraint than I expected in all
-of this, though funneling the protest into a residential neighborhood was an
-incredibly stupid move. Could the protesters not have just stayed in the park?
-Yes, the park would likely have been turned into an encampment, but it was
-already heading into that direction due to Covid-19. Overall, this night didn't
-need to be so hard, but Denver handled this well.
-
-But, it's only 1am, and the night has a long way to go. Things could still get
-worse. Even now I'm watching people trying to break into the supreme court
-building. Civic Center Park appears to be very populated again, and the police
-are very present there again. It's possible I may eat my words.
-
-# Monday, June 1st
-
-Yesterday was quite a bit more tame than the craziness Saturday. I woke up
-Sunday morning feeling antsy, and rode my bike around to see the damage. I had a
-long conversation with a homeless man named Gary in Civic Center Park. He was
-pissed, and had a lot to say about the "suburban kids" destroying the park he
-and many others live in, causing it to be shut down and tear gassed. The
-protesters saw it as a game, according to him, but it was life and death for the
-homeless; three of his guys got beat up in the street, and neither police nor
-protesters stopped it.
-
-Many people had shown up to the park early to help clean it up. Apart from the
-graffiti, which was also in the process of being cleaned, it was hard to tell
-anything had actually happened. Gary had some words about them as well, that
-they were only there for the gram and some pats on the back, but once they left
-his life would be back as it was. I could feel that, but I also appreciated that
-people were cognizant that damage was being done and were willing to do
-something about it.
-
-I rode around 16th street mall, down colfax, and back up 13th, looking to see if
-anything had happened. For the most part there was no damage, save the graffiti.
-A mediterranean restaurant got its windows smashed, as well as the Office Depot.
-The restaurant was unfortunate, Office Depot will be ok.
-
-The protest yesterday was much more peaceful. The cops were nowhere to be found
-when curfew hit, but did eventually show up when the protest moved down Colfax.
-They had lined the streets around their precinct building there, but for the
-most part the protesters just kept walking. This is when the "violence" started.
-The cops moved into the street, forming a line across Colfax behind the
-protesters. Police cars and vans started moving. As the protest turned back,
-presumably to head back to the capitol lawn, it ran into the riot line.
-
-Predictably, everyone scattered. The cat-and-mouse game had begun, which meant
-dumpster fires, broken windows, tear gas, and all the rest. Watching the whole
-thing it was extremely clear to us, though not the news casters, unfortunately,
-that if the police hadn't moved out into Colfax nothing would have ever
-happened. Instead, the news casters lamented that people were bringing things
-like helmets, gas masks, traffic cones, shields, etc... and so were clearly not there
-"for the right reasons".
-
-The thing that the news casters couldn't seem to grasp was that the police
-attempting to control these situations are what are catalyzing them in the first
-place. These are protests _against_ the police, they cannot take place under the
-terms the police choose. If the police were not here setting terms, but instead
-working with the peaceful protesters (the vast, vast majority) to quell the
-violence, no one would be here with helmets, gas masks, traffic cones,
-shields... But instead the protesters feel they need to protect themselves in
-order to be heard, and the police feel they have to exercise their power to
-maintain control, and so the situation degrades.
diff --git a/src/_posts/2020-07-07-viz-3.md b/src/_posts/2020-07-07-viz-3.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 7f5280d..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2020-07-07-viz-3.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,155 +0,0 @@
----
-title: >-
- Visualization 3
-description: >-
- All the pixels.
-series: viz
-tags: tech art
----
-
-<canvas id="canvas" style="padding-bottom: 2rem;"></canvas>
-
-This visualization is built from the ground up. On every frame a random set of
-pixels is chosen. Each chosen pixel calculates the average of its color and the
-color of a random neighbor. Some random color drift is added in as well. It
-replaces its own color with that calculated color.
-
-Choosing a neighbor is done using the "asteroid rule", ie a pixel at the very
-top row is considered to be the neighbor of the pixel on the bottom row of the
-same column.
-
-Without the asteroid rule the pixels would all eventually converge into a single
-uniform color, generally a light blue, due to the colors at the edge, the reds,
-being quickly averaged away. With the asteroid rule in place the canvas has no
-edges, thus no position on the canvas is favored and balance can be maintained.
-
-<script type="text/javascript">
-let rectSize = 12;
-
-function randn(n) {
- return Math.floor(Math.random() * n);
-}
-
-let canvas = document.getElementById("canvas");
-canvas.width = window.innerWidth - (window.innerWidth % rectSize);
-canvas.height = window.innerHeight- (window.innerHeight % rectSize);
-let ctx = canvas.getContext("2d");
-
-let w = canvas.width / rectSize;
-let h = canvas.height / rectSize;
-
-let matrices = new Array(2);
-matrices[0] = new Array(w);
-matrices[1] = new Array(w);
-for (let x = 0; x < w; x++) {
- matrices[0][x] = new Array(h);
- matrices[1][x] = new Array(h);
- for (let y = 0; y < h; y++) {
- let el = {
- h: 360 * (x / w),
- s: "100%",
- l: "50%",
- };
- matrices[0][x][y] = el;
- matrices[1][x][y] = el;
- }
-}
-
-// draw initial canvas, from here on out only individual rectangles will be
-// filled as they get updated.
-for (let x = 0; x < w; x++) {
- for (let y = 0; y < h; y++) {
- let el = matrices[0][x][y];
- ctx.fillStyle = `hsl(${el.h}, ${el.s}, ${el.l})`;
- ctx.fillRect(x * rectSize, y * rectSize, rectSize, rectSize);
- }
-}
-
-
-let requestAnimationFrame =
- window.requestAnimationFrame ||
- window.mozRequestAnimationFrame ||
- window.webkitRequestAnimationFrame ||
- window.msRequestAnimationFrame;
-
-let neighbors = [
- [-1, -1], [0, -1], [1, -1],
- [-1, 0], [1, 0],
- [-1, 1], [0, 1], [1, 1],
-];
-
-function randNeighborAsteroid(matrix, x, y) {
- let neighborCoord = neighbors[randn(neighbors.length)];
- let neighborX = x+neighborCoord[0];
- let neighborY = y+neighborCoord[1];
- neighborX = (neighborX + w) % w;
- neighborY = (neighborY + h) % h;
- return matrix[neighborX][neighborY];
-}
-
-function randNeighbor(matrix, x, y) {
- while (true) {
- let neighborCoord = neighbors[randn(neighbors.length)];
- let neighborX = x+neighborCoord[0];
- let neighborY = y+neighborCoord[1];
- if (neighborX < 0 || neighborX >= w || neighborY < 0 || neighborY >= h) {
- continue;
- }
- return matrix[neighborX][neighborY];
- }
-}
-
-let drift = 10;
-function genChildH(elA, elB) {
- // set the two h values, h1 <= h2
- let h1 = elA.h;
- let h2 = elB.h;
- if (h1 > h2) {
- h1 = elB.h;
- h2 = elA.h;
- }
-
- // diff must be between 0 (inclusive) and 360 (exclusive). If it's greater
- // than 180 then it's not the shortest path around, that must be the other
- // way around the circle.
- let hChild;
- let diff = h2 - h1;
- if (diff > 180) {
- diff = 360 - diff;
- hChild = h2 + (diff / 2);
- } else {
- hChild = h1 + (diff / 2);
- }
-
- hChild += (Math.random() * drift * 2) - drift;
- hChild = (hChild + 360) % 360;
- return hChild;
-}
-
-let tick = 0;
-function doTick() {
- tick++;
- let currI = tick % 2;
- let curr = matrices[currI];
- let lastI = (tick - 1) % 2;
- let last = matrices[lastI];
-
- for (let i = 0; i < (w * h / 2); i++) {
- let x = randn(w);
- let y = randn(h);
- if (curr[x][y].lastTick == tick) continue;
-
- let neighbor = randNeighborAsteroid(last, x, y);
- curr[x][y].h = genChildH(curr[x][y], neighbor);
- curr[x][y].lastTick = tick;
- ctx.fillStyle = `hsl(${curr[x][y].h}, ${curr[x][y].s}, ${curr[x][y].l})`;
- ctx.fillRect(x * rectSize, y * rectSize, rectSize, rectSize);
- }
-
- matrices[currI] = curr;
- requestAnimationFrame(doTick);
-}
-
-requestAnimationFrame(doTick);
-
-</script>
diff --git a/src/_posts/2020-11-16-component-oriented-programming.md b/src/_posts/2020-11-16-component-oriented-programming.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 64ac091..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2020-11-16-component-oriented-programming.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,353 +0,0 @@
----
-title: >-
- Component-Oriented Programming
-description: >-
- A concise description of.
-tags: tech
----
-
-[A previous post in this
-blog](/2019/08/02/program-structure-and-composability.html) focused on a
-framework developed to make designing component-based programs easier. In
-retrospect, the proposed pattern/framework was over-engineered. This post
-attempts to present the same ideas in a more distilled form, as a simple
-programming pattern and without the unnecessary framework.
-
-## Components
-
-Many languages, libraries, and patterns make use of a concept called a
-"component," but in each case the meaning of "component" might be slightly
-different. Therefore, to begin talking about components, it is necessary to first
-describe what is meant by "component" in this post.
-
-For the purposes of this post, the properties of components include the
-following.
-
-&nbsp;1... **Abstract**: A component is an interface consisting of one or more
-methods.
-
-&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;1a... A function might be considered a single-method component
-_if_ the language supports first-class functions.
-
-&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;1b... A component, being an interface, may have one or more
-implementations. Generally, there will be a primary implementation, which is
-used during a program's runtime, and secondary "mock" implementations, which are
-only used when testing other components.
-
-&nbsp;2... **Instantiatable**: An instance of a component, given some set of
-parameters, can be instantiated as a standalone entity. More than one of the
-same component can be instantiated, as needed.
-
-&nbsp;3... **Composable**: A component may be used as a parameter of another
-component's instantiation. This would make it a child component of the one being
-instantiated (the parent).
-
-&nbsp;4... **Pure**: A component may not use mutable global variables (i.e.,
-singletons) or impure global functions (e.g., system calls). It may only use
-constants and variables/components given to it during instantiation.
-
-&nbsp;5... **Ephemeral**: A component may have a specific method used to clean
-up all resources that it's holding (e.g., network connections, file handles,
-language-specific lightweight threads, etc.).
-
-&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;5a... This cleanup method should _not_ clean up any child
-components given as instantiation parameters.
-
-&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;5b... This cleanup method should not return until the
-component's cleanup is complete.
-
-&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;5c... A component should not be cleaned up until all its
-parent components are cleaned up.
-
-Components are composed together to create component-oriented programs. This is
-done by passing components as parameters to other components during
-instantiation. The `main` procedure of the program is responsible for
-instantiating and composing the components of the program.
-
-## Example
-
-It's easier to show than to tell. This section posits a simple program and then
-describes how it would be implemented in a component-oriented way. The program
-chooses a random number and exposes an HTTP interface that allows users to try
-and guess that number. The following are requirements of the program:
-
-* A guess consists of a name that identifies the user performing the guess and
- the number that is being guessed;
-
-* A score is kept for each user who has performed a guess;
-
-* Upon an incorrect guess, the user should be informed of whether they guessed
- too high or too low, and 1 point should be deducted from their score;
-
-* Upon a correct guess, the program should pick a new random number against
- which to check subsequent guesses, and 1000 points should be added to the
- user's score;
-
-* The HTTP interface should have two endpoints: one for users to submit guesses,
- and another that lists out user scores from highest to lowest;
-
-* Scores should be saved to disk so they survive program restarts.
-
-It seems clear that there will be two major areas of functionality for our
-program: score-keeping and user interaction via HTTP. Each of these can be
-encapsulated into components called `scoreboard` and `httpHandlers`,
-respectively.
-
-`scoreboard` will need to interact with a filesystem component to save/restore
-scores (because it can't use system calls directly; see property 4). It would be
-wasteful for `scoreboard` to save the scores to disk on every score update, so
-instead it will do so every 5 seconds. A time component will be required to
-support this.
-
-`httpHandlers` will be choosing the random number which is being guessed, and
-will therefore need a component that produces random numbers. `httpHandlers`
-will also be recording score changes to `scoreboard`, so it will need access to
-`scoreboard`.
-
-The example implementation will be written in go, which makes differentiating
-HTTP handler functionality from the actual HTTP server quite easy; thus, there
-will be an `httpServer` component that uses `httpHandlers`.
-
-Finally, a `logger` component will be used in various places to log useful
-information during runtime.
-
-[The example implementation can be found
-here.](/assets/component-oriented-design/v1/main.html) While most of it can be
-skimmed, it is recommended to at least read through the `main` function to see
-how components are composed together. Note that `main` is where all components
-are instantiated, and that all components' take in their child components as
-part of their instantiation.
-
-## DAG
-
-One way to look at a component-oriented program is as a directed acyclic graph
-(DAG), where each node in the graph represents a component, and each edge
-indicates that one component depends upon another component for instantiation.
-For the previous program, it's quite easy to construct such a DAG just by
-looking at `main`, as in the following:
-
-```
-net.Listener rand.Rand os.File
- ^ ^ ^
- | | |
- httpServer --> httpHandlers --> scoreboard --> time.Ticker
- | | |
- +---------------+---------------+--> log.Logger
-```
-
-Note that all the leaves of the DAG (i.e., nodes with no children) describe the
-points where the program meets the operating system via system calls. The leaves
-are, in essence, the program's interface with the outside world.
-
-While it's not necessary to actually draw out the DAG for every program one
-writes, it can be helpful to at least think about the program's structure in
-these terms.
-
-## Benefits
-
-Looking at the previous example implementation, one would be forgiven for having
-the immediate reaction of "This seems like a lot of extra work for little gain.
-Why can't I just make the system calls where I need to, and not bother with
-wrapping them in interfaces and all these other rules?"
-
-The following sections will answer that concern by showing the benefits gained
-by following a component-oriented pattern.
-
-### Testing
-
-Testing is important, that much is being assumed.
-
-A distinction to be made with testing is between unit and non-unit tests. Unit
-tests are those for which there are no requirements for the environment outside
-the test, such as the existence of global variables, running databases,
-filesystems, or network services. Unit tests do not interact with the world
-outside the testing procedure, but instead use mocks in place of the
-functionality that would be expected by that world.
-
-Unit tests are important because they are faster to run and more consistent than
-non-unit tests. Unit tests also force the programmer to consider different
-possible states of a component's dependencies during the mocking process.
-
-Unit tests are often not employed by programmers, because they are difficult to
-implement for code that does not expose any way to swap out dependencies for
-mocks of those dependencies. The primary culprit of this difficulty is the
-direct usage of singletons and impure global functions. For component-oriented
-programs, all components inherently allow for the swapping out of any
-dependencies via their instantiation parameters, so there's no extra effort
-needed to support unit tests.
-
-[Tests for the example implementation can be found
-here.](/assets/component-oriented-design/v1/main_test.html) Note that all
-dependencies of each component being tested are mocked/stubbed next to them.
-
-### Configuration
-
-Practically all programs require some level of runtime configuration. This may
-take the form of command-line arguments, environment variables, configuration
-files, etc.
-
-For a component-oriented program, all components are instantiated in the same
-place, `main`, so it's very easy to expose any arbitrary parameter to the user
-via configuration. For any component that is affected by a configurable
-parameter, that component merely needs to take an instantiation parameter for
-that configurable parameter; `main` can connect the two together. This accounts
-for the unit testing of a component with different configurations, while still
-allowing for the configuration of any arbitrary internal functionality.
-
-For more complex configuration systems, it is also possible to implement a
-`configuration` component that wraps whatever configuration-related
-functionality is needed, which other components use as a sub-component. The
-effect is the same.
-
-To demonstrate how configuration works in a component-oriented program, the
-example program's requirements will be augmented to include the following:
-
-* The point change values for both correct and incorrect guesses (currently
- hardcoded at 1000 and 1, respectively) should be configurable on the
- command-line;
-
-* The save file's path, HTTP listen address, and save interval should all be
- configurable on the command-line.
-
-[The new implementation, with newly configurable parameters, can be found
-here.](/assets/component-oriented-design/v2/main.html) Most of the program has
-remained the same, and all unit tests from before remain valid. The primary
-difference is that `scoreboard` takes in two new parameters for the point change
-values, and configuration is set up inside `main` using the `flags` package.
-
-### Setup/Runtime/Cleanup
-
-A program can be split into three stages: setup, runtime, and cleanup. Setup is
-the stage during which the internal state is assembled to make runtime possible.
-Runtime is the stage during which a program's actual function is being
-performed. Cleanup is the stage during which the runtime stops and internal
-state is disassembled.
-
-A graceful (i.e., reliably correct) setup is quite natural to accomplish for
-most. On the other hand, a graceful cleanup is, unfortunately, not a programmer's
-first concern (if it is a concern at all).
-
-When building reliable and correct programs, a graceful cleanup is as important
-as a graceful setup and runtime. A program is still running while it is being
-cleaned up, and it's possibly still acting on the outside world. Shouldn't
-it behave correctly during that time?
-
-Achieving a graceful setup and cleanup with components is quite simple.
-
-During setup, a single-threaded procedure (`main`) first constructs the leaf
-components, then the components that take those leaves as parameters, then the
-components that take _those_ as parameters, and so on, until the component DAG
-is fully constructed.
-
-At this point, the program's runtime has begun.
-
-Once the runtime is over, signified by a process signal or some other mechanism,
-it's only necessary to call each component's cleanup method (if any; see
-property 5) in the reverse of the order in which the components were
-instantiated. This order is inherently deterministic, as the components were
-instantiated by a single-threaded procedure.
-
-Inherent to this pattern is the fact that each component will certainly be
-cleaned up before any of its child components, as its child components must have
-been instantiated first, and a component will not clean up child components
-given as parameters (properties 5a and 5c). Therefore, the pattern avoids
-use-after-cleanup situations.
-
-To demonstrate a graceful cleanup in a component-oriented program, the example
-program's requirements will be augmented to include the following:
-
-* The program will terminate itself upon an interrupt signal;
-
-* During termination (cleanup), the program will save the latest set of scores
- to disk one final time.
-
-[The new implementation that accounts for these new requirements can be found
-here.](/assets/component-oriented-design/v3/main.html) For this example, go's
-`defer` feature could have been used instead, which would have been even
-cleaner, but was omitted for the sake of those using other languages.
-
-
-## Conclusion
-
-The component pattern helps make programs more reliable with only a small amount
-of extra effort incurred. In fact, most of the pattern has to do with
-establishing sensible abstractions around global functionality and remembering
-certain idioms for how those abstractions should be composed together, something
-most of us already do to some extent anyway.
-
-While beneficial in many ways, component-oriented programming is merely a tool
-that can be applied in many cases. It is certain that there are cases where it
-is not the right tool for the job, so apply it deliberately and intelligently.
-
-## Criticisms/Questions
-
-In lieu of a FAQ, I will attempt to premeditate questions and criticisms of the
-component-oriented programming pattern laid out in this post.
-
-**This seems like a lot of extra work.**
-
-Building reliable programs is a lot of work, just as building a
-reliable _anything_ is a lot of work. Many of us work in an industry that likes
-to balance reliability (sometimes referred to by the more specious "quality")
-with malleability and deliverability, which naturally leads to skepticism of any
-suggestions requiring more time spent on reliability. This is not necessarily a
-bad thing, it's just how the industry functions.
-
-All that said, a pattern need not be followed perfectly to be worthwhile, and
-the amount of extra work incurred by it can be decided based on practical
-considerations. I merely maintain that code which is (mostly) component-oriented
-is easier to maintain in the long run, even if it might be harder to get off the
-ground initially.
-
-**My language makes this difficult.**
-
-I don't know of any language which makes this pattern particularly easier than
-others, so, unfortunately, we're all in the same boat to some extent (though I
-recognize that some languages, or their ecosystems, make it more difficult than
-others). It seems to me that this pattern shouldn't be unbearably difficult for
-anyone to implement in any language either, however, as the only language
-feature required is abstract typing.
-
-It would be nice to one day see a language that explicitly supports this
-pattern by baking the component properties in as compiler-checked rules.
-
-**My `main` is too big**
-
-There's no law saying all component construction needs to happen in `main`,
-that's just the most sensible place for it. If there are large sections of your
-program that are independent of each other, then they could each have their own
-construction functions that `main` then calls.
-
-Other questions that are worth asking include: Can my program be split up
-into multiple programs? Can the responsibilities of any of my components be
-refactored to reduce the overall complexity of the component DAG? Can the
-instantiation of any components be moved within their parent's
-instantiation function?
-
-(This last suggestion may seem to be disallowed, but is fine as long as the
-parent's instantiation function remains pure.)
-
-**Won't this will result in over-abstraction?**
-
-Abstraction is a necessary tool in a programmer's toolkit, there is simply no
-way around it. The only questions are "how much?" and "where?"
-
-The use of this pattern does not affect how those questions are answered, in my
-opinion, but instead aims to more clearly delineate the relationships and
-interactions between the different abstracted types once they've been
-established using other methods. Over-abstraction is possible and avoidable
-regardless of which language, pattern, or framework is being used.
-
-**Does CoP conflict with object-oriented or functional programming?**
-
-I don't think so. OoP languages will have abstract types as part of their core
-feature-set; most difficulties are going to be with deliberately _not_ using
-other features of an OoP language, and with imported libraries in the language
-perhaps making life inconvenient by not following CoP (specifically regarding
-cleanup and the use of singletons).
-
-For functional programming, it may well be that, depending on the language, CoP
-is technically being used, as functional languages are already generally
-antagonistic toward globals and impure functions, which is most of the battle.
-If anything, the transition from functional to component-oriented programming
-will generally be an organizational task.
diff --git a/src/_posts/2021-01-01-new-year-new-resolution.md b/src/_posts/2021-01-01-new-year-new-resolution.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 8e9edc7..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2021-01-01-new-year-new-resolution.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,50 +0,0 @@
----
-title: >-
- New Year, New Resolution
-description: >-
- This blog is about to get some action.
----
-
-At this point I'm fairly well known amongst friends and family for my new year's
-resolutions, to the point that earlier this month a friend of mine asked me
-"What's it going to be this year?". In the past I've done things like no
-chocoloate, no fast food, no added sugar (see a theme?), and no social media.
-They've all been of the "I won't do this" sort, because it's a lot easier to
-stop doing something than to start doing something new. Doing something new
-inherently means _also_ not doing something else; there's only so many hours in
-the day, afterall.
-
-## This Year
-
-This year I'm going to shake things up, I'm going to do something new. My
-resolution is to have published 52 posts on this blog by Jan 1, 2022, 00:00 UTC.
-Only one post per day can count towards the 52. A post must be "substantial" to
-count towards the 52. A non-substantial post would be something like the 100
-word essay about my weekend that I wrote in first grade, which went something
-like "My weekend was really really really ('really' 96 more times) really really
-boring".
-
-Other than that, it's pretty open-ended.
-
-## Why
-
-My hope is that I'll get more efficient at writing these things. Usually I take
-a lot of time to craft a post, weeks in some cases. I really appreciate those of
-you that have taken the time to read them, but to be frank the time commitment
-just isn't worth it. With practice I can hopefully learn what exactly I have to
-say that others are interested in, and then go back to spending a lot of time
-crafting the things being said.
-
-Another part of this is going to be learning how to market myself properly,
-something I've always been reticent to do. Our world is filled with people
-shouting into the void of the internet, each with their own reasons for wanting
-to be heard. Does it need another? Probably not. But here I am. I guess what I'm
-really going to be doing is learning _why_ I want to do this; I know I want to
-have others read what I write, but is it possible that that desire isn't
-entirely selfish? Is it ok if it is?
-
-Once I'm comfortable with why I'm doing this it will, hopefully, be easier to
-figure out a marketing avenue I feel comfortable with putting a lot of energy
-towards. There must be at least _one_...
-
-So consider this #1, world. Only 51 to go.
diff --git a/src/_posts/2021-01-09-ginger.md b/src/_posts/2021-01-09-ginger.md
deleted file mode 100644
index fde8868..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2021-01-09-ginger.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,354 +0,0 @@
----
-title: >-
- Ginger
-description: >-
- Yes, it does exist.
-series: ginger
-tags: tech
----
-
-This post is about a programming language that's been bouncing around in my head
-for a _long_ time. I've tried to actually implement the language three or more
-times now, but everytime I get stuck or run out of steam. It doesn't help that
-everytime I try again the form of the language changes significantly. But all
-throughout the name of the language has always been "Ginger". It's a good name.
-
-In the last few years the form of the language has somewhat solidified in my
-head, so in lieu of actually working on it I'm going to talk about what it
-currently looks like.
-
-## Abstract Syntax Lists
-
-_In the beginning_ there was assembly. Well, really in the beginning there were
-punchcards, and probably something even more esoteric before that, but it was
-all effectively the same thing: a list of commands the computer would execute
-sequentially, with the ability to jump to odd places in the sequence depending
-on conditions at runtime. For the purpose of this post, we'll call this class of
-languages "abstract syntax list" (ASL) languages.
-
-Here's a hello world program in my favorite ASL language, brainfuck:
-
-```
-++++++++[>++++[>++>+++>+++>+<<<<-]>+>+>->>+[<]<-]>>.>---.+++++++..+++.>>.<-.<.++
-+.------.--------.>>+.>++.
-```
-
-(If you've never seen brainfuck, it's deliberately unintelligible. But it _is_
-an ASL, each character representing a single command, executed by the brainfuck
-runtime from left to right.)
-
-ASLs did the job at the time, but luckily we've mostly moved on past them.
-
-## Abstract Syntax Trees
-
-Eventually programmers upgraded to C-like languages. Rather than a sequence of
-commands, these languages were syntactically represented by an "abstract syntax
-tree" (AST). Rather than executing commands in essentially the same order they
-are written, an AST language compiler reads the syntax into a tree of syntax
-nodes. What it then does with the tree is language dependent.
-
-Here's a program which outputs all numbers from 0 to 9 to stdout, written in
-(slightly non-idiomatic) Go:
-
-```go
-i := 0
-for {
- if i == 10 {
- break
- }
- fmt.Println(i)
- i++
-}
-```
-
-When the Go compiler sees this, it's going to first parse the syntax into an
-AST. The AST might look something like this:
-
-```
-(root)
- |-(:=)
- | |-(i)
- | |-(0)
- |
- |-(for)
- |-(if)
- | |-(==)
- | | |-(i)
- | | |-(10)
- | |
- | |-(break)
- |
- |-(fmt.Println)
- | |-(i)
- |
- |-(++)
- |-(i)
-```
-
-Each of the non-leaf nodes in the tree represents an operation, and the children
-of the node represent the arguments to that operation, if any. From here the
-compiler traverses the tree depth-first in order to turn each operation it finds
-into the appropriate machine code.
-
-There's a sub-class of AST languages called the LISP ("LISt Processor")
-languages. In a LISP language the AST is represented using lists of elements,
-where the first element in each list denotes the operation and the rest of the
-elements in the list (if any) represent the arguments. Traditionally each list
-is represented using parenthesis. For example `(+ 1 1)` represents adding 1 and
-1 together.
-
-As a more complex example, here's how to print numbers 0 through 9 to stdout
-using my favorite (and, honestly, only) LISP, Clojure:
-
-```clj
-(doseq
- [n (range 10)]
- (println n))
-```
-
-Much smaller, but the idea is there. In LISPs there is no differentiation
-between the syntax, the AST, and the language's data structures; they are all
-one and the same. For this reason LISPs generally have very powerful macro
-support, wherein one uses code written in the language to transform code written
-in that same language. With macros users can extend a language's functionality
-to support nearly anything they need to, but because macro generation happens
-_before_ compilation they can still reap the benefits of compiler optimizations.
-
-### AST Pitfalls
-
-The ASL (assembly) is essentially just a thin layer of human readability on top
-of raw CPU instructions. It does nothing in the way of representing code in the
-way that humans actually think about it (relationships of types, flow of data,
-encapsulation of behavior). The AST is a step towards expressing code in human
-terms, but it isn't quite there in my opinion. Let me show why by revisiting the
-Go example above:
-
-```go
-i := 0
-for {
- if i > 9 {
- break
- }
- fmt.Println(i)
- i++
-}
-```
-
-When I understand this code I don't understand it in terms of its syntax. I
-understand it in terms of what it _does_. And what it does is this:
-
-* with a number starting at 0, start a loop.
-* if the number is greater than 9, stop the loop.
-* otherwise, print the number.
-* add one to the number.
-* go to start of loop.
-
-This behavior could be further abstracted into the original problem statement,
-"it prints numbers 0 through 9 to stdout", but that's too general, as there
-are different ways for that to be accomplished. The Clojure example first
-defines a list of numbers 0 through 9 and then iterates over that, rather than
-looping over a single number. These differences are important when understanding
-what code is doing.
-
-So what's the problem? My problem with ASTs is that the syntax I've written down
-does _not_ reflect the structure of the code or the flow of data which is in my
-head. In the AST representation if you want to follow the flow of data (a single
-number) you _have_ to understand the semantic meaning of `i` and `:=`; the AST
-structure itself does not convey how data is being moved or modified.
-Essentially, there's an extra implicit transformation that must be done to
-understand the code in human terms.
-
-## Ginger: An Abstract Syntax Graph Language
-
-In my view the next step is towards using graphs rather than trees for
-representing our code. A graph has the benefit of being able to reference
-"backwards" into itself, where a tree cannot, and so can represent the flow of
-data much more directly.
-
-I would like Ginger to be an ASG language where the language is the graph,
-similar to a LISP. But what does this look like exactly? Well, I have a good
-idea about what the graph _structure_ will be like and how it will function, but
-the syntax is something I haven't bothered much with yet. Representing graph
-structures in a text file is a problem to be tackled all on its own. For this
-post we'll use a made-up, overly verbose, and probably non-usable syntax, but
-hopefully it will convey the graph structure well enough.
-
-### Nodes, Edges, and Tuples
-
-All graphs have nodes, where each node contains a value. A single unique value
-can only have a single node in a graph. Nodes are connected by edges, where
-edges have a direction and can contain a value themselves.
-
-In the context of Ginger, a node represents a value as expected, and the value
-on an edge represents an operation to take on that value. For example:
-
-```
-5 -incr-> n
-```
-
-`5` and `n` are both nodes in the graph, with an edge going from `5` to `n` that
-has the value `incr`. When it comes time to interpret the graph we say that the
-value of `n` can be calculated by giving `5` as the input to the operation
-`incr` (increment). In other words, the value of `n` is `6`.
-
-What about operations which have more than one input value? For this Ginger
-introduces the tuple to its graph type. A tuple is like a node, except that it's
-anonymous, which allows more than one to exist within the same graph, as they do
-not share the same value. For the purposes of this blog post we'll represent
-tuples like this:
-
-```
-1 -> } -add-> t
-2 -> }
-```
-
-`t`'s value is the result of passing a tuple of two values, `1` and `2`, as
-inputs to the operation `add`. In other words, the value of `t` is `3`.
-
-For the syntax being described in this post we allow that a single contiguous
-graph can be represented as multiple related sections. This can be done because
-each node's value is unique, so when the same value is used in disparate
-sections we can merge the two sections on that value. For example, the following
-two graphs are exactly equivalent (note the parenthesis wrapping the graph which
-has been split):
-
-```
-1 -> } -add-> t -incr-> tt
-2 -> }
-```
-
-```
-(
- 1 -> } -add-> t
- 2 -> }
-
- t -incr-> tt
-)
-```
-
-(`tt` is `4` in both cases.)
-
-A tuple with only one input edge, a 1-tuple, is a no-op, semantically, but can
-be useful structurally to chain multiple operations together without defining
-new value names. In the above example the `t` value can be eliminated using a
-1-tuple.
-
-```
-1 -> } -add-> } -incr-> tt
-2 -> }
-```
-
-When an integer is used as an operation on a tuple value then the effect is to
-output the value in the tuple at that index. For example:
-
-```
-1 -> } -0-> } -incr-> t
-2 -> }
-```
-
-(`t` is `2`.)
-
-### Operations
-
-When a value sits on an edge it is used as an operation on the input of that
-edge. Some operations will no doubt be builtin, like `add`, but users should be
-able to define their own operations. This can be done using the `in` and `out`
-special values. When a graph is used as an operation it is scanned for both `in`
-and `out` values. `in` is set to the input value of the operation, and the value
-of `out` is used as the output of the operation.
-
-Here we will define the `incr` operation and then use it. Note that we set the
-`incr` value to be an entire sub-graph which represents the operation's body.
-
-```
-( in -> } -add-> out
- 1 -> } ) -> incr
-
-5 -incr-> n
-```
-
-(`n` is `6`.)
-
-The output of an operation may itself be a tuple. Here's an implementation and
-usage of `double-incr`, which increments two values at once.
-
-```
-( in -0-> } -incr-> } -> out
- }
- in -1-> } -incr-> } ) -> double-incr
-
-1 -> } -double-incr-> t -add-> tt
-2 -> }
-```
-
-(`t` is a 2-tuple with values `2`, and `3`, `tt` is `5.)
-
-### Conditionals
-
-The conditional is a bit weird, and I'm not totally settled on it yet. For now
-we'll use this. The `if` operation expects as an input a 2-tuple whose first
-value is a boolean and whose second value will be passed along. The `if`
-operation is special in that it has _two_ output edges. The first will be taken
-if the boolean is true, the second if the boolean is false. The second value in
-the input tuple, the one to be passed along, is used as the input to whichever
-branch is taken.
-
-Here is an implementation and usage of `max`, which takes two numbers and
-outputs the greater of the two. Note that the `if` operation has two output
-edges, but our syntax doesn't represent that very cleanly.
-
-```
-( in -gt-> } -if-> } -0-> out
- in -> } -> } -1-> out ) -> max
-
-1 -> } -max-> t
-2 -> }
-```
-
-(`t` is `2`.)
-
-It would be simple enough to create a `switch` macro on top of `if`, to allow
-for multiple conditionals to be tested at once.
-
-### Loops
-
-Loops are tricky, and I have two thoughts about how they might be accomplished.
-One is to literally draw an edge from the right end of the graph back to the
-left, at the point where the loop should occur, as that's conceptually what's
-happening. But representing that in a text file is difficult. For now I'll
-introduce the special `recur` value, and leave this whole section as TBD.
-
-`recur` is cousin of `in` and `out`, in that it's a special value and not an
-operation. It takes whatever value it's set to and calls the current operation
-with that as input. As an example, here is our now classic 0 through 9 printer
-(assume `println` outputs whatever it was input):
-
-```
-// incr-1 is an operation which takes a 2-tuple and returns the same 2-tuple
-// with the first element incremented.
-( in -0-> } -incr-> } -> out
- in -1-> } ) -> incr-1
-
-( in -eq-> } -if-> out
- in -> } -> } -0-> } -println-> } -incr-1-> } -> recur ) -> print-range
-
-0 -> } -print-range-> }
-10 -> }
-```
-
-## Next Steps
-
-This post is long enough, and I think gives at least a basic idea of what I'm
-going for. The syntax presented here is _extremely_ rudimentary, and is almost
-definitely not what any final version of the syntax would look like. But the
-general idea behind the structure is sound, I think.
-
-I have a lot of further ideas for Ginger I haven't presented here. Hopefully as
-time goes on and I work on the language more some of those ideas can start
-taking a more concrete shape and I can write about them.
-
-The next thing I need to do for Ginger is to implement (again) the graph type
-for it, since the last one I implemented didn't include tuples. Maybe I can
-extend it instead of re-writing it. After that it will be time to really buckle
-down and figure out a syntax. Once a syntax is established then it's time to
-start on the compiler!
diff --git a/src/_posts/2021-01-14-the-web.md b/src/_posts/2021-01-14-the-web.md
deleted file mode 100644
index cae564a..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2021-01-14-the-web.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,241 +0,0 @@
----
-title: >-
- The Web
-description: >-
- What is it good for?
-series: nebula
-tags: tech
----
-
-With the recent crisis in the US's democratic process, there's been much abuzz
-in the world about social media's undoubted role in the whole debacle. The
-extent to which the algorithms of Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, TikTok, etc, have
-played a role in the radicalization of large segments of the world's population
-is one popular topic. Another is the tactics those same companies are now
-employing to try and euthanize the monster they made so much ad money in
-creating.
-
-I don't want to talk about any of that; there is more to the web than
-social media. I want to talk about what the web could be, and to do that I want
-to first talk about what it has been.
-
-## Web 1.0
-
-In the 1950's computers were generally owned by large organizations like
-companies, universities, and governments. They were used to compute and manage
-large amounts of data, and each existed independently of the other.
-
-In the 60's protocols began to be developed which would allow them to
-communicate over large distances, and thereby share resources (both
-computational and informational).
-
-The funding of ARPANET by the US DoD led to the initial versions of the TCP/IP
-protocol in the 70's, still used today as the backbone of virtually all internet
-communication. Email also came about from ARPANET around this time.
-
-The 80s saw the growth of the internet across the world, as ARPANET gave way to
-NSFNET. It was during this time that the domain name system we use today was
-developed. At this point the internet use was still mostly for large
-non-commercial organizations; there was little commercial footprint, and little
-private access. The first commercially available ISP, which allowed access to
-the internet from private homes via dialup, wasn't launched until 1989.
-
-And so we find ourselves in the year 1989, when Tim Berners-Lee (TBL) first
-proposed the World-Wide Web (WWW, or "the web"). You can find the original
-proposal, which is surprisingly short and non-technical,
-[here](https://www.w3.org/Proposal.html).
-
-From reading TBL's proposal it's clear that what he was after was some mechanism
-for hosting information on his machine in such a way that others could find and
-view it, without it needing to be explicitly sent to them. He includes the
-following under the "Applications" header:
-
-> The application of a universal hypertext system, once in place, will cover
-> many areas such as document registration, on-line help, project documentation,
-> news schemes and so on.
-
-But out of such a humble scope grew one of the most powerful forces of the 21st
-century. By the end of 1990 TBL had written the first HTML/HTTP browser and
-server. By the end of 1994 sites like IMDB, Yahoo, and Bianca's Smut Shack were
-live and being accessed by consumers. The web grew that fast.
-
-In my view the characteristic of the web which catalyzed its adoption so quickly
-was the place-ness of it. The web is not just a protocol for transferring
-information, like email, but instead is a _place_ where that information lives.
-Any one place could be freely linked to any other place, and so complex and
-interesting relations could be formed between people and ideas. The
-contributions people make on the web can reverberate farther than they would or
-could in any other medium precisely because those contributions aren't tied to
-some one-off event or a deteriorating piece of physical infrastructure, but are
-instead given a home which is both permanent and everywhere.
-
-The other advantage of the web, at the time, was its simplicity. HTML was so
-simple it was basically human-readable. A basic HTTP server could be implemented
-as a hobby project by anyone in any language. Hosting your own website was a
-relatively straightforward task which anyone with a computer and an ISP could
-undertake.
-
-This was the environment early adopters of the web found themselves in.
-
-## Web 2.0
-
-The infamous dot-com boom took place in 2001. I don't believe this was a failure
-inherent in the principles of the web itself, but instead was a product of
-people investing in a technology they didn't fully understand. The web, as it
-was then, wasn't really designed with money-making in mind. It certainly allowed
-for it, but that wasn't the use-case being addressed.
-
-But of course, in this world we live in, if there's money to be made, it will
-certainly be made.
-
-By 2003 the phrase "Web 2.0" started popping up. I remember this. To me "Web
-2.0" meant a new aesthetic on the web, complete with bubble buttons and centered
-fix-width paragraph boxes. But what "Web 2.0" actually signified wasn't related
-to any new technology or aesthetic. It was a new strategy for how companies
-could enable use of the web by non-expert users, i.e. users who don't have the
-inclination or means to host their own website. Web 2.0 was a strategy for
-giving everyone a _place_ of their own on the web.
-
-"Web 2.0" was merely a label given to a movement which had already been in
-motion for years. I think the following Wikipedia excerpt describes this period
-best:
-
-
-> In 2004, the term ["Web 2.0"] began its rise in popularity when O'Reilly Media
-and MediaLive hosted the first Web 2.0 conference. In their opening remarks,
-John Battelle and Tim O'Reilly outlined their definition of the "Web as
-Platform", where software applications are built upon the Web as opposed to upon
-the desktop. The unique aspect of this migration, they argued, is that
-"customers are building your business for you". They argued that the
-activities of users generating content (in the form of ideas, text, videos, or
-pictures) could be "harnessed" to create value.
-
-
-In other words, Web 2.0 turned the place-ness of the web into a commodity.
-Rather than expect everyone to host, or arrange for the hosting, of their own
-corner of the web, the technologists would do it for them for "free"! This
-coincided with the increasing complexity of the underlying technology of the
-web; websites grew to be flashy, interactive, and stateful applications which
-_did_ things rather than be places which _held_ things. The idea of a hyperlink,
-upon which the success of the web had been founded, became merely an
-implementation detail.
-
-And so the walled gardens began to be built. Myspace was founded in 2003,
-Facebook opened to the public in 2006, Digg (the precursor to reddit) was
-launched in 2004, Flickr launched in 2004 (and was bought by Yahoo in 2005),
-Google bought Blogger in 2003, and Twitter launched in 2006. In effect this
-period both opened the web up to everyone and established the way we still use
-it today.
-
-It's upon these foundations that current events unfold. We have platforms whose
-only incentive is towards capturing new users and holding their attention, to
-the exclusion of other platforms, so they can be advertised to. Users are
-enticed in because they are being offered a place on the web, a place of their
-own to express themselves from, in order to find out the worth of their
-expressions to the rest of the world. But they aren't expressing to the world at
-large, they are expressing to a social media platform, a business, and so only
-the most lucrative of voices are heard.
-
-So much for not wanting to talk about social media.
-
-## Web 3.0
-
-The new hot topic in crypto and hacker circles is "Web 3.0", or the
-decentralized web (dweb). The idea is that we can have all the good of the
-current web (the accessibility, utility, permanency, etc) without all the bad
-(the centralized platforms, censorship, advertising, etc). The way forward to
-this utopian dream is by building decentralized applications (dApps).
-
-dApps are constructed in a way where all the users of an application help to
-host all the stateful content of that application. If I, as a user, post an
-image to a dApp, the idea is that other users of that same dApp would lend their
-meager computer resources to ensure my image is never forgotten, and in turn I
-would lend mine for theirs.
-
-In practice building successful dApps is enormously difficult for many reasons,
-and really I'm not sure there _are_ any successful ones (to date). While I
-support the general sentiment behind them, I sometimes wonder about the
-efficacy. What people want from the web is a place they can call their own, a
-place from which they can express themselves and share their contributions with
-others with all the speed and pervasiveness that the internet offers. A dApp is
-just another walled garden with specific capabilities; it offers only free
-hosting, not free expression.
-
-## Web 2.0b
-
-I'm not here solely to complain (just mostly).
-
-Thinking back to Web 1.0, and specifically to the turning point between 1.0 and
-2.0, I'd like to propose that maybe we made a wrong turn. The issue at hand was
-that hosting one's own site was still too much of a technical burden, and the
-direction we went was towards having businesses host them for us. Perhaps there
-was another way.
-
-What are the specific difficulties with hosting one's own site? Here are the
-ones I can think of:
-
-* Bad tooling: basically none of the tools you're required to use (web server,
- TLS, DNS, your home router) are designed for the average person.
-
-* Aggregiously complex languages: making a site which looks half decent and can
- do the things you want requires a _lot_ of knowledge about the underlying
- languages (CSS, HTML, Javascript, and whatever your server is written in).
-
-* Single point-of-failure: if your machine is off, your site is down.
-
-* Security: it's important to stay ahead of the hackers, but it takes time to
- do so.
-
-* Hostile environment: this is separate from security, and includes difficulties
- like dynamic home IPs and bad ISP policies (such as asymetric upload/download
- speeds).
-
-These are each separate avenues of attack.
-
-Bad tooling is a result of the fact that devs generally build technology for
-themselves or their fellow devs, and only build for others when they're being
-paid to do it. This is merely an attitude problem.
-
-Complex languages are really a sub-category of bad tooling. The concesus seems
-to be that the average person isn't interested or capable of working in
-HTML/CSS/JS. This may be true today, but it wasn't always. Most of my friends in
-middle and high school were well within their interest and capability to create
-the most heinous MySpace pages the world has ever seen, using nothing but CSS
-generators and scraps of shitty JS they found lying around. So what changed? The
-tools we use to build those pages did.
-
-A hostile environment is not something any individual can do anything about, but
-in the capitalist system we exist in we can at least hold in faith the idea that
-eventually us customers will get what we want. It may take a long time, but all
-monopolies break eventually, and someone will eventually sell us the internet
-access we're asking for. If all other pieces are in place I think we'll have
-enough people asking to make a difference.
-
-For single point-of-failure we have to grant that more than one person will be
-involved, since the vast majority of people aren't going to be able to keep one
-machine online consistently, let alone two or more machines. But I think we all
-know at least one person who could keep a machine online with some reliability,
-and they probably know a couple of other people who could do so as well. What
-I'm proposing is that, rather than building tools for global decentralization,
-we need tools for local decentralization, aka federation. We can make it
-possible for a group of people to have their presence managed by a subset of
-themselves. Those with the ability could help to host the online presence of
-their family, friends, churches, etc, if given the right tools.
-
-Security is the hard one, but also in many ways isn't. What most people want
-from the web is a place from which to express themselves. Expression doesn't
-take much more than a static page, usually, and there's not much attacking one
-can do against a static page. Additionally, we've already established that
-there's going to be at least a _couple_ of technically minded people involved in
-hosting this thing.
-
-So that's my idea that I'd like to build towards. First among these ideas is
-that we need tools which can help people help each other host their content, and
-on top of that foundation a new web can be built which values honest expression
-rather than the lucrative madness which our current algorithms love so much.
-
-This project was already somewhat started by
-[Cryptorado](https://github.com/Cryptorado-Community/Cryptorado-Node) while I
-was a regular attendee, but since COVID started my attendance has fallen off.
-Hopefully one day it can resume. In the meantime I'm going to be working on
-setting up these tools for myself, and see how far I can get.
diff --git a/src/_posts/2021-01-23-goodbye-github-pages.md b/src/_posts/2021-01-23-goodbye-github-pages.md
deleted file mode 100644
index e85ca81..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2021-01-23-goodbye-github-pages.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,247 +0,0 @@
----
-title: >-
- Goodbye, Github Pages
-description: >-
- This blog is no longer sponsored by Microsoft!
-tags: tech
-series: selfhost
----
-
-Slowly but surely I'm working on moving my digital life back to being
-self-hosted, and this blog was an easy low-hanging fruit to tackle. Previously
-the blog was hosted on Github Pages, which was easy enough but also in many ways
-restricting. By self-hosting I'm able to have a lot more control over the
-generation, delivery, and functionality of the blog.
-
-For reference you can find the source code for the blog at
-[{{site.repository}}]({{site.repository}}). Yes, it will one day be hosted
-elsewhere as well.
-
-## Nix
-
-Nix is something I'm slowly picking up, but the more I use it the more it grows
-on me. Rather than littering my system with ruby versions and packages I'll
-never otherwise use, nix allows me to create a sandboxed build pipeline for the
-blog with perfectly reproducible results.
-
-The first step in this process is to take the blog's existing `Gemfile.lock` and
-turn it into a `gemset.nix` file, which is essentially a translation of the
-`Gemfile.lock` into a file nix can understand. There's a tool called
-[bundix][bundix] which does this, and it can be used from a nix shell without
-having to actually install anything:
-
-```
- nix-shell -p bundix --run 'bundix'
-```
-
-The second step of using nix is to set up a nix expression in the file
-`default.nix`. This will actually build the static files. As a bonus I made my
-expression to also allow for serving the site locally with dynamic updating
-everytime I change a source file. My `default.nix` looks like this:
-
-```
-{
- # pkgs refers to all "builtin" nix pkgs and utilities. By importing from a
- # URL I'm able to always pin this default.nix to a specific version of those
- # packages.
- pkgs ? import (fetchTarball "https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/archive/cd63096d6d887d689543a0b97743d28995bc9bc3.tar.gz") {},
- system ? builtins.currentSystem,
-}:
-
- let
- # bundlerEnv looks for a Gemfile, Gemfile.lock, and gemset.nix inside
- # gemdir, and derives a package containing ruby and all desired gems.
- ruby_env = pkgs.bundlerEnv {
- name = "ruby_env";
- ruby = pkgs.ruby;
- gemdir = ./.;
- };
- in
- {
- # build will derive a package which contains the generated static
- # files of the blog. It uses the build.sh file (provided below) to
- # do this.
- build = derivation {
- name = "mediocre-blog";
-
- # The build.sh file (source provided below) is executed in order
- # to actually build the site.
- builder = "${pkgs.bash}/bin/bash";
- args = [ ./build.sh ];
-
- # ruby_env is provided as an input to build.sh so that it can
- # use jekyll, and the src directory is provided so it can access
- # the blog's source files. system is required by the derivation
- # function, and stdenv provides standard utilities to build.sh.
- inherit ruby_env system;
- src = ./src;
- stdenv = pkgs.stdenv;
- };
-
- # serve will derive an environment specifically tailored for being
- # run in a nix-shell. The resulting shell will have ruby_env
- # provided for it, and will automatically run the `jekyll serve`
- # command to serve the blog locally.
- serve = pkgs.stdenv.mkDerivation {
- name = "mediocre-blog-shell";
-
- # glibcLocales is required so to fill in LC_ALL and other locale
- # related environment vars. Without those jekyll's scss compiler
- # fails.
- #
- # TODO probably get rid of the scss compiler.
- buildInputs = [ ruby_env pkgs.glibcLocales ];
-
- shellHook = ''
- exec ${ruby_env}/bin/jekyll serve -s ./src -d ./_site -w -I -D
- '';
- };
- }
-```
-
-(Nix is a bit tricky to learn, but I highly recommend chapters 14 and 15 of [the
-nix manual][manual] for an overview of the language itself, if nothing else.)
-
-The `build.sh` used by the nix expression to actually generate the static files
-looks like this:
-
-```bash
-# stdenv was given a dependency to build.sh, and so build.sh can use it to
-# source in utilities like mkdir, which it needs.
-source $stdenv/setup
-set -e
-
-# Set up the output directory. nix provides the $out variable which will be the
-# root of the derived package's filesystem, but for simplicity later we want to
-# output the site within /var/www.
-d="$out/var/www/blog.mediocregopher.com"
-mkdir -p "$d"
-
-# Perform the jekyll build command. Like stdenv the ruby_env was given as a
-# dependency to build.sh, so it has to explicitly use it to have access to
-# jekyll. src is another explicit dependency which was given to build.sh, and
-# contains all the actual source files within the src directory of the repo.
-$ruby_env/bin/jekyll build -s "$src" -d "$d"
-```
-
-With these pieces in place I can easily regenerate the site like so:
-
-```
-nix-build -A build
-```
-
-Once run the static files will exist within a symlink called `result` in the
-project's root. Within the symlink will be a `var/www/blog.mediocregopher.com`
-tree of directories, and within that will be the generated static files, all
-without ever having to have installed ruby.
-
-The expression also allows me to serve the blog while I'm working on it. Doing
-so looks like this:
-
-```
-nix-shell -A serve
-```
-
-When run I get a normal jekyll process running in my `src` directory, serving
-the site in real-time on port 4000, once again all without ever installing ruby.
-
-As a final touch I introduced a simple `Makefile` to my repo to wrap these
-commands, because even these were too much for me to remember:
-
-```
-result:
- nix-build -A build
-
-install: result
- nix-env -i "$$(readlink result)"
-
-clean:
- rm result
- rm -rf _site
-
-serve:
- nix-shell -A serve
-
-update:
- nix-shell -p bundler --run 'bundler update; bundler lock; bundix; rm -rf .bundle vendor'
-```
-
-We'll look at that `install` target in the next section.
-
-## nginx
-
-So now I have the means to build my site quickly, reliably, and without
-cluttering up the rest of my system. Time to actually serve the files.
-
-My home server has a docker network which houses most of my services that I run,
-including nginx. nginx's primary job is to listen on ports 80 and 443, accept
-HTTP requests, and direct those requests to their appropriate service based on
-their `Host` header. nginx is also great at serving static content from disk, so
-I'll take advantage of that for the blog.
-
-The one hitch is that nginx is currently running within a docker container,
-as are all my other services. Ideally I would:
-
-* Get rid of the nginx docker container.
-* Build a nix package containing nginx, all my nginx config files, and the blog
- files themselves.
-* Run that directly.
-
-Unfortunately extracting nginx from docker is dependent on doing so for all
-other services as well, or at least on running all services on the host network,
-which I'm not prepared to do yet. So for now I've done something janky.
-
-If you look at the `Makefile` above you'll notice the `install` target. What
-that target does is to install the static blog files to my nix profile, which
-exists at `$HOME/.nix-profile`. nix allows any package to be installed to a
-profile in this way. All packages within a profile are independent and can be
-added, updated, and removed atomically. By installing the built blog package to
-my profile I make it available at
-`$HOME/.nix-profile/var/www/blog.mediocregopher.com`.
-
-So to serve those files via nginx all I need to do is add a read-only volume to
-the container...
-
-```
--v $HOME/.nix-profile/var/www/blog.mediocregopher.com:/var/www/blog.mediocregopher.com:ro \
-```
-
-...add a new virtual host to my nginx config...
-
-```
-server {
- listen 80;
- server_name blog.mediocregopher.com;
- root /var/www/blog.mediocregopher.com;
-}
-```
-
-...and finally direct the `blog` A record for `mediocregopher.com` to my home
-server's IP. Cloudflare will handle TLS on port 443 for me in this case, as well
-as hide my home IP, which is prudent.
-
-## Deploying
-
-So now it's time to publish this new post to the blog, what are the actual
-steps? It's as easy as:
-
-```
-make clean install
-```
-
-This will remove any existing `result`, regenerate the site (with the new post)
-under a new symlink, and install/update that newer package to my nix profile,
-overwriting the previous package which was there.
-
-EDIT: apparently this isn't quite true. Because `$HOME/.nix-profile` is a
-symlink docker doesn't handle the case of that symlink being updated correctly,
-so I also have to do `docker restart nginx` for changes to be reflected in
-nginx.
-
-And that's it! Nix is a cool tool that I'm still getting the hang of, but
-hopefully this post might be useful to anyone else thinking of self-hosting
-their site.
-
-[jekyll]: https://jekyllrb.com/
-[bundix]: https://github.com/nix-community/bundix
-[manual]: https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/#chap-writing-nix-expressions
diff --git a/src/_posts/2021-01-30-building-mobile-nebula.md b/src/_posts/2021-01-30-building-mobile-nebula.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 0645e70..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2021-01-30-building-mobile-nebula.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,390 +0,0 @@
----
-title: >-
- Building Mobile Nebula
-description: >-
- Getting my hands dirty with Android development.
-series: nebula
-tags: tech
----
-
-This post is going to be cheating a bit. I want to start working on adding DNS
-resolver configuration to the [mobile nebula][mobile_nebula] app (if you don't
-know nebula, [check it out][nebula], it's well worth knowing about), but I also
-need to write a blog post for this week, so I'm combining the two exercises.
-This post will essentially be my notes from my progress on today's task.
-
-(Protip: listen to [this][heilung] while following along to achieve the proper
-open-source programming aesthetic.)
-
-The current mobile nebula app works very well, but it is lacking one major
-feature: the ability to specify custom DNS resolvers. This is important because
-I want to be able to access resources on my nebula network by their hostname,
-not their IP. Android does everything in its power to make DNS configuration
-impossible, and essentially the only way to actually accomplish this is by
-specifying the DNS resolvers within the app. I go into more details about why
-Android is broken [here][dns_issue].
-
-## Setup
-
-Before I can make changes to the app I need to make sure I can correctly build
-it in the first place, so that's the major task for today. The first step to
-doing so is to install the project's dependencies. As described in the
-[mobile_nebula][mobile_nebula] README, the dependencies are:
-
-- [`flutter`](https://flutter.dev/docs/get-started/install)
-- [`gomobile`](https://godoc.org/golang.org/x/mobile/cmd/gomobile)
-- [`android-studio`](https://developer.android.com/studio)
-- [Enable NDK](https://developer.android.com/studio/projects/install-ndk)
-
-It should be noted that as of writing I haven't used any of these tools ever,
-and have only done a small amount of android programming, probably 7 or 8 years
-ago, so I'm going to have to walk the line between figuring out problems on the
-fly and not having to completely learning these entire ecosystems; there's only
-so many hours in a weekend, after all.
-
-I'm running [Archlinux][arch] so I install android-studio and flutter by
-doing:
-
-```bash
-yay -Sy android-studio flutter
-```
-
-And I install `gomobile`, according to its [documentation][gomobile] via:
-
-```bash
-go get golang.org/x/mobile/cmd/gomobile
-gomobile init
-```
-
-Now I startup android-studio and go through the setup wizard for it. I choose
-standard setup because customized setup doesn't actually offer any interesting
-options. Next android-studio spends approximately two lifetimes downloading
-dependencies while my eyesight goes blurry because I'm drinking my coffee too
-fast.
-
-It's annoying that I need to install these dependencies, especially
-android-studio, in order to build this project. A future goal of mine is to nix
-this whole thing up, and make a build pipeline where you can provide a full
-nebula configuration file and it outputs a custom APK file for that specific
-config; zero configuration required at runtime. This will be useful for
-lazy/non-technical users who want to be part of the nebula network.
-
-Once android-studio starts up I'm not quite done yet: there's still the NDK
-which must be enabled. The instructions given by the link in
-[mobile_nebula][mobile_nebula]'s README explain doing this pretty well, but it's
-important to install the specific version indicated in the mobile_nebula repo
-(`21.0.6113669` at time of writing). Only another 1GB of dependency downloading
-to go....
-
-While waiting for the NDK to download I run `flutter doctor` to make sure
-flutter is working, and it gives me some permissions errors. [This blog
-post][flutter_blog] gives some tips on setting up, and after running the
-following...
-
-```bash
-sudo groupadd flutterusers
-sudo gpasswd -a $USER flutterusers
-sudo chown -R :flutterusers /opt/flutter
-sudo chmod -R g+w /opt/flutter/
-newgrp flutterusers
-```
-
-... I'm able to run `flutter doctor`. It gives the following output:
-
-```
-[✓] Flutter (Channel stable, 1.22.6, on Linux, locale en_US.UTF-8)
-
-[!] Android toolchain - develop for Android devices (Android SDK version 30.0.3)
- ✗ Android licenses not accepted. To resolve this, run: flutter doctor --android-licenses
-[!] Android Studio
- ✗ Flutter plugin not installed; this adds Flutter specific functionality.
- ✗ Dart plugin not installed; this adds Dart specific functionality.
-[!] Connected device
- ! No devices available
-
-! Doctor found issues in 3 categories.
-```
-
-The first issue is easily solved as per the instructions given. The second is
-solved by finding the plugin manager in android-studio and installing the
-flutter plugin (which installs the dart plugin as a dependency, we call that a
-twofer).
-
-After installing the plugin the doctor command still complains about not finding
-the plugins, but the above mentioned blog post indicates to me that this is
-expected. It's comforting to know that the problems indicated by the doctor may
-or may not be real problems.
-
-The [blog post][flutter_blog] also indicates that I need `openjdk-8` installed,
-so I do:
-
-```bash
-yay -S jdk8-openjdk
-```
-
-And use the `archlinux-java` command to confirm that that is indeed the default
-version for my shell. The [mobile_nebula][mobile_nebula] helpfully expects an
-`env.sh` file to exist in the root, so if openjdk-8 wasn't already the default I
-could make it so within that file.
-
-## Build
-
-At this point I think I'm ready to try actually building an APK. Thoughts and
-prayers required. I run the following in a terminal, since for some reason the
-`Build > Flutter > Build APK` dropdown button in android-studio did nothing.
-
-```
-flutter build apk
-```
-
-It takes quite a while to run, but in the end it errors with:
-
-```
-make: 'mobileNebula.aar' is up to date.
-cp: cannot create regular file '../android/app/src/main/libs/mobileNebula.aar': No such file or directory
-
-FAILURE: Build failed with an exception.
-
-* Where:
-Build file '/tmp/src/mobile_nebula/android/app/build.gradle' line: 95
-
-* What went wrong:
-A problem occurred evaluating project ':app'.
-> Process 'command './gen-artifacts.sh'' finished with non-zero exit value 1
-
-* Try:
-Run with --stacktrace option to get the stack trace. Run with --info or --debug option to get more log output. Run with --scan to get full insights.
-
-* Get more help at https://help.gradle.org
-
-BUILD FAILED in 1s
-Running Gradle task 'bundleRelease'...
-Running Gradle task 'bundleRelease'... Done 1.7s
-Gradle task bundleRelease failed with exit code 1
-```
-
-I narrow down the problem to the `./gen-artifacts.sh` script in the repo's root,
-which takes in either `android` or `ios` as an argument. Running it directly
-as `./gen-artifacts.sh android` results in the same error:
-
-```bash
-make: 'mobileNebula.aar' is up to date.
-cp: cannot create regular file '../android/app/src/main/libs/mobileNebula.aar': No such file or directory
-```
-
-So now I gotta figure out wtf that `mobileNebula.aar` file is. The first thing I
-note is that not only is that file not there, but the `libs` directory it's
-supposed to be present in is also not there. So I suspect that there's a missing
-build step somewhere.
-
-I search for the string `mobileNebula.aar` within the project using
-[ag][silver_searcher] and find that it's built by `nebula/Makefile` as follows:
-
-```make
-mobileNebula.aar: *.go
- gomobile bind -trimpath -v --target=android
-```
-
-So that file is made by `gomobile`, good to know! Additionally the file is
-actually there in the `nebula` directory, so I suspect there's just a missing
-build step to move it into `android/app/src/main/libs`. Via some more `ag`-ing I
-find that the code which is supposed to move the `mobileNebula.aar` file is in
-the `gen-artifacts.sh` script, but that script doesn't create the `libs` folder
-as it ought to. I apply the following diff:
-
-```bash
-diff --git a/gen-artifacts.sh b/gen-artifacts.sh
-index 601ed7b..4f73b4c 100755
---- a/gen-artifacts.sh
-+++ b/gen-artifacts.sh
-@@ -16,7 +16,7 @@ if [ "$1" = "ios" ]; then
- elif [ "$1" = "android" ]; then
- # Build nebula for android
- make mobileNebula.aar
-- rm -rf ../android/app/src/main/libs/mobileNebula.aar
-+ mkdir -p ../android/app/src/main/libs
- cp mobileNebula.aar ../android/app/src/main/libs/mobileNebula.aar
-
- else
-```
-
-(The `rm -rf` isn't necessary, since a) that file is about to be overwritten by
-the subsequent `cp` whether or not it's there, and b) it's just deleting a
-single file so the `-rf` is an unnecessary risk).
-
-At this point I re-run `flutter build apk` and receive a new error. Progress!
-
-```
-A problem occurred evaluating root project 'android'.
-> A problem occurred configuring project ':app'.
- > Removing unused resources requires unused code shrinking to be turned on. See http://d.android.com/r/tools/shrink-resources.html for more information.
-```
-
-I recall that in the original [mobile_nebula][mobile_nebula] README it mentions
-to run the `flutter build` command with the `--no-shrink` option, so I try:
-
-```bash
-flutter build apk --no-shrink
-```
-
-Finally we really get somewhere. The command takes a very long time to run as it
-downloads yet more dependencies (mostly android SDK stuff from the looks of it),
-but unfortunately still errors out:
-
-```
-Execution failed for task ':app:processReleaseResources'.
-> Could not resolve all files for configuration ':app:releaseRuntimeClasspath'.
- > Failed to transform mobileNebula-.aar (:mobileNebula:) to match attributes {artifactType=android-compiled-dependencies-resources, org.gradle.status=integration}.
- > Execution failed for AarResourcesCompilerTransform: /home/mediocregopher/.gradle/caches/transforms-2/files-2.1/735fc805916d942f5311063c106e7363/jetified-mobileNebula.
- > /home/mediocregopher/.gradle/caches/transforms-2/files-2.1/735fc805916d942f5311063c106e7363/jetified-mobileNebula/AndroidManifest.xml
-```
-
-Time for more `ag`-ing. I find the file `android/app/build.gradle`, which has
-the following block:
-
-```
- implementation (name:'mobileNebula', ext:'aar') {
- exec {
- workingDir '../../'
- environment("ANDROID_NDK_HOME", android.ndkDirectory)
- environment("ANDROID_HOME", android.sdkDirectory)
- commandLine './gen-artifacts.sh', 'android'
- }
- }
-```
-
-I never set up the `ANDROID_HOME` or `ANDROID_NDK_HOME` environment variables,
-and I suppose that if I'm running the flutter command outside of android-studio
-there wouldn't be a way for flutter to know those values, so I try setting them
-within my `env.sh`:
-
-```bash
-export ANDROID_HOME=~/Android/Sdk
-export ANDROID_NDK_HOME=~/Android/Sdk/ndk/21.0.6113669
-```
-
-Re-running the build command still results in the same error. But it occurs to
-me that I probably had built the `mobileNebula.aar` without those set
-previously, so maybe it was built with the wrong NDK version or something. I
-tried deleting `nebula/mobileNebula.aar` and try building again. This time...
-new errors! Lots of them! Big ones and small ones!
-
-At this point I'm a bit fed up, and want to try a completely fresh build. I back
-up my modified `env.sh` and `gen-artifacts.sh` files, delete the `mobile_nebula`
-repo, re-clone it, reinstall those files, and try building again. This time just
-a single error:
-
-```
-Execution failed for task ':app:lintVitalRelease'.
-> Could not resolve all artifacts for configuration ':app:debugRuntimeClasspath'.
- > Failed to transform libs.jar to match attributes {artifactType=processed-jar, org.gradle.libraryelements=jar, org.gradle.usage=java-runtime}.
- > Execution failed for JetifyTransform: /tmp/src/mobile_nebula/build/app/intermediates/flutter/debug/libs.jar.
- > Failed to transform '/tmp/src/mobile_nebula/build/app/intermediates/flutter/debug/libs.jar' using Jetifier. Reason: FileNotFoundException, message: /tmp/src/mobile_nebula/build/app/intermediates/flutter/debug/libs.jar (No such file or directory). (Run with --stacktrace for more details.)
- Please file a bug at http://issuetracker.google.com/issues/new?component=460323.
-```
-
-So that's cool, apparently there's a bug with flutter and I should file a
-support ticket? Well, probably not. It seems that while
-`build/app/intermediates/flutter/debug/libs.jar` indeed doesn't exist in the
-repo, `build/app/intermediates/flutter/release/libs.jar` _does_, so this appears
-to possibly be an issue in declaring which build environment is being used.
-
-After some googling I found [this flutter issue][flutter_issue] related to the
-error. Tldr: gradle's not playing nicely with flutter. Downgrading could help,
-but apparently building with the `--debug` flag also works. I don't want to
-build a release version anyway, so this sits fine with me. I run...
-
-```bash
-flutter build apk --no-shrink --debug
-```
-
-And would you look at that, I got a result!
-
-```
-✓ Built build/app/outputs/flutter-apk/app-debug.apk.
-```
-
-## Install
-
-Building was probably the hard part, but I'm not totally out of the woods yet.
-Theoretically I could email this apk to my phone or something, but I'd like
-something with a faster turnover time; I need `adb`.
-
-I install `adb` via the `android-tools` package:
-
-```bash
-yay -S android-tools
-```
-
-Before `adb` will work, however, I need to turn on USB debugging on my phone,
-which I do by following [this article][usb_debugging]. Once connected I confirm
-that `adb` can talk to my phone by doing:
-
-```bash
-adb devices
-```
-
-And then, finally, I can install the apk:
-
-```
-adb install build/app/outputs/flutter-apk/app-debug.apk
-```
-
-NOT SO FAST! MORE ERRORS!
-
-```
-adb: failed to install build/app/outputs/flutter-apk/app-debug.apk: Failure [INSTALL_FAILED_UPDATE_INCOMPATIBLE: Package net.defined.mobile_nebula signatures do not match previously installed version; ignoring!]
-```
-
-I'm guessing this is because I already have the real nebula app installed. I
-uninstall it and try again.
-
-AND IT WORKS!!! FUCK YEAH!
-
-```
-Performing Streamed Install
-Success
-```
-
-I can open the nebula app on my phone and it works... fine. There's some
-pre-existing networks already installed, which isn't the case for the Play Store
-version as far as I can remember, so I suspect those are only there in the
-debugging build. Unfortunately the presence of these test networks causes the
-app the throw a bunch of errors because it can't contact those networks. Oh well.
-
-The presence of those test networks, in a way, is actually a good thing, as it
-means there's probably already a starting point for what I want to do: building
-a per-device nebula app with a config preloaded into it.
-
-## Further Steps
-
-Beyond continuing on towards my actual goal of adding DNS resolvers to this app,
-there's a couple of other paths I could potentially go down at this point.
-
-* As mentioned, nixify the whole thing. I'm 99% sure the android-studio GUI
- isn't actually needed at all, and I only used it for installing the CMake and
- NDK plugins because I didn't bother to look up how to do it on the CLI.
-
-* Figuring out how to do a proper release build would be great, just for my own
- education. Based on the [flutter issue][flutter_issue] it's possible that all
- that's needed is to downgrade gradle, but maybe that's not so easy.
-
-* Get an android emulator working so that I don't have to install to my phone
- everytime I want to test the app out. I'm not sure if that will also work for
- the VPN aspect of the app, but it will at least help me iterate on UI changes
- faster.
-
-But at this point I'm done for the day, I'll continue on this project some other
-time.
-
-[mobile_nebula]: https://github.com/DefinedNet/mobile_nebula
-[nebula]: https://slack.engineering/introducing-nebula-the-open-source-global-overlay-network-from-slack/
-[dns_issue]: https://github.com/DefinedNet/mobile_nebula/issues/9
-[arch]: https://archlinux.org/
-[android_wiki]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Android#Making_/opt/android-sdk_group-writeable
-[heilung]: https://youtu.be/SMJ7pxqk5d4?t=220
-[flutter_blog]: https://www.rockyourcode.com/how-to-get-flutter-and-android-working-on-arch-linux/
-[gomobile]: https://pkg.go.dev/golang.org/x/mobile/cmd/gomobile
-[silver_searcher]: https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher
-[flutter_issue]: https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/58247
-[usb_debugging]: https://www.droidviews.com/how-to-enable-developer-optionsusb-debugging-mode-on-devices-with-android-4-2-jelly-bean/
diff --git a/src/_posts/2021-02-06-old-code-new-ideas.md b/src/_posts/2021-02-06-old-code-new-ideas.md
deleted file mode 100644
index c495da0..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2021-02-06-old-code-new-ideas.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,224 +0,0 @@
----
-title: >-
- Old Code, New Ideas
-description: >-
- Looking back at my old code with bemusement and horror.
-tags: tech
----
-
-About 3 years ago I put a lot of effort into a set of golang packages called
-[mediocre-go-lib][mediocre-go-lib]. The idea was to create a framework around
-the ideas I had laid out in [this blog post][program-structure] around the
-structure and composability of programs. What I found in using the framework was
-that it was quite bulky, not fully thought out, and ultimately difficult for
-anyone but me to use. So.... a typical framework then.
-
-My ideas about program structure haven't changed a ton since then, but my ideas
-around the patterns which enable that structure have simplified dramatically
-(see [my more recent post][component-oriented] for more on that). So in that
-spirit I've decided to cut a `v2` branch of `mediocre-go-lib` and start trimming
-the fat.
-
-This is going to be an exercise both in deleting old code (very fun) and
-re-examining old code which I used to think was good but now know is bad (even
-more fun), and I've been looking forward to it for some time.
-
-[mediocre-go-lib]: https://github.com/mediocregopher/mediocre-go-lib
-[program-structure]: {% post_url 2019-08-02-program-structure-and-composability %}
-[component-oriented]: {% post_url 2020-11-16-component-oriented-programming %}
-
-## mcmp, mctx
-
-The two foundational pieces of `mediocre-go-lib` are the `mcmp` and `mctx`
-packages. `mcmp` primarily deals with its [mcmp.Component][component] type,
-which is a key/value store which can be used by other packages to store and
-retrieve component-level information. Each `mcmp.Component` exists as a node in
-a tree of `mcmp.Component`s, and these form the structure of a program.
-`mcmp.Component` is able to provide information about its place in that tree as
-well (i.e. its path, parents, children, etc...).
-
-If this sounds cumbersome and of questionable utility that's because it is. It's
-also not even correct, because a component in a program exists in a DAG, not a
-tree. Moreover, each component can keep track of whatever data it needs for
-itself using typed fields on a struct. Pretty much all other packages in
-`mediocre-go-lib` depend on `mcmp` to function, but they don't _need_ to, I just
-designed it that way.
-
-So my plan of attack is going to be to delete `mcmp` completely, and repair all
-the other packages.
-
-The other foundational piece of `mediocre-go-lib` is [mctx][mctx]. Where `mcmp`
-dealt with arbitrary key/value storage on the component level, `mctx` deals with
-it on the contextual level, where each go-routine (i.e. thread) corresponds to a
-`context.Context`. The primary function of `mctx` is this one:
-
-```go
-// Annotate takes in one or more key/value pairs (kvs' length must be even) and
-// returns a Context carrying them.
-func Annotate(ctx context.Context, kvs ...interface{}) context.Context
-```
-
-I'm inclined to keep this around for now because it will be useful for logging,
-but there's one change I'd like to make to it. In its current form the value of
-every key/value pair must already exist before being used to annotate the
-`context.Context`, but this can be cumbersome in cases where the data you'd want
-to annotate is quite hefty to generate but also not necessarily going to be
-used. I'd like to have the option to make annotating occur lazily. For this I
-add an `Annotator` interface and a `WithAnnotator` function which takes it as an
-argument, as well as some internal refactoring to make it all work right:
-
-```go
-// Annotations is a set of key/value pairs representing a set of annotations. It
-// implements the Annotator interface along with other useful post-processing
-// methods.
-type Annotations map[interface{}]interface{}
-
-// Annotator is a type which can add annotation data to an existing set of
-// annotations. The Annotate method should be expected to be called in a
-// non-thread-safe manner.
-type Annotator interface {
- Annotate(Annotations)
-}
-
-// WithAnnotator takes in an Annotator and returns a Context which will produce
-// that Annotator's annotations when the Annotations function is called. The
-// Annotator will be not be evaluated until the first call to Annotations.
-func WithAnnotator(ctx context.Context, annotator Annotator) context.Context
-```
-
-`Annotator` is designed like it is for two reasons. The more obvious design,
-where the method has no arguments and returns a map, would cause a memory
-allocation on every invocation, which could be a drag for long chains of
-contexts whose annotations are being evaluated frequently. The obvious design
-also leaves open questions about whether the returned map can be modified by
-whoever receives it. The design given here dodges these problems without any
-obvious drawbacks.
-
-The original implementation also had this unnecessary `Annotation` type:
-
-```go
-// Annotation describes the annotation of a key/value pair made on a Context via
-// the Annotate call.
-type Annotation struct {
- Key, Value interface{}
-}
-```
-
-I don't know why this was ever needed, as an `Annotation` was never passed into
-nor returned from any function. It was part of the type `AnnotationSet`, but
-that could easily be refactored into a `map[interface{}]interface{}` instead. So
-I factored `Annotation` out completely.
-
-[component]: https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/mediocregopher/mediocre-go-lib/mcmp#Component
-[mctx]: https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/mediocregopher/mediocre-go-lib/mctx
-
-## mcfg, mrun
-
-The next package to tackle is [mcfg][mcfg], which deals with configuration via
-command line arguments and environment variables. The package is set up to use
-the old `mcmp.Component` type such that each component could declare its own
-configuration parameters in the global configuration. In this way the
-configuration would have a hierarchy of its own which matches the component
-tree.
-
-Given that I now think `mcmp.Component` isn't the right course of action it
-would be the natural step to take that aspect out of `mcfg`, leaving only a
-basic command-line and environment variable parser. There are many other basic
-parsers of this sort out there, including [one][flagconfig] or [two][lever] I
-wrote myself, and frankly I don't think the world needs another. So `mcfg` is
-going away.
-
-The [mrun][mrun] package is the corresponding package to `mcfg`; where `mcfg`
-dealt with configuration of components `mrun` deals with the initialization and
-shutdown of those same components. Like `mcfg`, `mrun` relies heavily on
-`mcmp.Component`, and doesn't really have any function with that type gone. So
-`mrun` is a gonner too.
-
-[mcfg]: https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/mediocregopher/mediocre-go-lib/mcfg
-[mrun]: https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/mediocregopher/mediocre-go-lib/mrun
-[flagconfig]: https://github.com/mediocregopher/flagconfig
-[lever]: https://github.com/mediocregopher/lever
-
-## mlog
-
-The [mlog][mlog] package is primarily concerned with, as you might guess,
-logging. While there are many useful logging packages out there none of them
-integrate with `mctx`'s annotations, so it is useful to have a custom logging
-package here. `mlog` also has the nice property of not being extremely coupled
-to `mcmp.Component` like other packages; it's only necessary to delete a handful
-of global functions which aren't a direct part of the `mlog.Logger` type in
-order to free the package from that burden.
-
-With that said, the `mlog.Logger` type could still use some work. It's primary
-pattern looks like this:
-
-```go
-// Message describes a message to be logged.
-type Message struct {
- Level
- Description string
- Contexts []context.Context
-}
-
-// Info logs an InfoLevel message.
-func (l *Logger) Info(descr string, ctxs ...context.Context) {
- l.Log(mkMsg(InfoLevel, descr, ctxs...))
-}
-```
-
-The idea was that if the user has multiple `Contexts` in hand, each one possibly
-having some relevant annotations, all of those `Context`s' annotations could be
-merged together for the log entry.
-
-Looking back it seems to me that the only thing `mlog` should care about is the
-annotations, and not _where_ those annotations came from. So the new pattern
-looks like this:
-
-```go
-// Message describes a message to be logged.
-type Message struct {
- Context context.Context
- Level
- Description string
- Annotators []Annotators
-}
-
-// Info logs a LevelInfo message.
-func (l *Logger) Info(ctx context.Context, descr string, annotators ...mctx.Annotator)
-```
-
-The annotations on the given `Context` will be included, and then any further
-`Annotator`s can be added on. This will leave room for `merr` later.
-
-There's some other warts in `mlog.Logger` that should be dealt with as well,
-including some extraneous methods which were only used due to `mcmp.Component`,
-some poorly named types, a message handler which didn't properly clean itself
-up, and making `NewLogger` take in parameters with which it can be customized as
-needed (previously it only allowed for a single configuration). I've also
-extended `Message` to include a timestamp, a namespace field, and some other
-useful information.
-
-[mlog]: https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/mediocregopher/mediocre-go-lib/mlog
-
-## Future Work
-
-I've run out of time for today, but future work on this package includes:
-
-* Updating [merr][merr] with support for `mctx.Annotations`.
-* Auditing the [mnet][mnet], [mhttp][mhttp], and [mrpc][mrpc] packages to see if
- they contain anything worth keeping.
-* Probably deleting the [m][m] package entirely; I don't even really remember
- what it does.
-* Probably deleting the [mdb][mdb] package entirely; it only makes sense in the
- context of `mcmp.Component`.
-* Making a difficult decision about [mtest][mtest]; I put a lot of work into it,
- but is it really any better than [testify][testify]?
-
-[merr]: https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/mediocregopher/mediocre-go-lib/merr
-[mnet]: https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/mediocregopher/mediocre-go-lib/mnet
-[mhttp]: https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/mediocregopher/mediocre-go-lib/mhttp
-[mrpc]: https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/mediocregopher/mediocre-go-lib/mrpc
-[m]: https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/mediocregopher/mediocre-go-lib/m
-[mdb]: https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/mediocregopher/mediocre-go-lib/mdb
-[mtest]: https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/mediocregopher/mediocre-go-lib/mtest
-[testify]: https://github.com/stretchr/testify
diff --git a/src/_posts/2021-02-13-building-gomobile-using-nix.md b/src/_posts/2021-02-13-building-gomobile-using-nix.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 3326266..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2021-02-13-building-gomobile-using-nix.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,232 +0,0 @@
----
-title: >-
- Building gomobile Using Nix
-description: >-
- Harder than I thought it would be!
-series: nebula
-tags: tech
----
-
-When I last left off with the nebula project I wanted to [nix][nix]-ify the
-build process for Cryptic's [mobile_nebula][mobile_nebula] fork. While I've made
-progress on the overall build, one particular bit of it really held me up, so
-I'm writing about that part here. I'll finish the full build at a later time.
-
-## gomobile
-
-[gomobile][gomobile] is a toolkit for the go programming language to allow for
-running go code on Android and iOS devices. `mobile_nebula` uses `gomobile` to
-build a simple wrapper around the nebula client that the mobile app can then
-hook into.
-
-This means that in order to nix-ify the entire `mobile_nebula` project I first
-need to nix-ify `gomobile`, and since there isn't (at time of writing) an
-existing package for `gomobile` in the nixpkgs repo, I had to roll my own.
-
-I started with a simple `buildGoModule` nix expression:
-
-```
-pkgs.buildGoModule {
- pname = "gomobile";
- version = "unstable-2020-12-17";
- src = pkgs.fetchFromGitHub {
- owner = "golang";
- repo = "mobile";
- rev = "e6ae53a27f4fd7cfa2943f2ae47b96cba8eb01c9";
- sha256 = "03dzis3xkj0abcm4k95w2zd4l9ygn0rhkj56bzxbcpwa7idqhd62";
- };
- vendorSha256 = "1n1338vqkc1n8cy94501n7jn3qbr28q9d9zxnq2b4rxsqjfc9l94";
-}
-```
-
-The basic idea here is that `buildGoModule` will acquire a specific revision of
-the `gomobile` source code from github, then attempt to build it. However,
-`gomobile` is a special beast in that it requires a number of C/C++ libraries in
-order to be built. I discovered this upon running this expression, when I
-received this error:
-
-```
-./work.h:12:10: fatal error: GLES3/gl3.h: No such file or directory
- 12 | #include <GLES3/gl3.h> // install on Ubuntu with: sudo apt-get install libegl1-mesa-dev libgles2-mesa-dev libx11-dev
-```
-
-This stumped me for a bit, as I couldn't figure out a) the "right" place to
-source the `GLES3` header file from, and b) how to properly hook that into the
-`buildGoModule` expression. My initial attempts involved trying to include
-versions of the header file from my `androidsdk` nix package which I had already
-gotten (mostly) working, but the version which ships there appears to expect to
-be using clang. `cgo` (go's compiler which is used for C/C++ interop) only
-supports gcc, so that strategy failed.
-
-I didn't like having to import the header file from `androidsdk` anyway, as it
-meant that my `gomobile` would only work within the context of the
-`mobile_nebula` project, rather than being a standalone utility.
-
-## nix-index
-
-At this point I flailed around some more trying to figure out where to get this
-header file from. Eventually I stumbled on the [nix-index][nix-index] project,
-which implements something similar to the `locate` utility on linux: you give it
-a file pattern, and it searches your active nix channels for any packages which
-provide a file matching that pattern.
-
-Since nix is amazing it's not actually necessary to install `nix-index`, I
-simply start up a shell with the package available using `nix-shell -p
-nix-index`. On first run I needed to populate the index by running the
-`nix-index` command, which took some time, but after that finding packages which
-provide the file I need is as easy as:
-
-```
-> nix-shell -p nix-index
-[nix-shell:/tmp]$ nix-locate GLES3/gl3.h
-(zulip.out) 82,674 r /nix/store/wbfw7w2ixdp317wip77d4ji834v1k1b9-libglvnd-1.3.2-dev/include/GLES3/gl3.h
-libglvnd.dev 82,674 r /nix/store/pghxzmnmxdcarg5bj3js9csz0h85g08m-libglvnd-1.3.2-dev/include/GLES3/gl3.h
-emscripten.out 82,666 r /nix/store/x3c4y2h5rn1jawybk48r6glzs1jl029s-emscripten-2.0.1/share/emscripten/system/include/GLES3/gl3.h
-```
-
-So my mystery file is provided by a few packages, but `libglvnd.dev` stood out
-to me as it's also the pacman package which provides the same file in my real
-operating system:
-
-```
-> yay -Qo /usr/include/GLES3/gl3.h
-/usr/include/GLES3/gl3.h is owned by libglvnd 1.3.2-1
-```
-
-This gave me some confidence that this was the right track.
-
-## cgo
-
-My next fight was with `cgo` itself. Go's build process provides a few different
-entry points for C/C++ compiler/linker flags, including both environment
-variables and command-line arguments. But I wasn't using `go build` directly,
-instead I was working through nix's `buildGoModule` wrapper. This added a huge
-layer of confusion as all of nixpkgs is pretty terribly documented, so you
-really have to just divine behavior from the [source][buildGoModule-source]
-(good luck).
-
-After lots of debugging (hint: `NIX_DEBUG=1`) I determined that all which is
-actually needed is to set the `CGO_CFLAGS` variable within the `buildGoModule`
-arguments. This would translate to the `CGO_CFLAGS` environment variable being
-set during all internal commands, and whatever `go build` commands get used
-would pick up my compiler flags from that.
-
-My new nix expression looked like this:
-
-```
-pkgs.buildGoModule {
- pname = "gomobile";
- version = "unstable-2020-12-17";
- src = pkgs.fetchFromGitHub {
- owner = "golang";
- repo = "mobile";
- rev = "e6ae53a27f4fd7cfa2943f2ae47b96cba8eb01c9";
- sha256 = "03dzis3xkj0abcm4k95w2zd4l9ygn0rhkj56bzxbcpwa7idqhd62";
- };
- vendorSha256 = "1n1338vqkc1n8cy94501n7jn3qbr28q9d9zxnq2b4rxsqjfc9l94";
-
- CGO_CFLAGS = [
- "-I ${pkgs.libglvnd.dev}/include"
- ];
-}
-```
-
-Running this produced a new error. Progress! The new error was:
-
-```
-/nix/store/p792j5f44l3f0xi7ai5jllwnxqwnka88-binutils-2.31.1/bin/ld: cannot find -lGLESv2
-collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
-```
-
-So pretty similar to the previous issue, but this time the linker wasn't finding
-a library file rather than the compiler not finding a header file. Once again I
-used `nix-index`'s `nix-locate` command to find that this library file is
-provided by the `libglvnd` package (as opposed to `libglvnd.dev`, which provided
-the header file).
-
-Adding `libglvnd` to the `CGO_CFLAGS` did not work, as it turns out that flags
-for the linker `cgo` uses get passed in via `CGO_LDFLAGS` (makes sense). After
-adding this new variable I got yet another error; this time `X11/Xlib.h` was not
-able to be found. I repeated the process of `nix-locate`/add to `CGO_*FLAGS` a
-few more times until all dependencies were accounted for. The new nix expression
-looked like this:
-
-```
-pkgs.buildGoModule {
- pname = "gomobile";
- version = "unstable-2020-12-17";
- src = pkgs.fetchFromGitHub {
- owner = "golang";
- repo = "mobile";
- rev = "e6ae53a27f4fd7cfa2943f2ae47b96cba8eb01c9";
- sha256 = "03dzis3xkj0abcm4k95w2zd4l9ygn0rhkj56bzxbcpwa7idqhd62";
- };
- vendorSha256 = "1n1338vqkc1n8cy94501n7jn3qbr28q9d9zxnq2b4rxsqjfc9l94";
-
- CGO_CFLAGS = [
- "-I ${pkgs.libglvnd.dev}/include"
- "-I ${pkgs.xlibs.libX11.dev}/include"
- "-I ${pkgs.xlibs.xorgproto}/include"
- "-I ${pkgs.openal}/include"
- ];
-
- CGO_LDFLAGS = [
- "-L ${pkgs.libglvnd}/lib"
- "-L ${pkgs.xlibs.libX11}/lib"
- "-L ${pkgs.openal}/lib"
- ];
-}
-```
-
-## Tests
-
-The `CGO_*FLAGS` variables took care of all compiler/linker errors, but there
-was one issue left: `buildGoModule` apparently runs the project's tests after
-the build phase. `gomobile`'s tests were actually mostly passing, but some
-failed due to trying to copy files around, which nix was having none of. After
-some more [buildGoModule source][buildGoModule-source] divination I found that
-if I passed an empty `checkPhase` argument it would skip the check phase, and
-therefore skip running these tests.
-
-## Fin!
-
-The final nix expression looks like so:
-
-```
-pkgs.buildGoModule {
- pname = "gomobile";
- version = "unstable-2020-12-17";
- src = pkgs.fetchFromGitHub {
- owner = "golang";
- repo = "mobile";
- rev = "e6ae53a27f4fd7cfa2943f2ae47b96cba8eb01c9";
- sha256 = "03dzis3xkj0abcm4k95w2zd4l9ygn0rhkj56bzxbcpwa7idqhd62";
- };
- vendorSha256 = "1n1338vqkc1n8cy94501n7jn3qbr28q9d9zxnq2b4rxsqjfc9l94";
-
- CGO_CFLAGS = [
- "-I ${pkgs.libglvnd.dev}/include"
- "-I ${pkgs.xlibs.libX11.dev}/include"
- "-I ${pkgs.xlibs.xorgproto}/include"
- "-I ${pkgs.openal}/include"
- ];
-
- CGO_LDFLAGS = [
- "-L ${pkgs.libglvnd}/lib"
- "-L ${pkgs.xlibs.libX11}/lib"
- "-L ${pkgs.openal}/lib"
- ];
-
- checkPhase = "";
-}
-```
-
-Once I complete the nix-ification of `mobile_nebula` I'll submit a PR to the
-nixpkgs upstream with this, so that others can have `gomobile` available as
-well!
-
-[nix]: https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/
-[mobile_nebula]: https://github.com/cryptic-io/mobile_nebula
-[gomobile]: https://github.com/golang/mobile
-[nix-index]: https://github.com/bennofs/nix-index
-[buildGoModule-source]: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/26117ed4b78020252e49fe75f562378063471f71/pkgs/development/go-modules/generic/default.nix
diff --git a/src/_posts/2021-02-25-married.md b/src/_posts/2021-02-25-married.md
deleted file mode 100644
index a44e044..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2021-02-25-married.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,18 +0,0 @@
----
-title: >-
- Married!
-description: >-
- We did it!
----
-
-Just us, an aspen grove, and a photographer to witness. Between weather and
-foot-traffic on the trail everything went as well as we hoped it would; it was a
-wonderful day.
-
-{% include image.html dir="wedding" file="1.jpg" width=4005 %}
-
-{% include image.html dir="wedding" file="2.jpg" width=4004 %}
-
-{% include image.html dir="wedding" file="3.jpg" width=4005 %}
-
-More pictures coming soon to a website near you!
diff --git a/src/_posts/2021-03-01-conditionals-in-ginger.md b/src/_posts/2021-03-01-conditionals-in-ginger.md
deleted file mode 100644
index a8c6e44..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2021-03-01-conditionals-in-ginger.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,195 +0,0 @@
----
-title: >-
- Conditionals in Ginger
-description: >-
- Some different options for how "if" statements could work.
-series: ginger
-tags: tech
----
-
-In the [last ginger post][last] I covered a broad overview of how I envisioned
-ginger would work as a language, but there were two areas where I felt there was
-some uncertainty: conditionals and loops. In this post I will be focusing on
-conditionals, and going over a couple of options for how they could work.
-
-[last]: {% post_url 2021-01-09-ginger %}
-
-## Preface
-
-By "conditional" I'm referring to what programmers generally know as the "if"
-statement; some mechanism by which code can do one thing or another based on
-circumstances at runtime. Without some form of a conditional a programming
-language is not Turing-complete and can't be used for anything interesting.
-
-Given that it's uncommon to have a loop without some kind of a conditional
-inside of it (usually to exit the loop), but it's quite common to have a
-conditional with no loop in sight, it makes more sense to cover conditionals
-before loops. Whatever decision is reached regarding conditionals will impact
-how loops work, but not necessarily the other way around.
-
-For the duration of this post I will be attempting to construct a simple
-operation which takes two integers as arguments. If the first is less than
-the second then the operation returns the addition of the two, otherwise the
-operation returns the second subtracted from the first. In `go` this operation
-would look like:
-
-```go
-func op(a, b int) int {
- if a < b {
- return a + b
- }
- return b - a
-}
-```
-
-## Pattern 1: Branches As Inputs
-
-The pattern I'll lay out here is simultaneously the first pattern which came to
-me when trying to figure this problem out, the pattern which is most like
-existing mainstream programming languages, and (in my opinion) the worst pattern
-of the bunch. Here is what it looks like:
-
-```
- in -lt-> } -if-> out
- }
- in -add-> }
- }
-in -1-> } }
-in -0-> } -sub-> }
-
-```
-
-The idea here is that the operation `if` could take a 3-tuple whose elements
-are, respectively: a boolean, and two other edges which won't be evaluated until
-`if` is evaluated. If the boolean is true then `if` outputs the output of the
-first edge (the second element in the tuple), and otherwise it will output the
-value of the second edge.
-
-This idea doesn't work for a couple reasons. The biggest is that, if there were
-multiple levels of `if` statements, the structure of the graph grows out
-_leftward_, whereas the flow of data is rightwards. For someone reading the code
-to know what `if` will produce in either case they must first backtrack through
-the graph, find the origin of that branch, then track that leftward once again
-to the `if`.
-
-The other reason this doesn't work is because it doesn't jive with any pattern
-for loops I've come up with. This isn't evident from this particular example,
-but consider what this would look like if either branch of the `if` needed to
-loop back to a previous point in the codepath. If that's a difficult or
-confusing task for you, you're not alone.
-
-## Pattern 2: Pattern Matching
-
-There's quite a few languages with pattern matching, and even one which I know
-of (erlang) where pattern matching is the primary form of conditionals, and the
-more common `if` statement is just some syntactic sugar on top of the pattern
-matching.
-
-I've considered pattern matching for ginger. It might look something like:
-
-{% raw %}
-```
- in -> } -switch-> } -> {{{A, B}, _}, ({A,B}-lt->out)} -0-> } -add-> out
-in -1-> } -> } } -1-> } -sub-> out
-in -0-> }
-```
-{% endraw %}
-
-The `switch` operation posits that a node can have multiple output edges. In a
-graph this is fine, but it's worth noting. Graphs tend to be implemented such
-that edges to and from a node are unordered, but in ginger it seems unlikely
-that that will be the case.
-
-The last output edge from the switch is the easiest to explain: it outputs the
-input value to `switch` when no other branches are able to be taken. But the
-input to `switch` is a bit complex in this example: It's a 2-tuple whose first
-element is `in`, and whose second element is `in` but with reversed elements.
-In the last output edge we immediately pipe into a `1` operation to retrieve
-that second element and call `sub` on that, since that's the required behavior
-of the example.
-
-All other branches (in this switch there is only one, the first branch) output
-to a value. The form of this value is a tuple (denoted by enclosed curly braces
-here) of two values. The first value is the pattern itself, and the second is an
-optional predicate. The pattern in this example will match a 2-tuple, ignoring
-the second element in that tuple. The first element will itself be matched
-against a 2-tuple, and assign each element to the variables `A` and `B`,
-respectively. The second element in the tuple, the predicate, is a sub-graph
-which returns a boolean, and can be used for further specificity which can't be
-covered by the pattern matching (in this case, comparing the two values to each
-other).
-
-The output from any of `switch`'s branches is the same as its input value, the
-only question is which branch is taken. This means that there's no backtracking
-when reading a program using this pattern; no matter where you're looking you
-will only have to keep reading rightward to come to an `out`.
-
-There's a few drawbacks with this approach. The first is that it's not actually
-very easy to read. While pattern matching can be a really nice feature in
-languages that design around it, I've never seen it used in a LISP-style
-language where the syntax denotes actual datastructures, and I feel that in such
-a context it's a bit unwieldy. I could be wrong.
-
-The second drawback is that pattern matching is not simple to implement, and I'm
-not even sure what it would look like in a language where graphs are the primary
-datastructure. In the above example we're only matching into a tuple, but how
-would you format the pattern for a multi-node, multi-edge graph? Perhaps it's
-possible. But given that any such system could be implemented as a macro on top
-of normal `if` statements, rather than doing it the other way around, it seems
-better to start with the simpler option.
-
-(I haven't talked about it yet, but I'd like for ginger to be portable to
-multiple backends (i.e. different processor architectures, vms, etc). If the
-builtins of the language are complex, then doing this will be a difficult task,
-whereas if I'm conscious of that goal during design I think it can be made to be
-very simple. In that light I'd prefer to not require pattern matching to be a
-builtin.)
-
-The third drawback is that the input to the `switch` requires careful ordering,
-especially in cases like this one where a different value is needed depending on
-which branch is taken. I don't consider this to be a huge drawback, as
-encourages good data design and is a common consideration in other functional
-languages.
-
-## Pattern 3: Branches As Outputs
-
-Taking a cue from the pattern matching example, we can go back to `if` and take
-advantage of multiple output edges being a possibility:
-
-```
- in -> } -> } -if-> } -0-> } -add-> out
-in -1-> } -> } } } -1-> } -sub-> out
-in -0-> } }
- }
- in -lt-> }
-```
-
-It's not perfect, but I'd say this is the nicest of the three options so far.
-`if` is an operation which takes a 2-tuple. The second element of the tuple is a
-boolean, if the boolean is true then `if` passes the first element of its tuple
-to the first branch, otherwise it passes it to the second. In this way `if`
-becomes kind of like a fork in a train track: it accepts some payload (the first
-element of its input tuple) and depending on conditions (the second element) it
-directs the payload one way or the other.
-
-This pattern retains the benefits of the pattern matching example, where one
-never needs to backtrack in order to understand what is about to happen next,
-while also being much more readable and simpler to implement. It also retains
-one of the drawbacks of the pattern matching example, in that the inputs to `if`
-must be carefully organized based on the needs of the output branches. As
-before, I don't consider this to be a huge drawback.
-
-There's other modifications which might be made to this `if` to make it even
-cleaner, e.g. one could make it accept a 3-tuple, rather than a 2-tuple, in
-order to supply differing values to be used depending on which branch is taken.
-To me these sorts of small niceties are better left to be implemented as macros,
-built on top of a simpler but less pleasant builtin.
-
-## Fin
-
-If you have other ideas around how conditionals might be done in a graph-based
-language please [email me][email]; any and all contributions are welcome! One
-day I'll get around to actually implementing some of ginger, but today is not
-that day.
-
-[email]: mailto:mediocregopher@gmail.com
diff --git a/src/_posts/2021-03-04-conditionals-in-ginger-errata.md b/src/_posts/2021-03-04-conditionals-in-ginger-errata.md
deleted file mode 100644
index b4c0007..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2021-03-04-conditionals-in-ginger-errata.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,195 +0,0 @@
----
-title: >-
- Conditionals in Ginger, Errata
-description: >-
- Too clever by half.
-series: ginger
-tags: tech
----
-
-After publishing the last post in the series I walked away from my computer
-feeling that I was very clever and had made a good post. This was incorrect.
-
-To summarize [the previous post][prev], it's not obvious which is the best way
-to structure conditionals in a graphical programming language. My favorite
-solution looked something like this:
-
-```
- in -> } -> } -if-> } -0-> } -add-> out
-in -1-> } -> } } } -1-> } -sub-> out
-in -0-> } }
- }
- in -lt-> }
-```
-
-Essentially an `if` operator which accepts a value and a boolean, and which has
-two output edges. If the boolean is true then the input value is sent along the
-first output edge, and if it's false it's sent along the second.
-
-This structure is not possible, given the properties of ginger graphs that have
-been laid out in [other posts in the series][other].
-
-## Nodes, Tuples, and Edges
-
-A ginger graph, as it has been presented so far, is composed of these three
-elements. A node has a value, and its value is unique to the graph; if two nodes
-have the same value then they are the same node. Edges connect two nodes or
-tuples together, and have a value and direction. Tuples are, in essence, a node
-whose value is its input edges.
-
-The `if` operation above lies on an edge, not a node or tuple. It cannot have
-multiple output edges, since it cannot have any edges at all. It _is_ an edge.
-
-So it's back to the drawing board, to some extent. But luckily I've got some
-more ideas in my back pocket.
-
-## Forks and Junctions
-
-In an older conception of ginger there was no tuple, but instead there were
-forks and junctions. A junction was essentially the same as a tuple, just named
-differently: a node whose value is its input edges. A fork was just the
-opposite, a node whose value is its output edges. Junctions and forks naturally
-complimented each other, but ultimately I didn't find forks to be useful for
-much because there weren't cases where it was necessary to have a single edge be
-split across multiple output edges directly; any case which appeared to require
-a fork could be satisfied by directing the edge into a 1-tuple and using the
-output edges of the 1-tuple.
-
-But now we have such a case. The 1-tuple won't work, because the `if` operator
-would only see the 1-tuple, not its edges. It could be supposed that the graph
-interpreter could say that an `if` operation must be followed by a 1-tuple, and
-that the 1-tuple's output edges have a special meaning in that circumstance. But
-making the output edges of a 1-tuple have different meaning in different
-circumstances isn't very elegant.
-
-So a fork might be just the thing here. For the example I will represent a
-fork as the opposite of a tuple: a vertical column of `{` characters.
-
-```
- in -> } -> } -if-> { -0-> } -add-> out
-in -1-> } -> } } { -1-> } -sub-> out
-in -0-> } }
- }
- in -lt-> }
-```
-
-It _looks_ elegant, which is nice. I am curious though if there's any other
-possible use-case where a fork might be useful... if there's not then it seems
-odd to introduce an entire new element just to support a single operation. Why
-not just make that operation itself the new element?
-
-## Switch it Up
-
-In most conceptions of a flowchart that I've seen a conditional is usually
-represented as a node with a different shape than the other nodes (often a
-diamond). Ginger could borrow this idea for itself, and declare a new graph
-element, alongside nodes, tuples, and edges, called a switch.
-
-Let's say a switch is simply represented by a `-<>`, and acts like a node in all
-aspects except that it has no value and is not unique to the graph.
-
-The example presented in the [previous post][prev] would look something like
-this:
-
-```
- in -> } -> } -<> -0-> } -add-> out
-in -1-> } -> } } -1-> } -sub-> out
-in -0-> } }
- }
- in -lt-> }
-```
-
-This isn't the _worst_. Like the fork it's adding a new element, but that
-element's existence is required and its usage is very specific to that
-requirement, whereas the fork's existence is required but ambiguously useful
-outside of that requirement.
-
-On the other hand, there are macros to consider...
-
-## Macrophillic
-
-Ginger will certainly support macros, and as alluded to in the last post I'd
-like even conditional operations to be fair game for those who want to construct
-their own more complex operators. In the context of the switch `-<>` element,
-would someone be able to create something like a pattern matching conditional?
-If the builtin conditional is implemented as a new graph element then it seems
-that the primary way to implement a custom conditional macro will also involve a
-new graph element.
-
-While I'm not flat out opposed to allowing for custom graph elements, I'm
-extremely skeptical that it's necessary, and would like it to be proven
-necessary before considering it. So if we can have a basic conditional, _and_
-custom conditional macros built on top of the same broadly useful element, that
-seems like the better strategy.
-
-So all of that said, it seems I'm leaning towards forks as the better strategy
-in this. But I'd like a different name. "Fork" was nice as being the compliment
-of a "junction", but I like "tuple" way more than "junction" because the term
-applies well both to the structural element _and_ to the transformation that
-element performs (i.e. a tuple element combines its input edges' values into a
-tuple value). But "tuple" and "fork" seem weird together...
-
-## Many Minutes Later...
-
-A brief search of the internet reveals no better word than "fork". A place
-where a tree's trunk splits into two separate trunks is called a "fork". A
-place where a river splits into two separate rivers is called a "fork".
-Similarly with roads. And that _is_ what's happening, from the point of view of
-the graph's structure: it is an element whose only purpose is to denote multiple
-outward edges.
-
-So "fork" it is.
-
-## Other considerations
-
-A 1-tuple is interesting in that it acts essentially as a concatenation of two
-edges. A 1-fork could, theoretically, do the same thing:
-
-```
-a -foo-> } -bar-> b
-
-c -far-> { -boo-> d
-```
-
-The top uses a tuple, the bottom a fork. Each is, conceptually, valid, but I
-don't like that two different elements can be used for the exact same use-case.
-
-A 1-tuple is an established concept in data structures, so I am loath to give it
-up. A 1-fork, on the other hand, doesn't make sense structurally (would you
-point to any random point on a river and call it a "1-fork"?), and fork as a
-whole doesn't really have any analog in the realm of data structures. So I'm
-prepared to declare 1-forks invalid from the viewpoint of the language
-interpreter.
-
-Another consideration: I already expect that there's going to be confusion as to
-when to use a fork and when to use multiple outputs from a node. For example,
-here's a graph which uses a fork:
-
-```
-a -> { -op1-> foo
- { -op2-> bar
-```
-
-and here's a graph which has multiple outputs from the same node:
-
-```
-a -op1-> foo
- -op2-> bar
-```
-
-Each could be interpreted to mean the same thing: "set `foo` to the result of
-passing `a` into `op1`, and set `bar` to the result of passing `a` into `op2`."
-As with the 1-tuple vs 1-fork issue, we have another case where the same
-task might be accomplished with two different patterns. This case is trickier
-though, and I don't have as confident an answer.
-
-I think an interim rule which could be put in place, subject to review later, is
-that multiple edges from a node or tuple indicate that that same value is being
-used for multiple operations, while a fork indicates something specific to the
-operation on its input edge. It's not a pretty rule, but I think it will do.
-
-Stay tuned for next week when I realize that actually all of this is wrong and
-we start over again!
-
-[prev]: {% post_url 2021-03-01-conditionals-in-ginger %}
-[other]: {% post_url 2021-01-09-ginger %}
diff --git a/src/_posts/2021-03-12-ripple-a-game.md b/src/_posts/2021-03-12-ripple-a-game.md
deleted file mode 100644
index e793e6e..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2021-03-12-ripple-a-game.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,311 +0,0 @@
----
-title: >-
- Ripple: A Game
-description: >-
- Hop Till You Drop!
-tags: tech
-series: ripple
----
-
-<p>
- <b>Movement:</b> Arrow keys or WASD<br/>
- <b>Jump:</b> Space<br/>
- <b>Goal:</b> Jump as many times as possible without touching a ripple!<br/>
- <br/>
- <b>Press Jump To Begin!</b>
-</p>
-
-<canvas id="canvas"
- style="border:1px dashed #AAA"
- tabindex=0>
-Your browser doesn't support canvas. At this point in the world that's actually
-pretty cool, well done!
-</canvas>
-<button onclick="resetGame()">(R)eset</button>
-<span style="font-size: 2rem; margin-left: 1rem;">Score:
- <span style="font-weight: bold" id="score">0</span>
-</span>
-
-<script type="text/javascript">
-
-const palette = [
- "#264653",
- "#2A9D8F",
- "#E9C46A",
- "#F4A261",
- "#E76F51",
-];
-
-const width = 800;
-const height = 600;
-
-function hypotenuse(w, h) {
- return Math.sqrt(Math.pow(w, 2) + Math.pow(h, 2));
-}
-
-let canvas = document.getElementById("canvas");
-canvas.width = width;
-canvas.height = height;
-
-let score = document.getElementById("score");
-
-const whitelistedKeys = {
- "ArrowUp": {},
- "KeyW": {map: "ArrowUp"},
- "ArrowLeft": {},
- "KeyA": {map: "ArrowLeft"},
- "ArrowRight": {},
- "KeyD": {map: "ArrowRight"},
- "ArrowDown": {},
- "KeyS": {map: "ArrowDown"},
- "Space": {},
- "KeyR": {},
-};
-
-let keyboard = {};
-
-canvas.addEventListener('keydown', (event) => {
- let keyInfo = whitelistedKeys[event.code];
- if (!keyInfo) return;
-
- let code = event.code;
- if (keyInfo.map) code = keyInfo.map;
-
- event.preventDefault();
- keyboard[code] = true;
-});
-
-canvas.addEventListener('keyup', (event) => {
- let keyInfo = whitelistedKeys[event.code];
- if (!keyInfo) return;
-
- let code = event.code;
- if (keyInfo.map) code = keyInfo.map;
-
- event.preventDefault();
- delete keyboard[code];
-});
-
-let ctx = canvas.getContext("2d");
-
-let currTick;
-let drops;
-
-class Drop {
- constructor(x, y, bounces, color) {
- this.tick = currTick;
- this.x = x;
- this.y = y;
- this.thickness = (bounces+1) * 0.25;
- this.color = color ? color : palette[Math.floor(Math.random() * palette.length)];
- this.winner = false;
-
- this.maxRadius = hypotenuse(x, y);
- this.maxRadius = Math.max(this.maxRadius, hypotenuse(width-x, y));
- this.maxRadius = Math.max(this.maxRadius, hypotenuse(x, height-y));
- this.maxRadius = Math.max(this.maxRadius, hypotenuse(width-x, height-y));
-
- drops.push(this);
-
- if (bounces > 0) {
- new Drop(x, -y, bounces-1, this.color);
- new Drop(-x, y, bounces-1, this.color);
- new Drop((2*width)-x, y, bounces-1, this.color);
- new Drop(x, (2*height)-y, bounces-1, this.color);
- }
- }
-
- radius() { return currTick - this.tick; }
-
- draw() {
- ctx.beginPath();
- ctx.arc(this.x, this.y, this.radius(), 0, Math.PI * 2, false);
- ctx.closePath();
- ctx.lineWidth = this.thickness;
- ctx.strokeStyle = this.winner ? "#FF0000" : this.color;
- ctx.stroke();
- }
-
- canGC() {
- return this.radius() > this.maxRadius;
- }
-}
-
-const playerRadius = 10;
-const playerMoveAccel = 0.5;
-const playerMoveDecel = 0.7;
-const playerMaxMoveSpeed = 4;
-const playerJumpSpeed = 0.08;
-const playerMaxHeight = 1;
-const playerGravity = 0.01;
-
-class Player{
- constructor(x, y, color) {
- this.x = x;
- this.y = y;
- this.z = 0;
- this.xVelocity = 0;
- this.yVelocity = 0;
- this.zVelocity = 0;
- this.color = color;
- this.falling = false;
- this.lastJumpHeight = 0;
- this.loser = false;
- }
-
- act() {
- if (keyboard["ArrowUp"]) {
- this.yVelocity = Math.max(-playerMaxMoveSpeed, this.yVelocity - playerMoveAccel);
- } else if (keyboard["ArrowDown"]) {
- this.yVelocity = Math.min(playerMaxMoveSpeed, this.yVelocity + playerMoveAccel);
- } else if (this.yVelocity > 0) {
- this.yVelocity = Math.max(0, this.yVelocity - playerMoveDecel);
- } else if (this.yVelocity < 0) {
- this.yVelocity = Math.min(0, this.yVelocity + playerMoveDecel);
- }
-
- this.y += this.yVelocity;
- this.y = Math.max(0+playerRadius, this.y);
- this.y = Math.min(height-playerRadius, this.y);
-
- if (keyboard["ArrowLeft"]) {
- this.xVelocity = Math.max(-playerMaxMoveSpeed, this.xVelocity - playerMoveAccel);
- } else if (keyboard["ArrowRight"]) {
- this.xVelocity = Math.min(playerMaxMoveSpeed, this.xVelocity + playerMoveAccel);
- } else if (this.xVelocity > 0) {
- this.xVelocity = Math.max(0, this.xVelocity - playerMoveDecel);
- } else if (this.xVelocity < 0) {
- this.xVelocity = Math.min(0, this.xVelocity + playerMoveDecel);
- }
-
- this.x += this.xVelocity;
- this.x = Math.max(0+playerRadius, this.x);
- this.x = Math.min(width-playerRadius, this.x);
-
- let jumpHeld = keyboard["Space"];
-
- if (jumpHeld && !this.falling && this.z < playerMaxHeight) {
- this.lastJumpHeight = 0;
- this.zVelocity = playerJumpSpeed;
- } else {
- this.zVelocity = Math.max(-playerJumpSpeed, this.zVelocity - playerGravity);
- this.falling = this.z > 0;
- }
-
- let prevZ = this.z;
- this.z = Math.max(0, this.z + this.zVelocity);
- this.lastJumpHeight = Math.max(this.z, this.lastJumpHeight);
- }
-
- draw() {
- let y = this.y - (this.z * 40);
- let radius = playerRadius * (this.z+1)
-
- // draw main
- ctx.beginPath();
- ctx.arc(this.x, y, radius, 0, Math.PI * 2, false);
- ctx.closePath();
- ctx.lineWidth = 0;
- ctx.fillStyle = this.color;
- ctx.fill();
- if (this.loser) {
- ctx.strokeStyle = '#FF0000';
- ctx.lineWidth = 2;
- ctx.stroke();
- }
-
- // draw shadow, if in the air
- if (this.z > 0) {
- let radius = Math.max(0, playerRadius * (1.2 - this.z));
- ctx.beginPath();
- ctx.arc(this.x, this.y, radius, 0, Math.PI * 2, false);
- ctx.closePath();
- ctx.lineWidth = 0;
- ctx.fillStyle = this.color+"33";
- ctx.fill();
- }
- }
-}
-
-let player;
-let gameState;
-let numJumps;
-
-function resetGame() {
- currTick = 0;
- drops = [];
- player = new Player(width/2, height/2, palette[0]);
- gameState = 'play';
- numJumps = 0;
- canvas.focus();
-}
-resetGame();
-
-let requestAnimationFrame =
- window.requestAnimationFrame ||
- window.mozRequestAnimationFrame ||
- window.webkitRequestAnimationFrame ||
- window.msRequestAnimationFrame;
-
-function doTick() {
- if (keyboard['KeyR']) {
- resetGame();
- }
-
- if (gameState == 'play') {
- let playerPrevZ = player.z;
- player.act();
- if (playerPrevZ > 0 && player.z == 0) {
- let bounces = Math.floor((player.lastJumpHeight*1.8)+1);
- console.log("spawning drop with bounces:", bounces);
- new Drop(player.x, player.y, bounces);
- } else if (playerPrevZ == 0 && player.z > 0) {
- numJumps++;
- }
- score.innerHTML = numJumps;
-
- if (player.z == 0) {
- for (let i in drops) {
- let drop = drops[i];
- let dropRadius = drop.radius();
- if (dropRadius < playerRadius * 1.5) continue;
- let hs = Math.pow(drop.x-player.x, 2) + Math.pow(drop.y-player.y, 2);
- if (hs > Math.pow(playerRadius + dropRadius, 2)) {
- continue;
- } else if (Math.sqrt(hs) <= Math.abs(dropRadius-playerRadius)) {
- continue;
- } else {
- console.log("game over");
- drop.winner = true;
- player.loser = true;
- gameState = 'gameOver';
- }
- }
- }
- }
-
- drops = drops.filter(drop => !drop.canGC());
-
- ctx.clearRect(0, 0, canvas.width, canvas.height);
- drops.forEach(drop => drop.draw());
- player.draw()
-
- if (gameState == 'play') currTick++;
- requestAnimationFrame(doTick);
-}
-requestAnimationFrame(doTick);
-
-</script>
-
-_Do you have the patience to wait<br/>
-till your mud settles and the water is clear?_
-
-## Backstory
-
-This is a game I originally implemented in lua, which you can find [here][orig].
-It's a fun concept that I wanted to show off again, as well as to see if I could
-whip it up in an evening in javascript (I can!)
-
-Send me your high scores! I top out around 17.
-
-[orig]: https://github.com/mediocregopher/ripple
diff --git a/src/_posts/2021-03-20-a-simple-rule-for-better-errors.md b/src/_posts/2021-03-20-a-simple-rule-for-better-errors.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 30139fb..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2021-03-20-a-simple-rule-for-better-errors.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,227 +0,0 @@
----
-title: >-
- A Simple Rule for Better Errors
-description: >-
- ...and some examples of the rule in action.
-tags: tech
----
-
-This post will describe a simple rule for writing error messages that I've
-been using for some time and have found to be worthwhile. Using this rule I can
-be sure that my errors are propagated upwards with everything needed to debug
-problems, while not containing tons of extraneous or duplicate information.
-
-This rule is not specific to any particular language, pattern of error
-propagation (e.g. exceptions, signals, simple strings), or method of embedding
-information in errors (e.g. key/value pairs, formatted strings).
-
-I do not claim to have invented this system, I'm just describing it.
-
-## The Rule
-
-Without more ado, here's the rule:
-
-> A function sending back an error should not include information the caller
-> could already know.
-
-Pretty simple, really, but the best rules are. Keeping to this rule will result
-in error messages which, once propagated up to their final destination (usually
-some kind of logger), will contain only the information relevant to the error
-itself, with minimal duplication.
-
-The reason this rule works in tandem with good encapsulation of function
-behavior. The caller of a function knows only the inputs to the function and, in
-general terms, what the function is going to do with those inputs. If the
-returned error only includes information outside of those two things then the
-caller knows everything it needs to know about the error, and can continue on to
-propagate that error up the stack (with more information tacked on if necessary)
-or handle it in some other way.
-
-## Examples
-
-(For examples I'll use Go, but as previously mentioned this rule will be useful
-in any other language as well.)
-
-Let's go through a few examples, to show the various ways that this rule can
-manifest in actual code.
-
-**Example 1: Nothing to add**
-
-In this example we have a function which merely wraps a call to `io.Copy` for
-two files:
-
-```go
-func copyFile(dst, src *os.File) error {
- _, err := io.Copy(dst, src)
- return err
-}
-```
-
-In this example there's no need to modify the error from `io.Copy` before
-returning it to the caller. What would we even add? The caller already knows
-which files were involved in the error, and that the error was encountered
-during some kind of copy operation (since that's what the function says it
-does), so there's nothing more to say about it.
-
-**Example 2: Annotating which step an error occurs at**
-
-In this example we will open a file, read its contents, and return them as a
-string:
-
-```go
-func readFile(path string) (string, error) {
- f, err := os.Open(path)
- if err != nil {
- return "", fmt.Errorf("opening file: %w", err)
- }
- defer f.Close()
-
- contents, err := io.ReadAll(f)
- if err != nil {
- return "", fmt.Errorf("reading contents: %w", err)
- }
-
- return string(contents), nil
-}
-```
-
-In this example there are two different steps which could result in an error:
-opening the file and reading its contents. If an error is returned then our
-imaginary caller doesn't know which step the error occurred at. Using our rule
-we can infer that it would be good to annotate at _which_ step the error is
-from, so the caller is able to have a fuller picture of what went wrong.
-
-Note that each annotation does _not_ include the file path which was passed into
-the function. The caller already knows this path, so an error being returned
-back which reiterates the path is unnecessary.
-
-**Example 3: Annotating which argument was involved**
-
-In this example we will read two files using our function from example 2, and
-return the concatenation of their contents as a string.
-
-```go
-func concatFiles(pathA, pathB string) (string, error) {
- contentsA, err := readFile(pathA)
- if err != nil {
- return "", fmt.Errorf("reading contents of %q: %w", pathA, err)
- }
-
- contentsB, err := readFile(pathB)
- if err != nil {
- return "", fmt.Errorf("reading contents of %q: %w", pathB, err)
- }
-
- return contentsA + contentsB, nil
-}
-```
-
-Like in example 2 we annotate each error, but instead of annotating the action
-we annotate which file path was involved in each error. This is because if we
-simply annotated with the string `reading contents` like before it wouldn't be
-clear to the caller _which_ file's contents couldn't be read. Therefore we
-include which path the error is relevant to.
-
-**Example 4: Layering**
-
-In this example we will show how using this rule habitually results in easy to
-read errors which contain all relevant information surrounding the error. Our
-example reads one file, the "full" file, using our `readFile` function from
-example 2. It then reads the concatenation of two files, the "split" files,
-using our `concatFiles` function from example 3. It finally determines if the
-two strings are equal:
-
-```go
-func verifySplits(fullFilePath, splitFilePathA, splitFilePathB string) error {
- fullContents, err := readFile(fullFilePath)
- if err != nil {
- return fmt.Errorf("reading contents of full file: %w", err)
- }
-
- splitContents, err := concatFiles(splitFilePathA, splitFilePathB)
- if err != nil {
- return fmt.Errorf("reading concatenation of split files: %w", err)
- }
-
- if fullContents != splitContents {
- return errors.New("full file's contents do not match the split files' contents")
- }
-
- return nil
-}
-```
-
-As previously, we don't annotate the file paths for the different possible
-errors, but instead say _which_ files were involved. The caller already knows
-the paths, there's no need to reiterate them if there's another way of referring
-to them.
-
-Let's see what our errors actually look like! We run our new function using the
-following:
-
-```go
- err := verifySplits("full.txt", "splitA.txt", "splitB.txt")
- fmt.Println(err)
-```
-
-Let's say `full.txt` doesn't exist, we'll get the following error:
-
-```
-reading contents of full file: opening file: open full.txt: no such file or directory
-```
-
-The error is simple, and gives you everything you need to understand what went
-wrong: while attempting to read the full file, during the opening of that file,
-our code found that there was no such file. In fact, the error returned by
-`os.Open` contains the name of the file, which goes against our rule, but it's
-the standard library so what can ya do?
-
-Now, let's say that `splitA.txt` doesn't exist, then we'll get this error:
-
-```
-reading concatenation of split files: reading contents of "splitA.txt": opening file: open splitA.txt: no such file or directory
-```
-
-Now we did include the file path here, and so the standard library's failure to
-follow our rule is causing us some repitition. But overall, within the parts of
-the error we have control over, the error is concise and gives you everything
-you need to know what happened.
-
-## Exceptions
-
-As with all rules, there are certainly exceptions. The primary one I've found is
-that certain helper functions can benefit from bending this rule a bit. For
-example, if there is a helper function which is called to verify some kind of
-user input in many places, it can be helpful to include that input value within
-the error returned from the helper function:
-
-```go
-func verifyInput(str string) error {
- if err := check(str); err != nil {
- return fmt.Errorf("input %q was bad: %w", str, err)
- }
- return nil
-}
-```
-
-`str` is known to the caller so, according to our rule, we don't need to include
-it in the error. But if you're going to end up wrapping the error returned from
-`verifyInput` with `str` at every call site anyway it can be convenient to save
-some energy and break the rule. It's a trade-off, convenience in exchange for
-consistency.
-
-Another exception might be made with regards to stack traces.
-
-In the set of examples given above I tended to annotate each error being
-returned with a description of where in the function the error was being
-returned from. If your language automatically includes some kind of stack trace
-with every error, and if you find that you are generally able to reconcile that
-stack trace with actual code, then it may be that annotating each error site is
-unnecessary, except when annotating actual runtime values (e.g. an input
-string).
-
-As in all things with programming, there are no hard rules; everything is up to
-interpretation and the specific use-case being worked on. That said, I hope what
-I've laid out here will prove generally useful to you, in whatever way you might
-try to use it.
-
diff --git a/src/_posts/2021-04-01-fmail.md b/src/_posts/2021-04-01-fmail.md
deleted file mode 100644
index bdc473c..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2021-04-01-fmail.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,172 +0,0 @@
----
-title: >-
- F-Mail
-description: >-
- If email didn't suck.
----
-
-I'm down a blog post, so I'm going to try to make up some time on this one.
-
-Email is probably the oldest web technology which is widely recognized by the
-general public. It predates WWW by about 15 years, and is fundamental to the way
-we use the internet.
-
-It also really fucking sucks.
-
-## Thought Exercise
-
-Let's invent email all over again, for fun. We can take the good things from the
-existing email paradigm, and replace the bad. Let's not worry about marketshare
-and adoption strategies and all that annoying stuff either; after all, I need to
-finish this post in like.... 20 minutes... tops.
-
-This new email will be called fmail.
-
-The basic idea of email is solid. It's mail, on the internet. We all understand
-mail. You have a mailing address, I want to send you a thing. I pay someone else
-to take my thing to you, and they have some mechanism for finding you just based
-on your address.
-
-We're good so far. Let's get into the weeds.
-
-## Addresses
-
-Email addresses are... ok. There's a name and a domain. If you were sending a
-physical package to a house with multiple residents you would include the name
-of the recipient on the package, in addition to the address. With email the
-domain part of the email corresponds to the house address, and the username
-corresponds to the recipient's actual name.
-
-In this aspect, however, physical mail has email beat. If the package has a
-correct name it can often be routed directly to its intended recipient. But it
-doesn't _have_ to have a correct name. In fact it can have no name. In those
-cases the residents of the address figure out amongst themselves what to do with
-it. Maybe it's obvious who it's for, maybe not. In any case it's possible to
-resolve these issues.
-
-Further, in physical mail the routing steps are declared right on the mail
-container (box, envelope, etc). You can, generally, read the recipient address
-from bottom to top to understand how to deliver it. Here's an example:
-
-```
-Homer
-123 Fakie St
-Springfield, IL 12345
-USA
-```
-
-Understanding the steps is simple enough. The package first needs to get to the
-United States of America, then to Springfield, then to Fakie St, then to house
-123 on Fakie St, and finally to the resident named "Homer" at that house.
-
-Let's incorporate these ideas into fmail, our new mythical internet mail system.
-
-In fmail the address isn't an inflexible `name@domain`. Instead the address is
-composed of a sequence of `>` separated strings, each denoting an intended hop
-in the route. For example:
-
-```
-sick-domain.com>brian>phone
-```
-
-The sender only needs to know how to route to the first hop in order to do its
-duty. In this case it's a simple domain lookup, which would tell it an IP to
-send the fmail message to. From there the receiving server would need to know
-what to do with `brian` as a piece of routing information. Maybe it knows, and
-can send the message along. Maybe it doesn't, in which case the mail might go to
-a "lost and found" directory, where anyone on the fmail server could claim it.
-
-If the idea of a domain-wide "lost and found" sounds scary, consider that it
-might not be so scary in a world where fmail servers are easy to self-host, and
-so people actually do so. What would make it possible for fmail to be easy to
-self-host?
-
-## Spam
-
-Spam has made both email and real mail almost unbearable. If I'm honest, it's
-the daily chore of cleaning my two mail boxes that made start thinking about
-writing this post in the first place. With email the spam issue is particularly
-egregious, because the entire email ecosystem, not just the experience of the
-individual, is made worse by spam.
-
-If you want to know why it's hard to run your email server, the answer is
-"because spam exists". You need to block the spam destined for you server, you
-need to ensure someone isn't going to hack your server and send spam from it,
-you need to convince other email servers that you're one of the good ones and
-won't send spam, you need to pray your ISP even allows you to have an email
-server (because they don't want to be seen as enabling spam). There's actual
-_laws_ about email spam.
-
-The good news is, fmail has solved the spam problem completely.
-
-In fmail, all messages are rejected by default. It's a whitelist based access
-control, unlike email's blacklist based one where anyone can send you anything
-and it's up to you to reject what you don't want.
-
-How can this work? There's a couple different forms the whitelist can take, and
-they all can work together in your fmail server's configuration.
-
-The primary one would be to check for some kind of cryptographic signature on
-the message, declaring who its from. If the message is from a list of configured
-"good senders" then it's kept. This would be for friends, family, coworkers,
-etc... Those you expect to hear from frequently who you actually want to hear
-from.
-
-Building on this, each "good sender" could have a timeout associated with them,
-if desired. This could be useful when signing up for a website which wants to
-use fmail for authentication. You configure your fmail client (which of course
-integrates nicely with a web browser to make this easy) to allow messages from
-this sender only for a limited time, or only a limited number of messages from
-them. This way the user can receive their fmail confirmation message, or
-password reset or whatever, without being forever bothered by stupid marketing
-emails.
-
-A secondary method of whitelisting might involve someone attaching some
-cryptocurrency to their message as a peace offering of sorts. It could be as
-simple as a private key or signed transaction which would allow the receiver, if
-they receive the message, to keep the money. It would be up to the fmail client
-to allow configuration of which cryptos are accepted and how much crypto is
-required, as well as ensuring that the money is still available to be received.
-Only if all these requirements are met is the message allowed to be seen by a
-human, otherwise it's dropped.
-
-There's probably other interesting mechanisms I haven't thought of. It would be
-good for fmail servers to have a plugin system that allowed for extending
-functionality like this as the users desire.
-
-## Encryption
-
-One thing email sorely lacks is end-to-end encryption. This is a difficult
-problem for communication systems in general, because ultimately what it comes
-down to is a hard requirement on a safe exchange of public keys, which requires
-an existing trusted method of communication.
-
-I don't think fmail needs to re-invent this wheel. We've already established
-that users will have some mechanism for sharing public keys (for whitelisting),
-so really what this comes down to is having good UI around key management from
-the start, and the stubbornness to establish e2e messages as the norm.
-
-What holds email back in this area isn't so much the lack of solutions (there
-are many ways to do e2e encryption over email) but the need for supporting
-plaintext emails out of concern for backwards compatibility, as well as the need
-to support open mail boxes which can receive and send mail willy-nilly. If a
-whitelist-based system is built from scratch with e2e messages always being the
-default way of messaging others, and plaintext messages being something with big
-scary warnings around it, I don't think there'd be an issue.
-
-## That's fmail
-
-That's it. There's not much to it, except you know... actually implementing it
-(someone else do it, I don't have time).
-
-There's a lot more that could be said about the email protocol and server/client
-implementations themselves, but I think if one were to start from scratch on
-fmail it would be enough to say this: there's a lot of good things to take from
-email, and really what we need is to update the mindset around internet
-messaging in general.We have almost 8 billion people on earth, a double digit
-percentage of them have internet access, and we need to give users better
-mechanisms for ensuring their messages are received the way each one
-individually wants them to be.
-
-My dream of finishing this post in 20 minutes did not come to pass. It was more
-like an hour. I'm getting faster though!
diff --git a/src/_posts/2021-04-06-evaluation-of-network-filesystems.md b/src/_posts/2021-04-06-evaluation-of-network-filesystems.md
deleted file mode 100644
index b80eb8d..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2021-04-06-evaluation-of-network-filesystems.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,339 +0,0 @@
----
-title: >-
- Evaluation of Network Filesystems
-description: >-
- There can only be one.
-series: nebula
-tags: tech
----
-
-It's been a bit since updating my progress on what I've been lately calling the
-"cryptic nebula" project. When I last left off I was working on building the
-[mobile nebula][mobile_nebula] using [nix][nix]. For the moment I gave up on
-that dream, as flutter and nix just _really_ don't get along and I don't want to
-get to distracted on problems that aren't critical to the actual goal.
-
-Instead I'd like to pursue the next critical component of the system, and
-that's a shared filesystem. The use-case I'm ultimately trying to achieve is:
-
-* All hosts communicate with each other via the nebula network.
-* All hosts are personal machines owned by individuals, _not_ cloud VMs.
-* A handful of hosts are always-on, or at least as always-on as can be achieved
- in a home environment.
-* All hosts are able to read/write to a shared filesystem, which is mounted via
- FUSE (or some other mechanism, though I can't imagine what) on their computer.
-* Top-level directories within the shared filesystem can be restricted, so
- that only a certain person (or host) can read/write to them.
-
-What I'm looking for is some kind of network filesystem, of which there are
-_many_. This document will attempt to evaluate all relevant projects and come up
-with the next steps. It may be that no project fits the bill perfectly, and that
-I'm stuck either modifying an existing project to my needs or, if things are
-looking really dire, starting a new project.
-
-The ultimate use-case here is something like a self-hosted, distributed [keybase
-filesystem](https://book.keybase.io/docs/files); somewhere where individuals in
-the cluster can back up their personal projects, share files with each other,
-and possibly even be used as the base layer for more complex applications on
-top.
-
-The individuals involved shouldn't have to deal with configuring their
-distributed FS, either to read from it or add storage resources to it. Ideally
-the FS process can be bundled together with the nebula process and run opaquely;
-the user is just running their "cryptic nebula" process and everything else is
-handled in the background.
-
-## Low Pass Filter
-
-There are some criteria for these projects that I'm not willing to compromise
-on; these criteria will form a low pass filter which, hopefully, will narrow our
-search appreciably.
-
-The network filesystem used by the cryptic nebula must:
-
-* Be able to operate over a nebula network (obviously).
-* Be open-source. The license doesn't matter, as long as the code is available.
-* Run on both Mac and Linux.
-* Not require a third-party to function.
-* Allows for a replication factor of 3.
-* Supports sharding of data (ie each host need not have the entire dataset).
-* Allow for mounting a FUSE filesystem in any hosts' machine to interact with
- the network filesystem.
-* Not run in the JVM, or any other VM which is memory-greedy.
-
-The last may come across as mean, but the reason for it is that I forsee the
-network filesystem client running on users' personal laptops, which cannot be
-assumed to have resources to spare.
-
-## Rubric
-
-Each criteria in the next set lies along a spectrum. Any project may meet one of
-thses criteria fully, partially, or not at all. For each criteria I assign a
-point value according to how fully a project meets the criteria, and then sum up
-the points to give the project a final score. The project with the highest final
-score is not necessarily the winner, but this system should at least give some
-good candidates for final consideration.
-
-The criteria, and their associated points values, are:
-
-* **Hackability**: is the source-code of the project approachable?
- - 0: No
- - 1: Kind of, and there's not much of a community.
- - 2: Kind of, but there is an active community.
- - 3: Yes
-
-* **Documentation**: is the project well documented?
- - 0: No docs.
- - 1: Incomplete or out-of-date docs.
- - 2: Very well documented.
-
-* **Transience**: how does the system handle hosts appearing or disappearing?
- - 0: Requires an automated system to be built to handle adding/removing
- hosts.
- - 1: Gracefully handled.
-
-* **Priority**: is it possible to give certain hosts priority when choosing
- which will host/replicate some piece of data?
- - 0: No.
- - 1: Yes.
-
-* **Caching**: will hosts reading a file have that file cached locally for the
- next reading (until the file is modified)?
- - 0: No.
- - 1: Yes.
-
-* **Conflicts**: if two hosts updated the same file at the same time, how is
- that handled?
- - 0: The file can no longer be updated.
- - 1: One update clobbers the other, or both go through in an undefined
- order.
- - 2: One update is disallowed.
- - 3: A copy of the file containing the "losing" update is created (ie: how
- dropbox does it).
- - 4: Strategy can be configured on the file/directory level.
-
-* **Consistency**: how does the system handle a file being changed frequently?
- - 0: File changes must be propagated before subsequent updates are allowed (fully consistent).
- - 1: Files are snapshotted at some large-ish interval (eventually consistent).
- - 2: File state (ie content hash, last modifid, etc) is propagated
- frequently but contents are only fully propagated once the file has
- "settled" (eventually consistent with debounce).
-
-* **POSIX**: how POSIX compliant is the mounted fileystem?
- - 0: Only the most basic features are implemented.
- - 1: Some extra features are implemented.
- - 2: Fully POSIX compliant.
-
-* **Scale**: how many hosts can be a part of the cluster?
- - 0: A finite number.
- - 1: A finite number of dedicated hosts, infinite ephemeral.
- - 2: Infinite hosts.
-
-* **Failure**: how does the system handle failures (network partitions, hosts
- hanging, buggy client versions)?
- - 0: Data loss.
- - 1: Reads and writes are halted.
- - 2: Reads are allowed but writes are halted.
- - 3: System is partially read/write, except effected parts.
-
-* **Limitations**: are there limits on how big files can be, or how big
- directories can be?
- - 0: Files are limited to below 1TB in size.
- - 1: Directories are limited to below 100,000 files.
- - 2: No limits.
-
-* **Encryption**: how is data encrypted?
- - 0: Not at all, DIY.
- - 1: Encrypted at rest.
- - 2: Per-user encryption.
-
-* **Permissions**: how are modifications to data restricted?
- - 0: Not at all.
- - 1: Permissions are only superifically enforced.
- - 2: Fully enforced user/group restrictions, complex patterns, and/or POSIX ACLs.
-
-* **Administration**: how much administration is required for the system to
- function?
- - 0: Frequent.
- - 1: Infrequent.
- - 2: Essentially none.
-
-* **Simplicity**: how understandable is the system as a whole?
- - 0: Very complex.
- - 1: Understandable with some study.
- - 2: Very simple, easy to predict.
-
-* **Visibility**: how much visibility is available into processes within the
- system?
- - 0: Total black box.
- - 1: Basic logging.
- - 2: CLI tooling.
- - 3: Exportable metrics (e.g. prometheus).
-
-## Evaluations
-
-With the rubric defined, let's start actually working through our options! There
-are many, many different possibilities, so this may not be an exhaustive list.
-
-### [Ceph](https://docs.ceph.com/en/latest/cephfs/index.html)
-
-> The Ceph File System, or CephFS, is a POSIX-compliant file system built on
-> top of Ceph’s distributed object store, RADOS. CephFS endeavors to provide a
-> state-of-the-art, multi-use, highly available, and performant file store for
-> a variety of applications, including traditional use-cases like shared home
-> directories, HPC scratch space, and distributed workflow shared storage.
-
-- Hackability: 2. Very active community, but it's C++.
-- Documentation: 2. Hella docs, very daunting.
-- Transience: 0. Adding hosts seems to require multiple configuration steps.
-- Priority: 1. There is fine-tuning on a per-host basis.
-- Caching: 1. Clients can cache both metadata and block data.
-- Conflicts: 1. The FS behaves as much like a real FS as possible.
-- Consistency: 0. System is CP.
-- POSIX: 2. Fully POSIX compliant.
-- Scale: 2. Cluster can grow without any real bounds.
-- Failure: 3. There's no indication anywhere that Ceph goes into any kind of cluster-wide failure mode.
-- Limitations: 2. There are performance considerations with large directories, but no hard limits.
-- Encryption: 0. None to speak of.
-- Permissions: 2. POSIX ACLs supported.
-- Administration: 1. This is a guess, but Ceph seems to be self-healing in general, but still needs hand-holding in certain situations (adding/removing nodes, etc...)
-- Simplicity: 0. There are many moving pieces, as well as many different kinds of processes and entities.
-- Visibility: 3. Lots of tooling to dig into the state of the cluster, as well as a prometheus module.
-
-TOTAL: 22
-
-#### Comments
-
-Ceph has been recommended to me by a few people. It is clearly a very mature
-project, though that maturity has brought with it a lot of complexity. A lot of
-the complexity of Ceph seems to be rooted in its strong consistency guarantees,
-which I'm confident it fulfills well, but are not really needed for the
-use-case I'm interested in. I'd prefer a simpler, eventually consistent,
-system. It's also not clear to me that Ceph would even perform very well in my
-use-case as it seems to want an actual datacenter deployment, with beefy
-hardware and hosts which are generally close together.
-
-### [GlusterFS](https://docs.gluster.org/en/latest/)
-
-> GlusterFS is a scalable network filesystem suitable for data-intensive tasks
-> such as cloud storage and media streaming. GlusterFS is free and open source
-> software and can utilize common off-the-shelf hardware.
-
-- Hackability: 2. Mostly C code, but there is an active community.
-- Documentation: 2. Good docs.
-- Transience: 0. New nodes cannot add themselves to the pool.
-- Priority: 0. Data is distributed based on consistent hashing algo, nothing else.
-- Caching: 1. Docs mention client-side caching layer.
-- Conflicts: 0. File becomes frozen, manual intervention is needed to save it.
-- Consistency: 0. Gluster aims to be fully consistent.
-- POSIX: 2. Fully POSIX compliant.
-- Scale: 2. No apparent limits.
-- Failure: 3. Clients determine on their own whether or not they have a quorum for a particular sub-volume.
-- Limitations: 2. Limited by the file system underlying each volume, I think.
-- Encryption: 2. Encryption can be done on the volume level, each user could have a private volume.
-- Permissions: 2. ACL checking is enforced on the server-side, but requires syncing of users and group membership across servers.
-- Administration: 1. Beyond adding/removing nodes the system is fairly self-healing.
-- Simplicity: 1. There's only one kind of server process, and the configuration of volumes is is well documented and straightforward.
-- Visibility: 3. Prometheus exporter available.
-
-TOTAL: 23
-
-#### Comments
-
-GlusterFS was my initial choice when I did a brief survey of DFSs for this
-use-case. However, after further digging into it I think it will suffer the
-same ultimate problem as CephFS: too much consistency for a wide-area
-application like I'm envisioning. The need for syncing user/groups across
-machines as actual system users is also cumbersome enough to make it not a
-great choice.
-
-### [MooseFS](https://moosefs.com/)
-
-> MooseFS is a Petabyte Open Source Network Distributed File System. It is easy
-> to deploy and maintain, highly reliable, fault tolerant, highly performing,
-> easily scalable and POSIX compliant.
->
-> MooseFS spreads data over a number of commodity servers, which are visible to
-> the user as one resource. For standard file operations MooseFS acts like
-> ordinary Unix-like file system.
-
-- Hackability: 2. All C code, pretty dense, but backed by a company.
-- Documentation: 2. There's a giant PDF you can read through like a book. I
- guess that's.... good?
-- Transience: 0. Nodes must be added manually.
-- Priority: 1. There's "Storage Classes".
-- Caching: 1. Caching is done on the client, and there's some synchronization
- with the master server around it.
-- Conflicts: 1. Both update operations will go through.
-- Consistency: 0. Afaict it's a fully consistent system, with a master server
- being used to synchronize changes.
-- POSIX: 2. Fully POSIX compliant.
-- Scale: 2. Cluster can grow without any real bounds.
-- Failure: 1. If the master server is unreachable then the client can't
- function.
-- Limitations: 2. Limits are very large, effectively no limit.
-- Encryption: 0. Docs make no mention of encryption.
-- Permissions: 1. Afaict permissions are done by the OS on the fuse mount.
-- Administration: 1. It seems that if the topology is stable there shouldn't be
- much going on.
-- Simplicity: 0. There are many moving pieces, as well as many different kinds of processes and entities.
-- Visibility: 2. Lots of cli tooling, no prometheus metrics that I could find.
-
-TOTAL: 17
-
-Overall MooseFS seems to me like a poor-developer's Ceph. It can do exactly the
-same things, but with less of a community around it. The sale's pitch and
-feature-gating also don't ingratiate it to me. The most damning "feature" is the
-master metadata server, which acts as a SPOF and only sort of supports
-replication (but not failover, unless you get Pro).
-
-## Cutting Room Floor
-
-The following projects were intended to be reviewed, but didn't make the cut for
-various reasons.
-
-* Tahoe-LAFS: The FUSE mount (which is actually an SFTP mount) doesn't support
- mutable files.
-
-* HekaFS: Doesn't appear to exist anymore(?)
-
-* IPFS-cluster: Doesn't support sharding.
-
-* MinFS: Seems to only work off S3, no longer maintained anyway.
-
-* DRDB: Linux specific, no mac support.
-
-* BeeGFS: No mac support (I don't think? I couldn't find any indication it
- supports macs at any rate).
-
-* NFS: No support for sharding the dataset.
-
-## Conclusions
-
-Going through the featuresets of all these different projects really helped me
-focus in on how I actually expect this system to function, and a few things
-stood out to me:
-
-* Perfect consistency is not a goal, and is ultimately harmful for this
- use-case. The FS needs to propagate changes relatively quickly, but if two
- different hosts are updating the same file it's not necessary to synchronize
- those updates like a local filesystem would; just let one changeset clobber
- the other and let the outer application deal with coordination.
-
-* Permissions are extremely important, and yet for all these projects are
- generally an afterthought. In a distributed setting we can't rely on the OS
- user/groups of a host to permission read/write access. Instead that must be
- done primarily via e2e encryption.
-
-* Transience is not something most of these project expect, but is a hard
- requirement of this use-case. In the long run we need something which can be
- run on home hardware on home ISPs, which is not reliable at all. Hosts need to
- be able to flit in and out of existence, and the cluster as a whole needs to
- self-heal through that process.
-
-In the end, it may be necessary to roll our own project for this, as I don't
-think any of the existing distributed file systems are suitable for what's
-needed.
-
-[mobile_nebula]: https://github.com/cryptic-io/mobile_nebula
-[nix]: https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/
diff --git a/src/_posts/2021-04-11-ripple-v2.md b/src/_posts/2021-04-11-ripple-v2.md
deleted file mode 100644
index cbde032..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2021-04-11-ripple-v2.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,436 +0,0 @@
----
-title: >-
- Ripple V2: A Better Game
-description: >-
- The sequel no one was waiting for!
-tags: tech
-series: ripple
----
-
-<p>
- <b>Movement:</b> Arrow keys or WASD<br/>
- <b>Jump:</b> Space<br/>
- <b>Goal:</b> Jump as many times as possible without touching a ripple!<br/>
- <br/>
- <b>Press Jump To Begin!</b>
-</p>
-
-_Who can make the muddy water clear?<br/>
-Let it be still, and it will gradually become clear._
-
-<canvas id="canvas"
- style="border:1px dashed #AAA"
- tabindex=0>
-Your browser doesn't support canvas. At this point in the world that's actually
-pretty cool, well done!
-</canvas>
-<button onclick="reset()">(R)eset</button>
-<span style="font-size: 2rem; margin-left: 1rem;">Score:
- <span style="font-weight: bold" id="score">0</span>
-</span>
-
-<script type="text/javascript">
-
-const palette = [
- "#264653",
- "#2A9D8F",
- "#E9C46A",
- "#F4A261",
- "#E76F51",
-];
-
-const width = 800;
-const height = 600;
-
-function hypotenuse(w, h) {
- return Math.sqrt(Math.pow(w, 2) + Math.pow(h, 2));
-}
-
-let canvas = document.getElementById("canvas");
-canvas.width = width;
-canvas.height = height;
-
-const whitelistedKeys = {
- "ArrowUp": {},
- "KeyW": {map: "ArrowUp"},
- "ArrowLeft": {},
- "KeyA": {map: "ArrowLeft"},
- "ArrowRight": {},
- "KeyD": {map: "ArrowRight"},
- "ArrowDown": {},
- "KeyS": {map: "ArrowDown"},
- "Space": {},
- "KeyR": {},
-};
-
-let keyboard = {};
-
-canvas.addEventListener('keydown', (event) => {
- let keyInfo = whitelistedKeys[event.code];
- if (!keyInfo) return;
-
- let code = event.code;
- if (keyInfo.map) code = keyInfo.map;
-
- event.preventDefault();
- keyboard[code] = true;
-});
-
-canvas.addEventListener('keyup', (event) => {
- let keyInfo = whitelistedKeys[event.code];
- if (!keyInfo) return;
-
- let code = event.code;
- if (keyInfo.map) code = keyInfo.map;
-
- event.preventDefault();
- delete keyboard[code];
-});
-
-
-const C = 700; // scales the overall speed of the radius
-const T = 500; // on which tick the radius change becomes linear
-
-/*
- f(x) = sqrt(C*x) when x < T
- (C/(2*sqrt(CT)))(x-T) + sqrt(CT) when x >= T
-
- radius(x) = f(x) + playerRadius;
-*/
-
-const F1 = (x) => Math.sqrt(C*x);
-const F2C1 = C / (2 * Math.sqrt(C*T));
-const F2C2 = Math.sqrt(C * T);
-const F2 = (x) => (F2C1 * (x - T)) + F2C2;
-const F = (x) => {
- if (x < T) return F1(x);
- return F2(x);
-};
-
-class Ripple {
-
- constructor(id, currTick, x, y, bounces, color) {
- this.id = id;
- this.tick = currTick;
- this.x = x;
- this.y = y;
- this.thickness = Math.pow(bounces+1, 1.25);
- this.color = color;
- this.winner = false;
-
- this.maxRadius = hypotenuse(x, y);
- this.maxRadius = Math.max(this.maxRadius, hypotenuse(width-x, y));
- this.maxRadius = Math.max(this.maxRadius, hypotenuse(x, height-y));
- this.maxRadius = Math.max(this.maxRadius, hypotenuse(width-x, height-y));
- }
-
- radius(currTick) {
- const x = currTick - this.tick;
- return F(x) + playerRadius;
- }
-
- draw(ctx, currTick) {
- ctx.beginPath();
- ctx.arc(this.x, this.y, this.radius(currTick), 0, Math.PI * 2, false);
- ctx.closePath();
- ctx.lineWidth = this.thickness;
- ctx.strokeStyle = this.winner ? "#FF0000" : this.color;
- ctx.stroke();
- }
-
- canGC(currTick) {
- return this.radius(currTick) > this.maxRadius;
- }
-}
-
-const playerRadius = 10;
-const playerMoveAccel = 0.5;
-const playerMoveDecel = 0.7;
-const playerMaxMoveSpeed = 4;
-const playerJumpSpeed = 0.08;
-const playerMaxHeight = 1;
-const playerGravity = 0.01;
-
-class Player{
-
- constructor(x, y, color) {
- this.x = x;
- this.y = y;
- this.z = 0;
- this.xVelocity = 0;
- this.yVelocity = 0;
- this.zVelocity = 0;
- this.color = color;
- this.falling = false;
- this.lastJumpHeight = 0;
- this.loser = false;
- }
-
- act() {
- if (keyboard["ArrowUp"]) {
- this.yVelocity = Math.max(-playerMaxMoveSpeed, this.yVelocity - playerMoveAccel);
- } else if (keyboard["ArrowDown"]) {
- this.yVelocity = Math.min(playerMaxMoveSpeed, this.yVelocity + playerMoveAccel);
- } else if (this.yVelocity > 0) {
- this.yVelocity = Math.max(0, this.yVelocity - playerMoveDecel);
- } else if (this.yVelocity < 0) {
- this.yVelocity = Math.min(0, this.yVelocity + playerMoveDecel);
- }
-
- this.y += this.yVelocity;
- this.y = Math.max(0+playerRadius, this.y);
- this.y = Math.min(height-playerRadius, this.y);
-
- if (keyboard["ArrowLeft"]) {
- this.xVelocity = Math.max(-playerMaxMoveSpeed, this.xVelocity - playerMoveAccel);
- } else if (keyboard["ArrowRight"]) {
- this.xVelocity = Math.min(playerMaxMoveSpeed, this.xVelocity + playerMoveAccel);
- } else if (this.xVelocity > 0) {
- this.xVelocity = Math.max(0, this.xVelocity - playerMoveDecel);
- } else if (this.xVelocity < 0) {
- this.xVelocity = Math.min(0, this.xVelocity + playerMoveDecel);
- }
-
- this.x += this.xVelocity;
- this.x = Math.max(0+playerRadius, this.x);
- this.x = Math.min(width-playerRadius, this.x);
-
- let jumpHeld = keyboard["Space"];
-
- if (jumpHeld && !this.falling && this.z < playerMaxHeight) {
- this.lastJumpHeight = 0;
- this.zVelocity = playerJumpSpeed;
- } else {
- this.zVelocity = Math.max(-playerJumpSpeed, this.zVelocity - playerGravity);
- this.falling = this.z > 0;
- }
-
- let prevZ = this.z;
- this.z = Math.max(0, this.z + this.zVelocity);
- this.lastJumpHeight = Math.max(this.z, this.lastJumpHeight);
- }
-
- draw(ctx) {
- let y = this.y - (this.z * 40);
- let radius = playerRadius * (this.z+1)
-
- // draw main
- ctx.beginPath();
- ctx.arc(this.x, y, radius, 0, Math.PI * 2, false);
- ctx.closePath();
- ctx.lineWidth = 0;
- ctx.fillStyle = this.color;
- ctx.fill();
- if (this.loser) {
- ctx.strokeStyle = '#FF0000';
- ctx.lineWidth = 2;
- ctx.stroke();
- }
-
- // draw shadow, if in the air
- if (this.z > 0) {
- let radius = Math.max(0, playerRadius * (1.2 - this.z));
- ctx.beginPath();
- ctx.arc(this.x, this.y, radius, 0, Math.PI * 2, false);
- ctx.closePath();
- ctx.lineWidth = 0;
- ctx.fillStyle = this.color+"33";
- ctx.fill();
- }
- }
-}
-
-class Game {
-
- constructor(canvas, scoreEl) {
- this.currTick = 0;
- this.player = new Player(width/2, height/2, palette[0]);
- this.state = 'play';
- this.score = 0;
- this.scoreEl = scoreEl;
- this.canvas = canvas;
- this.ctx = canvas.getContext("2d");
- this.ripples = [];
- this.nextRippleID = 0;
- }
-
- shouldReset() {
- return keyboard['KeyR'];
- }
-
- newRippleID() {
- let id = this.nextRippleID;
- this.nextRippleID++;
- return id;
- }
-
- // newRipple initializes and stores a new ripple at the given coordinates, as
- // well as all sub-ripples which make up the initial ripple's reflections.
- newRipple(x, y, bounces, color) {
- color = color ? color : palette[Math.floor(Math.random() * palette.length)];
-
- let ripplePos = [];
- let nextRipples = [];
-
- let addRipple = (x, y) => {
- for (let i in ripplePos) {
- if (ripplePos[i][0] == x && ripplePos[i][1] == y) return;
- }
-
- let ripple = new Ripple(this.newRippleID(), this.currTick, x, y, bounces, color);
- nextRipples.push(ripple);
- ripplePos.push([x, y]);
- this.ripples.push(ripple);
- };
-
- // add initial ripple, after this we deal with the sub-ripples.
- addRipple(x, y);
-
- while (bounces > 0) {
- bounces--;
- let prevRipples = nextRipples;
- nextRipples = [];
-
- for (let i in prevRipples) {
- let prevX = prevRipples[i].x;
- let prevY = prevRipples[i].y;
- addRipple(prevX, -prevY);
- addRipple(-prevX, prevY);
- addRipple((2*this.canvas.width)-prevX, prevY);
- addRipple(prevX, (2*this.canvas.height)-prevY);
- }
- }
- }
-
- // playerRipplesState returns a mapping of rippleID -> boolean, where each
- // boolean indicates the ripple's relation to the player at the moment. true
- // indicates the player is outside the ripple, false indicates the player is
- // within the ripple.
- playerRipplesState() {
- let state = {};
- for (let i in this.ripples) {
- let ripple = this.ripples[i];
- let rippleRadius = ripple.radius(this.currTick);
- let hs = Math.pow(ripple.x-this.player.x, 2) + Math.pow(ripple.y-this.player.y, 2);
- state[ripple.id] = hs > Math.pow(rippleRadius + playerRadius, 2);
- }
- return state;
- }
-
- playerHasJumpedOverRipple(prev, curr) {
- for (const rippleID in prev) {
- if (!curr.hasOwnProperty(rippleID)) continue;
- if (curr[rippleID] != prev[rippleID]) return true;
- }
- return false;
- }
-
- update() {
- if (this.state != 'play') return;
-
- let playerPrevZ = this.player.z;
- this.player.act();
-
- if (playerPrevZ == 0 && this.player.z > 0) {
- // player has jumped
- this.prevPlayerRipplesState = this.playerRipplesState();
-
- } else if (playerPrevZ > 0 && this.player.z == 0) {
-
- // player has landed, don't produce a ripple unless there are no
- // existing ripples or the player jumped over an existing one.
- if (
- this.ripples.length == 0 ||
- this.playerHasJumpedOverRipple(
- this.prevPlayerRipplesState,
- this.playerRipplesState()
- )
- ) {
- let bounces = Math.floor((this.player.lastJumpHeight*1.8)+1);
- console.log("spawning ripple with bounces:", bounces);
- this.newRipple(this.player.x, this.player.y, bounces);
- this.score += bounces;
- }
- }
-
- if (this.player.z == 0) {
- for (let i in this.ripples) {
- let ripple = this.ripples[i];
- let rippleRadius = ripple.radius(this.currTick);
- if (rippleRadius < playerRadius * 1.5) continue;
- let hs = Math.pow(ripple.x-this.player.x, 2) + Math.pow(ripple.y-this.player.y, 2);
- if (hs > Math.pow(rippleRadius + playerRadius, 2)) {
- continue;
- } else if (hs <= Math.pow(rippleRadius - playerRadius, 2)) {
- continue;
- } else {
- console.log("game over", ripple);
- ripple.winner = true;
- this.player.loser = true;
- this.state = 'gameOver';
- // deliberately don't break here, in case multiple ripples hit
- // the player on the same frame
- }
- }
- }
-
- this.ripples = this.ripples.filter(ripple => !ripple.canGC(this.currTick));
-
- this.currTick++;
- }
-
- draw() {
- this.ctx.clearRect(0, 0, this.canvas.width, this.canvas.height);
- this.ripples.forEach(ripple => ripple.draw(this.ctx, this.currTick));
- this.player.draw(this.ctx)
- this.scoreEl.innerHTML = this.score;
- }
-}
-
-
-const requestAnimationFrame =
- window.requestAnimationFrame ||
- window.mozRequestAnimationFrame ||
- window.webkitRequestAnimationFrame ||
- window.msRequestAnimationFrame;
-
-let game = new Game(canvas, document.getElementById("score"));
-
-function reset() {
- game = new Game(canvas, document.getElementById("score"));
-}
-
-function nextFrame() {
- if (game.shouldReset()) reset();
-
- game.update()
- game.draw()
- requestAnimationFrame(nextFrame);
-}
-requestAnimationFrame(nextFrame);
-
-canvas.focus();
-
-</script>
-
-## Changelog
-
-There's been two major changes to the mechanics of the game since the previous
-version:
-
-* A new ripple is created _only_ if there are no ripples on the field already,
- or if the player has jumped over an existing ripple.
-
-* The score is increased only if a ripple is created, and is increased by the
- number of bounces off the wall that ripple will have. Put another way, the
- score is increased based on how high you jump.
-
-Other small changes include:
-
-* Ripple growth rate has been modified. It's now harder for a player to run into
- the ripple they just created.
-
-* Ripple thickness indicates how many bounces are left in the ripple. This was
- the case previously, but it's been made more obvious.
-
-* Small performance improvements.
diff --git a/src/_posts/2021-04-22-composing-processes-into-a-static-binary-with-nix.md b/src/_posts/2021-04-22-composing-processes-into-a-static-binary-with-nix.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 885d56b..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2021-04-22-composing-processes-into-a-static-binary-with-nix.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,248 +0,0 @@
----
-title: >-
- Composing Processes Into a Static Binary With Nix
-description: >-
- Goodbye, docker-compose!
----
-
-It's pretty frequent that one wants to use a project that requires multiple
-processes running. For example, a small web api which uses some database to
-store data in, or a networking utility which has some monitoring process which
-can be run alongside it.
-
-In these cases it's extremely helpful to be able to compose these disparate
-processes together into a single process. From the user's perspective it's much
-nicer to only have to manage one process (even if it has hidden child
-processes). From a dev's perspective the alternatives are: finding libraries in
-the same language which do the disparate tasks and composing them into the same
-process via import, or (if such libraries don't exist, which is likely)
-rewriting the functionality of all processes into a new, monolithic project
-which does everything; a huge waste of effort!
-
-## docker-compose
-
-A tool I've used before for process composition is
-[docker-compose][docker-compose]. While it works well for composition, it
-suffers from the same issues docker in general suffers from: annoying networking
-quirks, a questionable security model, and the need to run the docker daemon.
-While these issues are generally surmountable for a developer or sysadmin, they
-are not suitable for a general-purpose project which will be shipped to average
-users.
-
-## nix-bundle
-
-Enter [nix-bundle][nix-bundle]. This tools will take any [nix][nix] derivation
-and construct a single static binary out of it, a la [AppImage][appimage].
-Combined with a process management tool like [circus][circus], nix-bundle
-becomes a very useful tool for composing processes together!
-
-To demonstrate this, we'll be looking at putting together a project I wrote
-called [markov][markov], a simple REST API for building [markov
-chains][markov-chain] which is written in [go][golang] and backed by
-[redis][redis].
-
-## Step 1: Building Individual Components
-
-Step one is to get [markov][markov] and its dependencies into a state where it
-can be run with [nix][nix]. Doing this is fairly simple, we merely use the
-`buildGoModule` function:
-
-```
-pkgs.buildGoModule {
- pname = "markov";
- version = "618b666484566de71f2d59114d011ff4621cf375";
- src = pkgs.fetchFromGitHub {
- owner = "mediocregopher";
- repo = "markov";
- rev = "618b666484566de71f2d59114d011ff4621cf375";
- sha256 = "1sx9dr1q3vr3q8nyx3965x6259iyl85591vx815g1xacygv4i4fg";
- };
- vendorSha256 = "048wygrmv26fsnypsp6vxf89z3j0gs9f1w4i63khx7h134yxhbc6";
-}
-```
-
-This expression results in a derivation which places the markov binary at
-`bin/markov`.
-
-The other component we need to run markov is [redis][redis], which conveniently
-is already packaged in nixpkgs as `pkg.redis`.
-
-## Step 2: Composing Using Circus
-
-[Circus][circus] can be configured to run multiple processes at the same time.
-It will collect the stdout/stderr logs of these processes and combine them into
-a single stream, or write them to log files. If any processes fail circus will
-automatically restart them. It has a simple configuration and is, overall, a
-great tool for a simple project like this.
-
-Circus also comes pre-packed in nixpkgs, so we don't need to do anything to
-actually build it. We only need to configure it. To do this we'll write a bash
-script which generates the configuration on-the-fly, and then runs the process
-with that configuration.
-
-This script is going to act as the "frontend" for our eventual static binary;
-the user will pass in configuration parameters to this script, and this script
-will translate those into the appropriate configuration for all sub-process
-(markov, redis, circus). For this demo we won't go nuts with the configuration,
-we'll just expose the following:
-
-* `MARKOV_LISTEN_ADDR`: Address REST API will listen on (defaults to
- `localhost:8000`).
-
-* `MARKOV_TIMEOUT`: Expiration time of each link of the chain (defaults to 720
- hours).
-
-* `MARKOV_DATA_DIR`: Directory where data will be stored (defaults to current
- working directory).
-
-The bash script will take these params in as environment variables. The nix
-expression to generate the bash script, which we'll call our entrypoint script,
-will look like this (assumes that the expression to generate `bin/markov`,
-defined above, is set to the `markov` variable):
-
-```
-pkgs.writeScriptBin "markov" ''
- #!${pkgs.stdenv.shell}
-
- # On every run we create new, temporary, configuration files for redis and
- # circus. To do this we create a new config directory.
- markovCfgDir=$(${pkgs.coreutils}/bin/mktemp -d)
- echo "generating configuration to $markovCfgDir"
-
- cat >$markovCfgDir/redis.conf <<EOF
- save ""
- dir "''${MARKOV_DATA_DIR:-$(pwd)}"
- appendonly yes
- appendfilename "markov.data"
- EOF
-
- cat >$markovCfgDir/circus.ini <<EOF
-
- [circus]
-
- [watcher:markov]
- cmd = ${markov}/bin/markov \
- -listenAddr ''${MARKOV_LISTEN_ADDR:-localhost:8000} \
- -timeout ''${MARKOV_TIMEOUT:-720}
- numprocesses = 1
-
- [watcher:redis]
- cmd = ${pkgs.redis}/bin/redis-server $markovCfgDir/redis.conf
- numprocesses = 1
- EOF
-
- exec ${pkgs.circus}/bin/circusd $markovCfgDir/circus.ini
-'';
-```
-
-By `nix-build`ing this expression we end up with a derivation with
-`bin/markov`, and running that should result in the following output:
-
-```
-generating configuration to markov.VLMPwqY
-2021-04-22 09:27:56 circus[181906] [INFO] Starting master on pid 181906
-2021-04-22 09:27:56 circus[181906] [INFO] Arbiter now waiting for commands
-2021-04-22 09:27:56 circus[181906] [INFO] markov started
-2021-04-22 09:27:56 circus[181906] [INFO] redis started
-181923:C 22 Apr 2021 09:27:56.063 # oO0OoO0OoO0Oo Redis is starting oO0OoO0OoO0Oo
-181923:C 22 Apr 2021 09:27:56.063 # Redis version=6.0.6, bits=64, commit=00000000, modified=0, pid=181923, just started
-181923:C 22 Apr 2021 09:27:56.063 # Configuration loaded
-...
-```
-
-The `markov` server process doesn't have many logs, unfortunately, but redis'
-logs at least work well, and doing a `curl localhost:8000` results in the
-response from the `markov` server.
-
-At this point our processes are composed using circus, let's now bundle it all
-into a single static binary!
-
-## Step 3: nix-bundle
-
-The next step is to run [nix-bundle][nix-bundle] on the entrypoint expression,
-and nix-bundle will compile all dependencies (including markov, redis, and
-circus) into a single archive file, and make that file executable. When the
-archive is executed it will run our entrypoint script directly.
-
-Getting nix-bundle is very easy, just use nix-shell!
-
-```
-nix-shell -p nix-bundle
-```
-
-This will open a shell where the `nix-bundle` binary is available on your path.
-From there just run the following to construct the binary (this assumes that the
-nix code described so far is stored in `markov.nix`, the full source of which
-will be linked to at the end of this post):
-
-```
-nix-bundle '((import ./markov.nix) {}).entrypoint' '/bin/markov'
-```
-
-The resulting binary is called `markov`, and is 89MB. The size is a bit jarring,
-considering the simplicity of the functionality, but it could probably be
-trimmed by using a different process manager than circus (which requires
-bundling an entire python runtime into the binary).
-
-Running the binary directly as `./markov` produces the same result as when we
-ran the entrypoint script earlier. Success! We have bundled multiple existing
-processes into a single, opaque, static binary. Installation of this binary is
-now as easy as copying it to any linux machine and running it.
-
-## Bonus Step: nix'ing nix-bundle
-
-Installing and running [nix-bundle][nix-bundle] manually is _fine_, but it'd be even better if
-that was defined as part of our nix setup as well. That way any new person
-wouldn't have to worry about that step, and still get the same deterministic
-output from the build.
-
-Unfortunately, we can't actually run `nix-bundle` from within a nix build
-derivation, as it requires access to the nix store and that can't be done (or at
-least I'm not on that level yet). So instead we'll have to settle for defining
-the `nix-bundle` binary in nix and then using a `Makefile` to call it.
-
-Defining a `nix-bundle` expression is easy enough:
-
-```
- nixBundleSrc = pkgs.fetchFromGitHub {
- owner = "matthewbauer";
- repo = "nix-bundle";
- rev = "8e396533ef8f3e8a769037476824d668409b4a74";
- sha256 = "1lrq0990p07av42xz203w64abv2rz9xd8jrzxyvzzwj7vjj7qwyw";
- };
-
- nixBundle = (import "${nixBundleSrc}/release.nix") {
- nixpkgs' = pkgs;
- };
-```
-
-Then the Makefile:
-
-```make
-bundle:
- nix-build markov.nix -A nixBundle
- ./result/bin/nix-bundle '((import ./markov.nix) {}).entrypoint' '/bin/markov'
-```
-
-Now all a developer needs to rebuild the project is to do `make` within the
-directory, while also having nix set up. The result will be a deterministically
-built, static binary, encompassing multiple processes which will all work
-together behind the scenes. This static binary can be copied to any linux
-machine and run there without any further installation steps.
-
-How neat is that!
-
-The final source files used for this project can be found below:
-
-* [markov.nix](/assets/markov/markov.nix.html)
-* [Makefile](/assets/markov/Makefile.html)
-
-[nix]: https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/
-[nix-bundle]: https://github.com/matthewbauer/nix-bundle
-[docker-compose]: https://docs.docker.com/compose/
-[appimage]: https://appimage.org/
-[circus]: https://circus.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
-[markov]: https://github.com/mediocregopher/markov
-[markov-chain]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markov_chain
-[golang]: https://golang.org/
-[redis]: https://redis.io/
diff --git a/src/_posts/2021-04-27-loops-in-ginger.md b/src/_posts/2021-04-27-loops-in-ginger.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 2b0433c..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2021-04-27-loops-in-ginger.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,223 +0,0 @@
----
-title: >-
- Loops in Ginger
-description: >-
- Bringing it back around.
-series: ginger
-tags: tech
----
-
-In previous posts in this series I went over the general idea of the ginger
-programming language, and some of its properties. To recap:
-
-* Ginger is a programming language whose syntax defines a directed graph, in the
- same way that a LISP language's syntax defines nested lists.
-
-* Graph edges indicate an operation, while nodes indicate a value.
-
-* The special values `in` and `out` are used when interpreting a graph as a
- function.
-
-* A special node type, the tuple, is defined as being a node whose value is an
- ordered set of input edges.
-
-* Another special node type, the fork, is the complement to the tuple. A fork is
- defined as being a node whose value is an ordered set of output edges.
-
-* The special `if` operation accepts a 2-tuple, the first value being some state
- value and the second being a tuple. The `if` operation expects to be directed
- towards a 2-fork. If the boolean is true then the top output edge of the fork
- is taken, otherwise the bottom is taken. The state value is what's passed to
- the taken edge.
-
-There were some other detail rules but I don't remember them off the top of my
-head.
-
-## Loops
-
-Today I'd like to go over my ideas for how loops would work in ginger. With
-loops established ginger would officially be a Turing complete language and,
-given time and energy, real work could actually begin on it.
-
-As with conditionals I'll start by establishing a base example. Let's say we'd
-like to define an operation which prints out numbers from 0 up to `n`, where `n`
-is given as an argument. In go this would look like:
-
-```go
-func printRange(n int) int {
- for i := 0; i < n; i++ {
- fmt.Println(i)
- }
-}
-```
-
-With that established, let's start looking at different patterns.
-
-## Goto
-
-In the olden days the primary looping construct was `goto`, which essentially
-teleports the program counter (aka instruction pointer) to another place in the
-execution stack. Pretty much any other looping construct can be derived from
-`goto` and some kind of conditional, so it's a good starting place when
-considering loops in ginger.
-
-```
-(in -println-> } -incr-> out) -> println-incr
-
-0 -> } -> } -if-> { -> out
-in -> } -eq-> } { -> } -upd-> } -+
- ^ 0 -> } |
- | println-incr -> } |
- | |
- +--------------------------------+
-```
-
-(Note: the `upd` operation is used here for convenience. It takes in three
-arguments: A tuple, an index, and an operation. It applies the operation to the
-tuple element at the given index, and returns a new tuple with that index set to
-the value returned.)
-
-Here `goto` is performed using a literal arrow going from the right to left.
-it's ugly and hard to write, and would only be moreso the more possible gotos an
-operation has.
-
-It also complicates our graphs in a significant way: up till now ginger graphs
-have have always been directed _acyclic_ graphs (DAGs), but by introducing this
-construct we allow that graphs might be cyclic. It's not immediately clear to me
-what the consequences of this will be, but I'm sure they will be great. If
-nothign else it will make the compiler much more complex, as each value can no
-longer be defined in terms of its input edge, as that edge might resolve back to
-the value itself.
-
-While conceptually sound, I think this strategy fails the practability test. We
-can do better.
-
-## While
-
-The `while` construct is the basic looping primitive of iterative languages
-(some call it `for`, but they're just lying to themselves).
-
-Try as I might, I can't come up with a way to make `while` work with ginger.
-`while` ultimately relies on scoped variables being updated in place to
-function, while ginger is based on the concept of pipelining a set of values
-through a series of operations. From the point of view of the programmer these
-operations are essentially immutable, so the requirement of a variable which can
-be updated in place cannot be met.
-
-## Recur
-
-This pattern is based on how many functional languages, for example erlang,
-handle looping. Rather than introducing new primitives around looping, these
-language instead ensure that tail calls are properly optimized and uses those
-instead. So loops are implemented as recursive function calls.
-
-For ginger to do this it would make sense to introduce a new special value,
-`recur`, which could be used alongside `in` and `out` within operations. When
-the execution path hits a `recur` then it gets teleported back to the `in`
-value, with the input to `recur` now being the output from `in`. Usage of it
-would look like:
-
-```
-(
-
- (in -println-> } -incr-> out) -> println-incr
-
- in -> } -if-> { -> out
- in -eq-> } { -> } -upd-> } -> recur
- 0 -> }
- println-incr -> }
-
-) -> inner-op
-
-0 -> } -inner-op-> out
-in -> }
-```
-
-This looks pretty similar to the `goto` example overall, but with the major
-difference that the looping body had to be wrapped into an inner operation. The
-reason for this is that the outer operation only takes in one argument, `n`, but
-the loop actually needs two pieces of state to function: `n` and the current
-value. So the inner operation loops over these two pieces of state, and the
-outer operation supplies `n` and an initial iteration value (`0`) to that inner
-operation.
-
-This seems cumbersome on the surface, but what other languages do (such as
-erlang, which is the one I'm most familiar with) is to provide built-in macros
-on top of this primitive which make it more pleasant to use. These include
-function polymorphism and a more familiar `for` construct. With a decent macro
-capability ginger could do the same.
-
-The benefits here are that the graphs remain acyclic, and the syntax has not
-been made more cumbersome. It follows conventions established by other
-languages, and ensures the language will be capable of tail-recursion.
-
-## Map/Reduce
-
-Another functional strategy which is useful is that of the map/reduce power
-couple. The `map` operation takes a sequence of values and an operation, and
-returns a sequence of the same length where the operation has been applied to
-each value in the original sequence individually. The `reduce` operation is more
-complicated (and not necessary for out example), but it's essentially a
-mechanism to turn a sequence of values into a single value.
-
-For our example we only need `map`, plus one more helper operation: `range`.
-`range` takes a number `n` and returns a sequence of numbers starting at `0` and
-ending at `n-1`. Our print example now looks like:
-
-```
-in -range-> } -map-> out
- println -> }
-```
-
-Very simple! Map/reduce is a well established pattern and is probably the
-best way to construct functional programs. However, the question remains whether
-these are the best _primitives_ for looping, and I don't believe they are. Both
-`map` and `reduce` can be derived from conditional and looping primitives like
-`if` and `recur`, and they can't do some things that those primitives can. While
-
-
-I expect one of the first things which will be done in ginger is to define `map`
-and `reduce` in terms of `if` and a looping primitive, and use them generously
-throughout the code, I think the fact that they can be defined in terms of
-lower-level primitives indicates that they aren't the right looping primitives
-for ginger.
-
-## Conclusion
-
-Unlike with the conditionals posts, where I started out not really knowing what
-I wanted to do with conditionals, I more or less knew where this post was going
-from the beginning. `recur` is, in my mind, the best primitive for looping in
-ginger. It provides the flexibility to be extended to any use-case, while not
-complicating the structure of the language. While possibly cumbersome to
-implement directly, `recur` can be used as a primitive to construct more
-convenient looping operations like `map` and `reduce`.
-
-As a final treat (lucky you!), here's `map` defined using `if` and `recur`:
-
-```
-(
- in -0-> mapped-seq
- in -1-> orig-seq
- in -2-> op
-
- mapped-seq -len-> i
-
- mapped-seq -> } -if-> { -> out
- orig-seq -len-> } -eq-> } { -> } -append-> } -> recur
- i -> } } }
- } }
- orig-seq -i-> } -op-> } }
- }
- orig-seq -> }
- op -> }
-) -> inner-map
-
- () -> } -inner-map-> out
-in -0-> }
-in -1-> }
-```
-
-The next step for ginger is going to be writing an actual implementation of the
-graph structure in some other language (let's be honest, it'll be in go). After
-that we'll need a syntax definition which can be used to encode/decode that
-structure, and from there we can start actually implementing the language!
diff --git a/src/_posts/2021-05-02-nfts.md b/src/_posts/2021-05-02-nfts.md
deleted file mode 100644
index a3871b1..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2021-05-02-nfts.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,349 +0,0 @@
----
-title: >-
- NFTs
-description: >-
- Some thoughts about.
-tags: tech crypto
----
-
-NFT stands for "non-fungible token". The "token" part refers to an NFT being a
-token whose ownership is recorded on a blockchain. Pretty much all
-cryptocurrencies, from bitcoin to your favorite shitcoin, could be called tokens
-in this sense. Each token has exactly one owner, and ownership of the token can
-be transferred from one wallet to another via a transaction on the blockchain.
-
-What sets an NFT apart from a cryptocurrency is the "non-fungible" part.
-Cryptocurrency tokens are fungible; one bitcoin is the same as any other bitoin
-(according to the protocol, at least), in the same way as one US dollar holds as
-much value as any other US dollar. Fungibility is the property of two units of
-something being exactly interchangeable.
-
-NFTs are _not_ fungible. One is not the same as any other. Each has some piece
-of data attached to it, and each is recorded separately on a blockchain as an
-individual token. You can think of an NFT as a unique cryptocurrency which has a
-supply of 1 and can't be divided.
-
-Depending on the protocol used to produce an NFT, the data attached to it might
-be completely independent of its identity, even. It may be possible to produce
-two NFTs with the exact same data attached to them (again, depending on the
-protocol used), but even so those two NFTs will be independent and not
-interchangeable.
-
-## FUD
-
-Before getting into why NFTs are interesting, I want to first address some
-common criticism I see of them online (aka, in my twitter feed). The most
-common, and unfortunately least legitimate, criticism has to do with the
-environmental impact of NFTs. While the impact on energy usage and the
-environment when talking about bitcoin is a topic worth going into, bitcoin
-doesn't support hosting NFTs and therefore that topic is irrelevant here.
-
-Most NFTs are hosted on ethereum, which does have a comparable energy footprint
-to bitcoin (it's somewhat less than half, according to the internet). _However_,
-ethereum is taking actual, concrete steps towards changing its consensus
-mechanism from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS), which will cut the
-energy usage of the network down to essentially nothing. The rollout plan for
-Ethereum PoS covers the next couple of years, and after that we don't really
-have to worry about the energy usage of NFTs any longer.
-
-The other big criticism I hear is about the value and nature of art and what the
-impact of NFTs are in that area. I'm going to talk more about this in this post,
-but, simply put, I don't think that the value and nature of art are immutable,
-anymore than the form of art is immutable. Perhaps NFTs _will_ change art, but
-change isn't bad in itself, and furthermore I don't think they will actually
-change it all that much. People will still produce art, it's only the
-distribution mechanism that might change.
-
-## Real, Useful, Boring Things
-
-Most of the coverage around NFTs has to do with using them to represent
-collectibles and art. I'd like to start by talking about other use-cases, those
-where NFTs are actually "useful" (in the dull, practical sense).
-
-Each NFT can carry some piece of data along with it. This data can be anything,
-but for a practical use-case it needs to be something which indicates ownership
-of some internet good. It _cannot_ be the good itself. For example, an NFT which
-contains an image does not really convey the ownership of that image; anyone can
-copy the image data and own that image as well (intellectual property rights be
-damned!).
-
-A real use-case for NFTs which I'm already, if accidentally, taking advantage
-of, is domain name registration. I am the proud owner of the
-[mediocregopher.eth][ens] domain name (the `.eth` TLD is not yet in wide usage
-in browsers, but one day!). The domain name's ownership is indicated by an NFT:
-whoever holds that NFT, which I currently do, has the right to change all
-information attached to the `mediocregopher.eth` domain. If I want to sell the
-domain all I need to do is sell the NFT, which can be done via an ethereum
-transaction.
-
-Domain names work well for NFTs because knowing the data attached to the NFT
-doesn't actually do anything for you. It's the actual _ownership_ of the NFT
-which unlocks value. And I think this is the key rule for where to look to apply
-NFTs to practical use-cases: the ownership of the NFT has to unlock some
-functionality, not the data attached to it. The functionality has to be digital
-in nature, as well, as anything related to the physical world is not as easily
-guaranteed.
-
-I haven't thought of many further practical use-cases of NFTs, but we're still
-in early stages and I'm sure more will come up. In any case, the practical stuff
-is boring, let's talk about art.
-
-[ens]: https://nfton.me/nft/0x57f1887a8bf19b14fc0df6fd9b2acc9af147ea85/7558304748055753202351203668187280010336475031529884349040105080320604507070
-
-## Art, Memes, and All Wonderful Things
-
-For many the most baffling aspect of NFTs is their use as collectibles. Indeed,
-their use as collectibles is their _primary_ use right now, even though these
-collectibles procur no practical value for their owner; at best they are
-speculative goods, small gambles, and at worst just a complete waste of money.
-How can this be?
-
-The curmudgeons of the world would have you believe that money is only worth
-spending on goods which offer practical value. If the good is neither consumable
-in a way which meets a basic need, nor produces other goods of further value,
-then it is worthless. Obviously NFTs fall into the "worthless" category.
-
-Unfortunately for them, the curmudgeons don't live in reality. People spend
-their money on stupid, pointless shit all the time. I'm prepared to argue that
-people almost exclusively spend their money on stupid, pointless shit. The
-monetary value of a good has very little to do with its ability to meet a basic
-necessity or its ability to produce value (whatever that even really means), and
-more to do with how owning the shiny thing or doing the fun thing makes us
-stupid monkeys very happy (for a time).
-
-Rather than bemoan NFTs, and our simple irrationality which makes them
-desirable, let's embrace them as a new tool for expressing our irrationality to
-the world, a tool which we have yet to fully explore.
-
-### A Moment Captured
-
-It's 1857 and Jean-François Millet reveals to the world what would become one of
-his best known works: _The Gleaners_.
-
-{% include image.html dir="nfts" file="gleaners.jpg" width=5354 %}
-
-The painting depicts three peasants gleaning a field, the bulk of their harvest
-already stacked high in the background. The [wikipedia entry][gleaners] has this
-to say about the painting's eventual final sale:
-
-> In 1889, the painting, then owned by banker Ferdinand Bischoffsheim, sold for
-> 300,000 francs at auction. The buyer remained anonymous, but rumours were
-> that the painting was coveted by an American buyer. It was announced less than
-> a week later that Champagne maker Jeanne-Alexandrine Louise Pommery had
-> acquired the piece, which silenced gossip on her supposed financial issues
-> after leaving her grapes on the vines weeks longer than her competitors.
-
-I think we can all breathe a sigh of relief for Jeanne-Alexandrine.
-
-I'd like to talk about _why_ this painting was worth 300k francs, and really
-what makes art valuable at all (aside from the money laundering and tax evasion
-that high-value art enables). Millet didn't merely take a picture using paints
-and canvas, an exact replica of what his eyes could see. It's doubtful this
-scene ever played out in reality, exactly as depicted, at all! It existed only
-within Millet himself.
-
-In _The Gleaners_ Millet captured far more than an image: the image itself
-conveys the struggle of a humble life, the joy of the harvest, the history of
-the french peasantry (and therefore the other french societal classes as well),
-the vastness of the world compared to our little selves, and surely many other
-things, each dependant on the viewer. The image conveys emotions, and most
-importantly it conveys emotions captured at a particular moment, a moment which
-no longer exists and will never exist again. The capturing of such a moment by
-an artist capable of doing it some justice, so others can experience it to any
-significant degree far into the future, is a rare event.
-
-Access to that rare moment is what is being purchased for 300k francs. We refer
-to the painting as the "original", but really the painting is only the
-first-hand reproduction of the moment, which is the true original, and proximity
-to the true original is what is being purchased. All other reproductions must be
-based on this first-hand one (be they photographs or painted copies), and are
-therefore second and third-hand.
-
-Consider the value of a concert ticket; it is based on both how much in demand
-the performance is, how close to the performance the seating section is, and how
-many seats in that section there are. When one purchases the "original" _The
-Gleaners_, one is purchasing a front-row ticket to a world-class performance at
-a venue with only one seat. That is why it was worth 300k francs.
-
-I have one final thing to say here and then I'll move onto the topic at hand:
-the history of the work compounds its value as well. _The Gleaners_ conveys an
-emotion, but knowing the critical reaction of the french elite at its first
-unveiling can add to that emotion.
-
-Again, from the [wiki entry][gleaners]:
-
-> Millet's The Gleaners was also not perceived well due to its large size, 33
-> inches by 44 inches, or 84 by 112 centimetres. This was large for a painting
-> depicting labor. Normally this size of a canvas was reserved for religious or
-> mythological style paintings. Millet's work did not depict anything
-> religiously affiliated, nor was there any reference to any mythological
-> beliefs. The painting illustrated a realistic view of poverty and the working
-> class. One critic commented that "his three gleaners have gigantic
-> pretensions, they pose as the Three Fates of Poverty...their ugliness and
-> their grossness unrelieved."
-
-Now scroll back up and see if you don't now have more affinity for the painting
-than before you knew that. If so, then the face value just went up, just a
-little bit.
-
-[gleaners]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gleaners
-
-### The Value of an NFT
-
-With this acknowledgement of _why_ people desire art, we can understand why they
-would want an NFT depicting an artwork.
-
-A few days ago an NFT of this image sold for almost $500k:
-
-{% include image.html dir="nfts" file="disaster-girl.jpg" width=2560 %}
-
-Most of the internet knows this image as _Disaster Girl_, a meme which has been
-around since time immemorial (from the internet's perspective, anyway, in
-reality it was taken in 2007). The moment captured is funny, the girl in the
-image smiling as if she had set the fire which blazes in the background. But, as
-with _The Gleaners_, the image itself isn't everything. The countless usages of
-the image, the original and all of its remixes, all passed around as memes on
-the internet for the past 14 years, have all worked to add to the image's
-demand. _Disaster Girl_ is no longer just a funny picture or a versatile meme
-format, it's a piece of human history and nostalgia.
-
-Unlike physical paintings, however, internet memes are imminently copyable. If
-they weren't they could hardly function as memes! We can only have one
-"original" _The Gleaners_, but anyone with a computer can have an exact, perfect
-copy of the original _Disaster Girl_, such that there's no true original. But if
-I were to put up an NFT of _Disaster Girl_ for sale, I wouldn't get a damned
-penny for it (probably). Why was that version apparently worth $500k?
-
-The reason is that the seller is the girl in the image herself, now 21 years old
-and in college. I have no particular connection to _Disaster Girl_, so buying an
-NFT from me would be like buying a print of _The Gleaners_ off some rando in the
-street; just a shallow copy, worth only the material it's printed on plus some
-labor, and nothing more. But when Disaster Girl herself sells the NFT, then the
-buyer is actually part of the moment, they are entering themselves into the
-history of this meme that the whole world has taken a part in for the last 14
-years! $500k isn't so unreasonable in that light.
-
-### Property on the Internet
-
-I don't make it a secret that I consider "intellectual property" to be a giant
-fucking scam that the world has unfortunately bought into. Data, be it a
-physical book or a digital file, is essentially free to copy, and so any price
-placed on the copying or sharing of knowledge is purely artificial. But we don't
-have an alternate mechanism for paying producers of knowledge and art, and so we
-continue to treat data as property even though it bears absolutely no
-resemblance to anything of the kind.
-
-Disaster Girl has not, to my knowledge, asserted any property rights on the
-image of herself. Doing so in any real sense, beyond going after a handful of
-high-value targets who might settle a lawsuit, is simply not a feasible option.
-Instead, by selling an NFT, Disaster Girl has been compensated for her labor
-(meager as it was) in a way which was proportional to its impact on the world,
-all without the invocation of the law. A great success!
-
-Actually, the labor was performed by Disaster Girl's father, who took the
-original image and sent it into a photo contest or something. What would have
-happened if the NFT was sold in his name? I imagine that it would not have sold
-for nearly as much. This makes sense to me, even if it does not make sense from
-a purely economical point of view. Disaster Girl's father did the work in the
-moment, but being a notable figure to the general public is its own kind of
-labor, and it's likely that his daughter has born the larger burden over time.
-The same logic applies to why we pay our movie stars absurd amounts even while
-the crew makes a "normal" wage.
-
-Should the father not then get compensated at all? I think he should, and I
-think he could! If he were to produce an NFT of his own, of the exact same
-image, it would also fetch a decent price. Probably not 6 figures, possibly not
-even 4, but considering the actual contribution he made (taking a picture and
-uploading it), I think the price would be fair. How many photographers get paid
-anything at all for their off-hand pictures of family outings?
-
-And this is the point I'd like to make: an NFT's price, like in all art, is
-proportional to the distance to the moment captured. The beauty is that this
-distance is purely subjective; it is judged not by rules set down in law by
-fallable lawyers, but instead by the public at large. It is, in essence, a
-democritization of intellectual property disputes. If multiple people claim to
-having produced a single work, let them all produce an NFT, and the market will
-decide what each of their work is worth.
-
-Will the market ever be wrong? Certainly. But will it distribute the worth more
-incorrectly than our current system, where artists must sell their rights to a
-large publisher in order to see a meager profit, while the publisher rakes in
-the vastly larger share? I sincerely doubt it.
-
-### Content Creation
-
-Another interesting mechanism of NFTs is that some platforms (e.g.
-[Rarible][rarible]) allow the seller to attach a royalty percentage to the NFT
-being solde. When this is done it means the original seller will receive some
-percentage of all future sales of that NFT.
-
-I think this opens some interesting possibilities for content creators. Normally
-a content creator would need to sell ads or subscriptions in order to profit
-from their content, but if they instead/in addition sell NFTs associated with
-their content (e.g. one per episode of their youtube show) they can add another
-revenue stream. As their show, or whatever, begins to take off, older NFTs
-become more valuable, and the content creator can take advantage of that new
-increased value via royalties set on the NFTs.
-
-There's some further interesting side-effects that come from using NFTs in this
-way. If a creator releases a work, and a corresponding NFT for that work, their
-incentive is no longer to gate access to that work (as it would be in our
-current IP system) or burden the work with advertisements and pleas for
-subscriptions/donations. There's an entirely new goalpost for the creator:
-actual value to others.
-
-The value of the NFT is based entirely and arbitrarily on other's feelings
-towards the original work, and so it is in the creator's interest to increase
-the visibility and virality of the work. We can expect a creator who has sold an
-NFT for a work, with royalties attached, to actively ensure there is as
-little gatekeeping around the work as possible, and to create work which is
-completely platform-agnostic and available absolutely everywhere. Releasing a
-work as public-domain could even become a norm, should NFTs prove more
-profitable than other revenue streams.
-
-### Shill Gang
-
-While the content creator's relationship with their platform(s) will change
-drastically, I also expect that their relationship with their fans, or really
-their fan's relationship with the creator's work, will change even more. Fans
-are no longer passive viewers, they can have an actual investment in a work's
-success. Where fans currently shill their favorite show or game or whatever out
-of love, they can now also do it for personal profit. I think this is the worst
-possible externality of NFTs I've encountered: internet fandom becoming orders
-of magnitude more fierce and unbearable, as they relentlessly shill their
-investments to the world at large.
-
-There is one good thing to come out of this new fan/content relationship though,
-and that's the fan's role in distribution and preservation of work. Since fans
-now have a financial incentive to see a work persist into the future, they will
-take it upon themselves to ensure that the works won't accidentally fall off the
-face of the internet (as things often do). This can be difficult currently since
-work is often tied down with IP restrictions, but, as we've established, work
-which uses NFTs for revenue is incentivized to _not_ tie itself down in any way,
-so fans will have much more freedom in this respect.
-
-[rarible]: https://rarible.com/
-
-### Art
-
-It seems unlikely to me that art will cease to be created, or cease to be
-valuable. The human creative instinct comes prior to money, and we have always
-created art regardless of economic concerns. It's true that the nature of our
-art changes according to economics (don't forget to hit that "Follow" button at
-the top!), but if anything I think NFTs can change our art for the better. Our
-work can be more to the point, more accessible, and less encumbered by legal
-bullshit.
-
-## Fin
-
-That crypto cat is out of the bag, at this point, and I doubt if there's
-anything that can put it back. The world has never before had the tools that
-cryptocurrency and related technologies (like NFTs) offer, and our lives will
-surely change as new uses of these tools make themselves apparent. I've tried to
-extrapolate some uses and changes that could come out of NFTs here, but I have
-no doubt that I've missed or mistook some.
-
-It's my hope that this post has at least offered some food-for-thought related
-to NFTs, beyond the endless hot takes and hype that can be found on social
-media, and that the reader can now have a bigger picture view of NFTs and where
-they might take us as a society, should we embrace them.
diff --git a/src/_posts/2021-05-11-ripple-v3.md b/src/_posts/2021-05-11-ripple-v3.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 396dab0..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2021-05-11-ripple-v3.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,442 +0,0 @@
----
-title: >-
- Ripple V3
-description: >-
- We're getting there!
-tags: tech
-series: ripple
----
-
-<p>
- <b>Movement:</b> Arrow keys or WASD<br/>
- <b>Jump:</b> Space<br/>
- <b>Goal:</b> Jump as many times as possible without touching a ripple!<br/>
- <br/>
- <b>Press Jump To Begin!</b>
-</p>
-
-_Who can make the muddy water clear?<br/>
-Let it be still, and it will gradually become clear._
-
-<canvas id="canvas"
- style="border:1px dashed #AAA"
- tabindex=0>
-Your browser doesn't support canvas. At this point in the world that's actually
-pretty cool, well done!
-</canvas>
-<button onclick="reset()">(R)eset</button>
-<span style="font-size: 2rem; margin-left: 1rem;">Score:
- <span style="font-weight: bold" id="score">0</span>
-</span>
-
-<script type="text/javascript">
-
-const palette = [
- "#264653",
- "#2A9D8F",
- "#E9C46A",
- "#F4A261",
- "#E76F51",
-];
-
-const width = 800;
-const height = 600;
-
-function hypotenuse(w, h) {
- return Math.sqrt(Math.pow(w, 2) + Math.pow(h, 2));
-}
-
-let canvas = document.getElementById("canvas");
-canvas.width = width;
-canvas.height = height;
-
-const whitelistedKeys = {
- "ArrowUp": {},
- "KeyW": {map: "ArrowUp"},
- "ArrowLeft": {},
- "KeyA": {map: "ArrowLeft"},
- "ArrowRight": {},
- "KeyD": {map: "ArrowRight"},
- "ArrowDown": {},
- "KeyS": {map: "ArrowDown"},
- "Space": {},
- "KeyR": {},
-};
-
-let keyboard = {};
-
-canvas.addEventListener('keydown', (event) => {
- let keyInfo = whitelistedKeys[event.code];
- if (!keyInfo) return;
-
- let code = event.code;
- if (keyInfo.map) code = keyInfo.map;
-
- event.preventDefault();
- keyboard[code] = true;
-});
-
-canvas.addEventListener('keyup', (event) => {
- let keyInfo = whitelistedKeys[event.code];
- if (!keyInfo) return;
-
- let code = event.code;
- if (keyInfo.map) code = keyInfo.map;
-
- event.preventDefault();
- delete keyboard[code];
-});
-
-
-const C = 700; // scales the overall speed of the radius
-const T = 500; // on which tick the radius change becomes linear
-
-/*
- f(x) = sqrt(C*x) when x < T
- (C/(2*sqrt(CT)))(x-T) + sqrt(CT) when x >= T
-
- radius(x) = f(x) + playerRadius;
-*/
-
-const F1 = (x) => Math.sqrt(C*x);
-const F2C1 = C / (2 * Math.sqrt(C*T));
-const F2C2 = Math.sqrt(C * T);
-const F2 = (x) => (F2C1 * (x - T)) + F2C2;
-const F = (x) => {
- if (x < T) return F1(x);
- return F2(x);
-};
-
-class Ripple {
-
- constructor(id, currTick, x, y, bounces, color) {
- this.id = id;
- this.tick = currTick;
- this.x = x;
- this.y = y;
- this.thickness = Math.pow(bounces+1, 1.25);
- this.color = color;
- this.winner = false;
-
- this.maxRadius = hypotenuse(x, y);
- this.maxRadius = Math.max(this.maxRadius, hypotenuse(width-x, y));
- this.maxRadius = Math.max(this.maxRadius, hypotenuse(x, height-y));
- this.maxRadius = Math.max(this.maxRadius, hypotenuse(width-x, height-y));
- }
-
- radius(currTick) {
- const x = currTick - this.tick;
- return F(x) + playerRadius;
- }
-
- draw(ctx, currTick) {
- ctx.beginPath();
- ctx.arc(this.x, this.y, this.radius(currTick), 0, Math.PI * 2, false);
- ctx.closePath();
- ctx.lineWidth = this.thickness;
- ctx.strokeStyle = this.winner ? "#FF0000" : this.color;
- ctx.stroke();
- }
-
- canGC(currTick) {
- return this.radius(currTick) > this.maxRadius;
- }
-}
-
-const playerRadius = 10;
-const playerMoveAccel = 0.5;
-const playerMoveDecel = 0.7;
-const playerMaxMoveSpeed = 4;
-const playerJumpSpeed = 0.08;
-const playerMaxHeight = 1;
-const playerGravity = 0.01;
-
-class Player{
-
- constructor(x, y, color) {
- this.x = x;
- this.y = y;
- this.z = 0;
- this.xVelocity = 0;
- this.yVelocity = 0;
- this.zVelocity = 0;
- this.color = color;
- this.falling = false;
- this.lastJumpHeight = 0;
- this.loser = false;
- }
-
- act() {
- if (keyboard["ArrowUp"]) {
- this.yVelocity = Math.max(-playerMaxMoveSpeed, this.yVelocity - playerMoveAccel);
- } else if (keyboard["ArrowDown"]) {
- this.yVelocity = Math.min(playerMaxMoveSpeed, this.yVelocity + playerMoveAccel);
- } else if (this.yVelocity > 0) {
- this.yVelocity = Math.max(0, this.yVelocity - playerMoveDecel);
- } else if (this.yVelocity < 0) {
- this.yVelocity = Math.min(0, this.yVelocity + playerMoveDecel);
- }
-
- this.y += this.yVelocity;
- if (this.y < 0) this.y += height;
- else if (this.y > height) this.y -= height;
-
- if (keyboard["ArrowLeft"]) {
- this.xVelocity = Math.max(-playerMaxMoveSpeed, this.xVelocity - playerMoveAccel);
- } else if (keyboard["ArrowRight"]) {
- this.xVelocity = Math.min(playerMaxMoveSpeed, this.xVelocity + playerMoveAccel);
- } else if (this.xVelocity > 0) {
- this.xVelocity = Math.max(0, this.xVelocity - playerMoveDecel);
- } else if (this.xVelocity < 0) {
- this.xVelocity = Math.min(0, this.xVelocity + playerMoveDecel);
- }
-
- this.x += this.xVelocity;
- if (this.x < 0) this.x += width;
- else if (this.x > width) this.x -= width;
-
- let jumpHeld = keyboard["Space"];
-
- if (jumpHeld && !this.falling && this.z < playerMaxHeight) {
- this.lastJumpHeight = 0;
- this.zVelocity = playerJumpSpeed;
- } else {
- this.zVelocity = Math.max(-playerJumpSpeed, this.zVelocity - playerGravity);
- this.falling = this.z > 0;
- }
-
- let prevZ = this.z;
- this.z = Math.max(0, this.z + this.zVelocity);
- this.lastJumpHeight = Math.max(this.z, this.lastJumpHeight);
- }
-
- drawAt(ctx, atX, atY) {
- const y = atY - (this.z * 40);
- const radius = playerRadius * (this.z+1)
-
- // draw main
- ctx.beginPath();
- ctx.arc(atX, y, radius, 0, Math.PI * 2, false);
- ctx.closePath();
- ctx.lineWidth = 0;
- ctx.fillStyle = this.color;
- ctx.fill();
- if (this.loser) {
- ctx.strokeStyle = '#FF0000';
- ctx.lineWidth = 2;
- ctx.stroke();
- }
-
- // draw shadow, if in the air
- if (this.z > 0) {
- let radius = Math.max(0, playerRadius * (1.2 - this.z));
- ctx.beginPath();
- ctx.arc(atX, atY, radius, 0, Math.PI * 2, false);
- ctx.closePath();
- ctx.lineWidth = 0;
- ctx.fillStyle = this.color+"33";
- ctx.fill();
- }
- }
-
- draw(ctx) {
- [-1, 0, 1].forEach((wScalar) => {
- const w = width * wScalar;
- [-1, 0, 1].forEach((hScalar) => {
- const h = height * hScalar;
- this.drawAt(ctx, this.x+w, this.y+h);
- })
- })
- }
-}
-
-class Game {
-
- constructor(canvas, scoreEl) {
- this.currTick = 0;
- this.player = new Player(width/2, height/2, palette[0]);
- this.state = 'play';
- this.score = 0;
- this.scoreEl = scoreEl;
- this.canvas = canvas;
- this.ctx = canvas.getContext("2d");
- this.ripples = [];
- this.nextRippleID = 0;
- }
-
- shouldReset() {
- return keyboard['KeyR'];
- }
-
- newRippleID() {
- let id = this.nextRippleID;
- this.nextRippleID++;
- return id;
- }
-
- // newRipple initializes and stores a new ripple at the given coordinates, as
- // well as all sub-ripples which make up the initial ripple's reflections.
- newRipple(x, y, bounces, color) {
- color = color ? color : palette[Math.floor(Math.random() * palette.length)];
-
- let ripplePos = [];
- let nextRipples = [];
-
- let addRipple = (x, y) => {
- for (let i in ripplePos) {
- if (ripplePos[i][0] == x && ripplePos[i][1] == y) return;
- }
-
- let ripple = new Ripple(this.newRippleID(), this.currTick, x, y, bounces, color);
- nextRipples.push(ripple);
- ripplePos.push([x, y]);
- this.ripples.push(ripple);
- };
-
- // add initial ripple, after this we deal with the sub-ripples.
- addRipple(x, y);
-
- while (bounces > 0) {
- bounces--;
- let prevRipples = nextRipples;
- nextRipples = [];
-
- for (let i in prevRipples) {
- let prevX = prevRipples[i].x;
- let prevY = prevRipples[i].y;
-
- [-1, 0, 1].forEach((wScalar) => {
- const w = this.canvas.width * wScalar;
- [-1, 0, 1].forEach((hScalar) => {
- const h = this.canvas.height * hScalar;
- addRipple(prevX + w, prevY + h);
- })
- })
- }
- }
- }
-
- // playerRipplesState returns a mapping of rippleID -> boolean, where each
- // boolean indicates the ripple's relation to the player at the moment. true
- // indicates the player is outside the ripple, false indicates the player is
- // within the ripple.
- playerRipplesState() {
- let state = {};
- for (let i in this.ripples) {
- let ripple = this.ripples[i];
- let rippleRadius = ripple.radius(this.currTick);
- let hs = Math.pow(ripple.x-this.player.x, 2) + Math.pow(ripple.y-this.player.y, 2);
- state[ripple.id] = hs > Math.pow(rippleRadius + playerRadius, 2);
- }
- return state;
- }
-
- playerHasJumpedOverRipple(prev, curr) {
- for (const rippleID in prev) {
- if (!curr.hasOwnProperty(rippleID)) continue;
- if (curr[rippleID] != prev[rippleID]) return true;
- }
- return false;
- }
-
- update() {
- if (this.state != 'play') return;
-
- let playerPrevZ = this.player.z;
- this.player.act();
-
- if (playerPrevZ == 0 && this.player.z > 0) {
- // player has jumped
- this.prevPlayerRipplesState = this.playerRipplesState();
-
- } else if (playerPrevZ > 0 && this.player.z == 0) {
-
- // player has landed, don't produce a ripple unless there are no
- // existing ripples or the player jumped over an existing one.
- if (
- this.ripples.length == 0 ||
- this.playerHasJumpedOverRipple(
- this.prevPlayerRipplesState,
- this.playerRipplesState()
- )
- ) {
- //let bounces = Math.floor((this.player.lastJumpHeight*1.8)+1);
- const bounces = 1;
-
- console.log("spawning ripple with bounces:", bounces);
- this.newRipple(this.player.x, this.player.y, bounces);
- this.score += bounces;
- }
- }
-
- if (this.player.z == 0) {
- for (let i in this.ripples) {
- let ripple = this.ripples[i];
- let rippleRadius = ripple.radius(this.currTick);
- if (rippleRadius < playerRadius * 1.5) continue;
- let hs = Math.pow(ripple.x-this.player.x, 2) + Math.pow(ripple.y-this.player.y, 2);
- if (hs > Math.pow(rippleRadius + playerRadius, 2)) {
- continue;
- } else if (hs <= Math.pow(rippleRadius - playerRadius, 2)) {
- continue;
- } else {
- console.log("game over", ripple);
- ripple.winner = true;
- this.player.loser = true;
- this.state = 'gameOver';
- // deliberately don't break here, in case multiple ripples hit
- // the player on the same frame
- }
- }
- }
-
- this.ripples = this.ripples.filter(ripple => !ripple.canGC(this.currTick));
-
- this.currTick++;
- }
-
- draw() {
- this.ctx.clearRect(0, 0, this.canvas.width, this.canvas.height);
- this.ripples.forEach(ripple => ripple.draw(this.ctx, this.currTick));
- this.player.draw(this.ctx)
- this.scoreEl.innerHTML = this.score;
- }
-}
-
-
-const requestAnimationFrame =
- window.requestAnimationFrame ||
- window.mozRequestAnimationFrame ||
- window.webkitRequestAnimationFrame ||
- window.msRequestAnimationFrame;
-
-let game = new Game(canvas, document.getElementById("score"));
-
-function reset() {
- game = new Game(canvas, document.getElementById("score"));
-}
-
-function nextFrame() {
- if (game.shouldReset()) reset();
-
- game.update()
- game.draw()
- requestAnimationFrame(nextFrame);
-}
-requestAnimationFrame(nextFrame);
-
-canvas.focus();
-
-</script>
-
-## Changelog
-
-The previous version was two easy to break, even with the requirement of jumping
-over a ripple to generate a new one and increase your score. This led to the
-following major changes:
-
-* The game now incorporates asteroid/pacman mechanics. Rather than bouncing off
- walls, the player and ripples will instead come out the opposite wall they
- travel through.
-
-* Jump height no longer affects score or the "strength" of a ripple.
diff --git a/src/_posts/2021-05-16-new-years-resolution-vibe-check.md b/src/_posts/2021-05-16-new-years-resolution-vibe-check.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 965eac8..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2021-05-16-new-years-resolution-vibe-check.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,62 +0,0 @@
----
-title: >-
- New Year's Resolution Vibe Check
-description: >-
- The not-quite-halfway progress report.
----
-
-It's been over five months since I started my New Year's resolution, where I
-committed to writing 52 blog posts by the end of the year. This week I'm on the
-first vacation I've been able to take since the pandemic started, and, for lack
-of anything else to really write about, am doing an almost-halfway checkup on
-the whole process.
-
-Almost immediately into the process I wished I'd set my sights a bit lower. One
-post a week is a pretty intense pace, it turns out. If I were to reset the
-parameters of the resolution I would probably halve the requirements, down to
-26 posts in the year. One concern would be that I would be more likely to forget
-to do the bi-weekly post, whereas with the current system it's coupled with my
-normal work rhythm and so stays more top of mind. But I think I'd have a much
-easier time (perhaps even twice as easy!), so it might balance out.
-
-My thought in the beginning was that I could write on Friday afternoons or
-Monday mornings as a bookend to working, but what's generally happened is that I
-write on weekends. During the week the energy to write something up just isn't
-there; writing posts is a kind of work all on its own, and I can only bring
-myself to do so much work everyday.
-
-Lately it's been particularly difficult to pump out the posts. Obviously a large
-component of this is that I quickly picked all the low hanging fruit that were
-on my mind when I started this resolution, but an unexpected culprit has also
-appeared: seasons. When I started the resolution it was still winter, and during
-the cold months it's a lot easier to stay inside and work on a computer. As the
-weather warms it's been harder to find time though, in between working on the
-garden and going out and doing things with friends.
-
-Figuring out what to write about is becoming more of a challenge as well
-(obviously, given the topic of this post). Ideally I'd like to post about things
-I'm _doing_, rather than just talking about some topic, and for the most part
-I've mostly kept to that. Constantly posting about ideas I have or opinions I
-hold isn't really contributing any real work, unless the ideas or opinions are
-really groundbreaking (they're not). If, on the other hand, I use the posts as a
-kind of background motivation to get up and do something useful, so I can write
-about what I did, then at least progress has been made on _something_.
-
-The catch there is that I've now added an additional "thing" to do every week,
-in addition to the weekly post, and, as previously covered, I just don't have
-the time and energy for that. So some posts (ahem) are pretty much fluff, and I
-barely have the energy for those! Yet another reason to wish I'd committed to 26
-in the year, I suppose.
-
-It hasn't been all added stress and strife though. Doing the posts _has_ caused
-me to work on side projects more, and even better quite a few people I know have
-given me really good feedback on what I've been doing, and some have even
-started getting involved. So, in the sense of being a way to inform others about
-the things I'm working on, the posts are a great success! And I've definitely
-been more consistent about working on side projects this year.
-
-I'll wrap this up and continue with my vacation. Summary: blog is more extra
-work than expected, it's maybe worth it, but it would be more worth it if I
-halved my pace. I'm not _going_ to halve my pace, because that's not how
-resolutions work. The end.
-
diff --git a/src/_posts/2021-05-26-viz-4.md b/src/_posts/2021-05-26-viz-4.md
deleted file mode 100644
index cd6054a..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2021-05-26-viz-4.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,213 +0,0 @@
----
-title: >-
- Visualization 4
-description: >-
- Birth, death, and colors.
-series: viz
-tags: tech art
----
-
-<canvas id="canvas" style="padding-bottom: 2rem;" width="100%" height="100%"></canvas>
-
-This visualization is a conglomeration of ideas from all the previous ones. On
-each tick up to 20 new pixels are generated. The color of each new pixel is
-based on the average color of its neighbors, plus some random drift.
-
-Each pixel dies after a certain number of ticks, `N`. A pixel's life can be
-extended by up to `8N` ticks, one for each neighbor it has which is still alive.
-This mechanism accounts for the strange behavior which is seen when the
-visualization first loads, but also allows for more coherent clusters of pixels
-to hold together as time goes on.
-
-The asteroid rule is also in effect in this visualization, so the top row and
-bottom row pixels are neighbors of each other, and similarly for the rightmost
-and leftmost column pixels.
-
-<script type="text/javascript">
-
-function randn(n) {
- return Math.floor(Math.random() * n);
-}
-
-const canvas = document.getElementById("canvas");
-const parentWidth = canvas.parentElement.offsetWidth;
-
-const rectSize = Math.floor(parentWidth /100 /2) *2; // must be even number
-console.log("rectSize", rectSize);
-
-canvas.width = parentWidth - rectSize - (parentWidth % rectSize);
-canvas.height = canvas.width * 0.75;
-canvas.height -= canvas.height % rectSize;
-const ctx = canvas.getContext("2d");
-
-const w = (canvas.width / rectSize) - 1;
-const h = (canvas.height / rectSize) - 1;
-
-class Elements {
- constructor() {
- this.els = {};
- this.diff = {};
- }
-
- _normCoord(coord) {
- if (typeof coord !== 'string') coord = JSON.stringify(coord);
- return coord;
- }
-
- get(coord) {
- return this.els[this._normCoord(coord)];
- }
-
- getAll() {
- return Object.values(this.els);
- }
-
- set(coord, el) {
- this.diff[this._normCoord(coord)] = {action: "set", coord: coord, ...el};
- }
-
- unset(coord) {
- this.diff[this._normCoord(coord)] = {action: "unset"};
- }
-
- drawDiff(ctx) {
- for (const coordStr in this.diff) {
- const el = this.diff[coordStr];
- const coord = JSON.parse(coordStr);
-
- if (el.action == "set") {
- ctx.fillStyle = `hsl(${el.h}, ${el.s}, ${el.l})`;
- } else {
- ctx.fillStyle = `#FFF`;
- }
-
- ctx.fillRect(coord[0]*rectSize, coord[1]*rectSize, rectSize, rectSize);
- }
- }
-
- applyDiff() {
- for (const coordStr in this.diff) {
- const el = this.diff[coordStr];
- delete this.diff[coordStr];
-
- if (el.action == "set") {
- delete el.action;
- this.els[coordStr] = el;
- } else {
- delete this.els[coordStr];
- }
- }
- }
-}
-
-const neighbors = [
- [-1, -1], [0, -1], [1, -1],
- [-1, 0], /* [0, 0], */ [1, 0],
- [-1, 1], [0, 1], [1, 1],
-];
-
-function neighborsOf(coord) {
- return neighbors.map((n) => {
- let nX = coord[0]+n[0];
- let nY = coord[1]+n[1];
- nX = (nX + w) % w;
- nY = (nY + h) % h;
- return [nX, nY];
- });
-}
-
-function randEmptyNeighboringCoord(els, coord) {
- const neighbors = neighborsOf(coord).sort(() => Math.random() - 0.5);
- for (const nCoord of neighbors) {
- if (!els.get(nCoord)) return nCoord;
- }
- return null;
-}
-
-function neighboringElsOf(els, coord) {
- const neighboringEls = [];
- for (const nCoord of neighborsOf(coord)) {
- const el = els.get(nCoord);
- if (el) neighboringEls.push(el);
- }
- return neighboringEls;
-}
-
-const drift = 30;
-function newEl(nEls) {
-
- // for each h (which can be considered as degrees around a circle) break the h
- // down into x and y vectors, and add those up separately. Then find the angle
- // between those two resulting vectors, and that's the "average" h value.
- let x = 0;
- let y = 0;
- nEls.forEach((el) => {
- const hRad = el.h * Math.PI / 180;
- x += Math.cos(hRad);
- y += Math.sin(hRad);
- });
-
- let h = Math.atan2(y, x);
- h = h / Math.PI * 180;
-
- // apply some random drift, normalize
- h += (Math.random() * drift * 2) - drift;
- h = (h + 360) % 360;
-
- return {
- h: h,
- s: "100%",
- l: "50%",
- };
-}
-
-const requestAnimationFrame =
- window.requestAnimationFrame ||
- window.mozRequestAnimationFrame ||
- window.webkitRequestAnimationFrame ||
- window.msRequestAnimationFrame;
-
-const els = new Elements();
-
-const maxNewElsPerTick = 20;
-const deathThresh = 20;
-
-let tick = 0;
-function doTick() {
- tick++;
-
- const allEls = els.getAll().sort(() => Math.random() - 0.5);
-
- if (allEls.length == 0) {
- els.set([w/2, h/2], {
- h: randn(360),
- s: "100%",
- l: "50%",
- });
- }
-
- let newEls = 0;
- for (const el of allEls) {
- const nCoord = randEmptyNeighboringCoord(els, el.coord);
- if (!nCoord) continue; // el has no empty neighboring spots
-
- const nEl = newEl(neighboringElsOf(els, nCoord))
- nEl.tick = tick;
- els.set(nCoord, nEl);
-
- newEls++;
- if (newEls >= maxNewElsPerTick) break;
- }
-
- for (const el of allEls) {
- const nEls = neighboringElsOf(els, el.coord);
- if (tick - el.tick - (nEls.length * deathThresh) >= deathThresh) els.unset(el.coord);
- }
-
- els.drawDiff(ctx);
- els.applyDiff();
- requestAnimationFrame(doTick);
-}
-requestAnimationFrame(doTick);
-
-</script>
diff --git a/src/_posts/2021-05-28-viz-5.md b/src/_posts/2021-05-28-viz-5.md
deleted file mode 100644
index ea2f9e9..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2021-05-28-viz-5.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,306 +0,0 @@
----
-title: >-
- Visualization 5
-description: >-
- Seeing double.
-series: viz
-tags: tech art
----
-
-<script type="text/javascript">
-
-function randn(n) {
- return Math.floor(Math.random() * n);
-}
-
-const w = 100;
-const h = 50;
-
-const maxNewElsPerTick = 10;
-const deathThresh = 10;
-
-class Canvas {
- constructor(canvasDOM) {
- this.dom = canvasDOM;
- this.ctx = canvasDOM.getContext("2d");
-
- // expand canvas element's width to match parent.
- this.dom.width = this.dom.parentElement.offsetWidth;
-
- // rectSize must be an even number or the pixels don't display nicely.
- this.rectSize = Math.floor(this.dom.width / w /2) * 2;
-
- this.dom.width = w * this.rectSize;
- this.dom.height = h * this.rectSize;
- }
-
- rectSize() {
- return Math.floor(this.dom.width / w);
- }
-}
-
-class Layer {
- constructor(newEl) {
- this.els = {};
- this.diff = {};
- this.newEl = newEl;
- }
-
- _normCoord(coord) {
- if (typeof coord !== 'string') coord = JSON.stringify(coord);
- return coord;
- }
-
- get(coord) {
- return this.els[this._normCoord(coord)];
- }
-
- getAll() {
- return Object.values(this.els);
- }
-
- set(coord, el) {
- this.diff[this._normCoord(coord)] = {action: "set", coord: coord, ...el};
- }
-
- unset(coord) {
- this.diff[this._normCoord(coord)] = {action: "unset"};
- }
-
- applyDiff() {
- for (const coordStr in this.diff) {
- const el = this.diff[coordStr];
- delete this.diff[coordStr];
-
- if (el.action == "set") {
- delete el.action;
- this.els[coordStr] = el;
- } else {
- delete this.els[coordStr];
- }
- }
- }
-
- update(state) {
- // Apply diff from previous update first. The diff can't be applied last
- // because it needs to be present during the draw phase.
- this.applyDiff();
-
- const allEls = this.getAll().sort(() => Math.random() - 0.5);
-
- if (allEls.length == 0) {
- this.set([w/2, h/2], this.newEl([]));
- }
-
- let newEls = 0;
- for (const el of allEls) {
- const nCoord = randEmptyNeighboringCoord(this, el.coord);
- if (!nCoord) continue; // el has no empty neighboring spots
-
- const nEl = this.newEl(neighboringElsOf(this, nCoord))
- nEl.tick = state.tick;
- this.set(nCoord, nEl);
-
- newEls++;
- if (newEls >= maxNewElsPerTick) break;
- }
-
- for (const el of allEls) {
- const nEls = neighboringElsOf(this, el.coord);
- if (state.tick - el.tick - (nEls.length * deathThresh) >= deathThresh) this.unset(el.coord);
- }
-}
-
- draw(canvas) {
- for (const coordStr in this.diff) {
- const el = this.diff[coordStr];
- const coord = JSON.parse(coordStr);
-
- if (el.action == "set") {
- canvas.ctx.fillStyle = `hsl(${el.h}, ${el.s}, ${el.l})`;
- canvas.ctx.fillRect(
- coord[0]*canvas.rectSize, coord[1]*canvas.rectSize,
- canvas.rectSize, canvas.rectSize,
- );
-
- } else {
- canvas.ctx.clearRect(
- coord[0]*canvas.rectSize, coord[1]*canvas.rectSize,
- canvas.rectSize, canvas.rectSize,
- );
- }
- }
- }
-}
-
-const neighbors = [
- [-1, -1], [0, -1], [1, -1],
- [-1, 0], /* [0, 0], */ [1, 0],
- [-1, 1], [0, 1], [1, 1],
-];
-
-function neighborsOf(coord) {
- return neighbors.map((n) => {
- let nX = coord[0]+n[0];
- let nY = coord[1]+n[1];
- nX = (nX + w) % w;
- nY = (nY + h) % h;
- return [nX, nY];
- });
-}
-
-function randEmptyNeighboringCoord(layer, coord) {
- const neighbors = neighborsOf(coord).sort(() => Math.random() - 0.5);
- for (const nCoord of neighbors) {
- if (!layer.get(nCoord)) return nCoord;
- }
- return null;
-}
-
-function neighboringElsOf(layer, coord) {
- const neighboringEls = [];
- for (const nCoord of neighborsOf(coord)) {
- const el = layer.get(nCoord);
- if (el) neighboringEls.push(el);
- }
- return neighboringEls;
-}
-
-const drift = 30;
-function mkNewEl(l) {
- return (nEls) => {
- const s = "100%";
- if (nEls.length == 0) {
- return {
- h: randn(360),
- s: s,
- l: l,
- };
- }
-
- // for each h (which can be considered as degrees around a circle) break the h
- // down into x and y vectors, and add those up separately. Then find the angle
- // between those two resulting vectors, and that's the "average" h value.
- let x = 0;
- let y = 0;
- nEls.forEach((el) => {
- const hRad = el.h * Math.PI / 180;
- x += Math.cos(hRad);
- y += Math.sin(hRad);
- });
-
- let h = Math.atan2(y, x);
- h = h / Math.PI * 180;
-
- // apply some random drift, normalize
- h += (Math.random() * drift * 2) - drift;
- h = (h + 360) % 360;
-
- return {
- h: h,
- s: s,
- l: l,
- };
- }
-}
-
-class Universe {
- constructor(canvasesByClass, layersByClass) {
- this.canvasesByClass = canvasesByClass;
- this.state = {
- tick: 0,
- layers: layersByClass,
- };
- }
-
- update() {
- this.state.tick++;
- Object.values(this.state.layers).forEach((layer) => layer.update(this.state));
- }
-
- draw() {
- for (const layerName in this.state.layers) {
- if (!this.canvasesByClass[layerName]) return;
- this.canvasesByClass[layerName].forEach((canvas) => {
- this.state.layers[layerName].draw(canvas);
- });
- }
- }
-}
-
-</script>
-
-<style>
-
-.canvasContainer {
- display: grid;
- margin-bottom: 2rem;
- text-align: center;
-}
-
-canvas {
- border: 1px dashed #AAA;
- width: 100%;
- grid-area: 1/1/2/2;
-}
-
-</style>
-
-<div class="canvasContainer">
- <canvas class="layer1"></canvas>
- <canvas class="layer2"></canvas>
-</div>
-
-<div class="row">
- <div class="columns six">
- <div class="canvasContainer"><canvas class="layer1"></canvas></div>
- </div>
- <div class="columns six">
- <div class="canvasContainer"><canvas class="layer2"></canvas></div>
- </div>
-</div>
-
-This visualization combines two distinct layers, each of them borrowing their
-behavior from [Visualization 4][viz4]. Neither layer has any effect on the
-other, one is merely super-imposed on top of the other in the top canvas. You
-can see each layer individually in the two lower canvases.
-
-Despite their not affecting each other, the code is set up so that each layer
-_could_ be affected by the other. This will likely be explored more in a future
-post.
-
-[viz4]: {% post_url 2021-05-26-viz-4 %}
-
-<script>
-
-const canvasesByClass = {};
-[...document.getElementsByTagName("canvas")].forEach((canvasDOM) => {
-
- const canvas = new Canvas(canvasDOM);
- canvasDOM.classList.forEach((name) => {
- if (!canvasesByClass[name]) canvasesByClass[name] = [];
- canvasesByClass[name].push(canvas);
- })
-});
-
-
-const universe = new Universe(canvasesByClass, {
- "layer1": new Layer(mkNewEl("90%")),
- "layer2": new Layer(mkNewEl("50%")),
-});
-
-const requestAnimationFrame =
- window.requestAnimationFrame ||
- window.mozRequestAnimationFrame ||
- window.webkitRequestAnimationFrame ||
- window.msRequestAnimationFrame;
-
-function doTick() {
- universe.update();
- universe.draw();
- requestAnimationFrame(doTick);
-}
-
-doTick();
-
-</script>
diff --git a/src/_posts/2021-06-07-adventures-in-defi.md b/src/_posts/2021-06-07-adventures-in-defi.md
deleted file mode 100644
index f5a5879..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2021-06-07-adventures-in-defi.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,271 +0,0 @@
----
-title: >-
- Adventures In DeFi
-description: >-
- There and Back Again, a Yield Farmer's Tale.
----
-
-It's difficult to be remotely interested in crypto and avoid the world of
-decentralized finance (DeFi). Somewhere between the explosion of new projects,
-implausible APY percents, complex tokens schemes, new phrases like "yield
-farming" and "impermanent loss", rug pulls, hacks, and astronomical ethereum
-fees, you simply _must_ have heard of it, even in passing.
-
-In late November of 2020 I decided to jump in and see what would happen. I read
-everything I could find, got as educated as I could, did some (but probably not
-enough) math, and got to work. Almost immediately afterwards a giant bull
-market hit, fees on ethereum shot up to the moon, and my little yield farming
-DeFi ship was effectively out to sea.
-
-For the past 200 days I haven't been able to tweak or withdraw any of the DeFi
-positions I made, for fear of incurring so many ethereum fees that any gains I
-made would be essentially wiped out. But the bull market is finally at a rest,
-fees are down, and I'm interested in what the results of my involuntary
-long-term experiment were. Before getting to the results though, let's start at
-the beginning. I'm going to walk you through all the steps I took, as well as my
-decision making process (as flawed as it surely was) and risk assessments.
-
-## Step 1: The Base Positions
-
-My first step was to set aside some ETH and BTC for this experiment. I was (and
-remain) confident that these assets would acrue in value, and so wanted to hold
-onto them for a long period of time. But while holding onto those assets, why
-not make a little interest on them by putting them to use? That's where DeFi
-comes in.
-
-I started with 2.04 ETH and 0.04 BTC. The ETH existed as normal ETH on the
-ethereum blockchain, while the 0.04 BTC I had to first convert to [renBTC][ren].
-
-renBTC is an ethereum token whose value is pinned to the value of BTC. This is
-accomplished via a decentralized locking mechanism, wherein real BTC is
-transferred to a decentralized network of ren nodes, and they lock it such that
-no individual node has access to the wallet holding the BTC. At the same time
-that the BTC is locked, the nodes print and transfer a corresponding amount of
-renBTC to a wallet specified in the BTC transaction. It's a very interesting
-project, though the exact locking mechanism used was closed-source at the time I
-used it, which concerned me somewhat.
-
-[ren]: https://renproject.io/
-
-### Step 1.5: Collateralization
-
-In Step 2 I deposit my assets into liquidity pools. For my renBTC this was no
-problem, but for my ETH it wasn't so simple. I'll explain what a liquidity pool
-is in the next section, but for now all that needs to be known is that there are
-no worthwhile liquidity pools between ETH and anything ostensibly pinned to ETH
-(e.g. WETH). So I needed to first convert my ETH into an asset for which there
-are worthwhile liquidity pools, while also not losing my ETH position.
-
-Enter [MakerDAO][makerdao]. MakerDAO runs a decentralized collateralization app,
-wheren a user deposits assets into a contract and is granted an amount of DAI
-tokens relative to the value of the deposited assets. The value of DAI tokens
-are carefully managed via the variable fee structure of the MakerDAO app, such
-that 1 DAI is, generally, equal to 1 USD. If the value of the collateralized
-assets drops below a certain threshold the position is liquidated, meaning the
-user keeps the DAI and MakerDAO keeps the assets. It's not dissimilar to taking
-a loan out, using one's house as collateral, except that the collateral is ETH
-and not a house.
-
-MakerDAO allows you to choose, within some bounds, how much DAI you withdraw on
-your deposited collateral. The more DAI you withdraw, the higher your
-liquidation threshold, and if your assets fall in value and hit that threshold
-you lose them, so a higher threshold entails more risk. In this way the user has
-some say over how risky of a position they want to take out.
-
-In my case I took out a total of 500 DAI on my 2.04 ETH. Even at the time this
-was somewhat conservative, but now that the price of ETH has 5x'd it's almost
-comical. In any case, I now had 500 DAI to work with, and could move on to the
-next step.
-
-[makerdao]: https://makerdao.com/
-
-## Step 2: Liquidity Pools
-
-My assets were ready to get put to work, and the work they got put to was in
-liquidity pools (LPs). The function of an LP is to facilitate the exchange of
-one asset for another between users. They play the same role as a centralized
-exchange like Kraken or Binance, but are able to operate on decentralized chains
-by using a different exchange mechanism.
-
-I won't go into the details of how LPs work here, as it's not super pertinent.
-There's great explainers, like [this one][lp], that are easy to find. Suffice it
-to say that each LP operates on a set of assets that it allows users to convert
-between, and LP providers can deposit one or more of those assets into the pool
-in order to earn fees on each conversion.
-
-When you deposit an asset into an LP you receive back a corresponding amount of
-tokens representing your position in that LP. Each LP has its own token, and
-each token represents a share of of the pool that the provider owns. The value
-of each token goes up over time as fees are collected, and so acts as the
-mechanism by which the provider ultimately collects their yield.
-
-In addition to the yield one gets from users making conversions via the LP, LP
-providers are often also further incentivized by being granted governance tokens
-in the LPs they provide for, which they can then turn around and sell directly
-or hold onto as an investment. These are usually granted via a staking
-mechanism, where the LP provider stakes (or "locks") their LP tokens into the
-platform, and is able to withdraw the incentive token based on how long and how
-much they've staked.
-
-Some LP projects, such as [Sushi][sushi], have gone further and completely
-gamified the whole experience, and are the cause of the multi thousand percent
-APYs that DeFi has become somewhat famous for. These projects are flashy, but I
-couldn't find myself placing any trust in them.
-
-There is a risk in being an LP provider, and it's called ["impermanent
-loss"][il]. This is another area where it's not worth going into super detail,
-so I'll just say that impermanent loss occurs when the relative value of the
-assets in the pool diverges significantly. For example, if you are a provider in
-a BTC/USDC pool, and the value of BTC relative to USD either tanks or
-skyrockets, you will have ended up losing money.
-
-I wanted to avoid impermanent loss, and so focused on pools where the assets
-have little chance of diverging. These would be pools where the assets are
-ostensibly pinned in value, for example a pool between DAI and USDC, or between
-renBTC and WBTC. These are called stable pools. By choosing such pools my only
-risk was in one of the pooled assets suddenly losing all of its value due to a
-flaw in its mechanism, for example if MakerDAO's smart contract were to be
-hacked. Unfortunately, stable pools don't have as great yields as their volatile
-counterparts, but given that this was all gravy on top of the appreciation of
-the underlying ETH and BTC I didn't mind this as much.
-
-I chose the [Curve][curve] project as my LP project of choice. Curve focuses
-mainly on stable pools, and provides decent yield percents in that area while
-also being a relatively trusted and actively developed project.
-
-I made the following deposits into Curve:
-
-* 200 DAI into the [Y Pool][ypool], receiving back 188 LP tokens.
-* 300 DAI into the [USDN Pool][usdnpool], receiving back 299 LP tokens.
-* 0.04 renBTC into the [tBTC Pool][tbtcpool], receiving back 0.039 LP tokens.
-
-[lp]: https://finematics.com/liquidity-pools-explained/
-[il]: https://finematics.com/impermanent-loss-explained/
-[sushi]: https://www.sushi.com/
-[curve]: https://curve.fi
-[ypool]: https://curve.fi/iearn
-[usdnpool]: https://curve.fi/usdn
-[tbtcpool]: https://curve.fi/tbtc
-
-## Step 3: Yield Farming
-
-At this point I could have taken the next step of staking my LP tokens into the
-Curve platform, and periodically going in and reaping the incentive tokens that
-doing so would earn me. I could then sell these tokens and re-invest the profits
-back into the LP, and then stake the resulting LP tokens back into Curve,
-resulting in a higher yield the next time I reap the incentives, ad neaseaum
-forever.
-
-This is a fine strategy, but it has two major drawbacks:
-
-* I don't have the time, nor the patience, to implement it.
-* ETH transaction fees would make it completely impractical.
-
-Luckily, yield farming platforms exist. Rather than staking your LP tokens
-yourself, you instead deposit them into a yield farming platform. The platform
-aggregates everyone's LP tokens, stakes them, and automatically collects and
-re-invests incentives in large batches. By using a yield farming platform,
-small, humble yield farmers like myself can pool our resources together to take
-advantage of scale we wouldn't normally have.
-
-Of course, yield farming adds yet another gamification layer to the whole
-system, and complicates everything. You'll see what I mean in a moment.
-
-The yield farming platform I chose was [Harvest][harvest]. Overall
-Harvest had the best advertised APYs (though those can obviously change on a
-dime), a large number of farmed pools that gets updated regularly, as well as a
-simple interface that I could sort of understand. The project is a _bit_ of a
-mess, and there's probably better options now, but it was what I had at the
-time.
-
-For each of the 3 kinds of LP tokens I had collected in Step 2 I deposited them
-into the corresponding farming pool on Harvest. As with the LPs, for each
-farming pool you deposit into you receive back a corresponding amount of farming
-pool tokens which you can then stake back into Harvest. Based on how much you
-stake into Harvest you can collect a certain amount of FARM tokens periodically,
-which you can then sell, yada yada yada. It's farming all the way down. I didn't
-bother much with this.
-
-[harvest]: https://harvest.finance
-
-## Step 4: Wait
-
-At this point the market picked up, ethereum transactions shot up from 20 to 200
-gwei, and I was no longer able to play with my DeFi money without incurring huge
-losses. So I mostly forgot about it, and only now am coming back to it to see
-the damage.
-
-## Step 5: Reap What I've Sown
-
-It's 200 days later, fees are down again, and enough time has passed that I
-could plausibly evaluate my strategy, I've gone through the trouble of undoing
-all my positions in order to arrive back at my base assets, ETC and BTC. While
-it's tempting to just keep the DeFi ship floating on, I think I need to redo it
-in a way that I won't be paralyzed during the next market turn, and I'd like to
-evaluate other chains besides ethereum.
-
-First, I've unrolled my Harvest positions, collecting the original LP tokens
-back plus whatever yield the farming was able to generate. The results of that
-step are:
-
-* 194 Y Pool tokens (originally 188).
-* 336 USDN Pool tokens (originally 299).
-* 0.0405 tBTC Pool tokens (originally 0.039).
-
-Second, I've burned those LP tokens to collect back the original assets from the
-LPs, resulting in:
-
-* 215.83 DAI from the Y Pool (originally 200).
-* 346.45 DAI from the USDN Pool (originally 300).
-* 0.0405 renBTC from the tBTC Pool (originally 0.04).
-
-For a total DAI of 562.28.
-
-Finally, I've re-deposited the DAI back into MakerDAO to reclaim my original
-ETH. I had originally withdrawn 500 DAI, but due to interest I now owed 511
-DAI. So after reclaiming my full 2.04 ETH I have ~51 DAI leftover.
-
-## Insane Profits
-
-Calculating actual APY for the BTC investment is straightforward: it came out to
-about 4.20% APY. Not too bad, considering the position is fairly immune to price
-movements.
-
-Calculating for ETH is a bit trickier, since in the end I ended up with the same
-ETH as I started with (2.04) plus 51 DAI. If I were to purchase ETH with that
-DAI now, it would get me ~0.02 further ETH. Not a whole heck of a lot. And that
-doesn't even account for ethereum fees! I made 22 ethereum transactions
-throughout this whole process, resulting in ~0.098 ETH spent on transaction
-fees.
-
-So in the end, I lost 0.078 ETH, but gained 0.0005 BTC. If I were to
-convert the BTC gain to ETH now it would give me a net total profit of:
-
-**-0.071 ETH**
-
-A net loss, how fun!
-
-## Conclusions
-
-There were a lot of takeaways from this experiment:
-
-* ETH fees will get ya, even in the good times. I would need to be working with
- at least an order of magnitude higher base position in order for this to work
- out in my favor.
-
-* I should have put all my DAI in the Curve USDN pool, and not bothered with the
- Y pool. It had almost double the percent return in the end.
-
-* Borrowing DAI on my ETH was fun, but it really cuts down on how much of my ETH
- value I'm able to take advantage of. My BTC was able to be fully invested,
- whereas at most half of my ETH value was.
-
-* If I have a large USD position I want to sit on, the USDN pool on its own is
- not the worst place to park it. The APY on it was about 30%!
-
-I _will_ be trying this again, albeit with a bigger budget and more knowledge. I
-want to check out other chains besides ethereum, so as to avoid the fees, as
-well as other yield mechanisms besides LPs, and other yield farming platforms
-besides Harvest.
-
-Until then!
diff --git a/src/_posts/2021-06-23-viz-6.md b/src/_posts/2021-06-23-viz-6.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 8262c2b..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2021-06-23-viz-6.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,402 +0,0 @@
----
-title: >-
- Visualization 6
-description: >-
- Eat your heart out, Conway!
-series: viz
-tags: tech art
----
-
-<script type="text/javascript">
-
-function randn(n) {
- return Math.floor(Math.random() * n);
-}
-
-const w = 100;
-const h = 50;
-
-class Canvas {
- constructor(canvasDOM) {
- this.dom = canvasDOM;
- this.ctx = canvasDOM.getContext("2d");
-
- // expand canvas element's width to match parent.
- this.dom.width = this.dom.parentElement.offsetWidth;
-
- // rectSize must be an even number or the pixels don't display nicely.
- this.rectSize = Math.floor(this.dom.width / w /2) * 2;
-
- this.dom.width = w * this.rectSize;
- this.dom.height = h * this.rectSize;
- }
-
- rectSize() {
- return Math.floor(this.dom.width / w);
- }
-}
-
-class Layer {
- constructor(className, newEl, {
- maxNewElsPerTick = 10,
- ageOfDeath = 60,
- neighborBonusScalar = 1,
- layerBonusScalar = 1,
- chaos = 0,
- } = {}) {
- this.className = className;
- this.els = {};
- this.diff = {};
-
- this.newEl = newEl;
- this.maxNewElsPerTick = maxNewElsPerTick;
- this.ageOfDeath = ageOfDeath;
- this.neighborBonusScalar = neighborBonusScalar;
- this.layerBonusScalar = layerBonusScalar;
- this.chaos = chaos;
- }
-
- _normCoord(coord) {
- if (typeof coord !== 'string') coord = JSON.stringify(coord);
- return coord;
- }
-
- get(coord) {
- return this.els[this._normCoord(coord)];
- }
-
- getAll() {
- return Object.values(this.els);
- }
-
- set(coord, el) {
- this.diff[this._normCoord(coord)] = {action: "set", coord: coord, ...el};
- }
-
- unset(coord) {
- this.diff[this._normCoord(coord)] = {action: "unset"};
- }
-
- applyDiff() {
- for (const coordStr in this.diff) {
- const el = this.diff[coordStr];
- delete this.diff[coordStr];
-
- if (el.action == "set") {
- delete el.action;
- this.els[coordStr] = el;
- } else {
- delete this.els[coordStr];
- }
- }
- }
-
- update(state, prevLayer) {
- // Apply diff from previous update first. The diff can't be applied last
- // because it needs to be present during the draw phase.
- this.applyDiff();
-
- const allEls = this.getAll().sort(() => Math.random() - 0.5);
-
- if (allEls.length == 0) {
- const nEl = this.newEl([])
- nEl.tick = state.tick;
- this.set([w/2, h/2], nEl);
- return;
- }
-
- let newEls = 0;
- for (const el of allEls) {
- const nCoord = randEmptyNeighboringCoord(this, el.coord);
- if (!nCoord) continue; // el has no empty neighboring spots
-
- const nEl = this.newEl(neighboringElsOf(this, nCoord))
- nEl.tick = state.tick;
- this.set(nCoord, nEl);
-
- newEls++;
- if (newEls >= this.maxNewElsPerTick) break;
- }
-
- for (const el of allEls) {
- const age = state.tick - el.tick;
- const neighborBonus = neighboringElsOf(this, el.coord).length * this.neighborBonusScalar;
-
- const layerBonus = prevLayer
- ? neighboringElsOf(prevLayer, el.coord, true).length * this.layerBonusScalar
- : 0;
-
- const chaos = (this.chaos > 0) ? randn(this.chaos) : 0;
-
- if (age - neighborBonus - layerBonus + chaos >= this.ageOfDeath) {
- this.unset(el.coord);
- }
- }
-}
-
- draw(canvas) {
- for (const coordStr in this.diff) {
- const el = this.diff[coordStr];
- const coord = JSON.parse(coordStr);
-
- if (el.action == "set") {
- canvas.ctx.fillStyle = `hsl(${el.h}, ${el.s}, ${el.l})`;
- canvas.ctx.fillRect(
- coord[0]*canvas.rectSize, coord[1]*canvas.rectSize,
- canvas.rectSize, canvas.rectSize,
- );
-
- } else {
- canvas.ctx.clearRect(
- coord[0]*canvas.rectSize, coord[1]*canvas.rectSize,
- canvas.rectSize, canvas.rectSize,
- );
- }
- }
- }
-}
-
-const neighbors = [
- [-1, -1], [0, -1], [1, -1],
- [-1, 0], /* [0, 0], */ [1, 0],
- [-1, 1], [0, 1], [1, 1],
-];
-
-function neighborsOf(coord) {
- return neighbors.map((n) => {
- let nX = coord[0]+n[0];
- let nY = coord[1]+n[1];
- nX = (nX + w) % w;
- nY = (nY + h) % h;
- return [nX, nY];
- });
-}
-
-function randEmptyNeighboringCoord(layer, coord) {
- const neighbors = neighborsOf(coord).sort(() => Math.random() - 0.5);
- for (const nCoord of neighbors) {
- if (!layer.get(nCoord)) return nCoord;
- }
- return null;
-}
-
-function neighboringElsOf(layer, coord, includeCoord = false) {
- const neighboringEls = [];
-
- const neighboringCoords = neighborsOf(coord);
- if (includeCoord) neighboringCoords.push(coord);
-
- for (const nCoord of neighboringCoords) {
- const el = layer.get(nCoord);
- if (el) neighboringEls.push(el);
- }
- return neighboringEls;
-}
-
-const drift = 30;
-function mkNewEl(l) {
- return (nEls) => {
- const s = "100%";
- if (nEls.length == 0) {
- return {
- h: randn(360),
- s: s,
- l: l,
- };
- }
-
- // for each h (which can be considered as degrees around a circle) break the h
- // down into x and y vectors, and add those up separately. Then find the angle
- // between those two resulting vectors, and that's the "average" h value.
- let x = 0;
- let y = 0;
- nEls.forEach((el) => {
- const hRad = el.h * Math.PI / 180;
- x += Math.cos(hRad);
- y += Math.sin(hRad);
- });
-
- let h = Math.atan2(y, x);
- h = h / Math.PI * 180;
-
- // apply some random drift, normalize
- h += (Math.random() * drift * 2) - drift;
- h = (h + 360) % 360;
-
- return {
- h: h,
- s: s,
- l: l,
- };
- }
-}
-
-class Universe {
- constructor(canvasesByClass, layers) {
- this.canvasesByClass = canvasesByClass;
- this.state = {
- tick: 0,
- layers: layers,
- };
- }
-
- update() {
- this.state.tick++;
- let prevLayer;
- this.state.layers.forEach((layer) => {
- layer.update(this.state, prevLayer);
- prevLayer = layer;
- });
- }
-
- draw() {
- this.state.layers.forEach((layer) => {
- if (!this.canvasesByClass[layer.className]) return;
- this.canvasesByClass[layer.className].forEach((canvas) => {
- layer.draw(canvas);
- });
- });
- }
-}
-
-</script>
-
-<style>
-
-.canvasContainer {
- display: grid;
- margin-bottom: 2rem;
- text-align: center;
-}
-
-canvas {
- border: 1px dashed #AAA;
- width: 100%;
- grid-area: 1/1/2/2;
-}
-
-</style>
-
-<div class="canvasContainer">
- <canvas class="layer1"></canvas>
- <canvas class="layer2"></canvas>
-</div>
-
-<div class="row">
-
- <div class="columns six">
- <h3>Bottom Layer</h3>
- <div class="canvasContainer"><canvas class="layer1"></canvas></div>
- <div class="layer1 layerParams">
- <label>Max New Elements Per Tick</label><input type="text" param="maxNewElsPerTick" />
- <label>Age of Death</label><input type="text" param="ageOfDeath" />
- <label>Neighbor Bonus Scalar</label><input type="text" param="neighborBonusScalar" />
- </div>
- </div>
-
- <div class="columns six">
- <h3>Top Layer</h3>
- <div class="canvasContainer"><canvas class="layer2"></canvas></div>
- <div class="layer2 layerParams">
- <label>Max New Elements Per Tick</label><input type="text" param="maxNewElsPerTick" />
- <label>Age of Death</label><input type="text" param="ageOfDeath" />
- <label>Neighbor Bonus Scalar</label><input type="text" param="neighborBonusScalar" />
- <label>Layer Bonus Scalar</label><input type="text" param="layerBonusScalar" />
- </div>
- </div>
-
-</div>
-
-This visualization is essentially the same as the previous, except that each
-layer now operates with different parameters than the other, allowing each to
-exhibit different behavior.
-
-Additionally, the top layer has been made to be responsive to the bottom, via a
-new mechanism where the age of an element on the top layer can be extended based
-on the number of bottom layer elements it neighbors.
-
-Finally, the UI now exposes the actual parameters which are used to tweak the
-behavior of each layer. Modifying any parameter will change the behavior of the
-associated layer in real-time. The default parameters have been chosen such that
-the top layer is now rather dependent on the bottom for sustenance, although it
-can venture away to some extent. However, by playing the parameters yourself you
-can find other behaviors and interesting cause-and-effects that aren't
-immediately obvious. Try it!
-
-An explanation of the parameters is as follows:
-
-On each tick, up to `maxNewElements` are created in each layer, where each new
-element neighbors an existing one.
-
-Additionally, on each tick, _all_ elements in a layer are iterated through. Each
-one's age is determined as follows:
-
-```
-age = (currentTick - birthTick)
-age -= (numNeighbors * neighborBonusScalar)
-age -= (numBottomLayerNeighbors * layerBonusScalar) // only for top layer
-```
-
-If an element's age is greater than or equal to the `ageOfDeath` for that layer,
-then the element is removed.
-
-<script>
-
-const canvasesByClass = {};
-[...document.getElementsByTagName("canvas")].forEach((canvasDOM) => {
-
- const canvas = new Canvas(canvasDOM);
- canvasDOM.classList.forEach((name) => {
- if (!canvasesByClass[name]) canvasesByClass[name] = [];
- canvasesByClass[name].push(canvas);
- })
-});
-
-const layers = [
-
- new Layer("layer1", mkNewEl("90%"), {
- maxNewElsPerTick: 2,
- ageOfDeath: 30,
- neighborBonusScalar: 50,
- }),
-
- new Layer("layer2", mkNewEl("50%", ), {
- maxNewElsPerTick: 10,
- ageOfDeath: 1,
- neighborBonusScalar: 15,
- layerBonusScalar: 5,
- }),
-
-];
-
-for (const layer of layers) {
- document.querySelectorAll(`.${layer.className}.layerParams > input`).forEach((input) => {
- const param = input.getAttribute("param");
-
- // pre-fill input values
- input.value = layer[param];
-
- input.onchange = () => {
- console.log(`setting ${layer.className}.${param} to ${input.value}`);
- layer[param] = input.value;
- };
- });
-}
-
-const universe = new Universe(canvasesByClass, layers);
-
-const requestAnimationFrame =
- window.requestAnimationFrame ||
- window.mozRequestAnimationFrame ||
- window.webkitRequestAnimationFrame ||
- window.msRequestAnimationFrame;
-
-function doTick() {
- universe.update();
- universe.draw();
- requestAnimationFrame(doTick);
-}
-
-doTick();
-
-</script>
diff --git a/src/_posts/2021-06-26-selfhosted-email-with-maddy.md b/src/_posts/2021-06-26-selfhosted-email-with-maddy.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 0ea3491..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2021-06-26-selfhosted-email-with-maddy.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,277 +0,0 @@
----
-title: >-
- Self-Hosted Email With maddy: A Naive First Attempt
-description: >-
- How hard could it be?
-tags: tech
-series: selfhost
----
-
-For a _long_ time now I've wanted to get off gmail and host my own email
-domains. I've looked into it a few times, but have been discouraged on multiple
-fronts:
-
-* Understanding the protocols underlying email isn't straightforward; it's an
- old system, there's a lot of cruft, lots of auxiliary protocols that are now
- essentially required, and a lot of different services required to tape it all
- together.
-
-* The services which are required are themselves old, and use operational
- patterns that maybe used to make sense but are now pretty freaking cumbersome.
- For example, postfix requires something like 3 different system accounts.
-
-* Deviating from the non-standard route and using something like
- [Mail-in-a-box][miab] involves running docker, which I'm trying to avoid.
-
-So up till now I had let the idea sit, waiting for something better to come
-along.
-
-[maddy][maddy] is, I think, something better. According to the homepage
-"\[maddy\] replaces Postfix, Dovecot, OpenDKIM, OpenSPF, OpenDMARC and more with
-one daemon with uniform configuration and minimal maintenance cost." Sounds
-perfect! The homepage is clean and to the point, it's written in go, and the
-docs appear to be reasonably well written. And, to top it all off, it's already
-been added to [nixpkgs][nixpkgs]!
-
-So in this post (and subsequent posts) I'll be documenting my journey into
-getting a maddy server running to see how well it works out.
-
-## Just Do It
-
-I'm almost 100% sure this won't work, but to start with I'm going to simply get
-maddy up and running on my home media server as per the tutorial on its site,
-and go from there.
-
-First there's some global system configuration I need to perform. Ideally maddy
-could be completely packaged up and not pollute the rest of the system at all,
-and if I was using NixOS I think that would be possible, but as it is I need to
-create a user for maddy and ensure it's able to read the TLS certificates that I
-manage via [LetsEncrypt][le].
-
-```bash
-sudo useradd -mrU -s /sbin/nologin -d /var/lib/maddy -c "maddy mail server" maddy
-sudo setfacl -R -m u:maddy:rX /etc/letsencrypt/{live,archive}
-```
-
-The next step is to set up the nix build of the systemd service file. This is a
-strategy I've been using recently to nix-ify my services without needing to deal
-with nix profiles. The idea is to encode the nix store path to everything
-directly into the systemd service file, and install that file normally. In this
-case this looks something like:
-
-```
-pkgs.writeTextFile {
- name = "mediocregopher-maddy-service";
- text = ''
- [Unit]
- Description=mediocregopher maddy
- Documentation=man:maddy(1)
- Documentation=man:maddy.conf(5)
- Documentation=https://maddy.email
- After=network.target
-
- [Service]
- Type=notify
- NotifyAccess=main
- Restart=always
- RestartSec=1s
-
- User=maddy
- Group=maddy
-
- # cd to state directory to make sure any relative paths
- # in config will be relative to it unless handled specially.
- WorkingDirectory=/mnt/vol1/maddy
- ReadWritePaths=/mnt/vol1/maddy
-
- # ... lots of directives from
- # https://github.com/foxcpp/maddy/blob/master/dist/systemd/maddy.service
- # that we'll elide here ...
-
- ExecStart=${pkgs.maddy}/bin/maddy -config ${./maddy.conf}
-
- ExecReload=/bin/kill -USR1 $MAINPID
- ExecReload=/bin/kill -USR2 $MAINPID
-
- [Install]
- WantedBy=multi-user.target
- '';
-}
-```
-
-With the service now testable, it falls on me to actually go through the setup
-steps described in the [tutorial][tutorial].
-
-## Following The Tutorial
-
-The first step in the tutorial is setting up of domain names, which I first
-perform in cloudflare (where my DNS is hosted) and then reflect into the conf
-file. Then I point the `tls file` configuration line at my LetsEncrypt
-directory by changing the line to:
-
-```
-tls file /etc/letsencrypt/live/$(hostname)/fullchain.pem /etc/letsencrypt/live/$(hostname)/privkey.pem
-```
-
-
-maddy can access these files thanks to the `setfacl` command I performed
-earlier.
-
-At this point the server should be effectively configured. However, starting it
-via systemd results in this error:
-
-```
-failed to load /etc/letsencrypt/live/mx.mydomain.com/fullchain.pem and /etc/letsencrypt/live/mx.mydomain.com/privkey.pem
-```
-
-(For my own security I'm not going to be using the actual email domain in this
-post, I'll use `mydomain.com` instead.)
-
-This makes sense... I use a wildcard domain with LetsEncrypt, so certs for the
-`mx` sub-domain specifically won't exist. I need to figure out how to tell maddy
-to use the wildcard, or actually create a separate certificate for the `mx`
-sub-domain. I'd rather the former, obviously, as it's far less work.
-
-Luckily, making it use the wildcard isn't too hard, all that is needed is to
-change the `tls file` line to:
-
-```
-tls file /etc/letsencrypt/live/$(primary_domain)/fullchain.pem /etc/letsencrypt/live/$(primary_domain)/privkey.pem
-```
-
-This works because my `primary_domain` domain is set to the top-level
-(`mydomain.com`), which is what the wildcard cert is issued for.
-
-At this point maddy is up and running, but there's still a slight problem. maddy
-appears to be placing all of its state files in `/var/lib/maddy`, even though
-I'd like to place them in `/mnt/vol1/maddy`. I had set the `WorkingDirectory` in
-the systemd service file to this, but apparently that's not enough. After
-digging through the codebase I discover an undocumented directive which can be
-added to the conf file:
-
-```
-state_dir /mnt/vol1/maddy
-```
-
-Kind of annoying, but at least it works.
-
-The next step is to fiddle with DNS records some more. I add the SPF, DMARC and
-DKIM records to cloudflare as described by the tutorial (what do these do? I
-have no fuckin clue).
-
-I also need to set up MTA-STS (again, not really knowing what that is). The
-tutorial says I need to make a file with certain contents available at the URL
-`https://mta-sts.mydomain.com/.well-known/mta-sts.txt`. I love it when protocol
-has to give up and resort to another one in order to keep itself afloat, it
-really inspires confidence.
-
-Anyway, I set that subdomain up in cloudflare, and add the following to my nginx
-configuration:
-
-```
-server {
- listen 80;
- server_name mta-sts.mydomain.com;
- include include/public_whitelist.conf;
-
- location / {
- return 404;
- }
-
- location /.well-known/mta-sts.txt {
-
- # Check out openresty if you want to get super useful nginx plugins, like
- # the echo module, out-of-the-box.
- echo 'mode: enforce';
- echo 'max_age: 604800';
- echo 'mx: mx.mydomain.com';
- }
-}
-```
-
-(Note: my `public_whitelist.conf` only allows cloudflare IPs to access this
-sub-domain, which is something I do for all sub-domains which I can put through
-cloudflare.)
-
-Finally, I need to create some actual credentials in maddy with which to send my
-email. I do this via the `maddyctl` command-line utility:
-
-```
-> sudo maddyctl --config maddy.conf creds create 'me@mydomain.com'
-Enter password for new user:
-> sudo maddyctl --config maddy.conf imap-acct create 'me@mydomain.com'
-```
-
-## Send It!
-
-At this point I'm ready to actually test the email sending. I'm going to use
-[S-nail][snail] to do so, and after reading through the docs there I put the
-following in my `~/.mailrc`:
-
-```
-set v15-compat
-set mta=smtp://me%40mydomain.com:password@localhost:587 smtp-use-starttls
-```
-
-And attempt the following `mailx` command to send an email from my new mail
-server:
-
-```
-> echo 'Hello! This is a cool email' | mailx -s 'Subject' -r 'Me <me@mydomain.com>' 'test.email@gmail.com'
-reproducible_build: TLS certificate does not match: localhost:587
-/home/mediocregopher/dead.letter 10/313
-reproducible_build: ... message not sent
-```
-
-Damn. TLS is failing because I'm connecting over `localhost`, but maddy is
-serving the TLS certs for `mydomain.com`. Since I haven't gone through the steps
-of exposing maddy publicly yet (which would require port forwarding in my
-router, as well as opening a port in iptables) I can't properly test this with
-TLS not being required. _It's very important that I remember to re-require TLS
-before putting anything public._
-
-In the meantime I remove the `smtp-use-starttls` entry from my `~/.mailrc`, and
-retry the `mailx` command. This time I get a different error:
-
-```
-reproducible_build: SMTP server: 523 5.7.10 TLS is required
-```
-
-It turns out there's a further configuration directive I need to add, this time
-in `maddy.conf`. Within my `submission` configuration block I add the following
-line:
-
-```
-insecure_auth true
-```
-
-This allows plaintext auth over non-TLS connections. Kind of sketchy, but again
-I'll undo this before putting anything public.
-
-Finally, I try the `mailx` command one more time, and it successfully returns!
-
-Unfortunately, no email is ever received in my gmail :( I check the maddy logs
-and see what I feared most all along:
-
-```
-Jun 29 08:44:58 maddy[127396]: remote: cannot use MX {"domain":"gmail.com","io_op":"dial","msg_id":"5c23d76a-60db30e7","reason":"dial tcp 142.250.152.26:25: connect: connection timed out","remote_addr":"142.250.152.
-26:25","remote_server":"alt1.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com.","smtp_code":450,"smtp_enchcode":"4.4.2","smtp_msg":"Network I/O error"}
-```
-
-My ISP is blocking outbound connections on port 25. This is classic email
-bullshit; ISPs essentially can't allow outbound SMTP connections, as email is so
-easily abusable it would drastically increase the amount of spam being sent from
-their networks.
-
-## Lessons Learned
-
-The next attempt will involve an external VPS which allows SMTP, and a lot more
-interesting configuration. But for now I'm forced to turn off maddy and let this
-dream sit for a little while longer.
-
-[miab]: https://mailinabox.email/
-[maddy]: https://maddy.email
-[nixpkgs]: https://search.nixos.org/packages?channel=21.05&from=0&size=50&sort=relevance&query=maddy
-[tutorial]: https://maddy.email/tutorials/setting-up/
-[le]: https://letsencrypt.org/
-[snail]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/S-nail
diff --git a/src/_posts/2021-07-01-viz-7.md b/src/_posts/2021-07-01-viz-7.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 5bf3e8d..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2021-07-01-viz-7.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,440 +0,0 @@
----
-title: >-
- Visualization 7
-description: >-
- Feedback Loop.
-series: viz
-tags: tech art
----
-
-<script type="text/javascript">
-
-function randn(n) {
- return Math.floor(Math.random() * n);
-}
-
-const w = 100;
-const h = 60;
-
-class Canvas {
- constructor(canvasDOM) {
- this.dom = canvasDOM;
- this.ctx = canvasDOM.getContext("2d");
-
- // expand canvas element's width to match parent.
- this.dom.width = this.dom.parentElement.offsetWidth;
-
- // rectSize must be an even number or the pixels don't display nicely.
- this.rectSize = Math.floor(this.dom.width / w /2) * 2;
-
- this.dom.width = w * this.rectSize;
- this.dom.height = h * this.rectSize;
- }
-
- rectSize() {
- return Math.floor(this.dom.width / w);
- }
-}
-
-class UniverseState {
- constructor(layers) {
- this.tick = 0;
- this.layers = layers;
- }
-
- neighboringLayers(layerIndex) {
- const prevIndex = layerIndex-1;
- const prev = prevIndex < 0 ? null : this.layers[prevIndex];
-
- const nextIndex = layerIndex+1;
- const next = nextIndex >= this.layers.length ? null : this.layers[nextIndex];
-
- return [prev, next];
- }
-}
-
-const defaultKnobs = {
- maxNewElsPerTick: 10,
- ageOfDeath: 30,
- drift: 30,
- neighborScalar: 0,
- prevLayerScalar: 0,
- prevLayerLikenessScalar: 0,
- nextLayerScalar: 0,
- nextLayerLikenessScalar: 0,
- chaos: 0,
-};
-
-class Layer {
- constructor(className, newEl, knobs = {}) {
- this.className = className;
- this.els = {};
- this.diff = {};
- this.newEl = newEl;
- this.knobs = { ...defaultKnobs, ...knobs };
- }
-
- _normCoord(coord) {
- if (typeof coord !== 'string') coord = JSON.stringify(coord);
- return coord;
- }
-
- get(coord) {
- return this.els[this._normCoord(coord)];
- }
-
- getAll() {
- return Object.values(this.els);
- }
-
- set(coord, el) {
- this.diff[this._normCoord(coord)] = {action: "set", coord: coord, ...el};
- }
-
- unset(coord) {
- this.diff[this._normCoord(coord)] = {action: "unset"};
- }
-
- applyDiff() {
- for (const coordStr in this.diff) {
- const el = this.diff[coordStr];
- delete this.diff[coordStr];
-
- if (el.action == "set") {
- delete el.action;
- this.els[coordStr] = el;
- } else {
- delete this.els[coordStr];
- }
- }
- }
-
- update(state, thisLayerIndex) {
- // Apply diff from previous update first. The diff can't be applied last
- // because it needs to be present during the draw phase.
- this.applyDiff();
-
- const allEls = this.getAll().sort(() => Math.random() - 0.5);
-
- if (allEls.length == 0) {
- const newEl = this.newEl(this, [])
- newEl.tick = state.tick;
- this.set([w/2, h/2], newEl);
- return;
- }
-
- let newEls = 0;
- for (const el of allEls) {
- const nCoord = randEmptyNeighboringCoord(this, el.coord);
- if (!nCoord) continue; // el has no empty neighboring spots
-
- const newEl = this.newEl(this, neighboringElsOf(this, nCoord))
- newEl.tick = state.tick;
- this.set(nCoord, newEl);
-
- newEls++;
- if (newEls >= this.knobs.maxNewElsPerTick) break;
- }
-
- const calcLayerBonus = (el, layer, scalar, likenessScalar) => {
- if (!layer) return 0;
- const nEls = neighboringElsOf(layer, el.coord, true)
-
- const likeness = nEls.reduce((likeness, nEl) => {
- const diff = Math.abs(nEl.c - el.c);
- return likeness + Math.max(diff, Math.abs(1 - diff));
- }, 0);
-
- return (nEls.length * scalar) + (likeness * likenessScalar);
- };
-
- const [prevLayer, nextLayer] = state.neighboringLayers(thisLayerIndex);
-
- for (const el of allEls) {
- const age = state.tick - el.tick;
- const neighborBonus = neighboringElsOf(this, el.coord).length * this.knobs.neighborScalar;
- const prevLayerBonus = calcLayerBonus(el, prevLayer, this.knobs.prevLayerScalar, this.knobs.prevLayerLikenessScalar);
- const nextLayerBonus = calcLayerBonus(el, nextLayer, this.knobs.nextLayerScalar, this.knobs.nextLayerLikenessScalar);
- const chaos = (this.chaos > 0) ? randn(this.knobs.chaos) : 0;
-
- if (age - neighborBonus - prevLayerBonus - nextLayerBonus + chaos >= this.knobs.ageOfDeath) {
- this.unset(el.coord);
- }
- }
- }
-
- draw(canvas) {
- for (const coordStr in this.diff) {
- const el = this.diff[coordStr];
- const coord = JSON.parse(coordStr);
-
- if (el.action == "set") {
- canvas.ctx.fillStyle = `hsl(${el.h}, ${el.s}, ${el.l})`;
- canvas.ctx.fillRect(
- coord[0]*canvas.rectSize, coord[1]*canvas.rectSize,
- canvas.rectSize, canvas.rectSize,
- );
-
- } else {
- canvas.ctx.clearRect(
- coord[0]*canvas.rectSize, coord[1]*canvas.rectSize,
- canvas.rectSize, canvas.rectSize,
- );
- }
- }
- }
-}
-
-const neighbors = [
- [-1, -1], [0, -1], [1, -1],
- [-1, 0], /* [0, 0], */ [1, 0],
- [-1, 1], [0, 1], [1, 1],
-];
-
-function neighborsOf(coord) {
- return neighbors.map((n) => {
- let nX = coord[0]+n[0];
- let nY = coord[1]+n[1];
- nX = (nX + w) % w;
- nY = (nY + h) % h;
- return [nX, nY];
- });
-}
-
-function randEmptyNeighboringCoord(layer, coord) {
- const neighbors = neighborsOf(coord).sort(() => Math.random() - 0.5);
- for (const nCoord of neighbors) {
- if (!layer.get(nCoord)) return nCoord;
- }
- return null;
-}
-
-function neighboringElsOf(layer, coord, includeCoord = false) {
- const neighboringEls = [];
-
- const neighboringCoords = neighborsOf(coord);
- if (includeCoord) neighboringCoords.push(coord);
-
- for (const nCoord of neighboringCoords) {
- const el = layer.get(nCoord);
- if (el) neighboringEls.push(el);
- }
- return neighboringEls;
-}
-
-function newEl(h, l) {
- return {
- h: h,
- s: "100%",
- l: l,
- c: h / 360, // c is used to compare the element to others
- };
-}
-
-function mkNewEl(l) {
- return (layer, nEls) => {
- const s = "100%";
- if (nEls.length == 0) {
- const h = randn(360);
- return newEl(h, l);
- }
-
- // for each h (which can be considered as degrees around a circle) break the
- // h down into x and y vectors, and add those up separately. Then find the
- // angle between those two resulting vectors, and that's the "average" h
- // value.
- let x = 0;
- let y = 0;
- nEls.forEach((el) => {
- const hRad = el.h * Math.PI / 180;
- x += Math.cos(hRad);
- y += Math.sin(hRad);
- });
-
- let h = Math.atan2(y, x);
- h = h / Math.PI * 180;
-
- // apply some random drift, normalize
- h += (Math.random() * layer.knobs.drift * 2) - layer.knobs.drift;
- h = (h + 360) % 360;
-
- return newEl(h, l);
- }
-}
-
-class Universe {
- constructor(canvasesByClass, layers) {
- this.canvasesByClass = canvasesByClass;
- this.state = new UniverseState(layers);
- }
-
- update() {
- this.state.tick++;
- let prevLayer;
- this.state.layers.forEach((layer, i) => {
- layer.update(this.state, i);
- prevLayer = layer;
- });
- }
-
- draw() {
- this.state.layers.forEach((layer) => {
- if (!this.canvasesByClass[layer.className]) return;
- this.canvasesByClass[layer.className].forEach((canvas) => {
- layer.draw(canvas);
- });
- });
- }
-}
-
-</script>
-
-<style>
-
-.canvasContainer {
- display: grid;
- margin-bottom: 2rem;
- text-align: center;
-}
-
-canvas {
- border: 1px dashed #AAA;
- width: 100%;
- grid-area: 1/1/2/2;
-}
-
-</style>
-
-<div class="canvasContainer">
- <canvas class="layer1"></canvas>
- <canvas class="layer2"></canvas>
-</div>
-
-<div class="row">
-
- <div class="columns six">
- <h3>Bottom Layer</h3>
- <div class="canvasContainer"><canvas class="layer1"></canvas></div>
- <div class="layer1 layerParams">
- <label>Max New Elements Per Tick</label><input type="text" param="maxNewElsPerTick" />
- <label>Color Drift</label><input type="text" param="drift" />
- <label>Age of Death</label><input type="text" param="ageOfDeath" />
- <label>Neighbor Scalar</label><input type="text" param="neighborScalar" />
- <label>Top Layer Neighbor Scalar</label><input type="text" param="nextLayerScalar" />
- <label>Top Layer Neighbor Likeness Scalar</label><input type="text" param="nextLayerLikenessScalar" />
- </div>
- </div>
-
- <div class="columns six">
- <h3>Top Layer</h3>
- <div class="canvasContainer"><canvas class="layer2"></canvas></div>
- <div class="layer2 layerParams">
- <label>Max New Elements Per Tick</label><input type="text" param="maxNewElsPerTick" />
- <label>Color Drift</label><input type="text" param="drift" />
- <label>Age of Death</label><input type="text" param="ageOfDeath" />
- <label>Neighbor Scalar</label><input type="text" param="neighborScalar" />
- <label>Bottom Layer Neighbor Scalar</label><input type="text" param="prevLayerScalar" />
- <label>Bottom Layer Neighbor Likeness Scalar</label><input type="text" param="prevLayerLikenessScalar" />
- </div>
- </div>
-
-</div>
-
-Once again, this visualization iterates upon the previous. In the last one the
-top layer was able to "see" the bottom, and was therefore able to bolster or
-penalize its own elements which were on or near bottom layer elements, but not
-vice-versa. This time both layers can see each other, and the "Layer Neighbor
-Scalar" can be used to adjust lifetime of elements which are on/near elements of
-the neighboring layer.
-
-By default, the bottom layer has a high affinity to the top, and the top layer
-has a some (but not as much) affinity in return.
-
-Another addition is the "likeness" scalar. Likeness is defined as the degree to
-which one element is like another. In this visualization likeness is determined
-by color. The "Layer Neighbor Likeness Scalar" adjusts the lifetime of elements
-based on how like they are to nearby elements on the neighboring layer.
-
-By default, the top layer has a high affinity for the bottom's color, but the
-bottom doesn't care about the top's color at all (and so its color will drift
-aimlessly).
-
-And finally "Color Drift" can be used to adjust the degree to which the color of
-new elements can diverge from its parents. This has always been hardcoded, but
-can now be adjusted separately across the different layers.
-
-In the default configuration the top layer will (eventually) converge to roughly
-match the bottom both in shape and color. When I first implemented the likeness
-scaling I thought it was broken, because the top would never converge to the
-bottom's color.
-
-What I eventually realized was that the top must have a higher color drift than
-the bottom in order for it to do so, otherwise the top would always be playing
-catchup. However, if the drift difference is _too_ high then the top layer
-becomes chaos and also doesn't really follow the color of the bottom. A
-difference of 10 (degrees out of 360) is seemingly enough.
-
-<script>
-
-const canvasesByClass = {};
-[...document.getElementsByTagName("canvas")].forEach((canvasDOM) => {
-
- const canvas = new Canvas(canvasDOM);
- canvasDOM.classList.forEach((name) => {
- if (!canvasesByClass[name]) canvasesByClass[name] = [];
- canvasesByClass[name].push(canvas);
- })
-});
-
-const layers = [
-
- new Layer("layer1", mkNewEl("90%"), {
- maxNewElsPerTick: 2,
- ageOfDeath: 30,
- drift: 40,
- neighborScalar: 50,
- nextLayerScalar: 20,
- }),
-
- new Layer("layer2", mkNewEl("50%", ), {
- maxNewElsPerTick: 15,
- ageOfDeath: 1,
- drift: 50,
- neighborScalar: 5,
- prevLayerScalar: 5,
- prevLayerLikenessScalar: 20,
- }),
-
-];
-
-for (const layer of layers) {
- document.querySelectorAll(`.${layer.className}.layerParams > input`).forEach((input) => {
- const param = input.getAttribute("param");
-
- // pre-fill input values
- input.value = layer.knobs[param];
-
- input.onchange = () => {
- console.log(`setting ${layer.className}.${param} to ${input.value}`);
- layer.knobs[param] = input.value;
- };
- });
-}
-
-const universe = new Universe(canvasesByClass, layers);
-
-const requestAnimationFrame =
- window.requestAnimationFrame ||
- window.mozRequestAnimationFrame ||
- window.webkitRequestAnimationFrame ||
- window.msRequestAnimationFrame;
-
-function doTick() {
- universe.update();
- universe.draw();
- requestAnimationFrame(doTick);
-}
-
-doTick();
-
-</script>
diff --git a/src/_posts/2021-07-06-maddy-vps.md b/src/_posts/2021-07-06-maddy-vps.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 93c76d2..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2021-07-06-maddy-vps.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,115 +0,0 @@
----
-title: >-
- Setting Up maddy On A VPS
-description: >-
- We have delivery!
-tags: tech
-series: selfhost
----
-
-In the previous post I left off with being blocked by my ISP from sending
-outbound emails on port 25, effectively forcing me to set up [maddy][maddy] on a
-virtual private server (VPS) somewhere else.
-
-After some research I chose [Vultr][vultr] as my VPS of choice. They apparently
-don't block you from sending outbound emails on port 25, and are in general
-pretty cheap. I rented their smallest VPS server for $5/month, plus an
-additional $3/month to reserve an IPv4 address (though I'm not sure I really
-need that, I have dDNS set up at home and could easily get that working here as
-well).
-
-## TLS
-
-The first major hurdle was getting TLS certs for `mydomain.com` (not the real
-domain) onto my Vultr box. For the time being I've opted to effectively
-copy-paste my local [LetsEncrypt][le] setup to Vultr, using certbot to
-periodically update my records using DNS TXT challenges.
-
-The downside to this is that I now require my Cloudflare API key to be present
-on the Vultr box, which effectively means that if the box ever gets owned
-someone will have full access to all my DNS. For now I've locked down the box as
-best as I can, and will look into changing the setup in the future. There's two
-ways I could go about it:
-
-* SCP the certs from my local box to the remote everytime they're renewed. This
- would require setting up a new user on the remote box with very narrow
- privileges. This isn't the worst thing though.
-
-* Use a different challenge method than DNS TXT records.
-
-But again, I'm trying to set up maddy, not LetsEncrypt, and so I needed to move
-on.
-
-## Deployment
-
-In the previous post I talked about how I'm using nix to generate a systemd
-service file which encompasses all dependencies automatically, without needing
-to install anything to the global system or my nix profile.
-
-Since that's already been set up, it's fairly trivial to use `nix-copy-closure`
-to copy a service file, and _all_ of its dependencies (including configuration)
-from my local box to the remote Vultr box. Simply:
-
-```
-nix-copy-closure -s <ssh host> <nix store path>
-```
-
-I whipped up some scripts around this so that I can run a single make target and
-have it build the service (and all deps), do a `nix-copy-closure` to the remote
-host, copy the service file into `/etc/systemd/service`, and restart the
-service.
-
-## Changes
-
-For the most part the maddy deployment on the remote box is the same as on the
-local one. Down the road I will likely change them both significantly, so that
-the remote one only deals with SMTP (no need for IMAP) and the local one will
-automatically forward all submitted messages to it.
-
-Once that's done, and the remote Vultr box is set up on my [nebula][nebula]
-network, there won't be a need for the remote maddy to do any SMTP
-authentication, since the submission endpoint can be made entirely private.
-
-For now, however, I've set up maddy on the remote box's public interface with
-SMTP authentication enabled, to make testing easier.
-
-## Testing
-
-And now, to test it! I changed the SMTP credentials in my `~/.mailrc` file as
-appropriate, and let a test email rip:
-
-```
-echo 'Hello! This is a cool email' | mailx -s 'Subject' -r 'Me <me@mydomain.com>' 'test.email@gmail.com'
-```
-
-This would, ideally, send an email from my SMTP server (on my domain) to a test
-gmail domain. Unfortunately, it did not do that, but instead maddy spit this out
-in its log:
-
-> maddy[1547]: queue: delivery attempt failed {"msg_id":"330a1ed9","rcpt":"mediocregopher@gmail.com","reason":"[2001:19f0:5001:355a:5400:3ff:fe73:3d02] Our system has detected that\nthis message does not meet IPv6 sending guidelines regarding PTR\nrecords and authentication. Please review\n https://support.google.com/mail/?p=IPv6AuthError for more information\n. gn42si18496961ejc.717 - gsmtp","remote_server":"gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com.","smtp_code":550,"smtp_enchcode":"5.7.1","smtp_msg":"gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com. said: [2001:19f0:5001:355a:5400:3ff:fe73:3d02] Our system has detected that\nthis message does not meet IPv6 sending guidelines regarding PTR\nrecords and authentication. Please review\n https://support.google.com/mail/?p=IPv6AuthError for more information\n. gn42si18496961ejc.717 - gsmtp"}
-
-Luckily Vultr makes setting up PTR records for reverse DNS fairly easy. They
-even allowed me to do it on my box's IPv6 address which I'm not paying to
-reserve (though I'm not sure what the long-term risks of that are... can it
-change?).
-
-Once done, I attempted to send my email again, and what do you know...
-
-![Success!](/assets/maddy-vps/success.png)
-
-Success!
-
-So now I can send emails. There are a few next steps from here:
-
-* Get the VPS on my nebula network and lock it down properly.
-
-* Fix the TLS cert situation.
-
-* Set up the remote maddy to forward submissions to my local maddy.
-
-* Use my sick new email!
-
-[maddy]: https://maddy.email
-[le]: https://letsencrypt.org/
-[vultr]: https://www.vultr.com/
-[nebula]: https://github.com/slackhq/nebula
diff --git a/src/_posts/2021-07-14-how-to-secure-a-webapp.md b/src/_posts/2021-07-14-how-to-secure-a-webapp.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 155068d..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2021-07-14-how-to-secure-a-webapp.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,315 +0,0 @@
----
-title: >-
- How to Secure a Webapp
-description: >-
- Get ready to jump through some hoops.
-tags: tech
----
-
-In this post I will be documenting all security hoops that one must jump through
-in order to consider their webapp secure. This list should not be considered
-comprehensive, as I might have forgotten something or some new hoop might have
-appeared since writing.
-
-For the context of this post a "webapp" will be considered to be an HTML/CSS/JS
-website, loaded in a browser, with which users create and access accounts using
-some set of credentials (probably username and password). In other words, most
-popular websites today. This post will only cover those concerns which apply to
-_all_ webapps of this nature, and so won't dive into any which might be incurred
-by using one particular technology or another.
-
-Some of these hoops might seem redundant or optional. That may be the case. But
-if you are building a website and are beholden to passing some third-party
-security audit for any reason you'll likely find yourself being forced to
-implement most, if not all, of these measures anyway.
-
-So without further ado, let's get started!
-
-## HTTPS
-
-At this point you have to use HTTPS, there's not excuse for not doing so. All
-attempts to hit an HTTP endpoint should redirect to the equivalent HTTPS
-endpoint, and you should be using [HSTS][hsts] to ensure that a browser is never
-tricked into falling back to HTTP via some compromised DNS server.
-
-[hsts]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Strict-Transport-Security
-
-## Cookies
-
-Cookies are an old web technology, and have always been essentially broken. Each
-cookie can have certain flags set on it which change their behavior, and some of
-these flags are required at this point.
-
-### Secure
-
-If you're storing anything sensitive in a cookie (spoiler alert: you will be)
-then you need to have the Secure flag set on it. This prevents the cookie from
-being sent in a non-HTTPS request.
-
-### HTTPOnly
-
-The HTTPOnly flag protects a cookie from XSS attacks by preventing it from being
-accessible from javascript. Any cookie which is storing sensitive information
-_must_ have this flag set. In the **Authentication** section we will cover the
-storage of session tokens, but the TLDR is that they have to be stored in an
-HTTPOnly cookie.
-
-Practically, this means that your sessions architecture _must_ account for the
-fact that the webapp itself will not have direct access to its persistent
-session token(s), and therefore must have some other way of knowing that it's
-logged in (e.g. a secondary, non-HTTPOnly cookie which contains no secrets but
-only signals that the browser is logged in).
-
-### SameSite
-
-The SameSite attribute can be set to `Strict`, `Lax`, or `None`. `Lax` is the
-default in modern browsers and is sufficient for most security concerns, but if
-you can go with `Strict` that would be better. The downside of `Strict` is that
-cookies won't be sent on initial page-load of a site.
-
-In any case, even though `Lax` is the default you should still set this
-attribute manually (or your auditor might get to add another bullet point to
-their report).
-
-## Authentication
-
-Authentication is obviously one of the juiciest targets for an attacker. It's
-one thing to be able to trick a user into performing this or that action, but if
-one can just log in _as_ the user then they essentially have free-reign over all
-their information.
-
-### Password History
-
-Most websites use a username/password system as the first step of login. This
-is.... fine. We've accepted it, at any rate. But there's a couple of hoops which
-must be jumped through as a result of it, and the first is password history.
-
-I hope it goes without saying that one should be using a hashing algorithm like
-bcrypt to store user passwords. But what is often not said is that, for each
-user, you need to store the hashes of their last N passwords (where N is
-something like 8). This way if they attempt to re-use an old password they are
-not able to do so. The users must be protected from themselves, afterall.
-
-### Credential Stuffing/Account Enumeration
-
-A credential stuffing attack is one where credentials are stolen from one
-website and then attempted to be used on another, in the hope that users have
-re-used their username/password across multiple sites. When they occur it'll
-often look like a botnet spamming the authentication endpoint with tons of
-different credentials.
-
-Account enumeration is a similar attack: it's where an attacker finds a way to
-get the webapp to tell them whether or not an account email/username exists in
-the system, without needing to have the right password. This is often done by
-analyzing the error messages returned from login or a similar endpoint (e.g.
-"Sorry this username is taken"). They then run through all possible values for
-that endpoint to try and enumerate which users actually exist in the system.
-
-Account enumeration is tricky because often those errors are extremely helpful,
-and we'd _like_ to keep them if we can.
-
-I've bucketed both of these attacks in the same section because they have a
-similar solution: proof-of-work. The idea is that, for each request to some
-sensitive endpoint, the client must send some proof that they've done an
-intensive CPU computation.
-
-Compared to IP-based rate-limiting, PoW is much more effective against botnets
-(which have a limitless set of IPs from which to spam you), while also being
-much less intrusive on your real users than a captcha.
-
-PoW stymies botnets because they are generally being hosted by low-power,
-compromised machines. In addition the systems that run these botnets are pretty
-shallow in capability, because it's more lucrative to rent the botnet out then
-to actually use it yourself, so it's rare for a botnet operator to go to the
-trouble of implementing your PoW algorithm in the first place.
-
-So stick a PoW requirement on any login or account creation endpoint, or any
-other endpoint which might be used to enumerate accounts in the system. You can
-even make the PoW difficulty rise in relation to number of recent attempts on
-these endpoints, if you're feeling spry.
-
-### MFA
-
-All the PoW checks in the world won't help your poor user who isn't using a
-different username/password for each website, and who got unlucky enough to have
-those credentials leaked in a hack of a completely separate site than your own.
-They also won't help your user if they _are_ using different username/passwords
-for everything, but their machine gets straight up stolen IRL and the attacker
-gets access to their credential storage.
-
-What _will_ help them in these cases, however, is if your site supports
-multi-factor authentication, such as [TOTP][totp]. If it does then your user
-will have a further line of defense in the form of another password which
-changes every 30 seconds, and which can only be accessed from a secondary device
-(like their phone). If your site claims to care about the security of your
-user's account then MFA is an absolute requirement.
-
-It should be noted, however, that not all MFA is created equal. A TOTP system
-is great, but a one-time code being sent over SMS or email is totally different
-and not nearly as great. SMS is vulnerable to [SIM jacking][sim], which can be
-easily used in a targeted attack against one of your users. One-time codes over
-email are pointless for MFA, as most people have their email logged in on their
-machine all the time, so if someone steals your user's machine they're still
-screwed.
-
-In summary: MFA is essentially required, _especially_ if the user's account is
-linked to anything valuable, and must be done with real MFA systems like TOTP,
-not SMS or email.
-
-[totp]: https://www.twilio.com/docs/glossary/totp
-[sim]: https://www.vice.com/en/article/3kx4ej/sim-jacking-mobile-phone-fraud
-
-### Login Notifications
-
-Whenever a user successfully logs into their account you should send them email
-(or some other notification) letting them know it happened. This way if it
-wasn't actually them who did so, but an attacker, they can perhaps act quickly
-to lock down their account and prevent any further harm. The login notification
-email should have some kind of link in it which can be used to immediately lock
-the account.
-
-### Token Storage
-
-Once your user has logged into your webapp, it's up to you, the developer, to
-store their session token(s) somewhere. The question is... where? Well this
-one's easy, because there's only one right answer: HTTPOnly cookies (as alluded
-to earlier).
-
-When storing session tokens you want to guard against XSS attacks which might
-grab the tokens and send them to an attacker, allowing that attacker to hijack
-the session and pose as the user. This means the following are not suitable
-places to store the tokens:
-
-* Local storage.
-* `window`, or anything which can be accessed via `window`.
-* Non-HTTPOnly cookies.
-
-Any of these are trivial to find by a script running in the browser. If a
-session token is ephemeral then it may be stored in a "normal" javascript
-variable somewhere _as long as_ that variable isn't accessible from a global
-context. But for any tokens which need to be persisted across browser restarts
-an HTTPOnly cookie is your only option.
-
-## Cross-Site
-
-Speaking of XSS attacks, we have some more mitigation coming up...
-
-### CSP
-
-Setting a [CSP][csp] for your website is key to preventing XSS. A CSP allows you
-to more tightly control the allowed origins of the various entities on your site
-(be they scripts, styles, images, etc...). If an entity of unexpected origin
-shows up it is disallowed.
-
-Be sure to avoid any usages of the policies labeled "unsafe" (go figure),
-otherwise the CSP is rendered somewhat pointless. Also, when using hostname
-based allowlisting try to be as narrow as you can in your allowlist, and
-especially only include https hosts. If you can you should opt for the `nonce`
-or `sha` policies.
-
-[csp]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/CSP
-
-### SVG
-
-A small but important note: if you're website allows users to upload images,
-then be _very_ careful about allowing users to upload SVGs. SVGs are actually
-XML documents, and even worse than that they allow `<script>` tags within them!
-So you need to be very careful about allowing SVGs to be uploaded. If you can
-get away with it, it's better to disallow their use at all.
-
-## CSRF
-
-The web was designed in a time when cross-site requests were a considered
-feature. This has proven to be a massive mistake. We have two cross-site request
-prevention techniques in this list. The first is CSRF.
-
-CSRF protection will cover you from a variety of attacks, mostly of the kind
-where an attacker embeds a `<form>` on their own webpage, with the form set up
-to POST to _your_ website in some way. When a user of your website lands on the
-attacker's page and triggers the POST, the POST will be sent along with whatever
-cookies the user has stored in their browser for _your_ site!
-
-The attacker could, potentially, trick a user into submitting a password-reset
-request using a known value, or withdrawing all their money into the attacker's
-bank account, or anything else the user might be able to do on their own.
-
-The idea with CSRF is that any HTTP request made against an API should have an
-unguessable token as a required parameter, called the CSRF token. The CSRF token
-should be given to your webapp in a way where only your webapp could know it.
-There are many ways to accomplish this, including a cookie, server-side embedded
-value, etc... OWASP has put together an [entire cheatsheet full of CSRF
-methods][csrf] which is well worth checking out.
-
-[csrf]: https://cheatsheetseries.owasp.org/cheatsheets/Cross-Site_Request_Forgery_Prevention_Cheat_Sheet.html
-
-## CORS
-
-CORS is the other half of cross-site protection. With CSRF in place it's
-somewhat redundant, but it's good to have multiple layers of protection in place
-(in case you fuck up one of them by accident).
-
-The key thing one must do for CORS protection is to set the
-`Access-Control-Allow-Origin` to the origin a request is being sent from _only
-if you trust that origin_. If you stick a wildcard in that header then you're
-not doing anything.
-
-## Random Headers
-
-The rest of this is random HTTP headers which must be set in various contexts to
-protect your users.
-
-### Permissions Policy
-
-The [Permissions-Policy][pp] header is fairly new and not fully standardized
-yet, but there is support for it so it's worth using. It allows you to specify
-exactly which browser features you expect your webapp to need, and therefore
-prevent an attacker from taking advantage of some other feature that you were
-never going to use anyway.
-
-[pp]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Feature-Policy
-
-### X-Content-Type-Options
-
-It's important to set `X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff` on virtually all
-HTTP responses, in order to (theoretically) prevent a browser from inferring the
-MIME of the returned content.
-
-### X-Frame-Options
-
-Set `X-Frame-Options: deny` to prevent your webapp from being rendered in a
-frame or iframe on someone else's site, which might then be used to trick one of
-your users into doing something stupid.
-
-### X-XSS-Protection
-
-Set `X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block` to give older browsers which lack CSP
-support some extra defense against XSS attacks. It's not super clear to me what
-exactly this actually does, but it's easy enough to set.
-
-### Referrer-Policy
-
-Set the `Referrer-Policy` to inform your users' browsers to not send the
-`Referer` header to third-party sites when your users navigate away from your
-site. You don't want other websites to be able to see _yours_ in their logs, as
-they could then correlate which users of theirs have accounts with you (and so
-potentially have some easy targets).
-
-### Cache-Control/Pragma
-
-For all requests which return sensitive information (i.e. any authenticated
-requests) it's important to set `Cache-Control: no-store` and `Pragma: no-cache`
-on the response. This prevents some middle server or the browser from caching
-the response, and potentially returning it later to someone else using your site
-from the same location.
-
-## That's It
-
-It's probably not it, actually, these are just what I could think of off the top
-of my head. Please email me if I missed any.
-
-If you, like me, find yourself asking "how is anyone supposed to have figured
-this out?" then you should A) thank me for writing it all down for you and B)
-realize that at least 50% of this list has nothing to do with the web, really,
-and everything to do with covering up holes that backwards compatibility has
-left open. We can cover these holes, we just need everyone to agree on the path
-to doing so, and to allow ourselves to leave some ancient users behind.
diff --git a/src/_posts/2021-07-18-radix-v4.md b/src/_posts/2021-07-18-radix-v4.md
deleted file mode 100644
index bb0d04d..0000000
--- a/src/_posts/2021-07-18-radix-v4.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,248 +0,0 @@
----
-title: >-
- V4 of Radix, a Golang Redis Driver
-description: >-
- What's new, what's improved, and where we're going from here.
-tags: tech
----
-
-Radix is a Go driver for the [Redis][redis] database. The current stable release
-is v3, the docs for which can be found [here][v3]. Over the past year
-(perhaps longer) I've been working on a new version, v4, with the aim of
-addressing some of the shortcomings of v3 and distilling the API a bit better.
-
-At this point v4 is in beta. While there's still some internal bugs and QoL
-improvements which need to be made, the API is roughly stable and I wouldn't
-discourage anyone from using it for a non-critical project. In the coming months
-I intend on finishing the polish and tagging a `v4.0.0` release, but in the
-meantime let's go over the major changes and improvements in v4!
-
-You can see the v4 documentation [here][v4], if you'd like to follow along with
-any of the particulars, and you can see the full CHANGELOG [here][changelog].
-
-## Shoutouts
-
-Before continuing I want to give to give a huge shoutout to
-[nussjustin][nussjustin]. Since before v3 was even stable Justin has been
-contributing to radix in every way possible, from running benchmarks and making
-very low-level performance improvements to building whole user-facing features
-and responding to github issues when I get lost in the woods. Thank you Justin!
-
-## RESP3
-
-Starting at the lowest level, v4 supports new redis's new wire protocol,
-[RESP3][resp3]. This new protocol is (mostly) backwards compatible with the
-previous wire protocol, and is really more an extension than anything. The [new
-resp3 sub-package][resp3pkg] is capable of marshaling and unmarshaling all new
-wire types, including the streamed aggregates and streamed strings.
-
-A major improvement made on the API level is addition of the
-[resp.Opts][respOpts] type, which is used to propagate things like byte buffers
-and buffered readers. Doing this allows the resp3 package to reduce memory
-allocations without relying on something like `sync.Pool`, which introduces
-locking overhead.
-
-There's still some question to be answered regarding the best way for the main
-radix package to deal with the new push and attribute types, but the resp3
-package is general-purpose enough to handle most strategies in the future.
-
-In fact, the RESP3 protocol as a whole (and therefore v4's associated resp3
-sub-package) is totally usable outside of redis. If you're looking for a
-human-readable, binary safe, fast, and simple wire protocol which already has
-great tooling and libraries across multiple programming languages, I highly
-recommend checking out RESP3.
-
-## Conn
-
-Arguably one of the biggest design warts of v3, in my eyes, is the
-[CmdAction][cmdaction] type. This type required to allow for pipelining, which
-is a feature of redis where you can write new commands to a redis connection
-prior to previous ones returning their results. The major upside of pipelining
-is that N pipelined commands will only result in 2 system calls (a network write
-then a network read), rather than 2N system calls (N writes and N reads) if each
-command was performed independently.
-
-The normal v3 Action type is fairly opaque, and would perform both the write and
-read internally without exposing any way to do some other action in between
-(such as performing writes/reads for other commands in a pipeline). CmdAction
-extends Action to allow the write and read to be performed independently, and
-then leaves it to the Pipeline type to deal with the batching.
-
-v4 gets rid of the need for CmdAction, while allowing even more Action types to
-be pipeline-able than before (e.g. [EvalScript][evalscript]). This was done by
-coalescing the Encode and Decode methods on the [Conn][conn] type into a single
-method: EncodeDecode. By doing this we allow Actions to perform the write/read
-steps in a way which groups the two together, but leaves it to Conn to actually
-perform the steps in its own way.
-
-Because Conn now has knowledge of which read/write steps go together, it's
-possible to perform pipelining in nearly all cases. Aside from using the
-Pipeline type manually, the v4 Conn is able to automatically pipeline most
-Actions when they are performed concurrently on the same Conn. v3 had a similar
-feature, called "implicit pipelining", but v4 rebrands the feature as
-"connection sharing" since the mechanism is slightly different and the
-applicability is broader.
-
-Despite the apparent simplicity of the change (combining Encode and Decode
-methods), this resulted in probably the largest code difference between v3 and
-v4, involving the most complex new logic and package-wide refactorings. But the
-end result is a simpler, smaller API which can be applied to more use-cases. A
-great win!
-
-## Pool
-
-In v3 the connection pool, the Pool type, was implemented with the assumption
-that each Action (or CmdAction) would borrow a Conn for the duration of the
-Action. As such the Pool expects to be creating and destroying connections as
-load increases and decreases; if number of concurrent commands goes up then
-number of connections required to handle them goes up as well, and vice-versa.
-
-Down the road the Pool became responsible for performing implicit pipelining as
-well. This allowed for grouping together many commands on the same connection,
-reducing pressure on connection creation greatly, but nevertheless the Pool kept
-that same general pattern of dynamic connection pool sizing.
-
-In v4 there is no longer the assumption that each command gets its own
-connection, and in fact that assumption is flipped: each connection is expected
-to handle multiple commands concurrently in almost all cases. This means the
-Pool can get rid of the dynamism, and opt instead for a simple static connection
-pool size. There is still room in the API for some dynamic connection sizing to
-be implemented later, but it's mostly unnecessary now.
-
-Some care should be used with commands which _can't_ be pipelined, for example
-blocking commands like BRPOPLPUSH and XREAD. These commands, ideally, should be
-performed on an individual Conn created just for that purpose. Pool _will_
-properly handle them if needed, but with the caveat that the Action which will
-essentially remove a Conn from the Pool for its duration.
-
-[The new Pool][pool] is _vastly_ simpler in implementation than the old, as most
-of the complexity has been moved into Conn. Really this whole section is an
-extension of the refactoring which was started by the changes to Conn.
-
-## MultiClient
-
-In v3 there was a single Client type which was used to encompass Conn, Pool,
-Sentinel, and Cluster, with the aim that users could just use Client in their
-code and easily swap out the underlying implementation as needed.
-
-In practice this didn't work out. The original Client type only had a Do method
-for performing Actions, which would always perform the Actions against the
-primary instance in the case of Cluster and Sentinel. Cluster and Sentinel ended
-up being extended with DoSecondary methods, and Cluster required its own
-constructor for Scanner, so if you used any of those features you would not be
-able to use Client.
-
-v4 improves this situation by introducing the [MultiClient][multiclient]
-interface, which is implemented by both Cluster and Sentinel, while Conn and
-Pool only implement [Client][client]. Client is intended for clients which
-interact with only a single redis instance, while MultiClient is intended for
-use by clients which encompass multiple redis instances, and makes the
-distinction between primary and secondary instances.
-
-In general, users will want to use MultiClient in their code and swap the
-underlying implementation as their infrastructure evolves. When using only a
-single Pool, one can make it into a MultiClient using the new
-[ReplicaSet][replicaset].
-
-One can also implement their own MultiClient's fairly easily, to handle their
-own custom sharding or failover systems. It's not a common use-case, but it's
-cool that existing types like Scanner will still continue to work.
-
-## Contexts
-
-A common feature request of v3 was for support for Go's [Contexts][context],
-which would allow callers to unblock blocked operations in a dynamic way. There
-wasn't a clear way to incorporate Contexts into v3 without greatly expanding the
-API (something the Go standard library has had to do), and so I saved them for
-v4.
-
-In v4 all operations which might potentially block accept a Context argument.
-This takes the place of timeout options and some trace events which were used in
-v3, and in general simplifies things for the user.
-
-This was a change for which there is not much to talk about, but which required
-a _lot_ of work internally. Go's Contexts do not play nicely with its networking
-primitives, and making this all work alongside connection sharing and pipelining
-is a really hairy puzzle (for which there's a few open bugs still). I may one
-day write a blog post just about this topic, if I can figure out how to explain
-it in a way which isn't completely mind-numbing.
-
-## Configuration
-
-Constructors in v3 took advantage of the [functional options pattern][opts] for
-accepting optional parameters. While this pattern _looks_ nice, I've since
-grown out of love with it. The implementation is a lot more complex, its
-behavior is more ambiguous to users in certain cases (what happens if the same
-option is passed in twice?), it makes documentation more complex, and a slice of
-option functions isn't inspectable or serializable like a struct is.
-
-v4 uses a config struct pattern, but in a different way than I've generally seen
-it. See [Pool's constructor][pool] for an example. This pattern is functionally
-the same as passing the config struct as an argument to the constructor, but I
-think it results in a nicer grouping in the documentation.
-
-## Smaller Changes
-
-There's some smaller sets of changes which are worth mentioning. These didn't
-result in huge, package-wide changes, but will be useful for users of specific
-functionality.
-
-### Action Properties
-
-[v4's Action type][action] has a Properties method which returns a struct
-containing various fields which are useful for client's performing the Action.
-This is an improvement over v3's Action, which had no such method, in that it's
-more extensible going forward. Those implementing their own custom Actions
-should take care to understand the Action properties.
-
-### PubSub
-
-The v4 [PubSubConn][pubsub] has been completely redesigned from v3's
-implementation. The old design tried to do too much, and resulted in weird
-edge-cases when trying to tear down a connection that a user would have to
-handle themselves. The new design is simple both in implementation and usage.
-
-### Tracing
-
-The v4 [trace][trace] sub-package has been extended to support tracing Sentinel
-events, but at the same time has been cleaned out of all events which could be
-otherwise inferred by using Context values or wrapping an interface like Conn,
-Action, etc...
-
-## What's Next
-
-Obviously the most immediate goal is to get v4 stable and tagged. Once that's
-done I'm sure there will be many small bugs, feature requests, etc... which come
-up over time, and I'll do my best to address those as quickly as I can. I'm
-very excited to start using v4 in my own day-to-day work like I currently do for
-v3; it has a lot of great improvements and new flexibility that will make using
-Go and redis together an even better experience than it already is.
-
-That all said, I don't expect there to be a radix v5. I have a lot of other
-projects I'd like to work on, and radix is a huge time-sink. As time goes on v4
-will stabilize further and further, until all that's left is for it to gain
-additional support for whatever new crazy features redis comes up with. My hope
-is that the existing API is flexibile enough to allow others to fill in those
-gaps without any major changes to the existing code, and radix v4 can be the
-final major radix version.
-
-[redis]: https://redis.io
-[v3]: https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/mediocregopher/radix/v3#section-documentation
-[v4]: https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/mediocregopher/radix/v4#section-documentation
-[nussjustin]: https://github.com/nussjustin
-[resp3]: https://github.com/antirez/RESP3
-[resp3pkg]: https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/mediocregopher/radix/v4/resp/resp3
-[respOpts]: https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/mediocregopher/radix/v4/resp#Opts
-[changelog]: https://github.com/mediocregopher/radix/blob/v4/CHANGELOG.md
-[cmdaction]: https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/mediocregopher/radix/v3#CmdAction
-[evalscript]: https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/mediocregopher/radix/v4#EvalScript
-[conn]: https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/mediocregopher/radix/v4#Conn
-[pool]: https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/mediocregopher/radix/v4#PoolConfig.New
-[multiclient]: https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/mediocregopher/radix/v4#MultiClient
-[client]: https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/mediocregopher/radix/v4#Client
-[replicaset]: https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/mediocregopher/radix/v4#ReplicaSet
-[context]: https://blog.golang.org/context
-[opts]: https://dave.cheney.net/2014/10/17/functional-options-for-friendly-apis
-[action]: https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/mediocregopher/radix/v4#Action
-[pubsub]: https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/mediocregopher/radix/v4#PubSubConn
-[trace]: https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/mediocregopher/radix/v4/trace