Cortically Magnified

Program like writers do Programming is traditionally seen as an exercise that translates human thoughts into a format that computers can understand. As a result, the ideas behind the program can become obscured and fragmented in the source code. This is why reading code requires so much mental effort. For me, reading code often feels like solving a puzzle, or reading modernist/postmodernist novels where events are narrated out of sequence. The concept of literate programming was introduced by Donald Knuth in the 80’s to address this issue.

I started this website in 2018, because I wanted to collect all my content in one single place. I decided to built it with simple tools, so I could understand how everything works, and fix problems if needed. It’s a hobby like how some people like to build their own kitchens. Lots of tutorials are available on building personal websites, but I still want to write my own, because when I got started, I could never find one that explained every step needed to build a complete website.

Many articles are available about running Emacs in client/server mode. However, when I tried to do it in my particular environment (macOS 11.0.1 Big Sur, using zsh), some tweaks were still needed. So I figured that it’s probably useful to document my setup. In macOS, the Emacs executable is /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs. To run Emacs in its regular (non-server) operation mode, I defined two shell commands in .zshrc: emacs runs Emacs in GUI mode in a macOS window, whereas emacsnw runs Emacs in text mode within the terminal.

I got the idea from a photo of a clock that I found randomly on eBay. I thought that it was a novelty clock with a very unusual industrial design, but after a little while, I realized that what happened was that the seller took the hands part, and placed them haphazardly on the clock face. But it got me thinking, clock hands don’t have to rotate around the center, if they are mounted on rotating discs.

Collection of Sand is a collection of book reviews, exhibition reviews and travelogues that Italo Calvino wrote in the 70’s and 80’s. The quality varies. The best of them are unsurprisingly ekphrastic essays where Calvino described gardens, historical sites, and paintings in exquisite details. Those where he tried to regurgitate scientific or historical knowledge from academic books are less inspiring. But still, it is the variety of things that Calvino cared to write about that charms.