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I've been biking in Brooklyn for a few years now! It's hard for me to believe it, but I'm now one of the people other bicyclists ask questions to now. I decided to make a zine that answers the most common of those questions: Bike Brooklyn! is a zine that touches on everything I wish I knew when I started biking in Brooklyn. A lot of this information can be found in other resources, but I wanted to collect it in one place. I hope to update this zine when we get significantly more safe bike infrastructure in Brooklyn and laws change to make streets safer for bicyclists (and everyone) over time, but it's still important to note that each release will reflect a specific snapshot in time of bicycling in Brooklyn. All text and illustrations in the zine are my own. Thank you to Matt Denys, Geoffrey Thomas, Alex Morano, Saskia Haegens, Vishnu Reddy, Ben Turndorf, Thomas Nayem-Huzij, and Ryan Christman for suggestions for content and help with proofreading. This zine is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, so you can copy and distribute this zine for noncommercial purposes in unadapted form as long as you give credit to me. Check out the Bike Brooklyn! zine on the web or download pdfs to read digitally or print here!
I found inspiration for this pitcher's glaze design in the night sky. Whenever I feel lost, I know I can always look up and be under the same night sky, no matter where I am. Whenever I feel alone, I know I can always look up and feel connected to humanity, everyone else looking up at the same sky. Whenever I feel all is lost, the vast darkness in the night sky reminds me there are so many possibilities out there that I haven't even thought of yet. My studio practice is on a partial pause for an unknown amount of time right now; every piece I make is stuck in the greenware stage as I continue to save up to buy kilns and build out the glaze and kiln area. In some moments, this pause feels like a rare opportunity to take time to make more experimental and labor intensive pieces, but in other moments, I am overwhelmed by the feeling that pieces without a completion timeline on the horizon are just not worth doing. It's easy to bask in fleeting bursts of inspiration; it's harder to push through the periods where nothing feels worth doing. It's especially when the waves of anxiety about the unknown future of my studio practice and the waves of anxiety about the direction of the US government and the future of my country come at me at the same time. I try to ground myself, to keep myself from spiraling. I name things I can see, smell, hear. At night, I look to the dark sky. When I can, I reread Rebecca Solnit's Hope in the Dark: Hope locates itself in the premises that we don't know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act. When you recognize uncertainty, you recognize that you may be able to influence the outcomes–you alone or you in concert with a few dozen or several million others. Hope is an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable, an alternative to the certainty of both optimists and pessimists. Optimists think it will all be fine without our involvement; pessimists take the opposite position; both excuse themselves from acting. It's the belief that what we do matters even though how and when it may matter, who and what it may impact, are not things we can know beforehand. We may not, in fact, know them afterward either, but they matter all the same, and history is full of people whose influence was most powerful after they were gone. May we all find hope in the dark and choose to act.
When I was glazing this v60-style cone, I was thinking of rising sea levels, eroding beaches, and melting ice caps. Trying to tackle large challenges like climate change is overwhelming in the best of times, and these are not the best of times. There are many things we can personally do to reduce our carbon footprints and fight climate change, but If we want to have any chance to succeed, we need to join together and organize. If you're new to organizing, connect with local groups already doing the work you're interested in, and don't forget to look for groups pushing for change outside of just the national stage. Creating more dense walkable, transit-oriented communities is one of our strongest tools for a sustainable, climate friendly future. Generally, the bulk this work in the US happens at the state and local levels. In addition to the climate benefits, it's essential work to keep communities together and fight displacement. I personally spend a lot of my spare time organizing locally around this issue to help ensure NYC and New York State stay places everyone can thrive. I focus especially on pro-housing policies and improving transportation options and reliability so climate-friendly, less car-dependent lifestyles - and New York's relative safety - can be for everyone.
Clay shrinks as it dries and even more as it's fired, so it's useful to have a way to estimate the final size of in-progress work - especially if you're making multiples or trying to fit pieces together. One way to do this is with shrinkage rulers. I figured I'd design my own shrinkage rulers and provide a way for folks to make them themselves since ceramic tool costs can add up. To make your shrinkage rulers: Download either the colorful printable shrinkage rulers or black and white printable shrinkage rulers. Print at 100% size. (These files are both 400 dpi.) Verify that the 0% shrinkage standard ruler at the top matches the size of an existing regular ruler you have. This quick calibration step will make sure nothing out of scale during printing! Cut out your rulers. Optionally, laminate or cover in packing tape to help them last longer. To use your shrinkage rulers: If you're using commercial clay, look up how much your clay is estimated to shrink. If you're using a blend of clays or custom clays, you'll have to calculate how much your clay shrinks. An easy way to do this is measure the length of a wet piece right after you form them and again after it's been through its glaze firing. You can then calculate the estimated shrinkage rate: Pick the shrinkage ruler that corresponds to your clay's shrinkage rate. If you're between shrinkage rates, you can estimate with a nearby size. Remember that shrinkage rates are estimates, and a piece's actual shrinkage depends on many variables, including how wet your clay is and how close it is to it's original composition (this can change with repeated recycling). Measure your wet piece with the shrinkage ruler! The length shown is the expected length your piece's dimension will be when fired. The fine print: Reminder that shrinkage rulers only give estimated lengths! You're welcome to print these shrinkage rulers for yourself or your business. You may use the printed shrinkage rulers privately, even in commercial applications (I hope they help your ceramic art and business!), provided you do not redistribute or resell the shrinkage rulers themselves in any form, digital or physical. Footnotes If you're working on a jar or something else that needs to fit together tightly, it's better not to rely on shrinkage rulers to get a perfect fit. In my experiences, you ideally want to make the vessel and the lid as close in time as possible and have them dry together and fire together through as many phases as possible.↩
I'm continuing my clay body reviews series with two very heavily grogged "sculpture" clays I've used. Note that I currently practice in a community studio that glaze fires to cone 6 in oxidation, so my observations reflect that. Standard 420 Sculpture: Cone 6: average shrinkage 8.0%, absorption 1.5% Light straw when fired to cone 6: more yellow/beige than most white stonewares so the color is something to consider in your final vision (or engobe in something else) So much grog that it’s best described as working with wet sand, non-derogatory I've made complicated open coil-based structures with this clay that have been formed across many studio sessions over a couple days, and they've survived without cracking! Wet clay attaches readily to leather hard and even slightly dry clay. Wrapping my works in dry cleaning bags until done and dry before bisque was enough - I was worried I'd have to make a damp box, but not with this clay! The grog is white and grey, and it comes in a variety of sizes, including some that is visually rather large. The grog really shows if you sand to smooth the surface. I typically dislike how this looks - the result ends up looking more like concrete than clay. If you use this for functional ware or anything you move around a lot, you'll certainly want to sand the bottom since the groggy surface is extra rough to protect tables and counters. Burnishing alone doesn't usually make this clay smooth. Can be thrown when very soft, but your hands will feel scratched if you're not used to it! Angled slab joins join readily, and support coils press in quickly and easily. Some members of my studio prefer to make plates with this clay because the high level of grog significantly reduces warping. I personally prefer to make plates with clays with far less grog that I dry very slowly. High palpable grog content means a weaker object, and I prefer more strength in objects that are handled frequently. Can be marbled with 798, but needs to dry slowly. Standard 420's straw color shows in the unglazed section of this planter's drip tray, and there's also some flashing from the glaze near the edges. I sanded the base of this piece so the slightly rough surface of Standard 420 wouldn't scratch tables, and you can see the contrast between the sanded bottom (outside) layer where the varied grogs are revealed and the rougher surfaces of the other layers where they are still covered by clay particles. This handbuilt planter was made of Standard 798 over multiple studio sessions. The sculptural coil structures attached readily with my regular slip and score process, and it dried evenly enough to not crack with my regular process of drying under a single plastic dry-cleaning bag. This coiled wall art piece was made out of equal parts Standard 112 and Standard 420 wedged fully together. There's still ample grog in this hybrid clay body to work the same as the Standard 798 planter's coiled structure. Standard 798 Black Sculpture: Cone 6: average shrinkage 10%, absorption 1.0% Dark brown when wet, fires to a gorgeous black at cone 6 when unglazed. Clear glazes will make this clay look brown, so you need to use a black like Coyote Black or Amaco Obsidian to preserve the black color if you want to glaze it. So much grog that it’s best described as working with wet sand, non-derogatory. The grog is white, and provides a lovely contrast when on the surface or sanded to be revealed. Like 420, you'll probably want to sand the bottom of anything you'll pick up and put down more than once. Very similar working qualities to 420 - a true joy for handbuilding! Can be marbled with 420, but needs to dry slowly.
More in programming
Whether we like it or not, email is widely used to identify a person. Code sent to email is used as authentication and sometimes as authorisation for certain actions. I’m not comfortable with Google having such power over me, especially given the fact that they practically don’t have any support you can appeal to. If your Google account is blocked, that’s it. Maybe you know someone from Google and they can help you, but for most of us mortals that’s not an option.
I started writing this early last week but Real Life Stuff happened and now you're getting the first-draft late this week. Warning, unedited thoughts ahead! New Logic for Programmers release! v0.9 is out! This is a big release, with a new cover design, several rewritten chapters, online code samples and much more. See the full release notes at the changelog page, and get the book here! Write the cleverest code you possibly can There are millions of articles online about how programmers should not write "clever" code, and instead write simple, maintainable code that everybody understands. Sometimes the example of "clever" code looks like this (src): # Python p=n=1 exec("p*=n*n;n+=1;"*~-int(input())) print(p%n) This is code-golfing, the sport of writing the most concise code possible. Obviously you shouldn't run this in production for the same reason you shouldn't eat dinner off a Rembrandt. Other times the example looks like this: def is_prime(x): if x == 1: return True return all([x%n != 0 for n in range(2, x)] This is "clever" because it uses a single list comprehension, as opposed to a "simple" for loop. Yes, "list comprehensions are too clever" is something I've read in one of these articles. I've also talked to people who think that datatypes besides lists and hashmaps are too clever to use, that most optimizations are too clever to bother with, and even that functions and classes are too clever and code should be a linear script.1. Clever code is anything using features or domain concepts we don't understand. Something that seems unbearably clever to me might be utterly mundane for you, and vice versa. How do we make something utterly mundane? By using it and working at the boundaries of our skills. Almost everything I'm "good at" comes from banging my head against it more than is healthy. That suggests a really good reason to write clever code: it's an excellent form of purposeful practice. Writing clever code forces us to code outside of our comfort zone, developing our skills as software engineers. Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you [will get excellent debugging practice at exactly the right level required to push your skills as a software engineer] — Brian Kernighan, probably There are other benefits, too, but first let's kill the elephant in the room:2 Don't commit clever code I am proposing writing clever code as a means of practice. Being at work is a job with coworkers who will not appreciate if your code is too clever. Similarly, don't use too many innovative technologies. Don't put anything in production you are uncomfortable with. We can still responsibly write clever code at work, though: Solve a problem in both a simple and a clever way, and then only commit the simple way. This works well for small scale problems where trying the "clever way" only takes a few minutes. Write our personal tools cleverly. I'm a big believer of the idea that most programmers would benefit from writing more scripts and support code customized to their particular work environment. This is a great place to practice new techniques, languages, etc. If clever code is absolutely the best way to solve a problem, then commit it with extensive documentation explaining how it works and why it's preferable to simpler solutions. Bonus: this potentially helps the whole team upskill. Writing clever code... ...teaches simple solutions Usually, code that's called too clever composes several powerful features together — the "not a single list comprehension or function" people are the exception. Josh Comeau's "don't write clever code" article gives this example of "too clever": const extractDataFromResponse = (response) => { const [Component, props] = response; const resultsEntries = Object.entries({ Component, props }); const assignIfValueTruthy = (o, [k, v]) => (v ? { ...o, [k]: v } : o ); return resultsEntries.reduce(assignIfValueTruthy, {}); } What makes this "clever"? I count eight language features composed together: entries, argument unpacking, implicit objects, splats, ternaries, higher-order functions, and reductions. Would code that used only one or two of these features still be "clever"? I don't think so. These features exist for a reason, and oftentimes they make code simpler than not using them. We can, of course, learn these features one at a time. Writing the clever version (but not committing it) gives us practice with all eight at once and also with how they compose together. That knowledge comes in handy when we want to apply a single one of the ideas. I've recently had to do a bit of pandas for a project. Whenever I have to do a new analysis, I try to write it as a single chain of transformations, and then as a more balanced set of updates. ...helps us master concepts Even if the composite parts of a "clever" solution aren't by themselves useful, it still makes us better at the overall language, and that's inherently valuable. A few years ago I wrote Crimes with Python's Pattern Matching. It involves writing horrible code like this: from abc import ABC class NotIterable(ABC): @classmethod def __subclasshook__(cls, C): return not hasattr(C, "__iter__") def f(x): match x: case NotIterable(): print(f"{x} is not iterable") case _: print(f"{x} is iterable") if __name__ == "__main__": f(10) f("string") f([1, 2, 3]) This composes Python match statements, which are broadly useful, and abstract base classes, which are incredibly niche. But even if I never use ABCs in real production code, it helped me understand Python's match semantics and Method Resolution Order better. ...prepares us for necessity Sometimes the clever way is the only way. Maybe we need something faster than the simplest solution. Maybe we are working with constrained tools or frameworks that demand cleverness. Peter Norvig argued that design patterns compensate for missing language features. I'd argue that cleverness is another means of compensating: if our tools don't have an easy way to do something, we need to find a clever way. You see this a lot in formal methods like TLA+. Need to check a hyperproperty? Cast your state space to a directed graph. Need to compose ten specifications together? Combine refinements with state machines. Most difficult problems have a "clever" solution. The real problem is that clever solutions have a skill floor. If normal use of the tool is at difficult 3 out of 10, then basic clever solutions are at 5 out of 10, and it's hard to jump those two steps in the moment you need the cleverness. But if you've practiced with writing overly clever code, you're used to working at a 7 out of 10 level in short bursts, and then you can "drop down" to 5/10. I don't know if that makes too much sense, but I see it happen a lot in practice. ...builds comradery On a few occasions, after getting a pull request merged, I pulled the reviewer over and said "check out this horrible way of doing the same thing". I find that as long as people know they're not going to be subjected to a clever solution in production, they enjoy seeing it! Next week's newsletter will probably also be late, after that we should be back to a regular schedule for the rest of the summer. Mostly grad students outside of CS who have to write scripts to do research. And in more than one data scientist. I think it's correlated with using Jupyter. ↩ If I don't put this at the beginning, I'll get a bajillion responses like "your team will hate you" ↩
In mid-March we released a big bug fix update—elementary OS 8.0.1—and since then we’ve been hard at work on even more bug fixes and some new exciting features that I’m excited to share with you today! Read ahead to find out what we’ve released recently and what you can help us test in Early Access. Quick Settings Quick Settings has a new “Prevent Sleep” toggle Leo added a new “Prevent Sleep” toggle. This is useful when you’re giving a presentation or have a long-running background task where you want to temporarily avoid letting the computer go to sleep on its normal schedule. We also fixed a bug where the “Dark Mode” toggle would cancel the dark mode schedule when used. We now have proper schedule snoozing, so when you manually toggle Dark Mode on or off while using a timed or sunset-to-sunrise schedule, your schedule will resume on the next schedule change instead of being canceled completely. Vishal also fixed an issue that caused some apps to report being improperly closed on system shutdown or restart and on the lock screen we now show the “Suspend” button rather than the “Lock” button. System Settings Locale settings has a fresh layout thanks to Alain with its options aligned more cleanly and improved links to additional settings. Locale Settings has a more responsive design We’ve also added the phrase “about this device” as a search term for the System page and improved interface copy when a restart is required to finish installing updates based on your feedback. Plus, Stanisław improved stylus detection in Wacom settings preventing a crash when no stylus is found. AppCenter We now show a small label next to the download button for apps which contain in-app purchases. This is especially useful for easily identifying free-to-play games or alt stores like Steam or Heroic Games Launcher. AppCenter now shows when apps have in-app purchases Plus, we now reload app icons on-the-fly as their data is processed, thanks to Italo. That means you’ll no longer get occasionally stuck with an AppCenter which shows missing images for app’s who have taken a bit longer than usual to load. Get These Updates As always, pop open System Settings → System on elementary OS 8 and hit “Update All” to get these updates plus your regular security, bug fix, and translation updates. Or set up automatic updates and get a notification when updates are ready to install! Early Access Our development focus recently has been on some of the bigger features that will likely land for either elementary OS 8.1 or 9. We’ve got a new app, big changes to the design of our desktop itself, a whole lot of under-the-hood cleanup, and the return of some key system services thanks to a new open source project. Monitor We’re now shipping a System Monitor app by default By popular demand—and thanks to the hard work of Stanisław—we have a new system monitor app called “Monitor” shipping in Early Access. Monitor provides usage information for your processor, GPU, memory, storage, network, and currently running processes. You can optionally see system information in the panel with Monitor You can also optionally get a ton of glanceable information shown in the panel. There’s currently a lot of work happening to port Monitor to GTK4 and improve its functionality under the Secure Session, so make sure to report any issues you find! Multitasking The Dock is getting a workspace switcher Probably the biggest change to the Pantheon shell since its early inception, the Dock is getting a new workspace switcher! The workspace switcher works in a familiar way to the one you may have seen in the Multitasking View: Your currently open workspaces are represented as tiles with the icons of apps running on them; You can select a workspace to switch to it; You can drag-and-drop workspaces to rearrange them; And you can use the “+” button to create a new blank workspace. One new trick however is that selecting the workspace you’re already on will launch Multitasking View. The new workspace switcher makes it so much more accessible to multitask with just the mouse and get an overview of your workflows without having to first enter the Multitasking View. We’re really excited to hear what people think about it! You can close apps from Multitasking View by swiping up Another very satisfying feature for folks using touch input, you can now swipe up windows in the Multitasking View to close them. This is a really familiar gesture for those of us with Android and iOS devices and feels really natural for managing a big stack of windows without having to aim for a small “x” button. GTK4 Porting We’ve recently landed the port of Tasks to GTK4. So far that comes with a few fixes to tighten up its design, with much more possible in the future. Please make sure to help us test it thoroughly for any regressions! Tasks has a slightly tightened up design We’re also making great progress on porting the panel to GTK4. So far we have branches in review for Nightlight, Bluetooth, Datetime, and Network indicators. Power, Keyboard, and Quick Settings indicators all have in-progress branches. That leaves just Applications, Sound, and Notifications. So far these ports don’t come with major feature changes, but they do involve lots of cleaning up and modernizing of these code bases and in some cases fixing bugs! When the port is finished, we should see immediate performance gains and we’ll have a much better foundation for future releases. You can follow along with our progress porting everything to GTK4 in this GitHub Project. And More When you take a screenshot using keyboard shortcuts or by secondary-clicking an app’s window handle, we now send a notification letting you know that it was succesful and where to find the resulting image. Plus there’s a handy button that opens Files with your screenshot pre-selected. We’re also testing beaconDB as a replacement for Mozilla Location Services (MLS). If you’re not aware, we relied on MLS in previous versions of elementary OS to provide location information for devices that don’t have a GPS radio. Unfortunately Mozilla discontinued the service last June and we’ve been left without a replacement until now. Without these services, not only did maps and weather apps cease to function, but system features like automatic timezone detection and features that rely on sunset and sunrise times no longer work properly. beaconDB offers a drop-in replacement for MLS that uses Wireless networks, bluetooth devices, and cell towers to provide location data when requested. All of its data is crowd-sourced and opt-in and several distributions are now defaulting to using it as their location services data provider. I’ve set up a small sponsorship from elementary on Liberapay to support the project. If you can help support beaconDB either by sponsoring or providing stumbler data, I’d highly encourage you to do so! Sponsors At the moment we’re at 23% of our monthly funding goal and 336 Sponsors on GitHub! Shoutouts to everyone helping us reach our goals here. Your monthly sponsorship funds development and makes sure we have the resources we need to give you the best version of elementary OS we can! Monthly release candidate builds and daily Early Access builds are available to GitHub Sponsors from any tier! Beware that Early Access builds are not considered stable and you will encounter fresh issues when you run them. We’d really appreciate reporting any problems you encounter with the Feedback app or directly on GitHub.
Tracing how the CPU, OS, and ELF format shape the structure of your assembly code
I've been publishing at least one blog post every week on this blog for about 2.5 years. I kept it up even when I was very sick last year with Lyme disease. It's time for me to take a break and reset. This is the right time, because the world is very difficult for me to move through right now and I'm just burnt out. I need to focus my energy on things that give me energy and right now, that's not writing and that's not tech. I'll come back to this, and it might look a little different. This is my last post for at least a month. It might be longer, if I still need more time, but I won't return before the end of May. I know I need at least that long to heal, and I also need that time to focus on music. I plan to play a set at West Philly Porchfest, so this whole month I'll be prepping that set. If you want to follow along with my music, you can find it on my bandcamp (only one track, but I'll post demos of the others that I prepare for Porchfest as they come together). And if you want to reach out, my inbox is open. Be kind to yourself. Stay well, drink some water. See you in a while.
