Okay, I know. I have been notably silent for a couple weeks. Maybe 3. Or like a month. I apologize. I have been very busy; don't worry, I will explain it all in detail for you now.
Okay, first off. Research. 'Tis increasingly difficult. Turns out that when 30,000+ people independently prove that a theory/protocol is good, an idea shared between a couple of undergraduate students is probably not gonna have much to offer to the scientific community. Never stop dreaming, though. Our ideas work on the backs of several very specific assumptions that become increasingly less practical the more you add. It's okay though. I think we will live, and we've learned a lot in the process, so we may still have something worth publishing. Our ideas are not totally ruined, but we are significantly less confident than we were before. If you're curious what killed it, it was something called phase kickback. Information is classically represented as a 0 or 1. Quantum mechanics is special because instead of a 0 or 1, we put a direction on a sphere and then check how much it is pointing up or down. I didn't realize this until very recently, but gates are just rotations applied to that vector. That probably means nothing to you, but it makes understanding the math behind quantum circuits a lot easier. There's a special gate called a CNOT gate that we assumed only acted on a target, but it turns out the controller changes too... thus killing our previously perfect idea.
Okay, since you don't care about any of that, let's move on to something else you might care less about. I've been learning a lot about computers. Not about the different models or how to build a PC. I've been learning how, from the ground up, computers work. Let me tell you, it is insane. This all started when I had the idea to use my tiny 15$ computer to run some code every 15 minutes. The code would access the current weather and time of day in my home city and then tell Spotify to make a playlist of the corresponding Minecraft music. I didn't know much about how to do this, but ChatGPT had many ideas. It helped a lot. I set up the Raspberry Pi (tiny computer) and got my schedule running. Super cool!
This led me down a rabbit hole. If I could get that idea done in a day or so, what else could I do? I'm leaving for Paris in a couple of months and I am not bringing my Macbook because I don't want it to get damaged or stolen, but I still want to be able to do things like write these emails or watch the occasional YouTube video. I figured that I could make a very small laptop using one of these little computers, so that was next on the project list.
After 5 grueling days of trying to get a specific operating system (Linux) to run on this little computer, I gave up. It drove me crazy. I am working from a Macbook, which is based on the same ideas as Linux, but I couldn't do it. At around 2 am one night, I realized that I had an older laptop that was running Windows and was pretty much unusable. It took over 10 minutes to turn on and show the login screen and another 7 to open Chrome, but I verified that it was working.
Then, I nuked Windows.
I totally deleted the entire drive. I set all of the memory cells to zero, so I had a completely empty hard drive. I tried for half an hour to get Linux on there, only to realize that the reason it wasn't working was because my thumb drive was 3 GB too small for the Linux image (fancy computer lingo for instructions) that would make my computer into a Linux computer. Who the swear words makes a flash drive that is 2 GB? Is it 1985?
I **finally** got the Linux image on and plugged in the flash drive, told it to boot from the drive instead of whatever Windows was left over, and then formatted the drive with the new Linux image. This worked beautifully. The boot took about 15 seconds instead of 10 minutes. I was very excited.
The reason I chose Linux is two-fold: 1. it is fast. 2. it is sooo customizable that it is almost scary. However, I had no idea when I started that "customizable" is synonyms with "must know what you're doing", which was not at all the case. I found a bunch of tutorials online for how to set up some Linux stuff but I still have no idea what I'm doing. I do however know more than I did before.
I chose a tiling window manager, which is beautiful. A floating window manager is what you are used to: when you open a window, it will become something you can move around. Tiling window managers fill the screen, then new windows split the space. The one I use is called Hyprland, which is completely user configurable. There are different workspaces instead of disgusting stacked windows... it is digital nirvana.
I then got started with "ricing". This is the design part. You have to code what you want it to look like. I wrote some code (sounds a lot harder than it is, you just follow the tutorials and edit the template) to make it look somewhat like a Star Wars terminal. I then had to download a bunch of packages -- kind of like software -- to get apps like Firefox and VSCode. Those open very quickly. Everything is done with keyboard shortcuts, so you never have to take your hands off the keyboard. I love it.
I started working on my personal website. I'll attach a link when it's ready. It looks like an old-school computer terminal because I think it's cool. I spent forever on the glitch and CRT effect. I'm excited for it to be ready. It pulls from my blogs and has some brief summaries of my projects and how I did it.
Speaking of Star Wars, I watched A New Hope while the Utah Symphony played the music. It was one of the coolest things I've ever seen. The music was emotional and thematic and hit so much harder than when it's just speakers and your 36" basement TV. It sounded incredible and I forgot that the movie is actually kinda funny. Number III was far less funny when I saw it in theaters a couple months ago.
Other movies... I also watched The Materialists, which I already wrote my review of on my blog. I also watched The Pianist, which was super sad and honestly a bit hard to watch at times. It showed the human condition at its absolute lowest and how that point warrants a shift into complete survival mode. It is set in the heart of Nazi Poland. I watched Good Will Hunting, and felt like a movie started to get what it was like to be me. Not all of it, but some. Can't remember if I said that already.
I have been to the gym every day for the last few weeks. I go after work and am finally losing some of the weight that the MTC cursed me with. Turns out eating three meals a day makes me heavier. I want a six pack, but my genetics may be against me. I suppose I ought to find out.
I cleaned my room. Cheer and clap now.
I have been re-reading A Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Contrary to the theme of the name, it isn't nerdy at all, other than that it is in space. It is absolutely hilarious. I strive to reach the level of well-thought humor that Douglas Adams seems to live by.
I'm starting to see all kinds of ways to design stuff thanks to my YouTube algorithm. I should probably learn some actual 3D printing skills so that I can get some of those ideas built in the real world. So far, so good. The Minecraft playlist was my first real working idea.
I think I will be buzzing all of my hair off soon. It is very long right now and gets in my face too much, so it's time to go.
I also need to finally develop my film, which is scary. If I mess it up, my last 6 months of photos are gone. I don't think I will, but mixing all the chemicals is a little intimidating. Wish me luck with that one.
I need book recommendations. I like nonfiction, such as Cultish by Amanda Montell. Please send me any you've got. I'll see if I can find a copy. I'll occasionally read fiction, but it has to be good or it'll bore me too much.
Sorry that this email was so long. Hopefully I remember and don't put this off for so long next week so that it'll be a bit shorter.
Bye,
Will
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