I haven’t done any essay writing in a long time. I used to write quite frequently on a personal blog throughout high school and most of college. I had a less-frequently updated tech blog for a few years. I basically stopped writing on it cold turkey when I got a book contract for my first ever technical book. A book which I haven’t worked on in months at this point.
The technical blog server recently fell offline due to a bad server update that locked me out of the remote VM where it’s stored. I’ve been meaning to get it back online but now the laptop that holds the nix configs for the new remote VM that I setup to replace the borked update one has a bad USB charging port. So long story short it’s not really possible to update until/unless I get access to the laptop’s hard drive one way or another. The preferred way would be by charging the laptop up.
I need to figure out how to recharge the laptop. I’ve located the repair shop I want to drop the computer off at, but haven’t made the move to take it there yet. They open at 10am tomorrow. Let’s hope I make it out of my house tomorrow. Speaking of things to drop off at the <workshop>, I’ve also got a Miyabi 5000FCD kitchen knife that desperately needs sharpening sitting on the table beside me. The chinks in the blade are embarrassing me. It’s sitting on a stack of EFTPS papers and a pile of receipts from travel from the last year. Sitting next to it is a stack of notices from the state about LLC’s I’ve registered but forgotten to submit the yearly franchise tax paperwork for. Nearby there’s an empty milk glass that needs to get taken back to the grocery store next time I go, and a stack of tupperware lids that belong to bottoms buried somewhere in the storage unit I need to rent a truck to unpack at some point over the next weekend or two. At least before I take off for my next round of trips. They’re raising rates again on the unit and while my book collection is fairly rare and expensive, its definitely a better idea to keep it at home than paying for hot space in a garage somewhere. Much easier to read them when they’re here anyway! I’ve got three different dresses that need mending or alterations or to be donated draped over the backs of the dining room chairs. There’s a stack of still-in-packaging Stephen Biesty books that I impulse purchased in a fit of desire to re-discover the ancient pyramids of Egypt sitting directly behind my laptop screen.
This week feels like its been a week of delayed/deferred maintenance work finally making its way up to the surface. I finally sent the accountant some details about transactions for taxes I owed two years ago. Oops. I figured out a way to get some data I wanted out of a service I’ve been running on a home server for years now, data that will likely let me finally move some other payments infrastructure in-house, and hopefully vastly simplify my accounting for some of the business projects I’ve got going.
(Counting computers in the cloud as well as at home, I own/run/manage something like 8-9 different machines, all in various states of disorganization and deferred maintenance.) Sometimes I think it’d be nice to declare a ‘computer jubilee’ but then one of them will go down/fall over and I’ll realize what important piece of infrastructure it was running.
Speaking of home infrastructure, I setup a home github repo today, so I can sync code between my stable of computers without needing github to be up and working. (In case you’re wondering, this is the article that I followed.) It’s crazy how fast you can do something so empowering as having a private self-hosted repo if you understand how computers work. Or something. At least the “user interface” portion of them (where ‘user interface’ is a fungible token).
Its been a while since I’ve typed things out, so I thought it would be fun to start keeping a log of what I’ve been up to. Both for myself, as well as an attempt to try to be a bit more visible around “what’s going on in nifty’s life”. I do a lot but I think it ends up buried under the way my brain forgets whats already been done, in pursuit of what’s still left to do.
What Happened This Week
So here’s a short list of things that happened this week:
My wonderful friend Tomas is helping me do outreach about bitcoin++ sponsorships! We’ve got two conferences coming up very soon, and I’m embarrassingly behind on doing outreach about them. We did end up signing a sponsor for the highest tier this week, effectively closing it out!! If you want to sponsor/get a ticket/give a talk or workshop at an upcoming event, let me know!
We got a Satoshi level sponsor for bitcoin++ Berlin!! Yay!!!
I met with the venue for the upcoming bitcoin++ Berlin; we’re going to have to make some schedule changes due to the venue’s calendar. Nothing major major, but annoying. Announcement coming next week!
Finally finished some very very overdue tax accounting tasks!! I have one more set of things to do before I’m “done” with this. The trick turned out to be hiring an accountant. You could say I’ve got someone to be ‘accountable’ to here.
I did two livestreams while working on core-lightning, the open source lightning implementation that I spent a number of years working on at Blockstream. I still work on it one day a week. This week was more than normal.
One with Dusty, working on trying to figure out why sometimes Core Lightning was spending a UTXO its not supposed to. We didn’t quite figure it out during the stream, but I woke up the next day and tracked it down. PR for the fix and some other things is here. It ran into some problems in the tests and I might try fixing it a different way, but it definitely feels like we found the problem.
One with Michael J Evans where we added two new RPCs to the Core Lightning bookkeeper, so you can update descriptions of events in your books after they’ve happened. PR for code we wrote here.
Walker interviewed me on his podcast, THE Bitcoin Podcast! I really really enjoyed our conversation on this one! You can find it on YouTube here.
Had a good call with one of our flagship sponsors for bitcoin++, who’s going to help me wrangle the troops for having a great hackathon at the event!
Made a whole in-depth excel sheet about hotel pools with day passes and cabana rentals in Austin based off of ResortPass website data. Yes, I spent a good chunk of a Saturday afternoon putting this together. As a reward I went to check out of two of them! In case you’re wondering, the cheapest option is to get the Premium Cabana for 15 people at Hotel Van Zandt down in the Rainey district of Austin. I went to check it out on Sunday and really enjoyed it. Music was at a not terrible level, and the drink I got was really good! The pool’s also saltwater which I was pleasantly surprised by how nice it was.
I got really into reading up about Japanese knives, which led to a rabbithole around different types of steel! I’m planning my first ever trip to Japan in three weeks, and have been doing some occasional research into things to see and do while I’m there. I really want to learn more about knife sharpening while I’m there, and probably pick up a nice kitchen knife as a souvenir to mail home.
I made some more mango + saffron ice cream. It tastes amazing. I got a Ninja Creami back in April but didn’t start using it until late June. I’m a big believer in having homemade ice cream or popsicle treats during the summer, and it seems like this summer’s tool of choice is Ninja Creami concoctions. I kinda made up the recipe as I go based off of one I made a few months ago from an actual recipe. Tried to re-create it here. I already ate an entire one of the pints a few days ago.
I also made two new batches of beef jerky! I actually did write the recipes down for these on a notepad I got expressly for that purpose. I’m trying to get better about taking notes about what I’m doing (hehehe). With jerky this is so I can make the same things again later! Or share it with people if they like what I’ve made. I splurged on a 15-minute vacuum tumbler marinator back before the bitcoin conference in July and I’ve been very very happy with how fast it lets me get a new batch of jerky going in the dehydrator! Currently saving my sats up for a counter top Beef Jerky Slicer. In case you’re wondering where all my spare cash goes, it’s into tools for new projects. Or maintenance! Types of jerky I tried making this week:
Chinese 5 Spices. Apple cider vinegar base. No sweetener. Salt, Prague Powder #1 cure. Really tasty but lacking a bit of depth of flavor. Probably needs a bit of a sweetener. I ate it all already, RIP.
Fresh ground black pepper. Apple cider vinegar base. Honey to sweeten. Salt, Celery Salt cure. Delicious. The vinegar cure comes through a bit much in the late chew but the honey and pepper are absolutely great. Over dried it though, it’s a bit too stiff.
Took the car to the shop to get the transmission updated and the normal 30k mile service items taken care of. I ended up renting a car to get around while it was in the shop, and was really happy with the rate I ended up with through this website I happened across! Check it out next time you need a car rental?
Things I Could Use Some Help With
I’d love to hire someone to do a twice-a-month newsletter for bitcoin++. Willing to pay a decent amount for this, since I think it’d be an enormous value add to the project. If you or someone you know are looking for a freelance bitcoin-technical writing gig, send me a note!
If you’re local to Austin and know anyone that needs a part-time job, I’m looking to get someone to help manage day-to-day operations around the Base58 Bitcoin LARP. Bonus points if you know Golang or have an interest in learning how to run a commercial printer.
I’m toying with the idea of moving myself and my dogs to Buenos Aires for a few months at the end of the year, but need a buddy to fly down/back up with us so that I can bring both of them on-board as carry ons. Let me know if you’re interested in a trip to Buenos Aires in late October or mid-January. We’d be flying out of Austin most likely (the other option is Houston). It’s not 100% certain that this is going to happen but figured I’d at least see if I can get volunteers.
A member of La Crypta reached out to me about doing a bitcoin++ sponsored capture the flag for Labitconf in Buenos Aires this November. I’d love to get some help designing a script-oriented capture the flag project, in conjunction with the La Crypta crew.
From Around the Web
Here’s a few things I found this week that I thought were fun/cool.
Stardew Valley is one of my all-time favorite video games. I just found out they made a cookbook for the game’s recipes! They look extremely detailed so I’m holding off until I’ve gotten a few projects off my plate.
I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but really looking forward to this paper on What Every Programmer Should Know About Memory.
This Knife Japan website is a really great resource for different types of knives and steels that they’re made out of! Based on my digging, Tamahagane is the most premium/handmade steel available. It’s what high quality samourai swords were made from. Here’s an old YouTube video of a master blacksmith making a tamahagne knife.
Til next time nifty’s readers!
~nifty