screenwriting on a friggin typewriter

Carbonara pizza at 800°

2026-06-14T06:42:12Z

800° Woodfired Kitchen in Hollywood

I think they only serve beer though

Been eating Coscto chicken for the past week. I'm really craving some of Dina's fried chicken and a side of their chicken livers. It gets boring after awhile, making myself burritos all the time. The pizza was a nice change, but it's expensive. Usually, I buy a pizza and it lasts me at least two days. At 800°, they come in one size only. Small. I guess it's ideal for late night bar hopping, but this isn't even a full bar.

Still waiting for my laptop to come back from the repair shop.

Been loafing around doing nothing. Reading nothing. My index finger got chewed up by Susanne J. It's healing nicely, but it looked bad. It felt even worse. Thought she was ripping a chunk of meat out of my finger. I have noticed some tingly splinter/needles sensation when I tough the joint between my index and thumb. Weird, but I think I've had that since the stitches from work accident.

Rewatched Memento. I still don't get it. It's like the deeper into the story one gets, the foggier the "facts" become.

Half expecting a brainwashed audience to emerge from theaters after Disclosure Day premiers

2026-06-14T06:26:51Z

Disclosure Day was released nationwide yesterday. Are people comming out of theaters brainwashed?

Ridiculously engaging. Finds this line between operating as a straight deep-state intelligence thriller and as something on the difficulties of commitment. Carries the deep discomfort and paranoia that characterised much of Spielberg's post-9/11 work. the way it builds up to the final 30 minutes is unbelievable, my eyes were full of tears as the end credits began to roll. Found myself really moved by the palpable humanity of it all - a collective cut through government secrecy. Don’t think Emily Blunt has ever been better. Some of the compositions are truly spell-binding - full of haunting mirrored expressions, tracking shots, and some of the best blocking you’ll likely see this decade. And those chase sequences! So much fun. Looks like a real real movie. Actually very weird at times tonally, M. Night-like in ways as others have said (very much complimentary). Not only in terms of humour but also in the way it employs faith as a shield. Really really loved this, can see others not doing. Probably not entirely what you expect.
@sethsreviews dot letterboxd

Was feeling a little distant for large stretches of the movie and then the third act got me in the “lean forward in seat position” and I didn’t move the rest of the movie
@jonathan fujii dot letterboxd

Wouldn't you like to know, weather girl @starstruck dot letterboxd

This is the kind of movie the guy from Bugonia would have loved.
@itzRocha dot letterboxd

Possibly undercooked as a meditation on empathy and finding our sense of meaning, fucking phenomenal as a spiritual successor to Minority Report. Even takes time out of its day to rationalize and redeem much of what Crystal Skull was trying to do. Steve, you shouldn't have! Weirdly enough the best performance in the movie is from a character who only shows up in the final 10 minutes, not sure I've ever seen that happen before!
@James (Schaffrillas) dot letterboxd

Disclosure Day was atrociously bad. I mean, potentially one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. Multiple people got up and left the theaters, people were on their phones, fidgeting and completely uninterested. Uninteresting, corny beyond belief, premise sucked. Acting was just bad. Music cringed me out. This felt like a boomer blockbuster, and Steven Spielberg tarnished himself with this one. Rough watch, if you can stay awake. Save your money.
@ApollosMission dot X

I was really excited for Disclosure Day. This movie had me hooked from the trailer, and i could not wait until it released. So anyway...yeah, i fell asleep 30 minutes in...the movie was boring and didn't even have the courtesy to tell us what was whispered at the end.
@mynerdyhome dot X

Archive of Our Own (AO3)

2026-06-02T02:36:01Z

Not realizing how AO3 works, an account was created years ago. Upon revisiting the site, curiosity got the better of me. Getting as far as writing a single sentence, just to preview the results, I notice some of the multiple fields are mandatory.

Fandom

What even is fandom? If I were to guess, I would imagine it as a subplot for an already made work (of art) like a feature film. Hasn't everybody sat thru a film and imagined what ifs? What if the scene was done this way? What if this happened to the main character this way. Early on when I searched the web for answers to what fandom was exactly, mostly, the returns from google were stories. Stories I never was able to connect with anything fanatical. My research ability was probably to blame, as the search engines returned generalized answers to my question.

I screened Bohemian Rhapsody last night and there were a couple scenes I would've liked to expand on, like the scene where Freddy Mercury is confronted with the realization that his relationship with his wife is an open marriage, when she introduces him to her boyfriend. Isn't that just the way? I've heard people say monogamy isn't natural for humans, but still people enter into marriage aggreements with the understanding that flirting (or looking) at another woman in front of one's spouse is taboo.

What I would've expanded on in Bohemian Rhapsody is the way fame can corrupt idealism. Freddy Mercury grew up surrounded by Christian idealism, so when he proposed to his girlfriend, he probably expected to live a similar life like his parents. There's no way in hell Freddy's mother was going to let her husband stay out all night, nor become absent for days at a time the way Freddy disappeared while working on composing music.

And when he performs in the Live Aid concert, the lyrics seem directed to his mother, talking about himself: "Mama, I just killed a man." and "I don't want to die…" In fact, I see him puckering up a kiss towards the audience as if intended for for the cameras to his mother whom he had promised to send on live TV. These are factors that I would describe as fandom. The express opinions or reviews or expansion of scenes from a movie, but being stuck with writers' block myself about the defunding of the police force (resulting in stripping the uniforms away from law enforcement and colorizing them in hot pink) got me searching for AI websites that allow nudity.

Don't click the read-more button if you don't want to see AI generated nudity.

As I ponder for a fandom title for this AO3 thing I'm trying to write (nude caucasian cops,) I couldn't find anything. Browsing thru the list that pop up in AO3 for that 'fandom' field, I find fandom titles with the word 'cop' in it. The most enticing was Skateboard Cop, so I I closed AO3 and google 'skateboard cop' to learn more about what that fandom could be about. Is it possible that fandom can be anything created in social media platforms, like TikTok? And what's up with the nudity I just created on AI? Do genitals really look like camel toes on policemen?

The anti-cat spike tile removal ritual every time I need to use my computer

2026-05-31T20:24:27Z

https://photos.app.goo.gl/hGJMJpxQG3wt84Vs7

End of the month post. Pub domain pix on a whim before REM. Dreamt the cats found 2/8 of what they t

2026-05-31T17:00:04Z

A simple table I hashed out before bedtime.

photos	description
image	caption
image 2	caption
image 3	caption
image 4	caption

This table contains dense code, but JotterPad reduces the complexity

Using JotterPad is similar to what PhotoShop was like back when I had the software running locally on a PowerBook G3. I still have that laptop too. Unfortunately, my aspirations to create my VuePress on that old clunker machine is not compatible (Node.js v.20.9.0 required), but if I ever manage to learn to use Vue.js, I'm sure I'll be able to understand PHP and MySQL a little more. Then, perhaps, I could utilize those languages to build something on it. If I could even build something with Rebol, it would be a huge accomplishment.

Photo	Description
Photo by Quan Jing on Unsplash	Pinhole photography search from unsplash
Photo by Fotos on Unsplash	After struggling unsuccessfully, I might add, to get my OS/iOS devices to work with public keys (PGP), I'm glad to have a Mac computer
Photo by Dan Meyers on Unsplash	My dumb cats peeing everywhere makes my house seem dilapidated
Photo by Jackie Martinez on Unsplash	High altitude villa living
Photo by Kim Ampie on Unsplash	The preroll roach vs the cigarette butt. The 60's advertised tobacco as Smooth. Was it because people were smoking pot and scratching up their throats?

Lying in bed, I don't get drowsy until my eyes start to burn from watching TikTok bloggers acting stupid. The funny ones tend to get old and repetitive. When I reach a point when I'm all caught up on my social media fix, this table of miscellaneous pix I ganked from Unsplash gets me drowsy. After spending the whole day discovering new stuff I can do in Terminal and stuff I just comprehend with OpenID (PGP), brainstorming future posts relaxes me. I really like the way livjournal organizes my photos in a blog entry when I email it. It's not complicated, the way lj-cuts are mixes in with the table code. Thinks began to go bonkers when I tried experimenting with image hosting defaults. I wanted to see how attachment photos were displayed, with the lj-cuts, if the image layout was vertical. Then the multiple posts began to happen (and multiple photos too.)

I guess the multiple entries glitch is resolved because I don't see that occurring with my test posts from yesterday. It's going to be awhile until I finish the roll of film in the pinhole camera to post more pix, so last night I brainstormed how I might go about creating a table with images.

I never bothered to format images intended for the web before. The book on Vue.js has prompted me to scrutinize my images more carefully. Downsizing them for size and proportion is a task in itself. JotterPad can be tricky as I struggled to follow tutorials on making tables with markdown code using pipe symbols (|) and underscores (_), etc. When exporting my tables afterward, they just wouldn't formate into html properly. Then I discovered JotterPad has a tool button (+) that drops down a menu where I can select tables, the amount of rows and columns, etc. When I use that technique, the output to html is perfect.

So the plan is to use that when I have a roll of film scanned into my computer. I think uploading the photos into lj's photo album cloud might be the route I take, only because I won't be uploading photos in the same size that I scan them anymore. It will take longer, of course. A task I wouldn't mind adding as a skill to my resume. And that's what the gears in my head are thinking when I came up with this table in bed last night. Unsplash makes it so easy to grab a photo and post it, and if I like the way they look in this entry, my goal will be to duplicate that myself. Manually.

It was fun learning more about Terminal commands but I'm still in the dark over OpenPGP

2026-05-31T06:00:52Z

Easier said than done:
Prepare the post text
Sign the msg (ASCII-armored)
Inspect message.asc
Compose the email
Send and wait

TROUBLESHOOTING

Use clear-sign
Ensure the UID/eMail used to sign (bierdestone@blanketsin.com) matches the key you upoaded to livejournal
Verify signature locally
If the signature verification shows a different user ID, sign with the exact keyID
Paste the block into the email body

If it still doesn't post, paste the first 3 lines of message.asc (BEGIN line and the Hash line) and the output of

gpg --verify message.asc

Took the whole day troubleshooting. i imagine posting email updates this way, using a public key, works fine on a PC. Maybe it's a Mac thing. So I just changed the PIN on my Mobile settings. I'm watching carefully for duplicate posts as a result of sending so many tests. Another cool feature I didn't know about is I can attach a txt file as my entry (if i use the bundled Mail app that comes with OSX, I guess). I love that because I don't have to worry about accidently pressing the wrong button on my screen and stressing about not having save what I had composed. So, maybe this is cause for a shot. Cheers!

Clogged pens, bizarrely structured theme layers, and troubleshooting PHP emails

2026-05-29T21:33:52Z

The new editor is wonderful, but with it's limitations of creating image map coordinate hotspots on an image, I guess the old classic editor is the only solution. So, I began to restore the 'verified' email accounts allowable to send blog emails to post.livejournal.com but this time I was determined to utilize the PHP feature.

I already know the the previous Mobile set-up I had, with the PIN number, was generating multiple posts.

Taking a headache break, set the TV for Bugonia. It is doubtful I will ever get tired of watching this movie. Something about the camera angles and close-ups of Emma Stone that makes the movie pleasing to the eye. Then there Jesse Plemons AND his supporting actor Aiden Delbis. Half the time, just couldn't believe the AS character wasn't for real, but as far as Plemons' role in the film, the special effects is what really impressed me; high point being the rollerball scene.

Then there's the dedication of having one's head shaved for the role. We already knew Stone's professionalism in doing nude scenes. Now this? Well, I guess for actors it's all about doing it while you can, because when the golden years come around, it's doubtful anybody is going to care about a nude scene or a shaved head.

Extras that come with streaming purchase of Bugonia

It's fun to see the details that go into making a movie. This short 30 minute behind the scenes footage justifies the monetary budget that movies incur. Apparently an entire house was built for this film. However, you gotta wonder whether they included plumbing if a house built for a movie set isn't going to feature any running water or toilets flushing.

I haven't yet gotten the PHP email posts to work and that's okay since I can always create a post using the old editor. If I was organized at all, I would clear the developers area of theme layers and start from scratch (just to see if the problems there lies) but if I do that, I would need to figure out how I managed to get google fonts to finally work, and I would have to re-design the theme layer for the tmtwngm community. I guess I just have to weigh the factors of having a disfunctional pretty blog over a fully functional half-cocked design.

Does livejournal email even still work for anybody on this platform?

Can red-eye occur during daylight?

2026-05-27T20:45:59Z

Microsoft OneDrive

1drv.ms

This gets downloaded with an attachment that should be under 50KB.

saved with the otto title (automatically converted OCR) and it got saved as "I SAID QUACK QUACK QUACK. 2s QUE?"

508x357 resolution 72x72 RGB size 50KB

A walk thru the park. I wore my hiking boots. Cheap waterproof trackers with the sole coming apart after already gluing it back together once. It's not the reason I prefer to tread on the grass at the park. Treading on the grass helps avoid oncoming traffic (joggers mostly).

Does Red-eye occur during daylight? It's almost impossible to walk thru the grass in Echo Park without awakening a goose. Getting really close to the gander to make eye contact as I pass. Keeping fingers crossed that they don't make a scene and try to run me off their turf. Like, 'Get over there on the gravel where you belong, Hoomin.'

…and if it is a thing, how can you tell?

How to depict in (film)script the angle of eye contact wherein daylight red-eye occurs. Like staring down a gander just to see when it makes its move. Fight or flee. These Echo Park geese are too lazy to 'flight'. Some of them, I guess if one approaches carefully enough, will only grunt. It's quite something to hear a grunting goose in the middle of traffic noise. Grunt grunt grunnt grunnnt grnt.

I guess it's the angle, and the longer it lasts might involve the directional movement one heads, as the longer the axis point of eye-contact is maintained, without the goose changing focal point, without pedestrian's POV breaking focal point, that is when 'daylight red-eye' occurs.

Now back to the books: how to go about creating a hyperlink for the eye-ball in the duck?

see ~~I said quack quack quack. 2s que?~~ _DOT_JPEG in this "new editor" entry

Is it even something worth pursing with a jpg image as small as 50kb? How tiny would the image-map area cover, if say on the display?

All these questions are for further exploration and implementation for constructing the next WRITING PROMPT at tmtwngm. How to depict daylight red-eye between a passersby and a duck? On film?

Great. Now I can befriend the ducks so much so that they'll allow me to shoot them with the pinhole camera. And a tripod.

New editor, old editor, the wild goose chase Chrome browser sends me on—reminds of lj good ol' days

2026-05-27T06:44:17Z

I couldn't even upload this .jpg of a screenshot to the code monkeys at lj

I must've been tripping when I decided I should go back to my old editor. I have mutliple browsers on my computer and I use them all, though not for the same reasons. My work website prefers that I use Chrome because the other browsers don't work for their website.

After getting back on the programming development project, I like to relax by updating my lj blog, mainly because it doesn't involve the same brain boggling coding that I've been learning with Vue.js.

When I log out of my lj account and refresh my blog, Chrome only shows recent entries as far back as December 2025.

Who wouldn't think that was odd? So I started logging off of lj on all my different browsers to check what was going on and they all seem to work normally. Firefox, Safari, Opera. It's only Chrome, on my iMac, that fails to display my entries. Even if I go to the archive, the calendar plainly shows that I have posted entries in 2026. But if I click the link to any particular entry between January and present, the browser returns the message "No entries were made".

So I submitted a support ticket to livejournal. I don't expect I'll hear from them because the browser seems to work fine on my iPhone. It's only on my desktop computer that Chrome malfunctions.

I keep eMailing test entries too because I'm troubleshooting the duplicate entries that are created, and duplicate photos, every time I email a post. As a result of deleting multiple photos left and right, some of my blog entries are now showing broken images because how am I supposed to know which image from the multitude I am embedding in my entries?

I went ahead and removed my email accounts from the Mobile features so I won't be enticed to send another entry via eMail. Fuck that, and I'll be using the NEW editor from now on too. Seeing that Chrome is a Google product, and the way google maps sabotaged one of my photos of a Haunted Picnic Table in Griffith Park — it's still fresh in my memory so much so that I began to question whether google might deliberately be blocking my blog — I'm so close to trashing their google fonts and google analytics features all because of this Chrome debacle.

The new editor seems to steer away from all the customization to theme layers and what–not. So, the typewriter font, the chicken scratch font, Road Rage font, etc. were fun while they lasted. I never even realized that Special Elite wasn't a fixed width font. It's proportional. Don't be surprised if a good ol' websafe monospace font like Courier New takes it's place some day soon. Maybe abandoning those embedded google fonts will prompt me to manually hand print my h2 subject titles again. I was doing that back in the teen years, maybe 2014ish.

Memorial Day weekend: may your bar-b-q feast be bountiful, and the flies/mosquitoes ostracized.

2026-05-25T02:43:16Z

As depression sets in for the repair charges coming my way soon, for the replacement retna display on a MacBook Air, it behooves me to orchestrate a convincing scenario to convince myself 'these things happen.' Maybe closing a laptop and cracking the screen happens more often than people are willing to admit. I can see somebody leaving a pen or pencil on the keyboard and slamming their laptop shut, when wham! the crackling sound of glass startles them into regret. I dunno. What gets me so upset is the cause for my little accident, resulting from a magnetic charging port designed to prevent a laptop from becoming tangled in one’s feet from the charging cord. In other words, this happened to me when it should’ve been prevented.

Previous to this, the one disappointment that had me down was a revelation I heard online by a writer’s perspective about job postings in LinkedIn being a baldfaced sham. It isn’t just my lack of talent and experience or the competition that discourages, but what today’s administration says about journalism? Fake news. untalented reporters shameful media companies, etc. As depressing as it is, I lock myself in my bedroom for privacy with my laptop teaching myself programming in Vue.js., the VuePress platform enticing me for it’s press association.

Computer wizards make it look easy. I have aspirations to repurpose my old, broken down computers as web servers. And with that, I tell myself this little set-back (breaking my own retna display) is the equivalent of paying college tuition for programming classes. It’s the bullshit I deal with keeping my own miserable company. I know the comparison is a stretch. No curriculum, no foreseeable concrete goal, only reading chapter to chapter in discombobulation of all RegEx and JavaScript code structure. Just before the accident to my laptop, I had finally managed to scrutinize the password obstacle WordPress imposes for synching JotterPad app’s publishing feature. One day I will figure out why gmail lj updates create multiple duplicate entries.

I vaguely recall seeing on livejournal a list of previous entries listed as “email” posts. I felt I might find clues to the problem if I could access the list of entries posted via email. I believe Telegram is the cause BTW. I have so many bots in that app, after trying to develop alternate ways to update blog entries, that I feel I must’ve broken something. However, if that were the case, it doesn’t seem likely the same problem would occur if I used a dedicated email server like Outlook. Unfortunately, multiple/duplication occurs even when I use a different email server/client.

My fascination with the octopus specie has me praising new Sally Field movie

2026-05-24T09:00:58Z

Between Gina, the Russian skits, and all the Spanish bloggers that've found their way to my TikTok algorithm, sometimes I have to wonder if trying those dumb memes to see your what AI thinks of your temperament really just unlocks a new wave of funny people. Lately I have binged on a German actress obsessed with Mexico and I am totally liking her Spanish accent.

Been trying to get back into the paperback about Rats. Found myself putting out some cheese traps to give my cats a break. Finally caught Suzanne J long enough to take her in for shots and a bath. We picked up a flea collar together too.

My laptop is in the shop. That stupid magnetic power socket on Mac's, you know, the one that's supposed to disconnect from the device to prevent the computer from falling? It cracked my screen. Even if it was still under warranty. Trying to get Apple to admit it's a design flaw would be more of a headache that the computer itself (programming). I look at it as though the sheer frustration of trying to program made me do it. The laptop, sitting on my bed charging, was open. I closed it with a swip, you know, in case one of the cats was hiding under the bed waiting for an opportunity to pee on THIS one. At least a closed laptop might resist the urine as it got absorbed by the blankets.

The magnet must've unhinged from the socket with the movement of the computer itself being closed and fixed itself right between the the screen and keyboard. An electric eel sandwich. Fuck!

version with more red lines is the code designed for Vue.js 2, and the single red line, version 3?

2026-05-14T08:21:19Z

I know this is the easy part, memorizing the dynamic combination of script, template, style. I think it's crazy to try to think this stuff up from scratch. I don't even type this stuff onto the computer anymore (verbatim from the textbook.) Now I'm just going online to the packt github repository and copying the code from that file and pasting it to my computer file. I back up the original "exercise1.10," then create a blank one. I guess I'm learning about those plugins that require fixing for each exercise in the workspace.

My eyeballs tend to wander when I start getting tired reading this stuff. It's like the letters start running all over the place and I have to keep my eye on them, but before I know it, my focus is searching for the point where I left off. Between this text book and the CodeMonkeys tutorial, I'm starting to check the respective tutorial code to get the index to encapsulate entries in cards AND include Navigation bar/head at the top of the page.

I'm glad I found this book. I was getting frustrated trying to come up with stuff on my own that I could use YAML with, to improve my whatever–coding–language–is–combined–with–YAML skill. It's a real treat getting my mind blown when I discover that I can do this or that with YAML. As of now, I wouldn't mind understanding all this stuff just enough to start using markdown for blog entries. The goal I've set myself is to figure out how to use my markdown app JotterPad to hash out .ftn files, then write something into the YAML that would allow Vue.js to convert the file into html. Then, of course, I would need to focus on such things as pagination, where each page would consist of no more than 54 lines of text, all the proper margins for a move script manuscript, etc. Plan B is to continue to hack out my movie script scenes on the typewriter, scanning them into a .png file, and adding the images to a "public" file for my blog entries. A.K.A. the lazy-set goal.

Every time. I can't toss the peach pits away. Instead, I save it for later to ram it into the earth.

2026-05-14T01:29:24Z

BEFORE AND AFTER PICTURES, SPANNING 3 MONTHS

Photo from Feb. 2026

A nice tall tree would be nice in this city-owned plot of earth. Maybe I should write a letter to my councilman about climbing this street during summer. It doesn't have an outrageous incline like some of the neighboring street, but my peach pits aren't going to sprout if nobody adds water after I impale them into the ground with my shoe.

Photo from May. 2026

I'm still on chapter one of this web app programming book I'm drooling over. The exercises are meant to expose the reader to the details of code that Vue (vite?) uses, but this goes in one ear and out the other as I have zero javascript ability. I guess it would be easier if I had some hands-on experience using if/else conditions, but why kid myself? This book is 500+ pages and the rate I'm going, it'll be Christmas 2028 before anything sticks.

Yesterday I spent some time reviewing the already complete CodeMonkeys VuePress tutorial blog. I wanted to tweak it because the tutorial course ended rather prematurely, leaving the index without a header or a navigation bar. I crack myself up thinking I could solve the problem. Soon I'll become so frustrated, I'll abandon the book to spend some time doodling cartoons on a sketch pad. It's the undisputed pattern my brain takes.

From THE DEAD DON'T DIE—Act II awakens the audience to something intriguing in more ways than one

2026-05-12T17:52:08Z

I don't know how many times I tried formatting this with tables. I even had to use BBEdit because the old classic editor was cropping out the last photo.

I finally give up. It was hard enough to keep these clips in sequence. But I can see the value now in using dynamic coding for eliminating guess work in gremlins within the code.

We cut from the main set up of a small town cafe, cops, donuts, etc to this blond kneeling in front of a Buddha.

We don't see who the mysterious blond is until it is clear we are inside a Shaolin Temple-like structure.

Once it becomes clear who the blond is, a display of bad-ass Ninja moves ensues. Finished, she about faces.

After the Katana in her hand is brandished, she enters the adjacent room. A morgue? Intriguing.

She enters the morgue-like room and tucks a corpses hand back underneath the white blanket.

A before and after clip of the slab checks the wrinkle shadows of the sheet, but no human can be expected to notice that the hand had tussled it AGAIN.

This sequence spans roughly 3 minutes. In the time it takes to establish a Shaolin Temple setting, reveal A-list star and her Ninja skills, do a complete 180 to reveal the adjacent room as a morgue with real corpses, and end with the questionable animation of a dead person underneath a blanket, what elements were combined to condense the action down to only three pages?

The MYSTERIOUS BLOND and the Shaolin Temple setting are combined as the mad Ninja skills enforcing the Shaolin Temple setting and revealing A-lister actress. The brief emphasis of the Katana sword completely dumbfounds the setting when it is revealed that the adjacent room is a morgue. The curiosity this sparks in the audience is also depicted in Swinton when she enters the morgue-like room cautiously. We don't see the hand until Swinton tucks it back underneath the blanket. Satisfied, Swinton exits room, her back turned as the hand spasms underneath the blanket. We have a chance to see the slab with the blanket wrinkles just after Swinton tucks the corpse's hand back underneath the blanket, and after the spasm (something only a computer might be able to detect). Swinton re-appears from behind the door sill to question whether the corpse's hand didn't fall off the slab again.

The beta templates using YAML need debugging. Jotterpad doesn't have support for their 'Programming

2026-05-10T22:23:59Z

It’s time for a break. This past week, nothing was sitting right (in my gut) after devouring an entire medium pizza in one day. Following that, the next day, I had one of Mike’s famous Philly subs. Normally these dishes are well received. Maybe I need to buy more milk.

At Costco, milk is sold by the gallon in packages of two. I stopped buying milk by the gallon about two ro three years ago. For what it's worth, I think this is the new habitualism for aging. It’s fun eating your favorite foods while your young, but when you start getting old and begin to realize your gut doesn’t process foods the same way, it’s hard cutting them out. Thankfully I was never big on sugar, so I rarely consumed those yummy chocolate bars, skittles, Hersheys, etc. As far as milk goes, I’m not gonna lie. Not having milk for my coffee in the morning was torture. Having purchased an espresso machine years earlier, I came to understand that the foam that an espresso contains was considered to be the creme and that’s how I made cutting milk for coffee simple. I just began drinking espressos in the morning.

Now, even if I do buy a small pint of milk, I can take it or leave it. More than ever I’m using milk for making hot chocolate. Even better, I’ll let my hot chocolate cool before refrigerating and after about an hour, I mix it with Kahlua and tequila. And yes, that’s a lot of sugar. There’s only so many of those “Kahlua twists” I can drink before I just want to have my tequila straight. On the rocks.

This G-shock is something else, though. I tried to log my walk to a Thai restaurant. I remembered to turn it off as soon as my walk was over, but when I go to the G-shock app, the map image always lags (if it is there at all.) It’s like 50/50 that my short route will include a map.

Another annoying glitch is using e-mail to update my blog. It’s never happened before, but now, when I send an e-mail to livejournal, my entry is duplicated like 5 or 6 times. Whatever. I know I can force lj to post with the old classic editor now. The sole purpose of these e-mail updates is to see how my photos are formatted into tables behind the cut.

Learn to build scalable web apps (on a text editor that stalls printing templates.)

2026-05-10T07:17:59Z

Jotterpad has a templates feature. I wanted to use that to print these three pages in color (virtually) and post them here in my blog. Here's the big joke: I'm reading this Vue.js how-to book for beginners, but I think the "beginners" aspect of the course tutorials is referring to the early version of Vue.js. The book is made for the Vue.js version 2 software, but I'm running version 3. So following the tutorials is a joke. Nothing matches the code and here's an example to prove it.

I guess I can un-install Vue.js 3 and attempt to install Vue.js 2. It is the correct step to take if I intend to follow the tutorials. At this point, though, I'm already somewhat discouraged at my progress in understanding the code. Javascript is the main obstacle but I have difficulty with RegEx (Regular Expression) too. I don't know when I'll come to my senses, but the decision to move forward and just accept that I'll be learning the old version and the new version simultaneously stands. Rather, something really important has to change my mind about that as technology is always moving forward and learning the new version of a programming language seems to be more important than un-installing version 3 and attempting to install version 2.

I say attempt because Murphy's Law says something is always bound to go wrong. Even if I go through the trouble of un-installing and re-installing, it's very likely that some other bug will pop up.

Jotterpad Templates

Jotterpad offers templates and one of them is called 'Programming project'. It doesn't work. When I try to print it to PDF (or even a hard copy,) the app freezes. The description of the template sound great too. It color codes the fonts within the code to emphasize Objects and Functions (I guess.) I really would've liked to have seen this. I don't know who I can contact about the template flaw. At this point, I can only guess that it is a GitHub flub.

What do cats have against desk lamps? They already broke the glass shade to my previous lamp.

2026-05-09T02:27:51Z

This message (photo 6) kept popping up on my phone (every so often.) Just out of the blue. Of course, it would happen while I was doing something important, so it was disregarded. I later found out, through pure frustration over what it was about, Notability was sending me these notices. I still can't figure out why.

I don't think I've ever used whatever service Notability does with my email account. I usually use Notability for converting .pdf files into image files (.jpg and .png). Having gone into settings, I followed the email settings and saw that Notability was in there among all my email accounts AND it had been selected as the default. I'm like, huh-wha? All I can think of was that whatever it had been selected as the default to do, surely it wasn't the defaul email app. I think I have the bundled 'email' app that came with the operating system.

	I keep saying, with the summers we have in L.A., this side of the block should have more tree shade. Climbing this hill is hard enough in normal weather. Word is the house this portion of sidewalk belongs to is under new ownership. I was hoping whatever they planted here would be tall and wide. I wish you could look at it now. Maybe I'll take another photo of it this summer.
	Failed attempt to get my new G-shock to work. I keep forgetting to turn it off after the hike. If I start driving without turning it off, the whole map area gets skewed.
	Here's the lamp that my cats keep chewing up the powered cord on and I'm sure they must know something I don't. It is, after all, an LED lamp. I like it though. It has a charging port for my phone and a USB charger connection.
	Every time I go riding, I use this BeeLine gadget that points to the direction I need to go. This saves some power from my phone if I were to use that for directions. I have one of the early models. The newer ones are in color and they show a portion of the roadmap where turns need to be made. So, when I dismount the bike, this gizmo comes with me. Should I forget about it and leave it attached to the bike? I mean, it isn't like it's an video camera. It wasn't cheap though.
	It's hard to get all the cats in a group like this. I'm going to take more of these when I move their eating plates into the pathway area (dark room) to the bathroom. I tried to catch Suzanne J. yesterday and she won't have anything to do with me. To get her in her travel case, I'm going to lock her into the darkroom and leave the carrying case open. I'm sure she'll get in there over time. Only problem is how long it'll take. I'm planning on doing this without a litter box in there.

The CodeMonkeys theme structure, supposedly easier to construct using VuePress, hah! it is to laugh.

2026-05-08T02:55:17Z

Today was a free day from programming as the eBook once again required a charge.

I found my rivet machine and used it on the ribbon I received from Typwriter Chicago. I have to thank the many typewriter blogs out there for providing info on typewriter ribbon suppliers selling in bulk. Now I can rivet my own ribbon from a single gigantic spool. Although, that's a ways down the road before the current ink ribbon starts to dry up.

I think it's funny how computers took over the typewriter world, yet they continue to invent newer and better electronics, such as the quantum computer. Isn't it nice to still have vintage equipment supply stores? I'm still a bit leery of using my TWSBI fountain pen like a ballpoint that I can carry around in my pocket without worrying about leaks. Retro51 makes a small vintage ballpoint (Tornado) that comes with a little cozy sleeve ($21) and I've used this when the only pockets available are pants pockets. It prevents the pointy edge of the pen from making holes. I'm thinking of making a leather sleeve for the TWSBI mini which I picked up for it's vacuum ink reservoir technology. Apparently, they're leakproof.

Mindmap of VuePress theme structure files

In the 90's there was a blogger I followed named Christian Langreiter. The programming language he used for his "bliki" was called Rebol. My biggest obstacle in trying to learn that language was getting around Terminal. I had zero exposure to the command line, and although I abandoned that project, it served helpful getting by the CodeMonkey's tutorials. Copying the code from the YouTube videos was smooth sailing, but I have yet to understand what all this code means. Here are some of the files within the vuepress folder for the theme I'm developing.

Instead of having a normal bar menu at the top, with "Topics" and "Posts" as link navigator buttons, I had an epiphany about the hashtag #tmtwngm. Once upon a time, somebody took interest and asked what the acronym meant. I said it was for The Movie That Would Never Get Made and he/she corrected my grammar and repeated the movie that will never be made. And so, for the VuePress project, I decided I would use the corrected version TMTWNBM. The epiphany was that the acronym contains seven letters, much like the days of the week are seven (MTWTFSS) and what I did was reorder my week by renaming Mondays as Tuesday, Tuesdays as Mondays, Wednesdays as Thursdays and Thursdays as Wednesdays. Hence, TMTW. There still was the issue with NBM. How could I convey the last three days of the week as NBM?

For starters, people in this country shouldn't work so hard. A workweek should consist of only four days, not five. So the idea expanded to the re-interpretation of NBM to Never Before Midnight. In other words, don't show up for work on Fridays because the weekend starts on that day. TMTWNBM is the acronym for Tue, Mon, Thu, Wed, Never Before Midnight, because I don't keep track of what day of the week it is, but I know my weekend is gonna start on Friday. Having explained that concept, I would like to ask you all if you remember being late to class and being called tardy? The dictionary explains this word exactly as that, being late, but is there a play on the word retarded here? I must've been in elementary school when I experienced the teacher pointing out my "tardiness" and the classroom bursting in muffled giggles. I didn't take offense then, and now that I'm connecting these dots, I still don't take offense. I just think of annie_hardy and her self deprecation when she describes herself this way.

Go (the movie) 1999 Rated R

2026-05-06T06:38:15Z

Over the span of 3 years following the University incident in Idaho where students involved in Greek life lost their lives to hi-jinx, some rumors of a movie in development have crossed my attention. Last night I screened Go, a 1999, R-rated dark comedy. What I don’t see from the books and documentaries already circulating is a questionable side, not only of the victims slaughtered, suicided, however demised, but for the high ranking characters whom it’s anybody’s guess might’ve known of the horrible violence before law enforcement.

I sometimes lean towards law enforcement having a stake in the events, but there’s no doubt in my mind that big money was involved. Seeing that the sinister events occurred under the watch of Fraternities and Sororities, I wonder why the podcasters on YouTube don’t expand their views rather than cater to their ‘live’ guests’ input.

I may have suggested that the doctorate student who took the rap, if true, is an FBI agent, but that’s only because he doesn’t fit the bill. Only an agent for an agency like that could disguise himself as a lonely nerd that couldn’t harm a fly. At first, however, my concern was how law enforcement could possibly pin the crime on an individual nobody even suspected. Why not dig into Russ Cox too? I mean, how hard could it be to fabricate a link to just about anybody?

I guess where I’m going with this is, how much worse can a movie about the Idaho 4 be if the last big publication about it was written by a former FBI agent? I’m not bashing the documentaries or the previous books on the subject. I don’t normally read crime novels, or watch crime TV. For a heinous crime that’s received so much hype, I expect something along the lines of The Repentless Killogy. In the many podcast streams I’ve listened to, I may have suggested that the culprits were Malaysian. I have no supporting scenarios for that other than the homocides occurred in a learning depot environment. I don’t mean to stereotype Asians as brainy nerds by doing so. After all, the snippet from the movie Superbad, where a passenger on a public transport bus whom I suggested looked ideally like Pappa Rodger may resemble somebody I remember from middle school too. Roll all these plotpoints into a story, and maybe I’ll be interested in the blockbuster film I hear rumors about being in the making.

In the meantime, I’m making great strides with Frontend Development Projects with Vue.js. I spend my whole day following the exercises on my computer. I even screened the Lynda.com tutorial, now on LinkedIn dot com. But that’s what I’m talking about. Lynda dot com was such a cool website, it’s hard to imagine it got taken over by LinkedIn. With the University, the studies, the laws against marijuana in Idaho, the links between news reporters and Banfield and the resemblances of reporter Banfield with Kato Kaelin there’s gotta be a plot which, if exploited, may even point to shot callers as high as the current Prez.

In solidarity to May Day—only inches away 2 understanding components—I took a short walk 4 beer run

2026-05-02T01:38:42Z

Once in a while I will bring home some fresh catnip from Petco. I don’t really see much difference in the way my cats treat it, over the dried stuff that I sprinkle onto their scratching posts or stuffed toys. I`ve tried growing it from seed but I don’t get as good results as I do with growing catgrass. My cats love to eat catgrass. What I’ve noticed about the plants I grow in the porch area is that the overhang give lots of shade and a green ambient light as it is only made of a greenish fiber glass. In the past, I’ve experimented with growing ferns from spores by sprinkling the spores into a small fish tank filled with potting soil. It takes a year to germinate but the success rate is phenomenal.

I picked up a liter of 7-up because the bottle is green and I intend to sprinkle the catnip seeds into it to see if I’ll achieve a better success rate. I will slice an gaping slit down one side of the bottle, nail it to a board so it doesn’t roll all over the place, and hope the enclosed bottle maintains enough humidity to stimulate growth.

I parked the car a few blocks away from my favorite nursery and walked a few blocks taking three 15-second snapshots with the pinhole app on my phone. I don’t know where my brain is, as I had slipped into my hiking boots instead of my Vans. I didn’t realise it until I got on my skateboard, so I ended up just carrying the thing the whole way to the nursery. After buying my seeds I went back to the car to drop off the skateboard and continued my walk down the block to a local brewery to buy some beer. When I returned home and after eating lunch, a nap seemed like a good idea. It was either that or preparing an espresso.

I’m awake now and it’s probably too late in the day to start the catnip project. I still have to find a small plank of driftwood or something to screw the bottle onto, and I don’t want to stop in the middle of that step because of dusk. I estimate, from start to finish, the planting process will take a little over an hour and I have other things on my to-do list. I’ve got to water the plants in the front yard. I’ve got to fix the Roomba vacuum cleaner that never seems to be able to empty it’s trash bin anymore. And it’s Friday, which means I have to check Netflix for new movies.

As far as my programming goes, I watched yet another youtube that really put things in perspective for me. That will have to wait until Monday (I refuse to take my work home with me over the weekend.) It isn’t like I’m on a deadline or anything. I’ve given myself a year to understand static web structure with a dynamic platform to eventually go live with it. That’s when my overpriced server hosting subscription expires. I’m not even clear on deployment, so aside from teaching myself VuePress, I really feel like the challenge is over my head.

In solidarity to May Day—only inches away 2 understand components—I took a short walk 4 beer run

2026-05-02T01:37:01Z

In solidarity to May Day—only inches away 2 understand

2026-05-02T01:35:18Z

In solidarity to May Day—only inches away 2 understand

2026-05-02T01:33:36Z

In solidarity to May Day—only inches away 2 understand

2026-05-02T01:31:54Z

In solidarity to May Day—only inches away 2 understand

2026-05-02T01:30:12Z