Weeknotes - April 18, 2025

Feeling way better thanks to the med change from two weeks ago. Taking Modafinil twice a day turns out to be the way to beat sedation from the other meds. It also acts as a buffer against depression (which I think I was in a bit of, but not too bad)

I've been very productive, but I don't think it's mania. Saw the psychiatrist yesterday. They said I seemed excited, but okay, but definitely keep a close eye on things.

Biggest news it that I've decided to take a full swing at building a new social network. I've been going back and forth about it for years. It was one of the main things I focused on during my manic episode in 2017. I've been thinking about it ever since.

I spent a bunch of time doing a brain dump into: A Vision For The Web (which was originally titled A Website Manifesto). It's still a working draft. There's a fair amount more to do before fully publishing it, but it'll give you the idea.

I took a first pass at an approach for building the HTML for an RSS reader that isolated posts from each other using CSS. Got some feedback that it didn't work and a suggestion to try Web Components, which seem like a perfect fit. More on that here as I work on it: DEPRECATED: Web Component CSS Encapsulation Test For The Neb RSS Reader

And, yeah, it's possible that's a sign I'm getting manic. Delusions of Grandeur were a key feature of my mania. So, TBD on that. But, after the check-in with the psych team, I think it's just where my head's at overall.

Did my first live coding stream on YouTube. I didn't announce I was doing it. It was mainly a test run. What was cool is I still had a few viewers, including one who chatted. Another person subscribed, which was pretty cool.

(Ads are the biggest reason I'm looking at a move away from Twitch. You don't have to have any on YouTube)

I false started a "shorts" feed for my site. It was going to be another RSS feed with "microblogging" style content (e.g. pots that don't have titles). I did a bunch of work on the stream to set it up. Unfortunatel, the approach I built won't work.

The idea was to be able to put multiple shorts in a single source file (to make it easier to get to). Only problem is that breaks linking. All the shorts in one file would point to the same URL. Not how I want things to work. I ended up rolling it all back.

So it goes.

Had the idea to add a <<wiki>> tag to Neopoligen. It literally occurred to me while make the previous bullet point. I wrote the word Neopoligen and was about to make a footnote for it. Something I've done like a zillion times.

I designed a way to do global footnotes by referencing a global footnote ID. Just wrapping the word in the tag is easier and nicer looking. So, the idea now is to add a config file to the overall dataset that contains words to match on and their corresponding links.

Started a repo for neovim_command_runner.nvim

This is directly related to the "shorts" mentioned above. I want each short to have its own file. But, I don't want to have to come up with a filename each time I make one. So, I'm going to build a little Neovim feature/plugin that lets me create and open a new file with an auto-generated name.

The process will run an external command to get a KSUID. Originally, I was going to make a plugin specifically for making new shorts. Didn't take me long to realize I'd want the same ability for things like music links, bookmarks, quotes, etc... So, I'm going with a more generic tool.

The idea is to open a little window via hotkey that has a configurable list of command I can run from it. Basically, the same thing VS Code does, but for Neovim and with only the stuff I put in it.

Spent a bunch of time figuring out how to output stuff from Lua scripts into Neovim. I feel like I had to have missed stuff. It took hours to put togther because I couldn't find any clear examples out there of how to do it.

Hopefully, these will save other folks some time:

Run An External Command Synchronously In Neovim

Use Lua To Insert Lines Into A Neovim Buffer/File

Use Lua To Insert Text At The Current Cursor Position In Neovim

Started a repo for neopolitan_parser

Talked with a buddy about optimizing Neopoligen and learned one way to help with compile times would be to split it into different crates. The Neopolitan parser makes a perfect candidate.

I don't really need the optimization (the conversation was more about learning than an actual need), but it would be cool to have access to the parser in other apps.

Finally got around to figuring out how to turn borders back on in floating windows and my nvim-tree sidebar. See:

Change The Window Separator Border Color In Neovim, and

Set The Border Color Of Neovim Floating Windows

Actually got away from the computer a bit too. Charged up the camera and went to the beach. When I downloaded the images I found the stuff I shot over last year's fourth of july. That's how long it had been since I'd take a photo with it.

I'm pretty happy with how they turned out:

Beach Photos - April 2025