0xhenrique

Why I Chose Guix Over Nix

Mon, 23 Sep 2024 04:35:07 +0100

I’ve been using NixOS for quite some time, but somehow I ended up with Guix. In this article I will try to write about the reasons why I don’t use Nix anymore.

The Emacs > Elisp > SICP > Scheme pipeline

I honestly don’t remember the first time I heard about Emacs, but I remember the first time I tried to use it I got gatekept by the Elisp magecraft. After that, I spent some days trying to learn some basic concepts of this ancient text editor. Thanks to https://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/elisp/ I was able to write some simple functions to make my Emacs experience smoother. To be honest, I didn’t really liked to write Lisp back then, it sucked a lot for me. Even reading simple functions was a hassle since I wasn’t used to see through all the parenthesis. At that time, I already knew about the ‘Structure and Interpretaion of Computer Programs’ book, but didn’t read until then. It was only after seeing the MIT class linked below that I got hooked into computer magecraft:

That was when I finally decided to read the SICP and, consequently, learn Scheme.

Guix uses Scheme

And that alone is huge win for Guix. Configuring Nix packages was a pain in the ass. Not because you need to set everything up from scratch (that’s not even a problem), but because the language is confusing as hell and the documentation doesn’t help. It’s not a secret, everywhere you go on the internet you will find people complaining about how the Nix language is hard to grasp, but no because it is complex, just because it lacks proper documentation. For instance, here’s a comparison between the figlet package ported to Nix and the one ported to Guix: !Nix vs Guix

Guix Wallpapers

Fri, 20 Sep 2024 20:37:15 +0100

I’ve been using Guix for quite some time now. It’s been a great experience so far! Here are some wallpapers I’ve been collecting for my Guix desktop.

I think it goes without saying that Suika is the perfect candidate to be the Guix mascot .

Nazare Beach

Sat, 17 Aug 2024 07:44:45 +0100

I visited Nazaré Beach last year (2023). Such a lovely place. Shame on me for not taking my camera with me that day. I’m not a fan of smartphone cameras to be honest. Still, I couldn’t let the opportunity pass. Here are some photos I took that day.

According to Wikipedia, Nazaré is one of the most traditional Portuguese fishing villages, having the most popular bathing beach on the Portuguese west coast, where you can still find, on the sand, some women dressed in the traditional costume of seven skirts, taking care of the fish that dries in the sun, lined up on stakes.

I plan to go back there in the winter, but this time I will remember to take my camera with me. I have an 18-55 and a 200mm, but I believe I will get better photos with the 200mm, especially in the higher parts. Not to mention that I will be able to aim further without losing too much sharpness.

Monogatari - Text Editor in Python

Sat, 17 Aug 2024 07:44:33 +0100

MONOGATARI - Text Editor

Monogatari is a text editor built with Python using the Tkinter GUI library.

Installation and usage

Assuming you already have Python installed in your machine:

git clone git@github.com:all123all/monogatari.git
cd monogatari
python monogatari.py

If you’re using Linux you probably will need to install tk manually:

//Arch based distros
$ sudo pacman -S tk
//For Ubuntu
$ sudo apt-get install tk

Goals

Basic text editor functionalities (create file, open file, exit etc.)
Black background and a colorpicker option to choose another color
Test routine for the basic functionalities
Release a package
The close function is being called even when the file isn’t modified

Contribute to MONOGATARI - Text Editor

Click the fork button on top right
Git clone your fork
Connect with my repo:

$ git remote add all123all git://github.com/all123all/monogatari
$ git remote -v

You are now ready to start to code! Just do as always:

$ git add .
$ git commit -m "fix: something that was fixed"
$ git push

Then you can create a pull request right here on Github. Just go to the Pull Requests tab and select New pull request button to do so.

Screenshots

Lum - Linux Ubiquitous Marker

Sat, 17 Aug 2024 07:44:26 +0100

Link: https://github.com/henrique-marques-vsoft/lum

Lum is a project I started as a way to escape the feeling of being tied to the web-browser when it comes to bookmarks. The objective is relatively simple, to have access to my bookmarks outside of the browser. This way I could call my bookmarks from anywhere on the computer, whether from Vim, Emacs, the browser itself, the window manager or wherever. I’m still not sure if I’m going to turn this project into a CLI tool or a library. I still need to try to integrate Lum with some other tool and evaluate which points I failed, which ones I need to improve and where I got things right. I also wanted to have contact with Rust in practice. I have some things to say about the Rust language, but I think that will be for another post on this blog.

For now, I’m using JSON to save the bookmarks, but to be honest I don’t know if I’ll keep this format until the end. I’m still evaluating whether this would be the most practical and quickest way, considering that I already accumulated more than 12 thousand bookmarks at the height of my NEET time. I don’t think parsing 12 thousand objects in JSON is efficient, but it’s something I still need to test in practice.

Internet Lurk Compilation #1

Sat, 17 Aug 2024 07:44:17 +0100

General Findings

Pure gold from the 90s: https://lunduke.substack.com/p/the-computers-used-to-do-3d-animation
Symbolics Internet Museum: https://symbolics.com/museum/
What is the relationship between Apple and Serial Experiments Lain? https://www.cjas.org/~leng/apple-lain.htm
The Cornell Anime Club: https://www.cjas.org/
Appearances of MIT in Anime: https://anime.mit.edu/resources/mit_in_anime
How Emacs got into Tron: Legacy: https://boingboing.net/2011/04/06/how-emacs-got-into-t.html
The Jargon File: http://www.catb.org/jargon/

Neocities

Lainzine (Lain Magazine): https://lainzine.org/
About Software Privacy and other topics: https://digdeeper.neocities.org/
Reminds of Fauux: https://blackwings.neocities.org/
Fauux: https://fauux.neocities.org/
Tatsumoto’s guide to Nihongo: https://tatsumoto.neocities.org/

Internet Archive Findings

Oh! PC (Jul 01 1990) [Content in Japanese]: https://archive.org/details/oh-pc-issue-127-jul-01-1990/Oh%21%20PC%20Issue%20127%20%28Jul%2001%201990%29/mode/2up
Comptiq Manazine [Content in Japanese]: https://archive.org/search?query=comptiq
The Symbol of the Knights of Eastern Calculus: https://web.archive.org/web/20200121124624/http://www.cjas.org/~leng/knights.htm
MSX Magazine (1985-02) [Content in Japanese]: https://archive.org/details/msx-magazine-1985-02-ascii-jp/mode/2up

Websites I visit from time to time

A ~~modern~~ Javascript approach to SICP: https://sicp.sourceacademy.org/
A blog by Sam Greydanus: https://greydanus.github.io/
Xah Lee (he’s also one of the minds behind ergoemacs and xah-fly-keys): https://xahlee.info/
Sasha Chua blog: https://sachachua.com/blog/
Lunduke Journal: https://lunduke.substack.com/

If you find a broken link or a website that shares things that are clearly illegal, please let me know by email so I can remove it: hm2030master@proton.me.

Also, if you don’t want me to list your website here, feel free to contact me via email so I can remove it.

About

Sat, 17 Aug 2024 07:42:34 +0100

whois

Hello there! You can call me Henrique. The main purpose of this website is to share some interesting things I find on the world wide web and the projects of mine. Some of the stuff I work on Github.

My setup

Nothing fancy to be honest. Since I spend most of my time inside Emacs, I don’t really rice my computer. I’ve been through that phase though. Remaping keybindings, customising themes, colourschemes etc. Today things are simpler for me. Just my Emacs config and that’s it.

Here are some of my configs:

Laptop: Thinkpad T480
OS: GNU Guix
Shell: bash
Resolution: 1920x1080 (1 monitor is enough for me)
WM: EXWM
Terminal: eshell/vterm/kitty
CPU: Intel i5-8350U (8) @ 3.600GHz
GPU: 😕
RAM: 24Gb
Text editor: Emacs (29)

Keyboards

The Charybdis by Bastard Keyboards

Right now I’m using the Charybdis. It simply feels “correct” to type with it.
The only drawback from this keyboard is the price, but I don’t think you will find a dactyl for a cheap price.
As far as I know, there’s no company mass producing that type of keyboard.
But at the end I think it’s worth it, at least for me it is.

The Sofle V1 by Mechboards UK

The other one I have (although don’t use very much anymore) is the Sofle V1 that I bought from Mechboards UK. It was very nice to type on a low profile keyboard. It’s not so expansive as the Charybdis.