28 June 2025: Shuffle and Backup
Visual Card Shuffle
Continuing my exploration of cut-ups my sourcing interesting images from Wikimedia Commons and the Met Open Access collection. Then I shuffle the images and arrange nine of them on a grid:
Pain points:
- Image manipulation in css: My original idea was to use css to zoom in on random sections of each image, hoping for some creative serendipity. After an evening struggling with this. I gave up and started curating square tiles manually. The result is a bit creatively more satisfying, and it's a nice easy low-bandwidth task.
- Typescript: Kept getting warnings on a helper function that returns a JSX.Element type. Documentation on how to deal with it is inconsistent. Is it handled automatically by a vite setting (and if so, why is it being flagged)? Basic conclusion is that I need to learn a lot more about how to work with Typescript before picking it up for projects.
Next steps:
- In-page documentation
- A keep-and-draw mechanic with limited keeps
Backups
A few months ago the disk that had my only copy of multiple desktop backup failed. My thought process in procrastinating on new backups was:
- Essential work is on github
- Most of those backups were ephemera
- I rarely re-read books
- I've not looked at that stuff in a while
- Well crap, my sewing patterns are gone.
The last point pushed me to set up backups on the Thinkpad T420 I mentioned earlier as a backup system. It was mostly easy sailing once I specified full paths and set up my ssh keys. I used the Pika front end for BackupBorg to make everything work.
Reading Quote
Taking responsibility does not mean that we deny the reality of institutional injustice. For example, racism, sexism, and homophobia all create barriers and concrete instances of discrimination. Simply taking responsibility does not mean we can prevent discriminatory acts from happening. But we can choose how we respond to acts of injustice. Taking responsibility means that in the face of barriers we still have the capacity to invent our lives, to shape our destinies in ways that maximize our well-being. Every day we practice this shape shifting to cope with realities we cannot easily change.
- bell hooks, "All About Love," Chapter 4