We really need some sort of unifying theme to these posts, but what would it be? What hope is there in ever finding one? Thoughts become ever more scattered and the things that compete for attention are legion.

Well, as promised we continue to play around with themes and organization. What? You thought this I had forgotten about this endeavor? Never! Anyway, Edward Tufte is something of personal deity around these parts, so imagine the excitement when our Investigations Department discovered the delightful tufte css for styling web pages. Tufte has inspired a generation of web designers so it's nice to pay some homage from this site.

Things are far from perfect, though! While our Senior Editor finds the larger et-book font much easier on the eyes, he still is not sure about that very wide left margin. Maybe someone else has done a better job elsewhere. Rumour is that someone built a tufte theme for jekyll. More work for the ID (as if they didn't already have enough).

I am happy to say that Jonas Bernoulli's Kickstarter has been succesfully funded as of a few days ago. There still a few days left, so feel free to contribute. More money is always good when it is for a good cause.

My use case for git is honestly very simple as I do not contribute much to projects other than ein and the development team for the same is simply me, myself, and I. Even still, magit makes working with git easy and joyful and I am glad this package exists. In case you are wondering, I did make a very modest contribution to the campaign. If I had the means I would happily support more Emacs developers, particularly the ones who have contributed work that make EIN possible.

Jonas did something particularly interesting and courageous in an effort to promote his kickstarter: he added a modest, easily removed blurb on the magit status screen. It seems some took offence to the tactic. Unreasonably so, in my opinion. It could not have been an easy decision for Jonas to take.

I think part of the problem is that we, and by we I mean U.S. citizens in particular, have been conditioned to view the asking for help as an act of despicable weakness- especially so when asking for money. There also seems to be a bit of an attitude within some parts of the FOSS community that there really are such things as free lunches. But that is a another topic worthy of its own dedicated post, and I don't plan to get into it here.

Also programmers can be sensitive to interruptions and distractions- I think Rands in Repose diagnosed this particular condition succintly long ago - and advertisement is certainly up there on the list of non-value added distractions. In all, though, I think Jonas handled his plea for assistance elegantly and succinctly. I did not feel at all distracted or coereced into contributing to his campaign.

And contribute is the right word to use here, not give. Magit has helped me to be succesful in my work, so it only seemed fair to contribute back to its well-being.

Before I take leave, I have had in the back of my mind some words I read long ago by Phil Cubeta, he of the dungeon master to the stars. I can't find the post, unfortunately, but it had to do with levels, or rather a hierarchy, of giving and charity. Luckily a google search quickly revealed the aforementioned link, and the below summary.

I wonder if all who struggle with the non-trivial issue of financially supporting elisp package maintainers (and FOSS in general) wouldn't benefit at least some from quiet consideration of Mainmonide's levels of charity.

Mainmonide's 8 levels of charity (follow that link, it is much better than the summary below):

1. Investing in a poor person in a manner that they can become self-sufficient.

2. Giving to the poor without knowledge of the recipient and without allowing the recipient to know your identity.

3. Giving to the poor with knowledge of the recipient but without allowing the recipient to know your identity (anonymous giving).

4. Giving to the poor without knowledge of the recipient but allowing the recipient to know your identity.

5. Giving to the poor without or before being asked.

6. Giving to the poor after being asked.

7. Giving to the poor happily but inadequately.

8. Giving to the poor unwillingly.

I think the last time I genuinely tried to do one of these RadioUserland was the way to do it. Amazingly they still exist, I think? Anyway the world has moved on and so should we, to some extent. This new site takes advantage of the latest and greatest, and as such there is much still to learn. Expect general instability until we eventually settle down on some fixed sense of style and form. But ours is the way of the procrastination and indecision, so in reality there may never be any sense of "done" around here.

Ostensibly, this is where I will chronicle my (mis)adventures as an aging engineer in this bold, new hipster world of technology. Yes, I went there. But now I'm back. I don't hate them, I truly don't; only that about 10 years ago I suddenly found myself not cool enough and definitely not rich enough to continue the relationship.

Moving on. We will try to keep our writing to things that interest us, like our small labour of love, the Emacs Ipython Notebook, our interests in Machine Learning and Data Science, and our occasional journeys as a traveling Chemical Engineer. No promise, though, that things won't get a bit weird from time to time.

So, welcome! Hope you enjoy your stay, no matter how short it may be.