Tag: Gadgets

What to Own for Happiness (and what not)

Buy Happiness in an Age of Crisis on Amazon.

People have said that money cannot buy happiness, and I would give a caveat to that.

Years back, I mused that only up to a certain point can money buy more necessities; it can only buy luxuries. Beyond another point, money cannot buy more luxuries; it can only buy status symbols. Beyond another point, money cannot buy additional status symbols; it can only bring power.

And to that I would add a Canadian roommate's comment, made in the 90's, that a middle class American has basically all the creature comfort there is to be had.

But there is a caveat. A good pair of walking or running shoes, or better barefoot shoes, may not buy especially more comfort for your feet, but it can make more attainable the goal of walking or running and the health benefits that that brings. And really, as the video I quote below says, if the health benefits of exercise could be put into a pill, that would be the most important wonder drug in history. Shoes will not make you happy if you just buy them and don't exercise, but they can put regular exercise in better reach, and a solid exercise regimen can make you happier.

It is in this spirit that I would like to look at things that can make you happy. Getting more luxuries on Amazon brings only a fleeting pleasure, but some of the right purchases used rightly can help you to greater happiness.

So here are a few things that, used rightly, might contribute to happiness.

(One important caveat: with a few exceptions, like Infowars Turboforce energy drinks, the benefits do not turn on a dime. You're more likely to feel noticeably better after a month of using EMF protective clothing and good nutritional supplements than in the next day or two. Give these things some time.)

A rugged outdoors computer

I spent more money buying a maxed-out GetAC x500 computer than I did on my car, as a computer that would let me work outside when weather permits and is built to last—for ages.

If you spend a fair amount of time on a laptop or desktop computer, it is a great advantage to have a computer with a sunlight-readable display. Macs usually have a brighter display than normal PC's, but rugged PC's are brighter than either. Rugged laptops are available on Amazon (you might consider a GetAC V110 or , and they can be built to last as a longer-term investment.

(If you just use mobile devices and don't really use a PC, then this item is optional.)

A stand desk, if you work from a desk

Standing with good posture is better for most people than sitting.

Lambs EMF protective clothing

We are surrounded by much higher doses of ambient wifi, radio, 3G, 4G, and 5G electromagnetic fields (EMF), and this can be a drain on your mood where you don't even recognize what is happening.

There is a lot of EMF protective clothing on Amazon, but this is an area where brands can vary in value significantly, and you can't easily tell good protective clothing from bad. I wear a long sleeve T-shirt (a regular T-shirt would also work), to protect organs in my torso, and a beanie to protect my brain.

There are many cheaper options on Amazon, not to mention more options. If you explore Amazon, just scroll on past things like a lead apron for dental X-rays to see the real options for protecting your head and torso.

A blocbag used like a sleeping bag, with an EMF protective T-shirt pulled over my head

While this does not offer absolute protection, it provides some opportunity to recharge.

One possible caveat: Throwing protective clothing through the wringer by putting it through the regular wash can slowly degrade its protective value. I don't wash protective clothes if I can't smell anything in the armpits, and when I do wash it, I rinse it with cold water, dry what I can with a towel, and hang it to air dry.

Infowars supplements

Vitamins, minerals, and other supplements can vary greatly in effectiveness and bio-availability, and the difference between a really good brand and a common brand is substantial.

I personally use Infowars multivitamin, vitamin C with zinc, an eyedropper's worth of iodine, and Turboforce.

At least one sun lamp

Indoors lighting is usually much dimmer than outdoors; it's enough to see but not enough to thrive. Seeing bright lights during the day can help naturally, and sunlight is on the shortlist in the video above about things that prevent diseases of civilization.

A light alarm

When I am woken up by the sound of a regular alarm clock, I don't feel very awake. There is something to be said for getting enough sleep, but I have found that I feel significantly more awake when I am woken by a simulated sunrise than just sound.

Amber goggles (or red goggles, for a stronger effect)

Conversely to sun lamps and light alarms, among other healthy sleep habits, a pair of blue-blocking amber goggles can block stimulating blue light, ideally worn one to two hours before bedtime.

A red flashlight for nighttime trips to the bathroom

If you need to get up in the night to use the bathroom, it's a lot easier to get to sleep if you go only by the light of a red flashlight and do not turn on overhead lights. Red and amber goggles still let in much too much stimulating light, and can make it harder, and take longer, to fall asleep. Using a red flashlight and no overhead lights is a good way to avoid being woken up so much it's hard to fall asleep.

Rob Wolf, The Paleo Solution: The Original Human Diet

It is my considered judgment that the more I learn about how foods are produced, the more I think most of what is sold in the grocery stores needs a materials safety data sheet. Something of that wakeup call is found in Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and Diet Dictocrats, but the latter just looks at best solutions under conditions of civilization. The Paleo Solution looks at what humans have been optimized for hundreds of thousands of years longer than the paleontological eyeblink civilization has existed for.

One friend explained to me that Cheerio's, which are sold under claims like "I'm eating Cheerios to be alive longer for my loved ones," are harvested by poisoning the plants with herbicides so it will be easier to get the oats off. Quaker Oats are also really bad news.

One tip for people who are on a limited budget: Balanced consumption of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids is important and something that we as a society do really badly. Usually meat, for instance, is heavily skewed towards omega-6. Canned wild caught fish (such as tuna and sardines) offers cheap omega-3 acids for people whose budget won't allow regular consumption of grass-fed, organic beef.

Orthodox fasting is done in agreement with your priest or spiritual father, but I might point out that fasting does not automatically mean grains and pasta; it is possible to keep a strict fast by eating Paleo vegetables.

A weighted blanket

Having a little weight resting on you promotes good sleep. I personally find a ten pound blanket better than others calculated for my weight; the general rule of thumb in choosing a weighted blanket is to pick a blanket about a tenth of your weight, and possibly throw in an extra pound or two. (This guideline is used for children as well as adults.)

Barefoot shoes (some good brands include Vivo Barefoot, FeelGrounds, Wildling, and Ashina Shoes)

Shoes with a raised heel are to some extent working with the body and train runners and walkers to lead with a heel strike that isn't how our feet are designed to work. Barefoot shoes work with the body rather than against it, and over time they wear increasingly well.

PEMF (Pulsed Electro-Magnetic Field) generators

This is a big-ticket item and it's worth it, if it is a live option for you. Space programs realized how vital the pulsed energy of the earth's electromagnetic field is; miss it for one day and you will have no immune system ever after. Some people began to wonder, if an artificial PEMF generator is vital in space, whether such a thing might be helpful on earth.

And it is helpful. It is powerfully anti-inflammatory (diseases of civilization are powered by inflammation), and can be very regenerative. Check out the PEMF Supply homepage for more info.

Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David Burns (CD)

A good counselor can be very, very good and a bad counselor can be very, very bad; counseling can be a powerful resource, and Orthodox spiritual direction or pastoral counseling can be even better. I've known a couple of Orthodox mental health professionals, and they hold high regard for e.g. the "three column technique" laid out in Feeling Good.

This title can be helpful whether or not your own needs would benefit from counseling.

My own titles Happiness in an Age of Crisis, maybe The Luddite's Guide to Technology, and possibly The Good Parts if you're hungry for more

I've written a lot that relates to happy living in our present times, and Happiness in an Age of Crisis is shorter than the other work and covers essential things to understand happiness. The Luddite's Guide to Technology is a longer and fuller collection that looks more broadly about what is good for human persons and what particular engagement with technologies are helpful. More is often less here, and these books have something to say to human flourishing.

If your phone is running your life, read these. One admittedly drastic tip for getting a little bit of control over your phone usage is to keep your phone turned off, and then turn it on when you have a specific purpose to use it for, then turn it off. The added inconvenience is powerful.

Orthodox classics

The Bible (I recommend the Orthodox Study Bible, perhaps paired with the Classic Orthodox Bible which sounds more like a Bible) says quite a lot about how we are made to function, and I am excited that the Philokalia is widely read not only by monastics but not the lay faithful. (The fifth volume is one that I have so far not had pastoral encouragement to read; the link is to the other four volumes.)

These are used best under the guiding hand of an Orthodox priest.

The things you give away

The story is told of someone who had a lot of books, and asked, "Will I have my books in Heaven?"

The answer came, "Some of them."

"Which ones?"

"The ones you gave away."

There is a parable in the Philokalia which states that people come and lodge for the night in an inn; some sleep on beds and some sleep on the floor, but all alike leave with only the possessions they brought in. The intended meaning is that on earth some people live in luxury, some not, but you can't take it with you, and you will leave with only your actions to your credit.

One priest commented that he had never seen a trailer attached to a hearse; the footwear I wear will be of no further use to me when I die, even if I am buried with footwear on, but the boots sent to Ukraine will be helpful.

And this isn't just a point about the next life; it is a point about this life, too, and we profit more when we are generous: it is more blessed to give than to receive.

Generosity is a characteristic of a happy and joyful spirit; it is an abundance to be had even if one possesses little; it is a cause and effect of good spiritual health. And what we can buy that will make ourselves happier is dwarfed by what we can buy that will make others happier.

Things not to own

In Bridge to Terebithia, one of the ways that the author marks Lesley as rich and privileged is that her family Does Not Own a Television.

I have listed above possessions that I believe to be conducive to happiness, and there are others. I haven't explicitly talked about owning older technologies, such as paper books. But a great amount of the stuff that we accumulate isn't really helpful.

Phones can be useful, but they open a door to some things that are really not savory—and I do not just mean porn. There are many G-rated uses for a phone that are a distraction and orient us away from joy. My own recommendations for cellphone use are to use it in a way that is purely instrumental; the only game I play is chess, which I want to learn how to properly play. There is also something to be said for not owning the newest and hottest doodad. I have an iPhone 8 which I purchased, used, and which I have taken steps to protect for the longer term (i.e. a screen cover and a shock-absorbing case), and which I would not trade for an iPhone 13 Pro Max (or whatever is the hottest new doodad when you are reading this). I believe my phone supplies enough EMF radiation; I do not hold it to my head much, and I do not really want to hold a 5G EMF radiation source to my head at all. (Older phones are already plenty radioactive enough to cause brain cancer in kids who always have a phone at their ear—and always on the same side they held the phone to.)

I do not know anyone who is happy to have a house that's brimming with stuff. It takes discipline, perhaps, not to buy things that will only bring satisfaction for a moment, and not buy things on impulse. But it's better, and less acquisitive purchasing decisions make for less cluttered houses. There is, in purchasing, something akin to the Weight Watchers maxim: "A minute on the lips, a lifetime on the hips."

General Omar Bradley, upon seeing atomic weapons, said, "We have grasped the mystery of the atom and we have rejected the Sermon on the Mount." Now we have grasped the mystery of a worldwide communication network that sports 5G radiation and continues to grow, and still rejected the Sermon on the Mount.

But Christ's words in the Sermon on the Mount still apply:

"A man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions."

And if that was true of the more natural forms of wealth available in ancient times, how much more is it relevant with today's technological smorgasbord in reach?

Follow Me on oKyrios!

I am at a monastery now, and one hieromonk early on explained that the monastery was trying to act on the problems that I tried to document in The Seraphinians: "Blessed Seraphim Rose" and His Axe-Wielding Western Converts. He explained to me how Protestants were coming with questions that were perfectly respectful, appropriate, mature and so on. Perhaps the deliberate example he gave was an outsider's question, but not a bad question for a respectful outsider to be asking. And they are getting harassed and blasted to smithereens by axe-wielding Western converts.

And what the monastery is trying to do is provide a more wholesome alternative: a social network among other things, but a social network, run by Orthodox Christians, specifically not designed to be addictive, nor to sell advertising, but to serve the genuine interests of its members. The email account they provide is specifically intended to protect your privacy, as is the site as a whole. There is a $5 a month charge to cover costs, so we can serve it without ads.

The network is called oKyrios, Greek for "the Lord," and you can support me by creating an account at at https://lavra.okyrios.org?aff=CJSHayward. After you have created an account, you can log in at okyrios.org.

If you have not already joined, I invite you to do so.

A word to the wise

I am the author of The Luddite's Guide to Technology: Beyond the Black Mirror, and I hold Jean-Claude Larchet's The New Media Epidemic: The Undermining of Society, Family, and Our Own Soul in high regard, and some people who know me might be surprised I am recommending a social net.

I would, however, like to recommend using some of the lessons learned from Facebook. Like, for instance, the people who enjoy Facebook most are those who dip in and out quickly, not people who languish in depression, from others' happy posts, for hours. If you're going to use the social aspects of oKyrios, do so in limited moderation.

Besides social aspects, oKyrios has for instance a radio stations, a schooling system and recordings of bishops and other leaders offering really good lectures. About the lectures, which eclipse my own offerings, I would say this: Listen to one lecture and then stop for the day. Let it sink in; let it mingle with silence. This is not because I have any real concern about the lectures being anything but excellent, but one lecture sinking in is a good thing. An intravenous drip of noise is not a good thing, and that's true even if the intravenous drip of noise is an intravenous drip of some of the best Orthodox lectures you'll find anywhere on the web.

If you are not familiar with Humane Tech, at very least read their "Take Control" page, and apply its lessons to getting the best out of oKyrios. Consider setting a 15 minute timer and only stay on oKyrios for those 15 minutes.

You can get much better results from online services by making and following deliberate decisions, than if you just do whatever is easiest.

oKyrios is a wonderful resource, and all the better if you use it well!

My Life's Work

TL;DR

Own my complete collection in paperback! It is well worth it.

A Foxtrot cartoon featuring a tilted house and the words, "Peter, maybe you should take those Calvin and Hobbes books to the other side of the house.

OK, so I'm a dwarf standing on giants' shoulders, but...

A life's work between two covers...   er, almost a dozen pairs of covers with four to six hundred pages in between...   that could nicely adorn about two feet of space on your bookshelf...   a little smaller in size than the complete Calvin and Hobbes...

C.J.S. Hayward
Image by kind permission of the Wade Center.

"Must... fight... temptation.... to read... brilliant and interesting stuff from C.J.S. Hayward.... until.... after... work!"

—Kent Nebergall

If you don't know me, my name is Christos Jonathan Seth Hayward, which I usually abbreviate "C.J.S. Hayward."

But my name has to my surprise trilettered on Facebook to "CSH," for "C.S. Hayward". As in, the natural successor to C.S. Lewis. I take that as a big compliment.

I'm an Eastern Orthodox author, who grew up reading C.S. Lewis, and has read almost everything he wrote, including some of those reviewed in C.S. Lewis: The Neglected Works, but have written many different things in many styles. Readers have written things about parts of the the colllection like (J. Morovich):

A collection of joyful, challenging, insightful, intelligent, mirthful and jarring essays written by an Eastern Orthodox author who is much too wise for his years.

and (D. Donovan):

Each piece is a delight: partially because each 'speaks' using a different voice and partly because a diversity of topics and cross-connections between theology and everyday living makes the entire collection a delight to read, packed with unexpected twists, turns, and everyday challenges.

And all this for some of this collection.

These pieces are a joy to read, and a gateway to help you enter a larger world, and open up doors that you never dreamed were there to open. Want to really see how "There are more things in Heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy?" Read these.

This little library includes nearly everything I’ve written--roughly 365 works in 12 volumes. The works in each volume are quite varied and most are short.) I omit software projects and the occasional interactive webpage. What all is offered? Works in this series include: novellas, short stories, poems and prayers, articles, and humor.

The one single work I would recommend most by far, and has been strongly recommended by others, is The Consolation of Theology. It is based on a classic The Consolation of Philosophy, and it is meant to give consolation, joy, strength, insights and things that are beyond mere insight. In a pandemic, a collapsing economy, and times when grandmas are buying shotguns, and perhaps other things in the pipeline, happiness is possible, in our reach, and it is real.

My story includes Protestant origins and a progressive discovery of Orthodox Christianity. Because this is a collection of the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, I have set the works I would particularly recommend in bold in the Table of Contents.

I've also dropped the specified price per volume from $29.99 to $19.99.

C.J.S. Hayward

Buy the C.J.S. Hayward: The Complete Works on Amazon now!

 
(Please note: In the past, a bug prevented an avid reader furious he couldn't read more than the first half of the Kindle edition. The Kindle edition has one review at one star, from someone who read the first half of the book and was infuriated he couldn't read further. I've since fixed that bug, but the review is live and probably deterring people from purchasing. I can and do write well-received titles.)

I Build Intranets

I'm a developer and other things, and I take a particular interest in implementing intranets. I refereed a book on building intranets, and authored two technical titles with Packt Publications, the first of which built the world's first open source employee intranet photo directory, and the second of which built a dashboard.

One recommended practice is not to build an intranet for the sake of building an intranet or using a sweet tool. Instead, come up with a business motive and objective that can be addressed by building an intranet, and build an intranet that is a tool for meeting that goal.

With that stated, there are some pretty sweet tools that I can fairly easily put on an intranet. These include:

Drupal is a multipurpose content management system.

Hayward's Free Intranet Employee Photo Directory treats a gap in open source coverage for a photo directory.

Koha Library Software is a library management system that is top-notch if you have a library.

MediaWiki is the same software as Wikipedia runs. An intranet wiki can be a very useful tool where information that is out of date doesn't stay out of date for terribly long.

Moodle is an open source learning management system, that unlike Blackboard is based on a pedagogy. If you have employee training, Moodle may be able to help you.

MyCollab is an all-in-one groupware project that advertises, "One place to keep your project on track. Task. Issue. Risk. Time tracking. Milestone. Kanban. Customer management."

phpBB is an online forum and bulletin board solution. It can foster excellent internal discussions.

Request Tracker is an industrial strength request handler and ticket tracker.

SuiteCRM is a customer relationship management system.

TikiWiki is a feature-rich all-in-one system.

WordPress isn't just for blogs. It's a content management system, although internal blogs can be helpful.

I can put your selection(s) from these on a virtual machine that a sufficiently powerful computer can run from your network, for $50 per system included. I can also do additional custom work to customize an intranet built for your needs.

Contact me via the web or email me.

Ye Olde Curiositie & Gift Shoppe

Merry Christmas! I wanted to offer to you what treasures I can.

A picture of C.J.S. Hayward

Skip ahead to: Accolades, Books, Configurator for Swiss Army Knives®

I am a sinful, imperfect, and very unworthy layman of the Orthodox Church, seeking to enter monasticism to repent of my sins for the rest of my life. (However, I've written some pretty good stuff, and if you buy something you might help me along my way.)

What people are saying about this collection

"A collection of joyful, challenging, insightful, intelligent, mirthful, and jarring essays written by an Eastern Orthodox author who is much too wise for his years."

—Joseph Donovan, Amazon

"Each piece is a delight: partially because each 'speaks' using a different voice and partially because a diversity of topics and cross-connections between theology and everyday living makes the entire collection a delight to read, packed with unexpected twists, turns, and intellectual challenges.

Fans of C.S. Lewis and similar Christian thinkers will find The Best of Jonathan's Corner an absolute delight."

—Diane Donovan, Midwest Book Review

"When I read C. S. Lewis, A. W. Tozer, or G. K. Chesterton, there is a deep ache for both the times and the men that made honor, wisdom, and clarity a thing of such beauty and strength. We wonder what they would say of our time, and why, with so many more people and better communication, we don't see more of them.
Hayward is such a person of wisdom and depth. I do not say this lightly or flatteringly. He and I don't agree on everything, but when we contrast, it will never be his side of the issue that is lacking in depth, beauty, or elegance. He's Orthodox, yes (I'm not). But I suspect all sides will claim him as they do Lewis and Chesterton."

—Kent Nebergall, Amazon

"The Sign of the Grail is a unique, scholarly, and thorough examination of the Grail mythos, granting it a top recommendation for academia and the non-specialist reader with an interest in these subjects. Also very highly recommended for personal, academic, and community library collections are C.J.S. Hayward's other deftly written and original literary works, essays, and commentaries, compilations and anthologies: Yonder, Firestorm 2034, A Cord of Seven Strands, The Steel Orb, The Christmas Tales, and Hayward's Unabridged Dictionary [the other six Hayward titles then in print]."

—John Burroughs, Midwest Book Review

"Divinely inspired for our day and age's spiritually thirsty fellows."

—Colleen Woods, Amazon

"The work that stands out most among the creative pieces, perhaps among all of them, is that which opens the book, The Angelic Letters. I have had the pleasure of reading nearly all of Hayward's writings, and I was delighted that he undertook to write such a work. Readers who are familiar with C. S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters will recognize at once that it is the very book which that author desired, but felt unable, to write in order to balance the demonic correspondence. It is a mark of Hayward's skill, knowledge, and spiritual insight that he has successfully written something that such a theologian as Lewis did not wish to attempt. He has of course accomplished this work with God's help, but one must realize the spiritual struggle, mental effort, careful study, and deep prayer that has gone into every piece in this anthology... This author has gathered pearls for us, and may we gladly look upon them. They hold glimmers that can reflect our lives."

—Sydney "Nicoletta" Freedman, in the Foreword to The Best of Jonathan's Corner.

An author's bookshelf

I have dozens of works on my shelf; the "Complete Works" collection spans eight paperback volumes (one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, plus Profoundly Gifted Survival Guide and The Seraphinians), and are available in Kindle. Several much shorter collections are also available. Some top sellers include:

The inner sanctum of my library:

The Best of Jonathan's Corner: An Anthology of Orthodox Christian Mystical Theology
This is the piece of which the Midwest Book Review wrote, "Each piece is a delight: partially because each 'speaks' using a different voice and partially because a diversity of topics and cross-connections between theology and everyday living makes the entire collection a delight to read, packed with unexpected twists, turns, and intellectual challenges.

In other words, it enchants as a Swiss Army Knife enchants, and individual works are as distinctive as blades on a Swiss Army Knife..

This is the flagship of my works, both in theology and writing as a whole, and there's a lot there.

A Pilgrimage From Narnia: The Story of One Man's Journey into Orthodoxy
One question many who are Orthodox are asked is how they came into the Orthodox Church. This is an account of what I saw journeying into Orthodoxy, a process that is still not complete.
The Luddite's Guide to Technology: The Past Writes Back to Humane Tech!
Among the critiques I've made, The Seraphinians: "Blessed Seraphim Rose" and His Axe-Wielding Western Converts has had a pretty broad and effective reach, in particular for a work that has numerous vitriolic one star reviews. This title, by contrast, contains another significant critique. The "Humane Tech" movement achieves some things, but I would recall a common misquote allegedly from Einstein: "Our problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them." Humane Tech looks at how technology experts can work within today's technical paradigms to soften some of technology's rough spots. The Luddite's Guide to Technology is written across ages to step much further outside the box, and the light adaptation of Plato in Plato: The Allegory of the... Flickering Screen? has been called deep, perhaps because it was a light touch to a masterpiece.
"Do We Have Rights?" and Other Homilies
I mentioned in conversation with a previous parish priest that I would jump at an opportunity to do a homily, and when I asked for him to do a homily on something briefly touched on in previous opportunities, he invited me to give such a homily myself. I did, and it was the one time in my life that people burst out clapping after a homily. He was a great encourager, and it is my loss that he has moved to another state.
As It Were in Ye Olden Dayes
This is a collection with works containing Elizabethan or medieval English. It includes prayers.
A Small Taste of Jonathan's Corner
This is a sampler meant to let people taste my writing and see if they might like it.

The outer court of my porch:

Subtle Humor, in the style of the Onion Dome and rec.humor.funny.
Profoundly Gifted Survival Guide
Subtle Humor: A Jokebook in the Shadow of The Onion Dome, The Onion, and rec.humor.funny
I haven't written for The Onion; I have multiple submissions published in The Onion Dome and rec.humor.funny.
The Spectacles: A Collection of Short Stories
This collection holds fifteen short stories, no two of which are alike. The title chapter is in particular worth reading.
Merlin's Well
This is a twist on Arthurian legends written by a medievalist storyteller.
Profoundly Gifted Survival Guide
One of my top-selling works. It offers a glimpse into worlds.

A configurator for Swiss Army Knives®

Check out the features: Click on the pictures!

A picture of the foot-thick Wenger Giant pocketknife. If you do not have a live option to buy a foot-thick Wenger Giant, have you considered that my foot-thick print selection (with volumes one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, plus Profoundly Gifted Survival Guide and The Seraphinians) is much the same thing?

The cover to C.J.S. Hayward's "The Complete Works" collectionIt's not just that they're both about a foot thick. The thickness comes from a numerous and varied set of tools: 87 implements with 141 functions for the Wenger Giant, compared with 230 separate works (as of the time of this writing) in the Kindle collection. Furthermore, if you search Amazon for my dozens of titles you will see something a bit like the many Swiss Army Knives you can search from above.

If you love Swiss Army Knives, you may love my book collection and author homepage even more. It's a whole lot cheaper, and it might also be even better than the classic Wenger Giant.

Changes in Mac OSX Over Time: The Good Parts

Own C.J.S. Hayward's complete works in paper!

C++: The Good Parts

C++ is the best example of second-system effect since OS/360. - Henry Spencer

 
Even Bjarne Stroustrup has some sense that there is indeed a smaller and more elegant language struggling to get out of C++. He is right that that language is not Java or C#, but I would suggest that this more elegant language has been right under our noses the whole time:
 

A modified book cover for K&R labeling it as"C++: The Good Parts"

Now if we could turn back the clock on MacOS

I used to think that OSX was my favorite flavor of Unix. Now I think that the Mac, iPad, iPhone, and Apple Watch may be preferred for nontechnical users on all counts, but Apple has been more and more going its own way, and the result has made an environment that is more and more hostile to Unix / Linux gurus. Some of this is discussed further in Macs are now Super.Computer.s running "IRIX," a Super.Computer. OS!:

Terminal confusion

I have narrated above the breakage that shipped to me with OSX 12.2.4; the breakage that shipped with the OSX 12.2.2 update was Terminal.app crashing on a regular basis. And while I don’t wish to patronize developers who work with graphical IDE’s, the two most heavily used applications I have are Google Chrome and Terminal. When I poked around, I was pointed to an Apple developer bug first posted in 2016 that has 147 "I have this problem too" votes...  I wish they had done something more polite to Unix users than breaking and not fixing Terminal, like setting a Terminal.app background image of someone flipping the bird at command-line Unix / Linux types. Really, flipping the bird would be markedly more polite.

In conversations with technical support about malfunctioning in Apple's version of Apache, it took me an escalation all the way to level 3 support before I spoke with someone who knew that the Macintosh had a command line (let alone having any idea what that meant). And I was told that Apple supported GUI use of e.g. webservers, but not command line.

More broadly, it's been harder and harder by the year to get things working and I was astonished after initial difficulties installing SuiteCRM what my research turned up: Apple has removed parts of the OS that that project needed to run.

An even bigger shock

A much bigger shock came when I created a Linux VM to install some open source software projects I had meant to install natively.

I was shocked about how easy it was.

It was the command line version of "Point and click".

I realized that over the years I had become more and more accustomed to  installing open source software under MacOS being like out-stubborning an obscure and crufty flavor of Unix (such as Irix on NCSA supercomputers, with a general comment of "Nothing works on Irix!"). And working on installing major open source projects recalls a favorite xkcd comic about the joy of first meeting Python:

A famous xkcd comic showing someone flying after a first encounter with Python

Tolerating upgrades that break software:
Do you remember how people used to just accept the forever close at hand BSOD?

Before Windows XP came out, I remember trying to make a point to a non-hacker friend that "Computers are logical but not rational." Meaning that from a programming standpoint they ideally do neither more nor less than what the logic in a computer program called for, but state-of-the-art AI could not make sense of the basics of a children's "I Can Read" book. (For that matter, computers cannot understand the gist of a program. They may execute the program, but only programmers understand the gist.)

She said, "I disagree. What if you're using a computer and the mouse freezes?"

In the ensuing conversation, I failed completely in my efforts to communicate that incessant crashes on par with the Blue Screen of Death were simply not an automatic feature of how computers act, and that my Linux box did not malfunction at anywhere near the violence of Windows, on which point I quote Tad Phetteplace:

In a surprise announcement today, Microsoft President Steve Ballmer revealed that the Redmond-based company will allow computer resellers and end-users to customize the appearance of the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD), the screen that displays when the Windows operating system crashes.

The move comes as the result of numerous focus groups and customer surveys done by Microsoft. Thousands of Microsoft customers were asked, "What do you spend the most time doing on your computer?"

A surprising number of respondents said, "Staring at a Blue Screen of Death." At 54 percent, it was the top answer, beating the second place answer "Downloading XXXScans" by an easy 12 points.

"We immediately recognized this as a great opportunity for ourselves, our channel partners, and especially our customers," explained the excited Ballmer to a room full of reporters.

Immense video displays were used to show images of the new customizable BSOD screen side-by-side with the older static version. Users can select from a collection of "BSOD Themes," allowing them to instead have a Mauve Screen of Death or even a Paisley Screen of Death. Graphics and multimedia content can now be incorporated into the screen, making the BSOD the perfect conduit for delivering product information and entertainment to Windows users.

The BSOD is by far the most recognized feature of the Windows operating system, and as a result, Microsoft has historically insisted on total control over its look and feel. This recent departure from that policy reflects Microsoft's recognition of the Windows desktop itself as the "ultimate information portal." By default, the new BSOD will be configured to show a random selection of Microsoft product information whenever the system crashes. Microsoft channel partners can negotiate with Microsoft for the right to customize the BSOD on systems they ship.

Major computer resellers such as Compaq, Gateway, and Dell are already lining up for premier placement on the new and improved BSOD.

Ballmer concluded by getting a dig in against the Open Source community. "This just goes to show that Microsoft continues to innovate at a much faster pace than open source. I have yet to see any evidence that Linux even has a BSOD, let alone a customizable one."

Most of the software upgrades I have purchased in over a decade of Mac ownership have been because an OSX upgrade broke them completely.

On this point I would distinguish between Windows and Mac on the one hand, and Linux on the other. Microsoft and Apple both need to make changes that people have to buy different software over time; Linux may include mistakes but there is no built-in need to radically change everything on a regular basis. Now some Linux programming may change quickly: front-end web developers face a very volatile list of technologies they should know. However, something said about Unix applies to Linux to a degree that is simply unparalleled in Windows or Mac: "Unix has a steep learning curve, but you only have to climb it once."

OSX admittedly has better UX than Linux, and possibly it make sense for open source types to buy a Mac, run VMware Fusion in Unity mode, and do Linux development and open source software use from a Linux Mint VM. (My own choice is just to do Linux, with Windows VM's for compatibility.) However, for Unix and Linux wizards, the container is one that occasionally gives a nasty surprise.

Beautiful things work better:
An interesting solution

I've given a once-over to Linux Mint Sonya, to address UX tweaks and to echo some of that old glory. As is appropriate to an appliance, passwords are not needed (though the usual root methods of assigning a Linux password work better). The desktop and background are laid out to be truly beautiful!

To pick one little example of improved UX: copy is Control-C, and paste is Control-V, with gnome-terminal or without; if you want to send a literal Control-C, then Shift-Control-C will do that, and likewise for Control-V. This cuts down on frustrating attempts to remember, "In this context, will I copy by typing Control-C, or Control-Shift-C?" There are other little touches. For instance, Chrome is already installed, and the default Firefox search engine is configured out of the box to be, drum roll please... Google!"

Mint comes with a search engine that in my experience only have SERPs with ads above the fold that are formatted exactly or almost exactly like real organic search results. And not only is Google not the main search engine: it is FUDded, banished to a list options that are either not monetizable to Mint's makers, or are considered problematic and potentially unsafe. (Mint's FUDding does not distinguish which is which; it is set up to make Google look seedy.)

A screenshot of the desktop.

Perhaps you don't like the Aqua interface; it is if nothing else the gold star that North Korea's One Star Linux Red Star Linux offers, and people seem interested in an Aqua-themed Linux enough to write HOWTO's to get a root shell and migrate to English. Even if they advise against serious use, not because a fresh install has software that's years obsolete software, but because the entire environment could be described not so much as having spyware, but being spyware.

Or perhaps it might served as a change of scenery, a virtual vacation of a virtual machine.

A download button

Spaghetti Parenthesis Visualizer

Set of opening characters, i.e. '{(' or '{[(': .
Set of closing characters, i.e. ')}' or ')]}': .
Preserve line breaks.

Your code, unfurled:

(Nothing yet.)

Your code, underlined:

(Nothing yet.)

Having trouble trying to keep track of nested parentheses in a page-long SQL query or PHP/Perl/Python etc. conditionals? Type or paste in code you have that has so many layers of parenthesis that you struggle to keep on top of the tangled depth of the code.

Security-conscious? This code doesn't send your code snippet to the server: all calculations are handled in the browser. However, if you want that extra level of assurance, you are welcome to capture the source and make sure everything's on the up-and-up before you use it. This code is dual-licensed, available to you under your choice of the terms of MIT and GPLv3 license.

This page is link-ware. If you like it, you are invited to put a link to CJSHayward.com.

In Celebration of Tribbles (and FurReal Pets, and Joy for All)

Own C.J.S. Hayward's complete works in paper!

One note to the reader:

Please read the article below for a note on animal lovers who are not in a position to responsibly own a pet and don't want to put a companion animal in solitary confinement throughout business hours.

If you're just looking for links about what to buy, Tribbles were the best thing I knew of when this article was originally written. Since then, there are Furreal Friends, which seem designed to give pleasure to children, and Joy for All Silver Cat with White Mitts appears specifically created for the pleasure of adult animal lovers.

Years back, one friend, Cynthia, explained why she will never own a furry pet. An editor, her work often allows her to be in her apartment building during business hours, and when she walks through the halls, she hears so many whimperings, whinings, barks, and the like, every one of them saying, "Will you come in and be with me?"

That conversation made an impression on me. I am an animal lover. I grew up with a dog about the house, kept kind and gentle care of a lab even when her barking cut into my sleep, and when I am visiting my brother Joe's house, I love to see his cats. And I would love to have a furry cubicle pet. But the options there are somewhat limited, and not only because bosses sometimes have to say "No" to eccentric behavior. Though there have been workplaces where employees were welcome to bring well-behaved dogs, (see, for a rare example, Dreaming in Code), bringing a pet to work beyond a fish appropriately would include either transporting the pet with you or leaving your pet unattended for sixty or so hours straight each weekend, keeping the animal in an enclosed space without freedom to wander or explore, and so on. Now hamsters are solitary creatures and for what I know now, it might be possible to keep a hamster cage in a cubicle, leaving only problems like pet dander irritating other employees' allergies. But on the whole, the question of how to keep an office pet without cruelty is a difficult question.

And, up to a point at least, for a single person to keep a pet at home is dodgy. Families and people who work out of their homes are a separate case, and two or more cats may be able to keep each other company, but if you have a fulltime job or serve as a consultant, the question of how to keep a pet without cruelty may be a bit of a challenge.

Some common and respected practices are in fact cruel. My brother has taken in rescue cats which were already declawed, but he and my sister-in-law have never declawed a cat they owned. The common statement is that even front declawing a kitten is like cutting a baby's fingers off at the knuckles. My brother added that declawed cats are not, in fact, safer for owners to deal with: for a cat with front claws, the first line of defense is a swipe with claws which is only an abrasion, while for a declawed cat the first line of defense is abite, which is a puncture wound. Not only is that a more serious wound, but the puncture wound exposes you to whatever bacteria live in the cat's mouth, and mouths tend to have lots of infectious bacteria. Strange as it may sound, if you have a cat, you want the cat to be able to swipe its claws at you if it's cornered, angry, or afraid. It's better than a declawed cat's bite.

I have swing-mounted horses, and I would happily do so now if the opportunity offered to me. To swing-mount a horse, you crouch down, get a good grip of the horse's mane with both hands, and leap up, pulling yourself up by the mane, and ideally land squarely on the horse's back, and this is not cruel. Different species have different thresholds of pain, and a lot of animals are tougher than us; the average horse's threshold of pain is seven times higher than the average human. This means, for instance, that you can grab a good bit of a horse's mane in your hand and pull as hard as you can, and not only will it not injure the horse, it won't cause pain or even really annoyance for the horse. Now horses can be skittish around people and may not be used to you, but if a horse is comfortable with your presence, yanking on its mane doesn't mean anything.

And different thresholds of pain apply to dogs, too. The dog I had growing up would leap and dance for joy when she saw a famiy member starting to reach for her leash, because she knew that meant she would go for a walk outside. Years later, a dog a few months old would leap and dance for joy when he saw me reaching for a specific pair of workgloves, because he knew that meant he could bite me significantly harder when we were playing. He had a very high threshold of pain, unusual for even a dog, and he expected me to have the same high threshold of pain, and so things felt more natural and pleasant for him when I wore gloves and allowed him to bite me harder. And there's no way those Thin gloves would have protected me if he were really trying to hurt me; if he had been trying to dodamage, he could have easily sliced through my gloves and cut me to the bone. He was pulling his punches with me, even when I was wearing gloves and I allowed him to bite me much harder. (It really was just horseplay.) Seeing as he didn't draw blood on me, chances are pretty good it was just friendly horseplay to him. (Although dogs do not eat a meat-only diet, both cats and dogs are predators with powerful jaws, and both are well strong enough to cut to the bone.) And really, from my perspective those interactions with the puppy were pleasant play, and from his perspective they were nice, friendly horseplay. I have felt no inclination to bite any of my pets, but if I had started nipping at him with equal force, his enjoyment would probably have been so much the better. Nothing says love like a playful nip and ten or twenty slobbery kisses.

That is part of why I am puzzled when I occasionally hear of a man who was training dogs, and as something the dogs would relate to, bit the dogs for discipline, and he was rightly arrested for cruelty to animals. Part of my response was, "Um... why? Was he biting the dogs too hard? Did he draw blood? Did he misunderstand some detail of how an adult dog would use biting to discipline a younger dog? Did the police enforcing the anti-cruelty laws for animals have any idea of what normal social interaction between dogs looks like?" I thought of wearing gloves with that one puppy because I found his playful nips more painful than I wanted, but I can say in general of cats and dogs, that if it nips or bites you and it doesn't draw blood, it almost certainly wasn't trying to hurt you. Even if, perhaps, we need to draw lines and train dogs that they need to restrain their natural playfulness when horsing around with people, which most dogs purchased as pets can do well enough.

But more broadly than cats and claws, the question of how a single working person can responsibly own a furry pet without cruelty is difficult (I do not say necessarily impossible: but at least difficult). And I've explored a few things, starting when I was in grad school in 2007.

A tribble.For reasons I don't completely understand, people have made electronic pets that you wouldn't want to pet; there is a whole line of artificial cats, dogs, etc. that are usually not furry and do not look like something you'd want to pet. Just search for something like robot pet and look at the pictures.

But by accident, that's not the whole picture. I managed to get a Furby 2.0, and it seemed to be very well-done for its target audience of children, but have unnerving "uncanny valley"-like effects on me as an adult. I got my money's worth out of the purchase; I gave it to a friend's two-year-old where it became an almost instant hit and may have become his favorite toy. (Before letting it go, I quite deliberately gave it a fresh set of batteries, and showed both his parents where the "Off" switch was.)

Cue Star Trek. I am not the world's biggest Star Trek fan personally speaking; there was one conversation when cell phones had recently become a common thing to have, and a friend was gushing about Star Trek, and said, "And cell phones! What would our society be like today if there were no Star Trek?" (My response: "We would have had much better science fiction?") But Star Trek has many devoted fans, enough that when conditions would support it, it was economically viable to sell live, robotic, spayed-and-neutered Tribbles.

There is a large variety of Tribble merchandise; I have had medium and small Tribbles, and the small ones have been much less interactive. But for a cubicle pet and for people like me who would like to own something furry but aren't in a position to take on a live pet responsibly and without cruelty in solitary confinement or whatnot, a Tribble may be the nicest thing out there.

If you'd like something vaguely furry without worrying if you are treating a pet cruelly, I would recommend one of the following:

Tan Gray Brown

You might also like...

The Angelic Letters

Hymn to the Creator of Heaven and Earth

A Pet Owner's Rules

A Pilgrimage from Narnia

Proportional Font Terminal: A Better Unix / Linux / Mac Term

This project works with archaic browsers, like FireFox 3 or (shudder) Internet Exploder 6. It does not seem to work well with current browser versions, and it is being left partly as a historical detail, with a clear reference implementation of how one would do this with today's browser.

The basic enhancement of allowing this for e.g. Gnome Terminal appears to be in the Gnome Terminal bug tracker, and so this functionality may be available someday in standard terminal programs by setting one's font to Verdana.

View project on GitHub.

Design, typography, and terminals:
Not-so-good, better, best

Those of us involved in web design and usability know that fonts are not created equal. The first incarnation of my own website used fixed-width fonts for almost everything, because I didn't know what I was doing. Since then, I've joined the rest of the web in recognizing the benefits of using a font optimized for on-screen reading.

In the spirit of the sort of makeover done by Tufte in books like Envisioning Information, I would like to look at three different terms; the last one is the one offered here.

Not-so-good

This is a (cropped) screenshot of the default term (xterm) that shipped with my EeePC. It has a black background, like ancient VT100's:

A screenshot of some code in a default xterm from an EeePC.What this is optimized for is densely packing information into a tight space, and for serious coding this is seriously answering the wrong question.

Better

Let's look at a terminal that shows much better typography and design:

A screenshot of the same code in a gnome-terminal.This has a more readable font, and it makes productive use of space: more specifically, it uses space to enhance usability and readability, not cram in as many bits per pixel as can still technically be read. The font, unlike even the Mac Terminal, is deftly anti-aliased, and to a designer the font appears to have been clearly designed for usability.

Best

But we can do better by breaking out of the grid and using web-based typography as a starting point, and tweak the spacing for reading code:

A screenshot of the same code in the enhanced terminal served from this page.
I've looked at a lot of code this way, and the difference is remarkable. If your code is formatted well, it is easier to read and you can tell more at a glance and then zero in on what you need. It has just a little of the magic of of moving from find/grep/xargs to ack, ordiscovering Python. Having tried it, I really don't want to go back.

How did I do that? By standing on Antoine Lesuisse's shoulders with Ajaxterm (download). A few CSS tweaks, and there is a terminal that takes advantage of the web's advances in typography and usability.

Download

Version Download tar.gz Download tar.bz2
0.11, stable enhanced-terminal-0.11.tar.gz enhanced-terminal-0.11.tar.bz2
0.10, development enhanced-terminal-0.10.tar.gz enhanced-terminal-0.10.tar.bz2

License: All changes from Ajaxterm 0.10 are free software in the hopes that they may be useful but with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, WITHOUT EVEN THE IMPLIED WARRANTY OF MERCHANTIBILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, available under your choice of the Artistic, GPL, and MIT licenses. If you like this software, you are invited to consider linking to CJSHayward.com. Ajaxterm itself is not my work, but is in the public domain, except for its included Sarissa materials, which are LGPL.

(These instructions are for Unix/Linux/Mac; on Windows, I would try Cygwin.)

Troubleshooting tip

  • If you have trouble logging in, and this makes sense in your security situation (by default, Ajaxterm listens on localhost, and firewalls can block 8022 from access by other machines ensuring Ajaxterm is only available locally), you can pass ./ajaxterm.py the argument "--command=bash" and possibly have connections to http://localhost:8022/ simply served bash as the user running ./ajaxterm.py.