Automated updates: 2021-11-22

2021-10-09-lightbringer.md

@@ -57,7 +57,7 @@ While this is a problem common throughout superhero storytelling, like our prior
 
  * We open with how *sad* the cops are that they don't have enough time in the day to brutalize petty criminals.  I realize that I'm writing this in 2021, when nobody can (seriously) deny that street crime is largely a result of poverty, if only because it's not worthwhile for anybody else to engage in it.  But that doesn't make it any less an ugly premise.
  * The commentaries also, accidentally but notably, talk about how violence definitely isn't the way to solve problems for *non-white* people.  Getting the British to leave India had best be non-violent.  Blacks fighting for civil rights had best stay non-violent.  But beating up "the poors" to clean up the streets for a predominantly white city is necessary and heroic.
- * Crime where the perpetrator is also usually a victim is OK, because some people surely enjoy their exploitative jobs.  While I'm not saying that *no* sex worker look forward to having sex with clients, I *am* saying that using the hypothetical trilled sex worker comes off as an excuse to not care about yet another group of people who tend to be more desperate than the rest of us.
+ * Crime where the perpetrator is also usually a victim is OK, because some people surely enjoy their exploitative jobs.  While I'm not saying that no sex worker ever looks forward to having sex with clients, I *am* saying that using the hypothetical thrilled sex worker comes off as an excuse to not care about yet another group of people who tend to be more desperate than the rest of us.
  * If you read along with the author commentary, you might notice sneaking in a vague "religious oppression" as a form of slavery, as if this is a huge concern in the Midwest.  He's quite concerned that not enough comic books cover this ground.  For context, the incident leading up to [*Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colorado_Civil_Rights_Commission)---where a baker effectively claimed that making a wedding cake for a same-sex couple would violate his religious freedom---occurred just as this series ended.
  * We might also add in the peculiar idea that pacifists run away, whenever someone is in danger.  I mean, maybe the reason that pacifism isn't working for him is that he's *terrible* at it.  This is, in fact, the item that justifies shifting my assessment from "bigoted" to "fascist":  Plain old bigotry doesn't necessarily feel the need to glorify violence and malign people who aren't engaging in violence.
  * Likewise, the treatment of the sidekick---especially if you read along with the commentary---is fairly repulsive, treated as desirable for being "barely legal" while she's also utterly fascinated by everything in the protagonist's life, **hint**, **hint** 👀, and she also needs "a breast expansion machine" for mysterious reasons.  Oh, and she's treated like a bodybuilder for the uncanny ability to lift a hundred pound table...which most people should be able to do.
@@ -81,7 +81,7 @@ Also as mentioned, though, Lovhaug does have other material that you might want
 
 ## What's Adaptable?
 
-We open immediately with Pharos City---presumably named for the [Lighthouse of Alexandria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lighthouse_of_Alexandria)---which manages to look both enormous and tiny at the same time, due to the forced perspective; for context, the secondary information, not necessarily placed in the public domain, places it in Minnesota.  Bolstering that assumption is that the newspaper is the Pharos Keeper.  It's a city of eight million people, which puts it in the neighborhood of Bangalore, New York, Baghdad, or Bogotá.  Since that's unlikely for the Midwest---it is *not* three times the size of Chicago---we might imagine that the writer means the metropolitan area, which makes it more like Dallas, Nanjing, Kuala Lumpur, or Luanda.  Its big landmarks are the seven thematic towers, including the Lodestar and Steel.
+We open immediately with Pharos City---presumably named for the [Lighthouse of Alexandria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lighthouse_of_Alexandria)---which manages to look both enormous and tiny at the same time, due to the forced perspective.  Bolstering that assumption is that the newspaper is the Pharos Keeper.  It's a city of eight million people, which puts it in the neighborhood of Bangalore, New York, Baghdad, or Bogotá.  Since that's unlikely for the Midwest; for context, the secondary information, not necessarily placed in the public domain, places it in Minnesota---it is *not* three times the size of Chicago---we might imagine that the writer means the metropolitan area, which makes it more like Dallas, Nanjing, Kuala Lumpur, or Luanda.  Its big landmarks are the seven thematic towers, including the Lodestar and Steel.
 
 If you adapt anything from these stories, be aware that---like quite a bit of amateur fiction---these stories trade quite a bit in references to other works, ranging from the aforementioned Lightbringer costume to cameos by other characters to characters cribbed from more popular franchises.  It being part of a community, there are also stories crossing over into the work of others.  These probably aren't completely covered by the public domain dedication, since he can't really speak for someone else's creation.  Similarly, the public domain dedication explicitly excludes the work done by any guest artists.  So, before you adapt anything, double-check to make sure it comes from this comic and double-check who was involved.
 

2021-10-16-lightbringer2.md

@@ -7,6 +7,9 @@ tags: [freeculture, bookclub]
 summary: Discussing the remaining half of Lightbringer
 thumbnail: /blog/assets/lightbringer-20081112.png
 offset: -78%
+update: [
+  2021-10-09-lightbringer.md
+]
 proofed: true
 ---
 

2021-11-22-manastir.md

@@ -0,0 +1,58 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: Developer Journal, Albanian Alphabet Anniversary
+date: 2021-11-22 06:42:05-0500
+categories:
+tags: [programming, project, devjournal]
+summary: Progress on assorted projects
+thumbnail: /blog/assets/Komisioni-i-Alfabetit-Monastir-1908.png
+proofed: true
+---
+
+[Last week]({% post_url 2021-11-15-geography %}), I mentioned that holidays dry up quickly, this time of year, so what I scrounged up---other than this being the blog's **five hundredth post**---was the anniversary of the formalization of the [Albanian alphabet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albanian_alphabet) by the [Congress of Manastir](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress_of_Manastir).
+
+![The Congress of Manastir](/blog/assets/Komisioni-i-Alfabetit-Monastir-1908.png "If they didn't actually wear the numbers on their jackets and include a disembodied head among their ranks, why even show up...?")
+
+Coming from a software background as I do, I like to imagine the Congress as a consortium of business interests arguing that the language should use special letters that only their pens can write properly, or adding "private use" sections of the alphabet for organizations to create proprietary letters.
+
+And speaking of programming, here are the week's projects.
+
+## Ask INTERN
+
+Haskell continues to be frustrating.  Or rather, the *language* seems fine.  The *community* seems like it would just as soon never interact with other people.  To my prior complaints about scattered/incomplete documentation and non-working example/tutorial code, I add snotty documentation saying things along the lines of "you want to solve the error you're getting in a straightforward manner?  Why would you even want to use Haskell, then?"  As far as I'm concerned, this attitude is inexcusable, unless the goal is to keep the ecosystem from being successful.
+
+Similarly, two weeks working with three libraries produced precisely no buildable results, unless you need to print command-line arguments.
+
+Since I don't have much patience for communities that are more interested in preaching their philosophy than helping people actually get things done, I'm scrapping the Haskell code.  It was a nice idea, and it *looks* like a nice language, but this experience makes me think that the ecosystem isn't mature enough to bother with.
+
+Therefore, I'm scrapping the Haskell code for now.  I'll try to return to the ecosystem in a few years, but instead, I'll delete the code, and [**Ask INTERN**](https://github.com/jcolag/ask-intern) has been rewritten in [Elixir](https://elixir-lang.org/).  I've done some minor work in Elixir, over the years, so it's not entirely new to me---the reason that I chose Haskell---but I've also spent too much time on what would have *maybe* been thirty lines of code in a language like C.
+
+For an example of what I mean, here's what my Elixir version of the code looks like.
+
+```elixir
+query = Enum.join(args, " ")
+opts = [active: false]
+{:ok, socket} = :gen_tcp.connect('localhost', 48813, opts)
+:ok = :gen_tcp.send(socket, query)
+case :gen_tcp.recv(socket, 0, 10000) do
+  {:ok, response} -> IO.puts response
+  {:error, reason} -> IO.puts "#{reason}"
+end
+:ok = :gen_tcp.close(socket)
+```
+
+One line to turn the arguments into a string, two to send the request, four to get the response, and one to clean up.  The Haskell version was shaping up to be at least twice as long, with type errors even passing values from one API call to the next.
+
+It's pretty anti-climactic, after so much research in one language, to switch languages and have a working solution in nine lines of code.  But it's done---though I should handle exceptions---and that's satisfying.
+
+## Common Calendar
+
+Of interest to probably nobody, the [**Common Calendar**](https://github.com/jcolag/CommonCalendar) is now up to modern standards.  The build problem was that, when creating the application, I didn't pick a version of the `getopts` library ("crate"), and that's apparently no longer legitimate.  While I was already tinkering with the repository, I fixed the code's formatting and applied the advice of not-the-Microsoft-paperclip Clippy.
+
+## Next
+
+With **Ask INTERN** finally working, I'll probably return to **INTERN** to add some small features, and possibly [**Doritís Onomáton**](https://github.com/jcolag/doritis-onomaton) to figure out what happened with the local storage.
+
+* * *
+
+**Credits**:  The header image is [Komisioni i Alfabetit Monastir 1908](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Komisioni_i_Alfabetit_Monastir_1908.jpg) by an unknown photographer, long in the public domain.