Help Computer
2 Computer Stuff
- Linux Setup [wip] : My modern Linux setup, documented piece by piece as I work on streamlining my desktop experience.
- Websites in Emacs [wip] : The slightly unorthodox way I created and manage this site with Emacs org mode.
- Ubuntu-Mate Desktop Setup [old] - My prior Linux setup from a far less stable period.
- emacs [old] - Basic command reference, from when I first learned.
3 Select Repos
config and scripts
This is a manual (or loosely stitched together notes) for my own use on quickly reinstalling Ubuntu-Mate and all of the packages I frequently rely on in a semi automated way. I don't like remembering these things and don't want to make reinstalls a weeklong event. With the light scripts in the project, I can get up and running from scratch within an hour. These may be helpful for pedestrians, but professional programmers will balk (and bray and barf) at my code. Oh well.
stepmania-home
A root directory for my StepMania build on Ubuntu 20.04. It mostly consists of a Makefile with simple commands for symlinking my resources, like songs and themes, to the main game build. It's nothing fancy but it brings the game back to life for me after having permanently abandoned Windows years ago. Not very important, but a good idea for playing with other projects.
4 References
A list of books I have found helpful in the land of code.
4.1 The Pragmatic Programmer
David Thomas, Andrew Hunt
An easy to read self-help guide to writing and maintaining better code. Their advice only lands if you actually employ it, though, so be careful of the pitfall of merely reading and thinking you're better than the lesson just because you understood it.
For instance, the authors emphasize the benefits of prototyping, which is something it took me a long time to come around to. I have a tendency to want to implement a whole big problem at once, only to get lost in the details. Prototyping lets you tackle a specific angle of a problem, or to run a qualitative simulation that shows that things are sort of working well, before implementing a full scale problem that might require days of computation.
