I'm writing this Letter to the Web in a different software than I normally use. Rather than using Emacs, an old-school text-editor on Linux, I'm using 4theWords, a browser-based word processor that has gamification features added on. For example, I currently have 24 hours, 26 minutes, and 20 seconds to write an additional 1608 words, in order to defeat something called a Mertino, as part of the game's annual NaNoWriMo challenge.
This is part of an ongoing shift in what technology I'm using on a computer, in response to the changing present and future. Yup - this is going to be another Letter where I talk vaguely about what I'm doing and what I plan to do, with computers. I'll put that after the paid subscriber break, but for now, I'd like to share a couple garden updates.
First, we've put in a fall crop of potatoes. Even though El Nino is settling in (which here means generally colder and drier winters), I'm still pretty confident that we're going to be able to get a decent crop in. We've set up "hotbeds" using containers filled with compost, arranged to form a larger hotbed in the space between themselves. We’ve also got more onions, peas, rye, and wall-rocket going.
We're also continuing to pull in a good amount of saffron each day, which is exciting: it's looking like we'll have enough to share! And, our rye and peas are coming in decently. A reminder that all this happening in a backyard garden that we're going to be relocating in the spring, to an as-yet-undecided location. (We've got a couple opportunities lining up, including potentially sharing land ownership. Any contributions would be helpful toward these goals, or backup plans.)
We're also building up a stockpile of dehydrated mushrooms foraged from nearby: turkey tail, puffball, and boletes. We're farming oyster mushrooms ourselves; right now they're not fruiting but we're bulking out a tremendous amount of substrate - if certain opportunities come through, we might be at the Durham Farmers Market as soon as next fall, selling mushrooms and other things.
I've also, personally, been doing more to reconnect with some of the folk I was talking to before my days became as silly as they did. I still need to get the profiles set up, but I'm back on the Fediverse at @emsenn@turtleisland.social for microblogs, @emsenn@turtleisland.art for photos, and @ecoemsenn@turtleisland.video for videos. I'm also @emsenn on 4theWords if anyone else is using that.
In order to help get us back toward the orientation we want, me and my partners have also been looking at Habitica, a gamified task management application, that we're using to cultivate the habits we want, like stretching and composting, but also using to make sure we're putting as much effort into those things each day as we want, and using it more generally to track things we need to do.
4theWords and Habitica are both very different softwares than I normally use - they're online-only, they have paid subscription elements, so on. Far from the terminal-based open-source stuff I usually use.
The issue is, I've been so distant from using computers in what I'd consider a good way, that using what I'd consider better tools didn't really matter - especially because I wasn't ever getting closer to building the software I actually want, a generalized MUD engine.
So, I decided to switch to software that's a little more fun, stuff with an easy app I can carry on my phone, and just two pieces of software: one for tracking what I am doing or wanna do, and one for babbling about it.
Which is not different than what I was using Emacs for, except that I was never finding the time to set up InfoPonEmacs enough to just use it. Accepting Habitica and 4theWords as stopgaps that let me do the sort of work I need to do, now, well enough, I'm making the space to work on a MUD engine.
So, that's my winter orientation: improving our stockpile of biotic resources like soil and mushroom substrate, while using 4theWords and Habitica to do minimal recordkeeping on it, while looking at how to set up the MUD engine that I want. The rest of this Letter, after the break, will talk a bit about what my plan is for that.
(Oh - and me and my partners are planning on sharing our Habitica habits, once we can, for those of y'all who wanna play along with our praxis at home. Just, fully leaning into the "lifestyle anarchist" label folk put on us. Whatever.)