It’s 2025!

I don’t usually really care so much that it’s 2025 since I’m familiar with more than one way to go about counting years. On the other hand, since other people make it a big deal, and because I’ve made some promises as you can see above, I’ve got to be a little excited because Quarto by now has a glossary. RIGHT? RIGHHHTTT? Two years later, for an academic publishing tool, without any questions being asked as requested–means the feature is there, RIGHHHHTTT? Well, no. Two years of being question-free was still not enough time.

Bell South Engineers Suck?

I’d think that the Bell South Engineers would be able to belt this one out, unless there is some incentive for them not to. I’m not sure what that incentive is, but I do know that three years for a publishing app to not have any code to deal with a glossary is a lot of wasted time. I also know now that I wasn’t told the truth. It’s not so much the glossary functionality had not been worked on, so much as it was that there was no intention to work on it in any timely fashion. Result? I got the reply I got. My point? There are plenty of projects out there that get funding, and without users like me poking people to tell them they are needed features, they get left by the wayside. Blaming your user base for pointing out a needed feature is nonsensical–especially if you tell them that as an excuse to say “Hey man, answering you sucks, cause like I totally got work to do!” It’s another project-killer mentality. Just say the truth, which is, “Yeah, we should have this feature, but our lords and masters don’t think it is a priority right now so I’m not sure when it will be added.” Bummer, sure, but way more useful in terms of informational content.Certainly, it is way more honest.

Exciting update:

So you see, asking about a feature becomes abuse, no matter the timeline. You, the USER are the problem, not the project. This is why a Code of Conduct is useless. It gives people power to self-righteously believe they are doing the correct thing, when in fact, they are failing to hold themselves to reasonable behavior. Same thing was true when the Messiah walked the earth… While probably nobody is going to die for not having a glossary in Quarto, the fact I asked was the problem as it took up precious time. When I pointed out the time that had been taken that was precious, and the feature was still not present, I’m still the problem for desiring the feature and the project to be better suited to its niche. I’m not “constructive” although I’m showing exaclty something that needs “constructing”. Consequence, mute me, the voice, and the problem is solved, right? Except there is still no glossary…

When You See a Problem…

After discovering the problems with the domain of the internet system and some unpleasant consequences due to that as I’ve discussed elsewhere, I made it a prime focus in 2024 to try to find solutions to certain things that would fall under my purview of being able to offer useful input.

The first project I was excited about before 2024 but hoped would come to completion during that period was Gabpay. I’m not what you would call a “Christian Nationalist” but I do think competition that has a Biblical foundation against things like Paypal is going to be a positive contribution to the payment processor space. I especially believe that payment gateways need to be taken out of the custody of the likes of Stripe and Paypal since both of them have been caught de-platforming people at various moments for political reasons. While I don’t have an issue for people being removed from certain services due to serious violations of law, political beliefs ought not be one of the reasons for removal.

The last thing I did was apply for a card Gabpay said was coming, and that was some time ago. I think the idea was to compete with Paypal’s card system, which seemed like a good idea to me. Checking on it for purpose of writing this article, I’m still uncertain what the status is, and that’s about all I need to know about that solution. A general truth is going to be repeated here–if Gabpay had delivered on this promise within a reasonable time frame, they could have been a huge player in the tech scene. As it is, it’s more like a joke along the lines of Half-Life 3.

Another Project

Another project I got excited about was the Encyclosphere project as an alternative to Wikipedia. I became involved with writing some proof for it along with editing articles and understanding how the underlying code moved between confederated Wikis. When I wanted to make an offline copy of one of the wikis, however, Larry Sanger took it upon himself to accuse me of being a Chinese spy who was trying to steal the project. Apparently my idea hit at the same time some other nefarious actor out there started mucking about with the site. Of course, if this hasn’t been solved, then it seems to me that Sanger is not really solving the original problems that the first Wikipedia posed in that foreign influences got ahold of it. Since defending myself against accusations of not being a Chinese spy is a tiresome occupation, I decided to take my leave of the project. I’m not a lot of other things I don’t make a habit of defending myself against either. I don’t exactly blame Larry Sanger for this, but it did show me that putting effort into this specific project is unlikely to yield different results as the well is easily poisoned. With a little more trust, however, and less paranoia, and more unified effort applied to networking problems, I think Encyclosphere could have been a HUGE player on the tech scene as a better source of information that Wikipedia.

Finally Freenet

My final big 2024 hope was pinned on what was called Locutus but is now called Freenet. Ian Clark, who made the original Freenet, was behind this one and had a release date for early spring. Since I was a big fan of the old Freenet, I figured Ian had a good grasp on the timetable involved to get a project like this done and so assumed he had estimated correctly and waited for the work to complete full-well knowing that if he got it done on the timetable he anticipated, the project would be huge. Unfortunately, due to a crypto library they had counted on working with the new system needing to be re-written, the project was not done in Spring. It still wasn’t done in Fall, and I think also isn’t done now. The straw that broke that camel’s back, however, was when I was chatting with Ian and mentioned that I thought the project needed to be out sooner rather than later because people were literally dying over freedom of speech issues. He made light of that fact, although I think he is based out of Texas in part. I wonder if the present events connected there with all the exploisions have made him re-think that position? Regardless, it’s too late for the new Freenet to make the kind of impact it could have if Ian had estimated the time it would take correctly to make the new model.

My Evaluation

I think in many instances, the places above are motivated by a good but also receive grants to do the work they are doing. I think the process of receving grants makes those who are doing these projects vested in receiving more grant money and want to control the project in certain ways. This gives a false sense of security, and a lack of urgency. After all, if you have your own needs met, however long it takes is however long it takes. On the other hand, if you are being attacked by enemies of free speech, you require relief immediately–not when somebody gets around to it. In that regard, I think all the above other than Gab has a lack of first-hand experience. Gab probably got hamstrung at the banking level, but didn’t bother to communicate that and so lost its momentum. This and all the statements about creating a “parallel economy” and literally not seeming to achieve that in the least in any useful way make it a bunch of hot air. False hope is worse than no hope. Indeed, no technology is going to save humankind. That’s why there was a guy crucified, after all. On the other hand, the people who have that guy in common are supposed to be on a similar page–not dragging their feet and getting grant money and outsourcing tomorrow’s casualties for today’s funding. (Robbing Peter to pay Paul as they say) As a whole, I’d say in the technology fields, these groups of people have failed to assert a beachead and secure a landing zone for others fighting for freedom. Most of the reasons why it hasn’t happened are petty. Nobody is going to contribute to a project if you are constantly accusing them of nefarious ends. Ghosting your users about the status of your project is a good way to make them not care–especially if it takes forever. Making freedom of speech software but not feeling a kind of empathy of the actual plight of people who are dying because of the inability to speak and taking your time because you made an error in the time estimate is also not great. These are all human errors, but they are project-killers. Above all, missing the “Operational window” of “highest effectiveness and impact” is absolutely fatal. While there is still hope for these projects, the impact is now likely to be faint.

Rather, some other paradigm of technological freedom will have to take their places. Perhaps Qortal can fill that gap?

Note: Tor solves many problems all ready, and so does I2P. Of course, trusting the other users is another problem there.

Finding a Way

I took this site off the main web some time ago, but found an imposter pretending to be me bought the domain, protected it with cloudflare, and then starting posting as if they were me. Probably, it is some kind of crypto scam. I reported them to the registrar and ICANN so we shall see what they do. So far, they are taking their time which is ironic with all the climate of “misinformation” and “speedy takedowns”.

The Rogue Suggested

The Rogue Scholar suggested to me I ought to find a place for my website, and so here within the Qortal network I think there is enough tradeoff between security and non-dns stupidity to be able to have a presence without as much interference. Hence, the huge book cover!
If you head on over to the Qortal bookstore, you will find that you can purchase The Rogue Scholar: The Rogue To Victory for Qortal! It’s even a little cheaper than it is on Amazon and elsewhere, because hey, screw those guys.

The Book

Funnily enough, the book rather needed the kind of environment that Qortal provides and starts to predict a world a little like it. It was written back in 2010, which was when Bitcoin was only around two years old and was only just learning how to talk! The digital divide was undivided in the work.

Here is the Amazon tagline for the description of the work:

Sal Grimone is a GREAT DECEIVER! He gets paid to digitally implement his deceptions. Unfortunately for him, his neat world is about to be rocked by the unexpected intersection of other members of the reality he inhabits. And oh yeah, the line between reality and fiction has been made thin by the birth of a thing called the “Holonosphere”. Everyone is struggling with metaphysical problems brought about by this. A few people might just change the world by how they answer and act…

So Yeah…

The Rogue can be a demanding fellow. With a new digital home for one of the guys who publishes him, well, he had to have his say. So, he did! By the way, he also wants me to tell you the work is non-DRM’ed. If you get it from the Qortal store the produce should be an unvarnished PDF with no weirdness. If not, get in touch!

A Gallery?

Above, there should be a 3d gallery of various odds and ends. The folks over at Croquet have supplied quite the framework. Go check it out!

Hint: If you want to see the above gallery larger go here

My Face?

You should see a video with my face. Static website generators are awesome, but sometimes doing things like “embedding html” which I could easily do in say, 1997, are somehow more difficult in 2023. Nonetheless, we push on and prevail. Here’s the “I can’t be troubled to listen to your face” breakdown or the TL;DW–too long didn’t watch:

1. Buy the book: https://books.beiteshelpublications.org/wp/
   (paper or digital copy)

2. Sign up for the workshop after you buy the book: https://courses.beiteshelpublications.org/chamilo/main/auth/inscription.php?c=MED99&e=1

3. Sign up for the newsletter: https://paragraph.xyz/@beiteshelpub/from-school-you-skipped

Gemini Protocol

There are lots of people out there that, in one way or another, are hankering for a more “innocent” version of the internet or at least what they remember as being a more innocent version of the internet. Mostly, what they really mean to say is that they are seeking a version of the internet “before advertising and corporations and tracking” and all manner of other things that the internet has become. Indeed, the early days were more exciting in the sense that one had to go to the library to seek out the kind of information that was available easily on the internet. Most of all, it was “free” like going to a library. Putting up copious amounts of ads would have made as much sense as putting up a bunch of billboards in the library reading room.

As might be expected then, there are some people out there who are trying to take the web “back” to a simpler time and one such effort is the Gemini Protocol.

Gophers?

Gemini of course, is a constellation, but in the case of project Gemini it concerns the space program by that name because–well because people that made the protocol wanted it to be retro-spacey, okay? Okay!

If you click on the link, you will see something called the “gopher protocol“ mentioned as well which is/was a version of the internet that woulda/coulda/is still around. So Gemini is kinda like gopher, kinda like html, but all very stripped down in an almost “brutalist” way. However, for doing something like say, reading my new book, the Gemini experience offers something unparalleled in the modern internet. It offers a stripped down “content first” experience. Here, let me get a screen shot to show you what I mean:

See what I mean? That’s “gorgeous” in terms of internet reading and viewing.

Gempub?

In order to get the book “translated” to this form, I had to do quite a bit of work. For one thing, Gemini protocol only works with certain kinds of browsers. After experimenting around with several differing kinds I would say La Grange, which you see in the picture is by far the best aesthetic experience. The next thing I had to do was make the book consistent both with the Gemini protocol itself which is a bit like Markdown, and also make something called a “Gempub“ file which is really a kind of “accepted format” for books written in the Gemini markup. Then, I tried forever to get the cover page to display handsomely on the page with the intro, but either found a lack of support or else some transient bug that will hopefully be missing in future iterations. Finally, after I did all that, I had to make an ssh key, and reach out to someone hosting Gemini services to publish the Gempub file. The host, incidentally, is a Gemini addres: gemini://gmi.si3t.ch (reading an astrology chart for the sign of Gemini is magnitudes easier than the above chain of events)

So Where Is the Book?

Well, it is several places at this point, but if you want to go on the reading journey as God intended, (you do don’t you?) you should download the La Grange browser above and then head over to this link: gemini://gmi.si3t.ch/terraumbra/htdnw3.gpub/book/index.gmi

And Just to Be Hip/Cool

I also posted up a version of the book at this little “auction” place that uses “sats”–a type of cryptocurrency as an exchange. You can find the link here if that sort of thing interests you. When one’s Church/business whatever has been targeted or silenced, one gets to a point where one favors some other method of exchange than the usual kinds–which brings me to a final point.

WAYY BACK IN 2015

…I was warning everyone about an incoming blood moon and financial crash. My wife, at that point, went to France, and after ascending a mystic mountain during the blood moon (I shit you not) she prayed for the return of land in Southern France to be returned to Occitania. Do you know what happened? Two days after she left the mountain the proposal for the south of France to be returned to Occitania was on the table. A year to the date of her ascent, the land was returned.

Occitania is famous for people who idolize Mary Magdalene and the Cathars, which were a Gnostic sect and the mountain has no shortage of people all around it who are wizards, warlocks, witches, or just garden-variety insane. The thing about all these people is that though they had ascended the mountain and prayed to what I presume are pagan Gods, the return of the land never seemed to result. Now of course, I am sure there are wizards who will tell you that it was they who brandishing magical wand and sigil brought the land back, and it JUST so happened to coincidentally be at the time my wife prayed for the return of the land that their “Great Work” completed. Perhaps they are correct. However, if it were the case they were correct, then surely they ought to have written something like my above meditation book long before now since it consists of the corpus of what are usually considered to be “Gnostic Works”. My interpretation of these works is not inherently Gnostic, but it surely does not preclude such an understanding. What I see happening instead around a land that experienced nothing short of a miracle is a bunch of nonsense ego-strutting. I have a feeling that was somewhat how and why the land was lost with which to start.

I figure, however, that an alternative internet independent of time with “lost gnostic works” in a “mysty bygone-time-period” full of warlocks, wizards, and witches is probably the “best possible place” for a book to exist on a protocol called “Gemini” such as this. Maybe you might even be able to say it exists in a kind of “mirror sense” to the mountain–weirdly magical and hopeful for a more innocent time that simply slipped from our grasp due to human greed and suspicion. I especially figure a book with the Gospel of Mary Magdalene and Thomas in it should be especially appropriate to and for this task. For all of that to be true, I do not need to be the King of the Wizards, or the Grand Magus or Bodhisattva incarnate. No, for all those things, I need no specific association with the land, the mountain, or the people. Instead, I simply need to become smaller and listen to what my heart tells me.

Indeed, America is in the same place, as is the world. Somehow, probably due to that “early warning” I sounded that everyone brushed off along with many additional soundings since, everyone has become deaf. And you know what? In the world of the deaf, the man with one working ear is king. Shema Israel, ADONAI Eloheinu, ADONAI Echad.

Note: I’ve posted this elsewhere but am posting it here for the sake of continuity. Second note to Fold PR: Since this blog was in my email links to you, I am sure you can now appreciate that I am who I said I was.

Final note: if you are an author, check out my author webring: Behold!

Fold Sounds Possibly Cool

Fold is a card that claims to support lightning rewards. I was interested to try that out to see how it worked. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get that far, and I wonder if Fold should exist as a crypto card at all–here is my email exchange most recent occurs last so scrolling down you are moving “back in time” and anything without a name is me:

Eh no biggie. It simply means to me that your service has some fairly large bugs (possibly spiders?) in the system considering I could verify my identity with eBay in the 90s. But of course I think we both know that isn’t the actual issue here. It’s really about underwriters and lawsuits which should be an interesting mix with your purported crypto support. I’ll delete your app and let others know of my experience here.

Mar 7, 2023, 5:46 PM EST

Hey,

Our team has reviewed your application and discovered some discrepancies. As a result, we cannot establish your identity.

I understand how frustrating this can be, especially if this decision was made in error. Still, due to the limitations of identity verification, we won’t be able to open an account for you at this time.

Thank you for understanding.

Best Regards,

Risk Team

Mar 7, 2023, 1:53 PM EST

I’ll wait until 10 pm tonight CST. If it isn’t done by then I will just delete the app. I’m all for security and I understand false positives but my time is valuable and there are other accounts I could apply to who hypothetically might not “false positive” my info. Like flying on an airline I am going to tend to favor the one that hassles me the least. Thanks for alerting me however.

Foster Evans (Fold)

Mar 7, 2023, 12:52 PM EST

Hello,

To maintain a high level of security for our members, we must periodically update certain criteria in our systems with regard to user accounts. However, this can sometimes create false positives that require a manual review by our risk team. Unfortunately, it looks like your information must be manually reviewed before it can be approved.

We are working on completing this process as quickly as possible, and we appreciate your continued patience as we enhance our security measures for our cardholders. Due to the current number of outstanding reviews, response times may be longer than usual. We ask that you do not submit multiple tickets, or replies, as doing so may cause further delays in gaining access to your account.

Best,
Fold

Jeniza Ferrer (Fold)

Mar 7, 2023, 11:54 AM EST

Hello,

I apreciate your response. Your concern is very important to us. This issue will require additional assistance from our Escalation Team. I am going to forward your request to them, and someone from their team will respond as soon as possible.

Due to the current number of outstanding requests, response times may be longer than usual. We ask that you do not submit multiple tickets, or replies, as doing so may cause further delays in getting a response.

We appreciate your patience and understanding.

Best,
Jeniza

Mar 7, 2023, 10:15 AM EST

After restart cannot process submission continues. If there isn’t a way to solve this today then it is apparent having a fold card isn’t on my path and I will delete the app.

On Tue, 07 Mar 2023 15:07:10 GMT

Sure. Here is the error as of today. Will restart and advise further. I will include yesterdays error as well.

Mar 7, 2023, 10:07 AM EST

Sure. Here is the error as of today. Will restart and advise further. I will include yesterdays error as well.

Jeniza Ferrer (Fold)

Mar 7, 2023, 9:11 AM EST

Hey,

Thank you for reaching out, and I apologize for the inconvenience.

First, I would suggest force closing and relaunching the app. You may need to reboot your phone if that does not work.

Next, I would check the app store to make sure there is not an available update. If so, please download it and try again.

Lastly, if all else fails, try uninstalling, then reinstalling the app.

Please let me know if the above steps do not resolve the issue, and can you send a screenshot of the error that you are having for us to investigate further?

Best,
Jeniza

Mar 6, 2023, 11:00 PM EST

Placing my address and social security in fold card app results in Error and to Contact support to get fold card.

This sounds like the song and dance Stripe gave me which you can read about over at my blog here: Stripe Blog Post.

So, somehow the crypto of Fold is being used in an identity “risk assessing way” which sounds to me like a possible “poisoning of the well” for the sats earned by Fold since it seems to me this is going beyond typical KYC. I figured I’d alert the community to the potential problem since Crypto probably doesn’t need any additional “Bankmen-Fried” incidents.

Printing, A Perilous Adventure

As you have probably noticed, I have had several posts concerning the nature of my new book How To Do Nothing Well. I am writing these posts partly for people that are trying to publish so that a “pipeline” of what works and what does not in the modern post “everything is deplatforming everyone” era. My latest go around concerns thebookpatch.com. Here is what their site looks like as of yesterday:

As you can see, this is not exactly ideal, particularly as they also owe me money from some orders placed. One customer had gotten an email that morning that said her order was being shipped. So, whatever happened must have happened rather unexpectedly and in a hurry. I hope that everyone who ordered my book from thebookpatch received a copy. Part of the reason I selected them was because they had been around since 2009 and were more unlikely to suddenly disappear. Of course, they still suddenly disappeared, so time is no great indicator of market longevity.

Their Facebook page (or is that meta?) is also missing or else blocked by Facebook now, but as of yesterday this is what it looked like:

Quite a mysterious disappearance with a lot of very irate authors. I tend to be more patient and I sent them an email yesterday when I noticed the site was nonfunctional and as of today I still do not have any answers and that goes under “unacceptable” in my book of “business communication when you owe people money”. So, why they suddenly went away is currently unknown, however, I did find something interesting concerning the proprietor of thebookpatch. This one deserves some quoting.

The Guy Who Founded The Bookpatch…

Born in 1949 in Canada, Victor Ostrovsky moved to Israel with his family at age five. His inclination for the arts was apparent from a very early age. The well known Israeli painter, Gilady, lived on the same street and often set up his easel outdoors to paint. Victor would watch, spellbound, on his way to and from school as Gilady created beautiful images on the blank canvas. Eventually, the artist presented Victor with his box of oil paints and took the time to guide him into a world where expressions come through images and color, handing the child a gift that would soon become a passion.

Victor entered the military at the age of eighteen and became the youngest officer in the Israeli Defense Force. Victor rose to the rank of a lieutenant commander in the Israeli Navy and served as head of the weapon testing program when he was recruited by Israel’s elite intelligence agency, the Mossad. After two and a half years of training in the Mossad, victor became a katsa (case officer.) after serving in the field and becoming aware of the activities of elements within the agency that had more to do with self-preservation than the good of the country he left the service. After five years of trying to inform the powers to be with little success, he wrote an exposé “By Way Of Deception” that shook the agency’s foundations and is said to have brought about change. Victor has written two more books since A nonfiction “The Other Side Of Deception” and fictional spy novel “Lion Of Judah.”

Today, Victor’s insight and knowledge of the intelligence community facilitates his writing of fictional novels and screenplays and serves as a basis for his enigmatic and cryptic paintings. His canvases offer tantalizing images, evoking a mystical and other-worldly reaction from viewers. Hats, gloves, scarves, and umbrellas hide his mysterious figures’ identities, provoking and teasing our imaginations with visual portrayals of adventure and intrigue. The activities of his figures and the titles of the work reflect the enterprise and language of the international intelligence community, bringing several layers of meaning to his paintings while creating stories for the viewer.

source: https://villagegallery.com/gallery/victor-ostrovsky/

Mr. Ostrovsky was/is the owner of thebookpatch, and suddenly it makes sense as to why an ex-Mossad whistleblower might want a way to write a book that does not go through the channels of Amazon and the like. Amazon, as I noted in another post, has become far too “motherly” in the sense that it wants to “help you file your taxes” and “adjust your margins” and a bunch of other stuff while taking large percentages of your sales. It is almost like Amazon is a kind of “rain forest” that “makes money” by selling logging rights except replace rain forest with authors and logging rights with rape.

At the very least, if anyone has a motive for a swift disappearance, I’d say Mr. Ostrovsky has one. The inner-workings of any intelligence agency organization are convoluted at best. I suppose that is why they call them “spies”. They definitely, as per Edward Snowden, do not like anyone blowing any whistles since by their nature they operate in the shadows.

Publishing Without An Agency…

Frustratingly, as an author, however, I did not do a “Deep dig” on Thebookpatch thinking to myself “Gee, I wonder what intrigue and misadventure might lie here!” No, instead, I simply wanted a reliable publisher for print on demand services. I had recourse to this because Amazon was far too “controlling” in all the wrong ways, and we know that it certainly isn’t on the payroll of any intelligence agency, right? Right. I’d like to publish my damn book without having to consider every black budget in the “known world” and whether they might “get offended” by my “meditation book designed to give someone a closer relationship with spirit.” Instead, as an author, I am sandwiched between “CIA” and “Ex-Mossad” somewhere in the “self-help” print on demand section.

Too Many Clowns

The bottom line is, there are too many clowns masquerading as legitimate services with far too much power and money at their disposal. My book is first and foremost a “church book” and rolls together three world religions. It does not say they all “go the same place” but it does show that they do indeed go somewhere and that somewhere is most assuredly not an intelligence agency unless you mean the intelligence agency of YHVH. However, we will remember that even the “spies for Israel” to gain the land had some serious problems in that only two came back reliable and loyal to that source. Everyone else got a long slog of 40 years through a desert.

I Was Able Though…

I was able, however, to find a workaround to offer the for print version of the book up on my site. I’m not going to get into its inner workings right now, other than to say it is a company that offers a “bridge” to Wordpress. So, it actually looks better like this anyway, in my opinion. More “my brand” as opposed to “thebookpatch-now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t” brand.

Which Brings Me To This Morning’s Shower Thoughts

Speaking of bridges, a rather novel idea I had occurred to me as I was grabbing a shower was that typically, we are only AS assertive as we are willing to burn bridges. In other words, there are some people who are attaching dynamite to the bridge before we even get on it just waiting with a button in their hand to blow the thing when we are convinced by them to get on it. That’s not what I mean. What I mean is that most people don’t stand up for themselves because they are afraid of a burned bridge. Of course, if a burned bridge is what results, then should you really be around a person that forces that scenario to start with? I’d say no, and I’d say whatever thebookpatch is doing, it surely looks like internet scorched Earth.

The Perfect Book Writing Flow

I am somewhere between a programmer and a writer. That means I can program, but it isn’t my first goal in life. I can write, and that is closer to my goal in life, and so where I need to, I can program. I do not program for the joy of it, though. Never have. When I program it is strictly for a result or functionality I did not have before. So, when I go to publish something, I like a flow that gives me maximum ability to publish to different formats–pdf, html, epub, whatever. When XML first made its appearance, I remembered thinking “YES, FINALLY.” Ah, that was naive. (XML is great for everything I mentioned, it just happens to REALLY SUCK to write at any complexity)

Enter Latex

Latex is awesome for typesetting. The only problem with Latex, though, is that it is mostly made for a more “scienecy” type of writing. Equations, tables, charts, graphs all the things that bored you in textbooks Latex is good at. With some beating, one can coerce Latex to print other things fairly well like books. With some pandoc magic, you can even get it to convert to different formats with varying degrees of success. Then, the idea may strike you, why not write in something like markdown then convert it with pandoc to whatever else like latex? Some people do just that, but I have found that the results are too variable for my writing style. I don’t especially want to have to write specific Latex formatting guides either. All of that is very time-consuming and most often needed for whatever I am currently doing but not for things on down the road. Latex suffers from having many different kinds of interpreters and packages do not always place nice between successive incarnations of Latex.

Enter Quarto

Quarto, however, is a kind of synthesis between Latex and markdown with structured yaml thrown in for good measure. If you have built a static website with a static web builder, then you won’t have much trouble with Quarto. Quarto smoothly outputs different formats such as pdf or a website or many other variations.

The Problem With Quarto

Quarto would almost be a perfect tool except for the fact that it has certain stylistic assumptions about your book. For instance, if you have a dedication before your introduction, Quarto does not have a built-in facility to deal with this. Instead, it has a specially labeled section called “before-body.tex” where you can place formatted latex. This, however, can cause issues with your pdf generation later on down the road since certain things might duplicate. If you need a preface before the body, for instance, Quarto is not going to care for that since it all ready has ideas about where your preface should go. The same thing is true with an abstract and the “before body“ element does not carry into constructing a website. Therefore, if you want an abstract in your website, you are going to have to make Quarto do some calisthenics it would prefer not to do. (it looks like in hindsight you can also have a before body for the html too although I’m not sure how that works or does not work with .tex files)

A Glossary

During the writing of my book, after some feedback from my wife, I thought it might be nice to have a glossary as per some of her suggestions. Quarto does not support this at the moment, and so I went to support to see if anyone else had had a similar hankering. Imagine my glee in finding this information in the repo with the first issue being mentioned all the way back in August of 2022. Since there had been no update on the milestones, I figured I’d better ask as my book, which was in no small way about the End of Days, was nearing completion. I want to make sure I give you the pictorial version of the reply I got here, so you have an insight into the type of support you might receive if you happen to also want to use Quarto:

Oh no, he just didn’t!! He gave me the ole “My time as a programmer is more important than your time as a user/author and if there is a change you will see it here schtick,” after no discernible info had been contributed since last year. At the time I checked this repo for this article, I did notice that there were exactly 666 issues outstanding, and that just today, in fact, the milestones had been changed from 1.3 to 1.4 for the glossary! I can’t make it up, man. Dude has important things to do as a programmer, and if you just happen to be writing a book about the End of Days, you will JUST HAVE TO WAIT BUDDY! 2025, according to one American General, is gonna be an interesting year. Don’t ask cscheid about any programming for a glossary if that breaks out though! It distracts his mystical Quarto programming flow and he does NOT have time for that! (I will follow up with him about the glossary then if all of our countries are not some composite of nuclear obsidian) He will probably be on milestone 1.6 by then for sure.

All that being said, cscheid is just one member of the Quarto team, and it is highly possible not everyone is an arrogant jerk that is developing Quarto. Being someone who fields the issues of users is not always a fun job either, and so I don’t fault him for that. I do fault him for not following up on my email where I tried to explain myself a little further. He simply wanted to make me look like I was some energetic, enthusiastic cheerleader who was overzealous in public. I may be a lot of things, but enthusiastic cheerleader ain’t one of um. Next time, try updating the news more regularly and maybe users won’t ask you annoying questions.

Having Said All of THAT

I did mostly enjoy using Quarto, and I decided to release the free version of my book using their scaffolding. It was a smooth publishing flow and I could see how academics that don’t know much about web hosting would really enjoy this aspect of Quarto. I simply enjoyed not re-writing or modifying the content to try to achieve some static website semblance that did not violate the basic aesthetic flow of the book or chop up the words in some undesirable way. The pdf output was also pretty easy to engender, although for the title page I had to assemble that AFTER I ran Quarto to produce the entire pdf and use “pdfarranger“ to include a “cover”. There are some Quarto templates out there that say they do this, but I found them to be more trouble than just re-arranging the pdf in this fashion.

So Go Buy the Book

So now you know “How It Was Made.” Go buy the book!

New Edition of My Book

The last time I did a new edition of HTDNW3 (How To Do Nothing Well 3), I had just finished unsuccessfully trying to warn everyone of an impending judgment tied to the medical systems and food supplies and basic collapse of society. Hence, I was at a campground consistent with the plan, re-editing my First Edition in prep for the Second Edition and suddenly COVID broke out in earnest and paralyzed everything. I was not especially surprised to see any of this, since my message of “We should probably all be repenting and living differently” was falling on deaf ears. Covid was a really stupid answer to a very simple lack of giving a shit by people who had heard what I had to say.

I had also written various world leaders before this time telling them of the same basic issue. I bet you can guess how many replies I got back? So, now that I have written the THIRD Edition, I feel a little like the frontman of a “retard parade”. Yeah, I don’t care that it isn’t politically correct. Humanity is being “retarded” which means, in the original version of the word, “growth that is slowed down or arrested”. That is EXACTLY what humanity is doing–and what it is being–on an average day.

So Now the Third Edition

Now I have moved on to the Third Edition, which is more complete. Lest anyone says that I am doing spiritual stuff for money alone, (I’ve heard it before, mostly from people doing spiritual stuff for money alone) I have also put up a version of the book for free on the web. Eventually, as the digital cogs turn, the paper version should appear on all of your favorite terrible booksellers. I say “terrible” because I set the paperback price to 27 dollars which, after every digital store gets done taking their cut, leaves me with about 8 bucks per book for my “original meditation” that I so “graciously allowed” these places to print. (Really, it is about market penetration and signal spread) Edit: Those terrible companies wanted me to change the margin instead of just printing what Latex has all ready made perfectly formatted. Therefore, the book is available for print on demand through the Bookpatch. The digital distribution I am keeping on my end, and you can get the pdf version via crypto or Cashapp since I absolutely hate Stripe and refuse to use them as you can see elsewhere on my site. (Nevermind that I started the Church with their crowdfunding platform that apparently later became “too dangerous” for Stripe’s board of imbeciles) The book is being sold ultimately for the Church itself, since it outlines via the Dead Sea scrolls a disciplined meditation designed to allow a person to have a deeper relationship with Spirit.

Take My Money, I Want Your Book

Great! You are my kind of person. You can march yourself right over here and avail yourself of purchasing options which also includes the web-based free version if you are really cheap and/or poor or are the indecisive sort who wants information but does not want to support the source of it.

But You Don’t Sound Like a Meditation Guy…

I am EXACTLY what a “meditation guy” sounds like. If you tuned into spirits right now, you would find the majority of them are none-too-pleased. Most of them are miffed because humanity simply refuses to pay attention to what it knows it SHOULD be doing. You notice that I used the word “spirits” and not simply “Jesus”. The Holy Spirit is composed of “much more” than just the Christian expectation of the manifestation of spirit. Again, this amounts to trying to assert “control” over matters that God has set into motion. If YHVH decides, on a given day, to turn whatever He so pleases into a Living Being, He can do it. Not everything that He might do this to looks like “Christian Aryan Jesus”. Maybe it looks more Native American. Perhaps it looks Middle Eastern. Perhaps it is African American. Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps. The point to be made is nobody really knows what to expect until they meditate and see what they have waiting for them. Whether it is of Heaven or of Hell, it seems to me that either way, nobody is going to learn much about themselves or anyone else unless they first open up their eyes.

This Is the Part Where

This is the part where I am supposed to say how “Great” it was to write the Third Edition. It was “great”, but was a little like writing while riding a shark inside a tornado surrounded by flying snakes and scorpions. The book was written IN SPITE OF all of these distractions and outright machinations. The best I can say about it is directly to all those who interfered with its writing in the immortal words of Calvin Coolidge in reference to when someone bet him they could get him to say more than three words. His reply? “You Lose!”.

Combine that with some Willy Wonka, “Good Day to you Sir!” and that is really the best summary I can provide.