M&A Book Club Season 2: Ani*mystic Chapter1: Robots & Aliens

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Metropolis by Fritz. Langu

This year Aya and I are reading Ani*mystic by Gordon White from Rune Soup. I have read all of Gordon’s books, and I am excited to dive in. This week is a meditation on Chapter 1.

For years I taught a class called Computers, Robots, and Film at Fordham University. It was an incredible class. Often we discuss the relationship between aliens and robots – even though aliens were not on the curriculum. Gordon’s chapter sort of goes from robots to aliens which is why I bring this up. But I am starting in medias res. Let me instead start with what is alive in me.

“We make the ocean when we fish in it” This sort of encapsulates the feeling of this chapter and perhaps this book. What is the world? I read a book a few years ago by Markus Gabriel – a brilliant philosopher – and the book was called ‘why the world does not exist.’ I mean obviously the world exists. But we live in a time where someone can make the claim that the world does not exist, and this is partially Gordon’s issue – I mean this should be everyone’s issue because doubting something as fundamental as the world is totally nihilistic (even if it is a joke). This is not only an animist notion it is a nonduality notion – as a nonduality practitioner – this is how I identify with animism.

Gordon talks about another favorite author of mine, Charles Eisenstein, and the story of separation.

What is the story of separation – It is when we no longer make the ocean when we fish it. It is when the ocean exists apart from us.

As a once and future roboticist it is hard for me to see the “metaphor of machines” as the root of the story of separation- although this may true. Machines are other – they divide the world into natural and artificial – where as there is nothing nature and nothing artificial. A foreign seed becomes a local seed and a local seed migrates to become a foreign seed.

Make we should move to the metaphor of aliens now – and we are all aliens and all native. I am the other and I am the self.

Solidity day 3 – Its ALIVE!

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Today is day 3 of my 30 day solidity journey with https://github.com/scaffold-eth/scaffold-eth

I finally deployed a contract

I changed my process

I was tired and kept it simple.

I fired up 3 iterms, set an alias to my directory and ran my three yarn commands: yarn build, yarn start and yarn deploy

I wanted to avoid the proliferation of node processes I had yesterday

I replaced the current YourContract.sol via cut and paste from the primitives data point sample.

Then I ran yarn deploy AND IT FAILED

The default version of hardhat was using a different version of solidity.

So I edited the config and updated it to use the version in my contract

yarn deploy AGAIN and SUCCESS

What did I learn?

Sometimes when you do the least you make the most progress, but only if you have been making progress every day along the way.

Solidity Day 2/ 30

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Most people don’t know that installing software packages takes more time than programming.

This is why using containers is so revolutionary – they are like little preinstalled computers.

This is what I learned day 2 of solidity programming

My computer ground to a halt.

I ran the three functions in scaffolding eth. I started them stopped them restarted them. And then my computer stopped.

I had like 10 million node processes running. Maybe I should run this in a container!

While waiting for everything install I thought about port 3000.

Is it related to @mst3k mystery science theater 3000?

Probably not but I went down a rabbit hole.

Here are all mst3k episodes ranked.

I have a favorite – but I don’t know its name 🙁

I started programming a python app.

The python app turns mantras into sounds. I am going to use #scipy and matrices. http://zulko.github.io/blog/2014/03/29/soundstretching-and-pitch-shifting-in-python/

Maybe I will work on it more doing this 30for30 when solidity is slow – like saving things to the blockchain.

At one point my terminal stopped working!

The error: Clear error in Linux: Terminals Database Is Inaccessible Solution https://programmersought.com/article/78227910950/

I reset the terminal emulation:
export TERM=vt100. Something I have not done in like 20 years. And it worked!

I researched tricking out my tmux config – as one does.

Can different panes in #tmux have different color schemes?

Day 2 and it does not feel like much solidity was learned, but sometimes the hardest part is getting your environment set up

If you liked this :

1. Toss me a follow for more threads → @hackerm0m

2. Join me in learning solidity this month

Day 1/30 solidity in public

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Solidity 101

I have mucked around with solidity for years but still don’t feel solid.

This month I am coding examples scaffold-eth every day on, https://twitch.tv/thehackerm0m

Today was day 1 and this is what I learned 🧵👇

#1: https://github.com/scaffold-eth/scaffold-eth

It takes a long time to clone

•I think I should have done the cooking show technique and pre-downloaded it

But this gave me time to pay closer attention to the solidity contracts

#2: What is the goal?

No cut and paste CODE!

• Week 1 go through the basic exercises

• Week 2 build a staking app on buidl guide

• Week 3 build a dex

This is pretty ambitious — go BIG or go home!

#3: What did we learn today?

The repo is still cloning as we speak, we learned a lot

• 3 types of variables: local, state & global (ie blockchain)

• Gas fee logic (non-linearly related to # of statements & more) — https://dlt-repo.net/storage-vs-memory-vs-stack-in-solidity-ethereum/

• Beanstalk was hacked 🙁

TL;DR: A journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step

Today I took one step along with some folks

• We installed the scaffolding-eth repo

• Made a Plan

• Learned some things

Want to learn solidity with me? Follow me @hackerm0m and join on twitch every day this month!

Read this post and more on my Typeshare Social Blog