Shipped a little refresh to the little lab site. Also added some graphics made for the User Environments zine to the Canon Cat / Jasper essay 🙂

One syntax sugar I’ve enjoyed using in the language: It will match on unlabeled first params for dot calls on any expression of the right type.

Last month, I started a series diving into the implementation of a user environment for personal computing that I've been working on this year. The second lab report is out now, on the environment's programming language.

This week: Making books and watching turkeys.

This year, I’ve been building a user environment that reifies personal computing of the kind I’ve explored for the last several years — something I can fully live in. I'm kicking off a series of lab reports that take a deep dive into this environment's implementation.

This year, I’ve been building a user environment that reifies personal computing of the kind I’ve explored for the last several years — something I can fully live in. I'm kicking off a series of lab reports that take a deep dive into this environment's implementation.

Roughly a quarter of the first ten years of Sarah and my marriage was spent on (very) long road trips. This had the delightful effect of slowing down time, and the associations of places with times improved my (typically poor) recall: the years on the road are filled with inseparable memories.

Prototyping zines

Prototyping zines

carpe noctem

carpe noctem

I have enjoyed my work at the computer significantly more since starting to bind books daily. Not that I didn’t enjoy it before, but there’s some kind of forced balance that I think I needed.

This week: Making books and watching deer.

I gave Claude Code access to my Obsidian vault and asked it to give me some questions / prompts. It asked things like: - What forces preserve mediocre interfaces? - How do we escape vendor-imposed constraints on our thinking? Here's a small taste:

Excited to pore over this new book from Buddy Bindery. Thank you @alexanderobenauer.com for sharing your artistry with the world

"Simply following one's curiosity — even when it seems unproductive to do so — is wildly underestimated as an activity that moves the human race forward. Feynman's spinning plates led to his Nobel prize."

This Ars article from 2010 is fun to read now. Discussion of Carbon vs. Cocoa apps, pointing out the portion of the user base eager for the Cocoa rewrite, evoking the Human Interface Guidelines in the face of unseemly UI decisions... Such a different era.

The system Smith went on to describe (for programming by demonstration) in part elicited some fascinating thoughts from Alan Kay:

Completed another trip around the sun this week. With gratitude, something to share: Creative work is hilariously unintuitive to the adult mind. We are like beavers, blocking flow at the first sound of running water with dams made of any debris around. Here are reminders I hold close: (1/2)

Dave Smith, 2000

Updated my website to begin surfacing more of the work that's remained buried multiple clicks deep, and to finally include a small 'about me' blurb. There's still more to bring to the surface, but I'll leave it here for now.

great stuff @alexanderobenauer.com in a world of tech slop, this quote feels relevant as ever:

Livestreaming again in 20 minutes, making case wraps today!

Enjoyed this weekend's reading of the Declaration of Independence on the very balcony from which it was first read to the American public 249 years ago in Boston

I'll be doing a book making livestream, tomorrow at 1 pm edt. Join me while I make books by hand, the old fashioned way. Have me in the background on mute while you work, or come chat about book binding and other things. Link in reply!

Friends: make beautiful things.

Stumbled into a fun trick: Search for particularly favorite phrases in books you’re reading to discover blog posts from others who quoted that same phrase. Brings lots of enjoyable - directly or tangentially related - ideas into your orbit!

A book press we were lucky enough to find in our new town, in the hands of a longtime bookbinder. We’re restoring it now to put back into regular use!

This batch went quick! 16 left at the moment.

Friends! The first run of our book Bootstrapping Computing sold out quicker than we expected. We’re processing those orders now. We’re teeing up a limited second run, shipping in September. Preorders are open now! Link in reply, details in thread.

I've been living in a recreation of the user environment found on the Canon Cat. The interface consisted of one long document, and no mouse — it featured "leap keys" for navigation. Some things that have intrigued me...

New member update, landing tomorrow — along with a demo you'll get to try out for yourself

Have you read / seen any books that had a unique aspect to their physical construction? Something added or changed; or the physical concept of a book expanded in some way or upended entirely?

Since our preorders went live, I've had a number of folks say, "I should write a book!", and to each I reply, "you should!" This includes folks I've said this to a thousand times before, but for some reason, now it's tracking a bit more clearly for them. Stoked for that.

books are magic books are a technology books are important

Join us in our Tennessee bindery for a few moments while we build a production prototype for our first book. youtu.be/odH8fgg7X3Y

Good lord this look beautiful. I should write a book.

Here's Sarah arranging a promo photo, featuring nods to Windows (activation key), Apple (pro mouse), Lavarand, and some of our childhood books: The New Way Things Work (Macaulay), Invention Book (Caney), Story of Louis Pasteur (Johnson).

Truly, it's an honor y'all — thank you.

I have two things to share with you today. First, we're starting a publishing company. Second, I wrote a book about computing, which you can preorder starting today!

What are the most interesting alternative user environments in personal computing? (Alternatives to the desktop env. or WIMP in general.) Can be from research, industry, fiction...

If you aren't following along with Alex Warth's efforts to recreate Sketchpad, now's the time to start!

Big day! Excited to share new projects with y’all soon.

It looks like all the browsers keep their History data in Sqlite. http://webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki/SQLite https://gist.github.com/dropmeaword/9372cbeb29e8390521c2 I wonder how to nudge that closer to @alexobenauer's graph/itemizedOS? https://alexanderobenauer.com/labnotes/000/

The venerable hyperlink. 🔗 By @alexanderobenauer.com alexanderobenauer.com/labnotes/040/

This went out in an email shortly ago! But: I sent it from a new email service, and it looks like some have landed in spam. If yours landed there, could you mark it as not-spam? I'm looking into fixes from there.

New lab note, out shortly! You can sign up to receive these at the top or bottom of my homepage.

What’s the best book you read this year? Could be new, old, not technically a book, etc.

Glad to be seeing signs of life here! Do folks post similarly to x, or is there a distinct culture over here?