This Christmas is a weird one. We're staying home with our cat who is in the final stages of an illness he's had for some years. Keeping him comfortable. It's also our first in NH. I love the amount of snow we get up here.

oooh this book looks good

We engage in an evolutionary construction that continues a tradition started by our physical world long before we were here, and carried on into computing from its earliest days. It's also a process that mirrors how creative, explorative work is done.

@thebonesofjrjones.bsky.social Thanks for helping keep me sane this year! Radio Waves is somethin’ else.

"I mistook a clear view for a short distance." Too real! I've experienced this time and again. But I'm reticent to encode a reminder to avoid this mistake in the future; my life has been filled with wonderful projects that I would not have embarked on had I not been so naive.

I greatly appreciate everyone who has purchased this or our clothbound — besides supporting our new bindery & press, you’re also supporting my research. As a thanks, here are some member essays I've made public recently:

I'm also making this member update public today. It's about the itemized OS' persistent data storage layer & internal data model, which has grown organically over the years to support my experiments. You can read it here: lab.alexanderobenauer.com/updates/the-...

Today is the day! The paperback of Bootstrapping Computing is available & shipping. Preorders will go out shortly. Order today for delivery by Christmas in the U.S. You can buy it on our new site, powered by Stripe's payment links (👋 good riddance, shopify)

We had a lot of fun thinking about this cover, but one of my favorite things when working with artists is to just let them go wild with something they want to create. That's what we did here, and Owen knocked it out of the park. Love his choices of color, scene, etc.

Some news to share today: Earlier this year, we started our publishing company and released our first title, Bootstrapping Computing. The full-color paperback is available for preorder now, and will be released on December 1.

An essay reflecting on my work from 2023. Originally published for members, now made publicly available. Some highlights in the thread. lab.alexanderobenauer.com/updates/corp...

11 years ago, we launched a product that let you use random, unique email addresses for each sender (now common!) We signed up for tons of big co's newsletters to see who we'd catch selling your email address. Only one truly big co did it, and they did it nonstop: NYT.

This week: Making books and tending the fire.

Part 2 is out now. It’s about why the work we do in pursuit of composable systems and malleable software matters a great deal. Link in reply & background in thread!

It can be hard to discern and communicate why you're so drawn to some work. You're circling around something, but you're not sure what. By your nature, you hold some principle that is in conflict with reality; you can see yourself circling around it.

If you have access to a dark sky, tonight’s a great night to spend outside! Orionid meteor shower, and Comet Lemmon, all under a new moon.

"A knife can cut an avocado, and much more." These kinds of sentences show up in the most fundamental papers that I return to year after year. They sound silly out of place, but in my favorite works, they're used to build up to essential guiding ideas and insights!

Part 2 of my 2024 essay, hitting the 'net this week; On the moral imperative for composable systems & malleable software.

An AI coding approach I've liked using, which I first used on this project: Vibe code the first version. Investigate the code for its shape, complexities, needs, failure points. Then scrap all that and engineer a new version.

This article is now public! Link in reply. I recreated Jef Raskin's 1987 'Canon Cat' user environment and observed myself as I lived in it for a week. Implementation details, surprises, and more in the essay. (Why touch grass when you can read 3.2k words on user environments?)

I’m going to an event that Tim Berners-Lee will be at for his latest book. We can submit questions for TBL in advance, so I’ve been considering what I’d ask. What would you ask?

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!