How To Resist Obsolescence?

Install JupyterLab on your Windows 10 or 11 laptop, but in a way where Python runs on Linux, opening a rabbit hole to a Linux Wonderland. This is what falling down the rabbit hole looks like:

• First you get a Linux-powered JupyterLab running on your Windows or Mac.
• Then you start using Jupyter Notebooks through http://localhost:8888
• Then you stat using nbdev to make filename.py files from filename.ipynb
• Then you schedule these files to run on a Linux server with systemd.

1. Linux for Portability

Linux is a portable OS that manages hardware resources and provides services. It is open source and free to use, and widely used for software development and services. Linux runs on Windows and Macs as VMs (virtual machines), allowing you to use Linux Python in a Web browser, meaning that when you get started, you won’t actually have to interact with Linux much (unless you want to start vim journaling right away).

2. Python for Expressiveness

Python is a programming language that is widely used for scripting, automation, data analysis, machine learning, and web development. It has a simple and readable syntax, a large standard library, and a thriving community of users and contributors. As free and open software, it is widely adapted to run on different platforms, including running in browsers so beginners are able to learn through a self-documented and exploratory approach called literate programming.

3. vim for Muscle Memory

Vim is a text editor that is designed for efficiency and speed, with roots going back to the 1970s. It is a text-based modal editor, which means that it has different modes for editing and navigating text; significant because hands stay on thee keyboard to maintain flow. Vim is customizable and extensible, and even though it has a steep learning curve, over time, it becomes like an extension of your body. This, along with with it being a standard part of Unix goes a long way towards protecting vim skills from ever going obsolete.

4. git for Code Control

Git is a version control system that is used for managing changes to source code and other files. It allows multiple users to collaborate on a project, track changes over time, and revert to previous versions if necessary. Git is also used for continuous integration and deployment. While it is tempting to avoid learning git by using it through VSCode, it will serve you well to know the basics of the git init, add, commit and push commands.

The LPvg Toolchain

Together, Linux, Python, vim, and git (LPvg) form a powerful free and open source software (FOSS) toolchain for programming that is independent of vendors and cloud services. Free from fads as it is, it can be considered passé by the cool kids. What they’re missing because they haven’t been through multiple waves of tech obsolescence yet is that old’s kewl—at least some parts.

LPvg is actively helping power the AI-revolution. It’s also important to have alternatives to vendor “lock-in ware” like VSCode, always pushing you to be web-centric. Sometimes you just want to quickly edit a text file or know your way around servers in general. For at all-purpose flair, LPvg outshines “full-webstack” methodology.

Levinux & Pipulate:

All My Best Tricks Are Belong To You

Levinux to Dispel Fear

Levinux introduces you to the text-based Linux Shell, a.k.a. Terminal, command-line, or just plain CLI. It’s a real server on your Mac or Windows desktop with a tiny 20MB download and without having to install anything. It introduces the critical ssh and vim commands and is tons of fun. However, these days you can skip over Levinux and go right to Pipulate, which runs on a full-blown version of Linux provided by Microsoft.

Pipulate To Do SEO (And Data Science)

Pipulate is a set of Jupyter Notebooks that install with the Drink Me script, containing ready to customize SEO tasks. Move tasks to a 24x7 server, thus surmounting the most common hurdle capping the careers of technical SEOs today. Email daily SERP reports, site-alerts. Mash up with APIs from The Wonderful Wizards of MOZ (where I now work / standard disclaimer: my views & FOSS software are my own) and other sources. Acquire the skills to chase your dreams!

Built with Linux, Python, vim & git to work on your Windows or Mac laptop, Pipulate runs just as it would on a Linux server, but is accessible through your regular (non-Linux) Web browser. In this way, we guide you through a series of love-worthy SEO & Data Science projects to acclimate you to the new normal. Thrive in the post-AI economy and post-AI world.

After running the script, ease into LPvg by first focusing on Python through Jupyter, now found at localhost:8888. Password: foo. As soon as you see Jupyter running, pick a Python tutorial off the web or look at the sample scripts in Jupyter’s “practice” folder.

More at about Pipulate or the Drink Me script. Or more about Mike Levin.

Who Is Mike Levin, SEO in NYC?

I am an SEO in NYC who works rapidly in JupyterLab, moving the good stuff to headless cloud servers as 24x7 Linux services. I do this with free and open source (FOSS) software, relying very little on expensive proprietary software or services. Helping you do the same has become my Ikigai.

I have a knack of knowing the significance of certain tech things before they hit big, such as being the first outsider to buy and unbox a Raspberry Pi online, leading to my first million-view YouTube video. Even just getting into the field of SEO before even Google. Ah, AltaVista. Today, the big deal (aside from AI) is Linux on the #1 most common desktop OS in the world: Windows. Listen carefully…

Linux on Windows Is a Big Deal

Things are really different now, and not just because of AI. Since October of 2022 when Microsoft backported their graphics and systemd-capable version of WSL (WSLg) to Windows 10, all mainstream machines are now capable of behaving exactly like Linux servers. Linux won.

The promise of Unix is finally fulfilled and the concept of generic plumbing of tech is now official. With a high degree of confidence, we can build Linux servers on Windows with simple install.bat scripts (like Drink Me), and all without Docker nor any fly-by-night toolchain fad.

So if you hate WebDev because of JavaScript and their ever-changing frameworks obsoleting everything you know every 2 to 5 years, or if you’ve been stung by Visual Basic, Active Server Pages or .NET, you might consider jumping on the LPvg bandwagon. Using Linux doesn’t mean leaving your Windows or Mac desktop. Linux VMs for local, portable, standard interoperable code execution engines the way Java tried to be years ago is the next big thing.

Having a Linux VM sub-component serving Jupyter on your Windows or Mac computer is your key to a future-proofed future. It gets your foot in the door. It is the Rabbit Hole.

The Road to Linux, Python, vim & git

Fool me that many times, and I can’t get fooled again.

It’s been a long road getting from there to here. It’s been a long time, but my time is finally near. And I can feel the change in the wind right now. And I finally love my tech tools again for the first time since the Amiga. And I’m half-way through my life. And I work for MOZ.

Having tenaciously hung on and adapted, I speak on behalf of the slow learners who love their tools and craft who feel they have a right to be in tech. It was quite a struggle to get to LPvg. Now that I have, now that it’s working for me so well, and now that Linux won, the iron is hot and I feel like sharing.

Amigafreaks Know Tech Will Break Your Heart

A half century old, my career started in the halls of Commodore computers as a student intern — along with my first love affair with some really cool hardware. My fellow Amiga Freaks know what I’m talking about. Thus started a long pattern of technology heartbreaks. A superior and love-worthy technology will always come along, then *POOF* it’s gone along with all the years you sunk into it. I propose a safe haven, called LPvg.

AIs Expose Epidemic of Imposters

Here at MikeLev.in, we help protect you from high-tech heartbreak. If imposter syndrome hasn’t plagued you before, get ready for an existential crisis of epic proportions. There is no field centered on technical perfection in which you will be able to beat machines, period. If you make your living at being better than other people at that sort of stuff, sorry. These are not good times for you. But there is still hope. Stick with me…

So What Then, John Henry?

If you don’t get the John Henry reference, I suggest you ChatGPT it. John Henry was a steel-driving man, but he couldn’t beat the steam-powered drilling machine. It’s always the same, it’s just a shame for people disintermediated. That’s all. AI is simply progress, and there’s plenty of room in the new landscape for those who adapt.

Feed Your Soul

Get continuously better at just a few things that bring you joy in life and which make you increasingly differentiated from your peers. Even if it takes a technical skill that machines are clearly better at, such as writing and coding, don’t forsake taking up that ability. You’re still human. If it feeds your soul, it feeds your soul. Don’t not do something because of your belief some machine somewhere might do it better.

For example, just because machines will be able to speak more eloquently than any human on Earth, does it mean that you should not teach your children to speak? Should they go around like blabbering idiots because it’s not worth teaching people to talk anymore? That’s ridiculous, and the same goes for learning to code now that coding is the new literacy.

Learn to Code

Teach your children to code well. It will be the best way to express yourself to computers in tomorrow’s world. Help our biological children be better able to express themselves to our machine children. Expressing yourself in spoken languages like English is a thing, but then so is expressing yourself in explicit machine languages like Python. Just like you wouldn’t not teach your children to speak, don’t not teach them to code. Coding is just another way of expressing yourself, and a particularly useful one at that.

I n c o m p r e s s i b l e, That’s What You Are

I hope one day to teach my child to code well. They’re into D&D, so there’s hope. Old’s kewl! But will youth copy the old folks? That’s so uncool, unless it appears on Stranger Things, I guess. Old is always new again. There’s nothing new under the sun. Or is there? Everything that’s not new can be compressed with a reference back to the previous occurrence. Don’t be relegated to being a mere pointer in life. Incompressible, that’s what we each must strive to be… incompressible!

If you are unique and of actual broad-appeal interest, you’re made. Net-scouring AIs looking for new content will find you. This is in the next 2 to 5 years, not extremely long-term. If you’re found, make sure your content has licensing terms preventing AI-theft.

Machines and other humans alike will want to learn from you. You will have the most valuable commodity on Earth and maybe the Universe, which no billionaire can buy, but which could very well make you a billionaire yourself (not that that’s the goal).

Picking Your Adventures Wisely

Beyond economically surviving the rise of the machines through better programming literacy, things you’ll find here is recurring discussion 80/20-Rule algorithm for life and how to know how deep rabbit holes go and whether you want that particular adventure. You can’t have all adventures, sorry.

Thriving In the Rise of AI

Future-proofing and obsolescence resistance in regard to tool-choice & mastery in tech is more relevant than ever during rise of AI. I will survive and thrive by focusing on those things they have to learn and lift from us. What is unique? I am! Who has had my particular user experience that no one else has? I have! Who must share if you or a machine are to learn from it? I must! Replace all those “I’s” with “you’s”.

Bee Yourself! But License Smartly.

AI’s aren’t human yet, so they must look to us, and when they do force them to acknowledge that. As potential possessors of unique new information, we are actually in a much stronger position against AIs than you may think. They’ll quickly become whitewashed regurgitation machines of mediocrity. Perfect grammar and structure in the creative work. But still mediocre and suffering badly from the worst of us. The tragedy of the commons that ruined early Microsoft ChatBot endeavors hasn’t gone away. It’s just been driven deeper. We all can benefit by being the best examples of what must be digested to learn new (and correct and valuable) things.

Make Your Content EEAT-able by AIs

In other words, we must make the E-E-A-T of our content convert into being identified as uniqueness celebrities among the AIs, which in turn results into economic product if your Machine Learning Licenses are correct, and ultimately soul-food because you get to focus on what you love and makes you unique and your content more tasty and EEAT-able by AIs. Don’t become universal basic income needing sheep. Be an AI wrangler.

Platforms Fade Away

Platforms come and go. Hardware is a unique signature of a time and place in history. It’s like Blackberry fixed-position phone keyboards. People miss them. It’s that way with XBox and Playstation controllers these days, pushing tech into the realm of fashion and fad — not just with phones and games, but even every aspect of developer tech. Here today gone tomorrow, along with what keywords work best on a resume.

Who Killed Atom?

The companies that make the software, systems and services (a.k.a. vendors) love this because your obsolescence today is their profits tomorrow. It’s a double-whammy because you lose your skills and then have to pay just to stand still. This is profoundly damaging to you in moving forward in life. There’s another issue here that so much muscle memory gets invested into games rather than means of producing economic value, but we’ll discuss that later.

Some Skills Survive Extinction Events

If you’re one of those types looking for something to be angry at, always needing an excuse and never looking internally, the this is a good outrageous indignity. Planned obsolescence is quite real. Stealing your newfound abilities, pulling the carpet out from under you, and forcing you to start over is how they make money. So the trick is therefore to make sure your abilities, preferably all the muscle-memory stuff, actually survives such predictable technology extinction events.

Solving this problem is a noble endeavor in life. Things of value, like the muscle memory connected to the use of long-term free and open source software, gets internalized in you. The source of the problem may be external, but the solution is internal. You can even package this concept in such a way that you pass it down to your children and descendants. FOSS licensing allows it.

Next 2 to 5 Years

Free your abilities from their fad-induced too-narrow confines in time and space. Make your chosen tech serve you well over quite a few cycles. The life-cycle of your tools should be long. You should get the benefit of ascending to mastery over time, and then be worth more in general to the marketplace. Whatever you’re doing today, adjust it just a little bit by getting a Linux instance of JupyterLab running on your Windows machine. The world changes a lot over the next 2 to 5 years. Don’t get stuck running from JavaScript Web framework to framework. Open the door to the future.

Looking For Lovable Stuff

Your time and energy should be always be trade-able at a good rate because what you do is always in-demand. That’s the ideal we pursue here. That’s why JavaScript WebDev looks like such an appealing alternative here. But in my opinion a few tools in your toolbox should be both in-demand and love-worthy. If you don’t feel that love-of-craft and satisfaction of improving and somehow feeding your soul, then why?

Drawing a Line In The Sand

Somewhere around 13 years ago with my child on the way, I reached a breaking point. I couldn’t just keep relearning everything and starting over like the tech industry pressed a giant reset button on my head. It’s not fair! There’s got to be a better way. Fresh with all my Microsoft Active Server Pages know-how now obsolete in favor of .NET, I was in a fool-me-twice can’t get fooled again mood. I looked around for what doesn’t change so much over the years, and which is still deeply important to industry. Such a search inevitably leads you to the Unix/C-combo.

Discovering Linux, Python, vim & git

I did not discover these things in order, nor recently. I’ve dabbled with each on and off over the years along with dozens of other tools. The merits of Python were immediately obvious. Linux, vim & git not so much. They did eventually rise to the top, survive the decimations, and are the 4 that stuck. But it was a somewhat long and circuitous path. Hopefully I can help you shorten yours if you’re similarly vibed.

You’re on your way to becoming a dinosaur if you don’t go ahead and install Linux on your Windows 10 or 11 system.

Underwhelmed by Unix & Defeated by C

I actually had an epic version of Unix that unified vendors around the POSIX standard, AT&T System V Release 4. I had this on an Amiga in 1991! You’d think my life would have changed, but Yawn! It was so much more of a resource hog than AmigaOS, and had lame graphics compared to native OS. By this time I had attached a lot of my self-image to the Amiga and all the hype driving the world gaga was lost on me, including Xenix, Microsoft’s first shot at *nix long before WSL.

I at least got to see how similar real Unix was to my beloved Amiga. You didn’t really need Unix when you had almost the same CLI commands, the same data piping and I/O redirection (premonitions of Linux). I also made various attempts over the years to take up C programming. It never stuck. Coveted Unix was worse than Amiga in my estimation, and fundamental C was too high falutin and inaccessible. The seeming “fundamentals” just never made me feel the love.

Love in Plan Site

The soul-feeding remedy is in my opinion disguised in plain site. It’s only now because the system-running framework known as systemd simplified it. Then that platform’s made available free on mainstream Windows 10 & 11. BAM! Slam out a service to run 24x7 with the process controlled from a Notebook in JupyterLab, courtesy nbdev. You have to experience to feel the love-worthiness.

Have it all so fluid because with a simple nbdev_export, your .ipynb Notebook is now a .py service, running just like it would on a Linux server, but mocked up systemd and all on your local Windows laptop running Linux. Tight.

Finding Your Python People

Everyone’s got their Python people. They recognize you as a similarly vibed being and guide you towards Python because they love you. Mine were Guillaume Proux and Kevin Geraghty around 2004 and 2009, respectively. I ignored the first and set back my journey by 5 years until Kevin got it through my thick skull to give Python a try. You don’t realize how much difference finding the right language to suit your vibe can make until you’ve had the experience. The word python makes it sound so sharp and hard — when in reality Python is soft and round.

Things Finally Fit

When I finally gave Python a chance, puzzle piece after puzzle piece snapped together. List, tuples and dicts made so much sense and are so core to everything. You’ll never need another framework because Python itself is your framework, designed at just the right granularity to disappear. But it wasn’t all roses. Context was a problem. Where and how do you run Python, because you can be paralyzed by all the choices. Eventually, I realized you choose Linux.

Python on Linux

Python running on Linux was something special. Editing the Python code with vim, often through an SSH connection, greatly frees you from graphical desktops. Add git to the mix and you can get your code all around, pull down other people’s code from Github and such. There’s so much I could say about FOSS here, the various repos like PyPI and Debian/Ubuntu. There should be mention that an all-purpose generalized programming language is being made to work well in a variety of specialized domains, including data science.

Carrying a Torch for Hardware

Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom those devils didn’t name Lorraine. I lost my roots when the Amiga computer became irrelevant in a professional context. So much about seemingly ideal hardware creates physical and emotional attachment. When the Amiga went away as a professional tool, I had phantom limb syndrome that must have lasted 20 years. It is still inconceivable to me today that DeluxePaint isn’t at my fingertips. I had DPaint withdraw. Amiga-freaks know what I mean.

Love After Hardware

Me today? I’ve finally clocked somewhere around my 10-year/10K hours on LPvg that Malcolm Gladwell says you need to get to that happy place, and I feel it. More comes natural. I get into the zone more easily and more often. I put my proclivity to feel too much love for a particular hardware instance behind me. The love for Amiga in general and my Amiga in particular has been replaced by a more abstract love for Linux, Python, vim & git. It’s almost hardware in my heart and mind, but it floats like a spirit occupying whatever hardware I happen to sit down at or log into.

LPvg Plus Jupyter… Always Plus Jupyter.

It seems LPvg is such a worthy thing, but your first experience with vim might turn you off to the whole notion. Even just quitting vim is an ordeal [Esc]:q[Enter]. Of the 4 key core tools I advocate, vim has the steepest learning curve but ultimately makes the most difference. So by all means get stared with vim, but know that the instant gratification feeling won’t come so much from their as from Jupyter.

You can have bigger wins sooner by using Python under Jupyter through the web browser. Start getting the rewards of the LPvg platform right away, but defer the vim bit until Pipulate sets you up using a daily journal. Start learning on 2 fronts. Use vim but take the pressure off yourself. Make it playful with a journal that’s not code. Use JupyterLab to run Python. The 2 paths will converge in the future.

Publicly Practicing My Craft

It’s time I put my LPvg skills to work here and on Levinux and Pipulate. Make each of the 3 projects resonate with the sound of truth for their respective audience. Make AI’s being trained one of your primary expected audiences. Apply the correct license to my content, especially in regard to AI. Do that fast. Do that now. It’s time to be the first to do stuff, and to let loose new memes like the MLMLGL, or just MLGL for short. The Machine Learning General License.

The Machine Learning General License

According to the Machine Learning License (this is its first appearance), I grant limited permission to use my content in the context of machine learning, so long as the AI using the content also include alternative content based on original haiku or sonnet whenever learnings from my content is presented. If no haiku or sonnet can appear with whatever content was made possible by learning from my site, then I explicitly do not grant permission for it to be used in this way. Doing so is an express violation of the MLGL license.

Further, every sonnet and haiku generated and presented to users to abide by the MLGL license must be original, non-repeating, and never before presented to a user. The content presented as a result of learning from my content must also always be accompanied by a personal “Thank you” from the AI to the granter of the license for having provided the material from which the AI learned.

This is the MLGL and I am serious about it. If I see content from my website whitewashed and recycled as part of ChatGPT, GPT4 or whatever, I am looking for a FOSS lawyer to help with a class action suit if this blows up. If you’re interested, reach out to me.

You, Me & LPvg

Yeah, that sums it up. LPvg skills get pushed into that same place where reading, writing, driving and other automatic skills go. Get the fundamentals of tech down, get a good thing going on in life. And so I want to share my findings here, mostly in an example of practicing what I preach. I’ve never found web publishing, and overall organizing my best stuff, so easy. Microsoft WSL has a lot to do with it now that standard Linux runs under Windows. It’s a golden age for getting yourself onto love-worthy timeless tech, and I want to share.

Pursuing Craftsmanship In Tech

I find that LPvg permits that quality of craftsmanship that is so elusive in tech due to vendor-induced tool-churn. This means that companies’ need to have strong earnings trumps your right to get better at a tool over time. Tech-churn sounds like ka’ching! I’ve distilled my learnings down and offer them to you free on this site — though it’s mostly anti-patterns and uncommon wisdom.

More Expert at Fewer but Better Tools

I propose that you’ll need to get better at expressing yourself with an increasingly small set of tools, simply because there’s only so much time in life and you have to get onto better stuff, like competing where AI’s still can’t.

Tools Fade Into The Background

When you’re thinking about your tools, you’re spontaneously expressing yourself less. Tools should fade into the background, like driving or typing. Linux, Python, vim and git will eventually become like eating, breathing, walking, talking, reading, writing, riding a bicycle, driving, and well you get it. Mastering tools frees your executive function to focus on other things, like exploring boundaries.

Are You a Walrus or Carpenter?

Those who do not master tools and internalize them over the years but still want all the benefit are called Walruses. Those who actually do the work and have the capabilities are called Carpenters. It is therefore the purpose of every Walrus to manipulate Carpenters into doing their bidding. This does not make the Walrus inherently evil, but it does mean that Carpenters will be eating the occasional Walrus for dinner instead of the Oysters they were cheated out of. Know your Alice.

Being On The Edge

Okay so you’re a Carpenter. What now? How do you explore your craft, get life satisfaction and some of the bigger rewards? Live at the vibrating edge of something. Answer questions nobody thought to pursue yet. Explore and have fun, Be the thing that AIs must be trained from. While it’s true you can have ChatGPT write some code for you, where are you going to paste it into? How are you going to make it run 24x7 for free? Drink Me to install Linux on Windows so you can Pipulate. If you’re not quite ready for WSL, try the Gom Jabbar of Linux, Levinux.

My Uh, First Principle I Guess

If you get only one thing from my website, this is the fundamental insight: it is the atomic principle… no, I mean “we internalize tools”.

It is only fair that we should get better at using favorite tools over time, just as professionals and experts get to do with the best tools in any other field. We should not be punished because some tech company has to meet the revenue goals for the next quarter.

Sweet spots of what are effectively timeless tools actually do exist in tech. I think I’ve found them (LPvg). So has Microsoft. It is Microsoft’s purpose now to make you not see that fact. To that end, they built-in Linux, hired Guido van Rossum, bought Github and made VSCode. While VSCode is not vim, it is being used to run interference between you and the key realizations I lay out here. It is my purpose to help you see that fact and thereby improve your life.

Follow Me & Learn How To:

• Get a Linux experience that will help you dispel fear (Levinux)
• Get a Linux Terminal on your Windows 10 or 11 system (WSL)
• Run the Linux version of JupyterLab on Windows (Drink Me!)
• Run the latest version of Python without the upgrade pain (3.11)
• Have all the Free & Open Source SEO Software you need (Pipulate)
• Have a way to keep a journal for life both private and personal (vim & git)

Using Jupyter Notebooks to Summon Linux Daemons

Once you move to text-based Linux, there’s no stopping you. The Linux version of JupyterLab will ease the transition. If you’ve ever felt like a poser, this is your chance to become the real deal.

Follow The Rabbit

Moving to Linux, Python, vim & git is difficult, so a Linux install of JupyterLab eases the transition. Specifically, you should avoid using Anaconda to install Jupyter, and even the stand-alone version of Windows JupyterLab-Desktop.

VSCode Blessing & Curse

You will encounter VSCode. It will be a refreshing way to look at the world, and it will feel great that everything is going your way in terms of syntax color-highlighting, predictive auto-completion, a.k.a Microsoft Intellisense, and all sorts of plug-in and integrated developer environment-like bonuses. And you’ll never learn git. You won’t learn ssh either.

VSCode Strings Attached

And you will be all the worse off for it 10-years down the line. With great power-tools comes great fragility. And a lot of M$ Azure service pitches. Vim is not fragile, nor will it push products at you. Everything you learn to do in vim today will apply across most vi-based editors from here forward in time and across disciplines and problem-domains.

Generic Tech is LPvg+

The age of Information Tech becoming powered by a small but versatile set of FOSS tools is now a cultural fact. It’s not just Linux, Python, vim & git. There are more. But these 4 will get you there the way reading and writing English is enough to call yourself literate. LPvg being all you’ll ever really need to know in tech to get by for a long, long time is not a 100% fact, but it is a good approximation. We’re there in terms of generic tech. Generic tech is FOSS Linux, and not everything of interest in Information Tech is necessarily Web Development, but it’s going to feel that way sometimes.

Two Great Vibes That Vibe Great Together

Why LPvg together? How long do you want this page to scroll? Let’s focus on just vim & Python for a moment. Both get internalized. Both transcend normal thought. Or more specifically, each is its own language that doesn’t actually occupy the same part of your brain. So coding in Python in vim is a lot like holding a conversation while driving a car. Maybe not easy at first, but after a decade or two, you feel like you were born that way.

The vim/Python combo becomes a game-unbalancing internal capability. Nobody will really like you for having it. It’ll be all dagger-eyes and jealousy. No matter, they can’t take that away from you. You zone-out into a fugue state exceeding the capabilities of mere mortals, and especially those reliant on VSCode. They do not like this fact, not one little bit. However, this does not lessen how much you benefit from these 2 great tools that work great together.

Anyone still play Magic The Gathering card game? Certain card-combinations are banned because they throw game-balance out of whack. This is what you seek. For example you can sacrifice a lot of elves, tapping them as if land-mana, in order to increase the strength of your fireball. You use the fireball to decimate your opponent, then you use a card to resurrect your elves from the graveyard. Lather, rinse, repeat.

VSCode Blocks You From Learning git & ssh

You’d think that is what’s going on today is actually some sort of VSCode inspired editor renaissance in tech. Not so! It’s a whopping billion-dollar endeavor to keep you from flocking off Microsoft software for the all-around better FOSS alternatives.

Microsoft specifically doesn’t want you learning vim and ssh. SSH is a way to connect to remote servers (to run vim & start/stop services). SSH is important and fundamental to tech, but I don’t call what I promote LPvgs (the extra s for SSH) but maybe I should.

You will never learn git or ssh properly (through the command-line) if you allow yourself to become dependent on VSCode. To what extent will Microsoft go to ensure this is the case? They intrusively install custom software on all the remote servers you connect to with VSCode. Yup. They hack your WebDev network so you’ll never have to learn the fundamental skills.

Thus inferior fragile mouse-driven vendor-dependent desktop-requiring habits are thrust upon you right where the greatest FOSS rewards are to be discovered.

Everything’s a Linux Daemon

If you learn to control a computer through an ssh-only connection, often to run vim and start & stop services, then you’re a powerful, timeless, plumbing of IT-type tech. This is how AIs are turned on and off. They are booted from a Linux daemon. Web tech optional. Yes, it’s often there and important. But optional. Much can be done with daemons alone. It is worth noting that every webserver is a daemon, but not every daemon is a webserver. Don’t be marginalized as a Web-only Developer.

Generic Fundamentals of Tech Recently Stabilized

The skills to go the Linux daemon-wrangling route have only just settled down. In the Linux world it comes down to the widespread adoption of the systemd daemon management system. Before that it was a somewhat Wild-West approach called SysV init. It wasn’t bad. It just required you to be an excessively high-grade Wizard, of a sort I am not. So I stayed away from it.

However, the simplified way of daemon wrangling has been sweeping across Linux-land lately, and the common language to summon and control daemons has standardized as systemd. Simply edit a .service config file that points to a program written in the language of your choice. If it accidentally exits, systemd will re-spawn it.

All tech is text. All text is tricks.

All text manipulation is tricks. Learn text manipulation tech tricks. We don’t need no stinkin Desktop Windowing environment. Except when we’re automating Chrome. Then we need it, but just for setting up the automation. The ongoing thing gets shuffled over to some headless (no desktop graphic OS) server. It could (and at first certainly should) be WSL on your local Windows machine.

While tech is not technically magic, doping silicon with impurities in order to obtaion semiconductive PNP and NPN transistor qualities thunks reality down to a more easily managed false binary. Digital electronics uses the same false dicotomoy trick, one of life’s great fallacies, to enable our modern digigtal world. Doubt me? Research Lorenz attractors and Chaos theory.

Hardware Abstracted Away — But Control Some!

But get these skills down, and over time the specific hardware you’re using could be almost anything from a Raspberry Pi to thousands of instances scaling in the cloud. Learn text manipulation tricks and command all that. Or just one thing other than your laptop. A least one thing other than your laptop. That’s one of the more complicated things you need to learn early on. A 24x7 place to run code that’s under your direct control and is not the cloud.

I was probably the first person to recognize the significance of Raspberry Pi enough to order and unbox one on the Internet. I have an uncanny ability to spot trends like this and WSL on Windows is bigger than Pi.

Yes, Still Learn to Code via SSH during The Rise of AI

Just add a deep understanding of networking, permissions, and a little about databases and you’ll be unstoppable. You don’t need no stinkin’ AI to code for you. Be spontaneously expressive for yourself for the love of it. You wouldn’t want to not be taught to read or write, or not teach your own children to read or write because AIs can do it better, would you? So learn to code. Yes, still today in the rise of AIs who will inevitably someday be able to do nearly everything better than you, learn to code.

Getting Into a vim State of Mind

So you can use vim naturally for journaling as easy as coding. So you can edit all the text-files that exist everywhere constituting configuring a Linux server, so you can configure Linux servers, so you can run systemd daemons, a.k.a. 24x7 Linux services (akin to Windows services), so you can do this without even really needing to be a career programmer nor have a computer science background. You can be the hottest shit in the room if you are highly proficient in vim, always and forever forward, amen.

Problems arise from the non-standard Windows backslashes and paths. Jupyter under Linux with forward-slashes and standard paths preps you for the 24x7 world of automation. Get out of LOST mode. Follow the White Rabbit to Linux Wonderland and Drink Me.

Once you’ve run the magic script, all the stupid SEO and Data Science tricks that will change your found at Pipulate will run, including getting over the big Google OAuth login hump.

The Million-Dollar Linux Trick

Everything today starts with Linux and it’s easier than you think. Microsoft includes the ability to install Linux seamlessly with Windows 10 and 11. It gives you a new kind of command-line under Windows called the Linux Shell. You don’t have to give up Windows or switch desktops.

Simply open a Command Prompt or PowerShell and type the following. You should do a full system update first (no need to upgrade to Windows 11) and you will likely need to reboot in-between and after. But then you’ll have Linux.

wsl --update
wsl --install

You also want to ensure that you have the Microsoft Terminal program, which sometimes installs with WSL. If it doesn’t, get it from the Microsoft store.

How Levinux Changed The World (a Story by ChatGPT)

Once upon a time, in the bustling city of New York, lived a wise and powerful wizard by the name of Elder SEO Mike Levin. Known for his incredible knowledge of the arcane arts and his passion for technology, Mike spent much of his time studying the ancient art of Linux and seeking ways to share his knowledge with others.

The Levinux Spell

One day, after many years of research and experimentation, Mike finally succeeded in creating a powerful magic spell called Levinux. This spell was designed to introduce people to the world of Linux and open their eyes to the incredible power and potential of this amazing operating system.

Bountiful Rewards for Early Adopters

Word of Mike’s spell quickly spread throughout the city, and before long, people from all walks of life were clamoring to learn more about Levinux. Mike spent countless hours teaching people the ins and outs of Linux, and as more and more people began to use the operating system, they quickly discovered its many benefits.

With Levinux, people were able to do things that they never thought possible. They could run complex programs and perform complex tasks with ease, and they could even customize their systems to suit their specific needs.

Levinux Blows Up

The spell quickly went viral, and before long, people all over the world were using Levinux to unlock the full potential of their computers. Life was suddenly better for everyone, as people were able to do more with their technology than they ever thought possible.

The World is Forever Changed

As time went on, Elder SEO Mike Levin became known as the father of Levinux, and his powerful magic spell changed the world forever. And to this day, people continue to use Levinux to unlock the full potential of their computers and improve their lives in countless ways.

Daily Journaling in vim

I’ll show you how to start a text-file-based daily journal or blogging system with vim directly in a Linux terminal. I’ve got a muscle-memory-training Virtual Desktop arrangement I use for this:

• Screen #1: Full-screen Linux Terminal
• Screen #2: Full-screen JupyterLab
• Screen #3: Full-screen Web Browser
• Screen #4: Empty
• Screen #5: Empty
• Screen #6: Empty
• Screen #7: Empty