vim Macro to Format Markdown Poetry
by Mike Levin
Friday, May 27, 2022This livecast, lunch with Mike Levin, is about recording a macro so that all the markdown I do to format my poetry for publishing is much easierā¦ it will be recorded before your eyes, and thrown into my ~/.vimrc for future useā¦ which I expect you will also frequently seeā¦ because I write a lot of poetry.
At the risk of demonitizing, LOLā¦
LOL, you got this shit, Mike. Youāre 51 years old, and thatās plenty of time. Just work better, smarter and faster than everyone else.
If you havenāt made it by now, youāre never going to make it.
ā¦so says the person whose negativity canāt bring down either me nor my child who is deeply struggling. I condition my mind. I help them condition their mind. It is Jedi tricks. I have Star Wars to thank for some of it which I of course quote all the time, but it does some deep channeling. Folks like George Lucas, master storytellers, are channeling from somewhere. That somewhere is not always unknown, in the case of Lucas itās the heroās journey and all that myth research by Joseph Campbell and settings by Frank Herbert.
Okay, so get your head on strait and use your next fifty yearsā¦ not better than your last 50, and I have to get out of my head the temptation to say that because my last fifty-years rocked the planet. Itās just nobody knows and thatās okay. No, my next 50-years simply allows my algorithm to work differently, switching from expressing mostly exploratory activity to exploitative activity.
What? Exploit? Doesnāt the English language suck? Yes, the English language really sucks, the bourgeoisie aristocracy keeping the common man like me down. Well, eff-that. We common folk can rise-upā¦ but not in rebellion but rather in taking over the system. Whatās that? We already have? The nerds won, you say? New royalty is the Bill Gates, Elon Musks, Jeff Bezoses and the unheard-of Larry Ellisons? Well, maybe. But not all the nerds won equally.
Itās the wolf-nerds who won. I donāt wanna be a wolf. I want to be a sensitive artistic soul doing my thing and not having to live that deeply entangled and enslaved life of a tech-dude. No, nerds like Linus Torvalds and Guido van Rossum really won in my estimation. They still stand some chance of not being recognized and walking around to enjoy life. Yeah, maybe thatās worth coveting. And the real world-makers like Ada Lovelace who invented software or Grace Hopper who invented high-level business programming (essentially). Yeah, those folks are worth taking note of and emulating.
The wolf tech bros who eat their competition, they can go eff-themselves. You know who should have been rewarded? Jay Miner who invented the Amiga. He should have been Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Jack Tramiel rolled all into one. But he was a gentle sensitive soul doing his thing inventing hardware and changing the world quietly and unrecognized in his day, R.I.P. Jay Glenn Miner and his dog Mitchie, yeah, they should be celebrated today for inventing the love-worthy parts of our world and not those the quartet of cartoonish cannibal tycoons of today.
Elon? Maybe Elon Musk is a little bit different. If A is possible, so then should B and Cā¦ only old-school establishments holding onto their seat of power with fearful white chuckles and knuckles of a death-grip because shallow oil tycoons are cheaters with nothing worthwhile insideā¦
I am still the wolf
Let's not make trouble
Still the wolf
Suppress your double
Still the wolf
Re-read your Carl
Still the wolf
And keep it moral
Still the wolf
You can do better
Still the wolf
A habit setter
Still the wolf
Commit in writing
Still the wolf
Consistent fighting
Still the wolf
Be who you wanna
Still the wolf
I know I'm gonna
Still the wolf
Rise above it
Still the wolf
A macro... love it!
Still the wolf
Let's now go write it
Still the wolf
Record & flight it
Still the wolf
That's more improving
Still the wolf
But now I'm grooving
Still the wolf
So write another
Still the wolf
Keep at it, brother.
Still the wolf
So let's embrace it
Still the wolf
You got to face it.
Yeah, Iām finding my thing. So repeat the poem. Make the above one indented for ācodeā formatting via markdown. Make the one below where youāre going to do the livecast recording. There is nothing like this on YouTube. This is deep, soulful artistic stuff of the modern age.
Nobodyās going to recognize it. Sighhhhā¦ is that condescending to you? Am I insulting you?
%norm i> ^[A
Still The Wolf
I am still the wolf
Letās not make trouble
Still the wolf
Suppress your double
Still the wolf
Re-read your Carl
Still the wolf
And keep it moral
Still the wolf
You can do better
Still the wolf
A habit setter
Still the wolf
Commit in writing
Still the wolf
Consistent fighting
Still the wolf
Be who you wanna
Still the wolf
I know Iām gonna
Still the wolf
Rise above it
Still the wolf
Need macroā¦ LOVE it!
Still the wolf
Letās now go write it
Still the wolf
Record & flight it
Still the wolf
Thatās more improving
Still the wolf
But now Iām grooving
Still the wolf
So letās get going
Still the wolf
Need some new knowing
Still the wolf
So letās embrace it
Still the wolf
You got to face it.
āMike Levin, 2022
Brian Gonzalez Says
Brian needs a bigger font
That is something that I want
But the poem was too long
Woe was me and now this song.
—Mike Levin, 2022
All Your Bases (except vim) Belong To Us
Linux, Python, vim & git
Microsoft bought all of it.
But not vim so VSCode
Will be the place you
Do your Node
And they bought NPM too.
āMike Levin, 2022
ZeroMQ, the Unsung Hero of Jupyter
What makes Jupyter Notebook and JupyterLab so great? Isnāt it JavaScript underneath invalidating the whole āPython is so greatā argument? If Python is so great, why did they use JavaScript to make Jupyter? Well, the answer to that is really that ZeroMQ is so great. JavaScript is just the necessary evil of the user interface. All that snappy responsiveness of parts talking to each other like they were one comes from ZeroMQā¦ not JavaScript.
Do You Always Write That Much, Mike?
Yes, of course! Doesnāt everybody? No? Well maybe you should. To me now writing in vim is just thinking. Think in vim. Write in vim. No, let me correct that. Think in your head and let your hands just carry out the motions in vim. Itās just like driving. Driving is easy. Itās committed to muscle memory and becomes automatic, as if the work of driving were offloaded to a coprocessor (in computer terms). Same with vim. The work of typing is offloaded to that same place in your body that tends to driving so that your executive function (your conscious thinking mind) is freed up for the more difficult stuff.
If youāre not writing every day and then you sit down to write (for yourself like with journaling) or to code or program, think about how much of your cognitive function gets dedicated to just operating the tool. Thatās stupid, and even more so if that tool is a proprietary one provided by a vendor who wants to make money off of you and could change everything on you any time they want to for any reason (and has), and thereās not a thing you can do about it. You switch from one point-and-click style editor to another telling yourself thereās no difference and you havenāt really been set back.
But there is a difference and you have been set back. Why do you think Microsoft includes Linux now with Windows, hired the creator of Python, bought Github (and NodeJSās NPM) and created VSCode? Itās because they know everything Iām saying is true, and the one piece they donāt want you arriving to on your own is vim.
vim is your path to independence from Microsoftā¦ period. Linux may get you part of the way, but so long as VSCode is your main (trained muscle memory) editor, you will simply lack the ability to take that last step and be incapable of understanding why.
Iām telling you here and now. Take note.
Ultimately, the text editor is your freedom of choice, freedom of mind, and even ability to think in a higher-quality fashion that funnels your unarticulated abstract thought through your vocal-center, thus articulating, realizing, actualizing and even database-indexing your thoughts for accessing later.
Be in vim every day.
I use it as my full-screen āScreen #1ā in my ribbon of Virtual Desktops.
Microsoft also isnāt crazy about you discovering the wonderful world of Jupyter Desktop. Theyāre lifting all its best features putting them in VSCode (desperately) to take away that āah-ha!ā moment of discovery that you would otherwise experience, revealing that there is better stuff out there than what Microsoft and VSCode provide.
We also canāt let the flock flock to Jupyter so letās flock them. Weāll flock them good and life Project Jupyterās best features and put them in VSCode.
ā¦which makes yāall micro soft sheep.
Microsoft is no Linus Torvalds
Think this is the start of such Microsoft behavior? Wrong! In the early 1990s when the writing was on the wall about Unixās eventual dominance, when AT&T SVr4 was threatening to take the world, Microsoft made their own version of Unix called Xenix. It flopped. Microsoft is no Linus Torvalds.