vim Macro to Format Markdown Poetry
I'm talking about how to use vim to break free from Microsoft, how they are trying to steal Jupyter's features, and why their attempt to create their own version of Unix, Xenix, flopped. I'm also discussing how writing in vim is like driving and how it can free up your executive function for more difficult tasks, and how writing every day can help you become more proficient with your tools.
Discover Independence from Microsoft with Vim: Unlock the Power of Jupyter and Writing Every Day
By Michael Levin
Friday, May 27, 2022
This 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 easier… it will be recorded before your eyes, and thrown into my ~/.vimrc for future use… which I expect you will also frequently see… because I write a lot of poetry.
At the risk of demonitizing, LOL…
LOL, you got this shit, Mike. You’re 51 years old, and that’s plenty of time. Just work better, smarter and faster than everyone else.
If you haven’t made it by now, you’re never going to make it.
…so says the person whose negativity can’t 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 it’s the hero’s 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 years… 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. It’s just nobody knows and that’s okay. No, my next 50-years simply allows my algorithm to work differently, switching from expressing mostly exploratory activity to exploitative activity.
What? Exploit? Doesn’t the English language suck? Yes, the English language really sucks, the aristocracy keeping the common man like me down. Well, eff-that. We common folk can rise-up… but not in rebellion but rather in taking over the system. What’s 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.
It’s the wolf-nerds who won. I don’t 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 that’s 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 C… 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 inside…
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, I’m finding my thing. So repeat the poem. Make the above one indented for “code” formatting via markdown. Make the one below where you’re going to do the livecast recording. There is nothing like this on YouTube. This is deep, soulful artistic stuff of the modern age.
Nobody’s going to recognize it. Sighhhh… is that condescending to you? Am I insulting you?
%norm i> ^[A
Still The Wolf
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
Need 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 let’s get going
Still the wolf
Need some new knowing
Still the wolf
So let’s embrace it
Still the wolf
You got to face it.
—Mike 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.
—Mike Levin, 2022
ZeroMQ, the Unsung Hero of Jupyter
What makes Jupyter Notebook and JupyterLab so great? Isn’t it JavaScript underneath invalidating the whole “Python is so great” 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 ZeroMQ… not JavaScript.
Do You Always Write That Much, Mike?
Yes, of course! Doesn’t 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. It’s just like driving. Driving is easy. It’s 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 you’re 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. That’s 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 there’s not a thing you can do about it. You switch from one point-and-click style editor to another telling yourself there’s no difference and you haven’t 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 NodeJS’s NPM) and created VSCode? It’s because they know everything I’m saying is true, and the one piece they don’t want you arriving to on your own is vim.
vim is your path to independence from Microsoft… 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.
I’m 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 “Screen #1” in my ribbon of Virtual Desktops.
Microsoft also isn’t crazy about you discovering the wonderful world of Jupyter Desktop. They’re lifting all its best features putting them in VSCode (desperately) to take away that “ah-ha!” moment of discovery that you would otherwise experience, revealing that there is better stuff out there than what Microsoft and VSCode provide.
We also can’t let the flock flock to Jupyter so let’s flock them. We’ll flock them good and life Project Jupyter’s best features and put them in VSCode.
…which makes y’all 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 Unix’s 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.