The Monastery of the White Tiger - Journal of The Displine

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papermaking: So, yesterday, I was getting another batch ready and recently, when I created this new batch, I found my old molds. These aren't great. They're starting to give where the glue is. That's why I abandoned them. But I had this idea. I have 4 molds that I use and I double up on them to make them more flat. I've been wanting to make more but I've just been too lazy. Well, I had this idea yesterday: why not use these old ones to double up? I just need a flat surface with a screen to lay the good ones on anyways. I tried it yesterday but the issue with it not being flat popped up and it rained after they dried so that ruined it too. But I think this next dip will come out great.

This last batch of paper is the whitest I've ever seen it and I think another contributing factor is that it's new water. To explain, I have this Dune-inspired obsession with saving water so for all of my batches, I created a really primitive (and not good) filter for reusing the water in the vat. I use a screen to filter out the bits and a piece of cloth on the bottom to try and filter out the murky-ness. It's always been murky though. And this last batch, they way I arranged the buckets and the screen, instead of draining to the bottom bucket, it drained onto the floor instead. (which is why I needed new water)

underwear: So I've tried of a lot of different combinations. I first tried a breechcloth because it was the simplest, most efficient way of doing things. But the string, I think, was causing in-grown hairs, so I thought that I would stop doing that. It took forever to finally do something else.

The next thing I tried was this thing inspired by the main character of Barton Fink. It's like a wife beater with boxers attached to it and you enter in through the shirt part. I didn't want to make it more complex by entering in through the front part of the shirt though, so I thought I would do the top. The first one was too tight in the arms and too short in the groin.

I made another one but this time didn't close the bottom. It kept riding up and I don't like my groin being exposed if I sit down.

Yesterday, I tried a loin cloth. The first one was 3 yards of muslin that I cut in half. 3 yards was not adequate. I couldn't do the groin tuck underneath me. Just the wrap around the waist. It was okay though. Today, I sewed the other half on to the piece I used yesterday. I wrapped it around my waist then tucked between my legs and it was okay. There are two problems though. One is the fabric. Muslin doesn't stretch so as soon as I do the initial cinch around the waist, it starts to come loose. At one point, I was trying to not consciously readjust my loincloth and I looked down and it had completely undone and was coming out the bottom of the pant leg of my coveralls. (That's a fail.) So it needs stretchy fabric. The other issue is cost. I think a pair of boxers only costs like $4. Maybe $5. At the cost of $3.5 per year for muslin and I used 3 yards. That's $10.5 for underwear. Way too expensive. I think the only other option is to use remanant fabric that I can source out of Walmart for $2 per yard.

Another option that I just finished yesterday and am currently wearing is a bit more complicated. If you remember the first iteration of the onesie. I made one that's longer and has buttons on the shoulder. This actually seems almost viable. Muslin still doesn't stretch so I heard a small ripping sound when bending down to pick something up from the ground. But it's one of the most viable because I'd almost feel comfortable being semi-public in it.

agriculture: Yesterday, I was super hyped to plant some seeds but it took so long to do this other task that by the time I was done, it was super, super windy and I had to come back inside. so I was excited to do it today. The one thing I've been excited for is I bought a strainer and I want to strain the dirt to get all the little bits and pieces out for planting. Problem with that is it just rained so none of the dirty is dry enough to strain. So I just seeded some onions with the little bit of dirt I had left and I created a row for planting months ago, so I planted five seed potatoes that I bought from the store.

I've been excited recently because the first crop of beans that I planted, recently, I've seen a bean pop out of the dirt, standing up like it's sprouted. I've been assuming that any day now it'll pop up into the air. It's been days waiting though. Today, I touched it and no, it never sprouted. It was just the bean rose out of the dirt from the water. In one sense, it's nice because it means I can throw that entire row away now as a failure but I was excited for the sprouting.

The Discipline (services): I've been running into an issue where I'm immediatley running to social media to alleviate boredom during the day. Especially with Twitter because it's such a subconscious disposable for of entertaiment. I've also been concerned about not really writing down the services that I'm using. There's another issue where I've never really defined services. Like, I don't put down Google when I use Google Serch because Google Search is omnipresent and search in general is mostly a necessity when browsing the web. Same thing with Wikipedia because sometimes, I need to be able to look something up easily. But, technically, they're both services.

I guess I should talk a little bit about -why- I created the category to begin with. The five categories to keep track of for The Paper are infrastructure (everything I use during the day), food, media, programs (on my computer - not so much my phone) and services. I created 'services' because media is defined as something that can be discretely consumed. (Not discrete as in secret but in terms of one thing distinguished from another) A service's consumption is not discrete in that one act of consumption could go into another without having any real relation to each other. I hope that makes sense and doesn't just seem like incoherent rambling.

The problem with this though is that as part of using the Internet, services are just innate. You are using a plethora of different services just by accessing a website. So where do you keep track? It's the same reason why I don't keep track of -every- piece of technology I interact with. (Only a narrowly defined spectrum)

I think a good starting point is if you have to login to access it. That is definitely a service. Additionally, if you're accessing it passively — such as retrieving data without directly interacting with the interface — it still qualifies as a service. For example, downloading a large dataset from a website would be considered a service.

For now, I won't be including search, email or telephony as a service. I just don't want to have put that every day. Though, now that I downloaded a bunch of encyclopedias, I think maybe I'll include wikipedia.

metric clock: The metric clocks I've coded have been invaluable for The Discipline. I've been questioning the necessity of an entirely new system of time but I think it's good, psychologically, to enter a new world when beginning The Discipline and confining yourself to metric time is a godo way of doing that.

There's been a few issues though. The GUI version of the metric clock that I coded has some weird issue with alarms. If I run it for a long period of time and then click to delete the alarm, the whole app freezes it up. It is definitely an issue with alarms and only alarms, because it never freezes now that I stopped setting alarms. I think it's an issue where I delete the alarm as data and then try to refresh the GUI element and since it doesn't exist anymore, that's the crash.

Another issue that I haven't really explored is that the formula for calculating solar noon and dusk seems to be completely off. A couple days ago, it said it was dusk but it was still light out. Like completely still light. And at first, I thought it was maybe because of DST, but theoretically, that shouldn't be affecting it. At least in terms of the formula. The only thing I could think of is it's an issue with the way Python processes the time, like it's skipping ...maybe it is just DST.

papermaking: So I did another batch. Turns out the last batch of 200g of paper comes out to about 26 sheets of paper, so for 150g of paper, I can expect about 20. Only discrepancy is that I did 125g of the white paper in 25g batches in the blender, and the last batch, I messed up and didn't weigh it right. So it might be more than 20, could be less than 20. And just for posterity, I'll explicitly state that I did about 125g of white paper and 25g of reused paper. I might just do 150g entirely of white paper next time because I still have a bunch of white paper in my paper to be shredded bucket and I figured out a viable use for reused paper: agriculture.

So, previously, when putting reused paper in the bucket, I just put the sheets in there and because the first time I shredded, I just did like a few sheets, so there was a bunch of old sheets on the bottom of the bucket from more than 200 days ago. It's interesting to see the progression. My older dips were WAY thicker. Like ridiculously thick and a lot of it was just not viable. That's to be expected though, but what was even more interesting is the early papers I made were white. Like, not just using white paper. White white. The paper I've been making now is more of a beige. Not grey. But definitely not white. This paper though was WHITE. I genuinely didn't think paper that white was possible in this process. But I realize why is because when I first started doing The Paper, it was just regular pieces of printer paper that I was writing on it. So, the density of ink for that paper was a lot less than my current sources. I think I'm going to look into the process of removing ink from the pulp.

agriculture: Yeah, so I guess those seeds aren't growing. (I'm writing this on 826. I just forgot to write the log.) None of anything that I've planted has started to grow. I think the issue is it's not getting enough water. My Mom keeps saying it's the soil but I've sprouted seeds before in literally just a hydroponic medium with just plain water. So water must be the issue in this situation. Though, I think the soil is playing a part because the water just draining straight out of the soil. My Mom planted some roses and when I'm watering them, they still look like they're wet and I think that's because it's still in that soil that's in the pot when she put them in the ground.

I planted tomatoes in addition to the stuff I planted last time, but I did it in a half ass way. I had a paper cup from some restaurant and figured I'd use that. BUt it's kind of overkill for this project.

clothing: So I got some fabric last week. About ten yards of muslin and 2 remanant fabrics that's kind of like sweats, real stretchy. So the last time I tried to make long underwear out of muslin, the groin and arms were too tight. This time I made sure there was more than enough room in the arms and I didn't close the bottom. Because muslin doesn't stretch, there were still problems when reaching for things because of how I did the part for the arms, but I just have to peel back the shoulder a bit on that. Not closing the bottom wasn't ideal but I think if it was longer, it might have actually worked. I think the big problem is that I want to be able to sit down in my underwear and not have my nether regions exposed to the world, so I think I'm going to have to close the bottom.

Having to close the bottom creates its own problems because last time I made long underwear, I left the top open instead of doing what the original design which was open the front so you could enter it. (Having the front open makes it a little too complicated for me at this point and I'm not sure if I like that design aesthetically.) So there are three ways of doing this. Create button for the top on each shoulder to close it, put a button on the bottom to close it (not a great idea to have a button down there though, I think) or a third idea that I thought might be viable: put button on the side. You'd put it on one shoulder, under the arm and then off to the side of the leg. Idk, I might just down a loincloth at this stage. I don't want that level of complication.

I made some sweats. Of the two sweats-like fabric, this was the most ideal. The other was more like a knit and wasn't ideal for this application. So, in previous instances when cutting fabric, I would create a pattern by overlaying the original piece of clothing on a piece of cardboard, cutting out the pattern then chalk it out on the fabric. Then I started just chalking it out directly from the clothing. All of the surfaces I have available are a little too soft and it's not ideal for chalking. So I just overlaying the clothing onto the fabric and cutting it out from there. I have to leave a bit of extra room for seams though. And because I'm just using a small fold out table, sometimes, I'm just holding the fabric in the air while cutting and it's not an accurate cut. (which is why some of the cuts aren't symmetrically equal) But otherwise, it came out pretty good. A lil tighter than what I would like but overally good. I'm most proud that I cut the arms out separately from the torso but was able to sew it all together cohesively.

Socks. I'm a lil disappointed in them because I don't have a serger sewing machine to make cleaner seams and I'm a diabetic so I have to wear the seams outwards instead of inwards. But this has been one of the more complex bits of clothing I've ever made. Maybe even more so than underwear. The first pair of socks I made was cut right on the edge of the sock. The fabric stretches and it fit fine but it was a bit too tight. So I figured two fingers worth of space would be enough room. That was too much. Then I did just one finger on one side, the curved side. It still wasn't quite enough. I think the ankle part of the sock needs to have two fingers, because that traditionally has elastic in it to give it more give.

papermaking: So this last batch, normally, I cut paper when ever I see it start to stack up in the little box I keep it in. But this time I wanted to see how many pieces of paper a vat of this amount would actually make. So I'm keeping all the paper secluded until then and I just reached the bottom of it yesterday. (825) I'm excited to see how many pieces there are per batch. Additionally, I'm going to revise the last pulp count. Originally, it was like 150g of paper. 100g white, 25g color, 25g reused. I think I'm just going to do 125g white and 25g reused, just because I have so much white paper pulp I'm starting to throw it away so why not?

agriculture: previously, I planted beans in some twelve paper towel rolls that I cut up. these were some old beans that I've had sitting for years. I'm not sure if they've gone bad or if I just didn't water them enough. (they didn't grow.) So I had some discards from a batch of beans I was cooking today. Figured I'd use though and I threw away about half of the previous batch. For the new batch, it's 4 onions, 2 lettuce, 3 corn, and 3 bean. I'm pretty sure it's going to be hot to plant lettuce right now but I figured I'd give it a shot just to see how that turns out. so i've already done a 'tech' list where I go through The Paper's and seew what I am most commonly needing in my day to day life. today, I think I'll try to do that for agriculture and the food I've consumed.

papermaking: So I made a new batch. I did the same kind of batch as last time 100g white, 25g reused, 25g colored.

The first couple of dips that I did were super thick and came out past the edges. So I'll probably drop the total pulp batch to 150g. I shredded some more white paper but I wasn't able to empty my 'shred this' bucket so I think from now on, I'll avoid colored paper entirely and have it be 125g white and 25g reused.

Last time, I mentioned about how I left the molds out in the rain and the paper dried into the screens. Turns out just using the spray attachment on my hose cleaned the super easily. I was spending forever trying to scrape it off previously.

The Discipline: I have not been living within The Discipline at all recently. I think my recent foot problem has been really depressing me. The idea that I might not be able to walk around easily or that I'll be in pain while doing so just really bums me out. But my foot seems to be doing better and I have another thing I'm trying to remain within The Discipline. Each day that I'm not within The Discipline fades into each other. So I don't know if it's been 3 days or 8 days. In the interest of mitigating that, I created a little calendar for my wall so that I can mark off when I am living within The Discipline and when I am not.

I'm trying not to use my computer as much. Partly as part of The Discipline because it's a piece of complex technology that I'm not really able to create myself, but also, because for decades, I've lived virtually. In a world of video games, movies, television, social media and books. And this lifestyle, The Discipline, requires me to be more present so unless I need to, I try to avoid having my computer on now. Though, I am having a problem figuring out when solar noon and dusk is without having access to my metric clock.

There was this prohibition I created a while back to where I should avoid all media, except exalted media, before solar noon. I've been listening to the radio though despite this because the main reason I created the prohibition was that I was entirely focused on the media itself. Like, literally, just sitting there consuming songs and/or videos and that was all I was doing. At least with the radio, it's just something in the background.

halal media: recently, I've started listening to the radio and it's made me question the assumptions behind halal media. the main assumption behind 'media' as a concept is that you own it and have access to it. with broadcast media, such as terrestial radio, it's something else entirely, because you don't control what they're playing. and I think it's unrelealistic to expect someone to change the station based on their evaluation of whether a certain thing on that broadcast media is haram or halal. (whihc assumes they even know for certain its origins)

I'm honestly kind of torn because terrestial radio is mostly supported by ads and that kind of consumption is definitelty not something I want to support. But, again, just for the sake of practicality, I'll allow it. If only because, if you have no media, (or you just don't feel like listening to the already approved media) broadcast media like that should be okay. (if you're paying for the service, that's a separate thing - also remember to include the devices you may be using to access that broadcast media)

I think the main criteria we can make to where you -would- have to handle it halal/haram media is if you're accessing that broadcast media specifically, knowing what you will be accessing. So, if you were using some kind of TV guide and choosing which shows you will watch based on that, that is within the confines of halal/haram media. The general method of just randomly switching stations until you find something is something else.

blanket: I made a blanket out of this bag of my uncle's old socks and it was a little too short in terms of width. Mostly okay, just a little narrow. Today, I finished adding another section to make it a little wider. Though, I did some weird strings hanging off of it like when the spandex starts to deteriorate so I'm wondering if that's going to be a problem.

underwear: So a while back, I made a few loincloths (technically, breechcloths) to wear as underwear. I used a drawstring to secure it and I think that was causing an ingrown hair. I was a little stuck because I don't really wanna start using spandex. (Though, in hindsight, I saved a bunch of spandex straps from my previous boxers so maybe that'll work too.) Then one day, I was watching Barton Fink and saw John Turturo wear a kind of long underwear where it was a boxer and a tshirt in one piece with a wifebeater that you could step into. So I decided to try that out as a possible thing. I tried it today with some muslin. It was a little too short, almost too narrow, and definitely too tight in the arms. Also, muslin (at least the one I'm using) doesn't stretch enough for its requirement. Instead of trying a wifebeater that you could step into, I tried making the neck wide enough for me to step into. Thoguh, I think I'll need a couple of buttons on top.

papermaking: So I did some papermaking dips a couple days ago that's been drying outside. I left it there, meaing to get it the next day. The next day, it rained though. I wondered how it would affect the dips. This was an interesting situation though, because the dips are from the last bits of pulp left in the vat. So I'm not sure if because it rained or because the pulp is so low, but the paper dried into screen on the mold itself. Normally, once it dries, it comes right off from the vinyl screen but it's litereally dried into the screen and I'm having trouble even scraping it off now.

people: I don't know if I can really convince other people to do this with me. I've always felt like I was different from other people and one of those ways in which I've realized that I'm different from other people is that I don't have the capacity to predict or manipulate other human beings. Manipulate's probably a strong word but that's how I interpret almost all human interactions. (especially extroverted interactions)

The Discipline is pretty hard. Even for me. And if it's hard for me, why would anyone else do it?

There's an old adage: (old apparently means 2014, because I looked it up and its just some meme phrase that spawned around that time ) there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. This can be used as a rallying cry but in some cases, it's seen as inherently disempowering. If all consumption under capitalism is inherently unethical, why give a shit? Is it not inescapable?

The only ethical consumption is production. If you aren't producing then you're a consumer and consumers are what allows capitalism to exist.

A capitalist sells. Everything they do is about selling and gaining access to markets. Even if they are helping you, they are selling something.

We will help people and not ask for anything. Help people who need help. Because trust is built on helping people when they need it. And maybe no one will ever care enough to join me. But at least I helped people.

The Discipline: consumption under capitalism is an addiction. even the most benign forms of consumption. My vow of poverty makes it easy for me to not spend money needlessly, but because I have so much free time it's easy for me to get locked into the addiction of media consumption. It's been 7-8 days and I did have a very concerning couple of days at work which bottomed out my frustration. (I'm not sure if I can continue working there.) But I've been locked into media consumption as my main form of existence.

There is an aspect of this that is depression, because I start to consume media and just genuinely don't care about it at all and it's all forms of media. video games. porn. movies. television. books. I'm concerned about how much worse it could get but a part of me thinks it's good because it forces me back on to the straight and narrow.

It is an addiction because I consume media like the way I used to consume food. Compulsively. Obsessively. The only thing that prevents me from doing it now with food is my diabetes and the consequences of allowing that to run amok.

I had another realization recently. About my vow of poverty. A vow of poverty is good because it's a form of financial minimalism. Almost everyone reaches a point of frustration with their income. Never having enough money is an almost constant state of being whether you are a homeless person living out of your car or a billionaire trying to start their n-th startup. (This might be projecting on the latter, but for the most part, this general assumption stands for the average person.) More money isn't always going to help you in a situation. Sometimes, patience is necessary.

And I still readily believe that. Patience -is- necessary. But the one problem I realized is that a vow of poverty means that you are defining yourself, inherently, from a deficit. Poverty is a deficit of income and putting yourself inherently at a deficit seems like you're handicapping yourself (or pretending to) for the sake of not wanting to be ableist. That's probably a poor analogy, but maybe it should be more like 2x the poverty rate, just to offset the whole being at an inherent deficit.

At this stage though, there's not a lot of benefit for me do that. I make just enough to qualify for Medicaid. Medicaid is free. I could get health insurance from work, but it would cost $500 per month. (And I don't know what kind of quality of health insurance we're talking about, because if I have to pay $500 for health insurance AND still have to pay $5k deductible, that's literally not worth it in any circumstance.) That might sound liek a small price to pay because more money is more money. But I'd be paying $500 to earn an extra $1600. At a minimum! This doesn't include the extra money in gas which I'm pretty sure would be at least an extra $150. So $650 to earn 1000. That's still not horrible considering I can only save about $500 per month right now.

But there's two other things: there's the physical and psychological toil of working full time. I've been having some kind of issue with my foot and I genuinely would not be able to work full time with whatever is currently going on with it. (I just bought new shoes so I'm hoping this is going to resovle it.) I am generally less likely to engage in The Discipline if I have to work. Today, I didn't have to work and I've been planning for a few days that -this- was going to be the day I got back into it. (It wasn't. Just now only.)

There's also one other small assumption that I think needs to be refuted: I may not be able to get a full $3200 worth of hours per month. I would have to work 38 hours (not scheduled - work) per week to earn that. Thing is, -no one- at work is scheduled 38 hours. (Coincidentally, this newest work schedule actually -does- have people scheduled at 38+ hours but a BUNCH of people have been fired in the past month. That rarely ever happens though.) The most I can get guarantueed is 32 scheduled hours which is like 29 working. So we're looking, realistically at paying $600 to earn $500. Which is not a great proposition.

I think if I can find a job that pays for insurance and doesn't require me to stand the entire shift, I think it would be more viable for me.

One really great thing about this record is that I genuinely forget things. I forgot about my internet prohibition until I read what I was doing a few weeks prior. I remembered vaguely earlier today about the importance of work but I didn't remember The Duty until I just read it a few paragraphs down.

The Discipline / halal media: I try not to take The Discipline too gravely. Following The Discipline should be a natural thing and you do things naturally not by forcing yourself to do something but allowing those actions to become a part of yourself. I try not to worry too much about deviations. The Discipline is just that: a discipline. It is the ability to follow rules and procedures. Abilities are arrived at with practice and it's important to allow yourself the patience to arrive at that ability.

One particular deviation I've been making is in regards to halal media. I'm still writing it down when I deviate ( for the most part) but I think checking books out from the library that are haram that I have no compelling or previous interest is generally a mistake. I have a list of books I'm interested in and unless I've previously read an author or I find the book particularly compelling, I need to make sure I'm not reading them.

papermaking: brought in paper from my paperworking station after cutting them.

agriculture: I've been meaning to start planting things for a very long time. so I decided every 5 to 10 days I'll start sprouting some seeds. I started some beans first because they are the easiest food that I regularly eat. I think it's about fifteen or so cardboard tubes with dirt and a seed on top. I'll water them every time I do a new batch of paper. I should probably keep track of this in metric earth time if I'm going to do it outside. This dirt hasn't been processed at all by me. I just shoveled some from a pile I put down but if I have no success at all I'll filter it through this sieve I've used previously. (I hope I don't run out of cardboard tubes in the meantime.)

The Duty: I ran into a slight issue. So right now, I'm supposed to be working 25k on average every day with ten day work period. Today, is the ninth day. I didn't do any White Tiger work for two days because I was putting in full shifts. I had just barely caught up after working to make up for three days without working. (That was my fault. No particular reason why.) Now I'm 100kT in the hole and tomorrow is the last day of the work period. The best I've ever done is like 40kT of work, so there's no chance at all I'll be able to achieve this work goal for this period . (I originally couched it in terms of 'work debt' which I feel really uncomfortable with that kinda latent capitalist terminology. I still feel uncomfortable with 'work goals'.)

Since there's no chance at all of achieving my goal, it feels like there's literally no point at all in doing the work tomorrow. That makes it seem like an inherently bad system. Before this moment, I was considering increasing the average up to 30k so that I would be more likely to make up for days with deficits, but now that seems really unrealistic. I don't work a consistent schedule. I can work a maximum of 19 hours per week in order to stay on MedicAID. I keep a spreadsheet in order to maintain. I realized a couple months ago that instead of trying to maintain my hours at 19 per week. It might be more prudent to look at for the entire month and adjust it according to that. Additionally, some days I'm only schedule for 4. Some days 8. I realized recently as well that it's better for me to pick up eight hour shifts so I can drop the shifts in my schedule with less hours. (in order to save gas) So some weeks I might be working five days in a row, 30-35 hours that week. Other weeks, I might work two days, and 8 hours. It just depends on my hours for that month.

Additionally, the problem is also compounded by the fact that it's different measurements of time. Traditional work weeks (Sun-Sat) compared to my system of just evaluating it according to the day of the cycle (1-10). So my hours might get bunched up because two work weeks stack together in a weird way in the ten day cycle.

As much as I think The Duty is very important, I'm also a human being. And I have the right to feel like not working. Not being compelled to work is one of the most important principles of being a White Tiger.

I guess an average of 25k per day is too much to do with a job on top of that. I might also need to adjust the length of the cycles. Ten day cycles aren't written in stone. I could easily do 5 or 100 as well. (I'm planning on eventually binding all The Pages into books so maybe 100 is better.)

I can do 40k on a day where I'm not working. It's a push but I can get there. Work work takes a lot out of me compared to White Tiger work. It's physically demanding for a full day and there's almost always social elements that I find exhausting and overwhelming. So while a 4 hour work day is only 1/4 of my time awake, you could assume I'd be able to do 30k on that day. Technically, that may be true, but with the emotional toll of the social demands, it's probably best to keep that at 20k. An 8 hour work day, 4-5k at most. That doesn't even include errands and social obligations that I might have on top of my work obligations.

A work week is often evaluated as a work minimum. The minimum amount of hours required in order to yada yada, but it might be fruitful to evaluate things in the context of maximum hours.

There's two problems that I have when it comes to work: forcing myself to work, compelling myself to work in order to achieve some random fucking things and getting burnt out and never wanting to do thing associated with it ever again and obsessively systematizing something until it lose all meaning and becomes just a rote task with no emotional context. This is my burden.

While I do find the idea of 'work goals' an offputting concept, there is motivation for me in achieving goals. Working towards an average of 25kT per day is motivating. More motivating than any To Do list. The inverse of that though, (my current situation) of not being able to achieve my goals is completely demoralizing.

I just had an epiphany. I have a work week - at work. An idea of how many hours of labor I can be expected to earn money from. What if I had something similar for White Tiger? That might be the ticket.

So I went through my work schedule, figuring out how many hours I'm doing for each day in the next 10 day work cycle. 25kT is about 6 hours of work per day on average. AFter looking through my work schedule as part of a 10 day cycle, I reazlied I could do a minimum work hours -with- my work day. So on days I'm not working, I put in six hours of work at a minimum, but on days I am working, the time at my work counts for that total. So if I put in five hours at my work, i'd only have a deficit of one when I got home. I would still be working towards a 25kT but that would be the general goal while the compelling goal would be to maintain the minimum.

metric clock / programs: I keep track of programs that I use as part of The Discpline. For the most part, that's just been something that I've been doing with very little progress at all. Except for maybe the calculator and the text editor, everything that I would want to make would require a GUI. I can build interfaces over the web but I've never built anything with a GUI outside of maybe games using some kind of framework. (but mostly that was all web development) So a local application with a GUI is completely out of my wheelhouse.

I tried messing with some GUI stuff a while back and was just overwhelmed. It seemed completely indecipherable to me. Then on a lark, I tried searching yesterday. I stumbled upon tkinter and this was sooooooo easy, it's not even funny. Like within an hour, I had created a basic GUI version of the metric clock I'd been running as a CLI program. This is SOOOO awesome. About half of the programs that I use, I can relatively easily create some version of it now within a GUI, so that is so awesome.

So far, I've created a workable GUI version of the metric clock, started work on a text editor and I plan to create a calculator program today as well when I feel up to it.

This is only tangentially related to White Tiger but I had this issue regarding my scheduling program at work. Basically, people drop shifts at work, but the only way to know about it is by manually checking either on my phone or by logging into their website. So I started with twill and it was going okay, but then I realized, the login process for my work's scheduling program is all javascript which Twill doesn't support. So I started using Selenium and I was blown away by what it can do. Literally pulls up a browser and can programatically do the things I need it to do. So now, every fifteen minutes I login to my work scheduler, check to see if there are new shifts and if there are, it should beep for me. (I just hope I don't get banned from it.) But this is tangential because I've been wanting to create a replacement for feedly and this should work perfectly. I've already started work on something that uses wget and parses the pages. twill and selenium should be perfect for this now.

pen/paper: Creating paper was one of my first projects. The thing I've been meaning to do was create my own pen. Creaing my own ink feels insurmountable. I have a few different books about it but where to start is the hard part. I bought some fountain pen ink and a dip pen, hoping to get at least headed in the right direction. THe dip pen is too sharp and cuts into the paper and fountain pen ink is too watery to stick to it anyways. REcently, I had an idea to use a small brush instead. I've always been planning on making my own brush bu why not test it with the fountain pen ink? It almost works. I'm assuming a partial issue is that the paper has no sizing so the ink just soaks right though. Another issue is that when I first touch down with the brush after dipping, it's putting out a lot of ink all at once. I think that's partly a skill issue but I might need an even smaller brush or maybe a bigger paper?

socks: One of the items I need to make this winter is socks. A while back, I bought some wool socks and they were way too small for me. Thankfully, they came in two pairs. So I had this idea today to cut them in half and sew them together. It actually works much much better than I thought and while this only -kinda- counts for socks. I don't need to really wear slippers anymore on top of wearing socks, so that's pretty cool.

The Duty: I've been focusing on The Duty lately. Trying to get in a minimum amount of work. I'm doing the equivalent of 40 hours per weeks on an average daily basis. Mostly, that's just been reading and making this quilt out of socks. (That took forever btw.) But I'm happy with the amount of work I've done. Part of The Discipline is making sure that I'm keeping honest about the work I'm doing though, because I realized I was just generally counting 'working in the garage' as White Tiger work and that's not entirely true.

papermaking: After re-reading Dard Hunter's papermaking opus, I realized that I might have misinterpretted how many moulds I actually need. The issue I've been experiencing is that I just can't get the pulp off the mould. I never thought about the papermaking subreddit before but I posted my issue and they recommended that I try a new mould that isn't made from vinyl window screen. (because of how much give it has) I'm considering building an old style mould, but I'm not sure how difficult that would be. It's interesting to me though because today I just found a mould in that style selling for $1k. Which is fucking crazy to me. I mean, I get it, it's handmade with the wired laid by hand but that's crazy prices to me.

blanket: I made another quilt from socks again. This one came out a lot better. The last one I was kind of stumbling through the process, but this one I genuinely knew how to proceed so it was a lot smoother. I kinda messed up again though. Because I don't have a suitable space to lay stuff out, I'm laying it on the floor and I don't know the dimensions exactly so after I made the sock side, I started making the inner lining just by happenstance, making something that looked big enough and I ended up having to sew it on in three sections. This created other issues, mainly that sewing in the middle is a real pain in the ass because of how the little space there is on the side. It would have been better if the inner lining was just entire thing. It also would have been better if I sewed it on then flipped it inside out to have cleaner seams. It's not horrible, it's pretty huge, but it could be better.

The Discipline: I talked about my feelings about getting land. And I think I've reached a point of peace with it. Impatience, as what I'm feeling right now, is a symptom of consumerism. Being able to instantly gratify myself. So learning that I'm not going to be able get everything that I want and that's just -okay-. I set up a savings account and I'm going to drop money into it every month. Just a small amount but I won't ever touch that money unless it's an emergency. It's going to take two years, but I'm going to get there. I have a lot to learn anyways in the meantime.

papermaking: I did a new vat. There was probably still about a half a dozen pages left in the vat but some dirt got in there with a high wind, so I thought I would start a new vat. This time it was 100g of white shredded paper, 25g colored shredded paper and 25g reused shredded paper. This was a little too much but I was able to use all the water I had left to get the vat where it needed to be.

I've also started doubling up on the molds. I did one dip with a mold on each side and this is the first time where the paper has been smooth on both sides. I think I finally understand the role of a deckle and mold. When I got home from work today, I tried to do it again but it seemed like the mold on top isn't even touching the paper on the mold because of how the screen isn't completely flat, but we'll see once it dries.

The Discipline: I've been at a weird place with The Discipline lately. I'm not really being disciplined with it. I'm kind of being half and half with it. I realized something recently. Since I'm at poverty level income, there's only so much money I can earn per month. I've finally paid off all my debt so I can finally get the land I want to build the monastery. Before I do that though, I wanna build a shed and buy a back up car so that if my car breaks down completely, I won't have to immediately go out and buy a new car. But these things cost money and will take more time, it's already going to take my almost the whole year to save up to get the land. I'm feeling a little bit dispirited but I think it's because I'm being impatient. I realized there's so much that I need to do that I probably won't even be ready skill-wise if I did have the land.

sewing: So I've been working on a proper blanket. I've thought about what I could turn old clothes into and I think, the number one thing that all clothes can eventually be turned into is quilts. Maybe not good ones but adequate ones. I made one side of the blanket out of socks that came from my uncle and the lining of it from random left over sheets that I made robes out of. I did it wrong though. The sock part was, I think, big enough but the other part of it, made out of sheets and fabric was not actually long enough. I should have just made the lining ridiculously big and wrapped it around, but it barely goes around one side.

I did learn something though. I realized that when you take two peices of fabric and stich them together, it creates a little lip but you can put all those unsightly lips on the inside and take two pieces like that, put both of the lips on the inside, you're good. THe problem is stiching them together, you'll have a stich obvious on the outside, so you have to actually ugly stitch it inside out then turn it inside out when you've got the three sides sewn and try your best to sew it up neatly. At least that's the theory.

This blanket might actually be warm enough just by itself, but I still gotta finish it up before I can make that estimate. I'm learning how to use a proper sewing machine. Weirdly, I'm not really progressing at keeping the stitch straight. I don't know how tailors and seamstresses do it. All my lines are HORRIBLE. But I've learned how to sustainably sew for long periods of time. With my original machine, I was having to start and stop over and over. Now the process is smooth as butter now.

The Discipline / The Paper: I document what I'm doing throughout the day as part of The Discipline, but on 756, I realized, I really only -need- to do that for my work. The point of keeping track what I'm doing was so that I can see how productive I'm being. (not necessarily to make myself more productive but to make myself more accountable) And once I stop working, it's no longer necessary

papermaking: I dipped another two pieces of paper, but I'm going to try something different. A few days ago, I retrieved a dip and it was still wet. But it had been a few days at this point. It wasn't wet wet but it was wet enough to make it more difficult to get it off. So I've setup a little bench out in the sun, off of the porch, so that it'll get more direct sunlight and hopefully be dry completely in a day.

I've also started working on another two molds. I should have them done by 770 at least.

papermaking: Today, I refilled the vat. I had emptied it a few days ago but I think I had quite a bit of pulp left, because the remnant was quite a bit bigger than normal. Last time, it was 80g, 10g, 10g of white, colored and reused paper. I doubled the colored and reused paper up to 20g each. I've maxed out my buckets for shredded white paper and colored paper so I'll have to start making more molds. Also, another thing I need to work on is doing double molds. Because one side is smooth and the other side, the side exposed to the air is a bit rough, so maybe if I put a mold on top that'll remedy that.

The Duty / The Discipline: The Discipline is a series of rules and the ability of those within the organization to follow those rules, but I had kind of an epiphany that's kind of obvious in hindsight. I follow The Discipline when I can, but I'm not productive a lot of times. I really haven't made any headway since I first made paper and started using a sewing machine to sew. But like my previous post talks about, I don't believe in forcing things. A Protestant Work Ethic is a puritanical belief. No one should -have- to work. Ever. For any reason.

There was this saying that people were repeating a while back on social media. Anti-fascists have a responsibility to exercise, keep themselves physically fit, and learn about self defense because that's what fascists do all day, every day. I'm paraphrasing really poorly, because the way it was originally wrote was much more compelling. But that was the gist. I didn't identify with that statement. At all. There was also some pushback that that statement was able-ist, but my big problem with it was that it kind of assumes that violent conflict is the main interaction competing groups will have, which at least in my personal experience is not accurate at all. Violence has its uses but it should always be the last resort.

I'm not fighting that kind of war. If you have to use violence, you've literally already lost (or probably already about to). (In a situation of fight or flight: flight. It's honestly almost never worth it.) This is an economic war though and no longer can I afford to sit aside and work as the mood fits me. Because a capitalist is willing to work 12 hours a day, every day, rain, sleet or snow. They will abandon their children for profit. Leave their parents to die in the company of strangers to eke out a little bit more money. And I can't be bothered to create a consistent work schedule for The Discipline? It is The Duty of every White Tiger to work to the best of their ability every day. To put in at least 30k of work every day is the bare minimum.

The Discipline: I had a kind of epiphany recently. So often, I see people struggling with all of their might to change some inexplicable thing about themselves. "I want to work harder. How do I motivate myself to work harder?" The answer is you don't. You're a human being and human beings aren't meant to be function like machines, working when switched on. Now that's not to say that you can't motivate yourself, but a lot of times, it's not what people think it is. It's not figuring out the right incantations to make yourself do the thing that you want to do. It's not doing it and living in that moment of disappointment. Not ignoring it. Not trying to move past. Really feeling how disappointed you are in yourself. That's what motivation is. (fuck do I know though? ADHD is the epitome of executive disfunction.)

That being said, what am I trying to do? I updated this log a couple of days ago, but it's been almost two weeks since I've lived in The Discipline in any meaningful way. If The Discipline is about enacting correct behavior, and I don't believe in forcing myself into correct behavior, what the fuck am I do?

But that's not really what I'm doing. I'm not trying to motivate myself. If I were, it wouldn't have taken me two weeks to get back into the swing of things. I'm creating a culture. I'm creating a people. I am alone. Well and truly alone in ways that stagger the mind. And the only thing I want in life before I go is to be a part of a group of people that are reflective of who I am as a person.

Wow. I don't really delve emotionally like that in this log.

Since this is the first time I'm getting back into The Discipline, I feel a little bit out of it. The thing that almost always gets back into The Discipline is just not having any more conventional media consumption to do. I become so bored that The Discipline is all that's left. One negative behavioral loop that I do is checking social media. I check a particular social media, check another, get bored and then stop. Then I refresh it again, hoping that there's something else there. The Discipline with it's prohibition against social media helps me avoid those kind of behavior, but there's another insidious behavioral loop that I've noticed as well. While consuming a particular media, whether it be movies, television or music, I read about it on Wikipedia. The thing is, though, I continually do it. Obsessively, over and over. There's only so much you can read the same article over and over again. Today, I thought to myself: what if I just turned off the Internet? I could set another prohibition like with not watching videos until dusk. Maybe only have access to the Internet when time is at a factor of ten. That's 14 minutes of Internet access. Though, that does create issues for things like when I'm downloading for Internet Archive. But maybe I could do that while I'm asleep?

papermaking: a few days ago, I made a new batch that is roughly 80g shredded reused white paper,10g shredded colored paper, and 10g shredded re-reused paper. Temperatures have dropped pretty dramatically. I don't think it gets higher than 70 nowadays. As I was leaving today, I checked on a dip that I had set to dry at least 24 hours. It was still wet! That's crazy to me, considering that during the summer, I'd put a dip in the sun and it'd be dry in 2 hours. I'm going to start putting these dips directly in the sun to hopefully speed up the process. By the time, I got home almost 10+ hours later, only one of the dips was dry enough. So it looks like one of them will take at least 2 days to dry.

The Discipline: I had a realization the other day. I think now that I have a dedicated spot for papermaking. I'm seeing the utility in having a dedicated spot in general for things. I haven't been making paper. But I haven't really been doing anything productive. I thought it had been eight day because that was the last entry in the log but thankfully, it's only been 4 days since I last did a Paper.

Probably the one thing I learned from watching so much Casey Neistat videos that has been immensely helpful has been having dedicated spaces/things for the things you want to do. For example, I now have a vacuum in my room that's plugged in at all times. This is to remove the reluctance to vacuum because I 'have to unroll the cord and plug it in'. It's ready to go. The only excuse I have is that I just don't want to at that moment. And -that- is what is so important about dedicated spaces. Removing any kind of negative inertia / excuses / obstacles as to why you can't do it at that moment.

media: I've been thinking about media in general as it related exalted technology. (Remember that exalted in the context of this paradigm is that it was created as part of The Discipline.) I can easily consume media in a digital format. Terabytes and terabytes of hard drive space are available to me in which I can store media, but hard drive space is not exalted. (And I don't think I'll honestly ever reach that kind of technological capacity in my lifetime.) I can't just give up on media though. I'm a human being. (And neurodivergent - so media is a huge way in how I communicate with the world - and it communicates iwth me.)

But I was thinking about two different methods of storing media. The digital format in which huge amounts of information can be stored in a relatively small amount of space and the older (yet more achievable) formats that take up significantly more space but can be achieved by me. This will have to be something I aspire to.

technology: Technology, in its current form, is inevitably the product of capitalism. That means that the history and progress of technology (at least in its current form) cannot be separated from the process of capitalism. Other forms of technology hypothetically could have been viable but the profit motive underlies the process in which that technology was developed and was achieved. This might seem obvious but different forms of technology may have been viable if profit was not the main consideration.

The Discipline: This is boring. But that's kind of the point. In capitalism, if you have money, you literally never have to be bored. There is always someone willing to sell you a diversion. What happens when that's removed? Boredom.

I don't always feel like being productive. And that's okay. The point of this system / lifestyle isn't to be productive. It's to make you aware of the consequences of not being productive.

The Discipline: So I haven't really been that productive lately. I haven't created anything new in quite a while. But one thing that's really been motivating me is that, I'm making an effort to curtail my media consumption with the whole halal/haram media prohibition. If I'm not going to be productive and live fully within the intention of The Discipline, why am I even bothering? So one thing that's been bothering me lately is now that we're no longer in summer, I'm back to all of my clothes being outside of The Discipline and having to use blankets for warmth. So today, I took the first steps in working on building an exalted blanket. I already have sheets that I've made out of t-shirts, but now I can use the rest of my old clothes and make some quilts to keep me warm.

One thing I've realized very recently is that this lifestyle is extremely sedentary. It depends inordinately on space. Having space to create other things. But I need to be able to be a little bit more mobile, so figuring out some kind of way of doing that will eventually have to be a priority.

metric clock: So I did a few things for the python clock app. The biggest thing that I just came up with yesterday was making an 'eat' command. 90% of the time that I'm making an alarm, it's to check my blood sugar, so I figure, 'who cares? just make that a command by itself"

There's been this bug where the future events are displaying as 100+k instead of 0+k. Fixed that. That's been irking me like crazy.

And then there's been an issue with timers, where timers aren't being as accurate as alarms. So I just set the mechanism for timers to how alarms work. And I also set this new thing that I think will be immensely helpful: you can set a timer in minutes instead of having to convert it to metric time. I think this will be really, really helpful in getting an more intuitive sense of how many minutes equals how many metric seconds.

papermaking: So my papermaking has been strictly relegated to a small part of the garage. The problem with that is that I'm dipping the molds into a vat of water and I keep dripping water into the garage. (Not really big of a problem) My big concern though is when I have to empty the vat to try to clean it out that I'm going to spill the entire thing inside. (big problem) So I've moved my whole setup on to the porch and made a lil workbench out of a pallet I've had sitting around for a while. I literally just got this setup today so only time will tell how this will affect my productivity. But, at least, for now the shredding will probably still have to be done inside, (I just bought a $40 shredder for this and I don't want it to get damaged or stolen outside) but I think I can figure out a way to setup the blending outside though.

The Discipline: Not consuming entertain media before noon is pretty rough, but I think it's good. It keeps me sharp, focused and doesn't let me devolved into consuming entertainment media all day. Additionally, I had another idea that I think will help focus me even more. Not only will I try not to consume halal media. I will actively try to limit my behavior to just the necessities.

I've been thinking about the idea of simplifying things or replacing infrastructure with its simpler predecessor. It started with computers. I can make a computer from components but from its basic electronics, that's impractical. So I had an idea of doing whatever I would use the computer for, I would just use an alternative instead. Instead of writing in word documents, write on paper. Etc. The problem with this is that I will always eventually return to the computer. It is almost impossible for me to build my own processor or hard drive so its becomes an exercise in futility.

What if it was just a certain time period though? Like, maybe, before noon, I try to limit my own behavior even more than I normally would. I don't know if I'm accurately or sufficiently explaining it but that's the idea. ONe reason why is that I keep writing the same things over and over again. Pen, while relatively simple infrastructure, has been written down almost as much as computer. I've never progressed.

The Discipline: So I've been making a point of not consuming media before noon. Or at the very least halal media. (media I've created is fine) But I think I need to make an exception for educational media. There's a lot of stuff I'm going to have to read in order to accomplish what I want and I often don't want to because its boring. Really, the point of this prohibition was to avoid entertainment media beacuse I was just awash in it.

papermaking: So today, I dipped the paper and left out as soon as I woke up. It was relatively cold where I'm at, like, 70 degrees Farenheit. I thought 15k would be enough time for it to dry adequately but it wasn't. I thought about just leaving it til tomorrow but I thought let's try another 5k. when I came back, it was dry enough. I feel like I'm really getting the hang of it. Maybe it's because I'm not drying it in the sun anymore. I know the lower temepratures (it used to be in the hundreds) are a contributing factor but I think not drying it directly in the sun is another factor.

The Discpline: I haven't been able to consistently name the periods where I remove myself from The Discipline. I've been distinguishing between times when I do it out of necessity (like when I go to work) and when I do so out of exhaustion. In my mind though, for the latter part, I've been just referring to it as panic. I think a good way to refer it, generally speaking, is a lapse.

papermaking: Put out another two deckles. The pulp is definitely running out. One thing that was interesting was, and I think I mentioned this before, that one deckle was just made out of random scraps of wood that are not congruous with each other. This newest one has the most consistent shape and was made out of scrap 2x4s I had. Anyways, the more consistent one is able to scrape off the last bits of pulp from the vat. Normally, when I dip, it's a straight dip into the vat with the deckle being horizontal. When it's like this (hardly any pulp) or I do need to fix up spots that are bare, I do a diagnol dip where I drag it diagnolly across the vat on whatever side needs more pulp. Well, I did that instead of a horizontal dip and I was able to do a pretty smooth dip across the surface. The next deckle got a bunch of lumps from this process.

I think I'm going to eventually start running out of scrap paper as I increase the amount of deckles and the amount of dips I do per day. I do have a file cabinet of a bunch of archived documents so I might go through those and start scanning them to get rid of them. I think I also have a bunch of notebooks still that I've already scanned, so I might cut the paper out of those and throw those away. Gotta make sure I still have the scans first.

I did these dips around 12k, but I rpobably won't be home until 50k or so. But it's down to 70 which is crazy for where I live so the deckle might still be wet enough by the time I get home.

The Discipline: Today, is the first day I'm trying to enact the whole - not consuming media until noon and woo, is this hard. Maybe it's because I'm eating and I'm literally just sitting here, eating while staring at a blank screen.

papermaking: New batch of paper dipped. It was 77F but let's put it at 80F. And I'll check back in 15k.

I checked it before I went to work. I didn't have time to update before I left and I forgot when I got home. So, of the two deckles, one was completely dry and one was just wet enough to press. That was kinda odd. I wonder if it's a propery of the deckles being so different. Or if it's a property of how much pulp was on it. Maybe where on the porch it was?

The Paper / The Discipline: I'm just going through all my data and I finally got it all coordinated on one hard drive and one computer. Originally, I was saving all The Papers on my usb drive but I finally got them on to one spot. Anyways, I can't believe I've been doing this four months. I thought it was only at max two. I know, recently, I've adopted it on a relatively full-time basis, but I guess with how little I've updated this lately, it just doesn't feel like I'm as active as I actually am.

While I'm on the subject, I talked recently about limiting my consumption of video to only a certain time. Right now, that's until after dusk. (I was just watching way too much video.) Well, there was a thought yesterday about how media, in general, represents a sort of escape (from an experience-based reality). And I thought about adding a new thing, that from dawn to noon, there is no media consumption. In our media driven world, that's almost everything but the idea is to be grounded in an experience-based reality instead of a media-driven reality, at least for a short time period. I may actually extend this even further and try to go out of my way to avoid interactions with things that I have not directly created. Like, I'm already doing that, but in this way, I'd be even more extreme, at least for a short period of time. Like, maybe put that down in a different color pen. The only problem with this is that I tend to work pretty late so I'm not going to be awake at dawn, so unfortunately and fortunately, this will be the easy mode of this.

There's The Paper to keep track of my interactions but I think I might start journalling too. Just to start logging my feelings as a human being and how it relates to this and things that might be related. I don't want this to become that.

halal media: A distinction in terms: I've been referring, generally speaking, to media that is okay for consumption, but I had a realization that halal media refers to all media not created by The Organization but is within the appropriate time frame (older than 10 cycles)or subject matter (non-fiction and non-editorial). Media that's created by The Organization is separate from that category.

paper: I've noticed then when I write on the paper, the paper separates at the point where the pen tip touches the paper. Like it's pulling the pulp back. I thought this was kind odd but not worthy of commentary. Most recently, my paper has gotten to the desired thickness. To where, if you hold it at the end and shake it lightly, it does the appropriate wiggle you would expect from a piece of paper. Today, though, I noticed there's a bunch of ink marks on my desk. Now I understand why people used to have those big calendars on their desk.

I just retrieved the second batch of two deckle paper dips. I was excited to try my new paper cutter so I'm not manually cutting each sheet with scissors. (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXX3N5S8?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_dt_b_product_details) It did not work well at all, but I realized I was trying to cut with the back edge, not the blade. It still didn't work right. It just tears the paper. It got me to thinking about the general texture and quality of the paper. Maybe I need to set it to press even if its already relatively dry. I'm also going to start more actively monitoring (or trying to) my dips to try to get it out when it's dry enough to take off whne it's still a lil wet.

I just put it at out around 38k, so I'll check back at 48k.

I forgot to log the temperature. At 85F, 10k later, it was 80F, but it was not dry. Increase 20k for the next dip at this temperature. (I wonder if I need to start a spreadsheet.)

:

papermaking: So still working on the deckle. IT's taking a lot of glue to get it right. I'm off from Sunday to Thursday and I was hopoing to get three additional ones done during that time period. But I'll be lucky if I get two done.

Ever since I did this new batch of paper, I've thought that the paper was unnecessarily thick and today just confirmed it while I was scanning The Paper. There were a few from the last batch and they were so thin, they were like regular paper. (They might have been pressed too.) Then the first peices from this batch are SUPER thick, like a non-corrugated piece of cardboard. And as I've made more and added more water, the paper has gotten thinner and thinner. Weirdly, this batch also has a lot of wrinkles in it and today while I was placing a dip down it made me wonder if maybe the screen has started to get loose.

The Discipline: Yesterday, I was off and I thought I would do a lot of productive work. Other than starting work on that deckle, I didn't really do anything and then I gave up. When I give up or 'panic' as I call it, I give up The Discipline entirely and just do whatever I want during that time period.

The thing that bothers me about this is that if I were in a monastic setting, how would that work? What does that mean? And, recently, I had a bit of insight. Yesterday, when I gave up, I went to go play video games and watch TV like I would normally do but I continued wearing my robe and homemade underwear despite not being obligated to. It was so natural to me I just continued.

:

papermaking: I'm making a new deckle for paper. It came about so quickly, I'm wondering if maybe I should try to make a proper mold. I want to make multiple deckles so I can start really churning out paper. My goal is to reach ten in stock then a hundred then a thousand and so on and so on. Though, I might start focusing on quality, sourcing and automation before then.

paper: Yesterday, even though I was engaging in The Discipline, I started making paper again and diluted the vat a little bit with more water. This morning's dip is still a little too thick and it's the worst texture of paper (on the other side) I've ever had. IT's got these dimples in it and there's this weird curve that happened. Not sure how.

underwear: I bought some muslin the other day and some fabric to make regular pants. Today, I cut a 25 inch cut from it. The fabric must be 40+ inches long. (I don't have a metric yard stick in the house.) And afterwards, I realized I messed up. I thought it was a 25" x 30" fabric from my last underwear but I think it was a 30 x 60. In hindsight, that seems crazy big. (30 x 60) But 25 x 45 isn't big enough in the hips for me. It's big enough to go around my groin though so it's salveageble.

The other thing I realized is that this is pretty expensive. I can buy underwear for about $3 a pair online. This is already $3 (at least) and I haven't added the draw string and that'll add almost another dollar to it. Hopefully, this is just a bad fabric for underwear. But I don't think so. I think this is just the economics as it stands.

metric clock: I found another possible bug. So, right now, I'm running a timer for 8.5 so I can check my blood sugar 2 hours after I eat. It feels like it's taking too long. It's at 2k left, but it feels like it should almost be done. So I know when I finished eating and set a timer 8.5@[whatever the time was I ate]. Completely different times. This is completing almost a k later. So either I set this a lot later or I'm way way off. Even this @ timer seems a little off to be honest. Yeah, something is making my python script run a little slower than usual, because I ran a new @ and it's already 100 off after only 500 metric seconds.

The Discipline: I've been messing up in regards to The Paper. I've been logging my BG monitor and that's not necessary given the exemption I have for medical stuff.

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paper: Today, I got the dip from yesterday. It was barely wet but I don't think it was wet enough for me to be able to compress it properly. Or, it wasn't hot enough for it to dry enough. My dip from last night was still wet.

But it's definitely too thick. I wish the water had been ready so I could have diluted the pulp earlier. Also, ~220 g might be too much pulp for the vat. I don't know if I can dilute it enough to get it to the proper thickness.

The Discipline / The Paper: So just wanted to chime in regarding a small thing, I log different services (like social media) that I use during my day. But I decided to make an exception when that social media is being used to look something up. Like, if I'm googling someone and their profile comes up, that's fine. This might change in the future.

paper: So I ran out of viable pulp in the vat a few days ago. I thought I had logged that but I guess not. Basically, the last two dips I did were so thin they tore immediately when they came off. I was able to salvage them but they're not great. So I poured the water out from the vat into a bucket with a screen on it. The last time I did this I used zip ties. I had to use a bunch and I had to throw them away after so I thought I would try a rope instead to keep the screen on. That worked just fine. There was a lot more pulp this time compared to before. Last time, I drained it there was a lot of pulp on the bottom so I tried to use some pieces of cloth on a second pour into another bucket but I don't know how helpful that was. The water was still really murky.

So I knew that I wanted to drop the colored pulp down to 10% but I messed up. All in all, it was 195g of white shredded paper (I ran out before I reached 200g.) and ~22g of shredded, colored paper. (the kind that Amazon is putting in their packages) I messed up because someone threw in some red tissue paper for a gift. I counted that as part of the white paper. Big mistake. It completely threw the color off and I think it's almost as colored as it was last time. Maybe even a little more so except now it has a pinkish hue. Also, this -might- be too much pulp. I'm not sure if my vat just needed more water. (I didn't want to put anymore in until I tried to filter it with the cloth but the cloth was off to the side, drying.) But this first dip had a LOT of pulp on it. Like, maybe even three times much as a normal dip.

A mildly funny story. So I talked about how I pour the water from the bucket into another bucket but with the screen and cloth on top, right? So I brought the over to where I was making paper. It was down on the ground. And I was getting tired of stooping down to get water out of it to put in the blender, so I picked up the bucket to put it on my workbench. There was a puddle underneath so I just assumed the bucket itself was wet from the pour I had just done. But it was a -lot- of water and it was dripping. I put it back down on the ground. Then I realized: I used the same bucket that I had previously used for a water clock.

I guess I never logged this but, a while back, I poked a hole in the bottom of a bucket and filled it up to a certain point and kept track of how long it would take to empty it in metric time. It wasn't very useful because the shape of the bottom, the water stopped draining out as quickly and it felt like it just kept going and going. And outside of visually inspecting it over and over, I'm not sure how useful that would be. The one water clock I'd like to make is, I think, an Iranian one where you put a bowl with a hole in the bottom in a bucket and every time you hear the bowl hit the bottom of the bucket, a certain amount of time has passed. That's pretty simple and still useful. Though, I would eventually like to build the fucking Euclydiasian? or however you spell it. That fancy ass water clock, that chimes and runs by itself.

computer: I was having difficulty finding a monitor with HDMI in my collection. (I had been running the Raspberry PI Zero off the TV but it's at the wrong height.) I found one yesterday and set it up today. I immediately ran into an issue trying to use it as my main computer. Raspberry Pi Zero doesn't support Chromium which is a pretty big issue. And thne, another issue happened where the wifi just turned off. I brought up a terminal so I could run lynx and then an error came up saying that wpasupplicant was already running and then the wifi turned off.

There was always one thing that kind of bothered me about this. Once I did switch over to a Raspberry PI Zero, what did that really mean? The next step was to build a computer from its components but how is the RPZ relaly helping? I'm creating a barebones, minimalist setup - which I like, but it's also an overly specialized setup. If I have to choose between spending $15 on an RPZ or just getting garbage computers that no one would want, I would rather choose the latter. The only real advantage for an RPZ is that it presumably has a lower electrical usage than a regular computer.

The main issue with using the RPZ is just using its wifi, so I'll use it for something else. I've thought about using it as a metric clock but that seems like not enough given its capabilities.

I had planned to create an Altair-like computer but maybe a little more advanced so I could create a really basic (basic by contemporary standards) computer to use as my day to day. But, yesterday, I was reading homebrew projects about this and I realized that this would probably take decades to get to just an Altair/Apple level of computing.

The Discipline: Recently, I was reading Anathem and they were talking about, I think, The Convox that happens in that story. The specifics of what that means isn't so important but they talk about coordinating before Provener (noon), and after Provener. And that made me think of coordinating my efforts from now on in that same kind of vein. I spend a LOT of time watching media and that's problematic because its distracting for any kind of deep work, but what if I limited all video media to after Provener (noon) or maybe eventually dusk?

Metric Clock: I've been working on this concept of Metric Time for quite a while and only today, when I was reading a book called Hands of Time, I learned about Decimal Time which is apparently also an extensive Wikipedia article. I typed in 'metric time' in Google when I began this project and nothing significant came up but now this is a whole different avenue.

computer: I've been attempting to get the wifi working on the raspberry pi zero all morning. I'd been googling random things, typing in random commands to mitigate the issue but every single command except for 'ifconfig wlan0 up' returned an error. I basically gave up, figuring I'd have to get a Raspberry Pi Zero W, but I before I turned it off I noticed: the wifi was on! Something I had done had turned the wifi on and I was able to log in to the wifi network. I had no idea what command worked though.

So after rebooting and going through each command one by one, I figured out which one was bringing the wifi network up. The next problem was having it automatically run at start up. This created its own problems. rc.local did nothing. I added a special script to rc.init. Nothing. I tried adding the command to /etc/network/interfaces. nothing. Then I thought that maybe the issue was that since it's a USB wifi plug, maybe that network is only being initialized AFTER I log in. So I ran the command that's been working as part of .bashrc Works perfectly now. Now it's just about getting it connected to a proper monitor and waiting for the new hard drive for my file server and I think I'll be all set.

The Discipline: I gave up. On Saturday, I had a horrible, stressful day at work and then when I came home, my external hard drive with decades of data had some kind of issue because of a power outage. I was so incredibly frustrated. I just gave up entirely. I was pretty broken. I was able to save the data and I ordered a new hard drive. But I'm just now getting back into the swing of things.

halal media: I have another exception to add to the list. Though, technically, it's kind of more of the same. The novel that the White Tiger was written from. I might not like it though. I haven't read it but we'll see.

metric clock: I've found my first bug. I pulled up the web metric clock and it was almost a hundred metric seconds off from the python script running in the terminal. Normally, I would just assume the web version is off but I figured the terminal version was off because it's relatively accurate when you first load the web version.

I -think- I figured out what the issue was. Normally, it calibrates every 100 metric seconds by calculating the time. Otherwise, it just increments the time without calculating. Well, I changed it recently to a 1000 metric seconds. I think that's what accounting for the drift.

computer: for the goal of run my computing setup off of a raspberry pi that I currently have in the tech tree, I was finally able to get a desktop image on my raspberry pi zero. (nothing in particular stopping me just laziness and inertia) I think it'd be viable for everything except for playing videos. There was quite a bit of stutter. Maybe I'd need a full gigabyte of memory instead of just the 512mb. And from what I remember of that time, I don't recall getting heavily into videos until around a gigabyte of memory. (I could be wrong though. But I'm remembering 512mb as around 2002 or so.) The bigger problem is that I couldn't get the wifi chip to work on the USB hub. Not sure if it was because I didn't have it when it did the initial config or if it just isn't detecting it. (weirdly, ifconfig notes the interface but the gui desktop doesn't show anything.) So I'll probably be able to move my setup over to the pi as soon as I can get wifi. (BRO, that's crazy that these computers are only $15. The future of today is so awesome.)

My tenative plan is to try to get the wifi card working. I'll give it til the end of saturday and then sunday I'll just order the Zero W. I have a theory that -maybe- the video latency was because I was doing it through USB. If the video was directly on the SD card, it might not be nearly as bad. If that's the case then I should just be able to use this. If not, the next project is to get a really simple media player. Though, I probably can just use my file server as that. Because the plan is to hopefully just host all my files on there and use the zero as a kind of a thin client of sorts. Though, in terms of maintaining The Discipline, I don't think that's as viable. The better way of looking at it would be that the file server would be long term storage that I turn on to transfer files on and off and the zero would be day to day computer.

One thing that kinda sucks about this computing platform is that it runs off of mini hdmi. I understand why. But it doesn't appear you can double up on adapters, so I can't run a micro hdmi adapter to a regular hdmi cord to a vga input for a monitor. And I have a huge amount of VGA monitors that I'm very very satisfied with. VGA monitors are a plurality and you can get them at a lot of thrift stores for $5-10. But if I can only use it on hdmi ports, that's very limiting. Maybe just mini hdmi -> vga cables. THat's such a fucking specific use case though. It's not very versatile. I'd basically only be able to use them for raspberry pi zeroes. But I guess a raspberry pi zero being only $15 kinda makes it worth it in that regard.

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Paper: Yesterday, I put a new dip out to dry when I got home. I left it face down on a cloth and expected more of the same. Well, this morning it had been raining. That, plus the lower temperature, I think contributed to the paper still being a little damp when I took it out 16 hours later. (Unless maybe some water got on it even though it was on the porch) Because of this, I was able to put it in my press to make it a little flatter and it worked out pretty well. I'm excited for these new temperatures because it means that I might be able to get the paper off the deckle before it dries completely.

The Discipline: Due to the vagaries of having to live a 'real life', when I leave the house, I've been just been marking the entire time period off as sin. Sometimes, though, the infrastructure I use bleeds into the next. Like, if I start the washer during a period of general sin, but empty it while engaging in The Discipline, should I still have to count my usage of the washer as The Discipline?

Clock: So I've mainly been working on the earth based metric clock. It's messing up the rest of the portions of the clock. But now I have the ability to calculate dawn and dusk on top of solar noon. All of this is based off of zip code, so pretty american-centric, but I figured that's the easiest way of doing ti without having someone manually type in lat and long. I mainly just want it to be able to tell me when dawn, noon and dusk are, but I'm running into a bit of trouble. More work tomorrow on that.

Paper: So I've never been able to figure out the appropriate time to grab the deckle before it dries completely but where it's still wet enough to where I can put it in the press. It's either completely dry or so wet that it's starts tearing off of the deckle. This has been a bit of a disappointment because lately, the paper I've been using has been the best it's ever been but I started using both sides and while one side isn't horrible, it's a bit rough, making it a weird texture to write on.

Well, I gave up on trying to dry it for pressing but today, I laid it face down on a piece of fabric. It was just something to do. Normally, I dry it face up over a bucket but I figured I'd try something new. (Or maybe I just wasn't thinking.) Well, I made a discovery. Because I'm laying it face down on the fabric instead of face up, both sides are relatively smooth. The side facing the screeen becomes a little rougher but now they're a little bit closer to each other.

halal media: I was thinking about Nirvana and thinking about how there were like 5 or 6 releases after Cobain died. Would those be inelligible? I think there should be an exception in that situation. If the -main- person died of the media, before whatever date of halal/haram, I think that's okay as long as you aren't buying it within a cycle of it being released. Lemme explain.

If that particular person died before it would become haram then clearly, that's how old that media as an art form is. Now, there does have to be some scrutiny. It has to be the -main- person that died before it was released. So, an example that would not work, is The Dark Knight with Heath Ledger. In a hypothetical world where Heath died before it would be haram, but it was released afterwards, it would still not be eligible, because Heath Ledger is not the -main- person. He's the main villain. But he's not the main character and he's not the director. Even if it wasn't Cobain and it was Nosolovic or Grohl, that would still be fine, because while htey're not the leader singer, they are still an integral part. Though, it was like that Pat guy, it would only be for recordings with them.

Another caveat to discourage consumerism: the release has to be longer than a cycle. So adherents don't have to wait 10 cycles but they do have to at least wait one and that's from present day. Maybe if we're being charitable, as long as it was from the last cycle, that's fine too. (even if the last cycle was 10 days or 100 days ago.)

Clock: Programmed metric clock. I thought that it would be a good challenge to convert the algorithms from the spreadsheet presented here. I had originally used that site to calculate when solar noon was, but I had this hope to try to be able to do it, myself. When I first opened the spreadsheet linked, I became disheartened because there's 20+ relevant cells there with overlapping formulas. It was just a little overwhelming. But when I sat down and gave it a shot, I just figured I'd start copying out each cell and work my way through the requisites. It was actually easier than I thought. Just a little tedious and I was surprised that it mostly worked the first time once I figured out certain vagaries of the spreadsheet system versus python's system. The Discipline: Today, before I left for work, I made sure to do a dip of paper and leave it out, so that I at least did one thing productive in that category. (As per what I talked about yesterday) Later, when I was at work, I was thinking about how trivial that was. Trivial to the point of being almost irrelevant. I don't -need- more paper. It'll be nice to have it, but it's not necessary. So that made me realize that while it's nice to do that kind of work in a category. It is really the bare minimum. The kind of work where you are -technically- doing something but not pushing the envelope forward or making. The real work is new territory or new progress. Maybe the simplest criteria is working on something that's on The Paper of that day or, to a lesser extent, yesterday.

The Discipline: I had a realization today. I was filling out The Paper and as I've doing this, the category of Food has just been looking back at me, bothering me. There's not really much I can do until I buy my land. The kind of production I want anyways. But I realized, I can start actively working on food production now. I have access to a backyard. I have access to a garage. There's nothing really stopping me.

And as I was thinking about this, I realized that each category of sin as it relates to The Divinity of Infrastructure, has a corresponding action relating to negating that sin. This means that each day, there should be action in these categories to mitigate this inherent sin.

Clock: So I reprogrammed the metric clock. You can now create alarms and timers on the fly. I also reorganized the code. Alarms and timers were on one mechanism. They're now two separate mechanisms.

Mattress: So one of my more recent projects has been making a pair of sheets so that I can start sleeping on the floor. I don't think that's viable. I did not sleep well at all and certain positions that I would adopt while sleeping literally hurt me. I might still do it on days that I vaccuum and don't have to work the next day but for the most part, I'm back to using a mattress.

halal media: This is about porn and sex addiction, so if you're not interested in reading about that, move on. I always had hopes of finding suitable porn on Internet Archive but today, I've abandoned that. When looking for porn on Internet Archive, I've always tried indirect routes to find it. Today, I tried typing in 'porn' and porn came up, but the style of porn back then just isn't my tastes. I think it says a lot about how American consumption of porn has changed and what that means for the average male psyche. This makes me kind of sad. I might try to do some porn abstinence just to see how that plays out.

Paper: So I emptied the vat either yesterday or the day before into a bucket that I put a window screen over the top. I guess that still isn't adequate for the smaller bits of paper pulp because when I emptied the bucket back into the vat, there was still pulp in the bucket. I'm trying a new mix. Amazon, or whoever, has been using these long bits of paper for packaging so I figured I'd start shredding that and incorporating that into my mixes. So now I have shredded white and shredded colored. This particular mix is going to be 100g white and 50g colored. That's 33% colored mix. I need to bring that percentage down, possibly to 10% because the whole batch is brown now.

I need to stop putting more than 25g of paper at a time in the blender. It was having a lot of trouble on the first blend (50g) but wasn't nearly bad for the next two (25g) for white. But the colored paper is obviously thicker. (It's almost like paper grocery bags.) Because it takes forever for it to blend. I might need to go even lower for that type of paper. Like 10g.

I originally intended on checking my dip dry 6k after my initial dip but I'm not sure how close it was to that point. Either way, it was still very wet. So I put it in the sun. I checked it 4k later (right now) and it was still a little wet, but dry enough for me to get it off the deckle. Definitely need to make a mold. I hope it's not going to be too brown to make the black ink illegible.

Metric Clock: I got really tired of having to switch projects from this to the metricc lock so I could edit the alarms.txt file so I figured there had to be some kind of way to do input in the program. Now by typing "a [time for alarm]" or "d [time]", you can create or delete an alarm dynamically in the program. It's actually a lot smoother than doing it through a text file. I never considered this as an option and I had to familiarize myself with curses to do it but it works pretty well.

Divinity of Infrastructure: For truly complex items, like a computer, how do you create one? My original idea for 'creating a computer' was in the style of Wozniak inventing the first Apple, building it from constituent electronic parts, but with other more complex things, it suffices, at least for the first step, to build it from its most basic parts. Like a bicycle: the frame, chain, wheels, handlebars, seat, etc. That will suffice, at least for the first step. Each subsequent step is merely a continuation of that.

If the previous thing is about establishing its constituent parts, the next step (if continuing along the part of creating constuent parts is not viable) is to simplify the thing and create it again. So, maybe instead of a bicylce made from parts I've bought, I make a bicycle with parts I salvaged. On and on and so on.

Paper: I took the paper out from being dried/pressed. There was no real change because it had already dried. I only have one piece of paper for tomorrow but I'm going to try using both sides, because it's kind of a pain to switch between the two pages.

Sheets/Mattress: I've written previously that a mattress doesn't count as furniture in regards to The Discipline because I can hypothetically still lay on the ground. I don't want to lay on bare carpet though, so I've been working on sewing some sheets from some old t-shirts I had. I was actually able to sew together two. One for me to lay on and then one to go over me. I'm planning on sewing a quilt from a bunch of socks I have as well. It's really surprising how quickly I can operate now that I have a sewing machine. Thtough, I understand the limitations of my machine now. It's a cheap, portable machine so when I sew stuff together, I can't really overlap. I have to just crudely stitch end to end because there's not enough room in the sewing machine for a bunch of fabric.

The Discipline: One thing I thought would be helpful to explain about The Discipline is that, at least at this stage, I don't have to log infrastructure that I use to make other things. I think once that becomes solved though, then I can take up that problem.

Paper: I wasn't planning on making any paper today but I abandoned this list dip for 3 days and it's just been sitting where I leave deckles to dry outside since then. It's a horrible dip, completely inconsistent and too thick but the other side is good and it didn't tear. And since that was a successful dip, I figured I'd try one more. Interestingly, I finally figured out a new technique in dipping. Normally, when you dip the deckle straight in (level), all of the freshly agitated pulp goes on cleanly. It's the subsequent dips that ruin that dip because as you dip again, all of the pulp that's already settled on the deckle moves so it's a game of trying to get more pulp on the empty areas while not disrupting the areas that already have. I figured out if you bring it in at an angle, you can kinda scrape the pulp up on the edge without disturbing too much pulp. I think this one might actually turn out okay. I'm not going to time this dry. But I think what I will do is press it anyways even after it's dried. Because I've always operated with the assumption that when you're pressing it, you're doing it so it will dry more evenly and flatly. I just wanna see if it does anything.

Oh, and today I had a thought regarding drying. So I'm trying to dry it facedown on a towel and I assume it'll be the same problem as before: it keeps sticking. It won't come off cleanly onto the towel. I never mentioned this previously, but I'm not using a mold. It's just a deckle. And now I'm wondering if when you flip it over to dry, the mold actually helps keep it separated from the drying surface so that gravity can pull it off the deckle. Food for thought for me.

So I got the earlier dip for today off of the deckle. It was pretty late. It was like 14k after I set it out. It had dried pretty consistently and didn't rip in a way that compromised it. I'm pressing it now with my wood clamps and I'll get it tomorrow after my doctor's appointment. I don't think it'll noticeably change anything though. I noticed one of the sides was noticeably disfigured before I put it in, so I'm hoping that will at least mitigate that.

The Discipline: I've been mulling this idea around about quantifying The Discipline down to the numbers corresponding to each category that I keep track of: infrastructure, media, food, programs and websites.

Paper: Just retrieved my first batch. I was surprised how easy it was to dip in the vat considering how difficult a time I had last time, but there was a light coating as soon as I brought it out. I might have gotten the amount of time wrong and waited more than 6k because it was completely dry, but I'm assuming it was because it was such a light coat. These next two dips, I'll be checking back in 3k.

I just got the next batch and I initially, understood the role skilled labor plays in the vatman (dipping the deckle in the vat) but I didn't really understand the skill in the next step, which is laying it out and pressing it. So, this time, it wasn't completely dry but it made things a little more difficult because one of the dips tore completely when I took it off but the other one was mostly okay. I tried a technique that I've tred previously. I immediately took the freshly dipped deckle and flipped it over to where it would dry. I was concerned that it would tear off in clumps but it's not coming off at all now. I raised it up off the surface so there's empty space underneath so it'll hopefully just peel off as it dries with gravity pulling it down. I'm down to one deckle now though. The other one that I glued, just came apart where I glued it. I'm going to try gluing it to a support underneath.

I came back and started tapping the deckle to set it free and the entire middle part just clumped off. I did a new dip where I didn't care how thick the dip was or how consistent it was across it. Then I'm going to leave it face down on the towel for 5k to see how that goes.

The Discipline: I've noticed a pattern in my behavior. I will, sometimes, not do a thing specifically to avoid having to log the thing down associated with it. Like, for example, my floor is a little dirty. Not filthy but dirty enough. And I just don't want to have to log down that I used the vacuum. This behavior repeats over and over and I understand the reasoning behind it, but I'm not sure what to make of it. If anything, I hope that it will motivate me more to create more things so that my list won't have so many things on it.

halal media: I was thinking about the exception that I made for halal media. That everything before 10 cycles is okay. Why media? And not technology in general? I did a thought experiment and if there were already people already doing the thing that I am doing, I wouldn't need the exception. There would be an existing culture in which I could consume. I guess, in my mind, as long as I know the exceptions I'm allowing for, I'm okay with a blanket restriction on all outside infrastructure, but the idea that I wouldn't be able to listen to music, read fiction or watch videos just feels overwhelming to me. Even if I suddenly started making my own media, I don't think it's really all that gratifying to consume your own media.

towel: I had made a towel a while back from socks and I had posted on here how much of a failure it was. Because I was getting tired of having to put 'towel' down on my list, I figured I'd start it using more. Weirdly, today, when I took a shower, it worked just fine. I'm wondering if the difference was I didn't wash my hair. It's a relatively small towel. Also, I definitely build some more smaller ones to be able to dry my hands in different parts of the house and to be able to clean up messes.

Robe: I've made two robes previously. The first one was a completely haphazard creation. I literally took a sheet, draped it over my shoulders, used safety pins where I wanted it to be, sewed it by hand then cut the excess parts. It looks horrible. And the sleeves I sewed on have continually come off over and over. Not sure what the issue is with that.

The next one I did wasn't really supposed to be a robe. It was a shirt to go with broadcloth that I wear. Something a little less involved than a robe, but it's about as long as a short robe. My first robe goes to my ankles, but this goes to my knees. I have issues when I lay down, the shoulders aren't right and there's a lot of space in the neck. But I used a machine on this so it came together way more quickly than the robe did. The robe literally took at least the whole day if not two, because I was sewing it by hand.

I mainly wanted a back up robe to wear to bed. I haven't made a blanket yet so I've been wearing the long robe to bed and the shorter robe on a day to day basis. And I've been wearing all of this stuff for four days straight so I figured it's overdue. My own issue with the previous builds was I didn't really jot down any of the details. So because the proportions were all messed up for the first robe, I drew a design on a piece of cardboard for the shoulders for the second one. I've strayed away from that and made it just be a straight line at the top. I did make the neck a bit shorter. My measurement is a 26 inch neck, but I did 32 inches for the second and I'm doing 28 inches for this one. (It was perfect.) I'm also going to fold the fabric back and sew it because I'm getting tired of the thread coming down on the edges that I've cut. I'm also going to double stitch the parts that will face the most amount of tension like the shoulders. Unfortunately though, the thread tore from the bobbin side and it's a major pain to rethread it there so I'm done for the day.

Paper: It gets inordinately hot outside so I made sure to do the necessary work on the frames today early in the morning. Instead of making a whole new one (which was my original plan) I figured, I'd just repair the two that I already have. One of them, the laquer for the MDF started coming off so I think just by gluing it, it'll hopefully stay put this time. The other one the frame broke in half on one side so I start gluing that part. I glued it together and then I'm going ot glue a piece of scrap wood behind it for more support.

I took the last few batches of paper inside. I don't think I mentioned this but on the last batch, instead of just putting the two large pavers on top, I also used a couple of clamps I use in woodworking to press it down even harder. This made it the thinnest paper I've ever gotten. Actually, in the last batch, the paper had torn and usually, it won't dry into place but its fine now because I put it under so much pressure. I'm not sure why, if it's because its smoother than the previous ones, but I can write using a regular pen on this one, I don't need to use a sharpie anymore.

This entire batch of paper was made with 10% dryer lint and I don't think I'm going to use that anymore. There's a lot of hair in it and that makes it a little bit gross. I have been thinking about making toilet paper though and now that I can get this thin enough. IT's just about whether it's sanitary enough and the proper type to be able to flush.

halal media/The Discipline: I've talked about having to reign in my media consumption previously. So one thing that I've done is now when I'm loading up JDownloader, I wait until there's less than 100gb of pending downloads. But even then, I realized recently I'm doing a lot of browsing. I spent atleast 7k yesterday browsing media on Internet Archive and at the end of the day, it doesn't seem all the meaningful. So I think I'm also going to stop that type of browsing. So there is one type that I do that I think is okay and that's time period browsing where I sort media according to release date and go month by month through a particular type. That's reasonable. It's not crazy. But yesterday, I was just searching through comics and magazines in general and that wasn't as productive. All that being said, my main focus will be on stuff I actually want to watch first.

When I would read the Tripitaka (I think that's the name, it's the book of rules for Buddhist monks and any set of books of rules in general for monks), I always thought it was weird there were so many rules. Now as I see all of the various exceptions and special instances for halal media, I totally get it now. A rule is a communication on expected behavior and the more rules, the more explicit you are about the expectations of that behavior.

Now that I've been living like this, in The Discipline, mostly uninterrupted, I've been thinkign about the role of going to work plays in all this. They play music at work and, presumably, that music will be haram. But if I'm not the one picking it: is that haram? Really, it's the seeking out of it that's haram. Not the actual process of listening to it. So if I go to ask someone, 'what song is this?' or I go to play more contemporary music then, that is haram.

The Discipline / Halal Media: I can't believe this will be the third day I've maintained The Discipline. (mostly - There was that period I was working on my car and didn't want to write down -everything- I was putting on as safety gear.) One thing I noticed from yesterday though is that productivity (or an aspect of that) needs to be a part of it, because I spent most of yesterday just consuming old media. With that, I'm becoming less and less comfortable with the idea of it being 10 cycles ago. I don't want to be actively counting the clock every day, being like, "oh, what historical media can I consume today?" I'm wondering if it's better to just to go to the nearest 0 and -then- go back ten cycles. So I'd go back to the beginning of 4390 and then go back to 4380. Maybe that's too far actually. Waiting every 30 years to consume media is the opposite end of that spectrum but 3, that's not bad and that will give even more emotional significance to a new cycle.

One thing I was thinking about is that once I've reached the bottom of downloading video from YouTube and Internet Archive, and I have to start buying it, isn't that just as bad as being a regular consumer? Aren't I just the equivalent of an antique collector except for media? I've been thinking about time management a lot in this regard and I think I need to set a limit, maybe just personally, for how much time I'm browsing for new media.

I had an idea about encouraging productivity today. On my papers, the one I use to keep track of interactions, what if I marked off in a different color, the things that I -could- do. Smething productive that I know that I could do.

Like any system that relies on self reporting, I understand the shortcomings but it's more the mindfulness of it than anything. Last night, before I went to bed, I just gave up entirely on time reporting, but that's more just being conscious of how I spend my time than anything. And, also, I've started to realize the things that I'm not keeping track of but should. It's important to not beat myself up about it while also remaining vigilant.

Metric Clock: So I fixed the clock web page. It hasn't said the correct day since I made the original python code. I also added timers to the python app and both implementations I was hoping for. I wanted to add a straight timer that just starts from whenever you start the script (3.2 would be a timer for 3,200 metric seconds) and a timer that can start from a specified time (3.2@39 is a timer that presumes you start it at 39 and would do 3,200 metric seconds) I also changed how it calculates the time. It only calculates it every 1,000 metric seconds. Outside of that, it just increments the variables.

The Discipline / Holy Day: From now on, I'll just refer to the act of keeping track of my interactions as The Discipline instead of Holy Days. It makes it slightly less grandiose.

So I went outside to work on my car and I had originally planned to just put some rubber gloves on and include that as The Discipline for what I was doing. But I'm using some epoxy adhesive to secure my bumper back on and it recommended to clean whatever clothes you dirt with it 'professionally' so I figured I would put my overalls on and just log it as a lapse of Discipline while I did that.

Paper: Dropped the first batch of paper and I think I'm all out of paper pulp. I could not for the life of me get a good dip. It was only after I blended the past few bad batches and poured it in that I was able to finish.

I checked the batch after 6k. Probably could have went up to 7k or 8k. It was mostly dry but it tore a bit getting it off. Also, when I was adding the screen to this one last night, I just grabbed the first bit of screen I saw which wasn't enough to cover the entire frame so the two pieces overlap each other. I figured it would have some kind of effect but didn't know what.

I knew it would get in between the two layers but the real danger is the top layer of paper drying with that middle layer attached to it and having to tear it apart, so I'm going to put a new screen. I'm also going to make a new deckle entirely.

Now that I understand the role that the thickness plays, I've been wondering what to do with re-recycled paper. All of my batches of paper have been paper that I've shredded and blended, but what about that paper? I could maybe do one or two additional batches but I'm assuming there's a bottom and I think toilet paper would be a good avenue. THough, I'm not sure how I would make it sanitary for those purposes.

Holy Day Log: I'm going to make the dates and time metric oriented now. I'm pretty comfortable with it and I've already done it in my personal notes and my interaction log, so why not?

Holy Day: The name "Holy Day" seems unnecessarily ostentation and pretentious. I really gotta come up with something better to denote these time periods. The Discipline? idk. So, today, I'm going to try to do a full day of this. I have a bunch of days off in a row and I've been wanting to spend more and more time engaged like this so we'll see how this goes. And, I think, specifically, because of how special this day is, I'll also be posting the other documents for today.

I think I've explained this previously but I have two pieces of paper where on the first one, I jot down notes for the day and recently started keeping track of how I'm spending my time. The second paper, I keep track of my 'Interactions' which are with things I have not personally produced (there are some exceptions), food, programs, and media. (Look up Halal Media regarding that.)

Metric Clock: I spent most of my early day setting up an alarm. I'm still having some formatting issues on the console that I'm not sure how to resolve but it works pretty well for what I intended. I might create timers later or save that for another day.

Paper: Last time, I made paper I believe I waited 2.5 hours for the paper to dry and it was still a little wet. It's more than 38 degree celsius outside right now and when I left it out for 3 hours this time to firm it up so it wouldn't tear, it went completely dry. I won't be using the little frame anymore because it tore, but I did make some progress in regards to the proper thickness of paper. I've always had this issue where the paper is just too thick. When I moved to a bigger frame, the paper got a little bit thinner but I just didn't understand how to control it as a skill when dipping the deckle-frame in the vat. Today was the first day I kinda figured out how to do it. I think now I need to start making deckles where the frame isn't a part of it.

In the interest of centering myself towards a more metric-time based way of thinking, instead of doin X hours, I'll be checking the next paper after 10k instead of 12k.

So I checked it 10k after the last batch, it was still super dry and I think I didn't use enough this time because the margins were thin enough, the paper started to tear when I took it off the deckle-mold. The next batch I'll check in 6k instead.

6k after the last batch. It wouldn't come off the deckle-mold. I kept tapping it over and over again and it started separating from the center but eventually it started to tear because the sides had already dried to the deckle-mold. So I took the mold off and the part I was hoping to keep is actually completely broke in half. So I attached the other half even though it's not an even surface and the pulp is pooling in the center, there's no mold in it at all. I'll check it in 3k and hopefully, it will have dried just enough to be together but not enough to tear apart.

Checked in 3k after last batch and it had either started to dry too much to the deckle or not enough. I'm going to go with the former and check back at 1k. It had dried to certain sections but there's a big enough section to maybe be useful. We'll see how that one turns out. I had a lot of trouble getting a good dip, so either the vagaries of the deckle are just letting it go square or I'm almost out of pulp. But it seems pretty cloudy so I think it's the former. Also, I really messed up. Some of my scrap wood is MDF and when I made this deckle, I used some MDF. (I think that's what it's called.) And MDF is HORRIBLE when it gets wet.

Yeah, so it wasn't dry enough. 1k, it tore completely apart. So next time I'll have to do 6k and hopefully get a better batch. If this doesn't work out, I might try attaching the screen to the upper and lower part of a frame and have it come out so that I can kinda fold the paper out instead of trying to tap it free.

Holy Day Interactions: I make a dispensation for furniture, but something about a mattress bothered me. It didn't seem to fit the criteria of furniture while also seeming to fit the criteria. But I figured out a good metric. I don't include furniture like my desk and my computer chair because in order to use my computer, I need to be able to place the monitor somewhere and I need to be able to sit somewhere. Now I could stand to use my computer but I'd have to set my desk up to do that. I could set my stuff up on the ground but just seems so anti-ergonomic as to defeat its purpose. A mattress though? I can lay on the ground to sleep. I've done it before. It's not impossible or ergonomically impractical. So that's why it applies.

Halal Media: So I was having a bit of trouble because I wanted a more accurate time period for media than 'before 1994'. When I did calculation, it was 10,000 days divided 365.25, which is 27.3 years ago. Way sooner than 1994, my original estimate, which I didn't understand. Then I looked at the original entry, and it talked about 10 cycles ago 'and the current year', which I thought was a weird thing to throw in, but I meant the current cycle. And if I minus the current days of this cycle -and then- minus ten cycles, that gives me the number which is closer to 29. But how do I get a more specific date? For now, I just typed in the current number of days in the cycle plus 10,000 as a google search of "what date was it 10,638 days ago" and it gave me: July 18, 1995, which is perfect for my purposes.

So I'm watching a show from 1990 but it's clearly from a VHS recording from 1998. Is that considered acceptable? It comes with the commercials from that year so I'm not entirely sure.

Notes: Every time I do this, I have two sheets of paper. (more if the sheets are smaller) But one covers all of my interactions, food, programs, and media I use that day. The other is notes where I make sure to put the beginning and end times and any notes I might have during that period. Usually, that's questions, but last time it was just the beginning and end times, so I thought maybe it'd be better if I start documenting what I'm doing as well in terms of the time spent on things. Also, I've been wondering if there's any utility in posting those pages on here, because I do scan them but I just haven't bothered partly for privacy reasons and I figure no one cares any way.

Metric Clock: I was really worried how much drift there would be after a few days of letting the program run. (I made a github for it if you're interested.) I was a little disappointed to find out it was initially off by 100, but there was something odd about how it was incrementing. Instead of incrementing by 1, it was incrementing by 10. There was a 9 at the end that just wasn't going up at all. Then I realized, I had probably just inputted a character accidentally and there was only a second drift between it and the web app, which is right on mark for me.

I was thinking about how I made a mistake with original calculation for the cycle-day and I realized I messed up again. To adjust for the Holocene Calendar, I multipled 11969 by 365.25 ( I know the actual number is 365.24 but I just did a little rounding up) and I just rounded down, ignoring whatever the decimals were afterwards. In hindsight, I should have just added those to the day tally.

Paper: Turns out the larger piece of paper was pretty good in terms of overally thickness, better than the small piece was. And that was always the issue with the small pieces, they were just too thick, they had no give like a regular piece of paper. If I folded it, I'm pretty sure it would just tear. I made another sheet of larger paper after work a few days ago and it came out mostly pretty good, except I guess I didn't wait long enough for it dry because it tore a little but when I took it out but still usable.

Towel: So I had made a towel out of socks previously. I took a shower earlier and...it was not great. I thought the moisture wicking properties that are used for socks would translate well but they do not. It still got the job done at the end of the day but it just wasn't good.

Paper: After what feels like a long time without being productive, I finally start making paper again. I'm using whatever remanants from the previous batch are still in the vat and adding 100 grams of recycled paper, shredded and blended and 11 grams of dryer lint blended.

The first issue I ran into was just taking too long for it to dry before pulling it off the deckle mold. It's been at least an hour. The main reason why I want to take off before it dries is so I can press it better. This is creating a lot of problems for me. It felt like I was able to do this just fine with half of the last batch but I keep messing up lately. The paper just starts tearing off of the mold as I tap it to get it off. I'm going to wait just until it stops actively dripping then try taking it off.

I fell asleep. The paper isn't too horrible when it dries. It's just not the right thickness and texture. I thought both of them would be mostly dry. The small one was mostly dry but the large one I just created was still wet and I might be able to get something good out of it. I think the next step is to build a new deckle that's just frame, because my past two have been two frames with the screen sandwiched between it. I'll try stapling it onto there, see how that works.

August 21, 2024 [4391-871] (14:48 [u30.5k] - 23:33 [u69.9k]) - 39.4k / 9.45h

August 20, 2024 [c:4,391 d:870] (18:25 [u46k] - 22:20 [u62k])

August 8, 2024 (13:20 [1.76EK] - 21:16 [34.6EK])

August 7, 2024 (12:20 - 16:02 [12.8k])

July 27, 2024 (12:47 - 15:57)