This reminds of that delightfully charming episode of "Japanology Plus - Tokyo : Backstreets and Alleys":
The Magic of Alleyways
11–20 of 26 posts
Re: The Magic of Alleyways
#12I kinda wish there was a separate news feed for these long, meandering but often interesting stories (I propose we call it hacker news after dark). over 3k words is kind of a big commitment for the kind of bathroom breaks I am normally reading hacker news on so wish the main feed was kept to sub 2 k word stories/news. The other problem also happens where I sit down to the kind of epic bathroom break where I could enj…
My request would be for a button which saves the article to a form which I can read on a kindle or remarkable at a good time, for example on the commute home.
Firefox has something like that called Pocket. I don't know how easy it is to send the articles to an e-reader.
Re: The Magic of Alleyways
#13Are there equivalents to alleyways in software? Things that were meant as pragmatic ancillary solutions, but have taken on a life of their own? For me, vi's ! springs to mind.
Hmm...
"Surprisingly Turing-Complete" https://www.gwern.net/Turing-complete
> ‘Computers’, in the sense of being Turing-complete, are extremely common. Almost any system of sufficient complexity—unless carefully engineered otherwise—may be found to ‘accidentally’ support Turing-complete somewhere inside it through ‘weird machines’ which can be rebuilt out of the original system’s parts, even systems which would appear to have not the slightest thing to do with computation.
Re: The Magic of Alleyways
#14Saigon, Vietnam is a massive massive city with something like 8m+ people living there. When I was living there and couldn't sleep at night, I'd hop on my motorbike and just go explore all the little back streets and alleyways that cut through the whole city.
As a foreigner, it is relatively safe to do this. Most people are just busy living their lives (or sleeping!), but seems super sketchy if you think too deeply about it.
I never really saw anything too crazy (beyond the absolute poverty a lot of people live in), but the occasional illegal cockfight or overhearing screaming and yelling was always entertaining. One time, I had a gang of hookers on bikes chase me around for a bit, but eventually they realized that I wasn't interested in being a customer and left me alone.
I'm sure in a few instances, I could have stopped and had drinks with the more than friendly locals. From what I understand, I probably wouldn't have been allowed to leave until properly lubricated. I never worked up the courage for that one though, mostly because of the language barriers.
Re: The Magic of Alleyways
#15I kinda wish there was a separate news feed for these long, meandering but often interesting stories (I propose we call it hacker news after dark). over 3k words is kind of a big commitment for the kind of bathroom breaks I am normally reading hacker news on so wish the main feed was kept to sub 2 k word stories/news. The other problem also happens where I sit down to the kind of epic bathroom break where I could enj…
Second that. I found myself thinking, "too many adjectives."
Re: The Magic of Alleyways
#16Gumball Alley in San Luis Obispo, CA is equal parts magical and disgusting.
Re: The Magic of Alleyways
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
My request would be for a button which saves the article to a form which I can read on a kindle or remarkable at a good time, for example on the commute home.
Firefox has something like that called Pocket. I don't know how easy it is to send the articles to an e-reader.
Kobo readers at least have Pocket built-in.
Re: The Magic of Alleyways
#18I kinda wish there was a separate news feed for these long, meandering but often interesting stories (I propose we call it hacker news after dark). over 3k words is kind of a big commitment for the kind of bathroom breaks I am normally reading hacker news on so wish the main feed was kept to sub 2 k word stories/news. The other problem also happens where I sit down to the kind of epic bathroom break where I could enj…
Right. How are your bathroom breaks going anyway? Plumbing all working well, I hope! Drinking enough water?
Right as chocolate rain most of the time but sometimes it is cloudy with a chance of meatballs.
Re: The Magic of Alleyways
#19Lovely article. I wish the author would have spent more words explaining why he is so against laneway houses, though.
Re: The Magic of Alleyways
#20Are there equivalents to alleyways in software? Things that were meant as pragmatic ancillary solutions, but have taken on a life of their own? For me, vi's ! springs to mind.
Javascript was (in)famously hacked together in ten days.