dannyman.toldme.com

Survive, Sketch, Plane

A theme I experienced yesterday is the human need to make.

Justo reached into his pocket and gave me a bracelet. Orange and black, woven tight from plastic bags — the ones the men inside Alligator Alcatraz repurposed with their own tired hands, because human beings will make something out of nothing if you give them nothing long enough. They make them for each other. They make them because making something is the one thing a cage cannot take from you.

“The Long Road Ahead”
Rook T Winchester

You can read about Justo Betancourt, and how our government forced suffering upon him and continues to force suffering on our “unwanted” poeople. The barbarity and cruelty is sadly familiar to any American who is paying attention. We each resist in our own ways. We each must maintain our own sanity.

Sam Hamper has a very nice video about how he likes to sketch things, not in order to produce content, but just because the process of paying attention is gratifying in itself. You don’t take a walk to achieve something: you take a walk because it is something you need to do. Similarly, spending time observing things is something you need to do to feel whole and human. He notes that attention is rated as a most valuable “commodity” these days, and that you don’t have to sketch to focus on the moment: but sketching is what works for him.

I likened his sketching to taking notes at a meeting. I don’t usually take notes. Most meetings I tend to be checked out. When I do take notes, they are rarely useful beyond the moment, but the habit helps me focus my attention on what is happening. Some meetings I care about.

There’s a larger thing afoot with AI. I find it to be one of several handy tools in my day job: how do I correctly iterate through a dictionary list in this context? Other folks use AI to do the job of junior engineers. That sounds powerful but lonely. I believe that if you’re going to mentor something to do the work, empowering a human to grow is amazingly gratifying. I doubt work styles like mine are going to be replaced overnight, if ever, but … as a 50 year old tech worker, I have lately taken an interest in hand tools.

Watch Rex Krueger explain how to plane a board flat. You could run that board though a pair of machines or a table saw lickety split. But there’s something enjoyable about the process. Maybe. But you have to get the right tools and you have to make them sharp. What I did manage last night was to practice sawing into the end of a few boards at an angle. I am a couple of chisels away from attempting a dovetail joint. For practice. To see if I like the process.

Surprisingly not as scary as vi. I doubt the rest will come too easily.

I have a modest collection of power tools, but the hand tool thing feels “Unixy” to me: a collection of small tools that aren’t without a learning curve, but with a little practice you can get up to speed and build useful things.