---

Stuff on life and projects ¶

Posted on May 11, 2025

I understand spoon theory; it’s madness; I believed it did not come to that, but it did. Often I feel like I have more spoons right there… just grab them! But then I win over myself. Learned helplessness? Conjecture: I’m using too many technical terms that have become Internet memes, so I’m corrupted myself.

Worse: I’m surrendering to the Enemy. I started using a pseudo–intelligence; I’m a True Beginner with pseudos; for now I do it in two ways:

1. as the Librarian is used in Neal Stephenson’s novel “Snow Crash”;
2. as a replacement for WolframAlpha; I wanted to use the latter as a way to confirm my mathematical intuition about some topics I need in a project²; it turned out to not be what I really need; nowadays a pseudo can perform some symbolic mathematical computation, and I can use that to check my own computations or to find some results that are beyond my knowledge; for example:

   In Mathematics, specifically in Theory of Signals:
   
   * let t be a real number independent variable;
   
   * let Y(t) be a real valued function;
   
   * let X(t) be a real valued function;
   
   * let H(t) be a real valued function;
   
   if Y is equal to the monolateral convolution between X and H,
   how can we compute the derivative and the differential of Y
   with respect to t?
   

I edit my inputs in a gnu Emacs buffer, where I feel more comfortable, then I paste them as pseudo’s prompts.

My Applied Mathematics project is proving to be yet another lesson in humility: I forgot more Mathematics than I thought; the development is going in a different direction than the one I forsaw; the only elements that were right from the beginning are the core mathematical ideas, because I did not invent them!

Anyway, the project is moving, albeit slowly.

In general, I want to write my code by myself; but I would find helpful to use the pseudo to generate template code for LaTeX package TikZ; there are plenty of examples on the Net, but this package has so many features that I find it hard to start using it. I do not need to become an expert, and I do not need complex pictures (repeat: I. Do. Not. Need. Complex. Pictures.); any help that saves spoons is appreciated.