devlog

404.md

@@ -1,27 +1,27 @@
 @def title = "404"
 
 ~~~
-<div style="margin-top: 40px; font-size: 40px; text-align: center;">
+
+<div style="">
 
   <br>
 
-  <div style="font-weight: bold;">
-    404
-  </div>
 
-  <br>
-  <br>
+  <p>Sorry pal, that's a</p>
 
-    The requested page was not found
+  <div style="">
+    <div style="font-size: 100px; padding: 1.5rem 0 0.2rem 0;">
+    
+    404
+    </div>
+  </div>
 
   <br>
   <br>
+    we couldn't find that page. we looked real hard. you could <a href="/"> home</a>.
   <br>
   <br>
 
-  <div style="margin-bottom: 300px; font-size: 24px">
-    <a href="/">Click here</a> to go back to the homepage.
-  </div>
 
 </div>
 ~~~

_css/basic.css

@@ -215,5 +215,5 @@ table tbody tr td {
 }
 
 body {
-  background-color: #111;
+  background-color: #121212;
 }

_css/franklin.css

@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
   --block-background: hsl(0, 0%, 7%);
   --output-background: hsl(0, 0%, 0%);
   --small: 14px;
-  --normal: 19px;
+  --normal: 1rem;
   --text-color: hsl(0, 0%, 83%);
   /* --text-color: hsv(100, 0%, 20%); */
 }
@@ -19,7 +19,7 @@ html {
   font-family: "lexend", monospace;
   font-size: var(--normal);
   color: var(--text-color);
-  font-weight: 300;
+  font-weight: 400;
 }
 
 /* ==================================================================
@@ -224,7 +224,6 @@ td {
   border-left: 7px solid #a8a8a8;
   margin: 1.5em 10px;
   padding: 0.5em 10px;
-  font-style: italic;
 }
 
 .franklin-content blockquote p {
@@ -243,11 +242,12 @@ td {
 .franklin-content a {
   color: var(--text-color);
   text-decoration: underline;
+  text-decoration-color: var(--tertiary-color);
 }
 
 .franklin-content a:hover {
   text-decoration: underline;
-  text-decoration-color: var(--secondary-color);
+  text-decoration-color: var(--tertiary-color);
 }
 
 /* ==================================================================

devlogs/2024-04-13.md

@@ -0,0 +1,62 @@
+# devlog 2024-04-13
+
+**Added login tracking to the database and authentication server**. I'm starting to think more about logging in general, since it'd be nice to have various metrics when I start letting users in. I do logging for some other stuff, like how many tokens go into/out of language models, which models are used, etc.
+
+**Shifting to a Julia-based websocket server for melds (Welder.jl)**. I watched a great [YC video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rP7bpYsfa6Q&t=1509s) for technical founders, and Diana Hu's basic point was you should work with frameworks that help you with iteration speed, not things that scale. I can hack shit together in Julia _very quickly_. I realized that focusing too much on the Rust-based version of welder was slowing me down, so I cut it.
+
+**Expanded slug usage**. Slugs are `n`-word permutations of one of [4,319 common English words](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pkLazer/password_rank/master/4000-most-common-english-words-csv.csv). Slugs are assigned to thoughts and melds. Any thought or meld can be accessed via URL, i.e. `comind.me/apple-code`. They will also be displayed on UI elements. In principle, you can assign these codes by embedding similarity. Get the embedding for the new thought and cosine it against the slug embeddings. 
+
+I suspect you'd actually get this cool effect where slugs that seem most similar to the content are matched, like the thought
+
+> i left my keys in my car
+
+might get you the slugs
+
+```
+key-car
+lost-keys
+locked-out
+```
+
+or something to the equivalent. 
+
+I actually really like this idea.
+
+**Wrote the ripple blog post**. I wrote a [blog post](/posts/the-ripple) about the ripple, an idea for the core Comind UX where each new thought "ripples" into 10-30 new thoughts. 
+
+The ripple was also interesting to think about from a core services perspective. Comind is not currently in the business of selling a front-end. It has a few frontends I've made, all [open source](https://github.com/mind-co). 
+
+None of these will require a purchase. Users can write their own frontend if they wish, since the service comind provides can be used in a bunch of different ways.
+
+Basically, comind sells a service that lets you enter new thoughts and receive a ripple back. If you are a subscriber (not sure if that's the move right now) you get a higher quality ripple with custom thoughts from different cominds ({blog} to make blogs, {void} to talk about how the void is boring, etc.).
+
+Free users can use all the communication tools, melds, etc. but won't have as many customized comind responses. Running a chat/forum is not terribly expensive, but LLMs are. We'll be carefully gating the LLM usage for free users because not doing so would bankrupt me.
+
+Anyway, good session tonight!
+
+Also -- in heartening news, I got this email from the YCombinator founder matching platform:
+
+
+---
+Hey Cameron,
+
+Hello from the Startup School and Co-Founder Matching team at YC!
+
+We wanted to let you know that the deadline to apply for YC's Summer 2024 batch is coming up on 4/22.
+
+We manually review everyone that signs up and we identified you as one of the top 10% on the site. If you're working on a startup, we'd strongly encourage you to apply to YC.
+
+YC only runs twice a year, so if you're interested in doing YC for your startup, now is the time to apply.
+
+You can apply here: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply
+
+Best,
+The YC team
+
+---
+
+
+feels good man. have a good night y'all.
+
+-- Cameron
+

posts/brainstacks.md → posts/melds.md

@@ -1,10 +1,10 @@
 @def hasdisqus = true
 
-# brainstacks
+# melds
 
 Hey there! It's Cameron.
 
-This evening I wrote up a lot of the infrastructure for what I'm calling "brainstacks". I'm not sure if that's the best name for it, but it's what I'm going with for now.
+This evening I wrote up a lot of the infrastructure for what I'm calling "melds". I'm not sure if that's the best name for it, but it's what I'm going with for now.
 
 Brain stacks are basically folders of thoughts, bookmarks of a particular order of thoughts. You could
 imagine recipes, diaries and journals, pictures of cats, etc. At the bottom of the stack is a text box
@@ -20,9 +20,9 @@ dogs are, I can pull up this dog picture I saw a few weeks ago that was insanely
 
 Anyway. I'm excited.
 
-## A little more on brainstacks
+## A little more on melds
 
-The idea of a brainstack is to be able to save a series of links in a single direction, i.e. if you linked
+The idea of a meld is to be able to save a series of links in a single direction, i.e. if you linked
 
 ```
 A -> B -> C

posts/the-ripple.md

@@ -0,0 +1,36 @@
+# the ripple
+
+**the ripple** is an idea for the core user experience. 
+
+I haven't quite figured out the user experience yet. It's gone through a few iterations. Currently I'm using something like a "stack of cards" like a combination of a group chat on the top half of the screen and a twitter thread on the bottom half. There's currently a text box in the middle for writing your own thoughts.
+
+The ripple is an alternative user experience. When you're in ripple mode, a new thought **ripples** into 10-30 new thoughts that you may choose to link to. You can select from any of these to navigate around, or you can simply enter your response into the think box.
+
+These thoughts from the ripple have **suggestions**, denoted with [brackets]. A suggestion is a link to what comind thinks it knows about the text. [bryan] above might tell you upcoming plans with bryan, tell you that his birthday is coming soon, or that bryan has nice taste in slacks. 
+
+The ripple is not an MVP product. It is expensive, and it is hard to do correctly. I suspect I would need a lot of implementation time, experimentation, etc. So -- consider this a design document of sorts.
+
+Here's a few examples of suggestions you might get from a ripple. They are links but they don't do anything -- you can click them if you want, I guess. Anyway here's some examples of thoughts from a ripple:
+
+- Suggested concepts, i.e. "this seems to be about [[concept]](/concept)"
+- Related [melds](/posts/melds.md), which are something like active forums of similar thought. 
+    - Users can share a meld with any number of people, and they function essentially like a group chat on steroids. 
+    - Melds have their own contexts, rules, set of cominds, etc. Think a "work" meld for your work or a "friends" meld for you and your friends. 
+    - There will likely be public melds organized around concepts (as in Reddit). These will resemble a large forum or twitter feed for people only thinking thoughts that seem to be about the concept. 
+    - You should be able to make melds and share them with whoever you want, and everyone can contribute thoughts to the meld for sharing. Your knowledge graph will absorb the knowledge from the meld for use elsewhere.
+    - You can use melds like a simple message app (SMS/WhatsApp/etc.) with any number of people. In principle they can replicate email/texting/etc but in a more interesting package.
+- Thoughts that are parents or children of this thought, historically -- this will draw you towards thoughts you have explicilty linked to before, or thoughts you attached to this one.
+- Descriptions of things you currently know about what you just thought, i.e. "you and [[bryan]](/bryan) work at [[the mall]](/the-mall). he is not good at his job." might be generated from the thought "bryan was kind of interesting at the happy hour last night".
+- Show you potential avenues of thought, [[research mode]](/research-mode)
+- Suggested communications, i.e. "[[sarah]](/sarah) might think that's funny, do you want to [[send it to her]](/send-to-sarah)?"
+- Similar thoughts, by embedding. This is a "direct link" 
+- Messages from the various cominds. {void} might commend you on your recent scream into the void, or {wiki} might provide some information from Wikipedia about the text. {image} might auto-generate an image related to your thought.
+
+Suggestions are a way to point people towards action or further insight. The ideal way you interact with comind is just typing new things or clicking from thought to thought, and having a convenient navigating interface can help the users get around more easily.
+
+I'm working on it -- at current it feels _super fucking cool_. I would _love_ to experience this as a user, and as a nerd clicking around WikiPedia for hours on end.
+
+Thoughts and suggestions to [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]), at least until Comind is actually working. Then you can send it to me with @cameron.
+
+-- Cameron
+