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ADAM MONSEN

PANDOC VS. ASCIIDOCTOR FOR PRINT

I’m writing a small book. ~160 pages at 6″ x 9″. I want great-looking print
editions so PDF output is critical.

I started writing in Markdown, using a few scripts to pre-process for each
output format (EPUB ebook, screen PDF, print PDF, HTML) and invoke Pandoc. It
worked well at first, but after a year of work my scripts had grown to be
complex and annoying. I was running into the edge of what Pandoc is good at. I
had issues with table formatting (text mixed up with cell borders), variable
handling (had to do my own replacements), special characters (had to strip some
of these or the PDF backend would croak), index generation and cross-references
(both require confusing extensions). The Pandoc that came with my OS was
outdated and I wound up needed several versions. I was starting down a path of
customizing outputs with TeX directives and Lua extensions.

I looked around for better typesetting toolchains and came across the source
code for the book Pro Git 2. Scott and Ben used Asciidoctor to convert Asciidoc
source text to various formatted outputs. Their outputs looked great and there
wasn’t much code needed to build them.

To give it a shot, I used Pandoc to convert my Markdown book source to Asciidoc
then used the (tiny) Pro Git 2 build system. Asciidoctor created more and
better-looking outputs for my book. I switched to Asciidoc/Asciidoctor. I no
longer needed my pre-processing scripts, Asciidoctor did well at everything I
mentioned above with mostly default settings. Customization was easy, even in
the case where I had to add custom Ruby code. The Asciidoctor community seems
healthy and strong.

Pandoc remains awesome for many reasons. I still love it for converting between
common formats. I’ve be using it for a long time for Markdown and HTML and I
hope that continues. Perhaps it is not the best at generating print-ready PDFs
(nor ebooks), though.

Posted byadamFebruary 2, 2024February 2, 2024Posted inDefaultTags: foss, Fun,
nerdy, software, writingLeave a comment on Pandoc vs. Asciidoctor for print

BLUE? GREEN? SIGNAL.

I rolled my eyes far beyond acceptable limits when I first learned the meaning
of the phrase green bubble shame. Still, I was curious, so I asked a handful of
high school students about it. I rolled my eyes back into place (as they rolled
theirs at my questions) and learned it is in fact real and common. Text message
bubble color divides kids along lines of financial disparity and technological
choice.

It starts when someone with an Android phone sends a direct text message or
joins a chat. iPhone user messages appear to each other enclosed in beautiful
blue bubbles. Android messages are othered in annoying green bubbles. It’s a
subtle and meaningful cue. Green equates to hassle (group chats are impacted),
bad quality (images/videos look worse), and worse security (not guaranteed to be
encrypted). If the Android users are then socially excluded, we are in “green
bubble shame” territory.

Don’t wait for Apple or Google to solve this problem. Encourage your kids to use
Signal instead. This quick fix will reap rewards far beyond the next several
phones they and their friends are able to afford.

TIPS & TRICKS

If you do decide to try Signal:

* Disable Stories (these don’t add value).
* Disable the notification sent when a contact joins Signal in Settings →
Notifications (these are unnecessary).
* Note how Signal forgets by design (because privacy and security), so look
into saving messages if you want that.
* Consider donating to the nonprofit that keeps Signal alive.

FURTHER READING

* Apple’s green message bubbles draw wrath of US attorney general.
* The FTC has a horse in this race.
* Beeper Mini got the attention of the NY Times.
* Apple isn’t really doing its part to end green bubble shaming, but this
article from Brian X. Chen in the NY Times has some useful info.
* Tim Cook says ‘buy your mom an iPhone’ if you want to end green bubbles.
* Google tries publicly shaming Apple into adopting RCS.
* Why Apple’s iMessage Is Winning: Teens Dread the Green Text Bubble.

Posted byadamDecember 14, 2023March 22, 2024Posted inDefaultLeave a comment on
Blue? Green? Signal.

SELF-HOSTING TALKS IN SEATTLE AT SEAGL THIS WEEKEND

Folks in the Seattle area Friday and Saturday this week (or wishing to join
remotely online): there are at least 3 relevant self-hosting talks at the SeaGL
conference.

1. Steadfast Self-Hosting: this is a preview of my book, with background and
context. Demonstrates Ubuntu server, ZFS, docker-compose, Traefik reverse
proxy.
2. Lessons learned from growing a Home Lab: Guilherme Carvalho Trindade covers
self-hosting of private chat, social media, and game servers.
3. Simple Site Hosting with Lightweight Kubernetes: James Pannacciulli walks
through MicroK8s fundamentals.

I’m a SeaGL co-founder. SeaGL is free to attend. I’m promoting my own book in my
talk, and the book itself will be liberally licensed to encourage sharing and
remixing. It will include code, all of which is FOSS.

Posted byadamNovember 1, 2023November 1, 2023Posted inDefaultTags: foss, Fun,
nerdyLeave a comment on Self-Hosting talks in Seattle at SeaGL this weekend

NEW BOOK WEBSITE

I created a website for my forthcoming book:

Steadfast Self-Hosting: Rapid-Rise Personal Cloud

This book will free your data and empower your users.

Send me a note at info@(that same domain name) if you want me to let you know
when it is available.

Posted byadamSeptember 19, 2023September 19, 2023Posted inDefaultTags: foss,
Fun, linux, nerdy, software, system administrationLeave a comment on New book
website

FOSSY 2023

I am honored to be giving a talk at FOSSY 2023. The title is Steadfast
Self-Hosting: Rapid-Rise Personal Cloud.

EVENT DETAILS

* Date: Saturday, July 15, 2023
* More info
* Video

DESCRIPTION

Your data are essential to your life, your agency, and your future. Come learn
how to save, serve, and safely share your data at home with a smorgasbord of
FOSS. I’ll cover rapid setup and basic use of tools such as Traefik, Nextcloud,
Wallabag, Jellyfin, and more. With these powerful and private services at your
disposal you can collaboratively edit documents in realtime online, stream music
and video, and future-proof your digital assets.

This talk pairs well with a soon-to-be released book of the same topic and
title. Both the book and talk are about self-hosting FOSS, were created with
FOSS, and are FOSS themselves (open source, free to copy, free to modify and
redistribute).

Posted byadamJuly 11, 2023December 15, 2023Posted inDefaultTags: foss, Fun,
linux, nerdy, softwareLeave a comment on FOSSY 2023

GNUCASH

TL;DR – it works well for one specific purpose, for a single user. Use it if you
like to tinker and are academically interested in accounting.

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Screenshot of a GnuCash Account Register

I’ve used GnuCash for many years. I started using it without a sense for how
much time I’d spend in the manual and forums figuring out the UI/UX. After
having done so, I’m still glad I did. I learned quite a bit about double-entry
accounting. This way of accounting forces you to contend with the fact that
money always comes from somewhere and always goes somewhere. GnuCash maybe does
not enough to help you manage this complexity. GnuCash is complex in part
because finances are complex, but that’s not a great excuse for its often
confusing UI/UX.

GnuCash is strictly single-user. I think this is a good way to think about it,
too. Just use it for yourself. Only subject another to it if they really are,
let’s say, academically interested in accounting and expect to fiddle with their
accounting software (to the point of writing custom reports in Scheme).

Good luck getting a quicken/quickbooks power user to use GnuCash. I can’t speak
to proprietary accounting software since I barely used any, though. I’ve never
met a pro who used it.

GnuCash is mature. There is a rich body of knowledge available and a strong
community.

It is written in C/C++. If it were rewritten it would surely not be. I’m not
sure how much this matters in terms of project sustainability though, it has
been around since 1998 and is still in active development.

It’s fast.

There is no mobile client.

I have never lost data with GnuCash. This is an incredible confidence-builder
(and a requirement) for me. Data is hard work. It appears to be very careful
about never losing any with its lock file and log files and such. It is also
FOSS, which is a big deal for me.

I’ve used it for business invoicing and I remember being really proud when I got
it to spit out good-looking invoices that were true and reconcilable with all my
carefully-entered financial data. It’s not worth the effort for simple invoices,
though.

If you have the privilege of working with multiple financial institutions, you
get to import transactions from multiple sources. This is painful. In the USA
this is perhaps painful by design.

I used Mint for a while. All that thing did (besides trigger my privacy
spidey-sense) was sort of pull down transactions automatically with a lot of
hand-holding. GnuCash is even worse at pulling down transactions, though. I
never got the online stuff (OFXDirectConnect/AQBanking) to work well and I
recommend against trying it in the USA. Even manual QIF/OFX/CSV importing is a
pain, but it is generally predictable and reliable. There’s some intelligence
built in (matching, remembering previous categorizations, etc) but it is hard to
figure out. The real problem there IMHO is that our banks don’t want to become
commodities themselves and they have resisted interoperability. Check out FinTS
(was HBCI) in Germany for a counterexample where they’re trying to make it work.

The best part about GnuCash’s UI/UX is also the most boring part (you’ll find
boring is a Good Thing with finances): the transaction register. Filling in a
ledger for a particular account is very nice, especially in double-line mode.
Auto-complete works well. I’ve grown to love the shades of lime green like an
old-school paper ledger.

So there you go. One accountant, one desktop, maybe a few reports. Consider
using a spreadsheet instead.

Good luck!

Posted byadamMay 27, 2023May 27, 2023Posted inDefaultTags: foss, softwareLeave a
comment on GnuCash

THE IMMORTAL COOKBOOK

Check out my LibrePlanet 2023 workshop about digital recipe management titled
The Immortal Cookbook!

EVENT DETAILS

* Date: Monday, April 24
* More info
* Sign up
* Source code
* Video

DESCRIPTION

Join us in the journey: chart your course to digital recipe freedom! Celebrate
your favorite home-cooked meals with all their history, comfort, and tradition.
Cherish and share these meals with friends and family. Gather and curate your
delicious recipes with ease. Recall your favorite dishes in an instant and keep
them forever. This workshop will cover practical digital recipe storage and
maintenance with free software using libre data formats. The focus will be on
ease of use and collaboration. The workshop is designed to attract people
capable at plaintext editing, including some coding experience.

Posted byadamMarch 29, 2023July 28, 2023Posted inDefaultTags: foss, Fun, nerdy,
softwareLeave a comment on The Immortal Cookbook

CROSSWORD DATA DETECTIVE UNRAVELS MASSIVE SCANDAL

One fine day in 2016, Saul Pwanson invented a simple, standard, plain text
crossword data storage format. One outcome of Saul’s work was the uncovering of
a decades-long crossword copy-and-paste fiasco. This is the kind of story you’d
expect to hear on Tim Harford’s Cautionary Tales. Excellent work, Saul!

https://inv.riverside.rocks/watch?v=9aHfK8EUIzg

https://fivethirtyeight.com/crossword

Posted byadamFebruary 12, 2022Posted inDefaultTags: Fun, nerdyLeave a comment on
Crossword Data Detective Unravels Massive Scandal

ONE ACTION YOU CAN TAKE TO MAKE SOCIAL MEDIA MORE KIND

Sign this petition:

https://oneclicksafer.tech

This is an important experiment for Facebook to try limiting “freedom of reach”.
It’s a hard thing to regulate and our government is struggling to do so.
Facebook itself did the research and came up with the solution to limit
resharing, and it is a relatively easy change in their user interface.

More background:

https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/42-a-conversation-with-facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen

I hope we hear a lot more from Frances Haugen. She is an absolute champion.
Here’s a quote from Ms. Haugen about the proposed change to limit resharing:

> I think it’s one of those things where this is a change that Facebook could
> show that they were serious about decreasing extreme, polarizing, divisive
> content very, very easily. And they could show that they’re willing to trade
> off a very small amount of profits for the safety of the platform. And I think
> it’s a wonderful, content-neutral, language-neutral solution. It’s not about
> picking winners or losers. It’s not about censorship. It’s about changing the
> dynamics of the platform so that it’s less twitchy and reactive. And it allows
> us to be thoughtful. And I think we want social media that helps us connect
> with people we care about. We want social media we enjoy. And I think that all
> those things are true about this change.

If you use Facebook, will you also let me know if you noticed my post about this
petition? Facebook won’t give me analytics about it.

Posted byadamOctober 21, 2021Posted inDefaultTags: activism, facebook, social
mediaLeave a comment on One action you can take to make social media more kind

TO GO TO ROME

> Great the journey, little the gain, if you do not carry him with you you will
> not find him there.
>
> David Whyte, commentary on Santiago

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