Very Secure

Wandering Aimlessly

March 2nd, 2024

I've started hitting the gym. While I am stoked about my progress,1 I'm embarrassed to say it has become my main, dare I say only, focus.

Other than my workout routine, I've been all over the place. I've been underperforming in my saltmines job and haven't managed to produce a plan of where I want to go with my career.

Speaking of which, I'm sick of the saltmines, even though I work so few hours.2 Nowadays my mind often goes through the following pattern:

Good morning Will, let's seize the day! Start off with a nice hard workout at the gym. Phew, that was exhausting. Nice work. Now let's eat a hardy meal. Okay. Let's get to some actual work. Wellllll why not enjoy the day a bit and play some bridge/hang out/etc. Boy I'm quite tired, let's lie down for a sec. Wow there's only like 1-2 hours left of the day, shit. Should we do what we are passionate about, something related to bitcoin? Wait, we really need to get some saltmines work done don't we? *Spins between the two options, gets nothing done.*

Despite this disastrous thought pattern, perhaps I shouldn't be hard on myself. I have made progress this year. The gym is certainly helping with my RSI. I'm back to writing. I got some work done on my blockexplorer.

But I don't have a clear vision. I jump from one random "productive" task to another. No plan, no lofty goals.

Putting in my notice for the saltmines job may be in order. Working for a US tax paying organization is soul crushing. And having saltmines on the TODO list distracts my mind overall.

Simultaneously I need to construct my plan for the next coming years so that I can wake up and live life to the fullest.

  1. Minus the injury I gave myself doing a calf raise, sigh. []
  2. RSI gives a constant reminder that the number of clicks one gets on the keyboard is finite. []

My level two Freediving course in the magical Cenotes of the Yucatán peninsula with Blackfin Freediving

February 18th, 2024

A long overdue article.

This epic journey started with a solar eclipse. My instructor took me to go buy obsidian stones. You can use these as shields to look at the sun. Shortly after we arrived at the cenote, the moon began to block the sun. This distorted our respective shadows. Check out the crescent shape of the leaves.


divingcamera-2

Just after seeing this it was time to get in the water. For the first dives I was tripping out from anxiety. What can I say? Freediving is intense. Some people are naturals; there was a lovely mermaid who was able to get to 25m on her second day. I struggled to get to 15m. One must not compare themselves to mermaids.


divingcamera-3


divingcamera-4

Mermaid mermaiding

When I got home my throat was sore. Something was wrong with my equalization technique. I was using too much effort, which manifested in a horrible noise.1 I learned from my Instructor that doing this can lead to a trachea squeeze as “shallow” as 20m.2

The next day, I went to another famous and beautiful cenote called Angelita. I was hesitant to dive given my sore throat. That said it was feeling a little better, and so I decided to make some conservative dives. My instructor gave me an excellent drill that allowed me to understand what I have been doing wrong with my equalization.

divingcamera-5

Angelita entrance


divingcamera-6

Wrapping up at Angelita

The drill was to fill my mouth with air and dive down and up with my glottis closed. The point of the exercise was to feel my cheeks compressing on the way down and expanding on the way up. I was stunned to see that I was able to make it to about 10m. Normally to get to 10meters I would have to recharge my mouth with air multiple times.

The drill taught me to keep my glottis closed. It became painfully obvious that my problem was that I was constantly opening my glottis, allowing the air in my mouth and nasal cavities to fall back into my lungs. This fault mad me have to charge my mouth for every equalization.

My instructor also showed me that I could equalize my mask simply by relaxing my soft palate and unpinching my nose. Previously I had the misconception that I had to actively blow air from my nose into the mask. This misconception arises because you have to create pressure in order to open up the eustachian tubes. It may make one naïvely believe that equalization means pushing air into the middle ear. But once the tubes are open, there is no need for extra pressure. In other words, the pressure is used to open the valve but not to relocate the air once that valve is already open.

After the dive, I got home to rest. My next session was in the pool in the following afternoon. The 30 hours of rest got me worked up about the static apnea challenge. I was spinning thinking about how maybe I would somehow fail to even reach 2 minutes 30 seconds. Or maybe I would try to go for another shot at my PB of 4:40 and then I would black out. In retrospect, it was a silly thing to get worked up over, but my mind tortured me. I calmed myself down by doing 2min 40s static apnea on land.

Still, I was worrying so much about this that I forgot to pack my fins for the pool session. I took full responsibility for it, and it seemed my instructor did as well, so I think we both felt a little bummed out and slightly wishing the other person had not made their respective mistakes. It was not such a big deal, but that meant I would have to come back to the pool to do my 50m horizontal challenge… in any event the static apnea went fine, and I managed to last 3 minutes. At about that time I was dying to pee (a side effect of the mammalian dive reflex) so I was able to excuse myself from not pushing further because I did not want a warm current to brush the leg of my safeties. Lucky me.

The next day I went back to Maravilla, the first cenote. I was feeling confident. Still, I struggled to get to 15m. Even though I knew about my glottis problem, I was still accidentally opening it all the time. Also, my duck dive technique needed serious work. I was starting every dive terribly, causing stress that was fucking up my equalization. In the end, I managed to dive to 20m and see the beautiful cavern of Maravilla. I was high on life.

We were going to the pool that afternoon. During the downtime I managed to get myself into an anxious state. My mind started playing tricks on me, and I started to feel terrible. But it passed, and eventually we were back at the pool.

When we got there, my instructor gave us the drill to swim 200m free stroke and 200m breaststroke. As far as I know, one does not normally warm up for apnea with aerobic training. But I seriously needed to just swim and somehow my instructor knew this so I was so grateful for this warm up.

Then we did safety drills for horizontal apneas. This requires absolute focus. You need to stay right fucking next to your partner, and when they come up for air, you need to immediately tell them to breathe and be ready to catch them if they have an LMC.

While I was safetying, my partner did a turn and grabbed the pool ladder to get extra leverage. I thought this was hysterical. When he came up for air, I was laughing far away from him. My instructor scolded me, I did something incredibly fucking stupid and dangerous by letting the pool-ladder-grab make me laugh and lose focus. Grabbing the ladder might be the exact type of thing someone delirious from lack of oxygen would do.

When it was my turn to do my 50m horizontal distance, I was feeling not great, but not bad either. I did my breathe up and started the apnea. I had horrible technique. Nevertheless, I had my first contraction at around 40m. I think of the first contraction as about the half way point, so I felt confident that I could get to 75m. I sent it. When I came up for air the world seemed fuzzy. I realized that I had to do my hook breaths or I would faint. I recovered and was happy about the accomplishment. But I was stunned at how hypoxic I was.

I realize as I write this where my logic went wrong. When I had my first contraction at 40m I thought “I am halfway through my air and I have swam a pool length and a half, and then some. So certainly another pool length should be no problem.” It’s quite stupid but somehow my brain did not think about the 10 meters I had left to complete my second pool length. So I thought I only had 25m left after completing 50m. But in reality I had 35m left after completing only 40m.

Getting hypoxic when I didn’t expect it shook up my nervous system. I was sad and stressed for the next 24 hours. I still had 3 sessions booked and one more task needed to complete to get my certification, a mock rescue from a black out at 15m depth. I was stressed enough that I was contemplating calling everything off.

At the same time, I saw this as an opportunity to overcome adversity. So I decided to take a three day rest and then get back at it. I contacted the head of Blackfin and asked to push back my Friday session. Then I signed up for William Trubridge’s mental immune system course, and decided to use the time off to get my head in a good place. Learning how to handle myself during stressful times is one of the reasons why I decided to start Freediving.

I found the first few videos of William’s online video course to be helpful. He clearly has thought about the issue of anxiety from both a spiritual and biochemical perspective. There were a couple main takeaways that helped me get into a relaxed state. (1) rhythmic, diaphragmatic breathing.(2) viewing thoughts as an experience like a breeze of wind rather than something tied to one’s identity. The diaphragm breathing sends a signal to the brain that ‘all is good’ ; the dissociation of identity from thoughts takes away the power of intrusive thoughts to cascade into a downward spiral.

Armed with these tools I was feeling better. The head of Blackfin messaged me saying that they were gonna have a fun event and go to a great cenote on Friday and he asked me to change my mind about postponing my next session. I did and had a magnificent time.

We went to a lagoon that was roughly 75 m deep. We had to go to this place because of the caliber of divers that were present. There were national record holders, multiple people who have been deeper than 100m, and otherwise a cool cast of people. Everyone was friendly. The presence of all the talent and the camaraderie gave me a magnificent boost in confidence and relaxation.

I managed to repeatedly dive to 20m without any equalization problems.3 The head of Blackfin got some amazing videos, here are some stills. You can see the settlement layer between 0 and 7m. It was such an amazing feeling to break through the cloud and get to see the seawall.


divingstills-2

Diving along the seawall of La Laguna de Kaan Luum

The next day I was feeling high on life and went back to Angelita and again was able to dive to 20m without any problems. This cenote has a gorgeous tree coming out of her sulfuric acid cloud. The desire to see this tree in person got me to my happy place before I dived.

I did my 15m rescue and therefore finished the course and got my level two certification.

That was basically the end of the trip with regards to Freediving. I had one more day booked with Blackfin, but the plan was to go to some shallow cenote and have a free swim rather than dive with a line. I was relieved to be done diving, but there was a bitter taste in my mouth. Before coming on the trip I have been to 24.5 m, and I was slightly disappointed that I hadn’t matched or surpassed my PB. I knew my diving had improved, but I didn’t have the depth to show for it.

Well as things turned out, the fun dive got canceled. I had one more shot to go diving on the line and I took the opportunity. I went back to Angelita, the amazing Cenote with a tree coming out of a sulfur cloud.

I was feeling amazing and confident the morning of this last session. We did three warm-up dives to 10m. My equalization was working perfectly. I was ready to do 20m, then maybe 23m, and finally 25m.

Instead, the instructor said I should go to 25m right away while I had the most energy. My heart started racing. I was excited because I was feeling confident that I could do the dive and I knew how great it would be to end on a high note. I started my meditation and got myself to a state of serenity. I envisioned myself in the third person as if I had the perspective of a bird hovering over the Cenote. Then I zoomed out to the perspective of an astronaut in outer space looking down at me. Finally, I zoomed out “ all the way” to another galaxy, and just imagined myself as an infinitely small point. I let the image of Ganesh, the overcomer of obstacles, flash through my head.4

The dive was blissful. I performed the equalization exactly as I had planned it in my head.5 I got to see the beautiful tree and sulfur cloud up close. It was such a beautiful sight that later when I was retelling the story, I started crying.

When I came up from my dive my depth gauge read 25.1m. I was estatic, 25m has a much nicer ring to it then 24.5m. Everyone congratulated me on my personal best. But doing something once shows you have rather than you can. So I repeated the dive and I was later happy to find out that one of the diver friends I had made recorded it with a GoPro.

When I came up from the second 25m dive my instructor told me “you are on the other side.” It’s true, I know how to dive up to 25m and maybe even 30m now. I have a much better understanding of how to perform the necessary equalization, and I have much better control of the muscles necessary to do so.

The excitement of the trip didn’t end there, though. I had one more unwelcomed battle. After our diving session, as we were sitting down for lunch, I started to feel faint. I have neurocardiogenic syncope, which means that my blood pressure can drop dramatically during a fight or flight response, causing me to faint.6 I started to feel the symptoms of presyncope, and the people who were eating with me told me I turned white as a sheet. I knew there was a chance that I was going to go out and wake up on the floor. But I decided I’m going to fucking fight it and not faint.

The next two minutes were hell. My blood pressure must have dropped to an incredibly low level because I felt my whole arms and hands go numb. I started to use techniques I had learned to calm myself for Freediving. Specifically diaphragmatic breathing and focusing my mental effort on observing the sensations in my body and thoughts in my mind. I also kept drinking water with lime juice and salt as well as a Coca-Cola for sugar. My instructor who was with me helped me with all of this.

For the first time in my life, I endured pre-syncope without fainting. This was a big victory for me in that it taught me that it is possible to stop an episode. But it was maybe a pyrrhic victory because pre-syncope by itself is a fucking horrible feeling that I would very much like to never experience again. And I am concerned about Freediving being a potential trigger for an episode. The problem is that fainting is ultimately caused by lack of oxygen to the brain. This is usually because of low blood pressure, but apneas cause me to feel a similar sensation.

I think that I have developed a fear of the sensation of being close to fainting. This means that after a small amount of hypoxia, my body may start releasing adrenaline, causing the chemical cascade that leads to an episode of syncope. In order to enjoy Freediving, I’m going to have to figure this out. For now it’s time to rest and enjoy the accomplishments of the trip.

Since I wrote this months ago, I've continued to freedive and have achieved 30.9m or 101 ft. That's it for me for now though, I keep dealing with weird fatigue and headaches after diving and I simply cannot enjoy the sport since I always feel bad the day after. So that's it, the story of Will's freediving career and his journey to 30.9m. I'm going to leave my flag there and go find something else to do.

  1. Perhaps it was the infamous 'grouper call' noise. []
  2. This injury is considered minor when compared to a lung squeeze. But I’m not about to lose my squeeze virginity for no reason. []
  3. I did notice on one dive that, despite my supposedly relaxed state, I felt a contraction somewhere early in the dive. My instructor informed me that it’s possible that It was not a contraction. I’m really not sure because I think I felt it multiple times, which leads me to believe it was indeed a contraction. []
  4. To me it's all a bunch of mental voodoo, but if it works it works. []
  5. I charged at 5m., 10m, and 17m. I had told myself that if my 17m charge didn’t last until 25m I would just turn around instead of charging again. I equalized the mask at the same time as each charge as my first Instructor had taught me. []
  6. I have fainted ~6 times in my life, and this was one of my biggest fears going Freediving and the thing that was nagging in my head the entire trip. The first time I saw a doctor to get checked out if I could dive, I fainted discussing it. I was sure I would never be approve to dive, but I also thought that not diving would be giving into the fear and anxiety. Also, I always have pre-symptoms before an episode. so I could know when it’s not safe to dive. I spoke with my neurologist who diagnosed the condition in the first place, and he agreed with me and told me to go freedive. []

Understanding the Psyop that is the Segwit Softfork

February 5th, 2024

Segwit is an attempt to redefine the bitcoin protocol in a manner that drastically undermines the security of the network. Here’s an analogy to get a jist of what is going on.

Imagine a FIDE1 imposter attempted to add a new rule / restriction to chess, call this version chess2. Bishops are now only allowed to move a maximum of 4 squares diagonally from their current position. This new rule does not conflict with the original rules of chess.2 A chess player observing a game of chess2 would not necessarily know that a different game was being played. They would watch this ‘chess’ game and perhaps be perplexed as to why certain bishop moves weren’t played, but otherwise the game would look the same.

Imposter FIDE could slowly add new rules to chess2, all while maintaining an illusion of fidelity with the original game. Of course, the brazen FIDE impostor would not name their game chess2, and so their new game would be masquerading as chess itself.

This is the state of bitcoin. A group of ‘core devs’ have been chipping away at what the word bitcoin even means. They’ve made the kind of changes that are akin to removing the 20,999,999.9769 btc cap. 3 Yes, the situation is that bad. They are not only changing the rules of bitcoin, they are adding rules that poison it.

Chess2 is not chess and segwit is not bitcoin. If you want to use sound money you must use real bitcoin addresses that start with the character ‘1’.

  1. The major chess organization []
  2. Provided opposing kings do not move into a position 5+ diagonal squares away from a bishop. []
  3. Nope, it’s not exactly 21 million. And yes, this matters. Stating the precise cap illustrates that bitcoin adheres to a strict protocol, warts and all. []

Bitcoin Investment Strategy

February 3rd, 2024

Warts and all, bitcoin is the best money out there. It seems all but certain that it will take the dollar’s position as the reserve currency of the world. From napkin calculations that should put bitcoin at about $2,000,000-$4,000,000 per coin in today’s dollars, although the USD price per coin one day will be way higher than that due to inflation. All this to say, getting your hands on some coin is a very good idea.

So how do you buy some? Do you put away a paycheck each month or go all in with your savings right away? Well that depends on your risk profile. For the highest expected value, the best decision is to buy as much btc as possible all at once. This is because at time T+E it is always >50% that the price of btc will be higher than at time T. Of course you may have some insight that tells you the current price is at a local maximum, and thus you should ‘wait for the dip.’ But I seriously doubt you are privy to such information.

If you want to lower your EV for decreased variance, then you can consider dollar cost averaging. And if you’re new to using bitcoin, it is a good idea to practice buying, selling, trading, moving coins from one wallet to another, creating backup protocols, testing those backup protocols, etc. DCA is a good way to do this.

Lastly, if you want to put in a reasonable chunk of money in btc the only people in the consulting game are to be found at jwrd.net.

Happy investing. Rest with a smile on your face knowing that every buck you put into BTC takes some power away from the cursed governments of the world.

Hands Update

February 3rd, 2024

I’m pretty sick and tired of always avoiding activity in fear that I will incur further damage to my hands. I am also losing my mind from my inability/decision not to write. I would rather have flare ups than remain silent.

I am going to focus on physical therapy and typing technique retraining. Speech to text is no solution. Here’s to a revival of my textual output.

GPG Over Analog - Hardware Device for Secure Voice Communications

October 7th, 2023

I. Concept

The goal is to allow communications over an unsecured audio channel. The gizmo needed is a headset connected to a little computer which is connected via a long wire to an audio jack.1 This gizmo captures the audio signal, encrypts it, and passes the encrypted audio signal over an analog channel. To the sender’s and recipient’s untrusted device, the cypheraudio is nothing more than noise. And so unless the recipient has the corresponding gizmo + key, they will only hear static.

The beauty is that this gizmo will work with any device normally used for phone calls.2 You can plug it into any computer or dumbphone. Your correspondent can plug his into whatever shitware he is using.3

II. Implementation

What are the hardware requirements to encrypt/decrypt fast enough for a real-time phone call?

Most microphones sample at 44.1kHz with a 2 byte depth. Let's be safe and leave room for header information, so say we need to encrypt at 100KBps. My Mac’s (2.3GHz processor) GPG 1.4.23 can encrypt 100KB in about .015s and decrypt the same in about .02s. So the napkin calculation seems to show that this device is feasible without adding much latency to comms.

It would also be possible for the gizmos to use one time pads. The correspondents would ‘charge’ their gizmos with an OTP key before making a phone call.4 This would greatly reduce the computational load and complexity on the hardware device itself. It also allows for more transparency. Creating a verifiable device5 that can perform asymmetric public private key encryption seems quite difficult. But creating a device that simply takes an OTP key and performs the necessary XOR’s seems doable. 6

III. Prototyping

The tool can be simulated in software.7 The data flow in one direction is GIZMO -> Untrusted Device -> Network -> Untrusted Device -> GIZMO. All data passed over the various connections has a chance of corruption, especially over the network. So the first step in realizing this product is to create a pipeline with simulated data loss and create the encrypt/decrypt protocol that mitigates that data loss to a reasonable degree.

  1. The audio jack could be a USB, USBc, or whatever port Crapple is forcing upon its users at the given moment []
  2. This is why the long wire is important. You need to be far away from the untrusted device’s own microphone. One could place the untrusted device next to a source of white noise for extra protection. []
  3. Whatscrap, Noise- I mean Signal, and Shillegram promise end-to-end encryption, but even if you trust their software (only God knows why you would) they still run on top of devices backdoored by Crapple, Goolag, and perhaps a 3rd party hacker as well. []
  4. A 16 GB Key would give 22 hours of comms 16,000,000,000 / (60 * 60 * 100,000 * 2). []
  5. Like FUCKGOATS []
  6. The puzzle becomes - how do you sync up the encrypting and decrypting devices?

    One way to do this this is to break the audio signal into fixed sized packets with headers. The first part of the header contains the index into the OTP used to decrypt the rest of the packet. How do we ensure that this index is faithfully transmitted and what do we do with dropped bits within packets? I still need to work out some of these questions. []

  7. The hardware device can be prototyped without any special equipment. Ideally, one would have two computers and two cables - each cable connecting to the audio out of one device and to the audio in of the other device. []

The long-overdue review of JWRD's training course

October 3rd, 2023

Earlier this year I had the pleasure of taking JWRD’s operator course with sstacks. I was incredibly happy with the instruction provided by jfw. JWRD seems to have found a balance between being thorough and being practical when it comes to imparting their knowledge of how to guard one’s bitcoins onto their customers.1

The course consisted of ~17 weeks of instruction, one class per week and one office hour session per week.2 Needless to say, jfw was always on time and prepared with a good lesson.

The homework each week ranged from very easy to moderately difficult depending on previous experience programming computers. IMO they could improve the course by having different questions based on prior level of knowledge.3 At the moment, the beginning of the course seems geared towards someone completely unfamiliar with the command line. With that said, it certainly didn't hurt to review some basic concepts.

There are two more suggestions I have. The first, is I think jfw could pre record a 15 minute lecture for each class. The students would watch this video prior to class.4 This would save time for jfw and increase the amount of interaction during class.

The next suggestion has to do with the wording of some of the questions for the homework and warm-ups. Some of the questions are not real questions but instead a word association fill in the blank. For example this was one of the warmup challenges:

The ps and top commands display running ____.

I think the answer is less but it's not entirely clear what's being asked for. I would rewrite the question as

What command line program Is used to display the output of the ps and top commands?

There are many examples of these throughout their warm-ups and homework questions. It's a pet peeve of mine, and I certainly think it would be worth the effort to go through and change the questions to remove ambiguity.

Apart from those points I can't really do anything but praise the course. JWRD have no competitors, they're the only option if you want to learn how to secure your btc. The amount of groundwork they've done with their hardware decisions, software development, etc. Is quite frankly unbelievable. The price they're charging is low for what they offer.

Here's how you can calculate if the class is worth it for you.

EV = P(You lose your btc) * YOUR_BTC_INVESTMENT - COURSE_PRICE

So if you have fewer bitcoins than the price of the course, then the course may not be worth it. The more you have, the more it's worth it.

What if you have more coins than the price of the course but not substantially more? Well I am going to go out and say that P(You lose your btc) is pretty fucking close to 1 for most people. The USG successfully duped the ~entire market into using a fake version of bitcoin. If you have your coins in a bc1 or 3 address, JWRD’s course is worth it as long as you have 1 more satoshi than the course’s price.5 But even if somehow you managed to have the wherewithal to keep your coins in a legacy aka real bitcoin 1 address there are still many ways you can go wrong. You need a professional team to help you manage your wealth and JWRD is the only one up to the task.

  1. They also teach other topics such as secure networking and how to create digital backups. []
  2. I did not take advantage of the office hours to the extent that I should have. jfw has an incredible wealth of knowledge for all things related to cryptography, bitcoin, computers, etc. To anyone taking the course I recommend you pick his brain as much as possible.

    I should also note here that they were kind enough to switch the office hours to a video call format which was a great help for me on account of my hands. []

  3. It's possible that JWRD never had a customer before me with the same amount of experience that I have. But JWRD has a huge number of potential customers that will have prior linux command line experience. For example, all the people who followed along #trilema stand to gain a lot from the course, but for some of them the beginning lessons may not be challenging enough. There is also a potential customer base from people working in/escaping the ‘tech’ Industry in Silly Con Valley and they too will get little from some of the starting material. []
  4. Ideally there would also be a transcript of this video. []
  5. Plus a transaction fee, of course. []

Mistakes from my dives on September 17

October 3rd, 2023

On one dive to 20m I was unable to equalize at 17m. I was in freefall and accidentally went a little deeper then I had anticipated, putting painful pressure on my eardrum. I have to be very careful once I get to negative buoyancy to ensure that I don't fall if I can't equalize. I could prevent this by doing free immersion until I can comfortably equalize at my target.

On another dive, I tried to equalize on my way back up. I am very lucky I did not have a reverse barotrauma from attempting this. You should not voluntarily equalize when you return to the surface. It happens automatically.

RSI Next Steps

October 3rd, 2023

Although I've been dealing with chronic pain for two years and the situation looks pretty bleak, I am determined to fix my hands.

Here are the key steps I'm taking.

Resting. I try to avoid doing anything forceful or bearing weight on my hands. For example, when carrying small grocery bags I slip the handles up my shoulder instead of holding them in the palm of my hand. There're tons of little tricks like that to reduce the load.

Doing physical therapy for surrounding muscles. I'm strengthening the neck, shoulders, and back muscles. My forearms and hands are too delicate right now, working them out just puts me at risk for reinjury. Strengthening the supporting muscles helps me maintain better posture. It also gives the body an easier time when doing compensation movements.

Staying constantly hydrated. The problem may be due to cellular health and the fix may come from providing the right environment for tissues to regenerate. So I am drinking coconuts all the fucking time! I also may look into examining my blood work more closely and keeping an even stricter diet.

Wearing wrist splints at night. From what I've learned it seems that restricting movement can be quite dangerous when it comes to these type of injuries. However, at night time I know that I can put my wrists in horrible positions and then fall asleep on them.

Stretching Lengthening.1 The idea is that being more flexible means there is less tension in muscles. This may help alleviate any nerves that are constantly being squeezed.

Learning. Unfortunately this one has been neglected recently, but it's imperative to learn as much as I can about the human body and the anatomy of the hands. My problem is too complicated for doctors to figure out in their routine 20 minute check, so I'm kind of on my own here.

Technique retraining. I'm working on changing the way I type and fixing my workstation to accommodate for my crippled nature. At the moment this mostly means using speech to text.

The future sometimes looks grim but I'm not going down without a fight.

  1. The word choice emphasizes the gentle nature. []

Speech to Text

September 20th, 2023

Using speech to text is painful. Nevertheless, the tool is a blessing. Without speech to text, I would be unable to write these articles.

I am currently using some program that comes built-in with the Mac OS. The error rate is about one word per sentence. So, I have to constantly edit everything I right.1

To edit, I have to use the keyboard. So my process is far from hands-free. However, I am able to take off a huge load on my hands. This prevents me from having a flare up the following day after writing.

I would like to get back to programming, but there are a lot of difficulties that I foresee using speech to text for coding. The tool as far as I can tell is more useful for writing prose.

The other problem with speech to text is that I have to use either a Mac or Windows program. As far as I know, the open sores versions of speech to text are absolute garbage. At least that was my experienced with Talon. This means I will have to program on my Mac.

But these are hurdles that I simply may have to overcome. Programming has more thinking and planning involved than actual typing anyways. Perhaps the severe limit I have on my ability to make inputs into the computer could help me write better software.

  1. I'll leave that misspelling there so you can see what I'm dealing with. []