Cat Pea

The post argues that true learning comes from listening to narrated books instead of simply reading them, presenting a “simple formula” that involves the present self, accumulated knowledge, and future self to undo ineffective education; it stresses that every person has a right to real knowledge, that libraries and well‑read librarians hold the essential non‑fiction works, and that by hearing these works one can build perception, wisdom, culture, and meaning—thus avoiding the regrets of an older self who would have benefited from powerful books in youth.

The post outlines a simple yet scalable system architecture that lets each user own a tiny personal database—backed by Couchbase or CouchDB and synchronized via PouchDB on the client side—so that changes made in the browser are automatically stored back to their own server‑side store. It explains how to build a custom design‑document editor (modeled after Windows Explorer) for creating views, then shows how a programmer could pull news posts into each user’s database and expose them through a simple row navigator. From there it describes adding drag‑and‑drop UI tools that let users assemble layouts, link image URLs to UI elements, and even chain actions like an Automator clone. The resulting product is a subscription‑based, per‑user app builder where programmers can contribute reusable components that become available to all subscribers, thereby expanding the “business empire” of user‑generated apps.

Books hold humanity’s greatest thoughts and ideas, yet most of them remain unread; they are meant to be heard as music rather than merely perused in paper form. A library is like a buffet—if you only eat the same few dishes you’ll never return. To truly inherit a book’s wisdom one must actively engage with it, sometimes through distress or adventure, and even take long journeys such as walking the Appalachian Trail to cultivate perseverance. By challenging ourselves and “playing” each book we design our own mental software, following Dennett’s question: if brains are computers, who designs the software? The answer lies in reading a wide range of books—hundreds at least—to fill the cultural void that has long forgotten its best ideas. Thus, by loving every second we listen to these works, we can transform the world into a wiser, more peaceful place.

The post argues that modern teaching often fails to convey true learning, with teachers who are unprepared, overburdened, and sometimes deceptive, causing students to memorize instead of understand; it calls for a return to authentic education—where knowledge flows naturally from curiosity rather than rote drills—and suggests practical solutions such as audio‑book lectures, self‑direct study in philosophy, science, and biographies, and hands‑on software development that turns learning into real job skills; ultimately it proposes that students become their own teachers, using accessible devices and web applications to build a new kind of school that blends learning with remote work opportunities.

Programming is a discipline that sharpens clear thinking, encourages humility, and rewards deliberate learning over convenience. It teaches us to avoid letting personal favorites dictate our choices—whether we pick the easiest or most popular path—and to choose languages and tools based on their fit for the problem at hand, rather than on tradition or grade‑focusing curricula. For example, JavaScript’s early slowness gave way to a powerful web language that is now indispensable. When building UI, a single well‑placed logic statement can keep an animated button’s click handler from firing too early; separating UI and program logic keeps complexity in check. Exposure to such controlled challenges trains intellectual hygiene: we see the “hood” of code, design our own sequence of learning, and pace it to match our existing knowledge. Finally, programming’s instant feedback loop lets us examine errors and revisit theory, ensuring nothing is skipped and every concept is truly understood.

The post describes a creative way to embed a “file‑manager” style interface inside a phone or web application, using a tree‑like data structure built from simple node and edge arrays rather than recursive objects. By closing the main app with a magic key combination you can drop into this hidden file manager, which mirrors the application’s structure and represents all user resources; it serves as both a development aid—letting you remember code and track listeners—and a prototyping platform, enabling tools such as a form designer, theme generator, or finite‑state machine builder that output ready JavaScript via templates like EJS. Ultimately, this self‑editable system becomes a sellable product (e.g., a theme with bundled generators) that lets buyers generate, customize, and run applications directly in the browser, offering both practical utility for new projects and potential side income.

The post introduces “potatoes” as a lightweight abstraction for CouchDB documents that makes it easier to keep data in sync across a networked application and the user interface. Each potato has a unique ID and revision number, so changes are stored as separate files and the latest revision is chosen by sorting filenames—an eventual‑consistency approach that works even when many users update concurrently. By treating potatoes like Svelte stores or Bootstrap components, the author shows how UI elements can automatically refresh whenever a new winner revision appears, while “views” (small programs) filter changes to build the visible collection of potatoes. The article explains that this model supports simple list handling, page re‑calculation, and fast searches, all while keeping the system free from overwrites or hacks because each change is uniquely identified and propagated through Pouch/Couch or a custom storage layer.

A state machine is a simple programming pattern that forces an application into well‑defined states, each represented by a verb (e.g., “driving,” “warning,” “stopping”). The post uses a traffic light as an example: green → yellow → red → back to green, and shows how misnamed states (“red” for the stopping state) can confuse developers. It explains that actions are short commands that trigger transitions, while states persist over time; thus a state might be named “sleeping,” “driving,” or “warning.” Proper naming keeps the machine clear, enabling complex user‑interface flows to remain predictable and error‑free, because each transition is explicitly defined by an action leading into a verb‑named state.

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The author argues that applications become truly useful when they specialize into domain‑specific tools such as code editors or spreadsheet builders, rather than remaining general‑purpose; he cites Excel’s inevitable formulas and other legacy systems to show how users always need to learn a language, then introduces a song‑builder app that auto‑generates tracks with randomize settings, album covers, etc., proving that quick generation plus easy customization creates powerful tools—finally concluding that building specialized, customizable apps like a nature‑noise machine with recorded sounds and a simple web interface is the winning path to success.

Start by exploring several‑hour JavaScript courses, then dive into pixel‑based projects with p5.js or playful JavaScript games; from there you can move on to Svelte (a 2022 technology) and its interactive tutorial for building graphic UIs. These tools let you tackle more complex topics like PouchDB by creating management programs, and a great hands‑on example is a color‑theme generator that teaches you rgba and HSL models—exploring opacity, hue, saturation, lightness, complementary colors, triads, and dynamic palettes inspired by clrs.cc. By letting users pick a starting angle (0–360°) or generating 360 themes, you can showcase vibrant color schemes on a portfolio site, turning the project into a simple yet powerful web app that reinforces your grasp of color models.

The author reflects on the value of working for oneself, arguing that a paycheck job ages you and breeds boredom, while self‑education fuels wisdom and fulfillment. He encourages envisioning his future self to decide whether to pursue simple coding or beautiful ideas, noting that lack of ideas stems from fear rather than talent. The post then shifts to practical advice: choose efficient, language‑unified web stacks—JavaScript in the browser with PouchDB/CouchDB for data sync—and front‑end frameworks like Svelte and Bootstrap—to write once and run everywhere. Finally he reminds that short cuts derail progress, urging honest, trail‑blazing effort.

The post argues that modern education systems—shaped by religion, centralized schooling, and rigid borders—have stalled human progress and fueled conflict. It calls for a new, reality‑based learning model: self‑directed, individualized lessons that reward real results and are grounded in authentic cultural knowledge, all aimed at world peace and human advancement. The writer believes that if young people see how standardized schools fail, they will take initiative to program their own projects, attract investors, and break the poverty cycle that keeps them obedient. Ultimately, he urges a swift overhaul of schooling into an effective, universally funded system that empowers children to become great beings and ends ignorance for good.

Self‑editable applications let end users build and tweak UI elements on the fly—adding, rearranging or deleting controls like username fields, passwords, buttons, drop‑downs and menus—all through a simple code editor embedded in the app (often using JavaScript or Svelte). By dynamically constructing these controls from data structures such as JSON, developers can avoid predefining every component and let users experiment with layouts while still seeing the underlying source. This approach, echoing early tools like SmallTalk’s HyperCard and Wikipedia’s editable pages, promises a low‑barrier learning curve for programming, faster task automation, and a new wave of “social application development” where anyone can share customized features.

The author argues that our current educational system—especially at the middle and high‑school levels—is fundamentally flawed because it relies on standardized, compartmentalized teaching that leaves students unmotivated and ill‑prepared to prevent future problems like war and poverty. They claim that real learning happens when a student actively studies something they are genuinely interested in, for a few weeks, which unlocks lasting skills and knowledge. By moving away from rigid subject divisions and grade‑based rewards toward individualized, project‑based, hands‑on experiences (e.g., 3D printing, programming, DIY drones), schools could create instant, life‑lasting results and give children the tools to become wise and great beings. The post concludes that parents and teachers must revive this personalized approach so kids can grow fully and carry their culture’s wisdom forward.

The post argues that while machine‑learning is still an emerging technology, true AI will eventually be able to read, explain and improve its own code; it then explores the difficulty of generating digital products—especially code—by describing how a complex code generator can produce simple, bug‑free programs such as Bootstrap cards, yet remain limited by programming conventions and human expectations, and suggests that generative art and music illustrate the potential for AI to learn from existing digital artifacts, while recognizing that large projects like full Bootstrap themes are still too complex for one person but may become feasible with a machine’s own assembly logic.

In this post the author argues that drawing with pencil is essential for learning programming, describing how visual sketches help understand and remember concepts. He explains that a program can be seen as a diagram of nodes (major steps) connected by edges (links), each edge carrying its own snippet of code; the diagram thus becomes a “file pane” of the editor. The post stresses that while REPLs and computers are useful, they cannot replace the creative act of sketching—each line or circle in a drawing has meaning only within that visual context—and that this dream‑like visual thinking ultimately produces the actual code.

In the post, the author outlines a strategy for creating an efficient, cross‑platform application that runs on a Raspberry Pi and can be hosted in a colocation facility, emphasizing the use of JavaScript both on the server (via Koa or Express) and client side to avoid language switching. They recommend using PouchDB with Bootstrap and Svelte for an offline‑first, mobile‑first UI that scales well to desktop, and stress the importance of responsive design and low traffic. To streamline development, they propose building a code generator—specifically a Cytoscape‑JS graph interface on the front end and a collection of Node module templates on the back end—that automates repetitive coding tasks, saves time, and can be packaged as sellable themes or plugins for new technologies learned along the way.

The post argues that an EventEmitter is a fundamental programming concept—much like classes or try/catch—and explains why it’s especially valuable in modern frameworks such as Svelte. In Svelte, developers typically build a “pyramid” of state: a top‑level data object whose fragments are passed down to components. While this works for small, self‑contained apps, integrating external services (auth, databases, websockets) can become cumbersome; an EventEmitter lets components broadcast and listen for events across the entire pyramid without rigid structural rules, creating a spiderweb of communication. The author notes that junior developers sometimes view EventEmitters as “evil” but they actually simplify data flow and UI structure—illustrated by a complex properties pane that reacts to a single “selected” event and persists changes via an “save” event—showing how this pattern can make building applications quick, powerful, and visually intuitive.

In late September 2022, I began an experiment by attaching a fluffy tail to myself to explore whether humans would respond differently to a full prosthetic tail—an inquiry I intended to publish in the Journal of Science years later. During October, people initially ignored me until the 20th, after which they greeted me with smiles and kindness; this shift spurred personal growth: my programming skills surged (thanks to Svelte, PouchDB, Cytoscape‑js, and CodeMirror6), I lifted heavier weights, became more cheerful, improved my music composition, and even recalled a childhood song about a mixed‑breed puppy. The tail experiment has thus catalyzed both social interactions and creative development in my life.

The post argues that, while high‑quality studio samples and perfectly synthesized sounds sound nice on paper, the real magic of music comes from complex, noisy, and surprising elements that keep a song interesting far longer than predictable patterns—something especially true for workout tracks that need to sustain energy over time. Using a 1929 Jimmie Rodgers track (“Waiting for a Train”) as an example, the author shows how short random snippets can be stitched together with added noise to create fresh beats; simple techniques like low‑pass filtering on loud sounds or even tapping a mic can yield drum-like instruments. Overall, the piece celebrates randomness and old technology as powerful tools for crafting engaging, unique music.

To become a programmer you need self‑study, patience, and a solid environment: start with a free Debian GNU/Linux system on inexpensive hardware such as an 8 GB Raspberry Pi 4; choose JavaScript/ES2023 as the first language because it powers the web and will stay relevant for decades; use vim (preferably SpaceVim) as your editor to master terminal‑based coding; then begin with simple command‑line Node.js programs, employing modules like commander for CLI handling and sharp for image processing.

The post uses an operating‑system metaphor to argue that human minds are dynamic, evolving machines whose education can be upgraded much like software updates. It claims that standardized learning feels like eating the same “broccoli” over and over, whereas personalized, technology‑driven instruction—especially via smartphones—lets learners build their own knowledge paths, experiment with real projects, and earn rewards for solving problems. By creating a privacy‑respecting, self‑paced school where students can freely assemble curricula, collaborate online, and gain experience through bounties, the author believes individuals will feel empowered, overcome poverty fears, and continually refine their skills, just as an OS is upgraded or replaced to improve performance.

Research shows that having a tail—whether literal or metaphorical—offers practical benefits: it helps distribute weight, supports the back, and can even enhance intelligence. The post emphasizes that animals from squirrels to whales naturally possess tails, suggesting humans could benefit similarly. It stresses choosing a tail that fits one’s scale and size, implying careful selection is essential. Finally, it playfully suggests wearing a tail for style—whether on Halloween or year‑round—to feel mighty and strong.