Buzzard Game 4 Meta Reflection
by: CJ Pais
My Approach
Build telegram bot for myself to ingest content easily into Buzzard. Then basically do a meta analysis on this. To document what I have done and also make it repeatable for someone else. It is an option that anyone can pick up if they would like.
Just by creating this code, I can create a few pieces, which will be a good portion of my 10 posts I think. The rest I hope will be ideas or content that are generated from the bot itself.
I am trying to keep each piece as small as possible and add them to a collection. Hopefully to delineate content types as much as possible. Unfortunately I want to include some other posts outside of just housekeeping stuff so some pieces will be smashed together by default.
Struggles with Linking
I want to link all the things, but I'm going insane.
- Some things I want to link don't explicitly exist in the files here.
- One solution would be to create a file for this too, but that is HEAVY
- Not to mention the information contained in it is really created from a bunch of other files
- It almost doesn't exist without the context (or mention) from other files
- Not to mention the information contained in it is really created from a bunch of other files
- I want to link ALL the things.
- If I actually did this I would spend all the time linking things instead of moving on with my life and writing what I intend. There is so much context trapped in these silly little words and it should be captured and understood by the system.
Note, I see the benefit of backlinking. If you can create a shared context for something (walk in the park with dave and kristen (or (dave and cj) or (kristen and cj)) everyone can add notes and experiences to this. they can retain authorship, but the overall information is there and can be included as reference later. It helps solve the problem above significantly. However my question is this. How can we create amorphous backlinks? Ones that DO NOT require explicit dumb tags like [[apple]]. This cannot gracefully handle [[apples]] which is absolutely ludicrous if you ask me. Also as Codex has shown you can easily hide the syntax of [[]] which would be amazing. He is also more gracefully handling these more complex situations which is really important and something to look out for moving forward.
Even when writing this, I want to highlight a bunch of this and add it to the Codex context I am talking about. Treating sentences as groups themselves. hmm that probably doesn't make sense...
On another note. I think this also shows I have a very low threshold for tedium. When something becomes remotely tedious I want to throw that thing out the window as fast as possible. Not to mention I will almost refuse to do that thing until the tedium has been resolved. I might need some encouragement not to do this, otherwise I guess I write software to reduce it?
More meta notes
I AM SPENDING MORE TIME WRITING THE META THAN I AM ACTUALLY WRITING THE POSTS LOL WTF.
I think this might be one issue when trying to constrain the problem. There are actually many problems to solve and it's figuring out the fundamental one that helps alleviate the rest of the pains. I am extremely excited to discuss further with the rest of the group and continue to hear and collaborate on ideas to get closer.
Struggles with Digital Writing (BUZZING)
One of the immediate frictions I feel is with digital. Text especially feels constraining. When I write I am all over the place. It is NOT linear at all. I'm drawing arrows all over the places, writing and rewriting things as I begin to organize. Writing in digital forces me into this linear mode which pains me. I need more flexibility.
I keep writing things on a piece of paper or my iPad and realizing "yo dude, you have to write that again". shit. I could write some program which would directly send my notes to the site (I have some initial code on this from a while back), yet that feels wrong. I would much rather have a native interface that can do that.
Can start as handwritten bubbles/blocks or even as written text/images/video etc.
Idk maybe something like below
Note:
things (enclosed like this) I would like to be hidden initially. It's more like a sidenote, but hard to encapsulate in linear format again.
time tracking
one of the things I am doing is time tracking myself on Buzzard material. one thing I am interested in is tying that in as much as possible to other artifacts later. Saying during this "work block" these things were done. As granular as desired. But really would probably shoehorn in a few things into one block. Then this can be added to the meta of the post automatically.
WHY DOES THIS METADATA FEEL IMPORTANT?
Vulnerability Again
Something about actually doing these things is tough. Self consciousness certainly.
Bot thing
I am very not happy about the underscore filenames right now. This unhappiness is derived from inherently the thing is just a link or a message or whatever. But that itself contains a lot of metadata that is not captured. What I mean is that I can extract a title from a URL, and that could be part of the filename, but it's still going to be long and unwieldy. It still will be hard for me to read.
Maybe it is the more overarching question that is lingering. How to get content in, in a meaningful way that others can look at. The bot is not there yet. It works to get content in, but the meaningfulness is not quite there yet as far as I can see. Perhaps a lot of it is data visualization, the data is there now, which is great, but it needs a visual representation to actually become powerful. Something it currently does not have.
I think capturing as much metadata as possible here is going to be really important and including it in the front matter.
ANOTHER THING
Would be nice to communicate more with the rest of the group in terms of what I am thinking. This could make it more useful to more people. I am thinking this especially after seeing Kristen's consumption diary
Relationship OS
One thing I am noticing is that everyone has different ways of going about producing things. And that these simple text files to some degree handle it all relatively nicely. This is because we have already created and Operating System of sorts, but it seems to be missing the relationship component. I think figuring out what those relationships are and diving deeper into each post and all their connections will be invaluable.
Disentangling Posts
I am also struggling a lot on when to bring posts together and when to separate them. To me it seems like they all belong together. Some posts seem like they can be one, but they contain a few components
For example "how to"
- video
- simple text
- big text
- pictures
all of these are one, but they are also individual. I want to consume the one that is the most resonant with me, but all of them exist.
Perhaps simple text is the jumping off point, and then this can lead to one of the others?
Something similar happened with the demo. The demo and the how to video overlap significantly. But yet they are showing something different. Even how I speak in the videos and how they are recorded are different. But I have not figured out how to disentangle the two, so I feel it may not be entirely clear.
BLAH: ALL THESE THINGS CAN BE MIXED AND MASHED WHO AM I TO DECIDE HOW THEY SHOULD MUSSSHHHHH.
At the very least I think I am able to capture the essence of what is supposed to happen, but may not be the best at communicating exactly what that is. That's where I would appreciate a lot of help.
collaboration again
yeah basically more detailed collaboration would be very nice. focus on a specific thing and everyone able to approach it from different points of view. how to decide on this? for example, me throwing this bot together is very easy, but I did it by myself without outside consultation. I would much prefer to do this with more help from others. (however for the sake of this game, will leave it).
pressure
specifically from having to do 10 posts in 10 days. I have actually posted much more than this, but would like a certain level of quality for the 10. I am feeling the pressure enough to put other things down to do this. I like that. But it is something to be aware of.
this pressure is also leading me to take some more pride in my work. these meta notes are totally stream of consciousness. but my code is a product. I want to show that off well. The video I am showing off is too. Trying to do my best without being a perfectionist. But I also realize I am having myself do a lot more time on Buzzard, or wanting to, because I want to show off something. It is leading me away slightly from other things, as I am stressed that whatever I come up with will not be useful (more on this later)
I will say though, the pride may be spread too thin. It might be something that is contributing to the overall feeling of stress as well. Knowing I am trying to do too many things and half-assing all of them. The video's are not the quality I wanted (especially the how-to.. I shot 6 of them.. initially code issues... then audio issues... then video issues...). By the last one I was a bit annoyed, while the one previous was funny. It was the one I really wanted. I might still share both.
The photo guide I am especially unhappy with. But I am unsure how to make it better. I'd really like to rewrite it. But alas, it is fine for now. It is documentation. A first attempt, and it need not be perfect. Only more attempts and feedback will do better.
working on
Things I am intentionally trying to work on:
Technical writing and documentation.
jon first post
- how he is organizing metadata
- interesting to see it put directly in the file, especially for clarity right now.
- can this be a toggle in the future?
dave second post
- wow that last paragarph
SO MUCH COPY PASTE METADATA
ASLKFJHALSKJFHLKFSJH:LKAHSFHFS
^ that is not productive my friend
basically I really am not enjoying having to copy and paste metadata around when there is a more clear tree structure so certain metadata should be inherited. beyond this, there are relationships between the posts, so a lot of autogenerated structure could happen
lack of focus and the unknown
was everything i wrote for nothing? I think I am just worried, that all of what I am writing now won't be useful at all. Well maybe that is the wrong framing. I'm hoping it will be useful to whoever is reading this. But this hope can be slightly misguided. I cannot change if someone finds it useful or not.
the lack of focus much like Kristen describes is also getting at me
metadata in post is hard
im not able to keep the format very consistent. perhaps it is more unwilling. too much effort
collaboration
I have mentioned before but something more collaborative would be nice. These 10 posts feel detached.
Shahruz
wow fiction
the concept of only having 10 spaces. what would i put on there. certainly would be very different than what I did
2
Backend / API code is public and unchangeable by anyone, including whoever deployed it.
This has security benefits - there's no way for bad actors to steal funds in a well designed smart contract.
It also means people have to think ahead and try to build things that are extensible and adaptable with time. In that sense developers are inherently working in a "protocol design" moreso than an "API design" one.
The solid backend API here is the interesting piece to me. If this is the case, it allows UI to flourish on top more naturally.
5
mind blown
6
need some help to understand the example of NFT more
how to utilize the chain here? it is the top level pointer?
8
Questions are on point.
Also how can people spend?
Some more questions:
Should one limit the total supply of their currency or make it unlimited? How important is invoiding inflation if it's not meant to be traded as a currency?
What systems can be developed to utilize the currencies earned from a author/creator/publisher faucet? Systems for leveling within a fandom, systems for automating moderation, systems for enabling more direct access, ...
How do you detach the concept of a cryptocurrency from the concept of speculative financial investments? How do you distinguish "Monopoly money" from real money in a digital environment where they're built using the same things?