Bashing Ken
===================================================================

I've been having surprising success alternating between three
hobby tasks lately:

- Learning and writing about Bash

- Learning and writing about Nim

- Drawing in my sketchbook

(If I could work writing fiction in there, I think I would be in
hobby paradise, but I've learned to carefully modulate my hobby
"work load" while there are children under the age of 5 in the
house.  I keep that flame alive by *reading* as much fiction as I
can, occasionally saying "someday..." in a wistful voice while
staring into the heat mirages hovering over the dirt lot that is
our back yard.  Oh, and teasing myself mercilessly with NaNoWriMo
as it rolls around each November.)

I tend towards intense focus and (as long as the task remains
fun/interesting/challenging) an obsessive need to finish what I'm
doing.  So it is entirely against my nature to stop a project and
switch to something else.

And yet, I'm forcing myself to stop tasks and pick them back up
because I've come to believe:

- It will help avoid burnout

- We learn and retain knowledge far better that way

- That's how you get *big* projects done


Nim
-------------------------------------------------------------------

You've been seeing the result of the periodic work on re-learning
Nim in my "Nim Day X" phlog posts.  I don't know if those have
been of interest to anyone else, but it's been wonderful to be
able to use the casual environment of the Phlog to organize my
learning while forcing me to understand each subject well enough
to explain it to someone else (hopefully!).  I'm also looking
forward to the end goal of writing a Gopher server and client in
Nim.  That brings a positive internal pressure to continue going.

One thing that seems to help get me excited about Nim after
leaving it for a few days is to find a YouTube video about Nim and
watch a bit of it.  I inevitably find myself at the nim-lang.org
website looking something up and the next thing you know, I'm
writing notes.  And once I'm writing, I find that the rest takes
care of itself.


Bash
-------------------------------------------------------------------

This one is weird because it's three-fold.  I'm learning Bash
because:

- It's my daily shell and *really* knowing it is already paying
  off

- I've owned and referenced a Bash book for years, now I'm finally
  *reading* it

- The Slackware package I'm currently reviewing for my PkgBlog [1]
  is Bash

- I'm starting to use Bash frequently for personal utilities

The book, by the way, is the 1998 second edition of Learning the
Bash Shell published by O'Reilly.  My somewhat compulsive need to
read books cover-to-cover and get them into my Reading Journal
(and review them on Goodreads) seems to be a trait I share with a
lot of other readers.

I've mentioned the the PkgBlog (Slackware Package Blog) before.
Check out the link [1] if you want to learn more.  It's a weird,
obsessive quest, but one which has already been a massive
educational explosion for me and I've only just started to scratch
the surface.  The Bash post/article is ridiculous - over 6,000
words so far including tons of examples, but it's really for me
and like the Nim phlogs, it's been a *wonderful* way to learn each
subject well enough to explain it to others.

Finally, what ties all of this together perfectly is the fact that
I have an actual current, ongoing Bash project to tinker with...


Kenny Phloggins Bugfix Update
-------------------------------------------------------------------

I've updated the Kenny Phloggins script.  The updated script is
still called 'ken' (I've overwritten the previous version) and can
be found in my gopher/ dir.  [2]

(I described Mr.  Phloggins in an August phlog post, "Gopher
Stuff".  [3])

There were some silly bugs (hey, the script _did_ clearly warn you
that you were entering the "danger zone"!) and I've added some
usability features including better menu options and a couple
well-placed ANSI escape colors.

A greater familiarity with Bash has paid all kinds of dividends in
my confidence while working with small scripts like 'ken'.


Footnotes
-------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] http://ratfactor.com/slackware/pkgblog/

[2] gopher://sdf.org:70/0/users/ratfactor/gopher/ken

[3]
gopher://sdf.org:70/0/users/ratfactor/phlog/2018-08-26-gopher-stuff