Alexander Obenauer

Here it is, your moment of zen.

Here it is, your moment of zen.

It’s surprisingly easy to get started, particularly in comparison to other “making things” hobbies (woodworking, homebrewing, etc.)

We should be able to announce timing soon!

This week:

Making books and watching the snow.

The cover of Bootstrapping Computing (paperback edition) by Alexander Obenauer

Great read from @alexanderobenauer.com 🙌

"...plenty of things let you explore someone else's thinking, but personal computers can help you explore your own thinking, giving you living spaces to externalize, review, expand, and refine your thoughts on the things that matter most to you."

Keeping the wood stove warm during single-digit nights can be tiring though! 0° F / -18° C tonight.

I hope you're having a nice Christmas in your part of the world!

This Christmas is a weird one. We're staying home with our cat who is in the final stages of an illness he's had for some years. Keeping him comfortable.

It's also our first in NH. I love the amount of snow we get up here.

oooh this book looks good

New lab report up for members now exploring one way to look at the architecture for an itemized OS of the future:

lab.alexanderobenauer.com/updates/the-...

LAYERING UP THE ITEMIZED USER ENVIRONMENT December 3 In this lab report, we consider one way to look at the architecture for the itemized user environment: a layering that has been happening since the dawn of time. Some harbor an inclination toward a “grand design” in the construction of a new operating system’s user environment; a sort of “turtles all the way down” architecture that features one substance, or one core primitive, which defines the mechanics of an entire computing system deep under the hood and up into userland. I’m more inclined toward the “layers” which we’ve been stacking up since we first made the jump from hard-coded circuits to programmable, general ones (and on which we have built many new layers — machine code, assembly, low- and high-level programming languages, and so on). Each layer adheres to the contract of the one below, and offers a new way to think about things to the layers which will be built above. This is how we’ve bootstrapped into all of modern computing starting from simple logic gates, in a slow, evolutionary construction. This isn’t just the way modern computing came to be; it’s the way our physical world came to be, too! This “layering” is how our world has evolved into the one we know. But it comes with some important consequences.

Our evolutionary construction, the layering, neatly reflects how we do this kind of creative, exploratory work, and how the mind engages with ideas. Ted Nelson, in Literary Machines: Complicated ideas evolve slowly. People who do not work endlessly with ideas may not easily imagine how many are the steps that intensive work with ideas entails; how many are the guesses, postulations, reconsiderations, shifts of thought, confusions, resyntheses, reintegrations; how much is the rework of dearly-held insights in clouds of confusion. The swirl of needed changes never seems to end. […] This could not have been done with schedules and deadlines. When a project requires both exhaustive exploration and unusual inspiration, it is going to take however long it takes.

We engage in an evolutionary construction that continues a tradition started by our physical world long before we were here, and carried on into computing from its earliest days.

It's also a process that mirrors how creative, explorative work is done.

@thebonesofjrjones.bsky.social Thanks for helping keep me sane this year!

Radio Waves is somethin’ else.

"I mistook a clear view for a short distance."

Too real! I've experienced this time and again.

But I'm reticent to encode a reminder to avoid this mistake in the future; my life has been filled with wonderful projects that I would not have embarked on had I not been so naive.

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I greatly appreciate everyone who has purchased this or our clothbound — besides supporting our new bindery & press, you’re also supporting my research.

As a thanks, here are some member essays I've made public recently:

(should be fixed now!)

Ah, thank you - looks like our markdown converter is messing it up. Will fix soon.

(For reference, should link here: docs.datomic.com/whatis/data-...)

I'm also making this member update public today.

It's about the itemized OS' persistent data storage layer & internal data model, which has grown organically over the years to support my experiments.

You can read it here: lab.alexanderobenauer.com/updates/the-...

Thanks! Should be your way soon; I hope you enjoy it!

Thanks - I hope you enjoy it!

Today is the day!

The paperback of Bootstrapping Computing is available & shipping. Preorders will go out shortly.

Order today for delivery by Christmas in the U.S. You can buy it on our new site, powered by Stripe's payment links (👋 good riddance, shopify)

We had a lot of fun thinking about this cover, but one of my favorite things when working with artists is to just let them go wild with something they want to create.

That's what we did here, and Owen knocked it out of the park. Love his choices of color, scene, etc.

Yes! It will be available again at the beginning of the new year.

We've also written up a bit about our first year in business as a bindery & publishing company...

You can read it here: buddybindery.com

It's about how ten layers, from binary up, were arranged to build personal computing and the WWW.

Each layer is built out of the simpler parts of the one below, arranged to produce increasingly more sophisticated ideas of what computing could be.

It’s an incredible story of human ingenuity.

Bootstrapping Computing — Buddy Bindery & Press From binary up to the web: How ten layers, each made out of pieces of the last, build up to what we know of as personal computing.

You can order here: buddybindery.com/bootstrappin...

The paperback’s cover (pic in prior post) features a beautiful, original illustration by Owen D. Pomery (thanks for connecting us @paulrony.bsky.social , and for the rec. @andy.works!)

Grab a copy for yourself or a friend - I hope you enjoy it!

Some news to share today:

Earlier this year, we started our publishing company and released our first title, Bootstrapping Computing.

The full-color paperback is available for preorder now, and will be released on December 1.

Some excerpts, from @jessmart.in's notebook (if you haven't perused his notes before, you should! another lovely treasure on the internet.) notes.jessmart.in/Readwise/Art...