if she gets to know i'm doing this instead of
writing i'm just like i'm just i mean i'll be
like almost visualized uh it basically gives
me obsidian like functionality of these network
backups i've called upon these uh font declarations
whenever it's necessary and as i go further and
further into this uh novel it's super smooth
I use it for my Zettelkasten because it's incredibly
smooth and doesn't have the janky scrolling that
most terminals have. The fact that it needs to
be set for an A5 paper or A5 book. This is talking
about these values. And I was curious. And essentially,
that's why I went from Neowim. I'm not trying
to take you away from Markdown, right? I'm thinking
about it. Fight for Markdown, man. Fight for
Markdown. It's a great format in itself. If you're
listening to this as a podcast, remember that
it was originally recorded as a video. If you're
not following along, you can go to my YouTube
channel. My username is Linkarsu. And if you
want to support me to keep this podcast going,
you can donate in Ko -fi. I'm going to leave
a link in the description. All right. So let's
get started with this chapter then. I have a
special guest today. Dina, how's it going? It's
going well, man. Thank you for having me. Yeah,
thanks for your time. We didn't plan this with
a lot of time, so really appreciate you joining.
No, not a problem. I've enjoyed the previous
episodes with the maintainers of Neowim, I believe.
So that was great, and I'm glad to be, you know,
sharing anything of use. to your audience yeah
i watched one of your videos in the neo vim conf
i think it was 2024 it was this video right here
so um i really liked it and i was intrigued because
you would uh you do a lot of writing i do write
as well but not professionally you know i just
write markdown so i want to know more about the
different formats there are latex latex however
it's pronounced markdown what someone that does
this professionally thinks about each one of
them and whatever you want to share with us right
so um you mind sharing a little bit more about
you yeah sure let me just start up uh with that
uh i'm uh hi everyone i'm veena i'm a multi -disciplinary
artist based in colombo sri lanka by multi -disciplinary
i mean my work kind of spans between the literary
and the cinematic um and hopefully in the future
everything in between as well as far as my uh
my novel work is concerned i wrote a uh novel
called first utterance back in 2016 which ended
up winning the national literary award in sri
lanka in around two years ago i released my first
film i'm currently working on my follow -up books
a couple of screenplays for film as well as in
our tv series as well um i think that covers
everything oh so what what what could i possibly
add to this idea i mean this talk about open
source software and text editing and so on and
so forth um around the time of the pandemic i
sort of stumbled upon bim and i realized this
was exactly what i was looking for as far as
being able to write edit and world build at the
speed of thought which previous to that i was
basically like any any writer i was based on
uh all my work was inside rich text formats like
docx and so on and so forth and i was using the
traditional word processing software like mark
subword and google docs and so on and so forth
um the discovery of vim and thereafter git and
plain text forced me to kind of rethink my toolkit
and my my tool chain in itself. So the first
part of it was shifting from rich text to plain
text. And that process in that process, I sort
of discovered the various different markup syntaxes
that are there, Markdown being the obvious choice.
But from Markdown, I kind of moved on. I. I tried
out Markdown, I tried out Augmode and then I
finally settled on LaTeX. So all three of those
plaintext standards or syntaxes, markup languages,
all three of those plaintext markup languages
had their users. Currently, I use mostly Augmode
and LaTeX. Augmode is what I use for almost all
my nonfiction manuscript writing. So that could
mean anything between my personal research notebooks,
my proposals to clients, my, you know, like,
putting putting together to do lists, so on and
so forth. So all mode is very powerful for that.
I use Latin to for the writing of my screenplays,
which I will show during the course of this conversation.
Does that answer all your questions? All your
what you had in mind? Yeah. Actually, would you
mind sharing a little bit about your novel? What's
it about your book? Okay. So the first novel
that came out, First Art Trends, this was written
very much during the time I was writing on Microsoft
Word, and it's called First Art Trends. I wrote
it way back in 2012, and finally had the... i
don't know the self -belief to publish it around
2016 and after that i found it you know found
it had a fairly positive response locally uh
and it nationally locally in sri lanka it ended
up winning the national literary award what it
what the book is about is it is the first of
a series of novels called the mirajan cycles
uh and the mirajan cycles essentially imagines
a a word that goes through the karmic cycle of
death and rebirth and death and rebirth now usually
we think of the karmic cycle as a singular thing
as something that happens to an individual if
you are familiar with uh you know eastern and
specifically indian philosophy and mythology
it's usually cyclical for a single individual
but in my uh book says i sort of imagine this
entire country that goes through this cycle of
death and rebirth and they go through this thing
this cycle endless cycle of death and rebirth
for eternity um and the first book essentially
attracts one of those cycles from the beginning
to the end right now working on book two which
is which kind of cap which kind of takes our
readers into a point when the country is about
to face its inevitable apocalypse or the end
of another cycle that's taking a little longer
it's basically a the second book is a science
fiction and more science fiction and less magic
realism whereas book one was more magic realism
book two is basically a love story narrated by
a artificial intelligent being um and yeah that's
pretty much what i'm working on as far as my
writing is concerned i noticed that your book
is available here in amazon right uh yeah it
is available in amazon as an ebook uh those of
you who are interested in uh getting the printed
version uh reach out to me and i'll be happy
to like you know sort out shipping and send it
to my level okay wonderful wonderful and um let's
see okay let me see what i have here in the topics
we already covered who you are where people can
find you well this is your website i'm gonna
put it in the video description there's links
here to your book in amazon yeah i'm also going
to put your github repo there yeah yeah you're
on twitter and this is your youtube channel right
yeah yeah okay i'm gonna put all of these in
the video description thank you anything else
you want to share about you with us before we
move to uh to the technical topics no i think
once we cover the which we touch upon the technical
topics the i'm sure the audience is wondering
what the hell i'm doing here because what do
i know about uh foss and uh text editors right
so i instead of me uh you know premeditating
those questions once you ask it i think i'll
you know add some of the background stuff about
how exactly i came across all this open source
technology okay okay wonderful now regarding
your youtube channel i i'm curious i do see that
you have some videos here are there plans to
continue this or what's the status of the youtube
channel i mean i so every time i want to start
off i mean like it's only the three uh uh talks
from the three win conferences that are really
interesting there that's so that that would be
the one from a few months ago that's one from
two years ago and there's one one from three
years ago i would if anyone's interested i would
start off with the very first win conference
that i spoke at in 2021 it's called writing editing
and world building at the speed of thought uh
the one i did after that is called wimkipedia
or how it how i built my second brain using neowim
and third one is how i came up with my own uh
writing based neowim config so those are three
videos and i think over the course of this chat
with christian i would be touching on uh parts
of all those videos so as far as the youtube
channel every time i want to sit down and actually
do some serious youtube uh production i end up
having to work uh in actual production work you
know so i i just don't have the time for it but
i do hope to invest some time and uh in the future
okay wonderful okay and um the first question
that i have here is Why latex? Well, what is
latex? Basically, I'm just a five year old now
that doesn't know what it is. I see the name
everywhere. I see a lot of people using it, but
I don't get it. There's people in the audience
that don't know about it, too. Would you mind
sharing a bit more about latex? Sure. Yeah. So
the easiest way that I've come to understand
latex is think about it as. css styling sheets
but for printed documents specifically for pdfs
and so on and so forth so how is that relevant
for me and how would that potentially be relevant
for your audience uh for me specifically what
it does is it allows me to uh write in a consistent
uh i mean essentially i'm Writing a novel that
is going to be in A5 size, right? Now, if I was
to write that on a Microsoft Word document, I
can, but then that process of then getting that
manuscript ready for publication requires a middle
person. And the middle person is usually an art
director who will take the manuscript and lay
it down on an Adobe InDesign file. This can take
anywhere between two to three months, right?
um with latex what i can do is i can cut out
the middle person completely and write a write
my manuscript that looks about 85 to 95 percent
ready and conforms to the standards of the publishing
industry now what do i mean by that i want to
just show you a latic document right now this
is my latest manuscript right um i do this use
uh you would you see the pdf next yeah okay so
this pdf is interesting because um when i started
working on this on this manuscript a few months
a few years ago one of the things that i realized
was that i had to make it typographic they had
to be a typographic architecture what by what
that what by that i mean it would require different
fonts to talk when it's talking or when it's
touching about different parts of the story uh
let me show you an example of what i mean so
you can you can already see there's about three
different typographic uh uh you know three different
fonts essentially one is for the epigraph one
is for a for this narrator and one is for the
general general narrative in itself now if i
was to do this on microsoft word as you can imagine
i would have to you know copy paste like you
know like just constantly instead of focusing
on the actual writing of the substance of the
of the manuscript i would have to be focused
on the stylistic aspects of it now The typography
forms a backbone of the narrative. It's important
for the narrative because that's one of the ways
that I and eventually the reader will be able
to distinguish the various strands of the narrative.
So when I was writing it on Microsoft Word, I
was conscious that I had to keep to that consistent
typographic architecture that I had set. I needed
to follow through. as I was going deeper and
deeper and deeper into the novel. And one of
the things that quickly became apparent was how
difficult that was to do on Microsoft Word. And
thankfully, I had discovered LaTeX as a result
of my exploration of NeoWim and plaintext and
so on and so forth. And I came across LaTeX in
the context of scientific papers and mathematical,
especially mathematical papers, right? And I
found that finally there was instead there was
a typesetting standard that would allow me to
just focus on my substance while allowing so
focus on the substance of the manuscript and
the writing and not so much on the formatting
i could essentially forget about it once i sat
once i set up the latic document so how did i
set it up right the as you can see this is a
typical latex document it here i am basically
talking about what the the pdf engine is going
to be you can see here where the similarities
to css style sheets come in right here i'm talking
about the fact that it needs to be set for an
a5 a5 paper or a5 book this is talking about
these these values are um essentially margins
that that are now standard practice in the in
the in the publishing industry so you want something
that is essentially like allows me to declare
all of this stuff up front once i declare it
i can then call upon certain packages these packages
is for british english this is for typography
based stuff like for example this particular
line says use package cs quotes this cs quotes
is this one right it's essentially this one over
here which looks like which looks like uh which
looks distinct from the rest of the typography
right now imagine once again i was doing this
for an entire novel as opposed to like a few
pages it becomes incredibly difficult outside
of latex uh there is more more declarations here
again font packages you can see here i'm saying
what the senate font is going to have to be this
is what the modern space font is and this is
the font for uh poetry and so on and so forth
so you can see once i declare all of that if
i was to just uh go through this uh go through
my uh my uh the pdf of my current work in progress
management you can see the different typographical
uh you know structures coming into play and why
that was extremely necessary for me to switch
to latic in order to achieve this i i can still
do this on microsoft word i'm sure someone is
asking why why can't i do it but it becomes increasingly
difficult bothersome annoying call it what you
will you know to do this in a way that becomes
uh you know uh free flowing and it doesn't kind
of impede the writing itself whereas with latex
if i now if i was show you uh how i want to see
how you switch between the typographies like
how do you call them yeah they you can see the
very first one here right so if i was okay let's
just go to the first page here uh and the first
page essentially has three different uh it has
this which is for this epigraph right so when
you call on this epigraph uh package it allows
you to format it in this style right so that's
that's done so all i have to do here is i just
have to call on epigraph now when i have to call
on the other font i just have to say i just have
to say uh select font select font and i'll say
pcr when i say select font and pcr and then i
write this bit i was born last night you can
see there we go so the font is automatically
changed right so all i have to do is just this
this declaration at the right time and then turn
off the declaration whenever i need it so when
i say uh font family pcr it goes into this font
but when i say uh when i say normal font it goes
into this so fireflies this line fireflies is
in normal font right and as you can see all i've
done is i've called a novel font again so as
i'm going through as i'm going through this you
can see how how in the middle i have changed
certain uh like i've called upon these uh font
declarations whenever it's necessary and as i
go further and further into this uh novel this
became the hardest part of writing in microsoft
word and essentially this is the biggest problem
that latic has solved latic then isn't for your
typical uh note taking unless the note taking
is for technical subjects uh i'm sure you i mean
that there's a fairly amazing blog entry from
few years ago of a math student who would take
notes in his classroom on vim using nothing but
vim and latex snippets and he was able to do
this as the lecture is going on uh and he would
in the blog post he basically animated how the
whole thing was uh was happening the the impressive
part is because he was working in the technical
mathematical discipline he had to call on functions
as opposed to me i'm just calling on you know
random fonts here right he had to call on mathematical
functions whether the mathematical symbols uh
none of which are on the keyboard so it was all
a matter of just like using these symbols in
order to to to uh to be able to take down those
notes really fast now if you were not doing any
sort of technical subject and it was just normal
note taking then markdown and org mode is very
good for that. Personally, for me, if I was just
doing plain note -taking without any sort of
technical requirements, when I say technical
requirements, no mathematical formula. If that
wasn't a necessity, then i would uh you know
i would just go on uh markdown itself but for
me personally i find org mode the better solution
and i will take the audience through org mode
when you want to cover it but right now you know
we are very much on the latex side so so if i
was to just show you what this entire manuscript
was to look like i'm just going to speed run
through this whole thing so you can see hopefully
the different typographical structures kind of
coming into play in the manuscript itself this
would be incredibly difficult to do on a microsoft
word document which is why i don't do it you
can also notice how consistent it is now again
if i was to bring up the idea of microsoft word
sometimes when you are when you i mean mine is
already is about 206 pages when i was working
on the microsoft document it was around around
the same it was around the same length but the
problem was it was not consistent so if i had
to put in a new edit somewhere between pages
75 and page 878 and the moment i you know put
that new piece of text the formatting for the
for the rest of the document just completely
goes haywire right and once again i have lost
time uh lost time trying to sort that uh the
the the chaos in the formatting as opposed to
actually writing whereas with latex i do not
have to worry about that i can i can go into
any section and insert a new paragraph a new
word or anything of that nature and it would
ensure that the cascading changes are consistent
across the document and you can see that here
as well like you can see how incredibly consistent
the whole thing is right So that's pretty much
my latte. And for a person like me, one of the
things that it's going to do is when I do send
this out as a manuscript to my editor, my editor
is going to be able to see the manuscript as
I intend in its almost in its final form. My
editor will always also see how the typography
is supporting the story or the changes in the
typography is supporting the narrative. uh and
they will understand exactly what it is that
i'm trying to go for again if i have just like
you know sent a pdf of the manuscript as i had
uh on microsoft word that uh i That would have
been possible, but again, I would have lost time.
I would have just gone crazy, I think, because
I was going crazy before I discovered Vim for
myself. So essentially, that's why LaTeX is great.
And the other reason, and this is a reason that's
very, very... a niche for me because i write
in multiple languages right so one of the things
that um that i want to be able to write is a
a trilingual novel and with a trilingual novel
uh it just for context sri lanka is uh sri lanka's
but it's a native language is singhala and tamil
English is our link language, so technically
some of us speak all three languages. Right.
So I'm trying to work on a novel that would that
would kind of capture the the the sheer strangeness
and the and the and the surreal aspects of living
in a country where all three languages are spoken
in every corner sometimes. Right. So I wanted
to kind of mimic that in novel form. Now, again,
to do that on Microsoft Word, is it possible
yeah is it an absolute headache to do absolutely
whereas with latex it's just completely uh simple
so i'm just going to show you that what what
that looks like as far as a multilingual document
is concerned is that okay yeah yep all right
so you you asked me that day if i use uh tmux
so the answer is yes uh i use tmux when i'm working
on uh on on Lattic and NeoWeb. Let me see. I
have experienced that problem with Microsoft
Word, and I just do basic stuff. Sometimes I
need to use two different footers, right? So
you add multiple footers, headers, and you need
to add page breaks, and it's a nightmare if you
add something in between. and yeah i've done
simple things only and i hate it yeah i completely
understand where you're coming from man uh i
would never do it because it's just like as someone
who's spent their entire life on um okay so that
their entire life on um on microsoft word i completely
understand your pain but here as you can see
it's now shifting between three different languages
right again very easy to do on latex not so easy
to do on um on on on yeah it isn't right so yeah
and again here too the declaration is fairly
straightforward i'm saying it's a5 book i'm asking
you to use this particular package which is polyglosia
which allows for multiple uh languages i've asked
it to set default language as english other languages
include tamil uh different fonts so on and so
forth um where is this yeah as you can see separate
languages are coming into play and it it it records
it i mean it renders it very perfectly oh wonderful
yeah That's pretty much why LaTeX. I hope that
made sense. Oh yeah, definitely. I learned a
lot. Thanks for explaining it. No worries. I
mean, the thing is this. LaTeX, I am in no way
an expert at all. I came upon LaTeX in the last
two years, and in the last two years... I hate
to say this, but there was AI. And AI was able
to clarify certain things about the LaTeX specifications
and documentation that I found confusing at first.
So once I was able to comprehend some of those
eccentric bits about LaTeX, everything else became
fairly simple. And LaTeX completely replaced
Microsoft Word. No, I don't think so. Larte has
a very niche use case. One is for people who
are working in very technical, mathematical fields.
And one is for people like me who needs it for
their manuscript and for their writing work simply
because we need, for us, the typographic architecture
of the manuscript is as much of the story as
the story in itself. so in that case i needed
it right uh i don't think it will ever replace
microsoft word because microsoft word has its
purpose especially in the enterprise i don't
see people anyway leaving that at all but outside
the enterprise out when it comes to uh people
like me working on the you know on on their creative
pursuits whether it's in the literary side or
cinematic side and i say the cinematic side there
also is a part of it that involves a lot of writing
right coming about the writing of the screenplays
in all those cases i would say move your writing
towards plain text away from rich text and by
doing that what you have is the advantages of
multitude you will have the advantage of version
control portability of data you will never be
locked into a vendor there's so many advantages
that come from just shifting from rich text to
plain text From that, after you make that shift
to plaintext, which plaintext standard you adopt
for your purposes will depend on your purposes.
I'll be happy to take you through org mode later,
but I hardly ever use Markdown anymore. When
I first started, it was Markdown. It is for everyone
because it's so simple. But I found, Because
again, once I first started moving my manuscripts
to plain text, especially with this novel that
I'm working on right now, I could not in any
way or form mimic. the typographic architecture
that i was talking about how do i ship different
fonts in markdown you can't right especially
when you're when you're rendering it into a pdf
the markdown into a pdf it's just one font that
will be used in various various ratings weightages
depending on if it's bold styling or italicized
or underlying or whatnot but that that's about
it it doesn't go beyond that uh latex does now
but For me, the happy middle ground between the
very simple markdown and the very complex LaTeX
is org mode. I feel like org mode is everything
that I require for a simple markup language.
And honestly, org mode is very simple as a markup
language. It's incredibly straightforward, really
simple. But the advantages of org mode is in
the org mode ecosystem, which is just insane.
okay we can touch on that yeah yeah and okay
so if you're a writer and you're willing to learn
to kind of code and write your novel you could
replace word with latex right or latex yeah yeah
i mean theoretically yes that's my answer And
I don't see myself ever moving away from LaTeX
for my novels. I don't see myself ever moving
away from it. No way. I just don't. But I think
at some point when I'm sending my work to my
editor and they want it in a format where they
can make changes, I'll probably have to use Pandoc
to convert the LaTeX file to DocX and send it
to them for any review stuff. And when they send
that review back, I'll have to... I think I'll
have to look at it inside a word processor, at
least the changes, and then make the changes
through the LaTeX document itself. A little unnecessarily
complicated, but I'd rather do this than have
to be stuck inside Microsoft Word. I have a question.
So when you send this to the person that receives
this document, whoever that person is, how do
you send it? Do you send a LaTeX file? You mentioned
PDF. right so yes i send it as i said it as pdf
most most of my editors now have pdf with annotation
tools right so that's good enough for uh for
for most of my editing needs unless there's something
deeply structurally wrong with my first draft
and i hope that that's never the case unless
that that is the case i don't ever see myself
having to you know send her the word version
of the manuscript in which case i would have
to take the latic file like i said take the latic
file use pandoc to convert it into docx and send
it to my editor and what do they do with the
pdf like how do they print it do they rewrite
it again or no no it's annotation tools right
i mean my my edit my editors are fairly like
uh when they send me notes uh the the notes are
fairly brief if if uh if a certain uh section
is they will just you know annotate it with a
big red circle and just say this is rewrite it
okay that's it it's that simple right it won't
it will never be the case of i think this is
the problem here unless they have specific issues
in which case you know again when it comes to
pdf annotation tools you can put uh like you
know the virtual yellow stickers or post -it
notes and whatnot or if if it's like overflowing
from those tiny things what they will do is get
in touch with me over a call or it'll be a long
ass email okay so once it's completely done with
all the annotations revisions and all that the
pdf is what is published as a book Yeah, the
PDF is the one that will go into the printers.
And I mean, this version of the PDF will need,
I mean, right now I'm using a very compressed
version of PDF. The version that I'll send to
the printers would be a high -res, slightly bigger
version of the PDF. It would be bigger in terms
of file size. Okay, wonderful. Okay. Okay. Thanks
for all that knowledge. And you were mentioning
arc mode. let's talk about the inevitable why
org and what's your what's your adventure with
org what's going on there and what do you use
to edit org yeah uh i came across org when i
was still a vim user i think there are plenty
of like um all plugins for the new web and web
ecosystems I think there is something called
Vimorg, there is nvimorg, and a couple of others,
all of which are great. I've used them. uh they
are great for the purposes that they have and
that's essentially how i discovered org mode
and when i discovered org mode like i said earlier
it was for me an improved version of markdown
that's how i saw it um and i'll show you examples
of why i think it's an improved version of it
um because of its um hierarchical structure bullet
points it it seems innately built to express
express large ideas but it just allows you to
kind of like compress it into outlines and then
then expand each outline uh you know over time
and what what i felt was aug mode was was good
enough for your tiny notes it is good enough
for your to -do list but it's also good enough
to write an entire non -fiction book as well
um because you could essentially over with the
outline you have created a um you have created
the structure of a of potentially any um non
-fiction book whether that non -fiction book
is a textbook whether it is uh something to do
with you know like essays or so on and so forth
it's just so good at that and essentially that's
how i was using it on neovim for the longest
time but i kept seeing on on youtube people using
bog mode on emacs and i was curious and essentially
that's why i went from neovim to emacs and this
is kind of like strange because i spent a good
year creating a NeoWim based config for writing
and writers called OviWrite. So OviWrite was
meant to help other writers who may have seen
or heard about NeoWim have a higher place to
start from. as opposed to me when i started with
from absolutely being clueless about it so what
i wanted to do was i wanted to create a conflict
that would allow other writers to just install
neoim install this uh init .lua file and essentially
have an integrated writing environment with that
that integrated writing environment would allow
them to either take notes at a very simplistic
level write manuscripts on LaTeX, write nonfiction
books using org mode, and it would allow them
to have a Zettelkasten. Are you familiar with
the Zettelkasten concept, Christian? That's a
wonderful point that you're touching there. I
even purchased the course and I'm like, I don't
get this shit. I'm like, I tried it. I wanted
to try it, but... Let me show you my notes and
you tell me sure if they are If I should use
that or not sure sure yeah, sure Sorry, I just
had to grab a bottle of water, okay Yeah, show
me your notes, okay, so this is an example of
my notes I divide them in files right like this
everything is technical right xoa xoa xocli xcpng
stuff and um which one can i show you um this
one for example find nine um no hold on this
maybe yeah this this is fine right so i just
keep a table of contents there and i just keep
all the the topics in there I have headings,
a lot of subheadings, and I just jump through
them like that. Right. So settle custom in theory,
I would need to have a lot of notes instead of
having a big note. This one is 23 ,000 lines
long, right? No, 2300. I'm sorry. So I watched
that course. I was like, I don't get it. I still
don't get it. I don't know if I should use it,
if I should stick to this, if it makes sense
or not. Anything you want to share there? Yeah.
Yeah, sure. I mean, the way I understood the
Central Carson system was you have to kind of...
So you know the person who came up with it, right?
This German sociologist, Nicholas. uh yeah so
when he came up and one of the reasons why people
were always curious about uh his his gentle cousin
system was because he was incredibly prolific
and productive throughout his life uh often he
would be you know i think he's published several
times several times uh he has i think a few dozen
books that he wrote in his career and so on so
forth so a lot of people were curious how he
did that and after he is after his death one
of the things that people started to learn was
that he kept this analog system that was always
had like these slipcards and these slipcards
had index numbers so that they would kind of
be referencing one another so the idea is atomic
nodes and unique identifiers, right? We combine
those two. You're allowed. You can theoretically
make connections between with these various slick
cards if such a connection was once, you know,
you could conceive of it. Right. So essentially
what he was building the way I understood it
was a offline analog Wikipedia of his mind. That's
what he was doing. Right. And if you think about
that. it is i i found by thinking about it along
those lines to make the leap into the my digital
version of my zeta passing was so much easier
because i understood where you know like conceptually
things would be connected to one another i started
like exploring that and i found that essentially
what i ended up with over about you know since
i started the system about one and a half three
years ago what i've ended up with is an incredibly
uh you know persisting incredibly lively ecosystem
of ideas of ideas that are that interest me uh
concepts that interest me that i can expand upon
and because these notes are you know, they are
living notes. They kind of show the transition
or the iteration over time, right? Especially
when you combine that with digital technology
like Git and whatever markup language that you
want to use. So on the Nuobin side, I stumbled
upon this plugin called BIMWiki. i'm going to
show a little bit of the wiki right now this
is my zettelkasten you can see this i'm guessing
uh yeah it's a little bit there we go yep okay
so this is the home page of my zettelkasten right
and as you can see these are all links that uh
these are all links to various parts of things
that i'm interested in um this inbox is where
i put in uh ideas so this has writing ideas this
has you know like stuff i was learning i was
learning some programming stuff so i would put
all that stuff into computer science that's personal
finances you know music visual skills uh all
of these things that i think were that were important
to me and i needed to uh essentially have it
written down in an organized kind of way. The
Zettelkasten system allowed me to do that. So,
for example, because I'm a writer, if I go into
this writing ideas, I have writing ideas for
books, movies, short stories, poetry, essays,
and so on and so forth. So if I go into this,
I can show... What is this program that we're
looking at right now? Is this Emacs? This is...
this is new this is neo wide on uh have you seen
the yeah this is neo white right so i guess it
was really smooth so it was like yes it's super
smooth i i use it for my jet class because it's
incredibly smooth and doesn't have the the the
janky scrolling that most uh terminals have right
so i i really enjoy it for that because it almost
gives me the sense that i'm using a dedicated
app right and it's even though it's not it's
just new white running my zettelkasten system
in itself right and so essentially i can i can
just spend an entire day just going through uh
stuff like this oh this is uh this is what i
was working on you know it will have dates and
times showing exactly at what point the story
came up uh all of that stuff is very much here
and if i start like okay so i'm like again i
can go back into books here if i go back into
books i i have uh things to do with my okay this
is another book that i'm working on as you can
see this is this is these are the kind of notebooks
that writers would have right they're having
you know stuff to do with characters stuff to
do with plot uh the structure of the novel is
here and the very and the really cool part about
uh neo vim or rather bim wiki is it loves for
this uh this function called uh let me see it's
called vim wiki uh to html and browse right so
what happens with that is i'll show you um it
looks like this i essentially have an entire
website of all these notes so like vim wiki allows
me to export all those notes into in html format
and they become a hyperlink website so this whole
idea of zettelkasten immediately is is now you
know a real thing it's been interconnected and
i don't necessarily need to be on neo web i i
i would have this hosted on a vps which i can
access through my phone so even if i'm not near
my laptop i have these notes with me so the the
same uh the same things right writing ideas so
as you already saw the uh this through the neowim
interface but this is essentially the website
version of it um i essentially have all of this
at my backend call right poetry stuff is here
uh yeah it's just like very useful in that uh
in in these kind of ways so this is essentially
notes for the film that i i was working on three
years ago And once again, you can see the evolution
of ideas here because it has the dates and so
on and so forth. It essentially serves for me
as a production diary for the entire film. I
know it was on this day that I finalized on the
edit. It was on this day that I knew how I was
going to cut a certain sequence. These are the
notes I sent to my music director. these were
the color grade notes i have for my color graders
um yeah so it's it's so the the zettelkasten
system has long term but also short term uh benefits
on the short term it allows you to dump your
ideas into a format that that ages well because
it's it's plain text right but because the bin
making plugin is built from this idea of interconnectability
of nodes combine that with the fact that it's
in plain text it also then now you have the basis
for something that evolves with you over time
so in the case of this production listen the
production of my film I was able to trace where
I was at the start of the process and where I
was at the end and I know exactly how I got there
because the time stamps also has that capture
imagine when I am so i'm sorry to interrupt you
but how do i find this file like isn't it hard
like okay where what was the name of the file
that i needed to open to add this isn't it too
difficult for you to get to this file and start
writing there no because new image i mean sorry
give me a second uh if i if i was on if i was
in the let's call this the back end of my zettelkasten
and what you just saw as the front end right
if this is the back end i can just uh just uh
search for the file here and say okay um i'm
working on this thing called uh yeah and and
it will show me all those uh the things to do
with that and if it wants if i would need to
go to the specific wiki file here i am okay it's
not i'm on i'm already there so i just use uh
fcf uh fcf's file picker and fcs uh fcf grip
okay wonderful so you open this file and you
edit it and you keep a history of basically everything
like a diary right yeah Yeah, pretty much. So
that's an example for how I use it for my writing
and so on and so forth. These are my computer
science notes. Once again, during the pandemic,
I was basically teaching myself how to program.
There is some Linux useful commands that I have
here. All of this stuff is useful because I can
immediately just jump into certain things that
I'm interested in. i'm just so i thought myself
latex for example all of this is it's able to
accommodate all of this whether that is a technical
subject or not it's there right uh and you have
a main subject the main subject is yeah yeah
you go into it yeah exactly so this is computer
science right if i'm going to computer science
i have all of this under computer science these
were like this uh you know this tiny uh atomic
nodes right these i mean if i show you one like
random atomic node how to swap the caps lock
and escape i didn't know how to do this at that
point in time on a linux machine right this is
how it's done so these are the tiny nodes but
i also have nodes for uh larger things like uh
programming for writers let me see yeah so this
is like larger nodes on python right uh if i
go deeper into this every day every chapter is
covered uh and i'm able to kind of you know uh
revisit those those nodes at any point when i
am revising or if i feel like my python is a
little rusty But it's really great for that.
But it has its limitations. And I think by the
limitations, if I go back into this, say if I
want to show you the same computer science nodes.
Let's see if I go to Python here. All this is
great, but you can see most of the The writing
is in bullet point form and I can't really expand
this beyond tiny bullet points. And one of the
reasons I kind of moved all my research notes
into AUG mode was because it has what I feel
as probably the best implementation of the Zettelkasten
system there is and it's called AUG Robe. is
it's basically built on top of all mode itself
and i'm uh i will show that over the course of
time but it's basically an emacs thing um it
and it looks like so like essentially i'm able
to search here right so this is uh let's say
if i want to go to emacs this is my emacs notes
itself this is basically my zettelkasten but
inside emacs using all the row And with org -roam,
what I'm able to do is almost visualize... It
basically gives me the Obsidian -like functionality
of these network diagrams. So if I was to move
from... And is that Emacs, that diagram? That
diagram is inside my browser. It's basically
just building it on my browser itself. So if
I say masterclass, you will see it moves with
it. It's basically, I think, some sort of like
JavaScript and Lisp working together. So here
you can see the connection of nodes. If I were
to do, let's say, writing ideas, I go to writing
ideas, it shows what... what is connected to
it as well so right now i'm basically taking
down notes on a on i'm essentially just preparing
for a new production and i want to uh go into
the writing of the script with a little bit of
freshness and maybe some uh and maybe some you
know uh advice from uh more well -established
screenwriters so my favorite one of my favorite
screenwriters is this guy called aaron sorkin
right so aaron sorkin has his master class uh
on screenwriting with uh with uh of a master
class on screenwriting rather again i'm able
to have all of these notes there and if i was
to go and click on this you have all these entire
notes is very much there inside my browser as
well. You see what I'm saying? It's a lot more
powerful than what WinWiki is. I love WinWiki
for what it is. I still use it, but I feel like
with Ogrom, I have found exactly what it is that
I want it to look. uh what i wanted from the
start itself uh these are and these are essentially
notebooks for a film i mean a book i'm working
on um you can see references are here uh you
you are able to see the the the what is this
the hierarchical nature and how it has been organized
um i i am essentially putting together a computer
science computer science fiction book so a lot
of the research here is about uh the early days
of lisp and the early days of artificial intelligence
in 1960s and so on and so forth so i i needed
to do a lot of research and i found winwicki
wasn't able to accommodate that level of detail
whereas augurum is uh does a does a very good
job of it and the and the best part is augurum's
uh um augurum's export function is really simple
um i'm just going to show you how it's done um
h4 you can you can get this in pdf as well but
if that happens sorry that's weird you can separate
ah there yeah as you can see it produces a web
page of the entire thing and it's And it's a
really cleanly rendered document. The architecture
is very simple. I can just jump into various
parts of it. It also exists in PDF form. So I'm
going to show you what the PDF looks like. Do
you see this? Yeah. This is what a typical...
this is what a typical notebook uh that's that
is uh i mean so the org room node if i was to
export into pdf this is what it looks like as
you can see it's very uh it's super clean the
pdf itself is super clean and i i can revisit
these nodes in the tomorrow 10 years from now
probably 50 years from now if i'm still alive
i can still revisit these nodes and know exactly
what my thinking process was at that point in
time so that's pretty much one of the you know
great advantages of uh uh of this uh the other
reason for me to uh okay so we'll get that data
uh does that answer your question on by org mode
yeah white org mode and i i do have a question
why not or to write a book why did you decide
to go with latex to write the book yeah uh so
aug mode would make for i think a perfect uh
markup language for writing non -fiction because
especially if it's a textbook right like a textbook
like or a note or research notes or so on and
so forth it's really great because you would
have a very simple like i mean the structure
would be fairly obvious because what you're trying
to do in a nonfiction or textbook format is to
be as clear and as concise as possible to your
readers, right? Whereas with the novel, you are
not necessarily bound to the outlining process.
Sometimes you have to go into these darker corners
where you don't know exactly what it is you're
looking for. right and org mode isn't necessarily
great when you don't know what it is that you're
looking for uh whereas la tech uh la tech i mean
even when i even before i go into la tech i would
have done a lot of my work uh uh you know in
evaluating a story in in in in in a sec in something
like this right in a scenario like this i would
have written all of this stuff beforehand And
by the time I'm ready to commit it into LaTeX,
I already know what the structure is. And I already
have an idea of if the structure of the novel
requires the typography to adapt to the various
types of storytelling. And if that is the case,
aug mode doesn't really work. At least not. I
don't know how it can accommodate different.
uh typographic architectures or different fonts
yeah i don't know if it can whereas latic can
and latic also can accommodate different languages
and as aug mode when i try to write in my native
language and then try to export it there is usually
a problem with the compilation whereas with uh
when i do it as pure latic it's just quite straightforward
okay so latex is really flexible and since it's
just code you can do whatever you want wherever
in the documents yeah yeah and the latex for
me is very much like emacs in that it has a very
high entrance spot right it asks a lot to enter
it right but once you enter it once you jump
over that first wall you can figure it out and
emacs is very much the same uh i mean i i guess
even vim is very much the same but compared to
emacs maybe vim is a little easier on on people
than uh that and i think latex is it's not a
text editor but my point is as a as a as a markup
language latex is worth learning if you have
a specific use case for it if you don't have
a specific use case for it markdown or org mode
i would i would i would i would be more strongly
in uh favor of talking about people taking their
writing from markdown to aug mode as opposed
to taking it from markdown to latic because latic
is just going to ask for too much and in most
people's cases they don't need it okay wonderful
now something that i've been doing lately in
neovim is images me this image is new i use images
in my blog post so i paste them any of them i
convert them to avif you know with the key map
yeah and i can view them now in any of them do
you do that in org and in that tech uh i haven't
i mean I don't, have I put any images into my,
I mean, my LaTeX, not my LaTeX, LaTeX usually
doesn't have any sort of diagrams in it. But
I think if you look at my PDFs. There we go.
Yep. Okay. Yeah. Now, inside Emacs, apparently
there is a way where I can see the images inside
Emacs itself. I haven't really had a need to
do it. i just i just like me uh i mean before
kitty and neomim allowed for the display of images
they just basically put the image link format
right and then we expect it to render right it's
i do the same with the emacs to this day because
most of the time i'm not really interested in
incorporating images into my notebooks or my
manuscripts okay at least i don't have it i don't
have a need for it yet i don't have a need for
it yet yeah i use images in my blog post sometimes
because it's difficult to explain a lot of stuff
writing it i just showed an image there and that
covers yeah paragraphs okay and um when would
you use markdown or when do you use markdown
i haven't used markdown in a few months like
uh i am pretty much steeped inside latex and
augment these days uh most of the time i mean
let me just see uh uh no i am all my work is
at the moment let's see no yeah mostly it's Yeah,
it's mostly ORG format. Almost all of it is now
ORG, unless I'm working on a specific manuscript
and I have finalized all the research work and
I'm ready to put it into LaTeX. Everything is
inside org mode for the time being. Okay, I'm
into Markdown a lot. Everyone's telling me to
switch to Org. Yeah, but Markdown is my thing.
But I do see that it's, you could say inferior,
you know, if I compare it to org. Are there any
compatibility issues or caveats with org? Because
Josh told me, Joshua Blaze told me that if you
want to create a readme in GitHub, you can do
it in the .org extension. in yeah yeah yeah yeah
you can yeah you can um because i think github
uh now renders orgy files uh natively i think
along with markdown and honestly for most of
the emacs repositories all the readmes are in
orgy uh then they're hardly ever in markdown
at least uh not that i've seen um and personally
i i i've like i said i've i've moved down from
markdown uh and i haven't had a need to go back
to it um because like i said i i feel like the
the happy middle ground between latex insane
power and markdown's simplicity is awkward because
augur can be simple if it needs to be or it can
be incredibly complex if it needs to be as well
and awkward also comes with latic integrations
right you can uh you can put in for example if
i was writing uh notes for a technical subject
and i wanted to include a formula and you know
again augment doesn't support it negatively but
it does support for latic or it does support
latic so you can use a lot you can use latic
to create the formula and then export it into
org mode itself. So it has the best of both worlds.
I don't know if Markdown can go into that level
of complexity. Okay. The only compatibility would
be... I'm not trying to take you away from Markdown,
right? I'm thinking about it. Fight for Markdown,
man. Fight for Markdown. It's a great format
in itself. No, but you're saying... completely
the opposite with all your actions okay okay
but i'm being truthful though i because like
i was trying to think when i last time i used
markdown and i just cannot like i can perhaps
uh let's see i guess the only compatibility issue
would be with other people right so if you want
to share a file with someone else and They get
an org file. They're like, what's this shit?
You want to mark down files, right? Yeah, yeah,
exactly. Exactly. But then again, if you were
on, I'm not saying you should be, but if you
were doing org on Emacs and you say control C,
control E, one of the export options is marked
down as well. So I'm just saying. Okay, okay.
I have a feeling here that I'm someone who spoke
at a BIM conference three times, right? And now
I'm just being so evangelical about Emacs. I'm
sure to get a lot of hate mail, I think, after
this. So next year is going to be EmacsConf,
not NeoBIMConf. Let's see. Let's see. Okay. Let
us see. Have you used this other tool for notetaking
Obsidian? Do you have any thoughts on it? I mean,
I did. And Obsidian's killer feature was the
network node graph. Emacs does that for me, as
you can see. So I really didn't need to go back
to Obsidian. Until recently, I wanted everything
to be inside NeoWim. Now I want everything to
be inside Emacs. And in some cases, even without
me thinking about it, someone has actually created
all the things that I would possibly need on
Emacs. Whereas when I first came into Wim, I
had to kind of flail around to find solutions
that were specific. specific for writers right
whereas with emacs there's so much just already
uh in the ecosystem for writers and writing so
i just had to kind of bring it together and i
like the amount of time i spent configuring emacs
is i would say like if i was like i would say
i would have spent at least close to 200 to 300
hours on configuring uh neobim over the over
the years right whereas i don't think i've spent
more than a day uh at most on emacs because because
everything everything was all everything was
already there i just had to like i had to just
look for uh some you know certain functionality
and either it wouldn't be there or it was available
as some sort of package right uh that's it So
whereas with Wim I had to look around, I also
had to see if there was some sort of way, because
Emacs has plenty of people or writers who have
already spoken about its powers for years, right?
For years and years and years, right? Like everyone
from the science fiction author, oh my gosh,
I knew I was going to forget his name. uh the
science fiction writer neil stevenson right now
he's uh evolved linux and emacs user for decades
right uh so he's been using it for decades but
whereas when i came into vim and neo vim i didn't
find many people certainly not someone of like
neil stevenson's caliber who was using anything
to do with vim right so and because i was so
drawn to him i realized okay i'm just going to
uh figure out what were the plugins i needed
to kind of replicate this uh integrated writing
environment and i was going to put it together
and if another writer somewhere wanted to have
the same kind of functionality i i'd have done
the work for them they wouldn't have to go from
scratch whereas with emacs even before i was
you know looking around for it i remember seeing
this thing called emacs writing studio which
is which is basically something that's been uh
refined over the last i don't know 10 years i
think someone has been putting this together
neil stevenson has his own emacs config that
he's been using it to write his manuscripts for
decades uh so my point is for people like me
especially like writers emacs is easily extended
to accessible for our needs in a way that neo
women been necessarily work right and that's
why i think i took so much longer to put together
this integrated writing environment on neo web
whereas when i was when i came into emacs And
once that whole thing about Emacs and the way
its key bindings are structured, once that bulb,
I had the light bulb moment, everything else,
the ecosystem was already there. So I didn't
have to spend time like looking and all of that
stuff, right? And I think we mentioned this when
we spoke as well. Lisp is so much easier for
someone like me who's a non -programmer to work
with. because I seem to understand it so much
easier than I do Lua. Now that's in no way, you
know, a reflection of the language itself. I
am not a programmer, right? But from a non -programmer's
eyes and my comprehension of code, Lisp, Elisp,
Emacs Lisp is so much easier for me than Lua
was. And when you get something wrong with Lua,
your entire UOM config just collapses on itself,
right? Whereas with Emacs, I haven't done anything...
I've been playing around with Elix a lot, and
nothing I've done has made the scaffolding crash
on itself. It's always just remained. The errors
in the entire screen. Yeah, exactly, right? And
it seems to, like... i'm saying it seems to understand
it seems to be built in such a way where you
can all you know the idea of like um hot swapping
in in in hardware right where you can swap certain
components without having to restart or shut
down or anything of that nature with neovim i
was i could never hot swap maybe again it's me
it's not new it's me right uh because i i'm not
a programmer whereas with the emacs i can easily
hot swap i can change code and immediately i
just press ctrl x ctrl e evaluates the buffer
and the new settings have been uh absorbed yeah
applied right and and it's just uh it's just
incredibly fast that way yeah yeah so yeah i
think that's one of the reasons for me emacs
uh is now where i can't like i can't see myself
i'm leaving emacs right aug mode is the reason
to come but aug rome is probably the reason that
that i will stay in emacs for you know a long
long time okay and yeah emacs has been around
for so long that everything has been That off
already right so you don't have to Reinvent the
wheel like just get my my headings in my markdown
files like this Yeah, I did have to spend some
time to figure it out and I didn't know that
IMAX had this type of headings right so I without
knowing Mirrored IMAX headings any of them, right?
Realized until later. Yeah, but Yeah, I have
some reflections to do on Emacs and Org and all
that stuff. Yeah, yeah. Are you fully into Emacs
now? Or do you still use Neovim? So right now,
my Neovim is... I use Neovim purely for LaTex
because it's so much faster than Emacs. That's
pretty much the only reason I am now on Neovim.
uh my zettelkasten is also now moved into augurum
so i'm you know i don't even i the zettelkasten
that i showed you on vim i hardly use that i
use the augurum version instead um before i forget
this when you migrate from a tool to another
right because i used google docs for many years
and it sucked uh it was horrible all of my notes
yes from I don't know, for the past, for a lot
of years, are in Google Docs, you know, text
images. To open one of those files, I don't know,
it takes like two minutes for it to load properly
because they're huge files. A lot of information.
It's horrible. I didn't migrate them to NeoVim.
I only migrate the stuff that I need into the
new editor that I'm on. Do you do the same or
do you migrate all the old stuff? Because there's
usually a lot of trash there. So if you're talking
about my manuscripts that existed in rich text
format inside Microsoft Word, I had to convert
all of those into plain text. again that took
me about two to three weeks of just you know
painstakingly it was not just a case of like
okay this document converted into plain text
and move on i i couldn't do that i had to like
go through you know years and years of uh files
and research notes that i had put together for
my for my for my novels and i had to suddenly
move them all into plain text format so i i did
spend a good two weeks doing that and that two
week period kind of helped me understand how
plain text work how version control works and
because of that once i put either vim or you
know emacs on top of that plain text layer what
i have is you know incredibly fast search incredibly
fast access to all these files uh you know the
flexibility that comes is there's no point even
comparing it like i understand why you would
why certain people would want to be in those
formats but those formats are incredibly limiting
if you are not in a in a collaborative enterprise
environment then i don't see why and you migrate
everything then even stuff that you probably
will not use anymore you migrate all of your
notes from the old platform yeah because i was
very good at how i kept the notes because i was
incredibly paranoid about because one of the
things is you go back to you know pre -digital
note keeping and all that stuff i never had good
handwriting and i never could you know i was
always losing my stationery the pens and i was
losing my notebooks and all of that stuff so
because of that when i started working on digital
media especially when when i realized my writing
was going to be my you know uh the thing i was
going to do as far as my you know what's this
livelihood was concerned i became very serious
about how i kept those notes so they were always
very well uh fired and named and you know they
were kept in certain places and they were always
very organized what they didn't have and what
i kept wondering if such a thing even existed
was this magical save button where i could see
you know how what changes i made on this date
in this document and so on and so forth and i
thought that was technology that doesn't even
exist until i uh until i did you know came across
git and then i had this mind -blowing moment
where i was like holy this is exactly what i
was thinking about this is exactly what i wanted
so are you telling me all i have to do in order
to have this magical save button was to convert
everything into plain text yeah it i'll do it
so i spent two weeks just by converting everything
because the record keeping was already very thorough
converting it meant i knew everything was important
there was nothing that was going to be like trash
or throw throw away stuff because as writers
sometimes the like we sometimes i write what
i know is going to be trash today is something
i can revisit 10 years down the line and it i
would have figured it out because it was gestated
over time all i needed to do was to make sure
that i had written it down and then once i went
once i put it down in some sort of digital format
as opposed to an analog because once again i
was losing my analog notes and so on and so forth
so once i put it down into an analog format i
knew it existed i knew it was somewhere in my
uh files or in my inbox now of course i don't
have to think about it that like that i have
to just think about it as my giant monorepo of
manuscripts and screenplays, all written in plain
text. And if it's not plain text, it's rendered
into either HTML or PDF. Either way, the portability
of the files is guaranteed. I can read it on
any device and I don't have to be locked into
some sort of vendors. thing uh can i just show
one one extra thing uh as far as emacs is concerned
this what you're looking at right now is uh essentially
uh emacs screenplay writing ability you can write
screenplays as well through fountain format once
again you can do this on neovin you can do this
on my integrated writing environment obrite as
well but emacs comes like the version of emacs
that i got and the config that i got i just had
to say add fountain through emacs itself as opposed
to look for the plugin and all of that stuff
and yeah i can i can write screenplays as well
so screenplays research notebooks etc customs
la tech pretty much everything emacs has a inbuilt
solution for it And that's why I can't kind of
move away from it anymore. What are your fans
going to say? Does that worry you a little bit?
You're talking about my friends who are like...
Oh, right. That's going to be interesting when
they see this. Like I said, I've been a speaker
at the conference three times now. so i'm part
of the discord where all those uh guys are there
including i don't know if you've seen these guys
tj who tj drees who yeah so tj and prime and
all these guys are on on this discord uh i don't
go often much i don't know if they'll even see
or hear about it but if they do it'll be interesting
reactions it'll be interesting reactions oh man
yeah and you mentioned as well that You still
use Neobim for LaTeX? LaTeX, yeah. Why? It's
so much faster. If I was to just show... And
I don't know why it's faster, right? Because
the one thing I haven't figured out with Emacs
is LaTeX support. uh and every time i tried i'm
not even going to show it because sometimes what
happens in it tends to hang um philartic file
and i still haven't figured out why supposedly
uh according to uh you know searching on uh on
google and using ai supposedly there is some
uh piece of code that talks about how i'm how
emacs is supposed to render pdf that is incorrect
on my config file i haven't still figured out
what that is and everything i tried changing
it doesn't work so for the time being it's this
the experience on emacs for latex is incredibly
slow i think the lspa is also working in the
background and if i if like the input becomes
slower everything is much slower on emacs for
latex for whatever reason and i know it's nothing
to do with emacs it's probably how i've set it
up that i need to refine but i'm currently in
the middle of writing this and i don't want to
take time more time away from the writing of
the manuscript and just you know focus on configuring
my text editor it's just it's absolute madness
to do that so i'm going to finish finish this
manuscript and the next one when i start uh the
next manuscript when i start on la tech i want
to make sure my emacs is primed for la tech as
well okay and there's multiple ways to run emacs
you can just start the gui the the app itself
or you can run it from the terminal how do you
use it yeah why what you're seeing right now
when i show you emacs is always on gui mode and
the reason for that is because it can read pdfs
and it can read epubs so uh if i show you uh
yeah if i these are two epubs that i have uh
i mean i'm working on uh my writing of uh i'm
writing some sri lanka related uh story at this
point and i needed uh references these are two
ebooks right and i have ebooks open inside Emacs.
Again, these are not things that you can do inside
Neovium at all. You can also read PDFs and so
on and so forth. So in order to do that, you
have to be on Emacs GUI and not Emacs Terminal.
So I prefer Emacs GUI to be honest. And it really
is not... It's super fast, except when it comes
to LaTeX, which I haven't figured out yet. Okay.
The speed... Since you know about Neobite, I
have used Neobite. I do like it a lot. Is it
comparable to Neobite, the Emacs GUI app, or
is it a little bit slower? Is it a little bit
laggy? So it's imperceptibly slower than Neobite.
And I think it's because, again, I'm not a computer
science guy, right? So you will have to correct
me if I'm wrong. Neowire is written in Rust,
right? So it's supposed to be faster anyway.
That's how I understand the Rust programming
language. And Emacs is single threaded. So it
has certain, I don't know, from what I've read,
the technical reasoning has always been that
it's single threaded. And because of the single
threaded nature of Emacs, it's not going to fly
as fast as the Neovim, or Neovide rather, but
it's certainly going to be orders of magnitude
faster than Microsoft Word. And if you compare
it to Neovim, regular Neovim in your regular
terminal, would you say Emacs is a little bit
slower? Yeah, slightly so. But still, you can
work on it, right? No issues. I can work on it.
And the thing is, it's the trade -off, right?
What am I gaining for that loss of, you know,
marginal amount of speed that Neoman has over
Emax? I'm getting the ability to read EPUBs.
i'm getting all of those things that come with
org mode and all grown i'm getting fountain support
i'm getting calendar support and you know if
i want i can browse the web inside there's a
built -in browser inside especially if i want
like going to wikipedia or so on and so forth
it's that easy right it's so it's kind of ridiculous
in that sense it's kind of it's also kind of
funny because you know like richard stallman
made Emacs, right? And he's always a guy who's
like, you know, Unix philosophy, one thing has
to do this one thing properly and nothing more.
And then he creates Emacs, which is trying to
do everything and more. And it's just, it's kind
of nutty, but it's great. It's great at the same
time. Because every day you find some new thing
that Emacs can do and you're like, oh, that's
cool. Interesting. Okay. Wonderful. So we lost
you already. emacs from now on i think so yeah
man like yeah like once i once i sought out the
latex part yeah like i'm i'm pretty much done
on your game like it would the thing is i i like
i still use evil key bindings right so i am using
vim key bindings inside emacs because i still
think the vim's text editing process is is is
just mind -blowing it has it it's it's probably
the most efficient use of uh you know your uh
keyboard if it's 40 keyboard that you have i
don't know what it's like on the other keyboards
but for 40 keyboard user BIM key bindings seem
like the most natural thing in the world, right?
So I still use BIM key bindings inside Emacs.
I rarely use Emacs vanilla key bindings. Once
in a while, I turn off either just be like, can
I do Emacs? just you know emacs yeah yeah yeah
it's okay it's all right because i've had to
like reconfigure my keyboard so that the control
key is you know no longer you know pinky finger
right and it's not in this corner here so once
once you do all those like little things so right
now for me my control key is both my um is both
uh it's caps lock so caps lock is both escape
and control so it's escape if i just uh short
press it it's control if i yeah but if i control
like if i press it for long period along with
another key it's control my enter key is both
control as well as an enter all right that too
so both both pinkies on either side has a control
yeah has a control key on either side right uh
my uh better key for my mac is on both sides
of the this thing so that both sides of the space
bar has a better key as well in case i i have
i can use the other finger as well so that's
how deeply i've gotten into this whole emax life
uh it's kind of sad but it's it's actually it's
made it's actually been a lot of fun as well
like i'll be honest it's been a lot of fun i
i enjoy being in front of emacs and i enjoy like
you know studying and doing research with emacs
as my companion app because it allows me to do
all of that i can schedule my my classes inside
my own notebook which is kind of silly if you
think about it right No notebook should be able
to schedule classes and all of those things.
But I can with this. Yeah, so I think that's
the reason I kind of moved on. And I kind of
completely decided Emacs is the way. But Vim
keybindings, Vim editing, modal editing is a
must. Because that makes all the difference in
the world as well. It's genuinely some of the...
I mean, whoever thought about those key bindings,
absolute genius. Absolute genius, man. Yep. Have
you heard about this language server, Harper?
I had an interview with Elijah the other day.
Yeah. I've tried using Harper. It's not worked
out well for me because, once again, it's me.
It's not Harper. I haven't understood the configuration
stuff yet with Harper, which is why it hasn't
worked out for me. I'll probably figure it out
when I'm not in the midst of a production. Right
now, I'm in the midst of writing a novel as well
as getting pre -production for my next film.
So I just don't want to be caught up in hacking
NeoWim at this point or Emacs at this point,
which is nuts. yeah i know how it is when i have
to come up with a new solution it's like i put
it off for as long as i can and one day i just
decided to do it but it takes time i know that
i'm going to spend at least four or five hours
and it sucks yeah going through the process yeah
yeah yeah yeah and my partner is us like my partner
would sometimes look at me and be like that doesn't
look like writing because she'll see my screen
and i was like it's not writing like and she's
like i didn't i mean like i she she'd be like
i'm not dating you because you are this you know
programmer in disguise i'm dating you because
you're a novelist like yeah yeah and so she it's
her way of hinting that i need to finish finish
my books instead of like you know uh this whatever
she has no clue what this is she's just been
like i have no idea what you're doing but i know
you're not working on your manuscript can you
finish the manuscript please yeah yeah i completely
get it everyone watching this video is for sure
gonna get it we have all gone through that and
it's painful and it's not enjoyable yeah so it's
not it's not i would like to know how it goes
with harper you know someone that writes professionally
i would like to know what you think about it
if you decide to use it in the future with emacs
because it's available for emacs neobim and yeah
yeah i do basic writing and it helps me with
my markdown notes but i don't know writing professionally
yep yeah yeah and uh note -taking tool i guess
that's emacs now is that right org yeah okay
yeah okay i'll grow i'll grow so org mode i'll
grow on top of it Okay. ID? Emacs? Emacs. Okay.
Okay. Wonderful. And you have a few repos that
you maintain as well. Overwrite being one of
them. What's the status of that? Like, what's
going to happen to Overwrite? So, Overwrite...
right now i have failed in my duties as a maintainer
i haven't had a chance to look at some of the
pull requests that's been coming my way or all
the issues tab as well thankfully that there
are like about a dozen users i think who are
regular users who keep emailing me for tech support
and so on and so forth like you can see the issues
page right there's about six issues or four issues
there uh some of it are fixed I think most of
this are fixed, but there's still people having
some technical issues. But the good thing is
because there are about 10 or 12 regular users,
they've taken it upon themselves to help out
any new users coming with any sort of technical
issues. So that's been happening. I recently
attended to some... long overdue pull requests
that was like fired up so there's about five
or six pull requests uh from users which is great
what are you doing with pull requests github
i know i know i know i know it's part of the
reason is because every time i go into the pull
request i'm like if she gets to know i'm doing
this shit instead of writing i'm just like i'm
just i mean i'll be like i'm just like you know
being a little nerd here and there but and she'll
be like that's great but finish the book finish
the fucking book right so it's it's right now
it's just finish the fucking book and you can
you can play around with your she she still thinks
these are toys that i play with right like it's
it's my nerdy toys that i am i am working with
and i'm like okay you you you think of it that
way nerdy toys it is yeah but it's actually the
way that makes your ride better right so yeah
but you have to go deep into the weeds that's
the thing you know that's the thing yeah and
the thing is like i've always found it very strange
that if you think about musicians and you can
think about athletes right all of them will have
i mean a musician will have a certain instrument
or instruments that they have hand -picked and
like you know like used it in performance in
the studio on stage and they are especially drawn
to for its total qualities and so on and so forth
right like you know guitarists would be sentimentally
attached to certain guitars drummers the same
and you would also have the the feedback from
the makers of the uh drummers and guitarists
who would create signature versions of those
uh instruments so that is tailor -made for their
way of playing their music uh i've always thought
was really strange that writers don't have that
sort of you know uh like uh like narrow focus
on the tools that that allow them to write everyone's
like all writers are like you know okay microsoft
word okay this shitty keyboard ah okay you know
we'll use all of these things and i always found
it very strange that we accept that uh the status
quo of technology that's meant for writing and
we do it so meekly and we do it so like passively
yeah okay okay google sheets okay yeah okay you
know that sort of right and i i really found
that strange with most writers that they would
be okay with that sort of thing because I think
if you are very concerned about your craft you
would also be very concerned about the tools
that you use in expressing your craft right which
is which is part of the reason that I went on
this journey in the first place and which is
how I kind of ended up in Emacs in this but um
i i i always found it strange when writers tell
me why are you so obsessed with a writing tool
you're just writing and i'm like why are you
not obsessed with it because this is the thing
that they give you right yeah exactly yeah exactly
how are you okay with this sort of nonsense right
uh and and but then i also have to accept the
fact that most writers don't have the technical
knowledge or the bloody persistence. You need
a combination of both. I have enough technical
capability, I think, to understand the open source
landscape, what sort of library is going where
and all of that stuff. For whatever reason, I
get it. I get it enough to be able to follow
conversations, follow tutorials and get my way.
But it's also combined with persistence. bloody
-minded persistence persistence is also required
right but then again the bloody -minded persistence
comes because i care about my craft so much that
i should inevitably care about my tools if i
didn't care about my tools like that for me that
means i don't care about my craft that's how
i see it right you would have to be suffering
with worth for sure yeah yeah i mean and honestly
i i might as well stop writing if that was the
case no seriously does it give you superpowers
like you're a writer basically with superpowers
if there's something you want to do you can implement
it which is not something that everyone can do
right which makes you a better writer in the
long run right i mean i hope so i mean right
because what it what it does for me especially
i'm going to i'm speaking about neo vim right
now but i'm speaking about vim uh editing models
uh modes right because that's the thing that
that i i carried forward into emacs as well because
that the vim uh editing model editing is a superpower
because it allows you to write edit and for me
at least, right? Edited world -build almost at
the speed of thought. Because once the key bindings
become internalized, I'm not even thinking about,
you know, like, okay, how do I get the cursor
here? I automatically know it, right? So almost
like I'm like a pianist at this point. I know
what note to, like, if I press a certain key,
what note I'm going to hear. And I know that
consistency is it has carried forward inside
emacs as well so now when you know in those rare
moments where for example a client sends a word
document and i have to edit on that i i i find
myself pressing you know jjj right okay and i
i have to be like okay i'm not on with i i'm
on i'm in the i mean this this should stop right
now i just have to like yeah i have to just turn
off my bim uh this thing and just like i had
to use an arrow key because otherwise in a word
document i have to use an arrow key right and
it's just it's ridiculous but i i'm going to
have to use it uh okay right and i can't like
you know jump from the top of the document to
the uh this thing i can't do any of that stuff
but it's very frustrating i tried to explain
this to my wife you know that okay and she's
like You're just talking shit. It doesn't make
any sense. And I try to explain. No, no, no.
But look, there's this mode and I can go into
normal mode. And that means that I can move my
cursor around. And then really easily, I type
a key and I can start writing. I try to explain
it, you know, in basic terms. And for she to
get it, she didn't get it. It's just like, doesn't
make any sense. Yeah. Because. I don't think
I think anyone who first comes across model editing
is going to be like taken aback right because
my first interaction with Vim was during the
pandemic when I was setting up my media server
and i needed to like you know change some configuration
file following a tutorial and the tutorial said
you know use bim to open this to this configuration
file and i just couldn't use any of the keys
i it just confused the complete out of me and
then uh i remember i restarted the server two
or three times thinking there's something wrong
with this uh server And it's only like a few
attempts later that I realized, oh, you could
quit with colon Q. Right. Okay, cool. I know
how to quit with now. And it went from there.
And then it was just like, why would anyone do
this? And it went from why would anyone do this
to why isn't everyone else doing this? Because
it makes complete sense, right? And yeah, but
you can't like try to explain that to people
who are not going to be, you know, it's not.
Yeah, it's not possible to explain. They don't
get it. And why didn't you stop with Vim there?
Like, why didn't you say? Because it happened
to me as well. I think it happens to all of us,
right? Following a tutorial edit Network config
file setting a static IP address in a server
it was and the guy opened him and He explained
how to write quit and all that was kind enough.
So I was able to quit But I thought this is trash.
I don't like this I'm never gonna use this again.
Why did you continue with them? Why didn't you
stop there? Because, I'll show you, I found out
that you could use Vim on Android through Termux.
And which meant, along with version control,
I had my manuscripts with me on my phone. And
I had the same functionality, I had the same
software, Vim. on on the phone along with my
manuscripts and i could on the phone jump around
my documents really fast right and so that that
made that made the very fact that it was available
in two different platforms my linux platform
at that time and my uh saying it meant my writing
environment was the same so i i realized i could
make my writing environment the same on my computer
as well as my phone And then it was like, OK,
if I can do that, can I write screenplays? Can
I do this? Can I do that? Can I do that? And
I kept adding shit into it until it became like
a full fledged thing where I could find files
or, you know, grip sentences or do all of those
fancy things that, you know, programmers do.
But to my prose documents and I could do it.
And when I started doing that, I just remember
thinking there's no way that anyone's ever going
to convince me Microsoft Word is a better way
of doing these things. Because the same manuscript,
the manuscript I showed you, if I open the same
manuscript on a doc format and I was to open
it, it would take a minute and a half to open
it because it's 300 plus pages right now. That's
number one. it would be either at the very top
of the document or at the very bottom now what
if i was working on a section that's at the very
center of it i can't you know in vim i can put
a mark saying this is mark eight so even if i
come back to it i just you know plus tida a and
i go back to the exact place where i stopped
those things like make a huge difference when
you are uh when you are writing Whereas with
Word document, I would be scrolling like a monkey,
up and down, figuring out, okay, where did I
stop? Like, honestly, a monkey could do it, right?
Like, scrolling up and down a document, even
a monkey can do it, right? Like, I don't want
to be like that, you know, like that passive
monkey just scrolling up and down my document.
I want to be able to go exactly where it is that
I want to go. And you have to understand that
we as writers sometimes work with, like... very
brief windows of inspiration and when that very
brief window of inspiration strikes you sometimes
you want to be able to open your manuscript and
go exactly where where you want to where that
inspiration struck and you want to be able to
go exactly that yeah go there and start working
immediately i can't do that on microsoft word
even when i was on microsoft word what if if
i didn't have moments where inspiration struck
and this is back in my windows days i would just
start notepad and on notepad i would just you
know spit everything out i'll vomit everything
out on notepad save that there and possibly email
it to myself with a very detailed subject line
and all that stuff essentially like some sort
of like you know primitive version control that's
what i would do uh all that all that kind of
primitive monkey -like nonsense is god and what
i have instead is is this very sophisticated
thing that that has been time tested it's like
you know both bim and neobim have gone through
decades of of uh evolution in computer science
right then and they've stayed relevant somehow
or the other which means they're doing something
right um and and you can make the argument yeah
sure that they're doing something right and it's
only to only for programmers but once you understand
that prose can become plain text as well, then
the tools that programmers use can be the tools
for writers as well, which is essentially how
I ended up with BIM at that point in time. And
I felt like it was the best tool for allowing
me to write, edit and world build at the speed
of thought. Now, of course, with the same key
bindings, I bring that same sort of perspective
to events. And it's just as much fun. Yeah. How
many years ever since you started with BIM on
that server? How many years have you dedicated
to your config? How many hours? What would you
say those hours would translate into years of
configuring stuff? BIM, like I said, took...
so when i started i had i was on vim vim proper
right so i had a uh vim rc that that i used for
about three to four months then i learned about
new vim and i kind of like you know how they
patch your um if you are coming from vim background
you can have an init lua file that kind of uses
the same vim rc in order to have yeah so i was
doing that for a bit as well um Then I realized
the plugin ecosystem for NeoWIM was a lot more
lively than it was for WIM. So I took two or
three plugins from the WIM ecosystem. That was
WIM Wiki and WIM Org Mode and WIM Fountain. Those
three and everything else I basically used from
the NeoWIM ecosystem, which is how OviWrite came
about. And I was pretty happy with it. Honestly,
I was very happy with it. It's just that org
mode, I felt was, there was things about org
mode that I needed to discover. And for that,
I needed to go to Emacs. And in going to Emacs,
I discovered all the other things about Emacs.
And I'm like, okay, I'm going to stay here. I
like it here. And what percentage would you say
that comes to configure and stuff? I know that,
for example, stuff that i have to do versus stuff
over time that i spend configuring stuff the
time that i spend configuring is high yeah i
mean like i said i think uh if you remember what
i said about lua versus lisp i probably spent
uh i would estimate close to 300 hours to get
to that point where override i came to that point
where override for something i could put up in
a public project and you know uh help other writers
use it as well so that's i would estimate about
300 hours but in that 300 hours i was able to
do a lot of work uh while it was getting to that
point of where it was like an integrated writing
environment basically when i said a lot of work
i made my actual writing work i could still get
a lot of work on it right uh emacs with my current
config i barely changed it it's it's it's not
even my config it's basically config called emacs
kickstarter for new web users right so it it's
essentially for uh for meant for us all i did
was add yeah for us yeah yeah yeah it's meant
for it's meant for new people right and i think
the the guy who uh his name is what his name
uh i think he he's also someone who's who splits
his time between both and i think he saw a common
ground so essentially the common ground was on
the space bar use of the space bar as leader
key and so on and so forth which is how doom
max and space max also work but doom max i felt
was a little like the the it had like a modular
config that requires you to go through too many
files in order to be able to fix certain things
right whereas this guy was just a single init
file everything was in one this thing uh one
file and all i had to do was add in uh four things
all grown fountain uh latte that's it those are
the only things he hadn't added so once i added
that i had everything else yeah and And you learned
a lot in NeoVim and all of the other tools that
you have used. So when you switch to Emacs, it's
like, oh, this is really similar to NeoVim. So
it's not as difficult as when you started with
Vim for the first time. Yeah. Yeah. Also, one
thing that Emacs has is... uh so i'm pretty sure
for neovim you're using lazy git right for your
version control okay uh lazy git is great i i
prefer lazy git as well but uh emacs has something
called magic which honestly i haven't figured
out magic yet this is what magic looks like uh
so i as you can see i still haven't figured out
magic properly but i use uh um i use uh lazy
git and i compare how uh how both lazy git and
magic kind of like uh track my version uh the
same so i i only started using magic about um
i'd say uh about two weeks ago um and as and
i still haven't figured it out so what i usually
do is i have lazy git running alongside it and
i see uh and i try to kind of like apply the
same essence from lazy git into magic but magic
is supposedly incredibly powerful again i don't
need that additional power of like being able
to do uh blames and you know those kind of things
because i don't work on a shared repository at
all uh but uh it's pretty great and i think if
you're like what i've heard from people who work
on emacs on large code bases with other collaborators
is magic is incredible in those scenarios because
we're able to kind of like you know see uh contributions
and see where like especially i think its blame
function is supposed to be incredibly powerful
yeah i've heard about that too uh maggot i haven't
played with it but i think i will Regarding your
repo, what's going to happen to it? Are you going
to pass the flag? I requested one of the users
because I found one single user always helping
all the new users with the technical support
stuff and all that. So I asked him if he was
interested. Unfortunately, he's responsible.
I would love to, Dina, but the problem is I've
also discovered Emacs. I shit you not, right?
I also discovered Emacs and I'm like, I'm wondering
if I also should move completely to Emacs. Coincidentally
enough, I'm in the same place right now. So you
can update the readme and delete whatever is
in the readme and just use Emacs. Just use Emacs.
I'm actually wondering if I should just archive
the project because but there are some genuinely
I've gotten about two dozen support requests
over the time that two dozen unique support requests
from people who are like unique users who are
using it for their workflow and I thought that
was crazy that i i honestly because i remember
telling a friend of a friend of mine who's actually
a software engineer that i have this project
where i'm getting pull requests and technical
support questions and he was like why did you
go and do this now you're not going to be able
to sleep right you might have just a couple of
dozen users here but if this thing becomes remotely
successful you do not have any clue what it means
to like maintain uh you know repository in the
public domain you have zero idea about it already
and when i told him the other day i can't keep
up with it he's like yeah i told you so you shouldn't
have put this out you shouldn't have put it out
and you should have invited other like you know
writers to come on board because that he also
explained it probably is like listen not every
writer is going to have be as persistent as you
nor are they going to come in with that at least
certainly above average understanding of technology
for from a writer's standpoint so they are going
to keep asking you questions over and over and
over again sometimes it might even look like
simple questions that you know Yeah, so the long
-winded answer is I don't know. I might kind
of like archive it at some point or the other,
but for the time being, it seems like it has
a few users who enjoy it, so I'll keep it for
the time being. Okay. Yeah, that's one of the
reasons why I haven't switched my .files or my
NeoVim config into a repo. Right. Where is it?
Let me see. Here. I have everything in my .files,
right? So the excuse is if someone needs support
or if someone wants to change something, it's
like, hey, these are my .files, just clone them,
change them to your liking. But if I would create
a repo out of my config, I'm pretty sure I would
get a lot of requests and I don't want to deal
with that. Yeah, I know exactly what you mean,
man. i wouldn't like it is a it is a responsibility
right uh and an actual like responsibility that
you need to like take somewhat seriously which
is why i don't want to give half big answers
i don't want to like be uh like especially when
someone because a lot of the users that i've
gotten emails from are windows users now i haven't
used windows since the pandemic so i have no
clue what neo vm is like on windows i have zero
clue right so uh and i have no intention of like
even installing a virtual machine of windows
to see what it's like i just do not want to put
myself into that visit so yeah i feel like i'm
doing a bad job right now i just need to accept
that this is not for me and it was fun while
it lasted now i need to like archive it or or
just tell someone to fork it and just you know
maintain it on their own yeah but yeah if there's
someone watching the video still and they use
overwrite they will probably reach out and uh
they will yeah yeah please Yeah, I mean, if anyone's
interested in taking over, I'll be more than
happy to, like, you know, to handle the rates.
Okay, wonderful. Which operating system do you
use? At the moment, I'm on macOS. I'm on the
M1 14 -inch macOS. What is this? Sequoia? Yeah,
the latest one, Sequoia. Yeah, Sequoia, right?
So I'm on Sequoia. why did you choose mac and
not linux when are you jumping into the next
rabbit hole i okay so when i so during the pandemic
i jumped into linux completely because i was
like uh i i just don't want to be on windows
anymore so i used uh linux throughout 2020 2021
2022 and it's only in the midst of 2023 that
i got uh this machine and that was mostly because
i had finished my first film and it was basically
uh you know treat myself for finishing my first
film right but i i i uh edited my entire feature
length film on uh on ubuntu studio starting davinci
resolve uh and all that stuff so i i'll be happy
to kind of go back to linux but the problem is
battery life on laptops for linux isn't great
not yet it still gets incredibly hot i have an
xps from 2018 which has a graphics card as it
as it is and so when i'm using even light applications
the you know the fans are going the noise really
loud the noise all of that stuff whereas this
with the battery life i've never heard the fans
i've never seen it get hot i've thrown all sorts
of at it davichi resort is running in the background
there's a couple of local ai models running in
the background it doesn't seem to complain about
anything uh so i kind of uh yeah it does it doesn't
complain it just like you know it seems to just
shrunk its shoulders and just march on right
i like that fact i like the fact that it does
that but when i took this mac one of the things
that i did miss was i missed having a uh window
manager like solution uh because that's what
i was using on my uh on on my linux uh so i got
yamai i got skhd uh i put janky borders on this
uh and so i basically and i you know like one
of the things i don't like in my operating systems
is the operating system to show itself so as
you can see i always like everything to be full
screen i don't want to see my i don't want to
see the dock i i i completely hate the dock as
a user interface paradigm i completely i load
it it's horrible it takes real estate from the
screen right i completely load it uh so i always
remove that i also remove uh what what's this
um This one, you know, the top toolbar. It's
always hidden because, again, I don't want my
operating system to show itself. I'd rather it
just be in the background. And I just want certain
functionality done well. So tiling windows done
well. And all the other, you know, artifacts
of the OS to kind of like be in the background
as much as possible. So I use Yabai, SKHD and
Jackie Borders. and i'm happy with that uh and
everything else is like keyboard centric workflows
essentially all that comes from linux yeah you're
the first person that i talked to that uses yabai
well josh medesky used yabai in the past but
he moved away from yabai and i see that you use
your bike in stack mode right single application
on the screen no or no i mean no i i use it Yeah,
I use it in BSP. But when I'm on Neo, the only
reason this thing is stacked is because the PDF
is live updating as I make changes to the manuscript.
So I want to see how it looks. That's the only
reason. Otherwise, almost all of my... Yeah,
all of them are in full screen most of the time.
I prefer things to be completely full screen.
And if I really need to call upon anything, I
have Raycast for this. Raycast is great because
it allows me to have keyboard -centric workflow.
So if I say Emacs, for example, Emacs is alt
E opens Emacs, right? Chrome is alt C. You know,
so this... this is the easy way for me to do
this as opposed to have the doc or mission control
or any of the other stuff that mac has i prefer
this way of doing it okay wonderful okay and
um let's see what else do we have here okay your
thoughts on linux we already know that you have
a lot of experience with linux windows was it
your first operating system no i grew up on mac
actually so my my uh i had access to mac machines
in the 80s because my dad my dad was in the publishing
industry right and he was in the printing industry
so he was digitizing his family business and
how he started digitizing it was with the early
apple machines so he met if you remember the
very first macintoshes from the 80s I had the
Apple II, the Apple III growing up. So, you know,
the single tiny all -in -one computers with just
a keyboard. Yeah, so those were my first computers
growing up. And until I was 18, I didn't have
Windows. I was just like, my dad was like, there's
a computer at home. And I'd be like, I can't
play video games on this. I can't go online on
this because no one in my country knew how to
connect dial -up to a Mac back then. Because
Mac wasn't sexy at all at that point. I couldn't
play any of the CD ROMs because most of the CD
ROMs were for PC. So all my friends would be
playing video games on their 286 and 386 machines.
And I had these Mac machines where I couldn't
do anything. I couldn't even get online until
I was like 19, 20. And that's only because...
my dad was like okay finally here's your here's
a i like a what is it x86 it was a pentium 3.
so that's the picture 3. so from pentium 3 to
the i7 9750 so the ninth generation of the i7
though i was on windows after that i was just
uh i moved to back to mac so what are your thoughts
on windows now that's up now do you like it oh
my god oh my gosh no man like no i i sometimes
i have to work in client offices where they give
me the the you know pre -configured machines
or the approved machines and i just i'm like
oh my god i can't i can't do this uh i actually
said no to a job that requires me to uh use company
issued laptops at the company issued laptop with
all the this you know junk uh windows machines
right not even high -end ones like it was just
these junk plasticky ones that would just die
like the keyboards are shit it's windows 10 having
ants being thrown in every direction i was like
no man i can't do this i said no right and the
job was as i mean the job wasn't the most challenging
thing the pay was good but i was like even for
three months to work on this shitty laptop on
uh on windows it's just no no you were used to
linux and mac by then already yeah yeah yeah
yeah very much space i i even asked him look
if you're giving me that laptop can i just flash
it can i put uh linux on it and i will get all
the work that you want done faster than you would
get from me from uh on windows and they're like
no you can't do it this is corporate protocol
and so on and so forth yeah i guess once you
try linux or mac and you go to the unix world
going back to windows yeah it's like yeah yeah
yeah okay keep me in the unix world i i i'm happy
in in the world of unix i if it's mac it's great
if it's linux it's great just don't put me on
windows uh i i'll probably just like say no yeah
okay okay in which terminal are you using right
now terminal emulator kitty kitty you're in kitty
why haven't you switched to western or go see
like all the cool kids uh i i have this term
here uh it's not no not western i have uh ghosty.
I have ghosty here, actually. But ghosty's configuration
file, I still have it configured to my liking.
The only ghosty that runs right now is my lazy
git instance. That's the only thing that's ghosty.
That's the only thing that's ghosty. Everything
else is kitty. Because kitty, I've had a chance
to properly configure it, and it's exactly to
my liking. Okay. okay wonderful and oh what about
multiple monitors do you like working with one
monitor or multiple ones i need to yeah can you
explain why yeah um i think part of it comes
because of being a film editor you need two monitors
right sometimes uh your source monitor versus
your uh you know the pointer that you are where
you have your timeline and so on and so forth
so i kind of got used to it that way but because
i was working as a writer and a film editor at
the same time what what i started seeing was
oh i could have any any reference documents on
the second screen while my primary screen screen
is where i'm writing into this so that became
a thing uh and now you know with how i work uh
yeah multiple monitors. So even when I'm portable,
like mobile rather, when I'm moving around, I
use my iPad Pro as my second external monitor.
You can extend it that way. So even if I'm traveling
in a plane or in a train or something like this,
the iPad becomes my second monitor of sorts.
And it's very useful that way. Okay. Since you
write a lot, handheld is very important. write
a lot of markdown or my notes you know technical
notes if i need to do something i write it down
because i will forget it in a few months and
uh hands start suffering after a while how has
that been what keyboard do you use and how how
has the experience been um so i recently got
myself a mechanical keyboard uh i always be okay
using, I mean, especially once I moved to Vim
key bindings. And Mac has this thing called Vim,
kind of Vim, or Vim Anywhere. I think it's called
kind of Vim, where you have inside text boxes
inside the Mac operating system, you can have
Vim key bindings. Does that make sense? Right?
So, let me just show you. this is my this is
my uh address bar right now i have been key bindings
you see that hold on it's delaying a little bit
there you see it now i see like a raycast menu
you know do you see my browser uh do you see
my browser address bar yeah so this is vim key
bindings on my browser addressed by itself because
it's running a mac app called kind of bib it's
called kind of it's called this right so those
all of those has helped in terms of like making
sure i don't have rsi and so on and so forth
uh mouse usage has also drastically reduced but
the problem with using a mac Mac in a tropical
country is it's very hot. It's incredibly humid.
So my arms tend to be extremely sweaty and those
tend to smudge the base of the Mac laptop, right?
Which I found extremely, you know, like it's
kind of disgusting. So I'd have to every day
clean it up as well. So I recently bought myself
an Excel keyboard, this one. uh this is uh and
uh this is basically now my new little toy uh
and it's great it's just so great like i've been
wanting to get myself a proper mechanical keyboard
for a while and uh this one is just like exactly
how i wanted it and now that i've got it it's
it's you know thanks babe i don't know if it's
going to so sorry go on What does your partner
say every time you come up with something new?
Because I keep coming up with new shit all the
time. Like, oh, you know, I need a new keyboard.
I have to find a way to tell her. And it's $400
and it's like, what the fuck is happening next?
What's the experience there? 15 how like how
hard i've been working with this new project
right so i uh and i was like this i need to treat
myself with something and uh and she's like yeah
go for it you're you're an adult you don't need
to ask this you know i was like yeah but this
is going to be a little ridiculous and i got
myself this uh so this is basically you know
the company that makes one plus fours no oh oneplus
yeah so this is oneplus's mechanical keyboard
it's completely aluminium it's gasket mounted
linear tactile keys it comes with vr and qmk
and it comes with the dial as well like you know
this do you see the dial i don't see this Okay,
do you see the dial? Do you see the dial? Yeah,
so it's great. It's so heavy. It's so heavy that
you can use this in a zombie apocalypse. So I
was like, in case there's a zombie apocalypse,
I have a thing that will protect us. And she's
like, okay. She's like, why do you need a keyboard
that heavy? But it's also like, I showed her
the things it can do. and she was like she looked
at it she just you know shook her head and walked
off yeah she's like it's a good thing it's a
good thing you have other talents because this
is not the thing i would have fallen for you
know if you had shown me this at the start okay
yeah funny i told my wife the same thing hey
my mac mini you know It's always on my desk.
Sometimes I want to work somewhere else, right?
I want to go to the bed, work there, go to the
couch, work there. You know, I had to set the
stage to get a $3 ,000 computer. Yeah. Yeah.
There you go. I see. I see. yeah like even uh
so i mean i i tried and the thing is i don't
like throwing away my tech right i i make sure
that i repurpose it and all that stuff but every
four five years or so i i need a fresh batch
of you know electronic gear in my hand right
so after i finished my editing and finished my
first film i was like i deserve some sort of
reward because i was basically editing day in
and day out for eight months like i was editing
like you know working 18 19 hour days right so
it was so i i was like i'm i deserve a reward
so that's why i got myself the mac in the first
place i was like okay i need battery life and
so on so now that i've you know gone through
another two years of working on the mac and all
that stuff i was like i need a keyboard so about
two weeks ago i got this keyboard uh i got myself
this nice uh i i know as emac and neo web users
we don't use the mouse so much but because i
edit a lot on davinci result uh video you know
yeah you need that right so i got myself a nice
little uh ergonomic mouse there as well uh which
is which is pretty cool so yeah man it it you
know like just a regular regular regular nerd
that's it that's what it is yeah okay now moving
on to something not technical anymore and um
i guess we're going to be done soon We've been
here for two and a half hours and you should
be writing. Yeah, I know. Yeah. Yeah, I know.
Yeah. Let's just talk about, you know, not technical
stuff at the end of it. What is your movie about
and where can we find it? OK, my first film is
about a contemporary artist based in Sri Lanka.
called parlor p -a -l -a the movie is also called
parlor after him uh the film is in film festivals
right now so if what happens is movie the movie
business is you either when you're you know if
you have a marvel film for example you know you
have all the you're the stars you have the budgets
you don't need to do what i'm doing right in
in cases where you don't have the largest budget
and the most like you know like stars what you
have to do is you send it into film festivals
and it will run in uh And those film festivals
individually will decide if your film is worth
showing in that festival or not. If it runs in
the festival, they have something called a market.
And it's a market where distributors come and
see if there are films they want to distribute.
So my movie is in that process right now. So
you can't see it anywhere until that part of
the process is done. Oh, have you, well, of course
you have heard about the platform MUBI, M -U
-B -I. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah.
So probably it could end up in MUBI, right? Fingers
crossed, man, fingers crossed. But we shall see.
See, even in the case of MUBI, a lot of the films
that are there took years for it to get them
in some cases right like uh right so you know
sometimes you rediscover a film after very after
its first appearance in public consciousness
no one really paid attention to it then 20 years
later someone rediscovers those things happen
right so uh so yeah even nothing is like straightforward
even with movie it has to do well in festivals
it has to do well in the distributors and then
it kind of like works its way there it's just
incredibly like convoluted complex market uh
dynamics that i've worked there and sometimes
it's just very hard to keep track even for those
of us in the industry yeah because I would like
to watch it. You know, I'm eager to see what
you came up with based on what we have discussed
in the interview. You know, all of the dedication
that you put into your tools, your writing and
all that. I want to see what it is about. So
let us know if it's published somewhere. Let
us know. Sure. Okay. What would you say are your
favorite movies? You want to talk about two of
them? Yeah, yeah, sure. Ooh, favorite movies.
Okay. Your audience is mostly like American,
right? So I'm just going to give American friends
for time being. From everywhere. They're from
everywhere. Okay. Maybe American. Well, maybe
United States because I'm American as well. Yeah,
exactly. I'd say Let's go with 2001 A Space Odyssey
and Apocalypse Now. Those two. And two very different
films, but those two. Apocalypse Now. Let's see.
It's from 1979 and 2001 A Space Odyssey is from
1968. What is the Space Odyssey one? How did
you say it was? 2001, as in you write it in numerals,
2001 A Space Odyssey. It's science fiction. apocalypse
now is a war film from 1979 yeah so that's that
is one film and the other is apocalypse now apocalypse
now yeah that's it yeah those two yeah they're
very different films they're very different films
one is like very measured and you know science
fictiony the other is just like a bunch of uh
filmmakers and american actors on drugs and booze
trying to make a film and just making this epic
beautiful messy film in the process and i love
the fact that it's messy and you know it's not
a it's not a perfect film and that's one of the
reasons i like it okay wonderful and what about
music do you have any oh yeah uh are we going
with bands here right yeah whatever you want
to share okay uh i mean uh i am currently mostly
listening to music uh progressive metal from
south india mostly but if you ask me like who
are my favorite bands i would probably say soundgarden
and tool let's go with that for the time being
hmm interesting progressive yeah yeah it seemed
like a really calm person i didn't know that
you you like metal i oh man i i i am very much
a metalhead it's just that i uh have it doesn't
appear so now but say about 10 years ago it would
have been very obvious that i was a metalhead
Yeah, me too. It was a huge metal hit back then.
Ah. Yeah. But now... Nice. I'm not anymore. Not
so much. Yep. And two books that you want to
share? Okay. My favorite novel of all time is
translated from Spanish. It's 100 Years of Solitude
by Captain Garcia Marquez. That will be my favorite
novel of all time. Another one that goes with
it. Let me look at my library. Let me go with
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. Okay. You've
read Hundred Years of Solitude. Do you speak
Spanish? Spanish is my language. Okay. Have you
read Hundred Years of Solitude in Spanish? I
think I read it. Like in the school, but this
was years ago. I don't even remember. Okay. Yeah.
Okay. I read this every year. In Spanish? Yeah.
No, no, no. I wish, but I read it in English
and it's just an incredible novel. It's just
like, there's nothing like it. There's never
been a novel like it. There's probably never
going to be a novel like it. It just feels like
an entire universe inside a book. Insanely good
writing. yeah it's incredible variety just he's
great oh okay i'll have to read it again probably
because i did it when i was a kid many years
ago okay and um that's how the book starts many
years like the book starts with that very same
sentence many years later you know so when you
said many years ago i i was like okay is he making
You know, I thought you were like, yeah, reference
to the book itself. I thought you would make
a reference to the book itself. Oh, okay. And
I think we are basically done. Anything you want
to share before we wrap it up? No, I think we
touched on a lot of things. We started at 7 .30.
It's about 10 .30. So we've already done like
three hours. I don't think anyone wants to hear
anything from me. It's not even enough. Okay.
I'm going to leave all of the links in the video
description so people can find your book there,
the webpage, your GitHub repo, and all of that
stuff. Just wanted to say thanks for all your
time. I'm pretty sure this is going to be really
interesting. I'll share it in Reddit as well.
and we'll see what people say about it all right
thank you so much thank you for asking me and
thank you for your time and thank you for everything
that you're doing for the community all right
you're very welcome dina thanks to you take care
man bye