Welcome. If you're looking for something from my old project site, check the Internet Archive snapshot. I'll work on making pages for my old projects (maybe) or I may just continue ripping through this illusion of space-time without looking back.

News

01/15/2023

New year, new me, months without updates! I guess the main thing that was distracting me was focusing on building body mass, muscle in particular. I watched (and really enjoyed) Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, especially the first season and was inspired. I put on about 25 pounds bulking (almost "dirty bulking", but I wasn't eating ~as much as I could~ just way more than I normally do). I'm currently about 4 weeks into a cut/recomposition cycle... again not doing as much cardio/fasting as a pure cut, but I've already dropped about 5-10 pounds. I'm experimenting, figuring things out. I've been using 3 of Fraser Wilson's videos on YouTube pretty regularly, abs, arms and chest/shoulder. Speaking of shoulders I tried rollerblading before all this and ended up taking a pretty bad fall to my right shoulder, it's still giving me some issues, but seems to be slowly getting better. I haven't been back out rollerblading yet.

So far this year I've been following the M'Cheyne Bible Reading Plan, through Twitter I was connected to a Bible study group chat and have been doing streams (mainly to just record the VOD) of the daily readings. It's been nice seeing people really alight with fire as well as re-reading favorite books (like Genesis and Matthew) as well as finally taking bites out of books I hadn't got around to before slacking off. Hope I stay with it!

Dealt with a roof leak, looks like I was able to fix it with some sealant and expanding foam. I ran the irrigation system before the rain to see if the leak I thought I saw last year appeared again... but there was no sign. I'll plant the corn and squash tomorrow! Maybe even throw some poppy seeds along the back wall, the ones I have are getting pretty old and it would be good to get another generation.

I also just finished my very first NFT project today, from smart contract solidity code to front end minting site. It's not deployed on the main Ethereum network yet (I have a test setup on Ubiq right now), but will probably do that tomorrow. I also have some plans for some Ubiq exclusive projects now that I have some experience with this minimum viable project. I would say more about it, but it's someone else's idea. Another twitter connection, someone was fishing for a dev and I said I wished I could help, but I was in the middle of learning... turned out it was the simplest project imaginable, exactly what I needed to learn in a hands on way!

The year has got off to a good start, markets, activities, and vibe shifts. Just remembered I had a schizo rant published in a zine too (page 7). I feel like I need to write a synthesis of some ideas, but it seems like people are either destined to understand or not. It's like there's an inhibitory mechanism that prevents breaking out of naive empiricism (even as a thought experiment), and now that more and more people are accessing psychedelic drugs they are carrying that empiricism into a place where evolution *has not* honed their faculties, exposing them to hard lessons that can end up in extra-temporal (or eternal) traps, not to mention lesser problems of what would be best described as demonic phenomena. Oh well, like I said, there's a sort of hubris that's acting as a seed for a downfall of what seems to be the majority of people subscribing to secular relative morality... for all the positivity I'm seeing personally, it is saddening to see this ontology continue to dig deeper into the masses. However, if I can get through to *one* person with an earnest (non-schizo) synthesis, then maybe it'll be worth it.

10/21/2022

Quick test update, on the new server running updated software, but it looks like pictures aren't loading, so I'm trying a new upload. (edit: I just had to install php8.1-gd, success!)

Here's a cryptster that I acquired because it looked like a less grey Taleb. It was exciting being part of the mint for the "first pfp NFT project on Ubiq". I think with a bit more focus on things like cryptsters they'll get the traction they need to get to the moon (and hopefully take me along!). I have some ideas for a digital real estate project using minetest, but that's a while off. The first thing I'd like to do is make a mod that allows people to hang pictures of their NFTs up in game. Then the next obvious things would be skins and "real estate" plots.

Also check out the Extreme Toaster minetest server, cj_clippy is doing a lot of work on it!

This was supposed to be just a test post!

10/19/2022

This will be the last update on this server before I move over to a new one. I grabbed a deal from RackNerd, if you're ever in the need for VPS stuff check out LowEndBox and LET for cheapo promotions. You might have to deal with subpar service from new dealers/resellers though, so be careful. RackNerd has done me well in the past and seem very established.

I guess the big wrench in the works this past month has been getting some food poisoning that triggered a cluster headache volley. Now, I want to be clear, my experience isn't as bad as it's described there, but the repetition, the sinus/eye pain, every couple days and the threat of a full blown "migraine" type headache aura was there. So, maybe it wouldn't be categorized as a full cluster type situation, but whatever it was, was cured by finally taking some of the "research directions" after basically having my life on hold in fear of what I knew was around the corner if it were allowed to bloom. I dealt with these same headaches in my youth too and was only able to finally break free after my experience with the noted "research directions" in the wikipedia article there. Anyway, enough mulling over that mystery.

I've also been getting into Urbit and learning a bit of Hoon, the Urbit system programming language. I've been aware of the system for a few years, but hadn't pulled the trigger on getting a full planet until recently, if anyone wants to connect I'm ~daldel-talbyt, feel free to DM me there. The identity system uses the Ethereum network to prove ownership of a particular address (the name daldel-talbyt is just an encoding for a number similar to an IP address, if you'd like to read more to make sense of the next few sentences, see this Urbit blog post on address space). This lead me into the world of trading Urbit 'stars' which got me into studying things like automated market making and liquidity providing on places like Uniswap, you could say I have skin in the Urbit game now. I unfortunately decided to load the boat with ETH pre-PoS which was yet another hit. Trades and investments have been pretty rough, so I guess I've joined everyone else who's had to deal with a 60/40 allocation, but I lost it in much more creative ways. We'll see what the future holds, I really don't know what the best use of my time is at the moment, I still need to setup my security camera system here and maybe after I do that I'll travel around a bit. I don't know if I need to leave the country or not, but it might be a good idea to start seriously considering it.

I haven't done any sort of "science experiments", I haven't even done a microscope stream in about a month. I did go and visit an Orthodox church about an hour away which was nice to experience again. I've bought a few things off eBay to repair, a clock replica of the facade of the Chicago Board of Trade that I replaced the quartz movement, and a pewter replica of the CBOT building which needs a replacement Ceres statue, maybe I'll finish the design of that today and get it sent off to Shapeways. I think the Ceres design would be nice as earrings or a charm too.

Oohh! I've also installed Void linux and have been using it as my daily driver for a couple weeks now. As a glutton for punishment I also decided to attempt a new window manager (sway) and try Wayland. I've been having trouble getting OBS working, so that's another reason for the lack of Odysee streams. You can check out the extensive notes on the install here.

Thanks for reading, that's all I can think of right now, but I'm sure there's more I'm forgetting. Like NFT minting, trading, UBQ, oil, GBP futures, blah blah blah.

Peace.

09/01/2022

The first of September! Feels like I hit it just on time. Maybe I'll get into the groove of writing an update every first of the month. It's funny the first thing I think of is this unidentified zooplankton I've been watching for a few weeks now. I made a macro video with some funny editing of the plankton in a Falcon tube and posted it on Odysee and it ended up getting over 200 views! I didn't expect that, but made me curious about seeing what they were now that I had a crowd wondering as well.

I did a stream looking at the zooplankton and some other specimens, like a worm. I've still been making food in the solar evacuated tube cooker. The garden has been fully cleared besides 3 verdolagas plants I started from seed. They're supposed to be a variety that likes to grow vertically. Been thinking about ways to stay involved in the finance world without trading the size I was earlier this year, I was considering doing a show with trading a live smaller account. With the CME's new smaller contracts and a lot of new traders curious about possibilities, I thought it might be fun.

I've also ordered some parts from electronic goldmine to make some solar robot/BEAM/sculptures -- I'm not exactly sure, but they were running a deal on components that should be able to be used to make solar engines. A voltage supervisor (that triggers at 2.9v), small 3v motors and these little solar sensors/panels that could be arranged like flower pedals (8 of them to make >3v). Also going to experiment with tritium capsules, so hopefully I'll have some cool pictures of that for next time.

07/25/2022

Another late one, 3 months. I wish I had great news on the trading front, but I don't. I just added everything up last night and either there was a something being mismarked or this last week has (total) brought me down to the lowest draw down of the year. It's hard to face it, let alone write about, the Ostrich Effect is real. I felt like leaning into more speculative trades, and still do honestly, but when the market goes against larger speculative (I should say directional, since vol trading alone could be considered some form of speculation)... anyway, it's sort of rough, but I'm used to it, there is a tolerance that can be built for the variance.

What else, the garden has basically given up the ghost, all the beans and squash are looking dead to dim. One of the corn plants put out some seed stalk looking things, but I don't think it's looking like it'll flesh out into actual corn cobs. The monsoons are here and should be dropping a bunch of rain, which should help make wild amaranth pop up again this year, we may have had enough rain to get them going already. I was learning about the local flora last year trying to find out what's edible/herbal around here and was curious about the amaranth, it was only after they were all eaten by the local grazers that I learned it's possible to make micro popcorn with the seeds from Cahlen's channel on Odysee so I will definitely have to go try and collect some of the dry seed this year and try that! This was the only harvest from the garden this year:

I also popped onto Cahlen's interview show "Modern Day Wizards" and talked a bit about crypto, doom, economics and what not. It was fun to chat since I've been following him living outdoors in the high NM desert for a few months now, inspirational.

I was also inspired by another home-free (123HomeFree) individual who's been "guerilla grazing" for years. He showed off his GoSun solar oven and I was impressed enough to pick up a "sport" model during GoSun's 4th of July sale, and it worked pretty good the few times I've cooked with it. I've made bratwurts and chile rellenos, roasting fresh poblano chilis in the solar tube, next time I'm going to try canned whole chiles. Mixing the batter in a protein shaker also helps make clean up easier (easy for cooking in the field too).

I also experimented with making Jerusalem artichoke (sunchoke) chips:

I've started diving deeper into BSD operating systems. I've installed OpenBSD on my IBM T42 thinkpad and made a funny script to take the accelerometer data and move the active window (video). And I've installed FreeBSD on a couple computers, an ITX computer I'm hoping to turn into the media/CCTV server and a refurbed T480 I picked up when I thought the T42 had HW issues -- it may have hardware issues, but I was able to get OpenBSD running finally even after memtest reported a ton of errors. I should also mention I've been experimenting a lot with PKT announcement mining too and thinking about bandwidth, servers, colocation and all that... we'll see where that goes.

Replaced some bathroom sinks, still have a 3rd one to do. I've got a ton of CAT6 cable for PoE camera setup, but I haven't completely decided on what to do, originally I was going to house the PoE switch on the roof and just have ethernet run on the (flat) roof and through/over the stucco to the cameras (I haven't even picked the cameras out besides one to watch the front).

Things aren't bad, riding the wave

04/26/2022

Where to start, it's been 2 months since the last update. I've been working on the garden:

Spent time converting a sprinkler system to drip, designed the layout in librecad, I've been making changes to suit reality, like adding more emitters to water between the rows. It turned out the red spot drippers didn't spread the water far enough into the center.

The market making project was on hold for a couple long weeks, I rearchitected the system to use something like a game clock and got stuck trying to figure out how I was going to update the charts. I was reacting to every update being sent by the exchange, but now it's limited to once every .3 seconds, which really helps the CPU and actually makes the system snappier. I'm right at the brink of getting the charts working with the new architecture with the next step being showing where I have outstanding orders on the charts. After that I'll port the old trading system to the new paradigm and start tweaking things live, it's just how I roll.

Besides the garden, I've been (re)-learning a trading platform, Interactive Brokers Trader Workstation. It's alright, but I think I'll try and make an interface to trade there too. I won't do it yet... but a part of me wants to immediately start that project since I feel like it wouldn't take more than a day or two. Especially to just start it and get something simple and useful for my manual trading working. I might write that rant out in the next Wren's Warble. I haven't updated over there in a while and I've got a backlog of interesting finance things to write about.

Might as well make a mention of the current trading strategy that's been working the past few months using some big words to sound smart, or obfuscate the strategy... or maybe it's revealing, a sort of qabbalah of Moloch... sorry, that's terrible. The most concise way to describe it is: Dynamically delta hedged long volatility in futures options, buying full sized contracts of vol, while hedging with micros/mini futures. I also add/remove/roll the options themselves to neutralize after gaining deltas. Oil, natural gas, ES(S&P500), ZB, JPY... all over the place right now, but it seems to be the place with the best rate of success. I feel like retail has the most level playing field on CME/NYMEX etc... CBOE, NYSE Arca, not so much.

Crazy how long it's taken me to "learn that" or really it's a gem hidden by fear mongering. Yes, you can take on extremely leveraged positions... but these days so can Robinhood users w/that dirty (pfof) equity vol.

I guess that's about it. Just made a stir fry, so I'll sign off until next update, good luck and God bless in these seemingly apocalyptic times!

02/28/2022

It's the last day of February and I don't want to miss writing an update here this month. Node-RED has been a great tool to use. I've got to the point where I can place orders, but have decided I need to create another subsystem to maintain orderbook depth locally (where the standing limit orders are, I was just using the 'top of the book', the best bid and ask at the time). I was able to fit the IV curve in both the strike and expiration dimensions, but want to add the ability to manually weight expirations to try and get more sane theoretical prices. I am glad that I've been able to make progress after almost giving up again. I have been a bit tired of working on the project though and haven't made much progress there the past few days. I have been trying to keep up on other things, like selling my 'old' laptop, setting up my new one (another open box deal from Best Buy). Also had to deal with a leak from the water lines going into the washing machine, I guess the town water pressure has gone up... one of my poor neighbors had a line burst erroding quite a bit of dirt, glad that didn't happen here (yet), so I should get on the phone with a plumber and get a regulator installed before tragedy strikes.

Attach:peeking-gopher.mp4

Check out that gopher I spotted while wandering around the local baseball field. Never seen a live one before, didn't know they popped in and out like that, I can see the inspiration for the wack-a-mole game now.

Also did some video art using some footage from the microscope, made a Green Sun.

Until next time, peace

01/19/2022

A new year, in a new town, playing with new tools. After fixing up the old volatility plotting software a bit, I felt like trying to integrate any sort of live trading logic would be beyond my skill level, or the codebase was just not clean enough to make it worthwhile (I would end up pulling my hair out). I looked for visual programming frameworks to make editing algorithms and data flows easy, and checked out Ryven before settling on Node-RED to re-write the IV plotting software. Most recently I've been figuring out the easiest/best way to fit a curve to the IV data from the market prices and ran across this paper Curve-Fitting Method for Implied Volatility which exposed me to methods beyond splines and I think I've found something good using LOESS. In my initial implementation I fit a curve to each expiration, but discovered I really need to fit an entire surface (both across the strikes and expirations) due to the wide spreads, plus it's just the right way to do it. Here's a screenshot of the new charts with the per-expiry fitted curve in black:

I also added a Mind's Forge channel to my Odysee account (sign up for an account there to follow, plenty of other good channels are there including Louis Rossmann, EEVBlog, ElectroBOOM, and more). I've been streaming work on the IV plotting -> automated trading software as well as some microscopy, finally picked up a compound microscope and was able to see an amoeba when doing a test stream.

I've got some interesting experiments in mind involving the x-ray mutagenesis setup and the microscope. One is to irradiate samples of the stagnant water (control sample, then increase the time exposed to other samples), another is to germinate some control Wisconsin Fast Plant seeds and some from the mutant line and check the cellular morphology. It's been a while since doing any experiments, I was struggling with a lot (spiritually and dealing with the worldly) in 2019 -> 2020 and 2021 was busy with cleaning my dad's old house out to sell and moving out of the city. If you pray, please pray for me, I'm sure the kinds of works I do are spiritually dangerous. Thanks, until next time, peace!

... News Archive

chris@mindsforge.com