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<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
<title>Learning to Code</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type"text/css" href="style.css" />
</head>
<body>
<div id="global">
<h1 id="top">Diary of a Discipline Hopper, or </h1>
<h1>Malice* in Coderland</h1>
<p id=intro>* In French: mischief, cheekiness. In this case, that of a so-called “modern linguist”, who is neither a linguist (but who cannot help mixing languages...) nor very modern… and who is here doing this to try to remedy at least the latter at least a little bit, learning some of the most modern of languages, that which makes this whole (digital) thing work… For now, “modern linguist” in this case actually refers to a <a href="about.html">literary theorist</a>, if at all, (dis)oriented mainly – professionally – towards (and sometimes around, or even away from) French literature… but most importantly, simply someone keen to read, see, hear, wonder about everything, in as many languages and areas as possible. Much like Alice, with a relentless and sometimes troublesome curiosity as she is trying to cross borders…<br>
<br>
You can also find <b>a short conversation about this project <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXfCkwTnUJg&fbclid=IwAR32rIwgMIUk-tzhSAXFj488q6-Zqkei-ek2W3A2vvWjU_gb8RVoopUV6q4" target="_blank">here</a></b>. <br>
<br>
(NB. The formatting and structuring of this website is in progress - together with all the rest... I'll be taking screenshots of the evolution of this page and include it as I go, hoping to see some progress over time... (It will be very very meta - you've been warned...)
You can also see the backside of my baby steps <a href="https://github.com/babelhead/DisHop/blob/main/index.html" target="_blank">here</a>).
</p>
<div id="menugauche" class="noprint">
<h2>Weeks so far</h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="#week1">Week 1</a></li>
<li><a href="#week2">Week 2</a></li>
<li><a href="#week3">Week 3</a></li>
<li><a href="#week4">Week 4</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div id="menudroit" class="noprint">
<h2>More info</h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="about.html" target="_blank">About me</a></li>
<li><a href="https://gow.epsrc.ukri.org/NGBOViewGrant.aspx?GrantRef=EP/V007351/1" target="_blank">About the project</a></li>
<li><a href="experiments.html" target="_blank">Experiments</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div id="contenu">
<p id="topBox">Well,</p>
<h3>Hello World!</h3>
<p>(I've heard that's how it all began, and that's how everyone begins...)<br>
(It seems like I skipped that bit this time...)<br>
<br>
<article>
<h3 id="week1">Friday 22nd January 2021: Week 1 - Where to start? Can I start yet?</h3>
<p style="text-align: center"><b>(Oops, hang on, it's already started...)</b></p>
<br>
<p>Yesterday I finally (and accidentally) learnt that my project had officially started on Monday the 18th. Try not to be late when you don’t know you were supposed to be there, despite having been there for much longer than necessary, waiting to be told when you can finally be there officially (long story…). Whatever, still just joy and excitement that it’s finally ON! <br>
<br>
A lot of things happened already as last week I (still unofficially, and therefore somewhat patchily…) attended an intensive week on HTML/CSS integration, after an even less well managed presence in a somewhat less intensive project work week on generative fiction, which was the conclusion of the course I unofficially (and therefore patchily…) followed since October. In the latter, we had a couple of hours of intro to JavaScript and a couple of hours on the content management system <a href="https://omeka.org/about/project/" target="_blank">Omeka S</a>, of which I didn’t get much. This week, it was, for a change, an intensive seminar on <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/mineurphiteco/seminaires-et-ateliers" target="_blank">Stiegler and technique</a> by the <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/mineurphiteco/" target="_blank">PHITECO minor at UTC</a>.<br>
<br>
The HTML/CSS seems easy enough for starters. Just a tool, and it works, after just a couple of hours I can get some basic stuff working, which keeps amazing me. OK, I haven’t quite get the nuts and bolts of how to place it on a server yet, but I can write some mini HTML and CSS stuff that my navigator can execute, and I begin to understand how HTML and CSS and JavaScript and PHP work together, recognize some pointers in the code (markup).<br>
<br>
</p>
<img src="contact form HTML.png" > <br>
<!-- need to figure out how to define the image width relatively to the window size/ in a responsive way-->
<br>
<img src="contact form CSS.png">
<br>
<p>I made this, and I’m dead proud of it! It’s like realising you can just crack an egg in a pan and it’s actual food you can have for lunch, but you never thought that’s how it’s actually done and you could as well do it… Even if it was straight after the tutor’s demonstration, using the elements we just learnt, and constantly referring to the tutor’s explanations and examples and online reference materials… It’s how you learn a language, isn’t it? you repeat it after the teacher and wonder that people speaking it actually understand you.<br>
<br>
The Stiegler seminar was great too, the bits I could catch (still too many distracting practicalities to deal with this week, flat hunt, Lancaster business, etc…). Some ideas about writing as hypomnemata, écriture de soi as technique de soi (from Foucault), entropy as “effacement du passé”, etc. – ideas to come back to… But most interesting of all – and things I won’t find in a book or website – were the discussions with the students, in particular in UX design, and their perspective on their degree and profession/specialism – still too exclusively associated with IT, even though UX design could/should take “experience” in a much broader sense (apparently in the London School of Arts, where the boyfriend of one of the student studies it, there is a much broader and abstract/artistic approach to it –, its content and value, especially in France, where there isn’t any other school yet offering a dedicated degree in it, but where therefore the profession also seems to struggle its place/identity and affirm its interest as a not purely technical skill, and the possibility of shaping a French-style approach to UX design, like there is French-style “ingénieurs”, and TC as an institution’s approach to it (technically oriented or disoriented…). I hope to continue this conversation with them and others in the workshop I’ll be doing with them this term!<br>
<br>
Today I went to get a book I ordered at Fnac, HTML, XHTML & CSS pour les nuls. It’s of course the translation of a US edition. I spent a good half an hour browsing through the Fnac St Lazare’s small section on Computing. Hungry for books. I bought a big one on Architecture et technologie des ordinateurs, which is a French original for university students, and which seemed comprehensive enough to give me some degree of satisfaction (although I’ll hardly ever get through it, it seems a good reference book – with a lot of English terminology in brackets – it’ll also help linking up the languages around the topic, learning what corresponds to what, as it’s not always entirely straightforward). I somehow feel, experience the content and the whole subject differently in French and in English. I clearly feel it more natural and somehow easier in English, as if French had to try too hard to squeeze it into itself, or wrap itself around it… It has created much of the terminology already, for other bits it simply imported the English, but French still doesn’t feel to me like the natural environment of this subject. I don’t know if it’s my cultural bias or a real thing – French programmers can certainly become perfectly proficient without speaking or understanding much English, they would just know the terminology like you learn the Latin terms when studying medicine, I guess. I wonder if the presentation of things, the discourse is indeed somehow different like I feel it is, or it’s just the language and hearing it from the French, with their different culture and background, that gives it a different flavour (is that different at all? Perhaps the impossible to identify discursive differences, but how to show the difference in flavour – or the lack of it? obviously it’s a different flavour, since the language sounds and feels so different… to me… who could better compare?)<br>
<br>
NB I will have to make sure to take-notes-as-I-go, because otherwise it’ll be impossible to gather all the observations that pass through my mind… <br>
</p>
</article>
<article>
<h3 id="week2">Thursday 28 January</h3>
<p>
The idea of the day: Rather than just buying a blog space on a wysiwyg provider, create a GitHub repository and publish my own webpages and projects there, as GitHub Pages, with the source accessible, with references to the files that will include commentaries – writing at several levels at the same time, showing the thinking and evolution/questions/difficulties.
Create a blog-style thing in html use the list function, each entry/date would be an item on the list, each can be identified with a link (a new html page each time, or in one file with some go-to function inside it, identifying the list elements? I still have to figure out how to create a blog structure, but I don’t want to fall back on an easy template, the idea is to do my own bricolage, whatever it takes and whatever amateur the result will be. <br>
Commentary option through contact form – or other preset option?<br>
<br>
So here we are on <a href="https://github.com/" target="_blank">GitHub</a>, and you are seeing this as a GitHub Page (I told you we'd get mega meta...). This week’s intensive course on “Systèmes d’information et programmation internet” was a great, if dense and inevitably very cursory, intro by Samuel Szonieczky to using forms, databases, and CMS (content management systems), and how they can work together. He emphasized the plasticity of all things digital, and the fact that there are virtually infinite possibilities to transform and transfer things from one place/tool/system into others. The web is an ecosystem and you “only” need to find the way to translate/import/export data from one place and use to another. Also, for the know-how, he pointed out: “Je ne connais pas la syntaxe par coeur, mais je sais ce que je veux faire et quels sont les mots clé pour trouver, ce qui me permet d’avancer vite.” He also showed in the process how the browsers’ development tools (source code and console) are key to the process of coding – it’s much about decoding what doesn’t work when it doesn’t (which is a normal part of the process…). In a way, writing is at least as much about deciphering and rewriting/amending as it is about committing new elements to the code in progress. (By the way, the whole terminology would be worth some analysis – on GitHub, you edit then “commit” changes, “push” and “pull” files and repositories, etc… I’ll come back to some of these at some point!)<br>
</p>
</article>
<article>
<h3 id="week3">Thursday 3rd February</h3>
<p>As you can see, I've started working on the formatting, playing around with some of the CSS tricks we went through two weeks ago, and refining the structure of the site and the page... I mean, creating a structure, since there wasn't really one before... OK, it's not exactly a visual or structural masterpiece, but... It turns out that a main problem might be that it's difficult to stop. As in, it's 00:19 right now (erm... 00:31...), and two hours ago I meant to go to bed with a book, but then I went on doing just this little bit than that... <br>
<br>
Anyway, see the difference? There is also a menu that actually works and all :) (OK, still just fast food, but still...)</p>
<img src="before1.png"> <br>
<br>
<img src="after1.png">
<p>(OK, 00:43, now I'm really off now... to be continued...)</p>
</article>
<article>
<time pubdate datetime= ?php echo date(DATE_W3C);?></time>
<!-- not sure how to get this dating function work - Titan p86
also trying to figure out how to keep the text in separate files, rather than including in the HTML - or is it normal for this to grow with the text?-->
<h3 id="week4">Monday 15 February</h3>
<p>Looking back, turns out it was quite a week…</p>
<p>For the class on <b>“Document numérique et design de l’information”</b>, reading on “autogestion” (self-management) and free/open source software and GNU, texts to be annotated with a tool in development as part of the ANR project <a href="https://www.fmsh.fr/fr/recherche/30328">Archival - Valorisation d'archives multimedia</a>, to which the class contributes by annotating some of these materials (“Le projet ARCHIVAL travaillera sur la compréhension automatique multimodale du langage pour développer de nouvelles interfaces intelligentes de médiation et de transmission des savoirs.” – in addition to texts, the objective is to develop machine reading methods for video and other media and better navigation/exploitation of archival materials. The project leader, Prof. Ghislaine Azémard, <a href="http://www.chaire.fr/">Chair UNESCO ITEN</a> (Innovation, Transmission, Édition Numériques, FMSH / Université Paris 8), is on the teaching team, led by Khaldoum Zreik, which is great). We were introduced to the annotation software (still a bit clunky and awkward, with a bugging cursor they need to sort out) and reflected on some passages together.</p>
<p>The readings (Castoriadis, “Autogestion et hiérarchie” (1979), from the <a href="https://www.syllepse.net/syllepse_images/encyclope--die-internationale-volume-8-b.pdf"><i>Encyclopédie internationale de l’autogestion</i></a>; Olivier Blondeau, "Genèse et subversion du capitalisme informationnel. LINUX et les logiciels libres: vers une nouvelle utopie concrète?" in <a href="https://www.cairn.info/libres-enfants-du-savoir-numerique--9782841620432.htm"><i>Libres enfants du savoir numérique</i></a>, dir. O. Blondeau, Editions de l’Eclat (2000), and Richard Stallman’s <a href="https://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.en.html">“GNU Manifesto”</a> (1984) in the same (in Fr. translation)) were really interesting in highlighting the links between organizational structures in society, economy, technology and their interdependence – ie. you cannot create a truly horizontal structure inside a hierarchical framework, according to Castoriadis; self-management requires the abolition of all hierarchical (power) structures and (economic) inequality. A radical leftist thought from the 70s, which resonates well with Stallman’s free software movement, which is in a way the continuation of Castoriadis’s thought in/for the digital environment: proprietary software entails unequal economic and power relations and enables dependency and exploitation. Blondeau explains the Linux vs. MS as a mode of resistance against Fordist economy, and highlights the insufficiency of a Marxist approach to (material) production and property in the (supposedly) immaterial digital economy and (direct) intellectual value production (this might need some update today, better taking into account the massive material infrastructures required by the supposedly immaterial digital production and information). He also points out that the concept of intellectual property, created to <i>protect</i> the interests of humanity, for the work to be able to survive its creator, is now turning into its opposite and becoming an obstacle in the digital economy. Blondeau also makes reference to Eric S. Raymond’s metaphor of the “cathedral vs bazaar” to describe the hierarchical organisation vs Linux-style free and open source project (this also made me think of the Ihab Hassan-style opposition between modern vs postmodern: Proust-like cathedral idea (eve if there is an actual bazaar inside his circular cathedral…) vs fragment-like / networked construction à la Cortázar, for instance, or Bolaño’s <i>2666</i>, the loss of belief in the possibility of a Whole as a finished Thing…). The bazaar, despite its chaotic appearance, seems (proves…) to be a more stable structure than the cathedral – just like the network that doesn’t rely on a central piece (a keystone or <i>clef de voûte</i>) – because an issue at any point can be balanced out by alternative options/routes – or in the case of free software, the fact of multiple users being able to pick up and correct bugs rather than having to wait for the provider’s reaction and solution, results in a quicker and more flexible solutions. Things can of course go wrong, but they do with a centralized mode of organization as well – and often with farther reaching impact, if the system resists quick and easy reaction (NB the free software in itself surely still won’t lack hierarchical structures, and even the organization of at least some of the work would be overlooked by someone, at least in the design/conception phase – but perhaps here some hierarchy appears inside the horizontal framework, rather than the other way round?) </p>
<p>In any case, all this has taken me back (and forward again) somewhat unexpectedly to two key concepts I’ve been playing with which keep coming back, two projects I drafted at some point in different contexts and forms but which never materialized as such: one on <b>hierarchies</b> – this came from my musings on narrative paradoxes, in particular the aporetic mise en abyme, which collapses the hierarchy of diegetic levels (and narrative worlds), as well as the question of whether a networked society without hierarchy is conceivable at all, or how horizontal network and hierarchy can be complementary – and the other one on <b>complexity</b> and complex systems, where feedback loops replace hierarchical communication and command channels. All ends seem to meet again now – and the political, economic, social, and ecological importance of resisting dependency (both from companies and products, but also from structures held by a single power) through just accepting the black boxes we are offered. In any case, all this seems to confirm again the importance of learning to understand a bit better what it is we don’t have access to, and some of the potentials of code to (consciously or unconsciously) manipulate users and spread ideologies. This is just a first step, of course, but an indispensable one – like learning a language in a foreign country is indispensable for creating an autonomous life in it… In parallel, I’ve been reading Gao Xingjian’s <i>Le Livre d’un homme seul</i>, his memoire of sorts of living, surviving, and running away from communist China from the late 60s, with many direct and indirect references to oppression and the impossibility of not taking a position in certain moments – any action or non-action, enunciation or silence would be interpreted as a position of one kind or another anyway, without that one can always know on what basis a word or action is interpreted as a criticism or danger etc… and I watched a couple of documentaries about Mao and China, and how he managed to keep his power facing the many millions of people he made suffer (not alone, but with people who could never feel entirely safe again…), how fear and violence was used to make a large enough insurrection impossible, how lack of information could make believe in his ideologies, etc… and how dangerous it is to close our eyes and just accept… (not that we didn’t know… the banality of the evil, here too… but we can begin the resistance with just as banal means in the end…). Same applies to the ecology movement à la Greta Thunberg – Stiegler did make the link…</p>
<p>Half-day seminar on <a href="http://reticulum.info/3/"><b>Reticulum</b></a> with Everardo Reyes et co. – similarly about self-management and getting away from the surveillance and quantification-focused approach to academic research databases (ie. institutional repositories like HAL, commercial repositories like Academia.edu, ResearchGate etc.)</p>
<p>First class this term with Philippe Bootz, rehearsal of the basics of HTML/CSS. Philippe’s introduction was much more structured and abstract, explaining concepts and principles but giving less place to practice. An interesting contrast with the informaticians’ approach (Guillaume Besacier, Rodolphe Richard made us work through examples, but Philippe’s was a good overview and filling some theoretical gaps of terminology and background – the difference feels much like the one we’d find between a communication-focused Anglo-Saxon style language class (the informatician’s approach) vs. a European [Prussian?]-style theory- and structure-focused grammar class – Philippe’s use of a Word document to show bits of code HTML/CSS also materializes his more static approach, even though he did show us his code editor screen as well, and explained us how to use and what, not much space left for in-class practice, only a homework to do based on the examples he gave…)</p>
<p>First meeting with Serge Bouchardon and his class of three for the workshop on transcoding/recreating his 2009 Flash work, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxiohmeg780" target="_blank"><i><b>Toucher</b></i></a>, in HTML/CSS/JavaScript (à suivre…)</p>
<p>Reading on <a href="https://www.sitaudis.fr/Celebrations/tibor-papp-1936-2018.php" target="_blank"><b>Tibor Papp</b></a>, the visual-sound-digital poet whose oeuvre (ex. <a href="https://archive.org/details/hypercard_disztichon-alfa_2018-07-29" target="_blank"><i>Disztichon Alfa</i></a>) and legacy I’ll be working on with Philippe Bootz and Erzsébet Papp – slow exploration through Erzsébet’s monograph for now, I’ll need to call his widow, Zsuzsa to see if/when I could come look at the unpublished documents she has.</p>
<p>Also started working my way through <b><i>Architecture et technologie des ordinateurs</i></b>, with the chapter of the basic structure of the computer as we know today, the role and functioning of the CPU and the central memory, and the importance of the latter’s management. Serge Bouchardon likes to emphasize the memory management issue, as key to both programming and electronic literature, working with a living memory.</p>
<br>
<p>In sum, many tiny steps in many directions, but I feel it’s not without a coherence – and giving a taste again of how everything is linked up – including with things I’m doing “outside work”, outside this project… I’m struggling to write it all down, it’s a fancy buzz inside my brain…</p>
<p>(And to start this new week, finally changed the background here, it was frankly very lame… Now I have a little issue with the display of images, as the background’s opacity seems to impact them and I’m not managing to block their transparency at 0%... work in progress too…). <br>
Here is a little before-after again:</p>
<img src="before2.png">
<img src="after2.png">
</article>
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