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Okay, I’ve released and publicly announced Lovecraft Copywork. Here’s the tweet: Checkout my latest site: Write Like Lovecraft! Master the Art of Lovecraftian Style with Copywork.https://t.co/z3CxdtNaNw pic.twitter.com/elFfAf98dS — Jason Brownlee (@jason2brownlee) February 13, 2025 Below are some screenshots. Here’s the landing page that promote the benefits of copywork with lovecraft material specifically: Here’s the stories page: You can pick a story and see which stories you have already started and their progress. I generated iconic images for each story, gives a good horror feeling :) ...

I was reading a book about the Occult + Nazi’s the other day and there was a mention of technical analysis for astrology. As an aside, Germany went bananas for the occult in the early part of the century, then later the Nazi’s, because it was already in the air, e.g. Occultism in Nazism Anyway, my thought: Huh? Technical analysis for a field other than finance… that makes sense I guess. I filed it away to ponder…now. ...

My son made the comment about his school work that all kids make at some point: This is boring. Why do I have to do this? I’m never going to use it! I think it was with regard to some math homework. So, we had “the talk” about schoolwork. I stared off talking about the morning exercises he and his brother do with me: Star-jumps Push-ups Sit-ups Squats I said something like: ...

I finished Sahil Bloom’s “The 5 Types of Wealth” the other day. Toward the end, there was a chapter/section on compounding. It gave the grains of rice chessboard parable, and the usual benefits for understanding it and harnessing it. Good stuff. It got me thinking: We (humans) are terrible at understanding exponentials, like compounding. And: I’d LOVE a tiny book on the magic of compounding. I was thinking a whole lot of stuff to help hammer home the point. ...

Okay, I have developed a new version of Lovecraft Copywork. Here it is: LovecraftCopywork.com (I purchased the domain) It’s great! Firstly, each story is divided into paragraph “passages”. Progress is managed per passage both x/y words and x/y characters, and a little progress bar. The next word to type is indicated and all prose in the passage is gray and becomes back as typed. Any character that is not the next expected character is ignored. ...

I created another different prototype of lovecraft copywork yesterday. I was thinking an “online book” version might be interesting. One story per chapter. Brief history of the story. Synopsis of the story. Structure of the story. All prose for the story. Selected passages from the story. References for further reading. The idea is that one could choose to do copywork with the whole or parts of the story, or with the selected passages. ...

I was thinking more about the lovecraft copywork idea. I think it’s a no-brainer. I think a book is what is needed. For me, handwriting out a 2,000 word story or passage (at the low end) feels onerous. It needs to be buffet of passages from the stories that one can hand-copy as time permits, e.g. 20 min/per day. I asked some reasoning models to extract some passages that show strong writing technique. ...

My eldest son is saving for a new phone. Apparently hand-me-down iphones don’t cut it any more. Too many cracks, too slow. Whatever. We said he could not draw upon his savings, they’re for a first car, or something. As such, he is putting his 2024 Christmas and 2025 Chinese New year money towards this new effort. He also worked during the summer for his grandparents (washed windows) and great-auntie (front of shop in a cafe). ...

Still thinking about the practice of typing in code listing verbatim as a pedagogical tool. Quotes Some confirming quotes from reading: …I took online courses, though I made sure to type out everything as I went through them. That alone increases confidence, because you’re actually building something versus copy/pasting. Could be a psychological trick. I don’t know, but it works. – burntjamb I like: “Could be a psychological trick.” Yep! Are there any scientific studies and results of the studies on if this was just tedious work, or if the user did learn something about programming just by typing it in the computer? ...

I’ve been doing a lot of reading about “type-in programs”. There are a lot of old-timer programmers recounting their enjoyment of typing in programs from magazines and books in the 1980s and 1990s. Some highlights I enjoyed reading: Did type-in-programs or type-in-listings teach programming in the 70s and 80s or was it just tedious typing of the source code? Is there any hard data about type-in programs in the 80s? Anyone else here get started by typing in BASIC programs from Enter Magazine back in the early 80’s? Easy type-in software for a BASIC demonstration And on… Great stuff. ...