2022-05-16.01

Zellij; Wasm Command-Line Playground: jq; Stargate Alive

W00t! I figured out how to do custom domains for this Substack thing. You can now hit dailyfinds.hrbrmstr.dev (or keep using the original URL).

Zellij

I find it both amazing and awesome that there continues to be innovation in spaces such as text editors and terminal programs. Just when you think either category cannot possibly get any better in comes another scrappy entrant tempting us to make it our new default.

Zellij (GH) is a terminal workspace developed to augment your terminal environment experience, meaning it isn't a new terminal program like Warp, WezTerm, or iTerm. It has the base functionality of a terminal multiplexer, which — if you're not an existing user of such a tool — you can think of as a text version of graphical window managers.

It is similar to tmux or screen) but includes many built-in features, such as a native layout and plugin system, that allows you to extend it and create your own personalized environment.

The split pane view you see in the section header graphic are similar to the split panes in Warp, iTerm, and WezTerm, except Zellij is in control of the panes vs the terminal program itself.

Zellij differs from Warp's panes in that, with Zellij, you can detach running sessions (say, if they are going to run a long time, or the command you run in that session is going to act like a server but you don't want it to take up screen real estate).

You also would not want to run Zellij in Warp or WezTerm since Warp is very opinionated as to how a modern terminal should work and WezTerm has its own multiplexer and session handler.

One feature that makes Zellij unique is its WebAssembly plugin system. This allows developers to write a plugin which extends Zellij's feeatures in any language that can run on something called the WebAssembly System Interface (WASI) which is system interface to run WebAssembly outside the web that I'll cover in more depth in a future newsletter edition.

I'm somewhat of a die hard user of screen (don't @ me tmux fans), so I'd like to make an offer to you if you're Zellij-curious and plan to give it a try. I just gave Zellij a light workout in Apple's Terminal.app and have to admit it's a pretty spiffy multiplexer (I wouldn't have dedicated a section for it otherwise). However, I'm really not going to switch from screen so if you do put Zellij through some paces, I'd gladly give a byline-attributed section to you in a future edition to tell the world your experience with it.

Alternatively, if you do your own write-up in your own blog/newsletter-space, drop a note in the comments with it (and I can then drop a link to it in a future edition).

Wasm Command-Line Playground: jq

Wasm seems to be slowly eating the world, which is one reason I keep featuring it and tools that support it. I mentioned WASI in the previous section. While it lets you run Wasm outside a web browser context, Wasm was originally designed (I'm oversimplifying here) to take things designed for the terminal or context and run them in the browser.

I like learning through examples, and when I found Robert Aboukhalil's (@RobAboukhalil) tutorial on porting jq to Wasm so it can run in a browser I felt compelled to share it.

The jq program is, as you likely already know, a command line tool for working with JSON. Robert's article walks you through creating a command line playground — a space where folks can play with a program in-browser vs in-terminal — for jq.

You can preview the result over at jq kung fu and hit up the accompanying GitHub repo for more details.

If you port another command line app over and document your adventure (which I'd highly recommend doing if you've been bitten by the Wasm bug), drop a note in the comments or to me directly so I can feature it in an upcoming issue.

Stargate Alive

Mika McKinnon (mikamckinnon) is a consultant, public speaker, and writer who hails from Vancouver. She's also a field geophysicist, disaster researcher, and scifi science consultant. It's the last bit — scifi science consultant — that we're focusing on here as she has an amazing Twitter thread discussing some of her maths-y work on the Stargate military science fiction media franchise.

She regularly drops science-heavy Stargate tweets and threads and was on a recent episode of Dial the Gate which is aa YouTube channel that celebrates the success of the Stargate franchise with the creators and fans in long-form retrospective interviews.

Check out her maths-thread, listen/watch the DtG episode, and be super envious of the cool stuff Mika gets to do.

FIN

There may be a makeup day or two this week as I'm funemployed for the next seven days and plan to be outside more than inside. Rest assured, you'll get all five editions or your money back.

Remember you can now use dailyfinds.hrbrmstr.dev or the original URL to access this or any newsletter edition; and, if you do interact in the comments, the only rule is kindness. ☮

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