It's warm again in Bucharest these days. The weather forecast says we'll have a winter without snow. That's unheard of. Even last year we had a little, a couple of times. Things are changing fast.

In other news, I'm still burnt out on coding, after doing way too much of it last year. Note to self, that can happen even with one's main hobby. Been working on a couple of semi-secret websites instead. Can't wait to let everyone know, but there's more polishing and double-checking to do first.

Overall, I've been a lot more active again starting in December. It's obvious from the amount of notes I've been taking. That's a good sign.

Three days ago, a friend showed me his attempt to formulate a personal manifesto on literal paper, like I did many years ago.

Two days ago, I saw a very nice agenda in our local stationery store, that can be used as a personal journal.

Yesterday, mom lent me one of her modern fountain pens. It's so much nicer than those I learned to hate in primary school. Another thing to rediscover and finally enjoy.

This is how magic happens. But damn, I need my glasses.

While ncurses still has a place in the modern world, ANSI escape codes may be better in some situations:

• you can use (almost) any programming language, not just those that have a curses binding or a foreign function interface;
• you're literally just printing out some short codes: that's both efficient and liberating;
• you can use features that modern terminal emulators have, but (n)curses doesn't.

As for the downsides:

• ANSI escapes are like coding in machine language – you'll need a cheatsheet;
• some hardware videoterminals never supported the standard;
• ncurses does more useful work besides translating for those old things.

It's still good to have another tool in the toolbox, doubly so when it's easy and fun to tinker with.