The Library Of Babel

You’ve probably heard about this project before. Incredible piece of art/scienece/math – wonderful. I wish I was this clever.

Anyway, I liked the description that some LLM ( I don’t want to advertise a particular one ) gave. I particularly like the last sentence – and if I knew what to look for I would now know… unfortunately searching for “hans hafner died of complications” will result in that sentence, but of course the sentence continues with gibberish and also of course there are almost infinite numbers of ways (most of them gibberish) that continue this sentence, so again, we wouldn’t know where to look… kchkchkch – the scope is funny – anyway – here’s the text from the LLM:

Yes, you are thinking of The Library of Babel (found at libraryofbabel.info).

It is a brilliant digital realization created by author and programmer Jonathan Basile, based entirely on the famous 1941 short story by Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges.

The website operates on a fascinating premise: it contains every possible combination of the 26 lowercase letters of the English alphabet, plus the space, comma, and period.

Here is exactly how it works:

  • The Scale: The site simulates a universal library containing roughly $10^{4677}$ books. Because storing that much data physically or digitally would require more space than exists in the observable universe, the site uses a clever pseudo-random number generating algorithm.
  • The Search Feature: Instead of browsing endlessly through walls of absolute gibberish, you can use the “Search” tab to type in any sentence, phrase, or paragraph (up to 3,200 characters).
  • The Result: The algorithm instantly inverts the text into a set of fixed coordinates. It will point you to the exact hexagon, wall, shelf, and book where that precise string of text “resides.” Because the math is fixed, that sentence will exist at those exact coordinates forever. 

It is a trippy experience because it means everything you have ever said, every secret you have ever kept, and the exact description of how you will die is already written down somewhere on a page in that library.

Productivity tip: find Logic projects that contain a specific audio file

It happens every now and then that I need to know which Logic projects contain a certain audio file.

If you’re not afraid of the terminal, the following command will do that for you:

find . -type f -name "ProjectData" -exec grep -a "Your Audio Filename" {} +

The dot in this command is the starting directory for this search – when you first open the terminal it will open to the home folder of the user that you’re loggen in as.

If you want to be specific: only type “find” and a space and then drag and drop a folder from Finder into the terminal window, that will add the complete path to that folder as the search starting directory, then type (or copy/paste) the rest of the command and hit enter.

What’s happening under the hood?

Most of the files Logic uses are binary files that look like gibberish to humans. A standard search usually skips these because it can’t “read” the text inside. By using the -a flag with grep, we force the computer to treat that binary blob as plain text. This allows the command to scan through the code and pick out the human-readable filepaths and filenames hidden inside your project data without you ever having to open Logic.

macOS: Set Up iPhone as Mac Microphone

This is very useful if you don’t have a microphone available but need to quickly record a sketch into Logic for example. This is how to set up your iPhone as a microphone using your Mac’s built-in utilities, no third-party software needed:

  1. Connect via cable: Use a charging cable (Lightning or USB-C) to physically connect your iPhone to your Mac.
  2. Select “trust this computer” on the iPhone: Tap Trust on your iPhone when prompted, and enter your passcode.
  3. Open Audio MIDI Setup: Locate and launch the application in the Utilities folder (/Applications/Utilities).
  4. Open the “Audio Devices” window: If the window is not visible, navigate to Window > Audio Devices (or press Command + 1).
  5. Click “enable” below the iPhone name in the sidebar.

Hide Logic Project File Extensions

Apple Logic Pro project bundles normally end in .logicx. If this extension is visible in Finder, it clutters the file name and looks odd when you are doing a quick Save As… during a session. The tiny helper below walks your project drives and toggles the hidden extension flag so that Logic’s bundle appears extension-less in Finder.

TL;DR – Drop the script somewhere on your drive, make it executable, then schedule it in LaunchControl to run every few minutes. Your projects will stay tidy automatically.

Why?

Logic’s default behaviour is to hide the extension for new projects, but there are plenty of ways for it to re-appear (cloning projects, copying between volumes, third-party utilities, expanding .zip archives etc.). Manually hiding the extension file-by-file quickly becomes a drag.

What the script does

  1. Walks one or more directories (your project drives) up to eight folders deep.
  2. Finds anything that matches *logicx (Logic project bundles).
  3. Skips files that are locked (immutable flag set).
  4. Runs the SetFile -a E command to mark the bundle’s extension as invisible.

That’s it.

Prerequisites

  • macOS (tested on Ventura & Sonoma)
  • Xcode Command Line Tools (provides the SetFile utility)
  • LaunchControl – the easiest way to schedule background jobs on macOS. (Technically optional, but strongly recommended.)

Installation / Setup

  1. Install LaunchControl if you don’t have it yet.
  2. Save the script below as hide_logic_extension.sh somewhere convenient (e.g. ~/Scripts). Adjust the DIRECTORIES array so it points at all your Logic project volumes.
  3. Make it executable:
   chmod +x hide_logic_extension.sh
  1. Create a new Launch Agent in LaunchControl that calls the script every few minutes. (In LaunchControl ? New ? User Agent, point Program to the script and set a simple start interval, e.g. 300 s.)

If you prefer the command line, you can craft your own plist and load it via launchctl, but I’ve found the GUI to be far less brittle.

Script contents

#!/bin/zsh

# Path to SetFile – part of the Xcode CLT package
SETFILE="/usr/bin/SetFile"

# Directories to search – EDIT THIS
DIRECTORIES=(
    "/Volumes/DRIVE-1"
    "/Volumes/DRIVE-2"
)

for DIRECTORY in "${DIRECTORIES[@]}"; do
    echo "Processing directory: $DIRECTORY"

    # Find files matching *logicx (Logic project bundles)
    find "$DIRECTORY" \
        -not -path "*.Trashes" \
        -not -path "*.DocumentRevisions-V100" \
        -not -path "*.TemporaryItems" \
        -maxdepth 8 \
        -name "*logicx" | while read -r file; do

        # Skip locked files/bundles
        if ls -lO "$file" | grep -q 'uchg'; then
            echo "Skipping locked file: $file"
        else
            "$SETFILE" -a E "$file" && \
            echo "Modified: $file" || \
            echo "Failed to modify: $file"
        fi
    done

done

LaunchControl settings

Below is a screenshot of a minimal configuration that runs the job every five minutes. (Replace with your own once you have the script in place.)

What if I don’t want LaunchControl?

You can absolutely roll your own plist:

<!-- ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.example.hide-logic-extension.plist -->
<plist version="1.0">
  <dict>
    <key>Label</key> <string>com.example.hide-logic-extension</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
      <string>/path/to/hide_logic_extension.sh</string>
    </array>
    <key>StartInterval</key> <integer>300</integer>
    <key>StandardOutPath</key> <string>/tmp/hide_logic_extension.log</string>
    <key>StandardErrorPath</key> <string>/tmp/hide_logic_extension.err</string>
  </dict>
</plist>

Load it with:

launchctl load -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.example.hide-logic-extension.plist

…but I still recommend LaunchControl for the peace of mind.

Wrap-up

Enjoy cleaner project names! If this saved you a few clicks, you can buy me a coffee ?? and keep the caffeine flowing.

Install Xcode Command-Line Tools (macOS)

Many small macOS scripts and developer utilities rely on Apple’s Command-Line Tools for Xcode package. Among other things, it ships:

  • git, svn, and other version-control binaries
  • clang & friends for compiling C/C++/Obj-C
  • make, ld, strip, ar, nm, …
  • SetFile, PlistBuddy, and dozens of helper tools used in shell scripts

If you ever tried to run git on a fresh Mac and saw a dialog asking to “Install Command Line Developer Tools”, this is what macOS was talking about. Below are three quick ways to get them.

Time required: ? 2 – 3 minutes on a fast connection (700 MB download). No Apple-ID sign-in needed unless you prefer the full Xcode route.

1. One-liner in Terminal (fastest)

  1. Open Terminal.app (? Space ? Terminal).
  2. Run:xcode-select --install
  3. A small dialog appears – click Install and accept the license.

That’s it. After the installer finishes you can verify with:

xcode-select -p   # ? /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools
clang --version    # should print Apple clang …

2. Via the full Xcode app (App Store)

Installing the full 20 GB Xcode bundle also drops the command-line tools on your system. Choose this path only if you plan to use the Xcode IDE.

  1. Open the App Store and search for Xcode.
  2. Click Get / Install (Apple-ID required).
  3. Once Xcode finishes downloading, open it once so it can install its components.
  4. Verify:xcode-select -p # ? /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer

3. Manual .pkg download (offline machines)

Apple hosts standalone installer packages on the Developer website:

  1. Sign in at https://developer.apple.com/download/all/?q=command line tools (free account).
  2. Download the DMG that matches your macOS version, e.g. Command Line Tools for Xcode 15.3.
  3. Mount the DMG and double-click the .pkg inside.

Accepting the license non-interactively

Scripting a fleet of Macs? After installation run:

sudo xcodebuild -license accept

This pre-accepts the license so build systems won’t hang waiting for T&C confirmation.

Uninstalling (rarely needed)

To remove the standalone tools:

sudo rm -rf /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools

Then reinstall with xcode-select --install whenever you need them again.

?? Do not delete if they live inside Xcode.app – use Launchpad or Finder->Applications to remove Xcode instead.

Troubleshooting

• “Command line tools are already installed, use Software Update to install updates.” – They’re present; run softwareupdate -l to check for newer versions.
• xcode-select: error: command line tools are already installed, use Software Update to install – same as above.
• git: command not found even after installing – Open a new Terminal window or run hash -r to refresh your shell’s path cache.

Wrap-up

You now have Apple’s developer toolkit on your Mac. Most of the scripts in this repo (including the Hide Logic Extension helper) will “just work” from here on.

Leaving Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp)

First of all let me tell you how thankful I am that you made your way to this blog post. It means a great deal to me and I hope that you will stay in contact with me.
It means, that you find my leaving important enough to at least check out why I’m doing it.
I urge you to do the same – and I hope that you get your friends and family to also move to a more healthy and positive surrounding.

If you would like to stay in touch:

I’m putting this first because it’s more important to me that we stay in touch – if you would like to know my reasoning/rambling, read that further below.

Phone: I very much enjoy talking on the phone – if you have my number, please use it – otherwise send me a quick email.

Messenger: Best would be to stay in touch via a private messenger. I use Signal, best to exchange a quick email beforehand… as my phone number is pretty clean of spam it’s not published on this website.

Email: Email is the most free and open communication standard out there – yes, it’s not very private, but at least it works without having to rely on any of the large cloud companies. You can find my mail around here on the site.

Social media – Mastodon: It would be wonderful if you came over and connected on Mastodon:
https://mastodon.social/invite/5TPS8tu4
For very in-depth information on what this is head over to the EFF and read this article
A little easier to read is this article on Lifehacker

A quick note on artists and self-promotion:

I understand that we need to reach an audience as large as possible and that these services make that easily possible. That’s why it would be so good if we collectively made this statement and brought all the well-meaning people (and we are in the huge majority!!) with us to these free (in the sense of freedom, not in the sense of free beer) open solutions to make our world better, instead of giving all of our great energy to the executives and shareholders of Meta, Twitter, etc…

Why I’m leaving all Meta (Facebook) properties.

The main reason is: I don’t want my presence to contribute to Metas financial gain anymore at all.

Social media was such a beautiful thing – it was meant to bring us closer together, but what happened was political devide. With social media companies’ automated and algorithmic information positioning helped destructive forces to divide and conquer the world.
It helped to make Brexit happen.

I’ve stopped actively using Facebook probably about 7 years ago and Twitter about 3 years ago. I no longer want my emotional state to be influenced by any algorithmic timeline. Once you’ve used a service that doesn’t rely on doomscrolling to keep the user engaged you will immediately feel different and you will realize how your emotional state has been affected by someone elses decision about what to show you.

We have just now seen how quickly regime change can happen. If it does happen in Germany, I don’t want my connections and network of people to be in the hands of anybody except me. I have read German history and I know what it means to “round up people” based on some arbitrary attribute.
I want to be out of those databases.

Seeing how quickly tech CEOs buckled at the beginning of the second Tr*!$ administration in 2025 it is clear that I have to move away. My next project is to move my address book and other sensitive data off of iCloud and into a much more private syncing solution… one step at a time. (EDIT: I’ve done this and everything is now hosted on a Nextcloud instance.)

Special note on WhatsApp:

There are many reasons to leave WhatsApp – main ones for me are again that it’s owned by Meta and that spam is rampant on WhatsApp.

EDIT:

Collection of other peoples’ posts about this same topic:

Where are the off ramps?

Phonautograph

Over on Logicuser.de (I’ve been there for more than 20 year…) bitzone posted the audio recordings of Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, a french inventor of the Phonautograph. The raw recordings are available in the video below.

This stimulated my imagination a little bit, so I had to grab the audio and played around with it a little bit to come up with this little piece.

Those recordings let you hear things that are happening more in your head than in the actual recording. So I’m not going to spoil it and write any of the things that I’m hearing in those snippets. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did creating it.

Phonautograph     

 

 

The front page of today’s LA Times featured the headline, “Workers lead the resistance as AI risk emerges.”

The online edition uses the title, “Column: Your boss wants AI to replace you. The writers’ strike shows how to fight back”

From the article…

A big reason that the AI hype machine has been in overdrive, issuing apocalyptic claims about its vast power, is that the companies selling the tools want to make it all feel inevitable — to feel like the future — and have you believe that resisting it is both futile and stupid. Conveniently, most of these discussions eschew questions such as: Whose future? Whose future does AI really serve?
The answer to that is “Big Tech” and, to a lesser degree, “your boss.”
Matt Nicholas, a 30-year-old writer and WGA member, who was all too aware exactly how AI was going to be used by the film and television industry — not to replace writers, but to undermine them.
Too many executives in too many industries, such as entertainment, tech and journalism, recognize generative AI for what it is: an opportunity to wield leverage over already precarious workforces. There’s going to be a long, hard struggle, but it’s one worth fighting.
I liked this post on VI-Control by user JJP so much, I wanted to archive it here.

Opt out of agreements allowing AI to use your music to build more tracks for a production music library

I don’t have music in any of these libraries, so this is not about Envato specifically, it applies to all of them.

I would suggest to opt-out even though I am very well aware that of course it will not stop these type. of companies (or any for that matter) from implementing AI-driven content and catalogs.

But we don’t have to make it too easy for them.

“Composers/musicians using the website @AudioJungle by @envato to sell royalty free music – Envato have ‘updated’ – their T&C’s to **now have AI train on your items that you have authored and uploaded** You are opted in AUTOMATICALLY. Additionally, your items will now be licensed “in perpetuity” becuase an AI cannot ‘forget’ what it has learned. There is no mention of any profit share for authors from AI works derived from authors’ compositions. If you don’t want your items to be trained by AI, you need to remove them from the marketplace by June 1st. There is (currently) no opt-out available. While I appreciate AI is inevitable and some people will be embracing this, the immediacy with which @envato has gone about it while seemingly going against some of their core values is striking. I can’t believe they didn’t give authors a choice, and have only given 20 days notice to find an alternative. For those who might be dependent on income from the site, it puts them in a massive quandary, especially with the lack of time to find an alternate solution. It’s frankly shameful behavior. I’ve had an author account there since 2009 – which I will now remove. It kept me afloat during my early years in the industry. I also reviewed items on the site. This policy change and sudden implementation is disgraceful, and I’m now sorry to have been associated with @audiojungle and @envato in any way.”