While writing my papers I try not to get bogged down too much. So if a paragraph doens't flow right I just type TODO: rewrite on the line below it, and continue writing. When I think of something that I shouldn't forget, like an extra analysis to run I just write it down as a todo in the running text of my paper. I also write thoughts on my paper as a todo. Ideas on structure, whether I should maybe rearrange paragraphs or approach a subject differently, it all ends up as a todo in the running text.

When running the VSCode task for converting my paper to PDF (using Pandoc) it puts all the todos into the running text. That's fine by me, it helps as an extra reminder that stuff still needs to happen. But I wanted the todos to be visually different from the running text, so that it stands apart and doesn't confuse people who are reading my draft. That is where my Pandoc filter comes into play.

I found this super easy alternative way to animate your slides with reveal.js that works out of the box with Markdown and Pandoc. Here is how to do it.

Last week I had to give a progress presentation about the current state of my PhD, and I can whip those up in no time. I use Boilerplate Paper not only for writing my papers, but also for presentations like this.

I write the presentation in Markdown and then convert it to reveal.js. But sometimes you want something else than the default sliding transition that reveal.js provides.

The goal is to run c-lightning with plugins in a local testing cluster. For my cluster I use Simverse. Simverse allows for additional command line arguments to be passed to lightningd, so it should be possible to run lightningd with the plugin argument.

Let's first clone our plugin. We will be using one of the plugins that are available through Lightningd on Github.

cd ~\simverse\_repos
git clone https://github.com/lightningd/plugins.git --depth 1

We put the plugin in the _repos folder, because it is assumed that the plugin is there when the cluster is being build. (Also: throughout this article we assume your simverse folder is inside your home folder. If that is not the case, adjust it accordingly)

Since all nodes in Simverse run inside Docker containers, that plugin-file should be made available inside the Docker context folder. The _repos folder is not part of that context (each container gets its own context) so we have to copy the file from the _repos folder to the Docker context folder. Luckily Simverse works with the concept of recipes. A recipe describes how your cluster should look like. A recipe is a bash script that uses a library called cookbook that can be used to build your cluster step-by-step. Since it is "just" a bash script, you can do anything bash can do to tweak your cluster.

We will create a recipe that creates a cluster with three c-lightning nodes, running on a bitcoind back-end.

I do most of my development on a remote machine. The machine isn't that remote, it's a mini-pc running Ubuntu that is standing right here on my desk. It has no peripherals, so I have to do all my development remotely through my Windows 10 laptop.

Remote development with Vscode is amazing. It just works. Once you are set up, there's no difference with working locally. To have that seamless experience you do have to set up keybased authentication for SSH. If you don't you will be constantly reminded of working remotely, because you have to type in the password of the remote machine.

If you want to debug LND, or if you want to take a real deep dive into LND, you probably want to be able to set breakpoints in the source code to see what is actually happening. Not only that, you also want to have the node run in a local cluster of other nodes, so that you can perform some real Lightning actions like opening a channel and make payments. This post takes you through the setup I use based on Delve and Simverse.

I've been following Bitcoin and more importantly the Blockchain from the sidelines for a few years now, but I wanted to get my hands dirty. Obviously I could just download the Bitcoin Core executables from bitcoin.org, but I always feel it gives me more insight if I build something myself. Also it's was a nice test case for Bash on Windows.