Shen's Essays (Philosophy & Computer Science)

Shen's Essays

Dialogue on the Questions of Being, through an Analogy with Chess

Philosophy Featured

Dialogue on the Questions of Being, through an Analogy with Chess

Imagine one day, a Visitor arrives to your office. You offer them tea, and after all the introductions and customary salutations, they inquire of you the following question: “What is chess?”

A photo of a line of workers in front of a furnace, backlit.

Guide to Workflow Automation: How I use Firefly III, Paperless-ngx, and n8n to Painlessly Manage Receipts

A tutorial on using n8n to automate the uploading of receipts from Firefly III to Paperless-ngx.

An image of red onions in front of a pastel white background. Painted with broad brushstrokes.

How to Make Your Website Available Over Tor : A Complete Guide To EOTK, The Enterprise Onion Toolkit

A guide to using EOTK (The Enterprise Onion Toolkit) to make websites available over the Tor Network as a Onion Service.

An image of a open manuscript, with caligraphy written upon it.

Creating Fully Reproducible, PDF/A Compliant Documents in LaTeX

A guide to creating fully reproducible, PDF/A Compliant documents in LaTeX.

A photograph of a stained-glass window embedded into a deeply recessed archway.

Philosophical Contemplation on Einstein's Relativity: An Introduction

Thoughts, reflections, and a review on Relativity, by Albert Einstein. An examination of physics by a student of philosophy.

A landscape painting of two figures reclining next to a classical archway in a pastoral landscape.

The Necessity of Metaphysics: An Introduction for Computer Scientists and the Physical Sciences

An introduction to the Philosophy of Metaphysics for Computer Scientists and other STEM perspectives.

An oil painting of two women at a desk. One of them is writing.

Building a Philosophy Workstation with NixOS: Installing Firefox, VSCodium, and LaTeX

A NixOS tutorial on creating a Philosophy Workstation with Firefox, VSCodium, and LaTeX.

Oil painting of a man writing a letter using a quill.

Building a Philosophy Workstation with NixOS: Learning Home Manager and Configuring Sway with Wayland

A NixOS tutorial on using Network Manager, Home Manager, and setting up a Graphical Environment with Wayland and Sway

An oil painting of Galileo, being confronted by three seated inquisitors.

The Role of Friendship in Inquiry: Reflections on Galileo's Dialogues

I recently finished reading Galileo Galilei’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. Why is this ancient text still relevant today?

A photograph of cyphers written by hand on a piece of paper.

How to Install NixOS With Full Disk Encryption (FDE) using LUKS2, Detached LUKS Header, and A Separate Boot Partition on an USB/MicroSD Card

This tutorial is a guide on installing NixOS, with a separate /boot partition and full-disk-encryption (FDE) using LUKS2 with a detached header.

A dark oil painting of a storm above some rocky mountains.

Flashing Coreboot Firmware with TianoCore on a Purism Librem 14 Laptop in order to install NixOS

This tutorial is a guide on flashing (i.e. installing) Coreboot firmware on to a Purism Librem 14 laptop.