I was asked a little while ago if I understand that farming is not plotting. In fact, “plotting” is not a thing.
I am most certainly not confusing farming with making plots, although semantically making plots is a part of farming. Am I confused about farming and the Chia nomenclature? Oh, yes, very much so. Gives me insomnia.
Here is a very pretty diagram that I fished out of this here wiki
.
I’m a simple man. If I can use a gui, I’ll use a gui. I’m not simple enought to not be able to get into command line and documentation minutia. I make my living off things like that.
So that was the pretty diagram that had harvesters, a farmer, full nodes doing something in a ritual circle overseen by a timelord. The humble wallet and an “Electron GUI” on the right. Even a mythical creature, a pool that we are not supposed to be asking many questions about.
I got to that diagram from this super promising page. What are harvesters, farmers, full nodes, and timelords? Awesome, that’s exactly the question that I have!! But this is clickbait. The road here forks into " network architecture document" (where I got that diagram from) and [the new consensus document (Chia Consensus - Google Docs). Is there an old consensus document? It probably does not matter.
Remember, I’m a Windows gui user. I’m trying to make a mental map of what is going on in that diagram to the gui. It clearly does not map – the gui runs everything in an easy to understand, but monolithic way. When it gets shut down it leaves behind a command line interface.
Now let’s take a look at the command line documentation:
Command: chia start {service}
- Service
node
will start only the full node. - Service
farmer
will start the farmer, harvester, a full node, and the wallet. - positional arguments: {all,node,harvester,farmer,farmer-no-wallet,farmer-only,timelord,timelord-only,timelord-launcher-only,wallet,wallet-only,introducer,simulator}
This is not technical documentation. This is a puzzle. A Chia Lament Configuration.
There’s “all”. That is easy to understand. Node – well, I think I kind of understand what a node is. Same with harverter. Now, farmer-no-wallet. Is wallet a property of the farmer? I can imagine that. But farmer-only!!! What is the difference between a farmer and farmer only? Oh, oh, oh – “Service ‘farmer’ will start the farmer, harvester, a full node, and the wallet.” This is confusing, very confusing, but I’m still with it. Then there’s wallet and wallet only. What is in the wallet besides the wallet? Is a timelord hiding there? A timelord launcher? A gang of timelords? It could be anything.
Is this a timelord?
The introducer and the simulator are not on the previous diagram. Are they in the wallet? Are they part of the full node?
And after that stream of conciousness – have you noticed that “plotter” is not a thing – not in the diagrams, not in the command line documentation?
There is a chia demon. Ok, daemon. It makes plots. Making plots is what we, farmers spend most of our attention on right now. The plots are our lottery tickets. But the other pieces of farming, and I guess occult (timelords, nodes, electron guis, and introducers are not farming methaphors) equipment do not involve making plots. But when you are using the windows gui that is not apparent.
The problem here is that in that puzzle that we all pretend is simple there’s a great deal of complexity. And it stems from poor naming. And the puzzle making culture at Chia Network.
“Plotting” is not a farming term. “Plotting” means to “secretly make plans to carry out (an illegal or harmful action).” I have been saying “plotting” without thinking much about it, and I bet you have too. The farming metaphor that is appropriate to our dirt farming is “sowing”. Maybe “seeding” or “planting”.
We can make plots files without internet, without any time lords or other warlocks. All we need for that is chia demons. But those demons live in a mangled mesh of farming equipment, and I have been very confused about that for a while.
A harvester these days is a machine that is properly called a “combine harvester” or a “combine”. What does a combine combine? Oh, reaping, threshing, gathering, and winnowing— all better metaphors for the mechanics of Chia production.
So when I say I’m having trouble harvesting, I mean combine harvesting. Doing everything that I need to get my plots to give me the sweet, sweet magical, uh plants of the mint family? And doing it with a windows gui or the daemon that the windows gui leaves behind.