Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • problems -- trying to fix shit

  • Influence rolls

    I recently read the GURPS-based Discworld RPG and they have a fun way of blending social skills with reaction rolls!

    [...]

    I’m curious about reaction rolls because they seem to only set the initial disposition of an NPC. The PCs can then still mess it up.

    Althoug I feel that the Socialite Challenges table from Silent Legions is way more interesting in that case. Rolling to find out “Does she know, and why won’t she tell?” is more fertile ground for roleplaying than “this lady really likes the party”.

  • Mixing Rules Cyclopedia D&D with GURPS

    Inspired by how Stars Without Number managed to use a fighting system similar to D&D but a skill system similar to Traveller, maybe there can be a way to bolt on some of the stuff from GURPS into RC. And here I’m specifically looking at the version of GURPS 4e as presented in the GURPS Discworld book.

    I’m kinda kicking myself for not looking at this book earlier. The original 3e GURPS Discworld book was the first GURPS book I ever got but it was kind of a disappointment since instead of being a stand-alone game, there was a GURPS Lite printed in the back, but the main book itself was more of a Basic Set + CI + CII kind of game. So this second attempt came out in 2002, just four years after the original, I’ve been missing out, I should’ve bought it 22 years ago instead of just picking it up off a Bundle of Holding the other day.

  • Why I left gender studies

    At the beginning of "The Three Body Problem" (at least, the American version), Liu Cixin put in a pretty scathing review of the Cultural Revolution. In it, he imagined a professor being tortured on stage at a university by the Red Guards—his students. The Red Guards demanded that he denounce who they considered to to be the bourgeois scientists of the west—those whose international fame may be ascribed to their exploitation of the many working people labouring behind the scenes, building their microscopes, their computers, or perhaps doing their calculations by hand. The professor thought this was absurd. He, for example, rejected the idea that we shouldn't use Einstein's theory of relativity, because it was observably useful, and that we should remove Einstein name from his work, because he is indeed a smart guy who did a pretty good job at figuring the whole thing out (until, of course, our models demanded more uncertainty).

  • 🔤SpellBinding: YORSTUI Wordo: PECKS

  • No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai

    I've been slowly exploring Japanese literature over the last little while. First, I read 'I am a Cat' by Soseki Natsume during my hiatus from this capsule. Just recently I went on my second foray into this realm: No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai. While the first was a humorous, playful romp through a Japan that was rapidly modernizing, the second was one of the darkest books I've ever read. No Longer Human is the story of a man named Oba Yozo following him from childhood to death (or at least implying he died) in the form of 'found documents' that are almost like a series of journals written by Yozo chronicling certain stages in his life, with the prologue and epilogue being written by people who never met him.

  • making shit better

    they give up in frustration and that seems like a waste of effort that could have potentially done good.

  • Washer

    On the plus side, a dish or laundry washing machine can save much effort, especially if you've already done ten plus hours of work around the house and garden, or you have too many dishes to clean. A high-volume restaurant or food kitchen comes to mind. There are negatives to a dish washer, which I almost never use, such as the dishes being too clean compared to hand washing, and therefore the risk of allergies. Apparently such things as hand washing, fermented food, and living on a farm help suitably exercise the immune system. There may thus be a goldilocks zone between too clean and too dirty. These days, one may spend too much time on a computer (I'm not naming names) so a break for some manual thoughtless dish washing can be welcome. Also if you're cleaning sharp pointy things it may help be in the moment for that, not obsessing over some ncurses bug (again, not naming names).

  • April 14, 2024 - Second Sunday After Easter (W)

    The earth is full of the mercy of the Lord, alleluia: by the word of the Lord the heavens were established, alleluia, alleluia.

    Psalm: Rejoice in the Lord, O ye just; praise becometh the upright.

    Glory be to the Father. The earth is full of the mercy of the Lord, alleluia: by the word of the Lord the heavens were established, alleluia, alleluia.

  • Akebono, Musashimaru and Konishiki

    It's been a long time since I did an instalment in my micro album reviews series. This post *isn't* one, but maybe it'll get the ball rolling.

    In 1995, Hawaiian musician Israel Kamakawiwoʻole recorded a song called "Tengoku Kara Kaminari", (meaning "Thunder from Heaven"), celebrating three American sumo wrestlers of Pacific Island heritage who were the first non-Japanese wrestlers in history to earn championship titles. If you know absolutely nothing about Hawaiian music (raises hand) but have some vague stereotypical notion of what "Hawaiian island music" might sound like, yeah, it sounds more or less exactly like that. I don't mean that as a slight, it's a genuinely nice song for what it is, it's sincere and sentimental and respectful and pays tribute to people and events that mean a lot to some people but are supremely obscure in the wider sphere.

• Technology and Free Software

  • site administration under DOS

    what does it look like? and is it possible to work with this? are you crazy? - you ask.

    [...]

    Web 1.0 Hosting - is a project that makes it possible to access static websites from old devices such as retro computers, old operating systems, palmtops, and cellular phones as part of an initiative to save the old web. Hosting of modern websites and the use of modern technologies are also permitted.

  "Web 1.0 Hosting - is a project that makes it possible to access static websites from old devices such as retro computers, old operating systems, palmtops, and cellular phones as part of an initiative to save the old web. Hosting of modern websites and the use of modern technologies are also permitted." gemini://midnight.pub/posts/1801

  • OFFLFIRSOCH thoughts and observations

    Okay, a little later than expected, but as promised, here's a quick write up some thoughts and observations arising from the (IMHO) very successful first edition of the annual OFFLine FIRst SOftware CHallenge in March. It's not such much specific observations of submitted programs, most of which I freely I admit I haven't yet tried to run, more like stuff that is relevant to a hypothetical small future community of people who might like to spend time thinking about and writing this style of software. Whether or not OFFLFIRSOCH will help crystalise such a community, I dunno. I'll be pleased if it does, but not devastated if it doesn't.

  • OFFLFIRSOCH 2024 round up

    It's the first of April, which means two things! One, you should believe even fewer things you read online than usual. And two, the historic first ever OFFLine FIRst SOftware CHallenge has now drawn to a close. I had no idea what sort of uptake to expect for this new challenge, given that it necessarily targets a smaller audience (not everybody who phlogs/gemlogs also codes), but I am happy to report that OFFLFIRSOCH was welcomed with enthusiasm despite the awful name! I am aware of a total of twelve submisions. If I have missed or forgotten your submission, please reach out to me! EDIT: Now up to thirteen!

  • Internet/Gemini

    • On Gemtext Specification 0.24.0

      There is a new version of the Gemtext specification out, and I decided to comment on it publicly, instead of privately, because only this way a discussion involving more people can follow.

  • Programming

    • First Car

      For thrig, in a LISP program; for me, the '81 Civic I bought from my dad for $500 and drove for a couple of years before my foot went through the floor, literally, at a snowy intersection in the middle of winter. Years of west-coast winter driving by my parents when I was young, before we moved east. Out there, heavy salt use, and with no protective coating on the undercarriage, rust is basically inevitable.

      At point-of-catastrophic-failure the car was almost 20 years old, and in retrospect, it's a little shocking it lasted so long.

      [...]

      C++, Lua, Python are my pragmatic go-tos, and they're varying degrees of "fine", but programming in those languages doesn't feel as enjoyable in the same way it does with Scheme, with Lua probably the closest, and at least Python tries.