Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • IKEA soft serve

    IKEA soft serve.........my favourite thing in the world. One cup for just 85 pence!! Bring your own flake and make it a celebration.......a long trip through the store and its labyrinth aura. There awaits the sweet cold treat, at the very end of the maze. A delicious treat. A SUBLIME treat.

  • Chicken report 1

    This is a new series called Chicken Report, in which I talk about plans and progress with my chickens. I've had chickens for about 3 years now, and I've been making every mistake imaginable, I am still stumbling trying to get a nice harmonious coop, so here are The News.

  • Many Lives, Many Masters

    I recently finished reading "Many Lives, Many Masters" by Dr. Brian Weiss, a classic in the literature on past lives and reincarnation in the Western world. The book is based on the true case history of a young woman named Catherine who visits Dr. Weiss's psychiatry practice in the early 1980s seeking treatment for depression, anxiety, and multiple phobias. Dr. Weiss was head of psychiatry at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach, Florida, at the time. As a classically trained psychiatrist, he is well-versed in conventional treatments that eschew the supernatural and spiritual dimensions in favor of more scientifically verifiable and measurable methods.

  • I'm Reading Again

    The last time I was really into reading was during school. I made it through a couple books but eventually I got busy and got thrown off the habit. I also was just reading off of my phone which definitely worked but would usually get tiring after some time. Not to mention I’d have notifications and other apps competing for my attention.

    Since this last week I’ve been using one of the new Kobo readers, the Clara BW. I’ll save most of my thoughts on it for a future review after I’ve spent more time with it, but so far I’m really happy with it! It really is an upgrade from phone reading in every way, and I can see myself reading more often with it than if I were to rely solely on physical books. If you don’t want to wait for my review, my friend Joel recently reviewed his Kobo Clara 2E, a slightly older model which my BW is very nearly identical to.

• Technology and Free Software

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Books vs Internet

      Books come across as if they were so high-and-mighty and thought-through but they’re less robust than a well-worn, palimpsested wiki page or even a solid, hashed-out Usenet thread.

      They’re more like sermons than conversations, being talked at than talked with.

      In linguistics school one teacher said to us that “written language is just a technology”. It’s one particular finger pointing to the moon but it’s nothing to get hung about. If videos or voice messages really were a better way for people to record and convey and teach and understand things then it would be fine if it, over centuries, pushed out the written word.