Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Frames Of Reference- Chapter 25

    The graph paper is one fraction of a millimeter thick. On its factory-cut surface, twenty-six evenly spaced lines jut out in precise increments toward the edges. If it were placed on a lazy susan, these lines would form dazzling arcs, but as it is it remains placated and reticent aside a standard wooden pencil. Beyond the pencil is Nil’s emaciated right hand.

  • Let's talk about it.

    You don't know it, but you don't really want me here. It's not that I'm negative--a panacea word to drug every uncomfortable thought--because I am not. Not more negative than anything or anyone else, I think. Not more negative than you. More blunt, perhaps. Perhaps not.

    You don't want me here because I'm honest. More stark than negative, more naked, bare, and vulnerable. I don't claim power in being honest, it's just a state of being not some special gift. I find honest people everywhere, when they can bare the social burden of showing it. Others I suspect, wishing they would scream and tear their shirts open to finally show it. Not a good way to show it, but doesn't suppression end in explosion? Or is that just me?

  • No walls

    Spent 2 hours running around the map and trying every single dialog option - to find out there was no wall in the room I thought I was stuck.

• Politics and World Events

  • Dark Clouds

    With the news that the US Supreme Court has declared that the President has immunity for all acts conducted in the official business of the office, and that such cannot be entered as evidence in court proceedings, it's hard not to feel a dark cloud gathering. This, surely, is what Germany felt in the 30s, just before the tipping point, when politics were still democratic, until they weren't.

    I've been trying so hard to live outside of my screen today. To put it down, play cards with my in-laws, smile like nothing's wrong. Inside, every nerve is screaming. It feels like everything's bad and getting worse, and that things will never be this good again. In one of my my group chats, I learned that an old acquaintance (not in our group, but close with others in the chat) lost her daughter to suicide last week. Another person in the chat is really going through it: her husband's father dying, their son spiralling dangerously out of control, their family finances in incredibly dire straights.

• Technology and Free Software

  • Ignorance

    Complaints were made about technical project managers exhibiting ignorance of computers. While someone with 'technical' in their title probably should know at least something of computers, humans can be very specialized these days, so in general everyone knows little to nothing about most things. I once knew someone who had trouble telling disk space apart from memory—lol, what, really??—says us technical types who spend, uh, far too long on computers. Computers are probably important enough at the moment that knowing at least a little about them may be good, but that would take time away from someone dedicated to some other pursuit, such as advanced chip design, as was the case for that someone. Given specialization, an expert in one area might not be so good at even a seemingly closely related field. Chip design, by the way, can use crazy amounts of CPU, memory, and disk space, so they were often running out of one or more of those.

  • Project Crossroads

    I mentioned in my inaugural post that unlike the very filtered content of my other online venues, my gemlog would have more sundry and stream-of-consciousness subject matter. That's relevant because today's post is going to be more of a journaling entry in the purest sense.

    I took a break from working on VVO to work on the tabletop version of Vanquish Vanguard. I've now completely prepared the current playtest campaign, which runs through level 12 (the highest "normal" level in VanVan, though I have some draft content for "epic" levels 13-16).

  • Programming/Sysadmin

    • Reloading Packet Filter Tables

      is thus problematic as reloads of the rules or reboots of the system will wipe out dynamic addresses in the table, that is, hosts not also placed into the "/etc/testhosts" file. There could be an "@reboot" cron job to load the dynamic portions on boot, as well as an "edit and reload the firewall" wrapper script that carries out any necessary pre- and post- firewall rules change actions, but another way would be to only put addresses into the file, and when that file changes (or on firewall reload or system reboot) the new addresses will be loaded into memory. Dynamic addresses are still good if you want to expire the entries after some amount of time, and do not care if a firewall reload or system reboot wipes them out. However, if frequent firewall edits are made that may make temporary addresses a bit too dynamic, as there might be a lot of churn putting them back into memory after each edit. This may be more manageable if you have planned outage windows for firewall rule changes, as opposed to someone who is always fiddling around with the rules to try out this or that.