Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • brick by boring brick

    I guess this is a little personal rant but I'm genuinely baffled by how everyone seems to have everything figured out. I'm in my early twenties but genuinely I feel like a lost eighteen year old. I am trying to build myself and grow but god is it boring to try to bloom inside concrete walls. A mind can only be so creative when you are only presented with florescent lit shopping malls and 10$ horrendous coffee in minimalist coffee shops as places to explore. I often blame the space around me for what I am, but I am then presented with all those that can breathe in the same space that suffocates me.

  • My friend's new book

    This is a long typed-up version of the notes I mailed to my friend Madeline. They were lost in the mail. Glad I made photocopies!

    Madeline and I have known each other for 23 years. We aren't close friends, but pick-up-where-we-left- off-after-long absences friends. She sent me a typescript of her new novel for me to read and comment on, followed by anxious text messages: "Is it any good? Is it a book? Are we still friends?"

  • Continuing to tear through reading

    I'm continuing to work on a long-form bit of writing about Computers as Theatre but I seem to be running afield with other books and papers, trying to get more context for some of the observations she's making. One of the big detours is through some of these really early papers on HCI, like one about using context-free grammars to describe all the UI actions of workflows and deduce, from there, character of the interactions people were experiencing by looking at the shapes of production trees of the grammar

  • Shifting Interests

    As of late, I've found my interests shifting quite a bit. I've lost a lot of my love for most gaming genres, and find myself really only enjoying text adventures and gamebook games (Twine, Inform, Quest, Ink, etc...), as well as a few strategy games that I can play at a slow pace, like Mindustry and FTL. I also seem to have a small love for farm sims like Harvest Moon, but not so much for the romance part of them that always seems to get shoehorned into the whole thing. But things like shooters, RPGs, and such just don't hold me now.

  • off the shelf rig

    Yes, it has been some time since the last time I phlog'd. Yes, I went through some shit, and that has come to pass, so I am where I at now, which is writing this phost. I have basically gone non-participatory and have not had much desire to plug in. It wasn any kind of conscious decision I made, it was just something that just happened. I just stopped. The time I would usually spend doi my online activities were replaced with more analog activities and connecting with people in meatspace...to an extent. I am still hyper-sensitive to getting easily flooded by being around too much stimuli, but I have found some tools (not weapons) to help me keep on the m0ar manageable side.

  • Scheherazade

    I read more books now, and while I never looked down on skimming and skipping, which can make a good book even better, I’ve found myself having stopped doing that lately and instead I’m enjoying every page. I’m not as anxious for the plot to move along and I don’t mind tangents and stories-in-stories-in-stories. I’m patient with them now and let them carry me on their journeys beyond journeys. Last fall I read Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, a book I saw in bookstores 20 years ago and always thought would be dorky or campy but I loved it, it has changed my relationship to books and reading. It’s just a treasure chest.

• Science

  • Asteroids (1979)

    I've been recording my Asteroids games and posting the videos up on YouTube. (This is the Asteroids video game by Atari from 1979.) For I while I was posting them on my personal channel, then learned that I could make a dedicated channel. (YouTube allows users up to 100 channels.)

  • Responsibility vs determinism

    Please let’s continue have a Postel’s Law approach to this stuff: let’s stay compassionate with how other people are just victims of their circumstances and antecedents (I've always loved the Gaiman quote "When you know somebody really well, it's hard to stay mad at them very long") while continuing to take our own responsibilities seriously.

    That’s not meant to be sollipsistic or patronizing against all those poor fools out there, just patient and forgiving; committing to a restorative or transformative approach over a carceral or punitive one.

• Technology and Free Software

  • It's All Books Now

    With enshittification only accelerating and venture capital poisoning touching almost all consumer products, I might just stop consuming most video content.

    I've been using Freetube and Newpipe to watch youtube for years now, avoiding the absolute dumpster fire that is Youtube's own application. However, I'm noticing more hitches with those apps, and happened to see a post on mastodon where someone said something about Youtube closing their API, so I'm kind of putting two-and-two together. If they pull a Twitter and Reddit, then I'll probably have to stop watching Youtube videos, or, if ytdl still works somehow, figure out how to use that.

  • Musing on my Ideal Knowledgebase/Archiving Software

    There's a webapp I've had a vague idea about making for a long time, and earlier today I was thinking about not having posted on Gemini for a while; so I figured I might as well braindump about the idea and flesh it out some more.

    Do I expect anyone to make anything even somewhat resembling what I describe here? Hell no! (there's already a dearth of even basic bookmarking utilities like Pinboard) Do I even expect anyone to read this post? No, it's mostly just serving to conceptualize how feasible it'd be to make myself (spoiler: it isn't). Although if you'd also be interested in something like this, I'd love if you let me know!

  • which allow tor

    I kind of just pulled these server names from memory, I'm sure you can find a more complete list somewhere else.

  • Internet/Gemini

    • browser wallet bullshit

      I wanted to look into what kind of stuff I could get metamask to tell me, but there's a lot of different ways to get ethereum wallet browser extensions to tell you stuff.

    • maybe other things to do

      played with websurfaces some. ripped a PDF into images, and loaded those onto cubes, and put click handlers. it is meh. bai is working on a rewrite of janusweb, so maybe I'll play with other stuff for a while.