Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Larissa

    My companion, or rather my ex-companion, had to be removed from the project on Larissa for attempts at sabotage. Most of him was unmade and joined the particulate matter flowing through ducts between algae farms. I maintained his skin to create crude, flappy percussion instruments. I spend some of my downtime practising them. In the flat space, they sound more like bangings on hard rubber than what they are supposed to be, but that may be the fault of the resonating chambers or the general lack of acoustic conductance within the tiny, atmosphered living chamber.

  • linkstar operation thoughts

    It's like when you hit a certain low and you thought to yourself how to be even lower than you were you start having stupid ideas such as thinking to organise an event that is not going to help with anything at all because of how unrealistic it is.

    And I kinda did that anyways because I'm that stupid.

    Look, it's not that in the end I actually did the organising part of the event because I just decided to let someone who doesn't even know how the event works to do all the rough planning because apparently it's "easy" just so I could ease the burden of actually having to take the responsibility, but it's also not like it's a bad thing when you just need someone crazy enough to take the leap of faith to do something that was thought to be impossible.

  • A classic lazy day after "too much fun" the night before

    Ah, yes... last night... we partied at a bourbon place... hit the restaurant next door to it where I enjoyed a fanciful stout whose name I can't remember along with a fantastic barbecued brisket mac 'n cheese... went home for more magick fluids... we laughed... we cried... I hit the top of my already war-zone-esque bald head on the sharp pointy corner of a shelf after retrieving my toothbrush from a clumsy drop... my wife endured a drunken state-of-the-world rant... popped about an eighth (originally spelling: 'either'..) of a gummy... a few disoriented trips to the bathroom during the night... slept well, but sleep doesn't remedy toxicity the way it used to....

  • Sleep Is So Important

    Sleep is so important for ones health. I say this as someone who is currently suffering from a stretch of bad/reduced sleep and is really starting to feel the effects.

    I try to wake up at around 6am every day. I like getting an early start to the day and can take my time gearing up. I'm usually in bed by 10-10:30pm and screen time has ceased about a half hour before then.

  • Old coins

    I've been trying to figure out why I tend to hoard old coins. Not that old - 70's and 80's quarters mostly (although I do have an envelope full of pre-1965 silver coins too). There is a pile next to the monitor.

    I move them around and 'stim', I suppose, twiddling them between my fingers. Long before 'stimming' was a thing, I was doing it with British pound coins, but I haven't had any in years, so it's quarters for now.

• Technology and Free Software

  • If you’re staying off the Web only because you’re worried about Google indexing what you write, I have good news

    Really, it’s all there in the title. You should still read the rest of the article, though.

    If you’ve been writing in Geminispace because you don’t want Google to index your stuff (and you don’t want to use robots.txt or similar to tell it to go away), then this revelation gives you one fewer reason to make that fancypants HTML-based site with beautiful tables that you’ve been dreaming of making.

  • Post challenge thoughts

    We slept a night after the last day of the Old Computer Challenge, and things begin to sink in.

  • Day 7 of the 2024 Old Computer Challenge

    Today I hung out with a friend playing Atari games, so I didn't have time for much computing; however, I didn't use a newer computer so I didn't break any rules (and the Atari 7800 probably counts as old enough for the challenge anyway).

  • 🎧 Fuckity Bye, Pioneer

    Let's talk about Pioneer DJ gear. It’s well-made, battle-hardened, and the defacto standard. But it’s overpriced, and let down by some of the worst software I’ve ever used. Three months ago, I bit the bullet and part-exchanged my DDJ-1000 – which I’ve had since 2018 – for a Native Instruments S4. Why? Rekord Box is a piece of shit, and Pioneer are taking the fucking piss, charging a subscription to use it.

    There was nothing really wrong with the hardware – just like there’s nothing really wrong with CDJs, or DJMs – it’s built like a tank, and didn’t cark it at the first sight of cigarette & spliff ash. Is it the most feature rich controller? No. But it’s a decent size, and the platters felt comfy after years of using CDJs. And given I’d most likely stumble into a booth with Pioneer controllers (and / or Xone mixers), keeping to a familiar layout seemed important when I bought it.

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Exxed Out Twitter, Minus One

      I finally deleted my dormant Twitter account, after I renamed it to 15-character gibberish and unfollowed everyone some days ago in preparation for the deletion. I would have removed my account from my followers as well, because I don’t trust this company to actually delete any information, but I couldn’t automate it easily. I’ve created this account in autumn of 2007, almost 17 years ago. In 30 days it should be gone forever.

    • Bots again

      Today I couldn't log into the server. `ssh` just sat there, waiting for the server. Some web page loaded a few bytes and stopped. I knew it: some idiot had once again written a bot that was hitting my web apps (also known as "expensive endpoints") because they ignored all the rules. They also didn't get caught by fail2ban because of they were using cloud services, of course. And the only thing that helps against these fuckers is banning the whole network. Time to get working.

  • Programming

    • javascript one-liner horror story