Gemini* and Gopher

• Libraries

  • Libraries: The Catch

    Public libraries are great and I love them[1]. I can choose books there much more freely than my budget allows me to at bookstores. But they are, alas, not perfect. They're fine for the shorter books; I've checked out many books of short stories or poems and some of the breezier nonfiction. But I stay away from the big books, even the ones I would like to read. The trouble of course is that you do have to bring the books back, and sooner than later. I feel cramped by the due dates. I hate to say it, but libraries just aren't a good fit for those big, dense, chewy books. The books that you need to take a lot of time with, the looks that you want to take a lot of time with.

    [...]

    Oh well, nothing's perfect. And the library is still invaluable for those books it is suited for.

• Politics and World Events

  • Soul, Not Self

    In Hermeticism, it should be remembered that, while we have our day-to-day monkey-mind-generated notion of "self", this social construction of "identity", we should remember that that is not what we really are. Rather, we should remember that we *are* souls. Rather than thinking of ourselves as bodies that have souls or identities that have souls, where "soul" is just some object we possess, we should rather think of it the other way around: that we are *souls* that ride around in bodies as vehicles and put on identities as masks.

• Games

  • bit warm

    hiiiiiiii gemheads (that's you. you're gemheads now. that's what gemini users are called now. i've decided it and i'm the final authority on this)

    how we doin!! been a few months but i've not known what to write about on here. my darling gf is visiting in September and we're spending the week in London and i'm so excited to show her around and do dumb touristy stuff that i never do LOL

    ALSO she's here for my BIRTHDAY which is cool!! (September 12th to all you darling gemheads who were BEGGING to pop it in your calendars)

    [...]

    regulars of this gemlog (do i have regulars that aren't my gf? who knows) may remember me talking about an asynchronous noughts and crosses (aka tic-tac-toe) game i was working on as a little proof-of-concept in my last post. well, it took me too long to bloody finish it BUUUUT IT IS FINISHED check it out below!

  • Games

    Games at least do provide a distraction from the back pain. Here's a silly ship that one really should not fly. Key points are to do mining with a ship especially not suitable for mining, to reduce the velocity of the otherwise fast ship, to reduce the cargohold space to make the mining even less viable, some needlessly expensive items, and a few unfilled slots.

  • Corn Kidz 64

    Corn Kidz 64 is a low-poly 3D platformer and created by BogoSoft and released on Steam and the Nintendo Switch. In Corn Kidz 64, you play as an edgy "Invader Zim"-esque goat (with a unicorn horn for some reason?) named Seve who is stuck in the "Nacho Emporium" dream again. Climb, headbutt, and wall jump to help Seve get his Nachos and escape his dream!

• Technology and Free Software

  • Typing `127.1` words per minute (`>100wpm average`)

    After work one day, I noticed some discomfort in my right wrist. Upon research, it appeared to be a mild case of Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI). Initially, I thought that this would go away after a while, but after a week it became even worse. This led me to consider potential causes such as poor posture or keyboard use habits. As an enthusiast of keyboards, I experimented with ergonomic concave ortholinear split keyboards. Wait, what?...

  • Free speech advocacy on the fediverse

    It all started with @jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net arguing that the original poster (OP) of a message should be in control of what’s considered to be a reply to the their post. Apparently, this would be within the realm of how ActivityPub works, but it's not how Mastodon works. From my point of view, I'd love the ability to unlink replies from my post so that people clicking through to my post don't end up seeing those replies. I'd be protecting my readers from spam, trolls and detractors. Jan also argued that as a positive side-effect, servers getting the original post that starts a thread would immediately get the whole tree of replies. Finally, Jan also argued that replies should not be able to reduce the audience scope of the audience because it was used for bullying. People replying with a “followers only” audience can effectively pile-on the original poster with their friends and followers without anybody else being able to see this – you have to be a follower of the bully in order to see it.

  • Internet/Gemini

    • a clear message - albeit w/ backpeddaling

      Writing online, blogging, is immensely beneficial to anyone/everyone online in 2024 (and before, and beyond) because it offers one a "full spectrum" page, entry to elaborate on ALL things they want to discuss, and ALL viewpoints they agree/disagree with. All manner of mental flow and ephemera can be exhaled there (I love using that word, always). Instead of small updates, instead of expected-then-not-welcome responses on social media (big and small), or no responses at all, instead of self-conscious statements: a blog. Untethered, unfiltered, unafraid and un-ending (seemingly, at times). Thoughts mean words, words/thoughts have nuance and ebb and flow and mental-to-text fermentation - a process like that of thinking *deeply* about a subject, but just making the thoughts/words *mean* more by making them real (into text). (and yes that sounds bizarre, of course thoughts are real, in terms of what they are; thoughts - but putting them into writing has it's own depth of meaning).