Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Objectivity in (Modern) Analog Photography

    Something I find really irritating about the modern culture of film photography is that even though the final result is art, the process is pretty objectively a science—it's literally just a mix of chemistry, optics, sensitometry, and (in color film) colorimetry—and yet the vast majority of resources are very hand-wavy and heavily cargo culty about “a random photographer thought this this method might have some benefit 30 years ago so everyone still does it”. e.g. putting a piece of paper under the grain focuser when enlarging even though it empirically has no effect even at large print sizes; or how long to wash film (or especially fiber paper) before the hypo is completely gone, of which the Ilford Method is the only *specific* technique that's been empirically tested AFAIK.

  • Old-school Euros belatedly forgiven

    I realize that not every game can be Baduk or Turncoats, who are both almost magical in how every single game feels different even though they have very limited components and moves. Or maybe because of that; the Unix philosophy in action? The more general your ludemes are, the more varied the emergent experiences can be?

    I mean, I’ve said in the past how Bottle Imp was great fun, but “only” for the first 100 plays compared to the modern classic tricktaker Ninety-Nine which has endless replayability and challenge (and with a Ninety-Nine deck you can play millions of other games since it’s just a normal card game).

    Well, those 100 plays are still a heck of a lot better out of what you can get from one kingdom of Dominion, which most people would only wanna play a couple of times at the most.

  • 5k km on the bicycle in one year

    Today, I own my current bicycle exactly one year.

    Also today, I passed the 5.000 km point on the odometer.

    The bicycle is a so-called pedal assist electric bike, with a Bosch Active Line Plus hub motor.

  • Traveller and Mongoose

    Marc Miller's email was reposted in a few places, like Usenet (oh yes, it was posted on rec.games.frp.misc!), Rob Conley's blog, and elsewhere. What are your thoughts on it?

    [....]

    I am of two minds. Mongoose has been good for Traveller, I think. I liked Mongoose Traveller 1st ed., which I ran for a bit, and I have no reason to doubt that the current Mongoose Traveller 2nd ed. is as good a system the many other Traveller editions out there.

    I also have my doubts regarding Mongoose's quality in terms of editing – but who am I kidding, these days people are cutting corners all over the place and sometimes they're cutting corners in editing. It happens. It's the Zeitgeist. I guess in the world of quality assurance Mongoose wouldn't actually be all that bad because I'm assuming they fix all the typos in later printings. 😏

  • A tipping point fishing card game

    All eurogames ever made have a tipping point where you go from building up your power to start cashing in victory points. For example Splendor where you can buy cheap cards to get going but sooner or later you need to pivot to buying good cards that give you points.

    I wish there was a game for traditional playing cards with that same property. There are some games that have two phases; first you play to grab cards that are gonna help you in the second phase. But here I want those decisions throughout the game: do I grab that card that helps me get better at grabbing cards, or do I grab that card that gives me more points at the end?

  • Terrors in the Night

    haven't slept most of the night

    and then there's the ...

    ||~•NiGhT TeRoRs•~||

    if there's those of you unfamiliar

    they are FUCKING TERRIFYING lucid nightmares with bat shit insane manic events and are terrible to experience

  • a guided life

    i've been looking into the work of dr lisa miller. i'm convinced by the scientific proof of the legitimate need for an involved spiritual life, by the anatomy of our brains and our inborn propensity for it. i'm not convinced about the... content of that life she's espousing. a loving, guiding life (god/higher power etc). i mean, it matches my intuition. it matches my experience. she even uses the same language i've used to describe what i understand to be the most magical way of living, which only got some kind of recognition from one or two magical practitioners (out of quite a few i've talked to and interacted with over the years). so it's encouraging but also feels a little bit wrong to idk... "taint" it with science. as if the scientific confirmation makes it real /from now on/. as if by being "gotcha!" about it i'm admitting that i didn't /really/ believe it previously. i don't know, maybe it's my own hang up. but it's quite interesting stuff, i do recommend looking her up, there are quite a few podcasts with her as a guest. i haven't yet read her books, my non-fiction queue is full right now.

• Technology and Free Software

  • type yearn

    My, what a glory it will be when I have a phone where I can use the virtual keyboard. This phone is warped, difficult. New phone (nearly same model) ordered tomorrow night, arriving just after. Chomping at the bit! :)

  • Software Releases/Announcements

    • Gemini Specification changes (0.24.1)

      Today I have published an updated version of both Gemini specification documents. The current versions are designated 0.24.1. A full description of all changes follows. A total of six open issues on the GitLab repositories can be closed as a result of these changes, reducing the number of open issues from 31 to 25.

      I consider all of these changes very minor, either addressing rare edge cases or fixing ambiguities and inconsistencies. It is possible that some software or Gemtext document files may need to be updated to achieve/maintain strict compliance, but practically speaking failure to do so is extremely unlikely to cause actual real world problems. I do not think there is any risk of these changes "breaking" existing software in the same way that the 0.24.0 changes accidentally did.