Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • It's funny

    I only use midnight pub during midnight.

    and today i feel miserable and horrible

    i am afraid of my mortality

    Money doesn't bring peace and not having money doesn't bring peace

    i have been thinking about the Dostoevsky quote

  • instantiation of satisfactory substitutions ~or~ another displacement towards renewed constitution

  • Clean Island

    When I thought over the previous homeschooling year and wrote out some thoughts in my journal, what became clear is that the biggest problem I had last year was simply finding a clean spot in which to do school. It doesn't take long for our apartment to get cluttered and messy. I mean it's a matter of hours, if not minutes.

    I found myself in a bad pattern where I would wake up late because I was up with the baby at night, and so then I wouldn't get dressed and ready for the day till around 10 or 11. Then by the time I got the table cleared so the kids could have a place to get out their books, it would be time to make lunch. Then after lunch the table would be messy again.

• Technology and Free Software

  • This could maybe explain some of the emails I received, but not all of them

    I received some responses to yesterday's post [1]. The first was from Lionel Dricot [2] who reported that he, too, has received emails for other Lionel Dricot's that lived near him. He also stated that it may be a bug in Gmail where one person can register “seanconner@gmail.com”; someone else could register “sean.conner@gmail.com” but when receiving emails, Gmail condenses the two addresses into one. That's possible, but I would suspect that would have been an issue caught early on. I've had my Gmail account for twenty years now [3] [Has it been that long? —Sean] [Yes, it has. —Editor] [Shut up! —Sean]. and it's only been in the past few years that this has been an issue.

  • What do I owe you as a writer?

    It's kind of wild to think that this used to be a place where I would churn out an article every day with minimal proof reading. I went a single day without having found the time and energy to publish something and thus started an inevitable and seemingly irreversible decline until everything I write needed to be another "Resurrect an ancient pagan weather god with TensorFlow in 10 easy steps" lest it get put on the chopping block.

    Anyway, I've been working on an article called "The Michelin three-star restaurant of computer coding" about the Linux kernel, the way we talk about it and its consequences. I have a really hard time writing negatively about people… when I do, I take it super seriously. And in the case of the Linux kernel, it is indeed very hard to not be critical of a lot of the stuff that comes out of that community. So, it would have needed to be another "Resurrect an ancient pagan weather god" out of necessity or it would have been a complete miss.

  • VCFMW19 happened

    AJ from Forgotten Machines had the brilliant idea to put part of his exhibit on a cart, which, when the venue closed and they kicked us out, he just casually rolled out of the venue and into the hotel lounge to continue debugging until the wee hours of the morning. That was so clever, and so much fun.

    I met a lot of wonderful people there, including some SDF'ers and people from fedi.

    Before I packed everything up for the show, I tested each and every single display, verified it worked, put it in a bin.

  • Dissecting the "Techno-Optimist Manifesto"

    A few months ago, prominent venture-capitalist Marc Andreessen, of Andreessen-Horowitz, posted a document entitled "The Techno-Optimist Manifesto."

    I find it deeply troubling. I don't think Andreessen is a bad person - I don't really think most folk are - but I think the tech industry and its culture are cultivating some very bad ideas, combining technological solutionism with strange right-wing politics. I also believe that forty years of society glorifying tech experts and startup founders as gods has created an unfortunate bubble that has insulated people from the consequences of their work.

  • an Internet hub, in my kitchen

    I am here at my desk, in the kitchen, where I always keep my computer desk (reasons) and I have the curtain open, but not window, yet, as it is still warm. I just finished watching a HAM mini documentary (DX'ing) that I downloaded forever ago from yt. I think: I like that concept, that of a "hub" of long distance communication - a spot, like the dimly lit basements in the 80s with a modem plugged into a Commodore 64, pirating software and chatting on BBS's, forums, and having a "nook within a nook". A nook in one's home, a nook on the Internet.

    Alas, I was not part of the 80s computer culture (no PC until 97) but I still experience, and love, the "nook" vibe of personal "routine" (or even ritual) of settling down to the desk at night to write, e-mail, listen to music, anything I want.