Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • 🔤SpellBinding: BILOSVU Wordo: RULER

  • A New Chapter

    Had very stormy and windy weather today, which caused a brief power fluctuation that restarted my Pi and brought my Gemini server down again. Coincidentally, just like when this happened a couple weeks ago, I was planning on writing another gemlog entry today.

    Completed week one of my new job, which was mostly watching lots and lots of training videos. Tomorrow I should get to start diving into the code I'll be working on (we had today off for Veterans' Day -- federal holidays off is another perk of the new job). Impression so far is that this job might be more relaxed and less stressful than my previous one, which would be great.

    In my free time, I've made some decent progress on my strategy game. On my previous try with this game that got relatively close to completion, I had leaned a little too hard into the rapid prototyping approach, and just when I was nearly at the point where all functionality was complete, the slapdash design caught up to me and I got submerged in a morass of ugly debugging. This time I'm going for the opposite approach, overengineering and writing lots of tests for everything. There's still lots left to implement, but it's going well so far.

  • im only sleeping.....

    please don't wake me, no, don't shake me, leave me where i am.....

    love that song. i feel like it encompasses the entire 'overworked college student' feeling ive been having lately.

    but it is a nice sort of tired, the tired feeling where you are content and mellow, like a slight intoxication but without the nasty effects.

  • paper shredders

    a few months ago i purchased a paper shredder. plopped it down near my kitchen trash can, and have been using it almost daily since then. i still receive some bills/statements in the mail, for the purpose of having a few things that qualify as a proof of residency, if i ever needed to claim such, so those go into the shredder after a month. junk mail? into the shredder. endless credit card and personal loan offers? into the shredder. pay stubs and unneeded previous years tax documents? into the shredder. the list goes on.

• Technology and Free Software

  • MNT Reform 2 - CPU update

    I have updated my Reform 2 (the original, "big" one with 12.5" screen) to the fastest CPU available, the RCORE RK3588. That is, I now have 8 CPU cores (but 4 of them are fast) and 16GB of RAM in my laptop.

    It is said that this CPU is about 5 times faster than the original one. At least, sites like youtube are now fast. The 16 GB of RAM also help considerably in some situations (the original CPU module had 4GB).

    The only drawback is that the current Linux kernel nor any alternative OS cannot suspend on that CPU. It may improve in future, I think. Also, the better (more modern) integrated GPU helps with 3D software compatibility.

    I tested my own FEA solver here and it's abou 2x slower than on my POWER9. I mean in single-thread model. Common softare like the OpenSCAD is also much faster now.

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Invidious down

      I had been using Invidious (IV) to download and play YT videos. It was good for me because I didn't actually have to leave the terminal to do so. And yes, I know yt-dl exists, but it has never worked for me. It's incredibly disheartening because the past few weeks (maybe a couple months), I have not been able to view anything on IV.

      So recently I had been using default YT (with adblock, of course) and was reminded just why I don't really like default YT (the website, not the app). My recommendations there have been totally nuked and random. I guess Big G loves ruining all their algorithms.

      But I remembered a binary that was I had used before IV, and it thankfully still works. I won't name it here because I don't want to tip off the Big G gestapo, but there are thankfully many solutions. I just wish I could still use the IV solution I found.

    • random update

      My addiction to Youtube is ridiculous. I don't want to admit it, but it's been filling a void of loneliness. It makes me feel as if people are talking to me personally. I feel less alone... It's a big addiction, similar to when I was addicted to the social network. I'm looking forward to be over that.

    • it finally happened

      When I signed up here I was looking for a new home for my thoughts because I believed the platform I'd been using for several years, vent.co, was closing down. It was saved at very much the last minute, but last week we were given 7 days notice that it was ending, for real this time.

    • Tuesday

      Gonna be a busy day, what with rushing around a bit for staying up too late last night (add alcohol to that scenario, and can ya feel the drag?), and soon heading out to babysit grandson.

    • To Knock on the Front Door of a Tradition

      If you feel a connection to the gods or practices of an initiatic religious or spiritual tradition (i.e. a "closed system" along initiation-based lines), then the only reasonable option you have is to explore what that connection might be properly under a teacher or initiator of good repute and good training. Talk with them, do divination with them, see what there might be for you, if anything at all, but don't try to just overlook them and surpass them. Trying to jailbreak a system makes a mockery of it, insults the people who did the work under it, and puts you yourself at risk in all sorts of ways, not least because the system might not actually be something you should be involved in. You might just need to be a layperson and enjoy things from a non-initiated point, perhaps just for the time being, perhaps forever; you might just have a past life connection instead of one in this life, and that's where that connection ends (and ended), being born to do something else this time around. And those are fine! But you are owed nothing from any given tradition or its tradents, elders, and initiators until you have earned it from them, and if that requires you to initiate into such a tradition, then all that you can do is to go through the proper channels with the proper respect to do so. Anything less is appropriation and theft, if not outright blasphemy and transgression of spiritual protocols.