Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Recycling ♻️ and landfills 🕳️ 🌳

    I obsessively and compulsively recycle all dry trash as much I can. Soda cans, water bottles, cardboard and plastic bags are a low hanging fruit. Very little inconvenience other than sorting. I don’t know 🤷‍♂️ why everyone doesn't do this. Just bugs me. There is just so much trash that be diverted into making new bottles, cardboard and down cycled to rubber / road construction material etc.

  • Diary of an Unemployed Citizen 005

    Quite an uneventful day. One young lad made the whole day memorable by being the very first person yet to offer me, a temporary Package Orderly, something to drink. I considered it, but I politely declined, as most in such a situation do. I am not certain why I refused - perhaps I wished for a snack rather than something to drink, already having my own water. But I guess that is part of why it is not normally too difficult to be nice, most people will appreciate the sentiment without taking you up on the offer.

  • week 48 - suspension

    a lot of stress around the uncertain renovations. when they finally arrived it turned out they'll take twice the estimated time, of course. so they will continue next week. the worst, messiest, loudest part is done at least, and it was kind of fun to hide out with the partner in the tiny bedroom. sharing whatever we were working on or reading about, playing a couch co-op on the laptop, having a little bed-tray picnic. maybe we should do more of that on purpose?

  • 🔤SpellBinding: CFIMUSO Wordo: BOFFO

  • Late-Fall Stress

    Back in September, I posted about my free time rapidly vanishing with the start of a new academic year and many obligation coming due over a few months.

  • cold morning at the pub

    greetings to all the newbies and oldbies alike, he says as he walks in from the cold and stomps the snow off his boots. in this corner of the pub, by the bookshelf, there is a warm atmosphere, a glow like a fireplace, not boisterous or overbearing, but simply warm and well. the welcome of the books is comforting; someone keeps up this corner, someone who cares. it is to these places we gather—those marked by care and fellow-feeling.

    he pulls a book from the shelf, not knowing which. it is enough to have something to browse with a warm espresso. it looks like something deep; something by Adler. as he takes a sip, the door opens and his napkin is caught in a draft from outside. a fellow patron catches it and replaces it, and he offers thanks. thanks, he thinks; thanksgiving. it has been that time again, a time of warmth and welcome as a season of bitter cold approaches. even those who have next to nothing can be thankful, he thinks, as he peers across to a duo of patrons - a regular and his friend who lives in the park nearby. it is good for them to be inside, he thinks, sharing drinks and a laugh or two in a warm pub on such a miserable day.

  • Rating value obsession

    I have, for at least one week, been obsessed with the rating value a certain online site, let's call it film affinity.

    It goes like this: The site assigns a rating value of the films/series that are published there. The issue raises when it com to evaluating those numbers.

  • Letterbird.co

    If you all are like me, you are trying to stay away from noise of mainstream engagement via social media and want to write ✍️ undisturbed here.

    A quick shout out to our friends at letterbird - if you feel like having a free way for occasional but thoughtful responses from a few readers, you can link to a form online that will send you an email with their comments. You may upgrade if you wish to customize your form or if you wish to support them.

  • List of live stand ups I have attended.

  • ☃️ with a arm missing

    My son decided to keep a broken ornament for our tree 🌲. I did not notice that the snowman ornament I bought had a missing arm until we checked out. He felt bad for the snowman and decided not to exchange him since otherwise NO ONE ELSE WOULD BUY HIM. 😢

• Technology and Free Software

  • ThinkPad

    Need a new laptop and I'm thinking of getting a ThinkPad T460. Heard good things about ThinkPads; just hoping it has solid Linux compatibility.

  • How I Got Interested in Computers

    In the previous installment[1] I wrote about how external factors (work and school) led me to ever-greater engagement with computing in the 80s and 90s. But, curiously, I chose to leave off the account before reaching the point where I actually became interested in computers. So that's what this is about. And although it didn't set out to be, it's also a partial answer to christyotwisty's thought-provoking question, "what keeps you buoyant?"[2]

    However, I did touch a little on what got me interested in computing back in the spring, in my eulogy for poet and artist Tim McLaughlin.[3] To recap: having spent the 80s under a rock, in the early 90s it was news to me that personal computers weren't just more efficient typewriters and filing cabinets, but could be a creative medium in their own right. And of course, it was the advent of hypermedia/the web that really brought this home.

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Contact link fixed

      I noticed this morning that someone had tried to send me a message via the contact link on this capsule's homepage, but it failed due to a config issue on the server.

      To that person: thank you so much for your lovely message (which I was able to read via my server's logs). Also thank you for inadvertently helping me to spot this problem!