Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Why list a phone number if no one at your company even knows how to deal with the notification?

    And that's it. It's lucky there was no personal information included or this company could be in violation of HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act).

    On a whim, instead of simply deleting the email and going on with my life, I decided to do The Right Thing™, and inform the sender (which was the company itself) of the delivery error by calling the given phone number.

    It took several calls to resolve. No one at XXXXX­X knew how to directly handle my call. Two people I talked to attempted to transfer me to what they felt was the appropriate department, only to have the transfer fail and I had to call back and navigate the automated phone system yet again (in which I had to listen carefully, becauese the options had changed on October 20^th; a refreshing change from the “recently changed” most such systems claim).

  • A real real-time chess board

    Two years ago I talked about a spherical chess variant [1]. Now, I want to mention real time chess [2], where players can move their pieces at will, with the only limit being once a piece is moved, you can't move it for five seconds. And there's no check or checkmate—you win by capturing the opponent's king.

  • classical electronic

    As I am learning to be single, my past comes back to me. In a weird twist of event, I'm starting to listen to classical music again.

    I just enjoy listening to classical music, so much so that I feel a bit self concious about it. It feels somewhat 'pretentious' to like classical music. There is nothing I can do, my whole body enjoy listening to classical music.

    I dream about the day I'll be in the city and go to back to the orchestra. As a kid I've had the chance to go to many concert, one of my violin teacher was playing with the Montreal philharmonic orchestra. The experience of so many instruments playing at the same time, the composition and the story that happened in my head during this relaxing and exhilarating moment, deeply formed my relationship to music.

• Politics and World Events

  • Hermeticism Isn't Qabbalah

    Hermeticism is not equatable with Qabbalah. It's entirely possible (and encouraged) to be a Hermeticist without Qabbalah. Qabbalah is like terrible, drab shag carpeting laid out over a beautifully polished, ancient hardwood floor. Jewish Kabbalah is rich and profound, but Hermetic Qabbalah is effectively a cultural appropriation and maladaptation of it, and—let's be honest—doesn't provide much for us anymore besides a massive correspondence table with a lot of badly-pronounced Hebrew. And yet, it's formed such a procrustean bed that so many of us struggle to think outside of, much less break away from; it's become as much a crutch as it has a shackle. The more we divest ourselves of it and practice Hermetic spirituality without it, the better off we'll all be.

• Technology and Free Software

  • redterminal.org now runs on FreeBSD-14.2-RELEASE

    I upgraded the redterminal.org Gemini/Gopher/Finger/WWW server from the 14.1 branch to FreeBSD-14.2-RELEASE. Nobody should have noticed besides a brief downtime for the reboot. The update went painless and smoothly thanks to the FreeBSD maintainers. All packages are up-to-date too and everything is fine so far. Small problems will be ironed out with the first update if any, but as far as I can tell there are no problems.

  • Programming

    • Living in the Shell

      I am now using the Devterm R-01 for, what, 11 months or so as my more or
      less primary computer, which has lead to the "discovery" of some problems:
      
      
      - The screen real estate with its widescreen format and small size isn't
      ideal for a traditional desktop
      
      
      - It is somewhat slow
      
      
      - The trackball is still a crime against humanity