Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Things that slip by unnoticed

    A while ago, I started trying to rebuild my media library. Making sure I had local copies of everything, making sure all the meta-data was all copacetic, that sort of thing. Part of that was building a NAS. The other part of it of course is the not wanting to be reliant on streaming services.

    Not just the ephemeral nature of it mind. The not being able to rely on something being there is definitely something that factored into my thinking. Another thing was the discovery. Music-wise, with streaming you get access to a lot of things you wouldn't otherwise have access to. Flicking through some of my old mp3's though, I came to the realization that there are genre's of music out there that I used to listen to, that I still enjoy, that will never come across my feed. The discovery part of music streaming is broken. There's occasionally a new drum and bass track that I'll favorite, but that's about it. No new genre's, no exploration of the edges of genres. Launch a track mix of Irish punk, 30 minutes later you're listening to 4 different versions of the Irish Rover.

  • Night of the Long Film 🎦

    I went to see the film, The Brutalist. The title character isn't brutal, but his architecture is, although the film doesn't show all that much of it.

    It's so long, there's an interval. I came out almost 4 hours after I went in. And despite all that time, several things are left unexplained.

  • Dangers - Lantashi's Visit

    Progress is slow on the supernatural mystery my friend and I are working on. Silly work gets in the way for both of us. NextCloud really helps with working on the story though, both being able to see edits at the same time, and modify a text document at the same time. And you don't need to be in the same place as the person you are working with.

    Now if only I could somehow get Emacs to work with NextCloud lol. But sometimes Sylvan have to make sacrifices.

    Lantashi is not the main character of the story, but she is playing a bigger part than when we originally discussed. Which makes me happy *wink*. And strangely enough, Lee is playing a much smaller part than originally planned. But they were main characters in the following scene.

    This is the beginning of the chapter. It gets more exciting in later scenes. All the text is considered rough draft.

  • Learning

    The more I get to know this new friend of mine, the more I learn that we agree on many little fun things.

    Yesterday, sharing a picture from Ikea led to a discussion about home decorating choices, and I was delighted to hear that he also loves citrus-themed things. That was nice. He has an excellent taste for decor.

  • 🔤SpellBinding — AUILOTD Wordo: AARGH

• Politics and World Events

  • A Madman Ruling a Mad Country

    Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding father's once said this about mob mentality, "Too many heads, not enough brains."

    I can't help but think this is the kind of group thought that has become somewhat normalized as a part of American culture, a group of people that doesn't think, but has surrendered the power of thought in place of convenience and hedonism.

  • traveling fears

    I have this irrational fear that WWIII will break out and I will be stuck with my kid in the US without being allowed to travel back home to my partner and other kid. Hearing so many stories on how this happened in the past and in current conflicts... it is my worst fear, I have nightmares about it. I was planning to travel home this Christmas with my youngest since no one has met her yet.

• Science

  • First Analog Simulation (publ. 2025-02-04)

    I completed enough components on my analog computer to be able to wire up the Damped Oscillation simulation from Analog Thing. My components are based on the Grappendorf analog computer schematics, since I cannot afford to purchase an Analog Thing computer at this time. Here is a photo of the computer as it currently stands, with wires hooked up for the simulation: [...]

  • Divergence

    So if you study olden Western music forms alongside other traditions, middle eastern in particular, you may see similarities: emphasis on the melodic line, a variety of modes to pick from, improvisation, not so much in the way of harmony. When did harmony start? Uh, well, the weeds here can get pretty thick; it may suffice to gloss over much (and the much we do not know about music in the past) and claim that harmony (as used here) is a very recent Western thing, like in the last 400 years or so, and no other tradition is or likely has been so obsessed with harmony, to the detriment of other areas. Where did improv and those old modes go? Elitism can also be found, "it's not music if it lacks harmony" or the view that jazz is clearly a lower form of music. Did you hear that Dave Brubeck did not know how to read music? How could a music school graduate one who is ignorant of notation? Scandalous!

• Technology and Free Software

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Back in Geminispace

      After floundering around like a fish for the last year or so I began to crave the slowness and simplicity of the small web so I have decide to return to Gemini, which is about the smallest web that I know about.

      Please watch this site. It won't be updated too often but it will be updated more often than anything else that I have online.

    • Hello Gemini!...

      Hello Gemini!

  • Programming

    • Bash Alias: Make and Restore Backups

      I often find myself needing to create temporary backups of files or directories. The way I usually do this is by appending its name with the date and a ".bak" extension. It can be tedious to do that over and over again, especially when I'm testing a program or script; I'd much rather automate backups with one command.

    • Concurrency is tricky

      As I was writing the previous entry [1] I got the nagging feeling that something wasn't quite right with the code. I got distracted yesterday helping a friend bounce programming issues off me, but after that, I was able to take a good look at the code and figured out what I did wrong.

      Well, not “wrong” per se, the code as it worked—it's just that it could fail catastrophically in the