Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Athens

    I'm writing this post on my flight home from Athens, Greece as a way to reflect on the holiday. My partner and I took this holiday in late winter to stave off the seasonal depression that always kicks in by February in gloomy England. Going somewhere a little warmer and a lot brighter for a few days really helps! A city break in Athens from Monday to Friday was perfect. There's even a weekend on either end, to get ready and to prepare to go back to work.

    On our first full day in the city we got an email - our flight home was cancelled. The Greek air traffic control officers would be striking on Friday. We extended our holiday to the next available flight on Monday. That evening we read more about the strike and it turned out to be much more of a general strike.

• Politics and World Events

  • The Commonhold White Paper

    The Commonhole White Paper is good news for leasehold reform.

    (this post will be revised in a few days)

    In particular, it signals that the government is going to be hard-headed about driving through reform. You can't make an omelette without cracking some eggs, as the saying goes, and that is what is implied by today's white paper.

    There are some areas where they are also watering commonhold down to make it easier to get it adopted. There's also a fudge on the key financial questions of how the conversion to commonhold is to be paid for, and the role of veto-holders is largely unaddressed.

    On the other hand, this annoucement is the death knell for the idea that commonhold will lead to leasehold *abolition*: the Government has accepted the Law Commission's proposal to water down commonhold by allowing long leases *within* commonhold blocks, initially to bail out Shared Ownership.

• Science

  • Various Updates

    Lately I haven't got much stargazing done due to the logistical difficulties. I think weather has been overall more cloudy as we approach the spring season. There have been a few nights where I could see stars, but also clouds, and I just can't gamble time on stargazing right now unless it is definitely a clear night. I've seen a few clear nights over the last month or so, but every time I've either been too exhausted myself to stay up late, or I'm trying to get the kids in bed. It is hard to go out stargazing in the evening because then all the kids want to go out too, so I've either got to keep little kids up way past their bedtime, or send some people crying back to their rooms. Last night the sky looked mostly clear, but several of the kids were sick and I didn't want anybody bouncing around in the cold.

    I like the idea of stargazing in the early morning, but I have been having trouble getting up early enough due to exhaustion, and not keeping a close enough watch on the forecast.

    Hopefully I might be able to get in some more stargazing before winter ends, but I'm not sure.

• Technology and Free Software

  • Fedora 41

    Just a short note: the Fedora 41 for ppc64le is now running on my Blackbird (my POWER9 machine)! I'm still using X.org here so no big changes actually happened so far.

    Linux sforza 5.10.8-100.fc32.ppc64le #1 SMP Sun Jan 17 19:18:43 UTC 2021 ppc64le GNU/Linux

    So, probably for the first time from the moment when I have installed the Fedora I am actually running the current version!

  • leaving big tech has ruined me for big tech

    I read the first few posts and thought, "well, I'm already not using Chrome, Safari, or Edge, and it is pretty creepy to think how much Google knows about me from my email and Drive. Let's click some of these links to alternate email providers and see where they lead."

    Fast-forward fewer than 60 days, and being forced to use a work computer that runs on Windows 11, has Google everything, and won't even let me install a basic ad blocker has me experiencing Ed Zitron levels of rage.

  • Yelling at clouds

    I will admit—these are kneejerk reactions, but they're honestly my reactions to reading the following statements. I know, I know, hanging onions off our belt is long out of style.

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Protocol extensions in SpaceBeans

      I just recently came across a few proposals to extend Gemini. I have some thoughts about it.