Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • God, I feel like I'm an old man wearing a tin foil hat yelling at the world

    A few months ago our ice maker broke [1] and the upshot—we got charged for a replacement unit that was never installed and we're using ice trays.

    Last week, our dryer stopped working. It turned on, you can set the controls, but it fails to spin up and do any actual drying. We thought about maybe getting it repaired, but in all likelyhood, by the time we pay for the repair man and the replacement widget that isn't working, we would probably be looking at the price of a new dryer anyway. And if it can't be fixed, then we're definitely out the prirce of a new dryer and the repair man.

    So early this week we went out to one of the two remaining home improvement stores (and it wouldn't surprise me to find out they're both owned by the same shadow company—can you tell I'm gettin cynical here?) and bought a replacement. Of course, we couldn't just buy a new dryer—no. We had to buy a new electrical cord (what? It doesn't come as part of the dryer?) and a new dryer hose (what? What's wrong with the one we already have? This stuff is pretty much standardized by now). Then there was the delivery fee, the installation fee, and the removal-of-the-old-unit fee. All that tacked on an additional 25% on the shelf price, not including taxes.

  • LQ’s account of the end

    Well, I cant respond to each album. It would not make any sense.

    So for right now, I will do something different.

    For right now, until the end of the day, I will do an Ask Me Anything (AMA).

    You can ask any question you want, and wait for a comment.

    So what will your question be?

  • Picture Page 🖼

    Randomly chosen images from Geminispace

  • Balsam Poplar Observations (

    Today (2025-04-03) I took a walk by the Tanana River during the lunch break. The temps today were above freezing, and the sun was bright and delivering a lot of heat. I needed only my sweater and my jacket for warmth.

    Technically, the day was partly cloud, but most of the clouds were wispy and flat. Some of the thin clouds to the West had interesting undulations in density, staggered like train tracks. I could see, far off near the horizon in various directions, some thick cumulus clouds here and there.

  • 🔤SpellBinding: ODFILNB Wordo: DEPTH

• Science

  • 04 April 2025

    Last saturday the Raspberry Pi CM4 arrived, so i spend the saturday afternoon upgrading the DevTerm. As anticipated, it went absolutely without any problems... at least without problems caused by the hardware itself. The first time i powered the DevTerm on nothing besides a short flash of the power-led happened, after some confusing minutes and a look at the net it dawned on me: I had connected the CM the wrong way around. With the thought in the head, that i most likely have fried the CM i opened the DevTerm up again, corrected my mistake, and after switching it back on... it worked! Well, seems like the old german proverb "Das Glueck ist mit den doofen" ("The luck is with the stupid ones") is indeed true.

    With its new core, the DevTerm now is an absolutely daily driveable small computer, and now with a functioning mini- hdmi port i now can also use it docked with an external monitor, keyboard and mouse. The new ooomph it got also allowed me to get back from the terminal into a graphical desktop environment again. I opted for the suckless dwm + dmenu + st combination which really runs well on the little machine. Regarding a browser for the normal web i am still trying out various options. At the moment, surf (also from the suckless ecosystem) runs quiet well, also for the more sane parts of the web Dillo is a great choice.