Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • ending the love detox

    Waking up this morning thinking about her. I give up. She will be in my mind for a long time so it seems. It could be worst, I'm letting it go. Seems like I need something to fill my mind.

    I don't want to fight it anymore. It'll take the time it takes, and I'm getting bored of the whole situation. She's like a painting in my head, too big to move out. I guess I'll get used to it. It feels like fighting it will only make it more charged.

  • Prologue

    I have been thinking of you a great deal recently as I am working on a project that has a lot to do with Sri Lanka. I am living in Tampa, Florida now. Several years ago I had a dream. In the dream, I was wandering through the hills of Tampa (!) and came across a group of bhikkhuni. I approached and asked who they were and they responded “We are of Mahasena.” After waking, further research revealed that Mahasena was a 3rd-century Sri Lankan king who was responsible for bringing Mahayana to early Sri Lankan Buddhism. I had not heard of him before the dream, so I am constructing a fictional narrative that could be an explanation for how such a dream is possible. It involves time-traveling bhikkhunis and the relationship of some current concepts in physics (the amplituhedron) to some ideas associated with Pure Land buddhism. After this initial dream, I got lost in research on early Buddhism in Sri Lanka for a while and in Faxian’s chronicle of Buddhist nuns traveling to China and the associated modern impacts on bhikkhuni ordination.

  • dismantle and bloom

  • Longitude

    Another nautical note is that some amount of effort went into solving the longitude problem, also known as the "lowering the odds of running aground by better knowing where the heck you are" problem, among other benefits. There's a book about this, "Longitude" by Dava Sobel or one can probably find videos, somewhere. As is distressingly common with humans, there were Various Vested Interests who had invested in a lunar method that was maybe not quite so as good as using an accurate enough clock and naturally those Vested Interests worked to prevent the prize money from going to the clock innovator among other such efforts to make clocks look bad.

• Technology and Free Software

  • Loop Earplugs Review

    About a year or so ago, I ordered Loop earplugs¹ for my noise sensitivity. I was happy that I could finally stop using the bulky noise-cancelling headphones I was using that stood out like a sore thumb in public, easily fell off when I bent over, took up a lot of space when transporting them, and made my ears ache and sweat.

    The first model I ordered was the original Loop Switch, which permitted three different volume options by rotating a sliding plastic piece in the earplugs. It was a neat feature. I didn't even have to take them out to change the volume setting. Sadly it came at the cost of being able to wear them for more than a few hours and thoroughly clean them. Due to discomfort from the hard plastic, they couldn't be left in for long. And only the tips were able to be washed, not the plastic part.

    So I changed them for the Loop Quiet 2 Plus² earplugs, which only have a single fixed noise setting, but are easy to clean and don't make my ears ache even after wearing them for hours. If you're considering buying a pair of Loop earplugs, get the pure silicon models, not the Loop switch.

  • Programming

    • The basics of an indirect threaded code ANS Forth implementation

      I need to get into the habit of writing prose more often.

      Before I go into the implementation of my ANS Forth system, I need to define somethings. First, a bit about Forth terminology—a Forth “word” can be thought of as a function or subroutine of other languages, but it's a bit more than that—it can also refer to a variable, a constant, the equivalent of a key word. It's a fluid concept, but thinking of a “word” as a function won't be too far off. Also, a collection of Forth words is collected into a wordset (or if you are reading older documentation about Forth, a “dictionary”). You can think of a “dictionary” as a library, or maybe a module, of code.

      Second, Forth is a stack-based language. There are rarely any explicit parameters, just data placed on a stack, known as the “data stack.” Because of this, expressions are written in Reverse Polish Notation (RPN (Reverse Polish Notation))—data is specified first, then the operator.

      Third, there's a second stack, the “return stack” that is pretty much what it sounds like—it records the return address when calling into a Forth word.