Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Easy Musical Variations

    The variations discussed here might also be known as arpeggios or vamping or broken chords. Synthesizers or such often offer arpeggio features, though one can also use a permutation algorithm to go through them all, possibly filtering for particular aspects.

    One aspect would be to preserve a particular note, for example to "stand on the tonic" or some other scale degree. The dominant is popular, especially in certain Sonata forms, maybe to extend the half cadence for some number of measures. A half cadence is some motion to the dominant, which will feel unresolved, and in certain Sonata forms will usually be followed by a phrase that ends with a perfect cadence, for that full sense of completion. Anyways, permutations. The easiest method these days is probably to find a library and write some glue code.

  • 🔤SpellBinding: EGIYNOJ Wordo: SLUED

• Politics and World Events

  • Zine Club, and Ideas

    Last night, I attended a queer zine club at a local LGBT museum and archive. The open meeting was hosted by a gay man who had been making zines for a few years, and we had access to a few scrap materials from the archive for collaging. I ended up contributing a page to the meeting's collaborative zine about the first skirt I bought when I was 26 and in the closet.

    Among the collaging materials were a number of redundant copies of old indie newspapers. I found a July, 1974 issue of Lavender Woman - "Chicago's Lesbian/Feminist newspaper.' I hope to read through it soon.

  • Middle Eastern balance ⚖

    I don't post about politics. The right thing to do is usually obvious, and it seems pointless to say this to people who disagree; people whose "obvious" is the opposite of what's obvious to me. Nothing to post about there.

    But I have to say something about Gaza. More times than I can remember, there has been conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. The usual pattern is that a Palestinian group attacks Israel, killing some people, and the Israeli government makes a disproportionate response, killing n times as many people. Neither side is to be admired, but Israel kills a lot more people.

  • do we float

    the way you don't want to answer 
    when I ask you all the whys 
    has the same bleak undertone 
    as the fact I never write about you
    there's a resemblance 
    that cannot be unseen
    once discovered
    the spaces between the lines
    speaking volumes
    the things left unsaid
    parts left untouched 
    even this is difficult
    I can't tell if you're holding me afloat 
    or pulling me down
    If I cut you loose
    will one of us sink
    or both
    or do we float 
    like we haven't for so long
    

• Technology and Free Software

  • Vintage Story Combat Proposal

    Hit registration for melee is done in one of two ways, depending on the weapon used and attack type performed.

    Direct attacks use hitscan augmented with some auto-aim, because aiming is never really a challenge in combat; it only serves to make small targets annoying. This is due to the lack of weak points and blocking hurtboxes.

    Area attacks use a moving hitbox, permitting multi-target damage. The downside is that you need to physically aim, which can cause problems for the player when enemies are too short (rabbits, crawling drifters). This is arguably good for balance.

    Melee weapons generally provide two attack types.

  • On Unix Primitivism

    Yesterday i read that great post about "UNIX primitivism" on the GopherICU phlog and i think it highlights a very important point:

    While there is always this yearning for a Lisp machine, for a Smalltalk system or something like that overlooking the point that we have something not THAT far removed from that already at our hands: UNIX is not only an application launcher like other operating systems of similar age (i am looking at you DOS), it is a whole "programming environment" where you get a really nice toolset to create you own tools to solve your problems. there is a nice piece of history on youtube [1] where you can see (besides other notable persons) a young Mr. Kerningham describing the principles UNIX is build of in wonderful simple and understandable terms.