Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • FIVE QUESTIONS

    1. Has a self-help book ever helped you? If yes, would you share the title and author?

    I'll be honest, I've never even read one haha. I don't find help helpful, if that makes sense, I prefer to muddle through and do research, trial and error, even in day to day things. I do have fond memories of self help gurus on late night infomercials though, Tony Robbins, The Secret and the like. I sometimes wonder where these people are now.

    2. How many times a month do you cook dinner at home? Do you plan most of your meals, or do you start by looking in the refrigerator to see what hasn't gone bad?

    almost always! we're dirt poor and takeout in Australia can be pretty expensive. it was expensive in the States too but my wife's family loves junk food and hates effort so we did eat out a lot there, we cooked our own meals maybe two or three times a week. we used to meal plan but now we mostly play it by ear, we have a pretty solid rotation of favorites and we live near the stores we need so we can pick things up for meals easily. our fridge and pantry are reasonably stocked but mostly with spices, condiments, and basics like flour, baking soda, etc.

  • 🔤SpellBinding: ILVOTUN Wordo: LOONY

• Technology and Free Software

  • Stellar Adventures by Arion Games

    I have to second the recommendation for Arion Games's Stellar Adventures. While I have not had a chance to play it yet, I have played/run Advanced Fighing Fantasy 2E, which has the basic rules chassis, and found it works well for me.

    In 126 pages (excluding 2 pages of of Kickstarter Backers) Stellar Adventures is a complete SF rpg, with simple rules based on the Advanced Fighting Fantasy 2e rules, but customized for SF. Stats for most characters are SKILL (general competence), STAMINA (ability to take damage), and LUCK (just that), and then there are Special Skills, which are added to SKILL for specific situations. If you don't have a Special Skill, and it's something you can attempt without it, you default to SKILL. If you are playing a psionic character, you have PSIONICS stat; if you are playing a robot, you have a TECH stat. Characters also start with one Talent, which are things like Ambidextrous, Combat Reactions, Mutant (1D3 mutations rolled on a table), Linguist, Sidekick, etc., which the player can pick.

    Tests of SKILL or SKILL + Special Skill are roll 2d6 equal to or under the Skill total, while on opposed rolls you roll 2d6 + Skill total and compare the two rolls and the higher wins; ties roll again until not tied. LUCK is a finite resource; when you roll against it to get out of a tight spot (either at the Director's request or the player's request) you always lose a point of LUCK. LUCK does not return automatically, but you can get it back by actions in the game: basically, doing brave things and accomplishing significant goals, or compleating an adventure.

  • Toby's tinylog

    This isn't mentioned on their website, but Zorin OS now allows you to install to a ZFS-on-root encrypted and compressed drive! It's hidden under advanced settings. I re-installed my laptop to get this feature, and it's working as smooth and polished as the rest of Zorin OS. Kudos to the developers! #zorin #zfs #linux

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Reports of its death are greatly exaggerated

      I've seen posts here and there talking about how Gemini and Geminispace is dying, and I dunno, I have seen some capsules go offline but there's still a fair bit of activity. Of course, I tend to check places like BBS, tootik and Midnight.pub which are more social places, I have individual gemlogs in my feeds that I check, and I have some favourite games on Gemini that I come back to. Some capsules are gone, but plenty of them are still around. I mean, parts of my capsule were offline for a while before I got them running again.

    • Scriptonite Updates

      Everything mentioned in the original gemlog still applies and works as advertised. The goal is to remain backwards compatible as new features are added.

      [...]

      There are two new variables that can be accessed from scripts. SCRIPT_URL and CERT_HASH. SCRIPT_URL contains the complete url used to load the current page. This can make it easier to generate links in some situations (see updated examples below). CERT_HASH is the client certificate hash or null if there is no cert.

    • A separate allow-list to bypass fail2ban