Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Coffee Club

    Back at the office 3 days/week. Nobody's really thrilled about this, everyone seeing it as something we have to do because the powers that be said we had to do it. We've been bringing our coffee in thermal cups and thermoses, but our outbuilding has a small kitchen. Two tables, enough seating for eight. Building capacity maybe sixty or so seats? A problem at lunch time.

  • Shhhh

    It's quiet. How's everyone getting on?

  • last thing game

    current obsession - at this very moment i'm too physically tired to call anything an obsession. i was very into renewed mandolin practice until it broke. since then i'm back to my "always" obsession - tarot. currently figuring out how to make better use of decks i have some umbrage with. like - can i make a majors and courts (and aces) only deck from the one that has kind of shitty pips? there's the old method of laying out cards in a pile until you reach a major, then you have a spread of majors to read with supplemental material underneath if you feel like looking into it? i've been laying this out in two rows - bottom row is for the piles of minors, top row is for the single card majors (or perhaps also courts and aces?) works are in progress, inspired by windvexer on tumblr.

• Technology and Free Software

  • 2025-09-19

    I finally found a smartphone that's smaller than 6.7 inches! It's only 3 inches and I love it! They way most people get excited for a new iPhone, I am excited for this puny phone. It's specs are decent (3Gb RAM, dual-sim, 8Mp camera), price is very cheap, and it performs admirably for my modest needs. I could even buy it locally on Takealot (although you'll find it on AliExpress, etc., just search for Soyes 3" phone). The best part is that it came with NO bloatware, just plain Android. My main concern was of course, can I type on this thing? Surprisingly, yes, but a bit slower than usual. Thank you Soyes for being audacious and making this awesome trend-bucking gem! #android #tiny #smartphone #soyes

  • Internet/Gemini

    • SpellBinding is Now Absurdly Fast

      Original, CGI-based SpellBinding on tildes was plenty fast, clocking in for ~200uS for the core processing -- plus the CGI overhead and whatever the server does.

      Moving it to my own VPS on the Amazon cloud, with polluxd server, improved the response time to ~100uS.

      Getting rid of CGI altogether, merging a Fornax server into the same logic, resulted in ~20uS.

  • Programming

    • Dispatches from FUN Ocaml 2025

      I have just got my sleep pattern restored after a superb two days at the FUN OCaml conference in Warsaw. OCaml is an unusual computer programming language reputed to be a bit of a productivity boost and agreeable to use to boot.