Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • 2026 Bingo Card

    My roommate had a friend over last night, and we spent part of the evening making our 2026 bingo cards. This is not a game of predictions, but a goal setting exercise - a list of things we might like to do, that we can post on the fridge and keep tabs on.

  • SOMETHING NEW IN THE CUPBOARD

    There's a phlog post I've been failing to finish for weeks, and while writing it I was reminded of the collection of Electronics Today International (ETI) circuit book scans that I assembled about a decade ago. ETI was an electronics magazine which, in spite of the name, seems to have been mainly an Australian pulication. Alongside Electronics Australia it was popular in the 1970s and 1980s, when they got into the habit of publishing circuit/project books compiling past articles and submissions. I've built some of the circuits, and it's also quite thought inspiring just to read through.

    I do however have a habit of forgetting about these books and instead finding half-baked electronics projects on the internet for which better alternatives are already in them on my shelf. Years ago I had the idea that I should scan the contents pages and most interesting articles, so I could look at them from the computer as easily as websites. So about a decade ago I obsessively scanned in a whole lot of them, and... completely forgot I'd even done so. Yeah it didn't work at all, and indeed I see now there are again some projects I scanned which would be good alternatives for projects I've since copied from sketchier online designs.

• Technology and Free Software

  • Pocket-sized PDP-11 once more

    I was searching for something. As always, I have found many other things. In past months I returnerd a few of my Sharp Zauri to (well, very infrequent) use.

    Now, I unearthed my Elektronika MK-85 [1] collection.

    You many know than USSR used the CPUs compatible with the PDP-11 rather extensively. So much that use of a PDP-11 type CPU was obvious choice when designers were tasked with task of making a functional copy of the Casio FX-770P pocket computer[2]. Or programmable calculator. While the Casio used an 8-bit CPU the Soviet lookalike used the 16-bit CPU. There was little speed or memory size advantage at the time but the CPU was widely available an reasonably cheap so it was used (these Soviet CPUs are not clones but they use most of the PDP-11 instruction set - they are NOT fully compatible with any DEC PDP-11 CPU).

    Actually making a device which copies look and behaviour (up to almost identical BASIC) of something that actually works was a smart decision. The users of nominally more powerful MK-90 will know (it uses rather unoptimised copy of PDP-11 BASIC from 1970 as it only environment and it is not only slow but painful to program on).

  • This Handheld Wi-FI Signal Strength Meter Packs a Servo to Drive a Physical Dial Gauge

    Pseudonymous maker "CrazyScience" has built a Wi-Fi signal strength guide with a difference: it moves a physical dial on a gauge to let you know when you're straying from an access point's sweet spot.

    "I have always been using many [smartphone] applications to check my Wi-Fi speed, the process is time consuming and it's not that accurate(in terms of real time)," CrazyScience explains of the need for a dedicated tool. "So I wanted [a way] to visualize the Wi-Fi that [works] in real time! I'm not sure if the spirit boxes work (like you see in movies). But my Wi-Fi meter will definitely work!"

  • A full-time job for an i586 in 2025?

    For years, I've been running an old PC Engines ALIX.2 router as a machine dedicated to backups. Every day at 5 AM, it would quietly connect to my server via SSH, back up /var/www/html, /var/lib/mysql, and /var/gopher, and then go quiet for the rest of the day. When I decommissioned my physical server and moved to virtualization, the provider took over the backups, and for a moment it looked like the ALIX.2 would have nothing left to do. But I wasn't ready to let that happen, because it's the last i586 machine I run 24/7.

  • Internet/Gemini

    • generating less (and other changes)

      ah yes, gemini, the place i go to talk about gemini :3

      in the past i've had scripts and generators, but honestly, i don't think i want to have an atom feed after discover the gemini companion file format.