Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • 🖼️ xkcd: Installation #3206

  • Spectacle

    The depth charge was notable for making a big ba-da boom, and such a large explosion must mean "mission accomplished", right? How could it not? It was so loud, and threw up so much water! Here the love of spectacle may outwash a more effective weapon system, so effective that orders had to be sent to ask why the weapon system had not been used (humans, eh, what are you going to do?). The problem was, the weapon system did not offer much in the way of spectacle. If the target was missed, or the device failed to activate, nothing happened. Must not be working, right? Defective. Here, no news is good news; a problem with the depth charge is that it generally messes up the acoustics on account of the big ba-da boom (meanwhile the cloaked ship scuttles off) while a "no news" weapon communicates a miss without such disruption, meaning the sonar can "stay on target" and the better weapon system can have another go.

  • no mo coffee

    My brain needs a bit of a break.

    Going without coffee this morning, we'll see how this will go. I already feel lethargic. I was fine for a while, meaning that it was giving me a good boost without having a side effect in the afternoon. But lately I realize that my brain is getting really sluggish around 2pm.

• Technology and Free Software

  • Strange Happenings And Final Thoughts

    Alhena 5.5.1 was released with tighter integration into the underlying OS. Alhena on Mac behaves like a native MacOS app with respect to app lifecycle. OS file associations are supported on all platforms. Window size and location is now saved and used at startup (including multi-monitor and virtual screens). There's a deb install package for first class integration on Debian Linux (RPM will happen if someone asks).

  • Ubuntu again

    I wasn't using the Ubuntu for years (I think my last Ubuntu was on the Ubuntu Touch phone - until the device died - and on the GPD Pocket which is also non-functional now). I have been using the Debian on the MNT devices.

    This week my work computer was re-installed and (on mu request) "some Linux was installed in the virtual machine". It has been the current Ubuntu. The host OS is something terrible with number 11. Fortunately, the Ubuntu can run full screen so I'm not exposed to the other thing all the time.

  • The Open Source Robot of Theseus Trots Its Way Into Hands-On Experiments In Animal Locomotion

    Researchers from the University of Michigan have developed an open source modular robotic testbed designed to experimentally investigate the evolutionary origins of animal locomotion: the Robot of Theseus (TROT).

    "In paleontology, we can go back and look at bones, but it's really difficult to understand how these changes in limb proportion, or in range of motion, may have affected the way an animal can move," explains corresponding author Talia Moore of the team's work. "There have been some really great insights on this question from robots that each mimic one extinct animal very precisely, but each robot took years to design and construct. I wanted to make a robot that could easily shapeshift into several different extinct species proportions, so that we could compare them, and see how the evolution of those limb lengths and other features would affect their locomotion. With TROT, 60 million years of evolutionary changes in body size can happen in 20 minutes."

  • Ben Nanonote with new battery

    I bought new battery for the device (it's Nokia phone compatible one; they seem to be still made). So it boots again and has some battery life (in the best tradition of open source hardware projects the Ben newer had reliable suspend and the latest OS versions don't support this feature at all).

    In theory, it's a great small device with keyboard, terminal, serial port and so on. It can run on only things like the Vim and the SC spreadsheet but also the Gnu Octave and other stuff. It ever have a map application (but there is no GPS). Of course it can play music (it has the normal 3.5mm jack for headphones).