Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Exhausted

    One of my friends is in the hospital. I think they're dying. They're thousands of miles away. A bunch of us are trying to get information. It's hazy. But we know it's not good. A life of pre-existing conditions and lifestyle choices coming in like a freight train.

    I haven't had a drink since last week. I don't drink a lot, but I usually have a beer or whisky after work. But since my friend, since their struggle with alcohol, I just...

    Heavy, wet snow last night. I shovelled before bed. Over the night more snow blowed in, packed on the driveway. After I made breakfast for my partner and I, I cleared the packed snow, throwing it over the six and a half feet drifts that line our driveway. My arms are tired. My brain is tired. There's a deep sense of exhaustion that I feel like is only going to get worse.

  • thai massage training

    A road trip
    Massage, healing
    and dancing
    A sweet weekend
    

  • A rabbit hole full of mocking birds

    And I don't recall the rest of the lullaby. Annoyed that I couldn't recall the rest of the lyrics, I decided to look them up [1] and fell into a bit of a rabbit hole. The history of the lullaby seems to go back to the early 1900s in the Appalachian area of North Carolina. My paternal grandmother was born and raised in Asheville, North Carolina [2] back in 1921, so it's a pretty gone conclusion that she would have heard it as a child.

    But what I did not expect was just how popular it is as a cover song. I had no idea the number of people who covered it over the years, such as Burl Ives [3], Joan Baez [4], Nina Simone [5], Aretha Franklin [6], Carly Simon [7], Dusty Springfield and Jimi Hendrix [8], Bo Diddley [9] and … Eminen‽ The “Slim Shady [10]” Eminen? Eminen did a cover of it [11]?

• Technology and Free Software

  • How I fought my smartphone addiction

    Around 2018, I had the same epiphany: I was unable to get out of my house without my phone. In fact, I was so addicted that it was hard not to take the phone with me even inside the house or, God forbid, into the bathroom!

    I had this discussion with Matt Baer, Write.as creator, and he told me that he had started to consciously go for short walks without his smartphone. I thought it was a good idea. I started to leave my phone at home for short walks. I disabled notifications. I even invested in an e-ink smartphone and, later, in a Mudita Kompakt.