Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Hangry

    Over the last several days, I've done several miles of walking as part of a trip. A few people are joining us on this trip, and as we pound the pavement, we all naturally burn a lot of calories. This leads to some members of our party becoming "hangry," or hungry and angry, around our regular mealtimes.

    The phenomenon of being "hangry" seems to have become more and more common over the years. I see references to it in Internet memes, on mugs and tee shirts, and even in advertising for meals and snacks. I don't remember this phenomenon being very common a few decades ago--on the contrary, when I was young, I was taught that losing one's tempter due to hunger was extraordinarily rude.

  • slipping

    the rotting stench of stale emotions permeating my insides. i wish to scoop my thoughts into a pile of resignation; any tips on how this can be done? i've tried a few things with no success (as of yet).

  • receipt for: dead.name.dead.name

    for: services rendered for the cat you had together you haven't seen in years

    re: you aren't allowed to forget when you get emails to remind you

  • the sun is my frenemy

    Let me, as usual, back up. When I bought the house, my parents gave me a generator as a "housewarming gift." This was not unappreciated. The power does go out 2-3 times a year here, occasionally for several days. Letting the freezer and fridge melt during that time kinda sucks.

    But what my parents actually bought as a housewarming gift was a generator for THEM. They gave me the hand-me-down, which hails from the halcyon year of 1992. I have kept it going the past seven years with starter fluid, actual baling wire, and alternate rounds of cursing and prayer.

    This spring, it finally died for good - or at least so good my skills aren't bringing it back to life. (Nonzero chance my neighbor across the street will want it for parts. to which I say "have at it, Sean.") I don't want to replace it with another gas generator. I already replaced the lawnmower and chainsaw with electric versions; if I don't have a gas generator, I no longer have to keep gasoline in any form on the premises. I also don't have to worry about gas going stale. Or going to $THEMOON per gallon. Or anything else.

  • bones

    I feel bones
    in parts of my body
    I've only ever known as soft
    
    
    the thought escapes
    before I can stop it
    toxic
    
    
          when I reach my goal
          maybe I'll be lovable
    
    
    and I want to silence it 
    why not now
    why not now
    

• Technology and Free Software

  • Echo Delay

    The context here is that the SDF servers are on some remote and benighted continent, so by default for a keystroke to be echoed a packet must travel from Europe, across various cables and routers, be processed by the server, and sent back before it can be displayed. The speed of light is more or less fixed, and router delays set an additional floor on the lag. The best case would be the great circle distance (we assume the packets cannot take short-cuts through the Earth because the dinosaurs would eat them) which is optimistic as the packets must in reality wander across sea-cables or, much worse, bounce off a satellite or two. The situation will be even worse if your local system, the remote computer, or any routers along the way are busy, or if someone naughty has hijacked the route and added even more delay. Packets could also be dropped, in which case they must be flung out there, again.

  • Internet/Gemini

    • A paste bin

      I noticed that 0x0.st went down. I quite liked it as a temporary file hoster because you could use curl from the command-line to upload stuff. Sadly, they have been overwhelmed by bots.