Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Dissociated Pride and Prejudice 📖

    It is a truth universally acknowledged that I can't be bothered to read about moderately posh people trying to get married. But I can enjoy a mangled flavour of it in 150 words.

  • Hurry up and wait, or why as a sysadmin I don't do shit for new deployments until there's network...

    We're working on deploying a new system that is months behind schedule. The reason? The LLM hype machine and OEM's allocating all their product for hyperscalers and/or companies that want to toss their ring into the shit show. It's unbelievable..

    Anyways, for the last month or two, while there was NO NETWORK ACCESS AVAILABLE, i.e. THERE WAS NO WAN/LAN CONNECTIVITY FOR OUR EQUIPMENT, people I work with have been dropping suggestions of maybe I should provision a node. My consistent answer is, "with what network?". Seriously, I get wanting to POST new machines and get an O.S. installed, but we're talking about hundreds to thousands of machines, depending on the cluster. This new system will easily be ~2,000 nodes, not including any VM's that we decide to roll out for sorry ass applications that can't use an entire machine! Back to the point, the look of shock and/or confusion, and/or disappointment, etc., I see on other people's faces when I tell them that I'll start as soon as there is network available. Sure, I could get an ISO, install the O.S., and then constantly go back and forth between a connected machine to download packages, repositories, configuration files, etc. Why though? Why would I want to waste my time going against the grain of typical network provisioning, to have a node "ready" without its fucking network? It makes absolutely no sense at all! Sure, there are those that would assume maybe just use a switched fabric for "connectivity"; up until yesterday, there was no network available at all, not even an "air gapped" LAN.

  • The Chronicle of Beelzebub - Halfway There

    What started as a tiny experiment, a bit of chaos, and probably some questionable optimism has somehow turned into a proper long-term journey. The plant has survived seasons, mood swings and accidental neglect (from me).

    This is a thank you to everyone who helped keep Beelzebub alive during these 333 days by checking on it and watering. You know who you are!

• Technology and Free Software

  • dc(1) buffer

    One idea for a calculator is to use dc(1) but to buffer the commands in a text editor so you can use all the text editor things for entering and mangling the text. So in vi(1) with a buffer of

        640
        42
        -
        p
    

    which with the cursor on the 640 line (as compared to GUI where who knows where the cursor might be pointing to, into a text area or somewhere else in the GUI) one can then type :,+3!dc to send the lines containing 640 through p inclusive through dc.

  • Internet/Gemini

    • That It Be! - posting to reticulum and gemini

    • Smallnet Protocols

      I'm calling the protocols discussed below "smallnet protocols", but actually I don't know the right name for them...

      The gemini protocol is great, I've been using it for five years now. I also browse gopher quite a bit. There have also been some other small internet protocols that have been developed over recent years, which are captured in this "Small internet protocol roundup" page: [...]