Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • There's a stubborn crow where my heart should be

    I recently finished reading *It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over* by Anne De Marcken. The narrator is a Zombie who, early in the story, picks up a dead crow and carries it in her chest. She asks it questions sometimes. It answers in bursts of 3 or 4 words

  • Tanana River Updates

    We had a long winter, and a slow start to spring, but the weather here in Fairbanks has improved enough now that we are seeing a lot of sunny and beautiful days. These last few weeks, and especially this last week, I have been able to get out during the lunch breaks, and enjoy walks and jogs along the Tanana River, like I have been doing the last few summers. Last summer, I struggled trying to find a balancing between jogging, for the sake of exercise and good health, versus slow walking to enjoy the scenery and looks for interesting plants and such like. This summer, I've found that a good practical approach is to spend most of the lunch break walking slowly and exploring, and then spend the last few minutes jogging back to my SUV.

    A few weeks back (May 11) I took a walk and heard again that mysterious sound in various ponds, coming from the grass or reeds, which baffled me last summer. It sounded like a bunch of small animal voices — something in between a quack and a croak. I thought perhaps they were ducklings, not knowing what baby ducks actually sound like. This year, I decided to investigate more closely, and was able to determine that they are, in fact, frogs. By approaching a pond carefully, I was able to get within about 15 feet or so, close enough to see the frogs and still hear them croaking or whatever. I took a step closer, and they all went silent, with most of them instantly disappearing under the water.

  • I don't want to be a leader

    People grow up in specific historical moments that colour the way their caregivers approach raising a child—that affect the kinds of experiences they're given. I grew up in the historic moment of participation trophies. I may have also grown up in a historic moment of "leadership."

    There was this persistent notion throughout my early childhood that everyone needed to be a leader. I was being drowned in programs that promised to teach me how to lead. Looking back on it this feels pretty silly because *not* everyone can be a leader. That's not how hierarchical societies work. Maybe a better society wouldn't have leaders at all—one in which people made decisions collectively, but despite what the National Post will tell you, my elementary school teachers weren't trying to raise anarcho-communists. They were explicitly trying to raise "leaders."

  • search history

    I've become the woman
    I thought I could never be
    
    
    the one who keeps searching 
    for the definition of emotional abuse
    

• Politics and World Events

  • in which i get dangerously close to Discourse Blogging re: "land acknowledgements"

    At this time last year, I was scrambling so hard to get everything done that I straight up closed the library for the last week and a half of school. This year, I'm better at my job. Better enough that instead of closing the library, I'm mostly sitting here being bored in it.

    It is a library. It is hard to stay bored in.

    I've spent the last couple days learning about the US Public Lands Survey System (PLSS). If you live in one of the states with mostly square or rectangular counties within which townships are also mostly square or rectangular, you're in a PLSS-surveyed place.

    I got interested after finding an 1847 plat map that included my parents' farm, the one I grew up on. And then remembering that my mother has always claimed their farm originated as payment to some soldier for his service in the War of 1812. But the area wasn't even PLSS-surveyed until the 1820s. And then I remembered the first Treaty of Chicago wasn't signed until 1821. And then I was like "so when exactly did this poor bastard (FN1) get handed this land, and who was *actually* there before, if anyone?"

• Games

  • 🎲 Religion, the Board Game (Second Edition)

    Time passes, and human civilisation is slowly heading towards destruction. Some of the most significant forces in the world are religions, and it is their duty to do what they do best: recruit Earth’s entire population before the inevitable end!

    In Religion, the Board Game, you play as one of five Religions competing to amass the most Worshippers before the doomsday clock runs out.

• Technology and Free Software

  • MONITOR - It's not a lizard.

    I have obtained ADAM Audio D3V desktop monitors.

    These are not lizards. These are not screens.

    Apparently these are not even speakers. I have been informed that they are actually Monitors, and that is apparently a distinct thing from Speakers.

    I think my old speakers were decent. Creative Gigaworks T20 Series II. They were actually really good, as far as things that get plugged into a computer go. My music sounded... fine. I thought. It was good enough that I preferred to use the speakers at home in my tiny apartment over using headphones - which is a compliment to them, because most of my music is bass-ey or even sub-bass-ey.

    Welp. One evening, fueled by red wine, I made the decision to buy nicer speakers. I don't remember, really, what the decisionmaking process was here - was I unsatisfied, or was I just wondering ... could things be better?

  • In the sum of human knowledge, nothing useful to be found (or: tweaking a camera lens)

    I am not a very handy guy. I like technology, but I've never really been good at doing and fixing things physically. I've built desktop computers since I was in primary school, but I was always more of a software person. A user. I've never held a soldering iron and I'm near useless with a hammer.

    But since I started doing analogue photography two years ago, I've had to do some minor fixes just barely outside of my comfort zone. In two cases this has meant disassembling lenses to fix some internal issues – not terribly complicated, but very finicky. I hate teeny-tiny parts.

    But as an inexperienced fumbler, my biggest problem is really that I have no idea what I'm doing. So naturally I turn to the internet. How do I disassemble this specific lens, and how much do I have to take apart to get to the loose part?