Leftovers

• Monopolies/Monopsonies

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal/Opinions

      • Something old is new again

        I just finished a re-read of the first three books of The Black Company series by Glen Cook. I call it a re-read, but I haven't picked these up in probably 10 or 15 years; while I remembered some bits and pieces, it was essentially a spoiler-free experience. One of the benefits of having a swiss cheese memory is that I get a lot of replay value out of my media. I'm a chronic re-reader and re-watcher. Taking the long view, once something makes it into my rotation, it's probably going to stay there for decades.

      • a girl can dream

        scented sheets
        and something sweet
        
        
        sea and sun
        and sex on the beach
        

      • I live my life between moments in time

        The other day as I was heading out I noticed a weird looking camera on a poll outside my building. It looked like a Flock camera. It wasn't, but it looked quite a bit like one—unsettlingly so. This morning on my way back I noticed the camera again. Time passed between these two moments, but in the moment itself, they felt the same, like time had collapsed on a point.

        I notice the same thing when I go to bed. I lay down, I stare at the ceiling, and I think about how I did the same thing last night, how I'll do the same thing tomorrow.

      • Buckingham Palace Garden Party

        Last Friday I had the pleasure of attending a garden party celebrating young people who have earned their Gold Duke of Edinburgh awards. This was held at Buckingham Palace, the London gaff of the Royal Family. I was attending as a supporter and was nominated to attend. Each year, there are 3 events at Buckingham Palace and one at Holyrood in Edinburgh.

        Dress for the occasion is formal with uniforms being welcomed. This was a mercy as Scout uniform has a short sleeve shirt option and the weather was looking to be warm. It was 29 degrees C that day. Yep, I was happy to not have to wear a jacket! I did however, have to wear trousers as opposed to my desired shorts. As soon as the temperature if above 22 degrees C, I need shorts to remain vaguely cool. There were many a poor wretch suffering in their suits.

      • Afrobeat

        Those who listen to FLUX will not be surprised. Afrobeat is a delight. You hear some addicting rhthym, punchy brass getting you into the mood and then once you are moving in a trance the vocals hit. Sometimes you learn new words thanks to pidgin english, sometimes you learn a new perspective. Either way, you are having a great time. Go listen. Start at Fela Kuti and Tony Allen to begin a journey. Enjoy the ride and see where you end up. All great music takes you somewhere.

      • Lungs

        Got some red ink for tattoo. For the spider lily practice. Got some practice fake skin too. Ten sheet in total.

        By the time I finish my course and fill up 10 sheet (double side) of skin, I'll be ready to take on some real project. I already tattoo people, stick and poke, just for the fun of it. But I can't wait to have a bigger project.

        Lungs are still healing from so much smoking. I didn't smoke for a week, but then smoke a pack over the weekend partying.

      • sake, wine & chips

        A bottle of Sake, some red wine and an awful lot of chips and salsa, my stomach isn't happy this morning. I didn't smoke though, even as I was hanging out with the theater crew, a definite trigger for smoking.

      • grey wait day

        Gray day, sad, woke up at 3am.

        I don't like the singles' lifestyle: being single and looking and doing thing to not be single anymore. I had fun this weekend during the event, but it's not my cup of tea.

      • freak storm

        It was intense. I had to get out of bed at one point. It felt like a nice time to meditate. When all the elements are active, dancing and partying, the energy is high.

        I heard multiple trees crashing. One landed on my neighbor's house. It felt like something was happening. Some major change coming up. The full moon coming up. What is the storm announcing?

      • Power Outage Review

        The power went down for 48 hours. I wasn't prepared at all, so this is just what I had ready. It was still really comfortable but with a tad more prep, it would have been really nothing. It's also nice to be prepared to live without much power, or to have a setup for when I'm on the road.

      • flat tire

        Emotional meltdown this morning on the beach. I felt like the worst person in the world for a moment. I sat on the beach crying.

        My daughter woke up, not too late. We had coffee, and a bit of food. I tried to work a bit. I needed some sort of power. I didn't want to buy the same generator that I have sitting here, that probably needs some clean up as it won't start anymore.

    • Technology and Free Software

      • Wired is Op

        This isn't a new revelation, but IMO, wired accessories are overpowered. I have several Bluetooth headsets I've accumulated over the years. It's embarrassing, but back in 2015 I got a gift set of Bluetooth headphones with a 3.5mm backup and had the worst time trying to pair it. I think it may have been my first one, but I don't think it was because I think I had one of those old single bud-stem ones for phone calls... Of course back then I think they were only good for phone audio.

        Anyway, I charged it, turned it on, and...nothing. No connection, nothing. It had never occurred to me to hold down the power button to pair... I think that was also the way to turn it off. After just trying to use it as a wired headset, it was still nagging at me that I couldn't get this stupid headset to work. So out of frustration, I just held down the power button...and it actually started pairing. I was glad I figured it out, but I think previous ones I tried almost immediately tried to pair on power-up if they didn't detect a paired device. Anyway, I finally got past that miniscule hurdle and decided I liked the BT headsets. They didn't snag on anything and you could get up and move away without losing audio. And those are/were the only pros over wired connections.

      • 26 May 2026

        I started something, sort of, data fasting again. My dabbling into LLMs, using the modern web more and more and losing myself - again - in completely worthless social media battles with people i don't know, will never know and don't care about is getting out of hand... again. I know that i was at this point easily a dozen times and i know it has to stop. I don't know why i always slip into this toxic dommscrolling / fighting behavior but it is frustrating to find myself always returning to this habit as soon as i let myself use more modern tech too much.

        Well, now as my project at work is largely finished and my tasks are now mostly training my coworkers, writing manuals and so on i set myself the goal to do most of that stuff on my salvaged single core laptop using traditional Unix tools and absent from touching a modern browser besides of the absolutely necessary minimum to complete the tasks. At home things are more easy... there is no modern computer (besides the one from my wife which i dare not to touch).

      • TUI Annoyances

        NVIDIA at one point had an installer for CUDA that required the use of a colored terminal; the TUI was all fancy and unreadable without colors being enabled. A tarball and a README would be more efficient as that could be integrated into Ansible or similar more readily, but "sensible install options" may not be on the menu depending on the vendor.

      • Hypergrug - Playing with hyperdimensional computing

        I decided that before I get distracted by theoretical details, reading papers, doing math, I should just build a simple prototype library and try some things out. Hypergrug, my nascent HDC library, can be found in that acursed place, because migrating off is still on the list of things I 'should do' but have not yet done.

      • Black Sun Prototype Binding

        I completed this project in August of 2024, but never got around to posting it on my old blog, so I figured it might as well be a post here to my feed. Other prior postings are going into pages that are referenced on my home screen.

        I came up with a design idea for a binding of Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse.

      • reduce, re-use

        I'm one of the director of a small tech group. They are going full steam ahead with hosting AI on our infrastructure. I'm against it, but they have majority.

        [...]

        Localize: The information that I use and want to keep handy. Using stuff like Kiwix, or even a local, self hosted, on my phone or computer AI. We used to have a load of CD for your linux distro, where all the tools where with you when you needed them. Localize you shared data, know where you host your information.

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Last chance to hear: BBC 4 on longwave and CHU

          I started writing my intended follow-up to my "Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology" post today, to share my thoughts arising from responses to that post elsewhere in Gopherspace. I've put about an hour and a half into it and I'm not happy with it, I think it's going to need that long again to get a point where I'd be happy sharing it, and I don't have that in me today. So, just to keep my weekly posting streak alive, here's something substantially faster. Sorry to keep you all waiting, believe me I'm more frustrated by this than any of you are. Posting regularly these past two months or so has been great, but I'm also aware I've gotten into some kind of toxic productivity mindset where I get quite stressed about not being able to keep it up. At the same time the weather is getting really nice and I can feel my cycling and radio ambitions for the year being stirred, so maybe it's a good idea to fall back to fortnightly posting from June onward.