Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • When convenience is not worth the price

    One week ago, Bunny was transfered to the rehabilitation center. The hospital had arranged for her to go to (what I'm calling) The Good Rehab™, but Bunny wanted another one that was much closer to Chez Boca. As in walking distance of Chez Boca (that is, if you ignore multiple fences along the way and the lack of a cross walk across a six lanes of traffic on a major road). So that's where she was transported to.

  • Bartender stories

    For the couple of months, I've been playing a lot of narrative-heavy games: 'Ghost Trick', 'Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney', 'Heaven's Vault' (slow Indiana Jones in space), 'Va-11 Hall-A', and all three 'Coffee Talk' games. I'm currently in the middle of 'Coffee Talk Tokyo'.

    I've found the 'Coffee Talk' games an exceptionally rich seam, which is encouraging me to go back to my own writing and try something that accumulates meaning through discrete episodes and conversations, just as 'Coffee Talk' does. This feels much more approachable than planning another novel as a whole. I'm also intrigued by the way that conversation stories are a very old pattern: you can look back at least as far as the Platonic dialogues, for example.

  • start flying

    my bedroom smells like rain
    and blueberry shampoo 
    I lie awake for too long
    listen to the night
    come alive
    

  • How to Train Your Dragon (2010)

    It's made to a tween formula, but it didn't impress my tweens. It has that plastic injection moulded Dreamworks look. I can believe Vikings with Scottish accents, but surely they could have been /better/ Scottish accents given the actors are actually Scottish? And boy is Jay Baruchel's Hiccup voice annoying, like he's doing an impression of Holly Hunter's Elastigirl from The Incredibles.

  • Institutional Uncomfortable Conversationhaver

    That's the thing about being the Official Uncomfortable Conversationhaver of the product side of the company... the uncomfortable conversations just keep happening.

    Why? What's uncomfortable about them? And why do you keep doing this? Wouldn't it be easier to just go with the status quo, keep your head down, do your work and go home?

  • Six Days of Play

    And, of course, what does Genesis begin with? "In the beginning, God *created* the heaven and the earth." And so on, with God creating everything else over six days, then resting.

    We usually read Genesis as God worked for six days, so we, made in His image, should work for six days and have a day (usually Sunday) off.

    But what if Henry is right and creation is play? What if God *played* for six days before resting and perhaps admiring His creation? What if we, too, should be playing--creating--for most of our weeks instead of simply working, often at unfulfilling tasks?

  • music

    mannde ji mala, a song by maati baani. it's been with me over the last few weeks. i don't know, something about devotional music gets me. if you subscribe to the "god is all is-ness" paradigm - god godding god - it feels especially bittersweet. the music calling to the beloved, to itself, knowingly or not - still acknowledges the separation of the one calling and the one being called to. previously i've only ever had that feeling when listening to kirtans...

    i also like how ecumenical it is, even the translation rendering mala as rosary, tying in another tradition. love!

  • Random Weird Things - Part Ⅳ

    Every so often I stumble upon random, weird, and completely unexpected things on the internet. I thought it would be neat to share them here from time to time. This is the fourth run.

    [...]

    term.everything is a from-scratch Wayland compositor that renders GUI apps inside your terminal. GTK, Qt, whatever — it just grabs it and draws it right there. You can run Firefox or GIMP over SSH and interact with it using your mouse. No X forwarding, no latency nonsense. It actually works.

• Technology and Free Software

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Review of Sava's response to Not Bob's review of sava.i2p

      I found the reponse useful, because it made me further aware of I2P and the existence of real people using it. The response is a nicely formatted, well-written blog entry that quotes the whole original review, which is helpful because I don't use I2P. I liked the part about Chinese radios. Frankly, that was the main part.

      The original review was glowing - 5/5s all round - and the response was appreciative and harmonious. I only wish Sava had upgraded the response to a full review and given his own rating of the original review. That would have opened the door for Not Bob to review /this/ review, completing the circle of accountability.