Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Hiding from my boss

    Right now I am hiding from work, hiding from my boss. I can't stand the guy, I don't quite hate him, though there have been many times in the past when I have hated his guts. But overall, well, he's not quite so bad as to hate him. I just can't stand him. His constant presence, all the time having to have his input on whatever it is that I do, always criticizing, never having anything helpful to add to the matter. He's also weak, he keeps second-guessing himself, he's got me from unfinished proyect to unfinished project, and he clearly doesn't know what he's doing, but he makes me do it anyway, and then I get all the blame for the errors! I think he's a bit stupid. Or maybe suffers from something like ADHD, I don't know. I just think he's incompetent.

  • Radio amateurism

    I've spoken to the other two kids, and they have zero interest in taking part in the hobby. I respect that. In fairness, even if they did, the likelihood of either of them picking up a microphone, pressing the button, and (dare I even suggest it) _speak_? Well, that's a definite no.

    Interestingly, though, Caroline and I have had this mock-feud over the last 4 years since I've had my license, around who has spent the most money on their respective hobby - me with Amateur Radio, or her with her art. Now that she's caught the Amateur bug, it's definitely time for me to get the popcorn out!

  • the monster in this story

    I believe you when you say I am good
    for a while
    a good day, I think
    until someone else
    paints a different picture
    not ugly in an obvious way
    

  • Summer Updates

    I have still been doing some walks by the Tanana River. The wild flowers now are mostly gone, although occasionally one sees a buttercup or vetch that clings on, and some hawkweed. There is quite a lot of fireweed around Fairbanks as well, which I think blooms later than most wild flowers around here. There is plenty of common yarrow around, but most of it has gone to seed and doesn't look as pretty. I saw some foxtail along one of the dike trails, with the purple spikes around two rows of green barley seed. I also found some raspberries bushes with a few berries that were ripe enough to eat.

    I checked to see if any cranberries were available at my special high-bush cranberry patch. Sadly, though, almost the entire patch had disappeared, except one sickly bush that didn't look too inviting. It appears that what had happened is the thorn bushes had come in and choked it out. I've often thought that, if I was retired, or otherwise had more spare time, it would be nice to go around those trails and clip away brush that was threatening the more interesting or rare plants. Presumably I would need to get permission from the airport authorities, who I think own or maintain those trails. They clear away the brush on the side of the trails, every year or two, but don't really tend the vegetation. I imagine the trails could be a lot more beautiful and fun to explore if somebody was working to thin out the trees some and to clear out some of the less interesting bushes and weeds.

  • That Out-Of-Body Dream

    Two and a half years ago, I came back from the Dominican Republic and my stomach was barely hanging on. I was sick a third of the trip. I was glued to the toilet, chugging water, eating white bread and peanuts. My body behaved the entire flight back, then gave me hell for almost a week after.

    The first night back, I had the wildest dream of my life. I felt myself rip away from my body, floating above the bed. I was some kind of pure and fiery spirit, and I flew through the wall behind my bed and into something I can't remember anymore.

  • the echo of solitude

    The echo of the last few days resonate in me

  • party monk

    Woke up at 6, went back to bed, it's going to be a gentle day. My emotional body is scattered, I wonder about a partner, about sex, about my next steps. Amy replied to me. She was on a phone detox for a week. A positive answer, but no follow up. What should I reply? Do I want to pursue that connection? Open the door of possibilities? Or simply move on? She connected with me, here is a breadcrumb, I should probably follow that path and see where it leads me.

  • My batty coworker

    My co-worker is obsessed with bats. I don't know exactly when it happened, but wow: they fell hard.

    One week: regular conversations, or at least approaching regular. The usual detours, sympathetic complaining, mostly lighthearted, occasionally with actual work getting done in there somewhere.

    And then, out of nowhere, bats.

    All meetings must now by necessity begin with a short preamble on "bat facts". Details about these little critters are interspersed into chats throughout the day. I've seen pictures of many different types of bats, learned about echolocation in great detail, and heard stories about bats in the backyard, bats in boxes, and bats in attics.

• Technology and Free Software

  • Toshiba's TXZ+ M4V Security-Focused Microcontrollers Now Shipping, in Engineering Sample Form

    Toshiba has announced sampling of its enhanced-security TXZ+ M4V microcontroller family, built around an Arm Cortex-M4 core and targeting system control tasks in Internet of Things (IoT) designs.

    "The widespread adoption of network connectivity and over-the-air updates in consumer and industrial equipment has improved convenience in respect of remote monitoring, control, maintenance and device updating, while underlining the importance of security measures against unauthorized access and program tampering," the company says in support of its latest microcontroller design. "Toshiba has addressed these requirements by developing the M4V Group, which enhances security and data management functions while retaining the ease of use and versatility of its current standard microcontrollers."

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Add CSS wherever

      OK, this is surprisingly cool. In a previous blogpost (2026-08-01 Oddμ workflow) I made screenshots of this site. Which mean that the background was identical to the background of the actual site on which the screenshots where being shown. I tried adding a thick grey border to the images, but it didn't look good. I just tried to add a `style` element in the middle of the page to add a background colour to the whole page, and it just worked. I guess on a slow connection people will see a flash? But in my case, it looks very nice.

• Programming

  • What is even taste when it comes to programming?

    The second is from The Ze Frank Show:

    For a very long time, taste and artistic training have been things that only a small number of people have been able to develop. Only a few people could afford to participate in the production of many types of media. Raw materials like pigments were expensive; same with tools like printing presses; even as late as 1963 it cost Charles Peignot over $600,000 to create and cut a single font family.

    The small number of people who had access to these tools and resources created rules about what was good taste or bad taste. These designers started giving each other awards and the rules they followed became even more specific. All sorts of stuff about grids and sizes and color combinations — lots of stuff that the consumers of this media never consciously noticed. Over the last 20 years, however, the cost of tools related to the authorship of media has plummeted. For very little money, anyone can create and distribute things like newsletters, or videos, or bad-ass tunes about "ugly."

    Suddenly consumers are learning the language of these authorship tools. The fact that tons of people know names of fonts like Helvetica is weird! And when people start learning something new, they perceive the world around them differently. If you start learning how to play the guitar, suddenly the guitar stands out in all the music you listen to. For example, throughout most of the history of movies, the audience didn't really understand what a craft editing was. Now, as more and more people have access to things like iMovie, they begin to understand the manipulative power of editing. Watching reality TV almost becomes like a game as you try to second-guess how the editor is trying to manipulate you.

  • Unary operators and the Shunting Yard algorithm

    I use the Shunting Yard algorithm [1] to handle precedence when parsing expressions in my assembler [2]. It's great because not only is it simple to implement, but it simplifies the code in a hand-written recursive descent parser [3].

  • [Old] The basics of an indirect threaded code ANS Forth implementation

    I need to get into the habit of writing prose more often.

    Before I go into the implementation of my ANS Forth system, I need to define somethings. First, a bit about Forth terminology—a Forth “word” can be thought of as a function or subroutine of other languages, but it's a bit more than that—it can also refer to a variable, a constant, the equivalent of a key word. It's a fluid concept, but thinking of a “word” as a function won't be too far off. Also, a collection of Forth words is collected into a wordset (or if you are reading older documentation about Forth, a “dictionary”). You can think of a “dictionary” as a library, or maybe a module, of code.

    Second, Forth is a stack-based language. There are rarely any explicit parameters, just data placed on a stack, known as the “data stack.” Because of this, expressions are written in Reverse Polish Notation (RPN (Reverse Polish Notation))—data is specified first, then the operator.