Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • spilling secrets

    this I should keep to myself
    I think once, twice, many times
    
    
    the quiet hopes and ugly thoughts
    the rosy dreams and constant fears
    
    
    I keep spilling them, the secrets that scare me
    and you're still there, listening 
    not scared
    

  • Worth the wait

    I know exactly what they mean. My VW is not exactly a microcamper, but it is very at home on Britain's little roads and I'm much happier bimbling down the back routes than thundering down the motorway. There's a wonderful freedom in taking off, stopping when it suits, and having a brew when you need one.

    Owning a camper was a childhood dream, and though it took me the best part of half a century to get there, I still feel a great sense of privilege. Part of of me might wish I'd bought it earlier, but the truth is I wasn't in a position to get there any sooner. "Good things come to he who waits" might not *always* be true, but there is value in the waiting. Patience is, after all, a virtue. In an age of instant gratification, the act of waiting is about as counter-cultural as it gets.

• Science

  • Hill Function (publ. 2026-08-25)

    I'm working through An Introduction to Systems Biology (2nd Ed.) by Uri Alon, as part of my studies in the idea of modeling cellular systems as analog computing circuits. The first equations discussed was the Hill function:

    f(X*) = β X*ⁿ / (Kⁿ + X*ⁿ)

    The hill function can be used as an input function to describe how gene expression — or more precisely promoter activity — is related to the concentration of activation factors. K is the activation coefficient, which is the concentration point at which there is significant activation. The scale or maximal promoter activity is defined by β.

  • Error bars

    So they have no clue. Cultural knowledge strongly implies Tokyo as the target, but this also has some degree of uncertainty, not error bars but a weighted table of cities (why is it always cities) to roll on. Uncertainty isn't much found in casual speech, and probably should be in more scientific speech, as a trail marker "3 kilometers to campsite" is assumed to be roughly correct. A joker could append some zeros, though a 30000 km walking trail should ideally raise some Spock-like eyebrows. A more accurate 3000 ± 257.185 may again raise eyebrows, like how is the error precise to that many digits, and would the error estimate even be useful to the average trail-walker? More pertinent would be indicators such as "is there ice" or "some degree of rock climbing involved" not plus or minus some meters. The exact trail length quickly falls into the "how long is a coastline" rabbit hole, though a good Bematist will get good enough results.

• Technology and Free Software

  • Arduino Opens Pre-Orders for the Powerful VENTUNO Q, Its Second UNO-Branded Single-Board Computer

    Arduino has officially opened pre-orders for the VENTUNO Q, a more powerful successor to the UNO Q — which was, in turn, the first product launched following its acquisition by Qualcomm and the first Linux-capable single-board computer in the UNO family of formerly-microcontroller-powered development boards.

    "For twenty-one years, Arduino has taken complex technology and made it simple enough for anyone to build something real," says Arduino's Fabio Violante, now a vice president and general manager at Qualcomm. "VENTUNO Q is that same mission, applied to the most consequential technology of our time. With VENTUNO Q, we are giving every developer, educator and innovator the tools to build machines that don’t just think, but do."

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Journal Plans for 2027

      Continuing in my newfound appreciation of minimalism and simplicity, I'm not going to complicate my journaling experience any more than I have to for next year.

      We are quickly approaching Hobonichi season, with many people anxiously anticipating the now infamous 01/09 11:00 JST scramble, however I have decided I won't be taking part in the usual festivities this year.

      To tell you the truth, I have been utterly put off Hobonichi. The farcical website outage in 2024, followed by 2025's #papergate and 1101's increasingly shady business practices have all led me to the decision that I'll be spending my money elsewhere this year.

    • Extending finger protocol

      Finger[1] is a protocol from the early days of internet, which allowed people to spy^H^H^H see what other people were doing and/or were planning to do, although it also had other uses, like letting people to see contemporary contents of bevirege vending machine[2].