Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • 🔤SpellBinding: ALMNRSY Wordo: PRIED

  • and then,.

    gusts of wind fill the alley - the tucked away nook "away" from the big web. Heavy heaves and intense velocity forces the Pub door open.

    I slip in, the door slams behind me.

    I skirt around the Pub, looking around, not expectantly, but curiously - hands in pocket, thinking: "what to drink".

  • Some of the music i'm listening to - 11

  • new theatre season

    We're back in theatre.

    A quick meeting last week to check in about fundraising, we jumped right back into act 1.

    I've created a voice contraption for Gregor, with the PiSound, and added a PiSugar, board with battery. It makes the setup portable and rechargeable.

    I need to come up with the back pack setup now, battery, amp, and speakers all in one, I could also buy a portable speaker and mount it in the bag.

  • cat in hammock

    Since my ex left the house it's been busier than normal. Neighbour visiting because his water line was broken, wood guy delivery, different people showing up at my house. 2 days ago my land lord showed up, unannounced, wanting to work on the property.

    [landlord rant]

    I hosted him, I fed him, I helped him on his work, I listen to all of his 'great' accomplishment, and he still was an insulting character. I mean he was insulting in a polite way, like people who think they are superior will do. It doesn't matter your status, how much money you have in your bank, if you're miserable, and haven't dealt with your daddy issue, you're still an asshole. He was not very aware, not compassionate, I couldn't believe how in this moment I saw him for what he was. A little boy who will never be enough, digging his own grave with his bare hand, hoping someone will celebrate his suffering. A lack of love, when you are a kid, will screw your whole life.

  • back to school

    the back to school season is turning out to be interesting. i had expected the curriculum to be more around psychology and art, i've bought the monstrous camille paglia book, i brought some art books home from the library. but it turns out to be more of a spiritual theme, at least this first week. i've circled back around (spiralled up?) to high school days of alan watts, eckhart tolle, ram das. this time with krishna das and leaning more towards the teachings of sri neem karoli baba. it's interesting to observe how many things i've learned to let go of over the years, the different identities, "shoulds", expectations of myself and relationships. still a long way to go, but life is so much easier. isn't it much more fun to do like 20 collages in a row when you're moved to do it, than to think of yourself as An Artist and take on all the thoughts around that - i should do this every day, why am i not inspired, i need to be accountable, maybe if i shared my creations online etc etc. letting go of trying to be a Runner. never identified with that one in particular but i did try, for Health and for having more in common with my partner. but it's completely fine to not be a Runner, it's not indicative of anything idk... moral? or just anything, period. letting go of trying to have a particular - "real" - type of relationship with my mother, and accepting the type of relationship she's capable of having with me. isn't that better? to appreciate what is, rather than struggle towards the impossible, and keep seeing her "faults" and "lacks"?

  • it's 2:28

    Want to capture this feeling. I can't sleep. Eyes wide shut, staring at the back of my eyelids, the kaleidoscope of patterns. Are they miniscule veins of my skin? Can't be. They're moving. Thump of my heartbeat in my left ear. No tiredness. I have ideas. Certainly had too much coffee yesterday. Is that it? It usually doesn't affect me like this. Maybe it's the Escitalopram. I started that yesterday. Finally gave in. Needed something. But doc didn't mention it'd keep me up. Opposite, in fact. I have a run planned with a mate at 8am. Let's try this again.

  • organizing, cleaning

    Some words are moment-ephemeral. To be said, not delved into. Venting.

    A post from a moment ago, as well as a post from some time ago (the recent one about me, the other about someone else (whom I should have never said those things of)) have been deleted.

    Now, I am cleaning up my apartment. I talked to the new caseworker, from the Mint Team (a caseworker for a high-functioning adult with mental illness (me)), and I have her contact information. I also called a local therapist office, to get a counselor. Former therapist stopped the practice.

  • Freedom in Bareness

    Bareness in skill like a veteran shooter that shoots without the aid of any tools.

    A writer who can write just about anything, crouched in an office chair, on his phone.

    There is Freedom in Bareness.

    Like writing here, using only what's needed. Viewing only what's needed.

    No gimmicks but isn't everything a gimmick?

  • blog in the key of life

    I believe when I write a post (this time) it will be forever

    Of course I have to queue up Stevie Wonder, listen to the magic of that song

    Radio Garden later. Rock/Metal stations, gonna mosey from the Rockaway Radio, I "get" their format. It's good, will be back

• Technology and Free Software

  • VIM Productivity Vs Time

  • What does retro computing mean?

    I have an interest in nailing down what exactly is meant by "retro" or "classic" computing. A few years ago I started a small internet club for people interested in old computers called INetCC whose stated goal was creating a network of classic computers. However, this soon gave rise to the question of what counts as a classic computer. At the time, I decided that anything made before 1998 counted, as that was the year when the Pentium II processor was introduced, bringing modern processor features like speculative execution into the mainstream, as well as a couple of other things which I felt were a departure from computing before then. Still, it is always dissatisfying to draw a line at a specific year rather than capture the philosophy of classic computing in a rigorous definition. After all, there are brand new computers like the Commander X16 which are built to capture the spirit of classic computing, and obviously it fails the date test.

  • Pencil to Paper

    The last time I wrote anything of significant length on actual paper with an actual pencil was 20 years ago, in university. My challenge here, now, is to see if I can still pull this off. Literally old-school.

    In the spirit of ROOPHLOCH — slightly twisting the rules, perhaps — I'm sitting outside on the porch, with a pencil and a notepad. The pencil is one of those metallic ones where you can insert thin rods of graphite. I've owned this one since high school and it has served me well. "Pentel S445" it says on its side, and it has a matte silvery finish to the metal. I'm not a pen enthusiast, however, nor do I really work much with paper and pencil these days — I found this one lying around so I chose it for today's task.

    The technique is coming back to me. I've always enjoyed drawing, and writing manually on paper is a form of drawing, I suppose. Compared to digital writing, this is certainly slower, more deliberate. You need to choose words with care, because editing is difficult, if possible at all. I find myself erasing and swapping words here and there, but on the whole, what has been written is there to stay.

  • A Verificationism Definition of Art

    The argument between artists and the AI crowd regarding if AI-generated art is actually art hasn't been settled yet. You would think that the artist would admnit defeat with next-to-none logic and the most amount of appeal to emotion. But no, they are still fighting. The only formal education I got on philosophy was in my freshman year, took an intro to philosophy class in our philosophy department. I might be wrong, but I am entitled to my 2 cents. And I think I'm correct.

    My philosophical view is heavly influenced by this video years ago by a youtuber "Philosophy: Engineered!" (was AntiCitizenX at the time). Where he applied the Verificationism principle to the question of "does free will exist?". The video is great and I highly recommend it. There was a longer form, actual discussion on the topic, but it has been removed from youtube.

  • ASCII Plot (my favourite way to represent data)

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Likes and Reactions

      I love the reactions feature in Delta Chat, I think it’s great.

      Now it’s been studied somewhat how bad and horrible collecting likes is on world-readable popularity contest social media. It messes with our psychology in bad ways. One of the reasons I really really hate BGG is seeing a bunch of bad guys and bullying posts and bad takes get way more likes than the posts that are more along with my own values. That’s heartbreaking seeing that over and over again.

    • Number of Gopher users (re: Ralf Wause)

      Ralf wrote in his phlog post [1] that he was wondering how many regular users Gopher does get. With this, he means the number of people browser the Gopher sphere.

      In the past, I asked my self a similar question, about the number of Gopher servers [2]. I came to the surprising estimate of about 320 servers world wide.

    • Reactions

      Reactions are an interesting thing. Even simple ❤️ or ⭐ reactions have an effect on how we communicate. Do we feel appreciated? Heard? Is this the end of the conversation? The replies get shorter, it's time to say good-bye, the last message gets a "like" and we're done.

      My first contact with reactions was Twitter and Facebook, I think. Both accounts have been deleted.

      On Signal and Discord, I noticed people using reactions in my gaming groups. There is no notification for these reactions.

    • Done with cohost

      I think I'm done with cohost. The anti-capitalist bastard lovechild of Tumblr and LiveJournal was one of the first sites I tried once it became clear that Twitter, under its new owner, was basically screwed. I came there at the same time as a few other poets from Twitter. I think there were four of us. Two made accounts but I don't know if they even posted. One of them posted for a month or so with a fervor I admired - treating the site as a blogging or journal platform rather than a jokey, shitpostey Twitter replacement. And then she stopped. Ran out of steam, I guess. And then it was just me.

      I spent I think a year and a half there, joining in late 2022. I tried posting, but it was really hard. The actual tools aren't bad - you have Markdown, you can do all kinds of custom CSS to do wild things (what're known on cohost as "CSS crimes"), but it's very difficult to find interesting things. Cohost, being owned and run by a small trans and queer team, made very clear early on that it would favour safety over all else. This has meant, among other things, allowing search to only consider user-applied hashtags. There's no way to do a full-text search of public posts like on other sites.

      Discoverability, as you can imagine, is an absolute nightmare, ranging from annoying to outright impossible.

    • What to expect from this gemlog

      Retro computing is among my dozens (probably) of competing hobby interests. I got my first vintage computer (the TI-99/4a) in 2018 (I think) and have had some bursts of interest since then. I believe I'm writing to you in the midst of the third such burst.

    • VanVan Tutorial Adventure Published

      Considering I was on vacation for a couple of weeks, updates to my gemlog were awfully sparse. But that doesn't mean I was idle during that time. The fruits of my labors can be seen below: [...]

    • IT infrastructure frailty

      Issues with multiple online services unfold lately, accompanied by yet more of potential personal computer hardware issues, and the services that have no issues being dependent on those that have.

      uberspace.net, the primary domain I use for email, website, Gopher, and XMPP, seems to be in peril. Maybe it will turn out fine, but in case if not, my website's other address is thunix.net/~defanor, and there are an email address and Gopher site as well; other contacts (primary and backup ones) are listed on its "about" page. Actually it seems that thunix.net was in peril recently as well, but apparently not anymore.

    • 04 September 2024

      In recent weeks i was wondering: How many regular users do gopher get? I dont't mean how many servers or active gopher holes, but just people who browse the gophersphere and read. A few hundred worldwide? Perhaps a few thousand? I somewhat doubt that it would exceed that. I am curious what you fellow gophers think about that.

    • The Small Web is totally a thing

      Here in Geminispace there’s a temptation to write the entire Web off as an overcommercialized pit of large organizations — not all of them companies — trying to get you to do things that are good for them but not always good for you.

      Sure, there’s a lot of that these days, but it’s never been easier to just throw up a website onto the Internet.