Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • ROOPHLOCH 2024: A minimum viable garden

    I just finished watering my minimum viable garden. After my family moved into our new home, I promised that I would start gardening... “eventually”. But as I suppose is not uncommon for folks with ADHD, I’m a Big Talker and Bigger Putter-Offer; I can plan and scheme about a cool project for months — or even years — and never get around to starting it. But two months ago, I ate a particularly delicious melon, and decided on a lark to plant its seeds. Now I have some well-developed melon plants, and after planting additional kitchen scraps, I have carrots and garlic growing too. I also started watering a neglected dragonfruit plant that was already here, and it’s fruit are nearly ready to be picked.

  • telemute and visionless

    I failed, honestly

    I don't think of it much, the relationship element of TV (me and a friend (who is still a good friend, though we are distant)). This isn't a yearn or sorry "ex texting" deal, I mean a sincere and public (sorry?) look at how/why I suck at intimate (though in this case, distant) relationships.

    For me, it came to need. I always felt compelled, like a dog demanding a belly rub, or a puppy who couldn't be left alone, to be in contact with her. I hate myself of this. I am no longer like that, but at that time I was, and I have loathing for folks I've met who are like that. I issue a mountain of disgust and loathing for myself for that, but for V, an apology.

  • Stargazing: Auriga (publ. 2024-09-30)

    Clear skies again this morning. I was able to make it out around 3:30am for about 40 minutes, and I completed this sketch. The original was done in sloppy pencil work but I drew over that with pen to make it neater.

  • diGiTaL•°×X×°•DiSdAiN

  • 30 September 2024

    Well, after spending about 1000 Euros on the repair of $Car1, yesterday $Car2 (in fact an old car from my parents, but we use it mostly) broke down. We are now really contemplating getting a new car for the first time in our life.

    The thing is: Most of my life i was poor, not the starving type of poor, but poor enough that i mostly drove shitty 500 Euro cars, rode by (not much better) motorcycle everywhere or used my bicycle. Now, with my wife and after now having a medium-ok paying job things changed for the better over the last 10 years or so. But the idea of getting a loan (*gasp*) and spending about 17000 Euros on a car is something my brain is not used to. I will have to rewire my brain somehow. I mean, i am 40, i am a father of a small child, i am somewhat integrated in society... why is it bothering me so much to do what (almost) everybody else does all the time?

  • Month 1

    It's been a month since my wife left the house. We decided to separate a few months ago, but she stayed in the same house for a couple months, before leaving.

    Over the weekend a friend of mine was commenting on how much freedom I have now. I replied that f reedom is great but the purpose is lacking. What am I doing now? Who do I want to be and where do I want to go? It brought tears to my eyes.

    My ex is now in a new relationship. I partly envy her as it would be a good distraction to be in a new relationship. But I also feel that there would be a missing process if I would just jump into a new exciting thing. I mean I don't really have a choice, and I doubt that I would be able to resist someone who would be attracted to me, but for the moment it feels better to be single.

  • Validation

    All I know about myself is that everything I do is to be acknowledged by someone to feel good about myself for actually doing something that brings value to someone. But by doing that I don't get to do what I like, but because I have been doing it for so long I don't even know what I want. I feel shallow when talking to other people I feel like I all I can bring to the conversation is existential dread.

• Technology and Free Software

  • C Melody

    Lacking better methods of melody construction, outline a scale in a DAW, or on a piece of paper, or whatever. With a Digital Audio Workstation you can usually put the melodic fragment on loop while you fiddle around with it for a maybe faster feedback cycle as to whether a change was good or not.

  • Re: Is a flatfile database a terrible idea?

    Flatfiles are slow, even when cached in memory (which for anything frequent will pretty much be the case) as a linear scan for the 27,879th user record in /etc/passwd takes time, more than something with a B-tree index or whatever. Hence the flatfile database /etc/passwd (optionally) being able to be built into a Berkeley DB file, among other complications such as LDAP. So flatfiles can work, but may not scale. If your data does scale, then it may be too slow, fail, or you'll have to implement something more efficient into the workflow. (Berkeley DB can also fail, as Subversion discovered prior to moving to a filesystem-based database, probably a case of needing to use the right tool for the job. One story I heard was that the BDB folks said something like "don't use BDB like that".)

  • SSI AD&D Goldbox 2024 Update

    So two characters were dual-classed three years ago, to turn a fighter into a fighter/magic-user, and turn a magic-user into a magic-user/fighter. That was a bit more time-consuming than I had expected. Reading some online discussions about Pools of Darkness recently I learned that most prefer to do their dual-classing around levels 10-15, not 20-21 as I did. By AD&D rules, for a character to be able to use the abilities from their original class they have to first reach a higher level in their new class. So I had to get my two characters up to level 20-21, or some 4,000,000 XP (give or take). After many quite boring sessions of hunting random encounters to grind XP I started to carefully explore the world a bit more earlier this year (in real-world time). I found some locations with scripted encounters to clear, and after many attempts managed to clear one of the bigger dungeons, one major other location that I am not going to spoil, and then the two next entire areas that are part of the main quest. Turns out progressing a bit in the story was much more fun AND rewarded more XP than trying to grind random encounters, so I probably should have done that much sooner.

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Ch-ch-ch-changes

      I recall that previous communication. A few months ago I received a letter from my ISP trying to upsell me on a new plan, one that did not support static IP addresses. I called, and when I said that wasn't an option because of work (a slight embellishment on my part) they replied “how unfortunate” since they had no plans to offer one with the new plan. So I did nothing. I was happy with the plan I had (well, kind of still have).