Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • 🔤SpellBinding — EILMTVU Wordo: BOLTS

  • Piranesi vs Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell vs Three-Body Problem

    Spoilerific comparison of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell with Piranesi and Three-Body Problem (with a bonus slag at The Da Vinci Code):

    One of my favorite books of all time is Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. It’s exploring a weird world, fully and marvelously realized in amazing Scheherazade detail, but from the first page to the last it’s all about what the people in this weird world choose to do. Their follies and their temptations and their strength. It’s a twenty out of ten for me.

  • I love the smell of cig smoke in the morning..

    I awoke in a stupor. stupified. no madness methodized, no thoughts thunk - I knew but one thing: make my way up the road and buy cigs for the first time in two days.

    I rose, made coffee until the clock on the wall struck 7 AM. I sipped espresso fast, closing in on the Lucky Seven hour. Two minutes before, I set the mug down fast and nearly ran out the door.

    Up the street, the weather waxed clear and clean - hinting of a past fog, yet winking to the present day temps, as to say "nah, it's nice out this morning, no humidity to mess with the day". I entered Convenience Barn (convenient store) and went to the ATM - $160 withdrawn (for cash on-hand safekeeping) and then the counter. A guy babbled and teased the clerk there, my hand froze with the Mountain Dew Kickstart and heart pumped high then low then high with anticipation for the cigs before me. Like a wall of sex, though only two cartons were needed for my purposes.

  • Maybe ROOPHLOCH 2024

    So at the last possible day I'm sitting at the archery range. Ok, I admit, I got a chair out. And typing outside with a bit of sunlight in a lazy afternoon, I am painfully reminded, that my eye sight has deteorated noticably. No fun. It is windy at some 15°C, I hear the traffic at the road in the distance. One of the neighbours is using their circular saw to cut wood. A small airplane is passing in the west. A cat is passing in front of me and speedily heads home.

  • Crossing over Bar-lines that One Possibly Shouldn't

    As I just wrote to the swarm of protozoa that infest my "friend" Christian's living corpse, the new album (the one about *greenhouses*, if you are curious) is now published on Mirlo, Jamcoop and my own Faircamp. In celebration, I'm listening to the album. I thought I might have burned myself out mixing and mastering it, but I am enjoying the run-through. The Yamaha HS5 monitors gurgle forth its mellifluous recital. Speaking of the Yamaha HS5 monitors, they must be *taken care of*. **Taken care of** not in the sense of a hit by some mythical mafia but in the sense of being sold off at an exceedingly reduced price to some lucky individual - probably a human.

  • Tarot Conversation

    As I have been learning to 'divine' with the Tarot, I am always looking for new ways of reading and interpreting it. Rachel Pollack's book "A Walk Through the Forest of Souls" presents new interesting ways to question the Tarot.

    Here is one method that I came up with, and which I tried today. I present this publicly for two reasons: Firstly, to document today's experience for future reference, and second, to present to potential readers what may be a different way to interpret the Tarot, one that is not strictly "spread-based", which would be the "traditional" way of drawing cards.

  • Let's Get Spooky! - October Plans

    It's spooky season! The leaves are falling, inflatable pumpkins and ghosts are starting to take over lawns, and entire sections of stores are taken over by candy (and Christmas decorations...) set in purple and orange boxes. Spooky season has always been my favorite. Hockey season also starts soon!

    To start off spooky season, I made a spooky remix of the portrait I have on my business cards and as my website's favicon!

  • “What were the skies like when you were young?” was not asked by LeVar Burton

    I always thought that the opening question in the song “Little Fluffy Clouds [1]” by the Orb [2] (music video [3]) was a sample of LeVar Burton [4], maybe from his show “Reading Rainbow [5], but apparently, it's not [6]! (link via Jason Kottke [7]) Upon relistening to the song, it's now clear to me that it's not Levar Burton. It's very close though.

    And while I like the song, my favorite one from The Orb is “A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules from the Centre of the Ultraworld [8],” which is like a fever dream but in a good way [You're insane! —Bunny] [Yes, but in a good way! —Sean].

  • broadband

    I got broadband

    500mb from Spectrum. I was under the impression they didn't serve this property. I confirmed elsewise from leasing. Now, I have it ordered. Modem delivered tomorrow. Sans router. I will get my own router (if any). Yay! :)

    Other things ordered too. A 20 in display, now I can use the PC comfortably, no cracked laptop display. Some card adapters (no SD on this machine), other ephemera of computational habits.

  • Cardamom and Dragon's Blood

    I received a nice gift in the mail today, a roll-on scented oil that smells of cardamom, copper and dragon's blood. I love the smell. My cat hates it.

    I've been dealing with such painful toothaches these past few week. So badly that I stopped functioning for a good while. I went to get them checked out, and predictably, it's my wisdom teeth. They erupted and now they were causing all this ruckus in my mouth, barely letting me sleep, eat and shower in peace. I would have had them removed years ago, but my ortho at the time chose not to. I never realized how badly using metal brackets on my teeth would affect my life almost fifteen years after I had them, but here we are.

  • 01 October 2024

    Well, we did it. We indeed bought a new car today, spending about 20000 Euros and, well, somehow i am glad about it. Perhaps i am weird, but i always thought that spending that much on a car is something i would never do, i even considered something like this silly, spending a (for my terms) big amount on money on a tool for basic transportation.

• Technology and Free Software

  • Re: Is a Flatfile database a terrible idea? and Episode 2

    I did not expect to be writing Episode 2 so soon, but I did get my first reply ever, so that is a celebrateable occasion.

  • Software Releases/Announcements

    • Gemtexter 3.0.0 - Let's Gemtext again⁴

      I proudly announce that I've released Gemtexter version `3.0.0`. What is Gemtexter? It's my minimalist static site generator for Gemini Gemtext, HTML and Markdown, written in GNU Bash.

  • Programming

    • chunk-by

      Takes a list and splits it in order into smaller lists such that each list contains one pred. If there are no pred, that’s fine, DTRT silently i.e. make a one-element list containing the whole list.