Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Musings on friends

    It's halloween night where I live, and I'm spending it alone. As time went on after highschool (I'm also not the best at maintaining friendships, I'll admit that) my social circle steadily decreased and now I'm at the point where hanging out with friends is a bi-monthly occurrence; so while I would normally welcome a solo halloween movie night, this time it kinda stings.

  • Cadillac Desert

    Great book. Hadn't read it. Probably essential reading for those interested in the often troubled intersection of the ecosphere with civilization. One maybe can find a four hour video version. The backdrop includes mountains that create a rain shadow, which makes the shadowed parts pretty dry, then unto this land recently came farmers with something of a puritanical streak. In summary,

  • Autumn 2024

    My last post was simply about the weather we had last summer, which was extraordinary by the way.

    Now Autumn is here and it looks promising. The only downside is that it is raining heavily but this is a good thing. Rain should always welcome no matter how annoying it might seem.

  • On our watch

    I am a bit younger, but I am in the transition period of being angry with the ones that came before us and realising I am letting down the ones that are to come.

  • 🔤SpellBinding: CEFIPSY Wordo: BREWS

  • Hallowe'en Night

    Hallowe'en is - truly, honestly - maybe my favourite holiday of the year. Sure, there's Christmas, with its time off work, and seeing family. But I guess in that case, I like what happens on the holiday more than the holiday itself. I haven't been Christian since I was an Anglican as a teenager, so the religious aspects don't resonate with me anymore. It's a time to get together, relax, maybe drink too much. But Hallowe'en remains special to me, an echo of an earlier time, both mine, and ours collectively.

    I'm too old to go trick-or-treating (I keep hoping for an attitude shift, and roving bands of adults dressed as pirates and tigers going around with pillowcases full of candy), don't have a kid to go trick-or-treating with, so we always stay home and give out candy. Originally "whatever's cheap at Costco" (which some years was packs of mini-cookies, some years chips...), we've since settled on being the Cool House that gives out full-sized chocolate bars. 81 this year. The number's been climbing steadily.

  • Friday-1

    Friday: already a lot of reacting to the unexpected, mostly pertaining to the hell also known as other people.

  • Magic, Money, and Materials

    Being "big-time" in any field or cultural area generally correlates with having money, yes. That's kind of the point of being big-time. But let's consider this same situation with musicians for a moment: given how many big-time musicians there are even today, how many more small-time musicians are there out there? How many folk musicians are there, how many garage band players, how many hobbyists, how many sincere players are out there who don't make it big-time, or who don't care to do so? The same goes for magic and magicians, now as ever. You don't need money to be an occultist or magician; indeed, most of them across all of history never had much to speak of, after all.

• Technology and Free Software

  • Gzip them all!

    I keep an archive of the One Page Dungeon Contest. It's pretty big.

    [...]

    So I decided I wanted to gzip the PDF files ("pre-compress") them. I found the answer I was looking for in Serving pre-compressed files using Apache by François Marier. Sometimes searching for stuff is hard just because you don't know what it's called. 😅

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Bad Clock == No Internet

      I recently started using a Peloton bike again after several months. Pelotons are stationary bikes with a large Android tablet stuck to them. My Peloton has been turned off and possibly unplugged a few times in the last few months of disuse.

      When I turned it on this last week, I expected to do a dance of several "update your software" dialogs and reboots as Android, Peloton, and whatever else was running had to update. Such is the life of a modern connected device. From my experience with a PS5 last year, I planned for an extra 15 mins or so for my workout.

    • "twitter" is mine now

      found the twitter brand sitting in the trash bin the other day.

      i have decided to re-purpose it to be my own.

      twitter site cost: $40 billion

      twytere.com cost: like ten bucks