Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Where did the time go?

    I haven't posted since June? Seriously? I can't believe how quickly summer turned to fall... and how we're half way to winter already.

    We pulled most of the pepper plants out, after a bumper harvest. The few that we left in (because we just got tired of working on them) have continued to grow in spite of the few frosts we've had. Our Carolina Reaper plant gave us hundreds of little death peppers, which we've been using in very small amounts in chili. Our who family likes the flavor, but we have varying opinions on spice level. I made some chili this evening, in point of fact, with 1/4 a reaper in it, plus a few slices of jalapeno. Seems just about right, but I've only taste tested it, as it's not quite dinner time yet.

  • Art: Doors

    This not-quite-right hallway of doors evolved from abtract shapes, distorted slightly and shaded in colorful, offset hues. One door, smaller than all the others is slightly ajar and light streams onto the floor. This door captures the attention and imagination while the entire scene is bursting with potential -- what hides behind each door? Or not.

  • Ensemble puzzle

  • 6th November 2024 - Forward

    In the UK, cities typically have heraldic crests and mottos. It can be one of those interesting ways to see how a place sees itself. Often, these mottos are in latin. Looks smart, old and all that.

    The city of Birmingham decided to forego the latin. The motto is in English and simply one word - Forward.

• Politics and World Events

  • I want to rant a bit.

    Just like eight years ago, in the wake of the 2016 presidential election, history repeated and now I'm hearing a chorus of whining and crying from middle-class white cishet women. Spare me your sob story. I don't want to hear about your "resistance" or even worse, "I want to move to Canada" bullcrap. Your words reek of privilege and I'm tired of it.

    "Defend democracy?" Good deal. Democracy was working just fine exactly as designed. And that democracy lets anyone -- including a convicted felon with no character, no moral convictions, and no integrity, not to mention any real experience in public service -- raise money and participate in a national popularity contest. Being a TV reality show star cosplaying as "a successful businessman," he got lots of votes from no-information and low-information voters, including just about one out of two white Americans.

  • Some post-election writings

  • More on the 2024 US Election

    So my gut was wrong [0], and the Orange Menace won. It seems the impact of Roe v. Wade was not enough to tip the scales in the swing states. I think Harris actively lost the election by, as I put it in that post, being a "more of the same" candidate. The Democratic establishment just can't seem to realize that people want meaningful change. It was a repeat of 2016 - but worse, as it appears Harris lost the popular vote as well.

    It's hard to say what will happen during a second Trump term - from what we saw the last time he was in office, Trump does whatever is best for himself at any given moment. Smart people that interact with him try to take advantage of this, which was pretty obvious when watching his dealings with world leaders and advisers during the last go-around. But it's still a crap-shoot, and now you can add advisers and a VP that won't temper his worst impulses. Nor will the courts hamper him, with the US Supreme Court's ruling last term on presidential power.

• Technology and Free Software

  • Sus.

    An annual increase doesn't sound sustainable. Or it is, until it is not, and then doing more with less turns into doing less with less, just as America went nuts damming every river they could find, until that kinda sorta stopped, and now is kinda sorta tending more towards removing the damn things, manually or otherwise.

    I guess the W3C saying things about sustainability is good, but will debloating the web take any sort of priority over, say, the profit motives of those who have been steering the steering committees? Or can we get rid of JavaScript and CSS animations already? (Probably not, and expect some to continue bloating their pages just as some continued to build dams that made no lick of sense.)

  • akg headphones

    today a box was waiting for me at my doorstep, parts for a few of my akg headphones. while i do own a few pairs of more modern akg headphones, these parts are for the few vintage akgs i've been acquiring over the years; a pair of 600 ohm akg k240m[onitor], a k240df (diffuse field; 600 ohm), and a pair of k270p[layback] (75 ohm). all of these headphones are ~30-40 years old.

    the parts in the box are just common wear parts; a foam disc that sits between the listener's ear and the driver baffle/housing, a foam ring that fits inside the cups of the k240, and a small elastic assembly (basically just a rubber hair tie attached to a plastic disc) which controls the self-adjusting headband.

  • RetroChallenge 2024 Epiphlogue

    RetroChallenge 2024 has ended and I enjoyed my time revisiting old Sun hardware. Events like RC2024 help me to go back to how I used to personally compute. There hasn't been too many special projects where I would need these types of devices, but I do enjoy the opportunity to revisit and further my adventures with old friends...are friends electric?

    This round, I worked with my Sun Microsystems Ultra 10 workstation (voltesv), with Sun Type 6 keyboard and attached Sun Crossbow mouse, Samsung SyncMaster 900NF 19" CRT, and Cambridge SoundWorks powered desktop speakers (Model# SBS36B.) This system still runs an old install of Solaris 10 from 2005 and has not been patched or anything. I'm not really sure what options there are for patching installing software and I have not been motivated to find out, so I run as is and find workarounds as needed.