Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • 🔤SpellBinding: ABCLUNM Wordo: BONNE

  • Wednesday

    Have you ever encountered and interested with the same person online, albeit not realizing that's what was happening due to different "handles", and the relationship/interaction was completely different, e.g. specifically polar opposites in that you got along great in one context, but were at odds in another?

    Well, not that anyone here reads me anymore, anyway. But I needed to "wonder out loud" nevertheless.

    In just slightly related news, I had a really odd dream last night.

    I was working for a company I worked many years for, but this time the "where" as radically different. And I was somehow one of the more "quiet" employees. And one of them tried helping me by insisting I become more demonstrative, starting with having a heart to heart with my manager.

  • Hello Everyone

    I'm a halfway dropout as of today. My lady is nuts and making my life hell. Missing many exams today because of it. Gonna just drop that math major. I was never going to be a mathematician, what was I thinking anyway? I got my other major to back me up. Now I'll have free time.

  • Book Review: The Red Tape War

    A lot has been happening outside Rob's Gemini Capsule recently, and I haven't had much time to read. I've picked up a few titles in the last few months, but they've been serious, heavy works: the Ruby Throne series by Deborah Chester on one hand, Charles Dickens' "Great Expectations" on another. In the face of all that gloom, I needed something to lighten my spirits.

    It turned out "The Red Tape War" was just what I needed. Written by a team of three authors (Jack L Chalker, Mike Resnick, and George Alec Effinger) and published in 1991, the book is more a comedic exercise for the authors than a polished novel for the entertainment of the reader. Each author wrote one chapter at a time a chapter and tried to paint the next author into a corner as much as possible. I can see the enjoyment any author would get out of a challenge like that, especially if each is allowed to bend the rules a little bit along the way.

  • Still sane

    Because of its first line, “Today is my birthday”, I have often wanted to make a habit of listening to “Still Sane” by Lorde on my birthdays. In some years I succeeded. In some years I remembered my resolution shortly before and shortly after my birthday, but not on my birthday.

• Technology and Free Software

  • A big memex

    How big are your memories? Some days they seem endless. Perhaps you started using an external add-on brain, a memory extender (memex) – a blog, like I did. It's about 20 years old, now. The archives show the first blog posts showed up in 2002. I think I copied some entries over from Meatball, at the time. So I'm not entirely sure when this particular site started.

  • Programming

    • Limit and offset for row pruning

      I recently needed to prune data that tracked report requests and their processing status. The SQLite3 database table is called "reports" and has four columns.

    • SQLite3 json_patch is a jewel

      If you’re working with an SQLite3 database table and have JSON or columns you need to merge with other columns then the `json_path` function comes in really handy. I have a SQLite3 database table with four columns.

    • Rust tools for Web Work

      I've noticed that I'm using more tools written in the Rust language. I'd like to highlight two that have impressed me. Both are from [Cloud Cannon](https://cloudcannon.com). They make static website development interesting without unnecessarily increasing complexity.

      Historically static site development meant limited interactivity browser side. Then JavaScript arrived. That enabled the possibility of an interactive static site. Two areas remained challenging. First was search. An effective search engine used to required running specialized software like [Solr](https://solr.apache.org) or using a SAAS[^1] search solution. When the renaissance in static sites happened these options were seen as problematic.