Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • 🔤SpellBinding: BCOSTYU Wordo: RATHS

  • VIDEO VARIETIES 2025

    I spend too much time watching video. Broadcast TV, downloaded documentaries, and the constantly growing collection of movies I buy on second-hand VHS/DVD. It often strikes me as a waste of my time, but usually it's time when I'm so tired or unmotivated that after forcing myself to a productive task, nothing much gets achieved anyway. Alternatives of reading old books/magazines or staring blankly at a wall for an hour lost in thought, aren't really more beneficial for health, learning, or entertainment. At least I can hope to combine some minor repetitive productive task with viewing video, packaging up products I sell usually, which has the strange effect of burning random sections of the video I'm watching (especially documentaries) into my mind such that, quite unlike my normal forgetfullness, I can spontaniously replay bits of them in my head years later, like recalling a traumatic event. Unforunately that recall is only about 1% of the content I've watched, so not particularly useful as a deliberate memorising technique.

    Anyway, that aside, what I wanted to do was a quick round up of the state of video media formats that I use, since it's changing. Or more accurately, I'm affected by its changes, since for long-form reading I've got plenty of old books and no interest in digital alternatives, and for music I have my tracker module collection sampled from the infinate FTP collections of modland.com, or ABC classic FM, none of which has changed in relation to my usage.

  • elder cedar

    Yesterday I went on a walk The acid was quite strong, yet comfortable.

    I needed to connect with nature, so I stepped out for a moment. I was still tripping so I had a hard time walking in the forest.

    The light from the house created too many shadows in a very dark night, I couldn't find my footing.

• Politics and World Events

  • The Postman (David Brin Novel): A Believable Scenario for US Collapse

    Almost fifteen years ago now, I read a post-apocalyptic novel The Postman by David Brin. It was about post-collapse society in the US, after a string of events took out the US around the turn of the millennium. What struck me as odd and implausible at the time was the way in which the collapse occurred, but given what I know now, this book sounds eerily prescient.

    The collapse started with nuclear and biological attacks. The country was in the process of recovering from those. But humanitarian efforts were being thwarted and government relief workers were being murdered by a party of hyper-survivalists that formed around the writings of a guy named Nathan Holn. I think you could basically boil Holn's philosophy down to hyper-masculinity plus might makes right.

• Technology and Free Software

  • Week Notes 8

    I’m still making my way through Animal Well because it turns out the post-game is way bigger than I could’ve guessed. I’m somewhere just past halfway in the third “layer”, as the community seems to call it. If you played games as a kid and ever let your imagination run wild about hidden secrets, Animal Well is basically the game that brings all those ideas to life.

    My wife and I have also been playing through It Takes Two. I don’t have a whole lot to say about it other than that it’s a very enjoyable co-op puzzle platformer and that we’re both looking forward to playing more of it.

    [...]

    I’ve been continuing working through some of the active machines on HackTheBox, and I think I’m now at the point where I’m starting to notice some measurable improvement in myself. I’m less reliant on hints now and just a little bit faster.

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Why Blog?

      I've been asking myself this every now and then. I'm not a party person and while I've learned to do small talk, I don't talk as much as I write, I think. Recently, @adam@social.lol blogged about the Blog Question Challenge. It reminded me of similar posts of mine. 2024-03-07 Why do we even blog?. 2010-08-05 Why Blog. I keep wondering.