Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Dangers - Black Magic

    It has been almost a month since I posted the last scene of Chapter 6 - Dangers. I like the scenes with Lantashi in them (I'm a vain Sylvan). And scenes with both Lee and I are lots of fun.

    We've written a couple more chapters beyond this, and hopefully can finish the first draft of 'Shadows' before mid-year.

    This is the next scene of Chapter 6, called "Black Magic". Lee is a bit skeptical of Lantashi's friend. She reveals that not only Lee and his friends, but others, are also looking into the mysterious goings-on of the Upper Peninsula!

  • Cataloging Books

    worldcat.org is a great starting point. you can download records in RIS format and convert to bibtex, endnote, wordbib and others with [...]

  • in which today turns out pretty well, thanks

    The cat who has interposed herself between me and the computer and is passively-aggressively attempting to lick my face to get me to pet her notwithstanding. (I like her, too.)

    My snowdrops are blooming, so spring is now Beginning. I also saw some crocus leaves peeping up this afternoon.

    I got an email informing me that a library grant for which I applied last fall was approved. They're sending us $1,100 worth of free books as soon as I select which titles we want. So that was a nice little email I got to send to the district superintendent for inclusion in this week's e-newsletter to families.

• Politics and World Events

  • Things about MElon (and how easy for anyone to fall from people's grace)

    Four years ago, things looked very different for Elon Musk.

    In fact, I had a very good opinion of him. He was, to me, an example of how an autistic person could attain success through an unconventional career promoting out-of-the-box thinking. In a world in which 8 out of 10 autistic folks are either unemployed or severely underemployed, the public visibility of Elon Musk gave me hope.

    In 2021, he was on a Saturday Night Live episode. He also went to space, being one of the three billionaires who went on space tourism that year, along with Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson.

    Tesla was still a favorite among those who cared about climate change and carbon emissions. Many households were installing Tesla's solar panels and power banks.

• Food

  • (Lifehack) How to make ramen

    In the last 15 years, I have seen many ramen restaurants open in this part of the world. Until then, one had to go to Seattle for a decent bowl of ramen. Then, ramen joints began opening in Portland, following gentrification: Boxer Ramen on Northeast Alberta Street and Noraneko in the Central Eastside Industrial District were among the first. Today, there are homegrown ramen places and outposts of Japan-based chains (such as Afuri and Kizuki).

    Once you have real ramen, you'll immediately notice that it is a completely different creature from instant ramen noodles (especially the deep-fried ones found in U.S. supermarkets).

    But finding real ramen (fresh or frozen) is still a challenge in most parts of the U.S., and even if you could, it is very pricey.

    The other day, I found a trick that solves this problem. And it is cheap.

• Technology and Free Software

  • SSH ServerAliveInterval

    ServerAliveInterval could be set to some number of seconds if you have an ISP who is aggressive at clearing out "idle" network connections. A SSH connection might sit there doing nothing for hours, just the sort of thing a connection pruner would look to remove. So, if you want your SSH connection more likely to stay up given such firewalls, set a ServerAliveInterval.

    ServerAliveInterval could be turned off if you have a microwave or otherwise bad network connection that causes the connection to fail because the ServerAliveInterval ping test failed, and you want the connection to try to stay alive through such rough spots.

    These are contradictory use-cases, so if you have both a microwave and a firewall that prunes idle connections, well, maybe there's a ServerAliveInterval high enough to mostly ride through a microwave run while also being low enough to avoid the connection being marked as idle by the firewall.

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Thoughts on Ingress, free contributions, and Internet privacy

      With Niantic deciding not to sell Ingress (AR game originally developed by Google) with the reason being how it helps them with data for their VPS system, it made me realise how it solidify the way I think about a lot of things operating at the world and the influences I've had before it.

      Ingress is this thing that I happened to be a part of back when I wanted to add more Pokéstops to Pokémon Go, and ended up sticking with whilr actually ditching PoGo. The motivator of this is actually with how people from the opposing faction and I act, as well as my teammates who I've mostly never met because of me being some nerd who simply doesn't want to interact with people especially as years went by, and also the fact that I can contribute in *some* way to the game with the added bonus of an in game badge. There would be a lot I can say about people from both sides, but I simply do not think I should say much about them, besides my thoughts were all on the contribution part of it, so let's focus on that.