Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • 🔤SpellBinding — YDEHIWA Wordo: SKIES

  • Re: Thoughts on prepping for hard times

    Imagine my surprise when I saw that Anna (agk) wrote about my recent phlog post regarding preparing for some potential financial trouble. I definitely appreciate the view from someone who has experienced the situation I'm kinda fearing for myself and my partner right now, as it puts a lot of things into perspective. My partner has gone through similar situations growing up, but he rarely talks about it.

    First off, I do want to bring up about rainwater use. The mention of filtration was more about keeping debris out of the lines leading into the storage tanks, as I've been learning how bad some clogs can get if leaves and larger objects get stuffed in the conveyance systems. Our house is in need of gutters to help protect its raised foundation slab, especially around the kitchen addition, as it was built to older building codes and allowed to stay as is according to them.

  • Explorer Belt 2025

    I have just returned from 10 rather long yet enjoyable days helping 12 young people, 16 to 24, complete their Explorer Belt for Scouts.

    The Explorer Belt is an award which those who are 16 to 24 (Explorers and Network) can earn. They have to complete an expedition in a foreign country over 10 days with a focus on learning about culture, customs and other such aspects of that country. There are 10 minor projects and 1 major project to complete while being expected to be out and about for a minimum of 5 hours a day. At the end, the young people have to give a presentation about their projects and what they have found out.

    This expedition was to southern Spain and Gibralatar. We had decided to have fewer changes in location and thanks to a spot of non-communication from the Scouts in Spain and Gibraltar, we ended up in commerical accommodation. It forced us into 2 locations - San Pedro de Alcantara, near Marbella and Malaga.

• Science

  • You do need to memorize basic facts, actually

    Ever feel like someone who could not possibly have overheard your conversations is overhearing your conversations? That was my vibe this morning when I read this article from 404 Media:

    404 Media: The Man Who Wants AI to Help You Cheat on Everything

    I got that vibe because a friend and I had discussed, not twelve hours prior, a world in which AI HUDs or other tools could let just about anyone learn about you from available online data and then scam you in real time. Once again, what we thought was the future was actually the present.

• Technology and Free Software

  • The digital amnesia

    I don't really like to talk about my personal life and/or personal events, but I kind of need to.

    So I had a very recent issue involving the smartphone. All of a sudden, it changed its locking pattern (which I never actually wanted to set, I was coerced by some apps into setting one in my "own" phone, at least I was the one buying and paying for it some years ago, neither Google nor banks nor governments). All of a sudden, my old locking pattern stopped working, it was changed. It was my own pocket, which, somehow, got enough entropy to emerge a correct order of:

    1. Unlocking the phone using the current pattern

    2. Opening settings

    3. Then opening settings for changing pattern

    4. Then setting a new pattern

    5. Then confirming the new pattern, locking me into doom.

  • Oddμ templates

    I've been working on a rewrite of the Oddmu upload template. My problem is that Oddmu, like Oddmuse before it, derives filenames from the URL path. Thus, a page like this one uses `2025-04-23-oddmu-templates` as the filename. Which is fine. If I want to link to this page, I'll use something like `[templates](https://alexschroeder.ch/edit/?id=2025-04-23-oddmu-templates)`. This is also fine.

    Oddμ allows people to upload files, including Markdown files, and it allows people to edit the data files directly, using a regular editor (if they have access to the data directory). That means any UNIX filename can be used. This includes filenames containing reserved characters in URLs such as `?` and `#`.