Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • 🔤SpellBinding: EFKLOYW Wordo: BUSED

  • Planning cycle routes in Washington DC

    Having moved to Washington DC for work[1], I have spent some time looking at potential bike routes around the city. I brought my Dawes Super Galaxy touring bike rather than the single-speed[2], so I can do some riding on gravel trails. These routes are all longer rides. I think the shorter rides around town will emerge organically as I ride more. All these routes are adaptations of existing routes that others have posted online through websites like Komoot[3], ridewithgps[4], and bikewashington.org[5]. I haven't tested any of the routes yet, but I hope to try at least the three shorter ones over the next few weeks. As in my post about Edinburgh bike routes[6], I calculated the length of each route using R.

  • Golden Week 2025

    My SO and I were some of the fortunate ones who had an entire 11 days off in a row (a rarity in Japan.) Tomorrow is the last day and then the entire country goes back to work. It has been a fantastic Golden Week vacation for both of us.

    I myself went back to a city I used to live in, to wander the streets again and bring back old memories. I always enjoy riding the Shinkansen, and it was great to see the familiar sights again; to hear the sounds and smell the scents. In my exploring though, I walked over 33,000 steps in one day, and that took a toll on my feet, which required several days to heal.

• Technology and Free Software

  • The anatomy of a tiny VM (and a blackjack game for it)

    How small can a virtual machine get before dwindling into a fully esoteric state (like FlipJump, BytePusher, Subleq or even my own NRJ16)? In an attempt to answer this question, the mu808 VM has evolved into n808 ([1]) which, at the time being, already has a much more convenient assembly language but strictly limits both program and data memory areas to 128 steps and cells respectively, as well as reduces the ISA to just eight base opcodes and 24-bit instruction length. Nevertheless, I have been able to implement the same examples in this new VM just as successfully as in mu808, and the Bulls and Cows game, by the way, no longer is the most impressive of them all. But first, let's review how the n808 VM itself works in detail, looking at its TI-74 BASIC port where all of its inner secrets get revealed in the most obvious way.

  • My Dygma Raise 2 keyboard review

    Before talking about the all the great things about this keyboard, let’s address the main issue I have with it. Well, not really with the keyboard itself, but with the extra keycaps I’ve purchased. You may have noticed that I purchased some extra “dash” keycaps. “Dash” keycaps all have a dash on them, as shown here.

  • My keyboard journey lead me to the Dygma Raise 2

    Nota: This post was supposed to be a review of the Dygma Raise 2 keyboard, but ended up being about my story with keyboard to arrive to the Dygma Raise 2… It is already way too long so I decided to stop there and I will write another post to do an actual review instead of writing a post too long to read :-). If you care only about the review, wait for the next post!

    Before 2017, I didn’t care too much about keyboards. I was used to cheap 100% (with numeric pad) azerty keyboard or using the keyboard included with my laptop of the time. And even if I spent numerous hours using those, I wasn’t picky at all. I became fast enough with those and that was enough for me.

    Using more and more laptop devices, I realized one thing though: keyboard with numeric pad were annoying because it was moving my mouse very far on the right as I must have the main area of the keyboard centered with the screen in front of me. I don’t know if it is some kind of OCD or just normal, but I can’t use a keyboard not well centered… With a 100% layout, the pad was already far right and then the mouse even more which was less confortable.

  • Setting up Debian and GNOME DE

    Debian 12 *bookworm* with the GNOME 43.9 Desktop Environment is my current choice of Linux setup. I find the setup quite clean. No major issues. Although the apt package repository doesn't have all the software I use, I can easily install stand-alone binaries to fill the gap.

    Each time I do a re-install, I update these notes as I go while using them as a reference. I'm finding this activity teaches me a great deal. I plan on doing this regularly to keep me engaged with my tools.

  • Gathering data on plant growth form for a regional species checklist

    A colleague had a list of plant species names from a regional checklist they have compiled. They wanted to add a description of the growth form to each species, but with over 2000 species it was becoming laborious to look up each species individually online.

    This was my email response:

    There are obviously many different data sources you could use to get information on growth form, but many of them will be incomplete, and they will vary in how easy it is to process the data. Two of the best in terms of coverage and systematic recording of growth form are probably World Flora Online (WFO, https://www.worldfloraonline.org/[1]) and the TRY traits database (https://www.try-db.org/TryWeb/Home.php[2]).

  • OpenAI Introduces GPT-5 Turbo (Coming soon!) [Ed: Just yet more false promises and vapourware]

    OpenAI is actively developing GPT-5, its next-generation language model, which is anticipated to introduce significant advancements in artificial intelligence. Originally slated for release in early 2025, the launch has been postponed to later this year to allow for further enhancements and to address integration challenges.

  • Apple Plans Foldable iPad for 2026 [Ed: And still no proper keyboard normal people can get real work done on.]

    Apple is reportedly developing a foldable iPad, with plans to launch the device in 2026. Analyst Jeff Pu indicates that Apple aims to begin mass production of both a foldable iPhone and a foldable iPad in the fourth quarter of 2026. The foldable iPad is expected to feature an expansive 18.8-inch display when unfolded, positioning it as a potential hybrid between a tablet and a laptop.

  • Internet/Gemini

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  • Programming

    • From Shell

      This is a proper post from the CLI.

    • Hello again, testing BASH

      Hi, New to this and just testing a script to post from the CLI. I promise I won't pollute the pub. Greetings all.