Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Making things as a social exercise

    I was a band kid in high school. I don't know if I really thought of myself as a band kid at the time, because I didn't really hang out with anyone in band, but I was nominally in band. I mostly didn't enjoy it. I found it really humiliating. Even though our conductor was a pretty nice guy I had this impression that concert band was this incredibly oppressive thing, this place where failure was met with ridicule. The people who took it seriously took it way too seriously. And it probably didn't help that our school's band was small, under-funded and lacked any sort of practice discipline. The people who didn't take it seriously enough made it difficult to pull the pieces together. Whenever we went to competitions, the school across the river would wipe the floor with us.

    During the lock-down, however, I made a commitment with myself to practice for an hour every day. I noticed that the sheet music we were using included a link to unlisted videos on YouTube that featured a professional concert band performing the pieces, and so I started playing along with them. For the first time ever, I suppose, I was hearing my part in the context of the piece the way it was supposed to sound; or at least, I was able to see the bigger picture, and it became a lot clearer where I had to improve.

• Technology and Free Software

  • How to stay in tech and become a farmer

    I love reading these articles because they resonate a lot with me. They give me hope that if things ever get bad enough in my own career that there are greener pastures elsewhere. But the more I read stories like this the more I feel conflicted.

    Quitting tech to become a professional farmer seems to resonate with so many people that it's become a bit of a meme in the tech industry—particularly among people like me, who maybe like computers but think critically about the way they're used in society, and to what effect. The farm is this perceived idyllic alternative to the work we're used to, which can often be deeply unsatisfying whether or not we even like computers to begin with.

    I've encountered people who challenge this idea by arguing that we're underestimating how hard farming really is—and sure, maybe we are—but I think that's a really weak criticism. I think the same can be said for critiques that focus on how the image of farming is rooted in nostalgia—you don't actually want that life; you just think you do, and maybe you're even being a little reactionary for thinking so. Again, both of these critiques are weak, because they miss the point. I don't think an innate desire to drag a plough over a field has anything to do with this. As far as I can tell, people are struggling against the fact that they feel alienated from their work, they feel they are being enticed to turn something they're passionate about into nothing (or worse, against the people they care for), and they're seeking to remedy that alienation in the only way they know how: to reconnect with the land from which they've been separated.

  • OpenBSD 7.7 on Acer Aspire ES 15

    The Acer Aspire ES 15 is a laptop from about 2020.
    
    
    Some specs:
    
    
    * CPU: Intel Celeron N3050
    * Display: Glossy 15.6 inch, with a resolution of 1366x768
    * RAM: 4GB
    
    
    This laptop has a 'normal' keyboard and a numerical keyboard side
    by side. The 'normal' keyboard and the touch pad are off-center.
    Also, the keyboard is a bit wider than those of my ThinkPads.
    Touch typing is a bit difficult because of this.
    
    
    It is not a fast laptop.