Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Blue Jays in ALCS :(

    The Blue Jays lost the first game of the series to Seattle, 3-1, and as I'm writing this, they're down 10-3 in the bottom of the 7th in game 2. To say the start of the series has been a disaster would be putting it aptly. But this is also what they did in the ALCS the last two times they played, in 2015 and 2016. Went in with great expectations, came out of the second game down 0-2. Here we go again. Maybe they'll win a game or two, maybe not. They're very unlikely to win the series. The last time they had real and sustained success in the playoffs, I was twelve years old. I'm forty-four years old. Baseball will break your heart.

• Science

  • Happy Ada Lovelace Day!

    Today is Ada Lovelace Day, an international celebration of the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. It is, of course, named in honour of the pioneering British mathematician and computer scientist Ada Lovelace (1815-1852), whose accomplishments include publishing the first computer program and recognising the potential for computers to handle non-numeric data. Although she never saw a computer run any of her programs, women performed the vast majority of computer programming for several decades after the first working devices were introduced. The date, however, is essentially arbitrary – and I cannot express how unreasonably much that pleases me!

• Technology and Free Software

  • Sony CLIE PEG-TG50 Review

    I am beginning to give my new Sony CLIE PEG-TG50 a run as my daily driver PDA. After a few days of replacing the dead battery, general testing and accidentally corrupting the memory I now have it setup with all my necessities and am beginning to carry it exclusively. At various times I have daily carried a Palm m500 and a Palm Tungsten C with a brief stint using a Sony CLIE PEG-SL10. The TG50 most resembles the Tungsten C with its thumb keyboard, color screen and Palm OS 5. There are some key differences though that made the TG50 worth trying out. The TG50's keyboard is backlit and has a different feel and layout. It also has Sony's signature jog dial input. This consists of a wheel that can also be depressed and a back button on the left side of the PDA. This enables scrolling, selecting and going back with one hand.

    When compared to the Tungsten C the TG50 looks and feels more refined, modern and I'd say more premium. In the era of PDAs Sony's design was one of their major differentiators. The CLIE models all look nicer and in my opinion the designs hold up much better than their Palm counterparts. The inclusion of the jog dial input interface was also a unique feature not seen in other PDAs and it is actually pretty handy. Many people had a hard time doing without it once they got used to it.

  • I don't think it's news to anyone out there that one should avoid Network Solutions for domain registration and probably for anything else as well

    The rest of my domains have been transfered [1] away from Network Solutions. The process wasn't hard. It wasn't even really tedious, it just took a bunch of waiting.

    I would log into Network Solutions, click past a bunch of needless notifications and upsells, and request a domain transfer. I would then get a chance to renew the domain for the low-low price of $19.95, which technically is cheaper, but still twice the price that my new registar, Porkbun [2], charges. Click past that, and I would have to wait up to four days in order to change my mind before Network Solutions send the transfer key. You know, to keep me from making a rash decision to stop paying them money.

    Once I got the transfer key, I would then transfer in the domain to Porkbun. Network Solutions would then send an email 24 hours later, informing me that I have four days to change my mind, but I should talk to one of their “transfer specialists” to help transfer my domain, because Network Solutions is adamant that I don't rush into transfering my domains away from them and thus, stop paying them.