Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • 🔤SpellBinding — ACKRTWY Wordo: AISLE

  • 📺 Programmes TV TNT Française 📺

  • The cold

    Got my Covid vaccine two weeks ago and my influenza vaccine last week. This week, I have the cold. 😒

    I still hope the vaccines will repel all vaccination-sceptics. Working from home, wearing a mask when I feel crowded in (I often feel I should do it more often), yearly vaccinations for both – together these have really helped. Since 2020, I've been sick twice. Right now and once a few years ago.

  • Trains in Switzerland

    I wonder whether one of the reasons there is significant support for the train network in Switzerland is that the autobahn between Zürich (many people) and Bern (federal government is) is very congested and therefore many parliamentarians take the train. First hand experience changes minds? The alternative is a parliament where one of the perks is a government car. Of course you’ll want to use it. And you’ll feel the pain of congestion. So these parliamentarians are more likely to vote for bigger roads.

    This probably has the quality of hashtag shower thoughts but the train connection between Zürich and Bern is the busiest of all of Switzerland and I can’t help but think this must have an effect.

  • twitch

    these days, my right eye twitches. it twitches the same way it did at the end of high school, or during any other midterm week. some days, it feels like the twitching, the rush, the worry may never go away. and then it does, precisely when it should. without any warning. and then I understand.

    I worry...a lot. about everything. during all my waking hours. my friends know the misty gaze I have from time to time. when I don't realize that I just passed by a friend, that's why. I know that I cling onto everything too much. if you've watched Mr. Robot, you can compare my stubborn dwellings to Dom's insane passion for her work. and just like her, it takes a toll on me. I miss going to bed without fear. I miss the days without deadlines. hell, I miss not feeling dead I don't have work to do. I know that I have interests outside work (like writing, as I'm doing right now) but it takes a certain effort to context-switch. to leave it behind.

• Politics and World Events

  • Gullible like a fox

    There is a “clever” personality type, I’ve had several in my life, that become more susceptible to propaganda and myths when they are presented as some kind of secret insider knowledge or a way to get a leg up on what the general public knows.

  • We’re not living in America

    It’s disheartening that a lot of the things we get (rightly!) upset about in US politics we are just numb to and cowed under when it happens here in Sweden. ICE raids, shutdowns of BLM protests, profiled stop-and-frisk, political leaders mocking climate activists, fossil lobbying, deforestation, ocean exploitation and pollution, abuse of indigenous groups, propping up tyrannical and genocidal regimes abroad, union busting, increasing poverty, worsening wealth gaps, climate recklessness, fossil industry subsidies, factory farms, segregationist politics, huge military industrial complex, overfull prisons, racist “fair and balanced” right-wing media, and an appified society propping up the network effect overlords.

• Technology and Free Software

  • Software Survival

    One of my all-time favorite Raspberry Pi projects was the PirateBox. First created in 2011, the PirateBox was a self-contained, offline network server that allowed users to share files, stream media, chat with others, and even post on a local image board. It was designed to run on cheap SBC platforms, use open standards, be censorship-resistant, and promote freedom and privacy. Even better, it runs on my old RPi 1B boards that I stubbornly refuse to let go of. The project shut down in 2019, but to this day, I still seed torrents of the last release for RPi.

    What I appreciated about the PirateBox the most was its robustness. It didn't rely on any large-scale technological infrastructure to enable users to communicate. It couldn't be stopped by government firewalls or social media censorship. With a self-sufficient power source such as a windmill or solar panel, it could even be impervious to blackouts. It was a powerful tool that used an astonishingly small footprint, and even successor projects like the FreedomBox don't come close to matching its reach.

    The PirateBox was created in a time when governments and businesses still didn't fully understand the power of the Internet. Social media helped to fuel the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, and even played a minor role in the formation of South Sudan. Many oppressive regimes didn't know how to stop grassroots organization on the Internet, reverting to outright blocks to try to suppress it. Twitter still had no algorithmic manipulation; tweets became the primary source of information for people both inside and outside of political hotspots.

  • Black and white device screens

    Studies do show that the black-and-white mode is significantly less addictive but for me that effect wasn’t nearly strong enough and I’ve had to use other methods to try to not be on the tablet all day when I’m at home. The black-and-white mode doesn’t seem to help very much anymore when it comes to actually putting the thing down and getting to work. It did for a while and maybe that explains the studies; it just doesn’t help enough.

  • Programming

    • Extending the syntax when calling assembly language subroutines for Color BASIC

      Now, a 16-bit version of PEEK is nice, but it would also be nice to have a 16-bit version of POKE. But USRn only takes one parameter; if we want an aditional value, we're going to have to extend the BASIC parser. Fortunately, due to the way Color BASIC works, this is easy and there are quite a few routines we can call. The first call is to a routine I'm calling CB (Color BASIC).evalcomma (as in the Unravelled Series it goes by the name of LB26D). We need the comma, otherwise BASIC will return a syntax error without it. The next call we need is to a routine I'm calling CB.eval, which just evaluates an expression. And that's pretty much all that is needed to parse the additional syntax needed for this.