Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • A Work Thing

    It's not that my muse has deserted me, so much that it's become a bit scattered lately. And, more to the point, I just haven't felt strongly motivated to write anything for the past few weeks. However, it's been a long time since I let a whole (calendar) month go by in silence, and for some reason I'm reluctant to do so now, so I'd better dash something off before November draws to its rapidly impending close.

    When it comes to finding things to write about, though ... well, we've got the big stuff, that stubbornly fails to cohere into a pithy phlog post. And then we've got the small stuff, that's maybe too trivial to be of much interest - to others certainly, and possibly even to myself.

    But if we can look past its triviality, maybe the small stuff can at least gesture in the direction of something of greater import. Let's give it a shot.

  • The high blood pressure incident

    Two weeks ago, on October 15th, in a routine medical check the doctor found out that my blood pressure was so high that I could have suffered significant damage.

    I like to call it "the incident" for some reason, don't know why.

    From that day on, my life has changed significantly. Now I eat without any added salt, I avoid coffee, alcohol and any other thing that can make my blood pressure rise.

    What is more, since I need to lead a healthy life, I do not eat sugar. The only sugar I get comes from fruit. Can't get any healthier. Thus, I think I started a chain reaction in the sense that avoiding salt and sugar I do not eat ultra-processed food anymore.

• Technology and Free Software

  • My take on cyberdecks

    The winter has come, and I'm returning as promised. Throughout the no-post November, I have remembered another long-forgotten obsession of mine: DIY. And I also remembered a trend among some DIY+cyberpunk folks: building cyberdecks.

    So, what's a cyberdeck in the first place? In the original cyberpunk novels, these were the devices with some kind of brain-to-net interface to jack into the cyberspace. IRL though, the broadest definition of a cyberdeck is: "a DIY portable PC in a non-standard form factor for specialized or general usage". While this technically is true, I'd add some more constraints to this definition. You see, a lot of cyberdecks I've seen online have been built with full access to manufacturing facilities like 3D printers or even CNC machines. Which, in my opinion, contradicts the entire cyberpunk vibe. So, I personally define a true real-world cyberdeck as a DIY portable PC that:

    1) has a non-standard form factor,

    2) is hand-assembled from existing scrap/spare parts with minimum outside sourcing,

    3) once assembled, is fully autonomous but modular enough to replace **any** part with ease.

  • KeePassRX 0.12.0: Onwards to a Fully Functioning App

    The manual has also been updated to reflect the new features in this version. With this version of KeePassRX, it is starting to change from "weekend hack job" into "a proper mobile app." The next major feature is, of course, editing the password database. But there are still some smaller things to add before that (namely, supporting attachments) and further migration of the app's architecture to actually support editing the password database.

    The general roadmap I have for KeePassRX is to develop the baseline read-only functionality first, and squash as many bugs as possible out of that before adding edit functionality. And when I do start working on editing password databases, that too will be released in phases. The most likely place to start is adding and removing tags from entries: it's self-contained, simple, but still requires having the entire infrastructure in the code for editing.

  • kiwi

    In case you are curious about it, kiwi is the hostname of my raspberry pi model 3. This week I have upgraded it to raspbian trixie, well that is not correct. Raspbian is now called Raspberry Pi OS. I had not upgraded it for a long time and I'll tell you why. I love and hate my raspi at the same time:

    Love:

    1. It is a lovely toy but make no mistake, it is a powerful computer, and you have to take it seriouly. My respect to the project.

    2. I can have it working 24/7 since its power comsumption is truly low

    3. It has both ethernet and wifi connectivity which is great, you can place it anywhere in your house/office. Even under your bed... (joke)

  • Internet/Gemini

    • FRST Computer Exits Stealth Mode

      Tonight, FRST Computer exits "stealth mode"... One of the unique advantages of gopher has been its quiet, out-of-the-way quality and I've enjoyed the quiet of this space to "air out" some of my ideas on personal computing, permacomputing, cyberdecks, solarpunk... But tonight, I'm sharing some more details of what I've been up to in my lab and how I plan to expand my reach while continuing to prioritize FRST's gopher presence. This is happening -- I'm finally ready to sell you something! :)

      [...]

      What became clear to me is that this alternate timeline deserves the 'grid computing' envisioned by the brilliant Bell Labs team that brought us Plan 9. When Sir Berners-Lee himself has expressed his grave concern that the modern Internet is beyond saving, it's time for us to take it upon ourselves to build the cyber space we deserve. I envision small, local, people (neighbor)-oriented digital networks that overlay naturally against our in-real-life social networks. I've been spending most of my evenings these past couple of years studying packet radio, LoRa, FidoNet, 9P and brushing up on my OSI Model stuff in order to make something real that might help us build such networks.