Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • The Thousand Mile Journey

    Begins with a single step. We've all heard this saying a thousand times. Yet there's another saying that I find even more useful in our modern times. It staves off the fear of missing out (though we may be human with our psychologies being exploited for profit), from the thief of joy that is comparison.

  • Streetlights

    Last night, unable to sleep, I stepped out onto the balcony of my Melbourne apartment. For a few moments, there was blissful, mesmerising peace.

    I know it's probably not all that popular of an opinion on the small web, but modern cities can be beautiful things. Streetlights pepper the dark of night like stars, more brilliant and yet not so powerful as to overcome the night. In their faint glow, the unrestrained architectural variation of the rugged streetscape stretches into a majestic silhouette, even smaller lights darting to and fro across its expanse. Though the city never sleeps, the cover of darkness offers some reprieve from the cacophony of traffic, an imitation of stillness in the midst of this living, breathing sea of humanity.

  • The Art Of Chilling

    It feels as if chilling, not doing anything, relaxing, resting has been supplanted by every other obligation of life. For when we have been given the opportunity to be constantly productive, our expectations (either subliminal or external) are shifted to always expect work. I can certainly echo this sentiment. I feel compelled to be working on something. To sit still is to 'waste time'. The intellectual side of me knows that to not be true, but the emotional decision-maker whines and complains like a toddler. It moans until I move my stilled hands or disturb my quieted mind.

    The constant agitation, the disturbance, the disharmony make our lives, yes, our very existence less fruitful . How can the ideas precipitate out of my mind when the fluid they inhabit is constantly being stirred? All work and no play, they say, is the highway to burnout and depression. And I've got a lead foot and just got my driver's license.

    It is easier than ever to avoid boredom. Yet now is the time where boredom would be most helpful. Being bored intentionally paves the way to the sweet spiritual rest that each of our spirits need.

• Science

  • AC Explorations - Need More Current!

    Continuing to work through my workbook on AC currents and voltages, I was eager to reproduce some of my book learning with actual components. Series resonant LCR networks are exciting because it is possible to have a voltage across your capacitor or inductor that is larger than the supply current, which works out mathematically so long as the vector sum of all the voltages in the circuit equal the supply voltage. To get interesting voltage levels, though, you'll need not-insignificant levels of current, since E = I × X, the X here being the reactance of the reactive component.

    This is where I ran into an obstacle at the workbench. My experiments were in the audio frequency range — the last network I set up being resonant at 5.3 Khz. I needed about 100 mA current, but the signal generator I was using to generate the input signal would start drawing back before that — somewhere around 40 mA I think, or maybe less.

• Technology and Free Software

  • arch linux base install on a framework 12

    i just got a framework 12 laptop, so i could give my framework 13 to my brother. the 12 is slightly smaller, with a bunch of hardware design improvements, a slower cpu, and a touchscreen. i loved the netbook i used years ago and the framework 12 reminds me a little more of that.

  • The E6-B

    Over the last two months, I took a ground training course to become a private pilot. I've been interested in aviation my entire life, but the course taught me many things I didn't know, such as visual flight requirements, estimation of flying conditions base don the weather, and aerial traffic patterns when taking off and landing.

    I also love slide rules and other forms of mechanical computation. Aviation involves many kinds of calculation, and to facilitate those calculations, private pilots are trained to use flight computers. The one assigned to us by our instructor was the E6-B mechanical computer.

    The E6-B is a circular slide rule that also houses a two-sided panel. One side features the main slide rule that performs conversion operations, while the other side uses a transparent pane over a polar graph which is used to perform vector operations. It was created by Philip Dalton, a member of the US Navy, in the late 1930s. By the time of his death in 1941, it was used across the US Army Air Force, and it soon propagated to commercial and private aviation as well.

  • 🔤SpellBinding — EILNUVY Wordo: BASIL