Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • 🔤SpellBinding: BDLMORW Wordo: SHUNS

  • Books I enjoyed reading in 2025

    These are the books I enjoyed most in the last year.

    First, a list of the most enjoyed Gutenberg books and short stories, followed by the non-Gutenberg non-fiction, and ending with non-Gutenberg fiction.

  • 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.

• Technology and Free Software

  • Fascinating world of proton

    During my studies I had a friend who was crazy about gravitons. Almost every day he would talk about them: what would happen if he found them, and how exciting it would be to use them to just run off into outer space.

    As time passed and I dropped out of university to work as a software developer, I tried to stay connected to astronomy and physics. It wasn't always easy, but for a few years, thanks to Dr Becky Smethurs and her YouTube channel[0], I've stayed up to date with what's happening right now in astronomy. And she lit my fire of curiosity for research on the topic.

    One day, I tried to imagine what the quantum world really looks like. This curiosity came from another discovery of mine: during my studies I was taught that the Big Bang started as a singularity, which apparently is no longer part of the current standard model (I plan to write more about that in another gemlog entry).

  • A begrudging realization that adding icons to menu items might be useful for some people

    Up through Windows ’95 and Office ’95, menu items did not have icons next to them.

    Microsoft Office ’97 introduced a new style where some menu entries would have icons next to them. According to their human-interface guide, this sort of thing was a way to highlight important/common actions that a user could take.

    macOS 26 came out recently. One of the things that’s different about it is that the built-in applications all have loads of icons next to menu-bar menu entries, like, File → Save Version and Edit → AutoFill → Contact.

  • Despite it being a new year, the scams will never stop coming

    The clock struck midnight, the Times Square ball fell, and scams are still a thing in this year of 2026.

    [...]

    The first time was, I don't know, earlier this month. I thought then, and I still think it now, that any “official notification” would come through the U.S. Postal Service (aka (also known as) “snail mail”) than a vague text message.

    Also, by the time a debt hits the collection agencies, the organization with the debt has already written it off and sold the debt to said collection agencies, and I somehow don't think government organizations would sell off debt to collection agencies. Why would they? They have the means (read: guns) to collect if they really wanted to.

    Anyway, a search later, and I found this alert [1] from the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles [2] about this scam, and they mention the fact they will never send such a notice via text message, but will instead use snail mail.

  • mkscript

    I am writing 'mkscript'. What is 'mkscript'? Well, it is a script to make scripts. Or even better it is a shell script template to help me.

    I got the idea from a book I read many many years ago called "The Linux Command Line" written by William E. Shotts Jr. On his website he has got a similar script called new_script and I am looking at it again to get some ideas.

  • 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: [...]