Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Flowers

    They're out there somewhere I think
    They have colors and shape and smell
    They're bright against the bright and
    Have no secrets they won't tell
    
    
    There's something soft around them
    It lingers in the air and breeze
    They gift it to your lungs and heart
    They wave at your with budding leaves
    

  • There's an “E” there, not an “O”

    A few days ago Dan Lyke linked to a few posts of mine [1]. And then today, I found Lobster's comment linking to a post of mine [2]. In both cases, they gave my full name as “Sean Connor.”

    I know that “Connor” is a popular spelling for example: Chuck Connors [3] or Connor Huff [4]) only my last name isn't “Connor” but “Conn**E**r”, you know, like Sean Connery [5].

  • Exponential

    So say the human population, somehow, continues to grow at 3% per year, which doubtless some hold as being far too low a rate, belonging as they do to the "number go up" club. Over five centuries the numbers become a trifle large,

        2026 8000000000
        2126 160684294144
        2226 3227430420480
        2326 64824671207424
        2426 1302038394699776
        2526 26152137469722624
    

  • Time pressure in dungeon adventures is a bad idea

    I am using a Pathfinder dungeon for my AD&D game and the introduction of story elements like kidnapped children about to get sacrificed is at odds with old school dungeon exploration.

    The party travelled through the forest and suffered a random encounter with a harpy. They beat the monster but had to retreat back to town. A plot cleric showed up -- that's me judging that every small village probably has a village cleric that knows how to cast *cure light wounds.* It's still the same day, so the party goes back through the forest, finds the dungeon, traverses the first level, fights the boss guarding the entrance to the second level and retreats back to town. More healing. Uhm, now what? The children are about to be sacrificed! One of the players got enough experience points to level up so their character has to spend a week in training (this is AD&D 1st ed.!) and so they create a new level 1 character to join the expedition.

    The party ninja descends the elevator shaft and gets into a fight with two kobolds armed with spears, javelins and riding sabre-tooth toads. The halfling rangers quaffs a *potion of flying* and flies down their to aid their comrade. The two fighters jump into the elevator basked only to discover that it's rigged and they barely make their saves as the whole thing crashes. The kobold lancers stab them and they drop, not quite dead (AD&D 1st ed. means unconscious and bleeding at 0 to -3, comatose and debilitated for many days at -4 to -9, dead at -10). The druid, the henchies and the freed kobolds stay at the top of the elevator.

  • Music: KMFDM and Amy Grant

    Jon's Music Review #1 of 2026 features two of the most unlikely pairs of artists. One is an example of the self-indulgent, godless electronic speed-metal of the 90s while the other exemplifies 90s Contemporary Christian (CCM) (and sometimes sinfully secular radio-friendly pop).

    Truth is, I'm a sucker for the algorithm... my Amazon Music feed is really dialed in at this point. So it's no surprise (to me) to find both of these artists in my "new releases" feed.

• Technology and Free Software

  • File transfer made easier with Tailscale

    Since I started using Tailscale (using my own headscale server), I've been enjoying it a lot. The file transfer feature is particularly useful with other devices.

    This blog post explains my small setup to enhance the user experience.

  • The three kinds of error

    "An error has occurred" is a useless message, because it tells the user nothing about the error or what they should do next. "You have an invalid expression in line 3, column 4" is much better. Every time I write an error message I ask myself, will the person reading this know the problem and what action they should take next?