Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • American Spring

    A strike may be viable, though will be resisted by strike-breakers and scabs. Consensus should be gained through negotiation so as to limit problems stemming from impulsive decisions. Strikes however may be difficult to sustain until a favorable regieme change, so ideally should have a more specific goal and should be done in a way that garners sympathy from undecided citizens. Protest marches should also be organized.

  • Sticky Notes

    I had the idea last fall that I needed a pad of sticky notes at my bedside to capture those night-clarity thoughts. Those thoughts that are wild and useful but only appear in the half-dreamed wakeful slumber are the ones that always need capturing and never stick around long enough to remember. Those are the ones.

    This has turned into hundreds of sticky notes on my nightstand. What would otherwise be rather conservative decorations is juxtaposed with neon green sticky notes. But that doesn't matter. I'm no interior decorator.

  • priorities

    I lie to myself 
    when I say I prioritise sleep
    in the morning
    ignoring all the alarms
    then hurrying
    to my morning routine
    but in reality
    I'm prioritising
    the imaginary version
    of you
    

• Politics and World Events

  • Israel

    A law has been passed allowing the execution of Palestinian prisoners.

• Technology and Free Software

  • Re: Silly standards: fursona schema (and gemini i18n frustrations)

    Gemini is neat in itself, but it is also a perfect place to do things that don't really matter other than that they're fun. So of course, I promptly added a `.well-known/fursona` to my gemini server. Only to discover that while the schema explicitly acknowledges the gemini protocol, both Sleepycrow's implementation and the ‘official’ one only fetch files over http(s). So now my information is there, but it's irretrievable.

    Of course that wasn't particularly satisfactory, so I tried to build my own test tool to fetch and present the information over gemini. But I'm originally a Lua guy, and I also wasn't really wanting to reinvent the internet wheel. Thankfully, there's a Lua library for gemini, called gemlib. Unfortunately, it defaults to TLS 1.2. My server only uses 1.3, so the library fails to connect. I've sent an e-mail to the author, but I guess I'll leave it at that for now.

  • Naming success

    They say naming things is one of the 17 hardest problems in computer science (along with cache invalidation, and off-by-14 errors), but sometimes someone makes it look easy: [...]

  • My system with the c16 CPU and Gpu1

    In the hardware implementation, the CPU boots at address 0x0 and in the emulator, it boots at address 0xE0000000 and the boot rom jumps to address 0x0.

  • Distributed Systems Simulator - Part 1: Introduction and GUI

    This is the first blog post of the Distributed Systems Simulator series, written for the recent v1.1.0 release. It explores the Java-based Distributed Systems Simulator program I created as my diploma thesis at the Aachen University of Applied Sciences (August 2008). The simulator offers both built-in implementations of common distributed systems algorithms and an extensible framework that allows researchers and practitioners to implement and test their own custom protocols within the simulation environment.

  • Distributed Systems Simulator - Part 2: Built-in Protocols

    This is the second blog post of the Distributed Systems Simulator series. This part covers all 10 built-in protocols with examples.

  • Distributed Systems Simulator - Part 3: Advanced Examples and Protocol API

    This is the third and final blog post of the Distributed Systems Simulator series. This part covers advanced simulation examples, the Raft consensus protocol, and the extensible Protocol API.

  • one month of no music streaming

    I made a decision a little over a month ago to cancel my music streaming service (Spotify) after another price increase. I've been a Spotify user since 2014, so I did not expect this to be an easy transition. I used to get all my music for free (ahem), and then Spotify came around, and I liked this idea of any music I could want available at any time in one place.

    But the price for streaming has increased over time. I'm not enthused about paying another corporation to stream content. I started buying music to support artists on Bandcamp a few years ago after dating someone who was really into Bandcamp. I've discovered a lot of different artists and new music through Bandcamp and I didn't expect that I would or that I would like the music I found as much as I did.

  • Calculus for Electronics

    I am several chapters into an interesting book, Calculus for Electronics by Richmond. I don't have the book within arms reach at the moment, but I believe it is the 1972 version.