Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Notes on an overheard conversation coming from the Family Room

    “The TV (Television) remote isn't working again!”

    “You need to really smash that select button.”

    “I am! See?”

    “Hmmm. Let me try … oh. There you go.”

  • If one day the smoke kills me

    The smoke is so thick you can see it in the air. Not a haze in the upper atmosphere, or an unusually orange sun, but like a white sheet spread over the middle distance. A dry fog. You can feel it in your lungs, on the roof of your mouth, your nose, your eyes. When you close them it's still there.

    The student union is serving free hamburgers today in an open air barbecue. People dine outdoors like it's nothing. I swear this world we live in parodies itself.

• Politics and World Events

  • okay, i'm gonna talk about politics now and you're gonna listen (or not, i'm not the boss of you)

    El-Sayed is saying the same things I am hearing from my deep red rural Trump-voting relatives, in exactly the same words I am hearing them use. "Things shouldn't be this hard." "We need to get money out of politics."

    There's a tendency among non-Trump voters to assume that everyone who voted Trump is a die hard MAGA superfan. A lot of them, at least the ones I know out farming rural Michigan, aren't. They voted for Trump because *literally nobody else was saying what they were saying,* which is that things cannot go on as they are. We cannot keep running this country into the ground to benefit a handful of billionaires.

    Granted, Trump's solution for this problem was to win the Olympic gold medal in grifting. Which is something else the folks I know don't like. They just like the blatant-ness of that grifting, covering up for pedophiles, etc. more than they like the covert grifting, pedophile covering, etc. they're seeing from the other side.

    As I said to my father in law the other day, "The Democrats are the party for rich people who feel guilt, and the Republicans are the party for rich people who don't. And the Dems do not see why all us non-rich people should have a party. They feel guilt and surely that should be enough for us peasants."

    Trump at least did not offer the peasants guilt. He offered them a chance to feel like they pwned the establishment. Most people, if offered hollow pity or hollow triumph, will choose the latter. It sucks less. But offer them REAL triumph, and they'll go for it.

• Technology and Free Software

  • The surprising email to “Sean Conner” that wasn't meant for me

    I received yet another email for Sean Conner [1] but this time, it wasn't at Gmail!

    It was surprising because it was sent from my friend Lorie who currently lives in Pennsylvania, about the new Area Director for Toastmasters [2], which is funny, because I do not live in Pennsylvania, nor have I been involved with Toastmasters since the 5^th grade (ages 9–10 for non-US (United States) people). I wrote her back about this, and I received the following back: [...]

  • Alarm clocks

    Chris Siebenmann [1] uses iPhone as an alarm clock [2], and his reasons are largely why I too, I keep my old iPhone (which is no longer supported by the Oligarchic Cell Phone Company) as an alarm clock (and why I don't have a new iPhone that is supported is a complicated story I'd rather not get into for my own sanity).

    And I use the iPhone for all the reasons that Chris does. But one aspect that Chris doesn't mention is the ability to change the alarm sound to prevent myself from being conditioned to ignore the alarm. I have two stories about an old alarm clock (of the type that you plug into the wall) that illustrate my being conditioned to an alarm.

  • I recovered the diary

    I recovered my daughter's diary and my to-do list from the SvarDOS USB. Thanks for the emails, Ben Collver's textfile on gopher, and response to my post on sdf's bboard!

    What I think is so cool about the data recovery: I did it on the same diskless HP Mini netbook that the SvarDOS USB stick was in when it was corrupted!

    Recap: I'm testing using DOS from USB sticks for everyday salvage computing tasks: edutainment wares for my daughter and her friends, writing and editing wares for her and I. Each system has a focused purpose; you change activities by swapping USB sticks (which could, conceptually, be floppy disks, ROM carts, CF cards, or SD cards).

  • SiLabs Unveils the BG2B Bluetooth 6 Low Energy System-on-Chip — Its Lowest-Power Series 2 Part Yet

    Silicon Labs has announced its latest Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) system-on-chip, the BG2B — promising its lowest-power BLE part yet, without sacrificing features like Bluetooth Channel Sounding and integrated security enclave.

    "Bluetooth LE is moving beyond basic connectivity into secure ranging, proximity awareness, and location-aware experiences, while customers still need the low power, small form factor, and cost efficiency that made Bluetooth the foundation of battery-powered IoT [Internet of Things]," claims SiLabs senior vice president and chief technical officer Daniel Cooley.