Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • I Choose Me

    No matter who you are to me
    I will choose
    my current and future
    happiness
    

  • Gardening again, WSPRing at last

    For the first time in six years, we have a garden again, and what's more the situation is very different this time. It's larger than any previous allotment we've had, and it's also exclusively ours until such time as we decide to sell it (a marked contrast to the situation in Turku where you got a plot for 3 or 4 months of the year only and the entire parcel of land they were on were razed by the city in between seasons). This makes long term projects like trees and vines possible, and means caring for the soil will actually pay off because we will be working the same soil year after year. I have been keen to tell you all a lot more about it but, well, I haven't had the time. It's not that we are there for many hours every single day, but rather my time is always very delicately (but haphazardly) balanced between hobby time and work and family/household obligations, and an abrupt shock to the system like this inevitably leads to the neglect of something until I re-equilibriate.

  • Bloody parakeets! 🦜

    They're bright green, a bit smaller than a pigeon, they gather in large numbers to roost in trees, and they squawk and squawk and squawk. There are certain parts of town they like, which is good because they gather there and stay away from me. But at the bottom of my garden is a big tree and I've been waiting for them to notice it. The baking hot dry summer hasn't been good for the native birds, but the parakeets are liking it, and their numbers are goung up. They're now often flying over my house and sometimes stopping. Uh-oh.

    [...]

    The internet is keen to dispel a myth that it's Jimi Hendrix's fault for releasing a pair that he kept. Not much mention is made of climate change which is the real issue. These birds are native to India and sub-saharan Africa, but Britain is now warm enough for them to be quite comfortable here.

  • margarete petersen and the othrysian tarot

    margarete petersen... it's like a cross between the ritual tarot and the thoth? it has the elemental energy of the ritual tarot with the magical feeling of the thoth. it's like thoth but pure subconscious. the art is sparse enough for one card to not really be enough per spread position, but also so abstract that i can't visually read the conversation of neighboring cards in an open reading. so it's a little vague and frustrating to work with, but undeniably deep. i find i need to sort of feel into each card separately and then try to discern the meaning from the conversation of the "energies" between the cards?? it's also a little distracting how different the majors are from the minors (i prefer the minors).

• Technology and Free Software

  • My Washing Machine

    My washing machine is ages old, has three knobs and still washes my clothes perfectly clean. But I'm a little worried, because it's *really* old and I don't know if it could flood my whole kitchen, if it really breaks. So I don't know when I really have to buy a new one.

    But here's the thing that makes me really angry: I've looked at Amazon for some time for a new washing machine. But *all* of them now have a *big* computer inside, where you need a study to operate it correctly. Yes, they all look very nice and modern, like an UFO or something, but of course they'll break 3 days after the 2 years warranty.

    [...]

    I want the same washing machine model as my old one, but there's nothing similar anymore. Another "invention" which serves no purpose but pure greed while producing a lot of waste.

    And it's not just washing machines, it's now general business practice for nearly every piece of electric appliance.

  • Re: Keeping your tech alive: maintenance

    Some months after, I disabled Wi-fi on phone, because I didn't need it in that moment, and my phone just fell in bootloop. Firstly, I thougth something broke inside my phone, but after searching I found that all owners of my phone model encountered that same problem! If you disable both geolocation and Wi-fi it just starts to bootloop. Just like that. Again, after some "security" update.