Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Recollections from the 90s

    Like my millenial generation being obsessed with the 70s, it seems the gen Z/gen alpha(?) has the strange fascination with the 90s. Since I lived the 90s I figure I'd write down some random memories I have of them.

    Today's story takes place when I was in high school in 1999. One of my best friends was having his birthday come up and me and his mutual friends all decided to chip in and buy him a gag gift. That gag gift was a CD of the 1st album from an up-and-coming pop star called Britney Spears. Of course, all of us immature dudes found this gift hilarious since Britney's music was like an anathema to us "cool dudes" who only listened to cool bands like The Offspring and Linkin Park (LOL).

  • new cycles

    Meeting my schizophrenic friend who lives in Thailand. He knows some rich investor he met a while ago and was invited to pitch some ideas to get investment. He wants me to help him with his project, some sort of decentralized startup incubator to solve all human problems. I'm not convinced yet, but I like the idea of starting something crazy like that.

    I'm half way back into my training, push up, chin up, mantra... I leave home to pick up my daughter. I write on the ferry, I chant some mantra. I'm excited, I laugh and sing to myself.

• Technology and Free Software

  • Re: My Washing Machine

    fab wrote a phlog post about experiencing the enshittification of washing machines [1]

    This reminded me of a short essay by Robert Benchley written in 1920, called "Open Bookcases". For convenience, I just copied it to my Gopher burrow [2].

    The complaints of fab and of Robert Benchley are surprisingly similar, only the dates differ, and of course, the subject. Tomorrow's profits are what it is all about, and certainly not the actual needs of the customer.

  • Toby's tinylog

    My weekend #diy #maker project: a compact, battery-powered #guitar practice amp which is meant to be paired with an effects pedal. It provides a clean 9V power plug for the pedal, and runs off any 10V -> 20V power supply (such as a laptop power supply, or in my case, a 3-cell 21700 battery pack). Internally, the amp uses a TPA3118-based 60W mono class D amp module, a boost converter to supply 24V, and a LDO linear regulator to provide the 9V pedal power. The high efficiency of the amp module means that I can power it off a small battery pack for several hours. I've paired the amp with a Sony 120W 8 ohm surround sound speaker that I had lying around unused, which works brilliantly. Can't wait to try this out with a NAM/IR amp modeller pedal. Hopefully this will get me playing guitar more regularly.