Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • A Refueling Break

    Now that I no longer work from home, I need to drive to and from my office each day. Unfortunately, like many people in the American Midwest, I live several miles from where I work, so I need to refuel much more often than I used to.

    I've noticed something about my filling station habits. Whenever I stop to buy gasoline, I don't look at my smartphone while refueling. I find that I want to stretch my legs, pace a little, and look at the sky or the surrounding city. My gaze goes almost anywhere but my device.

    I'm not sure where this habit came from. I suppose refueling is one of the few activities I'm guaranteed to do outdoors, and I just enjoy the fresh air. Either way, sometimes I actually feel a little refreshed from not looking at a screen, even if only for a few moments.

  • the well

    the goblin that lives in my head
    keeps poisoning the well of hope
    the water never fully clear
    no matter how hard I keep trying 
    there's always a drop somewhere 
    and then it spreads
    

  • Awareness

    Humans have been aware of volcanoes for some time now, though it was only in the late 1980s that the risks of volcanic ash to airplanes became understood, about 100 years after heavier-than-air devices became a thing. The delay probably stems from not much aviation in the early years, especially not near where the active volcanoes are, and the rarity of eruptions at human timescales. Given a hypothetical society of aviators in an active volcanic zone one might imagine a somewhat quicker uptake on the whole "maybe this ash stuff isn't so good for planes" thing.

  • More on the Teme River (No28) Stop Line

    As part of my on-going investigation into the Western Command Stop Line Number 28 based around the Teme river I came across some further HER records[^1] for extant anti-tank cylinders that whilst also featuring on the Defence of Britain records do, oddly, not feature under the subset of records for the Teme river stop line.

• Technology and Free Software

  • Peace among the darkness

    I am reminded of 2020, during a heavy snowstorm AKA SnowVID, where a mere 4-5 inches of snow brought our generally dry state to its knees. The calm quietness of government-sponsored masked self-quarantine met a white carpeted day. The power grid could not march on and relented. We were a total of 20 hours without power and it was great. We made the most of it. We read, watched the fireplace, and huddled under the heavy blanket with an fierce eagle on it. We could hear nothing, and everything all at once. Even the ghosts who normally ding and creak were frozen. It was a great time. At night, candlelight made a romatic-esque atmosphere and matresses were moved next to the fire. Calmness unleashed its fierce talons on all. Smiles all around.

  • The non-AI, all analogue handwitten letter

    I was in a tiny independent bookshop in Salisbury recently, chatting to the owner. He is also a freelance editor and publishes books on a small scale, and he described how an author had come in recently with a sample of a children's book he had written and self-published. He wanted the shop to stock it, but it appeared that the illustrations were AI-generated, so the bookshop owner said he couldn't help. The author was confused - he had written the text himself, but he couldn't draw, so what was wrong with using AI for the pictures?

    The owner explained. His work was about supporting artists in their creativity and craft, and anything produced with AI was the thin end of a wedge which would undermine that, so he would not be able to stock the book even if others would. Neither would he edit or publish such material. I hope that similar conversations are happening across the whole of the creative world, not just publishing but music and art and photography and film, across poetry, prose and drama, but that's probably unrealistic.

  • Crazy...Like a Fox? AKA Going Mechanical: Part Deux

    I got a soroban. It's an incredibly simple machine, but it's like a mental math calculator. I'm still doing all the calculations, but the soroban abacus actually helps me visualize it. I'm still pretty slow going (although I probably jumped into multiplication and division a little early), but it's pretty cool to get the right answers I know from my childhood memorization on a Japanese abacus. Some people undoubtedly see this as pointless when most carry phones that can do much more complex operations in our pockets. I see it as a way to calculate without electricity. No worrying about batteries or charging: as long as it exists and I don't kick it around on the ground or step on it, it should just work. Human calculation.

    I also just ordered a manual typewriter. It was over 200 USD. That's a hefty chunk of change for something I arguably already have. The "worst" part about it is that it is, of course, using QWERTY when I've adapted to Dvorak. I don't know how much I'll type on it, but I do know it will work without an electrical circuit.

  • Christina's questions

    1. How for a North American to plan deGoogling?

    Be prepared to radically simplify and reskill, use neglected parts of your brain, to mix decades in daily life. Depends on how tangled in Google you are what you'll have to do to untangle.

    Buy a cheap domain from porkbun or namecheap and pay for email with a provider like fastmail or migadu. [...] Get a casio f91w wristwatch and find a used clock radio at the thrift store.

    Everything beyond this, my solutions may be too radical/low tech for most.

    Go to your bank branch, bank in person.

    Ditch your smartphone. Use a voip phone from a provider like 1-voip or callcentric or an inexpensive non-android dumbphone with a no-data plan. Your phone bill should be 10-20 USD/mo. If you have a dumbphone, leave it at home or turn it off often. Get everyone used to you never being instantly available, but always dependably return- ing calls/messages.

  • OpenTTD: keeping it fun

    I've been playing OpenTTD the last few months — a few minutes here and there when I can find time. I only play in single player mode — no competition — basically just for the fun of setting up rail networks and watching the trains move around. I recommend the game; however, if you haven't played OpenTTD before, you should understand that the game can be very frustrating, if either of the following are true: [...]