Tariffs would probably hurt less if consumer products were repairable and weren’t designed to fail artificially early.
Cycling is fun in itself, but doing it to perform a task is extremely satisfying. It feels so good to load up the cargo rack with groceries, or to opt for a bicycle instead of a car to go visit a friend. Biking with a purpose makes my desire to live green feel much more tangible.
It frustrates me that people who refuse to deal with Google, Apple or Microsoft for reasons of privacy or freedom are seen as the weird ones. The level of tracking, surveillance, advertising, hedonism, and societal fear being imposed on us is not normal. Those who reject the modern digital dystopia are not being radical or extreme; they’re trying to return to what should be normal.
It annoys me when I clone a git repository A in order to build and self-host some software, only to realize later that I also needed to clone repos B, C and D. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing–logical separation of code between, say, a client and a server is very handy–but some projects do not communicate very well when you need multiple tools to get it running independently.
Happy 6th birthday, Gemini protocol!
Every time I replay Pokemon Red, I forget about the level-16 Raticate gauntlet in Mt. Moon. Hyper Fang was a hell of a strong move in Generaion I.
It just occurred to me that Gemtext has no explicit support for anchors: the ability to link to a specific part of a document.
Everything I touch is plastic, and I’m sick of it.
Overheard at a restaurant: “Megabytes I understand, but kilobytes? Why even use them? That’s so little data!” This is why the Internet will destroy our environment.
I built a gaming PC back in 2020, and in 2024 the only resource-intensive task I perform with it is generating strong private keys for my nodes on the Yggdrasil network. Money well-spent!
It really bugs me when a Web site for a tool has a link called “How It Works”, but the actual information behind that link is “how to use”. A set of operating instructions for a tool and an explanation of the principles that enable the tool to function are two very different things.
As a rule of thumb, I only want to own or use computing devices that are not powerful enough to run a large language model. I like things simple and small.
From my bed, I can hear a noise outside that is most likely a confluence of insects and distant freight trains but sounds eerily like the static-laden cacophany of an old radio. I would go out to see what it is, but a small part of me is worried I might end up walking into an episode of “Are You Afraid of the Dark?” if I do.
It seems silly to me that we humans create thermal energy with coal, convert the thermal energy to mechanical energy with steam turbines, convert the mechanical energy to electrical energy with generators, and convert the electrical energy back into thermal energy with glass-top stoves and electric heaters.
It’s a shame that so many public Wi-Fi networks block traffic on ports 70 and 1965, completely cutting off both Gopher and Gemini. Restricting Internet access to only the “most common” use cases like YouTube and Wikipedia is a great way to ensure they eventually become the “only” use cases.
Happy (late) fifth birthday, Gemini protocol!
I suspect that people who came to Gemini from Gopher are more satisfied with the protocol than people who came to Gemini from HTTP.
It’s remarkable how much proprietary software one can avoid using if one simply eschews GUIs as much as possible.
It really frustrates me when the order of a program’s arguments matters, but the program doesn’t tell me that–it just silently ignores the arguments it deems to be in the “wrong” place.
For the first time in months, I’ve completely caught up on all the tasks in my todo.txt file that were either due today or overdue. It’s such a good feeling.
It’s been 10 years since the movie adaptation of Big Hero 6 was released and 3 years since the TV spinoff ended. And I’m still annoyed that Disney didn’t take the opportunity to turn the show into Bill Nye the Science Guy with crimefighting: highlighting a real scientific concept in each episode and using it to stop the villain of the hour.
The Syncthing instance on my poor RPi 1B has over 400 thousand files in its local state, totaling about 275 GB.
Happy 2024, twtxt community!
Why does the word “fridge” have the letter D in it when the word “refrigerator” does not?
A type of assumption that really grinds my gears: when someone expects a certain event will happen, and other people immediately assume that means the person wants the event to happen. Thinking something will happen and wanting it to happen are two very different things.
Finally getting around to cleaning up and updating my todo.txt file. Maybe I should put a task in there to remind me to check it.
I wish the National Park music from Pokemon Gold and Silver had gotten its own full-length arrangement. It’s one of the best tunes in the game.
I saw a report today that the number of wrong-way driving incidents in the UK has risen by 13% in the last year. As an American who drove in England for the first time this May, I’d like to officially apologize for my contribution to 12 of those 13 percentage points.
There’s all this talk and speculation about Twitter, Threads, Mastodon, Minds and so on. Meanwhile twtxt sits there, forever free and open.
Happy 4th birthday, Gemini protocol!
Make computers inconvenient again.
I don’t really like the term “gatekeeping”, especially when it’s used to describe the general concept of a barrier to entry. The term “gatekeeping” implies to me a “gatekeeper”–a person A who is trying to control if person B can interact with person C. It implies active discrimination, perhaps even bigotry, when in reality the barrier might be a passive issue such as scarcity or inherent complexity. “Gatekeeping” seems an intentionally- and needlessly-charged term.
My smartphone is receiving an upgrade to Android 13, less than one month after receiving an upgrade to Android 12. Most bizarre.
“View”, “watch”, “look” and “see” are roughly synonymous, but “overview”, “overwatch”, “overlook” and “oversee” are not.
I accidentally wiped out my bookmarks file this afternoon. Syncthing propagated the change, and I was forced to restore from an old partial backup. Lesson learned: versioning is useful.
It’s a nice feeling to finally clear out all the old “Syncing…” messages and global state discrepancies from my Syncthing nodes. The errors were all cosmetic–the files were syncing successfully–but they were annoying to look at every day.
I bought my Galaxy Note 8 five years go today. This is by far the most use I’ve gotten out of one smartphone!
It feels like every time I come across a Gemini capsule I find interesting, the owner suddenly stops posting and leaves the protocol. Maybe that’s a lesson for me: if I like their content, reach out to them and let them know.
While I’m all for people moving away from platforms like Twitter and embracing more freedom- and privacy-centric systems such as Mastodon, I do worry that many of them might be doing it purely for ideological reasons and may have no interest in maintaining the respectful atmosphere Mastodon is well-known for.
There’s only one major regret I have about switching from Windows to Linux for my personal computers, and that regret is that I no longer have Winamp.
Happy 5th birthday, A Hat In Time!
Nabisco claims that Halloween Oreos taste the same as regular Oreos, but they definitely don’t. They taste better to me for some reason.
The Cosmic Voyage motd is honestly one of the coolest terminal experiences I’ve ever had, and it’s almost entirely generic information.
Port 1965 is blocked on the park WiFi at Walt Disney World, so no Gemini for me.
After paying no attention to my twtxt file for a while, I finally learned today how to reply to someone properly. Now I need to start actually following other people…
Today’s “Where in the World” puzzle was tough. gemini://gemi.dev/cgi-bin/witw.cgi/play
In about four months’ time, if the replacement doesn’t ship from IndieGoGo before then, I will have been using my current smartphone for five years.
I was reminded today that the first season of Regular Show aired in autumn of 2010. That’s hard for me to believe. I feel like the show started way later than that, around early 2012.
The e-mails are now going out telling people that I’m leaving the company next week. It’s feeling more and more real every day.
Having no political party affiliation in a state with closed primaries means I often get very short ballots. Today’s had only two questions.