Oops, I just discovered that I nixed the selectors for most of my
Gopher services from the root gophermap here when I uploaded my
last post. Don't panic, I haven't deleted Gopher Banker, FireText,
and my Garth Merenghi's Darkplace tribute site. What? You never
even noticed? Huff.
I have actualy been tempted back to the idea of new Gopher services.
I said I'd stop them, but I think a little proxy for image URLs that
converts them to known sizes for downloading would be really nice,
to counter the risk of those "obscene images" I complained about in
2024-02-13.1Obscene_Images.txt. An option for an auto-generated
ASCII-art rendition would be a must as well.
But I've still kind-of had enough of messing with computers lately.
Or maybe permanently, because I think I've been saying that here
for some time. I guess it's not a terribly original observation,
but it's sunk into me that they're unhealthy. Not the modern stuff
about people sending themselves nuts with social media, that's
easily ignored. I mean the geek in the basement stereotype busy
optimising some code to utilise the vector instruction set of the
new CXY34+7 vortixulor co-processor, or whatever. It is one of my
few skill that's close to useful in both modern life and the modern
economy. But it's not meant for humans. Like, I gather, most
programmers, I'm only really good at it in a state of
sugar-saturated sleepless obsession. Healthy programming might work
on a tedious and stictly enforced routine as in some typical
soul-destroying form of employment, but it's no fun then, and very
slow.
I've been more active these past years, more into physical tasks,
somewhat willfully ignoring computer-related projects that I'd use
every day in preference for totally useless things I can build out
of 2x4 in the shed. My thinking is that if the weather suits doing
things outside, I'll do the computer stuff later. But when later
comes I often find things to make inside instead, or watch TV
because I've tired myself out. Yesterday was the Australia Day
holiday and forecast to get really hot, so I was going to start off
washing the car, then move in to the unairconditioned back room of
the house to work on finishing that optical data
transmitter/receiver, and finally when it got too hot back there,
get onto some of my computer tasks left unfinished for months. But
no, I just weathered the heat and finished every detail of the
optical comunication rigs (except, that is, testing them connected
with computers).
I'm not quite sure whether I'm bored with computers, or whether a
little extra muscle mass was all it took to completely redefine my
mental state. I'm not really burnt out from programming, just drawn
to other things more strongly than before. Unfortunately none of
those things offer even a vague hint at making money, which is why
I keep going back to this idea of trying to drop out of society and
live self-sufficiently (I was going to say like a hermit, but I
live a bit like a non-self-sufficient hermit already). One might
argue that's I'd be more secure as a fat slob sitting at a computer
9-to-5.
