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<title>Open source software and nice hardware</title>
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gopher://box.matto.nl/</link>
<description>This is my gopher burrow</description>
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<lastBuildDate>Mon, 21 Jul 2025 09:31:50 +0200</lastBuildDate>
<item>
<title>Gutenberg recents challenge</title>
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gopher://box.matto.nl/0/gutenberg-recents-challenge.txt</link>
<pubDate>Mon, 21 Jul 2025 09:25:20 +0200</pubDate>
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<pre>
+++ Monday 21 July 2025 +++
Gutenberg recents challenge
===========================
I came up with a new challenge, the "Gutenberg recents challenge".
At least six times per year, pick an ebook from the books listed
under "recents - last 30 days" op the Gutenberg website:
https://www.gutenberg.org/browse/recent/last30
The idea behind this is to get out of your "bubble" and read
something you wouldn't otherwise.
First pick
----------
As I am already reading "The Star Diaries" by Stanislaw Lem,
as well as going slowly through "Scheme and the Art of Programming"
by George Springer, my first pick is a short story:
"The black kiss" by Robert Bloch and Henry Kuttner
You can find it here:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76435
(yes, it shows the cover of a magazine.)
This is a horror story, a genre I normally don't read.
I enjoyed reading "The black kiss", so this proves this challenge
is not a bad idea :)
As soon as I finish "The Star Diaries", I'll pick a "real"
book (not a short story).
Last edited: $Date: 2025/07/21 09:25:20 $
</pre>
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<item>
<title>5 Questions, July 2025</title>
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gopher://box.matto.nl/0/5-questions-july-2025.txt</link>
<pubDate>Sat, 19 Jul 2025 16:02:20 +0200</pubDate>
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<pre>
+++ Sunday 20 July 2025 +++
5 Questions, July 2025
======================
Christina formulated five new questions [1].
Here's my take on them.
1. Has a self-help book ever helped you? If yes, would you share
the title and author?
I like to read books about Stoicism, Epicureanism, the Tao Te Ching
and so on. I don't think they are categorized as "self-help", but
they have helped me.
Some examples:
- "The Practicing Stoic" by Ward Farnsworth
This book brings together the teachings of several classic
Stoics like Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and also some
newer authors. The writing is very accessible and
understandable, and helps to gain insights in the Stoic way of
life.
- " Living for Pleasure: An Epicurean Guide to Life" by
Emily A. Austin
The Stoics looked down on Epicureanism, this book gives a
different view, and helped me appreciate the teachings of
Epicurus.
- "The Philosophy of the Daodejing" by Hans-Georg Moeller
This book provides a broader perspective. It shows the main
topics of the Dao and helps to understand the text with clear
analysis. It changed my view and understanding of the Tao Te
Ching a.k.a. Daodejing.
2. How many times a month do you cook dinner at home? Do you
plan most of your meals, or do you start by looking in the
refrigerator to see what hasn't gone bad?
We cook most days of the week, and my wife and I take turns on
doing the cooking. We usually plan a week ahead, which helps to
compile the groceries list for the trip to the supermarket.
3. Where do you get your recipes for #2? If you have multiple
cookbooks do you rotate them?
I think that Pareto (80/20-rule) applies here, and often the
cooking based on habit, a recipe that has been made many times
before. Sometimes I look for something new, and use the internet
for that.
When we eat out and are surprised (in a positive way) by the food,
I try to find a way to replicate the meal, hunting the internet
for a recipe.
We aim to avoid sugar and salt, and I don't like garlic. When I
use a recipe from the internet, often I apply a simplified version.
4. If you've gone antiquing or thrift store shopping, what is
one of your great finds?
We have two rattan chairs, that we got about a decade ago in the
thrift store and still are in use. A couple of years ago I got a
black leather relax swivel chair that I consider a great thrift
store find.
Last March I was in need for a walking cane, but couldn't find
one at the thrift stores in our area, and had to buy a new one.
During the hunting for the cane, we did get two (clearly used)
crutches from a thrift store, "just in case".
5. What would make, or has made, you more patriotic?
We are all inhabitants of the earth and the earth is the only
place where we can live. In my opinion patriotism is one of the
methods used by populists and right-wing politicians to create
an artificial divide between "us" and "them".
[1]
gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space:70/0/~christina/2025-07-09.txt
Last edited: $Date: 2025/07/19 16:02:20 $
</pre>
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</item>
<item>
<title>OCC25 Wrap up</title>
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gopher://box.matto.nl/0/occ25-wrap-up.txt</link>
<pubDate>Sat, 19 Jul 2025 20:13:37 +0200</pubDate>
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<pre>
+++ Saturday 19 July 2025 +++
OCC25 Wrap up
=============
Desktop system
--------------
The system for the 2025 edition of the Old Computer Challenge,
an old Power Mac G4, is kind of a mini-tower system under the
desk, and a display, keyboard, and mouse on the desk.
The last time I worked on this desk was around 2022, when I was
still working, until my retirement --only the university system
was a lot more capable.
I enjoy working on the Power Mac, I love the old 15 inch Graphite
Apple Studio Display, and using a real keyboard.
The downside is that my desk is on the attic, above the garage,
working on the Power Mac leaves my wife alone in the living room,
and therefor I didn't spend that much time at the Power Mac.
iTunes
------
In the past I had loaded my music collection on this system,
and the old iTunes version is nice to use.
It was connected to an old audio-system, but over time that
broke down, so now the sound comes from a cheap, tiny
computer speaker set. Still, Eric Clapton while Emacsing
is great.
Plans and reality
-----------------
I have not used all the software that I had installed for the
challenge.
I haven't started Flightgear, because I didn't spend that
much time at the desk. The facts that it is extremely slow on
this system, and that Flightgear with just a keyboard and a
mouse is not a great experience don't do much good to the
motivation either.
Also I had installed `Macintosh Common Lisp Version 5.2', but
haven't touched it. This looks like a nice wintertime project.
The only system where I run the Palm Desktop is this Power Mac
and I started the Challenge with the idea to write at least
one phlog post on it. This didn't happen.
I did install the Palm TX WPA2 Enterprise Security Upgrade,
however most of the times connecting to the local wireless
network fails. So this wasn't a great success.
I did install a Guppy on my TX though!
This is a toy-application, that shows a guppy swimming on the
display. See:
gopher://box.matto.nl/I/i/palm-guppy.png
To make this screenshot, I also installed a screenshot
application on the TX, both downloaded from palmdb.net and
installed with the Palm Desktop suite.
Mouse orientated
----------------
I have been using tiling window manager for a very long time,
mostly Ratpoison, on both private as well as on work
laptops. About eight or nine weeks ago I switched to EXWM,
the Emacs Window Manager. I used these tiling window managers
all with the aim to minimize the use of the mouse.
Using OS X 10.3.9 on the Power Mac is quite the opposite.
After playing with it for a week, my conclusion is that I
still feel most at home at keyboard oriented systems :)
Change of perspective
---------------------
As always, doing the Challenge brings new perspectives.
For one, the Challenge resulted in a new phlog-workflow.
The Emacs on the Power Mac is too old for my normal workflow to
create and publish phlogs. In Elisp I created an alternative
method. It results in a simplified workflow, and also without
dependency on Denote. I have decided to keep this new workflow,
and add some extra functionality.
To make it a more fun and learning experience, I wrote this
Elisp code using the old 20.3.1 version of GNU Emacs. This
too brought some new perspective and again it was a learning
experience.
For future challenges I will prefer a system that I can use
in the living room, that is another lesson learned.
To wrap it all up: I spend not as much time as usual using the
OCC-system and chatting in the #oldcomputerchallenge IRC-channel,
but still it was a fun and learning experience!
Last edited: $Date: 2025/07/19 20:13:37 $
</pre>
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</item>
<item>
<title>OCC25 Gnus for reading Usenet and RSS-feeds</title>
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gopher://box.matto.nl/0/occ25-gnus-for-reading-usenet-and-rssfeeds.txt</guid>
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gopher://box.matto.nl/0/occ25-gnus-for-reading-usenet-and-rssfeeds.txt</link>
<pubDate>Thu, 17 Jul 2025 12:08:08 +0200</pubDate>
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<pre>
+++ Thursday 17 July 2025 +++
OCC25 Gnus for reading Usenet and RSS-feeds
===========================================
Emacs Gnus is the built-in Usenet client in GNU Emacs.
I copies my `.newsrc.eld' from my daily driver to the Power Mac
G4, and created a small Gnus config file `~/.gnus.el' file. More
was not needed.
Reading Usenet posts
--------------------
In the Gnus config file I only set the URL of the Usenet-provider,
and omitted the line to select an encrypted SSL-connection and the
line with port 563. Without these lines, Gnus connects to the
Usenet-server and collects the status of the subscribed
newsgroups.
Usenet posts tends to be formatted in plain text, reading
those is fine of course.
gmane.io and gwene.org
----------------------
Gmane.io and gwene.org provide wonderful services to follow
mailinglists and RSS-feeds.
gmane.io is a mailinglist-to-nntp service. For each supported
mailinglist it provides a separate newsgroup.
gwene.org is a RSS-feed-to-nntp service. For each supported
RSS-feed it provides a separate newsgroup.
Bridging mailinglists and RSS-feeds to nntp is a briliiant
idea. Usenet readers are very good at knowing which messages have
been visited and filtering interesting information.
Using the services from gmane.io and gwene.org I follow a number
of mailinglists and RSS-feeds.
Maillinglist messages tend to be formatted in plain text, reading
those is again fine.
Following RSS-feeds
-------------------
The experience following RSS-feeds using the older Emacs versions
depends very much on how the specific feed is created.
Some RSS-feeds contain the full entry of each item. Opening an
item results usually in a good readable post, but the text can
also be formatted as html..
Some posts contain just a very short introduction) and
a link to the post. That is an https link, of course.
And many posts only contain a link, also https of course.
So here we have two problems:
- Posts are formatted in html.
- Links to https pages.
w3
--
In order to render html formatted text, I downloaded w3 from
https://archive.org/download/emacs-w3-evolt_browsers/4.0.47/
The standard ./configure, make, make install trio works, and
it gets compiled and installed (sudo make install).
Unfortunately, it has bugs and I can't open anything with it.
Which means, I have to look further :)
Last edited: $Date: 2025/07/17 12:08:08 $
</pre>
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<item>
<title>OCC25 Back on ICQ</title>
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gopher://box.matto.nl/0/occ25-back-on-icq.txt</guid>
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gopher://box.matto.nl/0/occ25-back-on-icq.txt</link>
<pubDate>Wed, 16 Jul 2025 20:49:31 +0200</pubDate>
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<pre>
+++ Wednesday 16 July 2025 +++
OCC25 Back on ICQ
=================
Thanks to Andreas [1] I was able to activate an ICQ
account.
The last time I used ICQ is a very long time ago, it
was a different world at that time.
The service is provided at nina.chat, and you have to register
a new account. You can choose any ICQ number (UIN) as long as
it is not yet taken.
Like Andreas emphasize in his blog post, it is an old protocol,
don't expect any protection of your sensitive data with something
modern like encryption.
If you want to connect, please do so. My current UIN: 9109515
Have fun!
[1]:
http://82mhz.net/posts/2025/07/occ-2025-i-m-back-on-icq/
Last edited: $Date: 2025/07/16 20:49:31 $
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