Conference Day 2 / redundancy of gopherholes // 18-3-13
Some years ago, I was asked by a guy from Spain through my then
boss/professor whether I would participate in a book project about
infrared technology. I agreed, but then was unexpectedly getting the
opportunity for my current job, and simply could no longer find the
time for serious scientific writing. So I had to disappoint the guy by
telling him I had to resign from the project.
Today I noticed his name on the list of speakers, and I had the
opportunity for some small talk, including a personal apology and his
reassuring I was not the only one on his authors list who could not
make it, and that the book was never finished. At least I'm not the
only culprit! _phew_
These fifteen minutes perhaps were worth the whole journey already, so
please take yesterday's rant and bad mood with a lighter note! ^-^
What I don't like that much is the missing punctuality of the
conference. Already the opening notes started with about 10 min delay,
which was a bad sign IMHO. You never make up lost time during big
events like these! Perhaps that's just my (Swiss) German punctuality
fetish, though.
On the programme, "Lunch" was marked as such. Now at a conference,
people assume lunch is included, if it's noted -- at least that's what
I did, as well as half a dozen of guys I was talking to. I was not very
hungry and decided to let them pay dearly by skipping lunch and later
attacking the buffet during coffee break, mhwahaha! Actually, I did not
eat much more than I would normally, just some sandwich and two
cookies... However, I noticed one girl skipping from one "island of
tables" to the next several times, leaving and returning to repeat.
Well, I don't blame it on her, because the food was really delicious!
Anyway, I don't feel bad about my little freeloading, because now I
have paid for my sin by not attending to the conference dinner this
evening. I just felt too tired and not in the mood for a lot of
socializing and food. In addition, "standard food intake slots" in
Spain are slightly dephased from my clock, i.e lunch is towards 2 pm
and dinner at 9 pm, and so I would certainly not get to bed before 11
pm.
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There's ongoing discussion in the SDF phlogosphere about "insourcing"
of gopherholes, i.e running one's own server to become independent from
SDF. I do like SDF, but OTOH I can well understand this, especially
with respect to improved redundancy and resilience. Therefore I'm not
thinking about moving, but mirroring.
And we all should have local redundant bookmarks, so that we can easily
look for stuff at a secondary place, when one site or host goes down.
Still thinking about having some local bookmark update script, like a
local [1]Bongusta or [2]Moku Pona.
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Man, the internet access in this hotel really sucks! I hate login
pages, where you have to input the access data every two hours or so,
because the router simply assumes you're gone unless if you only work
with HTTP or whatever Joe Sixpack is assumed to use. In addition, speed
feels lower than 2k4, but that's perhaps due to the over 20k (!) hosts
in this subnet my tablet discovered -- before I stopped it due to lack
of patience.
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_Still feeling fine and unin-flu-enced, yay!_
.:.
References
1.
gopher://i-logout.cz/1/en/bongusta/
2.
gopher://alexschroeder.ch/1map/Moku_Pona_Updates