+++ Gophernicus is Back +++ | |
Sunday, September 30, 2018 | |
I see tomasino posted a bboard request [0] to revert gopher.club | |
back to gophernicus, and also to upgrade it, and it appears that is | |
done now. Very nice! | |
[0] gopher://gopher.black/1/phlog/20180929-sdf-gopher-servers | |
Continued... | |
+++ SDF Nuked Gophernicus Again +++ | |
Friday, September 28, 2018 | |
Sigh. It seems gopher.club has changed its gopherd to Bucktooth... | |
again, and with no warning... again... breaking all gopher moles | |
(CGIs)... again. Sdf.org still uses gophernicus, however, which is | |
kind of confusing, especially if you read the gopher tutorial and | |
setup a CGI like it describes there, only to have it fail when your | |
phlog gets listed on gopher.club. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Books vs. E-books +++ | |
Sunday, September 16, 2018 | |
My wife and I had a discussion about books the other day. She is | |
reading a large hardcover, a book she got from English section of | |
the local library. She mentioned how much better she likes reading | |
actual books. I agreed, but it got me to thinking why I actually | |
feel this way. E-readers do have advantages, but something is | |
missing that makes reading from an e-reader seem less than | |
appealing. I think it is that e-books are sterile, they don't | |
provide the same sensory experience as real books. With a real book | |
you have the feel of the pages as you turn them. The visible | |
feedback as to just how much of the book you have read, as measured | |
by the thickness of the pages remaining. The smell of the book | |
itself. The ease with which you can hold it while reclining on your | |
couch. Flipping back a few pages to remember a character's name or | |
plot point while keeping your current position secure with a | |
finger. All combine to make a complete experience that e-readers | |
cannot match. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Reading List: Ken Follett +++ | |
Wednesday, August 29, 2018 | |
I just finished reading a very good book, 'Eye of the Needle' by Ken | |
Follett. It's a thriller set in WWII England, about the hunt for a | |
German spy. Very compelling reading, Follett is a great | |
writer. Mostly character-driven, but somehow he keeps you wanting | |
to turn the page. If you like historical fiction in particular | |
you'll enjoy it. I read another of his books recently, 'Pillars of | |
the Earth', which was equally engrossing, set in the early | |
middle-ages. There is a sequel to that latter one which is on my | |
"to-read" list. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Positive Changes at SDF +++ | |
Saturday, August 18, 2018 | |
I've been away from SDF for a bit, but I caught up on bboard today | |
and notice signs of increased responsiveness from the 'membership' | |
account. It seems to be replying to each and every requests thread, | |
and a lot of the helpdesk ones as well. I see more frequent emails | |
on new features, some like ssh-over-https that were requested by | |
users with a fairly quick turnaround time in implementation. I'm not | |
sure if this is smj or a group of admins (more likely the latter), | |
but the attention is welcome and long overdue. Thanks SDF! | |
Continued... | |
+++ Home Ownership +++ | |
Tuesday, July 31, 2018 | |
We've been looking into buying a house recently, two years after we | |
sold our house in the US. We've been renting a house in Canada ever | |
since, and I kind of like it. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Reply to Tfurrows on Canada +++ | |
Friday, July 27, 2018 | |
Tfurrows ruminates on Canadian citizenship for himself and his kids | |
[0]. This is exactly the situation I was in - born prior to 2009, to | |
a Canadian father outside of Canada. I was easily able to reclaim my | |
Canadian citizenship. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Congrats to Tomasino +++ | |
Thursday, July 26, 2018 | |
Congrats to Tomasino on getting his Italian citizenship [0], and | |
welcome to the US expat club [1]! I have never been to Iceland, but | |
have always wanted to visit, I think it would be a wonderful place | |
to settle. Moving to another country is quite an ordeal, but well | |
worth it. I hope it all works out for you! | |
Continued... | |
+++ I'm not Surprised +++ | |
Tuesday, June 12, 2018 | |
I'm not surprised [0], the web has been a mess for some time, but | |
it's really, painfully bad as of 2018. The wholesale move to | |
client-side, dynamic page generation is partly to blame. And for | |
what purpose? Client-side designs are harder to test, and more | |
brittle as far as dealing with odd browser dependencies. They are | |
also slower than generating content directly on the server-side, | |
when you consider that the content still has to come from the | |
server, except now it is coming from dozens of RPCs (add up the | |
network overhead of each request). Let's not forget all the | |
javascript loaded from third-party websites used for tracking and | |
ads, these slow down the sites even more. | |
Continued... | |
+++ CLI Translation Utility +++ | |
Sunday, June 10, 2018 | |
I came across a great command line translation utility 'translate | |
shell' [0]. It provides a script 'trans', which is written in pure | |
bash and gives an interface to the most popular online translation | |
sites (by default it will use Google translate). Here is an example | |
of it translating one of my recent French phosts [1]. The | |
translation is pretty accurate, at least enough to convey the | |
meaning. It has loads of options and I could see it being used to | |
facilitate a gopher-based translation site. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Finally Spring +++ | |
Saturday, May 12, 2018 | |
It appears spring has finally arrived in Québec, after a bout of | |
unseasonably cold weather. My walks are more pleasant now, with the | |
trees budding and things coming to life in general. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Android Gopher Client +++ | |
Thursday, May 03, 2018 | |
I came across a new Android gopher client called 'DiggieDog' | |
[0]. Nothing outstanding, but it works fine as a basic client and | |
even has bookmark support. It has the usual issues with garbled | |
display of ascii-art and line wrap, but I'm not sure it's possible | |
to fix those in all cases in the mobile format. | |
Continued... | |
+++ On Losing Weight +++ | |
Monday, April 02, 2018 | |
Txminth talks about his diet [0] - congrats on losing that weight! | |
I, too have been following the "hacker's diet" recently and counting | |
calories. My target is 1800 per day with a brisk walk most days | |
(five days a week). I've lost six pounds in two weeks. I have been | |
doing the walks for about two years, but my weight always held | |
steady until now. Counting calories really makes you aware of how | |
much you are eating. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Responses on Attention and Atheism +++ | |
Monday, April 02, 2018 | |
Solderpunk shared a link to an article on getting your attention | |
back [0], I agree it was not very insightful. But it made me think | |
of how digital books can sometimes impact attention negatively, at | |
least for me. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Skiing and a Gopher Mirror +++ | |
Sunday, March 18, 2018 | |
We're having a snowy and cold March here in Quebec, but the clouds | |
broke today and it was sunny and -8. It turned out to be a perfect | |
day for some cross-country skiing - my wife and I got in 8km this | |
afternoon. The conditions were phenomenal, with minimal wind, nice, | |
cold snow (the kind that makes that satisfying hard scrape as your | |
skis travel over it) and no ice to speak of. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Remembering Prepping +++ | |
Wednesday, March 14, 2018 | |
Reading Melton's phlog [0] has made me miss my own experiments in | |
self-sufficiency and preparedness. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Resp. to Tomasino and Jynx +++ | |
Sunday, March 11, 2018 | |
Tomasino moved his gopher hole away from SDF [0], it's now | |
self-hosted on a RPi. He cites the recent stealth changes to SDF's | |
gopher implementation as his main reason for moving. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Emacs and Remote Editing +++ | |
Thursday, March 08, 2018 | |
I've been working from the Meta-array (MA) lately since I'm finding | |
it a bit more responsive as far as editing and saving | |
documents. That probably has to do with the heavy use of the cluster | |
and that fact that you're always working over an NFS mount (although | |
I must say it's better lately on NetBSD 8.0 beta). | |
Continued... | |
+++ Text Formatting and Emacs +++ | |
Wednesday, March 07, 2018 | |
There have been lots of interesting posts lately about text | |
formatting tools [0][1][2][3][4] (I particularly like the artistic | |
bent of jynx's and cat's posts with the embedded ascii art). Since | |
I'm an Emacs guy I've used muse mode in the past - this is what I | |
wrote the SDF Emacs tutorial and cheatsheet in. For that they were | |
invaluable since I had one source document and could generate HTML, | |
text, and epub [5]. Speaking of formatting, in Emacs there is a | |
minor mode called refill-mode, it auto-fills paragraphs as you type, | |
with whatever justification you set ('M-x set-justification-full' is | |
what I'm using for this post). You can also disable refill-mode and | |
just manually fill paragraphs with M-q every so often. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Response to Solderpunk +++ | |
Thursday, February 22, 2018 | |
Just a quick reply to solderpunk, I would indeed be interested in an | |
80s-themed hotel room [0]. Genius! Alas, I agree modern (wo-)man | |
would be intent on just taking selfies with console TVs and princess | |
phones. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Woodnotes Guides on Gopher +++ | |
Monday, February 19, 2018 | |
I love finding new gopher sites. I posted a link to the classic | |
'Woodnotes Guide to Mutt' [0] in bboard today. After perusing the | |
author's blog, I discovered he uses gopher [1], and his site is | |
mirrored there, including all his tech guides [2]. | |
Continued... | |
+++ I Miss the 80s +++ | |
Friday, February 16, 2018 | |
With apologies to my younger readers. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Long Live Bongusta +++ | |
Thursday, February 08, 2018 | |
Just a quick note to thank Logout for Bongusta [0] and for keeping | |
it around [1]. I use it every day and I'm sure others do as well. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Thoughts on Finding Recently Updated SDF Gopherholes +++ | |
Saturday, February 03, 2018 | |
I and some others have noticed some issues recently with the SDF | |
phlogosphere display [0] and the sort order. So you know the | |
history, way back in 2009, smj posted this to the GOPHER bboard: | |
Continued... | |
+++ Long-Ass Gophermaps +++ | |
Wednesday, January 31, 2018 | |
Regarding Solderpunk's gopher bboard reply, on overly long | |
gophermaps and how VF-1 does not handle them with a pager: | |
Continued... | |
+++ The VF-1 Gopher Client +++ | |
Monday, January 22, 2018 | |
So I took some time today to put solderpunk's new gopher client VF-1 | |
[0][1] through its paces. I'm using whatever version is currently | |
installed on SDF. First let me say that I love the interface design, | |
despite it being quite different from lynx and gopher I got used to | |
it pretty quickly (as in a few minutes). I think anyone with REPL | |
experience will feel at home with it. The search facility and | |
veronica commands are very useful. I particularly like the | |
auto-generation of menus after each operation, whether that be a | |
search or link extraction (and that last is quite handy). | |
Continued... | |
+++ Pale Blue Dot +++ | |
Tuesday, January 16, 2018 | |
I've been keeping a low profile lately as post-holiday work has been | |
a bear and I've not had the motivation to write. But I'm catching up | |
on things today and saw a phost by gunnarfrost that caught my eye | |
[0]. He mentions the view of earth from space and how this has | |
shaped our philosophical views of the meaning of life. This made me | |
think of Carl Sagan's the 'Pale Blue Dot' [1][2], which is about the | |
view of Earth from Voyager I, seen as a tiny speck from about six | |
million kilometers away. Here is the quote: | |
Continued... | |
+++ Thoughts on Pseudo-anonymity +++ | |
Tuesday, January 02, 2018 | |
Solderpunk talks about pseudonymity [0] and the issues surrounding | |
it. Thankfully I do not recall ever reading that bit of bad advice | |
by Eric Raymond. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Welcome 2018 +++ | |
Monday, January 01, 2018 | |
Welcome to the new year, fellow gopherites! I notice some phloggers | |
have archived their 2017 posts into a sub-folder, with an apology | |
for breaking links. I see the most impact to that will be in the | |
'reply' posts where we link to one another, although the naming | |
convention from here on out should prevent that (phlog/ -> | |
phlog/2017/, for example). When I thought about archiving my posts, | |
I realized this a good reason to use gophermaps for a phlog - that | |
one layer of abstraction above raw directory indexes allows one to | |
archive posts transparently. In my case, I only needed to copy the | |
2017 posts into an empty subfolder, with their gophermap: | |
Continued... |