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Stardate: 20230716.1344 | |
Location: In an airplane | |
Input Device: Gemini PDA | |
Audio: Rumble of airplane | |
Visual: Flip-out tray table, safety information pamphlet | |
Emotional: Slightly refreshed from nap. | |
NOTE: This was phosted on 20230727.0942 since I was overseas. | |
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The Old Computer Challenge has concluded. I enjoyed taking on the | |
challenge, as well as reading about everybody's experiences in various | |
protocols out there, gopher, gemini, irc, hypertext transfer, etc. | |
When I first read about the challenge, I told myself that I needed to | |
particpiate this year. I enjoy when the "smolnet" communities call | |
for participating in shared experiences like occ, or ROOPLOCH, or | |
christyotwisty's monthly 5 questions, and we are able to | |
come together as community and have fun![1][2][3] | |
There are many things I have learned, not just from my direct | |
involvement with my old hardware and software, but also from you | |
people in the community. I have been keeping notes and still continue | |
to take notes of what you all share. | |
It is refreshing to be in a community where we can do stuff like this, | |
even if it is on a smol scale, but also a global scale! I observed | |
that there were so many different countries across many different | |
time zones involved. Just being on IRC on #oldcomputerchallenge in | |
libera.chat had people greeting me "Good morning," when I was still | |
finishing up "yesterday's" dinner and have not yet phosted my occ | |
notes for the day! Sometimes this feels like what I miss about | |
local BBS from before...it feels local...but global (globally local?), | |
and we can all feel free to participate without getting too lost with | |
overcrowding, drowned by the firehose, people with troll agendas, and | |
other distactions that has kept me away from the larger social media | |
groups. Plus, the comments and feedback are m0ar intimate and personal. | |
It is also nice to be among friends, old and new, who share the same | |
interest and curiosity with old computers and just getting things to | |
work just for the joy of old computing. As I have experienced, | |
there is still much worth there and much that can be repurposed or | |
reimagined into old hard/soft-warez. | |
From my dealings with the Sun Ultra 10 (voltesv), the hardware, aside | |
from the NVRAM, is still in decent shape and still has current | |
options available to explore. The installed Solaris is very limited | |
but I have found other operating systems to try. I plan on spending | |
m0ar time exploring the Ultra since it is no longer in pieces in my | |
garage. | |
The Asus eeePC 701 is still very useable and quite frankly, can be a | |
"modern" replacement for my general daily use. My "killer app" is | |
still the terminal with all of the different tools that I keep using | |
there. I still mostly use the web like I did during the web v1.0 | |
days of static web pages and web searches. Even with mastodon, there | |
are alternative clients and I do not have to be stuck using the web | |
GUI. | |
The OCC had me revisiting the toot CLI client and it showed me that | |
I do not need a GUI to stay connected. My masto-scrolling is much | |
m0ar efficient and for pics with descripions, I can still open the | |
images in a separate window. If there are no descriptions of the | |
image and I cannot easily guess what the picture is by the fugly URL, | |
then I guess I miss out on the picture. Oh well, no FOMO for me | |
there. | |
It was nice to be able to connect to both old computer's desktop | |
environments remotely from my Wind0ze workstation for work during | |
my breaks or long virtual meetings that did not require my active | |
participation. I would connect to the eeePC's desktop via the | |
x2go client and then connect to the Ultra from the eeePC's | |
desktop via x11vnc. Still very functional. | |
Overall, this was a really nice activity that I enjoyed and gave | |
me a chance to (re)connect with old and new friends in the smolnet, | |
learn some new things, and revisit personal computing's past. I | |
think I will continue the adventures with the old computer and | |
make m0ar of an effort to spend time in that area. Thanks to | |
Solène for the challenge and the community for participating! | |
Hope to do this again with you next year!!! | |
[1] Solène's Old Computer Challenge | |
[2] Solderpunk's ROOPHLOCH | |
gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/1/%7esolderpunk/roophloch | |
[3] christyotwisty's 5 Questions | |
gopher://sdf.org/0/users/christyotwisty/5Q-Index.txt | |
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