As you may or may not know, I run the

As you may or may not know, I run the
XMPP server for circumlunar.space. In
general, I really like XMPP, but it has
a few shortcomings. One of the real
drawbacks involves the use of multiple
clients. As originally configured, the
circumlunar.space Prosody server would
deliver your messages to the last active
client -- and only to that client. So
each client only had parts of
conversations. I recently learned that
XMPP supports message carbons, so I have
added that module, and the server now
supports them: each client will send a
copy of both incoming and outgoing
messages to the others. Unfortunately,
it doesn't seem to work unless you're
logged in on all the clients (at least,
that's my experience so far). I usually
close my laptop when I'm not using it,
so it ends up offline a lot -- and I
guess I still won't have all of my
messages on every device. A solution
would be to limit myself to a single
device, but I prefer to use the laptop
when I'm at home.

We now have three users (including
Solderpunk and myself) on
www.circumlunar.space, and I've set up
the first sftp account on the server. So
far so good. Check out Julienxx's
page[1]. It's got a cool retro-green CRT
feel to it.

I've decided that I'm going to learn a
real programming language. Back in the
80s, I knew a bit of BASIC and Turbo
Pascal. A couple of years ago, I learned
a lot of Javascript. The book Eloquent
Javacript[2] is a great resource if
you're interested. I learned Javascript
in order to do some webOS and web app
programming, but it's really frustrating
because of the constraints around file
access (which make a lot of sense!) and
the arcane 'dialects' you have to learn
to do anything useful (I hate you, Mojo
and Enyo!). Anyways, I want to learn
something practical and relatively
friendly to dabblers. I considered
Python, Go, and Rust, and in the end, I
think I'm going to try Rust. I'll report
back on the experience.

On another note, after reading John
Jewitt's account of his enslavement by
the Nuu-Chah-Nulth[3], I ended up
reading the (sometimes heavily edited
for publication) logs of Richard
Cleveland (a trader), and James Cook and
George Vancouver (explorers). After
doing so, I have a new respect for
Jewitt, who demonstrated amazing
cultural respect given the era and his
situation. All of the books are well out
of copyright, so I should post them here
at some point, or at least post a set of
links.

Eschew your civil right, Sundogs!

[1] https://www.circumlunar.space/~julienxx.

[2] https://eloquentjavascript.net/

[3] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/0/%7evisiblink/phlog/20190413