💾 Archived View for l1m1n4l.space › gemlog › gemlog-jan2022.gmi captured on 2022-07-16 at 14:04:41. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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I am content with the fish shell, but I want to play around with zsh, just for the sake of learning. It looks like a lot of work to configure zsh to do the things fish can do by default. I am restless to know everything, and of course that is impossible. But I keep trying. Thanks, ADHD.
Binge-watch of The Sopranos in progress. Capitalism, mental illness, the decline of an empire. America.
Happy birthday to me.
I was reminded today of the existence of UbuWeb, which is a large collection of art, text, video, and sound files related to "art". Mostly things that have been considered avant garde at some time or other. An amazing site. Has been around since 1996. Can consume your day if you fall in.
Aside from the coughing, fatigue, sinus congestion, brain fog, and depression, I am recovered from Covid.
The linux way: spend hours to research how to do something quickly from the command line. All roads lead to sed, and sed is hard for me to grok. Working on it...
I feel like my vim skills are leveling up. I am starting to work on key maps to make my workflow more efficient. I have taken the bold step of remapping my caps lock key to CTRL on a system level, after accepting that caps lock is mostly useless, and causes more hassle than benefit when at the keyboard. Another 20 years and I will be a moderately competent user.
Post-Covid exhaustion hit me hard today. Mondays are always busy at work, as I have to process payroll, generate weekly metrics, file reports, email a bunch of people, and a bunch of other stuff. I was sluggish all day, and when I got home I collapsed into bed and slept for 3 hours. Is this just my life now?
One coworker comes back to work after recovering from Covid, and another one goes out to enjoy quarantine and sickness. Working with the public is a real hazard. It has been a while since someone died (only 2 deaths that I know about) so I guess that is some sort of victory.
So tired...
It's my turn to struggle with short staff and panic buying. I come back from Covid, two other people on my team go out with Covid.
Most people get their booster shots before they get Covid, but I have always been a different kind of guy. So, booster shot yesterday. My arm is sore, but my recent surge of antibodies has lessened the side effects others have reported. Life goes on.
And just like that, temperatures in Austin have dropped to below freezing.
Back to work today, and it was rough. I am happy to be back in the world after getting over Covid, but I am tired and weak. Swarms of people panic-buying whatever they could grab in anticipation of a cold snap and possible ice. I feel like I took a beating.
PJ has been picked up and taken off to the crematory.
I will enable vim mode in any software that supports it. Just enabled it in Obsidian, and it works well enough. I wish there were a mode indicator at the bottom of the screen. Maybe I'll write that.
Song for today: Dramamine - Modest Mouse
I took another Covid test today, and it's negative! I'm headed back to work tomorrow. I miss being out of the house. I am still weak. Not sure how I will endure 8 hours on my feet, but I am as ready now as I ever will be. Wish me luck.
I I am abandoning my search for a web UI to use with my taskwarrior sync server. For now I am resigned to syncing my tasks with trello, because i was actually able to make that work.
The search for the best command line note taking app continues. Going back to hacking on nb. It seems useful, but it's slow compared to the other things I have tried.
There's just this void in the house after PJ's death. A strange sense of absence, as if the place is suddenly empty. Painful to look at her toys, the box she liked to sit in, her food dish. The strangeness of not having her curled up in my lap when I am on the couch. I have had beloved animals die several times in my life, but this feels different. I find myself about to call her, but of course, she is no longer here.
In this book it is spoken of the Sephiroth and the Paths, of Spirits and Conjurations; of Gods, Spheres, Planes, and many other things which may or may not exist. It is immaterial whether these exist or not. By doing certain things, certain results will follow; students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophic validity to any of them.
-- Aleister Crowley
I was having trouble getting gemtext syntax highlighting to work in neovim. I tried a few plugins, but they seemed to do nothing. Here's a link to the thing that worked:
I am in the process of searching for a good CLI note app. I use Obsidian as my brain dump, and I love it, but sometimes I just want to jot a quick note. I am trying nb, jrnl. and vimwiki to see what best meets my needs. jrnl will let me export my notes to a markdown file, which I can dump in my Obsidian vault. I'm thinking that doing a weekly dump will be fine. Permanent storage, plus the ability to leverage Obsidian's search function -- sounds like a good plan.
My cat, PJ, died yesterday. We think her old heart just gave out. We tried to comfort her in her last moments. It was so hard to see. I am struggling to keep my composure and not collapse in grief.
The search for a usable web interface for taskwarrior continues. I don't think any of the available programs work properly. Why is this so difficult? I really want to use taskwarrior for all my todos, but if I can't find a way to get an interface that works with my phone, I may have to seek other solutions.
I have found a few scripts that will sync with my calendar, or with todoist, but those things don't meet my needs.
I could get used to staying home and never returning to work. Although Covid is the reason, I am happy to have the time off. The fear of poverty compels me to return as soon as possible, however.
I have tried many systems/apps/whatever to assist in dotfile management. I gave GNU Stow a try, and hey, it's pretty good. I struggled a bit to figure out the required directory structure (online documentation is not too clear) but now that I have sorted it out, it's cool! Pushed the files to a private git repo, and now I am all set.
I am surprised that it took this long into the pandemic for me to get Covid. I work in a grocery store, surrounded by co-workers and customers for 8 hours a day. I have dealt with anti-mask idiots on the daily, and yet I managed to avoid infection. The vaccine kept the virus at bay until Omicron ripped through my workplace and landed in my body. I guess I get to be a part of history now -- didn't miss out on being infected! (Currently 321 million active cases worldwide.)
I am at a loss. I cannot find a taskserver web interface that actually works. I have tried docker images, ruby apps, customized freecinc install, others, and absolutely nothing works. I just want to be able to access my task list from my phone. There is an app called "task add" but I can't figure out how to properly configure it, and I am failing to find any help on the web. This is more difficult than it needs to be. Do I need to abandon taskwarrior? I really don't want to use a hosted server -- I need privacy, and I don't want my struggle to install taskserver (victorious!) to end up being wasted time. Does anybody know a way?
I am cleared to return to work on Sunday, as I have managed to survive Covid. I would like to get out of the house and go back to my life, but I am waiting to see how I'm feeling before returning to the outside world.
I successfully installed taskserver on my remote droplet. I wanted to get away from relying on a hosted server like wingtask or in.theam. I am working on controlling my data as much as possible, and taskserver was next on my list for self-hosting. I had attempted an install last week but I failed and walked away from it for a while. Today I made it work. I am still researching the best way to run a web interface for my taskserver so I can use taskwarrior on my phone. A project for another time...
I suppose it was only a matter of time: positive Covid test yesterday. I had tested negative during my sick time last week, went back to work, felt shitty again, took a test, and there you have it. Of course my wife has now tested positive as well, so we get to enjoy it together. Not the best birthday present for her, but it is what it is.
Much of today spent in front of my computer. Feeling better, but still not feeling good. YouTube in the background for most of the day on autoplay. The algorithm makes some strange choices on which videos to serve to me next. I'm not up for a badly recorded 2 hour video about vim today. Skip...
Still sick. I have missed 4 days of work now. It was nice to be away for so long, but that free time was wasted on being in shit shape. My main activities were coughing, sweating, and sleeping. I am going in tomorrow regardless of how I am feeling. I can't afford to miss any more days.
My friends are obsessed with Wordle. I am bad at word games so I cannot display my shame in public. You would think that since I was an English major in college I would have the necessary skills for Wordle, Scrabble, etc. But no, I am terrible at such things. I blame ADHD. It's important to have a convenient scapegoat for my mental failings.
An old friend died yesterday. The current assumption is that he had a heart attack and dropped dead, but because he was not yet 50 there will be an autopsy. We had not seen each other in the physical world in years, but we did spend a lot of time together in World of Warcraft (I used to spend hours a day there.) He actually convinced us (my wife and me) to sign up for the game.He gave us our first gold coin (in 2005 that was a lot of money) and he'd escort our low level characters through perilous runs through high level areas when we needed to get somewhere. Good times. He leaves behind 4 kids of various ages. Very sad.
I am getting the feeling that much of gemini space consists of abandoned capsules that were built in a burst of enthusiasm and then abandoned. I am on the lookout for regularly updated content. Personal content, gemlogs, that sort of thing. Gemini seems to encourage the personal style of writing, the individual voice, and that's what I want to see. I tell myself that I am going to keep up with it, at least as a journal/daily log.
Staying home for yet another day. Only one day worked this week. Glad that my sick time/vacation time reset at the start of the year so that I won't be unable to pay my bills. Still feel shitty, but perhaps less shitty.
After some resistance, I let my defensed down and took some store-brand Nyquil to give myself some chance at sleep. Worked. Still tired, but better than yesterday morning.
My throat hurts, my eyes are red, my body is sore, I am weak and shivering, my nose is running, my hair is greasy, and I don't love Jesus.
Taking a minute to figure out the rsync syntax needed to keep my remote gemini site synced with my local directory. I think I have it now!
Soon after the rando offered me money for my twitter handle, I listened to a recent Darknet Diaries episode about a guy who suffered all sorts of bullshit at the hands of someone who wanted his 2-letter handle. What a strange world.
Decided to put my gemini server on an external server. Using the cheapo basic digitalocean droplet. Also put nginx on the droplet to serve a simple static page so something would be up if anyone went to the web URL. Getting things working was a slight challenge, but I got it all functioning in the end.
Still sick, still staying home. If I had not just had a negative covid test, I would be afraid. Well, I am afraid - could have been a false negative, could be that I contracted it the day after, could be a lot of things. I have been coughing all night, and my ribs and back feel like someone has beaten me.
Some nerd on reddit made a shell alias for sudo: fucking. As in, fucking pacman -Syu. Dumb, so of course, funny.
My birthday is soon, and I will be moving up on the "older than 50" scale. In my residual self-image, I am the same as I have always been, but of course I know what I really am. Neo seeing old Neo in the mirror in the new Matrix movie is relatable.
Even sitting alone at my computer, working on a gemini capsule that nobody has ever visited, makes me feel less alone than staring at websites. Just knowing that there are other people out there doing the same thing, typing plain text thoughts... it gives me hope, though I don't have the words to express why.
Adult ADHD things: opening nvim because you just had an I HAVE TO WRITE THAT DOWN though, and by the time you open the document, you have forgotten what that thought was.
Free software is a philosophy, open source is a business model.
I saw this idea for denoting footnotes in gemtext: use lowercase letters like [a] etc. They won't be links, but they will make your page less confusing. Footnotes won't be mistaken for links. The reader will just have to scroll down if they want to see the notes.
Surfing random capsules for design inspiration. Interesting to see how people use the lack of features as a strength.
Out sick for the second day. The negative covid test is reducing my anxiety, but it doesn't make me feel physically better.
I love the democratic vibe of geminispace. Hosting a capsule is easy and cheap; you don't even have to pay for hosting if you have minimal tech at home. You can run your gemini server from your home on the shittiest of computers. That's what I am doing, and I am loving it.
Currently hosting my gemini capsule from home. I am debating the merits of serving it from a cheap digitalocean droplet. But that would cost money, and serving it from home is basically free.
Set up a quick git repo to back up my gemini capsule. Made the mistake of adding my certs to the repo, so I had to facepalm and add a .gitignore.
The Guy I Almost Was is a webcomic that resonates with me...
I have been researching ways to fix line wrap issues when viewing pages in amfora. I think I finally figured out the proper option in my nvim init file. I have added an autocommand to set text width to 0 when opening a .gmi file, and it seems to be working.
Some rando wants to buy my twitter handle for $1000. Not sure why, except that it's a 2-letter handle. Only 325 of us 2-letter people. In terms of social media influence/follower count, etc. my twitter is worth $0. If this guy wants to pay $1000 for it, how much is it really worth to him?
Update: now the guy wants to pay me $2000. I don't understand.
I like Charli XCX despite myself. Cannot resist the synthpop.
Covid is starting to tear through my co-workers again. All of the recent victims have been previously vaccinated, so that turned out to be less effective than hoped. I feel less than 100%, and because of that I'm feeling creeping paranoia. Time for a test...