💾 Archived View for sdf.org › thalass › gemlog › glog.gmi captured on 2023-06-16 at 16:36:31. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-06-14)
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I did it! For the first time since primary school I commuted by bike!
It was a tough ride, but I made it to work on time, and none of my coworkers killed me with their cars on the way. So that's a bonus. The ride home was nice, and only 5 minutes longer than driving. After that I switched bikes and did some other errands. 28km in total on bikes that day, instead of driving. I'm pretty pleased with myself.
The red bike is gonna need some tinkering still, mind you.
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Last week I finally managed to ride my bike to work! The distance isn't a problem (it's only 7km), the problem is the big ol hill I have to climb to get there. It doesn't count as a commute, since I did it after hours for practice. But hopefully this week I'll actually do it for realsies.
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Damnit I must be getting old. I'm constantly messing up spelling when I write with my phone. That's it! I've had enough! I need to get a hardware keyboard for my phone.
First world problems, I know. Or whatever we're supposed to say instead of "first world" these days.
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It's been a while since I did much of anything. Winter hits me kinda hard most years. But spring is almost here, and I've started to emerge from the SADs I suppose. I've already done about 70km on my bikes in the last couple of weekr, which is helping. I'm starting to feel interest in other projects, too. So maybe I'll complete a couple of things soon!
I hope anyone reading this is going well, too. :)
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Wow it's gonna take a while to get used to the year change. I ended last year with a nice bike ride (the first for a few weeks), and rounded out the year with about 550km or something like that. Pretty good for me!
I hope everyone has a good year. We could use a good year.
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I bought a new bike last weekend! Well, new to me at least. It's a mid 60s CCM frame, with drop bars, fenders, and a 3 speed Sturmey Archer hub in the rear. A pretty rare combination, and one I was thinking about trying to cobble together to see if it would help with the hill climb to work.
So the plan is to ride this bike to work and back, and then ride my other bike for everything else. I think my wrists can manage half an hour riding this bike twice a day. I hope!
I will need to get lights and a rear rack at least, maybe another horn/alarm for it. More for comunicating with cars than for the alarm part. But I have all winter to sort it out.
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Yesterday I bought a Sturmey Archer AW3 internal gear hub from Kijiji! It was made in 1954, easily the oldest thing I own. It's very similar to the 1997 AT3 in my bike, except it doesn't have an internal drum brake. I plan on fixing it up over winter, and then maybe building a bike around it? I should finish other projects first, though.
Nothing much else is happening. Still working on the keyboard when I have the energy. That's it, really.
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I got the Kimiko keyboard working! I didn't really touch it over summer, and couldn't get the two halves talking over uart. But a bunch of fiddling later and it seems like it works now? Pretty stoked.
I still need to print off a set of keycaps and a case, and there are still extra functions I'd like to have working, but it's basically a functional keyboard now. I totally bit off more than I could chew by using an RP2040 and KMK rather than a pro micro and QMK!
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Wow it's been a while! I kinda got caught up in the real world over summer, which isn't a bad thing, but it has meant that a lot of projects have been put on hold. I haven't touched the kimiko keyboard, or worked on the little one I intend to use at work. I've done some leather work, mostly simple cylindrical bags cos that's about the limit of my knowledge haha. I have fiddled with my bike a fair bit, because I've been riding a lot! I've done 400km of mostly around town errands. That's nearly a whole tank of petrol, so I've saved myself about a hundred bucks. And it's more fun than driving, even if it's a bit hairy at times.
But now winter is coming, so I've started thinking about these projects. I picked up the eeepc 701 again for the first time in months! I fiddled with KMK on the kimiko, too. Still learning how to get that working. I've also got some bike parts I'm going to buy. A dynamo and lights in particular. Even if it's not too cold to ride, the sun is rising later and later so riding to work is a no-go at the moment.
I guess I'll probably be perusing the smolnet more, too.
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I just read an interesting short article about how to future historians the modern age will be dark age. Not because society crumbles (though that might happen lol) nor because nobody is writing things down, but because future historians won't have access to very much. Only a small fraction of the internet and internet-based things are archived, and those that are are likely inaccesable. The article is written much better than anything I can manage. But it's interesting, and it makes me wonder what role static content like gemini, gopher, and old fashioned html, will play in future research. Assuming the data is physically accessable, it's human readable even in its raw form, and is laid out in a linear manner.
-> https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/the-digital-dark-ages/ Here it is.
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Oh man. The last few days have been great. My first ride I barely managed 1.3km, and I was stuffed. The next day I managed a little bit more, and today I rode 5km! That's almost as far as one of the local breweries! Feeling pretty energised.
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Last night I was hit with a surge of mojo, and readjusted the cones on the rear hub of my bike. She seems to be working nicely. This arvo I'm gonna take her out for a spin. I suspect the low gear might still be absent but I have read some more on it and I can try some other things if that's the case. As long as 2nd and 3rd work I'll be fine if I avoid big hills.
If anyone has experience with Sturmey Archer 3-speeds maybe shoot me an email?
Uh yeah. It works. Fresh grease and proper rigging did the trick. I'm stoked.
Nonetheless if you're on gemini and are into 3-speeds and IGH's still say hi. I suspect the venn diagram for these two things is a sliver.
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Hoo boy it's been a week. My dog has been acting strange lately, so we took her to the vet for a checkup. The tests pointed to Addison's Disease, which is where the adrenal gland stops working properly. Specifically it stops producing cortisol so stress results in extreme reactions. At least that's what I read on a couple of vet websites.
So we took her to an emergency hospital in Ottawa, about 4 hours away. Then we went back there yesterday to pick her up. Fortunately she is responding well to medication. It's not cheap though. I guess I have even more incentive to ride my opafiets instead of driving places now.
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Okay so I guess there are two technology-related regrets that I have. The first is trading in my Nokia N900 for a Galaxy Note. I should have kept the N900 for tinkering. The second is chucking out my Sony minidisc player. I don't even remember when I got rid of it. I'm feeling the need to pull away from modern smartphones and those two things would go nicely with a dumbphone, or even a RUSP. Assuming the phone could be used as a wifi hotspot of course.
I mean it's probably just a mid-life crisis thing, but still.
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So! I passed my citizenship test, so the ball is in their court. We'll see if it takes another year for them to get back to me.
In other news I'm coming out of a case of the morbs, so it's nice to feel energised again. Tonight I'm going to get my bicycle working again. This $2.20/l petrol price malarky is bullshit.
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I'm eligible to take the Canadian Citizenship test, it's online because plague times. I'm slightly annoyed that I have to install chrome in order to take the test but it's not the end of the world. Half an hour under the gaze of my webcam, hopefully I can remember everything from the study guide.
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I haven't been doing much this week, just vegging on the couch watching Bob's Burgers. Just one of those weeks. Though last weekend while I was hanging out on SDF's com, during Snowdusk's show and one of the SDF members validated my account! I wasn't sure what happened for a day or two, and it didn't say who it was but on the off chance you're reading this, thank you very much! SDF is a really neat concept in general (and I think Tilde is a similar thing?) and it's kinda wierd that I only just learned of its existence. I've been extremely online for twenty years, pretty much entirely in nerd circles. Oh well, it's still neat.
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Well spring is definitely here. Clouds of bugs that like to eat humans coming to have a sample of exotic foreign blood (mine lol)
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For the last few day I haven't been able to connect to any SDF cluster hosted gemini capsules. I get connection refused. Meta array ones are fine, though. I have no idea how to report this. I'm still learning the bboard program. Oh well, I'm sure it'll come around sooner or later.
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I checked out anonradio tonight. It was pretty great! Kinda takes me back to the old days (early '00s) when I'd be on IRC with friends while one of them played DJ with winamp's shoutcast thing. Damn good times.
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Oh boy! So this isn't the right place to put this, I suppose, but it's the first online thing I thought of. I've been in Canada for about seven years now, and I applied for citizenship last year. Today I got an email from immigration telling me to sit the citizenship exam! I've never been excited for an exam before 😅
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Quick emoji test. 💩
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Trying out this gemini thing! I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it... I've never really had a proper website, and the last time I had a blog it was a livejournal lol
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