💾 Archived View for axxuy.xyz › gemfeed.xml captured on 2024-12-17 at 11:55:53.
⬅️ Previous capture (2024-09-29)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
<title>axxuy's blog</title>
<link href="gemini://axxuy.xyz/"></link>
<updated>2024-09-26
</updated>
<author>
<name>axxuy</name>
<email>axxuyio@gmail.com</email>
</author>
<id>gemini://axxuy.xyz</id>
<entry>
<title>Primitive Pics</title>
<published>2024-09-26</published>
<id>gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/primitivepics.gmi</id>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/primitivepics.gmi"/>
<content type="text">
# Primitive Pics
A pair of posts came across my feeds today[1] about the CampSnap camera[2]. It's a barebones digital camera. It has no screen, no fancy settings, just a picture count, a flash, and a shutter button. That reminded me of a similar concept I saw, the Paper Shoot camera, which has an even more stripped down body[3].
I do not own either; I have never used either. I have mixed thoughts about them, as a concept. I'm tired of my phone and its distractions even as I feel powerless to resist them. I understand the appeal of single function devices like this. I like the idea of something small and simple.
The trouble, the thing that makes me hesitate, is that this is yet another thing to buy. I'm happy to be suspicious of my phone, of its potential for distraction, or worse things like surveillance. But I am also suspicious of "Buy another Thing. Buy another piece of plastic and circuit boards to make your life better. Come buy, come buy!" It fails the test for me of what can I do with this that I can't with the things I already have.
Or maybe it's just that I'm not all that into photography in the first place. All the same, I'll stick with my phone camera for the time being. I took this picture just the other day.
=> gemini://axxuy.xyz/images/jay.jpg A bluejay sits in a tree. It is foggy in the background.
[1]:
=> gemini://jrn.sh/post/the-old-way-of-taking-photos
=> gemini://notes.jeddacp.com/campsnap-screen-free-toy-camera/
=> gemini://www.campsnapphoto.com/ [2]: Camp Snap
=> gemini://papershootcamera.com/ [3]: Paper Shoot
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>A Blog: A Pendulum</title>
<published>2024-09-25</published>
<id>gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/dontregretdontrecommend.gmi</id>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/dontregretdontrecommend.gmi"/>
<content type="text">
# A Blog: A Pendulum
So today I'm going to talk about a link I followed from Jedda's blog[1] to a post by one Scopique[2], which if I recall correctly is just one of those blog posts that I saw a long while ago and never got around to responding to. In it, he talks about pondering a custom blog software, after having grown bored with Wordpress.
Aptly, he describes the desire to do this as a pendulum. My pendulum is at the other end right now. I have built my website all myself. I don't regret it. I have learned a lot doing it. It was also satisfying to build it all from scratch[3].
Despite that I now feel tempted to ditch it and move to some premade blog setup. I've gotten tired of having to do everything myself. And I know that what I have built is in truth a house of cards. It's fragile and finicky. Past decisions are beginning to impede the addition of new features. I want out. I want someone else to take care of it for me.
But why did I strike out on my own in the first place? I looked at the existing software, and it all seemed bloated. Which is really to say that it considered use cases beyond just mind and therefore had features that I didn't think I'd use. Features that I would nevertheless have to work around and configure.
I don't have any actual plans to move my setup right now, but it's possible. And if I did no doubt I would grow annoyed with something or other. And I would start to think about leaqving it all behind to start again.
And so the pendulum swings.
=> gemini://notes.jeddacp.com/week-notes-023/
=> gemini://scopique.com/2024/08/13/i-am-never-satisfied-with-this-site/ I Am Never Satisfied With This Site
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>I Meant to I Swear</title>
<published>2024-09-25</published>
<id>gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/imeanttoiswear.gmi</id>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/imeanttoiswear.gmi"/>
<content type="text">
#I Meant to, I Swear
I have started to feel a certain—guilt isn't the right word, but something along those lines with how I have been writing here. Missing out isn't what it is either, but there's shades of it. I don't feel really bad, it's more like being back in school, you've just gotten home from class, and you're watching an episode of Stargate to unwind a little, but at the back of your mind you know that you have homework to do. Some project to work on. It can mostly be ignored, but it still spoils what you wish was rest a little.
The way I see it, part of the fun of having my own little site here is being an active participant in the internet, in a way that's separate from posting on social media. In particular sharing links to things that I have read or seen gives a distinct feeling of adding to, of being a part of the Network.
But the majority of my posts don't have any links, any connections. They're just my thoughts, self contained, with a minimum of context to (I hope) make them sensible. That's where I feel I haven't been doing what I should. Should, again, is the wrong word. There is nothing wrong, after all, with letting your writing stand by itself. But I feel a dissatisfaction—there's the word I've been looking for!—with that.
Timely to this, I read a post by Jedda recently[1] about a bad habit of reading other people's posts and meaning to respond but failing to follow through. It is unfortunately relatable to me, and in large part how I ended up here. I have dozens of tabs of various blog posts open because I think that I might want to mention them in some part of my own writing. They languish for weeks, months, until I eventually admit defeat and just close them.
I've written one post that was a desperate attempt at attacking my habits. But naturally you do not break a habit with a one off post. It starts with one post, like this one, followed by another, and another, and another.
=> gemini://notes.jeddacp.com/intentions-to-respond [1]: Intentions to Respond
=> gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/tabcleaning.gmi [2]: Tab Cleaning
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>A Certain Kind of Light</title>
<published>2024-09-20</published>
<id>gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/acertainkindoflight.gmi</id>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/acertainkindoflight.gmi"/>
<content type="text">
# A Certain Kind of Light
A question for my fellow bloggers: how many of your posts begin with a deleted paragraph of wondering aloud what to write that day? Because we all have our moments, don't we, when we want or need to write something, but I'm not sure what? I think I'll keep that (this) paragraph in this time.
I had a very frustrating moment related to this the other day. I was out doing some errands, very far from my computer, or even from any place to simply sit down and jot a few notes, and a very nice idea for a little essay popped into my head. It even developed enough to possibly split into two pieces. But I knew that by the time I was able to actually get anything down, it would all be gone. And it seemed to me that this was a pattern that I am at my least imaginative when I am sitting down at a keyboard, or with a pen and paper, and at my most imaginitive when I am far from these things, and occupied with other tasks. I felt like I get my best ideas when I cannot express them, and that my mind goes blank when I have the time and space to get them out. Does anyone else know this frustration?
Now, that is something I wanted to get off my chest, but it's not the main thing I was planning to talk about today. That would be the weather. Summer is over now, and I have found myself wondering just how I know that. Besides from looking at the calendar of course. Simply looking out the window is enough. The leaves are just starting to change, that's the obvious tell. There's also something in the light. Is it just the angle of the sun? It doesn't seem like it should be that pronounced just yet. There's something about the shadows. They seem sharper now. The temperature has only dropped a little bit so far but the shadows seem like omens of the coming crispness in the air.
I ought to appreciate the shadows where they are here, I suppose. When winter comes around in my area, it brings clouds. It brings days upon days of flat, gray overcast. The light is flat and colorless and diffuse, unchanging from dawn to dusk. They are shadowless days.
I bet I could write a poem about that. Maybe I will.
=> gemini://axxuy.xyz/ Home
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>A Treacherous Road</title>
<published>2024-09-12</published>
<id>gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/thelaststop.gmi</id>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/thelaststop.gmi"/>
<content type="text">
# A Treacherous Road
If you ride one of the busses around here to the end of the line it will take you to a nice little island connected to the shore by a bridge. It's a nice place to hang out in a cafe, and there's some interesting shops. I found myself there after not having been for a long time, and I wondered why I had stopped going; it was lovely.
Then I woke up. I've never been to that place. It doesn't exist. There is no island, no bridge, no road, no bus.
It is an especially strange thing to dream that you have had a certain dream before. Have I really dreamed this before? Is there some dark corner of memory that dreams can hide from the waking mind in, but be accessible in dreams again? Or am I only dreaming that I remember this? It's a hell of a way to start the day, waking up and feeling reality slip.
=> gemini://axxuy.xyz/ Home
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Useless Analytics</title>
<published>2024-09-09</published>
<id>gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/uselessanalytics.gmi</id>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/uselessanalytics.gmi"/>
<content type="text">
# Useless Analytics
I don't have any fancy analytics on my site. I've been told I don't need them[1]. In any case, installing some such software is against the hand-rolled approach I take with this site.
I do still want to look at stats. I do this by grepping through my server logs. I even set up a way to log webmentions. I know it's best not to obsess too much, but I want such Internet Points[2] as I can get.
The results? The data I have are pretty useless. Part of that is just that I don't get enough traffic for any really interesting patterns to emerge. The exact proportion fluctuates, but the majority of traffic by a wide margin is RSS readers pinging my feed. Which, sure, tells me there are some people interested in my site, but nothing about what they're reading, or even how many individual people are reading. Even for the pages that do receive direct traffic, the problem is that one of the places I share my posts is on Mastodon. Due to the federated nature of Mastodon, this results in dozens of servers fetching the page just to generate a link preview. You get a lot of traffic that has nothing at all to do with who's actually seeing it.
I have a mind to try adding a like button or something to my blog posts. Mostly just for the exercise of building that system from scratch. And just to make sure I don't take those internet points too seriously I'm thinking of just adding a billion or so to the counts as a bit of fun. It's my site, I get to decide how many likes are on my posts :).
=> gemini://blog.yossarian.net/2023/12/24/You-dont-need-analytics-on-your-blog [1]: You don't need analytics on your blog
=> gemini://louplummer.lol/how-to-get-lots-of-internet-points/ [2]: How to Get Lots of Internet Points
=> gemini://axxuy.xyz/ Home
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>The Old Mine</title>
<published>2024-09-06</published>
<id>gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/theoldmine.gmi</id>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/theoldmine.gmi"/>
<content type="text">
# The Old Mine
I watched the trailer for the Minecraft movie that released recently[1]. I'm not going to comment on how the movie looks, but I do have other thoughts surrounding it.
What struck me was how much I am not the target audience. And that sparked reflection on who the target audience is. I started playing Minecraft early in it's beta release, which I suppose was in the early 2010s. I realized that a very significant part of this movie's target audience had not even been born then. So a lot of my discomfort with the movie boils down to "Oh fuck I'm getting older." Somewhat more eloquently, there's a dissonance for me, one that existed well before now and is being strongly excited by the movie. Minecraft for me is mentally filed as a new thing. Something that just came out. It was popular when I first heard of it, but it was nowhere near a big as it is now. So being made conscious that it is not so new anymore feels strange. Seeing it intrude into the real world feels strange. I see Minecraft toys on the shelves of department stores and it seems quaint. "Minecraft, that little indie game?"
### Conclusion?
I can't shake the feeling of rambling with this one. I wrote notes as soon as I thought of writing this, and yet whatever point it was that I wanted to make has vanished. Even with my notes about what I wanted to say, what my idea were, it took several tries writing this to get anything like what I meant. Thoughts are slippery things.
[1]: Update: removed link to trailer due to technical reasons
=> gemini://axxuy.xyz/ Home
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Tab Cleaning</title>
<published>2024-08-30</published>
<id>gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/tabcleaning.gmi</id>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/tabcleaning.gmi"/>
<content type="text">
# Tab Cleaning
I have a whole lot of tabs open of blog posts I've been reading. I need to clear them out, and I thought I'd take the opportunity to give a sample of my reading. Also, there is something satisfying about posting links, of the feeling of weaving my little site into the network of the internet.
These are mostly from participants in the "Blaugust" blogging festival.
=> gemini://andypiper.co.uk/2024/08/29/the-web-made-by-humans/ The Web, made by Humans
This one at least is fresh and hasn't been sitting open for... time. Now this post is about a proposed "humans.txt" protocol to credit the people who made a site. Though my main thought from the title is about how unfortunate it feels that so much of the internet is bots. I've seen my server logs, it's mostly bots, in an endless stream. I thought I was making this for people...
=> gemini://notes.jeddacp.com/on-getting-multiple-library-cards/ On Getting Multiple Library Cards
This blog is going in the ol' RSS reader. A friend of libraries is a friend of mine. I only have the one library card, for my city's library system. I should probably get one for the county libraries too.
=> gemini://gaudetetheology.wordpress.com/2024/08/27/haunting-and-the-holy-ghost/ Haunting and the Holy Ghost
Some musing on the theology of the "Holy Ghost" / "Holy Spirit" in Christianity vis-a-vis the idea of being haunted.
=> gemini://aywren.com/2024/08/20/my-empty-sketchbooks/ My Empty Sketchbooks
Aywren shares a variety of the sketchbooks she uses for her art. I'm not so much of an artist, but I am a sucker for stationery and understand well the temptation of a fancy notebook.
=> gemini://vixiss.bearblog.dev/its-ok-to-be-average/ it's ok to be average
A post, as I read it, about coming to terms with mediocrity (a term not used in the post, and with a more negative connotation than the word "average" that is used). You can't master everything. There isn't enough time in the day. So maybe it's better to be a jack of all trades.
=> gemini://thoughts.uncountable.uk/talking-and-typing/ Talking and typing
It is rather funny that the highest paid jobs are, as the title says, talking and typing. Shuffling numbers around on spreadsheets, rather than "hard" physical labor. This made me think of a factoid I heard somewhere that high level chess players burn an astonishing number of calories in tournaments. However a quick google search[1] casts a lot of doubt on that. Every report that that is the case cites the same unrigorous source.
=> gemini://hamatti.org/posts/keep-track-of-happenings-with-logging/ Keep track of happenings with logging
A quick run down of the logging module in the Python standard library. Something I could certainly stand to use more.
=> gemini://notes.jeddacp.com/songs-on-albums-i-gravitate-toward/ Songs on Albums I Gravitate Toward
Jedda lists some of their favorite albums, tracks on those albums, and favorite artists. Personally, I have always been hopeless at choosing favorites. I couldn't make a top five list to save my life.
There are still plenty more tabs to go, but I'll leave off here. I have to save something for my next post after all. And computer cleaning is not so different from housecleaning. When you have a big mess you don't have to tackle it all in one go. Chipping away at it a piece at a time can be a more sustainable habit.
=> gemini://axxuy.xyz/ Home
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Receipts</title>
<published>2024-08-30</published>
<id>gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/receipts.gmi</id>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/receipts.gmi"/>
<content type="text">
# Receipts
When you check books out at my local libraries, you have the option of getting a printed receipt with the titles and their due dates. I like to save these. I keep them in the pages of my journal. I've also started doing this with movie ticket stubs and museum passes and whatnot. It's a poor mans scrapbook. I like these physical reminders of what I'm reading, where I'm going, what I'm seeing in addition to my written account.
=> gemini://axxuy.xyz/ Home
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>It's Okay To Be Common</title>
<published>2024-08-22</published>
<id>gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/itsokaytobecommon.gmi</id>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/itsokaytobecommon.gmi"/>
<content type="text">
# It's Okay To Be Common
I was working on a different post today, and I found myself wanting to apologize in it. I was talking about things that I was sure other people have talked abput before, writing a post I am sure other people have written variations of. And my impulse was to add a disclaimer, to apologize for describing my experience, simply because it was one that has been shared before.
But I stopped myself and asked what that would add to my little article. Yes, it's about a mundane experience. But the words are still mine, the thoughts are still mine. Why shouldn't I share them? And, reader, shouldn't you share yours? Don't worry about if your topic has been done before. It doesn't matter. Your experiencing it has not happened before. Your version is worth telling.
=> gemini://axxuy.xyz/ Home
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Saturday Picnic</title>
<published>2024-08-16</published>
<id>gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/saturdaypicnic.gmi</id>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/saturdaypicnic.gmi"/>
<content type="text">
# Saturday Picnic
I'm looking forward to lunch tomorrow. I have a little routine I like to do on the weekends in the summer or whenever the weather is nice. It's simple. I make some lunch, pack it up with a water bottle and take it down to a local park that has some nice views[1]. And I eat my lunch sitting outside in the shade of a tree. It's nice. Often I will bring a book.
As a bonus, there's a library with an walking distance of my park, So I have a habit of stopping there and getting a book, either coming or going.
Parks AND libraries rock.
=> gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2023/bench.gmi It's the same park I'm talking about in this post.
=> gemini://axxuy.xyz/ Home
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>The Iron Law of the Internet</title>
<published>2024-08-12</published>
<id>gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/theironlawoftheinternet.gmi</id>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/theironlawoftheinternet.gmi"/>
<content type="text">
# The Iron Law of the Internet
My family has never had cats. I've visited people who did have a cat plenty of times, of course, but I never really interacted with them much. We were just always dog folks.
That is until recently, when my sister got a cat a few months ago. And this week she went on vacation, leaving the cat in my care. This is the first time I've spent any real time with a cat. She's a friendly cat, by the name of Cherry. She seems to like me well enough. Petting her is an interesting feeling: her fur is soft, but under that her body is very hard and muscular. It's a vivid contrast. And the way she moves is very different from what I'm used to with dogs. I don't know how to describe it in text.
Yesterday evening I noticed some sort of bag on the other side of the room that was standing upright. I glimpsed the shape in the corner of my eye and thought very strongly that it was a black cat sitting over there. My roommate said he'd had the same thought, and we both agreed that neither of us would have thought so if there wasn't a cat actually around. The shape could have been the same, the position could have been the same but up until this week we would not have had any reason to think it might be a cat. It's a reminder that the way you perceive the world is strongly affected by context. Merely knowing the fact there is a cat in a building alters my brain's interpretation of all kinds of shapes.
But I'm not writing this post to talk about the nature of perception. I'm writing it because there's debt to be paid. Access to the internet is not free, and I don't just mean what my ISP charges. The two constants in the world, so they say, our death and taxes. The internet has its form of death; the things you post are not actually forever, files get deleted, services get shut down, things disappear sooner or later. And it has its taxes: cat pictures. And so I post this to pay my taxes.
=> gemini://axxuy.xyz/images/cherry.jpg Cherry, the cat
=> gemini://axxuy.xyz/ Home
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>A Thorny Thing</title>
<published>2024-08-12</published>
<id>gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/athornything.gmi</id>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/athornything.gmi"/>
<content type="text">
# A Thorny Thing
I have a dream. A foolish dream that will never come true, but that's all right. Some dreams are like that.
Once upon a time, the English alphabet had more letters than it does now. And my dream is to bring some of them back.
In particular, I want to resurrect the old letter thorn[1] for the english dental fricative, "th", sound. Is that not a common enough sound to warrant its own letter? It only fell out of favor because early German-made printing presses didn't have that letter[2]. But haven't we moved beyond those limitations by now?
Now in an ideal world, we would all get an extra key on our keyboards dedicated to þe letter. But I fear þat while adding a new letter to þe alphabet may be straightforward, changing someþing so deeply entrenched as keyboards, may not be. And it would seem þat we are in þe same situation as þose early printers, unable to use þe letter however much we want to. But þis is not a disaster. Many word processors already have þe ability to alter þe characters we write on þe fly. It is common, for instance, to see þree hyphens in a row get converted to an em dash automatically. It would be easy to do þe same for þe letters "th" and þus all of our writing could be beautifully beþorned.
Þere would be several benefits to bringing it back. First of all, it would reduce confusion in a small number of words in which þe sequence "th" does not represent þe dental fricative. Such as "Neanderthal". It would also make english text look slightly cooler in my personal opinion. Eiþer of þese reasons would be sufficient, but combined þey make a powerful case.
[1]: The other letters are "eth" and "wynn". Eth represented the same sound as thorn, so bringing it back too would be redundant. And wynn was replaced by the letter "w" so has no gap to fill.
[2]: Þis is not actually true. Wikipedia tells me þat "þ" was already falling out of favor before þe arrival of þe printing press. But why let "facts" and "history" get in þe way of a good argument?
=> gemini://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(letter)#Middle_and_Early_Modern_English
=> gemini://axxuy.xyz/ Home
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Lament of Smoke</title>
<published>2024-08-09</published>
<id>gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/lamentforsmoke.gmi</id>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/lamentforsmoke.gmi"/>
<content type="text">
# Lament of Smoke
Woe! For the sun rises red in the morning.
Woe! For the sky is pale at noon.
Woe! For the sun, setting, is dim as the moon.
Woe! For the air tastes bitter.
Woe! For the breeze has lost its freshness and stings the eyes.
Cough! Choke! Feel your throat grow tight and sore. Swallow if you can, with a dry and bitter mouth. Wheeze! Gasp! The smoke is in your lungs now. It's on your food and in your drink. The smoke is in your blood now.
Woe! For this shall happen again.
=> gemini://axxuy.xyz/ Home
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Libraries: The Catch</title>
<published>2024-08-05</published>
<id>gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/librariesthecatch.gmi</id>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/librariesthecatch.gmi"/>
<content type="text">
# Libraries: The Catch
Public libraries are great and I love them[1]. I can choose books there much more freely than my budget allows me to at bookstores. But they are, alas, not perfect. They're fine for the shorter books; I've checked out many books of short stories or poems and some of the breezier nonfiction. But I stay away from the big books, even the ones I would like to read. The trouble of course is that you do have to bring the books back, and sooner than later. I feel cramped by the due dates. I hate to say it, but libraries just aren't a good fit for those big, dense, chewy books. The books that you need to take a lot of time with, the looks that you want to take a lot of time with.
There are also, for me, many different paces of reading a book. Despite my internet-addled attention span, There are still some books that I can plow through in a single day, or that I have to ration out chapters from to avoid doing so (the most recent one was Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree). Some books are plenty engaging but without quite being page turners; a chapter a day habit is quite easy to keep up with these. And then there's books, which, while not necessarily boring, do take some active effort to stay engaged with. Those are for obvious reasons, slow going, and that's where being on a time limit really hurts.
Oh well, nothing's perfect. And the library is still invaluable for those books it is suited for.
=> gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2023/libraries.gmi [1]: The Library Rocks!
=> gemini://axxuy.xyz/ Home
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>A Programmer In Search Of A Myth</title>
<published>2024-08-01</published>
<id>gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/aprogrammerinsearchofamyth.gmi</id>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/aprogrammerinsearchofamyth.gmi"/>
<content type="text">
# A Programmer In Search Of A Myth
Today's work was a lot of rearranging and adjusting code. If I've done it right things should now be mildly more convenient for me, and there should be no sign of the changes to anyone else. This is often a goal in programming. There is a lot of work that goes into designing things such that big or small changes can be made inside a program, while whoever or whatever is using it keeps going on their merry way. There are good reasons to do this, and work that has no direct effects can still be useful in paving the way for other work, but it still feels rather strange.
I wonder, what other fields does this sort of situation happen in? I know how it comes about in software, but the world is a much bigger place than software and I have no doubt that it can take many forms.
It's not exactly Sisyphean, you can have your goal and accomplish it, there is an end to the task. And it's not a matter of obliviousness or ingratitude on the part of whoever's on the outside, the way I eat strawberries without thinking about how they got to me or who picked them. It is work that is done and is truly invisible and unobservable for all but the ones doing the work.
I feel like there should be some sort of myth about this, some fable. Someone condemned to this sort of toil as a warning against bragging or boasting about your work. Some cousin of Sisyphus perhaps.
=> gemini://axxuy.xyz/ Home
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Donut Stop</title>
<published>2024-07-26</published>
<id>gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/donutstop.gmi</id>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/donutstop.gmi"/>
<content type="text">
# Donut Stop
There's a donut shop in my area that I've been to, as far as I can recall, twice. Once was several years ago, and again today. It's one of those places that I'm aware of, but it's just far enough outside my usual routine that I don't get there very much. Sometimes there is not all that much difference between being very distant or merely on the periphery.
I went there today, and wrote this post while enjoying a blueberry donut and iced coffee. But the only reason I'm here is because I had an errand across the street. It seemed like a nice day for a little treat afterwards.
Now my donut is tasty, and the coffee caffeinous, but I don't think I'll be back here again soon. It is still off the usual trail, and it is simply not a good enough donut to be worth clearing a new trail just for that.
However. There is a phenomenon that my family and I have noticed, where we will go years without going to some area or part of town, and then suddenly find ourselves going there multiple times in the space of a few weeks for totally unrelated reasons. Have you noticed something similar? So it is possible I'll end up back there sooner than I think.
=> gemini://axxuy.xyz/ Home
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Solitaire</title>
<published>2024-07-22</published>
<id>gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/solitaire.gmi</id>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/solitaire.gmi"/>
<content type="text">
# Solitaire
I've been playing solitaire again lately, after leaving it for many years. I have been playing with a physical deck of cards, but of course I cannot help but remember the many (too many) hours I spent on Microsoft Solitaire. there's no reason to miss at, I can play exactly the same game with my cards. But what I do miss is the animation at the end where all th cards would come cascading down across the screen. I think that was actually the most rewarding win screens of any video game I've ever played. It was absolutely iconic.
=> gemini://axxuy.xyz/ Home
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>One Step Short</title>
<published>2024-07-19</published>
<id>gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/onestepshort.gmi</id>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/onestepshort.gmi"/>
<content type="text">
# One Step Short
I've complained before about not having enough to say[1], but recently I've run into an extremely specific version of this, which although not as much of an impediment in my life, is still quite annoying.
I've been trying my hand at writing poetry lately[2]. Making my words fit into the structure of a meter and rhyme scheme is challenging, but interesting. If only because it makes me consider multiple ways to express a thought. So I don't object to the challenge per se, but I have noticed a particular difficulty in writing standard english iambic pentameter. My brain just doesn't seem to work on that rhythm. I can do the iambs just fine, but the natural length of a phrase or sentence is much more often eight syllables, a tetrameter, rather than the prescribed ten. Now this has me wondering how long are your sentences? How many syllables go between your commas? I think I might have to go back through my the my posts and do some counting. I wonder if there's a typical rhythm? I wonder if this rhythm, this typical length of a phrase has changed over time, from the heyday of of metrical poetry?
In other words, what if it's not just that I need more practice in writing iambic pentameter but that the english language as a whole has changed to make it more difficult for me personally? I guess I've got some googling to do.
[1]:
=> gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/quiet.gmi
[2]: For the most part I haven't shared it anywhere,but I do have some posted here:
=> gemini://www.fimfiction.net/story/550211/id-like-to-be-a-tree
=> gemini://axxuy.xyz/ Home
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Hack and Slash</title>
<published>2024-07-16</published>
<id>gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/hackandslash.gmi</id>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/hackandslash.gmi"/>
<content type="text">
# Hack and Slash
It's fascinating how even small, simple, static sites like this one are still liable to tinkering. Or perhaps it is because they are small that they are so tinkerable. It's easier when you can see the whole thing, poke at all of its parts. I can better envision rebuilding, modifying, hacking a bicycle than a train engine, for example.
I find that most of my efforts with this site lately are dedicated to wrangling extraneous slashes in the various links and paths. It's all put together with a mixture of perl and bash—capable tools, but also the duct tape and twine of the *nix world—and a dash of emacs lisp for seasoning. It works but it's hard to get everything just right when you're smashing so many strings together.
=> gemini://axxuy.xyz/ Home
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Morning Plans and Music</title>
<published>2024-07-15</published>
<id>gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/morningplans.gmi</id>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/morningplans.gmi"/>
<content type="text">
# Morning Plans and Music
I had plans for today and they started going wrong pretty much first thing out of bed. Nothing bad happened, just a reminder that no matter how simple your expectations, there's always room for them to be—the usual word here is "subverted" but that's not quite right, let's say "diverted".
I woke up and headed to the kitchen to make some pancakes for my breakfast. But I was interrupted by the discovery that someone had made banana bread muffins the night before. Now no one would have objected if I had also made the pancakes I planned, but it felt superfluous. And I'm flexible with my breakfast carbs anyhow, so those will wait for another day. Right now, I will have a muffin.
§
I'm not sure what prompted the thought last night, but my brain bubbled up the facts that 1) I do not have a local copy of Tom Lehrer's music, which I quite enjoy, and 2) that it is all in the public domain. So I made sure to download it after breakfast. If only all my todo list items were so easy. Here is the link if you would like it too:
=> gemini://tomlehrersongs.com/
Auf Wiederschrieben!
=> gemini://axxuy.xyz/ Home
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>For Here To There</title>
<published>2024-06-17</published>
<id>gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/forheretothere.gmi</id>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/forheretothere.gmi"/>
<content type="text">
# For Here To There
Do you ever have one of those days where you just can't figure out how to start a post? This is one for me. Blogs are cool. I like blogs. I mean both web blogs and gemlogs of course. Most likely anyone reading these words will agree with me in wanting to curate an experience of the internet made more of small, weird sites.
I mirror this gemlog to the web. It will never have much reach, I know, but knowing that is at least theoretically visible to the world makes it feel a little less like yelling into the void. I do still find it helpful to keep gemini first in mind when writing though. I'm too lazy to look up the posts, but I recall some discussion a few months ago lamenting the possibility of Gemini being a community, because that would mean that it had failed at being a network, and was instead only an insular little group. A secret club, rather than an alternative to the web. Even so, I find it helpful to think of Gemini people as my audience when I write. Gemspace is a much more focused subset of people than the "everyone" of the open web. The downside, I suppose, is the occasional bit of lost context when responding to some discussion going on in Gemspace. But I can live with that. Especially since my gemini server gets more traffic anyway.
=> gemini://axxuy.xyz/ Home
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Writing Around Writing Around Writing</title>
<published>2024-05-21</published>
<id>gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/writingaroundwritingaroundwriting.gmi</id>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/writingaroundwritingaroundwriting.gmi"/>
<content type="text">
# Writing Around Writing Around Writing
=> gemini://corscada.uk/dump/2024-05-21-writing-on-writing.gmi Writing Around Writing
Ah yes, the last refuge of the blocked writer. When you are having trouble writing you can always write about that trouble, complain about how you can't think of what to write, or that you have not been writing enough lately, or that if you have your writing is no good. There are more than a few entries in my journal that consist only of remarking on how I haven't written much in my journal lately.
Writer's block is a muse who is always willing to talk to you—as long as it's about writer's block.
=> gemini://axxuy.xyz/ Home
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Some Thoughts On Stoning</title>
<published>2024-05-17</published>
<id>gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/onstoning.gmi</id>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/onstoning.gmi"/>
<content type="text">
# On Stoning
Content warning: violence
Some religious thoughts for today. I'm not religious, but I do get the occansional bit of theology rattling around my brain. Today it's about stoning in the Bible. Not any of the offenses it is prescribed as punishment for, but the concept of stinging itself.
"To stone" is a euphemism, albeit a thin one. It puts all the focus on the implement, draws it away from what is actually done. "Stone" it's a nice plain noun, and a passive one at that. The word calls to my mind the image as smooth round gray or lump sitting on the ground. inert. It fits easily into the verb position of a sentence, and still nondescript.It keeps quiet about what the action entail.
"To stone somebody" means to beat them to death with rocks. There are various ways to arrange the details. But the essence is that you take the victim and beat them with stones. It is brutality.
Why do people do this to each other? Because humans are sinful, fallen creatures. Easy. But what I wonder about with these verses is that they are not episodes of sinful humans sinning against each other, but commands directly from God. "Thou shalt smash thy neighbors skull." What kind of god is it that orders us to do this to each other? What does it mean when the deity commands us to be cruel?
We are in the realm of theodicy now, about which much has been written. And so I will defer to all the authors who have discussed that. When it comes to the bible it's difficult to imagine that I have found anything new. I am surely not the first person to notice this, I just haven't done the research to find out what has been said. Fortunately I am not aware that laziness is one of the things that gets you stoned. I have read the wikipedia article on the topic, which claims that Jewish law put so many legal process so strick that it was practically impossible. So clearly I'm not the first to be uncomfortable with the idea.
I don't have a conclusion here. Implicitly, yes, this is an argument against Christianity, but hardly a thorough one. I am not trying to convince anybody of anything, only, as I said, get a thought out of my head.
=> gemini://axxuy.xyz/ Home
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Spring Idleness</title>
<published>2024-04-30</published>
<id>gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/springidleness.gmi</id>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/springidleness.gmi"/>
<content type="text">
# Spring Idleness
It is a quiet and idle spring day, with not much going on. But these days with not much going on is precisely when I have the most space to think and time to set those thoughts down.
I started watching the new Fallout show last week and watched the second episode today. I'm not one for binging TV shows. I'm also a pretty poor critic, so I'll refrain from saying much about it save that it is keeping me reasonably well entertained, and also that it seems to be a very foot-hostile show, with two characters receiving injuries to their lower extremities in as many episodes. I think when I watch the third episode, I'm going to be preoccupied wondering who will be hobbling by the end.
A question to those of you who have dogs: the view noticed them look up much? The sky is to me an interesting place, and I've certainly spent a fair bit of time with my neck craned at the clouds. But I've never noticed my dog look up other than to see if a squirrel is in a tree. Dogs' vision is different from ours, of course, but there is plenty of interest in the shapes of the clouds and in the quality of the light, things that I imagine they can see as well as we can, not just in the colors up there. I am attempting to write a poem about this, but so far have not been able to come up with anything I'm satisfied with.
Well, I should be going now. I'm making pizza for dinner tonight, and I need to get the things ready for that. Cheers!
=> gemini://axxuy.xyz/ Home
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Poem From a Small Cafe</title>
<published>2024-04-22</published>
<id>gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/poem2.gmi</id>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/poem2.gmi"/>
<content type="text">
# Poem From a Small Cafe
I was at a cafe the other day that was very busy. There was nowhere to sit except very small sliver of table, which inspired me to write this little poem in my notebook:
The lines
in this
poem
are short
because
I am
at a
table
that is
very
tiny.
If I
write one
more line
get wet
in my
coffee.
=> gemini://axxuy.xyz. Home
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Etcetera</title>
<published>2024-04-12</published>
<id>gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/etcetera.gmi</id>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/etcetera.gmi"/>
<content type="text">
# Etcetera
Good morning, or afternoon, or evening, whenever you're reading this. I'm trying to make a habit of writing more, and I wasn't sure what exactly to write today. But I thought to myself maybe it doesn't matter so much what exactly I write about. After all, this is a blog, not an essay, not a book.
Well speaking of blogs, so far everything on this little capsule has been only on gemini, but I decided to throw the rest of the internet a bone and set up a copy of this on the web side of things. I did already have a web server going for a few things. So I hacked together a quick and dirty perl script to convert everything to html. It's not pretty, but gets the job done, mostly. Enough for my needs anyway. Though I suppose the advantage of gemini's sparse formatting is that even a quick and dirty approach gets you ninety percent of the way there.
Okay let's see what else. I'm experimenting with dictation software. If my writing gets more rambly you can probably blame that. Because when you're talking out loud you can kind of just go on, get distracted chatting and stringing the sentences together. Talking takes less effort than typing,and so you can get away with being a lot less deliberate (at least on the production side of things, I know you, my audience, would not appreciate that too much). Of course while it works well for getting the bulk of a text out it does require an awful lot of cleanup. Especially in the punctuation department. It's possible to do the punctuation out loud,but it feels really unnatural. Or maybe I'm just not used to it, not used to saying stop all the time like a telegram.
I think I'm going to end it here. Another thing I'm not used here in regards to the dictation is speaking continuously for so long. My throat is starting to get quite sore. It is time, I think, to go and have my evening cup of tea.
=> gemini://axxuy.xyz/ Home
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Blur</title>
<published>2024-04-11</published>
<id>gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/blur.gmi</id>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/blur.gmi"/>
<content type="text">
# Blur
I need to quit my current job. There are a number of reasons for this, but I'm only going to talk about one today.
The thing is that it's boring. I can amuse myself moment to moment, checking my phone or even reading a book. But it is boring in a deeper way. It is a too familiar routine, and so the day makes little to no impression on my memory. I keep a journal, and even that record cannot keep the days from running together. It is very frequent for me to fill many more pages of description of what I did on the weekend than on workdays, even if all that amounted to was sitting and staring at a computer at home instead of at work.
=> gemini://axxuy.xyz/ Home
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>A Short Rant About Shoes</title>
<published>2024-03-07</published>
<id>gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/shoes.gmi</id>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/shoes.gmi"/>
<content type="text">
# A Short Rant About Shoes
Today, I will complain. I live in a fairly big city. That being the case it seems reasonable to me to expect lots of options for getting basic things, like, say, shoes. A big city ought to be able to support at least a couple of shoe stores, right? Even in the age of Amazon, it's common to need to try shoes on to see if they will fit—a feature of brick and mortar stores that ecommerce can't replace. And yet, and yet... There are no shoe stores in a shockingly large radius. There's just big box stores with a few cheap shoes none of which are in your size.
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Notifications</title>
<published>2024-02-27</published>
<id>gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/notifications.gmi</id>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/notifications.gmi"/>
<content type="text">
# Notifications
I made a little post yesterday, and that got me thinking about notfications. You get none posting here or to a static blog on the web, but I am used to it from various social networks. What is your behavior with those? I like to hoard them, to let that number on the bell or the icon of the app get as big as it can before I check them. Is this a healthy way to interact with the apps? Is there a healthy way other than simply ignoring them? That's very hard. If I didn't care about how people were reacting and responding to what I'd said I would be a very strange human. If I thought it didn't matter how people reacted to what I'd said would I have said anything at all?
=> gemini://axxuy.xyz/ Home
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Quiet</title>
<published>2024-02-26</published>
<id>gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/quiet.gmi</id>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2024/quiet.gmi"/>
<content type="text">
# Quiet
Hello, I've been quiet for a while. I usually am quiet. I've never understood how some people come up with so many things to say—and so many words to say them in. I have written and felt like I'm rambling, meandering, repeating myself—and looked back to see that it's all only a page or so. How books are written is a mystery to me (a mystery for which I am very grateful).
Until next time, I'll be here, listening, reading, quiet.
=> gemini://axxuy.xyz Home
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Words Have No Toolmarks</title>
<published>2023-07-07</published>
<id>gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2023/toolmarks.gmi</id>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2023/toolmarks.gmi"/>
<content type="text">
# Words Have No Toolmarks
Words live and travel independently of the medium they are created in in a unique way. If you look at other forms of art: a sculpture is made of a particular material and is inseparable from that. Drawing makes use of all kinds pigments and dyes and pixels that set apart an oil painting from a watercolor from a digital drawing. The properties of those substances are apparent in the image. Music—has hundreds of different instruments.
But these words? They are published on the internet, so clearly I put them into a computer file at some point. But did I compose them directly in a text editor? Or work them out with a pen and paper first? A pencil? A typewriter? Did I go to the beach and arrange these thoughts with a stick in the sand? You on the other end are probably reading on your own digital screen, but maybe you printed this out. You could be using a screenreader. These words, this message is totally opaque to all those possibilities.
=> gemini://axxuy.xyz Home
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>A Poem of Sorts</title>
<published>2023-06-28</published>
<id>gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2023/poem1.gmi</id>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2023/poem1.gmi"/>
<content type="text">
# A Peom of Sorts
Oh what beautiful words you think of
When you go on a long walk
Without a pen or paper
=> gemini://axxuy.xyz Home
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Re: The Library Rocks!</title>
<published>2023-06-24</published>
<id>gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2023/libraries.gmi</id>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2023/libraries.gmi"/>
<content type="text">
# Re: The Library Rocks!
In reply to:
=> gemini://alextheuxguy.mooo.com/2023-06-15.gmi Alex
=> gemini://dj-chase.com/documents/re-lib-rocks.gmi DJ Chase
I saw these posts and I wanted to throw in my own hurrah for libraries.
The traditional book loans libraries offer have become uncool. That's something of an exageration, but so many of the praises I see of libraries emphasise that "It's not just books anymore!" I certainly don't think that it's a bad thing that they are expanding their offerings—why shouldn't the ideas of sharing and public access apply to music, movies, video games, etc. But I do enjoy the books.
I like to read. My impression is that's a popular statement here in Geminispace. Computer monitors and eReaders are fine, I've certainly read many millions of words that way, but plain old paper has it's charm. The problem is that most of the books I read, I only read once. A book can be perfectly enjoyable, but just not have any appeal to rereading—at least not for many years. And these books take up an awful lot of space. Whenever I do a round of cleaning I end up with quite a few books that I can sell or give away and never miss. This is even after multiple passes over my shelves.
And so the wonderful thing about the library is that I can get as many books as I want without worrying about where and how I am going to store them. Or how I am going to get rid of them. They come and they go, easy as can be.
There's also the experience of wandering the shelves and seeing what titles catch your eye. Online catalogues and searching are great if you want something specific, but are useless when you don't know what you want. This meshes well with the free aspect of libraries. You can grab a book without risk. If it turns out not as good as you thought that's no matter. Just take it back and try again.
Libraries are great. They've saved me a lot of space and supplied me with a lot of good reading.
=> gemini://axxuy.xyz Home
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Other People Have Loved This Too</title>
<published>2023-06-15</published>
<id>gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2023/bench.gmi</id>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/2023/bench.gmi"/>
<content type="text">
# Other People Have Loved This Too
There's a park near me that I sometimes go to, with a canal running right through the middle of it. Recently I was wandering through a part of it I don't go to much, far off in a little corner. There the canal turns and that opens up a lovely vista where you can see straight down it and all the land around it.
My first thought was that it was a great view. But I was really delighted to find a bench there, facing it. It was a sign that someone else also thought that view was beautiful. For me the feeling of that connection and shared appreciation left a stronger impression than the sight itself.
There are nice things in the world if you pay attention.
=> gemini://axxuy.xyz Home
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Do Humans Dream of Electric Sheep?</title>
<published>2023-05-29</published>
<id>gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/dream.gmi</id>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/dream.gmi"/>
<content type="text">
# Do Humans Dream of Electric Sheep?
I don't. I've noticed that I hardly ever dream about computers, either using them or simply as an object in the environment. That's interesting considering how much of my waking life revolves around them.
=> gemini://axxuy.xyz Home
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>On November 17th, I Made Bread</title>
<published>2022-11-17</published>
<id>gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/imadebread.gmi</id>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="gemini://axxuy.xyz/posts/imadebread.gmi"/>
<content type="text">
# On November 17th, I Made Bread
It's a quiet Thursday morning, and I'm making a loaf of bread to have to lunch. It's whole wheat with olive oil and rosemary. Baking bread is something I'm no longer able to do without being reminded of a piece of ancient Roman graffiti preserved at Pompeii: "On April 19th I made bread." Me too, Roman dude, me too.
On an altogether less fun note, I have a dog, Felix. He's an old dog and not doing so well. The Final Appointment has been made for next week. Today is his last Thursday. It's the mundaneness of that that strikes me. It's not a big milestone of finality, not his last walk, last time iwth his favorite toy, etc. Just Thursday. Don't worry about me. It's sad, but I've been here before and I'll be here again, that's the nature of dogs. I'll be okay, in time.
I'm thinking about the Roman and his bread. It's a nice example of how little some things change across even thousands of years. His graffiti could just as easily been a post on Twitter (or Mastodon). Did he ever have a dog? There's no way to know, but supposing he did, he knew the same disparity between our lives and those of our dogs.
As I write this, my old dog is napping in a sunbeam.
=> gemini://axxuy.xyz Home
</content>
</entry>
</feed>