author: martin
I have to be in London next week, when for some insane reason, it's going to be 37º in the city. Never heard of such crazy temperatures. I'm currently writing a will, just in case.
I have noticed a bit more Esperanto being used on Station lately, so I'm taking the opportunity to pimp a post I wrote about the language – about why I love it, how I got started, and it also includes a little chat bot: https://martinrue.com/zamenhofa-tago-18
It's a beautiful day in the city – a rare occasion to enjoy coffee shops that didn’t commit to fully building their walls despite an average rainfall that challenges the definition of the words “under” and “water” taken together.
📢 Station now supports multiple identities! In "Your Account" you'll find a "Manage Identities" link. There's more details in Recent Updates: gemini://station.martinrue.com/updates
Really impressed with how much grassroots work is going on across Gemini. Shout out to @superfxchip, @smokey, @acidus, @krixano, @bacardi55, @skyjake, @gnuserland, @mozz to mention but a few very cool people building new things and extending the reach of Gemini in cool new directions. 🙌
Just did a pretty hardcore run and hit 192bpm. Based on one's estimated max of 220-age, I'm now officially 28. Might have to ditch Station for TikTok at this rate!
A programmer had a problem and thought: "I know, I'll solve it with:"
threads: now problems he two has
regex: now /([ashetprblwoms\s]){19}/g
java: now he has a problem factory
async: now problems problems problems problems
C: now he has two problemsͮ̂҉̯͈͕̹̘̱≠ˀ ̶̧̨̱̹̭̯ͧ̾ͬ´
What do we want?
Now!
When do we want it?
Fewer race conditions!
254 walks into a bar with a long face.
Bartender: "Why the long face?"
254: "Just feeling a bit off."
Folks, hit me with your number one link on Gemini to wow new users and show off how cool Gemini is.
I have a small window of free time, so I'm doing some Station work. 🙌
So @hiroantag clearly has the best profile image on Station :)
gemini://station.martinrue.com/hiroantag
It's a "file -> new project" kind of day. I love the thrill of building something new. No brush strokes have yet hit the canvas – everything is a possibility.
I mean, sure, 3 hours from now it'll be a bonfire, but I really enjoy these pre-flame moments.
Some thoughts on achieving goals: https://martinrue.com/achieving-goals/
What's everyone working on this week? Me: It has been great weather here in the UK, so I've been doing a bit more hanging out with friends than usual. Last night I hung out with a group of local Esperanto speakers which was super fun, and tonight I'm finally getting back to writing some code!
Spent the last few days renovating the home office. It was a lot of work, but I'm pretty happy with the final result: https://twitter.com/martinrue/status/1538628931468804109
Keto going well. I'm 8 days in and weight is already down 3.1kg, body fat down by 0.8 percent. Energy levels are good and I'm generally feeling miles better eating no carbs / sugar.
Of all the things I write as a programmer, I still love writing a little CLI app more than anything else. Handling basic input and output and leaving behind all the web/app UX concerns is just so refreshing.
Station just hit 700 people! It's really cool to see this place still growing. I should pull out all the sign-up dates and graph it at some point.
I had some writing inspiration so I wrote something new.
10 Slightly Odd Things I Want To Do: https://martinrue.com/odd-things/
“Despite the high cost of living it remains popular.”
Just found out some fiction I wrote for a competition will be published in a book sometime this year. Really happy about that! It's something I had never done before, so I had to give it a go. 🙏
What's everyone doing this weekend? Anything interesting planned?
For my Esperanto speaking friends here: one of my favourite words in Esperanto is "ŝanĝiĝi". Here's why, plus a little glimpse into how my brain works.
https://twitter.com/martinrue_eo/status/1524381880958783488/photo/1
PS: apologies to linking to "the other site", but images.
Two strings walk into a bar.
The first one says, "I'll have a vodka and coke¶³¾¤§¿ZZüy".
"Excuse my friend, he's not null terminated" says the second.
--
Never gets old. No, I mean due to trauma: https://martinrue.com/zzuy-a-lesson-in-perseverance/
Observation: to be really creative I need time to play – time that other goals or distractions have no control over. It seems like a trivial observation, yet it's so easy to fill your calendar and leave no time for that sort of work/behaviour to occur.
Oops, it turns out I never expected Station to last 1 year :)
Sorry about the cert issues folks. We now have a new one that (once trusted) will keep us going the next 10 years. Also happy 1 year anniversary to this cool little corner of the internet. 🎉
PS: Thanks for the heads-up @comatoast @obspogon @haze. 🙏
After far too long, I spent the whole weekend hanging out with Esperanto speakers at the Brita Kongreso here in the UK (in Wales). It was awesome to be around old and new friends, using only Esperanto for the whole weekend. I forgot how much I love escaping the real world and living in Esperantujo. Really can't wait for IJK in summer, where instead of 60 people it'll be more like 200 . 🙏
I'm pleased to announce that after a swift and relatively easy board meeting, we've voted unanimously to reject Elon's bid to buy Station.
It's a "long weekend" here in the UK due to the Easter holidays. I hope those with the benefit of the extra time off work have something/relaxing planned. I'll mostly be coding and settling back into life in the UK after a little time spent living in Spain – I'm still saying "¡la cuenta porfa!" in restaurants here!
Back in the UK after living in the Canaries for the last 3 months. It's great to see people again after so long, but damn, I'm already missing that beautiful weather. It's so rough here that the plane aborted landing on the first attempt.
I'm going to my first in-person Esperanto meetup in a couple of weeks since before the pandemic and I'm really pleased. It has been ages since I was around a bunch of other speakers, and there should be between 60-80 people! I'm even running a few games of "homlupo" (werewolf).
Curious which OS folks are running.
[POLL Which is your daily OS of choice?] Linux | macOS | Windows | Mobile (Android/iOS) | Other
The best thing you can do when learning a new language is to wield it like a maniac everywhere you can. You quickly lose any desire to appear competent and it becomes a lot more fun. It's also amazing how often people will go out of their way to help you when they see you trying.
Finished 30 days of intermittent fasting today. It's something I do on and off for periods of the year, aiming to give my body a rest from food intake much more than our normal diets allow. There are some really exciting health benefits associated with 16 hour daily intermittent fasting. If anyone is curious, I highly recommend the documentary Eat, Fast and Live Longer.
Station reached 600 users today... another cool milestone for our awesome little microcommunity here. Congrats everyone 🙌
It's great that after so many years I still love the feeling of sitting down and wiring in for a long evening spent progressing an idea. This kind of creative outlet has been addictively valuable to me since the day I first started coding, and I'm very thankful I can still find it. ☺️
Poll – I'm curious what kind of geography Station covers now with so many more users.
[POLL Where are Station's users?] Africa | Asia | Europe | America (N/S) | Australia
Just 2 posts until Station reaches 2000. Nice little milestone!
Sometimes all you need is a little momentum. It doesn't matter how you start – the only goal sans momentum is to get going. Do anything. Get into motion. Once you're moving everything else is much more prone to lining up. This has been a note to self.
Kelkfoje oni bezonas nur iom da movokvanto. Ne gravas kiel, nur ke via celo estu moviĝi. Ion ajn faru. Simple ekmoviĝu. Poste ĉiuj la aliaj aferoj emos malkovriĝi. Tiu ĉi estas noto por la estonta mi.
What's everyone doing this weekend? Anyone have exciting / unusual plans?
I'm hanging out here on the island of Lanzarote and mostly just coding. Simple pleasures :)
Anyone using a Gemini client on iOS they'd recommend? Ideally looking for something easy without having to compile myself.
@skyjake While I'm on the subject, do you have longer-term plans to have an App Store release for iOS? Might be a nice way to support development. I'd happily pay premium for it.
I've just lost 10 minutes to a wonderful version of the I-can't-find-the-sunglasses-that-are-on-my-head problem in which I've been debugging code that randomly stopped playing sound, except it didn't, I just didn't have my headphones on my actual head.
Happy Monday folks. Hope everyone has an awesome week. I'm working on my own stuff this week, and I'm super excited to have only that as my sole focus. Single-tasking ftw.
"You've already been dead for 4.5 billion years." 👊
I love being shit at something. No ego, no embarrassment in trying and failing repeatedly, progress is obvious to see, everyone can help you. Holding onto this mindset once you really start to make progress is rare. Rare and valuable tend to overlap often.
Reflecting on an amazing year and I'm thankful for so many things. Here are some short (subjective) observations from "life" so far.
Hey Stationeers! Today is my birthday, so I made a few updates to our station (it was getting a little rusty). Station is now faster, and you can add polls to posts to get more structured feedback. All the details are in "Recent Updates" gemini://station.martinrue.com/updates
So, here goes – first poll on Station:
[POLL How long have you been on Station?] I'm really new | A few weeks | A few months | I'm an old guard
I'm spending the day in a very hot Arrecife, so hello from the beach where I'm pushing this update from 👋
Station has reached 500 users! Thanks @powerh00th00t for bringing this awesome little community on the fringes of the Internet to this new milestone. Thanks everyone who participates here for keeping this place alive, friendly, and full of interesting stuff every day! 🍻
Hello from the Atlantic ocean! I'm on a ship headed to Lazarote and I'm somehow picking up a 4G signal, so I've tethered so I can use Lagrange. First Atlantic ocean post on Gemini? 😆
So I've been thinking. Wanderlust, while used too often, is still a cool German word that captures the essence of wanting to be somewhere else – the desire (lust) to be wandering (wander). But eventually, such an unfulfilled desire doesn't feel so positive, so I've always been on a first-name basis with Fernweh – far pain, or the pain of not being somewhere far away (in contrast to homesickness). Reflecting on the last month hanging out in the Canary islands, I'm grateful that I've had no cause to use either of these words. In fact I now wish to coin a new pair: Hierlust (the desire to be right here) and Anderswoweh (the pain of thinking about being anywhere else).
I've been pretty quiet on here since before Xmas. I've been traveling again. I really should sort out a mobile client. Hope everyone's 2022 has started well! 💪
¡Feliz día de Reyes! I didn't get anything. Probably a Brexit thing.
Station just reached 1500 (1501 now) posts! I'm loving the active, niche, friendly community we have here. Every time I visit there's something that catches my attention, and that's great to see considering the tiny corner of the internet we occupy. Here's to the next 1500!
Feliĉan Zamenhofan tagon! Today it's Esperanto day! If anyone's curious why I rate the language, and how I got into it: https://martinrue.com/zamenhofa-tago-18/
It's a grey, rainy day here in Manchester, UK. I'm staying in drinking Club-Mate and writing code all day, and I couldn't be happier.
JavaScript is 26 years old today. Crazy. Feels more like NaN years to me.
This is neat! Random 4k wallpaper generator... no two images are exactly the same: https://tanck.nl/wallpaper
I built a little turn-based game for some training I'm delivering. Goal: write a bot that finds and destroys its opponent. Here, bot 2 guesses the movement pattern of bot 1 and lays a mine in its path. This one should be fun to run! 🙌
Quick demo: https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1463473663576088579/pu/pl/638JNY7n9HKh23_H.m3u8?tag=12&container=fmp4&descending=true
Drinking Club-Mate and coding at 01:45. Today-me is screwing tomorrow-me so hard right now.
I have way more interesting conversations with people who have the ability to say "I don't know".
This week I'm delivering training to a bunch of folks getting into JavaScript from different languages/environments. Teaching is really rewarding... I really like doing it.
Not getting your StackOverflow questions answered? Got questions sitting around collecting nothing but internet dust? Simply make a second account and post a blatantly incorrect answer. Watch as hundreds of thousands of programmers from around the world descend on your question with their knowledge.
TIL: the oldest lightbulb (Centennial Light Bulb) has been almost continuously on since 1901. It's now 120 years old. It has been in Fire Station 6, Livermore, California since 1976 where it still burns.
Happy Friday! What's everyone up to this weekend?
Welcome @velartrill. You're Station's 300 member!
Kirk is about to go back into space. T-10 mins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEhdlIor-do
Question: What's your favourite TED talk and why?
Mine is "The art of misdirection" by Apollo Robbins: https://www.ted.com/talks/apollo_robbins_the_art_of_misdirection
Why? Because it's awesome (you can only watch it once).
I love Sundays. The internet is so quiet compared to during the week. It actually feels a little meditative.
Happy Monday everyone! Hope you all have a productive week. Going to be a busy one over here, but I'd prefer it no other way :)
The Mandelbrot set is so interesting. If you've not heard of it before, check out this awesome, beautiful visualisation of it.
Bonus: watch it for a minute or so and then look at an object in your room. The effects are so fun!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD2XgQOyCCk
Station just received its 1000th post!
Nice work everyone. It's awesome to see this micro community on Station growing and continuing to be full of interesting people and discussions 🙌
What's everyone up to this week?
I'm finishing off a little client work before putting some time into my own project work, which I've neglected far too much lately. Making time to work on my own things is really important – it's an essential part of keeping programming fun for me.
I saw this on the "other web" and had to share here:
A horse walks into a bar and orders a pint. The bartender says "You're in here pretty often. Do you think you might be an alcoholic?" The horse replies "I don't think I am," and then disappears from existence.
See, the joke is about Descartes' famous philosophy of "I think, therefore I am", but to explain that part before the rest of the joke would be putting Descartes before the horse.
It's Friday! Anyone got anything interesting planned for the weekend?
Curb has a special place in my heart (and the next one is coming in October!), but no sitcom will ever beat Seinfeld for me.
Two years today since I made a Polish robot speak Esperanto, and it still does: https://parol.martinrue.com
If you want to hear it, here's an example taken right out of the English-Hungarian phrasebook:
My hovercraft is full of eels: https://parol.martinrue.com/?teksto=Mia kusenveturilo estas plena je angiloj
Unpopular? opinion: get rid of the feature to minimize windows. I mostly only ever do it by mistake and haven't needed it in forever. If they ever give me the launch codes to macOS, it's *gone*, I tell you!
I finally got some time to do some Station work!
Check "Recent Updates" to see all changes, but the main one is that all Stationeers now have a Tinylog feed. Thanks for the idea @skyjake and @bacardi55.
This means users on Station can be "followed" outside of Station, via tools like GTL, like so: https://i.imgur.com/5TktXsz.png
Hope everyone's having a great weekend 🙌
Top-down design is far less enjoyable that bottoms up design. This is not a current status, yet.
I've officially reached the comically funny stage of how often TypeScript saves my ass. It feels like having a super smart colleague that *really* likes verbose ways of explaining how I'm acting like a psychopath in any given moment.
I will not leave all my work to the last minute. I will not leave all my work to the last minute. I will not leave all my work to the last minute...
The adage that travel broadens the mind and can make you a more open-minded, tolerant person, IME is very true. For that reason, I especially like the etomology behind the Icelandic word "heimskur", which means "stupid", or ~"one who hasn't left home".
Station just reached 200 docked! 👏
Happy weekend everyone. Anybody doing anything interesting? I'm in a local 10-day quarantine – plenty of time to get back into a personal project!
I finally got a negative PCR reading yesterday, which means I can fly home. Enjoying one more day in the wonderful city of Barcelona and heading back tomorrow. Good job, body!
It finally happened. I got it! Symptoms have been pretty bad until now, but today I feel a little better. Hoping that 2 weeks from now I'll be able to test negative so I can fly home.
Fun little game: how many languages can you idenitfy. Be honest. I got 27. https://baltoslav.eu/adhadaj/index.php?mova=en
I've been a bit quiet lately as I've been way too busy. Hope everyone's well. Awesome to see Station now has 170 capsuleers!
It's the weekend! Who's up to anything interesting?
I finally updated my now page: https://martinrue.com/now. Anyone else have one? Drop me links.
I'm spending the next month or so in Barcelona, hanging out with a bunch of friends I've met over the years. Our common language is Esperanto, and so today I've been hanging out at bars and coffee shops speaking only in Esperanto. This isn't the first time (last summer I did the same), but it's still such an awesome and surreal feeling to be able to do this.
Well that's a new one: made dinner plans for tomorrow 1400km away from where I am now
Current status: just tried to brush a forward slash off my screen. Been a long week.
Started this week a bit differently. I decided to head to London and do nothing but work on my own stuff, gym, spa, and socialise. It was wonderful. Back to the grind now, though.
Station now preserves newlines in posts and lets you use formatting lines (via ```) and quotes (via >).
."". ."",
| | / /
| | / /
| | / ;-._
} ` _/ / ;
| /` ) / /
| / /_/\_/\
|/ / |
( ' \ '- |
\ `. /
| |
| |
Enjoy!
Working beside an open window while it rains outside. Smells amazing.
The weekend is almost here! Anyone got anything interesting/unusual planned?
After two full days of battling with some code, I finally made a breakthrough. This is a *good* feeling.
Happy Monday everyone!
Rather than asking how my day's going, just ask me how many browser tabs I have open. That'll tell you everything.
Laying in a bath hot enough to potentially disolve me while listening to loud music is my meditation.
It has been a long week, but some Seneca is helping me relax today. I'm currently reading De Tranquillitate Animi (On the Tranquility of the Mind), and looking forward to De Brevitate Vitae (On the Shortness of Life) next. What are your favourite philosophy reads?
Hello weekend! Anyone doing anything interesting? I have a bit of work to do, and then I'm going to carry on with a project to write some fiction in Esperanto for the INK-Konkurso: https://www.akademio-literatura.org/ink
Need to search Station? Well now you can. You'll find the search feature on the homepage. Check Recent Updates for details. Happy searching!
Instead of sleep (which I really need to do very soon) I've spent this evening updating Station so you can now add a link on your profile page. Get sharing all your cool capsule (or fat web) links :) Goodnight Station!
New Station update! Notifications are now shown on the homepage too, and Station now has diagnostics (check bottom of homepage).
Just want to say thanks to everyone who signed up to Station since the launch a few days ago. We have a neat little community here on Gemini now (94 people so far), and that's pretty awesome!
Here in the UK it's a holiday today, but that ain't stopping me – today I'm drinking Mate and writing code, and I'd rather be doing nothing else. Surely you're all doing something far more interesting, right?
I just pushed an update to Station so that mentions (using an @ symbol before a user's name) now works. If you're mentioned, you'll see a notification on your profile page letting you know.
It's really awesome seeing people joining Station and posting stuff. Makes the late nights over the last few weeks totally worth it.
Hello! After a few weeks of tinkering, Station is finally live. If you like the idea of a text-based mini social network for gemini, create an account and hang out. ✌️