I made a capsule for the booksin.space project on the server where I am hosting namu.blue. Eventually it may be good to migrate it elsewhere, but for the time being it's there:
Things have barely even begun, but there seems to be a lot of enthusiasm for the project. It is very late here and I need to sleep, but in the morning I'll try to get things set up so that contributors needn't wait on sleepy old me!
I came across Drew Devault's recent toot suggesting that someone acquire the booksin.space domain to serve a public domain library in Geminispace. I have been (slowly) putting together a (small) library on my namu.blue capsule in an effort to contribute something meaningful to Gemini. Anyway, I went ahead and purchased booksin.space, and started a mailing list to facilitate discussion about how to move the project forward. I intend for this to be a community project, so if you are interested, don't hesitate to jump in and throw some ideas out there :)
My (little) library at namu.blue
The mailing list housed at Sourcehut
In the next day or so booksin.space will be live on a server, so keep your eyes peeled~
So I reached out to Roger Ames, who graciously gave me permission to use he and David Hall's interpretive translation of the reconstructed Dao De Jing. For now, I have only posted the English translation. The Chinese version they translated is not the canonical text collected by Wang Bi, but a reconstructed version which takes into account several important versions discovered in the past few decades. Anyway, it will take me a few days to make sure I have the original correct.
Currently the entire text is packed into one file. Eventually I want to divide it up by chapter, and maybe one day include commentary from historical and contemporary sources. It also needs a glossary because the translation often disambiguates translated terms by providing pinyin in parenthesis. When I get some time I will write a short intro about Ames and Hall and the nature of this particular translation (which is much different from other well known translations like Legge's or Lau's).
If you come across any typos let me know :)
Recently on the Gemini Mailinglist Sean Conner lamented that, to their knowledge, there is no version of the Dao De Jing available on Gemini:
gemini://rawtext.club/~sloum/geminilist/002889.gmi
I have tons of versions in various languages, and I thought about posting one on my capsule at namu.blue, where I've started a small Library (right now it only has Edgar Allan Poe...because it's that spooky month):
gemini://namu.blue/~mieum/library/
The only problem is that the best translations of the Dao De Jing are copyrighted material, and the most common version in the public domain is James Legge's nearly two century-old version. It was the first translation, I believe, and is a notoriously theistic intrepretation. Anyway, the translators of some of the better versions are still alive, so I thought about reaching out for permission. I've also considered just posting my own translation. The Dao De Jing is not that long, and over the years I have paraphrased many of its chapters in my own words, so I would have a little to work with. It would take a little time though, being that my sit-down-at-the-computer time is fairly limited these days. But if anyone is interested, I'll put some effort into it. For some time now I've been meaning to organize a good translation with some interesting commentary from contemporary interpreters~ (Not to mention, I could use a thorough re-appreciation of its wisdom).
I've been enjoying your paintober campaign, acdw, and today's (yesterday's) addition was especially intriguing. I like that the "beach" is ambiguous. On the one hand, the cyan portion appears to be the "water" because it is "water-colored," but the lighter pastel shade inside the violet squares make that region appear "on top" of the other one.
acdw::paint-tober 20-21 (2020)
Also, happy anniversary :)
I received my first patch today. A kind soul sent a patch to fix a broken link on a very bare bones web page I started for an informal collective I'm a part of. I threw the site together when I had a free weekend a couple months ago, and I've mostly neglected it since (in favor of Gemini!). Anyway, the fact that someone took the time to send me a simple patch inspired me to spend a little time on the site, especially since that project is starting to gain some traction. I have a gemlog post about that in the works.
Thanks for keeping the internet (and world) human, folks.
Finally getting a chance to sit down at the computer for the first time in a couple days. We meant to do a lot of housework this weekend, but ended up having an impromptu party last night. It was nice to see some friends for the first time in far too long.
Making a lot of little changes around this capsule. I decided to not include Allok Dallok updates in my main Gemlog, which is watched by sloum's Spacewalk. Instead, I decided to generate an atom feed for it so maybe I can get it up on CAPCOM. Also, the most recent dalloks will appear on the capsule home page. At some point I will make scripts to automate all this, but I'm really tired and distracted today.
I spent the last two days working on a gemlog post, but dumbly deleted it by typing 'rm' instead of 'mv' when trying to rename it. I've now made 'rm -i' an alias for 'rm.' That doesn't bring back my post though! Oh well, I'm glad to have written it. It helped get some things out of my system. Now I can focus on writing other more interesting things. So...thank you...rm?
In April, the azaleas bloom like crazy here in Korea, but come October, you can always find a bush somewhere with a flower or two. Is an October azalea late or early for spring? Or is it just an autumn blossom?
I'm launching this so-called Allok Dallok as a home for shorter and less refined writings and ideas. I have a lot on my mind lately, and I realized that breaking it up into smaller, casual portions would help me to better digest it.
What does Allok Dallok mean? Allok Dallok (알록달록) in Korean means colorful and mottled, like the trees in autumn. But the title of this "small" gemlog (알록短錄) is a play on words incorporating the "small" theme of Solderpunk's "pikku" log and Shufei's "微" phlog. Dallok (短錄) literally means "short record," or in this case, a short gemlog---and colorful too~
I've started aggregating a few themed feeds over at The Treeblue Review using sloum's Spacewalk. If anyone has an idea for a theme or knows of any content worth adding, let me know!
I did a few quick dives into geminispace via GUS to see where various types of content like poetry or music live on Geminispace. A lot of stuff is posted as just another entry to a generalistic gemlog, which makes aggregating it under a special theme through Spacewalk difficult or impossible. I hope that these sorts of themed feeds will encourage geminauts to publish more content in ways that make it more discoverable. Anyway, it's time for bed @_@ Please get in touch if you have any ideas or suggestions.
For anyone interested, booksin.space is now served over the standard port 1965:
I have been too busy to focus on writing the builder for the capsule, so nothing has really changed there yet. I'm going to try and muster energy to work on it consistently after putting the kids to sleep at night, so hopefully we'll have an actual library before too long. Sorry for the delay, folks!
This is the tenth consecutive year I have lived here in Korea, and the first time I've had an opportunity to partake in Kimjang. Kimjang is when your family/friends get together to make all of your Kimchi for the whole year. In the past, I have always had some kind of work to do when my wife's family did Kimjang. This time around I actually ended up helping make a massive batch at my daughter's school. We made probably 60 or 70 whole cabbages worth, with a TON of "sauce" leftover.
Anyway, I've been offline a lot lately, but I've been keeping an eye on the recent activity around here. There have been a lot of interesting discussions going on, and I'm a little sorry to miss out on them and to be unable to respond to the thought-provoking things people have been writing. Not to mention that I've had such little keyboard time that booksin.space is kind of just...floating in space! I actually have to go to my office on campus this week, so I'll have a little time to sit down and focus~
Our son has been getting a few new teeth, which has really thrown off our rhythm this past week or so. He has the craziest cry, too. Especially when he is really in a fit (like when he wakes up with pain in his mouth) he does these scary growls that build into high wails.
IT SUCKS! What makes it even more tiresome is that he is at that point where he can speak a little bit, but not as much as he understands. So he often shouts out of frustration (and also just being new to the whole idea of speaking...if you can shout, why not?). For the most part, though, he is very sweet and playful during the day, and a little extra patience and attention is all it takes to smooth things over. But when you are already wiped out it's not easy to muster that extra bit of energy.
And so now here we are in November already...
Yesterday we had a minor car accident, but luckily no one was injured. My wife is learning to drive and still kind of uneasy at the wheel. She took a left-hand turn too wide and kind of awkwardly popped up onto the sidewalk and tipped over a planter. We weren't going very fast, but fast enough to destroy one of our front wheels.
It was an interesting exprerience, though. In Korea, tow truck drivers just drive around waiting to respond to accidents. Within a minute or two of ours, there were half a dozen tow trucks trying to tow us away. It's actually pretty annoying, because our insurance company sends their own truck out, yet these guys were constantly pestering us to let them tow us instead. At one point I told them to fuck off because they were not only irritating the hell out of me, but they were all standing there smoking while I was trying to get my kids out of the car and into their coats.
The cops here are very friendly, at least in contrast with the US (where I'm from). They are not at all intimidating. They just showed up and took a quick report and kept traffic away from us. They even helped move all our bags out of the car and setup the carseats in my father-in-laws car when he arrived. Glad no one was hurt. I don't want my wife to feel discouraged about driving, though. Everyone has their own similar stories from when they first started driving. I know I do.
I had been trying to use emacs more in order familiarize myself with it. I kind of...gave up. I think unless I go cold turkey emacs-only then I won't really be able to get the full experience. I just end up doing everything I would normally do in vim. I like the idea of emacs, but I am not ready to commit to that kind of relationship I guess haha. I have to say, though, that emacs' built-in support for Korean input is awesome! Typing Korean even in a graphical vim session is not that fun. So I may return to emacs for some Korean-specific workflows, who knows.
I recently started messing around with ed a bit more. I've been referencing katolaz's posts, "ed(1) is The Right Tool," which have been very helpful:
gopher://republic.circumlunar.space:70/1/~katolaz/phlog/
ed, of course, is a completely different animal than vim and emacs. My use case has been using it as the editor when posting to the BBS at circumlunar.space. I like that I can just edit text right in the same buffer that contains the text from all the posts I had been reading. I recall sloum mentioning that they use their line editor "chalk" to edit gophermaps, which seems like another great use case.
There's no quarantine in Geminispace, so hey, let's throw a party! To attend the "Good Riddance 2020 Geminautical Ball," all it takes is to wear your "ugliest" ASCII holiday sweater! I know some of you reading this have legendary talents in the ASCII arts, so let's see your stuff! (Bonus kudos for ANSI colors!)
Here's an old family heirloom of mine to kick things off:
.--------\ /---------.
/#$##%;~~'---------'~~~;#%##$#\
/~$~~%;\\##//\\##//\\##//;~%~~$~\
/#$##%;~\\\///\\\///\\\///\;#%##$#\
/~$~~%/|\///\\\///\\\///\\\/|\~%~~$~\
/#$##%/ |\//~~\\//~~\\//~~\\// \#%##$#\
/~$~~%/ |\/#/\#\/#/\#\/#/\#\/| \~%~~$~\
|$###%; |~~//\\~~//\\~~//\\~~| \#%##$#\
\#$~~%\ |\///\\\///\\\///\\\/| ;%~~~$/
\#$##%\ |/\\\///\\\///\\\///\| /%###$/
\#$~~%||~~\\//~~\\//~~\\//~~| /%~~~$/
\#$#/ |/\#\/#/\#\/#/\#\/#/\| |%##$/
\#/ |/\\~~//\\~~//\\~~//\| \~~$/
v |/\\\///\\\///\\\///\| \$/
|\///\\\///\\\///\\\/| v
|\//##\\//##\\//##\\/|
|\/~/\~\/~/\~\/~/\~\/|
|~#//\\##//\\##//\\#~|
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~+
I've long been a vim user, and I'm fairly set in my ways. I've messed around with emacs in the past, but I've never really felt compelled to "switch." I think emacs and vim are fundamentally different though; each suited for different uses. There is something kind of fun about emacs that makes me want to mess with it more. It feels like a computer within my computer. I can see why people who love emacs LOVE it, so I'm trying to give it a fair chance to see what fun can be had with it.
So far, it feels a little awkward to use. I'm so used to navigating text with hjkl at this point. I know there is Evil Mode and all that. It might be worth looking into, but I'd like to think this old dog could learn a few new tricks. One thing that seems promising is *potentially* being able to input Korean and Chinese text less awkwardly with it. That would be quite a game changer for me, because typing Korean in a terminal (or even in a graphical vim session) is super awkward. Even just typing Korean/Chinese may turn out to be a nice use case for me.
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CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 mieum(at)rawtext.club