author: isoraqathedh
Because of works at home, I have not been able to be on the computer all the time. This means that my total online time is slightly less. But, that has not resulted in higher productivity at all.
A website on the general internet has an exired SSL certificate and I became so unfazed about it due to hitting it all the time in Gemini I just clicked through it. I don't know what to think about that.
I love qalc. It covers two-thirds of the use cases of Wolfram Alpha without ever connecting to the Internet. If a command line isn't for you, qalc also comes with a GUI interface called Qalculate. (I was inspired to make this because it easily handled "540 kUSD -> MHKD"!)
So I just figured out that my non-internet-connected digital clock is about 5 seconds fast every month or two. How annoying.
It's an 8-cylinder 651/feV engine delivering 1.27 GeV² of power at 3.55 ZeV of torque at 76.8 feV, all giving a maximum speed of... 0.000 000 231. And it only weighs 9.43 × 10^38 eV.
...wait, that's not what they meant when they told us to switch to "evs", is it?
After an unexpected failure, I have upgraded my GPU (and a whole bunch of other things too). So I'm back here again.
A thing that bugs me is that there are some rather inconsequential bits of knowledge that I really want but are ultimately unreachable. I'm thinking of, in particular, the previous identities of two roleplay characters which have been obliterated. I do not think asking the owner of the blog, the one place where they are mentioned, is possible, because she "apparently wanted to cut the owner of the obliterated characters out of her life", so most likely I would remain eternally unsatisfied.
It's one of those things I will look up if I had control of the global panopticon.
I wrote a new thing: gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/mouse-pointer.gmi
A fairly simple puzzle: "Aston Martin Copper (I) 5-nitrotetrazole+1".
If you can explain /why/ this makes sense, you get one point.
I always think that it would be nice if I can find people who can share an equal love to all things that move people from place to place. Roads, the things that go on them, rails, the things that go on /them/, &c.
I now have some steady progress going on with my implementation of Ùzje mahjong. I even wrote a prospective spec for a replay format here. gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/mjr.gmi
It is now March and somehow the temperature seems to have recognised this and is now sending me 27°C daytimes. It is kind of mad.
Idea about using the fragment identifier in Gemini urls: a client /may/ (but does not have to) initiate a full text search of things that come after the #.
I have wrote a fun little document about mahjong and π. This topic basically is just ideal for showing in gemini's format. gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/pi-mj.gmi
In 2000, the trams put up new destination blinds that add colour to each destination. This is redundant information, but it helps me identify where a tram is going because the colours are designed such that roughly colour and direction determine destination uniquely. I can see the colour from much further away than actually reading, so it helps a lot. But now they are going away due to the new LED panels being monochrome. I feel like something is lost here somehow.
My recent haul at the toy car shop has netted me a couple of big 7-seaters and the regular super-/hypercar menagerie. There are significantly fewer 4/5-seaters and smaller cars. I can't tell if that has anything to do with the modern taste of cars.
I have been finding a lot of cool new Wordle clones. Some of which are in Cantonese, my native language; one with arithmetic equations; and also one with Riichi mahjong hands. They are fascinating and I have not been swept up with any such like for a long time.
I want to give much thanks to @jk for creating the smol emoji font. I can now use it for my status bar also, which means I can reduce my dependence on FontAwesome.
I'm hearing from around the grapevine that Toki Pona now has an ISO language code (3 letters long). From c. Friday onwards, you can tag your Toki Pona using the language code "tok".
Feeling a bit strange right now as I make my way towards a PhD application. Alweays thinking about what I'm doing and whether I'm just stalling for life and money.
So that's it. Two years and a small cost in brain cells later my work contract has ended. I don't know if it's positive, but I'm trying to move forward with my academia projects now.
Actually, and following on from my previous post, it's a little sad that people don't make mechanical devices anymore. Everything's computer controlled and therefore much harder to examine than it needs to.
There seems to be a significant lack in anti-epidemic measures that *don't* involve the public to "buy in to" them. Things like mechanical machines for air filtration and ventilation, which work for any virus and are a good idea anyway. This is pretty worrisome.
I've gotten a vaccine yesterday. It is now not pleasant.
A thing that someone pointed out to me that now irritates me greatly: "No evidence for foo" is used to say both "foo is false" and "we don't know if foo is true yet".
Happy new year, everyone. I have been away for a while but I think I will return here again more often.
Example of a curious perversion of accessibility technology: being lazy with audio mixing and making dialogue audible because "hey you can just switch the subtitles on".
A thing I noticed about capsules is that their certificates expire and more than once they aren't tended to enough for a renewal (and even if they are renewed you have to go through a rigmorarole to accept that change). Uh oh, that sounds like link rot Gemini-style.
Scheduled a councelling session to have a look at my ailing productivity. It's not just work, it's all parts of my life.
This is perhaps not out of the ordinary, but I think that at some point I have this Thing going on where completely unrelated bits of knowledge get put together in my mind. Random bits of ${video game} lore get rubbed together with tropical cyclone classification systems and I want to see what sparks come out.
I wrote some preparatory maths about energy use with computers. gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/energy-competition.gmi
I spent this holiday trying to explore places that I haven't been to yet. It kind of worked, but of course there's opportunity costs to it.
Additionally, I took some time to expand my diecast car collection. Regardless of what you think about cars, they certainly are fascinating in terms of what they look like.
Having now written a couple of things on Gemini, I have come to appreciate CSS again in a new light. I'm now having thoughts to change up my CSS on my Github Pages website - along with some of the content - to make it more amenable to the tastes I have now.
I have made some metro maps as a bit of a thing that I always wanted to do. I may possibly put these in context in my capsule later. gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/img/derten-community-rail.png gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/img/turn-v.png
I am currently reading Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays and can heartily recommend it. I borrowed it from the library at the recommendation of a YouTube video that describes some of its concepts. I'm seriously trying to read it and understand the concepts rather than just consuming it.
Today I end up having to break off work early because I basically have no ability to think productively. I can't even do things that were pretty easy two weeks ago. Something has tripped inside my head I don't know what.
Goodness, don't I wish I have time. Today my thoughts are just not at work, but even with full drive to get some things done at home it amounted to very little in the end. Honestly, I think my mental stamina has taken a huge hit some time during my time at work.
It is unfortunate that some fool has decided to peddle his "completed product" (a sketchy cryptocurrency which in no way meets my own definition of a working currency) on Geddit repeatedly. Also apparently conflating Gemini (protocol) with other projects named the same, though interestingly not the cryptocurrency exchange.
Oh dear, the host my capsule is on has vanished and I am unsure how or if I should contact the admin to get it back up.
I've created a directory listing for my capsule. Be sure to check the link to the code generating it, as it also generates an atom feed. gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/dirs.gmi
So Ariane updated! ...but it seems to have lost its ability to import certificates. Whoops.
I'm writing a shell script wrapped in an org-mode file that creates an automatic directory listing of all gemtext files in my capsule, as I don't have access to server-side scripting. Later on, it will also create an Atom feed based on the last-modified date on all "eligible files" (which would most likely come in the form of a hashtag on the file itself, or embedded in the org-mode document if that is too ugly).
Managed to port my language list over to gemtext. It's surprisingly not so hard to then reconvert this to org-mode; and in fact I think this is agood middle step as opposed to converting to org-mode directly. It is here if you want to see it: gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/language-list.gmi
One thing that I noticed when I'm writing for my own capsule is just how much I'm forced to think about what to /write/. Saves me a lot of pain yak-shaving for layout options as compared to writing raw HTML, but gives me ideas about when how my website will eventually be laid out... eventually.
There is a surprising amount of Toki Pona speakers - that is, any amount at all - in Geminispace. I wonder how prominent the rest of conlang field is around here.
I now have a capsule of my own. I'm going to use it as a pressure relief but for words.
gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/ujmj.gmi
Strongly considering just saying "whatever" for now and asking for someone to host a capsule for me while the rest of my life arranges itself enough to get the rest of my infrastructure set up. To that end I am writing some basic pages.
One major shift to do when being on gemini is to make heavy use of bookmarks. It's easy to get away with tabs in most cases but some browsers just don't have them, so bookmarks tend to be the rule of the day.
There really is a whole bunch of things I want to do. One of them is to somehow get my own capsule, but I also want to write radiance-gemini first and find a suitable web space to put it on. Then there's also all the stuff I want to put on it from all the hobbies…
So, between Mastodon, a gemlog and this, I now have three extra bits of social media that I haven't expected myself using. That having been said, it probably would be a much more healthier experience to be here than in any of the bigger ones.