author: @gtl
last refresh: Sun 26 May 2024 12:00 EDT
currently agregating 17 tinylogs (Urls at the bottom of the page)
Lazy day rewatching Halt and Catch Fire. Such an underrated show.
I was pretty sure my own perception of "popular" is not, in any way, reflective of facts. However my curious gander at the current TIOBE Index quickly confirmed that. Visual Basic 7, Fortran, Delphi and ASM at 10, 11, 12. Wild. https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index
Last week I went on a 3-day solo retreat to Hội An to reflect, relax and be with my own thoughts for a while. I made a little video about it: https://youtu.be/nSkcQyXH5yk
Hello from the land border at Lao Bảo between Vietnam and Laos. I’m basically in the middle of nowhere where goats and cows are roaming the streets, but the fact I can get on Station makes me happy.
"It’s easier to act yourself into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting."
There is a bit of loneliness in my heart because I'm almost absent in the small net lately. But I'm all right and I'm here. There are several activities which were ate all free time reserved for the small activities.
As I always write the small net is around people who are involved in it. It's easy to fell out the road at the bend. And it's hard to enter it again. Everyone is moving forward. However, we have more and more to catch up.
I've browsed through IRC, mailbox, Antenna, Bongusta, XMPP, Mastodon #geminiprotocol annd #gopher hashtags, Usenet. A lot of all this.
I've been delighted by seeing OFFLFIRSOCH 2024 or smoll.earth. So people are still creating here. They are storms upstairs, and we are in the network edge, the shelter for the most useful knowledge.
I could've beaten today's farkle high score because I had 4 fills in a row on round six. I sandbagged it after because I made the game and I think it looks bad.
Digging holes for shrubs is hard work.
Station's cert has been updated to a v3 cert. I hope everyone made it back alive :)
PSA: At some point in the next week I'm going to replace Station's cert with a new one.
You'll see a warning about Station's cert having changed, that it may no longer be trustworthy, that perhaps its creator has been violently murdered by a hit squad from X due to internal jealously about how superior Station is. All of this is false, except the last last part.
Context: Station currently uses a v1 x509 cert, which makes it harder for folks writing custom Gemini clients, and generally speaking, is just old. Bad call, Martin! So, I'll update it to a newer v3 cert and the world can rejoice in harmony, and peace and success will befall us all.
PSA: Station finally now detects links in replies and shows them below the reply itself. In celebration, please link your favourite books. 👌
Just pushed a little update to my personal site (which, to my shame, is still not on Gemini). I also updated my /now page with some deets of my recent retreat to the beautiful town of Hoi An here in Vietnam. https://martinrue.com
Finished the login / auth portion today. now onto the game itself. the rules are going to present the biggest hurdle so I'll need to plan this one out.
Getting a bit more comfortable with Pascal now as I don't have to look up as much stuff.
That there are around 10⁸² atoms in the universe is a great example of how we can’t think well about large numbers. That looks wrong to me at first glance.
working on a new dice game. This time it's fully in Pascal. I'll be reusing some code from Farkle! but converting from Python code, so it'll be slow going.
Controversial opinion(?) I'm sick of finishing books with a strong sense that they were 300 pages just to appease the publisher/market, not because the author couldn't have been just as effective in 100 pages. I consider Derek Sivers a perfect counter example of this. Few books should need 300 pages.
"Impatience is an argument with reality."
I like this. I think it's even more useful with the qualifier: "You can win the argument, but not always."
Impatience can be useful, but only when your odds of changing reality are high enough. Otherwise embrace it. Patience brings presence.
The camera has really been getting its exercise lately. The fact the camera even survived this one is actually a miracle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvZ5amwkvRc
Bought a new Android phone and want to remove the bloat, spyware and tracking? Check out Universal Android Debloater Next Generation desktop app that makes this process easy with it's built-in debloat lists for various manufacturers. #android #privacy #bloatware
Github
https://github.com/Universal-Debloater-Alliance/universal-android-debloater-next-generation/wiki
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After many visits to Sivers's /now page, I realised his new book (https://sive.rs/u) is in early access. So, naturally, I read the hell out of it. Loved it. Really appreciate the short, provocative style and it left me with plenty of things to mull over.
getting closer to implementing the monthly standings "tournament" board for Farkle. I just need to get the monthly reset working and test it and I should be good. Daily points for the top three finishers:
also need to squash a scoring bug.
drama on gemini aside, @clseibold is a machine. He's made a new protocol (scroll protocol - wrote the spec) based off gemini, gopher+, and I think nex, made a server, reference client, and is working on a gui client to try and rival Lagrange. this, on top of the misfin work and all the stuff on auragem. That's some dedication, especially after I thought for sure he left after the fallout on Gemini's two social platforms.
Finally recorded a new video about life in Da Nang. 📽️ https://youtu.be/4J2uZqipzfY
It just cost me £1.58 to fill up my bike, which is now good for about 200km. Now that's a version of capitalism I can get behind.
Photos from a recent trip to Hartebeespoort Dam #photo
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Today was peak life: Had a great sleep. Jumped on the motorbike and shot over to the coworking space. Finished a new vlog edit. Met some new people. Got stuck due to the flash storm. Hung out chatting to cool folks. Cruised home on the fumes of petrichor. Dinner and a book.
"The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page."
Travel by itself doesn't change you much. What does change you, however, is an openness to engage with the sometimes huge differences in culture, attitudes, daily life, etc., that you often find via travel with that mindset.
Vietnam has been a great teacher so far.
This weekend was one of those that’s just good for the soul. I spent it on a remote island with a bunch of new friends I’ve made here in Vietnam. 10/10.
once I find time I'll add a "all-time high-score" to my Farkle game here in gemini. skyjake also had a neat idea of monthly point leaders.
damn IT band. all this sitting and not exercising made it flare back up again. Time for strengthening and stretching exercises to get rid of the knee pain.
I implemented the dice game Farkle in Gemini. Feedback welcomed (gritty@smallweb.space)
Je fais un test de tinylog
I think I just need to figure out my cron job issue and my game for gemini will be done.
I just learned about recency bias and it's already my new favourite.
I'm shutting down a project I built and ran for 7 years, serving ~3,000 people. It's bittersweet. On one hand it's amazing to contribute something valuable for so many. On the other, our attention and focus are so important, and we have to allow them to take on new things fully.
still thinking about doing a dumb / flip phone challenge
left my phone bedside all weekend. it was nice. I missed basically nothing important.
The root race conditions of all evil are.
My favourite part of last night was having a BBQ with everybody at the coworking space in the dark, because the electricity burned itself down. If you know life in SE Asia, this makes total sense.
What I'm doing now: https://martinrue.com/now
Today, I logged into my text environment and came across an article discussing surfing Gopher on the Commodore 64 machine. What a delightful concept.
gopher://sdf.org/0/users/d1337/assorted/c64-001.txt
A few weeks ago I moved to Việt Nam. Why? 1: To challenge myself and experience life somewhere very different. 2: To live more cheaply and have more time for Yakk and other projects.
Since 13 is so lucky in Asia, here are 13 reflections from my Vietnam experience so far: https://gist.githubusercontent.com/martinrue/7a45d3d5fcd47f643993be4dbb7ac272/raw/f710acdbe0dd16d309ff219c7740687c39bf8b8d/Vietnam.txt
So, after spending the first 2 weeks of this adventure in Hanoi, we're finally in Da Nang. The contrast is massive. Da Nang is like the LA of Vietnam – miles of beach, lots of newer buildings and a very chill vibe. Air is way cleaner too. Loving it in this city and planning on staying a good amount of time.
It's almost 10pm and I'm sat in a little coffee shop in the middle of Hanoi writing code as part of a little experiment. Could not be happier. Passing along the positive energy. ⚡️
I might stop my spartan server. There's really not anything I'd post there and not here. and cross posting seems redundant for redundancy's sake. plus no user certs.
welp, the drama may have resolved itself. strong opinions all around. i just don't participate.
looks like the BBS drama moved over to Station. I wonder how that platform will react.
A little video update from Dubai. https://youtu.be/WdNrDEDMvhM?si=Dwv1Sk8E4CHNvDuD
Podcast recommendation: Darknet Diaries. Amazing story telling about tech scams and hacks you should know about. #podcast
Darknet Diaries
Arriving into Hanoi after being in Dubai is, well, different! Happy to finally be here and looking forward to seeing what Hanoian life feels like.
Today's the day. I'm leaving the country. I made a video about what's in my bag: https://youtu.be/qGASvcfcQUg?si=XUgmK_EGhl78ywpP
this is why I'm not in the software development business
I don't know if this exists, but I wonder what an "all-in-one" capsule setup solution. For instance, some script that installs a server, creates a directory structure, and gives you a static site generator for publishing. It would come with a couple of prepackaged CGI scripts for a guestbook, tinylog update, and titan for automated file and gemlog upload.
just discovered SSHFS, which is a way to mount a remote filesystem/direcory over SSH.
I've successfully reimplemented my tinylog updater in Pascal, which I did as an exercise to test my knowledge of writing Pascal. I recently started dabbling in the language and find it kind of cool to be honest. There's a few gotchas like a 255 string character limit if you forget the right compiler option, but it's fun nonetheless.
Agregated tinylogs:
