GOING OFF COMPUTERS

Oops, I just discovered that I nixed the selectors for most of my 
Gopher services from the root gophermap here when I uploaded my 
last post. Don't panic, I haven't deleted Gopher Banker, FireText, 
and my Garth Merenghi's Darkplace tribute site. What? You never 
even noticed? Huff.

I have actualy been tempted back to the idea of new Gopher services.
I said I'd stop them, but I think a little proxy for image URLs that 
converts them to known sizes for downloading would be really nice, 
to counter the risk of those "obscene images" I complained about in 
2024-02-13.1Obscene_Images.txt. An option for an auto-generated 
ASCII-art rendition would be a must as well.

But I've still kind-of had enough of messing with computers lately. 
Or maybe permanently, because I think I've been saying that here 
for some time. I guess it's not a terribly original observation, 
but it's sunk into me that they're unhealthy. Not the modern stuff 
about people sending themselves nuts with social media, that's 
easily ignored. I mean the geek in the basement stereotype busy 
optimising some code to utilise the vector instruction set of the 
new CXY34+7 vortixulor co-processor, or whatever. It is one of my 
few skill that's close to useful in both modern life and the modern 
economy. But it's not meant for humans. Like, I gather, most 
programmers, I'm only really good at it in a state of 
sugar-saturated sleepless obsession. Healthy programming might work 
on a tedious and stictly enforced routine as in some typical 
soul-destroying form of employment, but it's no fun then, and very 
slow.

I've been more active these past years, more into physical tasks, 
somewhat willfully ignoring computer-related projects that I'd use 
every day in preference for totally useless things I can build out 
of 2x4 in the shed. My thinking is that if the weather suits doing 
things outside, I'll do the computer stuff later. But when later 
comes I often find things to make inside instead, or watch TV 
because I've tired myself out. Yesterday was the Australia Day 
holiday and forecast to get really hot, so I was going to start off 
washing the car, then move in to the unairconditioned back room of 
the house to work on finishing that optical data 
transmitter/receiver, and finally when it got too hot back there, 
get onto some of my computer tasks left unfinished for months. But 
no, I just weathered the heat and finished every detail of the 
optical comunication rigs (except, that is, testing them connected 
with computers).

I'm not quite sure whether I'm bored with computers, or whether a 
little extra muscle mass was all it took to completely redefine my 
mental state. I'm not really burnt out from programming, just drawn 
to other things more strongly than before. Unfortunately none of 
those things offer even a vague hint at making money, which is why 
I keep going back to this idea of trying to drop out of society and 
live self-sufficiently (I was going to say like a hermit, but I 
live a bit like a non-self-sufficient hermit already). One might 
argue that's I'd be more secure as a fat slob sitting at a computer 
9-to-5.

 - The Free Thinker