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Stardate: 20201002.1417
Location: Kitchen Table
Input Device: AlphaSmart dana.wireless
Audio: Neck fans
Visual: Tonkatsu Ramen, spinich and feta croissant
Emotional State:TGIF, centered and grounded
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It's triple digits outside and I am eating spicy tonkotsu ramen. I
would not normally eat hot food on a hot day, but I just had this
craving that needed to be satisfied. So I am wearing my neck fan
while I try to enjoy my hot and spicy ramen lunch.
Back on September 28th, SDF user, benj, had phosted about hobbies and
it got me thinking about my activities of leisure. He discussed
about how the hobbies he enjoys has a community associated with it.
I find this to be the case with my hobbies to some degree, especially
in the first half of my life.
In the 80's, there was video games and the Commodore 64. Going to
the local arcades, playing games with friends, talking about games,
sharing games, trading games, having friends over, going to their
place, etc.
Then I got my first 300 baud modem. That was a total game changer
that opened up my little world of video games to a, back then,
larger community of BBS's (Bulletin Board Systems) users within my
local calling area (for those not around back then, we used to have to
pay long distance per minute just to talk or send data across county
lines, which could get quite expensive, especially if you were
downloading public domain software at 300 baud! Sometimes those
upload to download ratios and login time limits were a blessing in
disguise!)
The BBS community was really a magical place for me where I was not
limted just to the kids in my neighborhood or school to have as
friends, but to a broader assortment of local kids, adults, hobbyists,
hackers, anarchists, homemakers, professionals, pirates, all walks of
life.
OK, I'm going off track here. If you haven't watched it yet, check out
the BBS Documentary for more about the BBS days.
Sorry about that. Getting back to the topic; I guess my hobbies
changed to being less social when I started having kids. They
basically took up any time I would have had for hobbies.
NOTE: Spawning child processes is extremely resource intensive!!!
As the children became more autonomous, I have had more time for
leisure activities, which brings me to these times.
These days, I find many of my hobbies to be solitary, yet somewhat
social, mostly due to the Internet. I would partake in hobbies,
like my love of gadgets and computers, at home, but would supplement the
social aspect of those hobbies with various online forums, chat systems,
podcasts, videos, etc. This allowed me to still enjoy the hobbies as
well as be available to my family. The Super Dimensional Fortress is
one of those social places.
I first became aware of SDF in the 90's from the Internet of
that time. I did not join back then and just enjoyed the wild west of
the Internet of that time, with all of the low bandwidth, personal home
pages, news groups, ftp servers, telnet sites, remaining BBS's, freenet,
etc.
A few years ago, after having lived through the deteriorating and
distracting quality of content of Web 2.0 and social media, SDF showed
up on my radar again. After checking it out for a bit, I signed up as a
member.
Here was a place that had an active community of creative people that
really cared about the community and supported and encouraged each
other. Not only that, but share common passions and interests with me
that would appear unpopular, mundane, or lame to most of the cattle. On
top of that, people were pretty consistent at returning and participating.
Yeah, it is not perfect, but it is as perfect as it could be with all of
the personalities and backgrounds from all over the world, flame wars,
server failures, DDOS attacks, federated disputes, etc. In a sense, it
is perfectly human..
One of the things I dislike about the Internet leading up to now is how big
and anonymous it can seem. Back in the BBS days, I felt like I really got
to know or become very familiar with the people on those systems. We
were pretty much in the same local calling area, same physical community,
same time zone, etc. We got to know each other by handle and which
boards we frequented. Yeah, you could change handles or have multiple
handles, but most people stuck with the same handle, especially when
people started to get to know you through your posts and replies or if
you were into software, when you started accumulating download credits
or access to other areas of the board.
The Internet users of now just seems so anonymous, unfriendly, disposable.
I think many of the users are just content consumers of the disposable,
agenda-driven noise whose personal data feeds the content owner's other,
sometimes hidden agendas. Those who have something genuine to share
just gets plowed over by all the garbage out there and don't want to share
anymore because maybe they think it doesn't matter or they're afraid to
put themselves out there to be criticized or ridiculed on a global scale.
I know I have felt this before many times and it has prevented me from
participating. These days, I still create but I create for myself.
I do participate and share sometimes, but it is not the primary goal
of my expression.
Another thing that really appeals to me about SDF is its history and
longevity. Here is a community and system that has been around since
1987. That was before the turn of the century/millennium! That's 33 years!
And they care about the history and celebrate it. They find the value in
the old and vintage and they keep it alive and even functioning. The
users keep the history alive with what they share from their memories,
whether it be on bboard, COM, www, gopher, irc, anonradio shows,
mastodon, etc.
SDF is not only about the old, but is also about the now. It is truly
super dimensional. There are modern components that have been
implemented, like mastodon, pixelfeeds, Internet radio shows, echolink,
VOIP, minecraft, federated components, etc. The users are a mix of both
old timers and new enthusiasts from all over the place experiencing and
sharing the same old and new technologies with each other.
With my timeline, this community brings me back to the Commodore 64, to
the BBS's, to my old PDA collection, even to my skateboarding days with
some of the users. It also brings back my college radio days through
anonradio's free-form programming format. It brings me back to the
subacultcha days through some of the music that you play on your shows
or on open mic. Even on Open VOIP, the vintage discussions have
dislodged long-forgotten memories of my early computing days.
Well, where am I going with all of this? Uh...well, like SDF user, benj,
my hobbies are traditionally social as well as differently social;
social none the less, depending on at what point in my timeline. Aside
from the restrictions of COVID-19, I can see my hobbies becoming more
social as the kids continue to grow and start living their own lives,
which should free up more resources for hobby and socializing.
p.s. I just completed this entry with much life interruptions. I am
not going to go back and edit and I take full responsibility for the
length of this entry any typos, and any meandering, confused or
disjointed thoughts, etc. ThiS is the xiled rumination construct after
all and life is too short to be edited.
20201004.1631
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