Wednesday 17 July 2024


Fifth day of the Old Computer Challenge 2024
============================================

This is the fifth day of the Old Computer Challenge 2024.

Lisp development
----------------
Yesterday I wrote about installing CCL, and compiling and running my
static site builder [1].

Today I started developing on the OCC laptop. I want to build a
paste-server and file-dropper, only with HTML, without Javascript,
just old fashioned web forms.

Currently Bepasty runs in our home network, and use it a lot, but as
Bepasty requires Javascript I want an alternative that can be used
with browsers like eww, lynx, and links.

I installed hunchentoot, a package that provides a web server in Common
Lisp, and started building an application with it.

Starting a new project with the Quicklisp local-projects method is
easy. It really helps to have your programming environment set up.

This is true not only for Common Lisp, but for any language.
Invest some time to set up your own environment, the effort will pay
itself back quickly.

With the Radeon kernel driver, and the default font, the screen of the
laptop measures 45 lines of 159 chars. Dividing the screen in two
Emacs windows, one with the source code, and one with the Slime REPL,
works fine. Looking up things on the internet must be done with a text
mode browser, no Firefox. But that is not deal breaker, and so far I
have been able to manage.

OCC gopher page
---------------
On RPoD moku-pona I ran into the Gopher burrow of dokuja, with their
OCC-diary. I added the link to this phlog on the OCC gopher page [2].

Next, I updated my Gopher page @ OCC [3].

Daily use
---------
Today I again experienced how performant working on the console is.
My working habit is of course text- and TUI centric.

Editing files with ed, committing changes to RCS, ssh to other systems,
and even writing text in Emacs, it all goes fast, even on a slow
laptop like this.

Before I confiscated this laptop for the OCC, it had been used by my
spouse. In the very past she ran Linux Mint on it. After years of not
being used, I fired it up a couple of months ago, and it was terribly
slow. It had an graphical desktop with X, and the changing wallpaper
didn't help either. The machine was close to being not-usable,
because of the bad performance. And now it is joy to use, although the
keyboard is a bit cramped.

Today I did some Common Lisp coding with CCL, and get a few steps for
my HTML-only (no Javascript) pastebin/filedropper working, using the
hunchentoot Common Lisp web server.

Further more, I did the usual stuff, read and wrote some emails using
Gnus, keep up with RSS feeds and mailinglists using Gnus, and IRC.
After starting up the Jabber client, there was nobody online, after an
hour or so I disconnected it again.

Starting from the usual Gopher aggregators, and also adventuring
through the Gopher realm using the service that gives you links
to five random Gopher servers [4], I again enjoyed diving into
Gopher. There are so many fine phlog posts to read ...

Using my jumplist I went to Antenne, to read some Gemtexts.
In the past I have used some Gemini aggregator, but don't remember
how I got there. I have to rediscover the  Gemini aggregators.

Happy OCC-ing!


[1]: gopher://box.matto.nl/0/fourth-day-of-the-old-computer-challenge-2024.txt
[2]: gopher://occ.deadnet.se/1/users/
[3]: gopher://occ.deadnet.se/1/users/matto
[4]: gopher://gopher.viste.fr/1/ogup/rnd


Last edited: $Date: 2024/07/17 18:32:14 $