+++ Happy Holidays, and a Reply to Sysdharma +++
Friday, December 29, 2017
I hope everyone is having a good holiday season! I've been perusing
gopherspace today and have a reply to sysdharma@sdf, who has a new
phlog [0] - welcome to the phlogosphere!
TEXT Continued...
+++ Gophernicus and Scripts in Gophermaps +++
Friday, December 15, 2017
Gophernicus (the gopher server used at SDF) has a nice script
feature for gophermaps. Any line that starts with '=' is assumed to
refer to a script, and the output is sent to the client.
TEXT Continued...
+++ The Unix Console +++
Monday, December 11, 2017
Jynx [0],[1] and Jandal [2] phosted on their favorite programs, and
use of the Unix console in particular. I love hearing about how
other people work in the console so I can try out new utilities or
ways of getting things done.
TEXT Continued...
+++ On Mutt and Email Servers +++
Monday, December 04, 2017
I read some recent phosts by jynx ([0],[1]) on email, where he
mentions mutt and the fact that self-hosting is difficult. I've been
using mutt and self-hosting my own domains' email for many years,
and have had few problems with blacklisting or blocking. Here is a
broad overview of what I do and recommend. I haven't changed this
setup in a long time, it just runs:
TEXT Continued...
+++ Old Books and Old Tech +++
Saturday, November 25, 2017
I was back in the States last week to visit friends and family. We
generally travel the week before the US Thanksgiving, just to avoid
huge delays at the border. Anyway, while there I was able to grab
some boxes of books that have been in storage for a while - not all
of them but just the ones I'm likely to re-read or that have some
sentimental significance. Most of the others I'll be giving away,
but I have the fantasy and scifi classics I've collected over the
years, including Heinlein, Bradbury, Asimov and Clarke.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Weekend Update +++
Thursday, November 02, 2017
Finally some downtime! Work has been crazy lately, and I just
haven't had the energy or motivation to update the ol'
gopherhole. But I'm off for a long weekend, headed south into
Vermont tomorrow with the family for some r&r, and I feel a bit
rejuvenated already.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Of Cabins and Simple Living +++
Saturday, October 21, 2017
Jynx started off the fascinating discussion on simple living,
asceticism, and technology use [0]:
TEXT Continued...
+++ Old Time Radio +++
Tuesday, October 17, 2017
My wife and I enjoy listening to old-time radio shows (OTR), mainly
CBS's Radio Mystery Theater (CBSRMT) [0], but also CBC's Nightfall
[1] series. This past weekend we listened to Orson Welles' rendition
of Dracula, from 1938 [2]. They make a nice change from TV if you
want some entertainment for an evening.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Thoughts on Privacy +++
Saturday, October 07, 2017
Like many other privacy-minded geeks, I've been trying to lessen my
public footprint and use of big-provider emails. I've had my own
mail server for many years - In the US I ran my own server from a
decent business-class connection with static IPs, but that all went
away when we moved to Canada. So I migrated my mail server to
Ramnode, where it has been ever since. But for a time during the
move, when things were uncertain, I relied more heavily on
gmail/yahoo mail. Now that we're settled, I've stopped use of both
of them entirely and moved everything back to my own email server
again. I don't consider using SDF email in this context, since I
don't want to associate my real name with my SDF account.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Francisation +++
Friday, October 06, 2017
I started a conversational French class this week, what they call
here 'francisation'. It's basically a group conversation course,
taught by a native speaker of Quebec French - actually it's better
than that, as the instructor speaks both English and French and did
so from a young age. So he can explain the nuances of both languages
and how they might translate. I'm rather jealous of his ability to
switch freely between languages. For me, I just want my French to
get to a basic conversational level, where I don't have to struggle
to find words. My goal is to be in a conversation with a native
speaker, and _not_ have them switch to English, something that
happens a lot. I don't blame them, they see someone struggling and
want to help, or maybe they are busy and don't want to
wait. Sometimes they even want to practice their English.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Weekend Update +++
Sunday, October 01, 2017
My wife continues to recover from her concussion. She can't watch TV
or read, so she's settled on audio books as a way to pass the
time. Our local library doesn't participate in Overdrive, but I was
able to get a card at the provincial library in Montreal, which
does. We found the android app Libby which is quite usable as a
wrapper around Overdrive. It has its own reader built-in, so my wife
has been able to listen to audio books with her phone.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Tales of a Former Paramedic +++
Saturday, September 30, 2017
I've seen lots of death. I'm not proud of that fact, and sometimes I
wish I hadn't. But it is part of me, part of my past. You may not
want to read this if you are bothered by descriptions of death.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Bike Crash and Comments to Tomasino +++
Sunday, September 17, 2017
My family had a scare yesterday when my wife crashed on her mountain
bike, going down a steep trail. She was dizzy afterwards and had no
memory of the accident, and her friends she was riding with ended up
calling for the mountain rescue, who did a great job packaging her
up and getting her to an ambulance. After an ER visit and CT scan,
she was diagnosed with a mild concussion, and has lots of bruises
and scrapes. So she will be fine as long as she takes it easy for a
while, and of course we're thankful as it could have been much
worse. When we moved to Quebec she bought an upgraded helmet (MIPS),
because she knew how much downhill biking there was here. Given that
her injuries are not serious, I'd say the helmet worked. To anyone
riding a bike - don't skimp on the helmet.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Citizenship Ceremony and Thoughts on Immigration +++
Friday, September 15, 2017
My son received his Canadian citizenship certificate this week, at a
ceremony in Montreal. He was with about 200 others, a group
unsurprisingly as diverse as you can imagine. The ceremony itself
consisted of a group oath-taking, presided over by a judge, then the
newly-minted citizens received their certificates. Finally, they
sang the Canadian national anthem. The whole thing took about two
hours, and was quite well-run. I imagine it has to be to keep 200
people moving along.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Of Fairs and French +++
Friday, September 08, 2017
Over the Labor Day weekend we went to a local fair, the 'Brome
Fair'. It was a bit nostalgic because when we lived in Connecticut,
every year we also went to a local fair - you know the kind, with
fried food, games, rides and farm animals. This was the same, but
was even more similar since Brome is in a part of Quebec that is
heavily anglophone. There are a few of those areas in Quebec,
including the West Island of Montreal. A region is termed
'anglophone' when a majority of families speak English at home as a
first language. What we've noticed is that most young people in
Quebec are bilingual, and talking to natives, it seems to be a
trend. The Quebec language law has done a good job keeping French
relevant (holding a job is impossible without at least an
intermediate level of spoken French), but parents are increasingly
realizing that English is important for their kids to learn.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Comments on Free Speech +++
Saturday, August 26, 2017
There is some good commentary on free speech and protest rights
lately in the gopher-verse [0], [1], [2]. I thought I'd add some
comments on the matter.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Random Gopher Updates and Replies +++
Sunday, August 20, 2017
There continues to be lots of new activity in gopherspace. Always
great to see. I notice leveck.us moved his phlog to SDF [0], and is
now using slerm. Let me know how it works for you, also note there
is a newer version of slerm with a few bugfixes (1.8) available in
my gopherspace [1].
TEXT Continued...
+++ Vacation and Other Goings On +++
Saturday, August 19, 2017
I was on vacation this past week, it was nice to get away from work
for a while and spend more time with my family. A full week it was -
including my 50th birthday, a visit to a water park, some tennis,
hiking with my wife and camping with my son.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Thoughts on Terror and Trump +++
Tuesday, August 15, 2017
Tomasino writes on his phlog about the recent terror attack in
Virginia [0]. I have the same visceral reaction to these events, and
I'm saddened to see hatred for race or political beliefs reach such
a point that someone feels they have to kill for it.
TEXT Continued...
+++ More Gopher Thoughts +++
Friday, August 11, 2017
First a quick thanks to Logout for his phlog aggregator 'bongusta'
[0]. This is a great resource, if anyone reading wants to get their
phlog on his list, let him know, he has a contact email on his phlog
[1].
TEXT Continued...
+++ Trip to the Library +++
Thursday, August 10, 2017
I made a trip to the local library yesterday, something I'd been
meaning to do since we moved. Libraries in general are an amazing
but underused resource.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Books +++
Sunday, August 06, 2017
I mentioned previously [0] that most of our books are in storage,
about 20 boxes. I estimate there are 300-400 books. Since they have
been in storage for over a year, I'm beginning to think I need to
get rid of a big chunk of them. Books I read once but will probably
never read again, or books I never read at all.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Ham Radio +++
Saturday, August 05, 2017
Hobbsc's latest phlog entry [0] got me thinking about amateur radio.
I've been a ham for nine years, I have a general license in the
US. I never did too much with it, although I have an HF transceiver
and at one point I had started to learn morse code [1].
TEXT Continued...
+++ Phlogit Tutorial +++
Sunday, July 30, 2017
Just a quick note that I put the latest version of 'phlogit' in
/sys/sdf/bin and checked it into RCS there, so it is available to
all SDF users who have /sys/sdf/bin/ in their path. MetaARPA members
can edit it.
TEXT Continued...
+++ The Indestructable HP 15-C Calculator +++
Saturday, July 29, 2017
I still have an HP-15C I bought new in 1987. I don't use its
programmable features anymore, but just as a desktop calculator
(after getting used to RPN, I could never get the hang of 'normal'
algebraic entry again). These are probably the slide rule of my
generation - every computer science and engineering student had one.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Welcome to the New Phlog +++
Saturday, July 29, 2017
As I hinted in my last post [0], I've moved the current slerm-based
phlog to a static one, using my phlogit script [1]. It simply
updates a gophermap top-down with a date, title and a short blurb
(just the first paragraph of text). I think I'll do yearly archives,
with the current year always pointing at /phlog for the sake of
people's bookmarks. For now, I have all of my prior years posts in
the same format, that is 2009-2015 [2]. Along the way I converted
some posts from my old motd blog that had never been posted on the
gopher side.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Days of our Phlogs +++
Wednesday, July 26, 2017 at 15:46
I've gotten some great feedback by email and bboard on how others
like to write phlogs. Thanks to those who have replied. I've
discovered that the UMN gopher client sometimes truncates text when
displaying a type-1 entry (normally directories but also CGI's),
something I never noticed as I use lynx. As I was writing and
thinking about this, some functional goals for the phlog came to
mind:
TEXT Continued...
+++ Help me Decide How to Phlog +++
Monday, July 24, 2017 at 19:58
I received a nice email today from a member of the SDF phlogging
community. In it he noted that he enjoyed reading my phlog, but was having
layout and spacing issues while using the SDF gopher client. I'll share some
of my response, then I'd love to hear your thoughts about what I should
do. Reply by comment here, or shoot me an email, or grab me on SDF jabber.
TEXT Continued...
+++ More on Walled Gardens +++
Sunday, July 23, 2017 at 16:15
The discussions from Solderpunk and Jandal around walled gardens and
what makes them good or evil are interesting. Read them and come
back here for my thoughts, just follow the 'View Post or Comment'
link below.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Comments on Phlogs +++
Sunday, July 16, 2017 at 09:44
Below are some collected thoughts on a few interesting phlog posts
I've read recently where I felt I had something to comment on. I've
put a link to the original post in each case so you can follow it
through.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Privacy +++
Tuesday, July 11, 2017 at 16:18
The new 2600 is out, and it has a few articles talking about various
aspects of privacy and anonymity online, which got me to thinking
how difficult it is to opt-out from, well basically anything that
doesn't spy on you in some way. Take gmail. While it's relatively
easy for us geeks to simply not use it, it provides the MX records
for a remarkable number of private, edu and business domains. Many
more people than that have @gmail.com addresses. So you can have
your own email server, or use SDF for email, and in the end what
does it get you? When you reply to or send an email to anyone using
Google's email infrastructure, Google (and by extension, the NSA)
gets your IP address, email address and content (because, let's face
it, no one encrypts email). I've had my own email server for about
15 years, and will keep it as long as practicable, but it is
disheartening to see the hold one company has on email.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Downtime +++
Tuesday, July 04, 2017 at 14:05
Happy 4th of July! It's been a quiet day today. One oddity of
working for a US-based company in Canada is that I observe US
holidays. So unlike the rest of Canada, I have today off, and am
spending some time reading and catching up on various creative
outlets.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Happy 150th Canada Day! +++
Saturday, July 01, 2017 at 16:10
We're celebrating the sesquicentennial Canada Day here up
north. Since it's a Saturday, it kind of feels like a normal
weekend. We're just taking it easy, doing some outstanding home
projects and enjoying the company of family. I found this neat
ascii-art Canadian flag, and gopherpedia has more:
TEXT Continued...
+++ The Value of a Canadian Citizenship +++
Friday, June 23, 2017 at 14:15
Yesterday my daughter received her Canadian citizenship
certificate. Kids under 19 who are permanent residents get automatic
citizenship, the parent who is already a citizen just has to apply
on their behalf. If they are under 14 (which is the case with my
daughter) they do not have to take a written test or go to an oath
ceremony. My son, who is 16, took his citizenship test today, and
passed. So in a couple of months he gets sworn in and given his
certificate in a group ceremony.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Happy 30th Anniversary SDF! +++
Friday, June 16, 2017 at 17:21
) ) |# | ( *
. ( . \___/ .
+ .-"-. * /^ + (
/ \ ) ( .-"-. ) +
. |# | ( * / \ ( )
\___/ ) ( |# | ( '
* /^ ) \___/
( * ' ( ^\ * '
. \ , , , , , ' \ +
) | | | | | ) .
* . @%@%@%@%@%@%@ ( )
( { happy } \ ( *
) * { birthday! } ) (
( @%@%@%@%@%@%@%@%@ ) '
+ { SDF } * (
{ 1987 - 2017 } . )
jgs { June 16 } (
* @%@%@%@%@%@%@%@%@%@ +
TEXT Continued...
+++ The Modern Web +++
Thursday, May 18, 2017 at 13:44
Solderpunk has a well thought-out commentary on the issues with web
apps:
TEXT Continued...
+++ Gopher to Web Proxy +++
Tuesday, May 09, 2017 at 15:51
I recently setup the gophper proxy [0] on my SDF web page [1]. It
has a few quirks (like not handling binary downloads all the time),
but overall seems to work reasonably well.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Update to the Slerm Phlogging Engine +++
Monday, May 08, 2017 at 09:58
This is a small update fixing a bug with selector line
endings. Basically, with my last update I mistakenly used \r\n as
the line ending for the comment file output, resulting in odd
formatting bugs. So now \r\n is strictly limited to direct gopher
output.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Settling Down in Canada +++
Saturday, February 25, 2017 at 19:40
I've mentioned before our intent to move to Canada. I'm a dual
US-Canadian citizen, so at least for me it was easy. I moved last
April to Quebec, in the process sponsoring my wife and kids for
permanent residency. It took 16 months in total, but after much
paperwork and stress, it is done. On January 23rd, 2017, my family
became landed Canadian immigrants. Now begins the process of
settling in - my wife has to trade in her US driver's license, we
had to sign everyone up for provincial healthcare, and we are
learning french.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Other SDF Phlogs +++
Tuesday, January 03, 2017 at 16:28
I was pleased to see a bit more activity in gopherspace here at SDF,
a few more phlogs I found linked from the phlogosphere page. I
linked to them on the main page of my own gopher space, under a new
heading 'Other SDF Users With Interesting Gopher Spaces'.
TEXT Continued...