+++ OTR for the Holidays +++
Monday, December 30, 2019 at 09:31
I've been doing a lot of old-time-radio (OTR) listening over the
holidays, something I mentioned before [0] and have continued to
enjoy over the years. Archive.org has a huge (and growing)
collection [1] if you have an interest in sampling the shows. Some
of the best series include Gunsmoke, Escape, Lights Out, CBS Radio
Mystery Theater (CBSRMT) [2], X Minus One, and Nightfall.
TEXT Continued...
+++ On 16 Years of Blogging +++
Saturday, December 14, 2019 at 01:04
Congrats to 'The Boston Diaries' on 20 years of blogging [0]. It's
even more amazing that that 20 years is available all in one
place. I had to go into the wayback machine to figure out that my
first blog post was on 12/19/2003 - so almost 16 years.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Fetching Articles With Images +++
Wednesday, December 11, 2019 at 03:15
I like that Shane [0] provides local text copies of articles for
viewing on gopher, and I decided to do the same for the EFF article
in my last phlog entry [1].
TEXT Continued...
+++ EFF Corporate Surveillance +++
Wednesday, December 11, 2019 at 02:59
The EFF has a very informative article on corporate surveillance in
all its forms - on the web and in real life [0][1]. It's long but
well worth reading. A lot of it won't be new to many of us on the
small internet, at least in concept. I was certainly aware that all
these forms of tracking existed, but I learned things I did not know
about how the various methods work and the lengths the data brokers
will go to tie behavioral data to a real person.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Story Telling Response to tfurrows +++
Wednesday, December 11, 2019 at 03:18
Tfurrows has a wonderful post about story-telling [0]. The story of
his older friend is very touching, and reminded me of my own
experiences with seniors, first with my grandparents as a child,
then in high school as a volunteer teacher for an elderhostel
program (I taught basic computer usage to seniors - on Commodore
VIC-20s, if I may date myself) and later as a paramedic. The latter
was not always under the best of circumstances [1], of course, but
there were moments I enjoyed, generally routine inter-hospital
transfers of older patients who were well enough and willing to
engage in conversation as they rode in the back of an ambulance.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Recent Reads Follett and Hertling +++
Saturday, November 30, 2019 at 18:03
I've been reading a lot lately, work has been crazy and I find
leaving myself an hour before bed to read does wonders to relax me
so I can sleep. Historical fiction has always been a favorite of
mine, recently I finished up Ken Follett's [0] Kingsbridge
trilogy. I read the first novel in the series (The Pillars of the
Earth) in 2018, and just finished the other two. They are not light
books (1000+ pages each) but are so engrossing you hardly notice how
long they are. I highly recommend them for any fans of historical
fiction, in particular early European history. All three books span
a period of 500 years, the 12th - 17th centuries.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Ed Rlwrap Tip +++
Tuesday, September 03, 2019 at 13:35
There are a few good tutorials on the 'ed' editor floating around
gopherspace, the one I've most recently seen is from KatolaZ [0][1].
It's nice and simple, but I find the actual line editing a bit
sparse - neither the GNU nor BSD versions of ed are linked with GNU
readline, so you don't have access to the usual arrow, ctrl-a,
ctrl-e, alt-d, etc. keys. But it's really easy to add this
functionality, using 'rlwrap', like so:
TEXT Continued...
+++ Consume Less, Create More +++
Tuesday, August 27, 2019 at 19:19
Shane posted an essay by an unknown author, "Consume Less, Create
More" [0]. It is an inspiring essay. I've been aware of the
relationship between my overall happiness and how much I create for
some time, in my case my main source of creativity is the material I
create for the D&D games I run, supplemented by journal/blog/phlog
writing. Which brings to mind another point - you don't need to create
for anyone but yourself. Creating is harder if you are constantly
worrying what others might think of your creations.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Crappy Cellular +++
Saturday, August 24, 2019 at 13:43
My wife and I were discussing how our efforts to improve at French
are hampered by the crappy quality of cellular voice calls.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Privacy Replies +++
Thursday, August 22, 2019 at 19:51
SDF phlogger fallingknife has an insightful reply to my 'privacy is
dead' rant [0]. He brings up something I did not about government
overreach with our private data. Also this:
TEXT Continued...
+++ Library Nostalgia +++
Saturday, August 17, 2019 at 20:48
Growing up in a small-town, the library was within walking distance
of our house, so I frequently made the trip alone (this was the late
70s, and as my fellow Gen-X'ers can attest, kids did things like
that then). Down our own street, up the sidewalk to the center of
town, and across main street, then in the back door. Past a water
fountain and into the library proper, the smell of the books hit you
as soon as you opened the heavy inner doors.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Privacy is Dead +++
Wednesday, August 14, 2019 at 16:48
I was listening to a news radio story about a woman who tried to
divorce herself completely from the big five tech companies (you can
guess which ones), which did not go well. She found it was
effectively impossible, given the hold these companies have on the
internet. Many of us here in the gopher underground or on the small
internet have done the same, but really how effective is it?
TEXT Continued...
+++ Summer in Quebec +++
Monday, July 01, 2019 at 20:52
Happy Canada Day [0] to my fellow Canucks. I've been enjoying the
summer weather here and trying to spend more time outdoors while I
can - mostly walking and riding my bike. We're lucky enough to be
within walking distance of downtown, round-trip is about 4km and
it's mainly sidewalk, which is convenient.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Republic Updates +++
Sunday, June 02, 2019 at 16:00
A while back, I mentioned that the Small Internet[0][1] certainly
could be a collection of protocols in stripped-down form. Others had
this idea as well, including solderpunk [2], who has decided to do
something about it with his 'opinionated' and minimal web server
shizaru [3]. That now runs on a VPS (thanks to user visiblink) and
offers web space to any circumlunar.space user who wants it [4][5].
TEXT Continued...
+++ Devuan to the Rescue +++
Saturday, May 11, 2019 at 15:25
I mentioned a while back that I was fed-up with systemd [0], and was
considering installing Devuan on my personal mail server. I finally
did just that and I have to say it has given me reason to like
Debian again (by way of Devuan of course). As far as I can tell,
Devuan ASCII [1] is indistinguishable from Debian 9, minus the
systemd virus.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Various Responses - Sol, Oldfolio, Jynx +++
Monday, December 28, 2020 at 14:42
Sol over at the Zaibatsu [0] talks about social media as an
anti-social influence, and discusses blocking large swaths of IP
space associated with the worst offenders.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Phlog Update is Done +++
Monday, March 11, 2019 at 03:38
As noted a few days ago, I wanted to re-work my phlog to make it a
bit simpler and easier to both update and navigate. There are no
helper scripts, I just create the post file in my ~gopher/phlog
directory, and add a line to the gophermap. Very quick and painless,
and all done from within emacs.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Phlog Revamp, Response to Solderpunk +++
Friday, March 08, 2019 at 19:09
I'm considering a revamp of my phlog much as logout did recently[0],
with a main gophermap and a simple listing of all posts for all
years on one page. It's certainly possible to to this and preserve
the original links, since the gophermap gives you one level of
indirection (except for slerm links, which I would just leave online
after converting).
TEXT Continued...
+++ Native Gopher on Firefox +++
Tuesday, February 26, 2019 at 01:43
I was able to get gopher working again in Firefox using OverbiteNX
[0], which basically allows native gopher rendering using an
external network service. It's not hard - just a two-step install,
one for the extension and one manual install of the network service
called Onyx [1]. It's nice to browse gopher in Firefox now and again
and not have to worry about rendering images or other binary
formats. I find it preferable to using one of the gopher-to-web
proxies, which don't correctly render all gopher sites.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Thoughts on Small Internet +++
Sunday, February 24, 2019 at 18:08
First, let me say that both the Small and Large Internets [0] rely
on the infrastructure, methodologies and software created decades
ago that were a result of open collaboration between highly skilled
and creative people. The effort was funded largely by public tax
dollars and created for the public good. One only has to look at the
lack of security in the original, core Internet protocols (DNS, BGP,
SMTP) to see that the people working on them could not conceive of
their creations being used for nefarious purposes.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Quick Update, Thanks and Perl +++
Friday, January 18, 2019 at 01:52
Just a quick phlog post as I've been insanely busy at work and left
with no energy to phlog lately. Work on the Republic has settled
down somewhat, the new user documentation is done and we continue to
get new user requests, we're now up to 12 users! We still have
plenty of room, I'll most likely stop once we get to 64 users, so
keep those requests coming!
TEXT Continued...
+++ More Republic Updates +++
Monday, December 31, 2018 at 16:43
Work on the Republic and the greater circumlunar.space universe
continues! Zaibatsu sundog visiblink has setup an XMPP server for
use by all circumlunar.space users [0]. This is a really great idea,
thanks to visiblink for setting that up. I've tested connections
from the Republic to xmpp.circumlunar.space and they work great,
using mcabber.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Republic New Users & Update +++
Friday, December 28, 2018 at 14:16
The Republic had four new user requests this week (three of them
yesterday and today), as I set them up you'll see their gopher holes
come online. Lntl was the first, and he has already started updating
his phlog [0]. The others will be linked from the Republic's gopher
homepage in the next few days. Welcome all!
TEXT Continued...
+++ Registration Open for Republic +++
Saturday, December 15, 2018 at 15:55
Registration is now open at republic.circumlunar.space [0]! And just
in time as the flagship zaibatsu server is now full and no longer
accepting new users.
TEXT Continued...
+++ FreeBSD and Republic.circumlunar.space Update +++
Wednesday, December 05, 2018 at 16:26
The new republic server is running FeeeBSD 11.2. I haven't worked
with FreeBSD in a long while and I'm enjoying getting my hands dirty
again - I used to run my personal email server on FreeBSD, way back
on version 6 (or thereabouts). I later migrated my server to Debian
where it has run for years, although my last upgrade just a few
months ago was to Devuan, as I could not stomach a switch to
systemd.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Coming Soon - Republic.circumlunar.space +++
Saturday, December 01, 2018 at 03:11
Solderpunk and I have been discussing adding a new server to the
circumlunar.space universe (hereinafter called the verse). It would be
similar in nature to his own server zaibatsu.circumlunar.space. At
first it will offer gopher hosting and shell access, with local email
(just among the circumlunar servers), and fairly quickly thereafter a
shared or federated bbs, so that users can post and read bbs (gboard)
updates from users on other servers in the verse.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Email Providers and Pubnix +++
Tuesday, November 06, 2018 at 02:25
Cdmnky talks about email providers [0]. I tried protonmail briefly but
deleted my account, it seemed to me to be a bit gimmicky, and less
than useful without direct imap support.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Cannabis Now Legal in Canada +++
Thursday, October 18, 2018 at 03:51
Well today cannabis became legal in Canada. Here in Quebec, it's
legal to possess up to 30 grams for anyone 18 or over. Of course the
news has been full of warnings with stories focusing on side effects
and kids. I sense a bit of discomfort from certain professionals
talking about legally using a psychoactive drug, but I think it will
all be fine. My own experience as a paramedic has shown me the evils
of alcohol abuse, but I don't see any reason to fear cannabis, which
generally makes people mellow and hungry. Not really a recipe for
violence.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Maps and Bugout +++
Monday, October 08, 2018 at 16:49
Tomasino talks about maps and bugout bags [0]. Paper maps are
undervalued as a resource. I've been steered wrong (literally) by
google maps many times, due to new construction or just plain bad
data. The heavy and ongoing construction around Montreal is a prime
example. I've never been sent off course by a decent map, even in
cases of construction blockage it gives you a large overview and
sense of your position that those small smartphone screens just
can't match. And of course topo maps are a necessity for extended
wilderness treks. When we travel we always have maps of the areas we
are traveling to in the glove box, as a backup.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Systemd and Tags +++
Saturday, October 06, 2018 at 22:24
I'm so fed up with systemd. I wrestle with it at work where we have
nothing but RHEL7 servers. At home, I tried recently to install
gophernicus on my home workstation, Debian 8 (Jesse) - the first
release they switched to systemd. Somehow the installer sets up a
listening gopher server on IPv6 only, and the systemd interface is
completely broken. I don't even want to spend the time to debug it,
the CLI interface and config file layout is so awful. I think I'll
install Devuan and say goodbye to systemd.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Fall Foliage and Thanksgiving +++
Friday, October 05, 2018 at 20:54
It's supposed to be nice tomorrow here in Quebec, sunny and 16. The
wife and I will probably head out on our bikes for a bit, or perhaps
go on a fall hike. The leaves are already turning, another week or
so and we'll be at peak fall foliage. Always my favorite time of
year.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Gophernicus is Back +++
Sunday, September 30, 2018
I see tomasino posted a bboard request [0] to revert gopher.club
back to gophernicus, and also to upgrade it, and it appears that is
done now. Very nice!
[0] gopher://gopher.black/1/phlog/20180929-sdf-gopher-servers
TEXT Continued...
+++ SDF Nuked Gophernicus Again +++
Friday, September 28, 2018
Sigh. It seems gopher.club has changed its gopherd to Bucktooth...
again, and with no warning... again... breaking all gopher moles
(CGIs)... again. Sdf.org still uses gophernicus, however, which is
kind of confusing, especially if you read the gopher tutorial and
setup a CGI like it describes there, only to have it fail when your
phlog gets listed on gopher.club.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Books vs. E-books +++
Sunday, September 16, 2018
My wife and I had a discussion about books the other day. She is
reading a large hardcover, a book she got from English section of
the local library. She mentioned how much better she likes reading
actual books. I agreed, but it got me to thinking why I actually
feel this way. E-readers do have advantages, but something is
missing that makes reading from an e-reader seem less than
appealing. I think it is that e-books are sterile, they don't
provide the same sensory experience as real books. With a real book
you have the feel of the pages as you turn them. The visible
feedback as to just how much of the book you have read, as measured
by the thickness of the pages remaining. The smell of the book
itself. The ease with which you can hold it while reclining on your
couch. Flipping back a few pages to remember a character's name or
plot point while keeping your current position secure with a
finger. All combine to make a complete experience that e-readers
cannot match.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Reading List: Ken Follett +++
Wednesday, August 29, 2018
I just finished reading a very good book, 'Eye of the Needle' by Ken
Follett. It's a thriller set in WWII England, about the hunt for a
German spy. Very compelling reading, Follett is a great
writer. Mostly character-driven, but somehow he keeps you wanting
to turn the page. If you like historical fiction in particular
you'll enjoy it. I read another of his books recently, 'Pillars of
the Earth', which was equally engrossing, set in the early
middle-ages. There is a sequel to that latter one which is on my
"to-read" list.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Positive Changes at SDF +++
Saturday, August 18, 2018
I've been away from SDF for a bit, but I caught up on bboard today
and notice signs of increased responsiveness from the 'membership'
account. It seems to be replying to each and every requests thread,
and a lot of the helpdesk ones as well. I see more frequent emails
on new features, some like ssh-over-https that were requested by
users with a fairly quick turnaround time in implementation. I'm not
sure if this is smj or a group of admins (more likely the latter),
but the attention is welcome and long overdue. Thanks SDF!
TEXT Continued...
+++ Home Ownership +++
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
We've been looking into buying a house recently, two years after we
sold our house in the US. We've been renting a house in Canada ever
since, and I kind of like it.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Reply to Tfurrows on Canada +++
Friday, July 27, 2018
Tfurrows ruminates on Canadian citizenship for himself and his kids
[0]. This is exactly the situation I was in - born prior to 2009, to
a Canadian father outside of Canada. I was easily able to reclaim my
Canadian citizenship.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Congrats to Tomasino +++
Thursday, July 26, 2018
Congrats to Tomasino on getting his Italian citizenship [0], and
welcome to the US expat club [1]! I have never been to Iceland, but
have always wanted to visit, I think it would be a wonderful place
to settle. Moving to another country is quite an ordeal, but well
worth it. I hope it all works out for you!
TEXT Continued...
+++ I'm not Surprised +++
Tuesday, June 12, 2018
I'm not surprised [0], the web has been a mess for some time, but
it's really, painfully bad as of 2018. The wholesale move to
client-side, dynamic page generation is partly to blame. And for
what purpose? Client-side designs are harder to test, and more
brittle as far as dealing with odd browser dependencies. They are
also slower than generating content directly on the server-side,
when you consider that the content still has to come from the
server, except now it is coming from dozens of RPCs (add up the
network overhead of each request). Let's not forget all the
javascript loaded from third-party websites used for tracking and
ads, these slow down the sites even more.
TEXT Continued...
+++ CLI Translation Utility +++
Sunday, June 10, 2018
I came across a great command line translation utility 'translate
shell' [0]. It provides a script 'trans', which is written in pure
bash and gives an interface to the most popular online translation
sites (by default it will use Google translate). Here is an example
of it translating one of my recent French phosts [1]. The
translation is pretty accurate, at least enough to convey the
meaning. It has loads of options and I could see it being used to
facilitate a gopher-based translation site.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Finally Spring +++
Saturday, May 12, 2018
It appears spring has finally arrived in Québec, after a bout of
unseasonably cold weather. My walks are more pleasant now, with the
trees budding and things coming to life in general.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Android Gopher Client +++
Thursday, May 03, 2018
I came across a new Android gopher client called 'DiggieDog'
[0]. Nothing outstanding, but it works fine as a basic client and
even has bookmark support. It has the usual issues with garbled
display of ascii-art and line wrap, but I'm not sure it's possible
to fix those in all cases in the mobile format.
TEXT Continued...
+++ On Losing Weight +++
Monday, April 02, 2018
Txminth talks about his diet [0] - congrats on losing that weight!
I, too have been following the "hacker's diet" recently and counting
calories. My target is 1800 per day with a brisk walk most days
(five days a week). I've lost six pounds in two weeks. I have been
doing the walks for about two years, but my weight always held
steady until now. Counting calories really makes you aware of how
much you are eating.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Responses on Attention and Atheism +++
Monday, April 02, 2018
Solderpunk shared a link to an article on getting your attention
back [0], I agree it was not very insightful. But it made me think
of how digital books can sometimes impact attention negatively, at
least for me.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Skiing and a Gopher Mirror +++
Sunday, March 18, 2018
We're having a snowy and cold March here in Quebec, but the clouds
broke today and it was sunny and -8. It turned out to be a perfect
day for some cross-country skiing - my wife and I got in 8km this
afternoon. The conditions were phenomenal, with minimal wind, nice,
cold snow (the kind that makes that satisfying hard scrape as your
skis travel over it) and no ice to speak of.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Remembering Prepping +++
Wednesday, March 14, 2018
Reading Melton's phlog [0] has made me miss my own experiments in
self-sufficiency and preparedness.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Resp. to Tomasino and Jynx +++
Sunday, March 11, 2018
Tomasino moved his gopher hole away from SDF [0], it's now
self-hosted on a RPi. He cites the recent stealth changes to SDF's
gopher implementation as his main reason for moving.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Emacs and Remote Editing +++
Thursday, March 08, 2018
I've been working from the Meta-array (MA) lately since I'm finding
it a bit more responsive as far as editing and saving
documents. That probably has to do with the heavy use of the cluster
and that fact that you're always working over an NFS mount (although
I must say it's better lately on NetBSD 8.0 beta).
TEXT Continued...
+++ Text Formatting and Emacs +++
Wednesday, March 07, 2018
There have been lots of interesting posts lately about text
formatting tools [0][1][2][3][4] (I particularly like the artistic
bent of jynx's and cat's posts with the embedded ascii art). Since
I'm an Emacs guy I've used muse mode in the past - this is what I
wrote the SDF Emacs tutorial and cheatsheet in. For that they were
invaluable since I had one source document and could generate HTML,
text, and epub [5]. Speaking of formatting, in Emacs there is a
minor mode called refill-mode, it auto-fills paragraphs as you type,
with whatever justification you set ('M-x set-justification-full' is
what I'm using for this post). You can also disable refill-mode and
just manually fill paragraphs with M-q every so often.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Response to Solderpunk +++
Thursday, February 22, 2018
Just a quick reply to solderpunk, I would indeed be interested in an
80s-themed hotel room [0]. Genius! Alas, I agree modern (wo-)man
would be intent on just taking selfies with console TVs and princess
phones.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Woodnotes Guides on Gopher +++
Monday, February 19, 2018
I love finding new gopher sites. I posted a link to the classic
'Woodnotes Guide to Mutt' [0] in bboard today. After perusing the
author's blog, I discovered he uses gopher [1], and his site is
mirrored there, including all his tech guides [2].
TEXT Continued...
+++ I Miss the 80s +++
Friday, February 16, 2018
With apologies to my younger readers.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Long Live Bongusta +++
Thursday, February 08, 2018
Just a quick note to thank Logout for Bongusta [0] and for keeping
it around [1]. I use it every day and I'm sure others do as well.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Thoughts on Finding Recently Updated SDF Gopherholes +++
Saturday, February 03, 2018
I and some others have noticed some issues recently with the SDF
phlogosphere display [0] and the sort order. So you know the
history, way back in 2009, smj posted this to the GOPHER bboard:
TEXT Continued...
+++ Long-Ass Gophermaps +++
Wednesday, January 31, 2018
Regarding Solderpunk's gopher bboard reply, on overly long
gophermaps and how VF-1 does not handle them with a pager:
TEXT Continued...
+++ The VF-1 Gopher Client +++
Monday, January 22, 2018
So I took some time today to put solderpunk's new gopher client VF-1
[0][1] through its paces. I'm using whatever version is currently
installed on SDF. First let me say that I love the interface design,
despite it being quite different from lynx and gopher I got used to
it pretty quickly (as in a few minutes). I think anyone with REPL
experience will feel at home with it. The search facility and
veronica commands are very useful. I particularly like the
auto-generation of menus after each operation, whether that be a
search or link extraction (and that last is quite handy).
TEXT Continued...
+++ Pale Blue Dot +++
Tuesday, January 16, 2018
I've been keeping a low profile lately as post-holiday work has been
a bear and I've not had the motivation to write. But I'm catching up
on things today and saw a phost by gunnarfrost that caught my eye
[0]. He mentions the view of earth from space and how this has
shaped our philosophical views of the meaning of life. This made me
think of Carl Sagan's the 'Pale Blue Dot' [1][2], which is about the
view of Earth from Voyager I, seen as a tiny speck from about six
million kilometers away. Here is the quote:
TEXT Continued...
+++ Thoughts on Pseudo-anonymity +++
Tuesday, January 02, 2018
Solderpunk talks about pseudonymity [0] and the issues surrounding
it. Thankfully I do not recall ever reading that bit of bad advice
by Eric Raymond.
TEXT Continued...
+++ Welcome 2018 +++
Monday, January 01, 2018
Welcome to the new year, fellow gopherites! I notice some phloggers
have archived their 2017 posts into a sub-folder, with an apology
for breaking links. I see the most impact to that will be in the
'reply' posts where we link to one another, although the naming
convention from here on out should prevent that (phlog/ ->
phlog/2017/, for example). When I thought about archiving my posts,
I realized this a good reason to use gophermaps for a phlog - that
one layer of abstraction above raw directory indexes allows one to
archive posts transparently. In my case, I only needed to copy the
2017 posts into an empty subfolder, with their gophermap:
TEXT Continued...
+++ 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
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. ( . \___/ .
+ .-"-. * /^ + (
/ \ ) ( .-"-. ) +
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\___/ ) ( |# | ( '
* /^ ) \___/
( * ' ( ^\ * '
. \ , , , , , ' \ +
) | | | | | ) .
* . @%@%@%@%@%@%@ ( )
( { 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...