In reverse chronological order gopher://tilde.pink/0/~bencollver/log/atom.xml 2026-04-24 gopher://tilde.pink/1/~bencollver/log/2026-04-24-the-librarians/ Ben Collver The Librarians (JS) It seemed to me that most of the documentary focused on school librarians. For me, the most disturbing scene was footage of a book burning bonfire in Tennessee in 2022, recorded on a phone, where a kid was asking his mother for books so he could throw them on the fire too. This is a historic time in the USA where book banning is happening at a scale never seen before. History shows a clear correlation between burning books and then eventually burning people. There are many instances of this dynamic recorded in history from modern to ancient times, and on multiple continents. Most of my thoughts on the topic are cynical. These days i feel old enough that i can accept a role where i cheer on the young people who are fighting the good fight. I do not have to fight it myself. Around the time of the civil war, the USA began measuring illiteracy at a national level. Literacy peaked in the 1970's, and illiteracy is currently at the highest level ever measured in this nation's history. In this context, book banning is largely symbolic. I saw a new elementary school constructed on River Road in Eugene. The architecture disturbed me. It looked a lot like a prison, right down to the bars on the windows. When i ponder a hypothetical school library of highly sanitized, soulless books that imprisoned children don't want to read anyway, i see book banning as a symptom, not the disease itself. Kids who want to something alive, fresh, and inspiring, will naturally look elsewhere. Things may get rough for a while, but there is a way out. Human nature cannot build any walls that it can't also break down. tags: censorship,collapse,freedom,political,video Tags ==== censorship collapse freedom political video ]]> 2026-04-24 09:17:33 gopher://tilde.pink/1/~bencollver/log/2026-04-19-bike-wreck/ Ben Collver ]]> 2026-04-22 06:58:58 gopher://tilde.pink/1/~bencollver/log/2026-04-14-whos-the-red-queen-by-ray-faraday-nelson/ Ben Collver "Lobotomy!" Prim little Nurse Wilson, standing in line in the bright white hospital cafeteria, pronounced the word with a certain satisfaction. "For who?" Eddie the Orderly asked, looming over her. "The Red Queen." "You're putting me on!" His reaction was so violent it startled her. Easy there, he told himself silently. "Would I lie, Eddie? I heard it from Dr. Heinroth. He's her doctor. And the rest of the staff agrees it'll make her more accessible to treatment. I know lobotomy has been out of fashion for a while, but now it's making a comeback." Eddie paid the cashier and they carried their trays to a nearby table. "What right have they...?" began Eddie. "What right have you? It's not our decision to make." "I don't believe in lobotomy." He had seated himself, but instead of digging in with his usual gusto, he frowned down into his food like an offended young gorilla. "You say you don't believe in drugs either, but still it's you that administers them to the patients in your ward when you're on duty. They seem to trust you, the poor things, almost as if you were one of them." She settled into her chair with an arch smile. Eddie was universally regarded as stupid--he had indeed never finished high school--but he understood what she meant by this little dig. He had graduated to the job of orderly from an even lower rank in the institutional pecking order. He had once been one of the patients. "Do your duty, Eddie." She was talking with her mouth full. "Our's not to reason why, you know." But he was thinking, /I won't let them/. Lobotomy was wrong in itself, but in the case of the Red Queen it was out of the question. The Red Queen was special, not like the others. He had spent a great deal of time with her, and knew every detail of her history, though there was not a great deal to know. The Red Queen had been found in the hills near Berkeley four years ago, wandering naked through the night and weeping. Neither the police nor, later, the doctors had been able to understand a word of the so-called "language" she spoke; she, in turn, seemed unable to understand English, Spanish or any other of the many languages that had been tried on her. All efforts to learn her identity had failed, and she had been diagnosed as a schizophrenic. (When in doubt, diagnose schizophrenia, as Dr. Heinroth always said.) During the reorganization of the state hospital system most of the other patients had been taken away, but the Red Queen remained, partly because she was an "interesting case", but mainly because she had absolutely no place else to go. Eddie looked across the table at Nurse Wilson, who was still talking though Eddie had ceased to pay attention. For an instant he was seized by the temptation to tell all, but stopped himself in the nick of time. He had a theory about the Red Queen, but up to now he had managed to keep it to himself. He thought she came from outer space. * * * "Ssh." Finger to lips, Eddie entered the dimly lit ward. Most of the beds were empty, but those few inmates in the room were sound asleep. Eddie had given them pills to make sure of that... except for the Red Queen. The Red Queen, clad in a shapeless white hospital shift, rolled over, sat up in bed and looked at him with those amazing dark orange eyes of hers, eyes no longer glazed and opaque with drugs as they had been for so long, but alert and curious. Eddie had not given her "the usual medication" for days. Both he and the staff on the other shifts had been giving her harmless placebos, though only Eddie knew of the substitution he'd made in her corner of the medicine cabinet, the corner that had contained the special tranquilizers her odd metabolism had seemed to require. Seeing her, Eddie hesitated. She looked in the dim light even stranger than usual. She was so tall for a woman... a good six foot three, and her short hair was of such an unusual texture more like an animal's pelt than a human's hair so dark and smooth and straight. But the strangest thing about her appearance was the color of her skin; it was red, not ruddy brown like the skin of an Indian, but really red, as if she had a permanent sunburn. /But,/ thought Eddie, /what's wrong with that? Everybody probably looks like that... where she comes from./ He advanced to her bedside, took her hand, and gestured toward the door. She frowned, puzzled, but got out of bed. He gave her a nurse's uniform, then looked away as she dressed. He knew it would be a tight fit, but he'd found none larger. Fifteen minutes later Eddie and the Red Queen were in his battered old Ford, cruising down the moonlit freeway toward Berkeley. * * * The Red Queen was well-named. As she sat on Eddie's bed, brushing her short purplish-black hair in the sunlight from the window, she looked every inch a queen, and she certainly was red. Was it her royal bearing that had kept him sleeping on the couch during the two weeks they'd been living here in this cramped apartment? (There were two rooms: the bedroom-livingroom and a kitchen... the toilet was down the hall.) Or was it her strangeness? She was beautiful, but not in a human way, hence not in a sexual way, even, as now, in the nude. It was as if--Eddie groped for the right simile--she were a wonderful thoroughbred racehorse. She put down the hairbrush, got up, went to the closet, and wiggled into one of the gaudy second-hand dresses Eddie had bought for her from the St. Vincent DePaul. "Teal?" he said to her. She turned to free him with a questioning expression. Yes, Teal was her name. He had learned her name, succeeding where all the doctors had failed. He grinned, pleased with himself "Teal, what you doing?" She answered him in her own language. The only word he could understand was his own name, which she pronounced "Eeeda." She went into the kitchen, heading for the back door. He followed her. "Teal, you can't go out." She had started to push open the screen door, smiling. He laid a restraining hand on her shoulder. The smile faded. She gazed for a moment longingly out at the sunlit backyard beyond the porch, then reluctantly allowed him to lead her back. They sat down at the kitchen table. He took her hands in his. "Teal, you got to understand. You can't go noplace. The cops--the police--they're looking for us. It's bad enough I got to go out for food, but you... they'd spot you in a minute, the way you look, the way you act, the way you can't talk. You're no ordinary Berkeley hippie. I mean, even here, where people are all kind of strange anyway, you'd stick out." He could tell from her blank expression he wasn't getting through. He sighed, then brightened. "Now Teal, I want to show you something I bought last time I was out." He opened a large brown paper bag that stood on the table near his elbow. "Look here. Teal." It was a kind of scroll. He unrolled it, revealing a map of the Solar System. "Earth," he said, pointing on the map. He pointed to himself. "Me, Eddie. Eddie from Earth. Where you from?" He pointed to her. Without hesitation she indicated the planet Earth on the chart. "No, no. Teal. Me from Earth! You from... who knows?" He shrugged. "Mars?" He pointed to Mars. She watched, not moving. "Venus? Saturn? The Moon?" She remained silent, her dark orange eyes following his moving forefinger. He couldn't conceal his disappointment. "Where, then?" Again she pointed to Earth. He thought a moment. Maybe she came from some other Solar System, from a planet a lot like Earth, maybe the same distance from some other sun. Excitedly he gestured skyward. "Some other sun! That's it, isn't it. Teal?" She was excited too, and, gesturing skyward, began speaking delightedly in her own language. He turned over the map. On the back were two star charts, one for the northern hemisphere and one for the southern. "Where, Teal? Here?" He pointed to the Big Dipper. "Here? Here?" The Great Bear. The Little Dipper. He looked up, saw her eyes were filled with hopelessness. "There, there. Teal baby." He patted her hands with his big meaty paw. "You'll get it right sooner or later." But in his mind was the thought, /Maybe she really is crazy/. * * * Eddie's money had run out. He didn't like to beg, but he begged. A lot of people begged in Berkeley, along Telegraph Avenue. He didn't like to steal, but he stole. A lot of people stole in Berkeley. They seemed to regard theft as a kind of political protest. Bad as he felt every time he slipped a can or two into the pockets of his overcoat in some supermarket, he felt worse when he happened to see a policeman or even a passing police car. He'd break into a sweat every time, thinking, /If they pick me up, what'll happen to her?/ Jail was bad, but not as bad as lobotomy. The rent was overdue and he hadn't the foggiest notion how he was going to pay it. Sooner or later he'd be evicted. He knew that, but could do nothing about it. He couldn't look for a job, couldn't put in for welfare. Anything like that was sure to bring his whereabouts to the attention of the police. He couldn't seek help from old friends, couldn't make new ones. What if someone saw Teal and started asking questions? Which story would he tell them? That he'd helped a madwoman to escape from an insane asylum? Or that she was a creature from outer space? No, he had to go it alone somehow. There was a danger in even going out of the apartment to steal or beg. What if she wasn't there when he got back? He'd gotten into the habit of locking her in, but she was clever. Someday, when she was ready, she'd find a way to break out. And the police would catch her. And the doctors would go to work on her. The breakthrough came one morning at dawn, after a whole night of patient working with her, he on one side of the kitchen table and she on the other. He had his face buried in his hands, feeling it was hopeless, that he'd never get through to her, when quite suddenly she'd broken the silence with the words, "Eddie. You want eat?" "What? What did you say?" "You want eat?" She pointed to his mouth. "Yes! Yes! Eat! You and me! We eat!" She fixed breakfast and he ate it, eggs with cheese spiced in that odd way she spiced everything, as if salty, not sour, was the opposite of sweet. From then on he hated to leave her even for an hour. There were so many words in the English language, but now she could learn at least all of them he knew. One evening, when he was finally certain she could understand his question, he asked her, "Where you from. Teal?" She looked at him a long time. Didn't she understand? He leaned across the kitchen table and grasped her wrist in his powerful fingers. "Teal, you're not from here, are you? You're not from this planet?" She didn't answer. There was a worried frown on her face. "Tell me, dammit. Teal! You're from the stars! Isn't that true?" "Yes." Her voice was very low. He let go her wrist and sat back, grinning. "I knew it! I knew it the minute I saw that beautiful red skin of yours." He began to laugh raggedly. She sat rubbing her wrist, regarding him seriously. * * * He sold the Ford, even though he was deathly afraid it would lead the police to him, and paid the back rent, with a little left over. He seemed to be able to think now, to find a way out. The winter rains came. Eddie bundled Teal up in raincoat, gloves, boots, rain hat and pants, so that hardly more than a few inches of red skin showed, then concealed her orange eyes behind dark glasses. Lots of people in Berkeley wore dark glasses when it was overcast, or even at night, for that matter. They went for a walk, arm in arm. Telegraph Avenue was one of those rare places where people are allowed to sit cross legged on the sidewalk and sell things, things made of wood, leather, cloth, beads and metal. The rain had stopped, though the cold wind hadn't, and the street merchants were out in force. As they strolled along. Teal said, "These people make things?" "That's right, babe." "They get money for them?" "Right again." "Money. Money gets food?" He chuckled. "You catch on fast to how we do things down here." "So we need money?" "We need money." "I can make things. You can sit here. You can get money for them." She had grown quite excited. He didn't like the idea at first. He wouldn't be with her so much, and there would be more risk from the police. He'd probably have to go to the police station to get a vendor's license. But what else could he do? He gave in. He bought her the raw materials and as soon as they got home, she started making jewelry. * * * The jewelry sold well; she was quick-fingered and skillful, and her designs were unique. When the weather was good, Eddie sat out on the sidewalk and sold things to tourists; when the weather was bad he sat at home and watched Teal work at the kitchen table. One day, about a month later, he had been sitting listening to the rain all afternoon, and as evening came on, said, "Teal, tell me about the stars." "I do not speak right." "Sure you do. You talk good now. I can understand every word. So start with the close stars and work out." Frowning, she began. "The closet star. That is not one star. It is three." She held up three fingers. "Three stars? He was delighted. "And around those three stars, how many planets?" "No planets." "No planets? Come on now!" "One star can have planets. Three stars together. No planets." She went on bending wire into tiny graceful shapes. "But there must be planets out there somewhere." "Yes. Many. When there is one star by itself and the star is not too big and not too small and not too hot and not too cold, then there is planets." Eddie leaned forward. "And on these planets... what kind of people are there?" "No people." "Well, what kind of animals?" "No animals." "There's got to be some kind of life!" He was indignant. "No life. No life anywhere." She sounded sad but somewhat impersonal. He jumped to his feet and bellowed, "Don't lie to me. Teal! There must be life out there! There must at least be life where you came from!" She looked at him, round-eyed with surprise at his sudden violence. "Yes. Where I come from. Yes, there is life." He sat down, calmer now. "Tell me about it." "My planet green and perfect. My planet a good place." "Go on!" "On my planet there is enough for all." "Yes?" "There is no money." "Never did like the damn stuff." "People not wear clothes." "That explains why you were naked when you first got here." "There is one king for the whole planet. You understand? There is peace." * * * Eddie leaned back with a sigh. "I kind of thought it would be like that. Maybe..." He hesitated. "Maybe when you go back, you can take me with you." She looked at him blankly. "I know you got to go home someday," he said gently. She burst into tears and ran into the bedroom. He stared after her, astonished. * * * The winter rains were over. The sunny days began. Teal sat with Eddie on the sidewalk, selling things to passersby. She wore a long-sleeved blouse, pants, boots, sunglasses and a big floppy hat. Nobody seemed to think there was anything strange about her, but Eddie didn't like it when anyone looked at her too long. Eddie had grown a long brown beard and long brown hair. In his T-shirt, jeans and sandals he looked exactly like a hundred other shaggy street people, fitting in so perfectly in the world of Telegraph Avenue that he was almost invisible. "How long does it take to get to your home?" he asked her. He was always asking her things like that. "No time at all," she answered patiently. "Come on. The truth now." "To come from another star, that takes a long long time, but on the ship it seems like a very short time. From here to nearest star, that takes a few days, maybe a week." She shrugged. "Or anyway /seems/ like a few days. But in those few days, many years pass." "When you go home... He stopped, seeing in her face the sudden grimace of anguish that appeared there whenever he mentioned her going home. What did that mean? He was baffled for an instant, as he always was, but this time an idea came to him. "You can't go home, can you, Teal?" His voice was soft. "No." She did not meet his gaze. "How come? Your spaceship wrecked?" "No. My ship is here, under a lake." He glanced at her with surprise, "But if your ship is okay..." "It is my world that is wrecked," she whispered. He felt embarrassed, tactless, but he had to ask her, "Then your mother, your father...?" "They are dead. Of all my people, there is now only me alive." "I'm sorry." She touched his arm. "I knew it would happen. I accepted it. I am what you call a... a soldier. I was sent out to learn a thing and come back and report. And I have done it. I have done what I was told to do." She smiled wistfully. "I learned there was no life in the stars, and now I report." "To who?" Like most of what she said this sounded to Eddie like some kind of riddle. "To you, Eddie." She laughed, but it was a bitter laugh, with an undertone of pain. * * * Teal was learning how to read and write. One afternoon, as they were walking home from the public library down one of Berkeley's quiet tree-lined streets, a police car pulled up alongside them, and Eddie and Teal were arrested. The charge, to their surprise, was possession of marijuana, though they were probably the only two people on Telegraph Avenue who had never possessed marijuana. At the police station, when no marijuana could be found on their persons, they were almost released, but before they could leave someone thought to check their fingerprints, and they were identified as the mad-woman and hospital orderly who had disappeared the previous year. Not exactly under arrest, yet not exactly free either, they were transported in a squad car to a nearby hospital and escorted into the office of one of the resident psychiatric social workers. /They're going to take her back,/ Eddie thought. /They're going to give her a lobotomy after all./ The social worker, obviously in a hurry, glanced at his wristwatch before shaking hands with Eddie. "You can call me Mike," said the balding, nervous little man. "Now if you'll be seated, young lady." Teal sat down in a chrome and plastic chair across the desk from him. "And you too, young man." Eddie sat in another chair beside her. The chairs, like everything else in the room, were modem and strictly functional. "You were diagnosed as a schizophrenic, miss?" "I suppose so," she answered. "I talked to your doctor Dr. Heinroth wasn't it? by phone. He said that before your escape you didn't communicate with people, that you couldn't even talk. Yet it. seems to me you're communicating well enough now." "I'm perfectly all right," she said calmly. "There's nothing wrong with me." "Yes. So I see. A spontaneous recovery. Schizophrenics do that sometimes. There are those within the profession who would say--off the record of course--that that's the only way a schizophrenic ever does recover. I'll be happy to inform your doctor of that. Now you, miss, can wait outside. I'd like to have a word with your friend here." As Teal got up and left, Eddie said numbly, "Just like that? Not even any tests?" Mike chuckled. "She can walk and talk. She has managed to keep out of trouble for a year. The way things are these days, with budget cuts and all, that's more than enough to keep you out of an institution." Teal had closed the door behind her. Mike's expression hardened. "But you, young man, could be subject to legal penalties if someone chose to bring charges." "Is anyone bringing charges?" Eddie demanded sharply. "No. No, I don't think so. Still, to clear matters up I'd like to ask you a few questions. It's to your best interests to answer them, young man, and answer them truthfully." Again his manner changed abruptly and smiling, he added, "You don't mind, do you?" "No," Eddie said uncertainly. "I guess not." Mike sat back in his swivel chair, making a little temple with his fingers. "Sometimes a schizophrenic makes a sudden recovery, it's true, but at other times the schizoid personality simply switches from one mode to another. A hebephrenic--someone completely withdrawn from the world--can turn into a paranoid, and a paranoid, though outwardly more normal, is also more dangerous. Delusions of grandeur and delusions of persecution is the usual pattern, and such a person can become dangerously violent either to assert the supposed superiority or to combat the supposed persecution." He leaned forward. "You've been living with the young lady, I gather, since her escape." "That's right." "Has she ever told you anything shall we say cosmic?" "Cosmic?" Eddie wondered if the social worker could somehow tell what someone was thinking by body language or some other super scientific magic. "Yes," Mike went on. "Has she claimed to be a goddess, for example." "No, not a goddess." "An angel? A demon? A creature from another planet?" Eddie hesitated before answering, "No, nothing like that." The social worker relaxed. "Excellent. Then all's well. If she does start in on such things however..." "I'll let you know." "I'd rather you'd look up someone else. We're kind of understaffed here..." Eddie left the office in a daze. "What did he say?" asked Teal, jumping up from the couch in the waiting room. "Nothing important," muttered Eddie. * * * Eddie, in his pajamas, sat on his couch and watched Teal undress. "Teal, can I ask a question?" "Of course." "On your planet, do men and women make love?" "Why yes, of course." Her orange eyes turned toward him, studying him. "I mean, do you do it the same way we do it?" "How do you do it?" she asked innocently. Unsteadily Eddie stood up and walked over to her, painfully aware of her nakedness, which up until now he had almost ceased to notice. "Like this." He took her in his arms and kissed her. A moment later he pulled back and looked at her almost angrily. "What's wrong, Eddie?" "I don't know. That kiss was so... so ordinary somehow." She laughed. "What did you expect?" He did not answer out loud, but thought, /Something out of this world/. A little after midnight. Teal and Eddie made love for the first time. It all went off perfectly naturally, too naturally. At two A.M., sitting up in bed beside her sleeping satisfied womanly body, he finally decided she wasn't from outer space after all. He felt like shaking her awake and shouting, "So you really are crazy!", but the habit of awe was not yet completely broken. It was the following morning when he at last nerved himself to confront her, across the breakfast table. "You're not really from outer space, are you?" He sat, arms folded on his broad chest, head cocked to one side, a faint superior smile on his lips. She turned away from the stove, and when she saw his face she gathered her bathrobe around her, though it was rather warm in the room, then said, softly but firmly, "No, I'm not." "Then why did you say you were?" "It seemed so important to you to believe it." "To me?" Eddie was dumbfounded. "I was afraid you'd..." Unconsciously she rubbed her wrist. "...you'd hurt me, if I didn't go along with the outer space thing." He thought, /How clearly she talks now!/ "I'd never hurt you, Teal. You must of had delusions of persecution." Her words came in a rush. "Don't turn me in, Eddie. I'm perfectly normal now. Promise you won't turn me in." "Of course I won't. Don't be silly. I can see you're okay, just like everybody else." And he thought, but did not say, /Ordinary/. Before he left the apartment, she tried to kiss him, but he wouldn't let her. He had a good day on Telegraph Avenue. "I cured a girl of schizophrenia," he told himself smugly. "And I did it when all medical science had given up on her." Around noon he met a very young, quite pretty girl. He'd heard a husky voice saying, "Any spare change, mister?" and when he'd looked up from the jewelry he had spread out on a blanket on the sidewalk, there she'd been. He didn't give her any spare change, but they fell into conversation and soon she was telling him that she'd run away from home, that her name was Isis Flower, and that she was hooked on speed. "I can cure you," Eddie said. "Nobody can cure me, man. I've tried to kick, but it's no use." "Leave it to Doctor Eddie!" After a while he and Isis Flower went to a little room where she was, as she put it, "crashing". "I don't actually live here," she explained, undressing. * * * Eddie awoke to find darkness and fog outside the window and Isis Flower gone, along with all the money he'd had in his wallet, though she had not, so far as he could tell, taken any of his jewelry from the battered old suitcase where he carried it. After getting dressed he looked listlessly around the room. There were things there, but they were all men's things. Eddie left quickly. Out in the street, under a fog-haloed streetlight, he paused and set down his suitcase. "Women!" he muttered. "Sooner or later they always rip you off." But then an odd thought struck him. Teal could have done the same thing to him that Isis Flower did. She could have, but she hadn't. He said to himself, "Hey, Teal don't have to stay with me now. She can talk. She can support herself with her jewelry. She's even learning to read and write. So why does she stay? Why don't she rob me and run? Every other female I've ever known, one way or another, sooner or later, has robbed me and run!" Maybe, after all, there was something special about the Red Queen. * * * Eddie burst into the apartment shouting delightedly, "Teal! Teal! I'm home!" There was no answer. Her note was on the kitchen table; Eddie, It was good that we tawked. I understann now that what I am is not what you want. My work on Earth is done. Goodby, Teal. The first thing he realized was that there were only a few words spelled wrong, and he felt a momentary flush of pride in himself as a teacher, and Teal as a student. Then another thought came to him. This was a suicide note. "Crazy bitch," he whispered, throwing himself down in his usual chair at the kitchen table. A phrase floated through his mind. It was something Teal had said. "My ship is here, under a lake." A picture came along with the phrase. In the picture Teal was standing on the edge of a lake, taking off her clothes. She was going to dive into the water; she was going to drown herself. That was where Teal had gone. Eddie was sure of it, the same as he'd been sure she was from outer space, but this time it was no nutty fantasy built for two. That crazy lady could really do it! He ran into the bedroom, jerked out a map of the San Francisco Bay Area he kept in his bureau drawer. A lake! A lake! There were a lot of lakes on the map. But it had to be a lake you could get to from the Berkeley hills with no clothes on. That's where she'd been found. And it had to be a lake deep enough to hide a spaceship. There was no spaceship there, of course, but Teal would believe there was! Only one lake filled the bill. The San Pablo Reservoir! He left the apartment without bothering to close the door behind him and ran out into the fog. Dashing along the street, he glanced into each parked car he passed. Ah, at last! Some fool had left the keys in the ignition. Eddie jumped in, started the car, and pulled away from the curb with a squeal of tires. * * * He'd gone through the tunnel, gas pedal to the floor, and was now in open country on the long downgrade on the other side of the coastal range. The fog was gone; the stars shone hard and clear this side of the hills and there were very few other cars on the freeway. Then he heard the wail of a police siren behind him and saw, in his rear view mirror, a flashing red fight. It was only then he began to have doubts. Maybe Teal wasn't going to make a suicide attempt. Maybe Teal would be back tomorrow morning, pleading to be forgiven. Maybe Teal wasn't crazy, or at least not as crazy as she had been. Maybe Teal, if she was going to kill herself, would do it somewhere else, in some other way. But he didn't slow down, just zoomed down the off-ramp and, tires screaming, slowed through a sharp left turn and careened onward along the narrow winding San Pablo Dam Road toward the reservoir. The police car lost ground, not daring to drive as fast as Eddie along such dangerous curves, but even when he couldn't see them, Eddie could hear them back there somewhere, with their infernal wailing siren. At the crest of a hill Eddie saw, fer ahead of him, another red flashing fight coming from the other direction. He was caught! He knew there were no turnoffs in this section. He slammed on the brakes and, as the car screeched to a stop in a cloud of dust, he sprang out and sprinted for the woods. As he passed the first dark looming mass of pines, he heard the police cars wail to a halt on the highway. When they shouted something at him with their bullhorn, he paid no attention, just kept running. When he paused for breath and looked back, he could see flashlights moving in the gloom, coming closer, could hear gruff voices issuing commands, complaining, swearing. He went on, panting, dizzy. And suddenly burst out of the pine grove to see, at the foot of the hill ahead, the flat dark expanse of the reservoir. He fell, staggered to his feet, kept on running down the steep slope. Then he saw her. She had dropped her clothes and was walking slowly, like the queen she had always seemed to be, toward the water's edge. "Teal!" Eddie shouted. She glanced back, saw him. Then dove gracefully into the black water. Eddie was tearing off his clothes as he ran. He had only to pause a moment to rip off his pants and shoes, then he dove in after her. The water was cold and good; it refreshed him. Would he have the strength to drag Teal out when he caught up with her? She was a tall woman but... yes, he could handle her. But he had not realized it would be so dark in the reservoir. He could hardly tell which way was up, let alone see where Teal had gone. He thought, /Hey, I could drown, too!/ But then he heard a deep humming sound, like the bass pipe of a church organ that echoed and re-echoed in some impossible immense cathedral. And there, below him, was a dull yellowish glow. He swam deeper. There was something there, something huge but long and thin and streamlined, something with windows brightly lit. In its top there was an opening. But his lungs were bursting. He clawed his way to the surface, sucked in air in great desperate gulps, caught a glimpse of the flashlights of the police moving along the shore, then dove again. The opening was smaller now. Like the iris in a camera, it was closing. With a last violent effort, he passed through and found himself in the airlock of the starship. * * * The Earth was rapidly shrinking. Eddie watched through a window that stretched from floor to ceiling and from wall to wall. "Where are we going?" he asked, "To your home planet?" Teal turned from the maze of glowing colored lights on the control panel and looked at him through the semi-darkness of the large oblong room. "Earth is my home planet, Eddie. We are going on a little trip, you and I. I want you to see some of the things I've seen. Since you insist on sharing my mission, you must also share my knowledge." The sound in the room grew softer, a gentle hum now instead of a drone. "But..." He faltered. "When will we come back?" She pushed off and came drifting toward him, almost as if she were still under water, her naked red body glowing in the light from the control panels and the stars outside. "It will be only a few months from now, as time flows within the starship," she said. "But when we return to Earth, your nation, the United States of America, will be as lost and forgotten a legend as my homeland, the place you call Atlantis." As the starship accelerated steadily toward the speed of light, behind them the Sun, the planets, and all the stars gradually turned a sullen and glowering red, then faded out into blackness. author: Nelson, Ray Faraday detail: source: I found the illustrator interesting too: Jeffrey Catherine Jones In Alice in the Wonderland, the Red Queen was the one who said "Off with her head!" In this short story, the nickname is given to the one who is scheduled for a lobotomy. Interesting that her real name is Teal, which is blue-green or the color of planet Earth. tags: sci-fi,short story Tags ==== sci-fi short story ]]> 2026-04-15 08:01:15 gopher://tilde.pink/1/~bencollver/log/2026-04-12-notes-on-clarifying-man-pages-by-julia-evans/ Ben Collver I've spent a lot of time writing cheat sheets for tools (tcpdump, git, dig, etc) which have a man page as their primary documentation. This is because I often find the man pages hard to navigate to get the information I want. Lately I've wondering--could the man page /itself/ have an amazing cheat sheet in it? What might make a man page easier to use? I'm still very early in thinking about this but I wanted to write down some quick notes. I asked some people on Mastodon for their favourite man pages, and here are some examples of interesting things I saw on those man pages. Mastodon post (JS) an OPTIONS SUMMARY ================== If you've read a lot of man pages you've probably seen something like this in the SYNOPSIS: once you're listing almost the entire alphabet, it's hard ls [-@ABCFGHILOPRSTUWabcdefghiklmnopqrstuvwxy1%,] grep [-abcdDEFGHhIiJLlMmnOopqRSsUVvwXxZz] The rsync man page has a solution I've never seen before: it keeps its SYNOPSIS very terse, like this: Local: rsync [OPTION...] SRC... [DEST] rsync man page and then has an "OPTIONS SUMMARY" section with a 1-line summary of each option, like this: --verbose, -v increase verbosity --info=FLAGS fine-grained informational verbosity --debug=FLAGS fine-grained debug verbosity --stderr=e|a|c change stderr output mode (default: errors) --quiet, -q suppress non-error messages --no-motd suppress daemon-mode MOTD Then later there's the usual OPTIONS section with a full description of each option. an OPTIONS section organized by category ======================================== The strace man page organizes its options by category (like "General", "Startup", "Tracing", and "Filtering", "Output Format") instead of alphabetically. strace man page As an experiment I tried to take the `grep` man page and make an "OPTIONS SUMMARY" section grouped by category, you can see the results here. I'm not sure what I think of the results but it was a fun exercise. When I was writing that I was thinking about how I can never remember the name of the -lgrep option. It always takes me what feels like forever to find it in the man page and I was trying to think of what structure would make it easier for me to find. Maybe categories? see the results here a cheat sheet ============= A couple of people pointed me to the suite of Perl man pages (perlfunc, perlre, etc), and one thing I noticed was man perlcheat, which has cheat sheet sections like this: SYNTAX foreach (LIST) { } for (a;b;c) { } while (e) { } until (e) { } if (e) { } elsif (e) { } else { } unless (e) { } elsif (e) { } else { } given (e) { when (e) {} default {} } perlcheat man page I think this is so cool and it makes me wonder if there are other ways to write condensed ASCII 80-character-wide cheat sheets for use in man pages. examples are very popular ========================= A common comment was something to the effect of "I like any man page that has examples". Someone mentioned the OpenBSD man pages, and the openbsd tail man page has examples of the exact 2 ways I use tail at the end. openbsd tail man page I think I've most often seen the EXAMPLES section at the end of the man page, but some man pages (like the rsync man page from earlier) start with the examples. When I was working on the git-add and git-rebase man pages I put a short example at the beginning. git-add man page git-rebase man page a table of contents, and links between sections =============================================== This isn't a property of the man page itself, but one issue with man pages in the terminal is it's hard to know what sections the man page has. When working on the Git man pages, one thing Marie and I did was to add a table of contents to the sidebar of the HTML versions of the man pages hosted on the Git site. add a table of contents I'd also like to add more hyperlinks to the HTML versions of the Git man pages at some point, so that you can click on "INCOMPATIBLE OPTIONS" to get to that section. It's very easy to add links like this in the Git project since Git's man pages are generated with AsciiDoc. I think adding a table of contents and adding internal hyperlinks is kind of a nice middle ground where we can make some improvements to the man page format (in the HTML version of the man page at least) without maintaining a totally different form of documentation. Though for this to work you do need to set up a toolchain like Git's AsciiDoc system. It would be amazing if there were some kind of universal system to make it easy to look up a specific option in a man page ("what does -a do?"). The best trick I know is use the man pager to search for something like /^ *-a/ but I never remember to do it and instead just end up going through every instance of /-a/ in the man page until I find what I'm looking for. examples for every option ========================= The curl man page has examples for every option, and there's also a table of contents on the HTML version so you can more easily jump to the option you're interested in. curl man page For instance the example for --cert makes it easy to see that you likely also want to pass the --key option, like this: curl --cert certfile --key keyfile https://example.com The way they implement this is that there's one file for each option and there's an "Example" field in that file. one file for each option (JS) formatting data in a table ========================== Quite a few people said that man ascii was their favourite man page, which looks like this: Oct Dec Hex Char ------------------------------------------- 000 0 00 NUL '\0' (null character) 001 1 01 SOH (start of heading) 002 2 02 STX (start of text) 003 3 03 ETX (end of text) 004 4 04 EOT (end of transmission) 005 5 05 ENQ (enquiry) 006 6 06 ACK (acknowledge) 007 7 07 BEL '\a' (bell) 010 8 08 BS '\b' (backspace) 011 9 09 HT '\t' (horizontal tab) 012 10 0A LF '\n' (new line) Obviously `man ascii` is an unusual man page but I think what's cool about this man page (other than the fact that it's always useful to have an ASCII reference) is it's very easy to scan to find the information you need because of the table format. It makes me wonder if there are more opportunities to display information in a "table" in a man page to make it easier to scan. the GNU approach ================ When I talk about man pages it often comes up that the GNU coreutils man pages (for example man tail) don't have examples, unlike the OpenBSD man pages, which do have examples. GNU tail man page I'm not going to get into this too much because it seems like a fairly political topic and I definitely can't do it justice here, but here are some things I believe to be true: * The GNU project prefers to maintain documentation in "info" manuals instead of man pages. This page says "the man pages are no longer being maintained". * There are 3 ways to read "info" manuals: their HTML version, in Emacs, or with a standalone `info` tool. I've heard from some Emacs users that they like the Emacs info browser. I don't think I've ever talked to anyone who uses the standalone `info` tool. * The info manual entry for tail is linked at the bottom of the man page, and it does have examples * The FSF used to sell print books of the GNU software manuals (and maybe they still do sometimes?) GNU man pages are no longer being maintained tail info manual entry FSF print books for sale FSF shop After a certain level of complexity a man page gets really hard to navigate: while I've never used the coreutils info manual and probably won't, I would almost certainly prefer to use the GNU Bash reference manual or the The GNU C Library Reference Manual via their HTML documentation rather than through a man page. GNU Bash Reference Manual GNU C Library Reference Manual a few more man-page-adjacent things =================================== Here are some tools I think are interesting: * The fish shell comes with a Python script to automatically generate tab completions from man pages. * tldr.sh is a community maintained database of examples, for example you can run it as `tldr grep`. Lots of people have told me they find it useful. * the Dash Mac docs browser has a nice man page viewer in it. I still use the terminal man page viewer but I like that it includes a table of contents, it looks like this screenshot. fish shell fish shell Python script tldr.sh Dash Mac screenshot it's interesting to think about a constrained format ==================================================== Man pages are such a constrained format and it's fun to think about what you can do with such limited formatting options. Even though I'm very into writing I've always had a bad habit of never reading documentation and so it's a little bit hard for me to think about what I actually find useful in man pages, I'm not sure whether I think most of the things in this post would improve my experience or not. Except for examples, I LOVE examples. So I'd be interested to hear about other man pages that you think are well designed and what you like about them, the comments section is here. comments section From: See also: Writing Effective Man Pages I personally think BSD and Tcl have good examples of how to do man pages for complex software projects. tags: article,technical,unix Tags ==== article technical unix ]]> 2026-04-12 06:56:02 gopher://tilde.pink/1/~bencollver/log/2026-04-09-noto-an-unexplored-corner-of-japan-by-percival-lowell/ Ben Collver After reading Percival Lowell's sketch of Korea, i sought out his other books. This one is a beautifully written travelogue about exploring a remote corner of Japan. It describes what to me is an exotic time and place. It also contains thrilling descriptions of wilderness travel through treacherous mountain passes, across questionable bridges between cliffs, through glaciers, and down roaring rapids. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Percival Lowell's sketch of Korea Noto Peninsula What follows are excerpts from the book with my comments within square brackets. Chapter 1: An Unknown ===================== Why not in fact have set my heart on going to Noto just because it was not known! Privately, I was delighted with the general lack of knowledge on the subject. To reach this topographically charming province, the main island had to be crossed at its widest, and, owing to lofty mountain chains, much tacking to be done to boot. ... Long after Tokyo is basking in spring, the west coast still lies buried in deep drifts of snow. [The author traveled with Yejiro a Japanese boy who served as cook and guide.] Chapter 2: Off and On ===================== Indeed, twilight is the time of times to arrive anywhere. Any spot, be it ever so homely, seems homelike then. The dusk has snatched from you the silent companionship of nature, to leave you poignantly alone. It is the hour when a [person] draws closer to [a loved one], and the hour when most [one] shrinks from [one]self, though [one wants] another near. It is then the rays of the house lights wander abroad and appear to beckon the houseless in... Chapter 4: Zenkoji ================== There are lands made to be skimmed, tame samenesses of plain or weary wastes of desert, where even the iron horse gallops too slow[ly]. Japan is not one of them. A land which Nature herself has already crumpled into its smallest compass, and then covered with vegetation rich as velvet, is no land to hurry over. One may well linger where each mile builds the scenery afresh. And in this world, whose civilization grows at the expense of the picturesque, it is something to see a culture that knows how least to mar. Chapter 5: No ============= The provinces of Hida and Etchiu are cut off from the rest of Japan by sets of mountain ranges, impassable throughout almost their whole length. So bent on barring the way are the chains that, not content with doing so in mid-course, they all but shut it at their ocean end; for they fall in all their entirety plumb into the sea. Following one another for a distance of sixty miles, range after range takes thus its header into the deep. The only level spots are the deltas deposited by the streams between the parallels of peak. But these are far between. Most of the way the road belts the cliffs, now near their base, now cut into the precipice hundreds of feet above the tide. The road is one continuous observation point. We halted for the night at a fishing village called No: two lines of houses hugging the mountain side, and a single line of boats drawn up, stern on, upon the strand; the day and night domiciles of the amphibious strip of humanity, in domestic tiff, turning their backs to one another, a stone's throw apart. As mine host bowed himself out, a maid bowed herself in, with a tray of tea and sugar-plums, and a grace that beggared appreciation. "His Augustness is well come," she said, as she sank on her knees and bowed her pretty head till it touched the mats; and the voice was only too human for heaven. Unconsciously it made the better part of a caress. "Would his Augustness deign to take some tea? Truly he must be very tired;" and, pouring out a cup, she placed it beside me as it might have been some beautiful rite, and then withdrew, leaving me, beside the tea, the perfume of a presence, the sense that something exquisite had come and gone. I sat there thinking of her in the abstract, and wondering how many maids outside Japan were dowried with like grace and the like voice. With such a one for cupbearer, I could have continued to sip tea, I thought, for the rest of my natural, or, alas, unnatural existence. * * * We pay in this world with copper for things gold cannot buy. Humanities are so cheap--and so dear. The whole household gathered in force on its outer sill to wish us good luck as we took the street, and threw sayonaras ("if it must be so") after us as we rolled away. There is a touch of pathos in this parting acquiescence in fate. If it must be so, indeed! I wonder did mine host suspect that I did not all leave,--that a part of me, a sort of ghostly lodger, remained with him who had asked me so little for my stay? Probably in body I shall never stir him again from beside his fire, nor follow as he leads the way through the labyrinth of his house; but in spirit, at times, I still steal back, and I always find the same kind welcome awaiting me in the guest room in the ell, and the same bright smile of morning to gild the tiny garden court. The only things beyond the grasp of change are our own memories of what once was. Chapter 6: On a New Cornice Road ================================ Every year before planting begins the dykes have all to be re-made strictly in place, for they serve for both dams and bounds to the elaborately partitioned fields. Adjacent mud is therefore carefully plastered over the remains of the old dyke... Indeed, I cannot but think the farmers take a natural delight in this exalted form of mud pies; they work away on already passable specimens with such a will. But who does quite outgrow his childish delights? And to make of the play of childhood the work of middle life, must be to foil the primal curse to the very letter. Chapter 7: Oya Shiradzu, Ko Shiradzu ==================================== Toward the middle of the afternoon we reached a part of the coast locally famous or infamous, for the two were one; a stretch of some miles where the mountains made no apology for falling abruptly into the sea. Sheer for several hundred feet, the shore is here unscalable. Nor did it use to be possible to go round by land, for the cliffs are merely the ends of mountain-chains, themselves utterly wild and tractless. A narrow strip of sand was the sole link between Etchiu on the one hand and Echigo on the other. The natives call the place Oya shiradzu, ko shiradzu, that is, a spot where the father no longer knows the child, nor the child the father; so obliterating to sense of all beside is the personal danger. Refuge there is none of any kind. To have been caught here in a storm on the making tide, must indeed have been to look death in the face. Now the place is fearful only to fancy. For a road has been built, belting the cliffs hundreds of feet above the tide. It is a part of what is known as the new road, a name it is likely long to keep. Its sides are in places so steep that it fails of its footing and is constantly slipping off into the sea. Such sad missteps are the occasion for bands of convicts to appear on the scene under the marshaling of a police officer and be set to work to repair the slide by digging a little deeper into the mountain-side. On the cutting above, four huge Chinese characters stood graved in the rock. "Ya no gotoku, to no gotoshi." "Smooth as a whetstone, straight as an arrow," meaning the cliff. Perhaps because of their pictorial descent, the characters did not shock one. At each mile, amid the ever lengthening shadows, nature seemed to grow more sentient. Chapter 13: On the Noto Highway =============================== We had hardly parted from the coasters on dry ground when we met in the way with a lot of women harnessed to carts filled with various merchandise, which they were toilsomely dragging along towards Nanao. [Literally treating women like cattle.] Chapter 14: The Harinoki Toge ============================= [The author had a guide book. At the time it was written, it recommended a 12 year old mountain pass, Harinoki pass. Since then, a road by sea had been built and the pass was no longer maintained. The locals expressed skepticism about the author's plan to go over the pass, but he trusted his guidebook.] Just before reaching the village, a huge tree in full faint purple bloom showed up a little to the left. Under a sudden attack of botanical zeal, I struck across lots to investigate, and after much tacking among the paddy dykes found, to my surprise, on reaching it, that the flowers came from a huge wistaria that had coiled itself up the tree. The vine must have been at least six feet round at the base, and had a body horribly like an enormous boa that swung from branches high in air. The animal look of the vegetable parasite was so lifelike that one both longed and loathed to touch it at the same time. At Kamidaki, after the usual delay, we found porters, who echoed the doubts of the people of Toyama, and went with us protesting. [Heh. He ignored TWO separate warnings. And then it became a sunk cost, so to say.] The porters proved refractory. They had agreed to come only as far as they could, and now they refused to proceed further. ... It seemed the men valued their lives above a money consideration, strangely enough. They made no bones about it; the thing was too dangerous. [His guide threatened the porters with legal consequences if they didn't proceed.] Chapter 15: Toward the Pass =========================== If we would halve their burdens by doubling their number, they would make an attempt on the pass, or, rather, they would go on as far as they could. [I loved the descriptions of the hazardous mountain travel, balancing on boards and logs bridging abysses between cliffs, etc. It kept getting worse. Then there were precarious crossings of snow and ice along cliffs. And then honeycombed glaciers. And then hot spring huts in the wilderness.] Chapter 16: Riuzanjita ====================== It would be better, they added, after the mountain opening on the tenth of June. For the tenth of June, he said, was the date of the mountain-climbing festival. Yearly on that day all the sacred peaks are thrown open to a pious public for ascent. A procession of pilgrims, headed by a flautist and a bellman, wend their way to the summit, and there encamp. For three days the ceremony lasts, after which the mountains are objects of pilgrimage till the twenty-eighth day of August. For the rest of the year the summits are held to be shut, the gods being then in conclave, to disturb whom were the height of impiety. Distraught in mind and restless in body, I got up and went out into the great snow waste. The sunset afterglow was just fading into the moonshine. The effect upon the pure white sheet before me was indescribably beautiful. There was one place, they said, where, if you slipped, you went down a ri (two miles and a half). It was here a woodcutter had been lost three days before. The ri must have been a flight of fancy, since it far exceeded the height of the pass above the sea. But a handsome discount from the statement left an unpleasant balance to contemplate. Fatal accidents, the watchmen said, were of yearly occurrence on the passes. And all this was only the way to Kurobe. Beyond it lay the Harinoki toge. That pass no one had yet crossed this year. If professionals, properly accoutred, found crossing so dangerous a matter, the place was hardly one for unprovided amateurs. On the other hand, one Blondin feat over the Devil Place was enough for me. To take it on the road rather than turn back was one thing, to start to take it in cold blood another. I had had quite enough of balancing and doubt. So I asked if there was no other way out. We might, they said, go to Arimine. Chapter 17: Over the Snow ========================= The bad bit was preface to a worse effect round the corner, for on turning the arete, we came upon a snow slope like a gigantic house-roof. It was as steep as you please, and disappeared a few hundred feet below over the edge into the abyss. Across and up this the guide, after looking about him, struck out, and I followed. The snow was in a plastic state, and at each step I kicked my toes well in, so wedging my footing. The view down was very unnerving. It soon grew so bad I fixed my thought solely on making each step secure, and went slowly, which was much against my inclination. In this manner we tacked gradually upward in zigzags, some forty feet apart, each of us improving the footprints of his predecessor. Our extempore guide had promised us, over his own fire the evening before, a single day of it to Arimine. On the road his estimate of the time needed had increased alarmingly. From direct questioning it now appeared that he intended to camp out on the mountain opposite, whose snowy slopes were painfully prophetic of what that night would be. Our object now was to strike the Ashikura trail and follow it down. The guide, however, was not sure of the path, so we hailed the hunters. One of them came across the delta to the edge of the stream within shouting distance, and from him we obtained knowledge of the way. At first the path was unadventurous enough, though distressingly rough. In truth, it was no path at all; it was an abstract direction. [They had to navigate through dangerous landslides. I've done it, though not as dangerous terrain as the author described, still enough to be exciting, and easy to lose one's way.] Darkness fell upon us while we were yet a long way from Ashikura, with an uncertain cliff path between us and it... The first thing to tell us of approach to human habitation was the croaking of the frogs. After the wildness of our day it sounded like some lullaby of Mother Earth, speaking of hearth and home, and we knew that we were come back to rice fields and man. It was another half hour, however, before our procession reached the outskirts of the village. Here we threw aside our torches, and in a weary, drawn-out file found our way, one by one, into the courtyard of the inn. It was not an inn the year round; it became such only at certain seasons, of which the present was not one. Chapter 18: A Genial Inkyo ========================== For an inkyo is a man who has formally handed in his resignation to the community, and yet continues to exist most enjoyably in the midst of it. He has abdicated in favor of his eldest son, and, having put off all responsibilities, is filially supported in a life of ease and pleasure. Chapter 19: Our Passport and the Basha ====================================== [The author's passport expired while he was sporting in the mountain passes.] The Harinoki toge was largely to blame for the delay, it is true. But then unluckily the Harinoki toge could not be arrested, and I could. * * * For the Tenriugawa, or River of the Heavenly Dragon, takes its rise in the lake of Suwa, a bowl of water a couple of miles or more across. It trickles out insignificantly enough at one end; gathers strength for fifty miles of flow, and then for another hundred cuts its way clean across a range of mountains. How it ever got through originally, and why, are interesting mysteries. Its gorge is now from one to two thousand feet deep, cleft, not through a plateau, but through the axis of a mountain chain. In most places there is not a yard to spare. Chapter 20: Down the Tenriugawa =============================== We had made arrangements overnight for a boat, not without difficulty, and in the morning we started in kuruma for the point of embarkation. * * * For some time we had voyaged thus with a feeling not unlike awe, when all at once there was a bustle among the boatmen, and one of them went forward and stood up in the bow. We swept round a corner, and saw our first great rapids three hundred yards ahead. We could mark a dip in the stream, and then a tumbled mass of white water, while a roar as of rage came out of the body of it. The steering the boatmen did was clever, but the steering the stream managed of its own motion was more so. For between the rapids proper were swirls and whirlpools and races without end. The current took us in hand at the turns, sweeping us down at speed straight for a rock on the opposite bank, and then, just as shipwreck seemed inevitable, whisked us round upon the other tack. A thick cushion of water had fended the boat off, so that to strike would have been as impossible as it looked certain. Chapter 21: To the Sea ====================== The rapids here were, if anything, finer than those above Mitsushima. Of them in all there are said to be more than thirty. Some have nicknames, as "the Turret," "the Adze," "Boiling Rice," and "the Mountain Bath." Indeed, probably all of them have distinctive appellations, but one cannot ask the names of everybody in a procession. There were some bad enough to give one a sensation. Two of the worst rocks have been blown up, but enough still remain to point a momentary moral or adorn an after tale. All were exhilarating. Through even the least bad I should have been more than sorry to have come alone. * * * Delays, discomforts, difficulties, disappeared, and its memory rose as lovely as the sky past which I looked. For the better part of place or person is the thought it leaves behind. author: Lowell, Percival, 1855-1916 detail: source: tags: ebook,outdoor,travel title: Noto: An Unexplored Corner of Japan Tags ==== ebook outdoor travel ]]> 2026-04-11 16:43:42 gopher://tilde.pink/1/~bencollver/log/2026-04-02-computer-connections-by-gary-kildall/ Ben Collver They used these Marchant calculators for Numerical Analysis, starting in about the 1940's. A business would hire rows and rows of Marchant calculator operators to compute so-called "Finite Differences." You sat there and pushed those keys while the mechnicals made a host of noises by cranking and grinding who-knows-what, until the rattling stopped. You got a number. You put the number on a form, and eventually, with enough numbers and forms, you got a result. Sometimes the resulting number was correct. These operators also made tables to figure where the Sun, Moon, stars and planets would be at a particular time, much like the tables that solved the navigation problems that we talked about earlier. In a sense, dad's navigation "crank" was somewhat inconveniently embodied in the Marchant with a "form" alongside. * * * [Describing using FORTRAN in 1965:] You walk into the keypunch room with your two-foot long cardboard box of FORTRAN STATEMENT cards. Then wait in line to get to a keypunch machine. Finally, someone tires of typing, and you get a seat. Each card in that stupid cardboard box is like a single line on your computer screen today. I don't even want to think about it, because you young [folks] have it all too easy. ... All us oldtimers remember that the keypunch machine is like a typewriter, but it shuffles cards through its mechanism and stamps rectangular holes in a column below each character. You leaf through your box, alter each necessary card, and then relinquish your keypunch to the next anxious student. Then, take your precious box of cards to the shelf outside the computer room and wait and wait and wait. The computer room hides the IBM 7094 with SAC-like security doors. Computer operators, trained in "Grumbly 101," sit behind that door, attending to their work and throwing down coffee without even their own notice. I know this because I spent about 1,312,467 hours looking through that little peep-hole window to see if the operator would arise from his or her throne to go to the restroom and possibly retrieve my box of punched cards on the way back into SAC. If you stayed around very late at night, you might get a "turnaround" of an hour or so to get the printout. The program usually didn't work, so it was back to the key-punch. * * * Here is another log entry where i discuss a video with Gary Kildall as one of the hosts: Computer Chronicles (1985) author: Kildall, Gary, 1942-1994 detail: source: tags: ebook,memoires,retrocomputing,technical title: Computer Connections Tags ==== ebook memoires retrocomputing technical ]]> 2026-04-04 17:46:25 gopher://tilde.pink/1/~bencollver/log/2026-04-01-toki-pona-grocery-list/ Ben Collver Toki Pona Dictionary Here is an example grocery list, first in English, then in Toki Pona, and finally translated back to literal English. English: * coffee * milk * pears * blueberries * scallions * jalapenos * cilantro * celery * bread * oats * rice * salsa * broth Toki Pona: * telo sewi wawa * telo mama soweli * kili laso * kili laso * kili laso * kili laso * kili laso * kili laso * pan * pan * pan * moku telo * moku telo Literal English: * liquid, dark [and] strong * liquid [from] parent animal * fruit or vegetable, blue or green * fruit or vegetable, blue or green * fruit or vegetable, blue or green * fruit or vegetable, blue or green * fruit or vegetable, blue or green * fruit or vegetable, blue or green * bread or grains * bread or grains * bread or grains * food, liquid * food, liquid It's so simple! tags: bencollver Tags ==== bencollver ]]> 2026-03-31 09:57:21 gopher://tilde.pink/1/~bencollver/log/2026-03-25-out-there-by-susan-glaspell/ Ben Collver source: tags: short story Tags ==== short story ]]> 2026-03-25 11:16:54 gopher://tilde.pink/1/~bencollver/log/2026-03-05-the-rediscovery-of-man-by-cordwainer-smith/ Ben Collver ... nothing is more unfair than to judge the [people] of the past > by the ideas of the present. --Denys Arthur Wistanley > Every one must be judged according to [their] own ideal, and not by > that of any one else. ... So in judging of those ancient religions > we must not take the standpoint to which we incline, but must put > ourselves into the position of thought and life of those early > times. --Swami Vivekananda My favorite three stories in this book are available online, free of charge: The Game of Rat and Dragon The Dead Lady of Clown Town The Ballad of Lost C'mell * * * author: Cordwainer Smith detail: tags: book,sci-fi title: The Rediscovery of Man Tags ==== book sci-fi ]]> 2026-03-05 16:31:05 gopher://tilde.pink/1/~bencollver/log/2026-02-28-install-svardos-in-netbsd-nvmm/ Ben Collver This is a follow up demonstrating how to do the same using NetBSD NVMM instead of Linux KVM. I used dosbox-x and qemu from pkgsrc. Refer to my 2025 post for screenshots, FAT filesystem lore, and other extra detail. Download the SvarDOS stable build (20240915) and package ISO. SvarDOS 1.44M floppy disk SvarDOS package repository ISO I placed these in ~/dist/dos/os/svardos/20240915/ and unzipped the floppy image. Install SvarDOS using Qemu ========================== SvarDOS supports FAT32, but i avoid it because it can be pathologically slow to repair using the free dosfsck.exe. I accept the limitations of FAT16B as a trade-off for better compatibility and maintenance. This limits partition sizes to 2G using the SvarDOS installer. * * * Later in these instructions i answer "Y" to permit fdisk to create a partition with the maximum size. With the 2G disk image, this uses a 32K cluster size, which is compatible with other versions of DOS. With a larger disk, it might use a 64K cluster size, which is not compatible with some versions of DOS. I might need to answer "N" and enter 2000 as the partition size, to keep the partition under 2G. I can verify the cluster size of a FAT16 filesystem using the CHKDSK command. C:\>chkdsk c: /s | find "every cluster" 32.768 bytes in every cluster 32.768 means the c: drive has the more compatible 32K cluster size. * * * I use the raw disk image format for maximum compatibility with various virtual machine software. I use a sparse file to conserve space on the host system. $ mkdir -p Qemu/svardos $ cd Qemu/svardos $ size=$((2*1024*1024*1024)) $ dd if=/dev/zero of=svardos.raw bs=1 count=1 seek=$size Create a shell script and run it to start qemu. $ ed qemu-svardos.sh qemu-svardos.sh: No such file or directory a #!/bin/sh DISK="/home/ben/Qemu/svardos/svardos.raw" CDROM="/home/ben/dist/dos/os/svardos/20240915/sv-repo.iso" FLOPPY="/home/ben/dist/dos/os/svardos/20240915/disk1.img" MACH="pc-i440fx-10.1,mem-merge=off,usb=off" qemu-system-i386 \ -accel nvmm \ -machine "$MACH" \ -machine pcspk-audiodev=1 \ -overcommit mem-lock=off \ -no-user-config \ -msg timestamp=on \ -cpu max \ -m 32M \ -global i8042.kbd-throttle=on \ -audiodev sdl,id=1 \ -device sb16,audiodev=1 \ -device VGA \ -drive file="$FLOPPY",format=raw,if=floppy \ -drive file="$DISK",format=raw,media=disk \ -cdrom "$CDROM" \ -display sdl,gl=on,grab-mod=rctrl \ -rtc base=localtime . w 917 q $ chmod a+rx qemu-svardos.sh $ ./qemu-svardos.sh At the welcome screen, I press Enter to select English. At the keyboard layout screen, I press Enter to select English (US). At the installation screen, I press Enter to Install SvarDOS. At the partition screen, I select Run the FDISK partitioning tool, then press Enter. At FDISK introduction, I press N to disable FAT32, then press Enter. At FDISK Options, I press Enter to Create DOS partition or Logical DOS Drive. At Create DOS Partition or Logical DOS Drive, I press 1 to Create Primary DOS Partition, then press Enter. At Create Primary DOS Partition, I press Enter to use the maximum available size for a Primary DOS Partition and make the partition active. At the partition screen, I press ESC to continue. At FDISK Options, I press ESC to exit FDISK. At You MUST restart your system for your changes to take effect, I press ESC to exit FDISK. At Your computer will reboot now, I press Enter. At the welcome screen, I press Enter to select English. At the keyboard layout screen, I press Enter to select English (US). At the installation screen, I press Enter to Install SvarDOS. At the disk screen, I press Enter to select C: [2047 MiB, hda0] At the format screen, I press Enter to Format drive C: At the installation of SvarDOS to C: screen, I press Enter to Install SvarDOS. It installs 32 packages. When it is done, it shows a screen Your computer will reboot now. I close the QEMU window to power off the virtual machine. This is equivalent to turning off the power while a PC is running. By default, SvarDOS does synchronous I/O and does not use a cache. When at the prompt, the data is already written to disk, so it is OK to abruptly power off the machine. I start qemu to boot the fresh install of SvarDOS. $ ./qemu-svardos.sh It takes a moment to do the post-install steps. When finished, it shows SvarDOS has been installed. Restart your computer now. I run FDAPM to do a cold boot. C:\TEMP>\SVARDOS\FDAPM COLDboot It boots to the Welcome to SvarDOS screen. The first thing i would like to do is enable access to the optical drive. Unfortunately, the driver is not included on the install floppy. I will need to copy it in place from the NetBSD host. I close the QEMU window to power off the virtual machine. I create scripts to mount and unmount the disk image on the NetBSD host. My uid is 1000. Adjust the script to match yours. On NetBSD i use the vnd(4) device to achieve a "loop" mount. Since NetBSD uses a static /dev directory, i dedicate a vnd special file to each virtual disk. I will use vnd1 for SvarDOS. See the MAKEDEV(8) manual if you need to create additional /dev/vnd* special files. $ ed mount-svardos.sh mount-svardos.sh: No such file or directory a #!/bin/sh disk="/home/ben/Qemu/svardos/svardos.raw" log="/mnt/fuse/svardos.log" dir="/mnt/svardos" vnd="vnd1" # truncate log cat /dev/null >"$log" # probe partitions vndconfig "$vnd" "$disk" >"$log" 2>&1 part=$(disklabel vnd1 2>/dev/null |\ awk '/MSDOS/ {sub(/:/,"",$1);print $1}') dev="/dev/$vnd$part" # mount it mount "$dev" "$dir" . w 341 q $ chmod a+rx mount-svardos.sh $ ed unmount-svardos.sh unmount-svardos.sh: No such file or directory a #!/bin/sh disk="/home/ben/Qemu/svardos/svardos.raw" dir="/mnt/svardos" vnd="vnd1" # unmount the filesystem umount "$dir" # detach vnd device vndconfig -u $vnd . w 161 q $ chmod a+rx unmount-svardos.sh To actually mount this disk image, i need to run these scripts as user root. The first time around i need to create directories for the mount point and log file. $ su - # mkdir -p /mnt/cdrom # mkdir -p /mnt/fuse # mkdir -p /mnt/svardos Next i mount the disk image, the package ISO, copy the CD driver package, unmount everything, and exit the root shell. # /home/ben/mount-svardos.sh # iso=/home/ben/dist/dos/os/svardos/20240915/sv-repo.iso # vndconfig -r vnd0 $iso # mount -o ro -t cd9660 /dev/vnd0a /mnt/cdrom # cp /mnt/cdrom/videcdd.svp /mnt/svardos/ # umount /mnt/cdrom # vndconfig -u vnd0 # /home/ben/unmount-svardos.sh # exit I boot SvarDOS to the welcome screen again. I install the CD driver packages. C:\>pkg install videcdd.svp I use the excellent SVED editor to enable the CD driver in CONFIG.SYS. C:\>copy CONFIG.SYS CONFIG.BAK C:\>sved CONFIG.SYS I use the arrow keys to navigate to the ;DEVICE=C:\DRIVERS\VIDECDD... line. I press Backspace to delete the leading ; character, uncommenting line DEVICE=C:\DRIVERS\VIDECDD\VIDE-CDD.SYS /D:SVCD0001 I press Esc to open the SVED menu, press Down to select Save, and press Enter. I press Esc to open the SVED menu, press Up to select Quit, and press Enter. I use SVED to enable the CD driver in AUTOEXEC.BAT. C:\>copy AUTOEXEC.BAT AUTOEXEC.BAK C:\>sved AUTOEXEC.BAT I use the arrow keys to navigate to the REM SHSUCDX ... line. I press the Backspace key 4 times to remove the "REM " prefix. I press Esc to open the SVED menu, press Down to select Save, and press Enter. I press Esc to open the SVED menu, press Up to select Quit, and press Enter. I use FDAPM to do a cold boot. C:\>SVARDOS\FDAPM COLDboot I install the unzip program from CD. C:\>pkg install D:\unzip.svp I get the disk geometry from FDISK. C:\>FDISK /INFO Current fixed disk drive 1 4193280 sectors, geometry 520/128/63 ... Note the text "geometry 520/128/63" in the output. I close the QEMU window to power off the virtual machine. Configure SvarDOS in DOSBox-X ============================= I make a copy of the DOSBox-X default configuration. $ mkdir -p .config/dosbox-x $ cd .config/dosbox-x $ cp /usr/pkg/share/dosbox-x/dosbox-x.reference.conf dosbox-x.conf I make the SvarDOS specific DOSBox-X configuration. $ cp dosbox-x.conf dosbox-x-svardos.conf I edit the SvarDOS specific DOSBox-X configuration. I change the memory size from 16 to 32M to match the qemu virtual machine. DOSBox-X needs the geometry for the raw disk image. Note that FDISK in qemu reported "geometry 520/128/63" and that the sector size is 512 bytes. Thus the parameters "-size 512,63,128,520". $ ed dosbox-x-svardos.conf 96658 /^memsize = 16/s/16/32/p memsize = 32 $a imgmount c /home/ben/Qemu/svardos/svardos.raw \ -size 512,63,128,520 imgmount d /home/ben/dist/dos/os/svardos/20240915/sv-repo.iso \ -t iso -fs iso boot c: . w 96818 q I create a shell script and run it to start dosbox-x. $ cd $ ed dosbox-svardos.sh dosbox-svardos.sh: No such file or directory a #!/bin/sh dosbox-x -conf \ /home/ben/.config/dosbox-x/dosbox-x-svardos.conf . w 80 q $ chmod a+rx dosbox-svardos.sh $ ./dosbox-svardos.sh That's it! Notes ===== These steps create two virtual machines, one using dosbox-x and the other using qemu. These both use the same disk image. Make sure to power off one before powering on the other. The qemu virtual machine is accelerated using NetBSD NVMM, which runs faster. The dosbox-x virtual machine provides a more accurate BIOS. If your keyboard has a Num Lock key, then you can use Alt Codes to enter special characters in DOSBox-X. Alt codes do not work in qemu nor VirtualBox because of BIOS bugs. tags: bencollver,retrocomputing,technical Tags ==== bencollver retrocomputing technical ]]> 2026-03-07 10:30:19