● 07.10.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Gemini Links 10/07/2023: Out-smarted by a ‘Smart’ Amazon TV and Making Keyboard Cables

Posted in News Roundup at 8:17 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal/Opinions

• The earth was sleeping, and the sky was asleep, And in this whole world, everything had fallen into a silent slumber, Only I, Azhdahak (the dragon), remained awake with my pain, And the reddest blood of mine, Was the only burning fire in this silent desert.

• We live in a small farm town, with fewer restrictions than the nearby suburbs. Our neighbors take full advantage of this by shooting off a phenomenal number of fireworks. This Independence Day, our house was surrounded with a constant display of lights and sounds in the sky. We invited a few friends over and fired a few pyrotechnic rounds ourselves. It was quite an experience.

• I’m planning on putting many of my electronics into a box for a while and reduce the number of devices I use to a minimum. This is because I find that I fret over them too much, and I try to use them all, which is wasteful. I think I’d prefer to limit myself to a few low-impact tools, and work on getting those to do as much as I can make them do.

Science

• To this day tension remains within the anarchist milieu between vegan and anti-vegan radicals. The mere mention of veganism, animal liberation and anti-speciesism on social media or at radical gatherings often generates a backlash of hostile responses. A common anti-vegan response is one that attempts to use Indigenous identity as a quick way to shut down any dialog

Technology and Free Software

• My plan is to write a daily wrap-up of my experiences during the 2023 edition of the Old Computer Challenge.

• This is the wrap-up of day one.

• Yesterday’s winery performance went pretty danged well.

• Much yard work today.

• Fantastic chocolate shake.

• Writing is feeling foolish again: if conceptuality is what hides/masks an ineffable reality, then of *course* attending to words is the wrong direction.

• Let me share an installation guide on OpenBSD for a product I like: kanboard. It’s a Kanban board written in PHP, it’s easy of use, light, effective, the kind of software I like.

• While there is a docker image for easy deployment on Linux, there is no guide to install it on OpenBSD. I did it successfuly, including httpd for the web server.

• The Ultra 10 has been re-assembled sans floppy drive. The case is still off and I have a DVD drive unmounted for the installation. I found a 10GB IDE drive in my stash. I think the original drive was 9GB or something. Only thing on it was a slackware install from 2004, which I plan on wiping and installing…something? The drive tried to boot on the laptop I used to check the drive via USB IDE cable. I forgot to disconnect the drive before rebooting the laptop. LInux LOader loaded, started boot sequence, then kernel panic.

• OK, this is going to be more challenging than I thought. The drive runs fine, but I can’t easily install much. Getting things to work seems so hard, like back in the day. All of these dependencies and missing software is taking me back to beginners mind. Kinda sux0rz when I just want things to work so I can do old computing and it’s not. Then again, now that I think about it, this was how it was before. I think I just did not mind it so much then since I did not have a reference of the computing of now on now’s technology.

• In my last post I briefly described my current quandary. To make my elderly in-laws happier I got them a giant voice-controlled Alexa TV… Size helps (vision issues); voice control helps (remote too complicated, too small to see, etc). It provides a minor amount of empowerment: “Alexa, TV off” instead of calling for help…

• As I also mentioned, idiocy is built-in: when voice control is on, purchases are no longer password-protected. Why? I don’t know. Somehow it is tied into ‘parental controls’, which should do the trick, but instead, makes things even worse. It will not allow starting apps without a password, completely defeating the purpose of the entire project. So I just have to chat with Amazon every now and then and insist that the purchases were made because of their own technical problems. So far it works — when they see someone renting a dozen movies and not watching…

• I just shared on fedi the keyboard cables I made. I am really proud of how they came out so I thought I’d share here the process and justification for why I went the route I did.

• It’s kind of ironically funny that Geminuats easily in my top ten to read probably hate me.

• So I guess I’ll just continue to read them from afar, as it were.

• Got some great sun, today. Didn’t need it, as I’m constantly hearing people amazed at how tan I am this year. But it’s kind of fun to see skin of mine a hue I’ve not since childhood.

Internet/Gemini

• This must have been the longest I’ve abandoned the gopher. I admit, I didn’t even have time to even open the gopher client and read, let alone do anything myself. That’s why this gopherhole looks terrible: some parts are broken, no one maintains the Bongusta list, etc.

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