● 08.22.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Gemini Links 22/08/2023: GitHub Turning Nastier, Google Domains Migration

Posted in News Roundup at 8:27 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal/Opinions

• I’ve never really dabbled in AI before. A couple of days ago, I gave it a shot for a few hours, but then I kind of lost interest but this is what came out of it.

• It is that time of the year again. Yesterday (which was a Monday) on my way to work I have spotted a Chicken Of The Woods. It came as a little surprise, because last Friday, on my way home, there was not a trace of it to be seen. So it went pretty fast this year. On the other hand, I have come to expect it already, because it is growing there every year around this time, always on the same tree. It is a white willow, the only one far and wide, and I pass it by twice every working day.

• My family made a camping trip to Chena Hot Springs Resort this last weekend. We used my brother’s trailer camper and rented a camping spot (20 USD per day). It went well, and despite rain and a fussy toddler, we had a enjoyable time for the most part. I took lots of family photos, of course, but am not sharing those here. I did, however, take some audio recordings of the water running under a bridge, the first one that goes over Montana Creek.

• Well, I actually got an email after yesterday’s phlog post, so I thought I should provide an update on the fire situation. You never know. I might have two readers!

• Environment Canada is predicting rain showers tomorrow night and there’s a 60% chance of showers for Tuesday and Wednesday. The BC Wildfire service says that the fire is not moving as quickly today. It’s calm out and the temperature is lower (a high of 22C today). The fire came 20 km in my direction on Friday. It’s 20 km away now and my house is right on the edge of a forest that almost crosses right through the middle of town. So the weather changes are a relief.

• Well, here’s the daily fire update:

• The macro-news:

• - they’ve added a new alert zone (which means you’re supposed to be ready to evacuate) a couple of km away. It doesn’t really make sense because the people on the far side of it, who are closer to the fire, are not on alert. I don’t really think much has changed since yesterday.

• - locals are accusing the BC Wildfire Service of making the fire worse with a controlled ignition. The idea is that you burn the forest off before the fire can get to it. The Wildfire Service set their fire when the wind was blowing toward the two forest fires that were out of control, knowing that the wind was going to reverse on them. They thought that the fires would then turn back on the already burned areas. There’s some debate over whether the plan worked. The two wildfires joined together and jumped the planned ignition zone. To be fair, it was windy as hell and to the south of us, a wildfire jumped Okanagan Lake, which is pretty crazy.

• An interesting weather day today. At lunch time we had a thunderstorm, which changed things up from the daily sunshine. I grew up liking thunderstorms – the louder the better – so I find it amusing when people get scared of them, “It’s God bowling. When thunder claps it’s him geting a strike.” is probably one most people in the West have heard. There isn’t a concept of only one God in Japan’s two main religions however, so it doesn’t translate well.

• I wonder sometimes if anyone who reads my journal also reads any of the books I write about. I used to get emails from time to time about what I write here but I guess as I’ve fallen away from such a close focus on the horsemen toward chronicling moments of domestic bliss there’s been less for anyone still reading to say to me.

• I write for myself, though, so I’ll keep writing. I write and read to think, to feel. Wide vistas open up, big breaths fill my lungs, things once discrete combine and make sense. I must do both.

• I have a particular taste in books. I’ve gotten my hands on books I want to read a variety of ways. Child me read all my parents’ books and all the library’s. Teen me stole. Young adult me tricked for books (and still stole). Finally I found inter-library loan. I rarely buy a book anymore, though I still own thousands.

• I’ve been wrestling with these ideas since my daughter was born, 11 years ago. The notions of gender norms, how we raise children differently depending on whether they’re girls or boys, how ‘society’ does exactly this, regardless of what we do as parents.

• Why is it my daughter wearing her big brother’s ‘Cars’ t-shirt is perfectly fine, but her little brother getting her ‘Frozen’ t-shirt is not generally acceptable?

• Many people will refute the premise of the above question, but it’s true in my world, and probably in yours too. When it’s no longer noteworthy, then I’ll accept it’s no longer true.

Technology and Free Software

• I often need to work with PDF, sometimes I need to extract a single page, or add a page, too often I need to rotate pages.

• Fortunately, there is a pretty awesome tool to do all of these tasks, it’s called PDFtk.

• To continue you must modify your browser settings to allow GitHub to use your location information.

• [...]

• One step closer to dropping the account. Unfortunately I still have to use it for work, and for a few repos I contribute to occasionally (Erlang, Elixir, IPFS, StandardEbooks, …).

• Picked up a new toy from a local e-waste recycler: A Tandy DMP 132 (catalogue number 26-2814), Circa 1987. They let me have it after we plugged it up and determined that it doesn’t even idle properly; all of the status LEDs light up, but it should only have the power LED lit if all is well, perhaps the alert LED should blink if there’s no paper too.

• When I got home I popped it open and determined that it contains an NEC D7810HCW CPU with a 14.7 MHz clock crystal. I looked up the datasheet for the CPU and determined that it is normally clocked at 12 MHz, and contains 256 bytes [sic] of RAM and 4K of ROM. (note: ROM and RAM are both externally expandable, but Tandy definitely is using only the base amount of RAM on this printer) The CPU is a nominally 5 volt CPU, the onboard RAM fails to function if it dips down to 3.2 volts.

Internet/Gemini

• I recently logged into Google Domains to change some minor DNS setting and was greeted by this bullshit: “Google recently entered into an agreement for Squarespace, Inc. to acquire all domain name registrations from Google Domains, with the purchase subject to regulatory approval and customary closing conditions. If the transaction closes, you will become a Squarespace customer and, following a transition period, your customer and billing information, if applicable, will be transferred to Squarespace, at which point Squarespace’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service will apply.”

• I received no email or any other communication about this, so I was caught a bit off-guard… Squarespace is not a company I care to deal with at all. Consequently I have transferred the zcrayfish.soy domain to Hover (Tucows) as a registrar, and am using Linode as the DNS servers. It has been a bit over 24 hours since I made the change, but I have outrageously high TTL values set here, so it’s possible (though not very likely) that some breakage could occur.

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