Techrights

Gemini Links 25/09/2024: Playing With Micro Emacs and Luddites

Posted by Roy Schestowitz on Sep 25, 2024

GNOME bluefish

Contents

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal/Opinions

stomach meds lead to discovery of skelecrow

I woke up at 1 PM. Stomach churning, I nearly vomited whatever I had ate previous. I hacked and spit on my floor. I had not had stomach meds since yesterday, Pantoprezole (prescription Nexium).

I decided I had to walk the 1.1 mi to Walgreens. On the other side of town. So, off I went.

The walk and purchase was uneventful. Then I decided a soda was needed, and then a stop off at the Halloween section.

Dreams

So yeah dreams. Do you still remember them after waking up?

It's been a while since I had a dream. 2 months since my last one. I tried journaling the dreams I had but after the first dream I wrote down no more came after. I feel like I used to dream more often.

The last dream I had was pretty strange but most of the dreams I partly remember were strange. In the last dream. I had my blood taken for a test there were more stuff happening but that's what stuck out the most.

What Fools Make Love

Now there’s a idea, a food for thought, A layered parfait with a cherry on top. It is like asking which came first, the chicken or the egg? Not to mention how many eggs it takes to make the omelet.

What makes love fools of us? What about love makes fools of us? What fools make love? And what fools make us love each other?

What makes fools love? Are we not all fools of love? Blindsided by its majesty, or are we just by its blinding aura? Does love make them just out of fools? Or fools out of the just?

Writing prose

Fuck it, I'll go back to writing code.

Technology and Free Software

A diary that talks back? Could be useful!

It’s a social network…but you’re the only human. The rest are bots of different personalities that you choose (nerds, trolls, haters, yes-men, etc.).

Environment Variables and Eshell (publ. 2024-09-24)

I'm presenting an Emacsconf talk this year called "Emacs as a Shell", so I've been thinking a lot about if and how Emacs can fulfill various functions that are traditionally fulfilled by a shell such as bash. One such function is managing environment variables.

Emacs is certainly capable of reading and setting environment variables. Through elisp calls, you can run elisp functions getenv, printenv, and setenv. From what I can tell, setenv sets the environment variable for that entire Emacs session, so that subprocesses launched by Emacs will get that environment variable.

Things are a little more subtle when you are working within Eshell, as each Eshell has its own environment. A new Eshell will inherit Emacs' general environment, or the environment passed to it by the Eshell, if launched by another Eshell.

Playing with Micro Emacs again

Arond 2021 I decided to seriously learn to use Emacs, using the vanilla key bindings.

Emacs is a real powerhouse, and at times it felt intimidating. To cope with that, I started to explore Micro Emacsen.

OpenBSD supplies good documentation with mg, and I used this documentation to create a short list of commands to learn, including their key binding. I reordered that list to begin with the more important commands to learn, in order to get me started.

ROOPHLOCH 24

7:40 am I am sitting down on my coat on top of my towel on top of leaf litter in a wooded area.

The rules I have set up are to write my text on the computer called Alfred, send the text over to the computer called Catwoman wirelessly, simulating a world without the internet, and apparently without USB sticks. To add slightly the post-apocalyptic feel, my little camp is by the ruins of a WPA-era retaining wall near a creek. I was hoping it would be a little more dignified, but the amount of graffiti has really made it more of a mural than a history lesson.

Let's get to our real protagonists. Alfred is a jail-broken Chromebook. And while, yes, it is running Mint, I have dropped it to TTY mode and have a tmux session going. I have the commands I am going to try copied in a txt file so hopefully I can do everything from the command line. If not, I have a back up rule of being allowed to use library WiFi to troubleshoot, but I'd rather not leave camp. (Edit: so I thought a the time).

No free Software

I've been thinking lately, what would be if there was no free / Open Source software. I mean for me privately not for the software ecosystem as a whole. I know, Big Tech uses Open Source as a tool for free (in the meaning 'without charge') development, but if there was no FOSS what would have happened to *me*?

If you read my WWW/Gemlog/Gopher site, you know I'm a zealous computer nerd although I'm no professional. But if there was no FOSS, I believe there was no system that I could really hack on as I like so much on Linux or FreeBSD. There would only be systems which are designed to be used as intended by the manufacturer, and the users would be, to say it with Stallmans words '(ab)useds'.

Luddites and those who overdo their actions

A state sponsored act of terrorism involving explosives in consumer electronics may have succeeded in creating fear and confusion, but on the surface it also looks like a luddite action gone wrong. Luddites, I believe, would never directly target people, no matter how hostile. The state involved (forgive me for having forgotten its name) is known for its sophisticated technological products that everyone wants. Wanted to have, I should say. In the 1970's some activists injected quicksilver into oranges, that too quickly turned consumers off. I can't condone that sort of action. Only a deranged surrealist could propose firing at random into a crowd (the example is of course drawn from Breton's second manifesto).

* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.