gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/
gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2021-06-14.%20lunch%20lines
I'm using Windows still on this work laptop. I think I could switch to Linux whenever but I just haven't yet. I should try WSL to see if it's any good, I suppose. Now I have the page open ... oh boy, Powershell. This will be fun. I'm so excited.
um.
I fed a sloth a sweet potato on Saturday. It was kind of ... life, you know? Really pretty great. I'll see if I can somehow upload a video later. Otherwise, imagine this.
A sloth, asleep in a corner platform.
My hand, grasping a sweet potato spear, coming near its face.
I stop just beyond its nose, wet, like a dog's nose.
It twitches (the nose).
Without opening its eyes, the sloth extends its lips a bit and I bring the sweet potato closer. It bites the sweet potato, and I let go. It eats.
It sleeps.
gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2021-05-25.%20re%3A%20html%20%26%20gemini%20status
=> gemini://thedaemons.space:1965/gemlog/2021-05-16.gmi og post by thedaemon
I identify strongly with this sentiment. I've redone my website (HTTP) a couple of times, especially since its zenith in about 2018, where it had a /lot/ of content ... and I've never had it go back to that. Part of me wants to have all that stuff in there, but part of me wants to just organically let it grow.
Same with this space, by the way. It's kind of nice to have it as just a thoughtspace, where I don't worry about SEO or marketability or anything. Just kind of ... long-form twitter, without the bs. A lettered conversation. Yeah.
So thedaemon, if you're listening, I love this idea. Keep it small, keep it free-timed. Just ... do it, you know? Go with the flow.
Oh, and def check out undo-fu. It's great for Emacs undo.
gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2021-05-24.%20going-away%20party
I've been getting mail from some of yall on here :) I love it! Thanks for the replies. I hope you like mine back.
Overall I'm feeling okay, all things considered. I still need to start a mood journal thing, maybe in org-mode. I'm putting it off, to be honest.
gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2021-05-22.%20Base%20N%20Ball
Basically, it's baseball, but the /base/ of the game changes each inning.
Here's the rules. I'd love to hear what you think.
Base /N/ ball
Base /n/ ball is a sport experiment with number bases, or /radices/. It resembles American baseball, except for the following tweaks:
- There are always 10 bases.
- The /game radix/ -- the radix in which every game number is notated --begins in binary and increases each inning.
- Innings turn over after 10 outs.
- The game is won by the first team that scores 100 points, or whichever team has the most points at the end of the inning where the game radix exhausts the Latin alphabet (henceforth called the /alphabet exhaustion number/, or /aen/).
- Special care has to be taken as to the layout of the bases, since their number and configuration changes each inning. There are a number of /fixed plates/ of game play, around which the other plates are arranged, in what's called the /base circle/: the /pitcher's plate/ (in baseball, a /mound/) and the /home plate/. These plates form the center and a radial terminus of a perfect circle whose radius is 𝑒^𝑒+𝛑 m. All the other plates are placed equidistant around the circumference of this circle.
- The infield is similarly specified: it is inscribed by a circle tangent to the home plate, and encircling the base circle, with a radius of ϕ(𝑒^𝑒+𝛑) m.
- The foul lines extend from the home plate, through points on the base circle that are either end of a line perpendicular to the pitcher-batsman line, and continue to the end of the outfield.
- The outfield, like in normal baseball, is arbitrarily large.
gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2021-05-21.%20a%20new%20start
*logging? I kind of like the *logging, since it has the Unix-style globbing
/and/ it's a star) again on here. It's been a while.
To be honest, I quit before because of my workplace blocking gem.acdw.net
completely, which it isn't doing now. So here I am. I tend to do a lot of
stuff from work because I have a good amount of downtime, and when I get home I
watch TV/cook/dick around on Reddit/etc. So no time to write *log posts.
Maybe that's partially why I'm writing again here. I'm starting a new job in
June and I'm going to be much more busy there. I've been at my current job for
four years, which is a long time to have most of your day to yourself except
you're at work. I'm not sure if my work/life balance is going to get
healthier (I'll have to do more "productive" things at home since I can't do
them at work) or less so (I'll just be tired all the time).
A word on the scare-quoted "productive" above. I'm not talking about
side-hustle productive or anything like that. Though.... no, I'm not talking
about that. I just mean, I have hobbies and stuff I /want/ to do, but it's
easy to not do those things because watching TV or Reddit is easier. I suppose
that's that depression coming through (has anyone made the joke 'derpression?'
is that anything?). So don't worry, I'm not trying to be a good little
capitalist. I know you were worried.
Who am I talking to anyway? Feel free to drop me a line, I think my email is
around here somewhere. If it isn't, you can reach me at acdw at acdw dot net.
Talk soon <3
gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2021-05-20
i've finished my first draft for my final article for the library,
i didn't bring a book to work to read,
i
i
i
i've been fairly depressed this week.
it just happened the other day, i was at the store (albertson's)
and boom it hit me
like
like a boom? a sailing boom? a boom mic?
i wonder i think probably
those terms are related
hmmmmm
maybe some stories or something.
could i write a story?
hmmmmm
gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/Can%20I%20post%20from%20work%20now%3F
I'm back, babeeee
I hope yall haven't missed me too much over the *checks notes* like, couple-of-months since I've written anything on here. Let's see what we have..
News
=> gemini://breadpunk.club breadpunk.club is a year old
- uh
- uhhhhh
- uhhhhhhhhhhh
I've been baking? I don't know.
Anyway, expect weird shit in here from yours truly soon!
Written when I'm bored at work!
Will I do an actual wiki-type thing?
PROBABLY NOT!!!!
gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/Welcome
/----------------------------------\
| * * * ) * |
| * (, |
| * _~_ * |
| * .......| |.. * |
| * / __________ \ |
|____________| _ |________|
| ` | |#| [+] | ` |
| ` ` .|,_|#|_,_,__,|, ` ` |
\----------------------------------/
# acdw's gemini cottage
Hello, and welcome. Come on in; sit a while. Look at the stars, aren't they beautiful? There's Castor, and his brother Pollux: the Twins. It's a cold night. Here, take this blanket.
</description>
<pubDate>Sat, 27 Feb 2021 02:24:13 GMT</pubDate>
</item>
<item>
<title>favicon.txt</title>
<link>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/favicon.txt</link>
<guid>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/favicon.txt</guid>
<description>20 text/plain
# Favicon.txt
I recently unsubscribed from the Gemini mailing list because of the amount of noise. Because of that, I missed the kerfuffle around favicons and all, mostly, and only tonight have I caught up on the whole thing.
I'm writing this page to prove that it's absolutely ridiculous to even think about "black-holing" an IP requesting /favicon.txt, because /favicon.txt can be a totally regular file, like this one. It does nothing to "bloat" the spec, nor does it even interact with the Gemini spec. /favicon.txt is just a file on a server, and "black-holing" anyone for requesting it is utterly stupid, on the level of "black-holing" a client for not following the /robots.txt conventions because of whatever is thought to be the type of client that's used.
What are we going to do next, "black-hole" any IP that requests any file of the glob /*.txt?
Just my +/- 2 cents on the matter, I suppose.
</description>
<pubDate>Wed, 24 Feb 2021 02:59:38 GMT</pubDate>
</item>
<item>
<title>2021-02-12. today has been weird.</title>
<link>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2021-02-12.%20today%20has%20been%20weird.</link>
<guid>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2021-02-12.%20today%20has%20been%20weird.</guid>
<description>Today has been weird. I didn't really have anything to do (I finished up my main current projects, it's Friday, nobody came in), so I set up Emacs some more, though that's really getting to the point where I'm not going to change it much. I still have my website to work on, but I forgot about that until ... about 20 minutes ago, so that's out (I'm off work in 10). I just kind of fiddle-farted around today, which I guess is fine. It's just like, most of my days at work. These days remind me of my first job out of college at the IT desk for my alma mater, where I really got hooked on Reddit -- there wasn't anything else to do. (Incidentally, that's where I also got hooked on Jimmy John's, but that had nothing to do with my productivity.)
I have some emails I need to reply to, but the one has links I can't get to at work so I have to wait. The other two are from my previous post, which actually I /do/ need to just email them back (if you're reading this, sorry I haven't got back to you; I'm like, bad at it or something!), but I didn't today, and again, there's (now 7) minutes til I bike home.
I don't know, today just seems like it was one of those Fridays that slips by. In retrospect I feel uneasy about it, maybe because of the constant messaging to make productive use of our time, but really I had a fine time today. Floated, kind of. My butt hurts, though -- I need to sit down less this weekend.</description>
<pubDate>Sat, 13 Feb 2021 00:25:14 GMT</pubDate>
</item>
<item>
<title>2021-02-08 still here</title>
<link>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2021-02-08%20still%20here</link>
<guid>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2021-02-08%20still%20here</guid>
<description>It's been quite a while, wow, since I've written anything here. I like seeing my name near the top of CAPCOM/Spacewalk, though, so here's a quick update. What have I been up to?
* Breadpunk is doing quite well, actually -- we have 42 members now!!!!!!!!!!! I need to do more to be a better admin.
* My browser, BOLLUX, was mentioned in a video by Chris Were -- he seems like a neat person, and I was happy to be included. View the video, which also reviews Kristall and Amphora, here:
=> https://share.tube/videos/watch/51155b47-6930-42f3-9abb-695bb97c7912 on ShareTube (http)
* yesterday I and the fam went to New Orleans to see the floats they had set up in the park. Mardi Gras parades have been cancelled this year, and it's hard to explain just how important they are to someone who hasn't been to one (or multiple). So they have them set up in the park for people to drive by them. It was cool! pictures may be forthcoming.
* I decided to move my http-site to my hetzner box and re-do it. It's still under construction but I hope to have it done this week -- also to incorporate my Gemini and HTTP sites more closely together.
* I've been reading /Hamnet/ and that play where he yells STELLLAAAA!!
* I've been struggling with my mental health.
* I've missed yall in gemini-space. I've not been checking in so much.
* I've got a good thing going with Emacs -- it's pretty well confgured how I want it.
* I've started making bagels on the regular with my wife. We have dreams of a cottage bakery.
* ...
I'm sure there's more, but here's what I have for now.</description>
<pubDate>Mon, 08 Feb 2021 14:13:23 GMT</pubDate>
</item>
<item>
<title>2021-01-06. Hyperion - Dan Simmons</title>
<link>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2021-01-06.%20Hyperion%20-%20Dan%20Simmons</link>
<guid>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2021-01-06.%20Hyperion%20-%20Dan%20Simmons</guid>
<description>I recently finished reading /Hyperion/, by Dan Simmons. It was recommended to me by someone on IRC, so if you’re reading this, thanks for the recommendation! I really enjoyed it.
If you’re not familiar with the book, it’s kind of a cosmic-horror, science fiction version of the /Canterbury Tales/ or the /Decameron/. It follows seven pilgrims on their way to the Time Tombs on the galactic Outback planet Hyperion, on the last Shrike Pilgrimage before intergalactic (I suppose actually intragalactic) war. The Shrike is a mysterious, otherworldly character, with four arms covered in blades, who can move through time and kills people gruesomely. The Time Tombs are its home and its prison, and they’re in an anti-entropic field, called the Time Tides, which make time move strangely within them. The pilgrims were chosen for their connections to the Shrike, the Tombs, or to Hyperion, and so they decide to share their stories in order to figure out a way to defeat the Shrike upon their meeting. The bulk of the book is in these stories.
The stories themselves are very good, a great mixture of cyberpunk, space opera, Lovecraftian horror, mystery, and character-driven fiction. The world is fully drawn and deep – when I looked up Simmons after finishing the book I wasn’t really surprised to find that he had been an English teacher for a long time before writing anything. He also packs in allusions to literature and history, both historical and future-historical, and mixes them in a way that feels real and lived-in.
My one issue with the novel is a common one among its readers: so much of the story is spent in flashback tales, there’s not much plot development in the current time of the novel. I found myself waiting for the big payoff at the end of the novel, only to find it never came. For this reason, I find it more accurate to describe /Hyperion/ as a collection of closely-connected short stories, as opposed to a proper novel. That being said, I’m definitely going to read the sequel, /The Fall of Hyperion/, to see what happens.</description>
<pubDate>Wed, 06 Jan 2021 19:37:04 GMT</pubDate>
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<item>
<title>2020-12-02. Cans for Fines drive</title>
<link>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2020-12-02.%20Cans%20for%20Fines%20drive</link>
<guid>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2020-12-02.%20Cans%20for%20Fines%20drive</guid>
<description>The library is about to start its annual "Cans for Fines" drive, where we forgive a dollar's worth of overdue fines per can of food donated for the Food Bank. I think I've got a thousand words' worth of thoughts about this, let's give it a go!
A disclaimer: These thoughts are mine. They are necessarily deeply steeped in the American Southern culture and norms, because that's where I'm from and where I live. YMMV.
Another disclaimer: This entire blog post should have a giant [citation needed] slapped on it. The facts I will so confidently state have been largely hearsay, and though I believe them, it's possible they're not completely true.
# Thought A: Library fines are not effective
Multiple studies have been done that prove library fines are not effective, either in convincing patrons to return books in a timely fashion, or in generating meaningful revenue for a library. I think the budget item for Fines is something like one tenth of one per cent of income for most libraries; it might even be less. Because of this, many libraries across the country have done away with fines entirely, except in cases where the loaned item has been lost (when it's not really a fine, so much as an invoice, and one which I think makes much more sense -- otherwise people *could* start stealing books from the library). Of course, *our* library has stead-fastly continued to collect fines, despite all the push-back against doing so; the same is true for probably the majority of libraries in the US as of this writing.
I personally don't like fines because I think they contribute to a negative stereotype about the library as being run by stuffy know-it-all types who really stickle for the Rules, no matter how myopic and arbitrary. I rankle against this description, because I am not any of those things, except maybe a little bit of a know-it-all (see my "Another disclaimer" paragraph, above, specifically the phrase "confidently state" -- I'm aware it's a problem). I think a Library should be a public compendium of knowledge and a gateway to that knowledge, and furthermore that all knowledge should be free in all senses of the word. I think library fines do little more than keep people who would otherwise visit the library to make use of its treasures out, which actually aids big bookselling corporations (cough, Amazon) into selling more books. Library fines also keep books from returning to the library, because once somebody has a book out for so long, they generally decide to keep it (free) rather than return it (not free).
# Thought A.5: Library fines persist because of this weird culture of punishment
See also: Prison-industrial complex, welfare demonization, refusal to provide public healthcare, etc. etc. etc.
For whatever reason (I have a Specific Idea, which comes pretty much wholesale from my reading of /The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism/ [Weber]), America has this obsession with punishment. If you do something Wrong, by God, you'd better be Punished for it, and hard and long, both to make sure you never do it again and to serve as an example that others won't follow down your ill-begotten footsteps. The thing is, it's been shown again and again that punishment of this nature is absolute trash for keeping you or anyone else from wrongdoing in the future, and in fact can exacerbate recidivism rates.
Okay, I'm going a little far afield here from library fines. But they're a part of it -- we can't just "let people get away" with having a book for Too Long, because ... well, because it's Against the Rules, and What Would We Be If We Didn't FOLLOW THE RUELSLSELSSDLSDKJFSPDOIFUa;kjsdnfas
(Can you tell I don't hold that opinion in high esteem?)
Funnily enough, the Rules seem to stop applying if you're rich enough or famous enough or Good enough, whatever that means (usually rich and/or famous and/or a man and/or white). For more, see Weber's book. It's really quite good.
# Thought B: Canned food drives are not the best way to help the Food Bank
I don't even think it's That Much of a Secret that the Food Bank makes deals with area vendors to make their dollar stretch way further than your dollar. In fact, I would assume that food banks would want to advertise that fact -- giving them cash is much more effective than giving them cans. I just saw an article today (of course I can't find it now) that reiterates that fact -- and I feel like I see it every year.
If you really want to help the hungry in your area, give the Food Bank cash or a check. Cans of food can spoil, they're not necessarily what people need, and they're super heavy! So annoying t0 carry.
# Thought B.5: Canned food drives persist because of this weird culture of gift giving
It's the same problem college-aged kids and office mates have each year at the holiday season: many would be happier, and better able to utilize, simple gifts of cash. Instead, the culture of gift-giving mandates that we put in a lot of stress and grievance thinking of, purchasing, and gifting useless or unneeded tchotchkeys, trinkets, and pajamas to each other. I think it's gotten so bad because of the relentelss desire of the Profit Gods ... but it's much older than that, I think. Personalized gifts made sense when they were homemade, and when we knew intimately everyone we gave gifts to. Anymore, we give gifts to many more people, many of whom we don't know that well. Cash should be normalized as a gift.
# Final thoughts
I'm going to be honest -- I started writing this about two weeks ago, so I've forgotten much of what I was talking about. Anyway, Food Bank Good. Cans Bad. I wish the library would just *donate* all fines collected in December to the Food Bank, but that makes no one feel good, even if it would cut down on system-gaming (I know I've looked for $0.50 or cheaper cans, to save money on fines).
Thanks, I guess, for coming to my Ted Talk.
</description>
<pubDate>Wed, 02 Dec 2020 14:13:30 GMT</pubDate>
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<item>
<title>2020-11-27. leftover</title>
<link>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2020-11-27.%20leftover</link>
<guid>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2020-11-27.%20leftover</guid>
<description>yesterday was Thanksgiving in the US, a holiday that I love and that I feel guilty for loving. personally it's always been good for me -- I've seen family, friends; cooked great food; drunk a little (or a lot); watched movies; lazed; generally had a wonderful time. Every year, even this year, with its uncertainties, has been a good Thanksgiving from my limited view.
and yet. we are beyond the time of limited views. thanksgiving is a holiday celebrating the colonization of a continent; the mass genocide of its original inhabitants; the continued mistreatment of those people and of other victims of the American myth of exceptionalism and attendant expansion, greed, and plunder. it seems like there's precious little to be thankful for on a world stage.
i worry that my ability to have a good thanksgiving is a function of my supreme priviledge as a white cis male. sometimes i am quite sure of the fact. the fact is that, for me, i know i am more powerful than many and i am still nowhere near powerful enough. i don't know where to put this. i don't know what to do.
i originally opened this to thank kensanata for telling me about
=> https://www1.wdr.de/mediathek/video/klangkoerper/sinfonieorchester/video-johannes-brahms---ein-deutsches-requiem-op--100.html Brahms's Ein deutsches Requiem Op. 45
but the leftovers had other ideas. anyway, thanks for it. it's informing my mood on this rainy Black Friday.
Speaking of Black Friday (and after this really, I'll be done), I used to think it referred to the day Jesus was crucified. Maybe it's telling that the dominant religion in America calls the day a reformer was murdered "good."</description>
<pubDate>Fri, 27 Nov 2020 20:09:12 GMT</pubDate>
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<item>
<title>2020-11-26. RE: Christina, 5Q November 2020</title>
<link>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2020-11-26.%20RE%3A%20Christina%2C%205Q%20November%202020</link>
<guid>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2020-11-26.%20RE%3A%20Christina%2C%205Q%20November%202020</guid>
<description>I don't know if yall thought I was gonna miss these, but of course I wouldn't for the world! Here we go, Christina's 5Qs for November, 2020.
# 1. What happens in films that make you say “this would never happen in real life”?
When they turn on the TV and it's immediately the thing that's important to the plot. A few movies deal with this and they're great.
# 2. If you could wipe a movie from your memory so that you could experience it for the first time again, what would you choose?
To be honest, I'm not much of a movie rewatcher. Or book rereader, for that fact. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I find the best movies are those which open up on rewatching -- I tend to miss a lot of the nuance on the first view.
BUT to answer your question -- I just remembered I've never seen /The Sixth Sense/ unspoiled. It was spoiled for me before I actually watched it for the first time --- so if I could wipe the /whole/ movie from my memory, every experience with it, it'd be neat to see it unspoiled for once.
# 3. What was your favourite toy as a child?
Legos. Definitely legos. Received them for every birthday and Christmas for many years. Actually if anyone reading this has a good Lego set for a 30-year-old email me it, because I've got the Hunger again.
# 4. What colour describes your mood right now?
Lilac. Don't know why. It just came to me -- which is how I feel moods should be described.
# 5. If your domicile was on fire, what three items would you save?
1. Stormy, my dog.
2. Stella, my other dog.
3. (assuming my wife [a] could make it out on her own and [b] doesn't count as an item) my little X240 laptop, because it'd be a real pain to reclone all my git repos.
</description>
<pubDate>Thu, 26 Nov 2020 16:08:43 GMT</pubDate>
</item>
<item>
<title>test</title>
<link>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/test</link>
<guid>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/test</guid>
<description>This page does not yet exist.</description>
<pubDate>Thu, 26 Nov 2020 04:06:20 GMT</pubDate>
</item>
<item>
<title>2020-11-25. been a while</title>
<link>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2020-11-25.%20been%20a%20while</link>
<guid>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2020-11-25.%20been%20a%20while</guid>
<description>It's been a while.
I am heartened by the fact that the sentence "It's been a while" is a refrain in and around the so-called smolweb. We're all busy people. We're all living long and varied and complicated lives. We all only have 24 hours in each day to eat, work, sleep, clean ourselves, and perform the other perfunctory functions of being alive. Blogging is a hobby, and a hobby is second-class.
I appreciate that this kind of writing is similar to open-source programming. I wonder if that's why many smolwebbers are interested in open-source, or maybe it's the other way round. Hm.
Anyway, it's been a while.
One reason for me, at least -- one reason I've not been so public on the gemini capsule I so diligently set up and then did little more with -- is that my workplace has deemed it blockable. Necessary to be blocked, even. I can't access gem.acdw.net at all from work, where I spend the bulk of my waking hours, especially the ones where I have little else to do but write or read or, more recently (at least until this Block), chat on IRC. So I have to remember to post my writings when I get home, when my mind is elsewhere, when I am thoroughly outside of "work mode," which includes writing.
Of course, this last sentence contradicts the previous four paragraphs. What can I say? I contain multitudes.
So what /have/ I been doing this month?
I've experienced waves of depression nearly every day. When outside of it -- or even, to be honest, when inside of it, at a proper distance from myself -- it's fascinating, the way it waves in and out of my head, like .. well, like a wave in the ocean. I'll be underwater, and later, come out. And it's like I was never under, except my head's a little wet and I'm blinking. And then -- here comes another, and I'm under again, and I have to really remind myself that the air exists.
I've been working haphazardly on my blanket. I've been crocheting it for months, off and on -- more off than on, if I'm being honest with myself; if I were more /on/, maybe it'd be done by now. Maybe by December.
TV has been watched. We churned through what NCIS is on Netflix and I ordered the next part on DVD from the library. It came today.
Food has been made. There was a particularly delicious enchilada recipe that is visible on my http site. Other than that, nothing too extraordinary.
I've biked to work quite a bit. I've almost logged another hundred miles on the thing from when I wrote about it last, at the beginning of the month. Which I suppose makes sense -- I received it about a month before that.
I've written a bit, here and there.
I've floated.
Between this world and the next, do you think there's a kind of accounting? I worry that if there were, I'd find that too much of my time was unspent, merely wasted. Water down the drain. On the other hand, that's all rain does, and the ocean too -- and everything else for that matter. There's no grand scheme in any of it, is there? Sure, it looks nice, but there's no purpose: it doesn't even tell time. The whole thing's a Rube Goldberg machine from the ground up; why shouldn't I be one too? Make yourself happy, I say. Damn the rest.
Maybe there's the problem -- am I making myself happy?
Maybe it's been a while since I have.
I'm not sure if I remember how to get back.
Did I ever know the way?
</description>
<pubDate>Wed, 25 Nov 2020 16:32:29 GMT</pubDate>
</item>
<item>
<title>robots</title>
<link>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/robots</link>
<guid>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/robots</guid>
<description>User-agent: *
# allowing do/index!
Crawl-delay: 10
</description>
<pubDate>Wed, 18 Nov 2020 03:39:42 GMT</pubDate>
</item>
<item>
<title>RE: ddevault, Is this a good idea?</title>
<link>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/RE%3A%20ddevault%2C%20Is%20this%20a%20good%20idea%3F</link>
<guid>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/RE%3A%20ddevault%2C%20Is%20this%20a%20good%20idea%3F</guid>
<description>I want to reply, not to the aggregator idea (I do like it), but to the last paragraph here:
=> gemini://drewdevault.com/2020/11/15/RE-Is-this-aggregator-idea-good.gmi RE: RE: RE: RE: ....
> And an aside: I generally dislike this approach of using our gemlogs to have discussions via "RE: post title" and such-with. Isn't this better suited to the mailing list?
I don't think so -- there's a bunch of RE's that aren't about gemini the protocol at all (see: 5Qs, etc). You can always check backlinks to see a "thread" here:
=> gemini://gus.guru/backlinks?tilde.team/~ew0k/is-this-aggregator-idea-good.gmi for Is This Aggregator Idea Good?
Now, that being said, I *do* think that Shannon is (a) a great name and (b) a pretty good idea -- tho we already have CAPCOM and Spacewalk. But . Why not a third?!
Eventually I'm going to set up the first two on breadpunk.club (or here?) with GUS's known URLs and known feeds lists. Might as well try a Shannon too :)
Stay tuned.
# PS
:^) Of course, we could reimplement webmentions in gemini ... maybe call them RadioBursts, or why not EMPs?</description>
<pubDate>Mon, 16 Nov 2020 17:00:07 GMT</pubDate>
</item>
<item>
<title>Bollux</title>
<link>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/Bollux</link>
<guid>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/Bollux</guid>
<description># bollux - a bash Gemini client
=> https://git.sr.ht/~acdw/bollux git the source
inspired by
=> https://github.com/dylanaraps/birch birch
=> https://git.sr.ht/~julienxx/castor castor
=> https://gemini.circumlunar.space/ gemini
# CAPABILITIES
* make requests
* receive files
* use `dd` to show a nice little download status
* use `less` to display text/* files
* link navigation
* configuration
# STILL TO DO
* bookmarks/history
* mailcap something
* generate certificates?
* implement TOFU?
# LICENSE
MIT
# CONTRIBUTING
Feel free to write to my
=> https://lists.sr.ht/~acdw/public-inbox public inbox
with changes you'd like to make, or submit an issue to the
=> https://todo.sr.ht/~acdw/bollux ticket tracker.
</description>
<pubDate>Sun, 15 Nov 2020 23:42:10 GMT</pubDate>
</item>
<item>
<title>2020-11-13. RE perplexing.space, "1000 Numerals"</title>
<link>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2020-11-13.%20RE%20perplexing.space%2C%20%221000%20Numerals%22</link>
<guid>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2020-11-13.%20RE%20perplexing.space%2C%20%221000%20Numerals%22</guid>
<description>Ha, I was not expecting anyone to reply to my "cheat" for 1kaday!
=> gemini://perplexing.space/2020/one-thousand-numerals.gmi but perplexing.space did :)
I have to say, seeing the loop macro make such quick work of this kind of makes me sad ... I actually hand-typed-out all of the numbers up to one hundred twenty, then copied and pasted them, doing some find-and-replacing to fix the numerals. I wanted to see how high you could count while staying within 100 words. 357 sounds about right :)
I also love the Roman Numeral wall -- it looks really interesting, almost in an art-type way.
Anway thanks for the laugh!
</description>
<pubDate>Fri, 13 Nov 2020 20:23:39 GMT</pubDate>
</item>
<item>
<title>2020-11-12. one thousand words</title>
<link>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2020-11-12.%20one%20thousand%20words</link>
<guid>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2020-11-12.%20one%20thousand%20words</guid>
<description>One two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen nineteen twenty;
twenty one twenty two twenty three twenty four twenty five twenty six twenty seven twenty eight twenty nine thirty thirty one thirty two thirty three thirty four thirty five thirty six thirty seven thirty eight thirty nine forty forty one forty two forty three forty four forty five forty six forty seven forty eight forty nine fifty fifty one fifty two fifty three fifty four fifty five fifty six fifty seven fifty eight fifty nine sixty sixty one sixty two sixty three sixty four sixty five sixty six sixty seven sixty eight sixty nine seventy seventy one seventy two seventy three seventy four seventy five seventy six seventy seven seventy eight seventy nine eighty eighty one eighty two eighty three eighty four eighty five eighty six eighty seven eighty eight eighty nine ninety ninety one ninety two ninety three ninety four ninety five ninety six ninety seven ninety eight ninety nine one hundred;
one hundred one one hundred two one hundred three one hundred four one hundred five one hundred six one hundred seven one hundred eight one hundred nine one hundred ten one hundred eleven one hundred twelve one hundred thirteen one hundred fourteen one hundred fifteen one hundred sixteen one hundred seventeen one hundred eighteen one hundred nineteen one hundred twenty;
one hundred twenty one one hundred twenty two one hundred twenty three one hundred twenty four one hundred twenty five one hundred twenty six one hundred twenty seven one hundred twenty eight one hundred twenty nine one hundred thirty one hundred thirty one one hundred thirty two one hundred thirty three one hundred thirty four one hundred thirty five one hundred thirty six one hundred thirty seven one hundred thirty eight one hundred thirty nine one hundred forty one hundred forty one one hundred forty two one hundred forty three one hundred forty four one hundred forty five one hundred forty six one hundred forty seven one hundred forty eight one hundred forty nine one hundred fifty one hundred fifty one one hundred fifty two one hundred fifty three one hundred fifty four one hundred fifty five one hundred fifty six one hundred fifty seven one hundred fifty eight one hundred fifty nine one hundred sixty one hundred sixty one one hundred sixty two one hundred sixty three one hundred sixty four one hundred sixty five one hundred sixty six one hundred sixty seven one hundred sixty eight one hundred sixty nine one hundred seventy one hundred seventy one one hundred seventy two one hundred seventy three one hundred seventy four one hundred seventy five one hundred seventy six one hundred seventy seven one hundred seventy eight one hundred seventy nine one hundred eighty one hundred eighty one one hundred eighty two one hundred eighty three one hundred eighty four one hundred eighty five one hundred eighty six one hundred eighty seven one hundred eighty eight one hundred eighty nine one hundred ninety one hundred ninety one one hundred ninety two one hundred ninety three one hundred ninety four one hundred ninety five one hundred ninety six one hundred ninety seven one hundred ninety eight one hundred ninety nine two hundred;
two hundred twenty one two hundred twenty two two hundred twenty three two hundred twenty four two hundred twenty five two hundred twenty six two hundred twenty seven two hundred twenty eight two hundred twenty nine two hundred thirty two hundred thirty one two hundred thirty two two hundred thirty three two hundred thirty four two hundred thirty five two hundred thirty six two hundred thirty seven two hundred thirty eight two hundred thirty nine two hundred forty two hundred forty one two hundred forty two two hundred forty three two hundred forty four two hundred forty five two hundred forty six two hundred forty seven two hundred forty eight two hundred forty nine two hundred fifty two hundred fifty one two hundred fifty two two hundred fifty three two hundred fifty four two hundred fifty five two hundred fifty six two hundred fifty seven two hundred fifty eight two hundred fifty nine two hundred sixty two hundred sixty one two hundred sixty two two hundred sixty three two hundred sixty four two hundred sixty five two hundred sixty six two hundred sixty seven two hundred sixty eight two hundred sixty nine two hundred seventy two hundred seventy one two hundred seventy two two hundred seventy three two hundred seventy four two hundred seventy five two hundred seventy six two hundred seventy seven two hundred seventy eight two hundred seventy nine two hundred eighty two hundred eighty one two hundred eighty two two hundred eighty three two hundred eighty four two hundred eighty five two hundred eighty six two hundred eighty seven two hundred eighty eight two hundred eighty nine two hundred ninety two hundred ninety one two hundred ninety two two hundred ninety three two hundred ninety four two hundred ninety five two hundred ninety six two hundred ninety seven two hundred ninety eight two hundred ninety nine three hundred;
three hundred twenty one three hundred twenty two three hundred twenty three three hundred twenty four three hundred twenty five three hundred twenty six three hundred twenty seven three hundred twenty eight three hundred twenty nine three hundred thirty three hundred thirty one three hundred thirty two three hundred thirty three three hundred thirty four three hundred thirty five three hundred thirty six three hundred thirty seven three hundred thirty eight three hundred thirty nine three hundred forty three hundred forty one three hundred forty two three hundred forty three three hundred forty four three hundred forty five three hundred forty six three hundred forty seven three hundred forty eight three hundred forty nine three hundred fifty three hundred fifty one three hundred fifty two three hundred fifty three three hundred fifty four three hundred fifty five three hundred fifty six three hundred fifty seven.
</description>
<pubDate>Thu, 12 Nov 2020 22:55:40 GMT</pubDate>
</item>
<item>
<title>lukee's wisdom on gemini</title>
<link>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/lukee%27s%20wisdom%20on%20gemini</link>
<guid>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/lukee%27s%20wisdom%20on%20gemini</guid>
<description>The great lukee once said:
> anyway gemini is just like the early music scene in many ways
> we have a creation myth.
> we are nostalgic for simpler times in the past
> we try to recreate those halycon days
> we have a strong notion of what is "authentic" use of gemini
> we call out anyone who wants to modernise
> shall I continue?
> we reject modern conveniences in favour of a purer experience
> we even have sacred historic texts
</description>
<pubDate>Thu, 12 Nov 2020 22:11:09 GMT</pubDate>
</item>
<item>
<title>2020-11-11. RE: solderpunk, browsers</title>
<link>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2020-11-11.%20RE%3A%20solderpunk%2C%20browsers</link>
<guid>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2020-11-11.%20RE%3A%20solderpunk%2C%20browsers</guid>
<description>Okay, I've missed yesterday and I'm going to miss today on my 1kaday challenge. The day before yesterday was on my tilde.town site:
=> http://tilde.town/~acdw/2020-11-09.html mouth
though it wasn't great. ANYWAY, I /do/ have something cooking, should finish it tomorrow, but in the meantime I want to respond to solderpunk's post here:
=> gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/~solderpunk/gemlog/the-short-lived-browser.gmi The short-lived browser
I've been thinking about doing this for a long time, and I installed 'surf' tonight to use Glowing Bear (a Weechat client) outside of my usual Firefox thing. It's great. It opens everything in a new window and makes it easy to close them. I'm definitely going to work on doing more of my web browsing in surf. I /might/ consider configuring it, but it'd only be to minimize it even more, honestly.
So yeah, great idea solderpunk! Thanks for the reminder :)
</description>
<pubDate>Thu, 12 Nov 2020 01:50:18 GMT</pubDate>
</item>
<item>
<title>gemini.png</title>
<link>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/gemini.png</link>
<guid>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/gemini.png</guid>
<description>This page does not yet exist.</description>
<pubDate>Wed, 11 Nov 2020 20:10:20 GMT</pubDate>
</item>
<item>
<title>2020-11-08. ren faire; synchronicity</title>
<link>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2020-11-08.%20ren%20faire%3B%20synchronicity</link>
<guid>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2020-11-08.%20ren%20faire%3B%20synchronicity</guid>
<description>I've never been to the Renaissance Faire before today, and boy was it fun as heck. We got Jester Fries and Apple Fritters and Dolmas and we watched Jousting and Glass Blowing and Pottery and Acrobatics and Fire stuff. I had so much fun and I want to buy Medieval clothes and wear them around all over now. Of course, it wasn't as great as it usually is (I'm guessing) because a ton of stuff was closed due to Covid, and we had to keep our masks on and honestly it was pretty humid today so it was kind of tough, and besides I was nervous since there tended to be presses of people, what with the way shows work in the woods and stuff. But it was way cooler than I even thought it could be -- the buildings were all like, permanent structures, which I did not think they'd be, I thought it'd be all tents and stuff. But it was so great. Of course, I didn't get a turkey leg because I'm vegetarian but I did try to get others we were with to get one, though they didn't. OH and also we shot arrows at targets and also hatchets at wood and I did pretty good with the arrows but I did NOT with the hatchets. There was also a hammered dulcimer player and we watched a glassblower who I'd happened to see years ago at Bonnaroo do a show. He broke the mug he was making but it was still pretty cool. We decided he could be a cult leader because he's got that vibe. I bet he's pretty hard to love.
When we got home we meal prepped and I made a really good looking salad thing with pasta ... I call it a pasta salad. I also hung out on IRC as per ushe (uze? use? us? hmmmmmm......) and ran into another person from Tennessee who, who knows, might have a dad who knows my dad. Small world, as they say.
Now R is sleeping on the couch and Sinisterhood, a podcast about true crime and creepy stuff. She's been catching up to the present, and right now they're talking about the lockdown when that happened. The one has too many boxes of pasta and they're bartering and stuff, which I remember well. That was when I organized my breadbuy with some local people from a mill down in New Orleans. I still have about 40 pounds of white flour, which is funny (not haha really) because R is not eating gluten for the time being because of some health stuff. So that flour has been sitting there for a few months. I'll be honest, I'm worried I'll open it to a writhing nightmarish mass of roaches or something. I think of that scene in /Dirk Gently/ where he and his cleaning lady have a standoff over cleaning out the fridge, and it gets so bad that it falls into the god-world (read the book if you want to understand completely, it makes sense in that context) and a minor god comes out, because the worlds are connected.
While I'm listening to this podcast out of one ear, on IRC we're talking about the time dilation of the pandemic, which has been a Thing. And now I'm thinking of that in context with the weird way the Ren Faire felt, where there wasn't any music piped anywhere and all the sounds were just the natural sounds, and it was really nice because it made me feel as though we were really /in/ the renaissance times, which .. I mean is the point? So those worlds are connected too. And the IRC and my life worlds.
And all worlds, right? Another episode of the podcast, earlier, was about the Montauk Project, where they tried to get kids to connect to other worlds through a psychic link -- basically think /Stranger Things/, because the story was the inspiration for the show (and more connections, the /current/ episode has /Tiger King/ discussion, because of course it was that stage of the pandemic). And it made me think about multiverse theory, and how some people maybe think that we're able to change the universe around us because of the way our brains work or something. And I don't believe in that at all, because I disagree with the notion that humans are in any way the center of anything. Everything I've observed has disavowed me of any of those type of ideas.
So I think that the universe is basically all this stuff, right, and you can look at the stuff in a number of different ways. There's too much stuff to be able to see it all at once, so you just look at whatever part makes sense and that's you. And sure, sometimes somebody else might walk onto your turf and something weird will happen, but it's weird for them too, right? So. Basically, I'm thinking of this one scene written by (who else but) Douglas Adams where he mentions the same thing, and there's the line "you slice it up however you want and there's something somebody can call home." Or something to that effect. Adams had a large influence on me as a youngster. His were the only books I read many more times than once. I still need to get into reading books more than once, to really get them. But I haven't yet.
Things I've learned this weekend: writing a thousand words works better at work when I have time to really think things out. Trying to push them all out within the space of the last hour of the day is not the best idea. Possibly having the word count in the status bar is also not the best idea. There /is/ a feature of this wc-mode that lets me set a goal. I need to try that tomorrow. I need to do a lot of things. I'll get around to it sometime.
</description>
<pubDate>Mon, 09 Nov 2020 05:38:19 GMT</pubDate>
</item>
<item>
<title>2020-11-07. work and worry on the weekend</title>
<link>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2020-11-07.%20work%20and%20worry%20on%20the%20weekend</link>
<guid>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2020-11-07.%20work%20and%20worry%20on%20the%20weekend</guid>
<description>So the election's been called. I feel like we can move on again. And that's all I really want to say about that.
Today, I worked all day.
Getting to work was an ordeal. My electric bike (I feel like a bougie asshole when I talk about that) ran out of juice midway to work, so I was stuck on leg power. On the one hand, it's kind of a Hedbergian "broken escalator" situation ("Sorry for the convenience..."), on the other, all that battery and motor and gear and shit I had weigh quite a bit more than your standard bike, so it was tough to pedal. I ended up being late to work by about 10 minutes.
Once I got to work, I was stressed in the morning because a lot of people came in to the Career Center and it was very busy, plus, who knows, I was just stressed. I spent a whole lot of time on IRC, and shot the shit with people on there, which is always nice, what can I say.
After lunch at Taco Bell with my wife (she didn't eat; she hates Taco Bell, but the Crunchwrap Supreme [sub black beans] gives me life) I felt better, and no one else really came into the career center so it was pretty easy going. This one lady did come in toward the end of the day to do some kind of "game" to apply for a job (!?) but that was about it.
I was able to work on some generative art based on a post from Vidar HolenÂą that I thought was pretty cool. I've thrown the best one on my image server, which is sadly still HTTP. (Maybe later I'll be able to update the link here.)
=> https://img.acdw.net/generative/18.ppm 18
I also discovered a kind of audio sequencer live-coding thing called ORCΛ², which looks really cool -- though to use it I need to install a MIDI something? I don't know. It seems pretty confusing. Still, I'll figure it out at some point and make some funky music :)
Biking home was a lot better because I did happen to take my charger to work and so was able to bike fast back home. So that was pretty nice. I like going fast!
We went to Old Navy after that because I need some pants. I've put on a bit of weight -- I'm to an actually healthy weight now, like 150 or so -- so my usual pants size of 30x34 is a little tight. On the one hand, that's great, because stores really don't carry 30x34s in stock, but usually *do* have 32x34s. I tried those on and they were still a little tight, so I went with 34x34s, but here's the thing. I still have these skinny chicken legs, so all the pants that fit my waist well don't fit my legs, like I'm swimming in those things. I tell ya, pants. They're tough.
We went to the grocery store after that, and let me tell you -- I love grocery shopping. It's like the best thing to do on the weekend. So yeah, grocery shopping, we did that, it was dope, then came home and ate some pizza and drank sparkling apple cider in celebration of what happened in the first paragraph of this post.
I finished out the day by watching some NCIS, writing this ... whatever, and catching the Saturday Night Live tonight. It's okay. Dave Chappelle is hosting, and he's doing a great job like always. The writing of the sketches just isn't where it used to be though.
=> https://www.vidarholen.net/contents/blog/?p=904 Âą Use echo/printf to write images in 5 LoC with zero libraries or headers
=> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaI_TuISSJE ² Introductory video to ORCΛ (youtube)
I'm going to be honest here: I almost didn't write this today. In fact, I technically *didn't* complete my #1kaday challenge on November 7, because it's currently 7 minutes past midnight on November 8 and I'm ... 676 words in to my 1000. I didn't have anything to really write today, so I'm writing out a journal of what happened to me.
I suppose it's better than nothing, but I really do need to plan out the rest of this month tomorrow. Of course, tomorrow I'm going to the Renaissance Faire so I don't know when I'll have the time.
Similar to this quandry, I have my new VPS I need to set up but other things keep distracting me or keeping me from doing it right then, and besides I'm not 1000% sure what I want to do or how to do it. This confluence of feelings is pretty effective at keeping me from doing a lot of things. I'm not sure how to get better at it.
I feel like I should be, since I'm 30 now and really, should have my shit together a little more than that, right? But I don't. Which is one of the reasons I want to make sure my kids know that
* nobody really knows what they're doing
I'm kind of being hard on myself here, for not knowing what to write. But I need to remind myself that it's okay to not be /on/ all the time, or not know what to do. I need to be easy on myself, to forgive myself for things like that. For what? I'm being unspecific here. I don't know what /that/ means, do you? Read it back. It means nothing. All of this means nothing. It was a day that day-ed, and it was okay, but it wasn't anything special, other than what happened in the first paragraph.
I just saw a reference about a beer scene in Shawshank Redemption but I don't remember it at all. I feel like a good number of things have happened lately that I don't remember and I worry about my memory too sometimes. My grandmother had dementia. I guess it'll happen or it won't happen. I can just take care of myself and that's that.
Well, that's a thousand. See you tomorrow.
</description>
<pubDate>Sun, 08 Nov 2020 06:22:54 GMT</pubDate>
</item>
<item>
<title>2020-11-06. Edwin, a Gemini server</title>
<link>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2020-11-06.%20Edwin%2C%20a%20Gemini%20server</link>
<guid>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2020-11-06.%20Edwin%2C%20a%20Gemini%20server</guid>
<description>What follows is the org-file I'm working on to literately write my posix awk/sh gemini server, edwin. It's what I worked on today and it's mostly words, so it's what you get. Enjoy!
Bah, nevermind. I'll convert it to gemtext, *by hand*. Whatever.
Oh, also: it's not finished. So... take that for what you will. I hope to finish it up this weekend.
# Edwin, a Gemini server in POSIX AWK (with some other bits)
# Foreword
Sort of on a whim, and sort of because the only programming languages I'm /really/ comfortable in are shell and awk, I've decided to write a Gemini server in those languages. I've already written a [[https://git.sr.ht/~acdw/bollux][Gemini browser in bash]] (or written most of one; I /still/ need to add some bits for quality-of-life improvements) for much of the same reasons, so I always knew that there would come a day when I'd need to write something for the other end of the pipe. It turns out, today is that day.
What follows is a literate Org file containing a functioning Gemini server that's as POSIX-compatible as possible. Awk handles the textual parts of the request and response, but since it can't do networking (and even GNU awk can't do TLS), I'm wrapping that core logic in a call to =socat= in a shell script. A dream of mine is to shoehorn Make in as a multiplexer, but I'm not sure if it's possible or even necessary. Let's find out!!
# Requirements
* POSIX =awk=
* POSIX =sh=
* =socat=
* probably a Unix environment
# References
=> gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/specification.gmi Gemini Specification
*
POSIX Awk manual
* POSIX Sh manual
* Socat manual
# Architecture
Edwin is made of a few different layers that all interact with each other. Awk is going to handle the actual input-output bit of the request, since it's good with that. It'll have 2 rules -- one to handle gemini links and one for everything else -- and due to the nature of Gemini connections, it'll exit after reading one line. Since that's not a great way to run a server, and since awk doesn't handle TLS or networking (GNU awk does, but that's (a) hacky and nonstandard and, I don't know, /weird/, and (b) it /still/ doesn't do TLS, so I'd be shelling it up anyway), I'm wrapping the awk script in a shell script using socat to pipe between TLS and the awk process.
/Under/ the awk layer, we'll have our CGI layer -- CGI scripts will respond to requests themselves, so they can do things like ask for input or use client certificates.
# Config
* TODO Awk layer
* * ~DEFAULT_MIME~
* * ~BASE_DIR~
* * ~HOSTNAME~
* TODO Shell layer
* TODO CGI layer
# Request
## Gemini spec
> Gemini requests are a single CRLF-terminated line with the following structure:
>
> =<URL><CR><LF>=
>
> =<URL>= is a UTF-8 encoded absolute URL, of maximum length 1024 bytes. If the scheme of the URL is not specified, a scheme of =gemini://= is implied.
>
> Sending an absolute URL instead of only a path or selector is effectively equivalent to building in a HTTP "Host" header. It permits virtual hosting of multiple Gemini domains on the same IP address. It also allows servers to optionally act as proxies. Including schemes other than =gemini://= in requests allows servers to optionally act as protocol-translating gateways to e.g. fetch gopher resources over Gemini. Proxying is optional and the vast majority of servers are expected to only respond to requests for resources at their own domain(s).
## URL parsingfunction usplit(url, uarr) {
scheme - scheme:
if (match(url, /^[^:\/\?#]+:/)) {
uarr["scheme"] = substr(url, RSTART, RLENGTH - 1);
url = substr(url, RSTART + RLENGTH);
}
authority - //authority
if (match(url, /^\/\/[^\/\?#]*/)) {
uarr["authority"] = substr(url, RSTART+2, RLENGTH-2);
url = substr(url, RSTART + RLENGTH);
}
path - path
if (match(url, /^[^\?#]*/)) {
uarr["path"] = substr(url, RSTART, RLENGTH);
url = substr(url, RSTART + RLENGTH);
}
query - ?query
if (match(url, /^\?[^#]*/)) {
uarr["query"] = substr(url, RSTART+1, RLENGTH-1);
url = substr(url, RSTART + RLENGTH);
}
fragment - #fragment
if (match(url, /^#.*/)) {
uarr["fragment"] = substr(url, RSTART+1);
url = substr(url, RSTART + RLENGTH);
}
sanity checks
if (!uarr["path"]) uarr["path"] = "/";
}
# Response ## Gemini spec > Gemini response headers look like this: > > =<STATUS><SPACE><META><CR><LF>= > > =<STATUS>= is a two-digit numeric status code, as described below in 3.2 and in Appendix 1. > > =<SPACE>= is a single space character, i.e. the byte 0x20. > > =<META>= is a UTF-8 encoded string of maximum length 1024 bytes, whose meaning is =<STATUS>= dependent. > > =<STATUS>= and =<META>= are separated by a single space character. > > If =<STATUS>= does not belong to the "SUCCESS" range of codes, then the server MUST close the connection after sending the header and MUST NOT send a response body. > > If a server sends a =<STATUS>= which is not a two-digit number or a =<META= which exceeds 1024 bytes in length, the client SHOULD close the connection and disregard the response header, informing the user of an error. ## Status codes Edwin is going to be "fancy," meaning it'll use the whole gamut of 2-digit codes. They are as follows:
| Code | Meaning | Layer |
|------+-----------------------------+---------|
| 10 | INPUT | cgi |
| 11 | SENSITIVE INPUT | cgi |
| 20 | SUCCESS | awk |
| 30 | REDIRECT - TEMPORARY | file? |
| 31 | REDIRECT - PERMANENT | file? |
| 40 | TEMPORARY FAILURE | -- |
| 41 | SERVER UNAVALIABLE | sh |
| 42 | CGI ERROR | awk |
| 43 | PROXY ERROR | ??? |
| 44 | SLOW DOWN | sh? |
| 50 | PERMANENT FAILURE | -- |
| 51 | NOT FOUND | awk |
| 52 | GONE | file? |
| 53 | PROXY REQUEST REFUSED | awk |
| 59 | BAD REQUEST | awk |
| 60 | CLIENT CERTIFICATE REQUIRED | cgi |
| 61 | CERTIFICATE NOT AUTHORISED | cgi |
| 62 | CERTIFICATE NOT VALID | cgi |
The =10= codes really only make sense in the context of CGI scripts, so they can handle those themselves. Ditto for the =60= s. =20= is the default, and works as long as the awk script can find the file or CGI script and can read/execute it. So awk can handle that. I'm thinking the ~30~ codes can be implemented on a file level, possibly with something as simple as =/some/path/redirect.31= with a single line, =gemini://example.com/some/other/path/= that edwin could read and send the client over there. Of course, the client would only have to request =/some/path/redirect= to be redirected. Another option for these is using something like a =.molly= or =.htaccess= file. =41= only really applies if the shellscript can't call the awk script. Likewise, =42= only makes sense in the awk layer, since that's what calls the CGI. =43= doesn't make sense unless we're planning on proxying to other hosts, which I'm not right now, so. =44= needs to be in the sh layer, if it's anywhere at all -- I'm not sure that I'll implement it. =51= will be implemented in the awk layer, since it tries to find the file. For my purposes, I don't see a meaningful difference between =51= and =52=, so I won't implement it; however, =52= /might/ be usable at a file level Ă la =31=-style file extensions -- i.e., move the to-be-deleted file to =delete.52=, and after waiting an "appropriate" amount of time, fully deleting it -- but that seems complicated and not-overly-helpful. =53= will be handled by the awk layer, since only awk will see what the request is. Same with =59=. ### Generate the status code
function respond(code, meta) {
printf "%s %s\r\n", code, meta
}
## Serve things ### Check permissions Edwin can't serve a file that doesn't exist, of course. ~expect()~ is the function that deals with that and other possiblities. Luckily, awk has a ~system()~ function that works like POSIX's ~system()~ call, which "shells out" to a shell -- meaning we can run Unix commands like ~test~. A caveat: because of the conventions of Unix, we need to negate our ideas of success and failure in awk. That's why I exit the script on the ~true~ branch of the ~if~ block below -- ~test~ exits with a 1 if it /fails/.
function test(file, test_arg, err_code, err_text) {
if (system("test -" test " " file)) {
if (err_code && err_text)
respond(err_code, err_text);
return 0;
}
return 1;
}
### TODO Mime types To serve a file, we need to know its mime-type so we can pass that on to the client. One day, I'll figure out something fancy with =/etc/mime.types= or something, but for now, we'll assume everything is ~DEFAULT_MIME~, which in edwin's case is =text/gemini=.
function get_mime(file) {
return DEFAULT_MIME;
}
### Serve files Here is the main "heart" of edwin, the whole reason we're here: we're serving a file. I'm not sure when we'd pass the mime-type in, but hey, it's there in case we do; at any rate, if it's not there we're going to find the mime type through the ~get_mime()~ function. After that, it's simple: print out the response header, then read the file line by line and pass it through. Finally, close the file and exit this iteration of the awk bit.
function serve_file(path, mime) {
if (!mime)
mime = get_mime(path);
respond(20, mime);
while (getline < path) {
print;
}
close(path);
exit 0;
}
### TODO Serve CGI ### Respond to requests
{
clean out the URL array
for (part in url)
delete url[part];
and reassign it
usplit($0, url);
sanity checks
if (url["scheme"] != "gemini") {
respond(53, "Only gemini supported.");
exit 53;
}
if (url["authority"] != HOST_NAME) {
response(53, "No proxying to other hosts!");
exit 53;
}
figure out the file we're serving
path = BASE_PATH url["path"];
is the file executable? serve cgi
if (test(path, "x"))
serve_cgi(path);
if not, does the file exist at least? serve the file.
if (test(path, "r", 51, "Not found."))
serve_file(path);
else
exit 51;
exit 0;
}
# TODO TLS </description> <pubDate>Fri, 06 Nov 2020 23:46:41 GMT</pubDate> </item> <item> <title>2020-11-05. On Unix and literature</title> <link>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2020-11-05.%20On%20Unix%20and%20literature</link> <guid>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2020-11-05.%20On%20Unix%20and%20literature</guid> <description> I came across what turned out to be an old-ass article (from 1998!!) about "UNIX as Literature:" => http://theody.net/elements.html The Elements of Style, by Thomas Scoville and boy, let me tell you -- it really got me going, as both an English and computer nerd. I feel like it explains me, in some ways: why I like the computers I do, what I like doing on them, how I use them. In This Essay I Will .. talk about that, I guess. For about nine hundred more words. Here we go. Hang on /type/ (lol, see what I did there? I'M NOT STALLING, YOU'RE STALLING)! I began writing in seventh grade. I wrote a lot of Very Bad poems¹, and I bound my own book. It was great fun. In highschool, I got a TI-83, you know the one, the graphing calculator with games on it. Remember MirageOS? Good times. Anyway, I started playing around with TI-BASIC and made a few little choose-your-own-adventure-style games (which is where I learned the slang meaning of /cum/, but that's another story), and even tried a little Assembly. It was also great fun. So much fun, in fact, that I wrote a little booklet about the basics of TI-BASIC and my dad was convinced I should be a technical writer or something, it was so great. I am not a technical writer now. Whether it was great or not is lost to time. I doubt it. I went to college for English Writing, and about midway through my first semester (and my first laptop), I thought I'd try out this Linux thing I'd been hearing about. I installed a truly terrible, backwater distro, and pretty quickly decided I didn't want to continue down that road. I uninstalled Linux (do you know where this is going?) and to my horror (here it comes!) found my computer unbootable. The true irony is that now, after having walked this path for some time, I could easily restore the boot order to get Windows Vista back running on that laptop. Alas, not as a wee froshie -- I wiped the whole thing and installed .. Ubuntu, I think. Thus began the Great Linux Adventure. Before we embark, however, a detour: I was talking to my coworker today about Geocities and she said, "Remember MySpace?" I answered, "Of course," and we talked about the great HTML learning capabilities of that wonderful Tom creation and I mentioned that really, I got my start with HTML on a website called /expages.com/, which was another HTML builder, and which had this great juggler gif that I spent a few minutes trying to find just now, to no avail. Of course, there was a lot of =<marquee>= in those days, as well. This, of course, is just another waystop in my Text / Computer Journey. In college, I used Linux exclusively (... GNU/Linux, whatever nerds), writing my papers, poems, non-fiction, stories, etc. on my little laptop, through a parade of various distros (it was a prime distro-hopping time). The only one I'll mention by name is the scrappy, now-defunct (well, retired) CrunchBang Linux, where I met my first Linux (GNU/Linux!) pals on the forum and had all-around a great time. Twas a good distro. Now I'm thinking about it, I wonder how much of the subject of my senior thesis, a hyptertextual PDF of everything I'd written in college², was born out of playing around in the computing environment I did in those days. Probably very much. (Do these sentences connect logically? I don't know if they do. No matter, onward!) I finally got a new laptop in graduate school (for Creative Writing, this time!) and kept Windows on there for a bit, partly because I was lazy and partly because ... no, wholly because I just didn't get around to wiping it and installing Linux (GNU/L---let me stuff a sock into the RMS in the back of my head). Finally, I did -- and I used it to write my Master's thesis, an outgrowth of my senior thesis but this time on the web (I still worry a little that I'll be got for self-plagiarization)³. After all that schooling, at some point I bought my website, got into tildes, and type a whole lot about nothing in particular online, all day. I still do a ton of writing and a lot of computering. Here's the thing though, my Big Scary Thought: I'm worried I'm only into any of this for the gear. When I was younger (and before I had to move twice a year), I collected books from everywhere, and they littered my room. I never read most of them, because the objects themselves were more interesting to me -- the old paper crinkling with pageturns; the slightly-raised ink on the pages; the typefaces, baroque and interesting; the covers, cardboard or paper, wrapped in fabric or nothing; and oh, the smell of all of it together. I've got rid of most of my books through moving a lot (they're quite heavy, as anyone who's lifted a box of them will know), but the books I still cannot bear to part with are majority unread as well. I never read that much poetry, really, and never felt as though I knew what I needed to be great at it. The same goes for computers -- I've been thinking about mechanical keyboards recently, but even before then -- the bulk of my tinkering on the computer has been tweaking my desktop settings, first through GUI tools like Compiz (wobbly window gang) and GNOME Tweak Tool, then by moving on to text-configured WMs like awesomewm, xmonad, herbstluftwm, i3, bspwm, or even programming my own with dwm. What I've learned of programming, I've learned because I was trying to make rectangles on my screen move around in different ways. Not because I actually had anything to /do/. I'm always worried that I am, at bottom, Unserious. That I'm just having a laff, shooting the shit -- though on the other hand, isn't that why we're here? I'm going to risk the ultimate cliché, quoting Vonnegut, because I really do like this one: > I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different. > ~ A Man Without a Country And I believe that, I really do -- but at the same time, what if I'm not farting around /right/ ? ... To be honest, being a part of a tilde community has helped with that, because I get the feedback I so crave, and friends are always nice to have. I also find the older I get, the less I care about being /right/, I just want to putter around. So putter I do. And most of the time, I have Great Fun. </description> <pubDate>Thu, 05 Nov 2020 22:47:04 GMT</pubDate> </item> <item> <title>2020-11-04. holding</title> <link>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2020-11-04.%20holding</link> <guid>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2020-11-04.%20holding</guid> <description>I've been thinking about redesigning my website lately. I'm bought a new VPS, slapped this gemini server on it, and I've been thinking about what else I can do with it. So I've been thinking about changing my website up. I even went so far as to post a topic in a semi-popular forum I frequent¹ to encourage others to post their webpages, as a ruse for inspiration. Everyone's webpages are so cool, and mine feels old and dusty by comparison. I know that part of that is because it's mine, and I've seen it a lot, whereas everyone else's is new, at least to me. I know that many other people experience similar feelings. This knowledge does nothing to help displace or otherwise mollify the feelings of inadequacy I feel. => https://tild.es/sy9 ¹ "Rate my homepage!" on Tildes.net => gemini://gem.acdw.net/page/About (contact me if you want an invite) Of course, while visiting Tildes in order to link to the thread above, I saw I had two notifications. I clicked them and found two replies to a comment I made about judging Trump supporters *a priori* regarding possible racism and xenophobia, on a thread that has since been locked and removed. I read through the rest of the comments, and a few were maybe trending toward flamewar, but I disagree with the site admin's decision to pull the plug on the discussion. However, it's not my site, I suppose, and so it goes. So again, the election has entered my life. It's all encompassing at this point, this sick American political machine; I think of those videos that show the Moon at the distance of the ISS, or the funnier one with a giant banana at the same distance. It covers the whole sky; we bathe in its light whether we want to or not. Ironically, I suppose (though didn't Morrisette strip that concept of all meaning in '96?), the sky outside my window has been a perfect, unbroken blue for the past few days, with that perfect fall weather that is crisp but not cold in the sunshine. I've been riding my bike to work and it's been making me very happy. You know what? I'm going to quote the *a priori* comment and my response here, to make a point, I think. The original post: > After reading the election thread, I don't personally see how admitting to being a Trump supporter would be productive for anyone on Tildes. Without citing specific comments, you'd just be copping to being a bigot and racist a priori in eyes of folks here. My response: > I want to just ... push a little bit on this, especially the a priori part. With all the stuff the Trump administration has said and done over the past four years, can we really argue that someone isn't at least okay with racism and bigotry if they support Trump? I do agree that admitting to supporting him wouldn't win you many friends on this site, but ... I don't know, it seems like leading with Trump support isn't the best way to win friends in like, real life either. At least in a lot of the country. And here's part of a response to me: > It's bad to villainize someone for voting for Trump (or anyone for that matter). It's also terrible to make assumptions that someone is a racist or is sympathetic to racist sentiment just because they cast a vote. This is something I see in my left-leaning friends that I wish would stop. I'll take it a step further and say it's even bad to assume someone is a bad person just because they seem racist. My great aunt -- who is not even that old, in her late 50s -- espouses some particularly racist ideas sometimes. And yet she still imparts some wisdom to me from time to time, and I know she loves her kids and grandkids, and I know she's a good person because I grew up with her. Humans aren't as one-dimensional as modern social media would like you to believe. I don't like that she might've voted for Trump, but I still would respect her decision if she did. I find myself reeling more and more about how everything happens all of the time. I can almost physically feel the weight of all of our collective sociopoliticoeconomic problems piling on this country and the world, I can see fires burning in the distance; but I can enjoy the autumn breeze and birdsong. I know that if it comes to self-sufficiency and tattered towns barely subsisting, there will still be singing and games on the weekends. People can commit great atrocities and still be good to those they wish to. People can be good people and be racist at the same time. We contain multitudes. The BTK killer was a family man who loved his daughters. Stalin was known to be generous with his family. George Washington owned slaves, and persecuted escaped ones for years, and Jefferson famously raped many of his slaves. I feel like education should do a better job of preparing us to accept this reality, and to figure out how to change it when we can. I keep not knowing where to put things. I've stopped listening to the news because I don't know how to hold it in my head. I remember Keats, explaining "Negative Capability:" > when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason I've used this phrase as a guide for much of my adult life. With recent events, I find it harder to live by, because it's somehow related to Doublethink: > To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself--that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word--doublethink--involved the use of doublethink. I find it impossible to tell, when I'm at my least sure, whether I or those I disagree with -- for these are ultimately disagreements -- are participating in Negative Capability, or Doublethink. And though these are but disagreements, they precipitate into action in the world, and people live and die by these disagreements. Is this how it's always been? I suppose I'm saying that, the older I become, the smaller I find myself to be. When I was a child I was my whole world, and then my siblings and me, my parents, my friends, my school, my town, my state, another state, the country, the world. I feel at times as though I have nothing to say to anyone, because what is my voice against the tide of humanity? And at the same time, I have a completeness in my family, my new one, with my wife and my dogs. At some point, we'll have children, and they'll be my whole world: a return, through stepping down the generations. And at the still same time, the world will be burning itself, or won't be, at any rate I can't control what it does. I feel as though I was promised I could do anything if only I put my mind to it. I feel as though that promise has been proven to be a lie -- a kind lie, like Santa Claus, but a much more damaging one. </description> <pubDate>Wed, 04 Nov 2020 22:58:58 GMT</pubDate> </item> <item> <title>2020-11-03. birds outside a stairwell</title> <link>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2020-11-03.%20birds%20outside%20a%20stairwell</link> <guid>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2020-11-03.%20birds%20outside%20a%20stairwell</guid> <description>Every day at work, I take the stairs, first up to the second floor to clock in, then sometimes up to the third if I have lunch to drop off, then all the way back down to the first floor, on every day except Monday, when I work all day on floor two. At lunch, I go back up the three flights of stairs to the third floor to make and eat lunch on the terrace, then I go down to the second floor every day except Friday, when I work all day on floor one; then of course I walk all the way back down. Each time I take the stairs, I take the one stairwell in the middle of the building, next to the main staff elevator. I rarely take the elevator because (1) I'm hale and I want to stay that way, and (2) Covid has made me even more wary of spending time with someone in a small moving metal room. The stairwell is a fairly standard one, with a tall tower-like construction with a stair winding around the inside. The stairs are gray and covered in a gray non-slip surfacing, and the bannister is a gray-painted metal, I assume steel. There is a landing on every corner of the stair as it winds up the tower, and I try to wait on these to let someone pass going the opposite direction pass me, because, again, Covid has made me weary of passing too closely to anyone. Besides, even if I weren't particularly worried, it seems like common courtesy in these uncertain times to keep my distance. There is also a window that runs the height of the tower, narrowish in comparison to the tower itself, though probably around four or even six feet wide if measured. I suppose it is actually a couple of windows on top of each other, since there are sills on which plants with long trailing vines, about half of which look dead, sit in their pots. I did see someone watering the plants once, and they look generally healthy, aside from their dead parts; however, I'm not much for plant care so I could be completely wrong. I usually only half-notice them, from the corners of my eyes, anyway: I tend to take the stairs two at a time and watch their surfaces for where I need to step, so I don't take a lot of time to look at the window plants, or out of the window at all. Today, while walking up the stairs to lunch, I happened to look out of the window, again in passing, or maybe something caught my eye and I glanced. I saw two dead birds on the awning of the staff entrance door, a mockingbird and possibly a sparrow, though I'm not completely sure (I'm about as knowledgable about birds as I am plants). Their bodies were bent in that way that always signals death; I didn't see any grease prints or other indications of where they'd hit the window, though I assume that's what happened: I can't think of another reason two birds would be dead on an awning outside of a window. The scene made me pause for the slightest instant, as though I were a ball hanging at the top of its long lobbed arc by a child throwing it straight up. Then, like the ball, I returned to myself, and began climbing the stairs again. Something about it seemed important, or somehow a portent of something else happening. Today, as those of us living through it know all too well, is Election Day in the United States, and in a lot of ways it feels as though it may be our last, or our last meaningful one, anyway. I tend to think apocalyptically, and when I do I'm always reminded of some quote, or maybe just an idea, that "every generation thinks it's the last one," so I try not to go too far down that path. But there are a lot of factors that feed into the fact that this election is different than others, and not in the way every election is different: there are a number of debts coming due, and we're running out of time to pay them. At some point, the balls that were upthrown -- when we shipped Africans to the New World to do our jobs for free, when we shifted toward a petroleum-based economy, when we augmented that economy with a military-industrial complex that shares its driver's seat, when we discarded the Fairness Doctrine in favor of a well-oild propoganda machine, when we decided to focus on quarterly earnings instead of long-term dividends, when it became easier to save the rich a few dollars rather than help the poor make needed improvements to their lives -- have to come down. I've been waiting for them to come down for as long as I've been paying attention. It feels as though the time is soon. But the birds have nothing to do with any of that. They didn't fly into the window to warn me of the impending Doom of Election Night; they flew into it because they didn't know what glass was. Maybe that's the parallel we can draw here, the reason why, today of all days, I happened to glance and see the birds and they struck something inside me that rang out. I've been feeling anxious these past four years because I feel like we're rudderless, or better, like some of us can see the iceberg as we approach it, but others see nothing at all, or want to see nothing so badly they convince themselves it isn't there, and those are the ones in charge of the rudder. I don't know which it is. But either way, it feels as though we're heading straight for this Doom -- window or iceberg, whichever -- and I'm stuck on the lower decks, wondering what's going on up there and why we're not moving aside. I don't know -- to be honest, I have serious doubts -- if tonight is going to start steering us away from that Doom, but either way, I'm not sure it's not too late. Not enough people see the glass, I think, to dodge it. </description> <pubDate>Tue, 03 Nov 2020 22:38:55 GMT</pubDate> </item> <item> <title>2020-11-02. Vocational Awe</title> <link>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2020-11-02.%20Vocational%20Awe</link> <guid>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2020-11-02.%20Vocational%20Awe</guid> <description># Vocational Awe ~Sardonyx¹ shared this article with me ... 2 months ago, and I've been meaning to write something regarding it since then -- seriously, it's been sitting in my Inbox for all this time, staring at me. It's about the labor that many of us do for a reduced price, or for free, because of a thing that the author, Anne Helen Peterson, terms "Vocational Awe." Go ahead and read the whole thing, if you'd like; I'll wait for you here.² => https://annehelen.substack.com/p/vocational-awe "Vocational Awe," by A.H. Peterson (Substack) => gemini://gemlog.blue/users/Sardonyx ¹ ~Sardonyx ² Of course, I have to re-read it as well -- it /has/ been two months, after all. ## about me So. I am a library worker (I say that instead of "librarian" because I don't have my MLIS, and because a lot of MLIS-holding librarians will be cross with me if I step on their hallowed ground) of ... coming up on four years now. My first job here was in the Outreach department, which meant I drove a big bus full of books around the parish and read stories to small children. Our department also drove (still does, just not my department any more) the bookmobiles to senior centers and low-income housing areas to lend books to the people there. For the past year, I've been at the Main branch of the library, splitting my time between the Career Center and the Small Business Services branch of the Reference department. In my current position, I help patrons with aspects of finding and applying for jobs, editing their resumes, and prepping for interviews; I help other patrons with navigating the business-creation process and interview local entrepreneurs; and I perform general "reference help desk" style duties -- which if you don't know what those are, try calling your local library's reference desk sometime, they can be really helpful! ## the over-tasked and under-paid Peterson's piece begins with a discussion of another one, the author of which (a sociologist named Eric Klinenberg) argues that libraries should be used as ballot drop-off points in the 2020 election. Peterson notes that Klinenberg neglected to interview any actual librarians, and when she fills that hole, she finds that -- shockingly -- librarians aren't super into doing even more extra work for essentially free. It seems as though libraries are another one of our society's essential institutions that are over-tasked and under-funded, alongside teachers, health workers, and even police officers. > But instead of treating libraries like the big, all-utility, all-service spaces they've become, we still fund them as if they're just lending books. This quote especially got me thinkig about the police, especially in the light of This Year and all the unrest and calls for defunding the police. While police forces around America have deep-seated problems with racial profiling, unjust practices, and a host of other things, they /also/ have the real problem of under-funding and over-tasking: the police are called in cases of drug overdose, mental breakdowns, domestic disputes, shootings, robberies, and more, many of which would be better served by better-trained professionals without weapons. But the Police are this Revered Institution that Must be Respected, so they're called ... though they're still funded as if they're just busting robbers. See the parallels? In the same way, I've been sickened by, specifically, Scott Walker, in his comments a few years ago about teachers, and how they don't work hard enough because they're "off" three months out of the year. I'm married to someone who was, until this year, a college professor, and she routinely worked 60- or 70-hour weeks, between curriculum development, lesson planning, meeting with students, meeting with fellow faculty, general office work, and, oh yeah, actually /teaching the class/ and /grading the materials/. And she didn't get paid enough to "take off" during the summer, and neither are a lot of other teachers. And she didn't have to deal with parents, or the school board, or any of the things that I can't even imagine grade-school teachers having to deal with, for roughly the same pay. ## vocational awe Peterson ties all these problems together under the umbrella of "vocational awe," an idea laid out by Fobazi Ettarh in /In the Library with the Lead Pipe/, the epigraph of which I'll quote here. > Vocational awe describes the set of ideas, values, and assumptions librarians have about themselves and the profession that result in notions that libraries as institutions are inherently good, sacred notions, and therefore beyond critique. I argue that the concept of vocational awe directly correlates to problems within librarianship like burnout and low salary. This article aims to describe the phenomenon and its effects on library philosophies and practices so that they may be recognized and deconstructed. => http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/ "Vocational Awe," by Fobazi Ettarh Peterson looks at the vocational awe of librarians, but also mentions the all-too-familiar "essential workers" of the COVID era, who are just trying to do their jobs so they can make rent in an unprecedented time, but are for some reason being heralded as "heroes," while still making the same as they were before putting their lives on the line every day. It's the classic bait-and-switch double-speak of ... I want to say "bourgeoisie" here, but that feels too Marxist ... corporatists who want all of us to Have a Good Time Working. I feel like it's been going this way a long time, at all levels -- cf. the "Take All the Vacation Time You Want" policies at Silicon Valley tech giants, which leads to /less/ vacation time taken; at wi-fi on planes, at, I don't know, *gestures vaguely around* all of the economy. I don't /want/ my vocation to be something awe-inspiring; I don't /want/ a job that is my Dream; I want to clock in, do my work, and clock out and enjoy my weekend. "Vocational awe" is, at bottom, a farce, a con to convince workers to work without adequate compensation. That's what Peterson's article basically says, and I'm guessing that's what Ettarh's does as well. I'm not really adding anything new to the conversation. However, I'd like to thank ~Sardonyx for linking it to me and getting me to read it. ## where do we go from here? I feel like all these "think pieces" should have some kind of solution section, something with a proposal to move forward and, I don't know, /fix/ the problem they describe. Most don't -- probably because the problems are always pretty Big, and deep-reaching into the heart of America's brokenness ... which is deep and dark and very, very old. The same goes with this -- I think it has something to do with the Puritan Work Ethic, but I think everything has to do with that. I try to undo its programming whenever I can, but let's face it, I live in a Society (lol), and everybody else has to get on this page too. So, yeah. It sucks right now. I don't know where to put this. If you have any ideas, feel free to get in touch. </description> <pubDate>Mon, 02 Nov 2020 19:44:41 GMT</pubDate> </item> <item> <title>2020-10-02. Vocational Awe</title> <link>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2020-10-02.%20Vocational%20Awe</link> <guid>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2020-10-02.%20Vocational%20Awe</guid> <description># Vocational Awe ~Sardonyx¹ shared this article with me ... 2 months ago, and I've been meaning to write something regarding it since then -- seriously, it's been sitting in my Inbox for all this time, staring at me. It's about the labor that many of us do for a reduced price, or for free, because of a thing that the author, Anne Helen Peterson, terms "Vocational Awe." Go ahead and read the whole thing, if you'd like; I'll wait for you here.² => https://annehelen.substack.com/p/vocational-awe "Vocational Awe," by A.H. Peterson (Substack) => gemini://gemlog.blue/users/Sardonyx ¹ ~Sardonyx ² Of course, I have to re-read it as well -- it /has/ been two months, after all. ## about me So. I am a library worker (I say that instead of "librarian" because I don't have my MLIS, and because a lot of MLIS-holding librarians will be cross with me if I step on their hallowed ground) of ... coming up on four years now. My first job here was in the Outreach department, which meant I drove a big bus full of books around the parish and read stories to small children. Our department also drove (still does, just not my department any more) the bookmobiles to senior centers and low-income housing areas to lend books to the people there. For the past year, I've been at the Main branch of the library, splitting my time between the Career Center and the Small Business Services branch of the Reference department. In my current position, I help patrons with aspects of finding and applying for jobs, editing their resumes, and prepping for interviews; I help other patrons with navigating the business-creation process and interview local entrepreneurs; and I perform general "reference help desk" style duties -- which if you don't know what those are, try calling your local library's reference desk sometime, they can be really helpful! ## the over-tasked and under-paid Peterson's piece begins with a discussion of another one, the author of which (a sociologist named Eric Klinenberg) argues that libraries should be used as ballot drop-off points in the 2020 election. Peterson notes that Klinenberg neglected to interview any actual librarians, and when she fills that hole, she finds that -- shockingly -- librarians aren't super into doing even more extra work for essentially free. It seems as though libraries are another one of our society's essential institutions that are over-tasked and under-funded, alongside teachers, health workers, and even police officers. > But instead of treating libraries like the big, all-utility, all-service spaces they've become, we still fund them as if they're just lending books. This quote especially got me thinkig about the police, especially in the light of This Year and all the unrest and calls for defunding the police. While police forces around America have deep-seated problems with racial profiling, unjust practices, and a host of other things, they /also/ have the real problem of under-funding and over-tasking: the police are called in cases of drug overdose, mental breakdowns, domestic disputes, shootings, robberies, and more, many of which would be better served by better-trained professionals without weapons. But the Police are this Revered Institution that Must be Respected, so they're called ... though they're still funded as if they're just busting robbers. See the parallels? In the same way, I've been sickened by, specifically, Scott Walker, in his comments a few years ago about teachers, and how they don't work hard enough because they're "off" three months out of the year. I'm married to someone who was, until this year, a college professor, and she routinely worked 60- or 70-hour weeks, between curriculum development, lesson planning, meeting with students, meeting with fellow faculty, general office work, and, oh yeah, actually /teaching the class/ and /grading the materials/. And she didn't get paid enough to "take off" during the summer, and neither are a lot of other teachers. And she didn't have to deal with parents, or the school board, or any of the things that I can't even imagine grade-school teachers having to deal with, for roughly the same pay. ## vocational awe Peterson ties all these problems together under the umbrella of "vocational awe," an idea laid out by Fobazi Ettarh in /In the Library with the Lead Pipe/, the epigraph of which I'll quote here. > Vocational awe describes the set of ideas, values, and assumptions librarians have about themselves and the profession that result in notions that libraries as institutions are inherently good, sacred notions, and therefore beyond critique. I argue that the concept of vocational awe directly correlates to problems within librarianship like burnout and low salary. This article aims to describe the phenomenon and its effects on library philosophies and practices so that they may be recognized and deconstructed. => http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/ "Vocational Awe," by Fobazi Ettarh Peterson looks at the vocational awe of librarians, but also mentions the all-too-familiar "essential workers" of the COVID era, who are just trying to do their jobs so they can make rent in an unprecedented time, but are for some reason being heralded as "heroes," while still making the same as they were before putting their lives on the line every day. It's the classic bait-and-switch double-speak of ... I want to say "bourgeoisie" here, but that feels too Marxist ... corporatists who want all of us to Have a Good Time Working. I feel like it's been going this way a long time, at all levels -- cf. the "Take All the Vacation Time You Want" policies at Silicon Valley tech giants, which leads to /less/ vacation time taken; at wi-fi on planes, at, I don't know, *gestures vaguely around* all of the economy. I don't /want/ my vocation to be something awe-inspiring; I don't /want/ a job that is my Dream; I want to clock in, do my work, and clock out and enjoy my weekend. "Vocational awe" is, at bottom, a farce, a con to convince workers to work without adequate compensation. That's what Peterson's article basically says, and I'm guessing that's what Ettarh's does as well. I'm not really adding anything new to the conversation. However, I'd like to thank ~Sardonyx for linking it to me and getting me to read it. ## where do we go from here? I feel like all these "think pieces" should have some kind of solution section, something with a proposal to move forward and, I don't know, /fix/ the problem they describe. Most don't -- probably because the problems are always pretty Big, and deep-reaching into the heart of America's brokenness ... which is deep and dark and very, very old. The same goes with this -- I think it has something to do with the Puritan Work Ethic, but I think everything has to do with that. I try to undo its programming whenever I can, but let's face it, I live in a Society (lol), and everybody else has to get on this page too. So, yeah. It sucks right now. I don't know where to put this. If you have any ideas, feel free to get in touch. </description> <pubDate>Mon, 02 Nov 2020 19:42:47 GMT</pubDate> </item> <item> <title>2020-11-01-commence-1kaday</title> <link>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2020-11-01-commence-1kaday</link> <guid>gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2020-11-01-commence-1kaday</guid> <description># Let us commence Today begins the beginning of #1kaday, my attempt at a watered-down Nanowrimo where I write only 1000 words a day (as opposed to, what, ~1200?) and they don't all have to make a cohesive narrative. I'm not ready for that yet. Today is going to be a kind of unfocused, rambling, let-me-get-my-setup-right type of thing, so buckle up, Dear Reader, let's go for a ride. ## Setting up my text editor So I use emacs, which has been mentioned before, I think. The first thing I needed to do was get rid of this annoying warning I kept getting from `auto-save` because I hadn't created the folder I'm putting all these in. So I had to add
(cuss auto-save-file-name-transforms
`((".*" ,(no-littering-expand-var-file-name "auto-save/") t)))
even though I've got this `super-save` package, and thought I'd disabled auto-save, but like, whatever. Also, for some reason I was editing *this* file with sudo powers, so I just exited out from Emacs and got back in. Uff. That done, I now need a word count in the mode-line. When I was using doom-modeline, it was included, but I've switched for no real reason to smart-mode-line, so I've got to do some searching here. Hang on. ## Wc-mode Okay, I found wc-mode and that seems to be what I want. => https://github.com/bnbeckwith/wc-mode It's hosted on Github. It allows me to set a goal word count with `C-c C-w w`, which obviously I set to 1000, and it shows a word count in the mode-line. So great so far. Of course, *my* modeline is smart-mode-line, and I've got the thing it uses to diminish minor-modes, called `rich-minority`. Of course of course, rich-minority takes a whitelist and a blacklist, so I've got the easy whitelist "^$" (it takes a regexp!) to block all minor-modes. BUT of course of course of course, the whitelist can be either * a regexp * a list of strings but NOT * a list of regexps You have to just have a long-ass string, like `"foo\|bar\|whatever\|quux"`, which is super annoying. So I had to write another function to add minor-modes to the whitelist:
(defun rm-whitelist-add (regexp)
"Add a regexp option to the rm-whitelist group."
(unless (boundp 'rm-whitelist-regexps)
(setq rm-whitelist-regexps '("^$")))
(add-to-list 'rm-whitelist-regexps regexp)
(setq rm-whitelist (mapconcat 'identity rm-whitelist-regexps "\\|")))
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