Seth "Twylo" Morabito @twylo@mastodon.sdf.org

Honestly what this really means is that I should finish mastering morse code so I can just hang out in the CW bands. I don't think anyone talks politics in CW.

I keep thinking to myself, "Self, you have a ham radio license. You have a fan dipole. You should get on the air more often!" But then I turn on my radio and spin the dial and, within MINUTES, I land on a rag chew where the old farts are talking about stolen elections and COVID conspiracies.

Without fail.

So I turn off the radio again for a few weeks.

Somewhere between 1992 and now, I lost my desire to really hack on Linux. I still use it as my daily driver desktop, but I use Linux Mint with basically all-default settings and don't get under the hood much.

There was a time when I recompiled the Linux kernel almost daily, hand-compiled all of my software without a package manager, and generally got really under the hood. Now, not so much. The complexity of modern Linux is incredibly intimidating.

My burnout has reached the level of "I definitely do not like computers at all any more, even just a little tiny bit." Not even old computers. Computers are just bad.

Also trying: Fedora 35. My goal is to pick a Linux distro for my Framework laptop, which should be arriving on a shiny FedEx truck this morning.

I'm installing Endeavour Linux today as an experiment. It's Babby's First Arch derivative! I have to learn about this whole 'pacman' thing.

The Internet is so bad that I'm on Mastodon just so I can feel something again.

Discord is a lousy replacement for forums. Discussions are just... lost to the winds, never to be seen again. To heck with that.

The thing is, I don't trust Google even more than I don't trust Apple, and I no longer trust either of them in any reasonable capacity. So, I dunno what to do other than "don't use a mobile phone".

This week I deleted 101GB of photos from Apple Photos and then I ordered a Light Phone II. How's your week going?

@phooky@octodon.social Its so weird seeing Donlon’s 4th floor lounge after all this time… https://youtu.be/wCK96UePRGM

I'm learning only the most useful Icelandic phrases by reading Icelandic kids books!

I've been trying to force myself to study and improve my terrible Icelandic, after years of promising that I'd do it. But, in typical procrastinator fashion I have concluded that before I can *really* study Icelandic, I need to write my own flashcard application with a focus on Icelandic grammar and vocabulary (oh, and to make it handle Old Norse too, since they're so similar, right?)

Anyway that's how my life is going right now.

Yesterday I learned about Project Gemini, a project building a new Internet protocol to serve static hypertext documents. It lies somewhere in-between Gopher and HTTP, and reminds me of the World Wide Web circa 1992. (see: https://gemini.circumlunar.space/) Today, I have a gemini server up and running at gemini://loomcom.com/! You'll need a gemini browser (e.g. castor) to view it.

I LIVE.

They say you should be the change you want to see in the world. That's why I'm backing the Reform open and repairable laptop, and why I think you should too! https://www.crowdsupply.com/mnt/reform

I think perhaps the biggest mistake made when creating the current fediverse was making instances culturally significant (i.e., making instances islands of users with a shared interest). It has led to the current arms race between instances blocking and canceling each other.

In my (correct) opinion, an instance of a distributed peer-to-peer messaging system should be nothing more than a dumb node that serves as a message source and sink.

Drat. The DEC GIGI terminal generates 15 kHz sync, which none of my LCD monitors can do.

Just arrived on my workbench: A DEC GIGI terminal! I never thought I'd own one of these.

IRC is still pretty great.