updates from the desk of TMO
I've been searching up and down trying to find out the name of (or remember) the controversial professor from MIT(?) who is always talking about open source software and then will like, say that climate change isn't real, or that the sun is cold or some shit like that.
Everyone “likes” him in the open source world, but normal (open source loving and non) people think he's batsxxx.
Who is this guy?
Am I “good” at writing? Am I just some quasi-poetic wordsmith'er? I tend to feel I have little quips and moments of Capote-inspired, wanna-be “good word making”, but I really have no way of making that happen. I sort of drum up a way to put together some melodic formation of text and say: “yep, thems the words to make people feel nice”.
As where someone of talent (like Capote) was a person who wrote that way, and flexed muscle of immense talent 24/7. He said of Kerouac at one point, “that's not writing, it's typing”. So maybe I'm more in alignment with someone who types more than anything.
Truth: I'd sell my soul and first blog to be able to have Capote, Kerouac, Lee (Harper Lee), or Hunter S Thompson gander at the text mash I put on-screen at some point, and see how they reacted to it. Would they love it? Would they dismiss it? Would they criticize it? I'd be hanging off their every word.
I stray a fair distance from writers of significance in the world – be it a legendary author, or...yea, just authors. Not only because I am an un-published “so and so”, but because I don't feel any ballpark comparison is something I'm comfortable with, nor is there a connection/permeation as to why such a comparison would be made in the first place. Like comparing a hot dog stand vendor to a bank executive – not too many roads of similarity to be traveled to get from point A to point B. I write and document life as I see it, but the art/craft of writing in general is the only tethered similarity about me and them.
Anyway, the coffee is nice. And as stated, the sun is shining. A nice day, I'd say.
...that should be a Punk-influenced Grunge album title ;) Or it can be “up with the Sunday trash” if there were anti-religious sentiment to it.
And I'm up at 8:00 AM, though 9:30 now. Trash billowing for a walk to the dumpster. No issue there, as it is sun everywhere today. Cloudless, gorgeous.
Puffing lengthy Edgefield non-filter cigarette “butts” this AM, because I am out of smokes, and these are like, ¾ cigarettes, so instead of being wasteful and trashing them to spend money on a fresh carton, I'll put these to use and get a carton....whenever.
Climate change happened across my radar this morning. Don't know where I saw info about it, but then I read stuff from New Yorker, The Guardian, etc., and it seems the crash course of ecology v civilization (a big bout! But free on Pay-Per-View!) is drawing more near (in some ways, already started), which is more or less an “accepted” viewpoint in my world/life now. I don't even “consider” the “possible” inevitability of climate disaster, nor do I kid myself as to the speed and severity of it, or the concept that we (humans, all of us) could do anything about it – even to stave it off for an additional 10+ years. It's here, accelerating, no horizons of technicolor wonder to infer an outcome any different, just a thing going on, and adapting is better than philosophizing.
So, there was a fast “news” reminder of....everything.
I'll ditch the trash. Watch more YT. Carry on.
later
So, Inquiry just dropped a truth bomb of raw transparency here, where I had not mustered the words to correspond, likely due to the nature of them, and the (negative) effects of thinking of/dwelling on said subject. Inquiry typed the words out:
...hyper focus your attention on the latter part. It's the most plaguing and also consistent element of my writing hobby and also my approach to blogging for the past year or more. Wanting to write something, but having lost all therapeutic benefit (and sometimes enjoyment) only to find myself flustering and fluttering with how to write a thing, because all of it is just trash and the mental movements have lost all zeal and meaning, so the past hype and purpose of a/the blog (for me) is faded and senseless, leaving me just typing stuff.
Hell, I can't even say whatever it is I am saying now because, I don't have it (in a way).
I keep blogging though. Cause I can and I do.
Things change. People change. Change back? Change for the better? It's anyone's guess
So I tried to set up FreshRSS with Cloudron on my Linode VPS. But I am throwing in the towel with that one. I went into the instructions to install Cloudron and it's shortfalls here, but even after going back and starting a new server, with a fresh install of Ubuntu, it still didn't take. This time, I knew exactly what I did wrong – I simply forgot to install PHP, which is a prerequisite of the FreshRSS software. So, it is FreshRSS that didn't take (initially), and then when backtracking/reverse-engineering and trying to install PHP after installing FreshRSS (which of course would not work), I lost access to the Cloudron Dashboard altogether via Web. It hands me an Apache splash page, and that is it. Be it thanx.cc or my.thanx.cc or rss.thanx.cc – all Apache pages other than rss.thanx.cc which gives me a network error due to the proxy I am using, but that URL still works on my phone (which is not using a proxy).
Whatever, I'm not doing it all over. I'll use a different RSS service
That's more of a humor title than a dire/serious/depressing one (in my eyes). But yea, it (surfing the web) is like that, sometimes. Like, a glance at the browser, seeing tabs newly opened, and just “clicking-in” to see what will let me down next.
A moment later, maybe a higher vigor and a “let's see what the next thing will be to blow my b*lls off!“, etc.
Lately, it (whatever “it” is – the content on line in that general timeframe, I guess) is fine. Just sort of journal entries and updates on flutter and mutter. A lot of folks are remarking on adding .rss to a Mastodon feed to “feed out” their updates, and this is true, as the .rss addition is with the recent Masto updates, but before it worked with RSS, just didn't need the .rss. And Musk stuff is all over too. Banning journos, banning features, banning banners and banning the banned from being banned.
What happens when a journalist puts their work/career into Twitter and then gets banned? Is it like that scene in Beatlegeuse where the guy opens the door in the afterworld to show “the lost souls room” and refers to it as “death for the dead”?
Likely similar
On with coffee and whatever else
later
As I watched a YT video, I see “The TV Typewriter”, a device by Don Lancaster from 1973, which was allegedly the first time someone typed a character on a keyboard and that character rendered itself on a screen. I heard many times that NASA sent an “e-mail” via an Intranet and it was actually someone typing real-time on a computer, and those words rendering in real-time on another computer screen on the other side of the room, the building, whatever.
Also, the Lancaster claim, which stems from a remark Steve Wozniak made in his book, iWoz (publishing date unknown, by me) that in 1976 (three years after Lancaster's TV Typewriter), that he (Woz) was the first to render a character on-screen via keyboard with his first iteration of the Apple I.
Lots of differences throughout. NASA did a thing within NASA and likely no one knew of it. Lancaster did The TV Typewriter and made it into a “thing”? A by-mail DIY kit? (not clear on that). Wozniak (and Jobs) used the Apple I as a jumping point to make the Apple II and it's variants which turned into the highest selling computer of that time, and in that time, and of ALL time (to that point).
But seeing the Lancaster thing made me think that I wanted to render some characters on my computer screen myself. Hence this entry.
Also, didn't calculators exist in the 1960s? Isn't that rendering characters on a screen? Were LED billboards in existence in that time? Same difference? Yes/no?
Anyway, I liked writing this little character rendering. Albeit, many beat me to the punch over a half century ago ;)
So I made some documentation for using the CLI-based messaging forum (Iris) for Ctrl-c.club, and that document is now complete (as far as I know). I cleared up the areas marked with “(!!!)”, as Eric B (Ctrl-c admin) got back to me via e-mail about what I needed clarification on.
So, everything is “done” with it.
He also included in the e-mail details on how to change the default editor one uses to edit files on Ctrl-c + Iris, as well as a method of marking all messages that have been “marked as read” and then un-marking them as such (in some odd way) haha.
So, that was cool
He may be sharing this via a Homepage link on Ctrl-c at some point, which would be really cool :)
later
To the tune of “Possibility”, a lesser-known original Pop song by Tiffany Alvord. She is a YT Pop starlet type person, and I have subbed to her channel since 2010, back when she was making the rounds as the person doing cover songs of Taylor Swift (who was newly famous then, of course). In fact, Tiffany had a studio called “Taylor Made Studios” (clever). I would search “Taylor Swift Fearless” or “Taylor Swift Say Yes” on YT back then, and Taylor didn't make videos (that I know) in 2010, so Tiffany's covers would show up, and get millions of views – delightful.
Tiffany did a bunch of original songs over the years, with high production videos (as well as covers by many artists), but she has since gone silent (mostly) on YT and last I saw she is “doing Instagram” full-time as a over-edited product placement model (aka influencer) and I have nothing but nice things to say about her and her career, but why she went all-in with Instagram instead of continuing the surmounting subscriber growth and high view count video content on YT, I will never know.
These things (numbers) are irrelevant to most. As they should be. But she never avoided trying to BE an Internet celebrity. It just seemed to be “what she did”. Most folks though, it's likely un-needed and above their pay grade.
On the subject of numbers, my cig-smoked count is too high, I think. Several packs in two days. Always been a smoker (since 13 (!!!)), but the habit has increased in recent weeks, so...idk.
No one should ever smoke, of course, nor use e-cigs. So there's a small disclaimer.
E-cigs are the worst. Continual coughing from vapor build up in the throat, bad lung issues, nicotine “poisoning” (high levels of it), messy tank refills, batteries dying all the time, inconvenient re-charging (non)schedules (aka sporadic battery deaths), expensive replacement parts, burnt out cartomizers, malfunctioning atomizers, threat of sub-market chemicals in lesser-known juice brands. Etcetera.
There used to be a “thing” with them, though. I think it started with the folks who hated Big Tobacco™, and wanted to liberate themselves from the prices and restrictions of cigarettes. E-cigs, they offered nearly no aroma, no smell left on clothes/skin, much cheaper ($40 for a Liter of juice), nearly no regulation (2012 era), which added enthusiasm to nicotine-loving members of the Libertarian crowd (however big that demographic was? IDK), parts could be DIY (never recommended) or bought in kits. And, “it was the healthier option”, or so many thought until chemical-induced pneumonia made people sick and eventually medically induced comas, and everything else lung/throat related started to go wrong in terms of prolonged inhalation of vapor molecules into the body.
A “safe and cheap” alternative to The Big Bad Business Wolf. How quaint if I made a Twitter/Masto reference here, but I won't. But I just did, so...
later
So, I subscribe to Matt (Baer)'s Mastodon acct via RSS (I like seeing particular Masto updates via RSS, and it sifts out the Boosts and Replies this way, so, it is better IMO). And I see he (MB) made a service for Mastodon instances (via admin participation) to utilize unsafe.social to create a link (links) from a person's Mastodon acct/status update to be clickable from Twitter. As of now, Twitter (Musk) banned such links from being reachable, because Masto is competition, and Musk is as small in ego as he is rich in dollars, so he just banned the links.
So, check out unsafe.social, as it is cool, I think. Even though I find neither Twitter nor Mastodon cool, tbh, haha.
Noble service though, indeed :)
I wouldn't be surprised to see Matt (Baer) (who owns/created Write.as, by the way) make a blog post about this service soon, so I may be jumping the gun with this entry, but it is good-intentioned, for sure.
And now, we continue with regular blogcasting. I mean textcaasting. I mean journalogging. I mean typerlinking. Or whatever VC's decided we are all doing on personal websites ;)
later