gopher.black

What Is Gemini

Fri, 12 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

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What is Gemini?
June 12th, 2020
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Last night I recorded a video about the new Gemini protocol [0],
created by solderpunk [1] which has been _taking off_ remarkably
well. If you aren't familiar with Gemini by now, it is a new
protocol that is very similar to gopher but with some
enhancements. It is still far, far away from being anything like
the web, but it brings some modern thought and consideration to
hypertext browsing.

[0] gemini protocol
    gopher://gemini.circumlunar.space/1/
[1] solderpunk
    gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/1/~solderpunk

You can watch my video on peertube or on youtube! [2,3]

[2] peertube
    https://toobnix.org/videos/watch/8ee54700-971c-4da3-a8b4-7a78ed9ac42e
[3] youtube
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGCSYyH2r6k

Fun Questions Part 2

Fri, 05 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

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Fun Questions - Part 2
June 05th, 2020
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Last spring I asked gopherspace a few fun questions to get some
interactions rolling [0]. Lots of people participated and
I personally got a lot of joy from seeing both the feedback and
learning a bit more about all of you. Well, I'm in desperate need
of some joy right now so I figure it's a good time for part 2!

[0] fun questions
    gopher://gopher.black/1/phlog/20190330-fun-questions

I'll keep with the theme and ask 3 questions again. If you want to
participate, you can answer any or all. Phlog the answer over on
your own gopher hole and we'll read up on them. Send me a note if
you do so and I'll add a link to the bottom of this post so
everyone can read your responses.

1. Think back and try to remember the most satisfying drink of
   water in your life. What's the story of that drink?

2. Have you ever personally witnessed an act off human compassion
   that brought you to tears?

3. When is the last time you fell off a bicycle?

Replies:
seedy
    gopher://seedy.xyz/0/phlog/2020/jun/20200605.txt
christyotwisty
    gopher://sdf.org/0/users/christyotwisty/phlog/2020-06-05.txt
jebug29
    gopher://sdf.org/0/users/jebug29/log/2020-06/09-0348

More Deaths Poetry

Tue, 02 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

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more deaths - poetry
June 02nd, 2020
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Another high school friend died on Saturday. I met her in poetry
class in my junior year. She sat behind me and we had a lot of
fun. In fact, we had so much fun that we attracted the attention
of another person across the room, Kristin. She came to join us
after a few weeks in our little area and would eventually become
my best friend.

In honor of Erin, may she rest in peace, I'm reading back over my
poetry here on gopher and in old notebooks. So much of it makes me
cringe now (I obviously read too much Dickenson & Browning at the
time) but I can still feel the youthful passion. I wish I had some
of her poems around.

Old poems of dubious quality
    gopher://gopher.black/1/writing/poetry

New Car

Tue, 26 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

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new car
May 26th, 2020
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A funny thing happened to me on Saturday. I went to a lovely BBQ
with some friends in Reyjkavík and had to head home around 2300 in
order to catch the last bus from the capital out to my little
suburb. The bus picked me up and deposited me there 20 minutes
later as planned. While I was on the bus, I took out my kindle to
do some reading.

When I got off that bus I needed to make one transfer onto the #7
bus which would take me into my neighborhood, saving me a 1km walk
from the town center. I've done this many times and knew the bus
would be along any moment, so I kept reading. As expected, the bus
came around the corner and up the hill toward me. I hopped on and
kept reading.

See, here's where things get a little silly. I may have been
pretty drunk at this point owing to said BBQ earlier in the
evening. I was most certainly not paying attention as I was
reading. I also forgot completely that the number 7 bus travels in
both directions from the same bus stop I was at. I usually would
check the exact timing of the bus because there's no way to tell
from the signage whether it's headed to my neighborhood or away
from it. In fact, during that last nightly route both busses
appear at that stop within two minutes of one another.

So yeah, I was a little surprised when I looked up to find myself
in another town and not in my neighborhood. I was screwed. Ugh.

There were no more busses and taxis don't just wander the streets.
You need to call them and arrange a pickup. So what's a drunk guy
to do in this situation? If you guessed "walk 10km home around
a mountain in the middle of the night in Iceland" then you win
a prize!

I took a shortcut across the middle of a golf course at one point,
and marveled once again at the well maintained and numerous trails
and paths available in my area. Almost everything was well lit and
clean. It was lovely! It took me over two hours to get home and
I got a few hot-spots on my heels since I was walking in flimsy
slip-on shoes and not my boots. Still, no harm no foul.

Anyway, today I bought a car. :D It's a 2017 SsangYong Tivoli. It
is white and in pretty good shape with only about 60,000km on it.
I'm not sure you'll believe me now, but this was actually in the
works before Saturday's adventure. My wife and I were talking
about how nice it is here to be able to take the bus everywhere
and how it was probably better for our health to do all the
walking. We also admitted that it's frustrating not to be able to
go out into the countryside. We live only 25 minutes from
þingvellir, after all, but we never go. We want to head up north
this summer and we were considering renting. But there's little
annoyances too. 

This summer there are a number of activities available to the kids
in the area. One is a little zoo and horseback riding place where
the kids can learn to take care of the animals. It would be
perfect for my boy. The farm is only 5 minutes away, but that's by
car. It's directly on the other side of the mountain behind my
apartment. To walk there would take an hour, each way. That's not
something we could sign him up for before. Now it's no problem.

People here also just assume you have a car or access to one. It
can be tricky when activites happen at odd spots. Even travelling
to IKEA from my place is a chore because it takes 4 transfers and
over 2hrs to get there. Now with a car it's an 18 minute drive.

We don't intend to use it for everything. Certainly we want to
have it to go out into the country and see the sights. We also
will use it for things like IKEA trips. But we want to keep using
the bus to go downtown and walk to go shopping for groceries.
I don't know how realistic that goal is, but we shall see.

A Bottomless Pit

Sat, 16 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

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a bottomless pit
May 16th, 2020
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That's what it feels like right now, even with all the
preparation. I lost my dad tonight. About an hour ago, in fact.
I didn't get to say goodbye, but my sister did. I'm glad for that.
He's not suffering anymore, and neither is my mom. I'm glad for
that too. I'm glad I had time to prepare for it, to think on it
and test my emotions in the years leading up to this. I'm also
really glad for all the time I had with him.

It's just that after all of that gratitude and reason I eventually
hit a memory where he isn't my dad, but he is daddy and I'm eight
years old again and it is an unfathomable pit of despair that
opens around me knowing that he's gone and I can't ever hold him
or talk to him again. I'll carry that part until my own days are
up.

I won't want my son to feel this way. I'll want him to be happy
with his life and live it brilliantly. My dad surely wants the
same. I'm glad for that knowledge too. I just miss my daddy.

A Few Years Of Gophering

Wed, 13 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

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a few years of gophering
May 13th, 2020
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Our good gopher citizen, solderpunk, recently shared his past
three years of gophering [0]. What an awesome view, seeing how
many posts we make on gopher month by month.

[0] solderpunk - three years of gopher
    gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/0/~solderpunk/phlog/three-years-of-gopher.txt

I wanted to see the same thing on my own gopher history and he was
kind enough to share his code. With very little tweaking, I found
this:

Aug 2017: 13 posts |**************************
Sep 2017: 15 posts |******************************
Oct 2017: 09 posts |******************
Nov 2017: 10 posts |********************
Dec 2017: 08 posts |****************
Jan 2018: 19 posts |**************************************
Feb 2018: 11 posts |**********************
Mar 2018: 34 posts |************************************************
                  +|********************
Apr 2018: 23 posts |**********************************************
May 2018: 14 posts |****************************
Jun 2018: 12 posts |************************
Jul 2018: 17 posts |**********************************
Aug 2018: 07 posts |**************
Sep 2018: 07 posts |**************
Oct 2018: 10 posts |********************
Nov 2018: 11 posts |**********************
Dec 2018: 05 posts |**********
Jan 2019: 09 posts |******************
Feb 2019: 02 posts |****
Mar 2019: 04 posts |********
Apr 2019: 11 posts |**********************
May 2019: 06 posts |************
Jun 2019: 04 posts |********
Jul 2019: 03 posts |******
Aug 2019: 03 posts |******
Sep 2019: 08 posts |****************
Oct 2019: 01 posts |**
Nov 2019: 02 posts |****
Dec 2019: 04 posts |********
Jan 2020: 02 posts |****
Feb 2020: 04 posts |********
Mar 2020: 06 posts |************
Apr 2020: 02 posts |****
May 2020: 01 posts |**

March of 2018 was CRAZY! 34 posts in 31 days. I guess I had a lot
to say. We'll see how this goes in the future. :D Thx solderpunk!

Plaintext Passwords

Tue, 12 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

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Plaintext passwords
May 12th, 2020
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A recent set of exchanges on the fediverse reminded me that
there's still plenty of poorly run websites and institutions who
are still storing user credentials in plain text. Yes, unencrypted
plain text.

I remember the horror in my heart back in 2008 when I was trying
to learn about virtual credit cards from my bank (a cool idea
which went away for no good reason). I was on the phone and the
customer service representative asked me for the 3rd and 5th
letter in my password to verify my identity.

Did it hit you too? Did that little pit in your stomach open up
like it did for me? How could this person know a specific
character in my password?

Needless to say, the conversation I had with the bank that day
quickly changed. I wish that was the only time I had the
experience, but it happened a second time in the same year in
a conversation with Fidelity, who ran my 401k at my job at the
time. In that case I was stuck. I couldn't choose to move my 401k
to another provider. Thanks America.

Anyway, there's a ton of these places including a downright scary
number of banks (looking at you Tesco). I figured gopher needed
some place to reference the list of shame, so I made one [0] over
in my Experiments section. There's a link over there to the master
list managed in github as well. If you have others to add, make
a PR and help shame them.

[0] List of sites storing passwords in plain text
    gopher://gopher.black/0/explorations/plaintext/list-of-plaintext-passwords.txt

Out Of The Past

Thu, 30 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

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Out of the past
April 30th, 2020
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I adored this band when I was a teen. They were local and played
mostly in bookstores and small venues or the occasional folk
festival. I would see them as much as possible, listened to their
music around the clock... you get it.

Well, 20+ years later, the keyboardist and main songwriter was
stuck at home due to covid-19. He sat at his piano and started
playing a song that he'd forgotten all about. It was from the time
leading up to their second indy album but the feel wasn't right
for that collection. Much later on he thought he'd lost all traces
of it: gone from memory and never recorded. Here we was, just
barely remembering the tune.

Then serendipity struck. Today he dusted off an old, ancient iPod
and plugged it in. Amazingly it still worked. He put it on shuffle
with his collection of thousands of songs when what should start
coming through his speakers but the very mystery song he'd lost.

Sometime in the mid-nineties he had put together a demo track with
just him and the lead singer. One take, no practice. It had been
mis-labeled as a different track ("More to This") and tossed into
a collection and forgotten.

Today it speaks across time not just to him, but to all of us who
loved that music and the band, and to everyone who spends the time
to listen. I can't even put into words how much it means to me.

Story to Tell (Soundcloud)
    https://soundcloud.com/dwayne-keith-kessel/itunesexport-m4a/s-Zq9n0kPcDms

Renting A Video Game

Wed, 29 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

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Renting a video game
April 29th, 2020
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Nostalgia struck. I'm back in a childhood home giddy with
excitement over the Nintendo Entertainment System which stealthily
arrived as the last present opened at Christmas. My parents sprung
for the unit that came with two game cartridges, not just one:
Super Mario Bros. & Duck Hunt on one cartridge, and Teenage Mutant
Ninja Turtles on the other. It's visceral. I can smell the box.
Feel the plastic.

Games then were expensive. I suppose they're still expensive, but
I don't buy so many. A game like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cost
about $50 in the late 80s. With some napkin math, that's around
$80-85 today. Pricey, as I said. We didn't get new ones often.
Years--and many garage sales--later, I have 57 games in my
collection. As a kid, I had around 20 at the most.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting games were worth this much
back then, but it's what we had. There's games I've got that
aren't worth a dime. The Adventures of Dino Rikki comes to mind.
What a piece of trash! Still, it cost a fortune and I had no way
of knowing if it was going to be terrible. Maybe a friend had it
and could warn me. Maybe it would get a mention in Nintendo Power
magazine. Otherwise, you're shopping by box art.

That was until the video rental stores got in on the action. It
was a brilliant outgrowth from home video. For a dollar or two you
could take home a game for a few days. Sure, you weren't likely to
master it or beat it, and your save game was gone when it was
returned. Even so, what an incredible tool to avoid wasting big
money on flops.

I vividly remember renting Life Force [0] from the Video Stop.
What a brilliant game that was. I loved the gameplay and the
sprites. There was one that looked like an uncooked chicken
crawling on the ground. Awesome. I believe that eventually many of
those sprites, sound effects, and much of the gameplay code would
get revisited in The Guardian Legend, my favorite NES game of all
time.

[0] Life Force
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dt-pMJiQTTk

That rental was awesome and eventually I'd get my own copy of the
game. Others... well [1], I own some of those anyway.

[1] Not so awesome NES games
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KgwO0N6e8U

I don't really have a big reason for sharing this. It just came to
my mind and was worth a smile. Hope it gave you one too.

All Summer In A Day

Tue, 24 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

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All Summer in a Day
March 24th, 2020
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When I was a child my dad recorded an eclectic collection of TV
movies for me onto a very low quality VHS. I'm fairly convinced he
had no idea what the stories were about but they probably said
they were for kids and that was good enough for him. For me, it
was a warm blanket of comfort. I adored every single thing on that
tape and watched them over and over. My sister, three years older
than me, couldn't stand any of them and would leave me alone.

Years later the VHS tape surfaced when I was in college. My friend
and roomate at the time looked at this odd assortment of titles
written on masking tape and asked about it. "Hold onto your butt!"
I probably yelled and looked all over creation for a VCR.

We sat there, two guys in their twenties, watching this mad
collection of cinematic excellence and I'll never forget his
reaction.

"This tape explains ALL of you."

So what was on it? Allow me to give you the highlights:

It opened with a powerhouse. One of the most beautiful and
heart-wrenching stories ever. Ray Bradbury's "All Summer in
a Day".

All Summer in a Day (Video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iz05RhA9Cyw
All Summer in a Day (Short story)
http://staff.esuhsd.org/danielle/english%20department%20lvillage/rt/short%20stories/all%20summer%20in%20a%20day.pdf

If you've never seen or read the story, I can't tell you honestly
which to look at first. The short story is powerful, but the video
really nails the drama. The only downside, which I did not
remember from childhood, is the absolutely horrible score.

As an interesting side-note, I ended up ripping the video of my
VHS tape and creating a chapterized DVD from it. I made fake
artwork for the case and printed 5 copies. A friend working at the
Franklin Indiana Public Library tagged them and snuck them onto
the shelves there. If anyone is in the Franklin Indiana area, have
a look and see if you can find a copy!

**** SPOILERS ****

This story profoundly affected my own appreciation for sorrow and
tragedy. This was just strong enough for the child I was to feel
it deeply and empathise with Margot. I was in the closet with her
in darkness. It's hard to put into words what that did to me.

**** END SPOILERS ****

The next video on the tap was a TV adaptation of the 1977
children's book by Daniel and Jill Pinkwater: The Hoboken Chicken
Emergency. The plot as described on Wikipedia:

The main character, Arthur, is asked to pick up a reserved
turkey for Thanksgiving dinner, but the market has lost the
reservation, and no store in the area has any turkeys or other
birds available for purchase. So Arthur finds and brings home
a 266-pound chicken named Henrietta. The family welcomes her
with open arms, but the neighbors are not so sure. Everyone in
town is horrified after Henrietta escapes.

As you can imagine, it's pure ridiculousness. The video format,
made in the early 80s, is really bad. The giant chicken costume,
the acting, all of it.

The Hoboken Chicken Emergency (Video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGe3Eh6zKTQ

Following that was a harrowing tale of kidnapping and escape.
That's right, I'm talking about that oh-so-famous TV movie,
Run Rebecca Run! Synopsis:

Simone Buchanan plays a young camera fanatic who is marooned
on a desert island. Here she is threatened by a refugee from
South America (Henri Szeps) who isn't keen on having his
whereabouts known. Hostility melts into friendship before the
rescue boats arrive.

That's kind of a lame way of putting it. The dude is a fugitive
and he decides to hold her captive so she can't give away his
location. She tries to escape, and there's a bird, and stuff.
I really wish I could explain it more, or link you to the actual
video, but this one doesn't seem to be online at present. The best
I can do is this trailer.

Run Rebecca Run (Trailer)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vW8sljNvZxI

I guess I could point to this one for some of my outdoors-y stuff,
or maybe for my penchant for being a recluse and doing crimes. I
dunno.

And that brings us to the clean-up position on the tape. The #1
biggest hit for me was The Boy Who Loved Trolls, with its all-star
cast including Sam Waterston and William H. Macy, and the dad from
Alf! This one is on Youtube in Parts and it's so worth your time:

The Boy Who Loved Trolls
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwJoKVDtA0Q

When the parents go away the secret magic of the world is revealed
to a dreamy-eyed kid. He journeys on adventures, meets some crazy
cool characters (including a mermaid and a turtle!) and saves time
itself. My fastination with the fantasy genre definitely comes
from this thing, in all its flaws.

There were more things on the tape, but you get the idea. It was
really substantial to my emerging identity and I'm appreciative.

Do you have anything like that? Books, movies? A horrible drive
you took with the family every year that scarred you for life?