words.charlie.town

It's been a while!

Apologies for the radio silence. These last couple months I've been;

• Bugfixing for trackle, which finally came out!
• Setting up a Dropbox-backed markdown-based notes solution (that I'm hoping is final...)
• Browsing /r/selfhosted and feeling equal parts inspired and intimidated.
• Planning a rebuild of my gameboy camera instagram page as a standalone site.
• Maybe most importantly, spending as little time on Instagram/Twitter as I possibly can.

I guess there's a common theme here... I'm definitely leaning more into self-hosted, or in some cases self-made alternatives to big corporate services. I've been feeling pretty disillusioned with big tech and it's role in shaping modern society as of late, especially given the current European climate.

This feeling may pass, but in the meantime, I'm going to finally make good on my promise of giving these people as minimal amount (or ideally no) data as possible.

Some of these might get full posts eventually, especially if I end up implementing some of these 'self' solutions, but we shall see.

I, like most of the internet, have been completely gripped by Wordle for the last few weeks.

I'm currently working on a nice site to track your results, show graphs, export to CSV etc. One day I'll finish a side project 🙄

Why does a busy man build a shed?:

This is the time of year for pondering and learning. I am pondering why during 10 years of helping grow/maintain a busy Saas infrastructure I spent a great deal of my free time building two sheds in my garden. They have been a place to deal with stress, an office, and now a place to hangout. So why does someone create work for themself when they are already busy and is this wise?

sho, Hacker News:

“Of course I don’t have to do this,” one middle aged man said, carefully cleaning the table with a damp cloth. He put the cloth in a little pouch, sat down beside him. “But look, this table’s clean.” He agreed that the table was clean.

“Usually,” the man said, “I work on alien religions… I catalogue, evaluate, compare. I come up with theories and argue with colleagues here and elsewhere. But the job’s never finished. Always new examples and even the old ones get reevaluated and new people come along and come up with new ideas about what you thought was settled. But,” he slapped the table, “when you clean a table, you clean a table. You feel you’ve done something. It’s an achievement.”

— Use Of Weapons, Iain M. Banks

Netflix's Castlevania has been occupying quite a bit of my time over the last month. I watched the initial 4-part season when it first released, but it's been great to dive back in now that there's plenty more to chew on.

Also slightly odd to see an "anime" where the lips are actually synced to the English audio... does the cardinal sin of anime apply when the English version isn't technically a dub? 😉

I've been loving the Micro text editor a lot recently.

Think "nano if it was made in 2021" — Ctrl-* hotkeys, mouse support, multicursor, etc, and all in a tiny zero-dependency binary that runs on any platform you want to throw it at.

The things we do to avoid learning Vim/emacs...

SerenityOS came to my attention a while back, but I had since forgotten about the project until I saw it on the front page of HN today. The project's founder Andreas Kling describes it thusly;

SerenityOS is a love letter to '90s user interfaces with a custom Unix-like core. It flatters with sincerity by stealing beautiful ideas from various other systems.

He explains that he started tinkering with building an operating system after completing a drug rehabilitation programme. While he was the projects original sole maintainer, his efforts have blossommed into a dedicated community of contributors and testers. It's amazing to see what progress has been made in just a few short years, including (and I can't stress how mind-blowing this is to me) implementing an entire browser engine from scratch.

Kling admits that it's nowhere near "production ready" — in it's current state you have to build it from source, and it only runs in QEMU — but I absolutely love the look and feel of this OS, and I can't wait to see where the future takes it.

The Balmuda Phone is a compact Android phone from a high-end toaster company, The Verge:

Where Balmuda is really differentiating itself is with design. It’s a well-worn tech writing cliche to say that something “feels good in the hand,” but that was clearly Balmuda’s intent here with the compact size and curved back that nestles into your palm like a pebble.

Reminds me of the Palm Pre 👀

Judge buys Rittenhouse lawyer’s inane argument that Apple’s pinch-to-zoom manipulates footage, The Verge:

“iPads, which are made by Apple, have artificial intelligence in them that allow things to be viewed through three-dimensions and logarithms,” the defense insisted. “It uses artificial intelligence, or their logarithms, to create what they believe is happening. So this isn’t actually enhanced video, this is Apple’s iPad programming creating what it thinks is there, not what necessarily is there,” they added.

Presented without comment.

Supper Mario Broth, Twitter:

In 1994, Nintendo made a public event at a Dutch airport where 10,000 counterfeit Game Boy games they confiscated in the Netherlands were ran over by a steamroller, to send a message to counterfeiters. An actor in a Mario costume was overseeing the operation.

I retweeted this a few days ago, but I'm sharing here because I can't get over just how metal this is.

NFT's Aren't the Answer to the IRL Problems of Digital Art:

Fraud has always been present in the art world, but never before has it been so easy to commit fraud at this scale and with this much potential reward. Marketplaces are failing in their duty to protect artists and their clients, letting fraudsters run amok on their platforms.

smugglerFlynn, Hacker News:

Two swindlers arrive at the capital city of an emperor who spends lavishly on clothing at the expense of state matters. Posing as art dealers, they offer to provide him magnificent clothes that would be backed by a digital token which proves value to those smart folks who understand digital. The emperor hires them, and they go to work in a special minting room. A succession of officials, and then the emperor himself, visit them to check their progress. Each sees that the room is empty but pretends otherwise to avoid being thought a fool.

Finally, art dealers report that the emperor's suit and its token are ready for release. They mime dressing him and he sets off in a procession before the whole city. The townsfolk uncomfortably go along with the pretense, not wanting to appear inept or stupid, until a child blurts out that the emperor is wearing nothing at all. The people then realize that child is very stupid, not understanding simple principles of digital DeFi-fueled web3.0 economy. Still smirking at the child, the emperor continues the procession, walking more proudly than ever.

The blockchain is exciting — Etherium's tech will definitely play a part in the internet's next major iteration, whatever form it takes.

I can't say the same for monkey JPGs.