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[22:25] I like it when people take interest in very specific things most people don't think twice about. Here is an analysis of the the user interfaces of Lego computers. (see also)
[23:55] A while ago I was pointed to this blog entry regarding comments which made me want to formulate my own stand on comments. Because, obviously, there is no option to write any on gmb.
I have two main reasons not to offer this option but to rely on my contact page: hijacking on one hand and on the other the pest web 2.0 brought us: hatred and flame wars.
When scrolling through comments (which I try to do seldom) I often find people write trivial comments with the obvious sole purpose of posting a link to their own blog or website, which is terribly annoying. Even sites like lobsters or hacker news, though moderated, tend to give the impression that they are just glorified centralized comment sections. The content is of way higher quality than on any blog I've ever seen, but especially on HN I often see people just dropping in to promote their own products.
These cases are not the rule, though. Moderation seems to help, I guess.
I don't want to get into detail on the flame wars, as you likely have seen those going on. Instead, in this matter, I'd like to quote Stephen Fry:
"Whenever I read a blog I do not let my eye drop below half the screen in case I accidentally hit the bit where the comments reside. Of all the stinking, sliding, scuttling, weird, entomological creatures that inhabit the floor of the internet those comments on blogs are the most unbearable, almost beyond imagining."
So I really had no motivation to implement a comment system on gmb. And, of course, embedding third party scripts like disqus is completely out of question.
So, no comments here. I do however receive the occasional email or get approached on IRC, so that option seems to work just fine.
Update: I slightly changed my tone with regards to HN and lobsters. It appears I was a bit more annoyed at the whole topic than I should have been and wronged these sites a bit.
[21:40] Gemini is a newish internet protocol somewhere between http and gopher that I wanted to try for a while now. I'm not a huge fan of gopher, but gemini might just be that little bit closer to http for me to like it. And since I just noticed there is a public_gemini folder in my home directory on ctrl-c.club I have no excuse for not trying it out this weekend.
I came across gemini via the Castor browser, by the way, which had managed to draw my attention right away.
[23:19] Sad to see soup.io die. This microblog actually has its origins over there, I used the service from May 2015 to mid-July 2016, before I began writing my own microblogging script and moved over to ctrl-c.club and then finally here.
I found a lot of cool stuff over there, followed the rabbit hole of reposts to many interesting accounts and spent way too much time scrolling.
Thanks, soup, and farewell!
[22:32] How many cores do you need to play Pong? No less than 896. (see also)
[19:19] If you find yourself with a broken keyboard on your laptop and need to write something, you can still use your laptop lid to send Morse code.
[21:03] The tildeverse keeps spawning unexpected things. breadpunk.club is all about baking.
[22:25] In case you have an urgent need for coffee stains on your documents but don't have a cup of coffee at hand: there is a LaTeX package for that.
[14:23] Being able to watch a live stream from space is really awesome.
[14:56] Usually password requirements are aimed to make users pick secure passwords and have the side effect off pissing some people off. This one has it the other way round. :D
[22:50] Yekaterinburg in Russia has a Keyboard Monument.
[19:40] This rarely happens, but I have to recommend a game: VirtuaVerse, a wonderful adventure that I played this weekend. A cyberpunk story, obviously made by nerds for other nerds (and with a great soundtrack). I can't remember when I last had that much fun with a game. I played (and finished) this on a friend's account, but I'll definitely buy it myself, too, if only to throw a little amount of money at the devs.
[14:27] It impresses me when people find creative ways to make music with things that are clearly not designed as musical instruments. A while ago I mentioned the Phantom of the Floppera and later the music-making tesla coils, but there are noumerous others, some of which I came across only recently.
Many of these acts use computer parts (floppy drives are a thing), devices connected to those (like, for instance, this dot matrix printer) or both (the Floppotron appears to be well known).
The Device Orchestra on the other hand is not limited to computers and periphery but takes whatever is available, while others show that even a car is suited for this task (there is some weird yelling at the end, so be sure to stop the video once the music is done).
Really creative folks out there, awesome work!
[21:08] Justine Haupt built a cellphone with a rotary dial. (see also)
[04:32] Great Ball Contraptions fascinate me. Most of the time the modules are fairly plain and just get the job done, but occasionally you'll come across a real gem.
[22:01] Jason Allemann built a Tensegrity Sculpture MOC, also providing a parts list and building instructions. That's cool!
[21:56] Finland added the demoscene to it's inventory of intangible cultural heritage.
[05:26] Conforming to standard frequencies is not only important to people dealing with radio or wifi, but for animals, too.
[22:04] Police in Tunisia have robots on patrol. I dearly hope they work better than, for example, this one and that one.
[21:17] Seems like I missed a few new tilde servers. Among those the first Windows tilde. That was unexpected.
[20:05] Fold'NFly has a database of paper airplane designs. I'll have to try a few of those.
[05:05] Richard Vijgen built a device that picks up wifi signals and plots images from these signals. (see also)
[20:53] "Blameuser" sounds like a trigger in a helpdesk system ran by a BOFH-esque person. As I recently learned, though, it is a (not too common) german surname. A name predestined to confuse devs and admins whenever it appears in a database.
[22:01] Toying around with bash, cron and css a little: 24 (about)
[21:14] The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy turns 42 today. (And it increasinlgy feels like the universe has indeed already been replaced by something totally bizarre. Oh well. Don't panic!)
[21:09] I recently came across the first two blogs I set up, back in 2012. The first one was a microblog in which I managed to drop links for a stunning nine days. I don't recall why I stopped. Also, I have no idea what the password might be. That was way before I used a password manager. I'm not even sure which email address I used. I do remember for the second one though. Slightly more activity there, but I seem to have lost interest in the topic I was writing about.
Funny to have this glance in the past.
[22:41] I know enough science fiction to be familiar with the idea of machines mimicking humans, but I did not expect printers, of all things, to be the first ones. :D