Posted around 2 Dec 2022 from the Four of Two department · Link to this post

I've been working on an article that I just can't quite get right. I've thrown away so many drafts that it feels like I've written a lot (probably because I've written a lot), but since I don't have anything to show for it, in lieu of an actual update, I'll offer a series of cop-outs.

• I added a few books to the book inventory, including one that I made a long time ago. I also cleaned up the descriptions in the alt tags (there were so many typos), and changed up the xsl so that the alt text is also the title text so you can see it if you mouse over the images.
• I completely redid the index listing of the blog so it sorts by broad category instead of date. I thought it was silly to have the archives broken down by months when some months would have one or fewer entries in them. The current categories are just copied verbatim from the articles page. I'll differentiate the blog entries more as I write more.

Posted around 16 Nov 2022 from the Electrical Parade department · Link to this post

• It's been a busy few months, not that you could tell around here. I've been writing most days, but nothing that I felt that was appropriate for posting here. Until today. Now that Twitter has begun the process of killing itself in a very public way, I felt like it was time to really dig into the fediverse and see what it's all about. I have thoughts.
• I've been regularly updating the inventory pages, and I've been working on a store page with some joke products that are actually real. I keep waffling on whether I should post it or not, but now that I've told the world that it exists, maybe I should put the finishing touches on it and actually un-secret the thing.

Posted around 9 June 2022 from the I took my boat for a car department · Link to this post

• I don't surf the Internet much any more. There are lots of reasons, but they mostly come down to time. It's more convenient for me to subscribe to sites and podcasts I want and let the content come to me whenever I want it. I go over some programs I use to make that happen.
• Bought a few more tech books and added them to the list. I've had to slow down a little bit because I'm running out of bookshelves.

Posted around 4 May 2022 from the Ham department · Link to this post

I don't generally make blanket software recommendations. To explain why I compare recommending software to picking pizza toppings. It made sense at the time.

Posted around 28 Apr 2022 from the Pointless distinctions department · Link to this post

A lot of people seem to be up in arms about twitter for some reason lately and are threatening to quit. The fediverse people are using the opportunity to try and convince people to flee to the fediverse (because that worked so well for ello). Twitter users and message board commenters from the usual places have come up with several arguments for why the fediverse will never succeed, and once I replaced 'mastodon' or 'fediverse' with 'email' I found that the arguments still seem to apply, but billions of people have managed to figure out how to use email. It was curious.

Posted around 14 Apr 2022 from the Doing the absolute minimum department · Link to this post

I got tired of people browbeating me about not having SSL on my website, so I added it today. My site isn't any more secure than it was, but if it makes random strangers on the Internet feel better then I guess I'm glad to help. I ran a script to change most instances of http:// to https://. It's always possible that the script screwed something up (read: that I screwed up the script). I've been updating the various inventories for the last month. Now that I'm kind of starting to come out of my Winter hibernation I can kind of start thinking about curating the collections again. I've been carrying around the pocket recorder and have recorded a bevy of new audioblogs (audioblogs travel in bevies, right?), but none of them were worth posting. Some of them may be worth going back and turning into blog entries, though. This warrants further investigation.

Posted around 14 Feb 2022 from the Book IT! department · Link to this post

A few months ago I started browsing used book sites for old technology books. I forget what I was initially looking for, or even if I found it. But while I was looking I discovered that there were a lot of used tech books that were very cheap, and a lot of these old tech books had great covers. Since XML is really good for cataloging things, I started a list/gallery of the books I've collected so far, and I started throwing in most of the other books I've collected throughout the years. You can check it out here or you can check the sidebar. A small disclaimer, just because a book shows up on that list doesn't mean that I endorse it or have read it. It just means that I bought it and took a picture of it.

Posted around 27 Jan 2022 from the Just a guy made of dots and lines department · Link to this post

I keep reading articles about the mythical Old Internet and how it's coming back any time now. It hasn't. But will it? I have some thoughts about that I occasionally pick up a computer book at the book store and then put it back down once I see what the price of it is. Tech books are expensive, unless you're looking for books printed more than 10 or 20 years ago. Then they get real cheap. Sure they might not be as up to date as the current books, but a lot of the basics haven't really changed that much in the last 20 years or so. Plus the cover art alone is typically worth the asking price. I don't have enough books to start an inventory page yet, but I'm strongly considering it.

Posted around 6 Jan 2022 from the News Tarts department · Link to this post

How about 2021, huh?. I'm not going to bother going through and reminiscing/complaining about it. Plenty of people online and off have already covered that ground well enough. I haven't had the time I would like to update this website. I don't even have the time now, I'm just pretending to work (people see me with a terminal window open and they think I'm doing something deep and they leave me alone for a while). But I do have one thing to share: I bought a new NES game. "Big Deal," you say? Normally you'd be right, but this game is new new. Released at the end of 2021 new. And programmed by a friend of mine. I don't think I can explain how great I think it is that not only are people still making new games for the ol' NESter, but that they're also making real cartridges to put them on with boxes and the whole works. That's fantastic. Added Anguna: Scourge of the Goblin King to the NES games list. I also archived the 2021's index page, which you can find here if that's what you're in to. Or you can just check the sidebar.