Status 2024-01-29

In which I speak about an intense week, feeling good(?), spending time in Gothenburg and Stockholm, Gemini (again), Keyboards (again), Outlook & e-mail etiquette, Parent computer thoughts.

Intense week this week, but very focused and productive. The first week back at the desk that dayjob rents for me at an Architect's office.

Started taking Magnesium supplements last Friday to help with a health problem. I also started trying to have a more regular sleep pattern, being better at sitting in zazen meditation twice a day, and even tried going to the gym before work! In a total coincidence, I was extremely productive at work! I also felt rather good.

Feeling good is unusual for me. Let's see where this goes. Before this I wasn't in a great mood.

Started the work year, after 37C3 (report coming) and a small vacation, by spending a week in Gothenburg. The name of the city made sense this time:

I felt terribly isolated and alone at the hotel in Gothenburg. It didn't get better when #2 had to cancel our dinner because he had to help a friend who had been robbed! How horrible!

I didn't even think that there might be a sauna to warm up in (There was! Next time!) so I just sat there in the hotel room considering my life choices. Spent quite a lot of time being miserable in hotel rooms last year.

The week after that I went to Z'ha'dum (aka Stockholm) for another conference, SamNet. Report from that visit is coming, too. Yet another hotel room. This time, however, I actually managed to meet friends, both at the conference and off!

My train to Zdm got stuck for five hours. I felt for the workers who had to be outside in the cold working on the rail switches for hours with more trains queuing up all the time. Some pressure! In comparison I had it easy and I had time to watch a few 37C3 talks I had missed.

The SJ train company sent an e-mail congratulating (?) me on having travelled 10,330 km with them during 2023. Sure, I generally like trains, but 10,000+ km? It's less than the 16,000+ km I used to have when I worked at Netnod in Stockholm, but still a lot of time in trains. Note that this was only domestic trains and not all the DSB, Deutsche Bahn, and Amtrak I travelled last year.

A good friend who now insists on living in the US came by recently. He brought these:

Beware Americans bringing gifts! Also nom, nom, nom… With chopsticks, naturally. The book is alright, too. Iain M. Banks' "The culture: The drawings".

Haven't done any programming in my free time for a long time. Been so stressed out and tired so I haven't had the spoons necessary. Sometimes I feel guilty about that, but, as you probably know, I feel guilty about all sorts of things all the time.

Some projects waiting for me to collect more spoons:

• BBS: I have a database model and some code talking to it. I have a nice command parsing frontend in the KOM tradition for the client. Still need to decide how the client will speak to the server. Just JSON over HTTP? gRPC? Something else?
• XMPP client: I have a Go backend speaking XMPP and an elisp frontend giving me a simple UI. Need to refactor some things and clean up but then I'll make an early release. No OMEMO yet, obviously. I've seen some Signal/axolotl code for Go, but no real OMEMO. Anyone?
• mctile River layout engine: Basically the example engine, but I've added monocle mode. I want to at least make it possible to have different layouts on different active tags.
• New hack.org server: Acquired a used 1U Supermicro and some disks. Still need to install OS, probably FreeBSD like the old server, some jail setup and an Ansible run. Probably going to investigate at least another SMTP server. Perhaps even something in type-safe language!

I like Gemini. I especially like the idea that user action should trigger all network traffic. Nothing should happen behind your back. I actually like the Gemtext format, too, and I think I have a quite nice setup in Emacs for writing in it.

Maybe I should investigate the possibility of at least writing my blog in gemtext but also serving it over HTTP and converted to HTML?

However, traffic is dropping. I don't know why. Perhaps it's just that it's only me on my gem.hack.org capsule? Perhaps interest is waning?

I have a couple of HHKB Pro 2 (and some vanilla HHKB from the 90's), as you probably know if you know me or seen my computer page. I'm reasonably happy with them, but I've been looking over the fence for other things for a while.

I'm in so much WANT!!!eleven1 over the ZSA Voyager. I mean, just look at it:

It has nice low-profile Kailh Chocs.

But I have doubts… I mean, 365 USD + shipping + Swedish 25% VAT and maybe customs. It's a lot.

I'm also looking at the MNT Reform Standalone Keyboard:

Also LP Kailh Chocs!

I'm extremely sympathetic to their cause, as you can probably guess, but I'm not sure I like the physical layout. If I would buy one I would have blank keycaps, obviously, but I'm talking about the physical layout. Still tempting! A friend has two of them, but I have yet to test them.

Apparently I have never received a mail message replying inline from someone using Outlook before, because I was really confused when they said something like "my comments are in blue".

In blue? All my e-mails are green text on a black background.

What's wrong with quoting my message with ">" as usual and then type the response underneath each part?

Oh yeah, apparently Outlook doesn't do that. How could I have missed that?

For people who are forced to use Outlook who still want to be good Internet citizens this might still work:

https://www.slipstick.com/outlook/email/to-use-internet-style-quoting/

@Catwoman69y2k@meow.social and @jima@mspsocial.net on Fedi kindly tested it for me and yes, the instructions are still valid, but there seems to be no way of setting things like this in OWA.

I know some people argue that mail is dead anyway, and yes, my own statistics of sent messages per year shows a sad trend:

% notmuch count tag:sent and date:2023
236
notmuch count tag:sent and date:2022
309
% notmuch count tag:sent and date:2021
455
% notmuch count tag:sent and date:1999
3053  

~10x as much sent messages in 1999! So yes, I agree something has happened with e-mail.

I still like the long-form style of messaging, though, and I think it would be good if people respected the the e-mail etiquette even if they are running, say, Outlook. Perhaps it's a lost cause, just like top posting thing?

I gave my dad an Android phone with Signal a few years ago. It's pretty slow and doesn't seem to get any updates anymore. He's also having a rough time using it with the touch screen. The screen simply doesn't recognize his fingers touching it. Yes, he has one of those "pens" but it still isn't easy for him, especially when it requires gestures.

Of course I can just give him a more modern phone… But should I?

I've been thinking about getting him a computer instead. It will probably be a laptop, but what kind and what OS? And how do I arrange for it to reach Internet? He seems to have fiber to the home installed in his new flat, but I would probably need to buy an AP and arrange for an ISP subscription.

I can do all this, of course, even if it's an eight hour train ride to him, but then there's the thing about updates, management, and, yes, what kind of programs do I install? I'm mostly on XMPP, for instance, and if I choose a Linux dist I can probably install Dino on it and that would be fine? Maybe?

But what about management? Do I make the laptop dial home with Wireguard or something and let me ssh into it?

My mom (not living in the same place) is very happy with her (second) Chromebook with vanilla Chrome OS I gave her. She's also happily using a smartphone with a lot more success than my dad, so we keep in touch mostly over Signal. Chromebooks are a wasteland when it comes to messaging apps so it's just as well we can keep the messaging on the phone.

Another idea is that I could perhaps bring one of my many SIP phones to dad? We could use this on a private PBX and my own SIP on short dial. That might work for phone calls without billing, perhaps, and with a lot better sound quality than POTS, but still not requiring touch.

Any thoughts about a dad computer?