The most infuriating 3 seconds of using this Mac every day are the first time I run man and it calls home to see if I’m allowed to do that.

Current toy project: an image feed generated by mk(1). Still some edges to clean up but it’s nice: http://a.9srv.net/img/_readme.html

My main domain name turned 24 years old today. That feels weird.

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Thanks! Fixed the typos. The links will stay broken for a bit because my online man collection is busted. It’s on the list. :-/

I updated wordwrap.[ch] to more closely match the interface for string(2); it’s now just that plus a margin. I also updated litclock and marquee to match. http://a.9srv.net/src/index.html

After submitting a correction for Apple Maps when they got the name of the Gulf of Mexico wrong, I wrote a letter to Investor Relations: http://a.9srv.net/b/investor_relations

One of the things I love about Plan 9 is how the interfaces make this possible: add snapshots to any block storage, at the kernel level, in less than 700 lines of code. http://9p.io/sources/contrib/blstuart/snap/devsnap.c

I tried using Firefox Focus as my default browser for a while but it was to extreme. It’s still the only one on my home screen. 50-60 is sort of my intent, but then it keeps being “just one more…”.

Cleaning up some of the 500 open tabs on my phone. I realized that if I don’t have some place to stash the good ones, I won’t go through any. http://a.9srv.net/b/2025-01-16

I forget where I found this, but it’s really beautiful, for the right kind of nerd (hi, it’s me!) — Docubyte’s Guide To Computing. https://www.docubyte.com/projects/guide-to-computing/

I’ve been using nile, my alternative WM for #plan9, for over a decade now. I just made some additional improvements and finally gave it a web page: http://a.9srv.net/src/nile/

Happy New Year, UTC-08:00! 🥳

First we got 9fans to be moderated, now we’ve brought back comp.os.plan9! Come say hi! #plan9 #usenet

9fans is now a moderated list. It’ll take time, but I’m hopeful we can get it back to being a good source of discussion. https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/T124eb3ec9c594189-M83bd6a0d97304a9b5cffd91d/9fans-now-moderated

I’ve talked about how I do backups on unix a bunch of times, but someone asked again today and I realized I didn’t have it written down where I could point to. So I wrote a lab report: http://a.9srv.net/reports/index.html#vac-unix

@eapl@eapl.mx I agree with you that the obviously-correct filename is tw.txt. That’s what mine’s always been.

I wrote about making Glenda’s Joy Division cover (with updated colors and a link to source): http://a.9srv.net/b/2024-11-23

Glenda’s on a Joy Division kick: http://a.9srv.net/image/jocelyn.x3y2o10t1.png

For example, this links to the previous post, no crypto needed: http://a.9srv.net/tw.txt#:~:text=2024-10-23T18:59:49-07:00

Huh. I had long forgotten about text fragment URLs. Seems relevant for linking to discussions around linking to individual twtxt posts. https://alfy.blog/2024/10/19/linking-directly-to-web-page-content.html

New post (mostly follow-up on the previous with a few new points) on the twtxt v2 discussion. http://a.9srv.net/b/2024-10-08

TWO HOURS wasted today trying to figure out why an image wasn’t loading on some web page and what I was doing wrong… when the issue is the friggin’ DSL router is injecting headers into http (non-https) pages. GAH! I’m ready to throw the thing. I’ve never been so mad at CPE. 🤬

Reading about browser security measures and getting sad we don’t live in a world where cross-site scripting is a feature instead of a bug.

This is only first draft quality, but I made some notes on the #twtxt v2 proposal. http://a.9srv.net/b/2024-09-25

Earlier this week I found myself on the RIAA’s side in a legal dispute. Now I think Amy Coney Barrett got it right in her SCOTUS dissent. Truly we are in Bizarro World.

There are apparently dedicated “fireproof” external hard drives available that do this, and this coincidentally-timed piece suggests I might be able to get closer to what I was thinking in the not-too-distant future: https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/ssds/researchers-have-developed-a-type-of-flash-memory-storage-that-can-withstand-temperatures-higher-than-the-surface-of-venus/

Fire-proof safes are generally designed so the internal temperature stays at or below ~350°F. Is there a computer medium I can write that’s likely to survive an extended stay around that temperature? Storage size doesn’t matter too much; a CD would be plenty (although an actual CD would presumably turn to soup).

I run Plan 9 on my server and my main home workstation (a raspberry pi). My “daily driver” time is basically split between that and a Mac (excluding time on my phone, i suppose). I think it looks elegant, too. :-)

I’m 148249012 if anyone wants to say goodbye. 🤣 I never had the attachment to ICQ I did to AIM, but this is still the end of one heck of a run.

There’s other potential uses for the tool (compare syscall latency between OSes, stat latency between file systems), but not what i’m after.

For my purposes, the comparison would only be useful to systems running Plan 9; if you happen to have that, yes please!

This was interesting: I didn’t expect so much variation in reported times. If you happen to have #plan9 running on some other VPS, I’d love to hear your results. https://pdx.social/@a/112481970480703254

@adi@twtxt.net I kinda bounced off learning go properly a few years back. This little toy would be a good thing to try again on, now that you mention it. Maybe.

Started writing something from scratch yesterday using thread(3) and wow do I miss writing in Limbo instead. :-/ #plan9

“Magic Clock” for Plan 9 (and p9p). http://a.9srv.net/src/img/magicclock-p9p.png http://a.9srv.net/src/magicclock.c (man and other info at http://a.9srv.net/src/).

@adi@twtxt.net (I would not object to someone wanting to throw FFRDC-class money at P9F, if you’ve got a lead! ☺)

@adi@twtxt.net No, thinking much bigger than that at the moment: http://a.9srv.net/b/us-osqi

Just over here writing my Senator’s office to see if we can get a new Federally Funded R&D Center created. 😳🤞

Also, incredibly excited that XOXO is coming back, even if just for one more year: https://2024.xoxofest.com

I wrote up a lab report on my daily to-do tracking “system”, mostly so I could stop thinking about it. The report is at http://a.9srv.net/reports/daily.pdf and the referenced code is at http://txtpunk.com/daily/index.html.

FOR SOME REASON I’m now archiving my plan files (as shown via ‘finger a@9srv.net’) at http://a.9srv.net/plans

Well crap. I think I just realized that if my profile photo was a person it could vote in this year’s election. Probably time for a new default one.

I’ve added myself to the registries at registry.twtxt.org and twtxt.tilde.institute. I wonder if there’s a list of registries. #meta

Huh. At some point, my twtxt-via-ssh shortcut from my phone stopped working. It does again now! I’ve changed nothing. Yay black boxes! 🤷🏻

First task of 2024: renew an expired cert. I like that it’s calendar-themed.

Spent a few hours the last two evenings fighting with tftpd. Party like it’s 1999!

TIL my high school publishes its own research journal. https://www.pingry.org/our-community/students/pingry-community-research-pcr-journal

I needed something to help with a morning schedule for two kiddos. It highlights the current 5-minute block as it goes. I think this was my first time reaching for JavaScript for a personal project. https://sidequest.club/stages.html

One of the frustrating parts of using twtxt for conversations is the URLs are, well… ugly. Anyone (like y’all yarn folks) looked at using webfinger for translating user@domain accounts to URLs?

I was just reminded of this interpreter for an APL/J-like language by Arthur Whitney, the absolute weirdest bit of C code I’ve actually gotten something out of, and thought I’d share: https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Essays/Incunabulum

TIL there’s a Director’s Cut of Miley Cyrus’s Wrecking Ball video and it’s much better than the original.

If I have an image that has clearly been naïvely upscaled, is there a program that can reasonably reliably tell me what the “true” size is?

No, I wasn’t set up for it. I wasn’t expecting to see the ISS at all, and you never know when an orbit will do the fade out thing.

Watching the ISS fade out in the sky as it moves into earth’s shadow remains one of the coolest things in the world.

I’ll likely take this down soonish as I think it’s pretty bad for usability, but as a fun hack, one of my weird side projects web pages now has monitor burn-in: http://txtpunk.com/index.html

It’ll track a bunch of finger(1) endpoints and let you see what’s new. Very early draft. Not actually a social network, more an anti-social network for ‘80s CompSci transplants. :-)

A read-only, finger(1)-based social network, maybe? http://txtpunk.com/fingers/

That’s the effect I’m after, but I want it not on my main browser. Turns out the Brave mobile app does this.

I want a browser for iOS that’s basically Mobile Safari but without JavaScript (or at least an easy toggle). Does such a thing exist?

I realized my twtxt client isn’t validating what it pulls once it gets a valid response when a domain started returning js-heavy parking pages for every URL. Oops. Weekend project, I guess. 🤦🏻

@adi@twtxt.net Also, I noticed you followed me on Twitter, but you might enjoy @anths if you want techie stuff instead of Oregon politics. 🤣

Lots of personal preference, but I disagree on Acme: it’s far and away my preferred editor on unix-like systems, too.

A “hunt group” is a phone number you can call which will ring some set of other phones and whoever answers first gets the call, and the others stop ringing.

Thanks, I’d forgotten about that. I’d rather avoid Google Voice, and I’m okay paying (reasonably). Looking like Twilio might have most of what I want natively.

Given that we don’t have a “home phone”, what’s the best way to create a “hunt group” for my partner’s and my cell phones? My first thought is Asterisk on a VPS, but my knowledge of such things is years out of date. Is there a better way?

Good weekend for random tech projects: this rackmount server I got free boots Plan 9 without issue, and my ttl adapters and wii nunchucks just arrived. Now where can I find a serial modem?

I have only just discovered this and need to dig in more, but so far it looks like a really nice reference for electronics pinouts: https://pinouts.org/

Okay, I’ve updated my examples page and shared the more complex ssh example. http://a.9srv.net/shortcuts

iOS has had a “Shortcuts” app for a while now which is very useful for scripting things on the device, and at some point grew the ability to run things via ssh, including piping input/output. It’s how I’ve done twtxt from my phone for a while now. I’ll clean up these two examples and post to the examples I’ve shared. http://a.9srv.net/shortcuts

Only 1 day of activity so far, but I’ve started a new project log for whatever the heck I end up doing to this Monroe 425 I got. http://a.9srv.net/monroe425

About two years late, but I finally finished setting up an iOS Shortcut so I can post to my blog via ssh. http://a.9srv.net/b/

Anyone seen a pixel-addressed display (any tech; lcd, eink, oled, whatever) in the range of 8”x1”?

I think y’all are missing something. I never used ftp as a schema; I’m saying the “ftp” hostname part with the “http” schema is amusing.

Check the raw file. ;-) Yes, “http colon slash slash ftp”.

I’m not sure! It feels similar to seeing “~username” in a URL. Part nostalgia, part… impressed at the persistence?

Seeing “http://ftp” in a URL makes me happy.

Nominally, my seen/read list for 2021, but I missed a lot of short readings. I may try to write more about these things this year. http://a.9srv.net/media/2021

Web3 being “democratic” makes perfect sense if you can’t tell the difference between a dollar and a person.

I just went to type the phrase “I avoid Linux like the plague” but then remembered that we’ve all learned that most people won’t actually go much out of their way to avoid the plague.

As a postmaster, Gmail remains the most irritating domain to send to. Soooo many false spam hits, such little information provided, so many hoops to jump through.

Agreed on “aggressive” — as a general rule, I don’t think most folks are acting like we’re in the kind of crisis we are.

There’s still an editing/proofreading pass to do before it becomes official, but the content is done.

It’s the (roughly) bi-annual platform convention. I think the new platform does a good job of holding to progressive values (even if I wish it went farther in places). I got an amendment in to improve our stance on encryption-related issues, which was nice.

Spent the weekend with the state Democrats at our platform convention. Good work and glad to have participated, but 20 hours of zoom over 60 hours is a lot of zoom.

Killing time in Goodwill, I picked up a desk calculator from a pile. Dude standing next to me goes “what’s that for?”. 😳💀

This pi will now boot directly to ed if the gpio pin is grounded at boot time. ed(1)term v1. :-) http://txtpunk.com/edterm/

I am not launching it with a specific file right now, but I’ll likely have it default to my daily work log shortly.

@lyse This was basically a trial/proof-of-concept for the real goal: a switch which, if on at boot time, causes the pi to boot straight to ed.

@lyse ed(1) is the standard editor. ;-)

I made a gpio button on my raspberry pi which opens a new window running ed. I screwed up while testing it and launched maaaaany ed windows.

I fork bombed my computer! With ed(1)!!! Haven’t done that in a while.

A 556 IC is functionally the same as two 555 ICs, but I’ve decided the 555 is better because search engines don’t confuse it for ammunition as much.

Uh, I think you are taking every line of that way too seriously.

Hah. It’s an edit of a “be gay do crimes” meme, in response to this: https://twitter.com/Cor3ntin/status/1460614695564496901

Use C do crime! https://cdn.masto.host/pdxsocial/media_attachments/files/107/294/565/215/390/680/original/1d29c85c0aa4c9a5.png

💉3️⃣✅ Thank you, Dolly Parton!

National Novel Writing Month; see https://nanowrimo.org/

I want NaNoWriMo but for tech writing.

Oh, me too: FreeBSD, macOS, and Solaris in server environments extensively, and Linux, AIX, HP/UX, Irix, probably others I’m forgetting. Plan 9 is a whole other class of thing.

Lots of downsides, too, but overall I still find it the most comfortable environment for anything that doesn’t need a web browser. :-)