gemini://gem.hack.org/mc/log/note8.gmi

I'm attending the small Lund Linux Conference today. It's a small, invite-only conference mostly geared towards Linux kernel hacking, but other firmware stuff is welcome too. The "invite-only" thing isn't very strongly enforced; it's easy to get an invite if you want to go.

I'm already here in one of the Axis Communications buildings at 08:30 in the morning. Early for me. I'm lucky that there's some decent coffee available. I haven't as much hope for lunch, so I brought my own.

I'm really glad I don't have to commute this way anymore. I worked in this very building many years ago. It's as cold as I remember it. Goddess knows why they keep it so cold in their offices.

I quit from Axis Communication when another company promised I could set up an open source R&D department and that I could work 30 hour weeks. The thing about a new R&D department turned out not to be a lie, exactly, but very exaggerated, so after a year I quit the new job and became an at-home dad for two years. I think this was very good for at least P, myself, and our kid.

Wonderful talk about Linux kernel development on the Chromebook today. Makes me want to do something on a Chromebook, although not necessarily Chrome/ChromiumOS, of course. I have two old Toshiba Chromebooks with a sweet fanless design and with GalliumOS installed. Haven't used them in a while. Perhaps time for a revisit. Then again, there's this interesting Pixelbook Go, which strictly speaking isn't available in Sweden, but perhaps something can be arranged... I'm holding hard onto my two old Thinkpad x230's but perhaps this is where I will end up if I need to "upgrade". That or the ARM-based Thinkpad X13s, perhaps?

A bit heated discussion after the "Rust in the kernel" talk, as expected, but I think this is a step in the right direction.

Speaking about steps in the right direction... During a break I almost grabbed a guy walking around with an "ARM Morello Program" hoodie (sorry, Joakim) and started asking about how I would be able to get my hands on a Morello devboard. As you probably know, Morello is an ARM version with capabilities in hardware, very much inspired by the CHERI ISA. Imagine that any address you use in pointers also have a number of bits telling what you can do with the memory and hardware enforcing this. There are some much older archictectures that used tagged memory or did something similar, but this needs to come back!

I've been using Terminus for a very long time. Especially on low resolution screens it's very, very nice. But on a HiDPI screen I'm finding my eyes get a bit tired. That I seem to have developed pollen allergy doesn't help. I tried a few modern fonts, like DejaVu Sans Mono and the lot.. Right now I'm trying out IBM Plex Mono on my HiDPI screens.

Using Plex Mono, or any proportional font I guess, in green on black feels... odd, though. So I've resigned and I'm doing some light grey thing as the foreground colour.

It's a version of the DEC VT220 font as a TTF. Seems a bit weird not to have it as a bitmap font.

Some old DEC terminals actually had soft fonts which means you could download new fonts to it. I've even seen a GIF viewer using this technique, designing fonts on the fly to display an image on an otherwise non-graphical terminal. Quite a neat hack. I think this is it:

Journal #8

Programming fonts