gemini://jsreed5.org/log/2024/202405/20240506-2022-week-17-18-thoughts-and-photos.gmi

The mainline Internet was once a mere set of tools and connections to access information on computers that were not yours. The openness and increasing ease of such access through the 1990s and early 2000s led to people adopting the Internet in droves. Then, about fifteen to twenty years ago, the Internet began to change. Today, the machinery of the modern Web is designed to try to control access as much as possible. Content is hidden behind restrictive APIs, account requirements, hefty paywalls, and pervasive tracking. One reason I love Gemini is that it is designed from the ground up to make information as easy to access as possible, and extensions to make it more difficult are explicity disallowed.

I sat down a few nights ago to practice speedsovling Rubik's Master Cube. My solution times have largely remained steady in the last few years, since I have very little time to practice anymore. To my amazement, my times during that session were extremely regular: either 71 seconds if I had difficulty pairing edge pieces, or 64 seconds if I didn't. These two times occurred in about 20 of the 30 solves I performed in that session.

Few updates have graced Rob's Gemini Capsule recently, and that's because I've moved many of my online activities to offline. I previously used todo.txt to store my daily tasks; I've now moved them to my bullet-journaling notebook. The same goes for calendar appointments and even recording thoughts, which I used to do using the microblogging script in the "Files" section of my capsule. I still read Gemini, as I can sync it for offline reading using offpunk, but I don't post as much. And I think that's good for me.

To get some exercise this week, I walked along a trail that runs through a nearby park. Several small creeks flow through the park. As I passed one of these, I found a man sitting on the side of the footpath, wordlessly staring at the water. I don't know who he was, why he was there, or what he was thinking about. But I think we could all use some time in silence, just watching the river flow.

My college friends are big video game fans. In our university days, we used to host weekly retro game nights, in which we would bring over consoles from the 1980s through the early 2000s and relive some cherished childhood memories. Recently they decided to revive the tradition, and we began this week by playing a classic, The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures.

2024 Week 17/18: Thoughts and Photos

2024-05-06