R.L. Dane

Well, after writing about gratitude every day for a month, and writing over sixteen thousand words on the subject, you'd think I've become a very grateful person as a result.

Note: This post contains serious spoilers for season 1 of Pluribus I was watching season 1 of Pluribus this past week, and I have to say that while it's a very odd, somewhat unstructured show, I was really fascinated by it, seeing it as a possible parable…

Our computers are so much more powerful than they were a decade or two ago.

...I'm not great at it.

Last night, I was having dinner with a group of friends, and the conversation drifted to a hot-button cultural issue.

As in, I need to get some.

As I was delightscrolling through the fediverse today, I came across this post with a close-up photo of a Palm IIIc synchronizing some email, and it made me realize how much I missed low-resolution displays.

What is a poet?

Background / Basic Concepts Another entry in the "Things that old folks care about but young folks don't know much about" department, let's talk about dithering!

Just a quick one today, because it's nearly midnight, and I'm tired.

What can I say about the amazing place I've called my Internet-home for the past four and a half years?

A couple of years before COVID, I was with a friend getting the house they were buying inspected, and afterwards we were asking the inspector some questions about what he had found.

Disclaimer: This post was indirectly inspired by a similar (and very enjoyable) post by the amazing Stefano, but it was germinating in my brain long before I realized the thematic similarities.

This is... a difficult subject, especially in the context of gratitude.

Since I spoke on Retrocomputing yesterday, I wanted to talk about its sister discipline/concept: Permacomputing.

This morning, I came across an article which the official Hackaday fediverse account linked yesterday: "Rosy Retrocomputing."

One thing I struggle with is seeing how much worse things are today than 30 years ago.

I'm continuing to explore lossy compression algorithms in my "Unsung Heroes, Human and Algorithmic" sub-theme of my September Gratitude series.

Hyde, who is a fedifriend I have had the pleasure of collaborating with in the past, wrote today about G.A.S., also known as "Gear Aquisition Syndrome."

Our first foray into lossy compression will be in the audio realm, looking at a pair of companding algorithms (short for "compressing and expanding") used extensively in telecommunications: A-law and µ-law.

For the next couple days, I'm going to take a look at lossy compression algorithms, what makes them so amazing, and how they enable the internet experience that we all know and love today.

Continuing my "Unsung Heroes, Human and Algorithmic" subseries in my September Gratitude series, I want to talk about GIF, the venerable and stalwart Graphics Interchange Format.

I'm taking this little detour within my gratitude series because I want to explore some of the very basic algorithms that are an essential part of our daily lives, for which we have little awareness, and to which is given little thought or thanks.

I was thinking today about some of the algorithms that shape our world today, which are largely unknown and unsung, and some of the people behind them.

A decade ago, I took a graduate course called "The Art and Craft of Translation" that really opened my eyes to just how beautifully messy and interpretive the act of translation actually is.

I wrote about personal music libraries on Day 2, but I'm just talking about music in general now.

(I mean the fruit) I know there are all kinds of amazing tropical fruits that I've never had an opportunity to try, but among all of the fruit I have had, I think dates are the most underrated.

I think I first heard about emulation in the early 1990s.

Ok, seriously forget that supposed rule about the internet being for, uh, "spicy media."

Over the past few years, I've been on a journey of migrating from streaming services to personal music libraries.

I wanted to start this month's theme off with something pretty light and easy to write.

This morning, I briefly skimmed through a post Robert Birming blog entitled "SepThemeBear - create your own theme."

Tech writers love making at times outlandish predictions.

Earlier today, I put out a call to see if anyone wanted to do a July Reply collab, and Hyde answered that call!

Andreas writes, The Amiga turns 40 this week.

Background/Reply Kevin Boone wrote an excellent article about "de-googling," and how to counsel people who are encountering the "costs" of living the de-googled life.

I saw Noisy Deadlines' recent post entitled "5 Albums," and it reminded me of fun "getting to know you" viral copypasta posts on social media before social media turned into a pile of garbage 😄.

Some stats: 24 posts written 123 links (not counting links to my own blog or fedi account) 76 links to actual blog posts (not counting links to things like fediverse accounts, wikipedia, git repos, and other "general information" links) 11+ new blogs added

Introduction I received a kind shout-out from Juhis Santala this morning, mentioning my previous blog post regarding the tilde (~) movement key in vi/nvi/vim, and how I tweaked it.

Fedifriend and fellow vim-addict Hyde is hosting what's called a "Vim Carnival", where someone sets a topic and encourages others to blog about the subject at hand concerning vim.

I don't understand time.

Content warning: discussion of religion and politics.

This image is protected under the "Fair Use" doctrine of US copyright law regarding derivative works and low-fidelity reproduction I wrote previously about my experience of a "Socratic Sign" as a student: how my experience of wonder and exhilaration in my…

Photo source: Marika Vinkmann I was listening to one of my new favorite podcasts, Don't Listen to Us with Mandy Patinkin and Kathryn Grody (his wife).

I was thinking about Arch's pacman this morning, mentally noting once again how insanely fast it is compared to all of the other package managers I've used.

Disclaimer 1: A heavy "[sic]" is implied on all intentional butchering of the German language in the references (and URLs) in this post Disclaimer 2: This post deals with issues of grieving, but in a lighthearted manner Disclaimer 3: This post may be best…

I don't watch a lot of YouTube anymore, and I'm trying to bring my TV watching down by a lot and read more.

By Dorkface Rickens Ready or not, the future is here!

Background I've been catching up on one of my favorite podcasts, recently: Tuxjam, and I just finished listening to Episode 120: Tunnels & Texts.

A reconstruction of the Commodore 64's BASIC prompt, adapted from Wikipedia I loved computers before the internet was a thing, and I will continue enjoying them long after the internet becomes an unusable hellhole of mass surveillance, age verification, d…