19 March 2017
New Year’s Resolutions kept: none, though the subtleties of the choices made leave me a modicum of wriggle room.
- Picking at my thumbnails at the traffic lights on the way to work: Fail. I should go a different way.
- Reducing sugars in my tea at home: Technically a great success. The fact that I’ve not drunk tea at home during 2017 cheapens this a bit; the fact it’s been all chai since Christmas means I’m floundering, adrift, rudderless here.
- Eating more healthily: Yes. More nuts, oats, er… healthy foods and in moderation too; less bread, biscuits/cookies. I take a cholesterol-reducing drink daily. The 16” kebab pizza last weekend was atypical.
- Exercising: Fail. I walk a bit, nowhere near enough to qualify as a person who walks.
- The thing that shall not be mentioned in polite society: Yup, still doing that.
18 March 2017
Talking Heads have had a major influence in my life. Subtle but major nonetheless. I’m now accustomed to the fact I’ll never see them play live; it’s taken me decades…
Prior to App.net’s shut down for good I’d hoped a song could be played during the final #MondayNightDanceParty. Due to an unfortunate typo by yours truly that didn’t happen. No matter, it’s this:
Heaven (YouTube video)
It sums up what I think of ADN. Especially poignant is… oh, listen to it!
Tidying up my emotions after ADN’s termination, here’s a song which looks forward:
This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody) (YouTube video)
18 March 2017
I just finished making dinner for me and the girls and realised something quite profound. My web site has existed in various forms and at various hosts over the 20 years since I arrived online. That’s not the important thing, no. 2017 is the first year that events outside my control rendered the vast majority of its content obsolete.
Yes, this is another post about the collateral damage resulting from App.net’s demise; though this one will thankfully be brief. Being honest, I don’t see much point in writing much about the past now, the future is much more important. It’s actually very easy for me to say that; the majority of people who made App.net special are at 10centuries.org or pnut.io right now. A nicely-distributed ‘ADN2’ (http://adn2.larryanderson.org.)
Back to my Wiki-type site. First the volunteer-driven App.net Wiki I helped edit expired, I stepped away from iOS, and then the network the App.net Wiki documented disappeared. Well, at least its infrastructure did. Ahhh…
My focus changed over the last year-and-a-half to blogging about what I’m thinking about, what I’m doing, and what makes me tick. A typical personal blog.
Maybe I should redirect incoming site requests to my 10C blog. or the more complete but less-social GitHub.com version or, heck, the trial self-hosted blog currently unloved and waiting for me to reconnect the Raspberry Pi 2 B mirroring it from the GitHub repo.
Dunno.
17 March 2017
This user-requested software upgrade exchange didn’t happen. I’ve made it up. Yes.*
The Man:
“[folder name] There is a launcher in here [program name].exe which should install the shizzle.”
Me, feeling cocky:
“We iz installing the shizzle on Jason’s machine. We think. :)”
(time passed…)
Unfortunately due to the way [program name] works, its installer had a lie down instead of exhibiting the outward trappings of a performant conclusion.
Me, somewhat circumspect:
“Could you please start the [program name] upgrade on a few more machines after lunch/1pm? Ben, Zeb, John-Boy and John. Maybe Olivia and Mary-Ellen tomorrow.”
The Man:
‘Please see below for the correct way to submit a request, as one of your colleagues seemed to nail it!
“Oh Great One,
Your humble servant requests that you fix [another program name] on my PC what not working (but did last week).
Thanks’
Me, acquiescing:
“Dear Sir or Madam of Awesomesauce,
This obsequious underling (initially examining but not limiting said examination to in this regard the relative vertical offsets between uppermost portions of cranial body parts) is desirous of your physical presence around these environs after the commencement and subsequent termination of the half-hour period in which the majority consume their midday repast to effect the increase in [program name]-related CAD and/or design productivity (post-button-fiddling-and-bitwise-cogitation) of a small number of my esteemed colleagues, to be occasioned by a heretofore successful manual implementation of a ‘soft ware upgrade’; those colleagues being namely by name: Ben of Sausage, Zeb of Sausage, John of Sausage, and John-Boy the, er… And, upon successful termination of the afore-to-alluded-to procedural black-box magic incantations, to examine the possibility of repeating the procedures on two further colleagues’ computing devices at a point not limited to a limited time within the limits of the next working day; those personnel being namely Olivia The Great of A-Specific-Sausage-Name-Analogy and Mary-Ellen The Great of Many-Bread-Product-Name-Analogies.
Yours in eager and trembling anticipatory raptures,
Mr or Mrs Turner.
p.s. The writer has determined that his or her [another program name] is also what not working (but what did earlier in the year.)”
(time passed…)
Yes, of course he did it, tsk!
The end.
*Er… No, that’s not exactly true. However the names have been changed to protect the identities of the guineapigs involvZzzz…
16 March 2017
Just short of a millennium ago, and handily beating Project Gutenberg, the Chinese invented movable type. Thus began the slow march of the dissemination of things important and unimportant (though perhaps entertaining) through the intervening ten centuries towards this, our almost ephemeral, digital age.
As App.net (ADN) haltingly passes into the realm of myths and fables an 11th-hour equitable stay was granted by the legend that is @berg; time to fix and thus allow the network’s inhabitants to download and unpack their digital memories.
24 more hours, the blink of an eye, and an ending somehow slightly less-memorable than of The Ides Of March; a date I’m sure that was chosen to be symbolic. Symbolic of what though?
How many Orcs though, how many Goblins, Men, Elves, nameless dark forces from the east, how many Trolls were slain during the time ADN shone? How many Adventures were had along the road? How many people met, spoke in hushed (and not-so-hushed) tones, whilst forging lasting alliances over cloudy ale and Elven Lembas bread?
Ok, enough allusions to Tolkien-esque worlds; wasn’t it fun‽
Simply, yes.
Incidentally, if you came to this scroll of mine expecting a list of legendary folk, instead look in at 10Centuries.org and pnut.io and see who’s there.
Do it.
I have invitation codes for both networks, just ask.
Do it, do it now, lest ye be eaten by a grue or (shudders) settle for Twitter!
(time passes…)
Have you done it yet‽
Who knows, before we know it, people could be telling tales of our later legendary exploits.