tom jennings

What we need now is for someone to make one of these. We could be rich!

“... Every one knew how laborious the usual method is of attaining to arts and sciences; whereas, by his contrivance, the most ignorant person, at a reasonable charge, and with a little bodily labour, might write books in philosophy, poetry, politics, laws, mathematics, and theology, without the least assistance from genius or study.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Engine

OK I just re-created the reason I got in trouble with libreoffice writer in the first place.

I'm making a printed book, so I need left and right pages.

The front part of the book, maybe a dozen pages, preface, index, colophon, etc, I want no page numbers.

About a dozen pages in, I want to start page numbering, with 1.

Libreoffice can''t seem to do this. Each page style must select "next style" which means the first N pages need to each have style N, where style 1 "nexts" to Style 2, 2 to 3, ... n-1 to N.

Style N then links to "Left page" which links to right which links to left.

It's a disastrous design. I'd done all this and somehow it broke.

Lots of other folks have similar issues with style and the answer from the org is "LO is designed around styles" which is a non-answer.

I will probably punt, break the book into pieces, have the front matter book use one set of alternating styles, then the rest of it another, produce PDFs, and assemble in PDF.

OH WAIT I CANT: the table of contents requires it to be one document.

What a shit show.

Fkn Libreoffice has corrupted my 150 page book, and it's been damaged for over two weeks, in a section I wasn't working in.

None of the recovery features I find in web searches exist.

There's a page (8) that is a black hole -- page 7 is OK, page 9 OK, but between is a blank page 8 where inserts or deletes that would wrap text over the page boundary essentially delete the text.

Can't DEL can't backspace, can' select over it and cut or delete, fkn damaged file.

150 pages of months of work. What a fucking disaster.

#Permacomputing is about the future. Old CPUs suck (but can be fun). Permacomputing has little to do with #retrocomputing, except insofar as we can examine our past solutions for synergies and such. And pre-enshittification versions of current software. The rest is nostalgia.

Used gear is the future too. There are so many "adequate" systems made in the last 10 years, alone, that meet most peoples needs.

The only non-enshittified OSes today are *nix OSes; freebsd, netbsd, derivatives, and the various linux.

I run Debian 13, as vanilla as I can get for the least effort involved. But linux/etc today are essentially server-class installs used on the desktop/laptop. OK lots of folk on the fedi lurv to wield complexity for it's own sake and that's fine. And eg. Debian is shockingly, wonderfully reliable and given the underlying complexity, surprisingly easy to install and maintain -- if you have the skills.

But I keep wondering about how much could a linux distro be pared back to cut size and complexity? A brutally stripped distro that runs Libreoffice and not much else; and a fancier one with networking (browser memory hogs).

Is there/are there super low end linux distributions I'm not aware of?

I'm not seeing a lot of traffic about permacomputing that aren't entangled with retrocomputing. I'm hoping that's just a feature of my feeds and follows!

@kevinbowen@hachyderm.io

Lol i tried to read the ranch writing, but it was above my pay grade. But i dont speak ranch so what could i expect.

So sad! My dance party busted by police! No dancing! Very sad.

Four of us went out to dinner for a friend's birthday, Out on the sidewalk after awaiting our ride, one of those Mercedes fake military-looking things drove by, the big squared off SUV/wagon thing.

It was projecting the M-B logo on the ground! Broadcasting a fucking advertisement as it went by!

Lol I was laughing out loud at the obnoxious folly of it. The trivial crassness! OH LOOK! A MERCEDES BENZ! How fucking novel.

You probably have to pay a monthly fee to turn it off.

Who the fuck would drive such a thing? Losers! lol

OK, I think this was my response to Interval Corp back in 1993, and I can only assume it did not go over well since I wasn't invited again, lol.

It's a bit rough around the edges but it still makes me laugh and it's more than a bit mean. Still I say, fuck them all for what they've built. (Not necessarily each and every one the folks at that conference.)

https://www.bleeve.me/Texts/net.culture.html

And no regrets! Though I'm a bit too harsh on cyberpunk, there were reasons for that then, I suppose, but they aren't articulated here and today, I doubt I'd care.

part 3 of 3

Maybe it's time for network connections; but to where? With what resources? Etc ad infinitum. There's no money in it, and most of them (like EPICENTER) are anti-profit.

(Classic clash: A few years back, Michelle Shocked, the musician of some note best known a few years ago? hung out at the anarchist BOUND TOGETHER BOOKSTORE, long before her success. After her profitable rise, she wanted to donate some money to them. (They are collectively run at no profit; no one gets paid.) When her lawyers found out they weren't 501c3, the whole thing fell through. Oh well.)

LOL! I FKN TOLD YOU SO! This plus seven bucks buys me coffee at starbucks.

I wrote this critique/response to a Interval Research Corp 1992..1994 "Online Communities Mini-Conference", I scanned and posted the preliminary minutes some time ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interval_Research_Corporation

It was a nothing for me.... While looking for something else, as is always the way, I found this old critique/response. It appears that I had responded them after the fact as presumably expected, but wrote this additional critique I likely did not share with Interval.

But it's the real one.

Well we've certainly got our Ghost of Christmas Future moment now.

Document timestamp lost, but it's from a folder I dated "1994", so it's 92 to 94 likely.

I was never popular with this crowd; it was soooo obvious that under nearly every single utterance about building culture, was fundamentally just about profit. I mean duh.

(It could have used an edit pass.)

--------------

This is the not-for-public-viewing addendum. It's arrogant and presumptious, especially coming on the heels of my previous rant (polemic is a nicer word :-)

To be brutally honest, I didn't get very inspired by what I heard people say, socially and ethics-interestedly speaking. With a few exceptions, I didn't connect with anyone signifigantly, nor feel like my goals were very compatible (since they generally (sigh) don't involve anything that makes money, not that I don't want to make money!). Actually I was a bit dismayed, in that those in fact making decisions to launch systems of wide and deep social impact aren't very savvy at all about the ramifications of just what the hell they're doing. But not surprised.

Besides people I already knew or knew of (Lee Felsenstein, Howard Rheingold, Dave Hughes, Doug Engelbart, Anna Couey, Cliff Figallo, well people, etc) it seems the people I got along with best were Interval people! I still haven't yet got to talk with Brenda Laurel.

part 1 of 2 or maybe 3 we'll see

SPINRITE! OMFG I'd forgotten all about that. The disk drive repair program.

I found a cache of DOS and early Windows programs and such from 1993, 1994.

NCSA Mosaic installer, wmos1_0.zip, the file you had to ftp from mosaic. I think this is NCSA Mosaic 1.0.

QuickBooks, ARCNet setup and files from 1992, WinQVT/Net, a TCP/IP shim setup for Windows 3.1, a Win 3.1 bunch of files, no idea.

These are all from a copy of a folder so as-installed but I think a lot of installers included.

Lol.

"Since version 3, TeX has used an idiosyncratic version numbering system, where updates have been indicated by adding an extra digit at the end of the decimal, so that the version number asymptotically approaches π. This is a reflection of the fact that TeX is now very stable, and only minor updates are anticipated. The current version of TeX is 3.141592653; it was last updated in 2021."

896 01/05/90 Wing Lee (3:600/2), Unit 04-1493, Singapore 1646 R $25.00
897 01/11/90 CompuSystems Inc, Columbia SC 29223 R $175.00
898 01/16/90 Gillian/Craig Associates , San Francisco CA 94103 R $50.00
901 02/06/90 Computer Designs, Oklahoma City, OK 73112 R $50.00
904 02/08/90 Blunt Ellis & Loewi, Englewood CO 80111 I $100.00
905 02/14/90 Mass. Dep't of Revenue, O, Boston MA 02204 I $0.00
906 02/14/90 Florida INternational Uni, North Miami FL 33181 R $140.00
907 02/14/90 Institute for Global Comm, San Francisco CA 94115 R $100.00
908 02/15/90 Synchronized Marketing In, Fremont CA 94538 I $175.00
910 02/20/90 RTC, Atlanta GA 30303 I $175.00
912 02/28/90 Yale Security Inc, Charlottesville NC 28229-8010 I $0.00
914 03/07/90 Capital Circuits, Boston MA 02134-1688 I $175.00
916 03/11/90 Nashville State Technical, Nashville TN 37209 I $50.00
917 03/11/90 Synchronized Marketing In, Fremont CA 94538 I $12.00
919 03/21/90 Synchronized Marketing In, Fremont CA 94538 I $25.00
920 03/27/90 U.S. Postal Service, Philadelphia PA 19104 I $300.00
921 03/28/90 Delwin Finch, Riverside CA 92505 I $175.00
922 04/12/90 Saskatchewan Telecommunic, Regina Sask. S4P 3Y2 I $50.00
923 04/23/90 Hogeschool, Utrecht Secto, 3513BK Utrecht NETHERL I $50.00
924 04/26/90 Mr. Chito Kintanar, Walnut CA 91787 I $212.00
925 04/29/90 Swanson Analysis Systems, Houston PA 15342 R $37.00
927 05/16/90 NE AHEC, Elko NV 89801 R $175.00
928 05/16/90 Key Corp, Albany NY 12201-0088 I $0.00
929 05/29/90 National Semiconductor, Santa Clara CA 95052-8090 R $50.00
930 06/06/90 Software Spectrum, Donners Grove IL 60515 I $175.00

I watched the author of this write on the sidewalk with a found piece of sheetrock (gypsum and plaster). The shape is determined by the oil stain it borders.

Alas i can't read it.

Unappreciated trees, under a freeway, adjacent a parking lot entrance. No water no maintenance except chopping when growth annoys. They're pretty cool trees.

HOMOCORE queer punk zine, 1988..1991, anthology. Books have arrived. It's a lot of text! 288 pages, 8.5 x 11.

You can buy them here: https://fluke.bigcartel.com/product/homocore

300 were made. Matthew at Fluke says 10 mail orders today. His books just arrived today.

Well this is pretty cool. Our house is at an intersection corner, we have a huge ICE OUT OF LA banner extremely prominently... I'm about to write letters and walk them to every neighbor and start to be a phone tree. (fuck the internet it's fascist tech now, phones are bad enough).

I think I'm shopping for a siren for our roof, and a public switch I'll expose to anyone who responds to my letters.

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/5735832-los-angeles-ice-warning-sirens-california/

Egad, it works. Took me this long to get around to finish printer code and final check the hardware.

While the sound is satisfying as expected (and since this is not something i need to live with daily its all pleasure) tractor feed, "top of form", tangles, output caught up in intake, all those fun things return also. Never mind all the dead trees. But realistically this box of paper will last me probably forever.

There's this many modules to the MP/M operating system distribution. I tell ya, its shockingly usable. Its missing tools, which i am writing. The compile load go debug edit loop is very slow, which i'm working on. A lot of improvements have been made to our tools and systems in the last 40 years.