ecliptik

Google Buzz [1] along with Wave you both were too soon for this world.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Buzz

I have a PicoGUS and have had a lot of fun futzing around with Claude and porting Cave Story to DOS [1] the last couple of months after SDL announced DOS support.

Originally I was just using it as a Soundblaster, but in the last few weeks added Waveblaster, Adlib, and Gravis Ultrasound support. It's been a lot of fun learning how the GUS works and hearing how distinctively different it is from other sound hardware of that era.

1. https://github.com/ecliptik/doskutsu

Semi-related, since SDL added support for DOS a few weeks ago I've worked with Claude to port Cave Story to DOS [1].

On a Pentium 75 it can get 30fps and with decoupling the frame timer it plays at the same speed as the original. The port offloads the Organya synth soundtrack to MIDI to improve performance, and also sounds amazing.

Still working on a few bug fixes, performance tweaks, and Waveblaster support, but it's playable.

1. https://codeberg.org/ecliptik/doskutsu

Not all of California, but San Diego has Measure A[1] on the upcoming primary to tax non-primary homes.

1. https://www.kpbs.org/news/politics/2026/04/20/2026-primary-e...

The Verge has an on-going series Where's the Trump Phone? [1] with updates every week. They even managed to get an interview with one of the execs a few months back.

1. https://www.theverge.com/gadgets/843498/trump-phone

My favorite Nullsoft software that came out the end of this era was WASTE [1].

Peer-to-peer (back when P2P was all the rage), encrypted, decentralized private networks.

Group of friends and I used it post-college as a way to share files and chat, and was much better than AIM or other instant messaging at the time.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WASTE

This update broke my workflow! I use Netatalk [1] with AFP to share files between my Macintosh 512ke and MacBook via AppleTalk.

Look, my setup works for me. Just add an option to re-enable AFP [2].

1. https://github.com/Netatalk/netatalk

2. https://xkcd.com/1172/

One of my favorite authors and highly recommend his short stories [1] and the "ambiguous apocalypse" trilogy - The Drowned World, The Burning World, and The Crystal World.

As one of collections intros said, Ballard is science fiction, but Inner Space, not Outer Space.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Complete_Short_Stories_of_...

Absolutely fantastic. As someone who just spent the last month vibe coding System 6 apps and reading through Apple HIG docs I love the look of the IDE.

If you're running forgejo you can setup mirrors [1].

Mine syncs a few repos to github to make them public, and planning to add Codeberg in as well ala POSSE [2].

1. https://forgejo.org/docs/next/user/repo-mirror/

2. https://indieweb.org/POSSE

Fluxbox has tabs and is a stacking window manager.

- https://fluxbox.org/features/

I miss this too, and sort of get it on airplanes where I almost never use my seat back screen and end up watching someone else's instead (yes there's no sound).

I chalk it up to overwhelming choices. Sometimes I just want to watch something but don't want to go through dozens of options and having decision anxiety.

Bonus is sometimes I discover something I never thought I would have liked.

Started vibe coding a more modern Telnet client for 68k Macintosh systems running System 6 last week, and within a couple of days have a fully working terminal emulator with VT100, VT220, xterm, glyph/emoji support, and dark/light mode.

- https://github.com/ecliptik/flynn

It's mainly for me to use but is entirely functional an real hardware.

Not really, most of my programming experience is for devops/sysadmin scripts with shell/perl. I can read python/ruby from supporting application teams, but never programmed a large project or application with it myself. Last I used C was 25 years ago in some college courses and was never very good with it.

Check out Claude Code Team Orchestration [1].

Set an env var and ask to create a team. If you're running in tmux it will take over the session and spawn multiple agents all coordinated through a "manager" agent. Recommend running it sandboxed with skip-dangerous-permissions otherwise it's endless approvals

Churns through tokens extremely quickly, so be mindful of your plan/budget.

1. https://code.claude.com/docs/en/agent-teams

Very cool, we have some Korean Pokemon cards that this would work great on. Are you planning to support other languages?

It's for personal use, and I wouldn't call it great software, but I used Claude Code Teams in parallel to create a Fluxbox-compatible window compositor for Wayland [1].

Overall effort was a few days of agentic vibe-coding over a period of about 3 weeks. Would have been faster, but the parallel agents burn though tokens extremely quickly and hit Max plan limits in under an hour.

1. https://github.com/ecliptik/fluxland

Lynx supports gopher [0] and check out Bombadillo [1], it's a stripped down "small web" (gopher, gemini, finger) only terminal browser.

Gopher is sort of like Latin, it's a dead protocol, but is still useful.

0. https://lynx.invisible-island.net/lynx_help/lynx_url_support...

1. https://bombadillo.colorfield.space/

This eerily feels like speed running Eternal September.

https://www.ecliptik.com

I've read 51 books this year (just finished Hyperion) which is 50 more than 2024.

I attribute this increase to a few things,

1. Borrowing from Libby puts a 21 day time limit to finish a book, encouraging me to read it before it's due.

2. Not discriminating from reading on my phone. Kindle app syncs between devices, and makes it easier to read a few pages here and there instead of waiting for uninterrupted sessions with my Kindle.

3. Continually updating a To Read list, mostly by going to Barnes and Noble, taking pictures of featured book tables, then adding the interesting ones to my Libby hold list.

4. Borrowing with Libby makes it easier to bail out of a book that doesn't intrigue me. Instead of forcing myself to finish something I spent $ on, I can just return it and move onto something else, feeling 0 guilt.

There are search engines, directories and feed aggregators [1].

Best means of discovery is like the original web, you surf it, bouncing from capsule to capsule finding what you like.

1. https://github.com/kr1sp1n/awesome-gemini?tab=readme-ov-file...

From what I remember about the name, it's derived from NASA space programs. Where Gopher is Mercury, Web is Apollo and Gemini is in between.

Gemini is a new internet protocol which:

- Is heavier than gopher

- Is lighter than the web

- Will not replace either

- Strives for maximum power to weight ratio

- Takes user privacy very seriously

And a Gunship sticker. After looking at some of these I wish there was an optional field people could add so others with overlapping interests could follow a blog/socialmedia/etc.

Are SpaceWalk [1] or Moku Pona[2] what you're looking for?

1. https://tildegit.org/sloum/spacewalk

2. https://github.com/kensanata/moku-pona

In the past I've donated old hardware to OpenBSD [1] and would love to donate to them directly, but they aren't registered as a 501c3 in the US and can't claim the deduction on taxes (yes, I know, I am not 100% altruistic).

Instead I donate to FreeBSD and support OpenBSD in an ancillary way through OpenBSD Amsterdam [2]. Which yes, is also not tax exempt, but does comes with nice OpenBSD VM.

1. https://www.openbsd.org/want.html

2. https://openbsd.amsterdam/

I haven't read it, but High Noon[1] comes up in recommendations about Sun Microsystems history.

1. https://archive.org/details/highnoon00kare

5 years ago I blew out a knee running and we ended up getting a Peloton (coincidentally the end of Feb 2020) since the doctor said it would be less stress on my knees.

Used their service some, but I 3D printed a phone holder for the handlebars. Now instead of sitting in a chair watching videos and scrolling HN, I do it with an elevated heart rate for 30 minutes.

Sure it's not the "right" way to exercise, but I've lost weight (in combination with an improved diet), have more energy and I feel less guilty about screentime.

I've been reading The Innovators[1], which includes early computing history, just finished the section on The Mother of all Demos yesterday coincidentally.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovators_(book)

restic + rclone to cloud storage for data I care about, the majority of the data can easily be replaced if needed.