//nthcdr.eu/blog/ nthcdr.eu en //nthcdr.eu/blog/2026-06-08-it-s-impossible-not-to-miss-emacs.gmi //nthcdr.eu/blog/2026-06-08-it-s-impossible-not-to-miss-emacs.gmi Mon, 08 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT Even as I sit with Skiff ready to act upon my every request it's impossible to not feel like something is missing. The joke goes that Emacs is a great operating system lacking a good editor. I wouldn't call Skiff an operating system or great, but one thing it's missing is a good editor. Good editor can only mean one thing to me; Emacs. //nthcdr.eu/blog/2026-06-07-calling-out-for-lynx-first-developers.gmi //nthcdr.eu/blog/2026-06-07-calling-out-for-lynx-first-developers.gmi Mon, 07 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT Two times now have I let AI loose on trying to implement a more advanced web browser for Skiff. Two times have I aborted the attempts and made do with the very basic one I've already got. The one that doesn't even attempt to understand CSS. The most recent attempt got passing grades for the old acid tests (acid1 and acid2) as well as implementing basic flexbox and grid support. Still both times I've just come away with the same conclusion. Just ignoring CSS and doing a reader mode pass of the document yields much more readable results than a poor mans CSS-aware browser. //nthcdr.eu/blog/2026-05-30-the-even-fatter-cat.gmi //nthcdr.eu/blog/2026-05-30-the-even-fatter-cat.gmi Mon, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT Fresh off blocking GCP with my evil laughter still echoing throughout the lair it struck me that while GCP had been the most obvious nemesis of my pod there was still a rather large elephant still lingering in the room. All while banning GCP I had left AWS off the hook. That seemed entirely unfair to AWS and I set off to block them in the same manner. //nthcdr.eu/blog/2026-05-30-and-i-took-that-personally.gmi //nthcdr.eu/blog/2026-05-30-and-i-took-that-personally.gmi Mon, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT Now that I've got nft set up to do rate limiting to ensure my pod is available to the broader public and also have a bit more insight into who my visitors are one thing stood out. Apparently my miscreants are mostly ips which when doing a reverse dns lookup resolve to something under googleusercontent.com. //nthcdr.eu/blog/2026-05-25-oh-behave.gmi //nthcdr.eu/blog/2026-05-25-oh-behave.gmi Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT Since implementing some rudimentary nft mitigation against rude web clients hogging all available connections to cairn I also added some basic counters so that I can see what is going on. //nthcdr.eu/blog/2026-05-23-love-letter-to-cheap-hobbies.gmi //nthcdr.eu/blog/2026-05-23-love-letter-to-cheap-hobbies.gmi Mon, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT For all the wealth I'm generating and all hobbies I invest it in its clear to me that the money spent is not paying dividends in perceived happiness. //nthcdr.eu/blog/2026-05-22-relearning-the-tools.gmi //nthcdr.eu/blog/2026-05-22-relearning-the-tools.gmi Mon, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT The thing about having been around for a while is that you get to relearn your tools on a regular basis. Having grown up with Linux my days of configuring and rebuilding my kernel is happily just a fond memory these days. I'm glad to say that things have come a long way in this regard. //nthcdr.eu/blog/2026-05-18-on-passion-and-purpose.gmi //nthcdr.eu/blog/2026-05-18-on-passion-and-purpose.gmi Mon, 18 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT I read this gemlog post[1] earlier and it got me thinking about my own perspective on the relation between passion and purpose. In my experience while purpose is a constant background hum, passion is a short burst of energy that is impossible to hold on to. It can materialise without forewarning and leave almost as fast. //nthcdr.eu/blog/2026-05-15-feel-good-security-with-bubblewrap.gmi //nthcdr.eu/blog/2026-05-15-feel-good-security-with-bubblewrap.gmi Mon, 15 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT It's a dangerous world out there and today I got blocked by my own cairn running this page because my publishing frontend didn't correctly close its titan sockets running into a per IP connection limit I implemented. //nthcdr.eu/blog/2026-05-12-the-feedback-loop-that-wasn-t.gmi //nthcdr.eu/blog/2026-05-12-the-feedback-loop-that-wasn-t.gmi Mon, 12 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT I've held my current position for more than a decade. It's a great job really. Yet the workplace as a whole is so dysfunctional. //nthcdr.eu/blog/2026-05-10-the-wonders-of-wander.gmi //nthcdr.eu/blog/2026-05-10-the-wonders-of-wander.gmi Mon, 10 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT So I've recreated a lisp desktop to browse gemini and listen to internet radio. Still I managed to also build the simplest of web browsers too because I feel like there is just so much more content on the web still. //nthcdr.eu/blog/2026-05-10-that-one-backup-trick-that-stuck.gmi //nthcdr.eu/blog/2026-05-10-that-one-backup-trick-that-stuck.gmi Mon, 10 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT Backups are boring, there is no two ways about that. It's the reason many (most?) of us fail to do them with the regularity warranted. All the more reason to make them easy and near friction less. //nthcdr.eu/blog/2026-05-09-there-i-said-it-i-don-t-like-darkmode.gmi //nthcdr.eu/blog/2026-05-09-there-i-said-it-i-don-t-like-darkmode.gmi Mon, 09 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT It is perhaps odd. After all my emacs has been applying the wombat theme for the last decade or so. But apart from my Emacs I don't particularly like white on black. Colleagues all sing the praises of darkmode preferring it but myself I feel disoriented. It's great when every other window is light and your Emacs is dark, you can spot it quickly and return to its warm embrace if by chance you have wandered astray. //nthcdr.eu/blog/2026-05-06-rediscovering-internet-radio.gmi //nthcdr.eu/blog/2026-05-06-rediscovering-internet-radio.gmi Mon, 06 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT Really loving my skiff desktop after tracking dirty rectangles made it snappier. I was not expecting such an improvement. When you live day to day making due with software that doesn't work the way you want it's a breath of fresh air to be in the driving seat even if the edges are rough. //nthcdr.eu/blog/2026-05-05-trailrunning-with-my-basenji.gmi //nthcdr.eu/blog/2026-05-05-trailrunning-with-my-basenji.gmi Mon, 05 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT A couple of years back I got a running harness for my basenji with the intent on taking her for runs and hopefully cement a good habit for the both of us. Things didn't quite work out as expected. She did quite alright for the first run but on the subsequent attempts she would be of quite a different opinion on everything from pace to how many pauses were reasonable, to where we were running and so on. On rainy days I would get her ready and she would seem eager to go only to pull the handbrake on the driveway more often than not ending up with me disappointedly leaving her at home and go for a run by myself. //nthcdr.eu/blog/2026-05-02-realisation-of-a-dream.gmi //nthcdr.eu/blog/2026-05-02-realisation-of-a-dream.gmi Mon, 02 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT I always had a thing for smalltalk, first squeak and then pharo. Alas by brain is more wired for lisp. Emacs as an operating system lacking a good editor is a well known trope and I've been living in emacs for the most part last decades. But I've always had pharo envy for the extra possibilities afforded by the rich ui experience. //nthcdr.eu/blog/2026-04-20-announcing-suspecto.gmi //nthcdr.eu/blog/2026-04-20-announcing-suspecto.gmi Mon, 20 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT The wife installed and enjoyed playing a game called Impostor with us. The game if you can call it that is really just a setup phase where each player is given a common word and one random player is given a hint to the word the other ones share. Then gameplay is just trying to figure out who was given the hint. //nthcdr.eu/blog/2026-04-03-hello-world.gmi //nthcdr.eu/blog/2026-04-03-hello-world.gmi Mon, 03 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT So I should probably spill the beans on who I am?! I'm a father of two daughters and husband of one wife, master of a basenji dog and keeper of a rabbit.