Gratitude Day 20: People of Conscience
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. He was an older gentleman, and it was obvious that "this wasn't [his] first rodeo," and he had a lot of experience and knowledge in his field.
When we were done, I was standing outside the inspector's truck talking to him before he left, and while I don't remember exactly what he said, it dawned on me that he was a man of conscience: aware of the world around him, not cynical about the role he played in it, and concerned about things like equality and justice.
Honestly, it threw me for a bit of a loop. I had a "It was so long ago, even Ruk had forgotten!" moment: a long-forgotten memory suddenly triggered. (It's not a direct quote from the episode, but that's how I remembered the line ;)
You see, "Karens," "Boomers," and "Donalds" are an all-too-present meme within our society today. Crunchy, deep-fried brains devoid of conscience or compassion, running on pure spite and jaded cynicism. It's really a tragedy.
In that moment, I remembered something from my childhood. I remembered growing up in Austin around the university, surrounded by my parents friends and colleagues who were generally older, yet very conscientious. I grew up listening to folk music and protest music by the likes of Utah Phillips. Of course, not everything about my childhood was great (take my counseling bill, please! 😄), but I'm thankful to have had that pattern: meeting people who cared about the world around them, and not just "me and mine."
In that moment, I remembered that it used to be normal for me to expect the aged to exude wisdom and compassion, not avarice and cynicism. How did that ever become normal??
I still think about that old inspector from time to time, and I'm thankful that he reminded me that not everyone my age and older is a crunchy opportunist. But sadly (and this may just be because I live in the DFW metro), this is still not the norm. There is a film of jaded cynicism that seems to cover everything here, and even people significantly younger than me project a certain air of apathy that is quite sad to me.
So, I have to be all the more appreciative of the people that I meet that remind me that giving a rip is worthwhile.
Gratitude Day 19: UNIX Shell
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.
I've been programming in UNIX shell (mainly ksh, then bash, and now a bit more POSIX shell) for about …
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Gratitude Day 18: Loss
This is... a difficult subject, especially in the context of gratitude.
What I wanted to write about is some of the people I've lost along the way. One thing you begin collecting as you age (without warning) is departed loved ones and friends. It's not a fun process.
And honestly …
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Gratitude Day 17: Permacomputing
Since I spoke on Retrocomputing yesterday, I wanted to talk about its sister discipline/concept: Permacomputing.
Now, I can't talk about it at length as anything remotely approaching a subject matter expert, but it is something I've been fairly interested in for several years, ever since I learned about uxn …
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Gratitude Day 16: Retrocomputing
This morning, I came across an article which the official Hackaday fediverse account linked yesterday: "Rosy Retrocomputing."
And... no hate. Albert has a good point. As much as I enjoy the rosy-colored glasses myself, there are some real pain points to retrocomputing, or as we called it when I was …
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Gratitude Day 15: Mental Health Awareness
One thing I struggle with is seeing how much worse things are today than 30 years ago. Our capitalism is unhinged, rapacious, and vulgar. Our leaders are utterly clueless sociopaths. Our technology is manipulative and vapid. Injustice is reaching biblical levels.
But dang if mental health awareness isn't on fire …
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Gratitude Day 14: Apple Video Codec
I'm continuing to explore lossy compression algorithms in my "Unsung Heroes, Human and Algorithmic" sub-theme of my September Gratitude series.
The Apple Video codec from 1991 is one of my favorite codecs: not because it's particularly efficient/effective (it's horrible), nor because it's popular (you'd be insane to use it …
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Gratitude Day 13: Re: G.A.S.
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."
In keeping with the theme of gratitude, and keeping the tone positive, I won't spend too much time on why I'm happy …
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Gratitude Day 12: A-law & µ-law Audio Companding
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.
Now, these algorithms don't exactly belong to the same category of the more well-known audio codecs, such as MP3 …
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Gratitude Day 11: Lossy Compression Algorithms
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.
Especially when dealing with video formats, we would be extremely limited if not for lossy compression …
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