She is Quite the Psychic Every Day

Before I begin this entry onto one of the crumpled pages of the Martenblog, I shall do two things. Firstly, I shall list the ideas this entry should cover. Secondly, I shall go through the last eight bars of Memories of Tomorrow seventeen milliard, four hundred seven million, two hundred three thousand, thirty one times. Let it be known that this is a prime number.

• The transformation of flavigula.net into its corresponding Gohper site
• Progress on the album that is workingly called Bleary Snapshots
• My intense hatred of the plumpest humorist of our time
• Peiločja’s possessiveness
• Math
• The song that is stuck in my head and its ramifications
• Lee’s birthday
• Achieving “goals” before death

Since I summoned five small pieces of toast from the niggulum and slathered them with ajvar and chopped not exactly ripe enough avocado, I shall begin writing before guitaring. Peiločja makes her characteristic short mew then slightly longer major fourth downward mew in response to my typed thoughts. She’s quite the psychic today. Rather, she is quite the psychic every day.

Over the last few weeks I have omitted a comma after prepositional phrases where normally I would not have omitted a comma and greatly expanded the Rust code for the Martenblog. The goal is to have it spit out static sites not only in html, but in gopher-speak and gemini-talk. It has been quite a paseo and a marvelous cesta so far and will continue to be, as my love of programming has not diminished over the epochs. Nor has my love of Rooibos, which I shall sip now. Having sipped said Rooibus (infused with a gentle green tea), I continue my oblong handkerchief’s tale. I’ve been torn to pieces with a barbed morning star thinking about whether I should have the sites truly static or create my own server apparati for each. Well, the server apparatus for the http version of Martenblog is in place, but I realized the other day that the search functionality doesn’t work on the flavigula.net server because the site is truly and simply copied (by rsync, no less) as a static entity. The search functionality needs a so-called CGI endpoint. Ah - how I miss the internet of the early 90s. In my fumbling ignorance, rush or syphilitic stupor I omitted a comma after a prepositional phrase and also only tested the http version of Martenblog locally, on which I must have my own http server running. Of course, the CGI endpoint (1992-1994! The golden age of the internet!) works locally because the http server is built into the same system that creates the static site. Bastards. So, on flavigula.net, I am now running the same server apparatus as I do locally and using nginx as a reverse proxy to fondle it.

Whereas I could use an open source Gopher server (and Gemini, too), I’m building those into my splendid application. The Gopher serving pig-dog already exists. So, given that, it makes sense to simply run http, Gopher and Gemini servers myself. The most fun part of development, however, was creating Gopher pages (which, incidentally, are still not dokonalé). With html, packages exist to easily parse and transform markdown (I write my blog entries in markdown) to html. Polymorphing them to Gopher-speak has been a more transformative cesta. I suspect Gemini will be similar. And I love it. Programming has always brought me joy.

Besides pure joy, another goal of the project is to incrementally distance myself from the monolithic, commercial web. Yes, I’ve already done that to a great extent. Http Martenblog is quite clean, ad-free and minimalist. But integrating incrementally into the so-called smol-web with Gohper and Gemini is a step towards a community (that I am partially part of already via Mastodon and my ex-Gemini site) that has a philosophical view (of commercialism, materialism, the internet and related issues) aligned with my own. An antagonistic point of view concerning my migration could be that I’m stepping into a walled garden. My experience, however, is that the range of intellectual diversity on the so-called smol web is vast, and though by nature it tends to omit those that are less oriented towards independent computing, I’m willing to make that compromise.

Bleary Snapshots is coming along slowly. I’ll soon prepare the chordal sequences from Náčrt that envelop the vocal regions the piece to send off to whoever is interested on Mastodon. Given how long it is taking the plumpest humorist of our time to finish the vocals of Dobbs, something akin to seven times the amount it took the first time round, and that’s just so far (he isn’t done), and that’s also allowing for the fact that he’s just doing vocals for two pieces, as opposed to five. Therefore, I shall hand off the vocal duties for Bleary Snapshots to whoever is interested. Given the plumpest humorist of our time’s general mental state during this epoch, this may be the way for Flavigula going forward into the future’s unfeeling grey, but I shan’t make any firm decisions since the plumpest humorist of our time could well snap out of his funk and discover once again passion for music (and, indeed, for life in general).

Bleary Snapshots is looking like this at the moment:

• Protivný Pták
• Sandra
• Náčrt
• Shambal
• Qat
• Tundra
• Gallarza
• Song for Ivanečka
• Náčrt repríza Everything is “close” to a state of completion. Well, except for all the synth parts I need to redo on Encima de Gallarza and guitar parts I need to redo on Song for Ivanečka. Hm - also there are some compositional gaps on Sandra.

Každopadně - I trudge onwards.

Peiločja has a certain habit of late, or perhaps it is the escalation of a habit she has had since not long after I brought her to my parents’ place from the shelter in Midland, Texas. She makes her peculiar two note meow consisting of a short burst of sound and followed quickly by a slightly longer burst a major fourth below. She is usually sitting behind me or in the adjacent room. I go to her (or turn around to her) and caress her for some time. After a few minutes, three at the most, she has a sort of sensation overload and starts playful biting. If I continue touching her fur, it escalates to attacking, though she rarely breaks the skin. Rarely meaning once in a few epochs. Logically, I then stand up to leave her be. When I walk away, after a few seconds, she attacks my foot or leg. Mostly I am unshod, so my bare skin bears the brunt of either a call for more attention or admonishment for going about my morning, afternoon, evening or holistic ramble.

For quite a while some epoch or day or hour or picosecond ago, I had the song Stardom in Action stuck in my head. I had not listened to it since the day I sat U Smrťaka listening to choice albums on random play and writing about memories that appeared with each song. The song has left my head already, but I’m partially convinced that my thoughts are drifting more and more to Christopher and the intense experiences we had together during former epochs or days or hours or picoseconds. The album from which Stardom in Action comes was one we listened to quite often together. I’m sure I’ve stated that before in this journaling apparatus that I laughingly call the Martenblog.

I wanted to listen to the album during my morning preparation routine - preparation for my true morning routine - but something thwarted me. Perhaps it was the idea that it would cheapen the intensity of the memories or even cheapen the music itself to have it simply be part of a normal morning’s backdrop.

Bender-boy and I spoke on the phone on the morning of his birthday in New Zealand. It was the evening before his birthday for me. It always confounds me why some so-called higher power has imposed time zones on a planet that is submerged in enough confusion and chaos as it is. Why make life even more complicated? Ah! Yes - I know why. The higher power is convinced that the best for its underlings is to live in discrete bubbles with rigid borders and to have communication for the most part locked within those borders. Time Zones are simply one of many annoyances that the higher power puts into place to passive-aggressively encourage its underlings to stay put in said bubbles.

Každopadně, Bender-boy and I spoke on the phone on the morning of his birthday (in New Zealand). I want to make it a point to speak more often. It was amazing.

One idea and practice I’ve thought about and written about over the last few years is narrowing. In specific, this means narrowing of interests, or better narrowing of interests that I pursue. My interests in creations of barbaric nature and geometric humanity alike are vícemeně limitless. As I pass into a state of increasing geriatric existence, however, mortality looms over me like an ill constructed, creaking, wooden fire hydrant, or at least an ill constructed, creaking, wooden obelisk from the time before. Multitudinous interests themselves are quite jolly, of course, and do their part in keeping the ill constructed, creaking, wooden menhir in its looming position. Placing multitudinous interests on the same priority creates a paucity of time or at best a type of artificial framework for attention deficit and failure. I don’t want to become like the plumpest humorist of our time and lay myriad interests beneath the ill constructed, creaking, wooden spigot so that I am paralyzed by indecision. So, I crush the majority of my uncountable interests into a small, compact cube and leave them in part of my mental space reserved for passive learning. The remainder, including composing music, practicing instruments, writing, cooking and worshiping goats, are indeed spread beneath my personal, ill constructed, creaking, wooden sepulcher. I feast on them every morning and every afternoon. I sate myself with them. I grow fat and pungent. I merge with the soil.