(???) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- (???) Blog Posts : March / 2024 | (???) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------| (???) home: finger://happynetbox.com/640kb | (???) blog: finger://happynetbox.com/debug | (???) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- (???) Mar 04, 2024 : Monday (???) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- (???) A large screen tablet | For the longest time I've been thinking about a | (???) -----------------------' larger tablet. I really wanted something primarily | (???) for reading comic books. It also had to be big enough so that I could avoid| (???) having to zoom in. | (???) | (???) My current 10.1" tablet always felt a tad small and the zooming served as a| (???) distraction. | (???) | (???) Looked over quite a few today, including Samsung's Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra | (???) 14.6" tablet - which would have been awesome for comics. It would have | (???) given them a larger than life quality. Each panel... super-sized! But at | (???) $1k and up... I just couldn't justify it. | (???) | (???) In the end, I decided on a budget Lenovo: the Lenovo Tab P12-2023, 12.7", | (???) 3k display and only $270! Lots to like about it. It'll also give me the | (???) size boost I was looking for (vs a 10.1" tablet): | (???) | (???) https://www.displaywars.com/12,7-inch-d%7B10x16%7D-vs-10,1-inch-d%7B10x16%7D (???) | (???) So excited to get my hands on this! Equally excited to read comics on a | (???) display that feels just right. | (???) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- (???) Mar 05, 2024 : Tuesday (???) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- (???) Final small cleanup of the file: finger://happynetbox.com/originsfinger | (???) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- (???) Mar 06, 2024 : Wednesday (???) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- (???) Watched 'Pioneer One' over the last few nights. What a great script. What a| (???) great mystery. | (???) | (???) It was a web series funded entirely by user donations (kickstarter) and | (???) originally distributed via torrent in 2010-2011. | (???) | (???) Its major failing was that it never did a reveal. Despite this, they did a | (???) great job of story-telling and keeping me immersed. I often can't say that | (???) about lots of big-budget, studio produced stuff. | (???) | (???) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_One | (???) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- (???) Mar 08, 2024 : Friday (???) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- (???) Creating the personal calendar file (640kbcalendar@happynetbox.com) turned | (???) out to be a great idea. While I have lots of dates listed, most of the | (???) stuff can be grouped into just a few categories. | (???) | (???) I'm finding myself sometimes immersed in a specific category daily. It | (???) could be UFOS, Sci-fi, paper plane-making, retro computing... | (???) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- (???) Mar 09, 2024 : Saturday (???) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- (???) The Lenovo Tab P12-2023 at 12.7" arrived a couple of days ago. It's | (???) beautiful... | (???) | (???) This turned out to be an amazing purchase. This is going to be a tablet I | (???) use regularly for a long time. The comic books I've tested from various | (???) different eras all look beautifully vibrant! | (???) | (???) The area is large enough that I may never have to zoom in again (unless | (???) it's to take in the scene, enjoy the art work): | (???) | (???) https://www.displaywars.com/12,7-inch-d%7B10x16%7D-vs-10,1-inch-d%7B10x16%7D (???) | (???) Turns out the the speakers here are really loud! The videos look amazing. | (???) This tablet is going to make a great video player. I even installed the | (???) "dreaded" TikTok and the full-screen videos look incredible. | (???) | (???) I've got a couple of readers installed: newsblur for my tech news and | (???) inoreader for non-tech stuff. I like to use various sites to see how they | (???) do things. I was on The Old Reader for the longest time. | (???) | (???) The tablet also feels fairly light considering its size. The bezels are | (???) just large enough to be helpful. | (???) | (???) Browsing on this thing feels so Desktop-like! Truly an entertainment | (???) powerhouse - but will mostly be used for comics. I have gone back and forth| (???) with comics for the longest time because I never really had the right | (???) digital tool for the job. Now it's here. I should have done this a long | (???) time ago. | (???) | (???) Been very busy the last couple of days. Maybe Sunday I can take a little | (???) time to enjoy some comics. | (???) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- (???) Mar 12, 2024 : Tuesday (???) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- (???) This tablet is making it so easy to just pick up and read a comic whenever | (???) I want. I've already read a few this way. At no point did I have to zoom in| (???) to make text legible. What an incredible difference. | (???) | (???) One thing I did not like about the tablet was the interface/launcher. The | (???) default is something called "Gesture Navigation". There were *no* soft | (???) buttons. I tried it for 3 days and never felt comfortable (that is... I | (???) hated it). | (???) | (???) Anyway... General Settings -> System Navigation -> Virtual Key Navigation | (???) | (???) Gives you back the 3 soft buttons while still giving you the same general | (???) interface (which is pretty useful). | (???) | (???) There's also a PC Mode. This is very nice. It's a Win XP / Mint Cinnamon | (???) style user interface. Feels like any desktop a person might be on. | (???) | (???) I might have continued to use it but this mode forces you into landscape | (???) mode only. My tablet is in Portrait mode - almost always: browsing, comics,| (???) file system navigation, RSS, etc... everything except videos and images. | (???) | (???) Portrait mode gives me a nicely sized, document-friendly tablet - love it! | (???) | (???) Landscape mode gives me a small laptop (and lots of scrolling). I scroll a | (???) lot less on this very readable 12.7" tablet (in portrait mode) than I do on| (???) my 15.6" (16:9 aspect) laptop in landscape mode. I prefer it over the | (???) laptop for lots of things now... | (???) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- (???) Mar 13, 2024 : Wednesday (???) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- (???) Reading three series of comic books now: | (???) | (???) [0] Captain Marvel Vol. 1 | (???) [1] Earth X (trilogy) | (???) [2] The Champions | (???) | (???) I still have five books left to read from 'The Champions' 17 issue series. | (???) I always kind of liked this group with my core favorites being: Hercules, | (???) Ghost Rider and, in particular, Black Widow. | (???) | (???) I always thought Black Widow would have made a great leader. | (???) | (???) No super powers but someone with superior combat and intelligence training.| (???) I just never felt the writing of the time took advantage of this character | (???) and this opportunity. | (???) | (???) The only series I read before was 'The Champions'. That was so many years | (???) ago that it feels like I'm reading it for the first time. | (???) | (???) I always wanted to read Captain Marvel and learn more about this character.| (???) I'm already a few issues in and it's delivered reasonably good storytelling| (???) for a series that began in 1968. | (???) | (???) Earth X has been the most engaging so far; maybe because it's the most | (???) modern of this initial grouping. | (???) | (???) After the Earth X series, I'm looking forward to starting: | (???) | (???) [3] The End | (???) | (???) Enjoying my new tablet (the Lenovo Tab P12-2023, 12.7"). Already have many | (???) more titles lined up. | (???) | (???) [0] https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Captain_Marvel_Vol_1 | (???) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Marvel_(Mar-Vell) | (???) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_X | (???) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champions_(1975_team) | (???) [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_(comics) | (???) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- (???) Mar 19, 2024 : Tuesday (???) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- (???) What's up, Doc? | I came back from a final appt today with my ear doctor | (???) -----------------' (ENT) to go over the MRI results. | (???) | (???) Loved the testing performed: | (???) | (???) 1. The Sound Room tests identified some hearing loss in my right ear but | (???) only while in the crowded room scenario. Otherwise, my hearing is great.| (???) | (???) 2. MRI showed that everything is ok. There were some concerns... I really | (???) liked that he was thorough and ordered an MRI of the ear. | (???) | (???) I get to keep the DVD+R of the pics, so I'll be able to see all the scanned| (???) images (once I find my external DVD player). | (???) | (???) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------| (???) Before The Matrix | The best part of the day... I drove by a public library| (???) -------------------' in the area. I've not had a library card since the | (???) Cretaceous period, I think. I parked across the street and considered this | (???) new fork on the road for a bit... | (???) | (???) I smiled. I went in. | (???) | (???) I showed the receptionist my driver's license and provided some contact | (???) info. Moments later... I had a brand new library card:) I felt like a kid | (???) again. | (???) | (???) I know about the digital resources for library card holders these days but | (???) I really like the idea of borrowing paper books, visiting the library and | (???) other 'brick & mortar' kind of stuff. | (???) | (???) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------| (???) The voice of the people (for now) | There is only so much "me time" in the | (???) -----------------------------------' day. Comic reading was put on hold for | (???) a while because... TikTok. Occasionally TikTok draws me in. | (???) | (???) After the house bill (or whatever that ugliness was), I spent quite a lot | (???) of my "me time" hearing and reading what people had to say on the platform | (???) about this. | (???) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- (???) Mar 21, 2024 : Thursday (???) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- (???) MRI, DICOM | Found my external DVD player. The MRI DVD came with a windows | (???) ------------' viewer for displaying the set of images. The viewer worked | (???) well under Linux/WINE and I was able to view all the head and neck images. | (???) | (???) It turns out that Linux has quite a few free native DICOM[0] viewers[1] | (???) since it is both an Open and Industry Standard in the medical field. I will| (???) probably install one in the future since I prefer native solutions. | (???) | (???) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DICOM | (???) | (???) [1] https://www.geeksmint.com/linux-dicom-viewers-for-doctors/ | (???) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- (???) Mar 24, 2024 : Sunday (???) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- (???) Fingerverse | I changed all links on this page from: finger @example.com | (???) -------------' TO finger://example.com | (???) | (???) It was long due. Practically all clients use the latter format. | (???) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- | (???) Also really enjoyed adding the alternative OS section. I thought I was | (???) nearly done with any major updates to the fingerverse page until I stumbled| (???) upon AmiGemini. | (???) | (???) I'm a huge fan of older OSes and current alternative OS efforts. I've run | (???) so many of them over the years. Not only are they orders of magnitude | (???) faster but they aren't surveilling their users. The smolnet and these OSes | (???) make a great match. | (???) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- (???) Mar 26, 2024 : Tuesday (???) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- (???) TEXT:// | I've been toying with the idea of creating an index page here on | (???) ---------' happynetbox.com. From my first post here, I loved the ASCII-page | (???) centered focus of this site. | (???) | (???) I've been posting here since about mid-Jan of 2023. I started off by using | (???) finger most of the time (finger @site). Loved having another reason to be | (???) on the command line, loved knowing that I was dealing only with content and| (???) not any of the other stuff that bloats and embeds itself to the content. | (???) | (???) Even simple ASCII-based creative design efforts are focused on highlighting| (???) the content or is oftentimes... the content itself. | (???) | (???) After a while, I wanted to see what else was out there besides the command | (???) line finger client. Found lots of other clients and tips scattered about | (???) and eventually the (public domain) fingerverse page emerged from that. | (???) | (???) Over the last couple of months, I've been using https://portal.mozz.us/ | (???) more and more to access the smolnet through my regular browser. | (???) | (???) The main reason for this switch to portal.mozz.us was because it does such | (???) a nice job of identifying a protocol and converting it into a clickable | (???) link (useful with finger://). This little tweak suddenly makes the pure | (???) text-based finger protocol also a pseudo text:// protocol. Try it:-) | (???) | (???) https://portal.mozz.us/finger/happynetbox.com/fingerverse | (???) | (???) note: For some reason, I get some minor alignment issues with this site and| (???) the Firefox gopher proxy extensions. | (???) | (???) None of the other clients I tested just now have the option of creating | (???) clickable links. It's not a negative, as text should always default to | (???) plain text. But... | (???) | (???) Since we currently don't have the kind of support for the emerging (?) | (???) text:// protocol for the 1/2 dozen of us or so who really dig communicating| (???) in 7-bits:-) the combination of happynetbox and portal.mozz.us makes a nice| (???) compromise solution. | (???) | (???) This need surfaced because there are a few more pages I'd like to create | (???) in the future. I post nowhere else and would love to give these pages a | (???) a permanent and easy to navigate home. | (???) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- (???) Mar 27, 2024 : Wednesday (???) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- (???) Linux Mint | Have always been a fan of Wil Wheaton. Just learned that he's | (???) ------------' a Linux Mint user. Apparently this has been common knowledge | (???) but it was fun to find this out just now. | (???) | (???) https://redd.it/wlwfmh (11aug2022) | (???) | (???) https://facebook.com/itswilwheaton (search for 'linux') | (???) | (???) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------| (???) It's the little things | During the mid-90s, I had a few web pages online | (???) ------------------------' thru an ISP. In 1997, I let my subscription lapse | (???) because... life. I regretted that I not only lost my most visited page but | (???) one that was a labor of love. | (???) | (???) To the site's visitors, I had vanished, suddenly, without a trace. I felt | (???) guilty about that for a long while. | (???) | (???) A few years later - circa 2000 - I discovered that someone had recovered | (???) the home/core page of the original site from their browser's cache. They | (???) had kept it online for the last few years. I was thrilled to see it! | (???) | (???) 27 years later, it makes me happy to see that the page is still online. | (???) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- (???) Mar 28, 2024 : Thursday (???) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- (???) TEXT:// | portal.mozz.us led me to a site that was hosting a page using | (???) ---------' the text:// protocol today: | (???) | (???) https://portal.mozz.us/text/asdfghasdfgh.de/ | (???) | (???) As far as I know, the only way to access the text:// protocol is via | (???) mozz.us itself or netcat (as seen on https://github.com/textprotocol/). | (???) Good to see an actual site in the wild using this protocol:-) I didn't | (???) think any existed. | (???) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- (???) Mar 29, 2024 : Friday (???) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- (???) codepage 437 | Sometime in 2023, I created a codepage 437 file (UTF-8) | (???) --------------' because I was curious how finger/gopher clients would handle| (???) 8-bits (I was also thinking about DOS-related stuff). | (???) | (???) I had noticed that an occasional post would contain some 8-bit characters. | (???) At the time, I was using the cli finger client almost exclusively and those| (???) characters would appear 'garbled'. | (???) | (???) After testing the clients I had listed (on a Linux System), I was surprised| (???) at how well so many of them handled 8-bits. I'm glad that despite the | (???) apparent support for extended ASCII, finger remains a 7-bit medium. | (???) | (???) The codepage 437 file was meant to be temporary while I did the testing and| (???) so I put it in an account named finger://happynetbox.com/debug . I'd like | (???) to give it a permanent home now and so created: | (???) | (???) finger://happynetbox.com/codepage437 | (???) | (???) Lagrange, Kristall, bopher-ng (below) and even telnet (below), among | (???) others, will display the file just fine. | (???) | (???) bopher: ./bopher-ng.sh gopher://happynetbox.com:79/0codepage437 | (???) | (???) telnet: cat <(echo codepage437) - | telnet happynetbox.com 79 | (???) | (???) As far as the debug account? I rather like the name:-) I have something | (???) planned for it in the near future. | (???) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- (???) Mar 30, 2024 : Saturday (final post of March/2024) (???) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- (???) Geek Calendar | The personal geek calendar was ridiculously long because of| (???) ---------------' all the commentary and additional links I added. | (???) | (???) Reduced the file from 466 to 250 lines today. I still plan on reducing | (???) further in the future. | (???) | (???) finger://happynetbox.com/640kbcalendar | (???) | (???) * updated/edited Mar 29 (Friday) post. | (???) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- (???) -- (???) ant another? finger zubaz21@happynetbox.com