# Roophloch 2023

September 25, 2023 · 3 minute read
      
Posted in:  gopher outdoor roophloch gemini 

      
<a id="org0a2f55a"></a>

## Weather and things

I am, as usual for me and ROOPHLOCH, sneaking things in at the end
of the month. One reason has been that it has been too damn hot
here! It doesn't normally start cooling down for autumn here until
October, but this year it has been especially bad. Temperatures in
the mid 80s F, with heat indices in the 90s. We've finally started
to have cool evenings and mornings as of last week, and now after
the equinox, I had been hoping the days would start being
tolerable. Today at noon, it's 83, feels like 93, so no such
luck. I should have come out to write this morning.

I'm sitting at a picnic bench in the shade of a large white oak
tree, and a smaller hickory, in a public park a short walk from my
house. It's okay when there is a breeze, but it's hot out of the
shade, and there are gnats. I'm writing this on the same eeePC I
used for the OPC this year, but running with its full specs (2
cores, 4GB) with my Atreus keyboard. I'm writing it in org-mode, in
Emacs, and I'm going to export it to Markdown and Gemtext for
publishing on 3 protocols. Thinking about how Sandra at
Idiomdrottning notes that Gemini is fine, but hasn't made anything
simpler for her.


<a id="org6867a0c"></a>

## Spooky Season

Maybe in reaction to the heat, maybe in order to push back the
depression, I started Spooky Season at the beginning of September
rather than the beginning of October this year. More candles, more
macabre decorations. I can't claim that consumerism played no part
in this — Halloween decorations came out at the art store in
mid-August, and went on 40% off in mid-September.

But I've also been on my stupid Goth shit again, listening to a lot
of Gothic and adjacent music, some of which is new-to-me. I'd like
to recommend the Android app InnerTune, available on F-Droid for
music discovery. It's basically an ad-free front-end to YouTube
Music, giving you a lot of the paid experience for free. Of course,
when you find an artist you like, you should see if they have a
Bandcamp page so you can throw money at them.

I haven't picked my classic Gothic novel for this October (past
years have been *Dracula*, *Frankenstein*, *The Mysteries of Udolpho*,
and *The Castle of Otranto*). I want to read one chapter of Zelazny's
*A Night in the Lonesome October* each night, but I still want to
keep my classics streak.


<a id="orge09b076"></a>

## Nerd Shit

I've been basically too burnt out and depressed to work on any of
my free-software or adjacent projects, like Gemini Quickstart. I
did finish the week in 3rd on the bronze league leaderboard for
Klingon on Duolingo, so that's poking my head above the water, I
guess. 

Music for this post: *Tear You Apart*, by She Wants Revenge.