As you may or may not know, I run the 
XMPP server for circumlunar.space. In 
general, I really like XMPP, but it has 
a few shortcomings. One of the real 
drawbacks involves the use of multiple 
clients. As originally configured, the 
circumlunar.space Prosody server would 
deliver your messages to the last active 
client -- and only to that client. So 
each client only had parts of 
conversations. I recently learned that 
XMPP supports message carbons, so I have 
added that module, and the server now 
supports them: each client will send a 
copy of both incoming and outgoing 
messages to the others. Unfortunately, 
it doesn't seem to work unless you're 
logged in on all the clients (at least, 
that's my experience so far). I usually 
close my laptop when I'm not using it, 
so it ends up offline a lot -- and I 
guess I still won't have all of my 
messages on every device. A solution 
would be to limit myself to a single 
device, but I prefer to use the laptop 
when I'm at home.

We now have three users (including 
Solderpunk and myself) on 
www.circumlunar.space, and I've set up 
the first sftp account on the server. So 
far so good. Check out Julienxx's 
page[1]. It's got a cool retro-green CRT 
feel to it.

I've decided that I'm going to learn a 
real programming language. Back in the 
80s, I knew a bit of BASIC and Turbo 
Pascal. A couple of years ago, I learned 
a lot of Javascript. The book Eloquent 
Javacript[2] is a great resource if 
you're interested. I learned Javascript 
in order to do some webOS and web app 
programming, but it's really frustrating 
because of the constraints around file 
access (which make a lot of sense!) and 
the arcane 'dialects' you have to learn 
to do anything useful (I hate you, Mojo 
and Enyo!). Anyways, I want to learn 
something practical and relatively 
friendly to dabblers. I considered 
Python, Go, and Rust, and in the end, I 
think I'm going to try Rust. I'll report 
back on the experience.

On another note, after reading John 
Jewitt's account of his enslavement by 
the Nuu-Chah-Nulth[3], I ended up 
reading the (sometimes heavily edited 
for publication) logs of Richard 
Cleveland (a trader), and James Cook and 
George Vancouver (explorers). After 
doing so, I have a new respect for 
Jewitt, who demonstrated amazing 
cultural respect given the era and his 
situation. All of the books are well out 
of copyright, so I should post them here 
at some point, or at least post a set of 
links.

Eschew your civil right, Sundogs!

[1] https://www.circumlunar.space/~julienxx. 

[2] https://eloquentjavascript.net/

[3] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/0/%7evisiblink/phlog/20190413