I'm bringing blogging back. (Yeah!)

This commit is contained in:
Neale Pickett 2022-08-01 16:18:29 -06:00
parent 59653c7de7
commit 525a6c7d00
22 changed files with 819 additions and 400 deletions

1
.gitignore vendored
View File

@ -1,2 +1,3 @@
*~ *~
_site/ _site/
.jekyll-cache/

View File

@ -1,6 +1,5 @@
defaults: defaults:
- - scope:
scope:
path: "" path: ""
values: values:
layout: "default" layout: "default"

View File

@ -17,8 +17,14 @@
</head> </head>
<body> <body>
<h1 id="title"> <h1 class="title">
<span>{{ page.title }}</span> <span>{{ page.title }}</span>
{% if page.collection == "posts" %}
<br>
<span class="subtitle">
{{page.date | date: "%Y %B %-d"}}
</span>
{% endif %}
</h1> </h1>
<main id="content"> <main id="content">
@ -34,6 +40,7 @@
<li><a href="{{ '/tartans/' | relative_url }}" title="AKA Plaids">Tartans</a></li> <li><a href="{{ '/tartans/' | relative_url }}" title="AKA Plaids">Tartans</a></li>
<li><a href="{{ '/poems/' | relative_url }}" title="I won't quit my day job">Poems</a></li> <li><a href="{{ '/poems/' | relative_url }}" title="I won't quit my day job">Poems</a></li>
<li><a href="{{ '/papers/' | relative_url }}" title="Various writings">Papers</a></li> <li><a href="{{ '/papers/' | relative_url }}" title="Various writings">Papers</a></li>
<li><a href="{{ '/blog.html' | relative_url }}" title="Public Journal">Blog</a></li>
<li><a href="{{ '/toys/' | relative_url }}" title="Dumb apps">Toys</a></li> <li><a href="{{ '/toys/' | relative_url }}" title="Dumb apps">Toys</a></li>
</ul> </ul>
</nav> </nav>

View File

@ -0,0 +1,276 @@
---
title: Debian on Digimatrix
---
Introduction
------------
We have a Digimatrix hooked up to our high-definition television. We
use it for a number of things:
* Watching DVDs
* Playing music from OGG and MP3 files
* Recording and playing back television shows
* Storing pictures and movies from our digital camera
* Hosting our pictures and movies, along with those of our friends,
on a web server
* Playing Super Nintendo video games
* Occasional desktop tasks
MythTV and Freevo vs. KDE
-------------------------
This sounds like a MythTV box, right? I tried MythTV, and Freevo, and
while I was impressed with how pretty they were, I just couldn't get
them working quite right.
[MythTV](http://www.mythtv.org/) gave a blank screen trying to watch or
record TV, with no useful error messages, and try as I might I just
couldn't figure out what the problem was. After spending three days on
it I gave up.
[Freevo](http://freevo.sourceforge.net/) had its own problems; I don't
remember exactly what they were now. I do remember feeling like Freevo
was held together with bailing wire and chewing gum, while MythTV had a
much more polished and easy-to-use feel to it.
Neither of them worked well out of the box with the Digimatrix remote
control.
In the end, I decided it'd be easier for everybody if we just used KDE.
It lets me bind actions to the key sequences the remote control sends
out, and for most TV-type activities the remote does enough to move
around in [Xine](http://xinehq.de/) and
[Konqueror](http://www.konqueror.org/). The
[x2x](http://x2x.dottedmag.net/) program allows us to use our laptops to
control things over the wireless network, when the remote doesn't
suffice. The Unix `at` utility and a little shell script lets us
schedule TV recordings with more ease than a VCR.
Best of all, there's no meta-information filed away in some obscure
database layout. Everything is a file somewhere and can be manipulated
with Konqueror or the shell.
This turns out to be a very workable setup.
### Installing the base system
I had to install the testing (etch) installation CD for it to have a
driver for the SiS 900 10/100 network card. Installation went smoothly
enough. Everything is detected at boot time except:
* LED Panel and front panel buttons (including volume)
* Infrared receiver
* 802.11b card ([Ralink rt2400 chipset](http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/)).
While I've gotten the rt2400 drivers to work, the card won't seem to
associate with my WAP until some other device does it first. This is
so inconvenient that I've run a long CAT-5 cable under the house so I
can use the 10/100 ethernet port.
I installed the following additional packages to help me administer the
machine:
<pre>
# apt-get install less zile screen ssh strace sudo ntp ntpdate
</pre>
Web server
--------------
Waldorf needed to run a web server to host photo albums.
<pre>
# apt-get install mathopd stunnel4 php4-cgi rssh
# apt-get install netpbm jhead exiftran libjpeg-mmx-progs libjpeg-progs
</pre>
I won't detail my web server configuration here, since that's unique to me.
X
----
<pre>
# apt-get install x-window-system
</pre>
To my surprise this brought in x.org. I run an HDTV over DVI, so to get
full screen, I had to change the configuration as follows:
<pre>
Section "Device"
Identifier "Generic Video Card"
Driver "sis"
Option "ForceCRT1Type" "DVI-D"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Generic Monitor"
Option "DPMS"
HorizSync 30-65
VertRefresh 30-60
ModeLine "720p" 74.160 1280 1352 1392 1648 697 725 730 750
EndSection
</pre>
I also had to add "720p" to the `Modes` of the `Display` subsection of
`Screen`.
You may notice I only have 697 pixels vertically. That's because my TV
puts about 23 lines in the "overscan", preventing me from seeing my KDE
toolbar. I haven't yet found a way to recenter the screen, this just
chops off the bottom. As a hack, I put empty KDE toolbars on the top,
left, and right borders. This keeps windows inside the viewable area.
### KDE
I like KDE. I've tried MythTV and Freevo and found it's just easier to
run KDE and occasionally use a mouse and keyboard. The only thing we
don't get is a snazzy interface to recording TV shows, but we don't tend
to want to do that very often. I may work on a web interface to XML-TV
listings later on.
<pre>
# apt-get install kde kdm
</pre>
I don't know if this is typical or not, but Debian's KDE went on without
asking me a single question. Kudos to the packagers.
### Sound
<pre>
# apt-get install alsa-base alsa-utils
</pre>
We use the Digimatrix's S/PDIF output (isn't it lame that it comes out
the front?). I know from a previous installation that if you just use
the defaults, you need to reboot between playing 2-channel audio and
using Xine's pass-through option to play a 7.1-channel DVD. I'm sure it
has something to do with the sound card resetting something or other.
The solution seems to be having ALSA multiplex audio, and while I don't
get why this works, work it does.
I put the following into `/etc/asound.conf`:
<pre>
pcm.asus-hw {
type hw
card 0
}
pcm.!default {
type plug
slave.pcm "asus"
}
pcm.asus {
type dmix
ipc_key 1234
slave {
pcm "hw:0,0"
period_time 0
period_size 1024
buffer_size 4096
rate 48000
}
}
ctl.asus-hw {
type hw
card 0
}
</pre>
### A decent desktop
At this point I was able to browse the web and play music using KDE's
"JuK":http://developer.kde.org/~wheeler/juk.html, so I took a break to
dance around the living room with my 1-year-old daughter as ABBA sang to
us.
### Playing DVDs
I like kaffeine, mostly because it's part of KDE and I'm a purist. It
can play all sorts of movies and even has a nice startup screen that
allows you to type in numbers for various actions (play from playlist,
play DVD, etc.).
<pre>
# apt-get install kaffeine
</pre>
### DVD drive speed ###
Linux does not use DMA on IDE devices when it boots up, you have to turn
that on yourself. I'm not sure what the reason is for this, probably
compatibility with some ancient thing that blows up if you attempt DMA.
In any case, turning on DMA will allows your DVD drive to keep up with
the data on the DVD.
<pre>
# apt-get install hdparm
</pre>
To turn on DMA, I put the following at the end of `/etc/hdparm.conf`.
While I was at it, I turned ot DMA for the hard drive too.
<pre>
/dev/dvd {
dma = on
}
/dev/hda {
dma = on
}
</pre>
### Try a DVD ###
At this point I was able to watch DVDs, so I did. I watched the first
DVD of the first season of Buffy, which turned out to be a terrible idea
since it's pretty dark and not very high quality. I played around with
the gamma settings in the KDE configuration tool, and set my gamma at
1.25. Then I adjusted the brightness, contrast, and saturation of
Kaffeine, and got what I think is a pretty nice-looking configuration.
### The remote control
What good is a home theater system if you have to get up off your butt
to press buttons? This is America, man! I want to be able to eat
cheez-doodles and watch porn all night without having my feet hit the
floor, ever.
### The keyboard thingy ###
My Digimatrix came with this IR receiver thingy that goes in between the
keyboard and the keyboard port on the Digimatrix. It synthesizes
keypresses in response to your remote. Pretty slick! This is good
enough for most things, and for a long time I just bound remote
keystrokes to do certain things in KDE applications, and to certain
actions in Xine.
### lirc ###
lirc is the Linux Infra-Red Control system. It provides a standard
interface to various IR recievers and remote controls, and supplies
events to whatever wants to listen to it. KDE has a module to listen to
it, so I figured I'd give it a go.
# apt-get install kdelirc
Unfortunately, lirc 0.7 (the version in debian testing and unstable)
does not compile on Linux 2.6.12 and newer, so I had to install from
source code.

View File

@ -0,0 +1,17 @@
---
title: All of Doctor Who
tags:
- drwho
---
I'm going to try to watch every episode of Doctor Who, in order.
Then I'm going to write up what I think.
A few rules I'm setting out initially:
* It's okay to skip an episode if I just can't handle it.
* I don't have to write a big ol' treatise on each one.
* I fully understand I lack cultural and temporal context for a lot of this,
and I'm not going to feel bound to try and attain said.
* I will be viewing this though my personal biases.
* I may create more rules later on.

View File

@ -0,0 +1,37 @@
---
title: "Doctor Who S01E01-E04: Cavemen and Fire"
tags:
- drwho
---
I guess this first story pretty clearly established that they travel
through time.
## S01E01 - An Unearthly Child
Oh man, the pacing is just slow.
I like how they're exploring "what if a time-travelling alien disguised itself as a human and went to high school."
Okay, there are two high school teachers,
and this highschool aged timelord girl who's the Doctor's grand-daughter.
The doctor is kind of a jerk.
## S01E02 - The Cave of Skulls
Right, okay, cavemen. And of course they're all short-term-memory idiots.
Okay, sure.
## S01E03 - The Forest of Fear
I forgot what this one was about,
because I didn't decide to write things down until later.
## S01E04 - The Firemaker
The man teacher makes a fire because of course the man does that in 1963.
And then the leader of the cavemen goes hunting.
They make some skulls on fire to distract everybody,
which is pretty cool,
and then they escape.

View File

@ -0,0 +1,80 @@
---
title: "Doctor Who S01E05-E11: Daleks!"
tags:
- drwho
---
Holy crap! I didn't realized the Daleks went all the way back to episode 4!
Also there are some Dutch-looking people who are of course the good guys.
## S01E05: The Dead Planet
They find a dead city which, oops, high background radiation.
Cool doors open up and some neat architecture.
You know what, for the time and (I assume) paltry budget of the first season,
this is pretty badass.
This Doctor is a jerk. Faking a broken part to force everyone to do what
he wants.
## S01E06: The Survivors
Daleks! It's cool that they waited until the second episode to bring them out.
They're pretty clearly assholes right at the outset here.
No moral ambiguity with the Daleks.
The Doctor is pretty frail. Honestly, the rest of the crew seems more
important than he is.
## S01E07: The Escape
I think we really meet the Norwegians here. I don't recall exactly.
I'm pretty sure this is the one where
the Norwegians try to meet up with the Daleks and forge a peace treaty,
not knowing the Daleks are complete assholes.
## S01E08: The Ambush
They start taking out the Daleks. There appears to be some sort of
creature inside, which can be taken out, and the dude teacher crawls in.
This is actually pretty cool, I liked this one.
## S01E09: The Expedition
I think the guy teacher tries to convince the peaceniks to fight the Daleks,
by presenting them with the possibility of him screwing up their stuff.
The Norwegians traipse around through some cool looking sets to
look like an alien landscape.
I think this is when the Daleks realize they need high background radiation
in order to survive, because the Norwegians (the Thaals I guess) anti-radiation
drug kills them. They plan to dump ionizing radiation onto the planet's
surface.
A Thaal dude goes to get water and gets sucked up by a vortex or something.
## S01E10: The Ordeal
Half the episode was watching people jump over a chasm in a cave.
The pacing on this, holy crap.
I think this is the one where the Doctor screws up their electrical grid.
## S01E11: The Rescue
Everybody runs around in the cave some more, and eventually they pop out
in the Dalek city.
The Doctor and his Grand-daughter
are imprisoned and he volunteers to teach them about his ship and how to
travel through time if they let him go.
The Norwegians and teachers rain holy hell and kill all the Daleks.
Everybody goes home.
Honestly, man, for being written 60 years ago, I'm surprised by how
compelling the Daleks were written when viewed by me today.

View File

@ -0,0 +1,29 @@
---
title: "Doctor Who S01E12-E13: A Tardis Button Gets Stuck"
tags:
- drwho
---
This story was bathouse crazy.
Part of it was probably that I wasn't paying full attention,
but it was also just nuts.
## S01E12: The Edge of Destruction
People alternate between normal and crazy.
There's a lot of screaming.
Random weirdness takes place and it doesn't make sense.
Everybody turns of everybody and then suddenly it's fine and dandy.
## S01E13: The Brink of Disaster
The Doctor starts piecing together some clues.
Turns out the Tardis itself has been trying to send them a message
by dropping obscure clues.
He figures it out and unsticks the "go back to where you just were" button,
which, because it was stuck down, sent them back to the origin of the
solar system.
You know, not awful.
It felt pretty incoherent but I was willing to go along.

View File

@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
---
title: "Doctor Who S01E14-20: Doctor Who goes to China"
tags:
- drwho
---
I guess the film for this was lost,
so it was sort of a slideshow playing over a radio drama.
## S01E14: The Roof of the World
I made it as far as them getting into a hut in Mongolia and meeting
Marco Polo,
and then I skipped to the next story.
## S01E15: The Singing Sands
More British people pretending they're in China, I presume.
## S01E16: Five Hundred Eyes
Skipped
## S01E17: The Wall of Lies
Skipped
## S01E18: Rider from Shang Tu
Skipped
## S01E19: Mightly Kublai Khan
Skipped
## S01E20: Assassin at Peking
Skipped

View File

@ -0,0 +1,97 @@
---
title: "Doctor Who S01E21-26: Finding the Chips"
tags:
- drwho
---
The Scooby gang has to find some microchips scattered around the planet,
so a machine can be repaired to mind-control everyone into
being peaceful.
## S01E21: The Sea of Death
This was the episode during which I decided to start writing this.
It's really interesting how they kept the sort of stumbling around delivery
of lines, rather than shooting another take. I kind of like it.
It's like watching a play.
LOL at the alien costume with swim flippers.
Frickin' Susan is, disappointingly, pretty much a horror movie character.
Just sort of blithely wandering around all over the place and screaming
a lot. Amusingly, they just assumed it was her from her scream.
Okay, got the main plot point. The dude needs to recover some keys so they
can mind-control people to make everybody peaceful. I really hope they don't
just accept this without question.
Their mime acting could use some continuity work, LOL.
## S02E22: The Velvet Web
When the statue's eyes lit up and the creepy lady came out to put rocks
on everybody's forehead, it really felt like a 1970s episode from when
I was a kid.
Aww yeah, brains in jars getting killed.
## S02E23: The Screaming Jungle
The Screaming Jungle, eh? Must be about Susan.
For crying out loud, yep, she's screaming again.
I read that this actress quit early on.
I don't blame her. What a limiting role to have to play.
Now Barbara's screaming. A statue grabbed her.
Now she's screaming again. A net fell on her.
Third time screaming. Some plants grabbed her.
Apparently the scream in the jungle was mostly Barbara.
## S01E24: The Snows of Terror
Okay, now Ian and Barbara are cold. And a beardo has rescued them.
Ian left for some reason,
and Beardo's giving off some really rapey vibes.
Oh, sure enough, he's got all their junk.
Susan and a blonde woman are in a cave.
I've decided I don't like Susan at all,
her sole role appears to be screwing things up and screaming.
Oh boy. They're all in another cave, and they're going to explore it..
Oh, okay, we don't have to watch that. They melt some ice and...
Susan's screaming again as some dude with a cardboard sword wakes up.
Great, they found another key.
## S01E25: Sentence of Death
The Scooby gang vs. the Japanese Criminal System, I guess.
They assumed Ian is guilty and he has to prove he's not.
The Doctor is going to be his defense.
I've seen this episode at least three times on Star Trek,
and once on the Brady Bunch.
I might skip this one.
Oh, neat, a dude who hits his wife.
Okay, but you know what, I dig the costumes.
## S01E26: The Keys of Marinus
I don't like Barbara's hairstyle, though.
Oh, snap! What a twist! I seriously was not expecting this one.
I mean, I probably should have, from a casting standpoint, but I'm not
really devoting a lot of mental energy to this.
Okay, I guess they decided the mind-control machine wasn't so great.
Kind of a naive take but whatever, it was a pretty fun story.

View File

@ -0,0 +1,66 @@
---
title: "Doctor Who S01E27-30: Doctor Who goes to Mexico"
tags:
- drwho
---
A bunch of white people pretend to be Aztecs, and explore their moral
perspectives on human sacrifice.
To its credit, there is at least lip service to the notion that
this is some other culture and maybe you can't impose your current moral
structure over it.
## S01E27: The Temple of Evil
Oh goodie. Barbara's gone and gotten herself in trouble again.
I'm not sure I can stomach this one.
Yay, let's focus on human sacrifice. And let's frame it as summoning rain,
because I'm sure that was the beginning and end of the philosophy behind it.
LOL the sword fight.
Haha, Susan's screaming desecrated an Aztec temple.
## S01E28: The Warriors of Death
Damn, the Doctor's pissed.
Holy crap, the Vulcan Nerve Pinch! 2 years before it showed up in Star Trek!
More 1960s dudes wrasslin'. But there's a twist, he got scratched.
## S01E29: The Bride of Sacrifice
Aha, the old Saffron maneuver, eh? Looks like the Doctor's gettin' hitched!
The gang has a moral dilemma about altering the culture of the Aztecs by
Barbara abusing her god status to outlaw human sacrifice. The Doctor gets
married or engaged or something. Susan finally expresses an emotion other
than terror:
![well hello there](/assets/blog/susan-well-hello-there.mp4)
I'm back to being uncomfortable with the cultural framing here. I mean,
maybe this is useful for viewing 1960s British culture, but that's still
too recent for me to not feel squicky about it. The only reason I didn't
skip this entire story is because Wikipedia said it was one of the best
stories of the entire franchise.
## S01E30: The Day of Darkness
They found a tunnel or something, to get back into the burial chamber
containing the Tardis. Susan is going to get married or sacrificed or
something. Ian does the Vulcan Nerve Pinch on a white guy dressed as a
brown guy, saving the white lady. They find a way to escape, and
somebody gets sacrificed, and then Barbara gets to watch Susan get
sacrificed or something, I'm not sure.
Oh, more 1960s dudes fighting. I skipped it. I presume the British
high school teacher beats the Aztec warrior who's been training his
entire life.
Barbara has some sort of moral quandry about her inability to change
the past, which I guess was the point of the story. I sure hope
they don't wind up on earth again in the next story.

View File

@ -0,0 +1,46 @@
---
title: "Doctor Who S01E31-36: The Sensorites"
tags:
- drwho
---
### S01E31: Strangers in Space
They're in a spaceship, thank goodness. The lighting is pretty bad.
Okay there are these sensorites messing with peoples' minds. Aw, crap,
we're sort of on Earth. At least it's in the future.
This is a cool premise,
taking over a ship by manipulating everybody's emotions.
### S01E32: The Unwilling Warriors
Hey! Creepy! I like this story.
Susan is doing something! Nice!
Susan makes a sacrifice
### S01E33: Hidden Danger
Susan needs to get out of this place! The Doctor's being a real jerk. Again.
Seems like she's growing up and needs her own space.
Anyway. The Sensorites are cool. And I'm glad Barbara seems to get an equal
say in matters. Like, she just argued with Ian about something, and she was
like "well then it's settled, we'll do it my way".
Still can't abide her hairstyle, though.
Ian seems really British. It's not difficult to imagine pretty much
everything he does being done by an older dude with a brandy in his hand.
He doesn't seem to get to grow as a character,
he's already fully grown, I guess.
I dig that the sensorites have internal debates.
## S01E34-36: More Sensorites
I guess I didn't write anything down here.
I really enjoyed this story, though!
A marked contrast to the rest of this season.

View File

@ -0,0 +1,14 @@
---
title: "Doctor Who S01E37-42: Doctor Who vs the French Revolution"
tags:
- drwho
---
Ugh, I just couldn't get myself to care about another one of these.
I'm noticing there are two basic plots here:
* Doctor Who goes back in time on Earth (I don't like these)
* Doctor Who goes to some other planet (These are cool)
I guess that's still true today, in 2022.

View File

@ -1,9 +1,9 @@
--- ---
title: Doctor Who: Season 2 title: "Doctor Who S01E01-E03: Honey, I shrunk Doctor Who"
tags:
- drwho
--- ---
# Story 1: Honey, I shrunk Doctor Who
## S02E01: Planet of Giants ## S02E01: Planet of Giants
They're on Earth again, but they're tiny. They're on Earth again, but they're tiny.
@ -23,6 +23,10 @@ Holy hell, Barbara faints!
I can't stop thinking about how much fun it must have been to I can't stop thinking about how much fun it must have been to
build this set! build this set!
Note to self: I think this was the epsiode with the insane foley.
I should make a little video of it,
there's a full 2 minutes of just insane analog noise and nothing else.
## S02E03: Crisis ## S02E03: Crisis
This is very cute. This is very cute.
@ -30,7 +34,3 @@ This is very cute.
Yeah, just store that giant poison seed next to Barbara, Yeah, just store that giant poison seed next to Barbara,
who's suffering from poisoning. who's suffering from poisoning.
# Story 2: Earth. Again. Also Daleks.
They go back to earth, and find a whole mess of Daleks.

View File

@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
---
title: "Doctor Who S02E04-E09: Earth Again, and Daleks again"
tags:
- drwho
---
They go back to earth, and find a whole mess of Daleks.
Everybody's got some stupid helmet that puts them under Dalek control,
but they manage to start an rebellion and some people throw Daleks around.
Maybe I should take a break before doing any more of these.

View File

@ -0,0 +1,7 @@
---
title: Private Blog Pages
published: false
---
I'm not sure why I would want to make a private blog entry that's also checked into Git,
but this file will serve as a reminder to myself how to do that.

View File

@ -0,0 +1,67 @@
---
title: Return of the blog
---
It was fun for a while,
but it seems like letting a big company host my blog posts wasn't actually a great idea.
So I'm starting the blog back.
I'll probably drop little updates here and there about what I'm up to.
I doubt I'm going to get into the sorts of tirades I used to.
An advantage of being older now:
I rarely feel the need to convince anybody of anything.
I thought it would be fun to pull some of my old blog entries out of the archive,
but it appears I mostly used my homepage to keep lists and record information.
Maybe one day I'll find out what happened to all that stuff I wrote.
## Self-Hosting is cool again
I've also been moving my source code back onto my own site,
removing things from my phone that demand attention,
and just generally reeling stuff back in to self-hosted.
One thing I really am not looking forward to self-hosting again is email:
SMTP is just a nightmare.
You need the SMTP server,
the IMAP server,
the anti-spam stuff,
domain certificates,
rate limiting,
and just ugh.
I may have to do email if Google really fouls up,
but I really don't want to.
## Pocket Computers: turns out, kind of a pain
The phone app removal has been interesting.
After removing the news aggregator,
I wound up having to remove news updates from the web browser app
and from the search app.
It took a couple of days to get used to not getting constant news updates,
but it seems okay now.
I can still read the news on my laptop, when I want to do that.
My phone/pocket computer has turned back into a bunch of neat tools,
like a great camera, and a way to send and receive messages to people,
and a low-stress low-stakes low-attention game I've been playing.
## Books
I really like electronic books.
Amy and Ginnie got me a new ebook reader,
to replace the 10-year-old one I've been using.
There was nothing wrong with the 10-year-old one,
but my eyesight has gotten worse,
and the low contrast screen has become difficult to read.
The new device is a Kobo Clara HD,
with better contrast.
It can also check out ebooks from the local library,
over a wireless connection.
I like it a whole lot,
and I find it amusing that the old one lasted me 10 years.
Amy has it now, she might pick it up when she finishes her current book.

View File

@ -27,7 +27,7 @@ input {
border-bottom: 1px solid black; border-bottom: 1px solid black;
} }
#title, td.main { .title, td.main {
background-color: #e0e4cc; background-color: #e0e4cc;
border-radius: 0.25em; border-radius: 0.25em;
padding: 0.1em 0.5em; padding: 0.1em 0.5em;
@ -35,6 +35,10 @@ input {
box-shadow: 0.2em 0.2em 1em rgba(0,0,0,0.1); box-shadow: 0.2em 0.2em 1em rgba(0,0,0,0.1);
} }
.subtitle {
font-size: 60%;
}
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 { h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 {
color: #e64; color: #e64;
} }

7
blog.md Normal file
View File

@ -0,0 +1,7 @@
---
title: Blog Posts
---
{% for post in site.posts %}
* [{{post.date | date: "%Y %B %-d"}}: {{post.title}}]({{post.url}})
{% endfor %}

View File

@ -1,385 +0,0 @@
---
title: Every Episode of Doctor Who
---
I'm going to try to watch every episode of Doctor Who, in order.
Then I'm going to write up what I think.
A few rules I'm setting out initially:
* It's okay to skip an episode if I just can't handle it.
* I don't have to write a big ol' treatise on each one.
* I fully understand I lack cultural and temporal context for a lot of this,
and I'm not going to feel bound to try and attain said.
* I will be viewing this though my personal biases.
* I may create more rules later on.
# Season One
## Story 1: Cavemen and Fire
I guess this first story pretty clearly established that they travel
through time.
### S01E01 - An Unearthly Child
Oh man, the pacing is just slow.
I like how they're exploring "what if a time-travelling alien disguised itself as a human and went to high school."
Okay, there are two high school teachers,
and this highschool aged timelord girl who's the Doctor's grand-daughter.
The doctor is kind of a jerk.
### S01E02 - The Cave of Skulls
Right, okay, cavemen. And of course they're all short-term-memory idiots.
Okay, sure.
### S01E03 - The Forest of Fear
I forgot what this one was about,
because I didn't decide to write things down until later.
### S01E04 - The Firemaker
The man teacher makes a fire because of course the man does that in 1963.
And then the leader of the cavemen goes hunting.
They make some skulls on fire to distract everybody,
which is pretty cool,
and then they escape.
## Story 2: Daleks!
Holy crap! I didn't realized the Daleks went all the way back to episode 4!
Also there are some Dutch-looking people who are of course the good guys.
### S01E05: The Dead Planet
They find a dead city which, oops, high background radiation.
Cool doors open up and some neat architecture.
You know what, for the time and (I assume) paltry budget of the first season,
this is pretty badass.
This Doctor is a jerk. Faking a broken part to force everyone to do what
he wants.
### S01E06: The Survivors
Daleks! It's cool that they waited until the second episode to bring them out.
They're pretty clearly assholes right at the outset here.
No moral ambiguity with the Daleks.
The Doctor is pretty frail. Honestly, the rest of the crew seems more
important than he is.
### S01E07: The Escape
I think we really meet the Norwegians here. I don't recall exactly.
I'm pretty sure this is the one where
the Norwegians try to meet up with the Daleks and forge a peace treaty,
not knowing the Daleks are complete assholes.
### S01E08: The Ambush
They start taking out the Daleks. There appears to be some sort of
creature inside, which can be taken out, and the dude teacher crawls in.
This is actually pretty cool, I liked this one.
### S01E09: The Expedition
I think the guy teacher tries to convince the peaceniks to fight the Daleks,
by presenting them with the possibility of him screwing up their stuff.
The Norwegians traipse around through some cool looking sets to
look like an alien landscape.
I think this is when the Daleks realize they need high background radiation
in order to survive, because the Norwegians (the Thaals I guess) anti-radiation
drug kills them. They plan to dump ionizing radiation onto the planet's
surface.
A Thaal dude goes to get water and gets sucked up by a vortex or something.
### S01E10: The Ordeal
Half the episode was watching people jump over a chasm in a cave.
The pacing on this, holy crap.
I think this is the one where the Doctor screws up their electrical grid.
### S01E11: The Rescue
Everybody runs around in the cave some more, and eventually they pop out
in the Dalek city.
The Doctor and his Grand-daughter
are imprisoned and he volunteers to teach them about his ship and how to
travel through time if they let him go.
The Norwegians and teachers rain holy hell and kill all the Daleks.
Everybody goes home.
Honestly, man, for being written 60 years ago, I'm surprised by how
compelling the Daleks were written when viewed by me today.
## Story 3: A Tardis Button Gets Stuck
This story was bathouse crazy.
Part of it was probably that I wasn't paying full attention,
but it was also just nuts.
### S01E12: The Edge of Destruction
People alternate between normal and crazy.
There's a lot of screaming.
Random weirdness takes place and it doesn't make sense.
Everybody turns of everybody and then suddenly it's fine and dandy.
### S01E13: The Brink of Disaster
The Doctor starts piecing together some clues.
Turns out the Tardis itself has been trying to send them a message
by dropping obscure clues.
He figures it out and unsticks the "go back to where you just were" button,
which, because it was stuck down, sent them back to the origin of the
solar system.
You know, not awful.
It felt pretty incoherent but I was willing to go along.
## Story 4: Doctor Who goes to China
I guess the film for this was lost,
so it was sort of a slideshow playing over a radio drama.
### S01E14: The Roof of the World
I made it as far as them getting into a hut in Mongolia and meeting
Marco Polo,
and then I skipped to the next story.
### S01E15: The Singing Sands
More British people pretending they're in China, I presume.
### S01E16: Five Hundred Eyes
Skipped
### S01E17: The Wall of Lies
Skipped
### S01E18: Rider from Shang Tu
Skipped
### S01E19: Mightly Kublai Khan
Skipped
### S01E20: Assassin at Peking
Skipped
## Story 5: Finding the Chips
The Scooby gang has to find some microchips scattered around the planet,
so a machine can be repaired to mind-control everyone into
being peaceful.
### S01E21: The Sea of Death
This was the episode during which I decided to start writing this.
It's really interesting how they kept the sort of stumbling around delivery
of lines, rather than shooting another take. I kind of like it.
It's like watching a play.
LOL at the alien costume with swim flippers.
Frickin' Susan is, disappointingly, pretty much a horror movie character.
Just sort of blithely wandering around all over the place and screaming
a lot. Amusingly, they just assumed it was her from her scream.
Okay, got the main plot point. The dude needs to recover some keys so they
can mind-control people to make everybody peaceful. I really hope they don't
just accept this without question.
Their mime acting could use some continuity work, LOL.
### S02E22: The Velvet Web
When the statue's eyes lit up and the creepy lady came out to put rocks
on everybody's forehead, it really felt like a 1970s episode from when
I was a kid.
Aww yeah, brains in jars getting killed.
### S02E23: The Screaming Jungle
The Screaming Jungle, eh? Must be about Susan.
For crying out loud, yep, she's screaming again.
I read that this actress quit early on.
I don't blame her. What a limiting role to have to play.
Now Barbara's screaming. A statue grabbed her.
Now she's screaming again. A net fell on her.
Third time screaming. Some plants grabbed her.
Apparently the scream in the jungle was mostly Barbara.
### S01E24: The Snows of Terror
Okay, now Ian and Barbara are cold. And a beardo has rescued them.
Ian left for some reason,
and Beardo's giving off some really rapey vibes.
Oh, sure enough, he's got all their junk.
Susan and a blonde woman are in a cave.
I've decided I don't like Susan at all,
her sole role appears to be screwing things up and screaming.
Oh boy. They're all in another cave, and they're going to explore it..
Oh, okay, we don't have to watch that. They melt some ice and...
Susan's screaming again as some dude with a cardboard sword wakes up.
Great, they found another key.
### S01E25: Sentence of Death
The Scooby gang vs. the Japanese Criminal System, I guess.
They assumed Ian is guilty and he has to prove he's not.
The Doctor is going to be his defense.
I've seen this episode at least three times on Star Trek,
and once on the Brady Bunch.
I might skip this one.
Oh, neat, a dude who hits his wife.
Okay, but you know what, I dig the costumes.
### S01E26: The Keys of Marinus
I don't like Barbara's hairstyle, though.
Oh, snap! What a twist! I seriously was not expecting this one.
I mean, I probably should have, from a casting standpoint, but I'm not
really devoting a lot of mental energy to this.
Okay, I guess they decided the mind-control machine wasn't so great.
Kind of a naive take but whatever, it was a pretty fun story.
## Story 6: Doctor Who goes to Mexico
A bunch of white people pretend to be Aztecs, and explore the moral
aspects of human sacrifice.
To its credit, there is at least lip service to the notion that
this is some other culture and maybe you can't impose your current moral
structure over it.
### S01E27: The Temple of Evil
Oh goodie. Barbara's gone and gotten herself in trouble again.
I'm not sure I can stomach this one.
Yay, let's focus on human sacrifice. And let's frame it as summoning rain,
because I'm sure that was the beginning and end of the philosophy behind it.
LOL the sword fight.
Haha, Susan's screaming desecrated an Aztec temple.
### S01E28: The Warriors of Death
Damn, the Doctor's pissed.
Holy crap, the Vulcan Nerve Pinch! 2 years before it showed up in Star Trek!
More 1960s dudes wrasslin'. But there's a twist, he got scratched.
### S01E29: The Bride of Sacrifice
Aha, the old Saffron maneuver, eh? Looks like the Doctor's gettin' hitched!
The gang has a moral dilemma about altering the culture of the Aztecs by
Barbara abusing her god status to outlaw human sacrifice. The Doctor gets
married or engaged or something. Susan finally expresses an emotion other
than terror:
![well hello there](susan-well-hello-there.mp4)
I'm back to being uncomfortable with the cultural framing here. I mean,
maybe this is useful for viewing 1960s British culture, but that's still
too recent for me to not feel squicky about it. The only reason I didn't
skip this entire story is because Wikipedia said it was one of the best
stories of the entire franchise.
### S01E30: The Day of Darkness
They found a tunnel or something, to get back into the burial chamber
containing the Tardis. Susan is going to get married or sacrificed or
something. Ian does the Vulcan Nerve Pinch on a white guy dressed as a
brown guy, saving the white lady. They find a way to escape, and
somebody gets sacrificed, and then Barbara gets to watch Susan get
sacrificed or something, I'm not sure.
Oh, more 1960s dudes fighting. I skipped it. I presume the British
high school teacher beats the Aztec warrior who's been training his
entire life.
Barbara has some sort of moral quandry about her inability to change
the past, which I guess was the point of the story. I sure hope
they don't wind up on earth again in the next story.
## Story 7: The Sensorites
### S01E31: Strangers in Space
They're in a spaceship, thank goodness. The lighting is pretty bad.
Okay there are these sensorites messing with peoples' minds. Aw, crap,
we're sort of on Earth. At least it's in the future.
This is a cool premise,
taking over a ship by manipulating everybody's emotions.
### S01E32: The Unwilling Warriors
Hey! Creepy! I like this story.
Susan is doing something! Nice!
Susan makes a sacrifice
### S01E33: Hidden Danger
Susan needs to get out of this place! The Doctor's being a real jerk. Again.
Seems like she's growing up and needs her own space.
Anyway. The Sensorites are cool. And I'm glad Barbara seems to get an equal
say in matters. Like, she just argued with Ian about something, and she was
like "well then it's settled, we'll do it my way".
Still can't abide her hairstyle, though.
Ian seems really British. It's not difficult to imagine pretty much
everything he does being done by an older dude with a brandy in his hand.
He doesn't seem to get to grow as a character,
he's already fully grown, I guess.
I dig that the sensorites have internal debates.
## Story 8: Dr Who vs the French Revolution
I just couldn't get myself to care about another one of these.

View File

@ -3,7 +3,7 @@ title: The 3-minute HTML tutorial
--- ---
As computer formats go, HTML is easy and logical. It's all just text As computer formats go, HTML is easy and logical. It's all just text
that you can edit with any basic text editor, like gedit under Gnome, or that you can edit with any basic text editor, like `gedit` under Gnome, or
notepad in Windows. Let's start out with an example. Say you have a notepad in Windows. Let's start out with an example. Say you have a
sentence, and you want one word in it to be bold. That sentence would sentence, and you want one word in it to be bold. That sentence would
look like this: look like this:
@ -76,14 +76,14 @@ Now, for inline images:
<p> <p>
This is an This is an
<img src="https://woozle.org/neale/face.png" <img src="https://woozle.org/assets/images/yurt.png"
alt="face"></img> image, and alt="face"></img> image, and
<a href="http://woozle.org/">this</a> is a link. <a href="http://woozle.org/">this</a> is a link.
</p> </p>
Which will show up like this: Which will show up like this:
> <p>This is an <img src="https://woozle.org/neale/face.png" > <p>This is an <img src="https://woozle.org/assets/images/yurt.png"
> alt="face" /> image, and > alt="face" /> image, and
> <a href="http://woozle.org/">this</a> is a link. > <a href="http://woozle.org/">this</a> is a link.
@ -91,7 +91,7 @@ The example above has an image tag, with two "attributes", "src" and
"alt". The "src" attribute in an `<img>` tag gives the URL to a "alt". The "src" attribute in an `<img>` tag gives the URL to a
picture, and the "alt" attribute is the text that's displayed to people picture, and the "alt" attribute is the text that's displayed to people
who can't see images (blind users, folks without graphics capabilities, who can't see images (blind users, folks without graphics capabilities,
or if there's a problem on your web server). The "alt" attribue is or if there's a problem on your web server). The "alt" attribute is
required, but you can set it to `""` if there's nothing appropriate for required, but you can set it to `""` if there's nothing appropriate for
alternate text. alternate text.