ajroach42

ajroach42, 1 year ago to random

I've been thinking about early home video art and early home video activism all day.

There is so much ground to cover here, and I am not prepared to cover it.

I almost wish I was affiliated with a university, so I could justify taking 6 months to write a history of Home Video.

ajroach42, 11 months ago to random

I haven't talked a lot about the writer's strike recently (mostly because I've been dealing with small implosions within my little community, as relationships have ended and people have drawn battle lines, and I've had to come to the defense of people I previously believed unassailable. So it goes.)

But I've been thinking about the writer's strike a lot, both because I care deeply about workers issues and because the outcome of the writers strike will directly impact the success of the company I am joining on Monday.

Yesterday, there were a lot of stories about the studios plans to drag the strike on as long as possible, in order to hurt the striking writers, and these were reported on uncritically as if it was some surprise.

I found this frustrating and naïve, and I'd like to talk about it a bit in between other things today.

ajroach42, 9 months ago to random

I found this thread, from the early days of mastodon, from my second instance, from a period of deep depression, from before I was given the opportunity to show off professionally, and I've been thinking about it.

In that thread, I list ideas I have been working on, and the state of them.

I'm going to copy the list and provide an update on every item in the list and add all the new ones.

https://retro.social/@ajr@cybre.space/97946668672626830

ajroach42, 6 months ago to random

I'm breaking the thread because I'm shifting gears a little and I don't want to get ideas muddled.

This is another thread about the Walmart house brand onn 4k Google TV set top box.

If you go digging, you'll find me talking about using this hardware for a general purpose computer. I still think thats worthwhile and possible and it's something I will likely pursue in the future, assuming sundog doesn't beat me to it today, but even if we can make this hardware a general purpose computer, there are compelling reasons to leave it as a set top box, and just to make it a better one.

ajroach42, 11 months ago to random

The time has come my friends to talk of many things

ajroach42, 6 months ago to random

I've talked a little bit about #JupitersGhost the last few days, but the last time I spent a large amount of time talking about it was ~1 year ago, and I have about twice as many followers now as I did then, which means it's time to talk about Jupiter's Ghost some more.

ajroach42, 2 months ago to random

The biggest thing I took away from reading Yu-Gi-Oh ( https://retro.social/@ajroach42/112247872898781375 ) is that I really miss the early days of Pokemon Go.

The game, especially in the early days, was bad. It didn't explain itself in any meaningful way. It crashed a lot. Many of the mechanics were badly broken unless you lived in a big city.

But, honestly and truly, none of that mattered! For a solid two years, I could reliably walk down the street in any city (or drive down the street in most suburbs) and meet new people, united by a common goal.

That part was incredible.

ajroach42, 7 months ago to random

I believe that Youtube's warnings about adblockers are the beginning of the end for Youtube as a citizen of the Open Web, and the latest volley in the fight that will end with the death of youtube-dl, invidious, etc.

This road leads to DRM powered by EME, and that would be the fulfillment of the promise made by EME when it was launched.

https://ajroach42.com/the-grim-future-of-youtube/

ajroach42, 2 months ago to random

I found (some of, but not the ones I was looking for) my palm pilots.

I wanted my m500, which has gone completely missing.

But I found my tungsten C and a USB dock, so I'll set out to get that set up tonight and tomorrow.

Time to see what happened in the hotsync world while I was working in big tech and ignoring small tech.

ajroach42, 2 months ago to random

I love film and television.

I love the idea of telling a story for the world.

I think of film as art, almost always. I think of television as art usually, but it is also almost always commerce.

ajroach42, 6 months ago to random

I just spent half an hour reading about and screwing around with Swords of Freeport by @vampiress

https://swordsoffreeport.com/

It's a BBS Door Game for the Tilde era, and exactly the kind of thing I was looking for when I ran a tilde server.

(This is a thread, I'm untagging Elissa in the replies, but seriously thank you for making something neat, I've had a blast fiddling with it.)

ajroach42, 2 months ago to random

I started reading a book on "cult" cinema written by people who worked for TCM Underground and it is just making me sad.

So much is out of print, not on streaming, and barely or not at all available through illicit means.

And these are films that people are writing Books about. What hope does a film that didn't catch the attention of a critic have? (Often, the answer is none!)

ajroach42, 1 year ago to random

Alright, I'm thinking about Gemini. It's time to write about Gemini some more.

Or rather to write about the philosophy that I use to approach Gemini and why and how I want to use it, but haven't.

But I'm going to do that here, and not there, because I don't like to use the thing to talk about the thing.

ajroach42, 3 months ago to random

If you're looking for a labor of love style passion project that will consume and ruin your life, might I suggest building an amatuer theme park in the north GA mountains, populated by mediocre animatronic space aliens?

ajroach42, 5 months ago to random

It's nearly Public Domain Day (my favorite holiday, since the US started celebrating it again a few years back) and I'm eagerly and excitedly collecting materials which will enter the public domain in 2024 to repackage, share, remix, and otherwise defile.

There's so good stuff coming to the US, and it will be transformed in to even better stuff.

But! this Public Domain Day is also a time for sadness (small thread)

ajroach42, 1 month ago to random

The problem with federated alternatives to centralized services (and also one of the main problems with centralized services which lead people to look for an alternative) is Discovery.

Etsy and Twitch and YouTube provide an audience, supposedly. With the right pitch (and the right advertising dollars) you can get your own slice of that audience. (For as long as the algorithm graces you, and as long as you're willing to stomach the other things your viewers will be algorithmically suggested.)

ajroach42, 1 year ago to random

what would the modern computer look like if it had not been designed by the military?

ajroach42, 6 months ago to random

Alright, let's be silly for a minute.

ajroach42, 9 months ago to random

I'm thinking more and more about #SpaceLARPCafe within the context of the universe of the Space Explorer's Field Guide (wiki) ( #sefgw ) and how those two ideas could co-exist.

ajroach42, 7 months ago to random

It's time to reshape the way we think about computers, to revist the roads not taken, and to do wacky bullshit for the sake of itself.

ajroach42, 1 month ago to random

It would be super helpful for me if I could pick up 1 or 2 short (6 week - 3 month) full time or part time sysadmin/infrastructure rebuild/SRE gigs.

Let me build something silly with you.

ajroach42, 1 year ago to random

You know how there's a bunch of critical infrastructure powering the internet (and presumably a lot more than the internet) is badly maintained and underfunded (often by just a few people)?

We know about several examples in the open source world, but I'm sure we all also know about several examples in each of our personal lives, in each of our places of business.

ajroach42, 25 days ago to random

It's amazing to me how we're watching the tech world fall apart at the feet of monetization and AI and whatever other bullshit of the week, and it's all exactly the consequences that the Free Software folks have been warning about and talking about for decades.

But the free software folks are, often, aggressive ideological purists or incredibly gatekeep-y, and free software as a movement has been seriously hampered by both of those things, and also by the same monetization push that is eating everything else.

We built our entire world on computers. We embedded them in every facet of our lives. I've spent my entire life With The Machine.

And yet...

ajroach42, 3 months ago to random

I still really want to open a weird and entirely unprofitable movie theater and just do rolling screenings of thr worst genre trash that's ever been made.

ajroach42, 8 months ago to random

Alright y'all, it's bandcamp friday.

It's probably the last bandcamp friday.

Today, Bandcamp isn't taking a cut of sales, which means that neither epic nor songtradr makes any money if you buy from bandcamp today.

It's time for me to write some words (expect music recs, among other things, in this thread.)