Ethan Gates @The_BFOOL@digipres.club

Over the past month our landlord kept tinkering with our wifi/internet setup (internet included in our rent) without checking with us first at inconvenient moments (basically anytime 9-5 on weekdays...)

This was really frustrating, esp since he means well and was trying to make things better for us knowing we are stuck WFH

...but now at the end of it we've got a mesh wifi set up and I'm hitting ~600/20 Mbps on wireless and like I didn't even realize that was possible???

tfw you're making a disc about "World Trade Flows" but have a max character limit for path

Less great:

- Listservs need work. The suggestion to bundle contacts doesn't really work when you can only bundle based on "From" contacts, no "To" contacts (unless I'm missing something). Putting all those on digest mode is necessary, not the worst thing anyway.

- "Imbox" is still a cognitively annoying word. But, the concept is solid and it's wild that after a week I have like two threads in there and yes, those are the only ones that actually needed my attention or a response

Finally did the thing and got a Hey account and am moving over my various personal Gmails. Impressions so far:

- The Feed is a *really* good idea. Since I don't get distracring notifications for them, all those newsletters for orgs and companies I actually like are no longer stressful and become a thing to flip through by choice instead of social media.

- Screening out dumb nonsense auto-marketing accounts forever is way easier than searching for the hidden "unsubscribe" and extremely good

Really hope you all weren't counting on much U.S. participation in World Digital Preservation Day this year

general kudos to you all, but I will have to read your blog post in 2021

Our power has been cutting in and out this afternoon (downed tree limbs after yesterday's snow), which means we've been left with our thoughts, the scariest Halloween trick of all

You'd think when you learn about computers both as a job and hobby you'd be the one without any trouble setting up for virtual game night but really you're the one who gets stuck troubleshooting Proton for hours

RIAA's ready to start Round 2, let's go

https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2020/10/2020-10-23-RIAA.md

I am really excited that the first in our series of "EaaSI training modules" is live!

https://www.softwarepreservationnetwork.org/eaasi-training-module-emulation-environments/

This is going to be one of my favorite things to work on for the next two (?!) years. It is a challenge to break down our technical and conceptual software preservation concerns to the most bite-sized and visual explanations possible, but figuring it out is extremely my shit.

...you all have read this incredible Mar Hicks piece on COBOL, maintenance, U.S. austerity, and the labor of care, right? Right?

https://logicmag.io/care/built-to-last/

my first in-print issue of Logic arrived on a day that I sorely needed it, just weeping and want all those out there who Care to know I see you too

I can probably acquire this elsewhere but I'm just so curious what happens here

Anyone aware of PPT or Google Slides templates that try to mimic mid-90s software aesthetic?

Basically trying to make my slides look like this, but also currently lacking the energy to actually migrate or work in Office 95

I know Google doesn't want me to get hung up on such old-school particulars as "file management", but what I wouldn't give for a "copy to [location]" option in Drive...

quarantine WFH has drastically decreased the amount of time it takes to reach the dissociative state of being like "who made this terrible spreadsheet choice" and realizing it was you

this used to at least take a couple months, now I check the version history and it's like yeah you did that on Monday bud

Blaseball reminds me so much of what the internet was like before F***b***k, of trawling weird AIM subgroups and role-playing in NationStates forums

Long live federated social networks, community-supported infrastructure, and whatever blaseball is

(blaseball is love)

I know you're all here for the emulation and archives and A/V cable talk or whatever but I regret to inform you this will now only be a blaseball fan account from now on

the Flowers are killing me out here, I'm going to need our rotation to step up

As someone lucky(?) enough to be in a grant-funded job right now, frankly it feels wildly irresponsible to issue cultural heritage grants for literally anything except payroll protection right now

Why:

1) are Linux email clients a trash fire of never-updated early-aughts design

2) can't MPOW switch to Hey email addresses *right now*

My professional career has been building to the moment of explaining another Mac OS chipset migration to my family