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Diffstat (limited to 'about')
| -rw-r--r-- | about/whereami.html | 16 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | about/whoami.html | 3 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | about/whyami.html | 4 |
3 files changed, 17 insertions, 6 deletions
diff --git a/about/whereami.html b/about/whereami.html index c34c973..4630805 100644 --- a/about/whereami.html +++ b/about/whereami.html @@ -1,4 +1,7 @@ -<p>Since you are on this page, you're presumably lost. That's ok. I don't really get all this stuff either. Let's start with some easy stuff.</p> +<center> +But I have to say this in defense of humankind: In no matter what era in history, including the Garden of Eden, <strong>everybody just got here</strong>. And, except for the Garden of Eden, there were already all these games going on that could make you act crazy, even if you weren't crazy to begin with. Some of the crazymaking games going on today are love and hate, liberalism and conservatism, automobiles and credit cards, golf, and girls' basketball. -- <em>Kurt Vonnegut, from A man without a country, emphasis my own</em> +</center> +<p>Since you are on this page, you're presumably lost. That's <em>ok</em>. I don't really get all this stuff either. Let's start with some easy stuff.</p> <p><em>You're on the Internet</em>. Known to some as a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_of_tubes">series of tubes</a>, but in reality much more complicated than it has to be. In basic sense, your computer called mine, and mine answered with directory full of pages.</p> The way you get here is through a device you have at home called a router, which literally does what the name implies--it routes signals to where they need to go to make things go beep. In the 60s and 70s, routers tended to be people-based and would spend their time plugging cables into and out of ports so calls could connect. <img src="/static/human_router.jpg" /> <center> @@ -10,8 +13,13 @@ The way you get here is through a device you have at home called a router, which <p>I'm getting lost on your question though, so where are we exactly?</p> <p>Precisely speaking, you are in a chrooted web server running on rented virtual machine in a server farm located roughly in New Jersey browsing the "about" directory on the "whereami.html" page.</p> <p>Less precisely, all that means is you're looking at some files I left in a directory at this address, and paid some people to host for me since local ISPs tend to be ridiculously expensive if you want to do anything besides host some private servers for you and your friends and family.</p> -<p>But maybe most importantly, you've reached a webpage owned by another human being, not a corporation, or a bot, or a government, or work, or a <em>network</em>. All these files were loving crafted by yours truly in vim, in markdown and converted with pandoc to HTML because of laziness. The Internet I grew up with, though I didn't really appreciate because I was too young at the time, used to be filled with places like this. "Homepages" were a thing, or were just starting to be at least.</p> -<p>But as soon as it started it all got sucked up social media, everyone got coerced into profiles, templates, and standards to make us easier for ad companies to study. It's not even unreasonable to believe you're not even talking to real people on there, because there's a good chance of it now. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing">Astroturfing</a> is not a secret government conspiracy, it's just business as usual at this point. You used to be able to tell a human from a chatbot from the way they write. I don't know if the bots at this point are smarter, or if we've just been made so cynical and dumb by business as usual that we've given up.</p> +<p>But maybe most importantly, you've reached a webpage owned by another human being, not a corporation, or a bot, or a government, or work, or a <em>network</em>. All these files were loving crafted by yours truly in vim, in markdown and converted with pandoc to HTML because of laziness. The Internet I grew up with, though I didn't really appreciate it at the time, used to be filled with places like this. "Homepages" were a thing, or were just starting to be at least.</p> +<p>But as soon as it started it all got sucked up and commodified into social media; we somehow got coerced into profiles, templates, and standards to make us easier for ad companies to study. It's not even unreasonable to believe you're not even talking to real people on there, because there's a good chance of it now. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing">Astroturfing</a> is not a secret government conspiracy, it's just business as usual at this point. You used to be able to tell a human from a chatbot from the way they write. I don't know if the bots at this point are smarter, or if we've just been made so cynical and dumb by the process that we've given up.</p> <p>Who would really write all that garbage on Facebook anyway?</p> -<p>Don't mistake this for some pity nostalgia piece though. If you look hard enough--I promise you--that <em>Internet</em> of humans is still there.</p> +<p>Don't mistake this for some pity nostalgia piece though. If you look hard enough--I promise you--that <em>Internet</em> of humans is still there. Here's a few places I like to poke around:</p> +<p>https://neocities.org/</p> +<p>https://1mb.club/</p> +<p>https://goodsites.tech/</p> +<p>and old <a href="https://archive.md/rav1z">not-so</a> faithful:</p> +<p>https://www.wikipedia.org/</p> <p>A helpful tip, CRTL+W will close any webpage you don't like. Not that you wouldn't like this page... you did read all the way here through all that pedantry didn't you?</p> diff --git a/about/whoami.html b/about/whoami.html index c0adad7..72d93d7 100644 --- a/about/whoami.html +++ b/about/whoami.html @@ -1,6 +1,7 @@ <center> -TL;DR Above everything I'm a lurker. And I mean that in the traditional forum/mailing list sense. You could put it a few ways and still be right: a reader, a people watcher, a listener, maybe a coward if you're cynical. But all in all, not anyone in particular really. +Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit. -- <a href="https://archive.md/7AC79"><em>apparently no one</em></a> </center> +<p><em>TL;DR Above everything, I'm a lurker. And I mean that in the traditional forum/mailing list sense. You could put it a few ways and still be right: a reader, a people watcher, a listener, maybe a coward if you're cynical. But all in all, not anyone in particular really.</em></p> <p>When I first came up with a writing a page with this title, it devolved into a kind of personal essay. The kind of unwelcome nonsense you no doubt encounter (and I no doubt supplied) in comment sections on the Internet or the paginated newsfeeds written by faceless names or in the rambling profiles that start with birth and forget where they're going around college. It seems to come easy to a lot of us.</p> <p>Now, I'm not sure I've earned the right yet.</p> <p>I'd rather just let my work (and my play) stand for itself, for whatever it's worth. You'll get it as you go I'm sure. That said, there are some things that probably help for context's sake: - I'm born, raised, and hosted on the US East Coast. By most countries' standards, that means I have no sense of the world outside of my own country, which despite my best efforts, is probably true - I'm raised and hosted (not born) on free software (unless you count whatever my VPS is running). This server is running OpenBSD with nginx and httpd working together to host a small git repo and this flask app I threw together - I'm born and raised (not hosted) by Luddites, for the most part. And I don't mean that in entirely bad way. What I mean is I grew up around mostly people who didn't know and didn't care to know about advances in technology or the merging of that technology with culture. In fact, that might be the appropriate view to have in light of recent circumstances. - By trade, I'm best at data recovery and writing good documentation. I'm self-taught at programming software design so by most metrics, I'm probably not great at that, but I'm getting there. I love a good math problem, and though I only got a B in my college circuits class, I still find time to make some lights blink. - I spend a lot of time on the Internet lost. And in the process, sometimes find useful things; though I largely find nonsense, which has it's own value, but it's separate.</p> diff --git a/about/whyami.html b/about/whyami.html index 17f46ec..46cd572 100644 --- a/about/whyami.html +++ b/about/whyami.html @@ -1 +1,3 @@ -<p>I am because I need to be I guess. Because I need to know things and because I need to be understood. But mostly because I need a place for my stuff.</p> +<center> +We are here on Earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different. -- <em>Kurt Vonnegut, from A man without a country.</em> +</center> |