Notices by es0mhi@tilde.zone, page 2

@alex @Sandra

Yeah, I've often asked myself, if there is anything I couldn''t do with the combination of HTML + CSS? But for "academic writing" (and I never know if something I write for myself might partially end up in that context), things like citations, references, footnotes, bibliography, index, etc. are essential and all built into DocBook.

But especially CSS has evolved to the point where it really has become an all-purpose weapon.

@alex @Sandra

Although it's easy to sympathise with this criticism, since there's no doubt that #DocBook is a beast and can drive you mad, this rant is also caused by the author's perspective.

If you use #DocBook as a source for producing man pages, it reminds me to learning #org-mode for writing your shopping list. Man pages have a very rigid structure, but the main strength of docbook is its flexibility. And with this flexibility comes ambiguity and redundancy.

If you look at the discussions between the people involved, it's not that they didn't see the problems, but it's about how #DocBook evolved. It's true that it was originally designed for writing "technical documentation". But what is technical documentation? My main use of it is for writing projects that are not "technical" in nature - but where the structure is often unpredictable. And as much as I've wanted to get rid of DocBook, I keep coming back to it because it allows me to even misuse it for purposes it wasn't designed for.

I can see a parallel there for why I like #Perl (which most people seem to hate as much as XML in general). I'm not a programmer, and I don't care if you have trouble understanding my code. But it gives me the ability to do things my way without having to rebuild everything from scratch. For me, these tools have certain values that I miss in most of the others out there.

And to make things even more complicated: I love #OpenBSD and hate man pages ;-)

@tekkie

Absolutely! I would even go so far as to say that with regard to true multiculturalism, emphasizing languages and other aspects of "high culture" is rather counterproductive. Let the body do what the body is longing for, then you will find like-minded people and the rest is a piece of cake.

@ferki @Perl

While these are surprisingly flattering figures for #Perl, they have to be put into perspective.

GitHub 2013: 3M users, 5M repos
GitHub 2023: 100M users, 372M repos

(numbers according to wikipedia)

Interesting nevertheless.

@tere

Üldiselt irvitan "content warnings'i" üle, kuid siinkohal suhtuksin leebemalt:

"sisu võib mõjutada häirivalt!".

@mathpunk

I would also like to know the true answer. But first, I want to remind you of something that I'm sure you've noticed yourself. If it's generally a reasonable principle in life that you shouldn't reinvent the wheel, then among programmers - and especially in the open source community - the opposite is true: "This wheel that guy invented is really cool. I just wonder why he made it out of wood. You'd need an axe. And I hate axes. Why not make it out of clay? I have some clay lying around anyway and nothing better to do at the moment."

I guess the same is true here. All programmers I know hate XML. I always loved XML because it's nothing but text, but in a form that both humans and machines can understand easily. But for the programmers mind it's to verbose. (Strange that we don't use machine code any more).

This resistance to an implementation in XML and that to the majority JSON "feels better", may be the only relevant reason.

#Reflexionen

Ich fand es immer schon ein wenig schade, daß die Bedeutung des Wortes 'Voyeur' derart eng auf den sexuellen Bereich eingeschränkt ist. Grundsätzlich bedeutet es ja 'Zuschauer' und die Position des Zuschauers - nicht der Zuschauer eines Spektakels, sondern der generelle Zuschauer im Leben, in allen Belangen des Lebens - war mir schon immer die liebste. Ich würde mich deswegen gern einen Voyeur nennen, würde das nicht unwillkürlich Mißverständnisse heraufbeschwören.

Das Verlockende am reinen Zuschauen ist die Entlastung von den Folgen und Verwicklungen des Handelns. Etwas, das in der Zeit des ungehemmten und umfassenden Kapitalismus zwar insgeheim ersehnt, aber inzwischen vollkommen verpönt ist. Jeder Moment passiven Verharrens gilt als Einladung an die Mitmenschen, uns die Butter vom Brot zu nehmen.

Ich erinnere mich noch an die alten Weiber meiner Kindheit, die den ganzen Tag - die Arme auf ein Kissen aufgestützt - am offenen Fenster hingen und in die Straße hinunterblickten. Trotz dieser komfortablen und wohlfeilen Position mochten sie die entlastende Rolle des Zuschauers nicht uneingeschränkt genießen. Mir kam ihr Zuschauen sogar wie ein Gaffen vor, vom Neid auf die dort unten ins Handeln Verstrickten motiviert. Heute will mir die Vorstellung einer solchen Zukunft als Fenster-Zuschauer dagegen durchaus erstrebenswert erscheinen.

Die Entlastung von den Folgen und Verwicklungen des Handelns ist auch heute noch ein Menschheitstraum (ein Menschenrecht?) Davon spricht, daß im Bereich der 'moving pictures' die Welt der Verbrecher und der Kriminalistik alles überwuchert. Handeln, das unvermeidlich ins Verderben und in den Tod führt, aus der Distanz beobachtet, verfolgt, angestarrt. Oder der Umstand, daß wir längst eine Gesellschaft von (Computer-)Spielern geworden sind. Nur ist dieser Rückzug, diese Exkulpation vollkommen von der Sphäre des Konsums aufgesogen und gesteuert. Heißt es denn nicht, die Leute 'zocken'. Was gestern noch bedeutete: sie spielen um Geld.

@simsa03

Thank you for your kind words. The reasons why I was absent are complex and complicated. And nothing I could fix easily. Just to speak about one minor aspect: to get back into the habit of posting occasionally I would first have to figure out the format. I can feel that I would like to write longer forms again but my mind isn't really free to focus at the moment. And then there is the question of language: two months ago I had a discussion in German for the first time in years. That was an embarrassing experience and revealing at the same time. I think I have to start writing in German again, and be it only for myself, in order not to lose this tool of expression and (self-)analysis. For the moment I may continue passivly lurking most of the time - though that's not what the fediverse was made for.

I also followed in puzzlement how you got into trouble on your last gnusocial instance and now having a fresh start here. Cheers!

@simsa03

Well phrased! I'll possibly borrow this one day.

#amateurradio #morsecode #morseclasses

I don't know if anyone still follows my updates about my progress in learning morse code. But if you do, and if you're wondering if I've given up: not yet! However, I was unable to attend class for the first time on Tuesday night. Because of a serious snowstorm, I was stuck at home with no electricity and lots of problems to solve quickly. But I was finally able to attend via skype (that's what they use) and it was perfectly fine.

I have to admit that I had not been able to practice all week and it showed. In the beginning, I made an alarming number of mistakes copying. But during the lesson my rate improved constantly and at the end I was back to 0 mistakes.

The new characters were 'R' and 'G' and that makes it a total of 16, if I'm not mistaken. (I've never gotten that far, but I wouldn't say the new characters have stuck yet).

Still, I'm full of hope that I'll actually make it this time. If your club offers something similar, don't hesitate to try it out.

#snowstorm

Digging my way into the light. ?

That was quite a snowstorm on Monday! I was without power for 38 hours. And lots of snow (otherwise rather the exception on the island here.) Quite a test for the water supply: Pump and pipes can easily freeze. But everything's o.k. Water and electricity running again. Just a lot of hassle.

@el

Indeed, I wasn't very clear. Let's put it like this: at one moment I decided to write all my posts in English. Lately, however, I started to think about the extent to which this is limiting. It's at least artificial, doesn't necessarily reflect me as I am elsewhere. So how about posting from one account in different languages? Whatever seems most appropriate for the subject at hand. Or even switching languages randomly in one sentence.

Like you, I don't see much of a problem there, with all the automatic translation aids. I just see few who really do it like this.

That's why I asked.

@diana @jakobrosin @tramm

It is definitely a good decision to be on a smaller instance. Otherwise, the constant flickering of new posts in the local timeline can drive you crazy. But I still don't like the idea to allow only certain languages. I hate all this blocking in advance. I prefer to look for a quieter place ;-)

@simsa04

From an Estonian perspective, of course, such concerns seem bizarre: it is not a matter of superiority, but rather of a will to assert oneself.

But this is a difficult discussion anyway: much depends on whether a culture defines itself primarily through language (as is the case with estonian culture) or whether language and the possible loss of it do not seem all that essential.

@simsa04

Totally agree. In the case of Estonian, however, there is also the aspect that it is a 'small' language (1.1 million native speakers) and that such projects are always about doing something to preserve the language. If Estonian is no longer present on the net, its future is uncertain.

#eestimastodon

In all the years I've been in the fediverse, I've looked every now and then if there are any Estonian users out there. Usually to no avail. Now the immigration wave from twitter (which - looking at my timeline - is already about to end) sets something in motion.

This week mastodon even made it to estonian public broadcasting: @jakobrosin, @diana and @tramm talked about a newly founded Estonian mastodon instance, est.social. Interesting! However, there were things that felt immediately strange to me: users are expected to post in Estonian - something I almost never do. This is done intentionally to build an 'Estonian community'. For me, this commitment to geographical, language-based spaces is in contradiction to what attracts me to the internet in the first place.

The discussion also suffered from being very mastodon-focused, barely mentioning the many other platforms that make the fediverse.

But let's see what happens next.

@simsa04

This statement should trigger a much broader discussion than I have time for right now.

Just a few brief remarks:

I, too, find approaching people via interests rather clumsy. Outside the net, I am first interested in personality (I use this fuzzy term here on purpose) and only later try to find out via which interests someone has become that personality. Moreover, here in the fediverse it apparently leads to the fact that many create different accounts for their different interests. Which I refuse to do (until now).

Since we can't "listen to the tone of a person's voice" here, don't necessarily learn about her mannors, the personality could be sensed in a different way. It would be helpful if people would express themselves more creatively. Simply boosting things, or spreading a link, a message, etc., is not enough. At some point, #GNUsocial was called 'statusnet' - an origin of which we hopefully emancipate ourselves - or not. Style would be of importance, style of writing, style of discussing. In a sharing culture, there is no room for style any more.

I find 'personal info' sometimes helpful after all. You say that we have learned not to share it on the net. Well, I have also learned many things offline about what I shouldn't do - and do them anyway.

@simsa04 @administrator

No, don't worry the first one is here as well:

@simsa04 @administrator

A screenshot from my side, showing you what I got here:

@administrator @simsa04

Yeah, I was sending this as a 'direct message' which is hidden to all other users but the ones addressed directly. I' m using this feature very rarely and I don't have to in the future if this causes any problems at gnusocial.net.

I received both @simsa04 replies and I think in general I get everything that is addressed to me from your instance. So no problem on this side.