Today, a day of nerdy firsts: I had my first-ever Telnet session, and very tentatively started to play in my first-ever MUD. Bear in mind I've been on the Internet since March 1997; that's twenty years! It's interesting to note that both Telnet and the MUD precede my arrival in the slow lane of the Information Superhighway.

But first, these snippets from Wikipedia:

"Telnet is a protocol used on the Internet or local area networks to provide a bidirectional interactive text-oriented communication facility using a virtual terminal connection."

…and:

"A MUD (originally Multi-User Dungeon, with later variants Multi-User Dimension and Multi-User Domain), is a multiplayer real-time virtual world, usually text-based. MUDs combine elements of role-playing games, hack and slash, player versus player, interactive fiction, and online chat."

Telnet, first mentioned in RFC#15 in 1969, is almost as old as I, predating the World Wide Web by an easy twenty years! The Colossal Cave Adventure first appeared in 1975, is itself no spring chicken!

Me: I played a few text-only adventure games starting in the early 1980s, but all were stand-alone single-user relying purely on the imagination of the programmer(s) and the user (me!) My all-time favourites: The Hobbit, The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, and Zork (a game I never finished.)

You may have seen the game I ran with @mlv in an App.net thread, a flavour of which is available through the transcript here. A very enjoyable, diverting few months.

So there it is. Thanks very much indeed to @papierzeit on the pnut.io network for posting your server details and allowing me to have a go! I'll be back.

Sharing imaginations, it's amazing!

Some of our work numbers are regularly targeted, plagued by unsolicited callers wanting to talk about a recent motor vehicle accident. I've been spared, luckily. Until today.

A colleague politely hung up on one… and then my phone rang.

It:

"Hello, this is [unintelligible name, company name] calling about your accident."

Me:

"What's the name of the company?"

It:

"Hello, this is [unintelligible name, company name] calling about your accident."

Me, rather louder than I intended to:

"Listen: go fuck yourself."

And then I replaced the handset, carefully, aware of an unaccountable increase in the hubbub, the level of mirth around me.

As a spectacle, not much, I'm mindful of being in work. I've done better…

Some time ago (I may already have written about this) I was unlucky enough to pick up at home; someone telling me my router has a virus. Yeah.

I began by insulting him, calling him a parasite, the usual insults I usually keep to myself when my family is with me. Interestingly, it went a bit downhill towards the end as he traded insults with me.

Here goes.

Me:

"Listen, your name really isn't 'Mike' is it."

It:

"No, you couldn't pronounce my name."

Me:

"Go on then, I've a few Asian friends who aren't bottom-feeding parasites like you, go on, give me a try."

It:

"[Utterly fucking unintelligible name.]"

Me:

"Ok, 'Mike, you got me th"

And then I replaced the handset, carefully, aware of an evening of the score, a stalemate.

Yeah.

I have a theory: that Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was close when wondering that, if the secret of the universe was ever found, it would be replaced by something even more improbable.

It happened, someone found it, or at least the secret of the bit over which humanity believes they have a loose measure of control. Why else would our world be changed daily beyond our understanding upon awakening‽

Douglas Adams:

"If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a non-working cat."

---

Prompted by @der_jeff:

"Has the world come to an end yet?"

I've been messing about with computers since 1981, on the internet since 1997 (yes, even that is 20 years!) and so it was a surprise to find, by chance, a bookmarking service that made sense to me. Tags: I know what they are, but the things never clicked until a week-and-a-half-ago. I've used GTD (Getting Things Done) in various forms in a personal and to a lesser degree work capacity, but this is different.

Pinboard.in has been around since, I think, 2009. It has a mature, sensible interface; maybe one that takes a time to master, but it works well. Apart from when it doesn't.

I signed up for an Archive account, one that costs a yearly fee of USD$25 and entitles the user to practically- unlimited, searchable, taggable bookmark storage. The Archive account is an extension of the Basic and gives full text search within the pages the Pinboard system crawls then archives. Sounds impressive.

I say 'sounds' as I've not yet had the opportunity to test the full-text bit. It simply didn't work for me and another new signup. After a week of no response to my 2 emails, several tweets, it emerged that Pinboard's hard drive was full. Oops, what bad timing!

Ok, the support could easily have been better, but the site owner has generously offered a small extension for the trouble I've had.

The good news, I spent time checking that the bookmarks could be exported in non-proprietary formats and, crucially, reimported. And I've spent time tagging like crazy.

And here are the fruits of my labours, a bit of a mess for now, but eminently usable:

https://pinboard.in/u:bazbt3

There's no doubt in my mind that I'm no longer the invincible fourteen year old my sense of self has identified with for the past few decades. I had the first inkling over 11 years ago, simply waking then walking downstairs. This latest indication that I must re-evaluate 'me' though, it simply shouldn't have happened.

Crushing plastic bottles to fit more into the recycling bin is something I have an unnatural pride in. Start from the neck, flatten going down the sides, fold over the base, throw into the IKEA 'Sortera' box. Yesterday evening though, I felt a twinge in my left thumb, but carried on regardless. Perhaps being fortified by a glass of 'Buffalo Trace' Kentucky whiskey emboldened me to simply work through the mild discomfort?

This morning though, in the cold light of day (well dark, it's not even dawn here yet) I find myself needing a painkiller or two.

Getting old(er) Baz.

Ordinary visits to the cinema of course provoke my tears, but not today's. The frankly inconsiderate, moronic behaviour of the phone users around me provoked me into doing something I'm not proud of, something terrible.

The woman in the row in front of us, when she wasn't talking with her children, surreptitiously turning on her phone, nearly-but-not hiding it with her hair and…

A teenager down the aisle was, I'm certain, recording large sections of the film, but the three selfies with flash were the last straw. So I got up, walked down the few a steps separating us, and told her to stop doing it and to turn the phone off.

The woman in front of us obviously saw it as a challenge so upped her game. Got up, stood in front of me asking her daughter…

We'd been lucky so far in our visits; I relish the chance to take the girls out, but I can see how, antisocial as it is, why subscription movies services and channels have flourished. Heck, my girls don't mind if I sit there in my underpants!

Well, ok, that last is a lie, sitting in my dressing gown is as bad as it gets.

Oh yes, the terrible thing.

I let my family down when, without retaining a sense of perspective, I swore at the teenager whilst ordering her about.

For what it's worth, I saw the majority of the film, and give it an easy 10/10 for the first 90 minutes before the distractions peaked. The soundtrack is amazing! and almost certainly one to buy. Baz's seal of approval.

Baz though? Baz does not, emphatically not, get the same courtesy.

Conversations often bring up what seem to be the weirdest things. And then I think for a bit.

I've posted recently of the information overload I've experienced since the middle of 2016; it's had a lot of positives and fair share of negatives, but I've learnt about, well, me.

Constipation is a term I first came across courtesy of @schmidt_fu on either 10Centuries.org or pnut.io and it got me thinking. I said I'd think about it, so did.

Constipation:

"irregular and infrequent or difficult evacuation of the bowels; can be a symptom of intestinal obstruction or diverticulitis" (Definition from iOS Terminology app.)

Humans have evolved to consume various edible items (and, for pleasure, some plainly inedible or noxious), to process them and convert into nutrients, and finally to expel the resultant waste. Ok, not just humans, pretty-much everything alive on the planet operates in a similar fashion. What differs between us at the top, and those below us on the food chain, is our insatiable desire to consume, process, and to, er… talk about stuff.

Yeah, a bit short of suitable metaphors here; 'constipation' isn't a bad pinnacle, right?

But there's only so far that balancing act between consumption and dissemination can take the average sane person. I gave up where someone with more confidence, more psychopathic tendencies would, has and will, advance further. I saw the effect on myself of the constant osmosis of facts and figures, and simply didn't like where it would take me.

That's not to say I removed myself entirely from the stimuli, that's impossible. Avoiding Brexit and Trump though, it's tantamount to acceptance, and I simply cannot roll over and submit to the propaganda machines rolling over pretty-much everything I've assumed would provide stability for me, my wife and, the reason large numbers of folks believe we're on this planet in the first place: my 2 lovely daughters.

Though we're not in the midst of an actual wartime, it'd be fair to say we live in times of unprecedented upheaval. And it's all stoppable in an instant if people simply come to their senses.

Chances of it happening? I think zero.

So, constipation, a recap:

"irregular and infrequent or difficult purging of the symptoms of stress brought on by an information overload; can be a symptom of the obstruction of regular thought processes or a response to stimuli outside an individual's sphere of influence".

My sphere of influence?

Around 1680mm diameter.