It's the Vince Guaraldiest.

You know how on TV and in movies, if someone calls a phone number, it starts with 555 because that's a reserved prefix for fictional use? Well, those exist for domain names and IP addresses too:

• RFC 2606 - Reserved Top Level DNS Names
• RFC 5737 - IPv4 Address Blocks Reserved for Documentation
• RFC 3849 - IPv6 Address Prefix Reserved for Documentation
• RFC 9637 - Expanding the IPv6 Documentation Space

If you're putting a fully qualified domain name or an IP address in your documentation, use a proper fake one!

I just had to go and update a bunch of IP addresses in tycoon's documentation and unit tests. I should've referred to these standards from the start. It would have saved me the work of coming up with fake addresses in the first place.

This past Friday I released tycoon 1.0. Tycoon is the server that powers my Gemini capsule. I had a lot of fun writing it. My entire philosophy while writing it was that I wanted to write a fun, small thing, and learn the protocol at the same time, and in that regard I consider it a smashing success. It also gave me an excuse to try out the KDL format, which I've been looking to use in a project for a while now.

tycoon config files are very simple and hopefully easy to pick up if you've ever configured a web server. A typical entry looks like this:

capsule arjache.com {
    root "/path/to/my/capsule"
}

Naturally there are various other options, though. It's all fully documented.

The other fun thing about tycoon is that it includes an (optional) builtin finger server. I noticed some Gemini capsules included links to .plan files via finger, and that my Gemini browser of choice included first-class support for finger. So it seemed a natural choice to add. I've currently got my own .plan file up here, in fact, though I might move it later. I like updating my .plan. It's very easy to do and has a bit of that old-school charm to it, even if I am pushing mine via git instead of directly editing it on the server.

If any of this interests you, consider checking it out on Codeberg! I'd be very curious if anyone else ends up using it.

ME: It's probably not worth even asking, but do you offer additional IPv4 addresses for a fee?

HOSTING COMPANY: No. Not unless you have a very good reason.

ME: I don't, no, not really. How about IPv6?

HOSTING COMPANY: Certainly. That one's free of charge, but we only offer it in bulk. If you want an additional IPv6 address we can allocate you our default range of...eighteen quintillion addresses per data center.

ME: ...

HOSTING COMPANY: In addition to your existing IPv6 address, of course.

ME: Eighteen quintillion...

HOSTING COMPANY: If that's not enough we do have a slightly larger range for special applications.

ME: Do-

HOSTING COMPANY: That one's four sextillion.

ME: Doesn't that seem like a bit much?

HOSTING COMPANY: Oh, it only seems that way because we're using American units.

ME: I suppose that is a relief.

Like a lot of other folks, I've been slowly disentangling my computing life from Microsoft over the past year. I didn't have a lot to do here -- I don't think I've daily driven Windows since Windows 2000, for one thing -- but it's enough that I thought I'd write up a list.

Operating systems

I've replaced Windows on my gaming laptop with Bazzite. There are some issues now and then but largely it Just Works, which is what I want for PC games. I've been using KDE Plasma and at times it's almost indistinguishable from the previous Windows setup. Especially when I've got Final Fantasy XIV going fullscreen, which, let's be real, is my primary use case for that system.

Editors

• vim or some variation on it has always been one of my editors of choice, but in recent years I found myself using VSCode more and more for certain programming tasks. I've now stopped using VSCode and gone back to using vim exclusively, or rather neovim. I've taken it as an excuse to clean up my configuration and get a more up-to-date setup when it comes to plugins and LSPs, and it's really nice now.
  • I use a combination of neovide on the desktop and plain neovim in a tmux session over ssh.
  • Updating my neovim configuration to get a more VSCode-like experience was incredibly daunting to set up, so I don't recommend this for most folks. If I weren't using vim, I'd probably go back to Sublime Text, which is what I used before VSCode.
• For previewing markdown, I've gone back to using Marked. It's a great app and a good way to support an independent developer.
  • There is apparently a Marked 3 in the works, but I've only used Marked 1 and 2. Marked 1 and 2 were standalone purchases; Marked 3 looks like it might be a subscription. But you can still buy Marked 2 at the time of writing, and it works for my needs.

Code forges

• For git repos, I keep my private repos on a locally hosted Forgejo (previously gitea) instance.
• I have a program I'm planning on open sourcing soon, and I plan to put that on Codeberg.

A small capsule floats up to you. A window rolls down. A badger waves at you from within and presses a button.

The capsule gently fires a pneumatic cylinder at you. You open it. There's a slip of paper, which you unfold.

Read the piece of paper.

It reads:

NOW AVAILABLE ON GEMINISPACE: gemini://arjache.com/

You protest that you cannot open that URL. The badger fires a second small pneumatic cylinder. It bounces off of you like a nerf dart. As you bend to pick it up, the badger merrily flies off into the distance.

Open the cylinder.

You open the cylinder to find another small slip of paper:

LAGRANGE IS A DANG GOOD GEMINI PROTOCOL CLIENT.

I've been staying up late browsing the retro Internet and listening to magical girl vaporwave lo-fi hip hop. I guess it really is summer.

(I've been listening to saturn genesis's entire discography, but this is my favorite album.)

There’s a heat wave on here, so let’s chill with some lo-fi bossa nova.

I added a Hire Me page to the site. Not that I expect a big audience from this blog, but it's mostly so I can have something to link to on social media without linking directly to my resume or LinkedIn. That said, if any of my tech industry readers want to check it out, please do.

I've added a light theme to the blog's CSS which should be automatically selected if your system is set to use light mode. The original dark theme will be selected if your system is set to use dark mode.

This is something that improves accessibility, but there's also a practical reason: I myself use light mode. Like many folks with astigmatism, I find dark mode more difficult to read. The effect is worse with high contrast. I initially went with a darker color scheme for the site because I was going for a specific aesthetic, but chose a low contrast set of colors to minimize the impact. That was okay for a while, but I realized that I want a blog I can actually read even when my eyes get tired. And if it bothers me, there are almost certainly other people it bothers as well.

The new theme uses a paper-inspired color scheme to match the logo and overall site design. It's the sort of color scheme that I've started using in a lot of my text editors as well; I find it incredibly comfortable to read. The links are a dark red: an homage to my favorite color of fountain pen ink. I'm really pleased with how it came out.