Over the past couple weeks, I decided to get serious again about learning #Rust and I have ported my chatbot scripting language #RiveScript over to Rust. This brings me full circle again because RiveScript, in 2005, originally used .rs for its own file extension! www.kirsle.net/rivescript-i...

I can finally say "I run Arch Linux, btw" The occasion was I was playing with A.I. tools and it said my nVIDIA driver was too outdated, which on Debian Stable, I can't do a lot about that without 'breaking' my system. I considered Fedora, but I dislike how they've been treating X11 recently.

20 Year Challenge (2006 -> 2016 -> 2026)

I gave myself another haircut. 💇 I kept the curls on top alone to grow them out some more, they look a bit more compact while wet.

My favorite obscure feature that actually worked on Skype: if you made a typo, you could fix it by writing a regular expression! Example: s/tpyo/typo/ And Skype would actually go and edit your previous message to apply the regexp. I talk like that to my nerdy friends and was surprised it worked!

Throwback Thursday to New Year's Eve, 1999, when I survived the end of the world event known as Y2K.

My first ever gift from my nephew! He's turning 4 next month.

Earlier this month, I went on "It's a Small World" at Disney World—my favorite ride, & one of the few songs you'll hear me sing along to as I know every word—and there was a secret new third verse added to the song! It took some research to find the video about it: www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fKU...

We've just hit a major milestone: nonshy.com now has 10,000 certified members! 🎊🎉 The site has grown primarily by word of mouth, so we couldn't have done it without you! 🙏 nonshy was launched on August 30, 2022 and reached 10K members after just 3⅓ years! 🤯 Thanks all! Here's to 10K more! 🥂

I managed to grab it from the Internet Archive, just seconds before it seems to have been pulled down. 🤔 Not to worry, I'll host a copy on my blog for now: www.kirsle.net/tmp/60minute... In case the Internet Archive comes back, the link I got it from was here: archive.org/download/60-...

We need more of this! "So you wouldn't come to this committee and say something that you can't prove. I know. I know you wouldn't do that. But you did." www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-XB...

Some new mushrooms popped up in my yard now. I've identified that the first one at least is called a shaggy mane. #Shroomsky #FungiFriends #mycology

Think it's enough to keep some left over after the trick or treater's? 💀 I forgot how much candy I bought last year but they nearly cleared me out!

I don't always post #Shroomsky, but when I do, it's to document the fungi that's growing in my back yard. According to a Google Lens search, these may be a kind of Russula mushroom. #FungiFriends #mycology

I showed up to my first protest today! #NoKings Oregon City. It was surprisingly a bit emotional to see so many people out there, and cars honking in support as they drove by. 10/10, would definitely recommend going to one of these if you haven't gotten out there yet!

I did archery last weekend for a friend's birthday party. I've done this probably fewer than 10 times in my life. I took a picture of my target after the 1st and last round (37 rounds in total!) I may have gotten a proper bullseye once, but I hit the general area enough to fully cut the middle out!

There's a pigeon party in my yard. (I'm not sure what kind of bird really, I've usually called them doves). Usually at most two of them come around to collect bird seed dropped from the feeder above, but it looks like they've told all their friends about it now too.

It's kind of adorable seeing posts on r/Neocities asking for basic help with their websites, like not knowing how to apply a CSS :hover effect or show a random image with JavaScript. It reminds me of when I was first learning HTML, way back in 1999! I'm just happy to see kids learning to code again.

I've built a "modern retro home page" to host on Neocities. Check it out! noahs.site I've been making websites since 1999 at age 12, and the modern resurgence of the Indie Web movement and Neocities bringing back the old Web has me nostalgic. I'll be posting my "era correct" old artwork on mine!

Inspired by the Indie Web movement and the resurgence of sites like Neocities, I've dusted off a cringe old website I built as a kid (last touched 2003) and put it back online. It's about a childhood story I wrote, ca. 12-15yo, inspired by all my favorite things. 1/2 🧵 landofnoreturn.neocities.org

Want to party like it's 2006? SpaceHey is a modern MySpace clone and it's so nostalgic. Do any of y'all remember MySpace? That site was my whole childhood, before Facebook started the trend of bland social media. Check out my profile page: spacehey.com/kirsle

I had a random memory come back from my slovenly youthful days, where I'd build whole towers, castles and fortresses around my computer made from empty soda cans that I had accumulated. 😅 Mtn Dew was my favorite, I'd go thru at least 4 cans per day. Wild to think about! Water is my favorite now.

lol mastodon.social/@aboutsignal...

I was feeling nostalgic tonight and installed Windows XP in a virtual machine. I got old-school AOL Instant Messenger set up on a RetroAIM server, and I dusted off my old Perl chatbot code (from back in 2004!) and signed it on to AIM as well. It's crazy to think that WinXP is now a "Retro OS" 1/3

Somebody asked me recently about how to break into software development as a career. I wrote a blog post with the advice that worked for me and others I met during my career. Pick a popular language, write an open source project that you can show off, and get hired. www.kirsle.net/how-to-get-i...

Reskeet with spectacles, nerd.

Happy Pride Month! 🏳️‍🌈 With thousands of members of the LGBT+ community on nonshy.com (including the founder himself), plus thousands more allies, nonshy stands in support of our brothers & sisters & enbies in all marginalized communities and we provide a safe space away from bigotry & hate speech.

I don't always post #bloomsky but when I do it's to show off the various #flowers and trees that came with my house. Here are a few so far this spring:

I got my new glasses today 🤓

Wanna see one of the first websites I ever created? www.kirsle.net/memories/syr... It's a Myst & Riven fan site I created when I was 13, and is the oldest website of mine I was able to recover from the wayback machine.

Feeling cute, won't delete later.

A top Democratic congressman goes off during a DOGE hearing and calls out Elon for trying to cut Social Security. More of this please.

With the daily barrage of news stories coming out (at "muzzle velocity," as Steve Bannon once put it), it's nice when somebody does a recap and highlights some of the best examples from recent events. Senator Murphy highlights the past 6 weeks of corruption: www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyco...

I found this cool (but scary) site: www.project2025.observer As you all should know if you've been paying any attention at all to the news, Project 2025 is indeed the agenda for this administration and all those EO's that had been rapidly coming out are *directly* from the P2025 playbook.

"I have long held the belief that if you're not genuinely excited by something yourself, then you can't expect anyone else to be. I hope you're as intrigued by these new discoveries as we've been." —Richard Vander Wende (Game Director, Riven)

Also, to spread the word: check out www.25and.me which is a great resource to comb through Project 2025, sorted by the issues you care about, with page number references in their playbook so you can read the full context yourself. It is confirmed that P2025 *is* the agenda of this administration.

I suddenly find myself in need of some new local friends after losing my One friend who still lives in the area. I baited him by mentioning That Billionaire's salute at the inauguration, to see if he would defend and rationalize it. Unfortunately, he responded *exactly* how I feared he would. 🙄

It was haircut day today! My hair was so curly that you couldn't tell before, but it was long enough to reach past my nose!

Okay I hate generational divide bullshit but “vertical video” being the top search term for gen z on pornhub is the funniest shit I’ve seen all week.

Some cozy Christmas decorations my partner and I just finished putting together. 🎄

In the current protocol war of ActivityPub (Mastodon, Pixelfed, Friendica, Ghost, PeerTube, etc.) vs. AT Protocol (Bluesky)... I think AT is currently winning on the regular old usability front. I am a massive nerd and ActivityPub is not great even from my opinion, it's not a replacement for X. 1/3

In a society obsessed with control, nudity is rebellion. The idea that nudism is apolitical is utopian. As long as bodies are judged and policed, nudity will always be radical.

this podcast is a pretty thorough primer (tho they also talk about activitypub, which is similar but also NOT) youtu.be/-R9CWq5CBlk?...

The real news we're not hearing!

This happened because of the immediate public outcry. We won’t grow numb to this!

I need to get a proper stereoscope to enjoy these. 😅

Protests have been filed for presidential election results in 5 NC counties. We are also exploring next steps to learn more about election results in PA, AZ, OH, MT and many other states. Please continue to support us in striving for transparency into the 2024 election. #Transparency #GiveEveryDay

Elections have to be verifiable to be trustworthy. SMART Elections is researching election irregularities so we can have confidence & not wonder if our results are accurate. Our work relies on you. Please donate today! #GiveEveryDay #Transparency fundraising.fracturedatlas.org/smart-elections

The Anti-Christ came and went, but no one noticed because he wasn't worse than the current state of the world already is. The rapture followed, but no one went to Heaven, so we didn't notice that either. We've been living in Hell for the last 5 years, and no one has noticed, yet.