I have a few minutes to spare so thought I’d get a quick post in on random thoughts.
I recently took a break from Facetime to do some Internet learning and have to say I’m enjoying myself. It has been a while since I’ve done a bit of learning and this week I set up Ubuntu on an old computer just so I could surf the deep web. I’m not interested in the bad stuff or depraved nonsense, learning how to do it takes me back to the early days of the internet when it was more of an adventure and hadn’t been taken over by click-bait and sites wanting to sell you stuff. The internet was the wild west back in the late 90’s and the deep web certainly is the wild west. In addition to using a separate computer and Linux I also boot from a Tails USB which has the TOR browser included. It is slow as molasses but I like the thrill.
Using Linux I’m also reminded of my days in Japan when I partitioned a drive and installed Red Hat back in 2002. Linux was such a nightmare and it could take all day for me to figure out how to install the printer. I like using the command line to make things happen because one can never be a true computer nerd without using Linux and the command line to make things happen.
While I’m on the subject I’ve also taken the opportunity to learn more about my server. I installed an SSL Certificate which worked well but am having trouble actually getting the encryption to actually work and get the terrible red line through my https. If things were simple I could just follow the instructions but I have four blogs that I host on it and I haven’t figured out how to configure my domains, Synology DDNS and the stupid certificate so everything works as it should. Do I issue the certificate to the DDNS address from Synology or one of my domain names? If I press enough buttons I’m sure I can get it to work eventually.
I’ve also been surfing the WordPress.com blogs and am enjoying that. I’ve found that a big majority of WordPress users are college students and I like reading about their adventures. It does make me feel a bit old though seeing as these people are from the class of 2018 when I graduated eons ago. It makes me think how quickly time goes and I’m very glad I’ve kept a journal for half of my life. If you take a look at the month drop down my own writing goes back to 1987 since I imported all my journals to this blog. A part of me wonders if this is a wise idea but I’ll tell you why I do it.
When I was travelling in Ireland I was riding a rented bike out in the countryside. I came across an old graveyard that was completely overgrown and seemingly forgotten about. These were people who had families, loved and were loved, had children and enjoyed drinking a beer. Now they are gone and nobody remembers them. I want my descendants to know me and remember me. Our society is always so focused on the here and now they neither remember the past or can contemplate the far off future. I expect my descendants will be able to pull me up in a hologram which speaks these very words so it is up to me to give them the content! It is also up to me to preserve the past and get it in computer format so they can easily pull up information on their ancestors.
Now going back to computer nerd mode I have to ensure that this blog survives through the centuries. I have backups and will teach my own children all I know regarding computers and the internet. I also have the WayBack Machine recording all of this. But eventually WW3 will happen and all the backups are eliminated – well then I’m hoping in the next 40 years or so comes up with a way to store stuff on the moon or Mars. These also could be hit by an asteroid and information wiped out so perhaps we could find a way to program energy or light itself and send it into deep space. I suppose this could also get wiped out by a black hole or a super nova……
So yea, I’m thinking ahead and I hope this all provides some entertainment for my descendants in the year 4034 who hopefully will be exploring the universe and have involved into spectacular beings that look back at me as a slightly more than a sophisticated monkey. At least I’ll be the monkey that preserved the information and when they go to search I’m the end of the line when it comes to their ancestors who address them directly.
Descendants – In today’s news we as a human species still have a hard time empathizing with others. Two candidates running for the office of President of the United States have called Syrian refugees rabid dogs and want to create a database to track Muslims in our country. They are appealing to the stupid members of our society with their stupid ideas. History is repeating itself again and it baffles me that although we have universities and many places of higher learning we still cannot get past these religious differences that existed two thousand years ago when nobody knew anything about anything. Peace, love and being kind to everyone is the only way forward and is the way things should be. But no, these monkeys will actually have people vote for them for saying these idiotic things so perhaps we really are no more than slightly more advanced than monkeys after all.
And that’s all I have to say about that – Forrest Gump
