Month: March 2019

A year later

This blog is one year old today. I founded it on Saint Patrick’s Day, last year. That’s why there’s that little shamrock on the first entry.

I really haven’t posted as much as I intended, here, over the last year.

My life underwent such huge changes, mostly unexpected. I ended my 11 year residency in South Korea and moved back to Southeast Alaska. I’m still in a bit of transition in terms of career, and meanwhile living off my savings.

I took a break from the OGF admin team last summer, then worked really hard the last few months. I have become very frustrated with trying to do admin on that site. Indeed, I have become deeply disillusioned – mostly with myself, and my inability to maintain a charitable and good-willed mindset in dealing with a never-ending onslaught of faceless trolls and juvenile idiots. I’d rather cope with a classroom of unruly 7th graders.

In a few days, I’ll be traveling to my mother’s in Queensland for a few weeks: a long crossing of the Pacific. I’ll be constrained by obligations to relatives, so I’m taking a leave-of-absence from OGF and geofiction. I have resigned the admin position permanently. It will be hard to let go, but I feel I must do so for my own peace of mind.

Music to map by: Olga Bell, “Пермский Край.”

Git topo

I finally got tired of dealing with Windows 10 drama, and decided to rebuild my preferred Ubuntu Linux desktop, as I’d been using in Korea before moving away last July.

I’ve made good progress on that, and have JOSM up and working again, and all that. But I became aware, as I was migrating my data and files, that I have a lot of files I would rather not lose, especially related to my geofiction. I need some systematic means of keeping stuff backed up.

I handled the issue of backup and redundancy for my creative writing years ago, when I started storing all my drafts and notes in google docs. It’s convenient, too, because I can get to my writing no matter where I am.

But I have no such system for all my .osm files for the geofiction. Especially important are the .osm files I use for drawing the topo layer, since those are never uploaded anywhere except temporarily at the time of an update.

I suppose I could just copy the files. But I decided I needed to store them in some kind of version-controlled space. About two years ago, I’d had them in a git repository but it was just copied out to an extra harddrive. I used git for some other stuff I used to do, so it wasn’t that hard to figure out.

I decided this time to try something different – I made a repository on github and decided to put my topo .osm files there. If I get in the habit of regularly updating the git repository, I’ll always have those topo files, no matter what happens to my computer or where I am. Further, if ever I go in the direction of wanting to collaborate on drawing topo files, this will make it really easy (assuming the other person is up to dealing with checking things out of a git repository). [UPDATE: this was a short-lived effort. Subsequently the files are just files, again, but they live on one of my HRATE servers]

If ever there will be a truly collaborative geofiction “planet” with a master topo layer, this might be a way to maintain that information, since practically speaking it can’t and shouldn’t be uploaded to the map server. Just an experiment, I guess, and meanwhile I’ll have a reliable backup of my work.

Music to map by: 선미, “가시나.“

Subway Philosophy

Someday, I will return to work on my great metropolis, Villa Constitución. And when that day comes, I shall take on the huge project of refactoring the complex subway system I designed.

When designing subways, one should have a philosophy of subways in mind. Here is an essay every subway designer must read: “Stoppism: Retrospects and Prospects“.*

*Footnote for the dense: the linked article is satire – a gorgeous, brilliant joke.

Music to design subways by: Silvio Rodríguez, “Santiago de Chile.”

admin blues

<rant>

It’s all pretty depressing.

I try to be a competent and fair and innovative admin on OpenGeofiction.

Half the users hate me – I know this for an actual fact, because I see what gets said on the OGF unofficial discord channel.

And now I’m feuding with the “boss” too. I can’t win – I’m stuck in the middle. I’m not paid for this. So why am I doing it?

Perhaps I should go back to trying to build my own geofiction server and forget this. Although I derive a lot of motivation and inspiration from the OGF community, trying to be an engaged and active member feels like more suffering than benefit, some days. I would do better to not try to change or “fix” things, but that’s not in my character.

I don’t know if the creator of OGF and I really share much in terms of vision. To initial appearances, he seems committed to the “open-” part of the name, and to open source projects and concepts. Yet upon further examination, he seems utterly uninterested in trying to go anywhere toward working out a more scalable and/or sustainable governance model for the site. And for any sizable internet community (or real community for that matter), governance is actually important. So in the end, it’s just a personal fiefdom. I can feel sympathetic to that… – that’s probably how I would set my own site up. But then, what’s the “open” about? Is it just because he used the OSM stack? It feels like false advertising: “Bait and switch.”

This is just a rant.

</rant>

Music to admin by: Robbie Fulks, “America Is A Hard Religion.”