Random discoveries



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Author	Random discoveries (Read 26926 times)
Bolkonskij Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023	on: August 21, 2024, 10:09 Yesterday the wife and I took our kids to the local zoo. We went there by train. Nothing remarkable in that. What was interesting, however, was that on the way back we ran into an old phone booth at the train station. The phone is long gone, instead they've put shelves into it and declared it a book sharing space. So you can pick whatever book you find interesting and/or place your old ones in there. Do you guys have something like that in your hometown too? Because I knew we had an one hour train ride ahead, I went and picked the next best English-speaking book. (because I want to improve my English) It happened to be "The Hotel New Hampshire" by John Irving from the 80's, of which I knew absolutely nothing (neither book nor author) and I started reading it on the way home. Which in turn made me think about how we seem to have mostly eliminated such random discoveries from our lives? Maybe it's just me. But I noticed that a long time ago I started to buy books after checking reviews & recommendations, deciding beforehand whether "it'll be interesting". It's the safe route to avoid disappointments - but of course, the same way I rob myself of random discoveries / many new impressions. That extends to travelling. Like everybody else, we have a navigator system in our car. So when we want to go someplace, we go straight from A to B, fastest route. We don't have to search for the right way anymore, don't cruise through small cities along the main road asking locals for the way. Random discoveries are reduced to a minimum. Same with our computers. I used to bi-weekly visit local computer shops just to browse their shelves, to check what's new and on sale and sometimes I'd just randomly pick up some software because the price was right and it looked interesting. (this is how I discovered Europa Universalis II for the Mac btw, one of my favorites) What I'm saying is that after randomly picking up this book I've had a feeling I didn't have in a long time. Do you guys also feel we've mostly eliminated the random discoveries in our lives or is it just me? Anything you recently discovered randomly / by accident? Do we need more such random discoveries in our lives or is it a good thing we've gotten rid of them?

wove 1024 MB Posts: 1363	Reply #1 on: August 21, 2024, 16:03 There is an entire organization devoted to small free neighborhood libraries. < https://littlefreelibrary.org> Of course a newer browser is needed There are a good number of these stations setup around town. People are very playful with them. One setup a couple blocks down the street is setup up with children’s books and the bottom shelf is devoted to kids toys. This ensures that the folks who maintain it always have kids being kids in front of their house. When your kids are grown and gone it is a real delight in watching kids playing. A couple summers ago we went out to visit a sone in Colorado, a journey on main interstate highways that takes about 12 hours to drive, but we took the back roads and made it in two days. We stopped at Car Henge <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carhenge>. It is in the middle of nowhere in Nebraska. It is pretty neat the British built something similar only they made it out of stone. At Car Henge we ran into a couple from Mississippi who were on their way to Seattle Washington to visit their kids. The fellow joked that their kids said they would pay for the trip if they could get there without driving on the main/direct highways. He then laughed and said, “Goofy kids still have no clue and it is a safe bet they do not have enough money to pay for the trip. We are taking the byways anyway.” A very nice aspect of retirement is you finally have time to explore all those delightful out of way places and really enjoy simple mundane adventures.

ovalking 128 MB Posts: 199	Reply #2 on: August 21, 2024, 20:02 A few phone boxes in the UK have also been converted to book exchanges, although I've not experienced one myself yet. There are still a few boxes around with working phones, mainly in villages, but so many have disappeared. Ironically, I recently had the opportunity to obtain some books from a library closure. Although it was an IT based library, I found no Mac related publications except an Applescript one. Nevertheless I grabbed as many books as I could carry. They ranged from useful knowledge (TCP/IP J umpstart) to the intriguing (The Practice of Statistics) or just random discoveries (Freedom from Command & Control). I'm reading this last one now, and although it's completely outside my zone, I'm still reading!†
Last Edit: August 22, 2024, 12:32 by ovalking
MTT 256 MB Posts: 394 SSW7 Oldtimer	Reply #3 on: August 22, 2024, 06:04 Random discoveries are most certainly a bonus to anyone's life -if they're of a positive nature anyway Finding an interesting and unexpected book, is one of those positive experiences. We don't have phone-booth free libraries in our village. We do however have several of those smaller box libraries scattered about and they are very similar in appearance to the 1st picture on that page wove had linked to in his post. There are five such boxes that are within an easy walk from where I live, and two I pass daily on a routine walk to our village CBD. Seems like we're not so unique in the antipodes, as I had thought Our free libraries usually have books (of course) and sometimes DVD's and audio CD's, and rarely, the odd piece of tech. Today, I picked up Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. In hard cover, a 1978 reprint. Printed on high quality paper. I've (mostly) read the Tales in ePub format, but this is so much nicer. A couple of days ago from our local free library I got the TV mini series on DVD, BBC's adaption of "Smiley's People" by John le Carré. I'd seen the BBC adaption of "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy". This one which I hadn't seen, carries on from where TTSS left off. Excellent viewing. Such a well done story. Free tech? A couple of weeks back a Digitech 5MP USB Microscope - complete boxed set with software turned up in the box... No idea why it was there, but I brought it home... Random discoveries are the best

scouter 64 MB Posts: 81 Retired IT Administraor	Reply #4 on: August 23, 2024, 15:51 We have a few old phone boxes as sharing library's around where I live in Faloumuth, Cornwall Christopher

MTT 256 MB Posts: 394 SSW7 Oldtimer	Reply #5 on: September 01, 2024, 08:51 I guess software discoveries can fall into the "random" category, too Lately I've been revisiting the Mozilla browser. Specifically "Wamcom Mozilla", and running it on Mac OS 8.6 on a beige G3. I remembered back in the early 2000's running Wamcom and having some add-ons that I used with it; an early Adblock and a proxy switcher. So, off to the Web Archive to see if I could track them down. I did find them, but I also made several more random finds during my search, which could further enhance my Mozilla experience in 2024. There were hundreds of 3rd party plugins and themes made for Mozilla back then. The Web Archive's Wayback Machine thankfully has managed to save a few of them as downloads. Here's a pic of one that's relevant to S7T, a BBcode plugin for Mozilla. It works a treat here. Now if only someone would fix that Underline code And another nice find: A Solitaire plugin for Mozilla. This has 27 solitaire games, showing Klondike in the screenshot, plus its list of available games. I also downloaded several themes (skins). Currently enjoying the "walnut" theme and Wamcom Mozilla.
Last Edit: September 02, 2024, 03:04 by MTT
Bolkonskij Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023	Reply #6 on: September 01, 2024, 17:37 Hah! Those are great finds, Mike. Any reasons other than nostalgia to prefer Mozilla over Classilla ? The add-ons sound very nice and your G3's browser sure looks like an 80's American station wagon with the fake wood panels :-D What's the matter with the underline code? (sorry, probably slipped my mind?)

MTT 256 MB Posts: 394 SSW7 Oldtimer	Reply #7 on: September 02, 2024, 02:58 Wamcom Mozilla - How many ways do I love thee While improvements were made to Classilla, they removed features from it that I still wanted, if I was to use a Mozilla based browser on OS 8/9. Namely support for Adblock or any easy way to add addon plugins and themes. So, to continue to use the features I wanted, I stayed loyal to Wamcom and not Classilla. As busted as the old browser is, it still works fine in more forgiving sites, like S7T. Ah, the "underline code" issue was discussed a while back in the bugs thread. Santa left no us pressies that year While Bold and Italic codes work, underline does not, as the under-the-hood parsing of BBcode to HTML generates incorrect tags.
Last Edit: September 02, 2024, 08:46 by MTT
wove 1024 MB Posts: 1363	Reply #8 on: September 02, 2024, 04:28 Quote from: “MTT” How many ways do I love thee I can relate to getting hooked on a browser. Once you find a workflow that seems easy and natural to the way you like to work, it can be difficult and uncomfortable to switch to another approach.
Last Edit: September 02, 2024, 04:30 by wove
MTT 256 MB Posts: 394 SSW7 Oldtimer	Reply #9 on: September 03, 2024, 01:52 Not exactly "hooked", I've lately been re-visiting these browsers, including Classilla, and trying to get them to do stuff that I recall they were capable of back in the day. This came about recently on the Mac Garden with myself and Jatoba (who also posts here) with getting Classilla to do some basic things that should have been possible. My finding was that although Classilla was a more "modernized" version derived from Wamcom code, it had dropped features from it that are still useful. The obvious one's I suppose are an inability to install 3rd party addons easily, if at all. It omits some menus that are present in Wamcom and it dropped Chatzilla from its repertoire of being the "Swiss Army Knife" of internet software. In conclusion, Classilla had become a lesser version of itself. Now that's not all bad, and Classilla is still a good browser and it did eventually become stable enough for reliable use. But I think grandpa Wamcom is still pretty neat too, and I enjoy the funky features that didn't make it into Classilla, more. It's been an interesting re-visitation, neither of which I'd consider using as a main browser, in 2024. Nostalgia? maybe, but not really. For fun? certainly.
Last Edit: September 03, 2024, 03:05 by MTT
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