Letters from the TildeVerse

Enough computer: small internet, old machines, and a politics of sufficiency

Fri, 21 Aug 2026 05:00:00 UTC

A fascinating blog post that overlaps to a considerable degree to what we're all about here on Ctrl-C Club. It also touches on some things I've been thinking (and trying to do) myself. With limited success, to be honest: it hasn't been easy to find new uses for old computers. But as long as they still work, I can keep trying.

talk: the P2P chat from 1983 that a VPN brought back to life

Fri, 21 Aug 2026 05:00:00 UTC

A fascinating write-up about chatting with other people online before even IRC. Seems relevant for tilde servers. Doubly so as I can't connect to tilde.chat's XMPP bridge right now, for some reason. (Edit: good thing Irssi on Ctrl-C is a thing. Forgot about it for a few days.)

P.S. Did you update your .plan and .project files lately?

The Wander Console

Thu, 11 Jun 2026 05:00:00 UTC

For all the effort put into newsfeeds, blogrolls and link pages, discovery on the small web remains difficult: a widely acknowlegded problem. That's why I was excited yesterday to learn of yet another tool made to help with that. The Wander Console is a wiki node for ordinary static websites enhanced with autodiscovery, able to hop from node to node and show you new pages without ever involving a server beyond loading the JavaScript files. I've already set one up for myself here; the code is hosted on Codeberg and very easy to use if you'd like to try.

anonymous-manifesto.txt

Thu, 28 May 2026 05:00:00 UTC

An especially delightful manifesto for the small web was just shared in the #ctrl-c channel of tilde.chat:

The good internet was never clean. It had broken images, dead mirrors, wrong clocks, handles with no faces, and pages that looked like they were assembled in a hurry by someone who cared more about the contents than the packaging. It was not frictionless. That was the point. Friction filtered tourists from operators.

Food for thought. Just saying.

SkeleSite Generator

Mon, 04 May 2026 05:00:00 UTC

Oops. Haven't updated this blog in over three months, and stuff has piled up. Even this entry is backdated. Anyway: I've added the first new toy in a while; a small, yet usable static site generator in a small shell script. There's a bit of a story, check it out! More news once I get around to using it for real.

Places to Telnet

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 06:00:00 UTC

Via tilde.news, I just found this interesting list of links, itself part of a whole site (albeit a small one) about the venerable protocol. It even mentions MUDs and other games in the same vein, along with how-tos and historical information.

The Vibes™

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 06:00:00 UTC

(cross-posted from Mastodon) brib makes excellent points here, except:

We do know how to build good software. We have in the past. Tech developed to keep Mars rovers semi-autonomous is now in every drone. We know exactly what to do but reject the idea, because step 1 is to limit scope. As for step 2? It's to buckle down and do it right, whether you apply engineering principles or good old craftsmanship. Then again, the "move fast and break things" attitude wasn't invented in the software industry. Capitalism fundamentally works that way.

On top of that, we still get the concept of intelligence wrong. In what sense are people "intelligent" when we fall for scams and con schemes so easily? I've come to the conclusion that being conned a couple of times makes you more immune not because you learn to see the trick (you literally can't, just like with stage magic) but because it humbles you. It makes you realize just how easily your oh-so-smart brain will fall for it every time.

JourNote is back!

Sun, 25 Jan 2026 06:00:00 UTC

It's been almost two years, but JourNote 2.0 is out, with one major change: now it runs in a system-wide directory by default, so you can access your journal and notes no matter what you're working on at the moment. Oh, and it has explicit Haiku support now!

(No, it didn't take me two years to do this. Just to get in the mood again.)

New versions of OutNoted and Scrunch Edit

Fri, 09 Jan 2026 06:00:00 UTC

It's been a while since I updated any of my utilities here (reorganizing the page is another story). But after three years, I finally picked up OutNoted and Scrunch Edit again and gave them a do-over, thanks to a new friend letting me know about an issue. Of course I took the opportunity to improve them in other ways, too. See their respective pages for details.

BrutalWiki mirror updates

Mon, 24 Nov 2025 06:00:00 UTC

More than half a year after reviving BrutalWiki, I finally got around to updating the project mirror on this site. That includes the text, logo and stylesheet, and re-adding the latest source archive. Will try to keep it more current in the future.

Eskild Hustvedt’s joy rediscovering Perl

Sun, 16 Nov 2025 06:00:00 UTC

A blog post that speaks to me on several levels. I have a bunch of friends who use Perl, and they all keep saying "Perl is dead", despite the fact that they use it, other people use it, and it's still the basis of many popular apps. Finally learned Perl myself this spring so I could swap code with them, but also because it's a unique language with unusual qualities. Been using POD to make man pages for a while anyway.

Linux Lane!

Sun, 16 Nov 2025 06:00:00 UTC

It's been more than half a year since my last update here. To make up for it, I added a whole new section to the site. It's a mirror, but fits in especially well here. As the old saying goes: Linux is a friendly operating system; it just chooses its friends well.

Ramblings about command-line interfaces

Mon, 21 Apr 2025 05:00:00 UTC

These days I finally remembered to write down a few words about why I like command-line interfaces, and my rules for making them. Couldn't figure out where to put this stuff, then remembered my writing page here. Enjoy!

Light mode on the home page!

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 06:00:00 UTC

Forgot to announce this yesterday: I added light mode to the site-wide theme, similar to the colors used right here in the news section. It's a new trick for me, and helps so much when doing work across multiple devices. Not to mention that for some people it's a serious accessibility issue. Hope this helps!

"Using (only) a Linux terminal for my personal computing in 2024"

Tue, 26 Nov 2024 06:00:00 UTC

A blog post (via lobste.rs) that might interest some people here.

Mobile devices and tilde servers

Thu, 15 Aug 2024 05:00:00 UTC

I just solved an old problem that was bothering me: some of my old D code now compiles under GDC. The fun part is, I did that over SSH from my tablet! It's kind of slow and awkward, but totally doable. Tilde servers rule.

Splitting screens

Fri, 28 Jun 2024 05:00:00 UTC

When connecting to a tilde server, it can be pretty helpful to use a terminal multiplexer. Much easier than having to connect twice, and juggle with multiple tabs or panes in my terminal emulator (for that matter, it can be useful to run a multiplexer locally, too). Conveniently, on Ctrl-C we have a full suite: Screen and tmux, plus the byobu front-end. I tried the latter first, because it has that fancy colorful status line, and uses the function keys. But that turned out to interfere with Midnight Commander, and from Android it's tricky to use function keys at all. Pretty sure there were other issues too, like with scrolling in certain apps.

For a while I just gave up, figuring that in case of need I can use Micro or NeoVim, both of which have built-in terminal emulators and window management. But seriously? There must be a better way. Sure enough, the old Screen is now much more capable than I remembered it, and it still has more intuitive keyboard shortcuts than the competition. Definitely worth another try. Note to self: check out known apps again from time to time, and don't just settle for doing things the hard way.

Today I learned

Mon, 24 Jun 2024 05:00:00 UTC

Okay, it's more like this month, but in the same spirit: did you know that here on Ctrl-C.club we have alternatives to all the usual applications? For example Vim and NeoVim, or Mutt and NeoMutt. So you can try both and see which you like best. It matters: for example vim works well in ConnectBot, nvim not so much. Both are fine in other terminal emulators.

In tangential news, it turns out Lynx comes bundled with comprehensive documentation that it displays if you start it without arguments, so you can learn a lot about it without even going online. Edit: by the way, did you know Lynx has a nice file manager built in? I keep forgetting. You can see it by passing a directory name on the command line.

A long-needed update

Sun, 23 Jun 2024 05:00:00 UTC

This site didn't work out as expected. While I made a lot of little apps and even added two new sections earlier this year, the writing section was neglected. Which is silly, because I've been doing a bunch of that, partly inspired by the Ctrl-Zine. This omission has now been rectified, with two new write-ups in their own section at the top, and another mirror of a popular old article. More to come!

Talk about timing

Mon, 13 May 2024 05:00:00 UTC

Once again dusting off my old projects paid off big time. A friend (who is also in Ctrl-C.club) liked one of the games I uploaded to Tildegit yesterday, and liked it so much he promptly made a reskin. Talk about validation. All the more reason to add new entries to the collection, and maintain the rest.

Revisiting my text-based Linux games

Sun, 12 May 2024 05:00:00 UTC

It's been more than three months since my last update, but I'm finally working on this website again. For now, baby steps: uploading some of my games for Linux terminals to tildegit.org, where people can play with the source code more easily. Plus, another online copy can't hurt.

OPML is underrated

Fri, 09 Feb 2024 06:00:00 UTC

A timely blog post that validates my recent work on OutNoted.

A refresh of Cozy Catalog

Sun, 04 Feb 2024 06:00:00 UTC

I barely touched Cozy Catalog after the second public release early last year, and it needed some updates. Finally got around to it today, and added toolbar icons, along with other UI enhancements. Hope this helps!

Reviving OutNoted

Tue, 30 Jan 2024 06:00:00 UTC

After a year-long break in development, my little outliner is back, and how! With a new major version, redesigned user interface and other improvements to be added soon. It's also on Tildegit now, if anyone wants to read the code, fork it or simply leave feedback. My other apps will also benefit from these improvements very soon. Good things all around.

Sun, 28 Jan 2024 06:00:00 UTC

For the past few years I've been working on a series of desktop tools. Naturally, I made some experiments with UI design. Let me tell you something.

You know the typical window with File / Edit / View / Help menus and a toolbar with icons? It exists for a reason. People who knew what they were doing refined it over many years. And then... a bunch of kiddies thought they were smarter. They started fooling around with hamburger menus. It's been downhill since.

Don't be like them. Want to experiment? Great. But start from the tried-and-true.

ToyEd 1.3 and native port

Tue, 23 Jan 2024 06:00:00 UTC

Not sure if anyone is reading this yet, but just in case: my text editor ToyEd just got a native Linux port, and a new release of the original edition to bring it in line with its younger sibling. Details on the homepage, but I have more plans for improvement, so no worries.

Announcing Clinklog Lite

Tue, 09 Jan 2024 06:00:00 UTC

In order to use Clinklog on Ctrl-C.club, I had to make a new, modified version. This is because Clinklog 2 generates a ton of web pages (easily dozens or hundreds once you have enough data), and here on the server we have a script called newstuff that checks what's new and updated in everyone's public directories. So many files at once would thoroughly swamp its feed, ruining things for everyone. Please use the Lite edition instead; documentation and everything coming soon.

Hello, world!

Mon, 08 Jan 2024 06:00:00 UTC

It took me way too long to set this up, but every site needs a news section, preferably with an RSS feed attached, so this is mine. It's also a testbed for the Lite edition of my pet SSG, so it's doubly useful. Not sure what I'm going to write here yet, but that's why you get a blank notebook first. Stick around.