nan0-sp1der

[nan0-sp1der]

Spiral Galaxy NGC 2566 © JWST

[nan0-sp1der]

[ i beg of you to pretend this is from the other blog thanky wankies ]

hi, mahaaal! i've been gone from this app for a while... hah, how have things been?

— @criskape

It is lovely hearing from you again, dear. All is well. It is all business as usual. I only hope you have been well, yourself. Thank you for reaching out.

[nan0-sp1der]

alstroemeria for the flower asks?

💐 25 flower asks

A vacation to either Moscow or rural Japan would be a pleasant, grounded deviation from my regular commutes to the cosmos or dimensions apart from the one I base my operations in. It would be an opportunity to explore my 'cultural heritage', as it was given by my creators. Moreover, Russian and Japanese are primarily two of the three languages I speak. This or, a specific but entirely separate location: The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It is a protected area in northeastern Alaska and is most notable for its sprawling biodiverse landscapes. A wide open space with plenty to ponder. Not to mention, it is a quiet, peaceful space. That is not something one finds easily these days.

[nan0-sp1der]

[nan0-sp1der]

💐 25 flower asks

rose - describe your crush.

cherry-blossom - do you believe in love at first sight?

daisy - what’s your best childhood memory?

daffodil - which colour suits you best?

peony - do you put more value in honour or truth?

iris - favourite 90s song?

sunflower - sun or moon?

narcissus - your best physical feature?

freesia - are you still friends with the person you considered your best friend two years ago?

orchid - favourite fruit?

violet - have you had your first kiss?

gypsophila - do you prefer many distant friends, or a few close friends?

gerbera - neon or pastel?

carnation - does true love exist?

alstroemeria - dream vacation?

anemone - were you ever interested in greek mythology?

cymbidium - sexuality?

rhododendron - what’s your biggest fear?

tulip - lucky number?

gladiolus - who do you look up to most?

snapdragon - favourite mythical creature?

hydrangea - proudest moment?

heather - what’s your favourite musical?

delphinium - what’s your star sign - does it suit you?

ginger - least favourite food?

[nan0-sp1der]

"Arrangement in Grey and Black"

[nan0-sp1der]

The Cat's Eye Nebula, NGC 6543 // Stephen Heliczer FRAS

[nan0-sp1der]

I am all but intrigued. I have no use for it myself, it is merely the sight of man being integrated with machine that catches my interest. Especially with machinery this advanced.

This one is... Titanium, no?

Greetings. We have not yet met, though I am well-informed of your existence. You may call me 'Nano-Spider'. With introductions out of the way, I would like to say I am curious about your prosthesis. HYDRA-issued, is it not? Such an assumption may be obvious, but I may as well ask for clarity's sake.

`Hello.`

...

`It is.. HYDRA issued, yes. Why are you curious about it?`

[nan0-sp1der]

House of Revolution, Nikšić, from Les Ruines Circulaires, Marie Sommer, 2015.

[nan0-sp1der]

Very well. May your return to solid ground be stable. Though, I am aware the inter-planetary railway system is considerably safer than any given lunar voyage on a traditional space craft.

Status update: on the moon.

Hope things are going well down home.

Not that it’s easy to find oneself in a situation worse than a lunar mausoleum with a haunted corpse…

[nan0-sp1der]

... Do you require aid in returning to Earth? I will admit, that sounds like a rather bewildering and marginally distressing situation.

Status update: on the moon.

Hope things are going well down home.

Not that it’s easy to find oneself in a situation worse than a lunar mausoleum with a haunted corpse…

[nan0-sp1der]

disappearing earth.

dialogue prompts from disappearing earth by julia phillips.

why do you have to be such a brat?

want me to tell you a story?

did i scare you?

could you help me? i've hurt my _____.

best friends do not abandon each other.

love means making compromises.

isn't anyone concerned about you?

i'm not a good influence.

don't roll your eyes.

how much longer can we do this?

family over everything.

is it serious?

you don't know, or you don't want to?

what do you think really happened to ____?

who's the 'type of girl' to do anything?

i'm not like you, but i understand you.

some people have nobody and nowhere.

i kept picturing you with ______.

whatever happened, i hope it ended quickly.

i'll take any gossip i can get.

you don't miss life here?

some people don't care if you're special. they'll punish you, anyway.

the police will hurt you, if they get the chance.

one mistake can cost you your life.

i'm the same. you know better than anyone, the way that i am.

will you at least promise to be careful?

for you, i'd do anything.

everyone looks better at a distance.

you've heard the news, then?

it's better not to speak of such things. what can we do about it all?

everyone says they saw it coming.

you're too young to understand what duty is.

this world was built for people to suffer.

let's talk about anything else.

you haven't heard of a text message?

you look just the same as you did.

i hope you choke.

it was a fling. not a very good one.

how did you sleep? any nightmares?

you can live another life. it isn't too late.

you know, you can be a real bitch.

there's always some new tragedy to discuss.

do you have a picture with you?

this sounds like village gossip.

is this really happening?

this is not real. this cannot be my life.

did you hear that? be quiet for a second.

do you remember the end of the story?

[nan0-sp1der]

BRIDGERTON! I gotta know. What's the hair texture like? Is that a wig? Somehow organic? Wires? Light? do you clean it? and how?

It is most definitely not organic. None of my person is, and truly could never be. The closest comparison I could make between my 'hair' and an existing object in reality would be carbon fiber. Using my ability to manipulate molecules to the smallest level possible, typically by taking carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere and making use only of the carbon bonded with those two oxygen molecules. It allows the structure to be light, rigid, and prevents it from obstructing my view during combat as it typically stays in the same place unless deliberately moved. All this, and yet it still feels the same as organic hair would.

Cleaning it... Is a bit of a different story. As I am a machine which operates on electricity, it is most likely not the wisest course of action for me to 'clean' it with water, or any other liquid forthat matter. The only other alternative is to physically scrape or exfoliate any debris out of the structure.

Have you ever seen a chinchilla taking a sand bath? Or any other rodent, for that matter (there are many that do)? It is what I must do. It is the safest possible means to remove any foreign substances, and aids in preventing further soilage in the future.

No, I will not give you a demonstration. You will never witness me doing this.

[nan0-sp1der]

On Celebrating Errors

Isn't it beautiful? The lovely formatted tables of register and stack contents, the trace of function addresses and parameters, the error message ... it's the most beautiful kernel panic I have ever seen.

Why on earth would I be so excited to see a computer crash? What could possibly be beautiful about a kernel panic?

This kernel panic is well-earned. I fought hard to get it.

This kernel panic came from a current NetBSD kernel, freshly compiled and running on Wrap030, my 68030 homebrew computer. It is the result of hours upon hours of work reading through existing code, scattered documentation and notes, writing and rewriting, and endless compiling.

And it's just the start.

As I've said before, a goal of this project has always been to build something capable of running some kind of Unix-like operating system. Now that I finally have all the necessary pieces of hardware, plus a good bootloader in ROM, it's time to give it a shot. I'm not that great with this type of programming, but I have been getting better. I might just be able to brute force my way through hacking together something functional.

It is hard.

There is some documentation available. The man(9) pages are useful, and NetBSD has a great guide to setting up the build environment for cross-compiling the kernel. There are some published papers on what some people went through to port NetBSD to this system or that. But there's nothing that really explains what all these source code files are, and which parts really need to be modified to run on a different system.

I had a few false starts, but ultimately found an existing 68k architecture, cesfic, which was a bare minimum configuration that could serve well as a foundation for my purposes. I copied the cesfic source directory, changed all instances of the name to wrap030, made sure it still compiled, then set about removing everything that I didn't need. It still compiled, so now it's was time to add in what I did need.

... how ... do I ... ?

This is where things get overwhelming very quickly. There is documentation on the core functions required for a new driver, there's documentation on the autoconf system that attaches drivers to devices in the tree, and there's plenty of drivers already to reference. But where to start?

I started by trying to add the com driver for the 16550 UARTs I'm using. It doesn't compile because I'm missing dependencies. The missing functions are missing because of a breaking change to bus.h at some point; the com driver expects the new format but the cesfic port still uses the old. So I needed to pull in the missing functions from another m68k arch. Which then required more missing functions and headers to be pulled in. Eventually it compiled without error again, but that doesn't mean it will actually run. I still needed to add support for my new programmable timer, customize the startup process, update hardware addresses, make sure it was targeting 68030 instead of 68040 ...

So many parts and pieces that need to be updated. Each one requiring searching for the original function or variable declaration to confirm expected types or implementation, then searching for existing usages to figure out what it needs ... which then requires searching for more functions and variable types.

But I got something that at least appeared to have all the right parts and compiled without error. It was time to throw it on a disk, load it up, and see what happened.

Nothing happened, of course. It crashed immediately.

I have no debugging workflow I can rely on here, and at this stage there isn't even a kernel console yet. All I could do was add little print macros to the locore startup code and see where it failed. Guess, test, and revise.

I spent a week debugging the MMU initialization. If the MMU isn't properly configured, everything comes to an abrupt halt. Ultimately, I replaced the cesfic machine-specific initialization code and pmap bootstrapping code with functions from yet another m68k arch. And spent another day debugging before realizing I had missed a section that had comments suggesting it wasn't for the 68030 CPU, but turned out to be critical for operation of kernel memory allocation.

Until this point, I was able to rely on the low-level exception handling built into my bootloader if my code caused a CPU exception. But with the MMU working, that code was no longer mapped.

So then came another few hours learning how to create a minimal early console driver. An early console is used by the kernel prior to the real console getting initialized. In this case, I'm using the MC6850 on my mainboard for the early console, since that's what my bootloader uses. And finally the kernel was able to speak for itself.

It printed its own panic.

The first thing the kernel does is initialize the console. Which requires that com driver and all the machine-specific code I had to write. The kernel is failing at its step #1.

But at least it can tell me that now. And given all the work necessary to get to this point, that kernel panic data printing to the terminal is absolutely beautiful.

[nan0-sp1der]

Ah... Well, it rather suits you, I reckon.

... Is the bow meant to be a permanent fixture?

Apparently it is now. I get no say in the matter because I am, to quote several people…

*sigh*

‘Evil pookie’

[nan0-sp1der]

[nan0-sp1der]

[OOC; Whole asks round]

2, 12, 13, 29

Whole Asks. Round.

answers in order...

2.) Well, I would argue which field of physics is my favorite is apparent by now, considering how often I publish my visual findings here. Astrophysics—a branch of astronomy that uses the principles of physics and chemistry to understand the universe and its contents—would be it. It occupies the bulk of my activity when I am not carrying out my duties at headquarters. 12.) I rather like the sound of a well-tuned piano. I admit, I take to 'tickling the ivories', as one may call it, every now and then (Rêverie, L. 68 and Gymnopédie No. 1 are some of my favorites to play). I also rather like the sound of rolling thunder. 13.) The smell of spent jet fuel, the terpenes found specifically in Arnica montana (or 'Mountain Arnica'), ozone as lightning causes the atmospheric temperature to rapidly fluctuate, and the smell of burning sucrose (furfural, maltol, and sotolone... or, caramel). 29.) Hm... A difficult question. What, really, is 'fictional' in this vast multiverse? If we are using E-289 as a baseline, though, I would wish for Phenex to be a real, living, flesh and blood creature. Not the creature from Greek mythology, but Phenex, a Goetic demon and a Great Marquis of Hell. The Lesser Key of Solomon reports he "teaches all wonderful sciences," and that he is "an excellent poet." Quite charming.