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Welcome to the personal website of Davis Remmel. I try to put interesting stuff here, so please look around.

Blue links will keep you on this site; brown links will take you elsewhere. Hover over yellow stuff to read secrets. This site is best paired with a chill, introspective ambiance.

I am not a member of LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, or any corporate social media. I did recently join Mastodon. This site doesn't have bogus terms of service that sell you out to any nitwit with a nickel.

I am available for employment as a programmer/sysadmin. If you find the information on this site useful, please consider purchasing copies of my software or making a donation.

About

My primary goal is to discover as much as possible about the Universe, imitating it with computational models. Some of my findings have been documented in Projects. Miscellaneous and old writings are uploaded to Posts. Interesting documents and FOIAs can be found in Letters.

I am an enthusiastic proponent of Free Software because we can't have a free society without controlling the computers that control us. I've supported Bernie Sanders and Howie Hawkins; please vote with me to elect people like them and put honest representatives in power. Knowing how wrong this world is breaks me into tears, and so does the grandeur of Nature but in a different kind of way.

Computing drives my inspiration, philosophical and spiritual beliefs. Currently hacking in Smalltalk and Python, I am a capable programmer in lots of languages. My favorites are those which recurse and reflect, because I find their symmetries and semantics simple, and therefore beautiful.

I live in rural Wisconsin, trying to envision my ideal reality, identifying the differences, and nudging the present direction here and there. I've spent time at the Free Software Foundation, and was a programmer sysadmin before that, but the real work I want to perform is the kind of research that takes 8 years of thinking, without any interest in profiteering. These kind of research dollars have mostly dried up, plus the cost of entering academia is prohibitively high, so for now I am pursuing projects in my own ambitions and curiosities.

The two projects I'm proudest of are reMarkable Connection Utility (RCU), which has the paid support of thousands of users, and my research of Gemini 4, which has produced a lecture and yet-to-be giant dome film. I manage to get by with some tools and an industrial workbench, dreaming of access to sophisticated equipment and larger spaces.

Supporting My Work

If you find the information on this site useful, please consider making a donation in any amount, or purchase copies of my software.

Contact

Please send mail to d@visr.me. My public key's fingerprint is 49D4 B5BF AA4B D357 3EA4 10CA FB0A 3412 F6A7 A54F (but do verify this through another channel).

Links

Below is where I put interesting things I find on the Web.

• Happy birthday, RCU. You're four years old today. 2024-09-05
• Referring to the talk I gave last month about Gemini 4, Words with Nerds producer Cheshire Cat Comedy wrote:

  Truly one of the best Words with Nerdses we've had. Final presenter and "guy who likes to get into stuff" Davis Remmel gave us a masterclass in leaving no stone unturned in the pursuit of answers about puzzling photographs from space...

  Facebook, 2024-08-18
• Re: Texas Sues General Motors, Alleging Illegal Selling of Driver Data, Hah! Stallman was right, again, and this is exactly why I pulled my OnStar fuse many years ago. 2024-08-13
• I'm looking for work. If you could use a GNU/Linux/FreeBSD admin and web/Python/Qt programmer, please get in contact. 2024-07-25
• I wrote a short post about how to improve the SiriusXM web player, to prevent it from maxing out CPU/RAM and keep playing after some hours of listening. 2024-07-07
• I made this ASCII art for LibrePlanet 2024. It will be displayed on the FSF's VT220 during their open house tomorrow night. 2024-05-02
• "Where is on down the line? How far away? Tell me I'm okay." I hope someone else finds "Hammond Song" by The Roches as beautiful as I do. It helps me cope with irrevocable decisions, an uncertain path, and trusting that it will all work out. I've been on both sides of this song. 2024-04-29
• I was listening to Gorilla vs Bear's SiriusXM show, and he played "Hell of a Ride" by Nourished By Time. It's one of the best things to ever grace my ears. Headphones required. 2024-03-31
• Julian Assange is at risk of being extradited to the United States for exposing US war crimes in Afghanistan, among other crimes of the US government. As people who have free speech, we must defend it. We cannot allow Assange to be the victim of political retribution for exposing the truth. If you are a US citizen, please call your representative and tell them to urgently support H.R. 934. 2024-02-10
• UAP: Plasmas in the Thermosphere. Good analysis from NASA broadcast footage. Shame they didn't mention Martyn Stubbs, who put this footage out decades ago. How could they leave out the best photograph ever of this phenomena, GT4-37149-039? Only a single mention of Gemini 4 at all. 2024-02-08
• If any orcas are reading this: keep up the good work! 2023-11-13.
• I changed GPG keys. My new key replaces the old one, which is now revoked. 2023-10-24
• Today is the final day of DVD Netflix. I really enjoyed the service, but there will never be such a grand library of quality media available for such convenience or low cost. I wish more people had seen it that way; physical media must live. 2023-09-29
• I'm really glad that Bill Hicks existed. I never knew him, but I sure feel like I did. yewtu.be, 2023-08-09
• Five articles you should read: 1. COINTELPRO Techniques for dilution, misdirection and control of a internet forum. 2. Twenty-Five Rules of Disinformation. 3. Eight Traits of the Disinformationalist. 4. How to Spot a Spy (Cointelpro Agent). 5. Seventeen Techniques for Truth Suppression. 2023-06-29
• US Citizens: Call your representative and tell them to support H.R. 2961: Audit the Pentagon Act of 2023. Call your Senators and tell them to support S. 2054: A bill to ensure that the Department of Defense achieves a clean audit opinion on its financial statements. An insane amount of corruption hides in their black budgets! 2023-06-23
• I support Marianne Williamson for President because her articulation of our becoming the highest expression of ourselves is the spirit of America. Her understanding of love, healing, and oneness are virtues we must elect because they are moral and just, and I wish to see them manifest through America's laws and politics. 2023-06-17
• "Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what's inside you, to make your soul grow." Kurt Vonnegut via Reddit; 2023-05-29
• If you care about press freedom, make some noise about Julian Assange; The Guardian, 2023-05-05
• CIA Officer Frank Snepp Discusses Planting Stories in Vietnam. yewtu.be, 2023-04-16
• I posted a new development version of RCU to the RCU-Develop mailing list. If no major issues are found, it will go on the official download page soon. 2023-04-12
• "Reality is a museum for God." Andrew Engelbrecht, 2022-02-08
• The Rambling Rubbisher is genuinely a good person. He bikes around, picking up litter and geotagging the dump bins on OpenStreetMap. You should support him and others alike. 2022-01-17
• Frederick Douglass wrote, "the limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." Nader said, "you have all kinds of marches, demonstrations, protests. And they never direct this energy to 535 people, senators and representatives, who have been given enormous power, the sovereignty of the people in the Constitution. They’ve been delegated enormous power, and they turn around, and a majority of them sell that power to the highest corporate bidders and corporate lobbyists." Davis thinks, "computers ought to be tools to guide a civil and cohesive society." Google shows unrelated results. 2021-12-24
• Why have I been quiet for a few weeks? I moved to Boston! Exciting times are ahead. 2021-11-12
• "Microsoft Exchange Autodiscover protocol found leaking hundreds of thousands of credentials" by "blithely" (wink) sending them in plaintext across the Internet, and I bet 99.99% of them ended up in Utah.. theregister.com, 2021-09-22
• In the news today: nothing new. Internet-connected build systems are easily cracked into, and developers increasingly prefer temporary, proprietary chat over long-form archives. Fad-driven development has got to stop; it hurts everyone, but users get shafted the most. 2021-09-16
• Congress doesn't respond to the rest of Congress, let alone informed individual citizens. "If members of Congress aren’t listening or responding except to commercial lobbyists and some causes that happen by gut-wrenching tragedy to be in the news, Congress just becomes a stone-walling dictatorship for lawlessness, servicing the always welcomed lawless, self-enriching plutocracy." commondreams.org; 2021-07-13
• This is a very important article from ProPublica about how the ultra-wealthy practice tax-avoidance schemes (the first article in a months-long series). As stated best by Bernie Sanders, "billionaires should not exist." Please write to your congressperson to tax them out of existence. 2021-06-08
• The missing page has been found (no thanks to my FOIA requests) and Analysis and Assessment of Gateway Process is complete. I just wish it wasn't Vice because their article is garbage. Their printing the page on blotter paper is in very poor taste and shows the author may not take seriously enough the drug exampled. vice.com, 2021-04-13
• I have photographic evidence that Richard Stallman is gentile with ladies. 2021-03-27
• New RCU is posted and I'm in the process of sending emails. Part of me thinks I should use a different email account, but the other part thinks that I ought to squeeze the ProtonMail "Professional" package for its (supposedly) unlimited sending limits. 2021-01-31
• RCU has passed over 800 sales. I just released a new development version on the download page: d2021.001(a). If no testers report problems (thank you to those who do), I will clean up the documentation and officially release this version. 2021-01-22
• I greatly appreciate Glenn Greenwald's reporting for calling out hypocrisy and censorship in mainstream media. I don't care whether it's in the context of Biden-bad or Trump-bad—I don't subscribe to political cults—it must be recognized how censored our Web is, and how self-censored mainstream reporters are! Our society keeps getting shafted by the wealthy elite, and lied to by our society's "eyes and ears." We have to stop these cycles and take control of our media, but most of all we must each uphold the moral virtue of honesty, not just to others, but to ourselves. 2020-10-29
• Everything is going according to plan...RCU sales are good (220 users!), I'm wrapping up another update, and soon I'll be able to have some space to work on my handwriting recognizer. Oh, what a year this has been. 2020-10-27
• So far, RCU has been a success, gaining over 100 users in the past month with three software releases. The latest version adds support for ink colors, PDF annotations and layers, and fixes lots of annoying things about the previous version. A big "thank you" from me to everyone who has supported my work, or who have helped test. 2020-10-03
• SQLiteStudio is the bomb. I use it everyday. It is the nicest SQLite GUI I've found, and it's also in the FreeBSD Ports! I've donated, and you should too. 2020-09-30
• After a long summer, RCU is released (Sep. 5) and it already has 36 paying users! 2020-09-09
• I've released a desktop OS for reMarkable: Parabola-rM. 2020-08-26
• The sauce is no longer a secret! I have authored a reMarkable lines (.rm) file renderer that looks nearly identical to the tablet's rendering. This is what RCU uses to export PDFs. 2020-08-05
• I put a page up about RCU. It's almost ready. 2020-07-23
• To all who are waiting patiently for RCU, it is not quite done yet. I still need to finish writing the manual and get a mailing list set up, and it's taking a little longer than I hoped. 2020-07-21
• Corporations defraud taxpayers for hundreds of millions; what else is new? The code isn't even in the public domain because the government itself did not build them. 2020-07-16
• I love this vibe; been grooving to it for a couple days. Confirmation (SSBD) by Westerman. 2020-07-13
• The two-party system will never change, so long as people keep voting for one of those two parties. 2020-07-12
• Speaking of owning your software, next week I am releasing reMarkable Connection Utility: an all-in-one offline manager for backups, screenshots, notebooks, templates, wallpaper, and third-party software. 2020-07-08
• "Your next BMW might only have heated seats for 3 months," reports CNET. This is what happens when people buy SaaS. Own your software, own your media, own your future! 2020-07-08
• I wrote a script for generating very pretty PDF invoices. 2020-06-17
• Tracking puck suckers. securityweek.com, 2020-05-17
• I am the first person to achieve a GNU/Linux desktop on their reMarkable tablet. My demo video became the #1 post of all time in /r/remarkabletablet. 2020-05-17
• "I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change; I am changing the things I cannot accept." Angela Davis. 2020-03-24
• This is quality journalism from NYT (in 2007): Mayor Takes the Subway—by Way of S.U.V., 2020-02-20
• My friend Lucas just started his own website, and is now on a journey learning HTML. Congratulations, buddy! 2020-02-19
• I've carried old printouts around for years, and came across one that I wanted to link here for posterity. I was obsessed with this kind of thing in high school: Writing Your Own Toy OS. 2020-02-17
• Britney Spears' Guide to Semiconductor Physics; 2020-02-17
• The truth runs deep. 2020-02-02
• Preach it, Alan. "What most people are doing is imitating..." The computer revolution has still not happened yet. 2020-02-02
• I trust Bernie Sanders to be my next president because he isn't going to pillage the Middle East or let the intelligence-military-corporate-industrial complex be so cancerous. We need Bernie Sanders, because he values life. 2019-10-17
• I had a crack in a molar, and needed a filling; a routine procedure. I pay $25 a month for dental insurance, because my employer does not provide me with any...for what? So I can waste three lunches not getting served via phone? So they will cover only $15 for a necessary procedure? I need Medicare for All because we are all getting shafted by corporations and enough is enough. 2019-10-17
• Bernie just had a heart operation, then tweeted: "None of us know when a medical emergency might affect us. And no one should fear going bankrupt if it occurs. Medicare for All!" Vote this man into office! 2019-10-02
• Preach it, Bernie! I don't think billionaires should exist either. No human should have that much ability to influence others, like when a richie buys support instead of earning it in the heart and minds of the people at-large. The System continues to grow more unstable. 2019-09-24
  
• This is a terrific video of Burt Rutan, with only 12 views. He discusses multiple topics important to me, and admitted that he wrote software and kept it proprietary because the code stank and he didn't want anyone to know. I agree with that sentiment, and think Free software holds the authors accountable for a higher standard. Check out the other videos in the same series. 2018-08-29
  
• Turing is going to be on the £50 note. Why aren't scientists featured on US bills? 2019-07-15
• If programming were analogous to knitting: conventional languages would be the instructions, and LISP would be the manifest weave. To automate production, conventional programmers would build sweater-knitting machines, but LISP programmers would build self-knitting sweaters. 2019-07-05
• Some time ago, I found a great interview set of Danny Hillis, and now I've found the same account has a set of Marvin Minsky. These are two guys who I identify with, and so badly wish I was in their circle (as I feel of other great moments of history, when people learn something completely new, that I wish I could be around at the right space-time). 2019-06-23
  
• File this one under the "cool sites" category; I have been reading n-gate.com for a few years now, and this might be the guy who runs it or helps write it. His things-to-read page is of particular note, because it links to so many other funny, sad, and interesting things. Also, check out this Usenet archive (another interesting site on its own), and the report about the solar dish bird deaths. 2019-06-22
• Here's a nice song; take a load off. soundcloud.com, 2019-04-17
• The amount of dissonance is unreal; why are police hiding their communications, and why can't they own all the bits to their radios? slashdot.org, 2019-03-02
  
• My telephone can't listen to me when it's on the hook. Why do people use these things? 9to5mac.com, 2019-01-29
• This is disgusting use of police force: attempted murder; the officer and DA must be held accountable. cbs58.com, 2018-11-26
  
• "When Ridiculousness is Ubiquitous" shares my same feelings towards the lifestyles of the masses. I wish populations would think more carefully, but that's hard to do in an age of short-attention. mrmoneymustache.com, 2018-11-16
• I am not renewing drbowtie.com. I haven't sold any in years; besides, ties are lame.
• Bill Atkinson was inspired to create HyperCard through an LSD trip. boingboing.net, 2018-11-08
• "If you're not stressed, you're bored!" Claire Rutkoske, 2018-11-01
• Too good to be true: I was about to log in to GitHub to download my projects and cancel my account, but I can't log in due to page errors. 2018-10-21
• Please remember to remove your non-essential fuses. freep.com, 2018-10-18
• I love this bit with Susan Kare. youtube.com, 2018-10-17