About me and this website

Page created: 1997-12-15 , updated: 2023-04-28

Me

Howdy, I’m Dave Gauer. I’ve worked in web technologies since the late 1990s.

What I’m up to right now!

Some interests: computer programming of all kinds, Linux/BSD/Unix, art, books (genre fiction, computing, history, biographies, art monographs), film, music (metal!), boardgames, and watching small creatures in the back yard

If you’re ready for the deep dive, check out my cards (mostly short) notes about various topics.

Me elsewhere:

I sometimes use this avatar:

slackware penguin with pipe watercolor avatar

It’s the "Bob" version of Tux the Penguin (a la Slackware Linux). I’ll often use that on tech-oriented sites. It’s cropped from a watercolor I did in my sketchbook quite a while ago:

watercolor image of a penguin in a toga working on a computer perched atop a marble column. penguin has a pipe and martini glass

"Ancient King Slackware Computes at the Altar"

And sometimes I use this avatar, which is another watercolor I did expressly to use as an avatar:

watercolor sketch of a rat with an eye patch

"Ratfactor"

This website

I’ve been running this website since 1997.

This website has:

  • No advertising

  • No tracking/cookies

  • No JavaScript unless used by a tool on the page

  • No bloat (check out ratfactor’s css file)

  • No so-called "AI" content (What Sandra writes here (idiomrottning.org) sums up my feelings beautifully.)

  • Of course there’s a humans.txt (updated in this glorious year of 2023)

  • Home page is currently under 100 Kb total: 1mb.club | 512kb.club | 250kb.club

Browse this website with your favorite terminal program or screen reader!

This may be controversial, but I strongly believe in allowing access to this website via both HTTPS and HTTP. Unencrypted HTTP can be accessed by extremely low-power machines and extremely simple software. TLS is very important, but it does come with a non-trivial complexity and computational cost.

In short, I agree with Consider Disabling HTTPS Auto Redirects (1mb.club).

retro under construction animated gif

RATFACTOR.COM HAS BEEN UNDER CONTINUOUS CONSTRUCTION SINCE 1997!

I try to follow the wisdom that Cool URIs don’t change (w3.org).

This website is designed to last (jeffhuang.com).

You should make a website too! The "Start a website" instructions at LandChad.net look pretty good to me. It’s remarkably similar to the setup I’m running these days.