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  "path": "/2026/05/31/bookmarks/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-05-31T04:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "https://inkdroid.org",
  "tags": [
    "Software can be finished",
    "Current Rothko",
    "Lament for the MIT Libraries",
    "The Working Archivist’s Guide to Enthusiast CD-ROM Archiving Tools",
    "palewire / fakethirtyeight",
    "Maryland\n/ CASA",
    "Preserving optical media from the command-line"
  ],
  "textContent": "These are some things I’ve wandered across on the web this week.\n\n##  🔖 \nSoftware can be finished \n\nOne of the “25 lessons” I presented at LoopConf this year was “Software can be finished”.\n\nI tried to remove this lesson from the talk to make room for something else. But it kinda took on a life of its own and wanted to be in the talk. It was an Important Lesson.\n\n“Software can be finished” is a controversial statement. And I want to be clear, as I was in the talk, that in many cases “finished” software is not, and should not be, the goal.\n\nBut I present it as an idea. An ideal. A theory. Something to chew on and think about.\n\nWhat would finished software be like? How would we write it? And what can we learn about the way that we create software by considering these other questions?\n\n##  🔖  Current Rothko\n\n\nA Rothko for the current weather.\n\n##  🔖 \nLament for the MIT Libraries \n\nI write with dismay, grief and sorrow for the permanent closure of MIT Libraries Barker, Dewey and Rotch [not yet closed, but likely to suffer the same fate, ed. note], and termination of library staff in those libraries. For over half a century, I have learned, studied, researched, reflected, taught, created and rested in these libraries, as an MIT undergraduate, graduate and postdoc student, as an MIT researcher and instructor, and as an MIT alum. Across the diverse ever-changing areas of the studies and investigations that involve me and my students – from physics to poetry, from historical science to electrical engineering, from sculpture to photography, from philosophy to psychology – all the MIT Libraries have stimulated, opened, and connected us with human efforts, current and historical, to understand, express and learn in and with the world. Welcoming for me, and all students, the MIT Libraries were oases, spaces apart from the stresses, deadlines, demands of this school, where one could reflect apart, go to a familiar bookshelf, read in companionship with others and be challenged by human voices new, unexpected and concerned for nature, learning and truth. The MIT Librarians and MIT Libraries Circulation desk were available, interested and open to assist for whatever confused questions, incomplete references, tangential details or specific analyses we might be working on or stumped by [see MIT 1912, third quote below]. There were always other places to look, another staircase to climb, or resources to consider. MIT Libraries could open to anywhere and also facilitate rethinking of one’s own understanding and local contexts.\n\n##  🔖 \nThe Working Archivist’s Guide to Enthusiast CD-ROM Archiving Tools \n\nI’ve seen a lot of professional archivists who use flux disc image archiving techniques for their collections—a technique in which a specialized floppy controller captures the raw signal coming from the floppy drive so that it can be preserved and decoded in software. I haven’t, however, seen many archivists using enthusiast-developed low-level reading techniques for CD-ROM. I’ve personally been making use of these techniques and I find them very helpful; I know that many other archivists and institutions could make great use of them. However, I know that information about enthusiast-developed tools are usually deeply embedded in those communities and can be hard to find for others. As someone with a foot in both worlds, I want to try to bridge the gap and make this information available a bit more widely. This post will summarize why archivists might be interested in these tools, what they can do, and how to make use of them.\n\n##  🔖 \npalewire / fakethirtyeight \n\nThe old fivethirtyeight.com was taken offline by its corporate owners. This repo spiders the Wayback Machine (and a few adjacent sources) to build a comprehensive, deduplicated index of every editorial entry FiveThirtyEight ever published, then serves a browse + search UI at fivethirtyeightindex.com.\n\n##  🔖  Maryland\n/ CASA \n\nThese candidates had the CASA in Action seal of approval.\n\n##  🔖 \nPreserving optical media from the command-line \n\nThe KB has quite a large collection of offline optical media, such as CD-ROMs, DVDs and audio CDs. We’re currently investigating how to stabilise the contents of these materials using disk imaging. During the initial phase of this work I did a number of tests with various open-source tools. It’s doubtful whether we’ll end up using these same tools in our actual workflows. The main reason for this is the sheer size of the collection, which we estimated at some 15,000 physical carriers; possibly even more. At those volumes we will need a solution that involves the use of a disk robot, and these often require dedicated software (we still need to investigate this more in-depth).\n\nNevertheless, throughout the initial testing phase I was surprised at the number of useful tools that are available in the open source domain. Since this will probably be of interest to others as well, I decided to polish a selection from my rough working notes into a somewhat more digestible form (or so I hope!). I edited my original notes down to the following topics:",
  "title": "Weekly Bookmarks"
}