1. Alpine Linux is Amazing

    I use a lot of old machines. I'm typing this article on a Dell D630 running a Core 2 Duo T8300 with a whopping 4G of RAM. I have a second one with a T7700 that's otherwise identical. I love these old systems for a lot of the same reasons …

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  2. Analog Watch Superiority

    When I was a kid, I didn't tend to wear a watch, with the exception of Boy Scout camp. I needed to know the time then, and there aren't any wall clocks outside, unfortunately. I would say we should fix that, meaning it in a tongue-in-cheek way, but I know …

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  3. My Journey in Watches

    I wrote this initially as some placeholder text for a blog theme I was creating at the time, but since it's relevant to the article I'm actually writing today, I figured I'd post it as a bonus for anyone who's crazy enough to be interested. I wrote it back in …

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  4. Game Reviews: Negative Reviews Matter

    I'm going to be brief with this, hopefully my next post will be another Final Fantasy review.

    This is for one I don't like, I won't name it just yet.

    However, I've been continuing to play this game, even though I don't like it, mainly because I want to give …

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  5. Should I Have Used Hugo Instead of Pelican?

    Shortly after I finished transitioning to Pelican, I started to do some research about what the most popular static site generators are. Normally, I would advise doing this the other way around, but my main reason for the shift was familiarity with Pelican combined with a desire to write more …

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  6. The XBOX One

    I bought a gently-used XBOX One X from a guy on EBay about a month or two before the Series X launched. This sounds like a really strange time to buy one, they had been recently discontinued, it was clear there was a new generation approaching, I already had a …

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  7. Shell Prompt Update

    As you can tell from the subtitle of this blog, I don't use Bash anymore. In fact, I switched away from Bash a long time ago now, for a myriad of reasons. I'll probably touch on some of those here, but the basic point is that my old post about …

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  8. Android Studio is a Disaster.

    Android Studio is a great example of what not to do when building a development environment for a device.

    To be clear, they get some things right, but by and large the whole system is kind of bad, and encourages experimentation while simultaneously punishing it.

    A Good Toolchain

    Before I …

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  9. The App-Light Lifestyle

    Sometimes, you can say a lot with few words. Sometimes, you can also do a lot with few apps. I don't use big apps like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, not just for privacy reasons, but because they don't fit my lifestyle. I use email, a browser, the camera, a calendar, and …

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  10. Rust in the Kernel: Is It an Issue?

    Starting this one with another disclaimer, I'm not a Linux kernel developer (though I have worked on kernels before) and my knowledge of Rust mainly lies in application programming. If that's a deal breaker for you, skip this one. If it's not and you want to hear yet another random …

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  11. Trying out Aerc for Email

    My first interaction with email on the command line was back in high school, when I first started playing around with Mutt. Honestly, I liked it a lot and it did a lot of things that more "fully featured" email applications didn't seem to get right. It was fast, launching …

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  12. The Case for Tiny Software

    Quick disclaimer before getting too far, this article is targeted at a slightly less technical audience than usual, so if I'm explaining a lot of (what you consider to be) basic stuff, that's why.

    Today's world is filled with "Apps" which run on "Phones". Let's just think about this for …

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  13. Reduce, Reuse, Repair, then Recycle

    A common saying among people in the modern world is a sort of slogan for encouraging people to send their used things to the recycle bin rather than the trash, "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle". Unfortunately, those first two steps often get ignored, which is exactly what leads to that phrase being …

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  14. Dev Log 3: Proof of Concept

    I took a week's break from the habit changer app.

    Honestly, I didn't mean to, but life happens I guess.

    Today, however, I spent the majority of the day working on the prototype, and I have something that mostly works! There are a few things I want to mention first …

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  15. Quick Mac and Cheese

    So a quick recipe for mac and cheese:

    Ingredients

    • Stick of butter
    • >1lb shredded cheese (your choice, mix and match to taste)
    • 12-16 oz pasta (Macaroni or shells are best)
    • Double the amount of water (by volume) as pasta
    • 1/4-1/2 cup milk

    Instructions

    Boil water on the stove …

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  16. Habit Changer Dev Log 2

    Hello again, it's been a few days!

    I actually took somewhat of a weekend break in the middle there, but now we're back with more habit changer work. However, during that time I managed to complete the data structures for the core habit system, a prototype algorithm for how to …

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  17. Fishing

    There's a time and a place for hard work, and there's a time and a place for just hanging out with friends and going fishing.

    I've heard a few people I know claim that they've never understood fishing, and they can't seem to fathom why anybody would do it. To …

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  18. Habit Changer Dev Log 1

    In my last post, I talked about a new app I wanted to develop, and while I said the next post would probably be the post after next, here I am one day later with my first draft design of the app.

    Basic Idea

    To recap yesterday's post, I want …

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  19. Habit Changer Dev Log 0

    Since I have a blog, and since I write software, I figured I should finally combine the two.

    Wow! What uncharted waters!

    In all seriousness though, a friend of mine asked me months ago to write a diet app for him that would track more than just calories. He wanted …

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  20. Managing Tasks with Org Mode

    I have ADHD. Personally, I see this as somewhat of a mixed bag, and I know for sure a number of other people with ADHD see it the same way. It's not so much an inability to focus as it is a difference in how focus is achieved. It means …

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  21. Transition to Pelican, Part 2

    It's been almost two weeks since transitioning this site over to Pelican, and I have some thoughts about the experience so far.

    First of all, it's way easier to write new posts this way, though if you read my last post you'd already know that. Check the blog tag for …

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  22. Pop OS and Updates

    I recently bought my grandmother a new PC, just this past year. She had been using a mid-2007 iMac 24". The Mac enthusiasts among you may realize how out of date this is. It last received software updates in 2018, and ever since it's whined about a pending OS update …

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  23. Transition to Pelican

    In my last post in the tech blog, I talked about how blogging tech is hard, and generally whined about how I managed my site for way too long. My conclusion was that it was my own fault and I should do better. Eventually, I implemented the changes I had …

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  24. Ratchet and Clank (PS2) Review

    1. Introduction

    The Ratchet and Clank series has been getting a lot of buzz lately, what with the trailers for the new PS5 entry, Rift Apart. However, the series got its start way back in 2002 on the PS2, as Insomniac Games’ first entry on the platform. This particular series …

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  25. Games!

    I Play Video Games.

    This isn’t really anything special these days, but I figure that at this point I’ve probably played enough video games to have some meaningful comments on them from time to time. This section will be where I talk about games, gaming, what I’m …

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  26. Blogging is Hard.

    Update (2022-08-23): This post was written long before I started using Pelican, and the entire post was originally shown via the desktop site. If you see mentions of the technology showing this post/blog and you want the full experience of what that looked like (and you're on a desktop …

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  27. Zsh Scripts are Dumb

    1. Background

    As you can probably tell by the existence of this blog, I’m what most people in the tech world call a "power user". I make use of all sorts of little hacks and tricks to make my computers run faster, and do what I want rather than …

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  28. Food!

    We eat every day. It seems obvious, but really think about that. Eating is part of the human experience. For nearly literally all of us.

    With this in mind, I really love to cook. Sometimes there's nothing more satisfying than readying a new chili, making burritos, preparing a good steak …

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  29. Lisp: Recursive Glory!

    Recently I've been toying a lot with the idea of doing more lisp programming to solve some of the tasks I generally would do with Python or BASH. Lisp often gets written off as old or weird, and while it is old and weird, it's certainly not past its usefulness …

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  30. Code Style and How to Write for Reading

    Recently I was browsing through YouTube, and it kept suggesting this video about programming mistakes, with one of those paper-cutout like CG thumbnails. My first impression was that it was one of those "let me show you how to code" videos, like so many of YouTube's suggestions to me are …

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  31. Web Programming a Desktop with Javascript

    One of the things which most people in web programming have to deal with is the problem of interactive content. The oldest methods for solving this were through the use of Java applets, and Flash content. There are other ways to accomplish this too, with software such as QuickTime, Real …

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  32. Making Bash Prompt you with Information

    In the world of Linux and Unix, one of the most powerful tools available is the command line. Those of us who are lucky enough to have Bash at our disposal will probably know of many of its varied powers and features. These include the ability to modify and rerun …

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