Tech writers love making at times outlandish predictions. I remember in the early 90s thinking back very glibly about John C. Dvorak's prediction (more of a comment, really) that the mouse was a questionable, unproven peripheral, and probably wouldn't ever take off as a main input device. How ironic that …
Earlier today, I put out a call to see if anyone wanted to do a July Reply collab, and Hyde answered that call! In his post Hyde talks about doing "spring cleaning" on his phone, removing old photos and contacts. I have a similar routine, removing a year's worth of …
Andreas writes , The Amiga turns 40 this week. I had an Amiga 500 as a kid, some time in the early 90s. And I remember being made fun of for having an Amiga, because PCs were supposedly so much cooler and better and whatnot. But the first time I visited …
Background/Reply Kevin Boone wrote an excellent article about "de-googling," and how to counsel people who are encountering the "costs" of living the de-googled life. I've been mostly de-googled since September 2021, and it of course hasn't been super easy. But I say "mostly de-googled" because I still have some …
I saw Noisy Deadlines ' recent post entitled " 5 Albums ," and it reminded me of fun "getting to know you" viral copypasta posts on social media before social media turned into a pile of garbage 😄. So, here's five albums to get to know me, based on release date. Note that the …
Some stats: 24 posts written 123 links (not counting links to my own blog or fedi account) 76 links to actual blog posts (not counting links to things like fediverse accounts, wikipedia, git repos, and other "general information" links) 11+ new blogs added to my rss feeds :) 7,242 words …
Introduction I received a kind shout-out from Juhis Santala this morning, mentioning my previous blog post regarding the tilde ( ~ ) movement key in vi/nvi/vim, and how I tweaked it. Reading his blog post , I discovered the " Jun ited" blogging theme, a way of bringing bloggers together for the month …
Fedifriend and fellow vim-addict Hyde is hosting what's called a " Vim Carnival ", where someone sets a topic and encourages others to blog about the subject at hand concerning vim . With permission, I'm going to slightly modify the subject to apply to nvi, but the option I will be explain also …
I don't understand time. I don't understand this weird 80-year period of life, bracketed by glory. I don't understand squinting and sweating under the sun, waiting for our Rescue. I don't understand the Creator's insistence of running the simulation of humanity on such a flawed and cantankerous scratch file. I …
Content warning: discussion of religion and politics. If those subjects are triggers for you, I fully understand, and offer instead this lighthearted post instead. Note: this post is in some ways a continuation of this one from 2024, but you don't need to read that first. There's a phrase found …
This image is protected under the "Fair Use" doctrine of US copyright law regarding derivative works and low-fidelity reproduction I wrote previously about my experience of a "Socratic Sign" as a student: how my experience of wonder and exhilaration in my studies kept me going through the relative stress and …
Photo source: Marika Vinkmann I was listening to one of my new favorite podcasts, Don't Listen to Us with Mandy Patinkin and Kathryn Grody (his wife). As I mentioned in a recent post, Mandy is one of my favorite actors, nay, favorite humans on the planet. I can't get into …
I was thinking about Arch 's pacman this morning, mentally noting once again how insanely fast it is compared to all of the other package managers I've used. So, I thought I'd put out an informal package manager tier list, based primarily on speed, and just going on my own …
Disclaimer 1: A heavy " [sic] " is implied on all intentional butchering of the German language in the references (and URLs) in this post Disclaimer 2: This post deals with issues of grieving, but in a lighthearted manner Disclaimer 3: This post may be best enjoyed while listening to this track …
I don't watch a lot of YouTube anymore, and I'm trying to bring my TV watching down by a lot and read more. But one of my guilty pleasures is Retro Badger Gaming . This guy uses variants of the Bridge Commander series of games/mods to put together intriguing, insane …
By Dorkface Rickens Ready or not, the future is here! This evening, I installed a new technology in my bathroom called a "mirror." I was excited to see what this could do, and skeptical of the claims that mirrors merely reflect the light coming in. Imagine my astonishment when I …
Background I've been catching up on one of my favorite podcasts, recently: Tuxjam , and I just finished listening to Episode 120: Tunnels & Texts . In this episode, they were reviewing a FOSS app called Deku SMS which initially seemed to promise the ability to send photos by SMS (not MMS!), but …
A reconstruction of the Commodore 64's BASIC prompt, adapted from Wikipedia I loved computers before the internet was a thing , and I will continue enjoying them long after the internet becomes an unusable hellhole of mass surveillance, age verification, deplorably invasive technical "standards," and hyper-aggressive advertising. I've seen truly enormous …
Content Warning: Discussion of fascism, modern U.S. politics, and a bible quote Background Back around 2011, there was a bible verse that was working its way through my cognitive machinery: Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw …
Image of the Cactus Cafe, taken from Wikipedia I went to a live music venue (really just a restaurant with a sizable enclosed patio and questionable sound system) with some family and friends a couple nights ago, and as we were sitting, sipping our drinks and waiting for the primary …
One day, a farmer went to load up his station wagon to take his family to visit some friends, but found that it wouldn't start. Looking under the hood with his friends, they sadly discovered that the engine block was cracked, and there was no likelihood of an easy or …
Note: no substantive spoilers in this review If you're short on time, you can skip the preamble Preamble As you will know from my previous blog post, I've been on a bit of a reading kick lately. I honestly hadn't read too many novels since I was in University last …
I took a few days of a break from the fediverse to try to do a mini digital detox, to stop zombiescrolling youtube, and to read more. I picked up a used copy of Michael Jan Friedman's Gauntlet , the first book in the Stargazer series, a Star Trek novel that …
One of my new fedifriends , Terminal Tilt recently posted : We should not call sharing "piracy." Piracy involves the physical theft of property where the original owner no longer has it. Sharing is an act of duplication, not subtraction. Language matters. Using the industry's preferred labels only helps reinforce their control …
Warning: (obviously) spoilers abound! I just finished watching Star Trek: Picard last night, and while this won't be a thorough analysis (I'd probably have to watch it five times to accomplish that), I did want to briefly write down my thoughts on it. Like many older Trek fans, I'm not …
My current Android setup with IodéOS, KISS Launcher, and grayscale mode The other day, I was watching a Techlore video while folding laundry, and became increasingly annoyed as it went along: not at Techlore or the video, but the Wired article he was responding to. Peertube link Invidious link 1 …
Yesterday was my grandmother's funeral. As a family member, I had the shared duty of greeting the various guests, and then when things got started, I just kinda hopped from table to table, talking to people I know and catching up with folks. It was a great way to top …
I was reading in Ploum 's excellent blog yesterday about his history with Ubuntu, when I stumbled upon a lovely screenshot of his FVWM setup circa 2003 , and it brought me back to a friendly, and long-raging debate with some fedifriends on the subject of pixels, namely, whether or not …
After yesterday's unhinged, painfully cathartic threnody of a post, I really wanted to post something short, light and enjoyable. I was considering writing down my thoughts on my favorite TV show, The Good Place , but that would have taken altogether much too long, so that is going to remain a …
Content Warning: this post is a downer. I will be dealing with issues of religious manipulation and existential guilt Chidi grabs the drug dealer by the hoodie while reciting Nietzsche In yesterday's post *, I discussed my favorite episode (s03e05 "Jeremy Bearimy") of my favorite series ( The Good Place ). I didn't …
Professor Chidi Anagonye stirring a pot of Marshmallow-Peeps-and-M&Ms chili in class as he rants Note: Spoilers of Seasons 1-3 of The Good Place follow. Also, a minor discussion of religion. Anyone who follows me on the Fediverse will know that I have been more than slightly obsessed with the …
In yesterdays's article , I described the benefit of having a large supply of physical hardware to try different OSes on. Now I would like to talk about why it's important to run more than just various Linux distros (although just trying different distros is a great way to start broadening …
Modified image of a stack of thinkpads taken originally from https://old.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/17xf8kl/my_thinkpad_stack/ A lot of people experience vendor lock-in and outright "ecosystem captivity" because they've plunked down several grand towards pricey and shiny laptops from Apple, Microsoft (*snicker*) , Samsung, or whomever. Such a …
Ironically, this isn't intended to be a "filler" post, but more of a fill-you-in post, as I've actually decided to stop trying to do "100 Days to Offload" this year. I still technically have enough time left in the year to do it, but then I'd just be slamming the …
I debated whether or not this should be a "toot" (status update), or a proper blog post. Like one time before, I am going to allow it to be something in-between. An off-the-cuff blog post, not quite as structured and agonized over as a proper blog post/article, but more …
...to let you all know why I haven't been blogging for the past couple weeks. After many years of fighting with illness, and multiple organ failures, my mother passed away peacefully last Tuesday night. I'm doing ok, overall, but haven't had much motivation to write. Everything is still very surreal …
Preview.app shown in NeXTStep 1.0 courtesy of infinitemac.org In yesterday's post, I talked about the things I do and don't miss about MacOS, mainly focusing on the global menubar search as the main positive from my experience with Mac OS X. Looking over blog post ideas note …
Background and disclaimer I was a Mac kid. I was lucky to have my own Mac at home (a relatively low-end one, but still) for most of my high school. And like most people, I do look at the past (particularly the retrocomputing past) with pretty strongly rose-tinted glasses. But …
A few days ago, I was reading someone's blog (I don't remember who) * that was talking about the art and the "why" of blogging (or it might've been in a chat conversation, I'm not sure). I had been thinking of posting something about it, because when I told someone IRL …
Background In yesterday's article, I went over the GUI programs that I enjoyed using over the years and remembered fondly. While I was going to go over TUI programs today, I realized that there's a category of GUI that straddles the line between GUI and TUI that deserved its own …
Background Yesterday , I wrote about why I loved the command-line, and one of my good Fedifriends commented that while he appreciated a good command-line program, he generally preferred GUIs (Graphical User Interfaces). My personal history in computing started with what you might call command-line computers, although I think it's more …
I was going to post a much more serious blog post about anhedonia yesterday, but I didn't get to do so, as I was feeling... anhedonic! One thing I do when I'm struggling to feel... anything (because I've spent way too much time feeling way too much, but that's a …
Background I'd be fooling myself to think that I could be the first person on the earth to note music's incredible ability to heal and salve the tormented human soul. My own journey with music is, well, unsurprisingly, about as old as I am. Most everyone on one side of …
Time for another little hardware review. Background I've been getting complaints that the small, inexpensive bluetooth earbuds (Skullcandy Dime XT/XT2) I had been carrying around for the past five years have pretty poor audio quality during phone calls (likely no microphone noise cancellation), so I started looking around again …
Disclaimer: I will be using the name/term vim in this blog post, but I actually mean any command-line editor based on or inspired by vi, or "vi-style editors." This includes the original vi, nvi (which IIRC was the basis of the vi that comes with the various BSDs), elVIs …
Note: When I say "Online" in this context, I literally mean "on a computer," vs. "on paper." This is the older, more classic meaning of the word, similar to " on-line documentation " (i.e., "on the computer," not "on the internet"). Background I know a lot of folks like solutions like …
Just now, I was doing what all great bloggers do when they run out of (easily) actionable blog post ideas: I got around to cruising my RSS feeds! To be fair, there are many wonderful bloggers that keep up with their RSS feeds and dutifully read and comment on all …
Greetings! If you are reading this, it means you were selected by TODD (the Temporal Observation Directorate Division) for a temporal excursion. Since you're a member of the Computing Sciences History Reading Room, you will no doubt want to brush up on how to procure computing resources in your assigned …
Welcome to the PADDING . This blost is a part of the interstitial spaces that make up my blog. It's here to support other blosts. Think of it as one of the glial cells supporting the superstructure of the twisted online brain that is https://rldane.space/ . Of course, that doesn't …
There's a scene in The King's Speech at the end where he's finally giving his big, inspiring speech, and while you hear is the speech, what you see is the scribbled crib notes and the incredible mental gymnastics he has to go through to get each word and phrase out …