Random updates
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 pipeline with content, and that's not really good for either of us. I've had enough major life events this year to make trying to fulfil an arbitrary number kind of meaningless, but I will try to pursue something meaningful for this year's WritingMonth, instead. I'm trying to decide between writing some short stories, or just journaling on paper.
Some minor interesting things that have happened in the last month:
- I bought The Good Place on Bluray, which turned out to be a fantastic decision, because it frees me up from buying into yet another streaming service (netflix), and the Bluray (1080p) content is both higher quality than the streaming options, and has more content (the episodes are actually a little longer).
- I wiped (factory-resetted) my Roku TV. I had logged into a family member's roku account (ironically to start watching The Good Place again), but all of the streaming platforms slowly blocked my device, as I wasn't in the same location as them. So, the streaming services all cut me off, except for the couple that I already had logged into my own name. So for now, my Roku TV is just a "dumb" TV. Glorious.
- I got my old Wii set up again. I'm beyond disappointed in Nintendo, but I won't waste time here kvetching about it. I'm hoping to spot some good deals for Wii and maybe GameCube games here and there and enjoy those platforms, rather than spending an arm and a leg on the new stuff. No sense in rewarding profiteering gigacorporations.
- I canceled my Amazon Prime Video ad-free subscription. It was only 2.99 USD per month, but I no longer watch anything on there, and I'm kind of done with streaming services.
- I said goodbye to Star Wars and Disney altogether. It's obvious to me that Disney is incompatible with a free world, and I will no longer be giving them money to further their fascistic goals. It will be sad to not be able to watch Rebels, Ahsoka, or upcoming Mandalorian episodes, but these are a small price to pay for the integrity of our democracy and our world. I'll keep an eye out for used blurays, though. ;)
More updates to come... organically. ;)
Just a quick note...
...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 …
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Desperately Seeking Preview.app
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 …
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What I Do and Don't Miss About MacOS
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 …
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Why Do We Blog?
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 …
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My Favorite GUI Programs, Part II
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 …
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My Favorite GUI Programs
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 …
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Why I Love the Command Line
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 …
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Songs to Improve Your Mental Health
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 …
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Anker SoundCore P30i mini-review
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 …
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