Re: Linkdump No 117, or "Thoughts on Computer Snobbery"
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 …
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Re: Praying to St Jude: counselling the re-Googlers
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 …
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Vim Carnival Entry: "The Motion that Changed Everything."
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 …
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Package Manager Tier List
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 …
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Mocking-up Photo Sharing over SMS
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 …
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I Loved Computers Before the Internet was a Thing
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 …
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The Farmer's Station Wagon: A Parable
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 …
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Smartphone Minimalism: the Underappreciated Middle Road
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 …
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The Past is the Future
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 …
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How Many Pixels Do You Really Need?
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 …
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