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. ;)
A Time-Traveler's Guide to Affordable Computing
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 …
Read More
Speedrunning life with a Rube Goldberg brain
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 …
Read More
Device mini-review: One by Wacom
Partially for the sake of my daily doodles, which I've been posting to the Fediverse, and also because I've been learning the Persian alphabet, I recently purchased a small USB pen digitizer, the "One by Wacom," by Wacom (great branding 😄).
For those of you not familiar with digitizers, think of …
Read More
A Toast to the Prolific ones
I wanted to take some time out today to acknowledge some folks on the fediverse that are remarkably prolific, just for fun.
Prolific blogger — Rubenerd
Oh holy moly. This fella has words. Lots of words. Many very fine words. Just look at bro's output for 2024:
~ $ curl -s https://rubenerd …
Read More
Used laptops are wonderful... except when you need batteries
When I was a kid, a new computer cost the equivalent of $3,000 in today's money, and a five year old computer was basically a dinosaur.
Nowadays you can get a brand new computer for $200 or less, and a ten-year-old computer can still be a viable daily-driver. You …
Read More
I Miss RC
I was on a Signal video chat with my siblings today, and when I mentioned something about RC flight as an analogy for a person's health (being "three mistakes high"), my brother looked confused and then amused when I explained what I was talking about.
Oh, quick explainer, I'm not …
Read More
Why I love Markdown
...
...
...
Because it's cool! But first, a brief history of writing in the digital age!
Some History, or: I have ADHD and we're all aboard the unnecessary detail traaaaaainnnn!......
The very first computer I had at home was an Apple ][+ that my mom rented for a computer class in university. The …
Read More
Blog Questions Challenge: Technology Edition
I saw this update to the "Blog Questions Challenge" format on jnv's blog, and without reading* it first (in order to not taint my own answers — I will definitely go back and read his), I thought I'd write down some of my own thoughts, for fun.
*I used curl …
Read More
Libraries are awesome
About a week ago, I had the pleasure of answering some interview-style questions from Hyde that got posted to his blog series, Over/Under.
Give it a read, as I had a lot of fun writing my responses, such that I forgot to actually answer "Overrated/Underrated" to some of …
Read More