Why I love Markdown
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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 …
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The Case for AVIF
Disclaimer: Right off the bat, I am NOT an imaging expert, a compression expert, or really an anything expert. I'm just speaking from my own experiences as a relatively ordinary user of image formats.
When I was a young-un in the early, early 90s, PICT was the day-to-day image format …
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"Online" documentation should be offline
I'm noticing a troubling trend among FOSS projects, even terminal-only utilities: no manpages (or a 1-paragraph useless one), barely any help screens, and a link to a wiki site like a github page or "readthedocs."
The thing is, the whole ethos behind so many terminal utilities is a hearkening back …
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"Ableism" and the Linux Aristocracy
Being an armchair FOSS advocate, there are a lot of anti-FOSS arguments I've become quite used to seeing and answering. Some of them are honestly just pretty dumb:
eloquent_FOSS_apologia();
Well, I just don't CARE about that!
Well …
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How I Watch YouTube
I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, TuxJam the other day, and they were discussing ways to watch YouTube without the annoyances that Google has added to the experience, namely ads and the inability to download videos for later viewing (also, YouTube stopped letting you listen to videos …
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Laptops: A Romance
As I wrote in yesterday's article, I have a soft spot in my heart for laptops. They exist in this incredibly sweet spot where convenience and agency/freedom converge in the very best way, possible. I bought my first laptop in 1995 with my very hard-earned money, but let's start …
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What is FOSS?
Note: This article was originally written last December, and was sidelined because I didn't feel it was finished. Reading through it this morning, I realized reason that I never "finished" it is because the next step would've been to write a 1280-word chapter, which is no small feat. But honestly …
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Why would you use Perl in 2024?
The rise and fall of the popularity of programming languages is fun to watch.
Quick disclaimer: I'm not a programmer. I've never held a programming job. I have been interested in programming as a hobby for several decades, and have written shell scripts as a part of my job in …
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Which Linux Distro *shouldn't* I pick, and why?
I enjoyed The Linux Cast's recent video tackling the perennially-debated question of "the best Linux" distro, and I wanted to present my own somewhat tongue-in-cheek version of a recommended Linux Distro List, but more like a dis-recommendation list.
So here are some distros I (kinda sorta) do not recommend …
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An unexpected game of "Musical Laptops"
I purchased this laptop I'm writing on now about a month ago. It's a Thinkpad X260 from 2016. I looked it up online, and it was actually shipped the very day (or the day before/after) I graduated college. That's a fun little coincidence to make me feel the passage …
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