This book is a perfect read in a time where we deny womanhood from women and manhood from men. This is a re-read from a few years ago and I got to remember how fun this book was.
The Man Without Qualities
Started this book 12 months ago. Very slow at this 1400+-page read. But it's great and compliments the above book.
Software
ShareX
Over the last 10 years I've unintentionally accrued all these screenshots which now act as a sort of timeline of what was going on in my life. "Alt + 1" is bound as the quick screenshot crop key.
SourceTree
Great piece of version control software. After moving away from GitHub/GitHub Desktop, I've used this heavily for both personal and work.
Microsoft VS Code
I don't condone Microsoft or VS Code, but the free "Remote Development" feature that makes developing on files over SSH feel like local development has been pretty invaluable at my job. The onboarding process is now very straightforward, and only requires a VPN and VS Code.
I have been fortunate in making some movie friends this year. I hadn't watched much film prior, and so this has introduced me to a lot of great titles and experiences. Since then I've been interested in the idea of cinema - still not cinema itself; I seem to be more drawn to the social experience of feeling out what people like, rather than the act of watching the film itself. It turns out watching movies by myself is very stressful. This is likely from my last experience, watching Antichrist and Funny Games (EN) on my own. It was apparently painful enough of an experience where I no longer wish to watch any moving pictures on my own. I perceived those films to be so bad that it felt like the entirety of humanity had betrayed me. A rather dramatic reaction, but not a surprising one considering my inexperience with movies thus far.
On the topic of the website itself - It has excellent UX. It wastes no space, using 2.5 columns to show data in a compact but comfortable and predictable manner. It strongly rewards exploration as it is abundant with user-created/curated content, where you can go and find the genre/group that interests you on your own. Not many forced promoted content. I'm finding myself spending at least 30 minutes on it every day which is actually starting to become a problem.
Recently got to complete two larger crochet pieces.
A cat and a crow.
The patterns are improvised so they look a little goofy, but they were very fun to make.
With crochet, you need only know how to create a square, and how to create a ball, to be able to do all the rest.
The animals are all made with some variation of a square or ball - for example the cat ears are flattened balls with non-gradual decrements. The crow beak and wings are just folded squares.
Some have said the cat looks like a crab because of the eyes, and that the crow looks like an owl because he's too fat. I think sharing your own creations with people you know is funny because they subconsciously try to put everything down if they see you've done something.
The process of crocheting itself is interesting because you lose yourself in it. Even those who are busy with thoughts will find they go blank when they do crochet.
I'd strongly recommend trying it at least once. Knowing how to make useful shapes out of one string using a simple stick-hook is surely a fun piece of knowledge to have.
Below are some more WIP photos:
Have a nice day.
Disassembling a Cooler Master Fan
6 December, 2022
Today I woke up to my PC grumbling in pain.
It was one of the case fans making some noise; cleaning the surroundings did not help so I took to disassembling it.
Below are the steps for improperly cleaning the fan.
Important: Do not clean out the grease if you do not have machine oil lying around.
Here's my unhappy fan. It was removed from the main body by unscrewing it at 4 points on the outside of the case.
We're too lazy to disconnect it, so we'll just flip it around, and unscrew the fan away from its fan case.
After peeling away the now-exposed sticker, take off the rubber cap in the center (good luck).
This part I found to be the most difficult. You must remove the thin, plastic c-ring from the fan axis end. I used my plastic prying tool and patience. Try to keep the small black ring in place when you pull out the fan.
The inside of the fan was indeed dirty. I cleaned it with a Q-tip. The inside is greasy; you want to try and not wipe any of the lubricant off the fan axis.
Reassemble, and hopefully your fan will no longer make that noise. Mine made the same noise for about 1 minute after re-assembling, and then was silent thereafter.
Happy disassembling.
September 2022
26 September, 2022
Hello
Completed the page for the mobile game. It would be one of the longer pages as far as projects go. Again it's interesting rewinding your brain back to a different time, different place, different feelings.
Recently wanted to start crochet. So I bought a $2 set to make a flat chestnut pattern.
It goes like this. I do not like myself -> I am not good enough -> It's because I don't know enough and I don't do enough And so apparently the mind decides that making some objects out of string will increase my worth. This should be considered a personality flaw than anything, but I'll reject such notions and present little fluffy things to society.
What I didn't realize is that they have sheet music for crochet. Don't know how to read that. Anyway I made an acorn
It's an original pattern because I tried to make a sphere and instead made a brown lemon. If you give a darker brown semisphere cap to a brown lemon, it turns into an acorn.
Have a nice day, I hope you are doing ok.
Neocities II
5 September, 2022
Gave the layout site a layout
It previously looked like this:
It has 5 layouts now.
It's been pleasant re-discovering how relaxing creating HTML layouts are.
Not having to worry about responsive design, JS libraries, backend matters. Just layouts how they used to be.
The new layout boasts 8 colors and font size designed for 800x600 CRT monitors.
All the content has also been removed except the blog and guestbook (now BBS). What we're going to do is have it all on the home page, like Craig of FFF's old layout. After giving it some thought, it's quite the perfect format. If your content is hard to categorize, or you feel too contained within having to fit into categories, just have them all in noncategory.
In the coming weeks I'll look to build up the grid.
Take care
Flip Flop Dyin'
16 August, 2022
This post is about a website I like very much. It is called Flip Flop Flyin', a personal website by a man with a massive collection of digital arts:
Well, that was their old layout.
This is what their layout looks like now:
- which I'm very quite sad about, because I thought the old layout was much better. The icon previews on the posts were so colorful and had such a warm feeling to it.
Nevertheless, the content is still there. You should look through it. Many of them are ongoing projects, spanning over years. There's a lot of great pixel art but my favorite one is Wreck. It makes me want to go outside. And also be his friend. And I think that's a great influence to have on your visitors.
I miss the old layout so much I might just use it as my own. Speaking of which I do not like this current layout of my site at all. So I will be updating it with something with at least 4 more colors.
Github to Codeberg
17 July, 2022
Hello.
Since Microsoft's scquisition of Github I've been trying to move off it. There's been a lot of discussion around this, and GiveUpGithub explains it all quite well. One of the main points is that since acquiring GitHub, Microsoft's been using all the code on there for their creepy for-profit code prediction product. I'm also just generally not in favor of Microsoft just throwing money at taking over the beginner developer ecosystem to get future generations of developers relying on Microsoft products, because they failed to be appealing enough through legitimate means for existing developers.
My current alternatives for Github were as follows:
Codeberg
Gitlab
Bitbucket
Nothing
Codeberg
An instance of Gitea hosted by a group in Germany. Is free, open-source and claims to use no tracking. Donations take on obscure forms, so I don't think they get much support.
Gitlab
Made with Rails, which is pretty interesting. Has hosted options or you can host your own. Open source for the free version. Some of my workplaces used Gitlab, and for organizations the merging/team features work great. But for solo use, I feel like it's not worth the slow clunky feeling.
Bitbucket
Atlassian, for-profit proprietary software with option to self-host. Interface slow like all their other products, which would only affect when you want to browse repos. Previous workplace used this, and it worked awesome with Jira/Confluence/Sourcetree.
Nothing
I did consider this. It turns out my desire to have a online git repo is mainly for ego. I like having a public place where I see a punchcard that I've filled in. I'm a wageslave through and through.
-
So I decided to go with Codeberg.
Sad to know that modern technology service use just means having to move your digital furniture every X years because everything eventually gets eaten up by bad practices. Here's hoping that we'll always have free/non-profit options for the decades to come.
