Recent Content

As mentioned in my previous post, I've recently been playing around with FreeBSD on one of my laptops. Why? Boredom, frankly. Boredom with my job, boredom with my lack of social life, boredom with the weather. Whatever the cause, the cure is always computer fun!

As mentioned in an earlier post, I've recently started hosting this site on a FreeBSD box to help me learn FreeBSD a little bit better and become a bit more bilingual with my UNIX-like systems. I had initially planned to install FreeBSD on my X200s, but unfortunately the OS was not supported by Libreboot, so I tabled the idea for a while.

I'm always surprised when I see modern companies not using renewable energy sources as a matter of course. It seems so strange to me that they don't see that this is a really big draw, especially in the tech industry where at least 70% of us are weird hippies. The other day I decided to do a little research on my host's (DigitalOcean) offerings and the differences between the datacentre, and I was surprised to find out the following:

1. DO does not have an easily accessible page about the green status of their datacentres
2. Only one of their datacentres is easily verifiable as green (FRA1)

I've been making some changes to my current website setup. Before, this site was hosted on the same server that currently hosts my Mastodon instance and Funkwhale pod, as well as my git server. But with gitea's poor performance and the general overcrowding, mixed in with my recent winding down of my Streama server, I decided to make a completely new server for my website.

2019 was a bit of a rocky year, admittedly. With the country in which I reside resigning itself utterly to lunacy, my relationship ending, and a general descent in my mental health at several points due to work and existing issues, it is not a year I will necessarily look back on with much fondness. All is not, however, doom and gloom.

This marks my third(?) migration to a new site format! 🎉

I've recently started learning to use Emacs after leaving the Emacs manual lying around for the better part of a year. Since I've decided to try my hand at some common lisp I figured it would be a good time to start learning, and my goodness I wish I'd started this sooner.

So I've been having some fun recently trying to teach myself Rust. I'm not really a programmer by any stretch of the imagination (yet!) but was challenged to write a bot for a Matrix chatroom I frequent. Most of us have written bots already, so it was my time to try something.

Originally I had planned to use Python like I had done previously for my Mastodon bot, tsukumogami. However, I'd been hearing some interesting things about Rust and decided it would be a fun challenge to try and write something functional in the language.

My workplace uses Slack. Actually, let me rephrase that: some of my coworkers use Slack. The company for which I work has had some trouble committing properly to a communications platform, which has left us in something of a state of limbo when it comes to communicating with one another. Some people only use Slack, others only Skype, still more refuse to communicate by anything other than good old fashioned face-to-face or email.

I've been working with and enjoying technology most of my life. As such (and given the long history of vendor lock-in and associated cost/challenge with going without the support of major tech companies), I have a pretty significant footprint with certain tech companies. I've been with Google/Gmail/Android for many years. I have files stored up on Onedrive and Google Cloud. I have been working with Windows, ChromeOS, and even macOS and iOS at various stages as long as I have been working with computers. After some self-education I've come to the conclusion that these dependencies must end and have been on a path to rid myself of external influences.

Ever heard of Void Linux? Me neither until a little while ago. My friend had orginally introduced me to Void when I was looking at going back to Arch Linux a few years ago, stating that it was (in many ways) a vastly superior system. I was intrigued, but I ultimately ended up sticking with Arch as I was familiar with it and was unwilling to give up on using the AUR at that point.