[23:20] Another lesson in language: HTTP status codes in latin
[23:18] A lesson in language: how to speak Silicon Valley
[20:04] It sometimes feels like Firefox is on a mission to piss me off at all cost. Just now I installed updates on my computer and Firefox noticed that it, too, was updated in the process. So it went ahead, took all my open tabs hostage and told me I needed to quit and restart it. Didn't ask me to. Told me to. No chance to keep working and restart the browser later. Also, no chance to keep tabs in a private session window unless the URLs are manually copied and stored in a text file or something. How someone in their right mind might consider this sane behaviour is beyond me.
[19:44] There are Online Fractal Tools.
[19:20] On most search engines, the top results these days are utter crap, thanks to a plague called SEO. To avoid this pile of useless waste of webspace, Million Short allows to remove the top n results from any given query, with n being between zero and a million.
[19:16] radiofreqs.space is a fairly new (opened for beta users on 2019-06-05) tilde server focused on radio and electronics.
[21:04] A lesson on anonymity on the internet including a challenge. Apparently still not unmasked after six years.
[17:42] While Tristan da Cunha is the most remote inhabited island, the most remote location in the ocean by and large is Point Nemo, which is both a spacecraft cemetery and the location of R'lyeh.
[21:43] It seems like my understanding of wysiwyg was wrong all the time. :)
[17:53] Ha, Google is caught red-handed stealing lyrics. Now that is a nifty trap! :D
[21:47] On a lighter note: the new laptop itself is actually fairly decent. A ThinkPad T440s with an i7 CPU, 12GB RAM and a 1080p display. The battery is a little worn out, but I can deal with that.
Huge step forward from the previous one (ThinkPad L412, i3, 4GB RAM). The only actual weak spot is the touchpad. This thing appears to be one single big button. Noisy when you click it, easy to misclick and messing up the trackpoint, because what should be two single buttons below the keyboard is actually part of this one single fucking huge buttonpad. Sucks.
Since this will be my desktop computer most of the time I'll have a mouse and keyboard hooked up to the laptop, so the touchpad will not be too much of an issue. Other than that, a neat laptop and running flawlessly on Ubuntu 18.04.
[19:38] On my new laptop now. This machine is running Ubuntu with Gnome Shell on top. What can I say ... I actually used to like this desktop, but currently I am growing to hate it. Why does this password popup thing not allow me to tab over to, say, KeePass to copy my ssh passphrase? Who thought it might be a good idea to make this prompt system modal? Moreover, after this was designed, who approved of this fuckery?
The lock screen already pissed me off, too. And I have just been on this machine for about an hour. I guess setting this laptop up will take a little longer than I expected it to, because I'll have to install Xfce.
Update: Firefox, too. Sorting the tabs by last time of access by default? wtf.
[22:48] Narf, seems like my laptop is in its final throes. Earlier today it just suddenly powered off. After starting it again, Firefox will no longer resolve addresses while any other application does. Oh, and it froze, too, forcing me to perform another hard reboot. I guess I'll have to make the switch to my newer less old laptop tomorrow.
[18:28] A friend of mine recently bought a VR headset and controllers for VR games and we played Beat Saber the other day. First of all, this stuff is incredibly immersive. (Especially so when you have a fan pointed in your direction so you feel the wind while you're speeding down this tunnel. Really awesome.) Second, it is stunning how drab reality feels after just half an hour in VR. I can only try and imagine what something like a full on first person shooter would feel like. I hope I'll get a chance to try this out sooner or later. Really, really impressive tech.
[19:29] The spikes at the end of a Stegosaurus' tail are called Thagomizer. Because a comic said so, actually.
[18:02] When playing the first Command and Conquer in Wine, the game will fairly often fail to redraw, forcing me to kill and restart it, which is fairly annoying. A bug report on winehq.org offered a workaround: simply restrict Wine to a single CPU. schedtool was recommended but was not installed on my laptop, so I took a different route:taskset --cpu-list 1 wine "c:\Westwood\C&C95\C&C95.exe" did the job.
[22:25] I moved my blog over to my own domain. sed should have taken care of all the old URLs. The gmbrc is updated as well. Sooo ... everything should have been migrated fairly smoothly. I'll see if I run into any issues in the coming days.
Anyways, welcome to 21x2.net!
[23:49] My laptop is dying on me. It will occasionally just freeze and require a hard reboot plus the keyboard recently began to fail me. Since I bought this machine second hand and got precisely zero info about its age (apart from the fact that the model -- ThinkPad L412 -- was being manufactured between 2010 and 2012) I had to find out myself. First I found the serial number, then I queried Lenovo for more info. Turns out the poor old thing is just two months shy of being nine years old, which is kind of impressive for a laptop.
I already have a new-ish replacement here (second hand again) that I got set up halfway, only have to migrate my home directory over there. Still, I find myself clinging to my recent laptop. I guess I'll try and keep it alive either way. It may be old, but since my requirements are low it still serves me well.
[21:01] Unusual bit of honesty from Facebook: social media users can't expect privacy.