2017-01-26 16:53 Since the web browser is not the only software I use to access the internet, maybe I should have different wardrobes at hand. An old, sturdy one as the icon for my terminal, for example. (I love to have a laptop to toy around with as I see fit and that I do not really depend on.) By the way, talking about wardrobes: do NOT dump your trash in there. You might startle the cat.
2017-01-17 23:22 So this is where the word "patch" originated. Kind of obvious. Can't believe I never pondered on this.
2017-01-15 01:41 Simone Giertz is awesome. That being said, I read this interview and became fond of the idea that the Internet is like Narnia. So I saved this icon (I know, I know -- not exactly a wardrobe) to /usr/lib/firefox/browser/icons/mozicon128.png and now have the Internet/Narnia just there, when I click on the sort-of-wardrobe. (By the way, I'm feeling the urge to point out that not only Narnia, but also this awesome world was reached by wardrobe. If you get the chance - play the first two games.)
Update: I also altered /usr/share/applications/firefox.desktop and set a new name and comment there.
2017-01-09 22:41 This ransomware forces those affected to read two articles about ransomware and how to stay safe online. After the articles have been read, it will provide a decryption key. Kind of a brute force approach to teaching.
Reminds me of this case, in which some guy cracked into a server and -- updated the kernel so this exploit could not be used again, then informed the admin before he left. Or Linux.Wifatch, technically a malware, that infected devices and disabled telnet, warning the users about it.
2016-12-29 21:13 Watching a stream from 33c3 right now (this one). Weird art stuff in a browser. For example, take a look at wwwwwwwww.jodi.org, which is a total mess. Then look at the source. They said they forgot to close the tags. Fascinating outcome, however accidental it may be.
The talk will appear there sooner or later.
Update: There you go.
2016-12-26 21:33 Found some old nineties eurodance and was inspired to do this. And for reasons I cannot really fathom, I like this mess.
2016-12-26 18:36 Okay. Forget the Winamp Classic skin that I linked to at the very beginning of this blog. Instead, take a look at this!
2016-12-14 20:24 And since I just found the tab among the dozens opened: if you are interested in astronomy, you may want to take a look at Galaxy Zoo and help classify galaxies. By hand.
2016-12-14 20:21 Changing the way gmb prints timestamps. I like the way SoC does it more, because it allows for use without any CSS. My current output looks terrible when the entry begins with a hyperlink, because it may not be easy to distinguish it from the timestamp/permalink. And as I am feeling more and more uneasy with CSS and intend to go all plain HTML, I better change it.
2016-12-12 22:46 What is it with people porting $program to the web? New candidate: Browsix, promising to run UNIX in the browser. I don't feel good about this.
2016-12-09 17:42 I always wondered why $ ps took arguments in a different style than most other programs. Without a leading dash, that is. And then there are applications accepting arguments with double dashes followed by entire words instead of single letters. This confused me a bit.
Yesterday an article I read pointed me to the answer: the syntax without any dashes is BSD style, while double dashes are more of a GNU thing. Single dash and single, yet combinable letters are a legacy of UNIX.
2016-11-27 19:24 If you like to know what GeoCities looked like on the hardware side, take a look at this article and the images included. Screenshots of the old web pages are one thing, but I like a view behind the curtain.
2016-11-20 19:46 This is the first time I'm logged in via my phone. Feels a little strange to have a CLI at my fingertips on a touchscreen, but it sure is nice to have. I'm using ConnectBot.
2016-11-13 11:58 To get a weather forecast in plain ASCII, take a look at wttr.in. Sort of works with curl, but the terminal has to be sized properly.
2016-11-10 19:40 At work, we're experiencing static discharge more often than not when touching any door knob, because the flooring just sucks. Now, one colleague uses a mouse with a metallic mouse wheel, and whenever he gets back to his desk and touches it, the electricity will discharge right into it, through the cable and into his computer, causing his screen to black out for just a split second. Being the admin this makes me feel a little uneasy. But being myself, I find this hilarious.
2016-11-09 19:32 I think I just made up a new form of body modification: engraving in the bone. Just imagine the facial expression of your medic when they x-ray you and find "Made in China" written on your femur.
2016-10-29 12:48 The Internet Archive made a search engine for the animated .gif files of the old GeoCities sites, available at GifCities.
2016-10-29 09:32 "Digital seems like it's forever because it's infinitely reproducible, but someone has to think to make that canonical copy or it's gone-gone." (source) The whole article is fascinating to read.
2016-10-25 21:20 This tool will help you calculate the contrast ratio of two colors. You might, for example, check the text and background colors on your web site. (It is, however, way beyond me why the page has to rely on amazonaws to display the "fork me" sash in the top left corner. Couldn't this be stored on the same server?)
2016-10-16 21:01 Quick and easy way to display your external IP address on GNU/Linux (because ifconfig will only show the local IP): $ dig +short myip.opendns.com @resolver1.opendns.com (via)
2016-10-08 19:43 From the "not gonna happen" department: I want a device that reads my brainwaves, calculates my degree of tiredness and chooses an adequate font in my messaging services. I want people to know that I just woke up right when they read my message.
2016-10-05 20:43 I wanted to write this about a month ago already, but I forgot, it seems. Anyways: I noticed ~aysb used gmb. Now, it is great fun writing code, but when someone actually uses it (and be it just for that short a time) this makes you really proud. So, thanks for using gmb, ~aysb!
2016-10-05 20:31 Since I chose to go by the name Gauntlet, I think this would make a nice tattoo.
Update: This one as well. I still love this game.
2016-10-02 23:22 Evan Roth talking about "Internet Landscapes". Just started the video, but it looks promising. I also like the fact that he is using his browser to scroll through his slides.
Update: Admittedly, I know this feeling he describes. Uploading a file, refreshing the browser and finding it there, available to the entire web. Amazing. I am a professional, I know about this stuff. Still, it amazes me.
2016-09-25 11:53 I'm all about text and not so much about images, and it seems I'm not the only person considering plain websites the prettiest and most purposeful. I found this design for a (copy-)writers site that is just about as minimal as I like it.
2016-09-22 20:07 Computers really help us to communicate. A friend had me try his headphones the other day, which happend to be loud enough to drown his voice. To continue our conversation, we used the text editor on his PC. Offline real-time chat, yay!
2016-09-19 20:37 Ugh, Firefox keeps bugging me. More often than not the back button wont work. Also, it wont reload on Ctrl R, instead I have to set the cursor in the address bar and hit return to reload. Now it quit following hyperlinks when I click on them. This just sucks. I'd happily switch to another browser, but the other ones don't support the addons I need.
Update: My bad, seemingly. I just messed up a Firefox install on another machine running a different OS. Installed NoScript and RequestPolicy and ran into just the same problems. Apparently I can't blame it on the fox.
2016-09-18 15:30 I'm still using the earliest working version of gmb on this blog, so I'd like to try the most up-to-date one and see wether or not it is reliable. So I'll dump a few links and comments in this testing ground within the next few days. Keeping this main blog geeky, rat will be a place to write all the other things. Woohoo.
2016-09-16 22:25 Reading on tildes is pure serendipity. On ~silver's page I found a link to this article. Mentioned there I read about notmuch, a text based email client I had not heard of before. On its website, in turn, I found a reference to sup, yet another cli mail client.
I really dig that.
2016-09-16 22:14 What is it like to completely ditch the GUI and live on the command line for a month? That's what it is like. Personally, I would most likely not even try this. I've been planning to buy a used netbook for a while now to put a lightweight GNU distro on, mainly focussing on the CLI, but I always had a graphic interface in mind. Something like Openbox, for example. Simply because I would miss videos.
(via)
2016-09-07 10:57 ~cortex came up with "swintons" as a name for the users of tilde servers. I like the idea. (And as the term was already used in 2014, I guess I'm pretty late to find out about it.)
2016-09-02 08:45 "Once Upon" by Olia Lialina & Dragan Espenschied: "Three important contemporary web sites, recreated with technology and spirit of late 1997, according to our memories."
2016-08-29 22:30 I have my own server now. Makes me feel like one of the cool kids. 8)
2016-08-23 10:43 Apparently, it is internaut's day today. Didn't hear or read about that one before. I should make a list of stuff like that.
This seems the right moment to recommend birthday, which is useful to keep track of any kinds of recurrent events.
2016-08-22 21:48 Using computers a lot, I grew pretty fond of standards. The other day I found out that there are also fan developed building standards for Lego creations.
2016-08-22 18:53 gmb initially was a tool to generate a quasi-endless one page blog, but if it is used for long enough a time or many times a day, the output file might (will) grow huge, so I'm currently implementing an archive and the option to remove older entries from the index page.
I'm also using functions, so stuff like rss or the archive can easily be toggled in the config file. (Yes, gmb is growing up. It now has a config file.)
2016-08-20 11:51 Ouch. I just noticed that the output of img2html is totally messed up in Chrome. Damn. Looked all right in Firefox. I'll have to take a look at the CSS.
Update, 2016-12-29: Finally took a look at the CSS and fixed it within less than a minute (in which I also googled how to copy/paste in nano). Talking about tardy bugfixes ...
2016-08-20 11:46 I like it when computers do weird, unexpected things. In this case, it had something to do with anti-aliasing and was pretty easy to fix, but it was quite a surprise when it happened out of the blue. (screenshot of this site)
2016-08-16 12:25 I can hardly tell how much I detest websites that override my input. When I middle click a link, I want it to open in a new tab, obviously. Who are these guys to decide that instead the link is opened in the same tab, thereby, in this case, fucking up my search results? Argh!
2016-08-15 09:31 On some occasions, I really feel particularly nerdy. The other day I was pondering a change of my general attire and not a minute later and basically still on the same topic I decided that an own server might proof useful.
2016-08-10 12:06 Working in a public library today. Was hard to find in the first place, as it is located in the uppermost floor of a mall, even above the parking deck. Also, wifi is just as unstable as it is slow. However, the librarians are quite friendly, so I might return.
2016-08-08 12:10 Co-working spaces are fascinating places to be at. (Even though I'm feeling a bit lost with my ThinkPad -- there's almost only MacBooks around. Creepy.)
2016-07-27 22:33 minimal web: "A minimalist website. Perfect for the readers, which is perfect for the writer. Not so perfect for advertisers and marketers, perhaps, but we're not creating sites for them. We're creating sites for us."
2016-07-27 15:39 vrms helps detecting non-free software installed on Debian-based operating systems.
2016-07-23 23:01 Studying other people's HTML actually pays. I learned about Meta refresh which allows to redirect from one page to another even if one has no access to the server config.
2016-07-20 14:25 I just failed at setting up the current version of my own script. Totally forgot to point to the rss.xml file. I guess I need to write a setup.sh or something.
2016-07-17 15:48 I updated gmb. It now supports RSS. Also, the timestamps are clickable now, so linking to a specific entry is made easier.
2016-07-16 00:12 Okay, all the old content should now be here. So, gmb is hereby inaugurated.
2016-07-07 00:00 Whenever I have my computer connected to a printer (especially when said printer is in another room) I'm scared to accidentally print stuff.
2016-07-04 00:00 Chocolatey. "The package manager for Windows"
2016-06-26 00:00 pi-top. I want one of those. I absolutely don't need it -- four laptops should do, shouldn't they? -- but I want to have one. ... okay, okay. Playing around with one for an hour or two would suffice.
2016-06-26 00:00 Today I met a former classmate I last met about three years ago. She's now working in extraterrestrial geophysics and processing data from the Hubble telescope. Wow.
2016-06-08 00:00 Plugged in the scanner, worked out of the box. I love Ubuntu.
2016-05-13 00:00 "Common Sans Is a typeface that replaces the word refugee with the word human."
2016-05-12 00:00 Whenever I come across an apparently empty web page I take a look at the source, because I am afraid to miss something.
2016-05-09 00:00 I hate it when people embed images on their sites and put an anchor around them in a way that the whitespace to both sides is part of the link. Seriously, how does that even happen?
2016-04-20 00:00 Hasn't been updated in a while, but here's a handful of posts by teachers, telling which hard- and software they are using in their workaday life. Quite fascinating.
2016-04-19 00:00 It just caught my eye (well, ear, that is) that Microsoft named their search engine after the sound of an error message.
2016-04-17 00:00 Hitting ' (single quote) on Firefox will open a search box for links on the page.
2016-04-13 00:00 I just downloaded a web page because I wanted a local copy. After hitting Ctrl S firefox prompted me with the save dialog box and chose a file name by itself: the page's title. I never before actually noticed that, but now it annoys me. Why would it use the title instead of the actual file name? Meh.
2016-04-11 00:00 SQL Island is a funny little game that provides a pretty laid-back way of learning SQL.
2016-03-14 00:00 There is a short story by Jorge Luis Borges entitled "The Library of Babel", in which he describes a library that contains, in the form of books of 410 pages each, all conceivable and possible combinations of a certain charset. In other words, the library would contain everything that was or will ever be written. Also any gibberish you may or may not imagine. At libraryofbabel.info you'll find a digital library of this very kind as a work in progress. Pretty fascinating to dig around in there.
2016-02-10 00:00 Oh noez. I just noticed that orteil released Cookie Clicker v2. This grants him my undivided (albeit temporary) hatred, because there goes my productivity.
2016-02-07 00:00 Laura Poitras is turning mass surveillance into an objet d'art: Astro Noise
2016-02-06 00:00 Dead Drops. Did I really miss to link this?
2015-12-10 00:00 News just told me that today would have been Ada Lovelace's 200th birthday. Great day to recommend a novel: The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. Read it.
2015-11-24 00:00 OneStepBack GTK theme. Call me unprogressive, but I like themes of this kind. Always wanted a Raleigh-ish GTK3 theme, but I guess this one will do.
2015-11-20 00:00 Note to self: take a look at the "Checkbox Hack". Might be fun to tinker with a little.
2015-11-13 00:00 You can add +anything to your email address just before the @ and still recieve the mail. It will even help you to sort and filter the incoming mail. See Gmail Help on this. How did I not know this yet? Seriously, how? (via)
2015-11-13 00:00 Net names for safe shelter. The idea of using norwegian law, norwegian tlds to keep data from crossing borders unencrypted and thereby ensure privacy. Interesting thought.
2015-11-09 00:00 "PirateBox is a DIY anonymous offline file-sharing and communications system built with free software and inexpensive off-the-shelf hardware."
2015-11-07 00:00 Discussed GUIs with a colleague the other day. He asked me if I was still using XFKDCE.... XFKDCE. Dude.DUDE.
2015-10-02 00:00 "The trouble with quotes on the Internet is that you can never know if they are genuine." - Abraham Lincoln
2015-09-28 00:00 '"The disease has been spotted in Madagascar" may be the single most rewarding line of text in all gaming.' - unmortalguy, 2014-05-28
2015-07-08 00:00 Math Limerick: ( (12 + 144 + 20 + 3 Sqrt[4]) / 7 ) + 5*11 = 92 + 0
2015-06-03 00:00 ZBar. A handy little tool for Windows that will add a taskbar on your second display showing only the programs running on this very display.
2015-05-15 00:00 Star Wars via telnet: $ telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl
2015-05-15 00:00 Star Wars via traceroute: $ traceroute -m 66 216.81.59.173
2015-05-15 00:00 "Love is Hate. War is Peace. Windows is stable." (via)
2015-05-13 00:00 MooGNU (YouTube video)
2015-05-13 00:00 Suicide Linux. "Any time you type any remotely incorrect command, the interpreter creatively resolves it into rm -rf / and wipes your hard drive."
