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"Just use Linux"...
Jun. 27th, 2023 04:47 amIt's a disingenuous ideology that often causes far more harm than good, especially for those who aren't as tech-literate as others in the FOSS space. Telling someone who has virtually no idea what they're really doing to "just install Linux" is akin to telling a random student pilot to "just get behind the stick" of an commercial jet and expecting them to know how to fly it. They might know the basics, but there's far more to the task that they just haven't learned yet.
And when people go looking for help, they're either asked to trust in copy-pasting random scripts or terminal commands (which is exceptionally dangerous), or they're just told to RTFM ("Read the F*****g Manual") and sent on their way. It's not how anyone should be treated, but in the Linux world, it's just normal for this to happen. And it's frustrating to see that, even after my decade of using Linux as a daily driver, and in the subsequent near-decade of having moved off of it, nothing has changed from the toxic gatekeeping attitudes among the most vocal of zealots who drown out everyone else. Like... I'm impressed that many people still give a damn about the OS when they have to deal with people who really have turned their hobby into a religion.
I left because I was tired of having to try and talk over shitheads in the Linux community just to help people. I was tired of dealing with the attitudes any time I ran into something that I needed help on. And above all, I was tired of the idea these people have of fend for yourself or leave.
There are good people in the Linux community, and I want to see their voices elevated over the assholes. Elevated enough that the assholes feel uncomfortable with their own toxic nature, and finally start changing for the better. Elevated enough that people actually want to use Linux because the community helps them, instead of charging out the ass for impersonal "support", or the current alternatives from hell.
I still have a soft spot for Linux. I wouldn't have stuck with it for so long otherwise. But until they can get their shit together in so many ways, including their community, I don't see much of a bright future for it. There is a future, it's just one that's remains abusive, rather than happy.
But the first step should definitely be this: Stop treating Linux like a cure-all, and start actually paying attention to what people need.
MacBook Pro repair, phone battery death
Jun. 25th, 2023 10:54 pmThat said, time hasn't treated my phone well. A Samsung Galaxy S5, it's pretty old. The battery finally failed after it went into thermal runaway, causing the phone to kinda lose some of its protections at the time. It couldn't charge, it was pushing the CPU and GPU to 100%, and it wasn't shutting down. As a result, the battery has started on its path to spicy pillowdom. Thankfully, a replacement wasn't too expensive, so that's on its way.
Right to repair... Such a wonderful thing.
C stuff, LibreOffice, and ePUB
Jun. 24th, 2023 06:56 pmAs such, I've been once again trying to learn C a bit more. "Learn C on the Mac" by Dave Mark has been a great help, given that I'm trying to do all of this on my MacBook Pro in Snow Leopard. And despite what I keep hearing from people (especially in the Rust community), C hasn't been that difficult for me so far. Sure, I'm not even done with the basics, but that's why I said so far. We'll see how well it goes in the future.
I've also been trying to figure out a good alternative to Pages '09 for making ePUB versions of my writing. Just in case I have to leave the MacOS platform for something like Linux or Windows in the future.
I tried getting the writer2epub extension working, but alas, it just doesn't run on either OpenOffice, LibreOffice, or NeoOffice for Snow Leopard. And the developer has seemingly disappeared, with all development dropped...because LibreOffice added built-in ePub export, and that was probably enough to make others sort of bully the dev into not updating (because that community hasn't pissed off enough people yet). So, I gave that a whirl.
It works. I'm having to do the testing in my Windows 7 install, but it works. Just... I can't get the cover image thing working properly, and the documentation doesn't say too much about any sort of troubleshooting. It doesn't even give me a size or aspect guideline for the file, or say what file types are supported. I've been having to guess this entire time.
That said, I know Calibre can export files to ePUB as well, so I'll be giving that a shot later. Here's hoping it's a bit more customizable than LibreOffice's offering. If nothing else, I can use my legacy version of Scrivener for Windows to do the work, because I know it works well. I just don't have a working Scrivener for 10.6.8...and that may eventually be a good thing.
For now, I think some gaming is in order. Just not sure what to play.
Gaming on my ass-old 2009 MacBook Pro
Jun. 22nd, 2023 11:18 pmAs I've mentioned before, I use a 2009 MacBook Pro. 2.53GHz Core2Duo, with 8GB of DDR3 1333MHz memory, and an nVidia GeForce 9400M with only 256MB of VRAM. Gaming is pretty good, as long as you play within the limits of the hardware.
Now, running Mac 10.6.8 means I'm not going to get most Mac App Store games, though Pathways Into Darkness runs quite well on it. I could upgrade to a newer OS, which would give me access to more games, but I like 10.6.8 too much to do so. So, as far as Mac games go, I look a bit further back. PPC games like Age of Empires II Gold, Star Wars: Empire at War, StarCraft, WarCraft III, and Diablo II are some of my first-to-mind entires, along with some of the early Pop Cap games like Plants vs Zombies and Peggle.
Of course, I also have access to the stuff on Macintosh Garden as well, so… Yeah. There's plenty to choose from there.
And still in the MacOS, I also have access to DOSBox (via Boxer) and Wine (via WineBottler). That means I have access to some Windows games, and a large swath of games for MS-DOS. At the moment, I have Undertale and Earth 2140 installed via WineBottler, but I've gotten a large number of GOG games running this way. You sometimes have to tweak the installs with extra prerequisites, but most 32-bit games can work.
With MS-DOS games… Uh… I have over 90 games installed via Boxer, which makes easy-to-use app bundles that can just be double-clicked to launch. The Wing Commander series, the Ultima series, Quest for Glory, Fire & Ice… The list goes on and on. Given it's one of my two favorite eras for PC games (the other being Windows 9x era games), having access to that library in such an easy-to-use and easily backed-up form is rather nice.
And speaking of not-emulation, there's also plenty of emulators for the platform as well. KiGB, Boycott Advance, and a number of others provide plenty of console and handheld emulation, from the NES and Sega Master System, up to even the DS and Wii. So yeah… That's a thing.
Moving on, there's also some source ports I can use as well. ZDoom, JFDuke3D, one for Shadow Warrior, a Quake source port, AelphOne for the Marathon series… I'm still finding them occasionally, and I'm pretty sure I can compile others to work. I love playing DOOM WADs on this thing for some reason.
And of course, there's virtual machines and Boot Camp! For those who don't know, Intel-based Macs allow you to install Windows XP and up in its own partition, fully bootable from the UEFI boot menu (hold Option while booting). I keep a Windows 7 VM on my MacBook, with a good number of games from GOG, Itch.io, and others that I've collected over the years.
I also have Parallels Desktop, which lets me run my Windows 7 install side-by-side as a VM, as well as integrating it with the Mac desktop directly. I use it to play games like Don't Starve and Stardew Valley while I'm working on other things, and it works surprisingly well on a Core2Duo. Or I can reboot and log in to play some Minecraft, or Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.
But it also allows for other OSes as virtual machines as well. I keep a Windows XP VM installed, and it's useful for playing Windows 9x era games that can't be played through Wine. Games like Drakan: Order of the Flame, and Triple Triad Gold, and even Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VIII for PC. A lot of them require a CD in a drive, or a disk image to be mounted, and that’s doable in a VM. Not so easy to do in Wine, though.
So, despite being on an older machine, I’ve got plenty to play. It’s not the most powerful of laptops, but it works for my needs.
Hacking on old code
Jun. 20th, 2023 07:02 pmPython both pisses me off, and is one of the reasons I nearly swore off programming as a whole, due to my early interactions with that community being on-par with that of many Arch Linux vocalists: "RTFM", and nothing else. I've been using Pelican, a python-based SSG engine, for my story and writing blogs for a while. But I want to be able to actually work on the backend software for my own uses, and given Chronicle is Perl...why not?
Well, I already ran into a problem while grabbing all of the dependencies. "-fstack-protection-strong" is not available with older gcc and clang compilers, so I had to go into my Perl configs, open "Config_heavy.pl", and change the ccflags entry to "-fstack-protection" instead. After that, everything started compiling just fine.
Right now, I'm going through the template docs to make one of my own. Probably a dark theme, thinking Black-Amber or Black-Green like an old monochrome CRT terminal. We'll see what I can come up with, though.
The place isn't federated. It's fragmented. And it's constantly becoming more and more fragmented with every passing day.
I just don't see any value in staying there. Not when I feel completely wiped out, and even depressed, by the time I'm done scrolling through the first ten or so updates on any one of my timelines. And I know tools exist to help filter out things, but they don't work when people use their words as a moving target to get around such filters. The whole thing has become a frustrating war of fighting against the network itself, when what I really should be doing is not playing at all.
Twitter had reach and audience as its draws for someone like me. I could have at least used it to self-advertise as an indie author, even without interacting with the horrid people that occupy much of it. With the Fediverse, I don't even have that as a draw. I never know when my audience might be cut off, or cut down, or even that I'd have much reach outside of the local instance, not to mention the abusive vocalists who attack people just for advertising their Patreon or Ko-Fi links. So what would be the point of even trying there?
And I tried... I tried five times to give the Fediverse a chance for my needs. And all five times, I've come out with worse mental health than when I went in. That's not a good record at all. And I don't feel safe in the slightest there. Not because of the admins of the instances I go to, but because of the Fediverse in general. It's just not worth the strain on my heart, or the heightened blood pressure and anxiety, that I get just looking at any of the timelines.
At least I can follow...some people via RSS. Not everyone, since that seems to be a thing that keeps getting taken away from non-Mastodon instances, and some don't even allow following from the web at all... Yeah... Standards aren't really standards.
Regardless, I don't think I want to go back. Not with the hellscape it tends to become at the drop of a hat.
I feel like a broken record...
Jun. 2nd, 2023 04:05 pmThe problem is that...many of the people I follow moved to Discord, Telegram, and social media almost exclusively. And those who went to social media either went to Twitter, or to Mastodon.
I don't have the spoons to deal with social media anymore. I barely have the spoons to hold conversations with my partners, much less be in the cacophony of chatter that exists on those platforms. For some, following them is the only way to get their updates, and a good portion of them on Mastodon either don't care about content warnings, or are hostile to the idea. So filtering out things that send me into anxiety hell is almost impossible, which means I can't follow them for the sake of my own mental health.
That's what makes gallery sites so valuable. Fans who have issues with political talk and the like can enjoy your work without having to turn around and get their mood completely tanked into the ground by things they can't really mentally handle. Separating your work from your general thoughts helps to not only gather and keep viewers (and potential customers), but also makes it so that those who want to follow you for your thoughts don't have to deal with things they might not want to wade through as well. It's why many people had a blog separate from their gallery page in the past.
I understand that people don't want to have to maintain multiple accounts and such, but it's something that fans will often appreciate far more than you could ever know. Unfortunately, at this point, not being thrown into a group chat just to see art, or being forced into the abusiveness that is Twitter and the Fediverse just to be able to keep up with an artist, is practically an impossibility. It's all people want to know, because they're too afraid of changing to something unknown, or can't afford to deal with maintaining their own presence on the web. And many complain about the abusive nature of one site, not realizing that the services they're moving toward can be just as abusive toward their users.
And unfortunately, the more people decide to silo themselves into one or two locations, the fewer alternatives become viable. It's why Discord is still so "popular", despite all of its screw-ups and abusive behavior. It's why people stuck to Skype until they literally couldn't do so anymore. It's why many won't leave Twitter, despite all of the insanity surrounding that platform.
There's no universal solution, and when there is, it's only a matter of time before it turns toxic. That's why it's so important to spread out. So that when the "best solution" turns sour, you have somewhere to go, and can point others in that direction.
Making Lifestyle Changes
Mar. 22nd, 2023 04:30 pmMy anxiety has been almost out of control, and it's heavily affected my ability to function and keep myself healthy. My ability to focus is almost non-existent, my general health has been going downhill, and I've been having extreme difficulty enjoying things that I normally love. So, I've been trying to change some of the things in my life to help mitigate the problems causing a lot of it.
For example, I've been acquiring a few items to set up a mini-kitchenette in my room. A small toaster, a small electric skillet, a small electric griddle, a cooler, and an electric kettle/coffee maker sit at my large desk, along with some basic utensils, cups, and so on. I make myself tea, coffee, toast, and small meals when I don't feel like going out to the main kitchen. It's liberating to have these items in here. It means I don't have to leave my work just to deal with lunch/dinner, and I can try to stay focused on my task.
I've also been trying to keep myself exercising as best I can, within my limits. Exercise pedals help with both arms and legs, getting up to move around gets the blood flowing, and I have some small weights to help with my arms. Can't do much with my back due to chronic issues, but I keep it going regardless.
I've also been attempting to just sit back and relax more. Reading, getting back into retro/vintage tech (think MacOS before OS X, or Windows XP and prior), and listening to music (thank you, Icecast/Shoutcast servers) have been my goto as of late. It's part of why I wanted an American futon in my room, so I could have a sofa to kick back on.
The biggest change has been limiting my time doing much of anything on the web. I'll watch videos, and sometimes join streams to chat, but otherwise I keep my web time online to a minimum where I can. I mean, I don't use cloud storage or web apps for most of what I do, so it's not like I need to be online all of the time. Plus, to keep myself off most sites, I can just use my old-school MacBook Pro since most sites don't work with old Gecko/Chrome engine stuff.
1) I c/p'd this bit of code that I haven't been able to find again in search engines, but it fixed the
CLOCK_REALTIME error:
#if defined(__MACH__) && !defined(CLOCK_REALTIME)
#include sys/time.h
#define CLOCK_REALTIME 0
// clock_gettime is not implemented on older versions of OS X (< 10.12).
// If implemented, CLOCK_REALTIME will have already been defined.
int clock_gettime(int /*clk_id*/, struct timespec* t) {
struct timeval now;
int rv = gettimeofday(&now, NULL);
if (rv) return rv;
t->tv_sec = now.tv_sec;
t->tv_nsec = now.tv_usec * 1000;
return 0;
}
#endif
2) I had to point the linker directly to the library name, as the library was in the right directory from my MacPorts install of gettext, but not seen. I edited the Config.mk file with the following, adding
-lintl.8 just after the library folders:
ldflags += -L/opt/local/lib -L/opt/local/libexec/openssl3/lib -L/opt/local/lib -lintl.8 -Wl,-search_paths_first ${LDFLAGS}Once I made those changes, it compiled perfectly fine.
Packing Things Away
Sep. 14th, 2022 09:34 pmUnfortunately, he's suddenly pushing it as a "we need to get it done now" issue without taking with either me or my partner about it first, mostly because he's the one who's been targeted by the bugs. I can understand his frustration, but with my partner working Mon-Fri, and me having had issues with my sleep for so long, it's also a massive drain on us as well.
We'll make it through. Just... I'll be glad when I can finally relax and start writing again.
Time Capsule Obtained
Sep. 1st, 2022 03:18 amSetup was absolutely easy. Ran a wizard that asked a few questions, helped me to set up the shared drive, even launched Time Machine for me so I could get that done. I was done in less than five minutes, and most of that time was thinking up a name for the device, and a name for the drive. Go figure that it Just Works™ when I need it to. The multiple hours of the initial backup over wifi? That was a bit of a pain, but understandable. And that's done, so the incremental backups are much faster.
And best of all? I don't have to worry about shoddy USB cables killing a drive. If this drive dies, I'll just open it up (once I get a hair dryer), put in a new drive, and get things going again. Don't have to worry about soldered-on SSDs or anything.
Repairability... It's such a nice thing.
Why did I order one if I'm already using Time Machine in another way?
I use it via a USB drive sled and 3.5" HDD. Recently, bumping the USB cable during a backup made me lose EVERYTHING on the drive to corruption, since it powered down during a write. Not Time Machine's fault, since that's on a physical level. But I don't want that happening again. And since I use a MacBook Pro, having the backups done automatically over WiFi means I don't need to worry about bumping a stupid cable while it's writing the backup. That's a good thing.
Yeah, I know. It's an Apple thing. It's proprietary. But at this point in my life, I find it hard to give a damn about that. I'm tired of fighting with solutions that cause more problems than they fix. I'd rather use some outdated proprietary stuff that works without problem, than to keep struggling with modern bullshit that makes me tired and angry all the time.
It's no wonder I see more Linux people I know moving to Macs these days. I can't blame them.
Re: Tech Sucks...
Aug. 10th, 2022 03:42 amYes, I'm a little bitter, but when told by members of a community to "just deal with it" in response to legit problems you're having, you probably would be as well.
I'm just really glad I was able to get this MacBook Pro. Dealing with Fedora on that Dell laptop was about to drive me up the wall in all the worst ways possible, and I'm not sure how much more I would've been able to take before starting to hate the OS as a whole. I still like Linux, just not the modern pieces that get forced down one's throat.
Maybe this is why I'm so into vintage computing theses days. It doesn't make me angry.
AAARGH... Tech sucks. [Rant]
Jul. 26th, 2022 08:36 amLinux is beginning to frustrate me to no end at this point. Costantly having to fix the sound system, updates breaking things just as much as Windows 10, dealing with constant instability just using the laptop... I'm so sick and tired of having maintain the OS more than I use it. To the point that I keep going to my Windows 10 desktop and using it for basic things.
I legit miss the ass-old MacOS on my MacBook. I miss Windows XP and Vista. I miss having an OS that works with me, instead of against me. I miss being able to not have to worry whether bringing the device out of sleep means a hard reboot or not.
I hate modern OSes. I hate what they've become. I didn't have these constant issues with late 00s/early 2010s Linux, nor do I have them with Win XP/Vista/7 or MacOS 10.6/10.8. It's like everyone said "fuck it, you're on your own." and started shipping alpha-grade patches to everyone because reasons.
I don't quite know what I'm going to do at the moment. Maybe back shit up and switch back to Windows 7, at least for the time being. I mean, it's better than wanting to send the laptop out a window every single day.
Just... Bleh.
I really hate some of the trends I've seen on social media, but one of the big ones that irks me is the whole idea that, if someone doesn't update their followers constantly, some of said followers start to get "worried or scared" that something happened to the person. I saw this recently because, while I don't use Twitter directly, I do keep up with certain interesting people via RSS feeds.
This person hadn't updated for two days. Just two days. Suddenly, they show up with an update stating that they're on vacation, and to no worry about them. I take a quick look via Twitter search, and see multiple people at-mentioning this person begging them to say something so that their followers know that they're okay. Just... What the hell? Let people post at their own pace. They may be busy, or like the person in this example, might be trying to get away from online life with a vacation.
The problem is that many individuals, and even the media, push and promote the "always connected" mentality in a way that normalizes those fears. The idea that someone going dark for even a day means there might be something wrong with said content creator. I've also seen it on the likes of YouTube, where a creator goes on an unexpected hiatus, and people lose it, thinking legitimately that the person is in the hospital, or even dead, just because they hadn't posted on schedule. It's absolutely terrifying that these creators can't even get personal time without fans pestering them about fearing the worst had happened.
It's why I prefer not to have a schedule at this point. If I did, and I missed an upload or something, I don't want someone going that route. It'd kill me a bit on the inside, knowing that I might have hurt someone in such a way.
Part of me also fears that it's fake empathy, with people making such posts to get "internet points" (Likes/Faves and such) for being such a "good fan". It's not only possible, but an actual trend or dark pattern that shows up at times to encourage people desparate for those numbers, or just for attention.
It's kinda sad, in innumerable ways, that it's considered socially acceptable to not let people have free time if they're a public figure/influencer/insert buzzword of the day here. Then again, with the other ways social media have twisted perceptions of individuals in high places, it's also not surprising. People aren't allowed to be just people if they're successful.
And above all else, just thinking about it, that actually kinda justifies my fear of success once again.
Well, it's working...and stable?
Jun. 23rd, 2022 02:40 amMy MacBook stopped working, and I don't know why. Simple as that.
So, for now, my love of KDE is realized again, even if I'm once again using mostly terminal apps in Konsole. At least Falkon isn't a steaming pile for a web browser, and I can still use Inform7 with Emacs (sorry Calyo, but I'm not using VIM with it yet. :P ). Oh! And KDE Connect is still awesome, and integrates with cmus now, so I don't even need a graphical music player, so that's a plus.
Now, if only Linux had good subpixel scaling on this screen...
Linux frustrations... again...
Jun. 14th, 2022 01:21 amFor a refresher, it's a Dell Latitude E6430,l 12GB PC3-10700, Core-i5 3360M, nVidia NVS 5200M + Intel HD 4000 (Optimus chipset). I replaced the optical drive with a second HDD caddy for the module bay, and use a 9-cell 97Wh main battery, with a second 97Wh slice battery on the docking port (when not using the port extender). As a baseline on Windows 7, this thing can get an average of 14-16 hours of battery life with normal usage, or around 10 hours while watching videos. It uses two 500GB SSDs for data, so no bottlenecks there.
I installed Fedora Workstation 36 first, and one update later, GRUB broke. Yay... Reinstalled, and got updates. Except that it wouldn't stop using the nVidia card. I was getting battery life in the 3-4 hour range while idling, so I wasn't happy. Tried Fedora 36 KDE, and it worked...until I updated. nVidia-only issue happened again, and I lost access to the docking port (and second battery), so 1.5-2 hours of battery on idle. Didn't know I was running a Mac Portable...
Tried Kubuntu (among others), but everything had problems all around that I couldn't find any help with, and frustration kept building when I really need to be relaxing. I finally just gave up and went back to using my Windows 7 drive.
On-metal Linux just isn't happening on this machine. I'll stick to a VM.
IRC, Matrix, Discord...
May. 6th, 2022 09:17 amI signed into Matrix (via Element), and instantly got hit with notifications. A security notification asking me to verify a sign-in from an experimental build of gomuks on my MacBook, some "try our beta feature" bubbles (what is this, GitHub?), and several friend invites from people who I don't even recognize. Like... I expect that from XMPP. Give me time to actually get into things before bombarding me with attention-stealing things like that, please.
At least they allow IRC bridges and are open source. Unlike Discord, which will ban your ass if they find out you're using anything but their "100% approved" web app of crap. It's a memory and network hog that only runs on modern OSes, and they love locking features behind a paywall. It's just frustrating to use on a daily basis, but it's what my partners use, so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Meanwhile, IRC may be old, but it Just Works™. It doesn't have offline message persistence, or end-to-end encryption, or cross-server friend systems, or image previews (unless your client has them), or stickers, or anything like that. But it does let you chat with people, unimpeded by paywalls or machine age, and it does so in a way that is simple and clean enough that you could do it on a fricken Commodore 64.
Sigh... I know one of my rules is "Don't use something in a way it wasn't meant to be used", but when that product frustrates me out of the box, it's kinda difficult not to. And both Matrix and Discord have frustrated me since day 1 in their own ways. Just... Some days, tech really doesn't pay.
Nothing for tonight
May. 5th, 2022 05:36 amMy site, PrismDragon.Net, goes by two names: PDN (the internal name), and "The Whitespace Plains". That latter name was started when I took the "codebalion" username in a few places, but truth be told, it has nothing to do with code. It's actually a reference to the "white space" used in many of Apple's commercials and presentations, most notably with many by Jony Ive.
Just something that was on my mind.
