💾 Archived View for jacksontaylor.xyz › 2020.gmi captured on 2023-05-24 at 17:41:33. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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I've been looking for a good way to develop this site for a while. Since it's all static HTML, I really didn't want to setup jenkins or any sort of massive CI/CD solution. I wanted to do a bunch of things that ended up having security issues(I think, I'm not actually sure), or were just overall dumb.
I finally found out about git hooks, and that is what I'm going to continue using for now. You can set up scripts both on remotes and locally to run on specific events. For example you can run unit tests when you go to push to a remote, and if they fail you can stop the push from going through. The way I am using it is to copy my repository into the folder I'm serving whenever new commits are pushed.
It seems to be working well, it's kind of messing with my rss feed because I would write my blog posts on my server and post it there. That's why my last blog about my year end playlist results is probably seen as updated or something.
This makes writing blog posts way easier. So I might start posting more, for real.
Tue, 22 Dec 2020 13:59:17 -0500
Up until this year, I had been using Google Play for all of my music. I had to switch because of the platform going away, so my family switched to YouTube Music maybe in the summertime, I can't remember. Something that's cool about this platform is they do the "Most listened to artists" generated playlist. I really love music, and I'll always want to talk about what I'm listening to. Here are the top 20 songs from this list (99 in total).
I'm assuming that these are songs that I listened to online, and not my downloads. Deer Tick (my favorite band) isn't in here until maybe 30-40, and I listen to them most every day. This was pretty cool to see though, if I keep this site up for a few years, and I keep YouTube Music, I'll keep doing this.
Tue, 22 Dec 2020 13:58:39 -0500
This ended up being way longer and way more review-y than I intended. I've been writing this for a few hours...
TLDR: it definitely isn't average consumer ready yet. The software is VERY buggy. The hardware isn't terrible though. But it was worth what I paid I think. If you know and love Linux, you may be interested.
I am in no way a phone reviewer, or tech reviewer. I am literally one of the worst people to ask anything about hardware. This is just something I think is interesting, and wanted to share a little bit about. I might write something later on if there is something cool I find out about it, or I do something cool with it myself.
I ordered a manjaro edition pinephone a while back and I actually didn't realize I had gotten the tracking number back in October, so it was kind of a surprise to get it. I thought they were going to be shipped out in mid-late November. I've had it for 2 days, and I've messed around with it a little bit, but nothing too extensive yet.
The build quality of the phone surprised me a bit. It is made of plastic, but it doesn't feel as cheap as I would've thought. I remember reading that it was the same size as my phone (OnePlus 7 pro, 6.7"), but that didn't really register in my mind, so I was surprised at how big it was. It's lighter than my phone, but that's probably due to the plastic. I love that it has a removable battery, hardware kill-switches, a 3.5mm headphone jack, expandable storage, and USB-C. It's nice that these features exist, and are sort of a standard on Linux phones currently (Librem has them as well). Hopefully this sets a standard for other phones to come. The LCD screen did have 1 dead pixel, which isn't noticeable. Only when the screen is black can you really see it. I got the convergence edition, which came with an extra GB of RAM (3GB total), and a "dock". It's more like a USB hub than a dock. It's made of metal, has 2 normal USB ports(I think they're USB 2.0), an HDMI port, and ethernet. And connects to the phone via USB-C. It also has a port to charge it while in use (I assume it charges it, though the USB ports may be powered from this). The battery life is kinda meh, it takes a while to charge. I haven't used it in a setting to drain it completely yet. The cameras aren't great either, but that's expected. They take pictures though, I know that wasn't a thing until pretty recently.
Like I said at the start, the software is REALLY buggy, but I've only used the manjaro phosh build. There are other operating systems and interfaces you can use. On my list to try is a pure arch variant, Postmarket, and probably UBPorts/Ubuntu touch. I don't think I will be happy with the software until it's waaaay more lightweight. Something like xfce maybe, or a tiling WM would be cool (Though using a tiling wm on a phone would be really weird). Anyway, the software is actually faster than I thought it would be for sure. But it can be really hit or miss when it crashes, or which apps actually work. For example: I haven't been able to change the background because the file manager used doesn't fit to the screen of the phone. I'm assuming it's trying to decide the resolution and gets hung, because it eventually does close. The file manager on it's own is fine, so I'm not sure if this is specific to the settings app. I haven't plugged a sim card into it yet, so I can't comment on the quality of calls and texts. Web browsing is kind of slow, but usable I guess. Since manjaro is arch based, you have access to pacman and even the aur. The included terminal emulator I think is the same you'd find on regular GNOME, it's ok. I think it's hilarious I can install Go and vim on my phone though. I don't really recommend using vim with your phone's keyboard though, that is really strange and kind of a pain. I think if I were to find a lightweight distro and interface, I would probably just use it like a laptop/mini desktop. With the dock, I can hook it up to a keyboard, mouse and monitor. This is also severely buggy. On first boot, it did not work. After a reboot, it works sometimes. It's probably just an issue with Xorg or Wayland(not sure which it uses). I may just be missing something with keyboard shortcuts or something, but if an app opens up off screen (Which usually happens), I can't move it. Crashing and resolution issues are my main concerns though, other than that the performance is decent.
If you care about privacy (incremental anyway, all phones are surveillance devices by nature), then this is probably something you'll want to at least keep up with a little bit. Purism, the creator of the Librem 5, is coming out with a "private" celluar plan as well. Not sure if that will work on phones besides the Librem 5 though. I imagine it will, but I can't confirm. With the inclusion of the kill switches, and the potential to run 100% libre software, you can be reasonably sure that your data isn't going anywhere it shouldn't be.
I'm happy with what the phone offers currenlty, and I'm pretty confident it will get better with time. If I decide to test a sim card in it, and the calls are alright, I think I'd call it worth the $200(I can't say for sure the extra GB is necessary, but 50% more is nothing to scoff at) for someone who wants a cheap phone. It's overall not really any worse than an android phone like 5-10 years ago. If you're not familiar with Linux, you *probably* won't have any issues picking up the phosh interface, they make it kind of hard to mess anything up. If you are familiar with Linux, I see some cool possibilities for its use.
Sat, 21 Nov 2020 22:13:15 -0500
Hey guys, I don't really have much to say in this post. Just letting those who care that you can now actually clone my repos from my git site. I figured this out today. Normally, if I wanted people to push and make changes I'd have to add their ssh keys to the site. But until now, I didn't know how to set it up to allow "anonymous" clones via a git or http link, and I couldn't figure out the right way to explain what I wanted to people. I thought I was gonna have to do something weird with gitolite or some other program to accomplish this, but if you use the clone-url and enable-http-clone options in your cgitrc file, it allows you to clone over https. So now if you run git clone https://git.jacksontaylor.xyz/repo.git it should work. I haven't tested it with all of my repos, but for dwm it works.
For dwm, my changes are on a different branch (jackson_additions). So if you're interested in my changes specifically, when you clone it you'll have to checkout that branch.
I also have realized that the css still isn't quite right in some spots on the git site, I'll have to go back and fix that too.
Sun, 01 Nov 2020 22:02:30 +0000
The change over to cgit was actually pretty painless. Even the server configuration was actually really simple too. I'm still not terribly happy with some of the styles on the page, but it definitely matches closer than the white did. I'm probably going to be messing with that later on today, or tomorrow. One of my friends recently has started doing logo designs and stuff, so I may commission something from them for a very simple logo.
Sat, 22 Aug 2020 19:46:04 +0000
I'm planning on switching to cgit from gitweb today. Gitweb is ok, but cgit seems a little cleaner and easier to deal with. I'm trying to integrate it with my stylesheet for the main site. This may break stuff in both places.
I may make a post about it once I am finished.
Sat, 22 Aug 2020 17:55:37 +0000
I said that the next blog I posted was going to be about the technology I use at work. I do use Vim, but I don't use it as my main editor, although I'm pretty comfortable with it (I'm using Vim to write this right now). C# is just so connected to Visual Studio it is unfeasible to switch. I do use vim everyday for changing configuration files or reading code when I'm already on a terminal. But I'm not here to explain my tools or processes yet though, and this doesn't pertain specifically to vim.
The title is a little misleading, as I really want to explain my thinking in learning the basics of the tools that are available to you. Vim being a very common example. This isn't about the bump in performance you can gain as a developer (you'll probably be way slower at the start than with the tools you use now), and this also isn't targeted specifically to developers (though I use that term a lot). This is about being prepared for the situations you can encounter, knowing what tools are at your disposal as well as their use cases, and expanding your knowledge to make you a better developer.
In this case when I say learn the basics, I really mean the absolute minimum for how a technology works. One of my favorite teachers would say "enough to be dangerous". With the example of vim, I consider the basics as knowing how to open a file, write some text, navigate the file, and save your changes. Going further is totally up to you and your workflow, that goes a little further than point 3 and this post. I may go specifically into how I feel about vim in a different post.
In software development specifically, we can get very complacent and used to our tools and although I am a firm believer in knowing your tools inside and out, and customizing it to exactly what makes sense to you, there are situations where you won't have your normal set of tools and configurations. When you are connected via ssh to a server or working in a tty, for example. Having knowledge of the common tools that are on every Linux distribution (or at least in their repositories), and knowing the use cases is a big plus in never being surprised and remaining productive.
In the past, when Unix was large and the GNU project started, there were only command line tools. A lot of the GNU tools(which were remade from the tools included in Unix) are still very applicable and useful in my every day work. Instead of spinning up a huge program like Visual Studio, or even a comparatively light tool like VSCode, to search for an exact string of text, you can just use grep and find the same text based on a general pattern, all without leaving the terminal. There are many more examples, even for more specific use cases like reversing text or sorting it. Instead of reinventing the wheel, or doing it by hand, knowing that these tools even exist can save a lot of time(I said this wasn't about any performance gains, but I kind of lied).
My last point is learning for the sake of learning. I really like learning about computers, and how different technologies work. Anytime I see a situation where I know I can use a new tool, I get a little giddy. So on one hand, it is for fun, and to satisfy my need to tinker. On the other hand, learning these tools keeps your options, and mind as a developer(or general computer user), open and helps you with your problem solving skills. This is more of a lifestyle point because personally, I believe you should be constantly learning, even the most basic concepts, because you'll never know where it can come in handy.
I've never been a strong writer (or been able to explain my points in a way that makes sense to most people), so excuse the awkwardness of this first post. I can't really say it'll get better from here, but I'll try. If you aren't someone who is familiar with much of what I'm talking about, but still read the whole thing, I really appreciate it!
Wed, 19 Aug 2020 02:26:43 +0000
Hello everyone! I've decided to start writing a blog. This is something I've been thinking about doing for a few months now. When I say blog I don't mean like a "keep up with me" sort of thing. I'm really a boring person. I'll probably write about varying topics, and sort of whatever I feel like. It's my blog, I'll write what I want.
I think for my first real blog post I may write about some of the tools I use when programming or getting work done, and what I think about them. I may stretch into some further concepts such as software bloat and the dangers I see in it.
Tue, 18 Aug 2020 00:43:00 +0000