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author: mathpunk
Transformers are the magical girls of cars
My greatest accomplishment in life: I have over 500 hours in factorio, and have never been hit by a train. Not once!
lord forgive me, I'm reinstalling Factorio
Been a while! Recently, I've decided to start posting stuff on peertube: https://spectra.video/c/mathpunk_channel/videos
Today I realized I've never seen a chihuahua puppy in my life. I'm convinced they burst forth from the earth fully formed. I also found out that if you breed a chihuahua with a great dane, they equalize each other and produce a normal sized dog. For some reason that's really funny to me
It's a Christmas miracle: I've finally written a new gemlog!
My Video Game Library Is Complete
gemini://tilde.team/~mathpunk/journal/videogamelibrary.gmi
It's wild how quickly you can get rusty at something you haven't practiced in a while, but at the same time, how quickly it comes back to you once you start. I'm looking at a lot of my own math work from 2022, and I can't even follow my own logic anymore. It's weird to think that I could easily solve these problems, and now I don't even know what's going on. But the idea of going through hundreds of practice problems to get back up to speed doesn't seem all that daunting.
Q: What do you call an elderly gorilla?
A: A past his prime-ate!
Does anyone have any lesser known tips for dealing with insomnia? I do all the things you're supposed to do and it's only gotten worse. Most of the information online is just a repeat of the stuff I'm already trying, like exercise, relaxation techniques, avoiding blue light. I've mostly just decided to live with it, but if anyone has any advice for when nothing works, I'd appreciate it.
My experience on Linux has been way more user-friendly and intuitive than my experience with Windows 10 and especially Windows 11, and I'm realizing that that's because I'm the kind of person who always changes the default settings. Windows is extremely intuitive and user friendly as long as you want to do everything the way Microsoft wants you to do it. But even something as simple as changing the system colour theme was kind of buggy, and if you don't want to use Edge or Bing or OneDrive? *shudders*
A couple nights ago I dreamt that I ran an ice cream shop where everything was normal except that I insisted everyone call the mint ice cream "Linux Mint ice cream." In the dream, nobody except me thought it was funny.
My mom bought herself an ipad as a Christmas present. A little early, but I got my PinePhone Pro even longer ago. My dad just ordered a lenovo tablet as well. I joke that we're a mixed OS family.
One of these days someone is going to invent earbuds that don't fall out of your ears or headphones that don't hurt to wear for more than 20 minutes and whoever does so will become filthy stinking rich. Until then, we can only dream...
Perhaps a better phrase than "if you aren't paying for it, you're the product" is "if you can't go without it, you're the product." If just paying for things was enough, car manufacturers wouldn't be... *gestures vaguely at the auto manufacturing dumpster fire.* But they can get away with it because a lot of us can't afford to just not have a car (or buy exclusively used, older cars)
Today we had pancakes with real maple syrup, instead of the fake stuff, because there's an ingredient in the fake syrup that my dad can't have. I jokingly told him, "keep having stomach problems!"
Re-reorganized my gemini capsule. I decided that simple is best. Still not a lot of stuff there, but I think slow is also good. I'll probably journal a little more soon
Happy Halloween, everyone! It's my favourite time of the year, mostly because I get to eat all the leftover chocolate after trick or treaters stop showing up >:3
My dad, who works in IT and is generally considered a Computer Knower, now comes to me when he has questions about Linux, as he's worked with Windows most of his career. I don't always have the answer, but it's wild how things change.
Made an agreement that I can use my new PinePhone Pro (which is supposed to be a christmas gift) as much as I want, as long as I put it back in the box, wrap it, and re-unbox it on Christmas.
So I've been having a lot of fun seeing what it can do. I've been testing out the default Manjaro/Plasma Mobile. I'll need to write a much longer post in the future detailing all the interesting issues I've caught so far.
My PinePhone Pro has arrived! That only took 4 days, wow. Unfortunately it is supposed to be my christmas gift, so I now have to pretend I don't have it for two months.
Today I overheard my dad say "I hate all these ads and pop-ups. I miss when the internet was just text." Should I tell him? I think I should tell him.
PinePhone Pro has been ordered! I'm super excited to try it out :3
Anyone have any experience with the PinePhone Pro? I'm thinking of picking one up in a couple months, less as a daily driver and more as something to experiment/tinker with.
I'm finally using my neocities site for something! I'm always a bit iffy about posting my writing online, but I'm trying to get over my shyness, so I've started posting some of my poems at https://mathpunk.neocities.org. Eventually I'll mirror them all on my gemini capsule as well, since I've already posted a few poems there.
I haven't been very active online lately. Life has been pretty rough, but I think things are on the upswing. I'm hoping to post here more often as well as eventually start updating my website and my gemini capsule. I've been making chiptunes for at least a decade now, and I'd like to start sharing them on my website someday soon. I see all the cool kids are on nex:// now. I really enjoy seeing people build new things. Hopefully soon I can get over my terminal self embarrassment and be more active on the small internet!
Been playing a lot of Minetest/MineClone2 lately, and I'm pretty happy with it. I don't honestly see myself returning to Minecraft. It's been a while since a game pulled me in this much. Anyone have any Minetest games they recommend?
Changing my name to Nicholas and releasing a Linux distro called Nick's OS just to confuse the hell out of everyone
Finally getting back into actually practicing math! For someone named mathpunk, you'd think I'd do it more often lol
I've been running Linux Mint for about a week now, and I'm definitely really impressed with it. The install process was quick and painless, and Cinnamon is intuitive and familiar. Definitely something I'd feel comfortable recommending my non-techie friends.
Hiya Station! I've been away for a bit, but I finally got a password manager set up, so I could add a password to my account in order to add new identities. Using my laptop is currently easier than my desktop for my back issues, so I'll probably be around more often now! :3
Had to kick myself off the fediverse today. Have been spending too much time staring at the waterfall of posts in the federated timeline, and "attempting to log out for a day and failing" is usually a sign that I'm getting too hyperfocused. I keep catching myself logging in by sheer muscle memory without even realizing I'm doing it. lol
Most of the work to reorganize my capsule is done! I just have to fix the headers and links in my gemlog, and create some navigational links to copy to the end of every page, and then its done! Woo!!
One of these days I will learn how to export my client certs to my laptop and phone, so I can spend more time here than on the fediverse.
Every time one of my windows machines has a problem, I just open up task manager and end every process with the word "microsoft" in it. This works a surprising amount of the time. For reference, I know even less about windows than I do about Linux. Just thought this was funny
I seem to be having trouble syncing message history in Gajim. If I recieve messages while Gajim isn't running, it won't show them. It says there aren't any messages. I'm on a server that supports MAM, and I can sync history on Conversations just fine. I think I'm doing something wrong, but I'm not sure what.
I'm enjoying being a part of smaller social communities on the internet. I feel a lot more comfortable. Also, since there's no incentive to keep my eyes on the screen to look at ads, I actually go outside and talk to my neighbors more often. Who woulda thought that becoming more of a computer nerd would actually result in me being less of a "basement shut in" stereotype?
I finally got around to checking out the fediverse. I think I actually prefer it here - the small size of this capsule prevents me from getting too hyperfocused, which is something I struggle with with social media. I think I can have a healthy relationship with it so long as I set boundaries with myself, though! I'm definitely going to try to be more active here and my gemlog, though.
I replaced the CMOS battery on the dell latitude and now instead of failing to boot, it can't even power on. Oops! Looks like I'm gonna have to take it back apart to see what I broke. Hoping I can fix whatever I did!
Think I'm gonna end up dual booting with windows after all. For one it doesn't really impact me since I have more hard drive space than I will ever use. But for two, I currently have absolutely zero experience with gaming on Linux, and some of the games I'm pretty excited about don't even show up on ProtonDB, so I think it's best to keep windows around "just in case."
So, this old laptop might actually run if I can replace the CMOS battery, and if it does, I might mess around with Linux From Scratch on it. I'm not using it for anything else, and I've already been having a lot of fun with Gentoo, so why not go DEEPER
My capsule will probably have problems with link breakage and disorganization starting soon, I'm going to try out organizing it by the johnny decimal system
Does anyone here have experience with gaming on Linux? I hear that steam games tend to be more reliable thanks to Proton, but GOG is my preferred retailer, and I've been told that games from GOG can be finicky unless they run in DOSBox. I have to decide whether or not I want to dual boot with windows or go pure Linux.
I'm taking the first step to finally getting caught up on my classwork again: spending hours writing a highly organized and needlessly detailed to-do list in org mode instead of actually doing any of my assignments.
Got some political crapmail today that claims that a local politician plans to give free heroin to criminals. I don't think they're going to get the reaction out of me that they seem to think this will get out of me.
Something that's hitting me now that I've been away from social media for a while: recommendation algorithms were NEVER good. Consciously, I knew that. They make money through ads which means keeping your eyes on the screen, which can mean explicitly pissing you off or upsetting you as much as it can mean "finding posts you might like," if not moreso. But only now is it hitting me, emotionally, how fucking ridiculous it is to avoid watching videos you haven't already seen in case you get weeks and weeks of trash you don't want to see because you dared watch 1 unfamiliar video. What the fuck
Friends, I have finally done it! I have installed Gentoo on a VM, and it actually boots! It even has a working internet connection! Wooooo! I'm gonna play around with it for a few days to make sure I can actually use it without breaking anything, and then I'm gonna install it on my laptop! :3 I'm very excited
So, about installing Gentoo: believe it or not, I found a 10 year old laptop sitting in an old drawer, and got distracted troubleshooting an apparent boot issue. I'm thinking there's a problem with the CMOS battery, so I'm going to replace that soon and hope it works! It was a fun excuse to finally try out Puppy Linux, though! :3
On the agenda for today: attempting to install Gentoo without breaking anything, Round 2. Fight!
Installed gentoo in a VM and it freezes at boot. That's why I do it in a VM - I always break something the first time!
I know that the small internet isn't meant to replace the world wide web, but I'm seriously thinking of trying to go without the WWW for a while. I'm just tired of how constantly vigilant you have to be. Currently, the only thing tying me to it is easy access to information, particularly regarding mathematics and programming. But I live within walking distance of a library. So I wonder if it's worthwhile as an experiment.
Am now pretty convinced that my virtual machines' internet randomly going out is a problem with virtualbox itself. It happens randomly to every OS I've played with, and restarting the virtual machine does nothing, whereas restarting my whole computer often fixes it. Wild
We did it! I currently have 69 notifications on Station. I am very mature
Been looking after the neighbor's dog while she went on a trip. She's coming back tomorrow. I've learned that the amount of time I can spend caring for an animal before I become very emotionally attached to them is about 5 days. I'm really gonna miss this dog!
Anyone have a preferred gemini/gopher client for android? I'm checking out Deedum right now and it works pretty well, though I'm not totally sure how to create/import identities. As far as I can tell it doesn't do gopher, and all the gopher browsers I've found for android aren't being maintained. I'm excited about being able to check Chilly Weather on my phone - my phone's built-in weather widget takes ages to update, and most web based weather sites are bloated to hell. Doing away with that was one of my first goals when I discovered gemini, actually!
The more time I spend surfing gemini the more it stands out to me how terrible modern web design has become. My classes have some online content that only ever renders on half the screen, regardless of screen size, because EVERYTHING is stuck into an iframe. I can't figure out what it is they're trying to accomplish by doing that. There's so much styling and javascript that it takes as long to load a single page as it would to load a PDF containing the entire course content. It's wild.
Been thinking that part of why I struggle to find things on the web is that I've trained myself to talk to search engines like I'm asking a person a question instead of looking for specific keywords. Problem is that search engines have been optimized for people doing that, so putting in the effort to do it the "right way" doesn't yield any better results anymore, except in some specific cases. Search operators don't even seem to work anymore.
Picked up an external HDD yesterday to backup my data while I mess around with my machines, so I'm officially ready to make the switch to using Linux full time!
My personal trainer has me doing a stretching routine before I sit down at the computer, to help with my neck and shoulder issues (which I have because I spend too much time sitting at the computer). Makes me feel like some kind of action movie hacker, doing warmups before coding.
Its currently 1am. I had some caffeine and powered through a chapter and a half of coursework, which is a whole chapter more than I intended to do. I'll be paying the price tomorrow, but that's less to do for future me : )
Have so far managed to convince two of my loved ones to start using pgp encryption. I'm on a roll!
Worked very hard to get caught up on my classes and then immediately started slacking off again. Gonna be a busy weekend!
Finally set up pgp email encryption today.
After two days of almost nonstop studying, I am caught up on all my classes again. Hopefully I can keep it that way
I enjoy this time of year. The sun doesn't set too early or too late, so I get to go for walks right before sunset. The way the sunlight paints the trees pink is quite pretty.
Saw the Mario movie today. It was better than I expected it to be. I particularly enjoyed the soundtrack and music choices. Jack Black did a really good job as Bowser, it sounds like he really enjoyed the role. All in all it was quite a fun little film.
Hello World! I've only recently discovered gemini, but I've been enjoying all the cool things there are to find, like this place, so I decided to sign up! I'm hoping to host my own capsule someday.