...to let you all know why I haven't been blogging for the past couple weeks. After many years of fighting with illness, and multiple organ failures, my mother passed away peacefully last Tuesday night. I'm doing ok, overall, but haven't had much motivation to write. Everything is still very surreal …| R.L. Dane
Preview.app shown in NeXTStep 1.0 courtesy of infinitemac.org In yesterday's post, I talked about the things I do and don't miss about MacOS, mainly focusing on the global menubar search as the main positive from my experience with Mac OS X. Looking over blog post ideas note …| R.L. Dane
What I Do and Don't Miss About MacOS| rldane.space
A few days ago, I was reading someone's blog (I don't remember who)* that was talking about the art and the "why" of blogging (or it might've been in a chat conversation, I'm not sure). I had been thinking of posting something about it, because when I told someone IRL …| R.L. Dane
Background In yesterday's article, I went over the GUI programs that I enjoyed using over the years and remembered fondly. While I was going to go over TUI programs today, I realized that there's a category of GUI that straddles the line between GUI and TUI that deserved its own …| R.L. Dane
Background I'd be fooling myself to think that I could be the first person on the earth to note music's incredible ability to heal and salve the tormented human soul. My own journey with music is, well, unsurprisingly, about as old as I am. Most everyone on one side of …| R.L. Dane
Time for another little hardware review. Background I've been getting complaints that the small, inexpensive bluetooth earbuds (Skullcandy Dime XT/XT2) I had been carrying around for the past five years have pretty poor audio quality during phone calls (likely no microphone noise cancellation), so I started looking around again …| R.L. Dane
Why I love vim| rldane.space
Note: When I say "Online" in this context, I literally mean "on a computer," vs. "on paper." This is the older, more classic meaning of the word, similar to "on-line documentation" (i.e., "on the computer," not "on the internet"). Background I know a lot of folks like solutions like …| R.L. Dane
Just now, I was doing what all great bloggers do when they run out of (easily) actionable blog post ideas: I got around to cruising my RSS feeds! To be fair, there are many wonderful bloggers that keep up with their RSS feeds and dutifully read and comment on all …| R.L. Dane
Greetings! If you are reading this, it means you were selected by TODD (the Temporal Observation Directorate Division) for a temporal excursion. Since you're a member of the Computing Sciences History Reading Room, you will no doubt want to brush up on how to procure computing resources in your assigned …| R.L. Dane
Welcome to the PADDING. This blost is a part of the interstitial spaces that make up my blog. It's here to support other blosts. Think of it as one of the glial cells supporting the superstructure of the twisted online brain that ishttps://rldane.space/. Of course, that doesn't …| R.L. Dane
There's a scene in The King's Speech at the end where he's finally giving his big, inspiring speech, and while you hear is the speech, what you see is the scribbled crib notes and the incredible mental gymnastics he has to go through to get each word and phrase out …| R.L. Dane
About two and a half months ago, I bought a Wacom digitizer to do doodles with, but I found the process of sketching with a standalone digitizer a bit dissatisfying after using an iPad in years past. To be clear, the fact that the screen and digitizer are separate devices …| R.L. Dane
Background I've used android as my main mobile OS for about four and a half years, and used it previously for about a year and a half before then. In total, I've spent eight and two thirds years on iOS, and six and one third years on Android (so far …| R.L. Dane
I wanted to try a new-to-me compressor, lz4, but it turned into a full ADHD-fueled file compression shoot-out: Dang, lz4 is crazy fast! Data/setup The corpus is a 2.29 GiB uncompressed tar file consisting of several years worth of GPS data in various plain-text formats. The computer is …| R.L. Dane
Luke looking wistfully out at the dual sunset on Tatooine as The Force Theme plays hauntingly in the background, beckoning him to his grand adventure Having grown up in the 1980s, one thing random friends would often ask me (actually what family friends would ask my mom) was: "Has he …| R.L. Dane
The Scenes that Made Me: Star Trek| rldane.space
Background One minor foible of the fediverse instance I'm on is that searching (for accounts or hashtags) can be quite slow. As a workaround for now, I've saved a list of accounts I've followed for easy reference, but I also wanted some way of saving a list of hashtags to …| R.L. Dane
Partially for the sake of my daily doodles, which I've been posting to the Fediverse, and also because I've been learning the Persian alphabet, I recently purchased a small USB pen digitizer, the "One by Wacom," by Wacom (great branding 😄). For those of you not familiar with digitizers, think of …| R.L. Dane
Used laptops are wonderful... except when you need batteries| rldane.space
I was on a Signal video chat with my siblings today, and when I mentioned something about RC flight as an analogy for a person's health (being "three mistakes high"), my brother looked confused and then amused when I explained what I was talking about. Oh, quick explainer, I'm not …| R.L. Dane
I was reading Clayton's blog post about his habit of buying larger and larger USB thumb drives back in the day (when they were getting rapidly larger every few months), and it reminded me of a wish I had in the 2000s that got only partially fulfilled. As anyone who …| R.L. Dane
I mean, that's certainly one way of looking at it. On the other hand, I know how much people were pooh-poohing the specs of the original Switch, and saying if Nintendo had just invested $50 more into it, it would've been such a better platform. I guess you can't have …| R.L. Dane
Libraries are awesome| rldane.space
A KSP Design Log| rldane.space
I was an 80s kid. I grew up in a booming and optimistic time. The future held so much promise: all kinds of cures for disease, technology and automation would free humanity from the drudgery of labor (heh), and the Information Age would bring an acceleration to learning and innovation …| R.L. Dane
Disclaimer: Right off the bat, I am NOT an imaging expert, a compression expert, or really an anything expert. I'm just speaking from my own experiences as a relatively ordinary user of image formats. When I was a young-un in the early, early 90s, PICT was the day-to-day image format …| R.L. Dane
I'm talking mostly about terminology, but of course, when in doubt, "I don't want your dumb app." So, as I briefly alluded to in yesterdays blog post, most mobile apps are pretty terrible. They're generally chock full of spyware (trackers), and are inherently user-hostile. But I want to talk about …| R.L. Dane
I, like many, have taken an interest in Daniel Supernault's new Loops video service. Unlike many, I'm not so much interested in a FOSS, Federated clone of TikTok, YT Shorts, or Vine. I honestly don't care for that kind of media. I don't object to the format (other than …| R.L. Dane
Last night I had one of those "your loved one isn't actually dead!" dreams, but about my cat. I used to have them a lot about my stepdad that passed away many years ago, and I had a handful about my boss that sadly ended his own life a decade …| R.L. Dane
I came across this set of questions from hyde (a.k.a. Lazy Bear)'s blog, and immediately loved it. It reminds me a bit of the kind of overly personal* questions that got passed between friends on facebook circa 2008, and email circa 2000. * They didn't feel overly personal …| R.L. Dane
I recall once having a discussion with some friends online about which chat client/network to use for communication, and someone strongly endorsed one over another because it had a better selection of animated reactions/videos. I was pretty incredulous that that was the most important thing to them. Imagine …| R.L. Dane
This is Part IV of the series, "Don't use what works for you." --- Being an armchair FOSS advocate, there are a lot of anti-FOSS arguments I've become quite used to seeing and answering. Some of them are honestly just pretty dumb: eloquent_FOSS_apologia(); Well, I just don't CARE about that! Well …| R.L. Dane
100 Days to Offload — Kicking 2025 Off Right| rldane.space
1920x1080. That's it. Goodnight, folks! [phonograph-needle-rip.wav] Wait, WAIT. My actual resolution is to use RSS feeds as my primary source of diversion on the go, vs. Pavlovically checking the Fediverse every five minutes, or even worse, getting stuck in an hours-long YT Shorts brainrot watching spree. If you're looking …| R.L. Dane
Across three decades working in I.T., I've had the opportunity to observe some spectacularly good and spectacularly bad managers. I feel like writing an homage to the three that were the most memorable. --- Name obfuscation methodology I will be using the real name of the individuals mentioned, but I …| R.L. Dane
I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, TuxJam the other day, and they were discussing ways to watch YouTube without the annoyances that Google has added to the experience, namely ads and the inability to download videos for later viewing (also, YouTube stopped letting you listen to videos …| R.L. Dane
Well, today is the last day of Writing Month, and this is my 20th blog post of 20, which is what I signed up for. My last post was a lot more involved and time-consuming than I expected, so I wanted to end on a high note, with a fairly …| R.L. Dane
As I wrote in yesterday's article, I have a soft spot in my heart for laptops. They exist in this incredibly sweet spot where convenience and agency/freedom converge in the very best way, possible. I bought my first laptop in 1995 with my very hard-earned money, but let's start …| R.L. Dane
What We Lost Along the Way| rldane.space
Background In the halcyon days of 16-bit microcomputers, there was a computer graphics technique used by many demos and some games known as Palette Rotation, Palette Shifting, Palette Animation, or Color Cycling. Computers weren't fast enough to change the entire contents of screen memory in graphics mode (even relatively low …| R.L. Dane
In Part IV, I discussed wristwatches. In this article, I'm jumping back into my pocket, so to speak, with a look at what's on my phone itself. This was a rather exhausting article to write, because I have a lot of apps on my phone. I have even been ridiculed …| R.L. Dane
Tonight was one of those nights were things fall into perspective. I went to a family friend's birthday party, and it was my first time visiting them at their house in about 10 years, as well as my first time seeing both of his kids (both now grown) in nearly …| R.L. Dane
In Part II, I described the protective function of hashtags. I will now delve into a more entertaining aspect of how they can be used. Whenever I share a blog post I've just written on the fediverse, I always use the hashtag #rlDaneWriting. It's an easy way for me to …| R.L. Dane
In Part I, I spoke humorously on the linguistic value of hashtags. I'd like to now go over why hashtags are useful for search on the Fediverse, and why global search is a bad idea. Reply guys. That's it. End of blog p— Oh okay, okay! I've noticed that there …| R.L. Dane
'Nuff said. End of blog post. Ok, well... The funny thing about hashtags on the Fediverse is that they're actually needed, and serve a very similar purpose to hashtags on Twitter (In Pace Requiescat). When hashtags were first developed, Twitter had no search function (or built-in RTs, or images, for …| R.L. Dane
In Part III, I discussed fountain pens, and how they revolutionized writing for me. I thought I was done with my EDC series, until a toot from my FediFriendOrbitalMartian reminded me of one more every-day carry …| R.L. Dane
In Part II, I went over the items in my backpack. In this edition, I will talk about a single item in detail: fountain pens. Growing up, I really disliked writing by hand. It was very uncomfortable, and my handwriting was extremely messy, to the point that my classmates would …| R.L. Dane
In Part I, I went over the items in my pockets. In this installment, I will go over the items in my backpack. Yes, I'm milking the posts to try to catch up to my WritingMonth quota. Hush. 😄 --- Here's what's currently in my backpack: Large items LaptopCurrently a Thinkpad …| R.L. Dane
My EDC is kind of boring, but sometimes even the most boring items have an interesting history. I used to carry around a Photon Microlight, but haven't needed a pocket light since 2010, thanks to modern phones. I also used to carry a mini Swiss Army Knife in my pocket …| R.L. Dane
The rise and fall of the popularity of programming languages is fun to watch. Quick disclaimer: I'm not a programmer. I've never held a programming job. I have been interested in programming as a hobby for several decades, and have written shell scripts as a part of my job in …| R.L. Dane
Love is a choice| rldane.space
...in the midst of... all this You're driving to work and you see them. A bunch of people holding up signs in favor of the human being (if they can be truly described as such!) that you loathe the most on the entire earth. Your blood boils. You air out …| R.L. Dane
This article is written based on a prompt I shared with a friend a couple weeks ago. You can my article from that "round-robin" prompt exercise here. Since neither of my fedifriends have written their prompts yet, I'm actually borrowing the idea I gave Amin to write: I'm going to …| R.L. Dane
FediFriend Amin wrote this in Early September: Well, NaNoWriMo has made an official statement that they believe categorical condemnation of "AI" to be classist and ableist. I'm… I'm just done with them. I used to overlook issues I was seeing with the organization behind NaNo, but… this is too much …| R.L. Dane
In Part I, I discussed the state of "Native Messaging" services in FOSS Android forks/builds, and why RCS might never be coming to these OSes. What does that leave us with? Well, SMS and MMS, of course, but using what client? Unfortunately, there is (of course) no one good …| R.L. Dane
FOSS ROMS and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad State of Native Messaging on Android| rldane.space
The working title of my previous post was, "A Grief Exchanged." I couldn't quite make the title work in my head, so I abandoned it for "Adoption," which still works well. I'm re-claiming that title for this post, because I can make more sense of where I was going with …| R.L. Dane
Adoption| rldane.space
A fedifriend mentioned me yesterday on a post about a recent kerfuffle regarding some decisions that Mozilla has been making, particularly in regards to buying an advertising company (and integrating advertising into the browser) and adding "A.I." features into recent builds of Firefox. I had intended to reply with …| R.L. Dane
I've just started a new exercise regimen (because, you know, it was either that or apply for asteroid status*). I've tried to get into exercise for... well... many, many years. I've even spent a lot of money of gym memberships that went absolutely nowhere. I will say quickly that I …| R.L. Dane
What Kid-Me Wanted To Do When He Grew Up| rldane.space
I'm not a gamer, an introspection| rldane.space
A Grief Fulfilled| rldane.space
Gesture navigation is lame| rldane.space
A fedifriend, Joel recently shared an older blog post detailing the smartphones he's owned over the years. It's an enjoyable read, so definitely check that out.| rldane.space
I was chilling out at the parking lot of In-N-Out after having lunch there (because the weather is pretty nice today), but decided to go to a local library to have a nice desk in front of me and do some reading/writing. I asked the Oracle at Googlii (via …| R.L. Dane
About an hour ago, I was catching up with an old friend from the 90s that I've kept in touch with through the years and visited several times (even though I moved to a different state at the end of that decade). We were part of a wonderfully tight-knit group …| R.L. Dane
Just a few days before Christmas Day, 1989, I excitedly carried home one of the greatest Christmas gifts I have ever received. I vaguely remember going with my stepdad to the university computer store (The "MicroCentre," it was called; no relation to the large, currently-extant computer store chain) to pick …| R.L. Dane
The Toxicity Dance| rldane.space
It's funny to me how simple, practical changes can produce lasting effects. It's also funny how something can seem so insurmountable when you're stuck in a certain mindset, only to realize that it's just a matter of a simple change of thinking and habits. When I was younger (read: thirties …| R.L. Dane
Use what works for good| rldane.space
Web 1.0 is (unironically) going great| rldane.space
The fediverse is a loose cooperative (or federation) of independent servers which can choose to communicate with each other (or not — in the case of bad actors or chronically under-moderated instances). These servers do not operating a single type/brand of software, but rather run many different services that all share information via the "ActivityPub" standard. There are federated equivalents for "X" (Mastodon), Facebook (Friendica), Instagram (Pixelfed), YouTube (PeerTube), and others, an...| rldane.space