...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
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
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
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
Some thoughts on *Severance*| rldane.space
Lars looking on wistfully while ingesting his sister-in-law's retort to his rant Video clip Content warning: this post unavoidably and briefly touches on some "mature" topics If you had told me six months ago that one of my favorite movies of all time would be a bout a man who …| R.L. Dane
The Scenes that Made Me: Star Trek| rldane.space
When I was in High School, I fell madly in love with Star Trek: The Next Generation. The fascinating characters, the (at the time) amazing special effects, the stories, the optimism, but most of all, the technology. My eyes dazzled seeing huge touchscreens, digital tablets, and incredible spacefaring vessels every …| R.L. Dane
Thanks to my fedifriendJoel for nominating me for this challenge (after I had pestered him 😄). Do you floss your teeth Before I answer this, you must understand something about me: I strongly believe in truthfulness as a core virtue. Inasmuch as I am able, I never lie or purposefully …| R.L. Dane
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 keep finding more of these blog challenge questions, and I totally love them. This one comes courtesy of Andreas' blog. Like Andreas, I'm not a big TV watcher. I think I formally quit watching TV in 2003. I did watch a few things on Netflix and Amazon Prime over …| 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
Content Warning: This post deals with religion and politics --- Last Sunday, I did something that I really don't like doing. I left church early. With a heavy and conflicted heart. The Sunday prior, I walked into church and spoke briefly with the pastor. I told him I was shocked to …| 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 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
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
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
What We Lost Along the Way| rldane.space
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
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
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
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
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
A Grief Fulfilled| 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
Six Months a Mourner| rldane.space
Content Warning: This post deals with the issue of toxic masculinity. If that (or the discussion thereof) is upsetting to you, please skip this one. Also, a minor bible reference is included. I thought I had a pretty fair grasp on the idea and archetypes of toxic masculinity. I am …| 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
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
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