The Wizard of Oz meets The Dark Crystal by way of 1930s scifi was fascinating as a concept, but they managed to make it dull and tedious.| Kelson Reviews Stuff
Collection of computer problems I've run into and how I solved them.| Hyperborea Tech Tips
★★★★☆ - Sue Burke: A different sort of book than Semiosis and Interference, taking place entirely on Earth long after the second Pax expedition returns. Can the bamboo keep humans' chaotic conflicts in check? Where do the robots fit in? With so many forms of intelligence, who counts as a person, anyway?| Hyperborea: New Posts
★★★☆☆ - The old Mozilla Suite lives on! Featuring web, email, news, an HTML editor, IRC client and more. Recent work has mostly been to keep it working and backport security fixes, so web app compatibility lags way behind even the ESR Firefox.| Hyperborea: New Posts
Yes, you can still connect it after the switch to OAuth2. You need to create a placeholder account first, and find the right settings, which Gmail doesn't seem to tell you anymore.| Hyperborea: New Posts
★★★★★ - Ursula K. Le Guin: The Earthsea series is one of my regular re-reads. It starts here, with the tale of how a goatherd grew into a wizard in a world where magic is woven through everything from the poorest village to the greatest palace. How he released a terrifying evil in his youth, and how he sailed the world seeking how to make up for his mistake.| Hyperborea: New Posts
★★★★★ - A citizen science project for reporting and identifying wildlife observations, plus a phone app for use 'in the field.' Think of it as Pokémon Go for real animals and plants.| Hyperborea: New Posts
Windows Update is a bit flaky about making the offer to enroll a Windows 10 system in an extra year of security updates. If it's not showing the offer, this can make it re-check whether your system qualifies: cmd /c ClipESUConsumer.exe -evaluateEligibility| Hyperborea: New Posts
You can reinstall Windows on a Surface tablet or laptop using a hardware-specific recovery image and a USB drive. Microsoft will want you to log in and provide the serial number of the device you want to reinstall.| Hyperborea Tech Tips
Every once in a while I'm reminded of SyFy's notoriously bad TV adaptation of Earthsea, and think, maybe I should watch it just once, like the Star Wars Holiday Special. This is not a review. This is why I still haven't seen it.| Hyperborea: New Posts
★★★★☆ - Nice park with a view of the ocean and Catalina Island, open grassy areas, playground, basketball and tennis courts, lots of parking and clean, new restrooms. Near the Forrestal Reserve trailheads making it a good post-hike restroom stop or picnic spot.| Hyperborea: New Posts
★★★☆☆ - A simple GUI wrapper around Linux's built-in virtualization support. It makes simple things easy, but to adjust advanced settings you either need to edit config files manually or use another GUI.| Hyperborea: New Posts
Another Bluesky/Mastodon/RSS Combo app like OpenVibe, a bit less polished but considerably more useful. Handles multiple accounts per type, plus custom feeds.| Kelson Reviews Stuff
★★★★★ - Annalee Newitz: A short but joyful tale of creating the future you want out of the present you've been stuck with, told by robots who would rather make noodles than war.| Hyperborea: New Posts
★★★★☆ - A great ultra-light Windows 10 tablet with detachable keyboard. Or an annoyingly slow Windows 11 tablet.| Hyperborea: New Posts
An intriguing followup to Semiosis that weaves several drastically different sentient species (both plant and animal) into a story about factions, community, freedom, communication and war.| Kelson Reviews Stuff
Invasion of the Body Snatchers from the POV of an alien plant person who grew up human. Now the invasion has started, and she's sorting out friends, family, and who she can trust from either planet.| Kelson Reviews Stuff
A fast, enjoyable read with a few gut punches hidden throughout. Not so much about the moon turning into cheese as how lots of different people *react* to the moon turning into cheese.| Kelson Reviews Stuff
A short, fast tale of frozen people reawakening after the fall of civilization, built around the premise that you need to keep a frozen person's consciousness active in VR, and there are very different reasons you might put people into cryo storage and a simulation.| Kelson Reviews Stuff
Things I've had to do on my PineTab2 to get various features working and/or usable.| Hyperborea Tech Tips
Extremely bare-bones social networking server that runs on low-resource machines, works on the web without cookies or JavaScript, and still interacts through ActivityPub with Mastodon, GoToSocial and other Fediverse software.| Kelson Reviews Stuff
An app for Mastodon (and other Fediverse sites) that cuts through the clutter. Runs anywhere in a web browser, or can be installed to your device's home page as a PWA.| Kelson Reviews Stuff
A lightweight Fediverse server, with a clean web interface for viewing public posts. Compatible with Mastodon apps and interacts with other ActivityPub platforms.| Kelson Reviews Stuff
A surprisingly capable Chromium browser for KDE and other Linux desktops that runs well even on low-end hardware and virtual machines.| Kelson Reviews Stuff
A simple desktop app for Mastodon and (most) compatible Fediverse servers. Fast, runs on multiple platforms.| Kelson Reviews Stuff
The most ridiculous Linux bug I've encountered in ages: Installing XFCE changed a mouse cursor setting for GNOME that caused the login screen to crash when trying to log into GNOME/Wayland.| Hyperborea: New Posts
The MacBook would boot as far as the login screen, but any attempt to use or repair it would just reboot, even at the Genius Bar. I managed to recover recent files by connecting from another computer over the network and copying them, 60 seconds at a time.| Hyperborea: New Posts
I can go with your scifi/fantasy story's super-impossible thing being associated with an eclipse. It's activating or deactivating people's super-powers? Sure! C| K-Squared Ramblings
Personal website of a programmer and sci-fi/comics fan from Southern California: creative writing, photography, humor, and fan activities.| hyperborea.org
How to find the RSS/Atom feeds for Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, Misskey, and other Fediverse platforms.| Hyperborea Tech Tips