I have not written anything in a while, I
have been too busy. Me and my wife have been watching Death Note,
the original Anime series and it has been for me a
wonderful experience. The first series was a on the edge of
the seat experience. We could not stop watching
it until we had watched every part. I haven't enjoyed the second
series so much, it felt rushed and there wasn't enough character
development. I also watched the 2017 Netflix film version of D-N,
and thought although it was a fairly good film, it didn't stick to
the original story enough and again was a little rushed.
As far as Linux goes I am using Debian 12 bookworm. I don't want
to be faffing about tweaking the system, constantly updating and
worrying about things possibly
going wrong. I want to now use a computer for what it is meant
for. Not constantly distro hopping from one pointless distro to
another. To me there are only really a few real Linux distros and
the rest are just poor copies, with a wallpaper and theme added,
and not much else!
There's Debian, which is stable and trust worthy, then there is
Arch, which is a show-off distro that has a high chance of
breakage and is bleeding edge. Sorry, but when I think about
bleeding edge, I think about death. blood and nothing positive.
Why would anyone unless they were a developer want that? I am
continuing sporadically to learn Python and Basic, as much as time
and patience permits. And am starting to write poetry again
for my own amusement.
I have changed my web page (I don't call it a website, this is my
web pages) design, have given it a dark background and am using a
cyan blue, which I feel has two main purposes. First, it makes it
easier to read. And two it looks more like the old operating
systems that I still have a fondness for.
Websites have become very flashy and dull these days. I feel pop
up ads seem more prominent than the actual content. I still prefer
the old way of doing things with basic html and let the words
speak for themselves. On this subject, I have discovered a
wonderful community of websites called Neocities. Which I think is
a play on the old Geocities. You will find many unique and proper
webpages, and you won't find a pop up add in site (pardon the pun)
That's all folks
This has been the week of BSD installations. I
have installed: NetBSD, OpenBSD, FreeBSD and Dragonfly BSD.
Which do I prefer? That's not a very easy question to answer.
NetBSD has an excellent installer, very intuitive and plenty of
applications available. The ports are truly NetBSD's crowning
glory. In a virtual machine, everything works, Sound, Wi-Fi,
updates, the whole shebang. On bare metal, I didn't fair so
well.
It would not install, it kept freezing and I never even got
through the install process. This is most like due to my
downloading the wrong ISO (perhaps?) I know it's not NetBSD's
fault, It is renowned for being a great OS for old hardware. It
even has a floppy disk version. No, it must be me.
I have been working on my page, adding a few new links and just trying to make it a slightly more relaxing space for one to visit. I hope that it will eventually be a good resource for anyone who uses Linux. Since I have a huge collection of tips and tutorials that I have collected over the years, I just need to find the time to add them all to my home page.
I thought this a very good
quote. And I agree with its sentiment.
Why can’t software last forever? It’s not made of wood,
concrete, or steel. It doesn’t “wear out”, rot, weather, or
rust. A working algorithm is a working algorithm. Technology
doesn’t need to be beautiful, or impress other people, to be
effective. Aren’t technologists ultimately in the business
of producing cost effective technology?
When companies decide to re-write or replace an existing
software application, they are making a similar decision.
Existing software is “retired” or “decommissioned” (along
with its cumulative investment). Yet the belief that new
code is always better than old is patently absurd. Old code
has weathered and withstood the test of time. It has been
battle-tested. You know it’s failure modes. Bugs have been
found, and more importantly, fixed.
So, what has been happening
this week so far? I have installed Linux mint (the 1st Linux
distro I ever used)
mainly because there is a fantastic application called cubic
that enables one to make either a clone of Linux mint or;
an ISO which has my own special configs and
customisations. I've been testing pep mini, for the
peppermint team. And trying to fin d the time to write
some more documentation. We've been having a rather fierce
storm over the past few days and power has been off, for
many. I have been missing my pet family who have all
passed away. Especially; Lucky my first dog, Timothy my
westie, who passed this year,
Roland and Rufus, our rats. Also not forgetting Roland the
1st, Tosca, Shadow, rocket, measly and blaze. I miss them
all! Flopsy buns our giant rabbit. And Edmund and Nomad
our cockatiels. I wish animals could stay with us forever,
but sadly they don't. (neither do we) so one must grab at
every opportunity and "make the most of what we yet may
spend, until we too into the dust shall descend"
Omar Khayyam
Well, it's Halloween. And the end of another month. Time passes by so very quickly, I've been contemplating life before the internet came into existence, and what we actually did when that was the case? I've always had a love of the capabilities of the internet, computers and the like, but I do think the internet is going in a somewhat disconcerting direction. We need to get back to the old ways of doing things. It's not the internet that is the problem it is those in control of it. Let's hope a day comes when we the people will again have control over our own web. I'm seeing many tech people are still making beautiful websites on GitHub and hopefully codeberg, Which has a much better overall ethos. Git is the place to still find those gems we used to call web pages. And maybe there is hope in that? There will always be geeks like me, that want to preserve the old way of doing things. Thank goodness there are!
I've been working on wallpapers for peppermint. It's not as easy as it looks. I mean anyone can copy and paste a logo onto a background and make some kind of wallpaper. But when trying to do it for a professional purpose one has to consider things like measurements, where to place the logo, and what colours are more likely to be to anyone's taste. I am also needing to make a start on some more documentation.
Today I have been making
wallpapers out of vintage tiles. I intend to build a
small archive where these wallpapers and tiles can be
available to the community. I have always had a love
for those old websites of the 90s. The world wide web was
once a very exciting place. So many people had their own
personal websites and they acted as an extension to
themselves. Decorated with animated gifs, banners and
sometimes horrendous background wallpapers, which made the
text on the page so hard to read. Yet these I feel was the
golden age of the web.
One day, I hope, people will
once again enjoy putting together a simple web page. Nothing
fancy, but something that shows a little of their
personality. The internet is supposed to benefit all, and is
not supposed to be a control apparatus for big companies. It
is supposed to be enjoyed and used by all mankind.
Let's see what happens!
I think i just want to be
able to collect together all my configs. wallpapers and
projects into one space. Where I can add whatever I feel,
whenever I like. It's also a place I can just have fun.
Today I have been working on my web-page. Doing things the traditional way, rather than the modern template way. I am using HTML which gives one a wonderful feeling of simplicity. My new page has no adverts, no pop ups. and Is just a simple site with a white background and words. I like doing things this way. It helps me gather my thoughts and just enjoy once more the joy of writing. Which is something I haven't done in a long time.