Day 11 - April 11th, 2026: King of the sleepy.

Oof, what a day! Lots of hard work, but worse: a never-ending exhaustion that's left me feeling sleepy for most of the day. I've got some theories, and I'm hoping this gets better over time.

They should make some sort of beverage that makes you not feel so tired all the time... I'd love that, I bet!

Not much else beyond that, so onto the Notes and Thoughts! Some of which are from yesterday that I didn't manage to add.

Notes:

- The Škoda DuoBell is a really neat invention! In short, it creates a tone (or two, rather) that manages to get past ANC to help reduce driver/pedestrian accidents!

- Do you remember "Cosmic Latte"? I do!

- Speaking of colors, what about Klein Blue?

- The WAN Show will now be hosted on the LMGClips channel. I use Pocket Casts, so this doesn't affect me (I think), but I thought it was important enough to point out.

- Spotify (for Windows only!) has a new Exclusive Mode, offering just about the highest-quality audio possible. This is neat, but since Windows isn't my main OS, it's not all that useful to me. Hopefully it'll come to Linux soon. (I can dream!)

- Do you remember the Pixel 4's "Next Gen Assistant"? I vaguely remembered this, but was more into Samsung at the time. This website is super cool (and pretty) though!

- YouTube, unfortunately, got a price increase. It's now $15.99 (from $13.99) for individuals, and $26.99 (from $22.99) for a Family. My trial ends later this week; I wish I'd signed up sooner somehow!

- There's a super cool website by Lorenzo Stanco that lets you see, filter, and export your Steam wishlist!

- Aether OS is a really interesting project. I won't pretend to fully understand how it works, but it's worth a look. There's also a Bluesky account you can follow for updates.

- Yahoo Scout. An AI-powered search engine. I personally have no use for this, but it sounded so off-beat I just had to include it in my notes. Can't say I've been a big Yahoo-er in my life.

- Microsoft PowerToys. This is a super cool program, and if you've never heard of it, please look into it more! I've heard (anecdotally?) that PowerToys Run is way ahead of Windows 11's broken search.

- Keychron published 3D models for their products! So if a part breaks, you can use a 3D printer to replace what you need. There are some "caveats" like how you can't use it for commercial purposes, but this is genuinely so cool! I don't currently have any Keychron products, but that immediately bumps them near the top of my list for when I (inevitably) need to replace my peripherals. (Even though I don't have a 3D printer yet either.)

- NASA has a very convenient list of galleries where you can see all the photos taken. The Artemis II Lunar Flyby gallery is by far my favorite! It's so surreal to see these photographs!

- Graveyard Keeper is free to keep forever on Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox until April 13th! This has been on my wishlist for a while, so I made sure to snag it.

- PlayTracker is... well, it aggregates all your playtime and completions across multiple gaming platforms! I love stats and analytics, so this is really interesting to me! (I've just set it up, and it's still syncing, but I'm curious to see what data it pulls and how it presents that.)

- Exophase does something similar. I'll have to use both extensively and see what each platform's advantages and disadvantages are. I'll likely touch on this again later, when I (and the respective platforms) have had more time!

- Apparently CarPlay Screenshots are disabled by default on iOS 26. I reset my phone recently, and found this out the hard way. To (re-)enable it, go into Settings -> General -> Screen Capture -> CarPlay Screenshots.

Thoughts:

- Even though those colors are neat, none of my monitors are anywhere near color-calibrated enough to be accurate. Maybe one day I'll get a high-refresh-rate, ultra-wide, OLED monitor that's color accurate!

- Horses and birds can lock their joints to sleep while standing up. Humans cannot, unfortunately. That'd be such a major life hack for me, haha! Alas, I must sit/lie down to sleep...

- Microsoft Rewards is still really neat. I think an Edge-only experiment would be fun!

- "The Hills Have Eyes" (the 2006 movie) sounds right up my alley, and I aim to watch it sometime soon! (Added to my Letterboxd Watchlist!)

- I've heard a lot of (mixed?) things about Notion. I'd like a single, cohesive platform to store all my writing/notes. I'll need to take a closer look at this when I have the time.

- I've been wanting to learn Chinese. No practical reason, it's just such an interesting language! Will I? Probably not... This is a thought, not a commitment, after all!

- I keep forgetting to read the LTT Labs blog! So much really interesting information on there.

- Apparently there's a pretty big server company located near me, that is somewhat open for visits. This'd be so cool to visit!

- I used to listen to t+Pazolite religiously a decade ago! However, at some point he fell off my radar, until I suddenly remembered his music! Ibun Denshou a La Carte is incredibly nostalgic to me, and brings back so many memories and feelings from 2014-2016!

And last but not least:

Huge theme updates! I restructured the page (and especially the first post) to now not show a huge vertical empty space. Highlight colors went from coral to... you'd never guess: animated rainbow! It's delightfully kitschy!

A screenshot with a lot of text. Of note, the title of the post, as well as all clickable links, are now animated-rainbow.

"Oh, how garish! Childish, even!" Perhaps... But it's FUN! This blog is meant as a way for me to express myself. Mostly through words (and thoughts, by extension.) But visually, this is something I find enjoyable. I'm not much of a coder, so this is probably awful spaghetti code, but it seems to work. Both on web/desktop, as well as mobile. Some things look a little rough around the edges (because they are) but this is a work-in-progress. And progress is happening!

I'd like to include a toggle for those rainbow- (or animation-)averse. Much beyond my skill level, however. But it should be doable, right?

That's all for now! A huge post, lots of changes, and lots of typing. (1,101 words with 6,153 characters, my fingers are tired!)

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Day 12 - April 12th, 2026: Causes and clearing out.

So first things first: I think I've figured out what makes me feel super nauseated sometimes! It'd happen occasionally in the mornings, and I always figured that maybe some leftovers I'd eaten had somehow gone bad.

Turns out: it's the Starbucks creamers I'd use occasionally in my morning coffees! Specifically, the Caramel Macchiato Inspired Creamer and Brown Sugar Shaken Espresso Inspired Creamer. And it was so difficult to figure out, because it doesn't kick in immediately. I'll have a tasty little coffee treat, and then an hour or two later I'll get these waves of nausea, incredibly bloating and cramps, and just a general feeling of malaise. (Plus some weird jitters, which I imagine is the caffeine making things worse.)

As for why... well, I'm not entirely sure. None of the ingredients stood out to me as "particularly bad". My best guess is that it's the very high amount of sugar. Roughly 1/3rd is sugar by volume. (5 grams of sugar per 15 milliliter/gram serving.) Considering I generally used 60 grams of creamer (with 100-120 milliliters of dairy-free milk and a 6-cup Moka Pot), that's 20 grams of sugar! I am known to have a sweet tooth, but generally those are foods. So the sudden (liquid) sugar rush must be triggering a "get out" response in my stomach. A shame, since I liked their taste, but wowee I feel bad right now!

Speaking of coffee: I'm finally reducing my intake, properly. No more morning and afternoon coffees. I'll save coffee as a special little treat. Perhaps the constant caffeine has left me feeling drained most days. It'll be a rough few weeks, but ultimately it'll be for the better! (Or so I hope.)

2 jars of oats standing atop and oven. The one on the left has a yellow lid, and the cocoa and peanut butter mixture looks quite brown. The jar on the right has a blue lid, and the mixture has a slight pastel blue hue to it.

And I did make two overnight oat jars. On the left is a cocoa & peanut butter one, and the blue-lidded one is simple blueberry! I don't yet know if they're any good. I'm a little worried about the cocoa & PB jar, since I think I put too much cocoa powder and made it too bitter, despite adding lots of honey. I'll have to report back, and post the recipes if they're good. I've been on a really bad "overnight oats" kick lately. Easy to make, satisfying to eat, and they help with the pastry cravings I get so often.

I've also finally gone through the tabs on my phone (60+) and will be adding them as notes and thoughts. Then, I'll be playing some Goat Simulator and try to get that BFF achievement!

Oh, and I did export my Steam wishlist (100+ games), and I'm going through them to find (and remove) games with broken achievements. I don't mind not getting 100% on some games, but I hate when games have broken/unfixed achievements! (Such as multiplayer-only achievements in a game whose servers have shut down. That's silly!)

Notes:

- Atuin. I've heard a lot of good things about this! A very straightforward install on Fedora, although it'll take a lot of using to get a good feel for it. If you're thinking of installing this too, make sure to read the installation guide! I'll be using ZSH and Alacritty. Perhaps I should write a simple blog post, too?

- Losing the Signal by Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff. I was never a BlackBerry user, so getting some insight into their history seems valuable! Added to my To-Read list.

- Peter Pan Syndrome. Good to know there's a term for this.

- Yaupon tea. I'd never heard of this, but it sounds intriguing! I love teas, and have been a big fan of yerba mate for a while. I'll have to try this soon! (Despite wanting to reduce my caffeine intake, haha!)

- I found this awesome (pun intended) GitHub page called "Awesome Wayland", full of nifty Wayland(-related) resources! I've bookmarked it, and I reckon I'll reference it often. (Since my machines are all pretty much Wayland-exclusive at this point.)

- OpenAlternative: A site to help you find open source alternatives to the programs you might be using currently. Another indispensable resource! It'll take me a while to comb through this (and I don't use many proprietary applications), but this is incredibly useful to anyone in the F(L)OSS world!

- Nivs' Blog, and specifically this post. Recommend giving their posts a read, there's a lot of genuinely interesting stuff there!

- The Death Clock: a clock that has a countdown timer with the (estimated) seconds you've got left to live. So incredibly morbid, but I love it! It can also be a regular clock. It's a $79.90 pre-order right now (ouch!), but this is too cool to pass up or not share.

- The SmartCard Ghost (Gen 3). A thin, card-shaped tracker that works with both Apple's Find My and Google's Find Hub. What's neat is that it charges wirelessly! It's a little pricey at $39.99 for one, but the 3-pack seems like a decent value (and would make for a good gift!) I don't use any trackers right now, and while I'm not known to lose my stuff, I'd like the extra insurance this would/could add!

This shows the terminal output of fastfetch piped into lolcat. It's rainbowy text.

- Dotacat, a Rust reimplementation of Lolcat. It makes your terminal output all rainbow-y. I love lolcat, since it makes things so much more fun! (And it's probably why I set up my blog to look similarly, haha!) Also, I adore the answer to "Why the name?"; "Because Dota is better than LoL (According to people - I play neither)"

- Taskwarrior-TUI is a super cool terminal program that allows you to manage to-dos and tasks from the terminal!

A screenshot of the terminal showing cbonsai output, which looks like a little 2D bonsai tree, in ASCII.

- And another cool terminal program: cbonsai. Perhaps less productive than the previously-mentioned program. But computing is supposed to be fun, right?

- And speaking of having fun: Chiaki-ng. It's a program that allows PlayStation Remote Play on devices that aren't a PS Portal or a smartphone. Think a laptop, so you can play PlayStation games in another room. Or more importantly; on a Steam Deck! My Wi-Fi might be too slow, but I can't wait to give this a try!

- The Reversal Icon Theme looks incredibly good. I want to install it, but it requires running a script which I'm not a big fan of. I prefer manually placing the files in the .icons folder (such as in the case of Bibata Rainbow, my current cursor!)

Thoughts:

- Attie, despite its controversy, sounded pretty interesting. I'm on the waitlist, and curious to see how it shakes out if/when I get accepted. Attie seems very much hated by the Bluesky community, and is one of the most-blocked accounts on the platform... Ouch!

- Randomly remembered PushBullet from my long-gone Android days. Seems like it's still around, but in maintenance mode. I suppose between LocalSend, KDE Connect, Edge Drop, and Blip, there hasn't been much reason to stick to PushBullet.

- I should get the CCNP certification. Not having any certifications (or code) is severely hurting my ability to get into IT. And I have to start somewhere, right? (If you're looking for a junior sysadmin with Linux experience, let me know!)

- I seriously need to get a YubiKey! For both added security and convenience. Despite using 2FA everywhere I can (and have done so for ages), I've never gotten a key like this before. Perhaps this'd make a good Christmas gift? (Wink wink, nudge nudge!)

- I ran across BB, which from what I understand, is a program that visualizes audio output. (Yes, yes, I'll mention Cava shortly!) What caught me off-guard was the "Requirements" section: "This demo requires computer at least as fast as 486/33 with coprocesor [sic]. But speed of 486/66 or pentium is highly recomended [sic] (especially for hight [sic] resolution SVGA modes). " Can I make this run on a modern machine? Sounds like a fun project!

A screenshot of Cava, an audio visualizer. It displays orange bars (corresponding to the frequencies). In this case, the background is dark grey, and the bars themselves are orange.

- Naturally this requires a shout-out to Cava!

- And speaking of audio, I'm swapping back to Spotify for a while. Two main reasons:

1) My YouTube Premium trial is running out. The individual cost was raised to $15.99, and that's more than I'm willing to spend at this time. I'll likely set up a Family plan, since that'll help alleviate the cost a bit.

2) YouTube Music can be oddly buggy when it has no access to internet. On my 1-hour long commute, I drive through several areas with no cell service. YouTube Music will often "forget" my like/thumbs-up when disconnecting and reconnecting, or not save it at all when the connection is too spotty. I've "lost" some songs this way, unfortunately. And despite playing from the "Downloads" section, it seems like it prefers to phone home when it can. I had no such issues on Spotify when I used it. (Although Spotify will show/hide the "Start Radio" button when connecting/disconnecting, causing the UI [and more critically, the Like/+ Button] to jump around wildly.)

- Speaking of Taskwarrior-TUI, a challenge I've been wanting to try for ages: GUI-less computing! I want to try running a terminal-only setup for a month or so. Relying only on the command line!

- I need to join Ubuntu Pro and, essentially, "figure out what it's about." I know Ubuntu is massive in the server/commercial space, and while I've used Ubuntu a lot over the years, I've never used Ubuntu Pro.

- And lastly, I should probably also join Coursera. If anything, just to hone my skills.

As always, none of these links/programs are sponsored! I like to highlight things I find interesting. And no affiliate links, either. Just clean, direct-to-item links.

Phew, another huge post. On to Goat Simulator!