Day 25 - Saturday, April 25th, 2026: The sleepiness never stops, but neither do I.

Despite crushing exhaustion, I'm moving forward. And as promised, a massive list of Notes & Thoughts!

Notes:

- The rumored iPhone 18 Pro colors appear to be right up my alley. I'm still more interested in the possible iPhone Fold, but I like that Apple is experimenting with colors.

- On the topic of Apple leaks: Siri is supposed to get a visual upgrade at WWDC this year. More than a visual upgrade though, I personally hope she gets a functionality upgrade.

- Microsoft's Community Hub has a blog post about not using LTSC, which I thought was noteworthy: Say No to Long Term Servicing Channel (LTSC)

- The Mudita Kompakt is a very interesting smartphone that aims not to be a smartphone. Like the name implies, it's small, but it also has an e-ink display! $399 and comes with a headphone jack, so naturally I'm quite tempted.

- Particle News, a "personalized" news app. I've heard good things about this app, and I'm about to try it myself! Available on both iOS and Android.

- Human brain cells learning to play Doom. (Without the human body, I should mention.)

- I have high hopes for Pixel Glow! I miss notification lights, and I hope Google won't abandon this idea.

- The Lenovo Legion Go Fold is a really interesting foldable hybrid handheld/portable PC. It's truly a little bit of everything. Curious to know the price when this releases! (But I'll likely have to skip either way.)

- Your Name In Landsat by NASA is quite amazing. Here's the banner I'll be using moving forward:

A composite image of geographical areas seemingly representing a letter. All of which combined look like they spell "SysadminRiley".

Thoughts:

- Hearing that NASA's Voyager 1 was the most distant, human-made object piqued my interest. (I forgot exactly which podcast I heard that fact on, I'm assuming either The Rest Is Science or Science Friday.) Turns out it's nearly 26 billion kilometers away from us! 16 billion miles. That's a mind-boggling distance. "Voyager 1 is also projected to reach a distance of one light day from Earth in November 2026." is another fun little fact coming from Voyager 1. NASA has interesting, interactive maps about Voyager 1 & 2, as well. "Voyager 1 is expected to reach the theorized Oort cloud in about 300 years [...]" hit me really hard; I feel like it puts everything into perspective. How insignificant everything is. I won't be around in 300 years. Neither would my children, or my children's children. I likely won't even be remembered in 300 years... But that's a little heavy. Go, space probes!

- Raycast for Windows is also surprisingly fast! The i5-8365U in this laptop isn't exactly a benchmark crusher, but Raycast launches nearly instantly and pulls up what I'm looking for in under a second. I am curious if it'll learn my habits and patterns though. I've also discovered it's available on iOS, although obviously it's a different user experience.

- I really enjoy getting newsletters, but I fear I may be getting too many! Which didn't stop me from signing up to all of PC World's newsletters, however. I'm sure I'll get to culling my subscriptions soon enough...

A screenshot, showing my nine lists in TickTick. Some are for reminders, others are for notes, but what's most important is that you can see I've created custom lists, and actually added notes and reminders to them. I'm actively using TickTick!

- I've been working on setting up and migrating over to TickTick, with some success! This is what I've managed to do so far. It also includes having set up the Apple Reminders auto-import feature, so now when I ask Siri to set a reminder, it goes right into TickTick. That definitely helps with the friction of moving platforms!

- I'm curious about All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace! Added to my Letterboxd.

- EFF's Effector Podcast is quite enjoyable; give the episodes a listen! (Including convenient Pocket Casts and Spotify links.)

- A couple of days ago I mentioned switching back to gPodder. That includes switching back to my dedicated MP3 player! I'm not entirely sure if I'll do this, since it'll take days (if not weeks) to switch back over and mark off all episodes I've listened to. At the rate I've been enjoying them, I've listened to well over 1,000 episodes across nearly 100 podcasts. Not the easiest to move to another platform!

- But on the note of using gPodder and an MP3 player; I'm wondering if it would be feasible to set up a bunch of scripts (perhaps also relying on a database) to recreate a "gPodder Wrapped"/"Year in Review" feature. Keeping track of when I subscribed to a show, how many episodes from that show I've listened to (by counting deleted from device as played), individual and aggregate time spent listening, things like that. I'm sure this sounds way easier on paper than it'd be to create!

- Curious if we'll ever see a Borderlands or Borderlands 2 RTX Remix! I'll be patiently waiting... 😇

- Turns out that the 16" Razer Blades can support 2 NVMe drives! I've been thinking of possibly getting a Razer laptop instead of a newer desktop PC, seeing as prices are crazy anyway and I might benefit from the smaller form factor. But I couldn't live without a Linux install, and I'm not the biggest fan of keeping both Windows & Linux on a single SSD.

- Randomly remembered how the "I'm a Mac"-guy (Justin Long) made some... not-amazing Intel ads. Wouldn't have been worth mentioning, except they've since been pulled from Intel's channel!

- I'm subscribing to the Macworld podcast on Pocket Casts. Let's see if it'll stick!

- Moravec's Paradox is something I'd heard of many times before, but never heard referenced by name: "It is comparatively easy to make computers exhibit adult level performance on intelligence tests or playing checkers, and difficult or impossible to give them the skills of a one-year-old when it comes to perception and mobility."

- I'm not sure what's up with the Changelog News podcast, but the latest episode was nearly a month ago. Looking forward to the next episode!

- Laurie Spiegel is a very interesting person! She (in my opinion) pioneered electronic music as we know it today, back in the 70s. Her first album "The Expanding Universe" released in 1980 is available on Spotify! (And Bandcamp too, if you prefer owning your music.)

- For the longest time, I thought I'd never had a Jaffa Cake before. I've always heard these described as lava cakes, but with jam in the center. (Which I can sort of see, I suppose?) But I have had these before, under the name LU Pim's! (Sinaasappel, om precies te zijn.)

A photograph of LU Pim's Orange, which are Jaffa Cakes. This is just a simple picture of the box. Photo not mine.

- Remember the Kyocera Echo? I did! But what about the ZTE Axon M? Because I did not remember that one!

That's where I'll draw the line! This post is already quite big, and more importantly, I've got to catch some zzz's! Goodnight, I'll need it... 😴

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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!