Day 4 - April 4th, 2026: Catching up and looking ahead.

It's the weekend! Happy Saturday! 🎉

I'm debating taking Monday off... On one hand, I love extra days off. On the other, I also like money. And it's supposed to be an "easier" day. Easy money <-> Extended weekend. Tough call!

And completely random, but today I saw a car with headlights that had tiny little wipers on them. How novel! I didn't feel comfortable taking a picture of a stranger's car, but apparently they used to be common?

I've also been thinking of turning my little server into a little gaming box. It's no powerhouse (and can't run Windows 11), but it's got an RX 6400 so it handles games-I-think-of-as-nostalgic just fine! I'm leaning towards Fedora, but I'm torn on the DE. It needs something light(er)weight than the KDE I usually go with. Perhaps I should ask about personal experiences on the Linux gaming subreddit?

Lots of notes today! Some left over that I didn't get to yesterday. So here goes:

- Thinking of switching to Obsidian. I've been using a mixture of Apple Notes (which I like aside from the lock-in), Google Keep (which I love for smaller notes), and Google Docs (generally too "big" for things like recipes, blog drafts, etc.)

- The Artemis launch! I'm sure you've heard and read all about it. I found it quite interesting! I don't know too much about space, but this has been huge.

- Got curious about using a PSVR2 on the PS5 Slim. It works! I've been wanting to try VR, but I think a PS5 is the only VR-capable machine I own. That $399 price tag stings, though.

- The Meta Quest: an affordable VR headset. Has also been tempting. Although I should probably wait until the Steam Frame launches!

- We all know what a speedrun is, but where does the term "speedrunning" come from? Wiktionary states the following: "From speed +‎ run. There are isolated attestations of the term as far back as the 19th century, mostly hyphenated as speed-run and in an engineering context; it is unlikely that these cases influenced the modern form." Not quite the answer I was looking for...

- I'm interested in turning my traditional library (of e-books) into audiobooks. I'm sure some tool must exist for this, right? That'd be a good way to work through my huge library, given how little time I've had to read lately.

- I've been really wanting to (re)play BioShock Infinite. The trophy list looks quite annoying, so I'm thinking of getting it on Steam.

- I've also been craving a run-through of Skyrim again. Both of these games would be perfect on my no-longer-server, haha!

- You've heard of the circadian rhythm, but have you ever heard the term "circalunar"? Because I hadn't!

- Cindy Cohn wrote a book: Privacy's Defender. Add it to the growing backlog!

- Chris Espinosa came up on my radar. Interesting fellow, and I'd definitely read a(n Apple-themed) biography of him!

- Speaking of books to add to my To-Read list: The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert

- And I'm interested in watching the TV show Silicon Valley.

- "The the the the induction of jamais vu in the laboratory: word alienation and semantic satiation". Yes, that's what it's called. Interesting read! (Thanks to The Rest Is Science - Cognitive Ghosts!)

- Looking for a convenient way to sync files across Linux, Windows, and ChromeOS. Dropbox came up, but it would take a lot to move me away from Google Drive. (Especially now that I got upgraded to 5 TB, for free!)

- I can't seem to find LTT's "We sold our asse(t)s to NVIDIA" video? It's referenced in quite a few places, but I can't seem to find it. Maybe it's a Floatplane exclusive?

- This year I want to leave more reviews! For places and products both. The little coffee shop I stop by frequently, for example, could definitely use more exposure! And I personally really enjoy reading (human) reviews of products. They don't often sway me, but I like the extra information.

- I want to remove certain types of ads from my podcasts (which isn't a fault of my preferred player, Pocket Casts.) Gambling, Alcoholic Beverages, Finance, etc. They're just so gross to me. But I don't want to unfollow every podcast that has these (dynamically inserted?) ads either. And reaching out to every podcast with these types of ads would be... time consuming, to say the least... 🫤

- The doctrines! Turns out I know far too little about these. (Is that embarrassing? Perhaps...)

- Oh, and that feeling you get when you're falling asleep and then suddenly feel as though you're actually falling? That's got a name! It's the Hypnic Jerk!

- I'm sure you're familiar with Déjà Vu, but have you ever heard of Déjà Rêvé or Jamais Vu? I hadn't! Here's a concise Medium post going over them!

- The sound of an amethyst cup is rad! But I'd be wary of drinking out of any actual-crystal mug...

- Hadn't yet heard of Transhumanism. It's a lengthy Wikipedia article, but I find it fascinating!

- And two TV-related terms: The Dead Unicorn Trope, and The Coconut Effect. Both are absolutely worth a read!

- Quite morbid, but End-of-Life Dreams and Visions are... interesting. Call me morbidly curious, I suppose!

- Gamma Brain Waves? Sci-fi-sounding! This has been added to my To-Read list (that I'll surely get through any day now!)

- The ThinkPad T14 Gen 7 got a 10/10 on iFixit! It'll likely be out of my price range (given Lenovo's pricing) but it's a huge win for repairability regardless!

- Oh, and The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is worth a read also!

And some more apps I'd like to install or look into:

- Telegram. (Needs no introduction!)

- Signal. (Same!)

- Viewfinder Preview, although I'm not nearly enough of a photography buff to get any actual use out of this!

- McDonald’s. Never had this installed, but I do love me some free food!

- Stellarium. A neat way to view the (night) sky and the stars and constellations. Cool!

- Storygraph. I never quite got into Goodreads, and since I don't have a Kindle, I'm not "stuck" on that platform.

- Too Good To Go, which sounded super interesting! I currently live in a bigger city (for now?) so it might actually work. I'll have to give it a whirl!

- Discogs & Bandcamp. (And somewhat related; RateYourMusic.) I'm a heavy user of YouTube Music, but I'd like to curate a collection of my own files. I have some, but with the way everything seems to be going, I think I'd like to have a large, offline collection that I own.

- Fog Of World. This was not recommended, but I found it so intriguing! Reminds me of a time (like a decade ago?) where I was a heavy user of Swarm. But more gamified, perhaps.

- See Saw. I quite like the Google Arts & Culture app, and this seems similar! (Frankly, I could stand to be more cultured, haha.)

- Moment Pro Camera. It sounds similar to Viewfinder Preview. Upping my photography skills is something I'd like to work on in 2027! (Not a typo; I've got a lot I'm working on this year already.)

- WhatsApp / Instagram / Threads / Snapchat. Not currently on any of these platforms, but I've lost touch with a lot of friends over the years... Even though I always appreciate old friends reaching out, perhaps others would find it annoying or suspicious. So on the back-burner these go!

Phew, that was a lot! I'm about to swap the drives in my server so I don't accidentally erase my backups! And I have to get some groceries for a little BBQ this weekend. All caught up, and excited for this weekend! (Which is the future, after all.)

(7,492 characters, 1,323 words. That's an essay!)

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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!