Day 8 - April 8th, 2026: Big day, lots of notes!

Most of the day was spent working... So I've got lots of notes! I also went to the dentist, and I seem to enjoy going to the dentist more than almost everyone I talk to. There's nothing wrong with that, right? 😅

I set up my OpenWrt router (A Netgear R6260) as a client device, and hooked it up to my desktop PC. Network speeds improved nearly 50-fold! I posted about it on Bluesky, X, and Tumblr. I'm trying to post more to multiple platforms, in case some prefer certain sites. I'd like to join Threads, but that requires ~~a Facebook~~ an Instagram (?) account, and I very much do not want one of those! I'm planning on joining Mastodon soon, although I'm not entirely sure which server to join. Decision paralysis, I suppose.

And I really want to start posting to Pixelfed too! Although I fear my pictures are too pedestrian, haha.

Beyond that, I've been attempting to connect my Xbox 360 to the Xbox Live network, with no success. Mildly annoying, but the Xbox is non-functional anyway. (It overheats. I've already cleaned it out and replaced the thermal paste. CPU/GPU is toast, I believe?)

I got a bunch of achievements in Goat Simulator on Steam. Working towards that 100%, but some achievements are... needlessly obtuse! 😩

And lastly, I've been itching to get my PS3 back out. Been on a "retro" game kick lately! (Is 2009-2015 considered retro? It's been over a decade...) I never unpacked it, so I likely won't until the next move later this year... Not like I have a lot of time to play games anyway! Plus, they won't magically vanish. My towering backlog will still be there, safe and sound. Although I do have an SSD I'd like to put in there! Can't imagine the original HDD from 2009 is holding up particularly well. Easily got hundreds of hours of use. I wonder if it's got S.M.A.R.T. data, that'd be interesting to find out! And if I'm going that far, I might also do a shell swap (since the case is cracked, has some weird scuffs/stains, and is missing the drive door and rubber feet.) And since I'm going through all of that trouble I might as well repaste the CPU & GPU, right? 😆

Definitely a project for another day, but one I want to do nonetheless.

Oh, and I joined the PlayStation Beta program! Also posted about this on Bluesky/X/Tumblr. (That's becoming a lot of links!)

Now, for the notes:

- There's an Anthropic Claude Chrome extension, apparently! Not sure I trust it with my browser, but I thought that was... neat?

- There's a Daily Tech News Show subreddit! I really enjoy the podcast, so I figured I'd also join there!

- Motorola announced a new 2026 Moto G Stylus, and shockingly, a new tablet, the 2026 Moto Pad. The Moto G Stylus got some nice (and enticing) upgrades, although their software update promise is lacking compared to the other Android OEMs. However, the tablet is of note since it's the first tablet they've released since the Motorola Droid Xyboard... from 2011! 15 years ago!

- I'm a little late, but Wine 11 got released! And it brought some huge changes.

- I want to rip some of my CDs and DVDs on Linux, since I now have a disc reader. But this is something I've never done before! So I need to do some digging...

- The Steam Summer Sale will begin June 25th. Nothing prompted this, I just got curious since I've got a growing wishlist and figured I'd hold off on getting more games until they're discounted. (Plus, I like collecting the sales badges!)

- Samsung released Hearapy, an app that can supposedly help with motion sickness. This I'm very curious about, since I tend to get carsick easily! I do so wish I had an Android phone, though...

- There's a stunning "Isai Blue" Pixel 10a. However, it's Japan-only. It's such a gorgeous color, alas I'm not located in Japan...

- Zack from JerryRigEverything managed to get his hands on a rollable LG prototype! How cool is that?!

- I also learned about the OnePlus Nord 6, and wow; 7,500 mAh battery! Unfortunately, can't get this one either. 0/2 so far. 😭

- Adam Ragusea on YouTube doesn't need a shout-out, but deserves one anyway!

- Edge computing: what does it mean? According to Wikipedia: "Edge computing is a distributed computing model that brings computation and data storage closer to the sources of data." Those are definitely words... I'd like to actually understand what that means though, so I'll have to do some more digging here too.

- FizzBuzz. In relation to programming. I'd heard this getting thrown around quite a bit, but I'm glad to finally understand what it means.

- The idea of switching all my devices over to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) sounds tempting. I'll probably start with just my PC though, wouldn't want to mess up any calendar events on my phone!

- Hardware Canucks on YouTube. They stopped showing up in my recommendations, so I had to go looking for their account.

- Here's an interesting read on the history of Amazon's AWS. We all know ~~and love~~ AWS, but I (and probably many others) didn't know its history!

- Two interesting books:

- The Global War for Internet Governance by Laura DeNardis.

- The Secret Life of Data by Aram Sinnreich and Jesse Gilbert.

(Both added to my ever-growing To-Read list! I've been considering getting a Kindle, but my current e-reader is fine... 😅)

- I would like to join Lobsters, but don't know anyone with an invite. Might join the IRC channel, and maybe someone'd be willing to send me an invite?

- I've been curious about Lossless Scaling. The dual GPU support sounds especially enticing. I wonder if I could use the Intel's built-in HD 530 to smooth out games on the RX 6400... I'll have to get it, try it out, and report back!

- And speaking of Steam, apparently Krita is available on there? Why? Well, why not, I suppose.

- GOG Galaxy came across my radar again. I do so wish they had a native Linux client... Never tried Heroic Games Launcher or Minigalaxy, but now might be a good time to do so?

- RetroAchievements! I've got to get this set up on my Steam Deck, at least. I love collecting achievements/trophies. I'll let you all know once I get some achievements on there!

Gosh, that's a lot! 1,060 words and 5,864 characters, and counting. I'll stop here for now, and save the rest for tomorrow!

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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!