Day 31 - Friday, May 1st, 2026: April showers bring May flowers!

It's officially May! I'm looking forward to this month.

Had to call out of work again, my arm's been killing me, and I can't shake this "sick" feeling. But there's hope! In about a week, we'll find out if the changes I've made will have helped.

Notes:

- Fedora 44 has been released! Update your machines, and enjoy all the goodies.

- Talkie is a 1930s LLM. Or, as they'd call it, a vintage language model. Worth mentioning it's a 13B model. Spiffy!

- Logitech announced the G512 X Gaming Keyboard, notable for its TMR switches. TMR seems to be the trendy new technology! It offers improved precision, lower latency, and better durability compared to Hall Effect sensors. Plus 8K polling and dual-swap beds.

- Changelog News uploaded a new episode after a month of silence! I've missed Adam and Jerod.

- EFF & the Internet Archive have published a book on the vulnerability of digital data. It's called "Vanishing Culture: A Report on Our Fragile Cultural Record" and can be downloaded for free from the Internet Archive. You can also purchase a physical copy, if that's more your style.

Thoughts:

- Turns out that inserting a Jump Break cuts off the posts on the homepage, and there's no quick XML fix for that. So the posts from this past week will be cut off. Oops! But it's all part of learning, right?

- I've always been skeptical of Amazon's Send-to-Kindle, but... I might be a convert! I don't have a Kindle yet, but you can use this to send files to the Kindle app on your phone. Previously I was using a comparatively complex setup in Calibre, where I'd run my library as a server, and then download the books from my phone into Apple Books. Which is not particularly useful as a multi-OS admin! Through the Kindle app I can easily read books on my phone and all my devices (Linux, Windows, ChromeOS). Plus, if I ever get an Android device or a Kindle, all my books are a simple download away! And there's cross-platform syncing, oh my.

- I've heard good things about The Empty Man, and I've added it to my Watchlist. I love a good (cosmic) horror!

- And I've been working on my iOS layout. Lock screen and home screen are set up, as are the icon designs. I'm currently working on icon layout and widgets. Pretty tedious, compared to a PC.

- And my attempt at moving over to Firefox has been slow. I want to make sure all my passwords have correct timestamps, which involves finding the "Account Created" email, taking the timestamp, converting it to Epoch Time, and then putting that into a spreadsheet to import into Firefox.

- Plus, I'll have to move my Reading List over to another read-it-later service. Pocket has been shuttered, which is a shame as I genuinely used and enjoyed the service. (And being able to sync with my Kobo was such a nice bonus!) I'm stuck between Instapaper and Raindrop.io. Instapaper is more of a drop-in replacement, while Raindrop.io seems more versatile and powerful. Since I'll have to get used to a new service, I might as well get used to a "more difficult" one at the same time, right?

- The Google Story by David A. Vise came onto my radar, and it's been added to my Reading List.

- I've managed to download all my files from iCloud Drive, and moved them into Google Drive. Another excruciatingly tedious task, as Apple doesn't make it easy to export your files. (In my opinion, anyway.) Dates on folders are incorrect (all timestamped as today), but the files seem fine. When I find the time, I need to comb through my years of accumulated digital cruft, and really sort everything properly.

- The Zen Browser did catch my eye, though. Not only is it available on Linux, there's even a Flatpak on Flathub! It's downloading now, but I may not have any time to test it this weekend, unfortunately.

- We all know Alan Turing, but I never realized how tragic his (short) life was. The Wikipedia page is worth a read. Without his work, I wouldn't be sitting here typing this, so I'm incredibly grateful for everything he's done.

- I'd never heard of IBM's "Quantum Chandelier", but it's a stunning piece of engineering work. You can read more about it on CNET.

- TechDweeb on YouTube has some very interesting videos about retro & handheld gaming. Not sure why he's not shown up in my recommendations yet; he deserves the shout-out!

- Steve Jobs' "Thoughts on Flash" is a lengthy read, but really interesting given how everything has developed since.

- I'd like to try out some different email clients on iOS. The default Mail app doesn't work for my needs, and I've had some issues with the Gmail app. Outlook seems like the obvious choice, but I've heard good things about Spark and Edison, so those might be worth checking out!

A rather lengthy post, with lots of thoughts! But all caught up, for now. I'd like to get my recipes written down and digitized, so that might be tomorrow's project! Goodnight for now. 😴

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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!