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Day 38: The sort-of weekend.

Fueled by leftover stuffed crust pizza, I'll write another sizable blog post!

It's been an interesting week, so without further ado:

(Or some slight ado: I'm thinking of separating the Notes & Thoughts, and applying labels for either section, or both sections, when applicable. But that's irrelevant for this post, it's more of a future-forward change.)


Notes:

- WhatPulse 6.2 has been released. I was particularly excited about the new pause toggle, but it doesn't seem to be available on Linux yet unfortunately. 

- Ubuntu 26.04 is out now, too! Here is the list of all changes from 25.10. GNOME 50 is the big one!

- Super ZSNES was released, after nearly two decades! Being nostalgic for an emulator is a funny thing, but I'll have to give this one a try!

- The Android Show | I/O Edition will be happening May 12th, and I've already created a calendar event! Curious to see what the "big changes" will be. The main Google I/O event will be happening a week later, May 19th - 20th. 

- Google COSMO was briefly released, then pulled. Seems like it was supposed to be an "anticipating" AI assistant. 

- Gizmodo's article on the leaked iPhone 4 is an evergreen article worth a read for a nice hit of nostalgia.

- Spotify has released a "Save To Spotify" CLI tool, mainly intended to push your own (AI-generated) audio for personal use. Interesting enough for me to mention it, but I likely won't use it.

- The long-rumored Google FitBit Air was finally released! $99.99, so I'll have to pass, but this has been an "open secret" for a little while now.


Thoughts:

- I need to set up a "Work" Focus Mode on iOS. I toggle on/off Sleep Mode when I (don't) want notifications, which is a bit of a hassle. A mode that automatically enables when I'm at work would be way more convenient!

- I can't wait for FEX (or similar translation layer) to get good enough to where we can run Borderlands 2 on Android phones. I'm sure we're almost there, given the rate of progress these past few months! I remember having to play the game on low settings at 630 x 480, just to get a playable 20 FPS. The future is now! (Or soon!)

- I'm excited for the new iPhone Luminance wallpapers, coming soon!

- I had to unsubscribe from the Mobile Tech Podcast, as it made me want phones I couldn't get. 😔

- And talking about emulation, I've been meaning to do some testing for the best cores in RetroArch. The idea of turning my Pi 5 into a retro machine sounds like a blast.

- Blast from the past: instead of using the Pi 5 as a retro emulation machine, what if I used it as a retro machine? A late 90s or early 2000s themed-PC. Linux, XFCE or MATE, using only The Old Net. Sounds fun, I think. 

- Playing with the idea of adding a UNIX timestamp to each blog post, at the time of writing. Silly? Maybe. But fun! 

- I want to read The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. 

- And I really need to look into PGP & GPG! I'm vaguely aware of them, but not using them (yet). Signing all my posts would be really cool, I think. In a nerdy, sysadmin-y way.

- For nostalgia's sake, I'd love a little desk mantle clock with swinging pendulum. However, they seem really expensive... 

- The different designs of the flags of earth are definitely worth a look! My favorite is the One World Flag design by Thomas Mandl


Time for me to get some much-needed rest. Looking forward to trying the new cheeses tomorrow! 🧀

Oh, and I'll be posting some pictures tomorrow, too!


Written at 1778252636.

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Day 1 - April 1st, 2026: New Beginnings!

The first official post! Day 1, April Fools', but not a joke.

And it's been a big day! Went to work, but had to leave early. However, I did manage to snap this beautiful cloud during the sunrise:

An image of a bright cloud in front of a bright blue sky, surrounded by darker clouds.

So bright and vibrant, but surrounded by dark clouds... There's a clever metaphor in there somewhere, I'm sure! 

I went and looked at a new house today, and it seems promising. It's much smaller than our current place, but it's quite comfy. In the middle of nowhere, too, so it's quiet! I'm looking forward to the (possible) move, and hope everything goes smoothly.

Then I had a pretty nice breakfast. More treats than food!

A picture of the Belgian Boys crêpes box. 
An image of a plate with a fork, fufu, a grilled gouda pita, and a half-eaten meat pie.
These Belgian Boys crêpes were truly delightful! A little thicker than ideal, but their taste was perfect! And the convenience factor of being frozen can't be overstated!


For "main food" I made a Gouda grilled pita. Like a grilled cheese, but more leftover-y. I also had a little meat pie, and fufu. As you can tell, I'm not used to taking a picture of my food before digging in!


A picture of 3 crêpe halves. One with brown sugar, one with molten chocolate chips, and one with honey.
But the crêpes! Oh so delightful. One half plain, one half with dark chocolate chips, one half with brown sugar, and one half with honey. 
Brown sugar is definitely my favorite way to eat these! (Also, the chocolate and honey ones were so messy! Crêpes generally have holes, so you can imagine the mess these made...)
A picture of the cross-section of a Reese's Oreo cup, resting on top of its packaging. An unopened Reese's Oreo cup can be seen in the background.

And finally: Reese's Oreo cups! I love both of those things separately, and unsurprisingly these are truly delightful combined! I had a whole bag of these...





And here are some things I looked into today:

(I'm thinking of calling this section "Notes", but I'm not sure how fitting that would be...)

- Netflix getting another price increase.

- Rumors of a new Amazon phone. I missed out on the first one, and I'm not sure if I'm excited about this one. But it's interesting, if anything!

- The Canon Cat! An old 80s PC I'd never heard of before. No arrow keys, but it does have "Leap" keys. Curious little machine!

- Two old Apple ads. The famous "1984" ad, and the infamous "Lemmings" ad. I watched these ages ago, but it's nice to revisit them. 

- I learned LocalSend is available on Windows! Never thought about that, I suppose, but it sure is convenient!

- Windows Insider, and if I should join it on my "extra" laptop. There seems to be an issue with KB5079391, but I think I'll join when I have the time. I love messing around with beta software!

- I got curious whether Ubuntu could resize a BitLocker-encrypted disk. Searching online yields mixed results, so this is something I'll have to try on the weekend!

- Super Meat Boy 3D is out! Undecided on what platform I'll get it, but it's really high on my wishlist either way. I loved the original Super Meat Boy. (Despite being terrible at the game!)

- Thinking of joining eBay, just to purchase one of those silicon wafers. They look so cool! Even if they'd be nothing more than a neat piece of wall decoration.

- I found out that there's a desktop program for Google Drive on Windows. Probably not news to most, but that'd also be very convenient! (ChromeOS has spoiled me, in that regard.)

    On a related note: GNOME 50 dropped support for Google Drive in Nautilus. This is a bummer as it broke in KDE some time in 2025.

- I discovered the Machines & More YouTube channel. It's mainly about computers and computer parts; right up my alley!

- I've been eyeing one of these beautiful SHARGE power banks. Translucent, with a display, and on sale! But spending $109 on something I'd use infrequently is hard to justify. 

- Updating an Xbox 360 via USB should be possible. My 360 stopped connecting to the internet for some reason. I couldn't find any reports about it online, and I know my internet works (on that Xbox). So I'll have to test that this weekend also!

- MSI sells prebuilt PCs. I suppose it makes sense, but discovering this blew my mind. I'd always opt to build my own machine, but hey... it's convenient!

- Dolphin. The emulator! It's not currently installed, but that's something I want to get up and running this weekend also!

- Gmail now allows you to change your username. Huge news for those with..."older" Gmails. 

- ntfy, which will come in handy for all my little homelab-related things! 

- Niri and PaperWM. Two window managers I've been really wanting to try! I love KDE, but these look so... functional? Unique? How could I not?

- RustDesk, to pair with noVNC. Remote sessions have been a pain in the past, so I'm hoping this combination will resolve my remote computing woes.

- I've been wanting to take a look at LXD. I'm comfortable with Docker, but LXD's promises are tempting! This is likely a long way off, but I'm sure I'll come around to looking into moving my handful of Docker instances over at some point...

Lots of topics to look into, thanks to all the podcasts I've been listening to! A lot of these were inspired by the latest episode of the Version History podcast: Macintosh: All in one.

And speaking of listening, I'm almost through my "Temp Listens" playlists. A collection of songs/albums I've been meaning to listen to. I've got some additional albums saved as well, but those were prioritized. Once I'm through my playlist, I'm planning on going through deadmau5' entire discography. (Or at least what's available on YouTube Music!)

This is a large first entry! The next few will probably be a little smaller. (Or maybe not?)

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Day 0: What is this, exactly?

Sysadmin Riley here! I will be undertaking a massive challenge: writing a blog post a day! The premise is simple, but I'm finding it hard to verbalize exactly what I'll be doing. Writing a blog post every day, of course. Generally just highlighting things that happened, new facts I've learned, interesting food I've eaten, topics I've dug into, things like that. These posts will likely vary wildly in size, from short one-liners on days when I might be sleeping off a cold all day, to huge walls of text when I finally fix some Linux issue that's been bothering me. 

It'll be like a journal of sorts, but one that the whole world can see! I imagine that over time, my writing style and general layout will refine itself, so these first few posts may seem a bit... "scattered".

The project will officially kick off on April 1st, 2026. (That's not a joke!) Month 4 of 2026; I've procrastinated long enough! 😅 (On a somewhat-related note, I'm not sure if I'll be using emojis or not. On the one hand, that's part of my current writing style. On the other, they seem kind of... "wrong" to put into writing like this? Well, I suppose I'll find out what I prefer long-term!)

Ideally, this'll run forever! But I'm setting the realistic goal of 1 year. Come April 2027, I hope I won't be disappointed in myself! Skipping a day seems almost inevitable, but I'll try hard not to ruin my streak. "Perfect is the enemy of good", after all. In ~365 days, we'll see some stats! I'll try to accumulate all my posts, all the words I've written, longest & shortest streaks, that sort of data. I love me some analytics! 

That's the introduction post for now; I'm sure this'll make more sense over time!

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Day 13 - April 13th, 2026: Long days and short nights.

 So tired once again! And very few notes. Went to bed early last night, so I didn't do anything too interesting. Although I did manage to get the BFF achievement in Goat Simulator. (And it was a downright pain!)

I did have to work today also, which was unfortunate. But on the bright side, it wasn't a full 8-hour shift! So I got to go home early. But, somewhat unfortunately, I've got a doctor's appointment, so I can't do a whole bunch of stuff. (Since I don't want to be late.) I might just take a little nap... 😴

Notes:

- There's been a leak of a potential OnePlus "Gaming" phone/device/handheld. I didn't bring it up initially because I didn't think it was too interesting. I used to love OnePlus, but haven't felt any connection since 2015-ish. But then another chip-related rumor came out, and it piqued my interest! Perhaps there's some hope this'll be a good (and real) device?

- The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires by Tim Wu sounds so interesting! Diagonal to my usual interests, I reckon this is one I should read anyway.

Thoughts:

- The Sony Xperia 1 VIII was leaked, and most people talk about the new colorways and the redesign (particularly of the camera area.) I have no strong opinion on it one way or another (I suppose the colors are nice?) but I'm bringing it up, because it brought me down a "memory lane rabbit hole". Remember the Xperia P? Or the Xperia S? With their super cool translucent bottom bars. What about the Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini Pro? The SK17i is a favorite of mine! How about SmartTags? I could browse old Android reviews and forums forever... 🥹

- PWM dimming! Apparently some people are sensitive to this, which I wasn't aware of.

- Another nostalgia-fueled thought: Zoo Keeper for the Nintendo DS. I miss the DS era. Reading reviews, carefully picking games, and just... having fun! Yes, yes, my rose-colored glasses are very visible. But I think I'll get the DS Lite out again and play some old favorites (and hopefully discover some new ones, too!) especially once I'm done with Goat Simulator. Tetris DS, Mario Kart DS, New Super Mario Bros, Pokémon Black & White, Super Mario 64 DS, WarioWare: Touched!, Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky, Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story & Partners in Time, Pokémon HeartGold & SoulSilver, Animal Crossing: Wild World, Space Invaders Extreme, Metroid Prime: Hunters, Picross DS... Gosh, I can't wait to revisit these!

- And speaking of the DS: the Anbernic RG DS seems really interesting, given how I've been on a retro kick lately. Roughly $100, I might... I might not... I suppose we'll see!

A shorter post since it was a shorter day. Nap time, then visit time! 



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