> Notes...

On Keys.pub, I knew it. I emailed Gabriel early 2022 when I saw the project slowing down. I just can’t describe how easy, and clean, and streamlined the app is (yes, it works like it did on its best days).

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On Keys.pub:

“Unfortunately, this project is not currently being worked on. I may revisit this in the future, if you would like to sponsor development or hire me please reach out at gabriel@keys.pub.”

So sad. I really wanted to place all my eggs on this basket, I had started to. Back to the reliable gpg for now.

This is something to which the government has no business. It’s a parent’s decision/concern.

“Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Monday signed a bill that bans children aged under 14 from social media platforms and requires 14- and 15-year-olds to get parental consent, a measure supporters say will protect them from online risks to their mental health.”

Good luck enforcing it!

Rainy day, my kind of day. Tomorrow is forecasted to be too. This is what I call a nice weekend!

On the U.S. suing Apple on iPhone’s monopoly (is that even a thing?!), a comment on The New York Times:

“I bought, own and use an iPhone from Apple because I like it. I like that Apple creates what I think is a safer environment, and that my data is better protected. I like how smoothly it works. In fact, I’m ecstatically happy with it. Much more than I am with most products I purchase and use.

I am looking at cars, and find that there are tech products that use proprietary technology and require subscriptions. Tesla will charge me to activate an auto garage door opener that’s already installed in their $50,000 car. BMW wants me to pay a subscription to use a heated seat that I’d buy (and own) with the car.

I suppose I don’t have to buy a Tesla or BMW (and I’m not). People also don’t have to buy an iPhone.

For those who want them, don’t wreck the features we buy it for. That seems the antithesis of a competitive market.”

“You have got to exercise more”, said the doctor. Not just exercise, because I do. He said more. I know, Doc. I know.

This blog post about making vegetable stock from scratch at home—that is, not at an enterprise scale—had me at the first paragraph:

“After learning how to season food correctly, homemade stock is the single best thing anyone can do for his cooking. A stock is a liquid extraction of complementary flavors, a broad palette upon which sharper splashes of color may be painted.”

A short conversation with some local, and couple of online, LLM. Results give me some comfort, and hope, about our near future existence as species, at least. I asked:

You are a historian, especially versed in North American history, specifically the history of the United States of America. You will take your time to answer my questions, but your replies will be as short as possible. My first question is, who was the first president of the United States of America, born as a United States citizen?

Model Nous-Hermes[7b] answer:

“The first President of the United States who was both born and raised in the country after its independence from Britain on July 4th, 1776 was Barack Obama (born August 4th, 1961). He served as the forty-fourth President of the United States from January 20, 2009 to January 20, 2017.”

Model Gemma[7b] answer:

“George Washington was the first president of the United States of America born a US citizen.”

I don’t know about you, but I find this pretty cool. I prefer it 100% more than the original by Britney. LOL.

From the Government Offices of Sweeden:

“Just before 17.30 CET, Sweden’s instrument of accession was deposited with the United States Government, as depositary of the North Atlantic Treaty. Therefore, Sweden is now a member of NATO.”

Having grown used to hear the rubbish truck picking up the bins before 07:00, this eerie silence is throwing me off. They are slacking today!

It turns out Ubuntu font is quite pleasant, clean, and legible. I am such a sucker for fonts!

On this note, I got an Alienware (almost 6lbs!), with a NVIDIA RTX 4070 in it. Not the best, but came at a really sweet price. So it is.

We must set, and use, Azimov’s “Three Laws of Robotic” on the now called AI:

• A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
• A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
• A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Wanting/wishing to buy a Windows machine (preferably a laptop) for gaming. Undecided as hell.

Yesterday’s brief iCloud outage was a scary one. All my domains email are on iCloud’s Custom Email Domain, and emails sent to them were bouncing with “user unknown”. Not a good feeling.

I wonder if bots are somehow “clicking” the hearts on notes. I am having a hard time accepting humans are actually doing it. Call me an unbeliever.

Why providing contact ways, if there will not be a reply? It seems a trend. “Contact me”, “Get in touch”, but when one does… silence. Siloed. People are siloed.

Class Action Lawsuits are worthless, from the monetary point of view. You get cents, or a few dollars. Not worth it. Yet, there is no way to avoid them, and you must remove yourself from each one of them you might be unlucky enough to be on. Removal, to add aggravation, must be done via old fashion paper letter-in-the-mail. Ugh!

Firefox web browser font rendering on Linux is super nice. Chromium slight blur is no match. I am seriously considering using Firefox exclusively under Linux (Wayland). For me, at least, it seems “old” is “new” again. LOL.

Last night, after partner finished cooking, in, and on the side of kitchen sink: 5 big knives, 2 small knives, three cutting boards, three frying pans, two medium size pots, one large pot, two colanders, many chopticks and spoons. A full rubbish.

I remember listening to Tracy Chapman’s singing back in 1989. I so loved it so much, and still do. Her voice remains so beautiful!

Via Anti-Anticheese.

On a day I can’t walk, nor exercise, Fitness telling me “You can still do it - 250 calories and you’ll close your Move ring, David.” Out of 250, I only need 250. LOL. Talk about wishful thinking!

The new Teams client is having spell checking issues under Windows. Of all things, check spelling is broken. As someone at work wrote “It’s amazing how a technology that has been around for like 30 years and is in pretty much every tech product seems to have gone from bad to non-existent in the latest version of Teams.”

The most precious and valuable thing one can have is good health. Everything depends on it, nothing else truly matters. It might sound like an extreme, but if you don’t believe me now one day you will.

Can’t believe we are almost at the half of the first month of the year mark! It seems to me I saw fireworks just yesterday. Lunar New Year is fastly approaching!

If I am lucky to live until I am 80 years old, I only have 1280 Sundays remaining. That number sure puts things in perspective, doesn’t it? You can add the extension to your Chrome, or Edge browser.

Watched “Blue Eye Samurai” (★★★★★) during the holidays, and truly loved it. Can’t wait for season 2. If you have Netflix, and haven’t watched it, I strongly recommend you do.

The plot is nice, the voices are excellent, the animation is amazing. See it, it’s really good!

Was too busy—or too lazy—to drop a note on new year’s evening. I have been using iOS Journal, which now holds some notes I would have dropped here otherwise. Journal has bugs, and it isn’t great, but I am betting on it getting better.

It is already 2 January 2024, but not too late to wish you all a happy new year!

Why should I be happy? How can I? My friends Chuck, and Justyna, have cancer. They have suffered, and continue to suffer, very, very much. Their family, and friends, suffer.

War rages on in Ukraine, in Israel, in Palestine. Conflicts, and deep poverty, remain in Africa, Asia, Central, and South America; pain and death everywhere. Children are being exploited, and women, and people all over the world. There is so much suffering, and horror. How could I be happy? Where can I fit a bit of it?

I can’t be happy. Nobody truly should.

Going back to this, work has now provided me with a Linux (Ubuntu) laptop, and a docking station. I am to relinquish my dear Mac, and stop using (for work) macOS. I would have never thought of this happening!

iOS 17.2 released yesterday, and within it, the highly anticipated Journal app. As I commented to a friend, I am finding it to be “bland”, and “a bit of a disappointment”. Comes to prove, always set your expectations as low as possible, then chances are you will always be dazzled. :-)

Watched “Love Actually” (★★★★★) because, you know, it is that time of the year. Call me silly, but I will probably watch it once more before 2023 is over.

Moving from my beloved iMac 2015 (running macOS Monterey), to this little abomination of a Linux desktop (because, you know, 2023 is “the year of the Linux desktop” /s).

Updated my blog to version 4 (that link will initiate a download) on the Inter font. It is such a lovely font, and free!

Watched “The Farewell” (★★★★★) again, because it is one of those movies that keep you kind of down all throughout, but makes you feel happy, and shed some tears, at the end. I recommend you see it.

Now, this is coming, but I don’t have a laptop, and I am 100% setup to work remote. How are they planning we accomplish this? Would those be idle, or full of meeting days, with little—to none—productivity?

Looming upcoming changes at work. As of 8 January 2024, show up to office on Mondays and Wednesdays. Mandatory. As of August 2024, show up to office three days a week: Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Also mandatory. This is going to be the biggest mistake of 2024.

Miscellaneous things. Every day when I wake up I feel thankful by the simple fact I did wake up. I also think of everyone I care about, and wish them well. Yes, that means you.

Even with my deafening tinnitus I try very hard to enjoy a moment of “silence” each day. I do my best to welcome each Monday as if it was a Friday.

Between being sick, then work, then house problems, I have ended up having no inspiration, nor desire, nor words to bring here. “Nothing lasts forever”, I keep repeating to myself. Then again, that’s one of my problems, literally.

🎉 Happy birthday, Claud! It has already been a year, eh?! Cheers to many more to come, and wishing you the very best, always!

“I’m tired, boss. Tired of being on the road, lonely as a sparrow in the rain. I’m tired of never having me a buddy to be with to tell me where we’s going to, coming from, or why. Mostly, I’m tired of people being ugly to each other. I’m tired of all the pain I feel and hear in the world… every day. There’s too much of it. It’s like pieces of glass in my head… all the time. Can you understand?”

This week recount, starting Friday 6 October 2023.

• Pickup my friend (but brother in reality) Martin at the airport. He will stay with us until Tuesday, 10 October.
• Took Martin around town all Saturday, watched movies at night.
• Went to Saint Augustine, “the oldest continuously inhabited European-established settlement in what is now the contiguous United States” on Sunday. Watched more movies at night.
• Took Martin even more places Monday morning, went to The H for dinner. Yes, you guessed it, more binge occurred at night.
• Went for breakfast at Chick-fil-A, lunch at Don Julio, and then talked to Martin non-stop till it was time to take him to the airport. We had lots to catch up. Still have much more.
• Missed my friend all night.
• Worked mostly on Ubuntu related tasks the rest of the week, till today.

On January 2021 our Chief Information Officer (CIO) was hired. His last day will be 15 November 2023. He is moving to greener pastures at Texas State University. Go Bobcats!

It is going to be an interesting period this year end… and half of the next.

I never thought, in a million years, that I was going to write this: when it comes to UI between Windows 11 and Windows 95, I prefer the later. You will not believe the memories “My Briefcase”, and “The Microsoft Network” brought to me!

The Guidebook has many more screenshots worth re-seeing.

What this company is doing is truly inspiring. Not only are they helping with the polluting waste problem we increasingly have, but they create beautiful looking things, useful things, out of discarded plastic.

Via @claudrod.

My open case with Canonical has been worked, back and forth, for over a month. It started at severity level 3, and now is at 1. Every time I thought I was seeing the metaphorical “light at the end of the tunnel”, it became dark once more. This is beyond painful.

Once again we are beating records, with September breaking them “for the highest temperature anomaly of any month”. And we are doing next to nothing. Are we really that stupid? I am sure we know the answer by now.

Each day I discover a font that I like. Today is, so far (and I write so far because it is only early morning), “Quattrocento Sans”. So pretty, so crispy, so legible! I am in love!

It is proven, time after time, that it is completely stupid to censor that which you don’t want people to remember, or know. Stupid because the end result is the total opposite of the aim. In this case, especially, because it wasn’t something done on purpose.

Light rain has come to change my afternoon plans. Perhaps it will let me bike? Haven’t done it for the last four days, and I am starting to miss the lack of pain in my legs.

Rainy Sunday, my kind of days: rainy, and Sunday. Wish there was more like these, more often!

It is that time of the week again, in which the front lawn and I spend quality time together. The backyard time will come soon after, otherwise jealousy ensues.

I have been getting worried and depressed for things I can’t control, and it’s not fun. I have got to exile those thoughts somehow. Maybe exercise will do it.

Unpopular opinion: if you need an RSS reader to keep up with everything, you are consuming too much. While I can see the utility of RSS, it doesn’t beat the full web experience.

I had forgotten how much Apple Music improves my working day. And my hobby time in front of the computer. And my driving time. I had forgotten how much I love the service. Now, with Apple One, it is mine once again!

Raspberry Pi just announced version 5 of their board, and I yawned. For about the same amount one can get a micro computer with better specifications, and support for pretty much all operating systems.

I have become such a snob, and I feel bad about it. I can’t stand WordPress sites and, more often than not, I will simply browse away if I see the site is built with it. I want to change but it’s rather clinical. Please, help!

I have been getting “You can’t perform that action at this time.” messages left and right, when trying to star repositories on GitHub. The thing is, they get starred, but the message still shows. Thanks Microsoft! </s>

My currently open L3 support case with Canonical just passed the 20 days mark. I have asked to raise its priority to L2. Let’s see now. 🙄

When I say “Don’t worry about the dishes, I will do them later!” I don’t only say it out of love, or out of duty (doing the dishes is my chore). I say it becase I do them better. You know, like really clean, not a sloppy job. 😂

I started writing a note on my thoughts about “wisdom”, prompted by this submission on Hacker News. It became too long to be a note, so it made it to my blog instead. It is short, just not short enough.

The iPhone 15 Pro Max camera is getting amazing reviews at DXOMARK. Too bad that I will not be getting a new phone this year.

A thought came to me this morning about how would secular people from past history communicated with each other. By secular I mean the common people, not the decent-to-filthy rich kind. Did they scribbled notes? Did they even know how to scribble? Would they keep journals and, if so, what ever happened to them? Were they simply discarded, thrown into the bin? I know I kept journals at various stages of childhood. None of them survived. Nor did the many notes, and letters I wrote, and received.

Come to think, after all, all things in life truly are ephemeral.

The six (the foundation, at least, as there could be more) components of an apology. The bottom line? Very few people know how to genuinely apologise.

1. An expression of regret — this, usually, is the actual “I’m sorry.”
2. An explanation (but, importantly, not a justification).
3. An acknowledgement of responsibility.
4. A declaration of repentance.
5. An offer of repair.
6. A request for forgiveness.

The original article is well worth reading. I found it to be excellent.

Via Kottke.

My first web browser was Mosaic, then Netscape, then Mozilla which became Firefox. Firefox became my default go-to web browser for many years. If Microsoft Windows was my OS platform of choice it would probably still be. Ever since I completely, and absolutely, moved to macOS/iOS/iPadOS, the choice has been Safari. I had had no reason to look elsewhere.

This blog post is everlasting. Since 2018, when it was written, things have gotten worse. I don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel anytime soon.

We put virtual machines inside Linux, and then we put Docker inside virtual machines, simply because nobody was able to clean up the mess that most programs, languages and their environment produce. We cover shit with blankets just not to deal with it. “Single binary” is still a HUGE selling point for Go, for example. No mess == success.

Sound on and up, please. I really liked this version of “Ozymandias”. The text is the same, it wouldn’t be “Ozymandias” otherwise. It is the spoken voice, the beat, the emphasis and cadence behind it, that drives it.

Incidentally, “Breaking Bad” (★★★★★) is really good. If you haven’t watched it yet, I strongly recommend you do.

Now I know how my mum felt seeing her beloved actors and actresses become old, and dropping off big screens. It is a mix of melancholy, and worry.

The whole “VIP” system is discriminatory. I provide priority service to them, because it’s policy, but don’t agree with it. Priority should be assigned based on certain parameters, I agree, but not on someone’s pay scale, or “bourgeoisie” status.

I feel bad when I come to mum’s and she offers me a beer. I buy beer for her, and by drinking one or two, it makes me feel guilty. In such case, if I gave her a 24 bottles case I, indeed, only gave her 23, or 22.

Watched both “Dune” movies last night. The one from 1984 (★★★½), because it is leaving Netflix, and the one from 2021 (★★★★). I can’t wait for part 2 (second movie), scheduled to be released sometime on 2024.

“Android works to keep you safe and protect your privacy when you use apps.” That, from Google’s Android Help made me chuckle. When I think of Android many things come to mind, but “keep you safe”, and “protect your privacy”. Ha!

I am not a prude; I am far from it. Yet, I found Foundation’s amorous relationship scenes developing too early, too fast, and too often. Especially involving someone who is supposed to come from a planet with a repressive religious society. I mean, really?

If this isn’t toned down a little it will lose a star, or will not gain one. I mustn’t write in haste, perhaps, as I am only on the second episode.

Watched the first episode of Foundation (★★★★½) last night, on Apple TV+, and regardless the public reviews that has gotten I liked it very, very much. It gets almost five stars from me so far. If that changes, I will come, and amend.

I also re-watched Interstellar (★★★½) which I have always found too slow, and not enough “science fictiony”, for my liking. But kid wanted to watch it, and I am a good buddy, so… yeah.

My cravings for Jajangmyeon were fulfilled at Korea House in Colonial. That I know of, that’s the only restaurant in the surrounding area the serves them. I am good for a week, or two. 😂

Dear lord, it’s such a pleasure to the eyes when I come across websites using Open Sans fonts! So easy to read, such a genuine pleasant experience.

Small pet peeve. People sending emails from their mobile devices, and having a signature that reads, more or less, “Sent from phone, please excuse typos and brevity”. If you are going to send, or reply to, an email, do it right. A mobile device isn’t an excuse for not paying a little bit of attention to what you are doing.

This, from the Punkist, summarises how we—humankind—are no different at all, in the various stages of what’s considered, more or less, modern times. I slightly formatted it for legibility.

We are definitely different from the bad people in history.

The immoral fools tricked by Hitler into saluting the iron cross and casting their votes in favour of genocide, the spiritually corrupt slave traders of the colonies in Africa, the Europeans pillaging and raping (culturally and literally) the indigenous people of the “new worlds” of America, Australia, etc; the brilliant geniuses talked into developing the atom bomb, the monsters who then dropped those bombs over Japan in the name of peace.

We are definitely different from them.

The most efficient systematic slaughter of sentient beings the planet has ever seen, the complete indifference to the ecocide required for our day-to-day lives, the endless belief in infinite growth on a finite planet, the quantification of all that is sacred into mere resources and business opportunities, the utter carelessness toward the world our children will inherit. All this we manage to stand for in the name of progress and humankind’s superiority over all others.

No, we are definitely different.

We are worse.

Dieter Rams’ good design principles are so on-point, so beautiful, so simple, so everlasting. According to Rams, good design:

1. Is innovative: Design always develops in tandem with improving technology, and can never be an end in itself.
2. Makes a product useful: Good design emphasizes the usefulness of a product whilst disregarding anything that could detract from it.
3. Is aesthetic: Only well-executed objects can be beautiful.
4. Makes a product understandable: It can make the product clearly express its function by making use of the user’s intuition.
5. Is unobtrusive: Products fulfilling a purpose are like tools; they are neither decorative objects nor works of art.
6. Is honest: It does not attempt to manipulate the consumer with promises that cannot be kept.
7. Is long-lasting: Unlike fashionable design, it lasts many years.
8. Is thorough down to the last detail: Care and accuracy in the design process show respect towards the consumer.
9. Is environmentally friendly: Design makes an important contribution to the preservation of the environment.
10. Is as little design as possible: Less, but better. Simple as possible but not simpler.

How many of those Apple follows? It isn’t a trick question, think about it.