> Notes...

Today we kind of ended the most disorganised, painful, and convoluted engagement ever in which I have being a participant. We are left with a non-functional solution that is bound to produce headaches, and unpleasantness—and surprises!—for years to come. Yay! 😒

Running iOS 17 public beta now, as temptation got a hold of me yesterday. It has some glitches, and small bugs (mostly visual), but very, very stable, and usable. Buttery smooth as if it were a release.

Substack is the new Medium. It started great, now one gets those obnoxious requests for signing up. I have avoided any links driving me to Medium; adding Substack to the array.

It is this note timestamp, and I am going to sleep. I have been going to bed each day, for the last few weeks, past 01:30, and waking up at 06:00. It has now caught up with me. Youngster no more.

I am so tempted to install iOS 17 public beta! If anything for that Journal app, because I will use the heck out of it. Also because George told me “this is the only way we can test”. The fact that he already jumped in isn’t helping. 😅

Ugh, need to learn how to read the fine print. On the Journal app, from Apple, “Coming later this year”. Cry, cry, cry! Still, I think I will jump in.

Thunderbird 115 Supernova is out, and it is hideous. Not just the looks (I ducking hate that Outlook look!), but the bloat. Why couldn’t an email client remain just for emails? Couldn’t care less about its calendar. Ugh, I am getting too old…

Working physically—as in, not remote—at one of our datacentres today. Last time I went there was at the end of year 2022, let’s see how much it has changed. I expect visible changes in our cage, as we are trying to vacate it. Off I go to waste over an hour on commute!

Wow, just wow! Truly no words to describe how well done, how perfect, how entertaining was to watch this stop-motion animation. This one defines mastery. The behind the scenes video is a must watch.

➝ Via Kottke.

Feature request for iOS: setting to allow all calls from Contacts to ring through, all others go straight to voicemail. In other words, an allowed list (as opposite to disallowed, duh!).

Local temperatures (in Celsius). Lovely, just lovely. We are not harming our planet, no. Not happening, nothing to see here, right?

New Red Hat owners, IBM, “f***** around, and they are finding out”. Their decision to stop publicly releasing RHEL source code is going to come back to bite them. New distros pledging to be RHEL compatible have spawned, and now SUSE and Oracle are, too, having their saying.

Fascinated by this, as I have always being about keeping track of time—though, like everyone else, I tend to “waste” it. I like the simplicity and usability. I also love the optimism of the maker: “[…] assuming I live to 85 years old.”

➝ Via Hacker News.

Oh yes, we know tipping—an endemic problem in the US—has gone out of control. This article Kim shared doesn’t make sense, though.

“No matter if you are dining in or opting to carry out, try to stick within 15 to 20 percent of the pretax bill.”

No, sorry, that’s not how it works. I might be an oddball, but I have been tipping when I feel like it, in the amount I feel like it—exceptions on places that include the tip on the bill. As the article briefly mentions, “businesses should pay their employees fair wages rather than forcing them to rely on tips.”

Upgraded my Mastodon instance to 4.1.4. Forever grateful to the “Update Notifications” bot which remind us all running the software to upgrade/update as needed. I would probably be in troubles without it.

Diablo IV season 1 is coming 20 July. I think it is coming out too soon. My only toon is level 94. Those last 6 levels will take a while. Like, I don’t think I will be 100 on the eternal realm before season 1 releases.

Where did Saturday go? Went to sleep at 03:30ish, woke up at 07:30ish, and tried using as much of the Saturday as possible, and still escaped like water between fingers. “Is there a secret to make a day last longer?” I asked my partner. “Yes, a workday” was her reply. 😅

Removed HTML and CSS files from caching here (server side). I don’t like having to hard refresh to see a new note. Let’s see if it works.

Seems to be working! I simply created a separate header @content cache-control max-age=0, where @content has HTML, and CSS files in it.

Though I knew about it, Phanpy has re-ignated my engagement on Mastodon. Three things I love about it: it is light, and easy to host, it is beautiful, and it is super usable (the look of the threads it creates had me at hello). Totally love it!

Every working day, without a fail, I feel sleepy right when I am about to return to work after the lunch hour. The thing is, I don’t eat at lunch, so it has to be a game my mind is playing on me. Ugh.

Forget religion for a moment, “it’s easy if you try”. This, from Hinduism’s Karma theory on the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, is true. I know it, you know it.

“Now as a man is like this or like that, according as he acts and according as he behaves, so will he be: a man of good acts will become good, a man of bad acts, bad. He becomes pure by pure deeds, bad by bad deeds. And here they say that a person consists of desires. And as is his desire, so is his will; and as is his will, so is his deed; and whatever deed he does, that he will reap.”

These have popped way too often for my liking, and I adore rain! I mean, if it weren’t because of this, I would be in heaven.

Eloquently, yet, succinctly writen. I totally agree.

“I’ve realized that avoiding bad habits is just as important as cultivating good habits. To address these kinds of issues, we must become aware of our patterns of incremental neglect and then take deliberate steps to counteract them and foster healthier habits.”

➝ Via Hacker News.

Went on a small stroll around the house to stretch my legs, and noticed our weed thriving backyard with fear. Yup, sadly, the time I dislike is quickly approaching.

I might have said this before, but it is worth repeating. I can’t stand LinkedIn. It is intrusive, used for spaming and solicitation. The few times I have been in it, because I have received notifications, I have encountered presumptous people that I don’t know, using the platform as a second Facebook (which I detest). Sadly, work nagged about not being on LinkedIn, so I am.

I don’t want to come across as a ranting person, but I think I need a rant icon.

More on this. Not complaining, nor unhappy, but I got the cache today from “Ashava the Pestilent”. So, now I am stumped. Is the game half broken? Has Blizzard fixed it?

Update: 04 Oct 2025 @ 17:59:44

Well, well, well. From the latest patch notes:

“Fixed an issue where the Weekly Reward Cache for defeating a World Boss would display as available if there was an active Whisper for defeating the boss, even when the Cache had already been claimed previously.”

That had to be it, I see no other explanation. Nothing lost then, carry on! Phew!

OK, so I created an Instagram account, so I could try Threads, and this that Claud wrote about was the first thing I noticed. Who are those people on my timeline, or whatever Threads calls it?!

If, when going to a website, the first thing it does within seconds of browsing it is showing me a floating request for my email address, I am almost 90% sure I will not be coming back. If it only allows 1 free article, I am 100% not coming back.

The amount of disregard for things around him, especially things that do not belong to him, that this guy showed is appalling.

“I admit with profound embarrassment that only after what regretfully happened did I learn of the antiquity of the monument.”

So, it would have been OK to do it, if it was a not-so-old building? 😡

For those who use “fine” often—when refering to issues with software, for example, “it works fine”, or “it’s fine!”—a sentence I read, don’t remember where (and I paraphrase): “Fine is far from good, and nowhere near great.”

Have killed three world bosses on Diablo IV this week, so far, none dropping the legendary cache (a once per week, per boss, item). Game has broken very recently, after the 4 July weekend. No support is provided, only posting on their forum. Ugh!

Added the beginning of a “uses” page, which is linked at the bottom, on the footer. I am not sure I want to add links at the top—like a menu—or just keep Notes simple, as I have it now. Probably the later.

Correct me if I am wrong, but there is no way to use Threads without an Instagram account? The app itself simply asks to login with Instagram, not even a “Don’t have an account? Create one” within the app interface. Meta’s so funny! Deleted.

Came across this, and though it sounds nice, and comes across as altruistic, it is naïve. Maybe it is the pedantic in me, but my impact to the world is the same as the impact of a single ant: null. I understand the feeling, though, and I, myself, try to be as caring and considerate as possible, nevertheless.

How many messaging apps does Google has, and/or has had? Many. All current (and past, with the exception of Google Talk) were/are rubbish. I am never, ever trusting Google with anything they produce. They have pretty much ceased to exist for me. End of rant.

This needs to be said because even though these notes are pseudo-anonymous, nothing on The Tubes truly is: any and all opinions listed here are my own, and not representative of my employers; future, past, and present. There, done. Phew!

Today I learned about Unicode’s Private Use Areas. That explains why you can see this symbol  on an Apple device, but can’t on Windows.

I am forced to use Outlook at work, as we use O365. Outlook has sucked for quite a while (since birth?), but the “new look” Microsoft is going to soon enforce is the very worst. Horribly looking, and it makes Outlook even more so slow.

Wow, this is very disturbing. The thing is, it is bound to get worse, and we are doing little to nothing about it.

“Monday was the world’s hottest day on record, exceeding an average of 17 degrees Celsius (62.6 degrees Fahrenheit) for the first time, according to initial measurements taken on Tuesday by US meteorologists.”

➝ Via Hacker News.

Pretty funny way to take a stab at Musk’s Twitter’s idiotic rate limiting self-destructing measures.

I don’t think this is a good news. It could mean LXD “might” get killed further down the line. That would make me—and others, I am sure—sad.