Add header & footer to blog posts.
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<?php
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require 'config.php';
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require '2016-05-18-hello-world.cfg.php';
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require 'templates/blog-header.php';
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?>
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<p>Welcome to my blog. In the most recent update of my website I decided to create a blog along with all my other content. I hope to keep this blog less personal and more oriented towards technology, but we will see how things play out.</p>
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<p>All my normal content will still be available on the website, I'm just adding a blog to the list.</p>
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<?php
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require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
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?>
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<?php
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require 'config.php';
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require '2016-05-19-ethical-giving.cfg.php';
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require 'templates/blog-header.php';
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?>
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<p>Recently I came across this link on 'ethical giving' by the <a href="http://fsf.org/" target="_blank" >FSF</a>. This is a rather good gift guide for those of us who are advocates for Free Software, as it gives a basic guide to those we love who may be a little less knowledgable in terms of technology.</p>
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<p>I believe that it does a very good job at covering various types of devices from routers, to laptops, to 3D printers, and so on. The site is also very simple and easy to understand for our less techy loved ones, and has an amazing feature for when you look at the 'buy' section of each category the non-free option has the 'avoid' button, which has the great functionality of not being functional, helping the visitor, as thick-headed as they may be, <b>avoid</b> buying the non-free option.</p>
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<p><b>EDIT 2016/12/02:</b> It turns out that this is an annual thing (or something of the sort) so here's a link to the <a href="https://www.fsf.org/givingguide/v7/" target="_blank" >2016 FSF Ethical Tech Giving Guide</a>. I do not plan on updating this again, so be sure to look for it yourself next year. Also, notice how in the URL for the previous year it put <code>`v6'</code> and this one says <code>`v7'</code>? That probably means that next year's will be <code>`v8'</code>.</p>
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<?php
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require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
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?>
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@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
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<?php
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require 'config.php';
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require '2016-05-23-the-television-is-cancer.cfg.php';
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require 'templates/blog-header.php';
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?>
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<p>If there is one thing that I have noticed in both the U.S. and Spain which
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annoys me the most, it's the addiction there is to the television. Of
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course, by television I am not only referring to the physical TV unit but
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@ -48,3 +53,7 @@ they're watching in terms of cinematography).</p>
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<p>So, please, keep your bad TV habits to yourselves unless mutual interest is
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explicitly stated, in which case go full throttle ahead.</p>
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<?php
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require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
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?>
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<?php
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require 'config.php';
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require '2016-05-25-small-talk.cfg.php';
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require 'templates/blog-header.php';
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?>
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<p>In my post about the television I mentioned very briefly the issue of
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'small talk'. First, I would like to make it clear that I am not talking
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about <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smalltalk" target="_blank" >SmallTalk</a>
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@ -29,3 +34,7 @@ march into uncharted waters where their opinions are at stake of being
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disproven by reason and evidence (in which case your opinions are most
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likely either wrong, incomplete, or unfounded to begin with).</p>
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<?php
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require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
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?>
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<?php
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require 'config.php';
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require '2016-05-26-the-new-era-of-script-kiddies.cfg.php';
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require 'templates/blog-header.php';
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?>
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<p>The world of technology has little by little been taken over by the web,
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which (in my opinion) isn't necessarily a bad thing. What I don't like is
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that the main languages in the web are scripting languages that allow bad
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@ -51,3 +56,7 @@ or doesn't make sense, it doesn't fix it for me, it gives me a <b>big fat
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error in bold red text</b> that tells me "Hey, this code is bad, you
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should change that!".</p>
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<?php
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require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
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?>
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<?php
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require 'config.php';
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require '2016-06-05-resources-for-learning-x86_64-assembly.cfg.php';
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require 'templates/blog-header.php';
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?>
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<p>I guess this will be a post of mine that will actually be useful for
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something...</p>
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@ -54,3 +59,7 @@ the other.</p>
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sure there are more, but this is what I have to offer you. I hope this
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post is helpful.</p>
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<?php
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require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
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?>
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<?php
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require 'config.php';
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require '2016-06-06-why-i-hate-the-web.cfg.php';
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require 'templates/blog-header.php';
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?>
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<p>I would first like to point out a couple things before starting my rant,
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first of which is that I am talking about the web, <b>not</b> the internet. To
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simplify this distinction for the non-techies who might be reading this,
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@ -58,3 +63,7 @@ and there are still positives to the web if you know where to go to avoid
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where those places are? Get off your Facebook and Twitter and start going
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to the less popular sites where your friends most likely don't hang out.</p>
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<?php
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require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
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?>
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<?php
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require 'config.php';
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require '2016-07-04-game-website-app-creators.cfg.php';
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require 'templates/blog-header.php';
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?>
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<p>A topic that I am very disturbed about are Game/Website creators. These
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programs are what I consider is helping to destroy the technology industry.
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Not only is this causing for more people to be able to create mediocre apps
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@ -55,3 +60,7 @@ long line</b> of HTML and CSS). Other than that, <b>no game creators</b> and
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<b>no app creators</b>. All these do is ruin the the programming industry and
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turn code quality down, performance down, and wages down.</p>
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<?php
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require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
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?>
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<?php
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require 'config.php';
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require '2016-07-05-why-i-am-a-gpl-advocate.cfg.php';
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require 'templates/blog-header.php';
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?>
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<p>I am very much a GPL advocate, and the more I get into programming the more
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I favour the GPL licenses. I have many reasons for this, some of them
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applying to myself personally, but others that are applicable at a larger
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get much further than what could be created with each of us going our own
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separate ways without having any knowledge of what the other has done.</p>
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<?php
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require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
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?>
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<?php
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require 'config.php';
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require '2016-07-18-my-favorite-firefox-addons.cfg.php';
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require 'templates/blog-header.php';
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?>
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<p>I use Firefox on a regular basis as my default browser, and something that
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I really enjoy about it is the vast number of addons (especially for
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developers) which can be hard to find anywhere else. These addons range
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@ -85,3 +90,7 @@ best plugins I've come across.</p>
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<p><b>EDIT 2018/06/24:</b> You may have noticed that some of these addons no longer work with newer versions of Firefox. This is why I've moved to Waterfox, which keeps the old addon system.</p>
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<?php
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require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
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?>
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<?php
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require 'config.php';
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require '2016-07-22-new-website-design.cfg.php';
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require 'templates/blog-header.php';
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?>
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<p>As you can see I've changed up the site quite a bit. Now we're back to running on PHP (no longer using Jekyll). I enjoy this theme much more as it reflects my interests (I put all that I can in the terminal, I'm writing this very post in the terminal using the Vim editor) and it also stands against the picture pretty websites that you see nowadays. You will not see anything on this site that is not pure text, it may be underlined, bold, or a hyperlink, but it will be text, like in a terminal (not the Enlightenment terminal, though, that thing's really weird). Of course, the source to my website is still available on Github and it's all up to date.</p>
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<p>Despite moving towards a system that I had to program myself and now having to write my posts in HTML with a little PHP at the beginning and end, this will actually make it easier for me to upload the posts. Previously with Jekyll I had to upload three different files every time I wanted to post something (the index page, the feed.xml, and the post itself), now, although I do not have an atom feed, I only have to upload the new post because the PHP automatically detects it and adds it to the list (Jekyll was not running on my server).</p>
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<p>Either way, I plan on keeping this for quite a while since it looks cool, was easy to make, and is pretty sustainable long-term. Again, don't expect to see any pictures here, if I add pictures it will be links to the picture located on either this server or an external one (I want to keep the theme going, so nothing but text will be on the actual pages).</p>
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<?php
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require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
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?>
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<?php
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require 'config.php';
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require '2016-07-25-my-favorite-vim-plugins.cfg.php';
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require 'templates/blog-header.php';
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?>
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<p>I've already made post about my favorite Firefox addons, so this one is dedicated to my favorite editor, Vim. Most people's first encounter with Vim is always a bad one (even mine), but once I got used to it's weird key bindings and commands I got used to it and now I quite enjoy it, especially with all of its plugins available that are very easy to install with a plugin called <a href="https://github.com/VundleVim/Vundle.vim" target="_blank" >Vundle</a>, which can be used to install all the other plugins by simply providing a link to their git repository (since most of these plugins tend to be on GitHub). So here it goes.</p>
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<p><a href="https://github.com/tpope/vim-fugitive" target="_blank" ><u>Vim-Fugitive</u></a>: This plugin is great since it allows you to work with Git from within Vim, that is, you can commit, switch branches, push, or anything really, all from within Vim.</p>
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<p>Of course, I use more than these, but these are the ones I like the most. I will most likely end up installing way more in the future, but these are truly useful.</p>
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<?php
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require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
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?>
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<?php
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require 'config.php';
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require '2016-07-31-my-first-superficial-impressions-of-freebsd.cfg.php';
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require 'templates/blog-header.php';
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?>
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<p>I have recently decided to run FreeBSD inside of a VM to try it out (because why not?). Of course, the first thing I was wondering when I got it installed was "Where's the GUI?". I didn't necessarily panic since I know how to deal with the command-line, and BSD seems to also use Bash (or some other Unix shell). So after getting a GUI installed I continued to check out FreeBSD (I wanted to try out BSD because I wanted to try compiling the <a href="https://notabug.org/bkeys/DMUX" target="_blank" >DMUX project</a> on a BSD system). I noticed that apparently FreeBSD had done an extremely basic install, only installing the bare necessities, which in my book is a pretty big plus (something I'm going to start doing with Debian from now on with their net installs).</p>
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<p>Another thing that they do that I found rather interesting is how they have the ports packaging system so you can compile things from source rather than installing a pre-compiled binary (which you can still do, but through the pkg package manager). I found this quite amusing, but ended up finding it to be a waste of time (since I don't necessarily care too much for compiling absolutely everything I download), so I continued using the pkg package manager. But this does show a certain amount of consistency with a Free Software ideology, and it wouldn't be too bad to implement a system similar to it (which might already exist, I haven't tried Gentoo out yet) in which the package manager downloads the source, compiles it, installs the binary, and deletes the source except if specified otherwise. It would most likely take longer for larger projects (you tell me how long it would take to download and compile the Firefox source), but it would be pretty cool, especially for educational purposes at a school.</p>
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<p>So overall I've had a very positive experience with FreeBSD, especially with how they have a very minimal install of their OS. I would not use it as a primary OS, since regardless of how much I like how they do things there are just not as many applications for their OS, as well how they do not make the amount of effort that other OSs like Debian make to separate free software from non-free software. However, if I were ever to have the opportunity to run this as a home server I would definitely try that out (might try installing it on my Raspberry Pi).</p>
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<?php
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require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
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?>
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<?php
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require 'config.php';
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require '2016-08-13-strict-compilers.cfg.php';
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require 'templates/blog-header.php';
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?>
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<p>For almost a year now I've been working on the <a href="https://notabug.org/bkeys/DMUX" target="_blank" >DMUX</a> project along with some other people. The leader of the project, <a href="http://www.bkeys.org" target="_blank" >Brigham Keys</a>, since the beginning has put in place a strict compiler in order to assure the highest code quality for us to work on avoiding bugs since step one. This means the compiler bitches about <b>everything</b>. Any small issue that there might be this compiler will whine to you. However, I have come to see this as a superior way of writing code, by doing this we are avoiding having to deal with many bugs (along with avoiding heap allocation whenever possible it avoid us having any major problems) and I would greatly encourage people to use strict compilers in order to avoid these things, much more if you're working in a group and especially if you're teaching people how to program.</p>
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<p>Looking back, a strict compiler would fix a lot of things that have frustrated me in the past. For example, when I was in high school I was a teacher's assistant for the technology teacher and he had me and my friend correct exams of the programming students. What I found painful was when students would create variables <b>and never use them!!!</b> Basically, the definition of inefficiency, you're taking up resources, holding memory, that you don't need to have. I understand if maybe you don't understand how to use inline functions, or how to optimize your code in general, even I have issues with that, but creating a variable and never using it is an obvious case where there should be a compiler error, you're taking up memory without using it. So this frustrated me a lot back then, but if these kids were using a strict compiler from the start (they were learning Java, but even Java can be strict if you pass the right flags) then it would help them to break these habits.</p>
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<p>So, in conclusion, please start using strict compilers, that way we can also weed out the normies that program for money rather than for fun (someone with genuine interest would be willing to program despite any complaints by the compiler).</p>
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require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
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?>
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<?php
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require 'config.php';
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require '2016-08-17-tox.cfg.php';
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require 'templates/blog-header.php';
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?>
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<p>It's sad that out of all the types of software out there the one that is developed the least or given the least importance in terms of its freedom respecting alternatives is precisely the ones that we care about the most, applications such as our video/voice chat. This is not to say that there aren't such alternatives, seeing that this post is about precisely one of those alternatives, but it is sad that they don't have the popularity that software such as Firefox or GNU/Linux have. Therefore I would like to talk about <a href="https://tox.chat/" target="_blank" >Tox</a>. There are other alternatives such as <a href="https://ring.cx/" target="_blank" >Ring</a>, but I personally prefer Tox and have actually used it for video chatting (qTox, that is). Ring seems to have many features and is more organized, but I've had many issues with it so I'm not going to necessarily talk about them, just be aware that they're another freedom respecting alternative.</p>
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<p>First I would like to point out that I use qTox. Now, what does this mean? Well, there are multiple Tox clients, because it's not a unified project. So in this post I will be talking about my experiences exclusively with qTox, the one that I have installed. Not all Tox clients have the same features, so I'd like to make it very clear that I'm only talking about qTox. If you want to know about any of the other clients simply go to <a href="https://tox.chat/clients.html" target="_blank" >this link</a> and choose your favorite. Just make sure to take a look at their features first and make sure they have what you're looking for.</p>
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<p>Because of this, I suggest that everyone switch to Tox, or at least to something like Ring, just please stop using non-free stuff like Google Hangouts, Skype, or especially Facetime. Which reminds me, I should do a post on why I hate Apple. I've probably shown quite a bit of hatred towards them in my blog before (and much more compared to my hatred of Microsoft). So look forward to a post hating on Apple.</p>
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<?php
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require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
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?>
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<?php
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require 'config.php';
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require '2016-08-20-my-loathing-of-apple.cfg.php';
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require 'templates/blog-header.php';
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?>
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<p>I hate Apple, and I've had many bad experiences with them. Aside from how they are spying on you <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%29" target="_blank" >being part of PRISM</a>, in general they are impossible with anyone who wants to use their products in combination with anyone else's. Let me explain my experiences that I have had with Apple.</p>
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<p>For the first 15 years of my life I was an Apple user, using iPods, iPads, iMacs, and iStuff in general. I was exposed to stuff like GNU/Linux at school (because the Spanish school system actually uses ethical software, sadly only because they can't afford proprietary stuff, but whatever), especially with Debian GNU/Linux because that's what my dad ran for work, but I still used mostly Apple products. However, at 15 I got my first personal laptop, which was a Dell Inspiron something or another, all I remember is it was a 32-bit with 1GB of RAM, so obviously I installed GNU/Linux on it, specifically Debian GNU/Linux (at the time I had stable since my dad was the one helping me to install it). So I had my own computer, but my music player was still an iPod... Why was this a problem? Because iPods didn't want to sync with anything that wasn't iTunes. I had to do something like using my family's Apple Mac (non-free software) to turn off the journaling on that thing and then every now and then I had to do it again because the iPod noticed!!! Unlike some other music players where I can <b>drag and drop my files</b>.</p>
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<p>So now you know my story. I <b>hate</b> Apple, I hate them even more than I hate Microsoft and their nonsense, in the case of Apple it's just personal. So if you ever know me, or already do and never knew this, <b>don't get me anything Apple</b>. It might be harsh but I would probably end up either asking you for the receipt or at the very most saying thank you and then stashing it somewhere in <b>someone else's</b> house where it can't track me (PRISM). Speaking of gifts, if you're reading this and wondering what to get me now that you can't buy me the latest iStuff, please refer back to my blog post on <a href="/blog/post/50/" >Ethical Giving</a> which uses the FSF's guide to finding an ethical technological gift for someone.</p>
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require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
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?>
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<?php
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require 'config.php';
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require '2016-08-25-what-is-lacking-in-education?.cfg.php';
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require 'templates/blog-header.php';
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?>
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<p>This is a question that is asked quite a lot, and although I don't have a definitive answer, I do have a few things that I believe to be very important that are being disregarded when it comes to the education of a student. Some of them are already being implemented by some school systems (in some cases it's only at certain schools), but I am not completely sure as to whether they are actually doing what I am going to expose here and if those results can be comparable statistically with those of a normal school. Either way, here are some things that I believe need to be improved. Also, in this list are things that are both common and specific, and they are based on my experiences with the American and Spanish educational system, therefore I will divide this into common issues, Spanish issues, and American issues.</p>
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<h3>Common Issues</h3>
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<p>4. Homework Should be Less of Your Grade: I'm one of those people that believes that tests should be essentially your entire grade, or at least something like 80% of it. I've heard the argument people have put as to why homework and projects should be worth more points, and I find it stupid and flawed. Their reasoning is that not everyone is good at taking tests and therefore certain students have advantages. First of all, please show me a proper scientific study demonstrating this. The Eastern Asian countries have very test based scoring systems and they rank highest on almost all the charts! Please explain to me how this works. Besides that, the reason why I believe tests are more important is because if you cannot properly explain the why and how of something in written form then you truly do not understand it. Meanwhile, on homework and projects you can easily just copy work from somewhere else, which isn't necessarily bad if you're reading through the work and attempting to understand it, but there's no guarantee of that happening. With projects there's also the common case of the lazy one who doesn't contribute to the project and yet gets the same grade as you. Meanwhile, in a test you are in a controlled environment where the teacher can see exactly what you know. The teacher shouldn't expect you to know data, but rather he/she should be testing you on whether or not you know how to work with data that is given. I distinguish between knowledge and intelligence. Someone who is knowledgable is someone who knows many things, someone who is intelligent is someone who knows what to do with information that he/she has or is given. So someone can be knowledgable and still stupid (basically, your computer is stupid, but it's knowledgable). So stop adding so much importance to homework.</p>
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require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
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?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2016-09-02-the-https-hype.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>Recently I've seen a lot of hype around everyone wanting to use HTTPS for absolutely everything, which is very understandable for sites like social networks and especially for financing websites. However, it's gotten to the point where people want an HTTPS website for no reason, for example, this site having an HTTPS protocol would serve <b>no purpose</b>. HTTPS only encrypts your connection to a server, but that's only useful if personal information or logins/passwords are involved. This website gives neither personalized pages nor requires any logins/passwords, therefore any reason to add HTTPS support to my website that I have seen makes no sense.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>So it seems like the hype over HTTPS is simply a blind belief that "because it's HTTPS it's secure and private", when in reality my website gives away <b>no sensitive information</b> through HTTP that it wouldn't give away through HTTPS. If you want to protect your identity online then HTTPS won't do anything, you want to be using the <a href="https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en" target="_blank" >Tor Browser</a> to hide your online identity. The only things that might be exposed are things like your HTTP header, which I don't feel bad for you if you're not using an identity spoofer like I mentioned in my blog post about my favorite Firefox add-ons.</p>
|
||||
@ -10,3 +15,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p><b>EDIT 2017/03/06:</b> I have recently changed my views on this issue, and have another post on this.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2016-09-30-educational-software.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>This last week I've been taking my university classes and we've started taking practice classes as well, where we apply the theory we've learned. In my programming class it's programming in C++ (they use Code::Blocks with the MinGW compiler), which is nice (I was expecting them to be using Visual Studio, so it's a nice surprise). However, for my math class we're using Mathematica. Although I can get it for free by checking out the installation disc at the library and get a license through my student e-mail, it's still an ethical issue for an advocate of Free Software. I've been searching all over for a good alternative to Mathematica that is Free Software, and although I've found some wonderful alternatives (such as <a href="http://www.sagemath.org/" target="_blank" >SAGE</a> and <a href="http://mathics.github.io/" target="_blank" >Mathics</a>), none of them are able to view/edit Mathematica Notebook files (which is surprising considering it's plain text).</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>However, the root of the problem does not lie with these alternatives for not being able to process proprietary formats, but rather with the educational facility (in this case the University of Jaen) for supporting such software and not allowing students to use a more ethical alternative (such as those mentioned previously) which have about the same capabilities. This is especially problematic since what this tells me is that they're teaching you a tool rather than the concepts behind the tool. If they were teaching the concepts behind the tool then using a different (more ethical) one would be perfectly fine as long as the concepts learned in theory are applied correctly. However, this is clearly not the case. Instead these classes are doing nothing but to make the students dependent on a specific software (and anon-free, extremely restrictive one at that) rather than something more accessible such as those alternatives mentioned before.</p>
|
||||
@ -6,3 +11,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>In this sense, I consider it very important that students have the opportunity to use free software alternatives, and would even argue that the default software used in class should always be free software in order to help the students learn and improve (or at least give them the opportunity to do so).</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2016-10-06-adobe-flash-needs-to-die.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>It's slow, it's inefficient, it's buggy, it has memory leaks, it no longer supports GNU/Linux, and it's proprietary. Ladies and gentlemen, it's Adobe Flash.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>One of the few great decisions Apple has ever made was when the decided to get rid of Adobe Flash on the iPad, and thanks to that and a number of other factors (such as the heavenly arrival of HTML5, CSS3, and modern JavaScript frameworks) Adobe Flash has been losing influence on the web to the point that it's getting harder and harder to see it anywhere, especially since you can now program anything in JavaScript and it will be faster, more efficient, and integrated with the browser (unlike Adobe Flash which requires a plugin). This is true to the extent that not so long ago I uninstalled the Flash plugin from my computer and mostly everything works just as it did before.</p>
|
||||
@ -8,3 +13,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>In any case, stop making Flash stuff, it's a waste of time and it's only going to become obsolete (which I guess is strange coming from someone who has an all text website that is built with PHP, but at least my website with render without a plugin).</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2016-10-08-why-i-use-cc-by-nd.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>If you look at my essays in the <a href="/writings/" >writings</a> section of my website you'll notice that they're licensed under a CC-BY-ND license, which is not a free culture license. Seeing that I fully support free culture I feel the need to explain why I use NoDerivatives on my essays specifically.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>First I would like to point out that although these works are licensed as NoDerivatives, you still have the right to distribute and even to quote my essays as long as you attribute my original work properly and do not modify/manipulate the text or section of the text that you use. Therefore the only right that is lacking is the right to modify my works and distribute those modifications.</p>
|
||||
@ -6,3 +11,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>Again, although derivatives are not permitted, there is still the ability to distribute and even commercialize my works, but not to make any derivatives based upon it.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2016-10-27-avoiding-youtube-non-free-javascript.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>First I would like to mention that there are free alternatives to publishing media (even videos) such as the Up1 service (which currently is currently down on its main page, but you can access another instance of it at <a href="https://share.riseup.net/" target="_blank" >share.riseup.net</a>), <a href="https://unsee.cc/" target="_blank" >unsee.cc</a>, and <a href="https://goblinrefuge.com/mediagoblin/" target="_blank" >GoblinRefuge</a> (a MediaGoblin instance that allows up to 1GB size uploads). Therefore if you're going to publish media try using one of those first (GoblinRefuge is the closest thing to YouTube in terms of how public the media is).</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>Now, as for avoiding using YouTube's website, I've found two programs that can be used to watch YouTube videos without having to visit the website. The first is `mps-youtube' (might also be called `mpsyt', that's the name of the Debian package, at least). This is a CLI program that lets you browse and download YouTube videos without having to visit the site. It gives you a set of commands which can be used to search, download, and play YouTube videos all from the command-line. It's quite advanced and should allow you to avoid using YouTube all together. I myself haven't truly explored all of its functionality yet (I mostly just use it to look up some quick videos), but expect it to be missing some of the website's functionality (duh).</p>
|
||||
@ -10,3 +15,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p><b>UPDATE 2020/03/19:</b> I forgot I had this post, but I guess late is better than never. Basically, HookTube has faced legal action from YouTube and had to resort to using normal embeds. It's still good as a lightweight alternative to YouTube, but not for privacy. If you want the privacy features HookTube used to have then I suggest using <a href="https://invidio.us/" target="_blank" >Invidious</a> instead.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,4 +1,13 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2016-11-15-studying-for-my-c++-exam.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>Today (in an hour and a half of me writing this) I have a practice exam on C++ programming. However, while all other students are studying loops, conditionals, array,s, and structures, I (obviously) am not. Instead I found a magnificent website containing a bunch of <a href="http://madebyevan.com/obscure-cpp-features/" target="_blank" >obscure C++ features</a> that I plan on using in the exam (at least those I can use for a class that hasn't even studied functions yet, much less pointers). One of the ones I'm most fond of (and that I did not think about before reading this page) is how an array is simply a pointer to a direction in memory (on the stack or the heap) where variables are stored. This is obvious once you think about it, but it has implications. This means that the array variable is holding the memory address to these variables, so this can no be used to create obscure syntax. Especially since the square brackets actually just do a sum to calculate the address and then point to that address, that is, <code>`myArray[3]'</code> is the same as <code>`3[myArray]'</code>. And what's more, remember how arrays are just pointing to different locations in memory (kind of like all variables, really)? Well, this means that you can just as easily do <code>`*(myArray + 3)'</code> and it will do the same exact thing. If anything this last one is more explanatory of what is actually going on, seeing that it's pointing to a memory address where the variable is located and it is put in a much more explicit manner.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>So yeah, I plan on using this for my exam. Why? So the teacher can see that this is child's play for me and that I should not be wasting my time on this when I could be creating something more important (like working on my hundreds of projects on GitHub and GitLab).</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2016-11-22-for-tabs.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>It's time for me to get involved in one of the most polar debates among programmers, even more polar and controversial than Vim vs. Emacs, which is tabs vs. spaces. In the Vim vs. Emacs debate many programmers tend to get left out and don't care because they('re noobs and) use GUI editors. While in the tabs vs. spaces debate, unless you only program in Assembly (and even then) or some obscure language that doesn't use indentation (or you just don't use indentation), you have used either one for your indentation and can most likely know what the conversation is about.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>To start off I am in favor of tabs. I'm not too religious about it, but if we're going to use spaces then it's gotta be 4. I actually don't have too many problems with using spaces, especially since my Vim has a plugin to detect indentation. However, if I am to choose how indentation is done then I choose tabs over spaces any day. My reasoning for this is simple: if tab characters are used then everyone gets to see the indentation they prefer. Remember how I said that if I use spaces it has to be 4? Yeah, that's because my tab size is set to 4. If tabs are used then I get to see a 4 column indentation, someone else gets to see a 2 column indentation, and someone else can see an 8 column indentation. Typically this is seen as a disadvantage of tabs, however I see it as advantageous since every programmer gets to see their code in the way they want it. Some may complain that they have to get used to pressing the tab key instead of the space bar, but to them I say that they should've setup their editor to convert tabs to spaces from the beginning instead of having to hit the space bar 4 times just to indent a line of code.</p>
|
||||
@ -6,3 +11,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>Basically, tabs allow each programmer to see things how they want to and be more efficient (since they'll be able to see all projects with the same indentation so long as they use tabs or the same number of spaces as there are columns in their tabs). Therefore, by using tabs everyone gets to see the code the way they want to and no one has to pass code back and forth between a styler. So let's stop the indentation size dictatorship of spaces that stops the hacker from seeing the code the way they want and work towards a tabs future so every hacker can read the code how they want to!</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2016-11-28-the-importance-of-libre-games.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>Games form a very important part of our lives, even if it's not necessarily computer games you do play some sort of games (although I would guess that most who read my blog would play some sort of computer game, mobile games included since mobiles are a type of computer). Games give us a way of spending some time that we have to kill, either alone or together with others. This means that freedom in gaming is extremely important.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>Usually gaming is one of those industries where free software has not yet been able to gain a foothold, yet I believe it is a very important industry to promote free software in to be able to relieve those of us (stallmanites) who wish not to use any non-free software are left with almost no decent games to play in the free world (unless we want to play 20 different versions of the same FPS game, like AssaultCube, Xonotic, Red Eclipse, OpenArena, Alien Arena etc., basically Quake-based games). It's really hard to find good libre games mostly because the free software movement in gaming is still extremely young.</p>
|
||||
@ -8,3 +13,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>This is just a small list, and I'm sure there are many more and other genres I have not mentioned. If you know of any horror libre games then please e-mail me with the name and/or a link.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2016-11-29-non-free-firmware.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>One of the largest struggles in the Free Software movement is that against non-free firmware. This is because firmware tends to be very difficult to replace, often completely tied to the hardware of the computer. Yet my opinion on the extension of freedom into this field is very iffy because of how firmware, by definition, is almost impossible to modify. Therefore the question is should we be as concerned about freedoms 1-3 with firmware? I would argue that freedom 0 is always important as it is what allows the user to use the program for whatever purpose, and therefore firmware is no more special in this regard.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>For freedom 1, the freedom to analyze the code and change it, I believe that the first part of analyzing the code is important, as it helps to make sure that the software does what it says it does. However, the second part is a little less clear. Since it is firmware and cannot necessarily be changed that means that any changes made to the code are somewhat futile. However, it could be said that a change in the source-code is good for community improvements to the code or providing alternatives for someone else who has the resources to manufacture alternative hardware containing the modified firmware. So I leave that up in the air. In this sense freedom 1 is quite necessary for firmware.</p>
|
||||
@ -8,3 +13,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>Of course, if possible it's always best to buy hardware that uses freedom respecting firmware. However, I do not see it as being as important as software in most cases, especially since firmware is not always changeable anyways therefore restricting freedom 1 by definition. That said, it is a different issue that manufacturers are putting more and more of the user's computing onto the hardware component itself and its firmware, and although this may yield more due to less load on the CPU it does take away power from the user and therefore the user's freedom. If the firmware simply does the minimal amount and then leaves most of the work to the drivers then the firmware being non-free is not as problematic so long as the drivers are freedom respecting. However, if the firmware is doing a good portion of the computing then it becomes rather problematic. These devices should be avoided at all costs since the user never has control over them.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2016-12-05-why-i-use-cli.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>For those of you who don't know, CLI means Command-Line Interface. I'm a huge fan of using CLI over their GUI (Graphical User Interface) alternatives, to the extent that typically the only non-terminal windows I have open is simply one: my browser (IceCat). I would not like to switch my browser to CLI for various reasons, but everything else is. Everything else (e-mail, IRC, music, password manager, etc.) is all in the terminal. I do this for multiple reasons.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>First one is that it's better performance. Instead of spending so many resources on other applications (like e-mail clients and music players, which tend to be rather heavy) I can reserve those resources for other applications, such as VMs or any heavy-duty program I may be running at that moment in time. Of course, I do have a small contradiction on this one which is that I use GNOME3 as my DE, which, for those of you who are not familiar with it, is a somewhat heavy DE. My excuse for this is simply that I'm used to GNOME and all of its nice keyboard shortcuts, that and its interface feels very natural and slick to me.</p>
|
||||
@ -10,3 +15,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>Now, there are some drawbacks to this, of course. One of the drawbacks is learning to use the tools, they're usually not as intuitive, however I usually find this worth it since my productivity then goes up. The second is that this can somewhat scare people away from using GNU/Linux because they think (by seeing you/me) that if you want to use GNU/Linux you also have to use CLI, which is not necessarily the case (depends mostly on the distro and installation). However, I generally do not care for this aspect as much as to change my CLI habits.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,4 +1,13 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2016-12-19-my-preference-for-c.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>Of all the programming languages my favorite in general is C. I'm fine with using other languages, but C is by far my favorite. The reason for this is that C is much closer to assembly than other languages which try to abstract it away from the developer. When programming in C you can see how the code would look in assembly just by looking at it, and it makes it easier to do performance improvements since you know what the code will look like more-or-less in assembly (with `-O0', of course). This makes it much easier for me to visualize how the computer is going to be managing the system's resources with my code and how it's going to run it, giving me much more control (something that I typically am attracted to in a programming language or in computing in general). Then there's also how the code in C is still low-level and is compiled to a binary, being much more efficient than an interpreted language. It is also quite basic, having a fewer variety of syntax which helps to make finding 'the best solution' much easier (unlike in C++ where there are 200 different ways to implement the same thing).</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>Of course, I do recognize that C is not best for every job, for example, for most desktop games I would prefer to use C++, since OOP languages seem to be better suited for games (or rather that gamedev itself fits the OOP paradigm very well), for any mobile app I'd obviously use Java, and so on. However, in general for a program I prefer C, seeing that it gives me more control over the computer, does not abstract me too far away from the assembly that is beneath, and does not bombard me with syntax and strange features.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2016-12-22-we-i3-now.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>So, in a previous post I spoke about how I use GNOME as my DE, and I explained that it's mostly because I didn't want to have to got through the hassle of setting up a more minimal WM to make it usable. Well, recently a friend helped me to setup a new WM, so from now on I'll be using i3, the tiled WM. I've found that this WM makes my life much easier than GNOME did, mostly because in this WM I can easily open terminals via `MOD+Enter' and I barely ever have to use the mouse. In fact, because I don't have to move around windows (which could be done with the keyboard in GNOME, but it took forever) I rarely use the mouse at all, that and I've configured everything to use the Vim key bindings (that is, instead of `jkl;', which are default, I use `hjkl').</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>Of course, there were a couple of things that I needed, since i3 doesn't automatically give you all the programs to make your computer work you will need to choose applications on your own. For networking I'm using wicd, it has GUI and CLI interfaces. I'm fine with keeping the GUI interface for that since I rarely have to touch it. For audio I've switched to using alsamixer and pavucontrol, however, with the volume being printed in the status bar I rarely have to use these.</p>
|
||||
@ -8,3 +13,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>So yes, now the "Deathsbreed uses all CLI because he spends half his RAM on his DE" meme is over.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2016-12-24-books.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>Nowadays we are very used to being pounded with the ever more popular idea that books are sacred and that anything digital is somehow impure (even if it's the same material but on a screen). This is something that has bothered me very much, especially as someone who does not read many physical books, but does read a lot of material online. And I'd like to point out that this belief is completely unfounded, and that, at least from what I see, the digital reading is being much more beneficial to society than the physical books.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>To begin, if I am reading the same material but I'm doing it on my computer rather than with a physical book, what's the difference? Yes, I know that you tend to remember things better that are on paper (I've seen this on many articles <b>online</b>), however that does not change the quality of the content if the content is <b>exactly the same</b>. So if I'm reading something digitally cut the crap.</p>
|
||||
@ -12,3 +17,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>So, next time you're about to tell some kids in a classroom about how "important it is to read <b>from a book</b>", just remember that some people read a lot more productive material online that those who read it from books.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2016-12-25-merry-grav-mass.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>Merry <a href="https://stallman.org/grav-mass.html" target="_blank" >Grav-Mass</a>!</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>Today is the day that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton" target="_blank" >Isaac Newton</a>, the man who discovered the laws of motion as well as having invented Calculus, was born. Many things that today we take for granted would not have been possible without his discoveries, and therefore deserves a day of recognition.</p>
|
||||
@ -6,3 +11,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>There are many ways to celebrate Grav-Mass, the link above to Stallman's page on the holiday has some very common ways of celebrating the holiday. However, in my opinion, the most important part is making sure that this holiday you promote, talk about, and learn anything math related or science related and sharing with friends.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2017-01-07-getting-esperanto-diacritics-on-gnu-linux.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>Recently I've decided to start learning Esperanto alongside Japanese. I have my reasons for liking Esperanto, but this post is mostly on how to get the Esperanto diacritics (namely ĉ, ŝ, ĥ, ĵ, ǔ, and ĝ) on your keyboard for GNU/Linux. There are multiple ways of doing this, the ibus system has some Esperanto IMEs (like the x-system and h-system), but I've found those to be extremely annoying while typing (just try to use them, if you're used to typing using a Japanese IME for hiragana and katakana then this will annoy you). So instead I decided to use a method I used to use back in the day for getting Spanish tildes, dieresis, and the 'ñ' characters: Xmodmap. Basically I mapped a key I barely used (like the right `alt' and `shift' keys) to tilde and 'ñ'.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>In this specific case I used `xev' to find out the `keycode' for my right `alt' key and then made a file in my home directory called `.Xmodmap' containing the line `keycode 108 = dead_circumflex' (make sure to change `108' with whatever your `xev' gives you for your dead key). After this just run `xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap' and it you will be able to use the circumflex by typing the right `alt' (or whatever you set it to) and then the character, such that `ralt+s' would give 'ŝ'. <b>NOTE:</b> you do not need to hold down the `alt' key, just press it once ;D.</p>
|
||||
@ -6,3 +11,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p><b>UPDATE 19/03/2020:</b> I've taken to using the US International keyboard layout instead of this hack, as it's much more effective and not as buggy. This just means changing your keyboard layout to US International via a tool like IBUS, whatever your DE uses - which is probably IBUS - or put it in your WM's init script as <code>`setxkbmap us altgr-intl'</code>.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2017-01-13-parabola-gnu-linux-libre.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>Recently I have made a switch to <a href="https://www.parabola.nu/" target="_blank" >Parabola GNU/Linux-Libre</a>, one the <a href="https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html" target="_blank" >free GNU/Linux distributions</a> (the others use the standard Linux kernel which has non-free blobs for drivers, as well as distributing non-free firmware). I made the switch after receiving a WiFi adapter that respects freedom, since the only component of my laptop that required non-free drivers and firmware was my wireless card. The reason I chose Parabola of all the free distros is because Parabola has the most up-to-date packages (unlike, for example, Trisquel which is based on the Ubuntu LTS, or gNewSense which is based on Debian Stable).</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>The reason for switching to Parabola from Debian is because Debian, although it can be de-blobbed, I have not liked how they do their software segregation. One would think that `non-free' would be for non-free software or free software that depends on non-free software (unless they put the free part in `contrib', as they do with the AssaultCube package), yet when I was looking for the firmware for my wireless card I was surprised to find that it was in `non-free' along with all the others. I quickly began looking up the firmware to see if I could find source code and what license it was under. But no, the firmware is 100% Free Software, Debian just put them in a non-free package with other non-free software that are completely unnecessary forcing anyone who wants to use the free firmware to also download the non-free firmware along with it.</p>
|
||||
@ -6,3 +11,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>I still have not overwritten my Windows drive because I currently still need it for video conferencing (you know, to talk to family and friends), however I believe I found found a solution to this, and I will post about it later when I confirm it as a proper solution. Once I have confirmed it as a solution and have gotten my family and friends to switch to it I will be overwriting my Windows drive most likely with Trisquel.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,6 +1,15 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2017-01-14-the-onion-router.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>As many may have noticed, unfortunately <a href="https://www.torproject.org/" target="_blank" >TOR</a> has been presented by the media as solely a tool for illicit activities that most of us consider to be extremely alarming (ie child pornography, hit-men, counterfeit bills, etc.), when those of us who have used TOR (or do use it regularly) know that the TOR project itself has nothing to do with these activities, and more importantly that it can be used for our own privacy just as it can for those of the criminals. However, because of this association that has been pounded into their heads by the media (where every time it comes up it's because some illicit activity is being done through it) they are often afraid to even use it for navigating the clearnet (used when referring to websites in the clear that we are all used to, like this one) fearing that somehow that will involve them in illicit activities, despite this not being the case at all.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>Therefore, whenever you may try to talk to people and try to convince them to use TOR the will often shy away due to its very negative image. So how do we talk to people about using TOR without scaring them off? Well, one 'alternative' is to simply talk about the alternatives, such as <a href="https://freenetproject.org/" target="_blank" >Freenet</a> or <a href="https://geti2p.net/" target="_blank" >I2P</a>, however this still avoids TOR which is one of the largest of these anonymizing networks, and therefore the most secure/private. However, notice one thing, everyone knows of TOR as TOR, when in reality TOR is simply an abbreviation for "The Onion Router", a name by which barely anyone knows it. Therefore, I believe that a good solution would be to stop referring to it as TOR and to begin referring to it by its full name: "The Onion Router". Because people do not know it when referring to it as "The Onion Router" they will not be afraid of it as they are when they hear TOR, they will not be thinking that it will draw them into some illicit activity, and they will be more willing to listen because they haven't heard of it before.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>Of course, this does not mean that now that you refer to it as "The Onion Router" they will automatically be interested in it, but it will lift one of the barriers to helping people protect their privacy.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2017-01-26-esperanto.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>Recently I started learning Esperanto, the universal second-language. It's a constructed language made with the purpose of being used as a second-language by everyone so that everyone could talk to each other while no one country having the advantage of it being their native language. Because of this the language is very simple to learn, the grammar is extremely simple and, most of all, consistent and logical.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>After having played with it a little I already find it quite easy to formulate sentences with it, although this is mostly due to it being very similar to romance languages. However the grammatical rules still remain simple and easy to use (such as the lack of person, gender, formality (in Japanese), and number in verb conjugation, which makes conjugation very easy to memorize).</p>
|
||||
@ -6,3 +11,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>Essentially, any movement that wishes to be international I believe should work in Esperanto as a way to maintaining neutrality and universality.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2017-01-30-developers-as-an-audience.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>Often times us programmers are told that something we are creating is too complex, too techie, or too advanced for the average person and therefore it is our responsibility to make our programs easier to use for other people. This makes sense in certain circumstances where we are actually trying to make things for the average user, however this does not always need to be the case. Why must we always make our programs available to the average user? This limits our ability to create great functionality because we're too focused on UX (and, in some horrifying cases, sacrifice functionality in the name of UX). To me this is an issue, as programmers we do not <b>always</b> have to develop for an end user, especially if we are trying to create something that we think most <b>other developers</b> would find useful or cool/fascinating.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>This also partly has to do with the lack of understanding by many who are not <a href="https://stallman.org/articles/on-hacking.html" target="_blank" >hackers</a> and do not understand that those of us who are do these things for the joy of it, the joy of making cool stuff, the joy of tinkering with stuff to make it do something in an interesting/unexpected way. This is something that we hold dearly but is not understood by most people outside of our small niche. To us it's entertainment and even a lifestyle, but to them we should be making things to be used by them.</p>
|
||||
@ -6,3 +11,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>Therefore, unless the hacker is at work and is creating a program specifically for the average user, let them make what they want, UX and all other factors are unimportant to them. The only thing that matters in their free time is their passion for what they're doing.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2017-02-20-parabola-with-lvm-on-luks.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>As of recently I have reinstalled Parabola with a LUKS encrypted partition containing both swap and root (I do not have a separate home partition). I found this to be a long and painful process, but I learned quite a bit from doing it. My current setup is as follows:</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<pre>
|
||||
@ -65,3 +70,7 @@ lvolswap - swap
|
||||
|
||||
<p>You should now be able to reboot and startup your new LUKS encrypted Parabola system. I may have forgotten something, if so please send me an e-mail so I can correct it (see my <a href="/contact/" >contact page</a>).</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2017-02-21-encrypted-backup-drive.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>In my previous post I demonstrated how to setup LVM on LUKS with Parabola GNU/Linux-libre. However, what good is an encrypted hard drive if your backups are completely vulnerable? So here's a small guide on setting up a LUKS partition on your backup device.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>In reality it's basically the same as setting up LUKS for Parabola, but I'm not going to make you read all that just to get a LUKS partition setup on your external hard drive. Please note that I'll be referring to the external device as <code>`/dev/sdb'</code>, if it's different for you <b>use your device's path!</b></p>
|
||||
@ -12,3 +17,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>Just remember that every time you want to mount the device you will have to run the <code>`cryptsetup luksOpen ...'</code> to mount and <code>`cryptsetup luksClose ...'</code> to dismount.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,4 +1,13 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2017-03-05-change-of-heart-on-https.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>A while back I wrote a blog post on HTTPS and how it is not necessary for all websites, however I have recently had a change of heart on the issue. Back when I wrote about it I did not think a step further which would have lead me to see the importance of HTTPS even for a static site like mine. You'll notice that you are connecting to this website via HTTPS currently, for all HTTP requests are redirected to the HTTPS. What's more, there is also a .onion address for my site so that you may connect to it without even leaving The Onion Router network (<a href="https://uk7ewohr7xpjuaca.onion/" >uk7ewohr7xpjuaca.onion</a>).</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>The reason why even a site like mine should use HTTPS (and even a .onion address) is that the content of my site may be banned in certain countries (especially certain writings where I am quite critical with issues such as religion). However, this can even apply to those of us having even the most 'dull' of websites, let us not forget the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/jan/15/mali-music-ban-islamists-crushing" target="_blank" >ban on music in Mali</a>, for that everything in my `/music/' and `/audio/' directories would be banned. For this reason it is important that we protect the content that the user is trying to access so that their ISP nor their government (nor any other entity) has access to such information.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2017-03-25-reasons-not-to-use-the-gpl.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p><b>NOTE:</b> I am explicitly referring to the GNU General Public License version 2 and 3 when I say GPL, it is not referring to other licenses such as the Lesser General Public License or the Affero General Public License.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>If you are actively involved in the Free Software movement you are probably well aware of how the web is a treacherous place where non-free programs are constantly installed on your computer without permission by default. The most obvious of these is the <a href="https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html" target="_blank" >JavaScript trap</a>, however similar issues arise with, for example, plugins such as Java web applets. However, measures can be taken against these and are actively improving, such as <a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/librejs/" target="_blank" >LibreJS</a>, which stops non-free non-trivial JavaScript files from running, one can also disable JavaScript and plugins on their browser to avoid downloading the malicious content.</p>
|
||||
@ -12,3 +17,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>The web seems to be a force actively working against the Free Software movement, and although we were happy at first, seeing that all the sources would be available to us since HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are all on the client-side and in plain text, we have seen that oppressors are finding new ways of making it harder use those. What's more, even our own applications that we write that are not intended for the web can be used against us. Therefore, in your next project, when you are thinking about using the GPL (again, version 2 or 3) please consider using the AGPL instead, as we are moving in a direction where it will be more and more needed.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2017-04-08-the-unused-potential-of-bitmessage.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>For quite some time now I've been using <a href="https://github.com/Bitmessage/PyBitmessage" target="_blank" >Bitmessage</a>, an e-mail replacement that was made to protect user privacy based on the <a href="https://bitcoin.org/" target="_blank" >Bitcoin</a> model. After using Bitmessage for quite some time I have come to see the many benefits it has compared to e-mail, namely in regards to privacy and ease-of-use.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>To begin with, Bitmessage has no e-mail service provider, you don't need to register an account with a third-party just to get a Bitmessage address, and all the information is stored on your computer. This means that it is highly accessible to anyone who has the application. This also means that information can't be stolen from a central source (eg. GMail/Yahoo/OutLook/etc. servers) but rather they would have to have direct access to the machine in which you store your messages (which is hopefully protected by disk encryption).</p>
|
||||
@ -20,3 +25,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>If you would like to try out Bitmessage you can send a message to the address I have on my Contact page, and I will get back to you as soon as I can.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2017-04-18-a-library-copyleft-license-combination.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>Recently I came across the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleepycat_License" target="_blank" >Sleepycat License</a>, which I believed to be a copyleft Free Software license that only requires any projects using the Sleepycat licensed software to disclose source code (not necessarily forcing any particular license on the user). I thought that this would be a great license for a library, since unlike the (A)GPL it doesn't force the developer using my library to use the same license (many people who like permissive licenses prefer to be able to choose their own license for their project), but at the same time whoever uses my library must at least disclose their source code (freedom #1... kinda). So I thought that with some slight modifications (since the license is also extremely specific to the BerkleyDB software) that the Sleepycat License would be a great license for libraries (better than GPL or LGPL). So after <a href="https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/libreplanet-discuss/2017-04/msg00012.html" target="_blank" >a very long discussion on the LibrePlanet-Discuss mailing list</a> I figured out that <a href="https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/libreplanet-discuss/2017-04/msg00035.html" target="_blank" >the Sleepycat License wasn't exactly what I thought it was</a>.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>However, during the mailing list someone mentioned something about <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/License_proliferation" target="_blank" >license proliferation</a>, which got me thinking that perhaps instead of looking for some new obscure license maybe I could do this with existing licenses, using conditional dual-licensing. With this I thought of the <a href="https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl" target="_blank" >GNU article on using (A)GPL instead of the LGPL for libraries</a>. The two licenses in question are the LGPL and the (A)GPL. The LGPL has the advantage that it does not force any particular license on the developer using the library and remains copyleft with regards to the library's source-code itself, but it has a flaw that is fixed by the (A)GPL, which is that the LGPL can be used by non-free projects as well as free projects, which to some of us is not something that settles well with our concious. However, the (A)GPL forces the project using the library to carry the (A)GPL as well. So, both of these had elements that I wanted, but they both had drawbacks. With this I finally thought of a dual-licensing scheme that could work to have the best of both licenses. It consists in <a href="https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/libreplanet-discuss/2017-04/msg00019.html" target="_blank" >licensing your library with the (A)GPL and offering an LGPL dual-licensing (with static linkage) to any project licensed exclusively with FSF approved licenses</a>.</p>
|
||||
@ -10,3 +15,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>I believe that this licensing scheme solves the eternal problem in library licensing between copyleft and permissive licenses without compromising a good concious, more copyleft than permissive licenses (such as MIT), not as strict about how projects using the library license themselves (such as GPL), and no compromising on ethics by not helping in any manner a non-free project (such as LGPL).</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2017-04-20-judgement.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>Too often have I heard people say that someone is "Judgemental", someone saying "Don't judge!", asking a friend "Would you judge me?". These are all extremely stupid phrases. Judgement is something extremely normal, it's not only human, but something that all animals do, and most importantly it is something that is completely necessary.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>Judgement is something we need, something we do every day. When you say you like a particular dish or not you are judging the dish, when you choose between two alternate products at a supermarket you are judging them. Even if you use a random number generator to decide which to pick you made the judgement to use the random number generator and what numbers each of the products would be. However, one may believe that this does not apply when talking about people, that we cannot judge other people, however this is also wrong. Should we not judge murderers? Should we not judge thieves? We must no doubt judge these people, and we should also be able to judge one another.</p>
|
||||
@ -8,3 +13,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>Therefore, please don't talk about judgement this way, it's annoying and you're making yourself look like a stuck-up prick who can't accept rational criticism. Instead listen to the other person's judgement, and if you don't care for their judgement then just ignore it, at least you listened.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2017-05-02-patch-files.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>Something that really annoys me about most repository hosts nowadays is that all of them are highly dependent on using pull-requests to contribute code, when originally all VCSs had (and still have) ways to contribute via patches (that and the `patch' command) which can be sent via e-mail. Now, I understand that having these changes more accessible to the public would be useful, and mailing lists aren't always best. However, why not simply use the same infrastructure of an issue tracker and apply it to uploading patch files? They would be organized just like pull-requests are, and would essentially be the same thing as a pull-request... except directly with a patch file instead of having to go through such a long process just to contribute to a repository.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>So, why are patch files better than pull-requests? First of all, pull-requests are still useful if someone makes a real fork of a project (not what they're calling 'forks' nowadays which is someone making a copy just to modify something and then merge it back into upstream). However, if I am contributing to a project it is much easier and faster to make a patch file than to deal with web interfaces endlessly just to contribute two lines of code. When you make a patch file the process is as follows: clone the repository, make the change, create patch file, submit patch file. Easy, right? Now, let's look at this same process for pull-requests: 'fork' a repository, clone your 'fork', make changes, push changes to your 'fork', and finally create the pull request. Patch files have 4 steps, while pull-requests have 5. You may say "Well, but that's only one extra step, it's not that bad". Okay, but let's move forward.</p>
|
||||
@ -16,3 +21,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>So please, stop promoting this cancerous disease known as "the pull-request". Patch files were perfectly fine. If you're going to write your own new repository hosting web framework or whatever, be sure to incorporate patch files. As I said before, pull-requests are good only if we're talking about <b>real forks</b>, not a 'fork' that someone made of a project to contribute 2 lines of code and then never touch it again.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2017-05-12-from-parabola-to-arch.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>I have recently switched from <a href="https://www.parabola.nu/" target="_blank" >Parabola</a> to <a href="https://www.archlinux.org/" target="_blank" >Arch</a>. First of all, I would like to mention that this is not because I want to use any non-free software in the Arch repos or install non-free firmware and drivers for some pieces of hardware I may have (I am still using Linux-libre on Arch), but rather for other reasons that I would like to explain.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>Firstly, the number one reason I am leaving Parabola is that the distro gets in my way too often. Mostly with its policy that anything that 'promotes non-free software' is non-free. I am an adult who knows every well what non-free software is, I can easily not install something that I see is non-free (namely for `pacaur', which would be so useful if only it were available on Parabola). This kind of blocking of any software that 'promotes non-free software' is useful for distros such as <a href="https://trisquel.info/" target="_blank" >Trisquel</a>, which are aimed at people who could hardly be described as tech-savvy, since these kinds of people do not necessarily know how to distinguish between free and non-free software (it's simply not something that's part of their daily lives). However, for experienced hackers like myself, this just gets in our way of quickly getting access to tools we want to use. It's nice when our OS doesn't constantly get in our way for these kinds of things. This is, in fact, the exact reason why I use Free Software to begin with and why I like GNU/Linux. I used to use Mac many many years ago, however I had almost no ability to make the computer do what I wanted it to, Apple products constantly worked against me and whatever I wanted to do with them, and I dislike that I am feeling this again with a GNU/Linux distro. Therefore, I would suggest that if you're an experienced hacker and get stressed when <b>your</b> OS gets in the way, don't use a <a href="https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html" target="_blank" >free distro</a>, they're aimed for newbs who are new to the idea of Free Software, not you.</p>
|
||||
@ -8,3 +13,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>With this I say that I will most likely never return to Parabola, even if the Quarantine Policy is implemented, for the reasons I mentioned first in this post. However I would still suggest that the Parabola community start to pull itself together and stop trying to shy away from having actual protocols. Debian is one of the largest community-oriented projects that is not controlled by a corporation in the background, and they have a ton of protocols and policies. If the Parabola community wishes to efficiently handle the challenges that await them in the future, it's time for them to start organizing themselves instead of leaving things as chaotic as they are.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2017-05-13-your-computer-your-computing.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>It pains me to see how often we end up 'just dealing' with our computer software being restrictive, how we say we dislike how a certain software functions and yet we just roll over and take the hit. Many of us are used to this kind of mentality, however, in the Free Software community a little less because we're granted choices, yet even there we find ourselves faced with software that does something we dislike, but we refuse to migrate simply because it would be 'inconvenient'.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>The truth of the matter is, your computer is your property (or rather, it should be, in the case of those of you who run non-free software), this means that any time you roll over and take the hit you are letting someone else decide how to use your personal property. When you own something, like a bicycle, you are not told and controlled on how you use that bicycle, how to adjust the seat, whether or not to add a basket. It's your bicycle and you use it as you please and adjust it as you please because it is your personal property and belongs to no one else, nor does it affect anyone else how you adjust it.</p>
|
||||
@ -8,3 +13,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>Again, any less than your computer working the way you want it to is a compromise on how you use your personal property.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,6 +1,15 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2017-05-14-the-beauty-of-silence.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>One thing I've always loved and come to appreciate more and more is the wonderful nothingness which is silence. It allows for people to be calm, where one can think clearly, be at peace with one's self and not be interrupted by one's surroundings. It truly is something beautiful.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>However, sadly, there are few in this world who truly value silence. What's more, it seems that every time there is silence people consider it 'awkward', and try to fill it in either with conversation (which is not bad) or noise (which is horrifyingly repulsive compared to the sweetness of silence), typically from an electronic device such as a television, radio, mobile device, or other. To these people I ask: what is wrong with silence? Are you that afraid of 'loneliness'? After all, silence does make us feel more alone. Or perhaps is it that you feel that for some reason emptiness demands to be filled? In which case, why is it that you feel this need to fill the gap?</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>No matter what your reason, perhaps it is important that you learn to appreciate the calm in life. By filling the air with noise you do nothing but to perpetuate stress, tension, discomfort, and anxiety. This is fine if it only affects you, however when others are present you must not create such a damaging environment as it harms others (the same way you should not smoke tobacco around non-smokers). In the presence of others it must also be of common courtesy to respect silence, conversation, social interaction, productive sound (such as one playing an instrument), or any kind of productive behaviour.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2017-05-29-summer-album.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>Ever since before <a href="/projects/music/ice-in-the-fall/" >Ice in the Fall</a> I've been working on an album called <a href="/projects/music/summer/" >Summer</a>. It's been a long time and I haven't really put much effort into making the album, sadly. However, I have recently begun to formulate it more, revise some of the lyrics and notes, along with the songs I had planned for the album to begin with (since the summer of 2013).</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>This album has taken me quite some time, and I've released two other albums since then, but this is mostly due to the complexity and work I have been trying to put into it. Unlike my first two albums, I wanted this one to be multi-track and less experimental. However, unlike <a href="/projects/music/dreaming-in-bytes/" >Dreaming in Bytes</a>, it is not simply me making up some interesting melodies in a digital audio studio program. This added complexity is what's been making it take quite a bit of time.</p>
|
||||
@ -6,3 +11,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>Like my other albums, this one will be published on Jamendo, but for those that download from this website there will be a 'Side 2' containing cover songs, the originals of which are either under a Free Culture license or have been passed into the Public Domain. Once I figure out which songs these will be I will post the track listing for the 'Side 2' on the page for the album (and perhaps a demo).</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2017-06-21-humour.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>In many countries in the West xenophobia has been rising, yet I have not seen this kind of behaviour in Andalusia. This made me wonder why it was that in Andalusia people weren't as affected as in (for example) the rest of Europe or the USA. Of course, the only thing I can really compare to is the Mid-West in the USA, since that's the only other place I've lived. However, with this I've noticed one key difference between the two: in Andalusia humour is not limited while in the Mid-West humour must bend to what is considered 'socially acceptable'.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>Humour, especially satire, serves the purpose of allowing us to look at things from a critical and comical perspective, but by using humour we also allow ourselves to look upon our own beliefs in this critical and comical way. It is also a sign that we can loosen up around someone, if I can tell jokes to a person then I feel more comfortable around them, I feel like I don't have to censor myself, free to speak my mind. This is very good for relieving tensions, since we'll feel more comfortable and amiable.</p>
|
||||
@ -10,3 +15,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>For this reason I think it is important that we do not limit humour nor speech, and instead we should embrace humour that is critical of our beliefs and opinions, to accept that stereotypes exist and for a reason. Otherwise we're only worsening the issue at hand.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2017-06-22-technology-literacy.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>It's quite annoying to hear, as it is for most techies, whenever people say that millennials are the 'technology' or 'digital' generation. Let's begin pointing out why this is wrong. When I ask a millennial to write a plain text file and they open a word processor, that's technological illiteracy; when I am told by a millennial that their internet was going slow so they upgraded their RAM, that's technological illiteracy; when a millennial doesn't understand that VLC can't play an iMovie project file (they copied the iMovie project file from a Mac computer to a Windows computer), that's complete technological stupidity. If you would like more information on why millennials are technological know-nothings you can visit <a href="http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-computers/" target="_blank" >this blog post</a> which does an excellent job at explaining the issue. In reality, millennials are just as computer literate as our parents were television literate (ie. I know how to press the buttons to make it go on and off, but the day one minor thing doesn't work in exactly the same way I freak out myself and have to call in tech support).</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>So, you may be asking "Why is it important that we have computer literacy in the first place?". The answer to which is quite simple: because you depend on it. When you depend on something, typically you learn enough about it so that when things go wrong you have a basic knowledge of it and aren't drooling like an idiot. Hence why in primary school we learn basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division (and many other things later on that are also fundamental to our ability to survive in society). If you depend on something you should at least have a <b>minimal understanding</b> of how to actually use it and how it works. The same way that when you get a car you learn the different parts of the car and how to check and make sure it's in shape, you still have to know how to check the oil and such.</p>
|
||||
@ -6,3 +11,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>This is not something that's completely out-of-this-world, it's quite basic, and the fact that most people (especially millennials) don't know this stuff makes them extremely vulnerable to all sorts of scams and stupid decisions, and helps them to be convenienced people who can't look things up on their own before asking for help (now that I mention this, perhaps the first thing they should learn is how to use a search engine to find a solution to their problem instead of asking the closest techie). I'm not asking for everyone to turn into computer wizards, I'm asking them to at least be able to detect more or less where a problem is coming from when they get an issue and for them to attempt to solve it themselves (via searching the problem first) before coming to people like me. If all I have to do in order to solve your issue is put your error in a search engine, that's something you could've done yourself.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2017-07-09-why-windows-sucks.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>For those of you who use GNU/Linux or BSD (or basically any other UNIX-like system) this post will come as no surprise to you, but I still felt the urge to make it anyways. I currently do not run Microsoft Windows anymore, but I still have to use under certain circumstances for classes and such as well as constantly hearing from friends (who run Windows as their main OS for some stupid reason) and news articles about the newest stupid thing they've added to annoy their users. So, let's get started on the bashing of the dead horse. (Why? Because it's fun.)</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<ol>
|
||||
@ -14,3 +19,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>This'll probably be it for the Windows bashing, but if you use MacOS/OSX, don't think you're off the hook, "Why MacOS Sucks" is coming very soon.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2017-08-13-the-google-memo.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>Normally I dislike hopping onto bandwagons for this blog, but this is about a field that I am very involved in: the technology field. Recently a Google employee sent out an internal memo that later was published for the whole world to see (you can read the full memo <a href="https://diversitymemo.com/" target="_blank" >here</a>). This memo spawn much controversy, and so I wanted to see the memo itself.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>Firstly I would like to bring up that the firing of this man is something that I consider completely unacceptable. People should not be fired for their personal opinions so long as they recognize that they are in a work environment and while at work only do so within the context of work (as this man has done). Otherwise we resort to the same kind of witch hunt that there was against Communists, Socialists, and Anarchists in the 50s.</p>
|
||||
@ -8,3 +13,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>The difference in proportion of women in STEM and men in arts and humanities is not something that can be solved at such a high level, not by companies like Google, and not by universities like my own. This is something that needs to be solved at a younger age by public schools and (most importantly) at home when raising children. What use does it make to have companies like Google make tech jobs more attractive for women when there aren't that many women even studying it in university? And what use does it make to have universities lower tuition for women in tech when not many women want to go into tech to begin with? The problem is much much deeper than these. Stop trying to blame administrators for being sexist and try looking at your own life and flaws. What are you training your daughter and son to like and enjoy doing? Why is your daughter going for a liberal arts degree while your son is going for a degree in civil engineering? Try fixing your own flaws and being consistent with your own ideas before trying to correct the behaviour of others. There are some minor inconsistencies that will always be there, but we must not stop trying to improve ourselves.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2017-09-04-why-macos-sucks.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>As promised, a criticism of Apple MacOS (or whatever people are calling it nowadays), of course, this will mostly be mixed in with issues I have with Apple itself, and some of them may sound familiar (because they're the same as with Windows). I'd also like to note that I haven't seen or used a Mac computer for personal use for maybe 7 years, so the information I provide may be antiquated, or I may be leaving stuff out that they came up with recently (or simply I forgot because of how bad it was). So let's jump into this!</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<ol>
|
||||
@ -9,3 +14,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>As you can see, I have less complaints about Apple Mac than I do Windows, which is not surprising considering that Mac is a UNIX-like system based upon BSD. Still, I wouldn't use it.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2017-09-10-slow-and-happy.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>For someone like me, one of the most damaging aspects of the society we live in is the constant stress and anxiety we feel throughout our lives, how we rarely have the time to reflect, to stop and think for a while, or simply to do nothing (yes, I mean nothing). I believe there are multiple reasons for this kind of behaviour and stress, multiple reasons why we are extremely over our heads with no time for ourselves or those around us, and as one can read online, there are many that agree with me.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>One of the things I seek in my life the most is leisure time, time where nothing is planned, nothing is structured, those free slots in my schedule where I can decide what I want to do in the moment. During this leisure time I have the ability to take part in a variety of activities that can allow me to express myself through different productive and creative mediums. This gives me lots of time to concentrate on things that I enjoy doing and can see the fruits of my own production. However, it seems that society is constantly working against me in this regard, wanting me to constantly do other things, and there are a few things in our daily lives that do this to us through various means. They work as time hoarders, distracting us from the passage of time and leaving us somewhat numb and divorced from reality (something that many enjoy at the end of a long work week to avoid having to deal with their stressful lives). These time hoarders work as opiates to pacify us, but only in the sense that we are left helplessly without time to ourselves, and the time, instead of being taken advantage of to enjoy it in something that will create long-term happiness, we take a dose of the opiate the pacifies in preparation for the next laborious work week.</p>
|
||||
@ -12,3 +17,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>You can conclude from this what you will, and do what you please after reading this, but I'm pretty sure that if you free up some time in your day, and even do a little bit of nothing here and there, you'll end up feeling a lot happier with yourself.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,4 +1,13 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2017-10-10-restructuring-the-blog.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>I have recently restructured my blog so that there are now multiple sections dedicated to different topics. I have done this because I believe that my blog is too random all on its own (all in one big clump). Now there are different categories dedicated to different broad topics, each one has an RSS feed of its own. This (of course) is gonna break a lot of links, but with my website it's best just to remember the domain name and then find things from there. This is a personal website, so I feel no obligation to keep any kinds of backwards compatibility.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>I hope this didn't inconvenience anyone, but oh well.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2017-10-13-software-used-in-summer.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>As someone who moves around a lot, I dislike having to bring lots of equipment with me, this includes amplifiers, keyboards, etc. Therefore, what I prefer to do is the run software that simulates these. I have used software <a href="http://zynaddsubfx.sourceforge.net/" target="_blank" >ZynAddSubFX</a> and <a href="https://lmms.io/" target="_blank" >LMMS</a> in previous albums, but I've also experimented before with tools that I'm using for the new album, <a href="/projects/music/summer/" ><i>Summer</i></a>.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>One of my primary tools with this album is <a href="http://guitarix.org/" target="_blank" >Guitarix</a>, a virtual guitar amplifier with many effects. In this sense, I find Guitarix to be a lot more useful than an actual amplifier, since it already comes with many effects that otherwise I'd have to get individual pedals for each new effect. What's more, since it works with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JACK_Audio_Connection_Kit" target="_blank" >JACK</a> I'm able to plug in different sound inputs (including synthesizers) as well as choosing where to send the output of the program. I manage this through the <a href="https://qjackctl.sourceforge.io/" target="_blank" >QjackCtl</a>, which makes plugging the different inputs/outputs very simple. In order to plug in the guitar I use a special cable that has a jack pin on one end and a USB connector on the other (no need for microphones with background noise).</p>
|
||||
@ -12,3 +17,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>As an appended news on the album's progress, it's currently slowed down a bit, but I'm hoping to release it in time for the summer of 2018. It all depends on the time I have and when my creative juices begin to flow.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2017-10-14-full-disk-encryption-with-grub2.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>A long time ago I figured out that <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB#Boot_partition" target="_blank" >GRUB2 has the capability of decrypting a LUKS encrypted partition</a> therefore allowing for the <code>`/boot'</code> partition to be encrypted, however I haven't had the time to test it out until today. After that I decided it'd be a good idea to write a blog entry on how I did it, to help others and to serve as a reference for myself next time I want to do an install.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>First, please note that I did all this while installing <a href="https://www.archlinux.org/" target="_blank" >ArchLinux</a>, but it should work just about the same for any manual installation of any distro. Also, some of the steps I explain here will be repeats of the post I did on <a href="2017-02-20-parabola-with-lvm-on-luks.php" >LVM on LUKS encryption</a> (where <code>`/boot'</code> is not encrypted so GRUB can boot the kernel).</p>
|
||||
@ -44,3 +49,7 @@ mkswap /dev/mapper/CryptGroup-swap -L swap
|
||||
<h3>Final Remarks</h3>
|
||||
<p>Please note that you will be asked for your password twice, once by GRUB (to find the kernel image to boot) and another by the Linux kernel (to boot the entire OS). If you notice that anything here is incorrect or that something should be fixed, contact me from my <a href="/pages/view/Contact/" >contact page</a> and I'll edit this post.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2017-10-15-disagreement-without-hate-disagreement-with-respect.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>I believe that in recent years the situations we've seen politically have gotten worse, people have become polarized, they are shifting towards extreme actions which do nothing but to worsen the situation. More and more I am finding that any form of political disagreement is automatically considered a reason to loathe a person, and therefore disregard them and all that they say. What's more, I believe that it is because we are not seeing each other as people, but rather as a compilation of ideas that this occurs (a rather platonic way of viewing things), when in reality if I change my opinions, my ideas, or anything about myself, I am still the same person, and therefore am I more than the ideas that I have, rather I am a compilation of the actions I have taken in the past leading up to this point in time. I may change my behaviour and no longer agree with my past actions, but I am still that person.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>I believe that one issue that contributes to this behaviour is that when we discuss our opinions with others we assume that it's going to only go one way: us convincing the other party that we're right. In reality this rarely ever happens precisely because of this mentality (because the other person has it as well). This means that neither side is willing to actually listen and analyze the argument of the other party with regards to their own, and therefore cannot even evolve their own argument, which will forever remain at an elementary state because it has never been challenged and therefore never tested to defend itself. I have found when talking to friends and family of mine that disagree that a better mindset to have with this isn't to want to convince them, but rather to have my discussion simply serve as a way for me to evolve my own argument. In all likelihood, you will never be able to convince them of your argument, and therefore the most you can get out of such a conversation is to improve your own by challenging your own ideas and reforming them to the new counter-arguments you encounter.</p>
|
||||
@ -10,3 +15,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>The fact of the matter seems to be that neither side now is tolerant of the other, and therefore such a situation can only continue to escalate into more violence.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2017-11-08-user-friendliness-and-modern-tech.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>I have to admit that I'm probably not the best example of what is considered <i>user-friendly</i> (since I use i3 with terminals everywhere, CLI versions of a bunch of applications, etc.), however I do know what is considered <i>user-friendly</i>, primarily because I am a techie in a family of a lot of non-techie people (basically I'm my family's tech support). From this I've found that a lot of the things that we believe are <i>user-friendly</i> are actually just new and popular but nobody actually knows how to use them (hence they tend to be misused and people get frustrated when things go wrong).</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>In this sense, the worst technology in existence is <i>The Cloud</i>. A technology which does not actually simplify a lot of people's lives, especially that of the elderly (those who I have to help the most often with their tech problems). There is a general rule, not only in technology, but in any kind of form of organization of data/tasks which states that the more complex the system the higher risk of failure (of things going wrong). Well, <i>The Cloud</i> is one of the most complex systems out there. Instead of people putting their files on external devices which have very little risk of failure, they are storing it on another computer, routing the information through several computers in order to get there. Hence I usually have to deal with network errors or <i>The Cloud</i> not working the way it should be. In this sense, the most <i>user-friendly</i> solution is actually for people to store information on external drives and then send it over to each other via e-mails or via some sharing service, but its primary storage should not be in <i>The Cloud</i>, but on this external device.</p>
|
||||
@ -6,3 +11,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>I'm saying this because it's sad that every time I go on break and return to my home, my family has new issues with their software failing because the developers changed something stupid or they made it way more complicated than it needs to be. It's fine for people who like changes, but don't tell me that it's <i>user-friendly</i> and then get everyone to buy it as if it were so.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,4 +1,13 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2017-11-17-from-firefox-to-palemoon.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>I'll keep this brief and to the point.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>Recently Firefox 57 (Quantum) was released, and with it most of my favorite addons became incompatible. Because of this I have left Firefox in favor of Palemoon (a more stable project that doesn't care so much about appealing to masses). Palemoon is a Firefox fork which focuses on performance, its UI is very similar to the old Firefox UI, so it's rather familiar. Most of my older addons also work with it, either on their own (such as uBlock Origin) or with the help of Moon Tester Tool, which installs addons regardless of the target application version specified. It also has a nice dark theme for the browser as well as a community with many people who have switched from Firefox to Palemoon.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2017-12-20-my-recent-dislike-for-oop-languages.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>Recently I have found myself disliking OOPLs , and I'd like to explain my reasoning for this. I'd also like to note that this may not necessarily apply to all OOPLs or uses of them, but it does apply to those which I am familiar with (primarily C++ and Java).</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>At my university the teachers use a lot of C++, in the Fundamentals of Programming class (teaching the absolute basics, like variables, loops, conditionals, data types, structures, etc.) they used C++ even though the features they were using were just as easily available on C. Then in the OOP class I had the next term they continued to use C++, this year it's used for my Data Structures class and next term I'll be using Java for the Artificial Intelligence course. OOPLs seem to be extremely popular, at least at my university. However, because of this and having to work with them a lot in a stricter project environment (versus my experience with solo projects or small cooperative projects), and with it I've come to see some reasons for disliking them.</p>
|
||||
@ -10,3 +15,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>As I mentioned before, there may be exceptions to this with certain languages, my experience is mostly with Java and C++, but I believe this is a paradigm issue. This doesn't mean that OOPLs aren't useful, but I dislike them compared to a much simpler C.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2018-01-02-waterfox.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>For any of you that have been using Firefox for quite some time now with your abundance of addons, you've probably noticed that most of them are no longer compatible with the newest Firefox 57 (Quantum). This is because Firefox has changed their addon system.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>For me this was a big issue, considering that a couple of my favourite addons were not available with the new Firefox version and the developers had no intentions of updating them (these being <a href="https://github.com/dillbyrne/random-agent-spoofer" target="_blank" >Random Agent Spoofer</a> and <a href="https://github.com/akhodakivskiy/VimFx" target="_blank" >VimFX</a>). So at first I did what most people did and tried to find alternative addons, unfortunately none of them seemed to fit. For Random Agent Spoofer there wasn't any addon that would change profiles at random intervals, and with the VimFX alternatives there weren't any that quite fit (which is quite important considering how essential that addon is for my web navigation).</p>
|
||||
@ -8,3 +13,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>Therefore, as of now, I'm a Waterfox user. If you use Arch <a href="https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/waterfox-bin" target="_blank" >you can find Waterfox in the AUR</a>.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,6 +1,15 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2018-01-13-ideas-for-improv-ii.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>As of lately I've been delving deeper into what is the psychedelic rock genre, looking for inspirations, and I've come across a subgenre called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoner_rock" target="_blank" >stoner rock</a>. I've mostly been listening to bands such as <a href="https://halfgrammeofsoma.bandcamp.com/" target="_blank" >Half Gramme of Soma</a>, <a href="https://samsarabluesexperiment.bandcamp.com/" target="_blank" >Samsara Blues Experiment</a>, and <a href="https://wetcactus.bandcamp.com/" target="_blank" >Wet Cactus</a>. Because of this I've been playing around a lot with fuzz pedals and effects with it in guitarix, but I feel as though to me the genre of stoner rock is something more improvised that just lets me go with the flow.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>Of course, the biggest issue with improvised albums is precisely that the music is improvised, but I like my direction to more complex music with multiple instruments and tracks, I don't want to just create an improvised guitar peace, so I've been working on recording both myself on the guitar with a drum machine, and hopefully I will eventually be working with synthesizers as well. So hopefully once I get this figured out I will be releasing an <i>Improv II</i> with a sound that's similar to stoner rock, at least with regards to the guitar.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>This should not be interfering with my progress on <i>Summer</i>, in fact I still have a few songs in <i>Summer</i> that I have not completely figured out yet, and therefore may use elements of stoner rock for these songs.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2018-03-01-i-hate-licensing-but-im-glad-its-there.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>Coming from someone who uses the GPL constantly this seems kind of strange or even contradictory, but I do actually dislike licensing. It's part of that self-serving bureaucratic system of intellectual property that simply drives me nuts.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>In general, with a lot of my works, I really couldn't care less about attribution. I see it as something more of a way of showing gratitude, and that often it can be a hassle (hence why it's a symbol of gratitude). However, what I really do care about is people distributing all derivatives under a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free_Software_Definition" target="_blank" >free license</a>, since that is what allows the code or art to grow and mature, as well as being simple courtesy (you benefited from code or art that was made public, you should allow others to benefit from the same freedoms you had). This is why I am also glad that licensing exists (otherwise I wouldn't be able to use the GPL in the first place).</p>
|
||||
@ -6,3 +11,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>Generally, when it comes to knowledge and intellectual property, I care less about who made something and more about what that thing is. This is of course an issue in a world where special privileges may be given to those who invent a certain thing (but those that spend hours working away at it receive no such favour). However, I believe that in an ideal world we would simply share knowledge for the sake of others and expand upon it, keeping it in the public domain.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2018-03-18-hosting-my-own-git.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>I have recently put up my own git hosting instance on the VPS at <a href="#"
|
||||
target="_blank" >git.themusicinnoise.net</a>. Essentially, I'm getting
|
||||
tired that I have repos in 3 different places, so I finally decided to bring
|
||||
@ -19,3 +24,7 @@ them.</p>
|
||||
<p><b>UPDATE 2020/03/19:</b> I've given up on maintaining my own git server.
|
||||
Currently I'm still using GitLab, but I may end up switching to fossil as an
|
||||
alternative to git depending on how things go.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,2 +1,11 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2018-03-18-the-farm.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>Maybe half a year ago a friend and I were talking about owning one's own labour as well as working less, and we were trying to figure out the way to work less and live more while at the same time own more of one's own labour. This is when we came upon the idea of <i>The Farm</i>. Essentially, the idea is to accumulate currency and eliminate debts until we are able to create our own self-sustaining farm, in which we provide as many of our resources as possible, and those we cannot provide ourselves through agriculture or otherwise, we would obtain them through trade in which we obtain the objects of trade through our own labour which we own (instead of working for someone else, we would work for ourselves). This friend is <a href="https://bkeys.org/" target="_blank" >Brigham Keys</a>. Recently he has <a href="https://farm.bkeys.org/" target="_blank" >created a page</a> where we will accumulate knowledge necessary to create this farm. If you are interested then bookmark the page, if you have knowledge to contribute then send an e-mail to <a href="mailto:bkeys@bkeys.org" >Brigham</a> or contact me through the information provided on my <a href="/pages/view/Contact/" >contact page</a>.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,6 +1,15 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2018-06-27-blog-upgrade.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>Recently I've decided to change how my blog works to make it easier to manage. Now I'm using databases to store my posts. Using a database has provided me more versatility than simple PHP files, which is what I used before. This has also drastically diminished the amount of files necessary for my blog as well as certain redundancies that were annoying me.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>With this I've been able to add other stuff, like a post description, as well as not having to choose between categories and a unified RSS feed. This also means that it'll be very easy to add new things, since the DB automates a lot of things for me, and I'd only have to edit a few files instead of all my posts like I would have before.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>Yes, I realize this breaks links from before, but whatever, I do this a lot, and my domain is still the same.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,4 +1,13 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2018-09-01-summer-update.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>Over the course of this summer I've been working a lot on the album 'Summer', primarily on the song "Linda's Open Doors". Currently I believe I've made a final draft of the song. Currently I have three more songs that I can finish before the end of the summer, of which two of them only require for me to record the vocals, and one of them requires vocals and a synthesizer. After this I'll only be missing 4 other songs (so half the album will be ready). I am currently considering releasing in the summer of 2019.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>I have not updated any of the audio files for "Linda's Open Doors" on the webpage, and I won't release the final version of the song on the website until I release the album. However, I will be releasing the final versions of "Where Are You?" and "Late Night Thoughts" before the release of the album.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2018-12-08-getting-more-women-in-technology.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>I've gone over before in my post about the Google memo, on how our current way of encouraging women to take STEM courses is failing. Here, rather than focusing on the Google memo itself, I'd like to suggest how this issue can be fixed.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>Firstly, it's very obvious by the statistics <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding" target="_blank" >that computer science specifically is what's having problems attracting women</a>, despite all the efforts that have been made in the last decade to encourage more women to enter the field of computer science, it seems to either have a negative effect or no effect at all (since statistically speaking, based on those numbers, you could not say it's been working). So what has been our strategy so far in this field? Well, most of it has taken the form of your typical market strategies (i.e. <a href="https://www.womenintechnology.org/scholarships" target="_blank" >subsidizing tuition costs for women taking certain fields</a>, <a href="https://smallbusiness.chron.com/tax-incentives-using-minorityowned-business-30659.html" target="_blank" >giving tax breaks to companies to hire more women</a>, etc.). Fact of the matter is, women still don't like tech, and it seems that less and less of them do since around the mid-80s.</p>
|
||||
@ -12,3 +17,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>Now, taking all this into consideration, it's important to remember that our goal is to bring more women into tech, not discourage men from it. It's fine to create activity groups related to tech that are women specific, since women may require a different motivations than men to join the field. However, supposing there is an instance where men are the minority (say there's a school where only a few boys are interested in tech versus tens of girls) it is important that the women also be inclusive of the men. We're not rivals, we're comrades, and comrades help each other.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2019-01-12-arm-the-future-of-free-software.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>The ARM CPU architecture, although quite old (first introduced in 1985) has only recently started to pick up steam, currently competing in the CPU market with Intel and AMD. Its primary advantage is its low power usage and low up-front cost compared to the other two, and therefore it has a lot of potential for embedded devices. Hence why currently the primary markets where you can find ARM booming are mobile and embedded CPUs. However, the line started to blur with the introduction of the <a href="http://raspberrypi.org/" target="_blank" >Raspberry Pi</a>, where techies and classrooms began to actively develop on the Raspberry Pi's ARM CPU. It continued to expand as potential was seen to use ARM in small netbooks (more commonly referred to as Chromebooks) to achieve similar gains as had been achieved in mobile, and since mobile was already using ARM, there would be little friction in putting a mobile-like OS on a netbook and allowing users to install mobile applications. Perhaps most interestingly, ARM has started to <a href="https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1330339" target="_blank" >enter the realm of supercomputing</a>, which catches the eye considering how ARM's CPU frequency hasn't been very fast up until recently.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>Of course, this is only a history as to why ARM has been booming recently, but why is it important to the free software movement? Simply put, it's because although certain parts of ARM boards may remain proprietary (especially in terms of firmware), there are ARM boards that demonstrate significant gains in freedom compared to the x86 series (Intel or AMD), especially with the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I.MX" target="_blank" >i.MX series</a>, which has an embedded Vivante GPU that runs on freedom respecting drivers (a massive leap forward in terms of free software, especially for those of us used to NVidia cards where you either use the proprietary drivers or conform with a buggy reverse engineered Nouveau driver). There are also many ARM boards that have free (as in freedom) BIOS/UEFI firmware, which should be a relief from having to either flash Libreboot onto your x86 Thinkpad yourself or buy a computer directly from Minifree (and the others) at an outrageously high price. Instead, it will work freely out of the box.</p>
|
||||
@ -8,3 +13,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>All this considered, it's not certain that ARM will lead the way in software freedom, but currently it provides much more freedom in drivers and even firmware than x86 providers do. To make things better, this freedom comes out of the box instead of through reverse engineering and buggy hacks. Also, as another pro, most non-free applications are not ported to ARM, and therefore it gives you a technical excuse not to use them instead of the "muh freedom" argument that (as most of us free software supporters have discovered) annoys our relatives and friends.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2019-02-25-productivity-and-quality-of-life.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>A common core ideal of our modern societies has become productivity, being able to produce more in less time. We value a person being a productive member of society, we prefer technologies that allow us to produce more with less work. Although this is not necessarily a bad ideal, without other more human values to guide it we end up with our current state, where we produce for the sake of producing rather than to make our lives easier.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>Despite the exponential improvement of technology (especially digital) over the past few decades our workload has not gotten thinner, and we find ourselves more stressed, depressed, and even lonely (despite the internet) than ever. The very same technology that we were told would make our lives easier and more leisurely has added more work onto our plates, despite the lack of actual need to produce so much. We keep ourselves constantly connected to our work through our mobile devices, and the time that once was for us to leave work, go home, and spend time with family, friends, and neighbors is now contaminated.</p>
|
||||
@ -8,3 +13,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>I'm not suggesting that we use automation to abolish work entirely, work is what drives us, what gives us purpose, allowing us to come home and feel accomplished. Instead, I believe we should use this automation and increased productivity to produce the same, work less, spend more time at home with our loved ones, and improve our social, psychological, and physical health.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,4 +1,13 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2019-06-13-blog-break-is-over.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>I haven't posted on my blog for quite a while, but there's a reason for this. As you may have noticed, the paths for my website have changed (again), this is because I've changed the underlying framework for my website to make it more manageable (instead of a jury rig). In doing so, I haven't gotten the functionality to post blog articles to work until now.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>Now that everything's finally setup, I have quite a few topics that I'd like to write articles about, so you can look forward to that.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,4 +1,13 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2019-06-13-new-cooking-category.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>I love food, it's one of the most important things in my life. However, not all food is the same, and some are better than others. What's more, food, or more specifically cooking, carries with it a much more important element than just sustenance and pleasuring our taste-buds: it is the expression of our cultures and values throughout thousands of years. The diets that we have developed in older civilizations (e.g. the Mediterranean, the Middle East, India, South-East Asia, etc.) are optimized throughout millennia to adjust to our specific climates, ecosystems, and ways of life. Therefore, it is very painful to watch as we lose we lose our traditional cooking as it becomes professionalized, where instead of having home-cooked meals, we'll eat at a restaurant or buy ready-made foods.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>For posts in my new cooking category I will attempt to collect recipes for meals that have ingredients commonly found in the Mediterranean climate (although perhaps with some exceptions). Have a nice meal!</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2019-06-16-colloquial-measurement-systems.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>In the US there seems to be strong sentiments going both ways on whether or not to use the Universal Metric System (e.g. meters, grams, litres, etc.). It's worth noting that the US Government has already switched to using the Universal Metric System and that the currently existing Imperial System is actually defined by the Universal System. However, I don't think it's appropriate to say that Americans should replace the Imperial System with the Universal System, at least not completely.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>What I suggest is not that the Imperial System become obsolete and be discarded, but rather that its use be limited to colloquial measurements. This is, in fact, how most countries using the Universal System operate, they'll use the Universal Metric System for official measurements, but when it comes to every-day tasks things will be measured using more human measurements.</p>
|
||||
@ -10,3 +15,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>All in all, I think this approach is much more productive than the "either or" mentality that is currently dominating the subject now in the USA. Both should be maintained, but each in contexts where they are most appropriate (please, stop using Imperial Measurements in engineering and science classes).</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,4 +1,13 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2019-06-16-more-settings-less-locale.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>I speak and use American English for all my computing because it's the English I grew up with (plus, it's typically the most complete language for any software package). Therefore, my locale is almost always set to <code>en_US</code>. This is fine for the most part (especially since most of my applications are quite minimal and configurable), but recently I've installed GNOME Calendar to start scheduling my week and found that the week starts on Sunday in GNOME Calendar. Now, although I was born in the USA, I've spent many years in Spain and have become accustomed to the week starting on Monday (which makes sense since we call Saturday and Sunday the "weekend" and not the "weekends"). So I went into the settings (which are very lacking) and did not find any setting to have the week start on Monday instead of Sunday. When I looked this up it turns out GNOME Calendar chooses which day the week starts on based on your locale, so I'd have to either change my locale to <code>en_GB</code> (therefore changing my language settings everywhere on my system to British English, and using the British Pound as the default currency) or put up with the Sunday first week format.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>This is the problem with locales. Although it works for people who use all the settings from one country (typically people who have only lived in one country their entire lives) it sucks for having any kind of complex configuration. In my case, I want my language to be in American English, my dates to be in YYYY/MM/DD format, and my currency to be in Euros. Yet, there is no locale that will configure with all these settings. And this is probably a small part of the list. What are the solutions? Either more customizable locales (which would be a pain since locales have already been pretty standardized) or applications can have more robust settings. Of the two, the easiest to work on right now is the latter.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2019-06-16-pybitmessage-sucks.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>Recently I've removed my Bitmessage address from the contact page of my website, and there's a reason for this. I'd like to start by saying that my complaints here are directed at PyBitmessage (the official Bitmessage client), not Bitmessage itself as a technology.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>If you run any Linux distro that isn't using running software from 5 years ago (*cough* Debian Stable *cough*) and you use PyBitmessage you should already know what I'm going to be ranting about (or if not, you'll learn why your PyBitmessage has had problems working recently). The issue at heart is that <a href="https://github.com/Bitmessage/PyBitmessage/issues/897#start-of-content" target="_blank" >PyBitmessage refuses to update their dependencies</a>. The client uses Python 2 and Qt4. The issue with this is that the support for both these technologies is being dropped or has already been dropped (<a href="https://github.com/python/peps/blob/master/pep-0373.txt" target="_blank" >Python 2.7</a>, Qt4 is mentioned in the article). This means there will be no bug fixes, and (more importantly) <b>no security updates</b>! The stated reason by a PyBitmessage developer is that "Windows XP is still a supported platform for PyBitmessage. However Windows XP (and Vista) is missing from Qt5's Supported Platforms ...".</p>
|
||||
@ -6,3 +11,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>Therefore, until PyBitmessage updates to Qt5 and Python 3, or a new client appears (hopefully one with a CLI), I will not be able to read anything from Bitmessage.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,4 +1,13 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2019-06-17-mnt-reform-adopts-i.mx8.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>For a while now I've been following the progress of the world of ARM computing, especially relating to personal computing. One of the projects I've been following is the <a href="https://mntre.com/reform/" target="_blank" >MNT Reform</a> (which I mentioned in my last post on ARM). The Reform is a modular laptop with open-source casing that can easily be 3D printed for replacement. In its original model it used the i.MX6QP, which had 4 cores with a frequency of 1.2GHz and the Vivante GC3000 GPU, which had up to OpenGL ES 3.1. However, in May for the re-introduction of the Reform they announced <a href="https://www.crowdsupply.com/mnt/reform/updates/re-introducing-reform" target="_blank" >they would be upgrading the chip from the i.MX6 to the i.MX8</a>. This has quite a few benefits to it, most importantly being the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I.MX#i.MX_8_series" target="_blank" >introduction of Vulkan support</a> with i.MX8's integrated GPU (which uses free drivers). This means a lot more power for the ARM laptop, and shows how ARM can push into the realm of personal computing.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>For most people interested in FLOSS computers, the MNT Reform seems to be providing a modern computer with freedom respecting hardware, while avoiding any kind of management engines like with Intel's x86 CPUs. With a GPU supporting Vulkan we can hope to see a laptop that will be good for FLOSS gaming as well as other GPU intensive tasks (such as 3D modeling).</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2019-06-20-vegetarianism.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>Vegetarianism (in its various forms) has become quite popular today, and each vegetarian has adopted this way of life for various reasons (as well as to various degrees of implementation). The reason for becoming a vegetarian is, I believe, important in analyzing and judging the moral sanctity and the effectiveness of becoming a vegetarian. Of the various reasons to become vegetarian, I'll be analyzing three: health, morality, and environment.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>In this post I will use the term vegetarianism to encompass veganism, since it is truly vegetarianism driven to its ultimate conclusion. Not all that I say may relate to a specific kind of vegetarianism, so I ask that you (the reader) interpret my reasoning and see if it applies. I do not have the time (nor the energy) to go over every different kind of vegetarianism, so I must work in general terms.</p>
|
||||
@ -12,3 +17,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>Ultimately, I don't think vegetarianism is the solution to health, moral, or environmental problems. In some cases it's a misunderstanding of nutrition, in others a flawed sense of morality, and for some a noble (but futile) attempt to save humanity. In the end, I think that a much better philosophy to advocate (and much more realistic and with better probability to give good results) is community self-sufficiency. By relying on resources within your area for basic necessities, your community will be more sustainable: it cannot consume more than what nature can provide, plus less transport of produce across the globe and therefore using less gas, etc.; less dangerous to game population: by hunting animals in your area, your community will notice when the population is growing or shrinking and know whether you should be hunting more or less each year; and healthier: the diet will consist of plants and animals from your ecosystem, in proportions that are healthier, and it will promote exercise in order to grow/hunt the food you eat, as well as creating positive social interaction between community members while obtaining these foods.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2019-07-26-the-cancer-which-is-pre-installed-applications.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>Have you ever bought a new phone and seen that half its storage is already used up by apps you never wanted? Have you ever gotten a new computer and seen that the OS itself occupies 20-30GiB because it comes with a bunch of utilities and features you didn't ask for? If you run almost any UNIX, Linux, or BSD distribution your answer is "no". However, you probably know exactly what I'm talking about, and it's one of the reasons you don't use Google, Microsoft, or Apple products. In my case, I personally don't have this problem, but my grandparents do.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>My grandparents have Android and MacOS devices, and the storage on these is always being filled. It's not because of photos and videos, because even though my Grandmother takes many whenever there is a family event she puts them all on Google servers (Google Photos or something). No, they are filled up to the brim with stupid apps that my grandparents will never use. The only apps my grandparents need are WhatsApp, <a href="https://wire.com/en/" target="_blank" >Wire</a>, phone, camera, browser, and the app to get the bus schedule. However, the phones they have come with a bunch of other applications that they will never use, such as: sports app, stock market app, PDF reader, document editor (which is stupid for a phone anyways), stupid mobile games they've never played, etc., and none of these can be uninstalled. All these extra apps on their devices do nothing more than to complicate their user experience, giving them a harder time managing their devices. At the end of the day, they come to me to solve their issues, and there's nothing I can do since I cannot uninstall the apps. I try to factory reset the apps (i.e. remove updates) which helps a little, but then the app store wants to update them.</p>
|
||||
@ -10,3 +15,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>I'm pretty sure that many people have a similar situation with their parents/grandparents, and although I do not have a solution for mobile (if you know of a free software mobile OS with a simple and consistent UI, please go to my contact page and send me an e-mail) there is most definitely a solution for laptops and desktops: Linux. Although the installation isn't always easy (you should do this for them), using Linux can be extremely easy (considering the elderly mostly just use the web browser), especially if you know what desktop environment to install. If they are used to using Microsoft Windows, try using <a href="https://kde.org/" target="_blank" >KDE</a>. Otherwise, look into using DEs with a simple UI as well as a history without major changes, such as: <a href="https://cinnamon-spices.linuxmint.com/" target="_blank" >Cinnamon</a>, <a href="https://mate-desktop.org/" target="_blank" >MATE</a>, or <a href="https://xfce.org/" target="_blank" >Xfce</a>. If you're a GNOME fanboy, sorry, but GNOME doesn't make the cut since they had such a massive change to their UI paradigm going from GNOME 2 to GNOME 3. Also, use a distro known for stability and where you can easily automate updates. I've found that rolling release distros are a real help here, despite the supposed instability you get from running new software.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2019-07-30-recipe:-mojopicón.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>Mojopicón is a Spanish spicy sauce recipe. It goes extremely well with meats, fish, on sandwiches (including burgers and hot dogs), but is mostly used as a dip (really good with french fries). It's extremely simple to make, and quite cheap as well, although it has quite the variety of spices.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>To make mojopicón you will require a blender, preferably a hand-held blender.</p>
|
||||
@ -22,3 +27,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>¡Que aproveche!</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2019-07-31-the-honorable-sacrifice-of-ones-soul.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>Almost every developed civilization has seen killing as unethical, especially when killing someone within one's own tribe. This is for the obvious reason that killing members of your own community harms your community's chances of survival since you have one less member and (in the case of fertile or young community members) harms your community's future (especially if the victim is a woman). However, there have always been times when this rule has been ignored even within the community, primarily as a way of removing undesirables who live only to cause the community harm via the death penalty.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>In the modern era we seem to have a kind of schizophrenia with regards to this issue. On the one hand we have our civil society, which teaches that all human lives are equal and no one has the right to end the life of another. The problem with this idea is that it's based on the notion of individualism: that no matter what an individual does to harm the community, no one has the right to harm said individual (even to prevent future harm to others). On the other hand, we have the military of our societies which dehumanizes the enemy, painting them as pure evil and therefore a justified kill (even though many innocents are often stuck in the cross-fire). This leans more towards authoritarian ideals where all that matters is the word of the commanding officer, and all who oppose are not human.</p>
|
||||
@ -10,3 +15,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>With this we finally have both sacrifice and responsibility in the same basket. The person who commits a crime for the good of others will recognize that sooner or later they must pay for their crimes, but if they believe that the well-being of their loved ones is more important than the price they will have to pay for the crime, then although their actions may be wrong, they are undoubtedly honorable.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2019-08-22-build-libraries-not-apps.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>In the world of UNIX computing, we love having the freedom to interact with a bit of software using a variety of different interfaces, the most common being Graphical User Interface (GUI), Text User Interface (TUI, think of any curses-like interface), and Command-Line Interface (CLI). The idea was always that you could use any of these alternative interfaces (not all of them officially-supported, but all of them worked) and get the same work done, in an environment that the user found most comfortable. Heck, often times you could integrate one application into another that you were more comfortable using. However, since Linux has gone <b>somewhat</b> mainstream, I've found that many newer applications (especially those based on web technologies such as electron) have strayed from this mentality. They first create an application, which has a bloated UI, and then (if they get around to it) they write up a very limited API, almost as an after-thought. This is the case for applications such as Wire and Telegram.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>From what I can speculate, the source of this new mentality is from web, and the non-technical user mentality. On the web, you have one way of viewing a page: whatever the server gives you. There is no alternative interface (using a text-based browser doesn't count, you're just omitting certain information). The same applies to the non-technical user, people who conform with whatever interface they're first given as the only possible interface to that software/network.</p>
|
||||
@ -6,3 +11,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>The only reason not to develop in this manner is if you are purposefully trying to make it harder for people to make alternative interfaces to your software, which doesn't sound very friendly, and certainly isn't in the spirit of free or open-source software.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2019-09-02-why-you-should-learn-esperanto.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto" target="_blank" >Esperanto</a> is an artificial language, created by Dr. Zamenhof in the late 19th century. Its objective: become the <i>lingua franca</i>, a language that would bridge different cultures of the world, an international second language. This is often referred to in Esperanto as the <i>fina venko</i> ("final victory"). Needless to say, Esperanto is far from achieving this goal, and probably never will. The closest we may ever see is Esperanto being implemented as a European regional language, but even this idea is far-fetched.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>So, why would anyone want to learn a language no one speaks? After all, the primary purpose of a language is communication. Well, there are several, some of which you may be surprised by.</p>
|
||||
@ -14,3 +19,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>Ĝis la revido!</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2019-09-18-how-to-split-tech-monopolies.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>Recently we've begun to question the amount of power that large tech
|
||||
companies have over our lives through our data, especially as these
|
||||
companies begin to monopolize the market. Because of this, the solution
|
||||
@ -89,3 +94,7 @@ Then, convince your friends and family to use these technologies and put
|
||||
the social network effect into practice. The more people you convince to
|
||||
use these technologies, the more will join, and the less power large
|
||||
corporations will have over your data.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,2 +1,11 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2019-10-01-recent-website-unavailability.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>I had not noticed this until someone thankfully brought it up to me last Friday, that my website was down. After looking into it, it turns out that the VPS provider was having issues with a server migration they were doing. They seem to have fixed their problem now, so we're back to business-as-usual.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2019-10-25-patches-and-suckless.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>A while back I was searching for a new terminal and browser to use on Gentoo that wouldn't take ages to compile and didn't have a million dependencies. Along the way, I was recommended to take a look at <a href="http://suckless.org/" target="_blank" >Suckless</a>. If you're not familiar with Suckless, it's a collection of software (or a development group, doesn't really matter) that aims to develop based on the traditional UNIX mentality, primarily the slogan "Keep It Simple Stupid" (or KISS). You may be asking, "Well, doesn't GNU already do this?". In certain regards, yes, but in others (especially simplicity), no. Although we definitely have all four freedoms with regards to a program like GNU IceCat or GNOME, in order to modify these programs to suit your needs you'd have to spend days (or maybe even weeks) sifting through source-code until you found the segment that pertains to exactly what you wanted to modify, and then you'd have to figure out how to change it to work how you want it to within their very complex codebase. In the end, most of us just give up and put up with what we've got (this has happened to me on various occasions). But putting up with mediocrity isn't the spirit of free software, the spirit is that it's my software and should work as I want it to. This is why, with Suckless software, their programs aim to be as minimal and tiny as possible, with easy build scripts (just a Makefile, really), and simple code. This is so to such an extent that for many of their programs configuration is done before compiling to avoid parsers (if you've ever programmed a parser, these things can be a lot of code and get complex very quickly), instead you use patches and modifications to a <code>condig.def.h</code> file. One may find this tedious at first, because recompiling a program to change configuration is objectively more tedious than a settings menu, but it's worth noting that you're not always changing your settings. Typically, you setup your environment once, maybe over the course of a week, and then never change it again, or at least not for a few years. So why have a program constantly read a configuration file from your computer that has been the same for the past 3 years? When it's hard coded, there's no need for that.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>So, now that we know what Suckless is, let's get back to the story. Suckless has both, a web-browser, <a href="http://surf.suckless.org/" target="_blank" >Surf</a>, and a terminal, <a href="http://st.suckless.org/" target="_blank" >st</a> (meaning <i>simple terminal</i>). So far, st has been extremely useful and I have been using it on a daily basis with no regret. Surf, on the other hand, is a piece of crap. To be fair, this isn't the fault of the guys at Suckless, and they are <a href="http://suckless.org/project_ideas/" target="_blank" >actually aware</a> of the problem (scroll down to where it says "A sane backend for surf"). Essentially, Surf is an attempt at being a light-weight graphical browser with full support for JavaScript, HTML5, and CSS3. Problem is, in order to have this, they need a web-renderer back-end that will support these, but this task is either impossible or extremely difficult while being light-weight. So for now they're conforming with webkit2 (which takes longer to compile than the Linux kernel or Qt libraries). Therefore, currently what I'm using is <a href="http://w3m.sourceforge.net/" target="_blank" >w3m</a> mostly, and whenever I'm forced to use some fancy web features (which is less often than I originally thought) I use Firefox from the <code>firefox-bin</code> package Gentoo has.</p>
|
||||
@ -6,3 +11,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>Now, because Suckless software is configured and modified primarily through user-made patches, I've had to make a few of my own (especially for dwm). These are specific to my use cases (e.g. I have some that create shortcuts for the media keys to cmus), but they can be modified to suit your own needs, or will show you how to make your own patch. Therefore, I'll be creating a new page for patches soon, which will contain a collection of patches that I use for different programs.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2019-10-31-what-makes-spanish-awesome.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>If you've ever had to learn Spanish for class (especially in the US) you're probably utterly confused as to why there would be anything useful in Spanish that a language like English could adopt. Especially because you are now going over the memories of all those wretched verb conjugations, gendered nouns, adjective conjugations, etc. But I'm not going to be going over those, and instead I'm going to be focusing on two elements of Spanish that are amazing and you probably didn't learn too much about them in your classes.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>First, let's go over the inverse punctuation marks: "¡" and "¿". Have you ever had to read a text out loud in English class, you get to the end of the sentence, and you realize it was supposed to be an exclamation? Or sometimes you've read a sentence that is very ambiguous as to whether it's a statement or a question, so you start pronouncing it as a statement until you reach the end and have to re-read the sentence. This is what inverse punctuation marks are for! Something I love about Spanish is you already know these things about a sentence from the very beginning of it. What makes it even more strange is that, to my knowledge, Spanish is the only language that uses these. Even our neighbors, the Portuguese, don't use them.</p>
|
||||
@ -8,3 +13,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>This last bit applies less to a language like Esperanto, where the tonic syllable is always the penultimate syllable, and every letter has a single pronunciation due to lack of digraphs and other linguistic anomalies. However, I still think Esperanto could benefit from adopting the inverse punctuation marks mentioned first.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2019-12-02-gentoo-and-how-its-useful.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>So, for maybe several months now I've been running Gentoo as my main distribution, keeping a dual-boot with ArchLinux. This was mostly because I wanted to start using more <a href="http://suckless.org/" target="_blank" >suckless</a> software, and for that I needed to use a system where the packages are compiled so that patches can easily be applied. After considering a few options I decided to simply go with Gentoo.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>Now, in case you're not familiar with Gentoo, it's a distribution that uses a package manager called <code>emerge</code> along with a management system called <i>portage</i> that is similar to the <i>ports</i> that some BSD distributions have. Under this system, all packages are compiled (save for some alternative binary packages ending in <code>*-bin</code>), and you have to manually configure and compile software like the Linux kernel. This has come with pros and cons.</p>
|
||||
@ -8,3 +13,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>So overall, I've seen it as a net-positive. Gentoo will teach you a lot more about your system along the way. It's not the best distribution for everything - I still use ArchLinux for video-games and any media applications - but it definitely has its place in the world.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2019-12-09-recipe:-potato-stir-fry.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>Living independently in an apartment, I've learned to make quite a few meals out of cheap ingredients and leftovers. This was a meal that I would make to get through a lot of potatoes that I'd have lying around.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>The tools you'll need are a large pot (to boil the potatoes in), and a wok or large pan.</p>
|
||||
@ -27,3 +32,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>¡Que aproveche!</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2019-12-11-moving-away-from-cmake.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>I've used CMake for quite some time, and I must admit that it's a very comprehensible build system. This is, in fact, what originally made it an attractive option to me, since UNIX Makefiles are somewhat cryptic to read and write. However, as of lately, I've been moving away from CMake, especially for smaller projects that don't have many source files or complex dependencies. There are a few reasons for this.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>To start off, CMake is bloated. I've always known it was bloated, and I know it's not as bloated as other build systems (I'm looking at you GNU Autotools), but I've always just put up with its bloated nature for the convenience of having a readable build script (the <code>CMakeLists.txt</code> file). However, once you get to learn the syntax of UNIX Makefiles, they're much faster and a lot less tedious, which is often what I'm looking for in my smaller projects.</p>
|
||||
@ -8,3 +13,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>There are some areas where I can see CMake being useful, particularly when we want to test dependencies. Hand-writing this into a <code>Makefile</code> would be time consuming and annoying, even if we had the help of <code>pkg-config</code>, while in CMake it's done almost automatically. So I can understand and will use CMake for large projects. But for anything that's small enough or simple enough, I'd rather just use a UNIX Makefile.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,4 +1,13 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2019-12-23-dwm-and-sxhkd.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>So in my last post about Suckless I mentioned something about creating a patches page for my mods to dwm. Well, this is no longer necessary. The reason I made this was because I wanted to be able to have more key-binds to run certain applications, not just interact with the window manager. It was somewhat difficult to implement this in a modular way that each patch added different key-binds (e.g. one patch for cmus commands, another for brightness, etc.). Luckily I found a video where they mentioned a universal key-bind program called <code>sxhkd</code> ("Simple X Hot-Key Daemon"). This automatically made my life infinitely better, since now all I needed was a separate config file for just that one application that would handle all my key-binds.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>I'd like to underline how this is truly an example of the UNIX way of doing things. Instead of concentrating all these tasks into a single application, each application is highly specialized to a specific task, it's small, and it does this task well. In this case, rather than having dwm manage all this, <code>sxhkd</code> is managing my key-binds and only my key-binds. If I wish to change to another window manager, I don't have to worry about my key-binds since they're managed by a completely different application.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2020-01-13-recipe:-pollo-picantito.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>This dish, literally meaning <i>spicy chicken</i>, is not Spanish in origin. In fact, it's probably Latin American. The ingredients are simple and (depending on where you live) cheap.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>Ingredients:</p>
|
||||
@ -26,3 +31,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>When the food is done, you can serve by adding rice to your plate and then adding some sauce on top.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,6 +1,15 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2020-03-11-new-category-and-content.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>Normally, aside from snide remarks here and there, I've refrained from posting content on religion here in my blog. I've had a category on politics before, which I had removed to keep some of my less popular opinions away from my public website. However, upon my conversion to Catholicism I've been questioning whether or not to publish content on religion. It's a topic that I am passionate about, but not one that I would necessarily like to publish due to certain controversial positions that may spell trouble for future employment; being the same issue I have with hosting a politics category. It is not that I am unwilling to defend those positions of the Church, but rather that I'd rather not look for trouble with something as fundamental as my livelihood. Instead, I will do such through other means which are not directly related to my person.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>However, ultimately I have decided to create this category and to write content pertaining to religion for three reasons. First, I am truly passionate about the Faith, and there are many aspects that I find absolutely fascinating. Secondly, there are parts of the Faith that are beautiful and are not necessarily heated issues. Thirdly, I had made certain posts or even code repositories in the past with regards to religion during my years as an Atheist, and I have no intention of removing these to hide my past. They are a reminder of my past, of how far I have come, and of the way many people still view the Faith. Therefore, I find it necessary to balance these with my new-found passion.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>Ave Maria purissima...</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2020-03-17-modesty.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>I'm unsure about most people, but throughout my life when I've heard the word "modesty" being used, it has typically been in reference to vestment and how much skin one is exposing. In other words, an immodest vestment would be one that emphasizes the sexual or indecent attributes of the person (typically a woman) while a modest vestment would be one that respects the sacred nature of these and attempts to pull attention away from these. And although this is most certainly a form of modesty, it is a very limited understanding of it.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>Perhaps the easiest way to think of modesty is as an act of charity. It's about making sure you're not drawing attention away from what is important. During the Holy Mass, the object of everyone's attention should be God and Christ in the Eucharist. To dress or act in a way that distracts people from this would be immodest, as you're drawing attention to yourself. You can also interpret this from a positive lens, where it would be modest to dress or act in such a way that you not only do not draw attention to yourself, but remind people of God by giving example of a reverent and respectful behaviour. Even some things that we may interpret as being modest such as wearing a veil for Holy Mass can be immodest, such as if the veil were to be colorful instead of plain, as this draws attention away from God.</p>
|
||||
@ -14,3 +19,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>Therefore, taking a step back, it would seem that the most <i>unique</i> thing to do is precisely to be modest. While everyone continues in the rat race of trying to stand out, simply following the example of Christ and working on improving our character would seem to be the most outstanding thing we can do. Don't act in the interest of drawing attention to yourself, but act in the interest of being positively modest, and redirecting people's attention to what is truly important. This itself has much more merit and is deserving of the respect of others.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2020-03-18-an-atheist-explains-the-problem-of-evil.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>The problem of evil is perhaps one of the most common arguments against the existence of God, and it holds much weight especially for those who have experienced some kind of hardship in their life. How can an Omnibenevolent God permit evil to exist? The faithful will typically retort with arguments of how God gave us free will, and how we live in a fallen world. These arguments are valid, but they don't get to the heart of the dilemma, which is the other person's inability to see how God can create more good from the evils he permits to exist.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>As pointed out in paragraph 311 of the <i>Catechism of the Catholic Church</i>:</p>
|
||||
@ -18,3 +23,7 @@
|
||||
|
||||
<p>May it be according to God's will, and God bless you.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2020-03-25-the-lesson-we-could-learn-but-wont.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>With the current spread of the COVID-19 virus, we're currently seeing
|
||||
the consequences of our highly interconnected global society. What
|
||||
started out as a small outbreak in a province of China became a global
|
||||
@ -58,3 +63,7 @@ but no attempt to truly solve the problem at hand.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
<p>My suggestion: leave the cities.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2020-04-08-tradition.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>In recent times it would seem that, led by the principles of the
|
||||
Enlightenment, society has decided mostly to leave behind Tradition as a
|
||||
means of obtaining Truth. With the tools of reason and empirical
|
||||
@ -72,3 +77,7 @@ regard it is much wiser to trust in the collective experience of our
|
||||
ancestors over tens of thousands of years that we have had human
|
||||
civilization.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2020-04-17-arm-boards-and-user-control.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>In the past I've mentioned both ARM and even the ARM-based laptop
|
||||
currently in development, the MNT Reform. Since they do not use any kind
|
||||
of microcode for system instructions, it is a very appealing alternative
|
||||
@ -43,3 +48,7 @@ href="http://macchiatobin.net/" target="_blank" >Marvell
|
||||
MACCHIATObin</a>. It will be exciting to see what ARM has in store for
|
||||
us and the free software movement.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2020-04-27-technological-slave-mentality.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>In light of the COVID-19 crisis and the rising trend of digital
|
||||
technological solutions to our social confinement efforts, I thought I
|
||||
would take the opportunity to go over the issue of what I call
|
||||
@ -81,3 +86,7 @@ extraordinary measures should remain extraordinary, and the moment we
|
||||
return to ordinary circumstances, ordinary measures should be
|
||||
restored.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'config.php';
|
||||
require '2020-05-08-the-advantages-of-e-mail.cfg.php';
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-header.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
<p>I'm not sure if I've touched upon this subject before, but e-mail is
|
||||
perhaps my favorite means of communication, especially for in-depth
|
||||
discussions. Despite the surge in modern instant-messaging, and the
|
||||
@ -69,3 +74,7 @@ changes. With e-mail I use the
|
||||
and that never changes. They may add support for some new things, but
|
||||
overall it's always the same.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<?php
|
||||
require 'templates/blog-footer.php';
|
||||
?>
|
||||
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Reference in New Issue
Block a user