Bobby Moss @trechnex@mastodon.sdf.org

I love this rebuttal to the “10x engineer” trope.

The amusing part is it can basically be summarised as “don’t be a sociopath” 😂

https://1x.engineer/

1. Open Notepad
2. Type .LOG
3. Save and close the file
4. Now open it again

You should see Notepad automatically add a timestamp each time you open the file.

It's a classic thing that's existed since early versions of Windows, and I just got reminded about it on birdsite and felt very nostalgic 😅

In other news, I now have a new personal blog! It's here: https://trechnex.github.io/

My previous blog link still works for now though: http://trechnex.freeshell.org/

Basically I'm shifting from handwritten content on the SDF public access UNIX server to a static Hugo site served from Github Pages.

It's a bit less nerdy, but it does look more modern and is a darnsight easier to maintain.

I highly recommend the "Don't Break Debian" wiki page, because much of its advice can be applied to other Linux distros you might use on your home workstations.

https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian

Hmm... I'm *very* tentatively back on the fediverse.

The month-long break has done me some good, but I am taking a look around at different servers I might join.

Today's terrible discovery during a hair cut is that I have grey hairs. And... there's more than few of them 😱

I turn 30 next April, so I hope in coming years that makes me look "distinguished" rather than "seasoned" 😂

The thing that surprises me is I haven't gone bald yet. I have a receding hairline at the front, so one would assume it could happen. 🤔

Here's a blast from the past! I re-uploaded an edited version of a response blog post I wrote in 2018 called "My Journey in Code".

https://trechnex.github.io/posts/my-journey-in-code/

TIL that Star Trek Discovery on Netflix has Klingon subtitles.

A 10,000 acre fire started by a gender reveal party is such a 2020 problem!

Stay safe Californians.

If it's any consolation though Americans, we had boat-based shenanigans during the Brexit referendum too. (Only with less sinking)

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nigel-farage-and-sir-bob-geldof-clash-over-brexit-flotilla-battle-thames-a7083106.html

I don't know who made this image, but they're my new hero 😂

(Spotted on birdsite under the hashtag "dumbkirk", and likely made in response to MAGA conspiracies about all the boats sinking at once)

I managed 8 hours’ sleep for the first time in weeks! 🥳

(It was 7pm to 3am, but still counts! 😅)

If you want to know how my public holiday (UK) went yesterday, I discovered it would take 18 hours to download Microsoft Flight Simulator, so I gave up 😂

Instead I split the day between playing Stellaris and binge watching “Gotham” on Netflix.

After a week of vacation time, it’s back to reality this morning. Thank God I’m a remote worker, and have been since before the pandemic.

How our technology is constructed and the way we use it is a product of IRL American society & the countries that emulate it.

If you want to break the cycle, you have to listen to people you wouldn't normally and examine the wider sociological and political ramifications of what you're creating.

You also need to be aware that you cannot fix complex societal problems with some cleverly-written computer code you wrote on your laptop. Activism requires a *lot* more than that.

TIL that Scandanavian fokelore includes a ship made from human fingernails, and a magic horse that drowns people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naglfar

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neck_(water_spirit)#In_horse_form

tbh the wildest thing I’ve learned about the tech industry since I joined the fediverse in 2017 is the “open secret” that high flyers in Silicon Valley microdose LSD to get through the work day.

If there is any truth to that rumour, it would actually explain quite a lot! 😂

(It’s hard to confirm/deny because it has become an internet meme. Media outlets also rarely name their sources & there’s few academic studies because such drugs are illegal)

It's 3:30am and I'm listening to The Killers' new album "Imploding the Mirage".

It's not bad. I recommend it 👍

Apparently the governor of Tennessee just made some kinds of protest a felony, and if you get a felony in his state you lose the right to vote.

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/513201-tennessee-governor-signs-bill-increasing-punishments-for-certain

This makes me think as an outsider looking in that maybe America isn't "the land of the free"

As an indication of just how far behind I am with playing "new" PC games, I've only just started playing The Outer Worlds.

I sense I'm going to be distracted by Microsoft Flight Simulator though once Glimpse 0.2.0 is finally done.

That rant about pacman was brought to you by "Bob trying to build Glimpse on Windows with MSYS2"

I guess that'll teach me for giving Arch a wide berth for the well over a decade I've been doing Linux stuff for 😂

pacman -Su
"Ah, so you want to upgrade the entire system? No updates!"

pacman -Syu
"There's a few packages that need updating, including pacman!"

pacman -Su
"I MUST UPGRADE ALL THE THINGS NOW!"

I'm sure there's some logic behind this, but I've yet to discover it 🤷‍♂️

For contrast, these commands do literally the same thing on other distros, and with less confusion over whether you have updates or not:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

sudo dnf update

Caught red handed! They should count their blessings that I never grew out of my “Gastropods are cool” phase as a kid, and have no intention of killing them with pellets!

‪In case anyone else tries to install Ubuntu 20.04 LTS onto modern Apple hardware and runs into weird problems with the grub install step, here’s the solution that worked for me!‬

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1256686/cannot-install-ubuntu-20-04-on-mac-mini-2020

While I understand the emotion behind FLOSS people yelling “USE FIREFOX TO SAVE THE WEB” to their own followers, that probably isn’t going to work.

The most effective thing you can do is convince web developer friends to test new websites in browsers that are not Google Chrome.