Nicholas Toone

Posts!

Here there be my blog posts,

  • Project: Friction – Update 2. Backup And Bullshit.

    Data backup has been, well, something. While working on the NAS, I’ve been figuring out how much data we have to backup and where to put it. It was in the middle of this where I found out that the freezing I’ve been experiencing on my PC was most likely due to one of two things:

    • A whacked out file somewhere in the large mess of directories and files or
    • the backup drive I was trying to copy file over to/from

    I zeroed in on the drive and started using Konsole to copy but holy hell, even rsync froze the computer. Jesus, wtf?

    I did some research and found that freezing while copying large amounts of files can be attributed to a bad disk – and for some reason I’d ignored the fact that this large USB backup drive is well over ten years old. Guess I needed to check it for errors and, well, smartctl wouldn’t pick up anything about this old drive at all, so eeeek. At this point I don’t even know how it was managing to spin its platters. All I knew was Linux wanted all but nothing to do with it.

    I plugged the damn thing into the old Windows 10 laptop we have that’s doing nothing but being an interim Plex server (until I get a NAS up and running, which is a story on its own) to see if I could find out anything and Windows complained that “This disk has errors, please fix”. I let it do its thing and everything worked out enough for me to move data off that old drive onto the SSD on the laptop – which is now being copied over to the secondary drive on my desktop (by way of the temporary TrueNAS Core machine). Convoluted? Sure. But, as they say, it is what it is for now.

    Speaking of Windows. The aforementioned laptop is an old Dell, i5 that I put a new SSD drive in. It runs Windows 10 which has been fine. Yesterday I turned it on and it took its time updating, like Windows does, and it eventually landed here:

    What the absolute shit is this? A few more services, eh? I really, really dislike this “oh! they must have all the things connected all the time!” mindset.

    I clicked Remind me in 3 days (because of course they won’t make a button that’s labeled: “No, never. Absolutely not ever in a million years do I want to connect to more of your services, even if it’s just a few”. That would take up the whole bottom of that screen and it would look yukky design wise) and it put me at the login screen. I logged in…

    .. And there was a Copilot button next the the Start menu.

    I just can’t with this AI shit. At least I could uninstall it. No matter. Once all the file copying and NAS setup is done, this old laptop is going to be introduced to Linux.

    Goddamned Phone

    GrapheneOS update: I got one of my work apps sending notifications. I really wish I could move to this full time, but I just can’t at the moment.

  • Project: Friction

    Following up on my last post, I’ve come up with a plan to untangle myself and Ms. Tucker as much as we can from Microsoft, Apple, and Google.

    And, because I’m oh, so very edgy, I’ve named whole thing Project: Friction. Here’s what I’m tackling:

    Microsoft 365

    I’m not going to lie, I kind of like MS 365. Scratch that, I like OneDrive which is one of the better of the Big Tech cloud storage options that is pretty seamless across Windows, macOS, and even Linux by way of InSync. However, like everything else Big Tech, they done gone and fucked it up. Standalone OneDrive accounts are gone. You can now only get a “basic” plan that includes 100GB of storage, the web based apps, ad free Outlook (seriously) and some other nonsense. If you want more space, then you need to sign up for one of their personal or family accounts that has 1TB of space (ok, cool) and a bunch of shit you may never use (it will install all of their apps on your computer, most of which you’ll probably never use). Oh, and they just increased the prices because they’re forcing stupid Copilot on everyone.

    Essentially, fuck all that. Reminds me of this from last year:

    Same mood now as then: fuck you and your growth at all costs.

    I’m taking the following approach with Microsoft:

    Cloud/OneDrive: A new provider that’s (a) not based in the US and (b) supports Windows, Linux, and macOS. I think we’ve settled on pCloud. I’ve been playing around with the service on a basic month to month plan for about a week now and, so far, it’s pretty amazing. Aft first it was not as straightforward as OneDrive but that was to be expected. It is a wee bit of a finicky setup on Linux but that was figured out (and I’m keeping this link handy). I have everything backed up and syncing and it’s humming along doing it’s thing. Remember: Embrace Friction. Bonus points to pCloud for offering a lifetime option; pay once and it’s yours.

    At the same time I’m working on configuring a local NAS. While I love the idea of syncing files to the could, let’s face it, we all should have local backups on hand just in case. I have an old, second hand mini computer and will be testing out TrueNAS CORE. This will be a challenge for sure

    Apps: This one’s easy: LibreOffice. I mean, come on. It all does the same shit as Microsoft’s apps and, let’s face it, the Microsoft stuff has never really been great. Microsoft is just a monopoly and they tell us they’re the best while duct taping more shit (sorry, “features”) onto their apps. Now we have to deal with Copilot and they can just fuck right off with that.

    Operating Systems

    At this point in the game, I’m back to Linux being my daily driver. I may setup a dual boot of Windows for the sole reason of playing games1, but we’ll see. Now that I’ve made a full cloud backup with pCloud, I’ve completely flattened my PC and started fresh with just Ubuntu Studio. I’m taking my time configuring everything to my tastes.

    Note that I’m not going to force anyone else in the house to take the Linux path but, going forward, I will be looking at setting Windows up without an MS Account.

    Goddamn Phones

    This one is the most difficult. Your choices are Apple/iOS, or some flavour of Android be it Google or Samsung or whoever. Which means you need to have an Apple ID or a Google account (or a Samsung login or whatever) in order to use the phones in any real capacity.

    Then we tripped across GrapheneOS.

    A hardened version of Android with all of the Google slop stripped out? And the Google stuff you do install has to live in a sandbox where YOU control its permissions?

    Fucking sign me up.

    So here we go…

    After four days my oh so brief review is this: GrapheneOS is excellent except for two things:

    1. The handful of apps I need for my job don’t work 100%.
    2. I can’t get RCS chats working.

    The apps I require for work are only half functional. Messages do come into them, but notifications are broken; they simply just don’t alert me. Since part of my job is an OnCall sift every few weeks I need to ensure that I get notifications. I’ll have to stick to the stock Google OS until I can get this figured out. If I can’t get these apps sending notifications at all, then GrapheneOS will have wait.

    RCS is another matter. Do I really need it? No? It is nice, but it’s not a deal breaker. I can make due with SMS and I’m working to find out who on my contacts list uses Signal. I know that RCS in the Google Messages app is implemented via Google and I suspect that I can’t get it working because my Google account is not tied to the GrapheneOS phone.

    On the other hand, Ms. Tucker has an iPhone 8 that is giving up the ghost and she’s not sure that she wants to give any more money to Apple. So the plan may be to slowly get her used to a Pixel 7 running GrapheneOS with the limited Play services so she can access the apps she needs and see how that goes.

    GrapheneOS is amazing even if it reminded me how much shit actually runs on a phone all in the sake of “convenience”. Thanks to playing around with GrapheneOS, I’ve managed to clean up a pile of apps from my stock phone.

    None of this is easy, but it’s not meant to be. And I’m back to enjoying what I enjoyed about Linux those couple of years ago: learning new things. Yet it was so easy back then to just give up at the slightest hint of inconvenience and take the stupid, familiar route. Hell, it’s easy to do that now.

    At the end of the day, stupid, familiar routes are boring. And I just don’t want to fall back on that anymore.

    1: I am attempting to get my games running under Linux (Steam/Proton/Lutris) again.

  • Embracing Friction

    It took me the better part of a week to get this post going. I kept having to stop, collect my thoughts, and get back to it. I haven’t been worked up about something like this in a while.

    In the middle of figuring out how I wanted to frame this piece, I wrote a quick Linux Journal entry detailing how I’d managed to fix some issues that had been bugging me. When I first started that journal entry, I was on the verge of becoming frustrated which, of course, summoned that little voice in the back of my head that whispers: “Just give up. Who cares if you need to use a Microsoft account and Windows? It’s just so much easier!”

    I paused.

    The gist of is is this:

    I really don’t think the majority of people really understand just how much of our lives we’ve slowly, but surely surrendered to Big Tech and I also don’t think we realize just how complacent we’ve become to it all.

    We live our lives almost entirely on devices that dictate how we do, well, most everything, and the main selling point that all of these tech companies hit on is Ease Of Use and Convenience.

    In short, they’re telling you that they’re removing the friction from your life.

    While my family has discussed friction in the past as it pertains to life in general, the best analogy is taking a vacation. The idea of paying more for a vacation may look like the perceived addition of things, but it’s actually the removal of one single thing: friction.

    Yes, the resort/cruise brochure may tell you that the bed is bigger, the beach/pool is private, the drinks are premium, and the food is five star, but they also lean heavily on “we do everything for you”. They tell you you’ll have a butler and invite you to sit back, relax, and not worry about anything. In the back of your mind you’re really thinking “I don’t have to deal with any of the normal bullshit like standing in line for half an hour at the buffet or not being able to find chair at the beach.” At its core, this is a lack of friction.

    And remember: If friction is removed, it is always removed at a cost.

    Last year we decided to try one of these all inclusive places that advertises Complete Lack Of Friction®™. We decided to pay extra for what they called The Diamond Club. We wanted to sit back, relax, and not worry about anything. We took them at their word.

    Of course, this vacation turned out to be one of the most frustrating, friction filled experiences we have ever gone through; The whole food experience sucked, the booze experience sucked, the “private” the beach area was a crowded joke and the “luxury” amenities were sub par at best. 1

    Even though we had shelled out for the top of the line package the resort offered, at every turn we were told that if we paid just a little more for this and a little more for that, then a little more friction would be removed. The entire week was nothing more than dealing with microstransactions.

    The costs to get a better seat at the beach was not only monetary transaction, but a sense that we’d been swindled. We did end up paying some extra for a beach cabana just so we could salvage some sort of good memory that week. But deep down we were angry simply because we had to pay for something that should have been included in The Diamond Club experience we were promised.

    Think about that, then think about the phone in your hand or the computer you’re looking at.

    Most modern technology is sold to us on the idea of less friction. Everything is easy. Everything is more convenient. And that’s not really true, is it?

    While everyone seems to understand, at least on a base level, what the costs are for all the FREE and EASY platforms we use are (we are the product), what gets us is that these costs seem to change every time we get settled into whatever cost we just accepted last time around.

    • Our data scraped and sold to the highest bidder again and again.
    • Algorithms tweaked to make us stay on the platform and and become angrier and angrier.
    • Apple sells, supremely overpriced hardware that locks you into an ecosystem that so rife with greed it has become little more than a way to push shitty apps on you so Apple can get their cut of each and every microtransaction.
    • Microsoft will push out a marginally better performing version of Windows that tracks you and forces ads on you. Now the company is shovelling half assed AI garbage into its products.
    • Google: We know it’s all about Ads and Tracking and Slop, oh my!

    The shitty part is that even after we pay these costs, even after all the promises of Ease Of Use and Convenience, the tech that is foisted on us is so ridiculously user hostile it’s almost laughable. These companies keep shovelling more shit at us in the form of “new features” which may appease a small handful of people but will achieve little more than frustration for the rest. And we’re told that if we pay just a little more with a subscription, or a little bit more via an in app microtransaction, then a little more of the friction will be removed.

    Growth at all costs capitalism got us where we are today. All of these companies need to make more than they did last quarter or last year. The shit we’re dealing with now is born from the growth mindset coupled with a complete lack of new, real ideas.2

    I’m waking up to the idea that little bit of friction goes a long way.

    If these products we are being forced to use at the cost of our data and privacy are so fucking horrible to use, even after we decide to pay fees on a good number of them, then why not just stop paying the heavy costs and instead allow the friction? Why can’t we just step outside of our comfort zones and investigate what technology exists besides these monopolies offer (and market to us that they’re our only hope)?

    I think I’ll be spending the next few months working, I mean really working to untangle myself from these fucking tech behemoths. I know it’s not going to be easy. It’s going to take some time and patience. We need to remember that not everything has to be easy. That’s part of the problem today. We have all conditioned to expect that everything needs be so easy 100% of the time.

    Nothing is perfect and there will be some steep learning curves a ton of friction but, goddammit, isn’t that what it’s all supposed to be about? Where we’re at right now and, more frighteningly, where we’re headed is all just too much.

    I’m choosing to embrace friction.

    1: We took the place up on their spa experience which turned out to be only marginally worse than soaking in the tub at home.

    2: I’m pretty sure Netflix raised their subscription prices recently because they don’t have anything new (especially AI related) to add to the product coupled with the fact that there are a finite amount of people on the planet with access to jobs and credit cards. I can picture a meeting in my head: “How can we show growth?” … “Why don’t we just just jack up the subscription prices?” … “I LOVE IT!”

  • Lies. All Lies.

    Whoa, hold up there. Just hold up. There is NO way this is a photo of an actual Support rep. That man is smiling ffs, SMILING.

  • Money, Meet Mouth

    I’ve spent the past few posts ranting about the state of big tech and how it is just getting worse and found myself feeling a little off.

    I’ve been going on and on about moving away from big tech and here I am using Windows. While I really like Windows 11, there is something wrong with having to spend time disabling tracking and ads in a fucking operating system. I recently reinstalled Windows 10 on an old laptop and the amount of absolute crap you have to opt out of/disable/uninstall is just stupid.

    So I decided to give Linux a try once again. Fedora 41 (Jam) baby!

    Took a bit of work at the start. I don’t know what I did with my first install, but after messing around in the console trying to get software installed for my keyboard and mouse, I rebooted to an 800×600 desktop with no other hardware working properly: no internet, no sound and… whatever. I’d not installed anything at that point so I reinstalled and here we are.

    Issues and Thoughts So Far…
        • Reaper won’t connect to my Scarlett 2i2. Got this somewhat fixed; the Scarlett is connecting now. It’s a GUI issue in Reaper. When you choose ALSA, you have to choose the device. If you click on the drop down, you get a blank list. This led me to beleive that the hardware was not detected. Turns out that you have to click exactly on the drop down arrows to see your device choices (e_e) I still need to test at some point as I don’t see the two separate inputs when I select a track input.
        • Installing and getting Scrivener 1 to run on Linux was a pain in the ass. I tried setting it up in Bottles and just could not get my license to activate no matter what I tried. I finally got it running in Lutris and so far so good even if the font rendering isn’t as crisp as it is in Windows. It did crash a couple of times at the beginning, but I messed with it and now have it working. I am pleased that I can access the work saved from Windows via my OneDrive folders (thank you sooo much Insync!).
        • Razer. Oh Razer. I love your hardware. Your DeathAdder mice are the best I’ve used when it comes to ergonomics and feel. And this Ornata TKL I have is is simply fantastic. Your software though? Garbage. Just garbage. For Linux there is OpenRazer. Means I can get my hardware working in Linux, yay! Everything is just as janky in Linux as it is in Windows, boo! Note that this is a not a bitch about Linux, or the people who work on OpenRazer. This is a bitch about Razer. I really don’t know why these companies can’t make decent software for their devices 2.

    And… I think that’s it? For now anyway. I mean, I just can’t figure out how to customize parts of the interface; there have been some changes in KDE Plasma in the past year and a half it seems, but that’s just me nitpicking. Besides, I’m goddamn playing The Witcher 3.

    On Linux.

    And it’s absolutely glorious 3.

    Look, I could go on about this shit forever and I know that there are those of you out there rolling their eyes thinking “oh, here he goes again!”. I also know that me blathering on about this shit doesn’t really amount to anything, but so what? I’m allowed to change my mind when I want just like everyone else is allowed to change their minds if they want. And like you all out there, I have to navigate the systems in which we live. I’m just not going to play ball one hundred percent of the time. I want to try and live by what I feel is right and blindly supporting Big Tech is not something I feel comfortable doing so I’m going to do my best to not support them, I know that there are times that I’ll have to use their services. I’ll just have to be conscious of my decisions.

    Will this Linux thing work this time around? I don’t know. I really don’t know. But I do know that I didn’t feel right not even trying.

    1: I own and use Scrivener for writing non blog stuff. After spending nearly six months trying out different writing software, Scrivener was the one that had the features I need and would use. Unfortunately, it’s Windows and Mac only.

    2: I mean, come on. I’m a simple man. I just want my lighting set to static white. That’s it. I don’t care about game modes or intelligent functions or breathing fire waterfalls. Just static white. Yet this never sticks. And if I bounce back to Windows for a moment holy crap, the lighting in both the mouse and the keyboard starts having seizures. The shit thing is that the software for all other peripheral companies is just as bad, if not worse. I’ve had to deal with Logitech before and Razer is downright revolutionary in comparison.

    3: For this I give a semi-cautious shout out to Valve and their Proton compatibility layer. Yes, I know Proton exists so they can sell Steam Decks and yes, there are things wrong with Steam,  but no other game group has, that I can see, has allowed for something like Proton. Sure, there is Lutris (which I have installed for Scrivener, but yet to try with games), but the fact that Steam not only built this compatibility layer but decided to include it in a Linux desktop version of Steam is actually pretty amazing and, so far, the experience has been seamless.

    Is Valve one of the bad guys? Sure, they are. I mean, they are the biggest digital game storefront there is so they do throw their weight around. Yes, yes, I have a GOG account, have bought games from them, and support their “you own the game” ideals, but unless Lutris really comes through then GOG is pretty much Windows only, and even if the GOG platform means well, they still offer and support games from the big studios so where do I stop?  I’m not here to go down every rabbit hole. I’m here to do the best that I can.

  • I’ll Always Be Right Here

    Most all technology companies start with the very best of intentions. They want to fix something that they see as broken. So they launch their product sow, their goodwill, and start to chip away at fixing the thing they saw as broken. They get investor cash, and then some more investor cash. They start to ramp up a user base of people who also believe that the thing was broken and is now being fixed for the better. Maybe there’s no ads. Maybe there are ads, but they’re not intrusive. Maybe there are fees, but they’re reasonable for what you’re getting out of this new thing that has totally fixed the old thing.

    Then the company either goes public or get bought out (or both). Things are ok for a little while. The company has fixed the thing and are turning a tidy profit, are well liked, and held up as an example of what kind of good tech can do. Then they have to start bending to investor pressure to make more money! More! No, not good enough, even more! Being profitable isn’t good enough anymore. They have to grow. And keep growing. Profits are now judged against last years profits. If they do even a penny less, then the company is seen as failing. So the company start to change. They start to remove useful features and add confusing features, especially cutting edge, buzzword features that other companies are using even if these features have nothing to do with the original something that was fixed.

    The founder decides to leave having seen his vision through to this point and wants to spend more time being a normal, regular person just like you and me by, sailing around the world with his family. On his yacht. A new leader comes in, promises to increase shareholder value. There is a round of layoffs, mostly from the customer facing groups like support and service. Fees are raised and more fees are added and they start adopting business models they once said they were against. They start copying features from other companies (who were also fixing things). Maybe they buy another company so they don’t have to actually code a new feature; they’ll just shoehorn it right on in there after another round of layoffs because it’s more cost effective to hire offshore than it is local. Everything becomes third party, ad infested slop barricaded behind some kind of subscription based paywall. Either that or there is an offer of a free login, the only cost being that your contact info and whatever data you provide is then harvested and sold to the highest bidder. There is a data leak and a scandal of some sort thrown in for good measure.

    Users start to complain. Users start leaving. Just a few at first. But the new CEO can’t stop saying stupid things and the new algorithm does nothing more than serve up hot garbage so more users leave taking their money and precious data to a new platform that has promised to fix what was broken.

    The company is then sold to a firm like Blackstone who takes them private, fires three quarters of the employees so they can “realign with the original vision of the founders”, run up huge debts at the companies expense and run the whole thing into the ground. While the company may still exist, its now a shadow of its former self and little more than a footnote in everyone’s mind.

    Now, that’s all overly dramatic but it kinda fits, doesn’t it? All you have to do is look around and see that there is a lot of shady shit going on. Right now, there are a good number of companies that are shitting the bed in one way or another bit are just too fucking big to budge (just yet anyway), but there are a more than a few mid-tier services that have become hostile to their user base like Etsy and Airbnb. You have DistroKid being assholes. Medium is little more than a virility promoter, among other things, that’s buried behind a “sign up” page. Substack is turning into a racist shithole.

    For me a glaring example of all of this is DeviantArt. While I haven’t paid attention to DA in a few years, I do remember it fondly as a bastion of creativity. I had an account back in the day (think like 2001-2003) and loved sharing art and perusing other people’s work. DA crossed my mind the other day so I looked it up. Now it’s owned by Wix.com and is a fucking AI Slop generating hellhole, while working to hide anything that is said against them:


    and promoting whatever the rancid fuck this is:

    I mean yes, of course there were always issues with DeviantArt and copyright back in the day, but this? An AI Generator? Wow. I’m not even going to explain why an AI Generator on DeviantArt is slimy. As the kids say, if you know, you know.

    In short, nearly everywhere I turn on the Internet, things suck at a level of hostile suck I never believed was possible.

    I’d like to think that people are starting to wise up to the bullshit these companies are forcing us to eat, but I’m not so sure.  I mean, most of the solutions to shit companies are new copycat companies pop up promising that they’re better. And maybe they are … for now. Give it time, those companies will either turn into their own version of high level suck, or they’ll die out because they’re not making money.

    Shit's Broke, Yo.

    Look, I don’t have solutions. I’m not that smart. While I feel that the “social” platforms we’re using now are in the beginning stages of a death throw, I honestly can’t envision what the next big thing will be. I do know that unless we take a good hard, honest look at what the current issues are, the forthcoming Next Big Thing will just be more of the same which is “Wow! This is neat. It has the potential to change the world. Now how can we monetize the hell out of it?”

    But you know one thing that’s still around? Blogs. There are people out there who are writing in their blogs. Not some weird ass writing platform created by some weird ass company, but like a simple WordPress install running on a small server somewhere. Maybe they’re making a little money by sending out a monthly newsletter, or maybe they’re not. Maybe they’re just writing for the sake of it. What they’re not doing is fighting for whatever scraps an algorithm is handing out. They’re not beholden to overly onerous license agreements. They’re not hustling every second of the day. Sure the hosting provider is probably trying to sell them dumb features (the hosting company I’m with constantly wants me to upgrade my plan), but you don’t have to buy SEO packages or make use of the AI Website Generator. Hell, you don’t even have to use WordPress if you don’t want to. What I think a lot of people forget (or just don’t know) is that the Internet is, at its very base, nothing more than text files running on computers that you can connect to. Yes, we give these files fancy names like HTML, PHP, JavaScript, etc. But they’re really all just shit people have typed into Notepad. And HTML isn’t even difficult. Just write something up in a plain, old HTML file, name it index.html and stick it on the web somewhere 1.

    Like I said, I don’t know where any of this is going and I don’t have answers. But this doesn’t mean I have to play along. I do know that I have my own little corner of the web, so here I’ll stay. I don’t want to be beholden to any platform that seeks only to enrich itself at the expense of those that use it.  And if the time ever comes that WordPress decides to one hundred percent shit the bed then I’ll code a basic website using Notepad like I learned how to do twenty five years ago. No database. No scripting. Just plain, old HTML 2.

     

    1: Free hosting exists and I’m currently investigating how good these are, especially the ad-free ones. While I’m lucky enough to be able to enjoy a paid service (albeit a very minimal service), I want to know what the free alternatives look like.

    2: I fucking love the fact that this shit is still out there and, for the most part, still completely functional.

  • Rebellion in Retrospect

    “I will always be like this.”

    I remember saying this to my folks when I was about 16. Hair down to my ass, dressed in a patch and stud covered jean vest over a leather jacket, a Metallica shirt, torn bluejeans, white basketball hightops; the 80s Thrash Metal Uniform.

    This was me. This was, for all intents and purposes, my rebellion. I was angry. Had that chip on my shoulder. No on understood me, my art, or my music. I believed that, right down to the very core of my being, I was my own person and no one could tell me what to do. The system, The Man, wouldn’t get its hooks into me.

    What I didn’t realize when I was young was that our little rebellions are prepackaged.

    The bands that I listened to when I was a teenager screamed “think for yourself!” and we all screamed back: “Fuck yeah! I think for myself!” as we handed over fist fulls of money for albums, and t-shirts, buttons, and patches. All so we could advertise to the stiffs of the world that we were the same as all the other people who thought for themselves.

    Like Rock n’ Roll in the fifties, the hippies in the sixties, punks in the seventies, Metal in the eighties, Grunge in the nineties… eventually the rebellion is analyzed, figured out, homogenized, put on an assembly line, mass produced, wrapped in shiny packages, marketed as unique, and sold to the greater masses.

    This is what the moral panic groups never understood: There is no Satan. There is only capitalism.

    Clarity in life is realizing that those you considered to be heroes all signed on the line and were then sold to you and the marketing was soooo very good that you didn’t see it coming until it was too late; Che’s face on your t-shirt.

    You can still rebel. You can delete your social media and not shop for dropshipped garbage from Temu or Shein (or Amazon). You can install ad blockers and download media from questionable locations on the internet. You can rebel by not paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars watch a band who once told you to think for yourself play a two hour nostalgia set list because they know their fans won’t be happy unless they hear songs primarily off the first three or four albums.

    Or you can go right ahead and do all of those things. You can do whatever you want. Don’t forget, you’re supposed to think for yourself.

  • Your One, Short Life Remix Update

    Remix is complete!

    I’ve updated the files here and on Bandcamp with the remix.

    I’ve put the original over here for posterity.

  • 2024 Books

    For 2024, I’ve decided to forego the x/10 thing.

    The Sentimentalists – Johanna Skibsrud
    Part of the 2023 Christmas Book Advent Calendar 1. Had never heard of the author. The blurb on the back hinted that it has a Vietnam War backstory, which I’m a sucker for, so I decided to give it a go. Turns out that this book is a quite lovely, sad, slightly plodding slice of life. It kept me engaged right on through. Wonderfully written, it’s the type of book that you reread sentences simply because they’re beautiful.

    It – Stephen King
    I first read It, freshly released in paperback, when I was a teenager (thirty seven years ago, JESUS) and I loved it. I reread this book every couple of years and my thoughts on it change every single time. There are moments of absolute  brilliance and wonder hidden in Its pages (the Derry Interludes are favourite passages of mine), however a good third (at least) of the book has not aged well (and I’m not even talking about “that part”), even when looking at It as a product of Its time.

    Microserfs – Douglas Coupland
    It was… merely ok. While there are small bits of wonderfulness scattered throughout, I don’t think it would be half as engaging if I didn’t know anything about Seattle and Silicon Valley in the early 90s. It’s a very specific snapshot in time and if you weren’t there, you may not get it. I don’t think I’ll be rushing to read another of Coupland’s books. I like slice of life, meandering books but this was really nothing special. A couple of chapters in, I was enjoying it just enough to maybe read some more of his works, but by the time I finished I decided that I’m going to pass.

    Crash – J.G. Ballard (DNF)
    Wow. What a fucking bad acid trip this book is. I kind of, sort of see where he was going with it? Maybe? Nah, I don’t know. It was just too absurd for me. Started feeling a little repetitive about half way through (if you can believe that people jizzing all over car dashboards as they crash can become repetitive) and became a slog so I just gave up on it. Disappointing because I fucking loved High-Rise.

    Bright Lights, Big City – Jay McInerney
    Very, very good. While it’s dark, it’s not Hubert Selby Jr./Brett Easton Ellis, “capital D” Dark.  What stuck with me is that it looks at the middle class and reminds you that addiction of any kind is not just the realm of the of the nameless, abused underclass or the bored, abusive upper class. Here is someone who, from viewed with a quick glance by a passerby, may appear to have it all together and shows that addiction doesn’t necessarily include extreme poverty, brutal violence and/or sexual humiliation but that a good number of people with addictions are out there, trying to live a “normal” life (whatever that is) and are just barley keeping it together.

    Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever – Matt Singer
    As a fan of both Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel, I thoroughly enjoyed this. While I knew some of history of them and their show, this book really explains how massively impactful these two critics were not just to movie criticism itself, but to movies in general and they way that they are made and marketed.

    His Majesty’s Dragon – Naomi Novik
    I was surprised by this. I’m not what you’d call an ardent fan of historical fiction but sometimes I give it a shot. Most of it was utterly predictable (of course the dragon is a Celestial!) but it’s very readable and not half as ridiculous as I’d expected.

    Throne of Jade – Naomi Novik
    A little more plodding than the first. Somewhat dark in some places but it never really pushed it. Got somewhat confuddled near the end with a big fight at a palace and the wrap up was, uh, ok? I guess? There was a small setup half way through that made the outcome very convenient. Like very, obviously overly convenient (so you were descended from royalty, eh? Uh-huh, cool beans). Didn’t enjoy this one half as much as the first and I don’t think I’ll read any more of this series.

    The Nineties – Charles Klosterman
    A very astute, well researched look at the decade I lived through in my twenties. Very much a walk down memory lane and a very poignant look at the decade “before everything changed”.  From grunge to slacker culture to selling out, if you lived through that time, you’ll most likely enjoy this book more than you’d think and marvel at some of the dots that are connected as you read it.

    The Librarianist – Patrick DeWitt
    I discovered Patrick DeWitt thanks to our yearly advent calendar which presented me with a copy of The Sisters Brothers. Since reading that, I’ve gone through all of his works. The Librarianist is not as dark as the aforementioned book, nor as crazily weird as Undermajordomo Minor, nor fantastical as French Exit. It is subtle and, of all things, somewhat believable … until the section with eleven year old Bob running away and joining up with a couple of travelling actors. That whole bit could have been cut out and nothing would have been lost. In the end, I enjoyed this book, just not quite as much as I enjoyed his others.

    Sex, Drugs, and Coco Puffs – Charles Klosterman
    Decided to read this based on how much I loved The Nineties. This one was… Ok. Like barely, merely ok. It reads like a series of ranty blog posts that didn’t age well. The book as a whole appears somewhat out of touch, even for something written in 2006. Klosterman is more than mildly misogynistic and some of the pieces come off as “look how much smarter than you, I am!” that’s akin to some of the shit you’d find these days buried in the bowls of Medium or some douchebaggy tech pundit’s site.

    The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini (DNF – I gave it up with maybe forty pages left to go)
    While I’m sure words cannot really describe how much I disliked this book, I’ll certainly try. This was another Advent Calendar book. Had good reviews. Sold a ton of copies.  Won a few awards. A movie was made that seemed to be well liked (Ebert named it the fifth best movie of 2007). In short it was popular enough that I knew the title, so why not?

    I was completely engrossed at first and it wasn’t until the protagonist and his father go to the US that I found the book starting to show itself for what it is: typical, cliched, Hollywood style tripe. When he goes back to Afghanistan the book casts aside whatever it was hiding under and confirms, in a huge way that yes,  it’s just typical, cliched, Hollywood style tripe. I hate that everything in this book is so very convenient and outcomes are so very neatly wrapped up in glittery paper. With a bow. It takes a horrific, super complicated subject and streamlines it into a basic story of capital “C” Coincidence 2.

    Neuromancer
    Count Zero
    Mona Lisa Overdrive
    – William Gibson
    Mental mouthwash to get rid of the taste of The Kite Runner. I fucking love the Sprawl Series and realized I haven’t read it in a good long while. All three books hold up for the most part. Mona Lisa Overdrive is still my fave out of the three.

    Virtual Light
    Idoru
    All Tomorrow’s Parties
    – William Gibson
    Just kept right on going with the Bridge Series. I found these to be a little less better than I remember. Especially Virtual Light. There are bits that seem moderately juvenile to me in my old age; weird little quips here and there that really don’t drive the story and wouldn’t feel out of place in one of Stephen Kings lesser books. Still, the idea of The Bridge is wholly original and, at one time, wholly plausible; it’s a shame the eastern span of the actual Bay Bridge was replaced. Out of the three All Tomorrow’s Parties is my fave.

    Mrs Frisby and the rats of NIMH – Robert O’Brien
    I first read this book it in grade school right around the time the movie came out (I would have been ten). This book holds a special place in my heart as it was the second “novel style” book I read (the first being My Bodyguard) and also my first realization that 99% of the time, the book is better than any film adaption 3. I saw the movie, The Secret Of NIMH, not in the theaters but a few years later when it hit VHS (yup!) and I remember thinking that all the magical shit they added, and turning Jenner into a major villain who kills Nicodemus,  was over the top and dumb. This book is still a nice, quick read and I was happy that I still enjoyed it.

    Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut
    Jon Stewart mentioned that Kurt Vonnegut was his favourite author so I decided “why not?” Not knowing where to start, I asked the Internet and people suggested that one should begin with Cat’s Cradle then move on to Slaughterhouse Five.

    So I started with Cat’s Cradle, and it was… interesting. I definitely didn’t hate it, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t love it. Don’t know what more to say about this odd story other than it certainly got stuck in my head for a few days after I read it, so mission accomplished?

    Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut
    This book was not at all what I was expecting. I see a description like “the author was in World War 2 and this is based on his experiences” and I think of what we all think: “Oh! Band of Brothers!”

    Heh, well, I can see why the sages of the Internet recommend starting with Cat’s Cradle as Slaughterhouse Five was definitely not Band of Brothers. I could see how one could be put off by the strange, weird, yet wonderfully original use of seemingly oddball 60’s science fiction. I really don’t know if I’d have enjoyed Slaughterhouse Five as much as I did had I not read Cat’s Cradle beforehand; I was at least somewhat prepared for it.

    That being said, I don’t think I’ll be going out of my way to read any more Vonnegut. It’s good. It’s definitely original. I think I’m just a little too young and a little too jaded by the modern WW2 movie experience to really appreciate Slaughterhouse Five.

    With The Old Breed – Eugene Sledge

    This… Oh. Where do I start? We are taught to see war as patriotic; flag waving and cheering, this was the first book I’ve read that really questions this. By this I mean, it’s a person who believed, volunteered, fought and saw first hand what a complete and total and utterly complete waste war is. I know this. I hope that you know this, and I pray we never have anything on this scale again.

    I have seen the The Pacific, on which some parts were based on With The Old Breed, but I didn’t really like it. Now I know why. The Pacific is more in line with the modern WW2 movie experience, covering most of the entire Pacific timeline while throwing in some of the more egregious happenings without clear context.  With The Old Breed is the context from beginning to end. It’s a hard read, but an important one.

    Vox – Nicholson Baker – DNF
    I started it. Just didn’t quite get it. Put it down. Picked it up again. Still didn’t quite get it. Put it down. Maybe I’ll get back to it. Maybe I won’t.

    Official Truth, 101 Proof – Rex Brown
    Your standard rock autobio.  Rex seems to be the only one of the Pantera members with any real kind of head on his shoulders (then again, it is his book). It’s not as party focused as rock bios go. While he does talk about booze and drugs (and how it almost killed him) he certainly doesn’t glamorize much. I did find the intro chapter a little insufferable; he lays on the “I’m the only smart one in a sea of dumbasses” pretty thick. He settles that shit down pretty quick, and it becomes an easy, enjoyable read. If you’re a Pantera fan, then this book is a no brainer. If you’re not a Pantera fan, but like rock bios, then this is worth it.

    Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace (DNF)
    I got about maybe a quarter of the way in, and I just had to put this book down. The five star reviews out there say you have to stick with it and it starts making sense several hundred pages in 4. In a plebe sense I felt like I did when I started watching Infinity War; like there may be something here, but I was missing it so I gave it up because I was bored and confused. Then a friend told me I had to watch no less than twenty other MCU movies and TV shows in a certain order to make any real sense Infinity War. Yeah. No thanks.

    I have patience, but not that much patience. I like plot twists, unreliable  narrators, and non linear timelines but I found this just a little too much for right now. Mammoth paragraphs, runalong sentences, and a plethora of words that are either pretentious or seemingly made up. Maybe I’ll come back to it. Maybe I won’t.

    (Narrator: He won’t.)

    Although, I do wonder if that dude ever got his weed…

    Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro
    Not at all what I was expecting. Slow burn science fiction that’s low on the science part. It’s there, but it’s not in your face. I tend to not try and over analyze the meanings of stories. I like to let good books unfold. Never Let Me Go surprised me as I felt it was a look at the world as I’ve been seeing it of late; an examination of what makes us who we are and how all the dreams and expectations that we grow up with usually turn out to be just that: dreams and expectations. I felt the idea of “possibles” not as who you came from, but where you think you can go. It’s not so much “I came from a lady who works in an office” it’s “I’d love to be working in an office like that lady”, yet it rarely, if ever happens. Just because you want to be an astronaut when you’re a kid doesn’t mean that’s where you’ll land. All these years later, while you’re spending your days answering emails, you think back of the possibles that were, and how here you are now, donating your organs to a society that takes what you have to offer as long as they don’t have to see you. And then you “complete”.

    Weaved in and around this are the those few that care enough to try and make things right by everyone, yet those in power only make half hearted attempts at any kind of change before letting everything slip back into the status quo.

    The Time In Between – David Bergen
    \The first book in this years Advent, it turned out to be one of the best books I read in 2024. Dark. Sad. Beautifully written. I wish I could conjure up something more to say. This is one of those books that I loved but can’t really express why. It just is. And it stayed with me for a good while when I’d finished.

    I tried to start four books after this one, and just had to put all of them down as none of them clicked with me for various reasons 5 but mostly because I was still thinking of The Time In Between 6.

    The Nickel Boys – Colson Whitehead
    Finished this the evening of Dec 30 – I wasn’t sure I’d have it read by the 31st, but I managed it. The Nickel Boys was an excellent, albeit hard read that left me feeling scraped out. Very well written, very deserved of its Pulitzer. I may have more to write about it in the coming days after I’ve had a chance to live with it for a bit…

    1: A local, second hand book store does a yearly “Book Advent Calendar” where they have tables and tables of bags marked like “Popular Thriller” or “Science Fiction” etc and each  contains 24 pre-wrapped books. Our family has been doing it for a couple of years now; it’s a good way to reuse/recycle and much more fun than the standard off the shelf garbage Advent Calendars you get at box stores.

    2:When the villain takes off his sunglasses to reveal himself and starts monologuing about how he came to be with the Taliban to get his revenge and so on and whatnot. I literally rolled my eyes and yelled: “I’M SYNDROME!!!”. Then he  gets a slingshot round to the left eye, conveniently by the son of the person who threatened to put a slingshot round through his left eye 30 years prior. Uh-huh. I sighed and just gave up. I put the book down, Wiki’d the ending and it boy am I glad I didn’t waste the last 40 pages or whatever reading what was, essentially, a cop out ending to a cop out book. I’ve played yellow paint slathered video games that don’t even come close to insulting my intelligence the way The Kite Runner did. What a fucking waste of my time.

    3: Fight Club is one notable exception. One of my favorite movies. A somewhat less than mediocre novel.

    4: And one dude on Goodreads (scroll down to a review by Kemper) says “And then there’s the fact you have to use two bookmarks because you’re constantly going back to the endnotes…. (and) Some of the endnotes contain long wandering passages that also don’t seem relevant to anything.” No, please. No thank you.

    5: Including, but not limited to: adult trying to write as a first person teenager (usually always falls flat), cliché depictions of supposedly troubled people (yes, yes, goth bad), and one of the worst opening sentences I’ve read in a long, long time. After The Time In Between, the 2024 advent calendar served up mostly duds.

    6: I did find a book (finally) that I’m reading now, but I won’t be done before the end of the year. Goddamn, I finished it!

  • My Rules: The Computer Edition

    When writing yesterday’s post about Tech Rot, I was going to add a list of “rules” I have made for myself in order to enjoy being online in any way, shape, or form. It didn’t quite fit the flow or message of the piece, so I decided to post it separately. With the context out of the way, here is the list of “rules” I follow:

    • Uninstall/remove/disable any and all bloatware/scamware/adware in whatever OS you’re using. I happen to like Windows 11, but oh my god, the fact one has to do this to use your computer in relative peace is ridiculous. (Note this rule is not Window specific. Removing unneeded packages from whatever Linux distro you use, or uninstall whatever apps included in macOS that 1: Apple allows you to uninstall and 2: You may not use; GarageBand, Pages etc).
    • Disable any and all completely unnecessary noise.
      • Turn off notifications of everything that does not matter. On your phone, you should get a notification when someone texts you or calls you. You don’t need a notification when some app randomly recommends an article or has a pair of shoes on sale (and don’t get me started on news apps). On your computer, notifications should be for email and chat only.
      • Turn down the intensity of notifications you do enable. On your computer, all you need is a badge on the app (and only if it’s running). No one needs a badge, and a sound, a toast alert, and a preview… just a badge. On your phone, the only thing you should see on your lock screen is the name of the person calling/sending you a text.
    • Firefox. Just Firefox. There is no other browser (unless you want to go hardcore with Tor, but that’s a whole other realm) 1.
      • Run an adblocker at all times. Don’t ever feel bad running an ad blocker and don’t let sites make you feel guilty with their popovers telling you that everyone will starve unless you allow ads. Remember: ads would be fine if they weren’t so absolutely fucking invasive and shitty.
      • While you’re at it, fuck with YouTube.
    • Set your browser tracking protection to Strict.
      • The only websites you should have to whitelist for any reason are important ones like banks or insurance companies. If a random website won’t load or work properly because you have an ad blocker installed and/or strict tracking protection turned on, then that website it not worth your time.
    • Thunderbird. Very, very good at stripping out email trackers and other such nonsense 2.
    • Use multiple email addresses. You should have one from a well known domain (Gmail, Outlook, iCloud) for banking and other important life items, one for personal use (family, friends), and at least one burner account to use for signing up for newsletters, software trials, 10% off coupons, etc.
    • Use a VPN. Please, for the love of all that is good in this world, make use of a VPN.
    • Use a password manager. In fact, use BitWarden. It’s free – or very inexpensive if you want to support them 3.

    Finally, and most importantly:

    DO NOT adopt a devotion of any kind to any company.

    1: Don’t @ me about Brave. They’re shoving useless AI shit into their product, have a rewards program (opt in or not, rewards programs on software is lame and shifty), and have been trying to pull some shady shit over the years only to get caught and backpedal. So fuck that shit. Nothing in their business model tells me they’re to be trusted. Yes, Firefox does offer “Sponsored Shortcuts” on their Home page, but all it takes to turn this off is a single checkbox.

    2: The best part is not only does Thunderbird give you an overall option like “Allow content from The Online Store”, it also shows you a list of individual options like:
    – Allow content from tracker.shadyasfuck.com?
    – Allow content from “api.wearealwayswatching.com?

    3: I’m not getting paid to say this. They’re just that awesome.