• 2 Posts
  • 84 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • That may be a good idea. However, people have had around 25 years of familiarity with all things centralised on the internet and the conveniences associated with it. If anything, we are doubling down on the centralised nature of the internet.

    It will take a great amount of time and effort to build a equivalently convenient decentralised alternatives, and to overcome the inertia to migrate to it.

    The latter I believe is only possible when something enormously drastic happens. We had a good number of drastic events happen in the last decade (Twitter poisoning, Meta privacy breaches, Reddit shenanigans), but none enough to convince people to move to alternatives.

    Another possibility is for regulations and/or governments to support the alternatives, but that may have unintended side effects of its own.


  • Call it the network effect, or the momentum of becoming a staple in the tech community, or whatever; GitHub is here to stay for a while, and the leaders in charge of it are well aware of this.

    GitHub has gained enough attention that it is almost impossible to ignore. Projects on GitHub tend to attract a level of engagement (code contributions, issue reports, and feedback) that other code forges do not enjoy.

    One unfortunate consequence of this, which I have experienced recently, is when recruiters ask for links to my past work or open-source contributions but refuse to accept links to relevant repositories on GitLab. The number of companies where this occurred was significant enough for me to set up mirror repositories on GitHub.

    Another frustrating but silly consequence was when I was questioned during one of the interviews why my activity graph on GitHub was empty: I had simply not enabled it.










  • There is no perfect laptop as it is a subjective choice.

    I got a MacBook Pro which is the one that ticks the most boxes for me. It is simply a well built and reliable piece of hardware with really nice battery life and performance.

    Yes, Apple tries really hard to sink their machines with terrible software decisions and hostile repair policies. But that still does not undermine their machines build quality.

    Also, this is trivial, but their website is simple and easy to use. They don’t bog one down with a slew of laptops that are hard to differentiate. I know what I am looking at, and what I will be getting.

    The only other machines I own are ThinkPads. But Lenovo loses me whenever I get on their website. It is easier to look at an eBay listing for a second hand ThinkPad than to navigate and search their website for a new one. Also, their newer machines just aren’t as good as the older ones.

    I say this as a user of an array of ThinkPads and ThinkCentres to quench my thirst for BSD (and sometimes Linux). I use these machines for writing, gaming, watching movies, and more. But I cannot depend on those machines for any critical or work-related tasks.

    Framework laptops aren’t sold here so I have never used them. There is no point in importing one where the whole raison d’être is their modularity and repairability which requires their ecosystem to be present first.

    P.S. Using Linux on M-series MacBooks

    I have contemplated using Asahi Linux on the MacBook Pro, but I am sure I won’t get the best out of the machine especially w.r.t. battery life. Perhaps when the machine is no longer supported by Apple, I will experiment with it.


  • I am not playing a ton of games really so maybe that is also something I could consider.

    I too don’t play games that often, not for want of trying.

    However, it allows me to be deliberate with my gaming sessions as well as when I am writing about it.

    What software are you using for this and could you share something you’ve written? Only if not too personal of course, I understand you might not want to share, that is OK.

    I use Org-Mode in Emacs, but I previously used Obsidian. You may definitely find the latter more palatable, as it did to me initially.

    As for what I write, my write-ups starts out with links to the game’s Steam/PlayStation store and Wikipedia entry (resolved on a best effort basis), and to my journal entry to Steam Deck or PS5 (nothing more than to facilitate reverse lookup). Followed by my own brief description of the game, story, and any special gameplay mechanics worth highlighting. The rest are my thoughts on what worked and what did not for me.

    There are some older, obscure games like Camy series, Monster Hunter (not the famous series), Heart of Darkness, and many more. which do not have any links but my write-ups are longer. Perhaps I play them more and have more to write about because not much is available online.




  • Vim was my primary tool of development for over a decade, and I used Obsidian for about 3 years. However, in early 2024, I tried out Emacs and never looked back.

    I find it functionally equivalent to Vim albeit perceivably slower, and Org-mode (+Denote) is far superior than Markdown and Obsidian with its slew of plugins.

    Migrating my 3 years worth of notes was a pain since I was using Obsidian’s variant of Markdown syntax to link other notes. In the end I gave up trying to convert those notes, and used them alongside my new Org-mode notes, thanks to Denote’s interoperability.

    In fact, Denote’s naming philosophy is so powerful yet simple that I started using it for all documents and downloads.