No need to reinstall your OS

Thursday, Jul 8, 2021

A fantastic “feature” of Linux, BSD, and even Windows 10 is you don’t really need to reinstall to migrate an installation to a new computer. A common misunderstanding is if you get a new PC, you must use the new OS install, or install a new copy of your OS. If you’re intending on replacing an existing PC (and disposing of or re-purposing the old one), there is probably no need to reinstall your OS and deal with user data migration.

Continue reading…

Freenode is dead, long live Freenode!

Wednesday, May 26, 2021

Note: this is my OWN opinion and not representative of any community entity. This is a summary of what I’ve experienced since the Freenode takeover. (The new Freenode is Libera.chat.) Drama? I prefer to not take sides in online drama, but I feel like I have to err on the side of not-nuking-and-paving IRC channels that have existed for decades. Here’s the summary of what’s happened, from my perspective: Guy with a bunch of money takes over a community operated network.

Continue reading…

Moving blog to ox-hugo

Saturday, Apr 3, 2021

It’s refresh time! Since January 2019 I’ve been blogging on this website and it’s been a rewarding experience. I originally researched many blogging solutions that involved using Emacs Org mode. I settled with org-static-blog and it worked pretty well for the most part. It gave just enough structure and mechanism to enable me to work on authoring content without dealing with the details of website building. Enter 2021, I have used org-static-blog for a couple years, and detailed some of my challenges with it below.

Continue reading…

Snarf YouTube videos off gather.town

Sunday, Mar 21, 2021

Gather.town is a very cool virtual conference platform. You pick an avatar, can voice chat, video chat, and watch presentations all while standing around in a virtual 2D space. A conference which I attended recently had all the talks pre-recorded and played back at live-time. This worked very well because the presenters would take their time and provide the best possible content. Within the virtual conference space, there was a way to play the videos back through moving your avatar into a specific location that is different for each video.

Continue reading…

Some tips when copying, recovering disks

Sunday, Mar 14, 2021

I seem to have a lot of suggestions to share with friends about managing disks on a linux livecd. Here are some of the tips I’d like to share. See the table of contents above for a breakdown of the topics discussed. Some disk related topics are out of scope for this article, as they deserve their own blog post. The topics not covered include partitioning, setting up a boot loader, using LVM2 or ZFS, that sort of thing.

Continue reading…

You want sudo -i or su -

Sunday, Feb 14, 2021

You want to use sudo -i or su - to log into root. sudo su anything is superfluous, because you probably should be using sudo -i or sudo -s, which are roughly equivalent, depending if you want to simulate a login (su - or sudo -i) or not (su or sudo -s).1 When to use su -? You want to log into root using the root password. Typically you must be in the wheel group (check your PAM configuration).

Continue reading…

About my keyboard choices

Tuesday, Nov 3, 2020

Disclaimer: Dvorak, fancy keyboards, whatever, does not replace good lifestyle habits such as computer breaks, good desk ergonomics, and balancing one’s computer life with gasp real life. Dvorak and fancy keyboards can make your life better, but they cannot completely address RSI problems alone. Since sometime 2013 I have faced pain, numbness, and tightness in my hands due to computer overuse. At first I chose to ignore it, but it got so bad I’d take days if not weeks off from prolonged computer use.

Continue reading…