Hi! been forever since I last wrote to you. I've been busy with life, you see. Me and my partner have decided to set our sights into moving and working in Japan. Mostly me, since she's tied up in a pretty long contract due to a management trainee program.

So I've been toiling away, studying Japanese and trying to absorb more knowledge so that I can seem more employable while I toil away at my “temporary” work. It's a year-long contract which may or may not get renewed each time it ends.

My weird place and situation within this company makes it feel like I'm in a limbo. I'm at a place where I barely have any directives or goals, basically left to manage myself without really clear guidance on how to set targets or deadlines or even how to communicate them.

I feel like I'm missing something here. I don't think this is how you're supposed to work, but it's not like I want to ask for more work. So I'm applying for this internship in Japan hoping to broaden my horizon and level up my skills. Or maybe I'll just keep playing catch up because I can't start conversations properly, only keep it going somewhat.

Until then, at least a few weeks of this limbo until I hear back from that internship. Wish me luck!

Yours Truly, Singodimejo

I watched Markiplier's “Edge of Sleep” and it was...fine. Inoffensive would be my gut reaction, even if I kept waiting for it to get to the point. Mostly I appreciated that all 6 episodes had the combined runtime less than a Marvel movie.

Of course, now I'm hearing all the discourse. Most of which is folks gushing over how good it is. Not really for the sake of the show itself, it seems. Rather as a parasocial exercise in propelling a low budget indie creator up the ranks of the oft-forgotten Prime Video platform to get one over on the networks suits with all the gusto of a middle schooler flipping off a mailperson for clout.

Thats not to say the show is bad. Clearly it's no one's first production rodeo and merits some recognition. The actors fulfilled their roles to the point I was idly contemplating how the dialogue could have been retooled to make me care more about the characters. Scenes were competently shot and edited well enough that I spent an inordinate amount of time saying “I get it, what's next?”

While efficient with setting the stage for the viewer to be invested, the story gets stuck reiterating its premise “Don't go to sleep” while doing jazz hands compelling you to believe there's some thrilling, mind blowing explanation on the way.

Then each episode just sort of...ends. Sure, there's a teasing reveal that does build on previous tidbits to paint something of a compelling picture about where the story began but does little to guide where it's going next. Which is mostly nowhere.

Each episode becomes a flurry of emotional stick waving driven by characters acting like they are functionally moving the plot forward. Meaningful character connections and any hint of plot resolutions, however, are scarcely more than the slowly fermenting carrot I can only imagine was dug from the leftovers of LOST.

I can sympathize with the reality of ambitious projects like this being launched on monolythic platforms like Prime where nothing is gaurenteed. As a result, the show feels caught between wanting to be a multi-season epic of slowly unveiling plot hooks and memorable character moments; or a one-off mini series exploring a a primal fear through a trippy metaphysical conspiracy. As a result, the mystery is largely suffocated trying to get the viewer to care about characters whom we barely have time, or reason, to connect with as they ambitiously hustle to do the heroic act of avoiding sleep.

In the end, it's a sophomoric outing arguably punching above its weight for the low budget allotted, at least in its technical aspects. Most of the hype is really around Mark and much of the discussion bypasses criticism to support the indie millionaire artist achieve his dreams by leveraging his own not-insignifigant platform as a short cut to the #6 spot in less than 12 hours. With that said, I'll probably still watch whatever he launches next.

What is “RTFM”, and why telling Linux newbies this “advice” simply sucks

!! CONTENT WARNING: Cursing !!

==========

In the title, I use “advice” as a stretch of the definition. RTFM, or “Read the Friendly/Fucking Manual” is an unfortunately common response to many Linux newbies asking questions anywhere from forums to a friend on Discord. This “advice” sucks, as newbies will often expect a good explanation as to what the hell to do; maybe even a part of the solution and a link to where to find that advice commonly. I personally have begun a practice wherein if someone asks me for advice that could be responded to with an “RTFM”, I will instead give a small sentence and a reference link/file to the requested advice if I can find it.

Additionally, most Linux commands posses a '-h', '—help', or (not common) '–?' flag for a help page.

A day before All Hallow's Eve, the undisputed kickoff for the entire winter holiday season, I was unceremoniously informed I no longer had a job. The entire location I worked at was being shut down, effective immediately. With a few anxiously rehearsed lines, I was given a limp apology; mildly bolstered with a check worth a few weeks of work to compensate my sudden and unforeseen strife.

I'd be lying if I said I was shocked, but I also can't say I am deeply lamenting my situation right now. I've got a number of borrowed weeks to stretch and maybe even breathe while chasing a few obligations and projects I have been struggling to get to for months. That's quite a luxurious opportunity most folks don't get.

So what now?

Well, I have a TON of projects to pursue as we cruise through this fall season practically head first into winter. So many, in fact, it leaves my head spinning trying to consider getting them all done in the few weeks of “freedom” I have while actively considering what my next big life moves are gonna be.

To that end, this blog. In a bit of serendipity, we are right into the Campgrounds' National Write Literally Anything Month. I figure it would be a good exercise to take advantage and organize some thoughts here in this blog for the next {however many} weeks.

What's that going to cover?

Honestly, I don't even know yet. Judging by a few hastily scratched out notes, I suspect A LOT of unpacking feelings about this sudden upheaval in life. But I can also imagine recapping the various things I'm working on and, if there's time, some hopes about what the future brings.

I guess grab some popcorn or something? I think I'm already a day behind on this writing, let alone all the other projects I mean to get out there, so I better hustle. Cheers to reading tea leaves dumped at my feet.

Arch Linux, the distro for the chronic customizer; a commentary on myself and other users

Arch Linux is notoriously the most difficult distro (barring Gentoo's entire existence) to use, since the base installation just gives a command line and almost no further explanation. The wiki is there, and enough guides will give you a mediocre to decent system, however when you customize it solely, it becomes the best. I say this because Arch is a perfectly customizable distro, allowing you to cherry-pick what you want on there (barring the base Linux and any libraries required by programs) and perfectly tailor the experience.

I have seen hundreds of Arch rices on r/unixp**n, but nothing looks better than what one makes for themselves, as the things you like depend on how you make them or even have them.

And to extend the stereotype: I use arch btw

Sweet smells of summer air Moonlight shadow grow long in the night A blanket of stillness wrapped tight Lingering memories come to bear

Lungs releasing a languishing sigh Figures past crossing a closed eye Transported, moment unbound Coveted feelings again found

Music and comradery Unspoken creeds Never relived again Save for paper and pen

A vocal experiment: https://soundcloud.com/kryptonite803/moonlight-memories

Lua, and my love-hate relationship with ComputerCraft's libraries and programs; why docs should be easy to read

I love Lua. It's the main language I know. That is, when it comes to the Minecraft mod ComputerCraft:Tweaked's CraftOS 1.8. For those unaware, ComputerCraft, and by extentsion ComputerCraft:Tweaked (Here on out referred to as CC and CC:T respectively) is a Minecraft mod that adds computers to the game, programmable with the Lua scripting language.

The reason it's a love-hate relationship is because sometimes the errors make no sense at all. When trying to loop over what should be a table, and getting the error “Expected table: got nil”, but when I print the ““nil”” value, it says it's a table outright. It's so confusing all the time. Thankfully I have Jeremy- my debugging ducky friend- to help sometimes.

But when Jeremy fails to help, I still pay him with a few little cracker crumbs and go to the CC:T wiki to look at the documentation, but it ends up making no sense at all. It's like trying to decipher assembly code, virtually impossible unless you can memorize assembly perfectly.

All in all, Lua and CC:T is a love-hate relationship, and make docs human-readable, dammit!

Why I use a rubber duck to debug my code

I have a little rubber duck with a christmas hat and antlers on my desk at all times. Whenever I code, and I come across an issue, I explain my code to the duck line by line. His name is Jerry by the way. Jerry is the best listener, in fact his listen-only method of debug assistance helps me listen to myself explain my bad code.

For example, in Lua, when trying to figure out why I kept getting an “Expected EOF” error, I read my code, line by line, in human explanation, to Jerry; which ended up helping me realize I missed a single end in an else statement.

If you code, get a rubber duck, name that duck whatever you want, and if you need to debug, rely on the duck and not a program.

RHEL and Ubuntu, what'll happen?

Topics: Red Hat Enterprise Linux going virtually closed source? Ubuntu immutable desktop option in future? My takes on the matters; with definitions

Did anyone ask for my takes? No. Will I give them? Absolutely. +=============+ Definitions:

“RHEL” and other capitalizations refers to Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

“SRC” and other capitalizations refers to the concept of “source code”.

“License” or “The License” and other capitalizations refers to the GNU GPL 3.0 +=============+

Topic 1: RHEL going closed source?

In a blog post by Red Hat, and the VP's follow-up blog post in response to backlash, it's clear that it isn't actually going closed source. However, one may argue that the license may still be violated in some way, as it could potentially violate the GPL's requirement for src to be available publicly in all forms.

Red Hat stated in the post that, A; CentOS Stream will now be the sole repository for public RHEL-related source code releases, and B; source code will remain available via the Red Hat Customer Portal for paying customers. What I take from this while also double checking the license, it states that no person(s) distributing software under the GPL can force you to pay to see the src.

By restricting part of the src to paying customers, this could be viewed as a violation of the license. This does not mean that Red Hat is so suddenly all evil and such, because in the VP's follow-up blog post, Red Hat VP Mike McGrath states; “We don’t simply take upstream packages and rebuild them. At Red Hat, thousands of people spend their time writing code to enable new features, fixing bugs, integrating different packages and then supporting that work for a long time – something that our customers and partners need.”

My take on this situation is that closing off a good amount of the src to only paying customers, if left unchecked or open-source somehow topples, could lead to disaster for Red Hat and RHEL users. While I don't see that happening anytime soon, some people are speculating that it may very well happen.

+=============+

Immutable, snap-based Ubuntu desktop

In the near future, Ubuntu will have a snap-based immutable desktop environment for those who really want it. The goal is to be able to have a containerized system so everything can be updated automatically when they need to be.

Now this is just an idea for Ubuntu Core, as stated in the post, but part of an immutable desktop include:

1 Read-only: The primary characteristic of an immutable OS is that the running system cannot be directly modified by users or applications.

2 Atomic updates: Updates are applied atomically; meaning they’re successfully applied all at once or not at all.

3 Predictable: Because the core operating system doesn’t change, its behaviour is predictable across devices.

4 Isolated Applications: Applications are isolated from the core operating system and from each other, usually through containerisation. This ensures that changes made by an application don’t affect the core system or other applications.

While this does seem like a good idea, in my opinion it could have a few issues. For starters, what about things like a custom .bashrc? Will those be affected? Will the terminal be unable to access the .bashrc file? Also, some of the drawbacks are listed;

1 Reduced Flexibility: An immutable OS is less flexible than a traditional OS. Users cannot modify system files or customise their system to the same degree.

2 Limited Compatibility: Not all applications and services are compatible with the containerised or isolated environments provided by an immutable OS.

3 Storage Requirements: Update mechanisms often require image snapshot storage. Isolated applications can lead to redundancy in the storage of application dependencies.

4 Developer Experience: While containerised development environments provide benefits (such as improved isolation and reproducibility) they may also introduce additional complexity and limit the use of familiar tools and workflows.

For me, the reason I daily drive Linux is for flexibility. I want to have everything tweaked just how I like it. I don't want just one desktop environment, I want options. That is why I personally will not be using the immutable Ubuntu Core when it comes out, however I would recommend it for someone who is new to Linux but wants a windows-like experience, such as grandmas.

+=============+

-Dusk 6/29/23

+=============+

Cited for RHEL SRC Stuff: https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/furthering-evolution-centos-stream https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/red-hats-commitment-open-source-response-gitcentosorg-changes

Cited for Ubuntu stuff: https://ubuntu.com/blog/ubuntu-core-an-immutable-linux-desktop

GNU GPL 3.0 Cites: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#DoesTheGPLAllowRequireFee

A Ballad

A limerick?

Some Words

---

The hour grows late I contemplate I outta clean some plates

When I hear the fearful tune A drip, drip, drip Of a pipe that's lost it's grip

Peering undertow, curious It surely can't be serious

A loosened screw can be fixed Good as new! Oh, if only I knew What problem had brewed

A clog big as a log Soap and grease now seized Snaked, raked, awkwardly pleased

Here a broken joint needs solder What else could be the bother? Cullet with missing threads At least it's not made of lead Now I find a tattered gasket It all belongs in a battered casket!

Cussing, groaning in song Toolbox proning before long Wrench and hammer join my venture Bring out the torch for good measure

A sigh and wipe the sweat from my eye Last week's dinner: fried fish on rye

Resignation sets in A job I just can't win The hour is late And plates need scrubbed Reduced to this fate Scouring in the tub

I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with fiction. We currently live in an age where there are countless works of fiction iterated infinitely by the similarly infinite bounds of human creativity even to this very moment. Yet, it results in this frustrating problem where I as a reader need to comb through those countless works of fiction to find the one that satisfies my recreational needs just right for any particular moment. This is my fancier way of recounting my woes of reading mangas and manhwas.

However, every time I struck gold on a particular title, it is pure ecstasy. The rush I felt whenever a new story begins to catch my intrigue? It is simply addictive. I recently found an amazing manhwa title that helps me see what is it that I like to read the most. The title of the manhwa is Infinite Mage. The story itself isn't doing anything new, being about a baby abandoned in the woods who's adopted by a commoner couple that later in life discovers an immense talent in magic. But the magic system in the story itself and how it is presented is so graceful that it got me excited. The last time I was this excited about magic in fiction was when I started reading Witch Hat Atelier. But then again, every peak has valleys, the title is fairly new and only has about 20-something chapters translated online, which was my second problem with reading manhwas and mangas. I am still grateful though.

Now, let's talk about what I realized while reading that title. One of my preferences when reading works of fiction was apparently about magic itself. Specifically, the kind of mainstream magic which enables you to do extraordinary things with your mind. I feel like I am drawn the most to magic as a concept. Though I can still enjoy them, one of my gripes with the Isekai genre or just fantasy manhwas is how most of them never properly try to confront magic and instead cheaply explain away magic with those game screen stats. I love a good game status window fantasy, but often times they feel cheap and clunky with no added value to the story. I always find myself laughing excitedly whenever I find the rare ones that really try to work with magic a little more seriously. Such as the two titles I have mentioned previously along with other titles such as Reincarnated as a Slime if you're going for a more Isekai-like title with a “gamified” feel or Faraway Paladin which captured the atmospheric experience of your typical TTRPGs like D&D. I just want to be immersed in a world where magic exists and it's this amazing thing, probably because the world we live in currently is a bit too exhausting to live in.

Anyways, it's been a while since I wrote this much and I kind of miss it. I just like ranting to the void of the internet about stuff. Especially stuff that I'm passionate about. If you have any title recommendations that has more of what I described just now, please reach out to me through my socials such as emailing me or find me on mastodon @singodimejo@astral.camp. That's all for today and until next time, be well my friend

Yours Truly, Singodimejo

I believe I found one of a kind mobile game and I would love to share them with you all today. The title of the game is Magium, which follows the story of an average human named Barry in his quest to obtain magic by participating in a continent-wide competition for mages from all over the world. Why? because the main price is access to this mythical “thing” known as Magium, which is only known by the rumors of how powerful and magically potent it is. Our main protagonist, who is obsessed with magic, believes that there is a chance that the Magium can grant him the ability to wield magic which was previously understood as a purely innate birthright of a lucky few in his race. Thus, we follow his daring adventures throughout the competition.

While most mobile CYOA I've seen in the fantasy genre centers more on the game-like mechanics of TTRPGs, making the app more of a decorated turn-based fighting game, Magium feels more like a digitalized CYOA book akin to R.L. Stine's famous “Goosebumps” franchise. The only “game mechanic” you have is some sort of status point system that will determine the success of certain actions, dictating your playstyle and the vibe of the story you get to read. However, due to this project being more similar to novels, there are a lot of constraints on the reader's influence on the story's plot. I do believe those constraints are tolerable as the story itself is quite fun to read.

I am writing about it to show my support for the wonderful game and to expose it to all of you, good people of the interwebs. If you are interested in things like fantasy and would like to try a weird new type of content, I'd recommend this to you. I hope you enjoy them at least as much as I had. Until next time, be well my friend.

Twisting my brain over...

The Pots and Pans Problem

It happens every time I move somewhere

Every. Time

The place feels so big and expensive, there must be room for all my stuff, and then some! That is, until I'm actually staring at the mountains of boxes in the space.

Especially kitchen stuff.

And through physical exhaustion moving piles of stuff and decision fatigue trying to think through the collosal Tetris puzzle that is 'Moving in', it always comes down to just shoving things into drawers and cabinets just to have it out of the way. “If I don't like it this way, I can just move it somewhere else later,” I always say. Famous last words (unless they're not? I suppose not, I've had plenty of words since then. Oh well.)

So life carries on. Weeks, months, even years of daily life pass by. And if you're anything like me, some things begin to irk you. Maybe it's an inconvenient cabinet to pull out some pans, or the pots don't quite fit the way you want, or general flow around the space is clumsy, whatever. It might be a good idea to reorganize.

Buuut, all the other kitchen implements already take up all the other spaces. Trying to optimize the space to improve quality of life would require a tremendous amount of time and effort, so everything continues to sit and be irksome.

The same could be true for other aspects of our lives. Maybe it's little behaviors we picked up to get through a hard time. Or dream projects that keep trying to spill out of the mental cabinet. It could be just daily junk from news and media making it really inconvenient to reach that pot of ambition or pan of relaxation.

All I know is I've got a lot of decluttering and organizing to work on. How's your kitchen faring?