amin

amin, 2 months ago to random

Oh, a webring search engine? That's a lovely idea.

https://lieu.cblgh.org/

amin, 2 months ago to random

Another brilliant article I discovered through my search engine project: https://frankchimero.com/blog/2013/what-screens-want/

cc @RL_Dane, especially, I think you'll like this one.

amin, 2 months ago to random

Hm okay so I discovered this site in my search engine's index and I have mixed feelings.

https://recipe.polente.de/

First, for context, it's a site featuring AI-generated vegan recipes. My first instinct is "Ew, I don't want AI-generated recipes in my index."

Then I take a closer look and the site itself is well-designed and, notably, doesn't feature any ads or tracking (if it did, my search engine would've penalized it in the rankings). Additionally, it clearly discloses the AI-generated nature and has a "Content Responsibility" section on the Imprint and a full writeup of the process used.

It seems to be a genuinely well-thought-through experiment that approaches things well and isn't trying to scam people.

I'm interested in hearing the thoughts of others.

amin, 2 months ago to random

Okay so

I'm considering getting a new keycap set

I'd been considering getting a set of blank alphas since I'm not on QWERTY anymore but like my current colored modifiers, but I just found a really cool set that, while still uses the QWERTY alphas is awesome and currently on sale.

Hmm.

I might treat myself, seeing as it's been almost a year since I bought any keyboard stuff.

amin, 2 months ago to random

My natural habitat is the used bookstore.

amin, 2 months ago to random

I've set up https://benjaminhollon.com to be able to receive webmentions.

Still planning to do some work to display those webmentions, then hopefully to automatically send webmentions to pages I link to, but if you wanna send webmentions to anything on my site you can and I'll get them. :)

amin, 2 months ago to random

I'm suddenly struck wondering why the drinking straw has become such a staple. It's… kinda unnecessary for most (abled) people and situations?

amin, 2 months ago to random

So—my grandma just presented me with an awesome belated birthday present.

There's a massive collection of Analog SF issues from the 80s and 90s that was at the used bookstore in town which I'd had my eyes on since moving here. I'd bought maybe ten issues, but during the sale in December, she bought up the remaining collection.

Over fifty issues, about 10,000 pages, of science fiction from February 1986 through May 2001.

This rocks.

And I'm gonna find out the bookshelf space, I don't know how, but I'm gonna. 😁

amin, 2 months ago to random

Had a surprisingly-complete idea for a new blog earlier today. And the domain name is available.

…

…

🤔

I really don't need yet another blog, but I do like this idea.

amin, 2 months ago to random

Halfway through my backup restoration last night, my wifi stopped working. I remembered the last time that happened it was an issue with DNS (it's always DNS) and, sure enough, dpkg-reconfigure resolveconf fixed everything perfectly.

(I love dpkg-reconfigure)

amin, 2 months ago to random

I think I've got everything working again… just waiting on my music collection to finish copying from the backup. Could take a while, since it's going at 40MB/s and I have 100GB of music.

I'll probably leave this running and go to bed.

This is record time for me with this scale of backup restore.

amin, 2 months ago to random

My 08:00 class tomorrow morning was cancelled but course registration opens for me at 07:00, so I'm gonna get up early anyway.

Being responsible is rough sometimes. :BlobCatPatAngry:

amin, 2 months ago to random

I'm not sure what possessed me to think it would be a good idea to try and move my $XDG_CONFIG_HOME from .config to config, and it's difficult to explain the exact chain of steps that resulted in deleting my config folder altogether.

…but, uh, this is why I make backups? Make backups, kids. (Yeah, this sounds like a plausible way to turn my stupid blunder into a clever PSA.)

amin, 2 months ago to random

If you've seen my crawler ("Ariadne") recrawling your website oddly-often over the last couple days, I apologize; my code to tell whether a feed item had already been crawled assumed that the URL wouldn't be redirected from what was listed in the feed.

I've now told it to double check with the unique ID listed in the feed next to the item, so after this last crawl-through to match those IDs with the redirected URLs, things'll be much quieter.

amin, 2 months ago to random

I think I've finally cracked.

to_document = documents.get(to_url, connection, cursor)
if to_document is None:
		print("AAHHHHAHAHAHA THAT DOCUMENT DOESN'T EXIST")
else
		to_document_id = to_document[0]

amin, 2 months ago to random

Howdy, everyone!

This coming Sunday is the first birthday of https://tty1.blog, my blog about the linux terminal! To celebrate, I'd love to do an article showcasing the favorite shell aliases an functions of you, my readers!

If you have some great shell aliases or (short) functions, send them my way and you might feature in the celebration article! :D

Boosts are welcome.

amin, 2 months ago to random

Okay, okay, web crawler refactor is going well. I've gotten my script to import web feeds into the database and fetch/parse each.

Now I need to work on a function to crawl the pages listed in those feeds.

amin, 2 months ago to random

Updated my now page.

https://benjaminhollon.com/now/

amin, 2 months ago to random

Had a thought. Let me know if it's just sleep dep talking.

We've all heard the "I don't have anything to hide" argument against needing privacy protection, right? Well, there's another thing to think about: solidarity.

Sure, maybe you don't have anything to hide. But some people do. Some people have really good reasons for needing to keep things about their identities or activities private, sometimes going as far as being a safety issue.

When you use technology that doesn't respect your privacy, you're empowering those companies and making it more difficult for privacy-respecting technology to survive, causing actual harm to people who need that privacy.

Needs a little more thought, but I wanted to say it. Maybe I'll write up a blog post or something, I don't know.

amin, 2 months ago to random

Our plane had issues and so I’m now currently stuck in Cancun while they figure out how to get us the rest of the way. :P

amin, 2 months ago to random

What food best describes your current feelings?

For me it's pizza. With plenty of olives.

amin, 2 months ago to random

Today’s my last day in Costa Rica. :(

amin, 2 months ago to random

Circumstances have converged such that it seems like I’ll be going ziplining on my birthday (which is an unspecified day in the next week).

amin, 2 months ago to random

Uh oh, my Framework Laptop is all of a sudden failing to post and flashing a diagnostic code with the power LED…

That’s really rough, I don’t have any way to fix anything while here in CR? Any tips?

amin, 3 months ago to random

Lots of coffee farms here in Costa Rica and a place we were at today had free samples so I figured, "hey I don't like coffee but I also haven't tried in years so I might as well taste a bit."

I have reconfirmed that I don't like coffee. Blech. (And this stuff was, according to others, really good.)