10/21/23 ----------------------------------------------------------------- I bought a server, a mini pc. Hosting on this should be more reliable. After thinking about it more, I can understand why people decide to support multiple overlay networks. So few people use any of them, that to get any semblance of significant reach, you have to be on multiple. Expecting people to install and set-up a specific piece of software, to go to your website, is a tad unreasonable. Being on multiple at least gives them more options. 12/13/22 ----------------------------------------------------------------- It's been more than a year since I started hosting this website. Feels strange. 10/29/22 ----------------------------------------------------------------- Site was down because my laptop broke, which also serves as the server. Got a new laptop. In other news, I'm doing okay. 5/24/22 ----------------------------------------------------------------- I made the site https because I want to use brotli compression and you're not allowed to use that over http because of unmaintained clients or some bullshit. On yggdrasil, you can only have https through a self-signed certificate. So there's a bit of initial discomfort to using the site now. It's also not like yggdrasil can have it's own CA because CA support is browser dependent. So there's a whole obnoxious power structure in the so-called "chain of trust". And according to browsers, http is preferable to self-signed https security-wise, for god knows what reason. Browsers are fucked. 5/22/22 ----------------------------------------------------------------- On somebody's suggestion, I've decided to use htmx to fill in the gaps html has for the project I'm working on. So far I like it a lot. It completes html and makes it what it should be in my opinion. Of course, it's unfortunately implemented in javascript. Being a puritan about these things is too tiresome for me though. At least there's options, even if they're not ideal. 5/13/22 ----------------------------------------------------------------- Yeah, that kubuntu thing didn't work out. It was a lot of things, including 150% scaling looking weird(inconsistent font size in the browser for one), but mostly systemd refusing to start yggdrasil and me not being able to find any information on how to fix it. It wouldn't work when I manually started it either. So now I'm using windows ltsc and it feels pretty nice. Ubuntu on wsl has no problem manually starting yggdrasil oddly enough. I don't feel like figuring out the problem or asking on forums and github. It's just not worth it. 5/3/22 ----------------------------------------------------------------- I've seen a few people recently use dosbox-x for pc-98 emutlion. Why? Why do people do this to themselves. For pc-98 emulation, dosbox-x is garbage. Fuck that shit. And what about "the unix philosophy"? Only applies when it makes life more of a pain in the ass, huh? Don't do it. Don't fucking do it. xnp2 does one thing and it does it well. Somebody actually recommended dosbox-x to me once. Dumb fuck. 4/13/22 ----------------------------------------------------------------- In a couple of weeks, I'm going to install kubuntu as my daily driver. It's sufficiently impressed me. I got fucking fcitx5 to work too. I enjoy using kubuntu, and it probably covers all of my limited needs. Really, I don't do anything specific like cad or whatever which is fledgling on linux. I have enough patience to work out problems and at this point I have enough experience with that to feel comfortable with it. I don't retract my prior critcisms, but at this point I don't really give a shit. 4/2/22 ----------------------------------------------------------------- Because I'm a masochist, I've given desktop linux, this time Fedora cause I heard good things about it, another try in a vm, using vmware, which has been more stable than vbox. This was also the first time I tried using gnome extensively and there were a few things I liked about it, but in the end it left me even more pessimistic then before. The gtk file picker caught my attention. No thumbnails. What's worse though is the core dev's attitude about it. They say gtk is a separate project, but gtk's development is tightly tied to gnome's. Also, a gtk2 app's(xnp21kai) fullscreen mode didn't work. The window expanded to the right size, but its title bar and gnome's header wouldn't go away, and it didn't auto-center. So I tried Fedora's KDE spin. It had neither of the above two problems. However, it was quite buggy. It also has no integrated ime support. Fctix5 was unstable to the point of being unusable. Sometimes it decided to work, but most of the time not. Editing widgets and whatever was pretty annoying, and the mouse wasn't aligned correctly, so highlighting text was a pain. These issues could have been due to KDE or Fedora. Honestly it doesn't matter. Best case scenario is that vmware was somehow at fault for all of this. (edit, in KDE Neon, the mouse worked. Fcitx5 and Fcitx were totally inoperable though). The amount of time I've spent solving, or trying to solve problems in linux, is thousands of times more than on windows, which I've been using since I was around 5. That's no exaggeration. So if you want a file picker with thumbnails AND an integrated ime, your choices are windows, macos(and maybe ios), chrome os, or android. What do all of these things have in common? They're developed by companies. If you want whatever miscellaneous thing you happen to need/want to work right away, commercial products are your only option. Capitalism is a beautiful thing, huh? 3/27/22 ----------------------------------------------------------------- I added https support for no particular reason. 3/19/22 ----------------------------------------------------------------- I've written the bbs back-end. Quite happy with myself. Going into this, I didn't know so much as how html forms work. The magic of nginx reverse proxies and golang's http library is truly a sight to behold. 3/8/22 ----------------------------------------------------------------- Firefox's latest ad has disturbed me to say the least. I update my browser and suddenly, a disney + ad is shoved in my face. It's uncanny. I'd use ungoogled chromium if the ui wasn't so horrible, and it didn't autodelete history. A lot of people don't know that cause it's not exactly advertised and there's no way to turn it off. Try seeing what you did 5 months ago. It's a big part of why I switched to firefox after years of using chrome/ungoogled chromium. Bookmark management is also god awful. There isn't so much asa date added field, let alone tags. For someone with over 13k bookmarks, that's not acceptable. 3/7/22 ----------------------------------------------------------------- I'd like to apologize to everyone who's been here but doesn't happen to share my screen resolution. Up until now, I've been using px in my html. Now, I use percentages, so the front page and stuff should look the same everywhere. 3/6/22 ----------------------------------------------------------------- I'm not a fan of desktop linux. Linux itself is a fine operating system. This website runs on linux(void). I'm writing specifically about linux on the desktop. To sum it up, I don't believe a "community-driven" approach is capable of producing a decent desktop OS, a large project, with many complicated parts, that need to be integrated as seamlessly as possible with each other. One of the most important consequences of this is application deployment. I'm not sure something that's statically compiled today, will work in ten years(I've heard mixed things about this), and that's not even the norm for deployment. For one reason or another, linux does not have a large library of software which is not maintained, but is still usable. Source based deployment, aside from being impractical for larger projects, necessitates maintenance, because of libraries and even c header files or whatever. For a server, this isn't a problem. For a desktop OS, it's unacceptable. You've got all these different groups making their own thing, and they have no financial interest in making sure their components work well together. FATELF is an example of something which tried to alleviate the above problem with application deployment, but it required cooperation from the kernel devs, which they were not willing to give. The kernel guys, have no reason to care about desktop problems. That's not what they're interested in, that's not what they're being financially backed to focus on. You can't compensate for this with graphical designers chasing the latest trends. One of the most popular "solutions" is to put more on top of the system. Another layer. Appimages, flatpaks, snaps. Each with their own problems(some again with integration). And each requiring developers(and users) to learn even more, and make more decisions to do something that should be simple. I have come to the conclusion that a singular entity controlling the project and making all the decisions is necessary to make a desktop OS that works for me. While I am frustrated by the lack of an option which respects my privacy and is open source, linux is not an option for me and never will be. Doesn't matter how much time I give it. I could go on about how de facto standards that do exist, like Freedesktop, are terrible, but you already get the idea. No real owner = bad. Maybe fuckin Fuchsia will save the day, I dunno. I've got little problem with people who have learned to live with these shortcomings, or don't consider them to be shortcomings because they're tech gurus who only care about the latest and greatest mathematic, scientific, computing computer magic(as annoying as the latter tends to be). The ones who really annoy me are what I call "linux cheerleaders". You know who I'm talking about. Any conversation about desktop OSs, they feel the need to mention how amazing and easy linux is now and how their 197 year old great grandmother uses it without problem to buy yarn on amazon for her knitting projects. There's people who have been using computers for longer than I've been alive, yet fail to see the incredibly obvious problems I've described above, or that those problems can't be fixed with their broken model. End rant. 2/28/22 ----------------------------------------------------------------- I've managed to get fancyindex working. I'm using someone else's theme with a few tweaks. https://github.com/drklee3/Nginx-Fancyindex-Minimal The result is pretty much the same thing as before, but with better fonts. 2/26/22 ----------------------------------------------------------------- You might be wondering what the "bbs experiment" is. Basically, I made a program in Red lang that generates html files. If input from the server could be used in a Red script, user input would be possible. Too bad Red has little to no facilities for that. I could make a cgi script, which I don't know how to do, but I'd prefer using a reverse proxy. My knowledge of web APIs is close to nill, so I can't finagle something from scratch either. I underestimated how complicated a task like this would be. In other news, I've been learning Go lang. I kind of like it. Maybe Go could handle the input, and Red the output? Anyway, that page doesn't actually do anything yet. 2/26/22 ----------------------------------------------------------------- So, I have the pc-98 files again. Doesn't work though cause nginx has decided to be a bitch about utf-8. Doesn't matter how many times I refresh it after changing the config, it has decided to stop working. Maybe this is somehow a Windows problem. Wouldn't be suprised. I am annoyed as all hell though. I might try moving the whole thing to wsl. edit: that's probably too much work. edit edit: did it anyway 2/14/22 ----------------------------------------------------------------- I hate people. I really really hate people. Can't live without them though. Is that frustrating? Yes. I'd like a better way to express my hatred. Something people could see and feel. If any of those who worked on the atom bomb were sadists, I'd like to think they felt euphoric during that first successful test. It's an edgy sentiment, but I've got to vent somehow. During my life, I really hope I make something great that I could dedicate to my misanthropy and show off. An eternal monument to my hatred for others. 2/1/22 ----------------------------------------------------------------- I had a bit of computer trouble that was entirely my fault. So this and that happened, and now the address is different. I wont have access to the pc-98 collection files for a while, but that should be taken care of soon enough. 11/18/21 ----------------------------------------------------------------- So, the web directory has two new sites. One of them is an anti "japanese cartoons" image board, and the only board is /b/. Let's see how long that lasts... I give it a month and that's being generous. It's cetertainly going to be bad and almost empty. The other is a pedophile, metal health support site, run by a furry, which is the real problem. Haaaaaaa. It's kind of funny. While I'll glad user adoption of yddgdrasil is increasing, can't say I'm interested in either of these. Or even that I'm a well wisher. update: the board is down already on almost the same day. There's another one in its place that's somewhat more appealing. 11/18/21 ----------------------------------------------------------------- Maybe the first two entries were a little too negative. I'm not a negative guy despite my neurotic tendencies. I'm at a bit of a crossroads right now, which is putting me on edge. 11/16/21 ----------------------------------------------------------------- I had a strange, lewd dream today, which I woke up from abruptly. Afterwards, I had this feeling that everything in society is a delusion. Like every commonly and uncommonly held belief is a total fabrication. And everyone is deluding themselves and each other. It's sick and tiresome. Maybe pursuing meaning and order is a pointless task? At least apathy and hedonism shouldn't be so demonized. Those "values" are closer to "the truth" than the vast majority of what people spew. You could argue society is heading in that direction, but I disagree. The most popular delusions are shifting, that's all. Maybe there's more dishonesty now. The same judgment and self-righteousness is there as always. 11/15/21 ----------------------------------------------------------------- You know what's annoying about webrings? Most aren't organized. Not even by whatever overlay network the sites use. And speaking of overlay networks, having your website be on every single one of them cheapens all of them imo. It's like you're saying none of them are good enough to commit to, so instead you'll take a wide net approach. And by committing to I mean contributing more than yet another tech and privacy blog(yeah I see the irony in this). Then there's Alfis. In short, it's an overdesigned, distributed cyrpto solution to the DNS problem. How about a nice, simple text file? Something that can easily be shared with others and the user has direct control over? It's like people gravitate towards overly complicated ways of doing things because they're so used to not having control over anything. mayvaneday.art on yggdradil for instance is hidden behind Alfis, I think. Their i2p and tor addresses don't have this problem. Whatever justification they may have for this isn't good enough. It's both less convenient and does nothing good for user adoption.