Just chilling at the lake beach.

This is wild. You can try out Linux distros in your browser using DistroSea. You don’t have to install anything!

This year I spent more money than I should have on computers. Of course, I am happy about that.

First, I bought a Beelink mini PCs with two NICs so I could set up an OPNsense router. My primary goal was to have a router/firewall that was up-to-date with security patches. That has been a rousing success. OPNsense, if anything, updates too often. My secondary goal was to have something I could set up as a VPN or proxy server so I could access my own stuff while I am away form home. I am unhappy to report that I could never get Wireguard working properly, and have given up on it for the time being.

I liked that PC so much that I bought another one to use as an app server. I installed Proxmox on it and have been having fun setting up numerous services in LXC containers using Proxmox VE Helper-Scripts. I set up LXC containers for Jellyfin (a media server and streamer), Paperless-ngx (a document manager for scanned papers), and several tools for downloading Linux ISOs and the like. It has been pretty easy to set up. The hardest part was getting all the LXC containers to connect to my NAS file shares, but even that was not very hard. (I do have many years of basic homelab-style Linux administration under my belt.)

The experience has been so good that I decided to buy a laptop to mess around with Linux on the desktop. I bought a 5-year-old used Thinkpad. It cost way less than $500, was in like-new condition, and runs Fedora 42 Workstation perfectly. I have been having more fun computing than I have for a long time.

I found the pst app! It’s a command-line tool for publishing to Micro.blog, written by @chrishannah in Rust, that runs on Linux! I used it to publish this post. Pst is open source, so I can learn from it! Very nice.

I’m running Fedora 42 Workstation on the “fun” laptop I bought myself at the start of the summer. I’m surprised to find out that there is practically no desktop blogging software available at all for it. Even the old, no-longer-supported apps I find online do not support publishing to Micro.blog. It might be fun to build a simple, publish-only tool that fills that gap. I will have to learn how to make an app for Gnome first, though, which may be difficult (I have no idea).

After a couple years away from micro.blog I decided to return. Let’s see if this sticks.

🎮 I pre-ordered “Super Mario Wonder” tonight after my daughter reminded me it is coming out soon. I can’t wait to play it. I wonder (no wordplay intended) when I will have time to play it.

📚 I started reading John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath today. I have been curious about it for a long time now. I haven’t read Steinbeck since high school.

📚 I finished reading Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 last night and stayed up too late thinking about it. I’m very glad I read it. I will be thinking about it for a long time.

I have been having a lot of fun playing Knotwords lately. It a fun and sometimes challenging reverse crossword puzzle in which you fill letters into a grid.

I have known about the PICO-8 fantasy console for a while, due to finding a PICO-8 item in Celeste, but I learned this week that all the game tools you need to create games with it (including a music editor and a sprite editor) are built in. You can also view the code of any published game, so you can change it, edit it, and even publish it. It is so cool! I bought a license this week. I think my son will like to create games with it.

I just ordered my wife an iPhone 15. I am not happy that I had to pay in full, rather than use Apple Card monthly installments, to buy one without connecting it to a Big Three carrier.

We all had a great time at Grounds for Sculpture today.

The past couple days here in New Jersey have been full of glorious early fall weather. 🌞

Apple News+ crosswords have an excellent UI. Interacting with the grid and clues is fluid and simple. I wish it were available in a separate app or tab in the News app, though. Sadly, the crossword clueing is nowhere near as good as it is in New York Times crosswords, which makes the Apple crosswords less fun.

📚 Last month I read Appointment in Samarra by John O’Hara. It is another 20th century classic that was on my reading list for a while, but I put it off because I had no idea what it was about. Turns out it’s about crazy drunk people being social and antisocial during Prohibition. I found it easy to read and deliriously entertaining.

I retrieved my 3-year-old iPhone 12 mini from the Apple Store this afternoon and set it up (along with my Apple Watch Series 4) from scratch. I also bought a new case for it. They both feel spiffy and new, which I did not expect.

Last night I went to the Apple Store to get a new battery for my iPhone 12 mini. Normally that process would take about an hour. Because I had the iOS 17 beta installed, however, they had to wipe my phone and downgrade it to iOS 16-something before they would swap the battery. The process took so long that I had to leave my phone with them overnight to get the repair, and will be getting it today at lunchtime.

I will watch the Apple iPhone announcement/informercial today, but I am not overly excited about it. I will be buying an iPhone 15 as soon as possible, however, to replace my wife’s frequently overheating and storage-starved iPhone XR.

⌨️ I love my (lamentably discontinued) Planck-EZ, but was amazed when I discovered that ZSA released a low-profile ergo split keyboard, the Voyager. It is the keyboard I would have bought instead of the Plank-EZ. (At the time I bought my first Planck-EZ I had my eye on a pre-built Corne) I would love to have one, but, at $365 USD, however, it is too expensive for me to buy on a whim.

📚 Catch-22 is witty, surreal, and really keeps you on your toes as you read it.

📺 I just subscribed to Paramount+ for the year. I got hooked on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds this summer, and now I want to watch all the other Trek that I missed. I am in the middle of Star Trek: Discovery now.

📚 I am tabling It for now. Three chapters in, I’m not sure I like it. I just borrowed Catch-22 from my local library, and will try that instead.

📚 I started reading Stephen King’s It. I know it’s popular. I know it’s long. I’m not yet sure that it is good.

📚 Just finished reading Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham. Loved it!