I wantz a can of dolphin pwezzz!

I’ve been back on the KDE Plasma desktop for a few weeks now after my ventures with the Trinity Desktop Environment. I really want to use TDE, but it just isn’t working out. I think I said it once before, I think TDE works just fine on a dedicated Personal Computer, but it’s just not intended for laptops. It really falls apart when it comes to external displays, audio device management, and even networking. So long things are static, then it’s fine; it’s way too manual otherwise.

There are a few things I typically setup on my computers, regardless of distribution or desktop if possible, and I wanted share a few of those here today for KDE and the dolphin file manager.

• How to setup custom actions in Dolphin file manager
• Bypassing Dolphin kioslaves with GVFS fuse
• Easy access to iPhone pictures and files in Dolphin

How to setup custom actions in Dolphin file manager:

Custom actions are a feature that’s kind of necessary, if not important for the way I work. If you don’t know what a custom action is, imagine being able to make your own right-click menu option that does something you specify when selecting a file or folder, or even multiple files and folders all at once in the file manager; an example scenario that comes to my mind would be an exif stripper that removes exif info on select files in the file manager form a simple context menu option. In my case, I use custom actions with a script that I made years ago for handling file transfers to multiple servers and image sharing direct-to-web from the file manager instead of ever needing a dedicated SFTP application. I might share this in in the future, but that’s outside this blog post for today.

Now unlike Thunar, Dolphin doesn’t provide an easy way to setup up custom actions. I had to search around the web until I came across some instructions on how to do this, so I’m going to show you here too! This is assuming that you already have a script of some sort that you can use as a custom action when highlighting files in the file manager.

First off, you’ll need to create the following directory path:

mkdir -p ~/.local/share/kservices5/ServiceMenus/

After that, move into the ServiceMenus directory and create a .desktop file; you can give it any name you want.

touch ~/.local/share/kservices5/ServiceMenus/exif_strip.desktop

Within the .desktop file, you’ll want something along the following lines:

[Desktop Entry]
  Encoding=UTF-8
  Actions=exif_strip;
  X-KDE-ServiceTypes=KonqPopupMenu/Plugin
  MimeType=image/jpeg;image/png;
  Type=Service
  X-KDE-Priority=TopLevel
  
  [Desktop Action exif_strip]
  Name=Exif info strip
  Exec=exiftool -overwrite_original -all= %N

• MimeType: There are a few options available here. Let’s say that you want the custom action to show up only when selecting a specific file type. You can achieve this by changing it to the desired format. Now, you’ re probably wondering, “how do I know what that looks like?” Well it’s pretty simple, you can use the “mimetype” command in your console against any file to get it’s “MimeType.”

  For example, you can run the mimetype command against a JPG file and it’ll show you in the output.

  mimetype cat_picture.jpg
    cat_picture.jpg:  image/jpeg

  You would then copy that into the MimeType option in the .desktop file. You can add additional mime types by separating them with a semi colon. If you want your custom action to apply to any and all files, then you can use “all/allfiles;” as the mime type too.

  MimeType=image/jpeg;

  For a more comprehensive explanation of options, you can read up on them on the freedesktop website.

• Exec: This is where you’ll pass the selected files or folders to your script from an exec key code. There are a few options here that are important to know. I recommend reading the options listed in the table on the freedesktop website.

  In my example, I’m using the “%N” option which is considered deprecated but still works. “%N” will substitute the selected filenames without including their paths. It all depends on what you’re trying to achieve here, so you’ll might need a different option than me. After saving the .desktop file, quit out of Dolphin then re-open it and you should see the new custom action in your right-click context menu depending on the mimetype it’s configured for.

  Note: You can use the exec key code options as described in Thunar's example too.

Bypassing Dolphin kioslaves with GVFS fuse:

I’m not very fond of the kioslave service that Plasma implements for file mounting. I don’t believe it supports GVFS, which I find to be a necessity in mounting network file shares. Non-GVFS methods in network file mounting on *nix based devices in unstable situations has always been a trash fire that’s never been well addressed in my experience. Disruptions in network connectivity shouldn’t ever impact performance of the files system, and yet it does, and GVFS fuse has been the only solution that I’ve found to avoid that.

It does come with its downsides though, such as obfuscating the mount path, making it difficult for some desktop applications to function; for example, Libreoffice and it’s habit of generating lock files beside the original file. It doesn’t always play well in a GVFS mount. However, I haven’t run into this issue for quite awhile now so maybe it’s been improved?

I believe another issue I’ve come across in the past with GVFS mounts is the inability to execute applications from the file server, despite the SMB service on the server permitting execution. It’s hit or miss, so it’s up to your judgment. I just want to demonstrate my method in mounting a file share via GVFS fuse and accessing that mount point within Dolphin without ever involving the kioslave service.

I use Gigolo for GVFS, even in situations where the file manager might natively support the protocol. I find that it tends to do a much better job in auto-mounting and exposing the mount to the whole desktop thanks to fuse. There are a few additional packages required which for some reason aren’t included or even recommended by the Gigolgo package on Debian, yet they're important to have.

apt install gigolo gvfs-daemons gvfs-backends gvfs-fuse gvfs-common

You’ll need to reboot after the install is complete.

Next up, you’ll need to configure Gigolo to connect to your network file share, which is pretty straight forward; I’m assuming that you should already know how to do this, so I’m not going to walk you thru that part, however there are a few settings I recommend.

Open Gigolo, click “edit” in the menu bar > preferences > Interface tab. Check “Start minimized in the Notification area,” this way it doesn’t start up with a window when logging in. Remove the checked option for “Show auto-connect error messages,” so that you’re not bombarded with connection error popups.

You’ll also want to make sure that giglo starts up when logging in. You can do this by adding the following .desktop to your “~/.config/autostart” directory.

[Desktop Entry]
  Encoding=UTF-8
  Type=Application
  Name=Gigolo
  Comment=GVFS file mounter
  Exec=gigolo

Once you have your network mount setup and connected in Gigolo, open Dolphin and navigate to the following directory:

/run/user/1000/gvfs/

You should see the mounted share from here. You can drag it over into the “Places” column in Dolphin, or bookmark it for quick access.

And that’s all there is to it! The next time you log back in, Gigolo should auto-mount the network share if it’s present, and you can simply click on your “Places” item or bookmark for it to access within Dolphin. No kioslave network setup needed!

Easy access to iPhone pictures and files in Dolphin:

By default, it seems Dolphin won’t show any indication that you’ve connected an iPhone. Instead, you’ll probably see a pop-up notification for a camera device, and clicking the option “open in file manager” does nothing. I don’t know if this is the case for other distributions, but it is for me being on Debian 12.

Alternatively, you can expand the options to reveal the “View photos with file manager,” and this seems to work. Only one problem is that if you close out of Dolphin, you have to go back through the device manager in the system tray to get back into your iPhone files.

To make this a little more simpler, right click in an empty space in the left sidebar of Dolphin that lists your Places, Remote networks, Recent files, and Devices. In the right click menu, select “Add Entry…”

From the “Add Places Entry” window, give it a label and adjust the location to “camera:/”. You can also give it a camera icon too. You can reposition the new Camera item in the sidebar by dragging and dropping it. Clicking it will take you to the “camera:/” location, and whenever you plug in your iPhone, it should show up as a selectable folder.

Thanks for reading my blog!

Time to take out the spam

So I run my own email service like any based internet Chad out there, of course. It’s primarily for coms between the fam and such, but it’s used for accounts and stuff and interfaces with other sites and services too. Hey, I don ’t care about Netflix and shid, but some of them do so it’s gotta work; especially for billing receipts and payment confirmations!

So there I was booking a hotel room for an upcoming Loonix Fest conference in New California (aka Austin Texas) and I wasn’t receiving an email or anything from them! I printed off the receipt and order-number from the hotels website, as one always should, because you never know what kind of shenanigans they’ll try to pull. I will not, and refuse to install hotel phone apps and parking passes (even it I could, see “ITT: stuff nobody asked for - Discontinuing of 3G cellular networks”) so sometimes they like to play stupid if you don’t install their spyware onto your mobile skinnerbox; I’ve got papers!

Anyways, I started noticing that I haven’t received an email since the 16’th of March (this now being March the 28’th) which is very sus. So I switch to one of my Protonmail accounts and send an email to my personal mail and got the following bounce back.

Subject: Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender
This is the mail system at Proton Mail.
Your email could not be delivered to one or more recipients. See below for the delivery error and email.
The most common reasons for undelivered email are wrong recipient address or wrong configuration on the recipient mail server.
Learn more about delivery errors in our knowledge base: https://proton.me/support/smtp-errors
<xxxx@xxxx.net>: host x[123.123.123.123] said: 554 5.7.1 Service
    unavailable; Helo command [mail-4322.protonmail.ch] blocked using
    dbl.spamhaus.org; Error: open resolver;
    https://check.spamhaus.org/returnc/pub/321.321.321.321/ (in reply to RCPT TO command)

The error “open resolver” is what my mail server sent to Proton Mail. An open resolver has to do with DNS, which I thought was an odd response that didn’t make much sense. My first thought was PM screwed something up on their side that was triggering the spam filter, but I did a little investigation and found that it was neither PM or my mail servers fault!

No no, it was coming from spamhaus which I use for spam protection! I had to do some looking around and came across this site with a post from October 19’th, 2021:

Be careful: Using Spamhaus with open resolvers is bad news

Do you use any of the Spamhaus blocking lists (DNSBLs) to protect yourself from inbound spam and email threats? If so, you're not alone. The Spamhaus data is quite popular and used by many ISPs as a front door gatekeeper for IP (and domain) reputation.

If you do use any of Spamhaus's DNSBLs, though, make sure you're not doing it via a public DNS resolver or via any DNS server that is attempting a high volume of queries against Spamhaus without being registered with them. If you do, you risk the queries triggering blocks simply due to the sheer volume of DNS traffic Spamhaus is receiving. Meaning you'll end up blocking mail that wasn't spam and that you probably didn't mean to block.

The guy in the post goes on to say that he strongly recommends against using public DNS servers to query Spamhaus, which is a kick in nuts because that would mean I either have to find a private DNS provider or run my own DNS server instead of just using what’s out there freely available.

But it gets a little more tricky than that. I found this on the Spamhaus resource center:

Successfully accessing Spamhaus’ free blocklists using a public DNS

--

3: The network originating the DNS Query must be identifiable. This means you must query the Spamhaus DNSBL Public Mirrors from a recursive resolver run on your own network or from a public resolver that supports ECS

I’m not familiar with ECS so looked it up and found this on wiki: “ EDNS Client Subnet (ECS) is an option in the Extension Mechanisms for DNS that allows a recursive DNS resolver to specify the subnetwork for the host or client on whose behalf it is making a DNS query” - “Because ECS provides client network information to upstream resolver, the extension reveals some information about the client's location that the resolver would not otherwise be able to deduce. Security researchers have suggested that ECS could be used to conduct internet surveillance. ECS may also be exploited to perform selective DNS cache poisoning attacks intended to only re-route specific clients to a poisoned DNS record”

Bery interdasting! Apparently this is enabled by default in /etc/resolve.conf on modern Linux operating systems. I didn’t even know that; thanks glowies!

options edns0 trust-ad

Then Spamhause continues on to the next point...

4: Queries originating from large shared hosting environments are not accepted. As a workaround, please apply for a free Datafeed Query Key from Spamhaus Technology.”

So rip in piss VPS email Chad’s. They make it sound as if this DQK and DQS is free, but what they meant to say is “free* 30 day trial.” After that you have to pay a $250 annual subscription. So it’s either pay for a key to access the DQS, or pay for a private resolver that supports ECS to continue in accessing the original public mirrors.

IMO, $250 ain't that bad, but I'm already spending quite a lot out of pocket here running my services so yeah I'm going to pass on this one bros.

There are free public resolvers that support ECS out there, such as NextDNS, but I don’t think the implementation of EDNS on Debian actually works? I’m using an old version of Debian though. I couldn’t really tell if it was working because NextDNS’s resolver isn’t yet black listed by Spamhaus, so it just worked without the EDNS settings regardless. I couldn't see any evidence of ECS when inspecting the DNS query packets from Postfix with tshark so yeah, idfk. I suspect I have to install their nextDNS client to get access to that feature.

One of Spamhause’s resources aimed at Cuckflare users has the following Q&A:

What if I don’t want to use the free DQS?

1: Use DNS resolvers with attributable DNS to continue being protected by Spamhaus’s IP and domain reputation.

2: If you no longer wish for your mail stream to be protected for free by Spamhaus’ blocklists, remove all associated configurations from your email infrastructure.

I don’t use Cloudflare for anything, but despite them supporting “attributable DNS” (ECS), I guess Spamhause are just going to force CF users to the DQS anyhow? That’s rude. It wouldn’t surprise me if they clamp down on self-hosted recursive DNS setups too, regardless of you being a good boy and following all of the rules. It’s only a matter of time and the deal will be altered, so don’t expect that method to last.

I’m just going to stop using their services altogether and not even bother with it anymore because it’ll turn into yet another time wasting endeavor keeping up with some pukes bureaucratic games; I’m already having to deal with enough of this at work.

Conclusion:

This has all been a gradual and slow effort of theirs dating back to 2018, which I didn’t even know about. Spamhaus says this is for the benefit of “small independent businesses and non-profit organizations to filter their email safely at no cost” by effectively cutting out abusers of the service, which I can understand that, but it’s just the same old song and dance routine as yet another once useful free service clamps down on more effective monetizing. I mean, isn’t this how it usually happens though? Make something that’s free and useful to attain widespread adoption, then later flip the tables and harvest the crop.

Now I’m not saying this was some long term master plan of theirs from the beginning, but I’m guessing there’s been a change in staff and attitude over the recent years, meaning the free ride is over because the very people these policy changes will effect the most are the small independent businesses and non-profit organizations. It’s not going to even phase the big email providers and abusers they say they’re after, since those guys are already paying for considerably more robust spam protection services than just simply some piss-ants “free” block list.

Unfortunately pretending they don’t exist won’t be enough to escape from the racket, because this isn’t my first run in with Spamhause gangsters.

About three years ago they black listed the block of addresses, including others owned by DigitalOcean, which my VPS was running on without any way to dispute it. I spent a lot of time working with Microsoft, Gmail, and Yahoo to keep off their spam filters only for these thugs to put an end to it; I have to now use an MTA proxy relay (AuthSMTP) to send emails so that my messages aren’t directed to the recipients spam folder since every major email provider also uses Spamhause filters (which is usually bundled in whatever spam protection service they’re running.) Fortunately the proxy is affordable, but it’s very irritating that I have to rely on it in order to send email.

So, I can’t send emails without a proxy thanks to Spamhause black listing my IP block, and then on top of that I can no longer utilize Spamhause for spam protection unless I pay for a private resolver that supports ECS. Remember, “Queries originating from large shared hosting environments are not accepted,” so hosting my own DNS isn’t going to work here, or work for very long if it did, given the nature of the environment I’m working in.

At this point, there are likely better paid for spam protection services out there than Spamhause so I might look into one of those. Maybe if someone were particularly smart, they could make an anti-spam AI in a container for anyone to slap on top of their MTA, putting an end to this black listing business.

Thanks for reading my blog!

It’s been a little while since the last update, and that’s because I’ve been busy. I’ve actually been too busy with IRL things to pay attention to the site. There’s a list of things that need to be done, even now; like, get the oil changed in my car and truck, probably get new tires for my truck, the car needs more coolant fluid, still gotta do tax return. And then there’s tons of things to be done for the house too.

There have been other things going on too, like I’m still struggling to keep an insurance policy down on the house without them canceling on me, but maybe that’ll finally be a things of the past because I FINALLY was able to get the house re-sided! I had to save up for it because it cost in total $19,000. Here are a few before and after pics:

The siding is fiber cement plank with the cedar pattern style which I think looks pretty good for this house. It no longer looks abandoned I can tell you that much, but there are still some things that need to be worked on. Most of the window sills need to be replaced; for now they’ve been repainted and caulked over, but that ain’t gonna last. I intend to get that done as I gradually replace the windows.

The flashing work in front of the dormer windows (the header), looks trashy and not really well done. I plan to install an apron over the flashing and detail the side walls of the dormers so everything looks a little more tidy.

Unfortunately the siding guys nail gunned the drip edges onto the trim in many places. I didn’t realize this at the time, so that’s gonna be a pain in the ass to replace and repair. Drip edge flashing is supposed to stand off from the fascia trim by about a quarter of an inch so that water doesn’t run down the side of the trim; it also provides a space to run a gutter which the back of extends up into and behind the drip edge. Nailing it down to the trim is a dumb-ass rookie mistake.

I also noticed that they high nailed the siding, which caused them to have to come back thru and pin-back the bottoms so that it wouldn’t flap or vibrate in high winds. Again, a dumb-ass rookie mistake. I guess I get what I paid for though, because I couldn’t really find anyone else that would re-side the house. I resorted to Mexican’s that couldn’t speak a lick of English, but at least they did the job. I just have to go thru and clean some of the rough spots up. The pin backed siding is alright, but it’ll cause grief in the future if I ever need to pull a section up for whatever reason.

I’m STILL working on this damn outhouse, and getting tired of it. There isn’t much day light in the winter season after getting off of work, so I haven’t been able to get anything done until recently. I’ve finally got some of the roof completed, which is a metal roof. I still need to find this edge flashing piece to attach around the front and both sides though so that rain can’t get beneath it. Metal roofs are a little different than shingled, so the drip edges you see in the pic below aren’t really required because a larger piece goes on top of and around it, except for the back side. I just added those there for extra protection really.

The beginning of the seat platform is coming along. I had a lot of trouble building this part because I didn’t have it drawn out on a blueprint like I did most of the rest of the project; so I just had to wing it. I’ve paid careful attention to weight distribution just in case I have an extra extra plus size visitor that needs to use it. I would hate for it to collapse on them!

There’s still a lot that needs to be done before this project is complete, and it’s getting a bit too expensive in my opinion. The plan though is that this will be a permanent structure and not a temporary one, so I’m building it to last. It would make for a great backup shitter in the future, and plus it looks fitting and quaint for a farm house.

A few weeks ago the weather here got freezing cold. I think the temperature was around 15F (-9C). This was before I had the house re-sided, so there were large spaces opened up in the wall where I did some repair work to the foundation. There was also no skirt around the house either, so the wind blew right thru and into the kitchen and living room, making it impossible to keep warm.

I brought everything essential form out of the kitchen and moved it into my bed room and pretty much lived out of there for a few weeks. I could at least keep my bed room warm, but even then there were areas where the wind was cutting thru that I had to cover it up with towels. The floor was also freezing cold, which I expected it would be and why I setup a rug in there the day I moved in to the house.

I alternated between different heaters to keep the room warm too. My electric heater I would leave on, which did a good job of keeping the room warm, but the cold would gradually take over so I would occasionally light either the propane heater or my kerosene heater. The kerosene heater heats up the room the quickest, but it also goes thru its fuel a little too quick; while the propane heater was slower but didn’t use much fuel.

Now with the new siding and skirt installed around the house, there’s no more serious draft blowing thru like before, so it shouldn’t be so difficult to keep the kitchen warm.

I moved my stuff back into the kitchen last week when the siding work was finished, and that first night I heard this haunting sound of two people moaning and babbling coming from somewhere around the house. I couldn’t tell if it was coming from the floor above or outside, but it sure sounded like the most stereotypical ghost noise you could imagine. I almost wanted to laugh at it because it couldn’t get anymore unoriginal, but it was real at the same time so I grabbed my flash light and went outside to check if it was out there.

As soon as I stepped onto the porch it stopped of course, but I walked over to the side of the house and spotted two cats going at it making love beneath the kitchen window! I didn’t know cats could make that sound, which was really similar to human voices; but at least that mystery was solved. As soon as I flashed my light on them, they zipped off to the barn in the back. I suspect I’ll have a litter of kittens come spring. Maybe I can get free cats this way or something?

Also here’s a picture of the neighbors dog. She likes to stop by to visit and use my front yard as a restroom. She’s a really sweet dog too; I give her pepperonis if I have them.

Thanks for reading my blog!

I’ve been using the Trinity desktop now for nearly two months, working out the kinks along the way. I like the desktop, but there are certainly some anachronisms that can make it difficult to use.

So why Trinity and not Plasma or something right? Well uhh, I don’t know. I like the traditional UI with its icons instead of those empty black and white silhouettes you see anymore. It has properly rendered window borders, titlebars, frame insets, tree lists, button borders, button icons, menu icons. The other thing I like about the it is that it works really well on lower resolutions; none of it feels bloated in the sense of an over-padded interface like your typical GTK3 application. It’s also pointer focused, meaning you can use a mouse pointer for just about everything; perhaps even to a fault.

This isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea, but I like it! It’s just those darned paper cut issues that makes it difficult to use, so I wanted to make a short guide detailing on how to fix most of them. I’ve also made a companion video to this blog (see above) demonstrating the desktop too.

Here’s a list of the problems I’ve come across while using the Trinity desktop:

• Screen tearing
• Lack of GVFS support in file manager
• Terrible audio volume mixer
• Dreadfully awful display management
• No bluetooth device management
• Power management

Screen tearing:

Trinity includes a version of compton built in, which is a little difficult to find in the Control Center. You have to go to Desktop > Window Behavior. This is a terrible place for compositor settings in my opinion, but that’s where they placed it!

From here, click on the Translucency tab and check the box below for “Use OpenGL compositor (best performance.) Log out, the n log back in and screen tearing should be fixed! You might have to first check the box above for “Enable the Trinity window compositio n manager” to activate the sub-settings.

Lack of GVFS support in file manager:

This is an easy-ish fix by installing the gigolo package. After installing, you can launch gigolo and setup your file share bookmarks.

I have a NAS server where I prefer SMB/CIFS over NFS since it has wider support across different operating systems. On Linux desktops, I prefer mounting network shares with GVFS since it has better handling of dropped connections unlike traditional mount, whi ch will just wreck your whole desktop by trying to aggressively reconnect to something that might no longer exist on the network.

Once you have your network mount setup in gigolo, you’ll want to copy the mount path directory (not the URI) by right-click on the bookmark and copying the file path. You can paste the path in the address bar of the Konqueror file manager. You can bookmark th is in the bookmarks sidebar for future use.

You’ll also want to make sure that giglo starts up when logging in. You can do this by adding the following .desktop to your “~/.config/autostart” directory.

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Type=Application
Name=Gigolo
Comment=GVFS file mounter
Exec=gigolo

Then open Gigolo, click “edit” in the menu bar > preferences > Interface tab. Check “Start minimized in the Notification area,” this way it doesn’t start up with a window when logging in. Remove the checked option for “Show auto-connect error messages,” so that you’re not bombarded with connection error popups.

Terrible audio volume mixer:

The default audio mixer, Trinity kmixer, isn’t very functional. It simply has a single master slider without any option to change the default output or input device. Instead of using kmixer, install pavucontrol-qt then add it to the panel bar as a “non-TDE application” launcher button.

Dreadfully awful display management:

Multi-display setup and configuration in Trinity is just no good. In the Trinity Control Center, System Administration > Monitor & Display, you can find all sorts of control options for setting up your monitors; but they don’t really work. It also doesn’t make sense that an elevated account is needed to even make changes to the resolution.

One of the settings I found comical was for mirroring. Typically mirroring implies that you’re actually duplicating your displays, but not here; mirroring means to literally mirror your display. There’s actually no functionality to duplicate your displays either, and drag dropping the little boxes on top of each other in the arrangement layout isn’t possible either (something you can do to duplicate displays in XFCE for example.)

If you’re on a multi-display setup, applying any changes to it will also wreck the color profile of the primary display with no way of recovering it.

It would be best to simply avoid applying any sort of change to your displays thru the Trinity Control Center. Instead, you can use lxrandr for display management, which isn’t exactly a perfect solution; if you know of any better solutions then let me know!

Anyhow once you’ve installed lxrandr, setup your displays and save the settings; you’ll need to modify the lxrandr display profile saved to your system so that it’ll startup on login. To do this, use a text editor to open the following file.

$ ~/.config/autostart/lxrandr-autostart.desktop

There should be a line in the file for “OnlyShowIn=LXDE.” You can either remove it or comment it out with a “#”. The next time you log back in, it should auto-start the xrandr script and your displays auto-configured.

No bluetooth device management:

This one is pretty easy to fix. All you need to do is install the blueman package and there ya go, instant bluetooth manager! It’ll even auto-start with the system and has a system tray icon too.

Power manager:

Power management settings are a little tricky to find because they’re not in the Trinity Control center from what I can tell. Instead, you access it from a system tray icon that you’ll right-click on.

From the right-click menu select “Configure TDEPowersave…” From here, you can modify the power setting profiles for specific events, such as on battery or connected direct to power.

Review:

The desktop can be alright after fixing it up. I find the default file manager, Konqueror, to be a little frustrating to use though. Sometimes it won’t default to my saved icon settings, changing itself back to the icon view instead of the detail list view when opening a new tab. So far, I’m still using Thunar whether I’m on GNOME, Plasma, MATE, or Trinity desktops.

I like the start menu along with the little hint search feature. The modern kicker menu though is pretty much useless to me because of the sporadic hover to activate menus. I can’t stand hover to activate UI elements! You can also completely modify the menus more to your liking too, so that’s at least possible.

There are a few panel applets that I find to be useful, like “Bookmarks” and “Quick File Browser.” You can point it to a specific folder on your system for quick access from the panel bar with Quick File Browser; I love it! The Quick Launch applet is also good to have, because without a quick launch I’m likely to not use the whole desktop environment. I prefer this traditional panel bar with quick launch shortcuts instead of a dock bar. I find dock bars infuriating to use, so the lack of a dock bar in Trinity is a plus in my book!

Trinity also includes a few of its own version of applications, like Kate, Konversation, konsole, and Dolphin. I’ve noticed that it has a weird service that I think is monitoring DBUS or something like that, which will intercept the application launch so that the Trinity version of a program is launched instead of a non-Trinity version. A little strange…

The default TDM (Trinity Display Manager) is okay, but its login greeter sort of sucks if you have a multi monitor setup with a laptop where the laptop lid is shut. It likes to default to the laptop display as the primary, and if it’s shut you won’t be able to see the login screen unless you open it. SDDM (the Plasma desktops default display manager) would probably make a better fit here. Also I have no idea how it’ll handle with external graphics cards, but it works fine on my laptop and my Desktop PC running an RX580 card.

You can change the display manager with the following command:

$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure tdm-trinity

Reboot your system after running the command.

I give this desktop about a 3 out of 5 score, closer to a 2 simply because of all the stuff that just didn’t really work right. It really is like a trip back to early 2000’s with KDE 3 though. I’m considering sticking with this one for my desktop as part of my cozy desktop project where I want a nice usable and proper looking setup that doesn’t make me want to jump off a cliff, even if they’ re old and out of date; so long they’re still useful and serve a purpose and aren’t web dependent.

I’m thinking of changing a few things up here to get it closer to what the Unix/Linux desktop with X11 is supposed to be like; so think XDM for display management, XscreenSaver for session locking and display power management, ACPID for overall system power management, possibly SysV init if it works out better; I’m honestly not all that up in arms with init systems so long it works and behaves itself. It’s just that going back to the basics and the original intended functionality of Linux desktops might call for ripping out more than what might be initially expected.

A lot of the “progress” made and being made in the Linux desktop ecosystem in terms of the Personal Computer is quickly beco ming irrelevant as the PC will be abandoned by the corporate sphere in favor of stripped down VDI cloud solutions. Now this isn’t me sa ying that the Linux desktop will be irrelevant and abandoned since it’s the likely candidate for powering those VDI service; but rather the Personal Computing paradigm in concept as a target platform will be irrelevant if it isn’t already, and thus the user experience l ike we’re seeing right now from any desktop and OS becomes greatly diminished, anti-user, and hostile toward the original concepts and established culture of ownership and personal space.

I still like my computer and would like to continue in using it as is for the indefinite future, internet access or not; It serves a use! I believe that the direction personal computer operating systems are taking, whether it’s Linux, Windows, or Apple, is a place without the “personal” aspect in mind. Instead, it’s becoming the Leased Computer Operating System, where the OS part is somethin g you don’t even have to think about since it’s managed by a timeshare. I think it’s pretty lame, so it’s probably about that time to just dig in and say “No.”

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I believe that the PC Desktop from outside my niche use of it is largely over. And by PC Desktop, I mean it in its most traditional and original concept. You have a physical computer that sits on a physical desk connected to a physical keyboard, mouse, and perhaps a few other devices like a printer, speakers, scanner, camera, etc. Oh and plus YOU own it; you can do whatever you want with bad mamma jamma!

The two major operating systems in use on PC’s today, MS Windows and MacOS, are unrecognizable to me as a Personal Computer Operating System. I don’t even think they should be considered as such given how hostile toward the personal computing concept and dependent on centralized network services they’ve become. They’re essentially a hybrid thin client OS whilst a truly Personal Computer OS is something of a rarity anymore. It’s why I ditched Windows for Debian back in the Windows 8 days; it just stopped being my computer.

I could certainly install the software I wanted on it, and this is still within the realm of possibility on newer versions, but it isn’t going to be very possible for much longer as x86 based architecture and the win32 API are no longer supported or mainstream from a PC perspective. From either major operating system, there’s a heavy emphasis on web based services and this entitled attitude of “you’re going to accept what we shove in your face or else we’ll make your life here miserable.” It’s obviously manipulative behavior and I don’t appreciate the gaslighting from these corporations either.

All I want is my computer back, and I thought I’d found that in the Linux Desktop Operating System ecosystem. For awhile there spanning between 2010 to 2019’ish, things seemed pretty alright, but I’ve began to notice that same sort of manipulative “we know better” self-righteous attitude growing among many of the OSS / FOSS developers too. Mutual respect between developers and their user base, regardless of their social and cultural differences, has quickly become a lost virtue transformed into a cry baby bitch bawl circling around the toilet drain of muh feefees and muh pronouns and muh bullies and muh this and muh that. Hooowaahhh poo lil me, *sniff sniff grift grift,* donate to me plzz!

There’s no doubt this side of software development and programming attracts a certain crowd of people, namely narcissists that excuse their poor attitudes and behavior under a victim-hood complex or “activism;” but this wasn’t really the case by and large from what I can recall within the scene until lately. I’m sure the present political climate has had a large part to play here, but the last thing I want to see and hear is some finger wagging dysgenic puke overlording my computer with their needless opinions on how it ought to work, and likewise a mob of pretend-users trying to shame a project into self destruction over childish kneejerk reactions. I got away from Windows exactly because of that attitude, and now it seems to be taking off here as well!

It’s disappointing, but also a sign of the times for the Personal Computing ecosystem. As I said earlier, it’s largely over. The normies have already moved on well over 10 years ago to mobile platforms and ditched the PC altogether, so anything new and novel or of any worth isn’t happening here. The only people remaining are office wagies, gaymers, boomers and enthusiasts (a fancy term for autists.) I guess I count in that enthusiast category, because I quite like my PC. It does everything I need it too, and affordably! Maybe just a little in the boomer category too. :^)

So with all of that in mind, I think it would be apt for a change in mindset for those enthusiasts remaining when it comes to the expectation of new and improved, or even progress made in this space. Remember, it’s over. There’s no more new, improved, or progress made; it’s finished and complete. There are certainly new projects and new software still being made and introduced, but much of that effort is vain attempts to recreate things that in all likelihood already existed in a much superior form or version. For example, how many times do note taking applications need to be reinvented when there were already good enough, if not even better applications out there made years if not decades ago?

The same concept can be applied to just about every aspect of the PC operating system and the available software for it. Rather than endlessly chasing after the “new” and “improved,” why not settle with that you’ve got? What exactly is your purpose or need in a PC anymore if you’re always chasing for something newer? Maybe it’s time to move on if you’re one of those types.

For myself, I like my PC because I prefer this method of interaction when writing, making music, making frog memes, editing pictures, chatting with people, watching my collection of movies and shows or listening to music. My habits here haven’t changed much over the past 15 years, but the software has. Rather than winamp, it’s audacious with the same skin. From Media Player Classic to MPV. From Firefox to Brave (which is sad, RIP FF.) Movie Maker to Kdenlive. Pirated version of Photoshop to GIMP. Pirated version of MS Office to LibreOffice. From IRC to MSN Messenger, then Steam chat, then back to IRC (and XMPP). From Ventrilo to Mumble. From .txt files to keepassxc (lel).

I’ve come to a realization that most of the software I use can simply remain static with some exception for internet based applications; but even the web is pretty much dead too with the only good parts being independent sites, so maybe a browser isn’t all that important anymore? One of the annoying aspects of Linux desktops is how difficult it is to run older applications, unlike Windows, however it’s possible thru containerization. Now get this, and this might be the same for you too; the applications that I use which require frequent updates and security patches is considerably far and few while all the rest of everything else that I use doesn’t. This even extends to the desktop environment itself and its core services and programs.

So I ask, what is the point in updating these things in a time where many of the projects and developers are becoming incompetent or hostile toward their users and appeasing of corporate dictates? Why should I bother with the “new” and “improved” way of things when what I’ve got is good enough? In fact, there are likely even older nearly forgotten relics of software out there that’s still completely functional if properly containerized and made possible to run today.

I use to think that people still daily driving Windows XP, and to some extent Windows 7 too, were a bunch of nut cases asking to get hacked; but the reality of it is that isn’t really the case. Now sure, you’re an absolute tard to daily drive XP on the internet with some old ass version of Firefox and expect to be able to access modern services with it; and I’m sure most of those guys realize that and have either concocted an elaborate work around or just divide their work between different devices. I’ve gradually come to the same mind in realizing that I don’t have to subject my interaction with my personal computer to the whims of petty tech tyrants. Their projects and bad opinions are now irrelevant and no longer needed, and at any time I can simply halt the “progress.”

I might not be aware if this is already a thing or not, but I can already see a potential underground of old software distribution, like GOG (Good Old Games) but for abandonware. I’ve managed to keep a lot my old installers, but found archive.org to be a good source for old usable software too. Perhaps some sort of package repo for containerized abandonware would be pretty neat! I can foresee loicense issues developing out of it, so it would need to remain anon and accessible from hidden networks; but then you’re asking for all sorts of malware distribution too since there wouldn’t be any accountability on the maintainers. I don’t really know how to approach such an idea. I think Lutris’s approach to Windows game installer scripts would be the way to go, but then a “know your user” and buddy-buddy gatekept ecosystem could work just as well.

I still have a computer that’s incidentally become a time capsule of 2012 running Windows 8.1. I use it strictly for music production, and nothing else. The update services and Microsoft gloware have been removed, and a block to the WWW placed on it with only limited access to my NAS. It’s worked smoothly since! I have another desktop running Ubuntu 16.04, which can surprisingly still be daily driven thanks to a backport of flatpak, but I really only use it for playing old 3Dfx voodoo games in Wine (which is some old compiled version that I found worked best with them.)

Right now my main computer is a Dell laptop that I special ordered back in 2019. It’s been good to me, but I soon plan to return back to one of my desktops now that I’ve got muh house and settle with a nice desktop environment and Linux distribution to begin the process of permanentization. This will involve a self hosted mirror of likely the Debian package repo because those aren’t indefinite; it would make for a cool project too!

I also wanted to mention something else which is a little off-topic but related. About seven’ish years ago I realized that video games were getting really crappy and unoriginal. I eventually stopped buying newer games and only ever bought older games since they were often superior in almost everyway, aside from the graphics (although I love the old surreal early 3D graphics.) It was from that moment on that the library of great and awesome video games was suddenly realized, and how there was no need to ever buy anything else new ever again. You could literally spend a life time playing all the good old games, which is why I had to quickly distance myself from them. It was too much! I’ve had this same sort of revelation too with not just my computer, but even with living life in general as well. Ceaselessly chasing after “new” and “improved” is really a massive delusion pleasantly wrapped up in the label of progress, and is truly an artifact of the Bernay’s-ian era of market propaganda that was instilled and generationally passed down as a societal virtue.

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, and our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of…. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind.” - Propaganda, Edward Bernays

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I’m working on a general update post, but I’ve been sick for the past few days and not feeling in the mood; so I’m making a fun post today instead. In This Thread, “Stuff nobody asked for” is the topic, which is basically something inconvenient that you have to live with that was completely unnecessary when everything was perfectly fine before. You could also include some of your own in the comment section too if you’d like.

I was inspired from a related thread to make this, in case you’re wondering where I got the idea from.

Microwave reminder beeps

Some microwaves include a reminder beep after it’s finished heating your food. It’ll keep beeping every 30 or so seconds to remind you, and it’s really irritating!

“Spill proof” gas can nozzles

Fines, fees, and civil punishment as preventative deterrents to effect societal change will only promote an attitude of resistance, not a clean environment. In other words, not my problem…

I would like to find the morons that passed this “regulation” and shove these nozzles down their throats! They cause even more spillage than what they were supposed to prevent. The nozzle clip mechanism is difficult or impossible to work, especially on larger heavy cans, which require you to hold and tilt the can one handed while finagling with the clip to get it to pour out the gas. What ends up happening is it rushes out all at once and makes a mess all over things because you can no longer gently tilt the can to get the right flow.

I just cut the clips off and glue down or use bailing wire to keep it always engaged. You can even buy nozzle replacements and simply throw out the old nozzle too!

Power strip safety clips

I can’t seem to find regular power strips anymore without some junk crammed down inside of them that prevents me from plugging anything into it. It’s supposed to be a safety feature so that tards aren’t able to stick stuff down into the plugs, but now its seems everyone must suffer the nanny state regulators yet again. I’d like to also shove these power strips in places they don’t belong in the people that deserve it.

I’ve bent a few plugs now on these things because the mechanism will frequently fail to engage, making you have to finagle around and shake it. I just open it up and pull that junk out and throw em away now!

Discontinuing of 3G cellular networks

I guess this is picrel?

I’m not 100% sure on this one from a technical POV, but I bring it up for a reason. All 4G compatible and above devices require more processing power for both a bloated OS that supports it and a power wasting signal encryption / decryption process. My 3G phone could live on its battery for nearly 1 month! Now with being forced to 4G, my newer compatible phone barely lasts 3 days! I rarely ever use my phone, making only the occasional call or text, and now I’m having to charge this thing every couple of days, and it’s really irritating!

Flips and brick style “dumb” phones were once really good on battery life, but now they’re right a long side the “smart” garbage. Not cool.

GFCI wall outlets

They say if you bite the cord you'll summon the Gurl Fren Cat Installer.

These things are like ticking time bombs. If I lived in a home that had these (thankfully I don’t), I’d throw em out and replace them with normal outlets. I’m pretty sure these things are designed to break after a few years because when I lived in an apartment that had them, they would frequently die. I don’t mean they tripped, but just right out die; maintenance would have to replace them, and they’re not cheap either. I was only running a coffee pot on one, a lamp on the other, and literally nothing on another until I needed it one day to charge my laptop.

Maybe this isn’t the case for everyone and maybe my apartment had sucky electrical, but this is hardware that shouldn’t break. It should last at least a hundred years!

Multi mode flashlights

These things are gradually becoming an epidemic. It’s infuriating to see how something that should be as simple as switching on a flashlight is now made ever so irritating by an annoying mode switching behavior. I just want a functioning flashlight, but instead I get epileptic strobing and different brightness levels. The packaging doesn’t always indicate this “feature” of the light either.

Broken or just stupid SSO MFA session handling

Clown Computing is the future

This is more in the realm of work because I don’t use a directory service or identity management system for managing the authentication of my personal stuff.

Something that I’ve noticed, and this could be simply my job but I suspect it isn’t, is how SSO MFA session handling is just plain out retarded anymore. It’s as if something about it changed of late, because at one time I could navigate to various sites and services that were all accessible and managed within the same access directory realm (Azure AD here). But now, I have to authenticate with nearly each and every single one of them individually; those being MS Outlook, MS Teams, Jira (despite being connected to the corporate tenant), and this stupid AzureDevOps board. Some times it requires a password, other time it’s just the MFA prompt. You can click the option to not harass you for one day, but it doesn’t work.

I think it’s getting silly when the “sign in to all your apps” feature (because they don’t have a name for it) of Windows is essentially broken because it’ll still badger me to individually sign in to friggin Office and other MS spyware junk. None of this is connivent, and part of why I never use any of this outside of work.

Because of the constant mandatory authentication requests, normies have been broken and conditioned to the point of typing their username and passwords into anything that pops up pretending to be a Microsoft account login. The amount of successful phishing attempts is astounding! It hasn’t ever been so easy as right now to make fake web pages and login prompts to farm user credentials, and it’s all Microsoft’s fault! NGL, cyber crime lookin real profitable and way too easy fr fr.

Clown computing is comprised of clowns clowning around in carnival corporate tents and they do it on purpose. Honk honk!

Crappy image search engines

This one is a little specific for me, but I member when I could look up pictures on the net and could find regular pictures taken by regular people on almost anything. Now every result is some sort of professional stock photo, and more recently AI stock images that all looks fake as hell and isn’t ever what I was looking for. I mean, the stock photos can look nice and high quality, but I want REAL pictures from REAL people with all the unprofessional photographic no-no’s included! It isn’t really that possible to do anymore, unless you trawl social media accounts; but those places are a whole other level of cancer where instead of simply a nice normal photo, they have to get their dumb monkey face up in the camera to ruin the shot.

Here’s a tip if you’re looking for rough quality OC; check out Craigslist and eBay as an alternative image search. It’s limited, but it can work.

Conclusion:

And that’s pretty much all that comes to mind. I’m pretty sure there’s a lot more that I’m forgetting. Here’s a site that I was linked in IRC that I think can contribute to my list here too. It covers stuff like GTK3, ip vs ifconfig, and poorly named network adapters by systemd/udev. Check it out!

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So yesterday was my 31’st birthday! It’s not as significant as the 30 year milestone of last year, but in all, it’s one year less in my mortal existence. Unlike when I was a kid, I didn’t really get anything for it. I think I got a card from my job, or maybe that was the annual Christmas card, I don’t really know. I did get some kitchen towels, pot holders, and a cake from my mom, so there’s at least that!

For the past three to four years I’ve been undergoing a big shift in lifestyle, change of perspective, and stuff like that. Part of it was buying a house, albeit I had planned to do that a little later and under better circumstances rather than sooner due to economic factors.

This shift in lifestyle has been a process that’s been taking time and hasn’t always been easy. A large part of it has involved letting go of the things I once enjoyed such as video games, guilds and internet drama, computers, technology, and the internet too. Instead of being an escape, I inhabited these places because I saw nowhere else to live and nothing else to do.

MMORPG’s (aka Mostly Men Online Role Playing Girls) were the center point of my life ever since I was 14. It gave me a surprisingly stable routine, taught me patience, budgeting, cooperation and teamwork, diligence, and moderation. By the time of my late 20’s, the novelty of these games had worn off a long time ago, leaving me to simply a routine without any cause or purpose. Other than keeping me sane and distracted from an even greater looming sense of dread, I stopped seeing the point and felt like I was wasting my time. I lost interest in socializing with anyone in the game because it was always shallow and repetitive; after 15 years of it, I think that’s pretty understandable.

This isn’t the first time either. World of Warcraft was the first for me, which I stopped playing in 2016 right before the Legion expansion. That was a solid 9 to 10 year run in just that one game! I remember sneaky buying it at Walmart because I knew my parents wouldn’t like it simply from the box art alone and the oh-so-spoooooooky word “craft” which is just too close to witchcraft! Didn’t give a crap and bought it anyhow, then persuaded my way around in the game to get the subscription paid for by other people or scrounged around for money IRL to pay for it.

Countless hours, late nights spent, and memorable moments had in front of my computer playing that game. It’s where I spent my teenage years and It was a lot of fun, but it came at a cost that I wouldn’t realize until later. No, it wasn’t my health surprisingly! I’m more of the type that forgets to eat and drink really, so I’ve actually managed to keep healthy. Instead the cost was losing grip with time and reality. My time was spent in a high fantasy world of magic and adventure whilst the reality around me was eroding away from behavioral sink and moral decay. I didn’t care one bit though. I wasn’t completely oblivious to my surroundings, but saw only enough to say to myself “yeah fug this shid, I’m going home and playing WoW, peace!”

Since I was a kid though, I didn’t really plan anything out. By the time 2016 rolled around though, I was so burnt out of the game I didn’t care to log back in one day. I didn’t feel relieved though because I suddenly didn’ t have my familiar routine in life anymore. By this time I was like 20 something and that looming dread of being out of place was right over my shoulder. I didn’t like it and quickly sought out another MMORPG. I needed something that was different enough that it wouldn’t feel like a WoW clone ripoff, yet had a developed enough world to lose myself in. I tried a few different games, such as Star Wars The Old Republic, but it was too basic. The Elder Scrolls MMO, but it didn’t have any interesting characters and just made me want to play the OG Elder Scrolls games which are way better. EVE Online put me to sleep, I think Wildstar was around then but it was basically a WoW clone-ripoff and I wasn’t interested, Black Desert Online was a borefest that seemed to only invite tryhards. I remember trying to get into Archage I think a year or two prior to 2016, but it fell victim to the same scam-to-play monetization models that nearly all Asian MMO’s frequently adopt.

Then I came across Final Fantasy XIV. I remember hearing about this one coming out a long time ago and flopping hard, but I was already neck deep into WoW back then. I gave it a try and instantly liked the cozy atmosphere, the good music, and all the weird and interesting character designs. It also had a huge focus on clothing and the appearance of your characters and minor environment details, whereas WoW looked like straight up ass! Also this game actually has REAL gurls, bros! I really got sucked into this game and so was back in it for another 7’ish years.

Yeah, I tend to play my games for the long haul.

One of these games I haven’t mentioned yet was Star Wars Battlefront II (2005). I played this game since its release date, originally on the PS2. It wasn’t until many years later that I got into it on the PC version as well. PS2 was king! This game, despite being as old as it was by 2010, still had an active competitive clan scene. 2008 was sort of the end of it’s high mark though when Call of Duty World at War released, but that didn’t deter everyone. Later on, match making monetization models for retards that can’t even with community servers and e-“Sports” grifters was taking off, which took another good chunk out of the competitive online clan scene. Then finally when GameSpy shut down, that was pretty much the final nail in the coffin and the end of an era. All at once, it was over and the clan forums and chat rooms gradually closed down. Some of them moved to CoD or League, but due to the match making monetization design of modern “competitive” online games, they were largely pointless and didn’t make any sense.

Some of the GameSpy games were hacked up to run on private servers, which I followed for awhile, but by 2016 it was well in truly over. GOG actually revived the game though, to a degree, but it’s only ever kids playing that can’t conceive the amount of skill I acquired over the many years of playing that game, and so I’m frequently banned or kicked and accused of hacking. They fail to understand the meta mechanics of a game made in an era where such things were of great importance, unlike today. Quake and UT2K4 are other examples of games with such meta mechanics, but are at least a good deal more well known unlike Star Wars Battlefront II.

“Whaaaaa you hacker! You glitching! STWAPPP CHEATING!” THAT’S HOW YOU PLAY IT! There weren’t patches to fix this shid, you just learned to deal with it, got some friggin skill, and amazingly a game with depth will actually emerge!

Anyhow back to FFXIV. I stopped playing it about 2 years ago, and on occasion log in to say hi and do a few things. But a few months ago I stopped signing in, which the game punishes you for that by taking away your house. Since I’ve been so busy with other things now, such as a real house, I kept forgetting to disable the subscription renewal of the game, so they were pretty much making free money off of me for a little while there. I finally got around to it though and ended it today… RIP FFXIV guild and toon (I handed the guild off to someone else btw.)

I wanted to write this blog post because of the cost that came with the amount of time I spent in these games. Now while some of you see my site or might talk with me in the IRC or Mumble, you’ll probably think I’m just being nostalgic right? Well the truth is, I’m really out of my time at an age I probably shouldn’t even be. The past two years have been a serious culture shock to me because in my mind I’m still somewhere before or around 2010. People have become sort of hostile or just distant in a way that reminds me of interacting with people in a game. I also don’t get the obsession with phones and I don’t see the point of them aside from email or IM, to which I’m so burnt out from that I would rather not have that with me everywhere I go. It’s why I’ve never bought a smart phone and just kept with flips and bricks. It wasn’t ever some fashion statement like I’ve seen some zoomers try making it into; I just don’t care for that stuff.

I didn’t actually know you could live translate text with a phone and camera by the way, until I saw it in a video from Bald and Bankrupt one day. I couldn’t believe it at first, that’s like some Star Trek shid wtf!? I’ve been aware of the home automation stuff going on, but I wasn’t exactly prepared to see how far people have taken it. After visiting a few coworkers homes as part of trying to be a little more social, these dumb asses had cameras in every room of the house, and they’re connected to the internet, and think nothing of it! When exactly did the perception of CCTV and surveillance dragnets become a favorable outcome for normies? I distinctly recall MANY science fiction movies and shows highlighting exactly this moment, the foreboding dread of such a future, and yet here we are! I’m pretty shocked by this one.

I’m also a little surprised that nobody can simply look at a map and then know where to go anymore. Nope, they have to have something that tells them or shows them on the spot at the moment in a place they should be familiar with by now. You would think this should reduce distraction levels, but nope. The whole time that damn phone is ding dong chirping away, text to speech reading out messages, radio playing the latest ear rape on top of the noise, and then they pick it up and dick around with it while driving like a mad drunk! I really don’t like riding as a passenger anymore.

Then of course there’s the behavioral sink and moral decay, which I was aware of to some degree around the gamer gate event that dragged out that festering turd into the light of day. It’s kind of funny to think how sensitive my parents would have been to a game title like “World of Warcraft” not so long ago, and to see just how far society has fallen in this regard. It’s unrecognizable to say the least, what the hell happened while I was out collecting bear asses and killing blood elf noobs for sport? It’s too much to even bat an eye at so I mostly just ignore it.

Also everything is gatekept behind streaming services anymore. Hastings is gone and there’s nowhere to really buy anything anymore without being directed to Amazon. So piracy it is? And that’s assuming it’s even worth pirating. I have to actually do some sleuthing on the internet to find local stores around me selling the products I’m looking for without getting bombarded with freaking Amazon. I DON’T WANT AMAZON!

It’s also become nearly impossible or just right out impossible to find any kind of local business that specializes in repair of specific things anymore. You can’t use the internet for this sort of thing anymore, and so it’ s either back to the Yellow Pages for me or I just drive around until I find a promising looking place. Where the fug else do I go!? I hear lots of people mentioning FaceBook marketplace? Yeah where is that exactly because I don’t see this market place on a map! Nope, it’s all on the internet, that’s where… Lame! And you know what else is infuriating about this? I can find local restaurants for every type of dish found around the world at my fingertip, but the minute I need to find someone that does electrical repair work is the moment it all shuts down. Really getting a bread and circus vibe here bros.

Oh yeah, I went to the mall one day too. It’s been awhile, but typically I just go directly to Dillard’s and not even venture out into the promenade. I decided to take a look around to see if I could find anything of interest and man, what a wasteland! All of the clothes aside from some at Dillard’s are so blah and lame and crappy. Like really crappy over priced clothes! No interesting novelty stores, unless you count the animu manga store as something interesting. The arcade was full of gacha gambling crap with nothing worth playing. I did find a game store, which I guess by this point is considered a retro game store. It’s pretty cool, but I’m pretty much done with games and that whole scene.

I’ve found that Cabela’s has better quality clothes, so I just go there now. The style of shoes I like are getting hard to find, and the quality of shoes has become abysmal. They fall apart in no time, so I’m probably going to start wearing legit cowboy boots soon.

Circumstances make weak men, but strong men make circumstances.

Conclusion:

Well I hope you guys didn’t mind the rambling. This has been my experience so far, going out into the world and stuff. This is coming from someone that has been perpetually online since 2008 and pretty much still lives in that pre-2010 era. I like to play it up sometimes with the nostalgia factor of the site, but I’m actually trying to break out of that mold personally. I’ve been gradually letting go of that part of my life because there isn’t really anything there that I haven’t already seen or done before. The daily routine was all it had going for it because it kept me busy, but one day I came to the realization that I could probably find a better daily routine than sitting on my butt playing vidya all day long. After that, it just became difficult to play a game anymore without feeling like I’m wasting my time for nothing. It was time to move on.

I’ve been preparing myself for a change of lifestyle over the past few years because I know I can’t just do it all at once. The sudden plunge would be too much and I would just run back to where I came from. So far I’ve learned how to cook, changed my diet, I’ve been learning food preservation and canning, learned some simple carpentry and house repair stuff. I’ll eventually get into husbandry too. I surprised myself by recently replacing my trucks busted fuel pump after watching some How To videos, as well as fixing my houses busted foundation too! I’m about to embark on total wall repair because I can’t find anyone that will do the job.

It’s been pretty fun, but it’s just me. Nobody around IRL to really talk with that isn’t some drone zoned in on “muh war” “muh pandemic” “muh climate change” “muh price of food” “muh recession” and other stupid crap they’re letting fear take control of. I feel like I just came out of a graveyard to live life, but everyone else is a dang zombie! Well, maybe not everyone.

Oh well, I guess I’m just going to have fun by myself. Peace!

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It's better than a fake garden!

So I would like to preface this as my 2023 gift guide that’s NOT a shill post, alright? This means I’m not linking to some Amazon affiliate link or any href link at all. Nah, you’ll have to look these up yourself!

Now, other than you, do you know somebody that also likes cool things? Well, look no further than here fren; most of the items listed below can be found for pretty cheap on eBay or at a local Goodwill if you live in the US. Some of it is also normie friendly.

If you do decide to use my gift guide, then don’t forget to lemme know if the gift was a hit or a shit!

[Old laptop]

I think the Lenovo’s are a better bet than other older laptops simply because of the availability in refurbished batteries. You can usually pick one up in great condition for around $50 - $100. Just get it a new battery, an SSD, and 8GB memory and it’ll make a good craptop for web browsing and stuff!

This might also make a good gift for learning how to use a real computer if you have any young and upcoming nephews and nieces or kids of your own that don’t know what a file manager is. They ain’t gonna learn shid from a tablet!

[Unicomp keycaps]

If you know anyone with a model M keyboard, get em the Unicomp Linux Tux Key set! Or maybe get it for yourself as a gift. I think I will.

[MP3 player]

You can pick up old MP3 players for pretty dang cheap these days. The Sony Walkmans are nice, and some of them you can reflash the firmware to something else. I haven’t actually done that to mine, and like it the way it is. Something to consider is that the MP3 players with the integrated batteries typically won’t hold a charge if they’re really old, so you might aim for one with replaceable AAA batteries.

Unless your frens an audiophile or capable of recalling music from memory to playback in their head, these don’t sound too bad (the Sony’s are the best IMO); and they make nice little devices for listening to audio-books and podcasts without all the hassle of unnecessary distractions like mobile skinner boxes and their lack of audio-jacks.

[Bookends]

Maybe you don’t know wtf to get as a gift and everyone you know are normies that couldn’t ever appreciate your refined eclectic tastes in good gifts. Well then, may I introduce you to bookends!? There’s literally thousands of different bookends you can find off of eBay for pennies on the dollar, and they make a great easy cheapo gift that almost everyone can use! Oh and don’t worry if your normie frens and fam are too illiterate to read and have no books, you can use these bad boys to prop up all sorts of things on a shelf! I recommend demonstrating its function so the idea might sink into their mind.

[Cock.li email account invite]

If you’re able to send invites for a cock.li email account, you could send this as a gift to someone wanting an “anon” mail account. (Psst, email isn’t anon and every relay can see your messages in transit unless you PGP encrypt the contents.)

[Steam game]

This one’s kind of lame bros, but it is an option. I’d recommend at least buying a game from your frens wish list to gift; just make sure it’s something you actually buy instead of gifting them a free to play game.

[Torrent collection of movies on a flash drive]

This ones a pretty cheap one too, but if it were me receiving this gift, it better be a complete TV series in nice quality and not just random crap you’d fish out of the Walmart movie dollar bin. So what you could do is ask your fren for their favorite shows and then follow up if they already have it or not. It might depend on who you intend to gift this for though, because most normies don’t know how to playback media files let alone have a means to play them back and likely don’t know wtf a flash drive is either.

Yes, I’m aware of streaming services too, so you might want to make sure this is a series that isn’t available on streaming services. Oh, and don’t forget to include subtitles!

[Hot choccy mix]

This is the “there was an attempt” level of a gift. It’s so cheap that any broke ass NEET should be able to scrounge around the change for it; hell, even your parents might have a box laying around you could snatch up too. If you can, at least include a bag of small marshmallows with it?

You might also keep in mind if your fren is lactose intolerant, so keep an eye on the ingredients or get the one with soy or non-dairy products.

[Draw a picture]

This might be even lower than the hot choccy mix in terms of gift appeal, but if you’re a good artist and set the piece in a nice frame, it might actually make a pretty good gift! Now if you’re a terrible artist, you could use the Bing DALL-E AI to make a cool picture to print and frame then either lie about its origins or make a big show about it being rendered by AI. Normies might think it would be super cool if it were made by AI too. You should probably have it printed on some nice lament instead of standard old copier paper so that it won’t fade over the years in the light.

[Vintage TI calculator]

These could make cool little novelty gifts for your techbros. I’d recommend a vintage calculator, preferably with lit LED numbers. Anything from the 70’s and 80’s would make a perfect choice. These are also pretty darn affordable. A calculator watch would be killer too!

For anyone living outside the US, these calculators will likely follow an order of operation that might not be expected by the rest of the world. You’ll have to look up the manual online to learn how it works.

Gifts I wouldn’t recommend:

[Coffee mugs]

Everyone already has a coffee mug, and probably one too many too. To not have another coffee mug for a gift would be a gift in and of itself.

[Grifter merch]

Nothing says “I love living in a pod and eating the bugs!” like gifting grifter merch. You get advertised to at every angle of sight these days, even after blocking them out with extensions or with a Pi-hole. Actually, a Pi-Hole might make a good gift too!

[Gift cards (with exception)]

Unless it’s a gift card pre-loaded with a balance that can be used anywhere, then forget it. Getting $15 off a $50 dinner at a steak house or a month subscription of Netflix or Amazon Prime is friggin lame! I’d rather just get a box of hot choccy and marshmallows.

[Scented candles]

These things friggin stink! I’d rather just pick out my own scented candle. The only good this lame-o gift serves is for target practice out on a range.

[Greeting Cards]

These are only okay when included with a real gift. A greeting card alone ain’t shid, unless you stuff a $20 or a $50 in it. People don’t do greeting cards correctly these days anyhow. You’re supposed to write a thoughtful letter in it, or send one to a relative, parents, or a close friend that’s far away and haven’t seen you in forever. I guess social media has nullified the sort of special moment they’re supposed to bring since people only ever just sign their name in it anymore with the occasional short “hello, hope all is well!” Blah.

Conclusion:

And this concludes the gift guide! If you have any gift ideas, you could post them in the comment section. This was fun to make and I’ve intentionally tried to keep it away from the mindless consoomer drivel that most gift guides end up being. My first iteration of this post was too cringe so I had to re-work it a few times. Hope it helps!

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