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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • Adding my “Me too” to Vorta/Borg. I use it with Borgbase, which I like because it’s legitimately cheap and they support Borg development. As well, you can set Borg backups with Borgbase to “append only,” which prevents ransomware or other unexpected “whoopsies” from wiping out your backup history.

    I backup most of my computer every hour, but have pruning rules that make sure things don’t get too out of hand. I have a second backup that backs everything up to my NAS (using Vorta, again). This is helpful for things like my downloads folder, virtual machines, or STEAM library - things I wouldn’t want to backup over the network, but on occasion I do find myself going “whoops, I wanted that.”

    I also have Vorta working on my Mom’s Macbook, then have Borgbase send me an email when there isn’t any activity for longer than a couple of days. Once I got automatic pruning working right I never had to touch this again.



  • I moved from Kubuntu to Tumbleweed and really like it. For some reason I really don’t like RPMs and that caused some hesitancy when I thought of switching, but really I never deal with RPMs directly. Zypper is ok and I’ve made peace with Flatpak. I update the whole distro every weekend and I’ve tested out reverting using Snapper.

    In the year and a half of using it I can think of two problems I had from updating - one is fixed by removing the GPUCache directory of an Electron app when Mesa gets updated, the other is with Zoom which I mostly fixed by moving to the Flatpak version.





  • The general discovery I made was this: for the small price of foregoing pretty colors and buttons and chrome, you can get a computer to do exactly what you want it to do much quicker. Assuming a willingness to learn a bit of shell scripting, of course.

    I find the emphasis people put on speed interesting, because by far the slowest part of any interaction I have with my computer is caused by me just figuring out what I’m doing next. When I’m functioning at top speed not needing to click around, or say, having the perfect keyboard shortcut, would save me only fractions of a second.

    Actually… to add to this I think the cognitive load of visually navigating is much lower than typing specific things it. I think this is why I find I’d prefer to click around my bookmarks or files to find something than just pull up a “Find” dialog and type something reasonable in.


  • I tried using KOrganize which had KMail and some other stuff integrated together and ended up feeling like it was a gigantic, archaic codebase just hanging on by a thread. It struggled a lot with Gmail and several times I deleted my whole mail profile to try to fix some strange bug.

    If I recall, what did me in was that it would stop sending emails after running for a while. The fix had something to do with restarting Akonadi. It was really disappointing, because I love a good UI/Plasma integration.

    I use Thunderbird now and … eh. It’s ok.









  • I’m just a passer-by here, but, I have a house with pine siding. It stains fine? Maybe we’re not thinking of the same thing.

    I’ve used Benjamin Moore’s “ARBORCOAT Translucent Classic Oil Finish” tinted “Natural,” as well as on my deck tinted “Cedar.” For the sides facing South and West I would ideally re-stain every 3 years it looks like, and it does seem to be getting darker every time I do that.

    I had always used this foaming wood cleaner, but one time in a pinch I bought the “normal” … not-foaming cleaner, and that turned out to be a big mistake. This cleaner didn’t clean so much as bleach, then when I put on the transparent stain it just looked like bleached wood. Luckily that was just a shed.

    Edit: This is the cleaner - https://www.homehardware.ca/en/4l-2-part-oxygen-deck-patio-and-stone-cleaner/p/1874410


  • Yeah, I tried naming the files to help, but then Google Photos doesn’t make it easy to see those.

    The first picture is the vent outside. Essentially, the hood fan (inside) exhausts into the top of the metal box that’s in the wall. On the other side of that box, around the middle, is a vent that goes outside. Then there’s just a dead-end area of the metal box where some bugs have collected.

    +---------------------------------+
    |  (Hood fan blows in here        |
    |           from inside house )   |
    |                                 |
    |                                 |
    |     (Vent to outside house)     |
    |                                 |
    |                                 |
    |           (Bugs)                |
    +---------------------------------+
    




  • I have email going all the way back to 2013 or so, and don’t like the idea of all that information sitting readily available for hacks, warrants, or automated scanning. I move mail older than two years into a local Thunderbird folder to limit what’s sitting online, while also letting me search for recent emails while out and about.

    Aside from that, I like that I can still access emails while offline, see all my inboxes, contacts, and calendar in one place. Also, I’ve got enough “apps” that run in the browser.

    Actually, sudden account closure without recourse (which Google does) is another reason to make sure I have local copies of email too.