The month of January 2026 Caption: Tree height Note: turning these weekly into monthly notes, as I simply don't get to them. Tasks (open) Many administrative tasks Revision of several products Increase mobility Maintain GenAI learnings, write up articles Tech stuff Moved over to Flatpak for browsers (Ungoogled Chromium, Vivaldi) even though these have issues ... Read more
Ungoogled Chromium for Debian This is meant to help with selecting and installing a chrome-based browser, with minimal tracking and other cruft. I've given up on Firefox as being too corrupt, and technically inferior. Yes, Chromium is a Google project, but the open source nature has produced two viable browser options for all desktop platforms: ... Read more
I've avoided Flatpaks and Snaps for a long time, but now see three uses for Flatpaks (though none yet for Snaps). The main issues have to do with the size of files, security stuff, and simply being not as convenient as using apt repositories. But when some folks can't keep those things stable (or offer ... Read more
Caption: New swimming pool I think this is the first week of 2026 or perhaps the last week of 2025? In any case, I've not done weekly notes for a few months now. Time to start again? I get the feeling that 2026 will end with many more question marks per paragraph? Software stuff Overall ... Read more
Android hardware At this point, I feel that Chromebooks are non-starters. Either Android or Linux (Debian) are the proper OSes of choice, and decent hardware that can support these platforms. We have moved to Samsung devices from Xiaomi, which has much more intrusive application spam, advertising, and tracking. We still use Mi Band and Mi ... Read more
Updated 11-Dec-2025 Reaper is the DAW I've decided on based on a combination of functionality and affordability. Reaper is not open source, but it does have a reasonable and affordable license. I'm fine with supporting them, up until enshittification (which isn't 100% guaranteed in any case). See also Generative AI in Music The main thing ... Read more
Updated 11-Dec-2025 I have several different thoughts on AI music. AI Music tools Most of the online tools are horrible, including from well-known AI companies. There are a few that are OK or produce good enough music: Suno.com good overall but horrible response rates, even for the billing email address. Clearly these folks don't care ... Read more
Updated 20-Dec-2025 I like PHP and have used it (nominally) for a long time, mainly for the web (WordPress). It is a nice part of a backend stack including some flavor of SQL (such as MariaDB, SQLite -- the most widely deployed database). It plays well with FPS operating with a web server (I use ... Read more
Turns out there are a large number of games that can be played on Linux, without crap like WINE (though some still use it). 0ad A great open-source game that has had continued ongoing development. Downloadable via apt: sudo apt install 0ad -t trixie-backports Roblox Roblox can be installed via flatpak (sadly) using a tool ... Read more
Roblox is the only reason my children run Windows on their computers. What an annoying operating system, which regularly tries to sneakily install and configure more bloatware and suveillance. Well, the wait is over to axe these operating systems and install Linux (namely, Debian Trixie 13). Roblox can be installed and used by emulating Android ... Read more
This is about the Kobo Clara BW 6". Some Issues Some settings are hard to reach (or very hard to reach) without some customization (using Nickelmenu). For example: Dark mode requires: More > Settings > Reading Settings > Dark Mode (compare with Kindle which is Swipe Down > Dark Mode Restarting the device reuqires holding ... Read more
Updated 26-Oct-2025 W39/2025: Monday 22 September - Sunday 28 September 2025 Caption: Bacon on Egg on Toast Tasks (open) Deploy more anti-bot measures on the website Enable caching on Gcore Install and configure Ejabbard server for domain: mcneill.info Migrate users from chat.mcneill.im to mcneill.info XMPP For Slack / Discord replacements, see: Zulip, Mattermost, Rocket Chat, ... Read more
W38/2025: Monday 15 September - Sunday 21 September 2025 Caption: Stop promoting substack Tech Fantastic article on Chinese AI pioneer Tasks (open) Consider Sypht or Roundcube for self-hosting email (and with web interface). A problem with my current email provider is not getting resolved (13 days so far). Deploy more anti-bot measures Enable caching on ... Read more
W37/2025: Monday 08 September - Sunday 14 September 2025 Caption: No Smoking No Vaping (vaping is smoking, folks!) Tech Fantastic article on Chinese AI pioneer Tasks (open) Consider Sypht or Roundcube for self-hosting email (and with web interface). A problem with my current email provider is not getting resolved (13 days so far). Deploy more ... Read more
Updated 21-Sep-2025 I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times ... In life after life, in age after age, forever. My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs, that you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms, In life after life, in age after ... Read more
Updated 14-Nov-2025 W36/2025: Monday 01 September - Sunday 07 September 2025 Caption: Rainbow over the football pitch, Tessabaan Hang Dong Tech Migrating from my *.io domains to *.info which is cheaper and more stable as a generic TLD, and the prices are not becoming ridiculous, as .ios are. Who knows what will happen with the ... Read more
W35/2025: Monday 25 August - Sunday 31 August 2025 No notes this week.
Good morning judges and audience members. My name is Benjamin McNeill. I am a representative 4th grade student from Tessabaan Hangdong Prachkomsangsan. Today I am honored to present briefly on the subject: My learning journey with AI. What is a journey When first informed of this topic, it took a bit of time to understand ... Read more
Updated 26-Sep-2025 A regular expression (shortened as regex or regexp), sometimes referred to as a rational expression, is a sequence of characters that specifies a match pattern in text. Usually such patterns are used by string-searching algorithms for "find" or "find and replace" operations on strings, or for input validation. See also regex101 for helpful ... Read more