Updated 03-Aug-2025 In the mid-2000s I attended courses in Future Studies at the University of Hawaii. Jim Dator, one of the founders of Future Studies in North America was there, and he had some useful, if soft, methods for going about understanding different futures. This is relevant to the latest pandemic because it is one ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 Fortune is a pseudo-random quote display, based on formated text file(s) and strfile(s). The runtime is available via apt install fortune, and then it is a matter of: Deleting current fortune files Creating one or more new fortune files Running strfile FORTUNEFILE to generate the .dat file Invoking fortune perhaps with cowsay in ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 The LMDE3 installation I had done 18 months ago was in need of a refresh. This was based on Debian 9, so I thought Debian 10 would be a good place to start. Unfortunately, the newest release breaks my laser printer, so I've looked at continuing with Debian 9 (aka oldstable) for the ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 The Onyx Boox Nova Pro is a popular 7.8" eNote device with grayscale e-ink Carta screen, and a Wacom touchscreen layer, under mobius and glass. The hardware includes USB-C, an on/off/sleep button and a back button, along with bluetooth and wifi. The main advantage, though still a bit incomplete, is the ability to ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 Simplicity is a wonderful thing. For the domain name game and hosting services, there are two kinds of simplicity: A single, monolithic simplicity - aka all-in-one A set of modular simplicities - aka best-of-breed At this stage in web hosting, domain name registration, and DNS service offerings, the second form of simplicity is ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 Microsoft has gone through a lot, and I've been with them for quite a long time, on and off. I became a MCSE in 1998, with a focus on Web, SQL and Exchange server. At the time we were in the battle for the backoffice, which was vs. Novell and Oracle, mainly, but ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 The day has come when I have confidence it is possible to move off of all third party clouds, with the only exception being social media and social network sites. That is, the wonderful world of email, file sharing and synchronization, and even online document collaboration, can all be supported independent of third ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 This is really about how to get off of Gmail/Google Email for Domains/Gsuite. It is not difficult to get off of Google Drive, and Google Photos, as well as Google Docs and Google Sheets, and the like. But there are certain advatages of Gmail/Google Mail, and the free version of GSuite, which I've ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 If there ever will be a world government, one which speaks for and works on behalf of humanity for the entire planet, or most of it, that system will not use miles, pounds, ounces, inches, and yards. That system will be a rational measurement system that 99.5% of the earth already uses. This ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 When one wants to understand what the most sigificant digits are regarding courses of action, it is vital to have the appropriate time-scale. What can be done in 1 day is a much more constrained problem than one can be done in 1 year, 10 years, 1,000 years, etc. Ten million years is ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 Paypal Sucks Paypal sucks, as everyone knows. It has one benefit for the consumer (those buying with paypal) and that is their dispute resolution, which I've used perhaps ten times and have never lost. Dispute resolution with credit cards and banks is much, much more difficult and harder to win. For the seller, ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 > Updated July 2019 - I no longer use Paypal, as it is roughly twice as expensive as Stripe when looking at $100 USD/month in transactions (more than 10% with transaction fees and currency conversion), and without currency conversion it is still 30% more when only looking at transaction fees (usually because of ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 Chrome, why are you such crap at simple things? I need to delete the cache/cookies from a single website. It appears impossible these days. There is an odd work around, as follows: > Three Dots > Advanced > Content Settings > Cookies > See All Cookie and Site Data > {Search for site} ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 Our three-year-old wasn't pooping regularly, which caused a lot of concern. Eventually we were going to go to the hospital for a thorough set of tests and what not, after about 4 months of once-per-week pooping. There are many potential causes and this behavior is not uncommon in 2-6 year olds. Possible things ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 The saddest part of the discussion of construction innovation as defined by making buildings more efficiently, is just that. Missing are: Making housing more sustainable (see Earthships) Making housing more affordable (see tiny homes in Kristen Dirksen's channel) Mainstream Media Housing Innovation Coverage NYTimes - Piece by Piece, a Factory-Made Answer for a ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 This is meant to be a reminder of important issues/decisions that already have some thought put in them (usually by others). Automatic categorization of text is a core tool now Instead of offering advice, rank priorities Build a website first (before an app), some forgotten article but the point is: faster, and desktop ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 Apparently, a reverse sear is the best way to cook a steak, and the basic principle is used to cook everything. Essentially, the idea boils down to cooking at two temperatures: Low and slow (cook throughout) High and fast (sear) In addition, reducing the moisture on the outside of the meat should also ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 I've written about WordPress at various points. I've been using this cms for 13-14 years, and for me it is well-known, though a bit worn out. The breakage it has has not improved much, and the resources needed are not up to the modern task. Essentially most performance gains are made through improvements ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 Automattic is the organization behind WordPress the content management system, wordpress.com, and a number of smaller entities. With some estimates, WordPress has ~30% market share of the web. It has taken on in excess of []$300m in funding](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/automattic) over the years. After 2–3 years of development of WordPress, Automattic was founded in 2005 ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 Content Management Systems come in all shapes and sizes, and it is unfair to evaluate their maturity based on their functionality. However, to some degree this is still a useful metric, depending on the fucntionality. Below are hallmarks of functional maturity. Again, certain CMS's will not receive an accurate score based on specific ... Read more