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 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
Updated 03-Aug-2025 On January 1, 2009 CNN published an article on memory. Now would be a good time to review and expand on that article, in the hopes of improving our own memory. It may be useful to conceive of the Art of Memory as having four broad application areas, a set of techniques (often ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 Necessity being the mother of invention, what if a densely populated, but small (~10m) country were to have zero access to petroleum for fertilizer and agriculture in general? Sustailable Agriculture would be a result (or starvation). What if Sustainable Agriculture Weren't Theoretical? The Case of Cuba Cuba's Agrifood System in Transition How to ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 Note: instructions for installing and configuring phpMyAdmin also included below. Related Artices in Debian Services and Applications - Debian on AWS Lightsail - OpenVPN on Debian + UFW Firewall - Nginx and Letsencrypt on Debian - PHP & MariaDB on Debian - Grav CMS on Debian As of December, 2018 there are decent ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 It is a good idea to get PHP and MariaDB on Debian set up before Nginx (except the PhpMyAdmin which can come after). Related Artices in Debian Services and Applications - Debian on AWS Lightsail - OpenVPN on Debian + UFW Firewall - Nginx and Letsencrypt on Debian - PHP & MariaDB on ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 The thing about history is that there is a lot of it. And prehistory, well, so much more. The highlights: carbon/methane sequestration 50mya seas and temperatures Return of the wooly mammoth Arctic resources Emigration for the next 1,000 years O Canada Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) > At least since 1997, the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 Google likes to remove functionality on free products to induce upselling. This is a common tactic in many software/SAS models. However, the cost of adopting Gsuite is very high, relative to free. Essentially a 5-10 pack of mailboxes with $5/month for the least expensive Gsuite paid option. That's $300-$600/year. What is sadly missing ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 By Amazon Canada, I am referring to the Amazon Advantage Canada operation. Pure, unadulterated incompetence. Support requests go something like this: - Me: Here is my problem, with detail - AC: Request for information (which is already in the detail) - Me: Submission of requested info, again - AC: Thank you, please wait ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 A sampling of Debian + Cinnamon keyboard shortcuts (incomplete) Function LMDE3 ChromeOS Refresh Ctrl+R Task List Partial Screenshot Debian Terminal Under Edit > Preferences > Shortcuts set the Edit > Copy, Edit > Paste, and Edit > Select All accelerator keys to Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, and Ctrl+A respectively. Screenshots Under Keyboard > Shortcuts > ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 Note: I've replaced Fish Shell with Bash in my personal technology stack, as of March 2018. Ha ha, back on Fish Shell. Fish Shell is a very useful shell. I use it on OSX and Linux. Provides for some sanity at the command line. For an editor I use Nano. Note that there ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 Bash being the most common shell, it makes sense to learn bash shell scripting. I didn't think this at first and later came to the conclusion, having spent time with Fish Shell. However, Bash is definitely old and creaky with some frankly ridiculous implementation details. Fish can be installed most everywhere, and is ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 Here are some ways of getting things tweaked. Your mileage may vary. Mint-Y-Dark This theme has some hardcoded colors in PNG files. Grayscale them with ImageMagick, as follows: for file in /usr/share/themes/Mint-Y-Dark/gtk-2.0/assets/*.png; do convert "$file" -colorspace Gray "$file"; done for file in /usr/share/themes/Mint-Y-Dark/gtk-3.0/assets/*.png; do convert "$file" -colorspace Gray "$file"; done Edit the /usr/share/themes/Mint-Y-Dark/gtk-2.0/gtkrc ... Read more