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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 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

Updated 03-Aug-2025 Scrollbar usability is shoddy and slipping across wide swaths of the web and software in general. Of course I am getting older, which means this is more and more of an annoyance. We know already, and for some time, how to do scrollbar usability and accessibility. Putting aside voice commands, just the bare ... Read more

Updated 03-Aug-2025 OpenVPN on Debian is the second step in securing an operating system. Below we include ufw firewall installation and configuration as well. 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 ... Read more

Updated 03-Aug-2025 This is a setup of several items, starting with Debian 9 on Amazon AWS Lightsail. This has server basics and apt, and then follows with links to additional articles. In general, after several years of running CentOS on Linode, and then Amazon Linux AMI on EC2 and Lightsail, I find that Debian 9 ... Read more