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Deep-dive into the "Dune" font, Davison Art Nouveau

Whether the Dune series is your cup of tea or not, anybody who’s spent more than a little time in the sci-fi section of a book store is likely familiar with the series’ book covers and the unusual typeface. I caught a link off the Orange site to a story on Fonts In Use about the history of the typeface that graces Frank Herbert’s series, and it’s right up my alley....

January 28, 2023 · 2 min · zonker
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How have your social media habits changed since the Twitter takeover?

It’s been a few months now since the Twitter Takeover, and Musk’s gutting of the Twitter workforce and various antics. I haven’t deleted my account, but I set it to private and set up shop on Mastodon in mid-November. Curious about what others have done and how your habits have changed (if at all).

January 26, 2023 · 2 min · zonker
AI-generated picture of a cat staring at a computer, in a woodcut / watercolor style.

Creating slides with Markdown using Marp

Need to make a presentation, but don’t like using a GUI app? Take a look at Marp, the Markdown Presentation Ecosystem.

January 25, 2023 · 3 min · zonker
Pi-hole warrior

Something I should've done a long time ago: Installing Pi-hole

Spent some quality Sunday time today refurbishing some older mini PCs that had been gathering dust so I could run a few personal projects. One of the projects I’ve had on my to-do list an embarrassingly long time is to set up Pi-hole for ad blocking / filtering. If I’d known it’d be that easy I’d have done it a long time ago! I installed Pi-hole on an ancient Core i3 NUC with 8GB of RAM running Debian....

January 23, 2023 · 2 min · zonker
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Absolute silliness: Hampster Invaders

You remember Space Invaders? You remember the Hampster Dance? Get ready for Hampster Invaders.

January 22, 2023 · 1 min · zonker
AI-generated replica of a "mini PC" but weird. Has odd ports and circuitry at all angles.

Lazyweb: Matching compatible mini-PCs with RAM / NVMe on hand?

I’ve recently upgraded a few laptops and have some NVMe drives and spare RAM on hand. Rather than letting them gather dust or try to sell them online, I’d like to match them with inexpensive mini PCs for use in my home lab. Suggestions on the best way to backwards-match this?

January 19, 2023 · 2 min · zonker
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Laws of technology and remote work

Some observations on a Friday evening about the realities of home offices and technology. Fa A laptop’s cabling will always be located on the maximally inconvenient side. Especially power cords with bulky connectors. Internet only fails before or during an important teleconference or the most suspenseful part of a movie or show. This is also true of power outages. Hotel internet is most reliable at mid-range hotels. Fleabag hotels and swank resorts have uniformly crappy internet....

January 14, 2023 · 1 min · zonker
Link-O-Rama

USB-C is simple, right? Well...

One of the nice things about USB-C is its simplicity, right? No more figuring out which side is up to plug into a device. The connector is super-friendly. But… that’s where the simplicity stops.

January 11, 2023 · 2 min · zonker
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The scorpion strikes: Still speaker-less after 11 votes

Clearly nobody taught Kevin McCarthy and the rest of the establishment GOP the lesson of the frog and the scorpion. It would be funny if it was a plot on a modern West Wing, but it just seems like a harbinger of more problems to come. After 11 tries, the U.S. House of Representatives has failed to appoint a speaker, due to in-fighting and extortion from the most extreme wing of an already extreme party....

January 6, 2023 · 2 min · zonker
Cartoon bear at the computer (generated by Midjourney v4)

MacBook Pro 2015 update: The winner is Pop!_OS

After a few tries to put Fedora on the MacBook Pro 2015, I auditioned a number of other Linux distros and wound up going with Pop!_OS. I gave Chrome OS Flex a brief spin, but it wasn’t quite my jam. If you like Chrome OS and have an old PC or Mac you’d like to give a little more life to, I give it a thumbs up. I was able to install some regular Linux apps on it as well as the standard Chrome apps, but found Firefox to be sluggish and generally just didn’t click with Chrome OS.

January 5, 2023 · 2 min · zonker