One of the notable changes is the lack of any Nextcloud services. My Raspberry Pi is still not online, and I haven’t really missed it that much. Most of my file management is now done on my computer with local files, and I sync stuff with Syncthing to my phone.
Other changes would be browsers, the removal of Simple Apps in favor on the Fossify forks, and a couple new sections I saw some people add, like blogging and social media.
Here we go:
What are yours?
- New sections: Social Media, Blogging, etc
- Added Neovim
- Replaced FeedMe with Capy Reader
- Replaced Tachiyomi with Mihon
- Replaced Firefox/Mulch with Zen Browser/Fennec
- Replaced Spotify with YT Music.
- Replaced Simple Apps (calendar, gallery) with Fossify forks
- Replaced Mi Cam with Google Camera (modded apk)
- Removed Tasks.org
- Removed Shotwell
- Removed Khal
- Removed MEGA
- Removed Nextcloud from most defaults.
- Removed sections: Shopping List, Meal Planning, Budgeting
This is post 56 of #100DaysToOffload
]]>It’s almost like I keep finding question challenges to answer day after day!
I do actually! I think Joel is a pretty cool name, it is kind of popular but not super popular, somewhere in the top 150 in Mexico, from what I found online. It means “Yahweh is God”, which makes sense to me :P
It was fairly common to be called “Jose” from time to time, by people glancing at my name in a list or something. Whenever I introduced myself, they would sometimes hear names like “Noe”—Noah in Spanish—or even just the last syllable “El”—“He” in Spanish.
I’ve even gotten mail directed to “Jose” at least once, nothing too bad though.
No idea, I’d like to keep the letter J to be honest, maybe James or Jack but like, I’m fine as is.
Yep, Joel is my first name.
Yes I do, won’t tell~
It depends, at work… nah, sometimes I’m called Junior for reasons you can assume. Sometimes I’ve been called Jo, which is not great in Spanish but makes sense in English I think. I’m also called Jojoy by family, in Spanish, don’t ever call me that in English.
Michael also added a couple of extra sections to this challenge, which are the following!
I wish my name pronounced in English was the same as in Spanish (kinda like “Ho-ell”) instead of “Joule/Yoel” or whatever.
I said I won’t tell my middle name, but if you are curious, it ends with “el” too.
This is day 50 of #100DaysToOffload
]]>Before actually answering the questions, I’d like to name some of the TV shows that come to my head at this time. I will not include anime, k-dramas (only watched like 2 anyway) or cartoons, I will include shows only available on streaming platforms as well.
Those are the ones that came to my mind, I think there’s some others but I didn’t really watch enough to be sure. For example, I know I watched like 20 or so random episodes of The Big Bang Theory and I have a general idea of how it evolved over time, but I haven’t really watched it, same goes for House M.D. and other shows. Law & Order gets a pass because, well, it is what it is. The rest I watched fully, or at least until their new seasons got bad, looking at Doctor Who and The Flash…
This one is difficult, the answer did not come to my head at all, but I will keep writing until something comes up. I’m thinking, I’m thinking, but I still have nothing. I want to say a character from Malcom in The Middle, but maybe not.
I think I’ll have to go with… nope, not yet. Sheldon…? I haven’t even watched The Big Bang Theory properly yet. Maybe Georgie from Young Sheldon? Nah probably not, I think I will have to go with OH WAIT, NOW I KNOW…
The Doctor! from Doctor Who! Oh man, that would be awesome, I think I’d make for a pretty cool companion and friend travelling through time and space… although it would be really dangerous. Hmm, let me think a bit more.
Matt Murdock from Daredevil? A bit too gritty and not a lot of quality friendship time would be available, and I may end up kidnapped somehow. Still thinking, still thinking…
Maybe from a sitcom show I have watched, should I return to Malcom in the Middle? It’s my favorite show (spoilers I guess) but to be friends with any of them? they are all such a troublesome bunch, I am not sure. I am an adult now after all, are we assuming that the characters grow up outside of the show too? If so… nope.
I’m literally clueless right now. OH RIGHT I KNOW WHO.
No, I don’t, just me fooling myself into knowing something hoping it works as a placebo.
A minute later…
Still nothing. Welp.
Alright, alright, I’ll have to pick the option I wanted to avoid at all costs. I would want to be friends with…
AAAAAAAAAH I STILL DON’T KNOW, I was trying to force myself into thinking something again (didn’t work).
Characters from Star Trek feel like too safe of a choice, and I would feel like a poser as I haven’t actually watched half of the episodes in the TOS and TNG series… so maybe not.
I’m knocking my head against the keyboard right now (figure of speech).
CISCO!
No, not the company that sells modems and stuff.
Cisco Ramon from The Flash! Yeah! That guy! he seems pretty funny and he is a nerd and does lots of hackery stuff, at least in the early seasons. Yeah I think I’d like to be friends with him!
Now I’m overthinking it, but no! I will stick to that choice, yeah. And maybe I’ll stop writing what I think directly from my brain.
I can always enjoy Malcom in the Middle, across the ages and the times, it is always fresh for me, and there will forever be different lenses and perspectives to understand the characters and their actions. It’s the quintessential family sitcom show, so, I don’t really need to watch it for the first time. Actually, every time I watch it, it’s like the first time at that moment in my life.
What I wish I could watch for the first time, is probably Doctor Who.
Doctor Who is a show that I started watching to spend time with my sister back in the day, it made her happy, and it was quite enjoyable as well. At some point in the early seasons I realized I absolutely loved it.
However, it took some time to get there, I didn’t care that much about it at first. Sure I paid attention to the story, but I didn’t appreciate it for what it was. But when I started to think “hold up, this is really good”, I also didn’t want to bother going back to the start and seeing what details I had missed. So I just kept going, and really enjoying all of it, even some of the bad parts of the 12th Doctor, until it got absolutely ruined by the 13th Doctor’s run, killed by terrible writing and directing.
At this point in my life, I think I could go for a rewatch, even though I’ll never have a chance to watch it truly blind like back then.
There is another huge reason I want to check it out again… I know English now!
When I started the series somewhere in 2016, I really didn’t know enough of the language as I do today, and even if I could follow some YouTube tutorials in English, I was totally unable to get the accent of the TV Show, or to listen to multiple voices at once. You may be asking why is this not a problem with other shows?
Well, other shows have great Latino dubs, Malcom has a great dub and a fantastic localization for its humor and dialogues, the same cannot be said for Doctor Who.
In fact, Doctor Who does not have a Latino dub, as far as I know, and I think the Castillian Spanish dub is not great either, and fails to capture most of the British humor of the series. I will admit though, I only watched like, 3 episodes in with the Spanish dub, and maybe it works for people from Spain, not me though.
So, yeah, Doctor Who for the win!
Malcom in the Middle is a show that is filled to the brim with life lessons, both good and bad examples of how to handle lots of realistic situations, and relatable family issues.
It’s a show that has been on air for years in Mexico, because it is so relatable to every single one of us. A middle-class family trying to get by day by day.
Across the multiple episodes, I have learned plenty of things. Here’s a short list.
In a way, they feel kinda “obvious” but at the same time, watching it when you are 9 or 12 years old, can really change you for the better or (admittedly) not—it still features plenty of bad kid behavior and such, but hey, I turned out alright, right?!
I had some other things to list, I just really enjoy this show, it is the one show I watched with my family every night before sleep, when I was 10, when I was 14, when I was 18, when I was 23—Not exactly sure about the exact ages but you see my point. Every time, I will always either laugh out loud, or I will be able to reflect on what’s going on, with the parenting style of Lois or Hal, be it good or bad, or the misfits or behavior of the kids, or whatever Francis is up to away from home. I can see what might work if handled a bit differently, it has always been super fun, enjoyable and even thought-provoking.
In a way, I want to write more, because this show deserves the attention, but, maybe that’s better left for another blog post.
I think I have plenty of other shows I am yet to watch, to be honest. But the answers I gave made sense to me somehow, except for the first one which was a true ramble compared to the rest, but hey, that’s really similar to what my head was going through at the time of writing.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed these answers, I highly recommend giving the mentioned shows a watch! The one show that didn’t made it into the answers properly was Daredevil, but it’s just soo goood, so I wanted to at least say that here. Give that one a go, the original Netflix series is a masterpiece from start to finish!
Until later!
Btw, I will nominate the following people!
This is day 49 of #100DaysToOffload
]]>Honestly, I have no idea, there are many times in my early life where I got interested in technology.
Probably one of the earliest examples would be phones. In my post about the phones I’ve owned, the first phone I had was a Nokia 3510, a device given to me as a kid, it was a phone locked to some US mobile carrier, and at the time it was impossible to unlock them to use with Mexican ones.
I remember playing Snake and Space Impact on it, and adding contact information, calendar events and stuff, simply amazed by what this cool brick of a phone could do.
However, that wasn’t the moment I got interested in tech. After some thought, I definitely know when.
Among the few forms of entertainment back in the early 2000s, there were VHS tapes. My mom loves to tell this story to people for some reason.
I was a weird 4 year old. You see, back in the day, I would invite my friends over to watch a movie on our TV, and—hear me out guys—it had robots on it!
They would be all lying in the floor in front of our not that huge CRT Television, waiting for me to rewind the VHS player. So, what was it? Terminator? RoboCop?
Nope. we are four years old come on guys 😭
About 20 minutes in, all of the kids in the neighborhood were outside doing something else, while I was glued to the TV, watching a documentary about robotics.
I loved documentaries. I had lots of different VHS tapes from Discovery channel and the like, I had one for sharks, one for helicopters, and one for robots.
This interest in robots sparked my interest in technology as a whole. I can still recall a lot of what I saw in that documentary, be it scenes from movies featuring animatronics with some voice-over explaining how reality could catch up to fiction; or robots that mimic the movement from animals like fish or crabs, robots that were sent to space, or disabled bombs, or walked on 2 feet! I found all of that incredibly interesting and entertaining, I watched that documentary so many times as a child.
So, yeah, I was four years old when my interest in technology begun.
I mean it’s kinda obvious right? It has to be my PSP. Or maybe I’ll do what R.L did and select a category, which would be handheld gaming consoles!
Not only is the PSP a genuinely incredible product of its time, but it is also one of the most influential devices in my life.
Given to me at 12 years old, it was already 7 years “old” since its release, and yet it was the most visually appealing device in the house. My computer running on Windows XP, the two CRT TVs, every phone in the house at the time, nothing compared.
The ease of modding and messing around with it, are probably one of the main reasons I got the confidence to attempt flashing a custom rom to my first Android device 3 or so years later.
I feel like a younger me would have picked “smartphones” as the answer for this. But even now, 20 years after its release, the PSP remains an incredible handheld that is a joy to play around with, while phones, while still being kinda cool, have mostly gotten more boring and less fun, so.
Oh right, and digital watches! Casio for the win.
This is a bit easier to settle, the clear answer is the Anbernic RG35XX SP. But I already said portable consoles in my previous question, so the second best option would be… my Kobo e-reader!
E-ink displays are quite fun, I kinda wish there was an actually affordable phone I could use with this technology, it would be great for an even more portable reading experience. Stuff like the Boox Palma exist but they don’t fully work as a phone, so.
Then again, I prefer to have separate devices over a unified interface, to be honest.
What I really want to see is a proper library or archive made possible by new laws regarding copyright and software distribution limiting copyright to like, 30 or so years instead of 70 or 100 years we got in some countries, and forcing software companies to let people own what they buy.
So, more books in the public domain, and more games available for everyone to borrow or acquire without DRM.
But the question says for something “we’ll have” and I don’t think such dreams are coming true anytime soon.
That doesn’t leave me with many options to be honest. I just wish that “robots taking over human jobs” meant “humans get to enjoy life doing things they like” instead of “humans become poor and homeless”. That would be nice, I think.
Except what’s probably something we won’t have either… hm.
Oh! I know! Affordable, non-proprietary smart devices would be neat. Smart watches, phones, and the like, running on free and open source software please.
My favorite question to answer was the first one, so much nostalgia!
Deep down, I truly have hope that technology can remain something humanity uses for good. I really believe things will turn out well in the end. It’s probably naive of me to think that, but I still think it’s true. Especially in regards to that last question, we are currently in difficult times, but I still think that technology could actually be helpful, without destroying the environment in the process, but I have no answers as to how, so, we’ll see.
Also, I nominate the following people!
And, if you are reading this, consider yourself challenged as well! EMAIL ME YOUR REPLIES.
This is day 48 of #100DaysToOffload
]]>During covid lockdown, I got into too many hobbies at once, game development, coding in general, GNU/Linux and open source software (due to Godot Engine) and also the Fediverse, where I joined Fosstodon—and many other instances at the same time, because that’s what a newbie does when they join fedi. Anyway! From there I found out many blog posts, I somehow stumbled upon the #100DaysToOffload challenge, and started my own blog on a whim using Kev’s guide to start a blog with Jekyll and SimpleCSS
From there, the rest is history! I had lots of time during the pandemic, so I managed to complete the challenge, and I have done so three times by now, it’s great.
I have stuck with Jekyll since the beginning, and it has worked great for me, I’ve never really bothered with anything else, not Hugo, not Zola, not Pelican, or any other SSG.
The closest has been blop, which I used on a mirror of this blog post for a while that is no longer updated, since I started to use some of Jekyll’s features more extensively, which made mirroring to a different ssg a bit of a pain. As I said though, I have no plans to move to a different platform at the moment.
I use it because it works well, I have developed my own workflow by writing scripts and tools to deal with most of the caveats using Jekyll could have, like adding images or creating a post from scratch, or sharing the link to my social media once I’m done with it. There’s many sections on my blog making use of Liquid syntax or Jekyll includes, and they just work, so why change it?
I had a couple of Blogger sites back in the day, I used to be a fan of Club Penguin, and also a kid with no money to spare, so I just made a website where I shared all the free stuff one could get playing the game, of course, copy pasted from different sites.
I also had a different site with Origami tutorials and diagrams that I shared for everyone to see. I think most of what I shared there was without permission, but I didn’t really know better at the time.
Both websites are long gone nowadays, only a few posts were shared on each. Blogging itself and actually writing didn’t really click for me yet.
Despite it all, I learned a good bit about HTML and graphic design! Looking things up on my own and the like. Good times, I miss Club Penguin.
At home, Neovim, with the goyo plugin to add margins to the text. At work, Notepad++, since it’s the only decent editor available, I found a styling for Markdown syntax that is decent enough. In my phone, Markor. It’s a pretty great markdown editor for android, does all it needs to do.
Most of the time I do a final edit on my laptop, in case I missed any typos or metadata for the post, since publishing and formatting is easier from there.
Lately, during any dead times I have at work, I write. I have a lot of topics in mind at this moment, but I usually check my RSS feeds to find some topic where I I have something to say.
Many times, I fall into a rabbithole, and it takes over my blog. For example, when I bought my Miyoo Mini Plus and did a lots of things with it; a review, game and save file management, my own theme and my own game cover designs. I wrote about all those because I felt passionate about it.
Other times, a particular thought lingers on my mind, some action I did, some experience I had; so I just decide to share it here because I don’t want it to just dissapear. They are more rare and personal, so I think they’re worth sharing.
I publish as soon as I finish a post, and I almost always finish a post in the same day. I just write quickly I guess, sometimes I have typos or bad grammar that I didn’t notice, but I just edit it later and call it a day. It’s my website, it’s no big deal.
I have a hard time chooosing like everyone does, but I will just share the first post that came to mind.
My Dune review! I don’t know, it just felt like writing a little journey throughout my experience with that universe before I watched the movies and the book, it was kinda fun.
My actual favorite I’m still undecided, probably one of the many I write describing a random day of my life, like this one or where I recall memories of my past, such as this one, yeah, probably those.
I really like my current color scheme, I really like most of my current structure. I’d like to add better statistics for the blog, like words per month and things like that.
I’d also like to unify all of my gaming and manga tracking, maybe parse it from the websites I currently use, or find one with a good API I can use instead.
Oh yeah, and a search bar for my website! One day.
Here are my nominations!
Go answer now!!
This is day 6 of #100DaysToOffload.
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