Posts

Back in December 2020 I wrote up my personal Must-Have GNOME extensions. It’s been nearly three years, two job changes, and a few Ubuntu upgrades, so I thought I’d take another look.

tl;dr:

What changed

Out

I no longer have these installed.

Sound Switcher Indicator

This used to crash a lot for me, to the point I’d go and look for it in the panel and it was missing. I figured if I don’t realise it’s gone, I probably don’t need it that much. Also, GNOME shell volume control has changed a bit over the last few years. It’s pretty easy to switch device now in the menu.

Every so often my brain reminds me of a conversation from long ago. Sometimes I’ll go for months without thinking about it, but then it’ll trigger, and I can’t stop thinking about it. It happened this week.

Many years ago I taught technical courses for SAP in their London training centre. There’d often be moments during the day when the students were busy doing exercises and off-topic conversations would start. Here’s how one went down.

tl;dr I’ve enabled full content text rather than summaries in the RSS feed for this blog. The irony that I am then summarising the entire post in one line here at the top, is not lost on me.

History

I’ve used various tools for my blog over the years. Initially in the late 1990’s it was hand-crafted HTML and some FrontPage extensions. Later I used Polarblog through the mid 2000’s then dropped that in 2006 for Drupal and subsequently WordPress.

Back in July, Martin introduced us to ZeroTier on the Linux Matters podcast, episode 8. He detailed why he’s using the tool and how. Worth a listen.

Per their website, ZeroTier “lets you build modern, secure multi-point virtualized networks of almost any type. From robust peer-to-peer networking to multi-cloud mesh infrastructure, we enable global connectivity with the simplicity of a local network.”

Interesting marketing, but do I need this though?

Computing setup

I have three main computers, and some other devices I use regularly. By ‘regularly’ I mean ‘at least once a week, maybe more’.

A re-enactment of an event yesterday evening.

I was just leaving an online game when I noticed a conversation among the Late Night Linux Telegram group about printing. One person quipped that people don’t print much anymore. Someone else suggested that they print more these days than they used to.

My brain saw this and thought “Huh, I wonder how many pages my printer has completed in its lifetime. I imagine that’s easy to find out.”

Yesterday, I wrote a little about the applications I’ve seen crash on my Ubuntu Linux laptop over the last six months.

Some people questioned why I use Microsoft Edge as my primary web browser on Ubuntu. I thought I’d write up why, and how a couple of the built-in features are appealing to me.

tl;dr it’s multiple profiles, stability, speed, tab sleep, and vertical tabs.

Multiple personality disorder

I have tried to keep work and personal browser profiles separate for some years now. There are two main reasons I do this. Firstly, my work-related search history, recent tabs and other activities are confined to one browser personality. My personal stuff like shopping, email, social media and other fun stuff is sectioned off from work. Secondly, by having work in its own profile, I can just close that profile at the end of the day.

tl;dr: I downloaded the application crash data for my work Laptop. To probably nobody’s surprise, Zoom is the most crashy thing in the last six months on my laptop.

New laptop

When I joined Axiom at the end of 2022, I was given some budget to buy a work laptop. My friend and co-presenter of Linux Matters Podcast, Martin Wimpress was looking for a new company laptop around the same time. He wrote up his thoughts on why he chose a ThinkPad Z13, and we discussed it on episode 1 of the podcast, back in April.

(yet)

tl;dr In a recent thread on Mastodon, it was revealed that Ubuntu 23.04 users can’t install the Steam deb package from the Ubuntu archive without jumping through some technical hoops. It turns out this was a mistake, a bug was filed, and future builds shouldn’t have this problem.

It’s not immediately apparent whether the (currently ‘broken’) ISO images for Ubuntu 23.04 will be rebuilt (unlikely) or if this will stay broken in 23.04, and users will need to ‘cope’.

Rainbow love

I’ve previously written about how the Sinclair line of computers kickstarted a life-long love of computing.

I still sometimes go back and play classic Spectrum games on my Nintendo DS.

I’ve also bought brand-new games for the platform in recent times. I love that people still code for these ancient devices.

Modern vintage classic

In April 2017, I backed the Sinclair ZX Spectrum Next Kickstarter campaign, which was ultimately successful. After some delay, I got my new Spectrum Next - in February 2020.

I’ve worked from home since November 2011, when I started working for Canonical. I’ve had enough though, and have chosen to go back to working in an office on a regular basis.

No, I don’t have investments in city-centre office spaces, and I’m not a Zoom paid shill. I just think it’s better for me, and here’s why.

Commuter hell

Before 2011, all my roles were all on-site, commuting between six and sixty miles a day, each way. I live in the South-East of the UK, so the M3 and M25 featured heavily in my “sitting in a car, going nowhere” experience point collection.