tiling window manager users are insane
Being I mentioned i3 and Sway in my last post, I wanted to talk more about tiling window managers. People who use them are insane.
You may have heard that some Linux users are anti-mouse. True? Yes. I know I am. But then again, I've been anti-mouse ever since the Windows 3.1 days. More on that in a bit.
Modern tiling window managers hearken back to DESQview. Yeah, that shell from 40 years ago that BBS sysops used a lot because it gave you true multitasking in DOS. That was good. For vintage PC peoples, DESQview is the most tiling manager-esque thing you could use. So if you were ever wondering, "Can I tile (more or less) on a PC with just an 8086 CPU and DOS?" With DESQview you can.
But let's talk about the insanity, because that's the fun part.
the good thing about ram prices going up
Computer hardware prices are skyrocketing right now. There are three specific types of hardware getting the most attention for pricing. RAM, CPUs and SSDs.
There is a good thing about the prices going up as fast as they are.
"Good? How?"
Don't worry, I'll tell you.
Whenever there's a shortage of pretty much anything in high demand, the end result is the unavoidable glut that happens afterward. The process is this:
vhs sucks, don't do it
I recently watched one-and-a-half YouTube videos of some guy who decided hey, wouldn't it be cool if I put out some videos using nothing but broadcast quality video equipment of the '90s. Being I actually have a college degree in Video and Radio Production, I thought okay, sure, I'll watch this.
I got through the first video. Then I started watching another, got about halfway through it and... no. I had to stop.
I'll explain why I had to stop in a bit.
At the time I was going to college, television industry broadcast standards weren't exactly standards but rather a weird mix. Whatever you could afford dictated what you used.
There was a period when four video editing standards were being used all at the same time. The old-and-crusty (even back in the '90s) U-matic, S-VHS (Super VHS), Betacam, and non-linear digital editing with Avid.
When I got my degree, a cuts-only non-linear Avid video editing system was $30,000. If you wanted digital video effects a.k.a. DVE, that was $60,000. Not an exaggeration. A cuts-only system was at the college I attended that was brand new then, and students were VERY FORBIDDEN from touching it because staff was still learning how to use the damned thing.
my insane way of dealing with email spam
I've pretty much been through all the standard ways of filtering spam. After a lot of research, I found a way that works for me that I'll detail in a moment.
Everybody's spam experience is different based on which companies are selling off account data and absolutely not giving a shit otherwise, where an email address has been leaked, how many of the email address owner's dopey friends had their email accounts compromised (in which the contact list is harvested and put into a spam database), and so on.
I can tell that the lion's share of spam I'm receiving right now is all coming from one botnet and most likely being sent from infected office PCs. How do I know? I get blasted with the same type of spam over and over with only minor variations, and like clockwork, the spam slows significantly on weekends and major holidays.
The fortunate part is that I was able to nail a pattern the spammer was using since all the spam was done in a specific way. After some experimentation, I found a pattern I could match, and now 100% of whatever that asshole sends goes straight to the spam folder.
retro things that aren't anachronisms
A lot of stuff being sold as "retro" ends up being a pile of suck because it's nothing more than an anachronism. An example of that is this thing, a CD player made to look like a record player with fake wood grain, fake tone arm and all. Yes, really. That audio player misses the mark so badly that it's living on a different planet.
Retro things that aren't anachronisms are the best kind. "True to original", if you will. And if it's cheap, that's even better.
I did find a few.