Posts

Today’s post is about a subject near and dear to my heart: Laptops with Linux preinstalled. Sadly this is not a happy post, but rather one in which I share my recent angst about the state of Linux Laptop hardware and how I have maneuvered myself into a very neglected corner. So as regular readers know, I have largely only purchased laptops with Linux preinstalled for quite a few years. This is because as a person living within a capitalistic society, I am ethically compelled to vote with my dollar as it is the only vote I have which actually seems to matter. To make a long story short: I do not wish to reward Microsoft for their ongoing objectionable behaviors relating to Windows and I really don’t much care for MacOS so Linux is my de-facto operating system of choice. ...

While most of my readers probably think of me as being some kind of massive die hard Linux loving Penguin, the reality is that outside of servers, laptops and desktops I don’t use Linux very much. The purpose of today’s post is to detail the reasons and the journey of how I have basically become an Apple Fanboi nearly everywhere else. Let’s start with a disclaimer: If you want to email me or send me a message on Mastodon telling me how stupid I am for trusting Apple, well, okay. So be it. While I wholeheartedly agree that trusting any form of proprietary software in this day and age is a foolish choice that will eventually bite everybody in their ass, the flip side is that sometimes you just need convenient tech to rely upon in certain scenarios. ...

As some of you undoubtedly have heard Unity, the company behind one of the most prolific game engines of our time called Unity Engine, recently announced some changes to their pricing. On the surface this may sound like quite a big nothing burger if you aren’t familiar with the process of how software is made, let me assure you: This announcement is rocking the entire gaming world. Note: This post is a follow-up to my 2019 post “My Modern Gaming Escape Plan”. If you haven’t read it or have gasp had the audacity to forget it over the last four years, I strongly advise you to read it (again) first. ...

As regular readers know, I have long questioned the value of social media and I have struggled with the question of how involved I should be with it. This morning I decided to quit Bluesky permanently because the bulk of the community there seems hellbent on ostracizing and ejecting anybody who doesn’t fully subscribe to their specific brand of group think. I wish there was a kinder way to put it. But there isn’t. When I first arrived on Bluesky back on June the 1st, I was pretty hopeful about it’s prospects. It was elite (due to being invite only), largely liberal and seemed like a relatively decent enough place at first glance. As is often the case in life, the first look was deceiving. ...

If you’ve worked in tech and have any degree of actual talent, you have run into the following scenario: You are on a team and that team has at least one member that isn’t pulling their weight. The reasons why generally range from a lack of work ethic to a lack of talent. Regardless that person can’t seem to get themselves fired. Why is that? UPDATE 8/9/2023: Lutz, in this particular case, has now been fired. Nobody misses him. ...

So over the last few weeks, I have been re-watching one of my favorite television shows of all time, The Wire. If you haven’t seen it, you should probably rectify that oversight. That being what it is, I’m currently making my way through Season 3 and I had a revelation of sorts: I might be a McNulty. Yeah okay, so for those of you not familiar with the show, you have no idea what that means. To put it somewhat briefly, Jimmy McNulty is a police detective on the show, who is basically all about the case. He wants to see justice done, no matter what the cost. He is all about “the work”. Needless to say that his narrow minded quest tends to alienate virtually everybody he works with… on a long enough timeline anyway. ...

This post is the culmination of years of accumulated professional frustration. It will not be well received by some. That’s okay. If you make it to the 25 year point of your dev career and you spent most of that time writing custom software for clients and you still disagree, feel free to write your own take and send it along to me. I will afford it my due consideration. ...

So this morning I was listening to one of the Linux related podcasts, Coder Radio and the hosts read feedback from a listener who claimed that he was “bored” with PHP and ready to try something else. Now to be fair, in this particular case, the writer outlined some circumstances that made me sympathize with him. Long story short is that parts of the PHP based stack he was relying on for some of his software had changed significantly. In order to update his software to a currently supported version of PHP, he basically now has to rewrite it from scratch. So yeah, that sucks. ...

I’ve been a Linux fan for almost 30 years, yet in all of that time, I never actually attended a Linux event (ignoring a handful of local Linux User Group (LUG) events here and there). That is, until this past weekend when I attended SouthEast LinuxFest (SELF) 2023 in Charlotte, NC. So what took so long? Well frankly, traditionally I have avoided socializing with others. COVID and age have both helped to shift my position on this a bit. ...

As of late it has become rather fashionable for established tech orgs running established platforms to attempt to make their platforms profitable. While the exact underlying reasons for this in each case varies, the end result is the same: Whatever the secret sauce was, the org manages to forever taint the platform with the changes they end up making. Who are we talking about? Today we’ll be discussing Reddit, Twitch, StackOverflow and Twitter. ...