The Art Of Not Asking Why

This morning, I looked into improving the quality of compressed videos while keeping the file size down. I went into an ffmpeg rabbit hole for almost two hours. I didn’t know of -present for example, or the fact that ffmpeg still uses h264 by default, where you can specify h265… 🧠 🤓

It’s not the first (or second) time I hear good things about Kagi. I tried it myself, and I ran out of searches quickly because I used it on my work browser, and I do research all the time.

Friendship Ended With GOOGLE Now KAGI Is My Best Friend

The nicest thing I can say about Kagi is that it has fully faded into the background of my life, and that I do not really realize or think about the fact that I am using Kagi. I mean this in a good way. 

I might have a shiny MacBook Pro for work and a Desktop with Windows installed to play the latest and greatest. But Linux feels like home. It’s the one place where I feel I can really do whatever I want, however I want. Everything else feels as if it’s on a loan.

Expensive dinner yesterday, but I can look at it and say, “It’s just money.” There were periods in my life when someone told me “It’s just money,” and I looked back at them with jealousy and irritation. I remember what it was like, glad I’m not at this point.

I had a lot of things to say about the AI boom as Wikipedia calls it (I agree). It was mostly a devil’s advocate kind of post, 3000 words long. You know what? I don’t want to post it. What is it going to do besides piss off those on the bandwagon anyway? I’m done with flamewars, one way or another.

Oxygen Not Included, aka ONI, is an amazing game I immediately recommend to anyone who likes thinking/managing games. It is made by Klei Studios, the masterminds who made Don’t Starve and a couple of other such gems.

You start off with three cutely animated mini humans, called “dupes” from “duplicants” at the center of a randomly-generated asteroid. The game runs from a side angle, so it’s completely two-dimensional. But if you think if this sounds simple, dear friend, you’re in for a surprise.

The dupes need to eat, so you give them food from a little yellow box until it runs out. Meanwhile, as the day progresses, they need to go to the bathroom, so you need to build them some. To build stuff, you dig away at the asteroid, which is made of different materials such as sandstone, copper, and sand (depending on your biome, of which there are plenty). You quickly discover that not all places can be dug out and that some are blocked until one of the little guys becomes more proficient in digging. They squeak and talk and give high-fives to each other as they work and dig, and eventually need to go to bed, which you need to build for them, or they will sleep on the ground and will become “unrested,” one of the many conditions which they can develop. In the morning, you realize that because the dupes were using the bathroom without washing their hands, they became sick, and if they’re sick, they spread germs, which is a whole thing in itself, and then they can vomit, and if they vomit, there will be vomit all over your base, which will ooze away at your clean water supply, which…

Look, just trust me when I say what I described does not even scratch the basics of the game’s first hour.

Being an adorably animated game (they have all kinds of cute critters as well) is one area that makes this management game unique. Another area worth mentioning is the science behind it. So far, it’s the most science-like game I know that still keeps things interesting. It’s a delicate balance that breaks for me in other more sciency games, but this one keeps it just right.

For example, you can dig out coal in your asteroid, which you can use with a coal generator to produce electricity, but that means CO2 will mix with the oxygen, and if you have too little space for it in your base, it will eventually spread and choke up your dupes. The generator also heats the base, which will eventually cause plants to stop growing, which means you won’t have any food. To counter that, you can stash this generator somewhere far (but not too far because getting coal to it will become a problem, not to mention building power cables back and forth). But, because CO2 is heavier than oxygen, you can put it next to a dip hole in the ground, and it will fill it up steadily, pushing the oxygen up to your dupes. Later on you can build a gas pump to pump CO2 somewhere else where you can use it (or even dump it into the void of space if you’re an evil environmentalist)

And power is just one such example. I highlighted gas above (of which the game has about 20), and other similar complex systems including liquids (pipes, pumps, filters, and more), entertainment and moral (dupes can get depressed in the game), transportation, and more. All of these systems come with their own unique problems and solutions, which in turn cause other problems you didn’t predict, to which you need to find more solutions.

Lastly, I should also mention that this is one of the most well-maintained games I’ve ever played, and it is easily one of the best investments you can get out of a computer game. ONI came out in 2017, and 7 years later, there are still updates every month. These updates are not just bug fixes: there are new plot twists, more options to play the game, better UI, and more - and I’m not even mentioning the active modding community of this game. Keli Studios understands their audience is usually geeks, so they have the game natively support Linux on Steam (and, of course, macOS), where I spent much of my time playing it. So far, the only extra money I spenton its single DLC, Spaced Out. Worth every penny.

If you’re a geek—and if you’re reading this on my blog, you probably are—do yourself a favor and at least check this game out. It’s highly recommended.

I’m not one to celebrate birthdays—mine in particular—but sometimes it’s good to acknowledge good things, and last night was one such thing.

My partners and I went to a local Thai restaurant that serves good food and drinks. Sitting there with both of them and chilling, I realized we’d been together for about 13 years. It’s strange how things work sometimes.

NK was speaking of their job, and I thought of mine, how at one point in college I was told I’ll never be a writer and that I should give up, and then later on in my first year (or second, was it?) as an official IT guy, that I’ll never be good in IT so I should just quit. There was also the “it’s just a phase” kind of talk from parents and family when it came to non-monogamy and countless eyebrow raises and disapprovals.

I’m not that much of a rebel as much as I never cared that much what other people think. Or maybe I’m a glutton for punishment. Possibly both. Whatever it is though, I’m glad I followed what felt right then and now.

So here’s to all of us. Let’s keep doing what we like doing. 🥂

Spent a big portion of the morning working on the Archive page. Added the old links that I took out of the navigation bar, expended on RSS feeds, and went into a rabbit hole of pages on Hugo for two hours 😅

A few more tweaks and I will be done. Considering bringing back the org-mode/Emacs category

This morning, I’m trying to wrap my head around the idea of web mentions. The explanation is simple enough, yet somehow I don’t fully get it… need a working example. Microblog (where I host my blog) implements this, and I want to make sure I take advantage.

Just another note (I’m on a roll today) that I just added TinyLytics to my site. In a nutshell, it’s a hit counter: it tells me you read a post, what country you’re from, and what OS you’re using. Nothing more (this is not Google Analytics!)

It’s hard to stay away from extremes these days. Everyone has an opinion, there’s so much noise, and we constantly get mentally bombarded in today’s social networks era.

Is it just me, or does it seem we use more unnecessary emphasis in everything we say? Instead of saying “I’m happy about this,” we say, “I’m super happy about this,” or “I’m super excited about this,” and there are those that would add “super super” to make sure we understand they are indeed excited. There’s the whole obnoxious “literally” that’s been around for years, and a bunch of other words. I like to grump, so I’d blame social media and move on.

But I can’t just do that, can I? Nope. Let me tag a few elephants (whales! super whales!) in the room, but I promise not to do more than that. It’s 2024, and we have an election coming up; there’s the Middle East stuff, the AI stuff, and the Ukraine-Russia stuff. Again, everyone has an opinion, a huge and loud one (me included; I’m human), so we have to go out there and let it out..!

A week ago or so, I encountered one such angry comment on Mastodon. It was your general provocative emotional post with an image. Since it showed something that challenged what I knew to be true at that point, I replied and asked for the source so I could read more about it. I was surprised (I shouldn’t have been, but there I was) to get an answer from the poster saying they don’t have one; they just got it from a friend who posted it on Twitter (they called it Twitter, so I call it Twitter. Personally, I don’t give a beep about how it’s called these days).

Why was I shocked? Because this was an educated, smart person whom I followed. This person posts good informative comments. As I checked this person’s feed, I was saddened to see post after post of similar magnitude, many of which were also challenging what I know to be true. Mastodon has an option to mute someone for a given time period, so I chose that, hoping that at some point, I could get back to “normal” with this person.

Look folks, I know I’m an idiot. I’m a grumpy dude in his 40s. That’s why I’m happy to learn more, because there’s always more to know. Just a couple of days ago, a friend challenged my emotional intelligence (or, apparently, lack of it), and after I cooled down, I re-read what I said to them in anger. Well yeah, I was angry and said stuff based on things I thought they said, not what they were trying to say. I didn’t have the mental capacity to understand them at the time because I was angry, and I knew that, but we were both too engaged in arguing to “take a breather,” which was needed.

When I was at school, one of the simple “tricks” our teachers had for us angry students was to tell us to step out and “go wash your face.” Everyone knew what this meant: splashing one’s face with cold water. It works for me, and according to a quick search, there’s some research about it. An extra tip from me: if you’re upset, close your eyes and hold the water (chilled) to your eyeballs for a moment. Press very gently so water don’t go through your eyelids, but enough to feel your eyeballs through the eyelids against your hands. If you have short hair or are bald like I am, you have another excellent advantage and can also get some cool water over your noggin. It doesn’t hurt to try, right?

So go wash your face.

You’d laugh. It’s so basic. And as I said, I don’t know much, so take it with a grain of salt. But it works - for me, anyway. If you’re angry and you find yourself at your keyboard typing away… don’t. Just hang on a bit. Don’t worry; you will still be angry enough to write the stuff later, only, hopefully, with more reason in you. And you’ll be able to link the dots for people, hopefully leading them away from obnoxious pukeboxes like Twit-eX. (Ha! I like the name. I’ll keep it.)

Have a good day, everyone, as much as you can, and drink plenty of water! (after you drink your coffee, of course).