@movq@www.uninformativ.de Thanks for sharing that, I always like reading about other peoples’ tooling setups (especially for desktop publishing).

@prologic@twtxt.net Just curious, what kind of CPU / memory usage does Picket show while dealing with one of these storms?

I wouldn’t blame anyone for abandoning public git repos in 2026… The scrapers just don’t seem to care about the harm they do (or the sites they crash). I guess it’s an “external” cost, and doesn’t cost them anything, so… ¯_(ツ)_/¯

@zyak@twtxt.z85b.xyz Very nice! 👍

@shinyoukai@twtxt.net 🤣 I hadn’t heard that before.

Doesn’t Gentoo require the user to build every package they want to use? Because I don’t hate myself enough to try that. 😁

In more frustrating news, I did something to my primary laptop, and now it crawls along like a 2005 Celeron trying to run Windows Vista.

My laptop is nothing too special (a Lenovo powered by an i7-1255U (4+8) @ 4.70 GHz with integrated “Iris Xe” graphics), but I’ve been running Manjaro Linux (with KDE Plasma) on it for the past couple of years, and apart from the odd pamac / pacman / “Add Remove Software” inconsistency (or Plasma widget issue), it’s been running pretty well.

Then, a few days ago, it started bugging about updates, and yesterday it added complaints about an unsupported kernel, so I finally pulled the trigger on it, and boy do I regret it.

I initially kept having issues downloading all of the updates (it was trying to download some kind of non-existent Quake-related library, which I had to remove), and I also had issues getting rid of the unsupported 7.1 kernel (due to some “meta” packages that had been installed), but in the end, I resolved both issues, got the kernel removed and the updates installed, and everything seemed fine after the post-update reboot… for about 10 minutes.

And that’s when the machine just decided to start moving at 1/3 speed: typing, moving the cursor, changing windows - everything started acting like it was 2008.

When I first tried to diagnose it, top showed kwin_wayland eating 50% of the CPU, and plasmashell another 10%, but it wasn’t consistent (they both came and went). I disabled all of the desktop effects, which helped some, as did blanking my plasma config (setting my desktop back to default), but things are still noticeably laggier than they were a few days ago.

Someone online suggested freeing up 25% space total on my root drive (which typically runs 90-95% full), so I’ve been cleaning up (and offloading) as much as I can. If that doesn’t work and I don’t find a solution by the end of the week, I’ll probably have to backup my data, wipe the machine clean, and start fresh. 🙃

@movq@www.uninformativ.de 😂

And what a great pull-quote:

“Norway has opened what might be the most idyllic public convenience in the world.”

🤣🤣🤣

#Magic update - for the 2nd time in a row, I went 2 for 2 (this time, in a pair of 3-player games).

For game 1, I ran a re-tweaked “Jace and the Echoverse” deck (a modified version of the recent Reality Fracture precon), dominating most of the game before pulling a 1-2 punch of making my creatures indestructible and then blowing up the board (so the other 2 players both quit, including an Ur-Sphinx deck). Then, for game 2, I ran my nearly-perfected Dune deck, which pulled out to a surprising early lead before finally winning with an unblockable commander (killing 1 opponent outright and making the other quit again).

I gotta say, I’m really digging both of these decks: not only do they win more often than not, but they’re both thematic as hell and fun to play. I plan to add them to my decklists page soon.

@maurice-renck.de@maurice-renck.de I hadn’t heard of that yet, very cool to see something like that formalized in an RFC.

I am for nearly anything that takes social media out of the hands of the corporate silos and returns it to the actual participants, doubly-so if it doesn’t swap the silo for something crypto-based, And the simpler the implementation is, the more likely that people will actually implement all of it (/me glances sideways towards ActivityPub).

Thanks for the rare bit of good news!

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Awesome, maybe I can actually finish it this year. 😃

@prologic@twtxt.net Pretty graph! 🤩

Very cool.

📽️ Watchmen (2009) https://youtu.be/wdiHDzT6YbQ

“I triggered it 35 minutes ago.”

🎶 “No More Love” - God Lives Underwater https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=T1PiNzwbIPw&si=LKxODuHPTugQCgwV

I’ve loved this song (and this band) ever since I first heard it on the soundtrack for Johnny Mnemonic (1995).

@maurice-renck.de@maurice-renck.de Oh, snap! You just described most of the websites I’ve ever built (except I prefer terminal green over orange/yellow 😁).

Of course, I’ll be the first to admit that I have precisely zero design skills, I just like writing HTML.

I (mostly) completed my second Halloween one-shot for 2026 earlier today. It went much quicker than last night’s game, but we had to cut it short due to a scheduling conflict, so there’s another 1-3 hours session probably still to go (and 🤞 we’ll get to finish it).

Both sessions were alot of fun, and really rekindled my interest in role-gaming. I hope to get back to regular campaign play after the new year, and I’ve already been bouncing some ideas off of some of my heavy players.

My first Halloween one-shot of 2026 is in-the-bag (as of about 90 minutes ago).

Mind you, it didn’t start until way later than anticipated (due to a scheduling conflict with one of the players), and then it ran for a marathon 6 hours before the 3 players “won” by rescuing the surviving vanished villagers and escaping with their lives. There were flying heads, vampire mercenaries, even a werewolf butler, all of whom met a sticky end at the “hands” of our heroes. Good times were had by all!

I’ll be running it again for 3 different players in about 10 hours. Hopefully their session goes as well for them (although I wouldn’t mind if it went a bit quicker, too 😁).

@prologic@twtxt.net

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I’m tied up for most of the day today, but I’ll see what I can get running here later tonight. Very cool! 🤩🤘

@thecanine@twtxt.net I fell you 100%.

My son asked me to fix his Win11 laptop: When he logs in, he gets a GSoD (gray screen of death). So, I fiddle with it for a few minutes, and I get it to login, but now the start menu button doesn’t work. So, I fiddle with it for another hour, and I get the start menu working, but he only has 2 GB free on his primary drive, and that’s not enough for all of the “critical” Windows updates it needs, so now I’m moving files around…

I know everyone says how “user friendly” Windows is, but I call BS on that - my Manjaro install may not always work perfectly, but at least my Start menu button does…

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Spam is as spam does (or maybe it’s “slop is as slop does”).

What’s the point of writing text with UTF-8 formatting and always sticking to the boring-old ASCII set? 😃

@prologic@twtxt.net Understood, and I apologize if it sounded like I was trying to do a price comparison (I really wasn’t). Instead, let me ask this way: as I am still unlearned in the art of small VMs, what does one do with a 64MB container? I’m old enough to remember when apps were really small, but even most “simple” apps are too big for a 64MB machine, right? Or am I missing something?

I guess that’s why I made the comparison with the 512MB droplet at DO - that’s the smallest machine I’ve run in a VPS so far (and even my home servers have 8-32 GB of RAM).

Maybe a better question is: What would you run on a service like what you’re talking about? Or what do you envision people using it for?

Sorry if the previous post broke anything, but between PHP-ageddon and the certificates with 3-bit keys today was just a ZALGO HE COMES kind of day.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de C’mon, it can’t be that bad OH MY GOD IT’S 11000 LȈ̷̢̠̟́NĔ̴͎̺͆̍̈Ş̴̛̉͒͑̚ ̴̙́̀͆̑Ó̴̧̝̝̌Ḟ̵̽̌̒ ̷̡̻̖͛͆͛̎̋C̸̊̒́͒ ̵͈̩̈́͑̕A̴͙͌̎̀́̕Ņ̴͐̓́̆Ḋ̴͇̕̚͘͝ ̵̡͓́T̵̹̘̼͐͑̈E̴̹͊̊S̷̫̔͑̂̊͘T̵̟̂̾Ş̵̼̘̠͛̆̉̐̄ Z̷̘̠̹̪̳̝̥̗͐̑̍̅̃͋̿̕A̴̜̦̖̟͍̒́L̴̢̧̥̤̖̼̯̝̭̠͒̈́͆́̇̔̾Ģ̸̰̯͇͔̦͎̱̳̖̠̽Ỏ̶̠͗̏̑͂͐͗̕͝͠ ̴̜̦͎̟̬̮͕̙̠͙̬̅́̔H̶̖̬͙̱̺͍̣͆͌͊͗̈́͛͑͒̿̃͘ͅÊ̶̮̝͇̲̺̈́̔̐͂͒̈́̽͗̿̄̚͝ ̸̜͍̩͉̭͎̤̼̊̃͛͊͌̏͝C̵͔͎̟̝͖̃͋̓̍͠͠O̸̡̯̰̜͖͉͊̃̄̕̕̚Ṁ̷̡̨̺̹͕̳̼͇̼͚͔͌̌̌̈́͆͗̉̇̌̎̕̚͘̚Ȩ̵̞̫̤͓̹̫̬̲͔͓̘͔̣̖̅́͋̈́́̌̃̀̀̇̐̌̓S̸̢̮̰͙̳̲̺̫͖̯̻̣̳̎̇̄͌͗̔̅̊͊̈̋͌̋͆͠ͅ!̴̡̨̳̗͉̭̙̦͓͆̇͒̎͆̓̒̓̑͑̌͘̕͝!̸͎̻͚̩̜͇͐͋̄̐͜͝!̷͙͚̱̤͔͓͂̐̑̀͆̃͜

@prologic@twtxt.net Potentially, but 64 MB is kinda small. I haven’t run a host with < 512 MB in quite some time, and it would take 8 @ 64MB to match that, although that would only be $1.40 (for the first 3) + $3.50 (for the last 5), so still under $5 a month…. Yeah, most likely, even if just for a couple of off-site services and secure backups.

I’ll be honest - I’ve had a VPS at DigitalOcean for years, but I barely use it anymore because I got big into “owning my own servers” (hence my interest in Self Hosted, which I just signed up for), so now I run a few repurposed old desktops throughout my house. But I trust you way more than I do some other random VPS provider, so again…. Yeah, most likely. 🙂

#Magic Update: This week, our Magic time was up against the local team’s Sportsball game, so we only had 4 players to start. I decided to try out a brand new deck, a lightly modified version of the new Jace, Multiverse Architect preconstructed deck that I picked up from my FLGS a few days ago, and let me tell you, that deck dominated, with everyone else quitting around the 90 minute mark. I know much of it was luck (especially in the early game), but it was so much fun to play, I look forward to breaking it out again… in a few weeks. 😁

By the time the second game started, the local team had won their Sportsball game (yay, sports team!), so it was one of our usual 5-player affairs. This time, I played my old-school Defenders of the Mirth deck, and it held up long enough for all but one other player to quit, and then I killed on my next turn with a truckload of unblockable commander damage at about the 2 hour mark. That put me at a rare 2/2 overall for the day. Good times! 🤘

Today’s putt.day (#158) is alot of fun, and has a real mini-golf-in-space vibe (complete with a windmill!) https://putt.day/s/yDg4fWjZgG99

🎶 “Like This” - Girl Talk https://youtu.be/vRbMp0IAQvI?is=_E5k7ETg5QW0_JAY

The transition from Karen Carpenter to Metallica + Lil Mama (towards the end) is sublime.

🎶 “Wizard” - Castle Rat https://youtu.be/DyhYzRRMBSU?is=VhzfCFwQjw9ECOJC

It rocks so hard, and I totally dig their low-rent fantasy schtick.

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org More excellent shots, thank you for those.

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Thanks for that keymapping idea, that’s clever!

Everybody have fun tonight,
Everybody Shang Tsung tonight.

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@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Loverly!

Yeah, things aren’t quite that bad where I work yet (thanks to no one wanting to pay the outrageous bills associated with the “frontier models”), but some people keep pushing for it. Personally, I’m still hoping that either the bubble bursts real soon and/or the people in charge realize that “enterprise-class” and “vibe-coded” are mutually exclusive software concepts, but who knows.

In the meantime, at my work, we’re still doing mandatory human PR reviews (with optional copilot ones), and there’s a big push for “respectful” AI use (as in being respectful of others, like always reading any text / code the AI generated for you before asking someone else to). We’ll see how it goes.

I hope things get better for you, @movq@www.uninformativ.de (and for anyone else dealing with the same issues).

@david@daiwei.me

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Very cool shots! 🤘

Today I got to take my doll and a couple other cats to see this nifty new flick at the Independent Picture House, a supermurgitroid, nonprofit theater in Charlotte.

It’s called “Psycho”, and let me tell you, it was Fat City - easily the ginchiest flick I’ve seen in a hot minute (and that’s the word from the bird).

If you haven’t seen it, I don’t want to be a wet nag, so I’ll keep the ending on the down low, but don’t wait, daddy-o - it’s radioactive!

OK, I can’t keep it up. :D

Yes, today I took the wife, son, and daughter-in-law to the theater to see a 66 year-old movie (and one which we’ve all seen before, many times). But the experience was great, and it’s one of my wife’s favorite movies (as well as a very important and influential one), so it was well worth it.

One might even say it was the bee’s knees. 😁

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OMT - in my experience, having just a single hardware token (for a password, passkey, 2FA, or whatever) is dangerous, as it’s too easy to lose it or get it wet, so I tend to keep two: one on my keychain, one at the house. I’m not sure how well this kind of device would work in tandem with another just like it, especially at $100 a pop (and coupled with my previously mentioned concerns about crowdfunding hardware).

@prologic@twtxt.net Pretty much everything @jecxjo@sh0.xyz said.

Mind you, I’m not saying “don’t back it”, I just treat it like I do when I go to a casino - I only spend as much as I’m willing to lose.

Unfortunately, sitting out has bitten me a couple of times (ex: I would have loved to have picked up a Flipper Zero, but I didn’t trust it to deliver). OTOH, it’s also saved me from backing several projects that I considered, but which ultimately failed.

@prologic@twtxt.net Hmm… Interesting. 🤔

They definitely made some bold decisions with it, but I’m always skeptical of crowd-funded hardware projects…

@JasonSanta@jasonsanta.xyz For sure. Even the self-hosted version is pretty easy to deploy, but I’m plenty satisfied with the web-based PWA. 🌤️

I forgot to note it here, but last night I opened my first bug report for the Old School Essentials Online Rules Reference, a modern set of rules for playing classic D&D-like games (and one which helped inspire my own system).

@JasonSanta@jasonsanta.xyzI was aware of it, but I hadn’t looked at it yet. Pretty cool!

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Nice color on the clouds.

@jecxjo@sh0.xyz Where would the world be without Real Heroes ™ like that? 🤣

This has become my new favorite way to get my local weather forecast (although I don’t think it works outside of the US): WeatherStar 4000+.

It emulates the feeling of watching The Weather Channel’s “local on the 8s” circa the late 90s / early 2000s, but it’s interactive, on-demand, and even includes a replica light-jazz soundtrack.

I installed it as a PWA on both my laptop and my phone. 😁

Also, it can be self-hosted, but the original author’s site has been good enough for me (so far).

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This was hilarious: https://minesweeper.mikelacher.com/

📽️ Phantoms (1998) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6i2zB2NsW8

“It’s just a Bundt cake, it’s just a Bundt cake…”

(And, incidentally, Affleck is the bomb in this.)

@david@daiwei.me Thank you! I’m not brave enough to play in public, but I know several people who do. I basically only play with friends or friends-of-friends.

@prologic@twtxt.net Yes, @david@daiwei.me is correct - it is a website with (most) everything one would need to run a fantasy tabletop role-playing game, either in-person or online. I use a service called Roll20 which provides a “shared” tabletop with virtual maps, dice, and character sheets that all the players can see (and I can control). It’s really alot of fun - it’s basically adult make-believe, but with a shared set of rules and a “game master” to keep the story moving. 😁

@jecxjo@sh0.xyz LOL, you aren’t the only one who remembers it: see https://github.com/ZuraGuerra/beat_time and https://hackaday.io/project/193777-the-curious-case-of-swatch-internet-time 🕚

@prologic@twtxt.net It depends on which part you’re asking about…

First some quick context: I’ve been into tabletop role-playing games (ex: Dungeons & Dragons) since I was a teenager, and I’ve been playing and/or running games for most of the last decade (mostly on Discord for the past few years, as my players are scattered around the country).

The Planar Vagabond’s Guide to the Multiverse is a website where I’ve collected much of the material I’ve written or adapted into my custom RPG ruleset, HOSR (Heroic Old-School Roleplaying), and I just published some new stuff there. 🤩

While most RPGs are played as “campaigns” (over multiple gaming sessions), a one-shot is an adventure that can (theoretically) be finished in a single-night (3-5 hours of gameplay). I’ve done horror-themed one-shots around Halloween for years, typically based on the classic gothic adventure, Ravenloft. But this year, I’m running something new(-er) called Escape the O.V.T.!, and I’m being intentionally cagey about it because I want it to be a surprise for my players.

Does that explain it? I’m happy to go deeper on any of it. 🙂

Today, I released a new update to my TTRPG project, The Planar Vagabond’s Guide to the Multiverse, adding a handful of new spells, monsters, magic items, and races.

Plus, after nearly a year away from playing, I’m super-excited to run an all-new Halloween survival-horror one-shot this year called Escape the O.V.T.!

“Who will survive, and what will be left of them?”