You know mostly desktop Linux has been a joy but then you run into things like this that remind you it's still not ready for civilians. Printing: still sucks in 2026.

We liked our last cruise so much we're going on another. This time to Italy, Malta, and Greece. I'll be sharing postcards in this thread. They will also be on a nicely formatted web page.

Seen on BlueSky

After I'm done talking to Gemini for some task it helps me with I give it a final status update. Ostensibly I'm doing this for its long-term memory and my own, in case I revisit the conversation. In fact I've anthropomorphized the AI enough it seems only polite to […] [Original post on tech.lgbt]

OMG someone rolled a zero. @George @annika @Vaguery

I am only just discovering _Parks & Recreation_ and what a lovely show! Almost done with Season 2.

Charmed by Bennett Foddy's latest, Baby Steps. Yet another awkward walking simulator like his brilliant QWOP. This is really reminding me of Crazy Climber, the classic '80s arcade game.

I knew RAM, CPU, and SSD prices were crazy. But so are spinning hard drives? I paid $200 for 14TB of rust less than a year ago; same drive is $500 now.

Reddit has an interesting new multilingual culture. People will post something in, say, German and folks will answer in English. Or you'll see a Portuguese answer to an English post. No one comments on this language swapping, for most users it seems entirely seamless? Not sure. I assume they […]

RIP David Hockney. One of my favorite of his works, Pearblossom Hwy., 11 - 18th April 1986, #2.

Had my first hard failure of the Linux desktop today. Wayland locked up 100% CPU, had to reboot. I've run into a bunch of bugs in various things. The bloom is off the rose, but I'm still really liking the Linux experience overall.

I'm using AI for everything all the time now but keep having to remind myself to be careful to verify what it asserts. Some errors are easier to spot than others.

I have a new favorite pickle: Britt's Pickles. Lovely very sour ferment and not at all shy about the flavoring. Lots of chile heat and some mustard seed in with the usuals. They're on Whidbey Island but my California grocery carries them.

One fun thing about Linux Desktop is there's a diverse world of experimental UIs. Here's a list of some 20 window managers, for instance. Most of these probably have fewer than 100 users, and some are written in languages I've never heard of. But I bet some have some good ideas!

I'm sort of OK with people using gen AI to make images to promote events. But they way they all end up looking _like this_ kills me.

Slowly learning Flatpaks are not the preferred option for Linux GUI apps. The sandboxing causes a lot more problem than it solves. AppImages preferred, or native packages (rpm/dpkg).

PG&E strikes again. 14,000 customers without power in Nevada County. Absolutely no weather at all: warm, dry, no wind.

I don't know how to read your mind The letters are too small I guess you know what you mean But it makes no sense to me at all —Willie Nelson

My brand new Linux system has a `/afs`, a mount point for the Andrew File System that I last considered using in the 1990s. I gather it doesn't even have a working complete Linux implementation now? Odd to see it show up in 2026.

Can I just say it is very disappointing to be shopping online for yellow pants and have a site show you khaki pants instead?

I'm seeing a lot more multi-lingual Reddit posts lately. People posting in Portuguese or French or whatever in English language subreddits. They have some auto-translation feature and I guess the AI is good enough now it just feels natural to people to talk in whatever language.

One thing I love about being in my small town is that our local Pride celebrations feel really important to me, personal and connected. I got pretty alienated from San Francisco's half million crowds, also there's a sense that we really need our LGBT visibility in […] [Original post on tech.lgbt]

Just donated to Standard Ebooks, the organization that publishes very high quality ebooks for out-of-copyright books. I've read a bunch of their editions over the past few years, most recently A Room With a View.

I wrote a blog post about my good experience switching to a Linux desktop.

First fire plane of the season, for this new fire. Far enough from me not to be a threat, but still a bad omen.

I pay for the Economist. Every time I want to read a new article in the Android app I have to swipe forward. Twice, once to skip over the ad page. Then I let the article sit on my screen for about 10 seconds ready to swipe back to it because the app navigates forward to another ad page. It does […]

Still enjoying Linux desktop but some edges are rough. Today's goal: play the new Boards of Canada album from the download I just bought. 1. Nobara has no music player installed?! 2. Elisa is the basic KDE music player. Installed it via Flatpak and nothing would play, presumably a container […]

Thinking about Osborn / Woods, a gay couple who lived in Nevada City and were graphic designers.

So Jony Ive designed an electric car for Ferrari. I admire his commitment to innovative charging solutions.

TIL some Docker servers (using distroless) run as UID 65532 because lol nothing matters.

Just look at this majestic masthead. Bring back 1944 typography!

Of all the reasons I'm glad to be switching to Linux from Windows, two bugs stand out: 1. The way trying to uninstall a program in Windows takes 5 minutes for it to scan the drive, then another 5 minutes for the uninstaller to delete files one at a time 2. The way I can't shut my Windows […]

A little nostalgia, the image Dennis Hwang drew for my first product launch at Google, the search API

Using Clonezilla for the first time in a couple of years. It is the most charmingly Linux software. Very powerful and precise, nearly impenetrable usability.

Can't log into my Proxmox server because I need to renew my Tailscale authentication but that requires I log in via Google and Google wants me to press a button on my phone which is in another room.

Getting out of SFO is a shitshow this morning with two runways closed for the next five months.

My Linux server for public projects is down. Saying a quiet word of thanks to Past Nelson who documented the Restic backups. They're working!

Hey Gen Xers not feeling old enough? Here's a late-middle-age Modern English performing Melt with You two years ago.

Fucking Gmail AI writing suggestions.

I've finally got this Linux box set up how I want and it is **so nice**. Linux desktop does some things better than Windows, also approach this de novo means I work to make it right. I'm using Nobara, a Fedora variant. KDE Plasma desktop. It's all quite slick.

Modernizing my bash configuration after 35 years of cruft having accumulated. I think it's safe to remove `export MOZILLA_HOME=/usr/local/netscape` Never removing this gem tho: `export NETHACKOPTIONS="dogname:Toto,catname:Aleister,time,nopickup,fruit:box of tofu"`

Got my penis back from Jori Phillips. She made this fabric sculpture, intricately beaded, then made this mount for it.

Just switched my cell phone from Verizon to Visible, operated by Verizon. Saving about half my bill. And it's an honest $40/mo, not $40 plus $20 in fees and taxes. The big catch is you can't walk into a store or get phone support but I don't want or need that.

Not thrilled with what Fedora / KDE has turned home directories into. Copying my homedir from Bazzite (a Fedora) to Fedora 44, a whole bunch of stuff doesn't work because of bad paths, etc. Also nothing worked at all because I forgot to rsync the weird SELinux extra attribute stuff. None of this […]

I've been trying out Linux distributions and just saw the most cursed idea. _Trump Linux_ You can just see the GUI theme, can't you? (It doesn't actually exist... yet.)

Never get tired of the view over Dolores Park

The new season of The Boys is pretty amazing parody of American fascism. It's hard to watch right now, but it is quite on point.

Trying out Bazzite, the Fedora Linux distribution with particular effort to make gaming usable. It is very nice, maybe the apocryphal Linux on the desktop? Tempted to use it instead of Windows for awhile, we'll see.

🚀 That AI writing style 🤖 ✨ that puts an emoji ✍️ 📍 for each bullet point 📋 😡 makes me angry 👊

Not to shit on anyone's parade but if someone is bragging about getting a Webby, just know someone probably paid hundreds of dollars for consideration.