July 30, 2023

Google without Gmail

In the course of having a website, and running my own server, I’ve largely eschewed Google. In fact, aside from my Pixel 5a (love it) and running Android variants, I’d rather not have anything to do with Google, so I try to limit my usage of anything Google as much as possible. I had a Gmail account for years, from roughly 2005-2019, in fact, IIRC. A friend gave me a Gmail invite back in the day and it was useful for quite a while, for personal as well as professional pursuits. But I eventually started paying for a FastMail subscription (maybe ~2015? can’t remember) and it’s been much better overall. Now this is not an ad for FastMail, just giving my personal thoughts on it, and what I’m about to go through with you, you should be able to do on a number of other non-Gmail email providers. To what extent, I don’t know, however, as it depends on the provider.

July 21, 2023

Stranded on the Much-Billowing Beach

I finally finished (the main story of) Death Stranding a couple of days ago. I’ll really try not to be spoilery within, more to give my impressions of the game and such, in a bit of a sketch. Not spoiling anything, but the epilogue of the game is wide-open and indefinite, allowing you to tie up loose ends and seek out things you may have missed in the (c)rush of the rest of the game, which is totally cool with me. I don’t think I’ll do any of that right away, which is fine. It’ll be there, waiting for me, like Amelie for Sam on the Beach.

April 25, 2023

Adventures with LibreTranslate

(Last updated 22 Jun 2025 with a few tweaks; otherwise things are about the same)

Now if you’ve spent any time on my site, or you know me at all, you know I like playing around with computers, installing stuff, whatever the case may be. I’ve particularly enjoyed running a server the past nearly 3 (!) years, since I can install things that I, and in turn others (friends, loved ones, the world at large), will find useful. I am happy to run this server on my own dime and pay for the VPS and hosting, because it is not only a private but a public good, and that is how it should be. I have not only myself but family and friends set up on Vaultwarden and NextCloud, and it’s just really nice.

March 14, 2023

Some Thoughts on Gaming and Gamers

I was talking with a friend back and forth recently about gaming and accessibility in gaming, and it inspired me to write my thoughts on gaming in general. My thoughts, my relationship with it, praise as well as criticism (to the extent I can do it justice). Accessibility is not my strong suit and I’m trying to learn more about it all the time, and of course I’d like to make anything I produce as accessible as possible. I just don’t always know how. I think switching the blog to Hugo helps; with an almost-plaintext blog, it should be readable by all sorts of tools (dis volentibus!). As I’ve mentioned before, please let me know if there’s anything I can do that would improve your experience of reading my work here. That said, pergamus.

February 18, 2023

Grad School Memories

I’ve been reading as others discuss their grad school experiences, struggles as well as successes, and thought I’d write some about my own experience in higher ed. Although I’m no longer in the field or really in academia at all, I did enjoy my time there for the most part, although it was exhausting and draining and stressful. And it doesn’t have to be, in an ideal world. Anyone should be able to pursue a post-graduate degree if they desire, for whatever reason, and not have it adversely affect their life, finances, whatever. People should be allowed to pursue education for its own sake, disciplinae gratia disciplina (scientiae gratia scientia? whatever works).

January 28, 2023

Tweaks

So I’ve had my theme set to Ananke so far and it’s been nice, but I think I’d like to check out some other themes and try them on. So if the site looks a little weird lately, I’m trying out new themes. We’ll see how it goes.

Hope y’all are well, friends.

January 2, 2023

RPG Rambles

I’ve been playing a lot of videogames during the break(s) from work over the past couple of weeks. I started Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core a little while back, as well as Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, and PSP emulation works pretty well on the laptop, so that’s been fun. But I’ve hit kind of a brick wall on the former, and just haven’t revisited the latter yet. I’ve mentioned this recently on Mastodon, but honestly, I keep coming back to the notion that the Super Nintendo is probably my favorite system of all time. NES is a close second, but I’ve had trouble reconnecting with the NES; it is difficult to get invested in those games any more, but a SNES game I can really dive into. Zelda and Zelda II are notable exceptions, as they’re really quite rich. But NES RPGs are somewhat inscrutable and inaccessible to me; I’ve tried quite a few of them and they just aren’t entirely my thing. I would much rather play the Origins port of Final Fantasy than the original, and I really couldn’t get into II (Japanese), and III was also really just not my thing.

December 2, 2022

Cardinal and Changeable

82 … ac uenti uelut agmine facto

qua data porta, ruunt et terras turbine perflant.

incubuere mari totumque a sedibus imis

una Eurusque Notusque ruunt creberque procellis

85 Africus, et uastos uoluunt ad litora fluctus.

(Vergil, Aeneid 1.82-85)

… and the winds, as if a column came about,

where passage was given, they rush down and blow through the lands in a storm.

They brooded over the sea and, together, from its lowest foundations,

November 8, 2022

Things are calming down

So this weekend we finished our move-out from the apartment. It took nearly 7 hours to finish everything up; multiple carloads, unloading and repacking boxes/crates, whatever. It was a real pain ultimately; my spouse said afterwards, “We’re hiring movers next time we do this.” I’m inclined to concur with that as I was absolutely wiped out that evening and the next day. I was supposed to play D&D on Sunday but I’m really kinda glad we had to reschedule to next Sunday. Worked out OK for me.

November 4, 2022

Domus Nova

domus nova means “new house” in Latin. And that’s really what this is about. My spouse and I started looking for houses in the start of August, were referred to excellent realtors by dear friends of ours, and started the process by meeting with said realtors. Then we started looking at listings online and trying to find something we would like. We told our realtors our general parameters and so they tailored listings to those, and sent them to us daily. thus the process started in early August, and we spoke with a lender about securing financing. My parents have said for years that they want to help us get into a house, so they planned on helping us with a down payment. and believe me, we wouldn’t get into a house without their help, not in a very very long time.