July 2025 (and some of August)

It's definitely been a while since my last post. My sleep schedule is kind of fucked up right now, and it's interfering with my ability to mentally commit to projects, since I'm more often than not trying and failing to not get involved in anything too late into the night. I miss waking up at reasonable times, good lord.

Bazzite

After the computer troubles I mentioned in the June blog post, I decided to try out a Linux distribution I've never used before: Bazzite. I've never even used any sort of Fedora-based system before this. But my reason for trying out this option was twofold:

My first and more obvious motive was that as much as I love being able to tinker with my computers in the way that a system like Arch provides, I've really wanted to just be able to get back to my games and have everything working again. I haven't been getting much use out of the Arch-like modularity on my gaming desktop, and as cliche as it sounds, I really would like to have something that "just works", and if I get frustrated with this distribution's atomic setup, then I suppose I can always jump ship later knowing I've gotten my worthwhile for the time being just getting to play my games.

Secondly, though, my brother understandably wants to get off of Windows dependancy before Windows 10 goes EOL. And he's the type of person who has said verbatim the sentiment that "if Valve released a version of SteamOS for desktops and not just the Steam Deck, I would just install that." Bazzite supposedly is like if SteamOS was valid for desktop use, so I wanted to try it out myself and see if I could recommend it in good faith. So far, I would say that I can. It's been working quite splendidly.

Music

Not much to report in terms of learning stuff on my bass, although I found a bass tabs video for Prevailing Westerlies from Hylics 2, which I intend to use. Also, I've learned by-ear a little bit more of They Might As Well Be Dead, as I was previously mentioning my intention on in this post. I figured out a little bit of the finale guitar solo, and it's pretty fun to play.

Aside from that, though, I've mainly been listening to stuff pretty intensely. I've gotten really into King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard lately, who I already loved the work of quite a bit, but I've been delving into more and more of their catalogue. I've been listening to a lot of stuff on repeat that I hadn't heard until recently, like Witchcraft, Gila Monster, Flamethrower (a personal favorite of mine from Petrodraconic Apocalypse), Crumbling Castle, and Hell. All fantastic tracks, I really can't get enough of that sound lately.

I've also simultaneously gotten the need to listen to more Machine Girl recently. Again, a band I've already enjoyed the sound of for a while, and I know all the tracks on Wlfgrl and ...Because I'm Young, Arrogant, and Hate Everything You Stand For, but like King Gizzard, I've just been overtaken with the need to hear more of the style. It's so good. Machine Girl really inspires me stylistically, especially the more directly electronic stuff.

Laptop battery

At the time of writing, I have just recently gotten a new battery for my laptop. I've known this was a repair my laptop needed ever since I first pulled it back out of the closet, but I haven't done anything about it since I can technically use my computer just fine without a working battery, it just causes inconvenience without it. The previous battery is entirely worn out and can't hold any kind of charge, so I've had it entirely detached from the laptop to remove the dead weight. Finally though, the functionality is restored.

The productivity ramifications of this should already be obvious, but mainly I'm just glad I won't have to wash my hands every time I want to move my laptop because the process no longer involves picking up the dingy power cable off the floor.

I ended up writing this whole post when I did because I needed something sufficiently useful to do on my laptop in commemoration of the new battery, so you can thank primarily that factor in particular for all this. Hopefully in general I'll be able to write more now that I'm not tethered to one of two specific locations around the house I tend to keep my cord at because it's a hassle to move it anywhere else. And do more music.