Since leaving my RSS feed bereft of updates for months at a time is a sad way to use it, I've elected to issue at least ONE update per month. Even if I've not done anything I feel is noteworthy enough to be given its own entry, I'll make sure to tie up any loose ends moving into the next month. Getting to use the RSS channel frequently really improves my mood and I wanna make sure I don't forget to take advantage of it.
Originally these blogging snippets started as writings for the month-end RSS wrapup, but got long enough that I decided to just post them to a blog page, and keep the RSS wrapup confined to catching up readers on the changelog.
Snippets follow:
The latter half of this month has been characterized by a fun development: I've been using the TUI even more for my Neocities workflow, and a real sense of flow has coalesced around that. First, I recently tried out the Neocities CLI program that runs on Ruby. Fun fact, I actually tried learning Ruby years ago on the very same laptop I write all my Neocities pages right this moment! So this is actually the second time this laptop has had some sort of Ruby program running on it, but the first time on Linux and not Windows 7.
While it took a bit of getting the commands in my head, I really enjoy using the Neocities CLI. As with most text-based programs, I really like not having to use my (broken-left button, confined to tap-to-click) mousepad at all in the process, and the responsiveness and snappy feeling that comes with doing something sans-graphics.
I also finally fixed my shell profile not having the default editor variable set (to Vim, of course), so now Yazi's "o" motion for opening files in-editor actually launches something and doesn't just error. Wow, imagine using your file manager to manage files instead of just using it as a reference lookup for filepaths. On that note, I've also gotten far more used to using all of Yazi's main functions, to the point where it's officially the most powerful file manager on my system.
So combine together Yazi, Vim, and Neocities CLI, and I can get every single aspect of my web-editing done entirely text-mode! Mainly it's just fun to do so, and to bring it up again; very useful to be able to use my mouse as little as possible.
Another thing I just did was finally fix a problem I was encountering where Vim kept displaying an annoying dark-orange on certain highlighted bits of syntax despite it being outside of my terminal emulator's color set, such as HTML tags. The fix that seemed to be the consensus online was simply not working only because the .vimrc wasn't being recognized where it was despite it being stated as a valid filepath by the documentation. Anyways, relatively easy fix for how absurdly long it took for me to stumble into it.
Main big point about this is simply that I'm once more motivated to try my hand at more customization of my terminal emulator and my tools in general. Previously, I had temporarily given up on a custom color scheme because the only set of colors that that annoying dark orange matched with was just the default Alacritty colors, since they're also pretty desaturated.
Right now I've just set my colors back to the EndeavourOS default until I get some better inspiration on what kind of look I want to try making for myself. I'll also try doing some more DE/WM theming as well. I mean, I've sort of conquered my text-based workflow for the time being, so I might as well work on optimizing my graphical workflow now, right? I hop across a couple of different DEs and WMs and haven't given any of them enough real touches to make them feel personalized and comfortable.
That's a lot of talk about just computer stuff, so let me mention some other assorted stuff before I close out on this entry:
I learned the bass part of the bass-guitar duet at 10:10 in the song "Like Antennas To Heaven" by Godspeed You Black Emperor! Great song, the duet is not only gorgeous, but a super fun part to play on the bass! At the time of writing this, I just got recommended a (sadly guitar, not bass) tabs video for They Might As Well Be Dead by Chris Christodoulou, so I'm definitely gonna learn that next, I couldn't have asked better material to drop straight into my hands for analysis. I've overall been super obsessed with the Risk of Rain 2 soundtrack as of recent so I'll take any chance to learn some songs, especially one as grand as TMAWBD. Please take a listen to it some time, it's so good.
Last day of May and I got some pretty interesting books from the discount books store! They're two books about UNIX shells, one from '86, one from '95. I mainly just thought the computer history aspect of them was neat, but maybe I'll actually learn something very applicable to my own modern systems. They disappointingly did not have any Linux books there despite having like 11 different books about Windows 10. I guess the usefulness of guides about Windows versions has a more meager lifespan and people sell them off quicker? A Linux book'll teach you forever, I suppose. But older books about UNIX shells is a find I'll take as a consolation. I've also gotten back to reading another book about Chinese language history.
I got Garry's Mod working on my desktop again! It hadn't been working for about six months or something and I finally tried just switching the version of compatibility layer that Steam was using. Hurrah, now I can finally use that ARAR playermodel and tote the one massive rifle from Signalis while exploring haunted maps. On the note of Signalis, I've given up trying and failing to get Leave ending and just going for Artifact already. Oh, and I got a B-rank on Then Fell The Ashes in Ultrakill, up from a C-rank. And I've been playing Hollow Knight a bunch while listening to music theory videos. OH AND GO PLAY ENA: DREAM BBQ!!! PLEASE IT'S SO GOOD!!!
Well, I think that's all. I'm gonna get back to sleep now. I hope we all have a splendid and fulfilling pride month! :3 :3 :3 :3 :3
The tabs for They Might As Well Be Dead were actually guitar AND bass tabs! I have now learnt the main bass riff, and am practicing it, having a great time. I also learnt the first couple notes of the guitar line entirely by ear without looking at the tabs, which has happened a fair bit recently for a few different melodies from different songs. So in short, I'm thriving.