Random Links 2
I enjoyed putting together the list of links last week and so I thought I would do it again this week. I am also typing this up to keep my mind busy as my mind is in the depth of an emotional cul-de-sac and I can't seem to shake the darkness or rain. Focusing on other things sometimes helps and that is certainly what I am aiming for at this moment.
- Instead of flooding our computer with all the software that was installed before upgrading to Zena, we have decided to take a more methodical approach to software installation. I had a directory of audio files that needed proper ID3 tag information. Enter Picard. Picard pings the MusicBrainz database and will identify your audio files and tag them for you. Back in the day (and long before two and three monitors) this meant doing a lot of typing and or copying/pasting and lots and lots of Alt+Tabbing. Those days are now history thanks to software such as Picard. It's not just for Linux either, so get yourself a copy if you find yourself in a "I need to tag some music" situation.
- Rarely do I need to "sketch" something and have that sketch be part of a digital note. It does happen from time to time tho, and this past week I was reminded about two powerful pieces of software that play very well with Obsidian but are standalone heroes in their own right.
- tldraw - a digital whiteboard that doesn't need to any explanation on how to use. It is just that intuitive.
- Excalidraw - Excalidraw is also a whiteboard, but the abilities here are more in line with with how the Drafts app in the iOS camp handles text. On the surface, yes, it's just a text editor. But under the hood it's basically a text-swiss-army knife that can basically do anything you can possibly imagine. Excalidraw is the same way in regards to whiteboards. It can be a simple whiteboard like tldraw, but if you want it can be as complicated as the most Dataview ridden Obsidian vault you have ever laid your eyes on.
- The Linux Mint clock applet that comes stock with the system. There is a link in the settings that sends you to this page: Python strftime reference cheatsheet for help in regards to setting up custom time formats. I thought I was doing something completely wrong cos I would not for the life of me get the week numbers to work. As it turns out, the strftime(3) manual page is the one you need to be following.
- This neat little Chrome-based extension (Brave, Chrome, Chromium) can help detect feeds for sites that do not explicitly link to them. It's called RSS Subscription Extension. While it's often best to view IndieWeb sites by way of the random button through PowRSS or webrings through a standard web browser, some blogs do deserve to live in a proper RSS feed so their updates can't be missed.
- Speaking of RSS readers, if you don't use one and want to give one a shot, you could do a LOT worse than The Old Reader. It was my default before I got looped into the Readwise camp.
- There is a little Radio applet for Linux Mint that I tried getting setup. I couldn't get it to work properly, but while poking under the hood I stumbled upon Radio-Browser.info which is where this applet was pulling it's data from. What a goldmine! They call themselves "a community driven effort (like wikipedia) with the aim of collecting as many internet radio and TV stations as possible." I have pulled quite a few of these out and added them to my alias configuration for quickly playing by way of the command-line via Tilda.
- It seems like every couple of months I try to get back into the idea of using a Habit Tracker app. Many Black Fridays ago both everyday and Habitify had deals on their Lifetime subscriptions and I ended up getting one for both. It just seems like when I add something to these apps my mind thinks of new and clever ways to talk myself out of doing it. I was pleased to see how much Habitify has come along since I was on it last. I always enjoyed their simple "mood tracker" thing they have.
- I have joined Pixelfed! If you're a fellow shutterbug, I'm on the pxlmo instance and am located here: @wmprkr
- I am truly fascinated by the theme Sylvia uses on their site.
- There are some pretty good compiled lists of BearBlog related materials but the Bear Blog Resource List Grizzly Gazette put up really raises the bar. Very well done. Check them out if you have not taken time to do so.
- I feel like the aforementioned Resource List inspired Mr. Robert Birming to put up a dedicated page of all this Bear themes and tools, which his navigation called Honeypot 🍯.
- Getting ready for the upcoming holidays, I have my own "Holiday Calendar" setup in Todoist. There are so many holidays on the calendar nowadays, but I really only need to be made aware of the ones that are going to effect work. I was delighted to find out these natural language dates are both correctly recognized by Todoist:
Memorial Day every last monday in mayLabor Day 🛠️ every first monday in september
- Easter dates for the next handful of years
- April 5, 2026
- March 28, 2027
- April 16, 2028
- April 1, 2029
- April 30, 2030 (AGI/Skynet should be in our lives by this day)
- Do you remember the game called Driver? You can play it here!
- Someone made a mock-up Gmail website called Jmail which allows you to engage with the site as if you were Jeffery Epstein. It's equally crazy and disturbing.
- Related if your interested
- The idea of joining a webring entered my mind lately. We stumbled upon Webring.gg while shuffling around the random button on PowRSS.
- Listography.com screams old web to me.
- We are on Day 11 of the 1001AlbumsGenerator project. I can tell you this much about the journey so far: I do not like "noise rock".
Check these people out
- https://robinrendle.com/notes/ - I love this guys theme
- https://notes.art/ - they make art in Apple Notes
- https://chrisglass.com/ - originally made by way here by way of the photo journal but the whole site is just lovely
- https://blog.404oops.com/ - the popup you get when you go here
- https://stateofnats.com/ - there is a level of authenticity here that draws me in
- https://94673.neocities.org/ - just start clicking around and see what you find
🎧 Damien Jurado - Over Rainbows And Rainier via Folk Forward on SomaFM