RE: https://social.lol/@bw/116881731101006901
I wanted to experiment on the cheapest machine I could find and I purchased a month of IONOS' cheapest option.
Does anyone have experience with them? Just wondering what the quality is like.
Microblog
Does anybody have opinions on VPS providers? I'm a long time shared/managed hosting user who wants to try his hand at running a basic web app on a VPS.
I just realized I hadn't looked at the hard disk icon in Tahoe yet. For some reason, I thought maybe it hadn't changed. I was wrong. It sucks now.
I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir on Mastodon, but I really miss the old school Mac OS X icons. Both first party and third party.
One of the first times I ever saw Mac UI was when I saw a professor hook up a laptop and the only thing on the desktop was this beautiful hard disk icon, which he double-clicked and began exploring files on his machine.
For some reason I thought that was so cool.
Great piece from @ellane:
Before I die I hope to do for someone else what Leila did for me.
It’s part of why I write.
https://ellanew.com/2026/07/01/unsolicited-advice-the-right-way
Because of my disability, spinal muscular atrophy, I spend a lot of time using a computer. I decided to write about my experience and the internal struggle I have with it.
https://blakewatson.com/journal/if-i-want-more-irl-i-must-go-afk/
"AI is here to stay: possibly the most upsetting truth that’s arisen in this golden age of slop."
RE: https://social.lol/@bw/116817481492575581
I totally didn't realize that Om died two days ago. RIP
This whole essay is a poetic, sick burn.
> Every significant deployment of mythos shares the same features. It operates in a domain where evidence is unavailable or inconvenient. It names things so the answer is already inside the word. Manifest. Divine. Destiny. Mythos. It requires an inside and an outside, the trusted and the untrusted, the believers and the skeptics. That is not a security policy. That is a priesthood.
Shoot I need to write a blog post this weekend to keep my streak alive. Might have to be a state the obvious post.
Tab fatigue
I got my May blog post in with a couple of minutes to spare. https://blakewatson.com/journal/things-i-enjoy-about-dungeons-dragons/
I just wrote a parenthetical that was so much better than the sentence it was tacked onto that I had to upgrade it to a real boy (ie, I removed the parentheses).
Anyone have any recommendations for artists who do D&D character art commissions?
I used to be ashamed of preferring GUIs to CLIs, thinking it a sign that I’m not a Real Developer™. But both of these are just facilitating interaction with a program. Memorizing (and typing) commands isn’t inherently better than clicking and dragging.
My understanding of what I'm doing—merging a branch in git, say, or searching a log—is what actually matters. I could definitely be better at git, but it doesn't mean I have to like the CLI!
(The counterpoint to this is that sometimes you *only* have CLI access. But my counterpoint to that counterpoint is I will look that stuff up when I need it.)
Controversial opinion: the YouTube algorithm is good, actually.
*hides under desk*
If you enjoy getting background or focus music from YouTube, here is a pro tip. If you add "before:2022" to your search, you can avoid a bunch of the AI generated music that is pervasive nowadays.
I have MMMBop by Hanson stuck in my head. It’s the final boss of earworms.
Where are people getting desktop backgrounds from? I'm in need of a new one for my studio display, but kind of tired of the usual suspects that appear in web search.