eBay

Tue, 24 Feb 2026 20:00:00 -0500

For a long while, I’ve been looking for something that could replace Amazon for most of my miscellaneous purchases that aren’t available in brick and mortar stores. It never really occurred to me that eBay might actually be the exact thing I was looking for.

Of course, I’ve been familiar with eBay for as long as I can recall. I’ve used it many times to sell things, but had never really used it to buy things before.

A few weeks ago I decided I needed to buy some cases to protect and display the handful of SNES and Nintendo 64 game cartridges I keep around (some of the few purely sentimental items I allow myself to hold on to), and eBay was the natural choice to look for options. The original cases are almost impossible to find, and those that do still exist cost hundreds of dollars. That said, I found someone making custom plastic cases based on the original box art, and decided to give them a try. I’m happy to report that I’m very pleased with the results.

This little foray into the world of eBay unlocked something in my mind. I decided to look up an item I’ve had on my Amazon wishlist for a while. To my surprise, I found an open box (but new!) listing for less than half the price of what Amazon was charging for a new item.

I repeated this a little later, when I needed to replace a very old (and very basic) multimeter that had finally bit the dust. I searched on eBay, and found a screaming deal on a relatively high quality (for my needs) multimeter.

Now, I find myself defaulting to eBay first, then resorting to other means if and only if I’m not able to find something there (and even then, I only fallback to Amazon as a very last resort).

I’m not sure why I’ve had such a mental block against using eBay, but the past handful of purchases have been affordable and provided excellent experiences! Plus, when you buy open box or used items, you’re saving things from ending up in the landfill. That’s a win-win!

Gapless vs. Euphonica

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 20:00:00 -0500

Every music player I have tried on GNOME is lacking in one area or another. Since my perfect music player doesn’t exist, I thought it might be of interest to say what I do and don’t like about the two primary apps that I tend to jump between: Euphonica and Gapless.

Generally, I prefer Euphonica. As someone who likes to listen to entire albums from start to finish, I find that viewing an album and queuing it up for play is a much better experience there.

I also prefer its “now playing” screen. I love that it tells me the quality details about the song I’m listening to. I like that I can shuffle directly from it, and even adjust features like crossfading and ReplayGain. Plus, I like the larger album art. I could take or leave the audio waveforms, but they are a nice touch.

It’s also nice that you can set cover art for an entire playlist.

The thing I dislike most about it is the fact that it requires an mpd server to work. I suppose most folks who use Euphonica are connecting to an mpd sever remotely, but I’ve set one up locally on my laptop (only available to localhost) purely for using with Euphonica. It was a small pain to set up, but what really annoys me about it is that it’s not always consistent about finding or displaying music that should be available. Occasionally songs or albums will be invisible from the library, but they’re so few and far between it’s hard to catch. In some cases I’ll realize an album is missing, but if I look at it through the artist view and then look at the individual songs list, I’ll find an entire album’s songs without the album showing up in the list. I suspect this is a shortcoming of Euphonica itself rather than mpd, but because the two are so intrinsically linked, it would take a decent amount of investigation to figure out.

I also miss being able to just see a flat-out list of every song in my library. I often just like to shuffle through everything, and I’ve not yet found a way to do so here.

Gapless, on the other hand, is a lot more minimal. This is both good and bad. I like that it just pulls from your local music library and handles all that functionality itself without requiring a separate server. So far it has reliably pulled in all my music. It automatically detects my saved playlists in a standard format. The music playback is great.

It’s also wicked fast. It launches almost instantly, playback happens as soon as you click play, and navigating the library has no delays.

It’s just missing the little bells and whistles that I mentioned that I like about Euphonica: the larger album art, the quality/format details, the shuffle buttons, the individual album views, etc.

But what bothers me the most about Gapless is the way that it handles the concept of a queue. When you play an album it pulls those tracks out of a queue, but still shows every song in your library within it. If you try to shuffle all your tracks but then play an album, it’s like it un-shuffles just the songs from the album, so in the middle there will just be 15 songs by the same artist in album order.

Sometimes playing individual tracks will clear the queue. Sometimes it appends. It’s just confusing to me, I simply don’t comprehend how the queue functions. The only time the queue behavior makes sense to me is when I’m playing music from a playlist.

If I could, I’d merge the best of both apps together. I feel like each excels in the exact ways the other falls short, so together it’s a complete experience.

Realistically, I think if Gapless were to make just a few tweaks it would be a perfect app. Whereas I think Euphonica, while my current favorite, is more fundamentally flawed in its library management.

Still, I really like both apps, and use them every single day. Maybe one day I’ll give up on one and settle on a single tool. Today is not that day, though.

Blog Posts Are The Ideal Form of the Written Word

Fri, 20 Feb 2026 20:00:00 -0500

Of all the things I read, I find blog posts to be the most enjoyable format.

Occasionally I will read a book that is memorable or even, in rare circumstances, life-altering. Those are usually the ones that manage to fully cover what they set out to discuss, without overstaying their welcome. A lot of books I read have “this could have been an email” energy, where it’s clear that the author had about thirty pages worth of ideas to discuss, but instead they will repeat themselves and pad it all out to fill the length requirements needed to get their books onto store shelves.

I can’t remember where I heard it, but around the time the iTunes store launched and you could purchase songs a-la carte for the first time, someone made the point that the song was the natural form for music. Now, instead of having to buy a full album just to get the one or two songs you wanted, you could just grab the individual tracks you liked.

(I do think we lost a little something in that period, because sometimes the best music that an artist produces is the stuff that doesn’t manage to hit the mainstream or get a ton of airtime — but I digress.)

In the same way, I think the blog post is kind of the ideal form of the written word. Books are big, bulky things that require several hours of commitment from the reader. When the subject deserves something of that length, that’s wonderful, but a lot of what makes it to bookshelves doesn’t fit the bill.

On the other hand, something smaller than a blog post (like a tweet, or a toot, or a skeet, or whatever the hell we’re calling a 500-or-fewer-character social post these days) often feels like a transient thought, and simply doesn’t have enough length to fully explore a topic or flesh out an idea.

But the blog post! What a perfect little medium. It can be short, if needed. It can be long, if necessary. It can be whatever it needs to be, but it usually manages to tell a story or share information exactly the way it needs to. I suppose, at the heart of it, a blog post is closest to an essay in the traditional sense. Whatever you call it and however you look at it, I find that material that takes somewhere between five minutes to an hour is usually just right.

Blog posts have been my favorite medium for as long as I can recall, and as long as you folks keep writin’ ‘em, I’ll keep readin’ ‘em.

The Current GNOME App Landscape, and the Two Apps I Wish Existed

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 20:00:00 -0500

I know the popular thing in modern times is to dislike standalone applications, and when it comes to apps on platforms like iOS and Android, I generally agree. More often than not, apps are black boxes that spy on you, rip you off, and in some cases, endanger your livelihood. Not to mention that they often use mechanisms under the hood to prevent you modifying or studying their behavior, and if you try to bypass those protections you can find yourself in violation of section 1201 of the DMCA and facing enormous fines and/or jail time.

But while this is true, using free and open source applications can be a really pleasant experience, and they will often provide you with a better experience than what you can find using a modern web app. I still love apps, especially those written using GTK and Adwaita, and made available via Flatpak through Flathub or other Flatpak repositories.

I’m genuinely amazed at the quality and variety of apps that I have available on my laptop, which currently (and for the past decade or so) is running Fedora with stock GNOME. We’re in a better state than I could have dreamed, and I get more enjoyment and utility out of my computer every single day because of these apps made by (mostly) independent developers all across the world and from all walks of life.

I want to be encouraging to developers, and point out that anyone with the technical know-how can get involved either with an existing project or, with a little determination and willingness to learn, start a project of their own.

At the same time, I think there is an underlying truth about the universe: there are only so many things that humans need or want to do, and for the most part, there are already ways of doing them quickly and easily on the computer.

There aren’t many gaps in my computing where I want to be able to achieve a task, but don’t currently have the means to do so.

From my perspective, there are only two apps that don’t currently exist as GNOME apps that I would love to see: a package tracking app, and an Adwaita email client.

On the package tracking front, I occasionally buy things online, and would really like a package tracker that lists all the different shipments I have in progress and shows me the latest tracking information for each of them, along with estimated delivery dates, and then sends me notifications whenever there is a new update about a package’s whereabouts. On iOS, I use the app Parcels, and it’s excellent (although I find that notifications don’t always trigger like they should).

A while back I teased that I had been working on such an app, and you can see a screenshot of what I have below:

All of the browsing/adding/removing/sorting functionality is in place and functional, but I haven’t been able to finish the rest of the app yet, because I don’t have a way of reliably pulling information from the various shipping providers. Proprietary apps have the advantage of being able to include unique API keys for all the various services, but being an open source app, I’ve not yet found a reliable way of storing said keys in a way that’s inaccessible to the user (and if I did, it wouldn’t really be open source). That means a user would have to individually sign up for developer accounts and generate API keys with each provider they want to use for tracking. What a horrible user experience! I’ve also tried various methods of scraping, but this would be extremely brittle because any new anti-scraping measurements or changes in how information is delivered on the part of the vendors would result in breakages within the app.

The second app that doesn’t yet exist is an Adwaita-based email client. I used to love Geary back in the GNOME 3 days, but as Yorba disbanded and development fell back to the community it started receiving fewer updates, and began to break in various places. I think development is still technically ongoing (and now it is maintained by GNOME itself to varying degrees), but it hasn’t seen a ton of modernization or improvement over the past decade or so.

I’m excited about a new potential app called Envelope, but so far there haven’t been any previews, nor activity in the repo for the past four months as far as I’m aware, so it may be a while yet before this is a viable option.

Still, how incredible is it that in the modern Linux ecosystem, I’m able to achieve almost everything I want to do with the apps that exist! There are thousands of apps in the Flathub “store”, with almost all of them receiving regular updates directly from the developers. It is the best time in history to be a Linux user, and I’m continuously impressed by the work that the Flatpak and Flathub communities have done (and are doing) to make this dream a reality.

Cine is the First Video Player That Can Replace VLC for Me

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 20:00:00 -0500

With the exception of a few visits to the cinema each year, every single thing I watch — every movie, every TV show, every online video — I watch on my laptop.

For as far back as I can recall, I’ve relied almost exclusively on VLC for video playback. It’s not because it has the most intuitive interface, it’s just because it’s consistently the best when it comes to playing back the content I want to watch.

Back when I didn’t have a ton of horsepower in my PC, VLC would handle 1080p videos (and then 4K videos) without stuttering or making the CPU hit 100% when other players would struggle. Then, when most of the things I watched starting being 4K HDR video files and needed tone mapping to look correct on my non-HDR display, it was VLC who did the job best (once you switched it to the Reinhard algorithm, that is).

It has supported all the features I’ve needed through the years, including subtitle support, multiple audio streams, and cropping videos when I want to take up my full display. As an aside, I know this is not ideal because a portion of the frame gets chopped off, but for non-cinematic videos I really just don’t care to lose a bit of the content in order to take full advantage of my screen real-estate.

That said, I’ve never been wowed by the UI nor UX of VLC. It is a QT app and doesn’t really fit in with the rest of my GTK desktop. The interface looks much the same as it has for decades now. It doesn’t adapt between light and dark styles correctly. The controls are either attached to the bottom of the window, or hidden with a keyboard shortcut. It’s a very competent video player, with plenty of features, but it just sticks out too much.

I’ve tried other video players throughout the years. For a while I used Totem, but it wasn’t well-suited for the task. As Adwaita and GTK4 became a thing it started feeling more and more outdated.

The new default GNOME video player, Showtime, had come the closest to replacing VLC so far. It definitely feels modern. It has rounded edges, automatically disappearing video controls (er, sometimes), and a great UI. But it completely falls apart during playback for me. It doesn’t support tone mapping HDR videos. It doesn’t allow for crop or zoom. And worst of all, about half the time I turn subtitles off (they are on by default), it either freezes or crashes the app. I’ve filed issue reports to help make sure some of these shortcomings are addressed, and the developers have been very responsive and willing to consider my suggestions. In the future, it will probably be a solid option. For now, though, it doesn’t fit my needs.

Another MPV-based app, Celluloid, has also come fairly close over the years. Recent versions do support tone mapping (since MPV supports it), but I find that HDR videos look darker there than they do in VLC or other places for some reason. It’s also missing a lot of features, like cropping/zoom support, and I’m not a fan of the way a lot of the UI sort of floats in and looks a bit non-standard.

All these apps have been tested, but none have been able to replace VLC for me in my day-to-day usage. That is, until now. Cine is finally the video player that I’ve been longing for.

Cine manages to achieve the really difficult combination of being a deceptively simple looking application, while still providing an absolute ton of options and features. It is rock-solid when it comes to stability. I’ve thrown a lot of different videos and codecs at it, and it has not crashed once. The interface is intuitive, and gets out of your way when it’s not needed so as to block parts of the video.

It gives you the usual playback controls, plus an easy selector for different subtitles or audio tracks. Chapter markers are elegantly displayed across the seek bar, with chapter titles showing up on mouse hover. A settings popover give you a ton of options for the current video, including an option to zooming the video (so it can fill your display), or adjusting individual levels like brightness, contrast, etc.

A preferences menu allows you to enable hardware decoding (while writing this post I just realized that wasn’t enabled — why isn’t that a default?!). It also gives you the ability to adjust subtitle settings, and normalize volume (a handy feature when the movie you’re watching has loud explosions but quiet dialog).

I do still sometimes find that videos are a bit on the dark side (I suppose this is something about how MPV renders the videos), but because it includes brightness controls, I can bump those a couple points and it looks great.

I honestly can’t say enough good things about this app. I’ve used it for about four weeks now, and it has officially replaced VLC completely for me. In that time I’ve watched new movies, TV shows, and a handful of other random video files. It just handles everything without even the slightest hesitation.

I can’t recommend Cine enough. You can grab it now from Flathub.

Cybergnosticism

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 20:00:00 -0500

For the longest time, one of my favorite books (even before my own battle with a disease trying to kill me) was “Mortality” by Christopher Hitchens. This is a short collection of essays he wrote after being diagnosed with terminal cancer, up until the moment he passed. In it, he says the following:

It’s normally agreed that the question “How are you?” doesn’t put you on your oath to give a full or honest answer. So when asked these days, I tend to say something cryptic like, “A bit early to say.” (If it’s the wonderful staff at my oncology clinic who inquire, I sometimes go so far as to respond, “I seem to have cancer today.”) Nobody wants to be told about the countless minor horrors and humiliations that become facts of “life” when your body turns from being a friend to being a foe: the boring switch from chronic constipation to its sudden dramatic opposite; the equally nasty double cross of feeling acute hunger while fearing even the scent of food; the absolute misery of gut–wringing nausea on an utterly empty stomach; or the pathetic discovery that hair loss extends to the disappearance of the follicles in your nostrils, and thus to the childish and irritating phenomenon of a permanently runny nose. Sorry, but you did ask… It’s no fun to appreciate to the full the truth of the materialist proposition that I don’t have a body, I am a body.

The phrase “I don’t have a body, I am a body” is one that I’ve thought about a million times since I first read it, and even more often as of late. I think I’ve come to the conclusion that I am not a body.

Some say that the concept of the “self” is artificial, and is an adaptation that has evolved over millions of years as a way of encouraging humans to want to reproduce and further their genes. Perhaps there is a species-level benefit to the concept of the self, but that still doesn’t feel adequate enough for an explanation to me. Perhaps I’m fooling myself, but I do tend to believe that I exist as something more than a collection of cells and a home for billions of bacteria. Then again, maybe that’s what the bacteria want me to think.

After all I’ve gone through with multiple kidney transplants and multiple blood transfusions, I really don’t think of myself as being my body. The closest I can get to that is thinking perhaps I am my brain, or at least, the person that my brain is rendering. But it feels like there’s more to it. For lack of a better word, it feels like a spirit of some sort, but not in a supernatural way. It’s an essence. It’s a feeling, a certain level of knowing and being.

In certain online communities, it’s an established norm to not use the phrase “IRL” (meaning “In Real Life”). The internet really is real life, and what happens there is as much a part of our reality as the air we breathe and the ground we walk upon. Instead, the term “AFK (Away from Keyboard)” is preferred.

In much the same way that I feel like I’m not a body but in a body, I find that when I connect with cyberspace I’m not any less there than I am here. Sure, I’m physically in a chair, but in a much grander sense I’m out there.

The environment that we all come together to build very much exists. When I interact with the systems that others build, that world exists as much as my kitchen does when I step into it. When I read the words that others write, I fill my head with the words that the authors put out into the world, and I construct meaning from them.

The digital systems that we build are very much a part of our lives. And the time we spend online is as real as the time that we spend walking through a park, or sitting on a couch watching TV with a loved on. Online life is real life, as much as offline life.

Because I think of my body more as a vessel, I see it more like a physical device. Much like a computer is just the means to allow you to go places and do things, the body is a way to experience the world, and in a much larger sense, life itself. So when I see people modifying their bodies, or making decisions about how they want them to function, I more and more find myself impressed with their tenacity. If your vessel doesn’t serve the spirit inside, and you have the means of modifying or otherwise biohacking it to bend to your will, why wouldn’t you?

Each of us has but one existence, one turn on the merry-go-round. We are born, we mess about for a bit, and then we cease to be. But I submit to you that your online existence is an extension of your corporeal existence: treat it with the reverence and care it deserves.

10 Random Things I Hate

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 21:00:00 -0500

Following a recent trend I’ve seen of people listing 10 things they hate, I thought it would be fun (and a bit of a break from the more serious posts I’ve written recently) to come up with my own list.

In that spirit, here are some things I hate:

When people listen to things out loud on a speaker in public.
Trader Joe’s. The food is fine, I suppose, but the store is always so crowded that I end up anxious and panicked trying to move around people and not get in anyone’s way.
People who don’t seed their torrents.
Ranch dressing. Nothing personal, I just can’t stand the taste.
When drivers camp in the passing lane, going at or below the speed limit.
People who talk or use phones during a showing at the cinema.
When people bring pets into restaurants or grocery stores. This obviously doesn’t apply to service animals. I see way too many people bringing their dogs into restaurants and grocery stores, but no one asks them to leave so they keep doing it.
AI generated photos and videos. Oh, and AI generated blog posts. In fact, most AI generated things.
When the plumbers/electricians/technicians don’t show up during their scheduled window.
“The Cloud.” Benefits of instant data backups and easier sharing aside, most of our data can be stored locally just fine, where it doesn’t get leaked/shared with the government to benefit the police state/used for training machine learning models.

What about you? If you end up making your own list, please be sure to link me to it.

Losing Weight

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 20:00:00 -0500

For well over a month now, I’ve been making a conscious and determined effort to lose weight.

It is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I’ve strugged with my weight ever since I was a little kid. It’s mainly due to the way I was brought up. Living in the U.S. South, you’re part of a culture that values flavor and tradition over healthier options and nutritious living. I fundamentally did not understand nutrition until very recently, and that is mostly thanks to what I’ve learned as part of my various health struggles.

When you’re in kidney failure you have to modify your diet. You have to limit things like phosphorus, potassium, and sodium. I’ve gotten really good at learning to cut things out of my diet, even things that I love. Turns out I have more willpower than I ever imagined.

But when you’re in kidney failure it’s almost impossible to lose weight. You retain fluid. You swell. You get bigger. It’s hard to tell where the body fat stops and the excess body fluid begins.

Now that I have a happy, healthy kidney, weight loss is an achievable goal. Not only is it achievable, it’s necessary. I also have developed some minor heart issues. If I don’t get them taken care of now, I know what awaits me. In the immediate future, it would be an ablation. In the longterm, it would be early mortality. These are just the facts.

And to be honest, I hate being a fat guy. I don’t like the way I look. I don’t like seeing myself in a mirror.

The only time in my life that I was thin was when I was in high school. I started working a part-time job at a local fast food joint, and I literally worked my ass off. I lost 60 pounds (approximately 27 kg) in the span of about 6 months. It probably didn’t hurt that I was also trying to impress a girl. But hey, whatever works.

The weight stayed off for around a year, but it slowly started creeping back up. In college, my “freshman fifteen” (pounds) started being the “freshman thirty”, then forty, then suddenly I was back where I started.

But that all ends now. I’m eating healthier. I’m eating things that have more nutrients that my body needs. I’m eating with more balance. And, I’m exercising regularly for the first time in my life.

The resource that was most helpful to me, out of everything I’ve read or learned, was “The Hacker’s Diet: How to lose weight and hair through stress and poor nutrition”, by John Walker. In it, he lays out the problem from an engineering/project management perspective, and makes some points I’ve never made time to think about before. Essentially, the secret to weight loss is all about calories. If you eat more than you burn, you put on weight. If you eat as many as you burn, you maintain your weight. If you eat less than you burn, you lose weight. Simple stuff.

Right now my daily metabolic rate is about 2800 calories. If I stay under that (which isn’t all that difficult), I lose. I’m trying to stay below 1800 calories each day. Every 3500 calories you “keep out” translates to one pound of body fat, so with this method I should expect to lose around two pounds each week (which I know won’t work out quite right, since everyone hits a plateau at one point).

I must admit that at first I was disappointed in the results I was seeing on the scale. My face is notably thinner. My hips are thinner. It’s evident I’ve lost a bit of weight. But at first, the numbers didn’t match what I was seeing in the mirror. Then today, I went back and looked at some of the recorded weights from my most recent doctors visits. Turns out, I was way heavier at the start of the year than I even realized. As of this morning, I’m down 18 pounds!

The changes I’m making aren’t meant to be a temporary measure. They’re the new way that I eat, the new way that I exercise, and the new way that I live. It’s not so radical that I won’t be able to maintain it for the long-term. I figure if I keep my actions in check, the results will follow.

Using a Dopp Kitt Every Day

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 20:00:00 -0500

I haven’t really mentioned it to anyone, but at the start of the year I had a tiny little hospital stay. It ended up not being anything serious (as far as we know), but I was urinating blood, and when you have a new kidney you can’t really just brush off that kind of thing.

I didn’t have much time to pack, I just had to hop in a car and get a move on toward my transplant hospital where my team would be able to get to the bottom of things quickly. If something were wrong with my kidney, hopefully we could spot the issue and prevent it from causing any serious damage.

I don’t really have a “go bag”, as it were, but I keep most of my stuff in a backpack. If I find myself needing to spend a few days away from home, I just grab it and I am all set. The one exception to that is that I always have to take some extra time and pack the necessary toiletries: a toothbrush, deodorant, maybe a comb, and if I’m really feeling prepared, a razor.

It occurred to me, what’s keeping me from storing all of that stuff in a single bag, too? When I go somewhere I pack a toiletry bag and live out of that just fine for as long as I’m away. Why couldn’t I do the same at home?

So, I researched a handful of bags that can be used as a Dopp Kit, picked a relatively inexpensive but highly-reviewed one, and waited for it to arrive. Once it did, I was able to pack not only the essentials, but literally everything I use on a day-to-day (or even week-to-week) basis. Grooming kits, cologne, shaving cream, the works.

I actually like having all my stuff in one well-organized bag, rather than spread out across a handful of drawers. And if I need to jump in a car and speed off towards a hospital again? I just grab the bag on my way out.

Banjo Recompiled

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 20:00:00 -0500

I know that Banjo-Kazooie is an almost thirty-year-old game, and that I already wrote a retrospective post on it less than four short months ago, but there has been a major development that basically requires me to write about it one more time.

A little over a week ago, a PC port was released, thanks to the work that has gone into a long-running decompilation project. This new port, which works on Windows, Mac, and Linux (Flatpak version available!), is a revelation, and is now the absolute definitive way to play the game.

My number one complaint from my last post, and indeed the one thing that kept Banjo-Kazooie feeling the most outdated, was that the camera was so rigid and difficult to move. There was no smooth, free-moving camera. Instead, the system tried to make assumptions about where the player would want the camera to be, and provided only a rudimentary system for adjusting it.

In the recompiled version, you get a modern camera that moves freely, and instantly makes Banjo-Kazooie feel like a platform that could have been released yesterday. It is such a massive improvement in every way.

Plus, seeing Banjo-Kazooie rendered in 4K is a sight to behold. Sure, there are some textures that don’t make the transition (although an additional mod pack to add hi-res textures goes a long way!), but overall it is visually stunning, especially considering it was one of the first 3D platformers ever created. The art design is still unmatched.

There are other quality of life improvements, including improved swimming and flying controls and, mercifully, it remembers the notes you have saved in each world, rather than requiring you to re-collect them each time you exit and enter. This feature was already implemented in the Xbox version, so it’s not necessarily groundbreaking, but it is nice to see it here.

All the positives I mentioned before still hold true. It has perfect progression, perfect character design, and a magnificent soundtrack.

The one remaining negative is that I still find navigating the hub world to be a bit of a pain. I wish there was an option to restart in the same world or room that you were in when you last turned the game off, rather than starting you out at the bottom of Gruntilda’s Lair every time. But that is a really minor complaint, and the shortcut system does let you move around the hub world rather quickly.

Even with this recompilation, I hesitate to call Banjo-Kazooie a perfect game, but wow does it come close. I don’t think any 3D platformer, or any game for that matter, has managed to match the immaculate vibes and charm that Banjo-Kazooie is dripping with. And now, with this Recompilation, you can experience it in a whole new way.

A Short Review of the JBuds Ergo Mouse in Linux

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 20:00:00 -0500

While I was at my local big box electronics retailer store recently, I stumbled across a relatively inexpensive vertical mouse that I was unfamiliar with. I have a Logitech Lift mouse that I’ve used off-and-on for a couple years now. I’ve always been a fan of that form factor, which eases wrist pain and feels more natural to hold, but I’ve never been a tremendous fan of the Lift Mouse. The plastic tends to wear down over time, turning into a smooth and oily service that feels unpleasant to hold for very long. It’s also not quite large enough for my hands, although in fairness to Logitech, they do point out it’s for small-to-medium sized hands, and suggest their MX Vertical mouse for larger-handed people like me. I have tested the MX Vertical mouse in stores, but it feels even less pleasant to me than the Lift, despite a slightly larger size.

But the mouse I found, a JBuds Ergo Mouse, immediately felt comfortable and pleasant in my hand. It was the right size, and a slightly different angle that felt even more natural and comfortable to me. Plus, it doesn’t feel like it has the same rubberized coating that tends to turn gross with the Logitech.

It was half the price of a Logitech Lift mouse, and the one I have is getting worn out anyway, so I decided to take a chance on it after reading a few threads online from Linux users to make sure that there weren’t any major compatibility issues.

I’m very impressed with this mouse. It pairs easily (to multiple devices), wakes and connects quickly, and is pleasant to use. It has a DPI switcher, back and forward thumb buttons, and a customizable button on top.

As a Linux person, I assumed I’d never be able to use the button, but to my absolute delight it registers as a basic keypress (Super +D). I was able to go into the Keyboard Settings and assign a custom shortcut to execute dbus-send --session --dest=org.gnome.Shell --type=method_call /org/gnome/Shell org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties.Set string:org.gnome.Shell string:OverviewActive variant:boolean:true, which launches the overview in GNOME Shell. Now, with the press of a single button, I can move to a different window or find a new app to start.

Even if it were to be the same price as the Lift or Logitech MX Vertical I would still prefer it over those others, but the fact that it retails at $39 makes it a no-brainer for me. If you’re in the market for a new mouse, or if you’ve never tried using a vertical mouse before, you really can’t go wrong with this one.

Selling Stuff

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 20:00:00 -0500

Selling things can be a real pain.

I’ve had a handful of gadgets and gizmos collecting dust in my garage for a while, and should have probably sold them well before now. I’ve hesitated because, as I mentioned in my last post, selling things locally requires going through Facebook, and asking my wife to essentially act as a bespoke shop keeper for me feels like a big ask. Of course, she has offered multiple times, and would love nothing more, so eventually I acquiesced and let her do me this giant favor.

Some people love selling things. Some people hate it. My wife lives for it. I wish I could go the rest of my life without ever having to sell anything again. Opposites attract!

The results so far have been fairly mixed. The things that I thought no one local would ever buy were gone the first day. The things I thought would be snatched up immediately are still hanging around, unsold. Most things are somewhere in the middle.

I’m fortunate that the two large, bulky items taking up so much space both sold in the first week. Everything else was a “nice to get rid of”, but not urgent.

One of the items I sold was an Xbox Controller, and that brought out the strangest assortment of people who have ever contacted us. I think many of them are teenagers who haven’t yet learned how to navigate these kinds of social transactions.

The item that frustrated me the most was an old pair of Sony Headphones (the XM3s I used for almost a decade). They were perfect in every way. New earcups. Long battery life. As good as you could hope for a used pair of headphones with that long a life. After selling them, the next day the person who bought them reached out to complain that there were parts broken. Turns out, they had taken it upon themselves to remove the earcups themselves, and they broke the clips while doing it. I saw the pictures, and it was not a gentle or delicate operation that they had done. But of course, they said I sold it to them like that. In the end I decided it wasn’t worth the hassle, and just gave them ten bucks back on Venmo so they could buy new earcups. I got screwed, but at least it’s over.

That’s the kind of thing that I hate about selling stuff. I know I could just donate everything, but I’m not made of money, and getting a small return back once an item has outlived its usefulness for me helps offset the cost I paid when I originally bought it.

I do subscribe to the common minimalist practice of how to let things go. First, I list it for what I think it’s worth. That starts a 30 day timer, where I have one month to sell it before it goes in the donate pile. Each week it doesn’t sell, I discount it. Eventually, if it sticks around long enough, it’s posted for almost nothing. And then, if there are no interested buyers, into the donate pile it goes.

But eventually everything that does not serve a purpose gets shown the door.

Having a feasible alternative to Facebook marketplace would make a lot of this easier. I do occasionally sell things on eBay, but despite its downsides, meeting someone in a grocery store parking lot down the street is a lot easier than packing it up and shipping it out. Lower carbon footprint, too.

Selling items you no longer need is a good, important thing to do. I just wish I never had to be the one to actually do it.

The Web is Larger Than Facebook

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 20:00:00 -0500

It annoys me how much of a grip Facebook still has on being able to digitally participate in your local community.

I got rid of my Facebook account years ago, and have no real interest to return, but I must admit I sometimes think about it when I run up against things that I would really benefit from being a part of.

Our local municipal utilities only post announcements on Facebook. Whenever there is a change to our trash pickup schedule due to a holiday or a weather event, I have absolutely no idea.

When there’s a new restaurant in town, chances are good that if I want to look at their menu or see anything more than just their business hours, it requires looking at their Facebook profile (which I can’t do without an account).

Local events like concerts, parades, and farmers markets are organized on Facebook. Club meetings. Political gatherings. Volunteering opportunities. Even the local library only makes their announcements on Facebook.

Most annoying of all, Facebook Marketplace is basically the only way to sell things locally. Craigslist is almost completely dead, and a couple of the experiences I’ve had there have been a bit shady, to say the least. I tend to avoid it completely, and instead opt for Facebook Marketplace by proxy: any time I have something I want to try to sell I have to send photos and a description to my wife, who posts and handles the transactions for me.

I suppose that given these difficulties, and the fact that my partner is on Facebook anyway, I should just bite the bullet and sign up for an account. It’s not like Facebook isn’t tracking me anyway.

But I don’t want to. Even if it’s just a symbolic gesture, I don’t want to actively provide value to Facebook. I don’t want to see ads that give them money. I don’t want to send a signal to others that I’m okay with the things they’re doing, like emotionally manipulating people into mental health crises, or interfering with elections.

And also, to be blunt, I don’t want to be disappointed in the people I like. Back when I was on Facebook, I often found that people I had an otherwise high opinion of or pleasant experiences with would share things that made me second-guess my relationship with them, or cause me to alter my opinion of them. I suppose I want to know when people in my life do bad things or have horrible beliefs, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say there’s an element of “ignorance is bliss” here.

I’m not going to re-join Facebook. Where possible, I’ll help people find alternatives, especially with creating their own web presence or using alternative social media on more open, federated platforms.

But at the end of the day, I’m mostly sad for the grip that Facebook still has when it comes to local businesses and governments sharing content online.

The One Item Rule

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 20:45:00 -0500

A couple weeks ago I was browsing the /r/minimalism subreddit, and I saw a post from a user asking whether or not other people try to stick to a “only one of a particular item” rule. I wish I could link to it here, but now that I have a moment to sit down and write I discovered that the original post was deleted, along with the user account of the person who posted it.

In any case, it’s an interesting question that gets at something that I’ve been doing for a while without stopping to consider why, or to put a name to it.

Despite a fair amount of negative feedback from users in the thread suggesting that this kind of question points more to something akin to obsessive compulsive behavior rather than minimalism (and perhaps it does), to me it really points to two important aspects of living with less: necessity and capacity.

For necessity, I typically find I don’t need more than one of most items. I have one water bottle because I can’t drink out of more than one vessel at a time. The same logic goes for a coffee cup. I have one backpack because I can only carry on thing on my back at once. I have one coat because that’s all I need to get through the winter. And so on, you get the idea. For pretty much everything, I only have one.

I admit, sometimes I take this too far. For example, I sleep with just one blanket now. It’s thick and heavy, and more importantly, sufficient. I could probably do with more, but if it gets the job done, why bother?

Of course, there are things I need multiple of. I can’t do laundry every day, so I have multiple shirts, socks, and underwear. Jeans require fewer swaps so I have fewer of those, but even then, I keep multiple pairs to swap between as needed. I have more than one fork, and more than one plate, because I share meals with my wife, and even the occasional house guest.

But where possible, I like to stick to one item. I simply don’t need more. I will treasure a thing until it wears out, and then replace it if needed. There are only so many things a person really needs. Everything else weighs you down.

That’s the necessity part. Here’s the capacity part: back when I used to have more than I do now, I was always overwhelmed. I couldn’t stay on top of the dishes because all the mugs, cups, and bottles that I didn’t need would just pile up. The more stuff you have, the more you have to work to do to maintain it. There are only so many hours in the day, and while I enjoy most household chores, there are so many others things I’d like to fill those hours with.

Every item you bring into your home is kind of like adopting a new pet. You might love them all, but how many can you truly take care of and give the attention they need?

Of course, there are other aspects of the “one item” thing that I haven’t mentioned, like requiring less money and being more environmentally sustainable. Ultimately, the core of this practice is about finding the right balance. But then again, what isn’t?

Thanks For Emailing

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 20:35:00 -0500

Last week I asked whether or not there were any humans actually reading my blog, and since then I have been astonished at the number of emails I’ve received! I thought I might get one or two from people in my immediate social circle, but I’ve heard from folks as far away as Sydney, and from across all walks of life.

I’m still a big believer in email as the best form of communication that humankind has ever invented, and these kind words and interesting exchanges have only bolstered that opinion. Massive, massive thanks to everyone that took time to send me a message, pass along a compliment, or share something from their own lives that are related to things they’ve read about here.

I learned three things from this exercise:

There are absolutely people out there reading what I write
The majority of them subscribe via my RSS feed, and most of them seem to have found me either from around the Fediverse, or have followed me since my time working on Vocal, the podcast client I used to maintain
The timestamps on my posts are super broken, and everything looks like it was published at midnight on the prior evening

That gave me the kick I needed to take a look at my RSS feed generation, as well as some of the metadata tags I use on posts. I believe that the timestamp issue should now be fixed (I’ve subscribed to my own feed via Newsflash so I can see what others see, something I should have done before, and posts seem to be showing up with the correct dates and times now).

As for the other two things I learned, I think the best thing I can do with that information is keep doing what I’m doing, but also make of an effort to encourage feedback and share my posts more often on Mastodon to invite more people in. While I write these posts for myself, knowing they some of them are useful or interesting to others makes the effort seem all the more worthwhile.