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The Lazy Month (Apr Update)

NothanyTPM — 2 weeks ago

God damn man, where did all my mojo go? I was doing so well last month!

Unfortunately, nothing much to report on this month. Most of it was me being a lazy piece of crap, and procrastinating a bunch

The Tech Stuff

Not much work was done on the Vectorizer this month. Mostly just small optimizations to the code so that I can easily slot in the different supported filetypes without needing to copy/paste the same code twice. I'm also struggling with trying to figure-out how unzip a freaking file in Rust. I need to learn that because some filetypes are just zip files that go under a different name (like "ora" and Krita files)

"ORA" files would have been next on my list of things to do, but I've grown tired of Rust's shenanigans recently. Both in the code, and in the Rust community. I thought Rust would have been a good beginner-ish programming language with the ability to reach C level speed.

However, what I got was an annoying programming language that's not as flexible, nor compatible as C with a community obsessed with rewriting everything in this baby language despite it being incompatible and unstable.

I didn't want it to come down to this because I worked so hard on it already, but I'm gonna rewrite the whole thing in C.

It's harder, but all the pros of C outweigh the cons of sticking with Rust...I just wished I had started with it sooner. I'm just hoping the syntax isn't too different that I need to rewrite whole functions.

Guess we'll just have to wait and see

Linux Stuff

Took a little detour because restarting an entire project like that is demotivating as all hell.

So I took to gutting OpenMandriva in the meantime, and trying to customize the DWM desktop.

Here is where I found my first complaint against OpenMandriva: its app repository is really lacking in variety. Most of its apps are made for the default KDE desktop they have. Straying away from that means you need to build the apps yourself. Thankfully, most of the apps I use are minimal and only need a handful of dependencies; so it's not that bad for my case. Just a little annoying to deal with.

Although, looking through their rolling release branch shows that they're trying to fix that problem. Only reason why I'm on their stable release is because rolling releases aren't good in commercial-like settings. Constant change is bad, and can cause problems when working on a bigger project.

Here's how my setup looks so far:

Looks nice enough in this stage, but it's still missing a lot of things that make it usable. Like it only just got a screenshot utility, and it's only so I could get this glamour shot. I still need to give it a lock screen, and set-up a bunch of hotkeys for everything.

Funnily enough, the easiest part was gutting all the pre-installed packages (which I figured-out shortly after taking the screenshot). All I needed to do was tell it to remove the "Knotification" packages (KDE's notification tool), and that for some reason uninstalled the entirety of the KDE desktop, and all the KDE apps it came with...I get the feeling that was an oversight by the OpenMandriva team...but hey, it made my life 100 times easier, so I'm not complaining

There's a lot of work that goes into these "DIY" desktops, but the hard work almost always pays off. I just love how feather-light it can get, and I can truly call this MY computer.

Life Stuff

Not a whole lot going on personally. I've amassed a collection of USB keys throughout the month. All in varying sizes and styles!

Got some 4GB USBs for installing different versions of Linux or just to experiment with different stuff that usually fall under the 2GB limit.

Some 32GB USBs because I've got half a dozen 16GB ones, and it annoys me how limiting those 16GB ones get sometimes.

And finally a couple 64GB USB keys (one USB 3, and the other USB 2 just in case there's compatibility issues) for those rare occasions where I need to transfer a file just over 32GB (and I'm too lazy to set up a temporary ftp server)

Now I have a wide range of USB keys that meet all my potential needs!

[Isn't this fun guys?]

Another thing that happened is I coded an expense tracker for my mom using the same Google Forms and spreadsheet apps. Originally, I wanted to make it super ambitious where it could sort by income and/or expense, select a date range, and search transactions by name.

Although, when I asked my mom about it, she said she only wanted something that tracked her expense which could be separated by category, and she'd manually clear the list every month. Nothing else. So I copy/pasted the code from the time tracker spreadsheet I made for her last month, tweaked it a little, added a graph, and I finished the whole thing in like 30min. She loves it!

Lastly, my mom and brother came over and helped patch the outside of my apartment to stop the pigeons from bugging me every day.

Normally, I'd ask my landlord about this, but I don't think he'd bother fixing it. The dude already hates me after I won that court case, and he had to shut-down two of his stores since. Don't think he'd be interested in patching-up a wall even for cheap.

One last quick thing I did was fix a small issue with my toilet where it would "phantom flush" every couple of minutes. Had this problem for almost 5 years. None of the plumbers the landlord hired was able to fix it. Then one day I experimented and found that the problem was caused by the toilet being too dirty where the flapper was.

I think I'm more qualified to be a plumber then whoever the landlord keeps hiring.

Conclusion

Pretty "eh..." kind of month. Feels like after I completed that first milestone with the Vectorizer things just went downhill motivation wise. A lot of things still happened later, but in general the whole month felt unfocused.

This month I'm taking a detour to work on a good long lasting Linux setup, and then I'll come back to the Vectorizer next month with a fresh mind.