Why I'm writing about technical topics lately.
I do seem to be on a computer-related writing jag at the moment, partly because I'm planning to build and run a server at home quite soon, partly because it's what I've always been interested in, and having a couple of spare Raspberry Pi single board computers available has enabled some wider experimentation. Open source software has been of interest to me ever since i helped with the publishing of the Pretty Good Privacy code many years ago. It's not about the "free-as-in-beer" aspect though that's an advantage!), it's about the philosophy, as well as having choice and control. I've been running GNU/Linux exclusively for around ten years, and have not looked back. I've learned more about how computers work and how to gain mastery over them and bend them to my will. on the journey I've discovered lots of little tips and tricks (especially when it comes to using the command line) and en route found many handy little tools that can either enhance my experience or enable me to do more (not to forget, having fun; some of these are silly little tools I use just for giggles!)
All this is evident in the writeups I've finished recently. The list below (all my April writings) includes mostly computer-related or technical stuff I've been discovering or reading about.
April's w-us so far:
Applied Cryptography
ddgr
Rust in Linux
binary blob
builtin
tabs vs. spaces
coreutils
April 12, 2025
Picnic Day
inode
ROT13
no more secrets
April 8, 2025
April 6, 2025
Cool Retro Term
Some Future Plans.
There is more to come; I'm planning a how-to on better using a *nix command line and there'll be a lot of supporting material for those interested. it seems that every day I stumble on something new, and most days I'm finding utility in these new toys and tools. One example is fzf, a very versatile fuzzy finder tool that has found dozens of daily uses on my system. Another is chafa, a command line utility for previewing image files in the terminal. Discovering ripgrep has simplified my life a good deal, as well as enabling me to actually use text searching in scripts more. I intend to write up each of these in the next few weeks, and hope that they find some use in your toolbox. Let me know if you'd like a writeup on a particular tool or topic.
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/ Today is Setting Orange, the 47th day \
\ of Discord in the YOLD 3191 /
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$ xclip -o | wc -w
400