General updates and miscellaneous thoughts

Tsk, I've been quiet... my apologies.

All is mostly well. I've been caught between being completely unproductive, and working on ⛓ LIGeR, but at least I've been mostly in good health and the weather has been amicable also.

Oh, I had some surgery today. Nothing major, just had a spot removed from my skin. It's nothing alarming, but it's better to take care of it early as per my dermatologist's recommendation, rather than risk it. I'll know more in a couple of weeks when the histopathology comes back.

As per the previous update, I've been trying to focus a little more on "my own stuff", whatever that may be.

As I wrote in today's ⛓ website update, I made the paging system... which, again, took all day. But that's okay! It was quite fun and I feel fulfilled.

Next order of business, I'll type up a post about the software thing I have on mind... or do some work on it, and update then. Either way! Things are okay.

Lately, I've been thinking about things

About life, about the things I do, the things I want...

About why those are, too

And, well... I did some reading, heard various perspectives, and they got me thinking.

Often, I find myself directionless without an external stimulus — not knowing what to occupy myself with.

I think this is understandable during the schoolyear, with me being busy and all, but... even in my downtime? During the summer? There must be more than... this. This... malaise that I find myself drowning in every time I don't have my hands full of work.

Another phenomenon that I noticed is that something similar is true of my desires, my beliefs... or, I suppose, that might be the same thing: what I want to do and what I want [sic] are often one and the same. Either way.

I haven't been talking online as much lately...

I haven't felt like I wanted to talk much at all

And as such... I've been able to slowly tune those things back in: my desires, my wants. Not fully... I'm struggling to see them in their entirety. Things damp and rotten will inevitably spark less, of course.

Still... at the same time, I've been feeling this... riptide, this opposing current of "wasting my time", of "wanting" things that I'm "supposed" to want, that other people want. It's hard to tell the difference between the two...

Still, I am trying. As hard as it is.

I don't need to buy things to be happy.

I don't need to please other people to be happy.

I don't need to stick to plans set out to me by others to be happy.

The only way to achieve peace, for me at least... is to turn everything else down and look inward. Focus. Think about what I'm truly yearning for.

That is the only way in which I can fan up the flames within my soul for it to shine brightly once again. To look at the world with the conviction and certainty of the person I was as a child. With respect and kindness for others, with a willingness to change, always... but with truth in myself only.

Introspection

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"There are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world."

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I'm so tired. Yesterday was such a long day! I left in the morning and came back past 2300... but at least what I was doing — arranging the sale of my car — went well. It's all done now, though, so I can relax again.

I think that today I'm going to try to draw a little bit, maybe something fun will come to mind. I still have that design for my friend to do... either way, I want to take it easy today.

Has this just turned into a diary? Not that I mind... at least for the time being!

So... yesterday didn't go quite as planned, exactly—

Truth be told, I didn't even touch the worldbuilding.

...and what I did do didn't go quite right either. I tried (and failed) to install a few OSes on my old Compute Stick, but that thing never works quite right regardless, so that was to be expected.

I definitely didn't expect OpenBSD to work out of the box — an OS that puts a blurb about wireless firmware on the main download page knows that they don't exactly have an excess of ease of use. That's alright though, it's a server OS, and I bet if I was installing it on a real PC with a real internet connection (Ethernet, not WiFi), it would have gone better.

Next, I tried Debian: the Daily netinst image, with an eye to configuring Debian Testing (or perhaps Unstable if I'd felt so inclined). The thing, though, is that Debian always has firmware issues. "Only free and open-source by default" also means that a bunch of the components of your system Just Don't Work out of the box 99% of the time. That's okay, though!, you might say, for there is an extensive firmware package! ...Yes, but... ...that needs to be loaded in the installer to work. And that requires mounting an extra volume off of a USB device, and the Compute Stick simply refused to do that, for some reason. ...the Debian installer running on it, I mean. In an OS it's fine, but when it's a netinstall image... I can't really just install and then load the firmware. Boo. :(

Finally, I tried Alpine Linux. To put it briefly, it works, but it's a little obtuse and alien. It's systemd-free, so obviously it will feel a little different in some key aspects, but... somehow, it doesn't seem quite right.

So where does this leave us? Well...

Funnily enough, the most intuitive OS I've tried within the last month or so is actually FreeBSD! Shockingly, despite being technically even less related to the Linux mainstreams than something like Alpine, it feels extremely familiar, the startup and shutdown is beautifully verbose, even the damn TTY scales 2x if the resolution is high — it's marvelous. The software selection is stunningly diverse by default, and the Ports system is second probably only to the AUR itself.

If I ever set up a server for some reason, or perhaps even something slightly embedded(?) (more on that later), I think I might just go with FreeBSD. Oh, and the WiFi Just Works out of the box. It's lovely.

So yeah, I'll see what I can do in terms of worldbuilding..... soon™. And until then, I have other things to keep myself busy. I think I ought to get to work on that design pass for a friend's character... either way. Avery out :3