Jag Talon – Software, photos, travel, and other interests.

Ika-19 na Linggo: Bakasyon, Thanksgiving

November 26th, 2022

English Version

Bakasyon

Naka-bakasyon ako ngayon sa trabaho, at ulit-ulit kong itinataboy ang pag-iisip na kailangan kong suriin at pagaralan ang wastong paggamit ng oras para maging produktibo ako. Dahil libre ang buong araw ko, hindi ko na alam kung ano talaga ang gusto kong gawin sa sarili ko. Gusto ko bang maglaro? Gusto ko bang maglakad ng malayo? Asikasuhin ang mga libangan ko? Magbasa ng libro? Kabado ako na mag-aaksaya lang ako ng oras ‘pag hindi ko pinili ang tamang gawain.

Parang jet lag, pero imbis na manibago ako sa bagong oras, naninibago ang katawan ko sa bakasyon.

Thanksgiving

Bumisita ako sa pamilya ko sa New Jersey. Mas kalmado dito kaysa sa Philly kaya sakto ito para sa’king bakasyon.

Nakakalibang kasama ang mga kapatid ko. Nakulayan ko ang buhok ko at nagpinta kami ng mga kuko.

hi@jagtalon.com or @jag@weirder.earth
Week 19: Vacation, Thanksgiving

November 26th, 2022

Tagalog Version

Time Off

I’m off work for a bit, and I’m actively fighting the urge to optimize my time and be somewhat productive. Abundant free time overwhelms me, and it’s difficult to figure out what I actually want to do. Do I want to play a game? Go for a long walk? Work on my hobbies? Read a book? I feel like I might squander my time off if I don’t choose the right thing.

It feels like jet lag, but instead of a different time zone, I’m adapting to time off.

Thanksgiving

I’m in New Jersey visiting some family. It’s much calmer here compared to Philly, so it’s a great place to relax during my time off.

It’s fun spending time with my siblings. I got to dye my hair and paint my nails with them.

hi@jagtalon.com or @jag@weirder.earth
Week 18: New Tools, Hypercard, Ads

November 18th, 2022
Using Lightweight Software

I’m trying to use the Eee PC more often in my day-to-day life. The reason I got it in the first place was because of its size. It’s so much easier to sit on the couch with this thing or to take it with me to a cafe. But the tools that I used were slow, so I had to find alternatives:
- For journaling, I moved from TiddlyWiki to Mycorrhiza Wiki.
- For budgeting, I moved from YNAB to Financier
Subvertising

I recently read a book called Advertising Shits in Your Head, and it’s so interesting to learn about the reasons why people remove or deface ads. I assumed that people were just doing it for fun, and it didn’t occur to me that it could be an act of resistance or protest.

Playing with Hypercard

I recently learned how to import images into Mini vMac. System 7 understands GIF filetypes so the steps that I took are:
1. Run the ImportFI app in the emulator.
2. Scale the image down, dither it, and convert it to black and white using ImageMagick: convert thing.jpg -resize 512 -dither FloydSteinberg -remap pattern:gray50 thing.gif
3. Drag and drop the image into the emulator.
4. Open the image using the GIF Converter app in the emulator. (I imagine other image viewers would work similarly?)
5. Copy the image then paste it into Hypercard.
I’m thinking I could make some sort of e-zine with this, so we’ll see!
Week 16-17: Zines, Friends, Halloween

November 9th, 2022

Halloween

It’s our first time having a porch, so we were excited to sit outside, drink wine, and hand out candy to kids. There weren’t many of them unfortunately because it was raining, so more candy for us!

Zines

I went to Philly Zine Fest for the first time, not knowing what to really expect from it. I just saw a toot from Iffy Books and decided to go check it out.

I was surprised to see a lot of vendors there and the breadth of artwork and topics as well. It was kind of overwhelming! I couldn’t resist any of it so I bought a bunch of them. It’s inspiring me to make zines of my own as well!

Friends

I did two potlucks with two different sets of friends last week. I cheated by splitting one large pot of chana masala. 😈

hi@jagtalon.com or @jag@weirder.earth
Week 15: OpenBSD, Old Games, Philippines

October 29th, 2022
OpenBSD on the Eee PC

I ended up installing OpenBSD on the laptop instead of Debian because I liked how minimalist and trimmed down the OS is. It comes with a tiny window managers for example cwm and fvwm and I read that they remove and simplify a lot of code as well, so I’m thinking that it would translate to better performance on the tiny laptop.

I’ve played around with OpenBSD on a server for a bit, but using it on a laptop was new to me so there was a bit of a learning curve with using WiFi, checking the battery life, mounting USB drives, and enabling click-to-tap.

I’m not sure it’s actually faster than Debian, but I put a lot of effort into learning it already so I think I’ll stick with it! Software that I’m currently using:
- Qutebrowser – web browsing
- TiddlyWiki – note-taking software that runs in the browser
- Syncthing – syncing files with my other devices
- Netsurf – browsing websites with no JS
- Tarsnap – backups
- Micro Editor – easy to use text editor
I also installed a new SSD on it which made things feel a bit faster.

Old Games

Oh, and I’m also running DevilutionX (for playing Diablo) and Chocolate Doom (for playing DOOM and Heretic) on the Eee PC! I’m really surprised how smooth these games run. I really didn’t think I’d be able to play games here because it’s already struggling a lot whenever I browse the web.

I guess web browsers are just much heavier than these games. I’m excited to do some gaming when I take this on a train or a plane.

Reading

I also read a book called Pangayaw and Decolonizing Resistance: Anarchism in the Philippines which I thought was an excellent book on framing anarchism in the context of Philippines’ history.

hi@jagtalon.com or @jag@weirder.earth
Week 14: More Books, Eee PC

October 20th, 2022
Wooden Shoe Books

I went to Wooden Shoe Books in Philadelphia for the first time, and I thought it was a fantastic bookstore. I loaded up on new books and I’m currently reading Work: capitalism, economics, resistance. I have a bad habit of starting a bunch of books at the same time so I have a bunch on my queue at the moment!

Book I’m currently reading

The cash register at Wooden Shoe Books

“New” Computer

I’ve been thinking about getting a small laptop to use for traveling for a while now. I love my big 17-inch laptop, but it’s not exactly the most portable. I thought about waiting for the MNT Pocket Reform, but in the spirit of permacomputing, I thought that maybe I should just get an old laptop. I just didn’t know what kind.

Fortunately, I’ve been reading that Eee PCs are quite popular among hobbyists:
I actually had an Eee PC when I was in university, and I remember how good that thing was! So I went on Ebay and started looking. I found one that has excellent battery health and it was only $40. I got it yesterday, and installed Debian with Xfce on it.

It’s running well and hardware-wise everything works–I’m grateful that Debian still has support for i386 architectures. In terms of software, there are some issues. Firefox is unbearably slow and it eats up a lot of the battery, so I’ve been using NetSurf to save some power. I also couldn’t get Maestral or Cryptomator to run on it, but I’m surprised that there’s a 32-bit build of TiddlyDesktop! That means I can do some journaling on this thing.

hi@jagtalon.com or @jag@weirder.earth
Week 13: Maryland, Clay, DOS, Coworking

October 13th, 2022

Maryland

I drove to MD to hang out with some family over the weekend. I made sure to bring some donuts and philly cheesesteak for pasalubong. I also got to see my cousin’s dog who loves to sunbathing, too.

Clay

The clay candleholders (called luminaries) that we made are done! Andrea and I designed it ourselves at the clay studio, and the studio painted it and baked it for us. It looks so good! I made the one that looks like a rook / castle.

DOS

I recently learned that JavaScript runs on DOS! It’s made possible by a project called DOjS, and it’s making retrocomputing on DOS much more accessible for me.

I’m currently working on porting my generative art to run on this old operating system. It’s amazing how much you can do on these tiny systems. I’m putting my code on https://codeberg.org/jagtalon/dos-generative-art.

Coworking

I’ve been coworking more regularly with some friends. We’ve been trying to explore cafes to work out of around Philly.

hi@jagtalon.com or @jag@weirder.earth
Week 12: Tattoo, Linux, Gaming

October 7th, 2022

Tattoo

I got a new tattoo! I thought I’d get something that reminded me of the Philippines, but I didn’t want a flag necessarily. So I got sampaguita flowers and a flying fox instead. I’m hoping to get gumamela flowers next. The tattoo is from Holly Danesi.

Linux

It’s been 4 months since I’ve been using Linux full time, and it’s been going pretty well! I’m able to do design work (Figma and Excel run on the browser and Zoom can be installed natively), I can play games through Steam, I can manage and edit my photos (I’m using digiKam and darktable), and I can easily sync my files using Dropbox (through an app called Maestral).

I tried out a few distros, but I eventually ended up with with Debian. I like the idea of a stable, slow-moving system (it seems that they release every two years), and I also like that it’s an all-volunteer run operating system.

Gaming

Speaking of games, I’ve been playing Stray recently. I love how cute and heart-warming this game is.

hi@jagtalon.com or @jag@weirder.earth
Week 11: Socials, Crafts, Nature

September 29th, 2022

Socials

This week, I joined weirder.earth (it’s kinda like Twitter) and bookwyrm.social (it’s kinda like Goodreads). Unlike other social networks that are controlled by surveillance capitalists, these websites are usually run by an individual or a small group of people. I can’t speak for all websites on the fediverse, but these are typically ad-free and anti-corporate.

Previously, I’ve been using micro.blog, but I found it difficult to find like-minded people. I’m not quite sure what it is, but I think it’s partly because it lacks hashtags. When I post something related to permacomputing, for example, I can add a #permacomputing hashtag to my post and people interested in the topic will find it and talk to me about it. Micro.blog uses emojis for categorization instead of hastags, but the topics are too broad for me. Don’t get me wrong I like Micro.blog! It just wasn’t what I was looking for.

Crafts

The weather this weekend was wonderful so I walked over to the cemetery to see the West Craft Fest. I only bought a sticker, but I enjoyed looking at all the beautiful handmade wares and taking pictures of people.

Nature

I saw a cardinal and a goldfinch in my neighborhood! Thanks to Merlin Bird ID and Seek, I’m starting to learn about the things that live around me.

I also got a pair of binoculars on Ebay. I’m hoping I could use it to watch some birds this weekend.

hi@jagtalon.com or @jag@weirder.earth
Week 10: Clay, Tablet, Veggies

September 22nd, 2022

Luminary

Andrea and I went to a clay studio to do a workshop on candle luminaries. It was my first time doing anything with clay, but this workshop got me into the flow state right away. Two hours just zipped by from my perspective. We were pretty happy about the results, too. I made a little castle, and Andrea carved out petal-shaped holes. We’ll see the final version in about 2 weeks.

Couch Computer

My dad was telling me how he managed to upgrade my grandma’s old tablet using LineageOS, and he asked me if I had any use for it. I’ve been wanting a couch computer for a while to browse the web and watch videos on, so I said absolutely! It feels good to get more use out of a tablet from 2014.

Veggies

I’m trying to add more veggies in my life. I’m not getting any younger! We’ve been shopping for more produce and we also subscribed to a local produce box delivery.

hi@jagtalon.com