Half / Byte @halfbyte@kosmos.social

Finally got my Gaggia Classic together again. Looks like it was actually the magnet valve. In the process I also changed the pressure valve and adjusted the pressure, exchanged all rubber gaskets and hopefully put it together with a little less force than the last mechanic.

It's a neat little, very servicable machine. Despite the heavy cost of this repair, I still feel good about this purchase.

So, who in the world is responsible for the war on standard application menus? Why do so many desktop applications hide their menus behind burger-style menu buttons?

Do people really think menu bars are too complicated? Or do we worry so much more than before about vertical space?

I am ranting but I really would like to know the answer to how this became a trend and why.

Completely disassembled by Coffee machine, now ordered replacement parts for several hundred euros, because I can't really see anything specifically broken. This is going to be an adventure...

Chrome on Windows basically now considers every single software download I try to make as malicious. Either windows malware is much more common than I thought or someone is misusing the report function.

Points in case: FileJuggler, LibreOffice (!).

Both downloads are fine says Windows' own scanner.

I have sooooo many thoughts on the event-stream, uh, event, it's not even funny. In many ways it is a culmination of many things going wrong not only in the npm eco system but in open source in general.

One can only hope that a couple of events like this will make people realize that none of this is sustainable and we need to change the way we build open source systems.

Finally got to run my Linux partition in VirtualBox on Windows and this is kind of an ok compromise for times when I need both systems at hand. It's definitely better than trying to make stuff work with WSL. It'll get there eventually, but right now it's too slow and too cumbersome.

...and our planning/ticket system is down. Of course it is.

It's definitely not a Weinberger inspired strategy (Small pieces, loosely joined, you know), and in my book, that's always a mistake. :)

Also, as a tool vendor, I'm obviously not happy with their overall strategy of trying to do everything within the product.

I also think that's a failing strategy, but again, I'm biased.

Now that I had to work with Gitlab for more than just trivial stuff, I'm slightly worried about both the product and the company. Software quality doesn't seem to be super great, substantial bugs are open for a very long time and so when using the API you run into all kinds of fun issues that require really bad workarounds from my end.

It's exactly what I would predict for a company that's run as it is, which is a little sad.

For now I'm back on stock Ubuntu. Would love to try completely different options as well. Any recommendations? (I'm not sure I'm brave enough to try Arch yet)

Back from a short stint on Elementary OS. It looks nice, no doubt, but it feels very fragile to me, has made some weird UX choices and essential things like proper Dropbox support are simply missing.

Apart from that it really disliked my combination of monitors and resolutions and I had to hack around with gsettings to make it display widgets in the proper size.

The positive outcome of this is that I now have large parts of my system setup automated...

Current status: Crying my eyes out to the music of Siri Nilsen.

Before you ask: No particular reason, nothing particular to worry about. I often cry when music touches me. Always a bit weird, but I'm embracing it.

But damn, that voice and those harmonies.

Papertrail is that *one* service I really need today.

Papertrail is that *one* service that does not work for me today.

Mondays, pfff.

This gig is handing me so many arguments on why you don't want to run your own infra as a SMB it's not even funny.

Earlier today our ticket system was down. One of the Jenkins servers that we use is not reachable for already more than a day. I'm basically either staring at an error message or hunting down red dots in the Jenkins interface. Not getting too much done.

Arrived in CDG, now hopefully sitting in the correct train to Paris. Still somewhat of a nervous traveller especially if I understand none of the announcements ;)

Still trying to get used to the feeling of attending a conference as part of the program but not having to stress out over my slides.

It’s the {live:js} life and I’m ok with that.

(Of course in reality I’m just stressing out over different things. Did I pack all needed cables? Will my performance software work? Did I practice enough?)

This is all no news to any seasoned Nintendo gamer of course, but with the exception of the DS Lite, I never had any Gameboy-ish (or any console really) during its prime time, so I’m actually enjoying some of these for the first time in my life.