Notes

I never liked the term blog, because it gives me this feeling that someone is trying to become popular and profitable. So I call then "notes". It's way to not look up for something for too long, reflex on something and stuff. And maybe toss a link around occasionally.

My first job offer was a scam

A memoir about my first ever "job opportunity" in IT. I ignored it, as it turned out to be an MLM scam. Writing it here to share the feelings and experience from the past.

(there's more)

FreeTube experience

I watch YouTube sometimes, it is becoming too addictive, can'd simply not use it because it has all the stuff, got to search alternatives, but since there is none that are both good and have relevant content - at least there is an alternative to its horrible website's UI - a cross-platform software piece called FreeTube.

(there's more)

Not buying logitech products anymore

I've been using Logitech input devices for last 15 years. They were always flawless and remained my preference.

In the past (well, it was about 10 years ago) when my mouse was flawed - Logitech support was super helpful... and sent me a replacement mouse. For free. That have bought my loyalty to Logitech brand for years.

Several times I've heard from friends that logitech products are horrible, but I just ignored these complaints - I mean, worked for me, why complain?

Until now. Guess, it is the point at which my loyalty ends.

(there's more)

Thoughts on UMPCs

UMPCs stand for Ultra-mobile PC. It's a rather modern term, used nowadays. Oh, I'm so excited about these! There is this childish feeling of owning a "high-tec gadget" - an all-in one all-purpose thingie, and carrying it around with you in your backpack.

But when it comes to actually using one - I have no idea what to do with them, actually. I believe, that's why nowadays UMPC's are considered "very niche" products and will never develop into something really useful.

(there's more)

Everyday tooling

Here's a small list of stuff I use every day and could recommend to you, maybe. Or make you mad because my choice may be different from yours. Whatever...

(there's more)

I don't use OVH anymore

Have been using a VPS for several years now. I've had couple databases running on it, also it served as a "satellite" for me on the internet - a helper "moonbase" for my online persona and, of course, my home page ran there. And I've been using OVH because it was coffee-cup cheap.

The first warning was when my VPS suddenly became unavailable for several days, with no warning or even a status report (according to their statuses everything was okay and running). The customer support did not answer me at all, not even once.

The second strong hint that I should quit was when my VPS got destroyed by fire. Literally, the data-center has migrated into the cloud overnight. A neighboring data-center, actually, but my VPS was also damaged. OVH was generous to provide me with 1.5 years of free service for this. That was kinda nice, and I bought it.

One day VPS became unavailable again and I could not even access my account - the system said I have entered wrong password or something. It almost looked as if my account was deleted or something. I even created a new account just to write to support - but got no response either.

Later on the service became available again. But by that time I have already moved to another provider, so had to cancel my OVH.

I managed to log in to my account and have tried to cancel my service. All I got was An error has occurred cancelling the service. message.

I had created the ticket, but did not receive an answer to it even after a week of wait. Luckily, it still was possible to switch the payment to manual payments (so - disabled automatic renewal). And, just in case, blocked OVH from payments in my banking app.

Two weeks later, the support has finally answered my ticket and said it will be okay if I just ignore the next payment, and they will just terminate my service. And later I got a message from my banking that OVH have tried to withdraw monthly payment from my account (even tho I have cancelled the automatic renewal

  • it still tried to withdraw some money. Good thing that my bank has option to block payments to specific service, because did not want to give them another dime)

I have moved to a more expensive option now. A local one. Great support, quick replies and no issues so far.

And my advice for anyone now is to stay away from OVH. It's not worth it.

MacOS - disable cmd+i opening mail app in chrome and browsers alike

Turns out this hotkey is hardcoded somewhere deep in webkit. What I had to do to disable this behavior was finding the name of menu item

(in my case it was File > Share > Email Link), and then going to System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts tab, selecting App Shortcuts there and creating a new shortcut for Vivaldi named Email Link, and assigning something like Cmd+Alt+Shift+Control+F8 to it (to be sure I never accidentally press it)

My view on information

I see now why all the really cool coders have 3-4 articles on their websites. The internet has got us used to sharing our thoughts somehow. But most of these are not worth sharing, really. Or could be just shared on bird-site or whatever.

I have done and written a lot of stuff. But I, in fact, tend to throw it all away eventually: websites get deleted, programs (even ones I've spent days and weeks worth of effort on!) get lost (and are never run again). And among all that stuff is, actually, a plenty of things worth posting somewhere, things that could help or inspire others (and make me look cool, he-he)

Now I'm forcing myself to learn to preserve it all somehow (especially the sources). And also to somehow do incremental improvements instead of starting over every time (with this website I started all over, for instance)

It feels weird, because I've always appreciated the data and always thought that information should be preserved somehow. But I manage to f*ck up the data every time. I tend to even forget names and phone numbers.

Most of the information nowadays is stored in some closed, "proprietary" form. Even the plain text data - it is often encoded into some sort of a database. And, even worse, it is often stored in a "cloud", on someone else's computer. Or even on a self-hosted service/app - it is still in some obscure format.

Micro$oft Word file or OpenOffice file, while they have formatting and tables and other cool stuff, are still "special" files, that need a special app to view them. But they still hold mostly text - and it's sort of irritating for me.

"Closed" formats are perfectly fine, don't get me wrong. They allow for metadata, for some performance benefits and stuff. Just bad for me: I tend to chose momentary convenience, and then, even if there is some form of backup/export option, that exported data just lays around until I lose it, it is not immediately reusable, takes some effort to reimport or parse.

By the way, that is the main reason I prefer obsidian over cherryTree and likes to take notes - the data is viewable via any text editor. That is why I use markdown for content of this site, too.

I believe, there existed some culture of information in the BBS ages (or maybe it still exists, but I'm not trained for it). An HTML article with images and stuff is cool, but its main content is text still. A PDF document describing a piece of software is great, but still text - text I can't open without shiny new piece of software. And text - well, it does not require many resources to read, in fact it is the same as it was in the teletype times.

Movies, books and music. For these universal formats exist. Widely recognized and supported, there are even standalone devices that play movies and music. Players, readers and TVs. That is why I have all my music, movies and books stored as files.

When I buy a musical album (I sometimes do, trust me, hehehe) - I usually rip it to preserve. When I buy it online - I only do from likes of bandcamp, that allows you to download music you've just bought. Because if the service only allows to play music you bought (not to have it) - the service will eventually stop working and it is lost. Happened before, will always happen. I never buy books from services that only allow to read them in their own app, because the app will stop working eventually.

Feels like with ubiquitous internet presence it becomes harder and harder to preserve information with each year. Everything is cloud-based ("you don't need to install an app, you have a web app"), everything requires to be online. Internet is fast, bandwidth is unlimited, so instead of downloading stuff we "stream" it (essentially downloading it over and over again.)

Maybe I'm just getting old.