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A strikethrough indicates I no longer possess the laptop.
[2006] β HP 530
[2010] β Packard Bell Dot SE
[2013] β ASUS X501A
[2016] β Dell Inspiron 15
[2018] β ASUS Chromebook C202SA (terra)
[2022] β MacBook Air M1
[2024] β ASUS Chromebook CX34 (marasov)
[2025] β MacBook Air M4
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Tags:
#list #listicle #laptops #computers #tech #technology #ref #reference #catalog #catalogue
I'm obsessed with FreeBSD. It scratches the philosophical, aesthetic and utilitarian itch that Linux couldn't ever satisfy.
Also, with everyone and their mate learning about Linux and migrating to Linux-based distros in droves β it's no longer trendy to say you daily-drive Linux, so naturally I needed to find something niche and esoteric enough to continue to distance myself from the madding crowds.
I first started using BSD operating systems seriously around this time last year, buying Absolute FreeBSD by Michael Lucas to accompany me on my quest. I used both FreeBSD and OpenBSD on a Lenovo ThinkPad X380 Yoga for the better part of a year before giving the machine away to my Pap. I now exclusively use FreeBSD on my SBC fleet of Raspberry Pis and RPi clones. When I inevitably SuzyQ my Chromebook, I'll most likely run FreeBSD or OpenBSD on that too.
Other than that, I toyed around with FreeBSD (and even MidnightBSD for a while) on virtual machines back in 2019, when I was still at university on the trust Dell Inspiron 15 something-or-other that saw me through till graduation.
I love how meticulously everything about this operating system is documented, with care and precision. As a result, it is incredibly easy to install and maintain: As long as you commit to the tried and true method of RTFM.
The FreeBSD mailing list is also incredible and hundreds of experts are never far from reach: They may begrudge having to answer basic questions for the umpteenth time, but I feel like they'd never take it out on you β unlike another community I know.
FreeBSD 14.3 running on my Raspberry Pi 3B+ with the MATE desktop environment
I don't mean to sound disparaging to Linux fans. Or maybe I do. Anecdotally, I always noticed a tonne of egoism within different Linux communities: A kind of misplaced sense of superiority. Maybe I'm a hypocrite because one of the reasons why I switched to FreeBSD was because it made me look trendy and different.
In all seriousness, there are plenty of reasons why you'd pick a Linux distro over a BSD OS, just as there are reasons you'd pick ChromeOS, macOS or Windows over a Linux distro.
I'm aware ChromeOS is based upon Gentoo Linux, but it's so proprietary and so optimised for Chromebook hardware, it's not really like a standard Linux distro anymore. So I personally don't count it as one. Even if it is. Technically it is, but philosophically it really isn't. It's hardly redistributable. I mean Google is bound to the GPL and publishes the changes it makes to the kernel but... It isn't like you can grab an open-source copy of fully-fledged ChromeOS and recompile it to run on your toaster, is it?
Don't say ChromeOs Flex, either. You know what I mean.
Speaking of Gentoo, I found FreeBSD as well as OpenBSD and MidnightBSD all easier to install than Linux distros like Gentoo or Arch. Another plus is that BSDs are generally more stable and being server-focused means they are dependable, performative and secure. They're all binary compatible with eachother, too so while it can be fiddly recompiling packages from one BSD to another β it is completely possible.
Perfect for serious users, as well as script-kiddies like me.
Some of the commands are different between BSDs, the software they ship with is a bit different and there are also some other quirks, like how the filesystem is organised, but it doesn't take long to adapt to these changes.
Take for example the command pkg_add instead of pkg install, or syspatch -c instead of freebsd-update. FreeBSD doesn't ship with sudo, and OpenBSD ships with doas instead of sudo.
The driver support for the kind of devices I have run these operating systems on has always been good enough for me, but I understand the setbacks if you're, say, a hardcore gamer, or require mainstream apps like Adobe Creative Cloud to undertake your work. I have it easy, as someone who predominantly works with plaintext and the rest of their computer experience consists of web-browsing, instant messaging, light gaming and tinkering with code.
Minecraft works on FreeBSD, as well as the PSP emulator ppsspp and the PS1 emulator duckstation, so as far as gaming is concerned I'm more or less completely covered.
I mentioned the philosophy of BSD earlier and I think that actually may contribute to the fact there's less snobbery in the BSD community. Hear me out for a moment. The BSD licence is one of the more permissive software licences out there, with minimal stipulations. You can redistribute BSD code for commercial purposes if you wish. You don't have to credit original code authors. You don't have to share-alike. It is, for all intents and purposes, a BaSeD licence. In contrast, the GPL is such a pick-me girl.
The GPL is like:
βh-hey! (β§β‘β¦) if you u-use my codeβ¦ y-you have to give m-me cwedit (β β>β β½ β<β β).. b-baka!! and donβt you dare wock it away!! if y-you change anything, y-you have t-to s-share it too!! i-iβm not doing this fow a-attention ow anything! ββγ½(βο½€^)chu i-i just want evewyone to have fweedom!! ughβ¦ justβ¦ j-j-just weave the wicense on and give me cwedit, okay? β*:γ»οΎ p-pweaseβ¦β
BSD is like a cool uncle with frosted tips, a bowling shirt and wraparound shades: βHey kid, do what the fuck you want with it. But if it breaks I don't wanna hear about it.β
Yes, I was invoking Guy Fieri.
No, I am not sorry. ___ Tags:
#freebsd #bsd #os #linux #kernel #operatingsystem #unix #unixlike #pickme #gpl #computer #tech #technology
Pirated Minecraft, a Windows 8.1 and Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr dual-boot, slightly damp baggies of amphetamine sulphate, skin-picking, hair-twirling, hair-pulling, self-harm, energy drinks, panic attacks until the early hours, sleep paralysis, grey aliens looking over me, shadowpeople, torrenting random Japanese TV, double-dinners, piss-bottles, shock sites, overly-friendly strangers, VampireFreaks, being fucking gr00med by kids my own age and grown adults alike, two-timing emo girls, Suicide Girls, Amour Angels, smoking cigarettes at school, smoking cigarettes at the bus stop, smoking cigarettes at friendsβ houses, smoking cigarettes in my room, washing the walls with vinegar and sugar soap in vain, mugs filled with mould, stacks of encrusted bowls and plates, floors littered with all of my earthly possessions, random Β£10 and Β£20 notes stored in books on a warped bookshelf, my bus pass, bus pass, whereβs my fucking bus pass, next to my bankbook, who the fuck still has a bankbook, McDonalds cups growing their own fungal flora, a fuck-off CRT TV from 1993, flies going up my nose and eating away at my brain, DXM, copious bottles of full-sugar Coca-Cola, extremely large pupils, the remixes, oh all the remixes, GTA V, storing JPS Menthols in the PS2 expansion bay, lolicore choons, lesbian manga, laying on the floor, hopelessly staring at the black mould on the ceiling, trying to recapture a glimpse of pre-2008 joy, a shrill Windows Live Messenger notification: βlol someone from school fucking killed himselfβ ___ Tags:
I'm impressed. The shaker I've been using for portions of Huel has been sat on the countertop with murky water in it for little over a week. I finally popped it open to clean it and the smell has surpassed that of human shit: It now smells more closely to the dry dog food section of a hot and stuffy discount shop.
I washed it and let it sit on the drainer. I might give it another crack with the old sponge on a stick later on, since I have 'contamination OCD' about the remnants of the mature probiotic guys that may be lurking in the cheap, porous plastic.
I'd rather not make myself sick just over a day before having to go back to work.
I'm waiting for my hunger to override my laziness, since I could really do with a lukewarm serving of deliciously rich chocolate Huel right now. ___ Tags:
I feel like absolute garbage about my indebtedness. The sense of shame is overwhelming, especially when I ask myself βHow did I let it get this bad?β
I need to reassure myself that, while the cumulative total of my outstanding credit card and payment plan debt may be well into five-figure territory now, it isn't like it's all compounded on the one card. It's split across different cards and plans, each with different interest rates (with some even being interest-free as of right now).
I think I have a fairly good approach to paying back my debts, especially since I overpay quite drastically every month and I never just pay the minimum amounts. I spend money I don't have in order to attempt to tide myself over: The odd treat here and there to make myself feel better. While I am constantly paying off huge chunks, I've managed to begin piling on the debt faster than I can pay it off.
If you're in a similar situation with debt looming over your head, I know it's probably the last thing you want to do but you have got to tackle it head on. Create that spreadsheet tracking your income and your outgoings each month, start budgeting and for crying out loud keep a track of your debts: What you owe, to whom you owe it and how much of your income you can set aside to repay it each month β also bearing in mind interest rates and how much that interest will set you back each month.
I got charged Β£100 interest alone on one credit card this month. It's an absolute killer.
As long as you're chipping away at it and not spending more each month on credit cards than you're paying back, then you are moving forward. I think it's going to take about a year and a half for me to get out of debt (excluding my student loan, which doesn't really matter) and that's only if I stay committed, focused and disciplined.
It could always be worse. At least I don't have a car, mortgage and/or children. I can afford to set huge chunks of my income aside each month to try and tackle the debt. I think my anxiety surrounding debt really begins to hit hard whenever work stability becomes thrown into question, irrationally so or otherwise...
My OCD loves to tack itself onto nuanced, long-term/long-standing and important topics like that. It makes me desperate for short-term quick fixes where there aren't going to be any: Apart from spending sensibly, keeping a track of everything and continually making small steps forwards: Day in, day out...
Talking about it on here helps. At least I'm not bringing anyone around me down while I go around and around in circles trying to piece together whether I'm going to be okay. My mind quickly panics about the prospect of debt management agencies, IVAs, bankruptcy, CCJs & the dreaded bailiffs.
I need to remember they would only become a real threat if I did the irresponsible thing and buried my head in the sand. Nobody ever tackled their debt by retreating and curling up into the false sense of security of denial. I'm paying it back, I'm making progress... albeit slowly.
I'll get out of debt one day. I'm making a promise to myself now, with you as a witness: When I pay off all my credit card and payment plan debt, that is the end of it. I will never buy anything on credit ever again.
I mean, I'd take out a mortgage for a house... but you know what I meant. No more financing fucking pizzas, mobile phones or sunny getaway holidays. No more wasteful AliExpress hauls, pointless 'digital goods' or treating myself to gimmicks that bring me a dopamine rush for all of five minutes after they arrive, to then quickly become destined to cluttering up my flat for the rest of their life before being tossed in the bin.
No more of this incessant, unceasing, perpetual cycle of consumption. I want to get over this sickness and never look back. ___ Tags:
#consumerism #debt #money #finances #worries #anxiety #stress #finance #creditcard #income #outgoings #budget #budgeting #consumption #consume #blog #indebtedness
By the time I stop letting idiots live in my head rent-free, the day is almost over. I feel like I've wasted my birthday allowing bullshit like work get me all wound up. At least I enjoyed some time with my family and Alicja, sharing some good food and some hearty laughs.
Turns out my Dad really likes ChatGPT's zingers when we asked him to roast us.
I received some cute, whimsy birthday cards and some beautiful gifts too β including a new furry friend, Rowan the Hare. My sister bought him for me and he's utterly adorable. I can't wait to get to know him better β from the little profile on his tag it sounds he's cut from the same rambunctious cloth as ol' Birchy.
I think my tenure at βββββββ is getting a bit long in the tooth. If I'm shedding tears about it, especially on my birthday, I think it might just be high time to move on.
Driven to crying on my birthday, haha, you know what they say... C'est ma fΓͺte...
I came so close to saying fuck it all and, in a mad frenzy, burning all my bridges with work by texting my supervisor that I 'can't be arsed anymore', that I 'won't be coming in next week' and β on top of all that β that I think he's a 'low-life, chauvinistic crackhead' who would be doing us all a favour if he just 'fucked off forever'... ___ Tags:
#birthday #sad #lesliegore #itsmyparty #cestmafete #work #gifts #family #support
It's my birthday today and what better way to celebrate it than to have my supervisor message me out of the blue (despite it being my week off) asking me to call him...
Okay... Well my heart sank just reading that message.
I called him immediately and it sounded like he was in his car. βI'll call you back in about five mate. It's nothing bad.β
So I wait for a few minutes anxiously anticipating his call back.
After he calls, he begins to explain how the guy who takes me into work is leaving the company soon, since they secured a new job. Then my supervisor presses me about 'what my new arrangements to get in to work will look like.'
Okay, why couldn't this have waited until Monday? β Especially as I later found out the guy is leaving in a couple of weeks. It isn't like I'm stuck without a lift on Monday. Well actually, I don't know, since the colleague who gives me lifts didn't answer the message I dropped him at 11 o'clock this morning, asking to confirm if I'm good for a lift on Monday.
At this point I don't care. It's a farce. There's no way my supervisor didn't know it's my birthday today since it's the reason I booked this week off. There's also a document on the work intranet with everyone's birthdays on it. That, coupled with the fact he could have literally called me any other day this week tells me it was intentional. It was to demoralise me. If it wasn't, then he's done an exceptionally good job at doing so.
The last thing I needed today was my supervisor fretting about how I will get into work, when, I've already discussed it at length with not only him but also my manager β who was far more understanding about it anyway. So why is my supervisor fretting about it? This is essentially a non-issue that has been blown out of proportion... On my birthday... While I'm off work.
My supervisor didn't wish me a happy birthday at any point, either. It's soured my mood because I have that crap hanging over my head now. It was just a shitty reminder of what I have to look forward to when I go back.
At this point I feel like throwing in the towel and literally doing anything else. I can find something... Anything. As long as it isn't situated at the back of beyond like this job. The funny thing is that we are required to be in the office for two days a week. Not just that, this kind of work can easily be done (arguably more productively so) remotely... Full-time.
It all boils down to the element of control. That's all it is. That's all it ever was. ___ Tags:
It's Wednesday tomorrow and I have nothing to show for myself this week.
I mean, I my Fairphone 5 turned up today and I had a blast getting it set up and then toying around with it. I have a perfectly good iPhone 15 Pro. I didn't need to buy a new phone. I also have yet another phone turning up soon, since the delightful company from whom I ordered it in Hong Kong waited until the grace period had ended before contacting me back, thus refusing to cancel my order. I also spilt half of a large oat-milk latte from Costa Coffee in my bedroom and spent a good twenty minutes obsessively dousing it with towels, after which I remained sat on the bedroom floor, staring at the ceiling in what evolved into a really enjoyable floor-time sesh.
I continually spend my days moping around nonchalantly and, when I eventually do stop derealising at approximately 2 AM, I continue despairing about how time is slipping through my fingers. I turn 27 in just two days, basically, yeah, totally tragic right?
It's a bit sad that System 2 has to kick in for me to work out how old I am now, since my age doesn't quite roll off the tongue like it used to. I seriously think to myself zingers such as '24+2' when trying to remember my age. Mentally, I peaked at around age 15. I'm just fatter (at least I don't lose my vision when I stand up anymore) and my facial hair is much thicker and more even now. Oh I also have money now, sometimes. I have the same thick, long 'honey blonde' hair I had back then. That's never going away. Maybe unless I start balding, maybe then I'd call it a day.
I'm on holiday. I'm not in Lanzarote like I was this time last year, mind you, no, I've remained housebound for the last few days, apart from venturing out after dark last night to go and see Sinners β which was an incredibly exhilarating cinematic experience, by the way. Not least because the entire cinema is a liminal void (it's being renovated and currently looks like an untextured out-of-bounds backroom), but because the film was phenomenal albeit a bit long.
I booked time off work on a whim a few weeks ago. Back then I thought I'd treat myself to not just my birthday off work but my whole birthweek. Work is bollocks. It was a painstaking day slogging through work on Friday, then there was a family emergency almost on cue as I clocked out for the day. Saturday I was back at work, then spent the afternoon with friends. Sunday I was too ill to do anything and Monday was pretty much the same, apart from going to the cinema in the evening. Today? I barely did anything at all. I still don't feel quite right and I still don't have my voice back fully.
I think I'll try and pursue only more creative endeavours tomorrow. It's fun to binge-watch YouTube in a rotation of Jak II: Renegade speedrunning videos, prank phone calls, cleancore music mixes & maybe the odd doom-inducing news segment, but it isn't really getting me anywhere. Perhaps I could start by, I don't know, actually writing in one of the many journals sat on my bookshelf! I had some ideas for some new projects that don't (really...) involve computers. Well, they do... but it isn't about, of or relating to computers, so it's all fine if you think about it. Is it a redundant to say about and relating to? I think it might be, but I enjoy a bit of pleonasm. It's my second favourite -asm, next only, perhaps, to a diaphragmatic spasm. Duh! What did you think I was going to say?
Speaking of hiccups...
I had a takeaway pizza but it didn't scratch the itch. You know when you get a takeaway and it's good and all, but it doesn't have that je ne sais quoi? It's as if that particular pizza was cut against the grain of the large pizza lumber from which it was, no doubt, unceremoniously cut.
That brings me on to another thing. If you hadn't noticed... I'm really sleep-deprived but sleeping is also the last thing I want to do right now? Perhaps I ought to get myself some Yerba but then that probably isn't the wisest decision at 22:30. I mean don't get me wrong, I'm no stranger to megadoses of caffeine in the evening but like, coke is clinical. Mechanical caffeine. Over the counter, drug store shit. Straight in, straight out. No complex compounds or slow-release goodness, just a firecracker... a candle burning from both ends and then, BAM! You've fallen asleep in your clothes again, laptop still on your lap blaring the sketchiest shit imaginable to you through your headphones, courtesy of YouTube's Autoplay. At 11 o'clock I'm usually listening to soundboard pranks or some other puerile semblance of 'entertainment' but by 3.33 (because I always wake up on a fucking angel number) I'm being excoriated by a girl chewing gum and calling me a litany of nasty names between blowing bubbles in a production she has dubbed 'ASMR popular girl at high school bullies you'.
Am I wired up wrong? I don't know, but I'm definitely wired.
Probably weird as well.
We just got home from Alicjaβs parentsβ house after spending the best part of the day with her family. We were disgusted as we popped into Tesco when we saw drunk people staggering around town, absolutely lashed already at what was barely six oβclock. Live music is still booming from the pub next door. I cannot believe all the pubs are teeming with people, with live music sets even on a sodding Easter Sunday.
Something tells me theyβre not celebrating the resurrection of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
I jokingly suggested to Alicja that I should shout inflammatory remarks out the window in my go-to hickey accent for such occasions and so, when we finally got back into the flat, I cracked open one of the skylights and bellowed as loud as I could. I screamed βFUCK YEAH!β And βTHATβS SOME FUCKING GOOD SHIT YEEEEEAH!β. I even shrieked βTEQUILAβ in time to the bandβs piss poor rendition of The Champs song.
I decided to peek through the curtains of our Juliet door to 'observe the aftermath' as it were and, who do I see but my fucking supervisor! Of course heβs at the pub on Easter Sunday β where the Hell else would he be?
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Tags:
#management #called #you #are #fired π€£π
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Here are some of the things I'm currently working on.