pengo

Divorce proceedings are over for me.

I've never used Amazon. I stopped using Microsoft products eight years ago. I left Facebook five years ago. I exited Google's ecosystem shortly afterwards. I closed my Twitter account the day Elon walked into the executive suite. I do have a small exposure to Apple which I mull over daily like probing a suspect tooth with my tongue. But I'm centred on Linux, with a SailfishOS phone.

I found my tribe in decentralised social media. I have two Mastodon accounts, a personal one and one for the music duo I'm in, and a Lemmy account. I'm considering Bookwyrm right now too. All of these took a lot of effort to get to the point where they're worthwhile. The first months were not rewarding but, gradually, I hooked up with people I wanted to chat with, found the hashtags and forums that were a good fit for me.

If you're prepared to invest some time in your social network, I recommend checking out the Fediverse. But it won't hand you anything on a plate.

I set up a Lemmy account yesterday. It has promise.

My daily driver is still a Dell XPS13 I bought in 2018 when it was the highest spec XPS13 available. I replaced it with a later (and higher spec) XPS13 in late 2021, but didn't like Dell's changes to the keyboard layout and returned to using the older machine. I'm looking at a 13" Framework with the AMD chipset, but holding off for now in case Linux on an M2 Macbook Pro matures quickly enough to be an option.

We still use Object Pascal (in the freeware Lazarus IDE) for dev utilities. Mostly they're native desktop apps, but some interface with cloud services.

Eating Marmite instead of Vegemite. Only in my fifties did I discover that Marmite tastes different because it contains sugar.

Sixty eight year old female here. I start every day except Sunday with 30 situps, 30 pushups and 30 squats. I ride my (non-electric) bicycle when I go shopping (including supermarket shopping for two), and do two or three 45 minute rides a week which include sprints. One long walk, often on the beach, completes my usual weekly routine.

In our environment support trumps sprint every time, regardless of whether the support task is legitimate or not. By legitimate, I mean that many of the "support tasks" are things clients can do for themselves, but rather than point the client to the (excellent) documentation, the development team ends up carrying the baby.

It's just a shame Windows is the only operating system in the world, otherwise we could all use something else.

I've run Linux on a series of Dell laptops (same model, different versions), all with i7 processors. There's no appreciable difference running 32GB RAM over 16GB, but there is an obvious difference for many proc intensive tasks between 8GB and 16GB.

I'm not saying you couldn't live with 8GB, but I'd strongly recommend 16GB.

I wrote a web app that moved paper-based funding submission and grant management online. A second client wanted the same thing, so I wrote it again with newer tech. When the third client asked for the same thing I spent eighteen months creating a customisable framework, which is in use for increasing numbers of clients.

Buy a decent protective case when you buy your new phone, and never remove it.

I've never lost a phone yet to accidental damage, while friends without cases break screens and destroy phones every 12 to 18 months.

I work at home in a low light room. I have my 4K laptop screen at 25% brightness, and the 38" 4K monitor above it at 5% brightness. I eschew dark mode in my IDE and other apps in favour of a light theme. Since making these changes I no longer suffer eye fatigue.

Interestingly when I create music (same monitor but a Mac Mini) I turn the 38" monitor up to 35% because the Mac fonts are harder to read at that resolution that my Linux laptop's.

I worked on a messaging convergence product in the early 2000s. I'd written several components including the POP3 server. The product owner had a demonstration scheduled with a potential telco buyer. Two weeks out, we learned that having IMAP4 capability was critical for the client. IMAP4 was on our roadmap, but still twelve months away. The requirement was to demonstrate IMAP4 in two weeks, not to provide a finished IMAP4 implementation, but neither of the architects could see any way of delivering a demo.

I had a bright idea in the shower one morning, went to work and told our project manager that I could deliver an IMAP4 demo in two days. I explained how, the architects admitted it would work, so I knuckled down and wrote a new API for our POP3 server that understood and responded to high level IMAP4 requests (we didn't need to return message parts or anything more atomic that an entire body).

Of course, the day after we finished testing this, the product owner decided we wouldn't include it in the demonstration, but that's life.