Technology

I ripped a CD (in 2026)

It was like I was back in 1999 again.

Why did I rip a CD? How did I do it?

I actually couldn’t remember how to do it in Windows because it had been so long. I’d used iTunes to rip most of my CD collection way back and haven’t had iTunes installed for years (and currently don’t have it installed). The first step was digging out my portable LG DVD drive, since none of my PCs have had DVD drives in them going back well over a decade now. I figured Windows Media Player (née Groove) might still support ripping CDs and it does. The process was relatively straightforward, but I had to direct it to information online to correctly tag the album, artists, and songs.

This CD ripping adventure started when I installed Deezer on my Galaxy S26, which has replaced Apple Music for me (I’ll post later about how de-Appled I am now). I prefer music to be onboard the device locally rather than chew up cell data and rely on sometimes spotty connectivity when out and aboot listening to tunes. It was when I downloaded Tales of Mystery and Imagination by The Alan Parsons Project that I remembered I’d bought the (second) CD remaster some years back and this particular edition had both the original 1987 remaster in which Parsons tweaked with some of the songs and the album fairly liberally, but also included a straight remaster of the 1976 original, altering none of the music and just cleaning up the sound quality.

Because the two versions are quite different, I wanted to go back and listen to the original again to see if I might prefer it. On Deezer this was a simple download. On the PC I use a different music program, not Deezer, so I dug out my Giant Binder of Music, found the relevant CD and let ‘er rip.

I can now listen to the original version of Tales of Mystery and Imagination at home and when on the go and in some ways, it’s better, mainly because all the new guitar bits added in the 1987 remaster feel superfluous, but I have to admit, the restored Orson Welles narration and the organ used to bridge what was once the two sides of the album into a seamless whole, both work really well.

I’m glad to have both readily available now and have even contemplated re-ripping some of my CDs at a higher bitrate now that know how to do it again. But it’s a lot of CDs and my ears are terrible, so it’s probably not worth the effort.

Probably.

Imagine Goldilocks entering a house where 20 bears lived

First, she’d probably get torn apart and eaten for dinner, because with that many bears, someone’s bound to be around and cranky.

But apart from that, let’s say she enters the bear dining room hall. There are 20 steaming bowls of porridge. She samples a few that are too obviously hot or cold, but then finds a dozen or more that are very close to being perfect, but not quite. They’re so similar that she can’t choose one and just finish the bowl. She regrets not eating before breaking into the bear house and leaves, somewhat sated, but unsatisfied. She is later arrested and sentenced to jail by the forest gnome police and courts.

This is a post about Linux distros.

I have tried the following:

  • Mint
  • Debian
  • Ubuntu
  • Kubuntu
  • Fedora
  • CachyOS
  • Pop_OS!
  • Zorin
  • KDE Neon
  • Bazzite

Maybe more! Some I’ve dismissed fairly quickly because of the too hot/cold thing (Debian) or never even tried because I’m not interested in making things more difficult just for the sake of challenge (Arch), but most of the ones above have something to recommend them:

  • Stability and built-in apps/features (Mint)
  • Customizability up the wazoo (any distro with KDE)
  • Speed, efficiency, constant updates (CachyOS)
  • Prioritizing gaming (Bazzite)
  • Looking pretty out of the box (Zorin)

But in almost every case, there’s some kind of downside:

  • Ubuntu: A bit bloated and pushes snaps, a proprietary package format
  • KDE distros: No preview app (this turns out to bug me way more than I thought)
  • Mint: Updates are slow, so it can lag on features and fixes
  • CachyOS: Can break because of the fast updates
  • Fedora: Does a few weird things
  • Many distros: Don’t play nice with dual boot, forcing you to do all the dirty work yourself

In the end, I rotate through a half dozen or so distros, forever dabbling, but never committing, save for Mint, which I kept as my alternate OS on my old PC.

I guess I need to decide why I want to run Linux:

  • Is it to replace Windows? Maybe.
  • Is it to putter around and experiment? Yes.
  • Is it to find better ways to do some things vs. Windows? Also yes.
  • Is it to game? Largely no, because I can do that in Windows 11 now.

Here’s the final irony to this post. I recently tried Fedora, then, due to a weird issue with Grub2Win that requires periodically running a script to keep it working with Fedora, I installed CachyOS.

After not using it for a few days, I went to login and realized I’d forgotten the password. Whoops. I wanted to try the KDE version, anyway (I tell myself).

Stay tuned for more Goldilocks and the 20 Distros, right here.

Static Site Generators: Why am I literally dreaming about these? Because I am a dorky nerd, apparently.

Last night, something made me start researching Static Site Generators. It was likely a combination of things:

  • Seeing them mentioned here and there on Mastodon and some tech sites
  • Encountering a few SSGs being used on blogs I come across
  • That feeling of wanting to move on from the bloated and now AI-enabled WordPress resurfacing again (any Matt Mullenweg post is bound to trigger this)

So last night I started looking into them as a possible new way forward on my olde blog. I came across a few I’d heard of before:

  • Hugo
  • Jekyll
  • Eleventy

And a lot more I’d never heard of. There are a lot of SSGs out there.

It got late, I went to bed. And dreamed.

Of Static Site Generators.

In the dream I was somehow using an SSG that was a physical thing, a kind of vinyl (?) curtain with code on it. There was a programmer with me to my left and I remember having to lift the corner of the curtain for him to see the code written there. He was apparently operating three animated figures, one of which was a famous character I cannot recall now. He was directing them to three small windows on the site or whatever it was. The code behind the curtain, maybe.

He then did a lifting gesture with his right hand, which opened the sashes on all three windows. He next did a hand-forward gesture, to tell the characters to go through the windows, which they did. I noted that they went through the windows before he started the second gesture and thought that was good or efficient. Or something.

Then I woke up.

And I’ve been doing more research on SSGs tonight. Part of me thinks they won’t fit my needs, but another part is excited to dive into some new and different. I guess I still like learning.

And having weird, nerdy dreams.

WordPress: Gateway to madness (and I guess I’m lucky?)

Kev Quirk’s blog linked to another blog discussing someone setting up a WordPress site. That post is this one:

It’s Just Broken: Oh WordPress (Pup on Tech)

My site here runs on WordPress, but I started it back in 2005 when WP was at version 1.2 (it just hit version 7.0 a few weeks ago). To say it was a simpler system then would be correct.

Reading through PoT’s post, I found myself nodding in agreement and considering myself lucky that my site has pretty much been in maintenance mode for years now (backend-wise–I still churn out nonsense regularly), running the same theme (GeneratePress) and a handful of plugins. Things generally just work.

Except recently, I had a plugin update go haywire for the first time in ages. This led me to disabling all plugins until I (relatively quickly) found the rogue one. But instead of re-enabling all the plugins I’d been using, I only re-enabled the ones I considered essential, even if they were fairly frivolous 1Like Modern Footnotes, which allows me to place pop-up style notes to offer witty little bits as I see fit.. It made me think again about my failed search for a WordPress alternative. My needs seem simple on the surface:

  • A space to write, with the usual formatting options
  • A space to post photos, including galleries
  • Something that doesn’t require a lot of coding, as I’m not a programmer (I can handle some CSS and the like)

But I am also a bit of a weirdo, as I like having more precise control over the text and photos than most blogging platforms allow. WP, as awful as it is, gives me that flexibility, and I’ve grown familiar with it and accustomed to its general awfulness. But now I wonder if I should again renew my search?

If anyone happens to read this and has a suggestion, hit me up on Mastodon, email me or otherwise reach out as outlined here.

In the meantime, back to Typing Cat:

I switched again (to CachyOS) because I *really* like breaking things

Fedora did not last long. It was fine. I may try it again.

So I got wacky and installed CachyOS with GNOME. It’s the #1 distro on DistroWatch because it’s fast and modern and such.

The install was easy. The software manager looks a little rudimentary, but it works.

I’ll probably switch again, even if just the Desktop Environment (DE) to KDE Plasma, because GNOME just doesn’t appeal to me. I think it’s because it spreads its UI elements all over the place, which is fine on an old 19″ monitor but maybe not so much on a widescreen 32″ one. And yes, I could just try installing Plasma onto the current CachyOS by reciting the proper incantations, but I’m fine with just wiping and starting over.

I am beginning to get a good feel for what I want in a Linux distro by constantly switching, though.

Things I like in a Linux distro:

  • Hassle-free installer and support for dual boot setups
  • Easy to use update manager
  • Comprehensive software manager/store
  • Good set of built-in tools and utilities
  • Built-in support for flatpacks
  • A good, flexible file manager
  • Hassle-free support for network shares/NAS
  • Overall high degree of customization of the UI

I switched to Fedora because I like breaking things

Technically, switching from Linux Mint to Fedora (running the KDE Desktop) went without a hitch, but I know it broke the Windows MBR and I’ll have to fix that before dual boot is working correctly again. I’ve done that before, so it’s pretty much the price of admission at this point.

Why did I switch from Mint to Fedora? Mostly because I wanted a distro that was a little more modern-looking and got updates a little more frequently. Mint is very stable and Cinnamon looks nice, but it follows Windows conventions a bit more closely that I really need at this point. I mean, KDE does, too, but it still feels a little fresher. Anyway, Linux is still where I go to tinker and mess around and I wanted something new.

I’m sure I’ll find out that Fedora is now being managed by fascist edgelords or something, but for the moment I’m content to poke around and have a look.

Later: I may have regrets. But only some!

I upgraded to WordPress 7.0

The first thing in the upgrade blurb is “WordPress 7.0 introduces the foundation for AI across the platform…”

Just what I wanted, more useless bloat, but also bloat that plagiarizes, kills the environment and more. Whee.

Anyway, I’ll have a post soon about the other changes, which will probably irritate me in some way, because people hate change and I’m a people.

At least the AI nonsense is opt-in.

Things you expect and things you don’t: Windows 11 and Linux

Thing I expect: File Explorer remains a hot mess. It takes a long time quite regularly to do simple things, like display contents of a folder, often displaying “Not Responding” before finally acting.

Thing I don’t expect: Last night I was going through my birding photos with Nic and thought, “I’ll do it in Linux Mint because its file manager is not burning trash.” Which is true. The files copied over from my SD card quickly and I used the built-in Pix program to go through and view the JPG files. Until the entire system locked up without warning or explanation. I ended up rebooting the system.

For all the crap that happens in Windows 11, I don’t remember the last time it hard-locked on me. I’m not saying it hasn’t, but if it has, it’s been too long for me to remember.

And now I’m wondering what caused the Mint crash and will it happen again, etc.

I am consternated.

How I created a dual boot system on my new (late 2025) PC without any ritual sacrifices

Caveat: Time and a lot of patience were sacrificed, but not in a ritualistic manner.

Early optimism

I got Linux Mint working on my 2019 PC alongside Windows 11 without much fuss a few years ago, each OS on its own SSD. I figured it would be pretty straightforward to do the same on my new PC.

I was wrong.

The fix and its various parts

First, Mint would refuse to even see Windows 11. I fixed this through some major overkill: I installed an entirely different Linux distro that did (in this case, KDE Neon).

Next, after recognizing that Windows 11 existed, Mint would only offer a dual boot option if I partitioned the drive I had Windows 11 on, which I did not want to do. (The next major update of Mint, coming around December 2026, promises to use a more modern installer that will likely address my woes detailed here.)

I did the next best thing, telling Mint to erase the SSD that KDE Neon was on, and then install to that. I’d have my dual boot system, woo.

Except Mint did this and never set up the Grub dual boot config at all. It would only boot into Mint unless I mashed F8 at startup and then chose the SSD with Windows.

I fixed this by using a Windows program called Grub2Win, which adds an absolutely hideous graphical UI (seriously, it looks like a CGA monitor threw up on it) to the Grub boot menu. I added Mint as the second boot-up option, pointing to its correct location on its SSD.

Everything now works as intended.

A list but please, don’t try this at home

So, in order:

  1. Install an unrelated Linux distro, like KDE Neon, on a secondary SSD, leaving Windows 11 as is on the primary SSD.
  2. Use the “Erase partition/disk” option in the Linux Mint installer to replace the above distro.
  3. Use a 3rd party program (in my case, Grub2Win, though others would presumably work) to add Linux Mint to the boot menu.
  4. Vow to never do this again. (I’ll probably do it again.)

Easy!

I’m sure I missed twirling a few virtual knobs to make the process easier, but in the end, much like Grade 8 Algebra, I finally got to the solution no matter how painful it was to get there.

As of now (April 2026) I have three phones

I swear I have not gone full phone hipster, whatever that would look like.

Phone #1: My first cellphone, a Samsung M320, purchased for $40 in 2009. Yes, I still have it and yes, it still works (for a bit before the battery sputters out). Its main use today is to act like a communicator from the original Star Trek, so I can flip it open and say clever things, like, “One to beam up.”

Phone #2: My iPhone 12, purchased for a lot more than $40 in January 2021. It still works fine, though the Liquid Glass update kind of killed any desire I had to use it.

Phone #3: The replacement for Phone #2 and my newest phone, a Samsung Galaxy S26. It’s the base model and seems nice enough after I adjusted the settings to my liking.

I will have more to say on this soon and will be updating this post soon as well: To all the phones I’ve loved, er, owned before

I tried to “fix” my iPhone, I have a few regrets

As I’ve mentioned before, I have an iPhone 12 I bought in January 2021, making it now a little over five years old. This is the longest I’ve ever had a phone that didn’t plug into a wall outlet.

But late last year it started exhibiting an annoying issue (that also had an unintended perk as a side effect): It stopped passing through phone calls.

I can make calls the same as always, but when someone calls me, they get sent directly to voicemail. Often, I don’t even get a notification that a call has happened. If my phone does ring, the caller gets sent to VM while I stare at a not-actually-happening call where the time on the call never advances past 0:00.

The perk is it saves me from ever having to take a call, which is nice in a 1990s-no-cellphone kind of way.

But it is not helpful when someone, like a doctor, needs to call me.

I tried various ways of fixing the issue, but always felt it was likely bad hardware. I’d resisted two final fixes:

  • Updating to iOS 26
  • Doing a full erase and reset of the phone

I’d already ruled out the second option, because I’d just rather get a new phone at that point, and I’d resisted the first option because I deeply dislike the look of “Liquid Glass” and the bugs and weird, unwelcome changes made in iOS 26.

But then I thought, it’s up to 26.4.1 now, and I knew all the steps to take to tamp down the (IMO) ugly look of the new UI design, so I went ahead and updated.

It made no difference. The phone is still broken.

But so I’m not just griping, as fun as it is, here are the steps I took to minimize the look of Liquid Glass, with most of these settings found, logically, in the Settings app:

  • Under Display, I changed Liquid Glass from Clear to Tinted
  • Under Accessibility:
    • Display and Tex Size: Turn on Reduce Transparency
    • Motion: Turn on Reduce Motion (this one is essential to cutting down the insane bounciness they added to everything)
  • Lock Screen > Customize: Set the clock from Glass to Solid

This mostly reduces the home screen and other app pages to looking like before, except with the weird glassy outlines on icons, which look terrible and you can do nothing about. This also doesn’t affect the awful choices Apple made in its native apps, like Apple Music, an app that was already pretty clunky and now is somehow even worse. But it’s mostly tolerable after making these adjustments.

The next step is a new Android phone, and soon.