Technology

Mini-culling: Logitech newsletters

This is a minor culling and I can’t prove that Logitech is acting maliciously, but the effect amounts to the same.

A while back I subscribed (via my Gmail account) to a Logitech newsletter because I realized I buy a lot of Logitech mice (and keyboards, to a lesser extent). For some reason, these messages aren’t getting forwarded to my current email, despite Google not marking them as spam. Odd.

But I then decided I don’t really want to get these anymore, anyway, so I hit the ol’ Unsubscribe link at the bottom of the most recent newsletter.

It took me here:

Yes, “unsubscription error.” Whoopsie, we didn’t unsubscribe you, our bad! Try again or go through our customer support hell, and good luck with that lol!

I tried a few more times, the error persisted. I then did the following in Gmail:

Problem solved (for me)!

(My current mouse is still Logitech but my keyboards are from Keychron and Drop.)

Firefox, why you gotta do this?

UPDATE, March 3, 2025: This is not encouraging:

I’ve changed email a hundred times in the past few years. I don’t want to change browsers, too.

The interweb denizens are still sussing out Mozilla’s new Terms of Use (as in, they never had these before) for Firefox, but this seems…not good? Bold is provided by me, as are the gratuitous icons of spies.

You Give Mozilla Certain Rights and Permissions

You give Mozilla all rights necessary to operate Firefox, including processing data as we describe in the Firefox Privacy Notice, as well as acting on your behalf to help you navigate the internet. When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox.

The language is just vague enough to put everyone on edge. We’ll see if Mozilla clarifies exactly what they mean by “help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox”. Maybe it’s all innocent-like. Maybe.

Font (no longer huge) Awesome

There was a recent update to the Official™ Font Awesome plugin, and I was excited, because I like icons and glyphs and other weird non-verbal forms of communication. However, when I tried inserting Font Awesome icon of a cat (of course), I discovered it was very big. Like, taking up half the screen of a 27″ monitor big.

I noticed you could adjust the size, so I adjusted the size way down. This seemed to have no effect.

I was sad.

But today there was an update and I think it’s been fixed. I’ll test this below by clogging up the rest of this post with Font Awesome icons! Or maybe just one. Or two.

This is the cat I originally tried posting:

And now, the yin-yang symbol. It spins! I think.

Here is a larger version of the cat, now in orange:

Exciting times here on the ol’ blog. Carry on with your day, if you can!

I must share this website with the world

I saw a post on Mastodon that led me to this site and post lamenting the state of the web and calling for more people to do their own blog/thing on the internet, something I obviously support, having spewed nonsense right here for 20 years and counting.

There are some links to other sites at the end of the article, and this is by far the most amazing and awesome. Remember 1998? This blog does!

Make Frontend Shit Again

I leave you with this:

Blogging is for teenage girls crying in their bedrooms

Or so said Ben Werdmuller’s university employer.

I just love this very specific and absurd description of blogging and who it’s for.

I blog because I like writing, I like rambling, and I occasionally even have thoughtful or interesting and possibly witty things to say.

And what better place to say these things than on something I have direct control over? No one can come up to me here and say, “You’re not a teenage girl and you’re not even crying. What are you doing, you huge poser?” Well, technically, someone could say this, but I disabled comments on this blog years ago due to a bot problem I was disinclined to invest the time to resolve, since only bots wanted to comment.

Hopefully those bots are out there, somewhere, crying mechanical tears. And possibly blogging about it in binary code.

Tech news is now terrible news

I remember tech news being about neat new ideas, inventions and technological improvements.

Now it’s just a showcase for how the richest and worst people in the world are destroying everything in pursuit of power above all else.

It’s sad and depressing, and I doubt it will get better in my lifetime.

On the plus side, I’m in the process of dropping most of the usual tech news sites I follow, and this frees up time and headspace to pursue more positive things, which I will do!

Finally, since it’s sort of technology and a cat, I present, yet again, cat typing on a keyboard:

The Culling: Miscellaneous software

Today I uninstalled a few programs on my Windows 11 PC I no longer use and made the great leap to open source office software (technically I already did, because I installed LibreOffice a while ago, but now it will be my default).

Uninstalled:

  • Facebook Messenger (can’t use without a FB account, anyway)
  • Arc browser (did not like)
  • Microsoft 365 (Word, Excel, etc.)
  • Microsoft Bing Search (I didn’t even know this was installed)
  • Microsoft Teams (I thought I had uninstalled this already)
  • Mind Over Magnet demo (I have the full game)
  • Proton Mail (switched to Fastmail)
  • Red Notebook (did not like)
  • WhatsApp (did not use, plus more Meta junk)
  • Zettlr (did not like)

February 1, 2025 is apparently Global Switch Day

Is it a day to celebrate light switches? Perhaps! But it’s mainly about switching from corporate-controlled apps owned by horrible techbro oligarchs, to ones that embrace privacy and the fediverse, which is not related in any way to Star Trek.

Looking this over:

  • X: Done! I never posted much on X/Twitter, anyway.
  • Instagram: Done! I have a Pixelfed account.
  • WhatsApp: Done! I never used WhatsApp much and have used signal for years.
  • Facebook: Pending! My account is “deleted” in less than two weeks. I have never tried Friendica, though, and the logo makes me think of two people in a 69, which is very friendly, I suppose.
  • YouTube: I’ve watched videos on PeerTube, but YouTube has huge piles of good video content. It’s not nearly as bad as the other services.
  • TikTok: Done! And by done, I mean I’ve never actually watched videos on TikTok. I have no interest in Loops, either.

Internet may be just a passing fad

I’m not sure where I came across this photo of a Daily Mail story from December 5, 2000, but I find it both amusing and prescient.

The prescient part is this:

They say that e-mail, far from replacing other forms of communication, is adding to an overload of information.

And this was before social media. Hopefully The Daily Mail has an updated story on how the internet was not a passing fad, but maybe it should have been, considering its current state.

I have a keyboard problem

I don’t even know how many I have. A bunch are tucked away into drawers. There are a few others elsewhere.

I’m currently using my CTRL keyboard again, after somehow botching the backlighting in my Keychron Q1. It’s OK, though, because I think I prefer the tenkeyless design to the more compact Q1 model.

But that doesn’t address my problem. Neither does the fact that I have another keyboard being delivered to me now. This one has Jupiter Banana switches. How could I say no to Jupiter Banana switches1Seriously, if I had a kid, I’d name them Jupiter Banana. Well, maybe not seriously. But it could be their nickname.? It’s also tenkeyless and can be run wirelessly, so I’ll see how that goes.

Then no more new keyboards. At least for, uh, let’s say six months. That seems reasonable. Doesn’t it? Maybe?

For reference:

CTRL

Mine is on the desk, not floating in space.

Keychron Q1 with Fancy™ Knob

This is the exact model I have, same colour and knob.

And the one I’ve ordered (a Keychron V3 Max also with Fancy™ Knob):

This only comes in one colour, and you’re looking at it.