But 2025 is the first time I’ll be spending a decent amount of time using Linux and not just tinkering or experimenting with it.
Its primary weaknesses remain the same for me:
Gaming is good, but not entirely there yet.
Graphics programs are still significantly weaker than on macOS or Windows. Some programs are reasonably powerful, like GIMP, but come hobbled with genuinely awful UIs that don’t work like any other modern program out there.
For myself, there are a few things I miss from Windows, mostly in the functionality enabled by PowerToys, like a multi-item clipboard.
But in terms of stability, speed and general use, Linux Mint 22.1, the distro I’m using, is providing a very smooth experience and I generally prefer it to Windows 11 now.
Fake edit: I found CopyQ on Linux, described thusly:
CopyQ monitors system clipboard and saves its content in customized tabs. Saved clipboard can be later copied and pasted directly into any application.
So far, it seems to be working fine.
Here’s to the Year of Linux Frequently on the Desktop.
With the recent revelation of DeepSeek, an AI thinger that apparently does what OpenAI and other big tech AI thingers do, but using cheaper hardware, less energy and via open source, the whole mad rush to AI for all and forever seems to have hit its first bump. This is one of those “will be interesting to see where things stand in five years” stories, but from the consumer perspective, it seems like:
There is interest in AI in a very general, Google search sort of way (the DeepSeek app is currently #1 and ChatGPT’s LLM app is a perennial top download)
Beyond the above, there seems to be as much interest in avoiding AI, with people trying to disable AI summaries in Google search, or turn off Microsoft’s Copilot, for example.
I’m in the latter camp. I dabbled in AI art for a bit over the last year (mostly for the lulz, as the kids used to say) or as a way to generate prompts for drawing or writing. It’s been pretty mediocre at both. I don’t have a compelling case for it, and a lot of what it does (especially with implementations like “Apple Intelligence” with its notification summaries and offers to rewrite your words) are things I specifically don’t want. And, in a rare case, it seems I am actually part of the crowd instead of standing outside of it.
I’m not anti-AI or anything, but it feels like too many people are relentlessly pushing it without having any reason to, other than a desperate need to have something be The Next Big Thing in tech that makes the lines keep going up. And to that, I say: Bah. Try making File Explorer crash less in Windows 11. That’l improve my life more than error-filled notification summaries will.
I occasionally joke on this blog about Tim Cook being irate at me for not upgrading my iPhone 12. I bought it in January 2021, so it’s now just over four years old and, with Apple’s yearly releases, it’s officially four generations behind the newest, sexiest iPhone 16.
What am I missing by not upgrading?
Better battery life
Faster processor
Better cameras
An action button. For action!
An overengineered camera button. For accidentally taking photos you didn’t mean to.
Some different colours
Apple Intelligence (it took a lot of self-control to avoid putting sarcasm quotes around the word “intelligence”)
Excluding the dubious features of Apple Intelligence, the only thing I’d really notice and appreciate in a new phone is the improved camera, and even then, without moving to the pro model with the telephoto lens, the camera in the iPhone 12 is still perfectly cromulent.
The battery health of my phone is 83%, which is edging closer to where Apple suggests getting a new phone battery. But it’s still plenty for me, given how light my phone usage is. I don’t do social media on my phone, I take few calls, snap a few photos and do some texting. I don’t play games or run processor-heavy apps.
And then there’s the whole question of whether I’d stick with Apple or jump over to Android. Sadly, those are really the only options, unless you want to go full dumb phone and party like it’s 2006. Which I sometimes do.
Part of me, the part that still gets that techno lust urge, wants to get a new phone, but really, I can’t justify it in any meaningful way. So I’m sticking with my iPhone 12 for now.
Sorry, Tim.
P.S. Tim, you suck. And not in the good way, in the kissing-the-ring-of-fascists way.
A screenshot1 from Tuba, the Mastodon app I use in Linux Mint, showing my use of filters to make my feed more palatable (highlighted in yellow):
I can always click on the filter to see what I’m missing. Or “missing.” It’s a little thing, but it makes a difference. Mastodon makes adding filters pretty simple, so filter away, I say.
Nerd note: I added the drop shadow and highlight using the program ksnip, self-described as a “Screenshot and Annotation Tool”. ↩︎
I heard that Microsoft was shoehorning its Copilot AI stuff into Microsoft 365 (née Office 365) because of course it was. AI for all, whether you want it or not!
But then I saw reports that Microsoft 365 plans were also going up in price. Indeed, when I checked my account, my $109/year package was going to be billed at $145 in April when it renewed. This is a substantial increase. The internet advised me that if I cancelled my current subscription, I would then be offered a “classic” version of my plan, without AI, for the previous $109 price. And lo, there it was:
To be clear, it is exactly the same plan I have now, just renamed. Microsoft moved me off that plan and to the new, more expensive “Microsoft 365 Family” plan, acting as if nothing had changed, just a simple (large) price increase.
It’s shady, it’s scummy, and it’s exactly what I expect of Microsoft these days.
My solution is to go back to storing everything locally and having backups available through my NAS, which will function almost as well as OneDrive would have, anyway.
Congrats, Microsoft, in your bid to shove AI down my throat and get more money from me, you will soon be getting none!
For fairly obvious reasons, I have dropped the subs to the politics channels I follow on YouTube, except for Steve Boots, because he is a zesty socialist who covers Canadian politics and his cat is constantly vamping in the background of his videos.
I’ve also filtered a few related words or phrases on Mastodon.
These things may change, but for now, it feels right. I still get a lot of news/doom through osmosis, anyway.
Yes, I changed email again. Why? Because I am mad, perhaps.
But also, I find I am less willing to do business with companies where the people in charge loudly blare their terrible views in public.
And it happens my main email service has one such person as its CEO. The company is doing damage control, stating they are non-profit, the CEO does not control the company, etc. It doesn’t matter, the rot is at the top. I’m not interested in supporting you with my dollars anymore.
So, I’ve gone from:
Obscure ISP-based email (sjames@istar.net or something) 25+ years ago
Less obscure ISP email through Telus
Gmail
HEY
Outlook
Proton
A few others that were never primary addresses, some of which I still have
And now:
Fastmail
The one bonus in the latest move is I can now drop the “w” from my name and just use stanjames@fastmail.com. Plus, it sounds fast.
If Fastmail doesn’t work out, I am going to invest in carrier pigeons.
I never actually used Tumblr, but I did create an account awhile back for it. Unlike Meta’s properties, Tumblr doesn’t appear to care if you delete your account, because the process is:
Select Delete Account in Account Settings
Enter your username and password
Click the Delete Account button
It then confirms the account is gone and offers you to sign up (ho ho).
And now I wonder just how many other accounts I have on old-timey social media sites that are still shambling along, zombie-like.
No, actually, I’m not even sure I fixed it, but I backed up my data and erased the HD and started clean, figuring if some rogue process was making it run hot, why not start by eliminating ALL processes? This also has the side effect of making it easier to sell if I choose to do so.
The reformat went surprisingly quickly. So far I have installed nothing, it’s just Safari and Photo Booth and whatever else Apple slaps on with the default install. The Mac is off right now, but I’ll check later to see if it is back to running cool. If not, it may be hardware-related or there may be unauthorized dust bunnies inside.
Also, I’m pretty sure the default mouse speed on a fresh macOS installation is calibrated for the original 1984 Macintosh 9″ display, because it is super weirdly slow.
Fun fact: Apple released no videos in 2024 to commemorate the Mac’s 40th anniversary.
There have always been good reasons to delete your Facebook account, but my inactivity over the last few years pretty much made the issue go away. If I ain’t using it, what harm is there letting the account go fallow?
This changed in the past few weeks, when Mark Zuckerberg decided to become macho or something (tip: You will never ever be macho, Zuck), pay fealty to God King Trump, and then decided to:
Stop most moderation and fact-checking on Meta sites, such as FB.
Replace moderation with “community notes”.
Kill all DEI initiatives.
In the name of “free speech” allow more slurs, name-calling and such to be permitted, especially and specifically against LGBTQ+ folks.
This is all in addition to the already running:
Endless, perpetual “Suggested For You” that never stops. It’s a useless sludge waterfall, and you are nailed to the bottom of it.
Reels, reels, reels! The “See less of this” when you click the X to close one is a jokey kind of placebo. Like the vampire kids in Salem’s Lot, they’ll be floating outside your window and scratching on the glass again soon enough. And forever.
Terrible, low-rent ads, but now with terrible, low-rent AI-generated crap in them.
A lot more AI sludge in general, including cringe-inducing (at best) AI people you can interact with (or rather, the ones they haven’t pulled yet after the not-insignificant backlash to them).
And not forgetting that FB executives have always been OK with people dying in exchange for increased engagement (revenue).
Today, I requested all of my FB info (mostly bird photos and various doodles). I already made a post letting actual human people know I’m deleting the account and pointing out I am easy to find elsewhere. The next step will be to request the deletion once I have my big ol’ FB info bundle (UPDATE: Shortly after I posted this, I got the info, just under 400MB worth at “medium” quality), then probably wait some period of time, probably 30 days, similar to the Instagram deletion.
It seems obvious now, but corporate controlled social media can probably never work. Mastodon might be a bit clunky, but there’s no billionaire or VC money behind it, just a bunch of federated servers relying on donations from individuals.
UPDATE: My Valentine’s Day gift to myself will be going Facebook-free.
Literally. For some reason, it runs pretty warm (much warmer than you’d expect for a well-ventilated M1 Mac). I’ve tried a bunch of things, ranging from shutting down every extraneous service or app, rebooted, updated, and worn a black mock turtleneck sweater1In my head, and it looks fabulous.. And still, it gets warm.
Activity Monitor shows no obvious culprits. I am baffled. Maybe the 40,000 vent holes in the back have sucked in a kilogram of dust over the last two years. I’d open the case to check, but…
The end result is, troubleshooting this is now the same sort of whack-a-mole as it is over on the Windows side, so I am now often shutting down the Mac when not using it so it doesn’t melt down on itself.
Sometimes technology is cool and sometimes it’s hot. And sometimes it’s too hot.
Here is a Macintosh LC. It is not my Mac. It may have never gotten hot. But I still love the industrial design some 30+ years later.
EDIT: I looked up the trade-in value on my Mac after writing this post, and that seems to have at least temporarily scared it back down to being not-so-hot. We'll see if it holds. I'm sure the Mac is totally sentient and reads this blog, probably using Apple Intelligence® to provide succinct summaries.
Specifically, I wear a Garmin Forerunner 255 running watch. I previously had a Series 5 Apple Watch, and it served me well, but I wanted a tool more attuned to my specific needs as a thrice-weekly runner who occasionally also does long walks and other activities, like treadmill workouts.
The Forerunner has been notably better in several respects:
Unlike Apple, Garmin doesn’t hate the web, so I can check all my stats on the web, as well as in an app.
The running stats are more detailed, and easier to suss out.
On the watch itself, because it has no touch display, it works fine regardless of the weather and starting/stopping/pausing a run is all built around pressing a single button, something easily done regardless of the conditions, or if I’m wearing gloves.
The battery life is so good I essentially don’t think about it. I charge when I shower and that’s it.
Because the battery life is so good, I use it for sleep tracking. I’m aware that sleep tracking is a bit dodgy on any smart device and Ray Maker (DC Rainmaker on YouTube) said he thinks they have about 80-85% accuracy, and he uses Garmin watches only to note his start/end times (Duration) for sleep, which it usually does a good job of, then mostly ignores the other things it tracks, namely:
Deep
Light
REM
Stress
Awake/Restlessness
Each category gets assigned a rating. For example, last night my watch said I slept 7 hours and 46 minutes, which is almost exactly what it recommended, so my Duration was rated Excellent. My Deep sleep lasted 48 minutes, which was enough to rate Fair–and so on.
The possible ratings are:
Excellent (90-100%)
Good (80-89%)
Fair (60-79%)
Poor (0-59%)
If you get Fair across the board, you’re looking at an average of around 70%, which is…Fair. But if one category ranks Poor, it can drag down your score either a modest amount, or a lot, depending on the category. One such category is Stress.
Last night, my sleep score was reported thus:
The accompanying text read:
Sleep Score 51/100 Poor Quality
Non-restorative
You slept long enough, but not well enough to bring your stress levels down overnight.
Your very stressful day yesterday may have compromised your sleep. You may feel more tired or irritable today.
Here’s where we get to my point and also that 80-85% accuracy figure Ray Maker notes. As you’ll see, my overall sleep was pretty decent–except for stress. It claims I had a “very stressful day.” My day consisted of chores, sundry tasks and the usual stuff. Nothing particularly stressful–or even stressful at all.
There were texts regarding the strata nonsense in late afternoon, which would be a stress point, but I felt pretty mellow in going through them. A few possible mitigating factors:
I am still a bit sore from my spill last week, particularly the hands and right wrist. This may cause some kind of low-level ongoing stress?
The bladder infection is only recently dealt with, so my body is still likely recovering from that, not quite back to normal.
Still, the previous night reported average (Fair) stress, so there’s no reason to think the above two items would affect my stress score while sleeping. Yet I do not feel the day was stressful. I woke up this morning feeling I had clearly slept better than the previous night–but with a lower score.
And I think of that 80-85% and wonder if my watch is now just kind of freaking out and interpreting everything as STRESS and reflecting it in my stats. The thing is, seeing it always reporting stress is genuinely stressful in itself, especially when I don’t feel I’m being stressed. It’s all very recursive.
I ponder whether to take the watch off at night. I’ll probably leave it on for now, but I will adjust to take the sleep scores with a bigger grain of salt, and adjust upward to giant grain as necessary.
Typing out this post probably affected my stress level, per the Forerunner.
