musing Tag Posts Index

Wednesday Walk and Lap Swimming

There’s something about swimming lanes that feels… territorial. Not in an aggressive way, just in that quiet, personal, this‑is‑my‑spot kind of way. The second lane

"Luck is Limitless Horizons"

The words were printed on someone's shirt. "Luck is Limitless Horizons". I think it is a gym slogan, or so it looked. It was just a random scene I walked

Somehow I Survived the Academic Nightmare | Diary of a Struggling and Failing Philosopher

Somehow, I just managed to survive. My story is by no means unique, or different. Absolutely not. In fact, I think I might be better off than most. Either way, it

Thank you for the kind words!

Hey everyone, Yesterday was a much-needed break. It's funny how fast time flies when you're trying to enjoy it. I'm feeling a lot better today, and I wanted to say

Brain Drain: Tuesday? This sucks, so have some suckless utils.

I've had one of those soul-sucking days, and not even the fun kind involving a succubus, no, just grocery shopping in this economy. So, for today's post, I'm just

When a Simple Ticker Becomes a New Project

Hey everyone, I recently wanted to add the current HIVE price to my Qtile bar, which I thought would be a simple task. Qtile has a built-in CryptoTicker widget,

GM Advice: Session Zero

Hey everyone, Today's GM advice is all about the pre-game, specifically the one session that can make or break a campaign before it even starts: Session Zero. It

A Simple Way to Check for Internet Connectivity in Scripts

Hey everyone, I run a lot of scripts via cron, even on my laptop, but my laptop isn't always connected to the internet. This can cause issues for scripts that need

Is it Random? A Deeper Dive into Fairness and Entropy

Hey everyone, After my last post about the mathematical fairness of the Ultimate Dice Roller, I got some excellent feedback. The gist of it was that a normal

Is the Ultimate Dice Roller _Mathematically_ Fair?

Hey everyone, The other day, @ecoinstant posed an excellent question about the Ultimate Dice Roller: we know it's provably fair, but is it mathematically fair? In

A Learning Experience: From OpenSSL to a Python Certificate Generator

Hey everyone, A recent announcement from Let's Encrypt about issuing their first certificate for an IP address sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole. For some reason,

Brain Drain Friday: A Debugging Marathon and a Well-Earned Break

Hey everyone, It's Brain Drain Friday, and this week truly earned its name. Yesterday, I did a developer "no-no": I spent a good 12-14 hours debugging

Preliminary Investigation: Finally, the Real Culprits

Hey everyone, My investigation into the high CPU usage on the "moon" server has been a process of refining the data to get a clear answer. After first

Investigating High CPU Usage on the "Moon" Server

Hey everyone, I've been keeping an eye on our "moon" server lately, and the CPU usage metrics have been consistently high, suggesting it might be time

A Sunday Hotfix and Some Lazy Day Thoughts

Happy Sunday, everyone. Well, just a day after the last hive-nectar release, I had to push an emergency hotfix. A client was getting a very strange error when trying

How I Build Software Quickly (My Take)

Hey everyone, I've been asked a few times how I manage to get so many different projects and tools built so quickly. It’s a great question, and I was inspired to

Phishing on the Blockchain: A Fascinatingly Complex Redirect

Hey everyone, I recently came across a phishing email, and while the usual advice is to just delete them and move on, something about the link caught my eye. Instead

The Hidden Iceberg: Why Does Software Take So Long?

Hey everyone, I was asked almost this very question yesterday: "What takes so long in the dev world?" It's a perfectly fair question, especially when a

The Library

Next to the kitchen, the dining room, the living room, the family room, the back veranda, the side veranda, the courtyard, the foyer, the receiving room, and before

Sunday musing about living from the countryside to the city

Last night, I had a hard time going to sleep because I felt like I had unfinished tasks, so I stayed up beyond my usual sleeping hours. This is a situation I often