"What we need to do is create a system where we don't rely on our self-control alone..."

Ashley talks about some things like turning off notifications and delegating tasks (calendar, calculator, etc) back to their physical counterparts. I don't think either of those things are bad advice, you should definitely do that. I think it's a bit funny though, because she almost immediately unknowingly contradicts her previous statement with the next piece of advice. Ashley charges her phone in the kitchen to keep herself from waking up and scrolling in the morning. When she said that, I immediately thought to myself, "This sounds very familiar..."

"Physically flee temptation."
"Separate yourself bodily from the thing that tempts you."

It's easiest and most effective to stop something before it starts. It's just inertia. This was her issue with applications like Apple's Digital Wellness, Screen Time, whatever they call it. They all stop you (or rather, make very half-assed attempts at stopping you) after you're already well into whatever it is you're doing. It's very easy to swipe away a notification every fifteen minutes if it means you can keep scrolling like you have been for hours. Get serious about it, and don't put yourself in that position to begin with.

As much as she'd want to believe that we need more than self-control alone, that's really all this boils down to. Just get off your phone, seriously, and stay off of it.

Applying this More Broadly in the Digital World

About a month or so ago, I made a new account on DSiPaint/3DSPaint. It's an old school style forum designed for use on Nintendo's DSi and 3DS. I had an account here from back in the day, but deleted it a few years ago when I found myself to be checking it often, too often. I came back as I found myself with more empty time. Now, I feel that I check it as often as some people check traditional social media. The same problem I had before. Will I delete my new account? No. The blog functionality of the site has really motivated me to start writing more in general. I am going to be taking steps to separate myself from it though.

1. No accessing the site from my phone.

Smartphones are meant for consumption, not creation. Only obsessively refresh groups and notifications when I'm on mobile anyways.

2. No access in the morning, night access only.

In the mornings, I'm usually on there to just put off having to get out of bed.

3. Minimize phone use in general.

Before it was *Paint, it was YouTube. If it's not *Paint, it'll just be whatever is next. I want to end useless consumption completely.

It's that simple, and I still get to be active on the forum. Less active? Maybe, but not by much.

Why?

If it wasn't made obvious by Ashley's essay (and just common knowledge), I've essentially become a prisoner of my vices. You have too. Nobody wants to be a prisoner of anything, and neither do I. There are things with the house that need done, and there are things with myself that need worked. I really need to get out, and build relationships. It's literally impossible to do any of that in the digital world. Before you even think it: no. Online relationships, romantic or not, are not real. I don't advise that anybody invest any serious energy or time into one.

The keyboard is inherently something that encourages creation. Just think about what it is used for: to type. If you log into your computer, open a text editor, and do nothing, nothing will happen. The keyboard won't type your ideas for you. What is a screen used for? To watch, to consooom. You don't have to continuously interact with the screen for something to happen. With just a few clicks, you can lazily be rewarded for time multitudes longer than it took to get there.

"Okay, but both computers and mobile devices have keyboards and screens."

Yes, but in completely different ways. Typing on a touch screen just sucks. You won't be writing software or college dissertations on your smart phone. Your phone, tablet, etc. are pretty much entirely screen. These devices are by extension almost entirely for consumption rather than creation. "b-but photography! But digital art!" The reality is that most people don't really ever use these devices for either one of these use cases. They use their phones to doomscroll Tiktok and Instagram. Computers, on the other hand, have physical keyboards. These take up real space, infinitely more than a software keyboard, and thus occupy more mental space. They're also infinitely better to type on too. It's why people write their dissertations, articles, blogs, programs, using them rather than a digital alternative.

"Computers are expensive!"

Computers can be had for less than $100 nowadays. The laptop I'm writing this on was $60. It's not a toaster either. 2c, 4t CPU @ 2.6GHz with 16 GB of RAM. Plenty capable for office workloads (it's literally designed for this, it's a Thinkpad t440p), heavy web browsing, and even some light gaming (emphasis on light, it's rocking an Intel iGPU).

Getting a Computer for Cheap:

Buy used! This is the only way to get truely cheap hardware. A custom build from new will be cheaper than a prebuilt with equivalent power (unless you pay somebody else to build it), but there are good enough (with upgrades) builds that cost hundreds (or even thousands) less. People don't want to believe it, but computers really haven't gotten much faster in the last 10-15 years for most workloads. If you have the money and want to do a custom build with new parts, go for it. This blog isn't about you.

If you're in the US, Goodwill has an online storefront. They sell many things, but the most relevant to us are the computers, parts, and accessories. If you're on a tight budget, I advise that you just get a desktop or laptop here, you'll at least have a computer. IRL thrift sores and electronics recyclers are also great places to find cheap computers and components. If you're just going to be casual computing, go for a laptop. For anything intense, like media creation or gaming, go for a desktop. Ebay's an option as well, but stay away from anything gaming (laptop or desktops). People tend to overvalue these, and you'll be paying for it.

Of the two, laptops will be the cheaper option. For those, look for Thinkpads or Dell Latitudes. These are business class laptops and tend to be more durable and repairable than most other laptops. That being said, be careful of the newer ones. If they look like a Macbook, they are. You'll have a hard time upgrading/repairing these, which is extremely important when it comes to longevity. Upgrading components will get you significant performance boosts for relatively cheap.

Desktops will be more expensive than laptops because you'll need to buy the peripherals in order to use them, assuming that you don't already have them lying around. These can be thrifted too for relatively cheap. In terms of which desktop to buy, you can really go for anything because they tend to be much more upgradable. Just avoid mini towers and small form factor (SFF) PCs. The go to for this sort of stuff is Dell's Optiplex line. These were the go-to for a lot of businesses, and so there's a lot of them on the market for cheap. Just thrown in a GPU, CPU, or whatever upgrades you find necessary, and call it a day. Hardware compatibilty is an in-depth topic, you can look into that yourself, but it's only really an issue with CPU/Motherboard. Most other components are plug-and-play. Again, upgrades are your friend.

Whatever you buy, do your research first. You will more than likely be disappointed if you just buy something blindly.

Software:

I don't like being an evangelist, but I'd advise that you stay away from Windows. With Windows 11 requiring TPM 2.0, and Windows 10 being discontinued, it's just not the best idea for older PCs. I could go on about Windows being terribly slow and cumbersome, but I won't. Just pick a Linux distro and install it. The Steam Deck runs SteamOS, based on Arch Linux. Linux is viable for gaming, and has been viable for general (normie) use cases for years.

On Upgrades:

When it comes to expensive components, like your CPU/GPU, you don't need to go new (in the case of CPUs, that could be impossible depending on the PC you end up getting). In fact, you shouldn't. Consider what you'll be doing with your PC, and find something a few years old that is capable of handling the task at hand. No, you don't actually need an RTX 5090 to play Fortnite, Minecraft, Sims, and emulate old Gamecube games. Also, most of the time a minor drop in performance can save you a disproportional amount of money. For CPUs specifically, you can get competent server CPUs for cheap on Ebay. The CPU I use in my server (which is just my old PC) is a $30 Intel Xeon. I wouldn't recommend using server GPU hardware for general use. For cheaper components (storage, memory, networking), go new. These things tend to be cheap, and the risk of defects with used hardware outweighs any savings you may find here.

Building a computer for cheap using old, used components probably won't last you forever. You might need to build/buy a new PC at some point if something major breaks, or your use case scales to require more powerful hardware. Maybe you won't though. Maybe you stop gaming after a while, like I did. In that case, your old gaming rig will probably be more than capable of whatever basic computing you do for the next 20 years.

You should have a computer, a real one. This is probably the most cost-effective way to do it.

I bought a house, so things are generally better. My family had to move in with me, but once they leave I should have room to set all of my servers back up. I'll post an update when that eventually happens.

I made a bit of progress on the website rewrite a few months ago, but I might just end up abandoning it. This current system works well enough, and my annoyances that I have with it don't actually come up very often. Plus the basic nature of HTML, CSS, and a text editor makes it easier to get exactly what I want out of the site. To do some things in Hugo I had to jump through extra hoops that wouldn't be necessary in a setup like this. Plus, most of the benefits of using an SSG like Hugo just don't seem all that useful for my use case.

Certainly not useful enough to rewrite my already built and good enough site.

I feel lost in my job, and by that I mean that I don't do much of anything outside of it. Especially now that I have a house to care for, I don't feel like I have much time to pursue hobbies, purpose, relationships... life y'know? I really should join a church, but the idea of church shopping has really made it easy to push off. Going back to God should pretty much solve all of my problems, aside from the hobby thing I guess.

I've been exploring more of the county, and I guess the area generally, on free weekends if you could consider that a hobby. I might go up to Madison, IN this weekend. It's a really pretty town, especially at night. They've got the bridge over the river all lit up, and there's a power plant nearby that's also lit up. Overall, very cool. Definitely check it out if you find yourself in the area.

I'm rambling now, so I guess I should wrap this up.

I started to make some changes to the site before ultimately deciding to learn Hugo and move to that. It will probably take a while, and the site will look very different. I'm hoping to solve some issues with consistency going forward. I tend to forget to update old pages when I make site-wide changes, like with changes to the navbar. Most importantly though, it'll be easier on me to make new pages and stuff. Not that it'll make me more motivated to post anything though. I've only been talking about actually doing something with this ever since I created this site. Then again though, I'm really not obligated to post anything either.

I changed the site web pin. It's no longer animated and more minimal. It'll also match the theme of the new site. I'm matching it with my window manager, so it'll be very simple and using the Gruvbox colorscheme.

I will be restoring the downloads page in the distant future. My current living situation is difficult and I'm not in a position to host a server for anything.

I might make some posts, possibly new pages if the topics end up large enough. I've had some ideas, but nothing substantial. Plus, I'm rather busy rn.

Firstly, site-related things. I've made a few changes to a few pages, and I've got a number of new pages in the works, and I obviously can't have all of these pages in the nav bar. I'll be removing the Breakfast link since the server is long dead. I'll also be removing the New Tab/Start Page link as well, since that's not important enough to require a spot on the nav bar. I do also plan on hosting my own SearXNG instance, so stay tuned for that. I also still want to host a PeerTube instance, though that has some annoying issues on Artix, which my at-home server is running. Either I'll need a separate server for that, or I'll just drop the idea. I don't really feel like paying for bandwidth and storage on some VPS. I've got it up and running, just took some finagling. Check it out!

Secondly, life stuff. I've lost someone who was very close and important to me. I don't know that I want to go into too much detail, since this is a public site. I'm pretty much the only person that goes to this site though. Anyways, I've been going through it. I was fine for a while until recently, when I've started unraveling. Some days, my mood seems to sometimes change significantly many times over the course of only an hour.

Swingin' B)

I might make a page for him, containing a bunch of pictures of him. I'm not one to take pictures, so unfortunately I don't have many of my own. It's not like you can prepare for things like this. Maybe I'll make a form to submit pictures, or maybe just put an email on there like I do with everything else.

I don't feel like talking anymore.

Despite that, I never did make a web pin for my site. I felt like I really didn't need once since there's not really much here, but that was more or less just an excuse to be lazy. The whole point of web pins are to have a fun way to advertise web sites. The key word there is fun. I don't have much on my website yet, but I made a pin for the fun of it.

So, if you for some reason want to add a link to my website on your own site/page, you can use my web pin!

It is also on the site's homepage.

Also, the XMPP server still isn't up. I don't know if I'll ever finish that. I might though, really just depends on my mood. ]]> https://souldj673.xyz/blog/about-xmpp.html https://souldj673.xyz/blog/about-xmpp.html Mon, 11 Apr 2022 20:14:05 -0400 contact page, I have a link to message my XMPP account. Ever since adding that link, it has been nonfunctional. I need to finish reconfiguring my network before my XMPP server is active, who knows how long that'll take. I work on it when I feel like it. If you're wanting to get ahold of me via XMPP, expect that to be up by the end of the month.
I'll be making an update post when that's complete. ]]> https://souldj673.xyz/blog/slightly-new-look.html https://souldj673.xyz/blog/slightly-new-look.html Sat, 19 Mar 2022 12:53:49 -0400 my git site matches this site now. ]]> https://souldj673.xyz/blog/oops.html https://souldj673.xyz/blog/oops.html Thu, 30 Dec 2021 17:22:36 +0000 https://souldj673.xyz/blog/website-redesign.html https://souldj673.xyz/blog/website-redesign.html Tue, 16 Nov 2021 18:48:28 -0500 https://souldj673.xyz/blog/rss-really-simple-syndication.html https://souldj673.xyz/blog/rss-really-simple-syndication.html Thu, 11 Nov 2021 16:50:46 -0500 https://souldj673.xyz/blog/my-car-is-falling-apart.html https://souldj673.xyz/blog/my-car-is-falling-apart.html Thu, 11 Mar 2021 14:05:21 -0500