My weird way of interacting with Twitter

When ever I browse my twitter feed I lazily click around because I have a hard time concentrating a lot because I am overwhelmed. So I find myself using heuristics more than the average person to curtail unwanted conversations. I'll read a sentence of a post and if the user sounds like a total idiot and I never want to hear from them again it triggers the "idiot flag" to TRUE. That person is muted. There's also a flag for "NOT WANT" that gets flagged to TRUE.

Sometimes I like to use computer metaphors to describe my internal dialogue to describe it, though usually to no one except to myself. I might be muting future conversations that may be good, though it's for the best. It makes me twitter feed very chill. The algorithm seems to mute people for me nowadays without my intervention. 

People complain about drama and trolls on Twitter, but I never see them. Twitter is very peaceful for me, even boring. I dont stay long on it, except to make a few replies here there and maybe some tweets of my own.

Linux isnt hard, it's relative

A lot of people dont even know that Linux exists others that know it exists and dont know much about it think it’s extremely difficult, which it isnt. It depends on what you’re trying to do with your computer. There’s many factors that can lead you to having problems as computers and people are complex.

If all you’re doing is trying to install a Linux distribution for browsing the internet or word processing you’ll have no problems. Even gaming isnt so hard anymore, though the difficulty level goes up when you try to do things like gaming. With anything new you have to be willing to go out of your comfort zone and learn. Any new tool, you have to learn how to use.

One problem that prevents people from learning about Linux is a lot of
people dont want to go through the trouble of installing a Linux distribution. I imagine no one would have any problem using it if it was already on their computer. I think more companies should make it more accessible and sell computers with a Linux distribution preinstalled. Some do like Dell, though they dont make the option prominent. A lot of the Linux Laptops and such I saw had premium price tags. There should be Linux laptops for average joe.

The difficulty level of installing a Linux distribution depends on what distribution you’re installing. Linux distributions such as Ubuntu and Linux Mint are fairly easy. The most difficult part is knowing how to put an ISO onto a flash drive and booting from it. This can be difficult for some people as it’s not always clear what key to press when your computer boots to select a different boot device as it differs between computer manufactures. So some people think it’s hard because of that. Not really a Linux distributions fault but just a fact of computer design. Like I said, computers are complex. People are complex. People lack certain knowledge and not every computer uses the same key to boot from. That’s just an example of one step someone would have trouble with installing Linux to their computer.

Things that may help with a slower computer on Windows

The first thing you should do is make sure you have enough disk space for your computer and that you have enough memory for Windows to run okay. As time goes on with subsequent Windows updates, it gets more hungry for system memory and storage space. Also your files might get in the way, so you might want to delete some files or back them up and move them to storage off your computer(if you're not actively using those files.)

At the time of writing this 8gb of memory is a sufficient amount of system memory to run Windows okay for basic computer usages such as web browsing and word processing.

To check how much memory your computer has in Windows 10, click the search bar in the taskbar and search for “computer”. “This PC' will show up, right click that icon then and click properties in the menu that appears. It'll tell you what CPU you have, and how much system memory you have. If you have less than 8gb of memory it would be a good idea to buy an upgrade. Memory is cheap nowadays, especially used memory.

If you're not comfortable installing memory yourself you can take your PC to a reputable computer shop and they'll be happy to install the memory for you.

Storage space is a cheap upgrade too, though it'll require reinstalling the OS. If you're looking for a storage device get one that is at least 500gb. Even cheap SSD's you can get that much space for cheap at the time of writing this.

Another thing that might help a tiny bit is change the visual effects on Windows. Search for the word performance from the search menu in the task bar. And click “adjust appearance and performance of Windows” in the menu that appears select “adjust for best performance” 

Though you might want to tick the box that says "smooth edges of screen fonts" so that fonts arent pixelated. 

Some programs slow down the boot up process of Windows. From the search bar in the start menu search “start up” and then select “start up apps” tick off any that you dont want to start up when your PC boots. Most of the things in there arent really necessary. Though if you're really not sure google the application to check. Another place to check is in the task manager. Press alt ctrl delete select task manager. There's other places start up programs hide... like in services. Though I dont really want to get into technical things in this guide.

Other than that keep your PC up to date with the latest Windows updates. If you're computer is especially slow dont be tempted to open too many tabs in your browser. Close them when you're done with them and close your browser frequently and open it again.

If your PC ever gets sticky, sometimes it needs a full restart. Windows by default doesnt fully restart or shutdown, it saves things from memory to the storage to make it boot faster. To force Windows to fully restart, click the search bar and search for “cmd” right click the icon that says “command prompt” and click “run as administrator” after that type into the prompt “shutdown /r” this will reboot your computer fully. Sometimes it helps because Windows can get fickle after awhile of being on for a long time. Even if it's shut down from the start menu!

Make sure you keep all your programs up to date, especially your internet related ones. This will save you from the majority of viruses problems and it may fix something that's slowing things down for you as well.

How to install TP-Link Archer T3U USB wifi NIC on Arch Linux

 

Note: This tutorial is a "scrap" meaning I'm just leaving it up for information purposes even though it's not totally complete. Follow at your own discretion. 

The first thing you have to do is make sure all the packages on your system are up to date.

sudo pacman -Syu

As you probably already know this will do a full system upgrade on your Arch install. Reboot your system by typing reboot at the terminal.

Next thing you’ll want to do is verify what kernel you’re running.

uname -a

You want to pick the correct kernel version if it asks. I may be mixing this up with what you have to do on Manjaro because the steps are pretty much the same with the except of one thing.

Next install the linux-headers for your kernel. Most likely it’ll choose the right one but sometimes it’ll ask.

sudo pacman -S linux-headers

“reboot” your system again typing reboot in the terminal again.

Now you want to install the stuff you’ll need to build the files from the git. You’ll need to install the packages base-devel, git and dkms. You can install them by typing the command:

sudo pacman -S --needed base-devel git dkms

base-devel is the package you need to get the compiler and programs to compile the source code, git is to download the source code from git hub. Dkms is what the script needs to load the finished driver file into the kernel(Far as I know)

At the time of the writing of this I dont remember what driver worked. (There are several) Though you can figure it out with trial and error. 

    lsusb

This command will print the list of your usb devices, copy and paste The ID code of the wifi adapter into Google and you'll find git hub pages of different drivers people wrote for the card. 

Once you find a driver you'd like to try navigate to the git page, copy and paste the url into the terminal with this command

    git clone pasted-url

 this will "clone" the git into a directory. Make sure you read any readme files using the cat command or any text editor of your choice before you begin trying to install them. 

If for some reason the driver didnt work. You can verify the version that was installed by typing dkms status and then copy and paste the driver itself and version. and type 

    sudo dkms remove driver/version. 

This way you'll be able to try another one without it conflicting. 

If you're having a lot of trouble with this wifi adapter. I highly suggest you get different wifi adapter, as the majority of wifi adapters the drivers are baked into the kernel, but this one has been especially troublesome. It was a learning experience though.

Finding information on Google can be a confusing mess nowadays

I was trying to find information on the COMPTIA A+ Certification, The first thing I did was Google about it and follow the links I found. I found a bunch of stuff that wasnt relevant and seemed to be scam links. One thing seemed to be a scam because they didnt have SSL enabled on their web server. Then I found a course that wanted way too much for the tuition and expected me to sit in the class for an entire day and cram it all in within 5 days which wouldnt work very well.

The next thing I tried is tried to find a book on the certification. But the books I found on Amazon were out of date. Later on I found a udemy course that was on sale, though by the time I have the money for it Id have to pay full price. But the full price is pretty reasonable and I may be able to get it covered being in the mental health rehab or I can save up for it if I cant get funding.

The nurse I was trying to show the thing helped me out a little bit, since sometimes after I take my medication I'm a bit confused.

Looking for information on the certification took a lot longer because I was using the computer at the psyche rehab which was full of viruses. I had to troubleshoot several things as I used it. I think next time I want to show the staff something I'll just bring out my Thinkpad.

I've been trying to organize files on my computer better

I dont organise files very well so I'm trying a different method. A lot of information I find on organising files seem intended for if you work in a office. Though I thought the same tips could be applied even though I dont work in one. 

Some tips in some contexts work in others. This idea works here sort of for organising my text files, pictures and videos. Though for saving pictures off the internet I'm probably going to end up with duplicate files. But that's okay, because it'll probably be less than what I have today. 

It'll also make backing up files easier, as the individual directories will be less large in size because everything will be separated according to year and month. It'll also make finding my files easier.

This is an example of the tree of my Documents directory this morning. The only directories I created in all of my new Documents directory were just in the April directory because that's the current month:

I still have to work on what I name the individual files so it's easier to identify without opening them.

I have everything in a directory for this year. It's a been redundant having the year there, but it'll make it so down the road when i copy this somewhere, like at the end of this year that saves me another thing to do later. 

As each month rolls by I'll copy the folder of the month to the backup folder in my home directory and then either burn it to a disk or upload it to cloud storage. I usually dont like using cloud storage, since it can be pricy and I'm running out of storage on my Google drive. So I'm probably going to end up burning it to a DVD-R. Which is what some people would call the boomer way of backing up files. Though oh well, if it isnt broken dont fix it. 

Steps to follow before and while following the Arch wiki

Make sure you have a working computer other than the one you're installing Arch Linux to for browsing the Arch Wiki on. Either that or print it off the pages you know you'll need so you have it handy for reference. You could always use your phone, but reading a lot on a small screen can be cumbersome from all the scrolling than on a normal sized screen.

Before you attempt to install 

If you never touched Linux it would probably be best to use an easier to use Linux distribution such as Manjaro before you try any DIY Linux distribution. You also should be comfortable with the terminal. Manjaro is fairly easy to install and have a working system you could start with that. Another one is Ubuntu. Read the Installation guide once or twice before you attempt anything to familiarise yourself with the material so you dont go in blind. Look up anything you dont understand.

While googling for help, dont be tempted to follow an installation guide other than the official one and dont use the included installation script. This is important if you ever need help from the official support channels, they wont help you if they know you used an automated tool or that you followed directions other than the official ones they provide on their official wiki.

Get familiar with your system. Know what the model name of your computer, if it's a laptop or prebuilt. Even if it is, you should also know what the model name of the the motherboard is and the serial number. you should know is what kind of CPU you have. Also what video card you have and how much system memory you have. Once you know the model names of your hardware you should write them down somewhere. This way if you have any hardware or driver related issues you have something you can Google. 

Get the model name of any external devices you have, even though most of those should work out of the box it's good to have the model names of all of these on hand. Even though most stuff is baked into the kernel there's an odd thing that doesnt work and you have to compile for. 

Explore what software you'd like to use. If you're coming from something like Ubuntu or Manjaro, you might want to find out what you were using on that for certain types of software because it'll make the installation process a lot easier because you'll be using mostly familiar stuff.

While you you install 

Read everything carefully and fully, read to the end of the section before you type any commands. Make sure you understand what the command is supposed to do. If you dont understand something it's better to not do it until you understand.

The commands for the initial install you should especially be careful because they're case sensitive, read them twice, and read what you type into the terminal twice before you hit the enter key.

Even though installing Arch Linux can be a pain, it's worth it because you learn things about Linux that you can use elsewhere.

I'm trying to build better habits

In an effort to become more aware of my habits. I started writing down everything I do every time I do them. I got the idea from this video:

Other than make me more aware of in the moment what I'm doing it's also motivating me to do more productive things, or at least it seems like that. I'm getting ideas about what I can do better. I suppose that's the whole point. The exercise is to see what you're doing and identifying things you can change.

I think I sort of do this already without realising it, of what I'm doing to a point. I waste a lot of time though because I have too much of it. 

I forgot a couple things because I got distracted but it's pretty much everything I did for awhile. I lost track of time so I'm not sure how long of a time span. These are the things i did in the wee hours of the morning since I didnt feel like sleeping(again).

While watching the video I had an idea of writing at least a page in my journal. It doesnt matter what I write about just stream of conscious at any time. That would be easy for me to accomplish. I noticed once I get going I write multiple pages. Since I'm writing out of space in my notebook and I cant buy any right now I'll write it in a word processor but up the font a bit because at the default size it fills up less space than writing in my journal. That would just make it easier to meet the goal.

Even though he didnt really mention in it in the video. I had an idea that building one habit over a month and then adding to those habits and linking them together would be a good idea. Since if I do too much at once I'll get less motivated. Though I probably already encountered that idea somewhere when I was researching awhile back. I think there's a term for it, habit stacking. 

I decided to limit interactions with new people to almost zero because I dont know how to interact with people appropriately and it stresses me out nowadays. For online I'll just stick to private chat rooms and mostly stay out of the public ones. Locally I'll just stick to family and people I know I can trust and shun everyone else.

I tend to get a long best with autistic people because they're pretty lonely too.  

The people I do accept I am not even sure I want to talk to anymore. how do I learn social skills when I never learned them? I know I have some but for some reason I cant interact with people anymore, it's like i have thought blocks to certain types of conversations. 

There's a quote I'm not sure if it fits in this context. I forget who wrote it:

"It's better to be alone than in bad company"

This man is a hero

He knows the staff need to hear the same thing thousands of time because they all seem stuck on stupid like most psychiatric nurses. This man was brave enough to totally troll them. 

I wouldnt do that myself because nurses can be mentally unstable, they're often poorly trained for that type of work. These nurses in the video just lock him up the first time he was calm and just repeating the same thing repeatedly.  being told the same thing over and over serves them right because by the looks of it seem to be horrible people with no empathy. 

Psychiatry is based on quack medicine so no wonder they're poorly equipped to deal with people. This guy wouldve been better off in a holding cell at a police station for the night than a psyche ward.

Strange thing a guy said to me in a mental ward that had a lot of wisdom to it

He said "Program yourself" like write yourself programs for you to follow like a computer. It sounded absurd at the time. Though now I realized it would be handy to think that way for routines. I'm kind of doing it now when I enter my room and tidying my room. When you're starting a routine it has to have some point and the action has to be specific and there has to be a goal to the behaviour.

So when I enter my room I:

When enter door way
look at room
Anything out of place? If yes tidy up
Any trash? If yes discard
is the trash full? If yes take it to the bigger trash
Every once in awhile go through drawers and find bigger items to discard.
If nothing to do then sit down.

Sounds kind of nutty but it makes things a lot easier because I never have to spend long cleaning up.  

So the next habit I want to add it drinking water. Since I figured drinking water would help so many things including my brain, since the brain is mostly water so Id be able to sleep better if I had more water in my system. 

Many chemical processes in the brain rely on having enough water. Otherwise your cognition goes down. I'm on medication that changes the blood flow in my brain like Divalproex so I need more water than I usually do because otherwise medication is gumming up certain neurotransmitters. I cant speak to it because I'm not a neuroscientist. But I know anticonvulsants affect the blood flow and certain neurotransmitters like GABA. Water in the system effects blood flow in theory.

So what I'm going to do is drink water when ever I sit down and keep the water bottle full constantly. So I'll be mindful of the level of the water bottle. Also drink extra water the more caffeine I drink as I pee.

snes music

Habits or lack thereof

 

I have habits of having no habits. What I learned about developing healthy habits is you cant do it all in one day. You got to start small. So for the past month or so I've been getting myself in the habit of tidying/cleaning my room when ever i enter it. I come in and out of my room a lot so it stays pretty tidy except when I'm upset or really tired.

The next habit i want to start is a bed time routine. Since before I had a fairly erratic sleep routine, since there was various things I did that would keep me up at odd times. A lot of the time I think it's the medication because it often makes me feel high at night. But that's not the only piece of the puzzle, it's things I'm doing too. 

I figured I might have some social jet lag as there are people I talk to that are either night owls too(like a guy I know in Ontario) and other people I talk to that are in the UK. The people in the UK I usually talk to in the mornings, afternoons and early evenings as at night time around 20:00 hours it's midnight for them so they're usually in bed by that time. The night owl from Ontario sometimes talks to me at 2am or so. Though when I told him I was trying to stay up late less he has been contacting me less at that time. The last time i talked to him it was around 23:00 hours. Yes I know it's weird I write things in 24 hour time but I prefer it nowadays. Because it's easier to keep things straight at strange times and figuring out things at varying times. Also it helps my brain. It may sound silly. 

Though the meds are a big part of it. I've been up for over 24 hours now and I'm still driven to do stuff even though I probably should be winding down to go to sleep. The last time i tried reducing it I found I felt less moody and more relaxed. Though I feel I must take them at the full dose for reasons I'm not going to get into right now.

Random pearl Jam songs

Playing Puyo Puyo Tetris while tired

I got myself in the habit of keeping my room clean

It may seem like a small thing, but keeping my room tidy has done wonders for some of my anxiety. I know where everything is now. Also gives me something to do that's productive. I tidy it every time I enter the room and sometimes when I leave the room. 

Every once in awhile I'll decide whether or not something should be discarded. Before if I needed to clean it, it was a chore, but now that I'm cleaning pretty much every time I return a lot of the time there's nothing to do.

I still have a lot of random stuff I'm not sure if i should keep or not. Though I already got rid of a lot of pointless stuff and the things I dont want that are taking up the most space have lithium-ion batteries. Those are hazardous waste so I cant chuck them in the trash.

some random memes

 

 

You should laugh at yourself

Laughing at yourself is great. I tend to like to laugh at my own expense. Because I'm laughing at myself not because I'm funny but because I'm pathetic. Though if you think about it everyone is pathetic in some kind of way so we should find humour in our own personal failings. Before Id delete my writing if it wasnt good enough. id destroy my own stuff all the time. Most of it.

Nowadays I just leave things alone in most circumstances, because it's not all the bad. I realized that there are worse things on the internet. People write worse things than me. 

one time I was reading a novel and it was like I was reading some terrible fanfiction on the internet. If things like that are published in a physical book, printed on pages and bound in a book is what I write really that bad?

I've seen research papers that were basically a huge shit post in official form. Devoid of meaning.

This song has double meanings depending on how it's intrepeted

This song is probably about a guys drug addict lover. Though it could be interpreted as someone being on psychiatric drugs because a lot of the time it's usually the case the drugs dont work for a lot of people. At least that's how I like to interpret this song. Though I tend to miss the point in a lot of things. I think everything can be interpreted many different ways. This is part of the song:

[Verse 2]
And I hope you're thinking of me
As you lay down on your side
Now the drugs don't work, they just make you worse
But I know I'll see your face again
[Chorus]
Now the drugs don't work, they just make you worse
But I know I'll see your face again

Embrace the cringe

Someone told me one time that I should embrace the cringe. I dont think that's exactly how he worded it, though that was basically it. His reasoning is not everything is cringe because you think it is so you might as well be comfortable with yourself. 

There are a lot of things that are very cringe about me. Why, your looking at it right now  how I'm unironically using zoomer speak at nearly 40 years old(cringe in the context of the last sentence) That's very cringeworthy. Though I'm not sure how else to say that nowadays so it just stuck. I use a mixture of words from different generations. I think calling things "neat" is boomer speak. 

What is cringe anyways? I suppose there's a threshold to things that induce a cringe response in people depending on the person. You cant please everyone. I dont have the vocabulary to understand.

Windows is a pain in the ass nowadays

I havnt used windows very much in the past ten years or so. I sometimes use it for games though I dont play games much anymore so I dont boot in there much. I mostly stay in Manjaro Linux. I find the interface of most Linux desktop environments much easier to use than whatever Microsoft calls their interface nowadays.

I cant put my finger on what exactly annoys me about Windows. Everything about it is annoying. Maybe because I’m no longer used to it anymore. One thing I noticed is Windows tends to be very unstable, sure it runs fine most of the time but when things get sticky, they really get sticky. I’m so used to things running smoothly in any Linux that the way Windows behaves makes me annoyed. Though this may be the software I happen to use. It may not be Windows itself. The last time it happened Discord got stuck. Though Windows tends to soak up a lot of resources so it may have been a bit of both.

Settings are much easier to set in Desktop Linux than they are in Windows. In Microsoft’s OS they try to hold your hand too much with this convoluted layout to the point you have to Google to find anything. While I find in Linux, on the XFCE desktop environment at least it’s easier. Not everything is hidden in a maze of menus.

Windows 10 is a convoluted mess. As for my problems with it, The start menu on Windows is absolutely worthless. It is annoying to use so I usually just put everything on the desktop that I use on there. I might be talking out of my ass tuba. I do that a lot. I’m just biased towards Linux nowadays.

If you dont need to use any kind of specialized software, ex Adobe software and you dont need to play the newest games you’d be stupid to continue using Windows.

Now that Steam has a compatibility layer called Proton for running Windows native games in Linux I have less reason to use Windows. I have a slow computer so I still have to run games directly because it takes more resources to run games that way. A lot of games I tried on it worked great without much prodding. At least the ones that arent too demanding on my computer.

I might need Adobe software in the future. I think if it comes to that i might buy a Mac instead. Even though I’m not a fan of most Apple hardware because it’s expensive for no reason there’s certain aspects that are good about them. If I didnt want to use Apple’s interface I could always run XFCE on it as it’s compatible with unix based operating systems. I dont like the direction Microsoft is taking with their OS. 

an xfce desktop on Manjaro