monthly update, october edition

happy samhain~

• i've joined at least two (2) cybersecurity-adjacent mailing lists almost completely by accident slash "ooh shiny" inclinations, and this 100% feels like a continuation of learning Cool Stuff by osmosis just by diving into the linux-y world. is this the early days of the "krad becomes a sysadmin completely against her will" fable for the ages? :P
  
  • (if i had to become one, i think the area i'd focus on is like.... sysadmin-y for tor-but-just-personal-art/anticensorship-sites, like i feel like there could be some fascinating overlap there. been meaning to set up an onion mirror for my site for a while too for the lulz.)
  • relatedly, i've mentioned Snowflake (tor extension) here before, but didn't know until recently if you have the icon visible, it turns green when somebody's using your connection safely. it's been green a lot more lately. really unexpectedly heartwarming to glance up every now and then in the last few weeks while the iranian protests/(revolution?) have been going on and know there's a real good chance at least one of those green blips is somebody getting info out there and circumventing censorship.  

• also relatedly i've been bulking up on using krita for my art almost exclusively for the last month (ever since one of my two USB ports on the drawing laptop finally stopped working) and the transition from like, 2010 era photoshop has gone shockingly well? every day i'm all 'oh my god you can DO THIS WITH FREE SOFTWARE??" (seriously there's a paint-bucket fill tool in krita that blew my fucking mind that basically erases any need to do "flats") bitches who complain about oss have no idea the life of luxury they've been living with my god. the painting brush engine alone makes me want to paint hardcore again.  it's crashed once or twice for me but less so now that i installed the non-developer version, and, admittedly, based off how many times photoshit crashed/, krita beats it pretty easily on those metrics too. :P like, PS on the relatively new mac computer crashes almost weekly lol.
  
  • i know 'year of the linux desktop hurrrr' meme is a little ah, overused, lol - but i actually do really think there's a new wave of non-developers who are getting so fucking sick of micro$hits/apples "rent a computer as a service" stunts that they're willing to try something new, and if companies like System76 was more well known to sidestep the issue of 'how to build a linux machine that doesn't have weird incompatibilities with drivers' - oh man. i know i'm not the last one that's not going back.

• been grinning like an idiot for the last day off and on because this pakidge came from littlegamersartshop ~  the sticker went immediately on this laptop and i've got the keychain right next to my collection of his cipher cards .... yes i have a problem, what of it lol. it's really well made, and having a physical piece of the charming part of 90's with resin phone charms is just lovely on a lot of sentimental levels for me.  the very kind shop owner makes these for all FE characters across the series too, btw!