Lifestyle

The Blockbuster Video Rental at Home

I see a lot of nostalgia for the video store rental atmosphere online these days. Rightly so. The experience was whimsical and wonderful. Friday nights walking into Blockbuster with my parents and sister was always an adventure. The outer walls were filled with the latest Hollywood hits. The interesting and obscure was scattered vicariously throughout the middle sections and and the video games were always closest to the register where it’d be more difficult for…

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Lifestyle Uncategorized

Active Listening

As Jeff Kennon describes in his blog posts. Active listening is a lost art. It’s difficult to slow down in our daily lives and pay attention to those around us. Afterall, we are busy people and always occupied with ourselves. “Now this habit of asking about another’s day I’m trying to walk in is much more involved than just spouting out some southern hospitality. I’m trying not to ask how someone’s doing as a form…

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Lifestyle Travel

The Economics of Wireless Earbuds

Several years ago now apple introduced their new iPhone with the notable omission the headphone jack. I was in college at the time and I recall the move from Apple being highly controversial. I remember everyone walked around with those apple wired earbuds across campus talking on the phone and listening to music. It was still the same as today in some ways. Android users were mocking iPhone users with the typical back and forth…

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Software

RiMusic and NewPipe Update

Recently I noticed RiMusic had a new update on FDroid so I decided to try it out again. I backed up my data from ViMusic and imported it to RiMusic with no issue. I’ve been on it about a week now and no more crashes. So I rescind my previous complaints about it’s stability. I would now recommend RiMusic over ViMusic. NewPipe Comments It seems YouTube changed something about their comments recently and this has…

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Lifestyle Privacy Software

(Update) The Push to Eliminate Google from my Daily Life

It’s been 3 weeks since I started my attempt to fully remove google from my phone. The journey has had some ups and downs. I think I have a mostly stable solutions set in place now. The services I was trying to replace were Youtube, Youtube Music, and Google Maps Youtube – Winner (NewPipe) Initially I narrowed my selection of Youtube replacements down to two options. LibreTube and NewPipe. Just based on LibreTube UI I…

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Internet Lifestyle Privacy Software

The Push to Eliminate Google from my Daily Life

For a while now I’ve made an attempt to eliminate the use of Google from my daily life. Around 18 months ago I picked up a Pixel 3A and installed Ubuntu Touch on it. While it was fully functional technically speaking it was an abysmal experience overall. I may detail that experience later, but the Tl;dr is that I flashed CalyxOS on the phone and that was the biggest catalyst to this change. Since then…

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Travel

SkyFly: Steampunk Experience at Pigeon Forge

This past fall we had the chance to stay in Gatlinburg for a week and kick back for a bit. The area was tranquil, full of glorious colors and a dreamscape of scenery. One unexpected attraction we found was a little place called SkyFly: Soar America. When looking for attractions online we came across this place. The reviews were mixed, many people complained that it was $25 for a 5 min ride. Well I can…

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Linux Steam

Upgrading the Steam Deck Hard Drive

Recently I took the initiative to upgrade my steam deck hard drive from the 256gb it came with to the much larger Micron 2Tb 2400 that was reasonably priced at Amazon (not an affiliate link). There’s no shortage of videos on YouTube to help you out, but I often find written guides to be more passable. Daniel over at WhoIsThisJoker was kind enough to write a guide for the process using the pictures I provided…

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Privacy

Unconventional Email Privacy

There’s a lot to cover here. Any time someone mentions email privacy there are a few common services and practices that everyone seems to recommend. I will mention those here. However I have a few unconventional methods I use that are easy to implement as well. First I will start with those. Fake and Temporary Emails Vanishing Emails To start off I’d like to suggest if you don’t need to create an email for a…

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