Will Thompson

Computational dadfluencer, lapsed amateur musician, somewhere in Greater London.

Formerly @wjt. He/him.

Public Key

npub1qty7zfva8ste9qdh48eaa6pe6njj22sgwx33hnkxjz6nddjfpzjstq6cjn

NIP-05 Address

wjt_at_mastodon.me.uk@mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsq9j0pykwnc9ujsxm6nu77aquafef99gy8rgcmemrfpdfkkeys3fgfyqj5s

Author Public Key

npub1qty7zfva8ste9qdh48eaa6pe6njj22sgwx33hnkxjz6nddjfpzjstq6cjn

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Last Notes

2024-07-13 14:25:31

We've dug out my wife's iPod Nano, which I plan to fill up with music and give to our 7-year-old. But first, the challenge: how does one transfer music to a 17-year-old iPod on Linux in AD 2024?

2024-07-02 17:38:13

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My specific research questions would be:
1. Is this actually a useful model, to be able to start your project in the simple tool and seamlessly switch to the full feature set when you reach a limitation? (For me it was time signature control in GarageBand.)
2. If it is possible to switch back to the simple mode while preserving the project (and any changes made in complex mode) do people do that? Or is it a one-way street from simple to complex?

2024-07-02 16:12:35

Is there any published, empirical research into how effective (or not) it is for a complex application to have a “simple mode” setting that reduces its functionality to make it more approachable for beginners?
(Conceptually I'm talking about Garage Band and Logic being one application where you can switch between the simple & pro interfaces & feature set.)

2024-06-29 08:57:49

Achievement unlocked: 7-year-old repeated something racist she read in a Roald Dahl book 😬

2024-06-11 14:37:14

Rediscovering Vessels' 2011 album Helioscope today. So many great tracks.
https://vesselsband.bandcamp.com/track/recur
#ThisIsMyJam

2024-06-10 20:58:10

I have a NUC I would like to repurpose as a home server. I would like to use an image-based/immutable/atomic/... Linux distro, with no GUI in the base image.
- Fedora CoreOS seems out because AFAICT you need a separate server hosting your butane/ignition config, and config changes mean a reimage.
- I would be happy with Silverblue Without A GUI but the Fedora IOT (which I think is basically that) failed to install its own bootloader.
What should I use?

2024-05-30 20:08:44

This morning I booted an admittedly slow computer running Windows that I last booted in 2019. 13 hours later it is still downloading & applying OS updates, currently with "2018" in their titles (??)

2024-05-29 20:00:39

I have been keeping a journal on and off as part of managing my mental health following my auditory system damage last summer. Right now I start with the same prompt each time: write 5 things I am grateful for that day. It gets kind of repetitive which puts me off the whole exercise.
People who are better/more practiced at journalling than me: do you always use the same prompt each day or do you vary it? How do you get the prompts?

2024-05-17 10:28:47

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@npub1lwu…6w4j Neovim 0.10 was released yesterday and did exactly that. https://gpanders.com/blog/whats-new-in-neovim-0.10/#builtin-commenting

2024-05-08 10:22:44

Game devs: how do you manage merge conflicts in your projects? A colleague and I were both independently working on the same Godot project, stored in Git, and so we inevitably had a merge conflict when we each modified the same scene. The scene format is plain text so after a bit of trial & error I resolved the conflict. Are there better tools for this in industry? Or is the tool “don't edit scene X, I'm working on it”?

2024-04-16 20:39:47

Food £200
Data £150
Transport £800
Fairy-related stuff on Etsy to leave out overnight for my kids to find in the morning £3,600
Utility £150
someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this.

2024-03-29 22:10:31

I accept some level of transatlantic spelling and vocabulary differences when I play a game from the New York Times, but, “valuate”? “value” is right there! Just stop after 2 syllables!

2024-03-29 08:16:41

A reverse takeover is when a private company acquires an already-public company and effectively parasitises it, to avoid the lengthy and tedious process of going public from scratch.
I saw Ptyxis has been (correctly!) blocked from being listed on Flathub in the org.gnome.* namespace without going through the necessary process, and got thinking: maybe it could perform a reverse takeover of Terminal or Console which are already in that namespace... https://github.com/flathub/flathub/pull/5036#issuecomment-1998114406

2024-03-16 22:24:14

People who know about charging laptops, USB-PD and AliExpress: I have a Dell laptop from 2015 that predates USB C. If I buy this adapter that purports to convert USB-PD to a Dell barrel jack, is my laptop likely to charge, or explode?
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005766656059.html

2024-03-15 09:49:45

Today I realised I had ordered 5 bunches of 7 bananas = 35 bananas, rather than 5 bananas.
Please recommend some good banana-related recipes!

2024-02-22 20:30:42

Cowards #SpellingBee
https://mastodon.me.uk/system/media_attachments/files/111/977/024/438/554/319/original/bfdd397bfb8dc79e.png

2024-02-22 19:32:19

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@npub12f7…lkxh pretty sure "20 million qubits" was a Black Mirror episode

2024-02-18 20:21:25

Quick evening experiment to replace @npub1qme…hfrm’s build system with Meson. Woefully incomplete but getting there!
https://mastodon.me.uk/system/media_attachments/files/111/954/332/251/582/866/original/bc1b27008c5851b7.png

2024-02-17 20:36:17

Do native English speakers who did not study Latin at school know what “et al.” means?
Specifically, is listing an app's developer as “Jane Bloggs, et al.” fine or pretentious/incomprehensible nonsense?

2024-02-16 09:12:48

Apropos of nothing, Chrome on Android (and no other browser¹) can install web apps as WebAPKs, which behave better than (say) web apps installed from Firefox. For example, WebAPKs appear in the main app tray, not just the desktop; WebAPKs can be subjected to screen time limits; they don't get the browser icon overlaid on their icon; etc.
¹ except Samsung's browser on Samsung phones, since they added the same special treatment

2024-02-06 16:03:30

I'll be at @npub1l9k…sj5d's State of Open Con tomorrow – who'll I see? #SOOCon24

2024-02-03 09:30:32

Come to the GNOME #FOSDEM booth in building H, level 1 in the next 121 minutes if you etc.
https://mastodon.me.uk/system/media_attachments/files/111/866/842/146/701/749/original/1644ce70fc0fd1d4.jpg

2024-01-26 22:16:38

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@npub12f7…lkxh (FWIW I think one could make that VM setup script work on Fedora without too much trouble; it mainly runs a sequence of commands inside the Boxes Flatpak.)

2024-01-25 19:23:13

I'll be speaking at #FOSDEM about why free software that runs on end-user systems should collect anonymous usage data, and how it can be done in a privacy-preserving way. Bring your pitchforks to Janson at 15:00 CST on Saturday 3rd February.
https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-3648-privacy-respecting-usage-metrics-for-free-software-projects/

2024-01-15 11:21:24

Putting “click here” in your hyperlinks is bad enough, but on https://www.hive.co.uk/ the “Click here to login” text is not even clickable! (Only the “My Account” below it is.)
https://mastodon.me.uk/system/media_attachments/files/111/759/693/431/655/307/original/e524e86baf575ee1.png

2024-01-14 21:29:14

Parents & present-givers to teenagers: any recommendations for a 16th birthday present for someone whose primary interest is space (and also likes books)?
(Tempted to buy a third copy of A City On Mars.)

2024-01-11 15:59:54

What is the presentation tool of choice in 2024 for the discerning hacker who would like to make text-light slides with the occasional diagram or code snippet?

2024-01-10 17:55:36

Google Fit doesn't have an exercise category for “carrying a 3½-year-old child on your shoulders”, smh

2024-01-02 10:33:24

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@npub1lwu…6w4j because 1969–1970 was the winter where Britain experimented with remaining on BST all year round.

2023-12-30 17:46:42

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@npub1yyx…qa5g due to a historical address book synching bug and Unix Timekeeping Reasons, several hundred of my contacts turn 54 on January 1st 2024

2023-12-28 08:14:20

Americans! I seek advice on good US 501(c)(3)s that work in these areas:
- reproductive rights (Planned Parenthood?)
- electoral reform / not allowing an old racist guy + his enablers to regress American democracy further (???)
- dealing with the effects of conflict (MSF? IRC?)
- research into tinnitus treatments (ATA?)

2023-12-11 10:22:00

Long shot, but does anyone I know in/near London have a laptop with Intel RST®, the feature from a few years ago that makes the internal disk invisible to Linux unless you disable in the firmware settings, that I could borrow for a bit?

2023-12-09 13:05:47

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@npub1yyx…qa5g https://phanpy.social/?

2023-12-06 07:53:53

What's your favourite Christmas song? Mine is Boris' festive hit, Just Abandoned My-Elf
https://boris.bandcamp.com/track/just-abandoned-myself

2023-11-29 19:31:23

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@npub12f7…lkxh I think this is called "wait for the EU to force Google to offer this option"

2023-11-26 15:13:49

“Sure, I know how to relax at weekends,” I say, submitting a patch to a photo browser app I don't even use on a Sunday afternoon.

2023-11-18 17:57:00

Who at Google do I need to bribe to make the Android voice recognition understand my daughter's name, rather than hearing it as the much more common name it sounds like? (In its defence most humans make the same mistake but surely on my own phone this should be solvable.)

2023-11-13 16:27:11

It's embarrassing enough to be part of an alleged representative democracy that semi-regularly turns defeated politicians into lords to bring them back into the Cabinet, but even by our standards to do this with Cameron is mortifying.

2023-11-06 09:44:20

A cool thing about the Fediverse is that even I, a cis het white centrist dad, can be mansplained for using a word in its colloquial sense rather than its scientific sense

2023-10-26 18:43:41

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@npub12f7…lkxh It was better than the Demi Lovato cover, and there was more to it than the Weezer cover of some other forgettable song. But... I can see Lovato being vaguely in the ballpark of Frozen fans' older siblings. Whereas... Weezer? Panic!?

2023-10-26 08:55:13

From the department of “What is the point of the Demi Lovato version of ‘Let It Go’?”: what is the point of the Panic! at the Disco version of ‘Into the Unknown’?

2023-10-23 13:06:22

https://mastodon.me.uk/system/media_attachments/files/111/284/478/115/144/622/original/2eff738e381c5288.png

2023-10-22 14:39:25

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@npub12f7…lkxh Regrettably I was not wearing that t-shirt at the time (but I do own it)
https://mastodon.me.uk/system/media_attachments/files/111/279/176/307/092/181/original/d781e03934795a0c.jpg

2023-10-21 09:07:32

I bumped into my daughters' classmates' grandmother the other day, and she told me: “You look like a teenager!”
I was wearing Converse, jeans, a hoodie, a rucksack, riding a kick scooter, wearing earbuds, so… fair enough I suppose.

2023-10-16 20:02:43

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@npub12f7…lkxh I have a Headspace subscription so the second season has been getting a thorough listening-to. If only there were more than like 12 new episodes though…

2023-07-26 10:36:26

Ah yes, the two genders:
- wears a dress correctly
- wears a dress upside-down
https://mastodon.me.uk/system/media_attachments/files/110/779/937/730/324/792/original/96f3c540f2bcc90f.jpg

2023-07-19 07:47:49

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@npub198t…hasj @npub154q…evek For what it's worth, on this laptop I use https://github.com/google/fscrypt/ for filesystem-level encryption of my home directory, tied to my login passphrase. I don't have full disk encryption. This does mean that my Wi-Fi passphrases and VPN credentials are not encrypted. Maybe I should tell NetworkManager to store those in my keyring rather than system-wide but it's so much more convenient not to!

2023-07-19 06:21:09

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@npub198t…hasj @npub154q…evek AIUI Windows does it in such a way that if you change anything in the boot path, auto-decrypting won't happen. So you can't actually do anything with the computer without entering your login password. So, if you trust that the login process contains no bugs, ...

2023-07-05 14:06:42

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I cite @npub1pfe…e2dm's post “Telemetry Is Not Your Enemy” approvingly and recommend reading it. He gives broadly the same rationale and line of argument at a conceptual level, written much better than I could hope to.
https://blog.glyph.im/2023/03/telemetry-is-not-your-enemy.html

2023-07-05 14:01:46

I wrote about the privacy-preserving telemetry system in @npub1dwl…r9f6 and why I believe that, done right, telemetry in free software is Good, actually. It's a long article! But there's a Spiders Georg reference midway through to break it up a little.
https://blogs.gnome.org/wjjt/2023/07/05/endless-oss-privacy-preserving-metrics-system/