Mini PC review: Beelink SER5 Pro with AMD Ryzen 5 5600H
About a month ago I bought a Beelink SER5 Pro Mini PC and have been using it as a desktop and test machine. I thought I’d give a quick review in case anybody else is looking at one of these for their own use. The SER5 was a bit...
The right way to name music files and my Picard file-naming script
Last year I got deep into using MusicBrainz Picard to help tag music before I add it to my collection. The MusicBrainz database is fantastic, and it saves me a lot of time tweaking metadata. Most of the time I can just look up an album and it finds...
What’s the deal with night mode?
At the risk of sounding like a Jerry Seinfeld bit, what is the deal with night mode? I was in a meeting today where somebody touted night mode in a tool as a Really Good Thing™ and I’m perplexed. I’m not perplexed about what night mode (or dark mode)...
Tab sweep on music tagging
Have been adding music to my Plex server this weekend. Part of that is cleaning up metadata before adding to Plex. Curating my music collection is one of those things that’s relaxing but also frustrating....
Time to update your… cable?
Anybody else feel like the barrage of app and operating system updates is getting to be a bit much? Not only the pace of updates, which shows no signs of slowing, but also the continual expansion of devices that require updates. Keeping your computer updated was no big deal....
My new favorite GNOME extension: quake-mode
Guake has long been a favorite application of mine. If you’re new to Guake, it’s a terminal application for Linux that stays out of site until it’s summoned with a hotkey, like the console in Id Software’s Quake games. Hit F12 or whatever combo you set up for it,...
Blacklight: A real-time website privacy inspector
Ever wondered what kind of trackers are on any given site? Check out Blacklight, a web-based tool to reveal specific user-tracking technologies on a site. I stumbled on this via The Markup and thought it might be interesting for privacy minded folks. (See: “How We Built a Real-time Privacy...
In case your current keyboard is too practical… the Cube Keyboard
To follow up on yesterday’s post about word processors, here’s a new entry for keyboard enthusiasts: The Cube Keyboard. It’s a keyboard that’s… a cube. I don’t think he’s going to win any typing speed contests with this one. Hat tip to Lobste.rs for this one....
My first word processor
This week I took a little trip down memory lane when a friend posted a meme or something about Stephen King’s Wang word processor in the 1980s. That was early for me, but sometime in 1993 or 1994 I bought my first word processor. Not a general purpose computer...
Things they don’t teach, but should: Content review
Writing and editing are taught widely in schools and professional programs, but content review is a neglected and unloved (and rare) skill that I’ve never seen taught or even acknowledged – but it’s widely required in jobs throughout the tech industry. If you’re a product manager, product marketer, comms...