The FOSS community have generally grown a kind of tacit acceptance of proprietary computer games. Everyone loves them, so nobody wants to make too much of a fuss, but I think we have good reasons to treat them differently. Computer games do not - by default - require environment interaction. They can (mostly) operate …

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I never had the money for serious gaming, and perhaps it did me well; I've focussed on other things. But when the pandemic hit, I decided that this was exactly the time to start playing again, so I bought Tomb Raider from 2013. Having not played anything much since Metal Gear Solid 3, I was blown away. The seamless way …

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If you haven't heard of him, he could only have been described as a 'mad genius'. Looking at his work, I found myself astounded by the fact that if he hadn't existed, I would have sworn that what he did was impossible. He made a full operating system. At this point, before learning that he actually did this, I would …

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I bought a Sony PRS-600 e-reader, and it's great. I've started reading again, after not reading any books for some years. Nothing could be easier. You plug it into a computer, stick on an epub book or pdf, then the e-reader lists the books you have, keeps the last page open of the books, and lets you make notes. This …

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This isn't advice. If I have any advice, it's just to try various things and find out what works for you. When it comes to productivity tools, I focus always on speed before and above anything else. If some new tool has a wonderful new feature, but takes three seconds to load, it's off the table. I won't even consider …

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I've never been able to focus. I'll be cleaning, or messing with spreadsheets for work, and all of a sudden I wonder 'could you type prose in the international phonetic alphabet (IPA), so you could put accents into a book properly?'. And then I think 'can I use the IPA as a keyboard layout, like I use the Polish …

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I found out about the Russian invasion of Ukraine from a meme-site, where someone had cobbled together all the public footage available from the ground. The sirens, the little lights in the sky, the military aeroplanes, and the sound of bombs. Jumping to Youtube (where I watch news channels), I found they have less …

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I always find what I need with Duck Duck go. I've heard others don't, and I have a suspicion they're using it wrong. Anyone used to Google might search for a film by typing in 'that guy with the beard', and find exactly what they're looking for, because Google's algorithm has cached thousands of similar results, and …

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Sysadmins refer to the low-level scripted hacks as 'the background noise of the internet'. So apparently if the internet could speak, it would sound like Let me in, I am admin. Password is admin. Let me in. I am root. Let me in...are you still there? Let me in...

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People often talk in terms of the false dichotomy between pragmatic software use, and ethical software use. 'Us pragmatic folks', they begin, 'just want to use what works'. We should understand of course that they have nothing against people who have principles, but would prefer functioning to non-functioning …

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