I’ve been using linux for going on 31 (DANG, that’s over half my life) years now, and feel like the GUI web browsers I’ve spent the most time in are Netscape and Firefox. In the terminal, it’s been links, lynx, and w3m. I’ve happily used Firefox for the last I-don’t-know-how-many-years, with the extensions ublock origin, Joplin web clipper, Vimium (for Vim-style keybindings), and Bitwarden.

The reasons I decided to try something else boil down mainly to needing something keyboard-focused (Vim-like keybindings), minimal GUI (less clunky), and light weight. Firefox with Vimium meets the Vim-like keybindings, but with my tendency to have a lot of tabs open, I was having to run a couple of extra extensions (OneTab and Auto Tab Discard) just to manage the amount of memory Firefox was consuming. As for the something-less-clunky requirement, Firefox even with the menu and bookmark toolbars disabled still uses more screen real estate than I’d like.

My search for a new alternative led me to the only browser that checked all the boxes, qutebrowser.

From Wikipedia: qutebrowser is a free, open-source web browser that is keyboard-focused and minimal in design. Written in Python and using PyQt, qutebrowser aims to offer a lightweight browser that can be primarily operated with keyboard commands inspired by Vim-style keybindings.

So two months ago, I decided to stop using Firefox, and for at least a week, do all my web browsing using qutebrowser; I figured I needed a week to fully acclimate myself to the keybindings.

Qutebrowser, while new to me, is not new; it’s just recently turned 11 years old. The development team is very small, but what they’ve created is an extraordinary, useful, and hackable browser. There’s is NO way I will be able detail it’s many feature in this post, so a short synopsis of what makes qutebrowser awesome will have to do.

Qutebrowser is WAY better at the Vim-like keybindings than Vimium. There are so many keyboard short cuts, and they are sane as well. There’s a cheat sheet online for default bindings, as well as a html page listing them accessible at the address qute://bindings. You can edit, add, and disable keybindings too.

Basic keybindings to get you started (from qute://help):

• Use the arrow keys or hjkl to move around a webpage (Vim-like syntax is used in quite a few places)
• To zoom in or out of a webpage, use the + or - keys respectively
• To go to a new webpage, press o, then type a url, then press Enter (Use O to open the url in a new tab, go to edit the current URL)
• If what you’ve typed isn’t a url, then a search engine will be used instead (DuckDuckGo, by default)
• To switch between tabs, use J (next tab) and K (previous tab), or press , where num is the position of the tab to switch to
• To close the current tab, press d (and press u to undo closing a tab)
• Use H and L to go back and forth in the history
• To click on something without using the mouse, press f to show the hints, then type the keys next to what you want to click on (if that sounds weird, then just try pressing f and see what happens)
• Press : to show the commandline
• To search in a page, press /, type the phrase to search for, then press Enter. Use n and N to go back and forth through the matches, and press Esc to stop doing the search.
• To close qutebrowser, press Alt-F4, or :q, :wq, (or :ZZ) to save the currently open tabs and quit (note that in the settings you can make qutebrowser always save the currently open tabs)

Hints are another absolutely awesome thing about qutebrowser. Just hit the f key to list a hint for every clickable link the current page, then type the hint and you’ve clicked it without even using the mouse. Hit ; to enter hint mode and you’ll be greeted with a list of bindings with description for actions that can be taken in hint mode.

Type : to enter command mode and you’ll be greeted with a fzf interface that list every command. From here you can set do a LOT. Set bindings, update the ad-blocker, configure qutebrowser, and more.

If you haven’t caught on yet, qutebrowser is modal. Modes include: Normal, Caret, Command, Hint, Insert, Passthrough, Prompt, Register, and Yesno.

One of the things that drew me to Qutebrowser was it’s minimal UI. To say it doesn’t get in the way is an understatement. Other than the webpage itself, all you have is a minimal tab row, and a status bar, both of which can be disabled or toggled on and off. I really like how minimal the UI is, and find that because of it, qutebrowser is an excellent replacement for a TUI browser in one-off scripts and for use in TUI programs like newsboat, neomutt, and tuir.

Qutebrowser’s documentation is excellent! All settings, commands, and shortcuts are described and or documented online, in the fzf finder pop-up interface, html pages accessible from the qute:// addresses, and from the built-in documentation accessible via the :help command. All commands can be started with the –help flag as well. You can configure qutebrowser in command mode, at the prompt, or from the address qute://settings

Qutebrowser has built in ad-blocking, although not as effective as ublock origin. However, it is adequate, and coupled with my Raspberry Pi blocking ads network-wide with Pi-hole, my ad-blocking experience is equal to, or better than with Firefox and ublock origin.

Bookmark (and quickmark) management is another thing qutebrowser got right. I was able to import my bookmarks, and searching through them using the built-in fzf make for a superior experience. I won’t go into the differences between bookmarks and quickmarks, but will say that I’ve kept all my eggs in the quickmark basket so far.

Qutebrowser’s fzf-integration is excellent, and truly feels built-in. It is very useful, intuitive, and takes the whole keyboard-focused thing to a whole new level.

Qutebrowser is light weight(-ish). Lacking any sort of concrete data, and based solely on my experience so far, qutebrowser is lighter weight than Firefox. I do find memory usage creeping up slowly over long periods of time (weeks) if a lot of tabs have been opened and closed. Restarting qutebrowser solves this. I have also noticed an improvement with the latest release (3.4.0) in this regard.

Really, the only thing that qutebrowser lacks for me is extension support; you cannot install any extensions (yet). This hasn’t been an issue for me though. I don’t need ublock-origin with qutebrowser’s built in ad-blocking (coupled with my pi-hole). Also I haven’t missed Bitwarden’s extension, as I’ve found a more than adequate (and less clunky) replacement with a rofi/fzf script (rbw). The only extension I used in Firefox that I miss using in qutebrowser is the Joplin web clipper; but with qutebrowser’s user script capabilities I can envision different ways to regain that functionality.

I can highly recommend qutebrowser if you are looking for a minimal, lightweight, keyboard-focused, hackable web browser. Whether you’re familiar with Vim-like keybindings or not, give it a try, explore the online help system, and you will be rewarded with what I think is a superior browsing experience. Once you’ve spent some time in qutebrowser, it is very hard to use another browser!

Initially, this experiment was to last a week, but I’m on week 10 now, and I don’t see myself switching back.

-dsyates

(o\_!_/o)

What was weird about this was that the embedded audio player had been working just fine for 4 years–or so I thought. Sometime in last 48 months the html player on the page stopped working. The reason I had not noticed it had stopped working is that do not listen to the stream from my webpage, but from a terminal, an app on my phone or TV, from my icecast server URL, or in a browser tab directly linked to the icecast stream mountpoint.

I guess the even weirder part was that when serving the Jekyll page locally the embedded audio player worked just fine, but stopped working once deployed on my website.

I racked my brain over this for almost 2 days, thinking the cause had something to do with my updating Jekyll, or the new dark theme, That did not make sense, but was the first route I went down trying to fix this. I just could not figure out why the browser would open and play the stream from a new tab, but not from the html audio player.

After eliminating Jekyll as the cause, I got to looking at icecast. Icecast is the only forward facing service I run without TLS/SSL. Thinking that perhaps browsers had become more secure in the last 48 months (forbidding unencrypted streams in embedded audio players), I decided to enable SSL on my icecast server.

The hitch I ran into next was that icecast requires certificates to be bundled in one pem file–instead of separate fullkey and privkey pem files like apache. The solution was amazingly straight forward, and elegant.

All I had to do was (as root) cat the contents on the fullkey.pem and privkey.pem files into one new file (e.g. bundle.pem) accessible to icecast; that and update my icecast.xml and .buttrc files, and change ports.

Even better, in the /etc/letsencrypt/renewal/ directory I was able to append (prepended by post_hook = ) the cat command combining the two pem files to the conf file, at the end of the renewal parems section. Adding a && systemctl restart icecast2.service at the end of the cat command, ensures that when my letsencrypt certs are renewed, icecast will get renewed too.

This solved my problem and now the embedded audio player works. The new https stream URL (now on port 8001) is now:

https://lottalinuxlinks.com:8001/stream

-dsyates

(o\_!_/o)

While a lot has changed since my last post, some things have not: I still use i3; still use X-org; still start my window manager with startx; and still run debian stable on everything but my daily driver laptop, which I moved from debian sid to arch 1332 days ago.

But some things have changed: I’ve retired; become a grandfather; have started 3d-printing; added a computer and a couple of raspberry pi to my already large list of home server machines; started using some docker containers; and have rejoined The Linux Link Tech Show.

I hope to start posting here more often too.

-dsyates

(o\_!_/o)

I know and love debian. It works, I know all the ins and outs, and it has never once broken, failed to update, or let me down in any memorable way; these are the reasons debian is the only distro I would ever install on a server. Debian is not just for servers; debian is everything anybody needs, meaning if you need stable they have you covered, if you need more recent, less “stale” programs, they have that covered as well, and if you need the latest and greatest, then they have that too! If you want a minimal install, or a full fledged out of the box, everything included, just works distro, you have those options too. And no matter what you need, they have security covered too. Installing packages from the appropriate official repo, no matter stable, testing, or sid, you can rest easy knowing that security has been handled appropriately.

Debian sid is often called a rolling release, and it’s accurate to do so; outside of the freeze before a stable release, debian sid is constantly being updated. Other than that, if one sticks to the official repos, and doesn’t mix repos, just about everything you could possibly need is there, and can be safely downloaded and installed with almost zero unexpected gotchas to be had.

So why even try something new? Was there an itch that debian sid wasn’t scratching for me? The short and only answer to the question is that for my personal daily driver computers running sid, I have been for years maintaining a list (paper and electronic) of packages that were installed from source and outside of the standard sid repos. The itch that arch seemed to scratch that debian sid does not, is a solution for installing packages outside of the standard repos using the package manager. Debian doesn’t do this as easily, and more times than not, it’s easier to just build and install from source. With arch however, using the aur, and the pkgbuild system, everything on my lists of things installed outside the package manager on debain sid, could be installed using the package manager and the aur.

Is it perfect? Is it safer? No to both questions. The aur doesn’t feel as safe or secure as debian for sure; but it is just a safe as installing from source on sid, if you take the time to read the source –which is something you should be doing every time you install anything from source. The main advantage with arch and the aur is that you can install from source using the package manager.

So, for me it’s a win: if something is not in the official arch repos, and it’s in the aur (which everything on my lists were) I can install it with the package manager, which with arch is a superior user experience.

Just from a more nebulous aspect though, having things installed more close to source (less patches than with debian binaries) my system seems a little more lean–it’s a feel thing but it seems a little more lean and a little more snappy. One of the things I really enjoy about a debian sid install is the minimal netinstall, arch does this in spades, as you only install what you need and you only enable or start the services you need as well. With arch I feel more in control of every detail of my system.

Overall I am very happy replacing debian sid with arch, and I don’t regret anything about it. YMMV

-dsyates

(o\_!_/o)

It really started earlier than that though, around 5th grade; I evidently was lying about the amount of homework I had, and my mom made me carry a notebook that I was to use to write down everything that I had to do. She probably had the teacher sign it too; I can’t remember the details, but it worked, and I have used and carried notebooks ever since. In school I would carry it my bag, but since then it has resided in my back pocket.

I take notes on my computer too of course. I have used a variety of apps in the past; I am currently using a combination of Vim, Joplin, syncthing, git, and nextcloud. Notes stored on my computer are more often for procedural or repetitive task, or things that I may want to copy and paste. In most cases these digital notes are as important to me as config files, and other things I routinely back up, but the pen and paper notes server a different purpose, and are also just quicker, easier, and more convenient. My analog notes tend to be more list-like in nature, compared to the ones I keep on my computer, and almost never need to be digitized, as they are a mainly a complementary supplement to my digital note taking.

Since graduating college and entering the work force, I have used a variety of pocket sized notebooks, spiral bound flip books, pads of paper in a cover, pocket calendars, and day-timers; but for the last 20 years or so, I can say that of all the pen and paper solutions I have carried, the best I have found is simply this: a Fisher Bullet Space Pen coupled with 3.5”x 5.5” dotted, memo books, carried in a leather cover.

What I love about this notebook, is that the leather cover makes it very durable and comfortable to carry in my back pocket, and it can hold 3, 64 page notebooks. In one leather cover I can carry one notebook for long term work-related things, one for mostly linux-related things, and one for archived material from the previous year.

The Fisher Bullet Space Pen is almost indestructible. The one I carry now, I found near my driveway after losing it for over a year. It had been run over by a car and exposed to the elements and still serves as my everyday pen. It’s not the best writing pen, but it is small and comfortable, and easily carried.

It may seem trivial, or an insignificant geeky thing, but my pen and paper pocket notebook make me happy.

-dsyates

(o\_!_/o)

Disclaimer: what follows is what worked for me, and what I did, and in the order I did it, to use the Caps Lock key for use as mod3 in i3.

Here is the relevant excerpt from my i3 config file, from when I was using just two mod keys:

set $mod Mod4                                                      
set $mod1 Mod1

And here is the xmodmap -pm command output (before repurposing the Caps Lock Key) showing the default assignments for mod1 through mod5:

xmodmap -pm
xmodmap:  up to 5 keys per modifier, (keycodes in parentheses):

shift       Shift_L (0x32),  Shift_R (0x3e)
lock      
control     Control_L (0x25),  Control_R (0x69)
mod1        Alt_L (0x40),  Alt_R (0x6c),  Meta_L (0xcd)
mod2        Num_Lock (0x4d)
mod3      
mod4        Hyper_L (0x42),  Super_L (0x85),  Super_R (0x86),  Super_L (0xce),  Hyper_L (0xcf)
mod5        ISO_Level3_Shift (0x5c),  Mode_switch (0xcb)

As you can see in the above output, mod3 is empty and mod4, in addition to the Super key, also includes the Hyper key.

The first thing I did was run the following setxkbmap command to change the Caps Lock key to the Hyper key:

setxkbmap -option caps:hyper

This might seem like enough, but it’s not; next a ~/.Xmodmap file needs to be created to clear out the mod4 designations, add the mod3 designation, and then re-add the mod4 designations. Here is the contents of the ~/.Xmodmap file I created:

clear mod4
keycode 66 = Hyper_L NoSymbol Hyper_L
add mod3 = Hyper_L
add mod4 = Super_L Super_R

Note: the keycode for the Caps Lock key can be obtained using the xev command like this:

xev -event keyboard

After creating the .Xmodmap file you either need to restart X or source the .Xmodmap file. Here is the command to source the new file:

xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap

After running that above command, re-running the xmodmap -pm command outputs the following:

xmodmap -pm
xmodmap:  up to 3 keys per modifier, (keycodes in parentheses):

shift       Shift_L (0x32),  Shift_R (0x3e)
lock      
control     Control_L (0x25),  Control_R (0x69)
mod1        Alt_L (0x40),  Alt_R (0x6c),  Meta_L (0xcd)
mod2        Num_Lock (0x4d)
mod3        Hyper_L (0x42),  Hyper_L (0xcf)
mod4        Super_L (0x85),  Super_R (0x86),  Super_L (0xce)
mod5        ISO_Level3_Shift (0x5c),  Mode_switch (0xcb)

As you can see mod4 now only includes Super, and mod3 is no longer empty, but contains Hyper.

Next (since I don’t run a display manager) I added the following to my ~/.xinitrc:

[[ -f ~/.Xmodmap ]] && xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap

This will source my custom ~/.Xmodmap file when I run startx.

And the last thing I did was add the following to my i3 config file:

set $mod3 Mod3
exec --no-startup-id setxkbmap -option caps:hyper

For clarity, I put the set $mod3 Mod3 line in the same section of the file where I had set $mod and $mod4; and I put the exec –no-startup-id setxkbmap command in the section of the file where I put the programs that I want started when i3 starts up.

With the above changes made, I now have three modifier keys that I can use for keybindings in i3. This gives me another whole level of keybinding flexibility.

The main reason I did this though, is that a third mod key made it more simple and intuitive to add and use an additional 10 workspaces, for a easily accessed total of 30. With i3 configured this way I can now access workspaces 1-10 with Super+numbers 1-0; workspaces 11-20 with Alt+numbers 1-0; and workspaces 21-30 with Caps Lock+numbers 1-0.

Here is the excerpt from my i3 config with 30 workspaces:

# Define names for default workspaces for which we configure key bindings later on.
# We use variables to avoid repeating the names in multiple places.
set $ws1 "1"
set $ws2 "2"
set $ws3 "3"
set $ws4 "4"
set $ws5 "5"
set $ws6 "6"
set $ws7 "7"
set $ws8 "8"
set $ws9 "9"
set $ws10 "10"
set $ws11 "11"
set $ws12 "12"
set $ws13 "13"
set $ws14 "14"
set $ws15 "15"
set $ws16 "16"
set $ws17 "17"
set $ws18 "18"
set $ws19 "19"
set $ws20 "20"
set $ws21 "21"
set $ws22 "22"
set $ws23 "23"
set $ws24 "24"
set $ws25 "25"
set $ws26 "26"
set $ws27 "27"
set $ws28 "28"
set $ws29 "29"
set $ws30 "30"

# switch to workspace
bindsym $mod+1 workspace number $ws1
bindsym $mod+2 workspace number $ws2
bindsym $mod+3 workspace number $ws3
bindsym $mod+4 workspace number $ws4
bindsym $mod+5 workspace number $ws5
bindsym $mod+6 workspace number $ws6
bindsym $mod+7 workspace number $ws7
bindsym $mod+8 workspace number $ws8
bindsym $mod+9 workspace number $ws9
bindsym $mod+0 workspace number $ws10
bindsym $mod1+1 workspace number $ws11
bindsym $mod1+2 workspace number $ws12
bindsym $mod1+3 workspace number $ws13
bindsym $mod1+4 workspace number $ws14
bindsym $mod1+5 workspace number $ws15
bindsym $mod1+6 workspace number $ws16
bindsym $mod1+7 workspace number $ws17
bindsym $mod1+8 workspace number $ws18
bindsym $mod1+9 workspace number $ws19
bindsym $mod1+0 workspace number $ws20
bindsym $mod3+1 workspace number $ws21
bindsym $mod3+2 workspace number $ws22
bindsym $mod3+3 workspace number $ws23
bindsym $mod3+4 workspace number $ws24
bindsym $mod3+5 workspace number $ws25
bindsym $mod3+6 workspace number $ws26
bindsym $mod3+7 workspace number $ws27
bindsym $mod3+8 workspace number $ws28
bindsym $mod3+9 workspace number $ws29
bindsym $mod3+0 workspace number $ws30
    
# move focused container to workspace
bindsym $mod+Shift+1 move container to workspace number $ws1
bindsym $mod+Shift+2 move container to workspace number $ws2
bindsym $mod+Shift+3 move container to workspace number $ws3
bindsym $mod+Shift+4 move container to workspace number $ws4
bindsym $mod+Shift+5 move container to workspace number $ws5
bindsym $mod+Shift+6 move container to workspace number $ws6
bindsym $mod+Shift+7 move container to workspace number $ws7
bindsym $mod+Shift+8 move container to workspace number $ws8
bindsym $mod+Shift+9 move container to workspace number $ws9
bindsym $mod+Shift+0 move container to workspace number $ws10
bindsym $mod1+Shift+1 move container to workspace number $ws11
bindsym $mod1+Shift+2 move container to workspace number $ws12
bindsym $mod1+Shift+3 move container to workspace number $ws13
bindsym $mod1+Shift+4 move container to workspace number $ws14
bindsym $mod1+Shift+5 move container to workspace number $ws15
bindsym $mod1+Shift+6 move container to workspace number $ws16
bindsym $mod1+Shift+7 move container to workspace number $ws17
bindsym $mod1+Shift+8 move container to workspace number $ws18
bindsym $mod1+Shift+9 move container to workspace number $ws19
bindsym $mod1+Shift+0 move container to workspace number $ws20
bindsym $mod3+Shift+1 move container to workspace number $ws21
bindsym $mod3+Shift+2 move container to workspace number $ws22
bindsym $mod3+Shift+3 move container to workspace number $ws23
bindsym $mod3+Shift+4 move container to workspace number $ws24
bindsym $mod3+Shift+5 move container to workspace number $ws25
bindsym $mod3+Shift+6 move container to workspace number $ws26
bindsym $mod3+Shift+7 move container to workspace number $ws27
bindsym $mod3+Shift+8 move container to workspace number $ws28
bindsym $mod3+Shift+9 move container to workspace number $ws29
bindsym $mod3+Shift+0 move container to workspace number $ws30

-dsyates

(o\_!_/o)

If you already have a gemini client enter in the following address:

gemini://gemini.lottalinuxlinks.com

Gemini is a new privacy-respecting internet protocol that seeks to fill the space between the web and gopher. It is still new to me, so I am just getting into it; but @Samsai, has a really good post about what makes gemini intriguing.

Much like gopher, except way more modern, you will need a gemini client to view gemini content.

Here is a list of clients, proxies, and servers that can be used with gemini.

If you don’t have a gemini client yet, you can use the gemini portal to access gemini capsules with a web browser.

There isn’t a lot of information on the web about it, but Project Gemini, and of course wikipedia, have a little more information if you are interested in learning more.

Special thanks to @ecliptik and his _scripts repository.

-dsyates

(o\_!_/o)

Debian does not have i3-gaps in their repos, just plain i3. If you are running debian, and already have i3 from the debian repos installed, and you want to use i3-gaps, I recommend uninstalling the version from the debian repos before proceeding. The reason you want to do this is that the i3-gaps binary is actually named i3, just like the non-gapped i3 from which it is forked.

I don’t know why the forked version has the same name, but that’s OK. You either want the gap option, or you don’t. If you want them bad enough, just uninstall the i3 from the repo before proceeding.

sudo apt purge i3

Before we go any further, and in the spirit of full disclosure, I installed i3 in /usr/ instead of /usr/local/.
I know, I know…the instructions that follow though will assume that you want to install i3-gaps in /usr/local/.

So, here is how to build from source and install i3-gaps on debian:

First install the dependencies:

apt install meson dh-autoreconf libxcb-keysyms1-dev libpango1.0-dev libxcb-util0-dev xcb libxcb1-dev libxcb-icccm4-dev libyajl-dev libev-dev libxcb-xkb-dev libxcb-cursor-dev libxkbcommon-dev libxcb-xinerama0-dev libxkbcommon-x11-dev libstartup-notification0-dev libxcb-randr0-dev libxcb-xrm0 libxcb-xrm-dev libxcb-shape0 libxcb-shape0-dev

Then cd to the directory where you want to download the i3-gaps source code and the run the following commands in the order shown.

git clone https://github.com/Airblader/i3 i3-gaps

cd i3-gaps

mkdir -p build && cd build

meson --prefix /usr/local

ninja

sudo ninja install

The meson –prefix option allows you to pick where you want to install i3-gaps. In the above example, everything will be installed in sub-directories of the /usr/local/ directory.

As I mentioned before, this binary will not be called i3-gaps, but it will be called i3.

If you are like me, and don’t use a display manager, just edit your .xinitrc file and comment out your current window manager and add the following line:

exec i3

If you are running a display manager you should be able to pick i3 from the login screen. Remember it will be called i3, not i3-gaps.

Once installed, you will need to edit your config file (~/.config/i3/config) to enable the gaps feature, since the config file that comes with i3-gaps is the same one as the default non-gapped i3 from the repo. All you need to add is in the README.md at the i3-gaps github page. Note that the i3-gaps documentation states that window titlebars need to be disabled in order for the gaps feature to work. I think that recommendation may be out of date, as I have run gaps with window titlebars enabled; but YMMV. I have since grown to love windows without titlebars though, and keep my titlebars disabled..

Here is the pertinent part of my config file, and how I have the gaps configured:

# gaps
# disable window titlebars
for_window [class="^.*"] border pixel 0

gaps inner 6
gaps outer 2

bindsym $mod+Shift+g gaps inner all set 6; gaps outer all set 2
bindsym $mod+Shift+n gaps inner all set 0; gaps outer all set 0

# Only enable gaps on a workspace when there is at least one container
smart_gaps on

# Activate smart borders (always)
#smart_borders on

# Activate smart borders (only when there are effectively no gaps)
#smart_borders no_gaps

# Hide edge borders only if there is one window with no gaps
hide_edge_borders smart_no_gaps

# What follows here is optional and defines a mode that allows you to resize the gaps on the fly.
# Press $mod1+Shift+g to enter the gap mode. Choose o or i for modifying outer/inner gaps. 
# Press one of + / - (in-/decrement for current workspace) or 0 (remove gaps for current workspace).
# If you also press Shift with these keys, the change will be global for all workspaces.
set $mode_gaps Gaps: (o) outer, (i) inner
set $mode_gaps_outer Outer Gaps: +|-|0 (local), Shift + +|-|0 (global)
set $mode_gaps_inner Inner Gaps: +|-|0 (local), Shift + +|-|0 (global)
bindsym $mod1+Shift+g mode "$mode_gaps"

mode "$mode_gaps" {
        bindsym o      mode "$mode_gaps_outer"
        bindsym i      mode "$mode_gaps_inner"
        bindsym Return mode "default"
        bindsym Escape mode "default"
}

mode "$mode_gaps_inner" {
        bindsym plus  gaps inner current plus 5
        bindsym minus gaps inner current minus 5
        bindsym 0     gaps inner current set 0

        bindsym Shift+plus  gaps inner all plus 5
        bindsym Shift+minus gaps inner all minus 5
        bindsym Shift+0     gaps inner all set 0

        bindsym Return mode "default"
        bindsym Escape mode "default"
}
mode "$mode_gaps_outer" {
        bindsym plus  gaps outer current plus 5
        bindsym minus gaps outer current minus 5
        bindsym 0     gaps outer current set 0

        bindsym Shift+plus  gaps outer all plus 5
        bindsym Shift+minus gaps outer all minus 5
        bindsym Shift+0     gaps outer all set 0

        bindsym Return mode "default"
        bindsym Escape mode "default"
}

If you like i3, you’ll love i3-gaps; even if you don’t love gaps, you can just turn them off and it will be just like regular i3. That is a win-win-win scenario.

-dsyates

(o\_!_/o)

Mastodon is an open source, and Free as in freedom, privacy respecting, own your data, social network server and micro blogging platform. All mastodon servers can communicate with each other on a federated network of decentralized servers; this means that if you are have an account on one server, or instance, you can communicate with all users on the server you are on, as well as users on other servers. Additionally, mastodon is part of the larger fediverse and can communicate with the other non-mastodon parts of the fediverse too. That is the short and sweet, oversimplified explanation of what mastodon is.

If you want to know why you should use mastodon, please read @codesections’s post about how and why mastodon is better than twitter; he is one of the moderators of the fosstodon mastodon instance, and he says it better than I ever could.

So, after that brief, what, how, and why, I will get back to the main purpose of the this post, and continue to gush a little about the fosstodon mastodon instance. One of the things I love about mastodon and it being federated, is that the instance you choose to have an account with can, if you find the right instance, really feel like a community. What I mean by that is if you are a Free and open source linux geek, the fosstodon instance will feel like home for you. The fosstodon instance is filled with people who care about linux, Free and open source software, and all the various and sundry geeky/nerdy things that those people are passionate about. If you are passionate about something, being surrounded by, and communicating with, people who are passionate about the same things, puts you in an environment that both liberates and fosters a healthy, fun, and engaging community.

I am living proof that, even someone like me who has suffered from occasional impostor’s syndrome, can, and will, be accepted into the linux and Free and open source software community. The fosstodon instance is a place for people like me; an exciting, and engaging place that allows anyone and everyone that is passionate about these things to get in , fit in, and take part in, an accepting community that feels like home.

Fosstodon, being just one instance of the larger mastodon federated network, isn’t a particularity small instance with over 15,000 users (and don’t forget you can still communicate with the other instances), but it still feels like a community, as well connected part of a larger unique part of the internet. And that is because it is part of the fediverse, the larger universe made up of all the federated networks, that in addition to mastodon include diaspora, Friendica, GNU Social, Hubzilla, Misskey, PeerTube, Pleroma, Pixelfed, Funkwhale, and possibly more. Together, all of these decentralized networks of federated servers make up the larger fediverse. It is a small-feeling, interconnected corner of the internet, that isn’t controlled by giant companies that mine your data for their profits. It sort of reminds me of the internet before the web became the way it is today; it somehow reminds me of gopherspace and BBSs, when the internet felt, in a good way, smaller–but more connected.

I told you I was gonna gush.

None of this is rocket science, and it may not even be that eye-opening for most people reading this, but I have had my eyes opened, again, by the linux and Free and open source software community. Thanks fosstodon.

If you don’t have a home on mastodon yet, and especially, if you are passionate about FOSS and linux, just click the link below to sign up for an account on the fosstodon instance:

Join fosstodon.

And if fosstodon doesn’t sound like home to you, being able to pick, or even host, your own instance are just two more reasons that make mastodon, and the fediverse so awesome.

-dsyates

(o\_!_/o)

But wait, what are MOD files? MOD is short for module, and paraphrased from wikipedia is a file format, first developed for the Amiga computer in 1987, and is mainly used to represent music. A MOD file (including files with the extension MOD, XM, IT, 669, MTM, and S3M) contains a set of instruments in the form of samples and a number of patterns indicating how and when the samples are played. More information about MOD files can be found at the alt.binaries.sounds.mods FAQ, retrieved and stored at textfiles.com.

All that aside, MOD files are both plenty fun and geeky; I have fond memories of editing MOD files back in the day, changing the instrument samples and completely changing the sound of the music. And you can still do that today with with the MOD tracking program MilkyTracker.

So, back to the story, a couple of day ago I decided I would stream a randomly shuffled, continuous playlist of 140,129 old (from roughly 1987-1995) MOD files. That’s a lot of MOD files; 309 days, 6 hours, 2 minutes, and 48 seconds worth of mod files to be exact! With this many files, there are sure to be some that are not your cup of tea, but there will plenty of good ones too. So, if you feel so inclined, tune in and give it a listen. I can pretty much guarantee you won’t hear the same song twice in 309 day of continuous listening.

Web player not working? Click here → MODcast stream.

Or simply just paste the following stream address in your media player of choice:

https://lottalinuxlinks.com:8001/stream.m3u

I don’t know for sure how much my daily internet usage will affect the stream quality, but I know there will be times when the stream is less than ideal. I really don’t think this is going to blow up the internet or anything like that, but if it gets to be a hassle bandwidth wise (or even if it doesn’t), there is a decent chance that I may end up moving the stream to a slot on anonradio over at SDF, or maybe tilderadio. We’ll see what happens.

tl;dr: I set up a pretty awesome internet audio stream of over 140,000 MOD files.

-dsyates

(o\_!_/o)