This game of backgammon ended up being far closer than it had any right to be. I was meticulous not to leave anything unprotected… until a series of bad dice rolls left one piece unprotected, white would have to roll a 1 to take it, and white did. I won, but like Waterloo, it wasContinue reading “A Near Run Thing”
Tag Archives: Linux Mint
Adventures in Backgammoning
I was losing this game of backgammon badly, then I came back to win it, with white leaving five pieces on the board. How badly was I losing? At one point, I had five pieces pinned in white’s home quadrant, white offered a double or resign (and I did not resign), and white had alreadyContinue reading “Adventures in Backgammoning”
An Unexpected (Partial) Work-from-Home Day
Four and a half years after going work from home, yesterday, for the first time, I executed one of my key job duties remotely. Each month I run a process called the “Page & MCBA Number Update.” To describe it briefly, I load all the items in the month’s PREVIEWS catalog (typically about 3,000, plusContinue reading “An Unexpected (Partial) Work-from-Home Day”
Mixing MATE and the i3 Window Manager
So, I have been tinkering. Back in June, I installed Linux Mint 22, with the MATE desktop to an empty partition on my system and configured it to look like old-school GNOME 2. It’s a nice environment, something to have fun with, like using Compiz to turn my desktop into a cube and then spinningContinue reading “Mixing MATE and the i3 Window Manager”
Trapped in a Past We Never Made
A few days ago the beta for Linux Mint 22 was approved for release, and while it hasn’t been officially announced yet I downloaded it off one of the mirrors to take a look at over the weekend. But not the usual Cinnamon edition, or the XFCE edition (which I use on my Chromebook). IContinue reading “Trapped in a Past We Never Made”
Operating System Archaeology
About a month ago, digging into the drawers of my desk, I found a stack of old Linux install CDs. Mostly Linux Mint — versions 5, 6, 9, 12, 13, a couple of others I can’t remember off the top of my head — and an Ubuntu 8.04 CD. Ubuntu 8.04! The first Linux IContinue reading “Operating System Archaeology”
Revisiting a Retro Linux Desktop
Over the last month, I’ve return to a project I worked on in the fall — making a theme for the CTWM window manager for Linux. I started working on it in October, and reached a point where it looked nice enough, but it wasn’t finished. The config was messy, and I planned to revisitContinue reading “Revisiting a Retro Linux Desktop”
Coding Myself a VPN Toggle
At fifty, I am becoming the Linux nerd I feel I should have been at twenty-five. I had a problem. I wanted an easy way to connect and disconnect from Diamond’s VPN. Yes, I could use the Network Connections interface in Linux Mint, but sometimes it expands while I was navigating to the VPN toggleContinue reading “Coding Myself a VPN Toggle”
Building a Dock in Linux Mint Cinnamon
One of the cool things about Linux Mint is that the Cinnamon desktop environment is built from CSS, and with a little custom code you can do some interesting things, like turn a panel — in Windows parlance, a taskbar — into a dock. Like here! That dock at left? It’s CSS, and not veryContinue reading “Building a Dock in Linux Mint Cinnamon”
Going Retro
As we approach the year 2024, there’s really no need for this. I installed CTWM, an old X11 window manager from the early early 90s, on Linux Mint, and it’s not the first time I’ve done this. CTWM is the sort of thing I read about in Byte in those days and never experienced forContinue reading “Going Retro”