fluffy, the critter

fluffy, the critter

@beesbuzz.biz

Musician, artist, sometimes a programmer. Burned out and full of chronic pain, but I keep trying anyway. Unapologetically furry and ADHD. The f is lowercase. See @fedi.beesbuzz.biz and @sockpuppet.band for more I guess.

236 followers247 following700 posts

fluffy, the critter
@beesbuzz.biz

Accidental upgrade (https://beesbuzz.biz/blog/17794-Accidental-upgrade)

beesbuzz.bizAccidental upgradeSo, a bunch of my services run, or rather, _ran_ , on an old Intel NUC 8 that I bought back in 2020 and have mostly used as a “random stuff goes here” server. A year and a half ago the fan on it died, so I bought a cheap replacement fan on Amazon and all was good. And over time I started hosting more and more stuff on it, such as my owncast and PeerTube instances, and a few things for my home media streaming setup (which are also now accessible while traveling). This morning while preparing for a week-long trip I’m going on tomorrow I did a bunch of updates to things to make sure that I could access the server remotely (such as tweaking my Tailscale configuration and installing all the latest security updates). And then I rebooted it, and then… it didn’t come back up. So of course I went to see what happened, and it was in thermal shutdown, because the replacement fan had failed. Oh joy. I tried to quickly see if I could ad-hoc a temporary fan onto it while waiting for a replacement to arrive, and remembered just how much of a pain in the butt it is to do that, and I was thinking, jeeze, I’d really like my stuff to work. * * * Around 10 years ago I built a Windows gaming PC, in anticipation of being an indie game developer. I never really gamed on it much, but I did always have it set up in my home theater and used it for things like streaming and watching media on my TV. Over the years I upgraded it in anticipation of using it as a VR system, and in 2022 after I left the software industry I put in its final upgrade, an nVidia 2080Ti, so that VRChat would run better. But it never really ran _great_ , and after Furality Somna I decided it was overdue for another upgrade. Unfortunately, I’d maxed this system out to the point that doing any further upgrades for VRChat would have required building a whole new computer, so that’s exactly what I did: built a new computer specifically for VRChat. So now I had a spare decent-spec graphics workstation just sitting around doing nothing. I did a couple of experiments on it but didn’t really have much to do with it, so it was just sitting under my desk. But then when I set up my new PeerTube channel, the little NUC was struggling to import all of my videos, and so I installed Linux on it and set up a remote runner so that it could help the poor little NUC to catch up. I also temporarily ran a runner on all of my other computers (including taking a couple old Macs out of mothballs), making quick work of the transcode tasks, but when all of those transcode tasks were finished, I decided to only keep the runner on this graphics computer for the future. * * * While thinking about how to get my NUC services working again, I thought about how the easiest way to get things going would be to transplant the drive into another Linux computer, seeing as how Linux is one of the few operating systems where you can just Do That. I ran through a mental list of all of the computers I could do it on, and realized that none of my computers would be suitable… except the graphics workstation. “Oh, I guess I could just temporarily do a drive transplant,” I thought, and went about putting the NUC’s NVMe into the workstation. Upon doing that I realized that due to the change in MAC address there was a bunch of other network configuration I needed to do. Oh, but it’ll just be temporary and I’ll revert it when I get home in a week, right? So anyway, I got everything working on the workstation-become-server, and then I had a major “well, _duh_ ” moment when I realized that the workstation is much more suited to the video-encoding-heavy tasks I was running on the NUC _anyway_ , and actually running persistent stuff on this thing is an actual useful thing to do with a workstation rather than having it just be an occasional helper to a much slower, less-capable device. * * * Now I’m just wondering if there’s any point to keeping the NUC, since I do not actually have a use for it on my network anymore. When I get back I’ll probably repair it and turn it into a media center PC so that I can stop relying on the horrors of Android TV and frustrations of AppleTV for my media consumption. I guess I’ll want to investigate TV-friendly Linux distributions. I wonder if Bazzite + Waydroid is any good for this purpose. Which is kind of funny: the home theater PC becomes the server, and the server becomes the home theater PC.

fluffy, the critter reposted

fluffy 💜
@fedi.beesbuzz.biz

Maybe if enough people send enough messages like this discord will stop being shitty about the sound pack thing.

fluffy, the critter
@beesbuzz.biz

ME/CFS + Fibromyalgia (https://beesbuzz.biz/blog/10257-ME-CFS-Fibromyalgia)

beesbuzz.bizME/CFS + FibromyalgiaAt this point it is super clear that I probably have ME/CFS. This has not been determined by a doctor (not for lack of trying!), but by a lifetime of experience and the fact that the issues I have match the profile pretty much exactly. I’d be tempted to blame the bad case of COVID I got back in 2024 but the precursors were there for a long, long time, so if COVID did anything it was just to push me over an edge I had been approaching for a while. Here are some of the signs that are now obvious in retrospect: * Post-exertional malaise; this is the hallmark symptom of ME/CFS and while I didn’t start experiencing it until a couple years ago, this _majorly_ affects my life these days * Alcohol intolerance; even at my peak consumption ability, having more than a couple drinks would make me feel like I was _dying_ , and nowadays having even just a little bit gives me a big pain flareup * Vertigo, especially during exertion and anxiety * Anxiety in general, which I’d always had to an extent but it got _much_ worse after my big 2011 trauma (which is also when my fibromyalgia symptoms went full-blown) * Visual snow syndrome, which I’ve had for as long as I can remember and has been getting a lot worse lately, along with its related issues like tinnitus, photophobia, and migraines A lot of literature on fibromyalgia vs ME/CFS implies that they have a lot of symptom overlap but that there’s things that distinguish them from each other. But when I look at the differential lists, I have everything from both columns. It’s also fairly common for folks to have both. Lucky me. Since ME/CFS symptoms are what are causing me the most grief these days, that’s what I’m focused on. Here’s things I’m trying: * Improve my diet For a while I’ve been having trouble with managing my blood sugar, and I thought it was helpful to switch entirely to sugar-free sodas and the like. But it turns out that low-calorie sweeteners are actually _worse_ for ME/CFS than the real thing, because it still triggers the serotonin response and decreases inflammation responses (and I’ve long had elevated inflammation markers in my blood work). ME/CFS is also characterized by a deficit of available energy (particularly ATP) due to what is theorized to be a mitochondrial disorder. And just as hummingbirds will happily consume their whole body weight in zero-calorie nectar and then die of exhaustion, the same thing happens with humans with ME/CFS. So, the big thing I’m doing is cutting out all artificial sweeteners from my diet. This includes Mio drops, SodaStream syrups, and diet tonic. I will manage my blood sugar by just reducing my sugar intake, and limiting my consumption of soda and candy and so on; I’ll treat them as emergency relief rather than a constant comfort. For hydration I’ll stick to lightly-flavored, unsweetened seltzer. Which I happen to like anyway. Apparently I should also avoid nightshades, including potatoes and tomatoes. _That_ will be hard. I love me some ‘maters and 'taters. It’s actually kinda hard to figure out what I _can_ eat since everything I like seems to be on the AMMES “avoid” list. But the Mediterranean diet seems like a pretty good starting point. Or maybe I go all the way back to my genetic roots. (Fortunately, that covers a lot of food that I like a lot!) I should also try my hand at fermentation. But yeah basically, more fish and pilaf and falafel and hummus for me. I can live with that. (As an aside, I really should share my hummus recipe. I do a sort of Israeli-Palestinian fusion version of it.) * Completely cutting out alcohol Not that I drank much to begin with, but there’s a few things that I’ve enjoyed in moderation. I’ll keep around some of my spirits for cooking (evaporating/burning off all the alcohol), but there’s no reason for me to keep around things that are purely just for drinking, including the beer in my studio fridge (which I got with the hope that it’d entice friends to come over to work on music but that’s never actually ended up happening). * Limiting caffeine even further So, this is also related to the soda thing, but also one of my favorite hobbies. I only rarely drink caffeinated coffee (and usually as a “get me out of a gravity well” measure) but as of late I’m finding that even a little caffeine makes me feel _very_ shitty, and also messes up my sleep. I have a lot of fancy coffee in my home. Someone please put it to a better use! Decaf also still has some caffeine in it and I’ve been sparing about drinking it, but I’m going to keep it around for now. But I might still end up giving up my roasting setup and beans. I’d rather not, though, as being a weird coffee person has been a big part of my life for a little while now! (But it’s also something I can live without.) * Learning to say “no” I’ve always had a pathological need to Do All The Things. That needs to change. Overdoing it on projects is _literally_ killing me. Always being the one to travel to see others is as well. I’m going to have to start insisting that socializing has to happen closer to my home. I can’t meet people halfway anymore, much less my usual “going to where they are” thing. I also can’t join in on every single VR concert that I’m invited to perform at. It’s just too much for me to keep up with anymore. * Learning to request and accept help A pathological need for self-sufficiency is just driving me to an early grave. I’ve reached out to Jewish Family Service to see if there’s any way I can get help with things I need help with (cleaning, organizing, meal prep, grocery shopping, travel, etc.), at least as an interim before I can finally get access to services that are gated by a disability determination. I’m also going to be quicker to pay for things that help me out rather than trying to stoicism myself to death. It’s not like I can take the money with me, right? * Take it slow I used to be hyperproductive when it comes to writing code and making music. Trying to push myself as hard as I used to just means I can’t do _anything_. I need to be fine with things coming out in a trickle, rather than a flood. This also means cutting down on things like game jam music, song-a-day challenges, and the like. I just can’t sustain the output anymore. So anyway, I have a bunch of stuff to give away, because I’d rather it go to people who can enjoy it: * A bunch of diet soda (mostly Safeway’s off-brand Coke Zero and Cherry Coke Zero clones, which are quite good, and also a couple of random bottles of other diet drinks that can go away) * Some tubes of water flavor drops (both Mio and offbrands) * Several bottles of SodaStream syrup (Diet Cola and Diet Dr. Pete); these can be mixed with plain seltzer and don’t require a SodaStream machine * A few pounds of pretty good coffee * A decent collection of liquor and spirits (some of which is _very_ nice) that I’ve accumulated over the years * A couple cases of beer (which I bought mostly with the hope that folks would come over and join me in the recording studio) If you’re willing to come to White Center to take some of this off of my hands, please let me know!
fluffy, the critter
@beesbuzz.biz

Looks like I'm going to need a new means of publishing my posts to bsky. Does anyone know of any good, easy-to-use RSS-to-bsky conduits that I can run locally as a CLI tool (i.e. from a git commit hook or whatever)?

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fluffy, the critter
@beesbuzz.biz

although there's enough differences between how discord does things and how bsky et al do things that it'd probably be better to just write a new thing for each separate service anyway, because otherwise the state storage gets SUPER complicated.

fluffy, the critter
@beesbuzz.biz

oh also I do know about github.com/milanmdev/bs... but it runs as a persistent service and not a one-and-done thing that can just be triggered by a site update. Persistent services = more moving parts to break. Monitoring this kind of stuff is best handled by a cron job IMO.

github.comGitHub - milanmdev/bsky.rss: A configurable RSS poster for BlueskyA configurable RSS poster for Bluesky. Contribute to milanmdev/bsky.rss development by creating an account on GitHub.
fluffy, the critter
@beesbuzz.biz

Looks like I'm going to need a new means of publishing my posts to bsky. Does anyone know of any good, easy-to-use RSS-to-bsky conduits that I can run locally as a CLI tool (i.e. from a git commit hook or whatever)?

fluffy, the critter
@beesbuzz.biz

I mean I could probably whip one up pretty quickly since there are bsky Python packages and I already have feed parsing and so on but I gotta get off of using other peoples' hosted stuff just for my own sanity

fluffy, the critter
@beesbuzz.biz

For folks in Washington State who have finally gotten their ballots, please note that Initiative IL26-638 is transphobic nonsense and that you should vote "no" for it. It will not help any kids, and it will only result in violating their privacy.

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fluffy, the critter
@beesbuzz.biz

IP26-645 is also something to vote "no" on, even if (hell, *especially* if) you're one of the people affected by it. If you're "earning" over $1 million a year you wouldn't miss the relatively tiny amount of money this gives you back, and that money makes the world around you a better place.

fluffy, the critter
@beesbuzz.biz

IP26-645 is presented as "repealing the millionaire's tax" but the tax is only on people who actively earn at least a million dollars annually. It's not a tax on money you already have. And the amount of tax is relatively *tiny*.

fluffy, the critter
@beesbuzz.biz

For folks in Washington State who have finally gotten their ballots, please note that Initiative IL26-638 is transphobic nonsense and that you should vote "no" for it. It will not help any kids, and it will only result in violating their privacy.

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fluffy, the critter
@beesbuzz.biz

It specifically requires that schools tell parents *immediately* about any counseling they've received, what extracurricular activities they're participating in, and grants parents veto authority over whether kids are allowed to hear anything about sexuality before they turn 18.

fluffy, the critter
@beesbuzz.biz

The fact both of these bills are being hyped up by the Washington State House Republicans should tell you all you need to know about it but still, language can be confusing and it's easy to accidentally vote yes on things that sound good on the surface.

fluffy, the critter
@beesbuzz.biz

For folks in Washington State who have finally gotten their ballots, please note that Initiative IL26-638 is transphobic nonsense and that you should vote "no" for it. It will not help any kids, and it will only result in violating their privacy.

fluffy, the critter
@beesbuzz.biz

The people who wrote it don't care about "protecting girls' sports," they just wants to punish trans kids for existing. Voting for it won't make anyone's life better, but it WILL make a lot of things worse, *especially* for the kids it's claiming to protect.

fluffy, the critter
@beesbuzz.biz

While we're at it, IL26-001 is a "parents' bill of rights" thing that will not help kids who are subject to abuse, and any parent who is being excluded from information about their kids' activities and mental health and so on is probably being excluded for a reason.

fluffy, the critter
@beesbuzz.biz

Fatigue and support thereof (https://beesbuzz.biz/blog/4438-Fatigue-and-support-thereof)

beesbuzz.bizFatigue and support thereofOver the past year or so my fatigue has been getting significantly worse. It’s almost always brought about by post-exertional malaise, which is one of the keystone symptoms of ME/CFS, which has no known treatment, just mitigations _at best_. And the core mitigation is to not overexert oneself. This presents a problem, as there are so many things I’d like to be doing, and even taking care of my basic day-to-day needs already puts me right up at my limit most of the time, and often pushes me over. It has me thinking quite a lot about what I need to go on. ### Things that are helpful I need to know that the things I’ve done have been worthwhile, and that there’s a reason to keep on doing the things I’m doing. Things that would make a huge impact along those lines: * Knowing that people are listening to my music, and sharing it with others * Feeling appreciated for the things that I’ve done, and anticipation (but not demand) for what’s coming next Having fatigue makes it difficult for me to do a lot of things, and I’m severely isolated. Having friends who are willing to come over and spend time with me, and help me with household chores (cleaning especially), without judgement, would help substantially. I also have so many projects that I’d like to be working on, and where having me be the sole person doing it would not be sustainable or successful. People who I can collaborate with, especially on software, would be great. At some point I’d particularly like to get back into making comics, but drawing physically hurts me to do anymore. Having someone I can work with to at least finish Lewi (and, ideally, Unity) would be amazing. But really, anything that tells me that what I’ve done has made an impact on them (especially positive impacts) would be amazing. Fanart and covers of my songs and such would be so incredibly precious to me. And, of course, learning something _I can actually do_ that would help me with my fatigue and chronic pain. Not palliative care (I can already smoke weed all day and wallow in oblivion), but like, something that would actually make a measurable positive impact on my health and ability and which I can actually access without going into bankruptcy. ### Things that are less helpful I’m not seeking financial support _per se_. I made plenty of money as a software engineer, and while my savings won’t last forever, I have enough to get by for a while. My reason for seeking disability is to gain access to helpful services that are gated by a disability determination (and where public funding drives the cost down). Having people show appreciation by buying my music and games and such would be _nice_ but it doesn’t do nearly as much for me as contributions in other ways (especially things that help things to keep going, like code contributions and help with word-of-mouth sharing and so on). Whenever I’m in a depression hole about how I’m not doing well and not able to do the things I’d like, the last thing I need is aphorisms about how okay it is that I’m not able to do things. That just makes me feel worse; at best it makes my works feel like they weren’t meaningful or worthwhile to begin with, or that the things that I’ve lost aren’t worth mourning. And being told what I can or should do in any sort of minimizing language? Remember that the word “just” can do some _heavy_ lifting. When I’m already barely treading water, burdening me with another hundred pounds is not helpful. ### Some talk about finances My overall cost of living is, at present, $4200/month. About 65% of that is housing expenses (mortgage, property taxes, insurance, utilities, etc.). Most of what remains is medical expenses (expensive medications, insurance, copays for medical appointments, and so on). At my current burn rate, I have enough savings to last quite a while, _but_ if I were to start paying out-of-pocket for the help I need, my savings would disappear pretty quickly, and they are only half-measures anyway. For example, cleaning services generally don’t do any of the hard parts, and around these parts would cost me another $1000/month for the amount of help I need. And while I can (and often do) outsource my travel to Lyft, that adds up _real_ fast, and anyway having a way to get places doesn’t help when I’m feeling too tired to even go anywhere to begin with. _Theoretically_ I could reduce my expenses significantly if I were to move somewhere cheaper and completely upend my life and lose what little social life I have already, but as I wrote about previously, a place that actually fits my access needs while also being affordable doesn’t seem to exist. I also recognize that I am in an incredibly privileged position. I don’t currently have to rely on anyone to financially support me, and I’m not at risk of losing my home. If I were in this same health situation but _didn’t_ have the good fortune I’ve experienced throughout my life, I’d be in a much more desperate position. So many of my friends _are_ in that much more desperate position, and it hurts me that I can’t help them out. I want this kind of support to exist for _everyone_. Everyone either needs help and support, or will someday. ### Some summarizing I think that at the core, my biggest issue is just the _social_ isolation. I hate that I’m experiencing life through a straw and watching it pass me by on a timeline, and that any attempt at fixing this only puts me in a worse state. I need my privacy and my own space but I also need connections with others. Some sort of cohousing situation would probably be great. Like, I’d love to be part of a village with a common creative space, and where people look out for each other and make sure they’re doing okay. And where there’s mutual support for getting places. Maybe I need to look into local cohousing groups; there’s a lot of promising-looking ones happening, although most of them seem to be either established (with no openings) or are in a “we need people to do the hard physical labor of building this thing that may or may not exist in a few years” phase. So at least in the interim, having more in-person social connections would be great, especially if it doesn’t involve me being the one to have to travel to make it happen, because that is very much off the table for me right now. (And getting help with cleaning and grocery shopping would be nice.)
fluffy, the critter
@beesbuzz.biz

My coffee selection hierarchy (https://beesbuzz.biz/food/coffee/16002-My-coffee-selection-hierarchy)

beesbuzz.bizMy coffee selection hierarchyRecently, James Hoffmann conducted a coffee fermentation project, along similar lines to his previous decaf project. Since this project was based entirely around caffeinated coffee, and I am quite caffeine-sensitive, I opted to just do this as a risky “drink one cup every few days” thing rather than a formal cupping. What I found is that while there were some slight differences between the coffee varieties, and I’d probably be able to tell the difference between them in a side-by-side cupping, the differences weren’t so profound as to make me think I need to particularly focus on fermentation as a selection criterion for my beans, especially since it’s uncommon to even encounter fermentations when going with decaf. So, here are my observations regarding the things that make the actual differences to my coffee enjoyment. ### Caffeine level This isn’t about flavor preference so much as the fact that if I have much more than 100mg of caffeine in a day I also end up having a panic attack and my sleep gets disrupted, badly. I primarily drink coffee for the flavor, so for me, caffeine is the most important aspect as it determines whether I can even _drink_ it. It’s also for this reason that I only seriously consider Arabica beans, as they’re naturally lower in caffeine than Robusta. Other varieties (such as Eugenoidies) do exist, but they’re pretty uncommon and expensive, and I have never heard of them ever being available in a decaffeinated form. ### Roast level and profile The way that coffee is roasted is, by far, the most important factor to whether I’ll like a coffee or not. I tend to prefer lighter roasts, as they come across as brighter and fruitier, and often keep more of the natural spiciness of the beans. Darker roasts tend towards uniformity and come across as burnt, to me. In particular I like lighter “city” roasts, which tend to preserve the fruit flavor while also picking up a little bit of chocolate and spice. Some roasters are finally getting savvy to providing these lighter roasts in decaf, but they tend to be super expensive; this is why I mostly roast my own, with beans primarily sourced from Burman. ### Origin I’ve consistently found that I prefer South/Central American beans over African beans. In my experience, South/Central American beans have a nicer flavor profile with roasted lighter, whereas African beans tend to only do well with darker roasts. I have no idea why this is. ### Separation method What we know as “coffee beans” are actually the pits of a fruit, known as a cherry. Part of the coffee process involves separating the bean from the rest of the fruit. There are a few different methods of doing this. The most common ones are: * Washing: The cherries are split open and then the fruit is mechanically separated from the bean, which is then washed in water before drying * Natural process: The cherries are kept whole when dried, and then the dried fruit is mechanically separated later * Honey process: This is a middle ground, where the skin and pulp is removed but the mucilage remains attached for drying Personally I prefer natural process. It retains a lot of the fruit flavor from the cherry, and this is especially nice with a lighter roast level. Honey process retains a lot of the sugars and tends to get a lot more roasty than washed beans, but doesn’t have the particular flavor components that I’m seeking out. But all of these methods are fine! Also, you can make washed coffee taste very similar to natural process by grinding some cascara in with the coffee. S&W Roasting is a great source for this. ### Decaffeination process As we saw when I participated in the decaf project, my preference is generally for either the water method or Ethyl Acetate decaffeination, although I don’t have a strong preference between the two. I do not care for CO2-based methods which add a bitter aftertaste. ### Fermentation method And, finally, the fermentation method seems to matter the least of all to me. Not only is it very uncommon to find fermented decaf to begin with (and caffeine content is by far my most important factor!), but I just don’t really taste much difference between processes. ### My current favorites These are my current home-roasting go-tos. My favorite roast profile is 5 minutes at 980W of power, followed by 2 minutes at 1100W, followed by a 3-minute cooling cycle: * Mexican Esmeralda EA Natural * Colombian Huila “Decaf de Caña” EA * Indonesian Sumatra Royal Select SWP And when I’m feeling fancy and want to buy other peoples' roasts: * Café Mam light roast * S&W Coffee: This roaster is generally a bit more experimental and their stock rotates/depletes frequently, but every single decaf I’ve ever had there has been _incredible_. Expensive, but worth it. * Perennial Common Voice Decaf: Another tasty light roast, but also quite expensive.
fluffy, the critter
@beesbuzz.biz

Technology extension and phone longevity (https://beesbuzz.biz/blog/11036-Technology-extension-and-phone-longevity)

beesbuzz.bizTechnology extension and phone longevityI’ve had the same phone for the past five years, an iPhone 13 Pro which I bought for two reasons: * My previous phone’s (iPhone 12 Mini) battery was worn out and had become worn out super quickly * I wanted the LiDAR sensor for the work I was doing at the time Anyway, it still does everything I need in a phone (which isn’t all that much), but over the last several months the battery wasn’t lasting a full day on the rare days when I went out, which is of course when I most need the battery to last. New iPhones are stupid expensive, even decent low-end Android phones are stupid expensive (and would need me to switch out a lot of my infrastructure/ecosystem buy-in, costing even more), and so of course it’s not too expensive or difficult to replace the battery yourself. So I bought iFixIt’s battery replacement kit, and the other day I replaced the battery. The final step of replacement is to charge the phone to 100% and then allow it to discharge to 0% to finish calibrating things, and with the new battery, the dang thing lasted for over two days on a single charge. It’s also back up to its full performance, or at least it feels snappier (I didn’t think to take any benchmarks before and after, though). With any luck this phone will continue to last me for another five years. I’m so done being an enthusiast for phones. I also ended up finding my old iPhone 6S and giving it a charge, and if it weren’t for it no longer supporting the latest Apple ecosystem stuff (including my Apple Watch and my HomeKit setup), it’d still be a perfectly usable device even today. I used to buy a lot of cellphones to play with and swap between. They were generally pretty cheap and things were always evolving and fun and weird. Here’s some highlights from my phone journey: * My first cellphone was the same Nokia 3390 that everyone had in 2001. I bought it because it was cheaper to get a cellphone with a minimal plan on Voicestream (which would later be bought out by T-Mobile) than it was to get a second phone line, when the town I lived in at the time still hadn’t gotten any broadband service. * I bought the original Danger Hiptop which was the first mass-market smartphone. It had a lot of promise but had too many problems to continue on with, mostly due to service unreliability. For example, the way it handled its “always-on” connection was by always being “dialed in” to GPRS and wouldn’t allow incoming calls to interrupt that session. Also remember how original iPhone users ended up getting gigantic GPRS call logs? T-Mobile did it first! * I got the N-Gage QD, not to play games on but because it was an affordable Symbian phone. It was pretty good! Then it self-bricked on a daylight savings change and I ended up recycling it because I couldn’t figure out how to get it out of a bootloop. * Then I had a long series of Ericsson/Sony Ericsson phones. The R520m was pretty good. The T28 was even better, and I used that one for years, including as a GPRS/Bluetooth modem for getting online with my Tapwave Zodiac. The T610 was amazing although I ended up going back to the T28 for some reason. At this point I was using an iPod for music. This was normal. * Then I switched to a Palm Treo 600 which was a bit more convenient than my two-device setup, but still used the iPod for music. * And then when I worked at Sony, the W580i came out and it was incredible. Small phone that would sync all my calendars and contacts, had a pretty okay (for the time) mobile web browser, _and_ a pretty good music player! This was my daily driver for years, and I looked down on the iPhone with derision because the W580i could do pretty much everything the iPhone did, _and_ had user-installable apps and a fitness tracker and supported stereo Bluetooth headphones. Plus its T9 was actually faster and more accurate than the iPhone’s on-screen touch keyboard. * When Android came out I was definitely Team Android for a while, aside from a brief foray into the original iPhone, which I found to be clunky, annoying, and super unreliable (which was mostly AT&T’s fault, but that was the only carrier it worked on at the time). Notable phones that I tried included the HTC Magic, the Nexus One, the Galaxy Nexus, and a bunch of random crappy Android phones that were the included ones in the various cheap-ass phone plans when I was trying to minimize my telecom costs * For a while I tried going without a phone entirely, and used an iPod Touch, a mobile access point, and a shoddy Twilio setup. It was a frustrating mess and just got people making fun of me. But I thought it was a worthwhile experiment, but I ditched it when the iPhone 6 came out. * The iPhone 6 was okay, but I ended up upgrading to the 6s the next year because it wasn’t quite up to scratch even at the time. It didn’t help that I’d underestimated how much storage I’d need for both photos and music. * Since then I’ve stuck with iPhones; I’ve had the 8, XR, 12 mini, and 13 Pro. * I’ve also had a few Android phones as spare devices for mostly developer and app-access purposes. I have learned that I really do not like Android anymore. Anyway. Sometimes I get tempted by some of the ultra-lightweight/minimal “dumbphones” out there, like the Dumber Mini and Clicks Communicator and the like, but none of them actually do the handful of things I actually use my phone for, and my hot take is that the way to get a simpler mobile device without a lot of app-based distractions is to not install apps unless you really need them, and to disable immediate notifications wherever possible. It’s still not perfect but I also just don’t really find myself being hooked on my phone to begin with. Because for all the phones I’ve had, it’s always just been a passive device most of the time. Anyway. I plan on running this iPhone 13 Pro into the ground. It does everything I need, isn’t loaded with shitty AI, has a great camera and the least-bad mobile music player I’ve used, and even upgrading to a newer iPhone would mean having to replace a bunch of my accessories and it wouldn’t give me any more capabilities than what I already use. The only real limitation I have is that it’s only a 128GB model so I can’t load my whole music library onto it, but my ridiculously-complicated smart playlist setup takes care of that, and maybe someday I’ll have a better option anyway. I balked at spending $1000 on a phone in 2022, but I haven’t had to spend anything on new phones since then aside from the $50-or-so total to replace the battery, and $200/year (so far!) is the best dang value I’ve ever had in a good phone. I suppose it’s possible Apple will drop support for this phone in a few years, but even then it’ll probably be a while before it stops working with everything I need it to.

fluffy, the critter reposted

Sockpuppet, the band
@sockpuppet.band

This #bandcampfriday you can take a 95% discount on my entire catalog with discount code WHYNOT. sockpuppet.bandcamp.com I would prefer that you pay more than the minimum, of course, but I will not stop you from getting my last 26 years of releases (over 400 tracks!) for a mere $3. Because why not

sockpuppet.bandcamp.comSockpuppetThere are so many people in this band! You wouldn't believe how many if we told you. That's why we always have so many different styles and genres of music. Try to figure out who is who! Open for co...
fluffy, the critter
@beesbuzz.biz

My urbanist fantasy (https://beesbuzz.biz/blog/4143-My-urbanist-fantasy)

beesbuzz.bizMy urbanist fantasyI mostly love the town I live in, except that I really miss living in a more urban area with good walkability and transit. I also love being in the Seattle area, except that everything feels so far away because of the transit situation. And when I do end up in the city I get so fed up with the constant presence of every tech company I cannot stand the existence of. Sometimes I think about moving and starting a new chapter of my life, but I’m not sure what that would look like. Here are things that are valuable to me: * Affordable housing and food * Being able to have a recording studio in or near my home, without noise leaking in from or out to neighboring homes (including an acoustic drum kit) * Having access to transit that doesn’t completely wipe me out just to get to the nearest usable bus stop * Having access to trans-affirming healthcare and not having to worry about being hate-crimed * A local government that has committed to remembering that trans rights are human rights * Access to long-distance transit (i.e. well-connected train and/or bus station, and not too hard to get to an airport) * Good pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure * Clean air * Good and affordable Internet And here are things that are nice to have: * A decent food culture * Access to forests and large bodies of water * A local trans community * A local furry community * Coffee shops that emphasize flavor and technique (ideally third-wave and with good decaf) * Majority English speakers Things that would make life easier for me but aren’t strictly required: * Not needing company sponsorship to move there * Still being able to use my 110V hardware Whenever I go on a Quixotic quest to find such a place, nothing really turns up. So far the least-bad option that keeps turning up is Victoria, Canada, but moving there would require some finagling to make it legal, and it' salso still a bit isolated for my tastes. I feel like the best option is to just stay in White Center and just become an advocate for better transit and bike infrastructure. To that end I’ve sent messages to my local representatives, and I’ve already gotten some encouraging responses. Maybe I can help change this town to be the place I want to be, or at least less-bad than how it feels right now. Here’s how White Center currently scores on the above points: * Affordable housing and food: Not particularly great. At present I’m paying around $2500/month for housing (including property tax and insurance), and that’s on the low end. Food is about twice as expensive here as most of the US. * Recording studio in/near home: I do! It’s in my basement. Basements are super uncommon here. But I have one, and it works great for this. Other houses here have yard space for a backyard recording shed, which is also acceptable. * Transit access: This is of course my biggest frustration. There is a bus stop right around the corner of my house, which was a big factor in why I bought this place, but a few months after I moved in the bus line that stops there got its service _significantly_ reduced and now it only runs every 70 minutes and during commuting hours. In the five years I’ve lived here, I’ve only taken that bus twice, and I had to plan ahead. The time I still spent waiting for the bus was longer than it’d have been to walk to the next nearest bus stops, which are about 15 minutes away (but require traversing hills and so it wipes me out bad). * Trans-affirming healthcare: Yes, and actually it’s better in White Center than in Seattle proper, amazingly enough. At least for general practice. For everything else I have to travel to Renton or Seattle, which gets back to the transit issues. * Trans rights being human rights: White Center is pretty libertarian, but in an anarcho-socialist way. So it suits me just fine. Seattle proper is also quite good. Neighboring Burien, not so much. * Long-distance transit: Our airport is pretty good, and it’s super easy to get to from White Center. Train travel is much more limited, but such is the case for all of the US. Train and bus access are just okay, and require traveling to Seattle proper. * Good pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure: Seattle is great about this. White center, not so much. _Downtown_ White Center has recently gotten a huge infrastructure upgrade which makes it very walkable and easy to bike through (although the actual bike parking isn’t so great), but downtown is just where you go to go to bars and restaurants or shop at little boutiques. The actual day-to-day activity (such as grocery stores) is better handled down in my neck of the woods, “My neck of the woods” is only half a mile from downtown, _but_ that half a mile involves an incredibly steep hill that is not safe or fun to bike or walk up, and the main throughfare has shitty sidewalks and no bike lanes. * Clean air: For the most part, yeah, it’s pretty good here. * Good and affordable Internet: I get symmetric 500Mbps for $50/month, and that was a downgrade from symmetric gigabit, which was $70/month. * Decent food culture: There’s some okay places to go here but they’re expensive. The food culture in Seattle proper is a lot better, but also a lot more expensive. And it still can’t hold a candle to Portland. * Access to forests and large bodies of water: I have found nowhere better than Seattle for that. White Center has a fair amount as well. Burien also has an incredible nature park (Seahurst) but getting to it without a car is a nightmare. * A local trans community: Seattle is basically the trans capital of the world, as far as I care, and I know several local trans and nonbinary folks in and near White Center. Although few of them are within walking distance. I’m sure there’s a bunch I don’t know though. * A local furry community: The Venn diagram of the trans people I know near White Center and the furries I know near White Center is literally a circle. * Good coffee shops: In White Center we have Moonshot, and Sound & Fog is currently my favorite coffee shop in the world and isn’t super far away from the BRT. * Majority English speakers: Well, yeah So I mean based on my rubric, White Center is pretty great. Looking at it that way, it’s a pretty high bar to clear. I just wish it didn’t cost so much to live here, in terms of both finances and energy.
fluffy, the critter
@beesbuzz.biz

Steam Frame pricing and thoughts (https://beesbuzz.biz/blog/9904-Steam-Frame-pricing-and-thoughts)

beesbuzz.bizSteam Frame pricing and thoughtsSo the Steam Frame pricing is finally announced. 256GB for $1059, 1TB for $1299. I have Thoughts. Currently I use a Bigscreen Beyond and a bunch of basestations. The basestation tracking quality is awful and has been getting worse over time, and I definitely want to switch to inside-out tracking. Also I’ve been less than impressed with Bigscreen as a company lately. Having a wireless headset would also be really nice. And the wireless implementation is pretty decent from what I’ve heard. But this is pretty darn expensive! I’m also concerned that it might not be possible to modify the face gasket to let me see my guitar while I perform, although replacement gaskets are fairly cheap so it’d be easy to find out. There’s also a passthrough camera which _might_ be able to do what I need, although I’d need to be able to purposefully partially overlay the passthrough over my SteamVR environment, as I need this while playing VRChat, which is very much not a mixed-reality game. I’m also sure I could 3D print a custom gasket like I did for my BSB. What’s really annoying about the price is that it’s this high mostly because of RAM prices, because Steam Frame is meant to be a standalone device that happens to also work with PCVR. I have basically zero interest in standalone VR gaming, and I don’t like that I’m being made to pay a premium for that thanks to AI price increases. Anyway, I’ve signed up for the preorder lottery. If I get one I’ll probably see about selling my BSB, although the process for that is difficult (and is a big part of why I’m not thrilled with Bigscreen as a company). In any case I’d still keep my base stations and fullbody tracking stuff. Even when Fluxpose finally ships I have a reason to do the playspace merge thing and continue using my Tundras for some stuff. Gosh this hobby is expensive though.

fluffy, the critter reposted

Rowan || Aurora || ECLIPSA
@ruadhain.bsky.social

-IMPORTANT- Gumroad has recently updated their website with the intention of phasing out the ability to manually edit your storefront and allowing you to only edit your storefront via AI agents. I will be dropping gumroad support entirely in the near future. More to come as I sort things out.

fluffy, the critter
@beesbuzz.biz

Okay everyone I know on Mastodon is way too Linux-brained to answer a Windows question for me, so: Are there any ways that I can share a single application window, that is NOT in the foreground, with someone over the network, such that they can control it? Teams can do this but it's janky/slow AF.

View full thread
fluffy, the critter
@beesbuzz.biz

Or, as an alternative: if there is a way to give someone full remote control over the mixer controls on my Focusrite Scarlett 18i8 (3rd gen) that doesn't involve the shitty Focusrite mobile app. But I don't think the FC Remote protocol has been published/reversed.

fluffy, the critter
@beesbuzz.biz

Also yes I know this would be easy to do in Linux but this is on a thing that I can't do in Linux just yet, at least not without a LOT of work that I'm not willing to put in at the moment.

fluffy, the critter
@beesbuzz.biz

Okay everyone I know on Mastodon is way too Linux-brained to answer a Windows question for me, so: Are there any ways that I can share a single application window, that is NOT in the foreground, with someone over the network, such that they can control it? Teams can do this but it's janky/slow AF.

fluffy, the critter
@beesbuzz.biz

Clearly it is *technically* possible (since Teams can do it) but having to use Teams for this is a very miserable experience, and it'd be nice to have a much simpler thing. Also, ideally it would not be a subscription app, because I'd only be using this for about an hour a month.

fluffy, the critter
@beesbuzz.biz

Gumroad alternatives (https://beesbuzz.biz/blog/7409-Gumroad-alternatives)

beesbuzz.bizGumroad alternativesSo, I’ve been no fan of Gumroad for quite some time, and now they’ve gone even further all-in on using AI for everything and being especially gross about it. Here’s some alternatives that are worth considering. ### Ko-Fi It’s what I use for my main shop these days. Their pricing is quite nice: 5% cut for transactions on the free tier, 0% if you pay $12/month. They support both digital and physical goods, although their variant support and shipping calculation is a bit weak. The main downside is that people don’t realize that Ko-Fi has a fully-fledged shop and membership system; for whatever reason everyone still just thinks of them as being a tip jar. Which is unfortunate, because they’re quite good at the other things too! ### Payhip Payhip is similar to Ko-Fi, but does a better job of marketing themselves as a storefront. Their pricing is _okay_ although not as good as Ko-Fi’s; the free tier is a 5% cut, but it costs significantly more to pay down the cut ($29/month to get 2% and $99/month to get 0%). I haven’t worked with them directly but a friend of mine speaks highly of it, and it seems like it was designed with inventory and variant support from the ground up although I don’t have any idea of how it actually works to the user. So I’ll probably sign up for it since some of my art pieces and coffee items that I’ve been meaning to list for sale again are pretty clumsy to list on Ko-Fi. ### itch.io itch.io is mostly seen as a place to sell games and conduct game jams, but it’s also great for selling digital assets and music. They let you set your platform cut, and default to 10%. There’s _technically_ support for physical merch although it’s quite weak, so I wouldn’t recommend it for that purpose. ### Jinxxy Jinxxy is designed specifically for VR assets, and has become very popular for VRChat creators in particular. As far as I can tell they _only_ support VRChat assets, however. Similarly to itch.io they let you specify your own cut, and default to 5%. ### Patreon I’m not exactly a fan of Patreon (despite having capitulated) but in addition to memberships they also have a means of selling digital goods. I don’t know anyone who really uses it that way and the discovery is pretty bad. It also only supports digital goods, and they charge a 10% cut unless you get one of the higher plans and I can’t really be bothered to research this one too much. But it’s an alternative to Gumroad so it was worth listing all the same.

fluffy, the critter reposted

MusicBrainz
@musicbrainz.org

This is affecting MusicBrainz as well, now. Thank you for patience as we weather the storm. -a

ListenBrainz@listenbrainz.org

Update: ListenBrainz is currently under attack from multiple distributed botnets. We are doing our best to mitigate it, but (as almost always) they use masses of residential IPs, many UAs, and are almost impossible to block without also blocking legitmate users. Thank you for bearing with us! -a

fluffy, the critter
@beesbuzz.biz

No more Mx. Nice Enby (https://beesbuzz.biz/blog/9977-No-more-Mx.-Nice-Enby)

beesbuzz.bizNo more Mx. Nice EnbyA couple days ago, the fucking crawlers ramped up their efforts to get past my 429 error page, so I finally set up a fail2ban rule that would block anything that kept on poking at things. Hoo _boy_ that was the wrong thing to do. When the bot farms started to detect that I was blocking them at the IP level, they started a **_massive onslaught_** coming from massive coordinated botnets that came from everywhere, because apparently the bot networks have decided that if they’re being blocked, they’re going to do whatever they can to get around the block, and they were specifically only making a single request from every one of the tens of thousands of IP addresses. After several hours of frustration I decided to take this site down for a bit, and found that as soon as my server started responding with error 502 making it look like it was down for the count, the botnet slowed to a trickle. Which tells me that they don’t give a shit about polite requests to please slow down, but _will_ stop when they think that the server has been overwhelmed and taken down. So, I changed my anticrawl thing a bit where now a failed check sends an inappropriate error 502. As a test I did see if I could put my existing automated sentience check on the error page and the bots were still trying to submit the form, so I’ve changed the form to be manual, and to require filling in the world’s simplest (and hopefully most accessible) CAPTCHA. Repeated failures to get past the CAPTCHA will still result in an IP block, but for now it seems that this is keeping the bots at bay. Anyway, as soon as I instituted that change on this site, they started hammering my music site instead, so I put the same mitigations in place there too, and now my server is out of crisis mode. I hate that I have to spend so much fucking time on this fucking bullshit, and that the solution requires violating HTTP standards. Because that seems to be all that these **_fuckers_** understand. I’m **_tired_** , y'all. And this wouldn’t even be a problem if they’d just **_RESPECT THE SIGNALS I SEND ABOUT WHICH PAGES ARE EVEN WORTH CRAWLING_**. I mark the problematic pages with `rel="noindex nofollow"` and if something declares itself to be a bot I don’t even show the links that lead to the bad behavior in the first place! But **_no_** these **_ABSOLUTE PIECES OF SHIT_** see any impediment to their crawling as something to get past. I want to fucking murder whoever is behind this shit. I wouldn’t, of course, but god damn I would not shed a single tear if I learned that these fucking **_assholes_** died in a terrorist attack. If you are a crawler author: either learn how to behave, or die in a goddamn fire. Fuck you. Fuck all of you. Eat shit and die, you fucking wastes of carbon.
fluffy, the critter
@beesbuzz.biz

Yet another new website: mecagorp.com (https://beesbuzz.biz/blog/4947-Yet-another-new-website-mecagorp.com)

beesbuzz.bizYet another new website: mecagorp.comFolks were looking for a centralized website for Chorus which wasn’t just the repository, so today I threw together another site, MecaGorp, which will be hopefully where I put all future information about Chorus/Canimus and its related efforts. There’s a lot more stuff to add but in the meantime it’s at least a starting point. I ended up just going with Publ as usual because I can’t be bothered to learn how to work with anything more light-weight right now. Maybe eventually I’ll try out 11ty or something, but whatevs. I don’t expect that site to be particularly high-traffic but it’ll be nice to have things be a bit more properly-catalogued there. And since I’m hosting the site files on github it makes it at least feasible for others to contribute more readily.
fluffy, the critter
@beesbuzz.biz

Futility (https://beesbuzz.biz/blog/3212-Futility)

beesbuzz.bizFutilityxkeeper posted a blog post about their issues running TCRF. On a related note, here’s my webserver’s HTTP response code stats for today, across all of my websites: fluffy@nautilus[/var/log/nginx] fluffy$ cut -f3 -d\" access.log | cut -f2 -d\ | sort | uniq -c | sort -n 3 408 4 502 4 503 10 410 20 504 56 307 60 403 165 406 225 401 462 499 662 405 670 500 819 202 1739 304 2989 400 6299 206 16352 302 32402 301 52673 404 83035 303 192512 200 308859 429 This is pretty disheartening. For those who don’t know, 429 is Too Many Requests, and is what my site responds with when it detects bad-behavior crawler activity, primarily from attempting to crawl over the tag browser, which is not presented to properly-declared bots (because there is no reason for bots to crawl them). So, of the nearly 700,000 requests served up today, around 44% were these crawler bots. Most of these bots come from residential proxy networks, meaning people have installed malware like Honeygain to earn tiny amounts of money for “Internet testing” or similar. Things are even worse, though. That 303 response code is See Other, which is a form of redirect that is used when you redirect a HTTP POST to a GET. There is only one place on my sites that such a thing happens: when someone presses the button for the “sentience check” that occurs on a 429 error page. When this button is clicked, the user gets a simple “button pressed” cookie that is signed with the user’s IP address and User-Agent and with a timestamp that expires after an hour. For a legitimate user who happened to trip the bot detection (by legitimately browsing multiple tags simultaneously), this will grant them access to the site. However, what’s actually happening here is that the crawlers are pretending to click the button so that they can try to access the site, but because each request comes from a different IP address or a randomized user-agent (trying to look like a real web browser), they end up just trying the same URL again and getting the same 429 response. So that’s another 12% of my website traffic going to bots who are specifically trying to get around my anti-bot measures. Back when I first started with this anti-bot measure I only checked for the presence of a cookie, under the presumption that the bots weren’t storing them at all, but one of the bots from the Alibaba cloud IP range did start to get through the check, indicating that it was storing _a_ cookie, and it was flooding my server with very expensive requests as a result. Signing it to the IP address stopped that, at least, but it hasn’t stopped the unrelenting onslaught, all the same. Okay, so HTTP 200 is the response code for an actual successful pageview. _At best_ that’s around 27.5% of my traffic. Let’s see how much of that is coming from declared bots: fluffy@nautilus[/var/log/nginx] fluffy$ grep ' 200 ' access.log | grep '+http' | wc -l 55024 So, of the 193,000 successful web requests, 29% is coming from bots that declare themselves to be bots. Let’s spot-check some of the other successful requests: x.x.x.x - - [07/Aug/2026:23:43:10 -0700] "GET /blog/everything?id=1643&tag=late-stage-capitalism HTTP/1.1" 200 3697 "https://beesbuzz.biz/blog/everything?id=1643&tag=late-stage-capitalism" "Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 6.0; Nexus 5 Build/MRA58N) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/65.0.3325.181 Mobile Safari/537.36" "beesbuzz.biz" https Okay so, this request is being made with its own URL as its referer, which legitimate browsers don’t do, but which bots do in order to try to look like real traffic while avoiding anti-hotlink protections. That’s harder to filter out with a simple command line. But spot-checking my access log, I see a lot of requests like that. I also see a lot of `ClaudeBot` requests. These do not properly declare themselves as bots, as they do not follow the `+http` convention for giving an informational page about the bot. They do provide a contact email address. The requests are all for nonexistent paths and seem to be probing for runtime configuration files and AWS credenetials and so on, so I doubt that these are _actually_ ClaudeBot. 35.205.29.241 - - [07/Aug/2026:23:47:38 -0700] "GET /@fs/.env?raw?? HTTP/1.1" 404 184 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com)" "flrig.beesbuzz.biz" https 35.205.29.241 - - [07/Aug/2026:23:47:38 -0700] "GET /@fs/home/ubuntu/.aws/config?raw?? HTTP/1.1" 404 184 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com)" "flrig.beesbuzz.biz" https 35.205.29.241 - - [07/Aug/2026:23:47:38 -0700] "GET /@fs/app/rootkey.csv?raw?? HTTP/1.1" 404 184 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com)" "flrig.beesbuzz.biz" https 35.205.29.241 - - [07/Aug/2026:23:47:41 -0700] "GET /@fs/app/terraform.tfstate?raw?? HTTP/1.1" 404 184 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com)" "flrig.beesbuzz.biz" https 35.205.29.241 - - [07/Aug/2026:23:47:41 -0700] "GET /@fs/var/www/.env?raw?? HTTP/1.1" 404 184 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com)" "flrig.beesbuzz.biz" https 35.205.29.241 - - [07/Aug/2026:23:47:44 -0700] "GET /@fs/home/ubuntu/.azure/credentials?raw?? HTTP/1.1" 404 184 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com)" "flrig.beesbuzz.biz" https 35.205.29.241 - - [07/Aug/2026:23:47:44 -0700] "GET /@fs/var/www/html/wp-config.php?raw?? HTTP/1.1" 404 184 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com)" "flrig.beesbuzz.biz" https 35.205.29.241 - - [07/Aug/2026:23:47:44 -0700] "GET /@fs/root/.config/linode-cli?raw?? HTTP/1.1" 404 184 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com)" "flrig.beesbuzz.biz" https 35.205.29.241 - - [07/Aug/2026:23:47:48 -0700] "GET /@fs/app/.openai/config.json?raw?? HTTP/1.1" 404 184 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com)" "flrig.beesbuzz.biz" https 35.205.29.241 - - [07/Aug/2026:23:47:51 -0700] "GET /server/.env HTTP/1.1" 404 184 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com)" "flrig.beesbuzz.biz" https Anyway. I don’t really have the energy to figure out a good test to find people who are legitimately browsing this site without doing much deeper analytics on IP addresses and so on, but I can safely say that very little of the traffic going to my server is fulfilling the purpose of putting my creative works online for other people to peruse. It’s disheartening. I spend so much time and energy and effort trying to make things that work well, and very little of it goes towards making a difference that matters. I am in a constant state of pain and fatigue, and try so very hard to do things that I care about with what little time and energy I can muster for it, but it all feels so futile. People keep telling me that AI is the future and you “can’t unsqueeze the tube of toothpaste” and so on, but what good is any of that shit doing? What good am _I_ doing? Why do I even bother? What’s the point to any of this?
fluffy, the critter
@beesbuzz.biz

#bandcampFriday thread that I posted over on the less-bad not-Twitter

fluffy 💜@fedi.beesbuzz.biz

#bandcampfriday recommendation: Jeremy Blake (https://redmeansrecording.bandcamp.com/) has put a 90% discount on his entire discography as part of rebranding his catalog and also after having remastered everything. His stuff is fucking amazing. Check it out please (and send him more than the […]

plush.cityOriginal post on plush.city
fluffy, the critter
@beesbuzz.biz

Post a perfect album from the ‘90s that isn’t Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, or Alice In Chains

SushiFerret@sushiferret.bsky.social

Post a perfect album from the ‘90s that isn't Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, or Alice In Chains

fluffy, the critter
@beesbuzz.biz

Visual snow syndrome (https://beesbuzz.biz/blog/13726-Visual-snow-syndrome)

beesbuzz.bizVisual snow syndromeA few days ago I happened upon this video about visual snow syndrome and I watched it even thinking that it was kinda clickbaity, since I always figured that visual snow syndrome is something that a lot of people have and it’s not a big deal. But it actually made me realize that there’s a lot of stuff that’s possibly interconnected in my brain. Because one of the things the presenter mentioned is that it’s also linked to tinnitus and heightened pareidolia, which are both things I’ve always had. As well as migraines. And I wonder how much of my other brain shit is also explained by this? So for example, fibromyalgia generally manifests as having a bit of pain that just leads to massive overwhelm for me. And then the MSG sensitivity I have seems to be caused by overexposure to the flavor of MSG lingering in my mouth. And the vertigo I have is triggered by being hyper-attuned to motion around me. And my migraine triggers are being overloaded by sensory input (usually smells or sound or flashes of light). And I have always had a tendency to photophobia as well. My anxiety also feels like it’s a sort of feedback cycle that happens. And maybe it’s even the source of my mirror-touch synaesthesia? This doesn’t explain _all_ of my problems (like my connective tissue issues which are also at the root of my most intense pain flareups) but I wonder if this is an avenue worth exploring. And how I would even go about exploring it. But also given that my creativity is all rooted in the random nerve firings that make connections where they aren’t obvious… maybe this isn’t something to fix. Just something to better understand. It’d be nice if I could figure out a way of keeping the good parts without being so badly affected by the bad parts. (As with so many other things in life, I suppose.)