Sibling Summit: Episode 9: Welcome to Linux!

Click here for the audio on Archive.org

What caused Hannah to purchase a new computer? Why did she choose a desktop, and what are her first thoughts on Linux? Do people who are blind also experience aphantasia, and what all does blindness actually encompass ? Join us for disucussions on all this and more!

Discoveries

• Hannah: Various computer-related discoveries
• Justin: VirtualBox

Music: https://www.purple-planet.com

Context: Originally posted as part of the now-defunct Sibling Summit podcast

Kdenlive for the Win

Earlier this evening I was attempting to open a 25+ GB mp4 file to edit (1920×1980 resolution, 35 mins long). I tried using Premiere Pro on my Gaming rig (Windows), as I figured that I would get the best performance on that machine, and I’m the most familiar with Premiere Pro out of all of the Non-Linear Editors. However, the program locked up for almost 10 minutes on the initial import, and was pretty much unusable once the video was imported. I could attempt a proxy setup, but I didn’t think that the video should be that hard to import.

Things That Work: Soundiiz

A few months ago, around the time that the COVID-19 pandemic began to affect the Untied States, I began playing a weekly round of Name That Tune with my family. The premise is simple: I create a playlist with a variety of songs, and then the rest of the family attempts to guess, within the first 90 seconds of the song, the song’s title and artist.

Prior to the start of these games, I was primarily using Apple Music for all of my music-streaming needs. It wasn’t perfect, but in general everything I was looking for was present in that ecosystem. However, as I began to put playlists together for the NTT games, I quickly decided that I was going to need an alternative to improve the workflow. Apple Music doesn’t have a good web or Linux client, and I didn’t feel like using my old MacBook Pro for all of the work. Plus, I was getting fed up with Apple Music’s playlist system. I briefly looked at YouTube Music/Google Music, but quickly decided that was also not going to work, and so I switched to Spotify.

The Work Week Ends

As has happened many times in the past few weeks, I had elaborate plans for what to write about today. And… I don’t feel like writing any of them. So instead, I’ll just summarize my day.

Today I worked from home. I had a couple of Zoom meetings, then spent time debugging a few different issues, reading documentation in preparation for another project, and spinning up an EndeavourOS VM to run a test on for a coworker (thanks VirtualBox!). In the late afternoon I went grocery shopping, then I’ve just been relaxing at home. Friday afternoons/evenings seem to be the worst time for me to have motivation.

Just Use the Website

For many years, I’ve heard recommendations from privacy-conscious individuals that if you choose to be on a social media platform, it’s best to just use the web interface, and not an app. That limits the ability of the company that runs the service to track and log data about you. Sometimes I’ve followed this advice, and sometimes I haven’t, depending on my perceived convenience of the app over the website.

Avoiding Temptations

This is a short post that I will probably revisit later. The topic? Avoiding temptations in life. Why today? Because I once again failed, and need the reminder…

I have learned, over the course of many years, that especially at certain points in the day I have very little willpower to avoid temptations. This could be something as simple as avoiding overeating desserts (which I like), to limiting my exposure to social media, to reducing the amount of time I spend watching movies/TV shows/YouTube. To actually achieve my goal in whatever area that is, I often have to completely remove the temptation from my life, or put such severe limitations on it that I cannot easily slip up when I’m tired after work, and I no longer have the willpower to easily keep myself away from whatever the temptation is.