Nora Bell

I live in an apartment. Historically, I’ve never heard any of my neighbors in my building. With my mental health struggles, I’m pretty sure my neighbors can’t say the same. I think I’ve been putting a lot of bad energy into the world lately, and they say you get from the world what you put into it. I try to hold back the negativity, but that’s not good either. I’ve gotta learn to alchemize it into something useful.

So I got home from class and the hallway smelled like sage. I’m not a fan of the scent of sage, but that’s ok. The energies seem calmer than they did earlier today.

I’d like to learn to yell less. I often lose my temper at somewhat innocuous things. I’ve had a history of reacting poorly when my inertia is interrupted, be it from a task or from nothing. This holds true with a history of problems with state changes in my past. If I had to guess this likely stems from the incident and the resulting unwanted move across the country (US, big place, nearly a 2000 mile move).

I’ve been using a mood tracker lately. I’ve never been one to track things like that because I can’t get myself to write in a journal for more than a week but I also don’t want my data going anywhere but my phone. I ended up downloading “Mood Cairns” from F-Droid. I’m loving it so far, and I’m gonna use it over time to try to develop heuristics for predicting my mood swings.

I’m preparing a speech on why I think everyone should explore their gender, not just those under the trans umbrella. I think it’s important to reckon with our identities, but gender identity is so often forced upon us that many of us are never given a chance to even consider what it means to us or make a decision whether we agree with the default assumption of what our societies say it means. That doesn’t mean I’m gonna go tell everyone to experiment with gender, but just to ask themselves earnestly what it means to them to be whatever gender they are.

I’m not a gender studies student. I’m a queer programmer with a big mouth who believes earnestly that most if not all of her opinions are objectively correct (disregarding the definition of objective, obviously). I’m heavily opinionated and I like to share my opinions.

I’m out of stuff to say today. I hope everyone’s week has been good. Happy hump day, just 2 more til the weekend.

Love y’all,
Nora

Come join me on Final Fantasy 14.

(Lodestone Embedder plugin in active development, data may be inaccurate)

I wanted to go for my birthday but the ‘topes we’re out of town. Last night was a Mariachi night, so the Isotopes were in their “Nuevo Mexico Mariachis” uniforms instead of their “Albuquerque Isotopes uniforms”.

It was fun. We left at the bottom of the seventh because it was raining and we had a game night to get to. I think they won, they were up by 5 by the 3rd inning. I’m starting to think this “home-field advantage” thing might be real when we’re at an altitude this high. Seemed like the Rivercats just couldn’t keep it together, and this isn’t the first time I’ve seen the ‘topes just run away with the game.

After the baseball game we went over to games inc and played some Magic. We did a draft. I think the superheroes set is kinda goofy, but whatever. I don’t really care what’s on the card, it’s the text that matters. It did feel like they kinda phoned it in though. The power levels were uncomfortably high for some draft decks. Idk, maybe we just got lucky pulls.

I have to go to the pharmacy tomorrow. I’m out of some of my meds. Luckily my partner takes the same one at half the dose so I can just snag 2 of hers, but I don’t wanna waste her backup supply because of my forgetfulness.

In other news:
(If you’re in my family, stop reading here, this not only does not concern you but is more information that you want about my life, I promise)

So I’ve been back on prog for a bit over a month. Y’all I am insatiable. It’s awful. I feel like a cat in heat, or JD Vance in a furniture store. Like, The boob growth is nice, awesome in fact. And I LOVE that my brain isn’t constantly screaming at me to go get knocked up (as if it were even physically possible) but OH MY GOD I’m SOOOOOO horny. And like, it’s not like this is an easy problem to solve either. To paraphrase Jeff Foxworthy a bit: “Women are like diesel engines, once you get them going they’re ready to keep going for miles”. Prog is like a full tank but it’s spiked with nitro-fuel.

I’ve been playing FFXIV, if anyone wants to play with me, DMs are always open. I play on Crystal – Diabolos.

Anyway, I think that’s all I’ve got today.

Love y’all,
Nora.

I like having a TV antenna because it makes sure I can’t be advertised to directly. Sure there are commercials, but nothing is being sold to me based on an advertising profile. Actually, the networks don’t know that girls like star trek so literally nothing is being advertised to me.
#OnAir #antenna #freetv #startrek #prejudiceinadvertising

mfwtfw the flonase hits just right and it feels like you slammed a rock of flowers

#shitpost #allergyposting #flonase #CharlieSheenStyleFlowers

So I found the phone I was looking for, funny how as soon as I complain online it remembers it’s supposed to exist and re-enters the physical plane. It was in a crate with some old documents, idk how it got there.

I’d like to build a custom OS for it, specifically I wanna build PostmarketOS or Ubuntu Touch, genuinely I don’t care I just want real linux and I can go from there.

I’m not sure where to even start. Nobody has built custom ROMs for this device so far, the Razr 50/Razr 2024 on account of the Dimensity 7300x SoC it’s sporting. I’ve reached out to Mediatek for drivers and their resounding silence rang through with a deafening “get fucked”, so I gotta build my own.

I know I could technically just rip apart the stock rom for the bits and pieces I need, but then I wouldn’t be allowed to release my rom to the public since it would contain proprietary code to which I don’t own rights.

So I need to make the drivers myself, but like, I don’t even know where to start. I’ve never written a driver before. Hell I’m only just learning C, I’m like, not a great programmer yet. Which is fine.

So how do I start making a driver? I bet I don’t have the right tools. I bet I need all kinds of kit. DMs appreciated.

Love y’all,
Nora

I found a parson spider in the bed.

I’m usually not arachnophobic, but in the BED??! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

BURN THE WHOLE BUILDING DOWN!?!?!

I got it with a folder. It ded. I feel bad, I believe that all life is valuable, but I panicked it was in my bed like brooo I didn’t invite you into the bed my guy that’s nasty dude go back outside and eat some BUGS like you’re supposed to JEEEZ.

I’m pretty passionate about data preservation. Now, I wanna be clear. I’m NOT a pirate. I never download anything from illegal torrent sites. I like to make sure I have backups of my DVDs and Blu-Rays, mostly because I’ve been affected by disc rot before.

It’s becoming increasingly relevant though. With the Sony thing a couple weeks ago there comes to light another need for people to crack the encryption on their devices to retain their streams of purchased content ad infinitum. It is unfair to the people, who are tricked into signing contracts they were never meant to read. Contracts which state that “No, you did not buy this movie, you bought a license to play it which can be irrevocably cancelled at any time for any reason by the people you bought it from”.

I’m never going to advocate for real piracy, filesharing and illegally sending copies of media around. Pay for the media you enjoy. I’m an artist and I release my work for free, but if I didn’t I wouldn’t want anyone stealing it. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t copy it though. Make backups, several actually. (One backup = none backups).

This isn’t just for protection though, it’s for convenience too. With Plex and Jellyfin you can have your entire dvd collection anywhere. If you’ve got a portable blu-ray player, one BD-R-DL can fit close to 40 90-minute films on it at 480p (standard DVD resolution), that way you only have to bring one disc on a trip, and not the original copy.

I think it’s time for a change. These laws about intellectual property protection and copyright enforcement are outdated, and far too aggressive. To date, the media I have personally [redacted] for my own enjoyment (not for [redacted] purposes) could add up to [redacted] years in federal prison if a judge was having a particularly bad day. I think despite the law, we have a moral imperative to protect our media. The corpos want to make sure it’s unavailable so we have to keep buying it, but fuck em.

Love y’all

It’s in my apartment… somewhere. Because if it isn’t I have to accept that the simplest other solution is that my friend stole it when we were jamming. I don’t think he’d do that, just doesn’t seem like him.

I don’t miss the phone. I’ve been using a Sunbeam F1 Horizon Wren. It meets every need I want my cellular device to meet. I’ll use my laptop or tablet for anything else.

I want to get into developing for the device I had though. I want to develop an open source driver for the chipset since Mediatek seems intent on keeping their blobs private. I just want a linux distro on my foldable, is that so much to ask? It’s a POWERFUL device, it’d make a great little machine for program sketches and whatnot. It would also give me an ARM platform to target other than my partner’s macbook.

I’d been manic for days (maybe like 2 weeks, it creeps up on me and I don’t recognize it til I’m doing the manic things that get me in trouble) and last night I had what might have been the best sleep of my life. I always used to be confused by my stepmother sleeping with earplugs, but last night I threw in my loops before bed and I slept like a log til I awoke to the need to pee. Then I slept for another 2 hours.

This may not seem like a big deal, but normally I rise with the sun, unable to sleep over the sound of my avian neighbors screaming at the top of their lungs to get laid. It doesn’t usually matter when I go to bed, could be 9, could be 4 am, I still end up awake by 6:40 most days, and at the absolute latest like 7:15 in the winter. Today I slept til almost 9 am and only arose because I had things to do.

I stopped looking for the phone for now. I’m gonna whip myself into a tizzy if I keep searching.

I have a speech and an exam today, wish me luck,
Nora.

So like, why does my server reset itself with a new seed every time I reboot my server? That’s kinda horseshit. What’s the point of using a systemd service to start my server if it wipes out my world every time? I’m sick of losing progress every time I have to power down my machine.

Please Please Please, DMs and Replies with advice are always appreciated.

His name is Brain Cranstin

Sometimes we say them online. I had the luxury of owning my data and the things I posted until I decided to make my blog subscribable. There is at least some evidence somewhere of the things I’ve posted over the last couple days. I subscribe to my own RSS for diagnostics for example, and the posts in question certainly exist over on my freshRSS feed.

I’m a hothead y’all. Wasn’t a secret. I’m actively working on ‘chilling the fuck out’. 3 years ago I’d have fought someone for saying I was a hothead. Today I can admit I am one, and take steps to make amends for the things I said when my cortisol spiked. Progress is being made.

I reached out to my stepmom. Dad’s gonna call me tomorrow. Just a big misunderstanding, and I blew up. I’m supposed to be practicing positive self talk, recognizing that once upon a time I was in a volatile house and blowing up when I felt affronted was the way I could gain control over my situation. I don’t need that anymore. I’m safe to relax, and just be offended. Hell I’m safe to use Hanlon’s razor and assume the other person didn’t know they set me off.

Y’know, I’ve done this 30 times now, had a birthday that is. And for the first time today I actually woke up feeling different. I feel almost serene?

They say the brain is done cooking at 26, but I think it probably takes a while to learn to live with the weird pink goo we grow between our ears.

I don’t really have much to say today so far. It’s not even noon here yet. I took Lili for our traditional long Saturday morning walk to the park. She was exceptionally bad, ran out into the road, caused a scene with not one but two neighborhood dogs, and barked at an elderly woman who made the unfortunate mistake of breathing Lili’s air. My knee is scraped and hurts now.

Today is my 10th birthday since moving out of home. It’s still weird not waking up to my parents on my birthday.

Love y’all,
Nora

I keep getting traffic from the same server. It’s a Hetzner Online server (supposedly) which has geodata linking it to the UAE. I’ve blocked the traffic, but I’m getting hella suspicious.

Anyway I’ve been live monitoring all my traffic and I’m blocking anything that I think is even the tiniest bit sus.

I’m not really thrilled to be blocking a hetzner IP, since there’s so many mastodon servers hosted on hetzner IPs, but like if y’all can’t fucking behave you’re not welcome at the party.

Love the rest of you,
Nora

I’m excited 🙂

I haven’t had a real desk in a long time. I used to have an ok-ish secretary’s desk that never quite fit the needs I wanted it to. I think this adjustable height desk will suit my needs far better. I need to get an undermount cage for my PC, but I need a new case for it first. Speaking of, I’d love a recommendation for a decent PC case with lots of airflow and lots of 5.25″ drive bays. I guess I should really start considering just building a dedicated NAS and moving most of my server ops to that instead of running everything on the desktop. A constant 100w at idle is a lot.

Just a shortie today

Love y’all,
Nora.

I made 32 Posts, some of which may have been deleted.
I recieved 10 Likes via ActivityPub and 2 via ATproto (bsky)
I got 4 boosts via ActivityPub and 0 via ATproto (bsky)
Akismet blocked 92 spam comments from bots selling fake crypto
I recieved 4 presumably human followers via ActivityPub, and 2 via ATproto (bsky)
I was followed by (then proceeded to block) 1 AI bot on ActivityPub and 1 AI bot on ATproto (bsky). Interestingly, the AI bot on ActivityPub was almost immediately banned from it’s home-server, while the ATproto bot has 19.2k Followers. Different strokes for different fokes I guess.

kthxbai
nora.