Marks MicroLog

Vim Commands I Did Not Know But Now Do

Sept. 29, 2022, 12:24 a.m.

Just some commands that I did not know for awhile.

These are explained more in this video

(Formatting on this is not great, copied it directly from text file - sorry 😢)

  • gi go the the place last inserted
  • g; g, keep searching
  • gv go to last visual

  • y/search yank up to search, can delete and change with d/search and c/search

  • * # Search for a word under cursor

    • Forward/backward respectively
  • ctrl + [ for escape

  • {} paragraph movement

  • ~ change a characters case

  • gUw change word to upper case
  • guw change word to lower case

  • ctrl a/x increase/decrease a number

  • zt down so current line is at the top

  • zz to centre

  • gj gk go up /down long text on 1 line

    • g$ same thing but go to end of long line
    • gq break up long lines

Global Push To Talk

Feb. 14, 2022, 9:30 p.m.

I like using push to talk whenever I have to use my microphone. Unfortunately the program I use the microphone the most with - Microsoft Teams - does not support this.

So I went ahead and made a global push to talk script. It only works on Linux (for now) and is written in python.

It does work though, so I now have push to talk on any application where I want it!

The script is here

Good Websites

Feb. 9, 2022, 2:47 a.m.

I have created a new website goodwebsites.org

The purpose of this website is to list websites that I think are good. That I think are good being the key point here. They are not what "most" people would consider good.

The have soul and character and present information well. I like that.

If you have any websites you would like to add please contact me :)

The website is very barebones and the moment, bare with whilst I make an awesome looking design worthy of the good websites name

#1 On Hacker News

Sept. 9, 2021, 7 p.m.

This blog post got to the number one spot on Hacker News

As a result this website received more traffic then it ever had and still held up. Getting to #1 was the best way to stress test this website and proved that I was telling the truth in that blog.

Full write-up coming soon, but a very quick stat (generated from log files as my analytics crashed) looks like 70,000+ 80,000+ people visited my website.

Fill In Pdf Forms With Ease Using Xournal++

Aug. 25, 2021, 10 p.m.

It's not often that I praise software. But Xournal++ has made my life so much easier recently.

I use it to fill in PDF forms. It allows you to enter text anywhere in the document. As well as allowing freehand drawing which is great for signing and ticking boxes.

I have recently had to fill in many forms and printing them out and scanning them back in was getting very tedious.

Any other program that I have tried to do this has not worked or is just really clunky. I even tried converting them to libreoffice draw/writer documents which is even more clunky! I have not tried any proprietary applications but can't imagine them being good considering the mess that is adobe reader.

Xournal++ is designed as a notetaking tool, it just so happens that it is also very good at filling in PDFs.

Cron Guide

June 30, 2021, 10:36 p.m.

I wrote a guide on how to use cron on this website

The website is about how to set up a Linux server and how to host things on it so you can own your own services and data and be a independent internet user like the internet was meant to be.

The site is called landchad, Land being "internet land" and Chad as in the meme Chad. A bit tongue-in-cheek but I am kind of surprised that there is no resource out there like this already.

Microcontrollers

June 27, 2021, 2:18 a.m.

I'm playing around a bit with an Arduino. Something has clicked in my brain about how cool it is that something can just run code without having to mess around with an Operating system.

It's cool being able to plug this in anywhere and have it do what you told it to.

I have always heard of microcontrollers and had a sort of abstract idea of what they where but never really had a concrete idea of what they where or how they worked. Working with the Arduino has given me new insight into this world of computing and a appreciation of what you can do with very cheap hardware.

I want to learn how to program assembly on these, I think it's possible and I have never done assembly before. Doing this will also force me to understand hardware and electronics better, I don't have a good grasp on those at the moment.

This video is a good explanation on microcontrollers

Long Term Crypto Storage

June 21, 2021, 11:50 p.m.

The best long term solution to bitcoin/crypto passphrase storage is on clay tablets. We have clay tablets from 4000BC that are still readable.

Currently people are using stamped metal to store there keys, I don't see any stamped metal that has lasted over 6000 years.