Morgan Makes

As far as the computer itself goes, I had originally planned to use a Linux distro specifically made for media centers or smart TVs. Over time, though (because the idea for this project came up way before I ever posted about it and it took me a long time to get started), I realized that many Linux distros are so damn customizable, it doesn't matter all that much which one I start out with. So I installed Linux Mint because I already have it on a flash drive and I already have experience with it. The other two laptops I've installed Mint on were generally pretty fast before they broke (at least fast enough for my standards--a middle class tech bro might disagree), and their main problem before replacing the OS was inconsistent ability to run. Both had frequent blue screens, and one would take forever for the screen to turn on. This laptop was different though: as far as I'm aware, it wasn't actually broken, they just stopped using it because it's so slow . When I dec

Imagine, if you will, going to the relatively new household of someone you know. Some people want to watch TV, so your friend or relative pulls out a couple remotes. With one, they turn on an old TV and ensure its input is on a specific HDMI option. With the second remote, which is wider than you would expect it to be but still looks like a remote, they control what's going on on the screen, navigating to a file system or streaming service. But they have to search for a specific file or show or something. You recall this as the most frustrating part of watching something on TV: pressing the arrow buttons or something to follow whatever on-screen keyboard the service uses. To your surprise, though, this isn't what the person does. Instead, they simply flip over their weird remote, unfold it into a keyboard, and start typing. Perhaps later you want to watch something advertised in their shelf of watchable media. You select what looks to be a DVD case, only to find a couple SD car

I've been aware that there's something not quite right with my laptop since maybe 6 months after I got it. At least a year ago I decided to try and install Linux on it, in the hopes that that would fix some of my problems--the problems involving firmware made to break, at least. At some point last semester I came to the realization that there was also something wrong with my graphics card: The laptop was usually in one of two states. Either all of my GPU-requiring apps worked just fine but I had a constant risk of blue-screening over and over again, or it worked somewhat stably but apps such as Minecraft and OBS Studio wouldn't start, citing that I didn't have the right graphics cards. Neither updating my drivers nor reverting to the first ones I had fixed this problem, so I figured it was actually a hardware problem.  I still held out hope though that somehow installing Linux might actually fix it (giving it about a 5% chance, but it was my most doable option and that

Saturday night last week was the last showing of The SpongeBob Musical. You may have noticed I haven't done much posting of writing, art, etc in a while, and the show was why. I think being in a musical was both really healthy for me, physically and socially, and really helpful in regaining my voice after getting covid last winter, but it unfortunately takes a lot of time and energy. Even when the performances started and our almost-full-workweek of long rehearsals was cut down to 3 3-hour-or-so performances and one pickup rehearsal a week, I was spending my entire 3 days off recuperating and didn't have much energy for art--certainly not enough at a time that I could post it. I've also been distracted because of how little energy I have, so even when I had the motivation to do stuff related to art (basically just plotting out a play I'm writing) I haven't had the memory to post it or write about it. Hopefully this will change now that the show is over, although th

From what I could gather on the internet (please correct me if I'm wrong), wild oat is the primary grass responsible for California's "golden hills." Unfortunately, wild oat grass is an invasive plant around these parts, spreading its seeds much more easily than most of the native grasses that populated the once green California hillsides. The only way to repatriate the soil and sunlight to the native grasses is by first ripping up the roots of those wild oats and destroying (or somehow getting rid of) the seeds so they can't plant themselves. This is exactly my plan, to be followed with planting of native grasses if I can do so in a helpful manner, and I encourage other Californians to do the same. This grass is a danger both to native wildlife and to crops. But why just get rid of a plant when I can also cut down on my consumption and waste by using what I took? I've gotta say, cooking and eating the oat seeds is one way to make sure they don't germinate

Git is a very useful tool in my life as a programmer. It allows me to collaborate with peers, contribute to open source, create NPM packages (etc), and just have a nice neat place to store my code. And that's what it's meant for, storing code. But what if we just used it for everything? At least everything that might need communicative collaboration--which, besides code, can range from a group project essay, to a gallery of art, to a web series. There are so many uses of collaboration software, which is one of the main reasons we have things like Google Drive and Microsoft Office. But I hate Google, and I hate Microsoft. And Office costs money if I remember correctly, and at least Google Drive isn't a great place to keep public projects because it exposes your email to everyone who sees the file. I could go on and on about reasons not to use either of these products, but the point is, I'd rather use git. GitHub is currently full of projects that are related to fields ou