→ F-Droid on sideloading #

Over half of all humankind uses an Android smartphone. Google does not own your phone. You own your phone. You have the right to decide who to trust, and where you can get your software from.

— marcprux on F-Droid

I’m glad to see some initiatives being brought open with this, such as keepandroidopen.org. Although alternative mobile operating systems exists, but with the domination of iOS and Android—especially for the required banking and government apps—make it hard to daily drive such systems. Using two phones, one with stock ROM and one with custom ROM without Gapps, is a solution, but it can be a chore.

Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things (2015)

Won’t let a world gone mad ever bring me down
Gave everything I had to turn it back around
Cause our time’s worth something bigger than both you and me
I can’t live my life always backing down
I gotta do this right, then they can’t make a sound
Cause I’m not here for nothing, least I can say
I stand for something

You and me, we stand for something

— All Signs Point To Lauderdale by A Day To Remember

In July 1925, on the island of Helgoland, Werner Heisenberg made a breakthrough that gave rise to modern quantum theory. A century later, physicists are still exploring what it truly means.

100 Years of Quantum: Perspectives on its Past, Present, and Future by Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics


Fun discussion.

→ Kawaii metal in Manila #

Joey Dizon interviewing BABYMETAL on PULP Magazine:

Moametal: We’re all people who love metal, who want to break down the barriers in metal and who want to see metal thrive[…]

Su-metal: Our number one goal moving forward is to headline a metal festival. […] We want to show that we are the next generation of metal, and we believe that headlining a festival is the ultimate destination for that… so we’d love to do it someday!

Momometal: It was just so much fun! We were definitely excited to see what kind of audience was waiting for us–and we got to see them at the show and made the best memories with them. I was so hyped when I heard the BABYMETAL chant before we even took the stage!

This has been so much fun and refreshing. I’ve been overwhelmed after the show. It’s so good. I can’t help but feel emotional during ‘Road of Resistance’; it was my the first time hearing it live.

Don’t think, feel.

\m/ 🦊

Back to my roots

I had enough time wandering so much. Being mostly distracted and easily hooked on things that really does not matter to me if given thought.

Time to go back to my roots and focus on that.

Orion’s belt is directly on front of me while writing this. Wake up! It is time to disrespect your surroundings.

PS: Cheers to ten years, Teudoongi!

Seiya soiya

We are the kids from yesterday, today.
https://youtu.be/YXiLHIYqb_Y

Schools that boast their rankings for marketing to get more students, seem to me like they’re just focused more on other things rather than on education itself. The advertised employment rate of such schools fits in that circle as well. This somewhat tells what the system is all about.

“We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.”
Carl Sagan, Cosmos

The need to win

When an archer is shooting for nothing
He has all his skill.
If he shoots for a brass buckle
He is already nervous.
If he shoots for a prize of gold
He goes blind
Or sees two targets
He is out of his mind!

His skill has not changed. But the prize
Divides him. He cares.
He thinks more of winning
Than of shooting-
And the need to win
Drains him of power.

from “The Way of Chuang Tzu” by Thomas Merton

https://youtu.be/lXwJbj9UpMg

Let’s migrate all from my self-build custom Android ROMs to the available official builds at the moment, trying to save some by avoiding servers for now. No Google Apps (GApps) and even microG for my main daily driver.

It takes a large appetite to bet on your one wild, precious life and decide what is best for you, to get offline, even when the whole world is shouting at you to better get yourself on LinkedIn, create Instagram to not miss out on the whole entire world having fun, to be well suited for life in the 21st century.

Man, I was just so tired of losing my time, attention, energy, humanity to Big Data.

There is no reward for losing all your life, so decide.

Take your freedom.

It’s free to be free.

You decide.

- Mehret Biruk

Just switched after a long while from Debian Stable with XFCE to Debian Testing with GNOME. GNOME does feel smoother now even on old hardware. ^_^

Hell yeah! \m/

Few things I’ve been playing around these days:

  1. I just recently found out that Netlify CMS, which I have been using to generate posts easily on this site has been rebranded to Decap CMS. I went ahead and changed the necessary moving pieces, which is not a lot, and I have been using it now typing this.
  2. Updated Hugo (which statically generates this site) to v0.127.0, thankfully nothing breaks so far.
  3. I am now signing my Android custom ROM builds with my own private keys. This is for the new requirement of Play Integrity that checks now if the ROM is signed or not.
  4. Ditching again Google Apps on my phone for microG, hopefully I won’t revert back due to some apps that requires it.
  5. Changing the site colors to light mode.

I’m now inspired to add the tech I’m using here, as well as updating my site again, credits to Derek Sivers for the motivation for all of this.

Listen also to Choi Yuree here. :)

Stillness……

After a month of trials, I finally built a stable custom Android rom for my old device. I now even tried applying backported security patches. All is good.

Frequent evening bike rides while stargazing with clear skies on a remote area has been the highlight of these past few days together with my listening parties.

Some xkcd strips while I’m at it: