Planet Larry

These are the channels on YouTube, that I’m currently, as of April 16, 2023, is subscribed to. All categories and channels, are ordered in an alphabethical order.

This list will be updated from time to time. I’ll make sure to include some kind of changelog for it.

Biking

• Always Another Adventure
• Backwoods Bikepacking
• Berm Peak Express
• Berm Peak
• BIKEPACKING.com
• BKXC
• CYCLINGABOUT
• Cykelmagasinet (Sv)
• Fabio Wibmer
• Gee Milner
• Iohan Gueorguiev
• Keep Smiling Adventures
• Liam Garrison
• MatthewNorway
• Mitch Boyer
• Park Tool
• Ryan Van Duzer
• Shifter
• Tristan Ridley
• VanCan
• Velofil

DIY

• Drew Builds Stuff

Entertainment

• Abroad in Japan
• Dashcam Academy
• Dashcam Nation
• Dutch Dashcam
• FailArmy

Food & Lifestyle

• Babish Culinary Universe
• BeardMeatsFood
• James Hoffmann
• My Name Is Andong

Gaming

• EthosLab
• jackfrags

Graffiti

• SMOE NOVA

Outdoors

• Justin Outdoors
• MyLifeOutdoors
• Peter Persson (Sv)
• TA Outdoors

Technology

• ExplainingComputers
• Jeff Geerling
• Marques Brownlee
• The 8-Bit Guy
• This Does Not Compute

Tiny houses

• Exploring Alternatives
• Living Big In A Tiny House

After several years of service, my trustworthy Raspberry Pi 2 with Alpine Linux, is now retired.

My Raspberry Pi 2, was mainly used for running WeeChat with BitlBee. WeeChat is a text-based IRC-client, and BitlBee brings instant messaging to IRC-clients. This meant that I could use my IRC-client for XMPP. Which is my go-to instant messaging platform, since the dawn of times.

The good thing with this setup, was that I could simply use my IRC-client for XMPP. WeeChat is my all-time favourite client. It’s something that I’m comfortable with, and it happens to be a fairly advanced client. You can customize to your liking in any way possible, with the large repository of plugins, that’s available for it. The bad thing with this setup, was the fact that the latest release of BitlBee is more than 4 years old. And even back then, the support for XMPP was lacking, at best. BitlBee, doesn’t support things like OMEMO (end-to-end encryption), MAM (Message Archive Management) or simply sending/receiving files.

No support for MAM, means that any message that I receive while offline, is lost forever. Well. For BitlBee at least. Any client that does support MAM, would have fetched the messages and showed them to me, the next time I would have logged in.

That’s why I was running it on a Raspberry Pi. It’s tiny and it doesn’t draw any power at all. Which meant that could always have it running 24/7, without ever worrying about an expensive electricity bill.

While it wasn’t a perfect setup, I was okay enough with it. It was actually a setup, that I used for almost a decade. The reason I decided to retire the setup, was for the fact that I currently don’t spend much time with my computer. And I don’t see that changing in the near future. The time I do spend with my computer, isn’t really spent on IRC or XMPP anyway.

Alpine Linux

I also have to give Alpine Linux, some love here. Alpine Linux is an “independent, non-commercial, general purpose Linux distribution designed for power users who appreciate security, simplicity and resource efficiency”. I quoted their website.

Alpine Linux is built around musl libc and busybox. Which makes it small and resource efficient. I think the base installation weights in at about 120 MB disk usage. Another neat thing with the ARM-version, is the fact that I only runs from RAM. This means that your poor SD-card is saved from constant abuse, and could potentially last forever.

My new setup

My new setup is simply running a client on my desktop computer. I choose Gajim, which supports both OMEMO, MAM and other fancy things. It’s a pure XMPP client, which means that it doesn’t support the IRC protocol, but the only IRC-channel that I’m still active on these days, are bridged to an XMPP-room anyway.

And yes. Gajim is a graphical client. It’s not usually what I use. It was actually quite difficult, switching to something graphical, but I’m slowly getting used to it. I also don’t like the fact that it’s trying to be ‘modern’, with bloat like “workspaces”, that you can’t even disable… It seems to be the least bad client right now though.

I’ve been using Pidgin in the past, but they lack modern XMPP features like BitlBee as well, but the new major upcoming version of Pidgin, looks promising though! I’m patiently waiting for that to happen.

And the reason that I didn’t choose a text-based client like Profanity or Poezio—that both have good support for XMPP—was for the simple fact that this old dog, don’t have the time or motivation to learn new tricks. At least not right now.

It’s a new year, which means that it’s time for another “My desktop”-post. The last one, was back in November 2021. Not much has really happened since the last time.

In my last post, I was trying out Debian. I had some idea that I wanted to try out something dead simple. I think that idea lasted for about a month, before I went back to Gentoo again.

My desktop looks pretty much the same as the previous years. I haven’t really changed much in.. an eternity ago. Well. Why change something that works.

Changes since the last post

Yes more panel

In the last post I wrote “No more panel”. I turned out that I actually like having a panel. ;)

My setup

Here’s some information about my setup and some of the more frequently used software that I use regularly.

Share your desktop

It would be fun to see what your desktop looks like. Feel free to comment on this post on Mastodon with some pictures and information about your setup.

This is not a sponsored post. The keycaps has been paid for in full by my partner.

My wife wanted to buy some keycaps for her younger brother as a Christmas present. After asking me for some advice, she decided to buy the Tai-Hao Sunshine keycaps. They were available for 449 SEK (≈40 EUR) a few weeks before Christmas.

Tai-Hao is an old company from Taiwan, founded back in 1962. They manufacture computer keyboards, keyboard keycaps, keyboard switches and card readers. This particular set is an “exotic” set, and it’s available in both German and ‘Nordic’. The Nordic language support means that they have combined the Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian and the Danish language on one set of keys.

For some reason, they included two tools for removing keycaps. A plastic version and a metal wire version. Don’t use the plastic tool! It will most likely scratch your keycaps.

The complete set consist of 114 colourful and vibrant keys. Nine of them are extra keys, while the rest is standard keys for a full-size Nordic ISO keyboard. The extra keys are:

• 4 × 1U Blank (R4)
• 1 × 1.75U Shift (R1)
• 4 × 1U Blank (R0)

There’s also a ‘non-exotic’ ANSI version of this set as well. It seems to have some add-on kits that supports the UK-ISO-layout and some keyboard specific layouts, like the non-standard Razer BlackWidow, the Leopold FC-980M and some other keyboards and layouts.

Specifications

• Manufacturer: Tai-Hao
• Set: Sunshine
• Language: Nordic
• Profile: OEM
• Plastic: PBT
• Thickness: 1 mm

The bad

The bad is honestly not that bad, at least not considering the price and the target audience, which is non-enthusiasts and gamers.

Limited compatibility

The set is compatible with a full-size standard ISO keyboard layout. They have included a few extra keys, but if you have some non-standard layout, you’re most likely out of luck in terms of compatibility—unless if you invest in some of the add-on sets, which might be difficult and/or even a bit too expensive to get your hands on, depending on where you live.

Thin keycaps

The keycaps are only 1 mm thick. If that doesn’t mean anything to you, it’s most likely won’t be of an issue for you. Me personally, prefer keycaps that’s 1.3 to 1.5 mm thick, as they make for a better sound profile.

Nordic language support

The good thing about combining the Nordic languages into one set of keycaps, is that you can keep the price down for the keycaps. The bad thing, is that the keycaps looks cluttered with a lot of extra text.

The good

PBT-plastic

I would personally never buy (or even recommend) any keycaps, unless they’re made out of PBT-plastic. The durability, compared to regular keycaps made out of ABS-plastic, is light-years better.

I have owned multiple keycaps in ABS-plastic—before I found out about PBT-keycaps—and they all started to show wear just after a few months of use. And they eventually started to shine not long after that. Compare that, with my oldest PBT-keycaps, which have been used and abused for more than six years now, and they still look pretty close to brand new.

Another thing that I like about PBT-keycaps is the rugged texture they tend to have. This makes for a pleasant experience for the fingertips when you type on them. These keycaps had an extra rugged surface.

It’s also worth mentioning that PBT-plastic, don’t turn yellow by UV-light, like ABS-plastic do. Well. Unless you have dark keycaps, then it doesn’t really matter anyway.

Double-shot moulding

Double-shot moulding is the process of moulding plastic around a preformed metal or plastic insert. This has been a popular process to create truly durable keycaps. It used to be a common method back in the 70s and 80s, back when keyboards wasn’t complete rubbish.

The good thing about double-shot moulding is that the legends are razor sharp and fully flush to the keycaps, which makes them pleasant to type on. The legends will also never wear our.

Price

The price is decent, especially considering what you get for the price. If you want any of the ‘enthusiast sets’ (from brands like enjoyPBT), you often have to spend 3 or 4 times the amount of money.

Conclusion

This is an excellent set for anyone who’s looking for a colourful set, which won’t break your bank.