I'm a Very Online person, and many of the people with whom I engage frequently are also Very Online people. Most of the time "engaging" means exchange email or online message, responding to a post on Read more
SurfaceBook 2 13": keyboard layout for English
In GNOME 3 on Debian 11, the default "English" keyboard layout does not work well for the SurfaceBook 2 13" (it's fine for the 15", just not the 13"). After a bit of testing, it seems like the best Read more
Rotating all the odd pages in a PDF document
A document has been scanned, badly. All the odd pages are the wrong way round (by 180 degrees). How to fix it? pdftk A=[name of input PDF.pdf] shuffle AoddSouth AevenNorth output [name of output.pdf] Read more
Fixing /e/ email client crash
I use email a lot, so imagine how unbelievably frustrating it has been that opening the email client on my phone, running /e/, crashes it 80% of the time. I haven't attempted to debug it properly Read more
LibreOffice Writer, deleting comments, and tracked changes
I've finally found a (very obvious; I can't believe I didn't think of it before) solution to something that bugging me with LibreOffice Writer. The problem If you delete a comment in a Writer Read more
Samsung Galaxy Tab 9.7" and postmarketOS: building a custom image
I spent a bit of time on Friday tinkering with postmarketOS. And, while it is definitely slower than my iPad, and the screen is definitely less good, I feel that it could be "good enough" for my Read more
Samsung Galaxy Tab 9.7" and postmarketOS: initial impressions
I have wanted to replace my iPad with a Linux-based device for a while so, when I saw that postmarketOS ran on the Samsung Galaxy Tab 9.7", from 2015, I was keen to give it a go. I found one on eBay Read more
Two important new papers on end to end encryption/security, child safety online, and client-side scanning
In this post, I introduce you to two lengthy papers which are likely to be of interest - if you are interested in end to end encryption/security, and child safety and client-side scanning. It really Read more
Microsoft Surface, Debian, and two 4k monitor frustrations
I've written loads about running Debian on the Microsoft Surface range of computers (tl;dr: it works really well), and also about my tribulations trying to find a working combination of Surface and Read more
"Self-host it" is not the answer
I'm going out on a limb a bit here. I love self-hosting my own systems. I self-host almost but not quite everything for personal and work use. But I think that, typically, "host it yourself" is a Read more