• 11/10/2025-

• 5 min read (877 words)

#newsletter #wrapup

Well, two weeks in a row is a streak, right? Good.

Work⌗

Our year is almost over, and my time is wrapping up. The last of the writer’s work will be handed in on the 14th, and then next week we’ll edit and audit the last articles of the year. Those will be my last chores before I’m done at the end of November. Technically, I’ll be employed through December 31, but we have all of December off.

I’ve put out some feelers for the next gig, as I talked about last week, but nothing so far. I’m really thinking that once I’m actually done with this job, I’ll put some effort into making a go of it with my own History site and channel. Maybe it goes somewhere? Won’t know if I don’t try.

Programming⌗

I created Poster, an app that allows me to cross post between Mastodon/GoToSocial and Bluesky. Written in Python and running in a Docker container, I’m really proud of it. Proud that it works since I had no clue how to use an API three weeks ago.

It took a bit of working, because the way Mastodon/GTS and Bluesky do hashtags is completely different, and I had to figure out why the links weren’t transferring across. But it works really well. I just host it on my home lab, it refreshes every 60 seconds, and that’s it. I may try to tie in X one day, but probably not. I’m pretty much done with Space Karen’s site.

And then on this site, I also added in a way for me to write blog posts in series. You can see a sneak peak of that at the bottom of this post. I’ll have a full write up on that tomorrow.

Blogging⌗

A few posts about books this week. I wrote about the Dresden Files and about how I’m too lazy to read the maps at the beginning of the book.

Potpourri⌗

• I posted a couple times on TLC this week, pretty happy with that. I’ve also settled on a new schedule going forward that I think is sustainable. I’m going to work in one YT Short a week, and see how that goes.
• I’m still working on rebuilding my music library. I’m almost done with the base set, and then I’ll have almost all the music I had before in .flac so that quality should never be an issue again. I still have loads to download, but I now have faith that I’ll get there. No more tidal or Spotify or Apple Music for me.
• I’m going to need to buy a new keyboard. My Dactyl is dying for sure. It’s not he KVM switch, and changing out the switches did nothing. I’m going to contact the guy who made this and see if he can fix it, but I don’t have high hopes. And for those of you who ask “but Matt, what about all the other keyboards you own?” Shut up.
• I tried out Mango WC this week. It’s a DWM inspired Wayland compositor. It sounds awesome, but I haven’t been able to get it to work quite yet. Configuring the monitors so far has proven to be beyond me. I also tried to get Plasma installed again this week, and I’m still having issues with it.
• I’m getting a bit bored, as you can tell by that last bullet, of Hyprland. I need something new. But so far, I’ve not found anything. I thought I’d spend some time in Plasma, but that didn’t go. Maybe I’ll try Gnome again. I have some config files on my system somewhere that is making actually using a Desktop Environment impossible. I thought I found them all, but apparently not. I do this periodically, where I just need to use something else before going back to whatever I use daily. The feeling will pass.
• I installed Helium Browser a few days ago. I need to test it out for a video. Unlikely that I’ll switch away from Vivaldi, though.

Small Web Links⌗

Still need to do a better job of collecting these.

• Juha-Matti wrote about homepages. I always find it fascinating when people talk about how they structure their websites. I know I talk about it a lot here on my own blog, and I get a lot of ideas from other people as well.
• Robb Knight introduced me to the Pen Addict podcast. I’m a noob at pens, but I’m already telling you guys that I’m going to be a nerd about pens very soon.

Last Week’s Goals⌗

• Publish more videos on YouTube. ✅
• Finish Ready Player One and move on to another book on the TBR ✅
• Keep working on the local music collection. ✅
• Rewrite the README for the theme I use for this blog. Maybe give it a rename since it is no longer close to what the original theme was. ✖️
• Minimum effort at work, they deserve nothing more. ✅

Goals For This Week⌗

• Finish Priory of the Orange Tree
• Finish downloading main music library.
• Stick to new video schedule for TLC
• Clean my desk. Goodness it needs it.
• Try DankShell
• Fix Plasma or Gnome.
• Rewrite my emoji script to remember the last used emojis. That should be fun

📚 Series: Newsletter 2 parts in this series

1. Weekly Newsletter 1
2. ➤ Weekly Newsletter 2 You are here