The Backrooms is a slow building psychological horror, and by this part in the film, tensions are beginning to rise for our characters. We're met with the aftermath of a nightmare, and a shaken person moving quietly down a dark hallway. Our audience is quiet, suspense is high, and the mood is merely bracing for what's next. Enter our gaseous compatriot, who was likely under the assumption they could let out a tapered fart without disturbing anyone. Alas, perhaps at the quietest and darkest the theater has been, their cheeks ripple through the room—cutting the cheese and tension simultaneously.

I can only imagine the face you must've had when someone damn near the opposite end of the room belted out “dude, someone just farted,” and having the entire room fall to hysterics for what felt like nearly a minute. Then, as the laughing grew choked and began to wane, the audience decided to break out into applause for the deed. I'm not sure who it was that started it, but it was devilishly funny; so funny that it spread like wildfire—it was an ovation! I can earnestly say that this was both louder and longer than the applause at the credits of the movie. I was holding back tears of laughter while clapping along.

Then, as we all finally settle back to Earth—and realize there's a movie we kind of wanted to watch—we get one more cherry on top of the whole ordeal. From the same corner the fart came from, someone lets out a hushed “aw dude, it stinks.” I hope you could still view the film from however far back you must've sunk into your chair, after dealing with all of that. Take pride in your contribution to the score of The Backrooms. Frankly, I think you deserve an entry in the credits for your performance; your timing and audio production were top-notch.

All writing is licensed under CC-BY-ND with attribution to Foxfire. The FSF recommends this license for opinion pieces.

I had to use that DVD, because this device is old enough that the BIOS doesn't have the capacity to boot from a USB stick. If there's any hope that this can be usable in 2026, I want to find out! With that being said, I set off to work seeing if there was anything even remotely lightweight enough to attempt at all. To my surprise, I was quickly able to find a few options, but the one I ultimately decided upon was Q4OS. I figured a Debian based i386 system, with very minimal packages, and a desktop environment forked from a early 2000's KDE project would be about as good of a shot as I was going to get.

While I was burning myself a nice DVD of that on my other computer, I was also thinking about what other problems could be hammering this at-risk doorstop. I ended up making a short itinerary which might address some of the speed issues:

• A thorough dust cleaning.
• Replacing the HDD with an SSD.
• Removing and reapplying CPU thermal paste.

Surprisingly, the device was rather clean when I opened it! I still had dust to clean—particularly from the fans—but compared to what I was expecting, I was fairly shocked. Perhaps it's been sealed in a box for a long time, but who knows. What I do know is that I can easily fish out one of the tiny SSDs from my assortment of computer parts. I was actually a little concerned I wouldn't be able to use the connections for more “modern” 2.5” and 3.5” drives, but thankfully that wasn't an issue. It just slipped right in, and I just let it stick out haphazardly of the drive bay, since it has no support for a 2.5” drive. Not like it has any moving parts anyway, what could possibly go wrong?

The final bit I figured was the most important—assuming there was any easy fixes left—as poor thermals on a CPU can bottleneck it severely. After taking off the thermal block, I was greeted with a lovely patch of what was effectively dust on the core and the thermal block. I gave that baby a nice alcohol swab, and threw on some fancy expensive thermal paste. It was just gathering dust after my last cooling system replacement anyway, so why not get a little fancy with it I suppose. I closed the cleaned up fossil, grabbed my freshly minted Q4OS DVD, and hope things work according to plan.

“All pasted up!”

The PC thankfully POSTs as expected, and I'm able to load the DVD pretty quickly! Everything installs to the SSD, and before I know it, I'm able to check out the system on my device. First of all, I cannot stress how fast this boot is in comparison to what it was before. I went from the better part of 10 minutes to get to the desktop on Windows 7, to 25 seconds from power on to desktop. It's not the speeds of a modern M.2 or anything, but for a current GNU/Linux distribution on a budget device from almost 20 years ago—it's incredible. Not only that, but it's responsive too, with Trinity showing little signs of sluggishness moving windows or navigating the system at all.

“Certified speed demon.”

But, okay, the base environment works well; applications need to work also. I don't expect this thing to be a workhorse, but I would need it to run a modern browser, and perhaps some other local applications. Surprisingly, it does pull this off! I wrote something in LibreOffice Writer, I navigated a number of sites and watched PeerTube videos in Chromium (sadly Firefox had issues), listened to music, and even opened my KeePass file! The last one was funny, as it really showcased how slow this device is. My decryption is based on one second of CPU load for my computer from 2016, and it takes this device 45 seconds to open it—almost twice the boot time!

The only major issue I noticed was that 1080p 60 FPS videos glitch out on VLC. Given that the load of even 720p videos is nearly 60% of my CPU, I assume this is some sort of hardware limitation, or perhaps something to do with codecs? Not interested in installing anything proprietary though, and perhaps it's just not available for this flavor of effectively very old device cut back Debian. It's not even the most recent Debian base I should add, just a still supported one for the next couple of years. In the end though, I've proven that this old PC didn't have to be a paperweight at all; it's perfectly capable of running modern software. I'm impressed, and a bit emboldened to see what other old computers are out there I could breathe life back into. I'm actually writing this blog entry on the late 2000s PC while watching a PeerTube art stream in another tab.

I feel like I should use this PC for something more, but I'm not quite sure just what yet. Only time will tell, but I'll keep putting mileage into it, and see where the wind takes me.

All writing is licensed under CC-BY-ND with attribution to Foxfire. The FSF recommends this license for opinion pieces.

Let's set the scene. It's the early morning, and a mother duck is taking a stroll across a stretch of pavement. She reaches a storm drain, and her large waders give her no trouble, as she waddles across the holes with ease. Unbeknownst to her however, the dozen ducklings she had in tow are having a lot more trouble navigating the obstacle; in fact, all of them slip right into the water a few feet below! They're all unharmed, but the chicks are too young to fly, and the mother is too large to retrieve them. Not being willing to abandon her babies, she stands outside the storm drain, and the quacking commotion catches the attention of some customers and employees.

This is where I finally am made aware of the situation by a rather distressed employee, who mentions what's happening and wants to save them. They weren't able to leave their post, and since there wasn't anyone else around, I suppose they thought it best to ask me if I could flag down the fire department when they arrived. I hadn't yet seen the duck, but you better believe I went right out there, and waited the several minutes it took to wave my hands, and get them up to speed with the info I had. I wasn't even the only person waiting, as a couple folks were already nearby—perhaps a little too close—to our rather stressed mom, and her crying babies. Thankfully, I think they were just concerned and curious, as letting them know the situation, and asking to give her some breathing room, was enough to keep things in check until the fire truck pulled up.

I was interested to see how they intended to save the ducklings, but it seems as if, like birds of their own, they decided to wing it. The only thing that was certain, was removing the grate from the storm drain. Now I've seen city workers do this before, where they'll use a special metal bar to levy the grate upward, and then shimmy the thing to the side if necessary for access. This is not what the fire department did; I couldn't even tell you if the guys had the tool on board. One of the bigger gentleman simply grabbed the large metal grate with his bare hands, lifted that thing straight up, and placed it off to the side. I wasn't sure it'd even come off without a special prying tool, but I guess all you really need is brute strength! To quote one of the other firemen, who was right beside him when he decided to just casually do that on his own:

“That guy is a monster!”

I figured they had it covered, but asked if I could help with anything, or if I should get out of their way. Surprisingly, they did want me to see if there were some tools around to help scoop the ducklings out, like a net or rakes. I went to go search; no nets, but some rakes, and some handled dustpans too, which could be a makeshift bucket perhaps! In that time, another solution was found though, and I suppose there's no reason why they wouldn't be trying all sorts of stuff in the heat of the moment. How'd they start bringing the ducklings back to the surface, and back to mom? A pole, with a tiny metal bucket duct taped to the end of it! I'm pretty certain that thing was made right on the spot, so maybe one of the other onlookers had something on hand from their car. Either way, within a few minutes, all twelve of the adorable babies were pulled out of the hole! Funnily enough, after mom got about half of them, she began to waddle off—albeit rather slowly. I'm not exactly sure what the logic was, but I suppose she got the better half of the litter, and thought that was good enough! A couple of people had to carry the little ducklings over, and then we had to encourage them to waddle away from us, and back to her. One in particular kept turning back at us, but eventually decided to join the rest of their family.

We all had our moments of cute noises and thanks, I waved off the fire department, and now I'm going to be enjoying this little slice of human decency for as long as I can. It feels hard to find these days, but being face to face with several people who were concerned about helping little creatures...that meant a lot. I suppose those articles about saving cats from trees and ducklings from drains really do happen from time to time. I obviously don't want to see more animals falling prey to simply existing near us, but I am glad good-natured folks deal with the fallout when it does.

All writing is licensed under CC-BY-ND with attribution to Foxfire. The FSF recommends this license for opinion pieces.

Seemingly due to overwhelming backlash, the survey was taken down a mere several hours after it initially launched. In the free form section at the end, I wrote a couple paragraphs airing my concerns. While I've entirely moved to Matrix now, I still felt it worthwhile to respond, and also to mirror this text elsewhere.

As a large, centralized corporation housing an enormous amount of personal data of users—including that of minors—I am incredibly concerned with any AI integration into Discord whatsoever. The thought of any person having the ability to offload data, particularly from private servers or private messages, into some other company's data centers for processing, is a privacy nightmare. With some of the features considered within this very survey, it sounds like even voice and video chats may become rife with direct processing to such companies. I cannot imagine whoever you partnered with would sit idly by while such massive natural human data streams come in, without harvesting them for who knows what.

Even if you hypothetically added an opt-out, and I were to trust that this genuinely prevented the transfer of data, the vast majority of people will leave settings as default—having the effects of this without necessarily even realizing the ramifications. It may also violate the consent of others, dependent on if someone who chooses to have AI highlights or summaries, have information included from participants who have chosen to opt-out. This would defeat the entire purpose of turning it off, beyond a veneer of a few hidden buttons; this would obviously be very problematic.

Additionally, I fundamentally am tied to Discord for communication between people, and only people. AI generated stickers, emoji, messages, or any other sort of non-human output, are directly at odds with the only thing I care about doing on the platform: talking to actual people. Groups of friends or communities create their own in-jokes and memes, and it is this human interaction which spurs the creation of things which we collectively enjoy. When I use a custom emoji or sticker, there is a story as to why it's there, and who created it. If there are people who wish to use generative models in spite of that, I would encourage them to use a local only, open weight, generative model they have full control over on their own computer.

I certainly don't want to further platform and normalize the generative models of the multi-trillion dollar AI market bubble, which is almost certainly what would be the case for any AI integration that is done by Discord. This bubble is causing lots of problems currently, and I expect those problems to get worse before they get better. Look no further than the gaming demographic Discord used to be aimed at; SSD and RAM prices are at astronomical levels right now, purely because of backroom AI data center deals. I am appalled by the prospect of further rewarding this behavior as it continues to put strain on the general populace, with deep pocket investors begging us to take part in their self-serving, prospective profiteering.

All writing is licensed under CC-BY-ND with attribution to Foxfire. The FSF recommends this license for opinion pieces.

I found a small piece of wood, and placed it just above you. As if you understood the instruction, you quickly moved your legs upward, and stuck to it. I took you outside to some flowers; you seemed curious, but didn't wish to leave the wood after a few minutes of facing them. Perhaps you just needed more time to rest, more time away from the sun-baked windows which were cooking you alive. I gave you shade nearby, and found some small rain puddles to coat my hands with, hopefully to give you some hydration. Just some small droplets and flicks of the fingers, hoping you might ingest some beads of water, as you gained more strength.

I wasn't sure if you'd make it, but I saw you breathing—I saw you holding on. Earnestly, I just hoped that whatever happened was better than the uncaring hand you were dealt until this point. When I checked on you after my lunch, you were nowhere to be seen. I'm holding on to hope that you regained your strength, and eventually flew away. We all live and die, but the pointless cruelty of dehydrating on a window sill is too much. You just wanted to live and forage, and instead we trapped you in a labyrinth of suffering. Who would've even cared if your corpse were there instead, had I missed you today? Why do we often feel so little for the countless other inhabitants of our world?

I hope you got your second chance.

All writing is licensed under CC-BY-ND with attribution to Foxfire. The FSF recommends this license for opinion pieces.

My absurd requests:

• A simple dark mode layout.
• Justified post body text.

I imagined that doing something like justifying text would be simpler than an entire theme, so I set off looking for answers. Digging through the writer guide brought up nothing, so I fervently clacked away, until I came across a several year old forum post on the matter. Not knowing what I was doing, I was happy to copy what seemed like a complete answer from Matt, the founder of Write.as. There was a warning about single spaces not functioning, but I figured “I separate paragraphs with multiple line breaks anyway, it'll be fine!” It was not fine; my entire blog post turned into a single rectangular mass. Additional line breaks did not help stave the amalgam, and I was left a bit conflicted. On the one hand, it's very evident I can justify text, but on the other, I can't really justify keeping it in this state.

If that was going to give me trouble, perhaps I can spend more time looking into dark themes. The first place I go to check is the Write.as themes page, to where I am greeted with a surprisingly limited selection. Out of everything, only one theme even seemed to resemble a dark palette at all: Painkiller Bullet. It's in the ballpark, so I do try it out, but gives off a bit of hacker type vibes, which isn't really the style I want personally. I did try changing some colors, but it feels like there's a number of things here I don't understand. Perhaps I could've sat with it longer, but I figured that if I was going to understand anything, I'm going to have to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and make changes—one at a time.

Enter: Duct Tape

Carl Sagan once said, “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” If you want to do that with a dark theme for someone else's website, I guess you have to stare at inspect element until you can't keep your eyes open. Between the very basic style info in the writers guide, pulling variables in inspect element, and consulting with W3Schools, I slowly managed to cobble together my custom theme. My vision was heavily inspired by one of the templates from System76's COSMIC dark mode, which has an umber background, along with yellow links, and an off-white base text. Surprisingly, I was able to get pretty far along, and I feel like I've (mostly) gotten to the point where basic stuff is presentable now. I even added some additional rules to match some personal tastes, like having titles be sans-serif, with the body being serif type. Also yes, I've fixed my justify problem, and can finally sleep at night knowing my margins are nice and orderly.

That being said, not only have I run into some limitations, but I also have already managed to create quite the mess of code. Things are not ordered in a sensible way, my comments are outdated, and I'm sure I'll need to add even more rules before I actually begin to clean it up. I intend to use this blog entry to help with figuring that out, since I won't know something is broken, until I try to actually use it. Once I do manage to clean up everything I feasibly can, my intent is to make variants of this theme for other blogs. Perhaps one inspired by KDE Plasma's dark breeze theme, or maybe one of the Dracula style dark themes I've seen in programs such as Voyager would be a good second version. As for the limitations, there seems to be some oddly hard-coded problems I can't work around with my custom style sheet. For example, this little bugger is jammed right into the webpage directly, so no matter what I do, it overwrites all style rules:

.post-byline .byline-author {
display:inline-flex;
align-items:center;
gap:0.5rem;
text-decoration:none;
color:#666;
font-size:0.9rem;
}

Most of this stuff isn't too big of a deal, but seriously, I'm forced to have a specific color of gray text for my author name‽ In order to make this not an absolute contrast nightmare, I had to turn my name into a faux button; a button far darker than anything else in the theme too. It doesn't look awful, but it does absolutely stick out in a way I'm not particularly keen on. I also can't for the life of me find a way to change my context menu icons from dark to light. Thankfully that's something only I can see, though I did manage to give them a background, and reduce their opacity to blend it better. Also, I ran into a roadblock you didn't even notice, despite it still impacting me as of this writing: blog avatars are broken. You might be saying to yourself “but I saw your avatar at the top of this article,” and you'd be fair to say that—but you're wrong.

Hacking In An Avatar

Assuming it's still broken when you read this, try right clicking and opening my avatar in a new tab. You probably noticed it threw a lovely 404 not found error, and tries to find an image called default.png. This is because I am totally unable to upload an avatar, but more than that, the default fallback avatars are broken too. Now, of course I brought this to the attention of the kind hosts of this instance, but in the interim, I was determined to prod at this until I made something happen. I have a feeling that I can hypothetically pull this off, because I can see that images can load through CSS, and there are a few tutorials on it through W3Schools too. Also, I'll need a reasonably reliable host to service the image as well. I figure since it's an avatar anyway, that I could just source it from one of several sites I use this exact image for the same purpose. Let's get a better look at our objective, shall we?

“The mission is simple: get me in there.”

I ended up choosing my profile from Etterna Online, a website for a FOSS rhythm game. I went with it because I know the owner, and I know full well this is exactly the place which won't care whatsoever, that I'm hot-linking a small image to an even smaller blog. When I added it as the background for the the property which controls the avatar, I suddenly see nothing but blue—fantastic! That means it's loaded the image at full size inside the circle, and now I simply need to reduce it to the correct value. This turned out to be 28px by 28px, and was very simple to append to the image properties. So with that, I managed to hack my way to a faux profile picture, effectively indistinguishable from a normal one. On top of that, I can do this for any blog independently, meaning they can all have different faux avatars for as long as necessary. Realistically, even if it were never resolved, I still won; I feel really good about that.

I suppose I need to test tables too:

All writing is licensed under CC-BY-ND with attribution to Foxfire. The FSF recommends this license for opinion pieces.

Beyond that, I intend to purpose this blog (not the GNU/Linux one), with various writings; old, and likely new too. There have been many times where I feel like writing something, but end up succumbing to the combined weight of my unending tiredness, and feeling that the write-up has no place to go anyway. I think what I realistically want is a personal website, but it will take me ages to get one up and running. I let perfect get in the way of good too often, preventing me from getting started on things I actually want to do. That being said, when I happened upon a WriteFreely—a simple FOSS blog platform—my interest was piqued! It's pretty much what I'm looking for: a simple way to write to no one, on my own little corner of the Internet. Something publicly accessible, but with no metrics, or assumptions that anyone will ever read it. A website, if that website was basically just a markdown file. It's so simple, so empty; it's a call to the void—and I'm ready to answer it.

All writing is licensed under CC-BY-ND with attribution to Foxfire. The FSF recommends this license for opinion pieces.