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Sat Oct 6 10:15:57 EDT 2018
Slept from one-thirty to nine without waking.
High of seventy-five and thunderstorms today.
A dark and rainy morning already.
Vacuumed.
The time again has come for my eye to wander from i3.
Spent last night playing with KDE.
KDE has lots of good ideas.
Unlike Gnome developers, who take a rather extreme less-is-more/devs-know-better-than-users approach, KDE developers gives users every option they can think of.
Unlike Gnome, many of KDE's kitchen-sink-full of features and options are not well integrated and organized.
That doesn't bother me as much as the several minor but tarnishing bugs I hit in the few hours I used it (e.g., minor inconsistent visual glitches with effects sometimes triggering but not always, remapping of CAPS to Ctrl not universally being recognized, customizations like the cursor theme sometimes reverting to the default, etc.).
KDE offers a lot of power, but it's not highly polished.
In short, not enough to steal me from i3, though it has improved since the last time I tried it.
Gnome 3.
Such ambivalent feelings about Gnome 3.
It's polished, consistent, and pretty.
But!
The developers achieved this by ruthlessly cutting features to such a degree that the stock desktop could only service users with the most casual of computing needs.
Gnome devs have banished power features and customizations to third-party extensions.
Even that would not end the world, except the Gnome devs apparently break the extensions API often enough to frequently break extensions, leaving power users standing in an environment ever-shifting sands.
Not good.
Some people say: with Gnome 3, don't worry about where a window is located — just search for it in the dashboard.
But that doesn't work for many types of window and (worse) windows as a type come up last in the search results.
My Compose key no longer works. `setxkbmap -option compose:prsc` has no effect.
Had to enable the Compose key in Gnome Tweak Tool.
When cycling through workspaces, wrap around!!! https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1116/workspace-switch-wraparound/ That should be the default behavior.
The "Workspaces to Dock" extension isn't bad.
It should be possible to assign more than one shortcut to an action.
The active and inactive windows are not visually well differentiated, especially with the "dark" color theme.
After writing that how Gnome got polish and stability by cutting feature… it got stuck trying to display the dock.
Not frozen, but stuck in an in-between state.
Worse, under Wayland, there's no way to restart Gnome without killing my entire session.
Maybe a misbehaving extension.
Disabled all except: Alternatetab, Launch new instance, and Workspaces to Dock.
Unfortunately, it might have been the workspace wrap extension causing the problem.
Added the Openweather, Clipboard Indicator, and Vitals extensions.
Settled on fairly simple keybindings:
- Alt-j, Alt-k go to next, previous workspace
- Alt-Tab switches windows (only for windows on the current workspace thanks to Alternatetab)
- Super/Windows displays the Dash
The Gnome devs get easier maintenance by cutting features.
Do I get anything by giving up features?
Is there anything for me to learn?
I guess I don't _need_ 10–20 workspaces at a time, but my current workflow needs at least 4–6.
Fifteen-minute walk in the late afternoon.
Dodged the rain.
Saw a dragonfly.
Watched some anime (My Hero Academia).
With carefully-selected keyboard shortcuts and a few extensions, I can see how people get real work done in Gnome.
But I still feel like the rug could be yanked out from under me at any moment if an extension upon which I rely doesn't receive continues support.
Usable, but with some concern.
I take several blood pressure readings morning and night, and record an average.
Tonight, after having several beers, I got several low readings — as low as 123/79.
A normal effect of alcohol/good mood or an indication that my otherwise elevated blood pressure is anxiety-related/psychological?
Hmm, a quick web search indicates that small amounts of alcohol might lower blood pressure a couple points, but generally alcohol (especially more than a couple drinks) increases blood pressure.
I had 4–5 drinks, and my blood pressure is significantly lower.
On the other hand, the Mayo Clinic says anxiety doesn't cause more than temporary blood pressure spikes.
Servings: grains 2/6, fruit 1/4, vegetables 5/4, dairy 2/2, protein 3/3.
Breakfast: coffee, two eggs with a little spinach and cheese, tomato
Lunch: banana, carrots, beer
Dinner: beans and rice (with tomato, onion, jalapenos), beer
146/87
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