que

about

hello! im que, im from the U.S. (not connecticut) and i program and do unix stuff. currently learning (teaching myself) korean. i focus on development in c/c++, but i also do web dev. im trying to improve my DSA. also a little bit of SQL now and again. i use debian with i3, polybar, and rofi. i'm also a huge suckless fan.

my button:

updates

i'll add more stuff when i make it, but expect some code, more blog stuff, and maybe music. i'm going to be moving away from a single page site soon, but that'll be when i get more posts, and a real reason to move it off.

BerryWM review
~~~ 4/7/24

 I found BerryWM off of the wikipedia list of window managers and BerryWM was at the top. The demo pictures looked pretty clean and I was looking to change it up after using wm2 (https://github.com/cannam/wm2) for a couple of months. wm2 is not as full featured as I liked but it was a good break from I3.

Installing Berry is easy (configure, make, make install) and I liked the dynamic configuration better than having to recompile. It's very configurable, but being able to change things on the fly is great. I was thinking of making an auto dark mode script and nightlight like in ElementaryOS, but I don't have that much of a need for it. The complete install process really takes only 10 minutes.

Overall, BerryWM is the "best" window manager that I have used so far in the sense that it is a really good compromise between looks and size/performance/minimalism.

Screenshot of my desktop:

freeBSD and openBSD first impressions
~~~ 2/17/24

i had nothing else to do today, so i decided to try out BSD. i've been wanting to switch things up with my desktop and systemd was getting on my nerves, so BSD seemed to fix this with more a more consistent system.

openBSD ~ i tried openBSD first since it seemed to have a reputation for security. but after the fact i think that would only come into play in a server environment. the initial setup was sub-optimal. the cli install wasn't half as bad as arch, but it was definitely not very user-friendly. it wouldn't hurt to have more explanations in the installer itself, but it was workable.

i wanted to setup a gui with xenodm, but it is a pain. im 100% sure it is user error and i could work something out, but having a dm installed by default is annoying, especially since my login manager of choice, slim, isnt on the package repos.

freeBSD ~ immediately felt better than openBSD. the tui menu feels a lot more natural and there was just more things automatically done for you. the ascii art bootscreen makes it feel more put-together than openBSD, and this is the sense im getting from using it. 

a minor detail is that the package manager isn't default installed. however, when you go to run it, it promts you to install. another thing about the package manager is that there is one program (pkg), instead of many (pkg_add, pkg_info, etc.) on openBSD. this definitely makes it easier just for consistency's sake, and keeping programs to one executable. also, freeBSD beats openBSD in speed in most metrics i've seen online, which i prioritize because im using it on desktop.

conclusion ~ all in all, the BSD have not been half as bad as the stereotypes make them out to be. i'll be using more freeBSD on my desktop, but i don't know if i'll switch to full time.

elementary OS review
~~~ 2/11/24

i first tried elementary OS out about six months ago. i had been using arch linux with herbstuftwm before, and this had me wanting a more put-together UI. out of the top distro's for design, elementary OS, deepin, and cutefish were the most common. however, since both deepin and cutefish were chinese projects, i've stayed well clear of them.

my first impressions of the OS were very positive. i liked how the style was very reminiscent of mac OS from the early 10's, but was more up-to-date. the performance was good, with few hiccups, which was suprising because i ran it with 8gb DDR3 and a 3.3 GHZ processor, however, it probably helped that i had a GPU (a gt 730 ;). the main downsides design wise came from the small scope of apps designed for it. also, to a lesser extent, the UI is bogged down with eye candy.
            
speaking of apps, the built in app store is terrible. flat out. flatpak overall is slow, but i liked being able to sideload apps from flathub. the main difficulty was updating apps. it got to the point where i would have to manually repair the install before every update (which defeats the purpose of a GUI), and managing apps from both apt and flatpak got to be a headache.
            
overall, it is a well put-together OS with a lot of support behind it. im looking forward to seeing more development on the project.

korean week one
~~~ 2/9/24

this is week one of learning korean. i've learned hangul and some basic expressions so far. one of the first things that struck me was that the grammar is much easier than english. although there are more honorifics, im used to a little of that from spanish, and it is worth the trade off for less complex grammar.

i've been using the yonsei university course on coursera, and it is fairly thourough compare to other courses. my past experience with duolingo was that it didn't cover the basics enough, it was more vocabulary than sentence oriented, and i learn better in a more tradition classroom style course.

one of the things that has shocked me is the importance of writing and how valuable flash cards are. at the stage im at, wrote memorization is beneficial. however, along with some memorization, i'm listing to more korean outside of the class (like stupid korean dating videos on youtube). the quickest way to learn a language is to immerse yourself in it. i'm not ready to go to korea just yet, but listing to korean music and watching korean tv will definitely help.