Well, I had to re-upload the entire site again due to a layout modification.

As part of the changes, I removed the Chattable iframe because it’s no longer working. I’m not sure if Chattable is experiencing issues or if they deleted my instance due to inactivity, but either way, I think the microblog is better off without it.

Instead, I’ve added a link to the recent note-taking app I created, which I mentioned in the previous post, so it’s now easier to find.

But I didn’t want this update to just be about the layout change, so I decided to discuss something that’s been on my mind. I have tons of topics I want to cover here, but today, something else caught my attention.

I stumbled across a video by a YouTuber called Penguinz0. I don’t usually watch YouTube, but the topic of this video piqued my interest. In the video he highlights a note from a blog about the theme he's talking about, and… WTF is this nonsense?

Just look at this: how many ads are on this page?



There are potentially six ads visible at once. I disabled my adblocker to check, and it’s even worse: the page seems to endlessly load because the ads keep rotating. There’s an ad every two three-line paragraphs, so you end up scrolling forever to read a note that’s barely a screenful of text.

This is awful. I honestly don’t understand how people put up with this shit. It’s not just this one page, it’s everywhere. I’ve even seen sites demand money to stop tracking you, and paying them doesn’t even remove the ads!

And then they have the audacity to plead with you to disable your adblocker. When you do, they pounce, trying to squeeze out as much revenue as possible.

Honestly, I think adblockers are essential these days just to filter out the absurd amount of junk on websites. I get that sites need to earn money, they’re not charities, but there has to be a balance.

If their content and user experience were genuinely good, people would stick around to read more, and one or two ads would be enough. Instead of relying solely on ads, why not diversify? Offer premium, ad-free content, merchandise, affiliate links, or other revenue streams.

These kinds of issues make me question the viability of the internet for anything beyond media consumption. We’re living through dark times online, not just because of what companies do to users, but because of what users are willing to tolerate to avoid losing their dopamine fix.

Well the rant ends here! I'll try to post more content now that i finished coding the second version of my app and have more free time, and also will try to squeeze more time too to make something in Blender agein. See Ya!

I really don’t understand this trend of websites working against their own users by concealing more information, stripping away the interactive and social features people used to rely on. Features we once took for granted are disappearing.

Look at YouTube, for example. First, they removed the dislike button, and now they’re inching toward changes like hiding certain metrics entirely like the ones of the picture. Xitter has taken away or restricted many core functions, and Netflix keeps reversing decisions that initially made them the go-to streaming platform.

I know a lot of people shrug and say, ‘Where else are we going to go?’ And maybe, in cases like YouTube, that’s fair since true alternatives are rare. But just passively accepting these changes only encourages platforms to keep eroding the experience. They’re free to make it worse without much consequence.

Personally, I’m cutting down on my reliance on these sites that keep ‘pulling this kind of crap.’ Sure, it means I miss out on some things, but it’s worth it to avoid all the compromises they push on us. Since YouTube cracked down on ad blockers, I’ve minimized my time on the platform. Sorry, YouTube, but I’m not waiting through the hottest indian music hit or an hour-long ad or unskippable content.

Then there’s Reddit. I’ve recently stopped using it as well, and I’d probably quit Xitter if they pushed things too far. The limits on daily views they introduced a while back already made me take a year-long break. Luckily, I haven’t found myself affected by the likes being hidden or restrictions on blocking since those aren’t features I use much, but who knows what’ll be next? Nothing is off the table if i get my experience messed up with.

I get that these are for-profit companies, aiming to increase revenue and engagement, but so many of these choices feel counterproductive. It makes me wonder, are these decisions even human-driven, or is an AI behind these changes?

Are we heading back to square one, where websites start to feel like TV channels, giving users no say in their experience? The only choice left to us is to watch or walk away.

It’s a pretty bleak outlook if you ask me. But there’s a bit of hope, sites like Neocities and the Fediverse seem to keep alive the community-driven, user-oriented internet that i'd like to see make a comeback.

The Fediverse! I have stuff to say about the fediverse... but that’s a topic for another post.

There's one and ONLY ONE reason why, despite using Bodhi Linux as my main driver for more or less one year now, there's still a dual boot system booting Windows 7 on my computer.

Well, aside from the fact that Blender for me works better on the Windows partition (but that's another story), there's only one piece of software that makes me be still kind of chained to Windows, and that's Music bee.

Probably not many people knows it since desktop music players have fallen out of preference of many people, leaving them in second place to music streaming sites, and also Musicbee is not one of the most popular ones, but i have to say it's one of the most feature filled music players that i've found ever.

It's a free music player built with the purpose of managing a large collection of music. It has a lot of options for creating a music library, and also options for managing it, you know, tag management, artwork, lyrics, it has a great way of presenting your library, it has music reencode tools AND... i think it has CD burning capabilities (i haven't checked it for sure, but it may have, it super super complete).

What's the problem with it? Well, i love it, it's the software i use to manage my music, and for now no software that i know comes closer to it in amount of features, but the problem is: it is closed source, and it's Windows only.

It is really a bummer, because every time i have to manage stuff regarding my music collection i have to boot into Windows to work into it, and believe me, i have tried several other Linux software that does similar stuff, and it always lacks features that i need.

Let me explain a bit how do i manage my music: Aside from having albums stored in their own albums and stray songs stored in genre folders, lately when talking about the music i listen the most, i have all the music files that i like and listen frequently pooled on a single folder, then i created a bunch of playlists, each one of different genres or themes.

On Music Bee it's super easy to manage, i add new music to several of the created playlists and Music bee keeps track of it, if i delete the file phisically on one playlist it deletes the file on all the playlists where that file is, and it also prevents me from adding the same file twice to a playlist.

When i finish adding files to my playlists, i just drag them to a "virtual hard disk" that i created for this purpose and Music bee copies the playlist and the new tracks to it, if the source files aren't in mp3 it transcodes them first before copying them, so i don't have to deal with multiple file formats.

I've become so used to this way of working with my music that i think i would have problems trying to do the same with other software, or all the steps involved would make it too cumbersome. so far i've tried Guayadeque (no longer maintained sadly), Quod Libet, Clementine/Strawberry and several others, and for now almost all of them suck one way of another, particularly when trying to manage large playlists or copying them to other folders/devices.

Some people would say that i could try running Music Bee on WINE, but a lot of people have problems with this too. To this day, no one has made Music bee run successfully on WINE, not at least with a lot of bugs that make it unworkable.

I'll keep trying to find another music player that i can install on Linux that allows me work on my music collection the way i want, and, who knows, maybe i could try coding it myself if the challenge is not big enough!