added some drafts, finished acrobat reader post

6 files changed, 125 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/drafts/dell-dock.html b/drafts/dell-dock.html
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index 0000000..5b2526f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/drafts/dell-dock.html
@@ -0,0 +1,54 @@
+<p class="description">
+  Here's the problem. I have a Dell Latitude E-series laptop running FreeBSD
+  12.1-RELEASE. I also have a Dell E-Port II docking station on my desk. I
+  wanted to be able to take my shut, sleeping laptop and plop it down on the
+  docking station, hit the dock power button, and have the laptop wake up and
+  switch over to all of the docking station peripherals. All of the USB devices
+  did this without any additional work. However, the ethernet hookup, external
+  monitor, and speakers all required some additional tinkering. This assumes
+  that you're already familiar with wired and wireless network interfaces on
+  FreeBSD!
+</p>
+
+<h2>Link Aggregation (Failover)</h2>
+
+<p>
+  FreeBSD doesn't magically swap from wireless to wired connections by default,
+  but there's an easy way to remedy this: link failover. I recommend reading the
+  <a href="https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/network-aggregation.html"
+    >FreeBSD handbook page on network aggregation</a
+  >
+  as it's where I found out how to do what I'm about to show you. Basically,
+  aggregation lets you bind two of your network interfaces together into a
+  single virtual interface. Failover lets your traffic continue moving as long
+  as one of the aggregated interfaces has is connected. The steps I had to
+  follow are as follows:
+</p>
+
+<ul>
+  <li>
+    Bind the wireless network interface to the MAC address of the wired
+    interface
+  </li>
+  <li>Create a lagg interface using the two network interfaces</li>
+  <li>Bind the lagg interface to an IP address, preferably with DHCP</li>
+</ul>
+
+<p>All of this is configured in my <code>rc.conf</code>:</p>
+
+<pre><code>
+wlans_iwn0="wlan0" # <- wlan0 device should use the iwn driver
+ifconfig_wlan0="WPA" # <- wlan0 should use WPA (wpa_supplicant) to connect to wireless SSIDs
+create_args_wlan0="wlanaddr 5c:26:0a:06:c1:d6" # <- wlan0 MAC address is set to em0 device MAC address
+ifconfig_em0="up" # <- enable em0 (ethernet) device
+cloned_interfaces="lagg0" # <- create cloned interface lagg0
+ifconfig_lagg0="up laggproto failover laggport em0 laggport wlan0 DHCP" # <- configure lagg0 interface to act as a failover lagg protocol over em0 and wlan0
+</code></pre>
+
+<p>
+  In practice, the preferred device is <code>em0</code>, or my ethernet NIC.
+  FreeBSD will always try to use that first. If it's disconnected, such as when
+  the laptop is removed from the dock, the wireless device (<code>wlan0</code>)
+  will take over. This transition happens instantly, and without interrupting
+  traffic; active transactions aren't cut short for example.
+</p>
diff --git a/drafts/my home server after b/drafts/home server evolution
index e69de29..e69de29 100644
--- a/drafts/my home server after
+++ b/drafts/home server evolution
diff --git a/drafts/my home server before b/drafts/my home server before
deleted file mode 100644
index e69de29..0000000
--- a/drafts/my home server before
+++ /dev/null
diff --git a/drafts/programs i use all the time.html b/drafts/programs i use all the time.html
index b679d4d..fe7e63c 100644
--- a/drafts/programs i use all the time.html
+++ b/drafts/programs i use all the time.html
@@ -37,4 +37,5 @@
   <li>vim</li>
   <li>tmux</li>
   <li>mixer, mixertui</li>
+  <li>picom</li>
 </ul>
diff --git a/drafts/what is a script no really.html b/drafts/what is a script no really.html
index e69de29..9d97844 100644
--- a/drafts/what is a script no really.html
+++ b/drafts/what is a script no really.html
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+glues programs together
diff --git a/drafts/why does everyone insist on using adobe acrobat?.html b/drafts/why does everyone insist on using adobe acrobat?.html
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c2a5504
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+++ b/drafts/why does everyone insist on using adobe acrobat?.html
@@ -0,0 +1,69 @@
+<h1>Why Does Everyone Use Adobe Acrobat [Reader]?</h1>
+
+<p>
+  This is something that I've never been able to figure out. All through high
+  school I had to use PDFs. And if you wanted to open a PDF, everyone understood
+  that you needed Adobe Acrobat Reader. Even web sites where you downloaded PDFs
+  insisted that in order to open them, you were going to have to follow a
+  download link to make sure you have Acrobat on your PC.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+  Fast-forward a few years into college and I'm using PDFs more than ever. Every
+  professor ever is scanning and uploading course material, so out comes Acrobat
+  Reader for literally every teacher and student. At this point I was actually
+  used to using Firefox (PDF.js) to view PDFs for a couple of reasons. First of
+  all, Firefox usually opened PDFs faster than Acrobat Reader did. Reader was
+  getting bigger with every release, and eventually had a monstrous UI to load
+  up every time I wanted to open a tiny PDF file. Second, Firefox had smooth
+  scrolling for page-width documents. Reader was getting slower and laggier with
+  each release, to the point where scrolling through a PDF was no longer buttery
+  smooth but jittery and stuttery. It also seemed like Reader purposefully
+  wouldn't slide the page when you used a mouse wheel. It would jump down a few
+  lines at a time like it was simulating the down arrow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+  By my senior year I had switched from Windows to Linux full-time and it was
+  then I found out about <a href="https://mupdf.com/">MuPDF</a> and from then on
+  things were never the same. It's literally the best PDF reader I've ever used,
+  and I tried out quite a few. There are desktop and mobile apps. It opens
+  almost instantly. It lets you easily resize the page with excellent keyboard
+  shortcuts. There are no giant menu bars on either side of the page to squish
+  the document down to an unreadable size. Having a dozen of them open at once
+  doesn't bog down my PC. It's also available for all of the relevant operating
+  systems I've used (Windows, Mac OS, Linux, FreeBSD)! Oh and password-protected
+  PDFs are supported as well.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+  It's a fantastic piece of software And the best part is it comes with a
+  variety of tools to edit and manipulate PDFs as well. If the folks I went to
+  school with thought you needed the free Acrobat Reader to view a PDF, they
+  sure as heck thought you needed to buy Acrobat Pro to edit one. Some of them
+  refused to pay for it and used a variety of online services to upload, split
+  or merge, and download PDFs. I honestly for the life of me can't understand
+  why. MuPDF comes with <code>mutool</code>, which does all of the things I
+  would ever need to do with a PDF. It can attempt to convert a PDF to other
+  formats, like HTML. It can split and combine documents. It can even create
+  them from scratch and sign them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+  It's also free and open source. Can you imagine that? PDF viewing and editing
+  being free and open source? It's AGPL (in addition to being commercially)
+  licensed by the creators. The only slight drawback is the desktop version
+  apparently does not yet let you fill out forms. Not sure why but this isn't
+  something I use very frequently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+  It's not the hottest piece of tech out there, but it just plain works and
+  works really well. Maybe the only reason more people I know don't use it is
+  because Adobe is synonymous with the PDF format. It doesn't seem like that big
+  of a deal, but I feel like Acrobat has always been a piece of software that
+  has frustrated new or infrequent users in computing. And that's just not good.
+  Maybe the barrier to using MuPDF is the lack of GUI and abundance of
+  keybindings, but for me that's no sweat. I'd say to anyone to just try it out
+  and see if they like it. It is free, after all.
+</p>