Evergreen on Leon Mika

An Incomplete List of DRM-Free Media Stores

Tue, 18 Feb 2025 08:09:11 +1100

I’ve been seeing a bunch of links to online stores that sell digital media — books, music, etc. — that is without DRM. I’ve thought of starting a collection of some of them here for my own reference. This is an evolving list and is by no means complete, but I want a central place to put these links.

Some notes:

This collection is mainly to catalogue places where I can get contemporary mainstream works, so sites like Project Gutenberg and Bandcamp have been left out (although they’re pretty good places to get works).
These are the Australian links, mainly because I live in Australia, but I’m sure you can find the storefronts specific to your region by following them (that’s how I found these ones).
I’ve not tried all these links myself. Those I’ve had that I’ve been happy with I’ve marked with a ✅. Those that I’ve tried that I haven’t been happy with I’ve marked with a 👎.

Books

eBooks DRM-Free Section: Looks to be a good place to get technology related books, such as the O’Reilly series.
✅ Manning: I’m not entirely sure about this one, yet I have had some success buying DRM-free content from here very recently. Mainly technology related books.
Standard eBooks: Looks to be mainly out-of-copyright works.
👎 Kobo DRM-Free Section: Looks to be mainly novels. Just beware that the mainstream sections may NOT be DRM-free.

Music

✅ Qobuz: This is pretty great. A lot of mainstream albums here.
ZDigital: Known as 7digital outside of AU (probably clashes with channel 7 here). I’ve not tried this yet, but looks to have a decent collection of mainstream albums too.

Audiobooks

✅ Libro.fm: Not really an audio-book person, probably because I’m not interested in trying anything more from Amazon. When I’m ready, I’ll come here first.

Many of these were shared on Micro.blog and Mastodon. Shoutouts to sod, toddgrotenhuis, and cheribaker.

Gallery of Fake Logo For Test Organisations

Fri, 10 Jan 2025 16:44:00 +1100

In lieu of anything else, I thought I’d put together a gallery of the logos I use for test organisations. I occasionally need to create fake organisations for testing at work, and to add a bit of amusement to the mix, I sometimes make fake logo for them. These logos are typically made using ChatGPT, although if I’m particularly bored, I sometimes touched them up by hand (nothing too drastic, usually things like cropping or adding titles). Most of the fake organisation are film and media production studios, as that’s typically the client base of our product.

I do this mainly for fun, but there is some utility to it. A user can be a member of zero or more organisations, and can change the one they’re acting in at any time. Having a unique avatar for each one helps in distinguishing which one I have active. I do get cute with the names, and for that, I make no apologies. 🙂

Content Mill Productions — The original logo made as a tongue-in-cheek joke to those online making content for the sake of chasing the 'views'.

Marian Film House — Named in honour of Spirit and Opportunity, which was passing through my head while coming up with this one.

Seedglass — Not really a film production studio. I had the domain seedglass.net at the time and I needed to test single sign on. I'm actually pretty impressed with what ChatGPT came up with for this one.

Good Vibe Productions — No remarks on this one, other than I was feeling a bit troubled by what was going in in the news at the time.

Feisty Feline Films — I did add the title for this one by hand but the colouring and illustration was all ChatGPT. And yeah, this is a Simpson reference.

Links About Blogging

Tue, 17 Oct 2023 10:16:00 +1100

Here’s a collection of links to posts about the “practice” of blogging or writing that I’ve found useful:

About Blog

About blogs, starting a blog, keeping a blog, and others who blog.

Why You Should Write, by Preetam Nath.
Why Blog, by Chuck Grimmett.
Small b blogging, by Tom Critchlow.
Understanding blogs, by Tracy Durnell.
On Having a Blog, by Skoobs.
More Personal Blogging, by Greg Morris.
A Year Of New Avenues, by Robin Sloan
The Year of the Personal Website, by Matthias Ott

The Practice

How and why to blog, and what to write.

The first 1,000 are the most difficult, by Seth Godin. Via Manton Reece.
Practical Ways to Post Something Every Day, by CJ Chilvers.
Prolific Beats Perfect, by Ali Abdaal. The section “Prolific Beats Perfect” and “Content is Time Travel” are good ones to revisit occasionally.
Write 5x more but write 5x less, Mike Crittenden.
What to blog, by Ben Werdmuller.
Take Care of Your Blog, by Robin Rendle.
Nobody cares about your blog, by Alex Molas. Don’t let the title dissuade you, this is actually encouragement.
Publishing your work increases your luck, by Aaron Francis, via Github’s The ReadME Project. A specific use case for your blog: to publish stuff you’re working on (yes, people would read it).
What to Blog About When You Don’t Know What to Blog About, by Michelle Barker. Via Own Your Web: Issue 4 by Matthias Ott.
Blogging Platforms, by Jason Velazquez. A list of blogging CMS and writing environments. Most options there are pretty good. Here’s another list.
Advice for How To Make Sure You Never Create Anything, by Erlend. I won’t spoil the theme here.
Blog like no one is watching, by Andy Nicolaides. This one’s a little personal, but the lessons are still worth taking away.

Blogging Ain’t Dead Yet

Your blog is not alone.

Blogging is alive and well, by Colin Devroe.
(Another) Blogging Isn’t Dead Post, by Brandon Trebitowski.

About Work In General

Not about blogging, but about working in public.

Links to share with others to encourage them to start blogging.

Metalinks

Links to others who have also collected links about blogging.

How to write about blogs, by Frank Meeuwsen. Via Own Your Web: Issue 5, by Matthias Ott.

Where Have I Been

Mon, 29 May 2023 04:31:41 +1100

Inspired by Manton and Maique, I thought I’d document the places I’ve visited as well. I’d had to refer to this list a few times in the past so having a record like this is helpful.

Transfers are not included here. In order for a place to be listed here, I’ve have had to have landed there. Also, I’ve excluded Victoria, Australia, as this is where I live.

🇦🇺Australia (home)
- New South Wales
- South Australia
- ACT
🇧🇷Brazil
🇨🇰Cook Islands
🇫🇯Fiji
🇫🇷France
🇮🇹Italy
🇮🇩Indonesia
🇯🇵Japan
🇰🇮Kiribati
🇳🇿New Zealand
🇳🇺Niue
🇵🇬Papua New Guinea
🇼🇸Samoa
🇸🇬Singapore
🇸🇧Solomon Islands
🇪🇸Spain
🇨🇭Switzerland
🇹🇴Tonga
🇹🇻Tuvalu
🇦🇪United Arab Emirates
🇬🇧United Kingdom
- Devon, England
🇺🇸United States of America
- District of Columbia
- Maryland
- Nevada
🇻🇺Vanuatu
🇻🇳Vietnam

Last Updated 12 Nov 2023

12 Nov 2023: Added Singapore and Indonesia
28 May 2023: First version. Note: I’m writing this while on an overseas trip, so I’ll also be including the countries that I’ll be visiting over the next few weeks.

Option Currency Symbol Reference

Wed, 12 Oct 2022 13:06:00 +1100

A small, incomplete reference of the various currency symbols that can be produced using the Option key. Here because I always forget these, and I’ve been needing to produce these quite often lately.

Currency	Symbol	Key
Dollar	`$`	`$`
Cent	`¢`	`Opt4`
Pound	`£`	`Opt3`
Euro	`€`	`ShiftOpt2`
Yen	`¥`	`Opty`