Don’t preorder ebooks from Packt Publishing
The preorder purchase experience at PacktPub was confusing. Packt never notified me when the book was made available to download. The ePub was also unformatted.
Latest blog entries
Nothing but bad experiences with Realtek Ethernet NICs
The tale of my bad experiences with consumer-grade Realtek networking equipment over the last decade. Intel has always had to come in to save the day.
Google’s unfair performance advantage in Chrome
Google Chrome for Android gives Google Search (when set as the default search engine) a network performance-boost over competing search engines.
The perfect cross-platform serif and sans-serif font stacks
How the default web browser fonts vary, why they are what they are, and how to make your webdesign look the same on different operating systems.
Does the web still need HTTP Deflate?
The compression format war of the last decade was won by Gzip. Why do web browsers still support the legacy HTTP Deflate (Zlib) format? It’s time to deprecate it.
Review of Logitech K835 tenkeyless mechanical keyboard
The Logitech K835 TKL is a low-latency and well-built budget keyboard. Mechanical keyboards aren’t just for gamers with too much disposable income!
Best method for embedding dark-mode friendly SVG in HTML
A comparison of the many different methods for embedding SVG into HTML webpages. Which work best with light/dark-mode, client cacheing, interactive mode, and more.
A deeper dive into Chrome WebFeed
Google hasn’t turned Chrome into a feed reader, but it does use Atom and RSS feeds to let visitors follow any website. Here are more details on how it works.
Chrome experiment lets you Follow news and website updates
A brief history of where news/syndication feeds (“RSS“) went wrong, and how Google Chrome might just have found the right place for it in the Chrome web browser.
Fixing the News Media and Digital Platform Bargaining Code
The Australian “link tax” levied on digital platforms linking to news is overly broad. Here’s an idea for how to better target it and narrow its scope.
How I fixed the intermittent Wi-Fi dropouts on my MacBook
The Wi-Fi on my MacBook Pro has intermittently stopped working. (Likely a Broadcom driver issue.) Here’s how I turned a simple workaround into a more permanent fix.
Updated blog entries
FreeStyle Libre Reader device vs LibreLink app
Update (): I’ve not used the FreeStyle Reader for the last year. I don’t miss it and I get by fine using just the LibreLink app on my Android smartphone.
Ctrl blog is now licensed under Creative Commons licenses
Update (): The license has been removed from old articles and new articles no longer carry Creative Commons licenses. Photos and images will remain under Creative Commons licenses. Check the bottom of each article page for information about licensing images on that page. Creative Commons licenses are non-revokable; meaning that you may continue to use content previously distributed under Creative Commons licenses under those lienses. You can even find and continue to use articles archived copies in the Internet Archive under Creative Commons licenses.
Use different search providers for every search with RandSearch
Update (): Added Brave Search to the list. Brave acquired the search technology from Cliqz.
A sync bug in Standard Notes kept deleting my notes
Update (): Lead-developer Mo Bitar says the dataloss issue has been fixed in recent versions of Standard Notes. He says the underlying issue was caused by a timing issue (“race-condition”) during data synchronization. I’ve not confirmed the fix; as this issue lead me to switch to Joplin. Though, now might be the time to give Standard Notes another try.
Windows Timeline browser add-on raises few privacy concerns
Update (): The Timeline extension is no longer available for download. A critical component required to handle logins no longer works. Microsoft has also announced the removal of the Timeline feature from Windows 10.
Run Windows 10 in GNOME Boxes
Article updated at .