Author: chuck

chuck is….

The “.is” (dot is) is the top-level domain for Iceland but it’s commonly used for domain name hacking. So many words, phrases, and names can end in “is” or be used in a sentence with since “is” is a verb. For example, I could create a page for “chuck.is/educated”, “chuck.is/experienced”, or simply “chuck.is/AnAsshat” – take your pick.

I am many things and my website serves as a public face of me – my work, my hobbies, and some of my ideas. “My piece of the internet” as they said in the early 2000’s. That said, I’ve migrated this website entirely over to my domain chuck.is and my old domain name chuckcarroll.co will redirect here. I still own the domain and my contact information will remain the same. RIP SEO.

Upgrading the Pixel 2 XL to LineageOS 18.1

The LineageOS team recently launched LineageOS 18.1 (based on Android 11) to several devices, including the 2017 Pixel 2 XL. This is awesome news to me since my old Pixel 2 XL stopped receiving official software updates last year.

Since this is a major release, I have to manually install the software via ADB rather than a traditional OTA update, so I figured I’d document the simple process. Although this is a manual update and your device should remain intact, it’s best to back up your device anyways.

Make sure you have adb and fastboot installed. I confirmed this just by typing in adb --version and fastboot --version into a terminal.

Download the latest version of LineageOS 18.1 here: https://download.lineageos.org/taimen
Open up a terminal and navigate to where the image is saved
Run the command adb reboot sideload. You phone should reboot into recovery mode
Navigate to the directory the image is located in and run the command adb sideload [image] where the image is the filename of the image. In my case it’s lineage-18.1-20210415-nightly-taimen-signed.zip. The update took less than 5 minutes, though your results may very depending on file size and if you’re using USB 3.0.
Once the update is completed, tap “Reboot system now” on the recovery screen on your phone

Nothing much has visually changed, but we can confirm we’re running Android 11 by going to Settings > About and checking the Android version.

The Web is Bloated 😱

My web development skills are rather limited. I know how to use WordPress, I know some basic HTML, and I can tweak CSS via trial and error. I am not a web developer by any means. I do, however, have some pretty strong opinions of what the web should look like. For example, I should be able to access your website on a low-spec machine and a low-bandwidth rural internet connection. Also if your site has a blog feed, it’s essential that it works with an RSS reader because I as a user should not have to constantly visit a website to see new content. My website lacks a lot of the bells and whistles that a lot of modern websites (personal or otherwise) have. The majority of my site is text based and I use zero tracking and very little images. This is done very much intentionally. Hell, if my knowledge were just a little bit better, I wouldn’t use WordPress at all and I’d stick with a pure HTML website.

The modern is web bloated and designed for middle class people on suburban internet connections. This sentiment isn’t new and it’s been continually circulated in several niche online circles. My view is this: Much like life, your website really doesn’t need much for something to be fully functional and enjoyable to use.

You Need to Have Your Own Website

If you’re a business or provide any sort of professional services, it seems obvious you should have your own website. But even if you’re just a random person on the internet, you should absolutely have a website. Having a website means having a piece of the internet to call your own where you can post your resume or projects or writing or photos or videos or…. whatever nonsense you feel like.

Stand Out
Literally everyone and their grandma’s dog is on social media, but those who have their own website (professional or personal) really stand out. Social media profiles should augment your website existing as extensions rather than be the sole home of your digital identity. Having a website not only establishes legitimacy to a business, but it can also establish credibility on an individual basis. You’re a real person and you stand out from the rest of the herd.

You Could Lose Access to Social Media
Your social media profile could be shutdown or you can lose access at any time. Google+ and Vine were once things and the day could very well come when Twitter and Facebook are relics from the past. In some cases, your account could be terminated if you violated some obscure or arbitrary rule on the platform, or you could be hacked for one reason or another. Anyone who has experience with this knows how insanely difficult to get in touch with someone from the platform that can help you regain access (pro-tip: use 2 factor authentication on ALL of your accounts and have offline backups of the important stuff). I’m not saying you need to completely disconnect from social media platforms as they can still serve a purpose for engagement, but in my view directing people to your website is ideal.

Personalization
Remember the days of MySpace? If you’re a zoomer you may not, but back then we were able to customize the look and feel of our MySpace page. In fact, a lot of the HTML I’ve learned was simply a result of tinkering with the code on my MySpace page. Nowadays, you’re limited in terms of customization on social media outside of updating a banner or profile picture. Having your own website gives you back that ability to customize your personal page but to an even greater level! Hell, you don’t even need to understand anything about web design since WordPress can do it all for you. It’s my view that minimalist web design is the most aesthetically pleasing, but if you really wanted to you could cover your site with early-2000’s GIFs.

Learn Something new
And finally, there’s also the side benefit of leaning a new skill. I am by no means a web developer, but the more you learn the better your skill-set becomes. If anything, tinkering with the few websites I own has made me more interested in web development. If you want to get started, I’ve set up several websites with Namecheap’s EasyWP service and it’s cheap especially if you go with a TLD like .xyz. Alternatively, Weebly and Wix are even more beginner friendly.

Stop being an internet peasant and go be an internet landlord!

Politics Is Too Small

I started writing this near the elections of 2020 when everyone was fixated on who was going to be the next president.

There’s an infinite number of things that seem more important and interesting than discussing national politics. Let’s ignore the fact that national politics will have almost zero impact on the average person. Why some people fixate on national politics rather than the local politics which will much more likely impact their lives is beyond me. The news cycle that shares this info is more entertainment (infotainment) than it is actual information of substance. There’s so much more to spend your mental energy pondering!

For example we can ponder that if the universe is infinite in size, that means patterns will repeat in an infinite system. If that’s the case, then there are both similar and identical versions of you and I doing the exact same thing we’re doing right now. Or there may be a version of you out there that’s ever so slightly different (for example you ate eggs for breakfast instead of oatmeal). Or there could be more extreme differences like you could be a cannibal! (unless you already are.

Have you ever heard of a Boltzmann brain? Trillions of years in the future after the inevitable heat death of the universe, the universe will spend the vast majority of eternity in a featureless state. Over enough eons, eventually a very rare thermal fluctuation will occur where atoms bounce off each other in exactly such a way to spontaneously yet briefly form a functioning human brain in the void that’s complete with false memory of having existed in our universe. Am I (or you) a Boltzmann brain?

Or what about free will? Do we live in a completely random universe that cannot be predicted? Do we live in a completely mechanistic and deterministic universe, but we as humans only think we have free will, but we’re really just deluding ourselves and the idea of “free will” is just a story we tell ourselves? Do we live in a completely random universe that cannot be predicted? Like when you meditate and really pay attention to your own awareness you’ll notice that thoughts actually appear rather than created by “you”. Where did they come from? Fuck if I know, I sure as shit didn’t produce them. Really makes you wonder who’s driving this thing.

How about time. Does time exist outside of the mind? We can certainly observe and therefore measure the passage of time, but that observation is made through the lens of consciousness. Maybe at this point you get where I’m coming from.

Anyways, there is so much more mind-fucking topics to spend your time pondering than waste so much energy reading the news or thinking about politics.