Owl's Roost

Infrequently-Asked Questions


The Author

Who are you?

Something I like about the internet is its semi-anonymity. I can exist as some vague presence writing HTML if I so desire, and it's nice to keep some things private. I think that my writing should speak for itself when possible.

That said, if you'd really like to know a little about me, then take a look at my About page.

You use any pronouns? Which should I pick?

If you're having a hard time choosing, then I'll tell you the same thing I tell people offline: use whichever set seems the most wrong for me. Have fun with it.

Why Owl?

In 2016, I needed a new username. The one randomly assigned to me as a kid by the Burger King virtual world (yes, really) wasn't cutting it anymore, so it was time for a change.

The easy way out was using the nearest pattern as a placeholder while I tried to think of something better. That happened to be a blanket with cartoon owls on it, so I started going by Owls online. The name stuck. Eventually, I dropped the S and my online name has been Owl ever since.

But aren't you [label]?

Labels are tools, not definitions.

Services

Do you take music commissions?

I do! You can find information about commissions here.

Will you fix my computer / solve some other problem?
  • Are you paying me for support services?
  • Did I personally help you set up whatever's having problems?
  • Are you using a program or service that I currently maintain or administer?
  • Did you read the documentation or check a search engine for your problem, then give it at least a half hour's effort on your own?
  • If the problem is interpersonal, then have you tried having an honest conversation about it?
  • Is the problem nerd sniping material?
  • Have I explicitly told you to come to me if you have this type of problem?

If the answer to all of these questions is "no", then please make at least one of them a "yes" before asking me to help. I care about people, but there's only so much I can do without burning myself out. Don't sell yourself short! Odds are that you can solve the problem on your own. At the very least, you should put it into a search engine and see what comes up. That's the first thing I do with any tough issue, and the answer is usually in the first few results.

Here's a handful of sites I like for troubleshooting my own problems.

Other Weirdness

Are you kiki or bouba?

Bold of you to assume I ascribe to the kiki-bouba binary.

Have you ever broken a bone?

Not that I know of! That said, I might have cracked something in my nose at one point. I was playing monkey-in-the-middle back in middle school. As usual, someone threw the ball, I bolted after it, and my face crashed into another kid's noggin hard enough to make him cry. My nose bled for a full hour. There wasn't any bruising, just a lot of pain, but now I can crack the bridge of my nose like a joint every few minutes. It's a fun party trick and occasionally lessens headaches.

Arbitrary computer opinions?

Programming language of choice?

Python at the moment. I use a fair bit of BASH too, but it's not nearly as nice to write.

Vim or Emacs?

Both are nice, but I use Vim because my pinkies don't like chorded commands. Doom Emacs exists, but I might as well just use Vim at that point if I'm not extending anything else. I'll admit I'd like to look into Emacs a bit more, though.

Operating system?

Linux or BSD.

Browser?

Firefox (with Arkenfox and uBlock Origin). Lynx is also lovely.

Fonts?

Fira Code Medium for monospace, Atkinson Hyperlegible for everything else.

IDE?

VSCodium (de-Microsofted VSCode).

Favorite keyboard switches?

Cherry blues. Browns are nice as well. There was another brand's white switches that I liked a lot, but I don't remember the brand name.

iPhone or Android?

They both suck.

How do you feel about geese?

They're funky little dinosaur men that want to kill you. I love them.

Favorite prime number?

Three. It's odd, simple, and pleasingly shaped. More importantly, when I was a kid, I read a book about three sisters who thought all good things come in threes. It made me love the number.
Five is also very nice because of all the numbers it's a factor of. I love a good pattern.

What's the worst joke you've made?

There was a dance unit in middle school where we had to do partnered swing dancing (fun!). Unfortunately, most of the guys didn't want to touch their partners' hands, let alone lead them. I'd recently started reading vampire novels and cracked a joke along that line to try to calm my guy down.

"Come on, I don't bite... usually."

Dead silence. Poor middle school me was totally oblivious as to why the guy was suddenly flustered. In retrospect, maybe my parents' attempts to shelter me caused more social problems than they solved.

What fonts does this site use?

The header title is Mansalva. Other headers are Libre Baskerville, and the body is Atkinson Hyperlegible. If your internet is a bit slow, then you might see Verdana as the body fallback.

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