LibreOffice Writer

Months after downloading Microsoft Word, I glanced at it every time I used my computer and never opened it. The costly, bulky software sits in my Applications folder hogging space and collecting digital dust on its blank pages. I don't really know why I never use Microsoft Word--it's perfectly capable of handling everything text-related that I do. I’ve been using TextEdit for most of my word processing, so I didn't want to bother using a complicated and hard to use software for doing basic tasks like writing a video. In the end, I deleted it off my computer for good and replaced it with LibreOffice.

LibreOffice is basically the free and open source version of Microsoft Office. It has 6 softwares: Writer, Impress, Draw, Calc, Math, Base. I feel like people hardly talk about it, especially since most remember and recognize Word as the go-to software. LibreOffice is a successor to OpenOffice (which is much older) and is still updated today. The software I care about most--and the one I use most--is Writer. I want to learn how to use it effectively and efficiently. Writer is very customizable, giving you the freedom to change how the interface looks to optimize productivity. If you're intimidated by the amount of customization, the default look works perfectly fine for anything you're accomplishing. Personally, I like a clean and minimalistic toolbar with only the things I frequently use. Mine looks like this:

 

As you can see, it looks pretty plain. The top bar has only a few things, and the bottom bar has very basic formatting. I've already written a decent amount of text in it, so I can attest that it runs well on pretty much anything. Even on my slow, old Linuxbook, it ran without using much CPU or RAM. 

I suggest you give this program a try, especially if you don't want to pay for expensive software and need a capable program. 

Life in these United States

Since I enjoy reading Reader's Digest every month, I titled this post after the section dedicated to humorous stories from people living in these United States. Instead of being humorous (and blatantly copying RD), I wanted to share a few things that happened today.

 

1) As I was about to leave the house this morning, I decided to leave a jacket at home because it wasn't going to rain and the sun was out. Later in the afternoon, I severely regretted my decision as I stood in the cold, strong wind for an uncomfortable few hours at a track meet.

2) While typing on my Chromebook, I realized my "n" key felt sticky, so I decided to pry it out and try to fix it. After a lot of attempts, I successfully failed at fixing the key and had to replace it with the grave accent key that I never use. There's now a missing key on the top left corner.

3) I packed five total sandwiches for lunch today and used the entire remaining bread loaf.

4) My friend uploaded on his YouTube channel after more than a year.

5) As I opened the door from inside a classroom, it slammed outward with unbelievable force from the wind and made an extremely loud WHACK. I then proceeded to watch a few more people do the exact same thing.

Rain

 It's been raining for a few days now, and it made me think about my feelings on rain. I'd say it's delightful and irritating and the same time, depending on the situation. If it's a weekday and you have to go out to work/school, then it sucks. It makes you take a little bit longer planning your outfit, since you probably want to have a jacket and some better shoes to resist the water. You have to make sure to take an umbrella if it's raining harder, since being wet for a long period of time can be really annoying. When you step outside, tiny droplets of cold hit your face and make you squint your eyes. You pull out your phone, and it accumulates little droplets of water that start making your phone register inputs you didn't do. Your hands are cold. Benches and tables become wet, meaning you can't sit where you usually sit anymore. Whenever you rush under an awning, you're almost guaranteed to get hit by a giant drop since it drips down. The floor is slick and squeaky. The cloudy sky makes you feel lethargic and down. While it's not really enjoyable to have to go out and about while it rains, it can be delightful when you're indoors.

 It's a Saturday morning, rain is coming down hard. That tapping at your window fills the silence of the room. Fresh coffee for a morning of nothingness. You plop down at your desk, open up a good book or start up your favorite game. This is probably the only time when I feel rain is delightful. I love that feeling knowing that the outdoors is sort of undesirable and that you don't have to be out there. The pleasant noise of rain on the window is perfect for focusing on work. A gloomy, dim light that lights your room means you can keep the lights off. Whenever you eventually step outside, the smell of rain lingers. When the sunshine comes after the rainfall, a wave of good feelings comes. It's that perfect kind of sunshine, with a good amount of clouds in the air that don't make it super bright.

Even though most say that sunny days are beautiful days, I think the very rare and occasional days like these are equally beautiful.

 

Recording on a Chromebook -- My Experience

 Most people who start YouTube channels, especially ones that focus heavily on screen recording, use a good computer. A good computer means that you won't have to worry about any issues when recording a game or other task on your computer. However, since I had a Chromebook for most of my YT channel, I had to deal with annoyances that aren't really talked about. 

1) Picking the right screen recorder. For some reason, all of the screen recorders on ChromeOS run differently. It doesn't help that there's 50 thousands options, either. There's some on the Chrome Web Store, the built in one, MANY crappy paid online ones, and some hidden PWA gems. The most heinous are certainly the online ones, since they almost always lag the video and cost absurd amounts for very limited usage. It's so easy to find these just by searching "Free Online Screen Recorder". Please don't fall for them. 

With all these options, it's difficult to find a screen recorder that works on your device and has what you need. Some don't record audio that well, don't record your microphone, slow down your computer too much, take up far too much storage, or create weird audio formats that aren't seekable. I've encountered all these issues at some point. As evident by many of my videos, I switched screen recorders often in a scramble to find the best one. In the end, it didn't matter, since I got a better computer and have Arch Linux on my Chromebook.

2) The inevitable lag. Even if you do find a screen recorder that works, it's not guaranteed that it won't lag when you record. When you're recording and browsing the web and doing very light-weight activities, you'll probably will be fine. But, the minute you start playing a game (especially web-based ones like Super Mario Construct), good luck. The game will lag, and so will the resulting video footage. It makes sense--doing harder tasks on your computer while trying to record will take up a lot of CPU power on low spec machines. 

In my Mac Mini video, I mentioned how I got lag when I recorded a Game Boy Color game. This isn't a lie. If you go back and watch some parts in the middle of my Oracle of Ages series, you will notice parts where there is a very noticeable frame drop. This infuriated me nearly to the point of giving up. I tried nearly everything to fix this, but each time there would eventually be lag. It truly feels like these Chromebooks are moving backwards in the advances of technology.

 3) Limited Storage. On top of dealing with crappy recording experiences, I had to figure out how to manage my storage with long videos. They would almost always take up a significant amount of space on my computer, which forced me to quickly upload it in fear of running out of space. Chromebooks (surprise) don't have a lot of disk space, so keeping multiple projects just wasn't an option.

 

Looking back, I'm not sure why I didn't install Linux on my Chromebook much sooner. It's a game-changer and I'm never going back. It can literally do exactly what a Chromebook can and much more, including record pretty good for free. You're still going to notice the limited hardware, but at least you won't be locked down.

Must-haves in your backpack (my opinion) if you're going somewhere.

Whenever I go somewhere and take a backpack, I always carry a bunch of "essentials" that I believe should be in everyone's pack. It really doesn't matter where you're going (to school, to work, on a flight, on a roadtrip, on a hike, to a geocache), you'll likely end up needing these things at some point. Here's my list:

In your pocket:

- Phone

- Wallet w/ cash

- Keys

- Headphones

- Shades

I never leave the house without these. I'm sure this list is pretty standard among most. You gotta have easy access to these things in your pocket. Personally, I like to add an item of entertainment like a DS or yo-yo.

In your bag:

- Water bottle. This can be plastic or reusable. If you're on a hike, those camelback pouch ones are nice

- Gum. You know you shouldn't leave without it

- A pen

- Portable Charger. I carry this everyday for school and whenever I go out for a longer period of time. If your phone dies, it's a pain. 

- Charging cable

- Measuring tape. Not like the ones that retract, just a simple one that looks like tape

- Nutrition. This is so important. Like I said, it doesn't matter where you are, having snacks like bars, chips, sandwiches, etc. is so clutch when you're hungry. 

I know this is a small amount of things, but these are important. Anything else you have in your pack is going to depend on where you're going/what you're doing. If you're going hiking, you're going to bring a flashlight and first aid kit. You obviously wouldn't need that at school, so it's not on this list. If you're going to school, you'll need a computer and stationary, but not when when hiking.

Have fun.

My Messy Desk

 I feel like every week my desk has been getting messier and messier. I'm not sure if it reflects how busy I am, how much stuff I own, or my laziness, but it's kind of insane. 

Let me set the scene: 

Right now, I have a book on the far left side of my desk. It's taking up a decent amount of space. I have two water bottles right next to it, one empty and one completely full. I have a lip balm also in front of the water bottles, as well as a Nintendo eShop gift card that I have yet to redeem. On top of that gift card is a journal and a stick note pad. Next to that are some stress balls I got for Christmas. These are jumbled in a pile with a 3DS screw driver, a ziplock bag of keyboard switches, and a blue flashlight I got from an event at school. Slightly above this pile is a new shoelace for my running shoes and some Aller-Flo I got from Costco. The Aller-Flo has been sitting there for months. Next to that is two tape measures, a mini gumball machine, and a pencil lamp (that looks suggestive). In front of me is my monitor, and beside that is my Mac mini. Resting on my monitor's stand is my Elgato capture card and two orange speakers that are made of the same thing that those Chinese takeout boxes are made of. It looks like there's gonna be fried rice in one, but it's actually just a speaker. There's two papers sitting in front of my monitor, which are both comics I drew about Lucas. They're really shitty. On top of the comics are headphones, and in front of the comics is my keyboard and trackpad. To the left and right of my keyboard is a bunch of random stuff. AirPods, a Bic pen, my wallet, gum, iPod shuffles, cards, more pens, and an iPad case I haven't used in years. My desk has shelves, and there's a bunch of random things on them. On the right shelf, there's 3 Amiibos (Ryu, Ness, and Lucas), 2 cameras (an old 2008 Kodak video camera + a Canon G9X Mark 2), 3 SD Cards, a Sony recording thingy, and a keycap remover. There's a shelf above this one, which has the box for the Zelda Game and Watch. I used that Game and Watch a ton, until one day when I went into a pool on Kauai and completely submerged it without realizing it was in my pocket. That one hurt, especially since it was for like 3 seconds. Besides the G&W, there's a Luminator Yo-Yo (from Yoyotricks.com), a sharpener, the Sage Yo-Yo, a Darn Tough arm band, my Mario G&W, and neon-colored flash cards. As you can probably tell, it's messy. The left shelf has a mixture of things like cash, coins, a calculator, sticky notes, SNES controllers, and books. 

I was able to write a giant paragraph of nearly everything on my desk, which tells me that I probably need to clean it. Every time I try, though, I end up not wanting to move things/put things away in fear that I'll need it later. I know that sounds a bit hoarder-ish, but I'm not. It's the same reason I have 50 million tabs open at once (and then I complain why my computer lags... lol). I've heard that having a messy desk shows that you're like smart or productive, but I'm not entirely convinced. Even if it does, it doesn't take away from the fact that it's an eyesore and kind of disgusting. I always see those "aesthetic" desk setups or "minimalist" desk setups on the internet. They look awesome, but in practice, I feel like it would be annoying trying to grab what you need. Props to you if you like it that way.

Now that I wrote this, I think I'm realizing that I need to clean up a bit and reorganize my desk. I'll be back...

Bic Round Stic

Feeding into this blog's randomness, I wanted to post about the Bic Round Stic pen.

 

I use this damn pen so much, that I may as well just own the rights to it. The Bic Round Stic (pictured above) is a very inexpensive, plastic office pen that comes in many colors and versions. I use the classic blue one for nearly every piece of handwriting, even math. It is extremely lightweight, thin, and surprisingly comfortable to hold. Even after long writing sessions, it gives little fatigue to my hand. It writes really smooth for a ballpoint pen and lasts an annoying amount of time. I swear, it takes months of heavy use to wear one of these out. It'd be faster to try and drink 10 gallons of water with a fork than to finish a pen. You're likely to lose it or break it before you finish the ink. 

I'm not sure why I like this pen so much. I think it's just because it's so vastly different from what most would consider a "good" or favorite pen. Most people prefer expensive gel pens, but for me, I'd take this over any pen, any day. It is the most reliable thing ever, even if it's been sitting in a drawer for a decade. Even though this pen is so cheap and mass produced, it doesn't really feel or write cheap.

I prefer blue ink over anything because it stands out, especially among printed documents that are black. Let me know what you prefer. 

Also yes, I do math in pen. I've seen some Reddit posts of people who do math completely in pen, and I don't feel so alone. I do cross out a lot and it can sometimes get messy, but overall I find it more satisfying and just as viable as pencil. I hate pencil (the way it looks and writes), so I've always just used pen for literally everything. In elementary school, you're probably going to have a harder time trying to convince your teacher to use pen for everything. In high school, they don't care, so go at it. 

Let me know what you think about the Bic Round Stic--or any other Bic pen for that matter--and if you use pen for everything or not.