update!

The program now uses argparse (as suggested by somebody) and accepts the arguments gyear, gmonth, and gday. I think it works pretty well! I have also implemented a --year tag (or -y for short) that creates a printout of the Symmetry454 calendar year. Additionally, much of the information that isn't very useful, like the number of weeks in a year, will now be hidden if you don't use the --verbose tag (or -v for short). The year preview also adds the leap week to December if needed.

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If you didn't know, Symmetry454 is a proposal for the reform of the Gregorian calendar made in 2002 that, as the name implies, has months that alternate between four and five weeks. It is perennial, meaning weekdays of dates don't change (so you can reuse calendars as long as it's not a leap year!) and certain holidays that depend on the nth weekday would have fixed dates (like Easter is proposed to be on the 7th of April). It interestingly has a leap week system that alternates between 5 and 6 year gaps between leap years, with an additional week being added to December during leap years. Personally, I find a leap week far more fun than a leap day.

I have made a small Python script that converts Gregorian dates into Symmetry454 dates, which follows the steps noted by the person who made Symmetry454 (they had a whole PDF and everything explaining each step to calculate all that, super helpful!). Currently, it accepts Gregorian dates (year, month, and day) and returns the Symmetry454 date (in YYYY-MM-DD format), as well as some additional information (like a basic calendar that shows the position of the day in the month. There is also a function for outputting a year, what quarter the day is in, and the fixed date since a defined epoch)

It doesn't really do much at the moment, but in the future, I would like the program to be able to let the user explore the calendar of different Symmetry454 years, as well as easily interconvert the dates of the two systems. There are probably a bunch of bugs in my code, and it's not really all that practical, but making it has been pretty fun!

If you want to check it out, it's on Codeberg with the GPLv3 license: https://codeberg.org/sbird/py-symmetry454

The PDF found in this website detailing the calculations for converting from Gregorian to Symmetry454 was very helpful, here it is for reference: https://kalendis.free.nf/symmetry.htm (go all the way down to "Documentation", it's the PDF labelled "calendar arithmetic")

No AI was used to create this project, all mistakes and bugginess are my own.

It looks like there are loads of weird and strange calendars that try to improve on the Gregorian calendar. Some stick with the twelve months while others divide the year into 13! A little searching shows some interesting ones that people came up with:

• the International Fixed Calendar, a 13-month calendar made in 1902, interestingly was adopted by Kodak for quite a while! Each month has 28 days, and there is an extra "year day" appended to bring the total to 365 days. Another day is added during leap years.
• the Pax Calendar, another 13-month calendar that was made in 1930, but instead of having leap days to keep it consistent with the Gregorian calendar, it has leap weeks. That's neat I guess.
• and the Symmetry454 calendar, which is a 12-month calendar made in 2002 (so much more recent than the above two) which alternates between months with four and five weeks. Additionally, it also has leap weeks, making December a five-week month every so often.

All of the above are "perennial", meaning the weekdays don't change every year. This could be both a good thing (makes things more predictable, you could reuse calendars from any previous year) but also as a negative (some birthdays would be on weekdays while others are on weekends). The 13-month options sound nice, but it would be very tough to get people interested in remembering a 13th month. I like the Symmetry454 calendar the most out of the three, since it's elegant while retaining the usual twelve months.

You also have the calendar made during the French Revolution in tandem with stuff like metric time and other base-10 standardisation, which had 10 months per year. It was removed after Napoleon took over, however, and wasn't adopted by any other nation.

I also find changing when the year begins from the birth of Jesus (which, apparently, isn't even that spot on, the guy was born four years before 1 AD I think) to some when else to be interesting too. The Holocene calendar adds another 10,000 years to represent the beginning of humans doing agriculture and such!

As for the question bit, I would like to ask what you all think of these alternate calendars. Would you switch to them if given the opportunity? If major world powers were to switch to the calendar, how would the public react? Is it possible to configure the clock to use an alternate calendar system on Linux?

Another thing I would like to ask if we were to change the calendar and possibly add a 13th month, what would you rename the months? It would help differentiate the old Gregorian dates in old texts, videos, etc. with new reformed ones, and it would also be a bit of fun! I also really don't like that the Caesars decided to shift the year by two, making September the 9th month, October the 10th, etc. Personally, I would name them after the major moons in the Solar System (the Moon, Ganymede, Europa, Titan, Miranda, etc.) given that the months were originally based on the lunar phases.

I bought a sticker pack online and one of them was a red Arch Linux logo I've never seen before, and strangely enough the pack did not include the blue version. What does this red version mean, is it an old logo or what? Is it some sort of testing/developer branch?

For reference, I have already told them why the sky has no stars (it's because of camera exposure, the moon surface is very reflective so lower exposure is used to not overexpose the image) and why the flag wasn't drooping down (there was an extending arm in the stand to hold it upright, as a flag drooping down is a sad flag). I have also explained that the videos of the moon landing were upscaled/remastered when they asked why the video quality of the clips were so good.

Currently, their main argument is the fact that the U.S. were able to do the moon landing in the mid 20th century while are experiencing delays for the current moon mission. They argue that, if the moon landing could be done way back then, with modern technology, it should be possible to quickly get back to the moon. They also argue NASA could have just reused the same designs as the Apollo missions if they actually went to the moon.

I have argued that NASA's budget is a fraction of what is used to be, and that the addition of new modern technologies introduces additional parts that could break and thus need to be tested. I have also mentioned that the Soviet Union would immediately call out the US if they faked the moon landing, and that samples of moon rocks were sent to Soviet scientists to study and verify. They insist that the Soviets were scared of what the US would do if they spoke out against a fake moon landing, which I didn't agree with (given they were both nuclear superpowers)

They then argued that it's impossible to tell whether the moon rocks are actually from the moon landing, they could be samples collected by rovers. I responded that no rovers had successfully collected moon rocks at the time, and then they switched to arguing that it's impossible to verify the rocks are from the moon. I followed up by saying there are methods of doing that (through the composition of the rocks and such). They then asked how anybody knows what moon rocks look like if nobody else has been to the moon, and I got kind of stumped. I tried to explain that there are models to how the moon formed, how we know the rocks aren't from Earth, satellites that map out the surface, etc., but they reiterated that no one can "prove" that they were from the moon without going there in the first place.

One interesting thing they also mentioned is that, if the US really did do a moon landing, why the Soviets (during cold war era) or Chinese (in modern era) didn't do what they do best and copied their designs to land on the moon. Given that the US and China are having a new space race with the goal of being the first to establish a lunar base, they argue that China could just copy the Apollo program designs if the US really did do a moon landing.

To summarise, their main points/questions right now are: a) Explain why the US hasn't gone back in so long, and why with modern technology it seems so difficult? (especially given that NASA has been experiencing numerous delays in the Artemis missions, that certainly hasn't given them a good impression...) b) How do you verify moon rocks without having actually been on the moon? How did scientists figure out what a moon rock looks like? c) Why aren't the old Apollo designs being reused for a moon landing? (by either the Americans or the Chinese)

They say that there isn't strong evidence either side (but believes that it is false, saying that "we will see" once someone else lands on the moon)

And what other points can I bring up to definitively say, yes, the moon landing wasn't faked?

edit:

Another thing, they also can't believe that astronauts could bring and ride the little moon buggies. I am also partially interested in how that was achieved to be honest!

My old iPhone 13 is kind if just sitting there, and I was wondering if you have any ideas to use it to do anything cool? Like as a mini display for weather/other kinds of data, any of that stuff. I have a 3D printer, so I could easily print a makeshift mount or stand for it to go on my desk, shelf, whatever.

UPDATE: I FOUND THE SOLUTION! After checking out the github repo, it turns out that I installed the theme in ~/.config/gtk-4.0 with a bunch of CSS files and an "assets" folder (I honestly forgot I did that haha!) so after deleting those the theme has been removed! Looks like if I want to install another theme I have to put in new CSS files.

original post here:

I have earlier used a theme when I used GNOME (a forest green one), but have switched to KDE Plasma (which I have set to a purpleish catppuccin theme) for a while now. Interestingly, the theme I set to GNOME has persisted for certain GTK apps (even after a distro hop, it's stored in the home directory I presume?).

How would I go about changing the GTK theme to a different one that matches better with my KDE theme?

edit: It looks like some GTK apps respect the system theme while others retain my old theme I used with GNOME (like GNOME Calendar, Rnote, and Pinta)

I will try installing a theme with the GTK themes menu and report back.

edit 2: After changing the theme to a different one and restarting, no luck for apps like Rnote and Pinta. Maybe the themes option from that menu don't work on some GTK apps? (the preview mentioned GTK3, does the option not affect GTK4 apps maybe? I have no idea)

Since moving to EndeavourOS, one weird thing that popped up is that the default KDE wallet (which is needed for a few things, like storing nextcloud login) requires unlocking. I have tried creating a new wallet with the same password as my computer, which worked to auto-unlock the wallet in Fedora, but not in EndeavourOS. Is there something I need to configure to have the default kde wallet to unlock on login?

Using large instances kind of defeats the points of the fediverse, so I would like to move away from the matrix.org homeserver. What are solid Matrix homeservers that works well? Preferably ones hosted in Europe rather than the U.S. for lower latency.

My little laptop server is already full of other stuff and is slightly struggling hosting a bunch of other stuff (Nextcloud, Immich, Minecraft server), and I only have it exposed to my local network (since I doubt my ability to securely selfhost something exposed to the internet and don't have the time to deal with DDoS, bots, crawlers, etc) so am not looking to self host my own Matrix instance.

edit: I have decided to go with matrix.glasgow.social

Everybody knows about the backstory, there was a civil war, KMT fled to Taiwan creating two Chinas sort of, maybe, neither recognises the other, whole thing. ROC (Taiwan) ended up transitioning from military rule to a multi-party democracy, while the PRC (mainland China) didn't do that (they did reform economically, "socialism with Chinese characteristics" and all that, but still a one-party state, not a multi-party democracy). The status quo right now is that Taiwan is in the grey area of statehood where they function pretty much independently but aren't properly recognised, and both sides of the strait are feeling pretty tense right now.

Taiwan's stance on the issue is that they would like to remain politically and economically independent of mainland China, retaining their multi-party democracy, political connections to its allies, economic trade connections, etc. Also, a majority of the people in Taiwan do not support reunification with China.

China's stance on the issue is that Taiwan should be reunified with the mainland at all costs, ideally peacefully, but war is not ruled out. They argue that Taiwan was unfairly separated from the mainland by imperial powers in their "century of humiliation". Strategically, taking Taiwan would be beneficial to China as they would have better control of the sea.

Is it even possible for both sides to agree to a peaceful solution? Personally, I can only see two ways this could go about that has the consent of both parties. One, a reformist leader takes power in the mainland and gives up on Taiwan, and the two exist as separate independent nations. Or two, the mainland gets a super-reformist leader that transitions the mainland to a multi-party democracy, and maybe then reunification could be on the table, with Taiwan keeping an autonomous status given the large cultural difference (similar to Hong Kong or Macau's current status). Both options are, unfortunately, very unlikely to occur in the near future.

A third option (?) would be a pseudo-unification, where Taiwan becomes a recognised country, but there can be free movement of people between the mainland and Taiwan, free trade, that sort of stuff (sort of like the EU? Maybe?). Not sure if the PRC would accept that.

What are your thoughts on a peaceful solution to the crisis that both sides could agree on?

edit: Damn there are crazies in both ends of the arguments. I really don't think giving Taiwan nukes would help solve the problem.

I think the current best solution, looking at the more reasonable and realistic comments, seems to be to maintain the status quo, at least until both sides of the strait are able to come into some sort of agreement (which seems to be worlds away right now given their current very opposing stances on the issue)

edit: I have gotten used to simply enabling the shuffle and adding my songs when I start up rmpc. Interestingly enough, when you press play with randomise on, it selects a random song just like that! Much faster compared to selecting the first song before enabling randomise, then using the hotkey for going to the next track to get a random song.

Having the speakers muted by default means loud music won't be broadcasted to everyone when my headphones disconnect, and that works well enough for me given that I don't regularly use my laptop speakers anyways.

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I love MPD and RMPC, it's probably the closest I have gotten to a "perfect" music player, it is super customisable and functional, but there are just a few things that I need to figure out how to change.

First, after each restart, the queue is cleared. How do I make sure that the queue by default is all the songs in my music directory?

Second, after each restart, shuffle (randomise) is reset to off, how do I change it so that shuffle is enabled by default?

Thirdly, is there a way to make MPD pause when headphones are disconnected?

Finally, how do I make MPD block screen lock when music is playing?

For your information, I am running EndeavourOS with KDE Plasma

My main requirement is that I am using Syncthing to sync my notes from my Android phone, which uses Quillpad. Quillpad is amazing and looks super nice, and functional too, but all the notes are in one big folder rather than being subdivided by notebook. So I require a markdown editor that can create "notebooks" but don't change the folder structure of the notes (I tested putting notes in subfolders, and quillpad thought the notes were deleted. Silly Quillpad!)

So the notebooks/similar organisation of notes needs to be specific to the app and should not change the folder structure. I would prefer if the app is open-source too, and something that fits with my desktop (KDE Plasma) would be cool too :D

~~This rules out Obsidian (which puts notes in a folder structure. Obsidian is great, but won't sync well with Quillpad)~~, Joplin won't work either. Ghostwriter is pretty much a markdown notepad (quite good, but can't see all my notes in one place)

I am using EndeavourOS with KDE Plasma

edit: To clarify, I want a markdown editor that is able to separate notes into different groups without using folders as Quillpad doesn't like folders. I also need to have a way to view all the notes at once in each group

Using a code editor VSCodium wouldn't really work as there isn't really a way to organise notes, aside from putting them in folders (which I don't want), and I am not yet ready to jump into the Vim rabbit hole of plugins and configuration

edit 2: Markdown editor to note organiser to satisfy the pedant

edit 3: Looks like Obsidian has tags, so I could use those to organise notes without folders. I will try that and see if it works!

edit 4: Obsidian does have tags, but it seems like you sort by tags by typing tag:#NAME, and you can't use spaces for tags. So not Obsidian then unfortunately. Are there any other options that have a larger focus on tags or similar?

This would be great if you wanted to talk to yourself without anyone understanding what you're saying, for example, or if you didn't want anybody to know what you were writing down. It might also be useful if you enjoy lots of foreign language media (see music, tv shows, movies) and want to experience the "original" rather than through dubs and subs.

Personally, I would go for either Russian, German, or Estonian, all three of which are because I frequently listen to lots of music that are in those languages