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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • In combination with the exercise it sounds like you’re doing anyway, have you tried a bit of Yoga and a bit of listening to meditative sounds before/during bed/sleep/end of day? You may have tried similar things already, but if not, maybe worth a go? It’s not going to pass/waste time as such, but might put you into a better position to stop your mind racing with negativity, especially in that crucial pre-sleep phase.

    Particularly looking at “Yoga for Anxiety” or “Yoga for Mental Health” type things, moreso than general strength and fitness Yoga. You’ll find a bunch online. You might find something like this Yoga Healthcare Alliance 10 Week Course works for you (it’s promoted by the UK’s NHS for some conditions). It’s focusing on basic de-stressing, de-tensing muscles, breathing focus, and may help you feel calm and relaxed - which may give you a good nights sleep - which could potentially do wonders for beginning to recover.

    I’d also suggest combining it with some “sleep headphones” - a fabric headband with some really flat headphone speakers inside it - then listen to a combination of “meditation for anxiety” or “8 hours deep sleep ambient soundscape” type things whilst you lie there.

    Ideally you’d do the Yoga sat on your bed, then drop straight into something like “a nice man tells you you’re great and everything will be fine” followed by some sort of “inner peace meditation that lasts 8 hours or longer”. Obviously, you’ll find your own preferred voices/sounds. I’ve also used white noise style “starship engine sound” or “on a night train” audio.

    If you watch them on your phone with “Newpipe”, you can save them as videos or just as audio files - which you can then set up as playlists in VLC. No point in downloading the same thing every night.

    This whole set of things might not work for you at all, but if you’re up for hours anyway, what do you have to lose?

    Personally, I found this process helped me massively on my way out of a similar patch (combined with exercising more, quitting caffeine for a while, CBT therapy - it was a multiple angle approach).

    Regardless, I wish you luck and pass you my best wishes in your recovery.



  • I’m sure it’s not possible for everyone - but I essentially did this some years back - though more with Premiere than Photoshop - and therefore more Cinelerra/Kdenlive than Gimp/Krita.

    I ran a dual boot system from about 2008 until about 2015. If it could be done in Linux/FOSS, it was. If it couldn’t, it was done in Windows/Adobe software.

    I was self-employed, though I often did subcontracting work for a handful of media/umbrella organisations - so sometimes I had to use Premiere or Sony Vegas to carry on half-done projects I was handed.

    Bear in mind this was when you bought Adobe software and didn’t rent it - and you could also keep running an older version for years.

    Anyway, over time I used the Windows partition less and less, until I got rid of it entirely when I got a new computer.

    I had to work a bit harder one year, and I did miss out on a few projects - but mostly, I could do everything I could do previously, but it took a bit longer for a while until I adjusted to a different workflow.

    After that, you’re just saying “That’s a £2000 job”, “That’s a £200 job”, and meeting a deadline. Nobody really cares if it took 7 minutes longer to do, and I saved a lot of time not using Windows any more.

    Editing (and other design stuff) is a far smaller part of my overall work these days, but I still do a good chunk of projects over the year, and I’ve been 100% Linux for almost 10 years. No regrets.






  • I’ve previously tried to do that backwards i.e. to deliberately record the audio output as an input, so I wonder if the process would be similar… but backwards?

    “Pulseaudio Volume Control” (pavucontrol) in the Mint repository should allow you to set what different audio sources are. “Monitor” is generally the “record your output sound as an input”.

    There’s a bit of info on this page from thr Audacity manual: Audacity: Recording Computer Playback on Linux

    Also may depend what you’re trying to put the audio in - because it may be a setting in the software (i.e. OBS/Audacity/A Steam Game) rather than the system itself.


  • To a degree, yes, but don’t expect magic. Some laptops have a waterproof membrane under the keyboard, so if you’re lucky, and it does, you may be able to just pop the keys off and dry the membrane out, and make sure no liquid creeps round the side into the electronics.

    Otherwise you may have better odds if you open up the case and mop up any/all loose liquid you can get to with a microfibre cloth, as soon as possible, then try and let it air dry for a while.

    A sealed bag with dried rice and your electronic object may absorb a bit of leftover moisture, but only to the extent that it will equal the moisture level in the sealed bag - the dried rice will gain a little extra moisture, the object will lose that bit of extra moisture.

    Try to resist the urge to turn it on to check if it’s working until you’ve got all the moisture out.



  • Normally, the bit you clicked on would show a list of nearby possible WiFi connections - so it should be as simple as clicking the name of your WiFi and putting the password in. It’s fairly likely to be a driver issue.

    If you’re at the “testing from a live session” stage, you can try the “edge” version of Linux Mint linuxmint.com

    The edge version has a newer kernel with newer drivers for hardware - I guess they’re less tested/stable than the normal version, but I wouldn’t expect problems.

    Mint is (was?) based on Ubuntu Long-Term-Support versions (which use older, well-tested drivers instead of the newest), so you can sometimes end up with a case where, for example, it has the WiFi drivers for every WiFi card that existed up until 2022, but any WiFi card released since isn’t yet included by default - though it can be separately added, or a newer Kernel can be installed.

    Anyway, it might be worth testing the Mint Edge version, as a relatively quick and simple solution - less likely to succeed if the laptop is older.

    If you’re unlucky, there may be no working drivers (for a while), and you may have to use a USB WiFi Dongle for a little while.

    Is not definitely this, but it’s this often enough that is worth trying :)

    [Edit] Apologies, someone’s given roughly the same answer already. Still worth trying anyway :)



  • I can’t personally, but I’ve installed/set up Linux systems for quite a lot of older people, and I think only one of them ever uses the terminal for anything. The rest just… use the computer.

    On the whole, they’re pretty much just using Libreoffice, Firefox and a few other bits these days. If something needs the terminal to fix, we’re already past the point where they’ve phoned me to pop round and fix it.

    These used to be Ubuntu systems, but I switched them all to Mint after having endless Snap permission problems with printers, USB sticks and other peripherals. Once up and running, it’s pretty low maintenance.

    I guess they don’t need to use the terminal, because I’ll go and do it if it’s necessary - but we are looking at once every few years. Not a lot of tech support needed.

    On my own machine, I probably use the terminal every day.