@mhd I have to ask -- and without being crass -- how "catcall" for "horny" is implied here? In terms of the original statement I mean, I'm curious how that's implied?

@mhd Wow. This is amazing, and far more than I had expected.

Thank you for your insight -- this is unexpected from my point of view, and a real joy -- you clearly know your stuff. :)

@thomasadam "caterwauling" is howling/wailing/yowling like a cat, when the're… well, when they're cats. So generally an unpleasant noise or sensation.

"Kater" i.e. tomcat is hangover in German, so this is doubling down a bit.

"catcall" is more recent and seems to be exclusively focused on the horny side of cats, I'd say.

Last time I heard the word was from Black Book's Fran Katzenjammer, and of course the Americans have their Katzenjammer Kids.

@mhd OK... "cat calling"? If so, "cat calling" implies something derogatory nowadays.

In praise of #kyuss

The so-called "stoner rock" era was rife with great bands. I'd perhaps include the more-recent #fugazi band.

Nonetheless. #kyuss stood out for me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyuss

Not knowing any #German, I've since found out the band were called #Katzenjammer which I think literally translates as "the cat which moans". Is this correct? :)

Wikipedia suggests a similar translation, but is there some idiomatic term I'm not familiar with here?

https://only-fans.neocities.org/

#crossword #crypticcrossword #unch

My edition of episode 2 #unch has arrived!

https://unchcrosswords.com

I've only had a quick look through it, but I'm already impressed. There's a good mixture of cryptic crosswords and even a barred crossword.

I'm almost tempted to order a second one so that I have another one which hasn't been scribbled in!

@oxpsi Hmm? I’m not sure I follow.

@thomasadam I love how they keep misspelling XFree86 as "X-386". X386 according to Wikipedia lasted about a year, first released in 1991 and became the basis of Xi Graphics' Accelerated-X. XFree86 sprang up from X386 code in 1992 and from what I can see, "replaced" X386.

That project fell apart because of a license change that the developers did not like (my recollection is hazy, but Wikipedia says it happened in 2004 and was because the new license was GPL-incompatible), so X.org forked from the very last commit before said license change, and work carried on from there. XFree86 withered and died.

I digress though…

That thread seems to be showing all the arrogance of the modern UI designers who seem to think being able to differentiate a pushbutton from plain text is old hat. (…and I'm sooo tired of scroll-bar peek-a-boo!) I've tried various Wayland environments on numerous occasions, but there are places where Wayland just isn't ready.

A big contributor to this is the fact that pretty much everything relies on co-operation with the compositor, and all the compositors have their own way of doing things. x11vnc for example just connects to the X server and allows you to expose any X11 desktop you have the credentials for, be it Gnome/KDE or any WM. wayvnc won't work unless you have a wlroots-based desktop (which means not KDE or Gnome).

On-screen keyboard support is a crapshoot too: I have a keyboard-less tablet computer that I have tried various Wayland desktops, and the inability to bring up a fully-featured on-screen keyboard is crippling. Best I've been able to do is a crappy iOS-like OSK with no Control, Alternate or function keys … and punctuation on a separate "layer" so I feel like I'm punching data in via a ITA-2 teletype. Totally buggers my password muscle memory!

Screenreaders I hear have big problems with keybindings… because once again the compositor is in charge of that, and like a "herd" of cats, are going about it their own special way.

This feels a lot like doing DHTML in the early 90s, with a "Netscape" way and a "Microsoft" way of doing things… the answer there was the W3C specifying a "standard" that both parties were held to.

I think Wayland will need to do the same thing, and it is what X was doing. There were a lot of X extensions that are no longer in use, but a good number of them were also implementing features that catered for such edge cases as the ones I mention above.

Sure, the choice of DE is rather sparse at the moment, but that will improve: there weren't a lot of X11 desktop environments in the early 90s either… I seem to recall Gnome and KDE were circa 1997~1998 or so… a good decade after X itself came out.

But not a lot will improve until there is some sort of API standardisation in Wayland, and that is the point people keep missing.

#Wayland #X11

To clarify -- what I mean by this, are the usual zealots of Wayland and/or X11 arguing one way or the other.

I've been very careful when writing about this to highlight why fvwm cannot exist within wayland.

I hope that's come across -- anything else outside of that is bollocks, distracting, and just noise for someone else's gratification.

#fvwm #lwn

https://lwn.net/Articles/1053678/

This article was about x11 support, etc., and quickly devolved into something else entirely.

I shouldn't be surprised, but yet again, anyone who is anyone can/does have an opinion, which sucks.

@kaixin Nope-- it's a WM.

@rl_dane @mos_8502 @chesheer Absolutely -- @mos_8502 I hadn't realised what you've done over the years, and having read some of your posts here... I get it.

FYI, I've also written about how Wayland is going to bad for X11-based WMs (which would include CDE):

https://github.com/fvwmorg/fvwm3/discussions/1258

Nothing I've said or done should ever imply anything bad against CDE, and I love that it's still going.

Yes, I know, certain WMs like FVWM perhaps make cloning a visual environment like CDE easier, but that's all it can ever do -- the functionality within CDE is what makes it unique, and just emulating its style peripherally is not meant to replace it.

I want X11 DEs and WMs to survive, but it's such a difficult situation when X11 toolkits (GTK/QT) drop support for X11. At this point, many of them become "Wayland-only", and I don't like this future either.

I hope that helps, and please don't think my earlier comments were meant to be inflammatory -- they weren't. :)

#crossword #crypticcrossword

Today in the Guardian, it was Pangakupu's turn -- who is also known as Phi in the Independent.

I am not a fan of his style at all, I have to say. However, there's always something to admire from any setter.

This clue:

6dn Information provided in Rhineland city for ‘improver’ of community (10)

The answer is: GENTRIFIER

"Gentrification" is the process of urban change, and hence "Improver of community" is such an example of one who does this.

GEN == "Information -- as in "What's the Gen?"
IF == "Provided. As in "If this is true then we can proceed"
TRIER == "City in Germany", into which we must place "IF".

Hence the answer.

Excellent clue -- oh, and unlike some of the other answers, has nothing to do with Christmas. :)

#crypticcrossword #crossword

The popular 225 site:

https://www.fifteensquared.net

Which typically blogs the dailies, is now going to start picking off certain crosswords from the up-and-coming mycrossword.co.uk site:

https://www.fifteensquared.net/2025/12/17/coming-soon-mycrossword-featured-puzzle/

I think this will be a nice addition to 225's remit. I hope it works out for them!

@mos_8502 @chesheer No, my code is terrible, and my vibes... never had any of those. Explains a lot...

@mos_8502 @chesheer I don't need to show you anything -- I hope not anyway!

When we refer to CDE, at least in terms of NsCDE, and similar clones over the years, it has always been with respect to the style/behaviour of the windows, etc.

Given that, the ecosystem is rich enough that one could choose to use, say, NsCDE with Motif applications built externally.

None of this takes anything away from being able to compile CDE now, or indeed, for its continued development. If anything, I'm pleased it's happening.

@mos_8502 @chesheer Oh dear, how wrong you are...

I’ve just heard that Andy Emmerson (G8PTH) passed away this morning

A lifelong telephone, radio and TV enthusiast he regularly published articles in wireless and electronics magazines throughout the 70s,80s,90s and 2000s, he also founded the UKs largest telephone collectors group

He sold me my first two plesseyphones!

He was an all round smashing chap who will be greatly missed. Here’s a recording he made in the 70s

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=15tsrrjmBuY
and
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=p6lAaVVJ7tE

Cheers Andy!

@sushee

Very cute!

Here's mine. :)