Like any software upgrade, going from Fedora 22 to 23 has its wins and losses, however temporary in both cases.

In the "wins" category: Yumex-DNF, the graphical package manager that isn't GNOME Software now displays normally with the Adiwata dark theme that I've been using.

Hopefully there is improvement across the board in GTK3 application rendering with dark themes.

I'm noticing this issue when using Ode's EditEdit in Fedora 23. It looks like the line spacing in the CSS for the "composing" windows is screwed up. See the screen grab above (click for full-sized image).

You can see that the top line in the "Title" windows is cut off on top, and the lines are a little cramped in the "Body."

I need to check this in Firefox to make sure it's not some kind of overall Fedora 23 issue (I just upgraded my OS from Fedora 22), and I'm sure I can adjust the CSS for EditEdit to make this problem go away.

Update: It looks fine in Firefox:

Update: This has something to do with the Courier font. Rather than go crazy about it, I'm just going to knock it out of the EditEdit CSS.

Fedora Magazine did a "How Do You Fedora" interview with Kevin Fenzi, longtime Fedora contributor and Red Hat employee who does so much for Xfce in the distribution.

So you want to start selling advertising on your blog or website?

There's always Google AdSense, which doesn't pay all that much. And there is NO customer service. I had a client blackballed from the service for doing something I KNOW they didn't do, and there is no recourse.

But looking around, it appears that you can do this outside of Google and make a lot more money.

Michael Hyatt says if you have 10,000 unique visitors per month, you can make it happen. And it looks like he used the Boston-based BuySellAds platform to help him do it.

Things he did included:

• Launching a reader survey
• Setting up an advertising page
• Creating an "advertising kit"
• Signing up with an advertising service (again, he used BuySellAds) Then capping it with:
• Pitching an irresistible offer

If self-help and career/life coaching is your thing, MichaelHyatt.com is all about that. He also offers a podcast and a bunch of products like e-books, print books, audio books and even a WordPress theme.

Not having spent a lot of time at his site, I imagine that Michael thinks of a blog as part of the overall marketing/monetization strategy in your life (or your business' life, I suppose).

Does this blog have 10,000 unique visitors per month?

Even I was asking that question after reading this. The purpose of this blog isn't direct monetization (or its content would be a whole lot different instead of "whatever the hell I'm thinking about" and "here's what I'm putting on social media").

I don't really pay much attention to the traffic. I don't even have a "real" analytics setup. I just rely on the AwStats functionality that my web host bakes into my account.

I usually get between 4,000 and 7,000 uniques per month, but I host a few other things on the stevenrosenberg.net domain, and I had a huge spike in November 2015, doubling the number of uniques to 14,000.

It turns out the spike was due to Los Angeles County election results that I host here for my employer. I should definitely move those to a company server, and I actually do have one now that can handle it (it's all Bash scripts, chewing gum and super glue). For the next election, I will.

I'm not saying I will never sell advertising on my "personal" blog, but I don't see it happening. I might do it if I started one or more "specialty" blogs that had some focus, but this isn't that blog.

News that the random number generator in JavaScript was fixed (I didn't know it was broken) prompted me to wonder how easy (or hard) it is to generate a random integer between 1 and 100 in as many languages as I could.

Of course I used Google and the sites it found for me to come up with these methods.

Generating random numbers is important in programming, and it's very important that those numbers be truly random. That's why the problem with JavaScript's random numbers seems so serious, especially with JavaScript's ubiquity not just on the client (where it's carrying a heavier load than ever) but now the server via Node.js.

So you want to generate a random number between 1 and 100? Here are n ways to do it:

Random numbers in various computer languages:

JavaScript

Use node to run this line in your terminal (you do have node installed on your computer, right? If not, you should):

Math.floor(Math.random() * 100) + 1

Ruby

It's even easier in Ruby (use irb to run this in the console):

rand(100) + 1

Python

In Python, it takes a couple of lines. You can run this in the python console (type python at the command line, then start typing your commands):

import random print(random.randint(0,100))

Groovy

I have been experimenting with Groovy, a dynamic language that uses the JVM (the Java Virtual Machine). If you have Groovy installed, start the graphical Groovy console with the command groovyConsole.

Math.abs(new Random().nextInt() % 100 + 1)

Perl

While Perl doesn't have an interactive shell like Ruby and Python, you can run a one-liner from a terminal using the perl command. Here is a random number between 1 and 100 in Perl:

perl -le 'print int(rand(100)) + 1'

Bash

You can also do it in the Bash shell with $RANDOM:

echo $RANDOM % 100 + 1 | bc

Analysis: Ruby offers the easiest, most elegant way to generate a random integer from 1 to 100 with a one-liner. But you can do it in most every dynamic language.

Notes: I'm sure this can be done in a Perl one-liner

The ideal is a free, open, federated social-media platform like Identi.ca or Status.net, but even those services, when run by others, are subject to a certain bit rot. They're here today, but will they be tomorrow?

We live in a world of mega-services like Twitter and Facebook. Multi-billion-dollar important companies. And in our zeal to communicate, we spend hours creating free content for them in exchange for free service.

Still, they offer value. If the few people we want to share our thoughts with also subscribe to a given service, there is value. That's how Facebook grew.

On Twitter, I can tell you that having 900 followers does not provide a lot of eyeballs for my tweets. I'm lucky if 40 people see them. Twitter is all about the now. A tweet's sell-by date is maybe a half-hour after it's created.

I think short, social-media-style updates are valuable.

But I want them to be my own. I have that, pretty much, when I create them through my blog and distribute to social-media services from there.

From my laptop, I'm about 90 percent of the way there. I'd like sharing links to be a little more automatic. Like on mobile devices. Android has "intents." Apple has the same thing, but I don't know what they call it.

And mobile is the place where I have the furthest to come.

If I were using WordPress, I bet the WP app for Android (and iOS, too) hooks into "intents" and allows link sharing.

But I don't use WordPress.

My Ode blog works off of a traditional filesystem on the server. There is no database. Create files, and with a few tweaks and pokes, you have a live blog entry.

I don't want to go back to a database. Flat files on a server is not just Ode's but every static-blogging tool out there's killer app.

So what I need is a mobile app that hooks into "intents" to allow link sharing and produces the files I need, gets them on the server and does what I need to make those files appear on the live site.

It shouldn't be too difficult. (Famous last words.)

It's what's driving me to learn Java and Android development. That and everything else.

Having a problem to solve and making something to do that. What could be better?

Every take one of those personality-type tests?

I did. Turns out I'm an INTP:

INTPs are independent, reserved, and live in a world of ideas. They can work well on a team but prefer to work alone in sporadic bursts of energy.

Although private, INTPs can at times seem totally outspoken because of their directness of communication and economy of words.

Other people may assume that INTPs say very little, but this is only when there is nothing to say. The general chitchat of social life is not for them.

They prefer to speak only about areas that interest them, things they consider important.

I run a lot of stories about package thieves, people who either trail delivery vehicles carrying packages from Amazon and scores of other online retailers and grab the goods, or who just troll neighborhoods looking for boxes already on doorsteps and then drive up, take the booty and drive away.

Many of us are ordering more online than ever. We got Amazon Prime and have really stepped up what we have delivered to the house by various couriers -- USPS, UPS, Fedex, OnTrac, Amazon contractors, and probably others.

So what do we do to keep those packages from being targeted by thieves?

You can always get the packages sent to your office, where delivery is usually made to an actual person. I've use this method sometimes, though not as much as I used to when I only made occasional orders.

That aside, I think we need a better solution for home package delivery.

What I'm thinking of is some kind of large, secure box that you can bolt to your front porch. If it can be designed so items can be placed into the box but not easily removed without a key, that would provide an extra measure of security for home delivery of items that can fit into the box.

I'm sure there is already a commercial product that does this very job. I'll look around to see what I can find. If you know of something that fills this role, let me know about it.

I'm in one of more than a few places I've been in recent days with my laptop but no Internet connectivity.

I can write an Ode entry with no problems. This would be just as true for the many static blog engines that are if not all then at least some of the rage among the more geeky bloggers out there.

Like I'm doing write now, all I have to do is use my favorite (or any available) text editor, write into a file and upload it to the server later.

And in my case, I have helper applications (chiefly Unison) and short scripts that make those uploads virtually automatic when I do.

Fedora 23 has been out for awhile and I haven't yet upgraded the HP Pavilion g2-2210us laptop I've been running and upgrading since I first installed F18 on it in mid-2013.

One reason I'm not upgrading, though under examination illogically, is that Fedora 22 is the best-running, most "stable" release I've ever run on this now-2 1/2-year-old hardware.

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