Saturday, 11 April 2026

Desktop Icons on GNOME

GNOME has traditionally always been one to prefer the benefits of a clean Desktop.

But I'm not one for traditions.

There's an GNOME extention available called Desktop Icons NG (DIN)1.

What I needed to do was:

  • copy the application file (thingy.desktop) from /usr/share/applications somewhere and then drag it onto my Desktop.
  • Make it Executable
  • Set it to "Allow launching"

References

[1] Desktop Icons NG (DING) by rastersoft
https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/2087/desktop-icons-ng-ding/

Wednesday, 8 April 2026

VoxxedDays 2026

So, I went to VoxxedDays on April 1st and 2nd.1

Some of it was very interesting, and I've retained some notes and links written below.

Spec-driven development2
It seems to be a way to specify the wanted behaviour of your software in such a way that AI can successfully create your software based on your spec. Not entirely convinced of this.
Lion3
Lion is a set of highly performant, accessible and flexible Web Components.
PicNic4

PicNic is a online greengrocer/supermarket which is running a Blog on the challenges on scaling up. Quite interesting.

Some interesting things for example are providing fresh products (bread for instance) within a certain timeframe.

Programming Rules your IDE can tell you about.
https://github.com/jborgers/PMD-jPinpoint-rules
Compressed OOPs in the JVM
https://www.baeldung.com/jvm-compressed-oops
A good explanation of generics
https://bramjanssens.nl/generics/
Reduce Object Header Size and Save Memory in Java 25
https://www.baeldung.com/java-object-header-reduced-size-save-memory

References

[1] VoxxedDays Amsterdam
https://amsterdam.voxxeddays.com/
[2] What Is Spec-Driven Development? A Complete Guide
https://www.augmentcode.com/guides/what-is-spec-driven-development
[3] Github - Ing/Lion
https://github.com/ing-bank/lion
[4] PicNic - Blog
https://blog.picnic.nl/