Araz Gray

Blog RSS Thoughts, Articles, Memories, and Events

Thoughts, articles, memories, and events by Araz Gray.

WTF-IS: Omarchy

90% of what you need to survive in Omarchy as a Ubuntu/KDE refugee Omarchy is an opinionated Linux setup created by DHH (David Heinemeier Hansson, the guy behind Ruby on Rails) and released in 2024. It's built on top of Arch Linux, using Hyprland as the window manager. But the story goes a l... Read All

Mistake-Proof Design

Back in the 2000s, when I was creating my first websites, I had one that looked perfectly fine on my computer. Months after publishing it, I happened to check it on one of my friend's computers. It was completely broken. My response was something like: "Well, you need a 1024×768 monitor ... Read All

How to set global key shortcuts in Wayland

If you're a dropdown terminal person, you know the deal: one key, instant access, no friction. I've used the grave key (`) to show and hide my terminal for as long as I can remember. Then Wayland came along and decided that key is off-limits for global shortcuts. Relearning decades of muscle memory ... Read All


WTF-IS: MySQL Database

Data runs the world. Whether you’re building a website, analyzing customer behavior, or automating tasks, you’ll eventually need to store, retrieve, and manipulate data. That’s where MySQL comes in.MySQL is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS) that enables efficient stora... Read All



WTF-IS: LaTeX

LaTeX (pronounced La-tek or sometimes Lay-tek) is a document preparation system created by Leslie Lamport in 1984. It’s built on top of TeX, a typesetting system developed by Donald Knuth in 1978. But the story goes further back: TeX was based on troff, an even older system written by Joe ... Read All

Understanding L10n, I18n, and Related Terms

Whenever you want to implement formatted data and multilingual support based on region or locale, you will eventually encounter the terms i18n and l10n. Sometimes, you may also see terms like G11n or Globalization. In this article, I’ll explain the definitions and differences between these terms. ... Read All

Understanding OWL: The Web Ontology Language

In November 2002, the World Wide Web Consortium proposed OWL as a semantic markup language for publishing and sharing web ontologies. OWL is based on RDF and derived from DAML+OIL. It is one of the semantic markup languages that uses clear and formal definitions of classes, instances, and relationsh... Read All

WTF-IS: VIM

Vim looks intimidating because it does not behave like most modern text editors. There are no obvious buttons for everything, and pressing a key does not always insert that character. Instead, Vim is built around modes, commands, motions, and operators. Once that idea clicks, Vim becomes much... Read All

Essential Steps After Installing Ubuntu 20.04

I’ve had my issues with Ubuntu for a long time, but after trying many other distributions, it unfortunately remains my first choice if you don’t want to deal with the thousand-and-one problems of other distros. From non-working shortcut keys when your keyboard language isn’t English on Deepin, to Mi... Read All