First time encountering system breaking down after updating. Maybe it’s a challenge which every daily GNU/Linux user will face.

After a system update, WiFi on my ThinkPad X14 stopped working. I first noticed the WiFi list was empty in dms, then confirmed it with nmcli device wifi list – still nothing.

I vaguely remembered the same thing happening when I set up Fedora Everything 44 on this machine from scratch, back then I suspected a kernel problem and ended up downloading the driver files on another machine and copying them over with a hard drive. That was too much hassle this time, so I tried tethering my iPhone over USB instead – it worked. With network access restored, I fired up opencode to debug it, and here’s what Deepseek V4 Pro diagnosed:

• nmcli radio reported WIFI-HW: missing, and rfkill had no WiFi device at all, so this was not a NetworkManager problem.
• journalctl -k revealed the real story: iwlwifi detected the Intel Wi-Fi 7 BE213 card fine, but then “no suitable firmware found”. The updated kernel (7.2.4) requires iwlwifi-sc-a0-wh-b0-c102 through c106, while only c101 was present in /usr/lib/firmware/.
• Root cause: Fedora shipped a new kernel whose firmware requirements outpace the linux-firmware package.

The first fix attempt was to download the missing .ucode files manually from kernel.org. That failed twice – git.kernel.org is behind an Anubis anti-bot challenge, and the URL returned not found in the browser. Then came the actual insight: on Fedora, iwlwifi firmware does not live in the main linux-firmware package. It is split into subpackages (iwlwifi-mld-firmware and friends), and I had none of them installed. In fact, even the c101 file I already had was “not owned by any package” – probably a leftover from the manual copy last time.

The real fix turned out to be one command:

sudo dnf install iwlwifi-mld-firmware

It ships iwlwifi-sc-a0-wh-b0-c106.ucode.xz, the kernel supports compressed firmware (CONFIG_FW_LOADER_COMPRESS_XZ=y), and after a modprobe -r iwlwifi && modprobe iwlwifi the WiFi list was back.

Nice feeling, solving a problem that once required a hard-drive round trip with a single dnf command.

Finished reading 今さらですが、幼なじみを好きになってしまいました. Such a melodramatic love story… I like it, though – those stories with twisted interpersonal relationships have always been my favourite.

Started watching 響け！ユーフォニアム. I tried to watch it during my senior year in high school, but I was too impetuous, overwhelmed with exams and exercises at that time, and therefore stopped halfway through. I’ll try to finish it this time, as it’s remarkablly well-made high quality anime from Kyoto Animation, and I’m a music enthusiast.

You see, there’re these kinds of anime:

• Rock
  • けいおん!
  • Girls Band Cry
  • ぼっち・ざ・ろっく！
  • BanG Dream series (at least people say they’re “rock”…)
  • Nana
• Jazz
  • Blue Giant
• Classical
  • 響け！ユーフォニアム
  • 四月は君の嘘
• Pop/Idol
  • 推しの子
  • Love Live! series
  • The Idolmaster series

But as a metalhead, it’s pathetic that there’s no metal-themed anime – at least I haven’t found any. What a pity…

Watched Man of Steel (2013 film). I like it very much. Superman in the film is portrayed with a sense of divinity, and I like the feeling of it, very cool! BGM from Hans Zimmer is incredible, as it always is.

Also, since I have a hobby of body-building and go to gym everyday, it’s inevitable for me to admire the physique that Superman owns – I wish I could train my body into that shape…

Finished watching BanG Dream! YUME∞MITA. I take back my words in my Aug 2, 2026 post. Truth is: it’s awful. Don’t watch this unless you’re a huge fan of girls band anime and have absolutely nothing else to watch. Proceed at your own risk.

My review here (no spoiler).

I am looking for an anime to watch in between Fridays (as that’s when I watch the new weekly anime episodes ヤニねこ, BanG Dream! YUME∞MITA and ぐらんぶる S03.) I think 上伊那ぼたん、酔へる姿は百合の花 is a good idea, as it has been recommended by many of my classmates.

Finished watching たまこラブストーリー. Great love story.

For me, it’s always easier to be fully absorbed into music and truly “understand” or “enjoy” an album late at night.

I am working on F.O.A.G. at midnight today. In order to concentrate on my work and prevent me from getting sleepy or distracted, I decided to listen to some Post Rock – Godspeed You! Black Emperor to be more specific, as it’s practically the only Post Rock band that I’ve dug and truly enjoy.

(Extracted from Dead Flag Blues – F♯ A♯ ∞ [Godspeed You! Black Emperor]):

The car’s on fire and there’s no driver at the wheel

And the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides

And a dark wind blows

…

The government is corrupt

And we’re on so many drugs

With the radio on and the curtains drawn

…

We’re trapped in the belly of this horrible machine

And the machine is bleeding to death

…

The sun has fallen down

And the billboards are all leering

And the flags are all dead at the top of their poles

How poignant – both literally and musically. The violins and trumpets nearly make me cry.

P.S. F# A# ∞ (Expanded Version) is my favourite album from GY!BE. My second and third favorites are Yanqui U.X.O. and ‘Allelujah! Don’t Bend Ascend. I haven’t fully gotten into their most well-know album Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven! though.

Finished playing 魔法使いの夜. I like it very much: Top-level animation effects, fascinating plot and interesting world setting. The downside is: it’s too short…I thought I had only covered covered 40% of the story when the game ended.

I found that there’re tons of available games on Steam that used to be only available on Windows platform.

There’s even no need for configuration before playing it: all I did was install Steam from Flathub, download the games in my library and just launch it. I’ve tested Persona 5, Lies of P, To Heart and Dark Soul III – only the last one crashed while the others ran smoothly.

Maybe it’s time to pick up my hobby in gaming – I’ve gave it up for quite a long time (in years) because I’m physically repulsed by Windows.

Decided to start with ToHeart first, since I’m already halfway through the others and don’t have time to replay the parts I’ve forgotten (or lost saves for…).

Finished watching たまこまーけっと. Remarkable Nichijou anime, as I had expected! I’m planning to watch たまこラブストーリー, ASAP.

Started watching たまこまーけっと.

I’ve always loved watching Nichijou Anime from Kyoto Animation: らき☆すた, 日常, K-ON!, 涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱 – including this time: たまこまーけっと. awesome animes! Highly recommended if you don’t have much spare time and can only watch animes in between those working hours.

Wrote a blog here. Finally, I can play galgames on my Thinkpad. I’ve been wishing to play galgame for quite a long time – approximately a year – and I ultimately managed to find some time and get up steam to tinker with those Wine-setups.

Started a new textbook solution project here. Let’s see how much exercises in the book will be covered before I turn to read something else.

Wasted a whole day and got nothing done. Feeling shit as hell.

First, I continued looking for a personal email hosting service, as I’ve always wanted to have my own email address named in @flandre.red. Last time, at my friend’s suggestion as he is personaly using, I tried resend, but my account ended up being permanently suspended:

From: <support@resend.com>
To: `text omitted`
Subject: Your submission is being reviewed

Hi there,

Generally speaking, Resend is not a tool designed for personal email - it's
more suited to email automation and newsletters.

Can you please provide more information about the nature of your sending and
how you plan to use Resend?

Slater Smith, Customer Success Engineer @ Resend

So this time I turned to mailbox. After a ton of registration, I ultimately failed to use my VISA from BOC to purchase the service in EUR – that card only seemed to support USD. So f BOC. Maybe I’ll try other services like Zoho mail or Purelymail.

Second, I was planning to use Kdenlive and RVC to glue multiple webm files recorded during a seminar together, turn the discussion audio into characters voices such as 豊川祥子, align multiple sound tracks toghether with the lecture recording. In the alignment step, Kdenlive has to transform the .webm files into .mp4 format in order to edit. However, some bugs in Kdenlive’s native file transformation makes the transformed video unidentified by itself. And I tried

ffmpeg -i "file:2026-08-16T05:11:11.486-flandre.webm" \
  -map 0:v:0 -map "0:a:0?" \
  -c:v libx264 -preset veryfast -crf 18 -pix_fmt yuv420p \
  -r 30 \
  -c:a aac -b:a 192k \
  -movflags +faststart \
  -copyts -avoid_negative_ts make_zero \
  "file:2026-08-16T05:11:11.486-flandre.mp4"

which the timestamp ended up corrupted, and I gave up. F it.

Finished watching 超かぐや姫！. It’s awesome – great production quality! Highly recommended.

Wrote a blog. I personally like the last two theorems, pretty structural. I think propositions like these are the reason why I’m into algebra.

Started watching ぐらんぶる S03.

This is my favourite comedy anime series. I heard that the original comic version of ぐらんぶる has even better expressiveness and illustration quality. Hence I decided to read the whole series from the beginning.

Though I’m still considering whether to purchase the physical book version or an appropriate E-reader, both are being so expensive…

Started watching BanG Dream! YUME∞MITA.

The production quality and plot is pretty remarkable, especially comparing to BanG Dream! Ave Mujica, where all the personas of the characters I love ended up ruined in a stupid way. But Viola’s motives, for all the things she did, are remained unresolved. And I don’t think this anime will have a satisfactory ending if the motivation was established in an overly simplistic way – inner motive development is required.

藤都子 & 宮永ののか可愛い…

Started watching ヤニねこ.

I wish I could have a gap year to read through The Rising Sea: Foundations of Algebraic Geometry before becoming a sophomore student.

It’s a really remarkable book for A.G. self-learning – the book is self-contained, i.e. any concepts and conclusions mentioned in the context will be taught within the textbook. Hence you won’t be struggling to search for an appropriate reference in order to learn those prerequisites.

You know, one can easily be stuck at some improperly hard or off-topic books & sites to learn a certain topic. For instance, the last time I learnt algebraic varieties with Algebraic Geometry - Hartshorne ended up spending half a year reading Commutative Algebra - M.Atiyah to supply my C.A. prerequisite.

In spite of such advantage, let’s address the elephant in the room: it’s freaking thick! The July 27 2024 draft version, which is the version that I’ve been reading, has 850 pages in total… I do want to read it through, but if I really do so, I won’t have enough time to catch up the progress in my A.G. seminar and finishing my undergraduate course with a decent GPA.

The fact is: Despite being a pure math student, I cannot get any major-credits from reading such book, simply because our school don’t have courses at such level or reading programs for undergraduate students to do. Equivalently, I’ll be PUNISHED for spending such time which I ought to use to “learn” my undergraduate courses – those which I finished several years ago, and I don’t think anyone would want to review subjects like mathematical analysis over and over again, what a shame.

Started playing 魔法使いの夜.

Just finished Chapter 1. Quite interesting so far, except that the plot is kind of slow-paced for me… For years, I’ve found it hard to finish playing the whole story of a galgame. Moreover there’re only few anime that I managed to finish watching, for instance 幸運☆星, while others were aborted in the middle , like 新世紀エヴァンゲリオン. I feel bad for the creators, but I always managed to find something else less time-comsuming to do when taking entertainments. Recreations like watching a 15-minute video on Youtube or Bilibili usually seemed to be more tempting for me :(

Anyway, I hope I can finish the whole story of 魔法使いの夜.

I’ve been reading Algebraic Number Theory and Fermat’s Last Theorem by Ian Stewart and David Tall in a seminar this summer holiday.

I found that ring of algebraic integers has some very nice properties, which makes it behaves like the ring of rational integers $\mathbb{Z}$. For instance, we know:

The ring of integers $\mathfrak{O}$ of a number field $K$ has the following properties:

1. It is an ingegral domain, with the field of fractions $K$.
2. It is noetherian.
3. $\forall \alpha\in K$ satisfying a monic polynomial equation with coefficients in $\mathfrak{O}$, then $\alpha\in\mathfrak{O}$.
4. Every non-zero prime ideals of $\mathfrak{O}$ is maximal.

Isn’t it nice? Such kind of large famliy of rings, where all of which shares such well properties, has been really rare.