author: @requiem@mastodonapp.uk
avatar: ☧ (Chi-Rho, U+2627)
licence: WTFPL
Increasingly the Apple "ecosystem" is depressing me. I have been using iDevices with great joy for the last ... 14-15 years? But I am increasingly frustrated by the degree to which these excellent devices end up as trash because of the way Apple locks them down. The absolute HEAP of dead iPads on eBay... With no way to rescue them with eg. compnies going bust and suddenly bobody around anymore to remove the activation locks. Yes, privacy is important and data integrity and all. But what's the other side -- the environmental impact? And does it actually deter theft when you can force them into compliance with an Arduino? (If I had one, I would...)
This capsule is very much not dead, when it will be dead you will know about it, because it will simply not exist. But I've had all sorts of issues sin e relocating to the new parish, and I am still under the illusion that I can create the perfect Gemini setup for writing. There are also about 3 posts I wrote AND LOST. So this is just a "heartbeat" post. I'm still alive!
I started in the new parish! Yay! That's all.
One of those evenings when I knew I wanted to do something after putting The Bairn to bed, but I've just been staring at the screen for the last 45 minutes switching between various, very quiet chat channels... It's probably time to call it a day...
The SX1276 LoRa modules arrived some time ago, and now I have wired one up. It seems I did so many mistakes previously, but it's because there are hardly any tutorials around for this stuff! You should magically just ~know~ things... So anyway. Takeaway is, 1) Always check what chipset is supported out of the box; 2) LoRa actually needs TWO DIO pins wired up, not just one... Seems to be working now, but I am yet to wire up another board to receive stuff as well as send. Tomorrow.
A very exciting day. 1) Upgraded to OpenBSD 7.6 -- I shouldn't be as ridiculously excited about this as I am; 2) Started the little Mastodon bot I wrote, at @thisisfine@botsin.space (go follow it!) [^FN] 3) The new LoRa modules finally arrived! I have a bunch of SX1276's to test! I really hope that these will be less painful to deal with than the other LoRa modules that weren't as widely supported by MicroPython on the ESP32... 4) Degus are still cute.
So vigilia was down for about 24 hours. Apparently Tailscale connections expire - problem was that the TS keys expired. All that was needed was areconnect. But I am very impressed with the server's stability: it was running for 77 days steadily by that time... Not bad for an old laptop!
So there was a bug in Rosarium's CGI that made the rosary applet crash after / around the fifth mystery and it did not display the ending correctly. As it's a dual-use script which can be run as a shell script as well as a CGI script; and as I was mostly running it locally as a shell script, I didn't notice it. Anyhow, @space_elf at the Geminispace BBS pointed it out; it took me a few days to get around to fixing it, but it IS fixed now. Please enjoy the now fully functional Rosary script:
=> Rosarium
ESP32's are incredible little things. They are SO forgiving. I think I managed to short out this board I am working on for the third(?) time, I connected all the wrong things to all the wrong things, and after re-running some of the solder points, removing a bit of excess solder, and heating up this and that to make sure everything is connected properly, it just works. Excellent little things.
Oh yeah; and the tinylog can now have
multi
ple
lines
I have a status page!! For now, it listens on port 1966 because I have some relayd and other things to sort out, but check out
=> gemini://status.vigilia.cc:1966
It's pretty nifty, I mean, I really really like it. I promse it'll be even more cleverer and I might even release the sources.
I am still working on the status page fallback -- idea being that if the home capsule goes down because the wind blows our 5G packets the wrong way and the world is struggling to access our sitting room via the interwebs; then opening Vigilia would display a status page (that you could acccess on status.vigilia.cc anyway). But OpenBSD and chroots mean it's a bit different this time around; however @op@bsd.network pointed me towards fastcgi for python. Idea is you create the .sock for gmid via a Python script, and run the script outside of the chroot, but gmid can still catch the output from within the chroot. This way I don't have to copy EVERYTHING over into the chroot to get Python running in it. Pretty neat. I will share the config later in its own write-up.
Currently visiting the Old Country, wanted to show The Bairn the Capital, and do a bit of touristy stuff as a family. "Officially" it is 29 degrees but it's actually more like 32-35. I spent the morning meeting up with an old friend, early, and we went to the Turkish Bathhouse in the city centre for opening time. We sat in the thermal water pool on the roof, had the place all to ourselves, and chatted as the sun rose above the brilliant cityscape across the river from us. How I missed this!
A FAVOUR to ask: could readers please let me know if they have trouble accessing content on the site? A friend said that he frequently gets a "bad request" error when trying to open links on the Capsule. I tested it with Offpunk and it seems to bug out indeed - I think it has to do with the URL scheme and its caching. I probably ought to stop using spaces in the filenames. But if you run into similar issues, could you please e-mail me on info at vigilia dot cc or send a misfin message to rqm at hashnix dot club? Ta!
All change! Well, much anyway. So I've migrated DNS to desec.io, getting rid of CloudFlare; and I migrated the reverse-proxy over to OpenBSD.amsterdam from OVH, so now I can use relayd instead of nginx for routing traffic to the Tailscale network that leads to the server under the television in our sitting room! And boy this feels SO much faster and more secure, too!
Downtime imminent...
I finally managed to get a server at OpenBSD Amsterdam, something I have been meaning to do for a while now! Which means that to save costs I am going to cancel the OVH plan for the reverse proxy that serves up this capsule and move it over to the new server. There will be some downtime at some point, but I'm not quite sure yet when... In the next days or weeks? Will keep you posted.
Today's a bit stressful - not in the "Good Lord I have so much to do" kind of way, but more in the "The Bairn is sick and I can't even make breakfast because he's screaming at me if I don't play Mickey Mouse with him" kind of way. My diary was entirely blank for today - I was looking forward to training and visiting and doing the odd little thing. Well, goodbye plans and hopes, and hello kid with ear infection.
Well I really hate expenses. I was up until 1am hunting down mileage reports and old receipts... And I am only partially done! But the strange thing is that I am having some significant trouble falling asleep tonight; I've been buzzing ever since this morning's gruelling (1280kcal) boxing + strenghth workout... Too tired to be tired?
We are back up! The move went surprisingly fine. I mean, the server migration bit. The rest was as hard as it gets, even with the removers doing the packing and unpacking and not particularly travelling far. Moving with a sick child is never fun. But we're here, and the sunsets are amazing, and we were greeted by a red kite hovering above the house. And I am starting to like the house.
Well, signing off for a little while... We are moving house tomorrow, and over the next few days, so the capsule will be offline. We'll see how it all goes! We had the workmen here today who will be carrying out the repairs to our home, and now everything is marked with signs on the wall to indicate where the plaster needs to come off. This move is the last thing I need right now, but at least the repairs will finally take place after 2 years of waiting on insurers.
Managed to sprain my left foot while doing interval runs. But... I did manage 3:30min/km for one of the sprints! 😎
I think I needed a rest... Stayed overnight at the old seminary, and I think I spent almost 10 hours in bed. It was quiet, and nobody came in to wake me at 5.45 because they want to watch Gigantosaurus...
BTW, if this tinylog gets more verbose, it is because I set up some small scripts to help me write into it - I am rather enjoying the format. But that's enough meta. I am back for a night at my old seminary; staying overnight as I have some meetings not too far from here. It's a great opportunity to catch up with folks I haven't seen in a while. However, as impious as it may be, I think I will skip Morning Prayer with the Students - having arrived at 11:30pm after a long drive, I feel entitled to some rest...
... or is it?! >_< The Bairn didn't believe that I really did lose my voice. I could only whisper for a while, then when I finally managed to speak up a little, he immediately said, "Dad, you were just pretending!"
Sore throat bettter :)
I have a sore throat coming on. Earache, problem swallowing, and more and more a cough, too. Terrible timing as I have a very important meeting on Thursday that I have been waiting for for about 3-4 months... AND I am hearing Confessions tomorrow; I have no idea how I am going to respond to penitents!
Two things I do not understand and three I simply cannot fathom: what on earth is going on with one of the specific files in the /projects directory on here so that it returns a "not found" error;whether I will ever be able to compile libsignal so I can compile signal-cli so I can compile Scli; and where on earth the day keeps disappearing and how is it almost midnight AGAIN.
I've managed to get an account on tilde.institute! Yay! Thus far I've used it to verify my Mastodon account and move my "bio" description there. It is served up via finger. I might do something fun with the public_http folder we get; only thing is, I really hate HTML lately. Why can't one just write pure MarkDow; couldn't browsers automatically just parse it?! Anyway, this also means I now have YET ANOTHER e-mail address... My username on tilde.institute is rqm. Hit me up.
Just before I forget, I wanted to leave this link here about installing Debian on vmmd: http://www.netzbasis.de/openbsd/vmd-debian/
I am having moderate success with setting up OpenBSD the way I like it. Solene (gemini://perso.pw) kindly pointed me to some Signal TUI apps; and I found that tg has been ported over, there's an official package for it, which is great! So I now have a text editor I'm OK with; a web browser; a Telegram client... I am hoping to perhaps roll it all into WeeChat, and not have to use 248 different apps. But for that, I need to install signald which might need its own Debian VM... So it's complicated, but I'm learning a lot!
OH, btw: I created this thing where I can write tinylogs by creating a timestamp.gmi file, and then those get concatenated into what this feed is. I've also created an alias for "timestamp"on OpenBSD (in ~/.kshrc: alias timestamp='date +%s'), symlinked the tinylog directory mounted over sshfs to ~/tinylog, so whenever I feel like it I can write: $ hx ~/tinylog/$(timestamp).gmi and happily type away! Oh and if I need to edit that last file and I don't want to figure out which timestamp is likely the last one: $ hx $(ls -Art | tail -n 1). Learning shell is awesome!
I almost purchased another domain because I wanted to have a shorthand domain for home projects that I don't want to expose to the world. Then I remembered that TailScale already offers internal domains for machines, so yay! Another $40 saved. BUT, in the process, I did manage to create one of the weirdest files in existence: vulg4t3.txt which contains all the hexspeak-compatible Latin words of the Bible, with their Hexspeak counterparts, like "ecclesia: 0xecc1e51ae"... It's in the Miscellanea section. "Enjoy..."
Hello from OpenBSD. I finally managed to get the system to not only a usable,but a likable point! The only things I want to figure out now is; how do I make helix word-wrap?!
Well, it seems that I have managed to 1- renew the certs for the site, upon the recommendation of many, it is now a self-signed, long-life cert; and 2- fix some broken images in the projects section. Enjoy new content...
Now that the tests are passing, what I actually wanted to write, is, that I have a terrible head cold at the moment. I slept about 3 hours last night because Lemsip capsules were keeping me awake, plus I had a dry throat, and it was all a mess, and today I am drowning in work, and I am beyond exhausted...
this is another test...
So the previous entry was a test of the little .zshrc alias I added so I can add things quickly from the terminal!
this is a test
Been trying to install OpenBSD on an old laptop I have but it's giving me grief. However I discovered the OpenBSD community to be incredibly helpful. Still, it will need work. And for the first time this morning I had someone forfeit while sparring... We were just doing light rounds as well... 😎
Got some class sparring in today, really enjoyed it. Tho I've got a few black and blue spots to show I did the work... Got a haircut and a new pair of glasses as well. Wondering which will be a distraction from which? 😀
Rewatching The Wire. Right now I'm on Season 4 and to be honest this is the one I find most trying emotionally - the struggles of education, the bullying of Dookie, the hopelessness of poverty... Heavy stuff that I have seen from up close. Brilliant.
This is just a quick test to see whether the little "last updated" script I have cobbled together is still working.
On call at the Hospital this week and got a buzz today from the Maternity Ward. Feared the worst. To my delight it was only a very devout mum who wanted Holy Communion before going into labour! Then a coffee at the local as a treat and daydreaming about a tattoo...
Ran a 10k this morning - managed it in 58m35s, at a pace of 5:51/km. Needed it, as a sortof baseline check - January was the last 10k I ran; I'm 30 seconds behind my pace then. Aim is to get under 5min/km.
Bank Holiday in England, after some stressful discussions in the parish yesterday I am totally wiped out. Overcast all day and I had 3 coffes already yet I feel I might go to sleep any moment. Not great when I am supposed to be looking after The Bairn while Reverend Madam is studying for an upcoming assessment.
Met my opponent for my upcoming charity fight in August for some sparring in the morning. 8 rounds of 2 minutes, went really well, it was good fun. In the afternoon visited some friends whose daughter has entered that "I want to play with the big kids" phase so her and our 4-year-old played along really nicely until The Bairn got worn down by a 2-year-old chasing after him constantly and started hiding. The Dads meanwhile were thinking up protocols for LoRa enabled doorbells!
Lunch today: Use; (fresh) pappardelle (300g), crumbly ewe's cheese from the Eastern European shop (3 half-inch slices or so), guancale bacon from the butcher's. Cut guancale according to taste and make little cubes. Fry them in a hot frying pan, I added a tiny bit of butter but would have been fine without. Remive crispy bacon bits, then crumble the ewe's cheese into the rendered fat, and melt it in the pan, reduce heat to low. Meanwhile cook the pappardelle in salty water (3mins for fresh, 8 mins for dry). Add fresh black pepper to ewe's cheese. When the pappardelle is cooked "al dente", strain it, and transfer to the pan. Using some tongs or similar, coat all the pasta in the melted ewe's cheese. Add bacon back in. enjoy.
Just constantly running around all morning, the kind of day when you have to pick between eating something or make it to your appointments in time. Totally stressed out by the end of the day. But, hopefully, this will get better... "Any moment now..."
A tinylog! Why not?! Just sitting in my local cafe, sipping their coffee of the month - "Peru MCM Grade I RFA", prepared as a filter, and greatly enjoying it.
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