June 2023 Retrospective - The Month of Reacher

Its officially summer and that means our sprinkler and irrigation business is going gangbusters. We have been working our butts off and have had our biggest month in sales, ever.

In fact, we’ve been so busy that I officially ended all my marketing freelance contracts so I can exclusively work in the sprinkler business. I just couldn’t give any time to freelancing, although it has been nice to have a little secondary income.

It was a hard choice. Yet, I think it is the right one. I can’t split my time anymore and expect to grow. Jack of all trades, master of none mindset. I needed to focus my efforts and truly focus on one to make it what I want.

Connect on the Fediverse

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Lemmy migration

Like a lot of other people, I left Reddit and moved over to the decentralized, federeated equivalent. Stux, the awesome individual who runs msdtn.social and my preferred masto server, spun up a Lemmy instance at geddit.social which made it really easy to pick a Lemmy instance and get started.

So far its been okay. Some of my favorite Reddit communities have a fedi-Reddit, some don’t yet. I’m keeping an eye on it and have already found some cool stuff.

Linux Unplugged studio trip

The highlight of the month was heading up to the Jupiter Broadcasting studio to hangout for a live Linux Unplugged recording with Chris and Wes. For over 10 years I’ve wanted to do this and was so rad they let me come and be a part of the show. I was even on mic and got a chance to participate.

After, I headed up to their house and helped them with their garden irrigation. At the beginning of May I installed a basic drip system for their garden and raised beds. This was a follow-up and check-in on the system. We were having flow issues and had to split it into two zones since there was significantly less gallons per minute available than I originally thought.

Tech projects

Amazon Kindle Fire 7 downgrade

For years I’ve been using a Samsung Galaxy Tab S5e as my bedtime entertainment device. I have troubles relaxing at bedtime and often watch a TV show while laying in bed. Using a tablet makes it so I don’t disturb my wife by having a bright TV running in the background. Since I’m mostly deaf, watching it with no sound and only captions isn’t a big deal for me either.

But, its always bugged me that I’m using a pretty decent tablet to exclusively watch an episode of The Simpsons each night. I wanted to free up the tablet without losing my bedtime entertainment device.

I have a 2015 Amazon Kindle Fire 7" tablet that just sits in a drawer and I’ve tried multiple times to use it as a entertainment device. Yet, I’ve given up on it multiple times because it struggles with streaming with its under-powered hardware and 2.4GHz only wifi.

Then it finally hit me. It doesn’t need to stream from my Plex or Jellyfin servers. It just needs to play local video files.

So, I installed LineageOS, debloated it as much as possible, put a bunch of seasons of The Simpsons and Futurama on an SD card, and leave it in airplane mode 24/7. With only about 15 apps, no Google services, never connecting to wifi, and screen brightness at the absolute lowest setting, I get a full week from the battery.

I own both shows on DVD and ripped them many years ago. For this project I re-encoded them with no sound and burned-in captions. In total I have 11 total seasons combined of the shows and, at 480p with no sound, they only take up about 9 GB of storage.

I’m happy I’ve been able to free up the S5e for other projects (TBD) and that I’m actually using the Fire 7 for something.

XMPP self-hosted woes

I don’t know what I’m doing wrong, but I failed at getting both Snikket and ejabberd XMPP server set up. In both instances I failed to get it through my reverse proxy.

Self-hosted chat is a super important project I wish I can get setup, even if its just for my wife and I to chat. I really want XMPP to work since its a federated system, extremely light on resources, and will work on my LAN without public internet access (part of my “internet in a box” project I’ve been working on fo years).

I had to take a pause on my XMPP projects and have a think about them. There’s clearly something I’m missing and just need more time to contemplate.

Articles

Here’s what I’ve been reading:

Lenovo Tab Extreme review: A good value proposition if you want to use your tablet as a laptop

And if you’re planning to use this tablet purely attached to a keyboard as a desk-bound productivity machine, then why not just use a “normal” laptop? You’ll really need to get the most out of this device to justify the four-figure price tag.

Blatant tech frauds run amok on the biggest online marketplaces

Online retailers that host third-party sellers, like Amazon and Walmart, have extensive, competitively priced electronics selections. But for years, they have also served as playgrounds for fraudulent sellers, who list products with inflated or deceptive performance claims. Worse, some of these products pose a physical threat to customers.

The Distribution Model is Changing

People don’t want to hear this so I’ll just say it, distributions can no longer afford to pretend that they add value by repackaging office suites. The real value is in the hard stuff. We need a well maintained kernel, graphical stack, desktop, and associated core tools.

Everything else, punt to Flathub. Need something you can’t get? You’re in luck, every distro worth something also has containers you can use to get what you need.

Response to “Developers are lazy, thus Flatpak”

Recently, the article “Developers are lazy, thus Flatpak”, by Martijn Braam, was published to criticize a few things regarding Flatpak. I want to go over the article and address some points that were raised.

An Anti-Porn App Put Him in Jail and His Family Under Surveillance

Hannah’s husband is now awaiting trial in jail, in part because of an anti-pornography app called Covenant Eyes. The company explicitly says the app is not meant for use in criminal proceedings, but the probation department in Indiana’s Monroe County has been using it for the past month to surveil not only Hannah’s husband but also the devices of everyone in their family.

Survivors of Kissinger’s Secret War in Cambodia Reveal Unreported Mass Killings

The U.S. carpet bombing of Cambodia between 1969 and 1973 has been well documented, but its architect, former national security adviser and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who will turn 100 on Saturday, bears responsibility for more violence than has been previously reported. An investigation by The Intercept provides evidence of previously unreported attacks that killed or wounded hundreds of Cambodian civilians during Kissinger’s tenure in the White House.

Entertainment

Books

I almost exclusively read books from my local library. This list will never have any Kindle or other exclusives.

• The Enemy by Lee Child. This is the first Jack Reacher book I’ve ever read and I am absolutely hooked! I love these kinds of books and the Jack Reacher series is massive.
• How to Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis. I picked up this book simply because it is popular and I wanted to see what all the chatter was about. I don’t use or watch anything on TikTok, and I had no idea who KC Davis was before reading. It is not in the arena of books (or videos) I would typically consume, so I took a chance on a topic that was completely new. It was… Okay. To be honest the tips KC Davis gives are the way I already operate, so I didn’t learn much about tidyness. However, I did learn how to better understand and empathize with people who do struggle with keeping their home “clean”. In that case, it was definitely worth the read. In addition, here’s a quote that has stuck with me:

“Anything worth doing is worth doing partially.”

Movies

• The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I watched the extended cuts for the first time. I liked them, even if they were all 4+ hours long each. I had to break them up since there was no way I could watch a 4 hour movie in one sitting, so it took about a week and a half to get through all of them.
• The Roundup. A fun Korean action movie with Ma Dong-seok. Will watch the others in this series for sure.
• Fast X. Absolutely loved this movie. Its the closest thing to an American Bollywood movie and was so much fun. Jason Momoa was freaking fantastic as the villian and love, love, loved him in it.
• Kandahar It was okay. We love Gerard Butler in this house, so it was a much watch. It felt more realistic to what it is like in the “war against terrorism”.
• Jack Reacher 1 & 2. The first movie is amazing and what got me to start reading the Jack Reacher series. The second one was meh.
• Mortal Kombat and Mortal Kombat Annihilation. The first movie is a classic and wanted to re-watch. The second is so bad that I loved it for being such an awful trainwreck. I also watch pretty much anything Paul W.S. Anderson makes.
• The Super Mario Bros Movie. Hated it. The original movie is amazing. This was trash.
• Sisu. It was fine. Very slow with almost no dialogue. I enjoyed watching it, but probably won’t ever watch again.
• Extraction 2. Fucking amazing. One of my favorite action movies of all-time. I also appreciate they actually stick with the extraction theme. Most sequels get away from the title theme. For example, below you’ll see I watched The Equalizer 2, which had very little equalizing. Its the same with the Escape Plan movies. The second and third movies have very little prison escape plans.
• Tombstone. A classic. Val Kilmer makes this movie and is probably his best role. The story is really… not great. The other acting isn’t the best either. However, Val Kilmer fucking nailed it.
• The Equalizer 2. Meh. I loved the first movie and this was okay. Denzel is still good and this movie still has me hyped for the third coming out this year.
• Olympus Has Fallen. Watched this with my son as he has never seen any of the “Has Fallen” movies. In a twist, this is my least favorite of the “Has Fallen” franchise. London Has Fallen is my fave.

Wrestling

We caught up on the PPV events and watched Night of Champions which is in Saudi Arabia. It felt icky to watch it. Plus, both of my daughters favorite wrestlers (Bianca Belair and Cody Rhodes) lost.

Took a while to recover.

Podcasts

I stuck to my normal regiment of Jupiter Broadcasting shows, The LinuxGameCast, and caught up on Linux Matters with Popey and Wimpy. Nothing new to report.

YouTube

Other than every TinyMiniMicro small form factor PC video ServeTheHome puts out, I haven’t watched anything else of note. This micro PC caught my attention and might end up being something I pick up for my birthday in July.

This CRAZY SMALL 2.5GbE Node will Change Everything

This 4x 2.5GbE box is so small. We ran VMware, Proxmox VE, Windows, Ubuntu, OPNsense, and pfSense on this box to see how it performed. We tear it apart and get inside to see how it works. This might be the next awesome #homelab and traveling demo node.

Gaming

I cancelled my Xbox Game Pass subcription simply because I wasn’t using it. I play such few games, the money is better spend purchasing what I want instead of a Netflix-style catalog rental each month.

Most of my gaming this month was with Warhammer 40k: Boltgun. Its a 90s retro FPS that is mostly fun without any grinding. My only complaint is that I kept getting lost trying to figure out where I was supposed to go next in levels. It would be nice to have some sort of HUD.

After Boltgun I started playing Lego DC Super-Villains which I picked up on sale a long time ago. This game is perfect for in-home streaming from the Xbox to my phone and using a Razer Kishi gamepad.

Until next time, bye pals.