Dom Corriveau

August 2023 Retrospective

Posted on Sep 2, 2023
tl;dr: Lots of progress on my tech go bag, learning more about virt-manager, plus what I've been reading and watching.

Another month and it was a hot one. We’ve been busy installing sprinklers and a lot of my garden is in harvest mode. This means summer is almost over and I can’t wait for the cool season to start. We got a little taste at the end of August and I am so ready.

I blogged less this month than I hoped, but I’m giving myself a pass since everything else is so busy.

About 80 days until a long vacation. Almost there.

Tech projects

Full text RSS

I try to stuff as much as I can into my RSS reader. I have a self-hosted FreshRSS instance that I have been curating a feed list for years. One of the features I want in my feeds is the full text of any article or blog in the feed so I don’t have to click through to the site. This gives a better experience and makes it easier to have my feeds offline.

I realized the RSS feed for my site wasn’t putting the full text into the feed, and instead was a short snippet. I finally thought to check because another blogger I follow had the same realization and wrote about it.

Luckily this was an easy fix in the Hugo config and the full text of these posts will appear in any feed reader.

Virtual Machine Tools

I am in no way a developer or a SysAdmin, I just cosplay as one at my house. This is why I learn some things way later than maybe I should have.

For my homelab I run Ubuntu with some containers running on the host, plus 4-5 VMs for some things I want to keep isolated from the host.

To manage the VMs, I have virt-manager on the host to make it easier to edit configs and spin up new ones. I know there’s lots fo ways to do this all from the CLI, but I find using virt-manager much easier. When I need to use it I’ve been popping open the laptop I use for the host and doing it straight on the machine.

This month I learned I through the magic of ssh I can connect to a remote machine with virt-manager and do all the same stuff from any machine. Before I would need to start the display manager, pop open the laptop, and uncomfortably use the machine from the rack.

Just another one of those things that makes my tech life that much easier.

More emergency prepping

Listening to this episode of the The Privacy, Security, and OSINT Show had me thinking about scanning my most important documents and storing in an encrypted repo just in case we need them for any reason. These are things like birth certificates, licenses, car titles, etc. I refer to this as my shtf archive.

Of course I don’t want these files just sitting in plain text on any device. After scanning, I created a Veracrypt container for my various Linux desktops and then started researching what I can use on Android. Although having the files on the laptop in my tech “go bag” is handy, in reality if i need to evacuate the device I’m guaranteed to have with me is my phone. At the moment I can’t find a way to decrypt Veracrypt containers on Android (at least without rooting the device), so I was on the search for a similar functioning app for Android.

Most options only encrypt single files, not full directories into a container. The best option I found is DroidFS. It checks a bunch of boxes for me:

  1. Encrypts more than a single file.
  2. Mounts the volume and makes it easy to add/subtract files.
  3. Doesn’t use its own encryption and instead uses some existing standards that can be decrypted on other platforms.

Pinebook Pro upgrades

I’ve been using the Pinebook Pro as the laptop that is in my tech “go bag”. I prefer it for this usecase because its super light, decent battery life, can charge from a phone charger, and I can’t find anything else that its actually good for.

I decided to remove Armbian as the main OS and switched back to Manjaro. So far its been much better with way less papercuts when I use it.

For a while now its been my portable internet-in-a-box for extended power outages. I expanded it to also be my “intermittent internet” machine. I’ve mentioned this project a few times without a ton of detail, but its essentially a laptop I can use to download a ton of content for times when I only occasionally have access to the internet. I’m thinking like I have to cancel our home internet due to a personal financial catastrophe.

I actually put it to the test in August. One Saturday I went to the library to download as much as I could and then come home and use only what I was able to grab.

Most everything worked fine. I have a duplicate FreshRSS instance that runs on the PBP and grabs full text from feeds using the public instance of MoRSS. Saving webpages using ArchiveBox worked as expected as well. One of the major issues was downloading YouTube videos. The script I wrote would look for videos on certain channels after a specfic date. But, this would take forever because it has to check every video on the channel to see if it matches my rules.

On top of all this, I’ve been diving even more into command line only usecases and I’m finding myself reaching more often for my PBP. I don’t think it has anything to do with the actual machine, rather I’ve been falling more and more in love with the command line. It makes me want to setup a laptop for at the house that is CLI/TUI only so I can leave the PBP in my go bag.

Goodwill find

I found a Logitech Brio webcam at the Goodwill for $5, which retails for $200. I call that a win.

Articles

  • What if Design isn’t for Humans?
    • A very interesting read about designing things for the “long now”.
    • Our planet can no longer afford to have waste be a part of the design of any system or product. Designers need to think long term.
  • Microsoft is using malware-like pop-ups in Windows 11 to get people to ditch Google
    • I have no idea why people continue to tolerate what Microsoft does to their users.
    • There are people who say, “But my games!” and I guess those people liked to be treated like dirt. If you were truly a fan of tech, you’d leave Windows.
  • The myths we tell ourselves about American farming
    • This was the most thought provoking read I had this month, well worth your time.
    • A quote, “As a result, according to Secchi, criticizing the modern agricultural system can be politically marginalizing. ‘In America today, rural and farm are not the same thing, but they tend to be conflated with each other,’’ she said. ‘And so they say, ‘Oh, you’re against this, you’re against rural people.’ But it’s not true. Rural people are the first ones to suffer from the pollution, from the poor labor laws, from all the problems that this kind of agricultural system creates.’’

Movies

  • Vikram Vedha
    • A classic Bollywood action movie with one of our faves in Hrithik Roshan. The twists! The turns! The dancing!!!!!!
  • Kisi Ka Bhai, Kisi Ki Jaan
    • We are huge fans of Salman Khan. This one had more crying than we expected…
  • Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
    • The Spider-Verse movies are some of the greatest animated movies ever made.
  • Striking Distance
    • LOVE this movie and this is like our 3rd watch just in the last year, especially since we all know the lowest a cop can get is a river cop.
  • The Best Man (2023)
    • Oof. We should have known an action movie with Luke Wilson would be bad and its not like Dolph Lundgren stuff is of high caliber. The bar was low and it still disappointed.
  • Shin Kamen Rider
    • A ton of fun! I mentioned previously that my son and I watch everything Anno and ther was no way we would skip this one.
  • From Paris with Love
    • Really, really bad. Turned it off halfway through.
  • Ip Man
    • This was… Okay. I don’t understand the hype, but enjoyed it enough to watch it. Probably won’t watch again or any of the sequels.
  • Iceman: The Time Traveller
    • Bad. I think I learned between this and Ip Man that I’m not really a Donnie Yen fan.
  • The Princess Bride
    • A midweek rewatch. I hadn’t see it in at least 5 years and is still a lot of fun.
  • The Marine 5
    • Its a WWE action movie starring The Miz and Bo Dallas. Like sweet, sweet candy for my mouth.
  • Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li
    • I don’t know what to think of this movie. The action sequences were great! The story was much more serious than the original JCVD version and for a video game movie I wished it was more fun.

YouTube

  • Valorant Champions Grand Finals
    • I watching this with my son, who is an avid Valorant fan and a competitive player.
    • A ton of fun! I wish more traditional sports folks would give esports the attention it deserves.

Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNYJjntEfRg

Games

  • Northgard
    • Now that I have a PC more capably for gaming, I’ve been looking through my Steam library for some new games to play. I landed on Northgard since itsa strategy game and has been sitting in my library for years. Fun so far.

Books

Never Go Back: A Jack Reacher Novel by Lee Child

I only read one book this month and of course it was a Jack Reacher novel. I think I’m going to take a break from Reacher for a while since at least three of my favorite series have new books coming out in September.

Thats it for this time. Bye, pals.