I’ve been toying with the idea of a digital garden over on twoprops.net. Give it a look!
I’m not a photographer.
I can take decent snapshots with a decent camera. Fortunately, modern smartphone cameras are decent or better. Still, my photographs are functional at best. But hey, accidents happen. I took this photo while doing a survey of my new home so that I could annotate the photos with dimensions. It was some time later, when I was looking for something else, when I realized that I had taken a picture with some composition and meaning. This is from my back deck, looking out toward the ocean. It hasn’t been edited or enhanced in any way, beyond what the phone does automatically.
I’m on an adventure. I have run a farm of Linux-based servers for decades, but for my desktop experience I have been using Macintosh computers since 1984. I’m a big fan of FOSS, and after I retired and could afford to have my workflow disrupted, I decided to switch to Linux for my desktop.
Our new home in Hawai’i is slowly coming together. I expect my current list of projects will take most of a decade to complete, but I can take small steps for now. Eventually, the home will completely eschew the idea of burning anything for energy. Transportation, heating, cooling, cooking, water filtration and heating, garden tools, and the hot tub will all be 100% electric, and the electricity will come from the sun.
When I first heard about 3-D printing, one of my first thoughts was that it could be used to make repair parts for any equipment that has small, specialized plastic pieces (usually injection molded) that are difficult to produce, stock, inventory, catalog, and sell. In the glorious future I foresaw, appliances would come with .stl files for all their little proprietary plastic parts. It would enhance repairability while unburdening the supply chain from having to manage all the little pieces that are then saddled with high logistical costs. Continue reading
My latest project, QRazy.fun (“crazy-fun”) is now open for public beta. It’s a simple site that lets you slap a pre-printed QR code label on anything, then give it a label and description using any smart phone. It’s free. There is no app to install. There are no ads. There is no tracking or collection of personal information.
A family member recently asked me about password managers. As it happened, I had recently had a string of Very Bad Experiences with same, so had been thinking about it entirely too much. Here’s how I answered:
It’s time to pay off some technical debt!
I have been running an email server since forever. Way back in 2004 I switched Linux distros to the newly-hatched Ubuntu. There were things I liked about it, particularly when they started offering long-term support (LTS) versions that would receive updates for years. I was running Postfix for the MTA and Dovecot for the user-facing side, and everything went really well. Every two years, a new LTS release of Ubuntu would come out, I would upgrade and spend most of a day cleaning up the inevitable rough edges, and Life Was Good™.
tl;dr a sprinkling of baby powder curbed my shoes’ evil sock-eating tendencies
I have been plagued with foot pain for as long as I can remember. As a consequence, I have tried countless different kinds of shoes, from cheap to pricey, but have worn flip-flops or gone barefoot most of my life. I’d estimate I have spent over $10,000 on shoes and never found a comfortable pair… until last year. I had been wearing some Oofos flip-flops that I found remarkably comfortable, and discovered that they sold shoes as well. I decided to try a pair.
My favorite way to make coffee is cold brew, but I do enjoy cappuccino. Since moving in with my betrothed, I have grown accustomed to having her DeLonghi Magnifica (ESAM3300) espresso machine at hand. Continue reading
