Sometimes, it’s simple things. We’re surrounded by wonders like smart phones and miracle drugs, but sometimes innovation can come entirely from just thinking about a problem differently. If you took an iPhone X 30 years into the past, it wouldn’t do much. Oh, it might be a shiny curiosity, but its function would be limited. Nor would someone in 1988 be able to disassemble it, discover its “secret” and make more of them: the main secret is layer upon layer upon layer of incremental improvements in processor design, chip fabrication, wireless technologies, display mechansims, battery capacities, operating system architecuture… the list goes on and on.
In spite of having cleaned up my container lid drawer, I still have problems with drawer clutter. One place I particularly notice is when looking for measuring cups. I like to bake, and so individual-size cups are essential, but I hate pawing through the drawer looking for the right one.
Most email users are blissfully unaware of the magnitude of the spam problem. Major email providers do a pretty good job of filtering, so you might see little or no spam in your inbox. Even the stuff that gets sent to your “spam folder” is only a tiny fraction of the spam that gets sent to you. That hides the magnitude of a really big problem, and one you pay for even if you don’t realize it.
If you don’t know what IPv4 and IPv6 are, this post isn’t for you.
If you know, and are wondering how you might implement IPv6, this might be of interest. We handle http/https requests using a white box router running Debian. Until recently, we were IPv4 only, and the router used NAT to connect to an existing subnet with a local IPv4 address space (in the 10.x.x.x range). What makes it odd is that the subnet is also reachable through a different IPv4 address and NAT—it’s ancient history in a network that has been running since the 1990’s.
I have written before about the horror that is systemd. I was just bitten again.
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My old bed cost, I think, about $1,500 and was too big — Caper and I rattled around in it. It was also over 10 years old. I got a Wirecutter recommendation for a compressed foam mattress that you can order online and it comes in a relatively tiny box — for less than $300. Uncrate it, and over a day or two it expands to a full 12″ deep mattress. I bought one for Matthew, and he liked it, so I decided to upgrade (and downsize) my own bed. Continue reading
I’ve started running out of space for my collection of 3D printer filament. I found this cool polished black PVC pipe on Amazon and printed some brackets to mount it on the wall. The spools nest out of the way between the pipe and the wall. Continue reading
I have a number of industrial racks I use for servers and storage. They’re a fairly standard design: angle iron and particle board. Interestingly, some came with no feet (which would be fine on concrete, but I have actual tile floors). Some came with only four feet. Some came with eight feet, the other four serving as caps on top of the angle-iron uprights.
When I first got a 3-D printer, I was excited to discover that somebody had already uploaded a design for feet to Thingiverse. The design was for much larger shelves, but it worked—it was, perhaps, the first actually functional print I made.
In the past, we’ve usually stayed in California for our vacations. I decided it was time that Joshua and Matthew saw a little more of the world and, on something of a whim, decided it would be cool to visit the Florida Keys. It had been a long time since I was in the land of John D. MacDonald, Ernest Hemingway, and Jimmy Buffett. I had fond memories and thought the Matthew and Joshua might make some of their own. Continue reading
A year or so ago, I was looking for a new phone. I had been using a Google Nexus 6 for two years, ever since I became a beta tester for Project Fi. I loved Project Fi (Google is eversomuch cooler than any other cellular carrier/MVNO in the US), but getting timely updates—even security updates—for the Nexus was like pulling teeth, and they dropped support for what had been their flagship phone barely a year after I bought it. Add to that the fact that there’s no effective private backup solution for Android devices, and I didn’t have any real choice. I had an old iPhone 5 that I had owned for maybe four years, and it was still running the latest version of iOS with all the security updates delivered instantly, while my three-years-newer Android was a security breach waiting to happen.
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