🗓️ Weeknote 2025-W15

2025-04-13 17:58

Some random front-of-mind pieces from my week.

Inner Conflict: Ok ok I nerded out this week. Sorry not sorry. I do it sometimes. I still worked 40 hours, mowed the lawn, cleaned the shower, ran 40km so whatever. I didn't kill anyone. I'm leaning into things that I simply can't lean out of. I enjoy it. Why do I feel guilty? Probably because my body doesn't appreciate it too much. I did my stretches though. That got me through.

🏃 Ran 40.8km / 826m profile - Continue to increase the KMs and with a little extra elevation. There's still a little niggle in the knee but it's not a sharp pain. Will continue with strengthening, stretching and not over-doing it.

❄️ We got the first dusting of the season down here in the southern hemisphere. It was short-lived though with warmer weather coming in later in the week. Still, days are getting shorter, jumpers are being worn, complaining about the cold is happening.

🏢 Work

• Installed a satellite dish (mounting with monkey-toes).
• Replaced PIRs on a refurbished home.
• Ran additional CAT6A on pre-wire job for master bedroom VOIP telephones.
• Troubleshooted broken WiFi network (it was firmware).
• Tested terminations on a site done by another mob. Bad terminations. Re-terminated.
• Mounted TVs, made up new coax leads, re-tuned TVs. I buggered up and broke the end of a coax termination, flicking a bit of shielding up to the bottom of my nose, shedding some blood. Couple lessons learnt, just glad it wasn't in my eye.
• Tested and configured an existing Sonance audio system.
• Fixed a Sonos surround sound setup that would not connect to TV.

💻 Self-hosting and servers

I'm running a server! On my Raspberry Pi. It is the cutest thing that just sits on the corner of my desk with nothing plugged in except for power and ethernet. This is the first time I've ever properly ran a server, and I am learning a tonne. I will write a post about it, hopefully reciprocating the inspiration I get from others. Here are a few posts from my RSS feed recently that get me motivated on these things:

• Setting up my own server | An Almost Anonymous Blog - I like how Steve shares the reality of the nitty gritty problems that you hit along the way setting up a server for the first time. I shared many similar experiences. Use case here is for photo storage, file sharing and Obsidian notes syncing. Nice.

• My Checklist And Tips For Server Setup | Alireza Alavi - A lot of tools and tips a bit advanced for me, but good for reference and maybe one day I'll need something extra from here. I use a couple of the tools.

• NGINX to Caddy | NTHP - "Why? I felt like it." I get it.

• Notes - Self-hosting VSCode code-server and researching various text editors | Dom Corriveau - First time I've heard about "code-servers" and I like the idea. I've been wondering about all my little scripts I have lying about, whether to dump them all into an online git repo or set up my own git server. I don't use VSCode but I like the concept. I don't quite know what docker is. Dom's site style is stella too.

• Self Hosted Chatmail Relay for Delta Chat | runtimeterror - An absolute cracker write-up about setting up a self-hosted Delta Chat server. Not sure if I'm more impressed with the instructions, or John's ample use of links, or the awesome stlye of his website. I also was not aware of "chatmail" and am intrigued. 6 out of 5 stars!

The Raspi is running Debian from the console, and I can SSH into it locally, or remotely by using Tailscale, on either my laptop or my Android. I'm pretty blown away by all this. My first "served" content is a Gemini capsule (more on that below), which had additional learning curves given it's a whole "other" web protocol and required domain configurations and things. My next goal is to run my RSS reader FreshRSS on my server. Currently the good folks at 32-Bit Cafe are hosting my feed.

💻 Gemini Protocol - You know when you find something that resonates so well that it's like tunnel-vision and it just reins you in, nothing else matters... well Gemini has been a bit like that for me. A few things have aligned here to make this so:

• I've got the Raspberry Pi, and I want to self-host something.
• I am getting comfortable enough with Linux to start using command line server utilities.
• The Gemini protocol has a couple of these.
• I like to learn and tinker.

So yeah, I started a Gemini capsule (gemini://gmi.zkbro.com/) and learnt a million things along the way. From SSH to VPS to DNS to port forwarding to TLS certificates to bloody everything else. Nothing has taken up my weeknotes like this before so clearly I'm enjoying it!

💻 Website

• I changed the colours of my text-wall to match the current colours of my terminal. It's just like we're typing on the same keyboard right?

• I changed the main page back to the original. Having a clickable image was fun, and brought back memories for myself and others :)

💻 Tools

• Tailscale - I can now connect any way from/to my laptop, Android or Raspi. Either SSH or via dedicated apps. When you activate Tailscale you join a VPN which is shared by all the other devices connected, then it's just like being a LAN. That's how I understand it anyway.

• Material Files (for Android) - Works as expected as a file explorer on my phone, but has the amazing ability to integrate with my Tailnet VPN so I can view and edit files on any of my other connected devices. Mind blown again.

• Auto Reader View Librewolf/Firefox plugin - I've been reading some indie-web websites recently which have some great reading, but I find hard on the eyes sometimes due to creativity-overload, so I've been flicking to Reader View in my Librewolf browser quite regularly. Because the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-Alt-R doesn't work in Librewolf (yeah, they have it mapped to reset browser as well!) I thought I'd go for an automatic reader view (when the site has it available) plugin. This one is good because you can also add domains to NOT be toggled (for instance I don't like GitHub or Codeberg in Reader View even though it is possible, so I turn them off).

• Bash Static Site Generator (BSSG) - A new SSG on the block. In bash. Love it. Have tested and going to use it as my up and coming tech-notes page, synced with my Gemini capsule. Seems fit.

• ripgrep - Search for strings within files from current directory within the terminal. Integrates well with yazi - Just press "S" and search for string.

📺 Watched

• Rogue Heroes Season 1 (TV) (2022) - A fun, very loose retelling of the formation of the Special Air Service (SAS) in World War II. Fun like Inglourious Basterds fun. Really enjoyed it.

🎧 Listening to...

• UNKLE - Never, Never, Land (2003) - I've been coming back this one a lot recently. It's just a bloody good collab album.