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Last year around this time I posted a couple of the songs that made it into my playlist for youtube music's-spotify wrapped clone playlist. I said I would do it again if they did. Which they do technically have the playlist for some users... but mine hasn't been populated yet. I am able to go to the page where it should be, but nothing is there besides a message saying "Nothing to see here". I'm not sure if this is me being impatient, or if I'm just not going to get one this year. I believe I had watch history turned off on youtube for a while, so that may have had something to do with it according to other users
Oh well, I know pretty well what I listened to and they don't give the same sort of statistics that Spotify does anyway, so I'm just going to give you 20 songs/albums that I like and listened to a lot this year. This isn't really in a particular order, but the ones that come first on the list are the ones that I think of first, so take from that what you will. These also aren't albums/songs that came out this year, just the ones I listened to a bunch.
If I get my playlist back from youtube, I'll come back and do another post about it to update it. If not, then I'll just do something similar to this next year. I'll be doing a recap on my resolutions from this year in the next few days too, so keep an eye out for that.
Wed, 22 Dec 2021 01:48:32 -0500
For those who only know me through this website, you may not know that I love Rubik's cubes and speedcubing. I have added a new section to my site covering some stories and stuff. My friends have started getting more interested in the hobby, so I've started remembering stories, and started getting back into some of the community aspects of it. I'm not sure how much of this site I'll dedicate to cubing stuff, but I may spend some time and write down all the algorithms and stuff I use for OLL/PLL in case anyone wants to know.
Sat, 30 Oct 2021 14:08:54 -0400
Since I last talked about RSS, I've gotten waaay more into it, and it just keeps getting better.
Like I mentioned in my last post from July, I use newsboat as my RSS reader. It is so extensible and cool. Luke Smith has such a nice config setup if you like vim keybindings and kick ass features. You can download videos right from the command line.
I know he made a video about his setup like a year ago, and a year ago before that, but he didn't actually go into how it works or what dependencies you need I don't think.
Obviously you'll want newsboat installed, that's a given. Luke's config is found on github, the other dependencies I can think of off the top of my head are as follows:
I don't think I've missed anything, but it's possible I have. If you run into an issue, figure it out lol (or email me and I'll attempt to debug it I guess ;) ). His setup might include some specific things for dwm/dwmblocks which you will probably have to get around if you aren't running it (I am)
His config is sort of easy to read once you have all of this setup. All of the commands are simply comma and then another key.
I haven't gotten a few of the commands to work, because I don't really use them or see a point in me using them.
There are other readers like I've mentioned in the past, but I think newsboat is perfect. Having all of these features is so cool and handy, you can do all of your content consuming from this one program. GO GET ON THE RSS GRIND NOW!!!
Tue, 21 Sep 2021 20:05:56 -0400
Server maintenance is finished
After a few weeks of incremental changes I think everything is moved to my new server and working. If something is off/not working, I'll find it eventually lol.
Tue, 24 Aug 2021 10:24:43 -0400
So if you've noticed, the git site and everything is still up and running. I have been pretty busy so I haven't gotten around to moving everything. I moved Montana's site over as a test, but when I went to get an ssl cert for it, certbot failed, so I just copied over the cert and keys from the server it was on (not sure this is best practice, but I didn't want it to be "not secure").
I'm certain this probably isn't a certbot issue, but I drop my files in the nginx directory like 99% of tutorials say. I wondered if it had anything to do with a cert already being registered for the site, but I don't think that would matter. I just had a thought as I was writing this that it might be a permissions thing... damn. Might try during work today with a dummy domain or something. I'm pretty sure certbot just places a file in your sites files and ensures it can find it based on the domain.
I'm going to Raleigh Galaxy con tomorrow with my sister. We were supposed to go meet Corey Taylor, but since Joey Jordison passed he cancelled, which is unfortunate but completely understandable. Even if only for the fact that probably all of his fans that would meet him would want to talk to him about it. Hopefully we'll get to meet him in the future. This is actually the second time Slipknot/Corey Taylor has cancelled on us, last time was for covid (again, understandable). And Saturday I'm going to a party at my old boss/mentor's house. So I may not get around to doing any of this stuff until Sunday or maybe mid August.
Thu, 29 Jul 2021 08:46:41 -0400
Ok actually, the git site and mail site will be going down, so yeah. Mail will be the first to come back up, but can't say when the cgit instance will. For now just check me out at these links:
I'll work on getting all the repos on my site onto these later today probably. The git site probably won't be down until later this afternoon/evening.
Mon, 26 Jul 2021 11:46:08 -0400
Hi guys, I'm attempting to move all my websites onto a better server in the next few days. There should be no downtime, but we'll see.
I'm moving all my jacksontaylor.xyz sites to this new server, along with a friend's website and my new domain of sbgotg.xyz. I'm hoping to have more services on this server. It actually isn't anymore expensive than having the 2 servers I have now, but it should be a little bit faster. And it will make everything much simpler to manage.
Mon, 26 Jul 2021 11:01:03 -0400
If you're reading this, obviously you know I have a blog. I don't post very often, so people probably don't check my site very frequently. But if "Jackson's #1 fan" wanted to keep up to date with me and my website, checking my page every single day would probably get annoying. It would get even more annoying if "Jackson's #1 fan" was also "Tommy's #1 fan" and was checking his page every day. Checking these pages every single day would be very tedious, and since they're different platforms there is no way to aggregate them into one feed like YouTube or Twitter is there? RSS feeds and RSS readers are the solution.
RSS - Real Simple Syndication is a format for creating feeds of information, and readers are just programs that read these feeds and present you that information.
RSS is conveyed in XML, and for an example you can go to my rss feed. Most feeds will follow the same format and include the same meta tags (date, title, etc.). I say mostly because each site probably does it slightly differently. As in there are some meta tags they use/don't.
There are many different RSS readers you can use. I have used QuiteRSS on windows, and I use newsboat on linux currently. Both are really good free software programs.
QuiteRSS is a full GUI application, with pretty good customization options, and if you're just getting started reading RSS this is a pretty good option.
Newsboat on the other hand is much less user friendly, and geared towards more technical users as it is a terminal based program. It's not that it makes RSS hard, it's still really simple, it's just that operating newsboat can be a little unintuitive and a little bare for most people who just want to read their blogs. That being said, it is still my favorite RSS reader.
I won't go into how to set these up, as QuiteRSS is pretty basic and mostly "click this, click that" and Luke Smith has already made a good video on how to configure newsboat.
As far as actually creating an RSS feed, there are many programs out there (and you can probably just write your own in a text editor), but the one I use is Luke Smith's lb script. You just write your blog in a text editor, then it generates the necessary links on your site for the html pages, and updates your RSS file.
The more I use RSS for reading blog posts and keeping up to date with different sites, the more I really love it. It is so nice to not have to check 80 different sites to even see if someone has posted, let alone read/watch them.
Odysee (a frontend for LBRY) recently implemented RSS feeds for their channels, which is a big step in getting me totally off of YouTube. I still watch some people on YouTube, so I have their feeds in my reader, but I don't HAVE to have an account to subscribe anymore.
RSS also has changed my content viewing habits. I look for more niche blogs around the internet. Lots of people have really cool things to say, and sticking to one platform is sort of dumb.
So anyway, go and use RSS! Here is a list of people I enjoy and follow. You can put these into your reader, or visit their site manually.
One note about the YouTube channels, if you understand how url parameters work you can use the channel ids and format your own if you want to follow other people.
Fri, 02 Jul 2021 18:55:20 -0400
If you saw my last youtube video(which I haven't posted to odysee yet, oops), you'll know that I've been reading some Uncle Ted recently. I'm planning on doing some more videos about his writings, specifically some of the later paragraphs in ISAIF and then a video on "The System's Neatest Trick" as I think they are pretty interesting.
Ted was very afraid of genetic engineering it seemed. Nothing wrong with that, I believe that being engineered beings would be an awful situation. It was just something that sort of struck me in a weird way, and was something that stuck out while I was reading.
Wed, 16 Jun 2021 14:32:50 -0400
That's pretty much it. Not a big fan. I tried switching to xfce on my work laptop and had a bunch of issues too. Once things kind of calm down I might take a day and just install arch and use dwm.
Tue, 18 May 2021 20:56:05 -0400
Last time I updated the site I was having some issues with nginx and all that jazz. I'm still having issues with that from what I can tell, it's doing some redirecting it shouldn't be, but I've kind of put that on the back burner for now. I still host my git site, my libreddit instance, this site, my mail server and a friend's website I made for her. I wish I had a nitter instance still, but I've been usng a different one for now. I also ventured and bought another vps for a wireguard vpn. I don't use it for anything nefarious because it's still in my name, it's mostly for when I'm connected to a network I don't necessarily trust. That was dead simple, I'm not sure if that's me getting better at following directions or if the software is just that simple, but I have spun it up in less than 20 minutes on 2 separate occasions.
Besides trying to get that sorted, I got 99% of my music downloaded and tagged from youtube music. Something like 3000 songs to tag was a huge undertaking, and I'm still gathering more. I'm looking to write something to help with sorting what I download into folders of artist - album - songs, and then going back and applying the right metadata. Youtube-dl cuts off part of the title, so it's impossible to use that to tell what song it is (I think), and there isn't any metadata about the song.
I also would like to keep my song in sync on 2 or 3 computers (thinkpad, server, and a usb drive for my vehicle). This I think I can rig something together with git/patch and a shell script for telling what's changed, and only transferring the songs that have actually changed. I'll probably make a post about that when I have the solution in my head. Or if there is already something for it, please let me know.
As for work stuff, I've started working on a large typescript project. It's also in a more agile fashion using some new ticketing software and processes. I can't say I really like typescript yet, but I can say that this project got me a linux laptop at work (which I'm over the moon about, WSL is ass and a pain in the ass to use). I might do some posts on things I learn over the course of this project. For instance, instead of keeping like a repo with all the sql and how the tables are laid out, we've essentially written code to make the tables for us (I think migrations is the word). Not sure how big a benefit this is, but it can help with reproducing errors and exact setups maybe?
Tue, 30 Mar 2021 19:02:28 -0400
The git site is probably going to be the first thing to go down. I don't think this is the actual problem, but it's at least part of it. So I'm going to try redoing the entire thing. CSS and everything shouldn't be effected.
Sat, 27 Feb 2021 19:07:06 -0500
I'm going through and trying to clean up/fix my nginx config and stuff. So probably a lot of my services are going to be messed up and stuff. Email is included in this. For the time being, you can email me at jacksontaylorxyz at protonmail.com
I'll make another post when I'm finished messing with stuff. Hopefully I'll have a nitter instance by the end of it.
Fri, 26 Feb 2021 20:31:07 -0500
Hi guys, for probably a few years now, people have been talking about the "Big Tech Exodus". This is essentially a move from using large centralized tech platforms like Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google among others, to using smaller decentralized platforms. The move is for reasons such as privacy and fear of censorship (in the case of social media). With the recent ban of Trump on all major platforms, Parler from Amazon's web services, and the Facebook Cambridge Analytica situation, this move isn't without reason (Stallman warned us!).
There are new social media platforms being made like Mastodon and Peertube, which are Twitter and YouTube like. These sites are examples of federated software. With federated software you can host your own instance, and have it "talk" to others. So people on my instance of mastodon could still see toots(tweets) from your instance. But I can never really be banned from the platform totally. I can just join a new instance. Federation is one benefit, the other is that these platforms are libre software. So if you host your own instance, you know exactly what is happening to your data.
But some people don't want to delete their social media accounts, or they have friends and family that won't switch, or whatever reason. There are solutions that allow you to still use/view these sites while having better privacy. There is free software that you can host yourself to act as a proxy between you and the original website. Libreddit, Nitter, and Invidious are some examples. These instances provide better privacy because if you host it on a vps or some other way: your actual IP isn't shown, a massive amount of data isn't sent to these companies, and if you have multiple users using the same instance then the browsing habits are much more erratic and obscure. There are public instances that you can use too.
I have decided to host my own instances of some of these sites. I currently have Libreddit working, which is for Reddit, but I will have to wait for Nitter and Invidious because I messed up while making the certs. You all reading are most welcome to use it. If it becomes too much of a bandwidth hog or anything I might have to figure something else out.
I want to make a Video talking more about the Big Tech Exodus, but I'm still getting my thoughts together on it. I have a markdown file with good links of some videos and alternative platforms and videos detailing the dangers of big tech.
Fri, 19 Feb 2021 19:23:35 -0500
I posted my first video on LBRY and YouTube. I'll probably try to post another one this weekend with some substance, and I'm going to work on the contact me page that I menitoned in the video as well.
If you're using a terminal rss reader or something, here are the links in plain text:
YouTube: https://youtu.be/kgn_0prtuSY
LBRY/Odysee: https://odysee.com/@JacksonTaylorxyz:d/welcome_to_my_lbry:6
Thank you for checking them out, I hope this turns into something that can help some people.
Fri, 29 Jan 2021 13:55:55 -0500
I've been thinking recently about creating videos to go along with the site. Not many people like reading long drawn out posts about stuff. So some people might like my voice being drug out for several minutes instead.
I would be using my phone and potentially recreating the same feel as Luke Smith's boomer rants in the woods series he has.
One of the main questions I have is where I would post these videos. I will most likely use YouTube AND LBRY. This is something I'll probably talk about more in my first video, as I prefer libre software and more open platforms. I would really like to have a peertube instance, but that's a lot of work/money for somethign that I haven't even started.
Once I setup my channels, I'll include them in a contact me page or something on my home page, and make a post about it. If you have any tips, opinions, topics you want me to talk about you can email me at jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz
Mon, 25 Jan 2021 21:30:03 -0500
Happy New Years (6 days late)! 2020 was... a year. It wasn't all bad for me to be honest. Despite the pandemic and quarantines, I had some very cool experiences and have met a lot of people. Some of which I consider to be very dear and close friends, and hope to continue to know for years to come. Both professionally and socially I was challenged. I went to Vegas for work, and Minnesota for pleasure. All while managing to avoid the virus. 2020 humbled me in many ways that I am still learning from, and expect to be learning from for months to come.
I hope 2021 has more cool adventures and more opportunties to grow. This will be the first year that I am really hosting this website, and hope to become more involved in it.
Here are some of the things I want to do with it specifically:
I don't expect this site to get much traction at all, it's really just a learning project. If it helps someone out in some way though, that's cool.
A part from site specific things here are some more general computer things I want to accomplish this year:
For personal/fitness goals, if I end the year feeling better physically than I do now, and don't lose any friends or anything, I'll be happy.
Until I setup an IRC server or a mastodon instance or something, you can contact me at jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz if you have any suggestions for the site or questions. Thanks for reading.
Wed, 06 Jan 2021 22:06:21 -0500