author: captainrantcraft
Spent a bit of time today migrating a nextcloud instance to the new cluster. Set it all up using Apache and mod php. I was wondering if there'll ever be an Apache 3 :D
Cayenne rebuild update. The new engine is in and the mechanic's testing the car for a few days now. Will see about leaks and potential issues in a few days. Still a long list of todos but at least it's new V8 heart seems to be pumping just fine. No more smokey exhaust and no more errors in the ECU. New exhaust filters also do their job keeping things as clean as possible.
I can't begin to describe how much I hate local DNS caches.
NIX comand of the day: "watch tree"
Wrote so much bash code today I think I grew a big gray beard in the process.
My Porsche Cayenne restauration projecct almost failed over the engine being essentially toast. Rebuild would be possible but would take a long time. Instead swapping the entire engine for an overhauled one. Second time I'm putting a replacement engine into this car ... hopefully this one is a better pick. Otherwise glad we take it all apart replacing many of the other worn parts like bushings, waterpump, etc. Should be on the road again soon ... driving, not paring.
From Smolweb to Smolwebhosting ... having oodles of fun with Alpine Linux based LXC containers. 10MB disk and 1.56 MB RAM usage out of the box. Starting to obsess over how to make effective use of them with just 16MB of RAM assigned and keeping disk usage below ~40MB. Just the thing to do with hundreds of GB of RAM sitting idle waiting for use.
ChatGPT grew on me quite a bit in the last weeks. I'm well aware it's "just" an LLM. But I certainly enjoy being able to bounce of deeply technical questions of it. Yes, some of the responses are not spot on but they are at least always educational and open new perspectives most of the time. I'm learning a lot from it and don't feel like wasting time phrasing good and very specific questions. Should I start worrying about my social life?
Connected Gitlab and Authentik via OpenID Connect. Expected a world of pain. Got an instantly working single sign on experience. I love it when a plan works.
New servers, new everything. Retireing OpenVPN for Wireguard. And I like it ... a lot.
DNS is a much deeper rabbit hole then I realized.
So "Arthur Miller" sent me a (spam?) mail informing me that our company website could be completely rebuilt with wordpress which he refers to as the latest in website technology. ... Dunno, we're doing just fine with our NuxtJS SSR/SPA hybrid mode connected to a neat little Django backend. Thanks Arthur.
Kicked off the rebuild of our 18 year old, completely dead Porsche Cayenne. Mechanic had a hard time opening the door at first. Battery replaced already (why is it under the drivers seat?!), exhaust system renewed with new cathalytic converters, change of broken pipes, etc. Should be able to pass emissions tests just fine now. Still a long list of todos, incl. engine rebuild or replacement. Could of course just buy a new car but they are just too annoying and the used market has become overpriced.
Just watched this vid about the issues with car manufacturers using "wet rubber belts" in car engines and how retarded that idea actually is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SASSFjIt5I - This is car centric but a great representation of so much other junk we're served by corporations who should really know it better.
Diving into some of the neocities sites again. Such a stark contrast to the polished clickbait with little to no substance. In fact most websites I consumed recently where mostly ugly but extremely rich in knowledge. Glad we didn't lose that web completely.
Dove into an older project of mine that used no TypeScript. Gotta admit I already missed having the additional DX. It may be some of the flimsiest typing ever but combined with a powerful IDE it's truly useful.
Spent the last few days building a stack demo app. Nuxt.js as a base with SurrealDB. Added Typescript for the first time. Auth comes exclusively via OIDC (self hosted in my case). Typescript gave me a hard time to begin with but I do kinda get it. Validation libs like zod really help a lot getting more solid code. SurrealDB is very cool. Has native OIDC support and it's live queries are dope. Nothing new but the whole package is just well rounded. The only thing left is finding a good use case for that new found stack beyond a little demo app ... useful as it is for me personally.
SurrealDB live queries are fun.
The rain is gone. Laundry day!
I was just looking for that "special" 24V power supply everywhere annoyed that the creator of the rather large and overly expensive appliance haven't simply put it right INTO the thing as my copy of iWoz turns up. It's ironic that the infuriating engineering oversights of a silly new age company put this book written by/about an engineer who truly changed the world put this book back into my field of view. Most of all I like the subtitle. "How I invented the person computer, co founded Apple and had fun doing it" - It's the having fun part that's so important. How much of the modern garbage we're bombarded with is just joyless trash made by people who just go to work?
Used Paypal. Their websites are so cringe.
The term `hacker` has become mostly meaningless these days. But I'm curious. How would you describe a hacker in 2024? And why?
So ... what exactly does TypeScript do that's so great? I'm playing with it a bit and can see some benefits like better auto complete, etc. But it doesn't seem to provide any guarantiees. In my limited understanding it's just as flimsy as vanillia JS with the added downside of having to fuff around with various type declarations. A breaking example for me would be an API result. I get a JSON object that's likely going to look like the type. But how could I even make sure? Typescript will just as happily fail in this case as JS. Am I getting this all wrong?
As a stubborn old JavaScript developer I resisted TypeScript for a long time. After playing with it a bit I finally see the light. Still feels a bit strange as it simply feels a bit "lose" compared to something like C or Rust. Anyway, I can see it being helpful in some cases. Anyone got comments on TypeScript? Pro and Contra both welcome. Happy to learn.
That feeling of joy when something you've been hacking on finally starts to work after resisting you for hours or even days. Priceless.
Working my way through the Rust by Example book. Cool format allowing to edit and run the example code from the browser directly. Great learning resource that helped a lot clearing up some gray zones of my understanding. Also love the fact that cargo can run example code directly. Ideal place to mess around with some libs and test features during development without the need to carry a full blown binary of sorts. I can see why devs love this language. I certainly develop a serious crush on it.
Back from a long European Road Trip.
Packing for a large Europe trip over the next weeks. Feeling too lazy to go but also excited to make some new discoveries along the way.
Looking into hosting public & fully federated matrix and fediverse services. Anyone got experience with that?
Today I found Sweet Home 3D. GPL licensed house planner. I'm a total zero with 3D anything but this thing got me going in no time. https://www.sweethome3d.com/
Had a lot of brainfog these last few days. When it finally stopped raining I begrudgingly started digging up weeds in the garden ... only to discover that this was just what I needed. The avalanche of thoughts and ideas following was quite refreshing. Love it when the creative open mode hits hard.
Rusts String handling is ... special. At first I was quite perplexed. Rust has a dozen or so ways to represent strings. Seems nuts at first. But then I learned about the problems that Rust tries to solve that way and I got it. Painful but worth it.
Another night without sleep. This time I keept hacking around with Rust. Gotta admit that GPT is a very useful tool to learn a new programming language. Also good for writing all the basic tests. Had plenty of fun writing that lib. Next stop add a little CLI tool using it.
Sat down for a bit of Civ 5 at 8 PM ... stoped at 6AM and felt like an hour. Intense.
Gotta span a LAN cable accross a stretch of open air. At least for some time until we can put it under ground. Does anyone know how they handle UV exposure? Something like a CAT7 or 8 installation cable. Any recoommendations for outdoor installation?
I worked in tech for 15+ years. I wrote code in many languages, touched many systems, solved many problems and gained oodles of experience. And yet I feel like I know nothing at all. Am I alone with that feeling? Is the tech world really such a bottomless pit of knowledge that no matter how much we dive into it there's always an infinite amount of stuff we don't know or can't quite grasp yet?