Since last time, I’ve finally learned how to make rootless podman work on Alpine Linux and it’s been pretty smooth so far.

My Pi4 is quietly running HomeAssistant and I like to leave that untouched so I don’t have to worry about pooping in the dark. I learned that the container requires root in order to access the Zigbee USB dongle through dbus so I can’t really run it as a rootless container. It’s not web facing so it’s locked down to my local network which is good enough for me.

My Pi5 is finally up and running again. Got a new, shorter domain name, managed to get the TLS set up in one go with Caddy which was nice. Right now I just have a bunch of wiki’s hosted with Kiwix and a file server using Caddy.

I’m putting the final touches on my series of scripts I wrote meant for automating backups. rTransfer for the actual backup, remoff for rotating backups (I plan to keep 1 backup a week, over a months time), and containers-util(work in progress) to automatically start and stop containers in preparation for a backup.

A bit crazy but I’ve been working on this whole backup process on and off for about a year now. It’s all POSIX portable except for a few commands like rsync and podman. Once I finish the last script, I’ll set up a blog and then my server will be secure to my liking and very low maintenance (my keep-alive script I also wrote has been working better than expected).

I also wrote a Dynamic MOTD script which updates /etc/motd with some basic information about the machine so I can get a quick look at the machine I’m ssh’ing into. I’m quite happy with how it turned out too.

I’ve been trying to use as few programs as possible and building my own when I can. It’s been quite the adventure this past year and a bit.

Uh… I didn’t even get a chance to learn the game

I do the same too. I even made my own very adaptable rsync based tool. The biggest feature is that it can automatically swap source and destination paths to quickly reverse the transfer direction. That makes syncing in either direction far less annoying than having an endless list of aliases.

Syncthing, nextcloud and any other bidirectional transfer service has been an awful experience. What I lose in bi-directinal transfers, I gain in stability and consistency by just using rsync commands directly. I don’t have to deal with the headache of troubleshooting every time syncthing or nextcloud decides to stop working because I sat down to relax.

It’s actually a plug in power outlet that plugs into a dual outlet box. It’s a snug fit so it’s able to hold all the extra weight surprisingly well.

It’s hard to see but I made a hook with the cable wrap holding the Pi5 and it hooks onto the cable wrap that goes the top of the quad outlet. That top cable wrap won’t slide down because I have two USB cables holding it in position. I designed it so I can easily detach it in case I need to do anything with the Pi5 or it’s hard drive.

I tried really hard to balance the Pi5 but the grey ethernet cable has too much weight so that’s the best I could do. I think I did a pretty good job all things considered :)

My little Raspberry Pi 5 with an old 1tb Hard drive connected to a WiFi extender. It ain’t much but I like it.

I used to work in automation as an electrician so I’m all about those coils and curves.

I had the opportunity to live in Berlin for a year. I made friends with a group of Yemen students. All of these people had friends, family or relatives bombed to death. Over the course of 2 weeks, one person lost 3 relatives to the bombings…

These people were sent to Germany to study and be as far away as possible from the horrors at home. Away from friends, family, everyone.

I was told that after flying to somewhere near Yemen, it would have taken another 16 hours to travel by road to get home. Their parents refused them coming to visit because it was just too dangerous.

I don’t know how they managed to hold their shit together and carry on even as their families were getting bombed back home.

It broke my heart and I felt powerless to even attempt to comfort them. I’m sure they felt a sense of powerlessness that’s beyond anything I could understand at that time.