Posts

Homelab Updates: VPN & Wireguard

It’s been a slow and complicated journey to remove my reliance on Google products. I’ll be documenting what products that I’m using and how they are set up. But first, the fundamentals of what my home lab environment is.

• Ubiquiti Dream Machine gateway and switch
• Synology DS920+ NAS
• Raspberry Pi 3B
• Dell R720 (recently acquired to my home lab)

I will be saving a discussion on the Dell, as it’s my first foray into enterprise grade hardware and will require a lot of reconfiguring.

My Defalt Apps 2023

I’ve been going through my personal journey to reduce my Google footprint and planned on documenting the tools that I’ve replaced. I’ve lately enjoyed reading everyone’s blog posts on Default Apps (full collection here), and decided to join the bandwagon.

I added links to the apps that I feel a bit lesser known:

• 📨 Mail Client: Thunderbird, Nine
• 📮 Mail Server: Migadu
• 📝 Notes: Joplin, Signal (Note to Self)
• ✅ To-Do: jtx Board, DAVx⁵, Nextcloud
• 📷 Photo Shooting: Google Camera
• 🟦 Photo Management: Synology Photos
• 📆 Calendar: Thunderbird, Business Calendar 2
• 📆 Calendar Backend: Nextcloud
• 📁 Cloud File Storage: Syncthing (to my local NAS)
• 📖 RSS: Read You
• 🙍🏻‍♂️ Contacts: DAVx⁵, Nextcloud
• 🌐 Browser: Firefox, Mull
• 💬 Chat: Signal, weechat
• 🔖 Bookmarks: Firefox sync
• 📈 Spreadsheets and Office Documents: LibreOffice
• 🎵 Music: Youtube Music
• 🎤 Podcasts: AntennaPod with gPodder Sync
• 🔐 Password Management: Bitwarden
• 🗺️ Maps: Google Maps, OSMAnd (for biking)
• 🌡️ Weather: Geometric Weather
• 🔎 Search: DuckDuckGo

I still have more to write about how I got here, which will be a future post.

Changing my Theme

Hello! Long time no see. Although it may look like a big overhaul, I decided to leverage Kev Quirk’s Simple.css Framework to update the UI design. All the content is still around, just formatted (I hope!) cleaner than before.

Reasons why I’m switching:

• No javascript: This is not a fancy web app. I don’t need any type of dynamic content modifications. The goal is to present information clearly to the broadest audience. 20% of the content delivered on this site was for javascript, which I don’t think is worth it in my opinion.
• No external fonts: Although there are some very neat nerd font icons to show Github, LinkedIn, etc, that ultimately reduces readability and adds more overhead to the site. Again, like the javascript, fonts was nearly 20% of the bandwidth on the last GTmetrix score I ran.
• Better performance: It’s funny, a website that pops up instantly is a rarity on the web nowadays. Having instant responsiveness just gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside.

Since the styling is light, this gives me an opportunity to modify the Hugo templates, and make some edits and cleanup.

Moving to Sourcehut

For quite some time I have been leveraging Gitlab and Netlify for the site hosting. It was pretty convenient as it allows me to write up a post, commit, and then push it to the repository and deploy automatically with a CDN. Netlify had a great tutorial for site hosting that guided me down the path of using Hugo to begin with.

I’ve been using Sourcehut off and on for hosting some small repositories, and I recently noticed they released sourcehut pages, a static website host. What an excellent opportunity to reduce my account footprint!

Using Framework With Fedora

Edit 2022/01/02: I erroneously said that I created the /etc/tlp.conf file, where I actually modified the file after downloading the tlp package.

On my previous post, I chose the Framework laptop as my new daily driver.

Well, it’s been a few weeks now, and I wanted to give an update getting it set up. There has been many improvements since the framework laptop launched, I imagine some of these items may no longer be necessary as Linux support naturally improves.

Linux Laptops Part 2: Choice Made

This is the follow-up post on Window Shopping for Linux Laptops. I recieved several excellent recommendations from the Fosstodon community that I missed in my original post:

• Nitrokey NitroPad: A hardened Lenovo ThinkPad that focuses on open source and security. Based in Germany.
• Slimbook Pro X AMD: 14" aluminum Ryzen processor that nearly checked everything I was looking for. Based in Spain.

When it comes to technology, sometimes I suffer from analysis paralysis. However, after missing a few keystrokes from my faulty laptop keyboard, a decision was made:

Window Shopping Linux Laptops

I’m typing on a Lenovo IdeaPad Flex. I love it, but it’s getting a bit beat up.

I originally thought that I had cracked the frame from a drop, but I noticed that they are stress cracks from the hinges. More recently, several of the keys on the keyboard are intermittently unresponsive. I went to a local repair shop (ubreakiFix) for an estimate to fix, and the parts alone was approximately $200. No thank you, I’m not paying for Lenovo’s poor design.

Koss Porta Pro

Amatuer audiophile time! Like most people, I’m a fan of “music.” I will readily admit that I usually listen to mp3s and streaming music due to convenience. Recently, I felt like upgrading my sound setup a little bit.

The Headphones

I purchased my pair of Koss Porta Pro Xs from Drop.com (formerly MassDrop) a while back with a $20 off sign up coupon. The final price was under $20 and included a microphone, which was an excellent deal!

Scott Pilgrim Complete Edition on Nintendo Switch

Wow! It finally took long enough, but I finally received my Scott Pilgrim vs. the World Complete Edition from Limited Run Games.

I purchased this all the way back on Janurary 15th, and it just arrived today on August 9th. I can say that the wait was worth it.

I had originally purchased this game on my Xbox 360, and I recall playing all the way through until the end with 4 players. I had a group of friends that powered through a lot of these co-op games, like Castle Crashers. This version includes some of the DLC that I didn’t pick up, such as Knives and Wallace.

Adding Kernel Arguments for My AMD Laptop

I’ve been using Fedora for a while, and enjoying it for the most part. I did a clean install for Fedora 34 so that I could try out moving from EXT4 to ButterFS.

I’ve also been using the Sway Window Manager for a while, and been enjoying adapting to the new workflow.

One issue I’ve been having recently is random freezes while playing video games or watching videos through Firefox. I jumped on the IRC channel on Libera Chat for suggestions, and the folks there said it looked like it was more of a kernel issue rather than a Sway issue. They recommended that I revert back to a working kernel.