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---
title: Welcome!
layout: home
---
## Welcome!
My online pseudonym is Amolith. However, if we end up meeting in person,
I would be happy to introduce myself as myself. I am a dedicated Linux
user, musician, sysadmin, and founder of
[NixNet](https://nixnet.services). At the moment, I’m a university
student studying to obtain my Masters degree in Computer Science with a
concentration in Systems. I don’t have much time to play music so it’s
(mostly) an “in my room when I have a few minutes” thing. I also host a
(work-in-progress) netcast called [Redacted
Life](https://redacted.life); the subject is Linux and libre software
with a hard spin on personal privacy and security. Nothing has been
recorded yet but it's in progress.
## Blog
I will occasionally blog here and that content can be found on the
[Posts](/posts) page. Below are a specific few posts that give a good
overview of what I typically write about.
* [Replacing YouTube & Invidious](/replacing-youtube-invidious)
* [Typing International Characters](/typing-international-characters)
* [Consuming News](/consuming-news)
* [On smoking a pipe](/on-smoking-a-pipe)
* [Part of my cellar](/part-of-my-cellar)
## Contact
I can be contacted through many methods but the most reliable and my
most preferred will *always* be email. In order of preference…
1. **Email:** [`amolith@secluded.site`](mailto:amolith@secluded.site)
2. **Fediverse:** [`@amolith@nixnet.social`](https://nixnet.social/@amolith)
3. **XMPP:** [`amolith@nixnet.xyz`](xmpp:amolith@nixnet.xyz) *(please use
OMEMO encryption)*
4. **IRC:** `amolith` on [Freenode](https://freenode.net/) and [NixNet](https://docs.nixnet.services/IRC)

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---
title: "Books"
description: "List of books I've read, what I plan to read, and what I'm reading at the moment"
cover: /assets/pngs/books.png
date: 2020-02-24T20:15:47-04:00
toc: true
---
I recently got a [Kobo Aura ONE](https://us.kobobooks.com/products/kobo-aura-one-limited-edition) and started reading a *lot* more. This page is meant to be a record of what I've already read, what I plan to read, and what I'm on at the moment. The categories are in alphabetical order but that's the only organisation there is in the *[Will read](#will-read "wikilink")* section; the others will be a bit more orderly.
All of the book links are to Wikipedia pages with*out* the language prefix so it should redirect to whatever locale you have set. Unfortunately, some of the books don't have dedicated pages; in those instances, I've used one of Wikipedia's features to prefill the ISBN search bar so you can view them using the database of your choice, whether that's [Open Library](https://openlibrary.org), [WorldCat](https://www.worldcat.org/), Amazon, etc. (but please [don't use Amazon](https://stallman.org/amazon.html)).
If you have any suggestions, feel free to send me a message somewhere!
## Currently reading
| Book | Author | Date |
|---------------------------------------------------------------------------------|--------------------|---------------|
| [The Endless Knot](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Song_of_Albion#The_Endless_Knot) | Stephen R. Lawhead | 07 Mar 2020 |
| [Permanent Record](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_Record_(autobiography)) | Edward Snowden | November 2019 |
## Will read
### Fantasy
| Book | Author |
|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|-------------------|
| [Shannara](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannara) | Terry Brooks |
| [The Witcher](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Witcher) | Andrzej Sapkowski |
| [Earthsea](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthsea) | Ursula K. Le Guin |
| [The Kingkiller Chronicles](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kingkiller_Chronicle) | Patrick Rothfuss |
| [Halo novels](https://halo.fandom.com/wiki/Halo_Novels) | Various |
| [The Horus Heresy](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Warhammer_40,000_novels#The_Horus_Heresy) | Various |
#### Zamonia
| Book | Author |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|--------------|
| [The City of Dreaming Books](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/The_City_of_Dreaming_Books) | Walter Moers |
| [The Alchemaster's Apprentice](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Alchemaster%27s_Apprentice) | Walter Moers |
| [The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_City_of_Dreaming_Books#The_Labyrinth_of_Dreaming_Books) | Walter Moers |
#### Forgotten Realms
| Book | Author |
|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------|-----------------------------------|
| [The Legend of Drizzt](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Drizzt) | R. A. Salvatore |
| [The Elminster Series](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elminster_Series) | Ed Greenwood |
| [War of the Spider Queen](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Spider_Queen) | Various with Salvatore overseeing |
#### Dystopian
| Book | Author |
|---------------------------------------------------------------------------|--------------|
| [Anthem](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthem_(novella)) | Ayn Rand |
| [Atlas Shrugged](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Shrugged) | Ayn Rand |
| [Robert Langdon](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Langdon_(book_series)) | Dan Brown |
| [Fahrenheit 451](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451) | Ray Bradbury |
### OSINT (offense & defense)
OSINT stands for [Open Source Intelligence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_intelligence) and deals with gathering information from public sources. This can include social media profiles, email addresses, passwords, usernames, etc. obtained through a public database dump, what you can find out from talking to an individual directly, etc. There are many reasons to have a working knowledge of OSINT methods but the main one, for me, is defense. While reading books on how to keep your information private is good and all, the best resources are on investigating *other* people; by knowing how to find information about others, you also have a better understanding of how to keep *your* information safe.
| Book | Author |
|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|------------------------------------|
| [Extreme Privacy](https://inteltechniques.com/book7.html) | Michael Bazzell |
| [Open Source Intelligence](https://inteltechniques.com/book1.html) | Michael Bazzell |
| [Social Engineering: The Science of Human Hacking](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/9781119433385) | Christopher Hadnagy |
| [How to Find Out Anything](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/9780735204676) | Don Macleod |
| [The Art of Invisibility](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/9780316380492) | Kevin Mitnick, Ray Porter, et. al. |
| [200+ Ways to Protect Your Privacy](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/9781721400126) | Jeni Rogers |
| [PGP & GPG: Email for the Practical Paranoid](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/9781593270711) | Michael Lucas |
### Privacy
| Book | Author |
|---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|------------------------------------------|
| [Nineteen Eighty-Four](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four) | George Orwell |
| [Does State Spying Make Us Safer?](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/9781770898424) | Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, et. al. |
| [Little Brother](https://craphound.com/littlebrother/) | Cory Doctorow |
| [Surveillance Valley](https://surveillancevalley.com/) | Yasha Levine |
| [No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the Surveillance State](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Place_to_Hide_(Greenwald_book)) | Glenn Greenwald |
### Science Fiction
| Book | Author |
|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|-----------------|
| [Flatland](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatland) | *A Square* |
| [Macroscope](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Macroscope_(novel)) | Piers Anthony |
| [Dune](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(novel)) | Frank Herbert |
| [The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (series)](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_Galaxy) | Douglas Adams |
| [The Martian](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martian_(Weir_novel)) | Andy Weir |
| [The Three Body Problem](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three-Body_Problem_(novel)) | Liu Cixin |
| [Agency](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Agency_(novel)) | William Gibson |
| [Seveneves](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Seveneves) | Neal Stephenson |
### Technology
| Book | Author |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|-----------------|
| [Autonomous](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/9780765392077) | Annalee Newitz |
| [Neuromancer](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromancer) | William Gibson |
| [Hackers & Painters](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers_%26_Painters) | Paul Graham |
| [The Cathedral and the Bazaar](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar) | Eric S. Raymond |
| [Cryptonomicon](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptonomicon) | Neal Stephenson |
### Miscellaneous
| Book | Author |
|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|-----------------|
| [The Count of Monte Cristo](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo) | Alexandre Dumas |
| [Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_and_the_Art_of_Motorcycle_Maintenance) | Robert Pirsig |
| [The Art of War](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_War) | Sun Tzu |
| [Who Rules The World?](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/9781627793810) | Noam Chomsky |
## Have read
---------
This is by *far* not a complete list; I have read more books than I can possibly remember. This is simply a list of either ones I've read since I started again or the first ones that come to mind when thinking back to when I was younger.
### Fantasy
| Book | Author | Date |
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|---------------------|-------------|
| [The Silver Hand](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Song_of_Albion#The_Silver_Hand) | Stephen R. Lawhead | 07 Mar 2020 |
| [The Paradise War](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Song_of_Albion#The_Paradise_War) | Stephen R. Lawhead | 14 Feb 2020 |
| [The Pendragon Cycle](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pendragon_Cycle) | Stephen R. Lawhead | |
| [The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/The_13%C2%BD_Lives_of_Captain_Bluebear) | Walter Moers | |
| [Fablehaven](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Fablehaven) | Brandon Mull | |
| [Septimus Heap](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Septimus_Heap) | Angie Sage | |
| [Percy Jackson & the Olympians](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Jackson_%26_the_Olympians) | Rick Riordan | |
| [The Heroes of Olympus](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heroes_of_Olympus) | Rick Riordan | |
| [The Kane Chronicles](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kane_Chronicles) | Rick Riordan | |
| [Redwall](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Redwall) | Brian Jacques | |
| [The Wardstone Chronicles](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wardstone_Chronicles) | Joseph Delaney | |
| [The Avatar Chronicles](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_(Kostick_novel)) | Conor Kostick | |
| [Brave Story](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_Story) | Miyuki Miyabe | |
| [The Inheritance Cycle](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Inheritance_Cycle) | Christopher Paolini | |
| [Ender's Game](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Ender's_Game) | Orson Scott Card | |
| [The Sword of Shannara](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sword_of_Shannara_Trilogy) | Terry Brooks | |
## Recommendations
These are books and series I have read and highly recommend. I will likely only list one series per author but I encourage you to look more into them and read more of their work. The first few are ranked in order of favouritism but, after that, there is no particular method to my madness.
### Fantasy
| Book | Author |
|------------------------------------------------------------------------------|--------------------|
| [The Pendragon Cycle](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pendragon_Cycle#Novels) | Stephen R. Lawhead |
| [The Lord of the Rings](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings) | J. R. R. Tolkien |
| [The Zamonia Series](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Moers#Zamonia_series) | Walter Moers |
| [Shannara](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannara) | Terry Brooks |
| [The Avatar Chronicles](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_(Kostick_novel)) | Conor Kostick |
### Privacy
| Book | Author |
|--------------------------------------------------------------------|-----------------|
| [Extreme Privacy](https://inteltechniques.com/book7.html) | Michael Bazzell |
| [Open Source Intelligence](https://inteltechniques.com/book1.html) | Michael Bazzell |
## Academic reading
My end career goal is to be a university professor. A PhD is all but *required* to teach at a university and obtaining one will be a rigorous endeavour. One of the requirements for that will be reading and writing a lot of academic papers. In addition to the normal books above, I'm going to keep a record of the academic works I've consumed, possibly with some blog posts and notes on them; we'll see where that goes though 😉
### Currently reading
| Paper | Author |
|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|--------------------------------------|
| [Business Intelligence and Analytics: From Big Data to Big Impact](https://doi.org/10.2307/41703503) | Hsinchun Chen, Roger Chiang, et. al.
### Read
### Will read
| Paper | Author |
|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| [Protecting TOR exit nodes from abuse](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/9789532330502) | Stjepan Groš, Marko Salkić, et. al. |
| [Improving the Tor traffic distribution with circuit switching method](https://doi.org/10.1109/HPSR.2016.7525647) | Timothy Girry Kale, et. al. |
| [Application of Neural Networks and Friedman Test for User Identification in Tor Networks](https://doi.org/10.1109/BWCCA.2015.88) | Taro Ishitaki, Tetsuya Oda, et. al. |
| [Deanonymizing schemes of hidden services in tor network: A survey](https://doi.org/10.1109/ICOIN.2015.7057949) | Sabita Nepal, Saurav Dahal, et. al. |
| [A hierarchical classification approach for tor anonymous traffic](https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCSN.2017.8230113) | Jia Lingyu, Liu Yang, et. al. |
| [Tor Network Limits](https://doi.org/10.1109/NCIS.2011.48) | Souad Benmeziane, Nadjib Badache, et. al. |
| [Large scale port scanning through tor using parallel Nmap scans to scan large portions of the IPv4 range](https://doi.org/10.1109/ISI.2017.8004906) | Rodney R Rohrmann & Vincent J Ercolani |
| [Web-based collaborative big data analytics on big data as a service platform](https://doi.org/10.1109/ICACT.2015.7224859) | Kyounghyun Park, Minh Nguyen, & Heesun Won |
| [Using Big Data for Profiling Heavy Users in Top Video Apps](https://doi.org/10.1109/BigDataCongress.2015.63) | Chieh-Hsin Liao, Yu-Heng Lei, Kai-Yu Liou, Jian-Shing Lin, Hsiao-Feng Yeh |

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---
title: "Minecraft"
description: "Instructions for joining the official™ Secluded.Site© Minecraft® server"
date: 2020-05-29T23:37:57-04:00
cover: /assets/pngs/minecraft.png
toc: true
---
Just a fun server for some friends to play on. The original was a mixture of survival and creative with some massive cities, castles, boats, towers, etc. but everyone eventually got bored with vanilla. Now, it has a few mods and we play more often.
## Joining
1. Set [TLauncher](https://tlauncher.org/en/) up. No account is necessary and
you can enter whatever username you wish.
3. Download [the modpack](/mods.zip) and unzip it.
4. In TLauncher, click `TL mods` in the bottom right, `Create` button at the
top, then select `Minecraft 1.15.2`.
5. Click the settings icon on the left, import all the extracted `.jar` files,
then `Enter` game.
6. Server address is `mc.secluded.site`
There is a [global map](https://map.secluded.site/#overworld/0/14/796/379/64)
generated from *all* of the chunks my server has created. The in-game minimap
only shows where you have been but this one has everything. The red and green
squares are textures from mods that I haven't extracted yet. Will do soon™. To
add a banner for your home, [create a
flag](https://www.planetminecraft.com/banner/) then send me the PNG along with
your coordinates.
### Skins
There are two possible routes for custom skins. The first is through Mojang; if
you have a Mojang account, you can enter your username and other players will
see that skin. The second is through TLauncher itself and *doesn't* require a
Mojang account. Note, however, that only other TLauncher users will see it. For
that, simply create a TLauncher account and select your skin!
If you don't have an account with either Mojang or TLauncher, the default
[player skin](https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Player) will be displayed.
## Rules
They're listed on signs by spawn but I'll put them here as well.
1. No griefing
2. Don't fuck with spawn
3. Don't be an ass
## Voice chat
We use Mumble for voice chat and installation/usage instructions can be found in
[NixNet's documentation](https://docs.nixnet.services/Mumble). Under `Hosted
Communities`, join `Secluded MC`.
## Text chat
This is available in a few places. You can of course use the in-game chat but
there's also [Telegram](https://t.me/SecludedMC) and IRC. If you want to join
IRC, take a look at [the documentation](https://docs.nixnet.services/IRC) for
server details. The channel is `#minecraft`.
## Changelog
## Mod list
### Dimensions/Biomes
* [Terraforged](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/terraforged)
* [The Midnight](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/the-midnight)
* [The
Bumblezone](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/the-bumblezone-forge)
### Blocks & Misc
* [MumbleLink](https://github.com/zsawyer/MumbleLink)
* [Minecolonies](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/minecolonies)
* [Structurize](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/structurize)
* [Structurize](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/structurize)
* [Cyclic](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/cyclic)
* [Additional
Light](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/additional-lights)
* [MrCrayfish's
Furniture](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/mrcrayfish-furniture-mod)
* [MrCrayfish's Venture](https://mrcrayfish.com/mods?id=venture)
* [MrCrayfish's Enchantable](https://mrcrayfish.com/mods?id=enchantable)
* [MrCrayfish's Glasscutter](https://mrcrayfish.com/mods?id=glasscutter)
* [MrCrayfish's Goblin Traders](https://mrcrayfish.com/mods?id=goblintraders)
* [Simple Farming](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/simple-farming)
* [Refined
Storage](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/refined-storage)
### Quality-of-life
* [Corpse](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/corpse)
* [Progressive
Bosses](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/progressive-bosses)
* [Nether portal
fix](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/netherportalfix)
* [Fast Leaf
Decay](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/fast-leaf-decay)
* [Morpheus](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/morpheus)
* [Quark](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/quark)
* [AutoRegLib](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/autoreglib)
### UI/HUD
* [Blur](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/blur)
* [Neat](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/neat)
* [Equipment
Tooltips](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/equipment-tooltips)
* [Hwyla](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/hwyla)
* [JAOPCA](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/jaopca)
* [Appleskin](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/appleskin)
* [Voxelmap](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/voxelmap)
### Items
* [Nature's
Compass](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/natures-compass)
* [Cooking for
Blockheads](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/cooking-for-blockheads)
* [Miner's Helmet](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/miners-helmet)
* [Mining Gadgets](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/mining-gadgets)
* [Traveler's
Backpack](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/travelers-backpack)
### Performance
* [Phosphor](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/phosphor-forge)
* [MixinBootstrap](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/mixinbootstrap)
* [Lithium](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/lithium-forge)
* [MixinBootstrap](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/mixinbootstrap)
* [Performant](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/performant)
* [MixinBootstrap](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/mixinbootstrap)
* [FastFurnace](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/fastfurnace)
* [FastWorkbench](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/fastworkbench)
* [Clumps](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/clumps)

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---
title: "Pipes and Tobacco"
description: "My collections and pipes and pipe tobacco"
cover: /assets/pngs/pipe.png
date: 2020-04-01T23:13:05-04:00
toc: true
categories:
- Pipe Smoking
tags:
- Pipes
- Tobacco
- Smoking
- Personal
---
This is intended to be a sort of journal documenting the tobaccos and pipes I've tried along with my opinions. At first, the links will lead to the store page. Eventually, I hope to have them lead to reviews 😉 If you're curious about why I smoke a pipe or how I got started, check the [category](/categories/pipe-smoking/).
## Pipes
* [The Emerald](https://corncobpipe.com/the-emerald-corn-cob-pipe) (in-transit)
* [Nording Partially Rusticated Churchwarden](https://www.smokingpipes.com/pipes/new/Nording/moreinfo.cfm?product_id=363601) (2020-03-23)
* Mauro Armellini (I know nothing about it yet)
* [Missouri Pride Corn Cob Pipe](https://corncobpipe.com/missouri-pride-corncob-pipe.html)
## Tobacco
### The Country Squire
* [Green Dragon](https://www.thecountrysquireonline.com/product/green-dragon-virginias/)
* [Kingsfoil](https://www.thecountrysquireonline.com/product/kingsfoil-virginia-kentucky/)
* [Rivendell](https://www.thecountrysquireonline.com/product/rivendell-nutty-woody-cocoa/)
* [Second Breakfast](https://www.thecountrysquireonline.com/product/second-breakfast-vanilla-maple/)
* [Bag End](https://www.thecountrysquireonline.com/product/bag-end-traditional-scottish/)
* [Old Toby](https://www.thecountrysquireonline.com/product/old-toby/)
### In-house blends
* Indian Summer

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---
title: "School..."
description: "I'm starting a new challenge where I'll write a blog post every day."
cover: /assets/pngs/calendar.png
tags:
- Personal
- School
- 100 Days To Offload
date: 2020-04-25T22:12:40-04:00
---
A friend of mine, [Kev Quirk](https://kevq.uk/), issued [a challenge](https://fosstodon.org/@kev/104053977554016690) yesterday and I decided to take him up on it. In the time between then and now, he's actually set up a website for participants to submit their posts; it's called (quite fittingly) *[100 Days To Offload](https://100daystooffload.com/)*. I'm going to attempt to keep up with it for the next 100 days and see where it takes me. Because I'll be using this blog every day, expect a lot of changes and improvements. With that out of the way, here goes!
---
Part of this challenge is "offloading" and one of the ways that word can be meant is to lay out everything that's on your mind. Today, that's school. I'm generally an *incredibly* laid-back person; I don't really ever get stressed about anything. That is simultaneously a good thing and a very bad thing. Because I don't really get stressed, I don't feel the urgency of getting homework done, communicating with professors about late assignments, studying, the works. In the past, I've enjoyed the content I was learning so the fear of making a bad grade was never a motivator---it was interest in the subject and a natural curiosity. Right now, I'm not interested in any of my subjects except for German. It's very unlikely that I will be dealing with Java in the workforce, Discrete Math is boring, and Calculus II is *killing* me[^1]. I don't even know if I'll pass it this semester.
And yet...I'm still not stressed. My university implemented an optional pass-fail grading system in light of the pandemic and the physical campus shutting down. If a student is making an A, they will definitely opt out. If a student is making a C, the minimum required to move on, they will opt in. This mean the C will remain on their transcript *but* it won't affect their GPA. For those wanting to get into grad school (me), it is a god send. I have been so lax this semester about doing *anything* for my classes that I will very likely end up opting in for all of courses except German. As I said above, I don't even know if I'll make a C in Calculus though that isn't just because I haven't done all of the work; I have one of the most difficult professors in the math department.I am worried but I'm *very* good at keeping that in the back of my mind under many many layers of keeping myself busy. It's a bit like that meme of the dog saying "this is fine" while the house burns around him except I'm not looking at the fire. My head is craned towards my monitor, my fingers on the keyboard, and my mind is somewhere in a server in Germany ignoring every bit of it.
This is very much a badly-written ramble and I'm not even going to read through it before posting. I don't like talking about this kind of thing but it feels good to get it off my chest, even if it is garbled and likely hard to read. I will try to only have a single "downer" post like this in the series; I have a few ideas for much better content.
---
This is published as part of *100 Days To Offload* and is not indicative of the rest of the content there; most of it is much more positive 😅 To join in, simply write a post, submit it [here](https://100daystooffload.com/), and use `#100DaysToOffload` somewhere on your social media 😉
[^1]: I actually took the course last semester and ended up dropping it because my grade was so bad right out of the gate.

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---
title: "100 Days To Read"
description: "Switching gears a little and reading for an hour every day"
cover: /assets/pngs/book.png
date: 2020-07-23T00:48:16-04:00
toc: true
categories:
- Technology
- Meta
tags:
- 100 Days to Read
- 100 Days to Offload
---
## The idea
I've found it very difficult to stick to a regular schedule for [#100DaysToOffload](https://100daystooffload) for various reasons. Chief among them is simply that I don't have enough time with everything else I have going on; what I want to write and the ideas I've had take longer to get on paper (or screen) than I'm able to dedicate at the moment[^1]. However, I love the intent behind it and want to continue in a somewhat less involved manner. Enter [#100DaysToRead](https://social.nixnet.services/tags/100DaysToRead).
## The "rules"
Quotes are used because they're not solid rules; it can be hard to learn something significant from fiction, you might miss a day here and there, what you learned could be a bit personal and not really suitable for social media, any number of things might result in "breaking" one or all of them. Just do your best. 🙂
### Read for an hour a day
I recommend using some kind of timer or stopwatch to track how long you've been reading. A stopwatch would be best as it allows you to get sucked in without ringing and making you feel as if you *need* to stop; the pull of real life is great and audible reminders only serve to exacerbate the urgency of rejoining the rest of the world. Part of the idea behind this is not only to learn something but to *enjoy* it and that's difficult when you're anxiously waiting for a timer to ding so you can get back to watching a show. I spent a *lot* of time with books when I was younger then fell completely out of the practise once I got more involved with school and want to make it a habit once more.
### Take notes
The *main* goal of this challenge is to learn things and the effects of this rule are twofold; you'll certainly be learning a lot but it will also provide material to write about in the future[^2]. Take notes in whatever manner you prefer, from writing in the margins[^3] to writing on the wall, though the latter might not be the greatest idea. I personally plan to put my notes in [a Zettelkasten](https://zettelkasten.de/) created with [vimwiki](https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki/) along with the rest of my notes[^4]. I will first write down whatever thoughts I have in my [pocket notebook](https://www.walmart.com/ip/Moleskine-Classic-Notebook-Hard-Cover-Pocket-3-5-x-5-5-Plain-Blank-Black-192-Pages-9788883701030-Hardcover-Ntb/8402217) (these will likely just be a short summary with the page/paragraph as reference[^5]) then, directly after I've finished the session or later that day—the same day!—I'll go through the notes and expand them a bit. I want the *full* thought stored in my Zettelkasten for use in the future; whenever I read another book and have a related thought, I'll return to this note and add links between them.
### Post a short summary
Whatever you've learned that day, post a condensed version along with the book/page/paragraph on social media using the [#100DaysToRead](https://social.nixnet.services/tags/100DaysToRead) tag! Expanding a short summary then condensing it again with different wording helps to ensure you understand the material and will aid in recollection. Posting about it will give others the same information and might even pique their interest about what you're reading.
## Thoughts
Inspiration for this comes partly from [episode 112](https://www.social-engineer.org/podcast/ep-112-catching-spies-and-paying-parking-tickets-with-joe-navarro/) of [The Social-Engineer Podcast](https://www.social-engineer.org/podcast/), partly from me wanting to learn more, and partly from me wanting more material to write about. There is so much knowledge in books but it takes a great deal of discipline to sit down every day and read for an hour when there are upgrades to perform, emails waiting for replies, games to play, shows to watch, and so much else. Another small aspect of this is partly to alleviate those concerns and stresses; it's a time to sit down, lose yourself in a book, and forget about the outside world.
## What I'm starting with
Fittingly, I plan to begin with *[How to Read a Book](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Read_a_Book)* by [Mortimer J. Adler](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortimer_J._Adler). It provides an in-depth discussion on reading critically and learning as much as possible from a given book. Adler doesn't push a "one-strategy-fits-all" method either. He goes through a variety of approaches for different genres and encourages a deep level of thinking for all, fiction included. I'm looking forward to starting it tomorrow!
[^1]: With finding links, proofreading, revising, expanding, and shortening various sections, this short post took me over two hours to write.
[^2]: Maybe a #100DaysToOffload Take 2!
[^3]: I physically can't bring myself to do this but some people love [marginalia](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginalia) and actively seek books with them. However, it's a very effective technique and might be fun to follow your thought trail when re-reading a book.
[^4]: I am currently evaluating [Anytype](https://anytype.io/) as a tool for creating and maintaining a Zettelkasten as well as storing other types on information. At the moment, I can only use it on Windows so it's inaccessible when I *really* need it but the developers say a Linux build will be ready soon™
[^5]: I plan to format these like `p20 ¶2`. The second symbol is a *pilcrow* or, more commonly, a paragraph mark. Usage of that and the section mark (§) are detailed in Matthew Butterick's *[Practical Typography](https://practicaltypography.com/paragraph-and-section-marks.html)*.

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---
title: "A (Mostly) Google-Free Android"
description: "My experience running Android without any Google Services or even a compatibility layer"
date: 2020-05-18T15:28:02-04:00
cover: /assets/pngs/android.png
toc: true
categories:
- Technology
tags:
- FLOSS
- Android
- Google
- Mobile
- 100 Days To Offload
---
Let me put a little disclaimer right here at the beginning: I don't use my mobile phone how a lot of people do so your mileage will vary. I also say "Mostly" in the title because it's incredibly difficult to *completely* remove Google from Android though [some projects](https://www.replicant.us/) have done a very good job of it.
## My motivation
In short, I value my privacy and Google is about as far from privacy-friendly as you can get. What information algorithms are capable of extrapolating given enough data is downright *scary* and **[that is Google's entire business model](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/google-says-it-doesnt-sell-your-data-heres-how-company-shares-monetizes-and)**. In addition, the company itself is [really quite terrible](https://www.alphabetworkers.org/resignation-letter/), from [launching a censored search engine in China](https://theintercept.com/2018/08/01/google-china-search-engine-censorship/) and [selling AI tech to the US military](https://gizmodo.com/google-employees-resign-in-protest-against-pentagon-con-1825729300) to [mishandling sexual assault cases](https://gizmodo.com/massive-google-walkout-over-sexual-misconduct-marks-tec-1830157276) and [forcing people onto Google services with sheer market dominance](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/10/eu-hits-alphabet-google-with-android-antitrust-fine.html).
I do not like Google and I do not want it on my phone.
## What I'm using
I have the [Redmi Note 5 Pro](https://www.mi.com/in/redmi-note-5-pro/) and love it. Specifically, one of the things I like is Xiaomi's business model. It's exactly the same as Google's—data collection and advertising—but it's incredibly easy to circumvent. Xiaomi not only uses its [MIUI](https://en.miui.com/) (*me-you-eye*) for user tracking and profiling but it also displays ads on the lock screen and elsewhere. Because of all that, they're able to *seriously* drop the price on their phones and almost sell them at no more than the hardware and manufacturing cost.
Circumventing the data collection is as easy as flashing your own ROM; I prefer [AospExtended](https://aospextended.com/) though [LineageOS](https://lineageos.org/) is a much simpler and "cleaner" Android experience. Many of the installation guide will tell you to flash some [Open GApps](https://opengapps.org/) package but I don't. Others will say to use [microG](https://microg.org/), which is much better but I decided to even omit that the last time I flashed my phone. Thus, I have absolutely no compatibility with Google Services and apps that break without it, well, break.
I also have the [Mi Band 4](https://www.mi.com/global/mi-smart-band-4)
which does give Xiaomi the ability to collect a plethora of biometric
data as well … if I use their app. Instead, I like
[Gadgetbridge](https://codeberg.org/Freeyourgadget/Gadgetbridge/) from
[F-Droid](https://f-droid.org/en/packages/nodomain.freeyourgadget.gadgetbridge/).
I do occasionally want proprietary apps such as
[Linguee](https://www.linguee.com/) for English/German translation and I get those through [Aurora](https://auroraoss.com/) rather than Google Play.
## What it's like
I mentioned that some apps will break without Google Services, however, I find that they are solidly in the minority; most proprietary applications will work perfectly fine without Google Services or microG though you won't get push notifications. That's really not a big deal for me because I've been moving to a more minimal mobile experience and do most things on my desktop anyway. This is closely related to the disclaimer at the top. I rarely use my phone for anything other than communication through open source apps and listening to podcasts; I don't even have an email client installed (but if I did, it would be [K-9 Mail](https://k9mail.app/)). In all, it's perfectly useable but don't expect your banking application to work[^1].
---
This was posted as part of [#100DaysToOffload](https://100daystooffload.com/), an [awesome idea](https://fosstodon.org/@kev/104053977554016690) from [Kev Quirk](https://kevq.uk/). If you want to participate, just write something every day for 100 days and post a link on social media with the hashtag!
[^1]: Why would you bank on mobile anyway? Mobile platforms are some of the most insecure and something that sensitive should be kept far away.

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---
title: "Adding A (Better) Scroll To Top Button Without JavaScript"
description: "The title is very self-explanatory"
cover: /assets/pngs/code.png
date: 2020-05-11T20:39:00-04:00
categories:
- Technology
tags:
- 100 Days To Offload
- HTML
- CSS
- Websites
toc: true
---
I'm a fan of using as little JavaScript as feasible on a website and implementing a scroll-to-top button in JS is just ridiculous. Nevertheless, there seems to be a plethora of copypasta for it so I thought I would write about implementing one in pure HTML and CSS. The title is just a playful poke at [Kev Quirk](https://kevq.uk) who recently posted about [exactly the same thing](https://kevq.uk/adding-a-scroll-to-top-button-without-javascript/) but with different styling 😉
## HTML
There's only one attribute to add to an existing HTML tag near the top of your page and a single line for the button itself.
For the attribute, you'll need to use an [ID](https://www.w3schools.com/hTML/html_id.asp). When the button is clicked, the user will be taken to whatever element has this attribute. For my site, I simply added it to the header at the very top.
```html
<header class="header" id="top">
```
All that's required for the button is:
```html
<a href="#top"><button class="top">Top</button></a>
```
## CSS
The basic HTML above is exactly the same as what Kev's article has. The CSS is where ours will diverge. Having a button at the very bottom of the page is perfectly fine but I use my site as more than a blog; it's reasonable to expect visitors to simply search for a link or whatever else and move on. Having a floating button that stays in the same place as the user scrolls is a good way to facilitate this.
```css
.top {
position: fixed;
bottom: 10px;
right: 10px;
max-width: 50px;
max-height: 50px;
width: 100%;
height: 100%;
padding: .5px;
border-radius: 8px;
justify-content: center;
background: #3b3d42;
font-size: 1rem;
font-weight: 800;
text-decoration: none;
cursor: pointer;
}
```
The `position`, `bottom`, and `right` lines are what tell your browser to render the item in the bottom right. The position is `fixed` so that means we can put it wherever on the page we want and it will stay there as the user scrolls. `right` and `bottom` say that the element is to be positioned 10 pixels above the bottom of the page and 10 pixels from the right. It's rather hidden on desktop but I'm not expecting desktop users to click it very often; that's what the `Home` key is for, after all, and it works across every website. I'm expecting mobile users to make use of it the most.
---
This was posted as part of [#100DaysToOffload](https://100daystooffload.com/), an [awesome idea](https://fosstodon.org/@kev/104053977554016690) from [Kev Quirk](https://kevq.uk/). If you want to participate, just write something every day for 100 days and post a link on social media with the hashtag!

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---
title: "Arch Spin pt. 1 — The perfect bootable"
subtitle: "There's no such thing . . . yet"
description: "I started trying to think of a distro that fit all my daily needs that I could take on a flash drive with me wherever I went and I couldn't"
date: 2018-08-15T10:38:00-04:00
cover: /assets/pngs/arch-spin/pt-1.png
categories:
- Technology
tags:
- Arch Linux
- Arch Spin
---
Today I had an orthodontist appointment and a voice lesson. The appointment was at 15:00 and the voice lesson at 16:00. I got to the orthodontist's office 10 minutes early, was told to right to the back (like always), I sat down in the seat, and the orthodontist came over after a few minutes with another patient. He looked at my teeth, had me put my retainers in, checked how they fit, then said I don't ever need to come back (unless I do need to). That all took about 7 or 8 minutes. My voice lesson was ~5 minutes away so I had an hour to kill. I drove to the college (where the lesson was), went into the computer lab, and booted my [multibootable](http://multibootusb.org/) bootable.
I went through the distros I had and chose the [i3 spin of Manjaro](https://manjaro.org/category/community-editions/i3/), forgetting that it hadn't written correctly and was corrupt. I went through a couple of other distros that were as well and settled on [Parrot Home](https://www.parrotsec.org/download-home.php). While I love Parrot Home for security reasons, it wasn't what I was looking for. I started trying to think of a distro that fit all my daily needs that I could take on a flash drive with me wherever I went and . . . I couldn't.
I would boot it, try to install some app I'm missing (Telegram, for instance), find that I need to first update everything then upgrade some packages then have no space left to install Telegram. There isn't one distro I can think of that I wouldn't have to do that with. So I thought I'd try my hand at installing Arch on a flash drive.
As I was reading, I decided I would rather make a *live* system. This way, I can log into whatever I need to and, as soon as I turn it off, whatever I did disappears. I asked around in the Arch [Telegram channel](https://t.me/archlinuxgroup) and was given a few pages to read up on the wiki as well as a youtube video. First is [building the arch iso](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/archiso), [making a custom repo](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pacman/Tips_and_tricks#Custom_local_repository) for installing AUR packages, building them in a [chroot](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/DeveloperWiki:Building_in_a_Clean_Chroot) so you don't mess with your current setup, and the [YouTube videos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqV1BJtJXEA) that help tie it all together:
# Summary
That'll be it for this post. It was originally a lot longer but I think I want to keep them to a quick read so it's easier to pick up where you left off. I'm not sure what the next post will contain but I am sure that it talks about setting up your dev environment 😉

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---
title: Arch Spin pt. 2 — Initial setup
subtitle: First steps to rolling your own spin
description: Setting up the basics for build your own Arch-based spin with archiso, the official development tool
cover: /assets/spin/arch-spin/pt-2.png
date: 2018-08-17T14:11:07-04:00
categories:
- Technology
Tags:
- Arch Linux
- Arch Spin
---
*I **think** I'm going to call it a spin . . .*
* Install the package `archiso` from the official repos or `archiso-git` from the AUR
* `$ mkdir ~/<build-directory>`
* Replace `<build-directory>` with wherever you want the iso build to be stored. This is where we'll be spending all of our time configuring. Mine is at `~/liveiso/` and that's the path I'll be using in this and future posts
* `$ sudo cp -r /usr/share/archiso/configs/releng/ ~/liveiso`
* Edit `~/liveiso/packages.x86_64` to install desired software
* This will be addressed in the next post, `packages.x86_64`, where I also give some quick ways to install everything you might want.

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---
title: Arch Spin pt. 3 - packages.x86_64
description: Getting all the packages you currently have installed from the Arch repos installed to your Arch ISO
cover: /assets/pngs/arch-spin/pt-3.png
date: 2018-08-18T16:52:42-04:00
categories:
- Technology
tags:
- Arch Linux
- Arch Spin
---
# Package configuration
As I said in the last post, this is the file in which you list the applications you wish to install. I won't list the defaults because there a lot. *However*, this basic setup only builds to a total of ~440 MB so you can add *many* more applications.
I want the setup on this bootable to be exactly the same as what I currently have on my system. I did not want to manually enter every single package though. Thankfully, pacman is a feature-complete tool and it lets you get a *lot* of information about installed packages. `pacman -Qne` lists all the currently installed packages that you explicitly installed. It does not list dependencies of those applications. What I did was run `pacman -Qne >> ~/liveiso/packages.x86_64` to add all the apps I have installed from the official Arch repos to the end of the file so nothing was overwritten.
After, I ran `pacman -Qni >> official.txt` so I could get information about all those packages and decide whether or not I wanted to keep them. For example, I removed some stuff from deepin that I no longer used, SuperTuxKart, and a lot of other stuff. This shrunk my iso from 3.6 GB to 2.5. Now I have a lot of space to use for installing my applications from the AUR. This includes [making a custom repo](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pacman/Tips_and_tricks#Custom_local_repository) for the packages and [building them in a chroot](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/DeveloperWiki:Building_in_a_Clean_Chroot) so you make *sure* you have all the needed dependencies while keeping your system from being messed up while building.
All of this will be discussed in the next blog post (when I get to it).

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---
title: "Bluegrass Music"
description: "My thoughts on old time and bluegrass music"
cover: /assets/pngs/guitar.png
categories:
- Music
tags:
- Music
- Bluegrass
- Old time
- 100 Days To Offload
date: 2020-04-28T02:13:16-04:00
---
When I was younger, I prided myself on being a classical musician. I played piano and organ, I was in a nearby fine arts university's choir (singing soprano of course), and, quite honestly, I was rather stuck up about it. I didn't know any bluegrass musicians so I had never really interacted with them or gotten "into" the genre but, whenever my mother would show me a group of people with a double bass, a banjo, a mandolin, and a fiddle, I would listen for a few seconds and write it off as "boring country". It wasn't until I started taking lessons that I grew fond of genre.
One of the things I had always wanted to play was double bass. However, lessons were *extremely* expensive and the instrument was even more so. Coming from a rather poor family of just me and my mother, classical lessons were completely out of the question. She did end up finding a way for me to take bluegrass lessons at an incredibly cheap rate; I won't say what the program is called because my name is plastered all over the internet for the branch in this area but it allows student to take lessons at a greatly reduced cost. Pricing was based on school lunch status and, with this particular branch, I was able to take free lessons and rent a bass for something like $30/semester. I picked it up quickly and started to really enjoy it, learning some classical pieces on the side and playing with a violin bow rather than the expensive bass bows. Throughout the lessons, my main goal was not to get "roped into" doing bluegrass for the rest of my life because I was entirely uninterested in that; I wanted to keep bluegrass in the back and classical in front.
Because I picked it up so quickly, the style is very common in this area, and bass players in something of a shortage, I ended up playing for a number of different groups at different levels. In one of them, the youngest member was 12 and, in another, I was the youngest with the next being 30 years older. With all of these groups, I ended up meeting *many* amazing and wonderful people, playing *so much music*, and getting to travel quite a lot. It was very slow but, about three years after first picking up a bass, I'm actively seeking out more bluegrass to learn, recently picking up fingerstyle guitar, banjo, and maybe mandolin in the future.
In opening my mind to the genre, I also discovered a lot of beautiful music that's...not quite bluegrass but...not quite anything else I've heard either. I absolutely *love* the style and can't wait to meet up with a friend of mine and put some pieces together. The main band I've been following is [The Punch Brothers](https://www.punchbrothers.com/). [Chris Thile](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Thile), the leader...holy shit he's a *musician*. From classical to bluegrass to jazz, he's an absolute madman. A couple of my favourite songs that The Punch Brothers do are written by him: *[My Oh My](https://invidio.us/watch?v=staHSMEE1pw)*, *[Julep]( https://invidio.us/watch?v=lLdtEiUKDig)*, *[Patchwork Girlfriend](https://invidio.us/watch?v=CMtyWB_Pzic)*, and *[Between 1st and A](https://invidio.us/watch?v=2hsXcl4X5vQ)*. The style is just so unique and different yet has those evident bluegrass roots underpinning it all.
---
This was posted as part of [#100DaysToOffload](https://100daystooffload.com/), an [awesome idea](https://fosstodon.org/@kev/104053977554016690) from [Kev Quirk](https://kevq.uk/). If you want to participate, just write something every day for 100 days and post a link on social media with the hashtag!

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---
title: "Building a Desktop"
date: 2020-04-27T21:03:46-04:00
draft: true
---

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---
title: "Calcurse Notifications"
description: "Configuring descriptive and attractive notifications for calcurse"
cover: /assets/pngs/calendar.png
date: 2020-05-13T22:23:25-04:00
categories:
- Technology
tags:
- Calcurse
- CLI
- Notifications
- 100 Days To Offload
---
I recently started using [calcurse](https://github.com/lfos/calcurse) for my calendar and one of its limitations is good notification support in the generally accepted meaning of the word. The developer has [a different opinion](https://github.com/lfos/calcurse/issues/285#issuecomment-620841221) and that's perfectly alright but traditional notifications are a feature I heavily rely on and calcurse doesn't handle handle them very well; it leaves the user to figure something out on their own. Inspired by [one individual's issue](https://github.com/lfos/calcurse/issues/286#issue-608118188), I did just that.
A quick glance at `man calcurse` reveals this section:
```
-n, --next
Print the first appointment within the next 24 hours. The
printed time is the number of hours and minutes left before
this appointment.
```
The output of running `calcurse -n`, for me and at the moment, looks like this:
```
❯ calcurse -n
next appointment:
[17:25] DnD on Mumble
```
It's all well and good but not really something you'd want in a notification; it needs to be filtered down so it only shows the name of the event, `DnD on Mumble`. To do this, I turned to the man pages of standard CLI utilities `tail` and `cut`. `tail` allows us to filter the output to only the last line[^1] with `tail -1`. `cut` is a little more complicated but will allow us to remove the first few columns of text. `cut -d ' ' -f 5-` is the next snippet in this one-liner. `-d ' '` tells cut to use a single space as the delimiter, `-f` specifies the fields to keep, and `-5` says to use all fields starting with the 5th because there are a few spaces preceding the content we want. Chain all of this mess together with pipes and we get:
```bash
calcurse -n | tail -1 | cut -d ' ' -f 5-
```
Great. Now we need to actually get a notification containing the resulting string. This can be achieved by storing it in a variable then using it with `notify-send`. You likely already have `notify-send` installed if you're using Linux but, if you don't, I would recommend looking around to see what's default and using that instead.
```bash
CONT="$(calcurse -n | tail -1 | cut -d ' ' -f 5- -)" && notify-send "Calcurse Event" "$CONT"
```
Now we're actually getting somewhere. With my setup, the notification looks like this:
![It's a screenshot of my desktop with a notification in the top right corner. The title is "Calcurse Event" and the text below is "DnD on Mumble". Surrounding the text is a solid border. Its position and the border are all that designate it as a notification: the background and text colour match the rest of my desktop which is themed with the base16-unikitty-dark scheme](/assets/jpgs/notification.jpg)
It's certainly passable and sufficient for some but I'd like an icon so I can see what the notification is for out of the corner of my eye and decide whether or not to glance over. Thankfully, `notify-send` has this built in with the `-i` flag.
```
-i, --icon=ICON[,ICON...]
Specifies an icon filename or stock icon to display.
```
Now it's just a matter of figuring out what icon to use. You can certainly pass the path of whatever image you want to it, such as `~/Pictures/calendar-icon.png`, but I want something that fits in with the rest of my icons. These are found in:
```
/usr/share/icons/<theme>/it/depends/on/theme
```
I use [Suru++ Dark](https://github.com/gusbemacbe/suru-plus-dark) and the icon I'm using can be found at:
```
/usr/share/icons/Suru++-Dark/apps/32@2x/calendar.svg
```
It's different for Adwaita and all the rest though; you'll have to do some digging. It's also worth noting that, if you don't have this theme installed on another device, the icon won't show up.
After all that, here's my notification command and a screenshot.
```bash
CONT="$(calcurse -n | tail -1 | cut -d ' ' -f 5-)" && notify-send -i /usr/share/icons/Suru++-Dark/apps/32@2x/calendar.svg "Calcurse Event" "$CONT"
```
![This is a screenshot like the last one but with an attractive icon to the left of the text](/assets/jpgs/notification-icon.jpg)
---
This was posted as part of [#100DaysToOffload](https://100daystooffload.com/), an [awesome idea](https://fosstodon.org/@kev/104053977554016690) from [Kev Quirk](https://kevq.uk/). If you want to participate, just write something every day for 100 days and post a link on social media with the hashtag!
[^1]: The opposite of `tail` is `head` and allows for exactly the same thing in reverse: `head -1` will return the first line of whatever input it's given.

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---
title: "Consuming News"
subtitle: "My setup for quickly getting news I want and discarding news I don't"
description: "My setup for quickly getting news I want and discarding news I don't"
date: 2020-03-31T14:08:14-04:00
cover: /assets/pngs/news.png
categories:
- Technology
tags:
- Productivity
- Reading
- RSS
- wallabag
- TT-RSS
- Firefox
- eReader
- Workflow
toc: true
---
I [recently posted](https://social.nixnet.services/@amolith/103918629088941744) about getting through 487 feed items in less than half an hour and I thought I would write about my setup here. There are three primary applications that require some configuration:
* [Feed reader](https://tt-rss.org/)
* [Browser](https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/new/)
* [Read-it-later service](https://wallabag.org)
## Tiny Tiny RSS
My feed reader of choice is TT-RSS. It's one of the most advanced readers I've ever used and can be tailored for any workflow. My basic preferences are below:
* ✅ Enable categories
* ✅ Combined mode
* ✅ Always expand articles[^1]
* ✅ Show content preview in headlines
Making use of the categories is *very* important; if you have a lot of feeds, getting through them is much easier when you can go topic by topic and leave some for when you have more time.
In addition to categories, the *big* feature I make use of is keyboard shortcuts. You can view those from the hamburger menu[^2] in the top right at `Keyboard shortcuts help`. `n` and `o` is what I make use of more than any other; `n` goes to the next article (or scrolls in particularly long ones) and `o` opens the source in a new tab. This would be great except that most browsers automatically switch to that new tab. If you're just wanting to get it up there to deal with later as I do, this diversion is *incredibly* annoying. Thankfully, it can be disabled in Firefox 😏
## Firefox
This setting is pretty damn easy; open `about:config`, search for `loadDivertedInBackground`, and set it to true.
When you right-click something and open it in a new tab, you're automatically diverted to it. In some cases, this is convenient but I've always found it annoying and worked around it by middle clicking links. Changing this setting in `about:config` will make it so *all* tabs open in the background leaving your current tab focused.
## wallabag
My read-it-later application is [wallabag](https://wallabag.org), a libre alternative to Mozilla's Pocket (which they still haven't made open source 👀). I use the [Firefox Add-on](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/wallabagger/) so simply clicking the icon will send the URL to my server for download. I also have an application on [my eReader](https://us.kobobooks.com/products/kobo-aura-one-limited-edition) called [Wallabako](https://gitlab.com/anarcat/wallabako/). It downloads articles from wallabag as ePubs so I can read online articles while I'm offline as if they were books. A dream come true 😉
## Entire workflow
With all that out of the way, here's my entire workflow.
1. Select topic of interest (category)
2. Start at the top and use `n` to quickly view the `n`ext headline and maybe a short preview of the content
3. If you want to read more, `o`pen it in the background
4. Continue pressing `n` and/or `o` until you get to the bottom
5. If you have time, move to the next category
6. Use `CTRL+Tab` to cycle through all the links you opened and send them to wallabag for consuming later
[^1]: Depending on what feeds you add, you might want to disable this. Slashdot makes up the bulk of my feed items and they generally fit on one page.
[^2]: A hamburger menu is three parallel horizontal lines typically styled as a button that expands to show a menu of some kind.

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---
title: "Custom Streaming Setup"
description: "My second post of 100 Days To Offload details my custom streaming setup"
date: 2020-04-26T20:24:38-04:00
cover: /assets/pngs/stream.png
categories:
- Technology
tags:
- Gaming
- Streaming
- NGINX
- OBS
- 100 Days To Offload
toc: true
---
The other day, I decided that I wanted to start streaming. I'll definitely be playing some games but I might also stream some other things like me playing music. We'll see where that goes. In any case, I don't like relying on third parties for things and didn't want to use Twitch so I started figuring out how to build my own open source and privacy-friendly "platform" (which is really just a [page](/live)).
## The search for a platform
Before settling on my own custom thing, I did some digging into ready-made platforms I could just throw on one of my servers and run. Two of the ones I found were [OpenStreamingPlatform](https://openstreamingplatform.com/) and [Restreamer](https://datarhei.github.io/restreamer/). The latter isn't exactly what I was looking for but it could have worked quite well. The former, at first glance, was absolutely *perfect*. On a functional level, it still is. However, take a look at [the installation guide](https://wiki.openstreamingplatform.com/Install/Manual).
`<rant>`
Steps 3 and 7 are unnecessary unless you feel like manually compiling your web server; it's already available in the [Debian repos](https://packages.debian.org/buster/libnginx-mod-rtmp) and, by extension, Ubuntu's. It's even been backported to Stretch. In step 4, he has `sed -i 's/appendfsync everysec/appendfsync no/'`. Like so many application developers, he's assuming that this is the only project that will be installed on the system. If someone is already using redis in production and they have a different value there, that command will fail. In step 9, the commands are copying the SystemD service files to `/lib/systemd/` but this is where the package manager, `apt`, stores its services. When you have your own that you're writing or copying from somewhere else, best practise is to put them in `/etc/systemd/system`. In addition, all of this is scripted for the "standard" install. Yes, you're always supposed to review scripts before running them but who really does that? When I see a project whose only supported installation method is a script, I nope right on out of there for exactly this reason. I know how my system *is* set up and I know how I *want* it set up. I can't stand it when they assume they know what's best. Just tell me what you *recommend* and I'll make decisions from there.
`</rant>`
## NGINX & RTMP
RTMP stands for [Real-Time Messaging Protocol](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-Time_Messaging_Protocol) and facilitates streaming audio, video, and other data over the internet in real-time. The NGINX module mentioned above adds functionality to NGINX that allows it to handle RTMP streams and turn them into something a browser or media streaming client can use. Connecting directly via `rtmp://example.com/live/stream` is not very widely supported so protocols such as [MPEG-DASH](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Adaptive_Streaming_over_HTTP) and [HLS](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Live_Streaming) are used instead.
On Debian-based systems, adding RTMP functionality to NGINX is as simple as `apt install libnginx-mod-rtmp`. After that, you'll need to add some things to your `nginx.conf` and whatever host file you're using for your website.
```conf
rtmp {
server {
listen 1935;
application live {
deny publish all;
allow publish 127.0.0.1;
live on;
interleave on;
hls on;
hls_path /tmp/hls;
hls_fragment 15s;
dash on;
dash_path /tmp/dash;
dash_fragment 15s;
}
}
}
```
`1935` is the default RTMP port. `deny publish all` means you are denying *anyone* from publishing a stream (that includes you. `allow publish 127.0.0.1` allows *local* connections to publish content. I'm using this as a form of authentication---before streaming anything, I have to tunnel my connection to my server via SSH or a VPN. At the moment, I'm using SSH:
```
ssh -L 1935:localhost:1935 user@example.com
```
The other options are just the basics needed to get DASH and HLS to work. The only other thing to do is use NGINX as a reverse proxy (sort of) to serve the streams. Add this to your site's virtual host.
```
location /dash {
root /tmp;
}
location /hls {
root /tmp;
}
```
That's it! Now you'll need to test your stream and verify that it actually works.
```
ffmpeg -re -i video.mp4 -vcodec copy -loop -1 -c:a aac -b:a 160k -ar 44100 -strict -2 -f flv rtmp://example.com/live/stream
```
This command has FFmpeg play the video and stream it to the server. You should then be able to open the stream in something like [VLC](https://www.videolan.org/) or [MPV](https://mpv.io/) and watch it from anywhere.
```
mpv https://example.com/dash/stream.mpd
```
However, I also wanted to embed it in a website and this is where it gets a little unstable.
## Browser playback
`dash.js` is currently one of the best ways to play a live stream in a browser plus it's pretty easy to work with. The code can be found [on GitHub](https://github.com/Dash-Industry-Forum/dash.js). Using the setup with NGINX I detailed above, this should work perfectly fine out of the box.
```js
<div>
<video id="videoPlayer" poster="/assets/jpgs/stream.jpg" controls></video>
</div>
<script src="/assets/js/dash.all.min.js"></script>
<script>
(function(){
var url = "/dash/stream.mpd";
var player = dashjs.MediaPlayer().create();
player.initialize(document.querySelector("#videoPlayer"), url, true);
})();
</script>
```
## Web chat
The last thing every stream needs is something for web chat. I tried a few different solutions and had mixed results. The first was [KiwiIRC](https://kiwiirc.com/) but the iframe wouldn't even finish loading because it connected to so many third parties with a lot of tracking. It functions very well and I might set it up on my own site eventually but it was a bit much to go through at the time. As an intermediate solution, I embedded [my instance](https://irc.nixnet.services) of [The Lounge](https://thelounge.chat), a fully-functional web-based IRC client. This loaded perfectly right out of the box but it wasn't quite what I wanted; there were *too* many options and the friends of mine who tested it got frustrated because some of the essential UI elements were hidden due to the small viewport. It's just not quite suitable for embedded webchat.
Finally, I landed on [qwebirc](https://qwebirc.org/) and it was pretty much *exactly* what I wanted. When the iframe loads, you're prompted to enter a nick, you click connect, wait a minute, and done! My one complaint is that the theme is very bright but I'll work on that later on. It's good enough for now 😉
**EDIT:** Since the time of writing, I have switched to hosting [KiwiIRC](https://kiwiirc.com/) on [Secluded.Site](https://chat.secluded.site) so all of the trackers and third parties aren't in use. My configs are below but I recommend going through [the wiki](https://github.com/kiwiirc/kiwiirc/wiki/Configuration-Options) and making your own decisions.
`/etc/kiwiirc/config.conf`
```
logLevel = 3
identd = false
gateway_name = "webircgateway"
secret = "changeme"
[verify]
recaptcha_secret = ""
recaptcha_key = ""
[clients]
username = "%i"
realname = "KiwiIRC on secluded.site"
[server.1]
bind = "0.0.0.0"
port = 7264
[fileserving]
enabled = true
webroot = /usr/share/kiwiirc/
[transports]
websocket
sockjs
kiwiirc
[reverse_proxies]
127.0.0.0/8
10.0.0.0/8
172.16.0.0/12
192.168.0.0/16
"::1/128"
"fd00::/8"
[upstream.1]
hostname = "irc.nixnet.services"
port = 6697
tls = true
timeout = 5
throttle = 2
webirc = ""
```
`/etc/kiwiirc/client.json`
```json
{
"windowTitle": "Secluded.Site Chat",
"startupScreen": "welcome",
"kiwiServer": "/webirc/kiwiirc/",
"restricted": true,
"hideAdvanced": true,
"showAutoComplete": true,
"showSendButton": true,
"sidebarDefault": "nicklist",
"theme": "dark",
"themes": [
{ "name": "Default", "url": "static/themes/default" },
{ "name": "Dark", "url": "static/themes/dark" },
{ "name": "Coffee", "url": "static/themes/coffee" },
{ "name": "GrayFox", "url": "static/themes/grayfox" },
{ "name": "Nightswatch", "url": "static/themes/nightswatch" },
{ "name": "Osprey", "url": "static/themes/osprey" },
{ "name": "Radioactive", "url": "static/themes/radioactive" },
{ "name": "Sky", "url": "static/themes/sky" }
],
"buffers" : {
"messageLayout": "compact",
"show_timestamps": false,
"show_hostnames": false,
"show_joinparts": false,
"show_topics": true,
"show_nick_changes": true,
"show_mode_changes": false,
"traffic_as_activity": false,
"coloured_nicklist": true,
"colour_nicknames_in_messages": true,
"block_pms": true,
"show_emoticons": true,
"extra_formatting": true,
"mute_sound": false,
"hide_message_counts": false,
"show_realnames": false,
"default_kick_reason": "Your behaviour is not conducive to this environment.",
"shared_input": false,
"show_message_info": true,
"share_typing": true,
"flash_title": "off",
"nicklist_avatars": true,
"show_link_previews": true,
"inline_link_previews": true,
"inline_link_auto_preview_whitelist": "secluded.site|nixnet.services",
"channel": "#secluded"
},
"startupOptions" : {
"server": "irc.nixnet.services",
"port": 6697,
"tls": true,
"direct": false,
"channel": "#secluded",
"nick": "viewer?",
"greetingText": "Welcome!",
"infoBackground": "",
"infoContent": ""
}
}
```
## Actually streaming
Once you're ready to start streaming content, I recommend using [OBS Studio](https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/). If you're noticing issues with stream performance, play around with your output resolution and FPS---those are the biggest factors. To use OBS with NGINX, you'll need to go to `Settings`, `Stream`, and set `Server` to `rtmp://localhost/live/`. If you're using my configs as they are, the key will need to be `stream`. Literally every component requires specific paths so, unless you're careful, things will break and you'll spend hours trying figure it out like I did. Also don't forget that the connection *has* to be tunnelled if you want authentication as I mentioned above. If you don't have `localhost:1935` on your streaming machine tunnelled to port 1935 on your server, OBS is going to throw errors about not being able to connect.
## Summary
I'm pretty proud of [the set up](/live) I have now but it could still do with some improvements. For example, I plan to mess with the CSS and make both the video and chat panes *much* wider as well as side-by-side rather than on top of each other. Everything is crammed together and it's not a very good experience.
## References
This post has pieces taken from a few other articles and sites that also deserve a mention as well as a read. NGINX actually has an [official blog post](https://www.nginx.com/blog/video-streaming-for-remote-learning-with-nginx/) on setting up RTMP streaming (though they compile NGINX from source as well) that was a *massive* help. I also found another post that is very similar to this one about [HTML5 Live Streaming with MPEG-DASH](https://www.isrv.pw/html5-live-streaming-with-mpeg-dash). A good number of the parts are the same but I used the NGINX module in Debian repos and they used a fork of it with additional features. My NGINX setup was mostly from the NGINX blog post and the embedded stream was primarily from Inanity's. I figured out some of the components I could use for all of this from [Drew DeVault](https://live.drewdevault.com/).
---
This was posted as part of [#100DaysToOffload](https://100daystooffload.com/), an [awesome idea](https://fosstodon.org/@kev/104053977554016690) from [Kev Quirk](https://kevq.uk/). If you want to participate, just write something every day for 100 days and post a link on social media with the hashtag!

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---
title: "Day 3"
description: "Day 3 out of 100"
cover: /assets/pngs/calendar.png
categories:
- Technology
tags:
- Inkscape
- Graphics
- 100 Days To Offload
date: 2020-04-27T23:15:04-04:00
---
Well I had planned to write a post about music this evening but I just spend two hours making the post's cover image, a guitar. Lately, I've been *basing* my images on [Feather Icons](https://feathericons.com/) or [Font Awesome](https://fontawesome.com/). I might download one to use as a reference, download and modify, etc. but I've stopped using the icons as they are. This guitar, however, is an exception; I used the [Bezier Pen](https://www.tutorviacomputer.com/inkscape/the-bezier-tool/) and created it completely from scratch. It's still just a silhouette but I've always avoided this tool because it's so hard to use. You can view it on [my Gitea instance](https://git.nixnet.xyz/Amolith/secluded/src/branch/master/content/assets/pngs/guitar.png).
Anyway, this is my anti-climactic third day out of 100! Prepare for some music tomorrow 😉
---
This was posted as part of [#100DaysToOffload](https://100daystooffload.com/), an [awesome idea](https://fosstodon.org/@kev/104053977554016690) from [Kev Quirk](https://kevq.uk/). If you want to participate, just write something every day for 100 days and post a link on social media with the hashtag!

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---
title: "Day 6 Updates"
description: "I don't really have much to say today so here are just a few things I've been working on"
cover: /assets/pngs/calendar.png
date: 2020-05-03T01:57:03-04:00
toc: true
categories:
- Technology
tags:
- Zettelkasten
- Doom Emacs
- Emacs
- NixNet
- 100 Days To Offload
---
I haven't been able to come up with a specific topic for today so this is just a kind of generic update about me.
## Zettelkasten
In my [previous post about Vim](/vim-as-a-markdown-editor/), I briefly mentioned being inspired to create a Zettelkasten by Daryl Sun in [his fourth 100 Days To Offload post](https://write.privacytools.io/darylsun/100-days-to-offload-day-4). A Zettelkasten is a personal knowledge management tool that allows one to quickly retrieve useful information about a subject, relearn forgotten concepts, and discover connections between those concepts to form entirely new ideas. There are different processes recommended by different people but I think it's a very personal choice and depends on what your workflow will look like. Mine will be as follows.
1. Take *very* concise notes on something I learned in a *physical* notebook
2. When I'm able, go through those notes and add them to my [digital Zettelkasten](https://git.nixnet.xyz/Amolith/zettelkasten), expanding them a little and fleshing the thought out more
The last step is *the most important* as this is the one where you sit down and think about what you're adding and try to draw connections between it and what you already know. The goal is not to make the longest and most complete notes in the world but to add value to each *concise* thought by linking it with others and build a web for you to explore later. You might not see immediate benefits but a mature Zettelkasten with hundreds of entries will constantly surprise you as you tumble into your own store of knowledge and rediscover things. That surprise is actually one of the greatest benefits to this kind of knowledge management system; when something is surprising, we tend to remember it better.
## Doom Emacs
A friend of mine convinced my to try [Doom Emacs](https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs) and, so far, I am very impressed. Emacs itself is very powerful but, from what I can tell, this configuration adds a *lot* of value. The main one being Vim keybindings 😉 I'm looking forward to learning [org-mode](https://orgmode.org/) and seeing what it can do for my productivity. As a text editor and programming tool, I plan to stick with [Neovim](https://neovim.io/) on desktop/laptop, [Vim](https://www.vim.org/) on Debian-based systems, [vi](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Vi) wherever else.
## NixNet plans
Today, I fleshed out some of my thoughts on reprovisioning all of my over the summer. I'm going to have [Ansible](https://docs.ansible.com/) or [Salt](https://docs.saltstack.com/en/latest/) build and deploy [LXC](https://linuxcontainers.org/lxc/introduction/) containers to a baremetal server from [Hetzner](https://www.hetzner.com/sb) running a *very* minimal [Alpine Linux](https://alpinelinux.org/) installation. Whatever setup I have for those will of course be available on [Gitea](https://git.nixnet.xyz/NixNet). From there, my local NAS will use something like [borgmatic](https://torsion.org/borgmatic/) to back up files and databases from all of my servers and [LXD](https://linuxcontainers.org/lxd/introduction/) to create container snapshots[^1]. All of that will be mirrored to [BackBlaze](https://www.backblaze.com/) likely using their B2 model as paying per GB per month is generally the most reliable option. Under one of the others, there's always the possibility that I might upload more than they think is reasonable and start limiting me in some way.
Short-term, I'm going to consolidate some of my servers to a single baremetal machine from Hetzner. Long-term, I'm going to look into building and racking my own servers in a datacenter in Germany, likely one of Hetzner's. This comes with a plethora of benefits but a pretty major detriment: the up-front cost will be absolutely *massive*. Building a rack server worth putting in a datacenter will be incredibly expensive at the start. Following that, all I have to pay is a monthly fee for however much space it uses in the rack and it won't be too much. Before any of that is even considered, I'm going to be spending a lot of time discussing things with my father; he did a lot of racking before he got his current sysadmin job and has a ton of advice to give, from using VoIP to powercycle the server to what networking gear to look at and how to organise everything within the rack.
I have a lot of really big plans.
[^1]: This one isn't *really* necessary as building the containers with Ansible/Salt is automated and it's a simple process to rebuild them. Snapshots might just take less time to redeploy should something go wrong.

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---
title: "Documenting With MediaWiki"
description: "Setting up MediaWiki to efficiently write quality documentation"
cover: /assets/pngs/mediawiki.png
date: 2020-06-04T12:23:34-04:00
categories:
- Technology
tags:
- MediaWiki
- Documentation
- Writing
- Efficiency
- 100 Days To Offload
toc: true
---
Much to my chagrin, I've hardly posted anything at all the past couple of weeks. This is partly due to university summer classes starting and partly due to me putting some work into [NixNet's documentation](https://docs.nixnet.services). After listening to [Episode 4 of 2.5 Admins](https://2.5admins.com/2-5-admins-04/), I decided to change some things up with my infrastructure planning and, instead of automating all the things, document it first. Only after writing extensive documentation will I look into automating *portions* my setup, like hardening a server directly following installation. To that end, I've decided to use [MediaWiki](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki).
After [downloading](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Download) and [installing](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Installation_guide) MediaWiki, a very straightforward process[^1], the next step is configuring it. There is of course [a guide](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:System_administration) but I think it can be useful to see someone else's configuration to get ideas from as well, especially considering how many extensions there are. I won't go through *all* of the settings, just the maybe less obvious ones.
## URLs
The first thing in `LocalSettings.php` is `$wgScriptPath`. Different wikis take vastly different approaches for this. Some fill that variable with `"/w"` (default), some with `"/view"`, and some with something entirely different. [Wikipedia](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki) and all of its children use `"/wiki"`. While well and good, the default configuration will have your URLs appearing as `example.com/wiki/index.php?title=<page>` and this is bad practise for SEO; if you want your pages easily discoverable, the URLs need to be a bit shorter. The easiest way I've found to do this is add all of six lines to my NGINX config and set `$wgScriptPath` to `""` (an empty string).
```
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ @rewrite;
}
location @rewrite {
rewrite ^/(.*)$ /index.php?title=$1&$args;
}
```
The snippet above tells NGINX to rewrite all of your site's base URLs and remove `index.php?title=` from them. This is a similar approach to what [Mozilla](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Main_Page) has done. The result is cleaner URLs that comply with SEO best practises and a setup that avoids [moving MediaWiki to the site's root](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Wiki_in_site_root_directory).
## Mobile view
I see a *lot* of MediaWiki instances without a good mobile version and, other than keeping the number of extensions down, I don't really understand why. Setting it up is incredibly easy and gives everyone a *much* better experience. The [Minerva Neue](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Skin:Minerva_Neue) skin is designed specifically for use on mobile devices and is also much more aggressive about optimisation. Though editing is a terrible experience, it also looks great on desktop. The [MobileFrontend](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:MobileFrontend) extension is used to detect the reader's device and serve them either the configured desktop skin or Minerva Neue. You *could* serve a different skin on mobile but I've found that Minerva Neue looks the best by far.
To set them up, you'll need to download [the skin](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:SkinDistributor/MinervaNeue) and [the extension](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:ExtensionDistributor/MobileFrontend). From there, you'll need to add a few lines to your config file. On a side note, I love how dynamic MediaWiki can be, especially with downloads; providing a copy/paste extraction command that doesn't use wildcards and puts it in the correct directory is *awesome*.
```php
# I recommend putting this with the rest of your extensions
wfLoadExtension( 'MobileFrontend' );
# These can go wherever you want but together is better
$wgMFDefaultSkinClass = 'SkinMinerva';
$wgMFAutodetectMobileView = true;
```
With the skin and extension in place and those lines in your config, save and reload and there should be a link at the bottom of your wiki called `Mobile view`. Click it and you'll see Minerva! On a phone, MobileFrontend will automatically serve it but you can force your default theme by clicking `Desktop view` in the same location.
![Screenshot of the mobile versions of my MediaWiki instance. The left uses Minerva Neue and the right uses Vector. The left has buttons and icons that are much larger and easier to tap making for better accessibility. Though the text is readable, the touch targets are much too small navigation is hell](/assets/pngs/mediawiki-skins.png)
<center><p>Left is Vector (default) and right is Minerva Neue</p></center>
## Discussion pages
The default discussion page for MediaWiki works but, unless you're already used to it, it can be quite odd for new people. That's where the [StructuredDiscussions](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Structured_Discussions) extension comes in. Here's a comparison of before and after enabling it.
![side-by-side screenshot of my wiki before and after enabling the extension. the left really is just the default content editor. it's like giving someone a text editor on a server and asking them to have a conversation with someone else by editing the same file and saving it to see replies. the right side is with the extension enabled and gives buttons to browse by topic and a field to create a new topic. it's very similar to github's issue tracker, for example, but without the ability to sort by tags](/assets/pngs/talk-before-after.png)
<center><p>Left is without StructuredDiscussions and right is with</p></center>
As I said, the left works but most people wouldn't know what to do when given the default MediaWiki editor and it raises the barrier for entry. The right is *much* more user-friendly and works exactly how one would expect. StructuredDiscussions does have a few dependencies but they're easy to add. [Echo](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Echo) is for notifications and the others are included by default. After [installing it](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:ExtensionDistributor/Echo), and [StructuredDiscussions](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:ExtensionDistributor/Flow), add the following lines to your `LocalSettings.php`.
```php
# With the rest of your extensions
wfLoadExtension( 'Echo' );
wfLoadExtension( 'Flow' );
```
Running the following commands is necessary because MediaWiki's database needs modification to support the extension. General talk pages are `--ns=1` and `User:Talk` pages are `--ns=3`. If you only want Structured Discussions enabled for one of them, only run that one. I personally recommend doing it for all.
```
php maintenance/populateContentModel.php --wiki=somewiki --ns=1 --table=revision
php maintenance/populateContentModel.php --wiki=somewiki --ns=1 --table=archive
php maintenance/populateContentModel.php --wiki=somewiki --ns=1 --table=page
php maintenance/populateContentModel.php --wiki=somewiki --ns=3 --table=revision
php maintenance/populateContentModel.php --wiki=somewiki --ns=3 --table=archive
php maintenance/populateContentModel.php --wiki=somewiki --ns=3 --table=page
```
After that, add these to actually enable the extension. To temporarily disable it, you can comment them out but I don't know how that will affect talk pages that already exist.
```php
# Flow (discussions) configuration
$wgNamespaceContentModels[NS_TALK] = 'flow-board';
$wgNamespaceContentModels[NS_USER_TALK] = 'flow-board';
```
## Subpages
One of the features I'll be making heavy use of for my [Privacy Policies](https://docs.nixnet.services/Category:Privacy_policies) and [Terms of Service](https://docs.nixnet.services/Category:Terms_of_Service) pages is [Subpages](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Subpages). This allows you to create pages entitled `Parent/Child` and the child automatically links back to the parent at the top. This can be seen in [Mozilla](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Apps/Security/Other) and [Arch Linux's](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Firefox/Privacy) wikis right under the header and [in mine as well](https://docs.nixnet.services/DNS/Privacy). Enabling it is quite simple; just add the following line to your config.
```php
## Enable subpages for all namespaces
$wgNamespacesWithSubpages[NS_MAIN] = true;
```
## Syntax highlighting
The final configuration change I've made (so far) has been to enable syntax highlighting in the default editor with [CodeMirror](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CodeMirror). After [installing it](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:ExtensionDistributor/CodeMirror), add these lines to your config and you're done!
```php
# Place with the other extensions as always
wfLoadExtension( 'CodeMirror' );
# Enables it by default but allows users to disable it
$wgDefaultUserOptions['usecodemirror'] = 1;
```
![screenshot of the mediawiki editor. headers are larger, code blocks are highlighted, links blue with link text black so it's easy to pick out, etc. In all, it's a much nicer experience.](/assets/pngs/mediawiki-highlight.png)
## Editing in Vim
The final tip I have is that you can edit pretty much *any* MediaWiki instance in Vim, including Wikipedia itself, with [a simple plugin](https://github.com/aquach/vim-mediawiki-editor). The only drawback I've found is that, unless you store your password in your config, you'll have to enter it every time you close and reopen Vim. You can also give Vim [Wikitext syntax highlighting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Text_editor_support#Vim) for creating MediaWiki pages when offline. A few days ago, my wiki was completely offline while taking a disk image backup but I still wrote the majority of the [libvirt](https://docs.nixnet.services/Libvirt) and [Debian](https://docs.nixnet.services/Debian) pages while I waited and the highlighting was really nice.
---
This was posted as part of [#100DaysToOffload](https://100daystooffload.com/), an [awesome idea](https://fosstodon.org/@kev/104053977554016690) from [Kev Quirk](https://kevq.uk/). If you want to participate, just write something every day for 100 days and post a link on social media with the hashtag!
[^1]: If you're having issues, feel free to contact me and I'll help where I can.

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---
title: Downloading courses from Linux Academy
subtitle: youtube-dl is a phenomenal tool
description: Using youtube-dl to pull Linux Academy courses for offline viewing
date: 2019-10-19T01:35:00-0400
cover: /assets/pngs/youtube-dl.png
categories:
- Technology
tags:
- youtube-dl
- Linux Academy
- Training
toc: true
---
## Forward
Every month, Linux Academy releases courses for free. I'm a very busy college student and don't have time to whirl through everything I want to before it goes behind their paywall again so I figured out how to download a course or two every month using [`youtube-dl`](https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/).
## Setup
* Install [`youtube-dl`](https://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/download.html)
* Make sure you have a browser handy
* Create a community account on [Linux Academy](https://linuxacademy.com/join/community)
* Get some food
* Maybe a drink
* Sit back down in your chair
* Spin around a bit
* Read on
## Downloading
* Log into your account
* Pick the course you want
* Open the developer console and go to `Network` (Ctrl+Shift+E in Firefox)
* You'll want to select `Media` as shown in the screenshot below
![](/assets/posts/linux-academy/scrot-1.png)
* Click the video you want to start with
* Watch the network logs
* You'll see an entry that starts with `playlist` (screenshot below)
![](/assets/posts/linux-academy/scrot-2.png)
* Right click it
* Copy the URL
* Paste it after `youtube-dl` in a terminal:
```bash
amolith@poseidon:~ $ youtube-dl https://video-cdn.linuxacademy.com/vods3/_definst_/smil:box/cdnstore/modules/lots-of-stuff-in-here
```
* Press enter
* Watch the magic unfold
At a high level, `youtube-dl` is acting like your browser and following the `m3u` playlist to download chunks of the file. After it fetches them all, it runs them through `ffmpeg` to stitch them together into a single video!
I found it useful to open a text editor and script downloading a whole course at a time. All you have to do is type `youtube-dl -o` and copy/paste it however many times there are videos. Then, copy and paste the video title in quotes after `-o` and add `.mp4` to the end (command example below). After that, paste the URL. Do that with every video in the series, save the script, run `chmod +x <script>`, then `./<script>` and (after a bit) you'll have an entire course you can watch at your leasure!
```bash
amolith@poseidon:~ $ youtube-dl -o "04 - Conclusion and Next Steps.mp4" https://video-cdn.linuxacademy.com/vods3/_definst_/smil:box/cdnstore/modules/lots-of-stuff-here
```
**NOTE:** You may want to set up your directory structure beforehand so it's easier to script the process. Here's an example of one of mine:
```bash
amolith@poseidon:~/Videos/Courses/Ansible - Playbooks Deep Dive $ tree
.
├── 01 - Course Overview
│   ├── 01 - About the Course.mp4
│   ├── 02 - About the Training Architect.mp4
│   ├── 03 - Course Features and Tools.mp4
│   ├── 04 - About Ansible Playbooks.mp4
│   └── 05 - Advanced Inventory Configuration.mp4
├── 02 - Playbook Basics
│   ├── 01 - Using YAML for Ansible Playbooks.mp4
│   ├── 02 - Creating an Ansible Play.mp4
│   ├── 03 - The ansible-playbook Command.mp4
│   └── 04 - Understanding Playbook Tasks.mp4
├── 03 - Essential Playbook Syntax
│   ├── 01 - Using Variables in Playbooks.mp4
│   ├── 02 - Working with Templates.mp4
│   ├── 03 - Using Ansible Facts.mp4
│   ├── 04 - Conditional Execution in Playbooks.mp4
│   ├── 05 - Using Loops in Ansible.mp4
│   └── 06 - Working with Handlers in Ansible.mp4
├── 04 - Advanced Playbook Syntax
│   ├── 01 - Executing Selective Parts of a Playbook.mp4
│   ├── 02 - Working with Sensitive Data Using Ansible Vault.mp4
│   ├── 03 - Error Handling in a Playbook: limit, ignore_errors, changed_when, and failed_when.mp4
│   ├── 04 - Error Handling in a Playbook: Block Groups and The Debug Module.mp4
│   ├── 05 - Asynchronous Tasks within a Playbook.mp4
│   ├── 06 - Delegating Playbook Execution with delegate_to and local_action.mp4
│   ├── 07 - Parallelism in Playbooks.mp4
│   ├── 08 - Using run_once.mp4
│   ├── 09 - Overview of Ansible Roles.mp4
│   └── 10 - Ansible Role Demo.mp4
└── 05 - Conclusion and Next Steps.mp4
4 directories, 26 files
amolith@poseidon:~/Videos/Courses/Ansible - Playbooks Deep Dive $
```

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---
title: Removing your site from the Wayback Machine (Keybase)
subtitle: A quick and easy guide
description: Quick guide on removing and excluding your content from Archive.org's Wayback Machine with Keybase
cover: /assets/pngs/archive.png
date: 2019-06-03T12:08:00-0400
categories:
- Technology
tags:
- Archive.org
- Privacy
- Sysadmin
toc: true
---
## Preface
There may be a myriad of reasons you want to do this, from removing sensitive information to regaining a measure of control over your content. Whatever your purpose, below should be a quick and easy way to achieve it.
## For domains you own
The easiest way to verify you own a domain is to put a text file in an easily accessible location and email [info@archive.org](mailto:info@archive.org) asking for removal and link to it. Mine is at [removal-request.txt](https://nixnet.services/removal-request.txt). It would be better if you didn't copy mine word-for-word and wrote your own instead though 😉
If that's all you intend to do, this should be sufficient and there's no need to read any further. If you want to exclude your *profiles* as well (for example, all your GitHub repos, Twitter, Mastodon, etc.) read on.
## For domains you *don't* own
There are a few things I used that worked in harmony to verify my other accounts. [Keybase](https://keybase.io/) was the most useful for this purpose. It is a proprietary service but I deem the level of proof it facilitates worth compromising for.
The other tool I used was [GPG](https://gnupg.org/). For the sake of keeping it simple, *this* guide will just deal with GPG from within Keybase. I ***really*** recommend actually learning to use GPG on its own; it's wonderful for protecting your privacy and verifying your identity in a multitude of situations. The next post will be on using GPG *outside* of Keybase for this so [stay tuned](/posts/index.xml).
### Generating your key
After creating your Keybase account, click "add a PGP key", "I need a public key", then enter the requisite information. You should use whatever name is associated with the account you'll be emailing Archive.org from as well as that address. Wait a bit while it generates the key . . .
### Verifying some accounts
This is where you verify whatever accounts you want removed. Just click the option and go through the steps! Aside from personal websites, Twitter, GitHub, Reddit, etc., you can also prove accounts on a lot of other services (including Mastodon). More are being added every day so check back if there's something specific you want to address.
Once this is done, you'll be ready to contact Archive.org about getting your stuff removed.
### Signing some messages
In the top right of Keybase, you'll see this pencil: <i class="fa fa-pencil"></i>. Click it and you'll be taken to a page with a text box. This is where you'll type your email and the text file for your website proof. For the text file, copy the signed message and paste it into your text editor, save, and put it at the root of your website. For example, mine is at [removal-request.txt](https://nixnet.services/removal-request.txt). It would be better if you didn't copy mine word for word and wrote your own 😉 For the email, you'll do the same thing but paste the signed message into your email client, whether that's Thunderbird, ProtonMail, Tutanota, etc. The text file only needs to contain the request for the (sub)domain removal. The email needs to contain the request for everything along with links to the text file, you Keybase account, and whatever you want removed.
Before sending it, you should also go back to your profile, click your key, and copy everything in the text box that starts with `-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----`. Paste that into another text file but save it with the `.asc` extension. For example, `key.asc`. Attach this to the email, send it to [info@archive.org](mailto:info@archive.org), wait a couple days, and you're done!

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---
title: "Forecasting with a command"
description: "Using a single command to get the week's weather forecast"
cover: /assets/pngs/weather.png
date: 2018-12-14T21:41:00-04:00
categories:
- Technology
tags:
- CLI
---
We all love the CLI *(and if we don't, we should)* so wouldn't it be great if there was a tool to see your weather forecast with a single command? Ceda EI at <a href="https://webionite.com" target="_blank">webionite.com</a> has written a tool that uses the Dark Sky API to give you the forecast for a day or week, at your location, and in Celsius or Fahrenheit.
## Celsius
+ Weather for one week - `$ curl sky.webionite.com/location`
+ Weather for today - `$ curl sky.webionite.com/location/t`
## Fahrenheit
+ Weather for one week - `$ curl sky.webionite.com/f/location`
+ Weather for today - `$ curl sky.webionite.com/f/location/t`
A great way to make this faster and simpler is to put an alias in your shell's `rc` file. For bash, you can do that with:
```
echo "alias weather='curl sky.webionite.com/f/location'" >> ~/.bashrc
```
If you ever forget how to use the tool, just run `curl sky.webionite.com` and you'll be given instructions.
![screenshot of the output of the command. it shows two rows of four boxes with ascii art depicting rain, overcast clouds, and the sun obscured by clouds. it shows the temperature and the time of day. everything is coloured and looks very attractive.](/assets/pngs/weather.png)

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---
title: "Site changes"
description: "Update about the RSS feed and plans for the website"
date: 2020-04-13T19:50:25-04:00
categories:
- Meta
tags:
- RSS
- Site update
cover: /assets/pngs/site.png
---
I just created a new category called [Meta](/categories/meta) and it'll be used for updates about this website and about me. The first thing is that I didn't realise until a few minutes ago that the RSS feeds only had summaries of my posts; that issue has been fixed and the full content is available in each one now. The second thing is some of my plans for this site. Until now, [NixNet](https://nixnet.services) has been my online "home". I'm in the process of making this my home instead. As NixNet grows, it needs to become less personal and more . . . "official" I guess. Sometime tomorrow, I plan to move all of the blog posts from there to here and make the `Blog` menu item lead to `secluded.site`. I'll also put redirect in place so links to the old posts will lead to their new home over here.
Another one of my plans is the make the `READ OTHER POSTS` section at the bottom a bit more intuitive. Right now, clicking on the right arrow opens the chronologically previous post and the left arrow opens the next one out of the *global* list. That's fine for now but it will be an annoyance when some of my [D&D campaigns](/categories/dungeons-dragons) get longer or when I do a series of posts on some topic. It might end up being next week or something but I'm going to set up some better logic for determining what's "next" and what's "previous" as well as better visual indicators of which is which.
I don't have *any* idea how I would set it up but it would also be nice to let readers pick combinations of feeds rather than having separate feeds for each one or a single feed for *everything*. The reason why I set up individual feeds is the same as why I'm wanting to give the option for combining them; I know the [Pipe Smoking](/categories/pipe-smoking/) category is something few people will want to read but it's a passion of mine and I plan to write about it anyway. The reading experience of the site as a whole shouldn't be lessened because of it though.

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---
title: Lossless screen recording
subtitle: Never waste resources with OBS again
description: Recording your screen (or monitors) with ffmpeg for a high-quality lossless video that uses very few system resources
date: 2018-08-12T17:15:20-04:00
cover: /assets/pngs/ffmpeg-lossless.png
categories:
- Technology
tags:
- FFmpeg
- CLI
- Minimalism
---
I've been trying off and on for the past few weeks to figure out how to record my 1920x1080 monitor. The recording is going to be some music videos for a friend. Originally, it was just going to be a single background image for the whole video then I had the idea of using [cava](https://github.com/karlstav/cava) in a transparent terminal on top of the background. This didn't work at all because it actually kept freezing when I tried to record it. So I tried switching to [ncmpcpp](http://ncmpcpp.rybczak.net/)'s visualiser. This still had horrible lag so I've been puzzling over how to use ffmpeg to *losslessly* record my second monitor. The reason OBS and similar screen recorders are so slow is because, most of the time, they encode to the end format while recording and that uses a lot of system resources. I finally figured it out and have pasted the command below.
```
ffmpeg -video_size 1920x1080 -framerate 30 -f x11grab -draw_mouse 0 -i :0.0+1366,0 -c:v libx264 -crf 0 -preset ultrafast output.mkv
```
Above is exactly what I used for my 1080p monitor with 768p laptop screen. I've modified the command so you can see what you need to edit for your use-case.
```
ffmpeg -video_size <target-resolution> -framerate 30 -f x11grab -i :0.0+<width-of-unused-monitor>,0 -c:v libx264 -crf 0 -preset ultrafast <filename>.mkv
```
If you do *not* want the cursor recorded, add `-draw_mouse 0` directly after `x11grab` like I did in the first command.
My video was 470mb for a ~13 minute video. If you're going to archive the recording or are concerned about file size, re-encode it with a slower preset. This will be a lot slower and take a lot of CPU but the resulting file is *significantly* smaller than the original and still lossless. I this as a general purpose screen recorder. Previously, I was using OBS and the lag in the video was incredible but with ffmpeg, it's smooth as butter. The command for re-encoding is below:
```
ffmpeg -i output.mkv -c:v libx264 -crf 0 -preset veryslow output-smaller.mkv
```
![](/assets/gifs/ffmpeg-lossless.gif)
# Note
This command only works with X, not Wayland. Skimming `ffmpeg`'s man page, I see that `video4linux2` is another option for capturing video so you may be able to replace `x11grab` with it for the same result. I have not tested this so I don't know if it'll work or not.

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---
title: "LWN Theming"
description: "Giving LWN a nice dark theme"
cover: /assets/pngs/code.png
date: 2020-06-19T16:41:16-04:00
toc: true
categories:
- Technology
tags:
- LWN
- News
- Theming
- 100 Days To Offload
---
After [a poll by @karan](https://fosstodon.org/@karan/104368387973787714), I started thinking about where I get my news and decided to subscribe to [LWN](https://lwn.net). Their content is really good, they've been running for a long time, and I want to support their work. However, I think the default theme is quite terrible. I spent about an hour last night messing with it and I think I improved it significantly; it's based on the theme of this site.
![The theme has a dark background, vibrant pink links, and light text](/assets/pngs/lwn-themed.png)
<center><p>Screenshot of my LWN theme</p></center>
After [subscribing](https://lwn.net/subscribe/), navigate to [your account page](https://lwn.net/MyAccount/) then click the link under `Customization`. The following tables are the options and values I've set for my theme but note that I have *not* changed the `Old (seen) comment background color` as I haven't had an opportunity to experience what that looks like yet. Once I do, I'll update my theme and this post accordingly.
## Display preferences
| Option | Value |
|----------------------------------------------|----------------|
| Page background colour | `#292a2d` |
| Left column background | `#292a2d` |
| Middle column background | `#292a2d` |
| Headline background | `#3b3d42` |
| Form/byline background | `#292a2d` |
| Sidebar background | `#292a2d` |
| Text colour | `#f5f4f7` |
| Link colour | `#fe5186` |
| Visited link colour | `#d0738f` |
| Quoted text (in email) colour | `#7ec699` |
| Old (seen) comment background colour | `#cccccc` |
| Navigation box on printable page | ✅ |
| Minimum width of main text column (em) | `40` |
| Maximum width of main text column (em) | `50` |
| Display old parent in unread comments screen | 🟩 (unchecked) |
## New page engine preferences
| Option | Value |
|---------------------------------------------|-----------|
| Use the new page engine | ✅ |
| Left column color | `#292a2d` |
| Maximum width for handset presentation (em) | `48` |
| Fixed navigation menu on small screens | ✅ |
| Font family to use| `🔘 sans-serif`
## Quoted text preferences
| Option | Value |
|------------------------|-------------|
| Quoted text style | `🔘 normal` |
| Quoted text weight | `🔘 bolder` |
| Quoted text colour | `#a9a9b3` |
| Quoted text background | `#292a2d` |
After applying the changes, this is what comments look like:
![The theme is basically the same as above with slightly lighter headers and a soft green for the quotes](/assets/pngs/lwn-comments.png)
<center><p>Screenshot of LWN comments</p></center>
## Conclusion
I'm already happy with my LWN subscription and plan to remain subscribed for a long time. The recent post about [*Tools to improve English text*](https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/822969/76cf4f582a5a1e15/) looks especially interesting and something I'm already looking into for [Arbor's documentation](https://man.sr.ht/~whereswaldon/arborchat/) (big blog post about the project coming soon™). If you have an extra \$3.50/mo, I really encourage you to subscribe to LWN. News is important and high-quality news especially so. Blinding though the default theme may be, LWN is, bar none, the best news site I've ever seen and I want to ensure they stick around.
---
This was day 12 of [#100DaysToOffload](https://100daystooffload.com/), an [awesome idea](https://fosstodon.org/@kev/104053977554016690) from [Kev Quirk](https://kevq.uk/). If you want to participate, just write something every day for 100 days and post a link on social media with the hashtag!

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---
title: "Moving My Old Blog"
description: "Moving my blog on nixnet.services to Secluded.Site"
cover: /assets/pngs/editor.png
date: 2020-09-23T18:09:15-04:00
categories:
- Meta
---
Just a heads up to those subscribed to this RSS feed: I'll be moving my posts on nixnet.services to secluded.site either today or tomorrow. I'm leaving their timestamps as they are so I don't know how they'll appear in your feed. I apologise for any mess they cause!
Hello world!

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---
title: "Part of my cellar"
description: "Quick tour of my pipes and accessories"
date: 2020-04-17T20:18:01-04:00
cover: /assets/jpgs/porch.jpg
categories:
- Pipe Smoking
tags:
- Nørding
- Churchwarden
- Cellar
- Pipes
- Missouri Meerschaum
- Mauro Armellini
---
Continuing with my journey into the world of pipe smoking, I thought I would show what my *cellar*[^1] looks like. It's not much—just some jars and a pipe stand on my dresser—but it's more than what I've seen some other people have[^2]. I'll talk about tobacco in another post; this one is just about what's on the left of the picture below. The paper is something I saw in a YouTube video and I thought it was a really cool idea; rather than pinching your tobacco out of the jar, sprinkling it into the bowl, and inevitably spilling some, simply dump it onto a sheet of paper. From there, you can pull apart any clumps that may have formed, fill the bowl, then fold the paper in half lengthwise and pour what's left back into to the jar.
![Picture of my dresser with some pipes, accessories, and tobacco. To the right, there are 12 big jars of tobacco along with a smaller one. On the left is my half-full pipe stand with three pipes in it, my lighter, a pipe tool, a wind cap, a smaller single stand to the right, and a sheet of paper in the front.](/assets/jpgs/dresser.jpg)
The small stand to the right of the big one is the [Single Pipe Stand from SmokingPipes](https://www.smokingpipes.com/accessories/pipe%20accessories/moreinfo.cfm?product_id=120415). I do like it but it's really only suitable for pipes with straight[^3] stems; with bent stems, the mouthpiece ends up resting on the table. I haven't tried it but I would recommend going with the [solid version](https://www.smokingpipes.com/accessories/pipe%20accessories/moreinfo.cfm?product_id=120414) if you're wanting a stand for a single pipe because it's more versatile. The larger one, below, is the [Woodmere 6 Pipe Stand](https://www.smokingpipes.com/accessories/pipe%20accessories/moreinfo.cfm?product_id=120414) from the same website. It has the same problem as the first but it's not as pronounced; pipes with bent stems need to be pushed forward in the divot in the base so they can lean back against the bar. Otherwise, the weight of the stem and shank[^4] will cause them to fall forward.
Pipes will be described further down so the next thing is the metal object that looks like a sink drain. It's a [wind cap from The Country Squire](https://www.thecountrysquireonline.com/product/wind-cap/) (which also has a great [podcast](https://www.podastery.com/podcast-country-squire-radio)). I've found it to be very handy at my university when it's windy. The next item is just a simple "Czech pipe tool" that can be purchased from pretty much any store that sells pipes, both brick-and-mortar and online retailers. The last thing is a Zippo *pipe* lighter. These are entirely different from normal Zippo lighters because they're meant to be held sideways over the bowl of a pipe. This design lets you put the flame directly to the tobacco rather than drawing it over the side of the bowl and scorching the rim. I ordered mine from Amazon a year or so ago but have since stopped using Amazon due to ethical and privacy concerns. I can't find the same product on [Zippo's website](https://www.zippo.com/collections/pipe-lighters) so here's a link to it from [Wal-mart](https://www.walmart.com/ip/Zippo-Red-Pipe-High-Polished-Brass-Windproof-Lighter-28322-NEW-L-K/628527710). I also dislike using Wal-mart but it's marginally better than Amazon.
![This picture is pretty much the same as the earlier one but without the tobacco and paper.](/assets/jpgs/pipes.jpg)
Now the fun part 😉 The first pipe I got was the [Missouri Pride from Missouri Meerschaum](https://corncobpipe.com/missouri-pride-corncob-pipe.html). An *excellent* starter pipe, I ended up giving it to my room mate after he showed an interest in the hobby. However, a close friend of mine had given me one of his old pipes and I fell in love with it. Unfortunately, I know absolutely *nothing* about it other than it was made by [Mauro Armellini](https://pipedia.org/wiki/Armellini), an Italian craftsman who died several years ago. I'm considering sending an email to the company and seeing if they can tell me anything about it. On one side of the shank is the name *Mauro Armellini*, the bottom has the number *705*, and the other side says *Verona* with the word *ARCOBALENO* below it. If anyone reading this knows something about the pipe, please [send me an email](mailto:amolith@secluded.site).
![A picture of my pipe from Mauro Armellini. It's sitting on my porch rail with the yard in the background; the grass is a light green and the leaves of the woods further on are darker. The pipe is a rich brown with a cream-coloured opalescent stem. There is a mother-of-pearl inlay on top of the stem.](/assets/jpgs/armellini.jpg)
The first "real" pipe I bought myself was a churchwarden[^5] from [Nørding Pipes](https://www.nordingpipes.com/). If you're curious about the company or the founder, Erik Nørding, listen to this episode of the [Country Squire Radio](https://countrysquireradio.fireside.fm/341). After I heard it, I decided to make one of their pipes my first purchase. What I ended up getting was a Partially Rusticated[^6] Churchwarden from [SmokingPipes](https://www.smokingpipes.com/pipes/new/Nording/moreinfo.cfm?product_id=363601). I've been using it for a month or so now and absolutely love it, especially when I'm sitting on the porch reading or going lunting[^7].
![This is also a picture of a pipe on my porch rail. It is significantly longer at about 10.5 inches or 265 millimetres. The stem has a gentle curve. The bowl is the same deep brown as the Armellini pipe but the finish is newer so it shines more. The rustication will be hard to describe. The rest of the pipe is brown but the rusticated part is black. The texture is rough but smooth—the edges that might have been jagged were sanded down. The bottom of the bowl is what's rusticated; the top is normal. When held upside down, it almost looks as if the rusticated part is dripping onto the normal part and the same for the stem.](/assets/jpgs/churchwarden-nording.jpg)
My latest acquisition is [The Emerald](https://corncobpipe.com/the-emerald-corn-cob-pipe) from [Missouri Meerschaum](https://corncobpipe.com). It is a corn cob pipe but not like the Missouri Pride; this model has very obviously been sanded smooth and sealed so that it *almost* feels like finished wood. The stem is a higher quality acrylic than their other models and much more pleasant to look at as well. This is the model they released for Saint Patrick's Day in 2019 but, due to popular demand, they started producing it again. I'm hoping to purchase this year's as well and start building a collection.
![This pipe is a light cream colour. The bowl looks like the cob of an ear of corn (that's what it is) with a short wooden tube sticking out of it. The bent stem is a deep marbled green.](/assets/jpgs/emerald.jpg)
This last picture is of me sitting on my porch with a book, my churchwarden, my lighter, and my pipe tool. It was a warm and peaceful afternoon and I had a strong urge to capture the moment because this is one of the *big* reasons I enjoy smoking a pipe. In the rigorous life of a university student, musician, and systems administrator, this is my rare chance to just slow down and simply be in the moment without worrying over anything else.
![In this picture, you can see the top edge of the book I'm reading, my crossed legs resting on the porch rail, my churchwarden to the left, and my light and pipe tool to the right. This is the same "warm" scene as described in the picture of Armellini's pipe; it's very peaceful](/assets/jpgs/porch.jpg)
[^1]: In this context, a cellar is simply a place to store pipes and pipe tobacco. When someone says they're going to *cellar* their tobacco, they mean they're going to prepare it for long-term storage.
[^2]: One was literally just a cardboard box with some jars inside and a few pipes laying on top. There's nothing wrong with that but I prefer to have a little more space.
[^3]: The stem is the part of the pipe where the mouthpiece is. In these pictures, it's opalescent for the first, marbled for the second, and solid black for the third.
[^4]: The shank is where the stem is inserted; it's in between that and the bowl and made from the same material as the bowl.
[^5]: *Churchwarden* refers to the length of the pipe. There are many theories about why it's named so but one I find interesting is that it's after real [churchwardens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churchwarden). They would have to stay up all night guarding the church and couldn't be expected to go that long without smoking. However, the smoke from a traditional pipe would often obscure their vision because it was so close to their face. The churchwarden was invented so the bowl was significantly further away and wouldn't get in their line of sight.
[^6]: Rustication is the process of adding texture to the bowl (or shank) of a pipe. Generally, this is done to hide imperfections in the briar so the pipe still looks good. Personally, I stay away from *fully* rusticated pipes not just because I don't like the aesthetics but because the wood is likely poor quality. This is certainly not *always* the case, however.
[^7]: Lunting is *the act of taking a leisurely stroll whilst smoking a tobacco pipe ([Lunting.org](https://www.lunting.org/)).* When I go hiking, I'll often take my pipe with me; it's a calm and contemplative time to simply think and enjoy a good tobacco.

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---
title: "Pausing 100 Days to Offload"
description: "Finals week is exhausting so I'm going to take a break and resume once it's finished"
date: 2020-05-04T21:57:27-04:00
cover: /assets/pngs/calendar.png
categories:
- Meta
tags:
- School
- 100 Days To Offload
---
I'm only 8 days into [100 Days To Offload](https://100daystooffload.com/) and I've already missed two. The biggest reason is that this is finals week and all my time right now is taken up by studying for exams. [As I said on the Fediverse](https://social.nixnet.services/@amolith/104103245015944134), I have been exhausted the past little while and I'm not getting nearly as much sleep as I really need. I've enjoyed it so far but I'm going to take a break until finals are over; I'll still be coming up with post ideas, however, I just won't actually write or publish them.

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---
title: "Peterson Irish Flake"
date: 2020-05-29T19:20:53-04:00
draft: true
---

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---
title: "Krozn'ik"
description: The first entry in our journey
date: 2020-02-09T01:03:03-05:00
cover: /assets/pngs/axe.png
categories:
- Dungeons & Dragons
---
Today was, quite honestly, average for this band. Before I get into what happened, however, I had better introduce myself. I am Krozn'ik, a half-orc. I know not where I was born save that the entirety of my village was slaughtered and I was raised by one of the knights party to the massacre. I was incredibly young at the time so he is the only father I have ever really known. We never had much but it was enough: a modest house near the centre of a small town, clothes without holes, enough food that we didn't starve, and so on. Though Father tried to teach me the ways of the sword, shield, and spear, it wasn't until I picked up a greataxe that he felt I had "found it". Within a couple short years, I was wielding the weapon as an extension of my body, able to make it sing as it sliced through the air, turned on a dime, and darted through the wooden poles we set up for practice.
Once I grew to be 17 or so, father started sending me to deal with minor issues in the neighbouring villages in his stead, fending off small groups of bandits, protecting towns from parties of goblins, things like that. Eventually, our lord sent me a few hundred kilometres West to care for another village. While there, a large band of orcs raided my father's city and slew him along with every one else. I left my people in the care of another knight and began a quest for vengeance. That is a story for another time, however.
This tale follows Angus, a dwarvish giant, a human ranger, Ryu, a barbarian called Tyler2, Valthos the Fighter, and, of course, me. It's an odd story, taking place in the caverns of Purgatorus, but one well worth reading. I didn't think to record our journey until the third encounter so I will do my best to recap it in the following entries. For now, this brief and inadequate introduction will have to suffice; we have just made camp and are resting for our journey back to Byron in the Cathedral of Thyatira.

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---
title: "(Temporary?) Death of the Campaign"
description: Unfortunately, we had to end the campaign before we got further than five sessions
date: 2020-04-03T09:13:20-04:00
cover: /assets/pngs/axe.png
---
With the emergence of COVID-19, our university shutting down, and everything going remote, this campaign has ended. Our DM and a few of the other guys don't like playing without face-to-face interaction. It's unfortunate but I do understand; half of our sessions consisted of us being complete dumbasses and dying laughing at something stupid one of us did. I did have half-finished notes that were going to be made into stories like [the first]({{< relref "pr-1.md" >}}) but I don't remember enough of what else happened to complete them.
We might pick things up in the Fall once the university opens and we can move back in or we might just start a new one; it remains to be seen. Whatever happens, there will be a new post in [the category](/categories/dungeons-dragons/).

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---
title: "Reading Methods & RSVP"
date: 2020-02-13T21:57:28-05:00
description: Methods we unconsciously use when reading and ways to increase both speed and comprehension
cover: /assets/pngs/book.png
categories:
- Technology
tags:
- Productivity
- Reading
- TIL
---
## Reading methods
Today, I learned that there are three primary ways people read. The first and most common is *mental reading* and this is when you "say" the words in your head as if you were speaking them[^1]. I find this useful when writing because it's as if I'm *actually* speaking them; picking out sentences and phrases that don't sound quite right is easier. In writing courses, the instructor's advice is often to read your work aloud and see how it sounds as mistakes, word choices, and grammatical errors are typically much more prominent. Personally, I find doing it in my head sufficient though. Mental reading is the slowest method but also where your comprehension is at its peak; you are forced to slow down and that gives your brain more time to process the information it's being fed. The average speed is 250 WPM[^2].
The second method is called *auditory reading* and it's just listening to words spoken by a person or a TTS[^3] engine. Because listening is generally more passive, it's much easier to completely miss individual words while still understanding the meaning of the phrase or passage. This is significantly faster than mental reading at an average of around 450 WPM. However, comprehension takes a hit because you have less time to process the information.
*Visual reading* is the last and fastest. The concept may be kind of hard to grasp at first but the next paragraph about Stutter will hopefully make it clearer. Visual reading is understanding the meaning of the word without having to hear it or say it in your head, recognising it based on its shape and the letters it's comprised of. Comprehension is at its lowest here but speed peaks. The *average* reader who uses this method can consume 700 words per minute. To put that in perspective, it's 2.8x faster than mental reading. While comprehension is low, it is not nonexistent. The best way to understand what I mean is to try it for yourself.
**Note:** [Some sources](https://steemit.com/content/@jacor/speed-reading-a-wonderful-skill-to-obtain) say that, with practise and when done correctly, there is no difference in comprehension, rather the opposite; you retain information *significantly* better when speed reading properly. This is where I would recommend actually doing it and deciding for yourself.
## Stutter
[Stutter](https://github.com/jamestomasino/stutter) is a Firefox and Chrome extension that brings RSVP[^4] to your browser and lets you develop visual reading skills. It specifically makes use of *peripheral reading* and displays a single word at time but moves through them at rapid pace. It highlights a single character of the current word just to the left of the centre. This is because a word can usually be recognised by its first few characters; the rest aren't as important. The highlight remains in a fixed position so you never have to move your eyes. Because of that, Stutter is able to display new words much more quickly; the average reader can usually comfortably start at 500 WPM but it is possible to reach speeds of over 1200 WPM with regular practise. I haven't gotten that far yet 😉
For more information on speed reading, the [Wikipedia page](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_reading) (where I got most of my information) is really interesting and well-worth a read.
## Edits
* [@caltlgin](https://masto.nixnet.xyz/@caltlgin) recommended [flrdr](https://octobanana.com/software/fltrdr), a TUI tool for reading with RSVP
[^1]: The technical term is *[subvocalisation](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvocalization)*
[^2]: Words per minute
[^3]: [Text-to-speech](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_synthesis)
[^4]: *[Rapid serial visual presentation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_serial_visual_presentation)*

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---
title: Removing your site from the Wayback Machine (GPG)
subtitle: A quick-ish and easy-ish guide
description: Quick-ish and easy-ish guide on removing and excluding your domain from Archive.org's Wayback Machine using GPG keys
cover: /assets/pngs/archive.png
date: 2019-06-04T21:57:00-04:00
categories:
- Technology
tags:
- Archive.org
- Privacy
- Sysadmin
toc: true
---
## Preface
If you simply want to remove your website and nothing else, read through the setup and verifying identities sections then continue from the [For domains you own](/removing-your-site-from-the-wayback-machine-keybase/#for-domains-you-own) section of the previous post. If you're wanting to address accounts/profiles on websites you don't own, read on.
In addition to dealing with the Wayback Machine, this article is also supposed to help you get started using GPG in every-day life for general security and privacy.
## Getting set up
### Installation & Generating Keys
First of all, you'll want to install GPG. The package on most distributions should be just be `gnupg`.
- Debian: `sudo apt install gnupg`
- Arch: `sudo pacman -S gnupg`
- Fedora: `sudo dnf install gnupg`
The next step is generating your key. While it will take a bit longer to generate, a stronger key will be more secure. Also make sure you read this excerpt from the `man` page as it contains a useful warning.
>**WARNINGS**
>
>Use a *good* password for your user account and a *good* passphrase to protect your secret key. This passphrase is the weakest part of the whole system. Programs to do dictionary attacks on your secret keyring are very easy to write and so you should protect your "~/.gnupg/" directory very well.
With that said, use `gpg --full-gen-key` to get started. Keep in mind that you don't actually have to use your real name or personal email address. If you *want* a personal key, go ahead and create one but you can also use a pseudonym and fake address if you'd like.
1. I would use the default (1) of "RSA and RSA".
2. Again, you can use default but I would recommend 4096 bits because it's much more secure. This does mean, however, that it will take longer to generate the key.
3. An expiry date is recommended but you don't necessarily have to set one.
4. You *don't* have to use your real name. You can use a pseudonym if you wish.
5. You *don't* have to use your personal email. You can use a pseudonymous one if you wish.
6. You don't need a comment
7. Confirm
8. Come up with a ***secure*** password or, even better, a pass*phrase*.
9. Move your mouse around a bit, type, something like that while it's generating the key.
### Email
I use [Thunderbird](https://www.thunderbird.net/) for email and there is a great addon for it called [Enigmail](https://enigmail.net/). It's quite easy to set up and use but there is a really annoying bug that you'll experience when replying in threaded mode. If you want to encrypt a reply, simply open the editor in a new window.
## Verifying Identities
In general, all you'll have to do is type something along the lines of:
> I am \<your-name-here\> and I own the following accounts:
> - Account 1 - \<link\>
> - Account 2 - \<link\>
> - Etc.
You'll save that in a text file, run `gpg --clearsign file.txt`, copy the output, then paste it wherever it needs to go, whether that's a blog, a GitHub gist, etc. With Twitter/Mastodon and their character limit, this won't quite work. The best solution there is probably to post a link to a gpg-signed message on your website that links back to the post.
Really, all you have to do is tie all of your accounts together in as close-knit a web as you can and sign with your GPG key wherever possible. Linking everything to everything else would definitely work but it should also be enough to link everything to a single document on your website (or a gist in GitHub etc.) that links back to all of those.
I'm probably not explaining very well so here's a diagram showing it.
![a diagram illustrating the text below](/assets/pngs/archive-diagram.png)
Note that the email links to everything else but nothing links back to the email. It's the main document that's at the centre of it all. Make sure both it and the email are signed. If you toot, link to the toot in the main document. If you make a gist, link to the gist in the main document.
## Sending the email
Once you have all the groundwork laid out, you'll be ready to send the email; the address is [info@archive.org](mailto:info@archive.org). Explain what you would like done and link to the document requesting your domain exclusion first as that's the easiest to verify. In the next paragraph, I would explain a little bit about what you've set up with signing messages and creating the "Web of Verification" (lol). Under that, I would link to the posts asking for the accounts to be removed. Make sure those posts also link back to the main document. Be polite, say thank you, then send the email!

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---
title: "Replacing YouTube & Invidious"
description: "Simple script I created to download YouTube videos"
cover: /assets/pngs/download-video.png
date: 2020-08-03T05:43:37-04:00
toc: true
categories:
- Technology
tags:
- YouTube
- Invidious
- youtube-dl
- Media
- Automation
---
Omar Roth, the developer of Invidious, recently wrote a blog post about
*[Stepping away from open source](https://omar.yt/posts/stepping-away-from-open-source)*.
While I never used the official instance, I thought this was a good
opportunity to create a tool that downloads videos from YouTubers I'm
subscribed to so I can watch them offline in whatever manner I prefer.
To that end, [youtube-dl](https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl) is by
far the most reliable and versatile option. Having been around since
before 2008[^1], I don't think the project is going anywhere.
[MPV](https://mpv.io/) is my media player of choice and it relies on
youtube-dl for watching online content from Twitch to YouTube to
PornHub to [much more](https://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/supportedsites.html).
Conveniently, youtube-dl comes with all of the tools and flags needed
for exactly this purpose so scripting and automating it is incredibly
easy. Taking a look at `man youtube-dl` reveals a *plethora* of options
but only a few are necessary.
## Preventing duplicates
The main thing when downloading an entire channel is ensuring the same
video isn't downloaded more than once. `--download-archive` will save the
IDs of all the videos downloaded to prevent them from being downloaded
again. All that's required is a file path at which to store the list.
```bash
--download-archive .archives/<channel>.txt
```
## Selecting quality
By default, youtube-dl downloads the *single* file with the best quality
audio and video so it doesn't need to mux[^2] them together after.
However, I prefer to have the highest possibly quality and don't mind
waiting a few seconds longer for FFmpeg to combine audio and video
files. `--format` lets the user decide which format they prefer and
whether they want to focus on storage efficiency or quality. The basic
options are `best`, `worst`, `bestvideo`, and `bestaudio`. These will
download a *single* file that is the highest or lowest quality of both
video/audio or video-only/audio-only. There are a lot of other options
for more fine-grained control over what to look for but, as I mentioned,
I want the highest video and the highest quality audio so I use
`bestvideo+bestaudio`. After downloading both of those files, they will
be muxed together.
```bash
--format bestvideo+bestaudio
```
## Embedding subtitles
I enjoy subtitles but I know many people don't so this section can
certainly be ignored.
There are a few options for fetching and embedding subtitles. To get
"real" subtitles that someone transcribed manually, use `--write-sub`.
For YouTube's auto-generated subtitles that may or may not be horribly
inaccurate, use `--write-auto-sub`. For selecting the language,
`--sub-lang <language-code>`, for embedding them, `--embed-subs`, and
for selecting the format, `--sub-format <desired-format>`. I like using
SRT files so I have that first with `best` beside it like so:
`--sub-format srt/best`. SRT is preferred but, if unavailable, whatever
other highest-quality format will be used and embedded instead.
```bash
--write-sub --write-auto-sub --sub-format srt/best --sub-lang en --embed-subs
```
## Limiting downloads
When switching to this method, the initial download will pull
*all* of a channel's videos. I certainly don't want this so they should
be limited in some way. `--dateafter` and `--playlist-end` serve very
nicely. The former will only download videos published *after* a certain
date and the latter will only download X number of videos.
```bash
--dateafter 20200801 --playlist-end 5
```
**EDIT:** A reader sent me an email with this improvement to the archive
functionality. Rather than checking the last five days of videos to see if
they've already been downloaded, this snippet will check when the archive file
was last edited and use that as the `--dateafter` parameter, making the script a
bit more efficient.
``` bash
AFTER=$(date -r .archives/"$1".txt +%Y%m%d 2>/dev/null || date +%Y%m%d)
--dateafter $AFTER --playlist-end 5
```
## Naming format
The final parameter to look at is how to name the files once they're
downloaded. `--output` provides templating functionality and there are a
*lot* of options. For this use, an acceptable template might be
something like `Channel/Title.ext`. In youtube-dl's templating format,
that's `"%(uploader)s/%(title)s.%(ext)s"`.
```bash
--output "%(uploader)s/%(title)s.%(ext)s"
```
## Getting notifications
I don't yet have a good method for getting notifications when there are
*new* videos but there is a simple way to get notified when the script
is finished running. `notify-send` is one of the easiest and has pretty
simple syntax as well: the first string is the notification summary and
the second is a longer description. You can optionally pass an icon
name to make it look a little better.
```bash
notify-send -i video-x-generic "Downloads finished" "Check the YouTube folder for new videos"
```
For some reason, I don't get icons when the generic name is specified
but I know the command will work on most systems. On mine, I have to
pass the path to the icon file I want: `-i /usr/share/icons/Suru++-Dark/apps/64/video.svg`
## Writing the script
I want to store the videos in `~/Videos/YouTube` and I want the archive
records stored in `.archives` so the first line (after the shebang[^3])
creates those directories if they don't already exist and the second
enters the `YouTube` folder.
```bash
mkdir -p "$HOME/Videos/YouTube/.archives"
cd "$HOME/Videos/YouTube"
```
From here, a way to reuse the youtube-dl command is necessary so
parameters can be changed in one place and they'll apply to all
channels. Functions are intended for exactly this purpose and are
formatted like so:
```bash
functionName () {
# Code here
}
```
I've named the function `dl` so mine looks like this:
```bash
dl () {
AFTER=$(date -r .archives/"$1".txt +%Y%m%d 2>/dev/null || \
date +%Y%m%d)
youtube-dl --download-archive .archives/"$1".txt -f \
bestvideo+bestaudio --dateafter 20200801 --write-sub \
--write-auto-sub --sub-format srt/best --sub-lang en \
--embed-subs -o "%(uploader)s/%(title)s.%(ext)s" \
--playlist-end 5 "$2"
sleep 5
}
```
Because it's in a function that's called repeatedly, the `AFTER` variable will
be reevaluated each time using a different archive file to ensure no videos are
missed. The backslashes at the end (`\`) tell bash that it's a single command
spanning multiple lines. At the bottom, `sleep` just waits 5 seconds before
downloading the next channel. It's unlikely that YouTube will ratelimit a
residential address for this but it is still possible. Waiting a bit before
continuing reduces the likelihood further.
Note the use of `"$1"` and `"$2"` in the archive path and at the very
end of the youtube-dl command. This lets the user define what the archive file
should be named and what channel to download videos from. A line using
the function would be something like:
```bash
dl linustechtips https://www.youtube.com/user/LinusTechTips
```
The result would be this directory structure:
```
YouTube
├── .archives
│   └── linustechtips.txt
└── Linus Tech Tips
└── They still make MP3 players.mkv
```
The last line is the notification command:
```bash
notify-send -i video-x-generic "Downloads finished" "Check the YouTube folder for new videos"
```
## Finished script
This the script I have in use right now.
```bash
#!/bin/bash
mkdir -p "$HOME/Videos/YouTube/.archives"
cd "$HOME/Videos/YouTube"
dl () {
AFTER=$(date -r .archives/"$1".txt +%Y%m%d 2>/dev/null || \
date +%Y%m%d)
youtube-dl --download-archive .archives/"$1".txt -f \
bestvideo+bestaudio --dateafter $AFTER --write-sub \
--write-auto-sub --sub-format srt/best --sub-lang en \
--embed-subs -o "%(uploader)s/%(title)s.%(ext)s" \
--playlist-end 5 "$2"
sleep 5
}
dl ding https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClq42foiSgl7sSpLupnugGA
dl meute https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCY3cAFsquIk7VGMuk-V8S3g
dl vsauce https://www.youtube.com/user/Vsauce
dl ardour https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqeg5vkTkH-DYxmOO9FJOHA
dl pewdiepie https://www.youtube.com/user/PewDiePie
dl techaltar https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtZO3K2p8mqFwiKWb9k7fXA
dl avikaplan https://www.youtube.com/user/AviKaplanMusic
dl lukesmith https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2eYFnH61tmytImy1mTYvhA
dl techlinked https://www.youtube.com/c/techlinked/
dl robscallon https://www.youtube.com/user/robs70986987
dl setheverman https://www.youtube.com/user/SethEverman
dl logosbynick https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEQXp_fcqwPcqrzNtWJ1w9w
dl techquickie https://www.youtube.com/user/Techquickie
dl yanntiersen https://www.youtube.com/user/YannTiersenOfficial
dl andrewhuang https://www.youtube.com/user/songstowearpantsto
dl aurahandpan https://www.youtube.com/user/Jantzulu
dl jamesveitch https://www.youtube.com/user/james948
dl brandonacker https://www.youtube.com/user/brandonacker
dl unboxtherapy https://www.youtube.com/user/unboxtherapy
dl linustechtips https://www.youtube.com/user/LinusTechTips
dl michaelreeves https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtHaxi4GTYDpJgMSGy7AeSw
dl countrysquire https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdrw_DN_OmFIic0gTZJDVCQ
dl roomieofficial https://www.youtube.com/user/RoomieOfficial
dl fridaycheckout https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRG_N2uO405WO4P3Ruef9NA
dl lastweektonight https://www.youtube.com/user/LastWeekTonight
dl bingingwithbabish https://www.youtube.com/user/bgfilms
notify-send --icon /usr/share/icons/Suru++-Dark/apps/64/video.svg "Downloads finished" "Check the YouTube folder for new videos"
```
## Automation
This is a very simple process.
1. Store your script wherever you want but take note of the directory.
2. Run `crontab -e`
* If you don't already have a cron utility installed, try `cronie`.
It should be in most repos.
4. Paste and edit: `0 */6 * * * /home/user/path/to/script.sh`
5. Save
6. Exit
7. ???
8. Profit
The pasted line runs the script every 6th hour of every day, every week,
every month, and every year. To change the frequency just run `crontab
-e`, edit the line, and save. [Crontab Generator](https://crontab-generator.org/)
or [Crontab Guru](https://crontab.guru/) might be useful if the syntax
is confusing.
Have fun!
## Edits
1. Synchronised `--dateafter` parameter with last modified timestamp of the
archive file — thank you Dominic!
[^1]: The [first commit](https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/commit/4fa74b5252a23c2890ddee52b8ee5811b5bb2987) for the current youtube-dl repository was made on
21 July 2008 and it references "the new youtube-dl", which suggests
versions prior.
[^2]: In the digital media world, muxing is process of combining two or
more files into one. This might be a video track, multiple audio tracks,
and/or subtitle tracks.
[^3]: A *shebang* is a sequence of characters that tell your program
loader what interpreter to use. `#!/bin/bash` is what you would use if
it's a bash script. To use a Python interpreter, `#!/usr/bin/env python`
will use the program search path to find the appropriate executable.

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---
title: Running an IRC server
description: Easy guide on setting up a modern IRC server
cover: /assets/pngs/irc.png
date: 2020-12-05T16:55:00-04:00
toc: true
categories:
- Technology
tags:
- IRC
- Chat
- Oragono
- Sysadmin
---
Many people will disagree but I think IRC is still one of the best chat
platforms there is for a [number of
reasons](https://drewdevault.com/2019/07/01/Absence-of-features-in-IRC.html).
However, the documentation surrounding it is sometimes lacking, commands
are esoteric and can differ from server to server, some networks have
stupid requirements/defaults, etc. But who says you have to join them?
IRC is very easy to set up, use, and maintain and this post should be a
decent guide on doing just that.
## Picking an IRCd
First, `ircd` is short for *IRC daemon*; it's just a server running in
the background. Second, there are a *ton* of choices, from
[charybdis](https://github.com/charybdis-ircd/charybdis) and
[ngIRCd](https://github.com/ngircd/ngircd/) to
[UnrealIRCd](https://www.unrealircd.org/),
[InspIRCd](https://www.inspircd.org/), and many others. The ircd this
guide will focus on is [Oragono](https://oragono.io/) because it's one
of the simpler options yet has support for [IRCv3](https://ircv3.net/)
and comes with [services](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRC_services)
out of the box.
## Setup
While we could run Oragono as root or under whatever account you use,
that's a stupid idea. We're going to create an `oragono` user to make
sure things are properly separated.
``` bash
adduser --disabled-login oragono
```
Press the enter key a bunch of times and you're good. After that, run
`sudo su - oragono` to log into that user account then head to the
[GitHub releases
page](https://github.com/oragono/oragono/releases/latest) and download
the latest gzipped tarball[^1] for your architecture. Decompress it with
`tar xvf oragono-*.tar.gz`. I *don't* recommend renaming the folder to
something else; having the version name right there will make it easy to
figure out when you need to upgrade in the future.
Copy the default config to the production config with `cp default.yaml
ircd.yaml`, open it in your favourite TUI editor, and start exploring
the options! The file is commented very well but I'll list a few
specific options and values I recommend.
## Configuration
* Obtain a TLS cert from [Let's Encrypt](https://letsencrypt.org/) and
use it if possible. If not, use Oragono's self-signed certificates.
Don't enable plaintext use.
* Consider setting [Tor](https://community.torproject.org/onion-services/) up
and allowing users to connect through it.
* If you're using a TLS cert from Let's Encrypt (like you should be),
set `sts.enabled` and `sts.preload` to `true`.
* Unless you specifically want [IRC
cloaks](https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC/Cloaks) to indicate
position, status, or affiliation, set `lookup-hostnames: true` and
`forward-confirm-hostnames: false`.
* Always make a cool MoTD. It's essential for any IRC server[^2]. I
recommend using something like
[TAAG](https://www.patorjk.com/software/taag/) to come up with it.
* You *may* want to enable email authentication but it's a pain to set
up properly. I haven't bothered.
* I recommend setting `channels.default-modes` to `+nts`. The `+s` flag
just indicates that it's a secret channel and won't show up in the
global list when someone runs `/list`. After creating a channel, if
you want it publicly listed, just run `/mode -s`.
* You *may* want to uncomment `opers.admin.modes` but it can get very
spammy when there are a lot of people on your server.
* If you plan to leave `history.enabled: true` and store channel message
history server-side, I highly recommend setting
`datastore.mysql.enabled` to `true` and going through that
configuration.
* Roleplay can be fun so it's a good idea to look through that section.
* If you enabled `datastore.mysql`, also enable `history.persistent`
* For privacy reasons, I *highly* recommend setting
`history.persistent.registered-channels` to `"opt-out"`. Message
history will not be stored by default but the channel owner can decide
to enable it if they wish. Same goes for
`history.persistent.direct-messages`.
* I recommend enabling both of the options under `history.retention`.
## Running the server
If you're using self-signed certs, run `./oragono mkcerts` and make sure
the paths are correct in your `ircd.yaml`. Assuming your config is
valid, you should be able to run `./oragono run` and connect to it. If
you can't, make sure port 6697 is open, your credentials are correct,
and nothing is wrong in the config.
You can always run Oragono in [tmux](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tmux)
or something but it would be much better to do it with
[systemd](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemd),
[OpenRC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenRC),
[runit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runit), etc. I personally use
systemd and this service file should go in
`/etc/systemd/system/oragono.service` or something similar.
{{< highlight ini "lineAnchors=service" >}}
[Unit]
Description=oragono
After=network.target
Wants=mysql.service
After=network.target mysql.service
[Service]
Type=simple
User=oragono
WorkingDirectory=/home/oragono/oragono
ExecStart=/home/oragono/oragono/oragono run --conf /home/oragono/oragono/ircd.yaml
ExecReload=/bin/kill -HUP $MAINPID
Restart=on-failure
LimitNOFILE=1048576
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
{{< / highlight >}}
Run the following commands to ensure Oragono starts when your server boots.
``` bash
systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl enable --now oragono
```
## Commands
As I said in the first section, IRC has a lot of commands and they can
be confusing to work with. I still don't know everything I should. That
said, here are a (very) few of the essentials:
| Command | Example | Operation |
|----------|------------------|--------------------------------------------|
| `/quote` | `/quote helpop` | Send argument as a command to the server |
| `/join` | `/join #channel` | Join a channel |
| `/leave` | `/leave` | Leave a channel |
| `/me` | `/me yawns` | Result will look like `* Amolith yawns` |
| `/query` | `/query amolith` | Open a direct message buffer with amolith |
| `/mode` | `/mode -s` | Add/remove flags from a channel[^3] |
| `/op` | `/op amolith` | Make amolith a channel operator |
| `/voice` | `/voice amolith` | Let amolith speak when channel set to `+M` |
The one command *every* Oragono oper[^4] should know is `/quote helpop
index`. It will list all the available commands so you can read through
them and discover what each does.
You've reached the end of the post. You are now disallowed from telling
anyone that IRC is too complicated. If you want to test a server you're
setting up, feel free to use my instance of [The
Lounge](https://thelounge.chat/); it's at
[irc.nixnet.services](https://irc.nixnet.services/) and any IRCd details
can be entered but mine are default. Speaking of my IRC server, you
should [join #secluded](ircs://irc.nixnet.services:6697/secluded) and
mention this post :D
[^1]: A *gzipped tarball* is just a compressed archive like a zip file
[^2]: You should definitely [join
mine](https://docs.nixnet.services/IRC) and look at our awesome MoTD
[^3]: See `/quote help cmodes` for all the flag options
[^4]: Short for [IRC operator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRC_operator)

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---
title: "New fonts & site changes"
description: "New fonts, more interesting typography, "
cover: /assets/pngs/editor.png
date: 2020-07-19T01:43:11-04:00
categories:
- Meta
tags:
- Fonts
- Typography
---
I just got a couple of new (and rather expensive) fonts. So far, I'm incredibly happy with them and think it was money well-spent for a few reasons. Created by [Matthew Butterick](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Butterick), [Valkyrie](https://mbtype.com/fonts/valkyrie/) and [Concourse](https://mbtype.com/fonts/concourse/) are simply beautiful. I don't know which I like more but they both have their places on this website and will find their way onto others in the future. Because Concourse is a [sans-serif](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sans-serif), it will be the default used all across Secluded.Site. Valkyrie is a [serif font](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serif) and, though the type seems to be losing its place on the web, I think it adds a lot when reading content that's focused on a narrative rather than simply being informative. Because of that, it will be used for my posts about [pipe smoking](/categories/pipe-smoking/) and [Dungeons & Dragons](/categories/dungeons-dragons/). I might come up with other categories where Valkyrie fits as well but it will likely remain limited to those two.
In addition to simply changing the fonts, I've also modified some styles on the site. Headers (such as the title of this post) are now in proper small caps[^1] and I did some work to improve font size relative to the content width. Previously, the text was smaller than I would have liked which meant longer lines; there are some studies[^2] indicating that lines with a lower character count, while decreasing reading speed[^3], are generally more comfortable and hold the reader's attention more effectively. The width hasn't changed but the size has increased and thus decreased the number of characters per line.
One of the reasons I decided to buy the fonts was simply that I love the way they look and they have a lot of [features](https://mbtype.com/fonts/concourse/features.html) I wanted. In addition to that, however, I also wanted to support Matthew. His book, *[Practical Typography](https://practicaltypography.com/)* is an amazing resource for anyone that does anything with text. He has put a massive amount of work into it and simply [asks readers to pay](https://practicaltypography.com/why-you-should-pay.html). There is no pay*wall* and no ads either; it's completely supported by readers. There are a few [ways to contribute](https://practicaltypography.com/how-to-pay-for-this-book.html) and one of them is buying his fonts. Interestingly enough, if you read his [first](https://practicaltypography.com/economics-year-one.html), [second](https://practicaltypography.com/effluents-influence-affluence.html), and [third](https://practicaltypography.com/to-pay-or-not-to-pay.html) year summaries, more people bought his fonts for a higher price than simply paid him directly:
> What’s most interesting to me, however, is that so many more readers were willing to buy a font license (at $59–299) than to make a direct payment (at $5–10). Don’t get me wrong—I’m utterly grateful. But it’s counterintuitive: I never expected that the cheaper option would be so much less popular. Economists, I invite your explanations.
>
> — *[The Economics of a Web-based Book: Year One](https://practicaltypography.com/economics-year-one.html)*
I won't speculate as to why but it is thought-provoking. Regardless, his approach is very similar to that of any developer who creates open source software. They pour their time and energy into projects they might get no compensation for and rely on the community to fund their efforts. I have a *great* deal of respect for these people and try to support them whenever I'm able. $200 is a small price for two incredible fonts in addition to *Practical Typography*!
[^1]: Small caps are a font style where the letters that would otherwise be lower case are a shorter version of the upper case form. Many people simulate small caps by reducing the font size of regular capital letters to that of lower case characters but the results are too tall and their vertical lines too thin; they've only been scaled down. *Proper* small caps are an additional set of letters added to a font file as [OpenType features](https://practicaltypography.com/opentype-features.html). For a comparison, see the related page on *[Practical Typography](https://practicaltypography.com/small-caps.html)*.
[^2]: I took mental note when reading an article about it but have since forgotten what it was and can't find it again. There are, however, various other sources, such as *[The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web](http://webtypography.net/2.1.2)* and *[Readability: the Optimal Line Length](https://baymard.com/blog/line-length-readability)*.
[^3]: A [rather short study](https://web.archive.org/web/20170918212943/http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/72/LineLength.asp) from Wichita State University found that increased line length resulted in greater reading efficiency. However, there were no significant effects on comprehension and the preference for longer or shorter lines was fairly evenly distributed.

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---
title: "The Guilded Mouse"
description: "Our adventurers launch right into the campaign after meeting with two prospective employers at The Guilded Mouse."
date: 2020-04-07T12:53:05-04:00
cover: /assets/pngs/axe.png
---
A few days ago, [@klaatu](https://mastodon.xyz/@klaatu) asked [if anyone was up for a game of D&D 5e](https://mastodon.xyz/@klaatu/103907619917870037). I didn't notice it until I saw [@ShellOwl](https://social.nixnet.services/@shellowl)'s reply in my local timeline and simply had to join in; my last D&D campaign has been [put on hold](/temporary-death-of-the-campaign/) for the foreseeable future but of course I still want to play. We met up last Thursday, had our first session, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself; I'm looking forward to the next few weeks!
---
My companions and I have been adventuring together for some time but, until now, I never thought to record our journeys. As I had the strange feeling I should do so now, on our way to the Guilded Mouse, I picked up a spare book and additional ink. Today has been largely uneventful, however I'll document it regardless.
A few days ago, we were invited to meet with a man named Sarus at a tavern known as *The Guilded Mouse*. Upon arriving in the city, we found that it was a small hole-in-the-wall place and didn't look like much at all. Its slight appearance gave the impression of being wedged between the two much larger buildings on either side. I led the way with Doctor Reed following a few paces behind and Iliris trailing further back, not wanting to be seen as our companion quite yet.
On entering the tavern, we found two men that could have been Sarus; one with a silver cloak on the left and one clad in grey on the right. The fellow in silver looked rather out of place and uncomfortable, as if he had never hired mercenaries before. However, his garb implied a great deal of wealth and I was rather intrigued. Doctor Reed and I crossed the tavern to speak with the man as Iliris leaned against the bar and ordered a mug of ale. A roguish character, I assumed he had some plan to eavesdrop on our conversation and join in when he felt the time was right.
We walked up to the man and, peering at us amiably, he asked if there was anything he could do for us. I replied asking him if he went by the name of Sarus. He said he did not but he was looking for a band of adventurers who might help with a problem his organisation was facing. Based on his garb, I assumed he could pay well so I was certainly interested, however we had already arranged to meet with someone else. I explained this and offered to return and hear him out once we concluded our other business and he, with a very relieved expression, accepted. I turned to Doctor Reed, gave a questioning look, and received a nod in confirmation.
I crossed to the man with the grey cloak and asked if *he* went by the name Sarus. He replied with a question of his own and asked if we were the adventurers he was waiting for and, sitting down, I said yes. From this vantage point, I was able to get a closer look at the man; from head to toe, his garb was quite the opposite of the man in silver, favouring function over form. He wore sturdy, leather boots instead of cloth shoes, breeches with bulging pockets, a nondescript vest, and that thick, grey cloak. He introduced himself as Something Sarus—I've forgotten his forename—and said he was a tenured professor of History at the University of Subtleties. He went on to explain that, in his research, he had discovered what might be a very notable temple not far away, approximately two days journey, and he would like to hire some adventurers to retrieve some artefacts. Specifically, he wanted items of importance to the civilisation he was studying, the Jaundools.
Pausing for a moment, Sarus fumbled around in his pack and retrieved what appeared to be a very intricate and complex magnifying glass. He held it up and said that it would detect the kind of artefacts he wanted us to collect. Being rather scholarly, I was curious how it worked on a more fundamental level. Hesitating as if gauging my intelligence and whether or not I would actually understand him, he said that it was a device of his own creation and tuned to a very specific god. He never had the chance to actually test it in the field so he requested that we monitor it carefully and apprise him of its behaviour when we returned. Satisfied that I could be trusted with it, Sarus handed the device to me and said to turn the knob on the handle left or right to adjust it; it was rather finicky and I would have to play with it. When looking at something related to the Jaundools, the band should emit a faint green glow. As Sarus sat back, indicating he had nothing further to say, Doctor Reed leaned forward and asked a few questions of his own.
The first thing on his mind was whether or not the temple was inhabited; he wanted to know if we would be stealing from anyone. Sarus said that, as far as he knew, the temple was completely abandoned and had been for centuries. He expected that the only creatures we would encounter would be on the road there. He would go himself but the way was too dangerous and he had students to instruct. The university had graciously offered to finance the expedition and he would be able to pay us 200 gold pieces each. This was a meagre sum and, seeing both of us hesitate, Sarus quickly added that we would be able to keep *any* artefacts we found that were *not* related to the Jaundools.
At this point, Iliris came over from the bar, pulled up a chair, sat down, and got right to business. He asked what *exactly* we could expect at the temple and on the way there: would there just be a few small creatures easily taken care of, was there something larger awaiting us, what? A little taken aback at this blunt intruder, Sarus said that, based on the research he had conducted, the temple was *completely* empty. It had been lost for centuries and no one but he and the university knew it existed. Iliris peered suspiciously at the man and said, considering that he didn't actually know for *sure* what was awaiting them at the temple, they should really be paid 250 gold pieces each. Uncertainty about the dangers would increase the price. Sarus quickly agreed and said that the university had a small amount set aside and he would be able to draw from it to pay us; 250 each would be fine.
Iliris then asked if there was a minimum number of artefacts we should bring back and Sarus said there was no *hard* minimum but he would be extremely disappointed if we returned with fewer than six small items or something of equivalent value: one large statue, a few medium-size pieces, something like that. He also said that there was no urgency in completing the expedition. He wanted us to take our time and examine everything thoroughly so we could make the most of the journey. Satisfied, Iliris rose and stepped back to the bar to finish his drink. With a covert gesture to Doctor Reed, he indicated that we had yet to decide on a meeting place once the job was completed. The Doctor asked and Sarus suggested simply seeking his office at the university.
After draining his glass, Iliris walked to the wealthy man we first met with. I was not within earshot but, from what I could see, it looked as if he took on the same attitude as with Sarus; incredibly blunt and business-like. Doctor Reed and I were content to stay where we were so we both got a drink and I ordered some food. After a short period of time, Iliris got up and simply left without so much as a nod us. We finished our food and strode outside after him. Summing up the conversation, Iliris said that the man would pay each of us 300 gold pieces if we would investigate a manor in a neighbouring town. The locals say it's haunted by its previous owner but the city council he represents believes it to be nothing more than superstition. Regardless, they still need to put on a show for the townspeople's benefit so he wants us to take a look and rid the place of any creatures or ghosts that may be there, however unlikely that may be.
Iliris took out a slip of paper he said the man gave him; it had a name and address on it where we could reach him once the job was complete. When I saw it, I felt a slight gust of cold air on the nape of my neck. I motioned for him to give it to me and, as soon as my fingers touched the rough scrap of paper, I got the odd feeling that whoever wrote the words was not from Baldur's Gate—indeed, was not even from the Forgotten Realms. My mind whirled with the implication as I passed it back to Iliris and commented on the impression. Unable to investigate further, we simply let it go for now.
After a few minutes of discussion, it was decided that we would venture to the house. We travelled cautiously and chose to rest for the night by a river. Rather unfortunately, some crocodiles happened to live there. I was nearest to the water and so was attacked first and promptly knocked unconscious. I woke a few seconds later as Doctor Reed cast *Healing Word* and revived me. Iliris had jumped from his position further away to a tree branch and then onto the beast attacking me. Rising, I drew my crossbow and fired a bolt at the one Doctor Reed was charging; it thudded into the crocodile's flesh and sank in. Nonetheless, when he met the animal, it snapped at him and he quickly went down, as well. Neither Iliris nor I had anything that could revive him so we focused first on slaying the beasts.
Just as I loosed another bolt at the crocodile chewing on Doctor Reed, I heard a groan and saw Iliris sink to the ground, slammed into unconsciousness by the beast he had been riding. Still determined to minimise the damage done to Doctor Reed, I took a third shot in his direction and that crocodile let out a sharp hiss just before it slunk off toward the river and died halfway there. As I made ready to cast *Misty Step*, Doctor Reed rose and—still reeling—tried to regain his bearings. A moment later, I appeared approximately 15 feet away from the remaining crocodile and quickly fired. The bolt sailed past and into the water. Fortunately, Doctor Reed had recovered enough to loose a bolt of his own and slay the creature.
We dragged the bodies away from the camp, returned, bandaged our wounds, ate a hearty dinner, and decided who would take first watch. Doctor Reed volunteered so I'm using a portion of this time to write. He should wake me in about an hour. In the morning, we'll be off to Saltmarsh.

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---
title: "The House of San Balay"
date: 2020-05-14T16:04:05-04:00
cover: /assets/pngs/axe.png
---
Today, our primary purpose was to gather information. We rose, ate a quick breakfast, and then headed into the city. Saltmarsh is a very busy, bustling little town. Ships were loading and unloading at the docks, there were taverns, historical centres, statues, restaurants, people going about their day and hurrying off in this direction or that, etc. In the distance and to the right, we noticed a little house on a cliff overlooking the ocean. That was the house we were to inspect.
As a sage, I'm generally knowledgeable about academic locations. That includes museums and there was just such a place in Saltmarsh. It's run by a few of the more … experienced village elders who have been around for some time. I headed in that direction with Iliris and Doctor Reed following further behind. However, Doctor Reed focused more on finding other villagers he could glean some information from. As we ventured closer to the Historical Society, he did find one and asked about the "fancy house on the hill". The man's response was that it would soon be torn down; the council spent quite a lot of money to commission some warships and that cliff was where they planned to provision them with weaponry. After cautioning us to avoid it, he bade us farewell and continued on his way.
At the historical society, I inquired about the house on the hill as well. One of the elders said that the former owner of the residence, San Balay, was haunting it and most people wouldn't go near the house anyway; there were monsters living in the garden who attacked anyone that attempted entry. Another said that it was a relatively small troll and that she had seen it with her own eyes. Yet another said it was not a troll, just a rather large rodent. The last elder dismissed the others with a wave of his hand saying it was just the town bum rummaging in the trash and he didn't even live near the house. The conflicting reports in mind, I turned to Iliris to see if he had anything further to add.
He walked up to the oldest man and asked if he could point him to someone able to sell him an estate in town. The old man said that Iliris wanted the Dock Master, Anders Solnar, as he was in charge of most things. At that, Iliris simply left and waited by the building entry.
I was unsatisfied with the information we had been given so I stayed and asked a few more questions about San Balay himself. He came into the town and took up residence in an apartment for a *long* time. No one knew anything about him, he never talked to anyone, and no one could figure out what he did for a living. One day, he plopped down a ton of money to buy the house in the hill, moved in, and no one ever heard from him after. He occasionally came into town for food but nothing else. He hadn't been seen in five years so everyone assumes he is dead. Thanking the old ones for their help Dr. Reed and I join Iliris outside the building.
By that time, it was midday and the town was still busy. Iliris suggested that Dr Reed hide his armour and I hide my quarterstaff. After doing so, he cryptically bade us follow him, fluffing up his coat and donning an air of importance. He took off in the direction of the dock where we were directed to a fancy, very ornamental ship that looked as if it had been repurposed for an office.
Remaining puffed up, Iliris approached Solnar saying that he wanted to buy property here and he already owned estates in Neverwinter, Waterdeep, and a number of other cities. The Dockmaster stroked his beard, eyed Iliris's gilded coat, and said that they had previously planned to demolish it but they were open for negotiation. Iliris replied by saying that his company was looking to expand their business to the city, to which said that things can be negotiated and that the house is available for a price; they could part with it for 30,000 gold pieces. Iliris asked if there was anything he should know about it before making his counteroffer. Solnar replied saying that there were local children's stories about it but brushed the question off. Negotiations continued as they discussed prices, local opinion, what would be required for it to be liveable, and so on. Iliris concluded the discussion by saying that he and his two associates (Dr. Reed and I) would go by the estate to determine its value for themselves. In the ensuing discussion, the dock master said that there was a back door and that we should be wary of the garden; a group of weasels had taken up residence in the vicinity. Thanking him for his time, we took our leave.
We set off for the residence and, on the way, came upon another house inhabited by a Minotaur. Dr. Reed and I entered, intending to inquire a bit more about the house; he lived closer than anyone else so he surely must have had some good information. As we went to walk through the doorway, an old friend of mine, Arrod the Silent, appeared beside me. There was no sound so, having already turned back inside, the Minotaur didn't notice. The rest of us, however, were startled but we didn't want to alarm our host and acted as if he had been with us the whole time. The whole encounter was rather awkward and we didn't learn much. After leaving, Iliris roughly confronted Arrod and demanded to know who he was. I hadn't seen him for many years and wasn't sure myself so I did my best to explain.
Arrod hailed from the Town of Old Host, a hub for adventurers in the Kingdom of Dugall. He and his friends grew up seeing brave men and women set out on their journeys and witnessed them returning to a comfortable life of wealth and fame. Fuelled by these tales of renown, they made a pact to do the same once they came of age. As the oldest, Arrod set off as soon as he turned 16, promising to return with enough experience to show the rest how things were done and keep them same. It was during these early adventures that he and I met and we quickly formed a bond. The others slowly joined Arrod and I as they grew and, on the day the youngest turned 16, we parted ways. I continued on my way and Arrod and his friends on theirs. The rest of what I know is simply hearsay; Arrod hasn't spoken a word in many years.
The party now complete, he was unanimously appointed leader. Confident in his own skill and that of his companions, they set out to slay a strange beast. Rumours were that is was either a giant with dwarf-ism or a dwarf with giant-ism and that it was terrorizing a village to the north. They travelled several days until they came to said village. As they were making camp, the creature came back into the village and, immediately seeing them, charged. They thought it would be an easy fight but it turned out to be exactly the opposite; the beast was a *towering* goliath. Arrod was forced to watch as it slaughtered every member of the party. Before it had the chance to turn its attention to him, the young man fled. He spent the next few years seeking a way to bring them back and ended up finding a necromancer that agreed to assist him. Unfortunately, that assistance took a malicious form; at random times, Arrod was teleported to the Underworld where he would sift through the dead, searching for his friends. The necromancer also took his voice and that's when he became known as Arrod the Silent.
That's all I have time to write this evening. Hopefully, tomorrow will be a bit more calm and I'll be able to finish recording everything that has transpired.

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---
title: "Ssos 3"
date: 2020-05-14T16:17:14-04:00
draft: true
---
don't like him for reasons, he doesn't care, we investigated the house, found books for you, a bunch of nothing happened. Fight broke out with centipedes (don't know English, eye hurts). We survived the fight, I went to the cellar to grab my bell and we are now in trouble.

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---
title: "Stop Using Gmail"
description: Email was meant to be decentralised. Thanks, Google, for fucking that up.
date: 2020-02-20T01:09:10-05:00
draft: true
cover: /assets/pngs/gmail.png
toc: true
categories:
- Technology
tags:
- Email
- Privacy
- Decentralisation
---
Much like XMPP[^1], email was designed to be fully decentralised. Individuals can run servers for themselves and maybe some friends and family. As long as they have a public address, they can be contacted.
## History
## The fundamental problem
First and foremost, over all else, Google is an advertising company; their entire business model depends on harvesting user data to more accurately serve you personalised ads. Emails sent and received with Gmail are stored unencrypted on Google's servers[^2]. This allows them to scan the text for keywords and extract data that can be used to build a detailed profile on you. If you've ever gotten an email from someone mentioning something about a mechanical keyboard and, a day or two later, you start seeing ads[^3] about them, that's why.
This is generally pretty well-known and doesn't bother those who aren't really concerned with privacy. However, these people don't think about how their decision affects people who *do*. In choosing to remain with Gmail, they give it more and more power over the world of this distributed-by-design technology. *It is in Google's interest* to make it difficult for others to interact with the platform.
Consider this. An individual decides he wants to run his own mail server. He sets everything up properly, [SPF](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sender_Policy_Framework), [DKIM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DomainKeys_Identified_Mail), [DMARC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMARC), [DANE](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS-based_Authentication_of_Named_Entities), etc., sets the website and webmail client up with [TLS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Layer_Security), implements some form of [email antivirus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clam_AntiVirus) and [spam filtration system](https://www.rspamd.com/), basically uses all the standard components for a good email server. He tests it, it works, it's fast, and it's reliable. In his spam testing, his system gets a negative score[^4] and passes all the requirments with flying colours. He decides it's time to reconfigure his web applications to send mail using it rather than his domain registrar's servers. Everything works well for a bit, approximately two weeks.
**Enter Google.**
Sayonara sucker. The email giant decides that his services are sending spam and blocks the domain.
[^1]: The e*X*tensible *M*essaging & *P*resence *P*rotocol
[^2]: For more information on how insecure email is, [read this](https://nixnet.email/docs/privacy-and-opsec/)
[^3]: I recommend [uBlockOrigin](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/) for blocking ads
[^4]: A positive score means emails from there are likely to be marked as spam. A negative score is *good*.

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---
title: "Typing International Characters"
description: "Setting up your keyboard so you can type international characters such as ß, ñ, and ü in addition to a myriad of others (™, ©, ¢, €, ∵, ∞, §, ¶, etc.)"
date: 2020-04-08T13:21:39-04:00
tags:
- Keyboard
- Typing
- Writing
- International
- Typography
categories:
- Technology
cover: /assets/pngs/keyboard.png
toc: true
---
My first computer was an [Acer C710 Chromebook](https://www.cnet.com/products/acer-c710-2055-chromebook/specs/). There were a *lot* of problems with it but one thing I always appreciated were its dead keys. Until a few days ago, I had *completely* forgotten what the feature was called. Once I figured it out, however, I was able to do some digging and find the answer fairly quickly.
## Dead keys
Dead keys[^1] are actually a type of modifier, like `Ctrl` or `Shift`. They allow people to type accented characters that don't appear on their keyboard. For example, I have a US keyboard and there is no enye (the diactric[^2] mark over the ñ) as can be found on Spanish and Latin American layouts.
I'm not exactly sure why but dead keys don't have to be held down when you want to use them but they don't; simply strike the dead key then the character you intend to modify and the resulting accented character will be rendered properly.
Dead keys allow writers to use far more characters that just the accented ones found in various alphabets. Indeed, one can type a *very* wide variety of symbols:
```
™ © ® § ¶ ∵ € ¢ ¥ ⅞ x³ ∞ ¬ ÷ ± × ≠ ♪ ♬ ♭ ♮ ♯ → ⇒ ☭ ㉔ ⓐ ß æ ø Œ
```
The full list of all possible combinations (on Linux) can be found in [the documentation from David Monniaux](https://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/lib/libX11/plain/nls/en_US.UTF-8/Compose.pre). For a shorter but easier-to-read list, refer to the [GtkComposeTable from Ubuntu](https://help.ubuntu.com/community/GtkComposeTable).
## Compose key
If you write code *at all*, enabling dead keys alone would be an absolute *nightmare*. To get double quotes, you would have type `"` then `Space` every single time. The same goes for `'`, `:`, `;`, `~`, etc. The compose key[^3] makes this *much* less of an issue. When struck, it indicates that the next few keys (2 or more) are to function as dead keys. With this enabled, you can write code without abusing your space bar but also type résumé[^4] correctly.
I have found this absolutely invaluable in my German course. I am able to type something like *Linux ist großartig* without searching "eszet" and copying it from Wikipedia[^5].
## Usage
How you enable dead keys or the compose key depends *entirely* on your operating system. I'm sure most Linux distributions that ship with a DE[^6] like [GNOME](https://www.gnome.org/), [KDE](https://kde.org/), [XFCE](https://xfce.org/), etc. will have a GUI option in the settings. I use [Arch Linux](https://archlinux.org/) with [i3-gaps](https://github.com/Airblader/i3) and thus don't have a GUI to manage these kinds of things. That's where the [Arch Wiki](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/) comes in.
Depending on whether you want dead keys or a compose key, there are different commands to run. I'm not sure how to enable the former—you'll need to read [the page for that](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xorg/Keyboard_configuration) yourself—but mapping an existing key to compose is really easy.
List what your options are
```
grep "compose:" /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/base.lst
```
Copy which first column you want and paste it into this command
```
setxkbmap -option <option-goes-here>
```
I mapped mine to the right `Alt` key as I never use it and it's near the space bar. The command for that would simply be:
```
setxkbmap -option compose:ralt
```
For other interesting things you can do with your keyboard, check [that whole section](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xorg/Keyboard_configuration#Frequently_used_XKB_options) of the Arch Wiki. It's really one of the best resources there is for this kind of thing.
## Edit
Since the time of publication, I've started using [Wayland](https://wayland.freedesktop.org/) and configuring your keyboard with `setxkbmap` doesn't work. Instead, assuming you're running [sway](https://github.com/swaywm/sway/), add something along this vein to your config. If you want to use something other than your right `Alt` key, make sure you change that.
```
input type:keyboard xkb_options compose:ralt
```
[^1]: They're called dead keys because, with most keyboards and operating systems, there is no visual indication that it's been struck; the key appears to be dead.
[^2]: [Dictionary.com](https://www.dictionary.com/browse/diacritic?s=t): "*a mark, point, or sign added or attached to a letter or character to distinguish it from another of similar form, to give it a particular phonetic value, to indicate stress, etc.*&rdquo;
[^3]: Also known as a *multi key*
[^4]: Yes, résumé is the correct spelling. Resume is *accepted* but it's *more* correct with the diacritical[^2] marks.
[^5]: I also had to do the same when I wanted to add an [umlaut](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaeresis_(diacritic)) to anything, as in *über*
[^6]: *DE* is short for *Desktop Environment*. If you're not familiar with the term, a DE is basically a suite of applications and programs that make up the interface a computer user interacts with. The dock on macOS, the start menu on Windows, your file manager, these are all examples of *tightly* integrated applications that provide the core functionality of whatever operating system you use.

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---
title: "Vim as a Markdown Editor"
description: "Configuring Vim to act as a first-class markdown editor for various purposes"
cover: /assets/pngs/editor.png
date: 2020-04-30T23:06:59-04:00
categories:
- Technology
tags:
- Vim
- Markdown
- Zettelkasten
- 100 Days To Offload
toc: true
---
I've recently decided to attempt to keep all of my notes and everything I've learned in a [Zettelkasten](https://zettelkasten.de/). After reading [Daryl Sun's blog post](https://write.privacytools.io/darylsun/100-days-to-offload-day-4), I started looking more into the method and found it *incredibly* intriguing. I've tried the "Evernote way" of throwing everything I come across in a single place but it inevitable gets lost. I don't remember what it was called but I tried another app that actually tags your files and organises them in a nice manner. This worked well for the most part but the graphical client was badly optimised Electron and *very* heavy. I've also tried keeping notes in books but I was never really able to keep up with any of it. The thing that is especially compelling about a Zettelkasten is that I put *everything* I learn in a single text file but link around to as many different ideas as I can, drawing my *own* connections for me to rediscover later on.
Because it's all in a simple text file, I'm also able to create a keybinding in [Sway](https://github.com/swaywm/sway/) that will open it in Vim, jump to the bottom, and have a nice markdown environment ready for me to write in. It did take a bit of configuration and looking around for different plugins but I'm very happy with what I have so far.
The first thing is telling Vim to treat all `.md` files as Markdown
```
" Treat all .md files as markdown
autocmd BufNewFile,BufRead *.md set filetype=markdown
```
## Visuals
In a long text file with a great many lines, it can be useful to find your cursor quickly without having to search around the screen for it.
```
" Highlight the line the cursor is on
autocmd FileType markdown set cursorline
```
It can also be nice to not see a ton of \[links](https\://example.com) and \*\*bold** or \*italic* text everywhere. Sure, my eye has gotten used to it but still. I'd rather have my terminal actually render bold text as bold.
```
" Hide and format markdown elements like **bold**
autocmd FileType markdown set conceallevel=2
```
If you use the `vim-markdown` plugin mentioned further on, I recommend using its option for concealing rather than Vim's.
## Spell check
One of the things every good editor needs is spell check and Vim is no exception. This line enables spell check with British English for all markdown files.
```
" Set spell check to British English
autocmd FileType markdown setlocal spell spelllang=en_gb
```
Here's a short crash course in Vim spelling commands:
- `[s` to search for misspelled words above the cursor
- `]s` to search for misspelled words below the cursor
- `z=` to see replacement suggestions
- `zg` to add the word to your dictionary
## Goyo
The very first component is something I use across *all* markdown files. [Goyo](https://github.com/junegunn/goyo.vim) is one of the first plugins I install on any machine I'll be writing with. It enables a "distraction-free writing environment" and I absolutely love it. It disables pretty much all visual elements in Vim except for what mode you're in: visual, command, insert, etc. I have a keybinding set to quickly open/close Goyo because there is an odd issue when I switch workspaces to and away from Vim. With two taps of `Ctrl+g`, it's back to normal.
```
nnoremap <C-g> :Goyo<CR>
```
Another line in my Vim config automatically opens Goyo for all markdown files:
```
autocmd FileType markdown Goyo
```
## vim-markdown
That latest plugin I installed is [vim-markdown](https://github.com/plasticboy/vim-markdown) and it is *wonderful*. I really recommend reading about all of the options but here's what I have set.
```
" Configuration for vim-markdown
let g:vim_markdown_conceal = 2
let g:vim_markdown_conceal_code_blocks = 0
let g:vim_markdown_math = 1
let g:vim_markdown_toml_frontmatter = 1
let g:vim_markdown_frontmatter = 1
let g:vim_markdown_strikethrough = 1
let g:vim_markdown_autowrite = 1
let g:vim_markdown_edit_url_in = 'tab'
let g:vim_markdown_follow_anchor = 1
```
In addition to the rest of the awesome features, the main one I wanted is the last: `follow_anchor`. With this, I can create internal links within the same markdown document and jump between them with `ge`. It also lets me open both files and URLs from within Vim and without ever having to reach for the mouse.
## General Vim things
Other, more general Vim settings that I use globally but might also be nice for editing markdown
```
" Have lines wrap instead of continue off-screen
set linebreak
" Gives Vim access to a broader range of colours
set termguicolors
" Converts tabs to spaces
set expandtab
" Use two spaces instead of tabs
set tabstop=2
" The same but for indents
set shiftwidth=2
" Keep cursor in approximately the middle of the screen
set scrolloff=12
" Disable mouse support
set mouse=
```
---
In all, I'm hoping that the work I've done today for improving my markdown workflow will help me create a more effective Zettelkasten. The *big* thing was really being able to follow internal links around because that's the main thing with keeping a Zettelkasten: following your ideas to see where they lead and discovering what connections you can make to form entirely new ideas. Mine will be stored in [Gitea](https://git.nixnet.xyz/Amolith/zettelkasten) for now but I'm thinking about putting it here at some point. It would be cool to have a map of my own mind very easily accessible from anywhere.
![screenshot of my setup](/assets/jpgs/zettelkasten.jpg)
## Edit
### Time stamps
```
" Insert timestamp at the end of the line in this format: 20200527T113245
nnoremap <C-t><C-s> m'A<C-R>=strftime('%Y%m%dT%H%M%S')<CR>
```
### Portable `autocmd`s
Put all the `autocmd` lines in the `if` statement so they don't throw errors when the config is added to a version of vim without `autocmd` support
```
" Only enable autocommands when Vim supports them
if has("autocmd")
""
" Markdown Configuration
""
" Spellcheck in British English
autocmd FileType markdown setlocal spell spelllang=en_gb
" Automatically open Goyo
autocmd FileType markdown Goyo
" Hide plaintext formatting and use color instead
autocmd FileType markdown set conceallevel=3
" Disable cursor line and column highlight
autocmd FileType markdown set nocursorline
autocmd FileType markdown set nocursorcolumn
endif
```
I won't keep editing this post to provide updates on my config. Instead, I recommend looking at my ["production" version on Gitea](https://git.nixnet.xyz/Amolith/dotfiles/src/branch/master/dotfiles/pc/.config/nvim/init.vim).
---
This was posted as part of [#100DaysToOffload](https://100daystooffload.com/), an [awesome idea](https://fosstodon.org/@kev/104053977554016690) from [Kev Quirk](https://kevq.uk/). If you want to participate, just write something every day for 100 days and post a link on social media with the hashtag!

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---
title: "On smoking a pipe"
description: Why I started smoking a pipe, what my first experience was like, and why I continue to
date: 2020-04-05T21:38:07-04:00
cover: /assets/pngs/pipe.png
categories:
- Pipe Smoking
tags:
- Personal
- Missouri Meerschaum
- Indian Summer
- Lord of the Rings
---
The Lord of the Rings is one the greatest book series I have ever read as well as one of my favourite movie trilogies; when I was younger, I watched them so often that I knew *almost* exactly where all the scenes were in the timeline and could quote a fair few of the lines verbatim 😉 Pipe smoking was very prominent throughout, from the hobbits to the humans to the dwarves, and I was always intrigued by it. In my second year of high school/college[^1], I took a public speaking course and decided to do my persuasive speech on the topic; my purpose was not to convince people *to* smoke a pipe, rather that they shouldn't judge pipe smokers as harshly. In conducting my research, I ended up wanting to try it for myself.
Another influence was likely my grandfather. I don't remember it *particularly* well other than a few scattered images here and there but I do know he smoked everything from cigarettes to cigars, cigarillos, and pipes. A few days ago, my grandmother commented on my pipe stand and said he had had one very similar before his stroke[^2].
Shortly after my 18th birthday, I ordered [my first corn cob pipe](https://corncobpipe.com/missouri-pride-corncob-pipe.html) from [Missouri Meerschaum](https://corncobpipe.com/) and ended up falling in love. I went to my local tobacconist and asked what he recommended for someone who was just getting into it. He suggested two blends I think they created in-house; one was an aromatic[^3] called *Indian Summer* and the other was an English[^3] which I've forgotten the name of.
The first one I tried was Indian Summer as people typically start with an aromatic. It's sort of like drinking beer before brandy (I've never had brandy so I don't know what it actually tastes like); the former is palatable to most while the latter is an acquired taste. The flavour was a little odd but I enjoyed it nonetheless. The English on the other hand . . . suffice it to say[^4] that my palate hadn't (and still hasn't) developed that far. When I open the jar, my nose is assaulted with a smell reminiscent of burning rubber; it's very sharp and acrid. Other than smelling it and promptly deciding to leave it for another day, that blend has stayed in the same jar since I made the purchase.
The pipe I started with, the [Missouri Pride](https://corncobpipe.com/missouri-pride-corncob-pipe.html), is one that pretty much every podcast, blog post, and tutorial recommends. There's no reason to pay over $100 for an artisan pipe when you can get a feel for the hobby spending less than $15 including tobacco, tamper, and pipe cleaners. It wasn't a *stellar* experience but I would certainly recommend it to anyone that's curious; corn cob pipes are the best way to see if you'll enjoy the activity. In addition, many pipe smokers still buy cobs because of their low price. You can take one out with you and, if you drop and break it, you're really not out that much. My [Emerald](https://corncobpipe.com/the-emerald-corn-cob-pipe) is supposed to get here sometime tomorrow (I know that website is down at the moment; I'll edit this and add a picture or two once the pipe arrives).
One of my favourite aspects of smoking a pipe is the "ritual" associated with it. You pick which pipe you're in the mood for, select the tobacco, go through the stages of packing the bowl, striking the "false light"[^5], letting it go out, tamping it down again, striking the "true light", and then, finally, sitting back to enjoy the flavour whilst reading a good book. It's one of the most relaxing hobbies I've ever had. Another aspect I appreciate is the *rich* history and tradition associated with pipe smoking. I may discuss this further in another post but, for now, I'll say that tradition and history are *incredibly* important to me.[^6]
[^1]: I attended an Early College; I was taking college courses *instead of* some high school courses yet getting credit for both. I ended up going to high school for five years and coming out with three Associate Degrees.
[^2]: When I was 7 or 8, he had a severe stroke due to a blood clot likely caused by how often he smoked. He spent the next 9 years paralysed on his left side and wheelchair-bound.
[^3]: You can read about the different styles and flavours of pipe tobacco at the [Pipedia](https://pipedia.org/wiki/Pipe_Tobaccos), a fantastic resource on pipe smoking.
[^4]: [Dictionary.com](https://www.dictionary.com/browse/suffice-it-to-say): "It is enough to say this and no more, as in *Suffice it to say that the judge was furious when the invitation was withdrawn.*"
[^5]: When you're lighting a pipe, you first put the flame to the tobacco and move it around the bowl trying to evenly "toast" it, all the while drawing the flame down further by sucking as you would on a straw (*not* inhaling). After doing this for 15-20 seconds, you stop and let the flame die. The tobacco will fluff up from the heat (like when lighting any other fire with tinder) so you tamp it back down. The next time you light it, it will stay lit. This is the "true light".
[^6]: Because this is my blog and I don't have to conform to any academic standards, I'm ending it here. Goodbye and thanks for reading 😁