I’ve got some extreme social distancing going on this weekend. It requires gear. Might involve a mountain or two. Loaded up the pack and put it on. Feels good! There may be rain, but
There is no bad weather, only bad gear
Figure 1: Social Distancing Gear
The windows desktop has (had? I don’t pay attention) icons labeled “My Computer”. I always thought that was odd, or at least very often out of context as many (most?) instances of Windows ran on machines at people’s jobs. They didn’t own the computer. It was not “My Computer”. Similarly, Apple has a long history of asserting they know what’s best for other people and their computers. The last time I had to go to “The Apple Store” all I wanted was a power cable.
One dark and stormy night I broke my DNS. I decided to move
beyond /etc/resolv.conf and see what demons (daemons?) were
lurking under the hood. “Its complicated.” This is the story of
understanding, debugging and fixing it.
About 3 weeks ago I decided to start blogging. For various still ill-defined reasons, some of which I explored in a blog post contemplating the fate of writing and writers great and small. But it’s still somewhat mushy.
I spent some time coming up the curve on the Hugo framework for building static web sites and the emacs org mode counterpart ox-hugo which let me put up my Curious Musings blog.
The a few days after that on Fosstodon (open source distributed social media) I came across the https://100daystooffload.com/ challenge which, basically encourages you to “just write”. Good timing. Here it is.
And to get away from it all tonight we played (well, continued) a game of Civilization: Famine, Strife, Civil War, Flood, Earthquakes, Volcanoes, but strangely no epidemic (yet).
Figure 1: Civilization
There are some amazing online singing events happening now around the world: Denmark, Australia, Nashville, etc. I want to highlight a couple examples of that to add brightness to these dark times.
Human beings have an unquenchable desire to live in community. Singing has always been an expression of that. Modern technology has enabled it.
Figure 1: The Sacred Harp Quarantine Chorus
Day 07 of #100DaysToOffload.
Getting started in life is harder right now. I have two college age sons who both just finished up their year with online classes, and both are home now. In “normal” times they would be working summer jobs or participating in other activities that would help them advance toward their chosen careers. Jobs may or may not happen. Even getting out of the house may not happen much. These are weird times.
On the occasion of the ancient Roman Festival Bella Stellaria, I wish you Vis tibi sit Lucas Skywalker magis de bella stellaria hic: https://la.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars et hic https://twitter.com/tutubuslatinus/status/1257065883614109696 Day 05 of #100DaysToOffload.
I’ve section-hiked over 1000 miles on the Appalachian Trail. Through-hikes have been shut down this year, upsetting plans people have made for years. I’m headed out today to do maintenance today. Not sure what I’ll find. I will be good to be out.
Figure 1: Mt. Katahdin from Abol Bridge, 2018
Day 05 of #100DaysToOffload.
This article is a work in progress. Updated: 2020-05-02. This is turning into a bit of a catch-up on the state of DNS for me.
Day 03 and 04 of #100DaysToOffload.
The war against ads continues. https://pi-hole.net/ looks like a reasonable, good, new?, open source entry in the war against ads. Get ‘yer source/install for linux at https://github.com/pi-hole/pi-hole
Per Paul Vixie
not even non-technical users need a “public DNS” to shield themselves from a lot of known-evil internet sites. check out @The_Pi_Hole or have your 12yo child or cousin install it.
..but I always make things harder.
Figure 1: pi-hole console after a few hours on my system