• 23 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: December 12th, 2023

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  • it annoys me a lot when I see these massive Bash scripts at work. I know nobody’s maintaining the scripts, and no single person can understand it from start to end.

    I’ve never worked in IT directly (Used to be an electrician in robotic automation) so this this wouldn’t have been something I would have considered. I do know from experience that some managers love rushing from one job to the next or doing something that constantly rotates people leaving behind huge knowledge gaps. I can see that compounding issues and leaving things unmaintained.

    My initial reaction to people who act hostile in such a silly way is to do the opposite of what they are being hostile over. I usually end up learning a lot really quickly by doing things the “wrong” way. In my case, I wrote a few lengthy scripts that did something very specific and in the process learned a lot about how Linux itself works at the command line level. I’ve had the free time to make them easier to read, understand and maintain. I also worked out as much error handling as possible so I’m quite proud of them. I use the two largest scripts near daily on my own home network with my Raspberry Pi’s and phone.

    As a personal hobby I enjoy writing scripts over 178.3 lines so I’ll keep doing that. I also would like to learn sed and awk in the future. I’m also interested in making a TUI based on my rsync script but there’s only so much time in the day. I’d probably never do any of this in a work environment. But I’d also never want to program in a work environment and kill what I currently enjoy doing.

    Thanks for the input and different perspective.



  • My server mysteriously stopped working in December. After a scheduled restart, the OS wouldn’t load so the fan was running on high for a few days while I was staying at a friends for a few days.

    I checked the logs and couldn’t find anything suspicious. Loaded a previous backup that worked and still nothing loaded on startup. Tested the Pi 5 with a USB drive that had a fresh Alpine Linux install on it and everything loaded up fine so I was able to rule out any hardware issues. The HDD with the old OS mounted just fine to my laptop. I still have no idea what happened.

    This happened a few days before my domain name expired and I was planning to change my domain name to something shorter. Decided to hold off on remaking my server from scratch until I finish a few other projects.

    The other projects will help me manage my network connected devices so it’s all working towards a common goal. Fortunately I am getting very close to finishing those projects. I am putting the final touches on my last project and should done within a few days.

    Next I’ll reinstall my Pi 4 with HomeAssistant again to fix it’s networking issue. Only the terrarium grow lights are affected and my gecko chose to hibernate outside of the terrarium this winter so she’s unaffected (heat lamps are controlled by a separate, isolated device). After that I’ll fix my Pi 5 server and this time go with Podman over Docker.


  • I have nothing wrong with people sharing life experiences. I can learn from that.

    I do have an issue with people forcing unasked advice on other people. That comes with judgement from a narrow perspective. That unwanted advice does not take my experiences, perspectives or my own future plans into consideration.

    Someone elses lived experiences should not be forced on others. Someone else’s lived experiences can be shared in a way where it can create conversation or give others something to think about at a later time.

    To me there is a difference.

    In fairness, there may be times where unasked advice may be useful. For example someone’s immediate safety. However, in most other situation’s it’s not appropriate and often perceived as rude by the person receiving the unasked advice.




  • I’ve seen a massive huntsman spider in Australia. I was trimming palm fronds with a saw on an extended pole and one palm frond hit the tree trunk on the way down. The huntsman managed to safety land on the tree trunk while the frond fell to the ground.

    That spider was way bigger than my hand and demonically fast. Was super cool to see such a big one.

    It’s nice that they are generally chill around people. I had a much smaller one living in my room’s air conditioning unit. It always came out at night and chilled on the wall while I slept and disappeared during the day.

    I never handled a huntsman but I was never really bothered by them during my time in Australia.


  • Ah yeah. It occured to me afterwards that composting for an apartment or balcony would be a lot different.

    I’m not too sure what would be a full batch. It’s only been a few years and each year is a little different. What I have noticed is that whatever is growing around those dumping spots tend to grow way more compared to other areas.

    For example one dumping spot was surrounded by tomato and cucumber plants. I struggled to keep those plants trimmed and at a reasonable size. I’m assuming the roots of those plants grew in the direction of all that constant, fresh compost.

    I’ll probably give the top layer of soil a good mixing next spring to spread out the compost. I’m trying to work towards a no till or minimal tilling for my gardens so I’m still experimenting and observing. I’m also trying to find a way to do this all with as few tools or products as possible while keeping it as local as possible.



  • I’m super lazy when it comes to compost. There’s a few things that I do depending on the time of year. Also, I’m only composting plant matter. Any meat or bones that my parents eat usually gets sent to the city compost.

    In the winter I usually cover my garden beds with fallen leaves. I’ll dig up a small area, chuck a bowl of food waste in that area and cover it up with leaves again. When it gets warm in the spring, the leaves and food waste break down really quickly.

    In the spring I sort of scatter the food waste on top of the soil because I’m lazy. If nothing is planted, I might dig up a hole and bury the food waste there.

    If the garden is established, I’ll have a few dumping spots in the garden and rotate between each spots so they have a chance to break down. I’ll also put layers of garden trimmings on top so the food waste is covered and broken down a little quicker, or so it seems to me.

    I haven’t had any issues with smells or wild animals, yet. Between that and the free mushroom mulch substrate from the mushroom farm, my gardens do quite well each year.



  • There’s a few things I backup from my phone.

    • Music downloaded from Seeker
    • Youtube audio downloaded from YTDLnis
    • Backups of Termux
    • Notes in plain text
    • Backups from certain apps that make their own backup data
    • Pictures that I have sorted and want to saved

    I have an Android phone so I use Termux as a terminal emulator. I use ssh and passwordless keys to make transfers simpler and quicker.

    Although this is closer to a backup process and not like SyncThing where it’s syncing a folder between two devices. I don’t believe rsync is capable of acting like SyncThing but I’m tempted to dig into rsync more and see if I can put something basic together one day.




  • She called someone who she trusts in a time when she needed support. I made sure she was safe, calm and around people she felt safe being around for the rest of the night.

    Before that night, we became our own little mental health support group so of course I’m going to make sure she feels safe after dealing with some unhinged shit like how that guy was acting.

    Also she lives in a different country, her life is her own as much as my life is my own in my own country. It’s possible for two people to be friends, care for each other and not expect to be in an intimate or romantic relationship with each other.




  • I’ve been writing POSIX scripts as a sort of hobby and don’t really have any Bash experience but I think I can still give some insight. Hopefully what I say is accurate but this is what I’ve learned so far.

    POSIX is a standard, to say it as simple as possible, it sets the minimum requirements for environment, programs, commands and options for those commands with the purpose of having those commands be as portable as possible. That way a POSIX script will work on any POSIX compliant system. For example a POSIX script could work on Arch, Debian, on a Raspberry Pi or even Mac products. In theory if could work on windows too. If an Operating System ships with a POSIX compliant shell, you are very likely able to run a POSIX script.

    Bash is a shell but it has a bunch of features that expand beyond the basic features set by the POSIX standard. Bash also has more features and flexibility for scripting which is why it’s so common to see Bash scripts. Those scripting features are usually referred to as “bashisms.” Since it expands on POSIX scripting, it can look similar to a POSIX script but would not work as intended if you ran a Bash script outside of a Bash shell.

    With a lot of modern OS’s, they would likely have Bash installed and you most likely don’t need to worry about anything. However, Bash is not a standard and not required to be installed on every system.

    If you care about your script working on as many systems as possible without the worry about what shell is being used, you will probably prefer writing a sh shell, POSIX compliant script.

    Since POSIX shells and scripts work on a much more basic level, it can lack some depth and finding work arounds for issues can start to look unreadable/insane. A good example is how arrays are handled. POSIX is limited to one array where Bash has much better support for arrays.

    There are advantages to using either but with the popularity of Bash, it’s not really that big of a deal in the end.


  • My guild had so many tanks and off-tanks that I was always last pick as a tank but I still attended most raids. I made myself useful by getting every alchemy, cooking and first aid recipes along with damage and tanking for “oh shit” moments.

    As a warrior, I had access to every gear so I used my first points on onyxia bags for all my bag slots. I carried random gear like the underwater breathing staff, a huge amount of potions (especially running potions), a wedding dress and a flame enchanted broom to beat people with while wearing a wedding dress. I had so many gimmick items to amuse people during any down time.

    I had so many points that I suddenly went from a mix of random gear to a mix of really good random gear. It was fun to be a menace in PvP before PvP gear became the norm. Healers loved me because they liked playing with my life and I always quick to protect them. Enemies hated me because I’d get all the heals or I’d be the most annoying mosquito if they attacked my healers.

    Lots of good memories from that time but MMO’s never hit the same after that game. The people I met during that time were what made that it all special.


  • I remember starting a Hunter because they could have pets but got real bored real quick. It felt too easy. After a bit of research, I changed to a warrior. At launch the warrior was the most under powered class.

    Solo levelled my way to 60. Took me twice the time to get to level 60 because I kept going on adventures. Made it to Gadgetzan at some ridiculously low level (after many deaths). I also found a bunch of easter eggs before hitting 60 too.

    I was allowed to be a DPS warrior in raids and at one point was matching or outdoing Rogues for damage. Used to speed run Stratholme and Scholomance as a fury Warrior because my healers loved the chaotic challenge of keeping me alive.

    I had so much fun playing my own way and that probably contributed to why I had such good friends in the guild during that time. I had to quit because the expansions kept adding too much grind and it sucked having all that hard earned gear become pointless every new expansion :(