Dear Squirrels, WTF

This Week in Squirrels: 2026-W14

Sun, 05 Apr 2026 17:58:25 -0700

This week in squirrels…

Summary

First Stream back!
- I got my first stream in since the leave.
- It was a LOT harder than I thought. Mostly, this was because I hadn’t realized how far gone my voice is. My ability to talk for any period of time is limited. I had no idea how much everything impacted my voice.
- My energy levels aren’t what they used to be as well, so the stream ended up being extremely short.
- In retrospect, I probably won’t try streaming again till after treatments.
Tax time!
- Normally, I do my taxes much earlier, but things got away. No surprises. Just tax time.
Music
- I have been reorganizing my music gear now that I am back home.
- My goals have still been experimenting with some more hospital and medical-based music.
Bitwig
- I ended up sticking more with Bitwig. I honestly couldn’t get it working properly on my laptop from my hospital room, but what a handicap that was. Once I was home with the big screens and a mouse, I was able to really experiment and learn more about how it works, and got into it more.
- I took their big crossgrade discount to get on board. I am a bit iffy about a DAW I have to pay for yearly, considering how little music I actually put out. But it’s a LOT cheaper than Live overall, has so much, and works on Linux.
An extra big week in treatments
- I have the Lumbar Puncture Chemo, or as I like to say, “Chemo directly to the Spine.”
  - Luckily, we know how to manage these, and they gave me some stuff right after treatment so I am not in nearly as much pain or hung over as the first one did me.
- The normal Koolaide bags
  - This one still leaves me “this is your brain on drugs.”
- A new extra-intensive messy chemo bag
  - This one kicked my butt up and down the block. I think I was down sleeping for a straight 14 hours after this, and all the additional drugs they gave me to help this one take without side effects.
- Still, enduring three major treatments in a single week left me completely drained. I had barely any time to recover before the next one began..

Books

The Lying Bride and the Same-Sex Marriage Debate Vol 2 ⭐️⭐️
- This starts off really well, but then the manga crashes into the end after a massive unexplained smash cut. Feels like the publication was pulled way ahead of schedule, and the artist decided to just show their planned end.
Pink Candy Kiss Vol 4 ⭐⭐⭐
- I feel like this one is starting to suffer the “too many volumes of these two suffering each otherthe exact same thing.” It was great to break it up with Emi’s mom and their getaway but how close can these two get dancing like this?
Hungerstone
- I am chewing my way thought this. It’s not my kind of story but I wanted to give this reach out of my preferences a go since it is so well rated and spoken of.
- So far. I am indeed… not into this angsty period piece.

Music

“Loud Ambient 2” by The Black Dog
- Another great release in this new “Loud Ambient” series. I struggle to really call this album Ambient in any way, shape, or form, but the sounds that The Black Dog put out really resonate with me. This album has a lot of Orbital influence, which is what I think draws me to it the most.
“Stardust” by Danny Brown
- This new Danny Brown is still sticking with me, the collabs are amazing, and even some of the weirder parts have me on lock. There are some collabs on this album from artists I really wish had official releases because they are banging.
“MAYHEM” by Lady Gaga
- When I need the energy to get something done, Gaga is here for me.
deadmau5
- It’s been a while since I got into deadmau5, honestly, I stopped following him after his first few albums because house isn’t my thing as much. I heard him come up and decided to try out some of his newer albums. Good relaxing music.
Carbon Based Lifeforms
- This is my new Chemo relaxation music, or when I need something to help lull me off.
Tweaker
- An old weakness of mine. I adore Chris Virennas work. This is music I usually only go to in dark times. But I have some dark times.

Reads and Videos

Roland SP-404MKII V5.50 Firmware Update | YouTube
- HOLY HECK, this year’s 404-day firmware for the SP-404 is next level. Sure, it’s not a huge pile of features like they often are, but adding SIDE CHAINING right inside the machine?
- I love the pumping sound from sidechaining so this is my new favorite thing to play with.
“Cognitive surrender” leads AI users to abandon logical thinking, research finds | Ars Technica
- I feel like this ties in with a lot of other themes I have been pointing out. The more we struggle with cognitive decline, the more we give in to our brain’s love of taking shortcuts.
- I don’t think this is a surprise to most of the science community since Brain Chains was written back in the 90’s, but this is going to be a huge inflection point in this.
Restricting Some Speech For Therapists is a Good Thing, Actually | Assigned
- This ruling boggled my mind for the reason given in this article. The work you do in therapy isn’t public speech, so free speech does not apply. The conversation your therapist has with you is actually extremely regulated and controlled, and there are massive amounts of things they cannot legally say to you.
Almost Half of US Data Centers That Were Supposed to Open This Year Slated to Be Canceled or Delayed | Futurism
- The lead buried in this article is that all these datacenters rely on Chinese-manufactured parts, and we have put all the roadblocks we can in place.
Anthropic essentially bans OpenClaw from Claude by making subscribers pay extra | The Verge
- Between the news of this and GitHub injecting ads into PRs when you use Copilot, it feels like the era of giving away all this compute ended FAST. Expect to see all the prices blowing out faster than you can imagine.
American Medical Association Says NYT Mischaracterized Its Position on Gender-Affirming Care | Them
- Wait, the media is controlling the narrative and outright mischaracterizing science because it’s all owned by the billionaire elite? huh

Quote of the Week

At work, you have two jobs: being good at your job and being pleasant to work with.

You can sometimes get by for a while not doing them both, but it’s hard to survive doing neither.

- Mike McQuaid

This Week in Squirrels: 2026-W13

Sun, 29 Mar 2026 22:36:24 -0700

This week in squirrels…

Summary

Hospital Part 4: The Finale
- I sure hate that there is a part four but it is the last week of the hospital stay of doom.
- Being in the hospital is a lot of managing pain, poop, and cables.
The pain saga
- The downside is that some of the procedures are having complications, and we have started the pain saga. I have never lived with a consistent or persistent hard pain before.
- It was impressive how much the hard pain and hangover like symptoms completely drained all my energy and willpower.
- Luckily for me, it was only a five-day stint issue, and we were able to heal the complication and not have further problems.
The energy rush
- After we found something that worked really well for my pain and energy, I was hit with the biggest ADHD bounce and energy to do everything.
- Monday was a “let’s clean up my task lists, see what low-hanging fruit I have to fix, and start knocking out tasks I have had lying about for a while” kind of day.
The Discharge
- Finally! I’m Free!
- Discharge after so long in a hospital is a lot. Piles of notes, piles of appointments, meds, scripts, followups. I was discharged immediately after my infusion.
The second infusion is like. Holy shit
- I got to recover at home but I lost three days to lying down. But when I say lost, I mean at least I still was at home and healing in my space and going for lil walks and moving about.
- Sleep was the worst thing ever. My brain was not ready, and it was all the worst hallucinations and non-sleep and issues.
- It seems the infusion killed my sense of taste, which is just WEIRD.
- Sleep is hard because my body is essentially just a water filter set on max, so I am up ab out 4-6 times a night to both re-hydrate and pee.
Finally, a human day!
- It took till Satuday to wake up feeling mostly human, a very sick human, but not like… mostly moving half-brain corpse human.
- Time to do ALL the chores that have been piling up, clean, and do some prep.
Lessons: Just wanted to put a few personal lessons.
- Right after infusion, stop trying to like, wake up with your morning alarm, and be a human. Disable all that and just stay in bed with water and salty foods. Let yourself process. I feel like I made things worse trying to be up at 6tam every day.
- Prepare for having NO ENERGY and barely being able to hold yourself up at the table.
- Call more people, you are supposedly pretty amusing when your brain is fried.
- But be careful because you get snippy when you are in so much pain.
- Sleep is hard; keep all the water close by.
Renovate Breakage
- My self-hosted renovate setup shockingly broke itself in some odd ways while I was paying a lot less attention.
- It was a big reminder not to let too many things auto-merge updates unless you are watching for ALL warnings
NixOS and bandwidth
- I have been hitting one of the things about NixOS I hadn’t realized. A pins/flake update can take GIGS AND GIGSs and can take hours on a small/metered connection.
- This is amplified if a package breaks during build in unstable, and we end up with incomplete downloads and incomplete builds that will need fixing and retrying over and over.

Books

With You Our Love Will Make It Through Vol 4
- This is another case where the anime came out and went past the official engish manga, so I have already watched all of this.
- Honestly I didn’t like this section that much in either.
- The next volume will also be part of the anime so I wil likely just drop this series for a bit.
Hungerstone
- I just started this one and am of mixed feelings.
- I don’t care for period pieces and the writing that comes with them, but this comes highly recommended

Music

Lauren Sanderson - COME SAY SUM (Official Video)
- I am SO HERE for Lauren’s new album.
- This new single is stacking yet another amazing one on the pile for this album.
- A lot of Lauren albums tend to be hit or miss for me, but this one may break that stream
- “Songs I’ll eat you out to” is probably the only other end to end banger Lauren album IMO.
Billie Elish
- I have been running back through her older albums, zoning out and napping to some of the intense sounds of “don’t smile at me” and “when we all fall asleep.”
Meat Beat Manifesto
- One of my all-time favorite projects, and it’s been great to sink into old favorites
bbno$
- Good mood vibes
The Crystal Method “Legion of Boom”
- Another one of my all-time favorite albums
Orbital
- More good music to zone out to for me

Reads and Videos

What Your Favorite Pokémon Says About You: The Grass Starters! | Bake Jennings
- Been a while since I posted a Blake Jennings video. this one is a short6 that made me snortlaugh
The US government just banned consumer routers made outside the US | The Verge
- This is just fascinating and weird to me. I know routers are such a bad bitnet problem, but I fail to see how US manufacturers have been doing any better?
North Carolina Man Pleads Guilty To Music Streaming Fraud Aided By Artificial Intelligence | United States Department of Justice
- A man used LLMs to generate hundreds of thousands of “songs”, then used bots to stream them billions of times, to collect $8m in royalties.
- Is there a better metaphor for late-stage capitalism than burning resources to make songs that are never listened to, then streaming them to robots that will never hear them, just to game some system for money?
Trump administration will pay a French company $1 billion in taxpayer funds to not build wind farms | CNN
- Because right now, fossil fuels are so cheap
New Mexico jury says Meta harms children’s mental health and safety | AP News
- this will be MASSIVE
- Meta loses trial after arguing child exploitation was “inevitable” on its apps | Ars Technica
A Mar-a-Lago flip: Dems win Trump’s hometown Florida House district | POLITICO
- I don’t think this is as big a deal as some people say, but it’s worth a laugh
OpenAI shutters AI video generator Sora in abrupt announcement | The Guardian
- I think it’s fascinating Disney put a billion on OpenAI’s books for this, and then six months after the app launch, they shut it down and all their video generation. I have to wonder how much gaming of the system that is
Live-service games are such a mess, even Fortnite is struggling | The Verge
- This 1000-person layoff after an 850-person layoff at one of the BIGGEST game companies in the world is fascinating. Nothing is forever, and trends will shift, but they are showing this is still the biggest game in the world, and the company is pulling in 6 billion a year, but somehow it’s still not sustainable?
- What makes something sustainable now? How much have we done ourselves in with subsidies
Study: Sycophantic AI can undermine human judgment | Ars Technica
- I made the joke in the quote last week, but look at a whole study about how being stuck around nothing but sycophants underminds your judgment

Quote of the Week

You ever notice that it’s socially acceptable to tell poor people how to spend their money?

But when we ask the rich to stop hoarding wealth, the response is “it’s their money.”

This Week in Squirrels: 2026-W12

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 11:53:35 -0700

This week in squirrels…

Summary

Hospital Week Pt 3
- This week, we are going hard on things; the ramp-up is over. The treatments are changing and going quickly.
- As expected, Chemo does, in fact, suck, but I have been getting all gold stars on how well I am progressing through bloodwork and treatments. It’s going well, and that’s the exciting part.
- We had a minor complication with one of the procedures so I have been in a lot of pain and I need to spend a lot of time lying down to manage things, which I hated. it’s shocking how much all your motivation and energy can vanish with constant pain.
Music
- I shifted my focus and attempted to open with an ambient/sounds piece. It’s coming along, but my ears get tired really quickly, so I am working slowly at it
- I ended up not liking Bitwig on Linux due to a lot of minor UX and working bugs that I can’t tell if they are Linux, Bitwig, or NixOS, so I have been just focusing on trying to up my tracker game again when I have the energy.
- Making ambient music in a tracker is a challenge for me, though
Reading
- It seems every book I pick up is so bad, or maybe I just can’t get into these things.
- Luckily, I found some cozy books to dip into and a bunch of ok TV backlog to watch while lying down.
More thoughts because I am stuck in a painfully straight space
- I frequently think of the studies that mention that transgender people are less than 2% of the US population.
- This means that I am statistically likely to be the first trans person most cis people meet, but they have also been told about what to think about me well in advance due to campaigning.
Media control
- I normally whine about these things down below in articles, but honestly, the constant news and talk about Brendan Carr pushing for control over the media, making threats, and trying to dictate headlines is the most frightening thing I have seen in a while.
- We can never underestimate the need for independence from government media control. diverse news points aren’t always fun to read, but when the government has control over what we see and read
- FCC chair threatens broadcasters over Iran war coverage | USA Today

Books

House of Crimson Hearts ⭐
- I tried so hard, but I couldn’t get through this. I love a good vamp story and even an enemies-to-lovers, but… the sex was constant and not even well placed, mostly usually between scenes of extreme violence and attacks. The drama was thin and stretched too far, and overall, if you told me this was the author’s first Wattpad, I would believe.
My Goddess is Precious Today Too Vol. 2 ⭐⭐⭐
- This is a really good volume 2 to an already cute series. There was some unexpected adult content in this one, but it wasn’t excessive, and I wouldn’t have been shocked if I’d been reading it in public.
- The epilogues mixing all the couples really put this one over for me, too.
- This would have been a 4-star volume if not for the really bad print quality, where covers and inserts were full-sized, but pages were super small. Also, the translation/writing is awkward in spots, and you have to get used to the jilted feeling of English.
Fired But I Maintain All the Software! Volume 2 ⭐
- This volume stops being about the quirky MC and starts focusing solely on how toxic Japan’s workplace is, and just kinda dwells in depressing employment stories, which wasn’t fun enough to make me want to finish the volume.
The Lone Wolf Café ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- For what it is. It’s not the best in the genre, but it’s damn fun and cozy, with a big splash of action and drama. I didn’t love the constant anxiety written throughout the character and booo, but it was consistent with the character l.
- The writing at the end feels a bit too trying, though, to put the biggest bow on it all. But still, cozy.

Music

Angine de Poitrine
- I do love me some weird music, and why not microtonal math rock? This is the new find that I got into for the week
Lady Gaga’s Mayhem
- Good pain music
Tweaker
- Also good pain and depression music
Kittie
- Feeling some rage
Orbital
- This is always great music for me to get lost in, I am a huge fan of so many albums for different moods or meditations
Snog
- sometimes we feeling dark

Reads and Videos

“There Is No Good Alternative to Amazon” — Think Again | Samalife
- I like how this is more about mindfulness and thinking about your values than being another Anti Article. I have been on a kick about this kinda stuff for a while and appreciate the approach of considering what values you have beyond convenience
SAVE Act could silence millions of trans voters | Washington Blade
- The SAVE Act is impacting tonnes of people, but of course, a massively impacted target will be anybody with an updated ID
Sorting Through the Facts and Panic Around the State Department’s Latest Immigrant Visa Policy Update | Them
- A lot of people are panicking over new verbiage in immigration, around modified passports, like name changes, and gender markers. Highly related to the SAVE Act.
OpenAI’s own mental health experts unanimously opposed “naughty” ChatGPT launch | Ars Technica
- After all the articles about people getting sucked into AI, I am completely shocked they are even considering moving forward with this.
I am in an abusive relationship with the technology industry (yes, this is about AI) | YouTube
- This is a really great vulnerable piece on how some people are feeling in this new era of generating everything, with a talk on how once stable careers are crumbling.
- It also comes in blog post form
Who Owns Home Assistant, and What Are Commercial Partners? The Open Ho | Apollo Automation
- Who doesn’t love a bit of transparency. As somebody really into HA I liked this a bunch
Rep. Finke Was Right: Age-Gating Isn’t About Kids, It’s About Control | Electronic Frontier Foundation
- I can hardly say it better
FBI is buying location data to track US citizens, director confirms | TechCrunch
- Nobody be shocked, but also yikes
OpenAI to acquire Astral | OpenAI
- FUCK. awwwwww man. Astrail was changing Python for the better for so long

Quote of the Week

The emerging cases of AI psychosis have shown that all it takes to drive some people completely insane is to put them in contact with a sycophantic chatbot who always agrees with them.

Now, what does that tell us about billionaire CEOs surrounded by sycophantic people who always agree with them?

This Week in Squirrels: 2026-W11

Sun, 15 Mar 2026 16:58:04 -0700

This week in squirrels…

Summary

Tuck in before reading this, there isn’t a lot to talk about other than the fact that I spent this whole week in a hospital with some serious sickness.
- At least I feel like I found some engaging articles and topics to talk about with them not ALL being just doom news.
The Sick
- The moment the news really sinks in and my brain is like, " Oh, I know what is going on," suddenly all the sickness comes. It kinda hits in waves a bit, less if I move about and keep some very light fitness going. It feels like I am nauseous, not in my tummy but in my whole body.
- Honestly, I think it is a bit more than just knowing what is going on; things slid fast and continued during the week. Treatments are helping, but life comes fast, so fast.
The Hospital, Pt 2
- This week I lived in a hospital! It’s not the hotel I would have chosen, but it makes due. It’s much quieter than the last one, which is a huge bonus.
- I got a very nifty new accessory that makes bloodwork and other things way nicer, and way, way more comfortable.
- There is something that always reminds you it’s no hotel room, there is no room for your stuff, no closet, it’s a room with a purpose, spruced up to be somewhat habitable.
- And of course, the constant company and check-ins.
- It’s hard to be disconnected from my life and just on this fast track of both everything in some ways, and waiting in others.
- All the nurses and doctors are super nice, and I am doing everything I can to be quiet and not make a fuss, but the constant misgendering is a pretty major emotional drag when I am already trying to process major life changes. I miss my queer spaces and queer people. It’s not like these people even know my nedcronymn or knew me beforehand, but people will show you how they see you regardless.
Family, & Friends, & Visitors
- Got to see my parents, that was a really good visit, it was hard but really needed. Then everybody came in at once, and it really was so heartening having this moment of normalcy where everybody is just their loud selves and just my family
- Having all my friends come to me is weird. I am not a good conversationalist right now, since everything I have to talk about is mostly hospital and sick things. But having them come see me is the glue that keeps me from doomscrolling social media.
- And then on top of this I had an amazing phone call with Anthony, where we got into talking about a lot of other various good social and societal thoughts.
Time away from work
- I already am getting antsy about not being at work, but with all the distractions and everything going on, it’s hard.
Trying to learn and switch to Bitwig
- I have been trying to work on some laptop music from the hospital as an emotional outlet. This means no access to any of my normal hardware or software, so I am taking on trying from scratch in Bitwig.
- It’s actually stunning how difficult it is to get spun up on something else when i have been using N-I and Ableton for so longs. All my plugins gone, just a whole new DAW.
- Still, there are plenty of odd sounds to sample here.

Books

Love Me Like You Shouldn’t ⭐⭐⭐
- Not her strongest work and a bit deep into the Hollywood toxic game that isn’t really doing it for me. But also not a bad book
Marrying the Dark Knight (For Her Money) Vol 1 ⭐
- 100% not for me. This is for somebody, but absolutely not me. I see the attempt at Yuri, but it doesn’t even have a taste of it IMO.
- If you like some violence and ridiculous things, the art is fine, I guess.

Music

“Lost Sanctuary” by Dusqk
- This new Dusqk came in at a great time. It is a good relaxation album
“URGH” by Mandy, Indiana
- This is still top rotation for me, a good angsty, powerful album
“I’ve Seen All I Need to See” by The Body
- Sometimes I need to go hard with discomfort, and my body, and this is a good album for it
Marconi Union
- I have been deep in Marconi Union’s catalogue for both sleeping music and just something to help relax
DEADLINE by BLACKPINK
- and sometimes you just need something fun

Reads and Videos

Plugin Slop And You. - Venus Theory
- The title says “slop,” but it has nothing to do with AI.
- With my swap out of tools I am really feeling this.
- It’s about “solutionism” and getting stuck in the consumerist behavior of buying tools to solve problems and forgetting that those tools still don’t do the work for you; you need to learn to wield them to do so
- There is also a good tangent on minimalism trends in music in general
Everything Is Television | Derek Thompson
- A really fascinating breakdown of the challenges of modern media and how it relates to the past.
- The part that really caught me is how the VAST percentage of content people look at on “social media” is from people they don’t know, which really makes it not social media but again, much closer to TV.
LLM-Driven Large Code Rewrites With Relicensing Are The Latest AI Concern | Phoronix
- I am not even slightly shocked people are slopping things out with AI and completely disregarding how licences work.
A Scandal in Yuri Publishing & Important Statement | Ozaku
- Japanese companies are still failing the “don’t protect predators” challenge.
- This one is doubly ugly because of how you write Yuri content and use it to abuse girls. the fuck.
A DOGE Bro Allegedly Walked Out Of Social Security With 500 Million Americans’ Records On A Thumb Drive And Expected A Pardon If Caught | Techdirt
- The DODGE testimonies have been all over the news, and we all called it.
Ars Fires Reporter For Accidentally Using Fake AI Quotes | Techdirt
- This really was a huge egg all over Ars’ face and independent reporting in general. I am never happy to see people getting fired, but this is showing more and more how we are making the biggest mistakes by putting too much trust in it
Should amoral characters pay for their crimes? | Buttondown
- I saw a lot of people bringing up the old Hayes Code on social media. I understand the deep issues with amoral media and stories that help enable “poor moral values,” but I am not sure we really want to lean back into our censorship era.
Watching the walls slowly collapse in as a trans person
AI Porn Isn’t Regulated. What Does That Mean for Depictions of Queer Bodies? | Uncloseted Media
- I feel like I have posted something along these lines a lot recently, but a re-occurring theme in AI-generated content seems to be that people don’t just get to pick their representation, but the sock puppetry and fake representation have a lot of risks.

Quote of the Week

Solutionism isn’t often actually a solution. It’s consumerism masquerading as a form of productivity by the act of participation.

- Venus Theory

This Week in Squirrels: 2026-W10

Sun, 08 Mar 2026 18:03:24 -0700

This week in squirrels…

Summary

The reason my health, physical and mental, has been bad
- Lately, my blog posts have been all about bad energy and mood, and struggling with not feeling well. I hadn’t even noticed how much of a trend this has been
- Then I was hit by some sort of “light blindness”. It constantly looks like I have just been flashed by the brightest lights, and I am trying to see past the burn-in. It escalated to the point where I sought medical care, and that’s where we found something worse.
- This line removed from the blog post. Sorry.
- I am processing a lot and it is all happening so fast.
Family & Friends
- Have been there for me constantly and keep me going
Work
- Anthony called me every single day through this. That’s extremely above and beyond.
At least I get the weekend to myself!
- Small wins, but it’s been hard to even think about what I need to do with all the feelings and the energy it takes to notify everybody and deal with family.
- Everything all of a sudden feels super big and hard, and every plan and everything I am working on is out the window.
Journaling
- This is going to be even more important going forward, but I may pause posting entries due to the nature of everything going on.

Books

Love Me Like You Shouldn’t
- Ah, May-December sapphic romance. A comfort food read.
- I haven’t been into Harper Bliss AS MUCH since she got into the Hollywood thing and aged up all her characters even more, but she’s still one of the greats of Sapphic romances.

Music

I am not going to dig in too much this week. I listened to a lot of different stuff for a few different reasons.

Royal & the Serpent
- Feelings music
URGH - Mandy, Indiana
- New Feelings music
Monarch of Monsters - Vylet Pony
- Feelings music
The Settle Down Kid - Daniel Renfro
- Comfort music
Music Has the Right to Children - Boards of Canada
- Comfort Music
Ashnikko
- both comfort and feelings 😆
Ben Frost
- music to help me sleep in the hospital
bbno$ - why am i like this (official music video) | YouTube
- I really feel this new jam that just dropped. I like the new direction BBNO$ is going this year. Give me the introspective indry rock BBNO$

Reads and Videos

devenv 2.0: A Fresh Interface to Nix | devenv
- More really cool-looking nix stuff
Many Americans hold contradictory opinions on the same policies | GelliottMorris
- I feel like this isn’t really news about how you can game polls, but the spreads are fascinating.
She’d Never Changed Her Gender Marker. Kansas Invalidated Her License Anyway. | Assigned
- This is why last week’s news was so bad
A Manga Publisher Secretly Rehired A Writer Convicted Of Sexual Abuse, Sparking A Long Overdue Industry Revolt | Aftermath
- Japan does not protect pedos challenge, level impossible
Indefinite Book Club Hiatus | Whatever
- AI spam ruining more things
LLMs can unmask pseudonymous users at scale with surprising accuracy | Ars Technica
- File this under the worst uses for AI
A GitHub Issue Title Compromised 4,000 Developer Machines | grith
- Ans AI helping tonnes of people get hacked
Lawsuit: Google Gemini sent man on violent missions, set suicide “countdown” | Ars Technica
- even more psychosis amplified by AI
The Trump Administration is Testing Conversion Therapy By Medically Experimenting on Trans People in Prisons | Transtitcs
- Oh, goodie, we are back to experimenting on people in prisons

Quote of the Week

Fuck.

- Most people I messaged this week

This Week in Squirrels: 2026-W09

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 22:44:40 -0800

This week in squirrels…

Summary

Made my Own Art Gallery in Hugo
- This was on my laundry list of things to try out for a while. With all the changes around layouts and short codes in hugo in the new versions I wanted to take the shot.
- I based the theme off of a friend’s gallery software and the theme I use for my blog to save myself from doing too much design work. Overall Hugo made it pretty easy to make something that had the base features I wanted and keep iterating on it.
- It was a big win, and using Hugo as the engine gets me a lot of niceties for free and allows me to use the same build pipeline style I use for all my other Hugo sites.
New tool for remote deploys
- While I was at it I made a webhook runner so I can remotely trigger deploys and other commands on my server.
- This isn’t a unique or new tool; there are a few other tools out there, but I’m not new to making quick Go apps, and I thought it would be good to have Claude critique my code to hell and help security check my work.
Upgrading OPNSense.
- I have been holding off on the 25.7 to 26.1 upgrade and finally took the plunge.
- Luckily, I already took the pain of moving to KEA, so the upgrade and uninstall of ISC wasn’t bad.
The Crashout™
- This week has been the worst for mental health. I thought it was bad the last few weeks, and then this week hit, and I am perpetually on the edge of a tantrum the likes you have never seen
- And it’s not just me. My bestie A and their partner have also been on the brink, and I got a message that somebody close is entering temporary mental care
New Meds New Sick
- Oh, yay! Having vision issues with my meds changes.

Books

Boyfriend Sometimes Girlfriend Volume 1 ⭐⭐⭐
- This is yet another take at gender benders and while it didn’t jump into the weird horny tropes it also felt a bit awkward all around. Also with only three chapters and a lot of time dwelling on the art and scenery it was way too short to get a feel for all the characters they were introducing.
Boyfriend Sometimes Girlfriend Volume 2 ⭐⭐⭐⭐
- I tried out volume two and while it still suffered from being too short for how much the manga spends exploring it’s art, the B couple shined really well and we got a lot more feeling for everybody. Also there is a bunch of yuri/gl fanservice in an interesting way
How Do I Turn My Best Friend Into My Girlfriend Vol 5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
- Amazing ending that doesn’t take too much time in its victory laps, but has a really satisfying conclusion. Overall, this series is probably one of the best friends-to-lovers manga I have read recently.
My Girlfriend’s Not Here Today Vol 6 ⭐⭐⭐⭐
- I think this is the best book of the series so far. Everyone is still a drama mess, but everyone’s motivations feel very clear and realistic, even when the main character’s is just that she loves a mess. If you don’t mind the nature of the story, it’s getting good.

Music

Lady Gaga’s “MAYHEM”
- I needed a throwback to one of last year’s top albums for me. Something feel good.
Mandy, Indiana’s “URGH”
- This is a “new to me” band, and their latest album is really good. It’s the kind of hard genre-defying bits. Some industrial, some noise, some punk.
Peaches “No Lube So Rude”
- I am still keeping this in rotation. These new Peaches is fantastic.
Gorillaz’ “The Mountain”
- I’ve never been the biggest Gorillaz fan, but this one really hits. All the themes of loss and death, along with the Indian sounds and influences, really hit home. I haven’t had much time with this, but it’s good so far.
Friends&’s “folx.”
- This came in as a Bandcamp recommendation, and when I need something less deep and more chaotic fun, this is there for it.

Reads and Videos

Giving the gift of independent journalism: a guide | The Handbasket
- Consider independent news, consider supporting it too
Tracking NixOS option values and dependencies | oddlama’s blog
- I am excited by this, I have some scripts to do this, but it could be cleaner
Grandson of Reese’s inventor accuses Hershey of hurting the brand | AP News
- Breaking News: Fork Found in Kitchen
Meta Director of AI Safety Allows AI Agent to Accidentally Delete Her Inbox | 404 Media
- The irony hurts. It hurts so bad
Discord distances itself from Persona age verification after user backlash | The Verge
- Discord has been posting a series of Mea Culpa here, but it’s clear they are saving face but not producing any meaningful good changes yet
Why Combini May Become a Tourist Luxury in Japan | Unseen Japan
- This is SO BRUTAL to read about; these inflation reports are scary
Kansas Orders Trans Drivers to Surrender Licenses With One Day’s Notice | Them
- See also German Jews’ Passports Declared Invalid | Holocaust Encyclopedia
Jack Dorsey’s Block cuts nearly half of its staff in AI gamble | The Verge
- He really said the quiet part out loud here. We aren’t cutting because the company is in trouble, but because we feel we can.
Algospeak Will Be the Unaliving of Me | The Flytrap Media
- Same, hard same

Quote of the Week

Maybe today, Satan

This Week in Squirrels: 2026-W08

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 22:10:18 -0800

This week in squirrels…

Summary

A day off!
- I spent all of it streaming and then playing a game to disconnect.
Sleeping with the rain
- It’s been a deep, hard storming at night all week, and it’s caused me to wake up constantly. It seems I have enough trauma about the sound of water in the house that it’s impacting my sleep.
- I also have paired this with a lot various other nightmares to make a missed sleep soup. Seems my brain has a lot of anxiety to shed.
Replacing my headphone earpads
- I have had a pair of DT880’s for… what might be 15-20 years ago, back when I started for my first impressively six-figure job. They have rapidly become less comfortable. Then this week I noticed the driver guard was resting on the shell of my ear.
- I bought some 3rd-party replacement pads, and my old pads are 1/3 the depth of the new uncompressed fresh ones.
Brain Vacation
- My brain is vacationing a lot this week. I am trying to keep it present, but the snap back from the stress of last week is hard.
Streaming Upgrades
- In order to relax but still engage my brain, I have been doing a lot of stream work, learning to migrate chat and alerts to local systems, building more things into my streams, and adding more commands. I don’t want to overload my streams with stuff, but there are a lot of interesting tricks in broadcast software to get even better.

Books

Ayaka is in Love with Hiroko! Volume 1 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
- Yes, that is SIX starts, six out of five. This makes me want to change my scale of lesbian manga.
- The story is a bit quicker than I would like, but I do love that it isn’t dwelling on virginal blushes and eternally (in)convenient miscommunications. These ladies are trying their best, but they FAIL HARD in hilarious ways due to clearly presented traumas and misunderstandings. There are some extra twists, and of course, it hits us with a cliffhanger

Music

Skold vs KMFMD
- A friend recommended this to me. I shockingly didn’t like it. Many of the KMDFM albums that have Skold on them are some of my favorites, but I feel like the programming is thin, and Skold’s lyrics are kinda goofy, and not in the best ways that KMFDM used to do
Not My God
- Now this is great, Skold work. This industrial sound really tickles me, especially how slow and dark it is
Skold
- I never got into his solo work before, but I have been picking through his back catalogue now.
hemlocke springs “the apple tree under the sea.”
- This artist is new to me. I am still trying to get into it because before I could spend enough time on it, the album below dropped
Peaches “No Lube So Rude”
- This week, Peach’s new album dropped! This album has some great polish without feeling overproduced. Peaches really hit this one out of the park

Reads and Videos

Ars Technica Retracts Story Featuring Fake Quotes Made Up By AI, About A Different AI That Launched A Weird Smear Campaign Against An Engineer Who Rejected Its Code (Seriously) | Techdirt
- How Close Can AI Get To Writing A Techdirt Post? | Techdirt
- Retraction: After a routine code rejection, an AI agent published a hit piece on someone by name - Ars Technica
- I share a lot of Ars Technica articles because I am a paid subscriber to them, and have been for a very long time.
- But I don’t think this one can go under the bridge, that they used AI to falsify a lot of quotes and information, ironically, when posting an article about issues with AI.
- Their redaction is IMO embarrassing, and without the journalism and openness I expect from them.
LGBTQ+ Identification Holds at 9% in U.S. - Gallup
- I still find it to be bonkers that 1% of the US population is trans and yet it’s the hottest topic.
Texas Attorney General Announces Anti-Trans Crusade Against Binders - Them
- You HAVE to be kidding me. This is the dumbest thing I read all week.
How IHS is Responding to Terrifying Changes at Amazon - I Heart SapphFic
- I haven’t seen enough follow-up or more information about this, but as I mentioned in a prior post, this site’s pro-Amazon crusade is one of the reasons I stuck to Amazon and ebooks
Western Digital Has No More HDD Capacity Left, as CEO Reveals Massive AI Deals; Brace Yourself For Price Surges Ahead!
- The pain will continue until… the AI crashes, I guess
The Death of Spotify - Levi Hildebrand
- Ending Spotify is going popular on channels now
Age verification vendor Persona left frontend exposed, researchers say | Malwarebytes
- Discord is still catching Ls

Quote of the Week

“Free speech” is code for “I want to say slurs at brunch.”

This Week in Squirrels: 2026-W07

Sun, 15 Feb 2026 21:57:45 -0800

This week in squirrels…

Summary

Showstopper Failure at work
- Things went really badly at work. A worst-case kinda thing where the whole nomad cluster ate itself due to a hot-trash bug. And due to a series of poor choices it took down everything for a deeply unacceptable amount of time.
- We had a full recovery with no data loss, but we had to rebuild the world.
- As you can imagine, we have now stopped the world and are auditing all procedures, processes, and disaster recovery.
- This has meant long days spent addressing every gap and challenge that has emerged out of this, and some more fresh we have found.
Crashing out after work
- I canceled all my streams and have mostly been watching a bit of tv and wishing I could hack on some stream stuff, but my energy and desire to code things have been wiped at the moment.
- I accomplished very little reading or writing.
Four hours on Tyler Perry
- I watched a four-hour-long video on Tyler Perry and Black media. It was actually worth it.
Dusting off the decks
- I am doing some DJing and hosting for a friend’s wedding. It is already a little stressful to prep and get it all ready, but getting to help one of my besties on her day is so worth it.

Books

Rainbows After Storms Vol 8 ⭐⭐⭐
- This volume was more enjoyable than the last two because it wasn’t constant chapters of them fighting over nothing. Despite this, the series still feels stalled. Eight volumes of virginal blushes and eyes feel less like slow burn and more repetitive and regressive.

Music

KMFDM’s Enemy
- I am still getting used to the new sound
Jérôme Chassagnard’s “Hora Fugit”
- Brand new album by a favorite of mine for “chill industrial.”
EFF DST’s “incarnate.”
- For some reason, every time I listen to Chassagnard, I want to listen to the slightly harder EFF DISS
Snog’s “Dear Valued Customer”
- I listened to this through a whole major incident and the next three days on loop.
Ashnikko’s “Smoochies” & “Weed Killer”
- Sometimes I just need to tap my yandere bisexual disaster energy. And this is it.

Reads and Videos

Verification debt is the AI era’s technical debt – Kevin Browne
- This is so real. We have been seeing this at work with our security inbox, and I assume it’s going to get even worse as more people rely on AI.
- I like that this article goes so far past just technical, though, and is in everything we look at now.
- I feel like the article misses the most apt comparison of email SPAM. Email’s biggest flaw is that its cost to generate and send is a fraction of what it costs to process it, both technically and also by the people who receive it. And therefore, flooding people with low-quality content has led to the undervaluing and reduced use of email, since you have to wade through it.
- Now, AI is making it so the cost of generating low-quality and possibly problematic content is ultra-low EVERYWHERE.
- What is interesting to me is that GitHub has decided to chip in and talk about how they are trying to address that, so this isn’t a random blog post about this either Welcome to the Eternal September of open source. Here’s what we plan to do for maintainers. - The GitHub Blog
Debian Linux Is Going Through A Crisis - Brodie
- I have seen a few articles about this, but Brodie does a good summary of a lot of things I have been seeing. All of these are smaller issues combined, but together they seem that Debian is facing some severe structural issues, as Gen X and even some Elder Millennials are aging out of the copious spare time and energy to work on this project that has not been modernized in 15 years.
- I think it is embarrassing that Canonical hasn’t supported the downstream at all, especially for things like GDPR help when they have people they pay for that.
‘The Most Dejected I’ve Ever Felt:’ Harassers Made Nude AI Images of Her, Then Started an OnlyFans
- This is the kinda stuff that shakes my faith in people.
Anthropic says Claude could be misused for “heinous crimes” like chemical weapons
- Clearly, this will not go wrong. /s
AI slows down open source developers. Peter Naur can teach us why.
- another decent AI programming thought piece
Did Bad Bunny “Out Woke” Kendrick? - F.D. Signifier
- The term “gatchastapo” needs to be used and known everywhere now
Discord Voluntarily Pushes Mandatory Age Verification Despite Recent Data Breach | Electronic Frontier Foundation
- Discord is making big mistakes.
Microsoft’s AI-Powered Copyright Bots Fucked Up And Got An Innocent Game Delisted From Steam | Techdirt
- and I doubt they will do anything to compensate the engineers and teams who they impacted, in fact, they will just keep harming others.

Quote of the Week

Being a billionaire is the moral failing they try to tell us homelessness is.

This Week in Squirrels: 2026-W06

Sun, 08 Feb 2026 18:55:31 -0800

This week in squirrels…

Summary

Fighting the RAM eaters
- I had another incident of memory getting eaten completely by a rogue app, and when researching how best to deal with this, I found two things.
- The first is cdown/psi-notify: Alert when your machine is becoming oversaturated, before it slows to a crawl. I found it works amazingly to throw up a quick warning when things start feeling the pressure, not bogging you down with info, but telling you which subsystem is hit: IO, RAM, CPU, Network.
- The second is rfjakob/earlyoom: earlyoom - Early OOM Daemon for Linux. It is a basic way to configure a fail switch that kills based on my settings, so never kill my WM or terminal. Great for casual desktop use.
Fighting this NixOS post
- If you read these, you might be wondering where the NixOS blog post that I said I was going to write is. I have scrapped and rewritten it three times at this point, trying to figure out not only the tone but exactly what information would be valuable.
- I spent a few days this week approaching it from some different angles, and honestly, it was a great way to re-evaluate what information needs to be shared, what of it is me making words. and thinking about what it is actually difficult.
- In all of this research, I ended up doing way more research than I ever expected to do about why, issues, confusion points, and also inefficiencies and problems with Nix and NixOS.
- it’s still not done, but it’s CLOSER on its way fr
- If you have feelings or confusions about Nix or NixOS let me know. I am not an expert, but I am looking for the issues people are having.
The great Flake drop
- As part of my refactor and experimentation work, I tried twice and failed to implement some useful patterns to make using NixOS even easier.
- However, out of this, I did an overdue MASSIVE refactor of my flake, breaking apart so much more to give me a really good granularity and making things easier to find.
- After that came the biggest change. I finally de-flaked. The more I researched flakes and flake issues for the blog, the more I wanted to re-evaluate MY flake usage. So I did, and the results really speak for themselves pretty well.
- It’s not perfect, but npins has simplified my configuration a lot, and it’s also changed how all my various shells work in ways that may be less pure, but streamlines so much.
tired of the news
- I am just tired of it. I normally feel the need to stay informed, but that is slipping.
Spout2PW by Hoshino Lina
- It’s here, and I was able to use it for TWO streams with no issues.
- Spout2PW & OBS-PWVideo
- I packaged it for NixOS myself, and right now, I am using binary release hacking because building all of that wine code and everything in NixOS was looking like a beast, and I was failing to do it over and over.
- I hope that after a few patches on both sides, I can submit the NixOS packaging because I want everybody to use this
Bandcamp Friday
- It’s Bandcamp Friday this week! I scored A bunch of new albums AND some re-releases. It will take me a while to get through all these
- KMFDM’s “ENEMY” - Brand New KMFDM I talk about more below
- Caustic “Unicorns, Kittens, and Shit (2026 Turd Polish remaster)” - Remaster of my favorite Caustic album
- Razed in Black’s “Oh My Goth!” - re-release of an amazing maxi-single
- Sweeps, Luv Pug’s “Oregon Coast” - new Chillhop album
- Matt Kap “Lovish Original Sound Version” - 8-bit soundtrack to a game I am into
- Cervello Elettronico’s “Aural” - a new album from an old favorite
- Steve Roach’s “Sentient Being” - A new-to-me Ambient artist I have gotten into

Books

I Wanna Be Your Girl Volume 3 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- This has turned into one of the best dissections of gender feelings and also the difference between how you feel about yourself and how you want to be perceived. This has so many perspectives and approaches to the variety of experiences. I just wish most people could talk about gender at this level

Music

Royal & the Serpent
- Going back to some of my favorite 2021-2022 eps. Serious bad mental health music. And right now is a time for bad mental health. This is the vast majority of my listening this week: this artist’s EPs on loop
Hazbin Hotel: Season Two (Original Soundtrack)
- I needed a break from depressing and decided to pick this up. I didn’t really love the music in the first season, but the second one has a lot of bangers. Extra big shoutouts to Gravity. Will this get me into showtunes? Probably not, but it’s good.
Sneaker Pimps’ Becoming X
- I am back on this favorite of mine for no good reason, other than it’s one of my favorites.
KMFDM’s Enemy
- A new KMFDM album dropped! This one is moving away from their heavily compressed, kinda muddy sound they often used and opening it up a LOT. It’s also a well-timed bit of protest about a lot of things. I love hearing them experimenting more.

Reads and Videos

Tech is Fun Again: The Tech Monoculture is Finally Breaking | Jason Willems
- As somebody who now has a music player again, I feel this and agree. Let’s get weird and fun with tech and devices
Technocapitalism and the Bad Future of Music - YouTube
- This is such an amazing breakdown of the issues in the music industry, but I think the real value is talking about how our music consumption habits are changing and the fascinating “danger” of vanity music.
AI controls are coming to Firefox
- For those who want less AI in their browser, Firefox is finally making a single feature toggle instead of making people chase dozens of configs. This is a pretty solid choice, no matter which way you roll, imo. More apps should offer this.
Notepad++ users take note: It’s time to check if you’re hacked - Ars Technica
- If you downloaded Notepad++ between Sept and Jan, you got a free backdoor
Adobe Is Ruthlessly Killing Off Software That Animators Around The World Are Using Every Day
- My socials are LOSING THEIR MIND over this
I feel like these two links are in contrast to each other. There is a minimum time to code well, but we want to overcome it; when we lean into LLMs to do it, we harm our comprehension
- You can code only 4 hours per day. Here’s why
- Comprehension Debt: The Ticking Time Bomb of LLM-Generated Code – Codemanship’s Blog
Hypergrowth isn’t always easy I really feel the ops pain here and love seeing their commitment to transparency and openness.
The Washington Post Is No Longer Useful to Jeff Bezos While this article starts off feeling a bit long-winded about the author’s media background, the way it wraps up really makes an impact.
The Funny Money goes poof? Is this the precursor?

This Week in Squirrels: 2026-W05

Sun, 01 Feb 2026 23:06:44 -0800

This week in squirrels…

Summary

Supporting Other Musicians: Helping Senpai
- A music artist I really like asked me to review the mix on some of his new tracks. It made me squee. It was really great to listen and offer feedback, amateurish as it is.
Personal Creativity and Music Urges: Overdue for a song
- Because of the above and a lot of angst boiling up in me, I have been feeling the urge to spend a lot more time making music. I will have to make the time, maybe dedicate a day.
Brain no worky
- The week is starting with no focus or desire to get things done
NixOS refactors
- Since things have settled, I am taking the time to do some refactors and see if I can get to better patterns I can share.
- I tried a lot to do the dendritic pattern, but couldn’t make it stick.
Blogging Shift
- Since I have been feeling stuck on some of the final music posts and technically am doing research on the portable audio player, I decided to switch
- Yes, I am finally jumping over to the NixOS blog post series and am working on a few posts in tandem at the moment.
Tech Issues and Troubleshooting: iOS and IPv6
- The AppleTV once again started throwing up IPv6 announcements declaring a gateway and screwing up my network. Freaking apple is blowing me up and pissing me off so much.
Creative Tech Experiments
- I wanted to make my own tangea, and I discovered Motion Capture for making this simple animation in Typescript. It seemed a bit intimidating, but actually ended up being really quick for me!
- Photopea also ended up helping so much for quick editing assets for it, I even subscribed for a year. It was enough to get me to uninstall gimp and Krita.

Books

ONIMAI I’m Now Your Sister! 10 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- This milestone volume has all the major bits making a comeback (for better or worse), seven bonus chapters, and a fun self-referential 100’s chapter with silly service. For A victory lap of a volume, it is well done. I’m still displeased with some of the content in this manga, but it doesn’t cross any further lines.
Theres No Freaking Way Ill be Your Lover! Unless… (Light Novel) Vol. 5 ⭐️⭐️
- I read this book in 2024, and I cannot remember any of the romantic plot lines from this book or how the previous’ book (anime end) cliffhanger is resolved, so I decided to go back and re-read it. I was reminded why I don’t remember most of it. It’s filler that resolves nothing.

Music

Haujobb’s “The Machine in the Ghost”
- Oddly enough, I was never that huge of a Haujobb fan, but when “The Machine in the Ghost” stopped in 2024, I was a convert. This album hits me hard and deep, while not even being super harsh
Lyra Pramuk’s “Hymnal”
- I have been getting more and more into Lyra’s work. I discovered her right when her first album came out, and even though I feel so much of the Björk influence, the first album didn’t stick. The remix and her second album last year are working for me more
Monasterium Imperi’s “Churchtek Files”
- I don’t know what churchtek was before this, but this newer, more glitch sound from the normally ambient droning music from Monasterium Imperi gets me
Primus’ “Tales From the Punchbowl”
- Due to jokes about a game that has the god Primus, I started listening to all of my Primus catalog again, this album is still my favorite though.
Gary Numan’s “Dead Son Rising”
- This album has me stuck again. I repeat, this is Gary Numan’s version of The Fragile, and I mean that in the most complimentary way possible.
Razed in Black’s “Shrieks, Laments and Anguished Cries”
- Cleopatra is re-releasing Razed In Black’s back catalog, and it’s gotten me listening to my favorite band from the early 2ks.

Reads and Videos

Nix Binary Cache backed by Git
- This is SO cool looking, I am excited to try it
ICE Says Critical Evidence In Abuse Case Was Lost In ‘System Crash’ a Day After It Was Sued
- Fascinating! No wait, not really. Shocking how that evidence destruction works.
Software patches in NixOS for fun and productivity | Olivier’s log
- I, too, am lazy and like patching things
all he had to do was be normal about women for five minutes - YouTube
- The line about “queer content from queer creators, and it’s being used to uplift a bunch of straight white dudes” hurt me inside, and then it changes to being about these people extracting money from people they hate, of course.
FBI agents search home of Washington Post reporter - POLITICO
- Sigh
“IG is a drug”: Internal messages may doom Meta at social media addiction trial - Ars Technica
- Oh no, anyway
Tesla: 2024 was bad, 2025 was worse as profit falls 46 percent - Ars Technica
- “Oh no, anyway.”
Beware: Government Using Image Manipulation for Propaganda | Electronic Frontier Foundation
- The EFF is actually on point here.
What If Gay Guys Were Normal About Pussy? | Them
- Challenge impossible, gay men be normal about women and trans people’s bodies
Consumer confidence dives to lowest point in 12 years • Nevada Current
- TWELVE years? I am shocked it’s not running back all the way to 2009
Amazon cutting another 16,000 jobs
- “Amazon said Wednesday it will cut another 16,000 jobs, just three months after slashing 14,000 roles across the company in a broad efficiency drive. Amazon’s cuts come amid the trend of what some have called the “forever layoff, where reductions come in batches, rather than a single sweeping reorganization.”
- I need a visual diagram that shows the number of people cut from major tech companies in the last 5 years, because these numbers continue to be astronomical. How can we say the economy is OK with this?
Grok is the most antisemitic chatbot according to the ADL | The Verge
- This just in: a fork was found in the kitchen.
Amid Backlash, Massive Porn Platform ManyVids Doubles Down on Bizarre, AI-Generated Posts
- I am not into the term “AI psychosis,” but I have been following a lot of various articles and videos talking about how AI can amplify people’s unhealthy mental states and send them down a bad path, and this is just WILD.
- Oh, look, an article showing we are studying it How often do AI chatbots lead users down a harmful path? - Ars Technica
The New Baby YouTuber Thumbnail Meta Changes Everything
- Here is something absurd and also so true and funny
Best gas masks | The Verge
- I wish this were satire, but it is not. This is where we live now, listicals on gas masks
What would a trans genocide look like? A Tucson Holocaust educator says we’re already seeing it. | Q&A
- yikes
Microsoft stock plunges as Wall Street questions AI investments | Al Jazeera
- Oh, look. That thing we all didn’t want but said we were sure was gonna happen, but a bunch of people were like. Don’t worry
- Welp

Quote of the Week

meow

Discord

This Week in Squirrels: 2026-W04

Sun, 25 Jan 2026 19:32:41 -0800

This week in squirrels…

Summary

The state of the US
- With ~~ICE~~ the SS raiding houses with no warrants and shooting multiple people in the streets, threats of more raiding of countries, and the CIA in full force all over social media, it’s more important than ever to speak up, speak out, have hard conversations, and support the people who need it.
Cult of the Lamb
- A friend gifted me this game, and even with only the base game, no DLC, I am COMPLETELY hooked and just want to play this game.
- I have lost hours playing it with oomfies, and it’s really good to have something to decompress.
Missing Overcast
- Trying to listen to podcasts on my music player is difficult. I am completely spoiled by the “Voice Booster” effect chain Overcast applies. So many quality content podcasts have poor sound quality.
- I am drowning in bassy plosives and muddy voices and dynamics all over the place.
- I tried to download and install a 3rd party eq/effects chain but of course my mp3 player doesn’t support it.
Stomach woes
- My overall health is improving a little, but then I caught some stomach bug that had me appreciating how nice and plush my bathroom rugs are. It’s been touch-and-go for almost a week
Feeling stable with NixOS
- I am still having some issues with nixpkgs, but my actual NixOS setup is feeling stable enough that I don’t feel the need to constantly be installing or changing things.
- I spent a little time unifying my waybar/fuzzel/mako style setup since I left DSM, but it wasn’t much to get everything looking consistent and nice.
- I think my next step is finding a way to make the underlying configurations and changes more visible for my own sanity.
The Joys of an music player
- I have ended up toying with this a bit to try and make podcasts sound nicer, like on my phone, but otherwise… I plug in headphones, and it plays my music. I am really happy with it.
- It still has me very disconnected from my phone solely as a bonus effect.
- I did end up buying some new casual headphones. There is currently a sizable market for inexpensive 90 ’s-style over-ear and earbuds that deliver very high-quality sound at sub-50 and sub-20 price points.
- Both Kaoss and Moondrop have nice classic headphones, so I got a pairwith upgraded foam, and it’s a delight.

Books

Alter Ego Volume 1 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
- I hated the MC and LOVED the story here and how they told it. What was worse was that, in a way, I hated the MC because I was invested in seeing her not be such a mess.
Alter Ego 2 Noel & June ⭐⭐⭐⭐
- I kinda feel like four stars is a smidgen generous for this. This feels so much like a victory lap after the first one, keeping the self-referential style. Even though it tries, I can’t say it adds a lot to the story, but it lets you see even more of the things you want.
A Tropical Fish Yearns for Snow, Vol. 1 - 9 ⭐⭐⭐
- I wanted so much more from this, but I also don’t feel it was necessarily bad. I do believe it should have been three volumes shorter. There were just too many issues of the same thing over and over.

Music

Lauren Sanderson - SPELL IT OUT (Official Music Video) - YouTube
- I am so excited for a new album from her. Of course, she starts with being horny af. very on brand.
Carbon Based Lifeforms’ “Derelicts”, “Seeker”, & “Hydroponic Garden”
- I have been wanting something to help me relax, and CBL’s discography has LOTS of amazing ambient music that isn’t too eerie, a bit of a beat, and vocals really help
Poppy’s “Empty Hands”
- This brand new album from Poppy! This really feels like an extension of “Negative Spaces.” The whole thing was co-written and produced by Jordan Fish of Bring Me the Horizon, and you can really hear it. This is more of Poppy’s move into more metal, alt-metal, and all that. I don’t love it, honestly. I preferred more of the pop-metal of “I Disagree (more)” and the industrial-metal style of “Choke” and “Zig.” I appreciated the Evanescence and Kitty influences, but this is a 6 for me. Fans of Bring Me the Horizon will probably like it a lot more, though.

Reads and Videos

Disney did an Anti-Semitism again - YouTube
- I have been head nodding on FD more and more and more. I deeply relate to his commentary on being critical about media literacy, especially about how being critical of something is directly proportional to how much he likes it.
- I also nod along to how some people equate liking something from an entertainment standard needing to be equivalent to liking something from a moral standard. He says “equating artistic quality with moral quality” and “how liking that thing means something about them.”
- Generally, how much I dig into critiques on something is directly proportional to how much I like it.
- See also, me and my rants about the anime “100 girlfriends that really, really, really, really love you.” This show is irredeemably bad, but I also love this dumb show, 8/10
Party of One for Code Review! - by Kent Beck
- Another even more insightful article about what it’s like to be a professional developer and software engineer in this age of emerging AI, as well as already well-known problems with code reviews. I really like this, especially this line “I miss the back-and-forth with another human who cares about the code. I miss being surprised by someone else’s solution. I miss the social pressure to explain my thinking out loud, which always makes the thinking better.”
Milk Is Not $20
- There is a website that lives rent-free in my head. It lets you visualize the difference between the average household income of $1 million and $1 billion.
- The economy of scale is mind-boggling, even when you actively subtract that only a fraction of that billion dollars is liquid assets.
Microsoft gave FBI a set of BitLocker encryption keys to unlock suspects’ laptops: Reports | TechCrunch
- Ah, yes, the next entry in my series known as…
- sigh
How dare I feel joy when the world is burning
- If you feel guilty about this, this is a decent read. I really fight with this a lot, and how little I show up.
Bring Back Ops Pride - by Charity Majors - charity.wtf
- More amazing writing from Charity. It seems this will be more of a thing in the near future.

Quote of the Week

If people had any ability to enter self-reflection without prompting, a therapist would be a pretty rare job.

@onlyhavecans

This Week in Squirrels: 2026-W03

Sun, 18 Jan 2026 20:56:19 -0800

This week in squirrels…

Summary

Rolling back to my old DE
- In the end, I moved back off of DankMaterialShell and rolled back to my self-rolled setup, it just wasn’t sparking joy. The fraction section delay I had in the launcher is really my own complaint. DMS is really nice overall, but I like my trim little setup.
- Because I can’t just leave good alone I tool some of the things I liked from DMS and redesigned my waybar. I switched to Inter as my font and rearranged things a little.
Struggling with IPv6
- My desire to run all IPv6 with a ULA on the internal network with SLAAC+RA has been one of these moments where there is ALWAYS something that needs to be slightly tuned.
- This week, the way I had Nixos for static systems was broken, a minor configuration issue on the Nix side I had to hack on.
- Also, I am STILL getting issues with disruptive IP rotations on my Linux system. NetworkManager seems absolutely atrocious on this, for reasons that are completely unclear to me.
- It took an entire day of researching but it had nothing to do with my card or OH, and EVERYTHING to do with my Apple TV having some ultra old configuration saved in Apple Home and it was Sharing a Threads Home with an old ULA broadcasting a rogue RA that was causing network disruptions.
- I learned so much about RA and how it can also be so disruptive when you have a rogue server.
Is AI speeding me up, or a toy
- I have been trying to make it work for me. But it’s also a lot of time experimenting with a thing to do a thing. Not even experimenting with an output.
- I love learning a force multiplier, but I am a lot more worried about the time invested vs. the gains,
New Anime Cour started up
- Yay a new season! I hope this one doesn’t end up nearly as packed
Anxiety and stress
- My brain has been coming at me in the worst way, but I think I am starting to move past it. Let’s keep moving forward and doing the best we can.
Less time with my phone
- It’s been kind of amazing how getting a music and podcast player separate from my phone as persistently separated me from my phone. I just don’t care where it is most of them time.
- When I do have my phone, I am quick to start flicking through apps, but when it’s nowhere nearby I don’t bother for it. I have my music player and it makes the music and podcasts.
Gaming
- I normally am not that much of a video game player. Maybe more than the average person, but nowhere near “a gamer.” But lately there has been a handful of games that have me actively excited to sit down and play games. Usually one or two games a year pop up but it’s been a derth of games.
- Maybe this is what is helping keep me a bit distracted from the mess.

Books

Monster-Colored Island Vol 1 ⭐⭐
- I like a lot of the ideas and themes being explored, and the art is decent, but the choice to make the very sexy/horny sapphic romance thriller about middle schoolers is such a deal breaker. The lack of slow burn you normally see in yuri is a welcome subversion, but again feels off when you frame up 12-year-old girls like this.
- I gave it two stars because with a reframing, it could be engaging. Also these girls are not yuri, they are gay homosexual lesbians. I give points for queer rep.
A Yuri Love Story That Begins with Getting Dumped in a Dream Vol 1 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
- The “best friends being awkward and in love but neither knows” romcom genre has been a bit crowded lately, but this manga stands out due to amazing art and fantastic comedic timing. The expressions are often the punchline in the best way. This one doesn’t dance around “is this one way or both ways” and instantly sets both in the awkward flirting. The pacing is good for a volume 1, but given how much heat they have, I wonder how long we can keep this up without feeling weirdly dragged out.
Hope You’re Happy Lemon Vol 2 ⭐⭐
- This book is probably a four-star to the right person, but the sketchy art and characters drowning in secrets and half-truths, even when it’s obvious to their detriment, just isn’t holding me. This is a drop but I would recommend it to anybody looking for a love triangle body swap not stuck in horny tropes.

Music

Xiu Xiu’s “Xiu Mother fucking Xiu.”
- I can’t say I am normally enough of a superfan of Xiu Xiu to buy a cover album, but when I saw the track list, I knew I had to have this one. All the classic early industrial, synthpop, and early alternative electronic done in the eclectic style of Xiu Xiu
slowerpace 音楽’s “مشاغبون EP”
- I can’t read Hindi, so I can’t tell you what this album is called, but this is an absolute hit. The entire time I am listening to it, I am waiting for some Front Line Assembly lyrics to come in. It seems like they do a lot of remix-style work on other productions, and while everything here felt super familiar, there was nothing that jumped out as a sample from a specific song. This artist is very prolific, so I will be watching them for more of this
Monasterium Imperi’s “Churchtek Files”
- Spending more time in the ambient and chill areas, this random find reminds me of Archetect and so many other “post industrial” and witchhouse acts. It’s got the chants and the lush pads, and then all the amazing glitchy. Most of this artist’s back catalog wasn’t as glitchy or electronic, but this one is a huge hit with me.
Gary Numan’s “Dead Son Rising”
- Gary Numan is one of my all time favorites since I was young. Dead Son Rising is not one of the tops that I normally go for, but I had a CRAVING. The influences from NIN’s “The Fragile” are so thick it really feels like Numan’s take on the album, and I mean that as the biggest compliment.
Lady Gaga’s “MAYHEM”
- This is an album from last year that is WAY better than I give it credit for sometimes. It just doesn’t come to mind until it does and then I am stuck with the feeling of “HOLY HECK. When did she get this good?

Reads and Videos

These are NOT unprecedented times. - YouTube
- I love how well he explains some things I have struggled to get to words, especially when discussing how there would still actually be a difference between Kamala and Trump, because I have a lot of people in my circles who honestly believe that there is no difference.
Daring Fireball: Why It Is Difficult to Resize Windows on MacOS 26 Dyehoe
- This is one of the reasons I have been pushing back into Linux full-time. The words here explain something I have been struggling to put my finger on:
- “It’s a straight-up inversion of Steve Jobs’s maxim that design is about how things work, not how they look.”
MAGA Metal, Punk, & Goth Fans Are Delusional… - YouTube
- I laugh every time people act like only now Goth and Metal are “woke” or liberal, but then I remember the 70s and 80s roots and it was all about girls that look like boys and boys that look like girls.
Bandcamp bans AI music from the platform
- Bandcamp is still the goat, it seems
🚀 Spout2 works on Linux!!! 🚀Post by @lina.yt — Bluesky
- This is such an amazing accomplishment and I can’t wait to play with it
Code Is Cheap Now. Software Isn’t. — Chris Gregori
- Speaking about career anxiety and how things are changing, this is a read that pulled me in because it makes great points about where the cost of software is shifting.

Quote of the Week

The failure mode of clever is “asshole.”

Twitter

This Week in Squirrels: 2026-W02

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 20:38:40 -0800

This week in squirrels…

Summary

Just sick
- New meds, seasonal slick, and cranky are making this a hard start to the week.
- I was just looking up, and things got a lot worse.
New Music Player, the HiBy M300
- It’s been a mixed bag. It feels so nice and sounds lovely… SOMETIMES.
- Plugging a powered speaker into it adds noticeable clicks and hissing. The amp audibly clicks on and off fairly loudly when not playing something, and this will be the end of me, I swear
- It DOES drive my old 250 ohm studio headphones, which is cool.
- Setting it up was a touch more painful than it should have been. Life lesson: Don’t encode all your music to Opus to save space while preserving quality. HiBy Player and Poweramp both HATE opus files, and it will kill your battery, and all file loads will take forever.
- Once I loaded my flac files onto the device, it operated smoothly and almost flawlessly.
- Now that it is all set up it is working really well. I was really hoping we had at least maintained the usability and ease of use as the iPod, which oddly, we have not.
Lil bit of a streaming breakout
- I somehow overnight tripled my viewers? Not sure how. But somehow I had 13 whole viewers! Weeeeeee.
What happened to wish fulfillment?
- I have been noticing a lot more manga and anime obsessed with the idea of being so work-pilled and ground into death marches that even when isekai’d, the fantasy fulfillment here is to continue being a work slave, but being the best work slave a New World has ever seen.
- I am pro-work, but this feels like some sort of propaganda-level narrative about how the fantasies that children and young adults should have are being the best worker drone. And that’s kind of weird and depressing.
Speaking of Isakai…
- Is it me, or is a lot of Isakai is used solely as a cheap and easy way to introduce massive amounts of exposition and world-building upfront? I’m not saying all stories do this, but I tend to find there are a lot of them that could’ve been plenty fine, bog-standard fantasy, but they chose Isakai so that they could spend multiple chapters or episodes exposition-dumping on the person who just showed up in their world.
- There is one this season that feels even less subtle.
NixOS
- How do you see what changed? Today, my Flake update and Nix build did this.¹ I know things changed, but it tells me nothing.
- I think I am ready to compile several of my complaints over the past many months, find out solutions, and then write a blog post on how I overcame questions, hopefully to help other people’s on boarding
DankMaterialShell
- I’ve decided to try and give DMS a shot since it’s so well integrated with Niri, and they seem to be starting to move together.
- I have been doing the “piecemeal desktop” for so long, it was actually kinda jarring to disable and remove so many little apps that I use. Still, I wanted to try using it all in, since all my configurations are in Git, a rollback is fairly trivial.
- My initial impression is that it’s extremely impressive and well done, giving that full DE experience with a window manager.
- I am a little nervous since it’s another single dev project, but it’s not like so many tools I lived by were not single dev. It was just easy to replace rofi when I went to Wayland without uprooting my entire system. Once I get settled into this, it will be harder to switch.
- Of course, day one, I find a bug and have a bug report to submit after experimenting the next day. I am so… o v e r j o y e d ???? to be that person. haha. At least I am good at debugging and reports
- It has been a little frustrating moving over to it, lots of theme fiddling to make things work, even needing to switch off my rose pine for now. I prefer a pink hue over a blue hue any day.
- I think my least favorite part of this is how slow it is. Now, I want to be clear. It’s not SUPER slow or anything. But I am used to firing off some keybinds so fast that I am almost rolling keys. Yet when I hit the keyboard command for the launcher, there is a half-second delay where keystrokes fall into the app below, and everything has that with it
Back on fish… AGAIN
- Every three to four years, I switch back to fish to try it out, get annoyed by scripting syntax, and then bounce back to ZSH.
- but here I am again, now with fish 4.x. I really wanted to try it out since it seems to be back on a good roll since they finished the Rust transition.
- It seems a good bit faster, and the fact that I did a full replication of my zsh settings in fish doesn’t feel different yet; I just need to get used to the fishisms again.
Scammers and Solicitors as an Economic Indicator
- Have we studied the number of scam calls and solicitors, and how it corresponds to how we are doing?
- Because I get a minimum of two calls a day now from scammers, and I have to filter all my calls.
- And I am up from a solicitor a month or so to multiple a week. I finally broke down and bought and installed a " No Solicitors " sign. I personally find those things off-putting and unwelcoming, and I also expect people to respect my time. Just because you paid somebody to carpet my neighborhood doesn’t mean you get to interrupt my day.
How about no Ring
- Ring sent me an email reminding me that they are DOUBLING the cost of their plans, which really feels obscene for a security + monitoring already being $100. But taking it to $200? Honestly, mind-boggling.
- Inflation is one thing, but that’s not an increase I can imagine most people want to eat.
- Are we getting any new features for this price hike? Absolutely not.

Books

Lilies Blooming in 100 Days ⭐
- Starts strong but repetitive and shallow. The art is completely mangled into very low-res JPEGs, to the point where the text is almost unreadable, so it’s not great as an art book either.

Music

Ashnikko’s “Smoochies”
- Not my favorite of her albums, but it’s still really good. I appreciate her living out her horny phase. Also, the phrase “mermaids with hole” is forever burned into my brain.
Oklou’s “choke enough”
- This has been a great end-of-year find, and I have been spending more and more time with it.
Vylet Pony’s “Monarch of Monsters”
- This is my new fave, one I will come back to a lot. If I end up getting into prog rock, it’s this album’s fault.
usedcvnt’s “ultraviolet”
- A random craving came up for that 2020’s era jungle, and this is one of my favorite finds.

Reads and Videos

The small web is beautiful
- It IS, and we should have more of it.
Why the Renovate project uses GitHub Discussions as our triage process · Jamie Tanna
- This is a really awesome trend I am seeing that separates triage and discussing expectations from engineering tickets. When everybody who uses your system is an engineer, a single pool can be fine, but it allows for longer, more in-depth discussions without clogging up tickets to address them.
- I honestly love a lot of their verbiage and may look to implement it on other projects
Daring Fireball: ‘The Big Regression’
- I am a huge proponent of smart home and have quite the setup, but I 💯 agree with the note here about “Making possible the heretofore impossible isn’t axiomatically a win. It’s a loss if it comes at the expense of keeping the easy things easy, consistent, reliable, and intuitive.” I have tried way too many smart home devices that didn’t work as well as their dumb counterparts.
book red flags and the Male Reading Crisis - YouTube
- Reply content to rage bait isn’t the most engaging, but there are some great thoughts about “performative reading and ownership” and how we hold the books you read to a different standard than other media we ingest. The summary brushes into my standard “let people like things,” but also maybe we should rethink how we perceive people based on their media. Maybe we should just judge if you do or don’t read?
StackOverflow Is Absolutely Cooked - YouTube
- I am not celebrating the end, but I am glad to see one less “standard” place we send everybody that is deeply, deeply problematic and toxic. I appreciate the people who put in the good work and contributed in ways that uplifted everybody. But I hope some people realize that it’s not just AI; the user experience is more than a technical thing.
Toonami Abridged | Sailor Moon (Part 2) - YouTube
- This is infinitely better than Sailor Moon Crystal. This series is drop-dead hilarious
Hacktivist deletes white supremacist websites live onstage during hacker conference | TechCrunch
- Not all heroes wear capes
How I set up Android DAPs - YouTube
- A nice setup guide for an Android DAP. I didn’t use all of these, but still good tips.wb
Please Seek Help Immediately
- I have to agree, if that is the writing of somebody too deep on the “bicycle of the mind,” then I am gonna keep walking.
The taint bandaid has evolved into the taint zapper | The Verge
- … this will be used for kink
How the hell are you supposed to have a career in tech in 2026? - Anil Dash
- Still No Clue
Which Dispatch Characters Can Say 🚬: Part 2! - YouTube
- Would it be my week without posting a Blake video? No, I exist to promote him
The Tailwind drama - YouTube
- It needled me when it is framed as the first time AI actually laid off an entire team, but this is the REALNESS. This is what is happening to so many companies, artists, and people trying to make a living. This is yet another major point in the path.

Quote of the Week

TikTok is possibly the worst way of learning your news

D’Angelo

<<< /run/current-system
>>> /nix/store/ilh3yhjmkwcplmln01a6bncmi9rjj28f-nixos-system-Morgan-25.11.20260105.3c9db02
   
CHANGED
[U.] nixos-system-Morgan 25.11.20260103.30a3c51 -> 25.11.20260105.3c9db02
   
SIZE: 35.6 GiB -> 35.6 GiB
DIFF: 5.65 KiB

↩︎

This Week in Squirrels: 2026-W01

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 19:23:35 -0800

This week in squirrels…

Summary

Enshittification Etsy
- Etsy now prevents you from seeing shipping information on the phone unless you use their app. If I open it on my desktop (or use a fake browser), I can click through to get this, but they make it inaccessible on the mobile website for the only reason they really want access to your phone’s data.
Low Key Week
- I was sick, so having a quiet end of the year isn’t too bad
Happy New Year
- I spent mine with some people who are very special to me; it was very low-key, but that’s what I needed
My new favorite use for Claude Code
- using AI to write Nix code for packaging apps. I have been using Claude to add any missing applications directly into my own flake. It’s working shockingly well. Hopefully, I can upstream some of these, too.

Books

The Guy She Was Interested In Wasn’t a Guy at All Vol 3 ⭐️⭐️⭐️
- This one is improving for me, the characters are becoming a bit less one-dimensional and “shouty” in their personalities, while MC really starts to evolve and come out of her shell.
- However, this is one of those yuri series where nobody is actually gay, which isn’t for me normally, but this is a great run of this kinda manga.
I Love Amy Vol 1 ⭐⭐
- This volume has a lot of potential, but there are too many “beneath the surface” elements that we don’t get in the book. The author is always hinting at the next underlying motive or trauma, but never reveals them before moving on to the next one, making it hard to understand the characters. It’s also difficult to empathize with them because they’re all exaggerated caricatures. The volume also ends abruptly without resolving anything or leaving a hook for the next one, leaving it feeling incomplete.

Music

Sonic Mayhem’s “Metal Eden: Corrupted Memory Edition”
- I haven’t thought of Sonic Mayhem since the Quake days. This new album that dropped at the very end of the year is an industrial metal banger, the likes of which I haven’t heard since the Doom 2016 soundtrack
Oklou’s “choke enough”
- Going through more “best of” Albums from 2025, and this chill electronic pop album is indeed a great find.
Geese’s “Getting Killed”
- I am still listening to this dang album, seeing if I can make it stick for me, and if I can sink in right
JPEGMAFIA & Danny Brown’s “SCARING THE HOES”
- After how good Stardust was, I keep going back to this, which is also so good

Reads and Videos

What’s In/Out in 2026! #shorts #newyears #expedition33 #heatedrivalry - YouTube
- More in and out
Which Mario Kart World Characters Can Say 🏳️‍🌈The Word🏳️‍🌈 | A Definitive Tier List - YouTube
I was wrong about AI… - YouTube
- I am seeing this a lot more. The use of AI in content creation is causing way more harm to artists and the consumers than any of the help it is giving
From prophet to product: How AI came back down to earth in 2025 - Ars Technica
- A retrospective of all the promises made, and forgotten, where things have stalled, but more interestingly to me, where things have pivoted into. Reflecting on the hype and the reality we now have helps temper our expectations for where we are going.
How To Apply These Therapeutic Principles to Sexting | Autostraddle
- Not a long or deep article, but good things to think about.
ProPublica’s Reporters Have Gotten Pushback for Asking for Comment — ProPublica
- Imagine being accountable to the media and public as a politician. That sounds like some kinda democracy thing.
Software engineers should be a little bit cynical
- I am the person they talk about in this article, the cynic
The Honey Files Expose Major Fraud! - YouTube
- After working three years in the deals and affiliate marketing space, I 100% believe the content in this video is true. Just saying.
Stop Guessing: Debug Your Nix Code Fast | Nix REPL - YouTube
- omgosh I needed this video a year ago
THE AI SLOPOCALYPSE - YouTube
- I think about this a lot, every time I open something.
GitHub - jamesbrink/nxv: nxv — Nix Version Index. A blazingly fast CLI for finding any version of any Nix package.
- A great tool for finding just the right version
the most dishonest discourse on the internet - YouTube
- More talking about “rap fatigue”, a good breakdown.

Quote of the Week

Facebook is malware.

@LoganFive

This Week in Squirrels: 2025-W52

Sun, 28 Dec 2025 18:25:46 -0800

This week in squirrels…

Summary

Merry Chryster ~
- I don’t have a lot to say this week, but Merry Christmas, Solstice, Yule, and a few other things to those who celebrate.
- I spent time with the family
Supporting Switchers
- Lately, a lot more people in my circle have been making switches, like Windows to Linux and Spotify to Self-hosted.
- I have been working my fuzzy tail off trying to support and help those people, and it’s felt really great.
- While most of my non-weekly posts have been about self-hosting and buying music, I am diversifying to listening to music, daily driving Linux tips, and streaming on Linux
Working
- I didn’t take the holidays off this year, so I actually spent most of this week working on cleaning up things at work. It’s kinda nice when it’s so quiet
Passings
- This week, several people in my sphere passed away, so I may be feeling extra touchy. Of all the times to be hitting even more tragedies, this is a rougher time
Year Wrapped
- A lot of services dropped their wrap, and while I don’t use a ton of services that do that, and what I do, I often have tracking turned off…
- Bandcamp sent me its version of its wrapped, and I was floored when they sent me how much I spent on music this year. I knew it was a big number because I was rebuilding parts of my collection, but HOLY MOLEY. Wow. Ouch.
Health
- Better?
Mental
- Looking forward to getting past the holidays

Books

Kaya-chan Isn’t Scary Vol 3 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The story kicks up a notch, and even though it still features a weird creeper stereotype, it also humanizes Kaya in some good ways. Also, it’s creepy af
This Monster Wants to Eat Me Vol 5 ⭐⭐⭐
- The anime has now moonshot well past this manga, which poured some water on me
- This volume is where all the big reveals happen, there is a ton of moping, and some time where we learn about the monsters a bit more
The Moon on a Rainy Night 8 ⭐⭐⭐⭐
- Gorgeous art? Check. Drama around a girl being a picky princess? Also check. Character realizing she is gay? Check. Whole six pages dedicated to “screams in lesbian” moment? Check.

Music

Jane Remover’s “Revengeseekerz”
- This one topped a lot of year-end lists. I can’t say it hooked me like some other people’s stuff, but I hear what people are saying when they call Jane Remover the current bar of hyper pop.
Miffle’s “goodbye, world!”
- This popped up on a year-end list and has really found a spot for me as “most fun chill music” with its dreamy, warpy tape sound
Ninajirachi’s “I Love My Computer”
- Another one on so many year-end lists, I had to run it back. While amazing EDM in general, when I sat down with the lyrics, it hit so, so, so much harder
Geese’s “Getting Killed”
- I bought this out of sheer bullying into listening to it because like, who hasn’t talked about this album? If this were a CD, I would have traded it in at the used record shop by the end of the week. Not for me.

Reads and Videos

Bari Weiss 60 Minutes controversy: What to know about CECOT prison
“Yo what?” LimeWire re-emerges in online rush to share pulled “60 Minutes” segment - Ars Technica
- Remember back when people in other countries used to VPN into download American TV to get around government censorship?
How viral AI videos use racism to make money and sway political opinions
- I feel like we don’t talk about Digital Blackface and the problems we cause with sockpuppetry
Billionaires with $1 salaries - and other legal tax dodges the ultrawealthy use to keep their riches - Salon.com
- I always hated when people acted like the fact that Steve Jobs worked for a dollar was some noble thing. Eventually, everybody figured out the tax dodge

Quote of the Week

“As we enter the New Year, remember fear of making bad art is holding you back. Fear of people not liking your work is holding you back. Rejection is holding you back. You’ll make bad art, you’ll have people not like your work, and you’ll be rejected. Moving past it is half the job of being a creative.

@samanthamash.bsky.social

This Week in Squirrels: 2025-W51

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 18:25:46 -0800

This week in squirrels…

Summary

Donate to your favorite causes! Donating, even in small amounts, can truly make a difference.
- I have specific projects I support:
  - MusicBrainz
  - Signal
  - HomeAssistant
  - OBS
- Next year, I am probably also going to be looking at Niri and Lix as areas to focus on and help.
NixOS, once the Shine has worn off
- I feel like I have overcome most of the biggest blockers and issues that I hear most people hitting, but now I am starting to really brush into some of the “subtler” issues, or maybe the next level ones. A lot of these are specifically about NixPkgs’ pain points around size and community.
- This is enough to be its own blog post, but I’d rather only write posts about how to fix things. Callouts and complaining can stick in my daily notes.
- Annoyance, the first: While NixOS claims to have the biggest package repo, it falters in having the “least likely to have the latest package” available. It would be fine if this were some reasonable expected pin, but no, a LOT of packages are just not well-maintained.
- Annoyance, the second: I opened a PR for a package that supports Darwin and waited over four days for CI. Which is probably one of the reasons package maintenance is so spotty.
- Annoyance, the third: This is likely tied right back with the last one, but one failed build in the pipeline for NixOS stops all patches from coming through till it is addressed. So something can be merged but not released for days in my experience, even things like security patches for browsers. When I wrote this, nixpkgs/nixos-25.11 was 5 days behind, and nixpkgs-unstable just jumped from 5 days behind to 2 days behind…. I don’t think the reasons and the risks this can cause are well discussed or understood, especially when many people are running edge packages of high-surface-area apps like their browsers.
- Annoyance, the fourth: Self-packaging or overlaying apps can suck long-term. One of the things I need to master next is having a dedicated cache somewhere for all of my own packages, because the huge CPU is constantly rebuilding things or reading some app I added to the store manually because licensing is obnoxious.
- Annoyance, the fifth: Suddenly installing more duplicates of everything! Why? Because your build should be 4gb bigger. But no, seriously, WHY? Sometimes I do a basic flake update, and it’s -a thing- for no obvious reason. Now, on a general level, I understand that a build dependency had a patch that changed the build signature enough to change the sha of TONNES of other downstream packages. I remember seeing this spiral out with Chef’s habitat. We were all reminded why dynamic linking is so popular. But at least with habitat, it was easy to point at what was causing it and understand the chain. Nix isn’t communicating this well with the tools it puts in front of the users. It also doesn’t wholly make sense why one diversion needs three to six versions of a downstream package. This means I have SIX hash-only different versions in use?! really.
- Annoyance, not about packages: I am a long-time Linux user, and I got good at Linux by examining and reading everything, with curiosity about what all the files are, how they are set up, and how they change. NixOS abstracts the configuration state away to the point where, when I make an update, I can see there IS a configuration change to apply, but I cannot easily see it. I can make a change to Nix, compile it, and see the sha and date of the generation I created, but I cannot diff the states at all. I have built tools that start to do this, but they are super noisy, and it’s hard to parse what I am changing, which has risks when I am monitoring changes to my systems.
Niri, the shine hasn’t worn off
- I wrote about “a month into Niri” and thought I would check in again
- Honestly. The latest 25.11 release of Niri fixes the vast majority of complaints I could summon.
- My biggest problem is still that some multi-display window shortcuts tend to be something I flail at remembering. But this feels more like an ME problem, and I could fix this by cutting down the “help” screen to just the things I forget and using it more
- Scrolling is much more effective than tiling for my workflow, especially while streaming and working.
- And a separately controlled workspace per screen is heavenly
POSSE, and the next phase of my site
- I saw this post on Mike’s blong POSSE, Blog and Feed Updates | Mike McQuaid which got me reading POSSE - IndieWeb and Molly White’s writing which might be the orgin of this POSSE: Reclaiming social media in a fragmented world and looking at this app they just called POSSE Party
- This has me thinking, since this is more or less what I have been trying to do, but I am somebody who loves a framework. So I am going to be digging into this more and trying to implement it better with this
Physical health
- I’m still adjusting to new medications. Some results are excellent, but the downsides remain difficult.
Mental Health
- I did mention I am listening to Whitehouse this week, right? I am about there.

Books

See You Tomorrow at the Food Court ⭐⭐⭐⭐
- This is the wordiest manga I’ve ever read, borderline Light Novel amounts of wall of text. A lot of the humor is pretty subtle in the context of what is going on around the girls as they talk about a topic. Overall, I adored this, but it won’t be for everyone. I also feel like it reads better slowly, a chapter at a time, rather than trying to get through the whole story at once.
I Don’t Know Which Is Love Vol 4 ⭐️⭐️⭐️
- This volume started pretty amazing with some good jokes and fun scenarios. But some of the cracks in the story’s and characters’ ability to keep this fresh for 4+ volumes are starting to show. The MC brushes off some things that are hard to imagine, but we get a setup, hopefully, for a solid volume 5

Music

Vylet Pony’s Monarch of Monsters
- That’s right, three weeks later. Album of the year category. haha
Whitehouse’s Bird Seed
- IDK how I got onto it, but I needed some noise in my life, and who else sits solidly in the early noise scene like Whitehouse? It’s not emotionally healthy music, but maybe that’s where I am.

Reads and Videos

What Your Spotify Wrapped 2025 Says About You: Part 3! #shorts #spotifywrapped #spotify - YouTube
- Once again, this ends on a joke so funny I hurt myself
Stigma around end-of-year firings may have faded
- Job cuts this November were up 24% from the same time a year ago, per private market layoff data from Challenger, Gray, and Christmas.
- I hate this so much
- Empathy down, bottom lines up
Musicians are getting really tired of this AI clone ‘bullshit’ | The Verge
- I feel like articles like this also miss the point that Spotify is just as culpable in this, if not more, but they keep passing the buck. The distributor model doesn’t work here.
The Rise And Fall of Queer Cartoons
- I have been following this for a bit since I am the sort of adult that watches a lot of animated offerings, even sometimes ones directly for kids like She-Ra and Owl House.
- I even have the fabled Trans Episode of Moon Girl, even though I didn’t watch the show.
ICE Accidentally Publishes A ‘Watch List’ Of Immigration Lawyers, Which Is Definitely A Normal Thing For The Government To Do - Above the Law
- heck
Mozilla says Firefox will evolve into an AI browser, and nobody is happy about it | Windows Central
- heck
US librarians tackle ‘manufactured crisis’ of book bans to protect LGBTQ+ rights | US news | The Guardian
- heck
Riot Games found a motherboard security flaw that helps PC cheaters | The Verge
- I am super impressed by this and how it helps improve hardware security.
- But when I think about video games needing that level of hardware verification and security, I start wondering if we are solving the problem at the wrong level.
Micron says memory shortage will ‘persist’ beyond 2026 | The Verge
- The company that dropped out of the consumer market then said that memory prices and availability will be fucked for well over 12 months… got a 10% stock boost for it.
- This is where bubbles and boom cycles really hurt people, reducing access to goods being hyper-consumed by systems that are not generating revenue. See also crypto.
The “Ins” and “Outs” of 2026, According to Them Staff | Them
- I am actually super into lists, normally not my bag, but this one has my number. Let’s get at it.
“Can We Please Leave Politics Out Of Punk & Metal”…NO - YouTube
- I could copy this diatribe word for word to my blog, and it would be as good as my own words, people who lack way too much media literacy and don’t engage enough with their content.
- discomfort is the point

Quote of the Week

How to NixOS

step 1: don’t use flakes.

step 2: :blobhaj_reach: ???

step 3: just use flakes.

@meluzzy@woof.tech

This Week in Squirrels: 2025-W50

Sun, 14 Dec 2025 18:01:22 -0800

This week in squirrels…

Summary

Family Get Together
- We had a huge family get-together. I spent time with family I haven’t seen in 20 years. It was so amazing to see all that family and people I missed. No incidents, all amazing time.
Grindstone at work
- Claude and I have become tight pairing partners by demand. It’s improving my AI coding skills, but I don’t know if I love it. Still, it’s likely going to be an invaluable skill.
- All I know is my company is pushing the fuck out of it, so I’m getting on board and getting good at it.
Desk rearrange
- My microphone’s spider shock mount’s rubber is hitting the end of its life, so what better time to rearrange my entire desk and install the mic stand I use at my other desk. I rarely use the mic at my music desk these days, so why not have the super nice mic and stand for streaming?
Framework shipping resolved
- I have my modules and RAM from the framework this week. They contacted me several days later to inform me that my sales order was in a bad state and that I needed to resubmit my billing. After verifying they never completed the charge and resubmitting it, it went through, and they shipped it a day ot so later, and I had it quick.
- Disappointing that it was something we could have resolved weeks ago if they had just notified me.
New Meds, mixed outcome
- New meds are never fun; these took a bit to have some good outcomes, but they are starting to pay off.
Poor Sleep
- Between pages and some new meds, I have been losing hours every single night.
Missed Streams
- I haven’t streamed as much, but the streams I had were amazing, so I hope I can make it up in the upcoming weeks.
My First NixPkgs PR
- It’s nothing too special, but I committed my first change to NixPkgs with a straightforward version bump to a package. Every once in a while, I bump into an out-of-date package, so I am starting to submit updates.
- If this goes well, I plan to keep pushing a steady state of some of my fave apps I don’t yet have.

Books

I Won’t Let Mistress Suck My Blood Vol 1 ⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Very bog-standard monster fucker premise setup for the whole volume. The art and flavor of this didn’t stand out. We definitely end the volume learning this is going to be the “submitting to the monster makes me very horny” protag sort.
Love Bullet Vol 1 ⭐
- In the right hands, this is a 4-star manga. But having sweet emotional moments followed by full-page art of point-blank gunshots to the head doesn’t work for me at all. If you are super into JDF stuff and girls making heart eyes at each other, this is for you, but I can’t even get into this for the novelty.
Rainbows After Storms Vol 7 ⭐️⭐️⭐️✨
- This volume is a recovery after the last two issues; tiffs, an excellent time with the new B-Plot girl, and a severe test to the relationship that felt authentic, and some big feel-good moments at the end.
- This would be a strong 4 instead of three and a half because the fan service felt forced. I still tire of these two acting like the deepest blushing of virginal maidens after half a year of dating and smooches sessions.
Fired But I Maintain All the Software! (Manga) Volume 1 ⭐️⭐️⭐️
- This has a fun, if not weird, plot and good characters, but the art and tone are all over the place. The whole thing has an extremely “manic” feel to the comedy.
Rainbow! Volume 2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- This is the fantastic conclusion of the first rainbow volume. It’s really amazing and delightful for a YA queer discovery-and-trauma story. My only critique is that it could have come together a bit better and breathed as a trilogy. Gimma more haha.

Music

Vylet Pony’s “Monarch of Monsters”
- This is the only thing I have listened to all week, on repeat, over and over. It’s got me completely sucked in.
- This prog rock style grim dark concept album is just too good and too powerful for this time.

Reads and Videos

The f*** off contact page - Nic Chan
- I hate these so much. I find myself hitting so many roadblocks trying to get support these days, too. This article pairs well with a video I posted a few weeks ago that discusses this from the user perspective rather than the UX designer’s.
How the creator economy destroyed the internet | The Verge
- As somebody who participates in this and has friends who have their entire well-being in the creator economy, an exposé like this is both fascinating and scary all at the same time, especially when I read No Lies.
Software Estimation Choices | Mike McQuaid
- This one hits a lot
You Have Billions Invested In Generative AI by Woe Industries
- A good text-based game to try out
Libxml2 Becomes Officially Unmaintained After Maintainer Steps Down
- Yikes
Scaling NixOS with “Import All and Enable” Pattern | Kobi Medrish’s Blog
- an interesting pattern I’d like to try
Flakey: An All-in-One NixOS Framework with Flakes
- another interesting pattern to try

Quote of the Week

Philosophy is a great way to figure out why you’re unhappy, but a terrible way to fix it

Twitter

This Week in Squirrels: 2025-W49

Sun, 07 Dec 2025 21:53:54 -0800

This week in squirrels…

Summary

low energy
- Sunday, I was hoping to be so productive, but then after my stream, I got stuck, and I didn’t even post my blog!
- Things did not pick up energy-wise because of the following tasks
Underwater at work
- After taking the week after the summit off, I came back to tonnes and tonnes to catch up on… but sadly not enough on the project I was working on.
- I ended up having to take two days to do massive refactoring and fixes to get the project back to where we wanted it over a week ago.
Bandcamp Friday!
- I have so many albums I have wanted to buy in the last two days, but NOOOOOOOOOO it’s Bandcamp Friday this week, and I have to wait with great anticipation!
- It reminded me of having to go out to the record store or Hot Topic and find your stuff for a month or so.
Freaking Framework
- Seriously, what is it with them and shipping? After my laptop arrived in mid-November, I immediately placed an order for more RAM and some additional modules. 5 business days with expedited shipping has turned into 15 business days and dead silence.
- Of course, now ram prices have blown up in the last week, so I assume they decided to silently never ship my order because they can resell my order for way more while never actually acknowledging the money I already gave them.
- After emailing them, they told me they have to escalate it, but the escalation team is all out for two weeks (in December), so…. the heck?

Books

I Wanna Be Your Girl Vol 1 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- A book about trans experience and queer friendship building that I rated five stars? Yep. This first book is perfect: sound art, amazing, well-informed stories. Feel good with the pains? Yes.
I Wanna Be Your Girl Volume 2 ⭐⭐⭐
- I took a whole star off because the ebook version of this is misprinted, so all the pages are arranged backwards, making it a pain to read
- The story is also more fragmented as we pull in a lot of characters. Some of them don’t feel as well-written as the initial cast. But overall, there is still some absolutely amazing character development from the now leading quartet of girls.

Music

I didn’t listen to much new music because Bandcamp Friday was coming up, halting music sales for me for a few weeks.

Danny Brown’s Stardust
- I have been lost in how good this is
spellcasting
- Still into this fun and goofy
Vylet Pony’s Monarch of Monsters
- Somebody recommended this to me, and I expected some underground EBM or hyperpop. Still, I ended up with this huge rock album full of experimental and heavy story elements, and I was blown away. This one is a shocker of how deep and powerful it is. I am legit shocked this hasn’t blown up more.

Reads and Videos

Which Dispatch Characters Can Say 🚬? #dispatch #shorts #rpg #gamer - YouTube
- It is all correct
how to quickly escape a dopamine hole - YouTube
- I have been in a bad dopamine hold
I’m getting really tired of AI art. - YouTube
- Same
How to Install and Configure Quickshell (2027 Edition) | Part 1 - YouTube
- I am leaving this for myself later because I have been eyeing QS for a while.
Building the PERFECT Linux PC with Linus Torvalds - YouTube
- It seems everybody this week is quoting SOMETHING from this Linus^2 video, so I watched it.
- Something that jumped out at me is something I preach a lot. Both Linus say early in the video that they never use the latest hardware, but always buy at least one gen back, including all the video editor workstations at LTT. And I feel this is so extra important for Linux.
- Also, the push back on “in ram ECC” in DDR5 and how he won’t use a system without ECC for the same reasons, stability, and RAM degradation.

Quote of the Week

Do your best & Advocate for the rest

Shelbizleee

This Week in Squirrels: 2025-W48

Sun, 30 Nov 2025 19:11:59 -0800

This week in squirrels…

Summary

Relaxing
- I took this week off. A lot of it was taking care of some backlog tasks and trying to relax with my hobbies.
- And of course all the manga backlog you can see below
Medical Time
- What is the best way to start a holiday? The doctors! Blood work! New medications! Yay! Aging.
Tuning a model in VTubeStudio
- This week, I learned so much about tuning a VTuber model. I had done it before, but there was always something wrong.
- I watched all the tutorials I could and after a lot of hacking and realizing a lot about tuning the “sides” of the controls, all is fixed!
- I can still do better but for now it’s a huge improvement.dis
All the streaming
- I have done so much streaming this week.
- And of course redoing my chat and everything else.
Merry Thanksgiving
- One of my favorite holidays.
- What better time than right now to get out and spend time with friends and family around food?

Books

If I Could Reach You, Vol 2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The manga shifted onto the B couple, which I like way, way more than the central love triangle. Their relationship is toxic and all messy trauma, but it is way more touching
If I Could Reach You 3 ⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The setup from last volume culminated in an entire book of people squirming and acting shady, and the B couple got nothing.
If I Could Reach You 4 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Finally, cards are coming out onto the table, and it’s going down, omg. Also, having more of the B couple helps the book
If I Could Reach You 5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The payoff and drama are in this book. I am once again left wondering where the story is headed, but I liked this as a dark ending.
If I Could Reach You 6 ⭐️⭐️
- The drama was good, but it feels way too late to burn half a book on deep backstory
If I Could Reach You 7 ⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Might as well finish the series, right? Not necessarily a HEA but more of a… huh, yeah, ok.
Wolf’s Daughter a Werewolf’s Tale Vol 2 ⭐️⭐️
- I like the premise of werewolf as a girl’s coming of age, but this one is too stiff and dry for me.
Whisper Me a Love Song 10 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- This book is a victory lap from the last arc finishing up, testing out new couples and their drama, revisiting thr “main” couple in max sappy romance service, and introducing some extra hot new drama. The writing and pacing are perfect for me here.

Music

Xiu Xiu’s “Girl with Basket of Fruit”
- When I mention looking for an entry point for an established band, this is the kind of album I think of. This is still very weird and eclectic, but it has some grooves and a catchiness that I really like
Danny Brown’s “Stardust”
- I haven’t heard anything from Danny Brown in a really long time personally. This album is fantastic, though. The laundry list of underground hyperpop producers here can’t be beat.
Spellcasting
- This is something I found through a stream, and honestly, it’s the most eclectic mix of clownish electronic cartoon music. It bounces between playful, weird, and glitched out, which is extremely my vibe. The earlier stuff is even more eclectic in a way I love, but they just dropped a new album

Reads and Videos

X’s messy “About This Account” rollout has caused utter chaos | The Verge
- When I started seeing all of the “Major MAGA accounts are all psyops” only in the least reputable news sources, I started wondering if this was even stupider than people are saying… and of course, it’s the fact that X can’t get a good feature out.
America’s Polarization Has Become the World’s Side Hustle
- It’s fascinating, though, that there IS a significant global market for making rage content off of Americans. In every conspiracy theory, there is some truth, and this is it. There are accounts out there cashing in on political rage.
David Chisnall: “For those who are skeptical that AI is a bubble, let’s look at the possible paths from the current growth” | Hachyderm.io
- A fascinating econ breakdown of the various scenarios of the US market based on how AI costs evolve. I always start clenching up when I see that the incentives are not to improve the technology, but to stagnate it in ways that make it less accessible to people and keep power in the major players.
My ‘I’m Not Enron’ t-shirt has people asking a lot of questions… | The Verge
- Yikes
Every Decision Has Three Costs: Time, Focus, and Optionality
- This is something I think about a lot for work.

Quote of the Week

Windows 11 is an ad delivery platform disguised as an operating system.

Jason Evangelho

This Week in Squirrels: 2025-W47

Sun, 23 Nov 2025 10:06:27 -0800

This week in squirrels…

Summary

The rainiest drive out
- Several coworkers and I all carpooled out to the work meetup, and it was an unexpectedly soaked drive. It felt like it went quickly since I had company, but seven hours of intense rain was a lot.
- At least I finally got some significant and extended mileage on the car, and with all the rain, it didn’t get too bug-covered.
Company Meetup
- We have these two to three times a year, and it’s been getting difficult in 2025. I had my first miss for the spring one and drove up to this one.
- The energy in this one was a bit weird for me. I think it was a combination of the fact that many of the engineers missed this one and many people slept very poorly for various reasons.
- We didn’t even have our regular closing ceremonies, where we talk about the next meetup and how the meetup has gone.
- I don’t want to talk about the content of the meetup on my blog, but it was good to sit down and have face-to-face conversations about where we are going. I love some of it, feel anxious about some of it, and am outright displeased about some of it, but isn’t that everything work?
All the Snow
- We went to a very snowy place, and I was able to see snow for the first time since I was in my single digits.
- I learned how to drive down a mountain in ice and snow for it. It was touch-and-go and scary when I started sliding down the road a few times, but nothing bad happened.
The longest drive back
- We took a new way back on the way home, and it was about the same time, but there were almost no places to stop for most of it, and it got a bit rough in parts, but we made it.
Weird week
- For the whole week, I didn’t have much reading time, watching time, or music time at all. I am not one to put headphones on in a room full of people I can talk to, so the rest of this list is short of more profound thoughts, just sharing random news.

Books

If I Could Reach You, Vol 1 ⭐⭐⭐
- The art is decent enough, and the emotional writing is strong, so much pining. The book feels as if it were a single volume about a teenager’s unrequited first love; it would be pretty good. But there is a bit too much “teens with crushes on adults,” which makes me uncomfortable. I am going to give the next book or two a read, but this is not going to stick for me.
If I Could Reach You 2
- Starting this and unsure about it.

Music

All of this music I listened to, more or less, in the car while driving people around, so I will have more thoughts later.

Swan’s “The Seer”
- I think this is one of my least favorite of them so far
Seeming
- I have been going back through Seeming’s fantastic catalog in preparation of the new album. I still think “Talk about Bones” might be my favorite track, but generally, I think most Seeming works best in Album form.
Cynthoni’s “LIFELESS MISERY”
- This one caught me off guard immediately. The dreamy synths and harsh crunch over breaks I had come to expect from Jvne were gone from the start. Instead, the album dropped into some hard D&B and dark, evil samples. Parts of it reminded me a lot of some of their earlier doom/industrial works. The album does eventually slide into some familiar sounds on the last track but is the most significant stylistic divergence in a long time.
Snog’s “The Last Days of Rome”
- My favorite Snog album that still manages to be as relevant as ever. Honestly it feels like the more time passes the more Snog becomes relevant.
Xiu Xiu’s “13” Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto With Bison Horn Grips"
- If I were going to get into Swans, why not more experimental rock groups? This album is more fun and engrossing than most Swans albums. I also checked out “Women as Lovers,” and it seems that moving back in their catalog, I find things that catch me even more.

Reads and Videos

Y’all mind if I complain for 15 minutes? - YouTube
- A well-done rant on how “stupid” the push to smart and apps is making everything. This is the sub-theme of my blog.
- There is a large tangent about how bad customer service and storefronts have become that I cannot agree with more; I have been struggling to buy things locally in stores.
Lix | Announcing Lix 2.94 “Açaí na tigela”
- Yay! It’s not stable yet, but I want it.
State Department Reverses Course, Says Trans Passports Will Be Valid Until They Expire
- I wanted to share this and hope this keeps.
Highlights from Git 2.52 - The GitHub Blog
- I am so pointlessly into Git updates
Framework 13 PipeWire Speaker EQ (without EasyEffects) · GitHub
- The framework 13 sounds rough on a lot of surfaces, so here are some tips on how to adjust it without always having an extra app open
GitHub - kavishdevar/librepods: AirPods liberated from Apple’s ecosystem.
- This is the nerd talk of the week. Somebody created a fully open way to unlock all of the AirPods’ features. I think this is amazing, but I worry about how quickly Apple will break this
Days 201-300: Every anti-LGBTQIA+ move the Trump Administration has made
- For those who don’t pay attention to the assault on queer lives right now, here is a rollup for the last 100 days.

Quote of the Week

I see a lot of people saying, “We need to have a serious conversation about this.” This means they want to spend 4 hours arguing about it, then all agree that absolutely nothing can or will be done about it.

JA Westenberg

This Week in Squirrels: 2025-W46

Sun, 16 Nov 2025 00:19:11 -0800

This week in squirrels…

Summary

Dang, all my articles are dark and rude af
- It’s just a bunch of angsty news. It’s things I still want to share and raise the mindset of, but I also really want to try and balance it out.
- I am going to try to spice up a lot more fun things, especially from now on.
New laptop!
- I am back on a Linux laptop after so many years of Apple laptops! I purchased the previous-gen AMD 7040 Framework 13 to sidestep any issues with new hardware support.
- The laptop feels and looks great except for the black transparent bezel and modules that I purchased as part of my “build-my-own” setup. I would love the return of 2k transparent electronics. Still, in this case, the accent is inconsistent and jarringly out of place against the beigeish-grey of the rest of the laptop. I purchased a dbrand artist series skin for the whole notebook, and it gives it a fantastic look and feel. Dbrand really did some excellent work on these.
- It was exceptionally cool to have my Nix and dotfiles setup pop up and have 90% of my setup done in moments. I needed a lot of laptop-centric tweaks and experiments, but it would have been that anyway.
- It took a little with Nix and experimentation to get my power profile and keyboard set up correctly. My initial battery cycles are going well. Not as good as I have seen claimed at 4-5W idle, but my 6.5W idle is still a good start, and it’s not ramping up during basic work and browsing.
The Streamer Bust
- I have been sharing a lot of little news and videos about changes at Twitch and YouTube, and general streamer news, and all of this is starting to culminate into a bust, or market correction of sorts.
- I am listening to more and more people talking about how the general economic struggles are combining with platforms’ aggressive changes in how they count viewers (a metric people get paid on). The skyrocketing costs and plummeting returns are making streaming an unviable career for many.
- This also contributes to rashes of burnout over people who became highly public entertainers five years ago during the pandemic and were unprepared for the amount of high personal drama, social expectations, begging for money, and general turning of their hobbies into their careers.
- I am well into double digits with the people in my circles who have already slipped off, officially announced their graduation, or are discussing their 2026 graduation.
A month on Niri
- It’s been a month on Niri now (Oct 10th), so I’m writing my feelings after having used it on a few different types of systems.
- My biggest impression is that the configuration has a great need for supporting includes. Sharing the same config across three boxes is a little painful since the screen layouts are so different. However, this DOES work because I can configure my screens by their name and ID. This means I can group all screen setups into a single config without conflicts.
- Overall, it feels so much better than a tiling window manager. I have a lot of history with i3/Sway, but it was always clunky having to constantly resize all my windows, especially with apps that didn’t handle it well. And I never had a great experience on a smaller laptop. Being able to spawn windows and have them scroll off is nice on my desktop with three monitors, but heavenly on my laptop with the 13-inch screen.
- The independent per monitor workspace is also nice for when I keep side monitors in one context, and shift the context of the center. This is really amazing when streaming, so some things are always there, and others get swapped in and out
- The number of keyboard commands for navigating and moving windows is still not FULLY under my fingers, which is weird. I need to get faster at moving between screens
- The amount of graphical flair is nice, moving windows has a pleasant but not over-the-top ZWOOP effect, especially when consuming a window into a column, something I have gotten very fast at. Also, the borders, transparencies, and such are just enough styling.
- In fact, the spawn and consume is so much faster for arranging columns that select then spawn. I don’t know why that works better in my brain.
- My only real complaint so far is that it’s easy to lose track of windows or forget to check in on one. I haven’t found a good way to do an activity view, so if I have a background task or conversation going on, it can get REALLY backgrounded. Now, for an adhd head that might actually be a good thing, more focus, less letting me multitask.
- Setting up a window selector in Fuzzel was not optional, though. Niri doesn’t have Alt-Tab or any native way to jump to a window, so a script using some niri msg commands works fine.

Books

If I Could Reach You
- I swear I will get through this, but I am very much not liking the plot or MC. I am hoping it turns around.
My Goddess is Precious Today Too Vol 1 ⭐️⭐️⭐️✨
- This volume has some of the best overall short stories with intertwined couples, unfortunately hampered by not-so-great art, some hard-to-track paneling, and rough writing or translation.
- I actually consider this a recommendation, even if I can’t rate it higher because of the combination of art, paneling, and writing all leaking against it.
- I don’t usually do half stars, but I wanted to give this more than three. Because the stories themselves and some of the jokes really are great.
Aoi is too hot to handle - Blooming Love ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Short, adorable, and awesome to see how much the artist and translators improved

Music

The Blak Dog’s “Fragments”
- TBD re-released Fragments with a remaster and some extra tracks. I hadn’t bought Fragments when it came out in 2025, and putting out a five-year-old album as a remaster feels weird, but right now this album hits just right, so it’s been at the top of my list.
Ori and the Blind Forrest
- It’s been a chill and soundtrack week, what can I say
fur:trash’s “LOST DOG”
- After ten or so EPs, fur:trash really went above and beyond, going past more rote Dariacore and making an absolute end-to-end banger of an album.
Swans
- I am working through a selection of the Swans catalog to try to find what my favorites and less-than-favorites are
Chillhop Timezones Japan
- This one stands out a lot from most of their other ones, but I really like it

Reads and Videos

The old and new view on human error - Nick’s Blog and Digital Garden
- Not a blog post, but an interesting rephrasing and approach to human error. I wonder whether we can use this effectively to address and fix the underlying system, or if it is too much of a divestment from people’s responsibility for their participation in it.
spotify is being sued 😳 - YouTube
- Is anybody shocked Payola still is a thing?
The algorithm failed music | The Verge
- I think this is an absolutely fascinating look at Spotify and some of their internal thought processes for maturing their algorithms
Easy Sing-Along - Hazbin Hotel S2 | Prime Video - YouTube
- This is such a fun and excessively gay song. This song interlude was probably the worst writing of the season because it felt so jarring and shallow. But then also when a show becomes unapologetically gay af, we have to forgive some clumsiness.
PewDiePie is right about AI - YouTube
- Of course, last week I sat and opined about AI as an engineer, and then days later, Theo dropped a big video about how to better use AI and when we are not doing ourselves any good. He basically re-runs all my talking points and then some. I swear I will stop maxposing Theo when I stop agreeing with these takes.
YouTube is Quietly Erasing Creators - YouTube
- A fascinating dive into the periods of how YouTube has worked and how it has changed what creators succeed and what fail.
The War Crimes of the Stardew Valley Community | An Unnecessary Analysis - YouTube
- Is my blog now a reshare for Blake Jennings? Yes, and I am ok with it. Spend 40 minutes not watching or reading stressful things
Let SSH retry connecting for you - Sindastra’s info dump
- This is not even an article, just a fun snippet reminding y’all that SSH has dope features
Ranking My HRT Changes - YouTube
- Every time I tell somebody about the various changes I went through when I transitioned, they are so shocked, but like, here is a fun tier list about them

Quote of the Week

Cynicism: A distrustful, suspicious posture toward human nature that assumes people are motivated only by self-interest. A worldview that treats sincerity as naïve and integrity as optional.

Cynicism ensures that trust never forms. Trust is the soil where community grows. Community is where accountability becomes possible. And accountability threatens the entire foundation of white supremacy.

For white men in particular, cynicism is sold as strength. As intelligence. As leadership.

But the truth is: cynicism is isolation.

Kim Crayton

This Week in Squirrels: 2025-W45

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 23:19:49 -0800

This week in squirrels…

Summary

Back on meditation
- I have been pushing to start my day with meditation again, a quiet 10 minutes to start each day, with my favorite old meditation & bells app Enso.
- Meditation is so hard to do, but the longer I do it, the more improvements in my state of mind I see. It pays off more than I sometimes give it credit for.
- It is still a surprise Enso still works on the iPhone; it’s ancient and not really updated much at all. But I won’t replace it until I have to, because it is as much of an app as I want for a meditation session.
- I am hoping to get back up to 20-30m soon. Still, meditation isn’t about urgency; it’s about building a mental muscle.
NixOS, Drivers, Power Management, and … maybe not NixOS
- The continual battle of mine with NixOS has nothing to do with the last of LSB or writing Nix code, but what has appeared as the lack of optimizations and patches that seem to exist in many other distributions.
- I am having problems that boggle the mind when considering that I have had far more issues with 6.12 on NixOS than both older 6.8 and newer 6.14 on other distributions.
- But I have found some tests and hints that it might not even be my Nix box. Big egg on my face if true, but it would be weird switching to nix broke my router or something.
- I also found that once I manually audited the hardware and options and set up power management, even in performance modes, I am getting far better power utilization and fewer issues.
Trying to be a better streamer
- I think most people say this, but being a [good] streamer is a lot of work in the background, a lot of time playing with assets, making things, learning how to improve, making things, and buying too much stuff. Oh, making too much stuff, hopefully making it.
- We always used to joke that furries are the modern patrons of the arts, but they have a new challenger with streamers.
jolars/tomat: A Pomodoro timer
- This is something I have wanted since I left macOS; it’s just enough of a Pomodoro timer that runs as a service with a good bar integration and sounds.
Feelings about using AI for work
- My employer is going hard in on AI. Things are tight and stressful, and being more efficient is the name of the game. It has gotten to the point where the CTO threw down the gauntlet in Slack with the unambiguous message to all the engineers, “The TL;DR is: if you can’t find the AI helpful when coding, then it’s likely the problem is you.”
- I have been leaning into the AI because I want to stay with the curve of tech even if I have apprehensions, but I still have concerns™. These aren’t unique concerns™ I have heard them reiterated by influencers like Theo, but ones I feel are worth spending time writing out in my own words.
- It feels like AI isn’t helping me as much as it is helping the company. I can use my pre-existing skill set to guide the computer to increase output and velocity to the point where I can no longer remain fully engaged in learning the work’s underlying systems and intricacies.
- I am reviewing and working on the code that I am making with AI, and I use it more than for writing code. But the most efficient way to learn and reinforce knowledge isn’t reviewing; it’s implementing solutions. One of the most important lessons we learn in school is that doing and showing the work builds expertise and wisdom. Nobody goes from a Jr to a Staff engineer reading code. One increases their skill set by going through the process of implementing concepts, even when it feels rote.
- If we let ourselves outsource the process of implementing and learning how to learn, we atrophy those skills. The question then becomes: can we maintain or grow when we are not the implementers but are delegated to the position of mentors?
- Now, I don’t want to be entirely doom and gloom and decry where things seem to be going; I still see a lot of value in some areas of AI in business tasks and operations in particular. Some of these things are areas where I am actively deriving value. But in our zealous excitement, I worry about overusing a tool.
- I also want to acknowledge that this is a feelings diatribe and I am no thot leader. But from past experience, I’ve learned that technical tools rarely come with guardrails and can be used in ways that cause significant problems down the road. One of my biggest challenges is determining whether a tool or method is something we should do, not just whether we can do it.
- I also know that the human mind loves shortcuts and will take every shortcut we give it, and I also know that consequences don’t always immediately fall into our lap; it’s slow, and then suddenly all at once.
- This is long enough to be a blog post on its own. I could expound on more of my thoughts if I did, but for now, I want to leave it as this pool of thoughts, maybe to rewrite later once I have thought more about it and talked to some other people, too.
Some of my favorite uses of AI, though
- Not one just to be a negative Nancy, I am also collecting my favorite and more valuable uses for AI.
- Writing one-off shell scripts for reports & bulk one-off tasks: If I am not going to use it more than once or twice? Make Claude write a shell script. Then I can polish that up in moments and run it to get my report. This is one of those areas where Claude can make it 80% faster than I can, and then I can get the 20% to make it work well quicker than it can.
- Documentation, let it write documentation, then delete HALF of what it wrote because it overwrites technical documentation.
- Set it on the “make the unit test pass” game.

Books

Hope You’re Happy Lemon Vol 1 ⭐⭐⭐⭐
- Nobody be shocked, I like to get into body swap/gender swap stories from time to time.
- This one was way better than many I have read lately, even though it has some parts I am not sure of in the long term. It has all the weak and overplayed tropes of a body swap. Still, it doesn’t completely mire itself in them, and it doesn’t get excessively horny about it.
- Some of the core parts of the story are about cheating and lying in a relationship, yet it comes at it with the nuance of a chainsaw to start.
If I Could Reach You
- I got three pages in and I already feel like I am not going to like this one.

Music

Cult of the Lamb Soundtrack
- This is more playful than creepy, maybe even spoopy.
Purity Ring’s “Another Eternity”
- Their new self-titled album is good, but this is my favorite album of the synth-pop group
Leroy’s Dariacore
- This is not my favorite Dariacore, even if it is the originator of the genre, the copies I have are just a bit too low bitrate and grainy, maybe on purpose
Björk’s Vespertine
- Sometimes I gotta listen to a Björk album on loop, this Thursday was Vespertine.

Reads and Videos

The Big Short Guy Just Bet $1 Billion That the AI Bubble Pops
- Fxck
AI executives rebuff questions about valuations
- Fxck
SCOTUS Rules Against Trans People’s Passport Gender Markers In Shadow Docket Ruling
- Fxck
Musk Tesla pay package of up to $1 trillion approved by shareholders
- Fxck
Microsoft is plugging more holes that let you use Windows 11 without an online account | The Verge
- Microsoft is doing its best to prove that they have enough people locked into its ecosystem that migrating to other systems is not possible for the majority of its user base
Generative AI is fueling an existential crisis in education | The Verge
- I actually appreciate this article, not because it’s just blaming AI for things. Still, it goes into how it is accentuating pre-existing problems. We need to stop brushing off the issues AND the underlying causes.
72% of game developers say Steam is effectively a PC gaming monopoly | TechSpot
- I find this fascinating from the thoughts about how we actually end up with monopolies even when ones legally don’t exist. There are plenty of game stores, but that matters little when somebody manages to steal enough mindshare to become the de facto.
- I appreciate and benefit a lot from the work Valve does with Proton and ArchLinux, but am so very mindful that I shouldn’t grant them too much grace for how they impact others.
Ikea just made the smart home simpler — and a lot more affordable | The Verge
- Hype! I am very excited for more local push for home automation and less IoT crap
Automattic Inc. Claims It Owns the Word ‘Automatic’
- You can hear my eyeroll from space. I have been following this solely because I like the tea.
Meta is earning a fortune on a deluge of fraudulent ads, documents show | Reuters
- If the punishment for a crime is a fine, then it is only a punishment for those who cannot easily pay the fine.

Quote of the Week

People with no skin in the game give confident advice. People with skin in the game say, “It’s complicated.”

JA Westenberg

This Week in Squirrels: 2025-W44

Sun, 02 Nov 2025 20:51:27 -0800

This week in squirrels…

Summary

IPv6 + Docker
- Since reloading my server, IPv6 has been broken in some unique and fun ways. Almost everything has been around my ULA+SLAAC RA configuration.
- And then Docker was blackholing packets coming in on IPv6 routing to containers. I learned this is a new Moby feature which is just breaking some things. I moved all my network configurations out of engine.json and into my Docker Compose file, and it fixed SOME of the issues.
- External systems routing in IPv6 to containers still doesn’t work in the exact same docker-compose and router setup, but at least that internal network traffic can route and track ipv6.
Sway
- Am I WM hopping? No, I promise, I swear. It’s not a hop; I was just uhhhhhhhhhhh switching to Sway to compare a few weeks on Niri. It’s pretty trivial to switch back and forth, so back to the experimenting.
- I lasted exactly 1 evening on Sway. I didn’t even get like a moment into my work day before I was like… I have WAY too much going on rn to play with this. Also I don’t think I can go back to how it counts desktops.
The curse of the Realtek rtl8125 & NixOS
- For all my time using Debian on my server and Mint on my desktop, I never had a single issue with my Realtek RTL8125b 2.5Gb NIC cards. However, since I switched to NixOS, it’s been a nightmare, and I’m not sure why.
- Are there a lot fewer kernel hacks and patches pre-applied? I am using a lot of the nixos-hardware module, but it’s not as mature.
- I also didn’t realize I had to set extra options to get all my non-free firmware blobs.
- Even with all this and forcing the upstream Realtek driver, my network hard stops working without any errors or messages; I don’t even see an official disconnect or packet loss. It just takes a little sleepy break long enough to disrupt everything. I am now deep into tuning a lot of module load settings and disabling power management on them.
- I would like to go back to everything working, but it’s a mess.
WM Tweaking
- Let it never be said I don’t absolutely love and adore using a window manager. For the longest time, I used an open box with a bunch of custom menus on my work computer, only to eventually switch to an i3.
- In the last few years, I got into Sway, but then went back to using a full DE to stop me from spending all my time tuning, tweaking, and fiddling
- But then I saw Niri
- Niri feels the most at home and makes me the happiest, but I am back to using a WM, and that means everything needs to be set up.
- It’s been two weeks since I went to Niri, and it’s been a RIDE of tuning config files and trying to get everything back
- But now I am back to solid, I think, and I pray to all heck I can just be happy with this and stop touching it. I love the filling and theming, but I also know it’s a time sink.
Work stress
- I don’t want to get into the details, but things are extra extra stressful at work. I have been very on edge and burnt out, and the latest news is that many people are involved.
- However, we have some discussions going on, and we can get through them all.

Books

The Anemone Feels the Heat, Vol. 1 ⭐⭐⭐
- This is a re-read because I forgot so much of this. In the end, it’s weird and toxic, but the fact that she only takes one volume to get off it. I do really like the art.
The Anemone Feels the Heat Vol 2 ⭐⭐⭐⭐
- This manga is actually getting better. I love the ultra-dramatic gay person who is not getting her way and has to make everybody’s relationship all drama. The fact that they are getting on with the ties quickly is making this enjoyable.

Music

The Body’s “I’ve Seen All I Need to See”
- I never thought I would buy an album on the recommendation of a Verge article, but here we are in 2025.
- This album is noisy, harsh, and aggressive.
Leroy’s Dariacore Trilogy
- I didn’t even realize that this is a lot of the origin of the Femtanyl sound. A bough quality but an interesting mix of mashup and hyperpop.

Reads and Videos

Common Pitfalls When Adopting Shape Up (and How to Avoid Them) - Ryan Singer
- I don’t talk about work stuff often, but Ryan Singer wrote a new blog post that outlines just about every issue I/we have had with Shape Up and adopting it. It’s a good, quick read
As social media age restrictions spread, is the internet entering its Victorian era?
- As someone who grew up with the very early internet, it is fascinating to watch the internet and regulation turn into such burdensome regulation and lockdown. This phrases the reflections in a Victorian era, which I find amusing, but I nevertheless have an additional question.
- Will this conservative era of restricting major platforms drive people back into the weird, distributed, small structures of the internet or create two internets?
‘Death to Spotify’: the DIY movement to get artists and fans to quit the music app | Spotify | The Guardian
- I hate to think of anything as “Death to” or “A Product Name Killer” but I am glad to see more and more people looking to the next phase of music, whatever that is
Andrea Fomera: Stop Giving Harm a Microphone
- Can a week go by without me side-posting shitty Ruby, man? No.
- However, of all the things I would recommend to people, this is by far the most, mainly because this is written by a transgender person and centers their experiences and how centering people who do harm has explicitly caused problems.. AND it offers real actions and solutions
Black Christmas Crafted Feminist Horror
- This dig into one of the great early classics of a genre touches on some of the more fascinating times like the 70s, 80s, and how horror was designed for times like these. Absolutely worth the long watch.
Backups - You only want them once you need them
- I post a lot about restore systems and backups. this is a nice quick jump in on what is and isn’t.
clipping.: Tiny Desk Concert - YouTube
- I love clipping. and this is probably the greatest Tiny Desk I have ever seen. This whole rig is something else and the turntablist they brought in was something else. Daaved looks so awkward the whole time but he still smashes it.

Quote of the Week

None this week.

Buying Music in 2025

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 19:31:37 -0700

Recently, I wrote about bandcamp and the dangers of not backing up and why I buy music. In this next of the series, I want get into how I actually get music right now.

A few things before we get started…

First, this is just my options and what I like to do.

Secondly, all of these options offer fully DRM-free music files, no proprietary formats. This isn’t about kracking or anything.

Finally, this isn’t a post about piracy or however you wanna call it.

This is a post about about the ways I spend my money (hopefully as directly as possible to artists) to download music I can use however I see fit, whenever I see fit… i.e., actually buying copies of music.

Now that we have gotten that out of the way let’s talk about

Where I Buy Music

Top Pick Bandcamp

The best way to buy music currently… if they have it.

Format: Too many to choose from (but I recommend FLAC or MP3 320)

The Good:

(Usually) lets you listen to an album several times before you buy
Stream your music right from their page… for now
Big Money to artists
All the formats you could want
Excessively HQ files, some even fancy 24-bit

The Bad:

Very few major artists (but you would be shocked by who you will find)
Their discovery is ruined these days.

The Ugly:

Artists can reupload and edit albums after they are published. What version is up now? who knows

Pick #2 iTunes Music Store

Yes, this still exists, but BARELY. You have to open up Apple Music, go to preferences, enable it, then go to the new icon… and GOD FORBID you mistake iTunes Music Store for the Apple Music subscription.

But the quality, selection, and price make it worth the annoyance.

Format: M4A 254

The Good:

M4A is well supported outside of Apple and has decent quality
Amazing catalogue with albums and singles impossible to find elsewhere
The best for international releases I have found

The Bad:

The tiny preview snippets are embarrassing in 2025
How Apple puts the album cover isn’t supported anywhere, so I have to fix them all manually.

The Ugly:

You have to use their “Apple Music.app” which is a tyre fire
The store is slow and sluggish, and does not have multiple tabs
lots of download problems requiring several app restarts and re-downloading

Pick #3 Amazon

Format: Variable Bit Rate MP3

The Good:

Second largest mainstream catalogue to iTunes
Everybody loves an MP3 file

The Bad:

Just like Apple, they do everything they can to funnel you to the subscription service
It can be hard to get to the MP3 pages even when you know what you are doing
Least quality files off of everything from this list
Half a dozen clicks to buy and download an album

The Ugly:

Amazon
Artist pages cannot tell between multiple artists with the same name.
When you click play on a track to preview it, it shuffles the current album and plays random tracks

Pick #4 Direct from Artist

This has been such a tyre fire of bad experiences. I really wish I could endorse this more. I really, really want to. But the facts of the matter are that I have bought music from the following artists directly, and only once has it gone well..

Gary Numan: No complaints
Aphex Twin: More expensive than anywhere else, and charges based on quality
My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult: All files are raw WAVs with no tagging. I had to FLAC and tag myself
Nine Inch Nails: paid a massive 100% cost of the album to shipping to pre-order a CD that showed up two weeks after the album came out. And it didn’t even have a jewel case, just a cardboard slip.
Lady Gaga: initially never delivered, had to contact support
Chance the Rapper: Tracks omitted from the album and renumbered with no disclaimer

Formats: ??? It depends

The good

Most money to artists
Sometimes the only place to get an HQ version

The Bad

Inconsistent with what you get
Prices all over the place
Buggy app stores
Pages sometimes do not say what format you are paying for
No preview before listening

The Ugly

Incomplete versions of albums
Good luck finding anything but the latest album
Welcome to a dozen mailing lists

The New Place I am not Sure About: Qobuz

I have bought exactly THREE albums from Qobuz so far to give it a try. One thing I like is that they are claiming to have tonnes of albums from major labels in lossless formats.

To try it out, I bought a Nine Inch Nails album after realizing one of my very old MP3s had a glitch.

Then I found out they have some Orbital singles that are not on Orbital’s Bandcamp.

I am not 100% ready to recommend them, but they might be the pick below Bandcamp, again, if they have it. My issues are that they are the most expensive of all, and I don’t know how aboveboard they are yet.

The Fallback: Used Media

Sometimes you can’t find a digital copy of music for reasons.

Something like Discogs or my local Zia Records suddenly becomes amazing. I can pick up a good “play copy” of an album. Play Copies are used albums that are in good condition, but not good enough to appease a collector.

Then rip it like it’s 2003!

For Macs try: dBpoweramp
For Windows: Try Exact Audio Copy
For command line nerds: Try Whipper

Segue: File Quality

Should anybody care about FLACs or 24-bit audio? Well, I don’t know about y’all, but I don’t want to say everybody should, but I have my reasons.

I prefer FLAC files because they are 1) Uncompressed, 2) An Open format

This means they are of the highest quality I can get, and being an open format means I never have to worry about listening to them because all software can use them freely. The standard and libraries are openly available¹.

I care about having uncompressed, high-bitrate music because when I stream it to my phone or computer, it’s often encoded in formats designed for streaming, like Opus. I would rather have a copy of the original, high-bit-rate, uncompressed version than a copy of a copy with artifacts of artifacts, possibly with more artifacts.

It’s not the biggest thing in the world; I still buy plenty of Amazon’s midaf mp3s and enjoy them. But if I can get better, I will.

Segue the Second: Backups

I brought this up in the last article, but for the love of everything that is holy, don’t only have backups, have tested restores.

Licensing and BS mean that where you bought a file doesn’t mean it will still be there when you come back, because you deleted, mauled, or lost something.

Finally: What about Discovery?

Spotify got popular because it was amazing at shoveling fresh new music into your ears at an astronomical rate.

So what to do?

YouTube is where I check out new music most of the time. They will recommend you lots of stuff; they have great music critics, reviewers, and talking heads, and when you find a song, it will often link to a link tree page that shows all the places you can buy an album or song.

Bandcamp lets you “follow” artists and entire labels to get notified when new music drops, so once I discover a label that puts out music I like, I get all their mailers and new releases.

Many players can “scrobble” all your listening to ListenBrainz. ListenBrainz is a part of a Wikipedia-like service for cataloging music and releases. ListenBrainz can provide you with playlists of recommended music to check out on YouTube or streaming platforms. So far, I really like what it’s been sharing with me. This raises some privacy concerns, but since it’s an open group trying to build an open and free music service rather than drive shareholder value, I have fewer concerns.

Also, having music nerd friends to talk to helps.

Wrapping Up

Whew. This was another big one!

My next and final post in this series is about how I actually self-host my own streaming library, along with some suggestions on how you can do it at all skill levels.

You can listen to FLACs almost anywhere EXCEPT Apple Music; they don’t support it, even though there is no technical or legal reason they shouldn’t. Mostly just because they made their own closed ALAC format. And be careful with ALAC because most other players won’t support it. ↩︎

This Week in Squirrels: 2025-W43

Sun, 26 Oct 2025 23:53:48 -0700

This week in squirrels…

Summary

Family Time
- I had a fantastic day with my sister and niblets on Sunday. We originally planned to go all out together, but things fell apart when the vehicles had a bad time. Still, we ended up staying in and chatting while catering to the kids.
- It’s something my sister and I haven’t really had in a long, long time, since I usually see her in the context of full family events.
nix-darwin
- It took two more tries before I was able to get a nix-darwin that I liked, and I am now moving the last of my Darwin systems over to it!
NixOS blog post
- I am working on this NixOS blog post still. Instead of going off the cuff, I have been collecting many people’s posts to make sure I am writing to address the issues they have.
- I see a prevalent thread of (1) the onboarding being a hot mess, mostly because most of them start with oversized flake setups, (2) there are a lot of resources focusing on everything you can configure and manage with NixNix, and less on “what brings most value”.
- I am reminded of my long career with Chef-Infra™ and the lessons I learned about not trying to stretch a tool too far. Nix, like Chef-Infra, is a tool for generating idempotent definitions of a final state, and that tends to be a super sucky tool for lifecycle management and can be slow and clumsy for rapidly changing state
time off computers
- In travel, conference, and family, I spent more time off computers in four days than I have in months. Good lil reset
Anime
- I am struggling to keep up with all the shows, but I will not give up! I finally got a free evening to sit down and catch up a bit.
- In the end, I am dropping things judiciously and trying to keep up
Reloading by fire
- Sometimes we make mistakes. Sometimes it tests how well we use our configuration management and how good our backups are.
- While experimenting with nixos-anywhere and seeing if I can pre-configure the hardware-config, I missed a flag. I wiped out the entire NVMe drive of my NAS and Docker host. Big oops
- Luckily, while I hadn’t set up everything in Nix yet, I still had everything in Ansible that I could migrate to NixOS. I had some issues with boot and IPv6, but it only took half a day of experimenting to get it 90% of the way there.
- It’s still not 100%, I am having some networking issues and instability, but once I pin some drivers and chase down some IPv6 RA ULA+SLAAC nuances, I am hoping it all clears up.

Books

Curses & Cold Brew ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- This one really sucked me in with tension and flirty heat. It’s written in a way that kept me engaged and wanting more with the mystery and “cozy” style.
- Why are all these fall books “cozy”? What makes the “cozy”?
- The book is not without some glaring flaws. It really ignores some huge ethical quandaries it raises, forgets about all the consequences brought up in the beginning, and spends a lot of time setting up the following books at the end, and trying to set hooks. Maybe that is what makes this cozy, no consequence, just hookups.
- I didn’t appreciate how much this book relied on you to have read the first one, while also gesturing a lot to a paid story behind Patreon. To get all the heat and tension between these characters, you have to have already read a few other works.
- For all my whining, I really liked it, yet probably won’t read any more from these two since they are leaning too much into “read our Patreon stories to get the buildup of this relationship.”
Rainbows After Storms Vol 6 ⭐️⭐️⭐️
- This is better than the last volume, but this series is falling off pretty hard.
- While this had some progress and evolution of the relationship, it felt like this was stretched more than a filler season of Naruto.
The Moon on a Rainy Night 7 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The volumes are only four chapters long, but the author makes each chapter a whole story on its own, which is very welcome; they don’t need to rely on cliffhangers.
- The amount of growth and progress on display as all these girls grow up is breathtaking in this volume.
- This author has a knack for really showing off some of their trials in impactful ways.
- Also, this is dropping some hints that this is starting to shift from “subtle hinting yuri” to like… are they gonna try and hook up fr? But maybe that’s how you keep the yuri hook dragging.

Music

BBNO$’s self-titled
- I have been getting into BBNO$’s singles a lot lately. It’s not exceptionally technical or complex, but it is fun and kitchy, and solid party music.
- I don’t exactly love how in 2025 we are back to 2005’s “get money fuck bitches” music. Even the songs about him having ADHD boil down to all the hoes he bangs and getting paid. I’d love to hear something fresher than a Caucasian Ludacris in my pop rap. But every generation needs its own, and this one’s still catchy and fun. At least he does flip SOME hypermasculine tropes on their head. Progress?
City Girl’s “I don’t know why I feel ok right now, but it’s nice”
- I am so jealous of her and want to be there with her for real.
- This is such a nice chill reprieve of an album. A lot of vibes and influence from “In Love with a Ghost”. If you like high-production chill hop, this is a must-have for the collection
Ashnikko’s “Smoochies”
- Here we are with fucking bitches, but the bitches are of all genders. It’s hard not to compare this album to BBNo$’s since they came out on the same day. I don’t think this one has the same production value but the lyrics and messages are far better.
- Yes, it’s twisted, but also “mermaids… with hole” is a line I will never forget.

Reads and Videos

Synology Reverses Policy Banning Third-Party HDDs After NAS sales plummet
- Seems like this is becoming more of the way of the world, companies enshittify, customers push back, and companies fold and change their mind…. or customers don’t push back enough and companies get another inch.
Ring’s CEO says his cameras can almost ‘zero out crime’ within the next 12 months | The Verge
- I know I am harping on this a lot, but just wow. A private surveillance state is the goal.
Cisgender Boy Forced to Play on Girls’ Sports Team Because of Birth Certificate Error | Them
- Sighs and eye rolls
Is 67 just brain rot? - YouTube
- A PhD in linguistics breaks down not just the origin of 6-7 but what “brain rot” represents on a sociological level.

Quote of the Week

“user engagement” and “addiction” are the same thing, measured from different perspectives -JA Westenberg

This Week in Squirrels: 2025-W42

Sun, 19 Oct 2025 18:59:11 -0700

This week in squirrels…

Summary

Holiday
- Indigenous peoples’ day! I spent the whole thing being a flop and trying to hack on packaging cinc-workstation in Nix for… reasons, I guess.
Streaming
- Sunday’s stream was so huge it took up way, way more of my day than it usually does. I think I went ill at 4pm and needed hours to decompress
NIxOS
- Still way too deep in the fiddle and hacking on it. However, I do think I am starting to be over the hill, where things are approaching “just works.”
- A CERTAIN piece of software is the worst. I eventually got the chef workstation fully working after approaching it from a whole new angle.
Niri
- It feels like I am already hitting the “smaller little touches” point with my desktop, though, which is nice. Maybe I can get past tuning in less than a week these days.
Travel
- I have work travel this week and I have an unduly amount of stress about it.
- I get that “they want you to feel unsafe when you leave the house is the whole point” but it doesn’t change the fact that the pressure is there.
Vegas Airport
- After all the warnings I got for the TSA, it turns out that does not apply to the TSA PreCheck; they fully implemented the new face & ID scanners, and that, combined with the traditional walkthrough metal detectors, meant I spent longer waiting for my cold brew.
- That didn’t make me immune to issues, though. After boarding and getting settled in, we found ourselves on a “traffic control tower shut down ground stop” that went so long we took off after we were supposed to land at our destination. It’s not the worst of problems, but when there is no air on the plane, it sucks.
OpSec
- This week, I was reminded that “trust” is not good opsec. Trusting that somebody in a community that has rules and norms of confidentiality will not turn you in the moment you provide too much information is not going to pan out.
- I was exposed as being part of a group through shared Discord servers, and this person felt it was perfectly fine to disclose this because they have different needs and wants.
- The irony of this is how much I brought up to a friend that I was concerned about this vector a lot, and it’s why I used a lot of per-server profiles in Discord.
XO Ruby
- XO Ruby was a fantastic event with tonnes of delightful speakers.
- I love any event that gives me things I want to bring home and talk about with the team.
- I unequivocally recommend the final Austin event of the year if you can make it.
- The lunch out on the town was absolutely amazing as an idea sicne we could all see some San Diego and chat as we wandered around and afterwards I spend dinner hanging out with several people from the conference as well, learning a lot of these people are all connected to other friends of mine.
- The last talk was a webinar in from one of the lead devs of the Hanami/Dry/ROM project talking about how they are looking at trying to reposition themselves since rails and ruby i becoming more and more of a toxic environment. I was curious if ANYBODY was going to address the issues and was a little disappointed nobody did before this.
- I did end up buying a lot of good books due to one talk though and I always love a talk with references

Books

Otonari Complex Vol 5: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- I didn’t like a lot of the messaging that this manga ended on around gender, exploration, and growing up. But it didn’t turn out toxic or problematic per se. It felt like this, Donald, a little too much, but in the end, he really nailed the landing, which is what matters.
Brewing Up Bedlam (Magic and Mishaps) ⭐⭐⭐1/2
- This book just never jived with me like the first book of this series. I don’t have exceptionally strong critiques of it, but it also struggled to grab me and make me excited to turn the page. Still, it’s a solid sapphic paranormal romance.
Curses & Cold Brew In Progress
- Does picking up a sapphic paranormal romance/mystery as my next October read make me basic? Well, if so, get me my pumpkin spice latte
- But seriously, right away this book had the tension I felt I was missing and had me turning pages.

Music

Venjent:
- This guy has built his whole brand on singles taken from sampling videos he finds, but he is well above and beyond a meme musician. Even without the videos, he has a sound that leans so heavily on a Prodigy influence with his D&B, and it’s just bangers.
- Also, you can buy his whole catalog on Bandcamp for a British Pound, but I recommend giving him more than that
- His latest track that dropped this week, I think, is one I really needed
SADIVA’s “As Prescribed”
- I really loved SADIVA’s last two beat tapes, and it’s been a while, but this new one does not disappoint.
- There are a few weird sample choices, though, but it’s still pretty solid
Dorian Electra’s “Flamboyant”
- I found the deluxe version of this on Bandcamp, and it’s been amazing to have an even more extended version. I can tell why some of these tracks on the deluxe got cut, but as someone who loves this album, it’s a treat to have more.
Run the Jewels’ “Meow the Jewels”
- I don’t care if this is a “gag” album; it’s a damn fun time.
The Prodigy’s Music for the Jilted Generation"
- When I listen to a lot of Venjent, it makes me want to listen to the Prodigy.

Reads and Videos

Wombat’s Book of Nix
- A well-updated community resource on Nix
The Illusion of Independent Thought
- I will leave this one entirely as an exercise to the reader, but this is something I think about a lot as somebody who tries to read and take notes on the internet.
Venjent - Take Your Own Advice
- I mentioned this above, this is what got me all on a multi-day long Vengent train, this is a track I could use. - - Amazon’s Ring now works with video surveillance company Flock - Ring cameras are about to get increasingly chummy with law enforcement - Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock, a network of AI cameras used by ICE, feds, and police - RE: Replacing my Ring doorbell, I was right on the mark on where things are going.

Quote of the Week

How to fail: #1 Run out of money.

Karl Weber

This Week in Squirrels: 2025-W41

Tue, 14 Oct 2025 21:27:11 -0700

This week in squirrels…

Summary

Journaling meta
- This one is getting posted late, and has a lot of unanswered questions for myself.
- I have a lot going on I am not willing to post about, but hopefully it ends up to be good stuff.
Streaming
- I had an extra amazing stream to start. I hadn’t streamed in a whole week, yet still had a great one, with a bunch of fun chatting and serious hard gaming.
Next Actions
- I still miss Omnifocus when it came to managing my next actions. It’s the solution that didn’t have me constantly changing things around, but I still struggle with my current one. I will meditate on the why
BlueSky
- A lot of people in my circle were very skeptical about Bluesky when it kicked off because of the people involved.
- Supposedly, last week BlueSky proved them right. After some user anger over some of the moderation decisions, the CEO and staff have started heavily lashing out at the community and cutting off prominent Black users and a swath of trans users.
- AFAICT, this started back when BlueSky started banning people for the phrase “Rest in Piss” and has just kept spiraling out from there.
- Guess we can’t have nice things. I doubt most people will leave over this, though
Fediverse/Mastodon
- In response to the Bluesky issues, a lot of Mastodon Ubernerds have started up the cry of keeping the fediverse weird and that the jank is the point. Honestly, the justification for Mastodon’s design decisions and UX issues (and, in the end, much of the fediverse and its protocols) hurts my soul.
Social Standards
- This one is a doozy.
- I was talking with my bestie about somebody, and I recently casually said that “my standards have changed” to what I am willing to put up with. The bar is so low out there that I need to find allies where I can.
- This also ties me back to this thread on fedi about the lack of compassion and being able to make space for people you don’t perfectly align with
- I had another conversation along this line later in the week when a completely different friend was like I am surprised to see you talking about X and their problematic background. And I was right back to, yes they are kinda shitty but not in a taking a fascist turn kinda way, which is the bar rn.
Fan vs Stan
- What is the tipping point between fan and stan, and how do people get to the point where a celebrity is beyond reproach?
- I think this has always existed, but it feels so much louder than normal when stans treat critiques of their chosen ones as critiques of themselves.
- What do I attach my own identity to strongly enough that I take offense to its criticism?
- Does this attachment require us to change our beliefs to fight the critiques, or do we use cognitive dissonance?
community
- We need to sustain and revive ways of staying in community that do not rely on companies and technology they control.
- What does it look like to still hold community in person now?
NixOS
- I spent almost too much time on this, learning some more nuances of it as a desktop.
- As usual, when I daily drive something for a desktop, I end up wanting to break away from defaults and get everything working in a way that is most optimal for me, even like how I am doing startup items, or I want things spawning in certain places
- But I am back to working from NixOS, let’s see how long this lasts before I get stuck on a task.
- I had an excellent Luks2 encryption setup from an article I will post below. I might post an updated version too.
Niri & Scrolling vs Tiling
- All this tuning got me to switch to Niri, and I am super happy with scrolling window managers. It works better for my brain than a tiling, and Niri has a lot of really amazing touches.
- I am shocked how fast it got under my fingers, even with default keybinds. I was always slightly clumsy with a tiling window manager (sway), but Niri had me moving fast by the end of the first day
- It has me spawning and destroying browser windows and terminals instead of using tabs and tmux as much, very interesting,
Terminals
- OMG, are we talking about this? Yes, but it’s not really news persay. I switched to the cool-kid terminal ghostty from my terminal over the past few years.
- The reason? Nothing about it being cool. Wezterm has a bunch of Wayland and Niri bugs, and Ghostty doesn’t. I set three config lines and don’t really notice the difference. 😆
Anime
- Normally, I am a seasonally watcher. Still, the season just started, and I am way too deep in hacking on computers and learning as I hack. I also haven’t read as much these last few weeks.
- I really hope to actually catch up, but we will see at this point. I am very behind on other things.

Books

I have not been sitting down and reading many novels, mostly manga

Futari Switch Vol 1: ⭐️⭐️
- The body swap premise really feels like a pilot for porn; the art is fantastic, but the content is not for me
Common-Sense Monster Vol 1: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Excellent art, a total page turner of a plot, and even though I quickly felt this was going to be a one-and-done for me, the ending hook pulled me back in.
Pink Candy Kiss Vol 3: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
- As much as I really like the art and the general story, the glacial pacing in a manga isn’t excellent. We could’ve cut this entire volume without losing any of the story.

Music

Nirvana’s “In Utero”
- I dunno what happened, but I got stuck on re-listening to In Utero on loop, which is the album I had growing up. A lot of the pain still holds up these days
Daniel Renfro’s “Settle Down Kid”
- Still one of my favorite albums. I don’t think you can get it anymore, but I heard the artist is looking to do a remaster/rerecording to release under one of his newer projects
The Masamune’s “Empire”
- Absolutely SLAY D&B, this dropped on Bandcamp Friday, and I stumbled upon it. It’s not long, but it’s an amazing all-bangers loop
Rebecca Black’s “Let her Burn”
- This was my favorite album of 2023. I know a lot of people didn’t love it like I do, but it’s something I have to come back to on loop from time to time
Sewerslvt’s “we had good times together, don’t forget that”
- An excruciating album about loss. A good loop when in pain (see listening to Nirvana)

Reads and Video

I don’t have a bunch of hard reads for y’all this week. How about some nerd stuff?

Development shells with Nix: four quick examples
- Example 4 here is my favorite form of a quick dev shell
How I provide technical clarity to non-technical leaders
- This is an excellent read on something I want to get better at
How to Install NixOS With Full Disk Encryption (FDE) using LUKS2, Detached LUKS Header, and A Separate Boot Partition on a USB/MicroSD Card
- This post is gold and it works! There are some small, more optimized commands you can use with cryptSetup (open), but they are annoying now!
Rails Needs New Governance
- I lied about not posting anything challenging. DDH is somehow getting worse, and the communities need to stop enabling him. He wouldn’t be nearly as dangerous if we didn’t keep platforming him.

Quote of the Week

How can you call out the legacy of someone who has said so many things and yet repeat none of them?

Twitter

This Week in Squirrels: 2025-W40

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 19:06:29 -0700

This week in squirrels…

Summary

Journaling
- I am reformatting my journal for a bit. I am not sure how this will post, but since it is a weekly deal for now, I’ll treat it more like an outline with a list, making it easier to skim and add notes to sections. I can then format it later.
- Do you love it? Do you hate it? I am still deeply on the fence and am wondering if I should reformat it before posting. Let me know!
Hades 2
- Hadies is way too good. I haven’t had a chance to play it much due to life’s distractions, but it is fantastic when I do get to play. I got hooked on it over the weekend. Sadly, I only managed one play session, as I have been intensely focused on technical projects both inside and outside of work.
NixOS
- I am back to trying to redo my NixOS usage. I have been using it for my secondary Linux desktop and a minor server for a while. But I want to go ALL THE WAY.
- I didn’t love trying to combine NixOS and nix-darwin, so now separate flakes.
- NixOS and nix flakes are the worst type of nerd hole for me to fall into because there is a LOT of tweaking and tuning you can do.
- After sidelining nix-darwin, I was able to do a lot of massive optimizations and clean up as I brought in my shell server and gaming rig into the fold!
Trying the AI
- I have been experimenting with AI and coding Nix flakes, too. It’s still really not the best experience because I am not trying to solve easy problems when I use it.
- I found the AI can sit and struggle for a shockingly long period of time on problems I can solve faster; I need to work to see what problems it is good at.
- Also, I am having a struggle with its code quality. It uses many outdated patterns or configurations, particularly with renovate configs and Nix.
- Learning the Zed editor is ok. It’s arguably a great editor, everything I wished Sublime Text was when I used it. However, it’s taking me a long time to get under my fingers and up to speed. I am so fast in Neovim with lazyvim that it’s hard to compete.
- In the end, I just found a better integration for Claude-code and Neovim 😆
Anime
- The anime season is wrapping up this week. So many of my shows had 13 episodes, so they went a week longer, but now this is the quiet week before a new flood begins
- Checking Livechart has shown a scary amount of shows I want to check out. But as usual, few will make the three-episode cut
- Oh no, I was wrong! It’s starting this week! The floooooood haha. Many shows are starting this week.
Sick Week
- I ended the weekend all feverish and sweating my brains out. The start of the week has been challenging, and I haven’t been good at managing tasks; I get stuck on things.
- In fact, my journal last week came days late, and I didn’t even get a schedule out, no matter how much I want to stream
- I thought it got better, but then “rebounded” Wednesday when I crashed after lunch, got back up, and then crashed out hard for bed, so hard I actually overslept my alarm for the first time I can remember. Perfect for a day with an 8am meeting.
Ring doorbell
- I received notice of a new feature of Ring™ doorbells called Search Party. This feature comes with a new firmware, allowing people to trigger the “Search party” by asking to find a dog (assuming it is identified by photo). All nearby footage will then be uploaded and scanned to locate the missing dog, enabling the owner to track it.
- They claim they will be looking to add cats to it as well. But what is the timeline for using this for tracking and identifying people? The skeptic in me says I am being paranoid. Then somebody reminded me they publicly brought back giving police access to your Ring™ cameras recently.
- Update: December, according to reports shared by the EFF, they plan to start scanning the faces of everybody detected and build a database of people beginning in December.
- My older doorbell probably isn’t eligible or working for this. Still, it’s about time to upgrade to something locally configured and stored.
- I ordered a Reolink and Hope to see it linked up with my home assistant soon!
Period Tracking in games
- Dear GOD. Love and Deep Space (LaDS) has a period tracker. For the love of all that is unholy, do not give this game company your health information. I know we can become desensitized, but this is still a valuable and potentially dangerous disclosure of health data. Do you not want to give random gaming companies your hormone and fertility cycles? They will abuse this.
- Also, don’t even try to shame me for my gaming choices.
Way too much Music
- Friday was Bandcamp Friday! And, as always, I was flooded with emails. I found some excellent recommendations and new albums to check out.
- What did the most damage was actually finding some artists from the 90’s and early 2ks had put up some albums I no longer have, or have horrible copies of, so… hooray to Bong-Ra and Razed in Black, I guess.

Books

My Journey to Her: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ outstanding art, a well-told story with lots of details. If someone were curious about bottom surgery, I would send them this book.

Music

Purity Ring’s Self-Titled:
- They released their extremely JRPG-themed self-titled album, and this has caused me to spend a LOT of time listening to their entire catalog on loop. I’m not sure where to categorize this band outside of electro pop, but it’s catchy and easily put on a loop.
Daniel Renfro’s “Settle Down Kid”
- Out of all of his projects and albums, this one is still one of my favorites. Most of Rigel’s Star’s works have more polish, but this one has a raw indie pop-rock style that resonates with me. Whenever someone mentions Phoenix Down, I need to listen to it.
RP Boo Elevator Music DJ Set
- I have to admit I had never heard of RP Boo or the Chicago Footwork style until the Planet Mu 30th anniversary comp, and I am HOOKED. Repetitive tight loops and syncopation? This is, and will always be, my jam. If you can invoke the minimalist styles of Steve Reich, you have a fan in me. I have been listening to DJ sets and have acquired some of the Planet Mu releases as well.
Bong-Ra’s “Bikini Bandits, Kill! Kill! Kill!”
- This early 2000s breakcore/hardcore album is one of the greats of the 2k’s hardcore scene. Themed after B-movies and exploitation films of years before, it has titles like “Can You Dig It?” and “Catholic High School Girls in Trouble.” It is overfilled with excellent sample work and some of the catchiest hardcore I have heard to date.
100 Gecs
- No real reason, sometimes I get 100 gecs stuck in my head and have to put their two albums on loop for a day or two

Reads and Videos

Merriam-Webster’s new Large Language Model for the AI Era will be released Nov 11th
- Turns out some people out there still know how to make a good troll
- No, seriously, this one got me good.
- Even the comments on this are hilarious
Do Trigger Warnings Work?
- I want to quote Betteridge’s Law of Headlines; Betteridge’s law of headlines is an adage that states: “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.” It is based on the assumption that if the publishers were confident that the answer was yes, they would have presented it as an assertion; by presenting it as a question, they are not accountable for whether it is correct or not.
- I have heard a lot of discussion about how Content Warnings are primarily a function of trying to cater to white fragility and comfort by suppressing the uncomfortable truths of other people. I am in favor of protecting the most vulnerable, and there are some serious uses for content warnings. Still, I don’t like the idea of them as a means to control expression.
Your Worst Halloween “Hear Me Outs”: Graded
- You thought I was going to share a bunch of super deep and painful things to process. Still, nope, it was me, another full-length Blake Jennings video of him being the funniest thing I have access to.
If You Let Your Kid Use Sora, You’re A Bad Parent: AI Slop Will Raise Your Kids If You Don’t
- The whole article is in the title, but this is a conversation my entire family is having a lot of. We can give our kids access to the world too easily, and their friends might already have access to it. But there are no guardrails on the internet that understand and respect that it is dealing with a child with a developing mind.
OpenAI’s Social App Is Here, and It’s Really, Genuinely, Truly Abombinable
- This and the previous article go into how the dopamine drip feed of the late 2010s to 2020s era’s quick video drip feed is bad for ALL of us. There are books after books about how this is a rapid escalation, damaging our attention spans, burning out our dopamine, and lowering literacy rates.
Mega Addresses How Bad The Twitch Situation Is
- The title is clickbait (as all seem to be on YouTube now), but this is a Twitch Streamer who is exponentially larger than me, complaining about the same thing I have been talking about in past weekly posts and bsky posts too.
- The tl;dr is that people are claiming that in the last month or so, Twitch stopped counting people who “lurk” (are watching without actively chatting) as Viewers.
- I experienced this huge drop where, after a short period of not saying anything, people drop off. I went from 8-10 to 1-3 “viewers”
Ctrl-Alt-Speech: Moderating is Such Sweet Sorrow
- In this podcast, there is a fantastic extension of Hanlon’s razor. The razor is, “Don’t attribute malice to what can be attributed to incompetence.” They added, “Don’t attribute incompetence to what can be attributed to not having enough time to think the problem through.”
- They were discussing the theorem that content moderation at scale is impossible. This relates to the ability to create content and establish safety rules that are agreed upon at scale.
- There was also fascinating terminology and thoughts around the concept of strong consensus and weak consensus norms and how moderation becomes more challenging the closer you get to weak consensus. Strong consensus refers to things that are more or less universally agreed upon, regardless of group size, versus things that have a daunting amount of nuance and disagreement, the more the group grows.
- This ties a lot into the issues about codes of conduct, which I talked about in last week’s post, which brings me back to
When Values Eat Their Young: How Ideal-Driven Groups Drift into Their Own Shadow
- A repeat!
- After hearing the podcast, I started tying back these ideas of moderation and consensus causing conflict and strife in communities to some other conversation about the use of codes of conduct and how they can be weaponized problematically or cause a community to lose the plot. Which, of course, is the point of this whole blog post
- I am still for having a code of conduct and moderation, especially when we think about what it takes to protect the most vulnerable in spaces and realize that tech is not apolitical in any way, shape, or form. I don’t buy into any critique of code of conducts that tries to ignore the fact that participating in any community is a privilege or that the communities cultural values are any less important than technical ones. I am mad this excludes me is not really valid either.
- I believe we have work still trying to build out codes of conduct that actively reflect the challenges of moderation listed above. What is even worse is when there are CoCs that used in the crusade of silencing dissenting voices, or even worse, have selective enforcement that doesn’t apply to the people people of privilege and status.
- At this point, I’ve written about this so much. I should break it out as a blog post unto itself. However, I dislike writing a blog post that poses questions without providing answers.

Quote of the Week

I am so flippin’ tired of leaders adopting the “let’s be edgy” mentality. It’s juvenile.

I’ve said before that the mark of maturity is knowing the difference between being edgy and being sharp.

Veronica Explains (@vkc@linuxmom.net)

This Week in Squirrels: 2025-W39

Sun, 28 Sep 2025 21:31:47 -0700

This week in squirrels…

Summary

I had really solid Sunday and Monday streams. I’m starting to build a little community, which is heartwarming.
New iPhone! I’ve complained plenty about lazy phone design, but Apple almost tried a little. The Pro has some curves and a lovely textured touch spot, even if it ends up being yet another slab of glass.
Upgraded OBS and my plug-ins; we will see how much I regret that later. Then, I upgraded the RAM in my big server to 64GB. I have started swapping due to the constantly growing number of containers.
Mental health is an extra struggle. I hate that I felt better after my vacation, but it took so little time to get really dragged down. It’s not just work, but it’s a lot right now.
I commissioned Halloween-themed icons. Nothing bank-breaking, but I want some spoopy season icons, and there are some good YCHs on VGen. A lil bit of retail therapy? Perhaps, but custom art of my characters is something I treasure and use frequently.
Now that I’m logging daily, I’m seeing Obsidian sync glitches again, doubled text, and mauled tables. I believe it’s a sync conflict, but it’s happening a lot. I wonder if it’s related to the linter, since it makes numerous rapid changes.
The more I deal with OS 26 Tahoe, the more I wonder if this is going to flip everything back around design-wise. When Apple switched to Mac OS 10.0 and made everything look like colored glass and “lickable,” everything suddenly had to be bubbles and colors. Then, with iOS, they made everything skeuomorphic, and everybody followed suit. Then, in iOS 7-ish, they ditched all that and made everything flat and minimalist. To this day, everybody is trying to make their logos as minimal, basic, and succinct as possible. Now we are back to the next generation of lickable transparent glass. Are we coming back around? Will everybody make everything glassy and gradients and blurs? It turns out that Google is already going gradient.
- Also, as an aside, I lol because every time Apple’s design team realizes they have enough technical and CPU power to make everything transparent, they go ham.
This is the week for all the manga drops for this month. I had five books in a single day.
I decided to finally build out an OCI mirror after the Docker Hub outage last week. Skopeo and Forgejo made it extremely easy to mirror a large number of public repositories.
I really want people to stop saying things like “how ironic” when discussing the behaviors of the current people in power using tools of censorship and control. You know, the censorship and “cancel culture” they complained about being used against them when they weren’t in power. It’s definitely not ironic; it is the whole point. They will complain when it’s pointed at them, and the moment they can, they will use that power to the fullest. They are going to show that the real power lies in the fact that it shouldn’t apply to them.
Looks like my meds are stabilizing towards the end of the week. Finally, I am hoping they stay this way.
Caught myself ordering in way too much. Did this constantly during the pandemic, then stopped for years, but fell back into it with current anxiety and stress. The odd part is that it seems to be a stress response. I don’t even really care for the food or experience more than what I can have at home.
The Hades II drop day was this week! I am so excited to have more games out that I am really into. The first game has been non-stop entertainment, and I’d be happy to stick with it, but everyone mentions how much quality of life and story improvements exist in the second one.
I bought a Matter-compatible smart plug-in outlet for automating my downstairs Corsi–Rosenthal Box, but it has been a colossal disappointment. It appears that I need to link it to my iPhone to connect it to Home Assistant, rather than directly through the app. It also seems to fall offline frequently, does not report power usage to Home Assistant, and generally is an abysmal experience. Quarter the cost of a Z-Wave plug, but I’d rather have the features and reliability.
- I am going to try out some Zigbee things and a cheap adapter. I want something that isn’t $40 an outlet but is at least MOSTLY reliable.
Two very opposing tech challenges came up this week, and I have been amusing myself with the first.
- The first is setting up Semaphore and trying to centralize the management of my RPis.
- The second is trying nix-darwin systems and bringing some other systems into Nix. The last time I did this, I found that making a multi-OS, multi-platform Flake for my environment was too much struggle, with not enough payoff. After several days, I agree with past me that it is better to have core flakes at maximum by platform, and then create some multi-use flakes to reuse code.

Books

Brewing Up Bedlam (Magic and Mishaps) Still in progress
Monthly in the Garden with My Landlord, Vol 5: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️✨ Honestly, this one really stuck the landing and was a delightful final volume.
My Girlfriend’s Not Here Today, Vol 5: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ The art brings this down, and the characters are somehow even less likable. However, the story and angst continue to pull at me.
How Do We Relationship Vol 13: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ These characters and these traumas and this story. It’s SO GOOD. Still minus one star for me, still barely being able to tell the characters apart.

Music

https://listenbrainz.org/user/dos_skwrl/stats/?range=this_week

Deftones’ “private music”: Everybody is talking about the new Deftones, which is weird because it makes me feel like it’s 1997. This still isn’t my main jam, but this album is excellent.
Projekt Melody & Cynthoni’s “Lost In Her Virtual Eyes”: I have been looking forward to this for a while. I really liked the singles and hoped this would be a lot longer. I would buy a whole album or two of these two together.
Grim Dawn OST: I don’t know why, but dark and moody is the main music for the start of the week.

Reads and Videos

Spacehey: Wait… hol up… Are we bringing back Myspace?! Fuck yes. Fuuuuuuuuuuck yes. I cannot wait to rebuild my top 8.
Mastodon and lack of compassion: This essay in Mastodon threads is an excellent dissection of what a lot of people have experienced and complained about on the fediverse, a space controlled primarily by marginalized white people weaponizing their trauma and attacking further marginalized people. I have gone over it several times, and it’s one of those things to reflect and discuss with/ my therapist.
When Values Eat Their Young: How Ideal-Driven Groups Drift into Their Own Shadow: This is the absolutely fascinating discussion on sociology and group dynamics I adore reading. It makes me think back a lot to the Furry and Open Source groups I have been involved with and how we could have changed things. Additionally, this blog style is absolutely stunning, and I may incorporate it into my next version of the blog.
Presidential Memoranda: Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence: It’s hard to see this as anything but a power grab using the horrible events to help silence and shut down all opposition at this point. Depressing. The end is near.
The Problem with YouTube: I have a love-hate relationship with ~~Future Proof~~ now Levi Hildebrand videos, and this is one of his better ones recently, and has some interesting points on how private equity is moving into what was people’s random content and the new content slop.

Quote of the Week

It’s very hard to maintain mental health because so many coping strategies are based on the idea that your anxiety is unwarranted, and right now needs more of an “okay, extremely warranted but you still gotta water the plants or you’ll have fascism AND dead plants” approach.

@pervocracy

Why I Choose Ownership over Unlimited Access

Thu, 25 Sep 2025 21:11:44 -0700

Sneaker Pimp’s “Becoming X”

…

Yep, that’s the whole post. The entire reason I buy almost every track of music I enjoy is because of Sneaker Pimp’s “Becoming X.”

Fine, that’s not a very good blog post, so let’s rewind.

The Beginning

I am, supposedly, not a young woman. I receive compliments suggesting otherwise, but as the kids say, I’m from the 1900s. You might be thinking, “So what? So am I!” Well, while music is a universal constant that transcends generations, the way we listen to it certainly is not.

There was a time when the only way to hear music was to create it yourself or enjoy it with friends. Eventually, we progressed to attending concerts, assuming we could afford the ticket. Then came the phonograph, but let’s skip ahead because this could take a while and I am not that old.

I have fond memories of cassette tapes, but I primarily grew up in the CD and MTV era. Back then, listening to the radio and watching music videos were beloved pastimes. However, my primary mode of enjoying music was through albums. I remember spending $15 per single album at the store or painstakingly recording songs off the radio onto tapes (later onto CD-Rs) to create curated playlists that lasted about an hour. CDs were fantastic—light, easy to carry in bulk, and simple to skip or loop.

Over the years, I went through countless CD binders—some I lost, others were stolen, and many I eventually discarded. We’re talking thousands of plastic disks between those I purchased and those I ripped, especially since I DJed during the CD era.

Even when the iPod era kicked off, it was a similar paradigm for me. Taking my albums and ripping them down so I could have my playlists and albums, and listen to them, now with fewer CD binders, but all in the same manner. One day would be a Meat Beat Manifesto day, and the next would be a Nine Inch Nails day, probably followed by a week of the same three Razed In Black albums before it was time to melt my brain with the Shizit or Ron D Core.

I shared all of this to bring us to my next two points, starting with…

Reason 1: All my Music from the Before Times

I have a vast collection of music, and not just popular, major-label music.

I have albums from various long-forgotten local groups I got at a show
I have white label demos from when I was a DJ.
I have innumerable albums from indie industrial, goth, and noise labels that are long gone.
I have music friends have made.
I have music that I have made.
I have demos, rarities, and bootleg CDs and tracks.
I have albums from a shoebox of CDs that I don’t even know where they came from.
I have a bunch of silly fun tracks from Myspace and the great meme music begining of the aughts.
I have music that was remade and re-released.

None of those tracks will ever ever ever be on streaming platforms. This meant I had two apps for a while. There was Spotify to listen to their music, and then iTunes to store my music; I had to switch between them depending on what I wanted to listen to.

When I used Apple Music with iTunes Match, it allowed me to sync my music so that I could listen to both together in a single interface. However, this was also dangerous, and I lost some music in the process. When iTunes Match believed that it already had a track in its library, it would replace your music with its own copy. For some, this was a way to upgrade old, poorly encoded tracks for free. But it was also a horrible way to lose demos, live versions, or rare recordings.

When I buy all of my music, all of my music, no matter how I sort it or store it, is all in one place.

Reason 2: My Preferred Style of Listening to Music

I prefer to listen to music album by album and artist by artist in a fairly intentional way. You can do that on streaming platforms, but that’s not the focus or behavior of the apps in my experience. They give you all these computer-generated playlists, all based on what they think you want to listen to, or they want you to listen to. I remember that playlists would automatically extend or go into “smart modes,” deciding what they felt should be next at the end.

The way apps prefer to feed people music has also changed how people create and release music. During the 2010s, EPs suddenly became the thing to make, allowing artists to get music out to people more rapidly, and now in the 2020s, it is all about singles. More and more artists I am coming across, especially in the pop space, have careers almost entirely based around pumping out singles without the need to put together a complete and coherent project.

The Sugar High ADHD approach to music is sometimes fun and can help discover new artists, but I still need the time to stop and delve into these artists’ catalogues. Just one song isn’t enough for me; I want to experience the whole of an artist’s work.

This is also why I lived by compilations and soundtracks; they had enough variety, but also served as kick-off points for me to learn more about individual artists’ catalogues. The worst time was when I discovered an artist I loved, only to find that they didn’t have any other music available, or I was unable to come by it. I am looking at you, ATP.

Constantly morphing playlists are the opposite of immersing myself in and truly hearing all the details and flow of an album, which leads to…

Reason 3: Sneaker Pimp’s “Becoming X”, or, I Was Listening to That, Where Did it Go?

It always comes back to Sneaker Pimp’s “Becoming X.” That album was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me.

I was listening to the album on loop on Apple Music and then the next morning…

It was gone.

I moved on, but later came back to Sneaker Pimp’s “Becoming X” and put it on loop.

But two days later it was gone again.

I was losing my mind.

Content comes and goes when you are streaming music. As licensing deals change, some albums pop on and off repeatedly. That was the actual thing that drove me to the point of deciding that having access to all the music is not worth it to me.

When I own my own files I can listen to them without dealing with licensing or whatever was taking things away.

Reason 4: Streaming Giveth, Streaming Taketh Away (from Artists too)

In the before times, artists either signed on with a major label that dictated their entire music career, or they stacked punk tapes at your local record store for people to buy.

However, in the late 1990s, MP3.com introduced a new indie distribution platform that elevated mixtapes and indie artists to the next level. And indie labels like Cleopatra and Crunch Pod, which were lifting them and putting out CDs and CDRs¹. Then Apple decided to get involved, and that’s what took it from underground swell to zeitgeist.

However, by all reports, streaming has made things far worse for small artists.

Yes, it is now frighteningly easy to upload music to streaming platforms in the name of fraud, harassment, and spam. This causes numerous problems for artists. I think you can easily troll YouTube to find video after video of people discussing the AI flood, algorithms, bots, and fraud, etc. In fact, some are considering this to be reaching a critical point.

To avoid sharing a Rick Beato video,² I will instead share a Venus Theory one on this topic.

Link: It’s Not Just You: Music Streaming Is Broken Now

Ok, When, what Should the Intrepid Reader Do?

Buy music
Listen intentionally to artists and albums.
Curate your own playlists and spend time with the music you enjoy.
Consider if any of this matters to you, then do what best aligns with your goals. Not Mine.

I have some planned follow-up posts for this one, covering how I buy music in 2025, and another on how I stream my own music anywhere I am, and how people of different nerd levels can do the same.

I still have a shocking number of painfully low-quality MP3.com files from creators who have long left the industry. ↩︎
I would never beat the old lady who yells at cloud allegations at that point. I probably went too far, but let me have this. ↩︎

This Week in Squirrels: 2025-W38

Sun, 21 Sep 2025 18:04:39 -0700

This week in squirrels…

Summary

Streaming has been a mixed bag lately. Twitch changed the way they count viewers, so my views are much lower now. Now I show streaming to nobody for large swaths of time, which may be a reflection of my lack of popularity/discoverability.
- Still, I am trying to improve my speaking and presenting, so I will master the “being on” to nobody skill.
- Ironically, I had an excellent late-week stream. Having even a few people around can really change the tone and feel, but also, I am getting better at swerving and filling time. Working on my speaking skills is part of the point.
UUUUUUUgh. My old friend amdgpu: ring gfx_0.0.0 timeout is back. I swore I was rid of this. It only happened once, but still, crashes and resets on the tower I work from are agonizing.
New medications I am taking are working wonders. I am still experiencing some energy issues. However, things are significantly better overall, particularly regarding fluid retention and mobility. I don’t feel like an overstuffed sausage constantly anymore. During my monthly massage, I received comments about less intense fluid buildup and lymphatic draining going far more easily than usual.
It’s shocking the amount of time I can burn just tweaking tech stuff, but I swear my blog has almost all of its annoyances out the window and done with. I even made a sharing profile.
- Mastodon was frustrating the heck out of me because I couldn’t get cards to work, and then four days later… it just worked! Not sure if my blog became more magical, or if I really needed to let Mastodon catch up.
- Either way, I have cards and more blog posts. I am sticking to my twice-weekly cadence and want to see if I can maintain this for three or four months to really make it a habit.
More upgrades! This week, for the Apple stuff, macOS 26 Tahoe came out. Not all of my equipment is new enough to upgrade; I have a lot of equipment, but I don’t constantly replace most of it until it actually has issues.
- The Apple TV experience was fascinating. The moment it booted into a new OS, it was significantly faster. Much less typing and click lag, everything is moving faster.
- Obsidian is ultra buggy on iPad, constantly forcing itself into a phone-width screen with a large white bar at the side.
- Yet, Some apps are really doing the new UI well, I am looking at you infuse and overcast.
- The new UI is mostly fine, but I keep hitting text that is unreadable due to background showing through, especially in the Photos app. I do like now a lot of the design language evokes the early Mac OS X design language with the oval buttons, lots of frosted glass, and round lickable everything.
- They removed how sidebar apps and split screen apps worked on the iPad, and I really loathe the new way to do split screen. It’s far more clumsy and finicky.
Exciting news! Well, the precursor to exciting news. A commission I have been waiting on for a very long time is out of the backlog and into work. I’m going to have a full-body Live2D model with some great toggles and outfits. My excitement can hardly be contained.
It’s been raining most of the week, and while it’s brought tonnes of humidity, it’s also lowered temperatures into the low 30s. 30s are not quite window-open-all-day temps, but at least I can get some more airflow in the house. Sadly, I also struggle with humidity, which has been particularly challenging.
I didn’t mention the murder last week, and honestly, I am even less interested in talking about it this week. Still, I also find it very difficult to avoid it or give it an excess of mental space due to the changes that are being pushed from it.
- Everything that is transpiring are things many of us knew deep down were going to happen the moment a big enough event could trigger it, but it makes it no less difficult for those being targeted. And for those people being targeted, listen to Black people. They have been through this before.

Books

Brewing Up Bedlam (Magic and Mishaps): Still In Progress
Whisper me a Love Song, Vol 9: ⭐⭐⭐
- I feel like, if not for the rough paneling and the fact that the ultra-rough anime already spoiled the end of this arc long ago, I could give this 4-5 stars, but for now, it’s pushed down to the weakest book in the series for me. I have high hopes for the next arc, though.

Music

HEALTH: I keep coming back to VOL4 and Rat Wars… I have this nagging feeling I should like this group more than I do, but I just haven’t given it a good enough listen… IDK. The pandemic collabs are still excellent.
Clipping.: I think Clipping.’s latest album is their weakest work to date, but it doesn’t change Clipping. from being one of my favorite acts.
Sewerslvt: Jvne re-posted the vent music session she did after her girlfriend committed suicide, “Tortvred Lesbians Ripped Apart.” I waxed and waned on buying the 22-minute-long track, but eventually caved and bought it. It’s excellent but also very intense, especially when you know the context that it is essentially one long building scream of pain and loss.

Reads and Vids

I know my links have been obnoxiously dark this week, but there are so many fascinating stories about various dark patterns and trends popping up. I offer some apology for how intense some of them are, and made sure to add some fun stuff too.

The Les Claypool Interview: I swear I am not an old music lady who yells at cloud, but yes, I do watch Rick Beato, and this Primus interview was so good.
A picture of me became a meme and things got weird: the sub-topic of this video is the communal and sociological bonding purposes of memes. It’s a fascinating topic, not too deep a dive, but a fun one.
Republicans embrace speech limits & Republicans are honoring Charlie Kirk’s memory by declaring war on the First Amendment: These are two of many writings I am seeing that are all leading to the conclusion that this murder is being made into the zeitgeist needed to consolidate power and strip rights, ala Timothy Snider’s writings. A lot of people in my circle are struggling with the erosion of their own humanity; it is amplified so much harder with the “when we die, it’s righteous, when y’all die, it’s a tragedy” attitude. To quote something that I sat with for a while,

He would wear blackface and tap dance on my grave and so I don’t know how I am supposed to feel about the fact he was killed; and what does that mean about my ability to get in touch with my own humanity? … I’m tired of playing the moral superiority game, I get nothing for it, and so I am unmoved." - Sharhonda Bossier on “Pod Save the People”
Michigan Lawmakers Are Attempting to Ban Porn Entirely: Normally, I would roll my eyes at something like this and not share it, but right now, I earnestly believe this has a shot at going somewhere, which is disturbing and links back to my point about the acceleration of locking down and restricting speech.
Massive Attack Turns Concert Into Facial Recognition Surveillance Experiment: Hot on the heels of the coldplay ceo incident, Massive Attack threw down pretty hard. As an infosec person, I was aware of this surveillance alongside device tracking and other forms of “casual” but extreme daily monitoring when you go out. My question is, will this actually start a useful conversation or be a one-off stunt?
I think I know why (YouTube) views dropped: A fascinating deep dive into an issue with view counts many creators and streamers have been talking about, including a lot of information and graphs from many channels and research into what is a likely cause. If all of the things shake out as stated, it may finally pit most content creators against their ad-blocking content consumers. I am already seeing videos from people pushing viewers to support them in other ways.
Dark patterns killed my wife’s Windows 11 installation: I fight using local things that require me to have an online account to access them. It’s a trash pattern, and this is a fascinating dive into how a horrible chain of events can’t lock you out of a desktop because you bought a new phone.
This was never about “open dialogue”: So many things flooding past my feeds are about how ragebait and this faux debate rage content is causing issues like what happened this week. But this is a more interesting discussion on it.
Hypocrisy is the point: It is, it’s about being able to be above the rules that you make others follow

Quote of the Week

Someone asked if I was ready for the fall, and it actually took me a moment to realize that they meant autumn, not the complete collapse of democracy.

Strandjunker@mstdn.social

The Great Forgejo Migration: Introduction

Thu, 18 Sep 2025 22:18:53 -0700

Welcome to the Great ~~British Bake-Off~~, I mean Forgejo migration!

I intended this post to be the whole story of how I took a week to migrate nearly 60 repositories to my own forge and set up CI/CD and dependency automation over it. The moment I started writing, I realized it’s going to be a long series. Hopefully you will stick along though.

The Background

I have always been a fan of self-hosting. Since the days of Debian Potato¹, I have been fixated on the idea of setting up and managing my own servers and services. There is no surprise in my career choices after thinking about this. While that original server’s hard drive ate itself a long, long time ago, and I was forced to rebuild it all by hand over the weekend (tequila was involved somehow), I eventually learned how to automate everything. In general, version control was always at the center of my automations and scripts.

I have been hosting my own git repos for quite a while, often on a random server over SSH. But once I learned about Git LFS, this was no longer enough. I needed a forge to manage my Git LFS files. I started with Atlassian Stash but then moved to Gitea on a colocated server. Some may have even remembered links to https://onlyhavecans.works. However, like most tech, that Mac Mini came from sand, and eventually returned to it.

I restored my backups of Gitea internally on my network and used it for extremely sensitive backups and repositories while I moved most of my code and other repositories to either GitLab or GitHub. This was convenient since I used GitHub for work, and GitLab was a popular place to stash things.

But that never changed my desire to self-host and manage all my own stuff.

The Why

With Gitlab’s massive data loss still too fresh in my mind and GitHub’s further and further push into using everything ever for AI training, my desire for data-sovereignty started to increase.

Also, the overly centralized internet has been nagging me lately after some conversations. We made a lot of progress by consolidating everything into a few sites, yet I believe the golden age of the internet was more about when we all had our own little corner with smaller audiences, rather than infinite feeds of data.

Self-hosting isn’t fully accessible to all, which I think would improve the internet significantly, but I do have the resources and knowledge.

The Plan

I have been keeping a casual eye on the forking of Forgejo from Gitea and have liked the project’s progress and goals, especially the idea of federation and some of their user-driven UX changes. While I was going to take some vacation time, I instead decided to refocus my energy on doing some nerd stuff that takes me back to some of my joy in computing—setting up things, building systems, and making them pretty amazing.

My idea was to move all of my repositories from Gitea, GitHub, and GitLab to a new Forgejo instance, drop my Gitea instance, and sync repositories that were already on GitHub so they continue to receive updates.

The Prep

I have already mentioned some of my decisions regarding the choice of Forjego, so the next step is to take some time to audit all the code I want to migrate. At the time, I did not realize how quickly the migrations themselves would be, so I decided to start with all of my code in Gitea, none of my GitLab code for now, and only the sources that were significant in GitHub. Since I tend to start with git init, I have a lot of throw-away one-use code there, and I don’t even care that much about hanging on to it.

What am I moving? ✅

The next big decision is then how to host it. I really wanted to host it on a machine in my network behind Caddy for easy SSL, open up the firewall for the necessary ports, and use a combination of dynamic DNS for the outside and a split-horizon DNS internally. The only part of this that is particularly interesting is that I am using unbound to do the split DNS instead of my Pi-Hole. In my testing, it was more reliable and easier to configure this, and since Unbound is what my Pi-Hole uses for resolution, anything in the network sees this. Anything outside comes in through the firewall.

  #/etc/unbound/unbound.conf.d/pi-hole.conf
  #...

  # Allow my domains to return private addresses
  private-domain: onlyhavecans.works

  local-zone: "onlyhavecans.works." redirect
  local-data: "onlyhavecans.works. AAAA fd45:4ece:4ead::443"
  local-data: "onlyhavecans.works. A 192.168.1.4"

Hosting? ✅

Next is CI/CD. I realized I can’t give up GitHub actions without a replacement. I took a moment to look at Jenkins, bringing it back to my roots, until I noticed that the forgejo-runner is not marked anymore as an insecure implementation demonstration. The team over there had been working on completing their action runner. The bonus here is that if I set up a remote Docker-in-Docker setup on another machine, I can put the tax on an old Mac mini for all my workers, and I have an extremely GitHub-like CI/CD process.

The pipelines? ✅

The next thing I realized was that I would be losing Dependabot, which was something I really liked. I spent a bit of time searching for solutions and came up with a very short list. I inevitably went with Renovate and am extremely happy with my choice, but I was initially intimidated by some aspects of it. But I will get there in a later post.

Dependency management? ✅

At this point, I thought I had planned it all generally out. But dear reader, since we are here and now, I will share the one thing I wish I had planned out.

How will I set up my repositories? ❌

What’s Next?

More blog posts! 😆 I think this is too long already to add more. I hope the next few posts will be shorter, but I will also be going into some code examples and processes I went through.

Here are the planned posts:

The Great Forgejo Migration: Introduction (this)
The Great Forgejo Migration: The Migration of Code & Config
The Great Forgejo Migration: Lessons of setting up CI/CD runners
The Great Forgejo Migration: Automating DNSControl
The Great Forgejo Migration: Renovate is my new best friend
The Great Forgejo Migration: Hugo sure, but what about Netlify?
The Great Forgejo Migration Side Story: Restoring with Restic (and also backing up, I guess)
The Great Forgejo Migration: Bits and Bobs, What else?

Please do not look up when that was. ↩︎

This Week in Squirrels: 2025-W37

Sun, 14 Sep 2025 14:07:29 -0700

🎊 I hope you like the new theme! 🎨

I only just barely got this new look ready in time for the weekly update. This brings the look and flow of my blog back to its minimal roots while improving readability imo.

Please let me know what you think, good, bad, or indifferent.

This week in squirrels…

Summary

I cannot believe I woke up so early after such a late night of streaming.
My Sunday AM Chaos stream quickly went into Terraria, turned into an epic-sized stream in time, and viewership again.
- However, Terraria was fun until it wasn’t, and then I was angry and frustrated, an event over spawned and stuck me in 10 10-minute death loop, so I bailed.
- I had a good conversation with Pixel during the stream about the struggle of newbies playing the game with veterans, because there is a big rush to get the game to a point for somebody who has done this enough times, while the newbie wants to explore and learn. I felt that at maximum volume by the end of the stream.
- Days later, somebody brought to my attention that Journey mode has a “god mode” button; in retrospect, that could have solved a lot of frustration.
- Ended the week with a second good Terreria stream, after Sunday’s torrent of frustration, I was handed a redic sword and basically melted anything and everything that could annoy me. It was a bit much that the game had no challenge anymore, but still, we got to play with all the bosses.
The week of Debian upgrades continues. With both 12 and 13 receiving a point release, I have many boxes to patch.
- Mark my words, though. I believe Michiru’s (RaspberryPi) SD card is going. It’s so slow to do work on it. However, the system requires very little disk I/O, so I will let it run until it dies and then rebuild it.
- I lost a good bit of time to something the Debian 13 upgrade broke for me. NVENC and NVDEC were not working in Jellyfin and Plex. Plex silently switched to software, but Jellyfin started throwing errors. It took me a bit to realize it wasn’t something with nvidia-container-toolkit. The upgrade + auto-remove cleaned out libnvcuvid1 and libnvidia-encode1. 😆 Kinda need those.
Did overhauls on my blog this week as planned. Feels nice to get things working better, but I don’t love how much time I spend fiddling with things. Getting things into a flow state takes work, and blogging is not something I always want to fiddle with.
- I hope all my week’s posts are not as big as last week’s.
- Luckily, hyperfocus and feedback put me in a huge blogging mood. I am stacking up drafts I can edit and post when I am not feeling like writing as much later.
- I really miss my old Hugo theme. It broke with a newer version of Hugo, and I switched to a more “off the shelf” one that looks amazing at a glance, but has a lot of things that bother me.
- I spent a whole evening tweaking my current theme to make it a touch more readable and fit better with how I want
- After all the modifications, I realized the theme wasn’t working for me, and I found one that fits what I wanted more. I worked on it extensively in PR, and even though it took a few days of on-and-off tuning and some feedback, I achieved the clean and stark look with PaperMod and a healthy dose of my own CSS. It might be too minimal, but let’s go with it.
It is fascinating to me in some of the worst ways that people are trying to bring back the R-slur. I have been seeing it around a lot more and even heard some commentary about it. I wonder about the motivation and goals behind the attempt to make it socially acceptable again.
- It’s a weird cycle. Back in my day, we’d say it and get a wooping, then the Family Guy era hit, and it was everywhere, and then we realized that was a colossal mistake… now it is back?
- Now I am pondering “Words as fences” or how we define a space with words. Another random social issue I will spend too much time thinking about and writing about
Renovate is only weeks old in my setup. I am already looking at the number of Renovate PRs I receive daily and considering how to set up auto-merging on passing tests, as well as how to test some crucial aspects, such as Hugo builds, since themes often break with new Hugo versions.
- However, it’s already caught some breaking versions, which is excellent.
Coming back to work after two weeks off is a lot, a lot, a lot. But Pomodoro’s have been keeping me on and honest, which is excellent.
Uuuuuuugh, Plex is having more issues with security. Last month, it was a critical client patch, and now it’s a service breach. Resetting my password and sessions has compromised my server to the point where I needed to delete my Preferences.xml and set it up as new to get it to authenticate again.
I need to stop pre-ordering every last manga and book that looks like a half-decent queer romance. Over the previous two weeks, I have read two manga that I didn’t particularly enjoy. The first book was not to my liking, and the second was even less appealing.
OMGOSH, the weather y’all. Towards the end of the week, temperatures started diving down to almost 20 °C by 6am, and I am so giddy. It’s cool enough to open windows at night and in the morning. AIR! FRESH AIR through my house.
I received an absolutely hilarious piece of spam from Grammarly introducing their new feature. In short, “By now you are amazing at using AI to write for you, but it all sounds too stiff and like AI doesn’t, it? Introducing humanizer! The AI to make your AI sound less AI.” I am in stitches.
My first major Jellyfin bug hit me. Trying to delete a massive music library broke library scans for everything and failed to clean up anything. I ended up having to add it back, remove it, and then perform an unfortunate amount of manual cleanup. At least Jellyfin’s file layouts and setups are mostly human parseable.
My motivation has been a bit hard to come by, which isn’t too shocking, but I really felt my energy drop off at the end of the week, and the big depression swing came hard. I hate blaming hormones, but yanno what. I am staring at the calendar like… I know what this is.
I have slipped back into a bad YouTube habit where I am spending too much time opening it and looking for something to watch to my taste. This eats into my reading time, and it shows by how much I have and haven’t read.

Books

Brewing Up Bedlam in Progress
It’s all Your Fault Vol 2 ⭐

Music

Yesss new Tierra Wack
Björk: I am crawling her catalog this week. Although I liked Post a lot, I feel I never gave her enough of a chance. I appreciate and enjoy her work even more than I remember, and while it’s a bit disjointed, her latest album has fantastic sounds and tracks.
Sophie: A co-worker mentioned Sophie, and now I am completely derailed and needed to drop everything and listen to her solo work—the founder of hyperpop who bore so many amazing artists in her wake. Sigh, rest in peace, and probably a lot of hype.
Oh wow, one of my fave albums. Well, we’re listening to Spahn Ranch for the end of the week. I am not even mad at how old this is. Oh, that old muddy Cleopatra industrial metal sound hits me just right.

Today is the 30th anniversary of the Spahn Ranch album “The Coiled One,” which was released on September 12, 1995, by Cleopatra Records.

Reads and Videos

Enshittification comes for Synology and hardware. Seeing this is discouraging; more and more consumer companies feel they have enough market capture to start worsening their products to drive customers up the product chain.
Ship|Show|Ask is making the rounds at my company, where we are asking if everything really needs reviews. It’s a good conversation since we already have places where reviews offer far less value. A lot of things in this article are not things I would exclude from a code review, but the ideas stand.
Every site needs a Links Page: This very mid 90’s website makes me want to make a links page and just weird my website out
The internet used to be fun: This is a huge pile of article that makes me excited to play with my site
Finally, something that isn’t serious. Blake Jenning’s “Which Furniture is THE Inanimate Queen? | Date Everything Diva Tournament (ft. Michael Lorz)”. This person is incredibly blessed, and their content always cracks me up. I truly hope that someday he is covered in human Shrek (s).

Quote of the Week

A well done modern remake of The Prisoner would hit like a hydrogen bomb right now.

@FinalGirl@blackqueer.life

(Not) Time to Abandon the Kindle Ship

Thu, 11 Sep 2025 23:10:09 -0700

Note

This blog post is from my drafts archive.

I was initially researching leaving my Kindle in Quarter 1 of 2025 when Amazon removed the ability to download your purchases from their website. I never ended up pulling the trigger for this and as of this posting, I still use my Kindle and the Amazon Kindle store heavily.

That said, I think my reflections and research are still valuable enough to others to share.

My Kindle “Addiction”

I have a confession to make, a weird confession. I am a Kindle junkie. Oh, how I love my Kindle. I have thousands of books purchased through Amazon’s Kindle store. I read my Kindle every day for hours. I digest over a hundred books and manga a year and take notes on each one.

I don’t stream music, TV, or movies; instead, I buy them directly wherever I can online. I don’t shop at questionable big-box stores when I have alternatives (and oh boy, do I have them in Las Vegas). I don’t use TikTok, Facebook, or X. I run Linux whenever possible. I buy my TTRPG games through indie distributors or directly from crowdfunding. I don’t use Google (as a Kagi paid user), I self-host, and I pay for services rather than being the product. All of this is to highlight how much effort I actively put into being as much of a reasonably ethical consumer as possible.

But Amazon Kindle books? That is my thing.

It’s convenient and fun and easy. I can buy any book at any time right from my Kindle. It’s there whenever I need it, and even with hardcore reading, the battery is always ready for more. The reading status is flawlessly synced in case I want to catch up on my phone for a bit or read comics on my iPad. It has almost everything. Everything except for that one thing you are probably thinking of right now.

I have leased 1,839 books from Amazon, with not a single one bought and owned. You don’t buy books from Amazon; you lease a license to read them for now.

But lately, I want to give up my creature comforts.

These are not brand new feelings. I have always struggled with what Amazon has become for a long time. I fought being a Kindle user by using several generations of the B&N Nook before I succumbed to the temptation. And once you make that switch, Amazon knows how to keep you hooked; it’s their whole deal. My point is, it’s been on my mind for a while —a nagging, background thread reminding me that my excessive Amazon Kindle usage isn’t in line with the rest of my consumption morals.

And yes, I do believe that your morals are directly reflected in how you spend your money. I don’t really believe in “pure” ethical capitalism either. Still, the lack of pure ethical capitalism doesn’t absolve anybody from the repercussions of their actions. “All my choices are flawed” doesn’t lessen the impact of my choices.

You might think that after everything I wrote above, the rest of this post is all about how I overcome my attachment to my Kindle and what I switched to… but this post doesn’t end like that. It’s not always victory.

Wait, but Amazon is Good for You, Actually?

Around the time I was working on this post, an author, editor, and promoter I greatly respect in the sapphic romance genre released a series of blog posts encouraging people to reconsider hastily dumping Amazon Kindle books, as a significant portion of a small author’s income comes from them.

Now, I want to state the fact that I do not agree with a lot of Jae’s opinions on boycotts or ethical consumerism. A lot of the post towards the end starts sounding like hardcore copium huffing. I refuse to accept the justification of “well, if you are going to boycott this, you also have to boycott everything you love,” because all changes come in steps, one at a time.

My frustration with some of her writing aside, she does have some good points about how Amazon built a system that tore down the walls of self-publishing and small-scale publishing, allowing small publishers to grow.

Also… I just wanted to have this one thing.

🥺👉🏻👈🏻

Can I have this one thing?

Squirrels Can Have a Little Kindle, as a Treat

The answer is yes.

That’s right. I didn’t leave Amazon Kindle. In fact, if you ever see me out and about, I promise it’s in my purse. I even bought a new one.

So, then, what is the rest of this post? This is the compiled list of notes, thoughts, and research I was doing to help me drop Kindle. It is incredibly biased to my own reading habits, which have a lot of Queer romance, manga, tech books, and PopSci books.

Everything below is research notes from the time and may age like wine or milk. Only time will tell, so keep in mind the date on this post.

My Notes on Moving on Dropping Amazon Reading

Stores that Look Super Appealing

I spent an evening searching and building myself a reference guide for leaving.

Store	DRM	Content	Notes
Book Walker Yuri	🔴	Manga	Complete EN+JP, Hardcore DRM
Bookshop	🟡	Everything	Trendy new General, mixed DRM
Rakuten Kobo	🟡	Everything	Native Store, mixed DRM
Craphound	🟢	Author	Nerd Author, sometimes good
Smashwords	🟢	Everything	Has lots of Kindle Indies. annoying website
Itch.Io	🟢	Indie Fiction	Trash UX, but creators like it
StoryBundle	🟢	Indie Fiction	Humble Bundle for Indie Fiction
eManga	🟢	Indie Manga	Has Lilyka’s manga
Irodori Comics	🟢	Indie Manga	A fave but small
J-Novel Club	🟢	Light Novels	Super light on Yuri & LGBTQIA
2600	🟢	Magazine	It’s been a while
Denpa	🟢	Manga	Has some really good series
Bold Stroke Books	🟢	Queer Fiction	HUGE Queer Bookstore
Nine Star Press	🟢	Queer Fiction
Humble	🟢	Refbooks	Random Lotto as to what you can buy
LeanPub	🟢	RefBooks	Hit or miss
Manning	🟢	RefBooks
No Starch Press	🟢	RefBooks	Personal Fave
Packt	🟢	RefBooks	Also Fan of
PragProd	🟢	Refbooks	Big Fan
Clare Lydon	🟢	WLW Author	Good Sapphic Author
Harper Bliss	🟢	WLW Author	My favorite Sapphic author direct
Bella Books	🟢	WLW Fiction	Huge
BywaterBooks	🟢	WLW Fiction
Desert Palm Press	🟢	WLW Fiction	Several Trans, large pool of authors
DreamSpinner Press	🟢	WLW Fiction
Ylva Pub	🟢	WLW Fiction

Meta Drm Free Lists

Buying Notes

Don’t forget renting books from library too

Kobo books and manga are reported to be very high quality and likely can be fixed.

I could focus on indie manga and kobo to put all that into Komga. I read manga on the iPad Primarily so Komga covers me.

I can buy everything but my Light Novels and Major Pub books through the large amounts of direct publish and organize it in Calibre-Web

For Major Pub and LNs I would ideally fix files from Bookshop, but fall back to fixing files from Kobo

Self Hosting

Fixing Stores

Kobo Tuning

Kobo technically has it’s own EPUB format which is an extension on EPUB3, which is recommended to use before sideloading for battery and performance

Kindle Fixes

Thread

If you have an eink Kindle and are able to download ebooks directly to your Kindle via WiFi, it is possible to then connect the Kindle to a computer via USB cable and import the ebook file (.kfx, .azw3, .azw, .mobi) from Kindle into calibre.

If your Kindle was released in 2013 or later running firmware v5.6.5 or newer, you will get mostly KFX (older books may result in older formats, like .mobi). Make sure you have the KFX Input plugin installed.

This Week in Squirrels: 2025-W36

Sun, 07 Sep 2025 20:21:44 -0700

This week in squirrels…

Summary

I took the week off for my birthday. This is the second week off, but last week wasn’t all that relaxing. I find it stressful that it takes a week to unwind enough to relax for a week. The layers of irony.
My birthday started with a quick stream and then a family birthday brunch at a very loud but delicious Israeli brunch restaurant.
- I get the solid impression that my brother and mother have really given up the effort to acknowledge my transition. Since it’s been over seven years, I can’t believe somebody is ever going to try if we are still putting no effort into resisting the urge to refer to me as “he” to the waiter. I am not mad about it, but disappointed.
After sitting down and documenting my career notes and processing my thoughts, I have some direction, or at least a lot of questions.
I set up a new IPv6 ULA & NPT, then updated all my external monitoring for my self-hosted services to ensure all my self-hosted apps are still working over IPv6 locally and remotely.
Returned to making and posting stream schedules for my live streams.
- I even made all my streams! No cancellations, and I hope to keep that up even when I am working. 😆
Reorganized all of my Forgejo repositories into orgs. There will be a blog post later on this.
- I started the blog post on my new Forgejo setup, which turned into the first post of a pretty long series. I have a lot to say and have learned from it.
Set up a Terraria server and spent almost 10 hours playing it with friends. It was way too much fun, but I was also up way too late. The only bad part was that I became a bit too involved and started missing chats.
- The second stream of it was proof that I like screwing around in the game so much, but I was much better at being present with chat.
- Still, Terraria sessions mean fewer breaks and longer streams for me so far.
Speaking of streaming, I set up a lot of Firebot v5 commands and fun stuff like auto shout-outs, a shout-out queue, and even have some overlay commands.
- It took a few revisions, but it’s great to have more features on the stream.
- Sadly, Fugi, the tool for sharing profiles and showing people you are collabing with on Discord on stream, is totally glitching out and breaking many times during a stream
Since Mint 22.2 was released, I upgraded my desktop and then finally jumped into updating my servers to Debian 13. All the upgrades were a massive nothing burger, which is really nice; I love an uneventful update.
Refactor all of my books tracking and logging into Obsidian bases instead of DataView, which fixed all my super slow renders. Switching from Goodreads to my own notes in Obsidian has slowed down my reading a bit, but taking all the notes has had me more engaged with what I am reading.
My blood sugar has been rapidly plummeting in the back half of this week with a significant pullback on my insulin. I had a rough start to the week due to poor eating on vacation, but the rubber band is impressive.
- At the very end of this week, I am starting up a new med, and that’s always exciting and scary when I am already experiencing low glucose.
Spent my usual Saturday working on plans for the next week with Kitty. It will likely be a lot of work on writing, thinking, and streaming. Time to think and write.
Went to a brand new ramen joint in town. Incredibly delicious, quality ingredients, and rich broth. The portions were smaller than I have seen anywhere, but the price-to-quality ratio is impressive.

Books

How Do I Turn My Best Friend Into My Girlfriend?, Vol. 4 ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Until I Love Myself, Vol 1 DNF
With You Our Love Will Make It Through, Vol 3 ⭐⭐⭐⭐
My First Love’s Kiss, Vol. 3 I have rarely regretted buying a book so much

At least all the romance fluff I read this week was good.

Music

Had a massive Bandcamp Friday haul that will take me a while to go through.
Found a “new to me” artist with a new album, “Lost Dog” by fur:trash. It’s very “breakcore noise trash” style with good underlying composition. It reminded me of Ada Rook’s “UNKILLABLE ANGEL,” which is still a contender for my fave album of the year.
Dusqk’s “Sanctuary OS” is a good “chill breakcore” counterbalance to fur:trash. It’s a type I often call the PlayStation Style because it uses that reverb and sweeps so often.
Went back to listening to Ada Rook instead of my new music 😆
I checked. It’s only September, and I have eighty-four 2025 releases purchased this year. 😅 I don’t know if I can listen to this much music, but I have it.

Reads and Videos

Damn it, I am agreeing with Theo.gg again. This is not a trend I try to keep. But I hard agree with his take on The right way to vibe code
This blog post ended up all over my corner of the internet, and it’s a big mood for me. Simplicity always wins in maintainability. I Tried Every Todo App and Ended Up With a .txt File

Holy Heck… That was a lot. A lot, a lot. I hope that these will be shorter going forward, and I will work on being more concise in my writing.

This Week in Squirrels: Intro

Sun, 07 Sep 2025 19:24:14 -0700

Welcome to a brand new series of posts.

This blog began as a continuation of my LiveJournal, and I am returning to my roots for this series called “This Week in Squirrels…” This blog went pretty quiet after Twitter really took off, but after the great “Eloning of X,” I never entirely took to Mastodon or BlueSky. Because of this, I miss blogging my thoughts.

My goals are two-fold here. The first is to return regularly and share my thoughts and content, even if it’s just brief updates on what is going on in my life. The next goal is to get back into the habit of regularly deploying to my journal and build workflows for improved blogging.

Status updates will not become the sole purpose of my blog, though. I would like to use this as a springboard for regular posts on all sorts of topics.

My format will grow and change over time, but it’s mostly going to be as follows:

## Summary

- list of things that have come up
- and thoughts

## Books

- Books
- Manga

## Music

- Music news
- Music I'm buying
- w/e

## Posts

- Sharing articles
- or videos
- the repost corner

I may miss a few weeks when things come up, but I hope you will stick with it. Also, I hope I stick with it too 🤣

Use Bandcamp, but Do Not Trust Bandcamp

Tue, 29 Apr 2025 12:51:25 -0700

To prevent burying the leede. Buy your music, but make sure you download it in the best format you can and keep it backed up. Do NOT trust services like Bandcamp, Amazon, or Apple to keep your music you purchased.

My Relationship with My Music Library

I have made it no secret I love music. I love consuming it, decorating time with it, DJing, making it, all of it. Outside of a very brief stint in the 1990’s with Limewire and in the 2010’s with Spotify, then Apple Music I have always been buy on buying and having my music collection.

A large part of why I like to maintain my own collection is that I have such eclectic tastes that there is too many songs I enjoy that are not on streaming platforms. In fact so much of my purchased music isn’t even in MusicBrainz database that it makes managing it with popular tools a nightmare.¹

The second reason stems from my time with Apple Music. Apple Music with iTunes Match was a perfect solution to my eclectic collection plus streaming until they kept vanishing one of my all time favorite albums “Becoming X” by the Sneaker Pimps. I would be listening to it one week, and it would be gone the next. That only had to happen twice before I gave up on streaming services.

For the past many years I have been extremely happy buying the vast bulk of my music from Bandcamp and Amazon since I can get MP3s from both. In 2021 I moved all my music to my NAS running Plex and have used PlexAmp to use as my own personal streaming service. This has been perfect for me, the clients are great, i can still stream to raspi with speakers for home music, and I have access to access to all my music.

Sometimes finding a song to buy is hard, and there is a few tracks that are stream only. I am looking directly at you Orbital and am so mad that “Copenhagen” is stream only. But then you find amazing things like you can buy music directly from some of your favorite artists and even get lossless files. Huge shoutouts to My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult and Gary Numan.

My “Discovery” about Bandcamp and what I Bought

But these last few weeks is where things went wrong with Bandcamp for me.

Since I am experimenting with switching from Plex to Navidrome for my music I am a lot more aware of my music tagging and also how personal streaming means transcoding my music as it is sent to my device.

As part of this I decided to download all 1120 of my Bandcamp purchases as FLAC so that I am encoding from lossless instead of lossy MP3s when listening to my music. it’s not a huge quality difference but there is no cost other than my time to swap out all the files and update tags. There is also some small advantages to using FLACs when it comes to tagging but that is not important here.

What is important is that the more I started replacing old files with new downloads the more I discovered how much artists can and do edit the albums after they are put up for sale.

In some cases this is for the better! I have found some albums now have more bonus tracks than when I bought and downloaded them. I had one artist that upgraded the quality of the tracks. I am not sure if it was originally a mistaken upload or a remaster… and the most nefarious of cases… songs are gone.

Currently artists have the ability to “private” an album or take it off sale, but in that case if I own it, I can still buy it.

But somehow artists also have the ability to hard delete songs from albums.

In 2020 when I bought LEZ POP’s “THE GIRLS” EP, it had four tracks, and I love each one of them dearly. Track three is the standout on the album for me because it introduced me to Backxwash, an artist I am so glad I have learned about and own all her albums now.

On the day this post was put up the album on Bandcamp only has two songs now, and the Backxwash collab is gone. Even if I download it having bought it with four songs. I can’t get the FLAC versions of those songs anymore.

This is only one example, and I am sure there is various legal and licencing reasons for this but I didn’t buy the two song version of the EP, I bought the four song version. And I have the files I got when I wanted, but the upgrade is impossible now.

This isn’t the only case of this, but this is the most ouch one for me at the moment.

The Moral of the Story

So, moral of the story; Buy content, download the best version of that content, and keep it safe and backed up in at least two places. Once you download it, you never know if you will be able to download it again.

If you dig around some places of the internet they will be very clear about how important it is to buy DRM free and back up, but I wanted to add the part about “if you have the option, get it in the highest quality and most open formats you can just to be sure for later.”

Ask me about the time I destroyed my collection with Beets music manager once and had one heck of a backups restore ↩︎

The Day I Lost One of the Most Important People in my Life

Thu, 13 Mar 2025 13:35:12 -0700

This post is written in mourning. Today I lost one of the most colorful humans in my life. Steph was absolutely the most amazing, delightful, and powerful women I have had the opportunity to love.

Since the early 2000’s with all those nights at nightclubs, to the nearly decade as partners, to her help with my transition, she has changed my life for the better over and over and over.

Part of me wants to go on about all her amazing charity with with the group she created Very Awesome Girls Into Nerdy Activities (yes, V.A.G.I.N.A lol), her time with activism, or all the things she taught me, all the troubles we overcame together, and all the smiles we shared.

When people pass away we often talk about who they were to us individually but I wanted to take a moment to talk about who she was to everybody.

She was more powerful than you could even imagine.
She was incredibly passionate about whatever had her interests.
She always wanted to help others around her and do good.
She had been through things that could humble most of us.
She created a whole local charity and social group around her.
She was an amazing witch
She was an amazing dancer, even right after knee surgery
She was the biggest nerd I know

I have so much more I could write but it’s still hard to. Maybe some other time I will come back and write more, but for now what I want to share most is her smile. Because it was the best one in the world.

I hope this can be a lil memorial to everything she was for us all.

Pomodoro for Success

Tue, 25 Feb 2025 20:32:00 +0000

One of the most annoying ADHD superpowers is many ADHDer’s are able to easily adapt to new techniques and systems, but that nothing seems to work forever.

In one of the many ADHD books I have read recently, there was a specific callout that the brain craves novelty so much that it’s healthier to expect routines to work for a limited time. The recommendation was to give yourself a lot of grace for when your habits start to fall apart and instead use the flexibility to pick up something new, or old to keep evolving your system.

This post, as you can imagine from the title and preamble, is about my on and off again relationship with Pomodoro timers.

I found that calendar time boxing for tasks does not work for me at all as my brain refuses to participate in events that are not actually appointments. However, I love the sound of a clicking clock; the repetition, the steady click that sometimes syncs up with my music, and other times slides out in an syncopated mash.

If you have followed me long enough you would know this is the third article I have written about the Pomodoro Technique™ and how amazing it works for me… some of the time.

This time let’s start off with talking about when using timers and focus blocks works best for me.

When I Use the Timer

I have three cases where I use the timer, and sometimes these overlap.

I want (on need) to sit down and focus to complete tasks.
I don’t want to lose too much time to hyperfocus
I want to apply time pressure to a task that doesn’t normally have it

The Focus

It’s not a given I want to focus, in fact, it’s more a given that I really don’t want to focus on anything. I want to ping pong all around until I hit something that triggers my hyper focus and then I will do that until I am dehydrated and weirdly fatigued because I haven’t moved for hours.

But sometimes my work requires me to spend several weeks importing, linking, & then unifying entire existing AWS regions into Terraform… you know… the riveting work. We all have some sort of work that is exciting like when we write interesting code or build things, and when we need to pour over vendor contracts and invoices to build a report for the CTO.

During these times breaking things down into 2hr max blocks and then starting a work/break timer helps build up momentum, get moving, and get stuff done. Because most of my work is back to engineering focus is key to delivering and feeling good about what I did in a day.

Hyper Focus Control

And even when I am working on something exciting and engaging, not taking breaks is simply bad for our health. I want to get up and move around, do some squats, meditate to keep my mental battery up, and drink a lot of water since I live in a desert!

By keeping the timer in my eye line and using something that will be very loud and alarm for a long time BUT also auto-continues, causes me to even derail out of a hyper focus just long enough to take care of the body and mind before I jump back in. I find that when i am using 50/10 no matter how engaged (or not) I am it still feels like enough time “in the flow” and the break is short enough that it feels like popping up up for a quick breath before getting back into it.

The Time Pressure (aka My Workday)

The most common way I use the time pressure of it is during work.

I start my workday with routine. I sit down and run down a personal checklist of reviewing all of my inputs like slack, email, & github. I also review what I have on all of my lists and what is being added to those lists.

This is a perfect place for me to a timer because I like to challenge myself to parse through and note down all of the inputs I need to reply to or deal with in half of a 50 minute timer. I treat this phase much like clearing an inbox, touch everything once, figure out what needs to happen, don’t do it, but put it on a list or delegate it or whatever.

Sometimes this can take a full 50 minute timer because I had a long weekend or a lot of things happened at work overnight for me. I work in a global company where most of my coworkers are in either the EMEA or East Aisa timezones, and those are not the time zones I work in, so I have to process everything that’s happened at everybody’s yesterday on top of any days I had off but they didn’t because our holidays don’t even line up.

But I want to make sure this never takes more than that 50 timer. So I challenge myself to get through it.

At the end of this block I set up the day’s pomodoro. When I am committing to nothing but focus work I can do up to 14 blocks or appx 6 hours of focus work. I like to stick to the OG method here where I list out all my bigger tasks with estimates based on the 25m (or half of one of my actual time blocks) and I keep my tasks cut down to max of 4 timers or appx two hours. I also put all of my smaller tasks into a “Batch blocks”

Then I have this big list of things to do with estimates. Both my “return to neutral” tasks and also my project work. Now I can attack each of these time blocks in 50/10 on off timers and try to meet or beat my estimates.

Once the 50 timer is going I want to try to get what I am working on done IN that block. I don’t want a lil dangling task, or to have to go into more blocks. I am not the type to cut corners for stuff like this but it does mean I can’t sit and dwell on my decisions more than necessary and I am focused on getting a deliverable out in that timer. A lot of this time this starts to look like me redefining the task mid flight, sometimes I will shrink the scope of and break it down into a smaller unit so I can get that done in the timer, and make the new next step a another discreet task.

The more I do this the better I get at making smaller units of work for myself, which makes ADHD brain happy on so many different levels. I get more things to “done”, I check off more boxes, and everybody prefers a smaller PR to review. Not everybody likes stacked PRs, but sometimes you get poke your coworkers to give you a quick check off.

When I Don’t Use a Timer

This is the easiest section to write and is probably just a list

I have a lot of meetings/appointments in the day
I am talking to somebody (actively or passively).
Incidents are derailing the day.
I want some unfocused meandering.
I am ok with hyperfocusing till it’s 1am (weekends are for me).

A lot of these boil down to the idea that if I don’t have the time to focus for at least an hour at a time, I don’t bother. Sometimes at the end of the day I will do a 25/5 timer just to close things out, but otherwise I need to have the time available without rejecting other important responsibilities.

When I Wished I Used a Timer

Sometimes when my meds have lapsed and I just can’t find the energy to hit start… it happens and it’s important that we give ourselves grace when our health or minds need a break from grinding things out at max clip.¹

When I Fall off the Wagon

I can usually keep this going for a few years on my best, but burnout and fatigue hit us all at some point. When the time tracking falls off because my position has changed, or my direction isn’t clear, or I can’t summon the energy to keep going… I don’t.

I put the timers away, usually for 6 months, maybe even a year…

But I keep coming back to the one time technique that has worked for me since I first got into doing knowledge work and needed to both track and control my own time and energy.

tl;dr

This is your reminder that…

Pomodoro Technique™ has some important elements people like to forget…

Plan out your time blocks for the day/week in advance
Set up each block to have an estimate no more than 4 blocks/2hour
If you have a bunch of smaller things set up “batch blocks”
Log your actual vs estimate to get a view of your day and how long tasks take
When you have time at the end of a timer and the task is done, clean things up, reset to neutral.

…and some things you should be more flexible with like how big your blocks are;

50/10 works amazing for me
25/5 is low energy or filler for me
75/15 would be even more powerful
90/30 is supposedly the “optimal” according to somebody on the internet but idk about that

and my own personal hacks are;

Use bigger ones when starting out, smoller ones when all tired at the end
Lean into the time pressure by using a timer that automatically progresses from focus->break->focus without intervention
Set your timer to tick when in focus, silent on break
Keep the timer somewhere in your eyeline
Sometimes I find I can reduce something enough (or misestimated something) so that I am suddenly in a “batch block” and I can pull in a bunch of smaller tasks till the timer resets!
Be flexible with your blocks as your day evolves, rescope them, cut them, grow them, suddenly do a batch block.

…but if planning things out isn’t for you but you still want to use timers to challenge yourself;

Choose what things you are going to focus on for the time period
Start a stopwatch and focus on a single task
Stop the timer when you get distracted or finish
Take the time you focused, divide by 5, then take a break like that.
Start again and see how long you can go!

P.S. What Timer Do I Use?

I have a physical TimeTimer clock for some cases but lately I mostly use the PomoFocus website because it is usable with an absolute minimum configuration, no login required, and has auto-progression.

I feel compelled to bring up the privilege in this statement. I am a knowledge worker who works for a company that isn’t complete dog shit to it’s employees and gives us the space to take care of minds and bodies when we need it, and empowers us to find the modalities of work that work the best for ourselves. If you look at my linkedin you will see how I have spent over 5 years of my life working in service & support oriented work. I never forget the good I have and and how grueling it was working tight timed shifts under forced time ebb and crunch. ↩︎

Jumping Onto the Uses Bandwagon

Sun, 23 Feb 2025 21:58:02 -0800

Another quick update for the website!

While reading some articles about how to do cool stuff with sqlc I found yet another “Uses” page where the blogger shows off their list full of favorite tools and toys.

Since I like to share cool tips and toys and tricks I thought i would make one too, now in the Uses Section of the sidebar.

Mine isn’t as nice as this one, but I aspire to get it to that point eventually. Check it out if you want to know what cool stuff I am into these days.

Full Text Feeds

Wed, 29 Jan 2025 23:12:20 -0800

I have updated my templates so that my RSS feeds are full text!

There is absolutely no reason to drive you to this site if you can read it in the comfort of whatever reader makes you happy.

Sorry it was not beforehand, it’s not the default for hugo.

Life After Facebook

Wed, 29 Jan 2025 21:25:32 -0800

What a dramatic title for this post! Let’s be honest. I didn’t use facebook that much to begin with. But this post is about life after Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and to a partial extent YouTube as well. I am letting go of Web 2.0.

But Why?

I am letting go of my “Web 2.0” social media and moving on to more decentralized things like my own hosted blog and Mastodon for several reasons.

Our Attention is More Valuable than Our Money

In this economy where you scroll is worth far more than money you pay out directly. That is why so few major players offer subscriptions and prefer you take “free” ad supported tiers.

I could probably write diatribes on this but there are dozens of books on the topic like “Look: How to Pay Attention in a Distracted World”, “Please Unsubscribe, Thanks!”, “Subprime Attention Crisis”, “Stolen Focus”, “The Sirens’ Call”, “How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy” and on and on and on who will explain it all so much better than I.

The important takeaway is that people are referring to the current tech industry as “The Attention Economy” for a reason. Companies are using relentless testing and neuroscience to keep you engaged. Pages and content are ranked by how long you look at it before clicking or swiping away.

I Spend Intentionally

My father loves the phrase “follow the money.” You gotta follow the money to understand where people’s true allegiances and motivations lie. I’ve always like to think about it the other way around and prefer the adage “Vote with your Dollars.”

Combining the prior point with intentional spending means the websites and content that I look at, are the ones I support.Meta, X, and even TikTok have done a hard right push to put all of their support behind Trump and his political desires very openly. Since those decisions don’t align with mine I want to support other companies with my time.

It’s All Much Worse for Us Than We Admit

Most of us know how toxic social media has become. I don’t personally know anybody who doesn’t complain about whatever platform they are on or how toxic it all is in general. I believe that we all know how problematic is but we are too addicted to pull away.

I have come to liken social media to cigarettes. We know they are bad for us too, we even know they are addictive. But even after the entire public came to know this everybody kept smoking for years and years and years before it finally became a lot less socially acceptable.

There are so many books and so many studies about how toxic the dopamine feeds are for our brains. There is so much research about how it feeds us just the right (or wrong) content to keep our neurons activated, our phone screens on, and the fingers scrolling.

I am pretty sure that in another 15 years or so we will hit better social awareness that social media companies are the tobacco outfits of the 10-20’s and the majority of the public will have moved on.

Ok, So What Next?

Rediscovering the new ways and old ways of staying connected to people. I am still on Mastodon, but I have removed all social media and other things from my phone to make it a device I put things into and use for direct contact, not a consumer of media.

Connect Directly Where I Can

I am used to being connected to so many people so easily and keeping track of them all in chats is hard. I have a lil app on my phone now that reminds me the last time I saw somebody, like a micro CRM so I remember to send pings to people. I plan on making a self hosted version of this sometime soon.

Find a New Way to Host Communities

I am also looking into how to replace Facebook’s biggest superpower to local communities; Groups and Events. I think if Facebook hadn’t done this so well it would already be long in the dust for most queer communities. In fact many of my friends who have stayed on Facebook have done so solely because they would loose access to community.

If the answer is we are bringing back forums I am in. I ran forums about 10 years of my life I can go right back to running community and events in them. I am more interested in something more “Fediverse” but honestly I’m not overly invested to the idea.

Curated Ingestion of Content

I have been an RSS person since Google Reader first became a thing and I never let go of it even when it closed. For the longest time I have been a huge fan of the paid web app NewsBlur but now that I am not getting all my various news and articles from social media I am working even more to curate lots of various feeds and sources to bring me all the news and entertainment I want.

Switching to a locally hosted FreshRSS has allowed me to add a lot more feeds without getting overwhelmed because it has some very powerful per feed and global filters. I added intitle:Trump to my global “mark as read” filter has reduced a lot of content from all my local and queer news sources and focused them back on the things I want to read right now. I can even add Youtube channels I want to follow to get only their latest videos, no shorts, no recommended thumbnails, just my content creators.

I am an even bigger podcast person these days as well. I prefer shorter daily and weekly news based podcasts and issues analysis with professionals over longer “talking heads share their thoughts.” I listen to all of my podcasts at 2x speed and I still listened to anywhere from 300 to 400 hours of podcasts a year depending.

Finally, as you can see here. I am putting more energy into my blog. The nature of the content might start changing and evolving. I might finally clear out the many years of posts I don’t really like anymore and put some shorter content here too. I will never add likes or comments back to my blog. This is my space to share what I want, and people are welcome to contact me directly if they want to engage with me and my content. I have no scripts or analytics on this so it is what it is and I don’t fuss about how popular it is.

Want to Help?

If you have read this far and have ideas on how to do groups and communities better I am all ears. Or if you want to tell me about your favorite feeds or podcasts I am open to that too.

Click my socials or linktree in the sidebar to get in touch.

Fix Crashing on AMD GPU on Debian 12

Sat, 23 Nov 2024 11:17:37 -0800

This year I replaced my work computer with a AMD Ryzen 7 8700G running Debian 12.

This was mostly ok, but I was getting the most random and rare hard lockups. I was super confused and frustrated as all my burn in tests came back clean with no issues. I even tried a short stint on Ubuntu 24.10 to see it it would help, but it still happened. Then I tried a GPU benchmarking tool and it hard locked my computer every time it tried to load. Since this was a work computer I hardly ever really engaged the GPU seriously. Turns out the GPU was fine, but the drivers were not.

Below is what I did to fix it, as a reference to myself and others. These are my instructions for Debian 12, adapted from some advice I was linked to from the Linux Mint forum and instruction from the Debian Forum and Wiki.

Warning

This is a rando on the internet advising you to install a bleeding edge kernel, the latest hotness mesa, and the latest AMD kernel drivers from the HEAD of the git repo.

This hasn’t bit me in the ass yet, but it may blow up your use case.

Set up Debian 12’s Bookworm Backports

echo "deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-backports main contrib non-free non-free-firmware" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/backports.list
sudo apt update

Backport Kernel, AMD, & Mesa

This installed the linux kernel 6.11 at the time of this article.

sudo apt install -t bookworm-backports linux-image-amd64 linux-headers-amd64 libgl1-mesa-dri libglx-mesa0 mesa-vulkan-drivers libglu1-mesa libglu1-mesa-dev

Update the AMD Drivers from the Kernel’s Main Branch

Download the linux-firmware-main.tar.gz into ~/Downloads from the linux firmware git page.

cd ~/Downloads
tar -xzf linux-firmware-main.tar.gz
sudo cp --update ~/Downloads/linux-firmware-main/amdgpu/* /lib/firmware/amdgpu/
sudo update-initramfs -u -k all

This will generate a pile of warnings about missing files, but none of them caused any issues for me.

Reboot and Pray

sudo systemctl reboot

Where are I and AI

Fri, 22 Nov 2024 16:00:30 +0000

After Writing about AI and cohorts I wanted to spend time putting down where I am with AI, hopefully this is a post that grows and changes as my feelings do.

Also sorry for the grammar in the title, I think it sounds clever.

As a Consumer

As somebody who consumes a lot of books, art, & music I want hand created content for a few reasons.

Reason 1: I Buy Stuff

I pay for content; I buy books by the droves, I purchase music directly,¹ and I commission art from artists² as well as have an active Patreon subscription I am always struggling to cull back.

What does this have to do with AI? Well I want the most value possible for my money. AI is low value content. It’s extremely easy to create for next to nothing. So then why should I pay for it?

Value can sometimes be arbitrary, but I put a lot of value on the time, energy, and effort of other people. I don’t really value the output of a computer that much, the computer and the software? Yes! it’s output, not really. That’s cheap, and intentionally so.

Reason 2: Error Tolerance

I have a moderately low error tolerance. Allow me to explain with an example.

Below is the title of an anime I am currently enjoying.

How I Attended an All-Guy’s Mixer

How much does this bother you? Did you even notice?

The human brain has an “auto-correct” system and there is a lot of memes about how if you rearrange all the consonants or set up a consistent typo, your brain will ‘swallow it’ and move on. Usually once somebody points out the error that it is an “All-Guys Mixer” you can’t unsee it.

However some people can’t miss these things.

I am usually less picky about grammar and typing, but am extremely picky about anatomy in art. I am that person who looks at furry, anime, and comic book art and screams about broken spines. If you aren’t sure what I am talking about there is a whole site dedicated to pointing this out.

Generative AI is notoriously bad at anatomy and creating errors in art. The errors it generates also look exceptionally annoying to me. This translates to factual errors and all the other various “hallucinations” it makes.

As a Creator

As a creator I have not gotten value out of generative AI because it is self reinforcing in my workflow, e.g. it doesn’t teach you a skill outside of how to use itself better.

I often think about the article “I have forgotten how to read” and the lost art of long form reading not only for entertainment but also education. I have had a conversation with a few different people about reading habits and how getting too into “quick” shorthand knowledge makes it harder to sit and engage with longer form content. Our brain readjusts and becomes bored engaging with content for a long period of time.

This applies to AI and “what it teaches us” because every time I have used AI it has been all about getting to the solution as rapidly as possible, not spending the time learning the thing. There are some exceptions to this but generally these are the products that are being sold to me.

When I used it to write code, I spent time using it to explain how to use a library to me, or to summarize some code to me, it didn’t teach me how to engage with the docs or how to read the code, it just provided the answers, with varying degrees of correctness, which only taught me how to quickly identify it’s mistakes and manipulate the AI to giving better answers. I also tried the copilot auto-correct method and found myself only learning how to make what it did better.

When I used it to improve my fiction and story writing, it didn’t teach me how to be a better writer, but how to re-adjust what it did in my writing to have my personal tone and flavor.

When i made it generate music for me I got some passable results, but with none of the satisfaction or knowledge on how to make the sounds or composition.

Now, if I had different priorities as a creator, this wouldn’t matter. If I didn’t care about learning how to learn with a variety of libraries, or improving my writing with my tone, or the act of making music itself…. then AI would have been a big win. But I have specific goals as a creator and they are less tied around the quantity of output but instead the quality and my my personal journey of improvement.

In fact my music “output” is a number that infinitely approaches zero and that is intentional. I just do music in the moment so having something else do music for me is pretty pointless.

Have I Found Value in AI Somewhere?

My favorite use so far is cleaning vocal samples from movies & TV of background sounds. it’s pretty amazing at that abhorrently hard task.
Sometimes I still run my writing through it, which usually mangles it and forces me to rewrite sections of it again. But that can help with stale descriptions.

That is it! Yea… not a promising list.

If you have a use you think I would like, you are welcome to send me a message on social media!

Buying albums in 2024? A seriously dying breed I get it but that’s me. I do not have a streaming music subscription. ↩︎
This reminds me that rebuilding my art site is the next thing that needs to happen. I have broken over 100 pieces of commissioned art and share it all NOWHERE at the moment. ↩︎

Media Consumer Cohorts and AI

Fri, 22 Nov 2024 10:00:00 +0000

I saw something about cohorts and AI usage and it got this whole idea stuck in my head so I decided to write it out and maybe it’s enough to make you think about how you feel about AI content itself and where it brings entertainment and value to you.

Now that the “AI boom” has started to plateau and mature I see two broad cohorts of people when it comes to ingesting media and services. These are the consumers, not the creators.

The Cohorts of Consumption

The first are those who like that they can get custom generated content tuned more or less to their preference quickly and almost constantly. The output has mechanical flaws and repetitive nature but you don’t have to sit with it too long because you can have the next in moments.

The second are those who want a craftsmanship to their content. It has a variance of the creators styles, quirks, and mood. These also grows and change between pieces as the artist develops, The output generally has less flaws and the ones they have are organic feeling. Things created by people take much more time, so have more time with each piece before the next.

What Makes Them Tick

The first cohort feels more pragmatic. There is a focus on getting output cheaply and efficiently. It seems like the group that seeks novelty and quick wins that they can build up into an larger experience that can satisfy them. We know this is a cohort that you can sell to in bulk because they want the next thing, now, and cheap. I see a likening to fast fashion and cheap and quick buy me fads. Arguably peak consumerism content and a market easy to feed.

The second feels more romantic. It’s quality over the quantity. There is a joy in the artistic nature of it all. The output of people has it’s own flaws but the variances we get are worth it. People trying to develop a skill and improve in their abilities fit into this themselves usually, as they are both consumers and creators. These are the people who are willing to put out a premium to get what they perceive is a premium product, especially when you consider people who commission works. Having something bulk made cheaply isn’t going to appease these people, they want to feel quality and possibly some unique value.

There is technically a third cohort I lump into the second. People who are more into defense of tradesmanship and artistry. They may not care as much about the output but they do care about how output is created for various economical and humane reasons. These are the people who spend with their heart, and generally at a premium.

Who ‘Wins’?

I believe one major factor is that the first group still needs novelty, if the system can’t improve at an acceptable clip they may bore of it, and the ’look’ of AI will become as dated as NFT monkeys.

The size of the various cohorts is the biggest factor too, will the amount of people interested in paying for AI content support it’s massive investment needs? Will the wash of easy and cheap content drown out creators who make things by hand? And finally how useful can AI be to the creators without replacing their style and value?

The Union of Obsidian and Hugo

Fri, 15 Nov 2024 08:29:08 -0800

Preamble

Since I am brining back this blog and plan on writing a lot more I wanted to make it a lot easier. Historically this blog has been written in Vim/NeoVim, which while being a very proficient editor, is not optimal for free flow text for me.

An Idea

Last year consolidated my journal and all of my notes into Obsidian. In the past I used MacJournal and then Day One for my journaling and Bear for my notes, but every time I would end up locked out of my data when trying to export to a new system.

Obsidian with a Weekly Journal plugin keeps all my journaling in easy to port text files, and navigating obsidian’s wiki style really grooves for my brain.

One of my favorite features of Obsidian is how well it works with git. I am extremely proficient in git these days so being able to both version control, back up, and sync my Obsidian vaults with it has been really amazing.

This got me thinking, why not open my hugo site as an Obsidian vault?

It Works

Unsurprisingly it’s perfectly smooth. You select your Hugo site directly as a vault and Hugo blissfully ignores the .obsidian folder it creates.

Now I have a quick way of editing all of my blog posts. Being able to use all the quick shortcuts for markdown editing, adding code blocks, is very natural to me as a heavy Obsidian user already.

But that’s fine and dandy, but how does Obsidian make it awesome?

How Obsidian Makes Blog Writing and Hacking Awesome

In short it’s the plugins. Let’s go over them.

Obsidian Itself

Ok, ok, this isn’t a plugin but the way that Obsidian handles the front matter as a formatted properties section is great. It allows for really quick editing of post settings and setup.

The tags pane is also so helpful. Being able to autocomplete tags and see all of the current tags helps keep consistency. Speaking of consistency…

TagWrangler

Tag Wrangler allows me to get all my tags unified. This blog is very old and the tags (and previously categories) are all over the place.

With tag wrangler a few clicks allows me to edit all my tags across all the posts instantly.

Obsidian Linter

The more I code the more I love a linter. The consistency of formatting and little things just tickles me. With Obsidian Linter I can preconfigure it, clean up all of the old posts and now every time I save or leave a file it is formatted and fixed up to offer some consistency.

While this isn’t the biggest feature, it really helps me out.

Git

I generally prefer to keep all my git work to the command line and I will share another blog post soon about how much my git-fu has changed, but making Obsidian git aware is still nice.

I can check what I have touched and make a quick commit right in a side panel. Nice!

It (kinda) Works

There is a few things I don’t quite have 100% yet.

I am still using my justfile to create the posts. I will want to set up QuickAdd and Templater at some point to make a single button for ’new post'
There is a hugo preview plugin but it has some rough edges and didn’t work for me better than using my justfile and another browser

But I plan on this to be a work in progress. Being in Obsidian makes it really easy to go in and edit stuff in a quick moment and get it committed.

A Quick Note on Plugins

There is a lot of great writing plugins for Obsidian depending on your style and needs. However the more plugins you install the more piles of publicly developed javascript you are running on your machine.

I generally recommend minimizing the amount of plugins you run. In fact since this vault is just for my blog I disable a majority of the built in plugins as well.

I develop this blog in a public repo currently so you can go check out all of my obsidian settings and how they have changed since I posted this!

2024 Returns

Thu, 14 Nov 2024 21:09:05 -0800

Oh wow. I haven’t written in my blog since the pandemic hit.

Yikes.

A lot has happened since then.

With social media having fallen apart for years I thought I would spend some time to build this blog back up.

I am going to try to spend more time adding smaller things to it, and putting more notes up here instead of only in my Obsidian document.

It’s going to be a rough next four years, might as well spend it contributing.

Dear Hugo, Ouch

It’s been years and the last time I wrote here I was using Hugo 0.80, sadly it is now at 0.138 and I have had to redo a shocking amount of code. It’s outright frustrating I needed to replace the theme and tonnes of code changes.

I also have noticed that old blog posts are pretty poor quality, but many of them are 12 years old and I am not interested in cleaning them all up… yet

It's hard to talk

Fri, 26 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The following is a stream of consciousness. It was originally meant as something more poetic, to try and share what social situations are like post transition.

It is not meant as a call out post for any person or the conference I was at. I solely wish to share what my experience is like now, and offer some contrast to how it was.

It’s hard to talk (as a trans person).

I say (as a trans person) because it was not hard to talk before. I don’t want to say it’s hardEr to talk as a trans person. It’s not a healthy comparison I think.

It’s wilting how often people stare with unpleasant eyes. A conference hall I’ve walked ten times before, full of people who I called my friends without reserve or limitations is now hostile and scary.

I’m gauging every glare.

It makes me not want to speak; don’t bring more attention to yourself. I don’t feel well after the third glare. Am I still a friend? Can I be apart of this a community? Is this going to a problem? Will I be able to pee?

Oh look! There’s Joe. Joe’s safe. Joe smiles when they see me.

I miss the time when everyone smiled when they saw me. Even strangers would give a quick strained smile, that sign that it’s not great at the moment but we are all friends here so they want to share is that quick flash of a smile and nod to say “it will be ok, I’ll pull this off”

People don’t tell me it’s ok with their eyes anymore. They tell me they haven’t decided; what they haven’t decided is the scariest part. Have they not decided if I can be apart of their space? have they not decided if they want to put me off? Have they not decided if today is a good day to die?

If I can stay by Joe it’ll be ok.

I keep telling myself I’m not afraid, I’m worried. Worried about the person giving me angry eyes while Joe talks.

Somone called me “he”, it’s a slip up. What makes someone make that slip up? This T-shirt really shows off my breasts. I even spent an hour on makeup and am standing they way I was taught, how am I still mistakenly a he? I guess I can’t be pretty enough to be a she. Stop that, being a woman isn’t about being pretty enough for others around you. It’s probably my voice, I sound masculine.

Someone once told me that it’s really awkward when they make a mistake; they don’t want to call attention to the mistake or me by correcting themselves or apologizing. It’s jarring to me when it happens, it sounds like someone screaming about how I’m just a dude in a dress. I’m downplaying how upset I am. I’m not even mad at you, I’m upset at the moment. I wish we could rewind and scrub it, we both get a do-over and everything great now.

It’s worse when you ignore the mistake, now I’m mad at you because you’ve hurt me without repentance, it feels like you are making a statement. Is it worth derailing this entire conversation? Take a deep breath and let it go, no one likes the pronoun police, you don’t want to be marked one of those shrew trans women.

Nobody else cares.

Shoot I missed what they said, I was distracted.

Smile and nod.

It’s hard to talk.

Systems are Not Always Easy Part 2: Unblocking

Sat, 16 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

In part one of this post I talked about what I feel the hardest part of every system is, maintenance. I talked about identifying tasks that take up large amounts of mental stress and what you should maybe do with them. Hint, throw them out or defer them. What if you really need to do this thing though?

I believe there is very few things we need to do, but there is a lot of things you really should do in your system. Some of those things you should do might be friction items that are not getting done. For these probleamatic items I have a special method of reviewing however this process isn’t free and takes both time and energy. I don’t always do this soon enough which is why sometimes things break down. If I haven’t done this in a while my normally 30 minute review can quickly ballon out into an hour or more, but sometimes you need to do that processing up front instead of every time you look at your list.

First off I remind myself that the concept of need is an crutch; I don’t need to do anything and saying the word need doesn’t empower me or the task. However I should do this because the consequence of not doing it is…? Then I write down the consequence of not doing the thing. Now that I know what happens if I don’t do it I write down what happens if I DO compete the thing.

Now is a good time to pause and look at the two things I wrote down and ask myself “Is this important and is this urgent?” If this is neither important nor urgent then it can be tossed into the whatever pile. If this is important or urgent then I should proceed and if it’s both important and urgent then I know I absolutely need to figure out how to make this easier for me to do, or find a way to delegate it ASAP. I can’t really tell you what makes something important to you but try to keep in mind if everything is important, then nothing is important.

After thinking about that I make the outcome of completing the task the name of a project. Once I’ve establish this is now a project, not just a “simple task” I think about anything that is in the way of me doing the thing. Do I need to know a number, or some business hours, do I have to schedule some time to do it, do I need a person? I try to figure out if the reason I am not doing the task is because I’m missing a step, then I make that next step the thing to do and cross off the old task. The old one has stress and emotion tied to it so we can throw it right out.

Now (hopefully) I have an outcome based project, a new simpler or at least more concise task to do, and a note to myself reminding me of what happens if I don’t do it. Now I’ve cleared out the stressors and can move forward! Problem solved!

But wait? What if there is nothing missing? What if that was the simplest next action and I make a project and write it down and I still don’t want to do the thing and what if the idea of calling the clinic just stresses me out so much and I don’t want to do it because OMG uhhhhhhhggggg heck darn.

Well it’s important, and urgent, and it’s the next action and I still don’t want to do it… so I put it on my calendar. Yep. I will schedule 30 minutes out of my day in the morning and go get some coffee and treat myself to something I wouldn’t normally eat and do the thing I do t wanna do.

I find by scheduling it, doing it early, and surrounding it by incentives makes things that suck, suck less.

Also finding an accountability buddy, or accoutabilabuddy as I like to say, is indispensable. It might be hard to find someone at first (or it might be too easy) but I’m sure someone out there is willing to give you that disapproving stare and tell you that you absolutely gotta do this thing. I would not have learned Japanese on my own, and I still would not be doing it either if not for having a regular study partner to both keep me in check, and also for me to keep them motivated as well.

So if you are having problems with your system; ask yourself why but don’t take the first answer. Keep digging in and make sure it’s not what you are putting into the system, or that the things in your system need more processing still. Your system shouldn’t be the source of your stress, it should be what is helping enable you to get more done and not forget what really matters most to you. All systems have an overhead and require maintenance but your gains should be exponential if you tend to it.

Systems are Not Always Easy Part 1

Fri, 15 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve spent a lot of my time over the past years evangelizing the power of having a system and the David Allen Getting Things Done (GTD) method. One thing I haven’t talked much about is that while having a trusted system has huge advantages it doesn’t come for free. Like all systems it must be maintained or it breaks down slowly until one day it either stops working completely, or you’ve given up on it for it’s inefficiency. Having a system isn’t unique to GTD but it is my favored variant of system. There is a lot of GTD flavor and verbiage here but absolutely nothing in this post is unique to GTD, this will apply to most of the systems I have used.

Over the course of many years I’ve had this system break down a few times. I’ve had it become this mess of not working for me anymore. Usually at this time I start looking for all these other systems that promise to “fix” GTD by being a system that doesn’t need maintenance or somehow are less effort. Sometimes I’ve tried completely different types of agile systems. I have never had this fix the problem, because no system is without effort and most systems are more or less the same amount of effort in my experience; the issue isn’t with them but what I am keeping in them.

My problem starts when I hit that “but I’m too busy to do a review” feeling and stop using the system. Am I too busy? I am usually not really so busy I can’t spend 30-45 minutes out of my week to align my goals, empty inboxes, and review lists. There is always 2 minutes in the morning to review my lists and flag some tasks. So why don’t I? Why can’t I just maintain this easily.

I can tell you that answer with a little bit of digging, and this is where the work comes in. We as people tend to say “don’t have the time” when we mean “don’t have the energy”. So why am I lacking the energy to review some lists? What is making maintenance that sounds simple on the surface take up that much energy?

It boils down to emotional friction for me. I don’t want to go over my lists and review things because they remind me of all the things I haven’t done yet. When I see things I have put off I feel bad. Often something is on the list I really don’t want to do or brings me anxiety.

I should have called the clinic weeks ago, but it stresses me out, so it’s still on the list, so looking at the list impacts my mood. Then I stop using the list because “oh I know what’s on there and I’m not sure if I am going to do it”. That is a lot of energy to expend just to have a list of things to do.

Maybe this is the exact same reason your own system is falling apart; it’s full of don’t want to dos and simply just will not to dos.

It is great to be emotionally invested in the things in your system but if “Talk to Rachel” isn’t something that’s actually going to bring value to my life then why is it on my list? It’s on the list because it popped into my head “Oh well I really should…” or my favorite little lie came up “I need to do this”. The core idea of GTD is that every idea you have you write down. Everything that hits your inbox that feels like it’s actionable should go into your system. Where I fall apart is remembering that not everything that hits the system should be done.

This is why I have a Someday/Maybe list; a bucket of ideas I had that I still want out of my head but have not committed to doing. So quickly I forget if I’m not going to call the Optometrist and get new glasses this year then I should stop lying to myself and put it there.

Also using my system as a wishing well is also poisonous to wanting to use it. My project list will eventually balloon up into a good hundred projects. Can I possibly be working on 100 projects at a time? Well, maybe, but not likely. Even then, that’s not a healthy workload for anyone. Anything I’m not working on actively, nor will I be in the next quarter needs to be incubated as well; Off to a Someday/Maybe list or put On Hold somehow.

When I am excited about my system, when I trust it and don’t have any mental friction, I always have the time and energy to maintain it and use it to get things done. However it’s going to slowly start filling up with things I won’t do and that is when it becomes a burden to maintain. Taking the time to incubate the things that I’m not doing now and punting those things I am not going to do is not easy, but not making a choice is a choice. The earlier I make that choice the less I have to be stressed about it and the less expensive maintenance becomes.

Now wait a moment, did I wrap this post telling everyone to put off or simply not to do the things they don’t want to do? Yes and no. I’m not your mommy, you know what should be done… or do you? I don’t always know what I should be doing so let’s go over how I review these blockers in part two.

A Word On Depression and Anxiety

Fri, 08 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Every day people say horrible things to me, constantly judging me, tearing me down, and invalidating me. Sometimes it’s my friends, sometimes it’s my family, other times it’s just me looking in a mirror.

It starts first thing in the morning when I open my eyes and I feel gross by the time I get out of the shower.

Most of these things never actually come out of another person’s mouth though. We can say “this isn’t real” but the fact it’s all in my head makes the feelings and emotions no less real.

All this hatred and anger and loathing is real, it’s in me and it wants to gnaw away at me. It takes the form of any person who it would hurt the most to hear it from, or sometimes twists a memory into something dark and demeaning.

Sometimes it feels like nobody is listening and everyone hates me; that every person I walk by is judging me. I can even hear it as clear as if they were spitting it in my face.

The hardest part is reminding myself the killer is inside the house. It’s not coming from them but all this loathing and hatred is inside me… and I can make it better. I can sooth all the anger and spite.

I’m talking about me, in the first person because this is who I am and what I have lived with every day of my life as far back as I can remember. However this also can be you. Maybe you feel this way too and that’s why I am sharing this. I really hope you too also can remind yourself that these feelings are inside you but they are not “just” inside you. They are real hurtful feelings that want to tear you down. You can’t ignore them because it won’t make them go away, they will only fester and get worse.

I have my friends to talk to, not just endless shouts into the void like this blog post or twitter rants, but people I have found to spend time with and talk out our feelings and love and support each other. I also have a therapist who helps me center myself, realign my expectations, and be happier. I have family, both natural and chosen, who love and support me and I love and support through all our flaws and missteps because that’s what family does.

You may not have all these things, but I really hope if you have a cascade of voices telling you how horrible you are and how every choice you have made is a bad one you can still reach out and listen to a real voice who can tell you how special and valid you really are.

Because you are valid, and awesome. I can promise you that you do deserve to be happy. While it won’t always be easy you can be happy too.

If you don’t feel you have anyone, ping me; let’s talk. I can’t promise I’ll always be the person you need to talk to but maybe I can at least help.

An Open Letter to Whom it May Concern

Thu, 03 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Sometimes it’s a little odd to hear these things from other people so I thought I’d leave a nice open letter to whom it may concern. No wait, this isn’t a generic letter to just anyone. This is a letter I am writing specifically for you. That’s right, directly from me to you; Just you. You probably heard some confusing things, or caught wind of some stuff you don’t understand. I am here to make some clarifications, set the record straight, just in case you missed the news.

Since this is just a personal letter between me and you I’m going to add an appropriate meme. You know me and memes; I can’t live without them.

For about 36 years of my life I went by a lot of different names from Xanaphia, Jonny, David, tBunnyMan, DJ Epic MegafaiL, and even BitM… Things have changed.

Now I’m going by Amy.

If you prefer; bunny, squirrel, she, her, they, D.O.S., or even OnlyHaveCans are all perfectly acceptable things to call me, so you have lots of choices.

I’m super happy living as a woman. My family and friends have been super supportive and I even have an amazing therapist. All in all I’m happier than I have ever been. Transitioning is not something you experiance without stressors jumping in but that is what the support of friends are for.

You may have questions, that’s great. I’d excited to spend some time explaining anything you want to know about. Just drop me a message. I’m still a fan of email if you don’t know a better way to contact me. Just send me an email to Squirrel at Wearing dot Black. Oh yea. That’s a wearing.black domain. Working in domains has taught me about all the coolest gTLDs.

Sorry that I told you though this letter, which I ended up posting to my blog publicly as well. It’s hard to tell everyone in person. It was super awesome talking to you again though! It’s been way way way too long so write me back! I know I suck at reaching out sometimes but I can always find time to reply to a letter.

Best Wishes, Amy A.

P.S. I won’t be answering questions in the comments.

Building chef-dk on FreeBSD 10

Tue, 02 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

For those that don’t know I’m a Chef for a living. Not the kind that works with food but one that works with code. What you may not know is I’m a FreeBSD guy, or at least claim to be one. I’ve been building a new FreeBSD workstation and discovered that there is no chef-dk for FreeBSD. Building it isn’t bad, but there is a trick to it.

So without further ado, here is building Chef-DK for FreeBSD 10.3 (and probably most >=10.0)

If this is a fresh box you need pkg, ports, and some base packages. All this assumes run as root.

pkg install pkg
portsnap fetch extract
portsnap fetch update
pkg install sudo

Ok, for the rest of this I am assuming you are running as a user that has sudo rights. If you aren’t then ymmv.

sudo pkg install ruby rubygem-bundler portdowngrade git
cd ~
sudo portdowngrade devel/gecode r345033
cd gecode
sudo make deinstall install clean
sudo sed -ie 's/\(#define GECODE_VERSION_NUMBER\)\s*/\1 300703/' /usr/local/include/gecode/support/config.hpp
cd ~
git clone https://github.com/chef/chef-dk.git
cd chef-dk
USE_SYSTEM_GECODE=1 bundle install --without development

There you go! It’s not going to give you the /opt/chef-dk omnibus but you will have all the chef-dk you need to do your stuff! Maybe later I’ll document how to make a package but this will likely work for me.

UPDATE 2017-01-17: Thanks to Shawn for the GECODE_VERSION_NUMBER update. This was broken several months after this post initally was written

BaaS: Burnout as a Service

Mon, 02 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

I wanna take a moment to to address what I like to call Burnout as a Service; how I see burnout as a product of the tech industry and culture. My friends, coworkers, and I have all experienced it in various levels, sometimes to crippling physical side effects. In this article I’m going to use strong language like need, and should, and I won’t work with you if you [don’t|do] $thing. While I have strong opinions about this subject and feel I have developed a powerful framework for helping avoid burnout it’s bound not to be perfect or complete. I do study this subject at great length in the name of personal development and productivity/energy management so if you have thoughts, opinions, feedback, or insights further into this topic I’d be happy to hear about them in the comments.

I’d like to point to this article, written by an amazing operations expert who has reached the jaded level where all things are approached solely by the perceived possible failure points, causing decision paralysis. Having lived the fear of doing for the failure it may cause down the road it I personally identify with this brand of burnout myself.

In my experience I have come to see burnout as a product of our tech industry’s culture more than anything else. There is a lot of different little causes that all stack up on each other; the fast evolution of technology, the constant threat from bad actors, high stakes companies built on investors, product first revenue second business models, fickle customers caused by untested in market products, unheard of before uptime requirements on hastily developed systems, etc. The list could go on listing reasons why the industry itself is a primary source of maximum energy drain.

My mother is a healthcare worker who often asks why I make as much if not more than her working on computers. I often have to remind her that every moment, at work or not, I can be more or less responsible for the shut down of an entire company’s revenue stream (possibly permanently) not just through negligence but from lack of anticipating the next failure or attack and guarding against it properly.

Let that sink in for a few moments. As an Operations Engineer or Developer not just my negligence but my lack of constant vigilance, research, and forethought can destroy an entire company. From bugs that open security holes, infrastructure mistakes that allow hidden-until-failure single points of failure, to a seemingly solid design choice that causes massive cascading failures in ways I never expected.¹ Let’s not even address what happens when someone makes an oops uh-oh and that backup you really need is coming back corrupt.

However all this is the nature of the industry we buy into often with the understanding of that this is how it works. I love having a job where mentally jogging day in and day out to keep pace or even get ahead of developing technology and security vectors. This is my great mental stimulation and when I tire of it I’ll go pour drinks at a bar.

However we all need to both expend and recover energy in equal amounts. This is a core biological imperative that we don’t often think about. Our desire to always be creating (which expends great amounts of mental energy) drives us all to burnout. An amount of rest and recuperation in equal volume and type to our expenditures needs to be done regularly. So many of us ignore the daily, weekly, and monthly cycles of stress and rest that are necessary to work at peak optimal shape. Instead we push for days, week, or even months to try to reach a constantly moving goalpost with a promise that we will someday maybe take that vacation we need. This is only assisted by our 24/7/365 pagers and systems that take no rest, constantly waiting to fail or fall over from the ever present threat of bad actors or full hard drives.

I have watched pager fatigue alone completely destroy someone mentally. A poorly managed monitoring system that pages over things that aren’t absolutely actionable and urgent or doesn’t soft notify well enough in advance things that could be resolved before they become a critical issue is psychological abuse when delivered at the right volume. If someone can’t disconnect because of the ever present pages that may or may not be actually actionable and critical then they are being slowly tortured, nerves frayed down with the rasp of their own phones.

At an even higher level I think we actively foster burnout amongst our peers and even ourselves with this great rockstar solo act so many of us pull. The concept of the Bastard Operator From Hell (BOFH) is the singlehanded “everything IT” person who has built everything from ground up and maintains everything even in the face of his users “always breaking everything”. Because of this they become so jaded that they begin to torment their own end users and customers for mental relief. The worst part of this is we have formed a whole worship culture about being the lone gunman tech asshole to a point where I have seen a lot of people glorifying and emulating it well above and beyond their own time.

If we built up the proper support systems both mentally and technically we would be able to weather the storms the environment and systems rain down on us much better. If we worked together as much as possible instead of competing we would be well armed against the ever-present threat of burnout. It tends to be a lot to do with the personality types we pulled to technology for years; high on technical knowledge, low on social skills, lots of communication through digital means and not a lot of interpersonal interactions. Mix this in with the E/INTJ Type A personalities that are drawn to this higher stakes world of startups and high payoff companies and we develop this culture where we think everyone needs to be a rockstar or a ninja. We slim down staffing and just “hire the most brilliant mind in tech” to not just design but also implement and support these companies ad infinitum or more realistically, until they burn out, quit, or both.

I understand staffing is expensive and money is tight when your product is still only on the verge of success but in so much of operations and development we are paid to think, not to turn cogs. We design, develop, and foster ideas and solutions to problems no one else has solved. These kinds of ideas are not easily grown in a vacuum, but best cultivated through discourse and experimentation. However difficult it is to measure these expenditures or notice when they are getting strained there are ways we can approach them that helps identify issues faster as well as spread the mental load out more safely.

The best thing that ever happened to me in my experience in operations was learning to foster an interpersonal technical rapport with my co-workers and keeping it open. Constantly jogging ideas back and forth, never letting myself, or them stick on a problem and instead kicking it out to jog between us. I’ve done it twice and now it’s a job requirement for me. The ability to “pair up” with operations to constantly foster and develop the most efficiently.

You see a lot of this starting to bud up in the tech world these days actually;

Open floor plans and chat based teams open up as much quick and easy discussion on issues as possible.
Code reviews are becoming the norm not just in development but in several forms of operations.²
The whole DevOps movement has large parts about enhancing communication and working together with others to help pool strengths and minimize weaknesses.
Some parts of agile/scrum are all about raising concerns and roadblocks as quickly as possible to put them up to the whole group, not trying to stick a single developer to solve a hard problem.
Pair programming is the next evolution of this, literally putting two minds to a single problem to solve it as efficiently and quickly as possible.

Even with all these trends though I still don’t see enough of it, enough brainstorming, enough idea swapping, enough “Hey man I’m trying to do this like this but…” and that’s why we are stuck staring at the flaws in every system. We work in our closed loops assuming that Issac Newton really did just sit under a tree staring at apples until he invented the Law of Gravitation so if we stare at our Apples and burn up all our mental energy the best way to handle this new package deploy will come to us. This is really where burnout comes from.

In closing I’d like to talk a little bit more about my mother. She’s been a registered nurse her whole professional life. She’s started in emergency rooms and for as long as I remember has been a hospice nurse. As you can imagine she’s best at dealing with emergencies and the dying. Having dealt with the maimed and dying her whole life she’s gone though mandatory on the clock grief therapy all of her professional life as well. In heath care when you deal with extreme emotional situations they regularly put you through therapy to help deal with and recover from what you work with. Whenever I ask someone who works about it it feels obvious to them that someone put though that level of emotional strain regularly would snap and do something horrible if they didn’t receive regular emotional therapy. So as someone who goes through regular mental strain what are you doing for mental therapy to prevent your own burnout?

tl;dr

In my opinion burnout is a natural product of the tech industry culture. In order help combat this you need to do all of the following, which is not a panacea but a powerful preventive framework;

Work with others to help solve problems instead of trying to be a rockstar and solve them all yourself.
Create review processes around configuration and software changes so that you have reduced liability and risk.
Work with someone to develop intelligent alerting as well as a support rotation that allows rest and relaxation cycles as frequently as possible to reduce pager fatigue.
if you have critical failures more than once a quarter you need to review your infrastructure & procedures and ask yourself what your company is doing that’s more important than having a reliable, usable product.
Rest yourself mentally every day, take breaks when you are locked in to a problem, and take regular vacations.
Bring in as much positivity to your workplace and your life as possible.
Fight negativity by analyzing it down to its root causes instead of superficially dismissing or accepting it.

And I hear you saying it already; “This isn’t important right now”, “I/we don’t have the bandwidth for this at the moment”, “I’m doing fine right now”, or the worst “I’m not gonna burn out”.

But know that when you do burn out I can promise you that you absolutely will not have the bandwidth or mental energy to do these things. By the time you are so far into burnout you actually become self aware of it deadlines will have slipped, everyone’s already jaded and unhappy, and maybe you won’t even care enough to implement this change.

I have some amazing stories about Sybase databases running on a failover Sun Cluster using Veritas Volume Manager and the catastrophic problem with SCSI-3 reservations preventing disks to randomly not be mountable during a fail over event caused only when the LUNs are provided from newer NetApp hardware. Long story short, the database will start without half it’s disks and it is not a pretty sight where it goes from there. ↩︎
The third best thing I have ever done in my career so far was take all of a companies critical configurations (haproxy, dns, maintenance crons, backup scripts, monitoring, ect) and put them in git, created a code review process, and used jenkins to deploy to production. Call it CI/CD, call it change control, call it whatever you want; I call it almost never again making that one line stupid oops uh oh that breaks an entire system again. ↩︎

Being Happy

Wed, 30 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

In my personal experience not everyone wants to be happy. When I say that I’m not talking about that one friend either. I’m talking about me. For a very long time I didn’t wanna be happy. It was a very frustrating time. I can’t say I knew I wanted to be unhappy, I just was all the time. I was angry, depressed, and off and on apathetic. It was actually my mother who coined the phrase “You just need to be unhappy.” somewhere in my early to mid 20s.

Above and beyond my own internal strife one of my problems was that those around me were constantly interested in trying to make me happy. Maybe that doesn’t sound like a problem to you but it was aggravating to me. It wasn’t that people wanted to help it was this frustrating struggle of people offering what I saw as cookie cutter back pats and weak attempts to stoke a nonexistent ego instead of just facing the truth and seeing the world like I saw it. They didn’t understand my problems. I thought about how miserable life is and how horrific this whole world works. I thought all the time about how my mediocre skill set in an over saturated field that shared a job pool with savants & geniuses meant I would going to toil and claw against an over abundant and under paid workforce. I thought about how compared to my peers my nothing-to-offer existence meant I get to writhe away in this world alone with a few cynical friends to cheerlead ourselves along to the grave. I looked at the ugly side of every story and trust me when you stop sugar coating everything you realize that there is millions of fucked up things going on every day and we do our best to gloss over it and put lipstick on this pig so that we can wake up and say today is an awesome day. This whole world is a corrupt Masque of the Red Death; an extravagant gala thrown by the privileged to hide away the social plague destroying everyone else around us.

Over time I learned how to communicate with others about my feelings in ways that helped prevent the constant fawning over my state. Of course I had to be highly selective of who I chose to associate with since I didn’t want to have to go through this rigmarole constantly. I wasn’t happy at that point but I reached this semi-content equilibrium where I got by with thick sense of dark humor and snark, as much as one possibly could exist in this sickness.

After a long while doing this I reached this weird nirvana where I was just me, and everyone was ok with it and I was ok with it to. I was just ok. Then the weird shit happened.

Through having this small social group, literally six to eight people deep, I was able to find this confidence in myself. Maybe what I could do was shit to anyone else but I could do things that made a difference to my friends, or at least impressed them. Over a period of about ten years give or take this grew, as well as my social circle. I often felt like the imposter in the room but through all these people I started to realize my own potential.

I can’t say the exact moment it hit me. I know it was when I was working for Stephens. I had stuck my foot out enough times and somehow not gotten the door slammed on it enough times that I had made it somewhere in the company. The group I was running hadn’t completely imploded on itself around me yet and I was a pretend famous DJ. Somewhere around this time it dawned on me that life isn’t the Olympics but an Industry and even if I sucked the fact I wasn’t going to stop trying made me valuable.

It was around that time I stopped reading fiction and switched to non-fiction. I read a lot of 90s-00s new era “be awesome at life” self help books and started implementing all these systems and tricks I read about.

My personal mantra around then was “It Never Hurts to Help”; a tongue in cheek reference to a cartoon from my youth called Eek the Cat. It was a morbid tale about an anthropomorphic feline whose overly sunny attitude and unflappable willingness to help other constantly ended him up in the hospital. That was his catch phrase, the one he said right before he was mauled by something. I like to say I was using it ironically since in the end I rarely caught fire after saying it but I did end up getting places professional and personally.

Needless to say life started moving really fast when I became truly motivated to help and get things done. I can’t say I was happy… but I was really busy.

It was around then the shift really happened. I don’t know if my attitude shifted first or those around me but things became nightmarishly disjointed and stressful at work over bad management, the club promoters I was working with went to war with another promotions group, and the community I was dealing with collapsed around the time someone slept with a minor unknowing and then someone else killed themselves. Needless to say these were dark times. However through all this stress I had a mantra and I stuck to it. Suddenly I was a too positive person for those I was around.

I was right back to where I was before in the reverse way. Everyone told me I need to “take it down a notch” and accused me of being disingenuous and sarcastic simply because I’m living my live the way I chose. I can’t possibly feel like that, I can’t do this, and we can’t do that.

That’s when my mantra changed to “I Only Have Cans”. Just like before I had to adjust who is important in my life since I don’t want to surround myself with those who are going to try to slow my progress and scowl at my outlook. This new mantra isn’t just a tongue and cheek spite of never giving up and always helping. This one is only having the positive, always being able to do something. I guess that’s when I decided to be happy?

I can’t say I’m always happy. In fact I’d go so far as to say no one really stops dealing with depression. I still have the eternal funeral procession of self doubt, loathing, paranoia, and ill wishes flickering through my mind like an unending film. However I can decide it doesn’t control me and I have way way better things to do with my life than be consumed by my own innate apathy. I can say that I’m in control of my outlook and what is important to me and I can control the world around me enough to decide I’m gonna be happy this day.

My mantra has been changing lately. I didn’t have a mantra for over 26 years and now suddenly in eight years I have gone through three of them. Like I said, things started moving fast. It’s not final, nothing is, but these days I’m sticking with “Be Fucking Amazing”.

Not bad for someone who needed to be unhappy almost his entire life.

For those who actually read this far, I didn’t write this to publicly stoke my dick at everyone or at least that wasn’t the original intention. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about those around me who are unhappy now. I get a little sad and want to go make them happy which reminds me of where I stood not that long ago. I’m not going to pretend my story applies to anyone else and this should be shared around facebook by duck lip hotties as some overly winded it gets better back pat. However I’d like to hope that there are plenty of people who struggle with needing to be unhappy that will learn to take control of their own world and be fucking awesome in their own right.

Quick Note on GnuRadio on Pentoo

Sun, 06 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Not a big blog, but a quick problem I got solved on IRC that I thought might help others.

I have a Gateway LT4009u with an Atom N2600. It’s my “hacker/workshop” laptop. The atom N processors are a bit gimpy so sometimes things don’t run right. One thing is GNURadio on Pentoo. Pentoo runs hardened and this pisses off the Atom N.

So if you get the following error.

LLVM ERROR: Allocation failed when allocating new memory in the JIT
Can't Allocate RWX Memory: Operation not permitted

Then you need to soft disable hardened with the following command

sudo toggle_hardened

I hope that helps anyone else on the internet.

Thanks to Zero_Chaos in #pentoo on irc.freenode.net for the fix (and pentoo)

Quick Update: This also happens when running in VirtualBox 5 on my 2015 MacBook i7, but the fix is the same

Monitoring Chef runs without Chef

Fri, 24 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I, like many sysadmins, really want to monitor all the things I actually care about. Monitoring is in general hard. Not because it’s hard to set up, but it’s hard to get right. It’s really easy to monitor ALL THE THINGS and then just end up with pager fatigue. It’s all about figuring out what you need to know and when you need to know it.

So in This case I Really Need to Know that My Machines Are Staying in compliance with Chef

There was a few ways you can do this. The first thought I had was adding a hook into all of my runs and having them report in on failure. This is mostly because I’m always looking for another way to hack on Chef and work on my ruby. The big problem with this is:

What if the node is offline?
What if the cron doesn’t fire?
What if chef/or ruby is so borked it can’t even fire the app
What if someone disabled chef

I need a better solution

Knife Status

Knife status is just awesome, it has some awesome flags and generally I run it far more than I should. The great part about this query the server approach is that it lets me know;

The server is still happy and spitting out cookbooks to nodes
The status of ALL of my runs from the “source of truth” for runs

Not Making My Chef Test Rely on Chef

But I’m not going to shell knife status. I’m a damn code snob and something about having the chef test rely on the chef client status didn’t seem right.

Instead I wrote a nagios script that I am not going to share in it’s entirety here because $WORK_CODE¹… insert sad face but I will tell you exactly how I did it.

How to Python Your Chef, or how I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love that I Can Still Use Python to Do Anything

I’m the most experienced in python and almost all of our internal nagios checks we have written in python. So this is in python.

Step One

Use pynagioscheck and pychef. Seriously. Don’t reinvent the wheel here.

Step Two

Create a knife object. have it take all your settings on initialize, then you can create functions for all the different knife commands to recreate them with pychef.

You really only need status for this one. The meat of status is this here, coderanger dropped this on me in IRC

for row in chef.Search('node', '*:*'):
    nodes[row.object['machine name']] = datetime.fromtimestamp(row.object['ohai_time'])

Step Three

Now from here I created a TimeChecker object. It takes the dictionary of { server: datetimeObj } on it’s init. For consistency sake I also init self.now = datetime.now(). Then I have a TimeChecker.runs_not_in_the_last() that just takes an int.

The magic of runs_not_in_the_last I will also share with you because I’m proud of this damn script and want to share it with the world

diff = timedelta(hours=hours)
return [k for k in self.runtimes.keys() if self.now - self.runtimes[k] > diff]

Bam!

Step Four

Now just extend NagiosCheck with KnifeStatusCheck, make all your options and other goods in your init and then make your check()

In the check you make knife, Make a Timechecker with the status return… then all you have to do is see if you have any runs_not_in_the_last for critical and then warning.

Gotchas and Cleanup Notes

USE EXCEPTIONS

seriously, this can and will make them so catch them properly and return errors. You will need to catch and handle AT LEAST

URLError
Status
UsageError
ChefError
At least two of your own exceptions

SSL Errors

So there is no trusted_certs here. You need to either give your server a working cert, install the snake oil into the nagios server as acceptable or do the dirtiest of monkey patches.

# Dirty Monkeypatch
if sys.version_info >= (2, 7, 9):
    import ssl
    ssl._create_default_https_context = ssl._create_unverified_context

But before you do this think of the children!!!

Weird Ass Errors with Join

I need to maybe open a ticket and patch pynagioscheck but I had the weirdest bug when raising a critical. It would die in the super’s check on “”.join(bt) or something of the ilk.

My work around was to not just pass msg to the Status exception but to make msg a list and put the main message in msg[0] and then put the comma joined list of servers out of compliance in msg[1]. This means the standard error comes up on normal returns but if you run the check with -v it will give you a list of servers out of compliance for troubleshooting or debugging. Not bad.

Handling the Pem File

Eeeeehhhh This maybe my one cop out in the whole script. Basically I created a nagios user in chef with a insane never to be used again and promptly lost password and put the nagios.pem file alongside the check script. Then I let the script optionally take a pem name, and it just checks that the pemfile is alongside the check script. I was considering letting you specify a pem script somewhere on the server or in the Nagios’s users home directory but decided to bite that and take the simplest route there.

Don’t Destroy Your Nagios Server

Seriously. Did you see this code? Run a search on all nodes and then return an attribute for every node in your nagios server. This is not the worlds fastest check script.

Unless you dedicate some serious power to your solr service on your chef server you should make sure to only check this service once every ten minutes tops. I only check once an hour normally and then follow up with 10 minute checks on fail on my server since I only do converges every four hours so an “out of compliance” warning for me would be at the 12 hour mark and critical at 24 hours.²

I don’t yet have any clearance to post or share anything I write for, while, at, or around work. The company owns all that, but we are currently working on getting to the point where we can share some stuff. Especially things not so related to our IP like infrastructure code, cookbook, checks, ect. ↩︎
The reason I picked these numbers is I don’t want to know the FIRST time a converge fails. I use the omnibus_updater in my runs (Pinned version in attributes of course) so a failed run can be normal. Plus I am deploying something that important I am going to spot check runs and verify everything gets run with knife ssh. I just want to know mostly if a machine is out of the loop for more than a day because that’s a node that needs to get shot. ↩︎

An Open Year

Fri, 17 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

It’s been about a year since my last post, mostly frustrated with Chef as a beginner. Now I spend most of my day writing cookbooks and recipes. In fact I am even helping the Lead Dev at work learn Chef and got back from Chef conference. There I met a lot of amazing people and even offered to help maintain BSD support in chef.

This post isn’t about that so much. It’s mostly about a behavior I noticed I picked up. When I worked for Stephens Media I spent a lot of my energy trying to contribute, in posts, open source, pull requests, ect. Then when I moved to Slickdeals.net my time was really sucked up. I drifted from working on Pelican and stopped doing as many pull requests. At some time I set up a personally hosted Stash instance. Then I locked that stash instance off behind a login. Then I started writing in my private confluence instead of here. Now all my projects these days are All Rights I noticed… hmph.

I don’t know exactly what triggered this sharephobia but it needs to stop. I almost think it’s some weird greed involving my personal time and effort but if I was greedy wouldn’t I want people fixing up my code for me? Is there some revolutionary private research in all this that makes me more valuable? I think showing off my abilities and progress makes me more valuable.

I’m just currently working on pulling all my code out of my stash and putting it onto github, with a much better BSD license. I’m remembering what the subtitle of my blog really means.

I’ve spent a lot of time studying Ruby since I finished my DBA course. There is still a lot of areas where Chef could use improvements and I plan to do a lot about it. We are going to make BSD a first class citizen with Chef and hopefully many of it’s tools and cookbooks too.¹

Remember when I used to post monthly? Hahahaha. I don’t want to use this as a journal, I already have one of those but I wanted to give a bigger picture life update since I am updating pages and testing my jenkins build trigger with github ;p

I have always preferred UNIX to Linux. My first sysadmin job was a Solaris Admin, a job I did for a long time. With the advent of SystemD I’ve gone back to my love in the form of BSD. ↩︎

Chef Frustrations

Mon, 14 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve spent the last week working on implementing chef. The experience is frustrating to say the least. Instead of whining I wanted to take the time to write out some of my pain points and hopefully offer some constructive fixes to what I see as the wall in the learning curve.

Now to be clear up front. Most of my problems aren’t with Chef, Ruby, or most of the core product; it’s with implementing it. To be more precise I think the failure REALLY is documentation.

Anti-pattern One: Getting Started (into a corner)

Also known as the “Just enough to be dangerous but not useful” anti-pattern

I really liked the new learn chef. I have to give them a ton of credit for all the work but underneath all the new splash and presentation it’s still the exact same old Chef 101 it was two years ago; it teaches you the barest of all basics and then drops you off to docs.opscode.com

I know that most would feel that statement isn’t fair, since it teaches you all about the design and system behind how chef works, and that it does; but it still feels like not enough to be useful and here is why.

Anti-pattern Two: We Have no Patterns

Learn Chef teaches you how chef works but not really how to use it at any level of scale; There is no real world usage taught anywhere. It teaches you to set up a Chef Enterprise server and then re-inventing the wheel with a homemade apache or ntp cookbook, and push it all to a vm but you would rarely do this in practice right?

When you leave Chef’s documentation you learn about many very important Chef Patterns;

wrapper cookbooks
berkshelf way
one repo per cookbook vs monolithic repo
application cookbooks
service cookbooks

Why doesn’t chef teach us these? Is this something we save for consultants to teach us at thousands of dollars an hour? Is it that Chef wants to avoid teaching patterns in order to remain as flexible as possible?¹

It’s not just chef either. Go to http://berkshelf.com and tell me how to use this tool assuming you’ve never done such before. If I was trying to remember a few commands or learn a new trick on top of something this tools docs would be great but it’s missing the meat of what this tool is designed for and how to use it. A lot of chef’s tools are treated this way.

Anti-pattern Three: …So Please Learn Everyone Else’s Anti-patterns

This is my biggest frustration, OPD; Other People’s Docs. As someone who has been working in Systems for 10+ years I have lived and learned so much from everyone else’s blogs, which is why I feel the need to blog all my own lessons and information.

I feel that chef relies too much on OPD though. Especially because chef is such a fast moving target. It’s amazing how many people who use chef that I talk to that use it in some odd, bizarre, and or generally ’not correct’ way. It’s usually because they learned a bad habit from a predecessor or found a bug in a long ago version and found some OPD that convinced them that “oh no you have to run everything chef-solo with your own special bootstraps, that is the ONE TRUE WAY™”. I’m not saying that patten doesn’t work but I doubt it’s the best way for many infrastructures.²

I plan on documenting plenty of chef like things myself; in fact I plan on posting as much of my own OPD as possible but with how fast chef evolves as a product and with the large variance of methods for different environments I really hope people take everything with a grain of salt and read the date on the post when considering my advice.

Here is a great example; where about 2014-07 I went into #chef and asked about some methods for setting things up and was linked to this blog which is treated like a defacto example of how to do things. But read all those updates… and then notice how it’s using a lot of deprecated methods. I was linked to an article that could be titled “How to develop some really bad habits, but learn important things while you are at it.” It’s not Mischa’s fault, It doesn’t seem like he is a docs writer for Chef. Honestly I feel the best thing that could be done is this document be updated to the latest methodologies and tacked on to the end of learn chef as “One good method to get your environment up and going”.

As a chef user do you even know about chef-dk? you probably should take a break from what you are doing, read this and then do this. Seriously don’t you feel much better? This also should be on the end of learn chef guide. Hell this should probably be the first half of the learn chef guide.

I get that maybe they don’t want to declare a “chef way” to do things… but at least give us some better hints.

Next Actions

Just to recap;

I believe chef’s biggest weakness is documentation, which creates a wall in the learning curve to hit right after “I can now build and deploy a test apache on a linode” and “I can build and deploy this in a staging environment”
I think there should be a learn chef 200 series that goes over;
- Using a wrapper cookbook, and the different types of abstraction you often see with these.
- Teaching everything chef-dk adds; bootstrapping, runtests, and automated integration testing.
- Highlighting several useful patterns for cookbook development.
- Using more of chef’s tools; ex ohai
If chef is going to rely on the community for docs maybe it should create a way where they can contribute to the main docbase just like they do code.
go here, have your life changed
If you are in the Las Vegas, NV area come hang out at #lvdevops on freenode and tell me how I make you feel
I’m going to spend another week or two trying different ways to structure my cookbooks and see what works.

I believe this is a horrible anti-pattern in documentation. If you believe your power is flexibility then you should highlight that but still outline some predominate patterns for your top two or three use cases. ↩︎
I know it’s not the best way because they are deprecating chef-solo for chef-zero, which is good but it’s a great example about the speed that Chef is changing. ↩︎

Where have you been?

Sun, 13 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Actually I should have called this where have I been. This seemed catchier though.

In short the answer is I have been at my new job at SlickDeals They have keep me as busy as can be. Because of this major shift I changed a lot of habits; I stopped writing here as much, I stopped actively contributing to Pelican,¹ and I also stopped posting to github.

Be not too afraid. I still write plenty of code and fiddle around with everything. I just stopped posting most of it to github. I mostly use my own private stash instance. There is some publicly accessible code for those who are interested. The reason is that stash is SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper for my private repos so I just put most of my stuff there. I have been rethinking that lately since I miss a lot of the github community style.

I haven’t been blogging much since I have just been focusing most of my documentation and writings to work, and got in the odd habit of putting eveything in my private wiki. For the sake of sharing and hashing things out I am going to refocus on using this blog to document out useful things. Hopefully this means you cna excpect floods of useful things. Maybe some smaller posts too.

On the other side I have been busy with my girlfriend, cycling, dba courseware, studying Japanese, and my unstoppable anime habit. I have my own house now and a workbench set back up so I may blog about those projects as well…

Anyways. No one loves a vanity post but I wanted to at least put an update out

I’m really sad about this but my personal time dropped sharply between a new job and new girlfriend. ↩︎

Coming back to vim

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

It’s time for my monthly or so post! I wanted to go through and post about my OpenBSD firewall I built but that’s not 100%. Also I’m not ready to go on about anything amazing with puppet because without my lab being done puppet isn’t useful so lets go back to talking about my dev environment!

I know Justin has been asking for this for a little while.

Preface: Going “back” to Vim

As a sysadmin at work I use vi a lot. Not even vim; vi. We have lots of unix boxes that default to vi as the installed editor and we don’t just go installing vim on everything. Personally I use vim a good amount on my machine since I spend a lot of command line time anyways. I know more than just a few of the commands but I really only consider myself a second or maybe third year vim user¹ since I never used it full time to write code. I live the motion and use things like ci[ and C-v 5j x but I still fail to use multiple registers, buffers, or tabs… or even the leader commands.

I’m an amateur software developer at best; I have serious aspirations about seeing if I have the chops to go pro but right now I’m honing edges. Irregardless of how developer or not I may be, I am developer lazy so I spend money on tools that make my life easier. I’ve been using PyCharm to help me write utilities and my mini apps and it’s just the best. Sometimes I worry about leaning on IDE tools stunting my abilities so I took some time a month back to stand up and step back from PyCharm and instead just use vim…

This is the setup.

Part One: My Keyboard

I use a slick trick on my Mac so I have no access to Caps and my CapsLock key acts as BOTH a Ctrl and Escape. If I tap the Caps it’s esc, if I chord it with anything else it registers Ctrl… I pinkie reach for nothing. Here is the the instructions, 10.8 approved so YMMV for other versions.

Go to System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Modifier Keys. Set Caps Lock to ^ Control.
Install KeyRemap4MacBook - Software for OS X.
In KeyRemap4MacBook, enable Control_L to Control_L (+ when you type Control_L only, send Escape. Search will help.
Reboot and enjoy.

Part Two: The Development Server

You didn’t think I was just going to vim run.py and take off did you? No.

If I’m going to work from the shell I want to make it so I can work from anywhere while I am at it. I have a Mac OS X server that would love to be my dev box so away I go. Open some ports, SSH keys, virtualenv, python3 from brew… tada! But it’s not ready yet.

OpenSSH is my best friend. I keep keys close at all times and use cools scripts on my laptop to help manage them. However SSH is not enough and this is where Mosh: the mobile shell comes in. Mosh isn’t a total end to end transport solution but it’s high speed udp style and local echo features make it supreme when then connection starts lagging and you don’t want it to slow down your code. Best yet? brew install mobile-shell on both boxes… done…

If only we had a windows client already.

If you want some portable keys help check out the following;

Just remember to not make these your ONLY keys, all posable keys should be password encoded and easily revokable so keep a backup and list of your emergency to revoke when it gets lost.

Part Three: The Terminal

I need a sweet terminal so I use zsh with oh-my-zsh and a while bunch of personal mods. Remember the whole lazy part? Yes. Here is the highlights of my zsh configs;

I have my .zsh run workon at the end to list all my virtenvs. It’s a nice nag
I use ^p and ^n for fuzzy history find and it’s amazing dotfiles/zsh/keybindings.zsh at master · onlyhavecans/dotfiles · GitHub
vi-mode!!!!!

The second major part is tmux. Whatever you are using now… drop it and use tmux. I remapped all my common tmux commands to vi-mode style and C-a for my leader because now ctrl and a are touching. For the full list of my configs which I won’t get too deep into check out tmux.conf at master · onlyhavecans/dotfiles · GitHub.

My main tmux window generally looks like this

 -----------------------
|    Chat   |           |
|     or    |           |
|extra shell|    VIM    |
|-----------|           |
|           |           |
|    IRC    |-----------|
|           | MiniShell |
=========================

Chat is my flux buffer that gets changed between a personal chat and second work buffer. IRC is my ever present wee-chat connection. The mini shell is a little shell I keep in the same dir as vim so I can quick run python -m unittest discover module over and over or whatever. When I’m playing with Flask it’s running there. Depending on where my focus is the vertical split is usually about 65% weighted to the work to squish distractions without cutting them all out or I am on the 11’ MacBook Air screen instead of a 20+’ external display.

I often have a second window but the latest version added C-a z for window zoom and that’s GREAT when I really wanna focus on something or blow up the mini-shell while I am debugging something.

Part Four: Into VIM

First and foremost I keep an 8.5x11 copy of Beautiful Vim Cheat-Sheet Poster & Printable Downloads on my desk. It’s a nice way to keep reminding me of all the features I NEED to be using and if you don’t want to give someone 10USD for it there is a free link right on the page for a low res.

tl;dr The Configs

dotfiles/vim at master · onlyhavecans/dotfiles · GitHub

A lot of my inital vim config like most was stolen from somewhere but over time I have stripped out everything I didn’t adapt in. I started with YADR and then seriously hacked it to death. In the end there is still yadr references but you shouldn’t take anything that claims being from yadr in there still is. I’m just lazy about renaming files for scuz.

Highlights

Setting toggle line numbers to F2 & toggle NERDTree to F3 is heavenly.
I use Solarized - Ethan Schoonover and the plugin is great
I use a lot of markdown but if you use plasticboy/vim-markdown · GitHub you need to set an extra setting to kill that damn folding
klen/python-mode · GitHub is just amazing and I only use a little of it
I really miss snippits but I am not yet ready to dive into $SNIPMANAGER-X
I’m just now REALLY getting used to the power of scrooloose/nerdtree · GitHub
I just got into using Lokaltog/powerline · GitHub. it’s really slick looking but I’m really not sold on a second status line
I’d love to use joonty/vdebug · GitHub more but I haven’t gotten it to work yet

There you go! I know it feels like I’m skimming the VIM part of the vim writeup but there is really only so much you can do TO VIM itself. It’s the development environment you put around it and what you put out with it. Hopefully I will be putting out great things once I learn how to use tags and rope and all that other stuff to get back to ultra fast code sifting and editing.

Part Five: Wishlist

Auto-running Tests

Just something that PyCharm and Komono before that spoiled me on. :w running my tests since I very often TDD would save a lot of window jumping

Snippits

I’ll never get deep code intelligence with vim and that’s kinda the point but PyCharm saved somewhere around a billion keystrokes when you learned when to hit the auto complete right.

Part Six: Warnings

This allows me to do some awesome stuff and so far I am happy with with it outside of a few small caveats.

It’s damn fiddly. So much and learn and fiddle with distracts from the work.
Sometimes cruising around inside of vim, inside of tmux can make for some finger dancing that I don’t care for; C-a l C-a k C-w l… until I trip over my own keystrokes. C-a ; is really useful when popping between panes when it comes to mind

Part Seven: Going forward

I can connect in technically from anything I trust enough to plug my key jump-drive into. I currently have bought a YubiKey and am seriously considering switching right over to two-factor OTP which makes me LESS afraid of plugging in the key into something.

Another area I am considering going forward with is I technically won’t even need my computer to work. I could just work with my iPad and a keyboard! I’m really sure these articles had just a little bit to do with my idea of moving over to all command line vim. I don’t know if I am there but it is tempting;

Was this more in depth than you expected? Do you want more? Lemme know.

See Just Use Sublime Text - Andrew Ray’s Github Blog for details on what I mean by that. ↩︎

SSH Keys on a USB jump drive on Mac OS X Part 2

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

All right! You read my post SSH Keys on a USB jump drive on Mac OS X (Mountain Lion Edition) and want to take this to the next level huh? Maybe having your config posting back to a jump drive and having to have it plugged in every time you want to log into something is sooooo lame! You often just leave it there, plugged in when you walk away from your work station. There has to be a better way…

I got you bro

What you need to be doing is adding your keys to ssh-agent on demand then pulling your key except for when you REALLY need it. But how do you do that easily?

I got you bro

Windows

Lets start with the basics. PuTTY Download Page - Pageant

Download it.
Install it.
Yes you have to use their crappy ppk so set that up.
Start Pageant then load your ppk version of your key.
Eject drive.
open new session, don’t bother manual adding key.
Party time
Excellent

The cool part is that Pageant remembers your keys so if you pin it to the start menu then it’s highlight, over enter, password… you get the point.

The shitty part is it keeps that key loaded until you reboot. That’s ULTRA fucking weak. Sorry windows. If anyone knows better give me a shout out.

Linux

Linux is easier and way better. Lets assume you do everything in the command line so.

alias loadkey=ssh-add -t 30m /mnt/whatever/ssh/$1

then all you have to do is

loadkey keyname

then POW!!! for 30 minutes you have you key loaded. See the 30m in the command? Change that for maximum moddage of commands. Are you a lazy brogrammer slash skriptkiddie and need the time format table?

Bro… got… you are… by me

<none>  seconds
s | S   seconds
m | M   minutes
h | H   hours
d | D   days
w | W   weeks

Time format examples:
600     600 seconds (10 minutes)
10m     10 minutes
1h30m   1 hour 30 minutes (90 minutes)

Damn! Yea….

Mac

Ok, this is where the gold is. I slaved over a hot mess of applescript to you guys this so feel the love bro. Since it’s my Mac and I wanted key exchange to be as easy as possible I pulled out all my scripting to invoke MAXIMUM lazy.

Maximum lazy engage!

Ok. To start there is no ssh-askpass on Mac OS X Mountain Lion which is fairly un-bro of apple but whatever. I replaced it with an applescript I stole and slightly tweaked to run better.

Take this, it’s dangerous to go alone. onlyhavecans/mac-ssh-askpass · GitHub

Just put it in ~/Applications like me or /usr/local/bin or where ever makes you warmest and fuzziest inside. Either way don’t forget where you put our makeshift ssh-askpass

Now break out the applescript editor and take this puppy for a ride.

(*
This key adding mini program indexes the keyfiles on your jump drive
then prompts you for what one you want to load into ssh-agent

You need mac-ssh-addpass for this to work as well
https://github.com/onlyhavecans/mac-ssh-askpass
*)

property keyFolder : "KEYDRIVE:ssh"
property askPass : "$HOME/Applications/ssh-askpass"
property keyTime : "1h"

tell application "System Events"
  set theList to the name of every item of folder keyFolder
  set theKeys to {}
  repeat with i from 1 to the count of theList
    set theFile to {item i of theList}
    if (theFile as string) ends with "pem" or (theFile as string) ends with "_dsa" or (theFile as string) ends with "_rsa" then
      set end of theKeys to theFile
    end if
  end repeat

  set frontApp to short name of first process whose frontmost is true
  tell application frontApp
    activate
    set theKey to choose from list theKeys with title "Choose your Destiny" with prompt "What Key do you want to activate for " & keyTime default items {first item of theKeys} without empty selection allowed and multiple selections allowed
  end tell

  do shell script "SSH_ASKPASS=" & askPass & " /usr/bin/ssh-add -t " & keyTime & " \"" & {POSIX path of folder keyFolder} & "/" & theKey & "\""
end tell

Now pay attention or this will hurt.

The keyFolder property is in Apple’s format because it just worked better that way. It needs to point to the folder that has all your key files. The format is drive:folder:subfolder:youget:theidea. Now make sure to set that and the location of our new ask-pass. Also because I was a lazy scripter the filter is hardcoded. If your key files end in anything other than .pem, _rsa, or _dsa you are perfectly legit but I hate you anyways and you will need to edit the nasty (theFile as string) ends with blah line.

Now… toss this applescript in your scripts folder and set the hotkey ctrl-opt-k in FastScripts and if you don’t have it then shut up and go buy it in thanks from having this awesomeness rained down upon you… or put it in Alfred App… whatever bro; the point is you should be running all your shell and applescripts from the keyboard so do it.

Now hit that key command and watch the awesome of the menu box you can arrow through! Select your key of the minute and hit enter! Be amazed at the applescript password prompt.

Feel amazing bro. Feel amazing.

Note for Those Who Are Curious

The applescripts are hooking off the frontmost application. IE it’s telling whatever app is in front to activate¹ and then display the dialogs for the scripts. So don’t bug out because the icon displayed is some “random seeming” app on your system. I do this so that the box is always to front so it can be keyboard operated and drops you right back into your front most app without fuzzing off the focus elsewhere or in some truly random app of my choosing like Finder.

I’ll probably put this in my GitHub later, or forget and leave it as a blog exclusive so enjoy.

I had some weird edge case focus issues and making sure to activate before springing the next dialog box smoothed it all out. Sorry if that has any weirds, it really shouldn’t ↩︎

Update to my Transmission Tools

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Nope, not something to help unmount and flush your transmissions, it’s some tools for Transmission, specifically MY tools.

I just though I would share that I redid this repository completely and cleaned up the Move & Stop script to cover some possible bugs and be a bit more python modern. If you had any problems with it not moving single files or just wanted some slightly cleaner code go grab the new version.

I should really break out TransmissionRequestWrapper into it’s own package and distribute that since it’s so sweet. Please feel free to use it with some credit.

onlyhavecans/Transmission_Tools · GitHub

SSH Keys on a USB jump drive on Mac OS X (Mountain Lion Edition)

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Here I Address the Eternal Struggle

I want to store all my private keys on my jump drive I wear around everywhere. I use Win, Linux, but primarily Macs to do to my work so it needs to be some FAT variant formatted. I want to use the absolutely least hacky way.

Windows and Linux were easy to overcome. In short for windows you use putty to make a putty key and in linux you do something shockingly similar to what is below… but I get ahead of myself.

All the searches in duck duck go and google came up with “Nope! Can’t do it! Give up!” for the Mac. All these people are horrible liars and don’t want you to succeed. After figuring this out it was REALLY EASY as long as you are terminal competent. If you aren’t terminal competent I’m not sure why you read my blog, I’d assume most of my stuff is really flying over your head.

As always YMMV and don’t copy paste things I write here into the terminal.

tl;dr Jump point

Find your uid with “id -u”. 99% of the time it’s 501.
Double check your drive name with “ls -ln /Volumes”.
with sudo add a new line to /etc/fstab¹

#Drive called iamaKey and user 501
LABEL=iamaKey none msdos -u=501,-m=700

There is no step 4; eject & replug your key to enjoy ssh keys used directly from drive.

Considerations

You have to do this on every mac you use. The drive name is always the same but there is a chance the user id is different.
If you aren’t sure if it worked or are having trouble give another “ls -ln /Volumes” which should look shockingly similar to this if you did it right:

lrwxr-xr-x  1 0    80     1 Feb 25 07:01 Macintosh HD -> /
drwx------  1 501  20  8192 Feb 25 10:17 iamaKey

You should REALLY make sure this drive name is unique to this drive for your machine. Any drive with the same name will get grabbed up by this now and if it’s not msdos formatted or you don’t want this havoc can be had.
In a multi-user environment this could likely cause weird edge case problems unless you are using very unique drive names.
I’m really sure putting spaces in your drive name will only wreck havoc. However you would assume that having lowercase letters in it would also fail hard but as you can see it works fine for me.
if you wanna be really cool then set up your config file on the jump drive as well and then alias keyssh to ‘ssh -F /path/to/usb/config’ Then that can ALL follow you around, except for on linux since it would mount on media or whatever instead of /Volumes breaking all your paths in the config but then you can just create a symlink anyways and it will work again… or something like that.
While not the point of this article yet your OpenPGP, GnuPG, GPG whateverPG, etc keys should also be WAY happier now placed on the jump drive. I believe they also hate being world readable.
This may not work in 10.9 or 11 or whatever comes next. The file /etc/fstab.hd says this is on the deprecation list. If Apple does break this down the road and you are reading this from the future the trick is to go looking wherever diskarbitrationd or it’s successor is getting it’s settings.
Final note, if you are going to do all this PLEASE don’t use password-less keys. Just don’t do it. Especially if you put your config file on the drive too. Then you are just telling people what systems they now have access too. Each key on the drive should have a strong & long passphrase, have it’s comment clearly marked as being the jump dive key (on the machines they key is loaded), and should be unique to that jump drive only so it can be easily purged and reissued in case of loss.

On a new 10.8 machine /etc/fstab does not exist. You must create a fresh file as root. ↩︎

Puppet Configuration Checks with Jenkins

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Ok, so we have all our Nagios configs being sanitized and checked by Jenkins, why not Puppet: IT Automation Software for System Administrators? WHY NOT PUPPET!?

A lot of this is going to be rehash of the PRIOR article but I wanted to document this out for later anyways since it’s slightly different.

Step One: Assumptions and Layout

I’m going to stop and assume we are well past the Jenkins setup phase. Please see the prior article for that… or better yet? make puppet do it for you. That’s what it is for.

Now Puppet is a system that hold dynamically updated configurations of your everything and Jenkins is a system that automatically runs random code summated to it to validate it. I think needless to say I’m not even going to consider these two pieces of software running on the same machine. I’m serious the answer is NO.

Ok, now lets start by assuming the following;

You are not using anything crazy like githubbing puppet configs nor can you afford github enterprise.
Puppet Master (puppet.domain.ex) runs in DMZ and is locked down tight.
/etc/puppet is your config locations on puppet.domain.ex and you have a user that can write to it other than root.
Jenkins is hidden away in your network where it belongs, also fairly secured.
Your central git server is on the same lan as your Jenkins, if not on the same box for some reason.
You solemly swear not to do anything stupid and copy paste anything from this document directly into a command prompt. I may toss a bad char in there just to keep you honest.

We have a few caveats to overcome here but it’s not impossible.

Step Two: Prepare Your Puppet Box

Puppet server should be locked down. So for my it’s a box with all the screws down tight as they can be, puppet’s web port and ssh passworded key to one user only is enabled. In order to allow pushing changes through git we will set up our friend the hub repo.

# Make puppet config directory a git repo
cd /etc/puppet
git init
git add .
git commit -m"Inital Commit"
# Make a hub repo in home
cd ~
mkdir puppet_configs.git
^mkdir^cd^
git --bare init
# Link and push to our hub
cd /etc/puppet
git remote add hub ~/puppet_configs.git
git push hub master

There! That wasn’t hard at all. In fact it was a short rehash of what I did last yesterday. However, lets add the post-merge hook to THIS hub.

cat __EOF__
#!/bin/sh
cd /etc/puppet
unset GIT_DIR
/usr/bin/git pull hub master
__EOF__ >  ~/puppet_configs.git/hooks/post-merge
chmod 755  ~/puppet_configs.git/hooks/post-merge

So now when the hub gets pushed to, puppet gets a fresh load of configs and it does whatever it needs to do from then on out! Yea? Awesome

Now get out of your puppet box and STAY OUT (until it breaks, you did set up Nagios on it right?)

Step Three: Jenkins

In case you haven’t already Jenkins is going to need a few upgrades. Hit it up with the following plugins.

Warnings Plug-in
Jenkins GIT plugin

I have been told you can set up this to work with the RVM plugin to deploy this and that but I took the cheap route since puppet is installed on this machine anyways. For this setup we will need one gem though. If this is for a buisness network I’d go the extra hours to learn RVM but it’s not, this is my home lab.

sudo gem install puppet-lint

Now this is where I start to steal heavily from Continuous Deployment with Jenkins and Puppet.

Now starts the puppet configurations!

Name: Puppet
Source Code Management: Git
- Repositories: Your central git hub, not the one on puppet¹
Trigger Builds Remotely: check
- Authentication Token: pick something simple but unique here like ‘stopHackingRoot’
Poll SCM: check
- Schedule: H/15 * * * *²

On your git repo for puppet you need to add a ‘post-update’ hook. to trigger builds remotely. Don’t forget to sub out YOUR_TOKEN with the token you picked above and set the kenkins server proper. The quick and dirty is;

cd puppet_configs.git/hooks
cat __EOL__
#!/bin/sh
echo "Sending build command to Jenkins"
curl -sSL 'http://mycooljenkins:8080/job/Nagios_Config/build?token=YOUR_TOKEN' >> /dev/null
exec git update-server-info
__EOL__ >> post-update
chmod 755 post-update

Now lets add two execute shell actions.

Build Execute Shell Number one:

for file in $(find . -iname '*.pp’)
do
  puppet parser validate \
    --render-as s \
    --modulepath=modules \
    "$file" || exit 1;
done

Build Execute Shell Number two:

find . -iname *.pp -exec puppet-lint --log-format "%{path}:%{linenumber}:%{check}:%{KIND}:%{message}" {}  \;

The second one shouldn’t error out but it will toss up style warnings and possible errors so lets check for those with our warning plugin.

Post-Build Actions
Scan for compiler warnings
- Parser: Puppet-Lint

Step Four: The Danger Zone

Now this is where you might expect me to tell you to set up a Post-Build Action using Git Publisher or some script or another to automate your verified go-live puppet, maybe with a cool mcollector call to speed up your push…

That recommendation is NOT forthcoming

The simple fact of the matter is that if you are automatically pushing configs to puppet from Jenkins you have;

A passwordless key laying around on a CI box (and any boxes Jenkins spawns) to your puppet config (or worse)
Much much bigger balls than me
Hopefully a whole enterprise security team all over this shit like a hawk.

You can set up an automated push and hope that everything you or anyone else pushes in master is gold but my recommendation is to test in branches, tag, and then have a human eyes verification on the configs before your push to puppet. When you have a bad push to nagios monitoring glitches out. When pupped fucks up… well you are running down a bad road at full speed.

Seriously, if you don’t have a central git server set up a central git repo SOMEWHERE safe, even on your jenkins box if need be (like we did for nagios) Just remember that your going to end up with something sensitive in there someday. ↩︎
You still want to regularly poll the git repo regularly just in case a commit script fails, it’s no good to have it falling through the cracks. ↩︎

BunMailPot Alpha...

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Ok… so that is not the best name I’ve every come up with. Sorry, but whatever. This is a quick but fun one.

I have been collecting malware with my BunnyPot for a while and have been finding some diminishing returns coming to me. I started thinking that I can set up more of these low interaction server honeypots but how can I get even MORE goods? The ability to grab random files pushed to any server seems like a limited way here…

Then it hit me, actually dinged me… my email dinged that is.

Malware comes through the mail too, duh.

The Setup

This is hella… well you will see. It needs some cleaning up and maybe not to be relying on Apple’s Mail.App… but seriously it’s a super quick and dirty hack. It’s not even ON the server, it’s on my laptop at the moment.

The Mail Rule

Ok, I have mail… lots of it, all my work and personal and trash mail all in one app with nice aggressive mail filters… so lets get the malware out!

Just make a mail rule that is all of the following;

Message is junk Mail
Any Attachment name Does not contain .htm

Now perform the following action;

Run Applescript ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/Mail/MalwareSaveRule.scpt

WHAT’S IN THE SCRIPT?! WHAT’S IN THE SCRIPT!!!!!!!

on perform_mail_action(ruleData)

  -- The folder to save the attachments in (must already exist)
  set attachmentsFolder to ((path to home folder as text) & "Downloads") as text

  -- Save in a sub-folder based on the name of the rule in Mail
  set subFolder to name of |Rule| of ruleData as text
  tell application "Finder"
    if not (exists folder subFolder of folder attachmentsFolder) then
      make new folder at attachmentsFolder with properties {name:subFolder}
    end if
  end tell

  -- Get incoming messages that match the rule
  tell application "Mail"
    set selectedMessages to |SelectedMessages| of ruleData
    repeat with theMessage in selectedMessages

      -- Get the date the message was sent
      set {year:y, month:m, day:d, hours:h, minutes:min} to theMessage's date sent
      set timeStamp to ("" & y & "-" & my pad(m as integer) & "-" & my pad(d) & "-" & my pad(h) & "-" & my pad(min))

      -- Save the attachment
      repeat with theAttachment in theMessage's mail attachments
        set originalName to name of theAttachment
        set savePath to attachmentsFolder & ":" & subFolder & ":" & timeStamp & " " & originalName
        try
          save theAttachment in savePath
        end try
      end repeat
    end repeat
  end tell

end perform_mail_action

-- Adds leading zeros to date components
on pad(n)
  return text -2 thru -1 of ("00" & n)
end pad

Simple ya? Nothing fancy, quick and kinda diiiirty. When this runs it creates a folder in your downloads that matches the name of the mail rule you created. I went with the hell creative Malware From Junk

Processing the Malware

Just like every other this is how I process files thing I have written up this part is all in Hazel. Seriously I can’t praise this app enough. Go pay this guy money. Stop reading this, go buy, use, love, live.

We add our folder which you remember is named after your mail rule to be watched by hazel… now lets start with the goods

Oh and disable Throwing away duplicate files, it might accidentally toss a variant… md5 will hash it down to what is and isn’t the same.

Uncompress

This is too easy

Kind is Archive

Uncompress

Rename Exe’s to Md5 and Send to Repo

Still really easy. The only trick is I set the rename and the upload to two separate scripts and actions so the whole thing can be halted easily in case something fails.

Extension is exe

Run Shell script embedded script

newname=$(md5 -q "$1")
mv "$1" "$newname"

Run Shell script embedded script

curl -sS -F upfile=@"$1" http://your.home.server:9000/cgi-bin/dionaea.py

Display Growl Notification “New MailMal (file)”

Notification

Ok, I’m not going to teach you how to set up growl to notify your phone for when you move this to your mac mini server at home, but needless to say Prowl - iOS Push Notifications is your friend. If you sent up the receiver I talked about in the last bunnypot article then you should already have that dionaea.py already to go!

Next Steps

Next I need to find out how to get an email or even an entire domain onto as many spam lists as possible…

Feel free to send donations or suggestions to [free_mal_pleez@bunnyman.info](mailto:free_mal_pleez@bunnyman.info

simpliFiRE.IDAscope API browsing on a Mac

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I know this isn’t the most revolutionary tip ever but my google searches pulled up nada when I tried to figure this out. I’m an IDA Pro MAC user. Bastard child of IDA right? Not really, except for plugins usually which is the point of this short tips post.

If you are using simpliFiRE.IDAscope to help you dig through malware you are collecting with your bunnypot (and gods why aren’t you?) you will bang against the WinAPI browser whining about the following error while searching for native windows calls¹

Well, something has gone wrong here. Try again with some proper API name.
Exception: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'C:/WinAPI/fs/createfile.htm'

While not directly documented the fix is really easy. Just tweak your config.json file in the IDAscope folder.

"winapi": {
  "search_hotkey": "ctrl+y",
  "load_keyword_database": false,
  "online_enabled": true
}

After you do this don’t even restart IDA, just close the IDAscope tab and rerun the script. This trick comes with another fringe benefit; IDAscope will load in a flash compared to the normal 30 second running, wait, almost… there… OK. The only disadvantage is that each search is now a web lookup but I don’t think that’s a horrible situation.

Now if I can only get the hotkey working right…

Happy hunting!

Of course I am assuming you are using version 1.0b (Released Oct 2012) or later, Otherwise you don’t even have the ability. ↩︎

Git-Fu Advice

Tue, 11 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Now who would have thought, I start blogging about git and people have advice. This post isn’t just my personal learning but also some advice I received from others!

git reset HEAD^

From Alexis: Something I’m doing a lot is when I mess up with git, I sometimes need to uncommit something but keep the changes I had just before the commit.

git add -i

From Alexis: “Use this…” Brief but powerful advice. I never thought of using the interactive mode personally but if you are doing a complex commit or want to double over your work git’s interactive mode is fairly robust.

cd my_git_repo
echo 'git push' > .git/hooks/post-commit
chmod 755 .git/hooks/post-commit

I mentioned this in an earlier post. This hook trick is for the lazy at heart. This script runs a push after every commit. If you always have access to your origin repo when you are coding, ie like you are a cubicle worker, this might not be too bad. This might get annoying of you are the type of coder that likes to write a lot of little commits on the road and then push in bundles.

git diff --cached [--ext-diff]

As mentioned in my last post I’m big for double-checking my commits before go. This long command (that deserves an alias) pops open a diff of everything in your index ready to commit. Always a quick check before proceed!

Fun with Git, Jenkins, & Nagios

Fri, 07 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Welcome to another edition on how to automate the hell out of your workflow.

Preface

One thing I have been addicted to since I learned it was source control. I don’t understand how some developers work without it… and I really don’t understand how any syadmins live without it. I have actually found it more useful as a sysadmin as a programmer, but only because at my day job I have used it in most of our major configs. Putting our 400+ file bind setup in subversion and using hooks to test and deploy our changes was not only a massive time saver but tail saver as well.

Another system that gets plenty of additions or tweaks is our Nagios configuration. Server gets deployed? Nagios. New services? Nagios. Something gets moved? Nagios. The list goes on.

The problem is that at work the Nagios commits aren’t so automated. You push to the SVN server, then go to the nagios box and then checkout to test your changes. This results in extra commits to fix breaks and just work. There doesn’t need to be work!

Getting to the point

The goal is to set up Nagios to have all it’s configurations in git. Then I want Jenkins CI to test my commits automatically and push to production if they are solid! This was shocking easy to do with just a few gotcha’s. I put this entire setup together in about a few hours, so expect possible areas of improvement.

Step One: Get Your Install on

Install Nagios and git. I’m not even gonna get into this, also if you haven’t already throw java on the box. I’m going to demonstrate how to do everything on one box but it should be easy to break everything out onto multiple systems where needed.

Jenkins might seem intimidating because it’s java but it’s not, really. I don’t even bother with package installers, just grab the .war file from the website and java --jar jenkins.war.¹ You might want to set up an init script and play with all the features but I’m not going to cover that, it’s all well documented on Welcome to Jenkins CI!](https://www.jenkins.io). If you are setting this up on a mac server, I tend to steal my LaunchAgent plists from Homebrew

For simplicities sake, or to mimic me, set up jenkins running as the same user as nagios. In my case I’m going to give nagios it’s own dedicated jenkins that can only be accessed by private IPs.

Step Two: Git-fu

This was the tricky part but it will seem easy when we are done.

Start by initing your nagios configs;

cd /usr/local/etc/nagios
git init
git add .
git commit -m"initial import of Nagios Configs"

Now you will want to set up the “hub” repo. For sakes of simplicity I’m setting it up in Nagios’ home directory but as long as Jenkins and you can reach it then you are solid.

cd ~
mkdir nagios_configs.git
^mkdir^cd^
git --bare init

Now we clone over our working data to the “hub”;

cd /usr/local/etc/nagios
git remote add hub ~/nagios_configs.git
git push hub master

While we are in the nagios config directory lets script a hook so that when this repo pulls and updates its configs from the hub it automatically reloads nagios.

cd .git/hooks
vim post-merge
#!/bin/sh
echo Running  'killall -HUP nagios' to reload settings
exec killall -HUP nagios
:wq
chmod 755 post-merge

Now leave this repo/directory and NEVER RETURN unless you break the hell out of the repo.

Now we have enough so that you can clone the hub repo and work on your nagios configs on your local workstation git style before pushing them back to your git hub… HA! See what I did there? Sorry…

Now what about testing?! and automation!? How does the data get from hub back to your nagios configs? Well this is where Jenkins comes in.

Step Three: Putting Jenkins to Work

First you need the Jenkins git plugin. Jenkin’s plugins are quick and easy. I’ll shortcut you to it just for completion;

Go to http://nagiosbox:8080/
Click on Manage Jenkins
Click Manage Plugins
Click the Availible tab
Search for and select the Jenkins GIT plugin
Click Download now and install after restart

Jenkins; It’s just that easy. Now lets set up our tests and deploy!

From the dashboard click New Job.
Project Name: Nagios_config²
Description: Whatever, not really important
Check Discard old builds
Set Max # of builds to keep to something reasonable like 5 or 20
Under Source Code Management check Git
Repository URL: is $HOME/nagios_configs.git or wherever you put this³
Set Branches to build to **
Under Build Triggers you want to check Trigger builds remotely
You’ll need to pick a token; I recommend keeping it simple but not guessable like caronLovesBronies
I like to also set Poll SCM and set something like */30 * * * * just in case something doesn’t get triggered. I don’t think it’s necessary though.
Under Build click the Add Build Step drop down and select Execute shell
Now we have our box to type our Nagios config Test, /usr/local/bin/nagios -v nagios.cfg

Technically that is all the Jenkins config we need to have it automatically clone the hub to it’s own private repo and then nagios -v to test the config. All typed out it seems like a decent amount of steps but by the time you set up your third Jenkin’s test you realize most all of that is boilerplate. Most of the time you spend with Jenkin’s is checking to see why your build failed and sometimes tweaking tests for the environment. It’s really a get set up and get out of your way kinda tool.

Now BEFORE we move on let’s make Jenkin’s do a little extra work and deploy from the hub to the live configs if the tests pass… oh crap you clicked save already didn’t you… If you did just go back to the project and hit Configure.

Now Under Build click Add Build Step and add a second Execute Shell. Then put the following unto it⁴

cd /usr/local/etc/nagios
unset GIT_DIR
/usr/local/bin/git pull hub master

Now you can hit save

To finish off our super automation let’s make it so that when anyone pushes to the hub it instantly triggers a build, test, and if the tests passes deploy. Let’s just jump back to the command line to add a hook to our hub repo now

cd ~/nagios_configs.git/hooks
vim post-update
#!/bin/sh
echo "Sending build command to Jenkins"
curl -sSL 'http://localhost:8080/job/Nagios_Config/build?token=YOUR_TOKEN' >> /dev/null
exec git update-server-info
:wq
chmod 755 post-update

Note that with the curl line, if you enable authentication on jenkins you will need to create a user that has “build” level permissions and put it into that line. Also replace my example token with yours.

All right! Now we have it so that using ssh you can clone the hub repo and work on it. When you push back to hub it triggers Jenkins to build the tests. Then jenkins will take a copy, run nagios -v to test it, and if it passes it will tell the live config to pull the new updates… and once that is done the live config -HUPs nagios for us.

AMAZING!!! But not done yet.

Step Four: Final Boss^WConfigs

Ok. This might seem just about perfect but there is a catch. The default Nagios config uses absolute pathing to all of it’s files. This means we need to modify some of Nagios’ configs to properly allow Jenkin’s testing to read all the proper files.

This process should be as easy as taking all the links at the top of the nagios.cfg file and just making them relative to the main config. For example, here is the head of my config minus comments;

$ egrep '^[^#]' nagios.cfg | head
log_file=/usr/local/var/lib/nagios/nagios.log
cfg_file=objects/commands.cfg
cfg_file=objects/contacts.cfg
cfg_file=objects/timeperiods.cfg
cfg_file=objects/templates.cfg
cfg_dir=systems
object_cache_file=/usr/local/var/lib/nagios/objects.cache
precached_object_file=/usr/local/var/lib/nagios/objects.precache
resource_file=/usr/local/etc/nagios/resource.cfg
status_file=/usr/local/var/lib/nagios/status.dat

Notice the gotcha in there!!! This one stuck me up for about two hours. I was unable to get Nagios to accept any relative path for the resource.cfg file. This introduces it’s own gotcha but most people don’t need to edit this too frequently.⁵

To explain a few other lines;

cfg_file=objects/commands.cfg
cfg_file=objects/contacts.cfg
cfg_file=objects/timeperiods.cfg
cfg_file=objects/templates.cfg
cfg_dir=systems

This is referring to /usr/local/etc/nagios/objects. I store all the default config files in there, commands, contacts, time periods, ect.. However I choose to put all my actual system, switch, & device configs in systems. I store personal templates and copies of all the defaults for reference in templates and then when I want to add a new group of systems I just copy a template to systems and fill it out. No need to edit the nagios.cfg every time.

Here is the layout of my nagios config directory;

$ tree nagios_configs
nagios_configs
├── cgi.cfg
├── htpasswd.users
├── nagios.cfg
├── objects
│   ├── commands.cfg
│   ├── contacts.cfg
│   ├── templates.cfg
│   └── timeperiods.cfg
├── resource.cfg
├── systems
│   ├── chunkhost.cfg
│   ├── lazylopranch.cfg
│   └── shells.cfg
└── templates
    ├── printer.cfg
    ├── switch.cfg
    └── windows.cfg

The End?

So there you go! It’s not perfect because of the listed caveats below. Someone malicious or even a sysop who is ignorant of the fragilities of the system can break it fairly easily trying to be tricky or cool. You could get around most of the git merge conflicts problems with hooks though.

The cool part though is this system is FAST. On a good build I push a change, by the time I can get to the web page to check the build it’s already deployed to production.

There will probably be a follow up when I figure out how to make the setup a bit more solid, this really was a few hours of hack.

If you think I’ve missed anything feel free to drop me a comment.

Bonus Points

Got Someone Who Doesn’t Get Git and Can’t Remember to Push? Hate the Extra Command?

Go into your personal repo and make git a little more SVN, for better or worse.

cd my_nagios_configs
echo 'git push' > .git/hooks/post-commit
chmod 755 .git/hooks/post-commit

How Do You Feel about Circular Dependencies?

If they are your thing then use the Nagios Jenkins Plugin to make Nagios check Jenkins and throw up alerts when your Nagios configs fail their tests!

Caveats

Never Use Git Push –force

If you ever ever EVER EVER do anything that requires a git push --force on hub like an --amend then may god have mercy on your soul. You know how they tell you that push --force is bad and breaks things when you first learned git? This is that exact use case where it ruins everything. Just don’t do it, the point of nifty automation is to make your life easier. Suck it up and let your tree be nice and linear, have mistakes, and be “bloated”; Git has some great storage ratios across lots of minor commits.

The Test Links to the Prod Version of resource.cfg

You are always testing against the live version of resource.cfg, which will usually be the HEAD^ version but if you break the build it could be even farther off. If you break the build on the resource.cfg file, the bad version will push, nagios will fail to restart properly, and then your NEXT build will fail in Jenkins and refuse to push so you will have to go into the server, test by hand, and then pull from hub manually. DAMN IT. I consider this to be a fairly major flaw that prevents me from wanting to deploy this in a professional environment.

You’ll want to set up authentication, general security, and maybe even want to restrict access by firewall to jenkins in the long run. Jenkins is a well tested system but left unsecured and open on the internet this system can be invoked to execute arbitrary code in a snap. ↩︎
I’ve noticed that if you put a space in your Jenkins project name it puts a space in the path to the “workspace” that Jenkins uses to test and deploy from. This can break things from time to time so to error for safe sides don’t do this. ↩︎
Don’t use a tilde in Jenkins paths. It doesn’t like them even a little bit. It probably has to do with it’s cross system compatibility. ↩︎
You might be wondering why we have Jenkins go into the live config and run a pull from hub instead of pushing the configs to the live repo but that’s just a nuance of git and most version controls that I have used. They don’t like having things ‘pushed’ into them if they have a working copy. Only pulls will properly grab the changes and merge them into the working copy. That’s why the hub we have uses the --bare flag. If You go to check out the hub repo you will see that it instead has the normal contents of .git just lying around instead of the normal files. ↩︎
Yes I consider this be a major flaw, read the CAVEATS section. ↩︎

Honing my Git-Fu Part 1

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Backstory

My git-fu sucks. I have to use an awesome git tool called SourceTree to do the git wizardry that I do. It’s totally free and for the Mac so if you want to just jump into git and have expert features clicks away go download this. I bought it back when it cost money but now you can have it for free. I’ll wait…

Anyways, I’ve been rolling around in the lap of GIT/SourceTree luxury these past months; clicking away and using features I only wished SVN could ever touch. However when jumping around between machines and VMs it would be faster to just use the command line. Now a days I’m now on the development team of a well sized open source project and having to fumble around git & github while testing submissions and making patches to help other people test is just NOT COOL. I think it all came to a head when the main project maintainer started flaunting some of his git-fu when submitting and fixing patches… well honestly since I just love cramming as much into my head as possible I thought I would hone my git foo.

Now back when I bought the McCullough and Berglund on Mastering Git - O’Reilly Media video’s while they were on stupid sale and decided to double up with the newly released version of Version Control with Git, 2nd Edition - O’Reilly Media. Time to get my learn on.

What? Studying DISASM, Developing software, working a full time job AND now deep studying a VCS is too much? PISH, I’m single and have the time.

The point

SnowLprd wanted me to get some documenting on and take notes on what I find useful. Over the next month or so I am going to litter this blog with some posts on the “next steps” for git. While I organize my thoughts and really get my git-fu on it may be a bit all over the place. Sorry to anyone who finds this too rudimentary at points but I am going to try to focus on skimming the core concepts while posting lots of gotcha real world commands and why you would use them.

Starter Commands

I’m not gonna put up how to clone a repo here. SRSLY if you haven’t gotten past 101 I’m not going to be useful. This is supposed to be 105b.

git remote set-url origin git@github.com:onlyhavecans/pelican.git
git remote add upstream git://github.com/getpelican/pelican.git
git remote add MyExBF git://github.com/justinmayer/pelican.git

Ok, so this one could be obvious but double check to make sure you have everything linked properly. You want the the R/W link to any repos you are pushing to. You might want to change your auth or connect style if you’ve say… been made a repo maintainer. For sakes of safety/neatness you should still treat your upstream as R/O and make all your changes in push requests and patches. Also add the R/O of your major contributors and co-developers so you can test their patches easier.

git pull upstream master && git push origin

There really should be a shortcut in this for git. Maybe I’ll discover it later. I don’t do my work on getpelican/pelican, I have the onlyhavecans/pelican fork! Each time I want to work on something I branch, code, commit, push, pull-request. It’s an endless cycle. I never really touch my master, I just want to keep it up to date with the upstream. I don’t know an amazing shortcut for that so the above micro shell script does the trick.

git push origin --delete <branchname>

I branch for every single patch to maintain tree neatness… however this becomes ugly fast on a good code month. This quickly dumps a branch and deletes it from github. Don’t do this before it’s been merged into master though, you are asking for pain the first time you make that mistake. Try to remember, branches aren’t too expensive disk-wise so don’t g too crazy on deleting them.

git add -p <file||.>

Don’t add whole files to your staging area! Jeez! Who does that anymore! Be 37337 and review every change you make as you add to staging by committing at the patch level instead of at the file level by using the -p flag

git log HEAD^^ -p

This one took me a minute to figure out. So git show shows the patch for the last commit with patch if applicable but what happens when I want to spew the patches from the last three commits on someone else’s branch to get a quick idea of what they are fuffng up? This one! Don’t blindly follow my ^^ syntax either, learn about it below.

git commit --amend -c HEAD && git push --force

Ok, for bigger things –fixup or –squash might be better but when you open up a PR and instantly realize you are a total moron and everyone is gonna see how dumb your are because of your misspelling/typo/misscommited line… this squished one liner will recommit your quickly staged fix (letting you tweak the commit message in case that’s your problem too) and replace your commit in the Pull Request with this much more awesome one.

Concepts to Think of

Revision bad4dad

All revisions are named with SHA-1’s of the actual commit contents. Then it uses something called treeish to sparse that down to the first 5-8 unique (to the repo) hex. That’s why your commit’s name is bad1dea. Obviously since repo’s are distributed there is no way to create linear counters so all repo’s are actually a linked list of commits. Everything from branches, to tags, to HEAD is just pointers to SHA-1.

HEAD^

Now then what’s the ^? Well everyone knows HEAD is an alias to the most recent commit. Well you can add the ^ to any repo name and it’s now the previous one. So bad1dea^ means the previous bad idea, while HEAD^ literally just means the previous commit. What’s better is it’s stackable HEAD^^ is two back. Now you probably don’t wanna stack 10 ^’s so just use the shorthand HEAD~10 for ten revisions back. Ahhh? History is a Linked list! so this traverses the linked list and returns all the revisions! Good for putting together a change log. To just see the last two commits git log HEAD^..HEAD Yea? Thats the cool stuff.

BunnyPot Alpha

Sat, 04 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Since the beginning of the year I have been mildly obsessed with reversing and malware. Studying ASM and low level debugging is put an awesome edge on my understanding of computer science, programming, and hacking in general.

A week or so ago I started reading the Malware Analyst’s Cookbook and DVD: Tools and Techniques for Fighting Malicious Code where they recommend you build up a honeypot to collect malware. Of course I can’t a simple suggestions and set up a normal honeypot; Being a SysAdmin at heart I have to automate the hell out of everything.

If you aren’t interested in the scripts or the setup just scroll down for the iPhone pic money shot.

Thus is Born BunnyPot 0.5

I started with a Ubuntu VPS, patched but lightly hardened. Obviously being a honeypot the system has to be quasi-disposable.

Setting up dionaea was the hardest part!! Seriously. The install directions for it are fucked and the whole thing just feels like a one man hack job, however it has the cool features that I want to play with. I wrote up a little batch script that SHOULD one-shot install it. Just like the original install instructions some of the versions might disappear/break so some of the fetch instructions may break and meed to be tweaked. While this script is dirty it’s smart enough to exit with error if it fails to download or decompress a file. However if you run it outside of sudo it will fail in ugly ways. Standard disclaimer applies; never run random scripts off the internet without vetting them yourself.

#!/bin/sh

aptitude install libudns-dev libglib2.0-dev libssl-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev \
libreadline-dev libsqlite3-dev python-dev \
libtool automake autoconf build-essential \
subversion git-core \
flex bison \
pkg-config p0f

mkdir /opt/dionaea


# liblcfg (all)

git clone git://git.carnivore.it/liblcfg.git liblcfg
cd liblcfg/code || exit 1
autoreconf -vi
./configure --prefix=/opt/dionaea
make install
cd ..
cd ..


#libemu (all)

git clone git://git.carnivore.it/libemu.git libemu
cd libemu || exit 1
autoreconf -vi
./configure --prefix=/opt/dionaea
make install
cd ..


#libnl (linux && optional)

git clone git://github.com/tgraf/libnl.git
cd libnl || exit 1
autoreconf -vi
export LDFLAGS=-Wl,-rpath,/opt/dionaea/lib
./configure --prefix=/opt/dionaea
make
make install
cd ..


#libev (all)

wget http://dist.schmorp.de/libev/libev-4.11.tar.gz
tar xfz libev-4.11.tar.gz
cd libev-4.11  || exit 1
./configure --prefix=/opt/dionaea
make install
cd ..


#Python3

wget http://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.2.3/Python-3.2.3.tgz
tar xfz Python-3.2.3.tgz
cd Python-3.2.3/ || exit 1
./configure --enable-shared --prefix=/opt/dionaea --with-computed-gotos \
      --enable-ipv6 LDFLAGS="-Wl,-rpath=/opt/dionaea/lib/ -L/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/"

make
make install
cd ..

#Cython (all)

#We have to use cython >= 0.15 as previous releases do not support Python3.2 __hash__'s Py_Hash_type for x86.
wget http://cython.org/release/Cython-0.16.tar.gz
tar xfz Cython-0.16.tar.gz
cd Cython-0.16 || exit 1
/opt/dionaea/bin/python3 setup.py install
cd ..


#udns (!ubuntu)
#udns does not use autotools to build.
wget http://www.corpit.ru/mjt/udns/old/udns_0.0.9.tar.gz
tar xfz udns_0.0.9.tar.gz
cd udns-0.0.9/ || exit 1
./configure
make shared
#There is no make install, so we copy the header to our include directory.
cp udns.h /opt/dionaea/include/
#and the lib to our library directory.
cp *.so* /opt/dionaea/lib/
cd /opt/dionaea/lib
ln -s libudns.so.0 libudns.so
cd -
cd ..


#libpcap (most)

wget http://www.tcpdump.org/release/libpcap-1.1.1.tar.gz
tar xfz libpcap-1.1.1.tar.gz
cd libpcap-1.1.1 || exit 1
./configure --prefix=/opt/dionaea
make
make install
cd ..


# FINALLY!!!!

git clone git://git.carnivore.it/dionaea.git dionaea
cd dionaea || exit 1
autoreconf -vi
./configure --with-lcfg-include=/opt/dionaea/include/ \
      --with-lcfg-lib=/opt/dionaea/lib/ \
      --with-python=/opt/dionaea/bin/python3.2 \
      --with-cython-dir=/opt/dionaea/bin \
      --with-udns-include=/opt/dionaea/include/ \
      --with-udns-lib=/opt/dionaea/lib/ \
      --with-emu-include=/opt/dionaea/include/ \
      --with-emu-lib=/opt/dionaea/lib/ \
      --with-gc-include=/usr/include/gc \
      --with-ev-include=/opt/dionaea/include \
      --with-ev-lib=/opt/dionaea/lib \
      --with-nl-include=/opt/dionaea/include \
      --with-nl-lib=/opt/dionaea/lib/ \
      --with-curl-config=/usr/bin/ \
      --with-pcap-include=/opt/dionaea/include \
      --with-pcap-lib=/opt/dionaea/lib/
make
make install

#Fix some permissions
chown -R nobody:nogroup /opt/dionaea/var/dionaea
exit 0

WHEW! That’s a big one huh? That took me several hours to suss out so I figured it’s best shared! I also wrote an update script for the system and all the git based packages, which MOST were.

#!/bin/bash

aptitude update
aptitude -y safe-upgrade


# liblcfg (all)

cd liblcfg || exit 1
git clean
git pull
cd code
autoreconf -vi
./configure --prefix=/opt/dionaea
make install
cd ..
cd ..


#libemu (all)

cd libemu || exit 1
git clean
git pull
autoreconf -vi
./configure --prefix=/opt/dionaea
make install
cd ..


#libnl (linux && optional)

cd libnl || exit 1
git clean
git pull
autoreconf -vi
export LDFLAGS=-Wl,-rpath,/opt/dionaea/lib
./configure --prefix=/opt/dionaea
make
make install
cd ..


# FINALLY!!!!

cd dionaea || exit 1
git clean
git pull
autoreconf -vi
./configure --with-lcfg-include=/opt/dionaea/include/ \
      --with-lcfg-lib=/opt/dionaea/lib/ \
      --with-python=/opt/dionaea/bin/python3.2 \
      --with-cython-dir=/opt/dionaea/bin \
      --with-udns-include=/opt/dionaea/include/ \
      --with-udns-lib=/opt/dionaea/lib/ \
      --with-emu-include=/opt/dionaea/include/ \
      --with-emu-lib=/opt/dionaea/lib/ \
      --with-gc-include=/usr/include/gc \
      --with-ev-include=/opt/dionaea/include \
      --with-ev-lib=/opt/dionaea/lib \
      --with-nl-include=/opt/dionaea/include \
      --with-nl-lib=/opt/dionaea/lib/ \
      --with-curl-config=/usr/bin/ \
      --with-pcap-include=/opt/dionaea/include \
      --with-pcap-lib=/opt/dionaea/lib/
make
make install

#Fix some permissions
chown -R nobody:nogroup /opt/dionaea/var/dionaea
exit 0

If you are following along at home I really recommend you put both of those scripts into their own dio-build directory since they make a mess of any directory you run them in and you want to keep all the installers about.

All you have to do after that is start it all up

sudo p0f -i any -u root -Q /tmp/p0f.sock -q -l -d -o /dev/null -c 1024 && sudo chown nobody /tmp/p0f.sock
sudo /opt/dionaea/bin/dionaea -u nobody -g nogroup -p /opt/dionaea/var/dionaea.pid -D

If it doesn’t self destruct then you are up and going. If course I recommend you set this up with something like runit but this will get your honeypot working.

Where the Cool Automation Comes in

dionaea doesn’t seem to have the cool IRC features of other honeypots but it still has web submissions. In fact it’s designed to submit to several standard honeypots. I’m greedy so I deleted all of those and put in my Mac OS X server as one. For a quick and dirty python receiving server check through MNIN Security | Malware Analyst’s Cookbook or buy the book.

Having these md5 named malware files on my OS X server means… what? They get backed up? Whoopty dooo! I guess that means I have easier access to them but so what. Lets make my system do all the pre work for me!

Using the power of the almighty Noodlesoft Hazel, Homebrew, and a few python packages the system watches the incoming binary directory for new files and then goes to work.¹ It runs a series of scans on the files and chimes my phone with the summary on my new gift from the internet!

Sweet huh? The first time I was sitting around and my phone chimed, delivering info on a fresh piece of malware, I did a dance.

Logging into the box and running a single check against the name nets me a larger summary;

➜  malware  ./pescanner.py binaries/12fb7332920a7797c2d02df29b57c640
################################################################################
Record 0
################################################################################

Meta-data
================================================================================
File:    binaries/12fb7332920a7797c2d02df29b57c640
Size:    57344 bytes
Type:    PE32 executable (GUI) Intel 80386, for MS Windows
MD5:     12fb7332920a7797c2d02df29b57c640
SHA1:    47707d46e3324be11cde22cdfe2be7d17193a5a2
ssdeep:
Date:    0x4AD5C802 [Wed Oct 14 12:45:54 2009 UTC]
EP:      0x40369e .text 0/4
CRC:     Claimed: 0x0, Actual: 0x151d9 [SUSPICIOUS]

Signature scans
================================================================================
Clamav: binaries/12fb7332920a7797c2d02df29b57c640: Trojan.Spy-78857 FOUND

Resource entries
================================================================================
Name               RVA      Size     Lang         Sublang                  Type
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
RT_RCDATA          0xa0a0   0x4621   LANG_KOREAN  SUBLANG_KOREAN           data
RT_RCDATA          0xe6c8   0x400    LANG_KOREAN  SUBLANG_KOREAN           PE32
  executable (GUI) Intel 80386, for MS Windows, Petite compressed

Suspicious IAT alerts
================================================================================
CreateProcessA
StartServiceA
CreateServiceA

Sections
================================================================================
Name       VirtAddr     VirtSize     RawSize      Entropy
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
.text      0x1000       0x5196       0x6000       5.959918
.rdata     0x7000       0xc76        0x1000       4.498997
.data      0x8000       0x1cdc       0x1000       3.521438
.rsrc      0xa000       0x4ac8       0x5000       7.283870    [SUSPICIOUS]

The next piece of this will involve setting up parallels on the Mac Mini server and getting remote malware deployment and testing going. dionaea also records tcp streams so that it can capture shell codes, something I also want to start indexing and stealing up.

Where is this awesome collaboration of scripts you ask? Well I’m not giving up all the goods yet, especially since it’s incomplete. Eventually I will probably post the whole deal. However most everything I set up is in Chapter 3 of the book I have been talking about the whole time. If you are super curious or want your own bunnypot now I can be bribed with beer and liquor like most hackers. ↩︎

More Pelican, or how I learned to stop worrying and start developing with others.

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Pelican 3.0 is almost out the door now. It’s been great working on a “real” project with other developers for what is, in retrospect, the first time ever.

Some programmers I know would rather fork a project and trudge off into the snow with the code base, then fork off their own leg and write their way back before working on someone else’s code; I think at some point I caught that same fever from someone close to me. I think the phrase tossed around was; “The only thing that is worse than someone else’s code is working with someone else’s code.” The crazy part is, after actually working with other people on a project I wish I had done it earlier.

After fitting in to someone else’s product and pitching my ideas and work into it instead of trying to run in it I almost don’t want to go back. Not everything I’ve suggested flew, some things were downright rejected and other things had to be rethought to fit it all… but it was a great experience to have a driven goal and to contribute to it. Luckily the Pelican team is also small, awesome, and very supportive so I’ve found it downright pleasant to work with them… I realize that not every team is as friendly and constructive as the Pelican project has been but the concept of check and balances and the feedback alone is invaluable.

Yes, there is a part of me that wants to be the solo super programmer hacker that gets an idea and sits down to write the next program that becomes the next golden standard but we can’t all be Linus and honestly, who wants to maintain that project into the ground? I’m not an amazing programmer, maybe someday I will be after lots of training. My programs work but without constant learning and challenges they aren’t going to be written well.

While cleaning out little bugs and documenting things over several times may not be everyone’s best use of time; I feel getting used to have to test everything, double think my commits, write tests for everything is important. Normally I can be a little lazy with my commit, get it in and test it after that… but I can’t just do that with a bigger project. On a personal project you can quickly develop and learn bad habits. Working with a team forces good habits, or at least as good habits as the team itself.

For big professional life time programmers I am probably preaching to the choir. Term development, code review, and focused controlled projects with deadlines are vital to putting out great projects. For all those that have been playing the part of the antisocial developer, like I was, I really recommend finding a smaller project that you can help grow, getting in on the channel, and getting your team coding on… you will be shocked how great it can be to work on a project together once ego gets set aside.

The project has sidetracked several other of my side projects, but in one of the best ways possible considering the amount of joy and constructive knowledge and experience I think I am getting from it. I still plan on learning more languages, namely lisp… but right now I am juggling working on this project and studying reversing, one of my biggest interests for the future.

As a whole sidetrack to this whole post, I think that infosec is where I am going to steer my career and reversing and malware is my current big “interest”. Even if I can’t grok it enough to become a professional malware analyzer or software analyzer, learning some of the lowest levels of computing and programming will help me understand all the other facets of security and infrastructure that much better. Not that infrastructure management isn’t a great career, but I don’t feel it’s really focusing me where I want to be long term. I have days where I really regret stepping up from Sr. Systems Admin.

Now with less dynamics

Fri, 06 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been stalling a lot on writing this post. I guess I wanted everything to be perfect by the time I actually wrote about it however my willpower to finish these test cases is weak.

The site has now changed, yet again. I decided not to wait 5 years between refreshes this time.

The biggest change people should notice is at first glance you shouldn’t notice change. When you click around it should be easy to realize that the site isn’t WordPress based anymore though. I’ve switched over to Pelican. The project still feels very young and small, but it’s done in python and the developers are very active and open to submissions so I jumped in.

It’s took some wiggling around to get into it, and lots of bashing on my old chunk theme to get it to look perfect in Pelican but in the end I really like the fact I did a lot of back end work to the system. I submitted my theme to the official Theme’s repo and am currently working on adding in several features of my own to the project… and by several I mean I have a to-do list longer than most any of my own software by far.

A little thank you goes a long way

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Things like this happen sometimes

[4:27 PM] <SnowLprd> tBunnyMan: Nice work on #389. I can see how that will come in handy. :^)
[4:27 PM] <tBunnyMan> Thanks!
[4:28 PM] <tBunnyMan> I really just wanted a 404 and 50x error that matched my theme... but making it more extensible helps everyone
[4:28 PM] <tBunnyMan> I just need to finish this test case for it when work stops being annoying
[4:29 PM] <SnowLprd> Nice of you to generalize it for everyone, despite only needing it yourself for 404/50x errors.
[4:29 PM] <SnowLprd> And the test will also be most welcome! \o/
[4:32 PM] <tBunnyMan> Pelican is fairly awesome IMO, I hope I can help tweak it into epic levels.
[4:34 PM] <SnowLprd> With contributions like yours, those levels will be here in short order. :D
[4:34 PM] <tBunnyMan> haha. I'm not that good ;p Thanks for the kind words
[4:35 PM] <tBunnyMan> Catch you around. It's time to travel
[4:35 PM] <SnowLprd> Every little bit counts!
[4:35 PM] <SnowLprd> Sounds good. Cheers!
[4:36 PM] <tBunnyMan> It does. It's why I love contributing little things to big projects.

All I really was trying to do is add a very quick and simple feature I needed. This was the response I got for it! The thing is, you would be shocked how infrequently I see something like this… It’s this type of additude and behavior amongst developers that makes people WANT to work with eachother and help really grow a product.

I just wanted to post a little good will and show that some people rule. Expecially SnowLprd, kylef, bbinet, and doubly so alexis!

Small Update

Tue, 19 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I haven’t posted in a while because I am working on redoing this site. Once I am done with the backend I will start updating regularly.

My Contribution to Calibre

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Backstory

When I bought my NOOK Simple Touch™ in January of this year I rediscovered calibre E-book management. While software always felt clunky in Mac OS X you could never deny it’s power and sheer amazing once you got past the UI.

Being a big fan of ReadItLater I immediately tried to have the program pump my massive reading list into my Nook. To my dismay I discovered that the plugin was hardly complete. It piped my entire ~500 article¹ reading list into a several megabytes large ebook and ordered articles from newest to oldest. Running the plugin a second time… produced the same results. It hadn’t even the courtesy to mark articles as read.

After digging about I found a few “close enough but incomplete” and outdated solutions along side plenty of complaints. You can’t blame Calibre, the massive project’s maintainers likely don’t use the service like I do of at all.

Solution

A python based open source project with something that I want improved? A bunny like me only can do one thing in a situation like this; reach back to grab one of my many ‘cans’, learn the API Documentation for recipes, and get my money out of PyCharm.

After a few days and learning more than just Calibre api,² I put out what I called ReadItLater V3 on to my github and reposted it to Calibre Recipes MobileRead Forums. Other people picked it up and I ended up adding a few extra features per requests

All was good with the world.

Reward

A few weeks ago Read It Later officially rebranded to Pocket. This prompted me to pull up Calibre and check my plugin was working… all clear. Then, since I like to cover my bases, I pulled up Mobile Reads and dug around… and that’s when I found it.

Calibre merged my version into the official trunk.³

This invigorated me to put my all into the project. However, all I really managed was the branding, some code cleanup, and docs. Pocket wasn’t ready to give out their new API to small beans like me. At one point during this Calibre devs merged in someone else’s but quickly pushed my latest version once I completed it.

I find myself flattered to have my code and name, even my pseudonym, in such a prestigious python project. Some of my friends felt my accomplishment was mediocre at best but I reject the haters. I’ve actively contributed to widely used open source. I don’t get a ton of warm fuzzies from my wins but this was one of those times. I’m still stoked as hell and hope that I can do it again.

I should get my reading list under control. My situation with real books looks exactly the same way, stacks and stacks of the latest up read interests. I read plenty but the information overload fills the world; the challenge of sorting fluff from gold increases daily. ↩︎
mechanize Browser and Beautiful Soup are now favorites in my toolbox of handling and scraping web content, something I do more than any bunny should. ↩︎
While this link only shows one part of the merge I chose it because it showed when they merged in my name to the top. Eventually they replaced the whole thing with my version. ↩︎

The search for the perfect wallet

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Through my whole life I have always struggled to find the perfect tool for the job. No matter what I am doing I from the big to the little I question methods and tools I am using. Sometimes I find it, sometimes I struggle on and on. This is a story about how I think I found perfection.

I have always had a fascination with wallets. They are where we keep the summary of our life and our valuables. Your wallet is like a woman’s purse, the thing that curious people want to pick through to find out more about you and the thing more introspective people think about how it reflects on them. Any time you pay for something the seller glances down and takes a quick look not just at your payment but at what it is coming out of. Your wallet is a statement of you in one of those subtle ways.

In my search I have gone through piles of wallets. I still have a small box in my closet that I have been loathe to throw away with then. I have gone from sleek leather, to big woven bulletproof nylon with lots of features, to slim money clips with stamped leather card slots, to the famous minimal Slimmy. Even with the Slimmy I went through two separate versions, one with window and one without.

My goal was to find a wallet that held everything I need to carry with me while still being small and slim. I have been on the largest minimal kick so the Slimmy and money clips were used for the last three years but they were too minimal for my needs. In the end the fact remains that any wallet I found that is small enough to make me happy didn’t hold enough and any wallet with enough space for everything was just too damn big.

The answer to my problem came to me several weeks ago while I was hanging out at a bar with my younger brother. We were about to tip up and I heard a familiar sound, the sound of rubber against the hard plastic of a credit card before snapping into place.

As a child my father never carried a wallet. He always just took his little pocket address book, pressed all of his cards up against it, folded up some money, and then wrapped it up in a pair of rubber bands. I asked him several times about why he never carried a wallet like everyone else and he told me it was because he never found a wallet he liked. Also, since he received the newspaper which is wrapped in a rubber band, it was free and replaceable weekly.

Like father like son I guess. When I asked my brother about it he said he “got it from dad” and “It was inevitable, you will succumb to it too.” It was and I did.

In the top most picture I didn’t use a normal rubber band but I quickly found that any fancy band I used was too much. Through a few months of testing I found that a traditional rubber band was just enough. In the picture you can easily see that I took the contents of the Slimmy, added my notebook and with the band it is still thinner than the EMPTY Slimmy. Even if I were to add more cards, which I have done, the wallet still manages to be no bigger than the standard four cards and a small amount of cash in a Slimmy that they recommend.¹

My rubber band wallet currently contains a Moleskine extra small notebook,² A collapsable pen to write with, a small set of cash, and every card and ID I could need on a day. Somehow it is still smaller and more useful than every wallet I have owned before!

As you can see with the pictures just above the new wallet is just a hair thicker than a AA battery and holds a mass of cards. In fact it actually contains more cards than I actually need. I found if there was too few cards the pen will roll over the cards and wiggle about. I now keep every gift card I have, my Fresh & Easy card, and a random hotel keycard from FurtherConfusion with art on it. Minimalism is amazing but the fact that I never have to go “Oh crap, I forgot card X” is nice.

As for looks? What does this say about me? While as a kid I thought it tacky to have a rubber band for a wallet most people tend to comment on how utilitarian and useful that is. How it holds a notebook and pen in the same space as their own bloated wallets.

No matter how many times I think about the process I think I found the perfect one for the job.

My problem with the slimy is its design. It is only meant to hold about four cards and a small amount of cash. On any day I need to carry my ID, Work ID, Debit Card, PCard. This means ALL extra credit cards, Costco memberships, health cards, gift cards, and even business cards are out. Yes I can live without them but having to drive home and grab my Costco card or applicable gift card every time I want to grab some shopping on the way home is ANNOYING. ↩︎
I use a BRIGHT PINK notebook too. It gets comments a lot, sometimes snide, sometimes funny… but the fact of the matter is when my “wallet” is on the table it’s hard to miss and that in the end is the point; High visibility. ↩︎

Nothing happens for a reason

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

“Everything happens for a reason.” I read this normally innocuous phrase on a friend’s blog recently and wanted to toss my coffee mug. The notion of the phrase makes me want to jump out of my chair and flip my keyboard. I’m not going to rag on them for saying or even feeling it, it’s simply not my place to tell people how to live their lives, however it bothers me that people who I care about in the world think like that.

I think the mentality of saying not only goes against my beliefs but undermines people’s ability to excel. The phrase is a sheep-like mindset that tells us to embrace our losses instead of trying to overcome them. The nature¹ of the phrase is predestination, which inherently is talking about divinity, though most often when I see people use it the meaning is less of a religious mentality² and more an extension of sour grapes. When we over-rationalize our painful decisions or situations we become placated or fight the reoccurrence of the opportunity because it wasn’t meant to be. We need some level of coping when we have perceived large losses but too much drags us down.

I quickly jumped up on the train of thought that this year’s Burning Man was going to be a bomb when I was denied access to STEP.³ However I never rationalized my loss to some point of divinity or told myself that there might be something better I need to make. There is no meant to be in my eyes; only what is and what is not. To this end I penciled in three furry conventions to fill my summer and replace the burn. Just a few days ago some things fell in to place and now I have access to tickets. Had I chose the meant to be mentality would I still want these tickets? Was there a reason for me to go through the extra month and a half of mental strife? No. It happened because mistakes were made. I received an opportunity to get tickets this month because of the people I choose to associate with and the impression I put on them. There was no luck in the preceding.

I am unwilling to ague the validity of anyone’s religious or spiritual beliefs but I believe that the moment you take the mentality that anything but you controls and shapes your life you give up the ability to reach your full potential. Removing the accountability for your problems not only dulls the pain of the problems but also the need to own and fix the them.

I’m not going to get into the literal meaning of the phrase, because technically everything does happen for a reason. Laws of nature, inertia, influence, chemical reactions, etc. I am taking about what people mean when they say everything happens for a reason. I was unable to find the etymology in searches but according to my results it seems that the phrase most likely stems from religion. ↩︎
Though my mother often uses the phrase followed with “God has a plan”, most of my friends don’t seem to subscribe to the hyper religious mentality. ↩︎
I didn’t enter the initial lotto, instead choosing to hold out for the full price second sales. Only people who entered the lotto for cheaper tickets where given access to STEP, the second chance ticket (re)sale system. ↩︎

Things that are not happening for 100, Alex

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

A: Importing this content into the new site was attempted only for a few moments before a review of it’s nature and amount had it canceled. Q: What is, BunnyMan’s old LJ?

Correct!

Wow. No, not happening. I still have it all backed up but I think all that old content will stay back there. I am currently trying to set this up so I can post my mostly private journal here as well as posting public news and information. LJ will not be getting 100% of the content I post, but it still will get some updates. The dawn of handpicked RSS content and feeds has consumed community and “friend based” feeds and for the most part I think we are better for it. I’m getting on the ship.

Wow!

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Another new site, another clean slate ready to be filled with so much information!

I will try to make this site as little about the drivel, porn, rage, and trolls that the rest of the internet seems to amuse itself about. This site is going to be all about the things that really interest me. Currently those things are Fiction, Writing, Technology, writing fiction, and Productivity… There also may be stuff about glitchy painful music and podcasts.

My old site is archived safe and while most of the old links may be gone feel free to check it out. It highlights one of the busiest and most externally exciting period of my life where photography and music production was every facet of my life. You can also feel free to ask questions if you really care. I don’t expect this site to get too much traffic.