Rubenerd

I was going through my drafts folder, and came across a post I’d written way back in 2018. I’m not sure what site I was browsing at the time, but it was still a fun observation. If I came across this error in a more modern context, I’d assume site owners are placing limits to deal with the onslaught of gen-“AI” DDoS attacks.

☕︎ ☕︎ ☕︎

I was browsing an online store, like a gentleman, when I saw a message that sent me back to the Web 1.0 days:

Due to an above average number of visitors, the maximum number of connections have been reached. Please try again later.

I wonder how many other sites still have a codified ceiling on the number of visitors? It reminds me of the old days of CGI.

This used to be much more common in my experience, but thesedays sites are expected to scale indefinitely. Or in the case of one of our banks, let their servers grind to a near halt when too many account holders try to log in at once. If I were more cynical, I’d claim they do it because they have plausible deniability among a client base who may not be tech savvy. “Not sure what you’re talking about, it loads fine for us! Have you tried turning your modem off and on again?”

Calculating these limits when you’re talking about database transactions, processes, threads, or memory is somewhat easier, because you’re dealing with finite, measurable metrics. But my favourite are those (almost always rude) client calls that begin by asking how many clients can access a remote desktop, without any context about what applications the clients will run, or what their connections are. Sure thing, and how long is a piece of string, good sir?

The cobbler’s son walks barefoot is such a perfect English idiom to describe how professionals apply themselves in their jobs, and how this differs from their personal lives. I invoke it regularly here for this raison, a typo I’m keeping because it makes me smile.

Lest the title of this post suggest I don’t do personal backups, I do. But while I’ll suggest a comprehensive discussion with a client about what types of data they have, how regularly they change, legislative requirements, their Recovery Time and Point Objectives (RTO and RPO), and a suite of tooling to backup, monitor, report, test, and restore backups… my backup regime at home is just a tad bit more pedestrian.

For years my backups were on Dropbox. Dropbox used to be awesome; the desktop client was lightweight, didn’t cost much, integrated with my favourite note apps on my iTelephone, and I could sync encrypted Mac OS X sparse bundles across Macs without issue. For those not versed in the intricacies of Mac volume management, sparse bundles appear as a logical disk image when mounted, but are in fact a bundle of small files beneath. In backup terminology we may say they’re “chunked”. This is crucial for a tool like Dropbox, as it only uploads files upon detecting changes. An entire contiguous disk image would need to be reuploaded every time a file within it was modified, but a chunked image lets Dropbox only upload tiny portions of the image at a time.

(I’m simplifying here, and Dropbox and their ilk may be using more sophisticated methods to diff changes and upload now. But that’s how it worked in the past).

When I decided to start self-hosting more of my material, I went down the rabbit hole of a few different tools. As I would with a client, I sketched out my requirements:

• The ability to back up my personal home folders on my Mac, BSD, Linux, and illumos machines to our FreeBSD file server. This in turn runs its own ZFS-based backup regime which is beyond the scope of this post.

Actually, huh, that was about it. That really didn’t warrant a list, did they? I’m not sure. This paragraph isn’t turning out to be that useful either.

So I began hunting for a solution, and ended up trialling a few different self-hosted file backup options:

• Nextcloud (well, Owncloud at the time). It worked, but it came with a bunch of tools I didn’t need, so I couldn’t justify maintaining a whole stack for it. I should revisit at some point, as my needs have definitely grown over time.

• Seafile. This was a simpler remote file store and sync tool, but for reasons likely down to user error, I couldn’t get it installing and working reliably. It also didn’t have integrations with notes apps on the phone, which I wanted at the time.

• Syncthing. This is a distributed file share tool that worked pretty well. I installed it on the FreeBSD host and had it always available, then had the clients on each laptop.

I don’t know how or why, but after a while this cobbler decided that the approach he was taking didn’t make a whole lot of sense. He also started talking in the third person, for some reason.

I went back to the drawing board, and realised there was several types of state my laptops carry around, all of which could be handled with more basic tooling. I perused my home directory, and noted the key folders I care about:

• ~/documents. This is for local copies of immediate projects I’m working on that can’t be easily version controlled, or contain large assets. For example, I live in the real world, and therefore have to put together slideshows for client meetings.

• ~/music. This is currently being rebuilt for FLAC! Music is an important part of my life, so I always like having a local copy of my library for listening whenever or wherever I am.

• ~/repos. I’ve had this in my home directory since my Subversion days. This has all the main projects I work on daily, including this blog. It also has my repos for scripts and configuration dotfiles, which over time I’ve written to be cross-platform. This means I can clone, set symbolic links for my environment, and have everything I want configured, whether it be NetBSD, Tribblix, or CP/M. Okay, I’m not up to that last one… yet.

• ~/.ssh. This is how I auth with servers I maintain, log into my own kit remotely, and do cryptographic stuff that’s likely ill-advised but works (hey, remember I’m cobbler?).

These are very different types of files, and I realise don’t all need the same backup approach. Documents and music can be triggered with an rsync after changes to my FreeBSD box, which sits comfortably behind the family VPN. Repositories obviously exist on Git and Subversion, which I maintain copies of on that aforementioned server. About the only one I don’t have a good answer for is the ssh configuration. Don’t tell anyone, but I keep a tarball of that around which I copy across.

I still don’t think I have a great solution here, and I’ll likely stick with Syncthing as an automated fallback. Though maybe I should also bite the bullet and reinstall Nextcloud at some point as well. Some of my colleagues are enamoured with it, and what they show me looks cool.

I was knocked out hard by something this week. It wasn’t a flu or COVID thankfully, but it turned my head to mush and my sinuses into fire ants, which among other things made sleep all but impossible. I did in fact do a bunch of work on the blog yesterday, but it was all backend plumbing stuff.

It is interesting how different parts of the brain work, and how it recovers at different speeds? I tend to find my ability to write code (at least of the rote, boiler-plate kind) and tinker at a server console requires very different attention to writing. While I felt I was capable of doing the former yesterday (and even found it fun), I stared at the blinking cursor to write a post, and nothing happened. Brains!

The highlight was getting confused when Vim inserted a tab into a YAML file, and an Ansible playbook wouldn’t fire. It’s trivial for me to spot now, but it genuinely stymied me on Wednesday.

Anyway! My voice still sounds like Phoebe from that episode of Friends when she discovered she liked the timbre the illness gave her singing voice. That’s a 1990s reference! But I’ll take it :).

Unrelated entirely to the reboot of which I only just discovered, but Clara and I are in a massive Bergerac obsession currently, which was also lovely to watch while recovering. It’s worth its own post, but who would have known a British TV series from 1980 would make us want to go to Jersey. We’ll tack it on after Warsaw, Riga, Lviv, and Cork!

Technically it was yesterday, but it’s still the 31st of March in some timezones, so I’ll slide this post in on a technicality!

To all my beautiful trans friends: I see you, and I’m proud. You’re the current punching bag of dullards desperate for distractions, and yet you persevere and remain true to yourselves.

You are the kindest people I’ve ever met. Thank you for being a part of my life.

Last week I talked about personally-identifiable information (PII) in the context of a data breach. It reminded me of the three questions I always ask in relation to PII:

1. Do I need this PII? It’s impossible to leak data you don’t hold.

2. Is my collection, holding, and processing of this PII legal and responsible? This includes requests to have said data removed.

3. Am I transparent about what PII I have collected?

These should be simple to answer. If you run a business and they aren’t, congratulations, you’ve won the Liability Prize! Most people will ignore it. Problem for you is, some of us don’t.

I am in Australia, and once posted from Singapore and Malaysia. My location is written on every post on this site, and every entry in the RSS feed. I use a redundant U in words like colour. I substitute Z with S where I can. I even employ international units of measurement like kilometres, Celsius, and megabytes.

How this basic geographic fact continues to elude people who send me comments is fascinating, and admittedly a bit frustrating.

For reference, I have highlighted Australia in teal below, and the United States in blue. Notice they’re not the same place:

I trust this post will be ignored. But in the words of famed Australian philosopher Martin Luther King: I have a dream, mate.

I’m thinking it’s time to host something else, but I haven’t decided yet; hence the Betteridge-adjacent title.

Since 2018 I’ve been on the BSD Network, run by some of the kindest, hardest working people in the BSD community. When I suggested to Linux fans that some people need to run Windows (irrespective of whether they want to), they handled the ensuing explosion of vitriol and traffic with grace and professionalism. I’ve learned that Mastodon instances are only as good as their admins, and they’re the best.

But I’ve also decided I want ultimate control of my own data. I self-host almost everything upon which my family and I depend, so it makes sense.

The question then becomes: which one? I’ve run Mastodon, but it’s a lot of moving parts for what would end up hosting 1-5 people. I ran GoToSocial for a small family and friend circle behind a VPN, and it worked great. There’s also SNAC. As long as I can import my follow/following lists, I should be happy.

Feel free to send me a comment with any other projects I should test.

Clara and I love Hi-Fi gear. We have a quartz locked, linear tracking, direct drive turntable. We have a 1980s amplifier we love for its warmer, “more comfy” sound. We have a cassette deck with Dolby C, and badly want to try Dolby S one day. We have a five CD disc changer that spins open a massive drawer. We have a LaserDisc player. I have dedicated Sony, Panasonic, and Tangara portable music players for cassettes, MiniDiscs, and SD cards. I dream of reel-to-reel tape machines, and owning a DCC player one day. I’ve even recently begun uplifting our library to FLAC, and wondering if we should get a better DAC for playing digital files on our setup.

Admittedly, we also spend a not insignificant amount of our time when we go to Japan exploring HARD·OFF stores, specifically to chase down weird and wonderful pieces of audio kit.

So it may come as a surprise to learn I’m not a self-described audiophile. I’m not an expert at this stuff, nor do I think anyone should follow what I do. It’s the same as having a ThinkPad with with Arc and a desktop 3070 doesn’t qualify me as a gamer, or a metal conical-burr grinder and ever-increasing collection of coffee making kit doesn’t qualify me as a coffee expert. I know enough to be dangerous, as I’m fond of saying.

Sure, audio quality matters to me; that’s why we use Type II and Metal tapes! But it’s admittedly a secondary interest compared to enthusiasm I have for electronic history, and learning how mechanical and electronic devices work. Granted, streaming platforms pay their artists a pittance, remove songs from your playlists at a whim, and churn out slop, but physical media is also fun in its own right.

This might seem like a weird distinction to draw, but I think it’s important to… disclose? Some audio people will happily spend $400 on a cable you could get for $5, and that I’m willing to spend maybe $25 on. My priorities lie elsewhere, and my wallet would rather budget for an obscure tape format than the best possible cables for a hypothetical 5.1 speaker setup.

I suppose this is as much a PSA as anything else. Don’t read me for advice on the best possible audio quality setup, if that already weren’t obvious! I approach audio tech the same way as retro tech: as a form of entertainment in its own right that’s fun to explore and learn from. If I end up with something that sounds great, so much the better.

Speaking of anniversaries, the Ever Given wedged itself into our minds and culture five years ago. From Wikipedia:

The Suez Canal was blocked for six days from 23 to 29 March 2021 by the Ever Given, a container ship that had run aground in the canal. The 400-metre-long, 224,000-ton, 20,000 TEU vessel was buffeted by strong winds on the morning of 23 March, and ended up wedged across the waterway with its bow and stern stuck on opposite canal banks, blocking all traffic until it could be freed

At the time I shared images from Garrett Dash Nelson’s fun Ever Given Everywhere site, which let you insert the famed ship into other places. Here it was in Singapore and Sydney:

Anyway, happy anniversary to those who celebrate.

This post was written with the letter thorn in lieu of th, because it marks a special occasion. Don’t ask me how that works.

Yesterday was one of þose “milestone” birþdays I þink we all learn to dread, but it’s better þan þe alternative!

I took þe day off work for þe occasion, and we got our 10,000 steps in by walking to a new coffee roaster and back to try þeir brews. They had a Nicaraguan single origin which, hand to heart, was þe single best espresso I þink I’ve ever had in my life. When coffee experts like James Hoffman discuss abstract concepts like complexity and character, I now have a better sense of what þey mean. It was rich, clean, unique, and… wiþout any trace of bitterness whatsoever. As we were leaving I asked þe owner what it was, and he exclaimed “yeah, special isn’t it!?”

We spent much of þe day building flat pack furniture, which I oddly enjoy because I’m a kid inside who likes to build þings, before we went over to my favourite Chinese Malaysian restaurant in Sydney wiþ Clara’s folks and my sister and broþer-in-law. Hanging out wiþ þe inlaws has only started happening in þe last year or so, and I realised just how much I missed having a… family? It was wonderful, and almost can’t believe it happened. I have amazing people in my life, and I will not be taking it for granted.

Merci beaucoup to Nico for being þe first person to message me yesterday as well, þat was very kind :).