blog.bdw.li

Ein Besuch in Chemnitz (2)

hello@bdw.li (jwb) — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Nach den ganzen Vorträgen bin ich Sonntag Abend noch eine Runde durch Chemnitz spaziert. Dabei sind mir auch ein paar Dinge aufgefallen:

Viele Nebenstraßen und die dort stehenden Mehrfamilienhäuser sehen 1:1 aus wie in Eberswalde
In viele Wohnungen kann man reingucken, da die Bewohner keine Vorhänge oder Jalousien benutzen
Mitunter ist die Architektur sehr abwechlungsreich
Die Chemnitzer verwenden fantastische Namen für Ihre Wahrzeichen wie Lulatsch oder Nischel
Die Stadt scheint ein gut ausgebautes Verkehrsnetz zu haben, trotzdem konnte ich eigentlich alles fußläufig innerhalb von 30min erreichen
Von Freitag Abend bis Montag früh habe ich Morgens und Abends kaum Menschen auf den Straßen gesehen

Der Spaziergang endete im Lokomov, direkt unter dem lokalen Chaos-Club. Das Chemnitzer Kulturbier, ein sanftes Helles, kann ich empfehlen. Sehr süffig.

Ein Besuch in Chemnitz (1)

hello@bdw.li (jwb) — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Im Herbst letzten Jahres habe ich erfahren, dass es die Chemnitzer Linux Tage gibt und mir kurzerhand Bahn und Unterkunft gebucht. Jetzt, nachdem das Wochenende vorbei ist, wollte ich noch mal festhalten, welche Vorträge mir besonders gut gefallen haben. Die Aufzeichnungen sind unter media.ccc.de/c/clt26 verfügbar.

= Digitalsouveräne Partei? Zwischen Anspruch und Wirklichkeit

Torsten hat ein bisschen aus dem Nähkästchen geplaudert, wie digitale Kollaboration bei Bündnis90/Die Grünen abläuft und wie aufwändig es sein kann 180.000 Mitglieder auf eine Zwei-Faktor-Authentifizierung umzustellen. Spoiler: Wenn alle bei den Grünen es schaffen, gibt es beim Rest der Welt keine Argumente, es nicht auch zu tun.

= Vom Ping zum Panorama: Monitoring mit System

In den Talk bin ich nicht mehr reingekommen, der Andrag war zu groß. Die Aufzeichnung muss ich mir selber noch anschauen.

= Rootless by Design: Sichere Container mit Podman und Quadlets

Der Talk ist anscheinend noch nicht fertig gerendert, im media.ccc Streaming Portal ist er aber verfügbar. Inhaltlich habe ich nichts Neues gelernt, aber es bestätigt mich in meinen Bestrebungen Docker den Rücken zu kehren.

= DNS-Infrastruktur mit PowerDNS: Betrieb, Architektur, DNSSEC

DNS wird ja gerne als gängiger Sündenbock für Fehler in der Infrastruktur genommen. Malik hat das aber so souverän vorgestellt, dass ich eigentlich keinen Grund habe, nicht auch einen DNS Resolver bei mir hinzustellen. Wieder eine neue Aufgabe auf der Homelab Liste.

= Richtig schlecht über Technik schreiben & Dokumentation mit Open-Source-Software

Diese beiden Vorträge haben mich noch mal motiviert genauer auf das Thema Dokumentation zu schauen. Ich habe privat gerade angefangen mit MkDocs und dem Material Theme eine Wiki für die Familie zu erschaffen und war schockiert, dass die Software quasi am Ende ist: What MkDocs 2.0 means for your documentation projects. Ich fasse mal ein paar Punkte der Macher des Material Themes auf:

MkDocs 2.0 is incompatible with Material for MkDocs
MkDocs 2.0 won’t have a plugin system
MkDocs 2.0 has a closed contribution model
MkDocs 2.0 is currently unlicensed

Das klingt alles nicht so gut, und das Team vom Material Theme hat kurzerhand Zensical ins Leben gerufen. Das Produkt ist auch noch nicht fertig, aber ich schaue es mir mal an. Das klassisch bekannte Material Theme ist weiterhin verfügbar, aber auch eine moderne Alternative, die ich auch ganz schick finde.

… und danach stand nur noch Abhängen in der Unterkunft an. Zum Abendbrot war ich bei Hotalo, Schmackofatz kann ich nur sagen. Optisch sehr schön eingerichtet und das Essen war fantastisch.

= (Keine) Fotos bitte!

Frank hat Offlinetags vorgestellt. Ein Abzeichen, mit dem man seine Präferenz für Fotos und Videos kundtun kann. Die Idee fand ich richtig gut! Ich habe auch schon einen Anwendungsfall beruflicher Natur im Kopf und werde das demnächst mal im Büro vorstellen.

= Kinder(rechte) und der Einstieg ins Netz und das Fediverse

Der Talk von Dominik war zu kurz, er hatte so viele spannende Aspekte, man hätte 120min draus machen sollen. Fun Fact: Die Aufsichtspflicht. Ich dachte immer es bedeutet, dass man auf Minderjährige aufpassen soll, damit Ihnen nichts geschieht. Gesetzlich sieht es allerdings anders aus, das BGB schreibt in §832 dazu folgendes:

§ 832 Haftung des Aufsichtspflichtigen (BGB)

(1) Wer kraft Gesetzes zur Führung der Aufsicht über eine Person verpflichtet ist, […] ist zum Ersatz des Schadens verpflichtet, den diese Person einem Dritten widerrechtlich zufügt […]

Das Gesetzt schützt also nicht die Kinder vor Unheil, sondern den Rest der Welt vor den Kindern ꉂ(˵˃ ᗜ ˂˵)

Ansonsten habe ich mitgenommen, dass man Kinder einfach mal machen lassen sollte. Und das kann ich grundsätzlich unterstützen, aber als Vater fällt es mir trotzdem nicht immer leicht so zu denken. Sollte man Dinge im Netz finden, die nicht gut für Kinden sind, sollte man sie einfach für alle Teilnehmer sperren. Auch für sich selbst. Und man sollte trotzdem, ab einem gewissen Alter des Kindes auch die Möglichkeit geben, die Sperren zu umgehen. Mein Internet in der Kindheit war auch komplett ungefiltert. War das gut? Ich weiß es nicht.

Nik hat außerdem teckids ins Leben gerufen um die (digitale) Welt verständlicher für alle zu machen.

= KI-Chat mit eigener Suchmaschine: RAG in YaCy

Ich habe Yacy kennengelernt und finde es spontan total cool. Dann noch mit einem lokalen LLM gekoppelt und den Index auf einige wenige interen Links eingeschränkt und schon steht der Chatbot, der einem Fragen aus dem eigenen Intranet beantwortet ohne mit dem Internet reden zu müssen.

= Mit OpenStreetMap digital souverän Ideen verwirklichen

Mit Falk und seinem Team hatte ich vor dem Talk ein gutes Gespräch, weil ich gerne Karten für die Innenräume unserer Bürogebäude hätte. Es gab einige Ansätze, mit denen ich mich demnächst mal beschäftigen möchte.

= Eine kleine Einführung in resiliente Datensicherung

Ich habe die 3-2-1-1-0 Regel kennengelernt. Bei einem Backup gilt:

3 verschiedene Kopien, eine Primärkopie und zwei Sicherungskopien
2 verschiedene Medientypen, auf denen die Kopien aufbewahrt werden
1 Kopie, die an einem anderen Standort aufbewahrt wird
1 unveränderliche Kopie
0 Fehler im Backup-/Verifizierungs- und Widerherstellungsprozess

Wobei ich fehlerfreie Backups als selbstverständlich ansehe ¯\(ツ)/¯

Das reichte dann aber auch, der Kopf war voll. Den Abend habe ich bei einem Spaziergang durch Chemnitz ausklingen lassen, davon mehr im nächsten Beitrag.

Running heatmap

hello@bdw.li (jwb) — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Rows are days, starting on Monday.
Columns are weeks, starting on Monday 51 weeks ago.

So, currently the most part of the heatmap is empty, but it will slowly fill over time. Except on Sundays it looks like.

This map is also included on the About page.

(‘ω’ ⊃ )⊃三二一

Ich bastel mir eine eigene Shell-Begrüßung

hello@bdw.li (jwb) — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Ich denke immer wieder darüber nach, was ich als Nächstes bloggen könnte. Ich habe auch immer wieder Themen an der Hand, bei denen ich etwas Neues lerne und über die man durchaus etwas schreiben könnte. Aber dann erwische ich mich dabei, wie ich meine eigene Arbeit anzweifle. „Das haben andere bestimmt eleganter gelöst.“ Verschwinde Perfektionismus! Ich habe jetzt entschieden dass Gefühl zu ignorieren und einfach meine persönlichen Errungenschaften zu Veröffentlichen!

Viele Shells begrüßen einen heutzutage, wenn man sich interaktiv anmeldet. Bei Ubuntu geschieht das sogar ausführlicher, inkl. der aktuell genutzten Systemressourcen und der anstehenden Updates.

Welcome to Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS (GNU/Linux 5.15.0-168-generic x86_64)

 * Documentation:  https://help.ubuntu.com
 * Management:     https://landscape.canonical.com
 * Support:        https://ubuntu.com/pro

 System information as of Wed Feb 11 10:15:58 PM CET 2026

  System load:           0.37
  Usage of /:            41.8% of 737.11GB
  Memory usage:          77%
  Swap usage:            0%
  Processes:             285
  Users logged in:       1
  IPv4 address for eth0: 198.51.100.23
  IPv6 address for eth0: 2001:db8:2b:359:89c:e5ff:feac:c9c5

 * Strictly confined Kubernetes makes edge and IoT secure. Learn how MicroK8s
   just raised the bar for easy, resilient and secure K8s cluster deployment.

   https://ubuntu.com/engage/secure-kubernetes-at-the-edge

Expanded Security Maintenance for Applications is enabled.

4 updates can be applied immediately.
1 of these updates is a standard security update.
To see these additional updates run: apt list --upgradable


You have no mail.
Last login: Wed Feb 11 14:48:51 2026 from 203.0.113.99
root@myMachine:~#

Übrigens, die IPs habe ich mir aus RFC 5737 und RFC 3849 genommen, da gibt es fest definierte IP Bereiche für Dokumentationen.

Für ein aktuelles Projekt hatte ich mich aber für Rocky Linux mit fish entschieden. Das minimalistische fish_greeting habe ich deaktiviert und mit Abfragen zu laufenden Docker Containern, Festplattennutzung, letztes Backup und letzte automatische Paketaktualisierung direkt etwas übertrieben. Aber wenn man erstmal etwas Neues zum Spielen gefunden hat, artet es manchmal eben aus. Die aktuell geblockten IPs von fail2ban könnte ich eigentlich auch noch mit ausgeben lassen.

Last login: Tue Feb 10 21:27:47 2026 from 203.0.113.99

Hostname : myOtherMachine
OS       : Rocky Linux 10.1 (Red Quartz)
IPv4     : 198.51.100.42 (example.com)
IPv6     : 2001:db8:4f7a:9c21:7a3d:ff:fe91:b6c4

Runtime  : Docker enabled
Container:
  seadoc          : Up 25 hours
  seafile         : Up 25 hours (healthy)
  seafile-caddy   : Up 25 hours (healthy)
  seafile-mysql   : Up 25 hours (healthy)
  seafile-redis   : Up 25 hours

Data directory size :
  /opt/seafile      : 423M
  /backup/seafile   : 996M

Last Backup     : 2026-02-11 02:31:24
Last DNF action : 2026-02-10 21:02:00
MOTD created at : 2026-02-11 22:39:24

usr@myOtherMachine ~>

Ich nutze für meine Lösung ein Bash Script (ja, da hätte ich auch fish schreibe können, aber solange schwimme ich noch nicht in den neuen Gewässern) und eine systemd Unit mit Timer. Das Script führt die vielen Befehle aus um alle Objekte abzufragen. Am Ende wird das Ergebnis in eine Datei geschrieben. Der systemd Timer läuft minütlich mit einem zufälligen Versatz von 20 Sekunden. Er startet die systemd Unit, die wiederum das Bash Script ausführt. Alle Ergebnisse der Ausführung landen im Journal. Das Script legt, wie gesagt, eine Datei mit dem Ergebnis an. In meiner fish config lasse ich dann einfach die angelegte Datei beim Starten einer interaktiven Session anzeigen.

Dadurch, dass die Generierung der Datei losgelöst vom Start der interaktiven Session ist, verzögert sich der Prozess nicht. Die Ausführung des eigentlichen Scripts dauert nämlich schon 1.3 Sekunden.

Am Ende war es gar nicht so schwer über den eigenen Schatten zu springen und die Seite zu veröffentlichen. Sollte ich häufiger machen.

Removing empty pages from PDF files

hello@bdw.li (jwb) — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 21:44:00 +0000

I bought a used Brother document scanner on Kleinanzeigen to manage my overflowing desk. Of course, I could have sorted it all manually, but why go the straight way if you can procrastinate with technology instead ┬┴┬┴┤･ω･)ﾉ.

The document scanner is quite simple and can only scan to a computer locally over USB. Luckily I can use scanimage on my Linux machine to access the scanner over the SANE interface as well.

(1) Scan the documents

After a while I found the proper parameters for my model:

$ scanimage
  # select device
  --device-name="$device" \

  # select source on the device (there are devices with several input sources)
  --source 'Automatic Document Feeder(centrally aligned,Duplex)' \

  # use offset to scan only the part of the paper where the actual text is
  -y 297 -l 7 \

  # run automatically, don't ask for input
  --batch="$doc_scan" \

  --resolution=300 \
  --format=pdf

With a single document, this produces a two page PDF file in DIN A4.

I don’t want to decide if I need to scan only one or both sides, and my scanner can only do as he’s told. I opted for both sides all the time - hence the duplex parameter - and take care of empty pages with CPU resources instead.

My workflow uses the following steps:

Create the original PDF file
Create a copy with Ghostscript to fix the xref table
Analyze the copy to find empty pages
If some are found, they will be extracted for manual verification
A “clean” PDF is created for use with paperless-ngx

Later I want to remove the manual verification step. But I need to use it for a few weeks to verify my threshold first.

(2) Fix the PDF

I’m using ghostscript to fix the pdf file. For some reason, the scanimage pdf is always “broken”. Errors look like this:

The following errors were encountered at least once while processing this file: xref table was repaired Incorrect /Length for stream object.

It could be the -y 297 -l 7 offset I’m using, or it could be $scanimage itself – I couldn’t bring myself to invest.

$ gs \
  # result is saved as $doc_fixed
  -o "$doc_fixed" \

  # generate new PDF file
  -sDEVICE=pdfwrite \
  
  # PDFs quality setting (here is potential to reduce the file size)
  -dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress \
  
  # Don't pause between pages
  -dNOPAUSE \
  
  # Quit gs automatically at the end
  -dBATCH \

  # Surpress most messages, except for actual errors
  -dQUIET \

  # input file that is used
  "$doc_scan"

(3) Look for empty pages

In the past I removed empty pages with pdfarranger, since I also used the tool to split all documents from one scan session into seperate files. Today I stumbled upon nklb/remove-blank-pages. His way, to simply ask ghostscript how much ink was used on a page, made me feel w(°ｏ°)w.

$doc_fixed is a 10 page PDF and the pages 4, 6 and 8 are almost empty. When I ask ghostscript how much ink is used on it, I get this result (I added the arrows for visibilty):

$ gs -q -o - -sDEVICE=inkcov $doc_fixed
    0.10491 0.10328 0.09950 0.04416 CMYK OK
    0.10148 0.10088 0.09943 0.05592 CMYK OK
    0.12084 0.11656 0.11248 0.05224 CMYK OK
->  0.01110 0.01129 0.01081 0.00863 CMYK OK
    0.13958 0.13398 0.12899 0.05891 CMYK OK
->  0.01345 0.01371 0.01331 0.01084 CMYK OK
    0.10316 0.09932 0.09451 0.02920 CMYK OK
->  0.00441 0.00413 0.00468 0.00076 CMYK OK
    0.42938 0.36430 0.36582 0.04960 CMYK OK
    0.36276 0.35747 0.36175 0.07565 CMYK OK

However, I couldn’t get nklbs grep pattern to work and decided to go with awk instead. awk can also count, which made it easier to set a threshold for an “empty page” in my view.

$ awk
# injecting $threshold variable into awks context
-v thr="$threshold"

# matching lines starting with an optional space followed by digits
# you can play around with the tokens at https://regex101.com/r/KtqgpB/1
/^[[:space:]]*[0-9]/ 

# awk magic: 
# p is a counter to count rows, where each row is a page in the pdf
# s is the sum of the four CMYK values per row
# then it checks if the sum is below the threshold. 
# If so, it will print p, the page number
{ p++; s=$1+$2+$3+$4; if (s) print p }

Currently my threshold is set to 0.06, so less then 6% of the page are covered in ink to be classified as empty. It’s usually just a border from scanning or punch holes that are recognized as “ink”.

Was machst du eigentlich den ganzen Tag? Oktober 2025

hello@bdw.li (jwb) — Sun, 05 Oct 2025 15:24:00 +0000

Es ist schon halb vier am Nachmittag und ich räume gerade weiter den Blog auf. Mitten in der Migration zum neuen Theme erwische ich den alten #wmdedgt Post und stelle fest, heute ist ja der Fünfte! Mal sehen, ob ich noch alles zusammenbekomme.

06:12 Uhr

Die Brut ist wach und verkündet das frohen Mutes dem ganzen Haushalt. Überraschenderweise gibt es Verständnis für müde Eltern und wir bekommen eine Gnadenfrist von 90 Minuten.

08:15 Uhr

Ausreichend wach schlüpfe ich in sozialverträgliche Kleidung und nehme Kurs auf den nahegelegenen Bäcker. Begleitet werde ich vom Erstgeborenen, der sich als Ziel gesetzt hat, alleine 4 Brötchen zu verspeisen.

09:00 Uhr

Beim Frühstück wird festgestellt, dass es langsam Zeit ist die Tasche für den Schwimmkurs zu packen. Das Seepferdchen will erobert werden. Also die geschmierten Brötchen einpacken, den Kaffee ehrenlos inhalieren, die wichtigsten Sachen in die Tasche pfeffern und schon gehts los.

10:00 Uhr

Das Kind ist pünktlich im Wasser und ich habe knappe 45 Minuten Zeit am Laptop zu klimpern. Die Zeit habe ich heute damit verbracht, kleine Zusammenfassungen für alte Blogbeiträge zu schreiben. Das neue Theme zeigt diese ganz gerne bei einem Artikel mit passender Kategorie an.

11:00 Uhr

Zurück daheim, Schwimmsachen wegsortieren, Aufräumen, beim Kochen unterstützen, Bude bauen, Reis mit Paprika-Sahne-Hähnchen genießen, Küche aufräumen…

15:00 Uhr

Kaffee Pause – und ich stelle fest, dass ich diesen Artikel schreiben könnte und tue es auch direkt.

16:45 Uhr

Ich stelle völlig verblüfft fest, dass das Kind in der Kita UNO gelernt hat. Also das Kartenspiel. Wir spielen viele Runden bis zum Abendbrot.

19:12 Uhr

Die Brut ist im Bett, Zeit den Gaming Rechner hochzufahren. Aktuell hoch im Kurs: Icarus.

Schweinehund, elender!

hello@bdw.li (jwb) — Sat, 04 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

While migrating to this pretty new theme, I also checked all posts to make sure they fit. I stumbled upon my #biking list and sadly realized that I didn’t come even close to a good distance this year.

     ╔══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
2014 ╢███████████████████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░╟ 517
2015 ╢I have no idea where the data is ░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░╟ ?
2016 ╢██████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░╟ 166
2017 ╢███████████████████████████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░╟ 729
2018 ╢█████████████████████████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░╟ 697
2019 ╢███████████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░╟ 312
2020 ╢█░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░╟ 17
2021 ╢███░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░╟ 90
2022 ╢██████████████████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░╟ 487
2023 ╢████████████████████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░╟ 553
2024 ╢██████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████╟ 1924
2025 ╢████████████████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░╟ 440
     ╠══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╣
     0                                                                      1924

There is no excuse, I was simply lazy (；⌣̀_⌣́).

Let's encrypt traffic to your local network devices

hello@bdw.li (jwb) — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 17:21:00 +0200

I like my computery things to be encrypted. I could run my own CA¹,²,³ in my home lab, but I won’t use it often and most probably wipe the VM by accident ╮(￣▽￣"")╭ .

Since I only had positive experiences with Let’s Encrypt, I started to fiddle around with it at home. The Web UI I use most often is from my NAS. I could simply trust it’s self-signed cert, but I wanted the fuzzy and warm feeling of a secure lock icon in my browser.

Synology offers to use the Let’s Encrypt CA out of the box, but the verification uses a http-challenge. This in turn requires Port 80 to be forwarded from the Router to the NAS. I didn’t want to do this and remembered that there is also a dns-challenge available.

To use the DNS challenge, I needed another client and went with acme.sh. Here is roughly how it goes:

acme.sh talks to LE CA and requests a new certificate
LE CA issues a token to acme.sh
acme.sh creates a DNS TXT record like _acme-challenge.nas.bdw.li with a value derived from the token and other details
LE CA checks the DNS record and gives the certificate creation process a go if the DNS record is valid
acme.sh creates the certificate and removes the DNS record
acme.sh switches the certificate in my NAS

acme.sh was only able to modify the DNS records thanks to the community that maintained the plugins for various DNS providers.

The DNS challenge also allows to create wildcard certificates like *.bdw.li. I’m starting to like those, because then you won’t leave a trail of your DNS names somewhere.

Wait, isn’t something crucial missing? Yes, Split DNS! I am pointing certain public DNS names to private IPs within my home lab.

So, in my home lab nas.bdw.li resolves to 10.10.2.1 and when I access it, I’m greeted with a pretty Let’s Encrypt certificate.

De-DRMing My Amazon Kindle Library

hello@bdw.li (jwb) — Mon, 20 Jan 2025 21:05:00 +0200

After a few hours of trial and error, I finally managed to free my Kindle library. Here’s how it went down, step by step.

What a strange coincidence that Amazon decided to disable the “Über USB herunterladen” function on their website in February (PSA: Amazon kills “download & transfer via USB” option for Kindles this week). My trials started around New Year’s, and my first draft of this post is from January 20th. Lucky me — I had already finished by the time Amazon decided to pull the plug.

What You’ll Need

A Kindle Paperwhite (Gen 11 or Older) This is crucial. Newer devices use a file format that the tools I used might not handle, but I didn’t test this directly.
Amazon Kindle Bulk Downloader (treetrum/amazon-kindle-bulk-downloader) A Node.js script that logs into your Amazon account and downloads all your purchased ebooks via “Über USB herunterladen”.
- It selects the last device that interacted with your Amazon library. You’ll need the serial number of this device later to decrypt the DRM.
- In my case, I had five devices listed, and the script chose the one connected to the Amazon store most recently.
- For peace of mind, you might want to change your Amazon credentials afterward.
Calibre with the DeDRM Plugin (noDRM fork of DeDRM_tools)
- Install the plugin in Calibre to remove DRM during the import process.
- Make sure to use the serial number of the Kindle device that downloaded the books. If you’ve already imported books into Calibre, you’ll need to remove them and re-import after setting up the plugin.
Calibre for Library Management (Calibre Software)
- Beyond DRM removal, Calibre is excellent for organizing your library. It lets you sort, edit metadata, convert file formats, and probably much more that I didn’t try yet.
- Start small: import one book and open it in Calibre’s reader to confirm that the DRM removal worked. Alternatively, try converting the file — if it works, you’re good to go.

Lessons Learned

There’s a lot of outdated advice out there about this process. Here’s what I learned through trial and (plenty of) error:

At one point, I was stuck using Kindle for PC in Wine on Linux. That didn’t go well. The app started but I was never able to access the internet from it. Some people suggested that missing CA certificates were the issue, but I didn’t follow that path.
I even set up a Windows VM to keep experimenting. Thankfully, I figured out the importance of using the correct serial number shortly after.
The latest versions of all tools worked fine on Linux once I understood the process.

In the end I did all of this, just to try out Claudio’s recommendation about Kokoro (Convert E-books into audiobooks with Kokoro), which is a text-to-speech
model (￣▽￣*)ゞ. Once I had a chance to play around with it, I might write about it some more.

One more thing 🏴‍☠️

With great power comes great responsibility.
— Benjamin Franklin “Ben” Parker a.k.a. Uncle Ben

Just because you can remove DRM doesn’t mean you should use it to distribute books freely. Stripping DRM is like ripping a CD — you’re making a backup or converting a file for personal use. But whether that’s legal depends on your country. In many places, sharing DRM-free copies is considered piracy and can have legal consequences.

A new feed tool

hello@bdw.li (jwb) — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 21:32:12 +0200

I’m using my Nextcloud for a while now. It started as a simple tool to synchronize my files over all my devices. Over time the developers added a lot of new features or apps which where exciting to use.

However, at some point I wondered what I would do, if my instance crashed. A single point of failure. Gone would be my photos, documents, calendar entries, bookmarks, feeds and what not. So I slowly took it apart and nowadays it only serves two purposed:

A plattform to easily provide files for friends (I do all my file synchronization with Syncthing now)
My rss feed aggregator and viewer at the same time (Nextcloud News)

Since Nextcloud was never intended to be used as a feed reader, I decided to try something new: Miniflux. The installation was easy enough and I will use the web interface for reading when I’m on my computer.

On my phone it’s more convenient to use an app. I looked at a few and decided to start with NetNewsWire. The configuration is easy as well, wouldn’t there be the one stepping stone that I didn’t see in the beginning.

Miniflux offers a wide array of third-party integrations. They are off by default. To NetNewsWire to access Miniflux’ data I needed to enable a third party API, namely Google Reader API. Once I enabled it with a custom username and password I was able to add a new “FreshRSS” account in NetNewsWire with the credentials that I just added in the Google Reader API. It’s not rocket science, one just has to understand how this all plays together.

Statistics, yay!

hello@bdw.li (jwb) — Thu, 11 Jul 2024 21:13:00 +0200

~~I just realised that this theme can draw charts using Chart.js. Figuring out all the options (and gathering all the data) took me two hours of this evening.~~

After switching to a new and minimal theme, I needed a new solution for this chart. Welcmoe: asciibar, a tool that let’s you easily create horizontal bar charts using ascii characters. Nice find!

Do you know what else I’m happy about? This years biking distance is my overall score in the past 10 years, and the year is just half way done!

     ╔══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
2014 ╢████████████████████████████████████████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░╟ 517
2016 ╢█████████████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░╟ 166
2017 ╢████████████████████████████████████████████████████████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░╟ 729
2018 ╢██████████████████████████████████████████████████████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░╟ 697
2019 ╢████████████████████████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░╟ 312
2020 ╢█░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░╟ 17
2021 ╢███████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░╟ 90
2022 ╢██████████████████████████████████████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░╟ 487
2023 ╢███████████████████████████████████████████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░╟ 553
2024 ╢██████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████╟ 904
     ╠══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╣
     0                                                                      904

The observant reader noticed that I skipped a year in the list. For some reason I have no data from 2015.

Two month of consequent biking

hello@bdw.li (jwb) — Sun, 07 Jul 2024 22:38:32 +0200

I wanted to write about my success to stay focused on using my bike and just realised I already did that a month ago, but never came around to publish the post （´∇｀’’）

Month	Distance	Rides
July	139km	8
June	709km	51
May	358km	35

The difficulty to stay on the ball

hello@bdw.li (jwb) — Sat, 08 Jun 2024 22:30:32 +0200

Looking back on this post I’m sad to say my initial motivation didn’t stay with me. However, let’s not dwell on the past too much. Instead, let’s celebrate my first month of commuting to work by bike ✧｡٩(ˊᗜˋ )و✧*｡

The marketing campaing “Mit dem Rad zur Arbeit” highly motivated me again and so far, I was able to ride the 12km to the office almost every work day since May.

SSH config has a matching function

hello@bdw.li (jwb) — Wed, 13 Mar 2024 21:32:33 +0100

Did you know that SSH can match “things”? I sure didn’t!

Tonight I wanted to grant SSH access to a service account that didn’t have a home directory, but was required to use keyauth. After a bit of research on the internet I added a new config file to /etc/ssh/sshd_config.d. (ﾉ´ з `)ノ I love drop-in configurations.

Match Group homeless
  # %u = current user
  AuthorizedKeysFile /etc/ssh/authorized-keys/%u

I also needed to create the group homeless and add my service account to it. And, of course, I also needed to add the public key to the referenced file above. (So, if your service account is called pinkie, you’ll need to add the key to
/etc/ssh/authorized-keys/pinkie).

Lastly, if you are on Windows and use the WSL to access a linux server using keyauth, I can only advise to copy your private key to some WSL folder instead of using the mounted windows drive at /mnt/c/%something. I was not able to restrict the access on the private key file on the Windows drive in any way, that was accepted by the ssh daemon. Copying the file to ~/.ssh/%something and restricting it (chmod 700) worked in the end.

Autohotkey is awesome, even though I couldn't figure out the proper syntax

hello@bdw.li (jwb) — Tue, 27 Feb 2024 22:38:44 +0200

Until today the issue with Apples new apps to synchronize with my iPhone is still not fixed. I wasn’t able to find any other users with similar issues, but also have to say I didn’t dig very deep. I choose the brutal way and simply removed all apps and installed the previous iTunes version 12.13.0.9 (thanks to theapplewiki.com).

My iTunes library was still complete, which was nice, but synchronizing to the iPhone still yielded the same old error: Preparing to Sync. Since killing the MDCrashReportTool.exe is easy enough, I decided to write a quick Autohotkey script for it.

#Requires AutoHotkey v2.0
While ProcessExist("itunes.exe")
    ProcessClose "MDCrashReportTool.exe"

Unfortunately, that didn’t work out too well. But I was too tired to wrap my head around the proper syntax and simply renamed the file (it’s located in C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Apple\Mobile Device Support\). This should work until a new update is published.

I miss my record collection

hello@bdw.li (jwb) — Thu, 22 Feb 2024 23:29:44 +0200

At the end of December 2023 I decided to switch back to CDs and stop using Spotify. The idea was triggered by the announced price increase and I thought, that for all the money that I spent on it per Year, I can actually buy a few CDs that I then own. During this thought-process I also remembered a very foolish decision from a few years ago:

In a basement cleanup session, I decided to throw away a whole box of CDs. I didn’t own a CD player at the time and haven’t touched the box in years. I thought Spotify will be my music source forever. If I could turn back time and change that decision, I would.

In the years before music streaming services, I collected all my MP3 files in folders sorted by artist and album. It was the logical thing to do, because CDs contained one artist and album (apart from Bravo Hits and Dream Dance ᕕ(⌐■_■)ᕗ ♪♬). Then Spotify came and I had access to virtually everything – that changed my listening behaviour. I moved from a sorted folder full of artists and their albums to playlists. Since I didn’t have my folder collection anymore, I sometimes didn’t know what music to listen to. In the end I almost only listened to one particular playlist. Thinking about this today, makes me feel limited somehow. I stopped listening to whole albums, and just played the few songs that I really liked. If you only ever play the really good ones, they can get boring over time.

Now that I decided to buy CDs and rip them myself again, I can’t wait to get started. But of course there are some challenges along the way:

Copying discs requires a disc drive 🕵️

No surprise there, but my current tower has no space for a optical drive (I still love it, though: Meshify 2 Compact from Fractal Design). When I assembled the computer a year ago, I thought the time for optical storage media is over. I still have a drive in the basement and will need to look into something like S-ATA to USB-A or C and simply put it on top of the tower.

Transferring music files from Windows to my iPhone 📠

I thought that would be an easy one: use iTunes. It turns out, Apple just released version 1.0 of the iCloud for Windows app and with that came a couple of new tools as well:

Apple Devices - Used to manage devices and synchronize selected content
Apple Music - Used to manage the music library, replaces iTunes but is limited in it’s features

iTunes also received an update, which removed the music part from it. Now you can only manage your audio books and podcasts, everything else is gone.(っ °Д °;)っ

Funny enough, even though Apple introduced the new apps, they still share an error that I already had on iTunes in the past: MDCrashReportTool, Backup, Sync, Preparing to Sync.

Apple Devices recognizes my iPhone most of the time. If it doesn’t, I need to kill MDCrashReporterTool.exe. Selecting Music shows an error that the media library from Apple Music couldn’t be opened. I only got it working the first time I ever used this app. Since then I always receive this error.

Die Mediathek von Apple Music konnte nicht geöffnet werden. Öffne die Apple Music-App, um dies zu beheben.

Clicking on the button to open Apple Music brings the Apple Music app in focus, but does nothing else. (I can see and listen to my music in Apple Music).

A really long time ago, back when I used my iPod Photo, I had a software from a company with a red chair as logo. They offered a simple tool to transfer MP3 files to the iPod without using iTunes – after a quick search I found it, the company was actually called “Red Chair”, the software was called Anapod (Snapshot at web.archive.org).

So today, I looked for alternatives again and tried CopyTrans Manager as well as iMazing 3 Beta to transfer files. Both were disappointing.

CopyTrans Manager works, but the interface is a really scary and not fun to use.

iMazing 3 has too many features. I just want to copy my music to the device. I think the price for iMazing is justified if you use all the features, but for me that doesn’t fit. Therefore it’s too expensive.

For the moment I will use CopyTrans Manager and simply hope, that Apple fixes the issue with the Windows app ( ˘︹˘ ).

Other Streaming services

I would have a huge book library by now, looking at my kindle ebook collection. And I wish I would have bought them all as paperback. (Also, I like looking at shelves full of books).

I have similar issues with Netflix and other streaming services. I happily switched from the bay to Netflix and enjoyed easy access to current movies for a while. But things dont last. Movies are removed from Netflix from time to time and it’s not trivial keeping up to date with that. Also more and more streaming services are popping up, using “exclusive” blockbusters to get people to use their service. Just another 10$ for this service and another one for that. It doesn’t take long and this accumulates to a few hundred bucks a year.

This development is no fun, but I haven’t found a good solution for movies yet. (I’m too impatient to wait for BluRay to load). And regarding books, I switched back to paperbacks in October already.

gitconfig and includeIf Statements

hello@bdw.li (jwb) — Tue, 13 Feb 2024 23:15:20 +0100

Over the day I was using different machines to work on some git files. One machine was running Ubuntu, the other one Windows. Since I started using GPG keys to sign my commits a few weeks ago, I wondered how I could streamline my config files. A dotfile repository seemed to be the answer.

While I did some research on that, I stumbled upon the nifty feature of IncludeIf in .gitconfig¹. I could use this to split up the configuration files to match the different Operating Systems.

~
├───.gitconfig
├───.gitconfig-linux
├───.gitconfig-windows
├───.gitconfig-github
└───.gitconfig-gitlab

VSCodium on Windows seems to require the gitdir/i parameter to work², Github³.

.gitconfig

[includeIf "gitdir/i:c:/"]
path = ~/.gitconfig-windows

[includeIf "gitdir:/home"]
path = ~/.gitconfig-linux

[includeIf "gitdir:~/Git/"]
path = ~/.gitconfig-github

[includeIf "gitdir:~/Gitlab/"]
path = ~/.gitconfig-gitlab

The tilde “~” is nowadays an alias for the HOME variable on all major systems. On Windows it will show C:\Users\$username, on Linux it will be /home/$username. (And on macOS probably something like /Users/$username, but I didn’t check.)

First, includeIf checks if the path of the git directory we are currently working in, starts with a C:\. If so, we are apparently on a Windows machine and include the configuration from C:\Users\$username\.gitconfig-windows.

The next check is for Linux systems. If the path starts with /home we include the linux config from /home/$username/.gitconfig-linux.

Once these are finished, we check if the path has /Git/ or /Gitlab/ in it. This is a personal preference of mine. I like to sort the repositories I work on into folders based on the provider.

Git = Github
Gitlab = Gitlab

.gitconfig-linux // .gitconfig-windows

These files only show the path to the gpg binary, to assist in signing the commits.

# .gitconfig-linux
[gpg]
program = /usr/bin/gpg2

# .gitconfig-windows
[gpg]
program = c:/Program Files (x86)/GnuPG/bin/gpg.exe

.gitconfig-github // .gitconfig-gitlab

Again, the files are pretty similar and will share the same configuration items. The content, however, is different.

# .gitconfig-github
[user]
email = 19500486-josephbadow@users.noreply.gitlab.com
name = josephbadow
signingkey = 962215312718E4709B8F48240A05C906BDF59822 

[commit]
gpgsign = true

# .gitconfig-gitlab
[user]
email = 19500486-josephbadow@users.noreply.gitlab.com
name = josephbadow
signingkey = 962215312718E4709B8F48240A05C906BDF59822 

[commit]
gpgsign = true

You can actually use git config --show-origin --get gpg.program to let git show you the value of the parameter (gpg.program in this case) and the config file where it was found.

All this allows me to use one set of configuration files on all my machines. My commits automagically use the proper gpg binary and git credentials, as long as I stay true to my folder structure with Git for Github and Gitlab for, well, Gitlab.

I like it!

Happy Birthday Blog

hello@bdw.li (jwb) — Thu, 01 Feb 2024 00:15:20 +0100

Pretty much one year ago I started to blog again, and I’m happy with the result. I’m tinkering with Hugo themes a lot and so the current theme changed already three times. But this is half of the fun for me and I learn a lot!

Happy Birthday blog.bdw.li ヾ( ˃ᴗ˂ )◞ • *✰

Bleating Heide

hello@bdw.li (jwb) — Wed, 24 Jan 2024 22:18:35 +0100

In January I had time to visit the Döberitzer Heide again. This time I walked in from the north-west side and after passing some interesting bunker ruines, I met these fellas:

Was machst du eigentlich den ganzen Tag? Januar 2024

hello@bdw.li (jwb) — Fri, 05 Jan 2024 21:47:20 +0100

Eigentlich hatte ich mir angewöhnt in Englisch zu schreiben, dass geht einfacher von der Hand. Aber der Hashtag #WMDEDGT ist Deutsch, also bleiben wir dabei.

So, worum gehts jetzt? Ich las bei assbach.de den #WMDEDGT - Dezember 2023 und fand die Idee so gut, dass ich sie direkt nachahmen wollte. Und dann habe ich auch noch gelernt, dass die Idee schon >10 Jahre alt ist! Wow, danke Frau Brüllen.

Jetzt aber mal los:

Als sich gegen 04:00 Uhr der Nachwuchs meldet habe ich zwar schon locker sechs Stunden geschlafen, richtig wach war ich in dem Moment trotzdem nicht. Er wünscht sich, im großen Bett bei den Eltern zu schlafen, in seinem Zimmer ist es dunkel. Das es im Schlafzimmer der Eltern ebenfalls dunkel ist, scheint in dem Moment nicht so wichtig zu sein. Normalerweise startet dann das Karussell, bei dem man aufpassen muss nicht aus dem Bett zu fallen, aber diesmal war es unerwartet ruhig und wir haben direkt verschlafen. Statt um Sechs, sind wir erst halb Acht aufgewacht.

Ich mache mich rasch frisch und kurz nach Acht bereinige ich das Auto vom ersten Schnee diesen Jahres. Anschließend flitze ich danach zu Fuß zum Bäcker. Der Sprößling knurrt immer, wenn er vor der Kita nichts zu mampfen bekommt. Kurz vor Neun ist es schon soweit, das Kind wurde erfolgreich in der Kita abgegeben. Schnurstracks zurück ins Home Office, erste E-Mails und Teams Nachrichten beantworten und endlich den ersten Kaffee trinken.

Gegen Zehn gibts einen kurzen Wochenrückblick mit dem Team, danach folgt konzentriertes Arbeiten. Hier ein bisschen vim, da ein bisschen git, noch Händchen halten beim Testen einer hochverfügbaren Datenbank und Bürokratie-Spießrutenlauf beim Klären, wie die Nummer vom Firmenhandy auf mich Privat umgeschrieben werden kann.

Es ist 16:00 Uhr, wir fahren zusammen den Nachwuchs aus der Kita abholen. Er hat sich einen Besuch beim Bäcker gewünscht, um dort einen Kakao zu trinken. Das passt zum heutigen Schnee-Regen-Tag, also los. Wir gehen zum Bäcker im Einkaufszentrum und drehen im Anschluss noch eine Runde durch die Geschäfte. Gekauft haben wir heute allerdings nichts.

Um Sechs sind wir wieder zu Hause und das Kind lässt sich überreden, direkt den Schlafanzug anzuziehen. Es gibt noch ein kleines Abendbrot und dann heißt es Zähne putzen, Pullern, Ab ins Bett! Um Punkt Sieben ist das tatsächlich erledigt. Jetzt erstmal kurz durchatmen und RSS Feeds abgrasen.

Kurz vor Acht zwänge ich mich in die engen Sportklamotten und gehe zum zweiten mal in diesem Jahr laufen. Diesmal habe ich 3,3km in 30 Minuten geschafft. Das war 2018 wesentlich besser - aber da ich gerade erst wieder anfange, und eine kleine Wanne vor mir herschiebe, bin ich zufrieden. Um 20:30 Uhr heißts dann Abdampfen und Duschen. Gegen 21:30 haben wir es dann tatsächlich geschafft, selber noch eine Kleinigkeit zu essen.

Jetzt schreibe ich noch diesen Post aus meinen Notizen zusammen und haue mich dann schon wieder aufs Ohr.

Almost at the watch tower at Döberitzer Heide

hello@bdw.li (jwb) — Sat, 23 Dec 2023 21:44:13 +0100

This month I took a walk into the Döberitzer Heide for the first time. While walking through the woods I noticed a watch tower on the map and decided to take a closer look. Unfortunately it was already pretty dark and the current weather isn’t favorable to climb a tower. So I walked into viewing distance and turned back. Definetly a spot I want to visit again during the day. Sadly, I didn’t wear proper socks for my boots and was presented with some bloody heels.

Analogue photo update

hello@bdw.li (jwb) — Sat, 23 Dec 2023 21:33:53 +0100

I received the film and there were actually some okayish pictures on it. However, due to several distractions I didn’t take time to reflect on those images properly.

App and other defaults

hello@bdw.li (jwb) — Tue, 07 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I follow eay.cc’s blog and found this great idea of “app defaults”¹. The idea is to list your main tools for several categories like Cloud storage, Mail client, Podcatcher etc. It’s apparently based on the podcast Hemispheric Views 097 - Duel of the Defaults!.

So I started listening to it and pretty quick the trio was setting the rule, that this whole idea means “defaults for apple-based systems”. That stopped me for a second, my main work horse is a windows machine, but you know what? I don’t care 😁 I like this idea so much, that I’m printing my defaults here anyway. I’m also adding a few others that came to mind.

Category	Desktop	Mobile
📨 Mail Server	mailbox.org ¹	mailbox.org
📨 Mail Client	Mozilla Thunderbird	Apple Mail
📝 Notes	Notepad++	Apple Notes with iCloud
✅ To-Do	-	Apple Reminders with iCloud²
📷 Photo Shooting	Fujifilm X-T3 😁	Apple Camera
📷 Photo Management	Windows Photos with iCloud	Apple Photos with iCloud
📆 Calendar client	-	Tiny Calendar
📆 Calendar server	-	Apple iCloud
☁️ Cloud file storage	Nextcloud	Nextcloud (& iCloud 🤔)
📰 RSS	Nextcloud News	Nextnews
📇 Contacts	-	Apple Contacts with iCloud
🌐 Browser	Mozilla Firefox	Apple Safari
💬 Chat	Discord	Discord
💬 Messaging	Signal	Signal
🔖 Bookmarks	Nextcloud Bookmarks	Floccus
📖 Read It Later	Nextcloud Bookmarks	Floccus
📝 Word Processing	Notepad++	Apple Notes with iCloud
📝 Spreadsheets	LibreOffice Calc	-
📝 Presentations	-	-
🛒 Shopping Lists	-	Apple Reminders with iCloud
🍜 Meal Planning	–	-
💸 Budgeting & Personal Finance	Online Banking³	Online Banking App
📰 News	Nextcloud News	Nextnews & Mastodon
🎶 Music	Spotify⁴	Spotify
🎤 Podcasts	-	Pocket Casts
🔐 Password Management	1Password⁵	1Password
🔎 Search engine	DuckDuckGo	DuckDuckGo
👾 Code Editor	VSCodium	-
💻 Terminal	MobaXterm	-
🕹️ Gaming library	Steam	-

If you find a cool tool in my list or simply want to share yours, let me know.

https://eay.cc/2023/my-app-defaults ↩︎ ↩︎
It even comes with a “bring-your-own-domain” service ↩︎
I’m currently trying a physical bullet journal parallel, but I don’t know if I can keep this up in the long run. The mobile phone is so damn convenient. ↩︎
I used Firefly III in the past, but my bank introduced budgeting and categories, therefore I don’t need a third-party tool anymore. ↩︎
I’m in the process of cancelling the service and switching back to the good old CDs. Once digitized I’m probably going to use Apple iTunes / Apple Music to sync the files to my iPhone. (Blog post already in the works.) ↩︎

Link dump #1

hello@bdw.li (jwb) — Fri, 03 Nov 2023 19:41:15 +0100

I enjoy reading other peoples link dumps, it’s a bit like taking a peek into their living room. It also gives me yet another reason to write something ○( ＾皿＾)っ Hehehe…

Without further ado, here are some things I found over the last months. It might be blogs, it might be services or it might be (self-hostable) tools I deem worth mentioning.

un.curl.dev – Uncurled. A “book” from Daniel Stenberg about managing open source projects. I had this link in my “read-later” list for quite a while, before I actually started reading it. (Hey, that’s what later means!) It gives interesting insides into curl and open source contribution in general. Also Daniel writes in an intriguing way, which makes me want to read further on.

sadservers.com – “Troubleshoot and make a sad server happy!” This web page shows more than 25 problematic servers and it is your job to fix them in a given time. Nice way to stay in shape, I think.

1nitetent.com – People in Europe (mostly Germany) offer a place for a tent on their property, free of charge. It’s not meant to be a free vacation spot, but more of a layover.

deimeke.net/dirk/blog – Dirk writes (in German) about Linux and open source in general, as well as task and time management. (I’m sure there are other things as well, but I try to keep this short.) He was also the trigger to create this link dump.

Git submodules and newly cloned repositories

hello@bdw.li (jwb) — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 08:30:25 +0100

As a reminder for my future self: If one clones a repository to a new location, the submodules are not cloned automatically. They need to be initialized and updated once, in order to show the proper content.

git submodule init
git submodule update

If the theme is a submodule and the customizations are in a different branch, one needs to switch to that particular branch as well. D’oh!

git checkout live

I started to shoot analogue again

hello@bdw.li (jwb) — Tue, 31 Oct 2023 22:04:18 +0100

Due to circumstances I got my hands on an analogue Minolta from the 90s. A Dynax 9xi. There was a 35mm film already loaded inside and almost full (24/36) as well. I took a walk through one of the historic parts of the city and finished the film. After a bit of research - many thanks to analoge-fotografie.net¹ - I decided to try my luck with Safelight Berlin². They offered a good price and seemed caring all-in-all. I received an email that the film arrived in their lab today, so I will know more in about two weeks time. I think the film inside the camera was from ~2005, fingers crossed that I will get something out of it!

Farming Simulator 22: Mod Folder Location and Controller Fixes

hello@bdw.li (jwb) — Tue, 31 Oct 2023 14:29:09 +0100

Prelude

The other day Ana Rodrigues (@ohhelloana@mastodon.social)¹ Mastodon that you should always write blog posts about the things that you successfully found on the interwebs.

If you finally found the solution to your coding problem in a deep comment or something after having dozens of tabs open, you should write about it in your own blog.

Really. Describe the problem in your own words and the solution for it, even if the solution seems really obvious now. Doesn’t matter. Give credit and whatever, but use your own words because you will be surprised at how many people will land on it.

Write the blog post you wish you had found.

This was my que to write this post!

Farming Simulator, playing the slow life

I’m a fan of slow games like Farming Simulator. I played FS17 for a while and then forgot about it in the past years. The other day I stumbled upon FS22 and I’m a happy little farmer again.

Where is that mod folder?

You can download mods directly in the game menu, but certain mods decided² to not use this option. Unfortunately, the one I was looking at didn’t offer a helpfull readme, to let me know where to install the files. A few minutes of searching my hard drive I found it:

%userprofile%\Documents\My Games\FarmingSimulator2022\mods

I didn’t even have to extract the zip file, just conveniently drag and drop it into the folder.

Show the proper controller icons

Steam has integrated support for XBOX and Playstation controllers, which works very well for me so far. I’m using a PS4 controller connected by USB cable (I never got Bluetooth to work, but I don’t mind the cable). Looking at the controller settings in the games menu showed the proper icons, but when I actually played, it showed the XBOX icons in the help window. Bahamut (from the Steam community) figured out, that FS22 actually uses it’s own controller logic and that it’s worth a try to disable the Playstation controller support in Steam. Thanks Bahamut, this worked immediately!³

Conclusion

Write more blog posts!

Restic backup and Windows paths

hello@bdw.li (jwb) — Sat, 30 Sep 2023 22:18:07 +0200

I recently stumbled upon restic¹ and since I haven’t really setup a backup of my windows machine², I wanted to give it a try.

I love it ❤ The software is straight to the point, not bloated and using it in a terminal is a bonus for me!

However, there was one pitfall with windows paths (and I’m not even surprised by this):

When you select the folder for the backup, you can choose absolute or relative paths.
The backup snapshot will always show the absolute path.
Additionally, the path in the snapshot view will be displayed in Windows style (with a colon and backward slashes).
The path in the actual backup will vary depending on your backup command and can only be displayed with ls

# Backup C:\Users\restic_demo\Git with an absolute path (ID b713711c)
PS C:\Users\restic_demo> restic -r .\Backup\ backup C:\Users\restic_demo\Git\

# Backup C:\Users\restic_demo\Git with a relative path (ID da8fe3c7)
PS C:\Users\restic_demo> restic -r .\Backup\ backup .\Git\

# Display restic snapshots
PS C:\Users\restic_demo> restic -r .\Backup\ snapshots
repository ebfaab05 opened (version 2, compression level auto)
ID        Time                 Host        Tags        Paths
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
b713711c  2023-09-30 21:47:58  Horscht               C:\Users\restic_demo\Git
da8fe3c7  2023-09-30 22:03:19  Horscht               C:\Users\restic_demo\Git
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

# Display snapshot files and folders for b713711c
PS C:\Users\restic_demo> restic -r .\Backup\ ls b713711c
enter password for repository:
repository ebfaab05 opened (version 2, compression level auto)
snapshot b713711c of [C:\Users\restic_demo\Git] filtered by [] at 2023-09-30 21:47:58.6977882 +0200 CEST):
/C
/C/Users
/C/Users/restic_demo
/C/Users/restic_demo/Git
/C/Users/restic_demo/Git/blog.bdw.li
/C/Users/restic_demo/Git/blog.bdw.li/.git

# Display snapshot files and folders for da8fe3c7
PS C:\Users\restic_demo> restic -r .\Backup\ ls da8fe3c7
enter password for repository:
repository ebfaab05 opened (version 2, compression level auto)
snapshot da8fe3c7 of [C:\Users\restic_demo\Git] filtered by [] at 2023-09-30 22:03:19.7184899 +0200 CEST):
/Git
/Git/blog.bdw.li
/Git/blog.bdw.li/.git

I no case would I be able to restore the data using the path from the snapshot view C:\Users\restic_demo\Git. It took me a few confused minutes to figure that out. And I didn’t find anything about it in the docs³. At last in the Github issue #2792⁴ was a note that mentioned the proper paths.

https://restic.net/ ↩︎
A synchronized nextcloud folder ist not a backup ╰(￣ω￣ｏ) ↩︎
https://restic.readthedocs.io/ ↩︎
https://github.com/restic/restic/issues/2792#issuecomment-668425658 ↩︎

Mailstore Home: Archive mailboxes automatically

hello@bdw.li (jwb) — Wed, 30 Aug 2023 19:48:33 +0200

I’m using Mailstore Home¹ to archive my personal emails for a while now. And while I didn’t find any specific documentation on command line options, you can actually use /c archive --id=$n to automatically start the archive process on application start. I currently archive three mailboxes and my scheduled task looks something like this:

MailStoreHome.exe /c archive --id="1,2,3"

At the end I still have to close the Mailstore Window manually. There are tools like AutoIt², that you can use to hide the GUI, but I don’t mind closing the window myself. The task runs right after my login and I just let it do it’s thing in the background. It usually doesn’t take longer then a minute anyway. If you do mind the window, check out the article on andysblog.de³.

I'm Still Biking!

hello@bdw.li (jwb) — Wed, 24 May 2023 23:03:19 +0200

Four weeks after my first bike ride this year¹ and I already sat on the saddle six more times! Three out of those six were earnest rides, where I squeezed myself into my lycra and took my race bike Rudi for a spin.

Month	Distance	Rides
May	96km	2
April	80km	2

I actually wanted to achieve 200km this month but I can already tell, that this is an unrealistic goal. Nevertheless, I don’t fret! I am actually looking forward to summer and 100s of kilometers to follow (～￣▽￣)～.

https://blog.bdw.li/finally-on-the-road-again/ ↩︎

Keep the hugo theme up-to-date

hello@bdw.li (jwb) — Wed, 24 May 2023 22:34:47 +0200

I found out that my current setup doesn’t allow for easy theme updates by the author, since I just cloned the theme folder into my hugo project ⊙﹏⊙.

But thanks to Adam and his introduction to gits submodule function¹ I was able to work around this.

Create repositories

First I created a repository for my hugo project
Then I created a fork of my current theme Terminal²
The theme was then embedded as submodule in my hugo project and received a second git repository as upstream source (this is the magic function right here)

git submodule add -f https://github.com//hugo-theme-terminal.git themes/terminal
git remote add upstream https://github.com/panr/hugo-theme-terminal.git

I also followed Adams advise and moved my theme customizations to a different branch

Get updates from the theme author

My workflow for theme updates now looks like this:

Changes to my customized theme will be added on the live branch
Official updates to the theme will be synced to the master branch and merged to live on demand

# from ./theme/terminal
git checkout master
git pull upstream master
git push origin master

git checkout live
git merge master

I’m still not using Github pages for publishing, I kind of can’t let go of my trustworthy VPS.

Finally on the Road Again

hello@bdw.li (jwb) — Sun, 23 Apr 2023 19:22:01 +0200

After month I finally made it back on the road again.

I bought my race bike in 2017 and I didn’t even reach 3000km with it yet. That actually bothers me a lot. Combine that with my somewhat unhealthy life style and increasing age and the result is Monsieur Blubber 🤪

Enough whining, the main thing is I did it again - 20km in 45min 💪

Log analysis with Grafana and Loki

hello@bdw.li (jwb) — Fri, 07 Apr 2023 23:04:37 +0200

I wanted to play around with Grafana and Loki¹ for a while now, but always found something else to do. Then, the other day, I decided to push my logs to Grafanas cloud stack just for the fun of it.

The installation and integration into my Ubuntu server and docker was easy enough. After a few hours I was shocked how many bad ssh logins were detected (>100) and decided to up my fail2ban rule. I am now blocking failed attempts (3 within 24h) for 150 days and I still receive around 5 attempts per hour.

Nevertheless, I enjoy clicking around in graphs, even though it doesn’t really add any value (⌐■_■).

https://grafana.com/logs/ ↩︎

Ciao Pocket, hello Nextcloud Bookmarks

hello@bdw.li (jwb) — Fri, 24 Mar 2023 19:55:39 +0100

My adventures with a Pocket account were short-lived. Saved links can’t be changed. Most menu items ask you to create a premium account, no thank you.

I decided to invest more into Nextcloud for the moment and installed bookmarks¹. I synchronize them through my devices using floccus².

On my mobile phone it’s still not easy to add bookmarks but the developer added a feature for that just yesterday³!

I love RSS!

hello@bdw.li (jwb) — Wed, 22 Mar 2023 19:29:43 +0100

After using Google Reader for years (who didn’t ¯\(ツ)/¯) I went to feedly for some time (who didn’t ¯\(ツ)/¯). But I don’t remember if it was ads or my motivation to self-host, that brought me to Nextcloud News¹.

Since buying a NAS three years ago, I seldomly use Nextcloud for anything else than reading my feed. And for a feed reader it’s quite bloated. Yes there are also other nice apps for Nextcloud, but I just don’t use them.

Where was I? Right, RSS, love it. I want to switch to a different, self-hosted system, but haven’t decided which one yet.

I also don’t have a proper read-later/bookmark tool. My “bookmarks” are a mess. Some links are on my mobiles “read later” function of the browser, some are faved entries on my Nextcloud News. I need to find a proper way to aggregate that. I used Instapaper all the way back in 2010 for a good long time, but never found a good alternative after it was sold.

Why am I rambling about bookmarking tools now? I already found one or two interesting RSS tools to try, but I don’t remember where I saved the link (⊙＿⊙’)

Now, after thinking for 30 seconds I decided on a whim to give Pocket² a try. I use Firefox almost exclusively anyway and will see how well it works.

And if your feedreader doesn’t find my rss feed automagically, let me help you: https://blog.bdw.li/index.xml.

Streamlined publishing

hello@bdw.li (jwb) — Thu, 02 Mar 2023 22:27:31 +0100

Maybe I can make writing a habit by simply doing it once a day. But the process of publishing would need to be simpler.

I still struggle with a hybrid world. Hugo¹ is currently only running on my windows workstation and rysnc only works on my WSL.

I could try to debug my hugo installation on WSL, but I am too lazy to do that. I could also use robocopy instead of rsync, but I don’t want to go that way either (working with ssh keys was a bit of a pain).

Now I created a quick & dirty script to do my tedious tasks of publishing new posts:

# cleaning the public folder
Remove-Item ./public/* -Force -Recurse

# generating new static content
hugo

# uploading content
wsl rsync -avz --delete public/ user@server:/path

Thoughts on further improvement:

Create a separate user with a passwordless key to remove the necessity to enter the ssh passphrase
The separate user would need to be restricted to the hugo html folder
Instead of robocopy I could look into the winscp cli commands
Thinking about a server installation of hugo – Currently posting is restricted to my workstation
Github Pages² (or something similar) would also work, but I like that I am not depending on a third party service.

How to start (´。＿。｀)

hello@bdw.li (jwb) — Thu, 02 Mar 2023 20:24:46 +0100

It’s been four weeks since I opened this blog and I haven’t published anything new yet. Let me just drop a few thoughts off my head:

I am impatiently waiting for a free slot on the Pixelfed mobile app¹ beta on testflight! The mobile web page² simply doesn’t feel as smooth as a proper app.
After looking at a couple of photo books (Ethiopia by Joey Lawrence³ and Juggling is easy by Peggy Nolan⁴) I really want to dig out my old analog Nikon and start shooting black and white films.

We are now live

hello@bdw.li (jwb) — Wed, 01 Feb 2023 23:24:37 +0100

Tonight I finally finished tinkering with a hugo theme and uploaded everything to my server.

The current process isn’t pretty but it works シ Once I have a new post I need to follow these steps:

Empty hugos local public folder
Render new html files with the simple hugo command
rsync everything to my server with rsync -avz --delete public/ user@server:/path/to/html/

Somehow I broke my hugo installation on the WSL. So now I have to run the hugo rendering command in PowerShell but still use WSL for the rsync command, since that is never going to be available in Windows¹.

rsync support - out of scope ↩︎

I still remember using these 💾

hello@bdw.li (jwb) — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I still remember using 5¼ and 2½ floppies in my early pc years. Even though nobody calls it PC any more. I also remember blogs but never got around to have my own for long. Let’s see if it works this time.

I finally found the time to spin up a hugo instance and play around with it. I have to say, I like it a lot! Goodbye Wordpress (╯°□°)╯︵_{ssǝɹdpɹoʍ}.

Since I don’t want to start with an empty page, I am going through my pictures and write down some stories from the past month.

Bad Labeling

hello@bdw.li (jwb) — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 20:07:48 +0100

I was documenting some infrastructure and stumbled upon handwritten labels on patch panels, that I haven’t seen so far.

Looks like the patch panels were added later, as the numbers don’t match the rest of the rack. I guess it’s still better then no label at all ¯\(ツ)/¯.

A long walk

hello@bdw.li (jwb) — Sat, 19 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

My dad invited me and a couple of friends to a walk through our home town Eberswalde. He was born there and wanted to share some of his memorys, while enjoying a nice walk with friends and family.

Right at the start it began to snow and we had so much fun, that things got slightly out of control. Instead of the planned round trip around the city center we also visited a village nearby and walked through a pretty winter forest. A total distance of 27km all in all.

My dad also brought his tiny gas cooker to offer us all a decent Glögg during the tour.

12/10 would walk again.