Posts
Integrating Pass into Emacs
For better or worse, I've been using Pass to manage my passwords since around mid-October of last year, and although I like its simplicity, using it was always intimidating. Creating a password is easy enough, but I didn't get comfortable enough with the CLI to search my password store for things...
Webmention Comments
After maybe 8 hours of distracted effort, my website now builds its comments from webmentions instead of using Cusdis. This was a bit of a feat, as I didn't even know what webmentions were before a couple weeks ago. For the similarly uninitiated, webmentions provide a notification protocol which...
Foraging with Org
Probably three years ago now I got into the hobby of foraging for fungi. I've managed to find chicken of the woods, puffballs, a couple varieties of oyster, and most recently wood ear in my area. I've heard whispers of the coveted morel, but I have yet to find any, much to my chagrin. Anyway,...
My vCard Backend for Org
Some time ago, I started using Org to manage my contacts and wrote a backend to export my contacts file to vCard, and I'm finally writing a post about it. Before I begin in earnest, I'd like to acknowledge that there's a vCard backend in Org-Contrib, but I decided against using it for a couple of...
Secret Synergy
I'll open by saying that my password solution up until about yesterday was not great. I spend most of my computer time in Emacs and I prefer to use it wherever I can, so at first I kept my sensitive info in my =.authinfo.gpg= file, an old Emacs standby. This is great for logins, but the format is...
We Have a Peanut Gallery Now
Ever since moving everything to the HTML exporter I adapted from ox-slimhtml, I've been admittedly pretty enamored with the machinery involved in publishing this site. Sometimes I change something just so I can push it up to GitLab and watch the whole process kick off. It's a very special and...
Mail with Gnus
After two years with Mu4e, I have moved over to Gnus as my mail client. I've started using RSS to consume news, and the move was mainly motivated by the appeal of having news and email in the same place. On the whole, Gnus is probably easier to get going than Mu4e. It doesn't require using...
Finances with Ledger and Org
Managing finances has always been a bit painful, but I've recently finally become somewhat comfortable with Ledger to make a report that's made the whole process easier. I started with trying to stay strictly within =ledger-mode= in Emacs, which is definitely an upgrade from the CLI, but it was...
SVG Images in Org Mode
I have taken an interest in chemistry, and have taken to using org-noter to take notes on the books that I read. Since it's organic chemistry, I thought it would be great to somehow incorporate my own diagrams of benzene rings and things into my notes. I like using GIMP for editing images, but...
My Arch Installation Experience
Just a notice, I originally published this in December of 2021, but I updated it in May of 2023 for "readability". If you think it's bad now, you should have seen it then! Anyhow, happy reading.
Super Pi Part 9: WebDAV
Just when I thought I was done adding things to Super Pi, I discovered another thing to add: a WebDAV server. I already have a Samba share, why do I need WebDAV? I've been looking at getting a Pine phone for at least 6 months now, and if I've learned anything about myself, it's that if I've been...
Org and Groceries
One of the things that was interesting to me about Org-mode is how people from myriad vocations find it useful in (if not integral to) their day-to-day workflow. Unfortunately, I'm somewhat locked into my professional tool set, so a couple of months ago, I decided to try to use Org-mode to make my...
Ox-Slimhtml Table Transcoder
A previous post went over how to create figures using a wrapper around Ox-Slimhtml's link transcoder. Feeling buffeted by my successes there, I decided to tackle writing a table transcoder next. As a disclaimer, I'm not trying to write extensible and versatile transcoders. In my case, I think it...
Super Pi Part 8: Samba
I admit that this part of Super Pi probably isn't the best use of resources. When I first got a Pi, I set up a Samba share as my first project. I actually had kind of a hard time getting it working. I later set up a NAS on my router when I got one that supported it. That worked well until I...
Getting Figure Tags Using Ox-Slimhtml
I'm using Ox-Slimhtml to generate this website now, and it works great once it's configured as long as you don't need anything it doesn't provide. In my experience, Ox-Slimhtml works pretty well for one-off exports, but I wasn't able to get it to export projects on its own using the example in the...
Migrating to Org Publish
This post marks the move from generating this website with Weblorg to Org publish with Ox-Slimhtml. I'll write another post about the specifics later, for now I mostly just want to celebrate my accomplishment, it's been a long time coming. I want to start by saying if you're interested in a...
Super Pi Part 7: Firewall
I thought of another configuration component to add to my Super Pi: a firewall. I will be using UncomplicatedFirewall, commonly known as UFW. It's an abstraction over IP-Tables, which came up in my research for my post on Wireguard a couple of times. Even though UFW is easier to use, IP-Tables...
Super Pi Part 6: HTTPS and NGINX
I'm feeling good about everything being behind an NGINX proxy, but I'm not a fan of the red shield in my browser notifying me that the connections are insecure because I'm not using HTTPS. Luckily, this issue isn't terribly difficult to address and I can use tools I already have. Like any proxy...
Super Pi Part 5: Git Server
I don't have a great reason for running a Git server on my network, except for maybe the old adage about storing data in three places. I first started using one when Microsoft bought out GitHub and I didn't know about Gitlab. I try not to spread too much hate, but I avoid Microsoft products...
Super Pi Part 4: NGINX
My next task was to proxy the Pi-Hole UI with NGINX instead of Lighttpd, following this guide with a few customizations. My main reason for moving to NGINX is that I wanted to host some household HTML documents alongside Pi-Hole and any other services I might add, all under different domains. I...
Super Pi Part 3: Node-RED
It would be nice if I had an automated way of renewing my IP address with DuckDNS. I could write a shell script and set up a CRON job to run it every so often, but since I'm interested in home automation, I'm going to use documentation on getting started with a Pi. The doc recommends a bash...
Super Pi Part 2: WireGuard
I wanted a WireGuard VPN to have Pi-Hole on the go. Before getting to that point, though, I registered a domain with DuckDNS since the IP address of my router changes periodically or when I reset it. I'll have to do a little more work to make sure DuckDNS gets notified when my IP address changes,...
Super Pi Part 1: Pi-Hole
So I have quite a few Raspberry Pi computers, five in fact. Three 3B+, one 0W, and one 4B. The 4B is a media center in progress, the 0W isn't used for anything currently, maybe some kind of brewing thing somewhere down the line. I was going to delegate various home automation tasks between the...
Emacs as a Mail Client
I wanted to write a few posts on how I use Emacs. As a disclaimer, I'm using Pop!_OS, so these are all Linux posts. Sorry for not being able to contribute to the dearth of material available to Windows users. On an unrelated note, I think previously I said that I wanted to make content...
Turning Gears
I think if there's one thing I struggle with, it's probably routine maintenance. I've put a lot of effort into trying to make this struggle manageable, but I am stubborn, and do not give up my misgivings with things easily. This issue has always flummoxed me because I don't mind the /idea/ of...
Coming Out Emacs
This post has proven to be a difficult one to write. I keep rethinking it! Is it a good idea to write about tech? Is it a good idea to write about something I'm passionate about but that is also extremely difficult to relate to? Am I willing to come off as a hipster programmer? It's time to find...
The First Post
So this is the inaugural post of my new website. While the thing is still small and has literally zero traffic, I find there's some small comfort afforded by the lack of lookers-on, and I am compelled to start with a confession. That confession, friends, is that this happens to be the fourth...
Python, NGINX, and HTTPS
In this article I'm going to try to remember what I did to get my computer to talk to a Python app over HTTPS hosted on my Pi.
Giving the Old Bird An Upgrade
This past week I decided to update my website. I wanted to update my build process to use Python 3, I wanted to remove my jQuery dependency, and I finally wanted to get rid of Anaconda. First I prepared for the update: I backed up my site to a new directory and decided to update the backup to...
Building a Static Site with Pelican
In this post, my plan is to provide a comprehensive walkthrough of how I generated this site on my Windows machine. As I was going through tutorials, I found a lot of them were not very clear, or I had to really dig to find the information I was looking for. My hope is that by putting all of the...
Pelican Website Debut!
The day is finally here, I rewrote my website with Pelican and it's live! It's crazy that I wrote a post over two weeks ago thinking I was almost ready to put my site up. It turned out there was more tweaking I wanted to do, which is good. I was thinking I'd put it up in a much more raw state,...
Why Programming, Though?
It turns out putting up this website has been a great thing because it's gotten me thinking a lot. I've had a hard time making sense of the job hunting process (mostly how long it takes) so having a way to process all of that has been enormously helpful. Yesterday I had an interview over the...
Jekyll Debut!
This post marks the debut of my website. The reason this is named the first HTML post is because the default format is Markdown and I wanted to keep that post in case the HTML one didn't fly so well. It went fine, so here we are. I programmed everything you see here in HTML5 and CSS3 and used...