Same. I love that it has no online features.

Intuitive or not, I’ve noticed that more frequently lately in SaaS websites I use at work. Left side default collapsed with an icon you wouldn’t expect for “all the important stuff is hidden here”

I’ve been dreading the new computer as well. I built the original incarnation of my current one in … holy shit, late 2013. I was thinking 2016 but I just looked up the order and it was 2013. I did it pretty damn “top of the line” because I wanted it to last ages. I have occasionally upgraded or replaced drives, GPU, RAM, power supply, but I’m still on the original board+CPU.

It’s still great… running Linux and occasionally gaming.

That’s mostly correct. If we want to be super technical, I’m not “logging in” to my router, just using it as a Tailscale network bridge to gain LAN access so I can SSH from my phone to my server. But, in general, yeah.

I currently don’t allow any direct access to my server from the internet. The only way to access it is Tailscale. I have Tailscale installed on both my desktop (always on) and my router (also, always on). The reason I installed it on the router is because my desktop is also full disk encrypted. So, if there’s a power outage then both the server and desktop will reboot and both will be waiting for LUKS unlock, rendering my desktop useless as a Tailscale jump point.

Since the router boots automatically then it will always start back up and allow Tailscale access after an outage and therefore I can use it to access my LAN and SSH to the server to enter the password.

Basically the same setup you’ve got with the RPi - having a node that comes online automatically after a power outage, automatically starts Tailscale, and allows LAN access. You use an RPi, I use my router. (I briefly did the exact same thing as you, with an RPi, until I found I could install it on the router : )

I used Mint for about a decade. When I upgraded the drives on my desktop RAID from 2TB to 14TB the newest version only recognized 999GB. After some troubleshooting I begrudgingly tried Ubuntu, same thing. I figured Debian would be the same since that’s Grandma but I tried anyway. It worked perfect so I’ve been on Debian for a few years now and haven’t noticed any big differences so here I’ll stay.

Love me some Debian

A lot of people seem to think I’m we’re crazy for not getting a new phone every year or two. Previous one lasted 7 years, this one is at a bit over 5 years… It’s fine.

Yeah, I did western Tennessee to northwest Washington in 2 days.

… I regretted it, but I did it.

That’s where you draw the line?

(Also, say hi to your chickens for me)

Your comment made me realize these could be a great digital attack vector. I assume they have wifi? And I doubt security was top of mind in the software development…

Aha, the separate breaker box is the part I wasn’t thinking about. I’ll need to do some thinking on how I could make that work for me. Thank you for the info.

Out of curiosity, how do you have that setup (at a high level)?

I’ve got a bluetti system for emergency power (12kWh, 6kW AC output) but I need to plug things directly into it. It’d be nice to feed it directly to my house wiring but … selectively. That is, I wouldn’t want to power the HVAC but it would be nice to not have to shuffle the fridge/freezer plugs from the wall to the inverter.

Dedicated circuit(s) with a manual switch from mains to inverter, I’m guessing? But then we get into all the extras required to do that safely and avoid back feeding the grid.

Granted, they have systems/setups specifically for whole house power but I don’t want to feed the whole house, just the important circuits/appliances.

Seems the Debian chain (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint) hide it by default but there is an option to enable it. It’s one of the first things I do because I use it a lot.

I think they’re all using Nemo (depending on desktop)? Not at home to check it currently (Debian 13 at home, Mint on bootable USB drives).

… Don’t trust me on Ubuntu, I haven’t used it since the telemetry debacle.

Yeah, at the core it’s just a hierarchy of directories/markdown files with a WYSIWYG/autorender web editor but then they kept adding more and more fancy stuff : )

The two biggest things I use it for are programmatically generating “lists of lists” (lists of pages, more accurately) and as a semi-hacky way to get text colors. Semi-related, the “Treeview” plugin gives you a folder hierarchy panel off to the left (by default) which is really, really nice.

I should probably clarify that I didn’t write these, I stole them from the Silverbullet community forums… also I should reiterate that I suck at Lua so take my explanations with a grain of “this person may not know what they’re talking about” ; )

Lists of Lists : I have a bad memory so I create a LOT of lists. I even have a base page named “Lists” that I then nest different types of lists under (TODOs for home, for work, for school, for projects, for selfhosting, etc). Since the table is programmatically generated, it’s always up to date on each load. This first snippet relies on using frontmatter on the respective pages along with the tags property.

${query[[
from index.tag "todolist"
order by lastModified desc
select {
  List="[[" .. _.name .. "]]",
  Modified=_.lastModified
  }
]]}

This retrieves all pages from the space index with a tag of todolist (from the frontmatter), orders them by lastModified, descending, and renders a table that contains the name and lastModified date. This is excellent for providing a list of pages (based on tag, todolist in this case) related to a topic and ordering them by the last time they were changed. I use this in the base page for pretty much all of my “folders”. Screenshot :

Text Color Hack : Since the Silverbullet markdown interpreter doesn’t (currently) support plain HTML, and the way we usually color specific areas of text within Markdown is <span style="color: #fff">white text</span>, they had to get inventive. Somebody came up with a way to provide Lua functions that will accept text as a parameter and then render it with the specified HTML color/style.

In my CONFIG page (that is applied to the entire space) I included a space-lua code block like :

function Red(text)
  return widget.html(dom.span {
    style="color:#e60000; font-weight: bold;",
    text
  })
end
// Also about 5 more for different colors I use, snipped for simplicity.

Then, anywhere in my Silverbullet space I can use a Lua code snippet like The following word is ${Red("red")} and it will invoke the space-lua function named Red() on the text red, apply the styling, and render it with CSS color #e60000. Hacky? Yeah… but it works for now. Screenshot :

… I’ve been meaning to build a generic Colorize(text, hexColor) function (which would likely take all of 30 seconds : ) but haven’t yet. Maybe tonight.

EDIT: That did, in fact, take 30 seconds. Function :

// This assumes "color" parameter is a valid/properly formatted CSS color, meaning a known word ("red"), hex ("#ff0000"), or presumably RGB/etc but so far I've only tested color names and hex (I typically use hex)
function Colorize(text, color)
return widget.html(dom.span {
    style=string.format("color:%s; font-weight: bold;", color),
    text
  })
end

Usage : ${Colorize("any text", "#00ff00")}

Hehe. So PWAs aren’t a silver bullet but Silverbullet can be a PWA.

Is that one of those “all squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares” type things?

Check out Silverbullet.md

https://silverbullet.md/

It’s like obsidian (I hear) but FOSS. I love it and it’s by far the self hosted service I use most.

It stores your notes in a plain directory hierarchy of markdown files so you can just point a cron shell script at it to git add/commit/push at your desired internal and you’ve got history tracking/backups too

Edit: also provides a PWA so you can “install” it on your phone instead of always using a full browser.

Edit x2: includes a Lua interpreter so you can get scripty with it. I use that functionality more than I expected and I suck at Lua

Edit x3: and it auto synchs to each device when open with conflict detection. Full copy is stored local to each device, synched when possible

It took three years but we’ve almost rooted it all out.

There’s still one ancient product that will (theoretically) decommission in mid 2028. It makes enough money to cover the Oracle licensing but isn’t worth reworking to migrate.

Knowing how decom goes, I’m sure it’ll still be running in 2035 with that one last client who “can’t move to the newer, better, easier project because… Reasons (I don’t wanna)”

“the 1900s”

: /

I recently picked up a 2024 model moto g power 5g. The main reason is that I needed the cheapest smart phone I could find locally to test a new provider (phreeli) before committing. That, and to serve as a ready backup if one of ours dies. $115 at a big box store.

It’s… fine. Even after debloating I get about half the battery life of my galaxy s20 which is now 5 years old. I haven’t been able to figure out what’s eating it, or maybe it just has a smaller battery… I should check that.