Over the last couple of weekends I've been trying a couple of blogging platforms,
namely WordPress.com and Blogger.
Each have their pros and cons, but to cut a story short:
WordPress.com is quick’n’easy to setup,
but the editor gets painfully slow with long (and not really all that long) articles, themes are very limited and can’t be
customized.
On the plus side, its code highlight block is quite neat.
Blogger is also quick’n’easy to setup,
the editor works well enough, allows editing most of the content
as HTML and then uploading images and videos, and themes are
fully customizable (can be edited raw).
On the huge downside, it will unpublish, block or remove
posts even entire blogs, and there seems to be no way to
appeal.
Running Plex Media Server on Linux is easy.
Updating it is easy too. Re-using the library from an old server on a
new one is also quite easy.
That said, running anything in Kubernetes is only slightly harder
once, and after that updates are entirely automatic and moving
from one cluster to another would be even easier.
I’ve been using Plex Media Server for a few
years, primarily to catch up with a bunch of podcasts I started
listening from their beginning in the spring of 2020, and
occasionally to share my Audible library with the family.
The family doesn’t really use any of this, specially since they got
Spotify, but this library of Podcasts has been a faithful companion
of mine for the last few years, at home and abroad.
The Kubernetes cluster running on Lexicon has proven stable
and convenient enough that I finally felt motivated to migrate the
Plex Media Server, from the stand-alone setup into the Kubernetes cluster.
The Wi-Fi 6E & Bluetooth 5.2 controllers in my motherboard died today.
Until the motherboard can be replaced, the solution is to disable
both in the UEFI BIOS. This is the only state in which the PC boots
normally. Enabling the Bluetooth controller causes the boot process
to spend about a minute trying to initialize the device, enabling
the Wi-Fi controller causes the whole system to freeze with at the
login screen and/or eventually reboot itself.
Minecraft Java Edition requires that servers match the
version of the clients and updating the server each time
is a bit of a chore, so it is more convenient to run it
on the Kubernetes cluster.
QMK firmware for the RoMac macro pad was not simple enough
for me, so I had to make my own.
The RoMac Macro Pad
is a wonderful, very useful 12-key macro pad that can be a
custom numpad or, better yet, an additional numpad for the
left hand, just not for numbers.
This macro pad, which can be purchased from
customkbd.com
(Australia) or
mechboards.co.uk
(United Kingdom), the latter also having
Relegendable Keycaps
that are great to custom-label each key.
I would like to be able to code from anywhere, or at
least have a development environment that doesn't depend
on my PC.
Visual Studio Code Server
seems like one of the best and/or most popular options
out there, so I decided it to try.
After playing around with a few Docker containers and Docker
compose, I decided it was time to dive into Kubernetes.
But I only have one server:
lexicon.
The young artist in the house, who will soon have an upgraded
PC for the new year, will be then running
Ubuntu Studio22.04,
made for creative people.
The current system is running Ubuntu Studio 20.04 on a very
old system, based on an AMD Phenom II X4 and an Asus M4A89GTD
Pro/USB3 from 2010. In preparation for the upcoming upgrade,
the process starts by installing Ubuntu Studio 22.04 on a old
SSD on my own PC (Rapture), which can later be
transplanted to the new PC.