Latest Posts (18 found)
neilzone 2 days ago

How I interact with PDFs using Free software and Linux in 2025

This blogpost contains some brief thoughts on how I interact with PDFs. It is not an exhaustive list of Free software PDF tools for Linux. I know that there are other options (including Okular, and LibreOffice’s Draw); some I have tried and some I have not. I use Gnome’s default tool, evince , also known as “Document Viewer”. The function for leaving notes on a PDF is pretty useful, although I don’t know how well it works if I wanted to share that file-with-notes with someone else, especially someone else using different software. When I review a contract or an article, I still like to do so with a pen in my hand. I don’t know why. Since I am using a ThinkPad with a touchscreen, and support for a pen , this is no problem. I convert the contract/article into PDF, most often using LibreOffice Writer’s export function. I then open the resulting PDF in Xournal++ , which is superbly useful piece of software. I like writing advice notes in Markdown, but I tend to convert them to PDF before sharing them as a “final” version. I am using pandoc and typst to do this , and it works really well, resulting in a nicely-formatted PDF. If I am converting a document into PDF for ease of scribbling, I use LibreOffice Writer’s export function. For scanning documents to PDF and OCRing them, I use paperless-ngx . I don’t appear to have blogged about it, but the gist is that I have configured our Brother MFC L2750DW to scan to a directory on a server as PDF, and paperless-ngx watches that directory and then ingests the resulting files. It works well, although one day I should move it from a Raspberry Pi 4 to something a little beefier. I use three main tools for “doing stuff” to PDFs. PDFArranger makes adding pages, deleting pages, splitting files, rotating pages, and moving pages around very easy. I use it quite a lot. I discovered Stirling-PDF more recently, and I’ve self-hosted an instance of Stirling-PDF for just under a year now. It is a web interface for a range of tools which offer quite a lot of PDF-related functions, and it works well on both desktop and mobile browsers. For batch changes to PDFs, I like PDFtk - apparently, there is a GUI version, but I use the command line tool. I find it especially useful for rotating all the pages in a file because someone has scanned a document poorly. If someone needs me to sign a PDF, in the sense of adding my name to it, I tend to use Xournal++. Rarely do I need a digital representation of my scribbled signature, but when I do, I also use Xournal++, either scribbling on the document or adding an image. For an electronic signature, I’ve experimented with LibreOffice’s functionality, but I didn’t get as far as I wanted. I should look into it some more. I ran an instance of DocuSeal for a while, but frankly I just did not use it enough to justify keeping it going. I was impressed with it and, had I needed its functionality more often, I imagine that I would have kept it. This is, fortunately, not something that I need to do day to day. I have a clunky-but-seems-to-work approach , for those very rare cases when I need it. If there is a better approach to doing this using Free software on Linux, I’d love to hear about it. I haven’t had to do this in a while, but I’ve note in my wiki that says that this ghostscript incantation has worked for me in the past:

open-source Open Source linux Linux
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neilzone 6 days ago

Notes on running postmarketOS on a OnePlus 6

I am experimenting with postmarketOS on a OnePlus 6. This is not my first foray into a Linux-mobile device; I have previously used postmarketOS on an old Samsung tablet, as well as Mobian, and the version of Debian that one could install onto the Planet range of PDAs. And, of course, many years ago, a Sharp Zaurus. Even though I am currently a pretty happy user of GrapheneOS, I’m keen to explore options which are further removed from Google. tl;dr: to make this work for me, I am going to need to make a lot of compromises. I am not sure if I am willing to do that or not. But I am enjoying the experiment. These are mainly some working notes. I wrote up installing postmarketOS with full disk encryption . The postmarketOS wiki is useful. I am avoiding Waydroid. Since one of the goals of this experiment is to see about move away from Android, using Waydroid seemed like cheating. I might play with it at some point but, for now, I am not looking at Android applications via Waydroid. As part of my preparation for this experiment, I looked at what apps I actually needed, and what services I could use via the web browser instead. Surprisingly, most of the parking apps that I use seem to work fine in a browser. I am not 100% sure of this - I haven’t tried them all yet - but then most of the car parks I use on a regular basis still have payment machines anyway. Banking websites generally suck, but none of my banks require - as far as I can tell - an app, as long as I’m willing to log in to the website using a card reader. I have not yet uninstalled the banking apps from my other phone, so I don’t know what will happen when a payment requires verification. Home Assistant works fine in the browser, but it does mean that my device location is not available (since this requires the app). So Sandra cannot tell where my phone is (and thus, most likely, where I am), which is a bit of a pain. I can control music around the house using the Lyrion Media Server’s web interface. Easy. I haven’t used shopping-related apps for ages, so no change here. I just use the websites. Wi-Fi works fine. I generated a WireGuard config on one of my WireGuard servers, and imported the resulting text file on the OP6. It worked, as expected. To make it connect automatically, I used: to identify the WireGuard tunnel, and then to connect automatically. It connects automatically following a device reboot. My Bluetooth headphones, and a Bluetooth keyboard, paired, connected, and work. Geary works fine, although it doesn’t appear to support GPG/PGP, which is a shame. Using GNOME’s “Online Accounts” functionality, I could connect to my Nextcloud instance, for contacts and calendar. This worked more easily than I was expecting. I bought a SIM, on the Three network (UK), put it in, and restarted the phone. It detected the SIM card automatically on reboot. SMS arrived immediately. Lots of them. I enabled mobile data from within GNOME settings (just as I do on my laptop, to control the internal modem) and it Just Worked. Traffic gets routed over the WireGuard tunnel. I can make a phone call, and I can receive a phone call, when the phone is unlocked or not. However, the stack is not particular stable: sometimes I can make and receive calls, and sometimes I cannot. There appears to be a fun bug, for me to investigate: Bitwarden is in my “sort of working” list. It works, as a Firefox add-on. I’d like to have a “desktop” way of accessing it, and I have yet to work that out. The cameras both work, after a fashion, but not if you want high quality images or video. I bought a small compact camera on eBay a while back, in the expectation that this was going to be a problem. It is nowhere near as convenient, of course. When I cycle or drive somewhere new, I tend to use my phone for navigation. Using the Maps application, I can plan a route, but I don’t get navigation instructions. This is a bit of a pain, and I don’t have a good alternative. The default SMS/XMPP/Matrix application, Chats, supports XMPP, but I cannot log in to my XMPP server (Snikket) using it. I have not dug into why this is the case, as I don’t think that I’ve got anything strange set up. Dino does work for messaging and file tranfer, and doesn’t look too bad on the smaller phone screen. But, for some undiagnosed reason, I don’t get notifications for incoming messages, and audio/video does not work, as calls fail to establish. Other people say that audio works for them, so I am not sure why it is not working for me. I need to look into this. I have not found a good option for this. Possibly some kind of Signal/XMPP bridge. I was not expecting this to work. It is a bit of a pain typing in a passphrase each time to use my phone, but oh well. I receive a call on the OP6 I answer the call while the OP6 is locked I hang up the call on the OP6 or the other end hangs up the call I unlock the OP6 it calls the number which had just called me :)

mobile Mobile open-source Open Source
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neilzone 2 weeks ago

What if I don't want videos of my hobby time available to the entire world?

I am very much enjoying my newly-resurrected hobby of Airsoft. Running around in the woods, firing small plastic pellets at other people, in pursuit of a contrived-to-be-fun mission, turns out to be, well, fun. I have also had to accept that, for some other players, part of that fun comes from making videos of their game days, and uploading them to YouTube. They often have quite impressive setups, with multiple cameras - head, rear-facing from barrel of weapon, and scope cam - and clearly put time, money, and effort into doing this. Great! Just like someone taking photos on their holidays, or when out and about, I can see the fun in it. It is the “non-consensually publishing it online for the world to see” aspect which bugs me a bit. In the handful of games that I have played, no-one has ever asked about consent of other participants. There has been no “put on this purple lanyard if you don’t want to be included in the public version of the video” rule, which I’ve seen work pretty well at conferences I have attended (even if it is opt-out rather than consent). I could, I suppose, ask each person that I see with a camera “would you mind not including me in anything you upload, please?”. And, since everyone with whom I’ve spoken at games, so far anyway, has been perfectly pleasant and friendly, I’d be hopeful that they would at least consider my request. I have not done this. The impression I get is that this is just seen as part and parcel of the hobby: by running around in the woods of northern Newbury on a Sunday morning, I need to accept that I may well appear on YouTube, for the world to see. I don’t love it, but it is not a big enough deal for me to make a fuss. I occasionally see people saying “well, if you don’t want to be in photos published online, don’t be in public spaces”. This is nonsense, for a number of reasons. Clearly, one should be able to exist in society, including going outside one’s own home, without needing to accept this kind of thing. In any case, here, the issue is somewhat different, since it is a private site, where people engage in private activity (a hobby). But then I’ve seen the same at (private) conferences, with people saying “Of course I’m free to take photos of identifiable individuals without their consent and publish them online”. Publishing someone’s photo online, without their consent, without another strong justification, just because they happen to be in view of one’s camera lens, feels wrong to me. This isn’t about what is legal (although, in some cases, claims of legality may be poorly conceived), but around my own perceptions of a private life, and a dislike for the fact that, just because one can publish such things, that one should .

Privacy gaming Gaming entertainment Entertainment
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neilzone 2 weeks ago

I am getting better at turning off unneeded self-hosted services

One of the things at which I’ve become better over the years is turning off self-hosted services. I love self-hosting things, and trying out new things, but I am also mindful that each new thing carries its own set of risks, particularly in terms of security. Similarly, while I do my best to secure servers and services to a reasonable standard, and to isolate things in a sensible way on our network, there is still residual risk and, if I am not using something enough, there is no point me tolerating that risk. So, once a month, I take a look at what I am self-hosting, and decide (a) if I really still need each thing, and (b) if I do, if I am doing the thing in the most sensible (for me) way. Occasionally, I am on the fence, particularly if it is something that I use infrequently but do still use it. Those are prime candidates for considering if I can achieve the same thing but in a better way. This is particularly true of services where upgrading them in a bit of a pain - I automate as much as I can, but if I have to interfere with something manually, then it is a greater risk, and I am less likely to keep it around. Overall, though, I’ve become a bit more ruthless in taking things down. I have backups, and, if I take down something which I later decide that I want to use, I can always reinstall it and restore the backup. I also go through and remove the DNS entries, and any firewall configuration, and again I have backups of those. I get the benefit of trying new things, but in a more managed manner.

security Security devops DevOps
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neilzone 4 weeks ago

I am not notable enough for Wikipedia. Thank goodness

As of today, I am officially not notable enough for Wikipedia . And I am delighted. A while back - perhaps a year, perhaps a bit longer - someone told me that they’d spotted a page about me on Wikipedia. This came as a surprise. There is absolutely no reason why there should be a page about me in any encyclopaedia. Over time, a few more details were added. None of them were, in themselves, inaccurate, but they were few and far between, and so the resulting picture was patchy. Not, fortunately, in a bad way, just in the way which I suspect is inevitable when people try to find sources to cite for information about someone who doesn’t justify that kind of effort. Three different people got in touch with me by email, explaining that they were Wikipedia editors, and that, for a price to be discussed, they would beef up my page. One noted that my page was proposed for deletion, and that they could sort that out, again for a price. I have no wish to have a page about me on Wikipedia. I am not “notable”, and have no wish to be. Today, finally, that page was deleted, which is entirely as it should be.

writing Writing culture Culture
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neilzone 1 months ago

Sustainable Free and open source software... but not like that

Perhaps I am just a grumpy git. Perhaps I am just an ungrateful grumpy git. I want Free / open source software to be sustainable. I am willing to spend money on this. I do spend money on this, when I can. I understand that developers may have different ways of seeking sustainability. I should - I think - be open to different developers coming up with different approaches. But boy am I ( still ) struggling with Mozilla. I can kind of understand setting a default search engine Google; at least I can change it to something more appropriate. Shovelling AI, unwanted, into its browser, Firefox. I’ve had to tinker in to turn that off, and I am not convinced that this will survive a new version / release. Showing “sponsored” content, even though I am darned sure that I turned it off. This really irks me. But perhaps I should just shrug my shoulders, and say “Well, I use Firefox, and if this is the price - if this is how Mozilla chooses to seek funding - then I should suck it up, and just change things i do not like.” Or change to another browser, but then, as I’ve blogged before , I struggle with the notion of using a Firefox fork, since I’d still be dependent on Mozilla.

web-development Web Development open-source Open Source business Business
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neilzone 1 months ago

Thoughts on running my own forgejo (hosted git with web stuff) server

I’ve been experimenting with git for a few months now , and I’ve been finding it both useful and enjoyable. It’s nice to learn something new, with a purpose in mind. For keeping dot files available across machines, in circumstances where Nextcloud is not a great option, I’ve been using git on a locked-down, private server. I commit locally, on whatever machine I make the change, and then push to the remote git server. This is just plain git, with no web front end or anything. Since it is just for me, and since I don’t want to expose it to the Internet, this has been fine, and it works well. I also wanted a git server with a web interface, which I can use for public-facing stuff. For that, I went with forgejo. I am always hesitant to say that installing and running something is easy, but that is subjective, but, for me, so far, it has been a very pleasant experience. At the moment, I am only using it for hosting some documentation - some sample terms for fedi instances - rather than code. I like it, and it is easy for me to use, pushing to it from a terminal. I am running it on a tiny container on a proxmox server; I might need to beef it up a little, but so far, it is doing pretty well, even in the face of sustained distributed traffic when I post links to it to the fediverse. I was pleased to see so many options for importing from other forges, including GitHub. As it turns out, I have not bothered to move anything from GitHub, as I’ve nothing there that I actually value or which I think would be of use to others. I’ll probably just delete those repos. But I very much like it that the option is there, and simple. Being my own instance, I am the only user of it, and, sadly, forgejo’s federated functionality - which would enable a user on another foregjo instance to make pull requests, raise issues etc. - is not there yet. So, for now, it is a bit isolated: it is there, on the web, but no-one else can raise issues and the like, and that feels like a shame for a collaboration platform. Perhaps I just didn’t think this through well enough when I picked a self-hosted instance of forgejo; I might have been better going with GitLab, or the like. I am always nervous about putting private information on a server accessible from the Internet. I have a Nextcloud instance, but it is not accessible from the Internet, even though I could see advantages to that. I lock down my mail server, so that one cannot log into IMAP over the Internet. I don’t expose a webmail interface. So, for now, I have not experimented with private repositories, and I am sticking with the separate git server (mentioned above) for things which I want to keep to myself. Perhaps I worry too much, and perhaps I should have some more faith in both my own sysadmin skills, and also the security of the services themselves. But, for now, separation seems like a better plan.

git Git devops DevOps open-source Open Source
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neilzone 1 months ago

Ofcom's perhaps inadvertent list of porn sites allegedly without age assurance made me smile

I had to smile today that, when reading Ofcom’s website about its enforcement activities under the Online Safety Act 2023, I learned about a few porn sites of which I was not previously aware. Given the nature of Ofcom’s investigations, some of these sites are probably not enforcing age assurance for users in the UK. Ofcom’s website is not (of course; it has no reason to be) behind age assurance, so I wonder at what point it becomes a destination of choice for anyone who does not want to, or is unable to, verify their age to access pornography, as the source of a curated list of probably still accessible porn sites. It is right and proper that Ofcom is transparent about the service providers subject to investigations or enforcement activity, but all the same, it tickled me. This reminded me of a journal article that I was reading a while back - sadly, I don’t recall the name, or even the journal - about child access to pornography. The gist of the article was that lots of children were aware of, and (to a lesser extent) had accessed, online pornography. Its research methodology has consisted of asking children who were 16 or so some questions about sex and pornography, including giving them a list of porn sites and asking with which they were familiar. There were some sites on that list of which I was not aware, and I imagine that that was probably true of the child research participants in the study too. I would love to have read the ethics board approval for that one…

media Media
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neilzone 1 months ago

Fixing high CPU usage of localsearch-3 by resetting it

My laptop’s fan kept kicking in, despite me not (knowingly) doing anything too burdensome. Looking at , I saw a process called , which was consuming a significant amount of CPU. I checked its status with , and it was running, but I couldn’t tell much which was useful from this. I checked what it was indexing with . It looked pretty sensible, being directory under my home directory. I decided to reset it with , and then monitored it with . After about 10 minutes, it finished indexing. It runs for a few minutes on reboot, which is fine, but so far, doing this seems to have calmed it down.

devops DevOps
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neilzone 1 months ago

My third Airsoft game day and perhaps I am finally getting the hang of it

I played my third Airsoft game day today, at Red Alert, near Thatcham, again. It was great fun, and, for the first time, I felt that I might be getting the hang of Airsoft. Sure, it is just running around and shooting toy guns at each other, but the first couple of times, I really had no clue what was going on, or what to do. This time was a lot better. I did have to fight a bit with my safety glasses sweating up today, and I spent part of one of the games with less than ideal vision, but I was still reasonably effective. I resorted to a sort of headband, but over my forehead, and that worked pretty well. As it gets cooler, perhaps this will become less of a problem. I played more aggressively than before, in terms of running up and taking on the opposition. I did this whether I was attacking or defending, so more of the “front line” than hanging around at the back. I guess that I was less worried about being hit, and more keen to be involved. It doesn’t hurt too much, and I go back to respawn and start again. I think that not having to think quite so much about the mechanics of the rifle helped, as I could just get on and use it, and focus on other things. Getting used to the site layout is helpful. I also tried to make use of some of the things that I had been taught in the practice evenings, especially use of cover, which definitely helped. I spent some time being sneaky and taking the long way round to flank the enemy to attack from their rear, which was also fun, but it takes a long time to walk back to respawn, which (especially on a hot day, as today was) was a bit of a pain. But I got some sneaky kills in that way. I’m still getting used to the range of my rifle, which is a lot less than I had expected. I don’t think that it is a particularly bad rifle / range - it is not noticeably worse than other people’s similar rifles - but it is just less than I would have thought. I did pretty well with it, in terms of the number of kills, so I have no real complaints. I am not looking to spend much more money on a nascent hobby at the moment, but I could be tempted to upgrade the spring and see if that has a positive effect (within chrono limits for the site). The first two times, I played on semi-automatic the whole time (one BB per pull of the trigger). This time, I experimented with full auto, so BBs firing for as long as I keep the trigger depressed. I firing no more than three or four rounds at a time (short bursts), and that worked quite well. It did mean that I got through a lot more ammunition - about £10 worth, by my estimation. Some games, I got through three hicap magazines, and into a fourth. A sling has made a massive difference, in terms of comfort, and I’ve experimented with the attachment points. This has been a good additional purchase. I think I’d like to give pyrotechnics a go at some point. Smoke grenades, or perhaps a frag grenade. But that feels like an unnecessary distraction at the moment, and I should get better with my rifle first. Not terrible, but definitely room for improvement. I did quite a bit of running, and sprinting between cover, but by the end of the day, I was definitely feeling it.

gaming Gaming sports Sports java Java
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neilzone 2 months ago

The term 'NSFW' is problematic and overdue for retirement

“NSFW” is an initialism for “Not Safe For Work”. It is, IMHO, a lazy, unhelpful, even stigmatising, shorthand. Using more specific descriptions makes more sense to me. Some people’s work involves pornography, or dealing with photographs of graphic injuries, or whatever it might be. “NSFW” asserts that the tagged content is Not Safe For Work even if it is, in fact, someone’s work. It is disingenuous to say that someone’s work is not suitable for work. It is, by definition, suitable for their workplace. There’s a particular irony in asserting that “sex work is work”, and then saying that that sex work content must be tagged “Not Safe For Work”. Whose work / safety / comfort is being prioritised here? For this reason alone, I think that it is long past time to retire “NSFW”. Tagging something - a photo, a post, a website, an app, whatever - as “NSFW” does not give any meaningful information. Does it contain graphic injuries? Domestic or sexual violence? A word used as a slur? What about a word which can be used as a slur but has been reclaimed by the community it was used to target? A video of a sexual act? Non-sexual nudity? Breastfeeding? A ( gasp ) “female nipple”? Is it something which might be problematic in one country but perfectly acceptable in another? If the goal of the use of the “NSFW” tag is to help users decide whether or not to view the tagged content, it fails precisely because of its lack of clarity. Users cannot make an informed choice to view the content, or whether to view it now or some other time, if they do not know what it entails. Instead, I think that being specific is more helpful. There are, of course, degrees of specificity, but saying that something is a photo of a graphic injury with blood, or describes domestic violence, or contains a cartoon depiction of sexual activity, or whatever, seems far more helpful to me than just saying “NSFW”. I can see how vagueness might seen as helpful to a site/service operator, who does not want to detail what they actually want to prohibit. This is on the basis that it gives them a vague, catch-all term, which they can use to justify moderation actions. To me, this causes more problems than it solves. It leads to concerns about lack of transparency as to why any given item was deemed to have broken the “NSFW” rule, and consequently concerns about selective or capricious enforcement. Practically, it can lead to problems with consistency when decisions are taken by multiple individuals separately, since each may have their own viewpoint on what is “NSFW”. From the perspective of encouraging participation (and also from a freedom of expression perspective), rules or consequences linked to an intentionally vague, unclear term is unattractive. I have some sympathy for an approach which says that a vague term “NSFW” is necessary, because if they prohibited specific things, people would argue that what they have created does not fall within those specific areas, and so must be allowed. To me, the answer lies in how the provider communicates its process for updating its list, to react to changing circumstances. Some will inevitably see this as moving the goalposts, and you can’t please all the people all the time, but I think that there is a genuine value in trying to ensure clarity and certainty while also reserving (transparently invoked) flexibility.

javascript JavaScript media Media culture Culture writing Writing
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neilzone 2 months ago

Fixing a fatal git error when upgrading LiberaForms to v4.2.0 by changing my git config origin from Gitlab to Codeberg

If you are the kind of person who has bothered to click the link to read this, this may already be obvious. But it stumped me for a bit, so I’m putting it here in case it helps others. I run an instance of LiberaForms . I like it very much. I was keen to upgrade to v4.2.0 in particular, because of its support for conditional form fields . When I followed the upgrade process in the blog post, I ran: and got the error The problem, it turns out, is that LiberaForms used to use Gitlab for source distribution / development, but has recently moved to Codeberg. I had installed LiberaForms from Gitland, so my was: v4.2.0 is not on Gitlab, but on their new choice of forge, Codeberg. I changed to: And re-ran . That worked, as did the rest of the upgrade instructions. There might be a better / proper way of changing an origin than hand-editing the config file, but this worked for me. Update : thanks to the kind person who suggested .

git Git
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neilzone 2 months ago

Fixing my Pixel 6's USB port issue with a trimmed down cocktail stick

I have a Pixel 6 phone, running GrapheneOS. It is a few years old but, other than being a bit short on storage, it does pretty much everything I need. I am not in a hurry to upgrade it, because, well, there’s no need for me to do so. But, for the last few months, I’ve noticed that the USB port is a bit iffy. Not absolutely broken, since I can charge and sync using it, but problematic enough that charging is unreliable. Initially, I thought that it was lint in the socket, so I cleaned it out with something small, and tried again. “Drat”, I thought. It was not a complete pain, as I tend to charge using a “wireless” charging pad anyway, and I sync my phone using a cable only occasionally, when I want to add new music. So no big deal, but an annoyance. It is more of a pain when it comes to driving, as the USB cable that I have in the car just falls out of the socket. The cable tests fine, and other cables also fall out, so I blamed the socket not the cable. Over the weekend, someone said that they had had the same problem, and that they had also tried cleaning lint out of the socket. But they needed to give it an even firmer cleaning, to get even more lint out. Someone else said that they had done this, and the USB port stopped working completely afterwards. So, with a bit of nervousness, I tried again using a shaved-down cocktail stick, so that it was wood (and thus not a conductor, just in case) and to make it thinner to avoid stressing the connector in the socket too much. I had to push and pry really quite hard, but gradually more and more lint came out. And, having done that, the USB cable seated itself again properly, and did not fall out. I’ve tried syncing the phone this morning and, again, the cable fitted in place properly, and the sync was not interrupted. So, with many thanks to those who shared tips, hopefully, my Pixel 6 now charges and syncs reliably via USB again. The storage is another issue…

mobile Mobile
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neilzone 2 months ago

'Here's what I do' versus 'You should'

Outside the confines of my professional work, I try not to give advice, or tell people what they should do. I am often very willing to share how I do something, in case it provides useful stimulus, to get someone else thinking. But I am wary of questions posed as “What should I do about [x]?” Whether what I do is a good approach for someone else to take, I’ve no idea, because so much depends on their own situation, knowledge, experience, finances, time and so on. I can help with an option of what someone could do, but what they should do is a different matter entirely. I have a strong preference for using Free software wherever I can, and I like using Linux. But I won’t be telling anyone that they should be using solely Free software, or Linux. I like cycling, and cycle instead of driving when I reasonably can. But I won’t be telling anyone that they should use a bike more. I have a strong preference for self-hosting. But I won’t… well, you get the picture. I’m happy to say “Here’s what I do…”, but not “You should”. I am even more wary of people telling others what they should do, since rarely do they take the time to understand the circumstances and biases and privileges at play. I’d much rather hear about what they do, and why , than what they think others should do. My distaste for people’s “You should…” posts is aggravated further when the poster uses emotive or manipulative language, such as making people feel bad or stupid or uncaring for not doing whatever the poster says that they should be doing. This is all too common when it comes to technology preferences, in my experience. Obviously, I’m not saying what they should do. That’s up to them. Here’s what I do: mute them or block them if they get too annoying.

open-source Open Source culture Culture
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neilzone 2 months ago

Thoughts on edent's 'We've got to stop sending files to each other'

edent has written another thought-provoking blogpost, “We’ve got to stop sending files to each other” . You should read that before you read this . In his post, edent makes a number of points. And, since he self-describes it as a rant, it is perhaps unsurprising that the edges of some of those points are not clearly defined, such that they appear a bit of amorphous mass. But it was sufficiently thought-provoking to make me want to respond to at least some of them. I should say at the beginning of this that I accept that, for reasons which are not entirely clear, the world does not revolve around me. One could answer every single one of these points with “but this isn’t about you, Neil”. And that’s fine. This is just a different perspective. edent’s starting point is that it is questionable, at best, why the MoD needed to use email to transfer a spreadsheet of data of vulnerable people applying for resettlement in the UK. Actually, on re-reading the post, edent doesn’t say this, at least not explicitly, so perhaps I am putting words in his mouth, and then agreeing with the words that I’ve put there. Oh well. But, yes, I agree with that sentiment: neither email nor a spreadsheet appear to be the most suitable tool for that task. I’m not against the idea of collaborative online editors. I’ve used a number of online collaborative editors, and have self-hosted Nextcloud with Collabora, Cryptpad, and Etherpad. At the moment, the only one I use with any regularity is Etherpad, and then just for simple collaborative text editing, rather than document work. edent’s example - emailing a completed Word template to someone every day - may be a prime example of a situation in which a collaborative online editor is a better alternative. I suspect that what works in one context, or for one person, might not work so well for others. There may not be a one-size-fits-all answer. For some things, sure, working on a shared live document - the document to which everyone else can have access - might make sense. But often I don’t want to work on the shared live document. I want a space to make changes and see what I feel about them, and then revert them. I want to move paragraphs around, and see what works better. I want to be able to add comments and share drafting with someone else, or even just make notes for myself, before deciding what changes to make to the shared live document. I don’t want to do that on the shared live document, as they might not be things that other people need to see. I don’t need someone else to see which bits of a document I’ve highlighted, or on which page I’ve spent most time reviewing, or even seeing when I have logged into a document. I might then be content to make the finalised changes to the shared live version, but not those intermediary steps. I guess that this isn’t so much about sharing files, just that online collaborative tools are not the answer in all situations. It is fashionable to do everything in a web browser. That is, I think, basically the principle of ChromeOS. And often it does work. Personally, if I’m marking up a contract, however it arrives to me, I’ll likely download it, convert it to a PDF, pop my laptop into tablet mode, and then scribble on it with a pen. My own, private, copy. I find that I do a more thorough review of it that way than if I am reading it on my screen using a keyboard and mouse/trackpad. I don’t know why, but, for me anyway, it works. Every so often, I have to try to edit a document using Office 365’s online version of Word. I am sure that it is fine to someone who uses it all the time. But I don’t - I prefer LibreOffice’s Writer - and I know where everything is in Writer. I can work more efficiently, and more effectively, in Writer. For simpler text files, I tend to use vim. Again, perhaps this is just a Neil thing, but I find it more efficient to do that than to use a hosted collaborative document editor. More annoyingly, all the different online editors work slightly differently. Jumping between different tools - Google docs, Collabora, Cryptpad, Office 365 etc. - is inefficient. I like to retain copies of mark-ups, as a form of version history. This gives me a way of seeing how we got to a particular provision, and an always-accessible-to-me copy of who made what changes. I don’t trust someone else’s hosted system, or that someone else will always continue to give me access to it. That may not matter in some contexts but to me, it is important. For somethings, I use git, but in many cases, since I work mostly with documents rather than individual text files, I do not. I suppose that I could download a copy of a document from an online editor before I made my edits, and then another version after I made my edits, hoping that no-one else has edited it at the same time. But this is still me moving files around, even if I’m not sending them to anyone else. Whether you are reading this in a web browser, or via an RSS reader, enjoy this local copy of my post, which you transferred from my server to your browser, for your reading pleasure :)

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neilzone 3 months ago

My first Airsoft game day (Red Alert, Newbury)

Yesterday - one of the hottest days of the year so far - I had a very enjoyable day playing my first ever Airsoft skirmish. I played at Red Alert, near Newbury . I’m not sure how many/much of my Airsoft adventures I will blog, but I’m blogging this one because it was a new experience for me, and I learned so much. There’s no two ways about it, I was nervous this morning. It was the fear of the unknown, mostly. That there would be a reasonably large group of people, and I was not expecting to know any of them. I don’t like large groups of people at the best of times, and especially groups of people I don’t know but who may well know each other. That, despite my time on the cross trainer, I would not be fit enough outside and in boots. Perhaps everyone there would be athletes. That I would not have the right gear. Or enough gear. Or that I would have too much gear. That I’d just be rubbish at it, no matter how much I told myself that I should see my first time as a learning experience, to see if I even enjoyed it. That it would hurt. I was hit many, many times. Which was to be expected, since I was unfamiliar with… everything. None of the hits today hurt. I could feel them, but they were not painful. I was not hit at close range by anything, and perhaps that helped. I had intentionally picked a woodland site for my first game, rather than a close quarters site, for this reason. I also wore a lot of protective gear (of which, more below), although I was hit mostly on my upper body. No point dodging this. I did not (and had not expected to) turn out to be some kind of superhuman player who could shoot everyone and never get hit. Quite the opposite. I was dreadful . I’m not beating myself up about being rubbish, because it was my first time, and it was a learning experience. There was a lot to learn, from handling the weapon I had rented, to the rules of each game, to where the various objectives were. A map of the site would have helped me to some extent; I’m quite a visual person in that regard. Someone kindly showed me a map of the site at lunch time, and that gave me some increased confidence for the afternoon that I would be heading in at least roughly the right direction. I didn’t want to spend a fortune on kit before finding out whether I’d really enjoy the game or not, so I went in some walking gear - think outdoor trousers, long sleeve lightweight shirt, old walking boots etc. When I arrived at just gone 09:00, the car park was pretty full of players, and as I’d kind of expected / feared, most were wearing lots of what I’d call “proper” kit. Military or at least pseudo-military stuff, with lots of packs and plate carriers and many magazines tucked into elastic straps, multiple weapons per person, and so on. Oh drat, I thought. But then I saw others who were going to play in shorts and t-shirt, and someone else with walking trousers, and I felt a bit less concerned Sure, there were still plenty of people who were very much kitted out, and there might be at least some tactical advantage to wearing relevant camouflage colours, but I need not have worried about what I was wearing. I did buy some protective gear to use (mostly from AliExpress, except for the glassed), including: In total, about £35 worth of kit. Well, the glasses fogged up so badly within seconds of the first game starting that I had a hard time seeing what was going on at all. Never mind not hitting anyone, I wasn’t even sure what some of the terrain was. And since the first game was really three consecutive games, that meant quite a long time of not being able to see well before I had a chance to fix it. I discovered in the break that wearing the helmet was not helping. So I switched that instead for a peaked cap with some material at the back, which I had brought just in case. It wouldn’t give me the same protection from BBs or branches, but it would protect me from the sun. After that, I could see a lot better. I was still rubbish, but at least I could see where I was supposed to be going. I want to experiment some more, but I was not prepared to forego my glasses or face mask, so I am pleased that switching out the helmet worked. The other major let down was my old walking boots, as the outer sole on one of them fell off mid-way through the first game. Fortunately, the inner sole was intact and good enough for me to keep playing, but I’ll need a new pair of boots before I play again. Some people were fitter than I am, some people less so. My fitness did not hold me back although, towards the end of the (hot) day, I was feeling a bit lethargic and less keen to run around. Sure, I could be fitter - and hopefully, if I play regularly enough, this will help me get fitter - but the terrain does not really lend itself to running around (safely, anyway), so not a big deal. I went into this knowing none of the other players, of which there were 70 or so. I did recognise a couple of the staff, from last week when I had tried one of Red Alert’s target shooting evenings, but that was it. And that was fine. Just before the first game, I saw someone else on our team standing on their own, so I just said hello and asked if they had any tips for someone who had not played before. And they were incredibly friendly and helpful - I’ve no reason to think that you’ll see this but, if you do, thank you. You made a big difference. I chatted with other people between games, and over lunch, and everyone was down to earth and friendly, no matter how much experience or kit they had. Last week, I did a target shooting session at Red Alert, so I had at least a bit of an idea of what to expect, terrain / set-up wise, although I was exposed at that point to only a small part of the site. Today, I got to play over more of it, but not all of it. There are plenty of things to hide behind, and different settings to act as the focal point for games, and clearly a lot of thought has gone into what is where. Small town areas, rocket launching site, a trench network, and plenty of ferns and other natural cover. The entry price - £55, including equipment rental - included a hot lunch cooked on site, which was excellent, and there was plenty of water available. The staff - both site staff and marshals - were friendly and helpful, and I’m very much looking forward to playing again.

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neilzone 3 months ago

Fixing out-of-sync audio when using VLC on Android with Bluetooth headphones

Before going away for a couple of days, I downloaded some videos from my Jellyfin server onto an Android tablet running GrapheneOS , so that I could watch them offline. I was using a pair of Jabra Bluetooth earbuds. Annoyingly, the audio was out of sync with the video. This was the case for all the files. This hasn’t happened before using Jellyfin with Bluetooth, so I guessed that it was an issue with VLC for Android. Fortunately, it was quite an easy fix. In VLC for Android: I tapped on the bottom left icon on the main screen (a round-cornered rectangle with some lines at the bottom). I tapped the small downwards arrow next to “Audio”. I tapped the first option, “Audio delay”. I set the Audio delay to “-500 ms”. I selected “Apply to Bluetooth device” And that sorted it.

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neilzone 3 months ago

Signing sieve vacation auto-reply messages with dkim using postfix for deliverability

I have dkim (and dmarc and spf) enabled for my email domains, to aid with deliverability and to lessen the risk of spoofing. I use sieve for sending vacation/auto-reply/out-of-office auto-responses. I know that some people do not like to use these, and that’s fine. I realised this morning that my sieve auto-replies were not being dkim signed, and so were not always being delivered. I read various guidance/suggestions about what to do, and ended up finding this most relevant . I fixed this by making a change to my postfix’s (in my case, ). I restarted postfix ( ) and then did some testing. In the logs, I saw which was a positive sign. I was able to send and receive email, and - testing my a spam Gmail account - send an auto-reply, which Gmail received.

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