For a while here, I’ve been backing up my Confluence install to Dropbox using a nifty little shell-script that interfaces with Dropbox’s API. That wasn’t too bad, all told, for a while. When the wiki was first set up, this was a solid MVP. But then you realize that once the data you need to back up is of sufficient volume, you’ve pretty much got to choose between versioned backups, or not making your DB account explode.
Solution to this, of course, is to choose the right tool for the job. Dropbox is great, but not so much for backups. In this case, the right tool for the job is borgbackup.
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So, the 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon of the internet is the theorem that no matter where one starts on Wikipedia, by clicking the first link on a page (that isn’t in a parenthetical or one of those info blocks above the main article body), one will eventually reach Philosophy.
I tested this.
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Short quick review of Lunanode from my phone: they’re awesome.
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Over the last two months or so, I’ve been homebrewing up my own setting/world for a Dungeons and Dragons campaign. It is a huge amount of fun–and a huge amount of work. The simple job of keeping facts and timelines straight once you’ve started is a gigantic thing in and of itself.
I realized that I’ve been working on this in a semi-agile way–perhaps more kanban than scrum, but fundamentally, if I were to work on a software project the way I’m working on this D&D world, you wouldn’t be able to say I was doing it wrong. I’m aping all the names of the principles here from people who know more than me, but it’s a little bit like pin-the-tail-o-the-donkey. You’re just sticking things where they belong.
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The context
I love eggs benedict. But I hate dishes. And I don’t even know how to make hollandaise, but I learned from my Grampy that it’s gotta be real, and gotta be fresh; definitely can’t be frozen or canned. Which presents a conundrum: I can’t make eggs benedict.
Except, it turns out, with some judicious ingredient hacking, I can.
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This winter break (which is something I haven’t had in some time–it’s fantastic!) I put together my own Confluence wiki. I’m really enjoying it because I’ve now got a place to dump all of my things that’s accessible to me anywhere, searchable, and pretty safe. I’m also using it to collaborate with the players in an upcoming D&D campaign, and the insanely fine-grained control Confluence gives you over access to pages is a DM’s dream come true.
Turns out, this was a pretty good learning experience for me too. It was a project and outcome I was invested in, and that started me off on the whole thing with excitement and momentum.
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The Context
So… I’m the kinda guy who has a ton of apps running on my Mac at the same time. And I’m also the kind of guy who has a lot of Menu Bar apps. You know, the ones that have icons up in the top right instead of say, the Dock. Which, for me, is kinda perfect. I have a dashboard with the really important information at a glance.
Problem is, you put enough information up there, that glance gets a little overwhelming, and after a while you stop looking.
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iTerm and Guake are terminal replacement apps for Mac OS X and Linux (Gnome) respectively, that offer a few simple, but absolutely game-changing tweaks over ‘standard’ terminals.
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If this is a blog looking at performance in daily life, one of the biggest questions we need to tackle is the question: who the heck is the audience?
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There’s something about online communications that disrupts one of the most fundamental aspects of the way imagine and understand other people: the lack of a physical presence. Beyond anonymity, the fact that the people we meet online exist only in our heads and on the screen changes the way we understand them.
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