Random Notes

A space for thoughts on my experimental server.

20251123

Keyboards are like beds. We spend a lot of our lives interacting with them but often make do we what we have or the cheapest option for convenience sake. I remember earlier in my career one of the biggest excitements of replacing a computer tower was the new keyboard you'd get from Dell or HP. I think we all had that favourite keyboard we saved and used across devices until PS2 became less common, then we did it all again with USB keyboards.

Lamost a decade ago now I found myself thinking about keyboards and remembering the solid feel and weight of the keyboard on my first computer experiences. The soldi clunk and weighted feedback of a BBC Micro or an Eagle II is very different to the plastic clatter of a cheap Dell USB keyboard, and so in a fit of nostalgia I ordered a CoolerMaster Masterkeys S mechanical keyboard with Cherry MX Brown switches. This was like those first keyboards, a heavy, solid slab of a keyboard with a thunderous clatter when typing at full speed. As I work remote this was fine, until my manager at the time pointed out that my typing was deafening in meetings and the Masterkeys S was relegated to a drawer replaced by a quiet, but otherwise insipid Logitech K380. The K380 is a fine keyboard, quiet, unassuming, and happily connecting via Bluetooth to three devices. However, it is boring and here I am in a new job and feeling that desire for real keys again. This time I have spent a little more than I did last time, but still kept myself to a sub-$100 budget and purchased a Keychron K3 Max. It's a ten-key-less design and takes up only slightly more room than the Logitech. It has low profile keycaps and Geteron Mechanical Red switches, creating a sound more like plunk than crash when typing. Best of all it can connect via Bluetooth, USB, or dedicated dongle, and has a slider switch to pick which method to use. This means that this one keyboard can be used with the three machines on my desk without the endless shared bluetooth hasssles I had with the Logitech (it worked fine with two devices but add a third and it seemed to fail to connect a lot more often). So we'll see how the K3 does at work this week but for personal work so far I'm liking it a lot.

20251116

Ten days of running the ufw blocklist script linked below and the nonsense traffic has died right down, meanwhile the score of hits on the blocklist is pleasingly high. The dongle still flickers but at a much lower rate as the blocking gets logged on the various botnets. Not a perfect solution but I've had ten days without an unscheduled outage, and I've had no issues accessing my sites.

A side effect is that it has increased my logins as I've been checking everything is working and that means my familiarity with the CLI tools I use is slowly returning. I do lean on shortcuts a bit more than I like, but small steps.

20251106

After a few days away for work I returned to a non-responding server. Power cycle and it came right back up but the slow bombardment of requests from Brazilian IP addresses started up straight away. A quick read around and finding threads of people with similar experiences led me to believe it isn't a malicious threat to my server directly, but a side effect of their search for breakable devices eventually acts like a Slow Loris attack and knocks me offline. Something had to be done.

Fortunately in those threads I found a link to a ufw blocklist and associated scripts, and about half an hour of carefully reading, checking, and copying and pasting over and my firewall now has almost 19000 blocked IP ranges rather than the 30 or so I'd added playing whack-a-mole. Upshot has been longer moments of low activity, and smaller bursts mostly from numbers that I know are on the list. Now what will happen next.

20251029

One benefit of taking a more active approach to protecting my tiny web server (see 20251028) is that logging on with SSH is much faster and more reliable now I've obfuscated the port and blocked SSH to anyone not in a very limited IP range. I'll probably be scratching my head in the future wondering why some project isn't working right but for now this seems happier.

The other thing I've learned is that when ufw logging is set to low or medium it only shows when requests not specifically detailed in the configuration result in a block. I had t switch logging to full to verify that ufw was actually bouncing all the requests from Brazil.

Then finally I saw a post on the fedi from Tinker that informed me Debian is dropping 32 bit support in Debian 13 "Trixie". That will mean RaspberryOS will have to change dramatically or stop providing updates to older boards in the current form. Eitehr way it means that this server will need an overhaul either to another OS that is maintaining 32bit x86 support or replacing it with a 64bit Pi. Hopefully I won't make the same mistakes again... I'll make new ones as well!

20251028

There has been a lot of learning the last few days. First I noticed the WiFi dongle on this server flashing more than usual. It turned out a number of IP ranges from Brazil were hitting me with requests on port 443. However, to discover that I had to learn to use netstat. That then led me to install ufw as a firewall, deny everything, open up HTTPS and Gemini, and then block those IP ranges on port 443. In doing this I also learned to view my logs using journalctl and discovered how badly my exposed ssh was getting hit. Now ssh is limited to inside the house, and the server is hopefully safer. The light on the Pi still flickers like mad for hours at a time, but the logs show everyone bouncing off. I guess this is the price we have to pay for having a smol web server in 2025.

20251010

Last night's attempt to revive an old desktop failed. I am not woried though, I have enough computers to play with. A quick glance at the desk reveals a Macbook Pro for work, a 2020 M1 Mini acting as my personal machine and media server, an Alder Lake NUC running Ubuntu as a torrent box, a 2012 Model B Raspberry Pi serving this site and my personal website, and a repurposed Asus Chromebook running Pop!OS for when I don't want to be at the desk. Then there's a Gemini server in France and a public access Unix box on the West Coast of teh USA that I dabble on from here. Seven's enough for now, right?

20251006

Two things. First off, happy birthday to my best friend Kevin who will never see this post! Secondly, worst cyberdeck ever, I've plugged a heavy Masterkeys S mechanical keyboard into my phone via a USB to USB C adpater, making a loud and unweildly cyberdeck but supplying a much better typing experience than what I usually have on the soft keyboard!

20251002

So I finally have a soft keyboard on Android with a CTRL key. Unexpected Keyboard. Now to see if I can save this post in Nano via Raspberry Connect.

20250919

Why does my ISP always change my IP address when I am out of town? I know, I know, I could do all kinds of fiddly things with scripts and cron jobs and have a load of services calling things and doing it for me, but the point of my smolweb experient is to do it simply and with as little looking up of things as possible. If we want the more of the broader world to adapt and adopt smolweb ideals, or even just understand how to host a website then it needs to be easier.

In other news, it takes me less than 5 minutes to fix and does my smolweb site need to be up 24/7/365? No, it doesn't and that is the beauty of it!

20250903

On a lovely Gemini wander last night I came across news of this wonderfully whimsical thing ROOPHLOCH or the Remote Outdoor Off-Grid Phlogging Challenge! It is a writing challenge that runs throughout September and can be as complicated or simple as you make it. This post doesn't count as I am inside and hooked up to a wall for power to both the computer and monitor, but I am seriously considering a solar powered entry from the beach! Something to think about while I do some Pi maintenance!

20250802

That alarming feeling when the Raspberry Pi that hosts this capsule and a couple of my websites isn't running and doesn't recover on a power cycle. Looks like the SD card sleeve had failed as the card and device worked fine with a different micro to regular SD adapter. Sighs of relief here, and it gave me an excuse to get R-Pi Connect uinstalled and working. So a productive failure!

20250710

Twenty five (25!!!) years ago today at 1pm British Summer Time my wife and I got married. Three trans-Atlantic moves and six homes later we are still somehow getting along. It has been an adventure, here's to the next 25 years!

20250603

Testing that this still works, and it looks like it does. Good night #smolweb

20250510

Finished Andor Series 2 yesterday, watched Rogue One again tonight. The two series and that movie make a much better lead in to Episode IV than the prequals.

20250412

I returned to work last week, after four years of being a full time, stay at home dad. I've been so lucky to watch my daughter grow, all those developmental steps, the struggles and the wins. Hard to believe she'll be in kindergarten in the autumn, and that the little kid days are over.

20250312

GNU TERRY PRATCHETT

Hard to believe it has been ten years. I still remember the day I was lucky enough to be picked from the audience for a personal meet and greet at a book signing of Snuff. A lovely man, and I am happy to report his writing lives on as I read the Tiffany Aching novels to my young daughter.

20250308

Suddenly it is March. I spent an hour collating and writing up some simple online and phone security tips for my less tech friends. We are going to have a Securi-tea party to drink tea and sort out their devices. Now to put the idea and slide deck into action.

20250225

Great to use a new piece of software using Veilid. Distrans provides anonymous file transfers over the Veilid Network. Best of all, aside from the technical nature of installation the command line interface was simple to use and I've been sending and recieving files for the last few days.

20250224

Happy to find Jeeves and Wooster and also an Inspector Morse on DVD at my local library. I donated a portable DVD player to them while I was there, and suggested starting a tools and hardware lending catalogue to go with the seed library.

20250214

In the late 1990's my best friend and I would walk over the hills talking about how terrible the Kosovo war was and mulled over what we would do if the horrors on the nightly news were happening on our hills and in our homes.

Now I live in the USA, and we only get to wander together every few years, but on a recent phonecall we admitted we'd both been remembering those conversations because the risk to our lives and our families now seems more acute than ever before.

20250131

A small update to remind myself that no matter how strange and worrying the world may become I set up this server on my bookcase and posted this update remotely.

Server location Florida, author location Massachusetts. It is how it was meant to work but I am still surprised it did!

20250119

Struggling a bit with depression at the moment. I have a horrible feeling that we're at the end of a cycle of democracy.

A good friend told me that the most important thing to do is to survive, and so this is what I will do.

I will not give up on believing the world needs less borders, less war, less division and urgently needs more collaboration, more community, and more love.

I fear it will get worse before it gets better, but I will not give up my belief in what is good and true, and I will not give up hope...

20241226

I read this a couple of weeks ago, and it has really made me reassess my storage, and what is "important".

20241205

Not seen any films on Gemini yet, so here to test the idea is the 1985 cyberpunk classic

Be warned, it is almost 750MB and being served over a slow connection!

20241126

Nothing like finding a Blogspot blog with a treasure trove of classic eighties and nineties music, ripped from first pressing CDs in extended FLAC format. If, like me, you are rebuilding your collection it's well worth a look.

20241115

Keeping things smol and fast is easier with a minimalist approach. News sites seem to embrace the bloat of the modern web with trackera, videos, and adverts. So I waa pleased to find a nicely curated list of text only and minimalist news sites.

20241112

Current things I'm excited by:

Going smol with my ebooks via ProseReader (I've linked the web version but get the Android app via fdroid) and some great, well formatted, free content from standard ebooks.

And also RSS using CapyReader as a simple, phone based reader and filling it with various suggestions from Molly White's blogroll.

20241028

The nervous wait as I watch the server rumble slowly through Linux updates via SSH. All done now, so nothing left but a quick post and then the command that always makes me feel like a hacker

>sudo reboot now

That'll show me if everything worked and I can head to bed. Night all...

20241023

Well we're back. The server dropped offline due to an IP change from my ISP during two hurricanes. The good news is no damage, no suspicious access on the server, and a quick change to the settings on the domain name and here we are. Onwards and upwards!

20240918

Creating a space for scribbles. Really just an excuse to use SSH to login from a borrowed laptop.

20240920

I'm reminded again that no matter how sleek the laptop, no matter how cool the 3d printed cyberdeck, nothing looks as awesome as a Kaypro II.

I have a dream of getting one and either using it in its original, beautiful form or installing a modern screen and guts hooked up to that classic chassis.

Well... I can dream...