(C) Alec Muffett's DropSafe blog.
Author Name: Alec Muffett
This story was originally published on allecmuffett.com. [1]
License: CC-BY-SA 3.0.[2]


Diary for Today – Dropsafe

2023-11

Getting the blog back together has been the most “tech” fun that I’ve had in the past 6 months, even though (or possibly because) it’s been on the back burner to do so for literally 2 years. The impending EOL of the old server’s WordPress software stack made it essential to update, and in the process gave me the opportunity to redress (i.e. throw away) several of the fediverse mistakes which I made in my early attempt – viz: don’t try to install Mastodon at home, people, unless you love running a messy Ruby stack with a bunch of un-necessary cruft which a sole-user instance does not need.

There’s more work to do: the DMZ and EOTK proxies need a rebuild, but that can wait for some other work on the UPS to happen, first. Then at some point I also have to rebuild the ADSB listeners.

Today has been my first proper experience of “our toddler got invited to a birthday party” and it was great, if exhausting, even only as a spectator-parent; 12 to 15 kids running around the local village hall with some setup/teardown (chairs, tables, balloons, bunting) to assist with. I think the Amazon review would be something like

**** would do again, but bring paracetamol and food, perhaps alcohol

I had some fun yesterday: our toddler’s daycare/preschool was literally throwing away an old pink/blue “Princess” Little Tikes Cozy Coupe which was “broken”; we asked if we could have it, and it turned out that the steering column was broken (and so the steering wheel kept falling off) and a few bits were missing. I jetwashed it, rebuilt the steering column and then yesterday 3D-printed a new “ignition” key, door lock, fuel filler-cap and mounting (all from Printables & Thingiverse) plus a self-designed personalised license plate. It’s now looking a lot cooler, and we’re thinking about overhauling the dash with nice retro speedo and fuel gauges.

It was very, very popular at today’s party.

There are a bunch of DIY projects on at home, too: a cargobike refit, new TV antenna, replacing the main UPS backup battery, toddler bedroom carpeting, and pathway lighting; these are all great but take up non-parenting-time which is a deeply valuable resource, so I am currently running home life like an engineering manager, trying to work out what is most impactful to do and balancing long-term projects against short-term ones like “clear the laundry backlog”. The family is already running on Trello, and I fear that if it gets more complex we may have to move up to Jira.

Then there’s the question of “The Book” – I already have a concept and more than enough notes, and I’ve made a start (actually, the second or third start) on an introduction. I think I’ve got something (possibly) unique to say about infosec: where security, privacy and identity all come from, and where they are commonly misunderstood. If you’ve read the E2E primer or this Guardian interview, you’ll get a sense of a couple of the chapters.

The main challenge is to work out who my audience is, and best how to write for them. Maybe thrashing out some ideas and charting progress in public on this blog would help motivate me, because at the moment I have to fit writing in during those rare gaps when I’m suddenly massively awake at 4am, which is happening too often at the moment.

What do you reckon?
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[1] URL: https://alecmuffett.com/article/108202
[2] URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

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