***** a quest for disinfected internet 02/25 *****
my disgust with the www-world, and a desire to learn more is what brought me underground to gopher.
it is impossible for me to avoid the surface web entirely, so in a continued effort to learn,
I set out to see what I could do to block as much of the filth as possible and this led me down
some rabbitholes that have been a gamechanger and shed some light on some security and networking
ideas really only previously theoretical to me.
since Im running a server for surveilance cameras I thought it would be a good additional project
to try running Pi-Hole. a FOSS, DNS sinkhole that blocks all addresses added to its blacklist
from ever resolving. this is much less detectable by the originatinng site than are adblockers.
although Linux Mint is not an officially supported OS, the install and config went smoothly and
it works 100%. Pi-hole is setup as the default DNS resolver for my home network through my router
and blocks crapola for anyone using the network. it also comes with an interface dashboard with
Star-Trek-like themes which is a really cool touch. it uses very little resources- thus its
ability to be run on very small RaspberryPi versions- for which it was designed and named.
The Pi-hole discourse community is very valuable when setting this up and learning.
One of the biggest irritations of the WWW was the seeming impossibility of avoiding what
I would consider to be complete garbage sites cluttering up my search results for nearly anything.
the end results of adding " -shitsite -turdweb " to every search string was very hit-or-miss
for whatever reason and doing that for every search was getting very old.
I want to live in a country where shitsite and turdweb are considered to be too awful for
consumption by the genuine knowledge-seeking populus.
after months of searching and reading many posts where other were seeking the same, without a
viable functional suggestion as an answer even in the rare cases where the question WAS
actually understood by the answerers, I hit on the solution- by way of filters for the uBlock Origin
browser extension... and it finally works!
Filters can be added to uBlock's "my filters" section formatted as follows...
Regarding browser extentions, I highly recommend using...
-uBlock Origin
-EFF's Privacy Badger
-NoScript
NoScript has shined the light on a world of nefarious JavaScript that I had previously only
heard about. you know a site is trash when it will let you do nearly nothing without enabling
javascript permissions for ad-blaster, track-master and sleeze-bastard.com and noscript will let
you see each of these attempting to smear your browser with their stink.
Im still using Firefox. I have tried, and found nothing I like better, though I am very critical
of a great number of the Mozilla Foundation's shenannigans and missteps in recent years and
I spend alot of time tweaking and diabling and removing alot of defaults the instant I install it.
the following are the actual uBlock filters I've initially made for my DuckDuckGo search blacklist
copy, paste, enjoy!
this has brought my per-search bloodpressure down dramatically
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***** Rooting an Android phone and Installing Lineage OS. 01/25 *****
15 years ago, having heard that Android was Linux-based, I was excited to get my 1st smart phone.
the polish wore off that real quick when I learned that in practice, Android OS was 180% of what I
hate about Windows and it was damn near impossible to do anything about that.
Like all reasons for being left dumb and blind for your own wellbeing- it is utter horseshit that
is all about the alterior motives to make you a fucking tool and a slave.
every device I've had, I researched rooting and after going down numerous lengthy rabbitholes
that ended in a paywall, I would give up out of aggrivation. my only options were to be as
selective and picky as possible with apps and to this day I install 50-400% fewer apps than most
peoples phones I have glanced at over the years.
still, every so-ofen I read about rooting and alternative OSs and when I found myself having collected
a few old phones that were no lomger mission-critical I figured I would go down the rabbithole again,
now with a little more Linux knowledge and command-line skills.
it turns out that LineageOS had a package specific to my old Motorolla model and I had read that
Motorolla was one of the companies whom had decided to make it possible to oem-unlock their phones.
after an insanely convoluted process involving clicking through countless warning pages,
signing in with an account which I was required to give up certain permissions to and getting
an email with five lines which had to be edited together into a single string code and entered
into the phone while it was connected to the internet via wifi, It was oem-unlocked!!!
LineageOS' eight page instructions on installation went exactly as stated
after getting adb and fastboot working on one of my arch machines.
Lineage looked and worked amazingly but obviously had the same lame, tired google apps installed-
just stripped a little. F-Droid app store and Fossify apps fixed most of those problems.
Magisk seemed to be the best thing going and most widely discussed online for root management
so I set out to get that happening. after following all permeatations of the directions on the site
without any luck I decided to try the most straightforeward, simple and aggressively flamed-against
method reported as sucessfull by others... and it was done. I've installed tcpdump to run as
root in termux and that was my measure of success.
it seems my current Motorolla device is oem-unlockable without all the flaming hoops, so should I
ever find an alternative OS presenting as compatible the way LineageOS did with the older Motorolla,
Im definitely giving it a whirl.
Android... is a bizarre and twisted world I would love to ditch all together...
but until that time comes there are at least some good options that ease the pain.
I research linux mobile variants every few years and that is looking promising,
though their affinity for overpriced Google hardware has kept me away so far.
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*** Homelab / Zoneminder ***
i read about Zoneminder almost 20 years ago and wanted to use it... but it is more involved than just
install and run... it requires a LAMP server (Linux,Apache,MySQL,PHP) and some networking knowledge...
i finally got a little- and setup my homelab as a surveilance server using a micro PC and enterprise PoE switch.
Zoneminder has some iffy reviews online, but that is largely due to it's less than beginner friendly UI.
it is tremendously powerful, solid, has excellent documentation and is still being regularly maintained
after at least 20 years. you could very effectively manage a large surveilance system with zoneminder
although being a Linux nerd is almost a prerequisite... something that made it all the more attractive to me.
I've only tested a few cameras so far but plan on intentionally trying out a variety of camera styles with
varying capabilities... more on this in the future.
if this kinda thing interests you, i highly recommend checking out Zoneminder.
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*** Data Recovery using photorec ***
8 years ago, my partner had an old Windoze XP laptop full of pics and she was afraid it was dying.
I backed-up all the images and videos on DVDs and gave them to her.
since that time, the DVDs seem to have been misplaced.
her old laptop, despite being huge, chonky and outdated- worked fine
and over the years, trying out Linux distros, I had wiped and installed a new OS on it at least twice.
it never got much use, but just sat there.
panicing about the loss of pictures- I decided to try some data forensics recovery to see if anything
could be saved from the old drive. this didnt seem hopeful but i decided it would be a good dive into
this for learning and experience. I heard good things about photorec so I gave it a try and was amazed
to have recovered almost 3 gigs of images! despite the 2x wipe/reinstalls!
many are the images that we remember, some are images she said she deleted on that XP installation.
the video files were less successful but definitely got a handful of those back.
photorec is part of the testdisk package of disk tools and is utterly astonishing!
HIGHLY recommended!!!
it does many filetypes too, not just photos!...
"PhotoRec is a free and open-source utility software for data recovery with text-based user interface
using data carving techniques, designed to recover lost files from various digital camera memory,
hard disk and CD-ROM. It can recover the files with more than 480 file extensions.
It is also possible to add custom file signature to detect less known files."
very much wish I had known about this in the past!
*** Chromebooks, FULL, actual wipe and Linux install ***
EOS, former schoolsystem Chromebooks are plentiful on Ebay, I got 3 Lenovo N23 Chromebooks for $45 in late 2023
these have 2g ram and a 16gSSD, nothing is upgradable. beyond the typically convoluted process to put the laptop
into a mode where you can actually proceed to do things to it, this required the removal of a jumper screw on
the MB so that the uefi could be replaced using new firmware from mrchromebox.tech.
this was all required to get a true chrome-wipe and reinstallation of Linux.
Finding a Linux variant that would even fit onto 16g and run with only 2g ram was not easy at first,
I was using Lubuntu for a while but had some problems with audio/video hanging with a tight-looped buzz
at random intervals. once I got Arch going it was perfect on these with almost 10gb to spare on the SSD!
In the end these were a cheap fun way to get myself a few rugged backpack books that will do basic things.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
=== ANCIENT PROJECTS ===================================>
over the years, my interests in technology and electronics started with an interest in electronic music.
my first projects included wiring a guitar pickup through the guts of a halloween voice FX mask in 1995.
i began circuit bending in 2001 and was obsessed for a few years.
i have made or modified about a dozen various instruments for aquaintances over the years.
i also built a Paia Fatman analog synth from a >300 piece kit ages ago..
a little more about these on the sounds page.
i had a workshop page on my www site in the early 2000s that apparently got alot of traffic on one
specific page featuring a completely passive 4-way MIDI splitter/joiner with led indicator.
this was made by very simply connecting all pins of same # and finding a tiny enough led.
this is a very analog and not-recommended way of treating MIDI but it worked for me flawlessly.
i think it was popular just because of how radibly against the idea people were on forums
i have largely moved away from this kind of thing today.
I spent months sourcing parts to make an arduino midi controller, was very excited about that,
and immediately burned up the best pots i could find.. being about 1/10th as good as the stuff
I had worked with in the 90s and early 00s.
obviously i probaby need a soldering iron with lower and adjustable wattage, but the lack of durability
of modern hardware really makes it not worth building or buying in my mind.
