P.disfinder.com on disfinder.com 🇺🇸

thanks for staying tuned )

Fri, 05 Jan 2024 09:09:00 +0000

the redesign is complete, now filling it with content.

The answer to “what to write articles in” has been found: Markdown it is, GitHub Pages it is.

Collected a few articles: /en/docs/articles/

Also started another blog: /en/posts/2023/hugo-blog/

what to write articles in?

Tue, 26 Dec 2023 04:27:00 +0000

I decided that before the new year I want to somewhat reshape the disfinder.com domain — instead of a blog on the root page, make a landing page that would host links to the blog and some useful articles.

The reshaping turned out to be fairly easy, and the obvious choice was Github Pages, for a few reasons:

I already have it set up
it’s plain markdown, easy to back up just in case (unlike Blogger)

But the markdown turned out to be not so plain — it’s Jekyll — and anyone who wants to write nice, useful articles there needs to get the hang of Jekyll first.

Preparing the Sleigh in Summer

Fri, 17 Dec 2021 06:33:00 +0000

I’m the kind of person who buys a Christmas tree stand at the end of February.

Articles in Git

Tue, 14 Dec 2021 05:02:00 +0000

The Problem#

One thing blogs are bad at is storing posts that evolve over time. For example, if an article or manual is being written and developed, readers only see the first publication — further edits don’t make it into RSS feeds and no emails are sent.

But there is a solution!

Hitting the Tablet Against Rough Roads and Sloppiness

Sat, 02 Oct 2021 07:08:00 +0000

A short note — while Apple is dragging its feet releasing the new MacBook Pros with M1X, I’m suffering with an old 2013 laptop that is struggling badly with today’s demands. A video call in Teams or Skype, and especially in Zoom with a virtual background overlay, slowly melts it, despite the thermal paste having been replaced twice (and I might do it a third time, who knows). Even ordinary browsing lags, stutters, and glitches.

Synology Returns

Thu, 25 Feb 2021 03:54:00 +0000

The replacement Synology arrived. I swapped the drives over, and while I was at it, threw in 4 GB of RAM that had been sitting in a drawer anyway — now it’s at 8. Plex came up quickly, I restored the config too, fine-tuning will happen as I go.

home server crash

Mon, 22 Feb 2021 18:00:00 +0000

Not even a year and a half had passed since I became a happy owner of a home server from Synology, and it already went belly up.

Canada Days, the finale.

Sun, 21 Feb 2021 17:00:00 +0000

The “Canada Days” trend was born in my booze blog, and I kept trying to remember what else Canadian from the past month (besides the beer and whisky) I had forgotten — and here it is.

String practice: time for a replacement

Wed, 10 Feb 2021 05:30:00 +0000

Less than a year has passed (July to February: about 8 months) since replacing the strings from “whatever was on there” to Yamaha NS 110. After half a year of light strumming, the brand-new strings already look like this:

A Knife for Field Cooking

Tue, 09 Feb 2021 16:00:00 +0000

Inspired by gourmet ideas, nurturing the notion of culinary caste greatness… or, more honestly, after scrolling through Instagram of Poles living in Ireland, I bought myself a little knife to cook outdoors.

Video on the Go

Tue, 02 Feb 2021 16:00:00 +0000

When you’re riding through beautiful scenery, you want to capture it and share it — but you can’t pull out your phone while driving. So the photo arsenal has finally gained a tool for shooting on the go. Stay tuned for new videos on the YouTube channel!

Shovel!

Tue, 26 Jan 2021 16:00:00 +0000

The absence of snow in these parts had made me a bit complacent — but that won’t do, so a shovel was finally bought and put in the trunk.

another axe

Mon, 18 Jan 2021 16:00:00 +0000

The older axe (who, by the way, is named Ira) has been joined by a smaller one. Still unnamed and without any mods for now, but I think we’ll sort that out come summer.

trump's twitter

Sat, 09 Jan 2021 03:34:00 +0000

Today I’m reading that Twitter has permanently banned one red-haired president. I went to see what that looks like (nothing, really) — and remembered that I had already banned him myself a few months ago. When I first arrived I followed him, since it was interesting to keep a finger on the pulse of the country, but then I couldn’t take the flood of meaningless information anymore. Well, once again I’ll congratulate myself on how smart I am. If only it worked that way with bitcoin :)

Prepare the Sledge in Summer

Sat, 12 Dec 2020 17:00:00 +0000

This particular purchase, on the other hand, was well thought out — it had been patiently sitting in my Amazon wishlist, waiting for a discount.

After swinging an axe all summer and realizing that cutting trees crosswise is not the most rewarding of tasks, I decided to splurge on a saw. Naturally, for camping I wanted something portable and foldable — though you could just as well throw a regular hand saw in the car, it wouldn’t be quite feng shui.

Watch 2020: the first one

Tue, 08 Dec 2020 17:00:00 +0000

For quite a long time I was perfectly happy with my Pebble Steel. Even after the company was acquired and shut down by competitors, enthusiasts had written the software, a server with watch faces, and everything kept ticking along. The watch looks great — metal bracelet, a familiar almost-LCD screen, and a battery that lasts a couple of weeks. Modern watches that need daily charging can’t even compare!

Flash Drives

Sat, 05 Dec 2020 17:00:00 +0000

Somehow before I knew it, I’d picked up a couple of flash drives. Time moves on, and the enormous university flash drive with its 4 GB is now only good for booting Ubuntu onto one of the old machines. And if you want to put a bit of music in the car — you’ll need to upgrade. Well, let the bigger one just sit there. You never know when you might suddenly need a 128 GB flash drive in the middle of the night…

Console Upgrade

Tue, 01 Dec 2020 17:00:00 +0000

Well, what can I say. Finally. It happened. Giving in to this year’s madness triggered by the release of yet another new PlayStation, I decided to upgrade mine as well.

"Woe from Wit" or "In Search of a Dumb Outlet"

Fri, 27 Nov 2020 16:00:00 +0000

This story begins in a neighbor’s bathroom.

Black Friday

Wed, 25 Nov 2020 20:17:00 +0000

Soon (or, according to most stores — already) the season of massive sales and gigantic discounts kicks off in the US.

The Magic of Fixing Without Fixing.

Sat, 10 Oct 2020 16:00:00 +0000

Upload speed is crawling. A megabyte and a half — just awful.

SAM4

Wed, 07 Oct 2020 16:00:00 +0000

What a gift the Croatians gave me for my birthday! True, for now it’s only on PC and some Stadia, so while I wait for it to come out on my console — I’ll replay the third one again.

New — just slightly refurbished old

Wed, 30 Sep 2020 16:00:00 +0000

My Logitech G930 headphones are not without their issues — the battery has weakened, the sound drops out occasionally, and there’s no alternative connection method besides their own USB dongle — yet they remain the only ones that connected to the PlayStation (for some reason Sony’s console refused to see my Sony headphones over Bluetooth). And unlike those Sony ones, the G930s play music and voice calls equally well — because the Sonys switch to headset mode during calls and the background music sounds like it’s coming through a phone.

An Alternative to a Campfire

Wed, 23 Sep 2020 16:00:00 +0000

Sometimes there is simply nowhere to make a campfire, or no time for it — or you got your fill of woodsmoke yesterday and now all you want is to boil a kettle.

Better an axe in hand than a fig in your pocket

Fri, 04 Sep 2020 17:00:00 +0000

The next addition to the camping arsenal was a hand tool — an axe. After swinging someone else’s for a bit, I realized I needed one of my own. And on the advice of friends (not to compensate for anything) — I chose the longer model, the Fiskars X25.

Sleeping Pads

Wed, 02 Sep 2020 04:54:00 +0000

Our first camping experience showed that sleeping on foam pads isn’t the most comfortable thing, so our little camper kit has now been joined by these inflatable sleeping pads.

emergency supply 3.5

Fri, 21 Aug 2020 16:30:00 +0000

A box of six such packages arrived recently.

Branded screwdriver set

Wed, 19 Aug 2020 16:30:00 +0000

And who just received this adorable little Chinese screwdriver set? That would be me

The case is magnetic and holds every bit in place. It’s also a metal-and-plastic combo — a metal sleeve slides over the plastic tray. Finally I have a Torx with a hole! No more having to snap out those miserable pins in screws!

The set is mostly small-to-micro sizes With a few non-standard bits…

A Little Cleanup

Thu, 30 Jul 2020 20:07:00 +0000

This is what the insides of a six-year-old laptop look like

The Theory of Big Discounts

Thu, 16 Jul 2020 05:08:00 +0000

“Come and get it, prices slashed!” — that’s basically what an email from Amazon was screaming at me about a grand sale on all sorts of stuff from WD and SanDisk.

String Practice

Sat, 11 Jul 2020 19:58:00 +0000

The first time I changed strings with my own hands. The first string (as always) snapped, but at the time the guitar was hanging on the wall and we weren’t even home. I suspect the cat may have helped, though there’s no evidence.

mikrotik

Sun, 21 Jun 2020 12:30:00 +0000

Another necropost dug out of drafts. In principle, everything is still fairly accurate and relevant, except that “recently” (became the owner) — it’s not even clear when…. Couldn’t find the purchase data, which is rather strange. But roughly off the top of my head, 2015 or so…..

You Can Never Have Too Much Space

Mon, 15 Jun 2020 12:00:00 +0000

I thought it over and decided not to wait for Black Friday, nor for the storage to run out ahead of schedule. In the spirit of increasing diversity inside my NAS, a green Seagate joined the two existing red WD drives.

2020, Song About a Rushnyk

Fri, 12 Jun 2020 12:00:00 +0000

Red is for love, and black is for sorrow….

Alcohol is back!

Tue, 09 Jun 2020 12:00:00 +0000

Today at the store I saw a whole variety of hand sanitizers — looks like the panic is over, and some production capacity has been created or retooled.

Need more fan!

Mon, 08 Jun 2020 12:00:00 +0000

The joke about forced ventilation has come true — it’s not even peak summer yet, and the equipment shelf is already showing +38ºC.

So a quick Amazon search turned up the smallest (80mm) decent consumer fan I could find — USB-powered, a 3-speed gearbox, and advertised as quiet.

The result: 30ºC on the first gear. Ready for summer!

Looking for a Switch

Sat, 16 May 2020 12:00:00 +0000

Working from home has shown that Wi-Fi can sometimes be unstable — it’s still unclear whether it’s the microwave oven or something else. So I’m going to try connecting the laptop the good old way, with a cable. The one catch is that my router only has 5 Ethernet ports, and all 5 are currently occupied. I decided to tackle the problem systematically — first draw out what’s connected where, then figure out where to plug what, whether to get a PoE switch or a plain one, whether to save money and go with Fast Ethernet or go for Gigabit after all… The price range runs from $10 for the simplest 100 Mbit switch to $60 for a Gigabit one with PoE. While the deliberation is still ongoing — here’s what a simple home network diagram looks like. Of course, there are still a few components missing from it; I’ll keep adding them little by little….

More boxes!

Fri, 15 May 2020 12:00:00 +0000

And here is what arrived to me in packaging proudly labeled “Made In USA” — a bigger box of boxes! It’s a bit larger than a matchbox, shown for scale. And a cat for scale too. The creature really wanted to get into the frame, so it helped however it could.

A Box of Boxes

Thu, 14 May 2020 12:00:00 +0000

Bought this little box-of-boxes to store boxes for boxes )))

The thing itself is not very large (25×20×16), but the compartments turned out to be long enough to fit tweezers, a spare spark plug, and my DIY phone-to-tripod mount adapters. Now all the junk rattles around in one place. Well, almost all of it… Another box is on its way….

fifteen chargers into one outlet... yo-ho-ho!

Wed, 13 May 2020 12:00:00 +0000

And to answer the question, “why bother with all that fuss with extension cords” — the answer is: to get rid of (or rather prevent) constructions like these:

Electrification Continues (Hopefully Finished)

Tue, 12 May 2020 12:00:00 +0000

As expected, 12 outlets turned out to be not enough (or rather, not everything can be plugged in at a single spot — sometimes the cable is just a bit too short), so the final (for now) addition arrived to catch up: a wall-mounted outlet block. They come in various configurations; I went with a more compact one that maximizes USB ports.

Squeezing the Unsqueezable

Mon, 11 May 2020 12:00:00 +0000

I’m obviously not going to connect just one NAS to the UPS — that would be both unfair and unwise.

Power Supply Must Be Uninterrupted

Sun, 10 May 2020 13:00:00 +0000

Well, look who’s here! My first UPS! Having lived on laptops for over a decade, I never felt the need for one — if the power goes out in the building, the ISP’s equipment will most likely go down too, and if it’s just a blown fuse, the router will reboot in a few minutes, no big deal.

And one ring to rule them all!

Sat, 09 May 2020 13:00:00 +0000

Several little gadgets arrived today — groceries and toilet paper get logistics priority over hardware, so the wait was long. But this thing with 12 outlets + 5 USB ports should significantly reduce the entropy of my little cabinet. Life in the 21st century demands constant charging, and not just physical exercise to keep the belly in check, but electrical charging too.

There is a time to scatter dust, and a time to suck it up.

Fri, 08 May 2020 12:00:00 +0000

Got out of the habit of tower computers with big fans… Only half a year has passed since that memorable Black Friday when a Synology moved in with me — and this is what its (her?) insides look like today.

Hello, is this the laundry?

Thu, 07 May 2020 10:00:00 +0000

It’s a dryer!

Overphoned

Sat, 02 May 2020 13:27:00 +0000

Even when you only need a single SIM card, somehow there are too many phones in the house…

Thu, 30 Apr 2020 12:30:00 +0000

Quarantine, stress, bad weather — you’ve got to fight it with some shopping. It had been sitting on my wish list for a long time, waiting in vain for a discount through two Black Fridays. Then, out of nowhere, the price dropped a little, and I decided to finally close the gestalt and get the big brother as a companion to my pocket-everyday Style. And just like that, another Leatherman joined the family.

PlayStation and FPS Shooters

Fri, 24 Apr 2020 21:18:00 +0000

Some time ago my “dear friends” talked me into buying a console, a.k.a. PlayStation 4. The main argument in favor was the release of Borderlands 3, which my existing hardware couldn’t handle at all. Weighing the pros and cons — namely, $800 for a gaming PC versus $100 for a gaming console (used) — I chose the latter, drove a good hundred kilometers to pick it up, and got the console itself, a couple of controllers (originally one), a charging station for the controllers, and a Mortal Kombat XL disc!!

2 Pixel 2

Thu, 16 Apr 2020 12:00:00 +0000

April 2019.

My wife gets a Pixel 2 — at that point a two-year-old model, and as Wikipedia tells us, discontinued April 1, 2019.

Social quarantine and its consequences

Wed, 15 Apr 2020 12:00:00 +0000

Re-reading my own blog and going through the sparse comments, I noticed that one of my friends’ domains — tsybulko.org — has gone dark. A shame.

A Beard Bib for Bearded Gentlemen

Tue, 14 Apr 2020 12:00:00 +0000

About 4-5 years ago I bought this wonderful little apron on AliExpress for gentlemen who prefer to take care of their beard themselves:

Counting Rhyme

Mon, 13 Apr 2020 11:00:00 +0000

Who will take a guess: together with this newly arrived box, what is the total number of MacBooks in a household of two adults?

Season 2020

Sun, 12 Apr 2020 12:00:00 +0000

Having waited for warm weather and even having missed a few (quite a lot of) warm days, the 2020 season is open!

For some reason I thought I started later last year, but nope — I was in the saddle on March 24.

Current state of the patient

Fri, 10 Apr 2020 07:00:00 +0000

So, the TV problem (and the set-top box audio along with it) was solved at the cost of blood and nerves in a battle against greed successfully. It seemed everything was great, but the infection had already taken deep root in the organism — you step into the kitchen and can’t hear the TV, and lying in the bath under a stream of your favourite podcast would be nice too, and besides, I noticed IKEA also sells wireless remote controls for sound…

Spreading the Infection

Thu, 09 Apr 2020 07:00:00 +0000

After the music in our home started sounding in a whole new way — it became very obvious just how terrible the sound from a flat TV is. Sure, there’s nowhere for good sound to come from in that thing, but at least before there was nothing to compare it to.

Bitten by Symfonisk

Wed, 08 Apr 2020 11:08:00 +0000

Recently my home network (which I might write about in more detail separately someday) has gained a few more residents — three or six, I still haven’t figured it out myself.

[technical] Comments

Wed, 08 Apr 2020 03:08:00 +0000

Attention, dear readers!

It turned out by accident that for some reason comments weren’t working in this Blogger theme.

Books

Sat, 08 Feb 2020 04:24:00 +0000

By the way, about DevOps.

And Now We Have a NAS at Home

Wed, 04 Dec 2019 04:32:00 +0000

Today, among the digital residents of our home, yet another (in a long line of) little box has appeared. Actually, thanks to Black Friday (which deserves its own separate post) — several of them showed up, one after another, but this one is by far the most promising and offers the most to play around with.

Evolution of EDC. Part 3. The Final

Mon, 16 Sep 2019 15:57:00 +0000

Unfortunately, nothing lasts forever — and my sincerely and long-loved CaseLogic was gradually losing ground: metal bits from my pockets had worn through the fabric, the straps had stretched out, the back panel had frayed and scuffed. The small crossbody pouch was also losing its looks, and most sadly — modern slab-phones no longer fit inside it!

EDC Evolution. Part 2.

Tue, 20 Aug 2019 20:02:00 +0000

With the arrival of a motorcycle, certain changes had to be made to the everyday carry setup — or rather, to how it was organized: a small pouch might not survive a headwind, and a phone dropped even at 80 km/h would be hard to even find, let alone put back together.

EDC Evolution. Part 1.

Mon, 19 Aug 2019 23:00:00 +0000

I love pockets and clothes that have them, yet for a long time I’ve carried nothing important in them: a phone in the front pocket gets in the way, in the back pocket it either disappears on its own or with a little help from kind strangers; leave your keys or access card in the pocket of a different jacket just once and you’ll be making a trip back home.

Fri, 16 Aug 2019 03:58:00 +0000

It’s no secret that our social circle is quite varied. There are relatives, old childhood friends, parents’ friends, neighbors, classmates, university groupmates…

flea market junk

Fri, 20 Jul 2018 15:02:00 +0000

We bought some furniture on Amazon — specifically, a couple of small tables.

Sat, 07 Jul 2018 03:42:00 +0000

an observation — the lamps shine not downward but upward: this way the light doesn’t hit your eyes directly, yet provides enough illumination by reflecting off the ceiling.

Miles, pounds, Fahrenheit...

Wed, 04 Jul 2018 01:29:00 +0000

Miles, pounds, Fahrenheit…

There is so much to do that there is not always time to write down thoughts when they arise. And then you forget them.

Paper sheet sizes are different — trying to photocopy something from A4 is a whole task. Dates are written differently, outlets are different… It seems like driving on the right side of the road is the only familiar thing left.

Among the unfamiliar things I especially wanted to note… well, what did I want to note… I forgot.

Billa'd me....

Sun, 17 Jun 2018 20:05:00 +0000

When the fairly large BILLA supermarket was long under construction in Zaporizhzhia and then finally opened, it became something of an upscale place and a symbol of “eliteness” — perhaps because it was a branch of a Kyiv chain, perhaps also because it was located underground beneath the avenue, in a spot that was awkward to reach by public transport when you had shopping bags.

And now in Kyiv, Billa is a store I genuinely avoid, only going there when I’m in a hurry or simply too lazy. A store like any other, nothing to set it apart. The closest one to us, and yet — the least visited….

on friends

Tue, 05 Jun 2018 21:49:00 +0000

So you scroll through Facebook’s friend suggestions — and suddenly people I don’t even know have more mutual friends with me than those I’ve known for a long time…

The digital age changes behavior, changes the frames.

You can choose anything in this world, son… )

Possessions should be light....

Tue, 29 May 2018 11:41:00 +0000

Back in 2007, when a friend helped me move, thanks to his exceptional packing skills, all the belongings from a one-room apartment fit into a Slavuta car. Running on gas… True, there was no furniture, but there were two adult bicycles.

The next move was from my parents’ place to a rented house, and it wasn’t as swift — so it didn’t stick in my memory quite as vividly.

Then came the road to the Zaporizhzhia region, and I don’t remember very well what junk made the trip there either. There was a microwave, I think… And a front-loading washing machine — that was the first major family purchase, for a crazy 2700 UAH or something like that….

Effort and Result

Sat, 17 Mar 2018 17:57:00 +0000

Only in times of crisis — when, for example, “everything is terrible” — does it become clearly visible how seemingly insignificant efforts lead to results. And what you couldn’t do at all yesterday, or did only through pain, today already comes much more easily, and tomorrow you can’t even imagine how you could have struggled with such a simple thing.

Unfortunately, the better the state you’re in, the less noticeable this becomes, and it seems like there’s no point in making an effort since there are no results anyway. But that’s not true..

Pre-New Year Caviar

Mon, 18 Dec 2017 10:38:00 +0000

1 kg == 3760.50 UAH == 133.53 USD == 0.007012 BTC

old age

Wed, 22 Nov 2017 21:12:00 +0000

Old age begins with pills on the bedside table)

inoreader

Fri, 27 Oct 2017 10:36:00 +0000

I’ve long wanted to support this service with a small contribution — I’m perfectly happy with the free ad-supported version, I even disabled my ad blocker on their site.

Finally today I bought an annual subscription — in honor of Halloween they’re giving three months for free, so, nudged by the magic word “discount,” I sent these fine folks 15 bucks.

internet stuff

Thu, 12 Oct 2017 10:21:00 +0000

AWS CloudFront locations show the centers of civilization. You can see that India has it, while Africa does not. Same for northern Nigeria…

Season Closing - New Year

Sun, 08 Oct 2017 18:16:00 +0000

Actually, you should take stock and make plans not on January 1st, but when the season closes.)

re:kodi again

Thu, 05 Oct 2017 10:57:00 +0000

Installing XBMC, a.k.a. Kodi, again. Remembered that I once wanted to try OpenELEC. Turned out you can’t change the root password in it, and in general it’s a heavily precompiled system. Tried it on ubuntu-server, but the graphics were pretty poor. Went with my favourite xubuntu, and now I’m tuning it up with Ansible. Photos and details will follow — stay tuned.

perepichka

Sun, 17 Sep 2017 15:00:00 +0000

Tried a perepichka. Pretty decent thing — a sausage in dough, extremely hot. It got me thinking about Ukrainian marketing: over two decades, one modification, one stall, no advertising, nothing — and there are queues. Quite interesting )

Thu, 31 Aug 2017 06:20:00 +0000

Passport documents have been submitted. Waiting.

Cherish it, for it is yours.

Sun, 27 Aug 2017 12:41:00 +0000

Watermelon from the Barge

Sun, 06 Aug 2017 10:57:00 +0000

Wed, 12 Jul 2017 06:17:00 +0000

Wednesday. Morning. A police bicycle patrol is pushing a stalled minibus stuck in traffic. Pushes it, then rides on.

Wonders never cease.

K is for Karma

Tue, 11 Jul 2017 08:56:00 +0000

just as I decided to install Docker, it somehow stopped being available.

The Amazon CloudFront distribution is configured to block access from your country.

Insurance

Mon, 10 Jul 2017 14:23:00 +0000

The USG insurance company is once again refusing to cover the claim, which baffles the doctors and frustrates me.

I’m thinking, maybe it’s time to switch this corporate policy for something else — one with “all inclusive” coverage.

Sat, 08 Jul 2017 10:00:00 +0000

They say watermelons are already on sale. I’m thinking maybe it’s worth buying a nitrate meter on AliExpress.

Fri, 07 Jul 2017 03:13:00 +0000

Morning Kharkiv reminds me of the Kyiv of my childhood — clean, quiet, few cars.

Mon, 26 Jun 2017 19:29:00 +0000

The road to Pereiaslav-Khmelnytskyi is good, though narrow — one lane each way.

Bumpy in places, but not too bad.

Sat, 24 Jun 2017 20:06:00 +0000

There is no such thing as planned happiness.

skype

Tue, 20 Jun 2017 14:21:00 +0000

put on my unlucky t-shirt — skype broke. and it broke since late yesterday evening, while I put the t-shirt on yesterday in the middle of the day.

broke hard, been lying there the whole day.

airdroid

Mon, 19 Jun 2017 11:54:00 +0000

giving it a try. after all, it’s the 21st century, that’s how it goes.

turn signals

Sun, 18 Jun 2017 11:54:00 +0000

Mon, 12 Jun 2017 16:51:00 +0000

the day of “unwashed russia”

visa-free

Sun, 11 Jun 2017 11:00:00 +0000

today Ukraine was granted visa-free travel. I regret a little that I didn’t get a passport sooner. now I’ll have to wait out the wave of “zradofily”.

backpack

Sat, 10 Jun 2017 14:24:00 +0000

Bought this backpack. Grey color. Going to try it out.

notes

Thu, 08 Jun 2017 15:10:00 +0000

Starting a series of short factual articles — notes.

Another trip to the dentist.

Strawberries are available to buy — they’ve been selling them for a while now, looks like the nitrate season has passed.

Looking for a single-strap EDC universal backpack and tactical tough-but-not-hot pants. No luck so far.

The eternal needle for a primus stove — to buy or not to buy?

Fri, 21 Apr 2017 21:18:00 +0000

Today I heard the claim that in order to live longer, one should live more economically: breathe less, move less, eat less (and therefore digest less), meditate, spare one’s nerves….

Dropping LiveJournal

Tue, 18 Apr 2017 21:21:00 +0000

So much has changed over the years of having that LiveJournal page…. Moving back to the homeland and back again. And another move. More moves that never got written about. Buying real estate and movable property. Significant and pleasant career changes, and even more significant — but far from pleasant — geopolitical changes….

android popups

Fri, 02 Dec 2016 19:58:00 +0000

After every call, popups started appearing offering to install Facebook or Yandex.Taxi. I read around online — people write that a lot of junk like this comes pre-installed in the phone’s firmware.

I decided to check one suspect — TouchPal — as what seemed to me the most brazen app. I blocked its access to calls — the popups seem to have stopped for now. I’ll keep watching.

Chess

Sun, 13 Nov 2016 23:23:00 +0000

Got an invitation to a corporate chess tournament — I had marked somewhere that I enjoy chess, so they found me and sent an invite. The game is online. Haven’t played in a while; curious how chess affects work, life, and decision-making.

Need to catch up) Not expecting any prizes, but I’ll take the enjoyment from the process, in the spirit of the Coubertin principle.

ITIL from scratch

Sun, 16 Oct 2016 08:39:00 +0000

I’m taking an ITIL course and remembered that I once invented my own CMDB without knowing any ITIL practices or recommendations.

It’s hard to say whether it’s a good thing that I’m so clever, or a bad thing that I hadn’t read up on it when I should have.

docker

Fri, 15 Jul 2016 18:24:00 +0000

Installed Docker on the laptop.

Had been afraid of it locally for a long time — figured it would eat up all the space and thrash the SSD.

But eventually had to bite the bullet. Moved /var/lib/docker via a symlink to the HDD, will keep an eye on the space usage.

winbash

Mon, 16 Mar 2015 13:25:00 +0000

As a small preamble to the upcoming article about debugging bash scripts via Eclipse, here’s a note that there is a port called win-bash — a console for Windows.

Yes, everyone knows about Cygwin, but it has certain quirks. Here we have an archive that you just unpack, add to PATH (and then plug into Eclipse and debug, debug…)

nooker

Sun, 15 Mar 2015 13:23:00 +0000

The Nook has its uses: as a tablet it doesn’t justify itself much — pages are awkward to flip through, and browsers don’t recognize the standard Nook buttons — but as an e-reader it’s excellent.

nook

Mon, 02 Mar 2015 16:36:00 +0000

Bought myself a Nook Barnes&Noble Simple Touch Reader.

github

Wed, 25 Feb 2015 23:19:00 +0000

Started a small pet project on GitHub, the main driver being learning collaboration. And also a chance to brush up on some Java.

Media Center: Zentyal — briefly about the bad

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 10:54:00 +0000

In the process of preparing to launch a home server, I ran into Buridan’s ass problem.

NAS or nettop?

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 21:02:00 +0000

My long-held, if somewhat forgotten, dream of setting up a home NAS was rekindled by a post from Tivasyk.

Bluetooth Woes

Sun, 23 Oct 2011 00:24:00 +0000

I’ve been puzzling over this: why didn’t the phone’s manufacturer give it the ability to act as a Bluetooth receiver?

I’d happily lie on the couch and watch a movie through my favorite wired headphones — without a cable running across the entire room.

I’m hoping to find some app that can at least receive audio over Wi-Fi. But Bluetooth would be more elegant and more efficient.

UPD from 2024#

Roku TV has a somewhat similar feature: you install their app on your phone, and the TV routes audio to it — I’m not sure how exactly, whether over Wi-Fi or via the internet. But in the general case, the problem still has no solution.

Vacation and Android

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 10:55:00 +0000

A huge desire of mine, once I go on vacation — to flash my Xperia with some alternative firmware based on Cyanogenmod, there’s just so much tasty stuff packed into it.

1C programmers gonna 1C

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 08:09:00 +0000

Found in the code of an official developer:

 **KvoSpisuem** = Min(RowNU.QuantityNU, **KvoSpisuemBU**);

It should be either “Spisuemo” (Ukrainian) or “Spisyvaem” (Russian).

But here you go — a surzhyk mashup right in the variable names.

Filesystem Tuning

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 20:50:00 +0000

I got fed up with Mint running slowly, especially compared to the beast of a machine at work.

Added the noatime,nodiratime options to /etc/fstab and ran the following command I found:

tune2fs -O has_journal -o journal_data_writeback /dev/sda5

to disable the journal on the root partition. Waiting for Dropbox to sync and then I’ll try rebooting.

Work Machine Upgrade

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 12:10:00 +0000

Now instead of this set of sticks

2 GB each, I have this “sweet pair”:

DDR3 1333MHz, 4 GB each.

Disqus

Fri, 20 May 2011 10:49:00 +0000

Finally got Disqus comments hooked up to Blogger.

Apologies for any lost comments — once I figure out how to migrate them, I’ll bring them back.

If the new comment form isn’t showing up for you, you’ll need to allow JavaScript from this domain.

Firefox

Thu, 19 May 2011 14:17:00 +0000

Looks like I’ll be rolling back to Firefox version 3, because version 4 keeps crashing on Windows — a pile of open tabs, and bam — crash.

With version 3 there was none of that, none of that…

slowly, but (hopefully) surely

Wed, 18 May 2011 13:18:00 +0000

In the 8 days since starting to create a local repository, 39 gigabytes have been downloaded and it has reached the letter L in the largest repository universe.

It’s rough living with a slow internet connection. And mostly it’s because after every disconnection the download stops and only resumes a) manually b) after re-hashing everything already downloaded.

today the whole day was spent recalculating those 39 gigs. what will it be like later when updating all this stuff?

LVM and Repositories

Wed, 11 May 2011 22:02:00 +0000

As I mentioned, I’m setting up a local mirror of repositories — so that the fleet of Linux machines gets updates quickly and over Ethernet. For this, I attached a 100 GB disk to a virtual machine, and now a specially crafted script is downloading repos for two architectures (i386 and amd64) of one distribution — 10.10. If the percentages the script prints to the screen are to be trusted, the final mirror size will be around 60 GB. I think I’ll also need to download repos for 11.04 (and eventually 11.10 as well), so expanding partitions with LVM is becoming practically useful — and even necessary. Once the download finishes (currently at about 15%), I’ll try it out and post recommendations there.

time allocation

Wed, 11 May 2011 09:02:00 +0000

I don’t like Wednesdays.

I want to work in such a way that on Wednesdays I handle backups and testing, and on Fridays — getting acquainted with new materials.

Moving 2

Tue, 10 May 2011 11:06:00 +0000

Recently I got my own domain: http://disfinder.com

My Tumblr blog — the one at http://disfinder.tumblr.com — is now hosted there.

Here, at <p.disfinder.com>, there will be a Blogger blog. I’ll tinker a bit with themes — everyone seems to praise Blogger. Let’s see how it goes.

Having as many as three diaries is a bit of a drag — this one, LiveJournal, and Tumblr.

The current breakdown is roughly this:

Tumblr — only about IT, and with at least some practical value
LiveJournal — about personal life
here — about IT stuff with no practical value. For example, “Microsoft bought Skype. Oh no oh no.”

Happy reading, my dear readers!

moving

Wed, 05 Jan 2011 10:25:00 +0000

I had long since grown disillusioned with Blogger, and for quite some time now I’ve been writing on LiveJournal. The main advantage — threaded comments. But now I’ve decided to write a bit on the Tumblr platform as well, so if anyone is interested in my graphomania — the address is: http://disfinder.tumblr.com

UPD from 2024#

Tumblr as a platform somehow went downhill and was abandoned. They sent emails saying “we’ll delete your account if you don’t click here”, I clicked once, and then stopped bothering — there was nothing interesting there anyway, so that page is gone for good, and rightly so.

What to install after setting up Linux Mint

Sat, 03 Jul 2010 23:04:00 +0000

yakuake
krusader
kvpnc
audacious
dropbox
teamViewer
keepasx
gPodder
opera
choqok
qutim
alltray
archivers
htop
vlock
tcsh
Firefox plugins

Increasing swap

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 19:06:00 +0000

Creating a swap file in FreeBSD

Make sure the virtual disk driver (md(4)) is present in the kernel configuration file. It is included in the GENERIC kernel.

device md # Memory "disks"

Create a swap file (/usr/swap0):

# dd if=/dev/zero of=/usr/swap0 bs=1024k count=64

Set appropriate permissions on (/usr/swap0):

# chmod 0600 /usr/swap0

Enable the swap file in /etc/rc.conf:

swapfile="/usr/swap0" # Set to name of swapfile if aux swapfile desired.

Reboot the computer, or to enable swap right now enter:

# mdconfig -a -t vnode -f /usr/swap0 -u 0 && swapon /dev/md0

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 12:28:00 +0000

Article on ru-board

How to hide a folder (file) in a shared folder

Download here

Violins on the right, drums on the left.

Sun, 25 May 2008 06:20:00 +0000

to boot FreeBSD via ntloader you need

c:\boot0=“FreeBSD”

Flash

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 19:02:00 +0000

Turned out that watching Flash on FreeBSD is a non-trivial task. There is nothing to download from the Adobe site, and after installing from ports, Flash is still not visible in either Opera or Firefox. Found another workaround — will give it a try.

Open the package manager as mentioned above and look for www/linux-flashplugin7, install it. It will install nspluginwrapper too and activate the browser plugin and any other browser plugins (like adobe acroread8) too. Restart the browser and use Flash. www/linuxpluginwrapper is obsolete.

Console in X

Sat, 05 Apr 2008 00:03:00 +0000

When Konsole is running with multiple tabs (logins), users are not shown by w. Interesting questions: a) why? b) what happens to the session if X or Konsole crashes?

Dia, an MS Visio alternative for Linux & Windows

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 13:27:00 +0000

unverified info from an unknown source

Dia was developed in the image and likeness of the commercial Windows application “Visio”, so switching to it should come with no learning curve complications. You can build various diagrams and flowcharts with the same ease. Dia features special tools for simplified drawing of entity-relationship diagrams, UML diagrams, flowcharts, network diagrams, and more.

official site

Windows installer

KDE

Sun, 17 Feb 2008 19:10:00 +0000

Building the subject from ports was not the most optimal decision… At this point the KDE-3.5.8 build on a Duron-750 with ADSL-512k has been running for 21 hours already. What would have been the right way to do it?

NAT

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 14:58:00 +0000

Question — do I need to install anything else to set up NAT, or can ppp handle it on its own? Found this:

http://www.opennet.ru/openforum/vsluhforumID3/3173.html#1

/etc/ppp/ppp.conf:

default:
set device PPPoE:ed0:my_isp's_name
set speed sync
set mru 1492
set mtu 1492
set ctsrts off
enable lqr
add default HISADDR
set timeout 0
set redial 0 0
#NAT
nat enable yes
nat log yes
nat same_ports yes
nat unregistered_only yes
enable dns

my_isp's_name:
set authname username
set authkey password

In rc.conf:

ssh

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 19:21:00 +0000

First rake. ShellGuard, my beloved ShellGuard - won’t connect. sshd is running and configured, I can log in locally on 127.0.0.1. Even PuTTY connected. Though sluggishly. But ShellGuard says

no matching comp found. Client zlib Server: none,zlib@openssh.com

Thanks to opennet. Turns out the fix is

"Compression yes" in /etc/ssh/sshd_config

and also

PasswordAuthentication yes

Though it connected sluggishly too. I’m blaming the huge number of interfaces and a running torrent. If it’s this slow on a real machine (up to 30 seconds to log in), the question will come up again.

Tasks and Questions

Sun, 10 Feb 2008 19:47:00 +0000

Tasks#

install FreeBSD
configure sshd
configure NAT for ADSL
locale russification, but for some reason only for root, even though I set it in /etc/profile
configure X
install KDE
update ports
MS Office under Wine

Questions#

Do I need a firewall? What for?
how the heck do you russify it? I’ve worn the Handbook to shreds…
how do you disconnect a PPPoE connection? how to reconnect after a drop? How to detect a drop?