2nd Week of 2024

Activism ⚑

New: Introduction to activism.

Activism consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct or intervene in social, political, economic or environmental reform with the desire to make changes in society toward a perceived greater good.

Life Management⚑

Life review ⚑

New: Thoughts on the reviews themselves.
- Keep It Simple: It's important for the process to be light enough that you want to actually do it, so you see it as a help instead of a burden. It's always better to do a small and quick review rather than nothing at all. At the start of the review analyze yourself to assess how much energy do you have and decide which steps of the review you want to do.
- Review approaches: In the past I used the life logging tools to analyze the past in order to understand what I achieved and take it as a base to learn from my mistakes. It was useful when I needed the endorphines boost of seeing all the progress done. Once I assumed that progress speed and understood that we always do the best we can given how we are, I started to feel that the review process was too cumbersome and that it was holding me into the past.
Nowadays I try not to look back but forward, analyze the present: how I feel, how's the environment around me, and how can I tweak both to fulfill my life goals. This approach leads to less reviewing of achievements and logs and more introspection, thinking and imagining. Which although may be slower to correct mistakes of the past, will surely make you live closer to the utopy.

The reviews below then follow that second approach.
- Personal alive reviews: Reviews have to reflect ourselves, and we change continuously, so take for granted that your review is going to change.
I've gone for full blown reviews of locking myself up for a week to not doing reviews for months.

This article represent the guidelines I follow to do my life review. It may seem a lot to you or may be very simple. Please take it as a base or maybe to get some ideas and then create your own that fits your needs.
New: Update the Month review process.
New: When to do the trimester reviews.

As with moth reviews, it's interesting to do analysis at representative moments. It gives it an emotional weight. You can for example use the solstices or my personal version of the solstices:
- Spring analysis (1^st of March): For me the spring is the real start of the year, it's when life explodes after the stillness of the winter. The sun starts to set later enough so that you have light in the afternoons, the climate gets warmer thus inviting you to be more outside, the nature is blooming new leaves and flowers. It is then a moment to build new projects and set the current year on track.
- Summer analysis (1^st of June): I hate heat, so summer is a moment of retreat. Everyone temporarily stop their lives, we go on holidays and all social projects slow their pace. Even the news have even less interesting things to report. It's so hot outside that some of us seek the cold refuge of home or remote holiday places. Days are long and people love to hang out till late, so usually you wake up later, thus having less time to actually do stuff. Even in the moments when you are alone the heat drains your energy to be productive. It is then a moment to relax and gather forces for the next trimester. It's also perfect to develop easy and chill personal projects that have been forgotten in a drawer. Lower your expectations and just flow with what your body asks you.
- Autumn analysis (1^st of September): September it's another key moment for many people. We have it hardcoded in our life since we were children as it was the start of school. People feel energized after the summer holidays and are eager to get back to their lives and stopped projects. You're already 6 months into the year, so it's a good moment to review your year plan and decide how you want to invest your energy reserves.
- Winter analysis (1^st of December): December is the cue that the year is coming to an end. The days grow shorter and colder, they basically invite you to enjoy a cup of tea under a blanket. It is then a good time to get into your cave and do an introspection analysis on the whole year and prepare the ground for the coming year. Some of the goals of this season are:
- Think everything you need to guarantee a good, solid and powerful spring start.
- Do the year review to adjust your principles.
The year is then divided in two sets of an expansion trimester and a retreat one. We can use this information to adjust our life plan accordingly. In the expansion trimester we could invest more energies in the planning, and in the retreat ones we can do more throughout reviews.
New: The principle documents.

Principle documents for me are orgmode documents where I think about the principle itself. It acts both as a way of understanding it and evolving my idea around it, and to build the roadmap to materialize the principle's path.

Without ever having created one I feel that it makes sense to make the reflection part public in the blue book, while I keep for myself the private one. This may also change between principles.
New: The life path document.

The life path document is an orgmode document where I think about what I want to do with my life and how. It's the highest level of abstraction of the life management system.

The structure so far is as follows:
```
* Life path
** {year}
*** Principles of {season} {year}
    {Notes on the season}
    - Principle 1
    - Principle 2
    ...

**** Objectives of {month} {year}
     - [-] Objective 1
       - [X] SubObjective 1
       - [ ] SubObjective 2
     - [ ] Objective 2
     - [ ] ...
```
Where the principles are usually links to principle documents and the objectives links to tasks.
New: Trimester prepare.

The trimester review requires an analysis that doesn't fill in a day session. It requires slow thinking over some time. So I'm creating a task 10 days before the actual review to start thinking about the next trimester. Whether it's ideas, plans, desires, objectives, or principles.

Is useful for that document to be available wherever you go, so that in any spare time you can pop it up and continue with the train of thought.

Doing the reflection without seeing your life path prevents you from being tainted by it, thus representing the real you of right now.

On the day to actually do the review, follow the steps of the Month review prepare adjusting them to the trimester case.

Task Management⚑

Org Mode ⚑

New: Start working on a task dates.

SCHEDULED defines when you are plan to start working on that task.

The headline is listed under the given date. In addition, a reminder that the scheduled date has passed is present in the compilation for today, until the entry is marked as done or disabled.
```
*** TODO Call Trillian for a date on New Years Eve.
    SCHEDULED: <2004-12-25 Sat>
```
Although is not a good idea (as it promotes the can pushing through the street), if you want to delay the display of this task in the agenda, use SCHEDULED: <2004-12-25 Sat -2d> the task is still scheduled on the 25^th but will appear two days later. In case the task contains a repeater, the delay is considered to affect all occurrences; if you want the delay to only affect the first scheduled occurrence of the task, use --2d instead.

Scheduling an item in Org mode should not be understood in the same way that we understand scheduling a meeting. Setting a date for a meeting is just a simple appointment, you should mark this entry with a simple plain timestamp, to get this item shown on the date where it applies. This is a frequent misunderstanding by Org users. In Org mode, scheduling means setting a date when you want to start working on an action item.

You can set it with <leader>s (Default: <leader>ois)
New: Deadlines.

DEADLINE are like appointments in the sense that it defines when the task is supposed to be finished on. On the deadline date, the task is listed in the agenda. The difference with appointments is that you also see the task in your agenda if it is overdue and you can set a warning about the approaching deadline, starting org_deadline_warning_days before the due date (14 by default). It's useful then to set DEADLINE for those tasks that you don't want to miss that the deadline is over.

An example:
```
* TODO Do this
DEADLINE: <2023-02-24 Fri>
```
You can set it with <leader>d (Default: <leader>oid).

If you need a different warning period for a special task, you can specify it. For example setting a warning period of 5 days DEADLINE: <2004-02-29 Sun -5d>.

If you're as me, you may want to remove the warning feature of DEADLINES to be able to keep your agenda clean. Most of times you are able to finish the task in the day, and for those that you can't specify a SCHEDULED date. To do so set the default number of days to 0.
```
require('orgmode').setup({
  org_deadline_warning_days = 0,
})
```
Using too many tasks with a DEADLINE will clutter your agenda. Use it only for the actions that you need to have a reminder, instead try to using appointment dates instead. The problem of using appointments is that once the date is over you don't get a reminder in the agenda that it's overdue, if you need this, use DEADLINE instead.
New: How to deal with overdue SCHEDULED and DEADLINE tasks.

Knowledge Management⚑

Anki ⚑

New: What to do when you need to edit a card but don't have the time.

You can mark it with a red flag so that you remember to edit it the next time you see it.

Grocy Management ⚑

New: Doing the inventory review.

I haven't found a way to make the grocy inventory match the reality because for me it's hard to register when I consume a product. Even more if other people also use them. Therefore I use grocy only to know what to buy without thinking about it. For that use case the inventory needs to meet reality only before doing the groceries. I usually do a big shopping of non-perishable goods at the supermarket once each two or three months, and a weekly shopping of the rest.

Tracking the goods that are bought each week makes no sense as those are things that are clearly seen and are very variable depending on the season. Once I've automated the ingestion and consumption of products it will, but so far it would mean investing more time than the benefit it gives.

This doesn't apply to the big shopping, as this one is done infrequently, so we need a better planning.

To do the inventory review I use a tablet and the android app.
- Open the stock overview and iterate through the locations to:
- Make sure that the number of products match the reality
  - Iterate over the list of products checking the quantity
  - Look at the location to see if there are missing products in the inventory
- Adjust the product properties (default location, minimum amount)
- Check the resulting shopping list and adjust the minimum values.
- Check the list of missing products to adjust the minimum values. I have a notepad in the fridge where I write the things I miss.

Coding⚑

Languages⚑

Bash snippets ⚑

New: Show the progresion of a long running task with dots.

echo -n "Process X is running."

sleep 1
echo -n "."
sleep 1
echo -n "."

echo ""

lua ⚑

New: Inspect contents of Lua table in Neovim.

When using Lua inside of Neovim you may need to view the contents of Lua tables, which are a first class data structure in Lua world. Tables in Lua can represent ordinary arrays, lists, symbol tables, sets, records, graphs, trees, etc.

If you try to just print a table directly, you will get the reference address for that table instead of the content, which is not very useful for most debugging purposes:
```
:lua print(vim.api.nvim_get_mode())
" table: 0x7f5b93e5ff88
```
To solve this, Neovim provides the vim.inspect function as part of its API. It serializes the content of any Lua object into a human readable string.

For example you can get information about the current mode like so:
```
:lua print(vim.inspect(vim.api.nvim_get_mode()))
" {  blocking = false,  mode = "n"}
```

Boto3 ⚑

New: Get running instances.

import boto3

ec2 = boto3.client('ec2')

running_instances = [
    instance
    for page in ec2.get_paginator('describe_instances').paginate()
    for reservation in page['Reservations']
    for instance in reservation['Instances']]
    if instance['State']['Name'] == 'running'
]

SQLite ⚑

New: Order by a column descending.

SELECT
   select_list
FROM
   table
ORDER BY
    column_1 ASC,
    column_2 DESC;

Python Snippets ⚑

New: Get unique items between two lists.

If you want all items from the second list that do not appear in the first list you can write:
```
x = [1,2,3,4]
f = [1,11,22,33,44,3,4]

result = set(f) - set(x)
```
New: Pad number with zeros.
```
number = 1
print(f"{number:02d}")
```

Pydantic ⚑

New: Nicely show validation errors.

A nice way of showing it is to capture the error and print it yourself:

try:
    model = Model(
        state=state,
    )
except ValidationError as error:
    log.error(f'Error building model with state {state}')
    raise error

New: Load a pydantic model from json.

You can use the model_validate_json method that will validate and return an object with the loaded data.

from datetime import date

from pydantic import BaseModel, ConfigDict, ValidationError

class Event(BaseModel):
    model_config = ConfigDict(strict=True)

    when: date
    where: tuple[int, int]

json_data = '{"when": "1987-01-28", "where": [51, -1]}'
print(Event.model_validate_json(json_data))

try:
    Event.model_validate({'when': '1987-01-28', 'where': [51, -1]})

except ValidationError as e:
    print(e)
    """
    2 validation errors for Event
    when
      Input should be a valid date [type=date_type, input_value='1987-01-28', input_type=str]
    where
      Input should be a valid tuple [type=tuple_type, input_value=[51, -1], input_type=list]
    """

Git ⚑

Correction: Search for alternatives to git-sweep.

The tool is no longer maintained but there is still no good alternative. I've found some but are either not popular and/or not maintained:

DevOps ⚑

New: Set default quality of request per user.

Sometimes one specific user continuously asks for a better quality of the content. If you go into the user configuration (as admin) you can set the default quality profiles for that user.

Infrastructure as Code⚑

Gitea ⚑

Correction: Update disable regular login with oauth.

The last signin_inner.tmpl failed with the latest version. I've uploaded the new working one.

Infrastructure Solutions⚑

Kubernetes ⚑

New: Introduce IceKube.

IceKube tool for finding complex attack paths in Kubernetes clusters. It's like Bloodhound for Kubernetes. It uses Neo4j to store & analyze Kubernetes resource relationships → identify attack paths & security misconfigs

AWS Savings plan ⚑

New: Understanding how reserved instances are applied.

A Reserved Instance that is purchased for a Region is called a regional Reserved Instance, and provides Availability Zone and instance size flexibility.

The Reserved Instance discount applies to instance usage in any Availability Zone in that Region.
The Reserved Instance discount applies to instance usage within the instance family, regardless of size—this is known as instance size flexibility.

With instance size flexibility, the Reserved Instance discount applies to instance usage for instances that have the same family, generation, and attribute. The Reserved Instance is applied from the smallest to the largest instance size within the instance family based on the normalization factor.

The discount applies either fully or partially to running instances of the same instance family, depending on the instance size of the reservation, in any Availability Zone in the Region. The only attributes that must be matched are the instance family, tenancy, and platform.

The following table lists the different sizes within an instance family, and the corresponding normalization factor. This scale is used to apply the discounted rate of Reserved Instances to the normalized usage of the instance family.

Instance size	Normalization factor
nano	0.25
micro	0.5
small	1
medium	2
large	4
xlarge	8
2xlarge	16
3xlarge	24
4xlarge	32
6xlarge	48
8xlarge	64
9xlarge	72
10xlarge	80
12xlarge	96
16xlarge	128
18xlarge	144
24xlarge	192
32xlarge	256
48xlarge	384
56xlarge	448
112xlarge	896

For example, a t2.medium instance has a normalization factor of 2. If you purchase a t2.medium default tenancy Amazon Linux/Unix Reserved Instance in the US East (N. Virginia) and you have two running t2.small instances in your account in that Region, the billing benefit is applied in full to both instances.

Or, if you have one t2.large instance running in your account in the US East (N. Virginia) Region, the billing benefit is applied to 50% of the usage of the instance.

Limitations:

Supported: Instance size flexibility is only supported for Regional Reserved Instances.
Not supported: Instance size flexibility is not supported for the following Reserved Instances:
- Reserved Instances that are purchased for a specific Availability Zone (zonal Reserved Instances)
- Reserved Instances for G4ad, G4dn, G5, G5g, and Inf1 instances
- Reserved Instances for Windows Server, Windows Server with SQL Standard, Windows Server with SQL Server Enterprise, Windows Server with SQL Server Web, RHEL, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
- Reserved Instances with dedicated tenancy

Monitoring⚑

Promtail ⚑

New: Introduce Promtail.

Promtail is an agent which ships the contents of local logs to a Loki instance.

It is usually deployed to every machine that runs applications which need to be monitored.

It primarily:
- Discovers targets
- Attaches labels to log streams
- Pushes them to the Loki instance.

Hardware⚑

GPU ⚑

New: Introduce GPU.

GPU or Graphic Processing Unit is a specialized electronic circuit initially designed to accelerate computer graphics and image processing (either on a video card or embedded on motherboards, mobile phones, personal computers, workstations, and game consoles).

For years I've wanted to buy a graphic card but I've been stuck in the problem that I don't have a desktop. I have a X280 lenovo laptop used to work and personal use with an integrated card that has let me so far to play old games such as King Arthur Gold or Age of Empires II, but has hard times playing "newer" games such as It takes two. Last year I also bought a NAS with awesome hardware. So it makes no sense to buy a desktop just for playing.

Now that I host Jellyfin on the NAS and that machine learning is on the hype with a lot of interesting solutions that can be self-hosted (whisper, chatgpt similar solutions...), it starts to make sense to add a GPU to the server. What made me give the step is that you can also self-host a gaming server to stream to any device! It makes so much sense to have all the big guns inside the NAS and stream the content to the less powerful devices.

That way if you host services, you make the most use of the hardware.

Operating Systems⚑

Linux⚑

Linux Snippets ⚑

New: Makefile use bash instead of sh.

The program used as the shell is taken from the variable SHELL. If this variable is not set in your makefile, the program /bin/sh is used as the shell.

So put SHELL := /bin/bash at the top of your makefile, and you should be good to go.
New: Recover the message of a commit if the command failed.

git commit can fail for reasons such as gpg.commitsign = true && gpg fails, or when running a pre-commit. Retrying the command opens a blank editor and the message seems to be lost.

The message is saved though in .git/COMMIT_EDITMSG, so you can:
```
git commit -m "$(cat .git/COMMIT_EDITMSG)"
```
Or in general (suitable for an alias for example):
```
git commit -m "$(cat "$(git rev-parse --git-dir)/COMMIT_EDITMSG)")"
```

beancount ⚑

New: Comments.

Any text on a line after the character ; is ignored, text like this:

; I paid and left the taxi, forgot to take change, it was cold.
2015-01-01 * "Taxi home from concert in Brooklyn"
  Assets:Cash      -20 USD  ; inline comment
  Expenses:Taxi

Dino ⚑

New: Disable automatic OMEMO key acceptance.

Dino automatically accepts new OMEMO keys from your own other devices and your chat partners by default. This default behaviour leads to the fact that the admin of the XMPP server could inject own public OMEMO keys without user verification, which enables the owner of the associated private OMEMO keys to decrypt your OMEMO secured conversation without being easily noticed.

To prevent this, two actions are required, the second consists of several steps and must be taken for each new chat partner.
- First, the automatic acceptance of new keys from your own other devices must be deactivated. Configure this in the account settings of your own accounts.
- Second, the automatic acceptance of new keys from your chat partners must be deactivated. Configure this in the contact details of every chat partner. Be aware that in the case of group chats, the entire communication can be decrypted unnoticed if even one partner does not actively deactivate automatic acceptance of new OMEMO keys.
Always confirm new keys from your chat partner before accepting them manually
New: Dino does not use encryption by default.

You have to initially enable encryption in the conversation window by clicking the lock-symbol and choose OMEMO. Future messages and file transfers to this contact will be encrypted with OMEMO automatically.
- Every chat partner has to enable encryption separately.
- If only one of two chat partner has activated OMEMO, only this part of the communication will be encrypted. The same applies with file transfers.
- If you get a message "This contact does not support OMEMO" make sure that your chatpartner has accepted the request to add him to your contact list and you accepted vice versa

New: Install in Tails.

If you have more detailed follow this article at the same time as you read this one. That one is more outdated but more detailed.

Boot a clean Tails
Create and configure the Persistent Storage
Restart Tails and open the Persistent Storage

Configure the persistence of the directory:

echo -e '/home/amnesia/.local/share/dino source=dino' | sudo tee -a /live/persistence/TailsData_unlocked/persistence.conf > /dev/null

Restart Tails

Install the application:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install dino-im

Configure the dino-im alias to use torsocks

sudo echo 'alias dino="torsocks dino-im &> /dev/null &"' >> /live/persistence/TailsData_unlocked/dotfiles/.bashrc
echo 'alias dino="torsocks dino-im &> /dev/null &"' >> ~/.bashrc

Moonlight ⚑

New: Introduce moonlight.

Moonlight is an open source client implementation of NVIDIA GameStream that allows you to to stream your collection of games and apps from your GameStream-compatible PC to another device on your network or the Internet. You can play your favorite games on your PC, phone, tablet, or TV with Moonlight..

References:
- Home
- Docs

Syncthing ⚑

New: Change the path of a folder.
- Shutdown Syncthing
- Edit the config file (~/.config/syncthing/config.xml)
- Search and replace the path
- Start again syncthing

Android⚑

GrapheneOS ⚑

Correction: Installation on GrapheneOS.

On GrapheneOS you may need to enable the restricted permissions
New: Disable Bluetooth and Wifi once it's disconnected.

If you don't want to go spreading your SSIDs you can configure graphene to disable wifi and bluetooth X minutes after loosing connection.

For Wifi:
- Go to Settings > network & internet > internet > network preferences
- Select Turn off Wi-Fi automatically, for example after 2 minutes
For Bluetooth:
- Go to Settings > connected devices > connection preferences> bluetooth
- Select Turn Bluetooth off automatically, for example after 2 minutes

Arts⚑

Cleaning⚑

Cleaning tips ⚑

New: Cleaning car headlights.

If you need to clean the car headlights you can use a mixture of one squeezed lemon and two spoonfuls of baking soda

Languages⚑

Castellano ⚑

New: El agua o la agua?.

El sustantivo agua es de género femenino, pero tiene la particularidad de comenzar por /a/ tónica (la vocal tónica de una palabra es aquella en la que recae el acento de intensidad: [água]). Por razones de fonética histórica, este tipo de palabras seleccionan en singular la forma el del artículo, en lugar de la forma femenina normal la. Esta regla solo opera cuando el artículo antecede inmediatamente al sustantivo, de ahí que digamos el agua, el área, el hacha; pero, si entre el artículo y el sustantivo se interpone otra palabra, la regla queda sin efecto, de ahí que digamos la misma agua, la extensa área, la afilada hacha. Puesto que estas palabras son femeninas, los adjetivos deben concordar siempre en femenino: el agua clara, el área extensa, el hacha afilada (y no el agua claro, el área extenso, el hacha afilado).

Por su parte, el indefinido una toma generalmente la forma un cuando antecede inmediatamente a sustantivos femeninos que comienzan por /a/ tónica: un área, un hacha, un águila (si bien no es incorrecto, aunque sí poco frecuente, utilizar la forma plena una: una área, una hacha, una águila). Asimismo, los indefinidos alguna y ninguna pueden adoptar en estos casos las formas apocopadas (algún alma, ningún alma) o mantener las formas plenas (alguna alma, ninguna alma).

Al tratarse de sustantivos femeninos, con los demostrativos este, ese, aquel o con cualquier otro adjetivo determinativo, como todo, mucho, poco, otro, etc., deben usarse las formas femeninas correspondientes: esta hacha, aquella misma arma, toda el agua, mucha hambre, etc. (y no este hacha, aquel mismo arma, todo el agua, mucho hambre, etc.)

Galego ⚑

New: Add some galego vocabulary.
New: Introduce galego.

O galego é unha lingua indoeuropea que pertence á póla de linguas románicas. É a lingua propia de Galiza, onde é falada por uns 2.4 millóns de galegas. Á parte de en Galiza, a lingua falase tamén en territórios limítrofes con esta comunidade, ainda que sen estatuto de oficialidade, asi como pola diáspora galega que emigrou a outras partes do estado español, América latina, os Estados Unidos, Suíza e outros países do Europa.
New: Te e che. Trucos para saber diferencialos.

En galego temos dúas formas para o pronome átono da segunda persoa do singular: te e che.

O pronome te ten a función de complemento directo (CD) e o pronome che de complemento indirecto (CI).

Cando se utiliza o pronome te?

O pronome te utilízase cando ten a función de CD, propio dos verbos transitivos, xa que alude ao ser ou ao obxecto sobre o que recae a acción verbal.

Se convertemos a oración en pasiva, o CD pasa a ser o suxeito. Por exemplo:

Vinte na cafetería / Ti fuches visto por min na cafetería.

Cando se utiliza o pronome che?

O pronome che utilízase cando ten a función de CI, xa que indica o destinatario da acción expresada polo verbo. Por exemplo:

Díxenche a verdade.

Compreiche unhas lambonadas.

Truco para saber diferencialos

Un truco moi rápido para diferenciarmos os pronomes te e che é substituír eses pronomes de segunda persoa polos de terceira.

Se podemos cambiar ese pronome por o/lo/no ou a/la/na, quere dicir que o pronome vai ser de CD. Polo tanto, temos que poñer te.

Saudeite onte pola rúa / Saudeino onte pola rúa.

Chameite por teléfono / Chameina por teléfono.

Se podemos substituílo por un lle, significa que é un pronome de CI e que debemos utilizar o che.

Lévoche mañá os apuntamentos / Lévolle mañá os apuntamentos.

Collinche as entradas do concerto / Collinlle as entradas do concerto.
New: Uso de asemade.

Asemade pode utilizarse como adverbio cando ten o significado de ‘ao mesmo tempo’ ou ‘simultaneamente’. Ainda que normalmente úsase no registro culto, non utilizalo na fala.
- Non se pode comer e falar asemade.
- Non podes facer os deberes e ver a televisión asemade, pois non te concentras.
Tamén se pode utilizar como conxunción co significado de ‘tan pronto como’.
- Foi o primeiro que vimos asemade entramos.
- Recoñecino asemade o vin.
É incorrecto empregar asemade como sinónimo de tamén, ademais ou igualmente.
New: Referencias e libros de gramática.

Referencias:
Libros gramática:

Other⚑

New: Inhibit rules between times.

To prevent some alerts to be sent between some hours you can use the time_intervals alertmanager configuration.

This can be useful for example if your backup system triggers some alerts that you don't need to act on.

```yaml route: receiver: 'email' group_by: [job, alertname, severity] group_wait: 5m group_interval: 5m repeat_interval: 12h routes: - receiver: 'email' matchers: - alertname =~ "HostCpuHighIowait|HostContextSwitching|HostUnusualDiskWriteRate" - hostname = backup_server mute_time_intervals: - night time_intervals: - name: night time_intervals: - times: - start_time: 02:00 end_time: 07:00