Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • worm eight day

    Restful weekend.

    I found a nice recipe for a skin care product. Castor oil, rose hips and rosemary, I'll go harvest some rose hips this week, it's the perfect season for that. I don't have dried rosemary, so next time I go in town I'll purchase some fresh organic branches. Something to consider growing this summer. I like the idea of growing lots of herbs, but it's almost late to start from seeds.

    The rose hips give you vitamin e and vitamin c, while the rosemary help with the absorption of collagen and the castor oil has this nourishing property, which the exact name escape my mind at the moment. I've been using castor oil for a while now, mostly for my leg healing, but generally speaking it's a powerful oil. I am not sure if I'll mix this with a lighter oil, like olive oil, or almond, or even use some shea butter to make it fluffy. I think I'll keep it simple for this round.

• Technology and Free Software

  • I Use Gentoo Now

    Well, it began last week. I had noticed that, on Amethyst-II (my T480s), linux-cachyos-hardened hadn't been updated in line with the other kernel flavours in a short while. Rather than wait for it to be updated, I switched back over to the regular linux-cachyos kernel. I then began to notice I had trouble accessing my onion services and eepsites, which I immediately decided was a problem with my system.

    I had no idea where to begin troubleshooting, as I wasn't getting any error messages, so I decided to do a clean install rather than take my chances.

    Quite rashly, I said to my flatmate "Arch has failed me for the last time. At least, for the next eight months". That timeframe is, of course, arbitrary.

    I would later discover that my inability to access the darknet was actually due to an ongoing attack on the networks, and just happened to coincide with my switching of kernels.

  • Wake-on-LAN Script Update

    For context, I use Wake-on-LAN so I don't have to manually power on my cluster of Lenovo machines (worker nodes) every morning. The script checks the MAC addresses of each machine and sends a "magic packet" to wake them up.

    Recently, my script stopped working. My master node Tiny kept running this script but the workers didn't wake up. The reason is that Wake-on-LAN packets are sent as broadcast messages. Without specifying the broadcast IP, the packets were only being sent to a single IP, which doesn't always reach sleeping machines. This is why my machines stopped waking up.

  • Mitch Altman Is Back with a New Longer-Range TV-B-Gone, Now Featuring an Espressif ESP32

    Noted maker Mitch Altman is updating his classic TV-B-Gone, unveiling a next-generation variant that delivers a longer range — and may include code learning and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) connectivity by the time its design is finalized.

    "Imagine a dystopian future, filled with monitors, marketing at us everywhere we go. Sadly, we are living that future now," Altman says of the original origins of his soldering kit design. "This kit is super useful, not only for yourself, but for everyone! And while maybe that's dramatic, the TV-B-Gone is perfect for playing pranks on your friends during the Super Bowl or getting some peace and quiet during dinner."

    At its heart, the TV-B-Gone is nothing more than a scripted infrared emitter: push the button and it runs through a pre-recorded "macro" of flashes designed to replicate the "Off" signal for more than 260 models of TV from around the world. Leave it running while pointing at a set, and eventually it'll hit on the right code to turn it off — bringing blessed peace, or an irate Super Bowl fan depending on when and how you choose to use it.