As some might have noticed, my blog has been silent for a while now, this was due to a lot happening in my private life lately, which I am not going into detail here, but let’s just say most is sorted out by now and with this post more regular updates are planned and going to happen.
Anyway, let’s dive into it.
Updates
The Mac
As mentioned in my last post I switched my main working machine over to a MacBook Air in December, and so far I am still happy with it, although the keyboard layout and window management are still frustrating at times.
I recently discovered a program called UTM (https://mac.getutm.app/) which I am now using for virtualisation on the mac, whenever I need a Linux machine. Rather happy with it, although at times I encountered a couple of bugs. Particularly when first trying to get Ubuntu to boot in it. But compared to Parallels or VMWare it is open source and thus not bound to a stupid subscription licence so the little bugs are more than acceptable.
I also started to make use of a program called magnet which allows window snapping via the keyboard, it improved my workflow by a lot and I can only recommend it. However I also heard about moon which seems to be doing that and a little more, like allowing to set up window layouts, so I might be giving that a try soon.
The server side
The latest guest on my server is a VM serving Jellyfin (https://jellyfin.org/) to my home network. Jellyfin is a home media server, that at the moment allows me to access all of my music collection, movies and pictures wherever I am, I have not had any issues so far. There are apps for Android, iOS and Apple TV for it.
As for music in the car I went back to using a local collection on a usb drive, in order to sync it with my jellyfin I use rsync plus a little python script from github to export my jellyfin playlists to m3u which works perfectly well: https://github.com/SegiH/Emby-and-Jellyfin-Playlist-Exporter
Other than that, nothing much happened lately, due to the lack of time mentioned before
Future Plans
The Blog
I am planning to spend less time messing around with IT-Stuff in my spare time than I did when the pandemic was full on raging all over the planet, but don’t worry, I won’t stop completely and there is a lot of already running stuff I am still planning to write about.
However I figured I could split my blog into topics and expend the things I write about to my offline hobbies, like hiking, ski touring, alpine skiing, photography, gardening and cooking. Maybe drop me a hint whether you would enjoy reading about these things as well on either fosstodon (@thewk@fosstodon.org) or via e-mail admin@thewkblog.com
PC stuff
As I said I plan to spend less time on computers, but I won’t be banning them from my life. One of the next big things I am planning is to introduce multiroom audio in the entire house by the way of sonos and then play to these speakers from jellyfin. All controlled by little RaspberryPies + Touchdisplays so you can alter the music or volume wherever you currently are.
My main workhorse machine, a self built PC, is currently running on Ubuntu, however I am currently playing around with the nightly builds of Fedora 36 and I really like what I am seeing there, so I might be switching it over as soon as 36 is out, not sure yet though.
The Server
A long time ago I posted the first entry of what was supposed to be a mini series about docker, but as usual something came up (namely the stuff that puts the food on the table) and I didn’t have the time to continue learning docker properly. But I have picked it up again and am planning to transition my server infrastructure to docker over the course of this year. As far as my current understanding of the technologies goes this step should make my backup and update process way easier and thus reduce the time spent on routine work.
Final thoughts
So yeah, this is it, the post I reboot my blog with, a lot of plans and hopefully enough time to come through on all of them. I also hope that after the long silence there are still some of you out there who would like to continue reading these little posts.