https://jeff.noxon.cc/tags/tech/Recent content in Tech on @jnoxon's thoughtsHugo -- gohugo.ioen-usjeff@noxon.cc (Jeff Noxon)jeff@noxon.cc (Jeff Noxon)Copyright © 2000-2019 Jeff Noxon. All Rights Reserved.Thu, 17 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000https://jeff.noxon.cc/2020/09/17/using-custom-dns-over-https-with-coredns-and-chrome/Thu, 17 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000jeff@noxon.cc (Jeff Noxon)https://jeff.noxon.cc/2020/09/17/using-custom-dns-over-https-with-coredns-and-chrome/I’ve been using CoreDNS on my home network infrastructure for a few years, and it’s worked really well. One of the things I use it for is translating local DNS queries into DNS-over-TLS queries, which keeps my ISP from inspecting and manipulating DNS lookups. That use case is well documented and works well. Today I found myself wanting to override the DNS provider used by just one browser on my computer.https://jeff.noxon.cc/2019/03/17/expanding-btrfs-filesystems/Sun, 17 Mar 2019 19:29:06 -0500jeff@noxon.cc (Jeff Noxon)https://jeff.noxon.cc/2019/03/17/expanding-btrfs-filesystems/A few months ago, I migrated a bunch of media from a ZFS mirror on my Mac to my home server VM. I used mismatched drives that I happened to have on hand, and while it works fine, I might as well replace the disks with the ones from the ZFS pool that I’m not using any more. While ZFS works reasonably well, it carries a ton of technical and political debt, particularly on Linux.https://jeff.noxon.cc/2019/03/17/using-commento-with-hugo/Sun, 17 Mar 2019 19:29:06 -0500jeff@noxon.cc (Jeff Noxon)https://jeff.noxon.cc/2019/03/17/using-commento-with-hugo/Although this site has never received much comment volume, there have been occasions where comments have been quite valuable. One popular solution for static sites is to use Disqus, which is a fully hosted comment system that many Hugo themes support right out of the box. Disqus is free, but you pay for it with lost privacy, third-party trackers, and bloat. I’ve decided instead to use Commento. There’s a cheap hosted version of Commento, but why not try out the fully self-hosted version?https://jeff.noxon.cc/2019/03/14/migrated-from-wordpress-to-hugo/Thu, 14 Mar 2019 13:17:12 -0500jeff@noxon.cc (Jeff Noxon)https://jeff.noxon.cc/2019/03/14/migrated-from-wordpress-to-hugo/I’ve migrated this blog from WordPress to Hugo. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. WordPress is a bit of a security nightmare, and although I’ve somehow never had my server owned, I did notice a couple of successful exfiltration attacks against WordPress while reviewing logs. Thankfully, the attacks were harmless. If you subscribe to my RSS feed, you’ll notice some repeated content. It wasn’t worth the effort to match the content GUIDs.https://jeff.noxon.cc/2019/02/12/using-pci-pass-through-in-vmware-esxi-6-7-on-a-2012-mac-mini/Wed, 13 Feb 2019 02:50:28 +0000jeff@noxon.cc (Jeff Noxon)https://jeff.noxon.cc/2019/02/12/using-pci-pass-through-in-vmware-esxi-6-7-on-a-2012-mac-mini/I use a 2012 Mac Mini as a home VMware ESXi server. It’s a surprisingly great little machine, with exceptionally low power consumption and good performance. It runs several Linux and Windows VMs. I’ve been gradually migrating applications to it, and the most recent is my home PLEX server. To do that, I needed to move a Thunderbolt disk enclosure (OWC ThunderBay 4) to the Mini and attach it to a Linux VM.https://jeff.noxon.cc/2018/12/28/setting-up-wireguard-between-linux-and-ios/Fri, 28 Dec 2018 17:57:09 +0000jeff@noxon.cc (Jeff Noxon)https://jeff.noxon.cc/2018/12/28/setting-up-wireguard-between-linux-and-ios/WireGuard is a modern VPN that’s designed to be easy to configure, performant, and secure. The ease-of-configuration is really important. If you’ve ever set up IPsec, you know what I mean. OpenVPN isn’t awful, but it isn’t good, either. WireGuard has both a Linux kernel implementation as well as a Go-based portable implementation that works on Mac and iOS. Official Windows support doesn’t exist yet, but is on the way.https://jeff.noxon.cc/2018/12/27/tv-standards-are-still-a-mess/Thu, 27 Dec 2018 21:48:27 +0000jeff@noxon.cc (Jeff Noxon)https://jeff.noxon.cc/2018/12/27/tv-standards-are-still-a-mess/I picked up a Vizio PQ65-F1 4K TV during the holiday sale season, and it’s a tremendous upgrade from our old LCD, an almost 10-year-old Sharp. The color and dynamic range are amazing and I don’t regret skipping OLED at all. I haven’t played with the built-in TV app platform at all, preferring instead to use an Apple TV 4K as the sole source device. Sadly, TV’s continue to be anything but plug-and-play.https://jeff.noxon.cc/2018/11/21/lego-nightstand-light-switch/Wed, 21 Nov 2018 15:47:42 +0000jeff@noxon.cc (Jeff Noxon)https://jeff.noxon.cc/2018/11/21/lego-nightstand-light-switch/I’ve been playing a lot with home automation recently, and in particular I’ve been installing a lot of cheap ESP8266-based Wi-Fi relays, such as the Sonoff Basic, Sonoff SV, Sonoff S31, Sonoff iFan02, and Shelly1, which have all been flashed to run the open-source Tasmota firmware. These communicate with Home Assistant through an MQTT message broker over Wi-Fi. Home Assistant, in turn, allows the devices to work with schedules, timers, voice-activated cylinders, and so on.https://jeff.noxon.cc/2017/08/04/closing-a-yahoo-account/Fri, 04 Aug 2017 21:29:33 +0000jeff@noxon.cc (Jeff Noxon)https://jeff.noxon.cc/2017/08/04/closing-a-yahoo-account/I terminated my Yahoo account on June 24. It was only used for Flickr. Flickr has been in a sad state for years, and is unlikely to improve under Verizon ownership. Yahoo sent the following as a confirmation: It’s strange that the final date is approximate. The 40 days concluded yesterday, August 3. I’ve received several emails recently of spambots liking photos on Flickr, including one this morning (August 4):https://jeff.noxon.cc/2016/03/01/disabling-wi-fi-on-an-lg-smart-refrigerator/Wed, 02 Mar 2016 02:01:49 +0000jeff@noxon.cc (Jeff Noxon)https://jeff.noxon.cc/2016/03/01/disabling-wi-fi-on-an-lg-smart-refrigerator/Our LG LFXS30766S refrigerator is broadcasting an open Wi-Fi access point. I’m sure it’s doing that so LG’s Android app can connect to it and deliver pairing instructions for another AP. Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be any way to disable this feature. LG: If you’re listening, nobody asked for this garbage. Making the door shelves adjustable would be pretty great, though. A $2,300 fridge should have adjustable shelves. I also see LG recently posted a firmware update for this fridge to their website.https://jeff.noxon.cc/2016/02/29/emulating-a-cd-rom-or-dvd-rom-drive/Mon, 29 Feb 2016 21:36:34 +0000jeff@noxon.cc (Jeff Noxon)https://jeff.noxon.cc/2016/02/29/emulating-a-cd-rom-or-dvd-rom-drive/I occasionally encounter situations where a bootable CD or DVD is necessary. Most recently, I had to load an operating system on a server. Before that, I had to burn and boot a CD to update the firmware of a device in my computer. I found out last week that hardware emulators are available that can read .ISO files and pretend to be a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive. On the recommendation of a co-worker, I got a Zalman ZM-V350B.https://jeff.noxon.cc/2016/01/08/led-strip-light-experimentation-part-1/Sat, 09 Jan 2016 02:43:44 +0000jeff@noxon.cc (Jeff Noxon)https://jeff.noxon.cc/2016/01/08/led-strip-light-experimentation-part-1/The first custom lighting project in our new home will be under-cabinet lights in the kitchen. After researching various choices for high-CRI LED strips, I decided to purchase a reel from Flexfire LED’s for experimentation. I settled on the Ultrabright High CRI Series Warm White LED Strip Light. Let me start by saying I’ve never purchased or played with LED strips before, but these are the real deal. I’ve played with demo strips at electronics stores, and the Flexfire strip is much brighter and the color is quite natural.https://jeff.noxon.cc/2015/12/29/lighting-our-new-home/Wed, 30 Dec 2015 03:29:26 +0000jeff@noxon.cc (Jeff Noxon)https://jeff.noxon.cc/2015/12/29/lighting-our-new-home/I’ve been fascinated with lighting since building my first home in 2003. The ceilings in that place have more 6″ downlights than anyone would reasonably install. Continuous Xenon lighting was used under the cabinets in the kitchen and bar. I like a lot of light, and that home demands it with its high ceilings and lack of natural light in the main living spaces. We started out with horrible incandescent 130-volt BR40 reflectors in the ceiling fixtures.https://jeff.noxon.cc/2014/10/28/replacing-dropbox-with-bittorrent-sync/Wed, 29 Oct 2014 04:02:15 +0000jeff@noxon.cc (Jeff Noxon)https://jeff.noxon.cc/2014/10/28/replacing-dropbox-with-bittorrent-sync/[Edit: December, 2015 – Since BitTorrent Sync hit 2.x, I’m no longer using it and I can no longer recommend it.] Too many times, you’ve heard a cloud storage/sync product described as “like Dropbox.” There’s Box, OneDrive, Google Drive, iCloud Drive, Bitcasa, SpiderOak, Wuala, Transporter, and I’ve missed a bunch. It doesn’t matter because they’re all pretty bad, and nearly all have the same problem, which is that any data you upload can be decrypted by the provider.https://jeff.noxon.cc/2014/06/16/testdisk-data-recovery-on-os-x/Tue, 17 Jun 2014 03:08:22 +0000jeff@noxon.cc (Jeff Noxon)https://jeff.noxon.cc/2014/06/16/testdisk-data-recovery-on-os-x/One of the 4TB external USB hard drives I use for local backups started randomly disconnecting a few days ago. Today it failed completely. It’s a Seagate Backup Plus model, where the bottom of the enclosure consists of a small, removable shim that contains the USB & power connections and the USB to SATA converter chip. After trying different USB ports and cables without success, I decided to hook up the drive directly using SATA.https://jeff.noxon.cc/2014/05/09/migrating-virtual-machines-from-amazon-ec2-to-google-compute-engine/Fri, 09 May 2014 17:51:23 +0000jeff@noxon.cc (Jeff Noxon)https://jeff.noxon.cc/2014/05/09/migrating-virtual-machines-from-amazon-ec2-to-google-compute-engine/My Amazon EC2 discount contract is almost up, and I’ve been playing with Google Compute Engine (GCE). Initial impressions are that it’s faster and costs less money, particularly if you don’t want to pay up-front for EC2 reserved instances. Google’s web console is more modern than Amazon’s, though slightly less sophisticated. Google’s CLI tools are much faster and don’t require Java. Google’s API uses JSON instead of XML. In terms of capabilities, GCE is not as advanced as EC2, but it’s vastly more powerful than Linode, Digital Ocean, and the like.https://jeff.noxon.cc/2014/03/26/secure-browsing-on-open-wi-fi-hotspots/Thu, 27 Mar 2014 01:32:12 +0000jeff@noxon.cc (Jeff Noxon)https://jeff.noxon.cc/2014/03/26/secure-browsing-on-open-wi-fi-hotspots/I frequently connect to insecure Wi-Fi networks on my iOS devices and my Mac. Aside from the risk of eavesdropping and malware when connecting to these hotspots, they frequently block access to services, insert advertisements in web pages, or worse. To work around these problems, I’ve tried numerous virtual private network (VPN) services. My experience with most of them has been awful. They tend to connect slowly or not at all, and I frequently can’t access anything on the Internet once the VPN connection is made.https://jeff.noxon.cc/2013/05/29/host-dropbox-public-files-on-your-own-domain-name/Thu, 30 May 2013 02:05:27 +0000jeff@noxon.cc (Jeff Noxon)https://jeff.noxon.cc/2013/05/29/host-dropbox-public-files-on-your-own-domain-name/I’ve been using a Dropbox public folder and some Apache trickery to share files directly from Dropbox on my own domain at pub.noxon.cc. Dropbox is drag-and-drop file sharing at its finest, and by sharing my files on my own domain instead of on dl.dropboxusercontent.com, my files are accessible to corporate folks who would otherwise find themselves blocked by an over-zealous web filter. Last but not least, if one of my files becomes too popular, Dropbox won’t shut down my account.https://jeff.noxon.cc/2013/05/17/google-hangouts-for-ios-google-talk-gets-pushy/Fri, 17 May 2013 12:01:06 +0000jeff@noxon.cc (Jeff Noxon)https://jeff.noxon.cc/2013/05/17/google-hangouts-for-ios-google-talk-gets-pushy/Since switching from Android to iOS, I’ve been looking for an instant messaging client that works well with Google Talk. Push notifications are essential for the “instant” part of instant messaging. Unfortunately, most iOS Talk apps only have push capability until the application times out in the background (10 minutes); One client, Verbs IM Pro (App Store link), has server-based push notifications, but it times out after a week, and has some bugs and reliability issues.