Træfik and SSLLabs: Reach for A+

Web server security is an ongoing issue these days. Fortunately thanks to Let's Encrypt getting good-quality X.509 certificates for HTTPS is no longer a problem, but we still want to keep our servers up-to-date with the latest developments. For HTTPS-based web sites, the free “SSL Server Test” offered by …

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Buying a Grand Piano in 2021

Unfortunately I don't have enough spare money to buy an actual grand piano (nor the place to put it; it would probably have to double up as a dining table). But the next best thing seems to be Pianoteq by Modartt. This makes your computer sound like a grand piano …

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Jitsi Meet in the Hetzner cloud, with Terraform and cloud-init

With the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in full swing, “social distancing” is the order of the day. Since we're not allowed to get together with our friends and family, video conferencing is surging, and one popular free tool for that is Jitsi Meet. We've had a bunch of video chats on Jitsi …

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Season 12 of The Big Bang Theory is on Netflix!

Season 12 of The Big Bang Theory is now on Netflix! It's the final season (boo) but I suppose we can always start over at the beginning.

Watched the first episode tonight, good fun. Watch for Teller (of Pen & Teller) as Amy's dad, and cameo appearances by Neil deGrasse Tyson …

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Golden Rice Approved in the Philippines

Golden rice, which is rice that has been genetically engineered to contain very high levels of beta-carotene (a precursor to vitamin A), is now officially approved as safe to grow and eat in the Philippines. This will hopefully help reduce illness, blindness, and death in children from vitamin-A deficiency, which …

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New Camera!

I gave myself a new camera for Christmas! When I found out that Olympus had a special offer on the PEN-F kit I couldn't resist, especially given that the PEN-F is no longer being manufactured and it's unlikely that there will be a successor model.

People who follow my photography …

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Easter Tunes

Finished sets for 41 dances for the Central Germany Branch's Easter workshop at the Kuckucksnest. (There are actually 42 dances on Alice's list but she still needs to send me the original tune for a new dance that she wrote herself.) 160 tunes altogether. Hope I can find some …

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The Amazing Spider-Man

Watched The Amazing Spider-Man on Netflix yesterday while casually hacking away on the server move at my desk (living room was occupied by the resident Germany's Next Topmodel fan).

Hadn't realised before that the movie was directed by Marc Webb, which does make a certain amount of sense.

Also hadn't …

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Tales from the PinguCloud, part 1: NFS and WireGuard

[As I've mentioned before, I'm in the process of moving my various web sites from the dedicated server I've been renting with a few pals to the Hetzner Cloud. I'll be blogging about the experience here when (and if) exciting things happen. –A.]

After I'd first read through the Hetzner …

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Hooray, a new web site (and blog)!

I'm in the process of moving all my stuff off the dedicated server I used to rent with a bunch of pals (it's actually the fifth or sixth server now, I lost count somewhere) and into cloud-based hosting which is a lot cheaper and more convenient. This means I get …

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