How Photographic Film Works

Some of you may know this. Some of you may not. But here’s something interesting: nowadays, cameras are everywhere, as in, just about everyone has one in their pocket. Sure, digital cameras are just counting photons hitting some silicon. But, before that? We had film. Film that recorded photos physically with chemical changes. And, I personally find that the science behind that is rather fascinating.

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WebDAV Explained: Filesystems Over HTTP

So I take it some people reading this are familiar with what I’ll call a ‘remote filesystem protocol’ like NFS, SMB, or AFP. Well, did you know there’s one that’s found use in a few places and you’ve maybe heard of once or twice, and really… well, doesn’t sound like it should make any sense? Welcome to WebDAV. The remote filesystem that runs over HTTP.

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My Next Obsolete Hobby: Film Photography

So here’s the thing. Compared to my other camera, the Nikon D7000, what I just bought is a 100% complete downgrade. However, I cannot resist the possibility of experiencing an era that had more or less ended before I was born. So, what did I do? I bought a 39 year old Nikon FG, which takes… 35mm film. But I won’t be stopping at just taking pictures… you’ll see shortly ;)

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IRC Is an Insanely Simple Protocol

This is where I’d usually make some joke about “if you remember, back in the day…” but… given how Freenode and Libera have been in the news recently for Freenode’s rather hostile takeover (and suicide), You probably know what IRC is. So. IRC, or Internet Relay Chat, is a really old (as in, 1988) protocol for text-based communications between users on a network. And the cool part is, it’s so simple that it’s almost funny. Like, let’s take a look. You could actually, with only a few minutes of reading, just enter raw IRC protocol lines by hand and have a perfectly valid and functional session.

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Matrix: Decentralized, Federated Chat

Do you like secure chat apps? but actually secure, not like Telegram? And end-to-end encrypted, if selected? And ones that support sending media, and files, and even voice and video calls? And completely decentralized meaning you don’t need to rely on any one company or any one third-party server?

Well do I have a deal for you: Matrix.

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Graylog, and the Syslog Protocol, Explained

So if you’ve tried enterprise log management systems, you’ve likely heard of Syslog. If you haven’t, Syslog, is, well, a protocol designed to allow multiple hosts to send their system logs over the network to some other server where they can be analyzed and stored. It’s another one of those weird UDP protocols, and this one is actually stupid simple, even in both of the commonly used forms! Oh, we’ll also cover the one piece of software that I use that handles Syslog — Graylog, which by itself is also really cool.

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TDNET 2.0: the New Homelab (Part 2)

Part 2 of 2

Now, this is the second part of a two-part post, that one covered the tech and background, and this will be the tour. So, let’s begin, running this one front-to-back.

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TDNET 2.0: the New Homelab (Part 1)

Part 1 of 2

A first for me, this post is going to come in two parts. This one will cover the tech behind everything, and the second will actually be a new network tour. I’ve finally finished one of the biggest, if not the biggest project I’ve undertaken in a while: overhauling pretty much my entire network.

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Self Hosted Password Manager: vaultwarden

Updated May 1st, 2020

You familiar with Bitwarden? It’s another one of those password manager services that comes as a browser extension or standalone program, and allows for things like storing TOTP keys, generating new, secure passwords, and all that fun stuff. Except unlike others that I’ve seen, it has one difference: You can self-host an instance. Though, their self-hosted options look a little lacking unless you want to give them money. Well as it happens with an open sourced project, someone decided to create a Bitwarden API compatible server, thus creating vaultwarden. And this is why it’s cool.

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