About / Welcome

Fergus Young2 Comments

Welcome,

This site was originally a Forum for family / friends to act as an alternative to using Facebook, however never achieved adoption and subsequently evolved into a personal general blog that it is today (serving as my personal self-hosted surrogate to Facebook).

As always, the views expressed here are my own and (unless otherwise explicitly stated) I do not purport that any of my views to be factually correct and opinions on any given topic are most certainly subjected to change. The intended audience of this blog is Family and friends and the content here should be regarded in the same vein as a series of personal public Facebook posts as opposed to a fully-fledged blog.

Regards,

—
Fergus Young
www.young.kiwi

 

About / Welcome

Sold a domain name (for the first time)

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Ended up flicking off the domain name anhedonia.org. Admittedly I forgot I even had that domain name and the unsolicited offers sent to me were ending up in the Junk folder unbeknownst to me until I went to check that folder.

No, this is not an invitation to begin sending me unsolicited offers to buy any of the other domain names I happen to hold.

Looks like Domain Agents and Escrow.com are legitimate in so much so the proceeds from the domain sale has appeared in my bank account. That said, the mechanics of the domain sale process however I feel could have been made a lot more clearer upfront and feel I was left hanging by Escrow especially particularly on up and coming steps I should be taking in advance to ensure a smooth transaction.

Sold a domain name (for the first time)

Matrix synapse Invalid Repository signatures

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Received this perplexing rookie error while trying to undertake maintenance on one of my virtual servers.

An error occurred during the signature verification. The repository is not updated and the previous index files will be used. GPG error: https://packages.matrix.org/debian bullseye InRelease: The following signatures were invalid: EXPKEYSIG F473DD4473365DE1 matrix.org packages packages@matrix.org

Apparently apart from running the usual such as…

/usr/share/keyrings$ sudo wget -O /usr/share/keyrings/matrix-org-archive-keyring.gpg https://packages.matrix.org/debian/matrix-org-archive-keyring.gpg

…I needed to also hop into /etc/apt/sources.list and comment out the line…

deb https://matrix.org/packages/debian/ focal main

e.g From…

# deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security multiverse
deb https://matrix.org/packages/debian/ focal main
# deb-src https://matrix.org/packages/debian/ focal main

…To…

# deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security multiverse
# deb https://matrix.org/packages/debian/ focal main
# deb-src https://matrix.org/packages/debian/ focal main

After that, was able to upgrade my Matrix Synapse homeserver without error

Matrix synapse Invalid Repository signatures

Grid Lock Screenshot

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Home time traffic on a Friday. Just as well I was working from home today. If I had to deal with this again on a regular basis. Would absolutely lose my freaking mind.

Auckland transport suggest that the Bus Driver Shortage afflicting the region will likely draw to a close in September. That long?

Unfortunately, it seems a few employers are still keen to force people back in the office at all costs while openly admitting that productivity while people were working from home was not actually a problem but simply to say it was “Sad” to walk into a sparse office – I struggle to see how this is a well throughout reason for lumping employees with such a heavy personal cost just to fill “bums on seats” in terms of personal time, commuting cost + stress along with mental health, and more importantly morale.

Grid Lock Screenshot

War of words where no one is a winner

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The issue I have with the events that have transpired over the weekend is that the result was really a loss for both sides of the transgender discussion. Not only that, the impact has apparently spilled over to inflict at least some mild transient damage to New Zealand’s reputation.

Instead of reasoned debate, we ended up in totally unnecessary and counter-productive violence of both the physical and verbal kind. The issue here is instead of making the other side more likely to see and come to understand your point of view, the attacks like this just make the other party dig in, radicalize and double down entrenching a war that frankly does no one any use.

War of words where no one is a winner

Moved from Google Keep to Joplin for note keeping

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Have moved from Google Keep to Joplin.

Screenshot from Joplin’s Linux client.

Only draw back I can see is there is no Web based UI to the thing. Have to use the native platform specific Joplin apps.

Installed Joplin client on Ubuntu 22.04 using this command line.

wget -O - https://raw.githubusercontent.com/laurent22/joplin/dev/Joplin_install_and_update.sh | bash

However, found that Joplin (after double clicking it’s short cut icon) refused to launch. So had to run these commands to lay down something called libfuse2

sudo add-apt-repository universe
sudo apt install libfuse2

…and then tried again, it launched after quite a few seconds.

Set up the path to my Joplin directory on my NextCloud installation.

https://[YOUR_SNAP_NEXTCLOUD_SERVER]/remote.php/webdav/Joplin

As for actually migrating your Google Keep Notes to Joplin, it’s a bit of a long winded process. Check here for some potential methods.

Moved from Google Keep to Joplin for note keeping

Installing Audacity without (Ubuntu) Snap packages and Error -9985

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TL;DR Answer was found here. https://askubuntu.com/questions/1426476/ubuntu-22-04-audacity-does-not-show-up-in-pulseaudio-recording-tab

sudo apt install audacity -y

Admittedly, the process of trying to lay down and run Audacity initially gave me a bit of grief.

Wanted to install Audacity on my freshly laid down copy of Ubuntu 22.04 and all the references I could find of Audacity was to either install using “Snap” or “Flatpak”. Was apprehensive about Snap versions of any software and recall having grief with Audacity Snap before on my older machine giving me vague errors (e.g error -9985) about being unable to save or being unable to listen to a particular recording device. “Going Transport” –> “Rescan Audio Devices” did absolutely squat.

Even went back into Ubuntu Store and enabled all permissions on Audacity with again, nil effect. Appears nothing has changed (at the time of writing this post) two years on. As a Ubuntu user, I don’t have an overall very good impression of Snap at all having had issues with other Snap packages including with Flameshot (a screenshot tool) being unable to save to the Picture directory.

 

Installing Audacity without (Ubuntu) Snap packages and Error -9985

Desire to Travel is in a lull

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Admittedly, my desire to travel anywhere is in a definite lull at the moment. I’m anticipating it will come back at some point, but I ain’t going to try and force it back. May be accommodation and general travel costs is impacting this a bit.

Might do some day or short overnight trips somewhere these Holidays depending on availability of accommodation / tent sites and depending on how I feel. Again, I’m not going to force it. Will spend my holidays how I see fit.

Desire to Travel is in a lull

Warning regarding “3M Command” type hanging hooks

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Please be aware the use of M3 Command or similar picture hooks can still cause damage to walls when one attempts to take them off. Had a case where a tenant (who has otherwise been excellent) while vacating a property tried to remove one of the hooks and ended up taking some paint with it. The property manager got their nominated handy man in to address it but saw in the property owner’s transaction statement I received later in the month that the cost of repair came to almost $300 (from looking at a copy of the Tradie’s invoice). Whether the charge is reasonable or not, I wouldn’t know as I’m not a tradie.

I now learn that other property owners on various private forums have suggested to their tenants to avoid the use of 3M Command type hooks as they can ultimately cause more damage than regular Picture Hanging hooks if they aren’t removed “correctly” which by itself seems rather subjective.

If you do a search for reviews regarding 3M Command hooks, it appears there’s a few repeating anecdotes suggesting that they may not be all they are cracked up to be so if you do choose to still use them for hanging stuff around the house (be it for your own home or a rental), do so with due care and awareness that the risk of damage is still present.

Warning regarding “3M Command” type hanging hooks

Yes, admittedly, I’m still running around in that 2006 Toyota Wagon.

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Admittedly, I did remark I would get rid of my car about 5 years ago. But have yet to do so.

To be honest, I just can’t be bugged with replacing it. While the paintwork is now well and truly fading and I get ribbed for it being the worst car at my workplace, the thing still reliably runs.

Have driven better cars in recent years mainly as rentals, and while I will admit they’re nice to drive, I don’t get enough elation to run out and get a newer car.

Yes, admittedly, I’m still running around in that 2006 Toyota Wagon.

Australian Mastodon Server instances

Fergus Young, 7 Comments

Update 16 February 2023: mastodon.au have announced they are shutting down.

Update 21 November 2022: New Australian Mastodon Server instances theblower.au and mastodon.au are now live and accepting signs ups. Existing instance, aus.social has just re-opened to Sign ups again today.

Update 12 November 2022: Appears both aus.social and Chinwag have temporarily halted signs ups. There is a new Server being developed at theblower.au. Please read more about the new AU Mastodon server here.

In the meantime, If any one knows of any other Australian Mastodon instances that are still open (and have the capacity to take in new sign ups) please advise in the comments below and help your fellow Aussies out, thanks.

—

If you’re in Australia and looking for a Mastodon (Twitter alternative) server to join, please look at…

theblower.au – NEW! Open for sign ups.
aus.social – Reopened to Sign ups 21 Nov 2022.
bne.social – NEW! Open for sign ups.
melb.social – Melbourne Based – Requires invite from existing user.
chinwag.org – Closed to New Sign ups.

mastodon.au – Instance announced it is now shutting down: See announcement.

There’s probably other Australia based (or focused) Mastodon instances. If anyone knows of any that are available to take sign ups, please let me know in the comments below and I’ll add them here.

Currently helping out at mastodon.nz in an assistant mod capacity to help get on top of reviewing sign ups and noticed there were a lot of Australians applying to sign up mentioning they could not find their local regional Mastodon server.

Australian Mastodon Server instances

From Musk to the Tusk (Twitter to Mastodon)

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There’s been some movement from Twitter to the Mastodon Fediverse since Elon Musk’s take over of Twitter.

The current foremost instance for New Zealanders is mastodon.nz. (Due to the influx, new account creation is currently set to manual approval). Others include mastodon.nzoss.nz (Being the oldest of the NZ specific instances) and cloudisland.nz, a more heavily moderated instance.

My Current handle is “Nui” on mastodon.nz. I’ve never had a Twitter account and this is perhaps my first foray into any sort of Microblogging hence still trying to find my feet as it were.

Update 11 November 2022: Been brought on as an assistant moderator (at least in the interim) to help with reviewing and approving sign ups during this massive influx of interest.

From Musk to the Tusk (Twitter to Mastodon)