Laurie Fabiano: Elizabeth Street

For some reason I downloaded https://www.amazon.com/Elizabeth-Street-Laurie-Fabiano-ebook/dp/B0030AOBR0 to my kindle a while back (can’t remember why) and since all other unread alternatives seemed less attractive, I’ve read it now 🙂

Wonderful novel taking the reader back to the times of 1900 Italy, to a family story around immigration to the US (l’Amercia!) and their struggle with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hand_(extortion).

Laurie Fabiano – Elizabeth Street

howto: self signed ssl certificate for apache2 on debian buster

# create storage location for cert+key
mkdir /etc/apache2/ssl && cd /etc/apache2/ssl

# generate cert+key
openssl req -x509 -newkey rsa:4096 -nodes -subj '/CN=7362cb9e-13a0-4043-87f3-4a176a8aec64' -keyout key.pem -out cert.pem -days 365

# enable ssl
sudo a2enmod ssl

# set up ssl, and redirect non-ssl
cat sites-available/default.conf 
<VirtualHost *:80>
  RewriteEngine On
  RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
  RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost _default_:443>
  DocumentRoot /var/www/default

  ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/default.ssl.error.log
  CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/default.ssl.access.log combined

  SSLEngine on
  SSLCertificateFile    /etc/apache2/ssl/cert.pem
  SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/apache2/ssl/key.pem

  <FilesMatch "\.(cgi|shtml|phtml|php)$">
     SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
  </FilesMatch>
  <Directory /usr/lib/cgi-bin>
    SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
  </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

# enable site and restart
a2ensite default
systemctl restart apache2

mostly as a reminder for future-me 🙂

Jeremias Gotthelf: Anne Bäbi Jowäger: Wie Anne Bäbi Jowäger haushaltet und wie es ihm mit dem Doktern geht

Recently finished reading, and thought I’d be worth logging it here, to ensure I don’t forget:

Amazing read when it comes to the words and sentence structures used (I assume that’s only true when read in its original form, with reasonable Swiss German language understanding), but Jeremias Gotthelf (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremias_Gotthelf) really likes to philosophize (and sermonize), which makes the whole read much less enjoyable.

Jeremias Gotthelf – Anne Bäbi Jowäger

gimp: animated gifs (also: a gundam)

Wanted to generate a gif to create a rotational view of an object for a different project. Thought I’d document here how easy this is:

#1 take lots of pictures of the object, while rotating it slowly

#2 In gimp, File > Open as Layers

#3 In gimp, Save as… filename.gif (check the ‘animation’ checkbox)

I’ve quickly done this again (without much image optimization) with my gold plated Gundam MSN-06S SINANJU (a project I’ll write later about 🙂 here’s the result:

rotating gold plated gundam gif made with gimp – this was done quickly, so the y axis positioning is far from perfect – but you get the point 🙂

headless wireless raspberry

Looks like raspberry has come quite a long way. headless (no monitor/screen, no keyboard, no mouse) and wireless (no ethernet/wired connection) setups are as easy as creating a wpa_supplicant.conf with your network settings:

country=us
update_config=1
ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant

network={
 scan_ssid=1
 ssid="NAME_OF_YOUR_WIRELESS_NETWORK"
 psk="PASSWORD_OF_YOUR_WIRELESS_NETWORK"
}

and an empty ssh file in your root partition (right after flashing, just remount the disk again by removing and re-adding it)

Tim Ferriss: The 4-Hour Body

After having attempted to read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_4-Hour_Body (https://tim.blog/category/the-4-hour-body/) before, and stopping half way through, I finally found the time to read the second half of the book as well.

Seen as a guide to various health and fitness related aspects to dive deeper into, I think the book does a reasonable job. – There are a couple of things I hadn’t heard about before (and a couple which are so far out of my horizon, I don’t think I’d ever have learned about them, if it weren’t for the book (baseball..)) providing a reasonable increase in knowledge spectrum.

Tim Ferriss – The 4-Hour Body