Devops on Janusworx

Kubernetes, Note to Self: Need Load Balancer Installed on Bare Metal

feedback@janusworx.com (Mario Jason Braganza) — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 07:37:54 +0530

Intended Audience

Mostly me. Also other grizzly sysadmins who are learning devops like me.

One thing that bit me when I was trying to expose my apps to the world when working on the home cluster, is that Kubernetes on bare metal—I was using Kind at the time—expects to talk to a load balancer service, which then talk to an actual load balancer. Which if you are using bare metal, you won’t usually have.
I had to then go expose a “NodePort” to gain access from outside.

So to expose my stuff in as “real world” a way as possible, we need to:

Either install a load balancer implementation like MetalLB. OR
Use a Kubernetes distribution that has a load balancer implementation built-in, like K3s.

I chose option 2 and used K3s, because I am, as they say in popular parlance, using Kubernetes at the edge.¹
In which case, I prefer to have as many batteries built-in as possible.

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Although, from the articles I’ve read, if you’re doing a multiple node cluster, then you’re better off using MetalLB. ↩︎

K3s: Move Data Folder

feedback@janusworx.com (Mario Jason Braganza) — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 16:50:45 +0530

Intended Audience

Mostly me. Also other grizzly sysadmins who are learning devops like me.

Problem
#

My main SSD is too small to hold all my kubernetes and K3s shenanigans. (It’s only about 512gb) So I need a way to move my K3s data folder out to my big HDD.

Solution
#

Caution

Before you do any of the following, make sure to stop the cluster with:
sudo systemctl stop k3s

K3s supports having a custom data directory, by letting me specify a data-dir.
I decided to specify it in the K3s config file at /etc/rancher/k3s/config.
If it isn’t there (as it wasn’t in my case), just create one. You’ll need to do this as the root user.
This is what I now have in there.

data-dir: /BIGHDD/rancher/k3s

And then, I …

Created a rancher directory in my big hard disk. (root owns it)
Ran rsync as the root user: rsync -a /var/lib/rancher/k3s/ /BIGHDD/rancher/k3s/
Started up my cluster again with a sudo systemctl start k3s

The Plan for My New Hetzner VM

feedback@janusworx.com (Mario Jason Braganza) — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 08:30:54 +0530

Update: 2025-12-11
#

I got it done!

Preamble
#

If this post is weird and stream of consciousness like, that’s by design.
You are seeing a notes and miscellanea post, in the work category.
I want to be able to think through what I am doing. Mostly to clarify, document and explicitly state what I want. To avoid shifting goalposts (or rather to shift them intentionally, if need be.)
I’ll be updating and revising this post as I think and learn and experience things

Goals
#

Think about and write what I want to get done with my hetzner
For now, the how does not matter

What I want
#

A VM running K3s, that I can deploy my Hugo website to, as well all the apps that I choose to run on Janusworx
My main need with a cluster is the GitOps aspect. Not the scaling or redundancy. I want infrastructure as code and automated updates, as much as possible.
Everything goes through my Forgejo instance at home
I write a post and it should deploy to the website somehow
Apps that I put in there, either just my config files of already published images/deployments, or my own custom things, ought to be pushed to or pulled by the cluster and deployed. Upgrades should be a matter of manipulating code
Secrets should be self hosted, via environment variables or some self hosted solution. Never at a third party service

2025-11-06 09:35
#

Got tangled with Hugo in the morning.
I think I got the basics down, the VM comes up. K3s in installed, but in what order do I move my apps over?
Think I’ll the root domail last. And try beginning with the “simpler” apps first
Begin with familiarising myself with Helm
2025-11-06 10:06: Tea break
2025-11-06 13:06: Lunch break

2025-11-06 16:00
#

Back. Trying to port my dev terraform setup to production. It should just work. But it does not.
2025-11-06 16:59: Solved. I had somehow borked my Terraform state. Nuked it. And then things started working again
Show stopper now. My GPG key has expired. Need to figure out how to sign my git commits with SSH now
2025-11-06 18:26: I think I’ve licked it. Both Github and Forgejo don’t seem to be complaining. Let’s see what else I’ve broken over the coming days
2025-11-06 20:00: Done! My production cluster is up! And I can tear it down and build it up consistently. Now to work with it tomorrow.

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Mail me at feedback at this domain.

Forgejo

feedback@janusworx.com (Mario Jason Braganza) — Sat, 28 Sep 2024 15:39:12 +0530

Setup a new instance of Forgejo for myself today.
The first thing I felt, was … instant relief.
I didn’t realise just how much cognitive discomfort I was feeling, because Github was the only place I had all my code. As well as mirrors/forks of all the stuff I loved.
I’m going to slowly move over to my little Forgejo instance as I learn more.

Right now I’ve set up pull mirrors for all the projects I love.

Next step is to figure out how to automate my Hugo blog deployment and more importantly; having all my posts in source control.

Feedback on this post?
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Doing Devops, Dropping Rust

feedback@janusworx.com (Mario Jason Braganza) — Fri, 07 Jun 2024 16:37:50 +0530

Been struggling to do it all over the past few months.
But no! Life says no :)

So I’m building some margin into my life.
And the only thing I can talk about work wise, is the familiarity I am trying to gain as part of the career pivot.
The Devops Stuff.
The only thing that is career adjacent to all the stuff I did as a sysadmin and then consultant. So hopefully lots of boring stuff about exciting tech as I try to build new mental models, to fit over old ones.

Problem though, is what do I write?
I don’t have a good spin on most computer devops stuff. I don’t know what to say.
So for now, they probably will be, just like I point above, boring progress logs.
Mostly consistent, to give me accountability.
And hopefully, I’ll find a voice.

On the personal front, books, reading, art, language, poetry, photography and other posts will continue. Those are what make my soul sing :)

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Moved My Music Library From Jellyfin to Emby Today

feedback@janusworx.com (Mario Jason Braganza) — Tue, 04 Jun 2024 10:47:23 +0530

I had moved off Plex, close to two years ago, because … reasons.
Unable to decide between Emby and Jellyfin and having just learned containers at the time, I deployed both on my Pi.
Emby handled video duties while Jellyfin did music.

And now after close to two years, I’m moving off Jellyfin to Emby.
The only reason being its iOS client.
It still has a lot of growing up to do, and I’ve reached the end of my tether trying to adjust to its foibles.
I cannot turn the phone off, else the music goes off.
I cannot switch away from the Jellyfin app, else the music goes off.
If I get a call, then the app sorta-kinda loses its mind and I have to kill it and relaunch it.

All I want from my music player is to be a good audio citizen on iOS. Connect to the server, read my songs, play my music. And do it in the background.

While I am sympathetic to the priorities of the open source Jellyfin team, I am not getting any younger and my hour long walks are the only time I get to enjoy my music.

So … I moved.

Setting the stage
#

There had to be two instances of Emby running. I don’t want my video online and so I don’t want it exposed
Video is secondary anyway. So that had to be the second container. The main one is Music.
Music needs to be accessible from anywhere on the web.

Doing it
#

I already had docker running and installed, along with Nginx
Jellyfin has better documentation. So I used their guide to reverse proxy Nginx to the Emby service that would come up. All I had to do, was put in my SSL cert paths correctly and change the variable jellyfin to embymusicserver (along with the rest of the require settings.)
I created a folder to hold Emby’s docker compose file. I modified the container name to embymusicserver and gave the path to mount for its config and another one that pointed to my music folder. Pretty straightforward. (I had already changed the ports earlier on the video emby instance to 8097 & 8921 to avoid conflicts with Jellyfin, so I did not have to touch that.)
Assigned ownership recursively to the user that would run the container.
Did a docker compose up to see if everything came up ok. And then tore it down
And finally, once again, adapted my old Jellyfin systemd script to ensure I could have it start and stop with the system

In hindsight, there was no way to pull all of this off in an hour, if it wasn’t for Docker and Emby’s image. Now I realise why containers are taking over the world.

And thank you for all you do, Jellyfin. I shall return as soon as the app gets more useful.

Getting Emacs Windows to Not Be Shy

feedback@janusworx.com (Mario Jason Braganza) — Sat, 18 Nov 2023 09:37:35 +0530

Figuring out my webapps problem yesterday made me ask myself if I could somehow repurpose that little xdotool script to solve another niche itch that I had.

Spoiler alert: It did.

I run Emacs as a daemon, and use EmacsClient to connect to the Emacs process.
Makes it really ease to launch, work on, sling around and close lots of Emacs windows.¹

Which brings me to the hiccough. I launch EmacsClient and a window (frame) does indeed launch, but it just … stays there in the background.

Repeated attempts to launch EmacsClient are to no avail.
The pesky little windows just pile up in their corner.

Ergo, this little bit of Bash/xdotool shenanigans …

#!/usr/bin/env bash 

export EMACSWINID=$(xdotool search "\*scratch\*" | tail -n1)

if [ $EMACSWINID ]; then
 xdotool windowactivate $EMACSWINID
else
 sh -c 'emacsclient --create-frame --no-wait --alternate-editor="" && export EMACSWINID=$(xdotool search "\*scratch\*" | tail -n1) && xdotool windowactivate $EMACSWINID'
fi

Check to see if an Emacs scratch buffer is open. If it is, switch to it.
Otherwise, just launch EmacsClient, get the id of the scratch buffer window (frame) and raise it, so that I can work on it. In peace.

Cue: sounds of relief, in the background

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Frames, in Emacs parlance ↩︎

Getting Around Linux Mint Web App Manager Window Errors

feedback@janusworx.com (Mario Jason Braganza) — Fri, 17 Nov 2023 19:09:46 +0530

One of best parts of using Linux Mint is its Web Apps Manager.

I can use most of my websites as dedicated applications now.
Case in point, I use a dedicated web app to run Elk, the web client for Mastodon.
Social stuff like this, or banking stuff or my webmail for that matter, stays away from the rest of my browsing and lets me keep these activities cognitively separate.

So far, so good.
The issue arises, when I try to launch one of these dedicated apps and it is already running.
Due to the way these little web containers are created, it cannot run another instance and I run into this error.

“Firefox is already running, but is not responding. To use Firefox, you must first close the existing Firefox process, restart your device, or use a different profile.”¹

And I’m like, I know this you git! I am running a different profile. Can’t you just switch to it? Apparently it cannot. So I’d have to go looking for my app and then Alt-Tab through dozens of windows or look in my dock² and then get it back.

The problem wasn’t the error per se, the problem was the slightly longish delay between me calling the app and the error popping up. And also all that crazy hunting and pecking to find the right window, once I see the error. It gets maddening when I need to do this dance and all I want to do is get to my email window to go look for something important.

So I began casting around for a way to somehow switch to the actually running window. Was it possible?
That’s when I found xdotool
It lets you do all sorts of crazy things with windows and keyboard and mouse input, but most importantly for me, it let me search for my running app window and it let me raise and bring it back up. Awesome!

So instead of telling Ulauncher to directly launch the app, I told it to run this script instead.

1
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#!/usr/bin/env bash 

export ELKWINID=$(xdotool search WebApp-ElkforToots1234 | tail -n1)

if [ $ELKWINID ]; then
 xdotool windowactivate $ELKWINID
else
 sh -c ' firefox --class WebApp-ElkforToots1234 --profile /home/user/.local/share/ice/firefox/ElkforToots1234 --no-remote "https://elk.zone/"'
fi

In a nutshell, I’m looking to see if Elk is already running (using the xdotool search option in line 3).
If it is, I tell xdotool to get that window to the forefront of the display; and if it isn’t, then to just go ahead and launch the app anew.

What a load off my mind, this one was!

I don’t know if this would happen if I use Chrome as the browser engine. I don’t even use it as a browser, much. And for things like these, I wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole. ↩︎
and still some how miss it ↩︎

Quick Fix: Go Mod File Not Found in Current Directory

feedback@janusworx.com (Mario Jason Braganza) — Wed, 15 Mar 2023 19:11:11 +0530

As I have begun learning Go (or golang as I needed to use for searching on the web), I’ve been running into some sort of chasm that the Go language seems to have crossed¹ that my old textbook obviously could not have foreseen when it was published.²

The book asks me to do a go run . to get my file to compile and run.
Go seems to having none of it.

go: go.mod file not found in current directory or any parent directory; see 'go help modules'

Some searching on the web, and I found setting the GO111MODULE environment variable to auto or off will do the trick. So …

export GO111MODULE='auto'

did indeed do the trick.

I’m not putting this in my .bashrc to make it persistent though. The Go folks must have had some reason to make this change, which I’m (currently) not aware of. Was it architectural? Security related? That is a web search for another day.

Right now the code compiles and I must be off to my next exercise.

I’m using v1.20.1 ↩︎
I’m learning from Packt’s, The Go Workshop (Delio D’Anna et al), 2019 ↩︎

Huginn: Vive La Pratique Délibérée Avec Les Flux RSS

feedback@janusworx.com (Mario Jason Braganza) — Wed, 15 Mar 2023 09:32:05 +0530

I’ve been learning French, on my own at a snail’s pace over the past year or so.
All because I want to read Émilie du Châtelet, Dumas, Verne, and Montaigne in their native tongue.

Since I cannot do immersion nor give regular practice the time it wants, it’s … slow going But I do, do it. Regularly and deliberately. I’ve built up a vocabulary of about 500-700 words by now and I know if I keep this up, I’ll be able to do read well in time.

One way I practice is to take something in French and read it slowly, looking up words and phrases and slowly building up the missing pieces.
And to do that, I need something in French. I stumbled across the France Pittoresque site and fell in love with it. French and History! Just my kind of site.

Being the lazy bum, that I am, I went looking for an RSS feed, so that I could read their daily article in Reeder.
And hit my first stumbling block.
The good folk at France Pittoresque, don’t provide a feed. Or if they do, I couldn’t find it. Even after looking and looking. And then looking some more.¹

You know where I’m going with this. This is a job for Huginn!

This is how the site looks today

click to embiggen.

And this little item is what I want to get, on a daily basis.

click to embiggen. Actually click any of them to embiggen!

So I whipped up this scenario.

It scrapes that little section I mentioned above and gets me the title, the url and the description of the article

And generates an RSS feed that I can then use in my feed reader!
The feed is normally at:
http://your-huginn-instance/users/[your-user-id-int]/web_requests/[agent-id-int]/some-'secret'-string.xml

It looks more complicated than it is. It’ll get generated the moment you create your agent. One advantage of using a vm is that my feed is accessible from any device.

You can find the scenario code here, if you want to play with it.

Huginn has proven invaluable when it comes to doing all the little things, that I’d rather not do :)
Merci beaucoup, Huginn!

You’re talking to a lazy bum here. So quite possible I overlooked something. ↩︎

Huginn: On Becoming a Cal Newport Podcast Packrat

feedback@janusworx.com (Mario Jason Braganza) — Tue, 14 Mar 2023 17:55:01 +0530

First things first, you should be listening to Cal Newport and reading his books too!
His recent episode on books and reading was lovely!¹

If I remember right, he started doing the podcast, a couple of months after the pandemic broke out and the world shut down. And it felt very much at the time, like one of those friendly voices across the waves in some post apocalyptic movie.
It felt warm, personal and gave me something to do in those dark days.
Ergo, I have a strong connection to it and I began saving every episode, at around episode 10 or so.

Oh, and speaking of slow productivity, it’s amazing to see what Cal has fashioned the podcast into. A slow steady drumbeat of episodic growth has led to what he call the Cal Newport Empire, with media galore.

So, like I was saying, I’ve been downloading them ever since the beginning, because I’ve some sort of unnatural attachment to them. They’re the thing I want to listen to if I’m marooned on a desert island.²

And now that I have Huginn, the computer downloads it for me, in the folder I want, with the naming convention, I want.

Here’s the scenario that does it.

It scrapes the website, once every twelve hours to check for a new episode, and grabs the url and title.
It uses the url to download the episode to a folder.
And at the same time, sends me a notification. The title tells me what’s new :)

I probably could use Huginn to rename and copy the file to where I want, but it runs from a Docker container and does not have access to the parent filesystem.
So this little Python script³ does it for me.

from pathlib import Path
import shutil


downloads_folder = Path('/path/to/downloaded/episode/directory/')
destination_folder = Path('/path/to/destination/directory/')

for audio_file in downloads_folder.iterdir():
 if audio_file.suffix == '.mp3':
 original_name = audio_file.stem
 original_name = original_name.split('-')[2:]
 episode_number, raw_file_name = f'CNPE{original_name[0]}', (' '.join(original_name[1:])).title()

 new_file_name = episode_number+ ' - ' +raw_file_name +audio_file.suffix

 shutil.move(downloads_folder/audio_file, destination_folder/new_file_name)

It looks for any mp3 files in the specified folder, renames them the way I want them named and then moves them to my packrat archive. Et voilà!

The scenario and scripts are here, if you want them.

What else, do you expect a bookworm to tell ya? 😂 ↩︎
with a stock of mp3 players and rechargable batteries ↩︎
scheduled via crontab ↩︎

Huginn: the Rube Goldbergness of Updating Hugo

feedback@janusworx.com (Mario Jason Braganza) — Mon, 13 Mar 2023 19:35:06 +0530

Click the pic to embiggen.
Rube Goldberg illustration via James Vaughan

Ended up too sick to even tinker, since I last wrote.
Well enough now, to scratch out some prose to get my brains in gear.
Let’s start with Huginn adventure #1.
Buckle up!

Background
#

I found Huginn, and am using it as my man friday.¹

The “Problem”
#

I run Hugo on ~~two~~ three machines.
I’m tired of updating to the latest release manually.
The computer can do it for me!

Why this way? Why? Why?!
#

It’s fun!
Yes, there are other (most likely simpler) ways to do it, but Huginn is my new shiny hammer … and well you know!
Did I tell you it’s fun? :)

How now brown cow?
#

Some more background:

I could just apt install, but I’m too posh for that 😂 I want the latest version of Hugo. And the extended version at that.
I depend on two more helpers.
a. Syncthing syncs the folder that the Hugo deb package downloads to, across all my machines
b. Pushover sends me push notifications. Huginn integrates with it.

Having said that, here’s a pic of my four step scenario, followed by the output of each step.

Scrape the Hugo github releases page to get the title.²

Get the latest release title³ and fashion a url out of it.

Download Hugo to a folder.

Send myself a push notification.⁴

And tada!

So we done? No, you silly goose!

We’re done downloading the installer. Said installer now needs installing.
So my very imaginatively titled install-hugo.sh script⁵, which runs once a day via a crontab entry …

takes the file,
checks to see if it’s downloaded in the last day
and if so, installs it.

Mind you, it needs root privileges. And then it also …
4. deletes any stray debs more than a few days old.⁶

#! /usr/bin/env bash

cd /path/to/hugo/deb/file

# Install deb from the last 24 hours
find *.deb -maxdepth 1 -mmin -1440 | xargs -d '\n' dpkg -i

# Remove debs more than 2 days old
find *.deb -maxdepth 1 -mtime +2 | xargs -d '\n' rm -rf 

And now we’re done :)

Holy shiny hammer, Batgirl! It worked!

The scenario, should you install Huginn and want to import and play with, as well as the shell script are here, on Github.

Note: I had originally used the RSS agent in step one, instead of the Website agent I use now, and that was much easier. But it would detect the new feed entry and then just sit there hatching eggs, not doing anything. I wish I had a snapshot (of the missed events, not hatched eggs) but I digress. The website agent, for all its hacky xpath quackery works.

it could have been girl friday too, but I call mine Bertuccio, after Edmond Dantes’ man friday ↩︎
I cannot believe, I go scrape a website and learn all that xpath voodoo, just to get a measly text string. ↩︎
And here’s where Huginn helps. It remembers the last title. And only proceeds if something has changed. ↩︎
the push notification is just like that. something whimsical for me. It’s independent of the download. I should probably have called it Step 3a. or 2b. Never mind now. ↩︎
which is also synced and available across all three machines ↩︎
I let them be for a couple of days, in case a machine is not online that day. ↩︎

Huginn

feedback@janusworx.com (Mario Jason Braganza) — Thu, 02 Mar 2023 05:00:00 +0530

Let’s get the, “What the heck is Huginn?” out of the way.
If you’ve heard of Zapier or IFTTT, that’s what this is. Only better. You host it. You control it. You program it. And everything’s in your control.
If you’ve used Yahoo Pipes, then I tip my hat to you my dear friend and tell the rest of you folk, that I believe all of these new fangled pieces of zaps and agents are the spiritual successor to that pioneering web app. IBM has a similar open source alternative, with all the new fangled hotness called Node-RED

Just like piping and transforming text with Unix utilities locally, Huginn lets us do that with web data. RSS feeds, webhooks, JSON data and the like. Take ’em, ingest ’em, chew on ’em, transform ’em and do what the heck you want with ’em!

Why Huginn?
#

So why did I settle on Huginn? And what do I use it for?
Well, I liked the name. And I wanted something Yahoo-pipesque for myself :)
I used it originally on my desktop, to push my blog posts to twitter and my mastodon account. And then I lost it in a system crash¹ and I didn’t get to putting it up again.

Until a recent bout of sickness, and the urge to tinker led me to put it up on my vm.
I realised that I don’t want to use my programming hammer to tackle every computing hammer that I face. There’s too much to learn and too little life.
So if Huginn lets me do interesting things with json and liquid and duct tape, why ever not?

I still have to do the autopost to my social accounts², but I’ve already set it up to scratch several itches I had.

It scrapes a couple of art websites, that don’t have feeds and then creates RSS feeds so that I can read them peacefully in my RSS Reeder.
I check my Calibre release feed, update my local install of Calibre to the latest hotness, and then get notified via a push notification, using a Rube Goldberg pastiche of Bash, cURL and Pushover.
I love archiving episodes of my favourite podcast (the Cal Newport podcast³), so Huginn and Python and Syncthing and cron all pull together to get it in the right place, with the naming convention I want.⁴

I hope to write a bit more about each of these in the coming days, but needless to say, I’m having more fun playing with Huginn, than I imagined I ever would!

it did work like the little engine that could, without a hitch until then ↩︎
I’ve forgotten how I did it! ↩︎
I think it’s called Deep Questions, but to me it’ll always be the Cal Newport Podcast ↩︎
If you lose all your audio files in a fire Cal, you know who to call! ↩︎

Why I Use an Online VM

feedback@janusworx.com (Mario Jason Braganza) — Wed, 01 Mar 2023 05:00:00 +0530

I am fortunate enough, to run most of my life between my local computer and another VM in a cloud. In this day and age of cloud native and serverless, why would anyone choose to run their life off a virtual server aka VM?
This post is me, thinking this through. I’ll return to this every now and then, and see if things have changed enough out there, for me to evaluate and make a change.
For now, I am happy using my dinky little box in the cloud.

Reasons I use a VM.
#

Because I cannot have a cloud connected desktop.
If I could I would. But commercial forces, at least in India don’t bode well for an always on, always connected desktop. The VM is a good compromise
Because I can. Being an old sysadmin lets me do this. But don’t let that scare you off. If you can afford one, I’d venture to say you should. If you put in the time to learn Linux fundamentals, most hosting providers now have excellent guides that will let you have a box that is pretty secure.
The amount of control it affords me. Most cloud services will handicap you, some way or the other. When you’re using a VM on the other hand, you have the power of the whole machine¹ in the palm of your hand. You can do what you want with it. Install programming languages to your hearts content, access all the storage that you have, run containers if you wish. Your VM is your oyster :)
I can host what I want to. Without paying per service. Or without letting outsiders slurp my data and attention to serve me ads. Right now I host — (goes and looks) —
1. This website
2. ZNC, an IRC bouncer, so I can stay connected always to my favourite IRC channels along with
3. The Lounge, so I can then access IRC from anywhere
4. an instance of Miniflux, to read my RSS feeds, to keep my self update with all my interests
5. Sendy, to send emails to my mailing list.
6. Baikal, for my contacts and calendars and finally…
7. Huginn, to let me do all sorts of wizardry with stuff on the net. Think of it as a self hosted Zapier / IFTTT
My data is not held hostage!

Reasons I wouldn’t use a VM
#

If I am sharing something with the world at large.
Something that might have the potential of being abused, even if I made or shared out of the goodness of my heart. No concrete example of this, comes to mind right now.
Serving or hosting something that my VM cannot handle. I wouldn’t serve video from my little box, for e.g.
Storing data. As in long lived collections. I doubt I’d store, my audio or photo library on here. Too large. It’d probably run too expensive and too risky.
Tradeoff between control and life. I outsource email and my fediverse, because for me, maintaining them, was too much of a time suck. (No matter how much I loved doing it)

Conclusion: Control
#

The more I think about it, the more I think it’s about control more than cost.
I want as much of my data and digital life, out of the control of the software giants and/or other third parties to extent, I can control.
As much as possible, I want to express myself without constraint. Most SAAS options in this day and age, don’t come close to the power and options that old desktop software gave us.
Having a VM lets me be creative, expressive and grab some semblance of control back for myself.

well, as much as you’re paying for 😂 ↩︎

What I Learned Today (14th of February, 2023)

feedback@janusworx.com (Mario Jason Braganza) — Tue, 14 Feb 2023 20:17:24 +0530

Happy Valentine’s all you lovely people! :)

Hugo
#

Upgraded to the latest Papermod theme on the website

Devops
#

Installed Fedora in a VM on my machine in order to do Devopsy work

Python
#

Learnt about the object() function. If I want an native something to use later, I can always cast to an basic object (x = object()) and use it. Best to use it, when using None would cause ambiguities. Read more here

Urdu
#

Did the “fe” group today.

Physical Fitness
#

Had a good workout. Worked my core.

What I Learned Today (11th of February, 2023)

feedback@janusworx.com (Mario Jason Braganza) — Sat, 11 Feb 2023 14:42:56 +0530

Rest day! Not doing much!

Emacs
#

It works! Yesterday’s little hack, to clock in and out when I change state works well! It doesn’t seem to have broken anything.
Also I added a WORKING state, and tagged my function to that. The clock in and out happen when I switch in an out of the WORKING state. Because I want my parent task to show IN_PROGRESS and the current subtask to be what I am working on. Like so …

** IN_PROGRESS Emacs
*** WORKING Learn about Org
*** TODO Write about what you learnt

Here’s an image of an actual task …

Except for one more thing.¹
When I switch another task to WORKING, it does clock me out of the old task, but it leaves the TODO state at WORKING. I want the old task to switch to WAITING. I’ll look at doing this as soon as I get some breathing time.

Devops
#

Spoke to a friend about some how and what and why for close to an hour
Helped me clear my mind lots!

Urdu
#

Did “toey” and “zoey”
Did I mention three letters for the same S sound yesterday?
Ha! Z has four! Zaal, Ze, Zuaad & Zoey
Also tutor’s note:

the word “zan” (ज़न) when written with ‘zoey’ means “presumption” whereas, the same word, when written with a ‘ze’ instead, means “woman”.

Which means? Lots of practice and reading ahead :)
Also coming from the madness that is English, I keep telling myself, this is not so bad 😂
Like Lizzo doing crack.

Physical Fitness
#

Rest day!

Thoughts
#

The meta need / theme of learning and working, as I am doing now, is that I need to work to a time budget
- Here’s the problem, try and solve it in an hour (or whatever time I budget)
I need to have no shame if I cannot get it done
I need to ask for help / look up solutions faster
I also need to budget the time to understand the solutions.
- If I cannot fix it one day and the solution is taking time to “get”, be ok with spending time the next day
It’s just me. There is no one else. There is no need to pressure myself more than necessary.
Work to the spec. Generalising (at least for now) is taboo. Now, I understand what my friends tell me about me perfectionism. I keep spending way too long about what if this? and what if that? I need to get something working first. Refine / expand / refactor it later
Get better at logging times
Get better at taking breaks between tasks
Writing these logs has helped gain insight and understanding. I need to keep at it. It’ll help with the “what now? what next?” questions

Getting greedy, aren’t I? :) ↩︎

Devops on Janusworx

Kubernetes, Note to Self: Need Load Balancer Installed on Bare Metal

K3s: Move Data Folder

Problem #

Solution #

The Plan for My New Hetzner VM

Update: 2025-12-11 #

Preamble #

Goals #

What I want #

2025-11-06 09:35 #

2025-11-06 16:00 #

Forgejo

Doing Devops, Dropping Rust

Moved My Music Library From Jellyfin to Emby Today

Setting the stage #

Doing it #

Getting Emacs Windows to Not Be Shy

Getting Around Linux Mint Web App Manager Window Errors

Quick Fix: Go Mod File Not Found in Current Directory

Huginn: Vive La Pratique Délibérée Avec Les Flux RSS

Huginn: On Becoming a Cal Newport Podcast Packrat

Huginn: the Rube Goldbergness of Updating Hugo

Background #

The “Problem” #

Why this way? Why? Why?! #

How now brown cow? #

Huginn

Why Huginn? #

Why I Use an Online VM

Reasons I use a VM. #

Reasons I wouldn’t use a VM #

Conclusion: Control #

What I Learned Today (14th of February, 2023)

Hugo #

Devops #

Python #

Urdu #

Physical Fitness #

What I Learned Today (11th of February, 2023)

Emacs #

Devops #

Urdu #

Physical Fitness #

Thoughts #

Problem
#

Solution
#

Update: 2025-12-11
#

Preamble
#

Goals
#

What I want
#

2025-11-06 09:35
#

2025-11-06 16:00
#

Setting the stage
#

Doing it
#

Background
#

The “Problem”
#

Why this way? Why? Why?!
#

How now brown cow?
#

Why Huginn?
#

Reasons I use a VM.
#

Reasons I wouldn’t use a VM
#

Conclusion: Control
#

Hugo
#

Devops
#

Python
#

Urdu
#

Physical Fitness
#

Emacs
#

Devops
#

Urdu
#

Physical Fitness
#

Thoughts
#