Posts tagged: til

Agents can miss obvious things too

2026-04-03T14:39:51Z

I am working with MiniMax M.2 to vibe up some webapp ideas for Nexus and I just spent many minutes not having the app render correctly because the agent mounted the wrong directory into the docker compose stack. I noticed it about 5 seconds after opening the file, but wasted nearly a half hour thinking it was a docker issue in distrobox…

Danger

Clankers are still just clankers man

Prettier Docker ‘ps’ Command

2025-12-29T05:33:05Z

The docker ps command is very useful, but I hate reading the output. Turns out, you can make it prettier:

docker ps

–format “table” is implied with the command.


❯ docker ps --format "table" | grep can
9b716a7d1ab0   postgres:17                                               "docker-entrypoint.s…"   13 hours ago    Up 13 hours (healthy)            0.0.0.0:5432->5432/tcp, [::]:5432->5432/tcp                                                cannalyzer-db-1
f7708ea0c112   adminer                                                   "entrypoint.sh docke…"   13 hours ago    Up 13 hours                      0.0.0.0:8081->8080/tcp, [::]:8081->8080/tcp                                                cannalyzer-adminer-1
93cd67719ed4   frontend:latest                                           "/docker-entrypoint.…"   13 hours ago    Up 13 hours                      0.0.0.0:5173->80/tcp, [::]:5173->80/tcp                                                    cannalyzer-frontend-1
f517625fca98   traefik:3.0                                               "/entrypoint.sh --pr…"   13 hours ago    Up 13 hours                      0.0.0.0:80->80/tcp, [::]:80->80/tcp, 0.0.0.0:8090->8080/tcp, [::]:8090->8080/tcp           cannalyzer-proxy-1
f4daa036216e   schickling/mailcatcher                                    "sh -c 'mailcatcher …"   13 hours ago    Up 13 hours                      0.0.0.0:1025->1025/tcp, [::]:1025->1025/tcp, 0.0.0.0:1080->1080/tcp, [::]:1080->1080/tcp   cannalyzer-mailcatcher-1

But you can pass a template string to the --format option, like so:

docker ps --format "table {{.Names}}"


✗ docker ps --format "table {{.Names}}" | grep can
cannalyzer-db-1
cannalyzer-adminer-1
cannalyzer-frontend-1
cannalyzer-proxy-1
cannalyzer-mailcatcher-1

docker ps --format "table {{.Names}}\t{{.Status}}\t{{.Ports}}"


❯ docker ps --format "table {{.Names}}\t{{.Ports}}" | grep can
cannalyzer-db-1             0.0.0.0:5432->5432/tcp, [::]:5432->5432/tcp
cannalyzer-adminer-1        0.0.0.0:8081->8080/tcp, [::]:8081->8080/tcp
cannalyzer-frontend-1       0.0.0.0:5173->80/tcp, [::]:5173->80/tcp
cannalyzer-proxy-1          0.0.0.0:80->80/tcp, [::]:80->80/tcp, 0.0.0.0:8090->8080/tcp, [::]:8090->8080/tcp
cannalyzer-mailcatcher-1    0.0.0.0:1025->1025/tcp, [::]:1025->1025/tcp, 0.0.0.0:1080->1080/tcp, [::]:1080->1080/tcp

Picture #

I noticed my template isn’t folding the codeblocks in a way that actually makes this post look like I’m lying!

COLUMNS Env Var For Nicer Screenshots

2025-12-08T05:16:55Z

I was working on UV Run + PEP 723 Is A Match Made In Heaven and I wanted to grab a screenshot of a TUI, but my terminal is full screen and the TUI was then super stretched… Nice for working and using it, but not nice for a screenshot going into a blog post… see the difference export COLUMNS=120 does here!

COLUMNS=120 mytui.py

mytui.py

Check SWAP in htop

2025-11-15T06:52:14Z

I struggle with maxxing swap on all my machines, I am sure it’s a neovim config that I’ve propagated everywhere and I’m too lazy to figure it out. Instead I just swapoff and swapon kind of often… but this morning I had to know how to see what’s using all that swap….

The way to see SWAP usage by process in htop is:

open htop
Slam F2 (f if you’re just in old school top)
see the screenshot, find M_SWAP
move M_SWAP to Active Columns

Credit to this superuser post

Use Jellyfin Tags For Content Moderation

2025-10-08T10:21:01Z

Jellyfin brings in ratings and allows you to set custom ratings for shows, which is nice for things like “block anything worse than TV-14 for my kid’s account”. But what if my firend’s kids can watch shows I don’t want my kids watching? Turns out tags exist and are great!

Tag the content #

First is to actually tag the content - in the UI it’s simple.

Login with admin
Manage Metadata
Click the content you want to tag and find the Tags section
Add your tag… for example blocked:girls

Filter on the account #

Go to Dashboard -> Users -> Library Access -> Parental Control -> Block items with tags

Sending SMS with SMTP

2025-10-04T09:38:58Z

I’m cooking something up over here that will include SMS message notifications as a feature and I’ve been doing some reading on different providers…

Many specialize in bulk SMS messaging, like for campaigns and promotions. So this pricing model doesn’t work for me.

The providers that do quick single SMS messages are often $0.005 to $.04 cents per message which isn’t insanity but I’m not exactly backed by anyone…

Well today I learned that you can actually send SMS messages via SMTP! I wouldn’t bank on total reliability here but for testing and initial roll out of what I want I think this will be perfect.

And because I’m just that kind of guy, here’s some code you can uv run smtp2sms.py and get yourself a handy little text. I’m going to build a simpler module but you can get a gmail and gmail app password within about 10 minutes. see here

# /// script
# requires-python = ">=3.10"
# dependencies = [
# ]
# ///
import os, smtplib
from email.mime.text import MIMEText

SMTP_APP_USER=os.environ.get("SMTP_APP_USER") # me@gmail.com
SMTP_APP_PASSWORD=os.environ.get("SMTP_APP_PASSWORD")
SMTP_SERVER=os.environ.get("SMTP_SERVER")  # smtp.gmail.ch

# NOTE: I haven't verified all the carrier domains - this was provided by ChatGPT

carriers = {
    "att": {
        "sms": "txt.att.net",
        "mms": "mms.att.net"
    },
    "tmobile": {
        "sms": "tmomail.net",
        "mms": "tmomail.net"
    },
    "verizon": {
        # "sms": "vtext.com", # not reliable
        "sms": "vzwpix.com",
        "mms": "vzwpix.com"
    },
    "sprint": {
        "sms": "messaging.sprintpcs.com",
        "mms": "pm.sprint.com"
    },
    "googlefi": {
        "sms": "msg.fi.google.com",
        "mms": "msg.fi.google.com"
    },
    "uscellular": {
        "sms": "email.uscc.net",
        "mms": "mms.uscc.net"
    },
    "boost": {
        "sms": "sms.myboostmobile.com",
        "mms": "myboostmobile.com"
    },
    "cricket": {
        "sms": "sms.cricketwireless.net",
        "mms": "mms.cricketwireless.net"
    },
    "metropcs": {
        "sms": "mymetropcs.com",
        "mms": "mymetropcs.com"
    },
    "virgin": {
        "sms": "vmobl.com",
        "mms": "vmobl.com"
    }
}
contacts = {
    "me": {"carrier": "verizon", "number": "1234567890"},
}
msg = MIMEText("Hello from a python script? What?!")
msg["From"] = SMTP_APP_USER

SEND_TO = "me"

# Complex for my future use cases - deal with it
msg["To"] = f"{contacts[SEND_TO]['number']}@{carriers[contacts[SEND_TO]['carrier']]['sms']}"

with smtplib.SMTP(SMTP_SERVER, 587) as email_handler:
    email_handler.starttls()
    email_handler.login(SMTP_APP_USER, SMTP_APP_PASSWORD)
    email_handler.sendmail(SMTP_APP_USER, [msg["To"]], msg.as_string())

Docker Compose Build From Git Repo

2025-09-12T08:45:20Z

You can reference a git repo in compose’s “build” argument for a service as of this PR

Zsh alias for uv scripts

2025-09-08T06:33:13Z

It’s apparently advantageous for uv to have a specific shebang set that uv init doesn’t add, no problem, we can have a zsh alias for it

alias add-shebang='f(){ 
  if [[ ! -s $1 ]]; then 
    echo "#!/usr/bin/env -S uv run --script" > "$1"; 
  elif head -n1 "$1" | grep -q "^#!"; then 
    echo "Shebang already present in $1"; 
  else 
    sed -i "1i #!/usr/bin/env -S uv run --script" "$1"; 
  fi
}; f'

Then if you have a python script from uv init --script you can add-shebang myscript.py to add the shebang.

Pair AceGamer Wireless PS4 Controller With PC

2025-08-14T06:51:12Z

I bought a $20 PS4 knock-off controller recently as my PS4 controllers are 12 years old (to me!) and I bought them used before that… the instructions for a $20 controller are obviously bad but a godsend redittor discovered the hidden secret to pair this device with my computer! Instructions (for ps4) say to plug it in, hit the home button, and you’re paired. Now, that didn’t work on PC obviously, but it ALSO didn’t work on my PS4… Unfortunte! It works wired just fine, but turns out the magic to send the thing into traditional Bluetooth Pairing Mode is to hold the home and share buttons down - wait for a rapid few blinks - then you’ll see the controller in your bluetooth pairing menu!

Migrate Github Issues to Kanboard

2025-08-07T14:43:27Z

I am working on shifting everything, or as much as I reasonably can, related to dev for myself to on-prem, including git and CI/CD. So for Quadtask I had a bunch of Github issues that I wanted to migrate to my kanboard instance, gpt-5 did a bang-up job on this script

It gets each issue, creates a tag for each label, creates the kanboard ticket, then closes the github issue


#!/bin/bash

# GitHub to Kanboard Issue Migration Script
# Uses GitHub CLI (gh) and curl to migrate issues

# Exit on error
set -e

# Check required environment variables
for var in KANBOARD_URL KANBOARD_TOKEN GH_TOKEN QUADTASK_KANBOARD_PROJECT_ID; do
    if [ -z "${!var}" ]; then
        echo "Error: $var is not set"
        exit 1
    fi
done

# GitHub repository (default: pypeaday/quadtask)
GITHUB_REPO=${GITHUB_REPO:-"pypeaday/quadtask"}

# Kanboard API endpoint
KANBOARD_API="$KANBOARD_URL/jsonrpc.php"

# Get all open issues from GitHub
echo "Fetching open issues from $GITHUB_REPO..."
ISSUES_JSON=$(gh issue list --repo "$GITHUB_REPO" --state open --limit 1000 --json number,title,body,labels)

# Count issues
ISSUE_COUNT=$(echo "$ISSUES_JSON" | jq '. | length')
echo "Found $ISSUE_COUNT open issues"

# Process each issue
echo "$ISSUES_JSON" | jq -c '.[]' | while read -r issue; do
    # Extract issue details
    NUMBER=$(echo "$issue" | jq -r '.number')
    TITLE=$(echo "$issue" | jq -r '.title')
    BODY=$(echo "$issue" | jq -r '.body // ""')
    # Extract label names as a JSON array
    LABELS_JSON=$(echo "$issue" | jq -c '[.labels[]?.name] // []')
    
    # Prepare Kanboard task data
    REQUEST_DATA=$(jq -n \
        --arg method "createTask" \
        --argjson id 1 \
        --arg jsonrpc "2.0" \
        --arg title "$TITLE" \
        --arg description "$BODY" \
        --arg project_id "$QUADTASK_KANBOARD_PROJECT_ID" \
        '{
            "jsonrpc": $jsonrpc,
            "method": $method,
            "id": $id,
            "params": {
                "title": $title,
                "description": $description,
                "project_id": $project_id
            }
        }')
    
    # Create task in Kanboard
    echo "Creating task: $TITLE"
    RESPONSE=$(curl -s -X POST \
        -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
        -u "jsonrpc:$KANBOARD_TOKEN" \
        -d "$REQUEST_DATA" \
        "$KANBOARD_API")
    
    # Check for errors
    if echo "$RESPONSE" | jq -e '.error' > /dev/null; then
        echo "Error creating task: $(echo "$RESPONSE" | jq -r '.error.message')"
    else
        TASK_ID=$(echo "$RESPONSE" | jq -r '.result')
        echo "Created task ID: $TASK_ID"

        # If there are labels, set them as Kanboard tags on the task
        if [ "$(echo "$LABELS_JSON" | jq 'length')" -gt 0 ]; then
            echo "Setting tags on task $TASK_ID: $(echo "$LABELS_JSON" | jq -r 'join(", ")')"
            TAGS_REQUEST=$(jq -n \
                --arg jsonrpc "2.0" \
                --arg method "setTaskTags" \
                --argjson id 2 \
                --arg project_id "$QUADTASK_KANBOARD_PROJECT_ID" \
                --arg task_id "$TASK_ID" \
                --argjson tags "$LABELS_JSON" \
                '{
                    jsonrpc: $jsonrpc,
                    method: $method,
                    id: $id,
                    params: {
                        project_id: $project_id,
                        task_id: $task_id,
                        tags: $tags
                    }
                }')

            TAGS_RESPONSE=$(curl -s -X POST \
                -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
                -u "jsonrpc:$KANBOARD_TOKEN" \
                -d "$TAGS_REQUEST" \
                "$KANBOARD_API")

            if echo "$TAGS_RESPONSE" | jq -e '.error' > /dev/null; then
                echo "Warning: Failed to set tags: $(echo "$TAGS_RESPONSE" | jq -r '.error.message')"
            else
                echo "Tags set successfully"
            fi
        fi

        # Close the corresponding GitHub issue to avoid duplicates
        TASK_URL="${KANBOARD_URL}/?controller=TaskViewController&action=show&task_id=${TASK_ID}"
        echo "Closing GitHub issue #$NUMBER with comment linking to Kanboard task..."
        if gh issue close "$NUMBER" --repo "$GITHUB_REPO" --comment "Migrated to Kanboard task $TASK_ID: $TASK_URL" >/dev/null; then
            echo "Closed GitHub issue #$NUMBER"
        else
            echo "Warning: Failed to close GitHub issue #$NUMBER"
        fi
    fi
    
    echo "----------------------------------------"
done

echo "Migration completed"

Add yourself to www-data to view your Nextcloud data on the filesystem

2025-07-17T07:38:09Z

I am working on using gotify cli for notifying me of nextcloud uploads and I’ll start by running the gotify cli as my user so I’ll need to be able to see the directory in the filesystem that Nextcloud stores the data in.

That folder on disk is owned by www-data (see Nextcloud permissions with ZFS and Ansible-NAS

Turns out it’s my computer and I can do what I want so I just add myself to the www-data group instead of running the gotify cli as root

Bonus

You can remove users from groups with gpasswd -d username groupname

Lua type hinting - undefined global

2025-07-11T06:08:39Z

I have tons of linting errors in my nvim config, partly because I use Lazyvim plus a set of poorly written customizations that have traveled with me for a while. I try to re-work things and right now I’ve been revisiting my developer setup. Well the LSP rrors as I’ve gone through my neovim config are ticking me off - and this was the biggest one “Undefined global: vim”. I saw vim.fn everywhere but the LSP hated it… turns out vim is a given global and you can help your lsp with this:

---@diagnostic disable: undefined-global
-- vim is a global in Neovim Lua scripts

For example:


---@diagnostic disable: undefined-global
-- vim is a global in Neovim Lua scripts
return {
  "pypeaday",
  dir = vim.fn.stdpath("config") .. "/lua/pypeaday",
  config = function()
    local daily = require("pypeaday.daily")
    vim.api.nvim_create_user_command("DailyNote", daily.check_and_open_daily_note, {})
    vim.api.nvim_create_user_command("Daily", daily.check_and_open_daily_note, {})
    vim.api.nvim_create_user_command("BackLinks", daily.find_backlinks, {})
    vim.keymap.set("n", "<leader>dn", daily.check_and_open_daily_note, { desc = "Open daily note" })
    vim.keymap.set("n", "<leader>df", daily.find_daily_files, { desc = "Find daily files" })
    vim.keymap.set("n", "<leader>dl", daily.find_backlinks, { desc = "Find backlinks" })
  end,
}

Nostr hex key

2025-07-02T08:43:32Z

you can hexify your Nostr key when you need to sometimes which I needed to for Posts tagged: postiz (link with a thought I’m sure I have on postiz)


# /// script
# requires-python = ">=3.8"
# dependencies = [
#     "bech32",
# ]
# ///
#
import os

import bech32

# Set your nsec... key to NOSTR_PRIVATE_KEY or bake it in...
nsec_key = os.environ.get("NOSTR_PRIVATE_KEY")


def decode_nsec(nsec_key):
    hrp, data = bech32.bech32_decode(nsec_key)
    if hrp != "nsec":
        raise ValueError("Not a valid nsec key")
    decoded = bech32.convertbits(data, 5, 8, False)
    return bytes(decoded).hex()


# Example usage
raw_hex = decode_nsec(nsec_key)
print(f"Raw hex private key: {raw_hex}")

💭 slash pages

2025-06-12T11:41:43Z

Here’s my thought on slash pages

Waylon’s mentioned slash pages before, but as I work on building my blog again and writing more regularly thanks to “thoughts” etc. I’d like to start putting together some meaningful slash pages for myself… I’m not sure what to put out there yet but this thought can serve as a todo for me

Note

This is one of [[ my-thoughts ]]. I picked this up from Waylon Walker(https://thoughts.waylonwalker.com). It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online. Learn more about the process Thoughts

Double check your CIDR blocks!

2025-06-07T07:27:31Z

tl;dr

Copy paste - don’t rely on typing correctly…

The Issue

I use tailscale at home and generally love it. One thing I use it for is whitelisting - so I have some apps publically available and my homelab ones have DNS with SSL certs by LE but I whitelist to only my private IPs so that I can use https at home basically. However I have had a few issues with a couple apps, and I kind of chaulked it up to “network protocol this” “need to figure out that header that” but ultimately I was being lazy and the issues weren’t catastrophic… it was things like:

couldn’t get to my NVR by DNS, so I’d have to use tailscale_ip:port
couldn’t login with my user in jellyfin cause I lock me down to LAN only since I dont’ use a password
gotify wouldn’t connect using DNS

These things aren’t huge but they are annoying and today I decided to figure it out.

Typo! #

I’m not an expert yet but I think the main problem was the CIDR block I was using in my traefik config.

This’ll shock some of you but 10.64.0.0/10 and 100.64.0.0/10 are not the same blocks!

Check your CIDRs

It’s always DNS, and even when it’s not, it’s still probably networking

Backups are dope

2025-05-27T19:42:27Z

I accidently chown’d -R an app directory and it totally screwed up the database folder. Luckily I zfs replicate my docker volumes to another drive even on the same host, so a quick [rsync] from /harbor/encrypted/docker/manyfold to /tank/encrypted/docker/manyfold got me back up and running since I hadn’t replicated the messed up permission set yet

Q: How to link to my rsync like a pro post?

A: Wikilinks <a href="/rsync-like-a-pro/" class="wikilink" data-title="rsync like a pro" data-description="I am moving a hefty amount of data to a new ZFS pool due to some corruption and I want to avoid using for this just to make sure I don't propagate any..." data-date="2024-12-11">rsync like a pro</a> rsync like a pro

Aurora U-Blue ZRAM Config

2025-05-27T13:51:27Z

I keep running out of space with my swap getting maxxed out… I don’t know why but U-Blue uses Zram already and apparently I can easily override the defaults:

in usr/lib/systemd/zram-generator.conf


# This config file enables a /dev/zram0 device with the default settings:
# — size — same as available RAM or 8GB, whichever is less
# — compression — most likely lzo-rle
#
# To disable, uninstall zram-generator-defaults or create empty
# /etc/systemd/zram-generator.conf file.
[zram0]
zram-size = min(ram, 8192)

And so I just made my own file in /etc/systemd/zram-generator.conf:


[zram0]
zram-size = min(ram, 16384)

Pandas.DataFrame info always answers and is sometimes right

2025-05-26T09:08:08Z

TIL

Today I learned that the .info() of a pandas.DataFrame will always give you an answer, but it is wildly difficult to know how accurate it is, because it depends on the underlying data types. If everything is a NumPy Dtype, then the result you get is the amount of memory NumPy is using under the hood, which is very accurate. But as soon as you have something like a Python string in the data frame, now pandas will tell you how much memory the NumPy data types are using, and it will give you some quick estimate of how much memory space the Python string types are using because numpy is just storing a pointer to that data in memory, but this is far less accurate because it doesn’t actually know what the strings are.

Memory Usage Deep or True #

To get an honest answer about a DataFrame’s memory usage, you need to pass memory_usage='deep' to the .info() method.

# This is the default
In [50]: df.info(memory_usage=True)
<class 'pandas.core.frame.DataFrame'>
RangeIndex: 10 entries, 0 to 9
Data columns (total 3 columns):
 #   Column  Non-Null Count  Dtype 
---  ------  --------------  ----- 
 0   s1      10 non-null     int64 
 1   s2      10 non-null     int64 
 2   s3      10 non-null     object
dtypes: int64(2), object(1)
memory usage: 372.0+ bytes

Notice that the memory usage has a + in it? You can force a deeper analysis by passing memory_usage='deep'

In [51]: df.info(memory_usage='deep')
<class 'pandas.core.frame.DataFrame'>
RangeIndex: 10 entries, 0 to 9
Data columns (total 3 columns):
 #   Column  Non-Null Count  Dtype 
---  ------  --------------  ----- 
 0   s1      10 non-null     int64 
 1   s2      10 non-null     int64 
 2   s3      10 non-null     object
dtypes: int64(2), object(1)
memory usage: 792.0 bytes

SearXNG

2025-05-25T08:33:10Z

I heard about SearXNG on a couple podcasts and saw it trending on GitHub several times before I finally decided to stand it up. I used it transparently when trying out khoj, a self-hosted AI LLM agent playground kind of a thing, but I’ve also been messing around with Open-WebUI to have a self-hosted ChatGPT-like experience. I don’t know if SearchXNG used to be harder to set up, but it was pretty simple with a Docker Compose up and a couple configuration options given my personal homelab setup. Using it feels very nice.

services:
  redis:
    container_name: redis
    image: docker.io/valkey/valkey:8-alpine
    command: valkey-server --save 30 1 --loglevel warning
    restart: unless-stopped
    volumes:
      - ./data/redis:/data
    logging:
      driver: "json-file"
      options:
        max-size: "1m"
        max-file: "1"

  searxng:
    container_name: searxng
    image: docker.io/searxng/searxng:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "8080:8080"
    volumes:
      - ./data/searxng:/etc/searxng:rw
    env_file: .env
    environment:
      # - SEARXNG_BASE_URL=https://${SEARXNG_HOSTNAME:-localhost}/
      - UWSGI_WORKERS=${SEARXNG_UWSGI_WORKERS:-4}
      - UWSGI_THREADS=${SEARXNG_UWSGI_THREADS:-4}
    logging:
      driver: "json-file"
      options:
        max-size: "1m"
        max-file: "1"

I love the self-hosted aspect. I love not seeing any ads on my search results. I did a few searches where I know what results to expect and it did okay. It is good right now at filtering out garbage in my results.

So I look forward to tweaking it and using it as a search backend with open web UI. Next on my list is having enough resources to run Ollama and a stable diffusion generator at the same time and have image generation working through open web UI.

Grafana + Gotify for push notifications

2025-04-07T10:12:51Z

It’s easy to configure push notifications through Gotify from Grafana by setting up a generic Webhook Alerting Contact Point…

The parameters are:

HTTP Method: POST
URL: http:///message
Authentication is done with an app token generated from Gotify, and you put it in Authorization Header: Credentials in the Grafana configuration

See image