As George Costanza used to say, "You know, we're living in a society!", but just in case we don't, remember this website has a mirror on the Tor network, so bookmark it. RSS feed is here.

VPN killswitch and Windows 7

February 20, 2024    Article    513 words    3 mins read

Lately I’ve been having fun with my Nokia Booklet netbook and Windows 7, and I wanted all Internet traffic blocked when there is no active VPN connection (VPN killswitch); this can be done with just Windows Firewall.

There are several steps involved:

  1. Download and install OpenVPN GUI for Windows 7 (make sure you don’t install OpenVPN Connect by mistake).
  2. Get a OpenVPN profile from a VPN provider (Proton, Njal.la, Riseup).
  3. Setup all VPN traffic to be allowed.
  4. Setup all other network traffic to be blocked.
  5. Fine-tune the firewall rules.

Go to Start Menu -> All Programs -> Administrative Tools -> Windows Firewall with Advanced Security. In the left panel click on Outbound Rules and once the outbound firewall rules are listed, click on New Rule in the right panel.

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Software that Fits in Your Backpack

February 19, 2024    Bookmark    https://atthis.link/blog/2023/16728.html

Building and using only the tools and software that do what you need rather than what you might doesn’t mean you need to pretend it’s the 80’s and every kilobyte and clock cycle is precious - or even that you need to forgo all the excitement of computing and choose boring technology. Rather, there’s value in periodically assessing what you use, how you use it, and weighing up whether there’s value in doing more with less. Not every program needs to handle every eventuality.

Does your email client, text editor, or todo app need to essentially be another operating system unto itself? So much so that they very likely have complete support for Xbox-360 controllers for some reason? Could you achieve just as much, if not more functionality, by putting everything in a simple text file? It’s worth exploring.

Marc

Future

February 17, 2024    Article    521 words    3 mins read

My great-grandmother had ten children, eight of whom lived to adulthood. When none had yet left the household, she used to bake golden-brown dinner rolls before dinnertime, cooling them in a towel-lined basket from which the smell of the rolls inside would waft through her whole house, announcing that the meal was almost ready to eat. Afterwards, if any of the rolls remained, the children would grab them out of the basket as a snack or to eat at lunch.

My grandmother had six children. Her mother passed down the recipe for those same dinner rolls down to her, and in the same fashion, she would bake them in the early afternoon and leave them in a basket on her kitchen countertop after meals were done. The table in her and my grandfather’s house, in time, hosted dozens of family friends, guests, and cherished extended family members, all of whom would end up having one of my grandmother’s dinner rolls at one point or another. Each of her children, just like she did when she was younger, would sneak a roll from the basket throughout the day, until all that was left was a pile of crumbs lining the bottom.

When my father married my mother, his parents passed down to him a family recipe book, a hundred fifty pages of jumbled, handwritten-and-copied notes on the dishes he had grown up with and how to make them just so. At the back of this book was the original dinner roll recipe, passed down from his mother’s mother to my grandmother, to him, and my mother. As a child, I often saw my mother kneading bread dough on a floured countertop on days when guests were expected, holidays, and special occasions, and on those days the warmth of the oven would dissipate throughout the house after what we knew as Mom’s dinner rolls had been pulled out and left to cool on a wire rack by the kitchen windowsill. I remember being able to make several of the buttery, crusty rolls disappear - as if by magic.

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Website wordcloud

February 2, 2024    Article    92 words    1 min read

It has come to my attention that thousands of years ago, all the cool kids had pretty wordclouds on their blogs, so here is mine; though a bit late, mainly because I’m not one of the cool kids.

The image was generated from the JSON feed of my website (with a temporary change to output all the website articles in that feed and not just the latest 20), using this Python module. Doesn’t include notes, bookmarks, projects or special pages (search, links, about, etc).

Click on the image for a bigger version.

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In Memoriam: The Life and Travels of Mick VII

January 21, 2024    Bookmark    https://geographicaljourneys.wordpress.com/2024/01/11/in-memoriam-the-life-and-travels-of-mick-vii/

If you can’t make a journey to a new place, then take a walk in a familiar place, but take notes on what you see, hear, smell and sense when you do. Read a book where the story is based in another country. Take a cooking class and research the places where the ingredients come from. Maybe begin to learn a new language.

[…]

All of the iterations of each of our lives may come from the same loaf of baguette (the dough of which we are made). We are who we are. We can’t change our DNA, and we were socialized as young people by our parents and the groups around us. However, it is possible to make a few subtle changes to who were are, or hope to become. Take your life (your baguette) and learn how to make a different meal, depending on which sauces you choose to dip it in. The type of sauce you dip your life into is heavily influenced by the friends you keep, and the environment you are in. Invest in keeping relationships with good old friends. Jettison the excess baggage in your life. Find a good environment to interact with and make a positive contribution to that environment. Although the bread remains the same, each piece of baguette will be a different size. And, when you switch from dipping that piece of bread into olive oil and oregano instead of hummus, you wind up with a slightly different taste.

Mick McCann