Over the last 3 months

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Published on: April 10, 2021

Over the last 3 months, I have worked to pull my data off of the web, and take more control over my data. Things are going along. My email, I now use Claw for the email client instead of a web client, for my calendar I use JPilot calendar instead of google calander. I have been pulling back from the web more and more, for chatting, I am back on IRC. For message boards, I am using UseNet again, and an BBS that is still alive, and mind you they are still alive and kicking with many users.

I have found here people are a lot less toxic then people on social media. Sad thing is you can be toxic there, but god forbid you be a conservative on social media, toxic ok, conservative not ok. Another nice thing, is I now only have 16 web tabs open, down from over 50 I use to have open at a time, true I now have other programs open in place of a few of them, and some of them are just have no replacement.

Replaced tabs
message boards — Pan Usenet reader (2 or more tabs) or BBS
redit — Pan Usenet reader (4 or more tabs) or BBS
google calendar — jpilot
google contacts — jpilot
rackspace web mail — claw
google notes — jpilot
google todo — jpilot
google news — Akregator (an RSS feed agragator)

tabs not replaced
facebook
twitter

Those are not complete lists, but gives you an idea.

The sad thing is the internet is not living up to the promise it was touted as back in the 90’s where any one can communicate with any one else around the world. People just flock to the big tech sites, do what they are told belive what big tech tells them.

The PS4 Time “issue”

Categories: Games, Geekdom, Technology
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Published on: April 8, 2021

With the talk of digital vs Physical games, the digital proponents have been talking about how the PS4 need to sync it clock to the PSN. Or things will not work, they claim that in the future if the PSN shuts down that PS4 physical games will not be playable because if the battery dies and needs to be replaced the clock will not sync to the PSN. Here why this is not an issue. Mind you this is a theoretical discussion for now.

First it reaches out to the PSN, so for this it has a URL that needs to be resolved by a DNS server. Well that is easly dealt with. I currently use Pi-Hole as a DNS ad blocking. But along with this, it is a full DNS server, that you can enter in to your own entries into. So on my home network I have a SMB server (my home built NAS, a Pi + a 2TB USB drive) in the Pi-Hole I added SMB to resolve to the static IP of the SMB server. So when I want to access it I can access SMB instead of just the IP address. So I can point any URL to any IP address I want on my home network. Next the time sync is probably just some reversed engineered protocol, and since you don’t need a PSN account to have it synced there no need for authentication. There are some great people out there that can reverse engineer a protocol. So if the time comes, I am sure they will have already figured this out (probably for emulation) but what to stop a programmer to take this info create a time server that you can run that would give the proper response to a PS4.

Now with these to items in place, just get a time server that would give the correct response for the time (or what ever time you want) run it as a server on a local area network, setup a DNS server on that same LAN (such as Pi-Hole) get the URL that the PS4 would look for and point the URL to the local time server.

Many have reversed engineered game servers, so this would probably be many times easier then a full game server. So for this reason even a CMOS battery dieing in a PS4 after the time sync for the PSN for the PS4 is turned off, would not prevent you from playing a PS4 in the future, sure it would take a bit of work, but not that much more. Put up a DNS server, put up a fake PSN time server, point the URL to the time server, BOOM done, and this all can be done with 1 Raspberry Pi. So the digital proponents argument on this is totally Moot. Those that want to play retro games (and some day the PS4 will be retro) will be able to do this easily. Again as long as I have a physical game they can not take the disc from me.

Palm 3e

Categories: Technology
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Published on: April 7, 2021

With the shutdown of the Sony PSP, Vita, and PS3 store. Also with places like facebag and twatter banning conservatives a lot. And finding that google does over tracking (see my post where I found that to use google drive it goes though one of their analytic sites instead) I have been thinking of what data I let others have control over and what data I have full control over now. While I can not pull that data back from google, or others I can control some of the data in the future. So instead of putting my data for contacts and calendar data on google anymore (the google apps via android) I decided I would look back at some older tech to keep this data and keep more personal control over this data. So I found on eBay an old palm 3e. I use to have one back in the 90’s (it was my first PDA ever) So I picked it up. looking at moving my data into the palm. I am still waiting on a USB to serial adapter so I can use it on my Linux box with JPilot. I have imported my contacts from my phone to JPilot already. There is not much in the calendar so I don’t need to import that data.

I was surprised how fast I remembered the old “graffiti” input style, but it was easy to remember and still almost second nature. I am starting to take more control over my data, instead of surrendering it to google and others. Also with using Pi-Hold to block all facebook URLs and twitter URLs, and many google tracking URLs, I can help keep the tracking down too. Until I can find a good search engine that is not google I can not block all of google’s URLs yet. Sadly DuckDuckGo does not seem to fit that need, and Bing don’t make me laugh.

Well the rumors were true, the PS3, PSP, and Vita stores are closing down.

Categories: Games, Geekdom, Technology
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Published on: March 29, 2021

I just got an email from Sony stating that they are going to indeed close the store.

We are closing PlayStation™Store on PlayStation®3 on July 2nd, 2021 and on PlayStation®Vita devices on August 27th 2021. Additionally, the remaining purchase functionality for PSP™ (PlayStation®Portable) will also retire on July 2nd, 2021.

They further go on to say

After thoughtful consideration, we decided to make these changes in an effort to focus our resources for PlayStation Store on PlayStation®4 and PlayStation®5, which will enable us to enhance the customer experience even further.

I don’t see how this says it going to make the PS4, or PS5 better, in fact as I read this, it puts me further into the position of never wanting to buy digital games. As I can not be sure on the permanency of a digital “purchases” how long will I still be able to download what I bought (if I had bought something digitally).

This does prove the point I have said more then once here, digital is a bad idea, go physical. If the idea was to get people to buy digital in the future this is not the way to do it.

NFT are stupid and I guess the next step from digital games, and bit coin.

Categories: Random Thoughts
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Published on: March 26, 2021

I don’t understand people wanting to “own” things that don’t exist, things that are only digital have no real existence and the value can be sucked out of them at a moments notices. It is scare that people are trying to build an economy on things that are only bits in some computer system. Some day bit coin will crash and crash hard when people realize it has no value, right now it is artificially inflated, I don’t know when it will crash but it will, I just know I would not buy any as an investment as when it crashes all value will be sucked out of it. And I guess the next step is the NFT stupidity, buying the “right” to say you “own” some virtual “item”. Nothing in that has value but people will trade money for that. People trade their hard earned money for nothing.

Yes I know fiat currency also has not value outside of what the government says it has, but at the end of the day it still has a physical presence and that can still be worth something, worse case, the economy crashes, but I will still have paper to wipe with, or burn for warmth, but with bit coin you don’t even have that.

Trying a new email client

Categories: Technology
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Published on: March 24, 2021

I have never been a fan of web mail. So I still use local mail clients. Right now I am trying a new mail client on my system, it is claw-mail. It seems to be working out well, there are a few more things I would like to get setup in it, but so far it looks like it will fit my needs. I have gotten it setup to handle html mail, sadly it seems EVERYONE sends email in HTML instead of plain text which is just stupid, if more email was just plain text I could get away with just plain pine, but since the stupidity of sending email in encoded html you are forced to deal with it, or have unreadable email.

I am so glad I never when digital with my games

Categories: Games, Geekdom, Technology
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Published on: March 22, 2021

With the news Sony is closing down the stores for the PS3, PSP, and the Vita it makes me so glad I never fell for the stupidity of going digital with my game collection. Below is my game collection, nice and safe from any digital store shutting down. This should be a warning to those that thought digital only or “cloud” gaming were good idea, You will some day lose access to the games you paid money for. But for me as long as I have the disc and working console I will still have access to the game, not even a hard drive crash can kill them, just put a new drive in (you can always get used drives, and some places will still make legacy drives) I will be able to keep the games. I said it before and I will say it again, the digital only future is not to be embraced but rejected. Heck the used/retro game market is also healthy so I can still get games for older games with out the need of a digital store front.

BGE really needs to get their act together

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Published on: March 18, 2021

Today we had a 3rd power outage for the week, I am sure some 3rd world countries have more stable power then we have with BGE.

Setup my first VLAN on my home network

Categories: Technology
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Published on: March 15, 2021

Well with the news of the new cyber security issue facing the US that came out today. See here While I am confident that where I work has things in place to help prevent this, one can never be to paranoid. So to protect my home network just in case, I setup a VLAN for my work computer (VLAN 10) I have blocked both ways, devices on my home network can not access the “work” network I setup on VLAN 10, nor can devices (well just device, the work laptop) on the “work” network can not access my home network. I have a drop from work lan -> home lan and also a drop from home lan -> work lan. With 2 more rules, requests to my DNS server only on port 53 from work lan -> home lan, and an Allow Estabished and Related rule so that if a request is made the DNS server can respond. I have tested if I can connect to my work place’s VPN (that all I really care about for the work laptop to connect to, as once that in place all traffic from the laptop goes to my work place) So now from my work laptop I can not ping any IP on my home network, nor can I ping my work laptop from my home network.

This should 1) protect my home network just in case (I doubt it will happen) and 2) if my home network gets compromised (I also doubt this will happen) it should help protect my work system from it. Also to go with this, my guest WiFi network is also off of either of these 2 network, so if I have a guest over that has a compromised devices (this is my biggest fear, as not all my friends are tech savy) it will not be on either my home network nor my work network.

Happy Pi Day all

Categories: Geekdom
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Published on: March 14, 2021

Hope you made a good Pie to celibate Pi day. I will be making a dutch apple pie later today for Pi day.

Time to make a real network eng cry (that such a mess, what the heck are you doing there?)

Categories: Technology
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Published on: March 13, 2021

This is the core of my network, Here you will see at the top my Unifi USG router, with the main WAN going out to my Verizon FioS modem, and the second WAN going out to a WiFi access point, that connects to my T-Mobile Hotspot as a fail over in case my Verizon connection goes down.

Next to the WiFi access point is a hard drive that is connected to a Pi that serves not only as a SMB server (for my local NAS) but that same Pi also serves as my DHCP server and the VPN endpoint into my home network when I am out and about (if we ever can leave our homes again) Above that Pi is another Pi that serves as a DNS server (Pi-Hole) and the Unifi Controller server.

Also you see on the wall there my main switch that has 3 lines going out, on to “Desk 2” to distribute the network into my computer room, one goes to the bed room to send out the network to the bedroom, and the third one goes out to the living room to distribute the network out there.

Also you will see the USB drive is not plugged directly into the Pi, as it could not put enough power to the USB drive so it goes into a powered USB hub, then to the Pi.

And there is the core of my home network, and yes it a mess and no cable managment.

Yet another Power failure from BGE today.

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Published on: March 12, 2021

I wish BGE could keep the power on more then a few days. Today at 11:30pm we had yet ANOTHER power failure.

To make my life easier on all my computers

Categories: Technology
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Published on: March 12, 2021

Since I have played around with the NAS, I had the thought I should share out my main data directory on my main computer, and then mount them on all my computers. This way I don’t have to worry about scp the file over do the work and then scp it back. This way I can just have my document directory mounted on all my Linux boxes, and if I need to work with a file, it is already “on” the computer and when I save it will be saved over at the main computer’s file system. I just had to set the “owner” of the files when I mount it on all the other Linux boxes. Took a little bit of work today, but it might save me time in the future, as no need to copy files back and forth.

Backing up my data to the NAS

Categories: Technology
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Published on: March 11, 2021

Along with the other backups I do of my data; I use SpiderOak for off sight, and also sync it with MS one drive [Yes Linux data being synced to OneDrive], I also take a tar.gz backup of it, and store in the local computer, then scp a copy of it to a file server on my network, also I sync the one drive down to another computer. I am now going to do a nightly rsync of the data directory to the NAS I setup. I know maybe I am doing to many backups of the data, but I want to be sure if something happens to my data I can have a chance of getting it back. I will also being coping a copy of my nightly backup tar.gz files up the the NAS.

The funny part is I could have uploaded it to the cloud faster then doing the init sync of the data to the NAS, while in the long run it will not mater, now it is going slower as the Raspberry Pi only has a 10/100Mbit Ethernet port, so it will take longer to load the full 1.3TB to the NAS. Funny as I could upload to the internet in half the time as I tend to get upload speeds of 200Mbits when uploading to the internet now, I have seen as high as 500Mbits, but 200Mbits is about the average I seen.

Next steps on my network

Categories: Technology
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Published on: March 10, 2021

I have 2 Raspberry Pis (as I have talked about a lot and they are doing network services for me) I am not using m the external hard drive I had attached to my PS4 Pro a while back so I cleaned up games from it, and also from the external drive that I will not be playing anymore on the PS4, especially since I have the PS5, and the PSVR is attached to the PS5. I was able to free enough room up on both the internal and exernal drive, that I am able to move all the games still on the PS4 to the internal drive. So I am going to format it and attach it to on of the Raspberry Pis and turn it into a 2TB NAS drive. The work I am doing on my home network is making it look almost professional. Firewalls, WiFi Mesh network, custom DHCP, in house DNS sever to both fillter out ads/malware sites and get updates from the DHCP server so I can connect to local boxes via a name and not just an IP address. Now I will have a nice little NAS (2TB) setup to go with all of this. Some of this is just repurposeing older hardware.

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