Forking Mad
An uncoordinated ramble through life's adventures.
@daj@iBe.social on the fediverse. 
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March 18th, 2024

End of an era

This morning was the funeral of my lovely elderly neighbour.  She was a gem of a lady.  I called her the duchess.  She was full of wisdom, grace, and mischief -- right until the end.

I collected her after a brief hospital stay mid-December, where she learned she was poorly and had no more than an handful of days left.

She told me her plan was to achieve three more things.  She then set about proving the doctors wrong, delaying her exit for almost three months.  She laughed every day.

She wanted to:
  • Have one more Christmas with her family 
  • Celebrate her 92nd birthday 
  • See the birth of her 5th great-grandchild.

She achieved them all.

Living her life as much as she could, until the end.  It was an honour to know her.
March 7th, 2024

🍏 The struggle is real 🍏

I came rather close to one of the seeds while eating an apple earlier.  It would appear it was making a bid for life. Who am I to deny its ambition?
A tiny apple seed, sprouting
A tiny apple seed, sprouting

I have potted it and await the first fruits of my love.  I have a feeling I may also be covered in soil before that happens   😜




February 27th, 2024

Instant Support?

Why do many of the Open Source projects offer support/help via chat services like Discord ?

Honestly, it's a dogs breakfast (aka mess).  It's mostly a linear chat; people join, ask a question, and expect an immediate response. Is that really possible? Shouldn't we be managing expectation better?

The question may get answered, or just scroll off the screen (never to be answered) as more support chat happens.  People replying to a question don't use the Reply feature, resulting in a long, disjointed list of somewhat unconnected messages.

What happened to support forums?  No one expects an instant response.  The results are then searchable in the future too.

February 22nd, 2024

Checking the Fediverse

Following on from my last Scribble about probing the Fediverse, I'm now ready to launch the project into the wild.

I run a couple of Fediverse servers.  On a daily basis the delivery queue can build up as it tries to deliver to non-responsive servers. I need to know if this is a temporary issue, or a longer-term problem spanning many days -- in which case I may stop delivery to the server.

FediCheck was born.  It's simple but useful (to me at least).  I'm putting it out in the wild today for others to test.

https://fedicheck.online/


February 15th, 2024

Probing the Fediverse

I working on a small project, and as part of it I need to know if a Fediverse instance in live.  
Some python scripting later and it is regularly probing every fediverse instance.  An interesting exercie.

Currently, the stats are:

72,098 known servers
25,273 are dead
24,210 are erroring
22,615 are alive


Also, the longest server name I have found is 244 characters long. 🤯
February 9th, 2024

What's in a name?

Have you seen omg.lol ?

I love the idea; love the site;  love all the little offerings; would happily pay twenty bucks for these great ideas.

I just can't deal with having an omg.lol address.  A .lol domain is like Comic Sans font -- cringe.

I appreciate loads of peeps will love a .lol but just not for me 😢
February 8th, 2024

Great Expectations

My other half decided to buy a few jigsaws at the local charity shop.  I later commented that it will probably have a piece missing.

I'm thinking of taking up prophecy 🤭
Completed jigsaw with one piece missing
Completed jigsaw with one piece missing
February 6th, 2024

School boy error

For about a week I have been, on and off, fighting my browser and Ubuntu Desktop to flush its DNS cache after struggling to reach one of my websites.

After a few minutes of swearing I'd set the problem aside and revisit another day.  The domain name was resolving to my old host. It was fine for other people, and worked for me if I dual-booted into Windows 11 (🙈) on my desktop. 

Tonight, a light-bulb moment 💡🤯

For some reason I had manually entered the old IP address in my hosts file.  I don't recall doing it, but it was no one else!

Can I blame the dog?


Wish to comment?  via my Fediverse post.

February 6th, 2024

At home with Git

Following on from my life changing discovery of Git, I've been busy testing various repositories.  I decided to have my public code on Codeberg, but for all my private work (websites, and various scripts, and dev work) I've rolled my own server.

You might ask why I don't just make my projects private on Codeberg?  Reading the t&cs it states that your account should predominately host public gits. Decision made for me!

Running Gitea on a Raspberry Pi 4 at home. I have several Pis doing nothing.  Nice to make use of one. 


January 30th, 2024

Git Me!

A new discovery in my life: Git

As a hobby developer, and occasional dev. in my career, I have been aware of Git and GitHub.  However, I've never given it much head space; I saw it more as a tool for collaboration with other developers.

Recently I decided to dabble while I had some down time.  I've finally got a better handle on it and I used the tool when I was writing my first python script.  It really helped me in keeping control of version, and changes.  It has been great in how I run a test system and updating live too.  I realise I am very late to the party.

I even took the step of publishing my code; that was a big consideration as I know everyone will then judge my work -- we're judged enough in life.  😜

I decided to skip the traditional GitHub as my repository for git, and instead went with Codeberg.  Mostly, as I am trying to conduct my digital life outwith the 'control' of big corporates.  (GibHub being part of Microsoft).
January 23rd, 2024

My first python script, and published

A red letter day today -- I wrote my first ever python script, and published it publicly on a code repository!

I consider myself a competent developer in a number of languages/scripts. My current strengths include the website suite of tools: PHP, HTML, JavaScript and CSS.  I've often wanted to start a python project but never had a need.

Last night it came to me, and here we are: written and published.

It's quite niche, however, if you use porkbun.com for your domain registration, this script will automatically assign your dynamic IP address to your domain.  Typically you would use this to run services/servers in your own home, where your ISP provides an ever-changing IP address.

Feel free to dig deeper, and maybe even make use of it!

https://codeberg.org/daj/porkbun-dynamic-dns-update


January 21st, 2024

Blowin' a hoolie

Sunday evening, 11:45pm and Strom Isha is passing through the UK. 

I was happily working away on a project on the computer; my other half watching TV. And then it was pitch black.  Power failure. Time for bed.

My weather station has so far recorded a gust of 58mph/93 kmph, and average sustained speed of 47.9mph/77kmph, which has broken my 8 years of records.

I guess there will be treemagedon tomorrow.

FYI: Hoolie is a Scottish term from strong wind. 



January 17th, 2024

Friendica test drive

I've been on the Fediverse for over a year now.  I'm quite settled in my main account, however I am always on the lookout for different, new, or interesting services to pique my natural curiosity.

Friendica has been around for some time (July 2010), but it's not huge.  Statistics from fedidb.org currently show 369 servers/instances with 18,360 users.  It's the 16th most popular federated server type out of 48, so not too bad.

Broadly speaking it feels similar to Facebook.  Not that it attempts to emulate it, but there's just something warm, cosy, and familiar.  It's massively configurable if you want it to be, and there are lovely features, like grouping followers, friends, etc -- similar to Circles in Google+ (remember that?!)

So far, I am enjoying it.  As you know though, it's difficult when you first start a new account as the following/follower/interaction is challenging.  However, I'm enjoying trying new things and experimenting.

January 14th, 2024

Fork handles

Those who know the sketch from the Two Ronnies TV show will understand the title!

This week I added another candle to the cake of life, and the old cliché: "it's only a number" comes out.

I have always subscribed to that.

My bag of bones chalked up another year, but it's my mind and outlook that are important to me. I have always lived by that philosophy.  The body may ache more as I get up in the morning, but the brain is running at full speed for the day ahead.

Of course, having 54 candles on your birthday cake means a bigger cake.  Result.

A very talented friend made me this entirely edible cake.  Delicious. 🎂
A sponge cake with icing, sculpted into a pineapple.
A sponge cake with icing, sculpted into a pineapple.


January 11th, 2024

Top Wikipedia Editor

Today I made an edit to a Wikipedia article.

That takes me to three since I registered in March 2015.  I doubt I will win any awards for Contributor of the Year!

The editing feature has moved on quite dramatically.  It's more about visual editing rather than the wiki-speak codes of yesteryear.
January 10th, 2024

Hello, again, World!

I'm back.  Did you miss me?

I've been blogging for years under various guises, but Forking Mad was my personal ramblings through my life; random thoughts and interesting (?) articles.  I started it in 2013, and here we are 10 years later, and a gap of four years, the keyboard is at it again.

What can you expect?  Past ramblings include:

  • Recipes
  • Random food photos
  • Comments on my life
  • Book Reviews
  • Opinions - imagine that!
My bio on social media reads:

#technology dude » culinary conjurer » drinker of #wine & #gin » crime fiction junkie » thinker of thoughts » sarcasm peddler » #Tudor history consumer

Live between #Scotland and #Spain.


If you need more of me, I am on the Fediverse: @daj@iBe.social


Just as an FYI: The Name

Where does the name 'Forking Mad' came from?

Once upon a time, while tackling an awkward patch of the garden, with my newly purchased garden fork, I stopped for a breath to admire the work so far.  Despite so much enthusiasm and the feeling of burning off thousands of calories there still seemed so much to do.

As I stood there, one hand on my hips, the other on the fork handle, I suddenly exclaimed to my audience of none, "I must be forking mad" -- clearly a play on words, or more precisely toning down the expletive.

So there you have it --the phrase stuck in my mind and when I decided a few weeks later to blog about my experiences it was the obvious moniker for the site.

David