Malcolm's Geek Blog

Author: Malcolm Gin

  • A grand project – Streaming and Video Hosting – Part 3 – Drilling into DNS

    I want to look into how we do DNS these days. There are a couple of choices – one of the reasons there are choices is that DNS kind of sucks. But it also drives the Internet. I am old enough that I remember, having just missed the era of programming mainframes with punch cards, […]

  • A grand project – Streaming and Video Hosting – Part 2 – Design, Planning, and Notes

    Rough network diagram, showing a private network on the left of the router, and a DMZ network on the right, showing a separation of traffic between the two and sharing the Internet connection.

    Having decided on a goal, it’s now time to rough out the approach. Basically, what do I need to do to make this happen? Decide on regular DNS or Dynamic DNS to provide an external DNS hostname so other peers can find my instance. regular DNS Domain: perivid.xyz Registered, registrar chosen, domain chosen. DNS A […]

  • A grand project – Streaming and Video Hosting – Part 1

    Sort of growing out of my impulse to record leukemia patient knowledge for posterity, I started playing PC games and streaming them. My original goal there was just to get used to recording my own video, used to hearing and listening critically to my own voice, figuring out what to talk about when playing games […]

  • An attempted compendium or at least a start of a resource guide on Long COVID

    One of my extended adult chosen family has contracted COVID. He’s fit, healthy, but a Gen X old (approximately) like the rest of us. Perhaps too fit, because he hates hearing that as far as we know, Some of the best ways to avoid Long COVID are to take a 6 week break from any […]

  • More on that custom widget – more about data analytics and researching stuff

    Widget reading: Temp 76F AQ 28

    Let’s talk about lay research, one of the cornerstones of science, and reproducibility, another, and   doing one’s research and homework before putting something out in the world when developing even trivial things like iOS Shortcuts-driven Widgets.

  • Writing/Customizing/Automating a Custom Widget in Apple’s iOS 14

    14 in gradient colors - ios 14 logo

    (NOTE: These are the life and times of a geek – we do this kind of thing for ourselves or our loved ones. It’s part of what I do to make a living, sometimes. Or just to impress neighbors or even help them sometimes. But that’s why this is in the Geek-as-a-Trade series.) So I […]

  • “Advanced” Home Automations with HomeKit, Eve’s HomeKit app, and Homebridge

    From time to time as I’m writing something for another use (I spend an inordinate amount of time updating house planning and house maintenance documents, moreso now that I’ve got a significant investment in “smart” home technologies in the house), I figure “Hey, maybe this’ll be useful for someone else to see!”, so I copy/paste […]

  • RPE System for Fitness

    photo of a woman lifting a barbell

    IMPORTANT NOTE: Though I am talking about fitness, and my goal is to be more fit, stronger, more flexible, and better conditioned, and more capable, I remain fat, and I am likely to continue to be fat. Not only that but I’m a fat acceptance activist. So don’t be using this blog post to shame […]

  • Unit Tests and Test Driven Development (TDD)

    woman coding

    I am working on a project, both to develop a little widget – a calculator to support my weightlifting exercise – and to do it and document it a RIGHT WAY, so that I might later turn that work into a book or a vlog series or whatever. Anyhow, while documenting the setup (in my […]

  • The KLF

    While I was growing up, I only really had access to radio and to my parents’ LP collection (yeah, I know, old). So my primary go-tos were, embarrassingly (or, SUPER COOL! depending on who I’m talking to): Robert Preston’s Chicken Fat Youth Fitness workout song The Story of Star Wars Album Kate Bush’s The Kick […]

  • Notes and remarks on my Wok Hei Lettuce with Chopped Salted Chiles

    Top-down photo of chopped salted chiles into a 1-cup mason jar.

    This is another promotional post about the anthology about recipes and cooking called Feeding the Muse, edited by Leona Wisoker. I’ll get the promotional stuff out of the way under the fold (the 2nd chapter), then go on to the writing about this section of my chapter.

  • Short reccs for Asian restaurants in the East Bay

    An old colleague just contacted me today about recommendations for Asian restaurants in the SF East Bay. I figured some of you might be interested in my response.

  • On contributing to an anthology about cooking

    This post is both promotional and musing, so to get the promotional stuff out of the way, read more, and I’ll try to stuff it all into the first paragraph.

  • 2018 SGV Trip, Day 4 (Monday)

    Green Onion Pancake with egg, served on an undersized white rectangular plate.

    Good morning! This is the (delayed) fourth diary entry for a trip we just finished taking through the San Gabriel Valley with some friends. You can find the map here, which has some photos and may also have comments as the trip goes on, tied to each location we visit, and organized according to date. […]

  • 2018 SGV Trip, Day 3 (Sunday)

    Spring Onion Chicken in Pepper Sauce served in a white oval bowl. White cut chicken in a spicy green oil and sauce with metal serving spoon.

    Good afternoon! This is the (delayed) third diary entry for a trip we just finished taking through the San Gabriel Valley with some friends. You can find the map here, which has some photos and may also have comments as the trip goes on, tied to each location we visit, and organized according to date. […]

  • 2018 SGV Trip, Day 2 (Saturday)

    Good afternoon! This is the (delayed) second diary entry for a trip we just finished taking through the San Gabriel Valley with some friends. You can find the map here, which has some photos and may also have comments as the trip goes on, tied to each location we visit, and organized according to date. […]

  • 2018 SGV Trip, Day 1 (Friday)

    Overhead shot of Kang Kang Food Court's sheng jian bao.

    Also get some dumplings. seriously. What are you? An Animal?

  • Migrating WordPress from one URL to another (with Dreamhost)

    I haven’t seen a comprehensive guide for this so I figured I should probably write it up. A site on my Dreamhost Shared Hosting Server was compromised a few days ago, and even though my security is decent, I figured it was time to switch up the configuration for my 4 WordPress blogs. The goal […]

  • Blowing my own horn a little – Gitlab repositories and demo sites

    Lately while alternating with looking for jobs/work, I’ve been doing programming exercises with The Coding Train, which is a good, approachable YouTube-based general tutorial/set of programming prompts, discussion, demo, and training. It’s a continuation of work I’ve been doing since late 2017.

  • On keeping passwords and accounts

    Bronze lock locking a chain across an old wooden door, painted green.

    Lately there have been some high profile password issues. Twitter discovered a log that was logging passwords in cleartext (this is eminently avoidable if you have an internal security team that’s properly empowered to train developers not to do this sort of thing). GitHub too.

  • Newly reported White People (ally/accomplice) BUG

    Two blue-toned butterflies close up on a leaf.

    I figure since this is a tech/geek blog, it will be useful to report these issues as bugs and hope that White People (their own developers/support) think to make it a priority to fix. Note this means I don’t have to fix it for ya’ll, just notify you of the problem.

  • Administrative Note (3/2018)

    Just a note. Today I upgraded the PHP framework for my WordPress blogs to version 7.2, which is good in the sense that an upgraded infrastructure is good for overall security in any service or application, but it seems to be generating a warning in the header of pages on the site. Hopefully Automattic, the […]

  • Memory Management

    I don’t mean this to be metaphorical, but maybe 10 or 20 years from now it will be. Computers and computing require memory. The reason is they need to keep quick calculations and values close at hand, because of communication speeds, because we need them to be quick and responsive, particularly for video displays and […]

  • More on Home Automation, Homebridge, Nest, and Apple’s HomeKit

    I got Homebridge, the Node.js-based software Bridge for use with home automation and Nest (and other Internet of Things – aka IoT) home automation devices, working and running in my environment. And then my WeMo bridge started failing. But more herein about getting Nest to work with Homebridge and Apple Homekit because, as usual, the […]

  • Getting better at customizing WordPress

    WordPress logo

    Since last year, I’ve been volunteering on a Taproot Foundation Website grant, and we’ve been setting up WordPress for a nonprofit that got awarded the grant for them to use as a replacement website for their content and publications. I’ve been working as the “lead developer” and my various hard and soft skills (including mentoring […]

  • Adventures in Home Automation

    For me, it started with the Nest Protects (Smoke and CO detectors), then a Nest Thermostat, then more Protects, now some cameras, and some other products: A WeMo (Belkin) smart outlet plug, and now a Philips Hue bridge and two lights. It’s a slippery slope. A gateway drug. But it’s also a huge technical PITA. […]

  • Still seeking a good CrashPlan Home Unlimited Family replacement

    As you may or may not know, CrashPlan, in April 2017, announced intent to mothball the CrashPlan Home service by October 2018, so since then I’ve been looking for a suitable replacement for my family.

  • This is my new home page

    (Sticky) Summary: I moved my current projects page to this blog.

  • Toxic Masculinity, the Real Scoop on What it’s Like to be a Man in it, and Related Thoughts

    Let me start by laying my cards out and saying why I’m writing this. I was assigned male at birth. I was raised a feminist boy in the late 60s, early 70s. I have a strong and assertive mother. I have a minor in Women’s Studies, I’m trans, and non binary (since I was 19). […]

  • 2017 Thanks Taking

    Two place settings, the centerpiece, a candle, the cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, gravy, and the meat plate.

    Let me start with a statement about “Thanksgiving”. We’re supposed to give thanks for all that we have. That’s great, but it elides the genocides, massacres, and wars that US settlers had with the natives of North America before taking possession. It elides the biological warfare. It elides centuries of neglect, abuse, and outright murder […]

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