From a547c5136ddb3a03694206b7c5e345e78c724cdc Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Tait Hoyem Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2021 15:59:58 -0700 Subject: [PATCH] Add lichess accessibility article --- 3q | 62 +++++++++++++++++++++++++ _posts/2021-01-31-lichess.md | 70 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ _site/2021/01/31/lichess/index.html | 5 +++ _site/3q | 1 + _site/blog/index.html | 2 +- _site/feed.xml | 2 +- _site/sitemap.xml | 2 +- 7 files changed, 141 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) create mode 100644 3q create mode 100644 _posts/2021-01-31-lichess.md create mode 100644 _site/2021/01/31/lichess/index.html create mode 100644 _site/3q diff --git a/3q b/3q new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ffc1e12 --- /dev/null +++ b/3q @@ -0,0 +1,62 @@ +--- +layout: post +title: "Lichess Accessibility" +--- + +I wanted to play chess with somebody who used a screen reader, without requiring a screen reader myself; +some sites, like QuintenC's Playroom have a rather poor visual interface for anyone who would like the play the game visually. +[Lichess](https://lichess.org) is an free and open-source website for chess players; +it bridges this gap by having two "modes" on the site: +standard mode and accessibility mode. + +## Accessibility Mode + +Accessibility mode is far from perfect on lichess.org. +That said, the idea to separate the sites into different modes was a good call. +It stops the inevitable "this would work well for screen readers but cause visual issues" shenanigans, +or, vice-verse "this looks great but it might be weird with a screen reader". +This way all the things which affect the visual interface are in one place, +and all things which affect the non-visual user interface (NVUI) are written in another. + +In my quest to play chess with visual and non-visual players with both having optimal experiences, I tried Lichess with my friend from [melly.tech](https://melly.tech/). +She pointed out that the method to interface with the board previously was rather poor. +This is because it required an "enter" at the end of each command and the commands tended to read out a row or column of a chessboard not just an individual square. + +For example, to list all pieces (or lack thereof) on the e file, I would type the command: + +``` +s e +``` + +Although this seems good in theory, and it's great when you need an entire file, there was no way to get only one square. +In addition, imagine typing to navigate around the board: + +``` +s e1 +s f1 +s e2 +``` + +For the inexperienced player, it seems to be more convenient to bind some keys and have the user bounce to various buttons, which they can push to say "I want to move this piece". +This is what I was told anyway. +So I want to work making a system so you could use the following basic keys: + +* left/right/up/down arrow: move on the board. +* k/q/r/b/n/p: move to next piece represented by its character in chess notation. +* shift + k/q/r/b/n/p: move back to the last piece represented by its character in chess notation. +* click/enter/space: select piece to move. +* click/enter/space again: move piece here. +* m: show where I can move with this piece. +* shift+m: show where I can capture with this piece. +* 1-8: move to rank 1-8; stay on same file. +* shift + 1-8: move to file a-h; stay on same rank. + +This gives a pretty solid basis for playing the game. +One caveat is after you have moved a pawn all the way to the farthest rank, only the destination tile will accept your promotion choice. +Therefore, all the other keys still work on other square, but if you are on the destination square of a promotion q/r/b/n will promote your piece, not jump you to the next/previous one. + +This pull request was merged earlier this month: + +## More To Come + + diff --git a/_posts/2021-01-31-lichess.md b/_posts/2021-01-31-lichess.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..df6df3f --- /dev/null +++ b/_posts/2021-01-31-lichess.md @@ -0,0 +1,70 @@ +--- +layout: post +title: "Lichess Accessibility" +--- + +I wanted to play chess with somebody who used a screen reader, without requiring a screen reader myself; +some sites, like QuintenC's Playroom have a rather poor visual interface for anyone who would like the play the game visually. +[Lichess](https://lichess.org) is an free and open-source website for chess players; +it bridges this gap by having two "modes" on the site: +standard mode and accessibility mode. + +## Accessibility Mode + +Accessibility mode is far from perfect on lichess.org. +That said, the idea to separate the sites into different modes was a good call. +It stops the inevitable "this would work well for screen readers but cause visual issues" shenanigans, +or, vice-verse "this looks great but it might be weird with a screen reader". +This way all the things which affect the visual interface are in one place, +and all things which affect the non-visual user interface (NVUI) are written in another. + +In my quest to play chess with visual and non-visual players with both having optimal experiences, I tried Lichess with my friend from [melly.tech](https://melly.tech/). +She pointed out that the method to interface with the board previously was rather poor. +This is because it required an "enter" at the end of each command and the commands tended to read out a row or column of a chessboard not just an individual square. + +For example, to list all pieces (or lack thereof) on the e file, I would type the command: + +``` +s e +``` + +Although this seems good in theory, and it's great when you need an entire file, there was no way to get only one square. +In addition, imagine typing to navigate around the board: + +``` +s e1 +s f1 +s e2 +``` + +For the inexperienced player, it seems to be more convenient to bind some keys and have the user bounce to various buttons, which they can push to say "I want to move this piece". +This is what I was told anyway. +So I want to work making a system so you could use the following basic keys: + +* left/right/up/down arrow: move on the board. +* k/q/r/b/n/p: move to next piece represented by its character in chess notation. +* shift + k/q/r/b/n/p: move back to the last piece represented by its character in chess notation. +* click/enter/space: select piece to move. +* click/enter/space again: move piece here. +* m: show where I can move with this piece. +* shift+m: show where I can capture with this piece. +* 1-8: move to rank 1-8; stay on same file. +* shift + 1-8: move to file a-h; stay on same rank. + +This gives a pretty solid basis for playing the game. +One caveat is after you have moved a pawn all the way to the farthest rank, only the destination tile will accept your promotion choice. +Therefore, all the other keys still work on other square, but if you are on the destination square of a promotion q/r/b/n will promote your piece, not jump you to the next/previous one. + +This pull request was merged earlier this month: + +## More To Come + +Next thing I want to do is implement the analysis board. +Right now it is not accessible whatsoever. + +## Help Me + +If you are a screen reader user or know about accessibility and want to help make Lichess an awesome chess site for sighted and unsighted players alike, +then send me an email at tait@tait.tech and I'll BCC you once I start testing the analysis board. + +Happy hacking, y'all! diff --git a/_site/2021/01/31/lichess/index.html b/_site/2021/01/31/lichess/index.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..45e6c15 --- /dev/null +++ b/_site/2021/01/31/lichess/index.html @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ + Lichess Accessibility | tait.tech

Lichess Accessibility

I wanted to play chess with somebody who used a screen reader, without requiring a screen reader myself; some sites, like QuintenC’s Playroom have a rather poor visual interface for anyone who would like the play the game visually. Lichess is an free and open-source website for chess players; it bridges this gap by having two “modes” on the site: standard mode and accessibility mode.

Accessibility Mode

Accessibility mode is far from perfect on lichess.org. That said, the idea to separate the sites into different modes was a good call. It stops the inevitable “this would work well for screen readers but cause visual issues” shenanigans, or, vice-verse “this looks great but it might be weird with a screen reader”. This way all the things which affect the visual interface are in one place, and all things which affect the non-visual user interface (NVUI) are written in another.

In my quest to play chess with visual and non-visual players with both having optimal experiences, I tried Lichess with my friend from melly.tech. She pointed out that the method to interface with the board previously was rather poor. This is because it required an “enter” at the end of each command and the commands tended to read out a row or column of a chessboard not just an individual square.

For example, to list all pieces (or lack thereof) on the e file, I would type the command:

s e
+

Although this seems good in theory, and it’s great when you need an entire file, there was no way to get only one square. In addition, imagine typing to navigate around the board:

s e1
+s f1
+s e2
+

For the inexperienced player, it seems to be more convenient to bind some keys and have the user bounce to various buttons, which they can push to say “I want to move this piece”. This is what I was told anyway. So I want to work making a system so you could use the following basic keys:

  • left/right/up/down arrow: move on the board.
  • k/q/r/b/n/p: move to next piece represented by its character in chess notation.
  • shift + k/q/r/b/n/p: move back to the last piece represented by its character in chess notation.
  • click/enter/space: select piece to move.
  • click/enter/space again: move piece here.
  • m: show where I can move with this piece.
  • shift+m: show where I can capture with this piece.
  • 1-8: move to rank 1-8; stay on same file.
  • shift + 1-8: move to file a-h; stay on same rank.

This gives a pretty solid basis for playing the game. One caveat is after you have moved a pawn all the way to the farthest rank, only the destination tile will accept your promotion choice. Therefore, all the other keys still work on other square, but if you are on the destination square of a promotion q/r/b/n will promote your piece, not jump you to the next/previous one.

This pull request was merged earlier this month:

More To Come

Next thing I want to do is implement the analysis board. Right now it is not accessible whatsoever.

Help Me

If you are a screen reader user or know about accessibility and want to help make Lichess an awesome chess site for sighted and unsighted players alike, then send me an email at tait@tait.tech and I’ll BCC you once I start testing the analysis board.

Happy hacking, y’all!

\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/_site/3q b/_site/3q new file mode 100644 index 0000000..12d0f55 --- /dev/null +++ b/_site/3q @@ -0,0 +1 @@ + Lichess Accessibility | tait.tech

Lichess Accessibility

I wanted to play chess with somebody who used a screen reader, without requiring a screen reader myself; some sites, like QuintenC's Playroom have a rather poor visual interface for anyone who would like the play the game visually. [Lichess](https://lichess.org) is an free and open-source website for chess players; it bridges this gap by having two "modes" on the site: standard mode and accessibility mode. ## Accessibility Mode Accessibility mode is far from perfect on lichess.org. That said, the idea to separate the sites into different modes was a good call. It stops the inevitable "this would work well for screen readers but cause visual issues" shenanigans, or, vice-verse "this looks great but it might be weird with a screen reader". This way all the things which affect the visual interface are in one place, and all things which affect the non-visual user interface (NVUI) are written in another. In my quest to play chess with visual and non-visual players with both having optimal experiences, I tried Lichess with my friend from [melly.tech](https://melly.tech/). She pointed out that the method to interface with the board previously was rather poor. This is because it required an "enter" at the end of each command and the commands tended to read out a row or column of a chessboard not just an individual square. For example, to list all pieces (or lack thereof) on the e file, I would type the command: ``` s e ``` Although this seems good in theory, and it's great when you need an entire file, there was no way to get only one square. In addition, imagine typing to navigate around the board: ``` s e1 s f1 s e2 ``` For the inexperienced player, it seems to be more convenient to bind some keys and have the user bounce to various buttons, which they can push to say "I want to move this piece". This is what I was told anyway. So I want to work making a system so you could use the following basic keys: * left/right/up/down arrow: move on the board. * k/q/r/b/n/p: move to next piece represented by its character in chess notation. * shift + k/q/r/b/n/p: move back to the last piece represented by its character in chess notation. * click/enter/space: select piece to move. * click/enter/space again: move piece here. * m: show where I can move with this piece. * shift+m: show where I can capture with this piece. * 1-8: move to rank 1-8; stay on same file. * shift + 1-8: move to file a-h; stay on same rank. This gives a pretty solid basis for playing the game. One caveat is after you have moved a pawn all the way to the farthest rank, only the destination tile will accept your promotion choice. Therefore, all the other keys still work on other square, but if you are on the destination square of a promotion q/r/b/n will promote your piece, not jump you to the next/previous one. This pull request was merged earlier this month: ## More To Come
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/_site/blog/index.html b/_site/blog/index.html index 35ee4af..24cef3a 100644 --- a/_site/blog/index.html +++ b/_site/blog/index.html @@ -1 +1 @@ - Blog | tait.tech

Blog

Orca, Emacspeak and Chromium Accessibility on A Raspberry Pi Running Manjaro ARM

I wanted to get a gift for my blind friend who has been interested in learning Linux for a while now. Just when I was about to start looking for something I decided to take a look at Brian Lunduke’s newest video featuring the Raspberry Pi 400. The Raspberry Pi 400 has come full circle in terms of computing. It is a keyboard. All the computing is done from within the keyboard. Much like the Comodore64, this computer comes without a screen but is still technically fully functional without one. I had my ‘Aha!’ moment, and decided that the Raspberry Pi 400 would be a very cool present.

Curiosity

Curiosity is fundamental to a deep understanding of any subject. Masters, Ph.Ds, and other fancy name suffixes will never help you if you don’t have the spirit of curiosity burning inside of you.

Minesweeper Bomb Generation And Tile Revealing

When I was creating a little Minesweeper game, I got confused at some points. My bomb generation didn’t look quite right, and I for sure didn’t quite get the whole cascading tile reveal thing. With a bit of internet research, I found what I was looking for. I’ll explain it all in one place for my own research purposes.

How to Solve The Django Deployment Puzzle

A few days ago I had a Django project I wanted to put on a real server. This project is still in its infancy, but I thought it would be nice to put it on my resume and show my friends. Little did I know the headache coming my way. Here are some tips to help you not make the same mistakes as me.

BSD Journey, Part 1

As Linux becomes controlled by corporate sponsors and becomes more full of proprietary blobs, drivers, and even closed-source software like Steam, One may wonder if there are other options out there. For me, somebody that is intensely interested in security, there is one option: OpenBSD.

Know How Your Representative Votes In Parliament

As an advocate for openness, I had an idea to make a project out of the government of Canada’s Open Data initiative to take a look at how my local MP voted on various pieces of legislation. It turns out though that this was not necessary due to how easy it was to find this information on the government’s own website. In this article, I will explain how you can do the same.

Installing MultiCraft on Gentoo Linux

In a very odd combination of requirements, I needed to install MultiCraft on a Gentoo Linux system. The PHP USE flags are important so you don’t have to recompile it three times like I did.

Independence

“When given a choice between independence and dependence, always choose independence; you will never regret that choice!”—Luke Smith

How to use tmux to send and receive things from your Minecraft server

So recently I had problem. I run a Minecraft server on a big Linux computer I have running in my room. Now, as a system administrator it is very helpful to be able to run some simple commands without needing to login with my key, password, TFA, etc. It is, frankly, a lot of work. Especially when I really just want to be playing games but I just need to check something quickly.

Site Update

I updated the site with some easier to identify information about me and my projects :)

New Game: Clue (coming soon)

Ooo! Exciting! Today I want to announce a new project I’ll be working on which should be live within the month of May: Clue.

What is XSS?

I found a cross-site scripting (XSS) attack in a well-known quiz hosting website. I disclosed the vulnerability to them years ago, so I thought now might be a good time to write about it.

How To Encrypt Your Own Documents Using gpg

If you have ever wanted to garuntee the utmost security of your emails and documents, then this is the guide for you! It should be noted that in some circles the tools used are more common than in others. These are the everyday tools of many privacy advocates and computer nerds.

How Does Encryption Work, in Theory?

There are many kinds of encryption used in our everyday communication. Online and offline, over the internet and in person. In this article, I will explain the basics of how encryption should work in theory. I explain in this article why encryption is important, and why you should care about it.

Is Encryption Worth It?

What is the most embarassing thing you have typed into Google search? What is the most personal secret you told a friend in confidence? What is your bank password? What is your business’s secret to stay ahead of the competition?

Padding And Margin

Many people have expressed confusion over how padding and margins work in HTML/CSS. I have been one of those people. In this short article I will explain what the differences are between the two, and how it may affect the functionality of your site.

\ No newline at end of file + Blog | tait.tech

Blog

Lichess Accessibility

I wanted to play chess with somebody who used a screen reader, without requiring a screen reader myself; some sites, like QuintenC’s Playroom have a rather poor visual interface for anyone who would like the play the game visually. Lichess is an free and open-source website for chess players; it bridges this gap by having two “modes” on the site: standard mode and accessibility mode.

Orca, Emacspeak and Chromium Accessibility on A Raspberry Pi Running Manjaro ARM

I wanted to get a gift for my blind friend who has been interested in learning Linux for a while now. Just when I was about to start looking for something I decided to take a look at Brian Lunduke’s newest video featuring the Raspberry Pi 400. The Raspberry Pi 400 has come full circle in terms of computing. It is a keyboard. All the computing is done from within the keyboard. Much like the Comodore64, this computer comes without a screen but is still technically fully functional without one. I had my ‘Aha!’ moment, and decided that the Raspberry Pi 400 would be a very cool present.

Curiosity

Curiosity is fundamental to a deep understanding of any subject. Masters, Ph.Ds, and other fancy name suffixes will never help you if you don’t have the spirit of curiosity burning inside of you.

Minesweeper Bomb Generation And Tile Revealing

When I was creating a little Minesweeper game, I got confused at some points. My bomb generation didn’t look quite right, and I for sure didn’t quite get the whole cascading tile reveal thing. With a bit of internet research, I found what I was looking for. I’ll explain it all in one place for my own research purposes.

How to Solve The Django Deployment Puzzle

A few days ago I had a Django project I wanted to put on a real server. This project is still in its infancy, but I thought it would be nice to put it on my resume and show my friends. Little did I know the headache coming my way. Here are some tips to help you not make the same mistakes as me.

BSD Journey, Part 1

As Linux becomes controlled by corporate sponsors and becomes more full of proprietary blobs, drivers, and even closed-source software like Steam, One may wonder if there are other options out there. For me, somebody that is intensely interested in security, there is one option: OpenBSD.

Know How Your Representative Votes In Parliament

As an advocate for openness, I had an idea to make a project out of the government of Canada’s Open Data initiative to take a look at how my local MP voted on various pieces of legislation. It turns out though that this was not necessary due to how easy it was to find this information on the government’s own website. In this article, I will explain how you can do the same.

Installing MultiCraft on Gentoo Linux

In a very odd combination of requirements, I needed to install MultiCraft on a Gentoo Linux system. The PHP USE flags are important so you don’t have to recompile it three times like I did.

Independence

“When given a choice between independence and dependence, always choose independence; you will never regret that choice!”—Luke Smith

How to use tmux to send and receive things from your Minecraft server

So recently I had problem. I run a Minecraft server on a big Linux computer I have running in my room. Now, as a system administrator it is very helpful to be able to run some simple commands without needing to login with my key, password, TFA, etc. It is, frankly, a lot of work. Especially when I really just want to be playing games but I just need to check something quickly.

Site Update

I updated the site with some easier to identify information about me and my projects :)

New Game: Clue (coming soon)

Ooo! Exciting! Today I want to announce a new project I’ll be working on which should be live within the month of May: Clue.

What is XSS?

I found a cross-site scripting (XSS) attack in a well-known quiz hosting website. I disclosed the vulnerability to them years ago, so I thought now might be a good time to write about it.

How To Encrypt Your Own Documents Using gpg

If you have ever wanted to garuntee the utmost security of your emails and documents, then this is the guide for you! It should be noted that in some circles the tools used are more common than in others. These are the everyday tools of many privacy advocates and computer nerds.

How Does Encryption Work, in Theory?

There are many kinds of encryption used in our everyday communication. Online and offline, over the internet and in person. In this article, I will explain the basics of how encryption should work in theory. I explain in this article why encryption is important, and why you should care about it.

Is Encryption Worth It?

What is the most embarassing thing you have typed into Google search? What is the most personal secret you told a friend in confidence? What is your bank password? What is your business’s secret to stay ahead of the competition?

Padding And Margin

Many people have expressed confusion over how padding and margins work in HTML/CSS. I have been one of those people. In this short article I will explain what the differences are between the two, and how it may affect the functionality of your site.

\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/_site/feed.xml b/_site/feed.xml index f441922..9b77d99 100644 --- a/_site/feed.xml +++ b/_site/feed.xml @@ -1 +1 @@ -Jekyll2020-12-21T10:06:52-07:00/feed.xmlHow to Deploy Lichess’s Lila With Nginx2020-12-20T00:00:00-07:002020-12-20T00:00:00-07:00/2020/12/20/deploy-lichess<p>I was getting ready to have a public test of some changes I made to <a href="https://lichess.org">lichess.org</a>’s <a href="https://lichess.org/source">open source chess platform</a>. In preperation, I got my Let’s Encrypt certificates and nginx configurations setup… and it wouldn’t work. Here are some tips for myself and future Lichess developers.</p> <h2 id="reasoning">Reasoning</h2> <p>My pull request involves accessibility. It will extend Lichess’s NVUI (Non-Visual User Interface) to be more accessible to beginner level chess players. At the time of writing this, Lichess’s NVUI only supports searching pieces by type, rank and file. It does not support any kind of interactive board.</p> <p>I wanted to play chess with a friend of mine who uses a screen reader. Even though Lichess does indeed have a separate rendering of the page for visually impaired users, I have heard from a few people that it is not the best.</p> <p>I don’t use a screen reader myself, so I thought having a public latest changes deployed server would work better for testing. It would certainly work better than getting some of my less computer literate friends to connect to me via VSCode/VPN and view my local repository.</p> <p>So here is how to deploy it:</p> <h2 id="setup-a-development-environment">Setup a development environment</h2> <p>This is described <a href="https://github.com/ornicar/lila/wiki/Lichess-Development-Onboarding">in Lichess’s documentation itself</a>. I will not elaborate further as it is not necessary.</p> <h2 id="setup-nginx">Setup nginx</h2> <p>This is the part that stumps most people. Getting a local development server usually works alright, but once you want to reverse proxy it for security and professionalism purposes, it get more interesting.</p> <p>Here is the relevant portion of my nginx configuration for lila:</p> <pre class="file"> server_name chess.tait.tech; location / { proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:9663; proxy_set_header Host $host; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for; proxy_set_header X-NginX-Proxy true; proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr; } </pre> <p>This is the config for the lila-ws websocket subdomain:</p> <pre class="file"> server_name ws.chess.tait.tech; location / { proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:9664; proxy_http_version 1.1; proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade; proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade"; } </pre> <p>You will need to deploy these on two virtual hosts.</p> <h2 id="lila">Lila</h2> <p><a href="https://github.com/ornicar/lila/">Lila</a> is the name for the main chess server, we need to change a few settings. Here is my git diff for the <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">conf/base.conf</code> file:</p> <pre class="file"> - domain = "localhost:9663" - socket.domains = [ "localhost:9664" ] + domain = "chess.tait.tech" + socket.domains = [ "ws.chess.tait.tech" ] asset.domain = ${net.domain} - asset.base_url = "http://"${net.asset.domain} + asset.base_url = "https://"${net.asset.domain} asset.minified = false - base_url = "http://"${net.domain} + base_url = "https://"${net.domain} </pre> <h3 id="lila-ws">Lila-ws</h3> <p><a href="https://github.com/ornicar/lila-ws/">Lila-ws</a> is the websocket component of Lila.</p> <p>The most common complaint amongst aspiring Lichess developers is websockets not working. They constantly get these ‘101’ responses from the websocket, and it also seems that the websocket returns instead of staying in the ‘pending’ state as it should be.</p> <p>Here is how to fix that (in diff format):</p> <pre class="file"> -csrf.origin = "http://127.0.0.1:9000" +csrf.origin = "https://chess.tait.tech" </pre> <p>You need to tell lila-ws where the websocket requests will be coming from. This is how to do that.</p> <h2 id="conclusion">Conclusion</h2> <p>This is not a long article, but just some notes for future me and Lila developers.</p>I was getting ready to have a public test of some changes I made to lichess.org’s open source chess platform. In preperation, I got my Let’s Encrypt certificates and nginx configurations setup… and it wouldn’t work. Here are some tips for myself and future Lichess developers.Getting Pacaur Working on a Raspberry Pi 4 with Manjaro ARM or Arch Linux2020-12-01T00:00:00-07:002020-12-01T00:00:00-07:00/2020/12/01/pacaur-rpi<p>I recently installed Manjaro ARM (based on Arch Linux ARM) on a Raspberry Pi 4. I used some standard commands to start to add the <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">pacaur</code> package so I can easily retrieve <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_User_Repository">AUR packages</a> without needing to do it manually. Unfortunately, there is a small problem with compiling this on ARM.</p> <h2 id="always_inline">always_inline</h2> <p>To setup the install for <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">pacaur</code>, I first needed to download <a href="https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/auracle-git">auracle-git</a> AUR package manually. I ran into an error when compiling this package.</p> <p>But first, my setup:</p> <pre class="terminal"> $ git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/auracle-git $ cd auracle-git $ makepkg -sri </pre> <p>Around half way through compiling this project, I got this cryptic message telling me there was a “target specific option mismatch”…Whatever that means. The full error is below, hopefully that helps my chances on the search engines.</p> <pre class="terminal"> In file included from ../subprojects/abseil-cpp-20200225.2/absl/random/internal/randen_hwaes.cc:225: /usr/lib/gcc/aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu/9.3.0/include/arm_neon.h: In function 'Vector128 {anonymous}::AesRound(const Vector128&amp;, const Vector128&amp;)': /usr/lib/gcc/aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu/9.3.0/include/arm_neon.h:12452:1: error: inlining failed in call to always_inline 'uint8x16_t vaesmcq_u8(uint8x16_t)': target specific option mismatch 12452 | vaesmcq_u8 (uint8x16_t data) </pre> <p>Luckily, there is a very easy fix for this. The user redfish <a href="https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/auracle-git#comment-762117">helpfully pointed out</a> on the <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">auracle-git</code> package page that you need to add a special make option to your <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">/etc/make.conf</code> file to make this work.</p> <p>His solution, as commented is like so:</p> <blockquote> <p>If you get this error when building for ARM aarch64:</p> <p>(insert error message from before)</p> <p>Then check that in /etc/makepkg.conf CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS have the +crypto suffix in -march flag, like -march=armv8-a+crypto (the base identifier may very depending on your hardware)</p> </blockquote> <p>Basically, there is a file on Linux: <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">/etc/makepkg.conf</code> which tells your computer how to compile <em>all</em> programs on the system. By default the Manjaro ARM (RPi4) edition has the following relevant lines in <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">makepkg.conf</code>.</p> <pre class="file"> CFLAGS="-march=armv8-a -O2 -pipe -fstack-protector-strong -fno-plt" CXXFLAGS="-march=armv8-a -O2 -pipe -fstack-protector-strong -fno-plt" </pre> <p>What Mr. redfish is telling us is that we must add ‘+crypto’ to the end of the -march compiler flag so that our compiler will know how to inline that pesky vaesmcq_u8 function.</p> <p>So in the end, your <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">makepkg.conf</code>’s relevant lines will look like so:</p> <pre class="file"> CFLAGS="-march=armv8-a+crypto -O2 -pipe -fstack-protector-strong -fno-plt" CXXFLAGS="-march=armv8-a+crypto -O2 -pipe -fstack-protector-strong -fno-plt" </pre> <h2 id="why">Why?</h2> <p>Redfish continues:</p> <blockquote> <p>Build of abseil-cpp package works because it uses CMake which adds the correct -march flag regardless of makepkg.conf, whereas when abseil-cpp is build as a subproject within this package, it uses meson, which does not add the flag and thus fails with the above error.</p> </blockquote> <p>In other words, one of the dependencies pulled in with auracle is not compiling without this special compiler flag enabled.</p> <h2 id="conclusion">Conclusion</h2> <p>Thanks to redfish for posting this solution to the forums! Would’ve been quite the rabbit hole for me to figure out how to do that. In fact, it is very likely I would have never figured that one out.</p> <p>After this issue is resolved, the installation of <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">pacaur</code> goes as expected. Nice and easy! Pacuar will compile on any architecture so it’s smooth sailing from here.</p> <p>Happy hacking!</p>I recently installed Manjaro ARM (based on Arch Linux ARM) on a Raspberry Pi 4. I used some standard commands to start to add the pacaur package so I can easily retrieve AUR packages without needing to do it manually. Unfortunately, there is a small problem with compiling this on ARM.ZFS NAS Box, Part 22020-11-15T00:00:00-07:002020-11-15T00:00:00-07:00/2020/11/15/nas2<p>Back in <a href="/2020/04/12/nas1/">part one of my NAS project</a> I discussed how I wanted to set up my hardware. Today, I set up the NAS (almost).</p> <p>There were some hiccup along the way, like learning that M.2 slots can disable some of your SATA ports or waiting a month for a host bus adapter to come in from China.</p> <h2 id="why-did-it-take-so-long">Why Did It Take So Long</h2> <p>So it turns out I was going to spend a lot more on this project than I originally anticipated. I ended up getting a server machine instead of a sleek NAS box. Here are some of the quick specs:</p> <ul> <li>Standard ATX case by Thermaltake.</li> <li>LSI 9211-8i.</li> <li>The cheapest HDMI graphics card I could find on Kijiji.</li> <li>6x 3TB Segate HDDs.</li> <li>1x 250G Kingston SSD.</li> <li>AMD Ryzen 5 3600.</li> <li>MSI B450 Gaming Plus Max.</li> <li>2x 8GB FlareX 3200Mhz RAM.</li> <li>1x 16GB Kingston 3200Mhz RAM.</li> </ul> <h2 id="zfs">ZFS</h2> <p>This is how I decided to configure my storage pools. In hindsight, this was not the best choice for upgrading. I may change it in the future to a 0+1 setup, but it works for now.</p> <p>I have 5x 3TB in a RAIDZ2 with one drive not attached for redundancy’s sake. How does one setup a ZFS pool. Check this out:</p> <pre class="terminal"> # zpool create poolname raidz2 \ /dev/by-id/blahblahblah1 \ /dev/by-id/blahblahblah2 \ /dev/by-id/blahblahblah3 \ /dev/by-id/blahblahblah4 \ /dev/by-id/blahblahblah5 </pre> <p>And zippidy-doo! We’ve got a ZFS pool! We can check its status with <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">zpool status</code>.</p> <pre class="terminal"> $ zfs status pool: raid state: ONLINE scan: scrub in progress since Wed Nov 18 18:41:41 2020 1.84T scanned at 8.51G/s, 121G issued at 562M/s, 1.84T total 0B repaired, 6.45% done, 0 days 00:53:25 to go config: NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM raid ONLINE 0 0 0 raidz2-0 ONLINE 0 0 0 ata-HGST_HUS724030ALA640_PN2234P8JTNMYY ONLINE 0 0 0 ata-HGST_HUS724030ALA640_PN2234P8JVSXTY ONLINE 0 0 0 ata-HGST_HUS724030ALA640_PN2234P8JXAS8Y ONLINE 0 0 0 ata-HGST_HUS724030ALA640_PN2234P8JXBARY ONLINE 0 0 0 ata-HGST_HUS724030ALA640_PN2234P8JXP77Y ONLINE 0 0 0 errors: No known data errors </pre> <p>I had run a scrub right before this, so there’s some extra detail in that. This is really fun! I will be doing more home storage projects soon. Perhaps Raspberry Pi NAS using all 4 USB ports to load SATA drives on it. Now that would be fun!</p> <h2 id="so-i-kinda-have-a-nas-now">So I Kinda Have A NAS Now…?</h2> <p>So right now I can only copy files with <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">rsync</code>, <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">scp</code> and moving data via a physical drive. The one major disadvantage this has is speed.</p> <p>Due to this machine being connected directly outside my network and pulling DHCP like a normal router would, I need to send my data through the WAN connection to get my files to it. This is rather unfortunate as my upload speed is capped at 20 megabits per second, despite my upload being in the 300+ range.</p> <p>Part 3 will involve a LAN card so I can connect both to the DHCP server of my ISP and my local router. This way my transfer speeds should be in the range of 1 gigabit per second. This will make my life much easier, at least on the local network.</p> <h2 id="fun-fact">Fun Fact!</h2> <p>Do not try to use the M.2 slot on a consumer motherboard where you are also using all the SATA ports. On my consumer gaming motherboard, the SATA ports next to the M.2 slot became <em>disabled</em> when I attached the M.2 SSD. I found this out form my motherboard documentation, which I read only after a week of thinking my motherboard itself was defective, and sending it in for repairs that did absolutely nothing.</p> <h2 id="thoughts">Thoughts</h2> <p>I like having all this space. I plan on using it up pretty fast, so I’m already looking at how to expand. Hopefully that gives a decent overview of how I set up my drives.</p> <p>Happy hacking!</p>Back in part one of my NAS project I discussed how I wanted to set up my hardware. Today, I set up the NAS (almost).Curiosity2020-10-26T00:00:00-06:002020-10-26T00:00:00-06:00/2020/10/26/curiosity<p>Curiosity is fundamental to a deep understanding of any subject. Masters, Ph.Ds, and other fancy name suffixes will never help you if you don’t have the spirit of curiosity burning inside of you.</p> <p>I was speaking to someone from a journalism major at my school when the subject of hacking arose. I expected her to know nothing about it, being a journalism student and all, but surprisingly she had something to say about it:</p> <blockquote> <p>“The best hackers are the ones who are curious.”</p> </blockquote> <p>That struck a cord with me. It seems to me she has nailed down the difference between the students who care about grades, and those who want to learn. These are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but in my experience they often are due to the way education is structured.</p> <h2 id="my-anecdote">My Anecdote</h2> <p>In my second semester at SAIT Polytechnic, I took a class entitled <em>Emerging Trends In Technology</em>. This class was probably the best class I have ever taken. We had to combine two things:</p> <ul> <li><strong>Hard skills</strong>: learning a new hard skill like Angular, Django, or GPG encryption.</li> <li><strong>Soft skills</strong>: public speaking and presentation of our ideas.</li> </ul> <p>Soft skills are not usually my area, but I can do public speaking. I grew up quite religious, so public speaking was drilled into me young. I liked to go off script and talk about interesting things I found along the way to the actual point. My creativity was not usually encouraged. That said, going off script is useful when teaching and presenting ideas; it gives a natural air to your breath and an unquestionable confidence in your speech.</p> <p>This is how we learn: in relationships. Try explaining ancient Japanese history to a computer science major, or UNIX sockets to an English major and you’ll see what I mean. If there is nothing for us to connect the knowledge to, it dissipates.</p> <p>So why did I do so well in this class?</p> <p>Our task for the semester was as follows:</p> <ol> <li>Learn a new subject (any <em>emerging trend in technology</em>) which you find fascinating.</li> <li>Give a one minute introduction by week three.</li> <li>Give a 10 minute non-technical overview by week 8.</li> <li>Give a 20 minute technical explaination and demo by week 13.</li> </ol> <p>This is the only course I have ever taken which lets students’ imagination run wild. Their presentation, their rules. They treated the students like adults who know what they are doing. What happened? Everyone stopped coming because “Oh no! Presentations!”?</p> <p>No, exactly the opposite. There was never more than one student missing. Every single presentation was at least moderately interesting, and most students were excited to come to that class. You could see it in their faces, the way they carried themselves. Every student picked something unique to their tastes, leaving every student more educated than before.</p> <p>This class, unlike many others, encouraged the curiosity of the students. It rewarded those who had unique interests and an ability to sell others on their ideas.</p> <p>The curiosity and the grades were one.</p> <h2 id="conclusion">Conclusion</h2> <p>Although it’s nice to have a course where these goals align here and there, anyone who has been to collage or university can tell you that is far from the norm.</p> <p>On the other hand, I never would have started this site if it wasn’t for that class alone. So I thank you, Kitty Wong, for getting me started running my own “research blog” (?)</p>Curiosity is fundamental to a deep understanding of any subject. Masters, Ph.Ds, and other fancy name suffixes will never help you if you don’t have the spirit of curiosity burning inside of you.Minesweeper Bomb Generation And Tile Revealing2020-09-12T00:00:00-06:002020-09-12T00:00:00-06:00/2020/09/12/minesweeper<p>When I was creating a little Minesweeper game, I got confused at some points. My bomb generation didn’t look quite right, and I for sure didn’t quite get the whole cascading tile reveal thing. With a bit of internet research, I found what I was looking for. I’ll explain it all in one place for my own research purposes.</p> <h2 id="bomb-generation">Bomb Generation</h2> <p>When I started this project I attempted to use a random bomb generator. By this I mean on each square, before it gets generated, give it a one in 15 change of being a bomb. Personally, I’m not sure why this never looked right. Something about the layout of the bombs did not mimic the classic Minesweeper game.</p> <p>After looking at some open source Minesweeper examples, I started to get the idea. I wrote some mathematical statements describing the generation of bombs and how to get their x,y position from an appropriate number. For those non-mathy people, don’t leave just yet; there will be code equivalents to the math.</p> <p>W and H are the width and height of the board respectively.</p> <p><span class="katex-display"><span class="katex"><span class="katex-mathml"><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><semantics><mrow><mn mathvariant="italic">0</mn><mo>≤</mo><mi>r</mi><mo>≤</mo><mtext>W</mtext><mo>×</mo><mtext>H</mtext></mrow><annotation encoding="application/x-tex"> \it 0 \leq r \leq \text W \times \text H </annotation></semantics></math></span><span class="katex-html" aria-hidden="true"><span class="base"><span class="strut" style="height:0.8193em;vertical-align:-0.13597em;"></span><span class="mord"><span class="mord mathit">0</span><span class="mspace" style="margin-right:0.2777777777777778em;"></span><span class="mrel">≤</span><span class="mspace" style="margin-right:0.2777777777777778em;"></span><span class="mord mathit">r</span><span class="mspace" style="margin-right:0.2777777777777778em;"></span><span class="mrel">≤</span><span class="mspace" style="margin-right:0.2777777777777778em;"></span><span class="mord text"><span class="mord">W</span></span><span class="mspace" style="margin-right:0.2222222222222222em;"></span><span class="mbin">×</span><span class="mspace" style="margin-right:0.2222222222222222em;"></span><span class="mord text"><span class="mord">H</span></span></span></span></span></span></span> <span class="katex-display"><span class="katex"><span class="katex-mathml"><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><semantics><mrow><mi>x</mi><mo>=</mo><mi>r</mi><mtext> </mtext><mo lspace="0.22em" rspace="0.22em"><mrow><mi mathvariant="normal">m</mi><mi mathvariant="normal">o</mi><mi mathvariant="normal">d</mi></mrow></mo><mtext> </mtext><mtext>W</mtext></mrow><annotation encoding="application/x-tex"> \it x = r \bmod \text W </annotation></semantics></math></span><span class="katex-html" aria-hidden="true"><span class="base"><span class="strut" style="height:0.69444em;vertical-align:0em;"></span><span class="mord"><span class="mord mathit">x</span><span class="mspace" style="margin-right:0.2777777777777778em;"></span><span class="mrel">=</span><span class="mspace" style="margin-right:0.2777777777777778em;"></span><span class="mord mathit">r</span><span class="mspace" style="margin-right:0.2222222222222222em;"></span><span class="mspace" style="margin-right:0.05555555555555555em;"></span><span class="mbin"><span class="mord"><span class="mord mathrm">m</span><span class="mord mathrm">o</span><span class="mord mathrm">d</span></span></span><span class="mspace" style="margin-right:0.2222222222222222em;"></span><span class="mspace" style="margin-right:0.05555555555555555em;"></span><span class="mord text"><span class="mord">W</span></span></span></span></span></span></span> <span class="katex-display"><span class="katex"><span class="katex-mathml"><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><semantics><mrow><mi>y</mi><mo>=</mo><mrow><mo fence="true">⌊</mo><mfrac><mi>r</mi><mtext>H</mtext></mfrac><mo fence="true">⌋</mo></mrow></mrow><annotation encoding="application/x-tex"> \it y = \left\lfloor\frac{r}{\text H}\right\rfloor </annotation></semantics></math></span><span class="katex-html" aria-hidden="true"><span class="base"><span class="strut" style="height:1.8359999999999999em;vertical-align:-0.686em;"></span><span class="mord"><span class="mord mathit">y</span><span class="mspace" style="margin-right:0.2777777777777778em;"></span><span class="mrel">=</span><span class="mspace" style="margin-right:0.2777777777777778em;"></span><span class="minner"><span class="mopen delimcenter" style="top:0em;"><span class="delimsizing size2">⌊</span></span><span class="mord"><span class="mopen nulldelimiter"></span><span class="mfrac"><span class="vlist-t vlist-t2"><span class="vlist-r"><span class="vlist" style="height:1.10756em;"><span style="top:-2.314em;"><span class="pstrut" style="height:3em;"></span><span class="mord"><span class="mord text"><span class="mord">H</span></span></span></span><span style="top:-3.23em;"><span class="pstrut" style="height:3em;"></span><span class="frac-line" style="border-bottom-width:0.04em;"></span></span><span style="top:-3.677em;"><span class="pstrut" style="height:3em;"></span><span class="mord"><span class="mord mathit">r</span></span></span></span><span class="vlist-s">​</span></span><span class="vlist-r"><span class="vlist" style="height:0.686em;"><span></span></span></span></span></span><span class="mclose nulldelimiter"></span></span><span class="mclose delimcenter" style="top:0em;"><span class="delimsizing size2">⌋</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p>The code equivalent to this in Python is below:</p> <div class="language-python highlighter-rouge"><div class="highlight"><pre class="highlight"><code><span class="kn">import</span> <span class="nn">random</span> <span class="c1"># r &lt;= 0 &lt;= W*H </span><span class="n">r</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">random</span><span class="p">.</span><span class="n">randint</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">W</span><span class="o">*</span><span class="n">H</span><span class="p">)</span><span class="o">-</span><span class="mi">1</span> <span class="c1"># x = r mod W </span><span class="n">x</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">r</span> <span class="o">%</span> <span class="n">W</span> <span class="c1"># y = floor(r/H); note the special syntax python has for this operation </span><span class="n">y</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">r</span> <span class="o">//</span> <span class="n">H</span> </code></pre></div></div> <p>So that’s that, we can put this in a big ‘ol for loop and generate an arbitrary <em>n</em> number of bombs given a width and height of a Minesweeper board.</p> <h2 id="cascading-tile-revealing">Cascading Tile Revealing</h2> <p>This one is hard to describe; I am adapting this from <a href="https://leetcode.com/problems/minesweeper/">leetcode.com</a>. Whenever a player clicks a tile, the following logic should be used:</p> <ol> <li>If a mine is revealed, the game is over. (obviously)</li> <li>If a tile with <em>no</em> adjacent mines is revealed, recursively reveal all eight adjacent tiles.</li> <li>If a tile with one or more adjacent mines is revealed, display the number of mines next to it.</li> </ol> <p>Here is the code in Python for this algorithm.</p> <div class="language-python highlighter-rouge"><div class="highlight"><pre class="highlight"><code><span class="k">def</span> <span class="nf">reveal_square</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">x</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">y</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">board</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">alread_revealed</span><span class="p">):</span> <span class="c1"># if already checked </span> <span class="k">if</span> <span class="p">(</span><span class="n">x</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">y</span><span class="p">)</span> <span class="ow">in</span> <span class="n">already_revealed</span><span class="p">:</span> <span class="k">return</span> <span class="c1"># if it's a bomb </span> <span class="k">if</span> <span class="n">board</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="n">x</span><span class="p">][</span><span class="n">y</span><span class="p">]</span> <span class="o">==</span> <span class="s">'B'</span><span class="p">:</span> <span class="n">you_lose</span><span class="p">()</span> <span class="k">return</span> <span class="c1"># if the bomb number is more than 0 </span> <span class="n">already_revealed</span><span class="p">.</span><span class="n">append</span><span class="p">((</span><span class="n">nx</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">ny</span><span class="p">))</span> <span class="c1"># from -1 to 1 </span> <span class="k">for</span> <span class="n">xd</span> <span class="ow">in</span> <span class="nb">range</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="o">-</span><span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="mi">2</span><span class="p">):</span> <span class="k">for</span> <span class="n">yd</span> <span class="ow">in</span> <span class="nb">range</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="o">-</span><span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="mi">2</span><span class="p">):</span> <span class="c1"># skip if it is this the center tile </span> <span class="k">if</span> <span class="n">x</span><span class="o">+</span><span class="n">xd</span> <span class="o">==</span> <span class="n">x</span> <span class="ow">and</span> <span class="n">y</span><span class="o">+</span><span class="n">yd</span> <span class="o">==</span> <span class="n">y</span><span class="p">:</span> <span class="k">continue</span> <span class="c1"># recursively check the adjacent square </span> <span class="n">reveal</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">x</span><span class="o">+</span><span class="n">xd</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">y</span><span class="o">+</span><span class="n">yd</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">board</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">already_revealed</span><span class="p">)</span> <span class="k">return</span> <span class="n">already_revealed</span> </code></pre></div></div> <p>This has no checks for valid squares, but it’s the general idea. This function returns an array of tile coordinates which should be revealed.</p> <h2 id="conclusion">Conclusion</h2> <p>I wrote this because in the first place because I was writing my own Minesweeper game. I hope that this helps you with getting the general idea of a Minesweeper game. The completed version of this game is available on my <a href="https://lamegames.tait.tech/">lamegames</a> site. Let me know what you think!</p> <p>Happy hacking!</p>When I was creating a little Minesweeper game, I got confused at some points. My bomb generation didn’t look quite right, and I for sure didn’t quite get the whole cascading tile reveal thing. With a bit of internet research, I found what I was looking for. I’ll explain it all in one place for my own research purposes.lamegames.tait.tech2020-09-09T00:00:00-06:002020-09-09T00:00:00-06:00/2020/09/09/lamegames<p>This is an announcement for a new project of mine: <a href="https://lamegames.tait.tech">lamegames.tait.tech</a>.</p> <p>This is something I’m really excited to work on!</p> <p>Right now, I’ve just got a rock-paper-scissors game. A chat function, and a few simple card games to come.</p> <p>Check out the repository on my <a href="https://github.com/TTWNO/lamegames.io">Github</a>.</p>This is an announcement for a new project of mine: lamegames.tait.tech.How to Solve The Django Deployment Puzzle2020-08-18T00:00:00-06:002020-08-18T00:00:00-06:00/2020/08/18/django-deployment<p>A few days ago I had a Django project I wanted to put on a real server. This project is still in its infancy, but I thought it would be nice to put it on my resume and show my friends. Little did I know the headache coming my way. Here are some tips to help you not make the same mistakes as me.</p> <h3 id="asgi-servers">ASGI Servers</h3> <p>Because my project used the ASGI (Asynchronous webServer Gateway Interface), I needed to find a good production ASGI server to handle all the incoming requests. The best thing I found was <a href="http://www.uvicorn.org/">uvicorn</a>. It focuses on speed, which is a priority, especially when using the ASGI protocol.</p> <p>To run uvicorn on the command line for testing purposes, use something like the following:</p> <pre class="terminal"> $ uvicorn --reload myapp.asgi:application </pre> <p>The <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">--reload</code> option says to reload the server if any of the files get updated. This is not recommended in production. Sadly, I thought this meant I would need to do a hard shutdown of the server process every time I wanted to update. This turned out to not be the case.</p> <h3 id="workload-managers">Workload Managers</h3> <p>There is another equine-named program called <a href="https://gunicorn.org/">gunicorn</a> which can hold a number of processes under its control. An interesting feature of <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">gunicorn</code> is that it will gracefully switch from an old to a new deployment, replacing the subprocesses one-by-one and eventually having only the new deployment active on all subprocesses. The greatest part? Zero down time. The server keeps any old processes open if there is communication with them, then shift and new connections to the new deployment. This was a very cool feature I wanted to take advantage of.</p> <p>“Now hold on!” you might protest. “gunicorn is a WSGI server!” … oh you got me there! Yes, that’s right, <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">gunicorn</code> is paired with <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">uvicorn</code> to serve my files.</p> <h3 id="systemd">systemd</h3> <p>Love it or hate it, the majority of Linux distributions use the <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">systemd</code> init system. I decided it would be very convenient to have a .service file for my Django application to run automatically at boot. <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">Systemd</code> allows me to do this with a file like the following one I stored in <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">/lib/systemd/system/lamegames.service</code>.</p> <pre class="file"> [Unit] Description=Gunicorn/Uvicorn (lamegames.io) [Service] WorkingDirectory=/home/lame/lamegames.io Type=simple RemainAfterExit=yes ExecStart=/home/lame/lamegames.io/env/bin/gunicorn lamegames.asgi:application -w 2 -k uvicorn.workers.UvicornWorker ExecStop=/bin/kill -HUP $MAINPID Restart=always [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target </pre> <h3 id="nginx">nginx</h3> <p>NGINX (pronounced engine-X) is a performance web server designed for speed and simplicity. For the front facing side of the site, I do need a production web server like nginx. Gunicorn simply doesn’t need all the features that nginx provides, but I do. To configure my nginx installation, I used the following few directives to:</p> <ol> <li>Redirect most traffic towards the gunicorn server.</li> <li>Redirect statically served files (CSS, JS, images) to the directory specified in the STATIC_ROOT variable of my <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">settings.py</code> file.</li> <li>Use TLS to enable https://</li> </ol> <p>Serving the static files from nginx as opposed to the <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">gunicorn</code> server is necessary. Gunicorn and other production A/WSGI web server will not set the proper MIME type over TLS. This will cause your browser to not load the Javascript/CSS.</p> <p>This is the important part of my nginx config.</p> <pre class="file"> server { location / { proxy_set_header Host $http_host; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme; # these two lines ensure that WebSocket, and HTTP2 connection are forwarded correctly proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade; proxy_set_header Connection "Upgrade"; proxy_redirect off; proxy_buffering off; # this forwards all traffic to the local server on port 8000 proxy_pass http://localhost:8000; } # This forwards all static requests to Django's STATIC_ROOT set in settings.py; it is generated using the collectstatic command. location /static { autoindex on; alias /home/lame/lamegames.io/static_generated; } } </pre> <h3 id="setup">Setup</h3> <p>After all that, I was able to do the following:</p> <pre class="terminal"> # systemctl enable lamegames </pre> <p>This enabled my <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">gunicorn</code> server to run once the server started. NGINX is that way be default.</p> <p>And tada! You now have a working Django project on a production server!</p> <h4 id="notes">Notes</h4> <ul> <li>If using ws:// websockets, change them to wss:// for secure web sockets.</li> <li>Make sure to use channels.routing.get_default_application() instead of django.get_asgi_application() if your’re wanting to use channels/redis WebSockets.</li> </ul>A few days ago I had a Django project I wanted to put on a real server. This project is still in its infancy, but I thought it would be nice to put it on my resume and show my friends. Little did I know the headache coming my way. Here are some tips to help you not make the same mistakes as me.BSD Journey, Part 12020-08-15T00:00:00-06:002020-08-15T00:00:00-06:00/2020/08/15/openbsd1<p>As Linux becomes controlled by corporate sponsors and becomes more full of proprietary blobs, drivers, and even closed-source software like Steam, One may wonder if there are other options out there. For me, somebody that is intensely interested in security, there is one option: OpenBSD.</p> <p>Now, my interest in OpenBSD has been going on for a long time. I started poking around for Linux alternatives way back a few years ago when Linus Torvalds decided to leave after he got in trouble for some <a href="https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/07/linus-torvalds-defends-his-right-to-shame-linux-kernel-developers/">unprofessional behaviour</a>. That said, Linus did come back to Linux development, but I knew that his abrasive style is what brought good code to the Linux kernel. I also knew that his ability to be critical would be hurt by the new <a href="https://itsfoss.com/linux-code-of-conduct/">code of conduct</a>. It would become a tool for the SJW types to hammer on Linus for being a “white male, et al.”; It would become a tool for the easily offended to use to get their dumb code into Linux; It would become a tool for the corporatization, the HR-ification of Linux. Frankly, this does not interest me.</p> <p>Now I’m sure that OpenBSD has its own internal policies that I disagree with. That said, Theo De Raadt is still at least known for calling Firefox an “amorphous peace of garbage” due to its lack of privilege separation. And, in their <a href="https://openbsd.org/goals.html">project goals</a> page, they specifically mention:</p> <blockquote> <p>Be as politics-free as possible; solutions should be decided on the basis of technical merit.</p> </blockquote> <p>Now that’s something I can get behind! Bet you that’s not in the Linux COC?</p> <p>He also went to university in my hometown, so that’s pretty cool! I can support a local madman who thinks he can make a better operating system than all those corporations. Maybe he was right, maybe not. What I know is I am excited to find out!</p> <p>Wish my luck on my OpenBSD journey. I will post updates here along the way.</p> <p>Happy hacking!</p>As Linux becomes controlled by corporate sponsors and becomes more full of proprietary blobs, drivers, and even closed-source software like Steam, One may wonder if there are other options out there. For me, somebody that is intensely interested in security, there is one option: OpenBSD.Know How Your Representative Votes In Parliament2020-07-30T00:00:00-06:002020-07-30T00:00:00-06:00/2020/07/30/canadian-parliament<p>As an advocate for openness, I had an idea to make a project out of the government of Canada’s <a href="https://open.canada.ca/en/open-data">Open Data</a> initiative to take a look at how my local MP voted on various pieces of legislation. It turns out though that this was not necessary due to how easy it was to find this information on the government’s own website. In this article, I will explain how you can do the same.</p> <h3 id="1-find-your-representative">1. Find Your Representative</h3> <p>The first step in this process is to find who your representative is. To do so, go to the government’s own website <a href="https://www.ourcommons.ca/Members/en">ourcommons.ca’s search tool</a>.</p> <p>Simply type in your postal code in the search box to find out who your MP is.</p> <h3 id="2-their-voting-record">2. Their Voting Record</h3> <p>Every MP’s voting record is public knowledge, and it is available nice and simple in a table on that MP’s page. For example, this is a link to <a href="https://www.ourcommons.ca/Members/en/pierre-poilievre(25524)/votes">Pierre Poilievre’s voting record</a>.</p> <p>To find your MP’s voting record, do step one, then: After the <strong>Overview</strong>, and <strong>Seat in The House</strong> sections, there are three tabs, <strong>Roles</strong>, <strong>Work</strong>, and <strong>Contact</strong>. Click on work. At the bottom of that tab is a link which says <strong>Chamber Votes</strong>. This will open a small window with some recent votes by this politician. If you want to see all their votes, there is a button at the bottom named <strong>All Votes by This Member</strong>.</p> <p>Tada! You can now keep your local MP accountable for anything you do or do not support.</p> <h3 id="3-bill-details">3. Bill Details</h3> <p>If you want to get into the nitty gritty, once you open a specific bill, you can actually find out the status of said bill, or read the actual text by clicking the <strong>View this Bill on LEGISinfo</strong> button.</p> <p>Both the status of the bill, and a link to a PDF document containing the bilingual text of the bill are visible in the main body of the page.</p> <h4 id="conclusion">Conclusion</h4> <p>I thought this was pretty cool! It was <em>way</em> simpler than I thought it would be.</p> <p>Thanks, Canada!</p>As an advocate for openness, I had an idea to make a project out of the government of Canada’s Open Data initiative to take a look at how my local MP voted on various pieces of legislation. It turns out though that this was not necessary due to how easy it was to find this information on the government’s own website. In this article, I will explain how you can do the same.Installing MultiCraft on Gentoo Linux2020-07-19T00:00:00-06:002020-07-19T00:00:00-06:00/2020/07/19/multicraft-php-gentoo<p>In a very odd combination of requirements, I needed to install <a href="https://multicraft.org">MultiCraft</a> on a Gentoo Linux system. The PHP <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">USE</code> flags are important so you don’t have to recompile it three times like I did.</p> <p>Here are some useful tips I came across:</p> <h3 id="php-use-flags">PHP <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">USE</code> flags</h3> <p>In <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">/etc/portage/package.use/php</code> I placed the following line:</p> <pre class="terminal"> dev-lang/php cgi mysql mysqli fpm pdo gd truetype </pre> <p>This should give you enough for a mysql backended MultiCraft installation. The <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">cgi</code> option may not be required as <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">fpm</code> stands for <em>FastCGI Process Managment</em>. I don’t know for sure though.</p> <h3 id="paper">Paper</h3> <p>This will grab the latest version of the Paper jar file using <a href="https://yivesmirror.com">YivesMirror</a>. I’m not sure how reputable it is, but my buddy who works with this stuff more often than me seemed to recognize it.</p> <pre class="terminal"> ## See the default craftbukkit.jar.conf for a detailed documentation of the ## format of this file. [config] name = Paper 1.16.1 Latest source = https://yivesmirror.com/files/paper/Paper-1.16.1-latest.jar category = Mods [encoding] #encode = system #decode = system #fileEncoding = latin-1 [start] command = "{JAVA}" -Xmx{MAX_MEMORY}M -Xms{START_MEMORY}M -XX:MaxPermSize=128M -Djline.terminal=jline.UnsupportedTerminal -jar "{JAR}" nogui </pre> <h3 id="other-tips">Other Tips</h3> <p>Do not use the option to setup a separate user for each server. This completely stalled any work getting done with a ton of ‘permission denied’ errors.</p> <h4 id="security">Security</h4> <p>If the panel is in the root directory of your NGINX web server, use the following in your server block to deny access to the <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">/protected</code> directory.</p> <pre class="terminal"> location /protected { deny all; return 404; } </pre> <h5 id="mysql">MySQL</h5> <p>It is always good practice to separate privileges. The MultiCraft daemon should have one SQL login, with one database allocated to it. The MultiCraft panel should have a separate SQL login, with a separate database allocated to it.</p> <p>You can do this with the following commands in your MySQL prompt:</p> <pre class="terminal"> sql&gt; CREATE DATABASE multicraft_daemon_database; Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec) sql&gt; CREATE DATABASE multicraft_panel_database; Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec) sql&gt; CREATE USER 'muilticraft_daemon'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'strong password here'; Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec) sql&gt; CREATE USER 'multicraft_panel'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'different strong password here'; Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec) sql&gt; GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON multicraft_daemon_database . * TO 'multicraft_daemon'@'localhost'; Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec) sql&gt; GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON multicraft_panel_database . * TO 'mutlicraft_panel'@'localhost'; Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec) </pre> <p>During setup, make sure the proper credentials are used for each step. Database 1 is the panel database. Database 2 is the daemon database.</p> <p>Happy hacking :)</p>In a very odd combination of requirements, I needed to install MultiCraft on a Gentoo Linux system. The PHP USE flags are important so you don’t have to recompile it three times like I did. \ No newline at end of file +Jekyll2021-02-02T15:59:30-07:00/feed.xmlLichess Accessibility2021-01-31T00:00:00-07:002021-01-31T00:00:00-07:00/2021/01/31/lichess<p>I wanted to play chess with somebody who used a screen reader, without requiring a screen reader myself; some sites, like QuintenC’s Playroom have a rather poor visual interface for anyone who would like the play the game visually. <a href="https://lichess.org">Lichess</a> is an free and open-source website for chess players; it bridges this gap by having two “modes” on the site: standard mode and accessibility mode.</p> <h2 id="accessibility-mode">Accessibility Mode</h2> <p>Accessibility mode is far from perfect on lichess.org. That said, the idea to separate the sites into different modes was a good call. It stops the inevitable “this would work well for screen readers but cause visual issues” shenanigans, or, vice-verse “this looks great but it might be weird with a screen reader”. This way all the things which affect the visual interface are in one place, and all things which affect the non-visual user interface (NVUI) are written in another.</p> <p>In my quest to play chess with visual and non-visual players with both having optimal experiences, I tried Lichess with my friend from <a href="https://melly.tech/">melly.tech</a>. She pointed out that the method to interface with the board previously was rather poor. This is because it required an “enter” at the end of each command and the commands tended to read out a row or column of a chessboard not just an individual square.</p> <p>For example, to list all pieces (or lack thereof) on the e file, I would type the command:</p> <div class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge"><div class="highlight"><pre class="highlight"><code>s e </code></pre></div></div> <p>Although this seems good in theory, and it’s great when you need an entire file, there was no way to get only one square. In addition, imagine typing to navigate around the board:</p> <div class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge"><div class="highlight"><pre class="highlight"><code>s e1 s f1 s e2 </code></pre></div></div> <p>For the inexperienced player, it seems to be more convenient to bind some keys and have the user bounce to various buttons, which they can push to say “I want to move this piece”. This is what I was told anyway. So I want to work making a system so you could use the following basic keys:</p> <ul> <li>left/right/up/down arrow: move on the board.</li> <li>k/q/r/b/n/p: move to next piece represented by its character in chess notation.</li> <li>shift + k/q/r/b/n/p: move back to the last piece represented by its character in chess notation.</li> <li>click/enter/space: select piece to move.</li> <li>click/enter/space again: move piece here.</li> <li>m: show where I can move with this piece.</li> <li>shift+m: show where I can capture with this piece.</li> <li>1-8: move to rank 1-8; stay on same file.</li> <li>shift + 1-8: move to file a-h; stay on same rank.</li> </ul> <p>This gives a pretty solid basis for playing the game. One caveat is after you have moved a pawn all the way to the farthest rank, only the destination tile will accept your promotion choice. Therefore, all the other keys still work on other square, but if you are on the destination square of a promotion q/r/b/n will promote your piece, not jump you to the next/previous one.</p> <p>This pull request was merged earlier this month:</p> <h2 id="more-to-come">More To Come</h2> <p>Next thing I want to do is implement the analysis board. Right now it is not accessible whatsoever.</p> <h2 id="help-me">Help Me</h2> <p>If you are a screen reader user or know about accessibility and want to help make Lichess an awesome chess site for sighted and unsighted players alike, then send me an email at <a href="mailto:tait@tait.tech">tait@tait.tech</a> and I’ll BCC you once I start testing the analysis board.</p> <p>Happy hacking, y’all!</p>I wanted to play chess with somebody who used a screen reader, without requiring a screen reader myself; some sites, like QuintenC’s Playroom have a rather poor visual interface for anyone who would like the play the game visually. Lichess is an free and open-source website for chess players; it bridges this gap by having two “modes” on the site: standard mode and accessibility mode.How to Deploy Lichess’s Lila With Nginx2020-12-20T00:00:00-07:002020-12-20T00:00:00-07:00/2020/12/20/deploy-lichess<p>I was getting ready to have a public test of some changes I made to <a href="https://lichess.org">lichess.org</a>’s <a href="https://lichess.org/source">open source chess platform</a>. In preperation, I got my Let’s Encrypt certificates and nginx configurations setup… and it wouldn’t work. Here are some tips for myself and future Lichess developers.</p> <h2 id="reasoning">Reasoning</h2> <p>My pull request involves accessibility. It will extend Lichess’s NVUI (Non-Visual User Interface) to be more accessible to beginner level chess players. At the time of writing this, Lichess’s NVUI only supports searching pieces by type, rank and file. It does not support any kind of interactive board.</p> <p>I wanted to play chess with a friend of mine who uses a screen reader. Even though Lichess does indeed have a separate rendering of the page for visually impaired users, I have heard from a few people that it is not the best.</p> <p>I don’t use a screen reader myself, so I thought having a public latest changes deployed server would work better for testing. It would certainly work better than getting some of my less computer literate friends to connect to me via VSCode/VPN and view my local repository.</p> <p>So here is how to deploy it:</p> <h2 id="setup-a-development-environment">Setup a development environment</h2> <p>This is described <a href="https://github.com/ornicar/lila/wiki/Lichess-Development-Onboarding">in Lichess’s documentation itself</a>. I will not elaborate further as it is not necessary.</p> <h2 id="setup-nginx">Setup nginx</h2> <p>This is the part that stumps most people. Getting a local development server usually works alright, but once you want to reverse proxy it for security and professionalism purposes, it get more interesting.</p> <p>Here is the relevant portion of my nginx configuration for lila:</p> <pre class="file"> server_name chess.tait.tech; location / { proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:9663; proxy_set_header Host $host; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for; proxy_set_header X-NginX-Proxy true; proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr; } </pre> <p>This is the config for the lila-ws websocket subdomain:</p> <pre class="file"> server_name ws.chess.tait.tech; location / { proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:9664; proxy_http_version 1.1; proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade; proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade"; } </pre> <p>You will need to deploy these on two virtual hosts.</p> <h2 id="lila">Lila</h2> <p><a href="https://github.com/ornicar/lila/">Lila</a> is the name for the main chess server, we need to change a few settings. Here is my git diff for the <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">conf/base.conf</code> file:</p> <pre class="file"> - domain = "localhost:9663" - socket.domains = [ "localhost:9664" ] + domain = "chess.tait.tech" + socket.domains = [ "ws.chess.tait.tech" ] asset.domain = ${net.domain} - asset.base_url = "http://"${net.asset.domain} + asset.base_url = "https://"${net.asset.domain} asset.minified = false - base_url = "http://"${net.domain} + base_url = "https://"${net.domain} </pre> <h3 id="lila-ws">Lila-ws</h3> <p><a href="https://github.com/ornicar/lila-ws/">Lila-ws</a> is the websocket component of Lila.</p> <p>The most common complaint amongst aspiring Lichess developers is websockets not working. They constantly get these ‘101’ responses from the websocket, and it also seems that the websocket returns instead of staying in the ‘pending’ state as it should be.</p> <p>Here is how to fix that (in diff format):</p> <pre class="file"> -csrf.origin = "http://127.0.0.1:9000" +csrf.origin = "https://chess.tait.tech" </pre> <p>You need to tell lila-ws where the websocket requests will be coming from. This is how to do that.</p> <h2 id="conclusion">Conclusion</h2> <p>This is not a long article, but just some notes for future me and Lila developers.</p>I was getting ready to have a public test of some changes I made to lichess.org’s open source chess platform. In preperation, I got my Let’s Encrypt certificates and nginx configurations setup… and it wouldn’t work. Here are some tips for myself and future Lichess developers.Getting Pacaur Working on a Raspberry Pi 4 with Manjaro ARM or Arch Linux2020-12-01T00:00:00-07:002020-12-01T00:00:00-07:00/2020/12/01/pacaur-rpi<p>I recently installed Manjaro ARM (based on Arch Linux ARM) on a Raspberry Pi 4. I used some standard commands to start to add the <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">pacaur</code> package so I can easily retrieve <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_User_Repository">AUR packages</a> without needing to do it manually. Unfortunately, there is a small problem with compiling this on ARM.</p> <h2 id="always_inline">always_inline</h2> <p>To setup the install for <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">pacaur</code>, I first needed to download <a href="https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/auracle-git">auracle-git</a> AUR package manually. I ran into an error when compiling this package.</p> <p>But first, my setup:</p> <pre class="terminal"> $ git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/auracle-git $ cd auracle-git $ makepkg -sri </pre> <p>Around half way through compiling this project, I got this cryptic message telling me there was a “target specific option mismatch”…Whatever that means. The full error is below, hopefully that helps my chances on the search engines.</p> <pre class="terminal"> In file included from ../subprojects/abseil-cpp-20200225.2/absl/random/internal/randen_hwaes.cc:225: /usr/lib/gcc/aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu/9.3.0/include/arm_neon.h: In function 'Vector128 {anonymous}::AesRound(const Vector128&amp;, const Vector128&amp;)': /usr/lib/gcc/aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu/9.3.0/include/arm_neon.h:12452:1: error: inlining failed in call to always_inline 'uint8x16_t vaesmcq_u8(uint8x16_t)': target specific option mismatch 12452 | vaesmcq_u8 (uint8x16_t data) </pre> <p>Luckily, there is a very easy fix for this. The user redfish <a href="https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/auracle-git#comment-762117">helpfully pointed out</a> on the <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">auracle-git</code> package page that you need to add a special make option to your <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">/etc/make.conf</code> file to make this work.</p> <p>His solution, as commented is like so:</p> <blockquote> <p>If you get this error when building for ARM aarch64:</p> <p>(insert error message from before)</p> <p>Then check that in /etc/makepkg.conf CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS have the +crypto suffix in -march flag, like -march=armv8-a+crypto (the base identifier may very depending on your hardware)</p> </blockquote> <p>Basically, there is a file on Linux: <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">/etc/makepkg.conf</code> which tells your computer how to compile <em>all</em> programs on the system. By default the Manjaro ARM (RPi4) edition has the following relevant lines in <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">makepkg.conf</code>.</p> <pre class="file"> CFLAGS="-march=armv8-a -O2 -pipe -fstack-protector-strong -fno-plt" CXXFLAGS="-march=armv8-a -O2 -pipe -fstack-protector-strong -fno-plt" </pre> <p>What Mr. redfish is telling us is that we must add ‘+crypto’ to the end of the -march compiler flag so that our compiler will know how to inline that pesky vaesmcq_u8 function.</p> <p>So in the end, your <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">makepkg.conf</code>’s relevant lines will look like so:</p> <pre class="file"> CFLAGS="-march=armv8-a+crypto -O2 -pipe -fstack-protector-strong -fno-plt" CXXFLAGS="-march=armv8-a+crypto -O2 -pipe -fstack-protector-strong -fno-plt" </pre> <h2 id="why">Why?</h2> <p>Redfish continues:</p> <blockquote> <p>Build of abseil-cpp package works because it uses CMake which adds the correct -march flag regardless of makepkg.conf, whereas when abseil-cpp is build as a subproject within this package, it uses meson, which does not add the flag and thus fails with the above error.</p> </blockquote> <p>In other words, one of the dependencies pulled in with auracle is not compiling without this special compiler flag enabled.</p> <h2 id="conclusion">Conclusion</h2> <p>Thanks to redfish for posting this solution to the forums! Would’ve been quite the rabbit hole for me to figure out how to do that. In fact, it is very likely I would have never figured that one out.</p> <p>After this issue is resolved, the installation of <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">pacaur</code> goes as expected. Nice and easy! Pacuar will compile on any architecture so it’s smooth sailing from here.</p> <p>Happy hacking!</p>I recently installed Manjaro ARM (based on Arch Linux ARM) on a Raspberry Pi 4. I used some standard commands to start to add the pacaur package so I can easily retrieve AUR packages without needing to do it manually. Unfortunately, there is a small problem with compiling this on ARM.ZFS NAS Box, Part 22020-11-15T00:00:00-07:002020-11-15T00:00:00-07:00/2020/11/15/nas2<p>Back in <a href="/2020/04/12/nas1/">part one of my NAS project</a> I discussed how I wanted to set up my hardware. Today, I set up the NAS (almost).</p> <p>There were some hiccup along the way, like learning that M.2 slots can disable some of your SATA ports or waiting a month for a host bus adapter to come in from China.</p> <h2 id="why-did-it-take-so-long">Why Did It Take So Long</h2> <p>So it turns out I was going to spend a lot more on this project than I originally anticipated. I ended up getting a server machine instead of a sleek NAS box. Here are some of the quick specs:</p> <ul> <li>Standard ATX case by Thermaltake.</li> <li>LSI 9211-8i.</li> <li>The cheapest HDMI graphics card I could find on Kijiji.</li> <li>6x 3TB Segate HDDs.</li> <li>1x 250G Kingston SSD.</li> <li>AMD Ryzen 5 3600.</li> <li>MSI B450 Gaming Plus Max.</li> <li>2x 8GB FlareX 3200Mhz RAM.</li> <li>1x 16GB Kingston 3200Mhz RAM.</li> </ul> <h2 id="zfs">ZFS</h2> <p>This is how I decided to configure my storage pools. In hindsight, this was not the best choice for upgrading. I may change it in the future to a 0+1 setup, but it works for now.</p> <p>I have 5x 3TB in a RAIDZ2 with one drive not attached for redundancy’s sake. How does one setup a ZFS pool. Check this out:</p> <pre class="terminal"> # zpool create poolname raidz2 \ /dev/by-id/blahblahblah1 \ /dev/by-id/blahblahblah2 \ /dev/by-id/blahblahblah3 \ /dev/by-id/blahblahblah4 \ /dev/by-id/blahblahblah5 </pre> <p>And zippidy-doo! We’ve got a ZFS pool! We can check its status with <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">zpool status</code>.</p> <pre class="terminal"> $ zfs status pool: raid state: ONLINE scan: scrub in progress since Wed Nov 18 18:41:41 2020 1.84T scanned at 8.51G/s, 121G issued at 562M/s, 1.84T total 0B repaired, 6.45% done, 0 days 00:53:25 to go config: NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM raid ONLINE 0 0 0 raidz2-0 ONLINE 0 0 0 ata-HGST_HUS724030ALA640_PN2234P8JTNMYY ONLINE 0 0 0 ata-HGST_HUS724030ALA640_PN2234P8JVSXTY ONLINE 0 0 0 ata-HGST_HUS724030ALA640_PN2234P8JXAS8Y ONLINE 0 0 0 ata-HGST_HUS724030ALA640_PN2234P8JXBARY ONLINE 0 0 0 ata-HGST_HUS724030ALA640_PN2234P8JXP77Y ONLINE 0 0 0 errors: No known data errors </pre> <p>I had run a scrub right before this, so there’s some extra detail in that. This is really fun! I will be doing more home storage projects soon. Perhaps Raspberry Pi NAS using all 4 USB ports to load SATA drives on it. Now that would be fun!</p> <h2 id="so-i-kinda-have-a-nas-now">So I Kinda Have A NAS Now…?</h2> <p>So right now I can only copy files with <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">rsync</code>, <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">scp</code> and moving data via a physical drive. The one major disadvantage this has is speed.</p> <p>Due to this machine being connected directly outside my network and pulling DHCP like a normal router would, I need to send my data through the WAN connection to get my files to it. This is rather unfortunate as my upload speed is capped at 20 megabits per second, despite my upload being in the 300+ range.</p> <p>Part 3 will involve a LAN card so I can connect both to the DHCP server of my ISP and my local router. This way my transfer speeds should be in the range of 1 gigabit per second. This will make my life much easier, at least on the local network.</p> <h2 id="fun-fact">Fun Fact!</h2> <p>Do not try to use the M.2 slot on a consumer motherboard where you are also using all the SATA ports. On my consumer gaming motherboard, the SATA ports next to the M.2 slot became <em>disabled</em> when I attached the M.2 SSD. I found this out form my motherboard documentation, which I read only after a week of thinking my motherboard itself was defective, and sending it in for repairs that did absolutely nothing.</p> <h2 id="thoughts">Thoughts</h2> <p>I like having all this space. I plan on using it up pretty fast, so I’m already looking at how to expand. Hopefully that gives a decent overview of how I set up my drives.</p> <p>Happy hacking!</p>Back in part one of my NAS project I discussed how I wanted to set up my hardware. Today, I set up the NAS (almost).Curiosity2020-10-26T00:00:00-06:002020-10-26T00:00:00-06:00/2020/10/26/curiosity<p>Curiosity is fundamental to a deep understanding of any subject. Masters, Ph.Ds, and other fancy name suffixes will never help you if you don’t have the spirit of curiosity burning inside of you.</p> <p>I was speaking to someone from a journalism major at my school when the subject of hacking arose. I expected her to know nothing about it, being a journalism student and all, but surprisingly she had something to say about it:</p> <blockquote> <p>“The best hackers are the ones who are curious.”</p> </blockquote> <p>That struck a cord with me. It seems to me she has nailed down the difference between the students who care about grades, and those who want to learn. These are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but in my experience they often are due to the way education is structured.</p> <h2 id="my-anecdote">My Anecdote</h2> <p>In my second semester at SAIT Polytechnic, I took a class entitled <em>Emerging Trends In Technology</em>. This class was probably the best class I have ever taken. We had to combine two things:</p> <ul> <li><strong>Hard skills</strong>: learning a new hard skill like Angular, Django, or GPG encryption.</li> <li><strong>Soft skills</strong>: public speaking and presentation of our ideas.</li> </ul> <p>Soft skills are not usually my area, but I can do public speaking. I grew up quite religious, so public speaking was drilled into me young. I liked to go off script and talk about interesting things I found along the way to the actual point. My creativity was not usually encouraged. That said, going off script is useful when teaching and presenting ideas; it gives a natural air to your breath and an unquestionable confidence in your speech.</p> <p>This is how we learn: in relationships. Try explaining ancient Japanese history to a computer science major, or UNIX sockets to an English major and you’ll see what I mean. If there is nothing for us to connect the knowledge to, it dissipates.</p> <p>So why did I do so well in this class?</p> <p>Our task for the semester was as follows:</p> <ol> <li>Learn a new subject (any <em>emerging trend in technology</em>) which you find fascinating.</li> <li>Give a one minute introduction by week three.</li> <li>Give a 10 minute non-technical overview by week 8.</li> <li>Give a 20 minute technical explaination and demo by week 13.</li> </ol> <p>This is the only course I have ever taken which lets students’ imagination run wild. Their presentation, their rules. They treated the students like adults who know what they are doing. What happened? Everyone stopped coming because “Oh no! Presentations!”?</p> <p>No, exactly the opposite. There was never more than one student missing. Every single presentation was at least moderately interesting, and most students were excited to come to that class. You could see it in their faces, the way they carried themselves. Every student picked something unique to their tastes, leaving every student more educated than before.</p> <p>This class, unlike many others, encouraged the curiosity of the students. It rewarded those who had unique interests and an ability to sell others on their ideas.</p> <p>The curiosity and the grades were one.</p> <h2 id="conclusion">Conclusion</h2> <p>Although it’s nice to have a course where these goals align here and there, anyone who has been to collage or university can tell you that is far from the norm.</p> <p>On the other hand, I never would have started this site if it wasn’t for that class alone. So I thank you, Kitty Wong, for getting me started running my own “research blog” (?)</p>Curiosity is fundamental to a deep understanding of any subject. Masters, Ph.Ds, and other fancy name suffixes will never help you if you don’t have the spirit of curiosity burning inside of you.Minesweeper Bomb Generation And Tile Revealing2020-09-12T00:00:00-06:002020-09-12T00:00:00-06:00/2020/09/12/minesweeper<p>When I was creating a little Minesweeper game, I got confused at some points. My bomb generation didn’t look quite right, and I for sure didn’t quite get the whole cascading tile reveal thing. With a bit of internet research, I found what I was looking for. I’ll explain it all in one place for my own research purposes.</p> <h2 id="bomb-generation">Bomb Generation</h2> <p>When I started this project I attempted to use a random bomb generator. By this I mean on each square, before it gets generated, give it a one in 15 change of being a bomb. Personally, I’m not sure why this never looked right. Something about the layout of the bombs did not mimic the classic Minesweeper game.</p> <p>After looking at some open source Minesweeper examples, I started to get the idea. I wrote some mathematical statements describing the generation of bombs and how to get their x,y position from an appropriate number. For those non-mathy people, don’t leave just yet; there will be code equivalents to the math.</p> <p>W and H are the width and height of the board respectively.</p> <p><span class="katex-display"><span class="katex"><span class="katex-mathml"><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><semantics><mrow><mn mathvariant="italic">0</mn><mo>≤</mo><mi>r</mi><mo>≤</mo><mtext>W</mtext><mo>×</mo><mtext>H</mtext></mrow><annotation encoding="application/x-tex"> \it 0 \leq r \leq \text W \times \text H </annotation></semantics></math></span><span class="katex-html" aria-hidden="true"><span class="base"><span class="strut" style="height:0.8193em;vertical-align:-0.13597em;"></span><span class="mord"><span class="mord mathit">0</span><span class="mspace" style="margin-right:0.2777777777777778em;"></span><span class="mrel">≤</span><span class="mspace" style="margin-right:0.2777777777777778em;"></span><span class="mord mathit">r</span><span class="mspace" style="margin-right:0.2777777777777778em;"></span><span class="mrel">≤</span><span class="mspace" style="margin-right:0.2777777777777778em;"></span><span class="mord text"><span class="mord">W</span></span><span class="mspace" style="margin-right:0.2222222222222222em;"></span><span class="mbin">×</span><span class="mspace" style="margin-right:0.2222222222222222em;"></span><span class="mord text"><span class="mord">H</span></span></span></span></span></span></span> <span class="katex-display"><span class="katex"><span class="katex-mathml"><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><semantics><mrow><mi>x</mi><mo>=</mo><mi>r</mi><mtext> </mtext><mo lspace="0.22em" rspace="0.22em"><mrow><mi mathvariant="normal">m</mi><mi mathvariant="normal">o</mi><mi mathvariant="normal">d</mi></mrow></mo><mtext> </mtext><mtext>W</mtext></mrow><annotation encoding="application/x-tex"> \it x = r \bmod \text W </annotation></semantics></math></span><span class="katex-html" aria-hidden="true"><span class="base"><span class="strut" style="height:0.69444em;vertical-align:0em;"></span><span class="mord"><span class="mord mathit">x</span><span class="mspace" style="margin-right:0.2777777777777778em;"></span><span class="mrel">=</span><span class="mspace" style="margin-right:0.2777777777777778em;"></span><span class="mord mathit">r</span><span class="mspace" style="margin-right:0.2222222222222222em;"></span><span class="mspace" style="margin-right:0.05555555555555555em;"></span><span class="mbin"><span class="mord"><span class="mord mathrm">m</span><span class="mord mathrm">o</span><span class="mord mathrm">d</span></span></span><span class="mspace" style="margin-right:0.2222222222222222em;"></span><span class="mspace" style="margin-right:0.05555555555555555em;"></span><span class="mord text"><span class="mord">W</span></span></span></span></span></span></span> <span class="katex-display"><span class="katex"><span class="katex-mathml"><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><semantics><mrow><mi>y</mi><mo>=</mo><mrow><mo fence="true">⌊</mo><mfrac><mi>r</mi><mtext>H</mtext></mfrac><mo fence="true">⌋</mo></mrow></mrow><annotation encoding="application/x-tex"> \it y = \left\lfloor\frac{r}{\text H}\right\rfloor </annotation></semantics></math></span><span class="katex-html" aria-hidden="true"><span class="base"><span class="strut" style="height:1.8359999999999999em;vertical-align:-0.686em;"></span><span class="mord"><span class="mord mathit">y</span><span class="mspace" style="margin-right:0.2777777777777778em;"></span><span class="mrel">=</span><span class="mspace" style="margin-right:0.2777777777777778em;"></span><span class="minner"><span class="mopen delimcenter" style="top:0em;"><span class="delimsizing size2">⌊</span></span><span class="mord"><span class="mopen nulldelimiter"></span><span class="mfrac"><span class="vlist-t vlist-t2"><span class="vlist-r"><span class="vlist" style="height:1.10756em;"><span style="top:-2.314em;"><span class="pstrut" style="height:3em;"></span><span class="mord"><span class="mord text"><span class="mord">H</span></span></span></span><span style="top:-3.23em;"><span class="pstrut" style="height:3em;"></span><span class="frac-line" style="border-bottom-width:0.04em;"></span></span><span style="top:-3.677em;"><span class="pstrut" style="height:3em;"></span><span class="mord"><span class="mord mathit">r</span></span></span></span><span class="vlist-s">​</span></span><span class="vlist-r"><span class="vlist" style="height:0.686em;"><span></span></span></span></span></span><span class="mclose nulldelimiter"></span></span><span class="mclose delimcenter" style="top:0em;"><span class="delimsizing size2">⌋</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p>The code equivalent to this in Python is below:</p> <div class="language-python highlighter-rouge"><div class="highlight"><pre class="highlight"><code><span class="kn">import</span> <span class="nn">random</span> <span class="c1"># r &lt;= 0 &lt;= W*H </span><span class="n">r</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">random</span><span class="p">.</span><span class="n">randint</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">W</span><span class="o">*</span><span class="n">H</span><span class="p">)</span><span class="o">-</span><span class="mi">1</span> <span class="c1"># x = r mod W </span><span class="n">x</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">r</span> <span class="o">%</span> <span class="n">W</span> <span class="c1"># y = floor(r/H); note the special syntax python has for this operation </span><span class="n">y</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">r</span> <span class="o">//</span> <span class="n">H</span> </code></pre></div></div> <p>So that’s that, we can put this in a big ‘ol for loop and generate an arbitrary <em>n</em> number of bombs given a width and height of a Minesweeper board.</p> <h2 id="cascading-tile-revealing">Cascading Tile Revealing</h2> <p>This one is hard to describe; I am adapting this from <a href="https://leetcode.com/problems/minesweeper/">leetcode.com</a>. Whenever a player clicks a tile, the following logic should be used:</p> <ol> <li>If a mine is revealed, the game is over. (obviously)</li> <li>If a tile with <em>no</em> adjacent mines is revealed, recursively reveal all eight adjacent tiles.</li> <li>If a tile with one or more adjacent mines is revealed, display the number of mines next to it.</li> </ol> <p>Here is the code in Python for this algorithm.</p> <div class="language-python highlighter-rouge"><div class="highlight"><pre class="highlight"><code><span class="k">def</span> <span class="nf">reveal_square</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">x</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">y</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">board</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">alread_revealed</span><span class="p">):</span> <span class="c1"># if already checked </span> <span class="k">if</span> <span class="p">(</span><span class="n">x</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">y</span><span class="p">)</span> <span class="ow">in</span> <span class="n">already_revealed</span><span class="p">:</span> <span class="k">return</span> <span class="c1"># if it's a bomb </span> <span class="k">if</span> <span class="n">board</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="n">x</span><span class="p">][</span><span class="n">y</span><span class="p">]</span> <span class="o">==</span> <span class="s">'B'</span><span class="p">:</span> <span class="n">you_lose</span><span class="p">()</span> <span class="k">return</span> <span class="c1"># if the bomb number is more than 0 </span> <span class="n">already_revealed</span><span class="p">.</span><span class="n">append</span><span class="p">((</span><span class="n">nx</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">ny</span><span class="p">))</span> <span class="c1"># from -1 to 1 </span> <span class="k">for</span> <span class="n">xd</span> <span class="ow">in</span> <span class="nb">range</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="o">-</span><span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="mi">2</span><span class="p">):</span> <span class="k">for</span> <span class="n">yd</span> <span class="ow">in</span> <span class="nb">range</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="o">-</span><span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="mi">2</span><span class="p">):</span> <span class="c1"># skip if it is this the center tile </span> <span class="k">if</span> <span class="n">x</span><span class="o">+</span><span class="n">xd</span> <span class="o">==</span> <span class="n">x</span> <span class="ow">and</span> <span class="n">y</span><span class="o">+</span><span class="n">yd</span> <span class="o">==</span> <span class="n">y</span><span class="p">:</span> <span class="k">continue</span> <span class="c1"># recursively check the adjacent square </span> <span class="n">reveal</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">x</span><span class="o">+</span><span class="n">xd</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">y</span><span class="o">+</span><span class="n">yd</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">board</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">already_revealed</span><span class="p">)</span> <span class="k">return</span> <span class="n">already_revealed</span> </code></pre></div></div> <p>This has no checks for valid squares, but it’s the general idea. This function returns an array of tile coordinates which should be revealed.</p> <h2 id="conclusion">Conclusion</h2> <p>I wrote this because in the first place because I was writing my own Minesweeper game. I hope that this helps you with getting the general idea of a Minesweeper game. The completed version of this game is available on my <a href="https://lamegames.tait.tech/">lamegames</a> site. Let me know what you think!</p> <p>Happy hacking!</p>When I was creating a little Minesweeper game, I got confused at some points. My bomb generation didn’t look quite right, and I for sure didn’t quite get the whole cascading tile reveal thing. With a bit of internet research, I found what I was looking for. I’ll explain it all in one place for my own research purposes.lamegames.tait.tech2020-09-09T00:00:00-06:002020-09-09T00:00:00-06:00/2020/09/09/lamegames<p>This is an announcement for a new project of mine: <a href="https://lamegames.tait.tech">lamegames.tait.tech</a>.</p> <p>This is something I’m really excited to work on!</p> <p>Right now, I’ve just got a rock-paper-scissors game. A chat function, and a few simple card games to come.</p> <p>Check out the repository on my <a href="https://github.com/TTWNO/lamegames.io">Github</a>.</p>This is an announcement for a new project of mine: lamegames.tait.tech.How to Solve The Django Deployment Puzzle2020-08-18T00:00:00-06:002020-08-18T00:00:00-06:00/2020/08/18/django-deployment<p>A few days ago I had a Django project I wanted to put on a real server. This project is still in its infancy, but I thought it would be nice to put it on my resume and show my friends. Little did I know the headache coming my way. Here are some tips to help you not make the same mistakes as me.</p> <h3 id="asgi-servers">ASGI Servers</h3> <p>Because my project used the ASGI (Asynchronous webServer Gateway Interface), I needed to find a good production ASGI server to handle all the incoming requests. The best thing I found was <a href="http://www.uvicorn.org/">uvicorn</a>. It focuses on speed, which is a priority, especially when using the ASGI protocol.</p> <p>To run uvicorn on the command line for testing purposes, use something like the following:</p> <pre class="terminal"> $ uvicorn --reload myapp.asgi:application </pre> <p>The <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">--reload</code> option says to reload the server if any of the files get updated. This is not recommended in production. Sadly, I thought this meant I would need to do a hard shutdown of the server process every time I wanted to update. This turned out to not be the case.</p> <h3 id="workload-managers">Workload Managers</h3> <p>There is another equine-named program called <a href="https://gunicorn.org/">gunicorn</a> which can hold a number of processes under its control. An interesting feature of <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">gunicorn</code> is that it will gracefully switch from an old to a new deployment, replacing the subprocesses one-by-one and eventually having only the new deployment active on all subprocesses. The greatest part? Zero down time. The server keeps any old processes open if there is communication with them, then shift and new connections to the new deployment. This was a very cool feature I wanted to take advantage of.</p> <p>“Now hold on!” you might protest. “gunicorn is a WSGI server!” … oh you got me there! Yes, that’s right, <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">gunicorn</code> is paired with <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">uvicorn</code> to serve my files.</p> <h3 id="systemd">systemd</h3> <p>Love it or hate it, the majority of Linux distributions use the <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">systemd</code> init system. I decided it would be very convenient to have a .service file for my Django application to run automatically at boot. <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">Systemd</code> allows me to do this with a file like the following one I stored in <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">/lib/systemd/system/lamegames.service</code>.</p> <pre class="file"> [Unit] Description=Gunicorn/Uvicorn (lamegames.io) [Service] WorkingDirectory=/home/lame/lamegames.io Type=simple RemainAfterExit=yes ExecStart=/home/lame/lamegames.io/env/bin/gunicorn lamegames.asgi:application -w 2 -k uvicorn.workers.UvicornWorker ExecStop=/bin/kill -HUP $MAINPID Restart=always [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target </pre> <h3 id="nginx">nginx</h3> <p>NGINX (pronounced engine-X) is a performance web server designed for speed and simplicity. For the front facing side of the site, I do need a production web server like nginx. Gunicorn simply doesn’t need all the features that nginx provides, but I do. To configure my nginx installation, I used the following few directives to:</p> <ol> <li>Redirect most traffic towards the gunicorn server.</li> <li>Redirect statically served files (CSS, JS, images) to the directory specified in the STATIC_ROOT variable of my <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">settings.py</code> file.</li> <li>Use TLS to enable https://</li> </ol> <p>Serving the static files from nginx as opposed to the <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">gunicorn</code> server is necessary. Gunicorn and other production A/WSGI web server will not set the proper MIME type over TLS. This will cause your browser to not load the Javascript/CSS.</p> <p>This is the important part of my nginx config.</p> <pre class="file"> server { location / { proxy_set_header Host $http_host; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme; # these two lines ensure that WebSocket, and HTTP2 connection are forwarded correctly proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade; proxy_set_header Connection "Upgrade"; proxy_redirect off; proxy_buffering off; # this forwards all traffic to the local server on port 8000 proxy_pass http://localhost:8000; } # This forwards all static requests to Django's STATIC_ROOT set in settings.py; it is generated using the collectstatic command. location /static { autoindex on; alias /home/lame/lamegames.io/static_generated; } } </pre> <h3 id="setup">Setup</h3> <p>After all that, I was able to do the following:</p> <pre class="terminal"> # systemctl enable lamegames </pre> <p>This enabled my <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">gunicorn</code> server to run once the server started. NGINX is that way be default.</p> <p>And tada! You now have a working Django project on a production server!</p> <h4 id="notes">Notes</h4> <ul> <li>If using ws:// websockets, change them to wss:// for secure web sockets.</li> <li>Make sure to use channels.routing.get_default_application() instead of django.get_asgi_application() if your’re wanting to use channels/redis WebSockets.</li> </ul>A few days ago I had a Django project I wanted to put on a real server. This project is still in its infancy, but I thought it would be nice to put it on my resume and show my friends. Little did I know the headache coming my way. Here are some tips to help you not make the same mistakes as me.BSD Journey, Part 12020-08-15T00:00:00-06:002020-08-15T00:00:00-06:00/2020/08/15/openbsd1<p>As Linux becomes controlled by corporate sponsors and becomes more full of proprietary blobs, drivers, and even closed-source software like Steam, One may wonder if there are other options out there. For me, somebody that is intensely interested in security, there is one option: OpenBSD.</p> <p>Now, my interest in OpenBSD has been going on for a long time. I started poking around for Linux alternatives way back a few years ago when Linus Torvalds decided to leave after he got in trouble for some <a href="https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/07/linus-torvalds-defends-his-right-to-shame-linux-kernel-developers/">unprofessional behaviour</a>. That said, Linus did come back to Linux development, but I knew that his abrasive style is what brought good code to the Linux kernel. I also knew that his ability to be critical would be hurt by the new <a href="https://itsfoss.com/linux-code-of-conduct/">code of conduct</a>. It would become a tool for the SJW types to hammer on Linus for being a “white male, et al.”; It would become a tool for the easily offended to use to get their dumb code into Linux; It would become a tool for the corporatization, the HR-ification of Linux. Frankly, this does not interest me.</p> <p>Now I’m sure that OpenBSD has its own internal policies that I disagree with. That said, Theo De Raadt is still at least known for calling Firefox an “amorphous peace of garbage” due to its lack of privilege separation. And, in their <a href="https://openbsd.org/goals.html">project goals</a> page, they specifically mention:</p> <blockquote> <p>Be as politics-free as possible; solutions should be decided on the basis of technical merit.</p> </blockquote> <p>Now that’s something I can get behind! Bet you that’s not in the Linux COC?</p> <p>He also went to university in my hometown, so that’s pretty cool! I can support a local madman who thinks he can make a better operating system than all those corporations. Maybe he was right, maybe not. What I know is I am excited to find out!</p> <p>Wish my luck on my OpenBSD journey. I will post updates here along the way.</p> <p>Happy hacking!</p>As Linux becomes controlled by corporate sponsors and becomes more full of proprietary blobs, drivers, and even closed-source software like Steam, One may wonder if there are other options out there. For me, somebody that is intensely interested in security, there is one option: OpenBSD.Know How Your Representative Votes In Parliament2020-07-30T00:00:00-06:002020-07-30T00:00:00-06:00/2020/07/30/canadian-parliament<p>As an advocate for openness, I had an idea to make a project out of the government of Canada’s <a href="https://open.canada.ca/en/open-data">Open Data</a> initiative to take a look at how my local MP voted on various pieces of legislation. It turns out though that this was not necessary due to how easy it was to find this information on the government’s own website. In this article, I will explain how you can do the same.</p> <h3 id="1-find-your-representative">1. Find Your Representative</h3> <p>The first step in this process is to find who your representative is. To do so, go to the government’s own website <a href="https://www.ourcommons.ca/Members/en">ourcommons.ca’s search tool</a>.</p> <p>Simply type in your postal code in the search box to find out who your MP is.</p> <h3 id="2-their-voting-record">2. Their Voting Record</h3> <p>Every MP’s voting record is public knowledge, and it is available nice and simple in a table on that MP’s page. For example, this is a link to <a href="https://www.ourcommons.ca/Members/en/pierre-poilievre(25524)/votes">Pierre Poilievre’s voting record</a>.</p> <p>To find your MP’s voting record, do step one, then: After the <strong>Overview</strong>, and <strong>Seat in The House</strong> sections, there are three tabs, <strong>Roles</strong>, <strong>Work</strong>, and <strong>Contact</strong>. Click on work. At the bottom of that tab is a link which says <strong>Chamber Votes</strong>. This will open a small window with some recent votes by this politician. If you want to see all their votes, there is a button at the bottom named <strong>All Votes by This Member</strong>.</p> <p>Tada! You can now keep your local MP accountable for anything you do or do not support.</p> <h3 id="3-bill-details">3. Bill Details</h3> <p>If you want to get into the nitty gritty, once you open a specific bill, you can actually find out the status of said bill, or read the actual text by clicking the <strong>View this Bill on LEGISinfo</strong> button.</p> <p>Both the status of the bill, and a link to a PDF document containing the bilingual text of the bill are visible in the main body of the page.</p> <h4 id="conclusion">Conclusion</h4> <p>I thought this was pretty cool! It was <em>way</em> simpler than I thought it would be.</p> <p>Thanks, Canada!</p>As an advocate for openness, I had an idea to make a project out of the government of Canada’s Open Data initiative to take a look at how my local MP voted on various pieces of legislation. It turns out though that this was not necessary due to how easy it was to find this information on the government’s own website. 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