Rambling about hacking on my creaky old email archival infrastructure
What started out as a simple message archiving task turned into many hours of debugging, fixing, and cleaning up the old archives. Both frustrating and fun at the same time.
Category Archives: Computers
Comics Aggregator: new comic, “Beetle Moses”
My comics aggregator now includes the Comics Kingdom comic Beetle Moses. As a reminder, you need a Comics Kingdom subscription to read its comics through the aggregator, as documented in the user guide. As always, please feel free to reach out if there’s a comic or column you’d like me to add to the aggregator.… Read More »
Comics Aggregator “The Lockhorns” is back, with changes
The comic strip The Lockhorns, which was previously hosted on Comics Kingdom, has moved to GoComics, so my comics aggregator has been updated to reflect this and the strip is once again available there. Note that a paid subscription is required to read Comics Kingdom through the aggregator (as per the user guide) but not… Read More »
Don’t worry, Brewster Rockit will return
Never fear, comics aggregator users who have noticed that Brewster Rockit has been missing for the past few days! I have it on good authority (the author himself!) that it will return shortly: Actually still trying to figure out what’s wrong, but this happens occasionally (this isn’t the first time) and it’s usually a clerical… Read More »
Washington Post content on strike in comics aggregator December 7
In solidarity with Washington Post employees who are engaging in a 24-hour strike on December 7, 2023, WaPo content is disabled in the comics aggregator on that date. Solidarity!
“This Modern World” is back in the comics aggregator
I had to remove This Modern World by Tom Tomorrow from the comics aggregator because the aggregator was getting it from The Nib, which alas stopped publishing. I’ve now worked out how to get it from Daily Kos instead, so it’s back. If you enjoy This Modern World I encourage you to support it. I… Read More »
Bad healthcare tech of the day: Boston Children’s Hospital patient portal
The user experience for registering for the portal and checking in for appointments is riddled with problems. We deserve better.
“Mother Goose & Grimm” fixed in the comics aggregator
The comic strip Mother Goose & Grimm stopped working in the comics aggregator about a week ago because the author stopped publishing new strips on grimmy.com. I’ve modified the aggregator to pull the strip from gocomics.com instead, so it’s working again. Thank you to the aggregator user who let me know about the problem so… Read More »
Just published: “perlmod_install_info” Ansible module
I’ve just published a new Ansible module called perlmod_install_info whose purpose is to help you install Perl modules on systems in the most portable way possible. Specifically, this module knows how to search for Perl modules in dnf, yum, and apt repositories as well as in cpanm. It prefers the OS repositories over CPAN because… Read More »
Long time Ubuntu user, first time Debian installer
My hot take: Debian is a good desktop operating system for highly technical people who know how to troubleshoot and fix computer problems, but it may not be the best choice for less technical people looking for a desktop operating system to use instead of Windows or macOS.