chilli's blog

Adguard Home as a container in Fedora Server

Setting up Adguard Home as a container in Fedora Server

Apps I use daily & some alternatives

Apps I use on my Fedora laptop on a daily basis

Fedora 43 cosmic spin post-install notes

Fedora 43 software and config that I did post install

My thoughts on Fedora 43 Cosmic Spin and my ThinkPad X1

I recently - as in two days ago - bought a ThinkPad X1 off of eBay, and decided to try Fedora 43 Cosmic Spin out on it. I want to sell my MacBookPro M1 as I rarely use it. I find that I’m using Linux more and more these days. I have my iPhone and iPad Pro for everything Apple, so the MBP is relatively superfluous in the grand scheme of things. I still have my work ‘spare’ laptop…

My first container using Podman

One of the reasons I got myself a home server is so that I can learn about containers. I’ve just got my first one set up, and as this was my first ‘rodeo’ it certainly took a while, but it turned out to be really quite easy in the end. So, here’s how I did it, and just as importantly - also what I learned. podman and quadlet I decided that I wanted to see if I could run a…

Installing token2 FIDO token on openSUSE Tumbleweed

Setting Up a Token2 FIDO2 Hardware Token on openSUSE Tumbleweed I recently purchased a USB-C FIDO2 hardware token from Token2 to use with my openSUSE Tumbleweed installation. Unlike standard Yubikeys, this device doesn’t work with the default Linux Yubikey software, so you need to build the Token2 software yourself. We’ll be building libfido2, which will allow you to use your Token2…

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) - what my job entails.

I sometimes write about what I’m doing outside of work and never really talk about what I do as my day job. I’m responsible for the Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) systems at the company that I work for, across EMEA and APAC regions. I’ve been in the EDI world for about 20+ years now, and I usually have a blast in what I get up to on a daily basis.

Goodbye Arch & hello OpenSUSE Tumbleweed

Recently, there was a discussion on omg.lol’ers about which good Linux distros are worth trying, and someone during the discussion mentioned Fedora Sway. So, I decided to overwrite my lovely Arch & Hyprland install on my Dell laptop, and install Fedora, which ultimately led me to installing openSUSE Tumbleweed. I started off with installing the Fedora Sway edition, and I have to say it…

Subscription Changes and saving money

I’ve not written anything on my blog in quite a while - apologies for that! I’ve been making some changes to my IT subscriptions recently. Some of it is simply pruning out software I no longer use (cost savings), and some involves merging providers to avoid paying twice for the same service. Microsoft Office - £79.99 pa → £0 Recently Microsoft announced they would be including AI in…

Arch packages I install on a clean Arch install

Here’s a list of no-nonsense packages that I immediately install after installing a fresh arch linux, and just as importantly why I install them. These are what I install because I might find the linux default apps - here’s looking at you man pages - are just too much hassle to use. Life is hard enough, so why make it harder for yourself? Eza Homepage | Arch page It brings colours to…

Arch Linux - I made a booboo!

Never underestimate the power of my human stupidity. So I opened my arch linux laptop to update Arch using pacman. Whilst doing that, I realised that my battery was at a stunning 6%, so I picked up the power cable, and plugged it into my laptop. two seconds later my laptop simply shut-down, mid-way through the mkinitcpio stuff. Why? Well, the eegit writing this blog post hadn’t checked to…

That was quite a break!

Well that was quite a break, huh? Sorry, life has been busy recently, and now I have a bit more time & probably more truthfully more inclination to continue with posting to my blog. I’ve been playing around with porkbun as a new Domain registrar, I’ve used name cheap for years, but the good folks at omg.lol pointed me towards porkbun. porkbun.com It’s a typical Domain registrar,…

What I'll be blogging about during WeblogPoMO 24

I’ve been thinking about what I can blog about during the whole month of May for WeblogPoMo 24 - it does start tomorrow after all! I think that I’ll mostly be blogging about getting my genealogy blog set-up, along with perhaps my own personal mastodon instance - the two will be related. I really do need to do something with my genealogy blog, which currently is practically…

Weekly Notes - Wk. 17/24

What’s caught my attention this week - Wk. 17, 2024 👨🏻‍🎨 Andy Carolan’s ko-fi webshop . Does amazing, custom User Avatars; see how cool my funky chilli one is? I’m totally thinking of asking him to do some more for me! At least 3, then I’m going to have some stickers printed. I won’t apologise. 👨🏻‍💻 tinylytics Privacy-focussed web analytics for your websites.…

WeblogPoMo - May2024

I’ll be joining WeblogPoMo - May 2024! Now, I haven’t written too much on my blog so far, but I’d like to do more. When I heard about @anniegreens WeblogPoMo, I figured I would go ahead and join in the fun! WeblogPoMo stands for Weblog Post Month, and every day of May I’ll be writing and publishing a blog post. Some of my posts maybe shorter than my usual length, and some…

My subscriptions What I pay for and why!

A lot of subscriptions try to hit the ‘price of a cup of coffee’ price point. So I thought I’d list my monthly subscriptions, and talk about the value that they provide to me. If I pay a dollar amount, then I’ve converted them to GBP, as that is what I actually pay. My Annual & Monthly subscription prices Bear blog hosting : £4/$5 /mo This blog is hosted by bearblog, and I…

積ん読 The Japanese art of buying books and never reading them.

Have you ever walked into a bookshop, bought a book (or two), and then once home, the books have sat there on your bedside table for a very long time. Unread ? The Japanese have a word to describe this 積ん読 (Pronounced: Tsundoku). My immediate thought on hearing this word for the first time - and then understanding what it means - was why on earth don’t we have this word in the English…

omg.lol - what?!

I spent $20 last night. I’m just not sure on what, exactly I spent it on - if that makes any kind of sense? Last night, I came across omg.lol, and now before you scoot off and visit the site, I suggest you practise your squinting, or at the very least perhaps put some sunglasses on before you do. The colours on their site are pretty wild, consider yourself warned. So, here’s the link.…

how I de-googled (as much as possible).

I, like many, decided a while ago to de-google my life. This post is about my reasons behind doing it, what I have achieved, and just as importantly what haven’t I been able to de-google? The service offering from Google is strong. There’s a bunch of really useful tools - for free - that the average person can use in their daily lives. This could be for example Google Mail, Google…

ideas

Broad topics covering things that I’d like to better understand: AI and how it’s going to impact search engines Improve my understanding of personal online privacy Try to find a couple of Linux cli projects to learn either basic rust or python coding. I’m open to suggestions! 😊 Better understand Linux containers, and immutable OSs. I plan to write some future blog posts on: A new (to me) rust or…

How to tweak Bear Blog

The documentation for Bear blog (that this blog is published on), can be a bit on the technical side. Here’s a non-technical article so you can set your blog up, how you want to. There’s been a couple of things that I wanted to change on my blog, once I’d chosen my theme. buymeacoffee.com If you look at my footer, you’ll see a link to my ‘buy me a coffee’ page,…

It's time to talk about Kagi.com

Kagi.com is a paid-for search engine, that’s around 2 years old. I’ve been using it for about 4 months now, and I’m super impressed with the results. I’ve not been happy with Google search results for quite some time now. They’re having to walk a thin line, in my opinion, between keeping their customers happy - whilst still having a very mystical SEO process - and…

Useful Stuff

Here’s some useful things that I have come across in my life that I currently enjoy using: Tech Companies Search engine: kagi.com Domain registrar: Porkbun Email Hosting: proton.com DNS Provider: desec.io Hosting provider: Upcloud Linux Distro: openSUSE | Fedora Online Community: omg.lol Home Networking: unifi

(untitled)

My home ‘IT-strategy’ So I have a bunch of stuff at home using Linux, and it covers most types of things. Let’s look at each one, and see what I use my home IT equipment for. Laptop This is my daily driver running fedora cosmic spin. It’s an 11th-gen ThinkPad x1 carbon with an Intel i7 13th gen CPU, 16 GB RAM, 500GB nvme drive, and a great 2K OLED screen. It’s where i…

about

About chilli.sh Hi there! I’m James—though most folks know me as chilli online. I’m a UK-based tech enthusiast, privacy advocate, and cat dad to two mischievous furballs, Gary and Mabel. By day, I wrangle integrations and business change in a Windows-dominated IT team. By night? That’s when the real fun begins. I tend to dive into: Linux (Fedora is my daily driver, with a soft spot for tinkering…

RSS Feed