I decided to switch from the normal, decades-old filesystem logic of the home directory, and instead use the relatively new technology of systemd-homed. "But Ben, why would you do that?" you may be wondering, and you would be right to do so. But I like to tinker, jump
It isn't quite Christmas yet, but the legislators of Virginia's General Assembly have been at it, pre-filing bills and getting ready for January. Most in the state know that Glenn Youngkin is our current governor, though this is the beginning of his last year, but who
Like has happened throughout the life of this blog, I have changed up how it is served to you yet again. Now I'm on Ghost: good, open-source software that isn't going through the turmoil that has enveloped Wordpress. I'm not going to write the
browserless.io released a rewritten version of their platform in December, and being a foolhardy self-hoster I decided to try and get that working with my changedectection.io setup immediately. This is all hosted on my HP EliteDesk with a 9th gen intel processor I got off of ebay, and
My weekend project has been to set change my personal website from a Wordpress install to a static site. There are a bunch of static site generators out there, and a bunch of content delivery networks allow hosting of those sites for free. Serving up HTML and CSS seems to
Today, I was trying to remember how I did something in Thunderbird, something I knew that I had recently done on Thunderbird on my other computer. I wanted to hide the "Local Folders" meta-account, because all of my various email accounts that I need to collate are all
A couple of days ago, I sent an email to Johnny Redd and Canova Peterson about the book banning actions that the Hanover County School Board were taking. Today, Johnny Redd responded: Needless to say, this misses every point.
Hanover County approves new library policy for books and then bans 17 titles Dear Mr. Redd and Mr. Peterson, Mr. Redd, I am shocked, disappointed, and appalled at the action taken by the Hanover County School Board last night. As a parent of two young children, one of which who
Google Reader died in 2013, a moment that many Very Online rue. Google killed a service that was able to connect people easily to all of the information sources that they wanted to follow, and even if there wasn't a social network, or monetizable ads, or anything like
In addition to being a prospect researcher, I have been a desktop Linux user for the past 15 years. Over that time, I have used many of the most popular distributions, such as Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch Linux, Debian, Linux Mint, and more. However, right now I am back on Ubuntu,
Starting in January, beer drinkers around Richmond noticed that the beers of Bell's Brewery, known for favorites such as Oberon and Two Hearted Ale, where no longer appearing on the shelves of grocery stores or at restaurants. Later, in February, we learned that the loss of Bell'
Finding a good place to host your podcast can be a struggle; the struggle is doubled if you want to find a place to do so for free. I have been producing Filibuster, the premier podcast about D.C. United, for the past 4 years, and in that time we
Archival Issues
As I talked about in my letter to the Governor of Virginia, Terry McAuliffe, and the Secretary of Education, Dietra Trent, the Library of Virginia has been forced to make massive and devastating budget cuts, which account for 12% of their total staff being laid off. The other shoe has
Archival Issues
Below is a letter that I wrote to Governor Terry McAuliffe and Secretary of Education Dietra Trent about the proposed layoffs at the Library of Virginia. 26 state employees have to be laid off state-wide, and out of that number 15 are currently proposed to come from the Library of
debian
I've been trying to build a home file server, mostly to store backups, using a Raspberry Pi and a Western Digital My Passport Ultra as the main storage unit. For years, I used an old Compaq desktop tower as my backup computer, but the fact that it won&
raspberry pi
A couple of years ago, I hosted this website and a couple others on my first-generation Raspberry Pi. However, it didn't quite have enough power to even support my light usage, and so I went over to DreamHost (started with a very cheap promo deal, which went up
Archival Issues
Historical Highlights #007 - Oct 5, 2015 […] I never would have thought of this: Prospect Research as an Alternative Career for Archivists and Librarians […]
Technology
Having been the producer of Filibuster - The Black and Red United Podcast, for over 70 episodes, I have gone through a number of methods of recording, most of which have annoyed me in one way or another. People keep asking me, though, how we do this podcast, so I
Archival Issues
For reasons that are boring to get into, I decided that I needed to leave the Library of Virginia a couple months ago and move into a new position that is not in an archival repository. I loved my time at LVA, and it saddened (and continues to sadden) me
proxy
There are plenty of tutorials out there on how to turn your Raspberry Pi into a full-fledged VPN, often using OpenVPN. However, many people don't need all of the features (and all of the setup) of a full VPN server in order to just protect their browsing when
advocacy
During the MARAC plenary today, Kathleen Roe of the New York State Archives gave a rousing call for more advocacy by archivists for their profession to those external stakeholders who don't necessarily know what we do but upon whom we rely for funding. It was an inspiring speech
Archival Issues
-From the Sunlight Foundation's post "Open data is the next iteration of public records." Government transparency is a good thing, and so I am happy to see the proliferation of open government data repositories, like data.gov and its equivalents at the state level. One worry,
Archival Issues
Since being hired by the Library of Virginia just over a year ago, a part of my job has been to process emails from the administration of Governor Tim Kaine, who was Governor of Virginia from 2006 to 2010. And last week, the first fruits of our labors were realized,
free software
As everyone by now has heard, Google has decided to pull the plug on Google Reader, its RSS feed aggregator. Google's reason is that Reader has a declining user base and that it wants to concentrate on other projects. I should have known that this was in the