it's sarablog

Aug 20-25 links etc

Small collection of things I've found recently. Mostly about going on the computer, but in my defense I go on the computer a lot.

music:

Queer UK Metal Radio
I was miserably looking up the Horrendous/Crypt Sermon show I missed tickets for Multiple Times and found someone on bsky who does a metal radio every Thursday, gayly. Seems fun, and they seem like they've got good taste! I gotta radio more.

Intro to Greek Black Metal
Really enjoyed this new Zeicrydeus disc and noticed people describe it as Greek-sounding despite their Canadian roots. Not a regional variant I know much about! I've checked out Necromantia and I like them a lot, got a bit of classic cock rock energy to it and I always love a crap 90s keyboard.
< hasn't even listened to Rotting Christ

I found a few albums I was interested in this week... considering trying to start up Music Post's...

self-hosting:

Virtual Server Setup Guide
Simple guide to safely setting up virtual servers by a vncup entrant. Ideally I want to have a little physical box so I only have to pay the leccy bill but, y'know, this early on I'm considering my options.

FreshRSS via Docker Guide
Fuck to Inoreader. Greedy thing. Too many buttons. I recently set up FreshRSS via Docker on an old Raspberry Pi 4 for local use, and this is how I did it! It's helped me understand Docker a lot more + what a docker-compose.yaml is. However I have also discovered that trying to troubleshoot a config file through a terminal text editor is like. Complete torture. Because of the exact indentations needed. Death
If I continue here, my next to-do is to set up the API so I can get it through to Capy Reader on my phone but ueghhh any sort of network exposure is Scary and I'm not ready for it. What's an nginx. I'll kill you. Instead maybe I just uninstall RSS on phone? I need to spend less time on phone anyway.

Self-Hosted Music Discovery
This is a self-hosted music discovery system! Hope of finding new music is like the one thing that made me go back to Sp*tify for a bit (check out: Spicetify if you want to do this unpaid), especially in genres I don't really know where the good publications are for, like hip-hop. I wanna put this up sometime

While I was writing this I realised I want to host a bookmark manager like raindrop.io... raindrop or raindrop users claim it works on Linux but it, does not, in my experience. There are other bookmark managers out there and I just gotta find the one that hurts my peanut brain the least. My current options:

Yes:

Hmm:

No:

I've seen people notice that Pocket used to be able to bypass paywalls - I'll have to see if any of the above can also do that. Shiori as a direct Pocket alternative might? Regardless, because of the archival functions a lot of these are going to have to be for after I sort out the drive space lol

I've been having trouble getting copyparty to work locally since the first few tries. I think it's because I'm VPNed up now but it's Pissing me off. Genuinely just having it on a local setup would be great for getting shit off my phone and onto my computer without having to faff about with syncthing. Regardless it's a bad idea because my Pi is only on a 16GB microSD and it doesn't put enough power into a single port to power a hard drive and I can't find my Y-cable to see if that works and my 64GB SD card broke and

other web:

Neocities Blog Template
I've seen a couple people (well, one couple.) use this for their Neocities blog format and it's quite a nice one. Very simple, text-focused, markdown conversion, one-click pub to Neocities. If/when I want to move from Bear I might use this. OP is a Domino Club contributor and makes good videogames also 👍

namecheap You know namecheap. i don't need an url here
I have a domain now. You can't know it because it's not done. I don't really know what to do with it but I set up my postless bsky to have it as a handle and also redirect to it. All in all, worth the $9 I paid for 2 years of it

file organisation:

Automatic Music Organiser Ripping off a t-shirt to reveal a second t-shirt underneath that says I heart organising files
I've got a hard drive with MP3s from like 2011 floating about. So I dumped ALL of it into my MP3 player of choice* and now I have 417 albums, many of which are shite. I recently discovered i have a crap old laptop sitting around with a CD drive so I might go rip everything I have on disc too. Go bump that number up a few digits.
beets is cool... it's simple enough; you point it at a folder with some MP3s, and then you point it at a folder where you want to keep everything clean, and then it copies them over in a consistent folder/artist/etc format while fixing all the metadata. All neat and tidy.

Additional plugins I used were:

*fooyin, for what it's worth. It's a semi-clone of foobar2000, which has too many windows deps to be easily portable to various of Linuxes. It's very customisable and not genuinely hideous like every other Linux music player (Clementine my absolute enemy), but it does occasionally crash when I'm shuffling widgets around. It's new though so I'll forgive it.
...Are Linux media players so bad because every true Linux sicko just uses some kind of open source Plex Music network player off their NAS...?
...I also saw a Youtube video shilling a command line music player that looked really good but it was a bitch to install on anything that wasn't Arch...

Automatic ROM Organiser
I enjoyed using beets so much I decided to do the same shit to my game ROMs :-)
...but ROM organisation isn't as solved as music. Turns out game databases aren't hosted online publicly in the same way music databases are, so you have to download a 'datfile', which is a type of index of metadata and hashes to compare file integrity against, and then point your ROM organiser at it before you show it to your jumble of games you want it to sort. Also, igir uses some sort of package manager for Javascript/node.js called npm which I can't be bothered to learn so it keeps not staying installed and I have to run it fresh a lot. My fault

BUT - I got it working, and I managed to put every NES, SNES and Mega Drive game on both my computer and my lovely little darling object "Anbernic RG Cube", which I exclusively use to play Shigeru Miyamoto's masterpiece, Devil World. My £130 Famiclone,

Android Game Library Launcher
Talking of my expensive Famiclone, this is what I settled on for a launcher. Free and slick, with a very nice random button for when you just want to play Something, which is a big plus for me. There's a button on the Cube that goes into Anbernic's default launcher and it's kind of piss so I went through the trouble of replacing it with this guide. Admitting this feels a bit Retro Emulator Console Collector Excited To Play Mario For The First Time but I do actually use this thing to play STGs in bed so cleaning it up was worthwhile.

journaling

Makers and Menders Scribology Travelers Notebooks
Instagram/Reddit-ass hobby imo but I do like nice paper. I'm looking at Traveler's Notebooks... just a thing of leather and a bit of elastic that you slot books and other organisational tools into... it's modular? as opposed to merely customisable in the same way that any paper is customisable. Inserts are mostly made out of folded cardstock/Kraft so you can easily make your own. Midori/Traveler's Company is the main #brand of these things but since it's not exactly a patented design you see leatherworkers do homemade ones.
I'm doing better with my Hobonichi this year than I did last time I tried, but I still don't think I like a page a day. It's too neat and guided. I need space to make a mess before I organise my thoughts. I don't really go in for kawaii doodles and stickers and washi tape or whatever and my handwriting's way too shit to be #Aesthetic. Plus, I always need more space for scraps and cards and receipts, so the idea of folding a bunch of card into folders for accumulated crap is very appealing. A TN as like, BIFL Junk Book sounded great for me.