Books and some interesting pages I read in May 2026 Non-fiction The End of Everything by Katie Mack (2020) 226 pages 5 stars We know that the universe started with the Big Bang, and that it currently is expanding. But will this go on forever, or is the universe destined to end, and if so, will there be a new Big...

Awkiawki with slowcgi with NGINX on FreeBSD How to run awkiawki using slogcgi and NGNINX Awkiawki is a wiki written in awk. slowcgi is a server which implements the FastCGI Protocol to execute CGI scripts. slowcgi is a simple server that translates FastCGI requests to the CGI protocol. It executes the requested CGI...

Books and some pages I read in April 2026 Non-fiction Vintage Didion by Joan Didion (2004) 200 pages 3 stars A collection of previously published essays focussed on US politics. The essays date from different periods. There are also three chapters from her book "Miami" in it. Usually I like to read Didion, but...

Explore the smol web with Bubbles All Aggregators Are Equal but Some Aggregators Are More Equal Than Others Bubbles is a new, brilliant, blog aggregator. Bubbles combines the power of RSS feeds with the power of voting. Of course there is lobste.rs, but that has a focus on technical publications. Non-tech blogs...

Install minimal Recoll on FreeBSD 15 Recoll is a full text search application. Recoll is based on the very capable Xapian search engine library. The FreeBSD package comes with a ton of dependencies, which is great for use on your desktop, but can be a bit of overkill for non-graphical systems. Minimal install The...

Books of March 2026 Below are the two books I finished reading this month. Fiction The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien (1954) 423 pages 5 stars This is a re-read, I have read the book several times, first time in the early seventies, the last time at least a decade ago. I also have seen the movie directed...

My Emacs misconceptions Emacs Carnival Mistakes and Misconceptions Philip Kaludercic has started the Emacs carnival on the subject Mistakes and Misconceptions. Here's my contribution. Vim to Emacs In 2021 I switched to Emacs after using Vim for more than 20 years. I was thinking about learning Lisp and Forth, and...

Deploy a Matrix server using Conduit and Cinny on FreeBSD in the homelab Here is a small post about deploying a Matrix server in the homelab. The goal is a Matrix server running on a FreeBSD jail that can be used from the web browser on your desktop. It is a quick-and-dirty configuration, to get you started. This...

Books of February 2026 Below are the two books that I finished this month. I started a third one, but didn't like and decided not to finish it. Non-fiction The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time by Jonathan Weiner (1994) 332 pages 5 stars A book about scientific research aimed at better...

Translate Texinfo files using po4a Texinfo Texinfo is a brilliant hypertext system that predates HTML. You access it with info, which is a text mode application. The content consists of a number of nodes. Each node is an information element. You access the nodes through menus, hyperlinks, and indices. Also you can...

Books of January 2026 I started this year with re-reading "Pattern Recognition". This is the first book that I re-read within a year. Because I really enjoyed this book, I followed it with the other two books of the Blue Ant trilogy. Non fiction Ends of the Earth: Journeys to the Polar Regions in Search of Life, the...

Books of Januari 2026 I started this year with re-reading "Pattern Recognition". This is the first book that I re-read within a year. Because I really enjoyed this book, I followed it with the other two books of the Blue Ant trilogy. Non fiction Ends of the Earth: Journeys to the Polar Regions in Search of Life, the...