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-rw-r--r--drafts/dell-dock.html54
-rw-r--r--drafts/home server evolution (renamed from drafts/my home server after)0
-rw-r--r--drafts/my home server before0
-rw-r--r--drafts/programs i use all the time.html1
-rw-r--r--drafts/what is a script no really.html1
-rw-r--r--drafts/why does everyone insist on using adobe acrobat?.html69
6 files changed, 125 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/drafts/dell-dock.html b/drafts/dell-dock.html
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5b2526f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/drafts/dell-dock.html
@@ -0,0 +1,54 @@
+<p class="description">
+ Here's the problem. I have a Dell Latitude E-series laptop running FreeBSD
+ 12.1-RELEASE. I also have a Dell E-Port II docking station on my desk. I
+ wanted to be able to take my shut, sleeping laptop and plop it down on the
+ docking station, hit the dock power button, and have the laptop wake up and
+ switch over to all of the docking station peripherals. All of the USB devices
+ did this without any additional work. However, the ethernet hookup, external
+ monitor, and speakers all required some additional tinkering. This assumes
+ that you're already familiar with wired and wireless network interfaces on
+ FreeBSD!
+</p>
+
+<h2>Link Aggregation (Failover)</h2>
+
+<p>
+ FreeBSD doesn't magically swap from wireless to wired connections by default,
+ but there's an easy way to remedy this: link failover. I recommend reading the
+ <a href="https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/network-aggregation.html"
+ >FreeBSD handbook page on network aggregation</a
+ >
+ as it's where I found out how to do what I'm about to show you. Basically,
+ aggregation lets you bind two of your network interfaces together into a
+ single virtual interface. Failover lets your traffic continue moving as long
+ as one of the aggregated interfaces has is connected. The steps I had to
+ follow are as follows:
+</p>
+
+<ul>
+ <li>
+ Bind the wireless network interface to the MAC address of the wired
+ interface
+ </li>
+ <li>Create a lagg interface using the two network interfaces</li>
+ <li>Bind the lagg interface to an IP address, preferably with DHCP</li>
+</ul>
+
+<p>All of this is configured in my <code>rc.conf</code>:</p>
+
+<pre><code>
+wlans_iwn0="wlan0" # <- wlan0 device should use the iwn driver
+ifconfig_wlan0="WPA" # <- wlan0 should use WPA (wpa_supplicant) to connect to wireless SSIDs
+create_args_wlan0="wlanaddr 5c:26:0a:06:c1:d6" # <- wlan0 MAC address is set to em0 device MAC address
+ifconfig_em0="up" # <- enable em0 (ethernet) device
+cloned_interfaces="lagg0" # <- create cloned interface lagg0
+ifconfig_lagg0="up laggproto failover laggport em0 laggport wlan0 DHCP" # <- configure lagg0 interface to act as a failover lagg protocol over em0 and wlan0
+</code></pre>
+
+<p>
+ In practice, the preferred device is <code>em0</code>, or my ethernet NIC.
+ FreeBSD will always try to use that first. If it's disconnected, such as when
+ the laptop is removed from the dock, the wireless device (<code>wlan0</code>)
+ will take over. This transition happens instantly, and without interrupting
+ traffic; active transactions aren't cut short for example.
+</p>
diff --git a/drafts/my home server after b/drafts/home server evolution
index e69de29..e69de29 100644
--- a/drafts/my home server after
+++ b/drafts/home server evolution
diff --git a/drafts/my home server before b/drafts/my home server before
deleted file mode 100644
index e69de29..0000000
--- a/drafts/my home server before
+++ /dev/null
diff --git a/drafts/programs i use all the time.html b/drafts/programs i use all the time.html
index b679d4d..fe7e63c 100644
--- a/drafts/programs i use all the time.html
+++ b/drafts/programs i use all the time.html
@@ -37,4 +37,5 @@
<li>vim</li>
<li>tmux</li>
<li>mixer, mixertui</li>
+ <li>picom</li>
</ul>
diff --git a/drafts/what is a script no really.html b/drafts/what is a script no really.html
index e69de29..9d97844 100644
--- a/drafts/what is a script no really.html
+++ b/drafts/what is a script no really.html
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+glues programs together
diff --git a/drafts/why does everyone insist on using adobe acrobat?.html b/drafts/why does everyone insist on using adobe acrobat?.html
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c2a5504
--- /dev/null
+++ b/drafts/why does everyone insist on using adobe acrobat?.html
@@ -0,0 +1,69 @@
+<h1>Why Does Everyone Use Adobe Acrobat [Reader]?</h1>
+
+<p>
+ This is something that I've never been able to figure out. All through high
+ school I had to use PDFs. And if you wanted to open a PDF, everyone understood
+ that you needed Adobe Acrobat Reader. Even web sites where you downloaded PDFs
+ insisted that in order to open them, you were going to have to follow a
+ download link to make sure you have Acrobat on your PC.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+ Fast-forward a few years into college and I'm using PDFs more than ever. Every
+ professor ever is scanning and uploading course material, so out comes Acrobat
+ Reader for literally every teacher and student. At this point I was actually
+ used to using Firefox (PDF.js) to view PDFs for a couple of reasons. First of
+ all, Firefox usually opened PDFs faster than Acrobat Reader did. Reader was
+ getting bigger with every release, and eventually had a monstrous UI to load
+ up every time I wanted to open a tiny PDF file. Second, Firefox had smooth
+ scrolling for page-width documents. Reader was getting slower and laggier with
+ each release, to the point where scrolling through a PDF was no longer buttery
+ smooth but jittery and stuttery. It also seemed like Reader purposefully
+ wouldn't slide the page when you used a mouse wheel. It would jump down a few
+ lines at a time like it was simulating the down arrow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+ By my senior year I had switched from Windows to Linux full-time and it was
+ then I found out about <a href="https://mupdf.com/">MuPDF</a> and from then on
+ things were never the same. It's literally the best PDF reader I've ever used,
+ and I tried out quite a few. There are desktop and mobile apps. It opens
+ almost instantly. It lets you easily resize the page with excellent keyboard
+ shortcuts. There are no giant menu bars on either side of the page to squish
+ the document down to an unreadable size. Having a dozen of them open at once
+ doesn't bog down my PC. It's also available for all of the relevant operating
+ systems I've used (Windows, Mac OS, Linux, FreeBSD)! Oh and password-protected
+ PDFs are supported as well.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+ It's a fantastic piece of software And the best part is it comes with a
+ variety of tools to edit and manipulate PDFs as well. If the folks I went to
+ school with thought you needed the free Acrobat Reader to view a PDF, they
+ sure as heck thought you needed to buy Acrobat Pro to edit one. Some of them
+ refused to pay for it and used a variety of online services to upload, split
+ or merge, and download PDFs. I honestly for the life of me can't understand
+ why. MuPDF comes with <code>mutool</code>, which does all of the things I
+ would ever need to do with a PDF. It can attempt to convert a PDF to other
+ formats, like HTML. It can split and combine documents. It can even create
+ them from scratch and sign them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+ It's also free and open source. Can you imagine that? PDF viewing and editing
+ being free and open source? It's AGPL (in addition to being commercially)
+ licensed by the creators. The only slight drawback is the desktop version
+ apparently does not yet let you fill out forms. Not sure why but this isn't
+ something I use very frequently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+ It's not the hottest piece of tech out there, but it just plain works and
+ works really well. Maybe the only reason more people I know don't use it is
+ because Adobe is synonymous with the PDF format. It doesn't seem like that big
+ of a deal, but I feel like Acrobat has always been a piece of software that
+ has frustrated new or infrequent users in computing. And that's just not good.
+ Maybe the barrier to using MuPDF is the lack of GUI and abundance of
+ keybindings, but for me that's no sweat. I'd say to anyone to just try it out
+ and see if they like it. It is free, after all.
+</p>