Hi there

I run Invidious on a TrueNAS SCALE box at home. Ads, tracking, the algorithm’s mood swings – none of that gets through. But Shorts still wrecked the subscriptions feed. Half the page was a wall of clips I had no intention of watching. I assumed there’d be a setting. There isn’t. Upstream has three feature requests asking for one (#3920, #4457, #3541) – all closed as “not planned”. The TrueNAS app wraps stock Invidious, so the GUI offers nothing either. ...

I’ve set up a Mastodon instance probably four or five times now, and each time I go through the same ritual of hunting down documentation that’s either six months out of date or assumes you already know which files go where. So here’s the thing I keep meaning to write. What you need A server with Docker and Docker Compose, a domain name pointing at it, and an SMTP provider — Mailgun, SendGrid, or your own mail server. That’s the whole list. No Kubernetes, no systemd, no compiling from source. ...

I was reading through some Reddit threads the other day — you know the ones, where people ask “what do you wish you’d known at 25?” — and I found myself nodding along to a lot of it. There’s something oddly comforting about reading advice from people who actually lived through the decade you’re currently in. Not theorists, not podcasters, just regular folks who figured some stuff out the hard way. ...

I’ve been trying to figure out which productivity app actually fits my workflow. Both WHPH (Work Hard Play Hard) and Super Productivity keep coming up, so I thought it was worth comparing them properly. WHPH (Work Hard Play Hard) WHPH is a general-purpose productivity app. It does several things: tracks your tasks, monitors which apps you use and for how long, helps you build habits, and gives you a basic sense of where your time goes. The sync between desktop and mobile happens over your local network – no cloud, no account, just devices talking to each other. ...

I have a drawer full of spare AA and AAA batteries. Some are fresh, some are from remote controls that died last winter, some I found in a toy. Before tossing them or putting them to use, I check the voltage with a multimeter. It takes thirty seconds and saves you from guessing. What you need A cheap multimeter is all you need. Any digital one will do — I’ve used the same £8 model from Amazon for years. The probes should be intact and the battery in the multimeter itself should have charge (if it beeps when you turn it on, you’re good). ...

Both are Firefox forks for Android. Both strip out telemetry. They diverge on what to do after that. Iceraven is built around customisation. It exposes about:config, supports a wider range of add-ons than stock Firefox for Android, and tries to replicate the desktop Firefox experience on mobile. Updates come through GitHub releases. It’s aimed at people who want to tweak their browser. IronFox comes from Mull, which itself is a privacy-hardened Firefox fork. It removes more telemetry than Iceraven, disables features that leak data by default (WebGL, for example), and keeps the interface stripped down. It’s on F-Droid and Accrescent as well as GitHub. The trade-off is that some websites break because of the aggressive defaults. ...

TOGAF is documentation-heavy and linear. Scrum is iterative and lightweight. Running them together means breaking the Architecture Development Method into sprint-sized chunks instead of treating it as a single pass from Phase A to Phase H. Mapping ADM phases to sprints The ADM doesn’t have to run in one direction. You can treat each phase as a backlog item and pull work through in sprints. TOGAF Phase Scrum equivalent Preliminary Sprint 0 — governance, tools, team setup Phase A: Vision Product backlog epics for the EA vision Phases B-D: Business, Data, Application, Technology One domain per sprint Phase E: Opportunities & Solutions Backlog refinement for implementation Phase F: Migration Planning Roadmap prioritisation Phase G: Implementation Delivery sprints Phase H: Change Management Sprint retrospectives Roles The Enterprise Architect maps closest to Product Owner — they prioritise the architecture backlog. The Architecture Board shows up at sprint reviews. The Scrum Master facilitates the process and removes blockers. ...

I’ve been on enough contracts now that I’ve started noticing patterns. Some good, some not so good. This is a collection of the things I check before signing, and the things I wish someone had told me about earlier. Before you sign There are three administrative questions that can catch you out if you don’t sort them early. The first two are about checks — whether the client needs a BPSS or DBS check done, and whether they’re going to organise it. The third is about timing. Some start dates are real, others depend on the client actually getting you a laptop and sorting your access. If their setup process is slow, your start date slides whether they realise it or not. ...

I used to take on any project that came my way. That was a mistake. Not every problem deserves your time, and not every client is worth working with. Over the years I’ve learned to filter opportunities through a simple set of questions before committing to anything. Can they fix it themselves? If the answer is yes – or if a decent blog post could solve it – then it’s not a consulting engagement. It’s a homework assignment. The value of consulting lies in the gap between what the client knows and what they need to know. Close that gap and you’ve got nothing to sell. ...

Bookbinding is a hobby I picked up during lockdown. It’s tactile, it’s slow, and the finished object is something you can hold. Here’s what I use. Equipment and materials Glue strips — 50-piece packs of hot melt glue strips (285mm). I’ve ordered these from eBay and AliExpress. They’re cheap and work fine for pamphlet stitching. PVA glue — Artway Strong PVA, 1 litre. White, works on fabric and paper. From Amazon UK. ...