Last spring, in the beginning of my masters’ program, I challenged myself to use OpenBSD on an ThinkPad X200 from 2008 for the duration of the semester.
OpenBSD did not have drivers for my Atheros wifi card to authenticate to my university’s PEAP wireless network, so I was basically consigned to only having internet if I could find an ethernet outlet.
(On a modern campus they are not so common.)
Even with internet access, however, the dated hardware couldn’t reliably play video (at least on OpenBSD) and it’s not like watching youtube or movies on the tiny, dim CCFL screen was that enjoyable anyway.
A while back I switched my email to Migadu and then again to Proton Mail.
My reasoning for this was because I was a little fed up with managing a mail server and I was increasingly worried that potential employers might not receive my emails.
I can confidently say that my worries were unfounded and I really missed tinkering with my little OpenBSD box in Amsterdam.
So, my mail server is again running on OpenBSD!
If I did everything right, nobody should have noticed.
I’ll have a new PGP key posted at some point.
In December I resurrected my Spotify and Instagram accounts after deleting them in 2020.
After two and a half months of using them both (and deleting them again) here are my observations:
Instagram
Initially things were pretty great.
I was able to reconnect with some friends I hadn’t been in touch with since high school.
Instagram also has a really great format for sharing trip and event photos.
Nevertheless, 99.9% of what you see on Instagram is Tiktok-adjacent shortform content and ads.
Even though you can add accounts to “Favorites” and “Close Friends”, there is no easy way to cut out all the cruft.
After several years of operation I have shutdown Canoemail.
Canoemail started as an experiment in automatically encrypting email at rest and later grew into a private platform which included group chats, video calls, and a search engine.
I learned a lot from running it, but it’s time to give it a rest and move on to bigger things.
If you are someone who used this service or benefitted from it, thank you for your interest and input.
Happy new year!
