Google Fit = Black Hole

The black hole of Google Fit.

The web version of Google Fit died earlier this year, along with any meaningful functionality.

Want to find out what your fastest mile was? Good luck with that. You have to BROWSE all activity and note down yourself when and where your runs (or bikes, or anything) and tally them up. There is no data export, search, or tabulation. You have to sift through thousands of "afternoon walks".

Fit now serves no purpose other than tracking users. There are zero user friendly features.
If the app did that in even the most basic way it would prove otherwise.

Thanks but no thanks Google. I'm going back to Nike for keeps, even though they killed connectivity on my perfectly good Nike Watch Sport. Jerks.

KeePass Auto-Type

For those of you who use KeePass for your passwords, auto-type is super nice, but it never seems to work for every website.

Until now.

Today I had an eureka, Aha, epiphany moment!

But it was also a RTFM moment.

According to the documentation, KeePass looks at the TITLE of the website. I'm putting that in all bold caps because it should be in the documentation.

So if you have a password saved for "Bank of Omaha", it won't auto-type if the bank's website has the title in the tab of "Welcome Valuable Customer". You have to change your KeePass entry for that item to be "Welcome Valuable Customer", and volia! Auto-type engaged! Maximum Overdrive!

So now you have to rely on the notes or URL to make the entry human searchable. Not great, but auto-type is more important, because now you don't have to search!!!

Superlux HD 668B Headphones

I have a pair of Superlux HD 668B headphones and they certainly are the best sub $50 headphones on the market.

As a note for disassembly that was not clear in other posts that I've read.

To remove the earphones from the band, first remove the logo cap. It's just a cap! Not a ring, no prying needed!

This can be pulled straight off with a sticky piece of tape, no knife needed. It's held on by two little plastic pins.

Also, the springy cussions are adjustable! I had no clue. They can pull out or push into the plastic bits on the sides, however it will take WAY more force than seems reasonably necessary to use. I noted that when I took everything apart.

Sneaky Subtitles

Some movies obviously require subtitles. Others are more sneaky, and you might not realize need them at first glance.

This is an incomplete list, purely from memory. I'll try to update it in the future.

Argo (2012)
Atomic Blonde (2017)
Babel (2006)
Baby Driver (2017)
Barry (2018)
Black Panther (2018)
Captain Phillips (2013)
Crazy Rich Asians (2018)
District 9 (2009)
The Incredibles (2004)
Inglorious Basterds (2009)
Isle of Dogs (2018)
Monuments Men (2014)

Murder on the Orient Express (2017)
Paris, je t'aime (2006)

Salt (2010)
The Shape of Water (2017)
Sicario (2015)
Sicario 2 (2018)
Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)
Spectre (2015)
Widows (2019)
X-Men: First Class (2011)

Nextcloud, VirtualBox and Shared Folders

Update 10/1/2019 - Getting rc.local to work

I've had trouble getting rc.local to work on VMs with newer versions of ubuntu.  My best efforts are to install samaba, smbclient, run through this, then to actually execute rc.local (running rc.local seems to be critical to get it to run on startup).

Original Post -

This might not be how you're supposed to do it, but it's what worked for me.

Install ubuntu server

Install VirtualBox guest additions

Install Nextcloud

Setup your shared folder of choice in VirtualBox.  I'm not going to talk about doing that, it's pretty straight forward.  I checked automount, though that doesn't seem to help.

I made a directory within /var/snap/nextcloud/common/nextcloud/data/ called share.  You might have to sudo su to do it.

Mount your shared folder to that directory:

1. sudo mount -t vboxsf share /var/snap/nextcloud/common/nextcloud/data/share/

Auto mounting at startup

1. Edit /etc/rc.local

   sudo -H nano /etc/rc.local
   

2. Before exit 0 type:

   mount.vboxsf share /var/snap/nextcloud/common/nextcloud/data/share/ vboxsf

3. Save and exit, please and thank you.

If you restart your VM, that folder should now be mounted persistently.

If you want to see that folder in Nextcloud, you need to enable External Storage Support in Apps, then in settings, direct the path to the Local share directory you created above, /var/snap/nextcloud/common/nextcloud/data/share/ in my case.

Looks like the Nextcloud community knows that samba doesn't work with the snap installer, however I couldn't successfully install Nextcloud without snap.  It's discussed here, I'm not sure what the downside is to adding shares in your data directory other than accidentally writing files directly to /var/snap/nextcloud/common/nextcloud/data/share/ , instead of to your shared folder.  Maybe a security risk?  I'm not sure.

But I don't really want a huge VM taking up gigs of space, and I'd like to get to the shared files directly, without using the web UI sometimes.  AND I can leave a tiny VM running on my server's boot SSD, rather than having it on a spinning disk, that may or may not be spun up at any given point (would probably even stop it from spinning down).

I got SSL running with my own certs too, based on this.

I used SSL For Free and DNS verification to authenticate the subdomain I'm running this on.

I renamed the files to be: certificate.crt to cert.pem,   ca_bundle.crt to chain.pem, and  privkey.pem to privkey.pem.

I ran sudo nextcloud.enable-https custom -s cert.pem privkey.pem chain.pem and got an error, but it made a directory that I need.

Then I coppied my three files into /var/snap/nextcloud/current/certs/custom/

Than reran sudo nextcloud.enable-https custom -s cert.pem privkey.pem chain.pem

BINGO!!!

This is my next project, except hosted locally:

https://crosstalksolutions.com/15-minute-hosted-unifi-controller-setup/

and

https://crosstalksolutions.com/lets-encrypt-unifi/

Trek vs Wars

I just had a revelation about why it is less socially acceptable to publicly embrace Star Trek than Star Wars.

Star Wars is for kids. Star Trek is for adults.

Extended adolescence and nostalgia for childhood things is "cool".

Being a grown-up who enjoys and actively chooses to watch a TV show about aliens in space: not so cool.

A Scanner Darkly (2006)

Rotoscope, a process invented by Max Fleischer of animated superman fame. Who's son, Richard Fleischer, was a director for many films including Soylent Green (1973) and Fantastic Voyage (1966). Less notable for Million Dollar Mystery (1987) in which famous stunt man Dar Robinson died, and to whom Lethal Weapon(1987) is dedicated.

I just watched Lethal Weapon and A Scanner Darkly back to back and stumbled upon their connection.