https://johan.im/writings
11 posts
Life 36% · Tech 27% · Writing 18% · Music 9% · Nature 9%
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Since beginning to self-host my site and other projects on my bare metal Ubuntu server, there's been a fair share of Manual Configuration Management™ by yours truly. Since I'm a huge Linux noob, this is my design, and it's all very boilerplate. But still, it only takes a couple of websites or servers for the nginx and systemd config is starting to be annoying: I can't scp or rsync over local (version controlled) copies automatically, due to how I've locked down my SSH user (it can't do sudo).…
Exhaustive list of actually good cover songs: "Nothing Compares 2 U" Performed by Sinéad O'Connor, original by Prince. "Hurt" Performed by Johnny Cash, original by Nine Inch Nails. Honorary mentions "All Along the Watchtower" Performed by Jimi Hendrix, original by Bob Dylan. "Knocking On Heaven's Door" Performed by Guns 'n Roses, original by Bob Dylan. That's it.
In the spirit of moving off third party services and becoming more "tech independent", I decided to code my own gym tracker app. I've been super satisifed with Reps & Sets by Graham Bower. It has perfect UX, follows iOS's UI guidelines mercilessly, and does just enough for me. However, Graham's latest update is iOS 26+ only, and I'm still holding out on iOS 18… Bummer, but that's on me. So in order to get around some of the (very rare) bugs in Reps & Sets, I was going to do my own gym tracker.…
Building my own gym workout app
Watched Spain - Portugal (cheered for Spain).
Watching Brazil - Norway with newborn son
Publishing my new site
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A slowly unfolding story, beginning with the murder of a woman. We get to follow the prequel story leading up to her murder: how that woman, Mary, marries a farmer in 1940s South Rhodesia (or is it South Africa? I never really got to know) and has a *really bad time*, bluntly speaking. There are so many layers to this book, I'm not smart enough to put it down into words. First of all, Lessing doesn't shy away from picturing the blunt racism in southern Africa back in the day. There are many…
A novel set in South Africa, spanning over multiple decades from pre-apartheid to present. We follow the five individuals of the Swart family, and the family's ultimate decline. It was quite hard to get into: took me a proper 150 pages before I "got" the rhythm. Galgut isn't marking out the conversations with interpunctions, like 98% of other works do. In a middle of a paragraph, the plot could jump to another setting or person. This was super annoying at first, and I got tired after having to…
The third an final book in Alexandra Fuller's memoir series about her upbringing and family, which began with [_Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight_](/reading/dont-lets-go-to-the-dogs-tonight). This book continues in the same style, and centers around the author's father: Tim Fuller. It tells us about his background and deeper episodes about his general character, recognisable from _Don't Let's Go…_ and [_Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of…
