Well hello friends! In this here,the one hundred and eleventh edition of the Weekly Head Voices, I present a personal view of selected events that took place in the time between Monday, July 25 and Sunday, August 14 of 2016. Post summary: HackerNews FastMail to Gmail retrospective (WARNING NERD CONTENT), Craft Beer tips, Swift Playgrounds (teach your kids to code!) and a tiny bit of backyard philosophy at the end.
Moving 12 years of email from GMail to FastMail
In 2013, when it became clear, primarily through Edward Snowden’s heroic actions, that the level of snooping by the US and other governments was far greater than any of us would have thought, I moved all of my data out of the US and of course blogged about it (that blog post has been read almost 70000 times; I think for many people this is an important issue). This included migrating 60000 emails away from my beloved GMail (I got my GMail invite from The Vogon Poet on August 24, 2004.
Weekly Head Voices #110: Satoshi.
This update contains carefully selected thought bubbles from the time span between Earth date Wednesday July 20 and Sunday July 24, 2016. Actually, the majority of this post is taken up by my Poor Man’s Bitcoin Explanation. If you’re not a nerd and/or you don’t have any interest in fabulous new virtual currencies that manage to work around a whole constellation of systems and rules put in place by governments the world over (STICK IT TO THE MAN BY THE POWER OF MATH!
Weekly Head Voices #109: GABA
From now on, I would like to limit WHVs to bullets (really) or to named sections, to ease reading. DOWN WITH WALLS OF TEXT! After a multi-year, completely coincidental, break from medical imaging, I am back to The Real Business since the start of July. I am super excited about the plans we’re cooking up and executing. I can obviously not say too much, unless beer is involved, or you hang around here for muuuuuch longer.
Installing free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates on webfaction in 3 easy steps
WARNING on 2020-02-24: webfaction has been bought by godaddy and will soon close down. I have recently moved out and am now keeping all of my Let’s Encrypt certificates up to date with the official certbot tool. WARNING: High levels of NERD ahead. I started using CloudFlare’s free tier on this blog, before Let’s Encrypt burst onto the scene, mostly for their universal SSL. However, as joepie91 recently pointed out, this means that by design, CloudFlare has to decrypt all SSL traffic, and then re-encrypt it to send it to your original site with its self-signed or generic certificate (in my case).
Weekly Head Voices #108: Gaga.
I was reminded that future me really enjoys having written these things. (Present me knows about extrapolation.) Actually present me also enjoys this, but creating sufficient amounts of time to do so is often challenging. I have most recently convinced myself that I should see this as practice so that I will later be able to write really entertaining posts in minimal time. Until then my two readers, I hope to compensate with edification.
Weekly Head Voices #107: Balance.
That’s how the African sun sets in Mpumalanga. … and this is more or less what it looks like when a cheetah decides to grace you with its presence. We had it all to ourselves (this is quite unusual in the Kruger National Park with an animal of this level of celebrity) and were able to follow it until it wandered further away from the road, probably on the lookout for some dinner.
Weekly Head Voices #106: Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes.
From me to you: The view from the top of Paarl Rock as seen through my telephone and google’s megamind going through all my photos and trying to stitch them together. Well hello everyone! I missed you, but due to reasons (read on…), this is the first time I’ve been able to get around to a weekly head voices. I woke up one day and decided that the super-inventive internet handle I had chosen when registering my first personal domain in 1999 somewhere, namely cpbotha, was not cutting it anymore.
Dolphins on the R44
On Sunday, April 10, 2016, as if the day was not already perfect enough, we were super fortunate to see a pod of dolphins speeding along in the sea right next to the R44 coastal road. The sight was so spectacular, that we could not spare a second to get our cameras out, so you’re going to have to be satisfied with this photo of me and GOU #1 admiring the pod as they swam out of sight.
Weekly Head Voices #105: There will be tears.
Congratulations, you have successfully completed the week of Monday February 8 to Sunday February 14, 2016! About 4 seconds after posting previous edition WHV #104 to Facebook with the “When you’re a vegan and haven’t told anyone in 10 minutes” meme image included, friend Ivo T. zinged me with this reply: So much truth. I have been put back in my place. Sorry vegans. Sorry MBA students. Not sorry Ayn Randers.