So, I started writing a file database and toolset called
fileson to take advantage of
AWS S3 Glacier Deep Archive
(let's just call it GDA from now on). With 1 €/mo/TB storage cost, it
is essentially a dirt cheap option to store very infrequently accessed data
like offsite backups.
Why not just use rclone? Well, I disliked the
fact that all tools do a ton of (paid) queries against S3 when syncing.
I thought a simple JSON file database should work to keep track what to
copy and delete. Well, that work is progressing, but as a part of that...
Encrypting on the fly with Python and Pycrypto(dome)
I started thinking that client side encryption would be
useful as well. AES is tried and tested, and it's easy to find sample
code
to do it. But it seems wasteful to first create encrypted files on your
hard drive, then upload them to AWS and finally delete everything.
Luckily, the Python AWS SDK boto3
has a great example on how to upload a file to
S3
with upload_fileobj that accepts "a readable file-like object". What does that
mean? Let's find out!
I was cleaning up my code folder today and came across my JUnzip library. I realized that I added zipping to the "popular" (40 stars makes it my second most starred repo at the moment) library.
It supports "deflate" method is zlib is present, and "store" if not. You can take a look at the zipping demo code to take a deeper dive.
Additional thanks to Björn Samuelsson for his compact CRC32 routines that
were used in case there's no zlib.
This site has been migrated from Wordpress to 11ty based static site. I took the posts, categories, tags and comments as JSON data and made the necessary templates for conversion. Everything should be alot faster now.
The look is still a bit bare, and some things like tables seem a bit broken. Will address these issues hopefully during upcoming days, weeks and months. Enjoy!
PS. Comments are currently disabled, I was only receiving spam in any case. You
can check out my homepage at https://joonaspihlajamaa.com/ if you want to
contact me.
I’ve been occasionally doing backups of critical files to an external hard drive (in addition to cloud of course :). However, my nice portable drive was only 500 GB and lately I’ve pushed over 600 GB with my Nikon D7200 RAW files. Time for a new drive! Instead of boring mechanical, I noticed that the very nice NVME SSD with Adata XPG SX8200 Pro with 1 TB capacity was available nearby for just 140€ (ca. $150)!
Commercial alternatives like Samsung T5 cost around 230€ here, so I thought I’d get one of those M.2 enclosures. Unfortunately, the ones with NVME support started from 50€ up in Finnish web stores.
Ugreen to the rescue
When you have something like M.2 enclosure, you know every manufacturer actually puts Chinese electronics inside. Thus, AliExpress seemed like an obvious destination to check out. I’m bit doubtful to order actual NVME drive (there were some cheap flash drives in the past that did not actually have the reported capacity), the enclosure should be fine.
Enter Ugreen, my favorite in AliExpress store. I’ve purchased several chargers from them, many having QuickCharge functionality, and the packaging, quality and everything are always top notch. Therefore I was more than happy to find a range of NVME enclosures from them for just $15-30:
Ugreen M.2 SSD USB enclosures (from Ugreen product page)
Time to order one! Fast forward 2½ weeks of anxious wait…
Unpacking and installing SSD to M.2 enclosure
I got the NVME model which promised up to 10 Gbit/s data rates, and chose the option with extra USB cable as I don’t have USB-C ports on my MB. The package arrived a bit faster than the promised 21-25 days. See the gallery below for glorious images of various stages of setup.
Just a quick update this time: A long while ago I made a post about using Adafruit Trinket without Arduino and later converted that into a TrinketMIDI Github repository for making a MIDI device with ATtiny:
Now thanks to a contribution by Gerhard Zintel, there is now also a MIDI volume device sample code in the repo. If you want to make a MIDI volume controller, it should be pretty easy with the code as well. Enjoy!
Note: The keyboard and keycaps in this article are bought by me and not a review sample. I have, however worked with KeyboardCo in the past and like them a lot in general. But just so you know!
A new keyboard in the house! Namely the Filco Majestouch-2 TK (MX Blue) Always an exciting happening in the family. After typing happily for a couple of years with superbly compact and slim Apple Magic Keyboard (works fine with Windows btw.) at home, and with my Topre Realforce 88UB at work, I thought it would be fun to get a keyboard with the classic clickly MX blues.
My main reason to get Cherries apart from the amazing blue clicky sound is the fact that one can get a wide selection of custom keycaps, very much unlike the Topre ones where you’re pretty much stuck with the keys they came with, or maybe some with Japanese characters.
After some consultation in Geekhack, I decided that out of the options I had available (in Finland pretty much zero apart from some gaming keyboards), Filco would be a good choice. Knowing they stock it, I headed straight to The Keyboard Company website and after some deliberation opted for one in Scandinavian layout — easier to swap here in Finland if I want to switch again. The Filcos are in no way inexpensive, but knowing the amount of time I spend typing, I considered the hourly cost to be quite reasonable.
Unboxing Filco Majestouch
The delivery from KeyboardCo arrived promptly as always, and I decided to shoot a classic unboxing video. Notice the great “Code and Life” logo in the thumbnail! There are no audio comments in the video, but you can hear the clickies quite well.
As an “out of the box” experience, here are my major plusses and minuses list:
Plusses
Very solid build, the case will definitely last a lifetime
Great MX blue typing experience and satisfying sound
Compact layout, it doesn’t expand much outside the keys in any direction
It’s a “no frills” workhorse, not much more to be said!
Minuses
Standard keycaps are quite high, making a wrist support pretty much a must
There’s nothing particularly exciting or special about they look
