Earlier I wrote about how I set up Beats – Elasticsearch – Grafana to visualize the various metrics (and logs, hate me) from Kitsune‘s dev server. There were a few tricky spots that didn’t work at first and took a while to figure out (or at least get working).
On Mount Buddha
I was looking for a mountain to climb. I wanted something easy for a change, but still preferably one of the 100 famous mountains of Japan. In the end I went with Mt Daibosatsu, which is relatively close, easy to access (that is when the buses run) and isn’t difficult.
Kumotori
Decided to back-date this post so that it won’t be so far from when it actually happened. It was the beginning of November and I had to start worrying about not being able to access mountains anymore. Most buses on mountain roads don’t run in the winter months, and honestly I’m not that a huge fan of renting cars.
Climbing Ibuki
During my university years I used to live in Hikone, pretty much walking distance (exaggerating here) from Mt Ibuki, one of the 100 famous mountains of Japan. It is (was?) a major ski destination that hosted some winter Olympics too.
Round trip
I like travelling. Who doesn’t, really? Also, I like taking pretty pictures. However, armed only with my phone, the possibilities are limited. Taking a scenery photo during the day will turn out nice, but trying to capture a giant red moon rising at night would be a futile attempt.
Summer Sonic 2018
Have you seen the lineup of this year’s Summer Sonic? It’s pretty amazing. Sure not as amazing as Rock in Japan, but still great. It’s been 7 years since my last Summer Sonic (I was there in Osaka in 2010 and 2011). It usually has one or two artists that catch my attention, but rarely enough to get me to actually go.
This year though there were two bands on the lineup that I didn’t dare miss: ling tosite sigure (don’t get mad at me for the spelling, it’s official) and Mastodon.
No JavaScript, please
The other day I got an email from Axosoft that the payment for my GitKraken license (yes I use GitKraken) was rejected by my credit card company. It was because the card I used there expired, but nonetheless I had to take action.
That involved going on their website and changing my payment method to a card that still worked. It involved first an overwhelmingly complex table like this.
Mounting folders as Docker volumes
When trying to pass data between a Docker container and the host, using ADD in the Dockerfile might be sufficient at first. However, it’s one way, get burned in the image and so very inflexible.
The usual solution is to mount folders using docker‘s -v option. It’s simple, easy to use and pretty reliable. Just add -v "$(pwd):/root" and the current folder will be mounted to the /root folder in the container.
Using volumes is nice because they’re (can be) two way and (can) sync in real-time. Now you don’t need to rebuild your image every time you fix a typo. -v has pretty deep configuration options too, in case you want to go down the rabbit hole.
Using Java signatures in Clojure
A while back I was trying to implement HTTP signatures to use with ActivityPub interactions with Mastodon. In Clojure. There is a go-to library for Clojure when it comes to crypto stuff, but I couldn’t get it to do the specific thing I needed: SHA-256 / RSA signatures. I looked at other options too, but as I’m not familiar with NaCl, that was just a confusing mess of wrappers around Java wrapped around C.
In the end I went with using Java interop to call Bouncy Castle stuff directly. I hate Java and interop in Clojure just feels wrong, but at least I could get it to work. Not to mention if something, Bouncy Castle is maintained. It wasn’t exactly a joyride, but it works. Check out the source if you’re interested (or want to use it). I didn’t make it stand-alone or put it up on Clojars (yet).
Dealing with weird keywords in Clojure specs
Recently I’ve been working on a Clojure implementation for ActivityPub. In the process I wanted to use specs, but I ran into a pretty significant problem. Namely the very first line in basically every single ActivityPub JSON object: { "@context": "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams" }.
Do you see the problem? Well. This JSON will arrive at the server, where it’ll be handled by Cheshire or something along those lines. Point is, keys in JSON maps will end up turned into keywords. Clicked the link? The guide isn’t exactly specific about what can and can’t go into a keyword.
