Lagomorph

Work

Tue, 20 Feb 2024 00:00:00 -0700

Hello, I’m Alex Spezowka, a Technologist & DevOps Specialist living in Calgary, Canada. With more then seven years of experience in the industry, I have the expertise to implement effective automation strategies and streamline software development processes from start to finish. I possess a wealth of knowledge in cloud computing, continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD), and Infrastructure & Design best practices. My design philosophy is hyper-functionalist, efficient, and resilient. Building tools that outlast my tenure, and can be later revised and modified by others, is a core tenent of how I work.

Skiff - Or: Why Venture Capital is Bad for You

Mon, 12 Feb 2024 00:00:00 -0700

😵‍💫 Warning: This Diatribe was written in anger, but contains grains of truth Around a year ago, I decided to shutdown my self-hosted email service after running it for about ten years. My choice in doing such was simply cost related - for the scale of email I was processing, it was not viable to run my own servers to do as such, accounting for time in maintenance and ensuring deliverability.

Using Tailscale in builds.sr.ht

Mon, 05 Feb 2024 12:09:00 -0700

Using Tailscale inside your builds on sr.ht are a little trickier then you might expect, since it’s done in a way thats counter to how Tailscale outlines the process of using it in CI inside their own docs. I had to learn this the hard way trying to get my own .builds.yml configured for this very blog, as the server it’s hosted on can only be accessed outside of HTTPS via the tailnet, and am now able to pass this knowledge onto you.

Kentucky Fried Zero - Part Three

Wed, 24 Jan 2024 14:36:00 -0700

Published in English 21.04.13 under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 DE license on superlevel.de, this article has been republished - without edits - here, for posterity. This is the third part of our analysis of Kentucky Route Zero. Original by Magnus Hildebrandt, translation by Josefiene Pertosa Lateness, delayed projects and the kind of Faustian bargains one strikes in order to not have to give up. Just as we did in the previous parts, we will once again delve deep into the background of and inspiration for Cardboard Computer’s surrealistic adventure.

Kentucky Fried Zero - Part Two

Wed, 24 Jan 2024 14:36:00 -0700

Published in English 21.04.13 under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 DE license on superlevel.de, this article has been republished - without edits - here, for posterity. This is the second part of an Analysis of Kentucky Route Zero Original by Magnus Hildebrandt, translation by Dennis Kogel Welcome back, welcome back, I hope you thoroughly enjoyed the short break, had some lively small talk and tried some of our criminally overprized canapés.

Is the internet dead? Are we?

Mon, 22 Jan 2024 18:46:00 -0700

Daily Carry 2024

Mon, 22 Jan 2024 00:00:00 -0700

I maintain a living document called my things list, where I track all the different tools and such that I use in my daily life. I try to update this when I remember to, throughout the year, but I also thought it might be interesting to track how my daily carry changes over time. So, here is what I usually have in my pockets as of the start of 2024.

Christine Emba: Rethinking Sex

Thu, 18 Jan 2024 15:32:00 -0700

I have a lot of thoughts about this book but I’ll try to keep this brief. To start, this book has a very odd citation format. The author directly cites journalists, blog posts, magazine surveys directly in line, but then deeper resources, ie Academic Studies, Medical Journals, are cited at the back of the book - and not many are cited compared to how many Journalists are. This creates a problem where many times in the book the author will say something along the lines of “many studies show…” but not actually directly link to a study.

Make Certbot Certs Readable by Non-Root Users

Tue, 09 Jan 2024 18:23:00 -0700

John Micklethwait: The Company

Fri, 05 Jan 2024 15:46:00 -0700

While occasionally simplistic and revisionist, The Company is a fascinating foray into the history of human organization, corporate profits, and human society. An interesting reminder that things have not always been the way they are, humanity pushes forward through progress and chaos alike, and shows that even in the largest bureaucratic machines in the world, any choice can be traced back to an individual. Strongly recommended.

Gator On A Bike on Paper

Wed, 03 Jan 2024 13:32:00 -0700

Musical equivalent of having a tooth pulled out at the dentist and then having to walk a mile home. Love it. Favorite track: Bring me a berban.

Resolutions 2024

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 -0700

Wow. What a year. There were many challenges and I accomplished little. The irony that it was the year of the rabbit is not lost on me. I’d like to thank all my friends and various associates for being a guiding light this year, as it would have been a lot more harrowing to do this one alone. Anyways, good riddance - here’s an outline of what I intend to accomplish by the end of this year.

A Quick and Brutal Match

Fri, 08 Dec 2023 15:15:00 -0700

I’ve had the ability to post chess games on this blog for a while but have found few games I have really wanted to highlight - this one is one I’m proud of. Hopefully I’ll be willing to start posting losses I’m proud of, too.

Unlocking the Bootloader on the Kyocera 902KC

Tue, 05 Dec 2023 15:30:00 -0700

There have been mixed reports of people managing to unlock the bootloader on the Kyocera 902KC. I’ve done some extensive research on unlocking and rooting this phone and I’d like to outline all my findings here. Being able to unlock the bootloader on the Kyocera 902KC would be a huge boon for usability in North America, as it would mean you could sideload the microG services, allowing you to utilize maps properly, as well as any apps that rely on Google Play Services in order to function.

French Republican Calendar Tools

Mon, 20 Nov 2023 00:00:00 -0700

I believe that in all facets of life, anything taken for granted should be examined. For me, this includes how I think about and interface with time. Since beginning research into this topic a few years ago, the French Republican Calendar has continued to fascinate and delight me, so much so to the point that I use decimal time and the republican calendar as my default method of tracking time in my personal life.

Catitecture

Sun, 05 Nov 2023 12:46:00 -0700

Design

Sun, 05 Nov 2023 00:00:00 -0600

Inspired by Gwern Branwen’s design outline, this page documents the design philosophy behind not only this website, but also every other project I work on. Lagomor.ph is implemented as a static website, compiled via Hugo from Standard Markdown, and hosted on a cloud server in Toronto. “Indifference towards people and the reality in which they live is actually the one and only cardinal sin in design.” Dieter Rams It is designed to be readable, pleasing to the eye, and easy to navigate.

Super Simple One Time Passwords for Deno

Sat, 21 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0600

SSTOTP is as simple as it gets for a TOTP implementation. The libary can do the following: Generate TOTP Secrets Generate TOTP Tokens Validate TOTP Tokens Tokens are valid for 30 seconds, and a step tolerance of two is implemented to account for clock skew. It has a single standard library dependency, which is base32. At this time, it is considered feature complete. Generating otpauth:// QR codes is left as an exercise to the reader.

Webmentions for Deno

Sat, 21 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0600

This is a straightforward webmention sending and endpoint discovery implementation. It has a single external dependency, which is Deno DOM. It uses this library to find the webmention endpoint within a page.

Writing in Typst

Thu, 19 Oct 2023 21:52:00 -0600

Digital Minimalism: Kyocera 902KC

Tue, 17 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0600

In August of this year, I deleted Twitter off of my phone, after what I found to be the final straw after months of garbage policy changes enforced by the rich egg who now owns the site. While I have been using a minimal smartphone for years - that is to say, a smartphone with as few apps as I “felt possible” (more on that later) - what I found after deleting my main digital narcotic was that instead of spending less time on my phone as I expected, I was instead spending just blankly staring at my phone before either reading the news or finding some other way to waste time.

Laundry & The Responsibility of Search Engines

Thu, 12 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0600

I’d like to take you on a journey through the world of scams, laundry, and search engines. In 2016, Foldimate, a California based startup, showed the world a laundry folding robot - it was the size of a washing machine, with a slot in the top for garments that would be mechanically folded and then passed down into a tidy stack at the bottom. I watched Foldimate with great interest, for you see, of all the daily chores of life that one must accomplish, folding laundry is the one I hate the most, put off the longest, and have tried to - mostly failing - hack my way out of for decades.

New Bump Mural

Fri, 06 Oct 2023 12:30:00 -0600

Walked down a street in an opposite direction then I normally do and discovered a grand new mural on the opposite wall.

A Weapon to Surpass Metal Gear

Mon, 02 Oct 2023 11:50:00 -0600

The Internet Manifesto

Wed, 06 Sep 2023 21:46:00 -0600

The Death of the Search Engine

Tue, 22 Aug 2023 00:00:00 -0600

In the early days of Google and Yahoo the best hack for getting your website to the top of rankings was Keyword Stuffing. You’d make the font blend in with the background and jam in as many relevant (or in many cases completely irrelevant, depending on your intent) keywords as you possibly could. Your users couldn’t see them, but search engines could, and they’d push you up the rankings, since with so many keywords the website in question must be super relevant to what you’re looking for.

Quality of Letters to the Editor

Tue, 01 Aug 2023 10:20:00 -0600

I find reading letters to the editor enjoyable. I find a lot of good debate springs up in that column, and on the flip side, I find it hilarious how poor comment sections can get. I wonder if this is due to the greater degree of curation by print editors versus the cacophony of the vox populi. I wonder if this is a problem that could be solved on the internet.

Putnam's Phrase Book

Fri, 07 Jul 2023 18:10:00 -0600

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/48441/48441-h/48441-h.htm

Webmention Deno!

Thu, 06 Jul 2023 15:38:00 -0600

Wrote a webmention library for Deno, it was good practice getting it to pass the test suite at webmention.rocks. https://deno.land/x/webmention@v1.1 The next step is writing out a CLI tool that can completely replace (the now defunct) webmention.app.

Silly Little Jokes

Thu, 06 Jul 2023 11:28:00 -0600