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As part of this weekend’s regular service update, I also came across Mosquitto’s new 2.1.2 release. This is my tale… I’m using Mosquitto as the MQTT broker for my IoT thermostats and smart plugs. If you’re interested, you can find more details on my setup in this and this post. The changelog of the new release contained a few interesting points: The acl_file option is deprecated in favour of the acl-file plugin, which is the same code but moved into a plugin. The acl_file option will be removed in 3.0. The password_file option is deprecated in favour of the password-file plugin, which is the same code but moved into a plugin. The password_file option will be removed in 3.0. I’m using both of these options, so because I was doing the update on a lazy Sunday morning instead of Friday evening after work, I decided to be a good sysadmin and replace the acl_file and password_file options now, instead of waiting for the update where they’re ultimately getting removed. ...

So let’s see whether I can write an engaging video game review. This post is about the game Distant Worlds 2. the game is an indie space 4X game, meaning you eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXterminate. My preferred kind of game. It is absolutely huge, more in its sheer scale than in the amount of game mechanics. The best description I can give it is from the old Master of Orion days: Your spreadsheet now has 3D graphics. 😁 ...

As promised, I will write a report on every train journey I take. This one is about the return journey for my family visit from last time. It started pretty uneventful. No last-minute changes, no cancellations or shortened trains. The first leg, to Dortmund main station, went very well. As usual on that route, it was an older ICE 2. I definitely prefer the seats on the newer ICE trains. The problems started with my train from Dortmund to my final destination. It started out with 20 minutes of delay, and finally left Dortmund with 35 minutes. The only explanation was “Governmental Measure”, which could mean anything. I was a bit sad when I boarded this train and saw that it didn’t have the ultra-modern interior I got to experience during my last train journey: ...

I’m traveling with Deutsche Bahn again, and it’s frustrating again. I decided: Enough is enough. Yesterday’s journey went off the rails before it even began. Instead of just quietly fuming, I decided to write about it. And not just this one. Instead, I decided to write one post about every train trip I take. And not just the bad ones! The good ones as well. It’s just that the bad ones generally motivate me to write more readily. ...

Please allow me to ramble a bit about a Fediverse post I saw around this time last year, and a few blog posts discussing self-hosting as a solution to the dominance of big tech. It all started with this post scrolling through my timeline last year. Are there any guides on self hosting for complete beginners out there? Especially those that have choice paralysis and care about privacy. Ones that walk you through buying a domain name, setting the DNS or whatever it’s called for it, setting up a hosting server (and which to choose), what OS to use on it etc? Or are you just expected to know all this? ...