2021 on Jackson Taylor

2021 Music List

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Wed, 22 Dec 2021 00:00:00 -0400

Last year around this time I posted a couple of the songs that made it into my playlist for youtube music’s-spotify wrapped clone playlist. I said I would do it again if they did. Which they do technically have the playlist for some users… but mine hasn’t been populated yet. I am able to go to the page where it should be, but nothing is there besides a message saying “Nothing to see here”. I’m not sure if this is me being impatient, or if I’m just not going to get one this year. I believe I had watch history turned off on youtube for a while, so that may have had something to do with it according to other users.

Oh well, I know pretty well what I listened to and they don’t give the same sort of statistics that Spotify does anyway, so I’m just going to give you 20 songs/albums that I like and listened to a lot this year. This isn’t really in a particular order, but the ones that come first on the list are the ones that I think of first, so take from that what you will. These also aren’t albums/songs that came out this year, just the ones I listened to a bunch.

Live at the Austin Outhouse - Blaze Foley. Overall a REALLY good album. Can’t recommend it enough.
And It’s Still Alright - Nathaniel Rateliff. I haven’t listened to the album in its entirety, but the song that shares the name is outstanding, very sad and dramatic (in a good way). I think he wrote it after his friend passed away.
Broken Window Serenade - Whiskey Meyers. One of my mom’s favorites. I can sorta play this on guitar too. Follows a guy who likes a girl who has an amphetamine addiction.
Sellout - Koe Wetzel. “Outcast”, “Drunk Driving” and “SideChick” are some of my favorites.
It Gets The Worst At Night - Lucero. You can kind of see I like sad music, this one reminds me of early summer a lot.
In Memory Of Loss (Deluxe Edition) - Nathaniel Rateliff. I’ve been listening to this one a lot recently, I’ve listened to most of it a few times. “Once In A Great While”, “Shroud” and “You Should’ve Seen The Other Guy” are my 3 favorites.
Quiet, Heavy Dreams - Zach Bryan. This is a really good short EP for anyone wanting to get into Zach Bryan. Favorite song is probably “Traveling man”.
Gribblecore - Jeff Squires. I think this was only released a few weeks ago, but this is the funniest thing I’ve heard. Super easy listening, especially if you love King Of the Hill.
Broken Hearts & Dirty Windows: Songs of John Prine, Vol. 2 - Various Artists. I don’t think I’ve listened to the first volume all the way through, but I like John Prine’s originals better anyway (except for Unwed Fathers, Deer Tick’s version is my favorite song ever). This was really good, definitely a good tribute. Favorite song is probably Tyler Childer’s cover of “Yes I Guess They Oughta Name A Drink After You” and Sturgill Simpson’s “Paradise”.
I Don’t Mind - Sturgill Simpson. Another sad one, but so good. Sturgill is pretty varied in the kind of music he makes, really good artist. I had already liked one of his songs, but Post Malone covered “You Can Have The Crown” and I did a deep dive on him.
Die Midwestern - Arlo McKinley. I’m not sure if this is something I actually listened to totally in 2021, but I come back to it a lot so I’m going to count it. “She’s always around” is one of the most “old-country” sounding songs that I have heard in a while. “Bag of Pills” is also fantastic.
Elisabeth - Zach Bryan. Both this and DeAnn have some real bangers on them. This one has my favorite Zach Bryan song though, which is “Messed up Kid”. I’ve been listening to DeAnn a little bit more recently though, I think my favorite from that album is “Godspeed”.
Weymouth - Fade Away. I’m a little biased on this one because I work with the drummer, but this a really good song from this year. Definitely a band to keep an eye out for.
Acolyte - Slaughter Beach, Dog. I only found this one about a week ago, but I’ve listened to it around 30 times. Sorta slow in lyrics, but fast in music, it’s weird. I really enjoy it.
Dublin Blues - Guy Clark. This guy is really underrated. This song is super fantastic. He unfortunately passed away in 2016.
Somewhere Along The Way - Dawes. I originally found Dawes on accident, not realizing the lead singer was one of the guys from Middle Brother, but I’m so glad I did. This one is sorta sad, but catchy and I’ll probably have it in my head the rest of the night too.
Pitchin’ Fits - Drayton Farley. I found this guy on TikTok originally I think. “Stoic Faces” is a good one off the same album, but it doesn’t have the punch this one does.
Mercury in Retrograde - Sturgill Simpson. If some of his other stuff didn’t prove how out there he is, and how versatile too, this one probably will. Super catchy.
Drunk Again - William Clark Green. This is a fun one to sing in the car at max volume.
Hotel in Minsk - jonatan leandoer96. One of the most ethereal feeling songs in my collection, I listened to this probably 30 times on repeat for about a week.

If I get my playlist back from youtube, I’ll come back and do another post about it to update it. If not, then I’ll just do something similar to this next year. I’ll be doing a recap on my resolutions from this year in the next few days too, so keep an eye out for that.

Cubing Section

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Sat, 30 Oct 2021 00:00:00 -0400

For those who only know me through this website, you may not know that I love Rubik’s cubes and speedcubing. I have added a new section to my site covering some stories and stuff. My friends have started getting more interested in the hobby, so I’ve started remembering stories, and started getting back into some of the community aspects of it. I’m not sure how much of this site I’ll dedicate to cubing stuff, but I may spend some time and write down all the algorithms and stuff I use for OLL/PLL in case anyone wants to know.

You can find the new section here

Luke's newsboat config is amazing

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Tue, 21 Sep 2021 00:00:00 -0400

Since I last talked about RSS, I’ve gotten waaay more into it, and it just keeps getting better.

Like I mentioned in my last post from July, I use newsboat as my RSS reader. It is so extensible and cool. Luke Smith has such a nice config setup if you like vim keybindings and kick ass features. You can download videos right from the command line.

I know he made a video about his setup like a year ago, and a year ago before that, but he didn’t actually go into how it works or what dependencies you need I don’t think.

Obviously you’ll want newsboat installed, that’s a given. If you want to use Luke’s config found here, the other dependencies I can think of off the top of my head are as follows:

curl
dmenu
lynx
mpv
sxiv
transmission-cli
urlscan
xclip
xsel
youtube-dl
zathura (and then the addons for it to view pdfs)
task-spooler (AUR)
youtube-viewer (AUR)
Luke’s linkhandler script
Luke’s qndl script
Luke’s dmenuhandler script
Luke’s transadd script
Luke’s peertubetorrent script

I don’t think I’ve missed anything, but it’s possible I have. If you run into an issue, figure it out lol (or email me and I’ll attempt to debug it I guess ;) ). His setup might include some specific things for dwm/dwmblocks which you will probably have to get around if you aren’t running it (I am)

His config is sort of easy to read once you have all of this setup. All of the commands are simply comma and then another key.

I haven’t gotten a few of the commands to work, because I don’t really use them or see a point in me using them.

t - runs the qndl script which downloads the media
a - downloads the video as an audio file
v - opens the video in mpv
w - opens the page in lynx
d - opens dmenuhandler script (I haven’t been able to get this to work, not sure what the intention is)
c - copies the link to the the clipboard (again, I haven’t gotten this one to work)
C - I think this opens just the comments of youtube videos, I don’t see this as all that helpful, but I haven’t gotten it to work and don’t really plan to.
p - runs the peertubetorrent script and downloads the video at 480p I’m assuming.
P - runs the peertubetorrent script and downloads the video at 1080p I’m assuming.

There are other readers like I’ve mentioned in the past, but I think newsboat is perfect. Having all of these features is so cool and handy, you can do all of your content consuming from this one program. GO GET ON THE RSS GRIND NOW!!!

Server maintenance is finished

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Tue, 24 Aug 2021 00:00:00 -0400

After a few weeks of incremental changes I think everything is moved to my new server and working. If something is off/not working, I’ll find it eventually lol.

I lied about downtime

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Thu, 29 Jul 2021 00:00:00 -0400

So if you’ve noticed, the git site and everything is still up and running. I have been pretty busy so I haven’t gotten around to moving everything. I moved Montana’s site over as a test, but when I went to get an ssl cert for it, certbot failed, so I just copied over the cert and keys from the server it was on (not sure this is best practice, but I didn’t want it to be “not secure”).

I’m certain this probably isn’t a certbot issue, but I drop my files in the nginx directory like 99% of tutorials say. I wondered if it had anything to do with a cert already being registered for the site, but I don’t think that would matter. I just had a thought as I was writing this that it might be a permissions thing… damn. Might try during work today with a dummy domain or something. I’m pretty sure certbot just places a file in your sites files and ensures it can find it based on the domain.

I’m going to Raleigh Galaxy con tomorrow with my sister. We were supposed to go meet Corey Taylor, but since Joey Jordison passed he cancelled, which is unfortunate but completely understandable. Even if only for the fact that probably all of his fans that would meet him would want to talk to him about it. Hopefully we’ll get to meet him in the future. This is actually the second time Slipknot/Corey Taylor has cancelled on us, last time was for covid (again, understandable). And Saturday I’m going to a party at my old boss/mentor’s house. So I may not get around to doing any of this stuff until Sunday or maybe mid August.

More About Downtime

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Mon, 26 Jul 2021 00:00:00 -0400

Ok actually, the git site and mail site will be going down, so yeah. Mail will be the first to come back up, but can’t say when the cgit instance will. For now just check me out at these links:

I’ll work on getting all the repos on my site onto these later today probably. The git site probably won’t be down until later this afternoon/evening.

Moving servers

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Mon, 26 Jul 2021 00:00:00 -0400

Hi guys, I’m attempting to move all my websites onto a better server in the next few days. There should be no downtime, but we’ll see.

I’m moving all my jacksontaylor.xyz sites to this new server, along with a friend’s website and my new domain of sbgotg.xyz. I’m hoping to have more services on this server. It actually isn’t anymore expensive than having the 2 servers I have now, but it should be a little bit faster. And it will make everything much simpler to manage.

RSS is really cool

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Fri, 02 Jul 2021 00:00:00 -0400

If you’re reading this, obviously you know I have a blog. I don’t post very often, so people probably don’t check my site very frequently. But if “Jackson’s #1 fan” wanted to keep up to date with me and my website, checking my page every single day would probably get annoying. It would get even more annoying if “Jackson’s #1 fan” was also “Tommy’s #1 fan” and was checking his page every day. Checking these pages every single day would be very tedious, and since they’re different platforms there is no way to aggregate them into one feed like YouTube or Twitter is there? RSS feeds and RSS readers are the solution.

RSS - Real Simple Syndication is a format for creating feeds of information, and readers are just programs that read these feeds and present you that information.

RSS is conveyed in XML, and for an example you can go to https://jacksontaylor.xyz/rss.xml. Most feeds will follow the same format and include the same meta tags (date, title, etc.). I say mostly because each site probably does it slightly differently. As in there are some meta tags they use/don’t.

There are many different RSS readers you can use. I have used QuiteRSS on windows, and I use newsboat on linux currently. Both are really good free software programs.

QuiteRSS is a full GUI application, with pretty good customization options, and if you’re just getting started reading RSS this is a pretty good option.

Newsboat on the other hand is much less user friendly, and geared towards more technical users as it is a terminal based program. It’s not that it makes RSS hard, it’s still really simple, it’s just that operating newsboat can be a little unintuitive and a little bare for most people who just want to read their blogs. That being said, it is still my favorite RSS reader.

I won’t go into how to set these up, as QuiteRSS is pretty basic and mostly “click this, click that” and Luke Smith has already made a good video on how to configure newsboat.

As far as actually creating an RSS feed, there are many programs out there (and you can probably just write your own in a text editor), but the one I use is Luke Smith’s lb script. You just write your blog in a text editor, then it generates the necessary links on your site for the html pages, and updates your RSS file.

The more I use RSS for reading blog posts and keeping up to date with different sites, the more I really love it. It is so nice to not have to check 80 different sites to even see if someone has posted, let alone read/watch them.

Odysee (a frontend for LBRY) recently implemented RSS feeds for their channels, which is a big step in getting me totally off of YouTube. I still watch some people on YouTube, so I have their feeds in my reader, but I don’t HAVE to have an account to subscribe anymore.

RSS also has changed my content viewing habits. I look for more niche blogs around the internet. Lots of people have really cool things to say, and sticking to one platform is sort of dumb.

So anyway, go and use RSS! Here is a list of people I enjoy and follow. You can put these into your reader, or visit their site manually.

http://stonetoss.com/comic/feed/ “~StoneToss”
https://xkcd.com/atom.xml “~xkcd”
https://odysee.com/$/rss/@BrodieRobertson/56e86eb938c0b93beccde0fbaaead65755139a10 “~Brodie Robertson”
https://odysee.com/$/rss/@DistroTube/2332c0df0bd5e046db04fe7e3e79f756d35a1523 “~Distrotube”
https://odysee.com/$/rss/@Luke/70d0495ea46072bead82429fb405d60438036524 “~Luke Smith”
https://odysee.com/$/rss/@AlphaNerd/8d497e7e96c789364c56aea7a35827d2dc1eea65 “~Mental Outlaw”
https://odysee.com/$/rss/@RobBraxmanTech/68044a0cf5ed7534872af5149d4e0c43a9a1d06a “~Rob Braxman”
http://www.kroah.com/log/index.rss “~Greg Kroah-Hartman”
https://jacksontaylor.xyz/rss.xml “~Jackson Taylor”
http://lukesmith.xyz/rss.xml “~Luke Smith’s Blog”
https://videos.lukesmith.xyz/feeds/videos.xml?videoChannelId=2 “~Luke Smith’s Videos”
https://notrelated.xyz/rss “~Not Related”
https://wowana.me/blog/feed.atom “~Opal”
http://blog.cleancoder.com/atom.xml “~Uncle Bob”
https://www.romanzolotarev.com/rss.xml “~Roman Zolotarev”
https://www.archlinux.org/feeds/news/ “~Arch site news”
https://landchad.net/rss.xml “~Land Chad news”
https://suckless.org/atom.xml “~Suckless news”
https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCJHA_jMfCvEnv-3kRjTCQXw “~Binging with Babish”
https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCfbnTUxUech4P1XgYUwYuKA “~Cold Ones”
https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UC9-y-6csu5WGm29I7JiwpnA “~Computerphile”
https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCmh5gdwCx6lN7gEC20leNVA “~David Dobrik”
https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UC4USoIAL9qcsx5nCZV_QRnA “~iDubbbzTV”
https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UC-tsNNJ3yIW98MtPH6PWFAQ “~iDubbbzTV2”
https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCtHaxi4GTYDpJgMSGy7AeSw “~Michael Reeves”
https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCsnGwSIHyoYN0kiINAGUKxg “~Wolfgang”

One note about the YouTube channels, if you understand how url parameters work you can use the channel ids and format your own if you want to follow other people.

June Update

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Wed, 16 Jun 2021 00:00:00 -0400

If you saw my last youtube video(which I haven’t posted to odysee yet, oops), you’ll know that I’ve been reading some Uncle Ted recently. I’m planning on doing some more videos about his writings, specifically some of the later paragraphs in ISAIF and then a video on “The System’s Neatest Trick” as I think they are pretty interesting.

Ted was very afraid of genetic engineering it seemed. Nothing wrong with that, I believe that being engineered beings would be an awful situation. It was just something that sort of struck me in a weird way, and was something that stuck out while I was reading.

GNOME sucks

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Tue, 18 May 2021 00:00:00 -0400

That’s pretty much it. Not a big fan. I tried switching to xfce on my work laptop and had a bunch of issues too. Once things kind of calm down I might take a day and just install arch and use dwm.

March Update

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Tue, 30 Mar 2021 00:00:00 -0400

Last time I updated the site I was having some issues with nginx and all that jazz. I’m still having issues with that from what I can tell, it’s doing some redirecting it shouldn’t be, but I’ve kind of put that on the back burner for now. I still host my git site, my libreddit instance, this site, my mail server and a friend’s website I made for her. I wish I had a nitter instance still, but I’ve been usng a different one for now. I also ventured and bought another vps for a wireguard vpn. I don’t use it for anything nefarious because it’s still in my name, it’s mostly for when I’m connected to a network I don’t necessarily trust. That was dead simple, I’m not sure if that’s me getting better at following directions or if the software is just that simple, but I have spun it up in less than 20 minutes on 2 separate occasions.

Besides trying to get that sorted, I got 99% of my music downloaded and tagged from youtube music. Something like 3000 songs to tag was a huge undertaking, and I’m still gathering more. I’m looking to write something to help with sorting what I download into folders of artist - album - songs, and then going back and applying the right metadata. Youtube-dl cuts off part of the title, so it’s impossible to use that to tell what song it is (I think), and there isn’t any metadata about the song.

I also would like to keep my song in sync on 2 or 3 computers (thinkpad, server, and a usb drive for my vehicle). This I think I can rig something together with git/patch and a shell script for telling what’s changed, and only transferring the songs that have actually changed. I’ll probably make a post about that when I have the solution in my head. Or if there is already something for it, please let me know.

As for work stuff, I’ve started working on a large typescript project. It’s also in a more agile fashion using some new ticketing software and processes. I can’t say I really like typescript yet, but I can say that this project got me a linux laptop at work (which I’m over the moon about, WSL is ass and a pain in the ass to use). I might do some posts on things I learn over the course of this project. For instance, instead of keeping like a repo with all the sql and how the tables are laid out, we’ve essentially written code to make the tables for us (I think migrations is the word). Not sure how big a benefit this is, but it can help with reproducing errors and exact setups maybe?

Git site is going down first

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Sat, 27 Feb 2021 00:00:00 -0400

The git site is probably going to be the first thing to go down. I don’t think this is the actual problem, but it’s at least part of it. So I’m going to try redoing the entire thing. CSS and everything shouldn’t be effected.

Probable downage

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Fri, 26 Feb 2021 00:00:00 -0400

I’m going through and trying to clean up/fix my nginx config and stuff. So probably a lot of my services are going to be messed up and stuff. Email is included in this. For the time being, you can email me at jacksontaylorxyz at protonmail.com

I’ll make another post when I’m finished messing with stuff. Hopefully I’ll have a nitter instance by the end of it.

Libreddit and more

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Fri, 19 Feb 2021 00:00:00 -0400

Hi guys, for probably a few years now, people have been talking about the “Big Tech Exodus”. This is essentially a move from using large centralized tech platforms like Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google among others, to using smaller decentralized platforms. The move is for reasons such as privacy and fear of censorship (in the case of social media). With the recent ban of Trump on all major platforms, Parler from Amazon’s web services, and the Facebook Cambridge Analytica situation, this move isn’t without reason (Stallman warned us!).

There are new social media platforms being made like Mastodon and Peertube, which are Twitter and YouTube like. These sites are examples of federated software. With federated software you can host your own instance, and have it “talk” to others. So people on my instance of mastodon could still see toots(tweets) from your instance. But I can never really be banned from the platform totally. I can just join a new instance. Federation is one benefit, the other is that these platforms are libre software. So if you host your own instance, you know exactly what is happening to your data.

But some people don’t want to delete their social media accounts, or they have friends and family that won’t switch, or whatever reason. There are solutions that allow you to still use/view these sites while having better privacy. There is free software that you can host yourself to act as a proxy between you and the original website. Libreddit, Nitter, and Invidious are some examples. These instances provide better privacy because if you host it on a vps or some other way: your actual IP isn’t shown, a massive amount of data isn’t sent to these companies, and if you have multiple users using the same instance then the browsing habits are much more erratic and obscure. There are public instances that you can use too.

I have decided to host my own instances of some of these sites. I currently have Libreddit working, which is for Reddit, but I will have to wait for Nitter and Invidious because I messed up while making the certs. You all reading are most welcome to use it. If it becomes too much of a bandwidth hog or anything I might have to figure something else out.

I want to make a Video talking more about the Big Tech Exodus, but I’m still getting my thoughts together on it. For now, here is a good link of some videos and alternative platforms and videos detailing the dangers of big tech.

First Video Posted

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 00:00:00 -0400

I posted my first video on LBRY and YouTube. I’ll probably try to post another one this weekend with some substance, and I’m going to work on the contact me page that I menitoned in the video as well.

If you’re using a terminal rss reader or something, here are the links in plain text: YouTube: https://youtu.be/kgn_0prtuSY LBRY/Odysee: https://odysee.com/@JacksonTaylorxyz:d/welcome_to_my_lbry:6

Thank you for checking them out, I hope this turns into something that can help some people.

I Might Start Posting Videos

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Mon, 25 Jan 2021 00:00:00 -0400

I’ve been thinking recently about creating videos to go along with the site. Not many people like reading long drawn out posts about stuff. So some people might like my voice being drug out for several minutes instead. I would be using my phone and potentially recreating the same feel as Luke Smith’s boomer rants in the woods series he has.

One of the main questions I have is where I would post these videos. I will most likely use YouTube AND LBRY. This is something I’ll probably talk about more in my first video, as I prefer libre software and more open platforms. I would really like to have a peertube instance, but that’s a lot of work/money for somethign that I haven’t even started.

Once I setup my channels, I’ll include them in a contact me page or something on my home page, and make a post about it. If you have any tips, opinions, topics you want me to talk about you can email me at jackson [at] jacksontaylor [dot] xyz

2021 Resolutions and Plans

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Wed, 06 Jan 2021 00:00:00 -0400

Happy New Years (6 days late)! 2020 was… a year. It wasn’t all bad for me to be honest. Despite the pandemic and quarantines, I had some very cool experiences and have met a lot of people. Some of which I consider to be very dear and close friends, and hope to continue to know for years to come. Both professionally and socially I was challenged. I went to Vegas for work, and Minnesota for pleasure. All while managing to avoid the virus. 2020 humbled me in many ways that I am still learning from, and expect to be learning from for months to come.

I hope 2021 has more cool adventures and more opportunities to grow. This will be the first year that I am really hosting this website, and hope to become more involved in it.

Here are some of the things I want to do with it specifically:

More blogs on my thoughts and beliefs in technology
Workflow showcases
I really want to set up my own searx instance. I have had so many issues getting it going, it’s insane.
Host my own IRC server?

I don’t expect this site to get much traction at all, it’s really just a learning project. If it helps someone out in some way though, that’s cool.

A part from site specific things here are some more general computer things I want to accomplish this year:

Learn more about general security with Linux (GPG, kernel hardening, system administration)
Look more into BSD(Probably GhostBSD or OpenBSD)
Better manage my home server(RAID, Backup solution, Plex->Jellyfin, local git(lab) server)
Finish and publish more personal projects for my git site

For personal/fitness goals, if I end the year feeling better physically than I do now, and don’t lose any friends or anything, I’ll be happy.

Until I setup an IRC server or a mastodon instance or something, you can contact me at jackson [at] jacksontaylor [dot] xyz if you have any suggestions for the site or questions. Thanks for reading.