Richard Bucker

Recent posts

Sep 5, 2023
GoPro Hero 11 Review — Quick review of the Hero 11 as a sideline action camera I record my kids both on the soccer field and on stage.. I li...
Aug 4, 2023
Vultr OpenBSD Mount Block Storage — [Vultr](https://vultr.com) has one of the better OpenBSD installations that I've seen and offers a level if trust I can...
Jul 17, 2023
EV and the Environment — I don't know jack on this subject but I was able to confirm that there is a CO2 cost per Kwh. Interestingly it's pretty...
Jun 22, 2023
Android Ssh Clients — It's Thursday and I'm working remotely. I have my Lenovo Duet 5 with the latest ChromeOS update that included Android 1...
Jun 14, 2023
Make M3u Playlist — There may be plenty of documentation out there for generating M3U files. The challenge is finding the authority. In fac...
Jun 13, 2023
Text Editors — I'm not sure what to say about text editors these days. I happen to be looking at the JOE editor only to see the varian...
Jun 8, 2023
OpenBSD Chroot Is Boss — Some months ago I found a post describing how the OpenBSD beople prefer to use chroot. It's easy enough to script, and ...
Jun 5, 2023
Rust to Riches — I got hooked on `Car Masters: Rust to Riches`. The basic idea is that this shop of 3 poly-discipline mechanics, 1 owner...
Jun 5, 2023
OpenBSD on Beelink GTR6 — I'm not sure what I had in mind... I have a four GMKtec mini PCs with an Intel N5105 CPU and 8GB ram. They work fine fo...
May 20, 2023
HP Devone Reinstall — I have not posted in a long while; just not feeling it. But here's a collection of thoughts about Linux and the HP devo...
Apr 21, 2023
Release Often Sucks — Back in the day, `Release Often` was a contract between the developer and the individual/single customer. Today it mean...
Apr 17, 2023
Patching or Fresh Install — There really is something to be said about... - immutable operating systems. I really liked CoreOS until RedHat bought...
Apr 10, 2023
Chatgpt Does What — I'm tired of ChatGPT. No amount of "chat" is going to replace written formal design specs. And to be more precise no am...
Feb 27, 2023
Roblox: a Parents Guide — This topic and the stark reality of internet security and protection for your/our children is a HUGE topic. At the hear...
Feb 26, 2023
Too Many Computers — This past week has been a computer nightmare... or at least a struggle. PopOS dropped a huge release and after installi...
Feb 24, 2023
LCX or Docker — I'm a bit of a techno snob. I have my opinions and I like them for the most part. Sometimes I get my gears all wired up...
Feb 18, 2023
Android Productivity Mode — Android "productivity mode"... to quote Monty Python "I don't think you know the meaning of the word". It's great that ...
Feb 18, 2023
ARM Future Past — I watched a [documentary](https://youtu.be/t59EtDxpYmM) about the ARM chip. It was very enlitening. Frankly I have been...
Feb 14, 2023
Losing Faith in OpenBSD — I have a pretty sweet OpenBSD setup. The computer (intel NUC - i5, 32GB ram and ~300GB SSD, dual 34in monitors) is not ...
Feb 12, 2023
Firefox or Chrome — In conclusion I have no idea which is better or worse. For the most part they both do their job and they both seem to s...
Feb 6, 2023
Down to the Wire — Now that my [hpdevone](https://hpdevone.com) and all of the ChromeBooks work just fine with my external USB monitors it...
Feb 2, 2023
Are You a 10x Programmer? — I've written about this in the past... I believe I was a 10x programmer but that was in the days before being a 10x pro...
Feb 2, 2023
hpdevone Displayport Not Working — The hpdevone is a pop\_os installed laptop from Hewlett Packard. There really isn't anything special about the laptop t...
Jan 31, 2023
Back and Better Than Before — Last year my development system was 2 different computers. One as a terminal that I would then `ssh` (proxy) into a sec...
Jan 30, 2023
More OpenBSD Development — I'm not a Chrome v Firefox person but I know it's a thing. I use Chrome because I'm only tellong one vendor about all m...
Jan 29, 2023
Computer Price Calculator — What is a `computer price calculator`? As most of my readers know I'm a proponent of simple and reproducable installat...
Jan 28, 2023
OpenBSD Nodejs Gulp — Gulp is a template compiler written using the nodeja framework and seems to have some Python2 dependencies. Whether it'...
Jan 27, 2023
Lenovo Ideapad3 Openbsd - No Good — I tried to install OpenBSD 7.2 on my Lenovo Ideapad 3. The install was finished in under 10 minutes. Previous installs ...
Jan 27, 2023
Too Many Logitech Dongles — Somewhere there is a pile of my left socks. Some commedian did a bit about the pile of lost laundry. Well I have accumu...
Jan 24, 2023
Tablets Are Still Toys — Android and iOS tablets are still toys compaired to modern operating systems solutions. I suppose Android and iOS are m...
Jan 24, 2023
How Much Are You Giving Away — It's long since understood that... - the internet is not free - that gmail is not free - that aol is not free - that f...
Jan 24, 2023
Memories — Back in round 2 of my pursuit of an undergraduate degree at FAU in Boca Raton FL... I worked in one of the school's com...
Jan 23, 2023
Another Piece of Junk — Dear System76 / Pop\_OS developers, It's really great that you want to do some really cool stuff with the desktop and ...
Jan 23, 2023
Amdgpu Memory Pin Fail Desktop Crash Hang Sucks — I have been getting this stupid error for about 6 months. I have no idea when it was introduced or by who and in what c...
Jan 22, 2023
OpenBSD Desktop Needs to Be Easier — It's the end of a weekend from hell. I've been posting about crappy systems and it's just not getting any better. This ...
Jan 21, 2023
ChromeOS Duet Fails — Let me start out by saying that I really wanted this to work. But the reality is that it does not. I have a Lenovo Due...
Jan 16, 2023
Worth Saying Again and Again — Sitting at a starbucks trying to get some basic work and surfing done things went upside down when my Lenovo C13 Yoga ...
Jan 13, 2023
Did Steve Jobs Get It Right? — A recent post was talking about Apple adding touch displays to it's laptops and how Steve Jobs was strongly opposed to ...
Jan 8, 2023
What a Mess! — It's a quiet Sunday morning and everyone is sleeping and I've been up for an hour or so. Watching some EU soccer on TV ...
Jan 6, 2023
Amazon FireOS VPN — FireOS is the preferred OS for the Amazon Fire. It's probably the basis for any number of IoT devices at Amazon because...
Jan 6, 2023
Android SSH Client — The first problem is that Android does not supply an SSH client application like the one that is included in ChromeOS. ...
Jan 6, 2023
Lenovo Duet; Which One — I think there have been three Lenovo Duets. - Duet - Duet 3 - Duet 5 There might have been two "Duet 3" models or if ...
Jan 5, 2023
New Lab Secure Webapp — In the last few days I have been playing with my chicken coop trying to make it more secure and faster/easier to maint...
Jan 2, 2023
ChromeOS Flex — ChromeOS Flex is a great idea that needs more support and effort. It's clear that Google wants to make money one way o...
Dec 31, 2022
Google ChromeOS Devices — It's not the first time Google has cancelled or EOL (end of live) a ChromeOS device. But I was surprised to hear that t...
Dec 30, 2022
Letsencrypt Challenges — 2023 will be here in just two short days and my mind is wandering around things related to LetsEncrypt and it's been a ...
Dec 27, 2022
Where Is My Dumb Terminal — What a pain in the ass! Sitting at the kitchen counter trying to get some basic work done I popped open my ChromeOS (Le...
Dec 25, 2022
Pen Stylus Crayon — I watch my kids use their iPad and Apple Pencil with envy. The tools they use and the skills they've developed are envi...
Dec 21, 2022
Android Tablets — > not all android tables are the same I'm struggling to find a place to start. My technology stack has been one terrib...
Nov 28, 2022
VPN by Any Other Name — It's still Monday and I'm still complaining about OpenVPN. First of all I'm not sure it supports SplitDNS on Android an...
Nov 28, 2022
Cyber Monday Fail — WTF and `holy crap` this has been a very rocky tech month and so much has gone so very wrong. Some months ago I decide...
Nov 22, 2022
Ad Blocker — > Ad blockers suck. I wish I could better explain the problem but they are unreliable. They create chaos when combinin...
Nov 22, 2022
Tablets Tablets Tablets — I was not in the room so I have no idea what the real sales figures are for ChromeOS devices... but from all the talkin...
Nov 20, 2022
Release Often Revelation — The good and bad of `release often` could be no more evident than this week. Also there is something wrong with the Lin...
Nov 14, 2022
Should I Trust System76 - Pop OS — Sh\*t Sh\*t Sh\*t -- After a very long weekend of following my daughter around the soccer fields ... I have returned ho...
Oct 31, 2022
Why I Hate MOST Linux Distros — Waking up at 4am for the 3rd night in a row I was created with the youtube video with the same title. Unfortunately I c...
Oct 27, 2022
Upgrade OpenBSD 7.2 — ## Introduction I used to name my OpenBSD machines with the OS version number but after a few version upgrades I'd los...
Oct 13, 2022
Need More Power — Brown out in the lab caused chaos. More important than the dial tone is reliable power. Our systems are not resiliant e...
Oct 7, 2022
Camping Gear — Camping gear is so subjective because it depends what the "mission" is. Are you camping with the family, stealth campin...
Sep 28, 2022
Recent Linux Desktop Hangs — \#tsdr; short don't read My Pop\_OS desktop hung yesterday. It's the second time this month. It's impossible to know w...
Sep 26, 2022
Bare Metal Warning — HA HA HA. I've been talking about Bare Metal vs containers and virtualization for a while... again. I still do not have...
Sep 24, 2022
Log v Print; Stdout Stderr — `print` is typically just outputting a string to the console. In most cases this is StdOut aka the console. The informa...
Sep 23, 2022
Rust v Go — This post started as a `rust v go` rant but then it became something else. The whole point of high level languages is t...
Sep 19, 2022
Spell Checking and Privacy — Is there such a thing as privacy these days? > Privacy is dead Last week my kid's teacher asked us to install a spell...
Sep 19, 2022
Rewrite in Rust, Really? — NO, no, no. Actually Maybe. > rewrite for speed, no This particular incentive, has been around for years. People used...
Sep 17, 2022
Why Ksh Instead of Bash — IAAS, PAAS, SAAS, DevOps, SRE .... oh my. The world of system development etc is under a new paradigm shift. Of course...
Sep 16, 2022
Batteries — Some smarty pants out there was talking about Jackery batteries. The kind that you might use with solar cells either ca...
Sep 15, 2022
Minis Forum B550 Review — Once I placed the order for the machine I tried to stop it. Partly because the delivery time bothered me but mostly bec...
Sep 15, 2022
Bare Metal or Virtualization — Both Lawrence Systems and Level1Linux popped on my youtube feed this morning. If there was a reason then only google kn...
Sep 14, 2022
OpenBSD Lenovo Ideapad 3 — ## Installation This is normal stuff... I might have missed some steps but it's pretty simple. Read the man pages. The...
Sep 7, 2022
Simple Fossil SCM — The [fossil-scm](https://fossil-scm.org/) is both simple and complicated at the same time. By itself it is a very good ...
Sep 3, 2022
New Chicken Coop — My new chicken coop is.... - Four GMKtec NucBox5 (Intel N5105) - One MinisForum Elitemini B550 (Ryzen 7 5700G) - Synol...
Sep 1, 2022
Updating My Chicken Coop — I like having a single piece of massive hardware whether it's a Corvette or a 256 core Ampere arm processor. But I also...
Sep 1, 2022
Buying a New Car — Maybe this post should have been titled "The Pricing/value proposition of a new car". A few weeks ago my wife and I tes...
Sep 1, 2022
Gas Prices — The day after this experience I watched a [YT video on gas](https://youtu.be/fD169YXFVdg) (auto fuel). Essentially the ...
Aug 22, 2022
Android 13 Landed Review — Android 13 landed last night as a security release... it was a painful 90 minute install and reboot. And in the end I h...
Aug 21, 2022
WTF Virtualization — Having built my own orchistration system that saved my employer many millions annually I find myself returning to scene...
Aug 19, 2022
Text Edit or IDE — This morning I went down a rabbit hole looking for a new editor. What I continue to experience is the conflict between ...
Aug 18, 2022
Processing CSV Files — Processing CSV files whether they are actually comma or tab separated is a pain in the ass. The problem is that any jac...
Aug 12, 2022
Technical Reasoning — I might be slow to the table but this morning while I was reasoning through nested VMs (linux-\>openbsd-\>openbsd) I wo...
Aug 9, 2022
Walmart SQL Test — I started to deep dive into the nuance of the queries and realized that was the wrong path. As an interview question t...
Aug 7, 2022
LXC Containers Review — If you've used or are proficient with Docker, Rkt containers or even virtual machine with some basic automation or orch...
Aug 6, 2022
A New Case for ChromeOS — As an independent "international" contractor I migrated to Mac because `vault` would encrypt the HDD so that my custome...
Aug 4, 2022
The Case for OpenBSD — I have my dual monitor Pop\_OS(linux) standing desk in front of my and I'm looking at my current system usage. > termi...
Jul 29, 2022
The Devil You Know; a Case for ChromeOS — ## The Problem "we" the naive computing public whether we're talking about smartphones, laptops, ChromeBooks, Servers,...
Jul 23, 2022
New Sign-in on Amazon Fire 7 Tablet — July 20 I placed an order on Amazon for anew Amazon Fire 7 tablet. > "New sign-in on Amazon Fire 7 Tablet" July 21, b...
Jul 23, 2022
Google Going Crazy — Google seems to be taking a page from the Apple/Steve Jobs playbook. Make a desireable product. Charge a lot for it. Ma...
Jul 20, 2022
Read to Me Kindle — Sitting on the couch with absolutely no interest in walking over to the desk I wanted to review my Kindle book purchas...
Jul 18, 2022
Another Day in Programming Languages — This bast weekend I completed yet another rant on programming languages and my chicken dsl approach to programming. Thi...
Jul 17, 2022
Chicken Lang: a Clarification — Over the last few years I have been writing about cattle, pets and now chickens. At one point in time chickens and cows...
Jul 17, 2022
The Not So Obvious Case Against Go — This is my opinion after 35 years as an applications and systems programmer. The GNU team continues to complain that m...
Jul 16, 2022
Alternative to Go Rust etc? — Are there any reasonable alternatives to go and rust? I know of only one. Borland Turbo Pascal. Do not confuse Turbo Pa...
Jul 16, 2022
Is It Time to Dump Google Products? — I really do not want to start with a history lesson but my thesis suggests that while google is not supposed to be doin...
Jul 14, 2022
Webassembly or Chicken? — The formal description of [WebAssembly](https://webassembly.org/) can be found on it's website. But for my purpose it's...
Jul 11, 2022
Top 10 Weirdest Programming Languages in Use in 2022 — Somehow google know what I'm thinking and from time to time they hit the nail on the head. This afternoon [this](https:...
Jul 4, 2022
Billion Dollar Code — Reacting to the movie "Billion Dollar Code" It would be great if there was a way to convert (export/import) all my wor...
Jul 1, 2022
Google Says Ansible — I'm not sure what to think about google. As every day passes and we hear about some new thing that are proposing or doi...
Jun 30, 2022
Why Are Chromebooks the Killer App — I've said some of this before... back in the day rank and file, managers and sales people alike used to say: > nobody ...
Jun 30, 2022
Blockchain Is Not Decentralized — I have been saying that BlockChain is not decenralized for years. I feel vindicated that the [pentagon agrees](https://...
Jun 23, 2022
The Next Operating System — Sitting on the couch this morning with just a few sips of my morning brew left I read the headline "Why Ubuntu Isn't a ...