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My TODO list is a .txt file on the desktop

About six months ago, I finally reached a breaking point: my email-based TODO system stopped working.

It was beyond its breaking point for a few years, actually... ever since I my average daily email volume increase from maybe 5-10 'important' emails to deal with to 50+.

My email-based TODO system used to go like this:

  1. Email myself things I deemed important enough to do the next day
  2. Next morning, when I checked my email, knock off the top item in that list, and try to work down the list a bit
  3. Anything else, forward that email again for the next day

Once an item got maybe 5-10 Fwd:s in the Subject line, I would decide whether to nix the TODO item entirely, or move it off into a Trello board—in either case, likely to be forgotten forever.

I didn't say the system was good.

But it did work, before my inbox became full of actually important stuff relating to running my business.

Photographing the 2024 Total Solar Eclipse

On April 8, there will be a Total Solar Eclipse covering an large swath of the US, offering hundreds of millions of people the opportunity to witness one of the most spectacular displays of our sun.

Jeff Geerling Photographing the Total Solar Eclipse

I wrote two blog posts about the recent 2017 eclipse, as well—check those out:

For this year, I was considering going all-in on a custom Raspberry-Pi-based solar tracking system, recording video and images... but Will Whang already built a custom solar imaging setup that would put anything I build to shame.

Waveshare's PoE HAT is the first for Raspberry Pi 5

Pi 5 PoE HAT Waveshare F

Power over Ethernet lets you run both power and networking to certain devices through one Ethernet cable. It's extremely convenient, especially if you have a managed PoE switch, because you get the following benefits:

  • A single cable for power + Ethernet (no need for separate power adapters)
  • No need to have electrical service near every device
  • Simple remote power on/off capability (assuming you have a managed switch)
  • Centralized power management (e.g. one UPS in a rack room covering all powered devices)

I have used the Raspberry Pi PoE and PoE+ HATs for years now, allowing me to have 4 or 5 Raspberry Pi per 1U of rack space, with all wiring on the front side. I also use PoE for cameras around my house, though there are dozens of use cases where PoE makes sense.

The Raspberry Pi, since it only requires 3-10W of power, is an ideal candidate for PoE, assuming you can find a HAT for it.

Resolving 'Temporary failure in name resolution' on Pi OS 12 Bookworm

Raspberry Pi OS version 12 (based on Debian 12 Bookworm) uses NetworkManager instead of dhcpcd for managing network connections, DNS resolution settings, DHCP, etc.

I've already mentioned using nmcli and nmtui for managing WiFi settings, but I ran into a strange issue after installing Docker on a fresh Raspberry Pi OS installation today. Suddenly DNS stopped working.

Trying to ping anything on the Internet gave me:

$ ping www.google.com
ping: www.google.com: Temporary failure in name resolution

As always, It was DNS. It was like DNS just gave up the ghost! Trying to change settings via nmtui seemed to not work (I tried DHCP for IPv4 with manual DNS, and that wasn't working).

Luckily, I found this post and followup comments mentioning the proper nmcli incantation to override DNS settings for an interface, so here it is (assuming built-in Ethernet):

Highly-condensed time-lapse footage with Frigate

Frigate's 0.13.0 release included a feature near and dear to my heart: easy exporting of timelapses, straight from the Frigate UI.

I'm a little bit nutty about timelapses, and have made them with dashcams, GoPros, full DSLRs, webcams, and even Raspberry Pi.

But one thing I haven't done (until now) is make easy timelapses from IP cameras like the Annke 4K PoE cameras I use for security around my house.

Eventually I'm planning on automating things further, but for now, here's my process for building up a timelapse that's relatively small in file size, preserving only frames where there's motion from frame to frame.

For something like clouds/sky, or natural environments, it's better to do a straight timelapse export and maybe recompress it if you want, but for indoor or outdoor security footage, it's nice to condense it down.