The Projects Topic

[Archmage]

Been working on a project? Learning something new? Post about it here.

[Archmage]

I got a few things cooking on the stove, one trying to figure out the weird cookie issue for easymode.im. I've been basically locked from using Firefox for some strange reason. I can login but I get instantly logged back out again. So in the meantime I've been using Chrome. I suspect it might be my slightly locked down config doing something but I'd like to try and fix it rather than blow it all away.

I also still want to try and get that PHP code working for S3 storage. I think it could be a fun project additionally I'm sure other folks could make use of the code and it's been a minute since I did PHP stuff. Though I need to rebuild my test forum because I kinda accidently sorta broke it. Rather than spend the time to fix it I believe it'll be faster to just build fresh and new while allowing me to focus on the end goal. I may make it public facing so I can have folks test things and give Ward access if he would like it for things in the future. I think I'll focus on that this weekend.

The next thing I've been tinkering on and off for the last month or so is Security Onion and Intrusion Detection/Prevention Software in general. Along with SEIMs (pronounced as sims).

Security Onion is basically a tool that lives on a network to monitor it for threats and gives folks the information needed to help protect against those threats. So far I've learned a bunch of stuff, for one Security Onion is very hungry and I mean *very* hungry. I gave it the recommended 32GBs of RAM and it's eating 95% of it. Come on SO you're killing me, do you know what the RAM market is these days? I'm gonna be eaten out of game and browser.

Well after satisfying the machine's greed I learned my Ubiquiti switches aren't so fancy like they make them out to be. I can't mirror a port or configure SPAN because who would want that? Well I do! Basically a SPAN or mirror means that you're grabbing what traffic you want to monitor and send it to SO to consume and digest it in a human readable manner. Luckily I had a Juniper EX4300 on hand I got for free from a dumpster ages ago that should do the trick. The problem now is I haven't messed with Junos in a hot minute so I gotta learn that before I can learn SO. Lovely times. Oh and the software might live behind a contract paywall. YAY CORPORATIONS!

As you'll come to learn about me as I document my technomagicmadness I tend to rotate a lot of projects as I wait for parts/resources. Another thing I've been doing a lot with is the Pager from Hak5, basically it's a little portable wifi access point you can do all sorts of neat cyber security tricks with. I've been using to learn how to do graphic design, modifying json (custom themes), scripting payloads (bash), some programing (mostly in Python3), and learning more about how wireless technologies work. It's been a wild ride and I feel like I'm just scratching the surface.

As the weather warms I'll share some of my other projects I've been working on outside.

[Casey]

@Archmage regarding the firefox issue, clear your cookies! I had the same issue and that fixed it for me.

All of my projects are literary in nature. I've got a poetry open mic coming up next week, and we're all going to be doing a zine, so I have stuff I gotta prepare for that.

My big project is a worldbuilding thing I'm doing where I'm writing a ton of stuff that is all vaguely interconnected in the sense that they all take place in the same giant world....I've just been kinda fleshing it out as I go. Of all of the 'sub-projects' within it, the biggest by far is a novel I'm working on that is rapidly approaching 40,000 words.

[ward]

@Archmage

I've been basically locked from using Firefox for some strange reason.

Try deleting your browser cookies/cache for the site. I made some very stupid changes to the cookies to test things... the changed them back... and messed with other things, so your cookies are probably poisoned. Casey said they were having issues too and deleting cookies fixed it. Also, I can clear the cache on the forum as well to see if that helps.

As for the php stuff... I think we can use rclone, cron, and nginx. I might test it out if I have a minute free. If it works, we probably won't need a php plugin... that way updates won't break anything. Message me and I'll let you mess around with the server. I'll make a backup so we can test stuff before I make any big announcements for the forum.

@Casey 40,000 words? That's about halfway there, right? You post your writing anywhere?

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As for me, I think everyone knows, so I won't take up too much space with my projects. I'll just post a progress video. I'm about to the point where I want to look for some voice actors. Anyone want to do a few lines for side-characters/regular characters if you're an actor and can do an Appalachian accent? Here's one of the scenes I'm working on... Animations for the characters are about 50%, so they may slide around awkwardly.

[the_skotts]

I was having the login in issue on Vivaldi and clearing the cookies fixed it.

@ward & @Archmage y'all are doing great with the forum!

@Casey do you have anybody your writing posted somewhere we could read?

We've been doing a big item processing conversion project at work so that's taken up a lot of my energy and willingness to work on anything personal for a while lol.

My wife did buy me a Gundam model kit somewhat recently and I've been thinking of finally putting that together.

[Archmage]

@the_skotts Appreciate it but @ward has done all the work. I’ve merely rambled and asked questions.

When I get back I’ll nuke the cache for the forum on Firefox and see. I thought I had did that but maybe I need to clear all my cookies rather than just selecting a single site. Thanks folks.

[bumbervevo]

Can confirm, clearing cookies and cache worked for me as well. I was getting logged out immediately after logging in this morning and private browsing let me log in, so I knew it had to do with cookies and cache.

@ward , I've only seen screenshots of your game, but this is looking incredible! The music is funky and the animations and environment look great. I'm excited to see more of it!

@Casey, this sounds incredible! I hope we'll be able to read about it. I love the story structure of loosely-connected events happening in a big world.


My fiancee and I are in the middle of moving, so I don't have too many super-interesting projects going on at the moment. We are getting fiber at our new place though, so I've been focusing on setting up some new services on my home server that I can give friends and family access to.

I've been working on migrating away from Docker/docker-compose services on my home server; it feels unnecessary since I'm running Proxmox already. So far I've gotten Jellyfin and my torrent client off of Docker and into an LXC. It feels like things are a bit faster now that they're off of Docker, which is a nice bonus.
Next thing to migrate will be my *arr stack, which is a much heftier workload.

Outside of that, I've finally gotten around to transitioning off of Windows and onto Debian as my daily driver for my desktop, so it's been a lot of tweaking and configuring.

[Casey]

Appreciate the interest in my writing projects! I do have some stuff posted up on a Neocities site, but it's all very bare bones and I only have quick little blog entries and some poetry up there right now...despite having literally majored in English and participating in several writing workshops and having a lot of projects and such, I'm very self conscious about my writing....maybe I'll have the courage to properly share some time!

@ward loving the sneak preview of your game project here! Your pixel art gets better every time I see it. Are you looking to have the thing fully voice acted or is it just certain lines?

[Archmage]

Thanks for the sneak peak, I can't wait to play this when it comes out @ward

@Casey I'd love to read your work, even if it's just little blips here and there. I need to get back to creative writing, it's been too long.

Over the weekend I *FINALLY* got Security Onion working and capturing data on the network. It comes prepackaged with influxdb and if you love graphs holy cow you'll love influxdb.

With the OS/Software working now I have to learn how to filter things and utilize the tool, that'll be on the back burner for the time being as I've been tasked with getting a CCNA by my job, along with other industry certifications. I also have my Japan trip coming up in a few weeks. So I'm a bit pressed for time as is.

[Casey]

Last night, I finished something that is probably simple to many others, but was something i didn't really know was possible. Spinning up a Jellyfin media server got me wanting a simple, light weight file server that would allow me to simplify my workflow by allowing me to drag and drop files from any of my devices into it and access my stuff from all of my devices. I'm sure there's a lot of different ways to do this, but I wanted something simple that didn't require me to mess with docker or get a domain. Copyparty in tandem with Tailscale is that solution. I have copyparty running off my main rig here at home, and if i need a file off of it I can just load into my tailnet, punch in the url and port to the copyparty server, and presto. it works! It's a bit janky but it works! I can finally grab documents off my phone to read at literary open mics. I can grab easily grab offline game installers. and play baldurs gate on the clock. I can easily drag and drop stuff to the server whenever i want. I've wanted this for years and I'm so glad to finally have it.