The Advisory Boar

By Abhijit Menon-Sen <>

I like volumeicon

volumeicon is a small mixer with sensible default behaviour.

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Resolving a conflict between manpages-dev and libbsd-dev

A simple backport from Debian unstable fixed a package conflict that left me without manpages.

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Restoring a #4 plane

My grandfather bought me a smoothing plane decades ago, and I was able to restore it and start using it again.

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Relaying from Postfix to gmail

Here's how I configured Postfix to relay mail from x@example.com through smtp-relay.gmail.com:587 using the credentials set up for x@example.com on Google Apps.

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Who invented the slicing-by-N CRC32 algorithm?

While searching for a paper by Berry and Kounavis describing their novel technique to calculate CRC32 checksums, I found a strange paper which heavily implies that its authors, from the TKM Institute of Technology in Kerala, invented this algorithm (which they certainly did not).

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Raspberry Pi murder

Wherein I try to make a Raspberry Pi rewrite its own SD card image, without success.

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Fighting voltage fluctuations

The Accurex DPM-3000 lives up to its superhero name by saving a lot of our equipment from extreme voltage fluctuations.

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Namecheap suspended my domain without notification

Namecheap suspended my domain because of a “one-time glitch”, but they owned up to the problem and fixed it quickly.

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The wonders of modern refrigeration

Refrigerators work much better if you don't have frequent power failures.

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Reading about wireguard

The new Wireguard VPN looks very promising.

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