Today I'm mapping out a brief set of requirements for bringing up and stopping an instance on-demand using MFA and the AWS CLI tools. I need it for work anyway, and it's a common use-case besides.

After that, I want to take a look at using saving state for a …

For a little while now I've been using the excellent shairport-sync package by Mike Brady on a Raspberry Pi 2B+ to stream music in my kitchen. I'd originally tried this out on FreeBSD around a year ago, but hit a wall due to only ALSA support for the package at …

After releasing the fbsdzfs-ec2imager last week, I posted it on Reddit and got one follow-up suggestion: to include a mini-guide for generically setting up access right to an AWS account. Having an account and access keys to run things there is a prerequisite to running the packer builder, so it …

Finished my packer builder setup after several weeks of tinkering and other delays.

Link: github.com/QueerBSD/fbsdzfs-ec2imager

Notes

• Although it would be preferable to use the "File" provisioner to deliver files directly, this doesn't seem possible if the directory isn't writeable by the packer user account.

• Jail setups can …

It’s been a couple months since posting last, thanks to work, and too much reddit. Politics is something of an addiction of mine, and I want to avoid bringing it here. The plan for bringing an s6-init FreeBSD into existence has taken a bit of a back seat to …

Deciding to pick up where I'd left off with my blogging routine, I noticed yesterday that my Let's Encrypt certificate for this site had expired. Not 100% why, as I thought I'd left a cron job in place to update it. But I’m also a dumbass, and didn't. So …

I started by setting up a raw and simple Vagrantfile, copied from a previous "portsbuilder" for staging new changes. After bringing up a new install of 11.1-RELEASE it was a matter of checking out the latest ports tree, as for some reason the s6-rc package for v0.4.0 …

Without having much oomph left in me last week, I didn't bring myself back to working on package updates and other details needed to bring s6-rc up to date for replacing BSD Init and filling out the next "easy steps". But lo and behold, I turn things on this morning …

Spent all weekend working on a simple Ansible script to generate and construct new FreeBSD images from a specific AMI. It was something of a cross work/qbsd support project. It was a lot of head-to-wall banging until I went back and carefully read the ec2_configinit rc script, and figured …

I’ve definitely let this lapse a bit too long in the last several weeks, much like everything else. What can I say? 2017 has been overwhelming, and the last weeks leading up to Christmas were packed to the gills with my day job and end-of-year deadlines. The only progress …

I spent most of today learning that Google Apps were no longer free, and wandering through their support pages trying to pull apart the momentary domain email I'd set up to get going. Because (1) it's not free anymore, (2) at best all I can do is add queerbsd.com …

The last five weeks were a bit chaotic at work, forcing me to put this aside while I focused on moving a critical platform at work. To be fair that was effectively done two weeks ago, so I’ve been a bit lazier than all that. But. I come bearing …

We’ll always have Paris.

Spent the last four days in tutorial sessions and some very enjoyable talks. As soon as I come up with a good way of integrating images in this ad-hoc tool, I’ll post my selfie with Groff the BSD Goat and some of the speakers …

I originally picked up this domain two years ago over drinks with one of my best friends, @grembo, but at the time wasn't even sure what to do with it.

After working a few days on a simple project at work, using daemontools by @hashbreaker to run a little report …

Finally got around to setting up a process for testing automated publishing with github, daemontools and py-pelican. This is that test!

Basic idea (final design to be tweaked) will be to export this file as a Markdown doc in the Working Copy app, and push it to the private pelican …

This is the first time I'm attempting a markdown page in vim. There's some fun stuff, like python syntax highlighting. I'll take the opportunity to record some very simple date functions I find handy.

from datetime import datetime, date, timedelta
import re

def now(): return datetime.now()

def today(): return …

A few weeks ago, a student in my MA course posted a question that took a little while to answer. I'm including it, and my answer here for reference.

Can someone please explain to me how qualia links into what constitutes the self? I seriously cannot see the correlation.

Most …

There ought to be a limit to the way we think of free will's influence on responsibility in the first place. It's rarely the case, if ever, that a person's actions aren’t already predetermined by a complex of prior judgments, personal outlook and knowledge, and circumstance. When someone does …

While sick in bed today I've had the rare chance to catch up on my "other" inbox, which consists of about forty webcomics, four news feeds, and sixteen various philosophy blogs. It's not particularly normal for me to follow a train of thought in any of this, but there did …

I've been tinkering with an idea about trust, and its relation to organized religions and other socially insular groups. Trust between individuals, I felt, was bolstered by a mutual, implicit commitment to some set of prescribed moral rules. However, it struck me yesterday that in commerce a similar sort of …

Reference: Mental Representation

Ok. So. Concepts are taken to be images or representations, and the argument is whether they influence our sensory perceptions or not, and to what extent.

Perceptions are taken to be representational, but then the question is "representational of what?" (all representational states have their content in …

I haven't been filling out this blog much after setting it up primarily because I've been occupied with schoolwork. This past February I started in on my MA work for the Open U and it's been rough going. I'd love to imagine myself somewhat skilled at this, but it's been …

I have a severe issue with what appears to be the overriding principle of Atheism as I've often heard it stated. My issue is that, given what people say God is, they profess that people who believe in their own characterization are wrong to believe that there's an object of …

Another entry from the I-already-posted-this-on-Stack-Exchange Dept. It's rare that I can be clear about a subject, so I wanted to record this for my ego's benefit.

Does Searle's Chinese Room model computers correctly?

Searle invented a thought experiment, the Chinese Room, which he proposes is an argument against Strong AI …

In this interesting result to my search for "Why is Liberalism Wrong?" Ryszard Legutko presents a straw man named Liberalism and proceeds to attack it. There's a good point made about separating the goals of egalitarianism from liberalism, but otherwise I have a sneaking suspicion that his aim is directed …

HC: To get into issues in philosophy of language, one can never read Kripke’s Naming and Necessity enough. It’s written the way philosophy should be written: it’s clear, it has beautiful arguments, it’s original, it’s deep, and it’s almost entirely true. It’s just …

Gravy Ingredients

A little while ago on Stack Exchange, I came across a question asking for a "rigorous argument for Atheism". I tried out an answer and picked up a few votes from the international peanut gallery.

I thought I'd provide the question and answer here again, and maybe a little later …