Hey, I'm Bryan. I keep big systems alive at work and tinker with everything else after hours.
Koken SSL Issue, Resolved
Koken does all kinds of strange things on an SSL-only nginx site — logins fail, settings won't save, themes won't apply. After a lot of debugging it came down to one line of config.
Recent writing
My Ambilight, My Obsession, My Curse
A long, rambling dump of a year's worth of obsessing over my DIY ambilight: every way people build them, why none of them do what I actually want, and the 4k HDCP wall I keep hitting. No TL;DR, sorry.
Crouching Slave, Hidden Master
Overhauling my home DNS, I switched from BIND to NSD and set up a hidden master — the public name servers answer queries while the box that actually edits the zones stays private. I am no networking guru; this was new to me too.
Unicode Font Issue in Windows
Certain Unicode glyphs rendered fine in Chrome but came up as boxes in Notepad++ and MobaXterm. It came down to Windows font fallback, fixed by hand-editing the registry SystemLink keys. Reg file included.
SSL in Nginx using Let's Encrypt
A working how-to for putting Let's Encrypt SSL on nginx using the manual webroot method, since the plugin was broken. Covers the acme-challenge config, generating certs, and a systemd timer for automatic renewal.
Breaking Down an NAA ID / World Wide Name
As a storage engineer I get handed a world wide name and asked to find the disk. Here is how to dissect an NAA ID into OUI and vendor fields, with the specific quirks of NetApp, EMC, Engenio, and HDS.
Nanobox Hybrid Review and PAR Analysis
A full review of the Nano Box Hybrid LED/T-5 fixture over my reef tank, plus PAR readings I took across every region of the water. The output surprised me, and not in the direction I expected.
Reef Aquarium 3.0
My third attempt at a reef tank, and the first one I actually planned. The full build — tank, sump, lighting, aquascape — plus the lessons the first two beat into me.
NetApp LUN Alignment
How to check and manually set the LUN alignment offset on NetApp without the VSC wizard, which came in handy for misaligned Linux LVM volumes the tool wouldn't flag. NetApp doesn't officially support this, so know what you're doing.
Building a Linux HTPC
Building a budget media center PC and trying to run Linux on it, until Blu-ray DRM and Silverlight streaming forced me to scrap the whole install for Windows. As much as it pains me to admit, Windows just does this better.
Electronic Cigarettes for Smoking Cessation
After failing to quit smoking with Chantix, patches, gum, and everything else, I switched to an electronic cigarette and stopped calling myself a smoker. My experience, the vaping community, and the health reasoning behind it.
Donnie Darko - An Interpretation
My chapter-by-chapter reading of Donnie Darko through The Philosophy of Time Travel, arguing it is straight science fiction about tangent universes, not the emo psychological thriller everyone treats it as. Spoilers throughout.
Too Smart for your Own Good
Smart enough to coast, not driven enough to do anything with it. An honest look at the gifted-program kid who used his gifts mostly to be lazy, and is still paying for the pride that came with them.
Features! But its got a compass!
Why does the iPhone need a compass, and why did Ralphie need one in his BB gun? A cynical look at feature creep and how useless add-ons are usually the exact thing that makes us buy something.
Friendship
My definition of a friend, why I have cut so many people loose over the years without much regret, and why some of my best friends are people I first met online. Being told I am difficult to be friends with is fair.
Leadership in Gaming
Leading a World of Warcraft raiding guild sounds silly, but recruiting, setting rules, distributing loot, and keeping 25 people happy is real management practice. Here is what running one taught me about leadership.
Blogging: What I have learned
My 50th post, so a look back at what writing a barely-trafficked blog has taught me: keep a schedule, do not get discouraged, stay short, and ask whether anyone but your mom would actually read this.
The Butterfly Effect
How one offhand choice can quietly set the rest of your life in motion. A friend likes to credit himself for everything in mine because he got me playing WoW, and annoyingly, he is not wrong.
Cassandra and Dirk
My blog makes me sound like a miserable cynical bastard, so for once I drop the act. A plainly sincere thank-you to my girlfriend Cassandra and my dog Dirk, the two reasons I am actually happy.
Vonnegut on Style
My favorite author left behind seven rules for writing with style, so I grade my own blogging against each one, in public, and ask you how I am doing.
Passion and Inspiration.
Obama's acceptance speech actually got to me, sappy as that sounds, and got me thinking about the line between passion and inspiration. Mostly about how to fight for something without letting passion curdle into anger.
Fulfillment is?
A reader asked what fulfillment actually means, so I tried to work it out while feeling pretty unfulfilled myself. The honest answer is I am probably just a glass-half-empty person who would complain no matter what.
The American Dream
Why am I so unhappy just being content? A jaded, somewhat bleak picking-apart of the American Dream, and why a comfortable life I know is good still feels like one I would rather quit.
Life Sucks, Then You Die
A gloomy walk through the whole arrangement: school, work, retirement, death, and how we sell our labor back to the companies whose stuff we are working to afford. I do not have a fix, just the bleak math of it.
No Girls Allowed!
Why a lot of top World of Warcraft guilds explicitly ban women, and why I don't think it's really sexism so much as raid leaders dodging drama. With a case study from my own guild that drove me and my girlfriend to quit.
Lost Email and Contacts in Thunderbird
If Thunderbird updated and suddenly your mail, contacts, and settings are gone, it likely just made a new default profile and orphaned your old one. A step-by-step on pointing a fresh profile back at your real data.
Why do I write?
Four months in, twenty visitors a day, and the philosophy posts I care about get no traffic while the tech post I like least gets all of it. Wondering aloud whether this blog is worth continuing.
Reward Systems and Instant Gratification
Top WoW guilds run like a perfect communism, people working harder for virtual nothing than they ever would at their real jobs. The difference is instant gratification, and I wonder what life would look like if it worked that way.
Is human happiness the driving force behind scientific innovation?
The case that nearly every technology we love was first built to make our lives easier or to wage war, often both. From the spear and ENIAC to DuPont, and the worry that all this convenience has just made us lazy.
I'll handle this, I'm a professional.
Calling yourself a professional just means you got paid, not that you are any good. The gap between making money at something and actually being an expert, and why professionalism is an attitude most professionals never show.
Developing a career and managing change.
At 26 with a self-made career, here is the advice I would give: do what you are good at instead of chasing dreams, go to college, never stop learning, stay replaceable, and embrace change rather than fear it.
Professional Gaming
Pro gaming is a real way to make money now, but the games change fast and there's no contract or retirement plan. On the kids dropping out of school to chase it, and the parents who let them.
You're so unique, you're the same.
Khakis, an IT job, a townhouse, Old Navy. I am about as normal as they come on the outside, which is exactly why uniqueness is a state of mind, not eye shadow and all-black outfits.
Only people who have blogs, read blogs
A hunch I can't shake: the only people who actually read blogs are the people who write them. I used to think blogs were stupid, then started one and immediately subscribed to thirty others.
Living in digital worlds
After years of MMOs and finally quitting them, the thing I notice most is how players rationalize the time, the friendships, and their loyalty to one game. Quit, and you get written off like an ex-addict by your old guild.
New Design Launched!
Over 200 hours went into this deliberately unconventional site design, my first WordPress template. A walk through the hand-coded HTML, CSS, and jQuery, and why I expect people to either love it or hate it.
Web development sucks
Building a site that works across every browser, resolution, and busted old version of IE turns into a pile of hacks I am not comfortable with. A perfectionist's case for why web development just sucks.
Fabricating reasons to hate people
How one petty grievance with a roommate, like a sink of dishes, quietly multiplies into a list of reasons to resent someone you actually like. On the parallels to real prejudice, and why I just ignore it instead of speaking up.
Designing for you.
I can code any mockup but I have no creative vision of my own, so redesigning this blog meant scrapping 30 hours of generic work and leaning on a designer friend. On building a site that actually reflects you.
Making a bad situation worse
On grudges, sulking, the silent treatment, and isolating yourself at the party you could have just enjoyed. I'm guiltier of all of it than most, and I know it never helps anything.
I shall name my first born son "Violence"
On the parade of absurd celebrity baby names and the ones New Zealand actually banned, like Sex Fruit and Talula Does the Hula. I think the names are ridiculous, but I am not convinced the courts should get a say.
Managing your online identity
I spent years trying to stay invisible online, then started a blog under my real name anyway. Where I landed on what to expose, what to keep private, and why the rule is mostly just don't be stupid.
Science is Racist
A Dallas commissioner took offense at the phrase black hole and called it racist. I walk through his examples one by one, where the etymology actually came from, and where I think he was just stretching.
Is there a God?
The obligatory philosophy-blog post on whether God exists. I work through a few definitions, land on no for all of them, and admit that as a man of science the big bang sounds better to me than a creator.
Presentism and Imagination, Depression
Your brain fills in the unknown past and future using how you feel right now, which is why a bad mood makes everything look bleak. Whether knowing about this trick is any use against depression is the part I'm not sure about.
Hi, How are you?
We ask how are you dozens of times a day, lie about the answer, and do not care to hear the truth anyway. A defense of brutal honesty over social graces, from someone who is a hypocrite about it at work.
Staying Organized in a Digital World
An obsessive's tour of how I keep bookmarks, calendars, contacts, email, music, and photos in sync across far too many computers and two iPhones. It mostly works, but the seams still show.
iPhone Madness
Buying an iPhone 3G on launch day, the three-hour line, and the activation mess that killed two phones when I tried to port numbers. My defense for picking one up, since it was cheaper than the GPS unit I wanted anyway.
Truth with respect to art
A web designer wrote that the future of design rests on Christian truth. I take apart the same question from the other side: truth and art are both subjective, and art owes truth nothing.
Maslow's Needs and Gaming
Why games, and MMORPGs especially, are so easy to sink into: mapped against Maslow's hierarchy, they quietly satisfy nearly every need a real life would. I've been addicted myself, so this isn't me judging from above.
Groupthink: Digg, oh how I hate thee.
How Digg went from my favorite site to one I can barely stand. A breakdown of the groupthink that rules the front page, complete with my cynical scoring system for what guarantees a story gets promoted.
Anti-Social Society
I am, by my own admission, a selfish anti-social asshole who turns down every invitation and then enjoys himself whenever forced to go. An attempt to figure out why, with a detour through brussels sprouts and psychological egoism.
The Sentence
A book on happiness got me thinking about the one trait that sets us apart: we think about the future. It is also, conveniently, the source of my own depression.
Go play a real guitar...
Everyone asks why I do not just play a real instrument instead of Guitar Hero. My answer: gaming is a waste of time, but so is everything else you do after work, and the plastic guitar is no sillier than a plastic steering wheel.
Anyone wanna watch some Metal Gear?
Metal Gear Solid 4 has so many cut scenes that my friend and I started asking each other if we wanted to go watch some Metal Gear. Somehow it still made me believe in the PS3.
Am I Too Trusting?
I never lock anything, and one day I left a car full of laptops and my wallet sitting unlocked outside a Wawa with the windows down. A look at whether I have been lucky or just foolish.
Naps are Super Good.
A wholehearted defense of the afternoon nap against everyone who keeps telling me to cut it out. As it happens, the research — and Edison, Einstein, and Churchill — are on my side.
What's so bad about cubicles?
Everyone loves to mock the cubicle drone, but mine is a roomy, private, pretty pleasant place to work. A defense of the cube, and of the IT guys everyone assumes have it easy.
Windows Vista, It Doesn't Suck
A year on Vista, including a regretted downgrade back to XP, convinced me the hate is overblown. The case for 64-bit Vista from someone who actually used it, UAC complaints and all.
Online behavior, hiding behind the keyboard
A field guide to the kinds of people who argue online and how the keyboard turns everyone into a tough guy. I sort them into types, then admit I'm two of the worse ones.
Why can't I just be successful online?
Seven or eight years of trying to build something online I could quit my day job for, and a postmortem on every project that died, usually because someone bigger beat me to it.
The Future of Video Cards
Intel says the graphics card is doomed once the GPU moves onto the CPU die; nVidia says the CPU is dead. My take on why the separate video card sticks around, and why competition is the reason I want it to.
Do I really use the internets?
I have been online since AOL 1.0 and consider myself a power user, yet I never send email and skip Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace entirely. Wondering whether I actually use the social web, or just lurk it as an introvert.
Age of Conan, Initial Impressions (Part 2)
Level 30 in Age of Conan, and this time I focus on the game itself instead of bashing Funcom. The combat genuinely shines, the UI is rough, and the music is still on, which says a lot.
Age of Conan, Initial Impressions (Part 1)
My first impressions of Funcom's new MMO, most of which I spent watching unannounced server outages instead of playing. I plan outages for a living, so I had opinions.
No posts match your search.