Update for the week ending on Friday, Apr 9, 2021

TinyPilot

Management

• More discussions about leasing office space
• Started training new assistant
• Posted assistant job to craigslist
• Interviewed two additional assistant candidates
• Updated TinyPilot’s logo
  • Old
  • New
• Migrated shared credentials over to BitWarden
• Did bookkeeping
• Bought a new (used) laptop as a test device for new assistants

Software development

• Reviewed PRs to add virtual media support to TinyPilot
• Switched the post-update check to use HTTP instead of socket.io
  • socket.io protocols are not backwards compatible, so in the last version upgrade, the update check broke. The frontend was still running the old code even though the backend had upgraded to a new version.
  • I’m confident HTTP will stay backwards compatible for a while.
• Reviewed a PR to add UI controls for video settings
• Experimented with accessing TinyPilot over the internet via a custom WireGuard proxy on fly.io
  • I’m looking for ways to give users secure, convenient access to their TinyPilot over the Internet
  • fly.io is definitely interesting, could be something more here.
  • Made me realize TinyPilot wasn’t supporting IPv6, so I added that
• Tried to upgrade to Ansible 2.10.0, but found out you can’t go from 2.9.x to 2.10.x through a regular pip install, which is a bummer, so now I have to add a workaround before I can upgrade.
• Deleted some dead code

Product research

• Continued working with EE firm on PoE HAT

Sales

• Made an experimental version of TinyPilot for a YouTuber’s upcoming video

mtlynch.io

• Published my March 2021 retrospective
• Published my notes for Shoe Dog by Phil Knight
• Continued working on LogPaste blog post
• Spec’ed out a diagram for the LogPaste post

LogPaste

Meta: I needed a service where users could easily share TinyPilot debug logs with me, and nothing else matched what I was looking for, so I rolled my own as a fun weekend project.

• Finished instructions for deploying on fly.io
• Wrote instructions for deploying on Heroku
• Simplified some SQLite code based on a tip from @benbjohnson

resticpy

Meta: I started making Python bindings for Restic, and I’ve gotten a little carried away.

• Shared resticpy on the restic community forums
• Open-sourced the Python script I use for my daily backup
  • It’s kind of ugly

What Got Done

• Domain was up for renewal, so I migrated out of Google Domains
  • I like Google Domains, but too much is tied up to my one Google account, and they sometimes lock people out for no reason

Misc

• Started playing with Photoprism
  • Open source, easy to self-host alternative to Google Photos
  • It’s pretty impressive, but it definitely falls short of Google Photos
  • I’d like to support the project and hope it implements the features I care about from Google Photos
• Set up moa.party to mirror my tweets to my Mastodon account
  • Works well, but I have to grant it a scary amount of permissions
  • I really like the idea of Mastodon, but I find it hard to invest time into it when I don’t know anyone there, so this is a way to start some content there.
• Got a backup of my Mastodon instance from my managed provider
  • This means I can theoretically recover my Mastodon instance if my provider disappears
• Voted in my town elections
• Made an appointment with a new accountant
  • After my current accountant has twice in the last three weeks told me he’d have my return ready by the end of the week
• Fixed a bug in fly.io’s installer
• Did some personal finance accounting
• Got a replacement for a light fixture that died
  • AFX lighting was surprisingly helpful about honoring their manufacturer warranty even though the retailer that was supposed to handle it wouldn’t return my calls.