Intro
Welcome all to the first issue of The Year X Conclusion. A end of the year post where I conclude my thoughts of anything that happened during the previous 12 months. This issue will cover a mix of self-hosting and software developer related content. As well as some news for 2024!
Release Of “Note Mark”
On September the 8th I released the first official stable release of my note taking web app Note Mark. It’s now had several life-improving updates along the way, with more still to come! I use this app daily for writing my ideas and plans, this post was also planned using it. It has been great to see the comments from some of you saying you enjoy using it! I would urge you to check it out if you have not heard of it, you may find it useful or know some who would benefit from it.
It now features a easy deployment though a all-in-one Docker image. You can even upload custom assets to it too!
“Now Self Hosted”
Issue 4
Starting with the first issue of 2023, issue 4. After moving from Pi-Hole to Blocky as discussed in this issue, I have been very satisfied with the functionality. I have it currently configured to use DoH (DNS over HTTPS) with a redis cache for a shared cache that my cluster nodes can access. At the time of writing it allows DNS queries to resolve in ~4ms with a 65% cache hit rate. To ensure the cache is used by client devices more; I have setup pre-fetching for the top queries. Pre-fetching is a very nice feature to have. Since installing Blocky it has added a few new features, one of them allowing for more granular control over upstream strategies. I however just use the default to pick the fastest ones from the list.
As for Scrutiny it now flags a warning for one of my NAS drives, so it has done it’s job (something to sort out for 2024). Looking at recent updates, no new features have been added however a number of fixes which is nice to see it being well maintained.
I recently setup a Dufs instance, allowing me to upload new assets to my site. This has been very useful and was simple to deploy.
Issue 5
From issue 5 I am still running Vikunja. I find it useful to remind myself of features and fixes that still need to implemented in my projects. Although I have started using Google’s Tasks app to remind me of server maintenance jobs, as the repeating task type seems to work better.
I still run a Gitea instance to allow me to have a local mirror of all git repositories. I still have not had time to add local CI/CD, so I think this may be another task for 2024!
Adding It-Tools to my collection of apps has provided a lot of useful tools which I can access quickly. I currently find myself using the “integer base converter”, “base64 string encoder/decoder” and surprisingly the “random port generator”.
This site is still powered by Hugo. However I am starting to use it for rendering my project documentation via a new theme called Mysti Guides which I have started developing.
Issue 6
Not much to say about this article (issue 6) since I already spoke about Note Mark. The other note taking apps seem well built however none of them are fit for my use.
Moving To Neovim
And now on to the developer related news. I still use neovim for all text editing. Recently I have moved to using “Lazy” as the package manager as “Packer” has been deprecated. I also added “Indent Blankline” to make indentation easy to see. Apart from that I have not added any other plugins as everything I have currently is all I need.
Other News
Here is some more exciting news for 2024 and beyond!
Website
As always I will always stride to bring you the most informative articles written without AI. Expect the normal monthly-ish “Now Self Hosted” articles which I enjoy writing and researching new cool things. Stay tuned for other tech content along the way! I hope you like the new site banner on the homepage, I think it looks really cool.
YouTube Videos
I have decided to start publishing some video content over on YouTube. At the moment you can find a demo video about my app Note Mark and a Computer Science video on Data & Information. It would be great if you could check them out.
Support My Work
Apart from the usual ways of helping me get discovered, it will be greatly appreciated if you could donate some spare change. This will help cover the costs; for running this website and development of my open source apps. I now have a way for you to do this over at “Buy Me A Coffee”, check out my profile @leospratt.
Thanks For Reading
Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed and found it useful. I wish you a happy new year, all be it a bit late!
