Calibre-Web 🔗
I have a Synology with Docker on it, plus a bunch of community packages for assorted things and it’s … fine. But people have been talking about this Pikapods thing so I gave it a spin with Calibre-Web as my test case. Right now I’m at the “got ping” stage with it: It is up, configured, and sees my library, and I just figured out how to make it put a missing cover on a book. I have not yet turned to getting my Kobo to talk to it, but omg I cannot wait to get my Kobo talking to it, because I think e-ink readers are both the best and worst technology I ever adopted, and I have a tool now that will allow me to make right the parts of that adoption that bother me the worst.
Stake whatever territory you want on the copyright front. I am an inconsistent hypocrite. In this particular use case, I am a hypocrite who happens to pay:
I supported my family for years with my writing. The person you read on these pages probably doesn’t seem like it. I am no longer a craftsman or a stylist. I am just this guy who still finds an outlet and a release in writing, but who does not really edit himself, and who understands that time-shifted 20 years give or take I might be the proprietor of the world’s least listened to podcast or most unwatched YouTube channel. Writing is just the way I tell eight or nine people a day what I’m into right now, and I deeply believe text you can skim is more considerate than forcing you to scrub through a bunch of recorded rambling and ill-conceived attempts to force you into a parasocial connection.
But I pay. I pay for newspapers, I pay for newsletters, and I buy every single book I read (that I’m not getting from the library). When my team found an open NFS mount full of O’Reilly books on an old Solaris box in the back of a DC, it was an easy decision to say “failing disk, mount it ro and serve notice that it is leaving us” because I was never so entrepreneurial or talented that I could afford the vanity of just giving my shit away: I had to sell it to someone if I didn’t want to go back to soldiering or doing secretary work to eat. You go fight Big Content, and I get it, but I will also pay.
So this isn’t me cackling and chortling because “fuck paying for books and now I don’t have to.” Looking over what’s in my new Pikapod, I’m pretty sure I’ve even paid twice for a big chunk of what’s in there.
I’m cackling and chortling because I’m free of doing business with an entity I wish I hadn’t. I don’t care about the law, I care about what’s right, and I bought every one of those books, so my duty to “right” is discharged.
Work 🔗
I bit off more than I can chew today. If anyone writes my biography, this is gonna be a weird exception to a largely prosaic and staid track record of “safety first, move with deliberation.”
But I bit off more than I can chew because I picked a dumb industry to work in, and I occasionally feel the need to thwart expectations and try out the whole “break glass” thing before retreating to my home position.
Just putting it on the record so you know who you’re recommending when you see me asking for help with references: Occasionally I’ll surprise you. It is not my intent to also terrify you.
braus 🔗
I realized after pulling it down to my second machine that I didn’t actually push my QoL changes to my braus fork. Fixed that.
Okay. Done. Time to get the Pikapod talking to my Kobo.