My Amazing Blog

An Update

crazyroostereye — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 20:00:00 GMT

An Update

So it has been a while since I last Posted. As you can see the website has Changed again, and to my RSS Subscribers I am very sorry for marking all my Items as New again for the 4th time.

So this Post is an explanation what has gone own the Last Months and what happened with the Challenge. So let's get into it.

The Challenge

Well as you can Imagine by the Lack of Posts, It didn't go so well. So work picked up at the later half of the Month, and meant I had less time doing anything else. This also had the result of my Falling into habits, for example watching mindlessly YouTube and other stuff. While I mostly binge in that period the CCC and some Shows, it still wasn't good. This Persisted too Week 4 and into February. And me being also active on the RJC Discord a lot didn't help either. But this doesn't mean the Challenge was total Failure, yes it didn't go as well as I hoped it would, I still reduced my Overall time by a good bit compared to before. And while it isn't on the same level as Last Year, it is satisfactory.

February

As said already February wasn't much better, Work continued to be stressful, and I continued Binging Shows left and right. But in the later half of the Month the Weather Improved a lot, which also lifted my Spirits. And gave me the Energy to work on some Projects and Socializing a bit more. For example, I visited my local CCC Chapter, and even signed up to an Armature Radio Licence Course, but more on that later. So by the end of the Month I was reinvigorated to do stuff.

March

With the energy got from February I stared on some Projects again, primarily some stuff for the Org I'm active in, but also some for fun. For one, I began to remake my Website as you can see, using a New SSG called 11ty. But also looked a lot into Ansible for my own Infreastructure and beginning to remake it using it. Also since the Discord drama I have been looking at a lot of Alternatives and tried out XMPP. Sadly that is essentially everything I was able to do. Since work sill kept me Busy and with recent Elections that will only get worse (in a good way). What also started this Month is Armature Radio Club and really enjoyed it, and learned a decent bit. Because of some Medical Issues with the Trainer, a Couply Seassions were missed. But it should come up again soon.

But yeah that brings me to today. I am still working on Projects, will be sharing about them soon I hope. And till then have a nice Time :-D

YouTube Challange 26 - Week 2

crazyroostereye — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 20:00:00 GMT

YouTube Challenge 26: Week 2

So we completed Week 2, and it went well. There wasn't anything to Complain about really. I read a lot which I am happy about, and I was able to keep up with my Documentation, unlike last Week. But of course it wasn't Perfect, I wasn't able to get into my Projects as much as I wanted too, and I was a lot on Discord over the Week which I didn't track but still noticed. So yeah for Week 3 I am going to try to reduce my Discord Time.

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    <div><canvas id="watchtime"></canvas></div>
    <div><canvas id="cato"></canvas></div>
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But let's get into the Data! This Week I'll be presenting my Standard Platform Chart, but also a Source chart. A Short Explanation of the Source Chart, it shows from where I learned of a Video, if that be somebody send me a Link or If I went onto YouTube, and it recommended me the Video. I primarily started keeping track of it because why not, but it evolved into an Interesting Data Set to see where I spent most of my Time. And as we can see from the Data I spent most of it on my RSS feed, which is good. As my RSS feed is supposed to by my Primary source of Media. As it is stuff I am actually Interested in, and I specifically subscribed too. Tho I do need to maybe filter some Channels out of there. Besides that let's take a look to the Other Sources, so the Second highest is Browsing with 4 Videos, now what does Browsing even mean. In context of this Chart Browsing refers to looking through Streaming and Video Sources that aren't YouTube. A great example is the CCC Media Library I looked through for some Nice Talks, or if I browse Nebula or Dropout for other Channels/Videos I haven't subscribed with RSS yet or cannot subscribe too. The other notable Video source is YouTube, because I have normally it blocked. But sadly for brief Period my mpv / yt-dlp stopped working and I was forced to go to the Website where I got caught by some Videos. But at least I didn't fall into the Trap of Endlessly Watching.

So yeah that concludes the Week 2 Report, see you next Week :).

<script>
const ctx = document.getElementById('watchtime');
const ctx2 = document.getElementById('cato');
new Chart(ctx, {
    type: 'bar',
    data: {
        labels: ["Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday", "Thrusday","Friday", "Saturday", "Sunday"],
        datasets: [
            { "label": "YouTube",
            data: [.543, .121, 1.815, .734, .201, 2.056, .720] },
            { "label": "CCC",
            data: [0, .7, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0] },
            { "label": "Straming",
            data: [0, 1.346, .241, .118, .261, .360, 0] },
            { "label": "Video",
            data: [0, .193, 0, .313, .330, 0, 0] },
            { "label": "Owned",
            data: [1.189, 0, 0, 0, 0, .407, 0]},
            { 
                "label": "Video Count",
                data: [7, 12, 7, 5, 3, 10, 3],
                type: "line",
                yAxisID: "y2"
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        ],
    },
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new Chart(ctx2, {
    type: 'pie',
    data: {
        labels: ["RSS", "Browsing", "YouTube", "Linked", "Looked For"],
        datasets: [
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                data: [36, 4, 3, 1, 3],
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                text: "Sources"
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        }
    }

});
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YouTube Challenge 26 - Week 1

crazyroostereye — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 20:00:00 GMT

YouTube Challenge 26: Week 1

Well we have reached the end of Week one, and it went well! While I did struggle with the first few Days, because I just put on myself too much of Documentation burden, once I cut back on that It was smooth sailing. But yeah as I said I had to cut back on thing, primarily the Documentation of general Computer time and Reading / Writing time. I just struggled to keep track of all them and even Differentiating between Reading and Writing in Context of Forums and Co. So I decided to cut them out and Focus on the Media Consumption. But that won't mean I won't keep an eye on it, it just means I won't have as many concrete Data Points to Compare. And this may Change again during the cumming Weeks as I will continue optimizing and Automating my Data Collection.

But this brings me to my first Major Point, I was able to automate most Video Media Data Collection. As I wrote a Script which gathers some Metadata every time a launch a Video in my Video Player. While it had some Hiccups, in which I will dive a bit deeper later, it worked really well.

Anyway let's get into the Data I did Collect. This Week I decided to present you with my Typical Watch Time Platform Chart, which Shows on which Platforms I watched the Media from. But also I am showing of a Chart about the Categories the Video I watched were in.

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<div id="chartsContainer">
    <div><canvas id="watchtime"></canvas></div>
    <div><canvas id="cato"></canvas></div>
</div>

First things first, Yes I did forget two Days, Tuesday and Thursday. This because on Tuesday I was quite Low Energy and really noticed the Documentation Burden I was putting on myself. This is the Point I decided to reduce it and change that for the following Days. And for Thursday, it was an entirely different reason, as Mentioned before, I wrote a Script that collects my Watch History from Media Player. Well that Script works great but in the somewhat common case where the Media Player fails to get the Video stream and Crashes, instead of doing nothing, the Script decides to overwrite the File Empty. And this is what happened on Thursday causing the entire Day of being Lost. This Issue has been resolved tho now. So lets hope It won't happen in the Future.

Anyway let's actually talk about the Data for real now. So on Monday we can see I watched the Most, and that is in large part because the 39C3 happened recently and in the following of it all the Talks were Published to their Video Platform. For those who don't know the C3 is the Computer Chaos Congress, it's a Large Computer / Hacker Convention in Germany organized by the Computer Chaos Club (CCC), for the Americans it's the European Analog to DEFCON. Well they Publish all their Talks on the Clubs Media library where you can Watch it for free. And me being a Huge Computer Nerd, I had to watch some of them. So I did. And because these are Stage Presented talks, they take up around an Hour each. So they easily can Inflate the Statistics.

The other Interesting Data Point is how little I watched on the Weekend, usually I watch the Most on Weekends, but this time around it was very little. This is in large part because I was busy, but also because I got really enthralled into the Book I am reading, The Greatest Hits from Harleen Ellison. Which caused me to read most of the Weekend. I will report about the Book in particular Soon™.

But yeah with this my Weeks Report is concluded, in general I can say it went well. But it could be better. Onwards to the next week.

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const ctx = document.getElementById('watchtime');
const ctx2 = document.getElementById('cato');
new Chart(ctx, {
    type: 'bar',
    data: {
        labels: ["Monday", "Wednesday", "Friday", "Saturday", "Sunday"],
        datasets: [
            { "label": "YouTube",
            data: [2.03, 0.24, 1.26, 0.35, 1.85] },
            { "label": "CCC",
            data: [2.6, 0, 0, 0, 0] },
            { "label": "Straming",
            data: [0.12, 0.24, 0.844, 0.12, 0] },
            { "label": "Video",
            data: [0, 0, 0.17, 0, 0] },
            { 
                "label": "Video Count",
                data: [10, 5, 14, 3, 11],
                type: "line",
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new Chart(ctx2, {
    type: 'radar',
    data: {
        labels: ["Edutainment", "News", "Talk", "Gaming", "Entertainment", "Animation", "Music", "Ad"],
        datasets: [
            {
                label: "By Count",
                data: [6, 8, 6, 9, 6, 3, 2, 1],
            },
            {
                label: "By Hours",
                data: [1.79, 1.09, 3.18, 2.03, 1.59, 0.20, 0.02, 0.004]
            }
        ]
    },
    options: {
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YouTube Challenge 26 - Week 0.5

crazyroostereye — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 20:00:00 GMT

YouTube Challenge Week 0.5

Because I started the Challenge as a New Year's Resolution too I had a tiny bit of the Last Week of December added on to it. So these few Days were primarily spent setting up tools and figuring out approaches for the Challenge.

For example, because I want to reduce more than just YouTube, but also my General Computer Consumption I have installed a handy little tool called ActivityWatch which should track what I do on my Computer, offline of course. This will act as my Assistant to figure out my Time spent writing, Gaming or Developing. As I already Manually note my Video Media Consumption.

Something I do struggle with tracking is Reading, as I do read a lot of Forum stuff, which I would love to add to the Statistic. But Separating from Writing is quite Hard in my Stats. I will search for a Solution for that tho.

Now to actually talk about the Week, or part of week really. For the most Part it was pretty straight forward. I spent a lot of time working on the Website, and changing some stuff around, adding some few Features here and there. Besides that I also did some other interesting Development things I will probably write a Blog Post about in the Near Future.

Activity Watch

crazyroostereye — Sat, 03 Jan 2026 21:00:00 GMT

Activity Watch

I discovered this Program a long time ago, but have recently rediscovered it for the purposed of the YouTube Challenge. What it does is it runs the Background and Collects Activity on your PC with its Watchers. Technically the Watcher can collect anything, depending on the Watcher. But the Watcher I Use is AWatcher and the Firefox Watcher, so the Data It collects is Browser and Window Activity.

So why is it useful? Well it allows me to see how much time I spent in any Application and Website easily. For example for my Challenge I want to Write more and Watch/Game less. So especially for gaming I can see how much time I just spent Playing a Game, and notice I should stop. Or vice versa know that I just wrote a lot. It also helps with my Book Keeping.

So if you want to Keep Track what you do on your PC or Laptop, then give this Tool a try. It really nicely collects and displays your Activity.

But that's enough from Me, have a Good Morning/Afternoon/Eveneing.

Link to the Software

The YouTube Challenge again

crazyroostereye — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 17:00:00 GMT

The YouTube Challenge again

If you don't know what I mean with this Challenge I recommend you read my Previous Attempt on it and read Sergio's Attempt. But in short, I will Attempt to reduce my Use of YouTube, but also other Content Platforms. And disconnect in general a bit. Last Year went really well, and it caused a long-lasting effect, but I have returned to my Old Habits of watching YouTube passively again, tho way less than before.

Sadly this year I won't be able to give the Stats of the Week prior, as I forgot to record them. And I have disabled my YouTube History since then. So yeah no Estimate this Year.

Things I want to do

So the Things that I want to do this time around is not only reduce consumption of Video Content. But also reduce general Computer time. This means not only YouTube but also browsing, gaming and other Socials. Second I want to write more Fully Featured Texts, meaning more Blog Posts and full Reviews, less Quick Texts and Forum Posts. So when I do actions like this they won't be taken into account when tracking the time. Finally, I also want to read more, so I will be filling the Gaps with reading more than I did before.

As usual, I will Keep you Posted with a Weekly Update and let's hope this time will be even better than last time.

My Webserver

crazyroostereye — Tue, 12 Aug 2025 14:00:00 GMT

My Webserver

Today I wanted to share my Current Setup to host my Website including my Webserver, Analytics and Rendering of my Site.

This will Consist of 3 Segements:

Web Server

I use Caddy as my Web server, as it has an integrated SSL Cert Handler to keep the SSL certs up to date and accurate. Makes the handling of it a breeze. It also has a very easy Configuration Language, which makes it also vary Nice to use. Following to that I use the robots.txt and Caddyfile Snippet from ai.robots.txt to straight Abort every Message from any of those Bots. As my Analytics have shown how often they call my Website.

All of this is hosted via Docker for easy Deployment and Movement. compose.yml

services:
	caddy:
		image: caddy
		restart: always
		ports:
			- 443:443
		volumes:
			- ./configs:/etc/caddy
			- ./certs:/data
			- ./logs:/var/log/caddy
			- /src/websites:/srv
		networks:
			caddy:
networks:
	caddy:
		external: true

Caddyfile

{
	log access {
		output file /var/log/caddy/access.log {
			mode 600
			roll_site 30MiB
			roll_keep 3
			roll_keep_for 30d
		}
		format json
		include http.log.access
	}
}
crazyroostereye.de {
	# This if for my Assets to still be loaded without Anubis
	root * /srv/website/public
	try_files {path}.html
	file_server
	encode gzip zstd
	# Imports from ai Caddyfile, which is in the same folder
	import ai
	abort @aibots
	log access
}

Rendering

Now that I have my Web server, I need the Website. And for that I built my SSG (Static Site Generator) with the help of Python and Jinja2. But why would I need a SSG? The reason is quite simple, actually. My Website includes a lot of content that is similar. For example the Navbar or footer. This means every time I want to alter them, I'd had to edit it on every single Page. Which with my Blog Posts Included is an ever-growing list. So this reduces the Workload by having a Template where the Footer and Navbar live. But why then not use something like PHP? Well PHP is a Dynamic Server, its basically replacing what I would have done in JS on the Client Side with PHP on the Server Side. Which would add additional Load on my Website, that would increase the more Visitors I have. Given that this a Personal Site, with little to non-Dynamic Content. I don't see the use of using something like that.

BTW if you want to see the source of the Webserver, here it is

Analytics

Now to the last aspect of my Web Server Setup, Analytics. I do collect everything my Web server Spits out, but I don't use any specific Analytics tools anymore. So I do pure Log Analytics. For that I use my General Monitoring Setup in Grafana. I connect to Caddy with Prometheus and scrape the Logs with Loki/Alloy. The Data I get from that is described on my Privacy Policy. But in general I look at the 404 Calls, User-Agents and the GeoIP. As I am always curious what specifically People look at, and even more what they Attampt to open that dosent exit. Motly its bots trying find voulnarbilities.

Web Journal

crazyroostereye — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 22:00:00 GMT

Web Journal

Servus, Today I am trying something new, a Web Journal. "But what is a Web Journal?", you might be asking. Well a Web Journal is a thing I read about Today on the Melonland Forum. It's basically the Idea of a Dream Journal but for what I did on my Computer / on the Interwebs. I found it a very fun Idea to try out and similar to what I did with YouTube Challange back in February. So I am going to try it out.

26 Jun 2025

So lets start writing my First Web Journal. So how was Browsing today? Well It felt mediocre, I spent a lot of time Watching YouTube, tho no YT Shorts as far as I can remember. I also browsed on Forums, including obviously Melonland where I discovered the Idea. But besides that, I wouldn't call today's Browsing Informative or Valuable. Mostly watching YouTube, and not even the good kind. More like Sloop. The only thing other just Popt into my Mind was that I worked on my FoundryVTT Instance, primarily talking off some of the thing my DM has to do when It comes to my Character. As we don't have the Expansion I implemented the Warforged and Artificer Race / Class manually in.

MPV and YT-DLP are Awesome

crazyroostereye — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 22:00:00 GMT

MPV and YT-DLP are Awesome

I am writing this Post because of the Facination of these two tools. So if you don't know mpv is a Video/Audio Player you primarily use inside the Terminal. It has all the Features you need, like Hardware Acceleration and Switching Audio/Subtitle Tracks. While graphical side of things the Player is very bare bones mostly hiding its features behind key binds, it is a very good tool when working a lot inside the Terminal.

But that is not all it does, It also Includes a very Important Library, the YT-DLP Library. A very full-featured Library to download Content of the Internet. While it is foremost for YouTube, it also has an exhaustive list of other Services it is compatible with. It allows getting whatever Stream of Video and Audio of the Website and Download it to your Computer. Or in the Case of MPV to play it on your Computer directly in MPV.

The Combination makes MPV a powerhouse in watching content from my RSS Feed. As Some compatible Website it has that I use are: Nebula, ARD Mediathek/Tagesschau and ZDF Mediathek. The two Latter ones being the Germany Public Broadcasters Repository of Content. This was a godsend when doing the YT challenge, as I could completely negate me going to the YouTube Website and avoid the Algorithm sucking me in. But furthermore it also avoids going to resource heavy website and only pulling the video itself, which is then Hardware Accelerated.

This makes it incredibly useful for watching and downloading online content. Especially for YouTube, where you have so many sketchy websites offering it.

So for the TLDR: learn and use MPV and YT-DLP, especially for backing online content up and not relaying on these sketch YouTube download sites.

YouTube Challenge - Week 4

crazyroostereye — Sun, 09 Mar 2025 22:00:00 GMT

YT-Challange - Week 4

So this Week marks of the End of this Challenge, but I will continue on my Journey of Media reduction. While maybe not Posting every week anymore I will continue writing about my Progress and feelings. Similar to Sérgio I also want to write a Blog post on Project I have been doing, or I want to do.

But before I get to Distracted, lets look at this Week! So the week started out decently. I finally got my YubiKey I order like 4 Weeks ago for a Project, and it finally arrived. And I have been Playing around with its features over the entire week. My Favorite thing I was able to do, is that I can now Unlock my Computer, and it's Keyring with the Key, while not giving Up encryption on the Keyring. I will explain more about this in a Future Blog Post on the Subject. I also was busy at work and reworked my SSO solution for the Home lab to include, you guessed it, Passkeys aka my YubiKey.

So I would say I successfully converted my felt Productiveness into actual Productiveness. Even tho I would call it more a Hyperfixation.

Something you might have seen also in last week's statistics is my Inclusion of the News as a Media. As Something many People say, and I can Agree on, is that the News make you Depressed. So I want to see correlation in my feelings compared to the News. While I have not Noticed it myself really yet, yeah they do make me feel down when Sad things happen, but It doesn't last for me. I think one of the Reasons the News don't affect me as much, is that I have very low Passive News Consumption. As I don't use Social Media's. While the Active News Consumption limits itself to an average quarter Hour a day.

So overall this Week has been going quite great.

<div class="horizontal">
	<div>
		<h3>Hours Watched of Content, by Content Type</h3>
		<canvas id="watchtime" style="width: 80%;"></canvas>
	</div>
	<div>
		<h3>Hours Watched Content Week 4 vs Watched YouTube Week 0</h3>
		<canvas id="watchtime-whole" style="width: 80%;"></canvas>
	</div>
</div>
<script>


const ctx = document.getElementById('watchtime');
      new Chart(ctx, {
            type: 'bar',
            data: {
                labels: ["Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday", "Thursday", "Friday", "Saturday", "Sunday"],
                datasets: [
                    {
                        label: "YouTube",
                        data: [1.037,0.34,0.7,0.545,1.366,0.154,0],
                    },
                    {
                        label: "Owned",
                        data: [0.396,0.779,0,0.4,0.4,0,0],
                    },
                    {
                        label: "News",
                        data: [0.5,0.25,0.25,0.624,0.25,0.25,0.25],
                    },
                    {
                        label: "Straming",
                        data: [0,0,0,0,1,0,0],
                    },
                    {
                        label: "Public",
                        data: [0,0,0,0,0,0.549,0.549],
                    },
                ],
            },
            options: {
                color: "white",
                responsive: false,
                
                scales: {
                    x: {
                        stacked: true,
                    },
                    y: {
                        stacked: true
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                }
            }
        });

      const ctx2 = document.getElementById('watchtime-whole');
      new Chart(ctx2, {
            type: 'bar',
            data: {
                labels: ["Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday", "Thursday", "Friday", "Saturday", "Sunday"],
                datasets: [
                    {
                        label: "Week 4",
                        data: [1.933,1.369,0.95,1.569,3.016,0.953,0.799],
                    },
                    {
                        label: "Week 0",
                        data: [11.84,13.36,16.32,18.37,14.88,14.55,6.06],
                    },
                ],
            },
            options: {
                color: "white",
                responsive: false,
                
                scales: {
                    x: {
                        stacked: false,
                    },
                    y: {
                        stacked: false
                    }
                }
            }
        });
</script>

In conclusion, I can say that this Challenge went really well. While this Challenge happened over a very Stressful bunch of weeks. I can say even with the extra Stress that was going on I was able to be less Stressed overall. But I also noticed some Issues that I want to fix too, I am spending a lot of time on Forums instead of YouTube. I think this is way better than any other Social Media. As these are smaller and more Human. It is still not real Social Contact. The Last Show of ZDF Magazin Royal, a German Late Night Show by the Public Broadcaster ZDF, talked about Loneliness and how Social Media isn't a Replacement for it. And how this is Harming us. It was very Interesting, and I am going to take some of the Advice to heart.

YouTube Challenge - Week 3

crazyroostereye — Sun, 09 Mar 2025 21:00:00 GMT

YT-Challange - Week 3

So I know this Check In is very Delayed, but it was initially written at end of Week 3, I was just busy remaking the Website, that I didn't Post it until I was done.

But here is my Overview of Week 3: This Week wasn't the Best in Consumption. Breaking my own goals on Most Days. Which is a bit disappointing. But I can also say, that I have been having a Mood Upswing over the Week. Feeling Productive, not being Productive, but feeling Productive. Furthermore, the Content I was watching this Week was way more Informative and Entertaining. I am paying way more attention when I watch something and therefor get more out of it. No passive Consumption on the Other Monitor.

Also, I am getting better with Boredom, as I finally am doing More things, compared to the start of the Challenge. But also I can deal better with Boredom. I started thinking more about what I saw/watched/etc today when I am bored, making it so much easier to Process the Information, but also makes the Boredom ease of. Making it easier to process the Shitshow the World currently is.

Another thing, probably why I felt so Productive, is that I started writing my Diary again. Most nights this week I have been sitting down for half an hour to an hour and started writing. A little Segment I added to my Diary is a breakdown of the Media I watched. A Review and a Synopsis basically. Maybe someday I compile these notes together and write a Proper Personal Review of these Shows and how I find them and Publish them here. But that's something for Future me, is at least on my ever-growing To-Do list.

For next week I should start finding a way to make the Feeling of Productiveness to actually translate to Productiveness.

<canvas id="watchtime" style="width: 70%;"></canvas>
<script>
const ctx = document.getElementById('watchtime');
new Chart(ctx, {
    type: 'bar',
    data: {
        labels: ["Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday", "Thursday", "Friday", "Saturday", "Sunday"],
        datasets: [
            {
                label: "YouTube",
                data: [0.59,0.82,0.97,1.45,1.17,0.23,1.19],
            },
            {
                label: "Owned",
                data: [1.15, 1, 0, 0.4, 0, 0.4, 0],
            },
            {
                label: "News",
                data: [0.25,0.25,0,0.25,0.25,0.5,0],
            },
            {
                label: "Straming",
                data: [0,0,0,0,0.45,1.6,0],
            },
            {
                label: "Public",
                data: [0,0,0,0,0.58,0,0],
            },
        ],
    },
    options: {
        color: "white",
        responsive: false,
        scales: {
            x: {
                stacked: true,
            },
            y: {
                stacked: true
            }
        }
    }
});
</script>

YouTube Challange - Week 2

crazyroostereye — Mon, 24 Feb 2025 22:00:00 GMT

YT-Challange - Week 2

This Week was a bit harder. While keeping Track of my TV watching habits compared to YouTube, I was able to reduce that to. But that didn't stick well. Saturday and Sunday were especially bad, as I completely Disregarded to track them. Ending with only Estimates which even then are bad. My Assumption is, the Reason YouTube withdrawal was so small the previous week, was most likely because of the amount of TV I was watching substituting it. I also still feel quite Unproductive. I still can not Motivate me to do some Project. There is most likely another Block in the way of doing those.

In good news, my Book arrived on Saturday, so I will at least have an Alternative to TV/YT when it comes to Entertainment.


<canvas id="watchtime" style="width: 70%;"></canvas>
<script>
const ctx = document.getElementById('watchtime');
      new Chart(ctx, {
            type: 'bar',
            data: {
                labels: ["Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday", "Thursday", "Friday", "Saturday", "Sunday"],
                datasets: [
                    {
                        label: "YouTube",
                        data: [0.31, 1.02, 0.48, 1.09, 0.46, 1.1, 0],
                    },
                    {
                        label: "Owned",
                        data: [0.38, 0.81, 0.8, 0.8, 2.8, 3, 3],
                    },
                    {
                        label: "Netflix",
                        data: [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1],
                    },
                ],
            },
            options: {
                color: "white",
                responsive: false,
                scales: {
                    x: {
                        stacked: true,
                    },
                    y: {
                        stacked: true
                    }
                }
            }
        });

    
  
</script>

YouTube Challenge - Week 1

crazyroostereye — Sun, 16 Feb 2025 22:00:00 GMT

YT-Challange - Week 1

So this week went pretty well. To the end of the Week it got harder, but that is unrelated to the Challenge. Most days went overall easy, but I also had an out of ordinarily Busy week. Which distracted me from YouTube. But every Day I at least once tried to access YouTube out of Habit which is terrifying that that is. Something I also noticed is the amount of TV I was Watching. For Next week I am definitely going to keep track of that. But I also got things done, that I have been putting of for a while, which was fairly nice. I also feel overall more Productive.


<canvas id="watchtime" style="width: 70%;"></canvas>
<script>
const ctx = document.getElementById('watchtime');
      new Chart(ctx, {
            type: 'bar',
            data: {
                labels: ["Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday", "Thursday", "Friday", "Saturday", "Sunday"],
                datasets: [{
                    label: "This Week",
                    data: [0.85, 1.25, 0.43, 0.28, 0.91, 0.64, 0.77],
                },
                {
                    label: "Last Week",
                    data: [11.84, 13.36, 16.32, 18.37, 14.88, 14.55, 6.06],
                }]
            },
            options: {
                responsive: false,
                color: "white",
                scales: {
                    x: {
                        stacked: false,

                    },
                    y: {
                        stacked: false
                    }
                }
            }
        });
  
</script>

The YouTube Challenge

crazyroostereye — Sun, 16 Feb 2025 21:00:00 GMT

The YouTube Challenge

So I got the Idea of this Challenge by SergioEduP, and he suggested trying it myself. While January is over and we are already a week into February I am doing it a week shorter, but my Goal is to see a Permeant Improvement anyway.

So, unlike Sergio, I decided to not got full on cold turkey on me, and still allow some YouTube. In particular a List of YouTubers I already Subscribed to via RSS. This list was initially Started with previous attempt to reduce my YouTube dependence that failed. But the RSS Feed remained and was continually maintained by me. But as Preemptive protection against falling into Algorithm Hell and just continue Watching, I am going to Block YouTube on my Browser, and only watch my Videos via my RSS Reader.

Why tho?

Similar how Sergio Described in his blog, please give him a read, I spent an eye watering amount of Time watching YouTube. So bad that my Muscle memory when opening a Browser is to type in youtube.com. This has begun to effect me in other segments of my Life.

My Attention Span is getting shorter
I am less Creative and Motivated to work on Projects
I am Socially less active Overall it is harming me Physically and Mentally. And this became especially apparent when I was compiling the Data of my Week before the Challenge. Where I collectively watched 95.38 hours over 493 Videos. And I can barely remember 5 of those.

This Graph is not 100% accurate, as Videos were Removed or weren't watch to completion


<canvas id="watchtime" style="width: 70%;"></canvas>
<script>
    const ctx = document.getElementById('watchtime');
    new Chart(ctx, {
          type: 'bar',
          data: {
              labels: ["Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday", "Thursday", "Friday", "Saturday", "Sunday"],
              datasets: [{
                  label: "hours",
                  data: [11.84, 13.36, 16.32, 18.37, 14.88, 14.55, 6.06],
                  yAxisID: "y"
              },
              {
                  label: "Videos",
                  data: [181, 49, 57, 87, 60, 47, 12],
                  type: "line",
                  yAxisID: "y1",
              }]
          },
          options: {
                responsive: false,
              interaction: {
                  mode: 'index',
                  intersect: false,
              },
              stacked: false,
              scales: {
                  y: {
                      type: 'linear',
                      display: true,
                      position: 'left',
                  },
                  y1: {
                      type: 'linear',
                      display: true,
                      position: 'right',

                      grid: {
                          drawOnChartArea: false,
                      },
                  },
              }
          },
      });  
</script>

Making of my Mail server!

crazyroostereye — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 22:00:00 GMT

Making of my Mail server!

Hello reader! As a head start before you start reading, I am a Not Native speaker of the English Language and therefor may make Spelling and Grammatical Errors, please keep that in mind. You can correct them if you feel like it on my GitLab Repo where this website resides on!

Why?

The first question obviously is why would I go to the effort of Setting up and managing my on Mail server? Well my reason are quite simple, I wanted to have control over my email. As service Providers can read your email, unless you PGP encryption with all your contacts. But furthermore I wanted control over the flow and security of my Email. As I want to see if someone logs on or even attempts it, and I want to experiment with Features email Server can provide like Plus addressing and Catch All.

The Software

The Software I use for my Mail server was Docker-Mailserver. A project that makes a Docker Image for a Mail server (duh), it builds upon the standard Linux tooling like Dovecot, Postfix, etc… and Containerizes it and ships it with their own management CLI tool. Which is also only a simplification to the standard tooling they incorporate. It is lightweight and easy to Deploy and Redeploy in case of moving it.

The Host

It wasn't Possible to host the Mail server in my Home lab, as it doesn't fit into my Safety scheme for it. Furthermore, I don't have Static IP address and Non-Commercial IP Addresses usually get flagged by the Bigger Mail providers anyway. So that rules out the Home lab completely.

So I took a look to Cloud Providers and chose my favorite one, Hetzner. They are German Based, this is where I am from, and I have good experiences with them.

So I choose them and rented a Shared CPU Machine with the Docker VM Image provided by Hetzner.

The Setup

The Setup was actually quite Straightforward, I copied they're docker-compose.yml and mailserver.yml and adjusted them. The other Adjustments I did was adding Roundcube to it and hooking it in to my caddy to so it uses its auto generated Certificates, which they luckily provide a how to in their docs for. The finally steps was adding it to my Monitoring, which I might Post in the Future about :), and adjusting the DNS.

Conclusion

I have had the Mail server running for the past few Days with no Issue. But I do notice the amount of people trying to log in into my Mail Server which luckily with the Power of Fail2Ban get blocked and Banned.

It was a Fun Project and would recommend it as a good Project to get to learn a bit more about mail and in particular about the Security Methods like DKIM.