january 2023
hola
Being sick
I was sick for the last week of January. Nothing serious, just a head cold that left my nose stuffed up and gave me the occasional headache.
It's ironic because I've spent the past month focused on nose breathing. I talked about it for like 25% of last month’s newsletter.
I can’t help but think I've somehow caused myself to get sick? Like since more air is coming in through my nose I accidentally sucked up a virus? A virus that is particularly potent through the nose?
This bout of sickness has also convinced me that Burt’s Bees lip balm is purposefully meant to dry out your lips. I remember this being a John Mulaney take. My lips feel dry and cracked and terrible a few minutes after each use. It perpetuates a vicious cycle.
Home network setup
I spent some time this month trying to setup my Raspberry Pi on our home network. Specifically, I bought this router in order to manually configure a primary DNS server (something that the router/modem Shaw gave us does not let you do 😡).
In semi-chronological order, I
setup a DNS server with Adguard on the pi
setup nginx on the pi
setup custom DNS rewrites (like kahvi.server.com) on Adguard
pointed nginx to the DNS rewrites
All this means is that if you try and go to kahvi.server.com on the normal internet, you’ll get something like this:
But if you come over and connect to our home network, you’ll see this when you go to kahvi.server.com:
It only exists on our local network! It’s like our apartment’s secret little website.
But wait, what is that ugly looking website anyways?
It’s a fileserver for pretty much every (digital) book I have. So you can browse and download at your leisure. A home library of sorts. Except a lot uglier and with no paper.
Normal People
I was enamoured with the show Normal People for a while this month. Partly because of my infatuation with the Irish language and culture in general. Their’s is my favourite accent.
I also enjoyed the show because of Marianne and Connel’s relationship (obviously).
Despite the show’s attempts to convince you otherwise, you get the message pretty quickly that the two are soulmates. And as a viewer, you draw comfort from that certainty; it makes watching the show much easier since the conclusion seems inevitable.
It’s also misleading because infallible, 100% certainty rarely exists in real life or relationships. But it’s a pleasant form of escapism, despite some of the more serious subject matter (depression, abuse, etc).
Additionally the sex scenes are really well done. I haven’t seen anything like it before. Having an intimacy coordinator on set and intricate choreography really paid off. To quote the Vulture article:
Normal People has managed to do the seemingly impossible: convey good sex as it actually happens in real life, not good sex as it happens onscreen.
Links
this cool game
this helpful decision flow diagram (thanks wealthsimple)
More substack content!
These are some newsletters I’ve been reading this month:
Sometimes, in a quizzical tone, I ask myself why I have made my life so weird by moving here when I have plenty of deep, cozy relationships somewhere else. But then when I talk to the people who I’ve already known forever, I’m reminded why the pursuit and building of friendships is worthwhile.
Above all, my advice with complicated emotions like this is to give them time to develop and clarify before you apply a narrative…Not to make an impossibly firm decision based on murky fears, but to observe them without judgment, or jumping to solutions, no matter how tempting.
This week I have witnessed a classic case of a celebrity home tour, an apartment that has unsettled my spirit. The home of David Harbour (no opinion) and Lily Allen (ahem and ahem) is dark energy manifested.
See you next month
Kahvi