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Thomas Pike’s other blog

Tales from a system administrator

Author: Thomas Pike

Combining WPML & ActivityPub

2025-01-142025-01-19 — Posted inActivityPub, Web technologies — 2 min read

Wouldn’t it be nice if ActivityPub and WPML could work together? With just a tiny bit of code, they can do just that.

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What happened to Vivaldi Social?

2023-07-282023-08-01 — Posted inSoftware, System Administration, Technology — 25 min read

On Saturday 8 July 2023, user accounts started disappearing from the Vivaldi Social Mastodon instance. What was going on, how did this happen, and what were the consequences?

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Updating the Vivaldi Themes website

2023-02-082023-02-09 — Posted inBrowser, CSS, Design, HTML, JavaScript, Technology, Web technologies — 4 min read

About a month ago, we started working on this little project, and as you can see, we launched the new UI today.

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Gmail has a spam problem

2022-12-292022-12-29 — Posted inSystem Administration, Technology — 3 min read

Or rather, the rest of us have a Gmail spam problem…

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Apostrophes and being wrong

2021-11-222021-11-22 — Posted inDesign, Typography — 2 min read

The problem with being opinionated about something is that it can be much harder to admit that you’re wrong.

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The impact of music

2021-09-022021-09-12 — Posted inGaming, HTML, Music — 3 min read

I added the original Atoms music to the Atoms-www game. It’s so much better now!

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What is truth?

2021-07-292023-02-09 — Posted inDatabases, Software, System Administration, Technology — 3 min read

Today a MariaDB database index corruption left me questioning reality itself.

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A noisy check: part two

2021-04-052021-04-19 — Posted inSoftware, System Administration — 15 min read

The check was noisy, but it was producing useful graphs, and though I could have disabled the alerts, they were a handy reminder that “you should really look into fixing that when you get the chance”. And so they stayed… for 3 months.

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A noisy check: part one

2021-04-012021-04-05 — Posted inSoftware, System Administration — 9 min read

This story begins from me wanting to be a good little sysadmin and make sure all our services are properly monitored…

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Adventures with MTA-STS

2020-11-222020-11-23 — Posted inSoftware, System Administration — 11 min read

As I am not a normal person, I run my own mail servers. These servers handle email for a couple of domains and are used by myself and a couple of family members. Here’s a look into an investigation of an unusual mail delivery problem.

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Let’s Encrypt + Salt: cert+key distribution

2020-10-252024-02-08 — Posted inConfiguration Management, Software, System Administration — 10 min read

Looking at how to use Salt to distribute certbot-generated SSL certificates and keys securely to the appropriate servers.

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About me

Thomas is a UK citizen living as an immigrant in Norway. He works as a System Administrator and Backend Developer for Vivaldi Technologies. When not working, he indulges in his hobbies of gaming (video/table-top/role-playing), singing (opera), cycling in the Norwegian countryside, writing about himself in the third person, and more sysadmin/web-dev stuff.

Recent Posts

  • Combining WPML & ActivityPub

    2025-01-14

  • What happened to Vivaldi Social?

    2023-07-28

  • Updating the Vivaldi Themes website

    2023-02-08

  • Gmail has a spam problem

    2022-12-29

  • Apostrophes and being wrong

    2021-11-22

Recent Comments

  • 4kai on Updating the Vivaldi Themes website
  • 4kai on Apostrophes and being wrong
  • 4kai on Gmail has a spam problem
  • dyne on Gmail has a spam problem
  • greybeard on What happened to Vivaldi Social?

Categories

  • ActivityPub (1)
  • Browser (1)
  • Configuration Management (1)
  • CSS (2)
  • Databases (1)
  • Design (3)
  • Gaming (2)
  • HTML (3)
  • JavaScript (2)
  • Music (1)
  • Software (7)
  • System Administration (7)
  • Technology (4)
  • Typography (1)
  • Web technologies (4)
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