If you own a domain, perhaps your DNS host provides mail services. When I registered JimDeibele.com, I picked Netlify’s domain server and it doesn’t provide mail service. I wanted to put blog@jimdeibele.com on here so I could be contacted without having to reveal my preferred email address. A year from now, maybe I want to switch to blog2@jimdeibele.com because there’s so much spam going to the first email address. Improvmx provides a service where you can control mail for a domain. On the free plan, you can have up to 10 aliases, meaning “blog@yourdomain”, “help@yourdomain”, “bigboss@yourdomain” and so on. There’s also a catch-all option, written as “*”. That means that anything that doesn’t match an alias will be sent to the catch-all address. ...
First issue of the Teleport Times - February 1995
Teleport was one of the first Internet Service Providers (ISP) in the US. It got its start in a technical bookstore. Back then, almost everything was done with modems over ordinary phone lines, usually entirely copper wires. There wasn’t an internet then, just Usenet. The bookstore struggled but there was growing interest in Usenet. I closed the bookstore and moved the Usenet access business to a downtown office building. Why? Well, having access to phone lines was easier with US West in a central business district than GTE in a suburb. Also, the business didn’t need customer parking. ...
Using Atom with Markdown Writer for Hugo
I want a markdown editor that works with images. I stopped blogging because I found the process of adding images to each post so time-consuming. So I’ve been trying different things. There are a lot of markdown editors but very few of them handles images at all. I finally ran across a reference to Hugo support for Atom. There are a few Hugo-specific packages (what Atom calls its plug-ins) but they’re not very well documented, not being developed, etc. ...
Killer Soduku Math Error
So my daughter Charlotte introduced me to Killer Soduku, an IOS app that makes it a little easier to solve soduku problems by giving you hints on what certain boxes should add up to. The other day I was sure I knew what most go in a box but Soduku gave me a red square indicating that 9 was not the right answer. I went on to solve the puzzle except for that square. As you can see, Killer Soduku says the last digit left to be used (on the lower right) should be 8. But 4+2+9+7 = 22. If the total is 31, the answer must be 9, not 8. ...
Apple Photos - Please Give Me a Clue When Asking Me to Confirm Person!
I get the feeling that people at Apple didn’t have siblings. Or they only have 1 child. Below is a picture of my daughter. But it looks a lot like her younger brother when he was the same age. A dad told me that kids would turn out to be very different and I’ve found that to be true for my kids. But there are ages where they looked very much alike! ...
Treehouse for Fairies or Squirrels
Saw this while walking the dog today. I don’t normally walk on this side of the street and had never noticed it before. I hope somebody had fun making it. PS: I need to figure out how to get Hugo to make thumbnails. But this was taken with the iPhone 11 I have in my pocket. Man, it takes amazing pictures. Tree House for Fairies. Or Squirrels. North side. ...
Covid for the Holidays
Our family is carefully planning the holidays. For my wife’s birthday we went and saw her parents. They stayed in the dining room near the gas fireplace while we stayed near the open patio door. Masks were worn except for eating and drinking. For Thanksgiving, we’re planning on hosting one brother and his two kids. Outside, with a heater attached to a propane tank. Maybe two. And, for Christmas, maybe it’s all via Zoom. That’s not traditional or even fun but if it keeps people alive, well, it’s worth it. ...
Watching the Covid 19 Rt Rate in Oregon Climb Again 3rd Wave
Rt.live shows the Effective Reproduction Rate, or Rt, for the whole US and specific states. The rate for Oregon started high, came down, went up a little, came down, and is now going up. What’s really scary is My oldest is doing her freshman year of college online at home. My other two are doing their high school classes 100% online, including Intro to Industrial Arts for one and Band for the other. With the onset of bad weather, it’s been weeks since we had somebody over since we can’t socially distance in the house. ...
How to Automatically Keep Your Python Packages Up to Date With pip-review
One way to install packages is via Pip. pip install django Pip will install not only the program you want but anything else it depends on. Further, you can use pip to upgrade a program and its dependencies. pip install --upgrade django I’d set up a cron job that would do this: pip install --upgrade django requests pytz certifi httplib2 Eventually I added a second and third line. But there’s a better way: use pip-review ...
How to Use Google Voice and a $50 Obihai VOIP Adapter for Free Landline Phone Service
TLDR: replace your landline with a one-time $50 purchase and $20 to Google. 10 or so years ago, we disconnected our landline. Our local company had been Pacific Northwest Bell, then Qwest, and finally CenturyLink. The service got worse - noise on the line, sometimes voices of other people, etc. - and it always got more expensive. Caller ID started at $5/month but it went up from there. We were paying about $30/month for relatively basic service when we stopped. ...