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Installing OpenBSD on Linveo KVM VPS 2024-10-21 I recently came across an amazing deal for a VPS on Linveo. For just $15 a year they provide: AMD KVM 1GB 1024 MB RAM 1 CPU Core 25 GB NVMe SSD 2000 GB Bandwidth It’s a pretty great deal and I suggest you look more into it if you’re interested! But this post is more focused on setting up OpenBSD via the custom ISO option in the KVM dashboard. Linveo already provides several Linux OS options, along with FreeBSD by default (which is great!). Since there is no OpenBSD template we need to do things manually. Getting Started Once you have your initial VPS up and running, login to the main dashboard and navigate to the Media tab. Under CD/DVD-ROM you’ll want to click “Custom CD/DVD” and enter the direct link to the install76.iso: https://cdn.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/7.6/amd64/install76.iso The "Media" tab of the Linveo Dashboard. Use the official ISO link and set the Boot Order to CD/DVD. Select “Insert”, then set your Boot Order to CD/DVD and click “Apply”. Once complete, Restart your server. Installing via VNC With the server rebooting, jump over to Options and click on “Browser VNC” to launch the web-based VNC client. From here we will boot into the OpenBSD installer and get things going! Follow the installer as you normally would when installing OpenBSD (if you’re unsure, I have a step-by-step walkthrough) until you reach the IPv4 selection. At this point you will want to input your servers IPv4 and IPv6 IPs found under your Network section of your dashboard. Next you will want to set the IPv6 route to first default listed option (not “none”). After that is complete, choose cd0 for your install media (don’t worry about http yet). Continue with the rest of the install (make users if desired, etc) until it tells you to reboot the machine. Go back to the Linveo Dashboard, switch your Boot Order back to “Harddrive” and reboot the machine directly. Booting into OpenBSD Load into the VNC client again. If you did everything correctly you should be greeted with the OpenBSD login prompt. There are a few tweaks we still need to make, so login as the root user. Remember how we installed our sets directly from the cd0? We’ll want to change that. Since we are running OpenBSD “virtually” through KVM, our target network interface will be vio0. Edit the /etc/hostname.vio0 file and add the following: dhcp !route add default <your_gateway_ip> The <your_gateway_ip> can be found under the Network tab of your dashboard. The next file we need to tweak is /etc/resolv.conf. Add the following to it: nameserver 8.8.8.8 nameserver 1.1.1.1 These nameservers are based on your selected IPs under the Resolvers section of Network in the Linveo dashboard. Change these as you see fit, so long as they match what you place in the resolve.conf file. Finally, the last file we need to edit is /etc/pf.conf. Like the others, add the following: pass out proto { tcp, udp } from any to any port 53 Final Stretch Now just reboot the server. Log back in as your desired user and everything should be working as expected! You can perform a simple test to check: ping openbsd.org This should work - meaning your network is up and running! Now you’re free to enjoy the beauty that is OpenBSD.
Vertical Tabs in Safari 2024-09-26 I use Firefox as my main browser (specifically the Nightly build) which has vertical tabs built-in. There are instances where I need to use Safari, such as debugging or testing iOS devices, and in those instances I prefer to have a similar experience to that of Firefox. Luckily, Apple has finally made it fairly straight forward to do so. Click the Sidebar icon in the top left of the Safari browser Right click and group your current tab(s) (I normally name mine something uninspired like “My Tabs” or simply “Tabs”) For an extra “clean look”, remove the horizontal tabs by right clicking the top bar, selected Customize Toolbar and dragging the tabs out When everything is set properly, you’ll have something that looks like this: One minor drawback is not having access to a direct URL input, since we have removed the horizontal tab bar altogether. Using a set of curated bookmarks could help avoid the need for direct input, along with setting our new tab page to DuckDuckGo or any other search engine.
Burning & Playing PS2 Games without a Modded Console 2024-09-02 Important: I do not support pirating or obtaining illegal copies of video games. This process should only be used to copy your existing PS2 games for backup, in case of accidental damage to the original disc. Requirements Note: This tutorial is tailored towards macOS users, but most things should work similar on Windows or Linux. You will need: An official PS2 game disc (the one you wish to copy) A PS2 Slim console An Apple device with a optical DVD drive (or a portable USB DVD drive) Some time and a coffee! (or tea) Create an ISO Image of Your PS2 Disc: Insert your PS2 disc into your optical drive. Open Disk Utility (Applications > Utilities) In Disk Utility, select your PS2 disc from the sidebar Click on the File menu, then select New Image > Image from [Disc Name] Choose a destination to save the ISO file and select the format as DVD/CD Master Name your file and click Save. Disk Utility will create a .cdr file, which is essentially an ISO file Before we move on, we will need to convert that newly created cdr file into ISO. Navigate to the directory where the .cdr file is located and use the hdiutil command to convert the .cdr file to an ISO file: hdiutil convert yourfile.cdr -format UDTO -o yourfile.iso You’ll end up with a file named yourfile.iso.cdr. Rename it by removing the .cdr extension to make it an .iso file: mv yourfile.iso.cdr yourfile.iso Done and done. Getting Started For Mac and Linux users, you will need to install Wine in order to run the patcher: # macOS brew install wine-stable # Linux (Debian) apt install wine Clone & Run the Patcher Clone the FreeDVDBoot ESR Patcher: git clone https://git.sr.ht/~bt/fdvdb-esr Navigate to the cloned project folder: cd /path/to/fdvdb-esr The run the executable: wine FDVDB_ESR_Patcher.exe Now you need to select your previously cloned ISO file, use the default Payload setting and then click Patch!. After a few seconds your file should be patched. Burning Our ISO to DVD It’s time for the main event! Insert a blank DVD-R into your disc drive and mount it. Then right click on your patched ISO file and run “Burn Disk Image to Disc...". From here, you want to make sure you select the slowest write speed and enable verification. Once the file is written to the disc and verified (verification might fail - it is safe to ignore) you can remove the disc from the drive. Before Playing the Game Make sure you change the PS2 disc speed from Standard to Fast in the main “Browser” setting before you put the game into your console. After that, enjoy playing your cloned PS2 game!
“This Key is Useless Now. Discard?” 2024-08-28 The title of this article probably triggers nostalgic memories for old school Resident Evil veterans like myself. My personal favourite in the series (not that anyone asked) was the original, 1998 version of Resident Evil 2 (RE2). I believe that game stands the test of time and is very close to a masterpiece. The recent remake lost a lot of the charm and nuance that made the original so great, which is why I consistently fire up the PS1 version on my PS2 Slim. Resident Evil 2 (PS1) running on my PS2, hooked up to my Toshiba CRT TV. But the point of this post isn’t to gush over RE2. Instead I would like to discuss how well RE2 handled its interface and user experience across multiple in-game systems. HUD? What HUD? Just like the first Resident Evil that came before it, RE2 has no in-game HUD (heads-up display) to speak of. It’s just your playable character and the environment. No ammo-counters. No health bars. No “quest” markers. Nothing. This is how the game looks while you play. Zero HUD elements. The game does provide you with an inventory system, which holds your core items, weapons and notes you find along your journey. Opening up this sub-menu allows you to heal, reload weapons, combine objects or puzzle items, or read through previously collected documents. Not only is this more immersive (HUDs don’t exist for us in the real world, we need to look through our packs as well…) it also gets out of the way. The main inventory screen. Shows everything you need to know, only when you need it. (I can hear this screenshot...) I don’t need a visual element in the bottom corner showing me a list of “items” I can cycle through. I don’t want an ammo counter cluttering up my screen with information I only need to see in combat or while manually reloading. If those are pieces of information I need, I’ll explicitly open and look for it. Don’t make assumptions about what is important to me on screen. Capcom took this concept of less visual clutter even further in regards to maps and the character health status. Where We’re Going, We Don’t Need Roads Mini-Maps A great deal of newer games come pre-packaged with a mini-map on the main interface. In certain instances this works just fine, but most are 100% UI clutter. Something to add to the screen. I can only assume some devs believe it is “helpful”. Most times it’s simply a distraction. Thank goodness most games allow you to disable them. As for RE2, you collect maps throughout your adventure and, just like most other systems in the game, you need to consciously open the map menu to view them. You know, just like in real life. This creates a higher tension as well, since you need to constantly reference your map (on initial playthroughs) to figure out where the heck to go. You feel the pressure of someone frantically pulling out a physical map and scanning their surroundings. It also helps the player build a mental model in their head, thus providing even more of that sweet, sweet immersion. The map of the Raccoon City Police Station. No Pain, No Gain The game doesn’t display any health bar or player status information. In order to view your current status (symbolized by “Fine”, “Caution” or “Danger”) you need to open your inventory screen. From here you can heal yourself (if needed) and see the status type change in real-time. The "condition" health status. This is fine. But that isn’t the only way to visually see your current status. Here’s a scenario: you’re traveling down a hallway, turn a corner and run right into the arms of a zombie. She takes a couple good bites out of your neck before you push her aside. You unload some handgun rounds into her and down she goes. As you run over her body she reaches out and chomps on your leg as a final “goodbye”. You break free and move along but notice something different in your character’s movement - they’re holding their stomach and limping. Here we can see the character "Hunk" holding his stomach and limping, indicating an injury without the need for a custom HUD element. If this was your first time playing, most players would instinctively open the inventory menu, where their characters health is displayed, and (in this instance) be greeted with a “Caution” status. This is another example of subtle UX design. I don’t need to know the health status of my character until an action is required (in this example: healing). The health system is out of the way but not hidden. This keeps the focus on immersion, not baby-sitting the game’s interface. A Key to Every Lock Hey! This section is in reference to the title of the article. We made it! …But yes, discarding keys in RE2 is a subtle example of fantastic user experience. As a player, I know for certain this key is no longer needed. I can safely discard it and free up precious space from my inventory. There is also a sense of accomplishment, a feeling of “I’ve completed a task” or an internal checkbox being ticked. Progress has been made! Don’t overlook how powerful of a interaction this little text prompt is. Ask any veteran of the series and they will tell you this prompt is almost euphoric. The game's prompt asking if you'd like to discard a useless key. Perfection. Inspiring Greatness RE2 is certainly not the first or last game to implement these “minimal” game systems. A more “modern” example is Dead Space (DS), along with its very faithful remake. In DS the character’s health is displayed directly on the character model itself, and a similar inventory screen is used to manage items. An ammo-counter is visible but only when the player aims their weapon. Pretty great stuff and another masterpiece of survival horror. In Dead Space, the character's health bar is set as part of their spacesuit. The Point I guess my main takeaway is that designers and developers should try their best to keep user experience intuitive. I know that sounds extremely generic but it is a lot more complex than one might think. Try to be as direct as possible while remaining subtle. It’s a delicate balance but experiences like RE2 show us it is attainable. I’d love to talk more, but I have another play-through of RE2 to complete…
More in programming
Here’s Jony Ive talking to Patrick Collison about measurement and numbers: People generally want to talk about product attributes that you can measure easily with a number…schedule, costs, speed, weight, anything where you can generally agree that six is a bigger number than two He says he used to get mad at how often people around him focused on the numbers of the work over other attributes of the work. But after giving it more thought, he now has a more generous interpretation of why we do this: because we want relate to each other, understand each other, and be inclusive of one another. There are many things we can’t agree on, but it’s likely we can agree that six is bigger than two. And so in this capacity, numbers become a tool for communicating with each other, albeit a kind of least common denominator — e.g. “I don’t agree with you at all, but I can’t argue that 134 is bigger than 87.” This is conducive to a culture where we spend all our time talking about attributes we can easily measure (because then we can easily communicate and work together) and results in a belief that the only things that matter are those which can be measured. People will give lip service to that not being the case, e.g. “We know there are things that can’t be measured that are important.” But the reality ends up being: only that which can be assigned a number gets managed, and that which gets managed is imbued with importance because it is allotted our time, attention, and care. This reminds me of the story of the judgement of King Solomon, an archetypal story found in cultures around the world. Here’s the story as summarized on Wikipedia: Solomon ruled between two women who both claimed to be the mother of a child. Solomon ordered the baby be cut in half, with each woman to receive one half. The first woman accepted the compromise as fair, but the second begged Solomon to give the baby to her rival, preferring the baby to live, even without her. Solomon ordered the baby given to the second woman, as her love was selfless, as opposed to the first woman's selfish disregard for the baby's actual well-being In an attempt to resolve the friction between two individuals, an appeal was made to numbers as an arbiter. We can’t agree on who the mother is, so let’s make it a numbers problem. Reduce the baby to a number and we can agree! But that doesn’t work very well, does it? I think there is a level of existence where measurement and numbers are a sound guide, where two and two make four and two halves make a whole. But, as humans, there is another level of existence where mathematical propositions don’t translate. A baby is not a quantity. A baby is an entity. Take a whole baby and divide it up by a sword and you do not half two halves of a baby. I am not a number. I’m an individual. Indivisible. What does this all have to do with software? Software is for us as humans, as individuals, and because of that I believe there is an aspect of its nature where metrics can’t take you.cIn fact, not only will numbers not guide you, they may actually misguide you. I think Robin Rendle articulated this well in his piece “Trust the vibes”: [numbers] are not representative of human experience or human behavior and can’t tell you anything about beauty or harmony or how to be funny or what to do next and then how to do it. Wisdom is knowing when to use numbers and when to use something else. Email · Mastodon · Bluesky
When I drive the 24 Hours of Le Mans, I spend a total of about 6-9 hours in the car, divided into stints of roughly two hours at a time. It's intense. But talking with Lex Fridman in Austin on his podcast? Over six hours straight! We only interrupted the session for five minutes total to take three bathroom breaks. All that endurance training has clearly paid off! But the magic of a good conversation, like the magic of driving at Le Mans, is that time flies by. Those six hours felt more like sixty minutes. This is what flow does: it compresses the moment. Besides, we had plenty to talk about. Lex prepares like no other podcast I've ever been on. Pages and pages of notes. Deep questions, endless attention for tangents. We covered the beauty of Ruby for half an hour alone! But also the future of AI, small teams, why we left the cloud, Elon Musk, fatherhood, money and happiness, and a million other topics (which Lex mercifully timestamps, so listeners without six hours to spare can hop around). It was a privilege to appear. If you're interested, the conversation is on YouTube, on Spotify, on X, and as a regular podcast.
Exploring diagram.website, I came across The Computer is a Feeling by Tim Hwang and Omar Rizwan: the modern internet exerts a tyranny over our imagination. The internet and its commercial power has sculpted the computer-device. It's become the terrain of flat, uniform, common platforms and protocols, not eccentric, local, idiosyncratic ones. Before computers were connected together, they were primarily personal. Once connected, they became primarily social. The purpose of the computer shifted to become social over personal. The triumph of the internet has also impoverished our sense of computers as a tool for private exploration rather than public expression. The pre-network computer has no utility except as a kind of personal notebook, the post-network computer demotes this to a secondary purpose. Smartphones are indisputably the personal computer. And yet, while being so intimately personal, they’re also the largest distribution of behavior-modification devices the world has ever seen. We all willing carry around in our pockets a device whose content is largely designed to modify our behavior and extract our time and money. Making “computer” mean computer-feelings and not computer-devices shifts the boundaries of what is captured by the word. It removes a great many things – smartphones, language models, “social” “media” – from the domain of the computational. It also welcomes a great many things – notebooks, papercraft, diary, kitchen – back into the domain of the computational. I love the feeling of a personal computer, one whose purpose primarily resides in the domain of the individual and secondarily supports the social. It’s part of what I love about the some of the ideas embedded in local-first, which start from the principle of owning and prioritizing what you do on your computer first and foremost, and then secondarily syncing that to other computers for the use of others. Email · Mastodon · Bluesky
