Alrighty, the site is up, it has TLS certificates, the all URL’s function (this was a nightmare because I am a goober).
What have I been doing?
It was recently my birthday, which is pretty close to Christmas (hint, I share a birthday with one of the great Anime Directors of our time), so I bought myself some neat lil gadgets.
Gadgets
Nook Glowlight 4 Plus
A neat little e-reader, I bought mine on a whim while at Barnes and Noble. It’s about $150, not super cheap but I like the form factor. I’d like it a lot better if I could hold the entire thing in a single hand, like the regular Glowlight, but oh well.
I heard good things from them in jvscholz’ video about it, and figured if he could make it work so could I.
I brought it home, tried to enable USB debugging, and was sorely disappointed that none of the passwords online worked. So then I put on my Technician’s cap and started guessing. The previous passwords (which I got from this post on reddit were similar to the device’s actual name in the file system, so I just tried “NOOK-BNRV-1300”, and that got me through. I am a developer’s worst nightmare.
I was able to get ReLauncherX and KoReader installed, download a bunch of (100% legal) CBZ’s onto it and bam, I was in business.
Thinkpad X390
My old Thinkpad was a W510, which was an absolute beast of a machine (in the year 1998). Currently she’s underpowered and heavy as sin, so I decided to replace her with something a little more lightweight. Suffice to say, the X390 is a pound for pound beast in comparison, and I’m really happy. I set up this Website and wrote this post 100% on the X390, and so far no issues.
I installed Artix Linux with the regular Cinnamon installer. Initially I was gonna be a big dawg and try to install the entire thing from scratch, but I couldn’t get the Wi-Fi card correctly setup at around 0200 in the morning, so I just called it quits and went back to Ol’ Reliable.
No complaints so far, I’m able to run pretty much everything here, it’s got a massive NVMe drive, so I should be able to download 100% legal content to my heart’s content.
Lifting and Running
Currently, I’m out of shape. 2024 was rough, but that’s no excuse for 2025.
Currently the regiment is Running and Calisthenics. My thoughts on this are very influenced by Mythical Strength’s. My body is at a point now that if I went back to lifting like I used to, I’d be uncoordinated, unconditioned, and unable to finish the workouts.
Here’s my basic framework for the training cycle:
Run: We’re starting off at square zero here, so it’s a single mile is the benchmark. I’m a big fan of Low Intensity / High Distance running, and it kind of sucks that my ‘High Distance’ is now a single mile when I used to be able to run 6 in 54 minutes, but oh well.
Lifting: It’s all hinging on burpees and pullups. Picking yourself up off the ground quickly is probably the most useful and metabolically demanding activity there is. Pullups are similarly useful, and they encourage a good looking physique.
Currently, a week might look like:
| Mon | Tue | Wed | Thur | Fri | Sat | Sun | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Running | 1 mile | Rest | 1 mile | Rest | mile | Rest | Rest |
| Lifting | Tabata Burpees -> Pullups for Time | Tabata Burpees -> Pullups for Time | Tabata Burpees -> Pullups for Time | Tabata Burpees -> Pullups for Time | Tabata Burpees -> Pullups for Time | Tabata Burpees -> Pullups for Time | Tabata Burpees -> Pullups for Time |
The Idea is that I start to slowly crank my mileage up over time and then I’ll be able to transition into daily long runs.
The Website!
I used Luke Smith’s Hugo guide on how to build this thing out on a local machine. It’s a really neat piece of software, it allows you to build static HTML based websites with minimal Javascript. It does this through taking user-written Markdown documents and layouts to build the actual HTML pages. This is all done through command line with a Hugo server perpetually checking for edits to documents and rendering them onto a localhost port. Once I had it built out correctly, I used the setup for nginx on Luke Smith’s landchad guide on how to get a server on the cloud from Vultr set up, copied the Hugo website directory over onto the cloud instance and everything worked without issue.
So far, it looks like I should be able to take this file, scp it onto the Vultr server, and add it to the blog content directory. Not bad for a guy who failed Pre-Cal in High School!
Closing Thoughts
Like I said, 2024 was rough, I’ve been in a bad place for a very long time. I’m done with that and just want to get on with life. Big things, big moves, and big changes happening this year, come hell or high water. I hope everyone who reads this has a good 2025, I know I’m going to!
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