A Solitary Cabin

Cyberdeck Test

Grueproof — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 05:08:00 -0500

I'm out early this morning. I hit the gym for a short workout and am now at the Starbucks in Richmond, IN, testing my cyberdeck post-upgrade.

It works. The power from an Anker power bank is enough to run the Raspberry Pi 500, the cyberdeck bonnet, and the screen I …

The House To Myself

Grueproof — Sun, 12 Oct 2025 10:12:00 -0400

It's been a quiet weekend in the house. My wife has gone to Columbus, OH, for a bachelorette weekend for a friend, and the cats and I have been holding down the fort.

It's nice to have a little time to myself. For whatever reason, I get a lot more …

Guiding Principles of Resistance Under Repression

Grueproof — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 16:26:00 -0400

My kid is having a tough time with the current political climate and asked how to handle it. This was all I could tell them.

Understand that power isn’t monolithic Even the most oppressive regimes rely on obedience, legitimacy, and cooperation from many layers of society. Identifying and exploiting …

Avowed: First Impressions from a Familiar but Stranger World

Grueproof — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 07:11:00 -0400

I picked up Avowed this week, and it feels less like trying a new game and more like walking into a house I used to visit all the time. The furniture has been moved around, the wallpaper has changed, but it still smells like the same place. That is the …

Deepening Into Fall

Grueproof — Sat, 30 Aug 2025 09:57:00 -0400

The days have been mostly quiet. The worst of the heat is behind us, and I’m looking forward to fall. Friday brought my first pumpkin coffee of the season. Not the sugar-heavy PSL, but my own version: coffee with cream and a single shot of pumpkin flavor. Just enough …

June...What Happened to June?

Grueproof — Thu, 03 Jul 2025 10:59:00 -0400

I've owed you all a post for a while, and I have some time to put pen to paper, so here we are.

June was a whirlwind. The month started with a trip northward to attend my in-laws' 50th wedding anniversary. This, I have to say, was lovely. They had …

Rehab Day 12 - Home

Grueproof — Thu, 15 May 2025 18:28:00 -0400

Days twelve through fourteen were a drag.

Nothing wrong with the place, the food, or the PT, or anything like that. I had simply plateaued in my recovery and was ready to go home. All we were waiting on was for the insurance to give me the go-ahead to leave …

Rehab Days 6-11

Grueproof — Sat, 10 May 2025 12:37:00 -0400

It's been a busy week in rehab, my friends.

Each day, I've gotten better. The progress has surprised me, if I'm being honest. A week ago, I couldn't walk three feet with the walker. On Monday, I couldn't get around the building without a wheelchair. By Thursday, I was able …

Rehab Days 4-5

Grueproof — Mon, 05 May 2025 18:28:00 -0400

Day 4

Sunday was lovely. My wife, Cat, and one of my best friends, Rob, came by for the Mother's Day brunch at the nursing home. It was perfect because not only was Sunday not Mother's Day, but I am not a mother. So, we basically had a lovely brunch …

Rehab Day 3

Grueproof — Sat, 03 May 2025 17:33:00 -0400

I was up early today. I didn't sleep well—one of the patients was having a rough night, which resulted in a lot of wailing. I'm not sure what was happening, but I hope she is doing better today.

I went exploring a bit today. Took the wheelchair out and …

Rehab Day 2

Grueproof — Fri, 02 May 2025 17:02:00 -0400

A quieter day today.

Two things:

Group PT Therapy, which consisted of movement with light weights from a seated position. The high point here was that I was seated next to Helen, who turned 100 years old a week ago and was sharp as a tack.
Happy Hour, where I …

Rehab Day 1

Grueproof — Thu, 01 May 2025 17:00:00 -0400

The first day of rehab is action-packed, as days in nursing homes go.

It was mostly a day of introductions: the staff, my nurse, the nurse practitioner, the physical therapist, the occupational therapist, the admin staff, and the aides who help me out. It's quite a group, and I am …

Contempt for the Ill

Grueproof — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 05:48:00 -0400

I'm starting day six at the hospital. While the majority of people I've worked with here have been great, there have been a few encounters that have left me with a bad taste in my mouth.

The common thread in all of them is a level of contempt for the …

Hospital Part Deux

Grueproof — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 16:13:00 -0400

Last Friday, I went back to the hospital.

I was doing okay, or so I thought, after I got out on Tuesday. On Wednesday, I went out, ran an errand, and generally had an okay day except for taking a small spill when my left leg refused to hold my …

Drakken's Tale - Chapter Two: The Bonewell

Grueproof — Sat, 19 Apr 2025 20:00:00 -0400

The codex lay open on Mattick’s table, its stone pages still smudged with ash and meltwater. The runes no longer shimmered — but the air around them seemed brittle, like it might crack if one spoke too loudly.

Mattick traced a line of script with a gnarled finger, murmuring words …

Hospital Stay and Beyond

Grueproof — Sat, 19 Apr 2025 11:09:00 -0400

How It Began

Two weeks ago, I mowed my lawn.

Normally, this wouldn’t be much of an occurrence, but I’m getting older and I have back, hip, and knee issues. I did... something... and pulled some muscles in my back. The next morning, I felt a little tweak …

Drakken's Tale - Chapter One: The Ember Path

Grueproof — Fri, 18 Apr 2025 03:00:00 -0400

Ashes and Echoes

The smoke in Mattick's longhouse clung low, a bitter incense crawling like forgotten ghosts through the skeletal beams of the rafters. It carried with it the scent of tallow, pine resin, and long-dead conversations. The hearth sulked in the center of the room, emitting a flame as …

Drakken's Tale: Prologue

Grueproof — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 11:00:00 -0400

What follows is the beginning of a fictionalization of my new game of Ironsworn.

The Ironlands are not young.

They are merely the last to die.

When the Old World tore itself asunder in fire and madness, our ancestors crossed the black water with iron in hand and sorrow in …

Cul-De-Sac

Grueproof — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 12:45:00 -0400

cul-de-sac (n): a street or passage closed at one end, a blind alley

It is 1977, and I am six years old. My mother plays guitar for the weekly prayer meeting at our church. I listen to new hymns that came out of the Jesus revolution earlier in the decade …

Why A Solitary Cabin?

Grueproof — Sat, 22 Mar 2025 09:27:00 -0400

I use internal metaphors to develop strategies on how to approach plans and accomplish things. One metaphor I've long used is the solitary cabin. The image of a solitary cabin comes from my long-term vision of how I want to interact with the world, especially in terms of social connections …

Veilid and Tor

Grueproof — Thu, 20 Feb 2025 09:30:00 -0500

I'm been following the Veilid project since their announcement at DefCon in 2023. I've been excited by the possiblities and the technology. A quote from The Register nails it:

"The idea being here that apps – mobile, desktop, web, and headless – can find and talk to each other across the internet …

Blur and Fade CSS for Owncast Chat Overlays in OBS

Grueproof — Sun, 09 Feb 2025 18:30:00 -0500

I was playing around this weekend on improving the way the chat overlay looks on my Owncast stream. Folks like Ozone were a big help in getting me started, then I took it and ran with it. Special thanks to Ety who helped me test.

The CSS below should be …

Groundhog Day

Grueproof — Sun, 02 Feb 2025 13:00:00 -0500

Good morning and happy Groundhog Day to those who celebrate. For those playing from home, the groundhog saw its shadow forecasting six more weeks of winter, which more or less lines up with a little thing we call the Spring Equinox, so that seems legit.

On Being Informed

Like many …

Combating the Weltschmerz

Grueproof — Tue, 14 Jan 2025 20:00:00 -0500

"Weltschmerz (German: [ˈvɛltʃmɛɐ̯ts]; literally "world-pain") is a literary concept describing the feeling experienced by an individual who believes that reality can never satisfy the expectations of the mind, resulting in 'a mood of weariness or sadness about life arising from the acute awareness of evil and suffering.'" — Wikipedia

To …

2024 Tech Roundup

Grueproof — Mon, 30 Dec 2024 07:00:00 -0500

During this holiday break I've been doing a lot of personal tech work. I upgraded and made some tweaks to my Owncast streaming server, started up a Peertube instance to host my gaming videos, and also put a copy of Firefly III on my home server for my finances. I …

Unquiet Desperation

Grueproof — Wed, 20 Nov 2024 07:00:00 -0500

Back in late 2005, I was miserable at my job and feeling the weight of everything. Pressure at home, stress at work, and a general sense of malaise hung over me like a storm cloud. The political climate didn't help—a Republican administration was steering the country through another four …

Monday Morning Notes

Grueproof — Mon, 11 Nov 2024 08:00:00 -0500

Good morning, chooms.

We had a nice quiet weekend around here. Spent some time on house stuff, mainly clearing out the umpteenhundred boxes from the move, finishing some sorting, and clearing out some old things we no longer needs.

Some not-chore-related happenings:

I picked up the new 2024 Dungeon Master's …

Resetting the Owncast Admin PW in a Docker Container

Grueproof — Sat, 02 Nov 2024 16:30:00 -0400

So I did a dumb. I lost/misplaced/forgot/ate my Owncast server's admin password. Note for myself (and other who might need to know this), here is how to fix that when you are using the Docker container.

Pop into the docker container's shell.

sudo docker exec -it <container_id …

Theming and Scheming

Grueproof — Wed, 30 Oct 2024 13:24:00 -0400

I despair at writing themes for this blog. I've done it in the past, sometimes it's fun, sometimes it's a drag. Over the years, I've opted for simpler and simpler themes. And so, we land on this one.

This is about as simple as it gets.

I used the literal …

Morning Thoughts: Gibson, Moore, Elections, Walkaway, Fediverse

Grueproof — Mon, 28 Oct 2024 06:30:00 -0400

Some morning thoughts for this Monday. Good morning, thanks for dropping in.

One of the books I'm reading right now is Zero History by William Gibson. Until his new novel comes out, this will be the final novel of his I need to finish before having read everything he's published …

Braindump Saturday

Grueproof — Sat, 26 Oct 2024 10:00:00 -0400

Good morning, chooms.

I've been meaning to sit down for a week and do some writing, but life has gotten in the way. Or maybe I didn't push back hard enough. Maybe both. But here I am, finally.

New Home

The move into the new house continues. So many boxes …

Fresh Start

Grueproof — Sun, 20 Oct 2024 05:24:00 -0400

So, I got to thinking, and as much as I liked my last site for using FastHTML for a blog, it bothered me that I was using Javascript to render Markdown.

For Reasons(tm), I've started interacting with the web from my terminal more than my regular browser of late …

Customizing the Font in Firefox Reader Mode

Grueproof — Tue, 08 Aug 2023 05:24:00 -0400

(this is a repost from a previous iteration of this blog)

I was surprised that there was no easily found way to customize the font inside Reader mode in Firefox. None in the about:config, anyway. However, you CAN do it in the userContent.css file, which might not exist …