runtimeterror

2026 TAC Autocross Event 5

2026-06-21T00:00:00+00:00

After a short break, I returned to the ~~race track~~ parking lot yesterday for another exciting round of local autocross competition. The forecast had once again called for thunderstorms all weekend, but the weather took pity on us. We had just some light sprinkles during setup and the first set of runs but that quickly cleared up, and we then had scattered clouds and a nice breeze the rest of the day. It was hot, but not uncomfortably (or dangerously) so; June autocross weather could be a lot worse than what we got.

The course was our fairly standard layout with a few tweaks to make it a bit of a challenge. There were several areas when you really had to give up speed in order to set up for the corner exit (and entry into the next feature), and you were punished with severe understeer push if you didn't heed that. It was a really fun course to drive, and I had a blast!

My best time was 41.493, putting me "just" 0.7 seconds behind the SSC class leader; that's an eternity in autocross, but I usually trail him by more than a full second so this loss still felt like an accomplishment. I finished 28th of 112 in PAX (the SSC winner finished 16th).

We've got another full month before the next race.

Yellowcard: Up Up Down Down Tour

2026-06-11T21:56:00+00:00

Back in November, my partner and I got to see Yellowcard open for A Day To Remember on their Maximum Fun Tour↗. We were somewhat disappointed by ADTR's performance (and their over-reliance on those giant distracting video screens that I've been complaining about lately) - but rather blown away by Yellowcard's set.

So we jumped at the opportunity to see Yellowcard on their own headline tour, this time accompanied by New Found Glory. I've listened to both band's latest releases (Yellowcard: Better Days↗, New Found Glory: Listen Up!↗) a lot lately, and I was really looking forward to this show.

The date finally came on Monday, and we drove up to Nashville's Ascend Ampitheater↗, hoping that the looming bad weather would clear off and we wouldn't get wet. It did! And we didn't!

And the show was really great!

Plain White T's

Plain White T's got things started. I honestly hadn't thought about this band at all in twenty years. They did fine, but definitely not anywhere near the energy levels we typically see at shows. Their performance brought big "middle-aged dads decided to start a band, again" vibes - which I guess is fair given that several of the members are likely middle-aged dads at this point.

Still, I enjoyed hearing Hate (I Really Don't Like You)↗ and that other song↗.

New Found Glory

The tempo picked up quite a bit when New Found Glory took the stage. They sounded great and were full of energy, and it was cool to see Chad¹ join the band on stage for a few songs.

NFG played a bunch of old favorites (including Understatement↗ and Hit or Miss↗) and new favorites (like Laugh It Off↗ and Beer and Blood Stains↗) before closing with My Friends Over You↗.

Yellowcard

Yellowcard's set was similar to the last time we saw them in a lot of ways. The theme leaned heavily into 80s nostalgia, with clips from movies and TV shows playing on a (relatively) small display on the sage throughout the performance. It could have been distracting but it somehow wasn't; it really complemented their music and presentation rather than drawing away from it.

And their music was incredible! They sounded so good, and delivered every note with passion and energy.

They played a well-balanced set with old classics as well as plenty of new stuff. Highlights for me included Better Days↗, Way Away↗, Love Letters Lost↗, Lights and Sounds↗, and Bedroom Posters↗.

They ended the night of fantastic live music with Ocean Avenue↗.

Yellowcard's live performance definitely ranks among the best that I've seen lately. I heartily recommend catching one of their shows if you get the chance.

Founding member and long-time guitarist Chad Gilbert has been fighting cancer for several years. ↩︎

2026 TAC Autocross Event 4

2026-06-07T21:05:00+00:00

Our local car club returned to the track¹ yesterday for our fourth² autocross of the year. The weather was quite warm, though a steady breeze and some welcome cloud cover in the afternoon kept it from being terribly uncomfortable. We had a number of new faces joining us, either first-time autocrossers or experiences racers visiting from other regions.

We got to race on a tight and twisty course that wound up flowing a lot better than I'd anticipated based on my morning course walks.

It was a fun course to drive, and I really wish we'd gotten more than six runs. I managed to get down to a 40.903s on my last run. I was pleased with that since I'd been struggling to get out of the 41s all day, but it still wasn't a super competitive time.

(Also, my datalogger acted up so here's the raw video with no pretty overlays.)

I finished 2nd (of 2) in the Solo Spec Coupe class (down by 1.6 seconds - an eternity), and 33rd of 115 in PAX. (The SSC winner finished 7th PAX. Dude is quick.)

Parking lot of an athletic stadium. ↩︎
Last month's two day event only counts as one. ↩︎

Learning to ride a bike

2026-05-31T17:16:00+00:00

I've been riding a bicycle (as an adult) since 2020, but I only recently picked up my first road bike. As it turns out, a road bike is a very different beast¹ than the hybrids I'd been on so far, and I have learned a ton in my first month (and ~325 miles) with the new steed.

I'm no bicycle surgeon

What follows are some of the things that I've picked up on in my relatively short time as a real cyclist. I'm probably going to screw up some terminology and explanations and who knows what else. You can correct me if you'd like, but I'm just letting you know that I'm kind of making this up as I go and if I'm wrong then oh well.

Starting with...

Getting a grip

Look, the bike I'd been on only had one place for me to put my hands. It was either grab on to the flat handlebars or... ride my bike with no handlebars². This new rig has ~~so much room for activities!~~ so many more options for holding on.

The horns 🤘

These vertical bits on either end are apparently the "brake horns"³, and they're where the brake/shifter levers attach to the whole setup⁴. They also make for a pretty natural spot to hold on.

Gripping ~~life~~ bikes by the horns puts your wrists in a nice neutral position (reducing fatigue) while also maximizing access to the lever that control this thing. Also, spreading your hands a little wider like this can really help with stability.

Speaking of stability, I've also learned that I really shouldn't be leaning down on the handlebars. That was kind of a natural thing to do on the hybrid bikes with their far-more-upright seating positions. With a road bike, it seems like The Thing To Do is more of a reaching forward sort of approach. I lean my upper body forward but keep my elbows bent (down), and my forearm is then almost parallel to the ground as I push my palms forward to grasp the horns. The handlebars don't really support my upper body weight as much as just provide some stability for me to hold myself up. This results in a lot less fatigue in my shoulders, elbows, and wrists.

Anyhoo, this is where my hands hang out about 90% of the time I'm on the bike.

The drop

You may have noticed that these handlebars also have a curved bars that drop down below the horns. These are the "drop bars"⁵ and I kind of assumed they were just useful for getting really low like when you wanna go really fast.

Well they are useful for tucking⁶ out of the wind to reduce trag, but bending over further can also provide a little extra oomph when climbing up a hill or pushing for more speed. (More posture stuff coming up later.)

At rest

The horizontal portion of the handlebars is perfect for rest breaks.

You wouldn't want to try to hold on here while pedaling aggressively or diving down a hill or navigating a turn or really anything other than straight-and-level flight, but it's a nice relaxed spot to hold while slurping from a bottle or scarfing down a protein bar.

A position of power

I learned a lot about the various muscle groups used at various stages of the pedal stroke while getting my new bike fitted, but the key takeaway for me⁷ was the impact that posture has on power production.

A road cyclist's standard forward-leaning position engages a whole bunch of muscles as they pedal away. Pivoting the upper body further forward adjusts how early certain leg muscles get activated, and can provide a more powerful pedal stroke.

And it's the dropped handlebars that allow for that extra angle. So that's why grabbing the drops can help with hill climbs.

Standing on the pedals and lifting my butt out of the saddle can further increase power output because it's (again) changing how early some of those really long muscles get in the game.

Shifting gears

I've also learned a completely new-to-me strategy for shifting between gears. On the hybrid bikes, I shifted without any real direction, just kind of grabbing whatever gear combination felt goodish.

On the road bike, I've learned that cadence is king. I'm working on establishing a pedal speed of around 90 rpm and then shifting up or down to maintain that cadence at a given power output level. It kind of makes me think of a car with a CVT transmission↗, where the engine may keep a steady speed even as the vehicle is accelerating.

The new bike has twelve cogs on the rear sprocket so I've got a lot of options, but this approach takes the guesswork out of it. And I'm able to take small steps up or down to really dial in the amount of force I used to propel myself forward. This results in more speed, more efficiency, and less fatigue - all good things as I take on longer rides.

Like dancing, steer with your hips

I don't dance

I know even less about dancing than I do about cycling, but it is my understanding that the hips are involved in some way.

And, finally, I'm learning that road bikes can be quite sensitive to even small control inputs. Pushing a hand a little harder than the other can result in an abrupt change of direction, perhaps with disastrous effects⁸. So I don't really use the handlebars for steering.

Instead, I steer by shifting my hips in the direction I want to go. Just the slightest bit of weight transfer is all that's needed to smoothly maneuver without throwing anything off balance.

It reminds me a bit of this remote control motorcycle toy that I had as a kid. It had two big balloon-inflated tires, and a weighted rider on top that pivoted left or right to induce a turn. Same idea, I think.

Plus now I really can ride my bike with no handlebars².

Admittedly I bristled a little bit when the guy at the bike shop referred to me as a "novice rider" even after nearly six years of riding regularly, but he was totally right. I'm kind of starting over again. ↩︎
No handlebars↗. ↩︎ ↩︎
Bike terminology is so, so dumb. ↩︎
You can't really see the levers in these photos because the photographer (👋) is a moron, but I promise they're there. ↩︎
Not drop bears. ↩︎
Not that kind of tucking. ↩︎
Well, after getting all the bike's geometry adjusted to maximize the correct muscle usage, or whatever. ↩︎
And another reason to not lean my whole upper body weight on the handlebars. ↩︎

Embedding remote feeds in a Hugo static site (without JavaScript)

2026-05-28T21:17:00+00:00

For a year or so, this site has been using RSS2HTML↗ to pull in items from an external feed (specifically my Linkding instance↗) so they could be displayed on the sidebar (and the dedicated /bookmarks and /postroll pages). This approach uses client-side JavaScript in combination with a proxy server to retrieve the feeds, parse the items, and render them in the page. That has worked okay but can sometimes (often?) cause page loading to hang while waiting for the JavaScript to complete.

Plus, no one likes unnecessary¹ JavaScript.

So I switched to using Hugo's built-in resources.GetRemote↗² and transform.Unmarshal↗ functions to do the same thing. This approach won't be quite as "dynamic" since the feeds will be fetched at build time rather than on page load, but I've already set up a deployment pipeline³ to build and deploy the site daily.

resources.GetRemote accepts the URL to fetch as an argument (I'm using the RSS feed URL for public Linkding items tagged with #bookmarks), and then passes that feed to transform.Unmarshal to parse the XML.

That feed looks a bit like this, by the way:

<rss version="2.0">
  <channel>
    <title>Public shared bookmarks</title>
    <link>https://links.vim.wtf/feeds/shared</link>
    <description>All public shared bookmarks</description>
    <atom:link href="https://links.vim.wtf/feeds/shared" rel="self"/>
    <language>en</language>
    <lastBuildDate>Wed, 27 May 2026 12:39:50 +0000</lastBuildDate>
    <item>
      <title>Transformer Explainer: LLM Transformer Model Visually Explained</title>
      <link>https://poloclub.github.io/transformer-explainer/</link>
      <description>
        An interactive visualization tool showing you how transformer models work in large language models (LLM) like GPT.
      </description>
      <pubDate>Wed, 27 May 2026 12:39:50 +0000</pubDate>
      <guid>https://poloclub.github.io/transformer-explainer/</guid>
      <category>bookmarks</category>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Hister - Your Own Search Engine</title>
      <link>https://hister.org/</link>
      <description>
        Hister is a general purpose web search engine providing automatic full-text indexing for visited websites.
      </description>
      <pubDate>Thu, 21 May 2026 15:47:29 +0000</pubDate>
      <guid>https://hister.org/</guid>
      <category>bookmarks</category>
    </item>
  <!-- [...] -->

So for the sidebar I just iterate through the first five items and grab its title and link:

<h3>bookmarks</h3>
{{ with resources.GetRemote "https://links.vim.wtf/feeds/shared?q=%23bookmarks" | transform.Unmarshal }}
  <ul>
    {{ range first 5 .channel.item }}
    <li>
      <a href="{{ .link }}">{{ .title }}↗</a>
    </li>
    {{ end }}
    <li>
      <em><a href="/bookmarks/">More bookmarks</a></em>
    </li>
  </ul>
{{ end }}

That works well for the minimal embed in the sidebar:

For the larger /bookmarks and /postroll pages, I can't use that Go template directly since they are Markdown pages. So I created a shortcode at layouts/shortcodes/feed-embed.html that I'll be able to include in a Markdown document. The shortcode accepts two positional parameters: the feed URL to fetch and the number of items to retrieve. It also extracts the link's description and the date it was bookmarked (converted to a YYYY-MM-DD time format).

{{- $feed := .Get 0 -}}
{{- $limit := .Get 1 -}}
{{ with resources.GetRemote $feed | transform.Unmarshal }}
<div>
  {{ range first $limit .channel.item }}
  <h3>
    <a href="{{ .link }}">{{ .title }}↗</a>
  </h3>
  <div>{{ .description }}</div>
  <div><em>Added: {{ .pubDate | time.Format "2006-01-02" }}</em></div>
  {{ end }}
</div><br>
{{ end }}

I use my new shortcode like this:

---
title: "/bookmarks"
description: "Sites and resources that I've bookmarked recently"
---
# Recent bookmarks

{{< feed-embed "https://links.vim.wtf/feeds/shared?q=%23bookmarks" 25 >}}

👉 [**Even more bookmarks**](https://links.vim.wtf/bookmarks/shared?q=%23bookmarks)

And that works too!

The last tweak I made was to adjust the Forgejo Actions workflow↗ to build the site every six hours instead of just once per day:

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: 0 */6 * * *

That should be a goodish balance between keeping the embedded bookmarks and postroll up-to-date while not just constantly rebuilding the site for giggles.

Typo↗ is very cool and thus necessary. Don't at me. ↩︎
Which I've previously used for dynamically updating the site's robots.txt file. ↩︎
Since writing that post, I migrated my work from GitHub to a self-hosted Forgejo instance↗ and slightly tweaked the deployment workflow↗ accordingly. ↩︎

Gokapi for self-hosted secure file sharing

2026-05-25T17:18:00+00:00

I recently wanted to share a 30MB file with someone, which is still a harder problem than it should be¹. Too big for most email providers, and I didn't want to have to run through the list of cloud file store options to see which we had in common. In the past, I've handled this by using Tailscale Funnel to temporarily expose a Caddy file_server↗ for long enough for the other party to retrieve the file(s). Hardly an elegant solution.

This time, though, I stumbled upon Gokapi↗ which checks a lot of my boxes²:

Open source
Self-hosted with a single container image
End-to-end encryption
Auto-expiring and download-limited links
OIDC authentication for being able to upload files
S3-like object storage support

I particularly like that I can connect Gokapi to external storage (to avoid using up all the storage on my VPS), that links (and corresponding files) will be automatically removed after a defined time period or number of downloads, and that it doesn't allow internet randos to upload files (my compute resources are finite, after all).

It only took me a few minutes to deploy the Gokapi container on an existing Hetzner VPS, link it to Pocket ID for auth, connect the storage backend to Bunny's (beta) S3 storage offering↗, and get on with sharing files.

Deployment

The Gokapi repo has an example docker compose file↗ to make it easy to get started. I just created an /opt/docker/gokapi/ folder on my server to hold the app's configuration and data (the integrated sqlite database) and then brought up the single-container stack:

services:
  gokapi:
    image: f0rc3/gokapi:latest
    container_name: gokapi
    ports:
      - "127.0.0.1:53842:53842"
    volumes:
      - /opt/docker/gokapi/data:/app/data
      - /opt/docker/gokapi/config:/app/config
    restart: always
    environment:
      TZ: UTC

The repo also provides an example .env file↗ in case you want to use environment variables to configure the deployment. This time I skipped right past that and instead used the web interface to perform the configuration. More on that in a moment.

But first, I used Caddy↗ to proxy the container with automatic TLS magic:

gokapi.example.com {
    reverse_proxy http://localhost:53842
    log {
        output file /var/log/caddy/gokapi.log
    }
}

After doing a quick docker compose up -d to start Gokapi and sudo caddy reload -c /etc/caddy/Caddyfile to ask Caddy to please start serving the new thing I can point my browser to https://gokapi.example.com/setup and get on with the configuratin'.

Hurry up!

Until the initial configuration is complete, anyone can access that URL to configure the instance. So you'll probably want to speed through the first-run config or configure Caddy to only allow access from your home IP for now↗.

After the first config, the /setup endpoint will only be available if you explicitly ask for it at container startup, and it will then also be protected by a randomly-generated username and password.

I just stick with the default sqlite database and initial webserver options, but I update two values on the Webserver 2/2 screen:

Public facing URL is set to https://gokapi.example.com/ to reflect the base URL where this thing will be served publicly.
Redirection URL points to my little jwq.lol↗ landing page. Basically there's no reason for an outside user to poke around the main page of my Gokapi instance so anyone that hits the index page will get sent elsewhere instead.

I want to use my Pocket ID setup for logging in to Gokapi's admin page, so I enable OIDC auth:

I then created a new OIDC client in my Pocket ID deployment:

Notable configuration details from that:

Client Launch URL: https://gokapi.example.com
Callback URLs: https://gokapi.example.com/oauth-callback
PKCE: disabled

Then I could use the Client ID and Client Secret for configuring the auth back in Gokapi:

The key here is that the Admin email address must match the email for your user in Pocket ID since that's how you'll be granted access.

Then I moved on to the storage setup. I wanted to use external S3-compatible object storage so I wouldn't have to worry about blowing up the disk on my VPS. So I selected Cloud Storage from the appropriate dropdown:

I'm using Bunny's new S3-compatible storage offering but the setup should be pretty similar for any provider:

CORS

Clicking the Test configuration button yielded a warning:

Test OK. WARNING: CORS settings do not allow encrypted downloads.

I know that Bunny's S3 support is still in early stages and doesn't yet support custom CORS rules and I suspect this warning may be related to that. Encrypted downloads work fine for me, but if you get a similar warning and they don't work, try enabling proxy downloads at the bottom of the previous storage configuration page.

And I want to use full end-to-end encryption; that makes the client work a little harder since it handles the encryption/decryption when files are uploaded/downloaded, but I like that the (possibly-sensitive) files will be completely encrypted at every step along the way.

Firefox issues

There's a pinned issue↗ on the Gokapi repo about Firefox (and derivatives) having trouble downloading files which were uploaded with end-to-end encryption. I haven't run into issues yet, probably since I've so far just been sharing files with sizes in the tens of megabytes. But if you intend to share much larger files you may want to use one of the lower encryption levels until that issue gets fixed.

All that's left is to click the big friendly Submit button to save my settings and get on with sharing files!

Usage

Now that setup is complete, if I just point my web browser to https://gokapi.example.com... I get immediately redirected to my profile page↗. Oh yeah, I did set up that redirect. Well it's cool that it works!

To be able to do stuff in Gokapi, I can instead head to https://gokapi.example.com/login, and this time I get redirected to the Pocket ID auth challenge:

Once I'm in.³, I immediately get hit with a screen telling me about the randomly-generated password to support end-to-end encryption.

This gets generated in my browser (not on the server) and and will be used for encrypting files uploaded the server. The server never knows about this password and thus wouldn't be able to access the encrypted even if it wanted to.

Save this somewhere safe!

The prompt isn't kidding: this random password won't be displayed again. It never gets uploaded to the server and exists solely in your local browser session. You'll need to re-enter the same password any time you log into Gokapi from a new machine (or erase your browser's local storage).

If you lose it, you can rerun the Gokapi setup to generate a new one - but you won't be able to access any of the files which were already uploaded.

Anyhoo, once I've confirmed receipt of the encryption password I can get on in to the main Gokapi interface:

I've got options there for limiting how many times a file can be downloaded, automatically removing it after a set number of days, and optionally setting a password for the file. These options will be applied to the next uploaded file.

I went ahead and left those options on their default settings, and uploaded a 1GB file to test things out.

Now that the file has been uploaded, I can click the little "copy URL" button at the right to grab the URL I can send to my friend. I could also click the little pencil icon to change the download limit, expiry, or password options for the file.

I'd like to see what the experience looks like on the other side of things, so I'm gonna go ahead and paste the download link into another browser and download the file:

After downloading the file once (the limit configured for that file) it gets automatically removed from the server and subsequent visits to the URL are met with a 404.

Reconfiguration

Once the initial setup has been completed, the only way to revisit and change settings is to restart the container and pass the --reconfigure flag. I usually do this by stopping the compose stack and then firing off a standalone container:

$ docker run --rm -p 127.0.0.1:53842:53842 \
        -v /opt/docker/gokapi/data:/app/data -v /opt/docker/gokapi/config:/app/config \
        f0rc3/gokapi:latest /app/run.sh --reconfigure

██████   ██████   ██   ██  █████  ██████  ██
██       ██    ██ ██  ██  ██   ██ ██   ██ ██
██   ███ ██    ██ █████   ███████ ██████  ██
██    ██ ██    ██ ██  ██  ██   ██ ██      ██
 ██████   ██████  ██   ██ ██   ██ ██      ██

Gokapi v2.2.4 starting

###################################################################
Use the following credentials for modifying the configuration:
Username: q12RsR
Password: 9yyrmvLPNN
###################################################################

Please open http://127.0.0.1:53842/setup to setup Gokapi.

I can then log in to https://gokapi.example/com/setup using the provided credentials and make my changes. Once I'm done, I exit the running container and restart the compose stack to pick up the changes.

Conclusion

I'm pretty pleased with this setup so far, and it seems to work rather well for my needs. I really like that the files automatically get removed after downloading so I don't have to worry about cluttering up storage somewhere, and being able to use external object storage means I don't have to provision a ton of storage on the server itself.

See XKCD 949↗. ↩︎
If you know what I mean... ↩︎
Said in my very best hacker voice. ↩︎

Electric Callboy: TANZNEID World Tour

2026-05-24T17:13:00+00:00

We weren't sure if we'd ever get another chance to see them after we bailed early from the disastrous 2023 Blue Ridge Rock Fest↗, but we managed to catch an Electric Callboy show in Nashville this past week.

It was fantastic.

I know I whined recently about arena shows and emphasized about how much we prefer smaller venues. I was a little anxious going to an Electric Callboy show knowing that the band does have a bit of a reputation for spectacle. I needn't have worried. This turned out to be a super fun show.

Scene Queen

The evening started with a set from Scene Queen↗, a slim blonde woman who pranced on stage wearing a pink top, denim shorts, and shiny pink cowboy boots to request (nay, demand!) a twerkle pit. Which is all the sweaty guys in the pit getting low and shaking their posteriors.

She went on to deliver a delightful bimbocore set blending hyperfeminine vocals, metalcore breakdowns, and rather explicit social commentary.

This set was full of some of the dumbest music I've ever seen performed live, and I absolutely loved it!

Check out her track Barbie & Ken↗.

Polaris

Scene Queen's utter ridiculousness was followed by Australian metalcore band Polaris↗ playing a much less silly set.

These guys delivered a heavy performance that had everyone head banging. About the only nit I have to pick with their set is that the vocalist's light-colored pants kept making me think he wasn't wearing any. That was kind of distracting/confusing.

They closed with their track Nightmare↗.

Electric Callboy

And then it was time for the main event: Electric Callboy↗. This was a show we've been anticipating for years, and it was AWESOME. The band's energy was so high and positive throughout the set, it was absolutely infectious.

I don't think I've ever seen so many costume changes. It seemed like every other song featured a new wardrobe (typically to reference the band's viral music videos). But somehow there was never a noticeable delay waiting for the boys to change.

And while there was a giant video screen at the back of the stage (and you know by now how much I typically hate those), they used it to display visuals that complemented the stage performance rather than distracted from it.

They played an impressive selection of favorite songs, starting off with tracks like TANZNEID↗, Tekkno Train↗, Hypa Hypa↗, and Pump It↗.

They also played a medley of old shit from their first few albums, ending with one of my favorite EC tracks, Crystals↗.

Frank Zummo (previously of Sum 41) played a fun drum solo...

...but I think that performance was primarily to distract us from the rest of the band sneaking onto the floor for a brief acoustic set. We got treated to a heartfelt acoustic version of Fuckboi↗ followed by their cover of a cover of a cover, Everytime We Touch↗.

They wrapped up the show with Elevator Operator↗ before returning for a totally unexpected encore consisting of RATATATA↗ (their collab with Babymetal), Spaceman↗ (the track which introduced me to EC), and We Got The Moves↗.

Final thoughts

I enjoyed this concert so very much. The silliness combined with the heavy metalcore breakdowns and the fist-pumping EDM beats to make something really special. I've seen a lot of great shows↗, and this concert definitely ranks near the top of that list. EC delivered an earnest, energizing performance that was so much more fun than whatever BMTH was doing.

If you get the chance to see Electric Callboy live, take it!

PS: The changeover music between bands was really great, too! It featured a lot of fun EDM covers of not-EDM songs. I found it on YouTube↗ and listened to it on repeat the entire next day. It's good shit!

Flashing a USB device with Chromium on Linux

2026-05-19T10:44:00+00:00

I recently gave in to peer pressure↗ and ordered the adorable little Xteink X4 ereader↗. It came in yesterday, and I immediately set to work flashing the recommended open-source community-maintained firmware, Crosspoint↗. They provide a handy-dandy web-based flashing utility to make it nice and easy... but of course it didn't work for me right off the bat.

It's a wrinkle that I've had to iron out several times in the past - basically any time that I switch operating systems on my laptop. Most recently, I impulsively decided↗ to switch from the stable Bluefin release to the Dakotaraptor "distroless" alpha↗.

I knew that the WebSerial API was only available on Chromium-based browsers, but even using the right browser the utility yielded an error about Failed to execute 'open' on 'ttyACM0': Failed to open serial port.

The solution was to find out which group owned that port:

$ ls -l /dev/ttyACM0
crw-rw---- 166,0 root dialout 19 May 08:09 /dev/ttyACM0

And then make myself a member of that dialout group:

$ sudo usermod -aG dialout $USER

I then logged out and back in from the graphical session (to ensure that Chromium would register my new membership) and was able to successfully flash my tiny little reader↗.

Yay!

Fit for a King: The Lonely God Tour

2026-05-17T21:42:00+00:00

After venturing a bit out of our comfort zone to see Bring Me The Horizon and Motionless In White play an arena show, my partner and I got to see one of our favorite metalcore bands play a much smaller venue last night↗ - and we didn't even have to drive two hours to get there!

Fit for a King came to the Mars Music Hall↗ here in Huntsville, and they brought with them Invent Animate, ten56., and ACRES. It was so nice getting back to a smaller local metal show.

ACRES

British melodic metalcore band ACRES↗ kicked things off, and these guys really got the audience moving. This was actually our second time seeing ACRES, and at the same venue no less; they opened for The Devil Wears Prada on the Metalcore Spring Break tour last May.

They played an enjoyable set and closed with their track Lost↗.

ten56.

ACRES was followed by French deathcore outfit ten56.↗, who brought brutal intensity to the stage (Boy↗. They also played a heartfelt rap ballad accompanied by some really nice guitar playing (IO↗, though the album version absolutely can't compare to the live arrangement).

I don't typically go for the deathcore style but I really enjoyed their set. I'll have to check them out some more.

Invent Animate

Progressive metalcore group Invent Animate↗ took the stage next. They played a lively set which inspired some pretty good circle pit action. I came away particularly impressed by their vocalist (his on-stage antics were a bit much, but he backed it up with a wide range of vocal talent) and their guitarist (who was a bit less animated but absolutely shredded.)

I really enjoyed hearing their newish single Fall Like Rain↗.

Fit for a King

Finally it was Fit for a King's turn, and they played a heavy-hitting fifteen track set↗ featuring a lot of my favorites. God of Fire↗ was particularly fun, the long scream at the end of Backbreaker↗ was epic:

They closed out the set with one of their most well known songs, When Everything Means Nothing↗, and Witness the End↗ (which had been stuck in my head all week leading up to the show - it's kind of catchy).

All told, it was a pretty great evening of live (and loud) music. Now I need to rest up for another show in a few days. Can't wait!

Bring Me The Horizon + Motionless In White

2026-05-10T14:59:00+00:00

My wife and I don't go to a lot of big concerts. I mean the turnout for CAKE was pretty good, but most of the shows we attend are in smaller venues, with maybe a few hundred in attendance rather than several thousand. We don't like being around other people, we don't like not knowing where we're going, we don't like struggling to find nearby parking, and we don't like waiting in long lines (especially with other people).

But we sucked it up and drove to the Bridgestone Arena↗ in Nashville Thursday evening to see Bring Me The Horizon, Motionless In White, The Plot In You, and Amira Elfeky on the North American Ascension Program 2↗ tour.

We managed to wander into a parking garage right next to the arena, and were able to find a parking space right away. That garage also happened to be actually connected to the arena, so we were able to scan our tickets (and our bodies, #security) and walk right in. Our walk from the car to the ticketed inside of the arena took maybe two minutes. We did have to walk allll the way around the arena to get to our seats, but at least it was indoors and comfortable and the way was pretty clear.

We did show up a bit late (having to drive 2 hours after work will do that) so we missed Amira's set entirely, but we got to see about half of The Plot In You's performance, which was fine if a bit unremarkable. A decent go for a warm-up act.

Then it was Motionless In White's turn.

They played a great set and reminded us why we're happy to drive 2+ hours to see them perform. The band brings such energy to the stage, and frontman Chris Motionless has such a comfortable presence. The bits of banter in between songs felt so natural, so genuine. It was a lot of fun.

Their set was crushingly short, but included a good mix of new-new stuff (like newish single Afraid of the Dark↗), tracks off their last album (like Slaughterhouse↗), and some older stuff (like Another Life↗).

Motionless always puts on such an enjoyable performance. Seeing them even for just seven songs was worth the drive.

Plus I just love seeing this during Voices↗:

Speaking of set decor, Bring Me The Horizon brought a shit ton of giant video screens (and pyro, and light beams, and confetti canons¹).

There was a lot happening on stage, but it was honestly a little hard to pay attention to what was actually going on up there. The musical performance faded behind all the bright lights and flashing animations on the screens that covered the entirety of the stage.

The band did play some of my favorite BMTH tracks (Shadow Moses↗, Throne↗, Follow You↗) and the music sounded great (too great, with such a heavily reliance on the backing track) but the overwhelming production resulted in a performance that was decidedly underwhelming for us.

This might be another reason that we don't typically go for arena shows: we're not impressed by empty spectacle².

So much confetti.

↩︎
We saw A Day To Remember and Yellowcard play a local arena last year↗ and came away similarly unimpressed by the headliner's stage show. ADTR relied so heavily on the giant video screens behind them and it made it hard to see what was happening on stage - and even harder to care. Yellowcard killed it, though, and really impressed me with their much cooler production↗. ↩︎