Nothing Is Simple

Configuring Rootless Podman

nothingissimple@ablatedsprocket.com (Andrew Burch) — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 00:00:00 -0600

It's been a while since I've written a post, but that doesn't mean I've been idle. I really like the idea of the separation involved with running things in containers. Until now, I accomplished this using Docker and Docker Compose. After spending some time with NixOS, I looked through its packages and found that everything I had running in Docker containers was available in Nix and enjoyed the opportunity to run these services under Systemd. Now that I'm back to using Arch, I decided to try getting the best of both worlds.

Doing Taxes in Emacs

nothingissimple@ablatedsprocket.com (Andrew Burch) — Sat, 19 Apr 2025 00:00:00 -0500

This year is my third year submitting tax forms that were filled out programmatically with Emacs. There is way too much to cover in one blog post, so I will be glossing over things. As usual, the source code is available on Codeberg for perusal. In this post, I'm only covering the logic that went in to generating a 1040, but there are functions for generating a number of other forms as well. Fair warning, some of them are... brittle. The code is tailored specifically to what I needed on a given year, so some forms are missing logic related to other forms that I haven't used. It's getting better, though; I have gradually been making the code more robust over time. My workflow is broken down into four sections:

Migrating Appointments and Holidays to Diary

nothingissimple@ablatedsprocket.com (Andrew Burch) — Sat, 12 Apr 2025 00:00:00 -0500

I use Org for many things, two of which are managing appointments and tracking my paid time off. I just learned about Emacs' Diary package from one of Protesilaos Stavrou's videos, and decided to see if moving my appointments and holidays to Diary made sense.

Git Links in Org

nothingissimple@ablatedsprocket.com (Andrew Burch) — Sun, 06 Apr 2025 00:00:00 -0500

After looking through Mastodon the other day I stumbled upon an old post by Tony Aldon about making Org hyperlinks to git repositories and opening them in Magit. I have this weird thing where when I see people make things for Magit, I try to do the same thing for VC. I'm giving myself a little slack here, though, because I've been thinking about how nice it would be to link Git commits to my Org todos, but I always tried to do it the other way.

Org File Housekeeping

nothingissimple@ablatedsprocket.com (Andrew Burch) — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 00:00:00 -0500

The other night I had a dream. In this dream, I was talking with a fictitious colleague about the merits of Confluence as an information management system. The conversation began with pleasantries, but as soon as it turned to information management, my mind immediately contextualized the conversation in terms of Emacs. This is a habit I have taken up in my waking world that seems to have become so second nature that it has carried over into my sleeping world. We exchanged points back and forth, but in the end agreed that the value of an information management system is predicated on the integrity of back-links cross-referencing different articles or files.

Things I Discovered Using VC in Emacs

nothingissimple@ablatedsprocket.com (Andrew Burch) — Sun, 23 Feb 2025 00:00:00 -0600

I am one of the few people who use VC over Magit. It's true, VC doesn't have the feature set that Magit does; it doesn't support cherry-picking, rebasing, all of Git's myriad switches, and unlike Magit, no one talks about using Emacs purely for VC. VC does however have nice integrations with other modes and some handy features worth mentioning that I haven't seen discussed elsewhere.

Building a Website: A Cautionary Tale

nothingissimple@ablatedsprocket.com (Andrew Burch) — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 00:00:00 -0600

I've written a number of announcement/introductory-style posts about using different static site generators, as well as more technical posts about implementing various features in my Org-to-HTML export scheme. Each touches on a larger narrative about creating a website, but shies away from going into any detail for fear of veering dangerously off-topic. The intent behind this post is to finally capture that narrative which I am so eager to mention but reluctant to elaborate on, so that I may finally quell the urge to mention it in the first place. This narrative begins with a question.

Website Improvements and a Sprinkling of Accessibility

nothingissimple@ablatedsprocket.com (Andrew Burch) — Sun, 08 Sep 2024 00:00:00 -0500

Inspired by a post on general website improvements and a post on enhancing website longevity, neither of which I can now find, I made some changes to my website! While I was at it, I finally decided to make some minor accessibility changes I've been thinking about for a while. As a warning, this site is created using Emacs to export Org files to HTML, so there is some Emacs lisp code! There's also some HTML and CSS markup, but those things are less scary.

Moving to Codeberg

nothingissimple@ablatedsprocket.com (Andrew Burch) — Thu, 22 Aug 2024 00:00:00 -0500

This post is a bit late, but I've moved all of my code from GitLab to Codeberg. I've been thinking about moving to a different platform for a while now, and while I like the idea of Source Hut a little better, I ultimately chose Codeberg because I found it easier to navigate. Eventually, Source Hut is probably where I'll land, but for now I'm afraid of people avoiding my code because Source Hut's user interface is so different. The main hindrance to me making the move was GitLab's continuous integrations, which I was using to help publish this website. I had just figured out how to create a comments section on my website from Mastodon toots and I wasn't sure how that would work without the continuous integrations I was relying on.

Integrating Pass into Emacs

nothingissimple@ablatedsprocket.com (Andrew Burch) — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 00:00:00 -0600

For bettor or worse, I've been using Pass to manage my passwords since around mid-October of last year, and although I like its simplicity, using it was always intimidating. Creating a password is easy enough, but I didn't get comfortable enough with the CLI to search my password store for things effectively, and when it came time to edit a password, it was easier to just open the file in Emacs and edit it manually. Of course, this pretty much defeats the purpose of the tool, so I've kept the idea of integrating it into Emacs in the back of my mind, and I finally wrote a package to do it. Emacs already comes with some pass integration in the form of auth-source-pass.el, but that really only helps Emacs query Pass and doesn't really help me add a password.

Webmention Comments

nothingissimple@ablatedsprocket.com (Andrew Burch) — Fri, 26 Jan 2024 00:00:00 -0600

After maybe 8 hours of distracted effort, my website now builds its comments from webmentions instead of using Cusdis. This was a bit of a feat, as I didn't even know what webmentions were before a couple weeks ago. For the similarly uninitiated, webmentions provide a notification protocol which establishes a communication standard. This protocol is one of several which link the various components of the fediverse together. I decided to go this route for two reasons: The first is that I'm not the biggest fan of Cusdis's decision to use iframes to display comments; it just seems unnecessary. The second reason is that Cusdis requires JavaScript, and it's disappointing that comments is the only thing on my site that uses it at this point. It can take up to a day for a comment to show up on a post with what I've managed to get working, but that's a small price to pay for completely removing JavaScript from my website as far as I'm concerned.

Foraging with Org

nothingissimple@ablatedsprocket.com (Andrew Burch) — Thu, 21 Dec 2023 00:00:00 -0600

Probably three years ago now I got into the hobby of foraging for fungi. I've managed to find chicken of the woods, puffballs, a couple varieties of oyster, and most recently wood ear in my area. I've heard whispers of the coveted morel, but I have yet to find any, much to my chagrin. Anyway, after rooting around for mushrooms for a while, I decided I would like to forage for more things than just fungus, and I decided to play with Org to see if I could come up with a fun way to keep track of it all. it turns out, fungi are complicated enough, so we'll stick to that for the purposes of this post.

My vCard Backend for Org

nothingissimple@ablatedsprocket.com (Andrew Burch) — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 00:00:00 -0600

Some time ago, I started using Org to manage my contacts and wrote a backend to export my contacts file to vCard, and I'm finally writing a post about it. Before I begin in earnest, I'd like to acknowledge that there's a vCard backend in Org-Contrib, but I decided against using it for a couple of reasons. And no, I don't consider Not-Invented-Here syndrome to be one of these reasons, although I have been guilty of that in the past.

Secret Synergy

nothingissimple@ablatedsprocket.com (Andrew Burch) — Fri, 20 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0500

I'll open by saying that my password solution up until about yesterday was not great. I spend most of my computer time in Emacs and I prefer to use it wherever I can, so at first I kept my sensitive info in my .authinfo.gpg file, an old Emacs standby. This is great for logins, but the format is pretty rigid. Each line wants a host, username, password, and maybe a port and a URL if you have one. However, for things like a social security number or a bank account number, this format can feel very forced.

We Have a Peanut Gallery Now

nothingissimple@ablatedsprocket.com (Andrew Burch) — Wed, 11 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0500

Ever since moving everything to the HTML exporter I adapted from ox-slimhtml, I've been admittedly pretty enamored with the machinery involved in publishing this site. Sometimes I change something just so I can push it up to GitLab and watch the whole process kick off. It's a very special and nerdy variety of ambrosia for me.

Mail with Gnus

nothingissimple@ablatedsprocket.com (Andrew Burch) — Tue, 12 Sep 2023 00:00:00 -0500

After two years with Mu4e, I have moved over to Gnus as my mail client. I've started using RSS to consume news, and the move was mainly motivated by the appeal of having news and email in the same place. On the whole, Gnus is probably easier to get going than Mu4e. It doesn't require using Mbsync or some other process to manage a local copy of your mail and there's no need for an external program to index your mail. Gnus takes care of everything with its nnimap select method. Do note that you can configure Gnus to operate on a local copy of your mail using Gnus' nnmaildir select method, which will also be discussed.

Finances with Ledger and Org

nothingissimple@ablatedsprocket.com (Andrew Burch) — Sat, 09 Sep 2023 00:00:00 -0500

Managing finances has always been a bit painful, but I've recently finally become somewhat comfortable with Ledger to make a report that's made the whole process easier. I started with trying to stay strictly within ledger-mode in Emacs, which is definitely an upgrade from the CLI, but it was still hard to use the reports effectively, so I decided to give the reports more context by compiling them into an Org document that looks a little something like this:

SVG Images in Org Mode

nothingissimple@ablatedsprocket.com (Andrew Burch) — Sat, 06 May 2023 00:00:00 -0500

I have taken an interest in chemistry, and have taken to using org-noter to take notes on the books that I read. Since it's organic chemistry, I thought it would be great to somehow incorporate my own diagrams of benzene rings and things into my notes. I like using GIMP for editing images, but thought a simpler image editing tool would be better for making simple diagrams. Since I wanted to use this with Org-mode in Emacs, I wanted something I could integrate somehow. Somewhere on the internet (probably a Reddit post), I discovered org-krita.

My Arch Installation Experience

nothingissimple@ablatedsprocket.com (Andrew Burch) — Sun, 26 Dec 2021 00:00:00 -0600

Just a notice, I originally published this in December of 2021, but I updated it in May of 2023 for "readability". If you think it's bad now, you should have seen it then! Anyhow, happy reading.

Super Pi Part 9: WebDAV

nothingissimple@ablatedsprocket.com (Andrew Burch) — Sat, 25 Sep 2021 00:00:00 -0500

Just when I thought I was done adding things to Super Pi, I discovered another thing to add: a WebDAV server. I already have a Samba share, why do I need WebDAV? I've been looking at getting a Pine phone for at least 6 months now, and if I've learned anything about myself, it's that if I've been thinking about getting something that long, eventually it's going to happen. To make sure I would be able to handle not having an app store (or a more limited one), I took inventory of what I use my phone for and decided my usage could be distilled into three things: a VPN, a browser, and some way to interact with Org files (my recipe project described in a previous post is working great). I'm pretty sure the first two are covered in at least Mobian, but I need an alternative to Orgzly.

Org and Groceries

nothingissimple@ablatedsprocket.com (Andrew Burch) — Mon, 13 Sep 2021 00:00:00 -0500

One of the things that was interesting to me about Org-mode is how people from myriad vocations find it useful in (if not integral to) their day-to-day workflow. Unfortunately, I'm somewhat locked into my professional tool set, so a couple of months ago, I decided to try to use Org-mode to make my personal life more efficient in some way. This post marks my first foray into Org-ing up.

Ox-Slimhtml Table Transcoder

nothingissimple@ablatedsprocket.com (Andrew Burch) — Fri, 11 Jun 2021 00:00:00 -0500

A previous post went over how to create figures using a wrapper around Ox-Slimhtml's link transcoder. Feeling buffeted by my successes there, I decided to tackle writing a table transcoder next. As a disclaimer, I'm not trying to write extensible and versatile transcoders. In my case, I think it would have actually been a bad idea to take that approach. It would have taken a lot longer, and I honestly don't see a use case where I'll need much more than what I describe here. This is neither here nor there, but I also think extensible transcoders for every situation go against the spirit of Ox-Slimhtml a bit. The framework itself is extensible, the transcoders don't really have to be.

Super Pi Part 8: Samba

nothingissimple@ablatedsprocket.com (Andrew Burch) — Thu, 10 Jun 2021 00:00:00 -0500

I admit that this part of Super Pi probably isn't the best use of resources. When I first got a Pi, I set up a Samba share as my first project. I actually had kind of a hard time getting it working. I later set up a NAS on my router when I got one that supported it. That worked well until I recently moved to OpenWRT, which is more than capable of hosting a NAS, but I have a much easier time customizing a Raspberry Pi than a router. Plus, it's also a lot lower risk for me. If my Pi goes down, no one notices, but if the router goes out I have another person to answer to, and she does not like being without internet. Given my situation, the path forward was clear. There are more tutorials on setting up Samba now, the config I used came from here. I pretty much ignored everything else. The first step is to install Samba:

Getting Figure Tags Using Ox-Slimhtml

nothingissimple@ablatedsprocket.com (Andrew Burch) — Wed, 02 Jun 2021 00:00:00 -0500

I'm using Ox-Slimhtml to generate this website now, and it works great once it's configured as long as you don't need anything it doesn't provide. In my experience, Ox-Slimhtml works pretty well for one-off exports, but I wasn't able to get it to export projects on its own using the example in the documentation. The backend is a bit bare-bones, so there's a good chance you will find yourself deriving your own backend anyway. Ox has an API for this, in addition to creating new backends from scratch. I'm not bold enough to create my own, though, and if I were, this post would probably have a different name. So deriving a backend it is!

Migrating to Org Publish

nothingissimple@ablatedsprocket.com (Andrew Burch) — Fri, 21 May 2021 00:00:00 -0500

This post marks the move from generating this website with Weblorg to Org publish with Ox-Slimhtml. I'll write another post about the specifics later, for now I mostly just want to celebrate my accomplishment, it's been a long time coming. I want to start by saying if you're interested in a static site generator that translates Org to HTML, I enthusiastically recommend Weblorg: good Jinja-style templating system, good API, very active. Sometimes I had to dig through the pull requests to find new features, but the maintainer clearly is trying to keep the documentation current. Another plus is that the library is easy to contribute to. I added a couple tiny pieces of code and the maintainer was great to work with. While I think the Weblorg project is awesome, I should note that I really have no experience with any other site generators converting Org straight to HTML. While I loved working with Weblorg and I was excited to make the transition from Ox-Hugo, I knew from the get-go that I would be transitioning again. It was the right call, but I have to confess that I'm sad to no longer have Weblorg's pink unicorn in the "Made with" section of my footer. Ultimately, I had three reasons for moving to Ox-Slimhtml:

Super Pi Part 7: Firewall

nothingissimple@ablatedsprocket.com (Andrew Burch) — Wed, 28 Apr 2021 00:00:00 -0500

I thought of another configuration component to add to my Super Pi: a firewall. I will be using UncomplicatedFirewall, commonly known as UFW. It's an abstraction over IP-Tables, which came up in my research for my post on Wireguard a couple of times. Even though UFW is easier to use, IP-Tables has a lot more examples for my use case. I experimented with it and got a configuration working, and at the end of it all I found out that there's some extra stuff to install to make the rules persist between reboots, which I didn't want to do so I switched. Anyhow, UFW it's available in most Linux repositories:

Super Pi Part 6: HTTPS and NGINX

nothingissimple@ablatedsprocket.com (Andrew Burch) — Sat, 17 Apr 2021 00:00:00 -0500

I'm feeling good about everything being behind an NGINX proxy, but I'm not a fan of the red shield in my browser notifying me that the connections are insecure because I'm not using HTTPS. Luckily, this issue isn't terribly difficult to address and I can use tools I already have. Like any proxy worth its salt, NGINX is HTTPS-capable, but there are some implementation details to decide on that aren't that obvious.

Super Pi Part 5: Git Server

nothingissimple@ablatedsprocket.com (Andrew Burch) — Mon, 12 Apr 2021 00:00:00 -0500

I don't have a great reason for running a Git server on my network, except for maybe the old adage about storing data in three places. I first started using one when Microsoft bought out GitHub and I didn't know about Gitlab. I try not to spread too much hate, but I avoid Microsoft products partly on principle and partly because I use them all the time at work and get tired of them. Configuring my own Git server did give me an opportunity to learn some new Linux skills, though. The first thing I did is install Git:

Super Pi Part 4: NGINX

nothingissimple@ablatedsprocket.com (Andrew Burch) — Sun, 11 Apr 2021 00:00:00 -0500

My next task was to proxy the Pi-Hole UI with NGINX instead of Lighttpd, following this guide with a few customizations. My main reason for moving to NGINX is that I wanted to host some household HTML documents alongside Pi-Hole and any other services I might add, all under different domains. I have used NGINX before to handle redirecting traffic to HTTPS and proxying it to a non-SSL application with some success. It was a steep learning curve, but I grew pretty fond of NGINX and want to use it again. I haven't gone through it yet, but I found an HTTPS Introduction that should go into more detail on all the steps I'll be going through. For my use case here I'll cover building proxies for Pi-Hole, Node-RED, and a directory of HTML files.

Super Pi Part 3: Node-RED

nothingissimple@ablatedsprocket.com (Andrew Burch) — Sat, 10 Apr 2021 00:00:00 -0500

It would be nice if I had an automated way of renewing my IP address with DuckDNS. I could write a shell script and set up a CRON job to run it every so often, but since I'm interested in home automation, I'm going to use documentation on getting started with a Pi. The doc recommends a bash script for installing everything. There's a package in the apt repository, but it seems to be finnicky. I can't get logs working, there's an error message that never goes away, my flows don't seem to run. Anyway, it seems like their suggestion to use the script is well-placed, so I ran the script they provide:

Super Pi Part 2: WireGuard

nothingissimple@ablatedsprocket.com (Andrew Burch) — Fri, 09 Apr 2021 00:00:00 -0500

I wanted a WireGuard VPN to have Pi-Hole on the go. Before getting to that point, though, I registered a domain with DuckDNS since the IP address of my router changes periodically or when I reset it. I'll have to do a little more work to make sure DuckDNS gets notified when my IP address changes, but that's for a later post. For now, I just have to remember that if WireGuard doesn't work, it's probably because my IP changed, and I need to log back into DuckDNS and update my IP address manually. To get WireGuard on my Pi, I decided to use PiVPN, which is a pretty reputable way to set up a VPN with minimal fuss and good defaults. Per their homepage, I ran the following script:

Super Pi Part 1: Pi-Hole

nothingissimple@ablatedsprocket.com (Andrew Burch) — Thu, 08 Apr 2021 00:00:00 -0500

So I have quite a few Raspberry Pi computers, five in fact. Three 3B+, one 0W, and one 4B. The 4B is a media center in progress, the 0W isn't used for anything currently, maybe some kind of brewing thing somewhere down the line. I was going to delegate various home automation tasks between the remaining Pis: WireGuard, Pi-Hole, a Git server, Node-RED. It occurred to me, though, that I can run all of that on one. This post series, Super Pi, chronicles this unnecessary journey. We're starting from scratch, with a Pi and an SD card and a pocket full of dreams.

Emacs as a Mail Client

nothingissimple@ablatedsprocket.com (Andrew Burch) — Mon, 08 Mar 2021 00:00:00 -0600

I wanted to write a few posts on how I use Emacs. As a disclaimer, I'm using Pop!_OS, so these are all Linux posts. Sorry for not being able to contribute to the dearth of material available to Windows users. On an unrelated note, I think previously I said that I wanted to make content accessible, and this is probably a step in the wrong direction on that front, but I find myself just not writing with all the constraints I'm trying to place on myself. Anyway, this is the first in (hopefully) a series of posts covering each arbitrarily-defined category of tasks I use Emacs for. To illustrate, this post is about using Emacs for email.

Turning Gears

nothingissimple@ablatedsprocket.com (Andrew Burch) — Fri, 20 Nov 2020 00:00:00 -0600

I think if there's one thing I struggle with, it's probably routine maintenance. I've put a lot of effort into trying to make this struggle manageable, but I am stubborn, and do not give up my misgivings with things easily. This issue has always flummoxed me because I don't mind the idea of maintaining things, just actually doing the maintaining.

Coming Out Emacs

nothingissimple@ablatedsprocket.com (Andrew Burch) — Sat, 07 Nov 2020 00:00:00 -0600

This post has proven to be a difficult one to write. I keep rethinking it! Is it a good idea to write about tech? Is it a good idea to write about something I'm passionate about but that is also extremely difficult to relate to? Am I willing to come off as a hipster programmer? It's time to find out, once and for all.

The First Post

nothingissimple@ablatedsprocket.com (Andrew Burch) — Tue, 03 Nov 2020 00:00:00 -0600

So this is the inaugural post of my new website. While the thing is still small and has literally zero traffic, I find there's some small comfort afforded by the lack of lookers-on, and I am compelled to start with a confession. That confession, friends, is that this happens to be the fourth reboot of my website. That's right, four. Will this one actually go anywhere? Will I muster the chutzpah to write more than a dozen posts this time? I don't know! But I do know this. I've actually decided to link this website to my LinkedIn profile. If I can't motivate me, maybe the fear of being silently judged by my professional peer group can!

Python, NGINX, and HTTPS

nothingissimple@ablatedsprocket.com (Andrew Burch) — Wed, 11 Sep 2019 00:00:00 -0500

In this article I'm going to try to remember what I did to get my computer to talk to a Python app over HTTPS hosted on my Pi.

Giving the Old Bird An Upgrade

nothingissimple@ablatedsprocket.com (Andrew Burch) — Wed, 24 Apr 2019 00:00:00 -0500

This past week I decided to update my website. I wanted to update my build process to use Python 3, I wanted to remove my jQuery dependency, and I finally wanted to get rid of Anaconda. First I prepared for the update: I backed up my site to a new directory and decided to update the backup to Python 3. I exported all my dependencies to a text file using pip freeze > requirements.txt. To make sure I would be able to update without blowing everything up, I figured I should update through Anaconda before blowing it away to make sure I could do it with venv.

Building a Static Site with Pelican

nothingissimple@ablatedsprocket.com (Andrew Burch) — Sat, 14 Jul 2018 00:00:00 -0500

In this post, my plan is to provide a comprehensive walkthrough of how I generated this site on my Windows machine. As I was going through tutorials, I found a lot of them were not very clear, or I had to really dig to find the information I was looking for. My hope is that by putting all of the information I managed to scrap together in one place, I can spare some other poor OCD soul the heartache I endured. The source code is available for reference at GitLab, which might be enough of a tutorial. If you want a little bit (or a lot) more, though, continue reading!

Pelican Website Debut!

nothingissimple@ablatedsprocket.com (Andrew Burch) — Sat, 03 Mar 2018 00:00:00 -0600

The day is finally here, I rewrote my website with Pelican and it's live! It's crazy that I wrote a post over two weeks ago thinking I was almost ready to put my site up. It turned out there was more tweaking I wanted to do, which is good. I was thinking I'd put it up in a much more raw state, but I've managed to put a lot of work into getting everything exactly the way I wanted it. I'll write a tutorial post on everything I did to finally get this thing up. I was probably a bit of a control freak about layouts and organization, and I waffled a bit in these areas which certainly didn't help. But finally it's live and I can heave a sigh of relief.

Why Programming, Though?

nothingissimple@ablatedsprocket.com (Andrew Burch) — Thu, 27 Apr 2017 00:00:00 -0500

It turns out putting up this website has been a great thing because it's gotten me thinking a lot. I've had a hard time making sense of the job hunting process (mostly how long it takes) so having a way to process all of that has been enormously helpful. Yesterday I had an interview over the phone with a neat company I've applied to a couple times called Exotic Metals, and one thing the interviewer asked about was why I've been doing programming lately and not engineering. My stance was that I picked it up to keep my brain working and I worked with Seattle Public Schools because I wanted to see if I could help out, but after thinking about it I realized I picked up programming initially because I wanted to build something and learn a lot.

Jekyll Debut!

nothingissimple@ablatedsprocket.com (Andrew Burch) — Wed, 26 Apr 2017 00:00:00 -0500

This post marks the debut of my website. The reason this is named the first HTML post is because the default format is Markdown and I wanted to keep that post in case the HTML one didn't fly so well. It went fine, so here we are. I programmed everything you see here in HTML5 and CSS3 and used Jekyll to build the site and Github-Pages to host it. There's a pretty good learning curve to doing everything myself but it's all free!