Networking, security & backups in 2024

I made a couple of upgrades to our home network recently so I thought I’d map it out and talk about it a little.

Home network

About a year and a half ago we bought a house. One of its major selling points (at least for me) was that it came pre-wired, with ethernet cables already installed in the walls.

Here’s how I used that to set up our home network – one that provides high quality wired or Wi-Fi internet access in all rooms, bathrooms, and outside areas.

Network diagram titled ‘Home network’. The diagram shows four room locations, one roaming location, and wired ethernet cables in the wall of the house. The garage is where the internet is connected via an NBN modem is. That room also has a router, switch, NAS, and printer – all of which have wired connections. The downstairs living room has a network switch, TV, UHD player, and home theatre – all of which have wired connections. The upstairs retreat has a Wi-Fi extender + switch and TV, UHD player, and home theatre. All but the home theatre have wired connections. The upstairs home office has a desktop with a wired connection. Finally, we have some roaming phones, tablets, laptops, etc that are connected via Wi-Fi.

I had two main goals when planning this network:

  • Put all bandwidth-heavy activities on the wired network. This includes things like 4K media streaming to our TVs and the backing up of large media files from my desktop to the NAS. Doing that leaves the Wi-Fi network free for our laptops, phones, and smart home gadgets.

  • Make sure our work laptops are a single wall away from a Wi-Fi access point. Both Nadia and I work from home at least two days a week and both of us do lots of video conferencing. So our work laptops (which we use upstairs) need to have access to a strong Wi-Fi signal.

Happily I was able to achieve both of those goals.

With this set-up Nadia and I can do simultaneous video conferencing for work without any issues. And I can do things like download hundreds of gigabytes of computer game data to my desktop without interfering with the TV show Nadia that is streaming downstairs.

New router and a UPS

A couple of weeks ago I replaced our ailing primary router (all its ethernet ports had died) with a Synology WRX560. And because our secondary router is a Synology RT2600ac with the latest firmware installed, I’ve been able to configure that as an extender. So now we have a mesh Wi-Fi network throughout the house.

Finally, this weekend I put our primary router, NBN modem, and NAS behind a CyberPower UPS. I’m pretty sure our previous router developed its issues because of recent power surges and outages. This UPS has automatic voltage regulation so it’ll protect our primary networking devices (and NAS) while also giving us about an hour of back-up battery power.

Protecting our data and network

With everything always connected, I need to make sure our devices and gadgets are secure. I do this using the Swiss cheese model of layered network security.

All security layers have some holes (like a slice of Swiss cheese does) but, by adding multiple layers with differently-arranged holes, you can minimize the chance of anything getting through.

In our case we have protections at the router layer, operating system layer, and browser layer.

Screenshot of a diagram titled ‘Security strategy’. The diagram has three columns with icons for browser, operating system, and router. Each column is split into incoming and outgoing directions, with risk mitigation measures listed under each one. The router column has active threat protection, two-factor authentication, and auto lock-out under incoming; and it has Cloudflare DNS under outgoing. The operating system column has active threat protection, full drive encryption, and 3-2-1+ backups under incoming; and it has NextDNS under outgoing. The browser column has password manager, two-factor authentication, DNS over HTTPS, HTTPS-only, and uBlock origin under outgoing.

Incoming controls

Active defense against incoming attacks is managed through threat protection at the router and operating system levels.

Passive defense is managed by using things like full drive encryption (which means upgrading to Windows 11 Pro so we can use BitLocker) and a comprehensive back-up strategy (more on this in a minute).

Outgoing controls

Since malware and ransomware attacks are often triggered by what you do in your browser, we use layers of outgoing security to protect against this:

  • Our primary router is configured to use Cloudflare’s DNS service,

  • our operating systems (in our computers, phones, and tablets) are all configured to use NextDNS, and

  • our web browsers all use uBlock Origin and a bunch of other security and privacy-forward configurations.

Finally, all our online accounts use unique, long, randomly-generated passwords that are managed by the Bitwarden password manager. And we have two-factor authentication set-up (using Aegis) on all the accounts that offer this feature.

Recovering from a disaster

If, in spite of all those protections, things do go horribly wrong – or maybe if there’s a fire or natural disaster – our last line of defence is a comprehensive back-up strategy.

A 3-2-1 back-up strategy – the least you should be aiming for – says you need to have:

  • 3 copies of your data,

  • on 2 different mediums,

  • with at least 1 copy in the cloud.

We have a 4-4-2 back-up strategy with:

  • 4 copies of our data,

  • on 4 different mediums,

  • with 2 copies in the cloud.

Screenshot if a graphic titled ‘Back-up strategy’. The screenshot shows backups from a desktop. There are constant, selective back-ups to a cloud sync location; hourly, selective back-ups to a cloud backup location; and hourly, comprehensive back-ups to a NAS backup location.

How I do it

I use Sync.com to maintain a constant, synchronized copy of all my important files in the cloud. This gives me two copies, on two different mediums, with at least one copy in the cloud.

I then use Arq to simultaneously (a) backup a selection of key files to a cloud storage bucket and (b) backup all my files (which includes large, replaceable media files) to our network attached storage (NAS) at home. So that’s two more copies, on two additional mediums, one of which is in the cloud.

Naturally all these files are encrypted before leaving my computer and access to the NAS and all those cloud services is protected with unique, long, random passwords and two-factor authentication.

Keeping up with our needs

Doing all this takes time and effort, and it doesn’t come cheap. But so much of our lives is online these days that the cost of inaction – and the risk of losing that much of our lives – is much higher than the cost of doing everything I’ve talked about above.

It wasn’t always like this for us, of course. Our cost and effort has kept pace with what we’ve been able to afford along the way. We’re just privileged to be in a position where we can do something this sophisticated and automated. (Gone are the good old days of backing up to multiple 3½ inch floppy disks and, later, USB sticks.)

I hope, regardless of your personal set-up, that you too are doing the best you can to keep yourself connected, but protected.

Journey to my favourite typefaces

I have used and played around with many, many typefaces (and their fonts) over the years. These are my current favourites.

Graphic titled ‘Typefaces I like and that I use more than others’ that shows several typefaces categorised under the headings: ‘Sans used frequently’, ‘Sans used when needed’, ‘Sans used when infrequently’, ‘Mono for text, coding apps’, ‘Mix used on our websites’, ‘Serif used frequently’, ‘Serif used when needed’, ‘Serif used when infrequently’, ‘Serif used for reading’, ‘Slab used as needed’.

How did these become my favourites?

I started, like almost everyone does, by using the default typefaces that come with operating systems and word processors.

Not long after, however, I got into typography in a big way. I bought books, did a lot of online learning, and played around with dozens of typefaces and fonts. I used to build and manage websites for a living, so this was partly professionally motivated.

Over time I upgraded to the more interesting, versatile, and practical typefaces listed above. I thought I’d take this opportunity to share some of the mini typographical journeys I took along the way.

Typeface or font?

Before we continue, there is one thing I should clarify:

  • Typeface = the design of the letterforms and accessories (ie numbers, punctuation)

  • Font = the actual item that produces the letterform, meaning everything from the 12-point piece of metal that gets inked and punched into a piece of paper all the way to the digital file that contains the code for, say, ‘Helvetica Neue Italic’.

To use a book analogy: This Is How You Lose the Time War is the typeface while its hardcover, paperback, EPUB, and PDF versions are its fonts.

Most people’s introduction to typefaces is via the fonts installed on their computer though, so non-design folks tend to use the two words interchangeably. I will not.

Mini typographical journeys

Arial: default typeface in Microsoft Word on Microsoft Windows

Graphic titled ‘Upgrading sans #1 - Arial’. The graphic contains four boxes, grouped by default/free typefaces and purchased/paid typefaces. The four featured typefaces are Arial, Avenir Next LT, Whitney, and Inter.

TOP LEFT: Arial is a well-designed and incredibly useful typeface, and I still use it every day at work (though not by choice). It is, however, a boring default that it is now considered the most neutral of typefaces.

TOP RIGHT: Once I became aware of other, more interesting typefaces, I immediately gravitated towards Avenir as the typeface I’d much rather use instead. Unfortunately, Avenir costs several hundred dollars. Fortunately, Avenir Next has been included as part of Microsoft Office since 2019 and so I now have access to a really good version of this typeface.

BOTTOM RIGHT: Not long after I fell in love with Avenir, I discovered Whitney and fell in love with that even more. Whitney is more practical and versatile than Avenir (at least for my purposes) and is also conveniently packaged for office applications (eg Word and PowerPoint). It costs a lot less than Avenir but is still a decently priced typeface. So yay for getting a bonus at work and treating myself to something nice :)

BOTTOM LEFT: More recently I came across the free and open-source typeface Inter, which is an excellent, more interesting alternative to Arial. (Inter is a version of Roboto that’s been optimised for interfaces, by the way. So a good alternative to this would be Roboto itself.)

Helvetica: default typeface in Microsoft Word on Apple Macintosh

Graphic titled ‘Upgrading sans #2 - Helvetica’. The graphic contains four boxes, grouped by default/free typefaces and purchased/paid typefaces. The four featured typefaces are Helvetica, Frutiger Next, Fact, and Inter.

TOP LEFT: Helvetica, the digitised and slightly upgraded version of Neue Haas Grotesk, is another excellent typeface. But, like Arial, it is now an overused default. (FYI Arial and Helvetica are not the same typeface. [1])

TOP RIGHT: Helvetica is used frequently for signage, but for that purpose I much prefer Frutiger. Frutiger, however, is expensive. Also, its has different revisions and interpretations, each with its own strengths and weaknesses.

BOTTOM RIGHT: Fact is an excellent typeface inspired by Frutiger that costs a lot less and is much more versatile (it has 96 styles and supports 100 languages). It is also on sale these days in case you are interested.

BOTTOM LEFT: Inter (a version of Roboto that’s been optimised for user interfaces) is a great alternative to both Helvetica and Frutiger, and it is also completely free.

Trebuchet MS: my favourite default typeface for creative uses

Graphic titled ‘Upgrading sans #3 - Trebuchet’. The graphic contains four boxes, grouped by default/free typefaces and purchased/paid typefaces. The four featured typefaces are Trebuchet MS, Montserrat, Whitney Narrow, and Ideal Sans.

TOP LEFT: With Arial and Helvetica out of the way, let’s talk about my favourite default typeface: Trebuchet MS [2]. This is a friendly sans serif font that I love to use when writing, and for the longest time it was my default email typeface. Trebuchet MS is also a “web safe font”, meaning it is universally installed across all browsers and devices. Unfortunately, it had its heyday on the web in 2009 and it is quite limited by modern font standards (its bold isn’t particularly bold, for example).

BOTTOM LEFT: Enter Fira Sans, a lovely, comprehensive, well-designed typeface that is much better than Trebuchet MS in all ways. This is my current typeface of choice when using Google Docs.

BOTTOM RIGHT: Lovely as Fira Sans is, I think Whitney Narrow is nicer. When I’m not using Google Docs, I use Whitney Narrow instead of Fira Sans.

TOP RIGHT: The one downside to Whitney Narrow is that it isn’t as rounded and friendly as Trebuchet MS, which brings us to the typeface I use most often these days: Ideal Sans. In fact, I’m writing this post in Microsoft Word using Ideal Sans right now.

Tahoma: my favourite default typeface for professional uses

Graphic titled ‘Upgrading sans #4 - Tahoma’. The graphic contains three boxes, grouped by default/free typefaces and purchased/paid typefaces. The three featured typefaces are Tahoma, Fira Sans, and DIN Next LT.

TOP LEFT: Back in the 1990s when I used Trebuchet MS for all my creative work, I used Tahoma for all my professional work. (Tahoma is basically a narrower, more tightly spaced version of Verdana.)

BOTTOM LEFT: But this too I replaced with the more friendly and full-featured Fira Sans.

BOTTOM RIGHT: In some situations, though, I use DIN. Originally created for road signage, it actually works well in text-dense designs and infographics. In fact, my resume is in DIN.

Verdana: the most legible web safe sans serif typeface

Graphic titled ‘Upgrading sans #5 - Verdana’. The graphic contains three boxes, grouped by default/free typefaces and upgraded/free typefaces. The three featured typefaces are Verdana, Open Sans, and General Sans.

TOP LEFT: Like Trebuchet MS and Tahoma, Verdana was designed as a typeface to be used on computer screens. And, like those two, it is also a core font for the web. I like Verdana. It isn’t particularly friendly or elegant, but it is my typeface of choice for email.

BOTTOM LEFT: Verdana might have been incredibly popular on the web in the 1990s and 2000s, but in the 2010s that crown was taken by the more elegant Open Sans. I like Open Sans too, but OMG is it overused.

TOP RIGHT: If I do need to use a typeface like Verdana or the excellent Montserrat – both of which are a little overused – more often than not I’ll reach for General Sans. Where Verdana is big, with perhaps an overwhelming focus on legibility, General Sans is compact and geometric, but somehow doesn’t look condensed, which I think is cool.

Calibri: the newer default typeface in Microsoft Word

Graphic titled ‘Upgrading sans #6 - Calibri’. The graphic contains three boxes, grouped by default/free typefaces and purchased/paid typefaces. The three featured typefaces are Calibri, Source Sans, and Whitney Narrow.

TOP LEFT: In 2007 Calibri replaced Times New Roman as the default typeface in Microsoft Word. I used Calibri for a while, but I never fell in love with it. After all, its defining character trait is ‘friendly neutral’. By the way, starting in 2024, Aptos will by the new default typeface in Word.

BOTTOM LEFT: Almost immediately after Source Sans was released in 2012, I started using that instead of Calibri. Source Sans is a free, high-quality typeface from Adobe.  

BOTTOM RIGHT: And once I’d bought Whitney Narrow, that took over from Source Sans in most situations.

Times New Roman: the default serif typeface in Microsoft Word

Graphic titled ‘Upgrading serif #1 - Times New Roman’. The graphic contains two boxes, grouped by default/free typefaces and upgraded/free typefaces. The two featured typefaces are Times New Roman and Source Sans.

LEFT: I’ve used Times New Roman a lot over the years and let me tell you that I do not like it very much. Sure it has its uses, but I’ve never been a fan.

RIGHT: As soon as I got my hands on Source Serif, it was all over for Times New Roman.

Garamond: a more elegant typeface that had a terrible font

Graphic titled ‘Upgrading serif #2 - Garamond’. The graphic contains two boxes, grouped by default/free typefaces and purchased/paid typefaces. The two featured typefaces are Garamond and Stempel Garamond LT.

LEFT: I love the Garamond typeface, but the Garamond font that comes with Word is terrible.

RIGHT: The Linotype foundry has an excellent version of Garamond created originally by the Stempel Type Foundry in the 1920s. I snapped up Stempel Garamond LT when it was on sale once and I’ve never looked back.

Georgia: the most legible web safe serif typeface

Graphic titled ‘Upgrading serif #3 - Georgia’. The graphic contains four boxes, grouped by default/free typefaces and purchased/paid typefaces. The four featured typefaces are Georgia, Merriweather, Charter, and Mercury.

TOP LEFT: I like Georgia. It’s not particularly elegant or refined. But like Verdana, with its focus on legibility, it gets the job done. For years my personal website used Georgia for its body text typeface.

BOTTOM LEFT: I love Merriweather. Ever since Google Fonts came on to the scene, I’ve used Merriweather for my website’s body text typeface. Indeed, that’s the typeface you’re reading this in now. [UPDATE: This is no longer true.]

TOP RIGHT: When not publishing online, I will sometimes use Charter as my Georgia replacement. Charter is older than Georgia, and it was designed by Matthew Carter, the same type designer who created both Georgia and Verdana.

BOTTOM RIGHT: When I do need a truly excellent, versatile, and highly legible serif typeface, most of the time I’ll turn to Mercury.

Honourable mentions

I haven’t talked about monospace or slab serif typefaces; this post is long enough as it is. But a couple of quick shout-outs.

Two graphics, side-by-side. One is titled ‘Graphics’ and features the Zilla Slab typeface. The other is titled ‘Coding apps’ and features the JetBrains Mono typeface.

LEFT: Zilla Slab is a free and open-source slab serif typeface created by the Mozilla Foundation. All the headings in the graphics used in this post are set in Zilla Slab.

RIGHT: JetBrains Mono is my coding typeface of choice. I blogged about this a couple of years ago.

Two graphics, side-by-side. One is titled ‘Text apps’ and features the Berkeley Mono and JetBrains Mono typefaces. The other is titled ‘Reading apps’ and features the Literata and Bookerly typefaces.

LEFT: Joplin and Notepad++ are, respectively, my note-taking and text-editing apps of choice. I use monospace typefaces in both. Berkeley Mono is gorgeous and joy to work in. It is a paid typeface, but it’s worth it (I got it on sale when it first launched). JetBrains Mono I’ve already talked about above. It is a free typeface.

RIGHT: Literata is a free and open-source typeface commissioned by Google for its Google Play Books app. Bookerly is a proprietary typeface (though available for download) commissioned by Amazon for its Amazon Kindle e-reader devices and apps.

Two graphics, side-by-side. One is titled ‘Elegant neutral’ and features the Neue Haas Unica typeface. The other is titled ‘Modern slab’ and features the Sentinel typeface.

LEFT: Neue Haas Unica is an elegant hybrid of Helvetica, Univers, and Akzidenz Grotesk. I don’t use this style of typeface very often, which is why it hasn’t come up before, but I do really like this interpretation. Also if you don’t get it as part of a bundle like I did several years ago, Neue Haas Unica is pretty expensive. Which is why it’s much easier to recommend Inter or Roboto everyone. (They’re both free!)

RIGHT: I’m not a big user of old style, Clarendon-esque typefaces, but I do like Sentinel. If nothing else, it pairs brilliantly with Ideal Sans.

Final thoughts

So there you have it. More than you probably wanted or needed to know about why I use the typefaces I do. I don’t know if you had fun reading it, but I enjoyed living it and then telling the mini stories about it. And, of course, I enjoyed creating all those typography graphics since, frankly, that’s half the fun of writing posts like this :)

One last thing I should mention is that, when I bought Whitney a long time ago, I discovered that Hoefler&Co is my favourite type foundry. The folks there created Whitney, Whitney Narrow, Ideal Sans, Sentinel, and Mercury – all of which I’ve bought over the years. I’m pretty sure I’m going to buy more of their typefaces in the future. It’s nice when you find a bunch of designers who really float your boat.

May you find the type foundries, type designers, or even just a bunch of typefaces that bring you joy.

Footnotes

[1] Many people think that Arial is a copy of Helvetica. It is not. Arial is designed to be a drop-in replacement for Helvetica, yes, but it is technically a copy of the older-than-both Akzidenz Grotesk. When Helvetica was created, the designers hoped it would be as popular as Akzidenz Grotesk. More on all that here, if you’re interested.

[2] Trebuchet MS was also inspired by Akzidenz Grotesk.

Strike another one off the list

When you stop supporting your community, your community stops supporting you.

I pay for my favourite social media sites (#privileged) but I now only pay for Tumblr, having cancelled my Twitter subscription earlier (we all know why) and now Reddit.

Screenshot of a pop-up window on a website asking to confirm that the user wants to cancel their (Reddit) Premium subscription.

I fully support platforms working to build multiple revenue streams, by the way, which is why I pay for them in the first place.

Heck, I’ve been paying for Reddit Premium since 2016!

Screenshot of a Reddit ‘trophy case’ box showing four trophies: Ten-Year Club, Gilding V, Verified Email, and Reddit Premium (since July 2016)

But there are ways to charge for usage and then there are ways to charge for usage.

That’s enshittification for you, right? *sigh*

I guess over the next few months we’ll see just how far along the “…and find out” stage we’re at for Reddit.

And I'm back on Flickr

After almost six years of not publishing anything on Flickr, I am now back on that platform.

Why? Because it’s nice to have a presence on a platform that lets you publish a public photo stream. (Unlike Instagram, which I wrote about a few months ago.)

It’s not just that though. Flickr lets you organise your photos into albums and publishes the EXIF metadata of the photos you have uploaded. You can also tag your photos, add them to public galleries, favourite other people’s photos, and even sell your photos.

Basically, it’s a great place to share your photos — and it works well for both amateur and professional photographers alike.

Closing the gap

I’ve now spent the last few days uploading five years’ worth of ‘missing’ photos to my Flickr profile. These are the photos I originally posted only to various social media channels or to this blog.

Now there is no gap between when I stopped publishing photos to Flickr back in 2017 and when I’ve resumed publishing there now (in December 2022).

If you’re someone who follows me on Flickr, I apologise for all the photo spam! Fortunately, that’s all done now.

Diagram showing four timelines. The one on top is labeled ‘Flickr’ and is in two parts. Its first part starts on 2 Mar 2007 and ends on 7 May 2017. Its second part, which is shaded in orange, starts from 30 Dec 2022 and continues to present day. The two middle timelines are labelled ‘Instagram only’ (2017-2019) and ‘Instagram’ (8 Nov 2012 to 9 Apr 2019). The bottom timeline is labelled ‘Random tangent blog’ (1 Jan 2019 to now) and this is also coloured orange.

Double the fun

Going forward I will post all my photos to this blog as well as to Flickr.

And, while you’re welcome to scroll back through this blog to see all the photos I’ve shared over the years, it’ll probably be easier to see them all in one place on Flickr :)

2022 NBN update: 3% faster

Every time we move house my first blog post is always an update on what the NBN internet speeds are at our new place. This time is no exception.

What is different this time is that, instead of renting, we’ve now bought a house in Melbourne’s northern suburbs. (Yay!)

Compared to our last place, the upload and download speeds at our new house are around 3% faster – which is cool.

A graphic titled ‘2022 NBN update: speeds up 3%’. The graphic shows two sets of bar charts, one with a heading of ‘average download speeds’ and the other with a heading of ‘average upload speeds’ — both showing download/upload speeds in megabits per second, or Mbps.

There are six bars in each chart, one each for the years 2009, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022. Both download and upload bars increase dramatically in size from 2009 (when the internet connection types was ADSL) to 2015 (when the internet connection type was FTTB).

The bars were highest in 2018, with 105.2 Mbps download speeds and 37.2 Mbps upload speeds in Kingsville. The connection type in this location was FTTP. In 2022 the bars show 94.7 Mbps download speeds and 18.9 Mbps upload speeds in Melbourne’s north. The connection type in this location is FTTC.

Our NBN connection type is still FTTC though. But that’s okay, the speeds we’re currently getting are sufficient for our needs.

There’s just two of us here, so Nadia and I can stream multiple 4K videos simultaneously without a hitch. And both of us can seamlessly participate in 1080p video conferences at the same time as well.

Of course, the second NBN Co give us the opportunity to upgrade our connection to FTTP, we’ll jump on that straight away :)

For now, though, I’m super happy with what we’ve got.

Medibank data breach

Finally got the email [1] from Medibank saying that my old membership data with them was stolen by cyber criminals.

Screenshot of an email with the heading ‘An important update from Medibank’.

The email reads: “Dear Ameel, We’re deeply sorry to inform you that some data relating to your former membership has been stolen in the recent cybercrime event. This email details what specific membership data was stolen, outlines actions you can take to safeguard your online identity, and the services available through our Cyber Response Support Program”.

The email then goes on to list what categories of data have and have not been stolen. The data stolen is name, gender, date of birth, email, address, phone number, policy number, and passport number. The data not stolen is credit card and banking details, and health claims data.

I left Medibank in 2009 so, with the exception of my name, gender, and date of birth [2], all the other data they have one me is now outdated and irrelevant.

And while it’s not great that various cybercriminals now have this data, in the broader scheme of things ‘tis but a flesh wound. After all, there’s not much that cybercriminals can do with a single old residential address, an old pre-paid phone number, and an expired Pakistani passport number :)

(Why Medibank kept all my customer data thirteen years after I closed my account with them is a whole other issue, of course. *sigh*)

[1] I got the email from them on 15 November 2022.

[2] You can find all this about me using open-source intelligence gathering anyway — like by looking through my social media feeds and seeing when my friends have wished me ‘happy birthday’, for example.

My lost years on Instagram

I’m not a fan of tightly gated internet communities. By ‘tightly gated’ I mean communities (ie social networks) that don’t provide public RSS feeds and also don’t let you view anyone’s content without being logged in yourself.

Instagram is one such gated community.

All my photos used to be publicly accessible

Before 2007 I didn’t publicly share many photos online. Those that I did, I uploaded as albums to this website – like my engagement and wedding photos.

Then in 2007 I joined Flickr and started posting all my photos there. Flickr was an excellent site, and I even had a paid account for several years.

My Flickr photostream from 2007

Instagram launched its Android app in April 2012, so a few months later I started posting photos there as well. During this period I cross-posted all my photos to both Instagram and Flickr.

Flickr stagnated, Instagram innovated

Unfortunately, Yahoo! pretty much stopped investing in Flickr. So, while Instagram was becoming increasingly easier and more fun to use, Flickr stayed where it was.

That’s why from 2017 I stopped cross-posting, and instead posted all my photos to Instagram only.

My Instagram photos from 2017

Facebook locked down Instagram

In the earlier days of Instagram you could still browse someone’s profile and look through all their photos without needing an Instagram account yourself. But, over time, Facebook made Instagram an increasingly tighter gated community.

Recognising this was happening, from the start of 2019 I started cross posting all my photos to this blog. That’s where we are now.

Diagram showing four timelines. Three of these are light grey in colour and are labeled ‘Flickr’ (2 Mar 2007 to 7 May 2017), ‘Instagram’ (8 Nov 2012 to 9 Apr 2019), and ‘Random tangent blog’ (1 Jan 2019 to now). One is orange in colour and is labeled ‘Instagram only’ (2017-2019).

Unlocking two years of ‘lost’ photos

What all this means is that I have almost two years’ worth of photos locked inside Instagram’s walled garden. This is what I’m now here to fix.

Over the next four posts I’ll re-share all my Instagram photos from 2017 and 2018 that are currently only available on that platform.

Here goes…

Humans love telling stories

Tom Eastman posted this back in 2018:

Screenshot of a tweet from Tom Eastman posted on 4 December 2018 that reads “I’m old enough to remember when the Internet wasn’t a group of five websites, each consisting of screenshots of text from the other four”.

He’s not wrong, and I get the point he’s trying to make: the internet is full of walled gardens and, by design, it’s difficult to talk across the boundaries.

But a few thousand years ago this could’ve been someone complaining that their valley is a group of five villages, each consisting of people telling stories they heard in the other four.

So while, yes, it is shitty that there isn’t more interoperability across social networks, I think it’s beautiful that humans love sharing stories they’ve seen and heard elsewhere with their own tribes — and that we’ll continue to do so, no matter what walls people build around us for their own financial benefit.

15 years of blogging

Today is my fifteenth blogging anniversary!

Well, at least that’s how long I’ve been blogging on insanityworks.org using syndicated blogging software. Before that I would add occasional life updates to a couple of static pages on this site.

Screenshot of an old webpage with a block of text titled “Summer/Winter 2006 onwards: Melbourne Business School”.

It’s been interesting to see how internet communication has changed over the years that I’ve been doing this. We started with plain blogging (with blog rings for discovery and RSS for pull notifications) and then added microblogging, photo sharing, videoblogging, podcasts, and now mailing lists.

Interest in longform personal blogging dropped off many years ago thanks to the rise of

  • microblogging (tweets take so much less effort to write),

  • photo sharing (super easy to share just a photo with a caption), and

  • video blogging (simultaneously both easier and more difficult to do).

The shuttering of Google Reader only sped things along.

At the same time commercialisation got a lot of personal bloggers to start blogging professionally instead.

Now podcasting is following a similar trajectory: we’ve gone from lots of small personal podcasts to increasingly commercial interests muscling in to this space. And what are TikTok videos if not a mashup of microblogs and video blogs?

Long exposure photo of a train going down a track behind some trees.

There has been movement in both directions though. People write lengthy, threaded microblogs which are basically just longform blogs split into small paragraphs. And lots of branding- and commercially-minded people have moved their writing to subscription-only mailing lists instead of public blogs. So the era of longer writing is having a bit of a comeback.

That said, us personal bloggers have kept on keeping on all these years. There were lean times during which I didn’t blog much, yes, but I’ve been pretty consistent these last few years. And I’m quite happy with the volume and quality of my current blogging output.

So here’s to fifteen more years!

Year in review 2021

Every January I do a review of where I spent my time, money, and attention in the year just ended. This lets me add or remove subscriptions, memberships, recurring payments, and social media follows. It also lets me see if I have any biases or blind spots, or if I’m unknowingly stuck in any kind of echo chamber.

This year I’ve decided to document and share some of my 2021 review.

Podcasts

I subscribed to 41 podcasts in 2021:

  • I listened to every single episode of 83% of them

  • 46% of them I supported financially in one way or another (eg memberships, recurring Patreon support, digital subscriptions, one-off donations)

  • Women and non-binary people hosted 54% of the podcasts I listened to

  • I mostly listened to technology podcasts (eg This Week in Tech, Security Now, Rocket, Command Line Heroes, Darknet Diaries)

People

I directly supported 12 people through recurring payments in 2021:

  • Most of these people are YouTubers (or at least started on that platform)

  • 67% of them identified as female or non-binary

News and information

I paid for eight news and information sources (through recurring subscriptions):

  1. The Guardian

  2. The Conversation

  3. Wired

  4. Quartz

  5. The Sizzle newsletter

  6. CHOICE magazine

  7. Offscreen magazine

  8. Hodinkee magazine

Given that list, it makes sense that Blindspotter thinks my media diet:

  • leans left + centre (with the Conversation, the Guardian, and ABC Australia as my top 3 news sources) and

  • is somewhat narrow (since its sourced mostly from independently owned sources).

(This analysis was based off 53 of my most recent tweets that contained a link to a news article, by the way, so take it with a grain of salt.)

Do I want to engage more with media sources that lean to the right or are owned by large media conglomerates? Not really. Which means I’m quite happy with my current media balance.

My current media diet matches the latest ABC Vote Compass analysis of my political leanings (from the 2019 Australian Federal election) which puts me somewhere between the Greens and the Australian Labor Party. So that checks out.

Subscriptions and donations

I like getting and using things for free, but I pay for what’s important to me and what I can afford at the time.

So over 2021:

Twitter

The social network I participate in the most is Twitter.

Over 2021:

  • I posted 1,010 tweets, 33% of which were replies

  • I tweeted the most in June and August (131 and 139 tweets in those months, respectively)

  • On average my tweets get 198 impressions, and 5.8% of people who see my tweets engage with them (like, reply, retweet, etc)

  • My most popular tweet in 2021 got 45,237 impressions

  • My most engaging tweets in 2021 (of which there were a few) got 33.3% engagement

Overall, I’m happy with how much energy I put into Twitter and how much engagement I have with the people on this social network.

Over the year I also used tools like (the free versions of) Followerwonk and followerAudit to analyse my Twitter graph, which told me interesting things like:

  • I follow more female users (29%) than male users (22%) – though this tool only estimates within the gender binary

  • That said, gender isn’t relevant to most (49%) of the Twitter users I follow (eg they’re not personal accounts)

  • 5.6% of my followers are estimated to be fake, which is lower than the 7% world average

  • 92% of the people I follow have been on Twitter for more than 5 years (I myself have been on Twitter for more than 13 years)

Finally, to get the most out of Twitter, I did these things:

  • I followed really good users and several interesting topics

  • I maintained a bunch of lists to keep my main feed from being overrun by stuff I didn’t want to see all the time (and then I used TweetDeck to track what’s been said by users in those lists)

  • I audited the users I follow, and then did at least two bulk unfollows last year

You have to put in the work if you want to have a good experience on your social network of choice. That’s what I did with Twitter, and that’s why it continues to be one of my favourite places to hang out.

(FYI. Most of the rest of my online energy goes into YouTube, Reddit, tumblr, and the broader decentralised, RSS-based web via NewsBlur.)

Where to from here?

I did do more analysis than this, but I’m not going talk about it all here.

Though maybe I should mention that the ‘Wedding song lyrics’ page on this website continues to be the most popular page year after year. I’m glad I refreshed it a few months ago, correcting some lyrics and adding audio references for all the songs I’ve catalogued there.

What I’ll do now is spend the next few days unfollowing and unsubscribing on Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, NewsBlur, and email. That should be fun, and it’ll help get 2022 off to a good start.

I intend to have a fantastic 2022 and I trust you do too. I hope this year exceeds all your expectations and that you have a truly fantabulous time!

Picking a typeface for writing code

Do you have a favourite typeface for writing code? (Assuming you write code, of course.)

If not, CodingFont is a brilliant website that will help you find your preferred coding typeface — tournament style!

The process is simple and elegant: you compare code written in two popular coding typefaces side-by-side, then you pick the one you prefer. Do this over and over again and, through the process of elimination, you’re left with the coding typeface you like the most.

In my case that’s JetBrains Mono. (Though I’m also happy to code in both Fira Code and Source Code Pro.)

I love typography and have literally spent days pouring over typefaces, comparing them closely, and then picking the ones I want to use in different scenarios. Like this comparison I did when I wanted to select a typeface for all the charts and diagrams I post on this blog:

Which is why all my charts and diagrams are now in Fira Sans or Ideal Sans. (Where they used to be in DIN Next or Open Sans.)

CodingFont lets you do this type of side-by-side comparison without any of the hassle. So, if you’re a coder – or even someone who regularly uses monospaced fonts – then this is totally worth a try.

Have fun!

2020 NBN update: now with FTTC

I’ve been tracking the NBN speeds we’ve been getting in the last four houses we’ve lived in. (NBN is Australia’s National Broadband Network, by the way.)

Since 2015, when we swapped our ADSL connection for the NBN, every time we’ve moved house our speeds have been gotten better. That’s mainly because, when picking a place to rent, we’ve only looked at houses with Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) connections. (Also because the NBN network itself has been getting incrementally better.)

This time, because we wanted a specific type of house within our price range, we decided to compromise a little and go for a place with a Fibre to the Curb (FTTC) connection. The performance of FTTC connections depends very much on how far your house is from the fibre-optic distribution point on your street. We lucked out and found a house we wanted to rent that is directly across the street from one of these points.

Speeds I can live with

Compared to the house we just moved from, our download have dropped only 12.7% to 91.9Mbps, which I’m super happy about.

Unfortunately our upload speeds dropped by 51.2% to 18.5Mbps, which isn’t ideal.

Given how much time Nadia and I spend on video conference calls for work, this drop in upload speeds might be an issue if we’re both on a video call at the same time. I guess we’ll wait and see how the connection performs when that situation arises in the next few weeks.

Other changes: latency, technology

There are two other differences compared to our previous NBN connection.

First, our connection latency has increased 78% from 3ms to 5ms. You don’t notice that too much day-to-day, though, so this hasn’t been an issue so far.

Second, given the technology change from FTTP to FTTC, we had to change modems because the fantastic Synology RT2600ac we were using doesn’t support VLANs (virtual local area networks).

UPDATE (24 Aug 2022): With a firmware upgrade to SRM 1.3, the Synology RT2600ac router does now support VLANs (announcement; feature support; configuration info). A big thank-you to to Craig in the comments for letting me know about this update!

FTTC is more of a shared connection than FTTP, so you need to use a VLAN-capable modem to connect to the internet. But all is well because I quickly bought a Netgear Nighthawk AX8, which is an equally fantastic modem that does support VLANs (and, specifically, 802.1Q VLAN tagging).

(If any of you are wanting to connect your Netgear Nighthawk AX8 to an FTTC connection, by the way, follow the configuration that rhys375 figured out you need to get this working.)

A mixed bag, but I’m okay with it

Overall I’m comfortable with our new speeds. I might think differently if we have issues with simultaneous video conferencing, but I don’t expect this to be a major issue.

So, onwards and only slightly downwards! And let’s hope the NBN network keeps getting better and better as time goes by.

Bypassing the YouTube recommendation algorithm

How many times have you watched a YouTube video that’s ended with a variation of this phrase: “please like and subscribe, and remember to click that bell icon so you get notified every time I upload a new video”?

If you watch YouTube as much as I do [1], you hear this All. The. Time.

What’s with the bell icon?

Why are YouTubers so insistent that viewers clicking that bell icon?

Veritasium (Derek Muller) explains this in his recent ‘My Video Went Viral. Here's Why’ video. In that he presents his “theory of everything when it comes to YouTube”. If you’re a big watcher of YouTube videos, I highly recommended you watch it.

But, basically: clicking that bell icon is great because doing so lets you, essentially, bypass part of YouTube’s recommendation algorithm (while also, technically, giving it more data). This, of course, is the algorithm that, among other things, determines which eight recommended videos you’ll see at the top of your YouTube home page.

If, however, you watch videos from your favourite channel by clicking on a YouTube notification instead, two things happen.

  1. You don’t have to wait for your favourite channel’s newest video to appear in your recommendations list. This is great because now you don’t miss a video just because the algorithm determined, for whatever reason, to not feature that video in your top recommendations.

  2. Once you’ve watched the videos from your favourite channels, YouTube doesn’t need to recommend them to you anymore. That means it can now recommend other things in your recommendations list. Which, depending on how you look at it, can be an excellent outcome.

But…I use an older magic

That, however, is not the method I use. It would make sense if I did – I do subscribe to 454 channels on YouTube, after all. But I really don’t want to be bombarded with all those notifications and emails.

Instead, I use a much older, much simpler, and much less obtrusive way of keeping track of every video a channel uploads: RSS.

Yes, I subscribe to the RSS feed of all the channels I want to watch most (if not all) the videos from :)

Some of the learning and science YouTube channels (and blogs) that I subscribe to.

Some of the learning and science YouTube channels (and blogs) that I subscribe to.

Depending on which RSS news reader you use, this is super easy to do. My reader of choice is NewsBlur so all I need to do is copy-paste a YouTube channel’s URL into NewsBlur’s add-feed dialog and, voilà, I am subscribed to a full feed of this channel’s videos.

So, if you’re someone who watches a lot of YouTube and also uses an RSS feed reader, I highly recommend you give this method a try. It will make your life much easier and you’ll be free of those pesky notifications.

—

[1] About and hour and half a day, on average.

Firefox extensions for privacy and security

A post called ‘A Few Simple Steps to Vastly Increase Your Privacy Online’ by Keith Axline has been making the rounds of the internet recently. It’s really good; you should read it.

In that post Keith recommends several privacy-related browser extensions. I use most of those, too, so I thought I’d follow up on my ‘Staying safe and private online’ post from a few weeks ago with the list of Firefox extensions I use to increase my online privacy and security.

Firefox extensions website.png

Block trackers from following your around the web

Privacy Badger by EFF Technologists: blocks trackers from following you around the web and seeing which websites you visit.

Decentraleyes by Thomas Rientjes: blocks creators of shared internet content (which lots of websites use) from tracking you every time you download their content.

CanvasBlocker by kkapsner: stops some trackers from using JavaScript to ‘fingerprint’ your browser.

Facebook Container by Mozilla: stops Facebook from tracking you around the web — essentially, lets you use Facebook and its related sites (like Instagram) in a private browser container that’s separated from the rest of your browser.

uBlock Origin by Raymond Hill: blocks ads and adware (ie malware in ads).

Keep your connections to websites encrypted whenever possible

HTTPS Everywhere by EFF Technologists: tries to upgrade all your website connections to ‘https’, which is an encrypted connection.

Stop potential security leaks when you use a VPN

Disable WebRTC by Chris Antaki: stops your true IP address from being leaked when streaming media through a VPN.

Create and manage excellent passwords

LastPass Password Manager by LastPass: generate long, unique, random passwords and then keep them secure.

Am I Mullvad.png

Take things up a notch by using a Virtual Private Network (VPN)

This isn’t a Firefox extension but, for completeness’ sake I thought I’d mention that my VPN of choice is Mullvad by Amagicom AB.

When you connect to the internet with Mullvad, we ensure that the traffic to and from your computer is encrypted to the highest standards even if you are using a public WiFi network at a cafe or hotel.

We keep no activity logs, do not ask for personal information, and even encourage anonymous payments via cash or one of the cryptocurrencies we accept. Your IP address is replaced by one of ours, ensuring that your device's activity and location are not linked to you.

If you want a really comprehensive VPN comparison, by the way, check out That One Privacy Site. One of the reasons I went will Mullvad is because that’s the only VPN listed on this site that has earned its ‘GOOD’ rating for privacy, features, and technology.

Staying safe and private online

I do lots of things to keep myself as secure and private as I can online – so many that I figured I’d make a list.

Securing my devices

  • make sure all my devices are fully encrypted – that includes all phones, tablets, laptops, and external hard drives (plus some USB sticks)

  • make sure all my data is backed up – and where it’s backed-up it is encrypted at rest (my cloud backup tool of choice is Arq and I use a local Synology NAS and Google Coldline as my backup locations)

  • make sure I have USB recovery drives for my all Windows installs

  • make sure my computer is kept proactively and reactively secure using anti-virus and anti-malware tools (my AV tool of choice is the pre-installed Windows Defender and my anti-malware tool of choice is Malwarebytes)

Securing my internet connection

  • configure my router to use a secure, private DNS server (CloudFlare’s 1.1.1.1 or Google’s Public DNS 8.8.8.8)

  • configure my Android phone to use a secure, private DNS server when on 4G (on the latest Android phones go to: Settings > Networks & Internet > Advanced > Private DNS)

  • use a VPN whenever I’m on an even slightly insecure network – on both my laptop and smartphone (my VPN provider of choice is Mullvad)

  • turn on my router’s guest network (with network isolation) and connect all my non-computer internet-connected gadgets (TV, Blu-ray player, cable set top box, etc) through that

  • use an advanced router that supports enterprise-level intrusion prevention (in my case I use a Synology router and their Intrusion Prevention app)

Securing my browser

Update: Check out my follow-up post for my list of ‘Firefox extensions for privacy and security’.

Securing my online accounts

  • use a password manager to generate and store long, secure, unique passwords for all my accounts (my password manager of choice is LastPass)

  • use two-factor authentication to keep as many of my accounts as possible secure (check the excellent Two Factor Auth List to see which accounts and services you can set up two-factor authentication for)

  • keep a regular, close eye on the data that various online services and social networks have on me by going through their ‘security check-up’ processes (eg Google’s excellent Privacy Check-up)

  • check all my email addresses on Have I Been Pwned to see which online services that I have an account with have had their user data stolen – also sign up to their ‘Notify me’ service to get an alert every time any of my email addresses is found in a newly stolen user data set

Always be learning

  • keep up with the latest in security via things like the Security Now podcast, several blogs, and a bunch of security-related mailing lists

  • check the EFF’s Surveillance Self-Defense website for the latest guides

  • consider switching to “ethical, easy-to-use and privacy-conscious alternatives” to social media networks, online services, and software using the comprehensive (and growing) list on switching.social

An excellent introduction to TikTok

If you’ve been around the internet for a while you’ll know there used be an app called Vine that let you make six-second long videos. It was hugely popular but, after being purchased by Twitter, was discontinued in 2016.

TikTok is considered by many to be the spiritual successor to Vine. But, like with Vine, if you don’t know what it’s about and what’s happening in that space, it’s a bit difficult to get into.

So a couple of weeks ago Sally Kuchar started a fantastic thread on Twitter that showcases some of the best TikTok videos and memes. I highly recommend you check it out!

Decentralizing my online presence

Starting this year, I'm going to cross-post to my blogs:

  • everything I post on Instagram and

  • most of what I tweet (and retweet) on Twitter.

Why?

Two reasons.

1. I'm sick of the walled gardens that social networks force you play in.

It’s great that I can post stuff so easily to social networks. That’s where most my non-techie friends and family members are too – which is super cool.

But, once I do post stuff to a social network, there’s almost nothing else I can do with this content of mine. I can’t archive, index, search, tag, export, or repurpose any of it. And I certainly can’t share it to any other social network. So, once my content is in there, it stays in there.

That’s not the way things used to be, back when the web was more decentralized.

In the words of Tom Eastman: “I’m old enough to remember when the Internet wasn’t a group of five websites, each consisting of screenshots of text from the other four.”

Now I’m still a massive RSS user (yay NewsBlur!) so, for me, most of the web still is decentralized. I want my content to be part of this easily accessible, decentralized web as well.

Which brings me to reason number two…

2. Social networks are internet black holes.

If a post of mine isn’t in currently your social news feed or isn’t pinned to the top of my social profile, it might as well not exist.

Unless you’re willing to go to my profile and scroll through years of posts, there’s no easy way to see what I’ve posted since I joined Flickr in 2007, Facebook in 2007, Twitter in 2008, and Instagram in 2012.

None of my social network posts appear in Google or Bing, either. So, as far as the broader internet is concerned, this content of mine has disappeared into a black hole that you need to be a member of to access. And, even then, there’s no easy way to find what I’ve posted there over the years. (Though, to be fair, Flickr and Twitter do have fairly decent built-in search engines.)

I don’t want my content to be this thoroughly inaccessible.

So what next?

Initially, not too much is going to change. I’ll still keep posting regularly to Twitter and Instagram.

But, because I’ll be cross-posting most of my stuff to my blogs, too, you’ll be able to go to my blogs (this one and my professional one) and look through all the great stuff (mine and others’) that I’ve been sharing on Twitter and Instagram.

The best part: this blog content will be archived, tagged, and backed-up. And it’ll be easy to search for, export, and share to any other social network.

Yay for a more (re)decentralized web!

The NBN is 62% faster in our new house!

This time last year we finally got connected to Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN).

Doing so dramatically increased our average download speed from 6.9MBps with ADSL2+ (over the old telephone copper wire network) to 46.7MBps with NBN (over a new NBN fibre optic connection to the closest telephone/internet exchange).

A little over a week ago we moved into an independent house in another suburb. This meant we were no longer sharing that fibre optic internet connection with the other residents in an apartment block.

I checked to see if this had increased our connection speed and, sure enough, our download speeds have gone up by 62% to 75.7MBps!

Woohoo! 

Pro tip: If you’re looking to move house and, like me, can’t live without the NBN, check out the nbnm8 Chrome extension. When you use realstate.com.au and Domain to search for properties it’ll automatically do the nbn availability look-up for you :)

We're finally connected to the NBN!

On 23 June 2014 I tweeted this:

But it wasn't till yesterday, 15 December 2015, that we finally got connected to Australia's National Broadband Network (NBN).

Yes, this took 1 year, 5 months and 22 days. 

What was particularly irritating was that our neighbours got connected several month ago. It took us this long because we're in an apartment building. Which meant that, first, our Body Corporate had to get their act together and network our building — which they finally did at the end of October.

We then had to wait till iiNet, our prefered ISP (who we've been with for over six years), released their Fibre to the Basement plans for selling NBN services to individual apartment building residents. 

Once all these pieces fell into place, though, things moved quickly. And, six days after the NBN became available to us, we were online:

We're now enjoying download speeds seven times faster than our old ADSL2+ connection (an average of 46.7Mbps with NBN versus 6.9MBps with ADSL2+) and upload speeds thirty-one times faster (27.6Mbps now vs 0.9Mbps previously). We're also connecting faster, with an average ping time of just 2.5ms with NBN vs 27ms with ADSL2+. 

It's awesome.

Of course these speeds aren't as fast as the NBN can theoretically reach ("up to 100Mbps") or as fast as my internet connection is at work (average downloads at 64.3Mbps and average uploads at 86.9Mbps) — but it still pretty darned good. And it's more than enough for any video streaming we want want to do.

So, yay! The NBN was a long time coming, but it was sure worth the wait.