Hi I'm back. been offline from SSB for a few months.
How are y'all doing?

I'll write how I'm doing ASAP with some kind of "my 2023" or something.

I run a pihole on docker at home frrom my NAS-like device and have been doing so for nearly 2 years now. (I ran a pi before, that but the constant heat of my small army of aurora bots, house automations, SSB stuff and other things got to the pi and made it burn out). It has worked really well so far!

The only thing you have to remember is to log in every now and then and update the docker image.

The first results on google (those paid ones) will no longer work, but other than that it works great!

don't connect to pubs and take it easy on whom to follow (I would be a bad first person to follow considering how many messages I have and how big the network around me is ;)

I would recommend getting started with one of the manyverse clients and connecting to a friendly neighborhood SSB Room (https://picoroom.hendrikpeter.net being an excellent first choice).

It's probably best to set the replication hops to 2, so you don't blow up your database if you (or a friend of a friend) connects with an SSB-celeb.

and from there go where your friend wants to go ^_^

your router might have some settings for custom DNS routes.. so if you can figure out what your TV is talking to you could just route those to a non existing localhost address

alternatively feel free to use my Pihole config:

On your router

On your router assign any Linux/Mac machine (or a pi or windows, but i have no experience running a pihole in windows) a reserved IP address that matches the Ip-address scheme of the rest of your devices (192.168.0.200 in my case) and reboot the router and the linux/Mac. that way they'll re-register to the network with all the right flags.

On your pi-hole computer of choice (with docker-compose)

Install Docker on your machine.
On ubuntu: https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/ubuntu/ and https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/linux-postinstall/#manage-docker-as-a-non-root-user
On mac: download Docker Desktop from docker.com.

open a terminal and make a new "pihole" directory somewhere in your user directory. in it insert the file below:

docker-compose.yml

version: "3"
services:
  pihole:
    container_name: pihole
    hostname: HomeNuc
    image: pihole/pihole:latest
    ports:
      - "192.168.0.200:53:53/tcp"
      - "192.168.0.200:53:53/udp"
      - "192.168.0.200:67:67/udp"
      - "0.0.0.0:5000:80/tcp"
    environment:
      TZ: 'Europe/Stockholm'
      WEBPASSWORD: 'INSERTYOURPASSHERE'
      ServerIP: "192.168.0.200"
      PIHOLE_DNS_: "1.1.1.1;1.0.0.1"
    volumes:
      - './etc-pihole/:/etc/pihole/'
      - './etc-dnsmasq.d/:/etc/dnsmasq.d/'
    restart: unless-stopped

Make sure to insert your Time-zone on TZ, your web interface password of choice as well as the serverIp of the pi-hole itself. also make sure to fill in the network address of your pi-hole as the expose-to interface in your port list.

port 53 and 67 are for DNS requests, port 80->5000 is for the web interface

once done type "docker-compose up".

If you get port reserved errors you might need to disable the system built-in DNS server:

On mac: https://discourse.pi-hole.net/t/docker-unable-to-bind-to-port-53/45082/8
on Ubuntu: https://www.smarthomebeginner.com/run-pihole-in-docker-on-ubuntu-with-reverse-proxy/ (step 1 in that guide, just do the 2 systemctl commands, no need to edit your resolve files or remove anything).

You might need to open some ports using sudo ufw allow 53 67 80 && sudo ufw reload if you are using the UFW firewall.

visit http://your-network-ip:5000 and verify that everything is up and running

Back on your router

go to "Prefered DNS settings" on your router and plug in the IP address of your pi-hole linux box without any ports, wait for devices to reconnect to your wifi and they should automatically pick up the preferred DNS.

You're done ;)

the pi-hole will report domains that you visit in its admin interface, if your TV adverts are still there, then find the domain in the log list for your TV and block it ;)

I tried out cross country skiing for the first time a few weeks ago, It's sooo much fun!

I always shrugged the "sport" off as "walking with extra steps", but it's actually pretty awesome to shuffle around the tracks through the forest, got my first pair of ski's fitted 2 weeks ago and I've been spending lunch-breaks, afternoons and weekends exploring the fast network of tracks starting just 2 minutes away from my front-door in Sundsvall (we have about 300km of semi-connected trails around town).

PDF map of the trails

I did a trail yesterday going from LV5 to Södraberget followed by the Scout stuga, fågelbergssutga and Sidsjö to then end up at Sallyhil and it was just such a blast!

I can really recommend trying the sport out if you ever get the chance.

That said getting the right equipment for your body-length and weight is super important. the center of the ski's will have some kind of material on them to give you grip when you press your ski down on the mountain (by lifting the other foot or by putting pressure on your toes). you won't glide if your ski's are too stiff and you won't get grip if the ski's are too flexible.

https://thehackernews.com/2022/01/german-court-rules-websites-embedding.html
Uh oh, FYI for everyone using Google fonts on their websites (with the easy embed tags)

First fines are dropping!