Guide

Note: These are notes from my own setup, not a definitive reference. I wrote them down as I went so I’d have something to follow if I ever have to rebuild this from scratch, not as verified documentation. Kopia’s flags and behavior may have moved on since I wrote this. If something doesn’t match what you see, check Kopia’s own docs for the current version. Kopia is an open-source, encrypted, deduplicating backup tool, the kind of thing you run instead of paying for Backblaze’s app or piecing together rsync and a prayer. It has a client-server mode: a repository server holds the actual backup data, and KopiaUI runs on your desktop as a client that connects to it. ...

You can’t delete your primary Google Calendar. Google doesn’t let you, it’s tied to your account. So when someone wants a totally clean slate, the only official option is the “Remove all events” flow buried in Calendar settings. I tried that recently for someone with years of accumulated events on their primary calendar. Click it, and a little “Deleting…” toast pops up from the bottom of the page like every other Google Calendar action. Except this one just sits there. Eventually it either says failed, or it dismisses itself quietly like the job finished. Refresh the page either way and the calendar’s still full. Ran it again. Same result. No useful error, no explanation, just a toast lying to you and a pile of events that refused to leave. ...

Bit rot is the failure mode nobody plans for: a file that was fine last year won’t open today, no error, no warning, no dramatic failure to point to. One bit somewhere flipped from a 0 to a 1, and now something chokes on it. Everyone plans for the drive dying. Almost nobody plans for the drive quietly lying to them instead. There’s a tool built specifically for this, decades old, still actively maintained, and most people have never heard of it: PAR2. ...

The standard Windows installer refuses to install to a USB drive, and that’s on purpose. Microsoft blocks it outright, which is a problem if you want a portable, bootable Windows environment you can plug into any PC for troubleshooting or borrowed-hardware work, without installing anything on the machine’s internal drive. The fix: Rufus , a free tool for writing bootable ISOs to USB drives, has a mode built exactly for this, called “Windows To Go”. It writes a full, runnable OS straight onto an external drive, bypassing the installer’s block entirely, and it boots on basically anything with a USB 3.0 port. ...

This is the exact stack behind this blog. If you want a super fast, self-deploying tech blog with zero servers, zero monthly bills, and VS Code as your entire CMS — here is how to build it. By the end you will have: A Hugo blog with the PaperMod theme VS Code as your editor, file manager, git client, and terminal — all in one Automatic deploys to Cloudflare Pages on every git push Why this stack Hugo is a static site generator. It turns markdown files into a complete website in milliseconds. No database, no runtime, nothing to keep running. ...

FTP isn’t a workflow. It doesn’t know who changed what. It has no memory of previous versions. It’s blind, manual, and prone to breaking mid-upload. If you’re still dragging files into a folder to “deploy”—or worse, manually creating site-backup-v2-final-actual-FINAL.zip before every change—you’re working harder than you need to. Enter The Solo Developer Workflow. In this guide, we’re building a professional pipeline: Local → Git → Server. No more “ghost files,” no more zip-file hoarding, and no more deployment anxiety. Just a clean, versioned, and automated path to production. ...

The Aruba AP-325 (Model: APIN0325) is an enterprise-grade 802.11ac Wave 2 access point that routinely appears on the secondary market after corporate Wi-Fi refreshes. The hardware is excellent — fast radios, strong range, rock-solid stability — but there’s a catch. Most surplus AP-325 units are “Campus APs”, meaning they require an Aruba Mobility Controller to function. Without one, they’re effectively useless. The good news: the AP-325 (and other similar Aruba models) can be converted to Instant (IAP) mode, allowing it to run standalone or form a controller-less cluster with other Instant APs. Once converted, it behaves exactly like a native Instant AP — no licenses, no subscriptions, no controller. ...

Ever wondered why copying a file to an external hard drive feels slow while your SSD-based machine flies? The answer comes down to data transfer speeds – and understanding the numbers across storage and networking technology helps you make better hardware decisions. Bits vs. Bytes Before looking at the numbers, there’s one conversion to keep in mind: 1 byte = 8 bits Network speeds are almost always quoted in megabits per second (Mbps) or gigabits per second (Gbps) Storage speeds are typically quoted in megabytes per second (MB/s) or gigabytes per second (GB/s) So a 1 Gbps network connection has a maximum throughput of 125 MB/s (1,000 / 8 = 125). This distinction matters when comparing specs across different product categories. ...

If you use Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL2), you may have noticed a large file on your system drive: C:\Users\<YourUser>\AppData\Local\Packages\<YourDistroFolder>\LocalState\ext4.vhdx This is a virtual hard disk that stores the entire Linux filesystem. It expands automatically as you install packages and create files, but it does not shrink automatically when files are deleted. Over time, this can leave you with a multi-gigabyte file containing mostly unused space. Here’s how to safely compact it and reclaim that space. ...

Search for BCM4332 and Linux and you’ll find years of forum threads with the same discouraging pattern: someone asks for help, someone replies “that chip doesn’t work on Linux anymore,” and the thread dies. That conclusion is wrong, and it’s been wrong every time someone wrote it. The BCM4332 chip works on modern Linux. Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 24.04, Linux Mint, Debian 12 — all of them. But it requires steps that the default package manager doesn’t take automatically, and if you skip any of them, you’ll end up with a chip that either doesn’t appear at all, or worse — works right now but vanishes silently after the next reboot. ...

Note: This guide was written in 2015 for OpenVPN Access Server 2.0.24 on Ubuntu 14. The general process remains similar on newer versions, but package names, download URLs, and some commands will differ. Check the OpenVPN Access Server docs for current instructions. In this guide we’ll install OpenVPN Access Server onto a VPS and connect to it using the built-in client web portal. Step 1: Get a VPS You’ll need a VPS with full root access. For this guide we’re using a 512MB VPS running Ubuntu 14 64-bit. If you use a different OS, the installation commands in Step 3 will differ. ...

Note: This guide is from 2014. VPS pricing has moved since, and the linked Transmission installer script may no longer be maintained, review it before running it (as the guide already tells you to) or look for a current alternative. The general approach, a small VPS running Transmission behind a web UI, still works fine. In this guide we’ll set up a seedbox (a BitTorrent client running on a remote server) on a Linux VPS in four steps. Once it’s running, you can queue downloads from any browser and pull completed files down to your local machine when ready. ...