I’ve just sat down, in front of my computer, after feeling like I’ve been in front of a computer for days. Strange as it may seem this post is part of a wind-down.
It began on when an exploratory trip to finding a different, and totally unnecessary, means to sync books to my Kobo. I wrote about that in Kobo Sync sank. That was all fixed up by yesterday morning and I will admit that some of the problems I had with the sync led me towards new ways of looking at Calibre.
One thing leads to another and an errant post I came across led me to take a look at Paperless. For a while I’ve been dissatisfied with Zotero’s input friction. Designed for research papers, it falls a little short for normal family life document storage. Any file I load needs to be wrapped in a parent document metadata structure to be useable. Paperless has a different enough approach that it was deemed look-worthy.
What followed was:
- Paperless on the Synology DiskStation DS920+ was easy enough to get running. Performance was woeful. Minutes to process just a few documents.
- So I downloaded Docker for Windows and installed it there. Night and day performance change. Not surprising with a CPU at least 10x faster and storage 100x faster.
- While I’m here, let’s move across Audiobookshelf because it has always been laggy on the NAS. It was not the evening I expected. The app (Docker container) was easy enough to pull across. The problem was I now had audiobooks on a network mounted NAS and docker had a hell of a time finding the documents. A couple of interface oddities tripped me up and a long conversation with Microsoft Copilot was not enough to help. The solutions were drawn from past configurations and didn’t help me solve what I needed. It’s a failing of Generative AI and it’s training. The fix was to move all the audiobooks from the NAS to local Windows storage. It’s like a Ferrari engine in a Mini.
- Today I moved calibre-web across, and did some reorganisation and tidy up of a file structure that was growing too quickly.
- Of course, I’ve had to repoint all my backups to keep My backup strategy working. Hard to back up something that’s not longer where it was.
- I rely on Portainer heavily to manage Docker on the Synology DiskStation DS920+. I don’t leave the command line available. It was natural to start with the same on Windows but I didn’t need it as the Docker.Desktop tool shows me what I need. So, finally I learned how to start containers using
docker compose up -d. If any family or friends need help I’ll be there. Hopefully I’ve stopped crying by then. A true adventure and I have learned a lot. Mentally spent so I have to be restful tomorrow.
Reading
Being restful is a good segue into what I’m reading.
- I finally finished listening Wind and Truth. See my thoughts at Kaladin is half-way.
- I read Harrow the Ninth and was very disappointed. Will not be continuing in the series.
- Enjoyed The Sanctuary Sparrow. Cadfael is one of my favourite characters. I always liked Derek Jacobi in the 80’s TV series.
- Listened to Odyssey, the final book in Stephen Fry’s Great Mythology Series. Excellent and a good primer for the movie next year.
- Have begun Philosophy in the Islamic World. None of the names are at all familiar so I hope I can keep them in order.
Coding
I worked on and submitted code for Obsidian Wallabag plugin which I’m waiting to have approved as a formal plugin. The original developer closed the project and as I’d contributed was asked by a couple of users if I could help.
I need to fix a problem with my site’s RSS feed showing links to pages that don’t exist. Postponing that until next weekend.
Watching
Started Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World two weeks ago. Will get back to it tomorrow.
Photography
I’ve been out and about exploring. And playing with an ultra-wide angle lens borrowed from a friend. It’s been very relaxing. A camera cube insert is on its way. My Peak Design 3L Everyday Sling is too small in some situations but a full size camera bag is not justified (I know as I have one I don’t use).
A pelican at Kennington Reservoir