Another year gone and my posting frequency hasn’t hugely increased. Possibly because I’ve been tinkering less - I think the amount of things being maintained eventually wore me down. More things running means more time fixing things when they inevitably go wrong! That said, the move to docker last year has meant that the hour I spent weekly updating virtual machines and LXC containers has become about 15mins a month. Generally this has been more robust too, which is appreciated. I found, for instance, my old Nextcloud LXC container generated a large amount of cruft as I upgraded each version. The post about upgrading PHP versions is as a result of that. Docker containers seem to make that all an absolute breeze.

Finishing my Masters

I finally finished my Masters of Education last year, which was a huge weight off my shoulders. I had extended my deadline for the final project by a year as COVID made collecting data a struggle. That combined with taking on a new role meant that it was a good idea if I wanted any time to myself! It also meant, however, that it took three years to complete - the same amount of time as my undergraduate degree! No disrespect to HKU, but it was a lot more expensive and a lot less fun than the undergrad experience. I’m so glad it’s out of the way. I achieved a distinction and am included on the Dean’s Honours List (which I don’t really understand to be honest - do we have that in the U.K too?), which helped me feel better about the time it took to complete.

Hong Kong

Hong Kong has been in the global news a lot over the past few years…not always for the most positive of reasons. I’ve seen an awful lot of colleagues come and go and it’s made me somewhat reflective of where I might want to end up. For all its issues, it’s still a pretty great city to live in. Perhaps a few more years? It seems that when I landed in Hong Kong I somewhat unknowingly hit the jackpot with regards to international teaching. Singapore compares well - but who can honestly stand the heat everyday? Thailand would be interesting too. One thing is certain though, I’ve seen so many friends pass through and live with one foot out of the door for years. They are never happy! Either commit or leave, so I think I’ll have to make a decision on that at some point.

So what this year?

Tech projects still need tending to!

Remove syndication capabilities from blog template

I have no regrets retireing my Mastodon server and never signed up to another instance. I guess I’m just not very social?! I’ve never been one for social media anyway. If people want to get in touch my (ephemeral) email address is posted on the blog anyway. I will need to re-edit my Hugo templates to remove the syndication code as I’ll not be POSSE’ing content out anywhere else. It was fun to learn and add this code - perhaps I’ll return to it at some point.

Update Proxmox & Update/ migrate infrastructure from Ubuntu 18.04

Urgh, it only seems like a few months ago that I last had to upgrade my Proxmox host, but such is the march of progress. Both Debian 9 and Ubuntu 18.04 are heading towards EOL in a couple of months, so upgrades will need to happen. I’m hoping the guide(s) I wrote on this blog, as well as my infrustural transition towards Docker make the upgrades easier this time.

I somewhat hope this is the end of it really. I’ve become a lot more frugal the last few years, so I’d like to keep the Homelab side of things lighter as a result. My laptop is now 6 years old, but I don’t think I’ll upgrade that this year either - still life in the thing yet! Perhaps my posting frequency will increase a little if I need to record information for projects e.t.c. Perhaps I should look into a Wiki instead - there’s plenty of software out there.

Here’s to the rest of the year!