My phone rings, I glance at it and contemplate answering. It rings a second time and I reach for the handset, then, just as suddenly as it began the ringing stopped and I was left in peace. I smiled to myself and continued what I was doing. No robocalls today! Bringing my phone into the Matrix Those of you who are regular followers of this blog will know that I have fully embraced Matrix as my chat platform of choice. While Matrix is a fantastic standalone product that offers exceptional features like federation, end-to-end encryption and the ability to self-host; Continue Reading
Christopher Munz-Michielin
Fun with FAXes
In my years of working in IT and technology I’ve never heard of anyone who considered dealing with FAXes “fun.” Most of the time my fellow sysadmins react to FAX tickets with either terror because they’re too young to have experienced the technology, or with absolute disgust as they remember the old-days of troubleshooting with buttsets, tone generators and termination blocks. Nevertheless, one day when digging through a box of old electronics I found a USB FAX modem, and decided to see if I could resurrect this old technology get it working in a modern environment. So what is a Continue Reading
My Brief Time with a Pet Millipede
It was during a hike on the trails of Mt Newton near Victoria, BC when I found it. I had wandered off the official trail, exploring the fence line of a doppler radar station when I happened to look down and spotted something black and shiny crawling over the rocks. I bent over to take a look, and was surprised to see a strange creature – 2 inches long, 62 tiny legs, 32 orange spots and 2 antennae flailing around – a small millipede: Harpaphe haydeniana Embracing my inner child, I coaxed the little guy onto my hand and watched with Continue Reading
A review of Starlink Internet
It was a weekday afternoon when my roommate messaged me “you have just received a large box.” I could barely contain my excitement as I meandered through the rest of my workday, because I knew what that large box contained! After many long months of waiting my Starlink starter pack was here! For those of you who have been living under a rock for the past few years, Starlink is Elon Musk’s pet project to launch a satellite-based Internet service by leveraging a constellation of thousands of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites. The service promises to deliver multi-megabit speeds to Continue Reading
Taking Back Control of my Messaging with Matrix
Back in the olden times when you wanted to send a message to someone you mailed them a letter. Remember those? Real pieces of paper which contained actual writing and were physically delivered to someone. Time progressed and advancements in technology gave us the ability to send messages electronically, there was FAX then email and SMS. All of these communication methods had two things in common: 1. They were decentralized and interoperable; that is to say anyone could send a message to anyone else with the right equipment, and 2. You were ultimately in control of the message history. In Continue Reading
Happy New Year and a Look back on 2021
It’s the morning of January 1st 2022 (it sounds so futuristic), and as I sit in front of my computer archiving emails from the past year I find myself wanting to take a few moments to reflect on the past year, from news events to happenings in my personal life. So without further adieu, a quick retrospective of everything that resonated with me in 2021. Historically, I feel that people could have been described me as a bit of a loner, although it’s not a title I gained by explicate choice. I’ve always found meeting new people difficult, simply because Continue Reading
Completing Bowker Creek – The final stretches
Following my adventures in the Hall of Wonders and the Bowker Creek headwaters I was becoming fairly familiar with the underground portions our little urban stream, however, I was aware there were a couple more sections of the creek which flowed beneath the city’s streets that still needed to be explored! Finally, in the summer of 2021, a full two years after my first journey below the city’s streets, I would have the opportunity to finally complete this explore. It was a beautiful summer afternoon when my usual draining buddy popped by and we made our way to the creek. Continue Reading
Totally Not Getting my Friends Stuck in a Drain
Let me begin by stating that despite the title, I did not get any of my friends stuck in a storm drain, nor were we ever in any real danger. I did learn a valuable lesson about knowing the physical limits of your friends before encouraging them to do borderline insane things with you though! The streets beneath downtown Victoria are home to a number of interesting storm drains, many of them popular urban exploration spots for the local UE community. The drains of my hometown range from “easy to access” to “only attempt at stupid o’clock in the morning Continue Reading
Shenanigans with Servers in the Middle of the night
At an hour when any reasonable person should have been asleep, I found myself sitting in front of a closed gate at a datacenter on the outskirts of Vancouver. While I waited for my friend to return with access cards, I heard a beeping sound, almost like an alarm, and the gate began to move. It was about 1:30 in the morning and I was sitting in a car with my roommate outside the Cologix datacenter in Vancouver helping a friend move servers. Why? Because, well, I’m not really a “normal” person and this is what passes for entertainment in Continue Reading
Popping Manholes on a Friday Night
I didn’t intend to spend my Friday night wandering around town popping manhole covers; in fact, I didn’t plan on doing much of anything on my Friday night. But sometimes circumstance has other plans and when the opportunity presents itself you just have to roll with it and engage in some middle of the night shenanigans! It was around 8PM and I was bored. I had a buddy who was supposed to be coming over to hang out in a few minutes and no really pressing problems on the agenda to solve. As I often do when I have nothing Continue Reading