Kind: Notes

short content: a post or status update with just plain content and typically without a title

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I run this site on a VPS. I recently had some problems because there was no log management configured for SQL and a harmless warning completely filled the storage. The irony was that, as the storage filled, the more applications failed and the more errors were generated, so it totally snowballed.

In the following week I had two portable devices start to display odd behaviour too. Turns out both of them were also short of storage. Several apps on one iOS device had apparently cached gigs of data that could only be removed by uninstalling and reinstalling the app. This feels like a problem we solved decades ago but then developers started relying on increasing storage capacity instead and stop caring.

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Recently found that one of my users, bob, could not log in. I tried to check the user in the Synology Control Panel > User & Group but got the message “failed to load the user data”. No other users seemed affected.

I logged in with <span class="code">ssh</span> with suspicions that some file permissions had been messed up. Took a bit of time but I discovered that some ill-advised and careless use of <span class="code">chown -R</span> in <span class="code">/volume1</span> (switching ownership of some shared files) meant that bob no longer owned the files/folders in <span class="code">/volume1/@userpreference/bob</span>.

I <span class="code">chown</span>ed them back to bob and it fixed the problem.

Sorry, bob.

I was today years old when I learned that I own an NFT 🤣 Turns out I’m a massive hypocrite and I didn’t even know.

(Yes, it’s a Reddit “Collectible” avatar)

My friend now has a mandatory, annual “AI objective”. I suggested this:

Minimise the risk of inclusion of mathematically certain, AI hallucinations, for which I would be blamed, by avoiding any usage beyond simple sentences rephrasing/proofing

Learned the meaning of some words today:

Exophthalmic (adj.), from Exophthalmos – a bulging of the eye anteriorly out of the orbit

Impecunious (adj.) – having little or no money

Prurient (adj.) – an inordinate interest in sex

TIL that they’re called “outplacement consultants” or “career transition specialists”. I didn’t meet one. I just had reason to look it up.

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I use the Redirection plugin on WordPress. As a result I am in a constant arms race with spammy 404s, like these:

/page/320/?s
/page/7/?s=九州通2025校园招聘
/page/87/?s=Which of the following can result if an embryo implants close to the internal opening of

Redirection supports regular expressions and this is one of the few regular chances I get to use them. I only use simple Ignore so there’s no real harm if I get them wrong either. I just need to keep the logs clean(er) so I can see the legit 404s.

This is what I got:

^\/page\/\d+\/\?s.*

And the final redirect in Redirection looks like this:

Source URL: ^/page/\d+/\?s.* Title: Ignore spammy page/?s 404s Match: URL only When matched: Do nothing (ignore)