New MacBook Air

2020 MacBook Air
MacBook Air 2020

Ok, so I’ve bought a new MacBook Air, but I’m sure the big question you’re asking is what’s going to happen to 2016 MacBook, the 2013 MacBook Air and most importantly the 2010 MacBook Air I used at the very start of this blogging journey?

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Arduino

I picked up my first Arduino as somewhat of an impulse purchase to avoid extortionate delivery costs when I was buying the Devastator Robot Platform which I blogged about here. I thought I might be able to use the Arduino to control the robot but ended up using a Raspberry Pi. I did eventually get around to playing with the Arduino kit and buying a few more along the way.

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Jnr Trak (aka Devastator Tank Mobile Robot Platform)

I can’t remember where the seed of this project was found, but when it was planted in my 7-year-old daughter’s mind it took root and grew over a number of our daily dog walks. Given we’re now in lockdown and are always looking for interesting and creative things to do at home, the time seemed right to make it happen. Fortunately, I came across this excellent series on YourTube from Explaining Computers which became the template for our Jnr Trak (aka Devastator tank mobile robot platform) project.

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Airsonic

This is another one of those things I really don’t need, but now I’ve found it and set it up I think it’s pretty cool and have been trying to find a more permanent use for it! Airsonic is a free, web-based media streamer, providing ubiquitous access to your music, although you’re probably best just checking out the website to find out more – https://airsonic.github.io/

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NGINX Proxy Manager

Using NGINX as a reverse proxy, with Letsenctypt to generate SSL certificates and secure access to my externally exposed services, was a real game-changer for me, automating something that in the past has been a real challenge.  NGINX Proxy Manager simplifies things even further and saves me having to edit multiple nginx.conf files.

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Updating Bitwarden

I blogged about my switch from using 1Password to a self-hosted version of Bitwarden here, and its been running perfectly ever since. That said, I had tried updating Bitwarden a couple of times, all of which have failed and I’d ended up rolling back a snapshot. I tried updating Bitwarden again this weekend, with a much more successful outcome!

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