Daniel F. Dickinson's Blog

Life and tech for the common good

Where have all the pictures gone

“… each of my posts has usually sported a big ol’ hero image as the background for the post’s title, description, and date-of-issuance info. That, too, has been limiting and even delaying, even if only as a lame excuse on my part. After all, it’s not always possible to find a freebie stock photo that has even a tangential connection to a post’s subject(s).” (Bryce Wray in a post about CTCAJW mode)

Alpine Vultr—Oh my!

This site now lives on an Alpine instance via Vultr.com public cloud. No more Azure Storage Blob web hosting (Microsoft) for me. And though it wasn’t a financial decision, I save money! [2023-07-11] I went all purist open source, for a few months.

I have been up to tech

If you’ve been wondering why I haven’t posted in a long time: “I have been up to tech!” I’ve created and updated quite a few projects.

Docker network: LAN to container

When using Docker to containerize internal services like Samba, LLMNR, or mDNS a.k.a Bonjour one may find that the standard Docker model of using specific unicast ports forwards, is insufficient.

Accessible design: No "_blank"

With browsers having built-in “Open link in new tab” functionality, it doesn’t make sense to break a basic web idiom (the back button) on a whim. Auto-opening link in a new tab/window breaks the back button and is unnecessary (because users have the ability to make that choice for themselves).

Board game winning AI

How Artificial Intelligence can win at board games.

No backscatter email alias relay

Setting up an email relay that aliases addresses in various domains to a specific offsite user doesn’t have to mean backscatter. Here is one solution.

Relaxation at the Midland Copy Shoppe

One of the lessons I’ve learned over the last few years is to relax and let others do what they do better than I. For instance, I recently updated my ‘introduction card’ (aka business card), but this time instead of designing it myself, I decided to rely on the professional designer at the Midland Copy Shoppe. I am very glad that I did, and I will show you why.

Ancient games, old computers, and new tech

About a member of the Mancala family of games known as Oware or Wari, with a look at an old Commodore 64 version as well as modern versions.