2026 August Summaries

2026 - 09 - Updates

Monday, 31st August 2026

• Another large step, roughly a month later. After approximately 8 hours of work and 67 OS builds later, I finally made the shift to NixOS, and I have explained why I did it. I have nothing against fedora, but it made me realize what I exactly needed. Reproducible and stateless system architecture. And, contrary to the general pop belief, it has actually taken a much shorter time since I understood the logic behind the NixOS system.

Friday, 28th August 2026

• TIL: If you found yourself in a situation where the fedora desktop is not willing to go to sleep or suspend. Do check your file indexing setup. Because if there is a background indexing going on - it will not let your system to go to sleep.

Tuesday, 25th August 2026

• Really, was annoyed dealing with the KDE Plasma Wayland second monitor not being clickable after system wake up. So again, there a fix I did, which is pretty straight forward but had to go through some hoops to find out what can be done.
• Umami analytics is now applied to the other projects I have rebuilt.

Monday, 24th August 2026

• Cleanup of previous Obsidian note vaults and migration of personal data into a personal vault and technical data with Silverbullet.
• Since pxl.to started to say that short links are being legacy features, it is difficult now to trust them in the long term. I have moved the short link domain to JotURL. Since they have been around since 2018.

Sunday, 23rd August 2026

• Resolved the issue with Handy.computer transcription paste issues in Fedora KDE Plasma Wayland. Now, Handy can paste the transcription to active applications without any issues. The code is on GitHub.
• I have tried to make it work with Ignis and Quartz Syncer, but while it partially worked, the publishing dialog was stuck in the process. I have reported compatibility issues in the GitHub Issues thread.

Saturday, 22nd August 2026

• Completed: Full selective REST API authentication layer protection for WordPress. This is mainly built to protect the REST API endpoint in WordPress for the Astro frontend of my site. This will be opened up as a WordPress plugin to the public soon. Now, completely block out access to the WordPress backend, while Astro can access it natively and I can use it as my editorial workflow.

Tuesday, 18th August 2026

• I completed the full Obsidian Sync server (CouchDB) in Proxmox. Yes, live editing is possible on multiple types of devices via the native Obsidian app. Needs the free plugin to do that.
• Completed the Ignis implementation, which is an Obsidian Electron based full web UI implementation on Proxmox, NO shitty VNC. Just a real browser-based Electron app experience.
• Migration planning from Obsidian desktop to the web vault, while keeping the option open for the desktop app as well. This is still on the to-do list, but will move faster.

Monday, 17th August 2026

• I completed the he-hauling of my previous automation for the homelab using Ansible Semaphore. This system has been automated and modified for over a year and continuously updated.
• Every homelab machine is now automatically audited, checked and inventoried every week. This also sends out a telegram report if any configuration or backups are drifting or missing any new machines in the chain.
• Managing using Ansible Semaphore UI and GitHub.
• The entire 24-step process is simplified into 3 targeted workflows.
• Dynamic DNS Client moved from the outdated ddclient to DDNS-Updater.

Friday, 14th August 2026

• Started another Substack with completely 0 subscribers. The goal is to try to provide small fixes for small annoyances.
• While composing some drafts for the above mentioned Substack. I realized I will need a social sharing image for each of the posts I make. Then I realized that to do this, I need to use a graphics editor and need to edit an image, making it look somewhat nice. But the goal of this Substack is basically simplifying the process of smaller fixes. It is mainly content-based, and it doesn’t really need a sophisticated graphic for social sharing. When I started doing that, I then realized that I needed to repeat this process and make it every time. I wanted to experiment with Python and the image generation capabilities. What I did was, I built up a reusable Python program with minimum depend ency, and now I can generate any article title with a gradient background and the logo, and this can be used by anyone for their own purposes.
• I ended up creating the OGIMG project that I (or anyone) will be able to be used in an editorial workflow and just use from the command line. No big shiny lights or shiny AI in the process. The purpose of this program is just to be a part of the workflow and not the entire workflow. It can be automated, it can be scripted. It’s simple, a parameterized Python shell program. It will work on Windows, Mac and Linux. I will open it up to the public once it is polished up a bit.
• Spend some significant time to resolve the issues with system-level integration between the password manager and browsers.
• Zen Browser is cool but shall I use it for a long time, not sure. 🫠
• Whenever configuring a network connection, never forget to apply the subnet mask properly. This can come back and haunt you.

Wednesday, 12th August 2026

• Typography patch for https://rabin.blog/; now it is similar to the reader mode view on mobile for better readablity.
• Fixed issues that Fedora keeps on taking over the volume of WiFi audio and Apple TV devices in the audio control panel.
• Updated Btrfs Snapper Logic for snapshots and timelines for the Fedora system.

Tuesday, 11th August 2026

• Updated the Cloudflare-based API to process realtime .VCF contact generation with spam gating and a limiter. Applied and tested for ruhani.me.
• Fixed issues with rendering content with the transformer which was missing WordPress specific block content at ruhanirabin.com. Improve the typography of the content for better clarity on reading.
• I have not logged into Windows 11 Pro for a while. I realized that Fedora KDE has more stable applications - for example, I did miss ShareX but Spectacle is doing an outstanding job so far. Dolphin and Krusader are handy, of course Krusader is not as full featured as Total Commander, but it does fill up the gap.
• The built-in clipboard manager works great.
• Compared to Linux Mint, I would say, if someone wants to transition to a stable usable Linux desktop workstation, Fedora should be a better choice.
• I even pulled in the Canva Affinity AppImage. Still need to see how that goes, since it is emulating via Wine. Gear Lever is an excellent tool for managing AppImages.
• I have set up Backrest to back up important user files to Synology regularly. pCloud is maintaining sync documents/pictures between multiple machines. Backrest is a repo-based backup system that uses restic for an encrypted, content-defined chunking to store identical data only once across all snapshots, significantly reducing storage consumption and transfer times. And supports SFTP, S3 targets.
• The only risk I can see going with Fedora, is the release cycle because every six months they have major releases. This is the only concern I have where other products they have a longer life cycle of a version. But generally speaking, it seems a much more workable workstation for me because I moved all the development work here and they are running solid without any issues. There are occasional small stuff that I can easily take care of.
• I’m still trying to find a proper backup system that will back up the Fedora system into either Synology or a different partition. So, this one I still need to figure out. For now I am keeping Btrfs snapshots.

Monday, 10th August 2026

• A few of my automations that are managed in the WordPress backend, started to fail. This led me to investigate the issues, the I found out that FlowMattic integrations are not working, had to spend an enormous amount of time to try to identify the root cause and eventually moved to HTTP API calls (generic) to resolve the issue. But the point is, that is not the way I should be using automation steps in the FlowMattic workflow. If I wanted to go that way, n8n is a much more stable choice.
• This is the mistake founders make all the time: they want to make their automation tools fancy, with MCP, AI agents, and so on. They are afraid - everyone has AI now - I must put AI into mine. But these are gimmicks; the actual automation system is boring, effective and does solid work. That is how you save time and resources. Adding too many bells and whistles will make the system fragile and dependent on too many changes. Anyway, I did ramble a bit. Although there is some truth in it. Shiny new fancy features do not always mean a stable product.

Sunday, 9th August 2026

• Added two interactive islands in this digital garden home page. They will get updated automatically when content is being added or changed. Minor modifications to the CSS for better readability.
• Mostly spend time on development work in 3 projects. Including Quartz 5.
• Cancelled 3 more domains. Here is Why I am getting rid of (some) domains.
• Restructured daily notes here, into collective updates by month, in reverse chronology. Latest date on top.
• Tested 3 Steam games; they are working with good FPS, slightly better FPS than Windows. This is backed by the PROTON framework for Steam.
• Added a full markdown compatible comments system here (bottom of each page), you can comment using just a username, or email. I will add other login providers later on. Email notifications on comments are working.
• I have already set up an administrative layer in the comments and the system is self-hosted using Remark42.

Saturday, 8th August 2026

• Tightened up the software that is needed for development, screenshots, prerequisites, runtimes, and agentic environment.
• Wasn’t easy to use LibreOffice, but it was straightforward to catch up.
• All browser profiles, password managers, and shell behaviors are synced. All shell access to homelab and external servers is working as expected.
• Great discoveries include Kate (great text editor), Nvim, Gwenview, Krusader (Total Commander alternative), Spectacle (screenshots - very well done), Konsole (the native console), Betterbird (instead of emClient), KDE wallet system, and many more.
• I also noticed, I am not really a fan of Flatpak 😵‍💫, I prefer to find the native RPM packages, then AppImage, and then only Flatpak.
• The GRUB2 is already detected and has an entry for Windows 11. Just a little tweak was needed in UEFI boot order as Windows bootloader as set at first. Now setting the Fedora GRUB2 allows me to use boot switching. Also had some trouble with the graphical GRUB2 UI, which was sorted out by fixing the GRUB2 theme loader.
• Fedora can natively access the NTFS drives, so it was easy to port over many things. One additional thing I appreciated is that to access those NTFS drives, it is required to enter the admin password.
• Git, GH, and all shell now have access to GitHub via shell authentications. pCloud synced all my documents.
• Tested development work and it was fast and flawless, no need to tackle with WSL2.

Friday, 7th August 2026

• Finally freed up an SSD to have a dedicated dual boot. Installed Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop 44.
• Hit some snags along the way, had some hard times initially to make the NVIDIA driver work with Secure Boot; there is a process to it.
• Generally the reason for having Fedora is to have a dedicated OS for development work. So I am splitting into 3 different systems 1) For automation and automated scripts - Linux Mint Cinnamon 2) For development work, VSCode, Node.js, Inference, etc. - Fedora 3) For media work, gaming - Windows 11 Pro

Wednesday, 5th August 2026

• Finally published my super complicated 🤣 Cheap Prolink UPS automation article.
• This wallet password issue in Linux Mint, broke my automations.

Tuesday, 4th August 2026

• Fixed - Uh - what happened to my Quartz homepage

Monday, 3rd August 2026

• I was pretty lazy to inspect each domain and their prices on multiple providers - from this one Why I am getting rid of (some) domains. It is time consuming and not a repeatable task. So I studied Cloudflare and the Porkbun API and came up with this mini script to get it done - Open sourced it in GitHub.
• Various fixes because I found some issues with Cloudflare Pages and font rendering scripts.

Sunday, 2nd August 2026

Three big milestones - done.

• Rabin.blog is now stable running using Hugo and the PaperMod theme. Keeping it simple readable and manageable for the long term with no database dependency. Here is the story - Why did I move rabin.blog to Hugo?
• The 20 years old blog, my primary domain www.ruhanirabin.com is now fully powered by Astro in the frontend and WordPress as the backend with many complex post types and performance improvements.
• Started to use Quartz 5 (current site you are reading). It is a digital garden format. This website is now added to Google Search Console using sitemap.xml.
• Thoughts on Why I am getting rid of (some) domains