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Some months ago I wrote about how this blog is “Google free” since I’m using the open source umami analytics service instead of Google Analytics. And I wrote also that I was using it on a free instance of Heroku, but, after 6/7 months the things on Heroku became worse and worse, there were lots of issues. One is that umami is using a new release of Next.js and Heroku hasn’t upgraded since months, so I wasn’t able to build the latest umami release (GitHub issue reported by lots of users) Sometimes the pages were very slow to open/refresh, also the Heroku pages to log in. I wasn’t able to save the 2FA code to Safari or 1Password, because the login page has a different address from the 2... Read More

In this hot summer I can’t survive without “doing nothing”, so since my parents are on vacation for one month, I started a new easy project to give my parents a better home network without spending nothing. Since I have already at home all the hardware: a Netgear R7000 router and a RPi Zero W. Goal The goal is to achieve a stable network, with some basic privacy features, and blocking the ads/requests via DNS. Plus obtaining an optimized network for FaceTime/iMessage, because me, my parents and my sister are using a family chat on iMessage and I always call my families with FaceTime. And last, a network that I can manage remotely, in order to update, check the clients, etc…and resolve ... Read More

If you don’t use the Safari built in Reading List, you can move forward, or read it if you want to find a quick way to save web links from every app. I love the Safari Reading List, because it’s a simply and quick way to save a webpage, an app, an Amazon item, etc… and have it synced across all you Apple devices, to read later on bigger screen, or with more relax when there’s time. Indeed it’s my first item in the share sheet! This feature has only two defects: one is that, by default, it caches the page for offline reading, and this could generate a very big Safari data storage. But this can be disabled/enable under “Setting>Safari>Automatically Save Offline” The other thing... Read More

I’ve just bought the iPad Mini 6, and…wow! What a great device, I’m really surprised of it, I also have the iPad Pro 12,9” but the Mini is absolutely lovely, a great display (better than the iPad Pro for contrast and pixel density, 326PPI the Mini VS 264PPI the Pro12,9”), very fast, with four good sounding speaker, a very compact format and super portable (actually I bought it to bring it always with me also in the small photography bags, like when I use the ONA Bowery) I’m not joking, here’re some numbers from GSMarena review But by default it has a huge trouble, that I was able to fix only after few days of usage: you need two boring steps (or hands) to reach the Home interface. ... Read More

When I’m working at the Mac I always want to listen/whatch something in background, and usually I want to listen news and informations about the world (not music) in order to be always informed, so my favourite TV channels became: Rai New 24, Sky TG24, La 7. But since I needed a way to listen/watch via internet, I created a simply playlist for the great IINA app for Mac: Copy-paste this code, save it as “TV.m3u8” and open with IINA. But there’s a catch in order to view the SkyTG24 channel, read below (because this URL doesn’t work as you can see) #EXTINF: -1 ,Rai News 24 [48] https://mediapolis.rai.it/relinker/relinkerServlet.htm?cont=1&output=16 #EXTINF: -1,Sky TG24 [50] https... Read More

I don’t know how I found this app but now I have to say that it saved me a lot of time and complications! ServerCat It’s a simply -but powerful- app to monitor the status of your servers and even run commands on them, also the same command to multiple servers. It also has a cloud sync feature and it runs on macOS, iOS and iPadOS (thanks to Catalyst) and a funny name that I think is due to use the ‘cat’ command to get the server details. Let me show you some screenshots of the main app before entering in to the details Here’s the app on macOS And on iOS The app simply displays the stats of a server via SSH, but you can tap on a info to switch from “Linux style load average” to cl... Read More

Introduction In the latest release Apple has made some big steps forward with the integration of Apple Keychain and macOS/iOS: “iOS 15 Includes Built-In Password Authenticator With Autofill, Replacing Google Authenticator and Authy”. Now the passwords are well managed, quite well integrated in the system, and most important: you can also add the 2FA without use third-party apps. And i think this feature is very useful, at the moment I enabled both 1Password and Apple Keychain 2FA (yes you can use the same code generator from a website/service on two password managers), because login/fill with faceID or touchID is faster than use 1Password. Inside the apps and Safari you can login withou... Read More

Some days ago I received a cool piece of “contemporary art”: the iPhone 3G frame by Grid, and I want to share my review of it because I think it’s an interesting product for the geek/Apple lovers and it has a correct price tag (in my opinion). Disclaimer: I’m not involved with Grid and I (unfortunately 😁) paid the full price for it and nobody asked me for a review. What is? It is an iPhone 3G, my first iPhone, and the first iPhone sold globally, with -almost- all the components exposed under a nice transparent Plexiglas panel framed (in A3 paper size) with a black border. Starting from the package, it is very well-made and it’s almost impossible to damage it with the sturdy plast... Read More

I spent my last two months to build/optimize my home network from scratch and I want to share my setup, info and troubles that I discovered during this work, so you can take some inspirations or ideas here and there. This post will be quite long, so I start with an overall description of the hardware/software/setup and then I’ll go into the details. The hardware and software Netgear R7800 with OpenWRT as main router The ISP default modem because works the best for my FTTC connection (still waiting for the 1000/200mbps FTTH upgrade) One Raspberry PI 4B 1GB RAM as Pi-Hole server One Raspberry PI 4B 2GB RAM as Homebridge server One Raspberry PI 4B 4GB RAM as Prometheus se... Read More

Browsing the info of my Raspberry PI 4B I found that all the three devices I have, are different. And not just a few differences, but quite substantial, at least according to the info loaded by the kernel. Data: My older Raspberry PI 4B is a Rev 1.2 with BCM2835 SoC (more info on it later) with 4GB ram but just received (after a long research and wait, due to the chip shortage) another two RPi 4B, one with 2GB ram and the other with 1GB. But here are the curious specs, the (new) one with 2GB of RAM with BCM2711: processor : 0 model name : ARMv7 Processor rev 3 (v7l) BogoMIPS : 126.00 Features : half thumb fastmult vfp edsp neon vfpv3 tls vfpv4 idiva idivt vfpd32 lpae evtstrm crc32 C... Read More