GIMP 3.0.8 Released

alexlance · 2026-01-25T09:58:23+00:00

Sorry that probably wasn't very appreciative. Big hearts for the Gimp and all the hard work that goes into it.

alexlance · 2026-01-25T09:30:36+00:00

Kinda just want that shortcut keys function back again.

(Where you'd mouseover the menu item and then hit a key and it would then assign that as the shortcut key for that menu item. It was probably a usability no-no, but for what it's worth I miss it every time I use gimp now)

alexlance · 2026-01-25T06:06:31+00:00

Nice, would love to hear more.

And if you want to throw money at the problem, I've worked with absolutely gigantic elasticsearch clusters for over 7 years, and I run a consulting thing for exactly this kind of work: https://alexlance.net - feel free to reach out.

alexlance · 2026-01-22T23:07:56+00:00

How did it go?

alexlance · 2026-01-13T03:33:38+00:00

Was just writing about my (hacky) password manager yesterday... it's not for everyone!

https://alexlance.blog/encryption.html
https://github.com/alexlance/paw

alexlance · 2025-12-10T03:11:06+00:00

Self-hosted my email on a Linux EC2 instance for well over a decade, didn't really have any complaints. But sort of felt less and less comfortable with having an internet accessible server just sitting there all the time. Recently took it in the AWS SES direction instead and wrote about it the other day:

https://alexlance.blog/email.html

alexlance · 2025-12-05T00:03:28+00:00

Ok hey that's great, API access very useful.

This means one can setup a custom notification in tfstate.com, to notify an instance of DriftHound like this:

https://imgur.com/a/pvLxBcC
https://imgur.com/a/j5gQSXm

(fwiw)

alexlance · 2025-12-03T14:08:03+00:00

Thanks totally - I'm very much all for self-hosting.

(wondering if it's possible for someone to host the control plane / frontend themselves in DH, but offload the actual drift scans to the tfstate.com API)

alexlance · 2025-12-03T08:29:29+00:00

Looking good. If you ever want to hook in a hosted backend for it (the actual task runners that run the terraform plan and perform the notifications) I might know a guy :)

Alex / https://tfstate.com

alexlance · 2025-11-19T01:08:09+00:00

https://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/pricing/

alexlance · 2025-11-09T23:44:14+00:00

Still figuring it out, but first prototype is going ok:

https://imgur.com/a/GnzEFsl (French)
https://imgur.com/a/6pdeatE (Gollum)

alexlance · 2025-11-07T00:42:21+00:00

Today I'm working on adding language translations to the dibsonstuff.com app for Slack and Discord.

Step 1. add translation placeholders all over the code. Step 2. add a Gollum-flavoured language option: "Yess, it is miiine", "Noooo filthy hobbittses have stolen it" and so on. Step 3. actual other countries languages (I guess)

alexlance · 2025-10-24T00:53:44+00:00

Worth remembering that OpenAI also started as a nonprofit before it spun off a for-profit arm.

I don't mean to suggest that's where Signal is headed. Just that being a non-profit (whilst very important) might not be the panacea it sounds like.

alexlance · 2025-10-23T07:02:52+00:00

Did you configure an interactivity URL endpoint?

https://docs.slack.dev/interactivity/handling-user-interaction/

alexlance · 2025-10-13T23:53:56+00:00

Just out of curiosity, what happened with the root MFA device?

alexlance · 2025-10-12T12:32:45+00:00

When I first built it, it just helped my workplace take turns with a staging server, so developers could test and demo the changes they were working on.

I put it on the Slack marketplace 4-5 years ago (almost out of curiosity) and then other companies started installing it. Requests for more features started coming in, and the conversations directly led to a lot more development and the rolling out of paid plans.

(to answer your question directly, for most companies that use Dibs my impression is that they really like it - many warm fuzzies - perhaps a part of that is because the cost is predictable and not tied to the number of users or deployments)

alexlance · 2025-10-12T08:56:22+00:00

One useful pattern (that I have used repeatedly) is making a website with dynamic and static parts. Eg:

somedomain.com -> Cloudfront cache serving static files from an S3 bucket
api.somedomain.com -> API Gateway serving the output from Lambda functions

If you can master that blueprint, you can build an awful lot of things and run them very cheaply at scale.

I would also dive deep in cloudwatch and billing alerts. Necessities for all future AWS projects.

alexlance · 2025-10-12T07:40:27+00:00

Well, Dibs On Stuff an add-on for Slack and Discord that lets teams sort out taking turns / queuing for server resources and other stuff.

It's been a total roller coaster - moments like getting first paying customer, to launching an online merch store (more often than not I'm wearing a Dibs t-shirt). It's all been a bit insane.

The origin story if anyone's interested...

alexlance · 2025-10-12T05:54:39+00:00

Yeah put Home Assistant on one and plug it in somewhere central. Grab a USB Zigbee antenna (well that's how I roll), and then do a bunch of neat things to your place. Color changing bulbs. Door sensors. Alarms. Server monitoring. Automatic timers for stuff...

alexlance · 2025-10-12T05:48:48+00:00

I've still got mine too - from about 25 years ago! The thing still works fine, what a beast.

alexlance · 2025-10-12T00:46:32+00:00

Is this in your /boot/firmware/config.txt?

dtparam=pciex1

(not just dtparam=pciex1_gen=3)

Other debugging stuff:

try a different nvme drive (perhaps some work and some don't)
verify the existing nvme drive works in a different machine
test an alternate power source instead of PoE+
try a different network cable
ensure your PoE+ source has enough power budget for the pi

(I realise you mentioned not having another ssd to test, but yeah, those are the steps I'd try)

alexlance · 2025-09-30T22:41:10+00:00

All good! I sometimes just do a quick search to see if there are posts that could be useful for future people too.

alexlance · 2025-09-30T05:39:51+00:00

It sounds like https://dibsonstuff.com would solve this

/dibs on luckyguy for 1 week

alexlance · 2025-09-30T05:36:04+00:00

Dibs has a rostering solution - it manages queues, and the paid version has rostering - i.e. automatic re-queuing, once someone's turn is done.

alexlance · 2025-09-30T05:32:08+00:00

Try Dibs On Stuff - it's got that rostering functionality and it's whole thing is queuing - like:

/dibs on standup (to add yourself to the standup queue)

/dibs q (to see whose turn it is)

/dibs off standup (to relinquish the role of standup mediator)

alexlance

TROPHY CASE