I’ve been listening to the Accidental Tech Podcast for years. They recently had a members-only special about the technology they use for their personal websites. Building customized, Rube Goldberg-esque systems for managing a website is a time-honored time sink for many, myself included. And since an earlier version of this site used a system developed by one of the podcast’s hosts (and inspired its look and feel), I was looking forward to the episode.
This is a quick update. Yes. I know I say that a lot (or at least, I certainly think it when I start a post). This one really will be quick.
First, background. My main computer, a 2018 Intel Mac Mini, has been having its internal drive fill up. Regularly. To the point that apps crash without warning overnight, backups fail, Mail stops working, etc. In February, I traced the main source of the problem to a folder called SpotlightKnowledgeEvents (I’m just gonna say SKE most of the time.) At the time, this folder had over 37 gigabytes of data in it.
Let’s say you have a data set made up of a selection of songs by one artist.
Let’s also say you want to slice and dice information from said dataset like how many songs come from each album, or average song length.
As of now what I want to know is the easiest way to “ask” my data set for this information. Do I have to type everything in a spreadsheet and filter? Can I use this to learn a teeny bit of python or something?
Disk Usage Woes: Day…whatever. How long has it been since I installed macOS Sequoia?
I’ve been struggling with the disk constantly filling up on my Mac Mini. See my lasttwo posts for a deep and wonky dive into the situation, and lots of data collection to confirm my suspicions (or not).
At this point, I’m still continuing to collect data, but it’s more in the realm of “just making more graphs for reference” than actually figuring anything out. I think the fix is pretty clear at this point: I need to delete extraneous data from time to time. I just now have a better idea where to find the best low-hanging fruit for deletion.
My main day-to-day machine is a 2018 Mac Mini. Over the last year, and especially the last 6 months, it’s been a struggle to keep adequate space free. About two weeks ago, I’d had enough, and went on a deep dive to figure out what was wrong. In my last post, I described the journey I took to identify the likely problem.
Simply identifying a “likely” culprit wasn’t enough, though. I needed to take a methodical approach to testing different settings and recording the results.
My everyday desktop is a 2018 Mac Mini. Last summer, I started noticing that some apps would crash overnight, mostly Ivory (my Mastodon client).
I assumed it was a memory thing. My disk space wasn’t great, but I had like 5 gigabytes or so free on the 256 gig drive, and wasn’t seeing any “your disk is full” errors. I wasn’t getting crazy “Your system is out of memory!” errors, either, but memory pressure seemed like a good explanation. I tried a few lazy tricks to get some data, try to collect logs, etc., but got nowhere.
Nine years ago, I migrated all my local house storage from a massive Dell with Debian and software RAID, onto a tiny little Synology NAS. Well, not exactly tiny, but probably 1/3 of the volume of the Dell. It serves as a file server, Time Machine target, and destination for various rsync and other low-level backup tasks from the rest of the network. At other times, it’s run a Plex server, the Channels DVR, and…I honestly don’t remember what else I’ve experimented with here. It’s a pretty capable little box.
A few days ago, I wrote about what GreyNoise have been calling “Noise Storms,” extended periods of high-volume ping traffic detected by many of their sensors, coming from…many different sources. The most intriguing of these were packets with the word “LOVE” in plaintext in the ping payload, and in my post, I offered a possible explanation of that traffic. At least, at a technical level – what they’re doing with those packets, well, that’s a different puzzle.
Earlier this month, I attended BSidesNoVA in Arlington, where the keynote was presented by Andrew Morris of GreyNoise. Using sensors distributed all over the world, GreyNoise collects…background noise…on the Internet. Basically, they watch and monitor activity that hits lots of hosts randomly – network mapping, port scanning, doorknob rattling. If you see someone trying to break into your SSH server, you can check GreyNoise to see if that person (well, their IP, anyway) has been seen doing such things in the past.
Back in 2018, I was fortunate enough to join a company called Expel. It had a great culture, friendly management with a real desire to do what’s right for customers and employees, and a product that seemed to fill a real need – and to fill it well.
Being remote friendly even in 2018, we were ready when the pandemic hit, and it seemed like we made it out the other side unscathed. But then we hit some snags, and in June 2023, I got laid off, along with 10% of my co-workers.
Apr 23, 2025 - 1700 Words -
