paulobrien's blog - Latest Comments

Re: What I use #2: Notion

Frank Arnold — Thu, 21 Nov 2019 11:44:07 -0000

Couldn't you completely replace Notion with ClickUp 2.0? There are now documents, a notepad etc. What makes the big difference for you that you still use Notion and Clickup in parallel?

Re: Installing Ghost 1.x on a Lightsail or EC2 instance

Xali Sys — Sun, 20 Oct 2019 21:20:50 -0000

Very nice post Paul, here i wrote in detail about running Ghost on AWS Lightsail https://xalitech.com/setup-...

Re: Installing Ghost 1.x on a Lightsail or EC2 instance

Arun Manoj — Mon, 08 Oct 2018 13:19:32 -0000

Hi,
what is the name of the Ghost theme you are using? is it paid or free?

Re: This blog is now on Amazon Lightsail

Derek — Fri, 17 Aug 2018 12:36:21 -0000

You recommend CloudFlare but I'm unable to get my lightsail instance pointed to cloudflare properly. I've added A records for the static IP I created, as well as pointed the DNS from my domain provider to cloudflares, but I'm getting a 502 bad gateway. Any ideas?

Re: How to get 'new Gmail' on a free Google Apps account

Akshay Sharma — Sun, 27 May 2018 23:03:42 -0000

Nope! Found it under Billing.

Re: How to get 'new Gmail' on a free Google Apps account

Akshay Sharma — Sun, 27 May 2018 23:00:58 -0000

It's now time to 'downgrade' but I can't seem to find how to do that!

Re: Installing Ghost 1.x on a Lightsail or EC2 instance

Karthik Varma — Sun, 30 Jul 2017 23:07:48 -0000

Thanks a lot man. This helped me :)

Re: This is how Tweet editing could work

martinkem — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 16:05:15 -0000

I think it should also be time limited too.

Re: How to create your own personal VPN (and why you should)

tiliarou — Thu, 20 Apr 2017 07:29:17 -0000

shadowsock is causing issues due to no repo for ubuntu 16.04, and to the fact that they deprecated OTA authentication in recent shadowsock builds.

Re: How to create your own personal VPN (and why you should)

johnbeynon — Thu, 30 Mar 2017 05:56:39 -0000

Did you have to do anything special for ShadowSocks? I've just setup a DO Streisand server, L2TP works, as does AnyConnect but ShadowSocks only connects and I don't get an downstream traffic.

Re: This blog is now on Amazon Lightsail

Iván Sánchez — Wed, 08 Feb 2017 19:58:26 -0000

Hey man thanks for sharing this info.
And nice blog by the way

Re: How to create your own personal VPN (and why you should)

Marsh11 — Sun, 01 Jan 2017 20:59:05 -0000

Hey Paul - thanks for putting this together. Any tips on setting it up on Lightsail? I see it has built in support to provision an Amazon instance, but I think that's the standard EC2 option.

Re: How to create your own personal VPN (and why you should)

YellowMonster — Mon, 12 Dec 2016 06:55:21 -0000

Awesome guide Paul. Darn it, a Digital Ocean IP address in the UK is not liked by BBC iplayer!

Re: How to create your own personal VPN (and why you should)

anon — Mon, 12 Dec 2016 05:41:04 -0000

I suspect VPN service providers will fall under "communication service provders". If not already covered by this new legislation then surely it's only a matter of time before they will be forced to log too. Which is why I like your idea of running Streisand on a VPS, as it could be UK-based without being logged.

As an aside, any thoughts on using thumb VPN devices like tinyhardwarefirewall.com? The argument goes that you should turn off wifi when in Starbucks and instead use a VPN device connected to your laptop via ethernet, thereby preventing your laptop wifi from being an attack surface for any nearby hacker. Since you're already using a VPN why not go that route too.

This new legislation is a scary development though. Undoubtedly hackers will obtain and publish the ISP logs. Various people in power will be toppled by them. The communications metadata about each of us will eventually be leaked and permanently available to all. The Snowden leaks revealed that all internet traffic entering or leaving the UK is already being logged. And soon all internal traffic will be too. What hope does anybody in the UK have for privacy.

Worst still, it was pushed through without any opportunity for protest. They managed to avoid November being reminiscent of the ending in V for Vendetta. But there is still the possibility of that.

Re: How to create your own personal VPN (and why you should)

Massis — Mon, 12 Dec 2016 02:23:13 -0000

Nice read, but does this mean that if I want to be able to switch locations (UK, France and Finland for instance), I need multiple servers? If so, this solution is economically sound only for a single location, isn't it?

Re: How to create your own personal VPN (and why you should)

Gaz — Sun, 11 Dec 2016 19:19:29 -0000

Wouldn't a UK based server be subject to the same metadata collection and storage as your usual UK ISP?

Re: How to create your own personal VPN (and why you should)

paulatmodaco — Sun, 11 Dec 2016 18:02:32 -0000

I have one at Aruba and one at Digital Ocean atm. Similar speeds at both, will probably stick with DO long term for UI! Maybe UK based server.

Re: How to create your own personal VPN (and why you should)

paulatmodaco — Sun, 11 Dec 2016 18:01:30 -0000

Not one I've ever used!

Re: How to create your own personal VPN (and why you should)

Nando — Sun, 11 Dec 2016 17:12:43 -0000

Hey. Very good article. Can't wait for the next updates :-). I was thinking about doing the same with softehter vpn. Ever tried it?

Re: How to create your own personal VPN (and why you should)

Gaz — Sun, 11 Dec 2016 17:09:35 -0000

Interesting stuff. Where did you settle on hosting your VPS and why?

Re: The Dell Inspiron 11 is a cool outdoor laptop, but I want the version for India

Wawrzyniec Pompka — Tue, 27 Sep 2016 19:03:02 -0000

Can I add more RAM by myself to that laptop?

Re: This would totally make Twitter better for new users

MSF Jarvis — Tue, 27 Sep 2016 13:17:55 -0000

GENIUS!

Re: WMail is the light Gmail wrapper you didn't know you needed

Nicholas Orr — Thu, 15 Sep 2016 22:13:43 -0000

The only issue with multiple accounts and gmail on chrome I can think of is desktop notifications. I use 4 gmail (gapps) accounts regularly and seems to work well (3x pinned tabs, 1 in other chrome profile).

All I really want is tiliq simple admin + gmail spam filter/labels/filtering/browser app w/ native android app.

Would be awesome if Google made a Gmail API so OS native apps worked properly with Gmail as imap "mostly" works, when it doesn't it is a PiA...

Re: The Kindle is great but stale... and where's the Google e-reader?

Nathan Budd — Wed, 07 Sep 2016 05:08:26 -0000

I've said for ages that Google need a decent ereader. I rooted my nook and installed Play Books on it, but that ran 2.3 and the Play Services stopped supporting it a while back.

I've since caved and bought a paperwhite, but I'd grab a Google ereader in a snap if it was competitively priced and back lit.

Re: The Kindle is great but stale... and where's the Google e-reader?

matthew roxburgh — Wed, 07 Sep 2016 05:02:59 -0000

I'm wary of any e-reader now.

Digital media means locking into to a supplier / device combined eco system and it's insanity.

Digital purchases are scary - you can have your whole library pulled and you have no way of getting it back. You pay almost as much as the physical copy and you can't sell it on or lend it.

Take iTunes Movies - why would I buy a movie on iTunes when I can only play it on an Apple product?

At least Google Play Movies only tie you into one half of the equation. The supplier side. Once you have bought the movie you can play it on any device, be it apple, microsoft or android. But they might just close down Movies one day and you are left without your 100s of purchases.

That said - I wouldn't trust google to remain committed to an e-reader and it would soon become another Nexus Q or Android TV