Welcome! This post is pinned so it stays at the top of the list no matter how many newer posts come after it.

• Notes about Linux, tooling, and open source
• Small solutions to problems I ran into myself
• Occasional book and paper reading notes

The best time to start a blog was ten years ago. The second best time is today.

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After years of ad-hoc rsync scripts, I finally settled on restic for local snapshots. Initialize a repository once:

restic init --repo /mnt/backup/restic

Then back up your home directory, excluding the usual noise:

restic -r /mnt/backup/restic backup ~ \
  --exclude ~/.cache \
  --exclude ~/Downloads

Check what snapshots exist and prune old ones:

restic -r /mnt/backup/restic snapshots
restic -r /mnt/backup/restic forget --keep-daily 7 --keep-weekly 4

The part that convinced me: restores are first-class, not an afterthought.

Things I finished or abandoned this month.

• The Pragmatic Programmer (20th anniversary edition) — still holds up
• A Philosophy of Software Design — the best short explanation of deep vs. shallow modules I know

• Thinking in Systems — slower going, but worth it

• A 600-page Kubernetes certification guide. Life is too short for bad diagrams.

Reading lists are mostly a promise to your future self.

Small habits that compound over time:

1. Jump back to the previous directory

cd /var/log
cd ~/projects
cd -    # back to /var/log

2. Reuse arguments from the previous command

mkdir -p ~/.local/bin
cd !!:1

3. Search shell history incrementally with Ctrl+R.

4. Fix a long command with fc — it opens the last command in your editor.

5. Watch a file instead of re-running a command

watch -n 2 'df -h /'

None of these are fancy, but together they save real time every day.