=========
 Backups
=========

One of the HDDs in my computer died. It contained my music collection,
but fortunately I had that backed up, and restored onto one of the
surviving disks.

While my backups are stored on external disks, sometimes I wonder
about setting remote backups, and finally looked into Borg (and a
little into Bacula) recently. While I prefer generic tools over such
specialized ones (particularly LUKS or ZFS for encryption and
integrity checks, rsync for copying and scrubbing), those did not seem
suitable for remote backups to untrusted servers, where encryption and
integrity checks should be client-side. Until I checked Borg
documentation, that is: noticed that it looks like a file system on
top of another file system, which nudged me to consider simply
accessing a block device remotely, and then using the usual tools on
it. For which I tried iSCSI, and setting it on Debian (tgt for server,
open-iscsi for client) went smoothly. I do not have a suitable remote
server to backup files to, but this looks like a good option, and
maybe I will set one eventually, likely combined with IPsec (although
that may be quite unreliable around here, since the censorship
occasionally interferes with such protocols, as mentioned in the last
month's post).

As data hoarders tend to do, sometimes I think of music backups as of
a preservation effort, in addition to the more practical purpose of
enjoying music. That motivates to prefer lossless compression, which
increases the size, and a greater size complicates backups. Though it
is imperfect still, since music mixes are lossy when compared to
individual and unprocessed tracks, any recordings are lossy compared
to actual performances. But particular performances may not be that
important for capturing the essence of a composition, as seen more
clearly with classical music. I wondered how well it applies to modern
rock music, and went to check cover versions of songs to investigate
that. Many covers either try to add a notable twist, or they are
simply made by a single person, in a single take, with minimal
equipment. But the higher-quality covers, which try to stay closer to
the original, often succeed in that. So perhaps particular recorded
performances are not that important for preservation purposes, though
at least their lossily compressed versions are useful for
enjoyment. But as for both preservation and enjoyment, perhaps it is
also worthwhile to collect scores, maybe even printed on paper,
particularly for compositions that are easier to perform from
those. Studying music and practicing playing musical instruments may
be useful for this.

Another notable chunk of backups is photos. I rarely take new pictures
these days, though pictures not taken are not that different from lost
ones, and pictures do not take much disk space; perhaps it is
worthwhile to try taking at least a few pictures per year, which will
not bloat the backups, but may be nice to have.


Other news
==========

Reached chapter 6 in the physics textbook. Though still going slowly
through it, I am pleased with that activity: it is fun and feels like
a time well spent afterwards.

The other regular activities, including work, go mostly as usual,
perhaps nothing notable there. A minor exception is me trying to be
more careful with physical exercises because of a knee pain in the
past few days, but hopefully that will pass soon, as did back pain
before that.

The local environment, along with the censorship and isolation,
appears to keep worsening. Among recent Internet-related developments
are YouTube lags. At first Rostelecom announced that they are expected
and caused by Google Global Cache servers becoming outdated, then it
happened at multiple local ISPs at once; and some report that it is
intentional slowing down, based on "googlevideo.com" in SNI. Update:
checked it myself later, by adding TLS record splitting into my
socksroute project, and it does seem to be the case. Update 2: a few
days later, they started blocking packets with such split SNI, or
without SNI at all. Update 3: adding a packet with a low TTL and a
fake SNI with byedpi works, and a few more days later (2024-08-08)
they started dropping a part of the packets for youtube.com itself and
ggpht.com (video thumbnails) as well, in the same way.

Peeking into job listings elsewhere still suggests that it would be
tricky to find appropriate ones, even after compromising quite a
bit. Somehow Java is very popular still, while the technologies I
prefer and use still have little intersection with in-demand ones.

Speaking of popular technologies, I started practicing QWERTY touch
typing. Using Colemak for a while now, but occasionally having to use
unconfigured systems, and then it is awkward to additionally deal with
an unfamiliar layout.

Other popular technologies I am trying out are a wallet and a bag. Due
to the increasing isolation, bank cards become less useful, so a more
convenient way to carry cash matters. I picked up a plain leather
bi-fold wallet, and a similar passport cover, but then discovered that
they do not fit well into pockets on my trousers (even though I picked
thinner and smaller ones), so acquired a small crossbody bag at
once. It seems quite convenient, allows to not worry about fitting
everything into pockets, removes the need to move items from one pair
of trousers into another. And with a small enough bag, one can enter
the Moscow Metro without its contents being checked by the police.


----

:Date: 2024-07-20
