https://tristor.ro/ Recent content on Wandering in Wondering Hugo -- gohugo.io en-us &copy; 2021 <a href='http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/'>Licensed CC:By-NC-SA</a> Tue, 02 Mar 2021 09:16:21 -0600 https://tristor.ro/blog/2021/03/02/a-word-on-mechanical-keyboards/ Tue, 02 Mar 2021 09:16:21 -0600 https://tristor.ro/blog/2021/03/02/a-word-on-mechanical-keyboards/ Introduction I&rsquo;ve been using mechanical keyboards for nearly as long as I&rsquo;ve been using computers. When I was a still a little boy, my parents got an IBM PS/1 with a 486, and most importantly the ubiquitious IBM Model M keyboard. I still have that keyboard and used it for years until I was no longer able to use a keyboard with a PS/2 connector. For as long as I&rsquo;ve been using computers, part of the visceral nature of putting thought to page or writing code was connected with the tactile feel and clicky sound of a mechanical keyboard. https://tristor.ro/cars/dangerous-track-pads/ Sun, 07 Feb 2021 17:37:45 -0600 https://tristor.ro/cars/dangerous-track-pads/ So this post is probably going to be a bit contentious, but I think it needs to be said. There are many brake pads on the market which their manufacturer&rsquo;s say are capable of going on a race track, and they are very very much not, even on light vehicles like the Miata or BRZ/FRS/86. This post is my opinion, but it&rsquo;s backed by my own personal experiences and my observations of others. https://tristor.ro/about/ Sun, 07 Feb 2021 11:25:47 -0600 https://tristor.ro/about/ My name is Tyler Duzan, or more formally Mr. Tyler T. Duzan. My nickname is tristor. This site you're on, entitled Wandering in Wondering, is my personal website as part of the IndieWeb If you need to contact me, please encrypt your messages using my public key. I am many things, but perhaps most of all I am a life-long learner. I aspire to become a renaissance man, although I see the journey ahead as being long (and a whole lot of fun). https://tristor.ro/cars/diy-atf-change-frz86/ Sat, 06 Feb 2021 13:03:10 -0600 https://tristor.ro/cars/diy-atf-change-frz86/ Foreward This was originally posted by me to the FT86 Club Forums in 2018. Recently, the FT86 Club Forums have had a few incidents where it&rsquo;s been offline and the admins are not responsive to my offers via email to help ensure the site stays up for the long haul. I am making an effort to rehost content I&rsquo;ve written, as well as rehost content written by others (with acknowledgements) that&rsquo;s important information to preserve. https://tristor.ro/cars/new-frs-brz-86-owners-mod-recommendations/ Sat, 06 Feb 2021 10:51:36 -0600 https://tristor.ro/cars/new-frs-brz-86-owners-mod-recommendations/ Foreward I originally wrote the content of this post in 2018 for the FRS/BRZ/86 Enthusiasts Group on Facebook that I help to moderate, which has a little bit more than 35k people in it. There are some common questions that come up and get posted constantly, especially by people who&rsquo;ve just bought the car and already want to mod. For this reposting on my website, I&rsquo;ve gone through and added updates to some sections, but mostly have left it alone. https://tristor.ro/cooking/introduction-to-cooking-section/ Sat, 06 Feb 2021 00:35:34 -0600 https://tristor.ro/cooking/introduction-to-cooking-section/ This is the first post in a new section being added to my website. During the course of 2020, and the seemingly endless lockdown that followed the COVID-19 pandemic, I set out to learn to cook properly. I discovered a wealth of resources online, especially on YouTube, and enrolled in 6 months of online culinary school. I&rsquo;ve regained the joy in cooking I felt when I was much younger, and I&rsquo;ve improved my health while reducing my food costs. https://tristor.ro/cars/introduction-to-cars-section/ Sat, 06 Feb 2021 00:35:25 -0600 https://tristor.ro/cars/introduction-to-cars-section/ This is the first post in a new section being added to my website. Starting in late 2017, I finally got to a point in my life where I could go all-in on a long-time interest of mine: motorsports. On December 21st, 2017, I purchased new a 2017 Subaru BRZ Limited, and had it on a race track getting instruction before the paper plates were off. I haven&rsquo;t slowed down much since, and now have a membership at Harris Hill Raceway in San Marcos, Texas, a local club track, where I try to visit at least twice a month. https://tristor.ro/blog/2021/02/05/ditching-google-analytics-for-goatcounter/ Fri, 05 Feb 2021 20:20:42 -0600 https://tristor.ro/blog/2021/02/05/ditching-google-analytics-for-goatcounter/ Analytics Doesn&rsquo;t Require Tracking As a very fast follow to my previous post, I&rsquo;ve now ditched Google Analytics as well. As I noted there, I was interested in privacy-respecting alternatives, so I found quite a few interesting ones. The options I considered were Plausible, Offen, and GoatCounter. I ended up choosing GoatCounter because it provides a free SaaS tier for strictly personal use websites, which this is. Plausible looks super slick, but is $4/mo even for my minimal traffic, which is almost what I pay every month for hosting. https://tristor.ro/blog/2021/02/05/replacing-disqus-with-commento.io/ Fri, 05 Feb 2021 15:38:39 -0600 https://tristor.ro/blog/2021/02/05/replacing-disqus-with-commento.io/ If You&rsquo;re Not The Customer, Then You&rsquo;re The Product You&rsquo;ve probably heard this statement before, and I don&rsquo;t know that it&rsquo;s always true, but it&rsquo;s become something of an axiom in the web/internet space. It&rsquo;s true enough in the ways that matter, though, and that brings us to the topic of the day. Today a post made it to the front page of HackerNews written by Supun Kavinda on his blog entitled &ldquo;Disqus, the dark commenting system&rdquo;. https://tristor.ro/blog/2021/02/04/a-covid-safe-valentines-day-plan/ Thu, 04 Feb 2021 21:26:12 -0600 https://tristor.ro/blog/2021/02/04/a-covid-safe-valentines-day-plan/ Introduction This year definitely is operating under some new restrictions. With COVID-19 still looming and vaccinations not yet distributed widely, it&rsquo;s important to keep in mind keeping social distance and staying out of doors. That said, I&rsquo;m sure I&rsquo;m just like many people in my desire to get out of the house. My girlfriend and I decided that instead of gifts this year we&rsquo;d plan COVID safe experiences for Valentine&rsquo;s Day. https://tristor.ro/blog/2021/02/03/2020-year-in-review/ Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:32:05 -0600 https://tristor.ro/blog/2021/02/03/2020-year-in-review/ Howdy all, It&rsquo;s been one year since I wrote my last update on the blog. I am hoping to become more active in the near-term future as I&rsquo;m in progress (albeit slowly) of migrating my site to a new server so I can expand it by adding new sections to cover my interest in cars/racing and cooking. In the process, I&rsquo;m also planning on reducing my time on social media and likely removing my Facebook account. https://tristor.ro/blog/2020/01/26/2019-year-in-review/ Sun, 26 Jan 2020 18:00:00 -0600 https://tristor.ro/blog/2020/01/26/2019-year-in-review/ Howdy all, It&rsquo;s been a long time since I&rsquo;ve posted an update to my blog. As you might have gathered from that I&rsquo;ve been busy and kind of forgot about writing for awhile. I originally had a huge post planned to kick things off again with all sorts of ideas, but instead I&rsquo;m just going to write something that&rsquo;s a bit word salad in the organization that comes to mind, and we&rsquo;ll see how long it is when I get to the end. https://tristor.ro/blog/2017/06/19/remote-year-dari%C3%A9n-is-this-a-conclusion/ Mon, 19 Jun 2017 23:36:26 +0200 https://tristor.ro/blog/2017/06/19/remote-year-dari%C3%A9n-is-this-a-conclusion/ Many of my fellow remotes have already written something about their experiences during the year and come to some conclusion about the meaning of it all. The honest truth for me though is that I don’t know what it means to me yet. My experience was very different from most of the people in our group, and yet I can’t help but see that some of the things I’m slowly coming to conclude align pretty strongly with others. https://tristor.ro/blog/2017/01/01/ry-dari%C3%A9n-update-new-years-in-bogota/ Sun, 01 Jan 2017 09:34:46 -0500 https://tristor.ro/blog/2017/01/01/ry-dari%C3%A9n-update-new-years-in-bogota/ Happy New Years! First of all, welcome to 2017. 2016 was an interesting year for me in many ways and a really positive experience, I hope the same can be said for all of my readers. I&rsquo;m writing this from my apartment in Bogota, Colombia as I begin Month #8 of Remote Year - Darién. When I think about last year and what sort of theme it represented in my life, I can only categorize it with the term &ldquo;Discovery&rdquo;. https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/11/19/setting-up-fgallery-on-os-x-with-homebrew/ Sat, 19 Nov 2016 13:06:35 +0100 https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/11/19/setting-up-fgallery-on-os-x-with-homebrew/ How&rsquo;d I Pick fgallery Anyway? Currently this site is being generated offline as a series of static images, HTML, CSS, and JS files that get served almost entirely out of cache through the CDN provided by Cloudflare. This is made possible by a piece of software called Hugo. Hugo takes a series of Markdown formatted text files, some HTML/CSS/JS templates, and a theme made of HTML/CSS/JS and generates this entire site each time I run the command hugo inside my site repository. https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/09/30/ry-dari%C3%A9n-update-september-interlude-a-love-poem-for-past%C3%A9is-de-nata/ Fri, 30 Sep 2016 15:50:57 +0100 https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/09/30/ry-dari%C3%A9n-update-september-interlude-a-love-poem-for-past%C3%A9is-de-nata/ Where Have I Been? It&rsquo;s been awhile since I&rsquo;ve last written anything here and I apologize for that. I&rsquo;ve had a few people ask me when I was going to post something again. The truth is, I&rsquo;ve been spending a lot of time working. When I haven&rsquo;t been working I&rsquo;ve been reading and sometimes thinking, although reading quite a bit more than thinking. I&rsquo;ve thought a lot about the experiences I&rsquo;ve been having on my journey and what it means to me as a person, what it means to us as a group. https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/07/18/ry-dari%C3%A9n-belgrade-day-16/ Mon, 18 Jul 2016 18:09:35 +0200 https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/07/18/ry-dari%C3%A9n-belgrade-day-16/ Hello all! I&rsquo;d greet you in Serbian, but the fact is I haven&rsquo;t really learned any in my journey yet. The people in Belgrade speak English very well and start learning English in the equivalent of kindergarten, so it&rsquo;s not really an issue here. This is going to be a short introduction for a rather long post and then I&rsquo;m going to get right into it. I&rsquo;ve spent quite a bit of time over the last few weeks writing with pen and paper or sometimes with my phone or laptop whenever the mood strikes me. https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/06/30/ry-dari%C3%A9n-prague-day-32/ Thu, 30 Jun 2016 21:34:07 +0200 https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/06/30/ry-dari%C3%A9n-prague-day-32/ Dobrý den once again readers. When I set out on this journey I originally intended to write at least one blog post a week. It seems its more difficult to keep with that schedule than I thought it was going to be. For those of you waiting for my next update, I apologize for the delay. Right now my schedule as I travel is pretty much filled with work during the week and I use the evenings in the weekend to write. https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/06/11/ry-dari%C3%A9n-prague-day-14/ Sat, 11 Jun 2016 00:55:31 +0200 https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/06/11/ry-dari%C3%A9n-prague-day-14/ Dobrý den once again readers. This post is going to be a bit different from my last. I&rsquo;ve had a lot of different things go through my mind in the last 10 days. I would say that in general for everyone in my Remote Year group that this first month is a period of discovery. We&rsquo;re learning more about who we are, what our tolerances are, and what we really care about in life. https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/06/02/ry-dari%C3%A9n-prague-day-4/ Thu, 02 Jun 2016 00:31:30 +0200 https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/06/02/ry-dari%C3%A9n-prague-day-4/ Dobrý den readers. It&rsquo;s been a whirlwind the past 4 days, but also very cool. I&rsquo;ve met and forgotten the names of so many people over the last 4 days. If you&rsquo;re reading this and you&rsquo;re one of the people I&rsquo;ve met, I am apologizing heavily in advance for my bad memory for names. I&rsquo;m sure I&rsquo;ll ask your name many times during this first couple of months. I am going to heavily compress my stories, but I have a few surprising or interesting things I wanted to share that I thought were worth telling, and a handful of pictures. https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/05/27/trip-preparation-update-the-day-before-my-flight/ Fri, 27 May 2016 11:19:59 -0500 https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/05/27/trip-preparation-update-the-day-before-my-flight/ Super short update. Tomorrow is the big day I fly out. Between flight time, layovers, and time zone changes I will be traveling for 26 hours straight. Leaving 8AM from San Antonio, Texas, USA to arrive in Prague, Czech Republic at 10:30AM (or thereabouts) local time. 7 hour layover in JFK, 8 hours to time zones, and the rest is in the air. Illness Update I&rsquo;ve basically fully recovered at this point. https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/05/21/trip-preparation-7-days-left/ Sat, 21 May 2016 20:58:24 -0500 https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/05/21/trip-preparation-7-days-left/ This is going to be short, just a quick update on how things are going. Illness Update The medication I am taking has caused some bad side effects. I&rsquo;ll spare the details, but I think I may have it under control. I am following up on Monday with the ENT specialist to check everything out, and then I am going to get my Hepatitis B booster this week assuming I am safe to do so. https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/05/18/trip-preparation-update-10-days-left-packing-list-and-todo-list/ Wed, 18 May 2016 20:58:27 -0500 https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/05/18/trip-preparation-update-10-days-left-packing-list-and-todo-list/ So, it&rsquo;s almost time to depart. Just 10 days left in the US, and I&rsquo;ll be on way for my trip and off to meet 74 strangers (hopefully soon to be some friends) to gallivant around Europe and South America. It&rsquo;s a bit daunting at this point and definitely feels real. Honestly, I don&rsquo;t feel like I have enough time left to do all the things I need to do so my anxiety is in overdrive. https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/05/15/trip-report-new-york-city/ Sun, 15 May 2016 19:24:26 -0500 https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/05/15/trip-report-new-york-city/ This will be pretty brief, but as many of you know I was in New York City last week on business all week. It was all around a blast. Just wanted to share a few brief photos from my week. Sorry about the quality, I took these with my phone rather than bringing my real camera along. Long story short while this was my 8th time in New York City, it was my first time visiting Brooklyn and it was my first time getting a chance to check out some of the city. https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/05/15/how-to-track-people-whove-signed-your-pgp-key-in-keybase/ Sun, 15 May 2016 18:56:49 -0500 https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/05/15/how-to-track-people-whove-signed-your-pgp-key-in-keybase/ This is going to be a short article, but I thought this might be useful to someone else. As many of you may already know, I use a service called Keybase. This service provides a number of features: Prove ownership of your social media identities via cryptographic cross-verification Prove your identify for your PGP key via cross-verificatin to your known social identities Prove ownership of your devices cryptographically Share encrypted files between your devices seamlessly using KBFS Track other Keybase users and encrypt messages to them simply Of course as should be obvious upon setting up your Keybase account, it has no relation to the existing OpenPGP Web of Trust (WoT), and therefore no easy way to connect the two. https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/05/05/setting-up-openvpn-on-centos-7-using-digitalocean/ Thu, 05 May 2016 20:37:31 -0500 https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/05/05/setting-up-openvpn-on-centos-7-using-digitalocean/ Introduction Why Bother? As should be abundantly clear from my prior writings I am about to leave on a trip for a year. During that time I&rsquo;ll likely be making use of numerous public Wi-Fi access points, not to mention whatever dodgy cellular providers are available in each location I travel to. As part of my overall stance on privacy, its essential I take steps to secure my communication while traveling, the primary of which is using a VPN for basically everything on both my laptop and my phone. https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/05/01/trip-preparation-update-insect-precautions/ Sun, 01 May 2016 11:09:43 -0500 https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/05/01/trip-preparation-update-insect-precautions/ Howdy all. This will be a mixed post today. The first part will cover a quick update to all the things I previously had in flight preparing for my trip, and the second part will be a summary of the intensive research I&rsquo;ve done on insect and mosquito repellents and other precautions. Several folks on the RY Facebook groups have been asking questions about what to do for mosquitos while in South America, and I have also fielded some direct questions from folks about the Permethrin-embedded clothing that I bought. https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/04/22/michigan-trip-report/ Fri, 22 Apr 2016 00:22:01 -0500 https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/04/22/michigan-trip-report/ I apologize for how belated this trip report is. Several people have been clamoring for a more complete write-up of the trip than I gave on Facebook. We&rsquo;ll start with the beer and end with some interesting photos and a story about one forlorn Camaro and a fragmented wild turkey. Beer During the course of my trip, myself and my buddy Jon Kelley managed to hit several breweries and get t-shirts from the tourism folks in Grand Rapids, which apparently styles itself as &ldquo;Beer City&rdquo;. https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/04/21/openvpn-google-authenticator-selinux-on-centos-7/ Thu, 21 Apr 2016 17:51:05 -0500 https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/04/21/openvpn-google-authenticator-selinux-on-centos-7/ Just a quick post to share this with anyone else that needs it. I spent hours using Google and reading posts from random people on the net, including bug comments from Dan Walsh on a never solved Fedora bug specifically related to this. The conclusion I came to was that hardly anyone uses SELinux and the ones that do just hack around the problem rather than solving it. In this particular case, the fault is really with the terrible implementation of Google Authenticator, which I found out during the course of this by reading through the source code. https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/04/02/setting-up-a-macbook-for-an-opsec-focused-developer-part-2/ Sat, 02 Apr 2016 16:43:34 -0500 https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/04/02/setting-up-a-macbook-for-an-opsec-focused-developer-part-2/ Introduction My apologies for the delay in posting part 2. I encountered a few chicken-and-egg problems in that I wanted to write this update from my new Macbook but needed complete the remainder of the setup in order to have a comfortable and secure environment to do so from. Without further ado, on to the meat of it. Organization I&rsquo;m breaking this article up into several parts to both assist me in the process of writing it and to make it easier to digest. https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/04/02/trip-preparation-update-deux/ Sat, 02 Apr 2016 16:41:16 -0500 https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/04/02/trip-preparation-update-deux/ I apologize I haven&rsquo;t posted the later parts of my Macbook setup instructions yet. I ran into the chicken-and-egg problem of wanting to use my new Macbook to write my posts. I am happy to report that I am now writing this post on my new Macbook and it&rsquo;s to a point where I can start writing the rest of the article. I will do that later on. First though, a quick update regarding trip preparations. https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/03/23/setting-up-a-macbook-for-an-opsec-focused-developer-part-1/ Wed, 23 Mar 2016 22:04:23 -0500 https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/03/23/setting-up-a-macbook-for-an-opsec-focused-developer-part-1/ Introduction That time has come again, and I have acquired a new Macbook Pro. In this case its primarily in preparation for my trip so that I can edit photos effectively on the go. It replaces my aged 2011 Macbook Air (which has served me well). It seems an opportune time then to write up my process for setting up a Macbook, and with a particular focus on security. Organization I&rsquo;m breaking this article up into several parts to both assist me in the process of writing it and to make it easier to digest. https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/03/20/the-ops-approach-to-linux-server-security/ Sun, 20 Mar 2016 14:48:50 -0500 https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/03/20/the-ops-approach-to-linux-server-security/ This post was originally a response to a question I received from a friend via email, with some additions. I&rsquo;m not going to try to get very in-depth here, this is more of a high-level overview of what you should be doing to secure a server running Linux. This is mainly focused on a business environment where you have multiple users and multiple servers (and are hopefully using configuration management software). https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/03/19/trip-preparation-update/ Sat, 19 Mar 2016 00:23:26 -0500 https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/03/19/trip-preparation-update/ Itinerary Update First, before I get into the rest of what I&rsquo;ve got sorted out this week for my trip, the itinerary has changed for Darién. The Remote Year staff reached out to everyone who has been accepted to Darién to notify us of the change earlier this week, citing safety concerns about Turkey and Bolivia. The new itinerary is below: Prague, Czech Republic Belgrade, Serbia London, UK Lisbon, Portugal Rabat, Morocco Valencia, Spain Mexico City, Mexico Bogotá, Colombia Medellin, Colombia Lima, Peru Córdoba, Argentina Buenos Aires, Argentina Preparing to Travel When I left you last week I was still figuring out insurance, waiting on my US Passport to be sent to me from renewal, and considering my options for some other essential items for travel. https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/03/13/i-have-been-accepted-to-remote-year/ Sun, 13 Mar 2016 19:34:49 -0500 https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/03/13/i-have-been-accepted-to-remote-year/ I&rsquo;m in! I&rsquo;m pleased to announce that I&rsquo;ve been accepted to join Remote Year as part of the Darién cohort starting on June 1st, 2016 in Prague, Czech Republic, and returning to the US in June of 2017. I&rsquo;ve been looking forward to doing international travel and participating in the digital nomad lifestyle for many years, and since I now work remotely its presented the opportunity to make that dream a reality. https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/03/04/five-colorado-photo-faves/ Fri, 04 Mar 2016 22:53:57 -0600 https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/03/04/five-colorado-photo-faves/ In October 2014 I moved from Texas to Longmont, CO in order to experience the amazing beer culture in Colorado. While there, I fell in love with the mountains and natural beauty of the state and rekindled my interest in photography. These are just five of my favorite photos I took while in Colorado. I hope you enjoy. 1. Reflections of a Mountain Morning This photo was taken in Longmont, CO near at Golden Ponds Park and Nature Area around 10AM one weekend morning. https://tristor.ro/resume/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://tristor.ro/resume/ Tyler Duzan is a 15+ year veteran of the tech industry. He got his start with computers at a very young age, learning his first programming language (BASIC) at six years old. As he got older his fascination with computers progressed into a passion for all things technology with an emphasis on security. As part of exploring this passion he has learned a broad range of technical skills including a deep understanding of Windows, Linux, and networking.