tag:blog.simonrumble.com,2013:/posts Simon Rumble's blog 2023-11-14T23:39:06Z Simon Rumble tag:blog.simonrumble.com,2013:Post/2047767 2023-11-12T23:17:54Z 2023-11-14T23:39:06Z Pizza Death at The Burdekin
Quite the change of pace from Kristen Hersh the night before: three death metal bands over three hours. Pizza Death have a solid gimmick, fun banter and silly songs. Supports Head In A Jar and Carnal Viscera had better music and still solid bantz. Loads of fun!

It took me a while to get with the mosh vibe but great energy, silly music, lovely crowd. Lots of fun!

Pizza for dinner, of course.
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Simon Rumble
tag:blog.simonrumble.com,2013:Post/2047761 2023-11-12T23:12:38Z 2023-11-12T23:12:38Z Kristen Hersh at The Vanguard





Last Friday night we got to see Kristen Hersh of Throwing Muses perform her solo work at The Vanguard in Newtown. I haven't been to this venue since the 1990s when it was "Top Gun".

Hersh was incredible. Her voice is so distinctive, ranging from gentle singing to a gravelly growl and everything in between. The sounds she gets from her acoustic guitar, the range of textures and tempos: she's a master at work. Absolutely incredible. Also really funny banter in between songs.


Quick dinner before the gig was Pappa's Stew Chilli Cuisine, a Hunanese place. We had a big hotpot that was rich, spicy and amazing. Alongside it we had what could be described as spicy spag bol: fat round noodles with a topping of spicy pork mince, kind of a Biang Biang type of thing.
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Simon Rumble
tag:blog.simonrumble.com,2013:Post/2041549 2023-10-29T00:40:07Z 2023-10-30T04:06:26Z Cook tech: Eat Your Books
I love to cook and so I have a lot of cookbooks.


This brings about a problem. Much as I love leafing through cookbooks, sometimes you need to work out what to cook more quickly. And I'm often trying to work out what to cook with a particular ingredient we have in abundance.

I actually set myself the task of building a combined recipe index for all my cookbooks. Manually typing in every recipe and the key ingredients. Then as I looked around to see if any tools existed for this kind of thing, I stumbled upon Eat Your Books, a site that already has all the hard work done for you.

You register all your cookbooks and then you can search through all of them by ingredient or recipe name. For example, I just searched for dessert recipes with apples, cos we have a bunch right now.


https://www.eatyourbooks.com/bookshelf?q=apple

For some recipes it even includes the page numbers and photos of the result. So fast and means instead of flipping, you have a shortlist of books to pull down.

I'm cooking the Spiced apple cake from Ottolenghi Simple tonight. Perfect for what I want after tonight's roast lamb.

Update: here's the cake. It was delicious.

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Simon Rumble
tag:blog.simonrumble.com,2013:Post/2040646 2023-10-26T22:19:02Z 2023-10-26T22:19:02Z GoGo Penguin at City Recital Hall
Last night I finally got to see GoGo Penguin, a band from Manchester I've been following for 10 years. I've been hanging out to see them live the whole time. I love their music.




I dragged along my mate Gab who's more of a jazz head than me, particularly keen on the freer end of jazz and a bunch of the 70s smoother stuff. He was commenting that there were periods when the music seemed to be repeating without someone taking the lead.

Our conclusion is that this is techno music played on jazz instrumentation, not a more jazz sensibility. There were solos but the structure of the songs is much more like techno: big build up of tension followed by dramatic release ("the drop") with all the instruments working together to that end.


A number of the tracks incorporate complicated polyrhythms with Chris Illingworth playing two and sometimes (with delays and loops) three parts while Nick Blacka shreds like his life depends on it with the double bass. Incredible complexity and discipline.

Check out some videos of this band. They're awesome.

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Simon Rumble
tag:blog.simonrumble.com,2013:Post/2039774 2023-10-24T00:25:27Z 2023-10-24T00:29:42Z Los Bitchos + These New South Whales
Last week Sydney hosted the first edition of South by Southwest located outside of Austin. Sounds like it was somewhat successful but I think it takes a while for people to understand what it was. I've heard stories of empty gigs and packed gigs, plus a lot of tickets and wristbands being given away.

I didn't manage to make it to anything until Saturday night. Life has been busy. Though given the vibe I saw, if they run it again I'd be tempted to get work to buy me the tech pass and buy myself a music pass then spend the evenings at gigs. A week of wall-to-wall gigs sounds great!

Los Bitchos
Saturday night there was a free event at The Factory in Marrickville, just around the corner from our place. Better yet it featured Los Bitchos, who I watched on the BBC coverage of this year's Glastonbury. How to describe their sound? Latin-afro inspired psych-surf fuzz? Or put more simply, the perfect sunny Glastonbury afternoon set when you've just picked up your first scrumpy and the hash cookie is starting to kick in.

Their set was awesome. Clearly these women love playing their music. The lead guitarist, Serra Petale the Aussie in the band, has the most intense facial expressions as she shreds. Totally lost in the music. Love it!

These New South Whales
My mate Michael suggested we head upstairs to see this local punk band I've barely ever heard of. There was a strong crowd of clearly die-hard fans. They had great energy but the sound in the room wasn't brilliant. I think I'd like to see them play their own set so I'll keep an eye out.


Coming up
This Thursday we're off to see GoGo Penguin and I am SUPER excited about that gig!


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Simon Rumble
tag:blog.simonrumble.com,2013:Post/2034321 2023-10-09T01:15:49Z 2023-10-09T01:18:26Z Bushfire excitement
Last week we planned to travel down to our friends' property on the Far South Coast of NSW. It's a beautiful spot right on the coast with two beaches on the property and not far from the little town I grew up in.

The trip down was uneventful. Six hours of driving but the kids and dog were great and we made it there. This is the first time we've taken the dog here, under strict instructions to keep her under control to protect wildlife and stock on the farm.

Foxie loved running around on the beaches, hanging out. She really got settled in.

It's such a stunning spot. Our happy place.

Then on day 1.5, Tuesday, one of the kids spotted smoke on the horizon. This was a weird day for weather in early October: 33 degrees with a very hot wind. Earlier in the day we'd been at one of the beaches glad to be wearing wetsuits in the ice cold water, then the wind changed and we were blasted with a wind that felt like it was an open oven. Bad news for fires.


Popping down to the beach where we can get (slow) mobile reception, it looked like there was a fire up the road. Growing fast.


It was decided we'd head to the house on the farm with its satelite internet, television and power so we could keep an eye on it. We packed our dinner and planned to settle down to ride it out.

As we drove around the corner to the house, the alarm sound came on ABC South East with the news that for those up the road from us, Cuttagee and Barraga Bay, it was now too late to leave with the massive fire front bearing down on them. So we decided instead of waiting it out in the house we'd bug out to Tathra.

As we left the fire got scarier and scarier looking in the distance. With this kind of weather—especially that hot, dry wind—fires can move with insane speed and this one was evidently a big one.


We got to Tathra and it turned out in just a few hours the fire burnt through 5,000 hectares of bush and was wildly out of control. Bugging out was definitely the right move. We would have been safe and even if the worst had happened we could have popped down to the beach and been okay, but the stress of that would've been immense.


We spent a couple of nights down at a caravan park in Tathra. Had to get some emergency prescriptions for medication we'd left behind, bought some cheap clothes since we only had what we'd left wearing. We didn't even have our wallets: not something you need on a farm. Thankfully mobile payments!


This is going to be a rough Summer in Australia. After two days of huge rains, there's a lot of plant growth and we're going into an El Nino cycle which means low rainfall, high temperatures.

Lesson: always have a plan for a bug out bag and the moment anything looks iffy with what you need for a few days. Just shove it all in a pile ready to grab and go. Leaving was definitely the right decision.

We haven't had much luck with holidays this year. Our Bali holiday earlier this year saw us all get Bali Belly and spend much of the trip feeling miserable. We might have to plan a very low key holiday to get some actual downtime! This truncated holiday didn't feel particularly restful.
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Simon Rumble
tag:blog.simonrumble.com,2013:Post/2026256 2023-09-18T08:11:14Z 2023-09-18T08:11:15Z Take advantage of free solar power with Home Assistant
It's that time of year when it warms up here in Sydney and I start tinkering with my home automation to make life easier and cheaper.

Background
Our house is very well insulated: the old 1920s part of the house has double brick and good insulation in the roof, the new part of the house has hempcrete walls, good roof insulation and double glazed windows. The high thermal mass means the temperature can stay very stable. Just closing the house up on hot days goes a long way to keeping it cool, but sometimes it needs a bit of help.

There's got a 6kW solar system on the roof and a Daikin wifi-connected air conditioner in the lounge room. On hot, sunny days when we're exporting lots of power to the grid and getting paid a pittance for it, I want to pre-chill the house below the usual comfort level so that when the sun goes down we keep the house closed up and turn the air con off but keep comfortable.

Home Assistant Helpers
I created two Helpers in Home Assistant, a dropdown called "Air con mode" and a numeric called "Air con target temp". The dropdown has "Manual" and "Power-driven cool" modes.



The logic I want is that when we're exporting more than 1kW of power and the air con is in "Power-driven cool" mode, drop the set temperature of the air con by 5 degrees. When we don't have excess, set it to the actual target temp. So we set the target to our comfort level, usually 24º, but when we have excess power cool it quite a bit lower.

Discussion
Adjusting the set point means we're not hard switching the air conditioner off and on, so we don't have to worry about hysteresis and the like. When someone switches the kettle or oven on, drawing lots of power, it silently switches to "keep it at the comfort temperature" and then will automatically switch back when more power is available.

By contrast, my shed/office air conditioner is a fair bit dumber so I just have it on a wifi switch to turn off and on under similar conditions, but I use a five minute average of the power and also have a condition set on the temperature so it's not flipping on/off too often.

I could probably set the excess power threshold and the amount of adjustment as Helpers too, but they're hardcoded here for now. In Winter I might do a similar automation, though there's usually a lot less excess power at that time of year.

Home Assistant Automations
The logic requires two automations that run every minute each. One for when there is excess power, one for when there isn't.

Automation for when there's excess power
alias: "Air con: Power-driven cool excess power"
description: ""
trigger:
  - platform: time_pattern
    minutes: "*"
condition:
  - condition: state
    entity_id: input_select.air_con_mode
    state: Power-driven cool
  - condition: numeric_state
    entity_id: sensor.envoy_current_net_consumption
    below: -1000
action:
  - service: climate.set_temperature
    data:
      temperature: "{{ states('input_number.air_con_target_temp')|float - 5 }}"
    target:
      entity_id: climate.daikinap26021
mode: single

Automation for when there's no excess power
alias: "Air con: Power-driven cool no excess"
description: ""
trigger:
  - platform: time_pattern
    minutes: "*"
condition:
  - condition: state
    entity_id: input_select.air_con_mode
    state: Power-driven cool
  - condition: numeric_state
    entity_id: sensor.envoy_current_net_consumption
    above: -1000
action:
  - service: climate.set_temperature
    data:
      temperature: "{{ states('input_number.air_con_target_temp')|float }}"
    target:
      entity_id: climate.daikinap26021
mode: single


Shed automation with a simple switch
This one uses a 5 minute average and also checks that it's uncomfortably warm before turning the air con back on. I actually leave this one running all the time: it checks that the door is closed so I'm okay using excess free electricity to keep the shed at a reasonable temperature even if I'm not in there.

alias: Shed aircon automatic on
description: ""
trigger:
  - platform: time_pattern
    minutes: "*"
condition:
  - condition: or
    conditions:
      - condition: state
        entity_id: input_select.shed_air_con_mode
        state: "on"
      - condition: and
        conditions:
          - condition: numeric_state
            entity_id: sensor.envoy_current_net_consumption_5_minute_average_linear
            below: -500
          - condition: state
            entity_id: binary_sensor.shed_door
            state: "off"
          - condition: numeric_state
            entity_id: sensor.shed_weather_temperature
            above: 25
          - condition: state
            entity_id: input_select.shed_air_con_mode
            state: Excess power
action:
  - service: switch.turn_on
    data: {}
    target:
      entity_id: switch.shed_aircon
mode: single
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Simon Rumble
tag:blog.simonrumble.com,2013:Post/2003871 2023-07-25T00:52:56Z 2023-07-25T00:52:57Z Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Busy week for gigs! Last night was the Yeah Yeah Yeahs at the Hordern Pavillion. Amazing band, visually stunning sound. Karen O has a pretty unique stage presence.



Their sound and show is definitely on the "art school" end of the spectrum, but that means great visuals. They were a lot of fun!


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Simon Rumble
tag:blog.simonrumble.com,2013:Post/2003519 2023-07-24T05:47:06Z 2023-07-24T05:53:16Z Swarm presents Mark N
Back in the 1990s a unique music scene formed in Newcastle, a small industrial city a few hours drive or train North of Sydney. A bunch of lads were making extremely aggressive hardcore techno on crappy Amiga computers. Noisy 4- and 8-bit samples, distorted kick drums and nasty, nasty samples. It was brilliant. Check out Nasenbluten for a taste.

One of the protagonists and the founder of one of the seminal labels, Bloody Fist, was Mark N. So when he popped up playing at a Swarm rave I had to go.


Loads of fun. We also enjoyed sets from Luke Snarl and Vic Zee.



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Simon Rumble
tag:blog.simonrumble.com,2013:Post/2002773 2023-07-22T04:00:17Z 2023-07-22T04:00:18Z On repeat: Sprints
This great garage punk band popped up in my Discover Weekly feed this week and I've been smashing their stuff ever since. Spiky, energetic guitar with sharp, witty, insightful lyrics. I really like these guys. Sprints from Dublin.




--
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Simon Rumble
tag:blog.simonrumble.com,2013:Post/2001706 2023-07-19T08:28:26Z 2023-07-19T08:28:27Z Let's talk about music
I haven't been posting to this blog much but I'd like to change that. As always, I still listen to a lot of music and go to a lot of gigs. I'm often asks for music tips so I'll try to make a habit of posting some music discoveries.

For now, here's the gigs I've been to so far this year.

Pitch Black and Sub Bass Snarl
2023-01-20 at Kings Cross Hotel
I've been mates with Seb and Luke of Sub Bass Snarl since the early 90s. They ran a bunch of seminal events: the Freaky Loops fundraisers for 2SER, weekly Frigid club night and the legendary island parties Cryogenesis. They also introduced me to NZ dub techno act Pitch Black. Great gig and I actually think the SBS set was better than Pitch Black, but both were awesome.

Dillinja
2023-02-24 at Factory Theatre, Marrickville
I haven't danced to much DnB since moving back to Sydney from London so when Dillinja popped up, and at a venue 5 minutes' walk from home, I jumped at it. This session was supported by a bunch of great Sydney dnb crews who all played short sets and their enthusiasm was infectious. The extra bass reinforcement set up for the night sure helped!


Vibe Tribe Reunion
2022-03-04 at Bridge Hotel, Rozelle
Another 90s rave crew, Vibe Tribe put on these amazing, anarchic parties that brought together the straight ravers with the Nimbin crusties, nerdy music types and a peppering of activists for wild early psy trance amazing stuff. It was great to catch up with a bunch of people I hadn't seen for years.


Golden Plains
2023-03-10-13, Meredith, Victoria
Always the highlight of our musical year, this festival is so much fun out in the Victorian countryside. A single stage, always eclectic lineup and a very relaxed vibe. BYO booze and unlike a NSW festival, no sniffer dogs or agro cops. So much fun. Highlights: Bikini Kill and Four Tet. Carly Rae Jepsen was wild too!



Nightradio
2023-03-26 at Lazybones, Marrickville
A band my mate Gab has recently joined on drums. They were good fun and they clearly had a good time.


Billy Bragg
2023-03-21 at Enmore Theatre
A gig three years in the making! This got pushed three times due to COVID, lockdowns and scheduling problems. Finally got to see the old fella again. He's always great. Played all the big tunes. Told the anecdotes. Entertained.


King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard
2023-03-30 Luna Park Big Top, Milsons Point
The Giz are always amazing, always prolific and tackle so many different genres. Hadn't been to this venue before but it's a great one. Ample space, good view of the band and the bike ride across the bridge is always spectacular.

A Clockwork Orange and Beyond, Australian Chamber Orchestra with the Will Gregory Moog Ensemble
2023-05-12 City Recital Hall, Sydney
This one grabbed my interest as they were playing parts of Wendy Carlos' groundbreaking soundtrack along with some other scifi synth soundtrack classics. Will Gregory is the non-Alison half of Goldfrapp. It was a great gig and the cheapest seats in the house were excellent!


Regurgitator
2023-05-20 UNSW Roundhouse, Kensington
For those of you outside Australia, you probably missed Regurgitator in the 1990s when they were making absolutely amazing music. Crossing over between rock, punk and techno with witty humour, they deserved to be way huger than they were outside Australia. In Australia they're rock royalty and this gig saw them reprise their classic album Unit in its entirety. Great fun!


This Is The Kit
2023-06-12 at Prizm, Kingston-upon-Thames
For my work trip to London, I checked out what gigs were on. This one was the Monday night after I arrived so I was dubious whether I'd be too tired but I felt fine so I managed to get along and catch up with my mate Aidan. Fantastic set, especially when she played Moonshine Freeze.


Arab Strap
2023-06-13 at EartH, Hackney
Another classic band, Scottish miserablists Arab Strap played their album Philophobia in its entirety. Brilliant set from the old bastards and great to catch up with Simon and Aidan again.


So that's half a year of gigs. Still plenty more gigs to come. Going to a rave this weekend with Mark N (of Nasenbluten fame) playing, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs next week, Kristen Hersh and Django Django later in the year. Undoubtedly there will be more!
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Simon Rumble
tag:blog.simonrumble.com,2013:Post/1893354 2022-10-21T04:34:25Z 2022-10-21T11:20:06Z Data Product Managers: links
I'm planning a talk and discussion about Data Product Management for tomorrow's MeasureCamp Sydney. Here's my links to further reading.
Always up for a chat about this kind of stuff. Find me on Measure Slack.

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Simon Rumble
tag:blog.simonrumble.com,2013:Post/1881510 2022-09-21T04:21:31Z 2022-09-21T04:21:32Z The Unravelling - Nomads Like Us

Last night I popped out to see this short gig, The Unravelling by Melbourne composers Nomads Like Us. The show consisted of a number of short pieces synchronised to visuals on in the background.

I really enjoyed the show. Beautiful music and curious visuals. Musically I'd call the style sountracky?
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Simon Rumble
tag:blog.simonrumble.com,2013:Post/1881093 2022-09-19T12:09:25Z 2022-09-19T12:09:26Z How to protect your privacy online: notes for my paranoid friend
I've got a friend who seems to be paralyzed with fear of the tracking happening on the modern Internet. He barely dares turn on a computer. This is someone who was a very early adopter of the Internet, worked for many years building web sites and infrastructure.

This bit of writing will hopefully help my friend assess the risks and take appropriate actions to re-connect with the modern internet safely. It's generally applicable so worth reading to anyone.

How am I the expert?
I've been using the Internet since before the World Wide Web existed and built a career around being an Internet nerd. Building web sites, helping companies get online. Eventually the discipline of web analytics emerged and I got heavily into it. So much so that I started a very successful meetup nearly ten years ago that has grown into a fantastic community of practitioners who run a monthly meetup and an annual unconference.

Tracking peoples' behaviour on the Internet is what I do. I even have a bookmark folder labelled "Evil Tracking" which chronicles mechanisms people have developed to get around security limitations and track in ways you're not supposed to.



Then I got concerned
I never worried too much about all the tracking we were doing. For many years the default for people like me was to track everything you could and worry about how you'd use it later. It wasn't such a huge problem at the time because the technology was too primitive, the data sets too disjointed and no single player really had a thorough enough view of any individual's behaviour to be worrying.

The technology got better, the players consolidated into the now familiar omnipotent FAANGs (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google) who could see vast portions of your online behaviour. There's a good chance that your behaviour right now is being tracked by some or all of those players. If you're reading this on my site, it's got at least Google Analytics on it.

My friend is right about what's going on: every app you open and web site you visit is tracking you and sending the data to powerful global players. Mostly they do this to target advertising at you with slightly more precision, then measure the impact of that targeting and advertising.

These days I spend a huge amount more time thinking about and taking action on privacy. The last few years I've spent a lot of time with lawyers, privacy experts and ethicists. I've also had a lot to learn about ethics, ethical reasoning, mechanisms to work through the implications of proposals and more general philosophical matters.

Match your action to your level of risk
If you're Edward Snowden, a dissident Uigher, an ambassador or spy, your level of risk is going to be much higher than an ordinary schlub like me. The Snowden leaks of the NSA's Taillored Access Operations show that if you're important enough for the spooks to put in some effort, they can physically intercept your hardware and install basically invisible stuff to monitor everything at the hardware level.

You and I are not those targets. Nobody cares enough to break into our house, open our laptop and solder in an expensive custom minutarized implant to send everything back to Fort Meade, Beijing or Tehran. It's sufficient for us to protect ourselves from the wholesale harvesting of data and not go to the levels of effort you'd need to have to protect yourself from the NSA.

Third-party dragnet tracking is easy to block
I'm not an absolute zealot on this. I run Android. My email and file storage uses Google. I watch a lot of YouTube. I have to be practical. However where I try to keep things under control is the vast range of uncontrolled third-party tracking on the web and in apps. Fortunately it's relatively simple to block the vast majority of this.

What I mean is that if you're visiting somesite.com and it's sending data to creepytracker.com, you can trivially block that and still use somesite.com without any negative impact to you. Needless to say if you go to creepytracker.com's site directly (or Google or Amazon etc), they're going to be able to track you. You have to pick the battles you can take on and the steps I take massively reduce my data exhaust being hoovered up. But I'm not invisible.

Browser and browser settings
The first level of protection is to use a browser that doesn't straight up invade your privacy. Don't use Chrome. Firefox is a good choice, though they're not perfect. They use some mildly dark patterns to trick you into sending telemetry back to their servers by default. Go through the settings and pick the most stringent settings you can work with. Introduce exceptions where you have to and are willing to.

This is your first line of defence.


I don't use Brave, though it's probably not the worst choice. I just don't trust the guy who started it (also responsible for unleashing JavaScript on the world, make of that what you will). The various ways they've been found to do slightly iffy things hasn't filled me with confidence either.

Ad and tracker blocking
Next you want to block ads and tracking pixels. Here we're fortunate that most developers are lazy. The tracking code on the web is loaded from a central location and the tracking data is send to a central location.

Ad blocking extensions in your browser load up blacklists of known tracking endpoints and simply block them. This means faster loading webpages, no ads and importantly no tracking! A better world all around.

Of course there is a cost. Sometimes the ad blocker will interfere with site functionality. If you're willing to tinker, you can often disable just the bits causing problems and continue. In the worst case, you can whitelist a specific site so it runs all its crap. Or open up your browser's Porn Mode, do what you need to do on the offending site, close the window and all the associate cookies and other long-term tracking info is gone.



The best ad blocker is without a doubt UBlock Origin. Just having it loaded with the defaults is a great start. Go through the settings and you can add more stringent blacklists and rules. It also has the cool dropper tool where you can select specific DOM elements in the page to remove. Great for popups and other annoyances.

DNS blocking
Next line of defence is DNS blocking. As most of the trackers and ad crap is centralised, you can block the DNS entries for much of it so it never even loads. This approach captures devices where you can't install your own software, like smart TVs, Internet of Things devices, phones and anything else connected to your local network.

There's a couple of ways to do this:
  • The Pi-hole uses a Raspberry Pi (or other cheap, low power computer) to run a custom DNS server with a range of blacklists on it. It's a great little system and works well, though only on your local network. Apart from the cost of the Raspberry Pi (and you can use one of the older, lower powered ones), it's free.
  • NextDNS is a paid service I use which does much the same but without you having to run a local server. It also allows you to protect your phone and other devices when you're away from your local network. It's really handy and simple to use.

A nice side effect: your ISP's blacklists that block things like The Pirate Bay are avoided because they're also done at the DNS level and you're no longer using their DNS servers.

How about your phone?
Mobile phones are filthy cesspits of tracking. Even if you don't have any apps (which all have tracking software inside), the manufacturers are all tracking you, whether that be Android (Google), iPhone (Apple) or one of the other Android players (Google still gets their data, Samsung, Huawei etc take their own too).

The only option I can offer if you want a phone but are totally uncomfortable with the tracking would be some of the open source options. But they're clunky and you won't have any of the particularly useful apps. Though I suppose you can browse the web and make phone calls.

Some options. I haven't explored this recently.
Of course the browser on your phone should be something like Firefox too, which has some limited ad blocking functionality too.

App telemetry
If you're going to be paranoid, you're going to need to get used to going through any settings on software you're using. The defaults tend to phone home and send telemetry, which you might want to disable.



Avoiding the FAANGs
So you've mostly cleansed your own hardware and software, but what about the services? Well you can still do a lot of things locally the old school way, and there's generally alternatives for any of the particularly problematic applications.

  • Search:
    • DuckDuckGo are a great search engine. Change your browser over to it now. Learn about the shortcuts that will take your search to other search engines for when it doesn't find you what you need. And don't install their apps, you don't need them.
  • Email:
    • Use a local email client and your ISP's mail server
    • Online services Fastmail, Protonmail are probably kosher
  • Maps:
    • It's funny to think how much we've got used to Google Maps. Of course Google's tracking where you go! You could try OpenStreetMap which isn't bad, though their directions routing isn't as good
  • Music:
    • Old school: load mp3s and FLAC files and use a local player
    • BandCamp are a great company, though I bet their apps have third-party tracking
    • The old Logitech Squeezebox music server software is still going strong and now supports a wide range of playback hardware including some cheap devices.
  • Media:
    • Jellyfin is an open source alternative to Plex for playing back video files
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Simon Rumble
tag:blog.simonrumble.com,2013:Post/1667287 2021-03-18T03:23:21Z 2021-03-18T03:23:21Z Random albums to mix things up a bit
I've taken to using the "Random Albums" option on my music system to surface music I haven't listened to in ages. It doesn't force you to listen to whatever comes out, that would be painful with the diverse library I have. Instead you can choose from the random albums it throws up.


It's been a fantastic tool for rediscovering great music I haven't listened to in a long time. It's really diversified my listening too, which is something I always try to do to keep out of music ruts..

Current pick I'm loving is the amazing Street Horrrsing by Fuck Buttons, first encountered at the Nick Cave-curated All Tomorrow's Parties festival held on Cockatoo Island in Sydney Harbour back in 2009. That was a mammoth day of incredible music! Still a great album too.

(See also Holy Fuck if you're looking for band t-shirts you can't wear to work.)

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Simon Rumble
tag:blog.simonrumble.com,2013:Post/1660155 2021-03-01T07:00:04Z 2021-03-01T07:00:05Z A month without booze

It's March which means my February booze fast is over. I tried a lot of alcohol free beer over February and there were some real gems amongst them.

The real standouts were the Vandestreek Playground IPA, Heaps Normal and the three Upflow brews. These made me not really miss beer at all. I'll be buying more of these!

The Sobah brews were disappointing. The backstory is great and I love the use of bush foods but the brews themselves weren't great. The Pepperberry one is great but I actually tipped out the Lemon Aspen. The finger lime one is okay but nothing special.

The mainstream brews were predictably underwhelming. The ones who get close in that category are the German wheat beer brands.

Sydney is starting to emerge from the restrictions we had over Xmas so there were a few outings in February. We went to a gig last week and then this weekend to a friend's birthday party in a local bar. The gig had Heaps Normal available so that was great. Out at the bar this weekend the bartender made me a really nice alcohol free cocktail with various juices and flavours, and I drank some plain tonic as they were using a good brand.

It's interesting to find I can get by without booze pretty happily though there are things I noticed. A lot of drinking is really giving you something to do with your hands. Without the booze, I ended up drinking quite a bit of water. No real problem but it was interesting to notice. Otherwise you end up drinking a lot of sugar.

Socially there's definitely a lubricating effect from alcohol. I didn't feel as talkative and definitely noticed the people around me loosening up as the night wore on. It's quite interesting observing it without being deep in it. Definitely worth experiencing from time to time anyway.

I've stocked up on a few favourite brews for my return to drinking. Since the whole idea is to cut down on drinking that definitely crept up in COVID-land, I probably won't crack anything open until Friday. Bummer that 1st March is a Monday but it won't hurt me.

So far in the stock is the Balter Hazy which is just brilliant summer quaffing and our closest brewery's best brew, the Sauce Bubble & Squeak. I'd also like to some of the Philter Marrickville Nights which is a brilliant Dark Ale, but I'll have to wander down that way to pick some up. Open to other suggestions.

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Simon Rumble
tag:blog.simonrumble.com,2013:Post/1656821 2021-02-21T20:56:15Z 2021-02-21T20:56:15Z Booze free beer: Sobah Lemon Aspen Pilsener

Sobah use bush foods as flavourings with mixed results. The Pepperberry isn't bad: an interesting flavour in the mix for a beer. The lemon aspen, not so good. It tasted like toilet cleaner, to be honest. I tipped it out.

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Simon Rumble
tag:blog.simonrumble.com,2013:Post/1656665 2021-02-21T09:42:59Z 2021-02-21T09:43:00Z Booze free beer: Erdinger Weissbrau Alcoholfrei

When holly was pregnant we drank a bit of this so I bought a bunch more for this booze free spell. It's still good, though now that I've discovered better it's not as amazing.

Styled as a wheat beer, which is very much Erdinger's thing, it's hoppy and flavoursome, very refreshing on a hot day. I still gladly drink this one. Though if I were drinking alcohol I'd go a Schofferhofer in preference.


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Simon Rumble
tag:blog.simonrumble.com,2013:Post/1656661 2021-02-21T09:33:16Z 2021-02-21T09:33:46Z A gig! EGOISM supported by Ultracrush

Last night Holly, Rachel and I managed to get out for some live music. Amazing after all this time.

The band we saw was local act EGOISM who we've been trying to see for a while. The earlier booking was for a December show that got cancelled with the Northern Beaches outbreak. Finally we got to see them at Mary's Underground, previously known as the famous Sydney venue The Basement.

It was weird going to a gig with all the checkin business for COVID. We were shown to a table and had to stay seated for the whole gig. Deeply weird. But rather civilised. Like a cabaret!

Better yet, Mary's stocks Heaps Normal, my favourite booze free beer.

EGOISM were great. Tightly performed their tracks, were fun with banter between songs. More polished than I'd expected. Their harmonies are really quite something.

Support act Ultracrush were good fun. Started off jingly jangly then went a bit shoegaze. Enjoyable show.


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Simon Rumble
tag:blog.simonrumble.com,2013:Post/1656658 2021-02-21T09:21:05Z 2021-02-21T09:21:05Z Booze free beer: Heaps Normal Quiet XPA

This is the way. A beer without booze that is no disappointment. It's delicious. Refreshing. Full of body. I'm buying a case!

Only downside: it costs the same as high-end craft beer! $80 case + $10 shipping. Ouch. But it is very good.



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Simon Rumble
tag:blog.simonrumble.com,2013:Post/1656657 2021-02-21T09:18:39Z 2021-02-21T09:18:39Z Booze free beer: Hawkesbury Prohibition Pale Ale

Ugh. This beer was just plain off. Undrinkable. And on such a hot night last night too!



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Simon Rumble
tag:blog.simonrumble.com,2013:Post/1655789 2021-02-18T22:00:41Z 2021-02-18T22:02:11Z Booze free beer: Upflow Pale Ale
Pale Ale tends to be the most common craft beer style and so tends to be the yardstick you measure against. This was always going to be a tough one for alcohol free beer. Upflow have got damn close here with a good fruity hop aroma and balanced bitterness. There's always going to be missing body but it's pretty damn good. I like it.
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Simon Rumble
tag:blog.simonrumble.com,2013:Post/1654133 2021-02-15T03:20:30Z 2021-02-18T22:01:42Z Booze free beer: Bakalar Non-Alcoholic Dry Hopped Lager
Not a bad attempt at a lager. Still ends up with that unique thin flavour you get with many of these brews but this one has more body than most. The hoppiness is strong and in your face, which helps. Refreshing and satisfying enough that Holly was disappointed when it had disappeared.

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Simon Rumble
tag:blog.simonrumble.com,2013:Post/1654132 2021-02-15T03:18:52Z 2021-02-15T03:20:07Z Booze free beer: Upflow Stout
I think this one may be my favourite yet. You could easily drink this and not realise it's got no booze, which is probably only something you could get away with in a dark beer. Fortunately I love dark beer! Amazing. Really impressive work here.

Upflow: how about a nut brown ale as another dark brew in the set?

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Simon Rumble
tag:blog.simonrumble.com,2013:Post/1654131 2021-02-15T03:16:36Z 2021-02-15T03:20:14Z Booze free beer: Sobah Pepperberry IPA & Big Drop Brewing Pine Trail Pale Ale
Catching up from last night's brews that Holly and I shared. These were both excellent.

The Sobah one had a bit of an odd smell from the pepperberry but that's a feature of their brews, Australian native ingredients. The taste was quite different though, strong malt and fruit. A really interesting brew, I'd drink this again.

Holly scored the Pine Trail Pale Ale but I got a sip. Delicious, a solid entrant with enough body to satisfy. Definitely worthwhile this one.

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Simon Rumble
tag:blog.simonrumble.com,2013:Post/1653399 2021-02-13T10:06:00Z 2021-02-15T03:20:23Z Booze free beer: Sobah Finger Lime Cerveza
Dry and refreshing but not much going on. I can't taste the finger lime at all. It's acceptable but nothing special. 
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Simon Rumble
tag:blog.simonrumble.com,2013:Post/1653108 2021-02-12T09:43:37Z 2021-02-12T11:03:20Z Booze free beer: Nort Refreshing Ale
Nice and crisp this one. A bit lacking in body but good flavour and certainly refreshing.

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Simon Rumble
tag:blog.simonrumble.com,2013:Post/1653076 2021-02-12T06:45:44Z 2021-02-12T06:47:10Z Booze free beer: UpFlow Session IPA and Flint Sukareki (сухариків)
Wow this IPA is the business! Fruity hop aroma. Deep bitterness. Body and malt. This is the benchmark now! There's a few other UpFlow brews in the cupboard so I'm looking forward to those now.

Also nibbling on some Ukrainian snacks. Sukareki are toasted black bread with flavourings and they're totally delicious! Perfect with beer. These ones are spicy tomato flavour and they definitely carry a kick. Nom.

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Simon Rumble
tag:blog.simonrumble.com,2013:Post/1653072 2021-02-12T06:21:23Z 2021-02-12T06:25:52Z Booze free beer: Mornington Free
This describes itself as a "Non-Alc Pale Ale". I'm not sure it hits the notes I'd expect from a pale ale. Not enough body. However it's quite refreshing, light flavoured without being incipid. Perfect when the temperature is 33 degrees like right now. A good Summer brew.

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Simon Rumble
tag:blog.simonrumble.com,2013:Post/1652620 2021-02-11T06:58:58Z 2021-02-11T10:06:53Z Booze free beer: Eggenberg Freibier
This Austrian number gets the take on lager right. Heavy, metallic bittering hops and a rich maltiness.

Lager is hard to get right with alcohol but without its super tough. This one nails it. I'd drink this happily.

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Simon Rumble