1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
|
#+title: My feed
#+OPTIONS: num:1 toc:nil
#+HTML_HEAD_EXTRA: <style>*{font-family: sans-serif !important}</style>
#+ATTR_HTML: :rules all :frame border :align center
| [[https://skylarcloud.xyz][🌎 Home]] | [[https://skylarcloud.xyz/feed.html][📡 My feed]] | [[https://searx.skylarcloud.xyz][🔭 SearXNG]] | [[https://git.skylarcloud.xyz][⚙️ Git Repos]] |
#+TOC: headlines 1
* Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse :post:book:
:PROPERTIES:
:ID: 22138706-ea97-4202-8c7f-a50511f31237
:PUBDATE: 2025-04-05 Sat 00:54
:END:
(This post contains spoilers)
This book has been rattling in my brain since I read it a couple month ago. I wanted to share two of my favorite passages, where Siddhartha is at his wits end, and within a few pages his suffering is reframed as the best possible news: a new start. Full forgiveness of yourself.
#+begin_quote
"A hang bent over the bank of the river, a coconut-tree; Siddhartha leaned against its trunk with his shoulder, embraced the trunk with one arm, and looked down into the green water, which ran and ran under him, looked down and found himself to be entirely filled with the wish to let go and to drown in these waters. A frightening emptiness was reflected back at him by the water, answering to the terrible emptiness in his soul. Yes, he had reached the end. There was nothing left for him, except to annihilate himself, except to smash the failure into which he had shaped his life, to throw it away, before the feet of mockingly laughing gods. This was the great vomiting he had longed for: death, the smashing to bits of the form he hated! Let him be food for fishes, this dog Siddhartha, this lunatic, this depraved and rotten body, this weakened and abused soul! Let him be food for fishes and crocodiles, let him be chopped to bits by the daemons!"
(a few pages later...)
"Wondrous indeed was my life, so he thought, wondrous detours it has taken. As a boy, I had only to do with gods and offerings. As a youth, I had only to do with asceticism, with thinking and meditation, was searching for Brahman, worshipped the eternal in the Atman. But as a young man, I followed the penitents, lived in the forest, suffered of heat and frost, learned to hunger, taught my body to become dead. Wonderfully, soon afterwards, insight came towards me in the form of the great Buddha’s teachings, I felt the knowledge of the oneness of the world circling in me like my own blood. But I also had to leave Buddha and the great knowledge. I went and learned the art of love with Kamala, learned trading with Kamaswami, piled up money, wasted money, learned to love my stomach, learned to please my senses. I had to spend many years losing my spirit, to unlearn thinking again, to forget the oneness. Isn’t it just as if I had turned slowly and on a long detour from a man into a child, from a thinker into a childlike person? And yet, this path has been very good; and yet, the bird in my chest has not died. But what a path has this been! I had to pass through so much stupidity, through so much vice, through so many errors, through so much disgust and disappointments and woe, just to become a child again and to be able to start over. But it was right so, my heart says “Yes” to it, my eyes smile to it. I’ve had to experience despair, I’ve had to sink down to the most foolish one of all thoughts, to the thought of suicide, in order to be able to experience divine grace, to hear Om again, to be able to sleep properly and awake properly again. I had to become a fool, to find Atman in me again. I had to sin, to be able to live again. Where else might my path lead me to? It is foolish, this path, it moves in loops, perhaps it is going around in a circle. Let it go as it likes, I want to take it."
#+end_quote
* Spinning, combing, waiting, waiting - draft :song:
:PROPERTIES:
:ID: 51652c89-25a8-40b6-9344-6b5a1d7e3ee6
:PUBDATE: 2025-04-04 Fri 23:24
:END:
[[https://skylarcloud.xyz/music/spinning-combing-waiting-waiting.m4a][Spinning, combing, waiting, waiting - draft]]
* The Tor Browser :post:tor:
:PROPERTIES:
:ID: 0ebb418d-f15f-4379-8343-a4c5a9054d7a
:PUBDATE: 2025-04-05 Sat 07:47
:END:
[[https://skylarcloud.xyz/posts/tor-browser.html][How and why of the Tor Browser, used to browse/publish on the internet anonymously and escape censorship.]]
* 3 Browser extensions I almost always install :note:
:PROPERTIES:
:ID: b366ef4e-8747-49af-ba35-a088163c7623
:PUBDATE: 2025-04-03 Thu 05:40
:END:
** uBlock Origin
:PROPERTIES:
:ID: 8035be60-1ae7-47bd-a9b8-40d964dc393b
:END:
Perhaps the most ubiquitous content/ad blocker, reliable as ever. I recommend this to anyone and everyone.
** Vimium C
:PROPERTIES:
:ID: c6685409-84da-4101-8c74-efa4ddda78c4
:END:
This lets do basic navigation in your browser with vim-like keybindings. You can click links, scroll, go back and forth between tabs and through your history, select/copy/search text and more with your keyboard.
** Dark Reader
:PROPERTIES:
:ID: 83562b76-589a-470f-a16c-794bef1bf786
:END:
Makes all websites default to a dark mode, and provides an easy toggle bound to Alt-Shift-d.
* Prepping for v2 of my salt repo :note:qubes:
:PROPERTIES:
:ID: 04b2c85d-8339-46b5-a123-180ed526bb25
:PUBDATE: 2025-04-02 Wed 22:34
:END:
I've massively restructured my salt repo and added enough features that I'm going to make a new repository and release it again in full, as a 2.0 version. This should be done within the next week or two.
* Methods of installing software in QubesOS with Saltstack :post:qubes:
:PROPERTIES:
:ID: bb15d59f-c217-441a-9446-108429b52c10
:PUBDATE: 2025-04-02 Wed 22:34
:END:
Here are some various methods of installing software that I've used in my personal salt configuration
** pkg.installed
:PROPERTIES:
:ID: 0e128288-8e86-41b1-9d4e-8ed5d431d110
:END:
Here's ~/srv/user_salt/pkgs/accounting.sls~ as an example. It uses the simplest way of installing programs, which is just listing them under ~pkg.installed~ which pulls them from your distros main repositories. This is the most preferable way to install software if it's available.
#+begin_src salt
# Install accounting tools
accounting--install-apps:
pkg.installed:
- pkgs:
- hledger # Command-line plain text accounting
- gnucash # Graphical GNU accounting suite
#+end_src
** Install from third-party repo with a script
:PROPERTIES:
:ID: 98e7e2ec-b88b-4a92-a065-5876a4f7c0ed
:END:
Here's ~/srv/user_salt/pkgs/signal.sls~ as an example. It places an installation script, ~/srv/user_salt/pkgs/install-scripts/signal-repo.sh~ into a qube and executes it to install the Signal messenger.
#+begin_src salt
...
signal--repo-script:
file.managed:
- name: /usr/bin/install-repo # this is where the installation script is placed
- source: salt://pkgs/install-scripts/signal-repo.sh # This is where the installation script was sourced
- user: root # sets the owner of the file, you can usually default to root
- group: root # sets the group of the file, you can usually default to root
- mode: 777 # sets the permissions of the file, you can usually default to 777 (any user on the qube has permissions)
# This simply executes the install-repo script in a qube
'install-repo':
cmd.run
#+end_src
Here's the installation script that's ran:
*** ~/srv/user_salt/pkgs/install-scripts/signal-repo.sh~
:PROPERTIES:
:ID: f07d4cd1-6ec6-41da-af32-41b9512eefb9
:END:
#+begin_src bash
# Retrieves Signal's key for verifying the package
# The request is proxied through 127.0.0.1:8082 to allow the template qube to access the internet
sudo curl --proxy 127.0.0.1:8082 -s https://updates.signal.org/desktop/apt/keys.asc | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee -a /usr/share/keyrings/signal-desktop-keyring.gpg > /dev/null
# Defines Signal's repo in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/
echo 'deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/signal-desktop-keyring.gpg] https://updates.signal.org/desktop/apt xenial main' | tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/signal-xenial.list
# Updates packages and installs signal-desktop through the newly configured repository
sudo apt update
sudo apt install signal-desktop -y
#+end_src
** Move a binary file into /usr/bin
:PROPERTIES:
:ID: 0dacbd16-7ddd-420e-8422-acff908a3c46
:END:
Here's ~/srv/user_salt/pkgs/st.sls~ as an example. It takes a binary file that's part of this salt repository, and moves it into the ~/usr/bin/ directory in a qube.
#+begin_src salt
# Installs my build of st terminal
/usr/bin/st:
file.managed:
- source: salt://pkgs/bin/st.bin
- user: root
- group: root
- mode: 777
#+end_src
* Website update :note:skylarcloud:
:PROPERTIES:
:ID: c843faa8-1fce-478d-bab2-e016c75bf59d
:PUBDATE: 2025-03-01 Sat 10:14
:END:
I've changed a few things about the website:
The blog posts have been consolidated into a single org document. I like the feeling of having one large waterfall of writing, with a level-one table of contents to navigate the posts.
I've figured out how to create an RSS feed using ~ox-rss~, which makes it easy to generate an xml feed from the newly-consolidated feed.org document. You can now follow my feed from any RSS reader!
https://git.skylarcloud.xyz now has a repo with the org and html files used for this site.
* Convenient torrenting with qBittorrent :post:
[[https://skylarcloud.xyz/posts/torrenting.html][Straightforward guide for using qBittorrent to search for and download media files]]
|
