kjcoop.com

I Switched from WordPress to Hugo

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 23:42:10 -0700

Both Hugo and WordPress are free software created with love and a lot of unpaid labor. My hat is off to both projects and their developers.

About the Software

Hugo

Hugo is a program written in Go that runs on your computer and generates a static website based on files you create. These include markdown files for content, HTML-ish files for themes, and static assets. All you need to put it out into the world is a way to serve web pages.

PHP Trilium Next API

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 18:18:49 -0700

A library to get data out of a Trilium instance

Taskfiend Api

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 22:15:17 -0700

Tool to get data out of a Task Fiend instance

Taskfiend

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 22:15:11 -0700

Obligate to-do list software

Hello World

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 14:58:16 -0700

A Hello World post doesn’t make a lot of sense considering this blog has some older content, but it’s a new blogging engine, so hello from it, I guess.

23 Years

Fri, 11 Jun 2021 01:44:09 +0000

I just passed the 23rd anniversary of creating my first website, which I would eventually name Midnight on a Wednesday. For my 16th birthday, my mom let me register my first domain name, kjcoop.com.

I was exposed to computers late relative to other people of my generation. I thought it was amazing that I could read the writings of people all over the world - there were no boundaries on the internet. This was before Wordpress and Facebook and even Friendster. if you wanted a website, you had to learn HTML.

Comparing Trello, Asana, Zenkit and Todoist

Tue, 09 Mar 2021 01:24:44 +0000

These are the four platforms where I have data. I hope to one day move it to a single platform.

Kanban uses the term card, Todoist says task. I use both.

AsanaTodoistTrelloZenkitBeauty5/10 - has a few backgrounds to choose from. Images attached to cards become small thumbnails.❌9/10 - An ever-growing number of pretty backgrounds thanks to Unsplash. Attached images become medium thumbnails on corresponding cards.5/10 - has a few backgrounds to choose from. Images attached to cards become small thumbnails.TagsColored background and globalColored font and global; paidColored background and siloed per boardColored background and siloed per board; can have multiple categories. Can be used to color the whole card. See below.Descriptions☑️❌☑️☑️AttachmentsCan be attached to cards or commentsCan only be attached to comments; paidCan be attached to cards or commentsCan be attached to cards or commentsRepeating tasks☑️☑️❌ - Power-up. Appears on due day.☑️Reminders☑️☑️❌☑️ - Added as a separate field, but you can add many such fieldsLinks between cards/boardsPaste the URL yourself.Paste the URL yourself.☑️ - Add it as an attachment. No URL pasting requiredPaste the URL yourself.

Zenkit API to Todoist CSV

Sun, 07 Feb 2021 20:45:04 +0000

I’m of two minds about posting this. The code is ugly. I’m posting it anyway because there aren’t a lot of resource for this this and was kind of a bear. I hope to save somebody else some trouble.

As is well-documented, I’m a fan of productivity tools. Todoist added boards to support a kanban format and let me tell you, I am here for it.

My productivity software journey of the past couple years goes like this: Trello and Todoist -> Asana -> Trello alone -> Zenkit -> Todoist alone. I have data living in all four places. I’m trying to move as much as I can to Todoist (it has global tags which Trello lacks, but its missing some other features I’m pretty fond of). Definitely Todoist will last forever and I won’t come running back to Trello.

Check a Domain Name for SSL Problems

Sun, 03 Jan 2021 08:53:02 +0000

Today I’m highlighting a script I wrote that will check sites for SSL problems. You can hand it a file with hard-coded domains, or you can pass domains in as arguments. I wrote a complementary script that will find all the vhosts on the current server.

It’s essentially a curl command with some formatting. First, it checks the domain name itself. If that passes, it checks for a random subdomain.

I had it include the curl time in the output because some domains were taking longer than others and I was interested to see where the slowdown was. Not that it does any troubleshooting, I just thought it was interesting to know.

Find All Virtual Hosts a Web Server is Serving

Sun, 03 Jan 2021 08:43:04 +0000

I registered a couple domain names recently and it was too hard to manually keep track of where everything was in the process of getting set up, so I wrote a few scripts to help with the job. They’re all on Github, which you already know, if you’re one of my zero followers. The one I’m highlighting here finds all the virtual hosts on a given system.

First off, I want to know what all I’ve got set up to be served. It trolls /etc/apache’s vhosts or sites-enabled directory, but it would work just as well with nginx. It’s basically one line. I hit Google hard for this one:

Ill-Fated Attempt at Importing Quick Notes Data to Joplin

Tue, 06 Oct 2020 07:06:24 +0000

As you may have learned from the title, my attempt at importing data from Quick Notes to Joplin failed. I leave my notes here in case they save trouble for the next person.

Background

I was a Quick Notes user (which, to be clear, is mighty fine software, just not quite what I was looking for) for like two days. During that time I entered as many as ten notes. Obviously I’m not going to manually move such an enormous quantity of data, so I started for looking for ways to automate it.

The Madness of 2020

Tue, 29 Sep 2020 06:00:15 +0000

Back in March, when San Diego County School District announced they were closing schools for three weeks, everyone I knew went, “Three weeks! What sort of madness is this?”

Prudent madness, as it turns out. That’s the tagline for this year: 2020, the year of prudent madness.

By the way, as of this writing, prudentmadness.com is available.

Productivity Software Wishlist

Tue, 21 Jul 2020 04:53:35 +0000

I have a fever for productivity software. I haven’t found anything perfect (the nerve of other people not to think of exactly what I want!). This is wishlist of things ideal software would have. I wrote this both as a checklist for myself and as a guide of what to mention when I review other productivity software.

So, my nearly-true love is ❤️ Trello ❤️. Next best is Asana. This review is based on the things I found pleasing and displeasing about each.

Productivity Review: Asana

Tue, 23 Jun 2020 02:51:00 +0000

I almost switched from 💌 Trello 💌 (not affiliated, just a fan) because it has global tags. Board-scoped tags is the one feature that’s keeping me from joining 💑 Trello 💑 in a union of holy matrimony. Ultimately, Asana was missing a lot of features that prevented me from fully embracing it.

What it Has Going for it

Covers basic kanban functionality nicely.
Aforementioned global and color-coded tags.
Can see a list of all tasks assigned to me, regardless of board. This is another thing 🌸 Trello 🌸 omits on the desktop.
It has the ability to see something as a board or a list with section headings. Scrolling down as opposed to over (and down) doesn’t really have a specific benefit, it’s just nice to see things displayed the way I think about them.
Native calendaring - 💖 Trello 💖 has plenty of plugins for this, but it doesn’t do it on its own
You can assign a task to multiple boards.
Occasional fun animations when you click done.
A nice library of templates
Its task notifications are pretty good.
Progress view, even at the free tier.
No time limit on the free tier. Although I’m willing to pay for a service I love (I pay for 💛 Trello 💛), a limited time trial period is inevitably too short to get a sense of whether or not a service works for me.

What it Lacks

The ability to duplicate a list to another board. While repeating oneself is bad practice (particularly in code), sometimes when you’re an end user of somebody else’s software, you just have to accept it.
Only a few pretty backgrounds to choose from. 💜 Trello 💜 must have some kind of intellectual property dibs on this.
Tag problems:
- Can’t create a new tag in the app on Android.
- No list of tags. If I want to see everything in the tag I used for things to be done during work hours, I have to go into a task with that tag, then click on the tag there.
- Using them is buggy in the app. I once accidentally created two of the same tag (same name, same color). In my browser, I moved everything to one and deleted the other. The app still shows them both and fails silently when I guess incorrectly about which one is still there.
App won’t even show a complete list of boards without an internet connection.
Sorting options aren’t retained in the app. When you pull up a list, it’s not sorted in any way. It doesn’t want to guess what you want, that’s fine. I sort it by due date and I’m happy. I go away and come back. For a minute, it’s still sorted by due date, but then the list refreshes and returns to unsorted.
The ability to use other boards/tasks as attachments.

Not Lacking But Distasteful

Boards are default scoped to public within organization.
Although it’s theoretically nice that on the website you can change the board sort, it comes at the expense of having Asana alphabetize them.

Conclusion

I’m still contemplating getting a 😍 Trello 😍 tattoo; running out of ❤️ emojis.

Pi-hole

Tue, 14 Apr 2020 06:40:39 +0000

I recently installed Pi-hole on a brand spankin’ new Raspberry Pi to blacklist advertisements.

The install was very simple - all I had to do was follow their directions. My only frustration was that I forgot to enable SSH to start on boot. Evidently chkconfig has gone out of style, so I had to google The New Way. I suffered from ignorance for like 30 seconds. The horror!

I couldn’t find out how I change the DNS server in the router. I fear I shall have to contact my ISP. The horror!

Productivity Review: 🌈 Trello 🌈

Thu, 26 Mar 2020 17:58:00 +0000

I have mentioned my love for Trello. I’ve also been trying to work around the lack of global tags since about the time I began using it on Dec 31, 2018.

This shortcoming finally lead me on a trip around the world of kanban software. I plan to review some of the stops I made. First off, I’d like to write a love letter to Trello on what may be the eve of our separation.

Tinkering with carlosazaustre / vue-trello

Thu, 19 Mar 2020 07:26:00 +0000

In my continuing effort to find a Trello replacement, I’ve been looking at carlosazaustre / vue-trello. My thanks to carlosazaustre for creating it. After some exploring, I realized it’s more reliant on Google Cloud Platform than I particularly want to go. However, I publish the notes I had so far in the hopes that they’ll help someone else.

`npm install`

`npm install` kept dying on Firebase. I had to uninstall then reinstall. I can’t find the Stack Overflow post that gave me the instructions, but according to my bash history, it looks something like the following:

Tinkering with jordanholliday / Scheme

Sat, 14 Mar 2020 07:14:33 +0000

Taking a look at Ruby Asana clone Scheme. Many thanks to jordanholliday for creating it!

There isn’t a lot of documentation for how to install it. I provide my rough notes in hopes that they’ll help someone else.

Basic Background

Ruby has a few prerequisites. On Suse, I installed them with:

zypper install ruby2.5-rubygem-bundler ruby-devel postgresql-devel

The bundler-gem installs all the software you’ll need to support Scheme:

bundle install

To run the project, start the server with:

Working with TrelloToAsana

Mon, 09 Mar 2020 02:16:02 +0000

First off, many thanks to goborrega, the author of TrelloToAsana - a ruby package to help users port their data from 🌹💃 💕 Trello 💕 💃 🌹 to Asana. I love Trello (as you may have gathered from the emojis), but the boards are very siloed. I have like 3 dozen boards, I don’t want to have to dig into each one.

There are a few ways to get data between the two, but none were to my satisfaction until I found this package on Github.

A Problem with `git push origin`

Mon, 02 Mar 2020 12:43:45 +0000

I couldn’t figure out why git kept complaining there was no such file as origin.

Because I was typing grep.

Pro-tip: `npm run dev` Relies on /etc/hostname

Mon, 10 Feb 2020 06:37:48 +0000

In my ongoing effort to play with Vue.js, I’ve been attempting to run the command npm run dev, which is required to turn the Vue magic into regular Javascript magic (all computers are magic). I couldn’t figure out why it kept insisting it couldn’t bind to the address.

I was looking for a config file with a hostname defined. There isn’t one. It uses the contents of /etc/hostname.

PS1 and hostname showed my hostname as kraken. But according to /etc/hostname, it was kraken.kjcoop.com. NPM was trying to bind to kjcoop.com’s IP address.

Changing a Username in Wordpress

Sat, 08 Feb 2020 07:05:01 +0000

When I installed Wordpress, I reflexively made my username the same as it is everywhere. Its ease of being guessed makes it that much easier for an interloper to get into my system.

The Wordpress UI says you can’t change your username. Actually you can just pop into the database and make the change.

The table is wp_users by default. You may have set the prefix to be different, but out of the box it’s “wp_”. To alter the row in question:

About Me

Wed, 05 Feb 2020 07:41:22 +0000

I became a professional programmer because I love it. It’s my profession and my favorite hobby.

Wordpress on kjcoop.com is Live, as You May Have Observed

Wed, 05 Feb 2020 06:34:02 +0000

Most of what I spent my time on was making it pretty. I’m not a graphic designer, but I think it looks pretty good.

My only real annoyance with Wordpress is the Gravatar nonsense - it’s a third party service used to have a pretty picture in your profile. I get that it offers users the ability to have the same picture on any Wordpress site they comment on, but for those of us who don’t care, would it be so bad to be able to upload a profile picture locally?

Tinkering with Wordpress

Mon, 03 Feb 2020 08:27:03 +0000

I spent a few hours tonight tinkering with Wordpress. It’s different than I remember it from several years ago - imagine that!

Theming will be a challenge. I don’t want to have to write and maintain one from scratch, but if I make code changes to an existing theme (spoiler alert: I have), it makes it difficult to update the theme, which again puts me in the position to have to maintain it myself.

Resume

Mon, 03 Feb 2020 07:38:34 +0000

tl;dr: PHP on Linux

Privacy Policy

Sun, 02 Feb 2020 07:41:13 +0000

Short story: this site doesn’t collect personal information.

Hello World!

Sun, 02 Feb 2020 04:59:11 +0000

I am starting a blog to describe my tech ventures. I’m at a contract position. After it ends, I may be in a position to have to impress people. So I shall track my nerd stuff in hopes that someone is looking for a nerd just like me.

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