A couple months ago, I wrote about how I had started using Ansible for desktop configuration. I still do, but it's a bit more nuanced now than it was then. There's a few reasons why, but really the most important one was that making any sort of configuration change ended …

In my opinion, this is one of the coolest tools I've ever made.

Maybe you agree, maybe you think the desktop site is cooler, but this pretty much universally solved a whole load of problems I was facing all at once, and it's not even that complicated under the hood …

If you read some of my other articles, you might be able to guess that my systems are all set up in a pretty unique and custom way. I use my own window manager, a copy of Emacs that's heavily customized, I use my own photo system, while this post …

Since late 2018 or early 2019, I've been running a personal XMPP server. It's not federated, and there's only about 4 or 5 users, but I've learned a lot in the process of maintaining it.

Background

When I was in college, I had a number of friends who would text …