Lark Space (#tech)

FanJam: A free event planning app for small cons

2025-09-26T00:00:00+00:00

A friend approached me with the idea back in the Spring. They were frustrated because the small con they had recently attended didn't have a good way of viewing the event schedule. All they had was a public link to a spreadsheet on Google Docs. This friend had been playing around with Airtable and similar apps, and decided to copy the con schedule into NocoDB</a> so they could have something more readable.

The pitch was, "What if you built a mobile app for attendees that was just a frontend for NocoDB"? That would save a ton of work over trying to build out a dashboard-like app for organizers. We'd just have to build the mobile app.

It turned out to be a lot of work anyways.

FanJam</a></li>
GitHub</a></li> </ul>
The mobile app turned out to be the easy part! The hardest part was figuring out how to make this app free for small cons. If I was planning on eating the hosting costs, I would need it to be cheap to host. Like, real cheap. My goal was a dozen cons and a couple thousand concurrent users for less than $40 USD per month. Yikes.
There are a couple factors that make this more reasonable than you might think:

Cons generally only last a few days, and generally don't all happen the same weekend, so traffic is pretty evenly distributed, and resources can be scaled up to accommodate burst traffic without exceeding the budget.</li>
Planning the schedule for a given con isn't generally a 24/7/365 affair, so I can automatically suspend those servers when they're not being used to save money.</li>
The data set is tiny, which means I can keep a full local copy on the user's device. This means no loading time in the app and less frequent requests to the server.</li> </ul>
But there were some challenges to overcome as well, namely that NocoDB is quite slow. There's no way I can rely on it to absorb significant traffic, which means I needed to build a caching layer in front of it.
I might share more of the technical details in future log entries. There's documentation on the architecture of the app in the GitHub repo, including diagrams.
When I show people FanJam, they'll often pull out their phone and show me the app from a con they've attended, usually to complain about it. It turns out there are a lot of bad apps out there trying to do what FanJam does. If I can build something that does it better and cheaper, I think there might actually be a market out there for me.
I'm really excited about this project. I have a long backlog of new features and enhancements I still want to implement, but in the coming weeks I'm going to start soliciting feedback from more than just a few friends, and maybe even start approaching some cons.
I imagine the hardest part will be convincing them it's not a scam lol.

Self-hosting a Matrix homeserver

2025-03-24T00:00:00+00:00

What is Matrix?</h2>
If you're not familiar with Matrix</a>, it's an open-source, decentralized, end-to-end encrypted chat platform. It's somewhat like Discord, with direct messages, rooms (comparable to channels or group chats in Discord), and spaces (comparable to Discord servers).
Matrix doesn't quite have feature parity with Discord, but it has pretty much all the features you expect of a chat app. I think the platform needs to mature before it's ready for mainstream adoption, but I'm holding out hope that someday it will be viable enough for Discord-based communities to feel enticed to switch over.
What's the appeal?</h2> With Discord almost certainly approaching an IPO, I fear that the enshittification</a> of the platform is imminent. Paired with the wave of public awareness of decentralized platforms like Mastodon, Lemmy, Pixelfed, and Peertube that we've seen in recent months, it feels like a perfect storm for Matrix to start seeing more adoption.
I worry about how deeply invested I am in Discord. There's little stopping the platform from implementing user-hostile changes, suspending my account without recourse, spying on me, getting hacked, or disappearing entirely. I believe very strongly in the power of federated, decentralized networks, and I think they're the only path forward for a free and open internet. Matrix being end-to-end encrypted is huge 1</a>; it protects privacy and security in a way that Discord fundamentally cannot.
It's encouraging to see that there's already a healthy diversity of client</a> and server</a> implementations, even if most of them are not yet feature-complete. I would have less confidence in the strength of the community and ecosystem if it consisted of only a single reference implementation.
Self-hosting a Matrix homeserver</h2>
Matrix has a concept of a homeserver, which is the server that hosts your user account and stores your (encrypted) messages. The domain of your homeserver forms part of your handle, which takes the form @username:example.com</code>. From the start, I was obsessed with the idea of having a lark.gay</code> handle. This does require hosting your own homeserver, but that also appeals to me because I want ownership and sovereignty over my own data. The only way to protect your data from disappearing someday is to host it yourself.
After assessing the landscape of server implementations, I settled on one calledconduwuit</a>.
The only fully feature-complete and stable server implementation available right now is Synapse</a>, however my understanding is that it's mired in performance issues and is intended to eventually be phased out by second-gen implementations like Dendrite</a>. I chose conduwuit over Dendrite because I have a lot more confidence in its maintainership; it seems to be seeing incredibly active development, whereas Dendrite's commit history indicates it has been in development for approximately eight years. I also happen to love using software made by trans people 🏳️‍⚧️.
The devlog</h2> Self-hosting a Matrix homeserver turned out to be somewhat more complicated than I would have hoped, even for an implementation that's meant to be easy to set up. This section is a technical devlog detailed how I did it. Before we dive in, I want to stress that you do not need to do any of this to use Matrix. Unless you really know that you want this, I would strongly recommend you join an existing homeserver</a> instead. Registering is very easy. conduwuit itself is just a statically linked binary with the database embedded, which is refreshingly simple. I just dropped the binary in /usr/local/bin</code>, created a system user to run it, and used one of the provided systemd unit files</a>--which are configured to provide a reasonable degree of sandboxing--to run it. Here are the relevant sections from my conduwuit config: [global] server_name = "lark.gay" port = 6167 database_path = "/var/lib/conduwuit" # I had to set this to true temporarily to register my user account. Because I # don't plan on sharing this server with anyone else, I set it back to false # immediately after. allow_registration = false # In order to set up my user account, I had to generate a random token. After # disabling registration, there's no need for one. #registration_token = "" [global.well_known] # I'll explain this later. client = "https://matrix.lark.gay" server = "matrix.lark.gay:8448" </code></pre> As recommended in the documentation, I set up Caddy</a> as a reverse proxy, which automatically handles acquiring and renewing TLS certificates. The config is remarkably simple: matrix.lark.gay, matrix.lark.gay:8448 { reverse_proxy 127.0.0.1:6167 } </code></pre> I had to open up port 8448 (the default port for the Matrix federation API) on my firewall, in addition to 443 (HTTPS) and 80 (HTTP). Port 80 is necessary for Caddy to acquire TLS certificates. Because my server is running Fedora Atomic, which has SELinux enabled, I had to run the following commands to allow Caddy to bind the port. sudo semanage port -a -t http_port_t -p tcp 8448 sudo semanage port -a -t http_port_t -p udp 8448 </code></pre> Some of the complexity setting this up comes from the fact that I really wanted my homeserver's domain to be lark.gay</code>, which will obviously need to be shared with this site. To accomplish this, Matrix has a feature called delegation. To implement Matrix server delegation, I have to serve these two files from this site, which tell Matrix clients and other servers that they can actually find my homeserver at matrix.lark.gay</code>. /.well-known/matrix/server</code> { "m.server": "matrix.lark.gay:8448" } </code></pre> /.well-known/matrix/client</code> { "m.homeserver": { "base_url": "https://matrix.lark.gay" } } </code></pre> For Matrix server delegation to work, you also need to proxy traffic to /_matrix/*</code> and /_conduwuit/*</code> to your homeserver. However, lark.gay</code> doesn't point to a web server that I can configure to do that; it points directly to a CDN. However, Cloudflare has a feature</a> that lets me put a serverless function in front of the CDN, which you can see here</a>. I believe that about covers it! Not too complex in hindsight, but it did take me some time to figure out, particularly troubleshooting some of the more subtle bits, like SELinux. A fun anecdote: I started the process of setting this all up while I was bored on a flight, connecting to the server over SSH. At one point I needed to reboot, and committed the classic blunder of locking myself out of SSH access. The server has full-disk encryption configured with a password, meaning that I need to be physically present to enter the password so it can boot. After that ordeal, I decided to configure LUKS to use the TPM instead, which allows it to boot unattended. I also flipped the switch in the UEFI firmware settings setting it to automatically power back on if it loses and then regains power--say if the electricity goes out. Conclusion</h2> I'm quite pleased with my progress, and excited to start using Matrix… once I actually have friends to talk to 😅. All my friends are still on Discord, and it might take some convincing to get them to register an account and install a new chat app just for me. Thankfully I have some nerd friends who I'm sure will be happy to indulge me. Soatok, a security expert, has raised some very serious criticisms</a> of the actual security of the end-to-end encryption implementation in several Matrix clients. If your privacy or freedom are at risk, Signal is probably the better choice. ↩</a> </li> </ol> </section>
Switching to Jujutsu: A git-compatible VCS 2025-02-22T00:00:00+00:00 I've been curious about non-git version control systems like Mercurial</a>, Fossil</a>, and Pijul</a> for a while, but switching away from git is difficult given its ubiquity, particularly considering the other VCSes have next to no support among the major hosting platforms. However, a friend recently clued me in to a relatively new VCS that's repo-compatible with git. It's called Jujutsu</a>. You can use Jujutsu with git forges like GitHub, and you can collaborate with people using git--without them even knowing! After playing around with it for a few weeks, it's almost completely supplanted git for me; I don't foresee myself going back. The CLI is much more sensible--a famous shortcoming of git--but it's more than just another git frontend. Its data model makes rewriting history, rebasing, and conflict resolution much less painful. It took some adjustment and unlearning of git paradigms, but after just a few weeks I'm already more confident navigating complex situations in Jujutsu than I am after 10 years of working with git. My one gripe with Jujutsu is the lack of git LFS support; using Jujutsu with LFS-enabled repos will implicitly check in those files, which is annoying. A friend and I collaborated to write a quick reference and cheat sheet</a> for Jujutsu. You can find his blog post here</a>. I highly recommend you give it a try. Migrating my photo library to Immich 2024-11-20T00:00:00+00:00 A few years ago I undertook a project to de-Google my life, as much as possible. There are a few Google services I still use--I haven't been able to divorce myself from Google Calendar just yet--but overall the endeavor has been fairly successful! Beyond the obvious reason to move away from Google services--privacy--having custody over my own data is important to me. I've heard too many stories of people having their Google accounts suspended due to a false-positive in Google's abuse detection systems, often without recourse. One of the major Google services I wanted to move away from is Google Photos. It's admittedly a good product, but I wanted something open-source and self-hosted with reasonable feature parity. I eventually settled on PhotoPrism</a>. PhotoPrism replicates some of Google Photos' most useful features, namely face and object detection. It also adds some new ones, like: Screenshots, memes, and other non-photographic images are automatically partitioned off into a separate folder. This is really nice for allowing me to back up everything without cluttering my photos timeline with memes.</li> Nearly-identical photos (usually photos that were taken in burst mode or in quick succession) are stacked together, so they're still individually accessible but don't clutter up your library.</li> You can mark some photos as private so they're hidden from your library by default. This makes handing your phone to someone to scroll through your photos much less anxiety-provoking.</li> You can configure it to automatically detect NSFW photos and mark them as private.</li> </ul> Unfortunately though, the PhotoPrism UX isn't great. It's slow, there's no native app for mobile (only a PWA), and it relies on a clunky third-party app to sync photos from your phone. A friend recently introduced me to Immich</a>, and I wanted to give it a try. The UI is much faster than PhotoPrism and more touch-friendly on mobile, comparable to Google Photos. It doesn't have private photos, photo stacking, or non-photographic image detection like PhotoPrism, but it does have a promising roadmap</a> which includes at least some of those features. Migrating my photo library over from PhotoPrism to Immich wasn't terribly difficult. I found this script</a> for migrating albums and favorites, which worked reasonably well. The most challenging part was that my ISP only offers paltry upload speeds. I really love just how much high-quality open-source software there is out there going toe-to-toe with proprietary services from major tech companies. If you're interested in trying Immich yourself, but find self-hosting intimidating, I recommend checking out PikaPods</a>. They offer managed hosting for a bunch of FOSS apps, and they make it pretty simple. Web feeds: An antidote to doomscrolling 2024-10-17T00:00:00+00:00 Web feeds, commonly known as RSS feeds1</a>, are a mechanism for subscribing to news sites, blogs, podcasts, social media posts, and really anything else on the web. Most blogging engines automatically generate a web feed. Most news sites have web feeds. Social media posts on Mastodon</a> have web feeds. The US government has a collection of feeds</a> for everything from congressional bills to court decisions. You install an app on your phone or computer, pick which feeds you want to subscribe to, and they appear in your own personal timeline. It's a simple system that has incredible power for putting you back in control of your mental health. We're used to massive machine learning models curating our feeds for us, deciding what media we consume. And this concept is sold to us under the premise that these feeds are "personalized"--relevant to our interests. What we often forget is the incentives at play. Companies make money when we engage with their platforms, and so they are incentivized to monopolize our attention by any means necessary. This causes tragic, inflammatory, and polarizing content to bubble up to the top, which affects not just our health as individuals, but the cohesion and strength of our communities. Shortly after coming out as trans, my news feed was inundated with transphobic content, assaulting me with news of oppressive policy decisions and violence around the country and around the world. This was happening during a vulnerable period in my transition, when I was trying to figure out what my future would look like. And it gave me anxiety about the world I was coming into. This prompted me to step away from algorithmic news feeds and focus on the news I actually want to consume--the news that isn't detrimental to my health--and web feeds were the solution to that. Feed readers let you subscribe to the content you want to see. Many let you set up custom feeds aggregating multiple news sources. Some even let you set up keyword filters to block out content you don't want to see or notify you for content you do. There are a number of open-source and proprietary feed readers for desktop and mobile. Seeing exactly the content you've subscribed to shouldn't be a radical concept. Web feeds are an open standard; anyone can publish them, and anyone can subscribe to them, and corporations can't take that away from you. Technically, RSS is one of several web feed formats, but it's been genericized as a term for web feeds generally. This site has an Atom</a> feed instead, which is a more modern alternative. If you're making a website, you should probably use Atom instead of RSS. ↩</a> </li> </ol> </section> The Gemini protocol: Bringing back the old web 2024-10-15T00:00:00+00:00 This has no relation to Google's Gemini large language model. The Gemini protocol</a> is a lightweight alternative to the web. I'll often jokingly refer to it as "Web 0.5", playing on terms like "Web 2.0" and "Web 3.0". Over the past few decades, the web has grown into a behemoth--a massive, global platform for building rich applications and networks that serve billions of users. The smallweb movement presents an alternative: small websites and small networks. Tight-knit communities of peers. A focus on content over presentation. In its earliest iterations, the web was nothing more than a network of documents that link to one another. Check out the first ever website</a> as an example. Over time, the web has accumulated layers of complexity to enable the applications it's used for today. That complexity comes at a cost, however: ballooning resource usage requiring ever-more powerful computers, threats to our privacy, and the commodification of our attention. Gemini is a return to the principles of the early web: a network of documents that link to one another. It's private, secure, and lightweight by default--deliberately designed to head off any attempts to expand its scope or complexity. Instead of massive social media networks controlled by big tech monopolies, Gemini is full of small blogs and personal sites hosted by individuals just for the fun of it. If this appeals to you, I encourage you to give it a try. I recommend downloading Lagrange</a>, a browser like Chrome or Firefox, but for Gemini. If you're interested in hosting your own Gemini site, I built a simple static site generator</a> that you might find useful. I used to host a Gemini site under this domain. I've taken a break from it, but might return someday. Amid the growing enshittification of the web, alternatives like Gemini are starting to look more and more appealing. They won't replace the web, but they don't need to. Gemini is a small, quiet corner I can retreat to when I need a break, and I'm grateful for it. A case for typewriters 2024-10-14T00:00:00+00:00 A few months ago I bought myself a typewriter. Friends were somewhat baffled, given that I work in tech, but I've found that I actually really enjoy using it. Between my job and hobbies, I spend a lot of time in front of a screen. Computers are attention-grabbing and pull me away from my physical environment; I can spend hours working on a personal project and fully disconnect from the world around me, distorting the passage of time. I don't like this sensation of realizing I've been absorbed for hours, and typewriters solve that for me. Using a typewriter is a very manual and intentional process that I find grounding and meditative. I'm sitting down to use it for a specific purpose, without any distractions to divert my attention. The process of it--lifting the bail, inserting the paper, turning the platen, setting margins--is a ritual I really enjoy. I mostly use it to write letters; I enjoy exchanging letters with my friends. I find them to be a more personal and thoughtful way to express my appreciation for someone--it's easier to be vulnerable the more asynchronous the communication method is. I also use it for taking notes occasionally. This one is situational, because I need most of my notes in my notes app so I always have them available and can search them, but some things I actually prefer to have on paper, like if I want to pin them to the fridge to reference at home. Often when writing notes or letters or stories, I get caught up fussing with wording and structure, and that gets in the way of me actually getting my thoughts out of my head. Because my typewriter makes editing more difficult, I'm forced to just write, without being perfectly happy with what I've written. I may go through multiple drafts, but there's a practical limit to how much I can revise. For me, one of the major hurdles to doing creative work is accepting that "good enough" is good enough. To that end, my typewriter has been quite helpful.