based.quest

How a spicy pillow got me into Seedvault and Tailscale

Thu, 25 Sep 2025 22:30:00 +0300

This is a long read, you’ve been warned :)

Prelude

I woke up last week wednesday morning like any other workday morning, I glanced at my phone (Google Pixel 7a) and noticed the case was sticking out a bit - I tried to push it back in, but it would pop out again. I didn’t think too much of it just yet, maybe a bad fit, so I took the case off.

Reverse Engineering a Mobile App Protobuf API

Sat, 11 May 2024 12:00:00 +0300

Why

Why not? Digital preservation is important, even if you don’t care for a specific program. This is also a good way to get started with protocol reverse engineering due to way protobuf is often left behind in source format within client applications.

The target

In this series of blogposts, I will be using a mobile game “Egg, Inc.” as the target for demonstration. It’s a simple time killer app that got me through boring long waits when I was still at school.

Moving from nginx to Caddy

Sun, 03 Sep 2023 13:00:00 +0300

Backstory

I’ve heard of Caddy for a long while, but have always been dismissive about it - ignoring it as “yet another webserver software” when I had my perfectly good trusty nginx to rely on for many years already. Over the years, my nginx config has become somewhat bloated and even take a while to do restarts on due to the complexity of said config. I did attempt to resolve it by reducing amount of expensive routines - which did help to an extent - I was complacent with my setup. Until I took a deeper dive into Caddy.

NAS Part I - The Build & Borgbackup Initial Impressions

Mon, 15 May 2023 20:40:00 +0300

NAS - Part I

If you have been reading since last year July, you may know of my “Project ReuseNAS” - you may also know that my build date estimate for “end of 2022” or “Q1 2023” was never met as per obvious lack of posts on that front.

When I was originally planning the NAS build, I was very much all over the idea, that I could reuse all of my old PC components. Over time after discussing with members of the based.quest community, we came to the conclusion that I would be severly handicapping myself with the hardware I already had laying around.

DeckPC - Christmas 2022 Update

Sun, 18 Dec 2022 17:20:00 +0200

It has been a while since the last word on my DeckPC experiment, I originally set myself the goal to see if using Valve’s Steam Deck as a regular Linux desktop with its preinstalled SteamOS environment is enough to replace the need to use my otherwise power-hungry PC. I even left an “unresolved” case in the last blog that never got a proper answer.

The resolved “unresolved”

Last time I noted that you are unable to use the offline password manager KeePassXC with any browsers in SteamOS out of the gate without it staying persistent throughout updates. I am glad to say that just today, before writing this article, I managed to get it working thanks to a suggestion by BieHDC to try out a project called distrobox. I simply created a new Arch Linux container with distrobox create -i archlinux -n sneed and installed Firefox and KeePassXC in them with pacman. After installation I created new desktop entries as such: distrobox-export --app firefox and distrobox-export --app keepassxc.

Supply chain attacks & how industry never learns

Thu, 22 Sep 2022 20:45:00 +0300

If you have been in the industry for the last several years, you may have noticed an ever-increasing trend of “convenient package managers for your favourite programming language”. It’s very much relevant in languages such as Python, JavaScript, Rust and almost every new emerging programming language. However, all of them are very much possible targets of supply chain attacks. Those are just some of the examples. There are countless instances of this happening and they will continue to happen due to low effort, high value and medium success.

Move to Hugo

Wed, 21 Sep 2022 20:38:55 +0300

First of all, why? Wasn’t blogit perfect?

No, no software ever is perfect. I will give credit where due, blogit is an amazing project that will work wonders for kickstarting a new personal blog. However, my ambitions have outgrown just a personal blog. I strive to make this site for the community (while also maintaining my personal blog) and blogit was not going to scale well going forward.

That being said, if you have something to share that you feel like is based (and won’t get me in trouble), you can clone the new web-hugo.git repository, create a patch with your post and send it my way either via email or Matrix.

DeckPC - Day one experience

Sat, 10 Sep 2022 19:47:33 +0300

This series of blogposts will be about documenting my experience with using Valve’s Steam Deck as a regular Linux desktop with its preinstalled SteamOS environment.

The dock

I admit I didn’t pick the most quality dock for this use case and cheaped out a bit and rushed to purchase without much more investigation than amount of ports. The dock I ended up purchasing was from China and bought from AliExpress. It features a single 4K@30Hz HDMI port, an USB-C power delivery port and 3x USB 3.0 ports. The first hurdle I faced from lack of research was the inability to support my PC monitor’s native refresh rate of 144Hz, but instead be capped to 1080p@120Hz.

How to setup SSH alerts like a landchad

Sat, 20 Aug 2022 15:04:20 +0300

Preface

I recently installed ntfy to enable UnifiedPush on several apps on my phone in order to conserve battery life and make notifications work more real-time. That gave me the idea that I can use this same setup for creating SSH intrusion alerts for my server for that extra peace of mind.

Installing ntfy

Installing it is quite straightforward. You can find guide for installing it on their website. In my instance, I had to install it for Ubuntu, so following commands had to be executed:

Personal projects and plans going forward

Wed, 17 Aug 2022 12:10:24 +0300

Preface

This blogpost will be mainly about the DIY projects I am about to do going forward from remainder of 2022 to 2023. It will only faintly touch topic of based.quest and cernodile.com, although some projects are tailored for it.

Project ReuseNAS

As they say - reuse is more important recycle. I will take that principle to heart when building my very first personal NAS. For those who haven’t known me for a long time, I have an older SFF PC from Fujitsu. It has been collecting dust for at least 4 years now as I built my very first proper PC with my own funds.

NOW HOSTING: Nitter & PeerTube

Wed, 13 Apr 2022 20:35:48 +0300

Nitter

Nitter is a bloatless no-javascript front-end for Twitter, similar to Piped or Invidious. If you have a reason to look at Twitter for whatever reason, here’s your free get-rid-of-bloat card. You can find it here.

PeerTube

PeerTube is a free/libre video sharing software funded by a non-profit organization Framsoft. Instead of interfacing a site like YouTube through bloatless front-ends, you get to use a platform that respects you. PeerTube is another one of the “fediverse” projects and hence is compatible with ActivityPub platforms. Due to legal complications, if you wish to join the instance, you’ll have to ask me personally for an account. You can also find it here.

Steam Deck Review by BieHDC

Sun, 13 Mar 2022 21:11:56 +0300

This guest blog is written by BieHDC

Yes, it is me again, because i have got my Steam Deck one week ago and now i am going to tell you about it. The first clue is already my choice of words, i called it “my”, because i actually own it. If you read my previous review of the FairPhone 4 you will already know that this is an important factor for me. It is a whole PC, or should i say PC2?… The Model i got is the 512 Gigabyte one, because i already knew i was going to install “Hitman 2” (2018) which alone takes 150 Gigabytes and followed by “Grand Theft Auto 5” with 105 Gigabytes, taking away over half of the disk space available already. As someone who has never owned a Console or Handheld before, one of the reasons being the lack of actually owning them, i had to learn a lot of the how to use first. You can watch that progress in my Unboxing and First Start Video.

FairPhone 4 Review - A Farmers Utilitarian Point Of View by BieHDC

Sat, 26 Feb 2022 21:33:12 +0300

This guest blog is written by BieHDC

I have been using the FairPhone 4 for 2 Months now and here is my experience with it.

Why is the FairPhone 4 interesting for me?

As a Farmer, I am very interested in Repairability, Sustainability and Longevity of Machinery. This is the standard for my equipment, but it is not anymore for technology. Also, since I expect fair prices for the goods i am producing, I should also pay a fair price for things I am buying. The Motivation behind the FairPhone overlaps with my own points of view, that is why I decided to buy one as a replacement for my Nokia 6710 Navigator.

Why I can't enable registrations

Wed, 23 Feb 2022 16:59:55 +0300

If you’ve used any of my services, you have more than likely have had to use it as a guest rather than a registered user. There’s one simple reason why I can’t allow you to. GDPR… and lack of helping the little guy with it.

The case of Matrix

I love Matrix - I would love to contribute to the wider ecosystem of it with my homeserver, but I’ve always had to shut down requests of people wanting to register an account in my homeserver if I do not know them.

PineTime - End of 2021 review

Sat, 01 Jan 2022 12:13:47 +0300

A PineWhatNow?

If you missed the PineTime blog, go check it out now. This is an continuation to the previous blog.

What has changed since?

A lot. Let’s start by summing up the faults I had last time for PineTime’s InfiniTime software.

Touch registration sucks
Bluetooth disconnects
Steps getting lost

I am thrilled to say, all of these have been fixed in current master build of InfiniTime. My watch is currently running InfiniTime build 8ab959b (to-be 1.8) from December 20th 2021. To address each concern, I applaud the following PRs and their creators for fixing these two issues: #688, #625 and #492.

How you can shape tech with your wallet

Tue, 05 Oct 2021 20:52:04 +0300

If you’re like me, you are definitely crazy for products like the Framework laptop or the Steam Deck, but may be put off by the price. I was in the same boat - generally I like to get the absolute most out of my money, but then it dawned on me. This thing isn’t getting any cheaper until we give them a way. Framework laptops won’t suddenly drop by few hundred just from nobody buying it. This is the early adopter price of voting with your wallet.

NOW HOSTING: Piped - A frontend for YouTube

Fri, 06 Aug 2021 18:41:59 +0300

Piped is an alternative frontend for YouTube that respects your privacy. I already host a service similar to this, Invidious, but lately it’s been acting up, especially with Google’s never-ending fight on age-restricted videos. I have launched an instance of Piped on based.quest. If you wish to use my proxy, you must open console in your browser and type in localStorage.instance = "https://pipedapi.based.quest" in a front-end of your choice (mine included).

PineTime - A promising open-source smartwatch and my experience

Sat, 24 Jul 2021 12:00:35 +0300

A PineWhatNow?

PineTime is a open-source smartwatch built by Pine64 and the community. It rocks a 1.3 inch IPS capacitive touchscreen and boasts a week long (yet to verify, but seems likely!) battery life and it communicates over BLE and Bluetooth 5. It has the typical features of your usual smartwatch such as step counting and heart rate sensor, ability to control your music and view notifications - all that on very low specs. It runs on a nRF52832 SoC with a 64MHz ARM Cortex-M4F CPU coupled with 512KB Flash and 64KB of RAM. It also has additional SPI NOR 4MB Flash which community software has recently taken advantage of.

Steam Deck - a love letter to Linux & handheld gamers

Fri, 16 Jul 2021 15:35:00 +0300

Alternative title: Steam Deck, a Linux PC console.

Valve recently announced Steam Deck and I must say that I like it. The people that made this hardware are clearly as passionate computer nerds as we are here. The controls do look a bit uncomfortable to my taste, but I’ll judge it when I see it. The operating system used for Valve’s handheld is Free Software built on Arch Linux. This may be one of the first (?) appearances of Arch Linux on a consumer product in actual production en masses. Not only are their software choices solid, they also allow you to decide that by not locking you out of your system and granting you access to desktop & install other OSes. You are also not limited to just Steam, you can easily install emulators on it and insert an SD card with your favourite ROMs. When docked, it will be a staple of your living room, a powerhouse capable of emulating likely up to PS3 even. Speaking of docks - while it is sold separately, I like what I see. You can turn your Steam Deck into a full on desktop experience with external monitor, Ethernet connectivity and fully working USB ports.

git.based.quest & source of this page

Fri, 16 Jul 2021 00:15:00 +0300

If you ever wanted to create a minimal blog or website that has no bloatware such as JavaScript and is statically generated, you can now take inspiration and see how I created this website & blog at git.based.quest.

Enjoy,

Cernodile

Launch and Intentions

Thu, 15 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0300

Hey, my name’s Cernodile, the system administrator for based.quest and its services. I started this website with the intent of creating a sane, perhaps based, space on the internet where you are not being spied or tracked on. I will be offering services that help you achieve sovereignty over your data.

To kick things off, I’ve launched an Invidious instance. Invidious allows you to watch YouTube videos without actually ever interfacing with Google. If you find Invidious tedious to use, you can use it as an API and pick a front-end of your liking (e.g. FreeTube).