Grey Panthers Savannah

Author: gpanther

  • Secure/privacy conscious phone setup

    Here is a dump of thoughts I had about setting up a new iPhone:

  • Couple of thoughts about web crawling

    Couple of thoughts about web crawling

    These days crawling the web is becoming more and more difficult with websites trying to ensure that “only humans” access them. While there are some good arguments in favour of these efforts, I also have some good arguments: Anyway, here are some tips to help out in creating a crawler:

  • Further USB-C (cable) trouble

    Updated on 1st of September, 2026 with feedback about the recommended cables. (kind-of a sequel to my post about USB-C fast – and not so fast – charging) I thought to myself: wouldn’t it be nice if I could glance at the device being charged and quickly understand if it’s fully charged or not? For…

  • MacOS Privacy

    On the one hand it has some pretty nice security features, decent hardware (although the effort for disassembling / fixing is higher than other laptops – and the insistence of soldering memory / storage to the mainboard is also annoying). On the other hand, when using LuLu (a very nice free and open source application…

  • USB-C (fast charging) shenanigans

    It’s nice that more and more devices have USB-C interfaces. Yet, they are not without their particularities: Happy charging! Photo taken from Andreas G with permission.

  • Adding your Google Calendar entries to the iOS calendar

    Noting this here in the hopes that it will be useful for somebody (or even me :)) in the future, since it took me longer than I expected to figure this out. Scenario: you have a Google account with entries in Google Calendar that you would like to see on your iOS device (iPad /…

  • New option for adblocking on iOS

    To start with: good ad blocking is the best one can do for their security / privacy online these days! For a long time adblocking on iOS devices (iPad / iPhone) was limited. One could use DNS based blocking (Pi-Hole or NextDNS are good options), but many advertisement circumvent these blocks. There was AdBlockPlus which…

  • Ripping BlueRays with Handbrake

    Ripping BlueRays with Handbrake

    (under GNU/Linux) Noting this here because all the information I could find on the Interned told me “use MakeMKV for it”. And while MakeMKV seems like a fine product, it’s a bit harder to install, since it doesn’t seem to be packaged for Debian at least. I still gave Handbrake a try (since it is…

  • Mainboard photos of HP t630

    The wonderful parkytowers.me.uk website doesn’t detailed photos of both sides of the HP t630 thin client, so – in case this would be useful for anyone – here are some photos I’ve made: It’s a very useful little fanless (!) machine. The DisplayPort outputs even support HDMI-CEC when connected to a TV, out of the…

  • Debian booting on a Swiss train

    It was fun to see 🙂