I’ve heard some reports of the Rasbery Pi being sensative to the voltage input.

I’m not using the official power supply, but instead a Macbook USB-C power supply. I think it’s rated at 65W (maybe only 30W?).

I haven’t noticed any issues, but I found out that you can check by running the following:

vcgencmd get_throttled

If you see the following the you may have voltage issues:

throttled=0x50005

When I ran the command the output was simply:

throttled=0x0

Hopefully that means I’m in the clear with my power supply.

Source: https://pimylifeup.com/raspberry-pi-low-voltage-warning/

This article did a pretty good job:

• https://raspberrytips.com/protonvpn-on-raspberry-pi/

Proton’s guide for installing their CLI:

• https://protonvpn.com/support/linux-vpn-tool/

Downloaded:

https://repo.protonvpn.com/debian/dists/stable/main/binary-all/protonvpn-stable-release_1.0.3_all.deb

I just installed the .deb with the GUI installer. Then proceeded to:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install protonvpn-cli

From there, it’s a matter of logging in:
protonvpn-cli login <username>

Enter. Then provide the password, when prompted.

I saw a GUI keychain manager popup, but I just cancelled. I guess that’s the OS offering to store the authentication info?

One the authentication is successful, to connect:
protonvpn-cli c

After choosing my server, unfortunately, I was met with:

An unknown error has occurred. Please ensure that you have internet connectivity. If the issue persists, please contact support.

The tutorial above also mentioned this. In their experience, rebooting the system was enough to resolve the issue. But I’m not clear if that’s for Ubuntu or Rasberry Pi.

I have yet to try the reboot, so I have everything installed and in place, but don’t yet have a working VPN connection.

An external hard drive that I had been using on Mac OS for years is using the APFS file system. Don’t ask me why.

Plugging in the drive showed that the system and file manager couldn’t deal with apfs.

I’m mainly wanted to view the files. A quick google and I came across a forum posts suggesting to use apfs-fuse:

• https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=251476
• apfs-fuse: https://github.com/sgan81/apfs-fuse

There steps to download and compile worked for me, with one exception. I guess gcc-c++ is no longer the package name in Linux

Downloaded the necessary tools:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install fuse libfuse3-dev bzip2 libbz2-dev cmake git libattr1-dev zlib1g-dev

Then close the github locally:

git clone https://github.com/sgan81/apfs-fuse.git
cd apfs-fuse
git submodule init
git submodule update

And compile:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
ccmake . # Only if you want to change build options
make

The last issue I ran into was actually mounting the hard drive. I asked for a little help from ChatGPT, which suggested:

sudo ./apfs-fuse -o allow_other /dev/sda2 /mnt/apfs

I was having permissions issues viewing before using the -o allow_other, and the ./ is because apfs-fuse was compiled locally, and doesn’t have any symbolic link for the system to know where to search for it.

I don’t think this will be automated, so I’ll have to manually mount APFS drives for now, but I was able to view the drive and files after following the above steps.

Seems work keeps me busy, as I’m not starting a bit of a break from work. My last update was at the beginning of my break leaving Japan and spending time in Hawai’i.

The crypto market has been brutal, I guess I was hoping for a bounce that never came; I think many people were sharing a similar sentiment, unfortunately.

Work has been decent, all things considered. My next big goal is to start building my own crypto business service, although I haven’t put much time into considering what that will look like. I think it might need to be a bit of building the car while on the road.

So far my ideas have been some combination:
*General assistance and crypto “coaching”
*Fund security and recovery services
*Biz consulting and payment implementation
*Regulation advising and advocacy
*Market insight writing

Not an exhaustive list. I should elaborate on each of these so I actually know what they mean next time I look at this list.

I think market adoption is generally trending in the right direction, as expected. However, price sentiment is obviously not ideal. This is actually a great buying range, for those with cash on the side. I do think there could still be more downside at this point, but I also think we might get a quicker bounce back than most people expect, simply for the reason that sentiment overwhelmingly seems to be bearish; I tend to thing when there’s that much agreement on market direction, that’s when you’re gonna see people get rekt in the wrong direction.

I’ve been playing with an idea writing an article along the lines of “If Bitcoin didn’t have a dollar value, would you still crypto?”

Over and out for now; would like to update more frequently. :)

It took a long time, there were bumps along the way, but I’ve finally left Japan.

I’m now in Hawaii, and on to the next chapter of my life. I’m sitting at my Airbnb, a nice little view looking out over Honolulu. The weather is warmer and more humid than I’ve felt for a while. Like many of the feelings related to leaving Japan, it’s interesting to suddenly be feeling such a different a different vibe.

I’ve only just landed, less than 24 hours in Hawaii, so there’s not a lot that I can offer that is very concrete. Without being dramatic or hyperbolic, I do see this as the beginning of the next chapter of my life.

There is so much to attend to, both for myself and relating to family.

I wanted to have more to say in this little update. But as is often the case, when I actually sit down to write, I find myself drawing a bit of a blank.

Today when Nami asked me where I would like to live in Hawaii, I described a place that is small, but not too remote. In addition to being able to do our jobs, I would also like to be in a place that I can be more engaged with the local community, especially on environmental infrastructure related projects. I know that might sound a bit random, but I think in addition to the core work I’m doing, I think it’s a good way to stay connected with nature and the local environment. As much as we are living more and more of life in a digital world, our local environment and infrastructure are key to the quality of life we experience, such as the air we breath, the water we drink and have access to, and the type of recreational nature that we have around us.

I don’t know if moving to Hawaii makes sense. There certainly at least seem to be some upsides. Of course, it also comes with some challenges. Anyway, for the time being, I will need to return home and spend time with family, thinking about what comes next. Could it be Hawaii?