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New York City

Matt Davey

Toronto Core

I lived in Toronto for a few years quite a while ago and these are the things that shaped my memory of the great city. Inspired by Saigon Core and Toronto Core . Most of these places will be shut or changed entirely by now but this is a time capsule within my head. An evening at Roy Thomson Hall listening to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra Fried Chicken, Pulled Pork Bao and Duck Confit Banh Mi from Banh Mi Boys The far too spicy Kothu Roti from Saffron Spice Kitchen Gra Bong from PAI Mini donuts and a coffee from Little Nicky's A quiet evening in the Aquarium Sour cherry slice from Wanda's Pie

Matt Davey · EN

These present circumstances

This is a direct follow up to the previous. I let some time pass because I didn’t want to get stuck writing, even if knowing this severely weakens intent and efficacy (and always consider this here isn’t a dialogue, but just a kind of soapbox where I mostly talk to myself to clarify things for […]

Looping Wor(l)d · EN

Assassin’s Apprentice – Robin Hobb

People are intimidated by a man who acts with no apparent regard for consequences. I was some 60 pages from the end of the book in June, but then it meant I had to write something about it here, so I put it on hold while starting to read tons of other books through the […]

Looping Wor(l)d · EN

Publishing Industry Blinders

This is just an unplanned extra, not very relevant. Today I received a not especially important book order. I wouldn’t be writing about it. It contains the latter three books by Ruocchio, Kingdoms of Death, Ashes of Men, Disquiet Gods, just to have them all before the last one comes out in November (but I’ll […]

Looping Wor(l)d · EN

On Malazan reading orders

I wanted to comment on a blog post by Werthead and reading orders in general. Following the general premise that a reading order should simply maximize reader enjoyment as a first read. You could then rearrange orders, following plotlines or chronology, but at that point an experienced reader is able to make their own choice. […]

Looping Wor(l)d · EN

Is Gene Wolfe a good writer?

Yes, of course he is. The title is intended to be rhetorical, in this case. But it’s the result of what I’ve asked myself: would I think this as good writing if I didn’t have a giant bias and prejudice, knowing how highly regarded Gene Wolfe is? He is one of those great writers who […]

Looping Wor(l)d · EN

1?84 – (spoilers) Haruki Murakami

Oh well, here we are, aren’t we? I did not intend writing about this book, as the things I have to put here into words have already gone through my mind several times. Doing it once again, trying to be coherent, is just more unpleasant effort. But here we are. The title, 1Q84, should essentially […]

Looping Wor(l)d · EN

Twin Peaks, explained?

While this side of the blog is temporarily(?) paused, I just wanted to link this: https://bluerosearchive.com/ And thankfully I searched my own website, because I already wrote in my mind half this blog post and was going to write ONCE AGAIN the same introductory things I wrote already. How I encountered the thing the first […]

Looping Wor(l)d · EN

The Age of Decaying Storytelling

I’m so glad about myself when I manage to restrain myself from writing here, so if this shows up it means I’ve failed. This has been triggered by reading a blog post about a (series of) book with a cool premise, that I think I’ve known in a form or another for years, maybe? But […]

Looping Wor(l)d · EN

Scripting a Zoho catch-all filter

I use Zoho as my email provider, and I recently learned that you can setup a catch-all forwarding address . This is pretty great, because that means I can receive any email sent to my domain! Go ahead, try it . I want to sort the emails I receive into their own folder, though, depending on the delivery address (for example, lol@miccah.io will go to /catch-all/lol ). It turns out, Zoho supports custom mail filters using a scripting DSL called deluge , so I wrote one!

miccah.io · EN

2023 Reflections and 2024 Goals

Okay, I know I’m finally finishing this post in NOVEMBER when 2024 is almost over, and it was mainly postponed because I lacked 2024 goals. So I’ve reflected on why and shared my thoughts below. But first, 2023 reflections! I made a huge life change that made it a great year for me. I moved to Seattle! It took me awhile to get everything ready and find a place to rent, but I finally did it! I chose Seattle for a few reasons. The nature in the Pacific Northwest really calls to me, and I want to go on hikes and enjoy it. I also have a few friends in Seattle, so it was an easier trans

miccah.io · EN

An unexpected benefit to keeping notes

I keep a weekly journal of notable events, my feelings, and ideas. Most of the time, the value I get out of doing this comes from the act of writing it down in the moment. Writing notable events helps my memory, writing my feelings helps me understand and let them go, and writing my ideas helps me refine them. This is largely unsurprising and overall very valuable to my mental health, but occasionally I look back over the years of notes and regain a perspective of myself that I so easily forget: I’m awesome . I’m not saying this to brag! Living day by day and falling into the rhyth

miccah.io · EN

2025 Reflections and 2026 Goals

It seems like 2025 came and went in a flash. Looking back, I’m happy to say that I continued being social and made some more friends. This past year, I.. Built a home server Okay, I actually built it in 2024, but I used it a lot this year and had a lot of fun setting up VMs with Proxmox . I keep all of my notes there, a gaming VM, and various media containers too. It may be recency bias, but I installed immich and have had a great experience with it, and even started a photo frame project that has been a lot of fun.

miccah.io · EN

WireGuard is simply elegant

WireGuard is a secure, easy to use, and simple VPN solution that is the underlying technology for Tailscale . I’ve personally used it in both flavors and have been very happy with its reliability and the fact that it “just works.” So this week, I decided to learn how it can “just work” by reading the whitepaper describing its design and also watching the 2018 BlackHat keynote . While I enjoy exploring the technical details of a secure communication protocol¹ and will dive into that later, I want to take some time to appreciate the simple elegance of the WireGuard

miccah.io · EN

Home cloud gaming server

At the end of 2024 I decided to build a new gaming PC. My existing one was a typical tower computer from 2012 that was big and loud and too old to run Elden Ring ! So I decided it was time to make a new build, but this time, I wanted to do it a little different. I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of having a large and loud tower at my desk, so I thought it would be fun to build a server that could stream games to my laptop.

miccah.io · EN

My NixOS dev machine

I have a home server that I built primarily for “cloud” gaming (read more about that here ). I’m running Proxmox so I can install other services, one of which is my notes machine. After many years of experimentation, I’ve landed on a system that I like: I ssh notes@notes which drops me directly into nvim -c VimwikiMakeDiaryNote and disconnects on close. It’s a very lightweight version of an SSH app, which I’m starting to realize I like quite a bit.

miccah.io · EN

Ergonomic SSH development

I’ve been setting up a dev machine on my home server and doing all of my personal projects remotely over SSH . I’ve fiddled quite a bit with the system to make it ergonomic, so here are some of the things I’m quite happy with. Tmux autocompletions Of course, tmux is a t-must! One of the cool things about tmux is that you can programmatically read the contents of a pane via tmux capture-pane -S- -pt $PANE_ID , which means you can plug this data into autocomplete engines.

miccah.io · EN

My New Note Taking Setup

I spent so much time in the past exploring different note taking solutions in order to put together a system that covers all my needs. I tried multiple apps and services, …

Posts on ilyess · EN

How I Fixed My Linux Installation

A few weeks ago, I broke my Linux installation . After a lengthy investigation that involved messing with BIOS settings and flashing a new firmware version, I was now ready to load a live Arch ISO and start digging around in hopes of finding the root cause and deploying a fix. Note If you haven’t read the post referenced above , I suggest giving it a read before this one.

Posts on ilyess · EN

Why I'm Adding Native Comments to My Blog

One of the main reasons I love blogging is the lively discussions my posts generate. Exchanging ideas with like-minded people brings me joy, helps me broaden my knowledge, and lets me forge long-term connections. Those conversations can’t thrive without a welcoming space. Broadly speaking, I categorize this feedback into two groups: private channels such as email and direct messages, and public venues like social-media posts or forums. In this article I’ll briefly outline the tools I’ve been using to manage public discussions on this blog, explore other comment-management sol

Posts on ilyess · EN

Using Pi-hole Dns in Neighboring Docker Containers

In a previous post , I explained how to run Pi-hole in Docker and use it to manage the Domain Name System (DNS) for an entire home network — for example at home, work, or school. It’s a great tool for taking control over your DNS and blocking trackers and ads across the whole network. Once the network’s DHCP 1 server is configured, every machine on the network will begin sending its DNS queries to the Pi-hole container. But what about Docker containers that share the same Pi-hole host — what I’m calling “neighboring Docker containers”? Can they also use the Pi-hol

Posts on ilyess · EN

Services Worth Self-Hosting for Privacy

A few years ago, I decided I wanted more control over my data. I was tired of wondering what Google knew about me, tired of cloud services getting breached, and tired of relying on companies that could shut down tomorrow and take my data with them. So I started self-hosting — not to be optimal, but to be in control. If you’re here, you might be thinking about doing the same. Maybe you’ve heard about self-hosting but feel overwhelmed by where to start. Maybe you think it requires a server closet full of equipment and a networking degree. It doesn’t.

Posts on ilyess · EN

A New Home for This Blog

When I first launched this blog, I wanted a short domain name for it. A name built around “ilyess”, which is the identity of this site. Obviously, ilyess.com was already taken. So I turned to the cheapest top-level domain I could get started with. After some promo hunting, I settled on ilyess.cc . It checked most of the boxes: short, centered around “ilyess”, and cheap. But this domain name is on an uncommon TLD and it’s not that “cool”. At least I didn’t think it was cool, and I still don’t.

Posts on ilyess · EN