petermolnar.net

tl;dr: https://code.petermolnar.net/ngx-http-blocklistd

I wrote about having fun with bots and scapers before that I brought upon myself by having nepenthes added to my server¹. As things currently stand, unless you want to or can afford A LOT OF traffic, you shouldn't do what I did.

Anyhow, now that all the links are removed from everywhere it means that there's a certain path prefix that I know 100% sure it's nasty bot traffic and I'd be happy to block the IP immediately if it ends up there.

The last time I tried fail2ban, my CPU got overloaded. I then tried blocking at ASN level², but I regularly ended up blocking M$, Google Cloud, and other things, eventually blocking some of the indieweb tooling³ from accessing my site with that blast radius.

I have turned to blocklistd⁴ (formerly called blacklistd) for blocking SSH and Postfix attempts, because it has it built in. It's a (Net)BSD security tool that listens on a socket for messages with IPs to be blocked by your firewall. In a sense it does the same job as fail2ban, but with much less overhead: it doesn't need logs to be writter, logs to be read and parsed, and it's written in C.

The nginx module that communicates to blocklistd didn't exist, so I decided to write it. The end results looks way simpler, than finding the resources were, but these were quite helpful:

• Emiller’s Guide To Nginx Module Development https://www.evanmiller.org/nginx-modules-guide.html
• Learning a new codebase: hacking on nginx https://notes.eatonphil.com/learning-a-new-codebase-hacking-nginx.html
• nginx Development guide https://nginx.org/en/docs/dev/development_guide.html
• A Guide to: NGINX Error Logs https://trunc.org/learning/everything-you-dont-need-to-know-about-nginx-error-logs
• nginx-dev-examples https://github.com/nginx/nginx-dev-examples/tree/main/hello_world_1
• ssh diff in blacklistd source https://github.com/paul-chambers/blacklistd/blob/trunk/diff/ssh.diff

It is now working and I'm testing how far I can take it. For what it's worth, I'm not going back to the endless AI poison maze experiment, because I can't afford to jeopardise that level of traffic on my home connection, but I will most likely put honeypot links back soon.

Somewhere in '98 or '99 I fired up ICQ for the first time. Take it into account that I was living in Hungary, a 14 years old boy, and while I was learning English since I was 6, the teaching methods in Hungary focus on grammar and not real life skills, meaning I was lagging 5-10 years behind American and British trends. By the way, this is still the case with a lot of Hungarians. It was incredible. I was able to search for people based on interest keywords, age, and so on. Back then not everybody lied all the time and practically everyone was allowed on everything. This meant both wonderful and atrocious websites, but that is for another day. You were able to message everyone out of the blue without worrying about spam filters or friend requests.

The internet, at that point, felt like another world, a place where you were able to surround yourself with the people you longed for, not with the ones fate threw at you in school. A place to retreat to.

It took me 20 more years to even learn about BBS systems, those never reached Hungary. It must have been incredible to live through the BBS era. "BBS: The Documentary"¹ is a fantastic watch.

Soon I made a website, and it felt like a significant achievement: it was mine, I actually crafted it, it looked the way I wanted it to look, and so on.

It looked like we were going towards a world with a fantastic, useful internet.

In the beginning of 2012 we made a trip to Ireland and England, and many of the amazing places we visited we found using Panoramio² on Google Maps. The Dark Hedges³, for example, much before it got featured on Game of Thrones. Without Panoramio I never could have discovered those locations, and since it's shutdown, it became quite hard again.

In the same year, the promised land of useful technology still existed. Gtalk talked XMPP, Facebook talked XMPP; everyone talked XMPP. RSS and Google Reader was big, and Google still had "don't be evil" in it's manifest. Augmented reality was on it's way. The relevant Wikipedia article⁴ shows a photo of a HTC Desire, a 2009 phone, displaying AR navigation⁵.

But a few months later the only community website I ever really loved and belonged to⁶ shut down. I wrote about it a while ago that maybe the reason for that site and it's community to work as well as it did that it was it's mixed reality roots⁷: a community with an entry point from the web, and with entry points from parties and events organised. You could start in one and continue in the other.

And then Google Glass debuted. It became of the most hated gadgets ever created, and with that, the dreams of a usefully connected world seem to have died. Meanwhile the clouds of endless consumption of worthless goods were gathering.

In 2007 the iPhone was presented and brought upon the insanity of being constantly distracted by notifications. In 2009 I had a company Nokia E52⁸. It was tiny, loud, the battery lasted a week easily, and it even had a surprisingly decent Nokia Maps navigation with Hungarian TTS. It was internet capable: with Opera Mini, I could read the news, it had an email client, and so on. For a company phone, it was perfect; a far cry from the glue-and-glass attention seeking monstrosities everyone carries now.

Seven years later, in 2014, something happened that killed any remaining promise of the mixed reality that would have served the people. Maybe a CEO conference, maybe just death by a thousand papercuts. The article "Get your loved ones off Facebook⁹ was triggered by the 2014 changes in Facebook's policies. Google Talk was discontinued in early 2015, Facebook also dropped XMPP by then.

In 2015, Pokémon Go debuted. The FOMO of "Gotta catch them all!" has been making people drop serious money on "collectables" probably since the dawn of time, but this one was new. You'd have to walk or go to physical places to interact with them or with others at the same location. And it was even teaching about local curiosities that were marked for those special spots.

But this wasn't really that useful AR that I longed for. It wasn't a simple, configurable heads up display that would, say, show my friends on a map, show events that might be are happening around me and would be open for me, or one that could be the local guide of curiosities and history. One that tells me the story of a building just by being there and looking at it, that would give me augmented navigation, that would allow me to connect with people in both worlds easily. It was a gacha game during a time when it wasn't yet clear how many, many things are, quietly, also made to track your behaviour, your location, your habits. The notion that the internet became, or was becoming, an enshittified cesspit didn't sink in just yet.

It's 2026 now and I see Ray-Ban Meta glass commercials everywhere. It's an even creepier device¹⁰ - it's made by Meta after all -, than the Google Glass was, yet somehow, it's ... OK now?! People live stream jackass moments with it, and we're cheering. Everyone got used to record anything they see, all the time, and being recorded, all the time.

Walking up to random strangers with weird questions, live streaming it all. Your car is will be mandated to record you in the EU from mid 2026¹¹. Instead of stopping a fight and pulling people apart, just record it and upload it. I get that in some cases, the recording is useful, even needed, but it can't be a priority over de-escalating a situation, and that's just one example.

How did we get here? Why did that useful internet promise die? Is it all just human greed, is it negligence, is it entertaining ourselves to death¹²?

One explanation I've heard is that in the early days the internet was less accessible and so it contained like-minded people. But it's hard to understand how we got from the collaborative internet of SOPA/PIPA internet blackouts¹³ in 2011/12, when the internet was already quite accessible to most, to being OK with AI generated posters for your kid's birthday party, willingly uploading the photos of involved kid into the machine that'll most likely store it forever for facial recognition.

Here we are, in the now: an insane amount of streamed, recorded video, using absurdly powerful machines that shamelessly trying to spy and gather as much information on us as possible, willingly in our pockets, and virtually not a single option to publish my live location to a select few friends in case we're about to bump into each other, without something selling me out, exploiting me, tracking me.

That is unless you are a wizard of words and your friends are listening to you, and you manage to self-host a server for them. Which I do, an XMPP server for friends & family, but not many others do, even though they should. It lives on a former thin client in my home, under a chest of drawers.

It could be me though. Maybe my definition of useful is a far cry from the averaged definition of useful. Maybe some people are looking forward to on-the-fly AI generated targeted video ads and streams with zero collective experience, and a reality fragmented into bubbles and oblivion.

Pár hete kijött egy törvény Angliában: 2008 után születettek soha sem vásárolhatnak legálisan cigarettát¹. Ahelyett, hogy örültem volna, hogy végre történik valami, az agyam feldobta, hogy dehát mégiscsak el kellene hogy dönthesse a felnőtt ember, hogy mit csinál magával. Egész életemben utáltam a bagószagot: hogy egy alapvetően nagyon jó illatú növényből hogyan lesz bűz, maj csilliárd eldobott cigarettavég, amit a Föld IQ haranggörbe bal oldalán elhelyezkedő agyúak nem képesek legalább a szemetesbe bedobni. Erre ez első gondolatom nem az, hogy "végre". Honnan buggyant ez elő?

Mióta nem Magyarországon élek egy sokkal tágabb világgal vagyok körülvéve. Van kollégám, akiről nemrég tudtam meg, hogy 17 évesen menekült 2003-ban az iraki háborúból, és többet látott, mint egy ezüsthátú new yorki rendőr. Ennek egyenes következménye, hogy ahogy teltek itt az évek egyre több oldalt próbálok megnézni, minden szögből felmérni és megérteni álláspontokat.

Ez önmagában jó és helyes, azonban nehéz véleményt megtartani, valamilyen oldalon állni, ha mindenkinek igaza van - a saját igaza, persze. Mikor kell a másik bőrébe, fejébe bújni, és mikor nem? Arra jutottam, hogy ha valami vagy objektíven és mérhetően rossz - lásd bagó -, van számomra morálisan és/vagy etikusan visszatetsző, akkor nincs helye más véleményének, és bele kell állni a sajátomban.

Ahhoz viszont, hogy eljussak egy ilyen rendkívül egyszerű következtetésig több napnyi üres fej kellett.

A 41. születésnapomra kaptam 5 nap szünetet, hogy egy kicsit kikapcsolhassam a gondolataimat, hogy a saját tempómban haladjak. Cél, illetve jobban mondva “indok” nélkül - konferencia, edzőtábor, munka, stb -, egyedül, eddig szinte sosem mentem egyedül egy napnál többet valahova, pláne nem messze, úgyhogy ez mindenképpen új élmény.

Ami ide vezetett az már bonyolultabb. Merlin születése óta az élet folyamatosan, szörnyű sebességgel dobálja az állandó figyelmet igénylő mindennapokat. Egy irodai munkahely ma elvárja, hogy perceken belül válaszolj az 50 csoportbeszélgetés bármelyikében, miközben a két kezeddel az eredeti feladatkörödet teljesíted, a füleddel az értekezletet² hallgatod, az agyad pedig táncoló elefántokon tányérokat pörgető bohócként próbál mindent egyben tartani.

Válts témát, feladatot, bármikor, ritmustalanul, váratlanul, napi nyolc órában - vagyishát napi 14 órában, hiszen otthonról dolgozol, és amikor kilépsz az munkázást (4 évesen így kell mondani) jelző szoba ajtaján, a 4 éves boldogan és örömmel jön, hogy végre vele foglalkozok. Teljesen igaza van, és szörnyű lenne, ha nem jönne, de attól még megpróbáltatás.

Amikor nem otthon vagyok, akkor órákat tartok. Egyfajta tai chi-t, íjászatot, visszafogott soft-contact harcművészetet. Ott arra figyelek, hogy ne legyen senkinek baja: miközben a mellettem levőnek magyarázok a hátsó szemeimmel a termet pásztázom. Részben kikapcsol, de attól még minden héten van, és hiába lenne éppen aznap máshoz kedve az embernek, számítanak rá. Fizetnek érte, így jogos az elvárás, bár amit fizetnek az a termet és a felszerelést fedezi. Nagyjából. Sosem volt célom tanítani ezt, viszont nem volt más, aki megtette volna. Ha 5 évvel ezelőtt nem ugrok bele, akkor lehet, hogy nincs több íjászat az élemben, és ezt nem akartam.

Valahogy így telt az elmúlt 4 év. Azon kaptam magam, hogy egyszerre vagyok képtelen megállni és nem csinálni, nem fogyasztani, nem nézni, nem hallgatni valamit. Ugyanakkor tisztán gondolkozni, ködös gondolatfoszlányok helyett egybefüggő mondatokkal és célokkal alig vagyok voltam képes már egy jó ideje.

A semmittevésre, unalomra óriási szükség van, a gond az, hogy undorítóan könnyű lett megkerülni, megszüntetni.

Évekkel ezelőtt valahol olvastam, hogy milyen fantasztikus dolog, hogy a “holt” időt végre ki tudjuk használni az okostelefonokkal. Azokat a rövid időszakokat, amikor várunk a buszra, amikor utazunk a metrón. Tíz Húsz³ harminc, ötven, száz évvel ezelőtt is volt “megoldás”: könyv, újság, később walkman. Viszont az iphone, és leginkább az instagram óta az a normális, hogy végtelen és végtelenül üres vizuális orkánt nyelünk a szemeinkkel minden “holt” percben. Meg nem holt percben. Minden percben. És nincs vége, mint egy könyvnek, nem kell kicserélni a kazettát, vagy előre tekerni, megy tovább a végtelen tartalom, magától. Mint ahogyan a mai játékoknak sincs vége, open world, ahelyett, hogy odavágnád a kontrollert, miután mindhárom életednek annyi az Aladdinban⁴, és kimennél biciklizni.

Gyerekkoromból dereng egy sorozat, amiben a gyerekek valami kütyüvel videótelefonálni tudtak egymással, bármikor, bárhonnan. Hogy mennyire lehetetlenül fantasztikusnak tartottam, és mennyire szerettem volna egy olyat. Ma van egy ilyenem, és sosem gondoltam volna, hogy az lesz nehéz, hogy erre a célra használjam.

A lényeg, hogy végre tartottam egy szünetet. Ültem és órákig néztem egy szubtrópusi völgyet Agaete mellett, ahol az egyik legészakibb, és egyben Európa egyetlen (kis csalással) kávéültetvényei vannak. Sétáltam és szagoltam a Kanári-fenyők illatát, ami, ha kisüt a nap, vetekszik bármilyen aromaterápiás kezeléssel. Feladtam terveket, mert lezárták a hegyről kivezető utat rally miatt, és átsétáltam egy mesebeli völgybe, barlangokba épített lakások között, hogy utána órákig élvezzem a kiltást egy völgyből az óceán felé, körülölelve sziklákkal és hegyekkel, aminek a méreteit Norvégia fjodrjaihoz tudom hasonlítani. Visszamentem egy barlanglakásba megszállni, lehetetlen kilátással, hogy a szelet hallgassam.

Segített. 3 nap múlva elkezdtem végre ráeszmélni, szavakba önteni, hogy a bajom ott kezdődik, hogy nem ülök le egy órára a tüzet nézni anélkül, hogy ennék, vagy hogy legalább zene is menne. Az egész fájdalmasan egybevág egy könyvvel⁵, amit teljesen véletlenül találtam egy antikváriumban. Ellentétben a legtöbb spirituális megközelítéssel a könyv a görög pantheonnal közelíti meg a problémát: Hermésszel, a nyüzsgés urával valamint Hesztiával, a ház tüzének istennőjével. A mondanivaló egyszerű: nem szabad a nyugit elhanyagolni, sem abból a szempontból, hogy állj meg, sem abból, hogy a kuckód legyen megnyugtató, és amikor hazatérsz, segítsen megnyugodni.

Vannak mesék és történetek, amik, attól függően, hogy életed melyik szakaszában olvasodt, mást és mást jelentenek. A legismertebb ilyen a Kis Herceg, de néha akad egy-egy rejtett pillanat másban is. Meglepetésemre még az a 1977-es Disney-féle Micimackóban filmben is:

Róbert Gida: Én legjobban azt szeretem, ha nem csinálok semmit.

Micimackó: Semmit? Hogy csinálsz semmit?

Róber Gida: Úgy, hogy amikor a felnőttek rámszólnak, "Most mit csinálsz?", én azt felelem: "Semmit...". És odébbmegyek.

Micimackó: De jó, csináljuk mindig ezt!

Róber Gida: Tudod Mackó, semmit már soha többé nem csinálunk.

Micimackó: Azt mondod, soha többé?

Róber Gida: Hát, sokkal ritkábban.

Talán itt az idejen megint többet csinálni azt a semmit, bármilyen nehéz is az elején, bármilyen lehetetlennek is tűnik kiszakadni a tévesen tevékenynek tűnő tevésből.

Initially, it was a syn flood. I don't know why I believed that the FreeBSD and pf defaults are protected against syn flood, so there was a bit of tweaking needed in `/etc/sysctl.conf. Many thanks for the internet sources¹².

# drop tcp packets destined for closed ports (default 0) 
net.inet.tcp.blackhole=2
# SYN/FIN packets get dropped on initial connection (default 0)
net.inet.tcp.drop_synfin=1
# recycle FIN/WAIT states quickly, helps against DoS, but may cause false RST (default 0)
net.inet.tcp.fast_finwait2_recycle=1
# disable TCP Fast Open client side, enforce three way TCP handshake (default 1, enabled)
net.inet.tcp.fastopen.client_enable=0
# disable TCP Fast Open server side, enforce three way TCP handshake (default 0)
net.inet.tcp.fastopen.server_enable=0
# TCP FIN_WAIT_2 timeout waiting for client FIN packet before state close (default 60000, 60 sec)
net.inet.tcp.finwait2_timeout=1000
# icmp may not send RST to avoid spoofed icmp/udp floods (default 1)
net.inet.tcp.icmp_may_rst=0
# amount of tcp keep alive probe failures before socket is forced closed (default 8)
net.inet.tcp.keepcnt=2
# time before starting tcp keep alive probes on an idle, TCP connection (default 7200000, 7200 secs)
net.inet.tcp.keepidle=62000
# tcp keep alive client reply timeout (default 75000, 75 secs)
net.inet.tcp.keepinit=5000
# Maximum Segment Lifetime, time the connection spends in TIME_WAIT state (default 30000, 2*MSL = 60 sec)
net.inet.tcp.msl=2500
# disable for mtu=1500 as most paths drop ICMP type 3 packets, but keep enabled for mtu=9000 (default 1)
net.inet.tcp.path_mtu_discovery=0

But it just kept going, and nepenthes³ got overwhelmed.

At first, I turned off nepenthes, and returned a mere HTTP 410 from nginx directly.

And it kept going, because now the logging was so high traffic that fail2ban was consuming enough CPU that everything else was starting to have problem. I didn't think this was possible, but yes: apparently fail2ban can use quite a lot of resources when it gets combined with high volume logging.

At one point I added a tarpit directly inside nginx, using the echo module⁴ and it's delay feature.

    echo '    <!DOCTYPE html>';
    echo_sleep 2;
    echo '    <html lang=en>';
    echo_sleep 4;
    echo '        <head>';
    echo_sleep 8;
    echo '            <meta charset=utf-8>';
    echo_sleep 16;
    echo '            <title></title>';
    echo_sleep 32;
    echo '        </head>';
    echo_sleep 64;
    echo '        <body>';
    echo_sleep 128;
    echo '            <blockquote>';
    echo_sleep 256;
    echo '                <p>';
    echo_sleep 512;
    echo '                    I must not fear. ';
    echo_sleep 1024;
    echo '                    Fear is the mind-killer. ';
    echo_sleep 2048;
    echo '                    Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. ';
    echo_sleep 4096;
    echo '                    I will face my fear. ';
    echo_sleep 8192;
    echo '                    I will permit it to pass over me and through me. ';
    echo_sleep 16384;
    echo '                    And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. ';
    echo_sleep 32768;
    echo '                    Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. ';
    echo_sleep 65535;
    echo '                    Only I will remain.';
    echo_sleep 131072;
    echo '                </p>';
    echo_sleep 262144;
    echo '                <p>—Frank Herbert, <cite>Dune</cite></p>';
    echo_sleep 524288;
    echo '            </blockquote>';
    echo_sleep 1048576;
    echo '        </body>';
    echo_sleep 2097152;
    echo '    </html>'; 

I ended up with 130k open connection.

The current solution, which I'm hoping to work for a while, was to add ASN data into my blocked logs, devise a cron job that gets the list of ASN entries, and block them if they go above X per hour - X is currently 100. So far, this is working.

Step 0: get ASN data

/usr/local/etc/cron.d/root

• root, because I need to reload nginx
• yes, I use wget
• yes, my crons have bash as shell

@daily root wget -q -O/var/db/ip-location-db/geolite2-asn.mmdb https://github.com/sapics/ip-location-db/releases/download/latest/geolite2-asn.mmdb >/dev/null && /usr/sbin/service nginx reload

@daily root cd /var/db/ip-location-db && wget -O/var/db/ip-location-db/asn_full.json.zip https://geoip.oxl.app/file/asn_full.json.zip && unzip -d /var/db/ip-location-db -f /var/db/ip-location-db/asn_full.json.zip && rm /var/db/ip-location-db/asn_full.json.zip && /usr/sbin/service nginx reload

Step 2: mount a tmpfs, so I don't wear out my SSD

While tmpfs is linuxism, but in this case, it's useful. There's a log rotation set up for 200MB max size + daily, keeping only 1 additional, so it can't eat my memory, but I have little desire to wear out my SSD with these logs.

/etc/fstab

tmpfs /shm tmpfs rw,mode=1777 0 0

/boot/loader.conf

tmpfs_load="YES"

If you don't want to reboot:

kldload tmpfs

Step 3: get ANS data into nginx logs⁵

Install the nginx geoip2 module - I leave it to you if you compile nginx from ports with the relevant flags or install nginx-full, both are OK. I went with the first.

nginx.conf

load_module /usr/local/libexec/nginx/ngx_http_geoip2_module.so;

http {
        [...]

    geoip2 /var/db/ip-location-db/geolite2-asn.mmdb {
        $geoip2_asn autonomous_system_number;
        $geoip2_asname autonomous_system_organization;
    }

    log_format minimal '$time_iso8601 $remote_addr $geoip2_asn "$geoip2_asname" $server_name "$request" $status $request_time';
    
    [...]
    
    server {
      [...]
      location /nope {
          access_log /shm/blocked.log minimal;
          return 401;
      }
    }
}

Step 4: block all the things

/usr/local/bin/block-asn-pf.py

#!/usr/local/bin/python3.11

import argparse
import json
import syslog
import os

parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
parser.add_argument('asn')
args = parser.parse_args()

with open('/var/db/ip-location-db/asn_full.json') as f:
    asninfo = json.load(f)

for cidr in asninfo.get(args.asn, {}).get('ipv4', []):
    cmd=f"pfctl -t badips -T add {cidr}"
    os.system(cmd)

/usr/local/etc/cron.d/root

• root, because it pipes into pf
• there's most likely an elegant way to do it in awk only, but there's a reason why it's called awkward

@hourly root for asn in $(cat /shm/blocked.log| awk '{print $3}' | sort | uniq -cd | awk -v limit=100 '$1 > limit{print $2}'); do /usr/local/bin/block-asn-pf.py $asn >/dev/null 2>&1; done;

# clean IPs up after a day
@hourly root pfctl -t badips -T expire 86400 >/dev/null 2>&1

/usr/local/etc/pf.conf

table <badips> persist
block drop in quick from <badips> to any 
block in from <badips> 

Extra: block Spamhaus DROP

Spamhaus provides a "Don't Route Or Peer Lists (DROP)" ⁶ list for IP addresses that are really not nice, so it's worth adding them to the same blocked table

/usr/local/etc/cron.d/root

• root, it pipes into pf

@hourly root curl -s https://www.spamhaus.org/drop/drop_v4.json | jq -r '.cidr' | grep -E '^[0-9]' |  sed -r 's/(.*)/pfctl -t badips -T add \1/' | bash >/dev/null 2>&1

Due to some road closures I moved my openstreetmaps planned journey through the mountains to more cave houses up one day, and it was definitely worth it. The view is magnificent - squint, the ocean is right at the end -, if you leave early enough in April, like I did, beyond the buzzing and humming of bees, there's only peace around.

My first destination on Gran Canaria was the pine forest close to me. I've been to southern pine forests at other locations, but that wonderful, serene scent that a canary pine forest disperses when the full sun warms them up is second to none.

It really is the stupid phone ruining everything isn’t it? The stupid screens of doom and the stupidity of the world isn’t it?

Yes.

However, it's not the device itself, and not the base functionalities of the device. I remember a series from my youth - "Den korsikanske biskopen"¹ - where the kids had these fantastic gadgets with video calls and other features, and I always marvelled at it.

I think the major difference was that those gizmos were something of a closed circuit, an semi-offline-ish thing: knowledge in your pocket, communication with friends. The utopistic gadgets never have the option to browse the news - an important feature to use them only when needed.

What they also didn't do is broadcasting.

The "free" broadcasting the wider internet brought is dismal. Most can't make sense of it, and it turns into vanity, into narcissism. Blogs were open diaries, were a way to, with an alter ego, share what we may not have been brave enough, or didn't have the stage to share within out normie life. Instagram, TikTok, and the rest, on the other hand, are bringing the worst out of people: not for the sake of being themselves, but to be something people can follow.

Some of the modern internet is incredible, but look at the times from before the iphone: there was less vanity, no instagram and tiktok brainrot - albeit Ren and Stimpy and Happy Tree Friends were hardcore.

These should not be in our pockets; it's a weigh that is dragging everyone down into a swamp.

Death to varying temperature! Death to day and night! Death to shorter and longer days! Death to all cycles natural! Death to the demoness Allegra Geller! Death to Pilgrimage! Death to transCendenZ!¹

Apologies for the bombastic first few lines, I thought I'd try to capture the essence of what is about to follow, but I got carried away.

Yesterday I was walking back home and noticed how, before reaching the roundabout, the lights are still sodium-vapour (natrium for the sensible world) lamp, whereas after it the lights are white LEDs. For a moment an ISS photo of the East/West Berlin line came to my mind²:

I'm from Hungary, and night always meant the deep yellow of the sodium lamps. As more and more research went into it it turned out sodium lamps are absolutely ideal for nights: our human eyes are quite sensitive it's very narrow light spectrum (it's yellow, and only yellow, if you think you see any other colours with it, look again), they are elegantly energy efficient, and night life is barely disturbed by them.

But lately it's all cheap, badly designed, shitty LEDs everywhere, which aren't even saving considerable money, as those sodium lamps are nearly as efficient. The retail park in Cambridge now has some purple street lamps, because they are so cheap LEDs that their coating disintegrated, allowing the purple/UV spectrum to burst through³.

One of my life hacks was that I kept using a halogen bulb in my desk lamp. It just feels more natural, and the excess heat from it literally warms me up, which is not something to dismiss in the glorious UK winter.

Unfortunately I got curious, and the promise of better angles and less desk space sounded wonderful, so I bought a second hand BenQ ScreenBar. It took me months to realise that it was sucking the life, the creativity, and the will out of me.

I don't have a scientific explanation, but once I put my trusty IKEA desk lamp back with that halogen bulb I finally regained some of my stubbornness to do things. Is it CRI? Is it the colour temperature? Is it the infrared emissions? I don't know, and neither do others, but LED lighting is lifeless⁴. You can get away with it as some places, and it makes decent Christmas tree lights, for me, it's horrible as desk lighting.

Those LED street lights could also be better. Philips installed red, bat-friendly night-time lighting⁵ in 2018 in the Netherlands, and there are promising amber LED street light projects⁶⁷ - but we'll still light the night up. Because safety, convenience, and... because we're afraid of the dark? Even my desk lamp and it's halogen bulb contributes to this sinister light pollution, which disturbs or vaporises natural sleep and relaxation cycles.

Nowadays, thanks to the pandemic, I work from home. There are social implications and I'm extremely unhappy that my employer got rid of the yearly department and company level gatherings, leaving us with sad, online only events. However, the health benefits are incredible: I don't have to use an AC⁸.

I know people who go mad in the scourging heat of the British summer, which might even reach 30°C, so they set the AC to 18°C. And then in winter, usually the same people set the AC to 24°C.

The human temperature tolerance is meagre compared to a lot of animals. I have to wear thick wool jumpers (thanks to the universe, Aran knits exist⁹) below 20°C and shorts above ~26-27°C. I do get uncomfortable working when my room temperature is above 29°C - because it's not meant for working, we should be resting, like people in the mediterraneum used to at midday. I also put the heating on to keep my home above 18°C - which makes me question where us, humans, would be truly comfortable in the world, if we didn't have heating.

So you see: with the pandemic and with working from home I re-gained one, albeit small natural cycle: that winter is colder and summer is warmer.

But what about the other cycles?

What about seasonal eating, about what food should and shouldn't we eat at different times of the day? What about the cycles of shorter and longer day? Shouldn't we align our working and sleeping hours instead of going 9-5 like machines? What about night and day cycles, shouldn't we have actual darkness at some point? About body meridian cycles, one's natural sleep patterns, and so on? Why are we trying to eliminate cycles?

Words from the greatest ever film monologue might be apt here:

Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men!

Charlie Chaplin - The Final Speech from The Great Dictator¹⁰

But what if that's the goal, machine men, with machine hearts?

What if all these small cycles are hidden reminders of the one cycle nobody can bypass: that our life begins and ends. That everything decays. Is that why we're trying to murder the nights, the yearly, the seasonal, the daily cycles, so that our own cycle will also stop?

I wouldn't be surprised if the nation leaders recently caught on tape discussing living up to 150¹¹ would think this way. I'm really hoping that Chaplin wasn't wrong, and

The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish…

still stands.

But to return a bit from the disturbed thoughts maybe the secret is to slowly but steadily embrace what we can.

Working from home opens the door not just for the temperature cycles to creep in, but to have a nap when needed. Blackouts are available to make our rooms truly dark throughout the night. We can email our city councillors to embrace wildlife friendly, more natural street lights. And we can put halogen bulbs into our desk lamps - that is as long as we can buy and stockpile halogen and incandescent bulbs.

My tiny home office desk

At the end of 2019 we moved into THE average UK house: the mythical semi-detached, as a friend referred to it. He was brought up in Bath, which, apparently, lacks these omnipresent dwellings, so when he moved out from there and was presented with them - as these were often mentioned as the national average - he greeted them as a beast of myths and legends.

It's a mid 50s Laing Easiform, one of the non traditional constructions - concrete in the UK is non-traditional, given a meagre 100 years of these being built doesn't add up to tradition yet - that was not deemed faulty in the '85 incursion into prefab houses. Possibly because it's not prefab¹.

Saying that this house is 3 bedroom is overselling it a bit: there are two large-ish bedrooms, and one ~2.4x2.4m, which became my office and our guest room. Because of this, my desk is rather cramped: it's whole 25 + 80 cm wide, 80cm deep, a now discontinued IKEA Ivar drop down desk, so it can be closed when the room acts as a guest bedroom. I'd definitely love a stereotypical hacker basement² but I'll work with what I have.

In 2020, when the world was told to stay at home, we bought floorstanding speakers to bring a bit more of the world home. The Panasonic micro bookshelf speakers, SB-PM500 that I got for about £20 when we moved to the UK in 2012 moved up with me. I tried to play with their placement, but you can see, there aren't many good options. I was driving them with a £15 class-D micro amp, a ZK-502T.

Sidenote: for me, it seems like that with cheap class-D amps one needs a lot of luck with speaker pairing. As I wrote before³ moving from a Topping MX3 to a NAD C 316BEE V2, which is still a budget amp, for the Dali Oberon 5 pair we have was an insane difference. Maybe higher end class-D is good, but in my very limited experience, the cheap ones are prone to speaker pairing, so consider getting a used AB class amplifier instead.

Another sidenote: some years ago I had the chance to bring my beloved-as-teen speakers from home - just the speakers, as the CD player of the base unit was dead already (SA-AK18). Since then I learnt the phrase "black plastic crap⁴" - and once I heard those old, space-grey, futuristic speakers against the small ones, I understood why the term. The smaller ones were better in every possible way, and I ended up donating the old ones. The lesson here: looks are deceiving for an untrained eye, especially for young, untrained eyes.

Ever since the Oberons I've been after better speakers for this small, limited, super near field listening space (LOL) for years. I think what was holding me back was knowing that the amp not up to driving real speakers so I kept putting the topic off.

I was very close to buying and AudioEngine A1, tiny, active pair, that's discontinued now. Not the A2 - the A1 still had the power supply in the box, as I'm getting very tired of external power bricks. It turned out: the A1 doesn't have grills, which is a must with a 3.5 year old in the house. The longer he doesn't know there's something behind the cover, the better. I also started reading up on the Adam Audio D3V, but the inner voice was telling me I wouldn't like them. And it also has a power brick.

Recently, however, things got shaken up a bit because of a box of cassettes.

The Revenge of the Box of Compact Cassettes

We were back at home in Hungary recently, where my father keeps giving me my own boxes filled with my own things that I still have at their place.

It's entirely valid, but it's not always simple to move my things via commercial airplanes: to make it worth it I need to pack an extra, exactly 20kg luggage. This time I managed, and I ended up with a large set of cassettes - which are apparently making a comeback to mainstream media?!

To at least have some vague idea what's on them I also brought my Panasonic walkman and my Aiwa dictaphone - both dead.

The Panasonic needed new belts: they were just crumbles at this point. It was playing too slow, but this was a relatively easy fix, though not measured yet, as I don't have an oscilloscope.

Regardless, it's left channel is partially dead, possibly a head alignment problem, and I couldn't yet get to it.

The Aiwa looks full on dead, and it's not the belts. One day I'll start working on it. Hopefully.

So I bought a cassette deck

To overcome the problem of not having something to play the cassettes with, and because I never had a proper one, I started I looking on eBay for a cassette deck. I ended up bidding on a whole stack of JVC: receiver, phono, tape deck, and ITT speakers, and I won them - for £13.38 the whole, with a 20 minutes driving. And with the promise of "it worked when I put it away".

When people tell you to be really aware of thing sold as "it worked when I put it away" you should listen - unless you know how to or want to learn how to fix things, like me.

The cigarette home smell from the equipment was ruthless. I let them air for some days, didn't work. I bought some Neutradol spray, sprayed them let them air many more days, that finally did the job, but they still puff occasionally. This is despite the fact that they are basically spotless: barely any dust or anything. Way too many people smoked in their back in the 'olden days, and it just soaked into everything.

The JVC KD-A11⁵ Stereo Cassette Deck is gorgeous. It has VU meters, large, physical buttons. It's not high end, as it's a 2 head system, but it's already much more complicated mechanically, than I was expecting it to be.

Nearly everything works, except fast forward. Unfortunately it doesn't seems to be a belt issue, so my desire to learn how to repair these things will soon come true - once I find the time. Does anyone have time for sale?

It sounds absolutely amazing compared to what I remembered about the sound of cassettes. Not my old recordings from VIVA through the TV, recorded by another black plastic crap system; those are miserable compared to streaming, or even against low quality mp3-s. But the genuine, store bought ones, those are actually quite nice, so I'm not entirely stunned about their comeback. I could even do a decent recording on a Type IV (metal) tape as a test.

But I also bought a turntable?

Because it was the full stack from 1980, it had turntable. I was told that the JVC L-A11⁶ got a new belt, and that it's fixed now. Well... no.

The belt was indeed replaced, but that was far from the only problem:

• completely, rock solid stuck spindle
• warped and twisted stylus
• misaligned cartridge

Now the rest is also fixed - thanks to @12voltvids on youtube⁷ for the idea to heat the spindle to pull it apart, though it did take a frightening amount of heating from a heat gun. Unfortunately I scratched it with the pliers despite the layers of cloth between them, but I was able to polish it out in the end.

I bought a new stylus that fits the original cartridge⁸, aligned the cartridge, configured the counterweight. I now have a working phono - without vinyls, because I bought the stack for the cassette deck.

So in order to be able to at least test it bought a Vivaldi: Four Seasons for a whole £1 in a charity shop - and I was overjoyed with the sound. Seems like there's definitely a lot of truth about old mastering quality, because that Vivaldi recording from the 70s packs some unbelievable detail compared to super-duper hi-res quality whatever in the streaming services.

For anyone wondering, it's connected to the NAD, it has a phono preamp. No, I'm not going to go down the cartridge rabbit hole, it's too deep, and it's for people with vinyl, which I still don't have, and I don't really intend to have - it's too expensive.

And I now have a vintage receiver?

The receiver, JVC R-S11⁹, is mint. Apart from two dead bugs that were inside the display - cleaned now -, it's in perfect condition. No dead capacitors, barely any dust inside.

There were spots I thought are leaking capacitors, only to learn that some capacitors are glued down.

The pots and meters needed cleaning, those made a lot of cracking sound, isopropyl alcohol was my friend here. All the contact sprays contain terrible things, I'll try to stay away from them.

Anyhow, the receiver is a beauty, and it sounds amazing for it's age.

And late '60s speakers?!

I ended up selling the ITT KS 665 speakers on eBay already - I don't have the space for them. I hope someone is going to be extremely happy, given they got it for £0.99 plus delivery.

I need to be realistic about restoring something that I need to learn how to do from scratch, considering my free time scarcity. It would be a waste to store these in the shed for a decade, only to let them rot away. Considering their age, they sounded surprisingly nice in vocal and high range, so they'd probably made acceptable studio monitors, given they are sealed cabinets, but they are hard to drive.

Different, small speakers, however...

As told in the beginning, I have been eye-ing upgrades for the Panasonics for quite a while now, but various things kept holding me back.

During the summer I went to a bar, Flakon¹⁰, in Budapest, with friends - only to be greeted with 4, very Dali-looking speakers inside. People, please, PLEASE put audiophile speakers at more venues, bars, cafés. They can deliver music at much lower volume, so people can hear each other. It's a wonderful experience. It kept bothering me because I couldn't find them in the lineup, but their appearance and sound was telling me they can't be old, and that they are for sure Dali. After some luck I found them: they were Zensor 3-s.

It's very hard to find information on discontinued lines, even if they are from 2015, when the internet was already omnipresent and in everyone's pocket, which is quite annoying. It'd be great to have a dedicated sections, corners, on manufacturer websites, that act like museums for old products. I'm also looking at you, IKEA.

When looking at Zensor 1-s, Oberon 1-s, coughing at the price of Menuet, I came across a surprise: the Dali Zensor Pico. This thing is the same size as my Panasonics!

Giving specs at -10 dB, Panasonic, sure, not cheating at all. No wonder it sounded so boxy.

I found 3 of them on eBay, and won the bid at £83 + £20 delivery - they were probably satellites in surround system. I love them, and they fit the unforgivably small space.

Speaker positioning makes a frightening difference. I put them on two, currently unused cork yoga blocks, and it would be better to get them even higher, but due to the options available, that's not yet possible (the monitor arm on the left is in the way).

Some closing thoughts

Music has been important for me as long as I can remember, much more, then equipment, but once I stopped going to loud music parties I started missing them. I tried playing guitar, but it's not for me, so I'm thankful to those who can and do play anything.

I always thought live music or at least from speakers is a whole level of different experience, then music from headphones, and a recent study¹¹¹² seem to finally back it up that resonance, music, etc reaches our cells. Obviously not limited to musical frequencies, which is probably why Chinese medicine says the food for the Pericardium Meridian is sunlight.

All of those healing with sounds things that many people think is bogus might finally be proved. Cats know this, their purr heals them, and possibly us as well. I dislike how people think of senses: one for seeing, one for hearing, etc, when, for example, our whole body feels heat, yet it's all different wavelength energy. Experiencing with our whole body should be important.

If you're like me, and can't go to parties any more, treat yourselves with some music that reaches your whole body¹³, not just your ears. It's important.

In 2023, I wrote another entry: The quest for simple, high quality music and video playback in 2023¹ My plan was to turn that entry into a digital garden² entity, but I came to realise it'd be an overgrown garden if I only ever just add to it. So: new post it is.

No capes snowflakes!

In my previous entry I established the following:

• things need to be able to run on their own, long term
• they need to be simple enough so any family members can use it, children included
• someone with a baseline IT knowledge can learn how to maintain it

But that second point... just because it's not snowflake, it can still be too complex.

The 2025 Chromecast Audio Troubles

When 2025 started I had the setup of:

• a streamer or renderer, in form of:
  • a TV
  • a Chromecast with Google TV
  • a Chromecast Audio
• tablet, phone, etc as controller and as data source
• amplifier
• speakers

So at this point I already got rid of the separate NAS.

Early March in 2025 however, brought something unexpected: The Chromecast Apocalypse - Reddit will tell you a lot about it³. To keep it simple, the on-device certificates expired after 10 years and Google took a week to fix it, but I wasn't sure there will be a fix at all.

I have been having troubles with the Chromecast Audio connectivity before, I decided to dust off the Rasbperry Pi approach once again.

It was a pleasant surprise that Raspotify, MPD, and upmpdcli works perfectly, just as I left them 2 years ago. I bought a Hifiberry DAC+⁴ off ebay to boost the quality a bit, and it's so far pretty nice, and sold the CCA.

And it was fun... until a Spotify API update, at which point it broke, again. Or when it randomly stopped playing and refused to do anything until a reboot.

Source! Controller! Renderer! ... But... why?

After the both the Chromecast Audio and the Raspberry Pi failures I decided to revisit the whole source - controller - renderer idea. Is it possible to merge them?

There are fanastic all-in-one solutions now, but I'm sceptical how long they'll last. Given how the CCA failed in 10 years, unless I go for something extendable, like a NAD C 3050⁵, chances are it'll go bust as well in no time. The WiiM Ultra looks like a fantastic option though⁶.

So I decided to run an experiment: to use a Samsung SM-T545, better known as Galaxy Tab Active Pro⁷ tablet, with a 2TB microSD card, as the center of it all. It's 10.1" tablet aimed at enterprise and light industrial use, as comes with a protective case by default, IP65 rating, so it's somewhat child-proof. Has a replaceable battery (sic!) so there's a bit of longevity, and still has a 3.5mm headphone jack.

After some troubles I eventually got that microSD card - the envelope arrived dirty, weeks later, after I kept chasing DHL, but at least it got here. It can hold my whole media collection - yes, it fits on 2TB. An easy feat when they are ripped CDs and DVDs, or flacs from bandcamp.

Loaded with local data, and official apps for streaming, this setup is much closer to a physical media collection, then having a NAS, a renderer/streamer, and a controller separately.

DAC? I already have one...

There's a lot of information out there. And a lot of opinions. And, in many cases, people confuse those two. One forum claims to be scientific, but limits their measurement by not taking the human ear and perceived hearing into account. Other base everything on human hearing, without relable scientific approach. There are good attempts, but they are rare⁸.

Among the many things these two camps can't agree on is if there's a difference between DACs - as in the chips and devices that convert bits to sound. I was curious, so I bought a second hand Cambridge Audio DACmagic XS - a micro, portable DAC. It did sound nice, but I couldn't shake the feeling that (a) it's louder, than any other output I have and

2. it colours the sound.

Mainly though it's utter pain to have it with a tablet that has a single USB-C connection: I need to connect a hub that can do PD charging; it's micro USB, and the last time I tried a USB-C to microUSB cable, it overheated the DACmagic.

The tablet already has a jack output. At the level I can afford to listen to music, which isn't only limited by wealth, but by space, time, a young child, hearing, and so on, the built in jack of that tablet is already crystal clear, and it's convenience is inquestionable.

I checked my hearing. With good headphones I seem to hear up to 18kHz at the volume I'd listen music; 19kHz if I push the volume up, but basically nothing abouve that. This is less, than the people who can hear the differences between DACs⁹. I'm 40 years old, so it's most likely downhill from here.

So at this point the stack has reduced to:

• a 32" gaming monitor with built-in speakers¹⁰ - my previous TV died, and I didn't like a single one of the new TVs picture, hence the IPS gaming monitor that actually lets me see the dark parts in movies, unlike UltraSuperMegaHDR OLEDs
• a Chromecast with Google TV
• a tablet
• an amplifier
• speakers

And it lets me focus on the music without worrying about stuff breaking every week.

A while ago I was sitting with a morning coffee and found myself pondering over other's shoes. Casual, light shoes, sneakers, trainers, running shoes everywhere. Barely ever a well-made leather boot, which, considering winter, is my first choice. Studies say over-cushioned footwear is really not good for us in the long term. For me, certainly not: I need a decent arc support, which is a rarity in the UK, so I resort to aftermarket insoles - or so I thought.

Once every half year now I show myself at work, for our all-hands. Since I work in IT, I'm used to wearing and seeing people in hoodies, t-shirts, and all that jazz, but for that twice a year gathering I try to show up nicer, in some level of business casual. And I'm slowly finding myself alone with this, as I've seen people come in shorts.

When I was a kid - mind you, we're talking 30+ years now - it was considered minimum etiquette to dress up for theatre, opera, ballet, etc. As time progressed I saw people go business casual first, then complete casual. I still, to this very day, believe that showing up in decent apparel is a way of expressing respect, so with live performances of such, I consider it a must - obviously not for a metal concert or an industrial party though.

I practice martial arts that has their own uniforms. I was never keen on the idea that practising anything needs a specific type of clothing but for sturdiness, but I also never actively went against it. After discussions with various people it became clear how it can signal both belonging from the group perspective, and dedication from the student. It also helps to be mentally present: a small ritual of changing into the right clothes for the coming class.

Somewhere I read that a little while ago being able to hold a job and raising a family were things to be proud of, and how it got distorted by now. To me, the utter lack of discipline in clothing feels part of this trend. Whatever doesn't feel comfortable can't be good for you, right?

Well, that is quite untrue. Overly comfortable, cloudy-soft sofas will wreck your body, so will the lack of exercise. Even if it looks OK, it can be deceiving. About a decade ago I ended up having an MRI on my lower back, because whenever I lifted my right thighs I felt a lightning-like pain, starting from the lower back, down to my ankles. I went to physio, and eventually got rid of it - until 2020. During the pandemic I ordered an IKEA Markus chair, and within a few months, the same pain came back out of nowhere - allowing me to realise I was using the same chair at work when it first manifested! I ended up buying a second hand Herman Miller Aeron fairly cheap - no issues since then.

So the solution is to "get out of your comfort zone"?

The "comfort zone" is this ideal place where you can be as lazy as you want to be, and live happily ever after. If you "feel like you need to get out of your comfort zone", you're not in your comfort zone. However: that "happily ever after" doesn't go hand in hand with complete laziness. You must work on your body, otherwise it'll go bad, go off, like old milk. If you really don't care of yourself, you'll smell like old milk as well, which is certainly not nice for anyone, including you. Remember: If you feel like you hate yourself, have a shower¹.

This is why I believe that "comfort zone" is often misunderstood or misused. It's the nice place, the one where things work, your equipment doesn't break down, where you have enough money to not worry, or at least not much, where food is fine, your home is warm, where you have people around you, where you feel good, and where your body is in a good condition. But it's not lazy, it can't be. With too much comfort, too much laziness, your body will not be in a nice condition at all, which means that in order to maintain that "comfort zone" you need to work quite a lot on it. This also applies to the rest: you need to maintain friendships, maintain the influx of money, maintain your equipment, so they don't break down.

Some of it can be done near invisibly, though. You can get a hard, high quality mattress²³, which will require your body to shift in sleep, which you do for 1/3rd of you life. You can take regular hot baths; go to a spa do to the same, or maybe go further, and find an accupressure specialist⁴ to maintain your chi flow.

You can also make conscious choices on footwear.

In the past 2 years I bought 5 shoes/boots, and kept 3 in the end. This is an absolute extreme for me so far, a record for my live, given I tend to wear my boots for at minimum 5 years if not more.

One I sold. I found it at half price in a TK Maxx: an AKU Grizzly 907/3 10 7 country boot⁵ which was absurdly comfortable, but overly warm. After wearing it twice on the coldest possible days in Cambridge, and ending up sweating, but someone bought it from me on eBay is is very happy with it.

The other was an expensive choice in a disappointed moment: a Cheaney & Sons Hurricane Boot⁶ The story behind it is that I've been looking to get a replacement for my now 9 year old Martens Samuel boots, and I did so for 2 years. In one bitter moment of yet again being unable to find anything decent for my feet, I walked into their Cambridge store, told them what I'm after, and they gave me a surprisingly well fitting, astonishing boot. I was not expecting that it'll need a month to break in. By the way, if I managed to keep this shoe worn for 7+ years, which I intend to, it's not that expensive when realised for the time frame.

What I was also not expecting is that once I put in an arc-supporting insole, like I do with all my boots, it'll start to show the same, rather extreme wear pattern when I only wear out the sole at the outer edge of the heel. And it got me thinking - do I still need that support I thought I do? Were the custom made insoles in Hungary different, because back then, this kind of wear pattern was never an issue, only since I started wearing the ones I got in the UK? Had my body changed?

Our bodies change, I shouldn't even question that. They need different kinds of maintenance throughout or lives: sometimes to develop muscle, coordination, other times to strengthen the core, the joints, tendons, ligaments; yet times to soften up stiffness, and all the time: stretching. My body, while it's hard to accept, has changed a lot over it's 4 decades course, so there's every chance that my feet need different support now, than it did 20 or 30 years ago.

Some while ago I was reading the r/onebag/⁷ subreddit and came across the Xero Prio⁸. I usually don't like running shoes, but I was looking for a lightweight backup shoes for decades (I'm not joking), and this caught my eyes - especially their claim on being "foot shaped". When it was finally back in stock, I ordered one. My feet is approximately 275mm in light socks, so I ordered a UK 9.5 - and it was the perfect size. Too bad the first pair had a manufacturing fault (the lining had a bump at the front, which pushed my right large toe to the side, which was utterly uncomfortable), but after a weird return process, where they asked me to mark the bad shoes with bright paint and send the photo of it, I got a replacement pair, and I'm surprisingly happy with it.

What's different with them is their absurd lightness, like not wearing anything, which is also because of the shape, and indeed, it's unusual. Also much more comfortable, as there's no pressure on the toes from either side. The barefoot feeling it gives with the thin but tough soles and the 3mm insole is also different to what I'm used to but I think it's part of the whole experience. These are really good shoes, and though it's supposed to be a fitness/running shoe, it's performing quite well for my everyday tasks so far, but it's going to be quite strange at first.

However, Xero also has nicer looking shoes, so I ordered a leather lined Denver boot from them. I ended up returning it within minutes from receiving - the relatively strong boot with the thin sole was weird, but the tongue was pressing on my ankles bones at a painful position was a deal breaker.

The last one I got was an Altberg Blueline Aqua⁹ (UK 9.5 as well, a tiny bit airy in light socks, but perfect with normal weight socks). I got these to replace my second, now ~8 years old Lowa Mountain Boots. Those (the Lowa) originally arrived with a wrinkle in the lining that took months to get used to, had a partial resoling done about 2 years ago, and had already worn out that re-sole at the extreme of the outside of both heels. It also didn't feel good to walk in them any more, and decided, with a heavy heart, to throw them out - which was the plan when I got the AKU above, which didn't work.

About a decade ago I already tried ordering from Altberg, and I found the boot extremely well made - but not for the shape of my feet, as I have slightly upwards angled large toes, which doesn't allow me to wear anything that has a sloping toe box. However, in the years since, Altberg started a new last which they call Aforme¹⁰, an addition to their traditional lasts¹¹. Surprise: it's also more foot shaped and fits much, much better! However, I'm still in the process of getting a hang of this boot - the foot part is spot on, but I need to get happy with the stitching line of the collar.

So there: now I have 3, relatively new shoes. I removed the non-original arc supporting insoles from the Cheaney, and I will not put one back in.The Xero and the Altberg came with their own insoles, so I will focus more on walking with my core - essentially my dan tien - activated. I'm hoping to have a better wearing pattern, and thus, to maintain a healthy joint and support system.

Update 2025-05-18: I tried the famed Northsole zero-drop 3mm insole. I seriously don't like it, it feels stuffy and unnatural; the stock Altberg and Xero insoles feel nicer.

This all ties back to those strange interrelation between discipline, comfort, posture, and all. If I buy cushioned, cloudy shoes, my body will go lazy, so I need to get shoes with less or different kind of support, and serious concentration on re-training my gait.

If I show up at work gathering in full casual, people will react and expect accordingly: maybe not giving me opportunities or not having the right effect when needed, which can eventually lead to a drop in my comfort by a stagnating income.

I don't think any of these are "getting out of the comfort zone", but efforts to stay in the comfort zone as long as possible. The lazy zone - that's the real problem, when we don't do the maintenance, and when we forget to question if we're doing it right. Not out of routine, but out of what is actually needed, revisited, revised, when required - especially for the body, which constantly changes.