The Future Is Now: Securing Linux-hosted Websites via SSL in 2022.

Having spent the better part of the last 20 years in IT, dealing with SSL Certificates has been a constant thorn in my side. Having to pay a Certificate Authority for the "privledge" of having an SSL cert issued from $100-300 always felt like a scam.

Enter Let's Encrypt

Let's Encrypt, along with the Electronic Freedom Foundation partnered to make certbot. I just had my first experience this evening in using certbot on an Ubuntu 20 LTS server of securing a website using certbot.

If you're a Linode customer, I highly recommend this guide which I found to be wonderfully written and well documented. Sometimes we can have nice things.

In Memoriam: Frank Lee Ruggles 1966 - 2021

This evening I glanced over at the bookshelf in my office and a photography book sitting on my shelf caught my eye. I purchased the book several years ago while at Shenandoah National Park. My wife, (then) infant son, and I were at Skyland Lodge and there was a photographer at the book store selling signed copies of his book.

We stopped for a bit and chatted with him. His book was amazing and I jumped at picking up a copy. After a few minutes chatting with him, I had the immediate impression of how friendly he was, and how enthralled in his work he was. I learned he was just ending his tour as Eminent Photographer for the National Park Service.

The National Park Service hires one person every ten years for this job. As Eminent Photographer, Frank was tasked with traveling to as many National Parks, National Forests, National Monuments...well you get the idea - he went everywhere. His body of work was prolific. He had photographed over 160 National Parks & Forests across the United States to create a database of over 40,000 images. He was the first Eminent Photographer to shoot digitally in the 21st century. And he lived here in Virginia, near Shenadoah NP.

After leaving the park that day, when I got home I looked him up online and found he was a prolific Instagram user, constantly updating as to which National Park he was traveling to from week to week and posting beatiful photos of his travels. He was super friendly in his comments, constantly answering questions of people about the park he was in, or how he took a photo. He would also frequently post dates of photowalks where people could come and meet with him, and join him in the park to take photos with him. His fanbase grew online and I was hooked.

This evening, when I saw his book on my shelf I remembered all of this and thought to myself, "I wonder what Frank is up to. I haven't seen him post on Instagram in a while."

I pulled out my phone to check his account, and that is when I learned that Frank tragically passed away on July 4th, 2021. I am so very saddened by this. I learned that he was in the middle of a project for the national Park service called the 79 years project He was going around and re-creating the iconic Ansel Adams photos, with the same 8x10” film field camera, lens, etc. trying to hit them at the same time of year and as many other similarities as possible.

The world has lost a prolific, beautiful photographer of our beloved National Parks. Rest in peace Frank. We will miss you, and your pictures, very much.

Frank showing off a large print of one my favorite of his photos of Shenandoah NP.

• In Memoriam: Frank Lee Ruggles 1966-2021 - National Park Trust

• Frank’s Instagram Account

• Frank’s Book: Chasing Light: An Exploration of the American Landscape

• A video posted by Frank’s wife, Lisa, from his memorial of friends & family sharing memories of Frank.

• And finally some wisdom from Frank: 10 tips for a better photography experience in the National Parks.

Nandi Bushell invited to play drums for Foo Fighters to play Everlong

This is fantastic.

46

Finally.

Election 2020 Results Tracking

You may or may not be aware, but there is a presidential election happening in four days. In addition to the election of our next president, there are a number of Senate and House of Representative elections on the ballot taking place. There are also races for various state legislators, judges, constitutional amendments, and other ballot measures.

This is a pretty big election.

A number of us want to follow the results on election night of any number of these races, but we will likely be overwhelmed by the deluge of information thrown at us in a very short amount of time. It may become difficult to keep track of it all.

Here are some online resources I've found to help with this:

538's Forecast Models

Nate Silver's organization, FiveThirtyEight, has put out a forecast model ever since the 2008 democratic primaries. It is quite good and gives you an idea of an aggregation of all the current national and state polls. The main page focuses on the presidential election but there is also a model for the Senate and a model for the House.

ObserableHQ's Electoral College Decision Tree

As the results come in, you can toggle which key states one candidate or the other has won, and thus eliminate paths to electoral college victory that remain possible.

What's On The Ballot?

Daniel Neichanian (@taniel) has created a site that gives you a general election cheat sheet of a majority of the notable federal, state, and local elections. There are notes here and there that explain why an election or ballot measure may be important. He has also created a PDF version for folks who may want to print this out and mark it up on election night.

Is This Thing On?

Hi.

I haven't posted a lot in the past few years. I became a father in July of 2016, and have found taking care of a child to be rather time consuming. As he gets older, this are slowly getting easier.

On top of this, I started a new job in February of 2020 about a month before the COVID-19 lockdown started. I am the IT Director (and sole IT staffer) of a 100+ employee non-profit in Washington, D.C. And we're a political / issue advocacy organization. And its an election year. So things have been hectic, to say the least.

Still though, I want to post more here, more often than I have in the past few years. I'll try to do that, starting today.

For now, here is a picture of Henry.

This kid loves to swing, let me tell you…

Landscape Photographer Christopher Burkett Races to Finish Decades of Work

How Eclipse Chasers Are Putting a Small Kentucky Town on the Map

This is a very good article on the coming solar eclipse on August 21st:

People on mountaintops will see it sweeping across the landscape, a cloak of darkness careening in their direction at more than 2000 miles per hour. This is the moon's innermost and darkest shadow, the umbra. Mabel Loomis Todd, a 19th-century eclipse writer, described it "like a wall, swift as imagination, silent as doom."

Things will get weird, and fast. The chirp of crickets may replace that of birds. Fireflies may emerge; bats may flit. Cows may low and jangle back to the barnyard. Pigs may wallow, flowers close. Chickens may return to roost or—as happened when an eclipse passed over Easter Island in 2010—freeze in place, standing flamingo-like on one leg.

A gust may sweep across your face as the wind shifts direction. Even here in August, you may shiver as the temperature sinks 10 degrees. Anybody who brought telescopes or binoculars that aren't filled with nitrogen may be disappointed as the plunge causes lenses to fog.