M
Matto
box.matto.nl · Personal blog · on HN since 2009
Matto writes about Unix tinkering: OpenBSD and FreeBSD on old laptops, Emacs, Gopher, Awk CGI, XMPP and encrypted git remotes.
What HN saysHN commenters link it for practical Unix recipes like syncing org files, converting markdown to PDF with groff, and DNS ad blocking, and some follow the blog.
15HN people shared it
4linked it in comments
15stories submitted
369story points
11 months agolast shared
2009people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Emacs with Wanderlust and GMail2 people · 22 points · first shared 2009 · 1 comments on HN
- 2OpenBSD 7.3 on a twenty year old IBM ThinkPad R312 people · 3 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 3We Must Revive Gopherspace (2017)1 people · 230 points · first shared 2019 · 179 comments on HN
- 4CGI with Awk on OpenBSD Httpd (2020)1 people · 94 points · first shared 2021 · 22 comments on HN
- 5Prosody XMPP server in the home lab1 people · 4 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
- 6Website is available without encryption, and yours should be too1 people · 4 points · first shared 2025 · 2 comments on HN
- 7Encrypted Git remotes with git-remote-gcrypt1 people · 3 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 8Create texinfo files with org-mode for your personal notes1 people · 2 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 9One Week with FreeBSD 13 on an Acer Aspire One ZG51 people · 2 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 10Some notes on OpenBSD 7.2 on a ThinkPad X2011 people · 2 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 11Kindle Highlights to Personal Wiki with AWK1 people · 1 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 12Twentysix year old RedHat 5.2 on QEMU i3861 people · 1 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 13Running a virtual machine on OpenBSD vmm (2018)1 people · 1 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 14Sparkleshare to sync org files1 people · first shared 2021
- 15Dnsadblok1 people · first shared 2014
What HN people wrote when they linked it
sigmonsays · 2021-05-04
totally unrelated to the topic but here I am following this blog now because of very much in common. That is, 1. i3, 2. emacs, 3. sync'ing git repos accross machines.
https://box.matto.nl/sparkleshare-to-sync-org-files.html
anthk · 2021-06-16
Some Unix nerd already did a md to groff translator written in AWK.
https://box.matto.nl/convert-markdownish-to-pdf-with-groff-mom.html
e12e · 2015-04-16
I agree with you, but re: templating: if you're using shell scripts, why not use m4 as well?
Shell of course has templating -- but it's a little dangerous...:
template=teapot size=short build=stout \
cat <<eof > teapot.conf
I'm a $template - $size and $build. I live at $(hostname).
eof
[ed: m4 is a little like cpp (the c pre-prosessor) on steroids (or acid). To get a feel for how it relates to templating for config files etc, see eg:
http://box.matto.nl/m4.html ]
Litost · 2014-05-14
Thanks, i was using this: http://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/ in a similar fashion to described in here: http://box.matto.nl/dnsadblok.html but will look into this one as well.