Sorry it’s been awhile since I’ve updated this blog, but I haven’t had that much going on. I’m still kind of stuck at home with my ankles still recovering. My surgeon wants me to get a cat scan or mri to see whats going on. I still have a bunch on pain in the back of my ankle, the surgeon thinks I may have a tendon that’s getting pinched hence the imaging.
I’ve been busy with Linux in the mean time. I rolled my main laptop over to debian testing right around the time bookworm came out. I’ve been pretty happy on debian, and the testing repo has plenty of fresh updates. I’m temped to go to debian unstable, which is called Sid. The releases are named after toy story characters . If I go to Sid things are a little less tested, but someone has to test them to see if it’s ready for prime time and my Linux skills can deal with some fiddling around to make things run . Maybe in the next few days I will move over. I also started over with my raspberry pi and that is on debian sid. I’ve had no trouble so far. I’m still running Arch on the other laptop.
This past two weeks or so I’ve been working on getting a bitcoin node fully functional. It’s been a project for sure. 1st you have to download the complete block chain which is 400GB plus. Then you have to build the transaction index, that takes a few days. Just when you think you might be done, the electrumx server needs to build it’s own database, and that takes around 3 days. I spent more time than I’d like to admit staring at a console watching it processing blocks. The raspberry pi wasn’t up to the task. The blockchain is more that the little arm processor can handle. I ran most of these steps on my laptop, when it was done I moved it over to the Pi. I now have a fully functional electrum server. It’s at linuxmonkeybox.com port 50002. I had some issues getting it to serve ssl on port 50002, but with some help from the developers I got it. It’s semi-public, I’m staying away from getting on the official electrum server list as I don’t have unlimited internet. I have left the server available to anyone that knows the address. If you are a reader of my blog feel free to use the server for your bitcoin needs if you use electrum wallet.
I’d also like to take a moment to remember my grandmother who passed away on the 17th. She almost made it to her 101th birthday. We shared the same birthday, and she was always in my life. She will be missed.