Legoraft - Posts

Family IT should be fun

contact@legoraft.com (Legoraft) — Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I read a lot of posts in different technical communities, be it hacker news, reddit or github, I love lurking and reading what people think about almost everything that's tech-adjacent. Nobody on the internet seems to agree on anything, but a thing I see a lot of consensus on (especially within the self-host and linux community) is that you shouldn't</strong> be the "family IT person". I think that this shouldn't be such a cut-and-dry opinion, as there are a lot of different sides to this.</p>

Family help desk</h2>
As far as I know, most families have a "techie" person in their family, who you'll call or text when something breaks, doesn't work or you just need advice on a new phone. If you're reading this blog, chances are that you are that person, just like me. For a lot of people^{1</a></sup>, this isn't a fun thing to do. I've seen comments on how hosting a service for someones creates an SLA2</a></sup> you need to maintain or helping your grandma set up a laptop means you should be prepared to be called every day. These comments are almost certainly based on a real experience someone has had, but it shouldn't be directly linked to being the help desk for your family.</p>}
In science and statistics you hear a lot about the difference between correlation and causation. Most of these (admittedly, not so good) experiences all happened to someone who is the family help desk. This is correlation, people who are the help desk have these experiences. That doesn't mean that this is also the cause of this behaviour. Setting up your grandma's new laptop doesn't mean she will call you thrice a day.</p>
Responsibility</h2>
I'm quite a tech-savvy person, who loves messing about with computers and other stuff. For me, hacking around in Linux or spinning up yet another docker container is fun. Every computer I touch turns into a project. Heck, I'm writing this on my Macbook of which I swore it'd be only used for university and I have 2 IDEs and a boatload of CLI tools on it I'll never use for my studies. This probably is relatable for a lot of people who run a homelab or like to code at times.</p>
The big difference between me and my family members is that they see their computer or phone as a tool</em>, not a project</em>. If you give them an Arch Linux install with Hyprland, but they can't run word, they'll probably be annoyed, because the tool they have doesn't work the way they expect it. Imagine you get a drill for a few hundred bucks and you need to run `pacman -Syu</code> before you can drill holes in your wall. What use does that tool have?</p>`
`This means that if you're advising family members on technical choices you got to keep in mind that they can have a significantly different view on their digital environment than you. As the person helping or advising them, this means that you need to inform them and empower them to be able to do their own things. Perhaps your grandma doesn't need a custom Arch Linux install on their laptop and she would be just as fine running a new` `Macbook Neo</a>. You should be very conscious of what your family member wants. Do they need to keep cost low? Do they run any windows-only apps? Are they daring enough to try something new?</p>`
Answering these questions means that they can have their mission-critical stuff, while you give them advice to do everything as best as possible. Every person has their own criteria for a "good" thing. This doesn't mean that you can't teach them some good principles. You can explain a lot of things like open source software, password managers or that the desktop isn't the place for all your files. You just shouldn't expect people to do exactly what you tell them, and sometimes their way will just be like that (also, an address book is a perfectly fine password manager if someone prefers that).</p>
On self-hosting services, don't think you have an SLA. You're probably giving them something new to use and you just should be clear what the ramifications are. For example, the worst thing that can happen to a jellyfin server is that people can't watch a show when they've just set up a movie night. With files, you should be more careful as people can store their sensitive and critical information on those servers (even though you told them a thousand times not to!). Just choose what people can lose or where they can suffer 9 eights of uptime instead of 8 nines</a>.</p>
Have fun</h2> My favorite approach of being the family help desk is to be appreciative. Being the family help desk should be appreciated, because you stay in touch with those family members that call with their problems. Of course, if you're the IT person for your family, you will be called more often for often benign reasons, but you still can help them, often with a simple google search, and make them happy. Even though they probably could've looked it up themselves, you're a lot faster at it. Think of the plumber that can fix a leak within minutes. You could've done it, but the plumber is way faster.</p> The most important part truly is to just have fun. Your grandma probably is very happy that she has a new laptop and your family could be very grateful for watching all your legally acquired media on your jellyfin server. Just be happy that you can be of value for a lot of people and that you're appreciated. And remember, you're a human too. If you don't have time or the person calling asks for to much, you can just say no, no matter how difficult that can be.</p> ^{1</sup> A loud portion of the internet at least.</p> </div> ^{2</sup> A Service Level Agreement, a contract that says that you should supply certain services to the other party.</p> </div>}}

Moving back to Firefox contact@legoraft.com (Legoraft) — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 I've used Firefox a lot, but when I heard about the Zen browser</a>, I had to try it. It was a great experience, until a bug appeared that broke my daily workflow, making me go back to Firefox.</p> Moving to Zen</h2> About a year ago, I learned about the Zen browser through multiple podcasts and reddit posts. I thought it was interesting, so I tried it for a bit. It was quite refreshing coming from Firefox, with vertical tabs, a transparent sidebar and it felt very pretty</em>. I also pinned a few sites I visited frequently to the top, just so I could access them easily. This was great, I could have way more tabs and everything felt better than a horizontal tab bar.</p> The migration wasn't an issue, I imported my bookmarks, set up my default hardening steps I already used in Firefox and went off to the races. A little issue was getting it on my Linux machine, where it wasn't in the main Arch repos. To fix this, I got the Appimage from Github and used a small, modified script I got from Justaguylinux</a> to update it with a single command, which worked great.</p> The bug</h2> In my day to day, I use my macbook more often, and over there everything was auto-updating from the default installer, which was all good. Then, a bug appeared. For context, I have a lot of self-hosted services in my homelab, one of which is glance</a>. This is a simple homepage I use to check my feeds, youtube videos and status of some services. This opens automatically when I open my browser, just so I can procrastinate work for a few minutes by reading some news and watching a video.</p> Back to the bug. Zen had updated after being closed (as it does) and with the update came a bug where my homepage wasn't opening automatically anymore. No problem, I thought, because it'll get fixed eventually. I reported</a> the bug and went on with my day, opening glance manually after I've closed the browser.</p> The bug didn't get fixed, though. The issue was reported on january 30th and still isn't fixed at the time of writing. I don't want to get mad at the developers, as they are doing all of this in their free time and I'll respect that. In the meantime, I got to the point where I either wouldn't close my browser for days to keep the homepage or just get annoyed in the morning due to my homepage not opening automatically. Both of these solutions weren't really a good fix. This feature is such a basic browser feature in my opinion, that I started thinking about leaving Zen.</p> Leaving Zen</h2> Due to me not really having a good time using my browser, I started looking around at other browsers. I also started evaluating what it was about Zen that was keeping me there. I concluded that about 90% of it was just the vertical tabs, and those are in a lot of places, so I started to shop around for a new browser.</p> This is where a lot of my constraints come in. I don't really like the chromium engine. I don't have a good reason for this besides rooting for the underdog1</a></sup>. So my options were basically Firefox or Zen. Not a lot to choose from, and I've already used firefox. Then, I remembered that firefox recently added vertical tabs, so I thought I'd check it out.</p> Finding the vertical tabs wasn't that hard and after enabling them, I kind of liked the idea. I also tried their pinned tabs implementation (like Zen has), but those wouldn't stay put with my aggressive cookie policy2</a></sup>. This was something I could live with, so I decided to try and use firefox for a few days.</p> Going back to firefox</h2> The move back was just as uneventful as the move to zen, the engines are the same, so nothing really changes. I imported my bookmarks, changed some security settings I had changed in the last year and got to work. Using firefox with vertical tabs wasn't that different from zen and I got used to it quickly. I still had a few small gripes, though.</p> First off, I didn't realize how much I loved the floating new tab zen has. It is basically the same as MacOS's spotlight, which is one of my favorite features of MacOS (I use the same shortcut on linux for rofi as well). Second, I liked that zen had almost everything in the sidebar: tabs, downloads and extensions. It is a bit weird to me that the downloads are in the top right again, but I can live with that. I love the full-size address bar inf Firefox, though, it makes it so much more easy to edit urls. This switch also solved another spotlight-related issue. In MacOS 26, spotlight is very slow. When I type "zen" and I have my editor open (zed), it will switch to the editor. This doesn't happen with firefox, as the word is very different.</p> Final remarks</h2> I don't really like where Firefox is going, with their really high C-suite pay, stupid projects every so often and their browser not always getting the love it deserves. I want to try new things that aren't Firefox or chromium whenever they pop up, but sometimes development is slow and what you're used to is just fine. I'm happily waiting for both servo</a> and ladybird</a> to launch, to try them out whenever I have a moment.</p> I totally understand that the Zen devs probably have a lot on their plate (about 500 issues!) and they don't really care about custom homepages. It's just a too important part of my browser setup to not have, so I went back to firefox. Who knows, if they fix my issue I'll come runnning back again. Until then, I'll stay happily on Firefox waiting for the next "new kid on the block" browser to show up.</p> ^1</sup>The underdog in this case being firefox, but I've also been eyeing both servo</a> and ladybird</a>.</p> </div> ^{2</sup> I clear all cookies and site history on closing my browser for improved security, logging in isn't that hard with a password manager.</p> </div>} Change your updates, change your versioning contact@legoraft.com (Legoraft) — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Mojang has changed their versioning system. This is something I didn't expect, but it is a great step forward. In a post about two years ago, I wrote</a> that Minecraft's versioning was getting worse with the new game drop system, making it so players and developers don't know what the latest major and minor versions are. Recently, Mojang announced in a post</a> on their site that they will change how Minecraft will be versioned. This is a great step towards better communication between players, developers and modders.</p> The old</h2> If you haven't read my previous post, here is a quick recap of the old situation. For years minecraft was versioned with a 1.x.x</code> version. The first x</code> showed the current major version, while the second was reserved for bug fixes. An example of this is 1.16.3</code>, where 1.16</code> shows that it is the nether update and the 3</code> shows that the item duplication bug</a> present in 1.16.2</code> has been fixed.</p> This system was great for years, until Mojang started releasing game drops. These are smaller updates that get released three times a year. With this new system, they just started incrementing the bug fix number. This caused the 1.21</code> version to go all the way to 1.21.11</code>, the highest version number until now</a>. With this, players and modders couldn't easily see the difference between a bug fix and a major version, as both incremented the same number.</p> The new</h2> The new system uses the year of the release as the first number, and every consecutive game drop will increment the second number. The last number is reserved for bug fixes again. The first game drop of 2026 was 26.1</code>, with an immediate bugfix being 26.1.1</code>. This makes every version a lot more clear. We'll be able to communicate through version numbers in a clear manner again, as is common in the Minecraft community. This also makes modder's work easier, as we can release 26.1.x</code> releases again and assume that the mod will be supported in all bugfix releases.</p> A side-effect of this change is the snapshot numbering also changing. Snapshot numbering always was a little weird, but I liked it. In the old system, you had the year number, snapshot number and hotfix letter. 25w41a</code> is an example, where you know this was the 41st snapshot in 2025, and it was the first iteration. Now, snapshots are numbered with the new drop number and the snapshot number, so 26.1 Snapshot 1</code>. Even though I liked the weird letter/number combination, this system is way clearer and tells players what's happening, so this is a good change.</p> Conclusion</h2> Even though I didn't expect Mojang to change this, it is a somewhat obvious change. Their developers also need good communication and the messed up version number doesn't help internally. I'm very happy Mojang has decided to change their versioning system to make the whole Minecraft ecosystem easier to browse. The new drop system isn't a decision everyone supports, but we're seeing a lot of backend fixes and improvements with this, which makes me wonder if that was the point. Anyway, it's awesome a game that was €20 a few years ago is still receiving free updates and that the Java devs are fixing their technical debt.</p> Alive internet contact@legoraft.com (Legoraft) — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 I've seen a lot of posts going around about dead internet theory and a lot of other depressing stuff pertaining to AI. A video</a> about the indie web gave me a lot of hope again. The indie web is a place where people gather to relive the web as it was before social media, and it's very</em> alive.</p> I've never really been able to figure out what I'd like to do with my blog. I love to write about things I'm doing or things I'm thinking about, but never really found the best way to do this. I've seen a lot of technical blogs that discuss very technical topics, always give you something to learn or think about and probably look great on a CV. I've seen the digital gardens, where people try to have a digital haven where they write and do what they like, but the articles always seemed so polished. This made me doubt my writing and how I'm doing things a lot. The indie web was a fun way to see that the web can also just be goofy, not everything has to be serious.</p> I don't need a job in tech, nor do I have one. I love tech and writing and I just want a personal site on which I can have fun. The indie web truly looks like the place to do this, so I'm planning on rewriting my website yet again. This rewrite probably won't be permanent, because I love to rewrite my site. I also have a ton of ideas of things to add to my website to make it fun, but I'm starting small.</p> I want to use the fun elements of the indie web, with my own goofy TUI design. The main idea behind my site is inspired by the digital gardens, though. I want to create a site where everything is living. Want to rearrange the full thing for the umpteenth time? Sure. Want to rewrite an old post, just because it doesn't feel right? Of course, just show that it's been updated. I want to create a site that can be fun to browse and to truly surf the web again. This site is my attempt to do this.</p> Why versioning is important contact@legoraft.com (Legoraft) — Sun, 29 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000 This is a post I wrote in 2024, 2 years ago. Check out the update on this topic in my new post</a></p> </blockquote> Recently, Mojang has changed</a> how they release Minecraft. This was already apparent, but it's official now. This is mostly because they want to give players new features more often. It also changes their update cycle a lot, because they changed how they version the game.</p> Before this change, Minecraft updates followed the Semver</a> specification (somewhat). Semver is short for semantic versioning. This system tries to avoid something called “dependency hell”, where all dependency versions and software versions clash and nothing works anymore (read more on their site</a>). This system requires a software version built up from three numbers: X.Y.Z</code>, where X is the major version, Y is the minor version and Z is the bug fix. In Minecraft, this system is loosely applied.</p> Their current system is as follows: Every minor version is where Mojang implement a major version. A normal Minecraft update would be 1.21</code>, with 1.22</code> coming next. Every bug fix, performance optimization or small fix will be (mostly) backwards compatible and added to the third number. A bug fix in version 1.21</code> would be 1.21.1</code>.</p> What's wrong</h2> So, Minecraft doesn't really follow Semver, who cares? My first mod, Simple armor hud</a>, also doesn't follow it very well, and to be honest, it doesn't matter a lot. The problem has started with the new changes. The issues begin with the fact that the Semver major version never changes, which removes a lot of flexibility for versioning. This is why the last number is now reserved for feature drops and</em> bugfixes. If Mojang would truly follow Semver, they wouldn't remove backwards compatibility when they update the minor version (which is their major version).</p> The most recent change in the update cycle of Minecraft causes the bugfix version to be completely neglected. They want to drop new (incompatible) updates on every minor version bump, while also still pushing bugfixes to this version. This means that 1.21.2</code> can be the version in which the bundles are added (24w39a</a>), or be a simple bugfix version that's backwards compatible. This removes a lot of the information you can get from a Semver spec version. Even though it's annoying, this isn't a big problem.</p> The problem</h2> The versioning won't hurt a lot of people. If you want to play Minecraft, open the most recent version and play it. Some people, like me, will be a bit annoyed by the fact that you can't get a lot of information from the Semver version. The biggest issues are for developers.</p> Before this change, if you built a mod for 1.21</code>, you could (mostly) count on it working for every bugfix version after that. This is often called 1.21.x</code> support. After this change, mod developers will need to rewrite their mod a lot on every minor version. This means that mods probably won't support every minor version from now on. This can cause developers to drop out or players to get annoyed because mod development just isn't that fast.</p> The biggest example of this is masa, he's the brain behind mods like litematica, minihud and tweakeroo. After this change by Mojang in versioning became apparent, he announced</a> that he'll stop developing his mods for newer versions. Mojang also has been a lot more radical with code changes, meaning that a rewrite sometimes isn't just adjusting a few variables, but needing to understand a whole new system.</p> Mod development is slowing down for people who do this in their free time. I've also considered stopping releasing on every minor release, but I'll update my mods when I have the time. This can annoy some people, but please respect the time and effort mod developers put into their mods.</p> Solutions</h2> To be fair, I don't think that Mojang will change Minecrafts versioning system. The subset of people who have problems with their new feature drops is way too small to care about. Besides, Mojang has been giving its updates names for quite some time. This means that the usual “I play Minecraft 1.21</code>.” can be replaced by “I play the Tricky Trials update.” I just happen to like the version names. I do want to propose a versioning solution though.</p> The simplest solution to bring back real bug fix versions would be to start using the major release number, so 1.21.1</code> turns into 21.0.1</code> if it was a bug fix version, and 21.1.0</code> if it was an extra feature drop. Mojang can also add tags to their version names, like 1.21.1-bug0</code> or something like that. These solutions are just quick fixes, and as I've said before, I don't think Mojang will change this.</p> I just want to ask everyone who uses mods, to try to respect the developers. Minecraft is a huge game and the code can be quite complex sometimes. Just calmly wait for the updates of your favorite mods and don't harass any developers. Be grateful that they do most of this work for free and if you can, donate to them if they have a way to support them. I'm also just going to try to keep my mods as up-to-date as possible. Enjoy the fact that we are able to mod the java version of the game, because even that isn't a given anymore</a>.</p>